Reader

thank you um mr tennis i'm looking at the dashboard right now um nan and it says that there are 25 current hospitalizations does that sound right yes and i guess the well i won't say i guess uh let me be real really clear you'll see numbers frequently change and so for the dashboard for the numbers for the hospitalizations we're updating that weekly um and i guess i'm going back to the case number and going back to and i'm sorry i can't see exactly who was speaking this is not tennis i'm sorry my apologies matt tennis yes um the numbers changing also because of what i was explaining at the beginning episode dates change when people are going in to get tested changes and that changes all of our numbers and we really want to be able to accurately keep track of two things we're interested in when people are going to get tested of course we're interested when people are positive we're also interested when people actually had covet and sometimes people don't go in until way after they've actually had covid and so it takes time for us to get that data updated and to make that link especially for with our numbers and we're not the only ones this happens for every single county across the state is working on this and constantly updating their numbers so i am happy to send you our link after this fall for those that are interested but yes i think you might have just muted yourself nan oops there you go sorry you guys i think what i'm trying to get at though is there can we see if hospitalizations are up with delta to what extent they're down there's no chart um on the on the dashboard showing where that how that number's moved over time it just says there's 25 current hospitalizations i'm wondering if you're seeing an impact from delta in terms of hospitalizations yeah and actually i like to share so a little bit information we are seeing an impact and it's the same way across the state so we know that this change is something that's expected it isn't something that's unique just to butte county but there's definitely an increase in currently we are not not i shouldn't say we all tests are not showing whether or not they are delta or a different variant so there's two different types of testing and because we don't have all the information we can't say for a fact that it's from delta we think that it is from delta based on what we know is going on with the virus right now okay and a follow-up question to that one regarding a delta also from matt tennis i'm looking at the confirmed covet 19 deaths by date of death in butte county 2021 chart and i don't see frankly much activity from delta in the realm of deaths can you comment on that yeah uh the reason why is because when someone is assigned a reason for their death it's often that i'm going to speak in my layman's terms because i'm not an md i have a master's in public health um but people when the corner when people sign off on the reason why the person died it's not necessarily from covid so even though we hear this conversation and i know that anecdotally i have people in my life that have been hurt and know people that have died of covet it doesn't mean that the death certificate was because of covet so there's no proof that it's actual covid that is the cause of that person's death and it has to do with the way that deaths are reported there's other things that that kavanagh influence that can cause someone to die i thought that makes sense yeah but i've got to follow up on that one and i'm not meaning to drag this conversation out any longer than necessary honestly but um i thought that anytime kovid was was in the mix so to speak of immortality that it got recorded as a covid death is that a urban legend that i've been taking i'm not gonna be able to answer that directly i'm actually gonna have to go talk to some wonderful people that know more than me um that i work with to get back to you about that answer because i thought that you just said that somebody could die with covid and it would not be registered here in the county data as a covid death is that correct well no because i people what makes somebody die and this is going into details i think we're going off the school board but what makes someone die isn't actually necessarily coveted for example if someone ends up dying from a stab wound they don't always say a stab wound they'll say a puncture to the spleen so that would be an example that i would give so it doesn't say on there a knife killed them um and that would just be that's a really raw example that i'm providing ad hoc right now but i can give you more information about that if you like no that's that's great thank you tom hi nan thanks again um just because we have kind of wandered away and our discussion today is about facial covering protocols i just want to start from the very beginning facial coverings are an effective way to stop the transmission of cobot is this correct to decrease the transmission yes thank you so does anyone else on the board have a question or administration i guess i'll have one more question mental health is a concern to me especially in the wake of what our community has been through also i a lot of you might not know this about me but i was a communications major at chico state and we studied non-verbal communication a lot and i'm concerned that as very young children in particular i'm thinking of kindergarten through through third grade but even beyond i think these kids as their brains are forming i'm concerned about how having all these face coverings in the academic environment for a majority of their waking day is going to affect their their mental well-being not seeing smiles and facial expressions which i learned in college are more impactful many times than verbal communication is the does i'm sorry but if you interrupt the speakers then that becomes a negative aspect and their ability to communicate so please stay polite to each other go ahead matt does the butte county department of public health have you guys had any conversations looked at any research about how masking might affect the social emotional health of children at this time as a counter point to whatever benefit you know may or may not exist out there to masking these these children i needed myself thank you for asking that question i would actually um i think the very best response is to say we're looking at lots of things we read lots of different articles that are coming in that are well published but that is something that i would go to behavioral health about not for not for our public health department because we're looking at slowing the transmission of the virus right now so public health does not concern itself with with behavioral health at all we we have a lot of relationships with behavioral health the question that you're asking specifically it and it's a really really great question i think that's something that i would want behavioral health to answer because they're more of a specialist i'm not trained in that field and so have i read articles myself absolutely i'm sure a lot of you have too but i'm not i'm not the right person to answer that question thank you all right we really really appreciate your availability and i think you mentioned you would share links to the dashboard how would that happen i've been in contact with some of your great staff and i will forward them some links in the morning all right thank you very much and i can forward it as well okay thank you nan appreciate your being available yeah thank you all right so um do we have a speaker's list yes are we moving to public comment well i think we're right we're at that point madam vice president yes dr kaiser i have some additional questions um i could wait until after public comment um but they're regarding the mandate that has come down from the state for facial coverage at what point would my questions be in order on that topic were you intending to ask uh nan representing butte county no no if if you want uh questions to go that she would respond to mine would not be appropriate now okay i think that then we ought to probably wait because otherwise we're keeping nan that we're keeping her on line longer than necessary so um community input or questions okay thank you so we ha most of our speakers are in person we're going to start with kimberly snyder and kimberly will be followed by amber brown vice president kaiser would you like to remind every one of the parameters right so the parameters are that each speaker gets three minutes we ask you not to repeat another speaker's comments if they've already been made in order that everybody gets their three minutes how many speakers do we have on the list i believe we have 12.

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.

yes i think that's also when my term as chair will end so um everyone can think about that well i i don't know but the sheet shows you may of 23.

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.

all right so it is uh 502 which makes two of us late but for that i apologize we are going to open with the flag salute and if you would stand 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 so with that do we have any announcements from any members of the board or staff okay oh actually does eileen have anything elaine did you have an announcement you'd like to make i did not thank you okay i'm sorry dr kaiser i do have an announcement i apologize uh chico unified sold uh its last uh measure k series bonds uh in the amount of 52 million dollars and we also refunded 22.5 million dollars of 1998 bond issuance uh related to the refunding i think when we talked about that originally we were estimating a savings to taxpayers of about 2.5 million we actually accomplished over 5 million dollar savings on the refunding and on the new on the measure k we achieved a 1.54 debt to principal ratio so just as a comparison a typical 30-year bond and again this is interest only is a two to one ratio so we are accomplishing a significant savings again for taxpayers compared to that standard and we had a lot of interest in the market as a matter of fact we had almost 300 million orders for our 52 million dollars worth of bonds which speaks to our credit rating and investors are very interested in putting their money with chico unified so it's one of the best sales i've been a part of we are taking advantage of very low interest rates in the market right now so it's excellent for issuers like chico unified and that will allow us to move forward with our facility master plan so i just want to let the board know in the community that very successful sale that's a wonderful and of course you didn't do fireworks because of the dixie fire but other than that sounds wonderful all right tom i would just like to take a moment if we may to you know think about our friends and relatives who are out there in uh chester and greenville it's a really scary time up there and i know we all wish them well i'm concerned about those communities many many people have been impacted uh okay and that actually calls out for a salute to our firefighters who have been phenomenal so maybe if you see them in a restaurant which they are locally you might buy them a dessert or some other recognition okay so we are anybody else though with the announcement no we are moving on to our discussion calendar then and ed services and so jay marchant and before jay jumps in i just want to recognize this is a really highly controversial topic facial coverings and we are here tonight to discuss it and i look forward to that conversation but i do want to ask that we all demonstrate civility and respect to each other and especially to those who may have very differing opinions i want us to be a model for our students and our community in how to have difficult discussions that doesn't mean that we don't have those discussions i'd just like to see us do it respectfully so with that mr marshawn if you can get us started that'd be great thank you miss staley okay that's last board meeting we passed on the reopening plan and then we decided to have the re uh the mask update and protocol emergency board meeting tonight so tonight i'm going to be going over the protocols for you guys to discuss and make a decision on on if a student refuses to wear a mask in inside doors so i'm going to kind of go over that tonight again on july 12th this the cd ph um sent for their guidelines on the reopening which says that all students will wear a mask indoors and then the governor came out literally hours after that saying that he will give local control over on what the protocols are will be if a student does not wear a mask so that's what brings us here tonight the guidelines issued on the cage 12 as i told you we're face covering when indoors both vaccinated unvaccinated adults and k-12 school settings are required to wear a mask whenever sharing indoor spaces with students recommendations at the at first cdc came out saying the recommendation um was if you could keep them three feet apart and people were vaccinated they did not have to wear a mask since then they have changed um their guidelines to saying all indoors for k-12 education should have a mask so that's been changed since the last on-board meeting we had again i've just what i talked about earlier it gives us the board how we go about enforcing the mass protocols through the cdph and butte county public health a couple good things to talk about tonight first the cdb cp cd ph has said that we do not have man mandate physical distancing requirements do they recommend three feet yes and most of our classrooms we can meet that three foot mandate in class but again it's not mandated that we meet that three foot also face coverings are not required outdoors so at recesses in between classrooms when students are outside or at lunch after school they do not have to wear a mask only inside the classroom yes after-school program students if they're indoors they're going to have to wear a mask so for some kids are in after school programs i mean how much cumulative time is that that they're in the class during the day again i would have to ask them but again they have different homework times but they also have break times where they can go outside that's one of those things that we're going to be talking about we will be encouraging breaks for our classes and we will be doing the same for after-school programs to get them outside so they can take the mask off and take a break again students and staff are required to wear facial coverings when riding a school bus it's the same school buses are considered the same as a classroom so if when a student gets under one of our buses they do have to have a mask on am i correct on that mr baltimore that's correct however there is no social distancing requirement on the bus we will continue to keep the windows down as long as the weather allows and we will continue to disinfect the buses before or after the morning route and after the afternoon round again our goal and our intent during this copied restrictions is that our goal to have all students have access to a safe and in-person instruction in a full instructional day setting again we're going from our am pm model at the end of last year to a full day model to start school year and for the protection of our students staff in the district it is also our tent to comply with the local state and federal requirements facial protocols further guidelines chief unified students must wear a facial covering while indoors unless they have received an exemption we briefly talked about this last board meeting if a family gets from a licensed medical professional um documentation from a licensed medical practitioner to be exempted from the face covering we have on tonight's presentation on an example of that form that they will need to get filled out by by their medical professional and then also the process but if a family comes in and they have a note from the license i want to make sure i'm saying this medical practitioner into the office with that they can immediately go into the classroom without a mask previously when we were taking these mental exemptions we would give them to our nurse that would double check with with the doctor to make sure that this is happening correctly um at this point we will be allowing the student to go directly into class without a mask then we'll have our nurse um check on the on the form to make sure it's filled out properly and just to clarify on that um the reason that we previously had the time delay is that many of the requests that we had for medical exemptions were very complicated uh they were health issues they were food allergies and they were things that we had to make sure that we could do and do absolutely correctly for the safety of the child we think this one will be much simpler and the form certainly is not as complicated as some of the others perfect yes um thank you um mental health professionals licensed mental health professionals um are they qualified under this too that is correct face covering protocols continued to extend possible this is during cafeteria recess and pe to the extent possible physical distancing will be maximized while unmasked for the purpose of eating and drinking and especially indoors outdoor spaces will be utilized for meal time to the extent possible and students will not be required to wear a face covering outdoors this including during recess and ppe while indoors students will provide an opportunity to step outside of their classrooms to remove their math so they can ask their teacher to take a break to go outside and take off their mask students without math will provided to a mask to wear when while endure so we will have masks available when when students come in the classroom if they do not have one students experiencing discomforting wearing a mask will provided a face shield to use as an alternative to the mask so if a student is having an uncomfortable with a mask again again we will have face shields available for them to wear so the requirement is a mask or a face shield while they're indoors when indoors an exempted student without a facial cover will be requested to put one on a mask will find it if needed unacceptable students who decline to wear a mask or a face shield indoors will be moved to an outdoor area to work independently school-sized staff will contact the student's parent or guardian to explain why facial coverings are required one more time and if a student continues either that day or on successive days refuse to wear a mask the site administrator will call a meeting with the parent and student to offer alternative to in-person instruction such as oak bridge or our online academies at the high school again if a student does not wear a mask in class or a face shield we do have outdoor settings for them to go to we will have outdoor settings they'll look differently on every campus because it depends on well where they'll have them available it could be right outside the classroom it could be under an overhang with supervision but those will be available yes mr tims is this a good time to ask about what practices teachers might use um i'm thinking of the younger grades a lot of my thoughts on this topic are directed toward kindergartners through third graders for speech teaching and things like that is this a good time to ask what what how that might be utilizing outdoor settings for some of those lessons that might involve mouth you know dictation and this kind of thing a couple things that on grade levels can do at that level they could work with their grade levels to see if there is an outdoor setting for them to share that they could go out and do those types of lessons but also a teacher could put on a shield so their mouth will be showing during the lesson okay again scenario i'm just going to go and go over a scenario one one more time so if a student comes to a classroom says i don't feel comfortable wearing a mask the teacher or doesn't have one the teacher will offer them one secondly they will offer them a shield if they don't do not want to wear a mask the third thing would be to offer them an outdoor settings for them to do their schoolwork the next two scenarios would get to talk about can they get a medical exemption for not having to wear the mask and the fifth one would be to offer some type of independent study at oak bridge academy or one of our academies at our high schools again if it continues we talked about before we we will have our administrators set up some type of school-based intervention um team meeting just to see how we can again try to accommodate our families so we invited butte county public health to join us i do believe they have a short presentation we did not receive the slides in advance so we will do our best to make sure that we can get those slides if you can get those to us but i'd like to introduce nan starr who is joining us via zoom from butte county public health hi nan hi good evening everyone so i i guess i was just given one specific question i'm happy to um take more um is there a specific part that you wanted me to chime in on here i'm sorry i'm coming in a little bit late sure we had to ask that butte county public health share with us some numbers where we are currently as a county uh what that means what you're seeing in terms of public health concerns and then i do believe there may be questions from our board regarding the current guidelines from the california department of public health sure so i'll go ahead and share um just some uh case a little bit about case information a little bit about delta which i know is on everyone's mind um and then some information about vaccinations and i'm also happy to take questions and if i don't have an answer i can definitely get back with you and i was given the one question also about cdc and also mandate so i'll cover those as well so for the cases the number of new cases and these are total confirmed cases as of august 1st 13 523 in butte county our new daily case count which is also all this information is posted on our dashboard our case count is posted like today our case count that we that we uh have on the dashboard is for august 3rd that's the closeout time would be 12 new episode cases and i'm also happy to um send additional information about that but let me try to break down really um hopefully this is a little bit clearer episode date can always change so for example someone can get tested and then they come in let's say toward the end of um of their symptoms and so then we find out later on what their episode date is and then that time actually gets changed and so um i'm i'm can give you additional information but that's why we have 12 and i'm saying that because that that number definitely changes frequently and you'll see on our dashboard right underneath where it has the infographics where there's one that's a daily um case count if you look underneath there's a graph and that graph actually shows those episode dates so you can watch over time i also wanted to share that delta is increasing and as you all know it's increasing across the state from 53 in june to 84 in july according to the results that have come in as of july 29th and there's always different results coming in there were 10 butte county residents that tested positive for the delta variants so that number also changes and we're also happy to give you updates as we learn more delta new data from cdc indicates that it is highly infectious amongst vaccinated and unvaccinated people the vaccine is effective at prevention of severe disease hospitalization and death and that's specific to delta and we're just continuously trying to stay updated on that and on frequent calls with cdph to learn more as well for vaccinations within our county there is 46.5 percent of our county is uh reported to be fully vaccinated and 52.8 at with at least one dose and that includes the 46.5 and that was reported as of the close of last week i'm going to share just some good news because there's been a lot of um i think worry and concern about it but i will say that for example yesterday we had a mobile clinic at chico high and 75 people came in and got vaccinated and you compare that to the first time we had our mobile clinic at chico high there was seven to ten and that was july 13th so that's just in a couple weeks so we're seeing a lot of increases in people that are getting vaccinated getting ready for for the school year chico state also has um frequently had vaccinations vaccination clinics and they vaccinated over 1500 people um so i i'm gonna answer the direct questions i was given and then i'm also happy to take more questions the question that i was provided was when did the cdc put butte county in the highest transmission category and is there a known plan well that's the second question so when did cdc put you counting the highest transmission category i actually don't know when it very much where it started the specific questions that you're asking is regarding the cdc's website and so you can actually google covet cdc gov tracker and it has a lot of information you can break it down by county and they update some of those data points they update daily and some of them weekly and they do a comparison change so i even noticed from yesterday to today there's some counties that change so that's frequently being updated the second question that i was asked is the plan for you well it said butte department of public health to mandate the face coverings we do not mandate these coverings at all so what we do is butte county public health is we get the information that is given to us from cdph and cdc and we share it with butte county as part of a public health entity and i'm happy to take some questions i know that chico state just put out their change in their requirements so that every single person on campus indoors must have on a mask and that's a very significant change than they had before what before it was just athletes and people staying in the dorms now it's any indoor building thank you for your being here tonight and for your presentation do you have any information about how delta is impacting hospitalizations here in butte county and mortality our deaths i'll share with you the information that i do have regarding mortality i don't um i know that it's i have actual numbers because i thought you might actually be interested in it so i'm gonna get those when i'm sharing with you a little bit um we know that delta is actually that's the part that i already shared we know that delta is increasing we know that we're seeing more positive cases within the hospital but because it's also new and there is a lag in some of the data that is given and that's just because somebody has to go get tested and then it has to go get results and then the results have to be reported that's continuously changing but our dashboard has information about that including the hospitalizations i guess i'm referring you back to our dashboard i don't have it open right now um madam president vice president excuse me madam vice president yes eileen thank you um nan in the chico enterprise record uh two days ago it was reported that um since july 27th until the cut off and i'm not sure if it was august first or second there had been new cases reported in butte county why is there such a discrepancy between what was reported in the newspaper and what you just reported to us and i'm sorry i'm sorry about that i was delayed getting unmuted i'm actually pulling up our website right now so i'll tell you uh just before i pull up the website one of the reasons why we see delay frequently and i also know i am the resident of butte county is because there's different data systems that are doing there there's actually multiple reasons so i'll give you a couple so one of them some of the information is data that's um shared at the state some of them goes through um calradia some of them go through cal connect and that's something that it's definitely not we're not gathering our own numbers we're getting these numbers from these government software programs and constantly linking and making those changes um and that's why you're seeing daily updates so we went from having weekly updates and as of this tuesday so as of yesterday we're doing those daily updates because of exactly what you said we're learning more as we move forward um and i guess i'll take another question but i'm going to pull up our website right now i don't think i can share anything on here actually so if you our dashboard is actually the place where you're just going to find any information that i'm going to be able to share with you now and it is updated frequently we're looking at it we have a cova division that is working on it so we have a question from uh tom landau hi nan um the 46.5 percent of buchanan residents who are vaccinated i just want to double check does that include uh the uh under 12s who can't be vaccinated yet or is that only of eligible uh citizens it does not include under 12.

so normally we only do 10 so in order to let all 12 have their chance that's why i'm strongly urging you to once one speaker has made your point that you not you know repeat that over and over again that way all 12 can get in so our first speaker would you give your name please hi my name is kimberly snyder i have two awesome kids going into first and third at shasta let me tell you if we didn't love the teachers staff and principal we would have jumped ship like so many others i'm going to make this short and sweet you guys already have made your minds up on how this is going to go your political agendas are loud and clear masks should be parents choice not yours others in california are doing it so can you i ask if my child or i ask if my child is more likely to get struck by lightning than diakovid should i never let them leave the house i want everyone to know if you wear a mask or not i support you vaccinated doesn't matter i support you either way let's come together for the kids caitlyn i already knew you wouldn't be here from your facebook post calling in your troops kaiser your endless email responses are rude and unprofessional tom your last quote basically calling anyone who doesn't agree with you dumb is uncalled for and wrong you have already robbed these children of so much please don't rob them of their smile i asked my 92 year old grandma before heading to missouri a delta variant hot spot if she was still okay with going she said i have this sign in my front yard that says live with faith over fear so that's what i'm going to do i think we should all try that thankfully there is a recall going on right now and every family in chico unified can show their displeasure with your leadership by visiting www.chicoparents.org and learning more about how to help this recall campaign lastly i ask that you save chico unified school district half a million dollars and resign now it's time to have people on this board that fight for our children's education fight on parents and shame on you board okay next we have amber brown followed by pat jones i did fail to mention that you'll get a warning sign from mr hanlon when you have 30 seconds to go okay thank you hi my name is amber brown i know most of you know who i am you've read my emails i've spoken the past i recently sent an email today asking miss dalby mrlando miss kaiser miss robinson and miss stanley to please resign you have failed our community you are not the right leaders to make the decisions that we may we need to have made i read this the other day and i thought it was perfect and i understand that i already sent this to you but i want you to understand how important that it is it is my duty as a parent to research and question everything for the sake of my children not blindly trust doctors are not the authority teachers are not the authority the government is not the authority i am mass should be parents choice if you don't if you are not if you are not strong enough to make this decision then like i said resign i have not heard anything tonight that changes my mind at all the coveted deaths have stayed the same for months my children are not at risk this is political theater and not in the best interest of our children my kindergartner is going to start school with the mask on how is she supposed to learn to read how are the many parents that i spoke out there with their kindergartners getting ready to start learning different languages how is that going to happen with a mask all i sit here and hear is all these extra things you're going to do to make sure my child complies how about let me be the parent and you guys be the teachers and the administrators please give us mass choice that is what we're asking for and nothing more thank you next we have pat jones followed by catherine p well i know you're sitting there and you have some hard decisions to make hopefully you make them smartly are you aware that there have been many tests and studies about masks if they help if they keep people safe not one of them has been proven there are no there have been a lot of studies that say that they don't work but there's not one that says masks do work so right there and then you should be really thinking hard about requiring little children to wear masks it should be the parents right to decide if the child is going to wear a mask or not you're putting so much fear in these children that they're all going to need mental health by the end of this next year if something doesn't happen and it's up to you to make it happen do you also know that orange county board of educator the school board is suing governor newsom because of his mandates maybe you guys should get on that lawsuit with them if you all stuck together maybe then you would take control of the schools instead of letting the governor mandate to you what to do why do we have you up there and why are you doing if you're only going to listen to the governor we don't even need a school board now i think that the vaccines or shots are an important part of the mask because the next step you're saying if they don't have a vaccine or shot they're going to need a mask dr robert malone he's the inventor of the mrna it's really bad for children to get this vaccine it causes heart inflammations in children and there's been cases of that locally that i know of and it isn't just children and it did cause a death and it wasn't a cova death it was a vaccine or shot death the other thing in these shots is something called graphene oxide graphene oxide if you put it simply is the lead in a pencil how many times you tell a kid not to put the pencil in their mouth because they might get lead poisoning but instead we're injecting it in under their skin i mean this is really dangerous your first allegiance should be to students and not to the teachers union it's up to the parents and the parents vote for you so please make a great decision and don't ask for masks for everyone and also you can be held personally responsible if kids do get sick because of the masks our next speaker is catherine p followed by anja hi everybody i'm catherine posey um thanks for all your attention reading and responding to emails and questions related to the mask policies i'm a pb high and chico state alumni i'm not a parent i teach at the college level and i'm a curriculum developer in the area of holocaust and genocide studies i've taught middle school english and been an elementary school librarian just to give you a little bit of background about myself i say all that because as i share information with you today to consider i'm particularly aware of the need to evaluate sources of information including potential biases and the currency of the information so i've got three points for you to consider point number one children transmitting the virus so in july 2020 the official journal of the american academy of pediatrics published a piece that concluded that children infrequently transmit covet 19 to each other or to adults and that piece based their conclusions on a study published in an issue of pediatrics as well as four other recent studies that examine covet transmission by and among children and i'll email you all these citations point two relates to the data we have on the risk of cope 19 to young people so over this year's season cdc data revealed the flu was five times deadlier to children age 14 years old or younger than covid19 the risk children is so low the new york times recently noted a child is 10 times more likely to die in a car accident than cobot 19.

so i'm a professor emeritus at the staff school of art and design i'm very excited to work with you i've always been passionate about about art and i'm really interested in learning more about art in public spaces congratulations on your return thank you and welcome jamal can you do an introduction for us please yes thank you alison uh jamal bufford i am a hip-hop recording artist so i'm uh more of an audio artist and uh i am the project specialist for washington county my brother's keeper uh which is a non-profit organization started by barack obama and it is focused on cradle to career pathways for boys uh black and brown boys men of color um of all ages trying to help counter some of the barriers that we face whether it be criminal justice system the education system uh economic inequity um been in that role this role for about a year and a half now i've been making music for well over 25 years i've performed in 15 countries performed all over the uh united states um and music led me to doing youth work uh sharing my love for hip-hop with young people in ann arbor public schools um from ann arbor went to nra public schools went to university of michigan um uh yeah and i guess that's about it um uh thankful for this opportunity to be nominated and working with you all and i'm looking forward to it great thank you i'm very excited to have you both on board and we'll uh hopefully not scare you off in our first meeting well well i actually should add that you are going to scare me off i actually do have to uh depart a little bit early i apologize um it is my fifth uh wedding anniversary with my wife so um i have reservations i have to dip out a little bit early i apologize for that that's okay congratulations thank you um all right so the next thing on our agenda is our approval of agenda um do i have a motion to approve the agenda thank you david and a second i saw john's hand go up john you second yes um any discussion of the agenda no okay uh all in favor of the agenda any opposed great um we will go on to public comment then we are very lucky to have um oh i'm sorry craig sarah just joined us in the attendees if you can promote her to a panelist so she can participate i know she i will gladly do so um and uh jennifer is welcome her is here from the ypsilanti arts commission um and i know she has some slides and i saw craig make you a host so you might be able to share them all right let me get them i'm gonna accept hang on a second hang on can you see the slides no we can't see them right now okay hang on a second do you have the option share screen at the bottom hey sarah jennifer maybe while you play sarah we did introductions of ourselves for the new folks um do you want to do a quick introduction of yourself just so everyone else can hear it yes absolutely good evening everyone sorry for the delay i think at the wrong link so thank you allison for sending that over um so i am relatively new to the mission that i've been working uh with uh with the arts for my entire career um i worked in performing arts um as a kid growing up in theater dance and music and studied art history in college and i've been um working with galleries in sales and marketing of art since then and currently work uh running the retail department of motowee tile works and joined the art commission about a year ago and is now vice chair all right jennifer take it away yes jennifer uh i am no one cheering so you when you want to advance just let me know you know craig you are my new best friend thank you don't ask me how i don't ask me how i did it because i can't i think it was a miracle so meant to be i think you know more about zoom than you think you do so um hello everyone i am um absolutely delighted to be in the zoom room with you today um to um kind of start what i'm hoping is going to be an ongoing conversation and opportunity for collaboration between our two arts commissions for the city of ann arbor and the city of ypsilanti and i'm excited that allison is going to be joining us at our august 19th meeting also on zoom um this month um to kind of kick things off so alison thank you for the invitation and um i'm actually feeling like this is a little bit of old home week because i've crossed paths with so many of you um on the arts commission in ann arbor um over over time so um if you can go ahead and advance craig a little bit about me that's me on the left with the cuphead and the green hair a little bit of a different look in this photo but i am super excited to be the um inaugural chair of the city of epsilantes um art commission we are just kind of coming up on our um first year of actual meeting activities and in the rest of my life that does take more time than i thought that it would in all sorts of good ways which we can dive into but in the rest of my life i'm currently serving as executive director of a local nonprofit arts organization wonderful productions we are a local community based nonprofit that is focused on building and connecting community through the power power of arts and creativity and you probably know us best as producer of the full moon luminary festival and the festive fools puppet um street theater that happen in downtown ann arbor in april and in ypsilanti um we're coming up on our annual ipsy glow event which is very similar to the full moon festival in ann arbor i've been in this role since fall of 2019 kind of just pre-covered and prior to that i had served as president and ceo of what was art serve michigan and repositioned as creative many michigan leading statewide advocacy and professional practice supports for the arts and creative industries statewide and i'm a lifelong champion for the power of arts and creativity in our daily lives in the education of our kids and how we connect as communities you know just in transforming possibilities for people of all ages and here in michigan i really got my start years ago as economic development director and dda director for the city of ypsilanti during which i was able to be part of the early kind of development of the riverside arts center on huron street in downtown fc um i'm just i love everything about creativity um a little bit about our commission um we are by comparison um to your commission very new we're kind of newbies in this space we were created by city ordinance in january of 2020 just a couple of months before covet hit and as a result we've only met by zoom which is a super challenging way to get to know people and get our feet wet in this work but we were established in a similar way to the ann arbor commission as an advisory body to our mayor our city council and city manager and it actually says in our ordinance that we're responsible for advising on all things art in epsilante we are comprised right now of nine members we can have as little as five as many as nine including one non-city resident on that spot is currently held by lynn settles the former ypsilanti high school art teacher who recently retired and were able to also include two non-voting youth members those positions have not yet been filled we had our first meeting in june of 2020 you know as i said we've been doing everything remotely which has been a bit of a challenge but what's been super exciting for us is that unlike in many communities when there's kind of a ground swell whether it's coming from the community at large or the artistic community for a city to establish an arts commission we certainly have that in epsilanny but our arts commission was really an effort that was led by our former mayor mayor beth beshert and city council who really saw the importance of having a leadership group at the city level to guide and really infuse our city with the importance of arts and creativity and so it's a kind of a bit of a different dynamic in getting started but it positions us i think very well for our work moving forward that we have such solid support and excitement from our city leadership team as we're getting started that's definitely been a big benefit for us we have a long checklist i can dive a little bit into some of our specific responsibilities i think they really mirror the ann arbor public art commission roles and responsibilities but kind of overall our charge as an advisory group is to promote right the importance of arts creative industries creativity as part of our community dna as part of economic development as part of what makes ipsilanti an amazing place to live work and explore we're charged with helping to educate building awareness around that with the broader community cultivating opportunities for the arts really to thrive and to prosper in our community and overarching all of that is upholding our city values of diversity pride and heritage and with a really sharp focus on helping to further city aims on providing inclusivity and access through our public art and creative experiences can advance craig so um our um development of our ordinance and our kind of charge of responsibilities was kind of really led by the city attorney who did a lot of research also looked at the ann arbor ordinance as one of the community models in crafting the city of epsilantes model but in general while we have like three pages of to do's on our checklist they really kind of distill into these broad categories um of the commission being responsible first and foremost for developing a strategic cultural arts master plan public art plan and the related policies and procedures right to guide development locations calls for art review of proposals and public spaces keeping an eye on the importance of maintenance and really focusing that advisory role in all things art that are happening in public spaces places the public realm we have no budget at present and one of our charges which is a little bit of a challenge in getting our feet wet and getting started is that we're responsible both for generating funding and cultivating funding opportunities funding partnerships helping to advise city staff the city manager on those kinds of funding investment possibilities we do have the opportunity to request annual budget allocations as well as part of the city budget process we are charged with identifying and cultivating collaborative opportunities with public private partners right at all kind of levels local regional state national um thinking of like ways to partner with eastern michigan university or washtenaw county or um the huron river watershed council or various non-profits kind of that full range the city also has a very important i think goal for using the arts commission to advise city staff on opportunities to infuse and engage arts and creative opportunities as part of our economic and community development strategies one of the kind of current opportunities in this regard is the water street redevelopment project which has a new developer that looks pretty serious in doing a mixed development in that area along the huron river and adjacent to the downtown on the east side we're working with the city and with the developer kind of advising on different ways that they could plan to accommodate public art as part of their ultimate design planning and for that space we have an overall charge for building community awareness of the power of art and creativity as part of education of our youth right doing that through strategic communications working as advocates for this platform and this agenda within our community and i'm sure similar to probably what you're responsible for we have annual right reporting requirements budget request opportunities coordinating with our city leadership team and i think one of the challenges that we face i don't think it's um unlike your commission and other groups that do the work that we do in communities we're limited not only by budget by by staff capacity we do have we're very grateful that we've been assigned an amazing staff liaison elise jacobson who's wearing i think at least three hats in city government primarily working as the downtown development authority coordinator and as the city's public engagement specialist but perhaps more importantly elise is a amazing talented practicing local artist co-founder of alloys studios off of east west michigan avenue and so she brings not only like the connection to public process and city right ins and outs but she brings that voice of local artists and all of those relationships as well which has been super valuable okay craig you can zip ahead so um we've had kind of you know this last year has been crazy for all of us in a lot of different ways and it certainly has been challenging to find the right ways to kind of get to know each other as a commission to kind of wrap our arms around our responsibilities as an advisory board kind of get going on all of those planning functions you know again doing all of that with kind of limited staff capacity funding capabilities and not really being able to be in community with our community and so one of the um important things that we've been focusing on really kind of got started on this this spring is to organize a online community and artist survey that we're looking to launch this fall that will be a baseline kind of invitation to the community from the general community wanting to understand what community interests are with relation to public art and the arts in general how our community is interacting and participating engaging in the arts and creative experiences and then with the targeted invitation to listen to our local artists you know understanding who they are who's practicing what are their disciplines you know are they able to do they have to juggle three jobs to right sustain their creative practice what keeps them up at night and what they need to thrive and stay in our community and um we're again eyeing this for a fall launch using an opportunity to kind of hone in at this kind of what we were hoping was going to be a post pandemic right moment like we're still putting masks back on but like we're getting closer to that moment like in that time what what do we need to know as we're thinking about setting goals and priorities and plans for the commission and for the city's public art initiative what do we need to listen to to really begin laying those groundworks i'm sure that once we are able to be back in the room with community we're going to be supplementing this kind of online survey work with in-person open meetings um you know focus groups those kinds of things but we were very grateful to have had an opportunity to connect with the emily hall tremaine foundation in connecticut thanks to a relationship that i had from creative many their national group that if you're not familiar with them i would encourage you to absolutely check them out they have an initiative called artists thrive which is a a national platform providing survey tools for self-assessment and kind of collective assessment that artists can take to kind of identify kind of what they need to do to thrive like set their goals and for organizations like ours or other non-profits that engage with artists to be able to um really assess how we're doing in that role what more what how how do we need to improve to really truly effectively and um smartly um support artists and collectively help the artists and arts thrive in our communities so the tremaine foundation has offered us a little bit of money i think the grant at this point is only about 4 000 but it's going to support like the efforts for doing surveymonkey and being able to do some reporting and assessment and communications to get the word out both on the invitation to participate as well as sharing the results so that's really a key focus right now and i admittedly it's taking us a little bit long kind of coordinating all of this remotely but excited to be able to share that experience with you as we go forward that then leads to right informing the development of our public art plan and policies that we really need to guide our commission in leading in this advisory role for the city so we've kind of been holding on this until we hear from the community um but one of the things that has kind of taken a step forward is that there has been quite a bit of interest in a more immediate opportunity to develop an incentive program that would kind of encourage street art performance busking within kind of the downtown districts of our community and so that's been kind of moving ahead of the rest of the planning process these are areas where we would be absolutely thrilled to be able to learn from you because you've been working in the space a whole lot longer than we have been um and then the other kind of um amazing and interesting but sometimes challenging dynamic that is just our reality right now is um we seem to be in this moment where um doing public art whether it's private murals or it's groups that are wanting to do creative things in public spaces it's kind of like a contagious it's a good contagious thing right now during a covid moment and so we've had um just like property owners that are wanting to enlist artists and we have groups that are doing things in public spaces and so we've been in a position having to advise on projects before we have plans and policies and guidelines in place which has been a little challenging we're kind of building it as we go i guess i would say and um so i can we can go to the next slide and i can jump into some of those example projects so um and and they're pretty cool projects um too that have been um presented to us in this um quick year that we've been started um the two top ones um first the ipsy black lives matter street mural project this project was um organized by survivor speaks activist and founder trishay duckworth who was working in partnership with two local artists barney judge and trevor stone trevor being a former program coordinator local artist from ann arbor but also with roots at the riverside arts center and i want to say they approached us initially back in december january of like at the break of the 2021 new year to propose the creation of community created and installed black lives matter murals for the heart of our town and there was a tremendous degree of community support the city was solidly on board to support this and ultimately the commission recommended approval of two locations for the blm murals the downtown location is on the south block of washington street between michigan avenue and pearl street right by the parking lot and dolores the new taqueria that just reopened and um the second one is on the entrance to riverside park off of east cross street in depot town these projects moved with rapid fire speed through the review and the community organizing process including fundraising city did not allocate funding to support these the funds that were were totally grassroots community crowdsource funding largely done on facebook and the murals were installed in late may in preparation for unveiling as part of the juneteenth celebration um in june june 19th where there was a whole community creative celebration music performances and such that happened so um some other photos of these as well i think the um um one kind of um dynamic for these murals particularly the one that's downtown is in trying to locate them on a street that didn't require state mdot michigan department of transportation approval we were focused the city wanted us to focus on locations that were city jurisdiction streets and the washington street location was ultimately selected for that reason because it was in the heart of downtown but that's also currently part of the blocks that are closed for outdoor dining so at the current moment you can't really get the full um feeling of that downtown mural as much as you can the one that's at riverside park so for that to be our first um project um success and accomplishment with the community um is incredibly meaningful as i'm sure you can understand um the second major project that was brought forward again just before the turn of the new year was the ipsilantic community school student streetscape banner project and this was a result of a prior curated exhibition of all ages student artwork that was selected to be exhibited at the u.s department of education in washington d.c in may of 2020 and the focus was on really the importance of racial equity and just social justice and a powerful group of student works of again all ages that were curated for that exhibit and what happened covet hit and the student artwork did not end up going to d.c and the community funds that were raised to support the students and their families traveling to dc to be part of the opening none of that happened and so the school district kathy fisk our fine arts coordinator worked with the other community funding partners to reimagine how we might celebrate this amazing exhibition of student artwork and put it in the public realm and ultimately the concept of designing streetscape banners that today if you come to ypsilanti maybe you've seen them they're in the downtown depot town and west cross street districts um all of i think there are 58 images are presented in that way and it was a bit of a challenging from a design standpoint challenging with a variety of sizes and scales and quality of the artwork it was somewhat challenging to translate that into streetscape banners but the commission and the community partners felt very strongly that that was a worthwhile sacrifice to make in being able to bring the visibility and to celebrate the students and young artists and for them to be able to feel that community support around the works that they had contributed so those will be up for a while and i think this was another example of us kind of building as we go because this project then sparked the epsilante dda to have to revisit how they entertain streetscape banner creative proposals and so there's a whole new policy now that allows the banners to be used as another form of artistic expression by other groups and artists and then finally as i kind of mentioned before um kind of all of our bigger work has really been focused on reviewing these projects that are being presented to us to move forward advising the city manager and the mayor and city council i can go ahead craig so i talked about um the blm project and the streetscape banners the other thing that has been um a bit of a both an opportunity and a challenge for us as an advisory commission is as part of the downtown development authority's efforts and the city efforts to support street art performance music other forms of creative experiences in the heart of our downtown last year during covid when the streets were closed they very quickly kind of endorsed and allowed groups in depot town and on the north washington block on some of the restaurants and bars in that area to put stages on the street and just begin to program activities to enhance that outdoor dining experience this year they're formalizing the permitting process for that kind of oddly the permit that the arts commission has to review is a noise permit for amplification of music and there are weekends when you can apply for amplification and the other days of the week you can only do non-amplified music we've been in kind of an ongoing dialogue with city staff about the importance of kind of relaxing those limitations to be able to encourage more accessibility and more variety of experience within the community but they're also balancing the concerns from downtown district residents who complain about the noise so it's kind of been a bigger conversation we're trying to figure out the right role oddly um while the arts commission role might better be positioned to advise on like a slate of programs that would um you know give us an opportunity to weigh in on diversity of like musical genre or different artistic disciplines or accessibility of community voice pretty much what at this point we're reviewing is who's requested which dates on the summer calendar and we don't get any of the other information and actually what the programming is that's being presented so it's a starting point of i think what is a learning opportunity and an opportunity for us to kind of um help guide the city on how we could play a more meaningful role go ahead and craig and i'm almost done because i know you have an agenda so just a couple of quick photo images this is kind of a shot of the washington street blm mural not a very good photo i was short on photos as i came back from vacation today to pull this together from you but we had a lot of people from across the community that came out and were super excited to help put the paint on the pavement next um this is a aerial view of the blm mural on south washington street okay an aerial view a pretty amazing aerial view of the mural in riverside park a view of another example of the banners these in depot town and then some of the other things that are kind of speaking to um kind of the excitement group stepping up if you haven't had an opportunity one of the other performance opportunities that's happening this summer is johnny lawrence the local jazz great out of ypsilanti formerly at washington community college is hosting a summer friday night jazz series in riverside park that is happening right in the public park space it's been happening every friday night through the summer on the days when we've had all the crazy rain it's moved to the ypsilanti freight house in depot town and the crowds you can look to the next slide the crowds for this are every week it's like it feels like it's doubling every week i imagine that by this friday it'll be a bigger crowd and more masks given the county's recommendations today but i think that this is testament to there is such community um just hunger for coming back together in this moment right now i mean i think it's there in general but it's more so this year than ever and to really celebrate the power of our artistic talent and the creativity in our community um this is um black jake and the carnies which is another downtown performance group that ziggy's on the alley off of michigan avenue in the downtown district performs our programs around the ipsy glow kind of halloween time frame a huge draw in the community but a kind of an example of a whole different kind of musical experience and then an example um this one from last year's ipsy glow in october this actually being a group of ann arbor homeschool kids that were home schooling more than normal last year during covid called the 19 nerds that did a temporary installation using paper cups like solo cups in the chain link fence at ypsilanti city hall as you're coming into town that was illuminated at night as well and making their statement about the importance of diversity and inclusion and racial racial equity so um just to kind of quickly wrap up you know i think that i was super excited when allison reached out we'd worked together um years past when she was at arts alliance and i was at creative many um exciting to think about um the power and the opportunities that we have as commissions in two neighboring communities we have our unique charges and yet we have so many opportunities i think to learn from each other and to be able to exchange right ideas models experiences you know when we're struggling with something in ypsilanti and not sure kind of which way to go you know i am really grateful that you're there that we can reach out to you and i think there's a great opportunity for us to have an ongoing kind of dialogue um you know i don't know call me crazy i'm a passionate arts advocate at heart and i think that like collectively the energy and the passion that we bring in our respective communities and together for the power of public art in place in individual experiences of how we connect as a community and define right the places we call home i think that like there's a tremendous opportunity into the future for how we might unite that voice broadly building broader community awareness community connections i just strategically and probably sasely put this picture in deliberately this is a street mural that was in created by treetown murals with wonderful productions for this spring's full moon celebration in april and it was an amazing design process that treetown murals engaged with ann arbor public school teachers and students who created 300 plus designs mandala designs radio designs that inspired this mural that was installed the weekend before full moon on the intersection of maine and liberty streets and um you know the city was determined that it not be permanent and we used paint products that we thought were going to be at least somewhat lasting into at least through the summer season and sadly we had one of those horrific rainstorms the day after was completed and lost so much of that amazing work treetown came that week and kind of fixed it up but it was not as detailed as it was when it was finished and it actually for full moon if you were there we used lots of sidewalk chalk and light up hula hoops and it became kind of a interactive community safely distance art experience for kids of all ages that night but i think this is kind of an example of the type of kind of conversation together we could spark within both of our communities and you know we are completely open to um the opportunities for you know what other ways um as um neighboring um commissions and lovers of public art might we join forces join forces join voices support each other we are really part of a bigger community region and the powerful work that you do and that you support in your community um you know benefits us as much as if somebody and vice versa so um again as i mentioned in the beginning super excited about this being the start of an ongoing conversation and collaboration and partnership with you well thank you so much jennifer um sophie i have to thank you sophie first brought to our attention the fact that you guys existed and that you were coming about and um kind of pushed us to say hey let's get to know them let's figure this out and um i'm really excited i think that we can inspire and support one another and lots of different ways and hopefully like collaborate i think that jennifer and i are planning to grab coffee every once in a while and just kind of compare notes but i also think like hopefully we can as commissions do that as well i think we will face a lot of the same sorts of challenges and opportunities so um that we can kind of build on each other and kind of inspire one another and help each other along the way hopefully yeah does anyone have any questions for jennifer i see sophie your hands up i think that's uh that was a very inspiring uh list of amazing achievements at the time and uh i think there were some great ideas in there that we could probably think about ourselves like they have two non-voting youth members and um i think there was the idea of the lamppost banners which i think we've had some engagement with but we could maybe do more with that um and yeah i love the idea of collaborating a little bit more formally from time to time so that we do have meetings and um think about things we could do together because obviously more is bigger sometimes and might be able to pack more punch who knows definitely what's up so i was very excited listening to you and hearing of all your accomplishments and how you were so inclusive of diverse expressions in art um and so you know i think there's lots of room for crossroads you know between us so thank you amen and i have to say that um you know i want to be sure that it's it's clear that like the accomplishments were not the commissions right i mean we just happen to be blessed with the charge of being advisors in a moment where we have amazing community members that are stepping forward to make amazing creative things happen and so like the role that we have um that i take really pretty seriously is like how can we make that as easy as possible right um and and help the city see ways where they can streamline normal policies and permitting and things so that we can really make it easy to be creative in our inner tongue any other questions for jennifer before she goes about the rest of her evening i mean you're welcome to stay and listen to our whole meeting if you want okay you're welcome too for sure um i can't promise it'll be as entertaining as your presentation though although we are going to go over our annual reports so who knows thank you yeah are you raising your hand i am apologizing for having to step out because my mom's okay no worries all right so we will move on to next on our agenda is our approval of minutes do i have a motion to approve the minutes sarah thank you do i have a second peggy thank you um is there any discussion of the minutes from last meeting no fabulous i'm seeing no discussion do i have all of everyone's approval of the minutes all in favor yep anyone opposed great um let's see next is old business we don't have anything new business is review and approve the um annual report so you will may remember that we discovered we forgot to do the animal report last year and no one said boo so we just combined them this year so the this is two years of an annual report of what we've been doing pretty much through the pandemic um so the annual report follows the fiscal calendar so it's that fun like june to july report um and hopefully you all got a chance to read it over david sent in lots of great notes which i have incorporated um grammar stuff changing names so that they're spelled right thank you um and things like that nothing um at the meat of things though i wanted to um open up the discussion if there was anything specifically you guys thought um i just categorically forgot or um just didn't define well or anything in the report or feedback you guys had david i thought overall it covered it or last two years really well it was just little details to make it read better i thought yep and i went ahead and i already put all those changes in in my word version my google word version so i will pdf that and get it back to vinita all right i guess if there's no discussion we can do i have a motion to approve the annual report david now i have a second john thank you i'm all in favor any opposed great we have an annual report yay that'll go off to um city council and hopefully they'll all you know be enamored with all the wonderful things that we've been doing um and just you know all want to come to our meetings everyone's going to be thrilled right um next on our agenda is report from staff will you be handling those craig saying is i am it for staff today i will be handling great um actually four items three on the agenda pickle street mural project has been withdrawn i understand the principles are leaving the area um so i i feel that's a loss but that's my personal statement on that um next the water treatment plant stairwell project is finally moving and on schedule the anarchy can you just yeah i can or you can just get it no you can you can say where it's at it's i believe it's on the call for art right now okay so the the project itself um i'll just bring marionette up to speed is um at the water treatment plants which is i don't know exactly where it's located it's okay 919 sunset where's that um it is near the dam it's near the corner of sunset and newport okay so anyways they do a lot of tours um and a normal year in their building for students and so they have a stairwell that is inclusive in that tour um and they wanted to put a mural in it and they are hoping to have a mural that has shows kind of the history of the building and um water treatment plants in general and they have this great proposal they're putting that they've put together um i am blanking on his name i want to say greg but that's not it glenn glenn glenn has come to us a couple in a couple meetings um and he has presented their call for art and their process and how they're going to select the work um and we've reviewed that with him and so they put out the call you said craig i bel if it's not out it's soon to be out okay um and i believe they will be asking someone from the commission to participate um in the selection process um so if anyone's interested that'll be coming up pretty soon and maybe a little background so the new commissioners understand why this project in this location um much of the funding that we get to sort of direct toward art comes off the cip and there is cip work going on at the water plant and they carved a piece of it out for this art in the stairwell um and while glenn is an engineer i think some of us think he's done very well at our the manchester water tank near uh the washington stadium split was one of his projects that was put out on the street so uh we have hopes for this project yeah glenn and i actually cross paths way back when and i did the canoe imagine project he was an engineer at stantec when we were and one of the engineers that approved the canoe fan foundation and all that stuff so he's been around the public art for a while the background on that is that's where we learned that in on the stadium bridges art we learned that uh no no disrespect but the heck with the art the whole project is really about foundations it's an expensive portion of the art yes yes um the ann arbor area community foundation funds are in hand and available for your use great after much uh back and forth of how to do it and get the right people to sign off as the city was in transition but it is now available for you the other one that is not on your list is the street murals uh i know council member rodina has had conversations with the attorney's office and the attorney's office has provided him uh privileged uh communications and when council member regina attends he can share with with the group what is being proposed or what's going forward so that's the black lives matter strange mural that we got the presentation it would be street murals not only that one but street murals in general going forward oh cool uh it would be what to deal with what jennifer faced on on the full moon one was the current code requires temporary art and what are the options for getting around that or changing it to allow more permanent art so that is happening great all right so that is happening i'm assuming you mean changes are happening that we might be happy about i can't say because i'm not fully in the discussion between the attorney's office and the council member i just know that they're occurring and uh options are being uh put forward to the council all right well good we're challenging that then the very least sophie i see your hand yeah i think the water treatment plant mural deadline was uh july 31st which was um too short for me as is often the case but uh yeah so that one they should have had their applications in okay it's on the the city uh website um i don't remember how i came upon it but uh i did see it eventually and i think it was a bit too late for me but yeah i think deadlines deadlines are always too short as far as i'm concerned well hopefully they got enough applicants i hope so yeah that's that's it all right well thank you um does anyone have any questions about those updates um from craig before we move on to our working groups okay so um with our working groups tonight if you can if we don't have a specific update like you haven't met recently if you can just tell us a little bit about what your working group is and who is participating in that working group and kind of give an overview so that marinetta can get familiar with them that would be helpful so the business owners and development work group is the first one on our list john i think you get to head that one up yes thank you um this work group tries to inspire public art paid for by private developers and one of the ways in which we do that is a member of this group serves on the design review board and has an opportunity to um recommend or uh discuss ways in which their project can um can include public art in addition to that we have a public art idea book and a best practices uh sort of list um that i'm on that work group and i'm not sure sophie are you on that work group with me uh i don't know who else is on the work group uh david um are you on that work group with me yes david is david is on the work group uh i think mary was and mary and jonah was yeah and they're both they're no longer on that work group so david and myself um another group but i'm i'm blanking on which one it was now i i think you're on the special projects i am on that one i know but i could have done something else too and i i just can't think what it was now exactly uh but uh in any event uh the design review board only meets when there are projects uh that are being developed within the dda boundaries uh so and they have not met for the past couple of months and so therefore i have nothing more to report okay well thank you john for being our voice at those meetings uh when they do happen we appreciate it um capital improvement projects uh david do you have any updates or can you actually give us a little background about that group sure the capital improvements project working group is basically one of the the few mandated requirements for this commission the city annually issues an updated capital improvements plan list of major projects that they're planning to work on um when you hear when you hear cip that's what we're talking about we'll hear cip all the time that's that's it some years it's a major update some years it's a minor update and a lot of it is roads and sewers and things like that that are a little hard to decorate with art but we look for projects on that list that seem like they might be suitable for public art and recommend them for enhancement so the the cip comes out typically in mid-december every year and we try to get a plan together in the last couple weeks of the year and early january so that this commission can vote to move it on to the the council so the rest of the year we don't have a lot to work on so we don't have anything new to update at this point but since our last meeting but that's what we do great um i know last time you had mentioned there was a fire station project that was moving forward do you know anything more about that project i have not heard anything about any of the projects okay uh were you referring to a town yeah you're on parkway okay all right i don't know the status of that but there was one for a mural on a fire station door but they changed to a glass door so the mural project went away um yeah i don't know anything about that one but this was this fire station was just starting early designs so there wasn't much yeah to do there wasn't going to be much to do with it for a while got it i think some of the building might have been postponed uh due to the pandemic but it's an interesting building in that i think they're building it with the idea that there's not zero emissions yeah when um when that opportunity comes back around i think it would be a great idea uh we had the sustainability grant um monies that were potentially offered to us and we were looking for a project to fit that with and perhaps pairing um pairing those together could uh make that move forward even faster or inspire art to be considered um as we move forward uh in that project but i know that um the pandemic has you know influenced some uh some scheduling so we can always revisit that right okay um david do you have anything else before i move on i don't think so no okay and let's see we've got the communications work group next which has myself and sarah and peggy are on that group um we haven't met recently we've been kind of holding off to focus our attention on doing using the funds from the community foundation um once those are available and now they are a focus of ours is going to be doing the announcement of the golden paintbrush award so we haven't done that yet so those funds will be used to do that as well as just general communication about the collection um so we have our work cut out for us in the next couple of months um as we look at that communication work i know um marionetta we had talked with you a little bit about that group maybe being an important one for you um to participate with as far as your background with education and that being a key portion of communicating and advocating about our public art collection and maybe a good fit so i don't know if you're still considering that one or not but we'd love to have you um let's see the fundraising work group is next i think that's myself and sarah we haven't raised any funds recently um but hopefully as we do more advocacy work i know that i saw somewhere that vanita i think applied for that sustainability grant for us so that could be potentially in there um we'll see um the leadership forum work group has not met the leadership forum is the concept is that we'll have community members participate within this leadership forum to act as our liaisons within the community to talk about advocate support public art they will meet with us at least once a year we'll also use them as a source to communicate emails through talking about our collection um talking about what we're doing and sort of be an exterior voice for us both internally and externally communicating with the community about what we're doing but then also giving us feedback and telling us what they're hearing and what their interests are and being another platform for us to communicate with our public they also the idea is that it might be a stepping stone either on to the commission or off of the commission so for folks who are kind of worn out and don't want to be on the commission anymore but still want to participate with us they could they could roll into the leadership forum but also the other way around you know if people are a little hesitant about joining the commission full term and but they want to kind of get their feet wet and kind of figure out what we're all about they could join also the leadership forum and see what we're about and then kind of roll into a position in a future date um does that kind of define what we've been talking about in that group is there anything i missed guys okay i think that group deb mexico was our former vice chair she's gonna still kind of provide some insight and voice on that um group and i'm on that group and john's on that group all right peggy are you on that group too i think i was on that group too yeah okay great glad to hear it um let's see the next group we have is nominations and leadership review um these are kind of two separate groups um because we have where we have to nominate more people to come on to the commission but we're uh we're full now which is exciting um and i think the next roll around if we've got our dates right aren't until may of next year i think um i'll have to pester um benita to custer me when we should be looking at that again um and sophie you have your hand up i was just thinking that since most most of us are on multiple groups and there seems to be quite a lot of things do we need to be one or two people bigger um well going one or two people bigger would um involve changing our bylaws which i think if we are interested in doing we could talk about doing um i think having more people might give us more energy and more ability or it might not i don't know honestly david would it be possible for us to have non-commission members on committees if they're interested in working on something yes um i like like um deb staying on with the leadership forum so you know and almost like advisors to working groups and advisors to us i think that that might that also um might work with the leadership forum as a way for people to kind of interact back and forth between that group as well so that's a great point is there a formal way that that works or do you just say to the committee meeting committee groups that they can just grab somebody off the street or how does it work uh i do not believe there's any formal way that it works um it's just probably first it's probably like project based yes i mean if you're working on a special project for example that you wanted to ask one of the former gold paintbrush award people like how was your experience or something like that i mean i don't i don't think you need the commissions like yes you can talk to other people john i think there's a provision in our bylaws that'll allow us the commission to appoint people uh to serve in a variety of capacities so uh i think that any of the working groups can informally engage and involve people but if we wanted to actually appoint a non-commissioner uh to a working group we do that we have the capacity to do that it would come about i'm imagining is that the the chair would recommend to the entire art commission the appointment of this particular person we would vote on it and they would serve on that group [Music] craig back back tracking a little bit you were asking about when the next uh expiration of terms are and it looks like end of may end of may 22 june 1 of 22 um piers one is in may 31st and one is june 1st why that split i don't know but at least that time frame in 22.

i don't know if that's a year an extra year's penalty for any opportunity oh yeah and i guess we usually usually vote for chair investor at the end of the annual year so we'll figure it out but just wanted to bring those dates to your mind okay thank you um so yeah nominations and leadership um so i'm sorry before we go back to that do does everyone kind of get a feel of how we could add people if we wanted to as far as um adding them to work groups if we had potential folks that were interested sarah um i mean bringing back the idea of the non-voting uh youth members i think that would be a great way also to to add to that and to be honest i mean we have the youth working group but we also have the nominations and leadership working group and um i either one of those working groups could probably take the lead um on getting that process started or work together um so but i think that would be a wonderful thing to to add especially um coming out of a pandemic year where we've had you know kids just have a completely different um school experience and adding something like this an opportunity like this could be really really beneficial yeah we want the teens participating not just from government who had to come sit through us and get our signature for going to a public meeting [Laughter] yes so okay so that is work that those either that group or the youth outreach group could be working on in general nominations and leadership are either nominating new people to join the commission um as people roll off or they are reviewing the leadership on an annual basis with the rest of the commissioners doing a quick survey and saying you know how did they do and are we going to re-up them is there other people that are interested are they rolling off that kind of stuff and the nominations group work group is predominantly the chair and vice chair the leadership review has been john and i don't john who worked with you was it peggy that worked with you on that i think jonah but um oh yeah jonah's gone now he's he's off right um so policy and governance work group has not met about anything in particular although it sounds like travis is taking on our taking on city attorney's office and working with them about getting some policies changed for the better of more permanent art installations in streets so that's good hopefully we'll see here some good updates about that coming soon um that group is predominantly sarah and myself um but if anyone has interest in that kind of thing policy and governance we'd love to have you join us i know david you're really into the nitty-gritty of language and things i think you would love that work group um next work group is special projects which is like the fun work group they get to do all the special stuff that comes to our table that really doesn't have a catching place that we kind of throw at you guys and say hey you guys take this on and they have shined recently reinvigorating our golden paintbrush award and i will let you guys take it away with that update yeah well we we we did get somewhere with the golden paintbrush award uh which was which is an award that existed a while ago uh for people who made a special contribution to public art uh an admirable con contribution and john kotowski suggested we revive it so we have but i would like to now pass it over to sarah fuller who's been taking the whole thing on her shoulders recently so she's probably got more updates than i have well aunt vanita has been pivotal in this process so uh what we've been working on is um working with the city's i.t department bonita's been doing that on putting together a digital packet of our nominations which have been sent out to our judges some of our judges have had an issue accessing them so we are going to uh reach back out and uh try and get the it problem solved so vanita and i are on that um and then we've sent out a doodle poll to make sure that we can uh uh determine a meeting time for uh all of our judges to hopefully meet in one meeting where we can accomplish um actually selecting our award recipients uh so we're looking at next week or the following week uh to have that meeting uh take place and uh grading criteria has been um given to the judges as well so our main focus is going to be making sure that everyone has actually been able to access that digital nominations uh packet and then actually be able to then complete all of the grading criteria before we have that meeting so that we can move through quickly and have those uh nominations ready to go um something else exciting and i forgot to take it uh home with me today because they wanted to show you guys via zoom but uh we do have the awards also created those are the uh 4x8 um uh burton tower uh tiles uh that will be ready for for uh our recipients of the award and then of course the next thing that uh the special projects group as well as myself and benita will meet to discuss will be our people's choice award uh which we have decided um we will choose the people's choice award from um the grouping uh that uh our judges nominate so we're going to give less options um just in the uh for practicality reasons uh so that we can uh you know get that decided and then um announced and then hopefully generate um even more uh buzz for next year's golden peak brush award does anyone have any questions great just be sure you share that with us so we can all vote and share it with all of our friends to vote as well awesome are there any other portions or projects you guys are working on in special projects that we should talk about um i think one of the things we're waiting on is for more information about the new city flag idea um but i think we have to get sort of instructions via the mayor or something to decide craig seems to know something about that go for it craig oh you're muted craig and switching from teams to zoom back and forth to mute buttons in different locations what i what i know is what i don't know i do know that sarah higgins has prompted the mayor a number of times we have a resolution drafted and to him if he wants to bring it to city council so it is out of staff's hands at the mayor's office great uh sophie um i just had another thought which is if the pickle street people aren't doing their mural that maybe we could somehow take it up and make it happen some other way if that space is already kind of allotted and agreed to there if if i may there is space on the allen creek berm wall uh they were filling in for lack of funding the allen creek berm opening project went way over budget and they it consumed up the money that was uh being allocated toward art so we have to explore if we can squeeze out some quarters and dimes and nickels to get that art funded again okay so it was it was about the funding not that they'd gone to a different city and we're doing a different thing well it we were we were slating them to fill that space yes but they were raising their own funding in their proposal do you have a sense of how much money is needed for that i don't off the top of my head um you know the question is what are we spending on the water treatment plant stairway mural would be somewhere in that same vicinity of value i think that was about 12 000 correct i think yeah it's not a huge sum of money so i i don't think all is lost at this point i think the the uh the disputes that are going on on the contract have to settle down and then well once the dust is settled go looking for the money okay um youth outreach work group which i think is just me right although i because i lost my other members but i would love to have some more people join me and like sarah said with the beginning of the school year i think this would be a great way to involve some more youth or involve youth period in our group so yeah jamal you what's what's sophie i'm nominating jamal in his absence well and but something's not here anymore either i thought she was on that group or showed interest i thought that the last time we met we talked about the fact that um you know i joined i joined it with both jonah and mary and that we were looking for other people to join so okay and you know what else i really would like is to maybe maybe not tonight but maybe at our next meeting kind of go back since i wasn't a part of when that group was formed just kind of the initial vision for those people that were a part of that i mean i i get that we want to involve i'm thinking high school students college students i don't know high school students in our group but just like how that all came to be since i wasn't on the commission then and i know that ipsy has a similar um role that some of their students play so anyway that's just some background info before i move ahead with that so i would say the background was from several years ago that that when that work group was um created um the initial intent was to have youth voices on our commission um which evolved and the conversation went back and forth between voting or non-voting i know that travis was saying that he was working with another commission who was doing similar work bringing on some youth for non-voting so um he might have some good insight on how that went or how they're going about that um is travis a part of this group travis is our city council liaison was he on the youth leadership though so our city council liaison doesn't usually sit on working groups he he talked about being interested in that working group though i remember um so yeah okay and though i mean i think it kind of evolved from that to supporting a project and doing a project with youth predominantly because of mary's association with neutral zone so it somewhat will be i think project based it could be related to youth art month you know i know you're deeply involved with that so supporting those efforts um in some way when those things come about with main street et cetera that would make sense right okay maybe you and i can talk offline too about okay sure perfect any um questions or further comments about our working groups okay um that is the last item on our agenda um before we adjourn do folks have anything they want to share either personal or professionally um related to the arts or not sarah i had um and i actually probably should have added it to the agenda but just a little update that i was able to uh uh to sit in on the alleyway project the presentation that um we had from jason ennis so that has moved forward i was able to vote on a few um submissions and that was all monitored with the ann arbor arts center and there are some really fabulous uh really creative uh projects that were uh that were incorporated in in this and i cannot wait to see this uh come to life there are multiple locations um in ann arbor that are suitable for these for these projects and um you know i think we we've we've done the voting and it will just be contacting those artists and making sure that it will sit within the stipulations of of those alleyways whether they're pedestrian only or whether they also serve as um as service roads and whatnot so um be on the lookout i will definitely as as it continues to get updated i will update our group as well um it's going to be really cool so i'm excited come down the line cool i'm excited to see that project happen too um i will share a personal update so my son is right now they had a coveted case at his camp so um he's home this week and he was bored and he wanted to um make money and so he was like well can i sell can i make sell some lemonade and we don't have any lemonade um so he decided to sell his artwork he set up a little table and he was going to ask 50 for each of his pieces but i talked him down to 10 cents and put out a tip jar so that was that was fun that was part of our afternoon today he had his own little art fair booth we didn't get a whole lot of foot traffic on our street he was pretty disappointed it wasn't art fair traffic but you know he made a couple bucks and he got a monster truck a mire later so it was a success peggy you're muted hon i know i just wanted to piggyback off that um creating your own art and sarah mentioned the ann arbor arts center they've done an amazing job having art created around our town during the pandemic and if you are out and about i know we do have some public listening they have a free art book that you can pick up it's for kids at the art center and it's a great guide that you can use to walk around and look at the public art it's actually geared more towards really young kids but talks about the symbols that the artists have used and um i just think it's a great intro to young children about public art i want to give them a plug and the book is free pick it up at the art center yes and it's an idea we can piggyback off of at some point for advocacy and communication and ideas for sure and congratulations allison on a another successful ann arbor art fair oh thank you yes we were very excited we had really great attendance you know we were talking earlier about people being eager to get out and support the arts and it they were eager they were here and even on the rain day so thank you yeah it was it was a great year sophie yeah today i had first meeting to prepare for the october westsider hop which uh which was so exciting because i'm having two helpers this time and last time it was just me so i'm very excited about that and we should be able to do something much more big and amazing and well attended i hope awesome do you have dates yet october 16th 17th october yep 16 or something great all right well with no other updates um i do i have a motion to adjourn sarah do i have a second david uh all in favor [Music] aye opposed okay motion passes have a great evening everybody i'll see you soon you

thank you um mr tennis i'm looking at the dashboard right now um nan and it says that there are 25 current hospitalizations does that sound right yes and i guess the well i won't say i guess uh let me be real really clear you'll see numbers frequently change and so for the dashboard for the numbers for the hospitalizations we're updating that weekly um and i guess i'm going back to the case number and going back to and i'm sorry i can't see exactly who was speaking this is not tennis i'm sorry my apologies matt tennis yes um the numbers changing also because of what i was explaining at the beginning episode dates change when people are going in to get tested changes and that changes all of our numbers and we really want to be able to accurately keep track of two things we're interested in when people are going to get tested of course we're interested when people are positive we're also interested when people actually had covet and sometimes people don't go in until way after they've actually had covid and so it takes time for us to get that data updated and to make that link especially for with our numbers and we're not the only ones this happens for every single county across the state is working on this and constantly updating their numbers so i am happy to send you our link after this fall for those that are interested but yes i think you might have just muted yourself nan oops there you go sorry you guys i think what i'm trying to get at though is there can we see if hospitalizations are up with delta to what extent they're down there's no chart um on the on the dashboard showing where that how that number's moved over time it just says there's 25 current hospitalizations i'm wondering if you're seeing an impact from delta in terms of hospitalizations yeah and actually i like to share so a little bit information we are seeing an impact and it's the same way across the state so we know that this change is something that's expected it isn't something that's unique just to butte county but there's definitely an increase in currently we are not not i shouldn't say we all tests are not showing whether or not they are delta or a different variant so there's two different types of testing and because we don't have all the information we can't say for a fact that it's from delta we think that it is from delta based on what we know is going on with the virus right now okay and a follow-up question to that one regarding a delta also from matt tennis i'm looking at the confirmed covet 19 deaths by date of death in butte county 2021 chart and i don't see frankly much activity from delta in the realm of deaths can you comment on that yeah uh the reason why is because when someone is assigned a reason for their death it's often that i'm going to speak in my layman's terms because i'm not an md i have a master's in public health um but people when the corner when people sign off on the reason why the person died it's not necessarily from covid so even though we hear this conversation and i know that anecdotally i have people in my life that have been hurt and know people that have died of covet it doesn't mean that the death certificate was because of covet so there's no proof that it's actual covid that is the cause of that person's death and it has to do with the way that deaths are reported there's other things that that kavanagh influence that can cause someone to die i thought that makes sense yeah but i've got to follow up on that one and i'm not meaning to drag this conversation out any longer than necessary honestly but um i thought that anytime kovid was was in the mix so to speak of immortality that it got recorded as a covid death is that a urban legend that i've been taking i'm not gonna be able to answer that directly i'm actually gonna have to go talk to some wonderful people that know more than me um that i work with to get back to you about that answer because i thought that you just said that somebody could die with covid and it would not be registered here in the county data as a covid death is that correct well no because i people what makes somebody die and this is going into details i think we're going off the school board but what makes someone die isn't actually necessarily coveted for example if someone ends up dying from a stab wound they don't always say a stab wound they'll say a puncture to the spleen so that would be an example that i would give so it doesn't say on there a knife killed them um and that would just be that's a really raw example that i'm providing ad hoc right now but i can give you more information about that if you like no that's that's great thank you tom hi nan thanks again um just because we have kind of wandered away and our discussion today is about facial covering protocols i just want to start from the very beginning facial coverings are an effective way to stop the transmission of cobot is this correct to decrease the transmission yes thank you so does anyone else on the board have a question or administration i guess i'll have one more question mental health is a concern to me especially in the wake of what our community has been through also i a lot of you might not know this about me but i was a communications major at chico state and we studied non-verbal communication a lot and i'm concerned that as very young children in particular i'm thinking of kindergarten through through third grade but even beyond i think these kids as their brains are forming i'm concerned about how having all these face coverings in the academic environment for a majority of their waking day is going to affect their their mental well-being not seeing smiles and facial expressions which i learned in college are more impactful many times than verbal communication is the does i'm sorry but if you interrupt the speakers then that becomes a negative aspect and their ability to communicate so please stay polite to each other go ahead matt does the butte county department of public health have you guys had any conversations looked at any research about how masking might affect the social emotional health of children at this time as a counter point to whatever benefit you know may or may not exist out there to masking these these children i needed myself thank you for asking that question i would actually um i think the very best response is to say we're looking at lots of things we read lots of different articles that are coming in that are well published but that is something that i would go to behavioral health about not for not for our public health department because we're looking at slowing the transmission of the virus right now so public health does not concern itself with with behavioral health at all we we have a lot of relationships with behavioral health the question that you're asking specifically it and it's a really really great question i think that's something that i would want behavioral health to answer because they're more of a specialist i'm not trained in that field and so have i read articles myself absolutely i'm sure a lot of you have too but i'm not i'm not the right person to answer that question thank you all right we really really appreciate your availability and i think you mentioned you would share links to the dashboard how would that happen i've been in contact with some of your great staff and i will forward them some links in the morning all right thank you very much and i can forward it as well okay thank you nan appreciate your being available yeah thank you all right so um do we have a speaker's list yes are we moving to public comment well i think we're right we're at that point madam vice president yes dr kaiser i have some additional questions um i could wait until after public comment um but they're regarding the mandate that has come down from the state for facial coverage at what point would my questions be in order on that topic were you intending to ask uh nan representing butte county no no if if you want uh questions to go that she would respond to mine would not be appropriate now okay i think that then we ought to probably wait because otherwise we're keeping nan that we're keeping her on line longer than necessary so um community input or questions okay thank you so we ha most of our speakers are in person we're going to start with kimberly snyder and kimberly will be followed by amber brown vice president kaiser would you like to remind every one of the parameters right so the parameters are that each speaker gets three minutes we ask you not to repeat another speaker's comments if they've already been made in order that everybody gets their three minutes how many speakers do we have on the list i believe we have 12.

so um the risk to children it is 0.0002 percent even less than vaccinated adults there were 335 deaths in the u.s due to covet and those younger than 18 and all of those cases had other underlying conditions my third and final point relates to the fear of what happens with no restrictions so i would argue that we shouldn't be requiring masks based on fears that aren't supported by the data for example how many schools were open with no masks no social distancing that had super spreader events what happened in sweden for example at the beginning of everything in spring 2020 they kept their children in school with no mask wearing no social distancing and no testing there was more cleaning than normal and children who were sick were sent home despite those lack of restrictions none of the 1.8 million children in swedish schools died in conclusion i share these three points in the hopes that you do vote for mass choice for the parents of the students in the school district similar to what districts like orland and clovis near fresno have chosen to do thank you our next speaker is anja there's no last name anja followed by mary murphy hi um first of all i was curious that the children are going to be required to be wearing masks i don't see anybody wearing masks in here right now i mean the idea that whatever threat is happening is not a threat right now but it's going to be a threat in the classroom it's not a threat at wendy's burger joint but it's a threat over a taco bell this is theater and it's theater of the absurd my comments are um over the course of the covet pandemic the cdc and who have clearly stated that communicable diseases uh disease prevention by masks and distancing is not based on science and are therefore not recommended outside of medical settings okay that was we were told that throughout medical settings and now all of a sudden it's other settings if in fact viruses can be stopped any kind of virus and it doesn't matter what virus i don't care if it's novel or not any scientist will tell you this if viruses were transmitted by aerosol in the air and could be trapped by a flimsy little mask a little cotton mask we would have been wearing them for the last few decades did you see anybody wearing any masks no and you should be asking your public health department why is it that if viruses were so contagious hospital staff didn't even wear masks until this year why aren't you asking these fundamental questions how dim would one have to be to not ask really good basic questions and why is it that they're running in the county cycle threshold on the pcr test of 45 cycles that is a tantamount to looking at a spec on the moon and saying that's dangerous and that's going to cause covet on earth it's that ludicrous we're talking about exponential numbers of amplification of a viral particle not even the full virus and on a test that says on the product insert cannot detect infection and this is what all this theater is about that virus test the coveted swab that you guys are going to be mandating soon enough for school children that test cannot detect infection and the public health department knows that and it's on the test cannot detect infection the inventor of the pcr test has said so multiple times so i would really urge you to do your due diligence and take care of the children in this county and in this city chico which is your that's what you're here for you're not here to carry out orders from on high you're here to take care of the children in this county and you better look behind the the curtain and find out how much of a scam this is being run because the lawsuits will come they will absolutely come and you guys are going to be very surprised because you're not you're not paying attention thank you our next speaker is mary murphy followed by nathaniel hart good evening and thank you for letting me speak pretty much everybody said everything that i had hoped to say i did send an email with with my i did send email with many references and what concerns me is people keep going back to as a public health person said the cdc and again all their quotes were in relationship to the current testing and as the woman before me said those tests are invalid so all these numbers that keep getting quoted as to the numbers of positives are not are invalid if a test is invalid then the test results that people are getting are invalid so unless somebody comes down with actual symptoms your data is incorrect so if you're basing this on data which is science you need to look at the actual science reports that have been in peer-reviewed articles and i again i urge you if i didn't send it to you guys i i did try kathleen thank you very much for responding that you received it and really take a look at those are hard scientifically reviewed journals with the exception of one which i stated is in the beginning of the peer review process but there are no scientific studies that have shown that there is that the masks the cloth masks are stopping these viruses so thank you very much and please allow these parents to make these decisions for their kids our next speaker is nathaniel hart and then i will be calling katie vanderwaal cook hello my name is nathaniel hart i am a concerned parent of two young kids that go to johnny mcmanus elementary school they're going into second and fourth grade my son trying to learn how to read and write and everything like that being in first grade for only two hours a day has really i think set him behind a little bit thank god my kids are smart and i talk to them like real human beings and they actually um you know have learned a little bit more from us than frankly the school system my main reason that i'm here tonight to speak is because my son kept getting headaches during school when he had to go back to school and you know you're only wearing a mask two to three hours a day but he kept getting headaches the teacher would call me he'd go down to the nurse's office i took him to the doctor twice tried to figure out what's wrong the teacher came up to my car and you know this whole time i'm thinking to myself it's because he's breathing in his own co2 and bacteria all day and now he's going to be breathing that in for eight hours a day including the bus so how's that going to stop my kids headaches and stuff from from his own co2 and bacteria it's ridiculous and nuzuma is recalled for a reason this being one of them and you're going to be next and i am a concerned parent because it is ridiculous i mean if you can smell everything smell everything through your mask what's going to prevent the virus from getting in your mask it's ridiculous this is completely asinine more facts about it like that like that professor said very smart lady she's made some good points point zero zero zero two percent kids died from this virus you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning like the other lady said so now i'm just repeating stuff but i'm a pissed off parent and you guys better recognize what's going on and yes lawsuits will be coming and one of them might even be mine [Applause] i'm calling katie vanderwaal cook hi katie this is the chico unified school school board you'll be addressing the school board if you hear a bell it means you have 30 seconds left okay [Music] okay go ahead thank you [Music] hi this is katie cook thank you for taking my call i'm speaking with you tonight due to my concern for our students and staff going back to school on august 16th although i feel we absolutely should be going back to school in person full time i do also feel some very serious steps must be taken to prevent the spread of this very serious and very real viral disease currently we have 48 covic cases in our county of children ages 5 through 17 and our overall vaccination rate hovers at 46 i adamantly believe all students age 12 and over and as well as cusd employees and volunteers should have to be mandatorily vaccinated as well as obviously masked i realize this may sound extreme but keep in mind two children under the age of 17 died this week of cobit in memphis tennessee and locally nursing staff at enlo are being offered a 400 bonus per extra shift they accept due to overwhelming patient totals at our local hospital the thought of students not being masked in cro in crowded junior high and high school hallways is unacceptable there is simply not enough fresh air to safely move amongst those crowded halls mapped safely firmly and consistently warm as worn excuse me as well as vaccinations for all students over age 12 and for age 12 and over is the only effective way to keep our kids in school full time long term without a leg and learning progress thank you very much our next speaker is claudia d followed by jeannie cutberth claudia is in person good afternoon i want to speak thank you that's fine a recent study shows that children have experienced great harm from the measures imposed on them during the covet epidemic the study used data from germany's first registry recording the experiences children were having wearing masks the registry was used by twenty thousand three hundred people including the parents the doctors and others reporting for the children using this data researchers found 24 health issues reported with the following symptoms irritability 60 headaches difficulty concentrating 50 less happiness 49 reluctance to go to school impaired learning 38 percent drowsiness and fatigue 37 shortness of breath 24.

yes i think that's also when my term as chair will end so um everyone can think about that well i i don't know but the sheet shows you may of 23.

so normally we only do 10 so in order to let all 12 have their chance that's why i'm strongly urging you to once one speaker has made your point that you not you know repeat that over and over again that way all 12 can get in so our first speaker would you give your name please hi my name is kimberly snyder i have two awesome kids going into first and third at shasta let me tell you if we didn't love the teachers staff and principal we would have jumped ship like so many others i'm going to make this short and sweet you guys already have made your minds up on how this is going to go your political agendas are loud and clear masks should be parents choice not yours others in california are doing it so can you i ask if my child or i ask if my child is more likely to get struck by lightning than diakovid should i never let them leave the house i want everyone to know if you wear a mask or not i support you vaccinated doesn't matter i support you either way let's come together for the kids caitlyn i already knew you wouldn't be here from your facebook post calling in your troops kaiser your endless email responses are rude and unprofessional tom your last quote basically calling anyone who doesn't agree with you dumb is uncalled for and wrong you have already robbed these children of so much please don't rob them of their smile i asked my 92 year old grandma before heading to missouri a delta variant hot spot if she was still okay with going she said i have this sign in my front yard that says live with faith over fear so that's what i'm going to do i think we should all try that thankfully there is a recall going on right now and every family in chico unified can show their displeasure with your leadership by visiting www.chicoparents.org and learning more about how to help this recall campaign lastly i ask that you save chico unified school district half a million dollars and resign now it's time to have people on this board that fight for our children's education fight on parents and shame on you board okay next we have amber brown followed by pat jones i did fail to mention that you'll get a warning sign from mr hanlon when you have 30 seconds to go okay thank you hi my name is amber brown i know most of you know who i am you've read my emails i've spoken the past i recently sent an email today asking miss dalby mrlando miss kaiser miss robinson and miss stanley to please resign you have failed our community you are not the right leaders to make the decisions that we may we need to have made i read this the other day and i thought it was perfect and i understand that i already sent this to you but i want you to understand how important that it is it is my duty as a parent to research and question everything for the sake of my children not blindly trust doctors are not the authority teachers are not the authority the government is not the authority i am mass should be parents choice if you don't if you are not if you are not strong enough to make this decision then like i said resign i have not heard anything tonight that changes my mind at all the coveted deaths have stayed the same for months my children are not at risk this is political theater and not in the best interest of our children my kindergartner is going to start school with the mask on how is she supposed to learn to read how are the many parents that i spoke out there with their kindergartners getting ready to start learning different languages how is that going to happen with a mask all i sit here and hear is all these extra things you're going to do to make sure my child complies how about let me be the parent and you guys be the teachers and the administrators please give us mass choice that is what we're asking for and nothing more thank you next we have pat jones followed by catherine p well i know you're sitting there and you have some hard decisions to make hopefully you make them smartly are you aware that there have been many tests and studies about masks if they help if they keep people safe not one of them has been proven there are no there have been a lot of studies that say that they don't work but there's not one that says masks do work so right there and then you should be really thinking hard about requiring little children to wear masks it should be the parents right to decide if the child is going to wear a mask or not you're putting so much fear in these children that they're all going to need mental health by the end of this next year if something doesn't happen and it's up to you to make it happen do you also know that orange county board of educator the school board is suing governor newsom because of his mandates maybe you guys should get on that lawsuit with them if you all stuck together maybe then you would take control of the schools instead of letting the governor mandate to you what to do why do we have you up there and why are you doing if you're only going to listen to the governor we don't even need a school board now i think that the vaccines or shots are an important part of the mask because the next step you're saying if they don't have a vaccine or shot they're going to need a mask dr robert malone he's the inventor of the mrna it's really bad for children to get this vaccine it causes heart inflammations in children and there's been cases of that locally that i know of and it isn't just children and it did cause a death and it wasn't a cova death it was a vaccine or shot death the other thing in these shots is something called graphene oxide graphene oxide if you put it simply is the lead in a pencil how many times you tell a kid not to put the pencil in their mouth because they might get lead poisoning but instead we're injecting it in under their skin i mean this is really dangerous your first allegiance should be to students and not to the teachers union it's up to the parents and the parents vote for you so please make a great decision and don't ask for masks for everyone and also you can be held personally responsible if kids do get sick because of the masks our next speaker is catherine p followed by anja hi everybody i'm catherine posey um thanks for all your attention reading and responding to emails and questions related to the mask policies i'm a pb high and chico state alumni i'm not a parent i teach at the college level and i'm a curriculum developer in the area of holocaust and genocide studies i've taught middle school english and been an elementary school librarian just to give you a little bit of background about myself i say all that because as i share information with you today to consider i'm particularly aware of the need to evaluate sources of information including potential biases and the currency of the information so i've got three points for you to consider point number one children transmitting the virus so in july 2020 the official journal of the american academy of pediatrics published a piece that concluded that children infrequently transmit covet 19 to each other or to adults and that piece based their conclusions on a study published in an issue of pediatrics as well as four other recent studies that examine covet transmission by and among children and i'll email you all these citations point two relates to the data we have on the risk of cope 19 to young people so over this year's season cdc data revealed the flu was five times deadlier to children age 14 years old or younger than covid19 the risk children is so low the new york times recently noted a child is 10 times more likely to die in a car accident than cobot 19.

26.4 percent shortness of breath this is 17.9 percent this is the damage that is done to children now there was another study published posted last month looking at the death occurring in children in the uk during the first 12 months of the the kovid epidemic it found that 99.995 percent of the children diagnosed with survived so how much is this death rate so that number oh and in the u.s there have been 335 children dying of course with a covid diagnosis on their death certificate and that includes that the number includes all who died of other causes with a covered diagnosis now a study was performed by university of warwick in the uk it looked at children absences between september 2020 and december 2020 looking at the number of students and teachers staying home from school sick with covered well thank you for listening okay our next speaker is jeannie cutberth followed by james bishop my name is jeannie and sitting out here and watching you people realizing that most of you there is one gentleman that i believe that might be on our side worried about our kids you up there are all in lockstep letting other people tell you what you need to do for our kids these people out here should be making the decisions not you this is serious this is serious what's going on in our country and for you to say that these kids little kindergarten can you imagine a kindergarten having to wear a mask for i don't know six hours four hours every single day they don't want to wear a mask none of us want to wear a mask because we're free we're americans and we should be able to make up our own minds not let people like some of you tell us that we have to put masks on our kids to go to school and learn i'm ashamed i'm ashamed of all of you and i'm disappointed in the human race i've got i've got a lawsuit here that i want to drop off to each one of you that's going on across the country and by god if you guys don't make the right decision you're all going to get one of these lawsuits because sitting here listening to you you're all do you only you have kids do you have kids put your hand up if you've got kids and this is what you want to do to your own kids what a disappointment that is that you that you went yeah this is what i want to do to my kids well i don't want this done to my kids or my grandkids i want us to be free to make up our own minds if somebody here wants to put a mask on a three-year-old go for it but don't tell me that the rest of us have to what a disappointment and we elected you well guaranteed we got that petition out there that we're signing by the hundreds to get rid of you for this that you are doing to chico so i'm going to leave these so you can all read it because this is what's kind of going to come to you if the decision you make to say that you're going to put masks on kindergarten through whatever chico state adults i'm embarrassed for you i really am i'm embarrassed you're just a disappointment to all of us our next speaker is james bishop followed by holly nielsen hello um so last summer i sent you guys easily enough research to conclude that last summer i sent you guys research that you could conclude that children did not need to be kept out of school or mitigated in any way if they went back to school and it included i won't go into all of it because um people have actually brought up some actual science tonight um but the icelandic study that came out right out of the gate in april they sequenced the rna of everybody in iceland and did not find a single instance of a child infecting their parent so they don't wear masks when they're with their parents and they don't social dissidents so the the research since then has been overwhelming in support of this so i also pointed out last summer that the l.a county teachers union released a white paper where they stated that kids would not be going back to in-person education until charter schools were closed and the police were defunded so this was an overt just making it clear so we don't really have to debate about it they were in the position of being willing to exploit the suffering of children that the cdc was being very clear at the time children need to go back to person education or they're going to suffer grave harm that's a quote and they they were taking advantage of that in order to expand their power if you don't think that's a fair assessment i'd like to hear how you would interpret it um since then um studies have shown things like the incidence is lower in school for kids under a certain age it's not hard to interpret so i'll leave that the american federation of teachers and the unions constantly claimed that they wanted schools open but also created criteria so that they would never be able to open the schools it was really growingly obvious to everyone i think when when wolinski was appointed to the cdc directorship um she the cdc all of a sudden started kind of echoing this rhetoric of the teachers unions to become suspicious maybe there's some relationship between the two well that was confirmed beyond doubt with a freedom of information request a foia that pulled all the email traffic between the cdc and the aft and showed that the cdc had been poised in the january february time frame to issue guidance which would have allowed all schools to open but instead they inserted some language about community spread which closed 99 of school so they went from 100 open to one percent open and it turns out that that language was a direct quote from a request through email that the aft made to ins to have this language inserted and the cdc complied so really i would just want to ask you guys do you think that this is a political power play that our kids are being subjected to or not if we all kind of agree on that then we should do for god sakes just about anything we could think of to resist right so i think you know i don't i'm not concerned about my kid wearing a face shield okay i don't think that a face shield is going to harm them particularly i think that forcing my child to do anything that has no basis behind it for some kind of an authoritarian reason that's connected to all kinds of political stuff is as horrific as you can get right so if we all agree on this and i have a feeling there is some agreement let's figure out what to do about it okay i'm figuring out what to do about it in my community but i would love to partner with you to figure out what to do about it because it's not okay we need to stop this we need to resist in any manner that we can think of okay i hope this is making sense to you okay our next speaker is and our last speaker holly nielsen hi first off the board's presentation talks a lot about the california department of public health mandates but you know doesn't mention that masks are only authorized under federal law the emergency use authorization act which explicitly states that individuals can opt out that means mask choice it does not require anything to be filled out by any medical practitioner and also just to make a comment now now you're going to turn teachers into the mask police as if they don't have enough to manage already i i'm i'm shocked i'm frankly shocked i'm an associate marriage and family therapist i see a lot of adolescents and children in my practice many highly traumatized butte county highest ace scores in california maybe maybe the nation um during my graduate studies in psychology i was a student of the neuroscientist stephen purge's polyvagal theory which is a sort of a universal theory of the etiology of trauma what his theory and related research basically says is that most of the higher functions of the human brain the mammalian brain are dedicated to what he calls a social engagement system our entire nervous system is literally wired for connection and this wiring is entirely mediated through the face and the voice what creates trauma is not necessarily that bad things happen to us it is when our nervous system signals that we are alone when bad things happen to us people heal from trauma when they are connected with others as mediated by engagement through the face and voice which then creates a resonance and heart biorhythms in which our nervous system signals safety connection love so what happens to this system when we're masked up the social engagement system goes offline our nervous system cannot read one another's faces and our voices are muffled social engagement as it is understood by our nervous system in the face of another is not present at all our nervous system believes that we're alone our cortisol adrenaline are increasing we become stressed and for children the sense of being alone is enough to traumatize them it's literally creating trauma in our children for children masking is especially detrimental and will have long-term effects on their physical mental and emotional well-being as i said most of our higher brain function is dedicated to the social engagement system children's forebrains do not even mature until they're 15 or 16 years old healthy brain development in children is completely dependent on their social engagement systems ability to consistently connect with others in their environment in its absence you have trauma you can see that in some of the statistics that already have coming out in this year of masking and social distancing increase in cutting and self-harm behaviors i cannot tell you how common this is in our kids today it is a crisis you're creating a crisis children are at very little risk from covid you know people who need to you know they're going to compromise older they can take the vaccine protect yourselves but the rationale i'm hearing here that supports the masking of children goes something like this children those dirty little germophiles are spreading the virus and endangering others you know since since when are we okay with sacrificing or you have the red sign for stuff for the common good ends justifies the means never means are everything all right so uh i'm going to go back to eileen eileen you had some questions that you wanted to present yes ma'am uh thank you dr kaiser for recognizing me under board discussion um i'm going to start with with 600 000 and just remind us as i remind myself that 600 000 americans are dead because of the covid and now that we have new variants um you know the numbers have increased this is this is not pretend in my opinion this is real and um these the uh acquaintances that i've lost were were here and now they're gone back to what we are about here tonight the cdc has at this point said that in order to get everyone back in school full-time which is the number one desire and mine as well that masks are what will keep us safe indoors at schools and they are mandated the governor's authority under that mandate and the authority that he has under a health emergency does give him the authority to mandate the masks the governor then said at the local level for schools we get to decide not if we're going to mandate masks but when we mandate masks how we will enforce it so the concerns we heard tonight from very concerned parents were that they wanted parent choice and that that has been heard loud and clear so the district has made sure that parent choice following the same forms and guidelines that we have parent choice for other medical issues in the schools is available it's a simple form that will be highlighted i understand later in the meeting so we have we have given the parents that are concerned the method by which to get their kids back into school full-time without the mask mandate if they have the waiver under the proper form now the the next issue that i have is is very much a concern about what we have negotiated with our unions and how the effect of that memorandum of understanding that that says that the teachers will follow the directives of the state department of health that says that when a child comes into the classroom they have to have a mask on as well as the teacher and the age and anyone else that's in the classroom they all have to have masks but um what if a teacher does not say to a student that walks into a classroom and the teacher is not aware of an exemption and does not say anything to the student what kind of liability does that teacher present for themselves by not dealing with an unmasked and to the teacher's knowledge unexempted student coming into a classroom i'd like um you know either mr gant or mr hanlon that handles our labor relations with cuta to answer that if they bite so when we negotiated the the mou we did not deal with any liability issues so i'm going to defer that to our attorney paul gantt but if they do not follow the agreement they're open to disciplinary action by their administrator so you know as far as that goes um we'll have conversations about that with with teachers and go through due process but um i'm going to leave the liability issue to mr gant paul i believe you're on do you want to give a response to that well uh thank you madam board president thank you members of the board and members of the public um board member uh robinson the there's several areas in which legal liability could be faced by the district if it if you do not have a policy in place that is um directed to in provide a reasonable approach to implementing the mass mandate that has been issued at the state level one of those yes is a potential issue with regard to your collective bargaining agreements even though it may be a teacher whose actions or inactions are the immediate cause of the mask not being um not being implemented in a classroom ultimately a teacher is under the supervision of a principal is under the supervision of district administration and the union to the extent that you have um obligations with the union to follow the guidelines of the public health the california public health department if you don't take reasonable steps to do that and then employees fail to act because you're not implementing reasonable enforcement steps implementation steps then that could be the basis of either a violation of your mou it could be an unfair labor practice or it could be a violation of your duty to bargain fairly with the union and that could also lead to potential liability in that sense the other sources of liability and are of course if there was an outbreak i and that outbreak could be traced um to a certain location such as a classroom or a site and that site was not implementing the mandate of the state then um causation would have to be proven by the person injured which would presumably be individuals who contracted covid and ultimately liability could attach in that circumstance i will tell you uh i think it's important to remember that as it is always a big issue with regard to all businesses and public agencies you rely on having adequate insurance coverage to cover you in the event that a lawsuit is filed for personal injury or that personal injury damages may come to pass the most of the carriers for school districts throughout the state of california have stated that an intentional failure to implement the direct mandate from the california department of public health unknowing and intentional failure to implement that directive could very much place in doubt whether your insurance would even be in place meaning you would bear the cost of of defending a lawsuit and the cost of any damages would come from your general fund as opposed to having that backup from your insurance company uh as an attorney i know that that's a very significant concern i would never want to have a client lose coverage because just the expense of defending a lawsuit even one that where ultimately you may succeed is so overwhelming and obviously would drain resources from the district that you need for other and much more important purposes i would say the most direct source of liability in terms of when we talk about a legal action that could impact you soon and that could result in expense to the district would be a legal action in the form of what we call a petition for a writ of mandate and there a pub member of the public says the state has ordered all school districts not just chico unified that you will implement a mask mandate it's outside the board's jurisdiction in the district's jurisdiction to refuse to try reasonably to implement that so if you took a position that says we just won't do it we don't agree with it and even though higher agency has the authority and the right order us to do that a member of the public could take you to court under one of these petitions for a writ of mandate in order to get a judge to order the district to comply with the established law there is little doubt that the governor under the emergency order and the department of public health under the direct supervision of the governor and under the health and safety code has the authority in a public health emergency to to wreck to direct subdivisions of the state such as school districts to implement these policies and even though you may disagree with them failure to do so could subject you to a lawsuit of the sort that i explained the law provides that you would have to not only pay for your own legal fees and costs but likely the legal fees and costs of the other side the member of the public who brought the lawsuit and their attorneys and i assure you there are a number of attorneys and groups out there that are anxiously awaiting this opportunity they we you would have to pay their legal fees i see this particular type of lawsuit as your greatest risk because i feel that a negligence lawsuit a lawsuit that says an injury was caused by covid will be difficult to win and it will take a long time to get there i don't think that's your most direct threat it's a possibility but i do believe the writ of mandate possibility and i also believe that the issues pertaining to your collective bargaining units are also very significant and all of those would run you at great cost to defend i hope i've answered the question primarily that you asked thank you paul very much dr kaiser i'd like to add one more thing regarding negotiations um it's been reported in in the the different news organizations about the reluctance of teacher unions to open schools and and be pro-mask nationally i just wanted to state publicly that in negotiations with our local union we were able to open on october 19th because both unions worked hand in hand with us the district in order to open it when 80 percent of the state remain closed for the remainder of the year in the spirit of negotiations regarding masking our conversation with them has been centered around the issue of when we when can we take mass off not um are we going to make everyone wear them so when we were having those conversations we had to choose at that time some way to i guess in a neutral fashion where one group or another couldn't mandate that everyone else were a mass if it was safe to take them off just because they were afraid of what could possibly happen and that's when we we agreed to let that fall in the health department which we were mandated to do anyway and we agreed with that that that would be the the organization that would allow us at that point to do that and therefore no teacher group minority group could um make everyone else wear it just because they continued to fear covet so i just wanted to put that out there that that they were very positive conversations and discussions and that was the spirit of the agreement that we reached with our teachers union so whatever's happening out there in at the state and national level it was very positive at the local level in getting our schools open and and as soon as legally possible concerning what mr gantt just said is when whenever we can get those mass taken off they were in support of that thank you mr hanlon i think that's a really good clarification i do want to go back for a second to eileen robinson uh did you have your questions uh answered yes dr thank you i had had both the concern about the um the liability of the teacher the district and our um our fiduciary responsibility to follow the law and they were all answered thank you i'd like could i ask a question of um mr gann mr ganner you i'm assume you're aware that there are some districts in our area and then very notably clovis unified school district um has produced a form online where not only a medical professional but a parent could also get on and essentially certify that their child was unable to wear a mask and this district clovis unified is about three times the size of chico unified maybe a little bigger i know i assume you're not representing them and i mean you wouldn't tell me if you were i guess i would let you know right away and i would plead a conflict of interest but no i actually i do not represent clovis yeah um that's what so do you have any sense as to how these other districts are justifying uh their decision in light of what you've said you've painted a very doom and gloom scenario for um basically i think that you're essentially saying that because of various areas of liability it's unconscionable that we would you know um empower parents to decide that that a mask created an unhealthy situation for their child well i you know i'll be very honest i cannot speak for the other districts but i that have implemented um different policies i i can say i've i've appeared before many boards including boards much larger than the clovis uh district and what i hear across the board is very similar in your community with other communities which is a great deal of serious controversy uh points of view on all sides different sides uh with with a lot of good faith uh people with a lot of data that goes in different directions and and and real concern from many different groups and and concerned boards boards who are listening boards who are trying to you know find their way through uh and so i'm i'm very sympathetic to that i try to do with all my boards including your board when asked to provide you with legal options you know options that i believe are defensible sometimes we we have to it's not unlike you know the covet exposure issue you know you're weighing risk and you're deciding you know the board's deciding what's going to be of the greatest risk um on the issue of what some have called self attestation in other words what i think it was the primary basis of your question the question of can parents simply advise the district that based on my own judgment as a parent my child should not wear a mask and therefore do not take steps to implement that with regard to my child what the department of public health has said and i don't know if if uh nan is still available but she might be able to comment on this is that that um we're mandating these masks in the absence of a medical exemption and they're very specific on that point it's got to be a medical exemption and the reason being is that they are designed to according to the department of health and again there's obviously different points of view as to whether they are right or they are wrong they're designed to both protect the wear of the mask and others who may be at risk and again according to what department public health says as part of their rationale for these rules is that the most protection is when you have a variety of mitigation measures including mass by all parties since that provides some alleged uh amount of protection for both the where and the person who that may be exposed to them so that's what they say and and then they said as a result of that we are we are mandating that schools have everyone wearing a mask this has been strengthened in just recent days uh to include all persons in all indoor locations uh in school and they have emphasized that that exemption is a medical exemption so the question becomes should someone should you implement a self-attestation rule that says a parent can opt out essentially based on their subjective decision that that's not best for the child is that going to subject the school district to the same type of risk that i described with regard to a simple across-the-board opt-out of the cd ph guidelines i think that there's a high chance it would subject you to risk because the cdph has identified it as a medical exemption a medical exemption and in my experience in school districts when there is a when there needs to be a medical basis for an action or an inaction it requires the input of a of a of a physician in the state of california those can be mental health practitioners by the way i heard that question yes licensed mental health practitioners can be physicians in the state of california whose opinions can be considered but in the absence of that i think there would be a strong argument and a strong basis for that rid of mandate action or other legal actions if it was on a a essentially apparent opt-out basis one of the areas and i think some of your board members had all of you may have some experience with this but sometimes we have to implement special rules with regard to children in the schools based on a medical condition and we have to develop in conjunction with our school nurses a health and safety plan that's a detailed plan that says we need to do something special for this child because of it may be a medication they take it may be a condition they have but there are exceptions we need to make for this child or special accommodations they need or we may have to actually assign a staff person to support this child in some way and we have to develop a health and safety plan that health and safety plan generally must be signed off on by a physician so that's just one example there are others but this is typically the rule with regard to a medical issue i i hope that that covers most of the question but i i'm happy to take a follow-up i think uh i think that did respond directly to that the format is typically a 504 and and that is with a medical practitioner and it can address a number of issues so um we've concluded our uh public comment and thank you for trying to respect and i think most of you did really well the timing issue so that we could get everybody in i think that's important that they get to provide their input as well and then are there any more questions or discussion issues with the board before we take action on this um i guess i'm fine uh robinson has no further questions okay thank you eileen and tom were you first or uh i didn't see our our parliamentarian's not here but somebody will make a motion correct and presumably maybe we'll get a second and then will there be one more round of comment remarks before we take a vote we can do that yes in the parliamentary procedure after the after the motion is when the board debates among itself so would you like to make a motion sure in the interest of of getting to that debate i will move the adoption of the facial covering protocols as put before us tonight i'll second that motion all right thank you so tom lando has made the motion and eileen robinson has seconded it so now we may have further discussion um did you want to yeah it's it's our practice here to make an explanation if we think we're going to make a descent which i anticipate that i will um if there's been some things worked into the policy that i think are are frankly admirable on the part of the district i think that the medical exemption expanding to include mental health professionals gives a meaningful amount of leeway to this rule um which broadly speaking i do not support um the thing that really gets me about this this proposal and limiting parents rights over this masking requirement i guess is the very young kids i've thought very deeply about this situation and really if it wasn't for the kindergartners through the third graders i could almost stomach the face masks or the face shields you know with with the coverage on them and just the variety of options i i think the whole the whole thing is overkill from a general broad public policy standpoint some of our speakers we had a number i think of really great points that were made from public commenters the most powerful is that for children to suffer mortality from covid is so rare is to be statistically you know a zero percent chance essentially i think it's like i i saw that it was point zero zero or maybe point zero three percent of all covid cases among children resulted in mortality um and that's just kobe being among the reasons that those children died you know nationally that we've heard the number here a few times it was you know 300 and some some peop children total um so to me that just doesn't justify um this just massive change to the way children grow up and interact with one another and interact with their teachers i just really can't can't support it as a matter of public policy but like i said the the face shields being an option for people and and the exemptions that do exist i i think are welcome uh caveats for me in this policy but i can't stomach supporting masking you know universal day-long masking for kindergarteners through third graders so for my part if somebody was willing to amend this motion to allow a parental discretion on those kids then then i could be persuaded to to support this i i think we had a very clear answer from our attorney that the cdc has made it really clear that it's medical we have expanded it as you know to recognize mental health practitioners but he was pretty clear about that tom did you have other comments that you wanted to make yeah i have a couple of comments um the first is just a general apology i heard a speaker today say that i had called some members of the public dumb and that is completely not true i am so glad that you guys are here and i am glad that you are participating and we do all of us listen everything you guys say and take it into consideration um so that said i kind of want to take this back to the very basics we have a couple things we need to do here right we need to protect us ourselves legally as a district and of course we need to keep the students safe and educated um it's become clear that we are kind of damned if we do and damned if we don't since we've been threatened with lawsuits from both sides so um i'm sorry for the disruption so tom if you want to continue thank you um so given that i don't really feel the need to dive into the debate about the science you're disrupting the meeting so you can do that thank you so what we should be looking for is a protocol towards enforcement that both protects our students and all of our students as well as making sure that we all have the most access possible to the curriculum i would be open to some kind of change in either the wording or in our in-school protocols for the k-2 students because i have the same concern i have a kindergartner i'm very concerned about speech and language development among our early speak readers so i would love to hear some some uh spitballing possible ideas from staff about what that might look like do we have anything like that i i can throw one out there i visited classrooms last year and um went to kindergarten classrooms and you know was asked it is crucial that students be able to see our face and that we can see theirs especially when we're teaching them reading when we're doing phonics and what the teacher used was the clear face shield and asked if that was appropriate for students as well and that's what he used in his classroom and i will tell you it is an amazing kindergarten teacher that always has fantastic results i think i know you're talking about it would it be possible or feasible to offer face shields just as a first level instead of saying take the mask no okay get a face shield just have the face shield there present for any of those students who would benefit from that i personally think that's a wonderful compromise thank you i would uh first of all i had one that just finished kindergarten and so you wait for them to come out and they're all the classes are lined up together and i literally didn't see any issue that the kids were expressing over a mask i actually had to remind mine to take them off when we got out but i think the face shields are a very good aspect i don't know that we need to quote unquote offer them first but they're there and they can be used with the language professionals that we have at each school site every school site has a lang a speech specialist and so again there are individual professionals who are attending to the speech needs i do have one that had speech issues and he was in second grade and he didn't have any problem you know after having had the speech therapy um with uh wearing a mask eileen did you have anything that you wanted to comment in this area of discussion uh thank you uh dr kaiser yes i do i had received information that we have a significant supply of the face shields so that using them and offering them is not an issue i believe mr baltimore gave me that information if he could respond to that well i don't have the exact number with me but we have a substantial amount of face shields in our warehouse so it would not be a problem providing those for the start of school and then we'll order more if needed so in clarification um particularly with the younger grades that we would make sure that parents and teachers knew they were available yes we have a process that's already in place that office managers can put in their orders and they're delivered the same day if not the next day for both mass and face shields so we would make sure that that process was still ready to go and we had enough of the face shields in our warehouse for distribution um if you remember we when we were first starting out with kobit that's what the board was given we were given face shields to wear so we've experienced that first line eileen did you have another aspect that you wanted to comment on no thank you dr kaiser um i i believe my questions um have been answered all right matt i've got a question about about the face shields um and if this more general discussion item is not appropriate let me know but um is there anybody here is the public health still on um okay so there's no one here who who knows the extent to which co2 gets caught in a face shield situation or anything like that i mean i read something about it it says something hang off the bottom of it like like a cloth hangs around the bottom of the face shield or is it more like a sneeze guard sort of a thing the ones that we have in stock do not have the uh drape i think is what it's called right thank you also i believe that number is a little over 5000 that we have um in our warehouse right now again under mr lando's point we can um we have a leadership meeting with all administrators coming tomorrow and then we also have a professional development day with all of our teachers on the 12th we clearly can be telling our teachers you can offer either one of those options to the student it doesn't have to be oh you're not wearing it we'll give you offers shielded our teachers are very good about wanting their kids in class also so they will they can clearly offer i can give you either or a mask or a shield okay if if i may and i you know i hesitated in that you are making the policy and you're amending the policy on the spot i i do feel i have an obligation as your counsel to at least direct you to that rule as you develop the the this particular aspect of it it is relatively short if i may read it to you there is some specific guidance in the cdph order on this point um may i read that yes please go ahead paul okay uh so this is this is in the updated guidance from august 2nd so understanding and some of this is not that new but um this is continuing to be in their specific guidance that was just updated and this is under the masking requirement and it's one of the exceptions that was specifically addressed and as you've been speaking about uh in terms of ensuring that the students are going to be able to be properly educated um they refer to that as a pedagogical or developmental reason okay so that's what that refers to when i read that they say under masking section 1 subdivision f of the school guidance of august 2nd they state in limited situations where a face covering cannot be used for pedagogical or developmental reasons for example communicating or assisting young children or those with special needs a face shield with a drape per cd ph guidelines can be used instead of a face covering while in the classroom as long as the wearer maintains physical distance from others staff must return to wearing a face covering outside the classroom now i do interpret that i think a reasonable interpretation is that the face shield with drape can be used by the teacher and the student for those pedagogical or developmental reasons but i just wanted to point out that there are a couple specifics there that need to be taken into account and one is that it does specify the drape and it also specifies that it is to be used in combination with physical distancing i would tend to interpret that as three feet but they haven't been specific so i think it's all it's as much as possible with a guide of being three feet if possible and i do believe that in um most if not all of our classrooms we can meet the three foot social distancing one of the advantages of the face shield is again the sound is transmitted you can see the lips and the facial expressions so i don't think there would be the sense that they would have to be so close together we actually have the reference to the face shield in our policy so i don't think we have to actually make an amendment it's already recognized that that's a accepted option for uh individuals and for sure um speech is the number one limitation or special need that any school district has that's why we have a speech therapist at every single site so it makes sense that the younger the student the more likely they would be benefiting from being able to see as well as hear the sounds and the movement so yeah so um yes tom i just want to address paul for a moment i think that what you were bringing up was that we our face masks for students do not have drapes and the language in the guidance specifically states that that's what needs to be used this is kevin can i add just a point to that the face shields that we ordered and have used last year we applied our own shield or a drape using a in essence a paper towel almost with a tape the reason being you could then dispose of that versus having some cloth that needed to be washed it proved effective and it gave kind of the opportunity to change that out multiple times during the day that's the same system we would use now so i just want to point out what we have for drapes is a self-applied in essence paper drape and we have the time and resources to do that to the 5000 or whatever as they as we know them we leave that up to the individual to put this on okay and if there's any doubt then there's always that's one of the uh benefits of having your local health officer if you have a question about hey is that appropriate under the guidelines then my sense is they would be able to give you that guidance to say yes that solution is appropriate and that's acceptable and you and you can you can rely upon that type of interpretation should come to that all right thank you uh any other points of discussion all right well seeing none then i'd like to move to the vote um did i understand there was some kind of amendment or could we have the motion read back please we didn't do an amendment right we just it's the action reference to facials is already included in the document um so are you asking for that entire protocol to be read no okay um excuse me um can i make a just to clarify this can i make a uh what is it an author's amendment to the to my own motion just with some clarifying language uh well if it's an amendment it'll have to be second yeah so um i would be happy to um i mean i can make myself a friendly amendment and prove it um i'd be happy to change that language so that we are adopting the presented facial covering protocols with the understanding that face shield will be a first line offering for students in k1 or 2.

so um the risk to children it is 0.0002 percent even less than vaccinated adults there were 335 deaths in the u.s due to covet and those younger than 18 and all of those cases had other underlying conditions my third and final point relates to the fear of what happens with no restrictions so i would argue that we shouldn't be requiring masks based on fears that aren't supported by the data for example how many schools were open with no masks no social distancing that had super spreader events what happened in sweden for example at the beginning of everything in spring 2020 they kept their children in school with no mask wearing no social distancing and no testing there was more cleaning than normal and children who were sick were sent home despite those lack of restrictions none of the 1.8 million children in swedish schools died in conclusion i share these three points in the hopes that you do vote for mass choice for the parents of the students in the school district similar to what districts like orland and clovis near fresno have chosen to do thank you our next speaker is anja there's no last name anja followed by mary murphy hi um first of all i was curious that the children are going to be required to be wearing masks i don't see anybody wearing masks in here right now i mean the idea that whatever threat is happening is not a threat right now but it's going to be a threat in the classroom it's not a threat at wendy's burger joint but it's a threat over a taco bell this is theater and it's theater of the absurd my comments are um over the course of the covet pandemic the cdc and who have clearly stated that communicable diseases uh disease prevention by masks and distancing is not based on science and are therefore not recommended outside of medical settings okay that was we were told that throughout medical settings and now all of a sudden it's other settings if in fact viruses can be stopped any kind of virus and it doesn't matter what virus i don't care if it's novel or not any scientist will tell you this if viruses were transmitted by aerosol in the air and could be trapped by a flimsy little mask a little cotton mask we would have been wearing them for the last few decades did you see anybody wearing any masks no and you should be asking your public health department why is it that if viruses were so contagious hospital staff didn't even wear masks until this year why aren't you asking these fundamental questions how dim would one have to be to not ask really good basic questions and why is it that they're running in the county cycle threshold on the pcr test of 45 cycles that is a tantamount to looking at a spec on the moon and saying that's dangerous and that's going to cause covet on earth it's that ludicrous we're talking about exponential numbers of amplification of a viral particle not even the full virus and on a test that says on the product insert cannot detect infection and this is what all this theater is about that virus test the coveted swab that you guys are going to be mandating soon enough for school children that test cannot detect infection and the public health department knows that and it's on the test cannot detect infection the inventor of the pcr test has said so multiple times so i would really urge you to do your due diligence and take care of the children in this county and in this city chico which is your that's what you're here for you're not here to carry out orders from on high you're here to take care of the children in this county and you better look behind the the curtain and find out how much of a scam this is being run because the lawsuits will come they will absolutely come and you guys are going to be very surprised because you're not you're not paying attention thank you our next speaker is mary murphy followed by nathaniel hart good evening and thank you for letting me speak pretty much everybody said everything that i had hoped to say i did send an email with with my i did send email with many references and what concerns me is people keep going back to as a public health person said the cdc and again all their quotes were in relationship to the current testing and as the woman before me said those tests are invalid so all these numbers that keep getting quoted as to the numbers of positives are not are invalid if a test is invalid then the test results that people are getting are invalid so unless somebody comes down with actual symptoms your data is incorrect so if you're basing this on data which is science you need to look at the actual science reports that have been in peer-reviewed articles and i again i urge you if i didn't send it to you guys i i did try kathleen thank you very much for responding that you received it and really take a look at those are hard scientifically reviewed journals with the exception of one which i stated is in the beginning of the peer review process but there are no scientific studies that have shown that there is that the masks the cloth masks are stopping these viruses so thank you very much and please allow these parents to make these decisions for their kids our next speaker is nathaniel hart and then i will be calling katie vanderwaal cook hello my name is nathaniel hart i am a concerned parent of two young kids that go to johnny mcmanus elementary school they're going into second and fourth grade my son trying to learn how to read and write and everything like that being in first grade for only two hours a day has really i think set him behind a little bit thank god my kids are smart and i talk to them like real human beings and they actually um you know have learned a little bit more from us than frankly the school system my main reason that i'm here tonight to speak is because my son kept getting headaches during school when he had to go back to school and you know you're only wearing a mask two to three hours a day but he kept getting headaches the teacher would call me he'd go down to the nurse's office i took him to the doctor twice tried to figure out what's wrong the teacher came up to my car and you know this whole time i'm thinking to myself it's because he's breathing in his own co2 and bacteria all day and now he's going to be breathing that in for eight hours a day including the bus so how's that going to stop my kids headaches and stuff from from his own co2 and bacteria it's ridiculous and nuzuma is recalled for a reason this being one of them and you're going to be next and i am a concerned parent because it is ridiculous i mean if you can smell everything smell everything through your mask what's going to prevent the virus from getting in your mask it's ridiculous this is completely asinine more facts about it like that like that professor said very smart lady she's made some good points point zero zero zero two percent kids died from this virus you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning like the other lady said so now i'm just repeating stuff but i'm a pissed off parent and you guys better recognize what's going on and yes lawsuits will be coming and one of them might even be mine [Applause] i'm calling katie vanderwaal cook hi katie this is the chico unified school school board you'll be addressing the school board if you hear a bell it means you have 30 seconds left okay [Music] okay go ahead thank you [Music] hi this is katie cook thank you for taking my call i'm speaking with you tonight due to my concern for our students and staff going back to school on august 16th although i feel we absolutely should be going back to school in person full time i do also feel some very serious steps must be taken to prevent the spread of this very serious and very real viral disease currently we have 48 covic cases in our county of children ages 5 through 17 and our overall vaccination rate hovers at 46 i adamantly believe all students age 12 and over and as well as cusd employees and volunteers should have to be mandatorily vaccinated as well as obviously masked i realize this may sound extreme but keep in mind two children under the age of 17 died this week of cobit in memphis tennessee and locally nursing staff at enlo are being offered a 400 bonus per extra shift they accept due to overwhelming patient totals at our local hospital the thought of students not being masked in cro in crowded junior high and high school hallways is unacceptable there is simply not enough fresh air to safely move amongst those crowded halls mapped safely firmly and consistently warm as worn excuse me as well as vaccinations for all students over age 12 and for age 12 and over is the only effective way to keep our kids in school full time long term without a leg and learning progress thank you very much our next speaker is claudia d followed by jeannie cutberth claudia is in person good afternoon i want to speak thank you that's fine a recent study shows that children have experienced great harm from the measures imposed on them during the covet epidemic the study used data from germany's first registry recording the experiences children were having wearing masks the registry was used by twenty thousand three hundred people including the parents the doctors and others reporting for the children using this data researchers found 24 health issues reported with the following symptoms irritability 60 headaches difficulty concentrating 50 less happiness 49 reluctance to go to school impaired learning 38 percent drowsiness and fatigue 37 shortness of breath 24.

is that is there eileen are you wanting to see that as friendly i do not believe that's uh i'm not going to second it because i i don't believe it's necessary and i support the ability for the students that do the masking really well as kelly said you know that i've observed the same thing i think that the face shield as an option when the need arises or is requested is is sufficient so i do not support the amendment is there another second is there another i'm not seeing one all right so uh that uh friendly amendment dies for the lack of a second and so again we are uh looking at voting for the face covering compliance protocol that was presented [Music] by jay marchant at our meeting it's an entire layout of all the protocols that we do have and so uh we'll need a voice vote so i'm calling on eileen first robinson i all right matt tennis nay okay uh oh kaiser i landed i all right so it passes uh four to one no i'm sorry three to one and all right thank you so we move on then to the assembly bill ab104 student pupil instruction and again to mr marshawn thank you dr kaiser this is an information only we just wanted to update the board on this new assembly bill ab104 and i'm going to hand it over to mr john shepard at this point thank you mr marchand so just to move things forward as mr vincent is pulling up the presentation as you'll recall last spring there was some legislation that came out that did adjust the grading and graduation expectations for california students and another round was was passed this summer so i just want to walk the board through this presentation just informational only it's our goal not only tonight but as already has happened last week and will continue to happen tomorrow and also next week we want to get this information out to the public because there are some timelines that we need to make sure we're aware of so basically this legislation includes ab104 and ab130 includes three education codes we're going to talk about one ab-130 separately so assembly bill 104 establishes three additional education codes as you can see here the first one is focuses on student retention for grades k through 11 and then an opportunity to change grades to pass no no pass and graduation requirements so most importantly parents and community members need to understand who the affected students are for each of these ed codes as you'll see in this ed code this first one 48071 mainly focuses on k11's students ability to be retained fortunately chica unified already has a robust board policy and administrative regulation protocol to address retention so we're covered with this and we feel like we we have process in place the second ed code is directly related to changing grades from a past to no pass as you can see here the affected students are those who are enrolled in chico unified grades 9 through 12 during the 2021 school year and that's an important distinction because some folks might when they received our aries communication they reached out to us last week wondering if their seventh grader could have his grades changed and if on this only affects students 9 12 through the 2021 school year now as you can see here in bold it's really important for the board and the and the public to understand that families and students only have 15 days from the operative date of the legislation to notify a school of an interest in changing grades the frustration first for some is this 15 days began on july 16th and will end prior to the start of school so again it's imperative that we communicate with our public we've already done so through aries communication that came out from the district it's going to come out again from the school sites tomorrow and again next week so we can just keep hammering home this understanding that there is a process in place for our for our students to change their grades this is so critical i i really hope that i'm concerned that parents don't thinking knowing this school's not going to start till the 16th they may be not checking these kinds of information sources so um i hope our media coverage will uh present this very dramatically because that would be extremely sad if a student simply missed it because thank you dr kaiser if anyone has any questions about any of this please contact me at the district office at 891-3000 extension 20105 because it's important that we get this information out to our public i do want to note it's a small font but it's important to note that the csu has been directed to accept pass no pass yes unfortunately the uc has not and so parents need to consider that talk to counselors talk to the guidance counselors at the universities the california department of education has provided a list of schools outside the uc and csu that will accept pass no fail and you can access that on their website so i think it's important that parents understand csu must accept those grades this duc they may and then lastly this affects the the students who are left out of the first ed code for graduation requirements specifically these students who were in their third or fourth year of high school during the 2021 school year so that would be our current seniors and last year's seniors and again they need to reach out to the school site we do have this policy or this ed code covered again in our board policy and administrative regulation if students are interested in retention the purpose behind this legislation is to provide learning recovery and graduation options for students so it's just one more step that the legislation took let me ask a question here it says third or fourth student and i've been wondering do we know whether that refers to academic status or years we've had a student who was already say retained at one point so they were in their third year as a say sophomore would they fall under this as well so typically students aren't retained until their senior year um there it's all based on credits once they're in into high school so it'd be their third or fourth year of high school okay so there are no corner cases to which that applies none that i know of but i've been wrong today once okay any questions for any other questions from the board okay so i guess for me the the really the stressor is to get this information out to the public as many times as we can because i think this is extremely important information and mr shepard we have sent that out to each individual family at the secondary level correct not just secondary we've sent it out to every student because it does affect elementary students okay yes okay so we are that was just information only it's very critical information for individual families and students so uh we'll move on to business services and we have a transportation update by kevin baltimore yes we want to make the board and the public aware of the challenge we're going to have starting the school year on our transportation department uh covid pandemic really impacted the number of bus drivers we have on staff um as a reminder is we have a lot of drivers that this is a second career and certainly the pandemic had an impact so we have bob anaveras our transportation supervisor and john carver and they'll just give you a brief summary of where we stand today and then also inform the board and the public of the steps we've been taking over the last number of months to try and do a better job recruiting and retaining drivers so with that i turn over to bob and john we need your sound higher it's pretty low i think you're not on or something how about now is that a little better all right all right again i thank you for an opportunity to share what's going on in transportation with you uh we do have some significant challenges this year um we actually currently have 11 driver positions open if there's anybody out there looking for a position we would more than gladly train you and provide you the skills and talents necessary to be a school bus driver we just now have a certified school bus driver trainer on staff we've been about a year and a half almost two years without one which made it very difficult for us to not only recruit but train drivers we're going to reduce the amount of buses that were in routes were going to be providing for this year uh pre-coveted we did eight and a half general red routes this year we're going to do seven uh in previous years we did 17 special ed routes this year we're going to do 16.

26.4 percent shortness of breath this is 17.9 percent this is the damage that is done to children now there was another study published posted last month looking at the death occurring in children in the uk during the first 12 months of the the kovid epidemic it found that 99.995 percent of the children diagnosed with survived so how much is this death rate so that number oh and in the u.s there have been 335 children dying of course with a covid diagnosis on their death certificate and that includes that the number includes all who died of other causes with a covered diagnosis now a study was performed by university of warwick in the uk it looked at children absences between september 2020 and december 2020 looking at the number of students and teachers staying home from school sick with covered well thank you for listening okay our next speaker is jeannie cutberth followed by james bishop my name is jeannie and sitting out here and watching you people realizing that most of you there is one gentleman that i believe that might be on our side worried about our kids you up there are all in lockstep letting other people tell you what you need to do for our kids these people out here should be making the decisions not you this is serious this is serious what's going on in our country and for you to say that these kids little kindergarten can you imagine a kindergarten having to wear a mask for i don't know six hours four hours every single day they don't want to wear a mask none of us want to wear a mask because we're free we're americans and we should be able to make up our own minds not let people like some of you tell us that we have to put masks on our kids to go to school and learn i'm ashamed i'm ashamed of all of you and i'm disappointed in the human race i've got i've got a lawsuit here that i want to drop off to each one of you that's going on across the country and by god if you guys don't make the right decision you're all going to get one of these lawsuits because sitting here listening to you you're all do you only you have kids do you have kids put your hand up if you've got kids and this is what you want to do to your own kids what a disappointment that is that you that you went yeah this is what i want to do to my kids well i don't want this done to my kids or my grandkids i want us to be free to make up our own minds if somebody here wants to put a mask on a three-year-old go for it but don't tell me that the rest of us have to what a disappointment and we elected you well guaranteed we got that petition out there that we're signing by the hundreds to get rid of you for this that you are doing to chico so i'm going to leave these so you can all read it because this is what's kind of going to come to you if the decision you make to say that you're going to put masks on kindergarten through whatever chico state adults i'm embarrassed for you i really am i'm embarrassed you're just a disappointment to all of us our next speaker is james bishop followed by holly nielsen hello um so last summer i sent you guys easily enough research to conclude that last summer i sent you guys research that you could conclude that children did not need to be kept out of school or mitigated in any way if they went back to school and it included i won't go into all of it because um people have actually brought up some actual science tonight um but the icelandic study that came out right out of the gate in april they sequenced the rna of everybody in iceland and did not find a single instance of a child infecting their parent so they don't wear masks when they're with their parents and they don't social dissidents so the the research since then has been overwhelming in support of this so i also pointed out last summer that the l.a county teachers union released a white paper where they stated that kids would not be going back to in-person education until charter schools were closed and the police were defunded so this was an overt just making it clear so we don't really have to debate about it they were in the position of being willing to exploit the suffering of children that the cdc was being very clear at the time children need to go back to person education or they're going to suffer grave harm that's a quote and they they were taking advantage of that in order to expand their power if you don't think that's a fair assessment i'd like to hear how you would interpret it um since then um studies have shown things like the incidence is lower in school for kids under a certain age it's not hard to interpret so i'll leave that the american federation of teachers and the unions constantly claimed that they wanted schools open but also created criteria so that they would never be able to open the schools it was really growingly obvious to everyone i think when when wolinski was appointed to the cdc directorship um she the cdc all of a sudden started kind of echoing this rhetoric of the teachers unions to become suspicious maybe there's some relationship between the two well that was confirmed beyond doubt with a freedom of information request a foia that pulled all the email traffic between the cdc and the aft and showed that the cdc had been poised in the january february time frame to issue guidance which would have allowed all schools to open but instead they inserted some language about community spread which closed 99 of school so they went from 100 open to one percent open and it turns out that that language was a direct quote from a request through email that the aft made to ins to have this language inserted and the cdc complied so really i would just want to ask you guys do you think that this is a political power play that our kids are being subjected to or not if we all kind of agree on that then we should do for god sakes just about anything we could think of to resist right so i think you know i don't i'm not concerned about my kid wearing a face shield okay i don't think that a face shield is going to harm them particularly i think that forcing my child to do anything that has no basis behind it for some kind of an authoritarian reason that's connected to all kinds of political stuff is as horrific as you can get right so if we all agree on this and i have a feeling there is some agreement let's figure out what to do about it okay i'm figuring out what to do about it in my community but i would love to partner with you to figure out what to do about it because it's not okay we need to stop this we need to resist in any manner that we can think of okay i hope this is making sense to you okay our next speaker is and our last speaker holly nielsen hi first off the board's presentation talks a lot about the california department of public health mandates but you know doesn't mention that masks are only authorized under federal law the emergency use authorization act which explicitly states that individuals can opt out that means mask choice it does not require anything to be filled out by any medical practitioner and also just to make a comment now now you're going to turn teachers into the mask police as if they don't have enough to manage already i i'm i'm shocked i'm frankly shocked i'm an associate marriage and family therapist i see a lot of adolescents and children in my practice many highly traumatized butte county highest ace scores in california maybe maybe the nation um during my graduate studies in psychology i was a student of the neuroscientist stephen purge's polyvagal theory which is a sort of a universal theory of the etiology of trauma what his theory and related research basically says is that most of the higher functions of the human brain the mammalian brain are dedicated to what he calls a social engagement system our entire nervous system is literally wired for connection and this wiring is entirely mediated through the face and the voice what creates trauma is not necessarily that bad things happen to us it is when our nervous system signals that we are alone when bad things happen to us people heal from trauma when they are connected with others as mediated by engagement through the face and voice which then creates a resonance and heart biorhythms in which our nervous system signals safety connection love so what happens to this system when we're masked up the social engagement system goes offline our nervous system cannot read one another's faces and our voices are muffled social engagement as it is understood by our nervous system in the face of another is not present at all our nervous system believes that we're alone our cortisol adrenaline are increasing we become stressed and for children the sense of being alone is enough to traumatize them it's literally creating trauma in our children for children masking is especially detrimental and will have long-term effects on their physical mental and emotional well-being as i said most of our higher brain function is dedicated to the social engagement system children's forebrains do not even mature until they're 15 or 16 years old healthy brain development in children is completely dependent on their social engagement systems ability to consistently connect with others in their environment in its absence you have trauma you can see that in some of the statistics that already have coming out in this year of masking and social distancing increase in cutting and self-harm behaviors i cannot tell you how common this is in our kids today it is a crisis you're creating a crisis children are at very little risk from covid you know people who need to you know they're going to compromise older they can take the vaccine protect yourselves but the rationale i'm hearing here that supports the masking of children goes something like this children those dirty little germophiles are spreading the virus and endangering others you know since since when are we okay with sacrificing or you have the red sign for stuff for the common good ends justifies the means never means are everything all right so uh i'm going to go back to eileen eileen you had some questions that you wanted to present yes ma'am uh thank you dr kaiser for recognizing me under board discussion um i'm going to start with with 600 000 and just remind us as i remind myself that 600 000 americans are dead because of the covid and now that we have new variants um you know the numbers have increased this is this is not pretend in my opinion this is real and um these the uh acquaintances that i've lost were were here and now they're gone back to what we are about here tonight the cdc has at this point said that in order to get everyone back in school full-time which is the number one desire and mine as well that masks are what will keep us safe indoors at schools and they are mandated the governor's authority under that mandate and the authority that he has under a health emergency does give him the authority to mandate the masks the governor then said at the local level for schools we get to decide not if we're going to mandate masks but when we mandate masks how we will enforce it so the concerns we heard tonight from very concerned parents were that they wanted parent choice and that that has been heard loud and clear so the district has made sure that parent choice following the same forms and guidelines that we have parent choice for other medical issues in the schools is available it's a simple form that will be highlighted i understand later in the meeting so we have we have given the parents that are concerned the method by which to get their kids back into school full-time without the mask mandate if they have the waiver under the proper form now the the next issue that i have is is very much a concern about what we have negotiated with our unions and how the effect of that memorandum of understanding that that says that the teachers will follow the directives of the state department of health that says that when a child comes into the classroom they have to have a mask on as well as the teacher and the age and anyone else that's in the classroom they all have to have masks but um what if a teacher does not say to a student that walks into a classroom and the teacher is not aware of an exemption and does not say anything to the student what kind of liability does that teacher present for themselves by not dealing with an unmasked and to the teacher's knowledge unexempted student coming into a classroom i'd like um you know either mr gant or mr hanlon that handles our labor relations with cuta to answer that if they bite so when we negotiated the the mou we did not deal with any liability issues so i'm going to defer that to our attorney paul gantt but if they do not follow the agreement they're open to disciplinary action by their administrator so you know as far as that goes um we'll have conversations about that with with teachers and go through due process but um i'm going to leave the liability issue to mr gant paul i believe you're on do you want to give a response to that well uh thank you madam board president thank you members of the board and members of the public um board member uh robinson the there's several areas in which legal liability could be faced by the district if it if you do not have a policy in place that is um directed to in provide a reasonable approach to implementing the mass mandate that has been issued at the state level one of those yes is a potential issue with regard to your collective bargaining agreements even though it may be a teacher whose actions or inactions are the immediate cause of the mask not being um not being implemented in a classroom ultimately a teacher is under the supervision of a principal is under the supervision of district administration and the union to the extent that you have um obligations with the union to follow the guidelines of the public health the california public health department if you don't take reasonable steps to do that and then employees fail to act because you're not implementing reasonable enforcement steps implementation steps then that could be the basis of either a violation of your mou it could be an unfair labor practice or it could be a violation of your duty to bargain fairly with the union and that could also lead to potential liability in that sense the other sources of liability and are of course if there was an outbreak i and that outbreak could be traced um to a certain location such as a classroom or a site and that site was not implementing the mandate of the state then um causation would have to be proven by the person injured which would presumably be individuals who contracted covid and ultimately liability could attach in that circumstance i will tell you uh i think it's important to remember that as it is always a big issue with regard to all businesses and public agencies you rely on having adequate insurance coverage to cover you in the event that a lawsuit is filed for personal injury or that personal injury damages may come to pass the most of the carriers for school districts throughout the state of california have stated that an intentional failure to implement the direct mandate from the california department of public health unknowing and intentional failure to implement that directive could very much place in doubt whether your insurance would even be in place meaning you would bear the cost of of defending a lawsuit and the cost of any damages would come from your general fund as opposed to having that backup from your insurance company uh as an attorney i know that that's a very significant concern i would never want to have a client lose coverage because just the expense of defending a lawsuit even one that where ultimately you may succeed is so overwhelming and obviously would drain resources from the district that you need for other and much more important purposes i would say the most direct source of liability in terms of when we talk about a legal action that could impact you soon and that could result in expense to the district would be a legal action in the form of what we call a petition for a writ of mandate and there a pub member of the public says the state has ordered all school districts not just chico unified that you will implement a mask mandate it's outside the board's jurisdiction in the district's jurisdiction to refuse to try reasonably to implement that so if you took a position that says we just won't do it we don't agree with it and even though higher agency has the authority and the right order us to do that a member of the public could take you to court under one of these petitions for a writ of mandate in order to get a judge to order the district to comply with the established law there is little doubt that the governor under the emergency order and the department of public health under the direct supervision of the governor and under the health and safety code has the authority in a public health emergency to to wreck to direct subdivisions of the state such as school districts to implement these policies and even though you may disagree with them failure to do so could subject you to a lawsuit of the sort that i explained the law provides that you would have to not only pay for your own legal fees and costs but likely the legal fees and costs of the other side the member of the public who brought the lawsuit and their attorneys and i assure you there are a number of attorneys and groups out there that are anxiously awaiting this opportunity they we you would have to pay their legal fees i see this particular type of lawsuit as your greatest risk because i feel that a negligence lawsuit a lawsuit that says an injury was caused by covid will be difficult to win and it will take a long time to get there i don't think that's your most direct threat it's a possibility but i do believe the writ of mandate possibility and i also believe that the issues pertaining to your collective bargaining units are also very significant and all of those would run you at great cost to defend i hope i've answered the question primarily that you asked thank you paul very much dr kaiser i'd like to add one more thing regarding negotiations um it's been reported in in the the different news organizations about the reluctance of teacher unions to open schools and and be pro-mask nationally i just wanted to state publicly that in negotiations with our local union we were able to open on october 19th because both unions worked hand in hand with us the district in order to open it when 80 percent of the state remain closed for the remainder of the year in the spirit of negotiations regarding masking our conversation with them has been centered around the issue of when we when can we take mass off not um are we going to make everyone wear them so when we were having those conversations we had to choose at that time some way to i guess in a neutral fashion where one group or another couldn't mandate that everyone else were a mass if it was safe to take them off just because they were afraid of what could possibly happen and that's when we we agreed to let that fall in the health department which we were mandated to do anyway and we agreed with that that that would be the the organization that would allow us at that point to do that and therefore no teacher group minority group could um make everyone else wear it just because they continued to fear covet so i just wanted to put that out there that that they were very positive conversations and discussions and that was the spirit of the agreement that we reached with our teachers union so whatever's happening out there in at the state and national level it was very positive at the local level in getting our schools open and and as soon as legally possible concerning what mr gantt just said is when whenever we can get those mass taken off they were in support of that thank you mr hanlon i think that's a really good clarification i do want to go back for a second to eileen robinson uh did you have your questions uh answered yes dr thank you i had had both the concern about the um the liability of the teacher the district and our um our fiduciary responsibility to follow the law and they were all answered thank you i'd like could i ask a question of um mr gann mr ganner you i'm assume you're aware that there are some districts in our area and then very notably clovis unified school district um has produced a form online where not only a medical professional but a parent could also get on and essentially certify that their child was unable to wear a mask and this district clovis unified is about three times the size of chico unified maybe a little bigger i know i assume you're not representing them and i mean you wouldn't tell me if you were i guess i would let you know right away and i would plead a conflict of interest but no i actually i do not represent clovis yeah um that's what so do you have any sense as to how these other districts are justifying uh their decision in light of what you've said you've painted a very doom and gloom scenario for um basically i think that you're essentially saying that because of various areas of liability it's unconscionable that we would you know um empower parents to decide that that a mask created an unhealthy situation for their child well i you know i'll be very honest i cannot speak for the other districts but i that have implemented um different policies i i can say i've i've appeared before many boards including boards much larger than the clovis uh district and what i hear across the board is very similar in your community with other communities which is a great deal of serious controversy uh points of view on all sides different sides uh with with a lot of good faith uh people with a lot of data that goes in different directions and and and real concern from many different groups and and concerned boards boards who are listening boards who are trying to you know find their way through uh and so i'm i'm very sympathetic to that i try to do with all my boards including your board when asked to provide you with legal options you know options that i believe are defensible sometimes we we have to it's not unlike you know the covet exposure issue you know you're weighing risk and you're deciding you know the board's deciding what's going to be of the greatest risk um on the issue of what some have called self attestation in other words what i think it was the primary basis of your question the question of can parents simply advise the district that based on my own judgment as a parent my child should not wear a mask and therefore do not take steps to implement that with regard to my child what the department of public health has said and i don't know if if uh nan is still available but she might be able to comment on this is that that um we're mandating these masks in the absence of a medical exemption and they're very specific on that point it's got to be a medical exemption and the reason being is that they are designed to according to the department of health and again there's obviously different points of view as to whether they are right or they are wrong they're designed to both protect the wear of the mask and others who may be at risk and again according to what department public health says as part of their rationale for these rules is that the most protection is when you have a variety of mitigation measures including mass by all parties since that provides some alleged uh amount of protection for both the where and the person who that may be exposed to them so that's what they say and and then they said as a result of that we are we are mandating that schools have everyone wearing a mask this has been strengthened in just recent days uh to include all persons in all indoor locations uh in school and they have emphasized that that exemption is a medical exemption so the question becomes should someone should you implement a self-attestation rule that says a parent can opt out essentially based on their subjective decision that that's not best for the child is that going to subject the school district to the same type of risk that i described with regard to a simple across-the-board opt-out of the cd ph guidelines i think that there's a high chance it would subject you to risk because the cdph has identified it as a medical exemption a medical exemption and in my experience in school districts when there is a when there needs to be a medical basis for an action or an inaction it requires the input of a of a of a physician in the state of california those can be mental health practitioners by the way i heard that question yes licensed mental health practitioners can be physicians in the state of california whose opinions can be considered but in the absence of that i think there would be a strong argument and a strong basis for that rid of mandate action or other legal actions if it was on a a essentially apparent opt-out basis one of the areas and i think some of your board members had all of you may have some experience with this but sometimes we have to implement special rules with regard to children in the schools based on a medical condition and we have to develop in conjunction with our school nurses a health and safety plan that's a detailed plan that says we need to do something special for this child because of it may be a medication they take it may be a condition they have but there are exceptions we need to make for this child or special accommodations they need or we may have to actually assign a staff person to support this child in some way and we have to develop a health and safety plan that health and safety plan generally must be signed off on by a physician so that's just one example there are others but this is typically the rule with regard to a medical issue i i hope that that covers most of the question but i i'm happy to take a follow-up i think uh i think that did respond directly to that the format is typically a 504 and and that is with a medical practitioner and it can address a number of issues so um we've concluded our uh public comment and thank you for trying to respect and i think most of you did really well the timing issue so that we could get everybody in i think that's important that they get to provide their input as well and then are there any more questions or discussion issues with the board before we take action on this um i guess i'm fine uh robinson has no further questions okay thank you eileen and tom were you first or uh i didn't see our our parliamentarian's not here but somebody will make a motion correct and presumably maybe we'll get a second and then will there be one more round of comment remarks before we take a vote we can do that yes in the parliamentary procedure after the after the motion is when the board debates among itself so would you like to make a motion sure in the interest of of getting to that debate i will move the adoption of the facial covering protocols as put before us tonight i'll second that motion all right thank you so tom lando has made the motion and eileen robinson has seconded it so now we may have further discussion um did you want to yeah it's it's our practice here to make an explanation if we think we're going to make a descent which i anticipate that i will um if there's been some things worked into the policy that i think are are frankly admirable on the part of the district i think that the medical exemption expanding to include mental health professionals gives a meaningful amount of leeway to this rule um which broadly speaking i do not support um the thing that really gets me about this this proposal and limiting parents rights over this masking requirement i guess is the very young kids i've thought very deeply about this situation and really if it wasn't for the kindergartners through the third graders i could almost stomach the face masks or the face shields you know with with the coverage on them and just the variety of options i i think the whole the whole thing is overkill from a general broad public policy standpoint some of our speakers we had a number i think of really great points that were made from public commenters the most powerful is that for children to suffer mortality from covid is so rare is to be statistically you know a zero percent chance essentially i think it's like i i saw that it was point zero zero or maybe point zero three percent of all covid cases among children resulted in mortality um and that's just kobe being among the reasons that those children died you know nationally that we've heard the number here a few times it was you know 300 and some some peop children total um so to me that just doesn't justify um this just massive change to the way children grow up and interact with one another and interact with their teachers i just really can't can't support it as a matter of public policy but like i said the the face shields being an option for people and and the exemptions that do exist i i think are welcome uh caveats for me in this policy but i can't stomach supporting masking you know universal day-long masking for kindergarteners through third graders so for my part if somebody was willing to amend this motion to allow a parental discretion on those kids then then i could be persuaded to to support this i i think we had a very clear answer from our attorney that the cdc has made it really clear that it's medical we have expanded it as you know to recognize mental health practitioners but he was pretty clear about that tom did you have other comments that you wanted to make yeah i have a couple of comments um the first is just a general apology i heard a speaker today say that i had called some members of the public dumb and that is completely not true i am so glad that you guys are here and i am glad that you are participating and we do all of us listen everything you guys say and take it into consideration um so that said i kind of want to take this back to the very basics we have a couple things we need to do here right we need to protect us ourselves legally as a district and of course we need to keep the students safe and educated um it's become clear that we are kind of damned if we do and damned if we don't since we've been threatened with lawsuits from both sides so um i'm sorry for the disruption so tom if you want to continue thank you um so given that i don't really feel the need to dive into the debate about the science you're disrupting the meeting so you can do that thank you so what we should be looking for is a protocol towards enforcement that both protects our students and all of our students as well as making sure that we all have the most access possible to the curriculum i would be open to some kind of change in either the wording or in our in-school protocols for the k-2 students because i have the same concern i have a kindergartner i'm very concerned about speech and language development among our early speak readers so i would love to hear some some uh spitballing possible ideas from staff about what that might look like do we have anything like that i i can throw one out there i visited classrooms last year and um went to kindergarten classrooms and you know was asked it is crucial that students be able to see our face and that we can see theirs especially when we're teaching them reading when we're doing phonics and what the teacher used was the clear face shield and asked if that was appropriate for students as well and that's what he used in his classroom and i will tell you it is an amazing kindergarten teacher that always has fantastic results i think i know you're talking about it would it be possible or feasible to offer face shields just as a first level instead of saying take the mask no okay get a face shield just have the face shield there present for any of those students who would benefit from that i personally think that's a wonderful compromise thank you i would uh first of all i had one that just finished kindergarten and so you wait for them to come out and they're all the classes are lined up together and i literally didn't see any issue that the kids were expressing over a mask i actually had to remind mine to take them off when we got out but i think the face shields are a very good aspect i don't know that we need to quote unquote offer them first but they're there and they can be used with the language professionals that we have at each school site every school site has a lang a speech specialist and so again there are individual professionals who are attending to the speech needs i do have one that had speech issues and he was in second grade and he didn't have any problem you know after having had the speech therapy um with uh wearing a mask eileen did you have anything that you wanted to comment in this area of discussion uh thank you uh dr kaiser yes i do i had received information that we have a significant supply of the face shields so that using them and offering them is not an issue i believe mr baltimore gave me that information if he could respond to that well i don't have the exact number with me but we have a substantial amount of face shields in our warehouse so it would not be a problem providing those for the start of school and then we'll order more if needed so in clarification um particularly with the younger grades that we would make sure that parents and teachers knew they were available yes we have a process that's already in place that office managers can put in their orders and they're delivered the same day if not the next day for both mass and face shields so we would make sure that that process was still ready to go and we had enough of the face shields in our warehouse for distribution um if you remember we when we were first starting out with kobit that's what the board was given we were given face shields to wear so we've experienced that first line eileen did you have another aspect that you wanted to comment on no thank you dr kaiser um i i believe my questions um have been answered all right matt i've got a question about about the face shields um and if this more general discussion item is not appropriate let me know but um is there anybody here is the public health still on um okay so there's no one here who who knows the extent to which co2 gets caught in a face shield situation or anything like that i mean i read something about it it says something hang off the bottom of it like like a cloth hangs around the bottom of the face shield or is it more like a sneeze guard sort of a thing the ones that we have in stock do not have the uh drape i think is what it's called right thank you also i believe that number is a little over 5000 that we have um in our warehouse right now again under mr lando's point we can um we have a leadership meeting with all administrators coming tomorrow and then we also have a professional development day with all of our teachers on the 12th we clearly can be telling our teachers you can offer either one of those options to the student it doesn't have to be oh you're not wearing it we'll give you offers shielded our teachers are very good about wanting their kids in class also so they will they can clearly offer i can give you either or a mask or a shield okay if if i may and i you know i hesitated in that you are making the policy and you're amending the policy on the spot i i do feel i have an obligation as your counsel to at least direct you to that rule as you develop the the this particular aspect of it it is relatively short if i may read it to you there is some specific guidance in the cdph order on this point um may i read that yes please go ahead paul okay uh so this is this is in the updated guidance from august 2nd so understanding and some of this is not that new but um this is continuing to be in their specific guidance that was just updated and this is under the masking requirement and it's one of the exceptions that was specifically addressed and as you've been speaking about uh in terms of ensuring that the students are going to be able to be properly educated um they refer to that as a pedagogical or developmental reason okay so that's what that refers to when i read that they say under masking section 1 subdivision f of the school guidance of august 2nd they state in limited situations where a face covering cannot be used for pedagogical or developmental reasons for example communicating or assisting young children or those with special needs a face shield with a drape per cd ph guidelines can be used instead of a face covering while in the classroom as long as the wearer maintains physical distance from others staff must return to wearing a face covering outside the classroom now i do interpret that i think a reasonable interpretation is that the face shield with drape can be used by the teacher and the student for those pedagogical or developmental reasons but i just wanted to point out that there are a couple specifics there that need to be taken into account and one is that it does specify the drape and it also specifies that it is to be used in combination with physical distancing i would tend to interpret that as three feet but they haven't been specific so i think it's all it's as much as possible with a guide of being three feet if possible and i do believe that in um most if not all of our classrooms we can meet the three foot social distancing one of the advantages of the face shield is again the sound is transmitted you can see the lips and the facial expressions so i don't think there would be the sense that they would have to be so close together we actually have the reference to the face shield in our policy so i don't think we have to actually make an amendment it's already recognized that that's a accepted option for uh individuals and for sure um speech is the number one limitation or special need that any school district has that's why we have a speech therapist at every single site so it makes sense that the younger the student the more likely they would be benefiting from being able to see as well as hear the sounds and the movement so yeah so um yes tom i just want to address paul for a moment i think that what you were bringing up was that we our face masks for students do not have drapes and the language in the guidance specifically states that that's what needs to be used this is kevin can i add just a point to that the face shields that we ordered and have used last year we applied our own shield or a drape using a in essence a paper towel almost with a tape the reason being you could then dispose of that versus having some cloth that needed to be washed it proved effective and it gave kind of the opportunity to change that out multiple times during the day that's the same system we would use now so i just want to point out what we have for drapes is a self-applied in essence paper drape and we have the time and resources to do that to the 5000 or whatever as they as we know them we leave that up to the individual to put this on okay and if there's any doubt then there's always that's one of the uh benefits of having your local health officer if you have a question about hey is that appropriate under the guidelines then my sense is they would be able to give you that guidance to say yes that solution is appropriate and that's acceptable and you and you can you can rely upon that type of interpretation should come to that all right thank you uh any other points of discussion all right well seeing none then i'd like to move to the vote um did i understand there was some kind of amendment or could we have the motion read back please we didn't do an amendment right we just it's the action reference to facials is already included in the document um so are you asking for that entire protocol to be read no okay um excuse me um can i make a just to clarify this can i make a uh what is it an author's amendment to the to my own motion just with some clarifying language uh well if it's an amendment it'll have to be second yeah so um i would be happy to um i mean i can make myself a friendly amendment and prove it um i'd be happy to change that language so that we are adopting the presented facial covering protocols with the understanding that face shield will be a first line offering for students in k1 or 2.

16 we have a lower application rate at this time usually about this time of year we're up around 300 maybe 400 students applying right now we're at about 110. we've done our best to try to let the public know that we are back in in the saddle and ready to take students back and forth from home to school um but we will be challenged because of the lack of drivers uh we've gone through several things to try to increase the driving staff we've made the the buses much more user friendly by purchasing new buses we've spent a great deal of money on trying to make the the environment either courtyard much better more professional and just yesterday i believe we've passed an mou generated by the district to increase the driver's wage rate which now puts us in a competitive position with the other districts around we're going to do our best to try to attract some significant amount of drivers to provide the best transportation for chico we're looking at updating our edge join website information telling the people that we've now have an increase in wages we're looking to reach out through indeed and possibly the edd we've considered going to some of the groups around like rotary and speaking to them to see if they have any people that are interested maybe like do a job fair to discuss the opportunities afforded to them to become a school bus driver and we're doing everything we can to get as many kids as we can back and forth safely to school how long does it usually take for the training it usually takes about a month because you have to go through some dmv then you have to go through a classroom with the subscriber trainer then you have to go through written tests with the chp then after that you go back to the chp get some more testing come back to the trainer get some more training behind the wheel and then go back to the chp finally take one more test and then you're certified so about about a month about four weeks one of the provisions in the mou allows us to now pay for drivers as their training so that was we think a barrier right come train with us for and spend quite a bit of time but no compensation as you're going through that process but the mou allows us to do that now okay good does anybody else have any questions on this just two more comments if i could this is a statewide issue and actually a national issue of just a decrease in the number of bus drivers the second piece is if you heard bob talk about the number of routes we're still operating that really is a credit to the staff that's out there to make this work as best they can you know even down that number of drivers being able to provide even half of what we did on a normal year i think is a good um is a good effort and we're doing better than that so we want the board to be aware we're not just going to take this as it comes we think the mou and some of the things that bob talked about will help us but we're going to be active as we get through the year because we want to be up to speed and home to school as quickly as possible and isn't it true that we have the ability to make arrangements with the city buses that some of our students may use that access point yes that is also true we have hadn't down bus passes in the past to students that we couldn't transport okay did you have something no okay all right mr carver well i was going to say everything that kevin and bob said the only thing that i have left to offer as we with the help of my office staff we created a flyer that now we can based on the mou that came out yesterday we're also going to put those out in mailings and and give outs and whatnot i don't sorry i didn't bring you a example but bob did so i'll just leave this up here and you guys can look at it and these are going to go out and mass mailings also all right and i assume there'll be something hanging from one of our old buses as people drive down the freeway that it will almost look just like this thank you all right well gentlemen i know that you work very very hard at this is a critical issue for every district as you noted and we do have to make every effort to get our students safely from school to home and back so thank you thank you all right so our next item is the which is an action and discussion is the approval of new and updated board policies and the first one is um it's on 3.3.1 um and we have uh jay marshall again thank you again dr kaiser so we're bringing forward back bringing forth to the independent study board policy we brought to you last week with a policy because we didn't know for sure that we were going to have another board meeting before school started and we needed to have a policy in place i want to let you know that um rhonda odlum and john shepard did a very good job of getting the language that we needed in there and everything that you guys approved last last board meeting is still in there but between that time and this we've had our auditor who oversees our independence study to make sure we are compliant with this board policy and csba just came out with their revisions to the board policy on independent studies so we have added their additions to this board policy and i wanted to bring it back to you guys for approval okay so actually i see that the first thing that show oh i see so you didn't did you get okay the details on independent study is actually behind the one on covet medication that's correct i'm sorry yeah so the first one we're doing yeah so does uh do you want to note any the more specific aspects where that was changed moral modes goes to the ed code they wanted to make sure that we had in here so we added all the different head codes that they thought would um just overall cover us on our board policy to make sure we had those in there we did not add those ed codes in there before and so we wanted to make sure that we put those in there and just to add um laws get passed and then there is the actual how they get implemented and then how we get held accountable for them and part of that is the auditing process so we wanted to make sure that we covered ourselves so that when we do go through an audit because we will on independent study we do annually that our board policy covers everything that the law requires and the audit process when we brought it forward two weeks ago had not yet been delineated so this updates that good so uh yes so there's been a law passed or laws passed and this is in here because of these laws that are that are passed i see that if somebody's gonna do an independent study they they now have to have um a licensed an employee who possesses a valid certification document pursuant to i assume that's a teacher's license or something like that when it comes to their credentialing whereas before you didn't have to have that that person's oversight now you do we in chico unified have always had credentialed teachers that are teaching independent study thanks um do we have uh eileen did you have any questions yourself on this no dr kaiser i was able to review both documents all right i just wanted to state that um i think one of the most uh one of the biggest changes is the change that uh independent study programs now have to check uh for attendance and engagement every three days instead of five and i think in a lot of ways that's going to really strengthen uh programs by basically mandating more and better contact with kids so i'm actually all for this i think we had a number of parents and students sometimes teachers who given the rather dramatic shift that we had to make to online that there would be disengaged students and it might be for a range of reasons but now this is a very um strict uh framework of reference that there has to be evidence that everything from assignments to interaction that you're not going more than three days without interaction and given that we already talked about the changes to the grades and past fail i think this will hopefully benefit students who found themselves struggling in that vein so yes okay so it's a little unclear would we be passing both of these as one item they're separate components in the past what the board has done is they've taken it as a single slate and pulled off ones that they wanted to discuss further and then voted on those separately so we can do that either way okay so let's then uh look at the 6158 that is the independent study one that our auditor did go over and that has had the changes relating to the law do we have any comments from the public on this okay can i have a motion then dr kaiser i would move approval all right i need a second i'll second that all right so eileen robinson uh moves and matt tennis seconds at the 6158 the board policy on independent study which is now compliant with the recent legal activity any discussion or questions okay then let's have a vote uh do we need to have a okay so again uh we need a voice vote so eileen i call on you first robinson eye okay tennis eye kaiser eye land to eye all right so that is four to zero good all right so we move then to the other one which is also um being impacted by uh i believe a leak is an illegal aspect of coveted mitigation so uh this is a policy that has been recommended by the california school boards association as we've already seen the independent study was an example of this is that sometimes regulations laws requirements audit practices change very quickly and they change faster than csba can update the policies so what this is saying is that when those things happen and there are discrepancies between existing board policy and current law or regulations or mandates that those mandates supersede the policies that the board has in place which they do anyway but this just clarifies that okay so it is particularly recognizing the issue of mental and physical health in this framework yes the policy goes on it talks about prior to the return to campus that we provide information on processes and protocols we've done that at the last two board meetings um it does talk a lot about the recognizing that the cobin environment has created social emotional mental health impacts and this board has been fabulous about setting aside dollars to ensure that we have social emotional supports in place for our students through additional counseling services adding wellness counselors targeted case managers it also talks about the personal protective equipment that we discussed the night and it does state in there that um we do provide reasonable accommodations when we have a notice or a letter from a healthcare practitioner it also talks about sanitization and airflow which we are doing as well as tracking which we did all of last year and we'll start up on the first day of school with butte county public health so um i think that last year we had an extremely viable and usable dashboard the view county health was referencing this a number of times but didn't seem to have it right at their hands but i know tina that was a critical aspect of what you were doing do we have any comments on our own expectations for our tracking this is dr cranker dr kaiser oh yes um if is tina uh going to do an update of uh any changes in the protocols for uh tracing um the covid cases and uh if if they aren't sufficient could she let the board know if if we need to do anything to help the nurses yeah this is kelly and we are not prepared to do that at this particular point we have not had the opportunity to meet with butte county public health with our nurses and with tina i know tina is all over that she was in my office talking about it today and she will be ready to go at the start of the school year but because our nurses are not back yet which is probably not a true statement i think they've been working all summer but officially not back yet um i'm not going to ask tina to talk about something that really she'd just be having to guess at this point thank you um superintendent staley my query was just tina don't go she opened the door i'm shutting it uh my question was just that we will we are planning to have a dashboard and we are planning to let the community know correct absolutely we worked under monica soderstrom's guidance last year when we finished the school year where she said summertime makes sense to let butte county public health handle those cases because we are out of session erica and i will start up with it uh at the beginning of the year all right so because that is one of the references in here that we would do tracking right so believe in transparency and we will do that right so thank you tina for that clarification okay does anyone no one anyone the public trying to all right anyone in the board have a question okay um and just a quick comment i was really excited to see reference to uh parent volunteers back in classrooms because i know that was sorely missed at elementary levels last year so i see in this policy that we will be having parents back on campus so they will be wearing ppe yeah really excited for a little extra help in those classrooms yeah so uh could i have a motion i move approval all right so eileen robinson moves approval this is for vp0470 yes that's correct i'll second that and tom lando seconds all right is there any further discussion on this okay so seeing none we can have a voice vote on this one all those in favor of passing bp 0470 on the coveted mitigation plan please say aye aye aye all right um i will be abstaining on this one if you don't want to stay okay so tennis abstains okay all right so we have the that actually was all of our uh official business um is there a board member who wants to request to agendize an item all right seeing none then we will officially close this board meeting and thank you for your participation dr kaiser i will state that we did not get closure on the item that we had forward for anticipated litigation so unless there is a desire on the part of the board we do not need to have a closed session this evening then i'm back to vacationing motion to adjourn yeah that would be motion to adjourn from eureka california and board member robinson what did you hear you

is that is there eileen are you wanting to see that as friendly i do not believe that's uh i'm not going to second it because i i don't believe it's necessary and i support the ability for the students that do the masking really well as kelly said you know that i've observed the same thing i think that the face shield as an option when the need arises or is requested is is sufficient so i do not support the amendment is there another second is there another i'm not seeing one all right so uh that uh friendly amendment dies for the lack of a second and so again we are uh looking at voting for the face covering compliance protocol that was presented [Music] by jay marchant at our meeting it's an entire layout of all the protocols that we do have and so uh we'll need a voice vote so i'm calling on eileen first robinson i all right matt tennis nay okay uh oh kaiser i landed i all right so it passes uh four to one no i'm sorry three to one and all right thank you so we move on then to the assembly bill ab104 student pupil instruction and again to mr marshawn thank you dr kaiser this is an information only we just wanted to update the board on this new assembly bill ab104 and i'm going to hand it over to mr john shepard at this point thank you mr marchand so just to move things forward as mr vincent is pulling up the presentation as you'll recall last spring there was some legislation that came out that did adjust the grading and graduation expectations for california students and another round was was passed this summer so i just want to walk the board through this presentation just informational only it's our goal not only tonight but as already has happened last week and will continue to happen tomorrow and also next week we want to get this information out to the public because there are some timelines that we need to make sure we're aware of so basically this legislation includes ab104 and ab130 includes three education codes we're going to talk about one ab-130 separately so assembly bill 104 establishes three additional education codes as you can see here the first one is focuses on student retention for grades k through 11 and then an opportunity to change grades to pass no no pass and graduation requirements so most importantly parents and community members need to understand who the affected students are for each of these ed codes as you'll see in this ed code this first one 48071 mainly focuses on k11's students ability to be retained fortunately chica unified already has a robust board policy and administrative regulation protocol to address retention so we're covered with this and we feel like we we have process in place the second ed code is directly related to changing grades from a past to no pass as you can see here the affected students are those who are enrolled in chico unified grades 9 through 12 during the 2021 school year and that's an important distinction because some folks might when they received our aries communication they reached out to us last week wondering if their seventh grader could have his grades changed and if on this only affects students 9 12 through the 2021 school year now as you can see here in bold it's really important for the board and the and the public to understand that families and students only have 15 days from the operative date of the legislation to notify a school of an interest in changing grades the frustration first for some is this 15 days began on july 16th and will end prior to the start of school so again it's imperative that we communicate with our public we've already done so through aries communication that came out from the district it's going to come out again from the school sites tomorrow and again next week so we can just keep hammering home this understanding that there is a process in place for our for our students to change their grades this is so critical i i really hope that i'm concerned that parents don't thinking knowing this school's not going to start till the 16th they may be not checking these kinds of information sources so um i hope our media coverage will uh present this very dramatically because that would be extremely sad if a student simply missed it because thank you dr kaiser if anyone has any questions about any of this please contact me at the district office at 891-3000 extension 20105 because it's important that we get this information out to our public i do want to note it's a small font but it's important to note that the csu has been directed to accept pass no pass yes unfortunately the uc has not and so parents need to consider that talk to counselors talk to the guidance counselors at the universities the california department of education has provided a list of schools outside the uc and csu that will accept pass no fail and you can access that on their website so i think it's important that parents understand csu must accept those grades this duc they may and then lastly this affects the the students who are left out of the first ed code for graduation requirements specifically these students who were in their third or fourth year of high school during the 2021 school year so that would be our current seniors and last year's seniors and again they need to reach out to the school site we do have this policy or this ed code covered again in our board policy and administrative regulation if students are interested in retention the purpose behind this legislation is to provide learning recovery and graduation options for students so it's just one more step that the legislation took let me ask a question here it says third or fourth student and i've been wondering do we know whether that refers to academic status or years we've had a student who was already say retained at one point so they were in their third year as a say sophomore would they fall under this as well so typically students aren't retained until their senior year um there it's all based on credits once they're in into high school so it'd be their third or fourth year of high school okay so there are no corner cases to which that applies none that i know of but i've been wrong today once okay any questions for any other questions from the board okay so i guess for me the the really the stressor is to get this information out to the public as many times as we can because i think this is extremely important information and mr shepard we have sent that out to each individual family at the secondary level correct not just secondary we've sent it out to every student because it does affect elementary students okay yes okay so we are that was just information only it's very critical information for individual families and students so uh we'll move on to business services and we have a transportation update by kevin baltimore yes we want to make the board and the public aware of the challenge we're going to have starting the school year on our transportation department uh covid pandemic really impacted the number of bus drivers we have on staff um as a reminder is we have a lot of drivers that this is a second career and certainly the pandemic had an impact so we have bob anaveras our transportation supervisor and john carver and they'll just give you a brief summary of where we stand today and then also inform the board and the public of the steps we've been taking over the last number of months to try and do a better job recruiting and retaining drivers so with that i turn over to bob and john we need your sound higher it's pretty low i think you're not on or something how about now is that a little better all right all right again i thank you for an opportunity to share what's going on in transportation with you uh we do have some significant challenges this year um we actually currently have 11 driver positions open if there's anybody out there looking for a position we would more than gladly train you and provide you the skills and talents necessary to be a school bus driver we just now have a certified school bus driver trainer on staff we've been about a year and a half almost two years without one which made it very difficult for us to not only recruit but train drivers we're going to reduce the amount of buses that were in routes were going to be providing for this year uh pre-coveted we did eight and a half general red routes this year we're going to do seven uh in previous years we did 17 special ed routes this year we're going to do 16.

now you should be able to unmute yourself and and talk hello jeff crockett can you hear me now we can yes okay um my wife christine and i have lived at 506 east kingsley since 1980 while a teacher for the plymouth canton's community schools i frequently drove by kellogg park a community center for recreation community events family and neighborhood gatherings kellogg park features a wonderful fountain we have nothing like it in ann arbor and this was a mistake made by early city planners we believe that with the passage of prop a we have the opportunity to correct this mistake that is why i'm speaking tonight i want to help i joined the initiating committee in april after attending a few meetings and becoming impressed with the vision and activism some amazing volunteers some of whom serve on this committee and are present tonight all of the flowers and vegetables for this garden have been donated we have documented this work with pictures taken of the various stages of the garden and created a log to count hours which at this point is eclipse 360.

any questions thank you all committees okay we'll move on to resolutions we're going to start with b education administration am i right you're right i'm sorry i skipped yes number 12 public recognition this portion of the meeting is open to the residents and non-residents of clifton for the purpose of addressing any subject matter pertinent to and or directly related to the operation of the clifton public school district residents and non-residents are requested if in person to sign the register provided for this purpose all speakers are asked to state their names municipality and subject matter before speaking comments are limited to five minutes per person issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and are responsibly forthcoming if and when appropriate your questions may or may not be answered by board members the board asked that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees of the board are discouraged and will not be responded to by the board students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of the state of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor will be liable for any comments made by members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments okay so if anyone would like to address the board the podium is here you're welcome to come good evening and thank you for allowing me to speak uh should i keep my mask on or should i take it off whatever you're more comfortable we just can't hear you so if you could uh either get closer and make sure it's on okay there we go thank you my name is howard cohn i'm from new milford new jersey i belong to the clifton jewish center and that's what brought me here it was surprising to learn of the presentations made on may 20th 2021 board of education meetings by two members and i'm here to comment on them those who viewed the statements of mr awad and mr abadrabo should research historical and current facts rather than depend on distortions and fictions presented in my opinion by both unlike mr awad i can recommend doing more than just a little research they depended i believe on the ignorance of their listeners to validate their assertions in 2005 all israelis living and dead were withdrawn from gaza to israel buildings factories and infrastructure were left by the israelis for arab use instead of using them peacefully practically all were destroyed and areas were turned into terror bases smuggling in attacks had to be prevented causing land and sea controls to be put in place if gaza has become the largest open-air prison it is due to the efforts and policies of the palestinian arabs mr awad commences his anti-israel diatribes with a list of dog whistles they include humanitarian issues uncontrollable crises mourning many losses many children being killed apartheid style walls colonialism and billions of dollars given to the israelis to oppress words based on emotions to be accepted not well without questions we are told that arab children in school shouldn't have to worry if their house will be there when they return from school it's not appropriate to mention that the arabs were firing rackets at israeli areas at the same time that children were going to school if hamas and the others did not launch rockets and store military supplies in civilian areas those areas would not have been targeted by the idf it was ironic to hear the complaint that civilians were given short notice to leave their homes before they were bombed what other army in the world gives civilians and secondarily enemy forces a warning that the area will be a target we are also given the information that our police are sent to israel to learn quote abusive tactics unquote to bring back to the urban communities he also tells us that the knee placed across george floyd's neck was a skill taught by the israelis we also learned that we can also go on the internet to see how israelis can be viewed doing the same thing to palestinian arabs one can go on the internet to see what police forces in our area have done to israel for training and what seminars they have attended you will be surprised by the truth mr awa discusses the importance of education in being educated and manner conducive to bring peace and knowledge to the student unfortunately this is not the case with the education or more correctly indoctrination that palestinian children are receiving as found by the un and other government organizations we were told by both that the palestinian arabs only want to live in peace and live with their neighbors in peace the continued firing of rockets at israel and use of incendiary balloons is the novel way of showing it your board of education meetings should be reversed reserved for fostering and improving the education in clifton it should not be necessary for a member of the board to insist that a fellow maker of comments declare that the board has absolutely nothing to do with the comments made i believe that miss both mr awad and mr abad rabo were out of line with the targets of their remarks thank you very much for allowing me to speak and i hope everybody remains in good health thank you yes please thank you salaam alaikum everyone my name is salahuddin mustafa i am a 20-plus year resident of clifton my children attended the schools here let me say mr cohen it's a good day for you to come because unfortunately for you you actually do have an educated audience in clifton so let me explain to you why it is that we and when i say we i'm not just talking about arabs i'm talking about people of every background jewish people every ba every color criticize israel let me explain to you so israel today the so-called democracy in the middle east has today 60 official laws that officially discriminate against non-jewish people arabs who are 21 of the population of proper israel today have less rights than jewish people by law mr cohen today can go to israel and become a citizen within minutes my father who was born in jerusalem can never be a citizen of that state i can't that's discrimination why do we why else do we criticize israel this is a difficult discussion for me but let me give let me you have to feel how much he's distorting the facts when i was a young man out growing up here i did my family is fortunate we actually didn't lose everything like almost 80 percent of the palestinians in 1948 lost everything when they were ethnically cleansed from their homes my family is lucky we actually still have homes in palestine and we go back to visit as much as we can when i was going back as a kid to go visit i was humiliated at the airport i was humiliated by m16s pointed at my face door at checkpoints so i made a very difficult decision two years ago pre-covered i decided i wanted my four children to go to palestine without me i did not want to go with them why i wanted my children to experience what i experienced without me protecting them i wanted my children to go to the israeli airport and to be absolutely humiliated isn't that terrible of me that's what i wanted them to experience i wanted my children to see with their own eyes the race this is in israel they call the democracy the race exclusive roads that they because they were arab are not allowed to drive on or walk on i wanted them to see that and by the way they literally filmed it and showed it to me while they were there i wanted my children to see at the checkpoint to see if an m16 would be pointed in their face guess what it was so here i have to hear the distortions telling me that i or any person that supports palestinian rights that we don't have a right to criticize israel how dare he in this country i don't have a right to cr i have a right to criticize my government i have a right to call my president anything i want but he tells me that i can't criticize israel because i would be deemed to be anti-semitic sir nelson mandela would be would be considered anti-semitic if it was up to you nelson mandela is one of the greatest figures in the history of the world he's not anti-semitic i am not anti-semitic because i criticize israel how dare you bring that drivel to this city how dare you that is why we criticize israel so if anybody wants to come here and tell us that we're anti-semitic listen go back under the rock that you came from we are not anti-semitic we have jewish people standing behind us right here could you please wrap up your statements you're out of time i'll wrap it up by saying you did the right thing fahim you did the right thing for us you did the right thing trying to educate people on the truth don't be afraid you're doing it on your own time don't be afraid this is a free country and don't let the dribble that he's peddling stop you from advocating for human rights for palestinians and for people who are oppressed all over the world thank you thank you next uh excuse me sir this is not a back and forth uh comments i will hand you the paper that i read from and i wish [Music] i'd like to remind the public that this is public comment time on issues related to education for the clifton public schools and this is not an opportunity for back and forth um discourse thank you yes ma'am go ahead i'm sorry i might make it more easy there um my name is tova fry and i'm a member of the jewish voice for peace i live in west orange and um frankly i was really disturbed when i heard the previous gentleman who apparently is a clifton police chaplain also speak and he did use the words anti-semitism yesterday at the city council meeting and i listened to his comments there and i want to tell you i know what anti-semitism is my all four my grandparents were killed in concentration camps during world war ii that was intense anti-semitism my parents tried to come after the war to the u.s they each had a sister here already and you know what there was a quota against eastern european jews from coming to the u.s that's anti-semitism what happened is my family wound up because they had nowhere else to go they were not zionists but they wound up in what had just been declared israel by the british and the u.s colonialists and they wound up their penniless and some israeli soldiers put a palestinian family out of their home and gave it to my parents and that's where i was born that's that's colonialism that's ethnic cleansing that is what what zionism has allowed to happen in in the so-called state of israel i have a sister that lives there now on a kibbutz so-called left-wing kibbutz in the 48 boundaries um but i want to tell you that what's happening in israel where people are being forced out of their homes in jerusalem right now in shakjara in other neighborhoods that's ethnic ethnic cleansing what happened in gaza over and over again not just this time in may but back in 2014 and before that and i think 2004 and before that the bombing in gaza that is against all human rights and that is colonialism and what's what's happened with building the walls that separate the west bank towns where palestinians are only allowed on certain roads and and the um these settlers can can come into their lands and take their homes that is apartheid and so i want to say that what's happening in in the state of israel is not anything that i am proud of as a jew and i want to say not in my name don't ever say that what happens in israel is for the defense of jews because it is not it is not in defense of jews it is anti-humanitarian and i want to say that what the on two board members said in the in the board meeting in may is absolutely correct um that israel is an apartheid state israel is practicing ethnic cleansing and that i am not proud as a jew i am not at all proud of what's happening there at all and and that i um support on all the palestinians for what they are trying to do to develop their own freedom and to be allowed to return to the land of their homeland i was allowed to return there to visit my sister even though i had only been two years old when we left but why because i'm jewish frankly after i came back from that visit i denounced my israeli citizenship i even though it was given to me just because i was born in the so-called state of israel um i i denounced it because i want to have nothing to do with that state thank you uh before we continue i would just like uh our attorney to read our board policy as it's listed on public uh recognition so uh please darlisa if you could thank you mr smith board policy number zero one six seven public participation in board meetings the board of education recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest in order to permit the fair and orderly expression of such comment the board shall set aside a portion of every public meeting the length of the portion to be determined by the board for public comment on any school or school district issue that a member of the public feels may be of concern to the residents of the school district public participation shall be permitted only as indicated on the order of business and board bylaw zero one six zero and bylaw number zero one six four anyone wishing to address the board at a public meeting may do so upon request during the public recognition periods referenced in board bylaw zero one six zero and bylaw zero one six four individuals shall limit their remarks to three minutes we've changed that since then regarding agenda items and five minutes for public recognition regarding general matters pertinent to the district while the time limit has may have changed the key here is that it's matters right regarding general matters pertinent to the district these periods may be extended for good cause at the discretion of the board president all persons receiving permission to address the board shall confine their remarks to those matters that properly relate to board of education business or which come under the jurisdiction or the authority of the board in any event that a speaker before the board becomes abusive or disrespectful or otherwise resorts to statements which may be considered discourteous or libelous the presiding officer may in the exercise of his her judgment summarily terminate the time allotted to the speaker there are the rest of the policy is fairly lengthy but i wanted to just make sure that the public is aware that public comment during a board of education meeting is intended to be for matters that are of concern um public comment are matters of uh related to the school or to school district issues and matters that are of concern to residents of the school district thank you okay next please if everyone could please sign the register that's on the podium when you come up to speak we would appreciate that thank you okay my name is bob mark and i'm here essentially to condemn in the first place the fact that matters about israel or what they call palestine or whatever have no business at a board of education meeting it doesn't impact upon the children or it shouldn't but the fact is that when they speak about such hatred i brought here a document which was sent by a muslim student in clifton one of the clifton schools threatening in writing to kill the child of a member of my congregation in writing on a social media platform this is what's generated by the hatred that's spoken about by the two muslim members here on the board of education aside from that i just listened just in time i came in i was trying to get in there was a cop blocking the engine for a time he said there was a gas leak in the building to people who have no concept of what's going on and i'm just going to address a few things because some of the wrong statements that were here are historically incorrect and absolutely false and just because this lady is jewish doesn't mean she knows one end of her body from the other for example apartheid i just heard that israel was an apartheid state no jew is allowed into any area that's controlled by the so-called palestinians yet in israel there are arab judges muslim judges policemen soldiers lawyers a supreme court justice doctors engineers and so on is that an apartheid state i don't think so it doesn't fit the definition of an apartheid state it's a misnomer people just try to manipulate the media or let's say gaza wants peace israel left the gaza 100 percent with no preconditions they left their homes there they left the synagogue buildings there they left public buildings there they left hot houses there so that the people that went there and lived there would be able to have a source of income within 24 hours 24 hours that's one day every hot house which was this to generate revenue for the gazans was taken down and the piping was used for missiles and rockets which were fired into the homes of civilians not military establishments but specifically homes and bearing children as a matter of fact more islamic children have been killed by rockets shot by hamas and by hezbollah than have been injured in any conflict by the israelis as a matter of fact they present the last hamas public presentation on an injured child they presented a child who was also killed in syria the same child same child was also killed in lebanon the same child was also killed in down into gaza and when it turned out that reuters which originally published the picture made further investigation it was an arab child killed by a an arab missile that never landed in israel it landed in the gaza strip do we love children well i guess if i love children i would certainly hide my weapons in a nursery school israel doesn't do that but the hamas does and we're talking about murdering children here these people saying they're worried about children let's look at the historical facts the historical facts don't represent anything that was said either by the two members here and by the way one of them i understand is under investigation for ethics matters by the way i don't want to mention his name but one of those two is and uh just because this lady is jewish certainly it doesn't mean she knows anything whatsoever unfortunately she's been influenced by media which is unfortunately inaccurate but i challenge anybody one of the members not abu dhabi the other one i can't remember his name said he would be happy to debate somebody well let me tell you i'd be more than happy to debate the man and when i do unfortunately i find him a new one if you know what i'm talking about i really resent the service can we please limit the comments to whatever you're addressing to the board okay i i think that the board should censor these people for bringing up matters that do not belong on a board of education they are generating hatred and that people with that kind of an attitude cannot properly serve all the children i happen to be the police chaplain in the city of clifton and when i swear people in i swear people in regardless of their faith regardless of their color regardless of their whatever it is i don't stop and say oh this is a muslim cop so i can't swear i'm in i can't be nice to him that's ridiculous and that's the kind of hatred here that's born in the middle east it's not representative of the united states of america it's sad and it deserves to be censored by the board time says thank you sir your time is up thank you ma'am if you i just want to read statement before you go please be informed that a board of education commissioner has the same rights to free speech as any other citizen of this country as long as they are speaking as individuals and not on behalf of the board it was made clear by mr awad and mr abu drabo that the statements that they were making when they made them were their own personal opinions and were not endorsed by the board of education the clifton board of education does not take any political position on any topic the board attorney made clear that the statements by these board members were their own and not statements supported by the board of education each board member is responsible for his our own statements and no one board member speaks for the entire board additionally so the public understands the board is also not authorized by the state law to take any action against a board member on this dais there has been prior case law on this topic and only the school ethics commission is empowered to take any disciplinary action against the board member on this day is clifton is a beautifully diverse community and the board of education is committed to ensuring that we remain respectful of one another regardless of differences or opinion the board is further committed going forward to ensuring that commentary for board members at boardman meetings be limited to issues that are related to the school district and its students i as board president have no additional powers or rights to sanction punish stop another board member from speaking additionally i have no rights nor any board member on this dias have any rights to remove a board member the only people that can remove a board member are you the people at election time or the ethics commission if they feel an ethics violation has been committed so i hope everyone understands that just because we don't like what somebody says the board cannot take action against another board member we are not a policing body i just wanted to make that clear to everyone ma'am i'm sorry go ahead thank you my name is emily filardo i'm also a member of jewish voice for peace i live in montclair new jersey i'm also jewish and i wanted to comment about how i think this is related to education i wouldn't be here if the remarks had just been made that that are we're discussing at the at the board meeting in may i think there's there's nothing wrong with those remarks i was concerned when i learned about those remarks being called anti-semitic by the rabbi at the meeting last night and to me the way it relates to education is that we it's a normal thing at a board of education meeting to comment about the loss of people through an illness to memorialize veterans right memoria some people make comments at around memorial day at that meeting right so comments about um those kind of issues are sort of understandable normal things that can happen so the way to me this relates to education is if we say that comments about a current event that was of such concern about the oppression and the horrible treatment of people in gaza are somehow different than other kinds of comments then that's setting a tone about what kinds of things can be discussed in a community and to me that is problematic for the education of the children in that community so to me policing those kind of comments or suggesting certain comments by a board member are wrong and others aren't if that's a problem that relates to education i also agree with the comments by those two board members that i think they was in their right to say it and i think they were saying things that are true but that's my that's how i would want to connect to education you don't want your board of education to um participate in closing down the topics that people in this community have a right to speak about and feel strongly about and who is someone to say that talking about veterans of this war their loss is okay but talking about the loss of civilians children in gaza is somehow different so that's the comment i wanted to make about the connection between that and education thank you thank you good evening everyone if i'm being honest i didn't come here tonight expecting to speak on this topic to respect to respect the statements made by the board president i will not go into the blasphemy that the extremely disrespectful gentleman made before me to put it bluntly and simply the so-called palestine is palestine it has always been palestine it is palestine and it will forever be palestine [Applause] good evening everyone my name is maryam muffler and i'm a recent clifton high school graduate from the class of 2021.

we don't know what day it will come but will come probably next week we can request 15 more days because it only gives us 15 days to respond and the response is the approval by the board of a new clarified hellcat 15 day extension if we request it at approximately the 20th of august will give us plenty of time to bring you a new plan on september 2nd thereby not having to schedule a special board meeting and giving staff in my department time to write their clarifications so our timeline we actually have the preliminary feedback in our possession we know exactly what they want it's not a problem it's all things we can do this is something we can take care of quite easily the letter will come as i mentioned we are going to work with the board president and the superintendent to request an extension and on september 2nd we'll bring you a new plan remember that what we're working on has three parts it's the update to the old plan from 2019 20 the last time we had a true lcap it's the update to the 2020-21 learning continuity attendance plan which unfortunately still spells lcap i don't know why they did that but it's a totally different plan with different requirements so they want an update on that plan which which is difficult to exactly we're going to do what they asked but remember last year was a very different year and then of course our proposed new lcap which we built with our community all those items need clarification what exactly are they asking for what are the changes they want greater detail in the proposals they want more explanation up from about those prior plan documents a lot of their requested edits have to do with the past we're writing history they want greater depth of the explanation of how we're connecting the students and their outcomes to the items in the plan how is it principally directed to those students generating the funds how are those students needs considered first and what research are we citing to show that that item is well thought out and appropriate we'll have longer written answers but let me tell you this after looking at the feedback not one goal will change the intent of the community will not change we had incredible community input this plan is strong it will go forward we just have work to do so the next steps for you a wait for wait for the letter let me know mrs uh nelson is ready to work with ms oppar when the letter arrives we'll request an extension on or about the 20th of august we'll work on changes and we'll make sure that before we get them to you they're already sort of conditionally approved by the county and then we'll submit them to you on september 2nd and then five days within five days of that we'll give them back to the county at which time mr schulenberg's budget can be approved and we can move forward with our normal planning processes so this we believe will be the new normal and it you know now that we know what the target is and exactly what they're looking for we'll hit this no problem but i just want this is every single district in our county is going to go through this process so we're not unique here any questions no question from this end thank you um av usd budget adjustments based on the state adopted budget by mr schulenberg thank you one moment while i connect with the magic screen great thank you uh as you see education code requires us to make any budget adjustments that we're going to make due to the state enacted budget we have to make those publicly available within 45 days of the state adopted budget so the deadline for us is august 12th of course we are meeting that deadline by this particular presentation making those preliminary adjustments public as you see there on that particular slide this addresses our local control funding formula our main source of funding from the state of california from the may revision and the 5.07 percent super cola that governor newsome proposed that cola was approved in the state adopted budget on june 28 2001 however they did make a significant change to the concentration grant portion of the lcff the concentration grant is a supplemental grant generated by those students who are eligible for free and reduced meals foster youth or english learners they increased that from 50 to 65 of the adjusted lcf base grant and we're projecting that's going to increase our concentration grant revenue by about 3.3 million dollars and we will make that adjustment for first interim on the federal revenue side we have our sr3 funding that's some of our funds allocated under the american rescue plan for covid relief activities our allocation was not adjusted but i did want to bring to the attention that it did clarify some of the compliance related to the sr3 monies from the federal government the requirement of a safe return plan which we do have a safe return plan with our covet 19 safety plan we have in place an expenditure plan clarified the fiscal requirements for the 20 spend on addressing the impact of lost instructional time and of course it does have a community engagement requirement on estate revenue we had a significant bump to our special education revenue uh via our selpa our special education local plan area it did not receive the super cola but it did receive what's the governor refers to as the compounded cola an additional 397 million augmentation 450 million dollars targeted on learning recovery support for our students with disabilities and then 100 million for alternative dispute resolution these funds do not flow directly to apple valley unified they flow to our selpa and that selfa then disperses those funds accordingly or utilizes those funds for these specific programs the enacted budget did create some new programs too the first we call the e-lap or the expanded learning opportunity program allocated one point bill 1.8 billion dollars across the state for comprehensive expanded learning programs really targeted at our elementary students our estimated funding for this optional program is 3.5 million dollars a couple of the caveats i want to mention it does require during the regular school year requires a 175 days of expanded learning opportunity that total at minimum a nine hour school day for the students and it also does require 30 days during breaks and intersessions of nine hours of instruction some one-time funding programs the governor brought back the educator effectiveness block grant this we are to coordinate with our title ii federal funding for professional development for all of our teachers and classified employees we do not have an allocation as it's listed to be determined up there that does require a plan to spend that money and it is available to us over several years to spend we have the a to g completion improvement grant there is also a plan required this addresses the college readiness for our students completing the uc csu ada g requirements our estimated allocation is approximately 1.1 million dollars again we do have multiple years to spend that money the governor had allocated some money across the state to begin a universal meal service program for students we do not know if we are going to get any allocation related to that so we're to be determined but i would like to remind the board that we already do participate in the national school lunch program community eligibility provision which provides free breakfast and free lunch to all students attending apple valley unified schools we did also receive or we are going to receive approximately 143 000 for the universal transitional kindergarten planning and implementation grant over the next five years transitional kindergarten is going to expand to essentially a whole other grade level where all four-year-olds will will be eligible to enroll in transitional kindergarten some additional impacts out of the state budget not necessarily fiscal or budget related one has to do with the local control accountability plan that mr schlosser just spoke about there is an lcap supplement that will be due here in the coming months related to that increase in the concentration grant money that i spoke of earlier there is also a new requirement for the carryover in the calculation of any carryover comparing the shortfalls between planned expenditures and actual expenses and that will take effect in the next budget year governor newsom did propose and the legislature did approve the elimination of all prior deferrals so all of the cash deferrals that we were going to be experiencing over the next several months were that we did experience over the last several months and would have been experiencing the repayment over the next several months will all be repaid in the month of august and last but not least on this particular page the reserve cap the reserve cap will be instituted will be implemented in the 2022-23 adopted budget which means our budget reserve is not allowed to be more than 10 percent of our annual expenditures uh some expense highlights any pending negotiation settlements with our bargaining units are not included until they are actually ratified by both the bargaining unit and the board they did reduce the unemployment insurance for us from one point two three percent of payroll to about point five percent of payroll and that was a reduction on that expense line of about half a million dollars those are the major highlights any questions thank you kylie do we have any public comments so any as provided on a public comments card speakers are required to limit comments to a maximum of three minutes if more than one person wishes to speak on the same topic subsequent speakers should limit their remarks to new information only public comments shall be limited to a maximum of 20 minutes per item in a situation where we have additional public comments and have exceeded the 20-minute maximum time per topic members of our community will be able to submit electronic public comments to kylie k l k-i-l-e-e underscore cardel c-a-u-d-e-l-l at avusd.org by monday august 9 2021 at 12 p.m these public comments will be publicly posted and distributed to all members of the board of trustees an information card with this information is available at the sign-in table tracy mascara can you speak into the might please okay sorry my name is tracy mascorro i am the vice president of the booster club for granite hills um touchdown club which is the football team there um i know there's a lot of parents that are here for support for the let the students and parents decide whether they want the mask i know i'm not speaking on that but i do support them as well um but what i am here for is i have two students that are at granite hills currently um one a sophomore which just got out of football practice so he couldn't be here and then this is my freshman that is there um we are in support of the team getting their own stadium because currently currently they are sharing a stadium and we know that land has been purchased and we're trying to help push that a little bit more um i have not experienced anything but i have heard several stories that make me feel really bad for our team and i don't want my student to go through that this year in regards to sharing a locker room or not being allowed to use a locker room even though it's considered their home also being heckled while they're on campus because it's not their home being told that that's not their home that obviously is going to make their morale very low and it doesn't really make them want to do very well when they're playing so i'm just here to support i know there's going to be more parents the next one but i couldn't make it so i just wanted to kind of put it out there and let you know we are all supporting our team and we really think that they deserve after 21 years especially now that we're getting a lot more students 21 years we deserve our own stadium that's it thank you matthew delmar [Music] all right good evening hello my name is matthew ballmer i have two uh children in the av usd school system second [Music] so you have two kids uh second and fourth grader i've lived in apple valley since uh 2014.

uh and we'll do a roll call heather could you uh check us off here and um just a reminder to everybody to um say where you're calling in from thank you yes all right i'll get us kicked off with stephen hey steve burksdorff president ann arbor michigan great uh jennifer it's not here alan alan haber damn ray france sarah here from ann arbor jeffrey jeff henny i'm here from ann arbor and camilla doesn't look like she's here yet rita you're from ann arbor oh i see jennifer's joining us just a moment alice thomas ralph here in ann arbor frank um here in eastport michigan adam uh adam zumke present here in ann arbor and jennifer president from somerset kentucky wow lucky gotta be hot down there i bet you know what actually i'm sitting outside because it's really a pretty pleasant evening so but it was i learned that people don't work go for a run at like three o'clock in the afternoon here so you gotta get it done at like six o'clock in the morning if i were in high school we would be on the marching band practice field at seven in the morning what did you play alice flute and they put me at right guard which is the longest step and i really had to work on that like putting putting a i don't know most ridiculous thing i ever heard of you have to go so many feet per step you know yeah and when you're on the outsides of the swing you're you're taking the longest step you know inside in the middle you just do little baby steps but they put me on the outside anyway um you do the you do the hard things in the cool weather that's what you do well we'll go ahead and uh get get things rolling here um i'm just gonna sorry adam i'm just gonna i i think you all can see me but i didn't get called on i am here in ann arbor oh i'm so sorry it doesn't really matter just for the record i just wanted to say here and where i'm at she's rcm yeah there you go minor details minor details um so i think heather you should you should forget me next time take turns for getting each one of you uh so we'll go ahead and and uh we can do an approval of the agenda um heather do you want to highlight because we did have some some late pieces here a little bit i know you sent an email which we really appreciate um just any uh any additional items here you know there was something that jeffrey submitted which is a report by the initiating committee so i'll let him take that over when we get to or you can let him take that over when we get uh member news and updates and then the other item was something that councilmember briggs and adam put together regarding trying to move the food truck idea forward perfect um are there any amendments uh to um to the agenda as written or as posted all right could we get a motion to approve i'd move to approve the agenda second second couple seconds there um all right uh all in favor say aye or raise your hand all right all right any opposed all right um and uh approval of the minutes of the last meeting um do we want there there are two sets of minutes in there because the one from the previous meeting had been postponed to this meeting so i think you can do it as a package or you can take it separately if you'd like to any objections to doing the package no okay so approval of the minutes from the previous two meetings um could we get a motion to um approve so moved second second all right uh all in favor raise your hand or say hi he posed i meant stating because i missed both of them and so my apologies i'll do better next time that's all right um okay uh that takes us to public comment uh heather do we have any members of the public we have one member of the public that joined us that does have their hand up robert black um you should be able to talk now thank you heather um i'm robert black as you probably remember i'm working working with the initiating committee um i wish to speak to you tonight on two agenda items number seven and eight on your agenda um i'm going to try to keep this to two minutes so alan can get to bed i won't do the three whole minutes uh agenda item number seven congratulations to you on your good progress in the july 7th working session i watched and you are beginning to gel as a collaborative group the process toward alignment is challenging for a group as diverse as you are yet your ability to listen and speak with mutual respect is laudable i encourage you to continue to seek more and more alignment and trust that future working sessions will be scheduled to allow 100 of council members to participate and then concerning agenda item number eight as you consider tonight a future design process i encourage you to ensure that you have sufficiently prepared a foundation of material to stand on including such things as a a clear and concise summary of the most useful findings from the center of the city task force and b a structured outline of the desired physical elements you ultimately envision for the commons this will allow you to prepare a thoughtful and well-defined rfq rfp to secure the guidance of design professionals you may even desire to start with a preliminary schematic design phase with clear outcomes in a near-term schedule taking a small step like this would allow an important incremental step to optimize any monetary expenditures and at the same time invite and solicit input and participation from potential partners both within and around the commons block any one or more of these potential partners may bring insights ideas and resources that will effectively leverage your expenditures while at the same time living out the basic principles of the commons diversity participation and inclusion i wish you a productive meeting tonight thank you and we have one person that joined us on the phone if you would like to talk you can press star nine to raise your hand all right you should be able to talk breast star 9.

this total does not include time spent in zoo meetings email and phone calls the actual number is easily over 400 hours i created a powerpoint presentation which has been presented to you with the help of many in the initiating committee most of the planning occurred planting occurred in late may into mid-june we created the green team now consisting of 10 members who rotate maintenance duties we expect the green team to grow as the garden reaches its peak and we begin the planning for 2022.

[Music] so do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] good [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] good evening everyone and welcome to the regularly scheduled clifton board of education meeting august the 5th 2021 if you would all please rise for a suit to our flag and a brief moment of silence thank you roll call please mr abedrabo here mr awad here miss bassford here miss beltran here mr kanova mr dr danny here mr casper mr smith here we have a quorum the mission of the clifton school district in an open reciprocal community partnership is to provide all students with a quality education to develop the skills necessary to become literate life-long learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to a democratic society in an ever-changing world yes we are missing two members okay i'm sorry yeah but they're not here at the days so i'm surprised i'm having some technical issues new jersey open public meetings act new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right to the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the clinton board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv in the local press on the district's website and mailed to presidents of parent teacher organizations this meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy zero one six eight uh pleasure of the board do you wish me to wait for um i guess joe is the only one missing mr uh casper has a family uh issue so he will not be attending and um mr daley just uh lost uh his grandson a nine-year-old grandson uh so he will not be uh attending this evening as well uh is anyone else missing so so joe you want me to wait very late oh okay then we'll have to go on okay as i stated um earlier our colleague mr jim daly lost his grandson to cancer the other day tomorrow will be awake for him at um uh shook funeral home in cedar grove from 4 to 8 p.m so on behalf of the board central administration and the entire clifton community we send our condolences to mr daley uh his wife kathy laser daily and the storms family for the passing of nicholas very upsetting uh to see anyone pass but especially a nine-year-old child is it's tough so our thoughts and prayers are with his family okay number six uh recognition and awards um mr abu drabba thank you president smith recognition of lucy danny resolve that the board of education recognized lucy's dan lucy danny as a nj sba new jersey school board association second certified board member the board commends dr danny for her dedication leadership and vision as a school board member we congratulate dr danny on this great accomplishment congrats motion to approve by uh mr abhidravo so moved it is so i have a second second second by uh mr awad roll call please mr abedrabo absolutely mr awad yes miss bassford yes miss beltran yes miss dr danny yes mr smith yes okay adoption of the minutes of our regularly scheduled meeting on july the 8th so moved so moved by mr abu drabo second second by mr awad discussions corrections scene nine roll call mr abedrabo yes mr awad yes miss bassford yes miss beltran yes dr danny announcements we have none all right first reading of policy zero one three one the bylaws policies and regulations two four one two home instruction due to health condition two four two one career and technical education two four eight one home or out of school instruction for a general education student for reasons other than a temporary or chronic health condition assignment of extra duties three one three four three one four two non-renewal of non-tenure teaching staff member three two two one evaluation of teachers three two two two evaluation of teaching staff members excluding teachers and administrators three two two three evaluation of administrators excluding principals vice president assistant principals three two two four evaluation principles vice president assistant principal four one four six non-renewal of non-tenured support staff four five six zero point two bridge year pilot program 6471 school district travel 8561 procurement procedures for school nutrition programs present presentations from uh administration we have none oh do we have one no yeah no no we don't okay board committee reports um miss password with policy sure um the policy committee met on july 20th we began the meeting at 4 35 pm attendees were vice president casper myself board members joe konova and dana beltran administration president was daniel robertazi and louise ross esquire the committee reviewed and discussed strauss esme's recommendation to policies as well as required mandated policies the committee makes the following recommendation to the board bylor0131 section select option one on page one and insert board secretary on page two policy number one six four nine abolish policy number two four two one select option two and on page two and insert nine and twelve on page two policy number three one three four three one four two three two two one three two two two three two two three three two two four and four one four six adopt as revised policy 5460.2 adopt the new mandated policy policy six seven excuse me six four seven one insert fifteen hundred dollars in the option section on page three delete the option on page four and select the third option on page five which reads the superintendent of schools and the business administrator are for final approval of travel policy number eight five six one adopters revised the committee then reviewed policy number two four one two and two four eight one dealing with home instruction and recommends adding the following sections to the policies for quarantining students student plural and short and long-term student needs simultaneous instruction and other virtual methods of instruction may be used or provided by the district the committee then discussed public portion at the board meeting the committee recommends that the board adopt resolution restating bylaw 0164 and 0167 which were suspended at the meeting on september 17th two thousand twenty these policies are reinstate a reinstated the remote bylaw zero one six four point six will be secondary and only used if needed in connection with the bylaw the following questions were raised and discussed whether we should have one or two public portions should uh there be should there be uh placed a specific time so speakers will know when they will be able to speak and whether to change the length of the time that is allowed to address the board board member board vice president casper recommends only having one session with the five minute limit discussions were held on this in the recommendation from the committee that we have two public recognition portions with a four-minute maximum time limit the one would be immediately following the open public meeting statement and the second portion would occur immediately before board member comments speakers will not be limited to discuss only agenda items during either portion and may address any general pertinent to the district at either public recognition portion if the board adopts this proposed recommendation then bylaw zero one six seven public participate public participation rule number two will be amended to reflect said changes in regards to bylaw zero one six seven discussion were also held adding a virtual or remote option to the public participation during person meetings in-person meetings it is noted that some board of educations are allowing email questions to be provided prior to the meeting which then are read by the board's secretary it is recommended to discuss this during new business with the possibility of drafting a resolution to amend bylaw zero one six seven to provide a remote option to the public participation the committee again inquired about drafting an automatic uniform response for the board commission uh commissioners to our emails for the public the um the committee also discussed discuss the topic of public speakers yielding time to other speakers and will ask for an advisory opinion which then will be reviewed at the next policy meeting for possible recommendations to the board the meeting concluded at 608 pm and they were submitted by mr ross any questions thank you next we have education dr danny would you want to read those in for mr casper clifton board of education education special education committee minutes of the july 20th 2021 meeting special education education committee began at two o'clock p.m attendees chairperson frank casper board president jim smith administrators dr danny robertazi yanina kusalevich first thing imagine math three-year renewal janina kusalevich miss kusalevich shared the benefits and high level of usage of the online imagine math support program 8 343 students use this engaging program regularly with students assessing accessing 3260 live teacher sessions for additional support this well-regarded program has shown measurable student growth and is a valuable addition to the math curriculum a three-year purchase will be made in order to lock in current pricing and savings for the district action resolution will be on the august 5th 2021 boe meeting number two updates on district reopening for full day full time five day per week in-person instruction dr danny robertosi and yanina kusalevich dr robert tosi and miss kusalevich provided an update on the district's reopening plan for the 2021-2022 school year the district is preparing to open for full day full-time five day per week in person instruction on september 2nd 2021 the district will be following the most updated health and safety guidance from the njdoe njdoh and the cdc to be able to open schools in the most normalized manner possible additional basic skills special education and counseling staff and services will be provided to assist students with the transition back to a normal schedule before and after school tutoring saturday support programs and small group instruction will be provided to support student learning enhanced cleaning hand sanitizing stations three foot classroom spacing with desk shields and multiple meal locations are among the safety guidelines currently recommended detailed information and a link for public comment are posted on the district website and will be updated as guidance continues to evolve action informational three home instruction policy update yanina kusalevich ms kusalevich shared that with the expiration of executive order number 175 which allowed for remote instruction districts are returning to full-time in-person learning in order to support continuous instruction for students who may be required to quarantine due to covid19 the home instruction policy will be revised to allow for the online provision of home instruction services action informational number four masks dr danny robertozzi and yanina kusalevich dr robertosi and miss kusalevich shared that the district will be following the most up-to-date njdoe njdoh and cdc guidance for the return to school current guidance on masks being recommended for unvaccinated students and personnel was reviewed provisions for universal masking in areas with high transmission rates or when it would be difficult to distinguish between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals was discussed the district is awaiting further guidance regarding this topic prior to the opening of school action informational the meeting adjourned at 3 p.m the minutes were respectfully submitted by yanina kusalevich questions leave a comment mr smith if i may yes superintendent thank you dr danny very thorough minutes and just to update the entire board as of less than two hours ago it has been reported that tomorrow the governor will announce that masks will be mandated uh in k-12 schools beginning in september uh that announcement is supposed to take place sometime tomorrow but that's what the announcement is expected so of course we will be following that that executive order thank you facilities miss beltran okay the meeting took place on july 23rd it was attended by myself uh danny janina kusalevich michael usee eric tomovich and al marchionne from the administration and the board members were mr daley vice president frank casper and president jim smith we discussed the rfp for the construction manager for the referendum project mr usee discussed the con construction manager rfp template prepared by the district's architect um the advertisement will be in the paper tomorrow the sixth um mr usa will provide the timeline for the rfe process with the committee the second thing we discussed was an update on pending capital projects the banfield says tennis court slash weight room at chs the committee would like a recommendation report from the committee by administration on the next meeting the third thing we discussed was additional district projects that have been requested we could utilize capital reserves as a surplus for these the administration presented different options for us to consider the first one being school 16 playground replacement making it a preschool education playground the committee recommends looking into all elementary schools in the district to prioritize the need administration will look into other schools for further review and provide an update to the committee at a later time the second option would be a home economics room at chs um ms kushalevich reported that for the career technical education cte program of the district to expand this would be a first step to build a culinary program at the high school it would provide the framework for us to be able to uh launch this program in two to three years the next option would be a chimney repair it's school number eleven mr marcion would like to reach out to other vendors for additional quotes and put the project on hold the repair is not an emergency but is needed administration will provide additional quotes to the committee at a later time the next option is school number 15 jim repainted school number nine jim repainted concrete stone the courtyard needs to be repaired at another school the committee recommends reviewing the whole courtyard for additional work uh the following project would be at ccms third floor classroom flooring replacement various hallway flooring repairs on all four levels central office flooring replacement entire building ceiling repair repair to the stair threads and risers on the stairwells number the fourth thing we spoke about was the window replacement exterior doors this would be using sr2 funds this would take place at school one school two three four five thirteen this is originally budgeted for 2122 and all exterior doors at ccms number five uh chs kitchen renovation change orders mr marcion state the product is moving forward there's a hard time receiving certain equipment because of back order one change order related to electrical issues second change order to demo unforeseen to demo unforeseen concrete these changes are still within the baseline bid allowance estimated completion date will be slightly delayed and the cafeteria might not be completely ready for the start of school but a plan plan b isn't processed by pomptonians so there'll be no delay to the food service school number 16 trees administration has received an updated report from the arborist administration will provide to the committee for a review the results of the arborist indicate there is no financial benefit by the tree vendor however the committee will have the arborist attend a future board meeting to report his findings in detail number seven replacing and purchasing district vans and vehicle for maintenance maintenance supervisor is requesting a pickup truck the custodian supervisor is requesting a van purchase a box truck a purchase of a box truck is also recommended for the maintenance maintenance custodial department parking lot at school number six mr marcion updated the status that the city was requiring of letter of where the funding is coming from from the city's zoning board also they were requesting a district employee to attend the zoning board meeting to explain the purpose of the parking lot this meeting is to occur on august 26th the committee recommends reaching out to the district attorney to clarify on this a new flagpole has already been installed uh boardroom renovation project mr marcion uh stated a company provided drawings for different layouts for the placing of the dais is administration will provide estimates for costs relating to the different layouts and provide to the committee on a data later late additional items that were discussed mr daley brought up the fact that the ccms softball field maintenance vendor is not honoring the contract administration will investigate there is if there is no improvement the district would like to go out to contract for a different softball field maintenance team mr smith discussed the use of facilities administrative administration indicated that all requests must be approved by the full board at a regular board meeting prior to the use of any facility this is a standard process for the district facilities by any outside organization and the meeting took place from 2 15 to 4 15.

i'm here today to speak to you all about the values that the clifton school district has taught me growing up and about how i am saddened and disappointed to see those same values disregarded by members of the public and by members of this board today in elementary school we learned the value of first honesty then courage and finally accountability these lessons built on each other as we move to middle school and later high school no individual is perfect and dakota cliche we are all human and we all make mistakes still we've always been taught that honesty is the best policy that communicating with others about our source of error is the only way to write our wrongs this does this honesty does not come easy i am sure it takes bravery to admit to our mistakes when we make them nonetheless it is just as important for those outside of the conflict to approach the problem with maturity and compassion it is no surprise that a lapse in judgment has been made by commissioner abedrabo around two months ago during project graduation still after hearing his public statement at the emergency board of education meeting in early july i found his transparency to be extremely admirable to admit to your mistake in private amongst your closest friends and family is difficult but to share your lapse in judgment to the entirety of your town takes true courage although i did not get the inter the opportunity to interact with mr abedrabo until he chaired the diversity inclusion committee my friend and i founded observing mr abdul through my high school through my entire high school career at board of education meetings has made it quite clear that he is an all-around genuinely and truly good person i have never seen him advocating against the entrance of our students or district once he chaired the committee i quickly learned that all of my assumptions were right from sharing extremely insightful tips on how to diversify our district to making the entire committee laugh after a long meeting it is with complete confidence that i can say that mr abu drabo is one of the most respectable kind people i have ever met watching the past two board of education meetings i was extremely disappointed to see that once mr abu drabbo admitted to his mistakes and even stepped down from his position as the board of education vice president members of the public and even some board members imparted some extremely negative and at time even hurtful words although mr abu drabo did in fact commit a wrong action his source of error was one rooted and pure and innocent intention the lessons i have been taught by this district are rooted in honesty courage and accountability mr abu drabba has been brave enough to embody all three after the project graduation incident now it is important that we show his effort the appropriate compassion it deserves mr abdrable is not the villain many painted him out to be he is someone who made a mistake and wants to rectify it please allow him the space to do so everyone makes mistakes but it is not our mistakes that define us rather it's the way that we handle our mistakes that are the truest testament of our character i wish this board all the best as it continues its agenda on the most important topic of interest as the new school year begins our students thank you all so much for your time thank you do good evening my name is ashley hernandez and i am a recent graduate from clifton high school's class of 2021.

you this one that's let's see one calling the meeting to order i propose to add the following item to the agenda becoming item 1i4 of this regular meeting pursuant to california government code section 54954.2 section b section 2 because there is a need for immediate action which came to the attention of the board after the agenda was repaired in order to add this item because four of uh five board members are present the vote must be unanimous action 1.4 5.4 action to authorize the superintendent designee to enter into a contract to provide covet testing and related services as may be necessary to support students and limit the possible possible spread of infection of school sites the contract will then be placed on the next board agenda for ratification i need a vote i need somebody to make a move i made motion i'll second it i'm going to do the uh physical vote all in favor all right in your post union represent representatives california school employees association csea do you have somebody to speak they're not here apple valley unified teachers association a-v-u-t-a let me see if you can hear me is this all right or can i take it off if we have a kid here i'm like just for a second i'm not around anybody good evening board members in apple valley unified admin first of all a buddha wants to welcome the new board member chris nunez we look forward to working together with all the board members to make it a great year can you believe we made it through two whole days of in-person learning the certificated members are all aglow literally they're a glow because it's so hot outside um and so excited to be with their students again there were some major minor hiccups ac not working in several classes an impromptu fire drill and a site that has one woman's bathroom was out of service however the general feeling from the teachers is that they miss their students and we're glad to be back in person with them the majority of the teachers were exhausted after each day but happy that there is some semblance of a normal school year avuda is once again going to be out in the community with our adopter street community cleanup day on saturday september 18th from 8 30 to noon we would like to extend an invitation to all of the board members to come and work beside us please let me know if you wish to attend and i will send you i will send you more info and we'll make sure that if there's more than two of you we haven't covered other than that avuda is off and running as usual and looks forward to a great school year thank you for letting me speak and have a great night thank you thank you mr rawley who is the clerk of the board is not present today so we are going to have mrs nelson act as the clerk for the next agenda item the board map you want me to continue the board may approve the agenda as it is i have two readouts you have two i'll do two readouts in closed session the board of trustees took action in support of the following recommendation from the superintendent b1 public employee discipline dismissal release reassignment transfer leave certificated and unclassified employees on a motion by mr so and seconded by mrs oppara the board of trustees voted to release classified employee 6946 effective august 6th 2021 pursuant to the notice of intent to discipline by dismissal dated july 22nd 2021 and a um roll call vote mr bender i christian christopher nunez i maria oppara i rick raleigh absent wilson so i in closed session the board of trustees took action in support of the following recommendation from the superintendent b5 conference with labor labor negotiator on a motion by mr soh seconded by mr nunez the board of trustees approved the following approved the memorandum of understanding with the california school employees association csea chapter 828 dated june 15 2021 and june 18 2021 regarding prescribed work hours mr bender i christopher nina's eye the board may approve the agenda as is or add and or pull items from the consent agenda for discussion and or action due to it i'm not finished due to a clerical error we need to amend the agenda to add item m5 2021 to 2022 sandabs membership renewal to the consent agenda becoming item j34 all in favor any opposed the vote carries um discussion information el cap patch schlosser thank you there's a presentation and i'll go through just a couple of slides and there's an item at your desk it's a sample of a letter that the board president will receive and we'll get to that in just a moment just an update on the lcap it's on the screen folks behind you if you want to take a look and follow along the normal local control accountability plan approval process follows those first five bold steps in every other year except for this year typically right now i'm bringing to you the fact that it's been approved i've gotten feedback from the county we've gone back and forth on language and then it's approved this year we have four new steps that they've instituted that are there and kind of in that blue font with the red asterisk there will be a letter to the board president we will have the opportunity for a possible extension of time we will submit clarifications to you and then resubmit to the county so a couple of items about that remember that through the spring we developed this with our stakeholders what we developed with our stakeholders won't be changing but the review process is more intense our county is following a very strict interpretation of the law when evaluating these lcaps and so 33 districts in the county we anticipate that every district will receive a clarification letter which is simply a request for clarification for certain items in the document this is almost i think 33 of 33 will get them why this year extreme scrutiny brought to our county superintendent of schools office they are the oversight for the lcap plans for every district there are advocacy groups out there that are really focused on the use of these funds remember they are supplemental and concentration grant funds designed to be used to increase the quality or quantity of services to the students who generate those funds students with low economic economically disadvantaged students english learners or foster youth they want to see that the items in the plan match the needs of those students particular expenses are targeted for example the use of those funds to fund the police department we do not have that particular expenditure in our plan we do have a police department but we fund that out of the general fund so the letter is a standard letter will be sent to ms opara sitting as our board president a sample of that letter has been placed at your seat and it is exactly the form it simply says they want more clarification it will require response within 15 days of receipt it has to by by statute it must be sent to the board president by august 15.

and i just want to i started by acknowledging the board and superintendents um for you know doing their best uh fighting to keep the schools open and um getting the kids back uh in in school in person learning um despite the crazy circumstances and bureaucracy they faced over the last year and a half really um i just can't imagine what it's been like to be in your shoes to go through um all the decisions that you've had to make and so that's why i'm here really just learn more about the process and have a better understanding of of what it's like to make those decisions so that i can better participate in that process and of course i'm here to say my piece about some concerns um but first you know the district staff again the teachers and admin if you didn't know that they were out on campus um yesterday um you know uh they're just very committed every teacher and and admin staff that i've met at the schools um have been very generous people and um it's just i want to acknowledge that you know um again they're doing the best they can and um and i really believe that they're just in the best hands possible um but i believe that we can do better okay and um so what possibly could my concerns be with that being said you know knowing that they're in such good hands primarily the things i can't control or we can't control right we can interact with our kids i can mitigate the effects in those relationships as a parent with their classes and their teachers and their friends i can opine at school board meetings i can spend time with them before and after school and i can guide my kids through the craziest of times the easy and the rough so regardless of how crazy those times can be those are my concerns how crazy our time is going to be and how bad are we going to let it get before we make some hard decisions as leaders here um who is shaping the world that they're going to be growing up in you know is it weingarten and the nea doubling down to fight any opposition is it just the state teachers unions pulling strings in sacramento apparently as great as the district is and the school staff is the leverage here that you have is limited or is it i'm concerned with the limited leverage that we have as representative governments go and we have our school board leaders here are you going to continue to cave to uh you know this woke corporate fascism that's taken over the new revolution of dividing and conquer mandates if i may add you'll also see that your time set i will submit the rest yeah thank you thank you thanks erica lancaster i'm a parent can you speak into the mic please thank you i'm a parent of abusd students three i'm here about the mask mandate uh and abusd's decision to enforce the recommendation from the cdc the cdc's data is clear school-aged children are at virtually zero risk to catch spread or die from covet 19.

now you should be able to unmute yourself and and talk hello jeff crockett can you hear me now we can yes okay um my wife christine and i have lived at 506 east kingsley since 1980 while a teacher for the plymouth canton's community schools i frequently drove by kellogg park a community center for recreation community events family and neighborhood gatherings kellogg park features a wonderful fountain we have nothing like it in ann arbor and this was a mistake made by early city planners we believe that with the passage of prop a we have the opportunity to correct this mistake that is why i'm speaking tonight i want to help i joined the initiating committee in april after attending a few meetings and becoming impressed with the vision and activism some amazing volunteers some of whom serve on this committee and are present tonight all of the flowers and vegetables for this garden have been donated we have documented this work with pictures taken of the various stages of the garden and created a log to count hours which at this point is eclipse 360.

i encourage anyone who wants to join the fun to please contact me and we will add you to the team i am also giving guided tours of the garden which started with council member lisa dish and this invitation for a tour is extended to all of you i would be happy to meet you at the garden and tell you the story in person this project more than anything else is about building personal relationships i am pleased to share with you a proposed sign for the garden that i hope was posted that the green team would like to install in the west boundary it is 15 inches tall and 8 feet wide it will be visible from division the loco was created by robert black a qo qr code will direct the visitor to the initial initiating committee's website this sign has been approved by the initiating committee and by maura thompson of the dda it will be produced and donated by graffactory a local sign business please let us know what you think in closing i would like to thank all of you for your generous donation of time in serving in the council of the commons thanks also to maura thompson for moving parking on weekends and to ali ramlee for providing water for the garden we clearly need now to move forward with a short-term plan that includes single-day events such as the proposed market days bathroom facilities electrical upgrade wi-fi and most importantly seating for both event and recreational use just understand that the ann arbor city count commons is our field of dreams if we build it they will come thank you thanks jeff anyone else heather that is it all right wonderful uh so um with that uh we'll move on to member news and updates and um we we can do a couple of things here we could do the initiating committee uh report if you'd like jeff um you uh would like me to do that right now i can do sure yeah that sounds good can i share my screen heather or do you have you should be able to as a panelist host disabled participant screen sharing yeah can you un uns un disable that let's see are you able to do it now all right see yeah i think so okay so um [Music] this is a little report to you guys we're planning a fall food art and fun network we probably call it something else but that's what we've come up with so far i have to do with fan market it's three events uh on the ann arbor library lot in liberty plaza and it would start beginning september and go through mid-november three events um we decided that sorry to interrupt you but i'm not seeing your full screen is everybody else seeing it no you can't see it either it's just the ribbon in the top of your screen uh you you can't see my full screen [Music] nothing uh we can see just the uh it's basically the header of your web your web browser um just says heather can you put my presentation up i sent it to you just threesome see um unless i go down here can you see it now nope not yet supposed to be showing well anyway i can i can just talk through it i can try pulling it up just a moment it'll take me it's just three slides but while she's doing that so uh we decided that uh it would be great as you know non-profits the initiated community and library green if we could you know implement start implementing can you see it now yeah okay so um we could we could start uh implementing what was talked about before which is is getting some food activity going on the site and related um and so what we did was uh we put together we put together a plan and we're going to get permitting from the appropriate sources and and and do all the necessary you know requirements for a non-profit to use the site and the idea is for us to put this uh a a series a three a three um event series together starting uh the first or second sunday of september and it as i say we're calling it fall food art and fun and um let me see if i can so can you move to the next slide yeah thank you and uh here's a a kind of i don't know whether you can see this very well i sent a a report to each one of you through heather but it just shows where the stalls of the different vendors would be we're gonna have food vendors trucks um you know uh other kinds of vendors uh entertainment like singers and and music and and um and some non-profits and of course central will be the folks in the uh the block neighbors we i've already started talking to them about having a presence there if they want to if the and uh we would like them to to to have a presence and um if you could go to the next uh slide or just if you can move the slide up so um we're also we also have entertainers uh and kids fun area we hope we're trying hoping to have puppet shows games and clowns and stuff like that if we can get them organized uh we're going to have an information booth which would be over on the uh you can kind of see it there if you can see it would be the the information booth on the uh the whole project on the on the city park and civic center commons initiative would be there and um uh so that would be the first one and then we would have two more probably the first or second sunday of october and first or second sunday of november and probably have some sustainability projects included in collaboration with the department of sustainability at the city who are big supporters of us and we are a collaborator with them on their website they have the commons up there and uh also we want to do a future of ann arbor visioning game which we're organizing that allows people to be creative and imaginative about the future of ann arbor and of course we'd work with the planners in the city and so forth and the dda and so forth to talk about that um part of the exercise is really to run what i would call a clinical trial or an experiment to do these three things um and that is because uh it was quite rightly pointed out that although the task force had done great things about getting input from the community and as was said earlier we need to look at that carefully and we have looked at it uh we want to elicit more feedback from the community more diverse feedback and this series of experiments is one way of doing it to figure out what people how people feel about use of the site what their interests are and whether these kind of activities are enjoyable and interesting to them and of course we will have in the information booth the opportunity for people to express those uh those thoughts and ideas it's uh it was properly marketed and signed signed and all the rest of it um part of the exercise will involve intensive data collection images and feedback collection the way we uh did it in the task force and in particular jeff crockett who talked earlier who did the the green team uh garden uh is very good at collecting data and uh and you know and processing and so forth and analyzing it so we will work with him on that and of course uh everything will be properly permitted and insured and safety health and sanitary requirements will be in place you can go to the next slide so funding from from um for this will come from via from private donations through the library green conservancy and we already have commitments to fund this and um also um the series itself will be these series of events will be organized and professionally managed on behalf of the initiated committee and library green conservancy by dana queen with a support of volunteer team dana is currently the saline farmers market manager she previously successfully launched the dexter farmers market and advises and assists the manchester acorn farmers market so she has a great deal of experience in running and organizing and marketing these events she knows the vendors she can pull in the entertainers she puts these things together very professionally and very quickly and she has committed some time to do this and uh both the library green and the initiating committee have been very comfortable and happy with uh what they've heard from her uh full disclosure she is my step and uh so just so people know that um we welcome please close the door sorry about that close the door please yeah and i understand closely sorry that's my my little grandson um so sorry about that he's seven years old he doesn't quite understand adult zooms quite yet uh anyway um we welcome all advice counsel and support from the council of the commons and as i said i've sent a little document that reflects mostly this a few little odds and bits added to it but that's not what i wanted to report to the council about this thank you i think it looks really exciting jeff um i think uh i think it's uh it's very cool looks like you've got it well planned out too well i felt that it was extremely important to do this if if we're going to you know launch an experiment and we're going to you know this is our public face we need to do it thoroughly professionally and so we've all devoted a lot of time and put some money into this to really you know put a good face on on what we're doing and so it reflects well hopefully on the council of the commons because at the end of the day you're the public face uh you know to the the city government and so forth but i welcome any input advice ideas participation from any member of the council of commons we we we do have some members that are already engaged and but anybody who wants to participate be delighted to have them adam if you want to have your business uh featured there that would be great you know for example we also will be getting sponsorships uh for example the uh uh the university of michigan credit union has indicated they are inclined to sponsor this and put some money behind it and there's a couple of others um that have said the same thing i talked to ali ramali and others and they're all very positive about this so uh erica you've got is that up to you heather to ask or what's up to adam oh yeah please feel free there's i think there's four people that have their hands up yes i think i'm third in line i think alice was first i i apologize i actually cannot see anybody's hands done all right let's just go on first adam we're just taking over yeah sounds good alice go first have at it now i can i i don't know what happened well first of all jeff a very impressive uh program you have outlined um uh the the one thing that gave me pause was who the we are especially when it comes to the gathering of data and the information booth um we've already run into this problem with the representation of of this commission as being conflated somehow with the initiating committee and they are very different things as someone has mentioned or several have mentioned the difference between a public process and a public public commission and and a volunteer non-profit you know who who is speaking for whom is just one consideration that i'd like like to point out um before you get too deep into all of this uh free labor that you're putting into this but um that's just what i wanted to bring up it is really much more um your your program is very much more uh better thought out than anything we've seen or had the opportunity to put together otherwise um but i wouldn't want it to kind of be cornered by a technicality i guess do you want to respond to that or i i don't require responsibility okay sure um stephen um yeah no thanks uh thanks for sending it around and thanks for sort of talking us through it i thought it looked fantastic um i thought i was the only thing i wanted to offer by way of thought was uh in terms of like the data that that's being collected i saw a lot of ideas around like making sure you know kind of use it as a chance to find out what people want are they using the site but also maybe ask questions about what they want to see but also make sure to collect information about what you want when you're running an event there you know so we have more hard data about that as far as like facilities wise and things that are obstacles in terms of either in any kind of way and bringing it off or you know executing it planning it uh whatever the the things you wish you would have had or that would have been easier this is another good opportunity to learn more about that so but kudos all around for putting it together and it sounds like it's going to be happening in the near term like starting off so that was great as well so thank you uh stephen i absolutely concur with you and that will be part of the process we will iteratively learn what we need to do to make these events successful so each event will teach you something new and we will obviously report back that information not only will we analyze it ourselves for making things better as we go along but also report it back right now and like with a view towards like the prior public comment talking about some of the facilities that they that folks already kind of wish were there more electrical wi-fi right bathrooms you know these kind of facilities and just kind of be thinking about that as these events are going forward um i concur with what's been said so far um basically looks like a great um great plan and it's nice to have some um kind of official events already in the works for the fall and i very much kind of in line with what alice mentioned um i think it's it's wonderful that um michigan and community is coming and gathering some input about what we'd like to see but i i definitely see it as this is a non-profit led event and i think it should be pretty clear from um the promotion and from um kind of how the event would be perceived on site that that's the you know two non-profits in in the community have have worked hard to to to launch this event series um and so when it comes to the data collection piece um there is certainly given the rules of these nonprofits interested in understanding how the space is used but i do worry a little bit without kind of alice's concern about how people can get weary about sharing their views about a site and we the task forces has collected data um i anticipate that we're going to be um hopefully in the rfp process getting people's thoughts in um in the design phase and so the more information that it's always great to ask people's opinions and things like that we have to be careful about we want to make sure that we can use that information in meaningful ways um or that you can use that information in meaningful ways um but i guess be cognizant that the people may when the next time we're asking for their information they may say well i've already provided information twice why should i why should i give more thoughts on this so um maybe just connect more with heather as this is going forward just to get some sort of staff feedback on this as well i absolutely agree with that and the the reason i presented it in the way that i did it was not to preempt what the task force did or what um what the initiate what the sorry what the council of the commons is going to do it was simply i wanted to be helpful because some members of the council of the commons had been concerned that we hadn't cast wide enough a net earlier on and so that's an issue for the council of commerce but i just wanted to be helpful in the process and you know mainly this is about trying to figure out how to do these events well as you know has been mentioned earlier and learn how to do it better i'm not trying to interject something into the into the decisions of the council the comments and the recommendations of the council comes we're just trying to be helpful and we're just trying to to keep things moving along and and giving the community something to to to relate to on the site as a you know that that things are happening but certainly i'm going to consult with heather and anybody else uh and i should say we it's not just me um and and will not impinge on any of the issues you've raised thank you yeah no it seems great i mean it's a big thing just to get that site activated and adam if i can just jump in for a second i just wanted to say i love the idea of testing it you know so i think the feedback that you get about how people feel about the event that's taking place you know as a use for the space i think that's that's going to be valuable input that we haven't really received before you know about an event that's actually occurring there yeah it's action research basically right right yeah heather um could i ask how what the relationship of the data that jeff's when the initiating committee uh what they collect it i think you kind of said this that it would be for initiating committee's use and not necessarily become part of our public process is that correct it's it's up to you i mean it's up to the city it's up to you guys if you want it to be part of the public process fine if you don't that's fine too i mean i'm you know we're we're certainly we're trying to be cl we want to be collaborative and and do what people what what the council would like in that respect in that regard yeah i don't see any issue with the initiating committee sharing the information that they've received you know data that they've collected with this group that's certainly fair we just need to be clear about where it comes from you know and and that it wasn't necessarily like a city-sponsored event right not going to say it's a city-sponsored event or that's a the council of the commons sponsored event okay we're just simply saying that there are council of the commons members involved and we're we're we're letting you know about it because we're we want you know that that's our obligation to let you know it's because i sit on all three i feel the obligation anyway to report this and let people know and get get feedback from you and get advice and help i mean this is a community event and you're you you guys represent the community in many ways and your input is is essential uh jennifer's had her hand up for a while thanks adam um i wanted to say first of all i think that this is such awesome news and i was really excited to read through your proposal um i would love for other nonprofit or community organizations to for you to be the um example the leader you know from which they follow or to which they follow um in terms of envisioning use of the space um i don't think it's any secret that i've been very excited to see the space activated for something to benefit the community um and i believe you know we need to take baby steps and so that's i just i was very excited to see your proposal um i had one i think this dovetails with what's some of the other feedback but i would love to get um or just suggest as part of your data collection to consider asking how did they hear about the event how did they hear about what you're doing because i think that would be really good information and intelligence to collect about the audience and you know to your point about casting a wide net how how well you know that's being achieved and if it's generating any buzz and we could use it as a benchmark as well um for future iterations in terms of how did you feel about or how did you hear excuse me how did you hear about this event in this space but overall i i am hugely supportive of what you're doing and i think it's just great so thank you thank you could i could i just ask you jennifer would it would spark be interested in in participating in some way because you're you're a block partner so it would be great if you were involved you know yeah so i'm gonna be i think this is something that needs to be like i bring my experience and my professional um activity from spark to the table here but i am not a representative of spark on the sport on this commission i'm a private citizen who loves ann arbor and loves green space um so i i would not commit to that in this setting and in fact i would probably repease myself from any conversations that spark regarding you know our involvement support etc etc um because obviously i'm quite biased so i'd ask a you know one of my colleagues to to step in should that happen okay thank you yeah uh we'll do allen and then sarah next good uh well i've been involved in the thinking through of this with the initiating committee and with the library at green conservancy the commons is really a bottom-up process and this is uh how does community people get together to try and do something on this space because there's no one else to do it the city council isn't doing it in our group as the council of the commons is basically advisory so we need someone in the community and that's what the initiating committee was recognized by the city council as being sort of the on-the-ground group to get stuff going and i hope that we can do that as widely as possible i think there is a problem that the block group has never really been convened and that is i hope this process will begin to get all the partners on the block uh together to begin to see how everyone can benefit from this beginning action research is a good way of describing it so it is the initiating committee trying to do something in behalf of the community and everybody is welcome to join in however and however the data is to be collected and made available i think that we could benefit from suggestions of what data people actually you know want but seems like a good step to go forward i hope there can be more of it and we'll see how it all goes i have some other comments about in our this agenda item but on this report i think that the library green and the initiating committee has done a good job in getting something to move forward following the discussion from the yeah july 7th that uh what's the first thing to do we'll get something going and do it around food so bring food to the commons and this is trying to carry that forward thanks helen um sarah's next thanks um oh similar to everyone else i think this is really exciting that this is being put together and it's happening so quickly i have a two quick questions maybe i think it's food awesome food trucks where are you envisioning that they will go are they going to take and they're big so are they going to be actually on the site or are they going to be more like food stalls well it will mainly be fruit stalls we are still working out the details on the food truck dana is taking over responsibility for for doing all that as i said she's done this many times uh in many venues in this area uh and and and by the way on as far as you know knowing where where people find out about this one of her great strengths is being able to use social media to market throughout the you know the the area and that was my second question yeah and she's she's a master at it and she she always gets crowds at every one of her events and that's why all the other groups outside ann arbor have been using her so we will get some great data from social media and we'll use it any way that people would like us to use it she sounds excellent um because i was just sort of thinking through like how are people going to find out about this and what sort of marketing plan and we do at work like a lot of like sponsored posts so they come up on your facebook feed like whether or not you like any sort of page i'm assuming that data knows all about that stuff more than i do but that's awesome that was my second question how are you going to get the word out because to get good data we want you know as many people to come as possible and enjoy the event thank you this looks like a lot of work i'm excited yeah and also the reason why we were going to go and try and do it a little earlier but we thought we'd better have the students back before we do this yeah anyway uh jennifer i don't know if you have your hands still up or did you raise it again okay no sorry about that i just didn't take it down no worries no worries um okay uh so uh are there any other member updates before we move move on to the next item in the agenda uh alan yeah well uh another activity that's in the uh works i've been involved since uh 2014 with other organizations to uh have program on peace day and on earth day and other times and so during the week of peace week which should be from sunday the 19th of uh september through that week and an international day of peace is tuesday the 21st we'll be uh having activities around uh what is this uh uh park and how the culture of peace and non-violence is a municipal endeavor as well as a global endeavor and we'll get application all that through the community services and you'll all be given some uh opportunity to participate and suggest how peace can the culture of peace and foster can best be done on this this place i bring to attention and maybe it got circulated that the conference of of mayors mayors for peace which involves 8038 different cities around the world has issued a statement suggesting urging that the local groups see that the culture of peace and non-violence is an essential sense in local municipal development as well as in global development so we're trying to put that forward during peace week any help and suggestion greatly appreciated thank you very much ellen um in uh unless there are any other member updates we'll move on to the next item on the agenda um so why don't we go ahead and do that and um so this is a follow-up from the july 7th meeting and um invite erica to comment here a little bit as well um you know we one of the one of the items um as i recall coming out of the the july 7th meeting was to to bring something forward you know as promptly as possible to counsel and um so uh you know keep in mind that we are an advisory uh a body that is uh designated to make recommendations uh eric and i had a conversation uh to try and actually put some some pen to paper um and so you know what uh feel free uh heather if you have the ability to to share some of this i can um walk a lot of folks through and erica uh can you feel free to interrupt me as well and you know if we think this is um is a good bad or indifferent we can you know revise or throw it out or uh do whatever uh it does not matter to me but i think our our goal was to honor um the intent of uh what came out of that uh july 7th meeting um in trying to make a formal recommendation to council and get city staff uh moving uh ideally um on some of our recommendations erica did you want to add anything before we uh went through yeah um i guess uh just a little bit i've talked since our last meeting um i've heather and i have chatted about this um and also um frank and rita and i have chatted a little bit um and most recently adam and i did so one of the pieces that i was struggling with a little bit um i also talked to john fournier about it as well um but really just kind of trying to think through exactly what um um council might be approving and so i appreciate adam really did a lot of work putting this this um this handout together um i think that's a it's a good framework for thinking through maybe what we what we might be um asking um sort of staff to start considering um i think adam i'll let you kind of walk through the bullet points in the document but um it provides a nice framework for thinking about how the city might start exploring um opportunities for immediate activation with food trucks and other potential vendors um and then and developing a model for that and then you know if for some reason that that the financial model for that doesn't work because obviously one of the challenges that we have right now as a as a community is that you know outside of the farmers market we don't really have we don't we don't have staff that does programming um for for public spaces and so there's nobody really to tap into for this and this is obviously not um at least the we often talk a lot about the top of the library lot obviously we're also talking about the um the uh liberty plaza as well but i um the library lot is not yet designated as a park space and so um it becomes a little challenging to think about we've as a group certainly gone through the you know who's going to manage and do the maintenance of this um who will actually spend their time um during the week if this was staff doing um figuring you know doing the programming so this this creates a little bit of a framework for that and actually when i talked to john fournier about this this week he had some interesting uh ideas about um looking to some other communities about how that might how that might work as well and if that doesn't work then also just providing some some staff feedback around what the costs about this what the limitations might be and really starting to actively partner more towards with nonprofits in the community but adam i'll let you speak more in more detail to the bullet points sure uh thank you eric and you know i i think um you know part of this really came from the fact that um that we it's a city-owned property and uh we need to figure out uh how how the city is going to interface with it one way or another in order to to make some things happen and certainly i think jeff uh your report is showing uh that you can do uh you know great things with with uh well-meaning people who are driven to do it um and i think what our thought process um in in the july 7th meeting was we need to get the city to help uh create a uh you know an effort to support uh the organic efforts like yours so uh frankly it's great segue um so uh you know as as uh we kind of came out of that july 7th meeting um you know we made a recommendation and this is paraphrased uh so uh you know feel free to to wordsmith as folks would uh feel um necessary but you know recommend to the university council uh to direct city staff to plan and to activate the surface parking lot of the library structure for regular and recurring use by food trucks and carts and other light commercial vendors such as artisan pop-ups etc those are the two things i know that really were highlighted in the in the survey and in making this recommendation center of the city council the commons urges city council staff to these three sub points here uh make use of any and all existing use processes uh from like spaces and activities uh examples being farmers markets street fairs etc there are many other examples too um that could be could be utilized here to aid activation of the lot including but now limited to the application processes for vendors cleaning health and safety management marketing and external engagement uh i put a note in here that the our council urges the city to really not reinvent the wheel to the extent possible and use best practices it doesn't have to be ann arbor best practices but best practices in general associated with similar activities figure this is not really rocket science and there are a lot of good ideas out there and let's borrow them um second point work with the center of the city block partners including the library and private businesses to collectively ensure the activation is successful noting that some planned and recurring activities might not be and i described them as core competencies but you know essentially the the day-to-day activities of individual block partners um engage block partners to bring vendors to the space that supplement uh and complement uh their day-to-day activities and serve the community and then uh finally the finals uh i think it's the final sub bullet point here uh create an activation strategy that deliberately creates planned reoccurring activities and markets them in the community obviously something we talked about um with regard to uh the fan event and dude doing so the council of commons urges the city to put together particular emphasis uh on the attraction of minority and women-owned vendors as well as the creation of activities that attract diversity of participants as reflected in ann arbor's values um and then there are a couple of other points heather if you could scroll down can you see it uh and then finally you know if necessary and or helpful the council of commons can designate uh members uh to work with city staff to develop the activation plan uh having gone through the the vision session on 7-7 themselves and so um so we could certainly uh appoint folks who would uh like to take on that role uh and then uh finally and this speaks to the point that uh that uh erica brought to you know if ultimately the the um the city does not have the ability to or desire to dedicate staff to this effort then we really do need to figure out an alternative way to create these recurring activities um you know and uh and plan them out and so um you know the city should just make a create a process by which uh nonprofits and other external organizations can apply and market it and get it going uh in a very prompt fashion uh so i think that was that was sort of the the final point you know basically if we're gonna run into um just points where where we need staff time and it's just not going to happen within the city then we need to figure out another way to engage the short-term activity and so uh so that was what that final point is so i offered this uh you know we have this only for uh food for thought try and uh synthesize what came out of the seven seven meeting and um you know move something forward to city council to get a reaction frankly um one way or another and feel free if we want to keep it on the screen or go back to the full screen i don't have a preference and adam i don't know if you can see but there's i see three hands up jeff alice's and frank's and again if people want me to keep this up i can if not we can go back to looking at each other we can go back i think yeah why don't we go back and then jeff why don't you go ahead and we can always pull back up if we need you yeah i i just wanted to say this is great in general um i i i want to be as supportive as i can in any way i can be i think you you'll find some of the things helpful to whatever way it goes down you know from what we what we're going to do with fan uh certainly for example dana has a a rigorous and effective uh vendor selection process vendor application process she's used over and over again throughout the community which might be helpful or may not in this context so i would offer that as one example the other thing is she's been very focused on uh diversity and and inclusion and getting you know all all different kinds of people engaged with stuff and so she knows how to do that and wants to do that so uh we have some some ways of doing that uh that have been uh developed uh already and can be made available and marketing strategies and so forth so like i said we offer that uh we might be able to generate an infrastructure that could serve either purpose which whether it goes down the the city line or down a more you know private sector or non-profit line but but i think we we we're going to be able to put him put together something that might be useful to either either party and we do that in all humility not not trying to dominate the process or say we should be doing it or anything like that sure thank uh thanks jeff uh and definitely i think uh a lot of complimentary uh pieces here too um alice uh and then we'll do frank okay no i'm i'm i'm not muted okay um uh i i did send out i'll disclose that i did send um as soon as i saw a short email to erica and adam and heather with just a few tiny little little changes just to reinforce what i think the clarity that would be helpful but i noticed one more we ought to get the right name for this this the current name for this space i think is the library lane parking garage and we would have to say something like library link the surface parking on i don't know how we say it but we should call it the correct thing rather than the library lot because that sort of infringes on the library's actual surface parking which is behind the library so we want to make clear that we're not making assumptions about somebody else's property um but the other other things were pretty simple and i didn't say much about that last paragraph which i think is what is much more important than my first or second reading of it because uh i don't our two friends who were supposed to be here tonight who are not mara thompson and please remind me of our friend uh in the permitting process for events i don't remember her name deborah williams deborah williams yes i think some people may have the impression that she would be that person but that's obviously something entirely different from what's suggested uh in that last paragraph the fact that we don't have um a city employee that is dedicated to doing the things that for instance parks seems to do they have a program that they um i mean that's the closest thing i can think of is the programming that they do for the park system we don't have the one though for we have separate things going on for say the farmers market or the stone barn again the names of these things i just know where they are um but the the one on packard and um cobblestone farm is what i'm talking about so those special properties that parks has that i don't think they even do the programming for those they have other groups that do it so whether we're talking about um enhancing the relationship between the nonprofits or the ex-officio or whatever kind of group we're talking about that sort of um shepherds the programming for those special properties are we um trying to find yet another one for this space or you know we don't even know what the possibilities are uh or what we would recommend in terms of someone dedicated to programming for this particular um property so i'd like to find out i'd like us to find out who that how i you know make it make some kind of stab at identifying not necessarily an existing person but a structure for that process like cobblestone does its own programming farmers market does its own programming and a few others also do their own programming so that's something to think about excellent thanks alice uh and i do have a draft with um many of alice's comments uh reflected in them that i've just thrown together right before the meeting too frank and then stephen yes i'm glad we had a chance to walk through this point by point because my quick reading of this document earlier didn't really bring out its uh its full potential i think i guess where i i where it led me to focus uh granted the the our entire site is not parkland but liberty plaza is and it seems like we we have a reservoir of you know compatible uh related knowledge in the farmer's market area where there is a a staff and there's a history and it's just not market farm market vendors there are other events that take place there it just seems that there's a reservoir of expertise there that should be brought to bear in some creative way i i'm sure if we were to arrive on monday morning say can you layer this on to your already uh uh heavy workload that would not be welcomed but is there a way to it's sort of a interim way interim process of moving us to a final solution to really draw on that expertise at uh of the farmers market staff i don't know if they have a separate advisory board or anything like that the other thing that occurs to me is what is the relationship between farmers market and kerrytown and surrounding businesses there may be some important learnings there in terms of how the market relates to those uh business interests and resources so um i'm pretty excited all of a sudden about how to you know how to really uh use an existing resource to advance our knowledge and activity here and i will just jump in and add that we did reach out to the farmer's market manager and she's very helpful and she provided us the existing form that they have for food trucks to apply to their food truck rallies um so they they're i think they'll be a great resource to go forward um the deeper knowledge about how fairytown and the farmers market intersex we haven't asked that question but we can i'm sure find out more about that it might be to invite uh whoever is the person running on the farmers market to join one of our our meetings for a you know more iterative conversation okay steve steven i think you're up next uh thank you um and thank you for putting this together um i knew that somebody thank you alice for finding some improvements i looked for typos and things but i didn't find any i think i understood the sort of what was in the document and i think i agree with sort of what it put forward as i understood it it's basically i guess three parts in the first part has like three subparts you know make a plan and have the plan make use of existing processes in terms of how to actually activate the space and maybe in the near term some of that is the existing city staff um and maybe in the future you look towards making it into a park and so you know whatever whatever comes there but don't over complicate it um i think the actual words don't reinvent the wheel or in there the second part was engage with the black partner sort of you know create the i guess for this one i'm a little confused what we're asking the city to do um beyond sort of create the conditions for success or at least somehow we are signaling that we want to engage with the black partners but what i think i also read there was that we don't we don't want to confuse it for somehow like can some obligation of consensus with all of the black or that we have to go anyone has a veto or something like this but that we we welcome input and that where there's this sort of win-win for for individual black partners as to a certain topic that it makes sense then we should pursue that um and then planned recurring activities is another thing that is there that makes a lot of sense um and then the other two sort of big points where yes we could have a liaison to interact we don't need to you don't need to try to get the entire council of the commons in the room to do something and then this concept of i guess as i perceive it maybe more of a long-term arrangement but have some sort of non-profit uh as i'm understanding it maybe that's sort of managing the space or helping to deal with the programming the scheduling coordination with other nonprofits about how they'll use the space whatever that is what i raised my hand for was the part that i'm not sure that i did see in there like i'm curious about uh this mou with the dda and if this is a document we're gonna go ask the city to do something i think we should encourage them to finalize an mou with the dda for the use of the space and i don't know and maybe this is a question as to what the status of that is and if that's already moving along we don't need to say it here then fine but that's something that i think maybe even comes before these talks about sort of how you know okay how do we get people activating the space first let's make sure we button up that point with uh some sort of mou about using the space and i i'm going to jump in here i please correct me if heather if you if i've got this wrong i my sense is that the dda doesn't necessarily need to authorize the city using the space but if there was for example the the mou that's sort of being considered the partners are being still being worked out whether it's the dda or city or both that might be involved the last bullet point was really focused in on you know if there is not if right now for maybe budgetary reasons um it doesn't seem feasible to do ongoing programming for this space that we need to try to develop an alternative non-profit model and so that's where the mou would come into would would be utilized so um it's kind of suggesting an either or proposition ideally that the city is uh utilizing its current resources to um figure out a model for kind of financing and program you know doing some short-term activation the space but if that is doesn't seem feasible um we determine that that is a lot larger cost than we realize it comes back to city council for a vote there's not support there for doing that that there is interest in the commission to say okay well then let's let's create another alternative model that has a viable path forward i think uh i think erica hit the nail on the head basically uh in terms of the intent stephen to your point though uh regarding the mlu the dda to to um you know keep cars off the space uh in general do we have an update on the status of that heather do you know where that's at i don't know completely where that's at right now um you know that was a process that was occurring between um the city administrator and the dda and the attorneys needed to be involved because it's a parking agreement that already exists that needs to be modified that deals with the revenue that's generated from the parking that's there so the details of that were being hashed out i haven't had a chance to talk to maura um in recent days to just to get a status but i will reach out to her to find out more and then i think when we have a permanent city manager in place again then um we'll be able to move that forward again beat my curiosity mou what's happening with that right well i think there's two separate and correct me if i'm wrong um i think there might be two separate mousse that we're talking about so one is the parking agreement if we want to permanently remove parking from the top of the structure then that needs to be worked out between the city and the dda as far as then the second mou would be defining that relationship that we enter into with a non-profit to manage events occurring at the space so i guess my comment to clarify is directed towards that first mou towards the the first step of just kind of getting clarifying with with dda about getting parking off the top um and using you know what whatever that would entail yeah so that yeah and that would be the permanent removal right now you know there's a process in place that we can have temporary removal you know that's been happening on weekends to to allow for the gardening um it can happen really at any time if a group applies so so to do a you know a night of food trucks or something like that should be no problem yeah understood thank you thanks steven that's great feedback uh rita you're up next thanks um i just want to add some um real specifics as suggestions to include in terms of potential recurring events and those are events like festivals taste of ann arbor the green fair fourth of july that could use some additional physical space to have some really good events so i don't know if those necessarily need to be in the document that you created which i think is great but just if we have those in mind to encourage them i think that would be really great that's it rita i'm all i'm all for uh giving more ideas um because i find that's always helpful uh to uh to the conversation so i did throw those just now in in this revised document right uh we've got uh alan and then alice yeah thank you uh this is a a good summary and a good start in getting the city involved in this there were a couple point i do think we need to er yes there's a block group together begin to so that people on the block that can begin to see one another and see how the whole block can find benefit in these initial and ongoing activities i heard from steve uh i think in the last meeting from parks that there were actually facilities that might be available this is going to need tables are there tables and chairs available in city facilities that could be used for these events rather than the uh you know non-profits having to locate those or buy them or something separately and other uh resources from the uh city and that could be uh made available we need storage space for stuff between events and it has been a long need call for as part of this that wi-fi be made available on this and this sense of the city resources being directed to make to facilitate the activation and see how the wi-fi storage and existing tables and chairs be available thank you for sure i think i think uh you know to the point that you just made ellen um you know our thought process in in um putting this up for consideration uh was really to test the water and get things uh going with uh with the city to um to really see if we're going to be able to you know have the city manage uh these planned type of recurring events um and if that's not the case then the point you just made around the um around the use of uh other city-owned property like tables and chairs and things like that you know becomes a very relevant point if we if it's offloaded to a non-profit so i really see that the management of this is going to be in the world of voluntary non-profit as that is much more the model of the commons and seeing the city to set up some management program and we just have to figure that out over time initially we got a group that's ready to uh you know begin and everybody that can cooperate in that city and the non-profits will just see how it works out long term is another question alice and then sarah yeah i just had a a brief uh reference to rita's comment about other other events you it would be nice if we perhaps if attached to this you know there could be an asterisk in the paragraph from the recommendation but put an addendum of as many of those kinds of events as we can think of instead of putting them in the body of the recommendation that would be one way to is just attach a list of examples rather than leave out you know because so many that might be useful including the two that i thought of just now as alan talked about tables and chairs huron river days uh sponsored by the parks i think in green fair sponsored by the city um that i don't know if they will continue after this disruption of events that we've had but they all they did did have tables and chairs which i don't think were provided by each um each group representing something to do at a table or or a booth so um i think alan is right and so are you adam that this can come along later but as far as the events that are used as examples we could attach a list that's more extensive if we wish um i think that would be one way to to cover the territory absolutely thanks sarah you're up thanks uh well first of all thanks adam and heather and erica for putting this together i think this is a really good summary um from that july 7th meeting which feels like way more than a month ago for some reason it's been a really long month um i'm curious if does this in your mind does this come with any sort of funding ask and i think either way it should sort of be clear you know it says it directs do we think this is within the scope of you know what we already had like heather's time funded to do and are there any other like funding asks that would be part of this or is this more just like these are things that we can do within the scope of what we've been given and would not require additional funding just knowing that we don't have a lot and i think the funding that we just got is earmarked for this design process if the answer is no that's awesome but i think we should sort of say somewhere that like this does not require this is not an ask for funding it's like ask for it's within the bounds of whatever we kind of assumed that staff would already be working on with this group maybe i don't really know how to say that but i don't know if that came up at all together what i would hope honestly is that this is not a funding ask i think that um i think city council has allocated funding for for this initiative this year and the focus has been on the design um long-term design um when i talked to mr fournier about this he suggested that there might be some opportunities to um through sort of the permitting fees or something like that um for for ongoing events to um especially if this to then fund maybe the the um a part-time you know some part-time work um from the city because you know i don't think we're talking about um especially if we keep this really simple um and it's not different types of events you know if we're just let's keep it simple and it's food trucks it's maybe it's a food truck area for the next bed and that happens um that provides an opportunity for um but there's still there's still work that's needed even if it's really simple right there's still maintenance and monitoring and cleanup and there's there's there's costs associated with that and there's cost of coordinating and and working with those vendors and different things like that and so this is not you know everybody at the city um is working hard and probably already has too many things on there on their plate to do and so um but there is interest in trying to figure out how this works and so this i think the hope of this is that it's it's broad enough that um maybe there can be a few internal meetings to think about how this might play out and if this is realistic if there's an opportunity and maybe the maybe the timeline isn't quite as quick as everybody at this table might hope but maybe it gets things in um really going um and um and getting something happening on a regular basis there so i don't think we know yet how this is going to play out and the alternative is also no this is you know this is really a budgetary ask and council can consider that um or you know we say okay let's move to the non-profit model yeah i'll leave it to you guys as to whether or not you think it's even worth bringing back funding within this i just like it on it on like a first reading and i appreciate going through it step by step because i think similar to frank i read through it just initially and read it a little bit differently i was kind of like how do we pay for this but i think the ask really is more like these are the directions we want to go i think this group if council wanted could you know potentially assist in some of these activities um but i think you're right it's sort of up to council it's like what the directions need to be but funding came up immediately in my mind so it may be worth thinking about how to address it within this document do you think that councils will have that question so if they're if this group is wants to provide direction on that that is certainly fine but if if you want to keep it loot you know broad um that's okay too i mean i don't i don't i personally don't necessarily think it should be a fun thing ask at this point um because i think some of these things can be done like look very low like potentially just staff time costs that we already hopefully have allocated through other um or no cost but i i think we won't really know until you know some of the stuff is approved and we get going yeah i i would just say you know certainly um certainly thinking about um i would say just allowing creativity right i think the goal as we originally wrote it was basically to try and tell city council this is what our recommendation is and so please take action on it you know direct staff to take action on it and and then that will help us flush out exactly where the hurdles are and maybe we can try and create some creative solutions and you know that's part of the reason um you know we put the the option of having some members of this council uh serve alongside to try and basically provide for that create creative insight as well um so that i that's the only thing that i was um thinking of i i certainly wouldn't want to put up any walls um before we necessarily um you know before we necessarily get there especially given you know maybe there's an option of some of the fee money or something they could they could pay for limited uh limited uh costs uh that could that would be incurred so that's one thing uh jeff you mean frank i mean frank not me i didn't have my hand up oh i'm sorry i thought you did i apologize uh frank i shaved my beard off right frank's hand is up uh i think we have the right team working on this uh adam erica and and alice uh i think you're you're the right trio to sort of broach this and and kind of navigate to the halls of the you know city hall the halls of city hall my other comment is uh and i don't want to uh put steve on the spot but if he if he thinks there's a an opportunity to uh access tables chairs benches that might be in storage that could be used for this series of events that are being planned for the fall number one is that a possibility number two how do we how do we get to the key to the storage locker i i um happy to be put on the spot i have no idea the answer to that question uh but i'm happy to try to find out uh and see if if the park staff has some sort of the answer you know what that is where that is yeah if it exists how we might get our hands on it so okay thank you very much excellent um we'll see another know their hands up i'm um i'm happy to uh you know i i do have a draft that i've incorporated alice's comments into um you know knowing knowing the um desire at least expressed by uh folks participating in the 7-7 meeting of moving you know as quickly as possible on and getting to council um i'd like to see how folks feel about sort of approving at least in concept this statement you know with some with some of the the feedback um you know and so that we can take it to council um you know i feel like that we're at a point now we've had a couple of meetings um is that something that people feel comfortable with um do they feel like this document in general surmises the summarizes the um recommendation as agreed upon by the group in july do we need a straw poll or something like that just um i mean i don't think uh i don't think we have to do it i think i mean how do you ask for a vote on sentiment you know i would love to see i would love if the um commission tonight would would vote um to recommend this um to council with incorporating the comments that that came from the table tonight around um sort of alice's um input and i think there are other kind of few other little small bullet points that got incorporated in as well um if there's if there's agreement on that then i can make sure it gets on the august um 16th council agenda and it would be nice to have that come with you know a vote of so erica that almost sounded like a motion do you want to make a motion i think it's a great idea are we are we seeking the sentiment of the group almost on the process point like should we take a thing to council and say here's what we think you ought to do or how you should be thinking about this i fully totally agree erica i'm sorry it sounds like you're volunteering to speak in in you know positive tones about this at the meeting where it comes up um yeah fully agree i don't know if it's a straw poll time or if i'm seconding something but yeah count me before we get into an actual motion since it hasn't been since we don't have one on the floor is there are there any concerns with doing it i certainly don't want to rush anybody but obviously uh there does appear to be a lot of angst to get get going well if you just want a vocal opinion i think this is pretty close as close to uh well polished as it can will be once you incorporate what you heard tonight and uh what is the harm i mean i think it's a good move to really inspire all the things that are going on at city council i think it's a good move to send them something that this more concrete than please let us do these things for sure ellen you've got your hand up i don't know if jeff wants to go after allen yeah well i basically go along with this i made a few comments i'd like to see incorporated i when we have a document that's given to us uh on the day we're supposed to be reflecting on it it's uh i don't want to postpone it but in general uh it would have been nicer if we had seen this a week ago and i hope that the thoughts that i added on can get put into it and maybe there should just be a day that people who want to make sure they have their nuance included can give them to you or whoever is a drafter that goes to the city council it's not asking for any money it's basically asking that they move forward with getting this activated i would hope it's not a big problem if there's any money involved in it of course going to be a problem but that's not what we're asking for and i think the emphasis that at this point we're looking to see the financing through the private fundraising and the non-profits and that's from the beginning been my sense of how this actually the commons is actually financed by the people who are of the community that people will find the benefit from this so yeah yes let's go forward you know with it for the next council meeting all right thanks alan uh erica you got your hand up yeah um i would hope that um just kind of i'd actually be rather not bring forward kind of additional i appreciate ellen your sort of thoughts around the the wi-fi and and different in storage and stuff like that i think that's come in the form of another resolution to counsel previously and so i'd rather keep this limited to um short-term activation of the space or specifically around what came out of the um our our working meeting in early july because i think there was pretty strong consensus around sort of the food truck activation and so that that feels like that has there was um you know kind of unanimous um sentiment around that um and so i'd love to be able to take that to councils and get staff you know brainstorming on on that idea and moving it forward because i think some of the other ideas we've we've gotten some feedback around some of the you know some of the challenges that the city's struggling with on those but this one is uh hopefully one that's um we already have that there's already some resolutions in the past addressing those issues this would be kind of a new a new request to staff and so um and i'd also rather not honestly have a whole lot of feedback coming in if there's on this document i'd love that the group to be voting on what is um being agreed upon tonight based on the document that you've seen and all received scene feedback on and that that's what i'm taking and getting attached to legistar have attached to legislar so so knowing that um i've got a um i've got a revised version uh with a lot of the comments that were incorporated tonight uh heather do you wanna uh allow me to share my screen and i can uh just pull it up and um and then we can take a look and then hopefully we can just excellent okay can you see uh can you see the document okay perfect um okay so um but what i have here uh i'll just try and summarize the uh the changes that i made not not the full thing again um so i added uh from some of uh alice's uh comments um you know some and many uh examples that were created here i did put them in here i did also uh add an asterisk at the bottom we can we can make an amendment here but uh you know we have street fairs the taste of ann arbor independence day here in river days green fair festival sonic lunch uh at l and uh and the uh the asterix um i did clean up this uh naming of the lot uh to what i believe is uh accurate here please correct me if i'm wrong on this but paid activation of uh the uh library surface parking lot um library capital link capital all right library land surface parking lot we'll uh have this reference oh also at the top yeah exactly uh okay the so library land service parking lot okay um i don't think anything else was cleaned up in uh this first bullet point um black partners i did enumerate the ann arbor district library so that we just have that in there for point clarification um i did amend the language i had originally core competencies i changed that to not be within the expertise of individual block partners in these last two sentences here and change the word urges to encourages and i also eliminated the subset from this bullet point right here to just designate members and uh i think that's it could you change it seems awkward to say particular emphasis on the attraction of minority i think on attracting minority would be more direct because we want to who's who are we attracting we're attracting the minorities so we want to attract and be it's engaged it encourages the city urges at attracting how did i have that down um [Music] encourages emphasis on attracting minority and i think we're we are talking to the city um encourages attracting minority and women leave out the city you know they know who we're talking we're talking to them encouraging and we also say that that we're referring to diverse participants as reflected in ann arbor's values a diverse is there such a thing as a diversity it would seem appropriate given that the city just established a 30-person steering committee on equitability the equitability steering committee oh i think that i think that burdens it a little bit too much but because the city knows who they have to unlock that that they've just done that right i think i think that last bullet point makes sense before we move on for that both way i'm not sure minority is really the best term to be using i think we might want to spell out what exactly we mean like are we talking black owned i think it's called color yeah um encourages the city to work to attract diverse vendors as well as the creation of activities that attract diverse participants well that might confuse it a little bit because like are we like diversity and like what they're offering which i also think is important but i think that's what are we talking about both as reflected in ann arbor's values assuredly gets us to all of that because as just mentioned we've got a 30 person commission on diversity the city is very out front on this topic so they'll know what we mean i think when we say do it in the way that you need to be doing it so maybe we say reflected in ann arbor's values of like social equity and racial justice or something like that like because we have values about all kinds of things so if we're talking about specifically like equity and things like that like in equity in all and all forms then maybe we can just add that and i think you then you maybe could say like a diversity of vendors and then we could sort of take that as whatever it is be like all-inclusive maybe i like it in the in the prior bullet point can we include it says work with coc block partners including the aadl and private businesses can we put the dda in there can we put antibiotic library comma dda and private businesses is that too much to put them on the spot like this no those are they blocked but that's the thing so i raised my hand a minute ago to ask like when we see when we say the coc black partners who are we talking about we don't currently have any partnerships right so i i'm not i'm that to me felt really ambiguous if we're going to take this to city council if i was if i was being asked that question or asked to vote on that i think i would consider that as like well who are your partners that's a logical question we call them neighbors property and business owners uh say sarah what did you just say property and business owners or block participants like uh a lot that's i like participating because this it it allows folks the opportunity to to participate at an engagement which is comfortable for them it doesn't make assumptions i guess and maybe yeah i really do like adding the downtown development authority because they are in charge of in are responsible for the the space itself you know even though it's um i agree with alice could we even say and others tbd or others private businesses comma and others i think would be great i guess yeah i guess what's giving me pauses it almost seems as though we have a coalition of partners who are either supportive or who have and somehow you know have somehow raised their hand or are engaged in this process when that necessarily isn't the case for all of whom might come underneath this umbrella at a later date and i want to make sure that we aren't exclusive or you know i guess giving the perception as though we haven't had those conversations and and welcomed that dialogue in a way that would be meaningful and helpful to what we're trying to accomplish good good points yeah i think we're getting there instead of working with it's like initiate conversations with or something because we really haven't started this right that's been part of the sticking point correct hmm that's not bad that's not bad about what what if it isn't even something like solicit involvement from you know something that creates it as a we are welcoming we are we are a body that is welcoming and inclusive and wants to you know as as we talk through what that means but welcoming and inclusive of um support right because we we can't do this on our own and i think to that's that's a great acknowledgement of is a community space that we're trying to activate with community support and involvement i totally love it we could also say engage the black participants and but social involvement is great we are hoping for block partners for the recommendations of the center of the city task force it was to create a block group of all the people who are on the block to see how they relate to this and make this an open proposition that is what needs to be convened that should have been convened in march of uh 2020 and is still waiting yeah and this is this is a way to get the city to maybe help us solicit that involvement yeah i think this is a perfect place just to kind of put a nudge in the middle of it right there and would i would suggest that that our block partners have probably been focused a lot on on pandemic needs and maybe this is their of their own so we're entering a time that maybe they have a little bit of space to start thinking about some some other issues i agree any other uh you know final um uh wordsmith in here um are we feeling proud well i guess i would when we add on other endeavors like sonic lunch and independence day uh i would be happy since we have been doing earth day and peace day uh to uh just put those in as community events to honor appropriate days each day is coming up um yeah um i think we're gonna really get lost in this if we if we keep putting them in that paragraph and and we don't have a long list to add at the end you know unless we repeat those we can we can uh we can yeah we've got one i do have a footnote down here how about this why don't we uh you know we can if folks are amenable um if we if we agree to this language tonight with the one asterix that we uh we can create a list of uh suggestions and submit that along with this as the asterisks uh and then we'll we'll take that that piece out uh of that of that sentence that way we've got a little bit of you know a couple days or something like that to throw on suggestions to to a an addendum um that heather can collect and attach to this does that sound fair yeah and that way we don't even have to put any we can say instead of giving those examples we can just say see additional lists yep exactly with the asterisk and then just a small edit adam just making um block participants consistent in that paragraph there's a couple other references to block partners ah yes okay good good catch and we may just want to change the date up at the top to include reference today's meeting as well or not you know or not include the date whichever i one suggestion would would be to include two or three uh standing activities like taste of ann arbor etc but only two or three and then go then direct them to the longer list because i don't want to miss the category of existing programming right that could be shared on that space we can do that we'll we'll leave a couple in there and then direct them to a longer list that folks help compile thank you frank any other changes do not let perfect be the enemy of good amen my favorite phrase alice what any policymaker would take uh should take seriously i am really impressed this is great thank you adam you did a lot of work on this i was creating the framework and thank you adam during the text great i i love it it's great problem all right you type and and you type really fast i i hear you don't have a ton of time so this is a necessity um so uh so how about this uh can we get a motion on this language with with that one asterisk list okay move some move by jeff in a second all right second by rita i'm gonna stop sharing so that we can all see one another all in favor say or raise your hand all right bye bye me oppose all right motion carries heather i will send this over to you okay i have the motion what i wrote down is motion to send recommendation on food direct activation to counsel with changes proposed by group at eight five meeting included if that works for everyone it's perfect okay and then wow look at us look at you i should say so we should so so heather if folks would like to add examples um why don't we get those together try and get them maybe by the end of the day tomorrow to heather um and and uh we we can uh you know she can take out the majority of the examples out of that sentence and put them in an addendum um as a complete and send it out to everybody and then uh we'll rely on erica to wield her uh political gamble at uh the next council meeting so all right to get this into council's agenda it would be needed by the end of tomorrow right um no it because next next meeting is a is a working session so it's really wednesday after that and so okay um heather i don't know if there's a way for you to we can talk i don't know if there's a way for you to kind of move this forward if i because of the time frame it may be necessary for for me to just put kind of sponsor it but yeah if there's if there's time i can move it in but if it's kind of late coming in then you'll need to sponsor it to get it faster okay sounds good good i'm muted um all right in that case um i think that takes care of the follow-up um we have a 7a reflections updates i think that pretty much covers it um do we want to talk about the next two items considerations for a future design process and then also potential subcommittees i know we've had a uh the subcommittee's discussion has come come up several times um i think we did a great job at sort of activating a working session which sort of serves as a temporary subcommittee um but uh does seem like as we go forward with the future design process subcommittees could be very helpful um and we could you know to the extent folks would like to talk about them tonight we could do that we could also submit recommendations to heather to be distributed to the group around subcommittee ideas um and then try and make those official or at least organize between now and the next meeting we've got at least one person their hand up jennifer i i think i just need a bit of clarification in terms of subcommittees is it smaller groups of us or is it inviting community partners etc to be part of a subcommittee process i think that would largely be up to the group i'm not sure what the semantics are other are there uh differences here um as far as allowing other community participants i think that can be you can do that if you wanted to do that um i think the initial drive my impression was that the initial drive to to to have subcommittees was to get some stuff done and so i think the question is is is right now are you feeling like you need to um divide into subcommittees or are you feeling like you know maybe that would you can hold that off to maybe for another topic or another time so i guess that's just like the question to answer i could that was just but just to clarify the question i think to put a finer point on it is that is there a way for this group to divide and conquer and come back like can we be productive in off times um you know in between meetings or is this something where the intention is to bring in others for a voice and that that's what i think tripped me up a bit so i think just to that point i mean subcommittees to at least from my experience with other commissions there they are publicly noticed there's usually a staff person that's staffing them so i personally am a little i i know there's desire to to get things going i would hate to see like a list of you know seven subcommittees formed with lots just because i think it's really um it's time intensive um particularly for heather um and but i think it seems like there's need for focus on short-term and there's need for focus on long term um rita and then alan and frank uh mine is really a question it's like when we thought about subcommittees in the past or even just now it's like what are the kinds of things that we had in mind i think that would help us you know it feels to my reaction right now is like i'd like to sort of brainstorm the kind of things that that we want to have um different groups address and um [Music] that seems that's just i'll just leave it that simple like what are those things that we need um and if there's a time frame related to them it would be nice to have that in mind as well uh ellen well frank had his hand up first but if you're calling on me i would like to see uh this eight and nine put off to our next meeting we have a one hour meeting and we're 51 minutes past that and now i appreciate your smile there adam we've had a good good discussion but i think both of these questions about future design and how and our working groups on more specific questions need more attention it would seem a good idea somebody said to have us each or those who wish put in suggestions to heather who could distribute those significantly before our next meeting so that we could have a discussion based on some uh formulated ideas right uh frank yeah um i just want to draw us back for a moment to the to the working sessions and we've had one and and i i in my mind anticipated there might be additional ones and i think this iterative process of you know short-term intermediate and long-term planning need probably needs the focus of a working session facilitated and maybe the question of subcommittees could be addressed in that i i don't know but i just didn't want us to forget about the working session model that we started last month definitely uh jeff yeah i i want to support frank on that i think it's important to have those a few more of those facilitated working sessions maybe not these individual working groups right now i think allen's right about that and others who said that but um i think we do it would be good to have well let's say i would like to have maybe one or two more facilitated sessions um so that we can get uh you know this the the the brain power of the group working together you know in a less formal setting and you know in a more creative uh circumstance so i agree with frank on that if we could if we could plan that fairly soon another working session that facilitated working session that would be great from my perspective okay uh else i think you're muted alice the picture jumped over to another part of the screen and i couldn't get unmuted um i i i don't want to miss out an opportunity um i i understand the conversation is currently about subcommittee's working sessions and all that i thought we did pretty good tonight with something tangible to work with them but where we get that from is possibly something to be considered um the but number eight consideration for future design process goes to a problem i had with the information we got back from mara thompson and it included a very microscopic plan drawing and things like that um uh the that's the kind of thing we need to really line up i mean robert black just mentioned it at the beginning of our meeting we need to have a clarity about what the parameters are about what exists about what we we really want to do physically what today we've worked with the programming i think it's wonderful because we've got it's it's a way to keep engaged with city council to whom we are responsible for our advisory activities um but if we're going to advise on how much money we need or how who how to when to do a an rfp or an rfq that's the process that we would need to start but we need more clarity on information that describes what we're working with and and then to sort out from that what we want to change or how we want to go about working with what we have to work with and so um [Music] so tonight i don't think there's enough time to go into and i can't find the docu the list that mara ran through of responses to questions i can't find it anywhere i had a print i printed it out and i can't find it anywhere but i did find this the drawing that i can barely read because it's so microscopic um but um those are those are questions that i think we do need to address if we're going to talk about the design process the the future design process which isn't possible tonight because we did a good job with what we did with um for tonight i think it was timely work that we did but we are really lagging behind and getting they feel pardoned the word concrete information about this place that is mostly made of concrete it's not that we're going to change the concrete it's the what can we do with it pretty much and that's that's where we need to have more information more specific technical information even though we're not going to do the design we do need to scope the work that's my concern we don't have enough information to scope the work that we're going to ask someone else to do and they the first thing they would do that we'd have to pay them for is to scope the work so so we want to do that because that determines what we end up with in in the end result that's what i wanted to say just now and you can go back to whatever bullet point we're at i don't know i just needed to get that said so it sounds like to me the overarching consensus is um that maybe more of these working sessions um full group working sessions uh to uh to uh you know uh do some deeper diving into a lot of what alex just said frankly get our questions answered understanding our parameters it seems like that's majority of the consensus rather than at least at this point in time breaking off into into two subgroups i am all for more uh less formal working sessions um you know and uh and would be happy to participate in that i think that if there's a way maybe we could alice heather and i and and maybe erica can sit down virtually you know in the next few days we can talk about what some of those questions could be and who we need to get in to answer and we can maybe provide a list to the uh council members here about who that could be initially for a working session um get some feedback and then um schedule one um based on that does that sound like a good plan of action for next steps yes yes i think so the uh you know i i made a i i was i guess i was surprised that it's been two months that we've tried to get colin to come and talk to us about parks and he made a very good point go to the pros plan and uh and that's readily available somebody has to do some homework and it's you know whoever can get to it um it's one of it's a one or more of us on this in this group that needs to research the questions rather than asking somebody else to go and look at things that they don't have time to look at um i get i guess um because most of the answers to our questions about the relationship between parks and this park um are probably in there i i haven't seen it for the past 10 years but it's been revised a number of times i'm sure so um it's a good good thing to go back to it's a document we haven't really talked about and it addresses some of the big questions we have about having liberty plaza on this block and how it's related to what we're doing so why don't we proceed with that it seems like we got a lot of head nods um and um we'll come back uh heather uh we'll if we could get a zoom scheduled for all of us uh in the next four of us in the next few days um and and talk about what those things are then we'll provide a list of items uh for at least a first working session uh to council members and uh if that list uh you know we solicit feedback that would get to a point where we feel it's acceptable schedule one and and keep the ball rolling here um you know looking at that uh at that um longer term you know vision as the scope of that and um so uh that sounds good to me um i think we can take that action i am back and and that point uh at this point i think we've got that covers our item number 10 next agenda items if we keep the focus on continuing to to drive that ball forward you know we will we have it it'll be very clear as to where our agenda looks like um are there any other items before we go into public comment that folks wanted to make sure we hit on i i do want to just uh add my uh repeated theme that there are certain principles of the development of a commons that we should refresh ourselves about and make sure are included in our thinking of how this process comes goes forward thank you allen all right uh hearing then uh nothing else then um heather do we have any members of the public we have two members of the public online and one with a raised hand robert go ahead and speak thank you heather this is one of your dedicated and loyal audience members i sat on every word you said and took notes literally of everything the last two hours it's fascinating to watch a group really work together and i'm proud of you and happy for you because i don't know many groups of the dozens i've worked with that have worked so equitably and live the principles of the commons together i think you are actually doing you just set aside a subcommittee to work on this thing about background information bravo you also have another opportunity for educating yourselves about the commons there's at least one subcommittee of one involved with that right now i heard so um please continue on with that i think this idea of activating the commons with the the beautiful work that jeffrey talked about jeff haney and also jeff crockett you have these opportunities the fall food and food art and fun thing picks up two of the key elements of the commons the food and the art but also the garden is a teaching metaphor so this whole idea of education and and getting data feedback from the public is really a huge opportunity in the next couple of months and i would like to to think that your data collection should be directed towards you know as alice talked about this foundational information and it should be driven towards the idea that you will have some kind of physical manifestation of the commons back in march there was a document prepared that showed a possibility of how to list the physical elements around several categories a park a playground food and a building so those are some key elements that you could think about and then there's the social element of the commons into future thinking about the stage and performance and education a watershed model all kinds of different things that could be sussed out in a working session as you move forward so i'd encourage you to have that facilitated work session there's a number of independent people who could help you get through that and make a really productive work session on myself included but there are many others in ann arbor too and the last thing i want to say is that um i think it should be clear that you have a clear intention and description of the sponsorship of these events so it is not to be confused you said it very well with the council of the commons because you're an advising group but i would suggest that you'd consider having a table a poster or a booth in the event that is the council of the commons so that people understand the distinctions and roles about this so um kudos bravo i just love watching you guys work together and uh i wish you good luck in your um action research as uh you know mr haber called it so thank you for a wonderful productive meeting thanks robert okay and we have a person on the phone i'm gonna press allow to talk so you should be able to talk now hello this is uh jeff crocker calling again i assume you can all hear me yes okay uh one suggestion for heather um when i looked at the agenda uh the meeting id is incorrect i had to i put in the meeting id when i tried to get into the meeting and it came back saying it was wrong so i i figured out that the meeting id was on the television screen which i copied down one beginning with 933 but that was not very visible if you're low vision that's going to be a problem so i would suggest that on the meeting agenda you have uh not just the correct meeting id but then uh indication that to get into the meeting at star nine and then to unmute yourself star six so it's written down so that people with limited vision aren't confused so that is sort of one suggestion i am very pleased with what i heard at the meeting adam you did a great job in the document you produced um i i'm hoping to get some feedback from you all on what you think of the garden i hope you stop by and take a look it's reaching its peak but i'd like to hear some feedback and also we're planning on putting up a sign and to sort of indicate that this is a volunteer community garden in the community commons but i noticed that there's virtually no other signage about the commons and typically when you have a situation where you have a a proposition that's passed i think it would be a good idea to have this is the future site of the the commons as passed by proposition a with a little explanation because part of the job that we're doing here is promotion and even though we're having activities uh there's still people are walking by without having a clear sense for what the space is expected to become so i'm hoping you'll consider some signage i really like what frank said about looking at other local resources and one person you should consider is grace singleton who's the head of the carrytown district association that we've worked with closely in the old fourth ward about planning events she could be of some help i think in in linking perhaps what they're doing with kerrytown with potential events on the on the commons the other thing is that this the commons the idea i mentioned plymouth uh plymouth is being facilitated i think the wilcox foundation so you have different towns particularly like plymouth who've had a lot of experience doing this with support from public foundations so i would strongly suggest that you contact the people in plymouth uh city planner administrator and non-profit to find out how they work together so you don't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel and the last thing about promotion is i think we should be actively promoting the library green conservancy there's been a lot of talk about well the city can match funds that are generated with you know a private foundation but i don't think we should just sit and wait for other people to donate i think all of us including all of you should and including me should be out there saying donate to the library green conservancy so we can activate the space i just think we have to be a lot more active thank you very much for your consideration good night thanks jeff um heather do we have any other members of the public we do not okay uh with that then alan i apologize we are nine minutes over our actual two-hour time but that means an hour and nine minutes um start so i apologize hope you get some good sleep um we have a motion to adjourn don't move all right seconded by several people uh including mr haber you all have a wonderful evening uh i think meetings adjourned thank you you

any questions thank you all committees okay we'll move on to resolutions we're going to start with b education administration am i right you're right i'm sorry i skipped yes number 12 public recognition this portion of the meeting is open to the residents and non-residents of clifton for the purpose of addressing any subject matter pertinent to and or directly related to the operation of the clifton public school district residents and non-residents are requested if in person to sign the register provided for this purpose all speakers are asked to state their names municipality and subject matter before speaking comments are limited to five minutes per person issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and are responsibly forthcoming if and when appropriate your questions may or may not be answered by board members the board asked that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees of the board are discouraged and will not be responded to by the board students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of the state of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor will be liable for any comments made by members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments okay so if anyone would like to address the board the podium is here you're welcome to come good evening and thank you for allowing me to speak uh should i keep my mask on or should i take it off whatever you're more comfortable we just can't hear you so if you could uh either get closer and make sure it's on okay there we go thank you my name is howard cohn i'm from new milford new jersey i belong to the clifton jewish center and that's what brought me here it was surprising to learn of the presentations made on may 20th 2021 board of education meetings by two members and i'm here to comment on them those who viewed the statements of mr awad and mr abadrabo should research historical and current facts rather than depend on distortions and fictions presented in my opinion by both unlike mr awad i can recommend doing more than just a little research they depended i believe on the ignorance of their listeners to validate their assertions in 2005 all israelis living and dead were withdrawn from gaza to israel buildings factories and infrastructure were left by the israelis for arab use instead of using them peacefully practically all were destroyed and areas were turned into terror bases smuggling in attacks had to be prevented causing land and sea controls to be put in place if gaza has become the largest open-air prison it is due to the efforts and policies of the palestinian arabs mr awad commences his anti-israel diatribes with a list of dog whistles they include humanitarian issues uncontrollable crises mourning many losses many children being killed apartheid style walls colonialism and billions of dollars given to the israelis to oppress words based on emotions to be accepted not well without questions we are told that arab children in school shouldn't have to worry if their house will be there when they return from school it's not appropriate to mention that the arabs were firing rackets at israeli areas at the same time that children were going to school if hamas and the others did not launch rockets and store military supplies in civilian areas those areas would not have been targeted by the idf it was ironic to hear the complaint that civilians were given short notice to leave their homes before they were bombed what other army in the world gives civilians and secondarily enemy forces a warning that the area will be a target we are also given the information that our police are sent to israel to learn quote abusive tactics unquote to bring back to the urban communities he also tells us that the knee placed across george floyd's neck was a skill taught by the israelis we also learned that we can also go on the internet to see how israelis can be viewed doing the same thing to palestinian arabs one can go on the internet to see what police forces in our area have done to israel for training and what seminars they have attended you will be surprised by the truth mr awa discusses the importance of education in being educated and manner conducive to bring peace and knowledge to the student unfortunately this is not the case with the education or more correctly indoctrination that palestinian children are receiving as found by the un and other government organizations we were told by both that the palestinian arabs only want to live in peace and live with their neighbors in peace the continued firing of rockets at israel and use of incendiary balloons is the novel way of showing it your board of education meetings should be reversed reserved for fostering and improving the education in clifton it should not be necessary for a member of the board to insist that a fellow maker of comments declare that the board has absolutely nothing to do with the comments made i believe that miss both mr awad and mr abad rabo were out of line with the targets of their remarks thank you very much for allowing me to speak and i hope everybody remains in good health thank you yes please thank you salaam alaikum everyone my name is salahuddin mustafa i am a 20-plus year resident of clifton my children attended the schools here let me say mr cohen it's a good day for you to come because unfortunately for you you actually do have an educated audience in clifton so let me explain to you why it is that we and when i say we i'm not just talking about arabs i'm talking about people of every background jewish people every ba every color criticize israel let me explain to you so israel today the so-called democracy in the middle east has today 60 official laws that officially discriminate against non-jewish people arabs who are 21 of the population of proper israel today have less rights than jewish people by law mr cohen today can go to israel and become a citizen within minutes my father who was born in jerusalem can never be a citizen of that state i can't that's discrimination why do we why else do we criticize israel this is a difficult discussion for me but let me give let me you have to feel how much he's distorting the facts when i was a young man out growing up here i did my family is fortunate we actually didn't lose everything like almost 80 percent of the palestinians in 1948 lost everything when they were ethnically cleansed from their homes my family is lucky we actually still have homes in palestine and we go back to visit as much as we can when i was going back as a kid to go visit i was humiliated at the airport i was humiliated by m16s pointed at my face door at checkpoints so i made a very difficult decision two years ago pre-covered i decided i wanted my four children to go to palestine without me i did not want to go with them why i wanted my children to experience what i experienced without me protecting them i wanted my children to go to the israeli airport and to be absolutely humiliated isn't that terrible of me that's what i wanted them to experience i wanted my children to see with their own eyes the race this is in israel they call the democracy the race exclusive roads that they because they were arab are not allowed to drive on or walk on i wanted them to see that and by the way they literally filmed it and showed it to me while they were there i wanted my children to see at the checkpoint to see if an m16 would be pointed in their face guess what it was so here i have to hear the distortions telling me that i or any person that supports palestinian rights that we don't have a right to criticize israel how dare he in this country i don't have a right to cr i have a right to criticize my government i have a right to call my president anything i want but he tells me that i can't criticize israel because i would be deemed to be anti-semitic sir nelson mandela would be would be considered anti-semitic if it was up to you nelson mandela is one of the greatest figures in the history of the world he's not anti-semitic i am not anti-semitic because i criticize israel how dare you bring that drivel to this city how dare you that is why we criticize israel so if anybody wants to come here and tell us that we're anti-semitic listen go back under the rock that you came from we are not anti-semitic we have jewish people standing behind us right here could you please wrap up your statements you're out of time i'll wrap it up by saying you did the right thing fahim you did the right thing for us you did the right thing trying to educate people on the truth don't be afraid you're doing it on your own time don't be afraid this is a free country and don't let the dribble that he's peddling stop you from advocating for human rights for palestinians and for people who are oppressed all over the world thank you thank you next uh excuse me sir this is not a back and forth uh comments i will hand you the paper that i read from and i wish [Music] i'd like to remind the public that this is public comment time on issues related to education for the clifton public schools and this is not an opportunity for back and forth um discourse thank you yes ma'am go ahead i'm sorry i might make it more easy there um my name is tova fry and i'm a member of the jewish voice for peace i live in west orange and um frankly i was really disturbed when i heard the previous gentleman who apparently is a clifton police chaplain also speak and he did use the words anti-semitism yesterday at the city council meeting and i listened to his comments there and i want to tell you i know what anti-semitism is my all four my grandparents were killed in concentration camps during world war ii that was intense anti-semitism my parents tried to come after the war to the u.s they each had a sister here already and you know what there was a quota against eastern european jews from coming to the u.s that's anti-semitism what happened is my family wound up because they had nowhere else to go they were not zionists but they wound up in what had just been declared israel by the british and the u.s colonialists and they wound up their penniless and some israeli soldiers put a palestinian family out of their home and gave it to my parents and that's where i was born that's that's colonialism that's ethnic cleansing that is what what zionism has allowed to happen in in the so-called state of israel i have a sister that lives there now on a kibbutz so-called left-wing kibbutz in the 48 boundaries um but i want to tell you that what's happening in israel where people are being forced out of their homes in jerusalem right now in shakjara in other neighborhoods that's ethnic ethnic cleansing what happened in gaza over and over again not just this time in may but back in 2014 and before that and i think 2004 and before that the bombing in gaza that is against all human rights and that is colonialism and what's what's happened with building the walls that separate the west bank towns where palestinians are only allowed on certain roads and and the um these settlers can can come into their lands and take their homes that is apartheid and so i want to say that what's happening in in the state of israel is not anything that i am proud of as a jew and i want to say not in my name don't ever say that what happens in israel is for the defense of jews because it is not it is not in defense of jews it is anti-humanitarian and i want to say that what the on two board members said in the in the board meeting in may is absolutely correct um that israel is an apartheid state israel is practicing ethnic cleansing and that i am not proud as a jew i am not at all proud of what's happening there at all and and that i um support on all the palestinians for what they are trying to do to develop their own freedom and to be allowed to return to the land of their homeland i was allowed to return there to visit my sister even though i had only been two years old when we left but why because i'm jewish frankly after i came back from that visit i denounced my israeli citizenship i even though it was given to me just because i was born in the so-called state of israel um i i denounced it because i want to have nothing to do with that state thank you uh before we continue i would just like uh our attorney to read our board policy as it's listed on public uh recognition so uh please darlisa if you could thank you mr smith board policy number zero one six seven public participation in board meetings the board of education recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest in order to permit the fair and orderly expression of such comment the board shall set aside a portion of every public meeting the length of the portion to be determined by the board for public comment on any school or school district issue that a member of the public feels may be of concern to the residents of the school district public participation shall be permitted only as indicated on the order of business and board bylaw zero one six zero and bylaw number zero one six four anyone wishing to address the board at a public meeting may do so upon request during the public recognition periods referenced in board bylaw zero one six zero and bylaw zero one six four individuals shall limit their remarks to three minutes we've changed that since then regarding agenda items and five minutes for public recognition regarding general matters pertinent to the district while the time limit has may have changed the key here is that it's matters right regarding general matters pertinent to the district these periods may be extended for good cause at the discretion of the board president all persons receiving permission to address the board shall confine their remarks to those matters that properly relate to board of education business or which come under the jurisdiction or the authority of the board in any event that a speaker before the board becomes abusive or disrespectful or otherwise resorts to statements which may be considered discourteous or libelous the presiding officer may in the exercise of his her judgment summarily terminate the time allotted to the speaker there are the rest of the policy is fairly lengthy but i wanted to just make sure that the public is aware that public comment during a board of education meeting is intended to be for matters that are of concern um public comment are matters of uh related to the school or to school district issues and matters that are of concern to residents of the school district thank you okay next please if everyone could please sign the register that's on the podium when you come up to speak we would appreciate that thank you okay my name is bob mark and i'm here essentially to condemn in the first place the fact that matters about israel or what they call palestine or whatever have no business at a board of education meeting it doesn't impact upon the children or it shouldn't but the fact is that when they speak about such hatred i brought here a document which was sent by a muslim student in clifton one of the clifton schools threatening in writing to kill the child of a member of my congregation in writing on a social media platform this is what's generated by the hatred that's spoken about by the two muslim members here on the board of education aside from that i just listened just in time i came in i was trying to get in there was a cop blocking the engine for a time he said there was a gas leak in the building to people who have no concept of what's going on and i'm just going to address a few things because some of the wrong statements that were here are historically incorrect and absolutely false and just because this lady is jewish doesn't mean she knows one end of her body from the other for example apartheid i just heard that israel was an apartheid state no jew is allowed into any area that's controlled by the so-called palestinians yet in israel there are arab judges muslim judges policemen soldiers lawyers a supreme court justice doctors engineers and so on is that an apartheid state i don't think so it doesn't fit the definition of an apartheid state it's a misnomer people just try to manipulate the media or let's say gaza wants peace israel left the gaza 100 percent with no preconditions they left their homes there they left the synagogue buildings there they left public buildings there they left hot houses there so that the people that went there and lived there would be able to have a source of income within 24 hours 24 hours that's one day every hot house which was this to generate revenue for the gazans was taken down and the piping was used for missiles and rockets which were fired into the homes of civilians not military establishments but specifically homes and bearing children as a matter of fact more islamic children have been killed by rockets shot by hamas and by hezbollah than have been injured in any conflict by the israelis as a matter of fact they present the last hamas public presentation on an injured child they presented a child who was also killed in syria the same child same child was also killed in lebanon the same child was also killed in down into gaza and when it turned out that reuters which originally published the picture made further investigation it was an arab child killed by a an arab missile that never landed in israel it landed in the gaza strip do we love children well i guess if i love children i would certainly hide my weapons in a nursery school israel doesn't do that but the hamas does and we're talking about murdering children here these people saying they're worried about children let's look at the historical facts the historical facts don't represent anything that was said either by the two members here and by the way one of them i understand is under investigation for ethics matters by the way i don't want to mention his name but one of those two is and uh just because this lady is jewish certainly it doesn't mean she knows anything whatsoever unfortunately she's been influenced by media which is unfortunately inaccurate but i challenge anybody one of the members not abu dhabi the other one i can't remember his name said he would be happy to debate somebody well let me tell you i'd be more than happy to debate the man and when i do unfortunately i find him a new one if you know what i'm talking about i really resent the service can we please limit the comments to whatever you're addressing to the board okay i i think that the board should censor these people for bringing up matters that do not belong on a board of education they are generating hatred and that people with that kind of an attitude cannot properly serve all the children i happen to be the police chaplain in the city of clifton and when i swear people in i swear people in regardless of their faith regardless of their color regardless of their whatever it is i don't stop and say oh this is a muslim cop so i can't swear i'm in i can't be nice to him that's ridiculous and that's the kind of hatred here that's born in the middle east it's not representative of the united states of america it's sad and it deserves to be censored by the board time says thank you sir your time is up thank you ma'am if you i just want to read statement before you go please be informed that a board of education commissioner has the same rights to free speech as any other citizen of this country as long as they are speaking as individuals and not on behalf of the board it was made clear by mr awad and mr abu drabo that the statements that they were making when they made them were their own personal opinions and were not endorsed by the board of education the clifton board of education does not take any political position on any topic the board attorney made clear that the statements by these board members were their own and not statements supported by the board of education each board member is responsible for his our own statements and no one board member speaks for the entire board additionally so the public understands the board is also not authorized by the state law to take any action against a board member on this dais there has been prior case law on this topic and only the school ethics commission is empowered to take any disciplinary action against the board member on this day is clifton is a beautifully diverse community and the board of education is committed to ensuring that we remain respectful of one another regardless of differences or opinion the board is further committed going forward to ensuring that commentary for board members at boardman meetings be limited to issues that are related to the school district and its students i as board president have no additional powers or rights to sanction punish stop another board member from speaking additionally i have no rights nor any board member on this dias have any rights to remove a board member the only people that can remove a board member are you the people at election time or the ethics commission if they feel an ethics violation has been committed so i hope everyone understands that just because we don't like what somebody says the board cannot take action against another board member we are not a policing body i just wanted to make that clear to everyone ma'am i'm sorry go ahead thank you my name is emily filardo i'm also a member of jewish voice for peace i live in montclair new jersey i'm also jewish and i wanted to comment about how i think this is related to education i wouldn't be here if the remarks had just been made that that are we're discussing at the at the board meeting in may i think there's there's nothing wrong with those remarks i was concerned when i learned about those remarks being called anti-semitic by the rabbi at the meeting last night and to me the way it relates to education is that we it's a normal thing at a board of education meeting to comment about the loss of people through an illness to memorialize veterans right memoria some people make comments at around memorial day at that meeting right so comments about um those kind of issues are sort of understandable normal things that can happen so the way to me this relates to education is if we say that comments about a current event that was of such concern about the oppression and the horrible treatment of people in gaza are somehow different than other kinds of comments then that's setting a tone about what kinds of things can be discussed in a community and to me that is problematic for the education of the children in that community so to me policing those kind of comments or suggesting certain comments by a board member are wrong and others aren't if that's a problem that relates to education i also agree with the comments by those two board members that i think they was in their right to say it and i think they were saying things that are true but that's my that's how i would want to connect to education you don't want your board of education to um participate in closing down the topics that people in this community have a right to speak about and feel strongly about and who is someone to say that talking about veterans of this war their loss is okay but talking about the loss of civilians children in gaza is somehow different so that's the comment i wanted to make about the connection between that and education thank you thank you good evening everyone if i'm being honest i didn't come here tonight expecting to speak on this topic to respect to respect the statements made by the board president i will not go into the blasphemy that the extremely disrespectful gentleman made before me to put it bluntly and simply the so-called palestine is palestine it has always been palestine it is palestine and it will forever be palestine [Applause] good evening everyone my name is maryam muffler and i'm a recent clifton high school graduate from the class of 2021.

i am here today to speak with you all about my experiences working alongside mr abadrabo and how i am disappointed to see members of the board and clifton community disregard his genuinely good character and the positive influence that he has graciously imparted on clifton's youth during his term as board of education commissioner and previous vice president during the summer of 2020 my best friend mariam and i jumpstarted clifton's first diversity and inclusion committee though it was ambitious to start this initiative virtually during the peak of the pandemic the support of our teachers and administrators made our plan come to fruition mr abedrabo was one of the board members who supported us and served on our committee and his desire to promote an inclusive learning environment for all students of diverse backgrounds was evident mr abu drabbo's ideas were vibrant and demonstrated his unwavering commitment to serving clifton's youth even before having my first interaction with mr abu drabbo through the diversity committee his genuine character was obvious as he continuously advocated for student interests at board meetings i can firmly say that mr abedrabo is one of the kindest and most genuine people i have ever had the pleasure to work with when we look at mr abu drabbo's recent lapse in judgment at project graduation i believe it is very important that we also acknowledge the good character that he has upheld during his term and the true intention that drove his judgment based on his public statement it is clear that his mistake was driven by honest and innocent thought and what he believed would ensure the student's safety during the night of graduation although no safety concerns were present at the night of project graduation and all students returned home safely mr abadrabo still came forward and acknowledged his mistakes given his choice to come forward without provocation i believe that we should try to move forward from this mistake and heal as a district i am sure that all of us in this room have made mistakes in our lives at one time or another and we have all had to ask for forgiveness mr abedrabo has shown time and time again that he is a person of integrity and has shown that he prioritizes the needs of this district and our students going forward i wish nothing but the best for the board of education and the rest of the clifton public schools district thank you all for your time tonight thank you good evening everybody mark brunsack 20 holly street first of all i want to give my deepest condolences to the daily family i can't imagine the pain that they're going through so i want to extend my deepest sympathies to the family every meeting i come here to i'm asking for parents to get choices i want parents to have choices to send their kids into school five days a week to have the most normal life possible and i hear their their conditions that you're trying to bring back such as those students who already have the quarantine which are already stating that so you're ready the assumption is that students are already going to be quarantined even though dr robert trozy just said that governor murphy is just has just mandated that all all children in grades k through 12 regardless of vaccination status must wear masks now in class so how is it even possible that that the virus is going to be transmitted through a classroom i i mean it could be argued that it never was because we have been we've gone over and beyond above and beyond the cdc recommendations and still i hear no member here pushing back from the local government all the way to the federal government i hear nobody pushing back about supposedly the science that there has been and how do they even know that it's the delta variant these days the information per the cdc today the information may not readily be available the viral tests that are used to determine if a person has covid are not designed to tell you what variant is causing the infection detecting the delta variant or other variants requiring a special type of testing called genomic sequencing and due to the volume of covet cases sequencing is not performed on all virus samples so all the fear that has continued recently is based on estimates everybody in fact back in may president biden even said if you are fully vaccinated you no longer need to wear a mask july 9th associated press vaccinated teachers and students don't need mass per the the cdc says webster dictionary vaccination is a treatment with a vaccine to produce immunity against a disease or inoculation but here we are just weeks away from this and i know people are scared and instead of pushing back i still haven't heard anybody push back if they have please let me know i i'll apologize to this to this board i'm asking why parents don't have choices yet there are lots of parents out there that are still scared that they don't want their kids to go in school so i want those parents to have an option to keep their kids at home remote so they feel safe i think parents have an idea of what they know they think is best for their kids yet here we are again weeks from opening and this is all changing again so if you think that the guidance isn't going to change now it'll probably change several times and this is going on over 15 months so i'm asking this board to get baron's choices and uh i i still don't hear you know every day in the united states after 2019 the 20 20 numbers aren't out yet from the cdc every day in the united states 1800 people die of heart disease 1640 die of cancer 470 die by accident 430 of chronic lower respiratory disease 410 of stroke 330 of alzheimer's and as of today our seven day rolling average of deaths from covet in the u.s is 426.