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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.

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

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.

80 percent of covert related deaths were people over the age of 65 and 30 of those were people over the age of 85. children are not at risk and should not be forced to wear masks just days ago top covered task force infectious disease expert said on mainstream media news outlet that masks are ineffective this is a quote ineffective at reducing movement in or out of viruses while they are ineffective at keeping viruses in or out they are extremely effective at harboring bacteria which can and does easily lead to bacterial pneumonia in fact the majority of deaths during the 1918 influenza pandemic were caused by bacterial pneumonia our children's mental health also matters suicide is the second leading cause of death children of younger children and it's doubled the attempts in the last year because of the health dangers caused by prolonged periods of mass scoring our children's educational development will also suffer it's difficult enough to have a simple conversation with anyone while wearing a mask imagine how difficult it is to learn or to teach with the mask on it seems our children's mental and educational and developmental health was of little if any concern when the district decided they were going to go along with the cdc's recommendation to enforce the masks in our classrooms it's apparent this decision was based on the irrational fear and appeasement of a small few which seems to be an epidemic in our leadership in our country anyways no one is more concerned about my children's health than me nobody in this room and nobody in the world as parents we hold our children's best interests at heart not the government i ask today that the av usd in mr schlosser's words enforce the strict law strictly our constitutional rights and defend those of our children's and immediately suspend the mask requirement in apple valley's classrooms requiring masks in our classrooms will put our children's physical and mental health at a greater risk than coveted 19 ever will thank you christian morrison [Applause] maybe trisha morrison please hello thank you i didn't write anything tonight i actually came with a few numbers for you san bernardino county numbers that show us that the mask mandate is nonsense um but my biggest topic first is how miss trenay nelson dealt with it i would like to know how many emails you received from the parents we stood up for our children we stood up for our community we asked for help and we were not given it we weren't responded to correctly we were not given an opportunity to be heard and we that's all we're asking for we did not ask you to veto anything we asked you to address it with the board and the district whoever you need to get involved and that was not given to us we were told you would push it off over to some political people that's not how this works i looked up the superintendent job application or the job description your job is to deal with these people and it was not done we have a right to speak up for our children our children do not need to wear masks according to the numbers the numbers show that it is more harm than it is help and the one thing i'm not even going to go through all this you have over 309 000 confirmed covet cases over 300 000 of those have been resolved only 0.06 percent of those are deaths in our county and children deaths three three in san bernardino county and this is going back a year and a half this isn't just the last six months our numbers are showing that we went from 60.1 percent to 0.4 percent deaths that is since january since january when our kids have been unmasked at target at the bounce houses wherever they're going they're with friends they're with people they're constantly in large groups target for heaven's sakes walmart wherever you go shopping our children are not in masks until they walk into a classroom and then they're told you need to be structured you need to follow our rules you need to do what we say why are we putting government control on children i am their parents and just like it was said before what i feel is best for my child should be acknowledged it should not be based on what you feel is best for my child and just one last thing there are several children that i know personally three that cannot return to school because they have now been diagnosed with anxiety disorder from wearing masks i have two friends that have children that are hard of hearing and they need to read your lips and they can't do that now they're struggling and they don't understand it as much as we try to teach it to them at their age what they can understand i have a 10 year old i have a 15 year old i'm sorry your time is okay your time is up thank you thank you [Applause] brian bowes thank you i'm gonna skip over some stuff since i only have about three minutes but um i like talking about my daughter real quick um i'm a single father she's eight years old she's on her second year at sitting bull as a third grader in mrs roberts class amazing student winning scholar awards excelling at every subject praised by all our teachers as one of the best students helpful and joy to have in class she was so excited to start school again have a set schedule where she could be physically at school learning and making new friends as soon as the school sent out the letter that the students would have to wear masks she immediately became down and asked why we didn't have to wear them in stores at gymnastics and even at the end of our summer trip to knox berry farm in sea world i told her that i would come here today to talk to those that were in charge and can make a difference so let's start with a recent article in the new york post which highlights a study by the mckinsey group a study out of the uk released last week proved once again what we have known for more than a year kids transmit covet virus at much lower rate than new adults an epidemiologist who led it found that children aren't taking the virus home and then transferring it to the community these kids have a very little capacity and affect household members and conclude that last year's school closures left students on average five months behind in mathematics four months in reading by the end of the school year states that with open schools didn't have more child coveted cases and certainly not more hospitalizations or deaths schools without mass mandates didn't have significantly more coveted cases they simply put kids first so let's look at the statistics i know we talked about this already but in the county of san bernardino the age group from 0 to 14 there have been 28 190 cases and of those only two deaths i know she mentioned this kids at that age have a 99.993 chance of surviving covid if they get it if you jump that number up to the 19 year old so 4 to 19 there's been three more deaths 5 total again 99.99 chance of surviving if they even get it i'm gonna try to go fast again i'm sorry um so what are we doing here and how do we get to this point it doesn't make any sense whatsoever these kids are having to wear masks indoors but then playing together outside eating lunch together hanging out after school they are participating in extracurricular activities with physical contact and have been for months businesses have been open restaurants gyms and this is not about health it's about control and submission we should not let our government that is 100 miles away state government dictate to us how we should be running our schools to be honest we shouldn't even have the county telus we are our own community up here in the high desert we know what is best for us and we shouldn't be making decisions and we should be making the decisions on the local level deferring to the california department department of health guidelines is an easy way out for all of you you have to make a decision i'm asking you to stand up and do what's right for our kids their families in this community we should not allow blanket decision from the state to rule our lives the school board should be partnering with parents let us make the decisions on safety and health together on our own children that is our primary responsibility thank you oh yeah solids mary loose yes yeah there's a female name hi my name is merry christolies um can you pull the mind here to talk about the mask again pretty sure everybody is um so it's just so nauseating talking about this still a year and a half um so i'm not here to tell you the facts and rant and rage over how upsetting all this is you already know the facts you know in your heart of hearts that this is wrong instead i'm here to let you know that i am praying for all of you every single day i will pray that god may give you the discernment and the courage to stand for what is right thank you [Applause] monica king good evening sorry good evening everybody my name is monica and i'm a mother of two boys in the apple valley school district thank you so much let me start by saying i'm so glad to have our children back in school thank you all so much for fighting to open our schools and to get our kids in the classroom last year was rough on everyone and both of my kids were affected deeply by distance learning as were many others not seeing their friends all the shutdowns etc so we're just so grateful to be open today i myself am here to talk about mass let me start by saying with all i've heard from everyone that i've spoken with in the school district non-stop are there words there's nothing i can do my hands are tied i don't have a choice no i don't buy that we always have a choice right now you are all choosing to comply with these unjustified mandates and look the other way while our children suffer today i was called into the school because my son went to the office to pick up the mass that i had brought him i tried to send him without one apparently our mask wasn't good enough he was offered one of their masks he told them he couldn't wear that mask and wouldn't go back into the classroom because he had to wear one the day before and he said he couldn't breathe and it made him sick i was so proud of him my son is shy and he stood up for himself i can't believe what's happening to these children they told him to take a mass break he said no he wasn't going to wear one and he wouldn't return to class with one i'm just so proud of him my son has trouble breathing he's only mildly asthmatic but these masks have given him major anxiety when he can't breathe and he doesn't even have it that badly i can't fathom what some of the other children are feeling from having to wear these masks children with disabilities anxiety asthma in the 2018-2019 flu season 477 children died of the regular flu we haven't even reached 400 that have died from all the variants combined so where were the mass then where were the mandates where was the outrage not to mention the flu completely has vanished you say your hands are tied but so are mine now and you have back parents into a corner and force them against their will to restrict their own child's breathing for six hours a day what about the staff let's protect them when i walked into that building to bring my child a mask not one of them was wearing a mask and they all popped them on right when i walked in excuse me does my child get to take his mask off in the building when he feels like he can't breathe and he's sick does he i just i'm done with it all sorry when i walked in here all of you guys were chatting mass free as well and applied your mass so i just i just don't get it at this time i'm tired we're all tired this is only going to get worse if we roll over keep complying and allow these ridiculous mandates to continue we have to stand up for my children for all your children for all of your children for all of our children i understand covet is serious and teachers should be protected they have the option to double mass vaccinate if they choose they can wear a facial they can work from home my child's mental health and physical health isn't going to be sacrificed for the comfort of staff lastly emergency issued mandates are not law and no establishment can deny us services for not covering our face and do you know why because we live in the united states of america thank you very much palm okay hi am i is this okay volume ones okay my name is pam mckay i am not a parent of any children in this district but i've taught in the area for a long time as a professor at victor valley college professor of microbiology and i'm here to talk about the masks just for a minute and then i have some other concerns as well the masks are i think at this point a political tool the masks are not effective at stopping viruses it's plain and simple in microbiology i taught my students the size of virus virions when they're out of the body they're called virions right and they are measured in angstroms which are fractions thousands of micrometers which are the size of bacteria a mass might stop some bacteria a mask is not going to stop a virus a mask is like wearing i mean it's analogous to having a chain-link fence to keep up mosquitoes if somebody has covered the virus is going to be in their breath it's not just in respiratory droplets if somebody has it it's going to pass right through the mask and be transmitted plain and simple it's biology okay another thing that i'm concerned about and you know i'm i'm really glad you guys opened up the schools here but i'm also concerned that you have given into mass mandates without understanding the science perhaps i'm wondering what else you'll give into the state education board has mandated that schools teach gender studies programs that are not biological in biology we teach there are two genders generally there are very few exceptions when people are born with different odd numbers of chromosomes but in general by far the majority there's male and there's female and you have gender studies programs that are going to teach children that there are 58 different genders it's just biologically wrong okay there's also and i think it's morally wrong as well i think it's equivalent to child abuse to think to teach a a child that kid can change gender and take um hormones the rest of their life to promote that it just seems wrong um also i'm concerned about the teaching of critical race theory because i think it teaches i hope the board does not adopt that i think it teaches people to to hate each other and i think that's that's wrong all everybody's life is important everybody's equal and i'm also concerned about the distortion of history with the 1619 project and i would urge this board not to adopt any of those policies and perhaps really think about changing that mass policy as well thank you [Applause] thank you cody soros how you doing um kind of new to the whole parenting um my son started tk yesterday and he's been so excited for the last six months to start school um today he didn't want to go to school he had to wear the mask yesterday was the first time he has ever worn a mask in his entire life and waking up this morning and saying i don't want to go to school broke my heart because he loves learning loves being around people and that's really the main reason i came here i don't have a big speech or anything if i'm allowed to a lot of my time i'd like to give it to brian bauer so he can continue speaking because i know he had a little more to say thank you thank you my mike i'm sorry i have to make that no not yet michael reyes i'll try to get through this without crying but uh as much as i wanted to show up in my nice clothes and uh i was donating half of my day hanging sponsorship banners and varsity with um hanging sponsorship banners um and varsity senior volleyball banners at the appleby high school right now all these girls are so excited to be back playing the game they love i was born and raised in apple valley i run a very successful business in the valley i'm on the town of appleby planning commission i've ran my homeowners association for a few years and i voted for you guys i support you guys these kids have already been robbed of learning social interactions sports and activities over the last year and a half i'm already hearing talks of possibility no spectators for indoor sports or they may even get shut down you were voted by this you were voted by the citizens to represent us and us are here and asking you to make sure our kids stay in school for in-person learning sports and activities if you should choose to start if you should choose to start to restrict any of these things that are in your control i will make sure i spend every second of every day to rally every parent in this district to peacefully protest in front of your business in front of your houses so help me god crystal halloween hello i'm a mother of two boys that go to sitting bowl academy one of fifth grader and a preschooler to just start my son cole at three years old was diagnosed with severe oh sorry i'm getting so nervous disappeared to profound hearing loss well we've been waiting a long time for speech therapy because it's all closed it's all been closed um they're all shut down due to government and so he he's finally starting school and wearing masks pulls on his ears and he wears hearing aids and every time he turns his head he hears a high a high-pitched sound like when a microphone gets too close to a speaker and so he doesn't want to wear them and they said they're going to try face shields which also can mess with his ears um and it's just frequent you know high pitched sound which he already can't hear so it's so distracting um oh i'm so concerned with his verbal skills um because how can he learn from a teacher who has her mouth covered he already has a problem hearing and he has delayed speech um he needs to see mouths to understand what people are saying that's like half of how he learns and so i don't have a solution to this but i'm i'm just been so worried for months since we got his diagnosis and um i we as parents we need help with our kids to not have any more delays so please i'm just begging for help with that thank you [Applause] thank you to all the speakers superintendents comments the first thing i want to say is whether you believe that i am advocating for your children or not i have been advocating for your children there is no local control on this matter whether you believe it or not it is a mandate that all districts are required to follow i have participated and continued to participate in something called the san bernardino county district advocates for better schools i'm an elected official to that board and i speak to the elected officials at the state level and at the federal level without that time i don't get to advocate on behalf of anything without writing letters like you as people sitting in the audience the cdph is the government code that causes us to hold this line they've given us two mandates the masks must be worn inside the question about masks outside versus inside and inside when no students are here are very different the minute a child walks into a room and we've had legal response to this including board meetings means i have to put a mask on regardless of vaccination status that's why indoors when we see children walk in we are required to do so the second piece to this is is that after they made the mandate about masks they then told us that the requirement to isolate and send students home would not happen if we had masks on inside the classroom so in the past two days we have had four coveted cases positive on three campuses and we have not had to send students home i understand the science you've presented today and i would advocate on telling you that you are welcome to write the letters you can say that it was ridiculous for me to send them to the elected officials however that's the next step the elected officials are the ones that i advocate to to change the laws and the rules that we are governed by i am governed by state federal osha just like any other employer and so beyond all of it our goal is to keep kids in classrooms if the mandate changes because of the advocacy of parents across this state that's how things have changed in the other states the governor has taken a role in saying it's not required but until that happens i still have rules and regulations i have to follow and you can shake your head and tell me that i don't and i am sorry that i have to be the person that that will say that the parent that said that i was not asked to veto i received 60 emails some of them were from husbands and from wives some of them were a form letter that at the bottom said this is what i would write or change it if you'd like and they never re removed that so there was a request that i veto and i was trying to respond to all in a group so that we could get schools open so if any of you believe that i have not done what i need to do i'm sorry i will continue to try to keep our schools open that's my goal full time thank you thank you board comments we have a brand new board member so today we're going to give him the option to get started mr christopher nunes i would just like to say thank you so much for coming out and giving me the opportunity to hear you and i i can't tell you how much i appreciate the fact that you're here to advocate for your students it's going to be important now and throughout their entire career so thank you for that mr no i'm i'm going to echo what mr newman just said and i think i've granted in school too you know i taught and and i'm i've tremendous sympathy for your concerns and and as ms nelson pointed out if you want to give us letters maybe what we need to do is provide those collective letters to the officials state officials that mandated these requirements and definitely and i know as i said i have grandchildren in the school district not here but in the torrent school district and and i know they are impacted by the mass requirement so but we're going to work with you and we'll provide information to the city officials thank you mr bender i want to thank you for being here you speak from the heart we should have held this meeting tomorrow on august the 6th that would have been the 76th anniversary of dropping the atomic bomb on hiroshima we'll fit right in and as your board president i am going to now speak um i just want you to know that i heard everything you had to say today every one of them my heart was broken uh for the special needs parent who had the issue with the hearing um we're going to look into that one because that's important for us to look into um everything that you have to say i would suggest that you write to your state and and other representatives so that they can hear you as well we do hear you i hear you you're very very important in the life of our district so we really want you to continue to advocate for your children but to understand that we are going to do our own best on our side to see what can happen uh on the in the local forum i thank you all for coming out today and i hope you never give up and then one more thing i had the opportunity to go out to the schools yesterday and ride along with the superintendent to all of the schools except granite hills because by the time i contacted her she already made it to grand hills but i went to all of the schools the students were engaged the teachers were ready the school looked as though we were just ready um we are going to continue to work we are working progress i tell people that each time they tell me i have gained weight and i tell them i'm work in progress so we are still working don't give up that's what we can only ask of you and the superintendent is doing the best she can and reporting back to us so when she reports back to us we ask our further questions um i'm i'm going to let you know she has given it her all we'll just keep working at it and someday this will all be over thank you so much for coming to this meeting today [Music] yes i need a motion to adjourn to the public meeting of the apple valley okay this is this special meeting public facilities you do right okay i need a motion to adjourn to a public meeting of the upper valley unified school district public facilities corporation for a new business as deemed necessary so move second okay you need to write that down um mr bender yes um you can answer one single vote all in favor is chris is here all right action island club and the time is 7 35.

so how many how many times more of that are people dying of other natural causes right yet the the perpetual fear that still exists today and i get it i see people over here plenty of people unmasked plenty of people masked over here i want you to have that choice if you if everybody here feels safer with the mass i support you 120 100 120 you know and uh you know those who you know those who chose not to give accident those who chose not to get vaccinated so i thought are almost no threat of those of us who are vaccinated and yet they're ongoing targets of the left that's right mr brunsiak all right so i'm just asking as i come here all the time i'm just asking everybody to get parents options thank you for your time and god bless america have a good night everybody thank you [Music] samantha basford clifton new jersey i don't have a prepared speech today so i'm sorry if i stumble and ramble um but i feel like i'm sounding like a broken record about unity i talked yesterday at the city council meeting and i'm watching oppressed people oppress people we have history we have deep rooted racism in this country and yet we're still attacking each other in this room like i cannot believe i watch this woman who her right is to speak being belittled because of her belief that is not how we solve moving forward and making things better we live in america we have freedom of speech though i do understand my privilege and not everybody having the same privilege as i am but we are giving into systematic racism so i wore this sweatshirt for a reason today because this is what we should be doing we should not be oppressing each other we should be working towards something i do understand the opinion about certain facebook posts and things being talked i understand about that and maybe that's something that we need to learn better about that certain things will make certain people react to stuff i understand that and good people make mistakes everything i wrote on commit clifton community news i stand by that we have to make mistakes to grow and we have to give people the chance to grow and learn from their mistakes if they are willing to and if they want to now i did want to bring up about the mural and people are probably like this is not the city council meeting but there was a sophomore student yesterday at the council meeting in tears and that is where it does fall on us to support a sophomore student for those of you who have been here for a long time you remember mrs starensack she ran the peace garden most kind-hearted gentle woman you could ever met loved the peace garden with all her heart and made us all love it too i found a recent picture of me and my classmates class of 2008 outside of the peace garden that we had to work months to put this together i would like to see may's mural somewhere in the high school i think that it belongs here because it's a message of unity it does not have a racial undertone it's about what clifton is i feel lucky that i grew up in a place where i got to experience diversity but i never really understood until i was in college i had intergroup dialogue conversations i really sat with people to understand their upbringings understand their challenges their their ways of life and that is the opportunity that i see this district time and time again miss is that how are you helping not just educate on math science that's important but educating on life so that you go into the world you have different sides here able to have a dialogue conversation because you can have your beliefs you have your traumas that you experienced and yes a wrong is a wrong but we should not be sitting up here fighting one another without having more understanding and i really hope that this is not falling on death's ears and people are really working towards this we were in covid when we were sitting in quarantine all those people dying from covid they're not here anymore but we were lucky and we're here so what are we doing with our time what are we doing with our time that was given to us to reset to re to think to reflect i hope that this message is heard i hope that we can stop calling name callings of cairns and white trash in the parking lot to people i hope that ends today and i hope you're hearing me when i say that because we can do better we can be pre better and set that example we have an opportunity may gave us an opportunity with her drawing to do better and to be better and we owe it to that student that alumni and her friends who were bashed by other adults pristine people in the in the city from what i heard a whole doctor which i can't believe that we owe it to her to be better thank you good evening zelie thomas patterson new jersey my name is ellie thomas i'm a organizer and founder of black lives matter patterson an organizer for the black lives matter movement before i begin i want to condemn a couple of different things the gentleman that spoke earlier i think he said he's a police chapman chaplain i want to condemn his misogynistic statements towards that young lady behind me and also want to condemn his statements that he was whispering to her calling her a self-hating jew many of you may not have heard that but many of us in the audience continuously hear him calling her a safe hating jew and i want to bring up those two things because a very important reason the only statements that you have heard today that was filled with hate was from that gentleman nothing else has been hateful even people who was talking about palestine was not about hate and i think this is very important why we have to talk about education and why we have to talk about these different movements that's occurring not only here in the united states but all over the world many americans just a few months ago just heard about a destruction of a neighborhood that they never heard about before they heard about this town being bombed they heard about these buildings burning and the fire was just raging on because there was no firemen to put it out they learned about whole school buildings and entire school districts being bombed and children have no school to go to anymore they heard about the citizens from that area those residents from those areas being arrested and rounded up they heard about these things and i was wondering how come they never heard about this before how come they never heard about this incident before and i know some of you may be thinking i'm think i'm talking about palestine because that's what this whole discussion seems to be talking about today but i'm not talking about palestine i'm talking about tulsa oklahoma right tulsa oklahoma which just recognized this 100th year anniversary of the bombing of tulsa oklahoma which many of me know as the race massacre or the race riots and it's very important for us to know about this so we don't repeat history i'm a black person living in america i know genocide i know oppression i know apartheid i know what it looks like that's why i fight so hard to end it not just here in america but elsewhere i see what's going on in israel and palestine and that's why i with full confidence call it an apartheid state yes what the gentleman was saying about there are arab and muslim policemen and doctors in israel but we're talking about the west bank we're talking about this other um occupations where those citizens those residents do not have the freedom of movement those residents who are being um faced with harm and mr thomas mr thomas i would like to just remind you about the word policy that i have yes earlier i don't know whether this is pretty relevant that you're talking to about you know i mentioned it before even after the person said misogynistic statements you didn't end him right so please allow me to continue because this is about educating our people educating our residents because you also said that it is predicament to the members of the school district and this is something that the school district and members of the school district need to learn about about history why it's important for us to teach history why it's important for us not to um turn these corners because we've seen this all connected with the mural right that we are too afraid to confront racism we're too afraid to confront social injustice we rather just wash it away but we cannot wash away racism and think it's disappeared we cannot wash away or not talk about these incidences that's happening in the middle east and think because we're not talking about no more that is not happening we need to be able to have these courageous conversations and not what you do to me try to silence me or try to try to silence board members or try to silence kids in the school district who are passionate about these issues who are passionate about these causes and want to talk about these causes and want your support and when they see you saying things like this to me they don't feel they have your support and i hope that's not true i hope that you support all students of the clifton school district regardless of their backgrounds regardless of their positions i hope you support them and this is why it's very important for us to educate them so they be fully productive citizens in order to create the type of world that we all deserve to live in a world that's free from harm a world that's free from oppression in a world that does not try to oppress others because they are afraid to be oppressed themselves thank you i'm sorry that you took away my time but hopefully you will do to no one else thank you [Applause] good evening al dubois 62 elmwood drive clifton i thought it was going to be a simple night if anything though we have to be all grateful and thankful of what we've just heard here tonight with everyone i mean we represent right here in this little room practically the whole world you know in our own little backyard and the good thing is that we're all able here to talk and even you know express passion or whatever has happened but we're able to at least say it here and and share it and we're going to hopefully go home tonight in peace but that's not why i came tonight i came to talk about the safe schools program i went on the website i had read it and i had commented on the program never got a confirmation back saying oh you know your comments were received i called last week and asked what's going on about it because i go on the website i don't see any other comments not even my own as public records so that you can read what other parents might be saying i know my wife and i had asked several people to make comments on that document and what i heard was oh it's for private use of certain administrators board members and other people we're going to review it and we're going to implement what we feel is proper you asked us to comment it should be made public for everyone to read and i was not asked to be on any committee i would like to be on a committee part because like the gentleman said earlier mark we don't hear any other sides to this whole issue we're hearing one narrow side regarding covid that is propagated by the media and some distorted people out there and it's like we never lived life before i mean if you look at any of the news shows you're going to see that influenza was a hundred times worse than what we're experiencing now everyone here i don't see no face masks everyone had to come up they can't talk properly they're muzzling themselves we don't know if they're being affected by that they take it off germs are in the air um it's it's pathetic you go to a restaurant you gotta walk in with it but you sit down you eat and the waitress is back and forth all over the place so these laws that are coming out are laws to keep us controlled for the great reset the great this is a plan endemic i don't believe i believe very little about it yes people die but people people die anyway so you're going to die whether it's covert or this or that you're going to die they've blown it out of proportion and i would like to be on this committee if possible and i'd also like to see the public comments because nobody's saying anything about health about your immune system about all the doctors that have been silenced on youtube that have spoken other alternatives to this and i know for myself my child was in june it got very hot one day he had a headache he was the only one in the classroom because everybody was home virtual the teacher would not let him take off his mask and he had to have bad headache and he doesn't complain so if he had a headache that day he could have headaches other days cause of the mask whether it's hot or not hot you can't say oh well if the weather gets warm we'll go by that day because we don't know how it affects each individual each human being is different we don't know if they're trying to speak or articulate themselves and that thing on their face how is that affecting their learning ability how is it affecting their mind to just walk around i went to macy's every 10 feet you have to look at these draconian signs that tell you about watch your hands watch this do this scratch that it's pathetic then they got it on the air um it's sickening so you're only hearing one side of this i mean it's going to come and it's going to pass away and we have to be careful the media but we need some people that are saying things at the board meetings we're at these committee meetings who are articulating themselves and presenting another side to this and i hope i can get a call from someone letting me know what's going on but i like those comments made public i think they should be public i like to read what other parents had said and you know what's going on thank you [Applause] thank you um uh first i pray to the almighty uh king of the universe who's all places at all times that you should bestow upon me his wisdom that i may with god's help convey his message and and hopefully with god's help sanctify his name and we hope to bring peace to the world um my name is rabbi israel david weiss i'm from chestnut ridge new york it's quite close to here and i've been a visitor through many many years to the patterson clifton community and i really need god's help to be able to in this short time be able to convey my message the issue that we're here for with my colleagues my colleagues some of them and all the gentlemen he first said he'll speak but he's he decided he's a little afraid he doesn't speak english that well he's from palestine from palestine before 19 the 1948 area from the old city of jerusalem uh and he has stories to tell about how they the jewish people lived in the same courtyards helped each other babysat each other's children respected each other and there was total harmony as it should be and that is a picture of how it was throughout the muslim world that we have witnesses live witnesses still today thank god and there was never an issue of a difference of religion uh the in in 1947 the united nations came along and they decided to because of what was happening again the time doesn't does justify doesn't give us the opportunity to speak about all that right but what is important is that there's a statement from the united nations documents where the chief rabbi of palestine nothing to do with the israeli rabbinate or their chief rabbi that was a name that they took for themselves there is a community that was living there for hundreds of years which uh um which my colleague rabbi lefkowitz from that community and he said sitting in front of the united nations delegation in july 16 1947 which is their records we furthermore wish to express our definite opposition to a jewish state in any part of palestine again we furthermore wish to express our definite opposition to a jewish state in any part of palestine he passed on other chief rabbis yesterday was the anniversary of rabbi title baum who moved with the title of chief rabbi to new york and he's well known satma rabbi curious joel i'm sure you've heard of it it was his anniversary tens and tens of thousands of people went to visit his graveyard uh the uh the till today we have people demonstrating there's right across from manhattan brooklyn new york in williamsburg brooklyn there's the largest concentration of religious jews there's not one single israeli flag we all almost entirely our children my of people who survivors of the holocaust my grandparents were killed in the holocaust my father escaped from hungary when the nazis came there and almost all of my family was wiped out as almost all of our people yet and we give our lives for our religion we pay for kosher food for special clothing ex we pay for private schooling as you well know with large families yet we do not support in fact we demonstrate in tens of thousands of people here in new york in washington dc in the city of jerusalem uh against the existence rabbi i would ask that police whatever your comments are that they are related to the school district definitely related i um as you please give me the opportunity because it's it's it's crucial to hear this there's the um the they stand there at the cost of their lives even demonstrating against the existence of the state the chief rabbi had passed on rabbi title bam the next chief rabbi here we have is rabbi weiss he's not a relative of mine um and he he just went out to to how to where they're digging graves the zionists because they do not what zionism is the state of israel is a transformation from judaism as a religion to a nationalism there they they that's why the chief rabbi said we are forbidden to have a state we're forbidden to take the homes and steal from other people was forbidden to occupy another land in fact jews are forbidden since the the since the destruction of the temple according to jewish law to have our own sovereignty we have to be loyal citizens and every country will reside and pray for the well-being of that country at the cost of our lives we uphold these commandments because it's called the decree of exile we respect god's words till today jewish boys and girls who are become criminals in israel because they refuse to serve in the army because of our religious edicts because of our laws they get um just give me two please two more minutes they're getting beaten and i have pictures that's from rest from from this last month where jews are being beaten and arrested uh including the chief rabbi who i just mentioned we had tens of thousands of people greeting him and taking up he has respect yet they're being attacked because they stood up and demonstrated against the living of graves are we anti-semitic are we anti-jewish all right sir i'm sorry you're going to have to uh yeah just one moment yes let me just finish this record the point is that a person in regard to mr awad and um the attacks that they're getting you have to understand it would be uh it would be a total mistake to remove people who if they would not speak up for the rights of their families of human beings the dead bodies they wouldn't behave they would shouldn't be on the board thank you sir very much we appreciate your comments sir you're way over your time i'm sorry everyone gets five minutes to speak that is the rules okay so we can't extend it to anybody if anyone else would like to speak but each member gets five minutes we gave you plenty of extra time hello my name is daniel gaudette and i'd like to thank president smith commissioners and superintendent dr robert towsey it's good to see you first i want to give my deepest condolences to commissioner daley and his family on terrible loss terrible dr danny congratulations i'm very very proud um mr uchi dropped off a package with the drawing you might have already seen it once it should be on your desk it shows a plan bus drop off at school one way coming in from east 11th down over to marcellus an area we could drop off students safely and not double pack on either east 11th or marcellus i believe we should put some serious thought into this the traffic around the lakeview section marcellus in east 11th is very busy i spent the whole school year there with my daughter kindergarten dropping her off it would take us we get there half hour before school just to get a parking lot parking space close enough to pick up our daughter and then it'll take us another half hour to get home to bergen avenue less than a half a mile away something really needs to be done and i ain't saying that other schools in the district don't have same the same problem but this is one that i had a chance to visit look at give a great amount of thought and i believe it's a good design so if you could please look into it you can contact me any questions you have on it also i thought it'd be nice to give you the school zone safety strategies from february 21 from rutgers university and the federal highway administration i've gone through it there's a lot of good information here maybe some you already know maybe some you don't again i want to thank you for the ability to speak in your attention thank you so much thank you hi hi dr robertosi uh jen pagano avondale lab uh i just want to know what my kids school year is going to look like next year i just want to know are they still being six feet apart are there dividers where are they eating lunch i heard a rumor in june that they were going to be eating in the hallway i don't love that idea i've parents are questioning i'm here to ask that's all i want to know thank you okay superintendent would like to give a brief response to that pagano i i hear you during my remarks tonight i will be giving i will answer a lot of the things you just mentioned but we will give a more formal presentation at our next board meeting which depending on the board's vote tonight may be changed to august 18th so we know some things tonight again things change daily but i'll be able to answer some questions and explain what my expectations will be later on tonight during my comments mr smith uh before i start my comments and you start timing me i just want to clarify something that a lot of people have been getting up and uh mr lee's been saying about them talking you aren't on the board uh miss danny was on the board and mrs bassett was on the board going back years ago i had a some problem with the dallas tennis schools and i went to make comments about it i was stopped by the board president and i was stopped by the lawyer i brought the case to the aclu they found out the board was wrong they violated my first amendment so i'm just trying to say to you now and again it's not part of my thing i'm just telling you these people have a right to come up here and talk and say what they want you can have a policy all you want first amendment takes over it so you know do what you want me you know if it happened to me again i'd be in touch with the aclu again i stop anyone tonight other than for their time no no but what you're saying what they could say that's what i'm saying you can't stop people that's all i'm saying you could do what you want i don't know you know as long as it don't happen to me okay um now can i stop my time okay keith bassford from clifton new jersey you know a lot of things are said tonight about different people here the nationalities what uh what they belong to and everything you know i've been around the sport a long time okay and as you know the woman straight ahead from me is my wife okay and i try not to get involved the name board business of its board business but if it's family business it's family business you know the last board meeting i was a little taken back the meeting was over and my wife and me were outside going into our car and i hear a person say you to my wife white trash okay so being um older not stupid like i was young i walked away because i said i have other ways to take care of this this person's on the board right now it's one of the commissions we're going to see if he steps up and says it and plus i have a witness too you want to talk about things going on okay i read this facebook stuff too everybody has a right to own opinion what's going on but if you're gonna put some on facebook this is not the board's opinion this is my own personal opinion okay that's how you do it you know it's it's about time people start learning ethics up here it's not being done but i uh i made a promise because i haven't been up here for about a year or so but i made a promise anything that goes unethical anything that violates opera and everything and i know it does i will be following the complaint there's no question in my mind if anybody knows me i don't fool around now the person who said something to my wife because it's not the first time must think that uh oh mr bassman uh he's not gonna say nothing you know uh maybe he's afraid of me maybe he's this no so we're talking about an individual that everybody's been talking about tonight okay why is it the same individual that people have problems with think now do i have to mention your name or you're going to be a man enough to say something okay i'll mention your name mr wad this is my family you want to deal with my wife on a professional basis here whatever you have to do on the board i don't care my wife's not white trash my family's not white trash and i don't care you could make believe you didn't do it i have a witness and everything you could call your lawyer you could call your senator i don't care but one thing you're gonna understand there's a line of professionalism here and there's a line of respect for my family i hopefully you understand my words what i'm saying here this is the last time i want to say it just no threat or nothing okay like i said i have my own ways of doing things and doing things right so do what you want mr smith you heard me thank you good evening dr robert hozi and members of the board here my name is adrian palazzo i'm at 196 martin ave and i am a school 13 mom to my incoming second grader before i asked the main question that i plan to ask tonight i first just would like to say that personally i am actually relieved to hear about the mask mandate going back into schools as per the governor and dr robertosi i'm very happy to hear that you will be going along with his executive order because i as a mother of a son who is of elementary level who's still a part of the unvaccinated um group that is you know not eligible for the vaccine yet i personally feel safer about that with you know going back in with masks so which now brings me to my next question um so now that the bond referendum plan has passed successfully and thankfully um i just am curious to know when will uh you know the updates of the hvac systems be done especially now that it looks like the new school year is going to start off at least with everyone in masks everybody's going to also be in school for longer hours being that it's going to be you know full day five days a week i know this past school year uh the cdc's answer to ventilation was to have windows open and especially with our older school buildings with the hvac being outdated but now that the bond referendum plan passed and to my understanding hvac was like one of the top priorities on the list of getting done and a lot of these schools as you know very old i know school 13 alone is 100 years old and you know just wondering if when hvac is going to be updated and hopefully it's not going to be a year again assuming with with masks for however long hopefully it's not going to be a year where it's open windows you know with all kinds of weather i know that kind of got cumbersome as the school year went by between the hot the cold the rain um so just was wondering uh roughly if at some point you are able to state when hvac especially is going to be taken care of because i feel that is most crucial for all our schools um and considering that now it looks like mass are going to be worn through the day and i was basically here for the same reasons as this other mom here we just want to know the rest of the back to school plan and about how lunch is going to be handled so look forward to hearing what you have to say about that dr robertosi so thank you very much for your time thank you thank you good evening steve goldberg um [Music] clifton um first i'd like to extend my condolences to the daily family the horrible loss of the grandchild um you know i used to be a staple here at the board meetings i came here for about 15 years while my daughter was in school um i was very proud of the education she got i was very proud of the diverse group of friends she has and still has and loves them dearly matter of fact i had lunch with her today she's in third year in med school and uh i haven't been coming because you know i think it's you know parents of of children should be at board meetings and now i'm sitting here wondering am i even welcome here i mean i'm jewish should i be here do i have to denounce my homeland to be here because that's what you're asking me to do who else are you asking to do that whether the religion what other race are you setting that up with none only the jews that's why it's anti-semitism i have no problem with palestinians loving their homeland no problem let me love my homeland and if you don't let me love my homeland then why should i let you love your homeland that's what we're missing here you're setting up a two-tier system only for jews right now that's what you're doing so every jewish student now has to decide well do i say i love israel where half my people live do i do that can i say that what do i do every staff person who who who believes in israel who believes in 1948 the world voted on israel we talk about respecting the vote right respecting the vote 1948 73 years ago the world voted on israel so we have some jews who don't like israel i can bring in some arabs who don't like palestine there's an old joke you have two jews on the desert island how many synagogues do you build you build three one for one to go to one for the other two one to go to and one for both of them not to go to big deal you put some jews here who don't like israel wonderful and i have no problem with free speech no problem you can talk but again i have more problem with the silence when someone says something like israel is responsible for the killing of george floyd that is an anti-semitic trope plain and simple i i don't know i listened to the der chauvin trial i didn't hear that as a part of the defense i missed that part so where are we going here mazel tov by the way board of education when my child was in school i don't know they talked about education clifton wasn't the best school system but apparently you're the best school system in the state of new jersey you've got all the covert problems solved and now you're taking on the mideast problem and then after that you'll take on north korea and cuba and maybe you'll deal with china what are you doing where is this going to go we know where this is going to go we know it's going to be bring hatred it's going to bring violence it's going to bring division that's where this is going to go you know i i who was it samantha talked about that that mural you can say all you want you can say horrible disgusting things but the point is as a commissioner of the board why why would you want to bring the violence and the bloodshed and the destruction and the hopelessness from the mideast here in clifton why it boggles my mind it really it boggles my mind i mean i'm really ashamed of this school system a school system that gave my family so much that was time mister we felt we belonged thank you good evening everyone my name is dia mostafa i live at 111 washington avenue clifton new jersey you want to talk okay i'm sorry my name is moshe lafkavitz i live in monson new york in i will excuse myself my english is very limited and i'm here i need to express my feelings i was born in jerusalem my eyes and my heart is constantly there i love israel i love it i love earth as well which is the land of israel but i'm here to say that if somebody thinks that zionism saved the jewish problem it's obvious that they are the cause of the problem in not on not only they didn't save tools the problem of anti-semitic anti-semitic happening in the world today is because of them jews have lived in harmony with our arab neighbors my mother-in-law was a resident of the al city she always said that we lived in omni till design is a movement in instead it's inside it the the the situation and i'm only here to say to say that we aren't be i admire all the feelings of any any any any jewish person in any human being but zionism is a destruction for jewish people and physically and religiously and in ever in any in any way and we i feel very bad if somebody is expressing himself about about something that is related to his relative in his nationality that he should be blamed by by the fact we are affected by the zionism a government they in any aspect of religious that they are not admiring our people by themselves and i'm sorry to tell to tell it in front of of the open field but that's the fact in i hope that the better days will come if we live in harmony with our neighbors in our the the glo the glory of god will be revealed over the whole world thank you okay yeah again my name is diamond stefan from when you live in washington avenue in clifton uh first i would like to thank the board of education for the great work you do for clifton and um a member of the palestinian american community center and we offer our support for for the board of education anything you need from our community we are willing to help uh we are not here to silence anybody actually we are here before because we feel we are we are silenced we are there is a movement that trying to silence anybody that would speak for the just cause of palestine when commissioner awad spoke in may during the massacres and the war that was happening in gaza as a palestinian he had some emotions he had the right to express his to express it with the board and some people are trying to silence him my friend you're not the victim here please stop playing the role of the victim the whole idea here is silencing the discussion on palestine silencing voices that would speak the just for the justice of palestine and i hope that this does not translate into the clifton school system we love clifton we feel that we are a very strong part of it we will do everything to make it succeed but we want our children also not just our board of education members but our students in the schools to be able to express their opinions and their feelings about what happens for their family in palestine and that's not anti-semitism that's definitely not anti-semitism when you speak about a just cause about realities about facts that happen in the ground that's not anti-semitism there's a movement now in the united states that's trying to defy redefine the meaning of anti-semitism to include any criticism of israel and that's not just i hope and i pray that clifton stays away from these gains and that doesn't listen to these uh false ideas and to the chaplain here of the clifton uh police department i i don't know you i never met you but i i was sitting there and i heard what he told that young lady there and i just heard him right now respecting disrespecting this gentleman he called him an idiot he called him names he made yes he did sir you cursed that you cursed him and you called him sir this is not so this is not a moment this is not a moment for debates i'm just saying that this is this is you haven't heard the end of this and you will you're going to be hearing about us about what you did today thank you excuse me this is a public meeting to address the board not each other is there anyone else that wishes to address the board of education anyone else that would like to address the board of education scene on motion clothes by mr abaddraba second by mr awad okay we're going to try and do some uh school business now okay do we have any unfinished business president smith i'm sorry do we need a roll call on that one what to close the motion roll call no you don't need that where i come from all right we'll start um education [Music] administration ea one is a expression of condolences miss basford would you mind reading that um do a separate role call yeah please me too um august 5th um from the administration ea 8 521 expression of condolence public uh whereas august 3rd 2021 the community noted with sorrow the passing of nicholas gerald grandson of commissioner james daly whereas nicholas was a former student of school 14 until he moved to cedar grove new jersey nicholas enjoyed riding his bike playing video games playing all sports and watching the giants nikki loved his family and friends so much we will especially he will especially be remembered for his courage and his bravery now therefore be it resolved that this resolution be forwarded to his bereaved family be it further resolved that the content of this resolution be noted in its in their entirety in the official minutes of the clifton board of education for future generations to prove dated august 5th 2021 uh motion by miss basford do i have a second second second by mr awad discussion roll call please mr abhijabo yes mr awad yes miss bassford yes miss beltran yes miss dr danny yes mr smith yes okay well now we'll do uh ea2 through ea 10 motion motion by miss bassford uh mr smith it's up to 11.

now we're at the public facility corporation action items you go to action items facilities corporation number one authorize the filing of the annual registration renewal fee rrf-1 and the annual traders report ct dash tr-21 forms with the attorney general's registry of charitable trust have a motion second all right all in favor aye all right in your post he's running he's running the meeting because you're in the public facilities all right that's all right we're gonna adjourn what time 7 36.

sorry no 11 is the bulk oh i'm sorry i know i used to always do that yeah the last one is the all of them all right so it's ea23810 we have a motion and a second mr wad discussion roll call please mr abedrabo yes except on ea too just to know on ea2 mr awad yes for all but for ea ii miss password yes miss beltran yes dr danny yes mr smith uh all but uh no on ea2 motion carries except ea too question question that is to re that is to re-establish our bylaw for regular meetings that's all that is um ea2 is yeah but part of the public session is part of we didn't we didn't change the bylaw to do anything on it it goes it reverts back to the three minutes on the agenda and the five minutes to the um open public meeting right the proposal of the committee was to talk about it under new business but uh my recommendation tonight would not be to do that unless the full board is here okay i i do think the full board should be here i mean this is really like you know just five yeah we're not i mean yeah this is just to to rescind what we did to suspend what we did uh back in september so until the full board is here it will remain the way it is and then the full board can vote but but i understand that we're still running under a remote policy from meetings so technically we have to give people the option to speak remotely i i'd have to see that that resolution wasn't saying here is to suspend bylaws 0-164-0167 so that's the entire by-law so if the public portion is in that by-law it's supposed to be to reinstate it not to suspend right but i'm saying we suspended it in september so it's the full bylaw because we in september we went with that remote vial off to do our public meetings so we suspended these two because they were null and void the committee recommended that we get rid of the remote one and bring back the old ones and follow with our regular order business right so we're going to have that opportunity to do that next meeting on the full board here right why don't we just make a motion to just pull the pull this and then this way the whole board can weigh in but is there other parts of 01640167 that are okay but don't deal with that it's just the it's everything it's all the regular order of business the other one's still in effect we haven't done anything with it so and we pull this and then we vote on the next meeting and we all have a healthy dialogue i i have no problem with that the motion and secular agreed we'll table this to the next meeting yeah i'll second it okay you have to roll call on it no right just motion the table it right okay so the group uh the rest of the group passed all right we'll move on to um personnel we have personnel uh p1 through p42 motion motion by mr abedrabo second second by miss basford discussion seeing none uh roll call mr abu drabbo yes and abstain on peace i'm sorry on my name only for p38 mr awat yes but also on uh p i mean p-38 upsetting my name roman miss password yes abstaining on p38 my name only please ms beltran yes dr danny yes abstain on p38 my name only mr smith yes abstaining from p38 my name only emotions carry motion carries wanna do that now i don't think he's in here mr gingaro uh the board has just voted to name you our new assistant superintendent of schools and if you'd like to say a few words congratulations [Applause] sorry we're just outside so excuse of my tardiness to the podium good evening president smith board of ed commissioners dr robertosi mr tisian miss kusalevich mr uchi mr thomasevich and ms gutierrez for all of those who still remain in the audience and for all of those who are watching at home as the old adage goes life's a journey and it's not a destination and my journey in the clifton public schools district has followed this course i began my career here in clifton high school as a teacher for students with disabilities in both the self-contained and inclusive settings i had the privilege in working with our student athletes as a three-sport varsity coach and in my final year at chs i served as our dean of student discipline i was later afforded the opportunity to continue in my professional growth as both an administrative intern and building administrator at the christopher columbus middle school which ultimately led to me assuming the role of our district administrator of climate and security which is an umbrella title for a whole host of responsibilities that i hold in the district including our school safety specialist our anti-bullying coordinator our pbsis facilitator our supervisor of registration residency and truancy and i was also given the herculean task of serving as the facilitator of the reopening committee during the covet pandemic and now i've been afforded the opportunity to serve as the district's assistant superintendent there are so many people in my life who have provided the support and encouragement to make this possible so tonight i'd like to take that opportunity to thank my family my friends my colleagues administrators our supervisors our board attorney our teachers our counselors our nurses our child study teams our secretaries the members of the custodial maintenance and transportation group our domicile investigators our paraprofessionals our food service providers our coaches our athletic trainers our 381 members of the reopening committee and to our parents who have served on hsas ptas ptos booster clubs bond referendum committees and most importantly our students and the players i had the privilege to coach who have all been part of this incredible journey for me this dream would not be a reality without all of you now they take take a few moments to personally thank starting with miss janina kusalevich our assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction you have been a friend and a mentor to me from the moment my administrative career has begun thank you for all of your guidance for without it i would not be standing here in this capacity it will be an honor to work alongside of you as your counterpart as assistant superintendent to mr tisian our assistant superintendent arguably the single biggest shoes to ever have to fill in this district when it comes to clifton public schools in the community you are a pillar within both as for as long as i can remember i thank you also for your support and guidance throughout these years and i hope i'm worthy of this task i hope to make both you and the entire teigen family proud in filling your shoes to the board of education thank you for entrusting me over these over this past several years with the responsibility of overseeing the safety of our students and our staff in this district i would like to also thank you for this opportunity and your continued trust and support in this new role of assistant superintendent for those of you who have worked with me you've seen the sign in my office that says failure is not an option i will not let you down but more importantly i will not let the students down and finally dr robertosi in the short few years that you have been our commander-in-chief you have made such an enormous impact on our district from the one to one chromebook initiative to leading us through this covet pandemic to the passing of the single largest bond referendum in state history and this vision that you've had you've had the option to select any one candidate to help you to continue to drive this vision of one clifton and you chose me to say that this is an honor would simply just be an understatement thank you for your continued faith confidence and trust in me i look forward to working collaboratively with you and helping you fly this ship as we finally jump to hyperspace as i said life's a journey it's not a destination and although the current destination is now the assistant superintendent my journey in clifton still continues i look forward to the tasks and challenges that lay ahead and once again i thank you all for this amazing opportunity above all else continue to stay safe and healthy thank you [Applause] uh congratulations assistant superintendent but um you know you're gonna have to um endure uh late hours as this board does so you better get used to that um he's not listening to me anyway anyhow um congratulations and just to recognize his father frank is here frank is a long time educator in our system and was head of the clifton teachers association for many years i had the wonderful opportunity to uh to work with mr frank gingaro and i have such great memories of your time here in clifton so we thank you for for being here tonight and of course um mark your lovely uh your lovely counterpart who uh who keeps uh christopher columbus in order um ms gabo we we thank you for being here as well tonight though [Applause] okay let's move on uh we have uh finance and facilities we have f one through f eighteen motion motion by miss password second by mr abedrabo discussion seeing non-roll call mr abhijabo yes mr awa yes miss bastford yes ms beltran yes dr danny yes mr smith yes motion scary okay board member comments today we are starting with dr danny thank you um i will keep my comments short i want to thank all the speakers who came out and spoke today we do live in a democracy where obviously you could express your views so you know thank you once again for coming out and speaking out that's what it's all about is coming here and whatever um is upsetting about what was stated um it is your right uh when you have your time at the microphone i would just like to end condolences to jim daly kathy laser daily and the storm family there just really isn't any words um that i can think of you know when you lose someone and cancer is just a really horrific disease two of my family members have died of cancer and it's just again it's it's a horrific disease and just to see people suffer and especially you know a young child to go through it and on facebook i would often read the um comments that the the family would put and in regards to nicholas and it's just amazing i mean the the spirit that he had and the fighter that he was and when i heard of this passing it was it was heavy on my heart and again as i said because when it's a child um so that's all that i have and i hope that students and faculty and teachers enjoy the remainder of the summer stay safe and we'll see you know what september brings it's always something new when it comes to coven 19 being an educator i i know it's like i don't know what it'll bring thank you next up is mr abu drabo thank you president smith um prayers and thoughts to jimmy kathy and the storm family thank god i can't say i know it is to lose a child but many of you some know that my daughter my sister passed away when i was younger so i kind of feel what he's going for or with what they're going through but as i told jim yesterday anything you need to the daily storm family please let us know while we don't always agree on everything we still have to give each other some human respect and decency to respect each other's families and what each other goes through so um if anybody's interested may you want to lawn sign that's been produced for ten dollars you can reach out to mr amar i believe all proceeds will go to saint peter's haven mr president if it's possible maybe the packet that was handed today by mr cadet if we can send over the facilities at least to be looked over and discussed through you to our chair commissioner beltran congrats to all our ma degrees our district personnel district doctor who is on our agenda dr uh blaine rosenberg and uh i don't know sometimes he looks like the the big show with his hair and sometimes i know he likes the undertaker but absolute congrats to our new assistant superintendent mark gingerow since i came on the board you hit the ground running in your current position since your new position doesn't start till tomorrow morning you're an amazing person you are you know the short period of time i got to know you over the past few years you stay true to your word you i know you always have goals and you hit them you hit your marks and i can't see anybody else that could be complimentary to our superintendent to make sure our district goes far and beyond what it already is so mark congratulations um i know you do you will do a phenomenal job um thank you to all our speakers the nordicarda jvp pack patterson blm and of course the venerable rabbi from the clifton synagogue rabbi bob mark we may not agree on points and views but a you are a man of god and i will respect you on that you are a human being i respect you on that and every person that's that's a citizen of this world has the right to speak up no matter even if we agree or disagree and on that note i have something typed up because pre-typed up because i watched the council meeting last night and it's going to go along with what was mentioned yesterday and it's going to go around two things and i'm going to thank may for the following two things use your voice and infinite possibility because that's what we as human beings have to focus on and it's unfortunate that we have to use our voices to compete to combat hatred and the lack of respect of a humanity of humanity so here we go anti-semitism should not be taken lightly because i believe every religion is peaceful anti-semitism should not be shrugged off nor should the word be thrown around to negate a viewpoint a few months ago i spoke about my experiences when visiting my family in palestine and again i'm using my voice i'm allowed to do that just like everybody's allowed to come to the podium and speak as well well i do not agree with the tax tactics of their oppressors judaism was never a type of conversation nor was it ever mentioned out of my mouth or the state of israel and you can go back because i made sure and i actually heard that may 20th reference meeting because they referenced it last night and made sure to what i said and neither of those were into what i said the current state of palestine has nothing to do with the jewish faith the holy land does belong to all abrahamic religions peaceful religions palestinians are not only a muslim but also the face of christianity judaism coptic and even jews why do i say that because the great rabbi mentioned for you to say that a muslim student wanting to hurt someone is reprehensible while that may be an isolated event that is one person that is one incident that does not represent muslims guess what that's islamophobe that's islamophobe i didn't mention a religion you did great rabbi you did tonight and last night just how all muslims are not palestinians not all palestinians are muslim that is something that is to be carefully thought about and that is why there needs to be more education to my point from back in may where if more funds were used towards education we'd have we would have a lot more in this district and across this country this is also why it is better to keep more funding in this country to be used for that education not funding foreign entities it's not about solving north korea solving cuba solving it's about any foreign entity and where our monies go outside this country what do we get in return besides lack of benefits for our veterans and the land and and the the i'm going to use this word the weakness of our education in this country whether it's about dii diversity education and quant and sam thank you and i i feel bad about that because i was on di committee at seton hall it's been a while i know and that's what i'm talking about in more funding to educate our communities educate ourselves educate our neighbors to understand where this new generation is coming from to understand about gender respect respected genders respected cultures respected ethnicities respecting thy neighbor do we forget that our children need to be taught not only to love and compassion towards all human beings but also understand that people make up this world in order to become better citizens of this world and we all want that for our children but what we want for our children as we grow up we forget we forget how to act at times and that is wrong i'm not saying i'm innocent i'm guilty of that at times we're all human beings we learn from our mistakes we move on and to the council member last night who decided to say he was disappointed in the statements that were mentioned on may 20th i would ask you to have a conversation with me about my personal experience before speaking out on something you have no idea about you have nothing but privilege you have no idea what it is and how it is to be treated the way people get treated today you have multiple privileges i'm gonna be honest i'm disappointed in you i once called you a friend guess what it's done and i know who you know you know who you are especially when i try calling today speak to you and you do not pick up my call done and honestly the fact that people speak on something they have no idea about how black lives are in this country how people get treated in this country and around the world yes all lives do matter but when a certain life is deemed lesser than others when they are brought up to that scale then we can talk about that thank you mr awad you're next thank you mr smith uh first and foremost uh my condolences to the daily family and uh heaven has gained a new angel and nicholas may he rest in eternal peace um also i just on another note mr mark gingaro ever since i've entered this district you have been such an amazing amazing uh person to work with on the residency and security committee your energy is you know it rubs off in such a positive way your you know your passion and your love for the students and for the district and for you know your vision and your goals i feel like you know another new chapter for you has opened and i wish you and your family nothing but positivity and greatness tonight was a little rough it was probably one of the roughest meetings i endured since my election and i know what i signed up for and i know what the city has and what the potential is um you know the past couple weeks you know an incident has occurred in our city when dealing with the art the mural and uh personally i reached out to the artist and i told the artist keep your chin up keep on fighting you are doing the right thing you are expressing yourself art has been attacked over many centuries by certain groups because it is a peaceful way of expression and that's something i applaud and that is something when we go into uh new business i would like to also discuss first if that's allowed mr smith um i have an idea and a topic that i i kind of been brainstorming and wrote down and i would love to present it hopefully you know for the future for us to discuss as a board um to my brothers and sisters of you know from clifton and throughout the state you know that came out and spoke um i will just want to state this loud and clear i love judaism rabbi ruiz i came and spoke he's been a friend and a mentor for many years ever since i was a child i used to hear him speak my grandparents grew up in a small village on the outskirts of jerusalem and caden i am the first elected official in my city ever in the united states or even in jordan where a majority of them refuge and i always get encouraged to always stand up and speak for the truth this is a beautiful city where 70 percent the majority were christian and jewish my grandparents were actually a minority in the city this is the city where john the baptist i call a city it's a village it's a city now it's a village where john the baptist was born the virgin mary had a well it is a very important biblical aspect where once you know many christians go on pilgrimage to the jordan river they used to walk by foot to that village to drink from that well my great was an islamic scholar that used to travel all over the world preaching peace his position in that village before enduring that journey for many centuries and he passed it down to his children and he goes back 10 10 generations before him he had the key to a cathedral as a muslim he had a key to the cathedral he would open up that cathedral every single day in the morning likewise that cathedral their priest had the key to the mosque he would also open up the mosque for the morning prayers many of you asked why am i bringing that up because it was taught on a cultural aspect as a palestinian you never ever divide to conquer when i mean division i mean saying that you are this faith you are that faith you are this shape color you were that shade color it was a unification that is something that's told all over the middle east a very very poisonous tactic is to divide and conquer by pointing out people's disabilities sexual orientations belief systems shade a skin tone whatever it may be that is a tactic that is also brought in our school systems all over the nation in our communities that mural means a lot to me for one reason it was just about unification and showing the beauty and the diversity and i spoke to may many many many times and i helped mr amar get those posters printed from professional contacts that i had i would always support my community no matter what and to samantha basford your words yesterday were very on point in your words today i would must say you're always on point and you speak to such a high standard and your parents should be proud you do not hold back from speaking and when you do you say in such a way that honestly it's inspirational and what you said today i had wrote it down that is something i want to share with my wife because words of wisdom sadly nowadays is very rare to all them that may think i offended them what i said and what i posted on my personal facebook is my personal opinion it's my personal experience many might not understand and i totally get that but no way no form no chance that i have any hatred or any ill intent towards the religion of judaism judaism is a beautiful pure peaceful religion and rabbi wise taught me many many many scriptures from the torah as as i've also read many scriptures from the bible the old testament i like to educate i like to understand people's point of views and what they're brought up to what i'm trying to get to is our city is amazing we do have to follow the model one clifton clifton does care but at this moment our city is struggling when we face adversity as elected officials either here or on the council we must stand up for what's right taking the easy way out and turning our chin the other way because it's a sensitive topic it's not excuse my language a sexy topic to talk about and it might affect our election it might affect votes it might affect people's opinion you might upset someone but the truth is the truth we are here to serve the people i will be vocal for all causes no matter what and if anybody tries to stop me let them be as is my god-given right as an american blessed to be born here it's an amendment and i will use it and i will speak on any topic that pertains to benefiting our district when it comes to the art mural like i said a new business i would love to discuss an idea that will give platforms for many many many generations of students to come and to the city of clifton just know i will always serve with the right intent and the purest intentions because as many know my daughter will be born in september and this little one is going to be going to this district and i want her to know that this amazing board even though we discovered so many times we always have the right intentions the children and i want to be able to give her and anybody else in this district the greatest education possible endless possibilities to basically thread and they're like dough thread and form them so once they do graduate they have all the capabilities of being a modern pure great citizen taking on collagen in their endeavors and giving back to their community thank you next miss password thank you i just want to say thank you to all the speakers who came out tonight i just want you to all know that i heard you and i listen i write things down i listen to what you have to say and i take everything into consideration french and guerrero it's so good to see you people don't realize the impact of generations that you've had on people not only your own child and the good things that come out of out of him but also the effect that you had on some board members children in this district some of the successes in this district belong to you and from my family so thank you it's nice to see you mark gengaro may the force be with you you owe me a movie that's a joke because we're big star wars fans um a while back i uh emailed the superintendent while he was away about the mural and about giving this young lady a platform in clifton high because she is a she is a graduate and i was wondering if that we could find and this is a suggestion it's my opinion if we could find some space in this building to her to put a smaller version in the hallways and maybe open up a new platform for people that have done have graduated and done things to come back to the community i was there last night [Music] it was very hard to watch what happened and uh as the mother and me i stood up at one point i could not stand what i saw but people don't realize when they put another person in a in an adversarial situation like that and she's so young that it was the people in the audience saw a different thing going on and that's what was upsetting to a lot of people that were there samantha basford i have two great things in my life and you're one of them you always amaze me every day every day the things that come out of you and the things that you do i may not be the richest person on this planet but i'm rich because what i have with you and your brother keep onward and up with sammy you got so much to give you are going to be amazing with what you're about to launch into okay um a couple of things um mr smith thank you for allowing me to read that that resolution for nikki storms for over the last 15 months there's been a group of people praying for him and although no words can take away the sorrow that the family is bearing may be comforting to know that others care there's a lot of people out there that have been praying for nikki and the family and i um my faith believes that god has another plan for nikki so that's what we believe in and we don't believe that this is the last we believe that we will see each other again one day and we will be able to meet each other and and and be together so i hope that your faith whatever you believe in keeps you through these very difficult days to kathy laser daily to jim daly and the storm's family my deepest condolences my deepest condolences to um adele gamon for the loss of her husband mike to steven tala who just lost his father and the rest of his family my condolences and i just found out somebody texted me former board member keith laforger passed away tonight so condolences to the little forger family as well that's it i have thank you good night okay miss beltran you're next i would also like to express my sincere uh condolences to the to jim daly and his family for their unexplainable loss i don't have children of my own but i can only imagine what they're going through i love to see how much public participation we're getting at these meetings positive negative it's appreciated in my mind my family comes from a country where if you were to come out and speak like this you would be jailed immediately um my family my father grew up in cuba my grandfather will be the last generation likely to ever have seen a free cuba we're fighting for it but we're more pessimistic than palestinians palestinians have a little bit more umph i guess into their fight than unfortunately uh we do but there's always a hope that one day we'll be able to speak like this at a deus or rise up in some way the school year this year is it's it's going to look strange again we're hoping for a normal year but it's looking like we're going to have an extraordinary year i hope we're able to continue in-person learning even if it has to be with the masks it's it's not ideal obviously but if they're still in school learning and we have the masks and we have um i'm sure dr robitosi has a lovely plan laid out of how to guide us through another year but i'm just hopeful that we'll be able to stay in person because i think the personal contact even though masked will be better than no personal contact through a screen i would also just like to say that although i do not always agree with the personal comments made by colleagues on the dais whether it be about current political issues covet issues you know even issues of when meetings take place etc i i truly appreciate that we're able to have these types of discussions relatively calmly and i appreciate that i personally don't choose to use this forum to express my personal views but other colleagues do and i think it's a good insight into people's lives you know if they choose to use this forum to express their personal views and have everyone in the town know about them then so be it other people choose to do it in silence you know it it's a 2000 year old battle that we watched rage out here my battle for my country is only 60 years long i hope art doesn't go for 2000 years but you never you really never know but i applaud everyone who came out and spoke on both sides of the issue although this forum i think i agree with them pretty much everyone probably agree with me is not the ideal location for such an argument um i do applaud that they're they use their right to do so and that's all i have for tonight thank you mr truman uh is everybody right uh it seems like it's the night of condolences and uh i surely don't like to have to send regards to families especially when one is a a colleague first mr keith laforgia who passed away tonight today keith and i were on the board together for i believe five years we accomplished a great amount and he was a great and dedicated board member i enjoyed working with him and i'll always remember some great times that we had on this board so keith i know you're in a better place free from pain and suffering and you will be missed as ms bassford mentioned a former board member and councilman steven towel lost his father and a dedicated veteran in our town mike gimon also was taken home over the last week then to get the news from jim that um that his grandson nikki had passed away and as miss bassford said it really hits it too hard and hits home we've been praying for nikki for so many years probably three i think it started about three years ago and i remember just a little bit over a year ago when nikki they take them back to the hospital where they were treated and when you beat cancer you ring a bell and i remember the day that nikki went in to ring the bell that he was free from cancer and he was so happy and so excited and then to turn around and be hit with it again and even stronger even more devastating just four weeks ago he went through a 22-hour surgery came through the surgery great we thought they got everything and cancer won but nikki didn't lose he had a great life when he was here he had a great family that supported him and loved him and he's home he's home can never be in pain again does not have to go through chemotherapy or tests and needles so even though we grieve god taking a young life at nine years old you have to know that he's in a better place free from pain my thoughts and prayers go out to jim and kathy and the entire storms family i know what a hard time it was to bury parents i can't imagine what it's like to bury a child so all the members of this board offered their support to jim and to his family and i thank the board for that and if anything kids parents when we talk about condolences and death if anything it teaches us is just to cherish the time you have together if we just stop fighting and get along and make our time here on earth the best that we could what a great place this would be and i'm sorry uh mr gingaro that on such a happy occasion tonight that we had such sorrowful news to to add into it but thank god that we have an opportunity to celebrate and cheer and thank and wish good luck to our new assistant superintendent of schools who has worked so hard for this district dedicated himself his time and his efforts and sometimes i i just look and i say mark how you got 20 things going at one time and mark going in every other direction but worked his butt off to make sure he accomplished those goals because he always told me failure is not an option so mark i know you're not going to fail i know you're going to succeed because you've succeeded so much already this district is going to be so great having dr robitozzi at the helm and you as an assistant along with janina but so much so much of this district has been set up and has worked so great because of the dedication and commitment to kids that mr teigen had for this district clifton would not be successful district it is today without mr teigen's hard work dedication and devotion and i have to tell you one one line that i had from mr teigen the other day and it summarized everything about him and about the district he said he was he used to be at christopher columbus and he loved crispr columbus and he wished he was back there with the kids that really stuck home with me he didn't want to be in administration he didn't want to be going up the ladder he wanted to be with kids he wanted to help kids mr teigen you did you helped many kids and we thank you for all of your devotion and dedication to clifton you made this district what it is today and we thank you for that devotion dr robitosi you're laying the foundation here to have one of the if not the best district in the state yes do we have obstacles to climb over we do it's just the part of the nature of education but if we come back and remember one thing why we're here for no other reason we're here for kids and if we remember that all this other petty stuff means nothing dr rubitosi thank you mr president good evening commissioners and citizens and those in attendance and those watching at home first and foremost i know it's been said but i have to give my deepest condolences to jim daly cathy and the storms family you are all in my prayers and i'm praying for you during this most difficult time and i'm just so sorry to to hear what happened but know that there are many who are praying for you nicholas many might not know but nicholas was a former student in clifton he attended school 14 and and his mom uh was a teacher in our district so a lot of people praying for you and your family during this time tonight was a lot i'm very emotional tonight there was a lot there's a lot going on here tonight trying to run a school district trying to do what's best for kids we're not going to solve the world's problems but we do need to listen to each other because that's where it starts and our kids are watching kids are watching at how how we interact amongst ourselves as the as the adults act the kids will act and so we set the example and so clifton is a beautifully diverse community that for the most part gets along really really well i think as long as we remember that we have so much more in common than we do that separates us that above all we are humans that we are meant to help each other that will be okay let's stop take a step back take a deep breath and remember why all of us are here none of us exist if not for children i don't have a job if not for children this board of education does not exist if not for children let's keep that at the forefront of everything we do of every decision that we make every single moment of the day our kids are watching now on to the business of the school district mr gingaro we got a lot of work to do my friend i couldn't think of anybody else to uh to be by my side as we forge through congratulations it's well deserved from day one you and i had something in common and it was about making decisions about what's best for kids not what's convenient for adults but what's best for kids so we got a lot of work to do but we got a supportive board we got great people around us and tomorrow we roll up our sleeves and we get going as i mentioned earlier tonight we're expecting governor murphy to make an announcement tomorrow mandating that masks must be worn at the start of the school year at least at the beginning of the school year by all students in grades k-12 and although i don't know if it's going to be part of his announcement that mandate will also be for staff members so that will be for everybody who will be in our schools including visitors although we will be trying to limit the amount of visitors that we have at least at the beginning of the school year the sad thing is just less than a month and a half ago i don't think we thought this thing was over but we thought we were moving in a good direction and we thought september was going to look as normal as possible and i i read today that um in the past month the number of cases has increased by 365 percent so we are still in the middle of fighting this but i want to make sure that everyone hears me tonight that we will be open if it is up to me five days a week full time there are some things that you're going to have to deal with that we all have to expect we're going to have to continue the mandatory daily symptom screening before school starts each day for staff and students we're going to have to continue the mask wearing whether we like it or not we'll make sure students have mask breaks i expect students to be eating in the cafeteria right now we're expected to keep students three feet apart in most places in our district we can do that in areas where we can we have other mitigation measures like mask wearing extra ventilation on top of the physical um things we're worried about with the virus we've been very much worried about the mental health of our students i'm very proud to say that we have now have a extra counselors at every school now every elementary school has its own counselor at the secondary level we've expanded counseling support with our own staff and contracted services to address that part of this because people are wounded mentally we're going to have a new before school elementary tutoring program we're going to have more after school tutoring in person and virtual but as of today there is no virtual option we do not have a virtual option for students if a student or a group of students or a class has to quarantine because they were close contacts of a positive coveted case then we will make arrangements for them to receive virtual instruction either on home instruction or through synchronous simultaneous instruction by their teacher but we're hoping that we don't have to quarantine entire classes if our contact tracing is good enough we're collaborating again with the boys and girls club to have before care and aftercare programs and options for our parents for those of you who aren't aware we still have our summer meal distribution program on mondays wednesdays and fridays at clifton high school christopher columbus and at school 17 from 10 a.m to 11 30 a.m that is open to everyone in the community everyone is welcome please come by again that's monday wednesdays fridays clifton high school christopher columbus middle school and school 17 from 10 to 11 30 a.m miss palazzo asked earlier uh about the referendum and um well she's not gonna like my answer but i would never tell a lie at least on purpose um and this is not news if uh those who were aware or part of the referendum we have been saying what the timeline would look like on april 20th the vote passed um and from april 20th we really didn't expect a shovel in the ground or any work to start until april of 2022 and you might say wow that's a really long time the truth is there is so much that has to happen from april 20th to april of 2022 for example um the selling of the bonds right so we passed this referendum what that meant was we were allowed to borrow the money so we don't even have the money yet matter of fact i believe mr uc today was the day that we had the bond sale is that correct yeah yes sir and the closing's going to be near the end of the month so by closing that means we might get some money by the end of the month no no i didn't think so i'm being i'm being sarcastic so my point is we don't even have the money to do the projects but what's going on while we're waiting for the money is the architects are doing all the official drawings once the drawings are done those projects are bundled into packages and then they have to go out to bid and then we have to get we have to pick the contractors by the lowest bidder we expect that to happen best case scenario december january so we're still on target but you won't see air conditioning or any of the other projects for we expect all of the projects that can be be completed by the fall of 2023 it's still amazing though that we got that done still amazing miss kusalevich is there any other major things that you can add to what we already know for the opening of school just so parents are listening one thing i will add is at our next board meeting which the board voted on tonight will be august 18th we will do a formal presentation for the entire community i will then communicate all that information out to all of our parents so we have an idea but everybody has to understand that as it has been since day one of this pandemic this stuff changes this stuff changes rapidly so we can tell you today what we think and what our plans are and that could change mr kusalevich anything that you would like to add to the reopening stuff i just would like to say that exactly what uh dr robert ozzie has been expressing we will be back full time full day five days per week while some things will still be odd a lot of the day will be as normal as it has been in the past students will be in their classrooms with their teachers middle and high school students will be changing classes yes there will be some mitigation factors that have to take place to maintain health and safety so that we can stay open hopefully every single day like we have in the past with extracurriculars and now with additional instructional support so that it should look as normal as it possibly can thank you miss kusalevich mr smith that concludes my comments for tonight thank you thank you uh we'll now move on to uh new business mr awad i'm sorry mr smith i just had something i just want to make sure i went back to the minutes of the policy meeting um it said that we were reinstating 164 and 167.

what time 7 7 36 pm okay all right we're done yes we hereby convene the regular meeting again discussion action session it is recommended that the board of board of trustees discuss and take action on the following items approve the certificated and classified personnel actions as listed i need a motion so move any second second mr nunez is second um all in favor any opposed approve the requested leaves as noted i need a motion i'll i'll make a motion okay uh all in favor any opposed authorize the termination of the youth agreement between the apple valley unified school district and the high desert youth soccer league and direct staff to notify the high desert youth circle league of such action i need a motion i need a second second all in favor any opposed action to authorize the superintendent designate to enter into a contract to provide cove testing and related services as may be necessary for support to support students and limit the possible spread of infection at school sites the contract will then be placed on the next border agenda for ratification before we take a vote trine nelson would like to explain and address the need for immediate action and now that the audience is left and we have no students in the room the rule for inside masking is if you are vaccinated no mask required um so i just wanted to make sure everybody knew on this item we are asking that you allow the us to look at a contract with an outside provider to do what is listed based on the current situation with positive coveted cases with students we would like our staffs not to be required um to have to go away from their normal work duties and that this would allow us to contract with an outside agency to take care of our isolation rooms if we have any students with symptoms and then follow up with the testing and contact tracing okay i need emotion i move so move check it consent agenda it is recommended that the board of trustees consider approving a number of agenda items as a consent list consent items are routine in nature and can be enacted in one motion without further discussion this procedure conserves meeting time for a full discussion of significant issues the consent items to be approved in one motion are as follows one through thirty four so move second all in favor aye aye aye all right i need a motion to go to close uh oh superintendent's comments closing items i just wanted to um thank the staffs and all of the families that returned to our schools yesterday the joy and the laughter and every student that i passed today and asked how yesterday was indicated it was wonderful and i wish them a wonderful day today i know that there are some hiccups going on having to do with traffic and drop off and pick up which is normal the first week of school the first few days of school specifically those will start getting better as people get back in the habit of how we deliver students and pick them up once people start recognizing who the cars belong to and which student belongs with which parents it goes much faster so i know today was even faster than yesterday so um you know be patient but the joy of having them back on campus and keeping us open is is here so thank you mr nunez thank you so much um to all of our staff and faculty across the district as the newest board member i just want to say thank you welcome back i hope you're as excited as all of us are i had the great pleasure of taking my son yesterday to his very first day of fourth grade and walking them up to the front door and i can't think of anything that could possibly have brought me greater joy so i hope that that that sentiment is shared across our district from our parents and we keep at the forefront what is truly important right now so thank you all and uh let's keep on the work mr so i don't have a lot to say but i just want to thank all our staff for coming that's all thank you mr bender no i'm glad everything went good and then me um i think we did good um yesterday um i can't wait to start going back to the schools and i'm still waiting to get the jersey so that our other shirts so that i can uh i can advertise you guys um at the board meetings and i can't wait i really can't wait for the students to start coming to the board meetings and presenting to us the great things they are doing at school i need to take this opportunity to to thank all of the staff that helped make this opening a success especially the people that are at the district office i didn't know if they took a vacation or not because i would come into the district and somebody will be here but i want to extend sincere gratitude to the district staff sincere gratitude to the teachers who knew school was going to start and they started working long before and the classified staff especially the school bus drivers they have a task on their hands and i truly truly appreciate them thank you so much for a great great start signing of documents um we need to sign approved and approved documents uh do we have documents to sign then i move that we adjourn the meeting and then go for the signing anybody uh you need a second mistake mr mr bender motioned you can second i seconded your favor all right any opposed okay meeting adjourned you

the that's that was the error on the agenda it said so i want to make sure that goes in and then we will be cancelling 0164.6 so it's in it's on the last page this uh second paragraph up from the bottom right thank you so just that one part would be tabled mr watt thank you president smith um i would like to bring uh to the board of new orleans business uh something that has kind of occurred in the past week in our community dealing with on the mural with you know the state that it looks like the state will be removing it something that was worked on extremely hard by an artist named may and her friends they worked about a week in the heat thinking that they had the permission everything perfect for them to paint it uh president smith going through you to the superintendent can we kind of browse and think and brainstorm as a board an idea of maybe using all the tools and assets we have as a district to probably build or create a blank canvas for murals for students in the district to express them themselves through art and the most non-political you know something that is approved by you know the the board and the superintendent and staff uh i was thinking either on ccms property on the corner near paris paedav or maybe on the board of education property by the flagpole something you know where students current students from you know that are coming into the district in september and for future students something that they could probably use throughout the year different art projects having everybody active and expressing themselves it could be a really cool backdrop also that they can paint something towards the end of the year for graduation as they're coming into the stadium you know if it is placed by ccms it's something you know the community can look at and also it's a beautiful piece of art that people driving on 46 where we they are coming from other towns can see how beautiful and how diverse our town is and giving a platform basically for students to express themselves through art um like i suggested ccms by paige maybe outside i know we have assets in different classes like wood shop and stuff maybe they can pitch in and build we do have a phenomenal art department in all our schools in a secondary location maybe board of education property by the flagpole i just want to be able to give the students you know a chance that i didn't have growing up where you know we pay attention to what happens in our communities and we can use that as an educational point where we kind of speak with them and let them understand why certain decisions happen why certain points were made and you know mistakes happen we live and learn but we shouldn't be able to just suppress um art and suppress expression of our we should be able to basically uplift them and give them the platforms and the tools that they need uh to succeed so that is you know something if we could work with so why don't we uh police policy we'll have to put some type of policy together on that so why don't we send it to policy and facilities let them come up with uh you know just some guidelines and rules and then we can come back to the board and because my idea is to have something outside i just want to be clear something that it could be built outside to certain dimensions that you know everybody approves of and fits within you know the rules i was just my recommendation be like i said board of education property by the flagpole it's a busy road where people can appreciate the art or maybe probably jedi because it's a major highway on 46.

i would like it more outdoor not for just the students to see for the community and basically anybody passing through our town to appreciate it because it turns out that murals under certain underpasses with state laws and stuff like that forbid it and as a community we just learned that recently so we want to basically take advantage of this and give art a platform and something that you know there has to be rules of what can be put and can't be put we don't want to offend or hurt anybody we don't want to make it political or religious or any aspect like that but something students can invest their time uh to to express what they feel should be up there uh and this is something we could start as you know a cultural thing in clifton uh for you know future uh graduating classes that they could take part in thank you yeah so that's why i have policy we'll have to come up some guidelines because not only for this one but going in the future where they can go what the guidelines are for it so policy and facilities if you would take that up in your next meeting uh mr abhijava did you have something yeah on the same i'm sorry on the same level um so um she was one of our students mayor was one of our students i just would like to recommend to through you to the superintendent since most likely she will be leaving for school i believe she lives on campus or does not she lives on her university's property um that we ask her to create some sort of sketch or probably replicate what was under the the bridge i know it's going to go to policy but at least we give her the opportunity to leave her footprint where it will not be erased to give her the opportunity to leave something where i mean it's not the only time she's done something it's her and her friends and her and her peers have done it across the city um but if we can leave allow her to leave her footprint and her peers footprints somewhere where they roam the holes of and allow her to at least put a preliminary sketch together she may not have to paint her or do anything she'll be away at school i'm assuming um but allow her allow her and her peers to do a sketch and also even if she wants to do this um so i don't think i don't think we've actually even approached her we being the administration meeting so if we can do that in the meantime one goes through policy i think just for the time sake so the administration will handle that aspect of it yeah okay any other new business yes uh the policy committee asked that we send for an advisory opinion about yielding time to other speakers i've never done that through the board i've done advisory opinions on my own so how would we go about doing that because we uh we just want to make sure that we are not missing anything well i thought we got an advisory opinion from the state attorney i think i sent that to everybody i thought it was my understanding that um kathy hello was sent to some information from new jersey school boards everyone got that right but it's i want to go down to the state and get an advisory opinion from them can we do that not the school board's attorney is state attorney i don't i don't know that there's a mechanism for getting an advisory opinion on it's basically robert jews of order i got i understand on robert's rules of order from the state attorney general's office but i'll look into what where where there is a possible avenue okay and also the the committee wants to know when are we going to get the automatic response for emails that's something that's the committee keeps on bringing up so that i i promised them that we'd address it at the next meeting i can work on that here we have it for the next meeting your next meeting any other new business oh yes a policy we have to set a date um i think we were on the second wednesday of every month now uh that would be the 11th of august being that we have work now to do with this so if if that's not good just let's we'll send the email out to the committee to see when everybody's available but i want we want to make it the second wednesday of the month and if all committees would please get the dates and we'd like to make a calendar for the rest of the year have the dates already in so everyone knows the dates and if you have to cancel the meeting for whatever you cancel it at least it's in the calendar and it's on um instead of last minute trying to get a date and find out who can make it or not just let's get a calendar made get the dates in and uh we'll work it from there okay mr smith just so uh the committee chairs are where tuesdays are going to be a little tough for me this year my schedule's changing a little bit but uh i can make any other night stay away from tuesdays if we can any other new business justice level check uh superintendent orbitals that you said tuesdays will be tuesday's really going to be a little tougher no good for don't try and keep away from tuesdays in this next remainder of the year any other new business all right seeing none we do have one item for executive session yes sir just one item all right so um personnel action may be taken [Music] we should be uh i hate giving a time limit because it never works out that way but um we're hoping that this will be a a quick uh um yeah i just said action may or may not be taken um so we'll say a half an hour shouldn't be more than that right yeah all right and uh so then we'll come back out uh after uh executive session uh do i have a motion to go into executive session motion second by uh mr avajabo second by mr awad roll call please abby driver yes mr awad yes miss password yes mr beltran yes dr danny yes mr smith yes okay where are we going same room a6 public we hope to be back shortly and a half an hour hope what are you doing danny foreign

i was going to leave it that way just oh is there a log in just to get past the windows screen so you don't see i'm not going to say and you should have to vote any other additions to the anything agenda or anything we move on to the consent agenda motion to approve the agenda as presented exactly motion a second for consent agenda everyone vote on your computer motion passes 6-0 move on the public comment excited to see anybody signing into letters or anything so we'll move on to written communications thank you letter everyone move on to administrative reports start with pds more kindergarteners sign up for the jumpstart after uh yeah we are we start tomorrow and i want to say we are at uh any other questions or comments move on to brooklyn middle school i would say enrollment worked really well um talking to debbie we missed about 30 30 30 kids that are not in normal some are on vacation they've already been in contact so that was a little bit different move on to mr reed for rolex high school uh same thing that uh i said things are moving along up there uh i've heard a lot of the staffs they said thank you uh from the elementary to middle school to high school on the uh detention uh i did notice that last year's freshman in this year's sophomore there was a minus 12 business that i don't know it seemed like that was the biggest one throughout the district is that something that has watched your number preliminary numbers too so i don't know if there's something you lost last year um last year was 80 in this year's 68 yesterday that that group came in a lot lower than that uh that's what they had in junior high about i was like i remember writers somewhere around march or april or something they dropped a little bit at that time but we still kept kept it so it's almost like yeah remember but i expect that number to be because it you know that group was pretty small it's a sophomore group that's pretty good size i'm sorry yeah i'm expecting the numbers to be right kind of where i thought unless uh something changes i think we had new students celebrate high school you want a special ed report my biggest thing i feel like i always talk about staffing good news is certified staff we have all positions filled creatively fulfilled paris staff i think i put in it started at like 21 openings down to i don't know 6 8 somewhere in there but i have a couple up north that are gonna test run by um subbing first but are getting in there i had nicole set up three interviews for me down here today so i really feel like that's a number we can whittle away at we're at 21 i was like i don't see how this is going to happen so we've made some progress the biggest issue is that our sub pool district wide is already minimal and i keep hiring full-time employees which only makes it more minimal so that's a fear across the board is how we're going to do that so we're looking at some creative ways to try to help with that because people are going to be gone or need to be gone and i would never forget so but one step at a time i guess okay move on to educational technology report you guys any questions uh we're kind of getting the pinch on chips or freshman laptops yeah we uh we happen to buy refurbished under under the emergency connectivity fund ester type money we had bought new laptops for the eighth graders those are temporarily going to be freshman laptops and then as soon as these other devices come in which we expect sometime in early september then we'll go through a transition period and get the get the freshman their laptops and then we'll rotate those back to the middle school so that was the best we expected a june 5th delivery and just like everything else we've sat and waited is the um blue interactive playground is that installed it is it is installed we got a couple of pieces left to figure to get a couple pieces we've got to figure out now that they've got it installed but they did a little bit with it last week and i don't know darla may have had a crash party up there i'm not sure but yes that's going to be really exciting both for physical education and uh the after school program another way to tie those two together see if we can get a demonstration when we do our we do the two retreats yeah because it's uh it was it was pretty impressive when they were doing the install yeah it's pretty cool and the only other thing we did i think i don't know if i put that in there nikki kelly uh who many of you may know nikki is going to be our new assistive technology para at the elementary school and so she was in enrollment and so we threw her right in the deep end and she got started she's been real involved she was at the elementary school this past year and got involved with showbie and so forth and so i think she'll be a natural fit we're looking forward to having her join the team any other questions or comments for educational technology report very good information go to superintendents report and these numbers again the enrollment chart there again these numbers i just was i was able to get the information from our building um office staff uh this morning so i wasn't able to get these uh over the weekend uh added enrollment i'll echo the same sentiment with enrollment the first two hours was just chaos i mean it was massive busy and everybody handled it terrific i mean i might say chaos that's not right it was just busy i'll just say it's busy but they handled it terrific and uh it just like i said people if you wanted to get in and get out you had a little land in your first two hours and then after that it was i i timed people regularly if you wanted to just go in and do your you know had your work done ahead of time you were out in 10 minutes so it was really a good a good situation again the enrollment numbers are there i compare i didn't have a chance to dive into individual grade levels but i did check last year our preliminary account was 8 15.

like to watch all right you're unmuted can you hear me back there can you hear me okay now i just want to make sure the people that are watching online get here all right uh new jersey open public meeting statement the new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which time any business affecting their interest is discussed and acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act and board of education policy 0162 the board of education of the borough of bound brook has caused notice of this meeting to be posted in the board of office and at bambook high school and mailed her fast to the courier news found referral clerk southbound for board of education and any person who has requested individual notice and paid during firefight please stand for the senate i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under [Music] yes um i the only comment is i hope everyone's summer is going well and uh i guess i'm sure most people heard about the the announcement by the state concerning masks so uh i believe that's the direction that we'll be going because there's just glad we spent time on that we just spent a lot of time discussing that and taking uh surveys but i guess we will be masked uh as of september as far as social distancing we will have to wait and see what the state says on that uh that's all i have for tonight so at this time i need uh open for to the public for anything that's on the agenda oh no i'm sorry doctor i'm sorry no no um just just as i said and tried to give you guys a warning about this um it would start to come to fruition enrollment is going through the roof as we speak most of the students that we are receiving are slight kids which means that they are kids coming from south america with interrupted education so to give you an example we're going to have a number of kids who are going to be in the high school with almost a sixth grade education however their age is going to make us place them as a high school it's either freshmen or sophomores depending on their age and unfortunately they're probably going to age out before they can graduate so it's going to hurt our graduation cohort rate in addition to this by the number of kids that are coming in and as they're coming in across grade levels the other thing that you should be aware of is that regardless of how hard we work when kids are missing multiple years of education it's going to be very very hard to obtain satisfactory numbers in our test scores so i just wanted to bring you uh to that so just to give you an example um mr smith i think high school is at 6 80 for the start of the year up from 608.

good evening all welcome to tonight's board meeting um i appreciate you all being here with that let's stand and have the pledge please of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you next we're going to go to adoption of the agenda is there any agenda items that anybody member from tonight's agenda and there is there's an updated agenda [Music] all in favor next is our call to the public and i think we have one let's see joni joni welcome joanie come on up hi ariel very well thank you i came to talk to you guys because i had heard through the schools that there were some kids that have coveted and what they were doing was all the kids that sat around and they're sending them home to isolate themselves for 10 days and i think that's very unfair you're making a victim of the person that's already sick if these kids aren't sick they need to have the temperatures taped but they're healthy you shouldn't kick him out of school it's wrong to do and i want to know what science that made you come up with that idea we're actually going to talk about it later during my presentation during the superintendent report so i'll share that at that point i would appreciate it because these kids you send something home with the kids parents let them make sure they take their temperatures make sure that they do everything that they should do but the children are healthy and they should come to school all right thank you i encourage you to stay to listen to the rest of mr schultz report thank you all right moving on i'd um six special all right so this is a superintendent report you have a report on your desk uh we're starting off with staffing a little bit different than the order on there but it's all the same stuff excited to report that we have we're down to one opening um teacher opening and i just learned that there was an interview today or i learned earlier but that the interview went very well so they're working on some options there so we may have to be able to fill that that was um our girls p.e teacher at the high school don't worry mrs ballard is coming back she's just transferring to our our school counselor position which is we're actually excited about she's going to be we think an excellent school counselor so we're backfilling her position so ms ballard is sticking around and we're just backfilling her position and we think we have a viable candidate we're just kind of exploring different options with this person so that's positive we do have of our international uh teachers that are coming in we do have two that are actually in the united states right now um we have a and these are the two that are on the j-1 visa which is the exchange student visa or exchange teacher visa sorry our third j-1 visa teacher we learned over the weekend has received clearance to come to united states and she's just waiting on her plane kit and then the h-1b visa it's just uh for both of them we have one from the philippines and our psychologists from the netherlands it's paperwork right now and we we need to get send stuff to the secretary arizona secretary of state's office they're closed mail only we sent it down got it back we set it down a second time waiting for it to come back she's approved by the united states to come into the country she does not have the approval of the filipino government to leave the country that's where we're what we're working on now and then the um our psychologist from the netherlands he we're just going through the visa process with him he started a little bit late so we didn't expect him to be done in addition um i learned in the term senjin area sounds like it's mr fogle knows uh maybe as a social studies teacher the shenzhen region is basically western europe um and right now there's a travel ban from the senjen region to united states and that was actually just extended i think last week from the weekend before so we're waiting on that travel ban to expire also in order for him to travel to the united states so we think it'll happen shortly um but we're just kind of crossing our fingers and going to the visa process anyway so we can bring bring him out law conference uh mr tona and i are attending no one is attending the delegate assembly we'll talk a little bit about what's gonna hap the agenda or the agenda items at the delegate assembly but we're not gonna have you as a board will not have any input other than your original input just because there won't be a representative there but i wanted to kind of let you know that um enrollment super excited um there's a summary sheet in the in the report on enrollment we are up when you talk about strictly avm 150 to 200 kids um our kindergarten went from 130 last year to over 190 this year um even our last year's kindergarten in the first grade is what rankings 155 i think was one of the last numbers i saw in first grade right now 158 158 low 130s last year so we're getting those kinders back that didn't come to school last year they're coming back super excited about that our high school i can't remember the last time our high school over 800 kids right now and that's that's pretty much solid so those are solid numbers now that number will go down as we get through the end of the as we get to the school year that's always happens it's it's a normal you know attrition and then what happens is our high school goes down our k-8 tends to go up at the same time we get some k-8 kids um which i don't know if how our teachers are going to handle more k-8 kids coming in so we're excited about that so um you know last year i think we mentioned there were 50 000 kids across the state that didn't come to school because of code um by choice it wasn't there you know they chose their families chose not to send their kids they just kind of disappeared off the rolls we hopefully have gained our kids back and if our enrollment holds we haven't seen these numbers probably in four or five years if not longer so super excited about that and um you know that kind of goes into kind of the first week of school recap i shared with you an email but for everyone that's watching or listening now i attended three of the four parent um meet the teacher nights and just went out to some of the schools first day of school there seems to be kind of a buzz that we haven't felt in a little while about coming to school very positive maybe some of the happiest people the parents being able to send their kids to school and send them off and and um have them you know there's a sense of normalcy i think that we haven't had things are still and that's going to be our next thing we'll talk about october but things are still you know concerning when it comes to covet but um you know there's there's it's been the most normal in the last 18 months really so that was exciting uh let's see um as any questions so far so as kind of a transition and to kind of talk a little bit about what joni was saying um we did have one student that was asymptomatic so the student did not know they were positive they weren't sick that was at a family function the prior weekend someone at that family function was positive they got their family tested she was positive as well so um there's 12 students that have been um quarantined because of that and you asked about where those numbers come for that information come from um it's there's guidance on there's guidance on the cdc website and there's guidance on the arizona department of health services and they answer your question is we don't know that's why they're quarantined yeah so has been so unreliable we that's the information that we have available and that's what we're where we've decided to use that's the best information that we have well no there's actually uh information from the uh american association of association of pediatrics and the numbers so the low low numbers of what children do and how they pass it now let me i'm not quite done with my presentation yet okay so let me let me finish okay so um but that's what's going on in the district right now um so i i did give you some information about what um according to the arizona department of health services um we are in a high transmission area right now or high transmission right now um also the next page is from the um county health department or is it here yeah it's in here the county health department so there have been um as you can see the the cases in chino valley and paulden this is over the last month what's what's taken place and so um there have been 211 cases combined that average about seven cases per day one thing that i did want to point out is when you look at school age cases which is the one on the far right they've been pretty pretty constant um most of the days it's been less than ten ten school-age kids um in and this is yavapai county so that's all of yavapai county we've had less and that's from 5 to 17 is the range that they have available on the county website okay so relatively low numbers um one thing that i shared with you and it should be in there is there was some guidance from the department of education the arizona department of education that talked about what maricopa county's recommendations are when it comes to quarantine and they are recommending putting it down to 10 days quarantine and seven days if you test they're still saying that you should probably mask from day 11 through 14.

i'll start of the stream again mr mcgivern it's going okay one moment um [Music] one moment in very short order we'll get back from going here one personality feet yes okay thank you folks we're back in session now we're going to repeat roll call we have uh mr rollers uh online now mrs allen yes mrs here mr australia mr yes thank you uh we're on agenda item number six if you're following along four one minutes please i'll approve motion that yes thank you okay call to the public we have uh anybody else on the phone public okay i have one to read and then we have a couple of folks here okay this is from doug this is stallman stalling here to the continental board my son is a fifth a sixth grader sorry at continental elementary we moved to green valley in 2018.

um [Music] you ready sir good ready please join me in the pledge pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you let's go please this is alex here mrs price here miss rogers mr ellery mr mcdavid yes thank you i'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda please second motion in a second any discussion group mrs allen yes mrs keith yes mr austin yes yes thank you we will now encourage

and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all does anybody have anything to add to the agenda no can i please have a motion to prove the agenda second vivian and lauren uh all in favor any oppose eyes have it item six board member code of conduct review gary i will be sufficiently informed about and prepared to act on specific issues before the board and remain reasonably knowledgeable about local state national and global education issues all right thank you does anybody have any questions on the consent agenda no no no uh can i please have a motion to prove the consent agenda motion second yes all right do we have any public comments no superintendent's report mr gold all right uh first i want to mention that all the comments from last meeting i do have a meeting set up with her this week so wednesday night i think i'm gonna kind of go through some things i wanna make sure you follow it up uh item a the vendor expense report we uh try to provide this to the board every every year at this time nothing to present really just something for information purposes we try to be as transparent as possible so you can see the various expenses throughout the year to different vendors there any questions to let me know i just said i i sent bob some questions about i had on it um if anybody didn't know the analyze stevenson cost was for the vaccination pod yeah which was good and then this uh my biggest concern was the seed all cost yes so based on based on what we have in seed all we're spending forty two thousand dollars per student in cedaw and on average we spend in our budget i just use the expense line from this current budget that was in the packet we're at 28 000 per student so it's yeah yeah the tuition cost there is every bit that much that you mentioned there so we're at uh but that 508 000 from last year is a little higher than normal because our tuition costs went up because the ida funding was done differently we get all the idea funding now we they used to get part of it we now get all of it but yeah it's it's uh we i think we have and dr pittman you can correct me if i'm wrong we have 12 or 13.

on behalf of the board of education i would like to thank the public for attending tonight's meeting we value the feedback we receive from our residents and encourage everyone to take an active interest in their public school system residents interested in speaking to the board this evening are asked to have completed a comment card and presented it to the secretary to the board when the secretary calls your name i ask that you come to the microphone state your name for the public record and provide your feedback in order to hear from as many community members as possible comments are limited to three minutes per person for a total of 45 minutes and three comments per subject unless time allows for more within the 45 minutes tonight i will read five email comments at the beginning with students being given the priority and these will be prioritized in the order they were received all hello board members i'm a freshman in 308 and i'm asking you to please abide by governor pritzker's k-12 mask mandate i say this as someone who doesn't like wearing a mask i say this as someone who misses seeing my friends smile i say this as someone who wants so badly to return to a pre-pandemic world i wish i could hug my teachers and friends i wish i could sit less than a foot away from all my classmates i wish we could talk shoulder to shoulder in the hallways but that's what i wish would happen as much as i want this pre-pandemic school experience i want my friends classmates and teachers to be safe and healthy over all of that as mustard as i want these i know that when one student gets hospitalized none of it will be worth it i know this must be a hard decision to make but you can't teach science in classrooms and then ignore it when it shares an unfortunate truth sadly the pandemic hasn't ended cases and hospitalizations are rising and every credible health department recommends universal masking in schools as much as we all want to be back to normal please make the decision that will protect everyone thank you for hearing me out hello board members i am an incoming freshman in district 308 and i am requesting that you abide by governor pritzker's masked mandate for k-12 schools i'm reading what was sent in this pandemic has been challenging and difficult for everyone but it is not over covig-19 cases are recently rising across the states and public schools are prime places for the virus to spread and infect thousands of children going to school in person is the best way for students to learn but the safeties of those students and the staff is most important as much as i hate wearing a mask anywhere and even though i am vaccinated i am still at risk of spreading it to my younger sibling who is unable to get vaccinated schools with students and faculty wearing masks will lessen the risk of spreading it to family and friends who are unable to get the vaccine or getting infected with covet itself i miss so much seeing the smile of my friends instead of having to read it in their eyes or being able to hug them without the worry about dying of this deadly virus and taking safety precautions like wearing masks is the best way to go back to something normal so please consider abiding by the governor's mandate to help lessen the spread of covid19 thank you for your time hello i am a freshman at oswego east high school with the rising concern about the delta variant and the worrying amount of cases rising i think it would be best to continue enforcing the governor's mass mandate for our schools i know some people might see this as unnecessary or useless because we all just came out of a long exhausting lockdown but the truth is until we start to work together and wear our masks this will be our lives until then until we come together we won't be able to see our friends faces until we come together we won't be able to travel to many places until we come together we can't move on from this drawn out situation so please let us all come together wear our masks and fight this virus as a community good evening this is avery mccowen robbie and i am currently a student at oswego east high school below is my public comment good evening my name is avery and i will be an incoming junior at oswego east high school i know the topic of masking has been very contentious so i wanted to share some thoughts as a current student one of the things that all students have learned since the beginning of elementary school were the character counts pillars two of which are caring and citizenship if you truly want to dissect the mask debate wearing a mask demonstrates two of our foundational character principles for our district we all understand that masks are not an enjoyable experience however if you can't be quiet while the process is going on you will be you will be asked to leave we all understand that masks are not an enjoyable experience however i am an emerging adult wanting to do everything possible to be a strong supporting sd 308 community member don't even understand why wearing a mask during a pandemic is even a question on the table i understand as americans we fought hard for our freedom but wearing a mask to get us out of this pandemic will give us back our freedom to resume our pre-pandemic lives something we all want our world is broken and we need to teach our children that the only way for us to be saved is to come together as good citizens not only of our district but our nation to care for and protect one another thank you for your time jennifer stamp thank you i would ask that the entirety of my comments be made a part of the official record my name is jennifer stamp i live in this district and my daughter is an elementary school child in this district she is ineligible for the vaccine due to her age i've also been a lawyer for nearly two decades i want to address constitutional rights and liberties in regard to the enforceability of a masked mandate as we all know the first amendment gives citizens the right to assemble and redress grievances with their government however the right to assembly is not absolute as you stated in your opening remarks when assembling at a public meeting the first amendment does not allow audience members to interrupt delay or disturb proceedings courts have held that when this occurs microphones can be turned off the disruptive audience member may be removed and the meeting may be adjourned the first amendment is also subject to time place and manner of restrictions i'm happy to show my id to verify that is my place to be here i live here this is my daughter's school district you're my school board i'm here to address my grievances i challenge any subsequent speaker to do the same if audience members are coming here in mobs from other communities to dictate policy i question whether they are properly placed here our local school board is not their government they have no grievance to address with you that affects their life or their child's education through speaking they are preventing actual community members from addressing their grievances with their government it defeats the entire purpose of the first amendment for persons in our community the first amendment is not a shield to say or do whatever you want there are several forms of speech not protected by the first amendment including defamation fighting words intimidation harassment threats it's not a first amendment right to harass audience or board members it's disorderly conduct it's a matter for the criminal code and not the constitution i would also like to address the idea that covet is governed by parental choice it's not a parental choice to determine if a community as well as its children are exposed to a potentially deadly virus it's not a vote we take among parents covet safety is the domain of the health department period i would also like to address any debate that the governor's mass mandate does not need to be followed the governor's authority to impose mass mandates was challenged last year by six separate plaintiffs all six lawsuits were dismissed in sangamon county the court found that it is squarely within his emergency powers as well as within his powers under the federal and state constitution to issue a mandate if the school board ignores the mandate they face liability and accreditation issues if an individual ignores the mandate they're welcome to be the seventh plaintiff in a masked lawsuit and i would expect that the governor will remain undefeated in that lawsuit as well i apologize but your time is up thank you for your time thank you [Applause] bristol casper she's not here yet christian crystal read the name again crystal casper hello my name is crystal casper i'm the mother to a sophomore in the district for months i've come up here to advocate for parent choice especially when it comes to masking kids this past week governor pritzker once again overstepped his authority to issue mass mandates for all schools including private institutions i'm guessing the board thinks they're off the hook which is why there's no agenda item for math well i'm here to tell the board it's not mass aren't laws all right i'm sorry mandates aren't laws house bill 2789 has not been passed giving the governor the ability to make mandates enforceable this is a fact and i encourage you to investigate that thousands of parents grandparents taxpayers and state reps are all banning together to fight for our children manuka board members have maintained the local control making mass optional and are considering suing j.b pritzker the village of orland park is fighting back against the illinois general assembly to push back and have the governor reevaluate his mass mandate school board members are stepping down because they don't agree with masking kids and school boards are waking up and standing their ground to give parents a choice regardless of these mandates when is school district 308 going to stand up and join this fight to end these illegal mandates on our children mass may be causing our children more harm than good it's not okay for children to be silenced and complacent to be instilled with fear if they don't wear a mask thinking they're going to get others sick it's not okay for my child to have a headache from wearing a mask for hours at a time and it's not okay for my child to be able to not talk to his friends because they have to stay three feet apart my son doesn't even recognize his friends because half their faces are covered tell me how does this make school a fun place to be why would any child want to go to school like this my son does not want to go back to school if he has to wear a mask here are my three questions here are my questions for you that i would like answered to a follow-up email are you going to discipline kids who refuse to wear a mask are you going to allow mask breaks if needed what are you going to do when my child or any other child passes out from wearing a mask because it does happen what are you going to do when my kid or any child gets a staph infection on their face or bronchitis from breathing his or own germs for eight hours and that too does happen these are all legitimate questions and liability concerns that can arise from prolonged mask usage all children in request are required by illinois law to have access to free public education and that is not contingent on wearing a mask my son will not be wearing a mask to school he will not be tested for covid by school staff and my son will not be subject to unwarranted discipline or discrimination this fight is not over i call on the school district to unite with parents teachers administration and do the right thing for our children and fight the governor in his illegal mandates that infringe on our normal school year let's retain our mass optional option don't they deserve that after what they've been through for the last 18 months thank you michelle klein [Applause] michelle klein i am hi my name is michelle klein i'm here to speak on behalf of we the people of 308 and also on behalf of awake illinois to whom it may concern all every single one of you awake illinois is a registered 501c not-for-profit social welfare organization supporting constitutional and parental rights in illinois we are proud to announce the awake illinois chapter has officially launched and is available to meet with community leadership and policy makers to discuss collaboration efforts our members include parents taxpayers and involved citizens who support our american principles protections and liberties whether the issues are at the local school board level or the state level we are organized and paying attention from rural areas to urban areas we are actively calling out any forms of government outreach or constitutional violations especially those that are oppressing our children from house bill 2789 the latest sex ed senate bill 0818 and the implementation of device curricula parents are understandably concerned about their children's education additionally the perception that elected school boards have any role in health care decisions or medical decisions is worrisome we support parental rights regarding facial masks viral testings asymptomatic quarantine and or 12-19 vaccination of our children we implore this school district and administrators to lead and enact policies that maintain the integrity of the constitution of the united states the declaration of independence and the bill of rights should you be willing to meet and discuss how our advocacy may help unite our community stakeholders please contact us please visit visit www.awakeil.com to learn about how we are affecting positive change by educating others on these issues and empowering our communities communities to advocate we are awake illinois and we cannot be canceled thank you you also you also all receive this email already [Applause] one a little second hello again public servants remember me because i certainly remember you oh mrs johnson i hope telling everyone that you don't work for them was worth it because 120 000 people got to see make a fool of yourself so keep it up i want to welcome you all today 516 of the permanent pandemic yes it was 516 days ago on march 11 2020 the world health organization declared chronovirus pandemic and here we are talking about masks and wearing them apparently i just want to let you all know one thing hell will freeze over before i let david pritzker tell me what to do i think many of the parents in this room feel the same way so our governor can kindly pound sand we don't want to force our kids to wear a suit of masks period i mean do you guys just like to see kids suffer did someone hurt you as a child so is your mission to hurt these kids it also makes no sense why any of you care what and what any of these parents decide to do with their own kids most of these women spent nine months with their kids in their belly and probably went through a lot of pain and labor so i think they've earned the right to make the decisions at the very least but today i need to highlight a very important issue last meeting mrs johnson took her time to complain about someone telling her you should know what's good for you over the past week i myself been a target of not only harassment but threats and physical violence on august 3rd at a school meeting i was charged at and hit by a deranged member of the public and was almost knocked off my feet other people screamed profanities at me the police actually wouldn't let me file a report at the school so at 10 30 at night i had to drive to the police station myself to seek justice after that i was featured on nbc5 and a couple days later i got messages from an unknown number who wouldn't tell me who he is saying play stupid games win stupid prizes and a friend of mine who was then school with activism herself on three separate occasions had people show up to her home address and throw projectiles at our home with their husband and young children inside i myself have seen people lurking outside my house this has got to stop i am 18 years old i live with my parents who are not involved with my activism and i am deathly afraid not only for my own safety but for theirs as well if any crazy person show up to my home address and i don't appreciate the news media in oswego broadcasting what town i live in or even doing the research to find my home address mark harrington i have gone to the police stations more time in the past week than i have in my entire life and it is exhausting i just want to be able to advocate for children and parents without having to look over my shoulder every five seconds or worrying about my safety while walking my own dog in my own neighborhood harassing us at our homes workplaces or in public has got to stop please all remember that we are humans and we will disagree but we have to be conscious of everyone's safety thank you [Applause] joanne johnson hi my name is joanne johnson and i'm here to talk about critical race theory and my husband is actually holding up a picture of our family and as you can see our family consists of every color from translucent to coal black the only thing that matches in this picture is our clothes and the reason that we did that is so that nobody would stand out i have taken time to ensure that i've been educated on what critical race theory teaches critical race theory is not history it comes from the opinions and it uses it to manipulate it uses history to manipulate and justify the vilification of the white man as well as to be intolerant of other people's opinions this is my family the only colors that matter are the color of our blood according to crt color blindness equates to ignoring the struggles of the black and brown community according to critical race theory our white children are need to learn about their whiteness and inherent racism our white children are the oppressors of their black and brown siblings note my parents actually fled from greece i am white i have white skin i do not have white privilege never have all he wanted all my dad wanted was an opportunity to be a citizen in the united states and to be able to hold down a job and never take anything but to contribute to his country critical race theory teaches our brown children that their brothers and sisters need to help them make it in this world because they can't do it on their own critical race theory theory says that white people are not allowed to be racist because they are not in the minority lack of brown people are our white grandson who adores their papa is really racist according to critical race theory they are nine months and two years old in the johnson household our children are taught to show respect to everybody our children will respect the law if they get pulled over their hands will go on the steering wheel and they will answer yes sir no ma'am our children are expected to do the best that they can in school and all have straight a's including the brown ones all children that have to deal with people that are bad this is a fact of life it is not their job to judge the lives of others it is for them to learn how to deal with the adversity and tough things in life our school district should apologize but your time is up okay sorry thank you [Applause] no i'm sorry you cannot defer your time to someone else okay our school district shocked me with its publication of being racist i've never seen it in any of the five years of my five children went through this school i see our volleyball teams with mvps and honorable awards going to black children to include gay black children if you want to teach this hate infested theory go for it but give parents the choice to opt out this is not history this is using history to be a victim my kids are not victims joanne's and kevin's they are victors to end this i'd like to make a statement about last month's school board meeting four things that struck me deeply one threatening emails are being sent that is wrong and we as a community are better than that two that the school district doesn't work for us you are an elected official to represent and fight for we the people three then to sit out a vote when a hundred percent of the parents that came up said they didn't want mass and you set out the vote clearly your personal feelings cannot be put aside for the people who elected you it may be high time to let someone take your seat four lastly there was a member who said that they refused to have their child carry that avid binder because it caused back issues i agree that it is within your right to do that but don't then turn around and tell us what we must have our children wear mass when it has been proven that is bad for their mental and physical health learning and comprehension as well as social skills they have zero percent chance of dying this is less lethal than the flu to our kids these vaccines have killed more kids than covet i was not prepared to speak i worked in the school district until the mass mandates came out and then i refused last year but can you put your mask up please i'm sorry thank you so sorry um i've been in this district for the past 20 plus years the crt thing for me is extremely frustrating i know no i've been in this district and i can say that i have treated everybody the same and i've never had issues with anybody black asian white indian it doesn't matter you're you're selling the whole district short thinking that this is going to improve anything i think it's just going to backfire and as a parent of five kids that have been through this school district i think all parents should have an option of what they want their child to do you know the lady here that that would probably like to have her child vaccinated and can't that's her prerogative and there's plenty other people out here who think opposite i think this is what's missing in america we need to be able to debate our differences respectfully and make a decision that's what makes us americans it's not tyrannical we're a republic we need to start acting like it we're all adults come together unite do what's best for the children politics aside get rid of it do what's right dennis okay uh hi my name is inga denos dear school board members the united states of america is an exceptional nature nation founded in liberty inspiring leaders including george washington thomas jefferson abraham lincoln frederick douglass and reverend martin luther king jr have demonstrated what it means to be american uniting people through a common culture of humanity and citizenship that celebrates and respects the individual a public institution schools such as schools should reflect our american values now ask yourself if you agree with the following generalization should be should we be teaching children that all white people are inherently racist segregation should we be teaching children that america is systematically racist country based in white supremacy intolerance should we be teaching children that you are either racist or anti-racist and there is no neutral conjuncture should we be teaching children that white america is inherently anti-black and that all whites suffer from unconscious bias against people of color marginalization should we be teaching children that the most important determine determine of success in their life is skin color if you answered no to any of these questions consider how this approach is undermine undermines progress towards equality as a concerned parent i do not believe that crt should be in k-12 education today this type of teaching will not establi establish mutual respect rather than focus on division we should promote bringing people together and celebrating the talents of individuals while fostering strong bonds for the betterment of our shared community thank you [Applause] taylor spears jayla spears [Music] she's she's coming jayla spears good evening my name is jayla and i'm a senior at ob this past year i had a teacher who talked about real world topics and it kept the whole class engaged we were able to improve our critical thinking skills and were given space to speak freely in an intellectual environment i began to develop a real connection with my teacher and classmates because our teacher decided to incorporate things that we actually care about in our curriculum things that matter being accepted was enforced and it made for a better learning environment i did exceedingly well in that class because my teacher pushed us to be better as students and as people this definitely has not been the case for all of my teachers i've had teachers who sat me and two other black girls in my class in the back for entire youth an entire year and never bothered to learn our names it made me feel unnoticed and insignificant i've had teachers who by definition bullied students in my class and i've seen teachers give up on students who needed guidance witnessing the treatment of my friend witnessing this treatment of my friends made it hard to learn because i never felt comfortable and i was afraid to ask questions a simple word of encouragement or acknowledgement of a student's feelings goes a long way some students need that student teacher connection and need to know their teacher actually cares about them i was told that outside the family origin teachers are the second most influential person in the in a child's life they hold an immense power and influence about how we feel about ourselves teachers have a huge impact on our growth so they need to be held to a higher standard how teachers interact with students have a profound effect on academic outcomes and how students feel about themselves that's why we're here in support of the district and culturally responsive teaching students want to be seen and supported when we feel good we do good we need teachers to be more accepting and willing to consider our backgrounds while teaching messages that will impact us thank you for hearing my voice [Applause] william sampao good evening to the board and the superintendent i'm will sample i'm a senior at oa and my one's coming tonight to talk about culturally responsive teaching um by definition it means um it's a research and response based form of teaching i think all students myself can benefit greatly from this form of teaching um i'm just one of those two immigrants and it's always been very important for me to see representations of myself and my culture and my community this has driven me to start programs with the library teaching kids how to how about their differences and make them unique i think that message needs to be spread into the classroom personally i haven't experienced this much i think a lot of our black history education has been focused around european history inaccurate understanding of this nation's history and an additional lens with which to examine our legal framework can only enhance our understanding of our nation and its current state students learn about various events um beginning as early as third grade we learned about the holocaust and like world war ii because that information allows us to learn um to understand our past and the atrocities and successes the successes only make sense when we understand all that we have and need to overcome i believe that diversifying the narrative and immersing students in multiple cultures will provide us with some valuable messages we can learn for life i can't wait to the future for this district thank you for your time [Applause] good evening school members of the school board thank you for the opportunity to address you on the record my name is asanto jones and i live in district 308 and i'm a proud senior this year this district like many others around the country has faced unprecedented challenges fluctuating mandates and a barrage of concerns from parents and students so i thank you for continuing to show up as a student in this district it is greatly appreciated concerned parents are the part of the reason we continue to thrive as district parents of this district unify organize and voice their concern and this board in turn listens isn't always perfect but we're all striving for one goal the best for every student this pedagogy is not new to our district as addressed with our diversity and equity committee since 2008 we know that culturally responsive teaching not to be confused with critical race theory are attributes of excellent educators cultural responsive practices foster high expectations for students despite negative stereotypes foster's critical thinking skills and inquiry and most important a safe environment in which a student can engage and grow it is always it also fosters a healthy student-teacher relationship overall my experience at this school has been positive a specific instance of this was when an english teacher i had for two years during my freshman and sophomore year pushed me more than other any other teacher she was the first of my teachers to expect more out of me than i expected of myself and i have high expectations of myself throughout middle school i was able to go through school barely engaged in class discussions as long as i continued to get an a in the class this changed with this teacher the class environment she had allowed students to flourish she made the she made it feel comfortable to ask questions she did this through little things like taking the time to pronounce every student's name correctly and also through bigger things like holding every student to the same expectation through her making sure the class fits each student's individual and cultural needs students can reach their full potential and feel welcomed this is not the standard i've had more than one teacher would not call me by my preferred name assange because it was too hard to pronounce oftentimes people of color allowed to fall behind because of preconceived notions i have once been referred as the whitest black person that person knew the reasoning was because i was nice quiet and intelligent having this said about me as a child child confused me at the time i associated these traits as an aspect of my identity not as subverting racial stereotypes why was academic success not seen as something that could be associated with people who look like me culturally responsive teaching emphasizes having high expectations for every student i want to say thank you to miss toonaman because you have demonstrated what excellence and practice feels and looks like this is why i'm in support of continued cultural responsive teaching and training in the district thank you for listening andrew nicholson thank you members of the board as we know will and kendall counties have been classified as high transmission areas with cases going up in will county 141 percent over the last 14 days cases going up in kendall county up 198 over the last 14 days we remain at only 48 fully vaccinated so now that governor pritzker has implemented the mass mandate parents are looking to school boards to make sure that the mandate is implemented and that you do not give in to uninformed denial of science this isn't about opinion and this isn't about asking you to honor the request it's about doing what is required four things to keep in mind my mask protects you your mask protects me so if somebody doesn't wear a mask i'm the one who's at rest schools that don't adhere to the mandate are opening themselves up to liability and sanction the state of illinois has the right to remove funding and insurance companies have the right to remove coverage from schools that refuse to comply the virus does not care about political beliefs you should not care about them when you're defending children from it and lastly you don't actually work for the parents you work for the school district and it's your job to do the right thing for the school district and the people who go to school either to learn or to be taught or to to teach i'm going to tell a little story my eight-year-old went on a playdate on sunday and he was almost at the door when he said oh wait i forgot my mask and he ran back inside i forgot it his mother forgot it but he was like needed an umbrella because it was going to rain so he came back in to get his mask and when he came home later that night he told his mother myself they had gone into uh a fast food restaurant and he said i wore my mask and i said did you really said of course i did dad it's the same way that children have been talking to parents about stuff that they think is obvious for generations kids do not have a problem with masks parents have a problem with masks pediatric icu departments all over the country are getting overwhelmed children are getting coveted and even when they do survive they're experiencing greater side effects something called the long covid as part of a layered approach including social distancing sanitizing and vaccination masks are safe to use and work to protect kids from covid when everyone uses them please do not give in to the anti-science agenda protect our children thank you for your work for our kids and our schools and if nothing else this meeting has taught me that we need to push to make public education more available to everybody thank you terry jackson harry jackson hello um i live in the school district my kids are graduated now but both went to us we go east but i'm here as a concerned citizen concerned citizen for our school children a current concerned citizen for the community at large because of the the spread of cobit and especially right now with the spread of the delta variant which is much more aggressive much more contagious and as as most of you probably know just from following the news and keeping up is is rampant again across the country and the um it seems to me that a lot of people in the room i'm sure the board knows this very well but a lot of people in the room don't seem to realize this and that the kid that their decision well they think their decision as a parent is is to to make the decisions for the health care for their children but think about how this affects the rest of the children in the school district and that's your responsibility is to protect them and it's not just about their individual child but it's about all of the children this is a very very contagious virus and possibly deadly virus even for kids actually right now across the country there's a little it's affecting a lot of children right now there's children across this country that are hospitalized there's children that are on life support it can happen but it's not it's not just that it's the fact that this is a virus that you can have that you don't even realize you have that you don't have symptoms your child could be sim could have coveted could be some not feeling symptoms could spread it not only to the other children in the school but to the staff in the school to the employees in the school to the janitors to everyone in the school and then bring that that home spread that to the family spread it to other community members and this is where what i think we're really missing is that this is about the collective about of us as a community us as a school district us you know as a school here at us we go east is to protect each other and the simple fact of wearing a piece of cloth over over your face in order to protect people where's the humanity where's the caring about other people in the effects that that this can have on people with immunocompromised health issues and and just we just don't know what this can do to the individual child and why take the chance and as a board why take the chance on a child getting this and possibly possibly dying it's very serious thank you [Applause] this will be our last comment for the evening zoe mormont hi i'm zoe wearman i'm an incoming senior at ohs and some of you may remember me from two meetings ago when i urged you to require masks i was going to get up here today energy to require masks again for my safety but today i stand urging you to consider this for the future consider the fact that the cdc had to recommend wearing masks to keep me safe consider the fact that none of us have a choice but to go to the school district consider the fact that this virus is deadly why did it take a state mandate for masks to be required well i couldn't tell you that but the truth is i don't care what all these parents do in their free time they can take their children to play dates without masks and run around speaking against masks all they want but they don't get to endanger my safety this school district is where i learned to speak for myself and where i learned to fact check my sources this school district is where i learned exponential growth which has become a very relevant topic during this pandemic this school district is where i learned biology which taught me how dangerous pandemics can be one person's constitutional right ends when it negatively impacts the health and safety of others two meetings ago the message i received from the school board was clear the message i received was that one child's discomfort wearing a mask is more important than my physical safety when receiving an education in a building where i'm required to go i've been called fearful and i can assure you this isn't fear i've simply been well educated an education i receive from this district and my community an education that i am now using to say consider our safety when formulating safety plans this year i've heard these parents cry to give them their power back that it's their children so they get to say what they wear as a teen girl in this district i can say the squirty tells me what i can and can't wear and that these parents never had the power due to the dress code if you can make me put on a sweater you can make everybody wear a mask and follow proper safety protocols ultimately your job is to keep the district running and now your job is also to keep the students safe so please keep me safe this school year by maintaining proper safety protocols throughout the year as long as covet is raging we need to continue requiring masks thank you to all the board members who have had to put up with threats and harassment you didn't deserve that as you are simply trying to do your job but please don't cave to public pressure the loudest voice in the room isn't always the right voice the safety of students is the most important and one student hospitalized would be one too many as many of these parents have said they love their children in that case they shouldn't want their child hospitalized from covet or potentially dead please listen to the students who have to go to school and who care about keeping people alive thank you [Applause] thank you everyone for your comments we now move on to 5.1 board member comments as many of you know the board members had a retreat on june 26 to start the year off right with the majority of the board being new our iasb representative provided a training and during this training she asked each of us to write down what we wanted our legacy to be at the end of our term i thought these statements would be helpful for all of you to hear so i'll read a few of them for you now this board sought information to be prepared for discussions thoughtfully considered administration's recommendations and collaborated respectfully to make decisions in the best interest of students staff and the school community as a whole compassionate advocates for all students and staff that we set an example to our students and community of how to work collaboratively how to work through problems from multiple perspectives while respecting each other's opinions and ideas this board was a caring governing body who listened to community input in their decision-making process which led to an educational environment where kids feel safe cared for and prepared for what comes next created a culture of professionalism integrity and equity created a team that included all stakeholders working together for the best interests of all of our students brought our community back together had a top rated and sought after district proud proud to be a boe member representing the community proud to work here go to school and graduate from here we develop systems to create and maintain a learning climate that values all individuals while simultaneously creating a sense of community we cared and were fair our governance aided in creating an educational environment that is inclusive of all community members they did what was right and what was best for current future students staff and community the district is positioned for growth and for everyone to reach their maximum potential while in the district and beyond among these statements you will notice common themes of collaboration community and doing what is in the best interest of our students please know that this is what is in the hearts of every person who sits up here tonight we want to work with one another not against one another and most of all we want to provide the best world-class education possible in the safest environment possible for our children thank you anyone else okay so we move on now to the superintendent report well good evening board uh tonight is our last regularly scheduled meeting prior to welcoming back our staff on august 16th and our 17 000 plus students to the 21-22 school year the summer has been an extremely busy one as we prepare for the upcoming year and i am looking forward to the school year beginning i have i have often said that schools are just bricks and mortar without the students and staff and i know i speak for everyone when i say how much we are looking forward to the upcoming school year last week we held a two-day orientation for our new administrators our new administrators spent time with our district leaders in professional development and we also held a retreat for all admin last friday at murphy junior high uh one thing i'd like to thank the oswego oswego rotary for choosing school district 308 as one of their service projects this year last week rotarians and different community members came together uh to clean all 142 of our district 308 buses so i can now say that our buses are waxed they're gassed and they're clean from top to bottom and they're ready for kids on august 18th so as you can see there's a lot of things happening in school district 308 as we get ready for the 21 22 school year and that is my report for this evening i'll have more more later i motion for approval of consent agenda i make a motion to approve all items under consent including 6.1 minutes from the july 12 2021 board of education meeting open and closed session and 6.2 acknowledge the foia request received by the district second mrs simonton aye dr marino aye mr gatewood aye mr swanson aye mrs croner hi mrs doyle aye mrs johnson aye motion passes seven zero item 7.1 is financial statements are there any questions regarding the information that has been provided to the board this evening item 7.2 is in regards to driver's education vehicles dr petsky will present at this time dr pesky thanks dr sparlin all right well i'd like to present to the board of education today just a little bit of history on what we do with our driver's education vehicles and uh i'd like to talk about the challenge we had in january when we went to bid for our vehicles and a proposal that has been designed to help us meet that need so starting off on our first light here you can see our current practice we currently rent our drivers education vehicles they're uh we rent them for about 675 dollars a month per vehicle it comes out two for six vehicles three at oh oswego high school and three at oswego east high school so six total vehicles for forty eight thousand six hundred dollars so if you did want to look at this in terms of a lease cost like a three year lease that would be like a hundred forty five thousand eight hundred dollars over three years in addition to renting the cars or even if we were to lease the cars we would be responsible for the maintenance over those three years and the maintenance cost comes out to about six uh six thousand four hundred eighty dollars now back uh back in 2014 we've started renting these vehicles and in 2018 we released a bid to find out if we could replace our vehicles and when we released that bid we had no one respond to it so we engaged with our current car dealership and we just acquired six new vehicles and again began renting the vehicles now that lease is up we did go out to bid or not the lease but the renting program is up now we uh we did put out the bid we were given three bids from three different dealerships and we uh chose the lowest bid and we started negotiating with the sales team for that for those vehicles and when the finance department found out that we were leasing the vehicles they said no because you they don't want the liability with leased vehicles to uh they don't want the liability of leased vehicles being used in the driver's ed program so we reached out to our other bidders and told them the same situation and they they too they were not comfortable with the finance department honoring a lease so we went back to our we went back to our current rental agreement and and our local dealership and they they said that they weren't interested in considering the rental program either so that left us with looking for another option and fortunately there are some out there so if you look in the next box here on the right the proposal is we've engaged with a fleet management company with enterprise fleet management and um what we're looking at is doing what's called an open-ended municipal lease and so they will lease the vehicles to us the the cost for that lease is 48 366 dollars it would be a three-year program this program would include maintenance so we wouldn't have an additional cost there but what's nice about the fleet management system is at the end of the three-year term enterprise will work with us to either sell the vehicles and give us the equity which would amount to about twenty six thousand eight hundred twenty six dollars at the end of this lease or we could roll that equity into acquiring new vehicles so it gives us some options so in addition to that twenty six thousand eight hundred twenty six dollars in equity we get also the maintenance cost and the difference between the the two leases in the program so we would actually be saving about eleven thousand three hundred thirty six dollars a year or about thirty four thousand eight dollars over the three year term there we go um and just if you've got a question about bidding or not bidding are we still within the realm of what we can do because we did bid this out we um we do not have to go out for bids to compare this but i do want to mention we are a member in what's called source well or eni public sourcing these two groups our memberships in these they uh enterprise actually won contracts for them so they can acquire vehicles for us at a co-op purchasing program price so we are assured that we are getting low prices on the vehicles that we are engaging in this contract with so that's something i'd like to talk to you a little bit more about later too there's other purchasing options with these co-ops as well so let's look at the complicated screen just so i make sure everyone knows what we're talking about here so the first thing let's look at the thing that pops out and that's the four squares and kind of the lower left with a fleet management option we can actually choose to do one of four things we can either buy the cars right now outright which is called the self-funded or the cash option we can finance the car we can buy it on finance terms to zero and we can own it when we're done or we can do a closed end lease where we lease that vehicle for three years and we give it back we don't have any equity in the vehicle or and the reason there's a star above that last option is that's what i would recommend that we do there's an open-ended municipal lease and what that means is we would lease the vehicles and we would lease the vehicles and if you look at that spreadsheet up top the lease vehicle would be 671.75 per vehicle per month and then at the end of our three-year term we could give uh enterprise ten thousand five hundred dollars for each vehicle and we could buy it or we could lease it um we could lease that ten thousand dollars or we can give the cars back to enterprise and say sell the cars and they're telling us that the expected value of these cars when we're done with them will be fifteen thousand dollars so when they sell the car for fifteen thousand dollars they're going to keep their ten thousand dollars that they put into the car and they're gonna give us the difference which in this case would be four thousand four hundred and seventy one dollars per vehicle so can you see how on this uh open-ended municipal lease we get twenty six thousand eight hundred dollars in equity at the end of this we can then take that twenty six thousand dollars we can then acquire six new vehicles and apply those dollars to that lease so instead of paying a hundred forty five thousand dollars over three years we can subtract twenty six thousand dollars off the top so we're saving a little bit more money so not uh it's it's uh works to our benefit um and that's kind of all that this screen says and the last thing i just had in here is uh it does include a vehicle maintenance program so we would not be paying extra so where we were renting the cars for 675 675 dollars a day and then doing maintenance this allows us to uh for 671.75 build that maintenance in so oil changes uh any manufacturer recalls or any warranty repair work that has to be done we take it into any of these 37 maintenance centers around our area and they take care of it no problem and what i didn't opt to do is i didn't do the tire replacement and the brake replacement because after our three year lease we're not going to have that many miles on them to justify replacing tires and brakes so we can trade them in get new vehicles and that my board of education is how 308 will work with source well to partner with enterprise fleet management for our driver's ed education program and if you're curious there's a picture of the 2021 nissan rogue that we would be acquiring so i would be happy to entertain any questions do they have sorry do they have six nissan rogues for us they do see a lot of empty car lots yeah there's a lot of empty car lots the one nice thing about the dealership enterprise has a nationwide selection so as soon as we tell them this is the option we want to go with they will get the vehicles for us and our other car dealership has been kind enough to allow us to use our current vehicles until we acquire the new ones is it is there a fee to be a member of source well no great question there is not a fee it's just a matter of signing up for it and then it's just keeping track of what purchasing agreements they have and if those truly are the best prices or if we can get better pricing other places and are you familiar with other districts who are using um this fleet management service not for their driver's ed vehicles so some other districts are purchasing their vehicles and choosing to do other things but i can certainly reach out to other other cfos and find out what they're doing but i do know the few that i've checked with they purchase their vehicles and they keep them which unfortunately you know with the maintenance that you kind of take a chance when you buy your cars absolutely thank you is there any um difference in our insurance coverage when it comes to the lease option versus what we're currently doing of renting yeah you know what that's a good question i don't think there is but i will i will double check with our insurance provider just to make sure but i would i would think that leasing would be more in our favor than renting so if anything i think it would be more in our favor to have the lease option but i'll i'll get that information for you as well thanks thank you dr patsy any other questions all right very good item 7.3 is an annual item in regards to updating the membership of our board of education advisory committees the board chairs have gone through the applicants and are recommending the new members to the finance committee are there any questions on this informational item all right item 7.4 is in regards to board policy 7 colon 165.

let's you ready okay call this meeting to order roll call please mrs galbert here dr hall here mr wallace here mrs walters absent brown is here vice president roo here president albert here rice for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all ms roop would you please read the mission statement sure it's to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future okay uh before we get started i just thought for those watching on the video feed that this is going to be a very short meeting tonight ordinarily this would be our committee of the whole night but we redesignated it a special meeting so that we could vote on uh the personnel report which includes some teacher contracts that we want to get signed before the beginning of school year and we had really had no other business tonight as we were going to do board evaluation training and for a number of reasons uh we had to reschedule that so this will be a very short meeting are there any public comments okay our action item for personnel and culture is to approve the personnel report can i have a motion to approve the certified staff employment reassignment resignation and intent to retire and the educational support staff employment reassignment intent to retire and resignation moved second first and second are there any any comments okay uh just i do have a i'll have a couple follow-up questions i'm going to go ahead and you know vote on it but i just have a couple follow-up questions and i'll send it to the superintendent she put it out on our question and answer okay so i won't even bring it out tonight okay all right um roll call please okay brown brown is an eye mrs galbraith name dr hall aye mr swallows aye vice president group aye president albrecht aye motion carries uh we have no other business tonight uh we were going to have closed session for uh as i mentioned for board evaluation training to be hosted by the illinois association of school boards and that is going to be rescheduled can i get a motion to adjourn move second roll couple well oh no we don't need a roll call all in favor say aye aye all opposed

okay all right good evening right before i do appreciate seeing so many people here caring for our students and for our school corporation this is the regular school board meeting of the bartholomew consolidated school corporation board of school trustees we start each of our sessions with the opportunity for one of our colleagues to offer reflections and this evening i'll turn to dr bills thank you dr shedd good evening i'm going to be reading a excerpt from chicken soup for the teacher's soul i thought we needed that for the beginning of the school year and chicken soup books are some of my favorites so i really like those books and this is for all the teachers out there i am a teacher i was born the first moment that a question leaped from the mouth of a child i have been many people in many places i am socrates exciting the youth of athens to discover new ideas through the use of questions i am ann sullivan tapping out the secrets of the universe into the outstretched hand of helen keller i am esop and hands christians anderson revealing truth through countless stories i am marva collins fighting for every child's right to an education i am mary mcleod bethune building a great college for my people using orange crates for desks i am belle kaufman struggling to go up the down staircase the names of those who have practiced my profession rings like a hall of fame for humanity booker t washington buddha john dewey excuse me leo buzzkalgia moses and jesus i am also those whose names and faces have long been forgotten but whose lessons and character will always be remembered in the accomplishments of their students i have wept for joy at the wedding of former students laughed with glee at the birth of their children and stood with head bowed in grief and confusion by graves dug too soon for bodies far too young throughout the course of a day i have been called upon to be an actor friend nurse and doctor coach finder of lost articles money lender taxi driver psychologist substitute parent salesman politician and a keeper of the faith despite the maps charts formulas verbs stories and books i have really had nothing to teach for my students really have only themselves to learn and i know it takes the whole world to tell you who you are i am a paradox i speak loudest when i listen the most my greatest gifts are in what i am willing to appreciatively receive for my students material wealth is not one of my goals but i am a full-time treasure seeker in my quest for new opportunities for my students to use their talents and in my constant search for those talents that sometimes lie buried in self-defeat i am the most fortunate of all who labor a doctor is allowed to usher life into the world in one magical moment i am allowed to see that life is reborn each day with new questions ideas and friendships an architect knows that if he builds with care his structure may stand for centuries a teacher knows that if he builds with love and truth what he builds will last forever i am a warrior daily doing battle against peer pressure negativity fear conformity prejudice ignorance and apathy but i have great allies intelligence curiosity parental support individuals creativity faith love and laughter i'll rush to my banner with indomitable support and who do i have to thank for this wonderful life i am so fortunate to experience but the public for you have done me the great honor to entrust me with your greatest contribution to eternity your children and so i have a past that is rich in memories i have a present that is challenging adventurous and fun because i am allowed to spend my days with the future i am a teacher and thank god for it every day and that is by john wayne schlatter chicken sue for the soul thank you dr bills if you are able if you stand and join us for the pledge of for allegiance it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all freedom all right six of our seven members are here our thoughts are with miss dehoff dwyer she had some surgery and we wish her to get well very soon so with that we do have a quorum and i'll call the meeting to order so just as a reminder we have here on our screen and behind us our mission and our vision which guides the decisions that we make here each and every meeting as well as our list of high expectation objectives which guide our decision making and guide the work of this school corporation so let's make this meeting a little more complicated the first thing that we get to do this evening is to have a public hearing and this has to do with the proposed renovations and improvements on school facilities that were discussed in depth at our last meeting they are opportunities to make changes at barcs parkside schmidt some roof wood placements solar projects and the purchase of equipment and technology so i get to gavel out if you've been to these meetings you know how much i love this gavel out and we will gavel into a public hearing this affords all of you to offer any comments about the projects that we discussed at our last meeting do we want to offer a summary yes thank you as you know anytime we issue bonds to do a building renovation we're required to hold two public hearings they're called preliminary determination hearings this is the first of those two public notice of that hearing was published in the republic on january 28th and sent to the county clerk's office for their knowledge as well and this is uh this is to approve eventually approve but to get input on the approximately 13.5 million dollar project to improve significant improvements to the on building envelope and educational learning spaces at parkside as well as the three roofs that you mentioned and solar project as well so with your approval we could open the floor for any public comments specific to these projects all right thank you are there individuals here that would like to talk about our 13 plus million dollar project mr phillips i think one of the items later on in the board meeting right is tied to this greg there is a resolution specific to just a procedural requirement as we move through the process there'll be more hearings to come in future meetings as well thank you there any questions about our future investments all right with that i will gavel out of the public hearing and i will come back to our meeting of the board of school trustees so we have the wonderful opportunity to recognize the of the folger outstanding teacher award winner good evening it's always a great opportunity when we can recognize amazing educators in the work they do each and every day at this time i would like to call forward john sattler the president and ceo of style insurance services as we announced our 2021 nfb fulton outstanding teacher award it's a great time good evening thanks again this is an exciting time to be here um just to refresh a little bit on the edna b folger award it's for the outstanding teacher and it's sponsored annually by sciho the iupuc center for teaching and learning the community education coalition and the columbus area chamber of commerce the edna v folger outstanding teacher award was designed to recognize the impact teachers have both in and outside of the classroom this award is named for local teaching icon edna v folger who invested more than 46 years of her life educating students in bartholomew county the folger award celebrates dedication to the teaching profession ability to motivate students and staff to reach their full potential innovation and teaching style and curriculum the ability to form strong bonds and relationships with students parents peers and contributions to the community outside of the classroom i am pleased to recognize peggy myers of columbus east high school as a 2021 edna v folger award winner like all previous folger winners peggy goes above and beyond in all dimensions both in and outside of the classroom she is committed she is a committed advocate for her students ensuring that they have every learning and life opportunity possible peggy designs individual plans for each of her students to help them reach their fullest potential along with her staff peggy patiently leads her students towards learning goals teaching social and job skills along the way she is the glue that holds the complex set of plans and people together peggy's innovative and creative approaches teach valuable life skills that enhance independence to help our students achieve personal happiness and success the coffee cart at columbus east offers opportunities for students to develop social skills by taking orders preparing and delivering beverages and accepting payments several years ago peggy introduced best buddies this program involves more than 50 students and creates integrated employment and leadership development opportunities along with one-on-one friendships for individuals with developmental disabilities peggy is also the coach for the ihsaa unified track teams the teams involve over 60 students and have earned national recognition receiving the unified champion school national award peggy is active in the arc of bartholomew county and has served as president vice president and secretary she freely shares her professional knowledge expertise passion and skills with colleagues representing at state and national conferences many folder recipients over the years are nominated by colleagues building administrators and sometimes parents but peggy was nominated by a former student this young woman was so inspired through her interaction with peggy that she is now majoring in special ed in college please join me in congratulating peggy myers recipient of the 2021 nfv folger outstanding teacher award [Applause] thank you very much for hosting such an important award and we can't be more proud of peggy myers so next on our agenda is an update of the coveted plan of action for this current school year thank you dr congratulations peggy on that outstanding award i know we didn't last year which is things the way we were didn't celebrate it maybe as we would have i know you had a neat celebration at columbus east high school though and glad that we're able to recognize you publicly here tonight congratulations again all right so we're going to jump right into the copa 19 plan of action conversation and coming around i noticed that way i think we have there's a number i wrote down 36 i think uh people prepared to speak so i'm going to be relatively brief so we can get to that that opportunity for public comment and then get into the additional board uh conversation and consideration of any changes in uh the reopening plan so let me dig into this a little bit just to walk us through it's been interesting how if we go back to a year ago in the month of july leading up to school what the conversation was about and whether or not we would be able to start school and then roll through the school year and we were able to i had to take a pause there a couple of times but we were able to start school but that was kind of the debate at that point in time was just can we have school or not coming on the heels of the spring and this year it's obviously different i i i think that at least with each individual i talk to there's a genuine desire belief that we can be in school so let's let's do that and then it is what about other mitigation strategies and specifically masks and whether or not students should be wearing masks or or students and staff members anybody in the building wearing masks or not so that becomes has become the conversation and as i pay attention to the emails that come in whether it's to me or to these board members that number um is has grown over the last few days and weeks but we've cataloged all of those we go back to june 1st at least take a a look at the the two months that have led into this we've catalogued those to get an understanding of where people are coming from certainly social media is a way to capture that dialogue in conversation so certainly can begin to get a feel for that and then we take a look at the information besides all of that stuff coming our way the input of of all of you people who certainly care about their children regardless of which side of this debate you're on your passionate care for for your children as well as all children of this community so as we take a look at that what other information do we have available to us and so i'm just going to show you some of that information and try to stair step it from the national level which i i understand sometimes there's questions about that and then coming back down to our local level because that's what we try to deal with is where are we at here in our community so these are just two maps of indiana that come from two different places and they are as up to date as as i'm able to find so the centers for disease control and prevention is on the left-hand side and our county is is outlined with the gray and shows us as red by their measurement the department of health also comes out with a weekly map that comes out on wednesday so the last time that map would have been updated would have been last wednesday it shows us in yellow in terms of the color designations red is the highest spread at the national level it is also the highest spread at the state level as of last wednesday the only county that was in red was posey down in the south west corner around the evansville area and then orange yellow and blue stair stepping down i didn't highlight hours but we are a one um there in the in the middle uh down toward the middle southern part of the state so that's that's what we have in terms of taking out the two pieces of information and i'll just comment quickly on this one before moving on is that a year ago we didn't take much of a look at the centers for disease control site and so i put it up here because you will hear a lot about that one and people will bring it up but it was not a part of our metrics last year and so i would try to not shove it aside but but move on to the more local in terms of what our circumstances and situation is just because i hear the debate around those numbers and trying to localize the conversation more so our local covet 19 task force does release information it was regularly uh two times a week last school year through the school year and then the summer times when numbers dropped they went to one time per week on thursdays and have now updated that to two times a week again back to mondays and thursdays so there is information today that actually then is dated for yesterday august the 8th in terms of where we are and so you see the new positive cases from yesterday in our community 23 the hospitalizations at 18 and test turnaround time was always something that we tracked i said a day so it's very quickly very quick for somebody to go get a test and figure out where they are with a positive or negative so that takes us then to more internally with bcsc so again just stair stepping our way down from what the national data says um and regardless of where you are with that and substantial spread what the department of health then says our numbers are and the reason between of the difference between the department of health and the cdc is because of the range that they capture sustainable spread in the the cdc uses between 1 and 49 the indiana department of education department of health uses 1-99 so quite quite the difference in that color designation but then you saw our metrics and then this is bcsc so as we start the school year and we look at last year just trying to start school and have school what our cases were in the first quarter of 2021 we had 29 positive test cases so as we entered fall break that was that was our number and as we uh look at today and actually that number could be updated because we've had four more come in since that that number was in there so for the first two days of 2021-22 our numbers are 31 positive test cases and the number of close contacts i believe is is 88.

good evening everybody and welcome to the august 10th uh 2021 meeting of the dartmouth school committee uh per governor baker's order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law glc 30a section 20 the legislature's extension of those provisions the public will not be allowed to physically access this school committee meeting the meeting will be conducted remotely members of the public can access the meeting via live stream at youtube.com dhs tv media in addition the event will be rebroadcast on dc tv channels 9 and 18 on the following days wednesday and thursday at 5 00 pm friday at 6 00 am saturday at 8 a.m and sunday at 2 p.m the school committee reserves the right to implement additional remote participation procedures and will notify the public of these procedures as soon as practicable um i'd like to now we can all start with a pledge of allegiance please i pledge allegiance shannon jenkins here mary wait here kathleen admiral here john nunes chris oliver here and i'd like to note um mr nunes is unable to make it um we tried to arrange a time where everyone could but it's difficult in august um with everyone's uh vacation plans and out of office plans and so um this was the best that we could do we did want to have a meeting before our august 23rd meeting to discuss important issues and so that's why we're doing this remote meeting because not everyone is even in town i know miss waite is joined us from her vacation um uh the first item on our agenda is the public comment um comments are welcome please forward any comments you have to our recording secretary ms genther kathleen genthner at dartmouthschools.org ms gentler has been receiving public comment throughout the day all public comments and all emails that she received are forwarded to every member of the school committee we have received quite a few public comments um and due to time constraints i think it would take us maybe a half hour to an hour simply to read all those public comments out loud and we will not be reading them out loud but i do want to assure the public that every email that is received by dr gifford by ms genther is forwarded to every member of the school committee um and if you have comments on items we're discussing this evening i encourage you to send those again kathleen genthner dartmouthschools.org and we will receive those and read those i would ask if you received public comment ms gentler but i know that you have already because you forward several more so i won't ask um and i know that you will forward them at the end as you receive them through the meeting so thank you for that um the first item on our agenda is the discussion of a district maths protocol um as dr gifford emailed us earlier today um we do have a policy in place regarding face coverings that is in effect until repealed but we thought it was important for us to come and have a discussion about this um the other important thing i want to note before i hand it over to dr gifford is that under current cdc guidelines masking is required on buses right so regardless of what we do mass will be required on buses because we do not control that decision after having given that brief introduction i'm gonna hand it over you dr gifford to talk um about any issues concerns that you'd like to address thank you madam chair so i'm glad you brought up uh just to start the conversation the cdc guidelines i'd like to note that we are receiving guidelines from various groups including of course jesse's guidelines was a little bit different than the cdc um the american academy of pediatrics has the guidelines you know a set of guidelines as well um so it's it's it's i just want the community to know as you stated we do receive uh various opinions on what we should do about masking and we will be here to make the best decision we feel is best based on those guidelines but more importantly i think based on the discussions that we have with our local director of public health who has of course the um data etc and trends of what's happening in our community so with that said i'd just like to let you all know that mr kylie and i have already spoken to chris mishu a few times already we had a meeting with him last week we've had conversations we have another meeting scheduled for next week um we also have a meeting i'm just kind of giving a little bit of an overview right now of what we're doing to plan for the year we have a meeting scheduled for next week with our nurses as well we're asking them to look at the covid responses that we have set up the guidelines from last year to see what tweaks we might make um i also would note that we there is a webinar tomorrow that i'm i'll be attending uh from jesse on the test and stay protocol and again i'm just giving a few options a few ideas of what we'll be looking at over the next week or so other than the mass which we'll really be talking about tonight um i do want to remind the community that according to desi and our district decision we will not have a remote option this year jesse is making sure of that all students will be returning to school our buildings will be um working like we did last year to provide accommodations as much as we can possible to make sure kids have access if you recall we did a various things last year and i just want to note that um dr jenkins mentioned last meeting to have that we would like to present strategies and ideas of how we're going to help students support students move forward we're calling it accelerate learning from last year and i've asked the principals rather than do a school improvement plan as we normally do we've provided them with three themes uh three priority areas of how they're going to develop strategies within each building that will address those things so those will be coming up soon but back to the mass if i may um and and i'm gonna i'm gonna make my recommendation here and then of course i'm not sure if the school committee is going to want to vote tonight or think about it and and vote at our next meeting but as of as of today based on our conversation with miss dimicio and um just everything that we're up against and not not really knowing what's happening with the delta variant um we would like to recommend that the entire district remain in masks to uh get started until we determine what's happening with the variant how trends are going and of course continue to um monitor that continually with the with the hope and the um really potential that we get rid of them soon um but that as of today would be our recommendation i know it doesn't set easy with a lot of people as we said we've received emails opinions on both sides but mr kylie and i had a lot of discussions about it and again with mr micho and at this point in time we just felt for today that would be our recommendation um you do know you noted that we do have a mass policy in place already uh so i would imagine that if the committee so desires that that they want to maintain that policy then we would just have to do that we wouldn't have to really vote i suppose but i think it's important that we do vote whether to maintain it or not and once again whether it's tonight or you want to postpone that until um the next meeting whereby we will also have more updates once we have the webinar on the test and stay more discussions what would be our uh protocols for covid response quarantining etc so that will be coming a little bit later as well as we gather more information thank you dr gifford you know i think from the perspective of maybe how do we proceed right the mass mandate is technically in place because we voted that policy that mask wearing was in place until we make a decision to repeal that mass mandate um and so i think it it kind of behooves us at every meeting moving forward to ask our ask ourselves are we ready to repeal that mass mandate and if so then we can make a motion to repeal that or not um but i think right now if we do nothing the mandate is in place um we could vote to repeal it we could vote to affirm it or even if we wait until next meeting when mr nunes is here that will still be in place and we can raise the issue again as we might at every single meeting so i just want to preface that that we don't necessarily have to vote um this evening but i will now open it up i have lots of thoughts i'm sure the committee does so i'll open it up for questions and comments mr oliver thank you madam chair so yeah obviously lots of questions lots of concerns i have um you know just like everyone else received the emails i've been doing my due diligence with doing my research on all the different websites and all the different outlets and trying to follow the science i think this is the right move for us for dartmouth it's unfortunate that the baker administration as well as the department of elementary and secondary education has stopped short of requiring a mass mandate and only strongly recommending um but you know right off of the american um association of pediatrics they're recommending uh this was as of just the past couple of weeks includes a recommendation that everyone older than two years of age wears mass regardless of vaccination status that's coming from the american academy of pediatrics um and as well as the cdc what we've mentioned before about the cdc it's just unfortunate with the state that uh they for political reasons i believe they've stopped short of putting a full-out mask mandate in place for the schools but at least for the for the town of dartmouth is in the dartmouth public schools i think that i would ra i would rather stop the year off in masks in being protective in protecting our students and i know there's side there's opinions on both sides of the aisle here but i think that this is the right thing to do for the children and the staff of the dartmouth public schools and like you said dr jenkins we can revisit this down the road and if right now bristol county is is back in red right we are we are one of those counties that are increasing we know uh also the latest the latest numbers that as of today massachusetts public health officials reported 9 969 total covet 19 breakthrough cases and fully vaccinated individuals as of august 10th 445 patients have been hospitalized and 106 have died i know you know that doesn't relate specifically to younger younger children and students however those numbers are concerning to me and i think for for those reasons and for all the reasons i previously stated that i am in favor of keeping the mass mandate um as is for the time being and like you said i think let's revisit this um down the road and if numbers improve i just do know that in speaking with medical colleagues um that i that i'm fairly friendly with that i've had conversations with that there is some definite concern amongst the medical community about the delta variant and the in the transmission of that and especially in those individuals who are not vaccinated how they're twice as likely to get sick with that um so that that's that's where i stand i fully support uh the datmouth public schools um sticking right now with the mask mandate i know that you know i know i'm not gonna make people happy but it's my job to look at and just like all of us it's we look at the big picture i look at my daughter i look at everyone else's kids sons and daughters and i want to do what's best for the dartmouth public schools so thank you madam chair thank you miss wade or miss amarillo go ahead yeah i mean i won't really add much to what chris has said uh uh simply put in order for us to go back and to you know fingers crossed stay in person um educated in the schools uh as much as possible or the whole year let's hope i was joking about let's raising the white flag here but it's the for me it's the only responsible thing to do you know is it a question of masking some not all and then and then uh bringing us into conversations around what that might look like i mean uh uh you know i've i hear it i hear kiddos like oh you're you're a kovit fanatic you know ingest but what is that going to translate to in the schoolyard in the in the classroom unfortunately this is a polarizing topic but for me the only responsible reaction that i can have is that we go back to school in masks um you know i have i have kids nobody really wants to hear this again but you know i i've got kiddos span the spectrum um i have a son who's medically complex and significantly um impacted by a disability where i never thought he would be able to wear a mask and he is thrilled to wear a mask to get on his bus he goes year round to school and to stay in a mask all day um and go in store you know what what to live his life and so i feel like if he can do it um and my daughter she does taekwondo fully masked no problem right um so we enjoy the things we enjoy but the only responsible answer that i have my opinion is that we we we're all go in all masked so that's all thank you miss amara miss wait um yeah i think i'll echo my colleagues but i also just wanted to just getting back um dr gifford what did chris mr michelle what did he say what were his comments because i know you touched on and this is a policy that i know that he wants and he wants to see in place but specifically before i kind of add mine and take what were his what was his rationale and his concerns that he was forwarding um similar to what mr oliver was speaking about the un um really not knowing right now what the variant will be doing and what he is seeing uh the number of cases that are up ticking just in our community alone over the last few weeks and in general what he was stating was folks the data is showing that folks that have been vaccinated are still getting the virus again this variant as well as younger and younger folks so while he can't speak about you know those specific cases in general he was concerned about what he was seeing over the last few weeks as compared to maybe the end of the school year he also felt that because we had implemented so many mitigation strategies effectively throughout the year we were able to keep pretty much we never saw a transmission in the school and to miss amarillo's point that's what we want to do now is now that we're bringing everyone back that's the important thing all kids will be in front of their teachers that's what we want to see so he was just um reluctant to you know he he obviously always says i can't tell you what to do but we rely on his advice and when mr kylie and i were tossing it around and and we we felt this was the best way to go uh mr misha said that he would support us 100 percent uh just he said it might you know the very it might go this and this and then within a month or so we see a trend where we can say that's it but it's better safe than sorry to get a good kick in the butt if you will in the new year and get started um i do want to mention that you know outside is a different story of course because all those other restrictions have been lifted which is a good thing but for inside with all the kids coming um [Music] he he felt strongly that that was a good recommendation okay and then if i may like i would you know again i think it's so critical for all of us just to you know constantly you know have chris and i'm so grateful that he's you know miss rashod is there you know as our resource because i'm not a pediatrician but certainly i've done my due diligence like you know mr oliver and everyone else that's sitting here um i just you know i think all of us want the kids to be none of us wanted kids to go back in the mass but you know given the reality the number one priority i think we all have is for our kids to be back in the classroom full-time and you know i'd like to see spectators at sports you know all of those things if the mask is the only you know right now that's the only thing and let's hope it stays there that we have the mass and you know and to your point that you know we can continue to reassess this you know certainly with john you know being of mr news being our next meeting but um i agree with my colleagues i think it needs to stay and um and i really really appreciate being able to you know lean on our board of health because you know they're the ones that we need that have the expertise you know this certainly help along with you know all of our other you know recommendees so thank you thanks everyone i'll just add my own two cents i think you know facebook reminded me this morning i look at my memories that one year ago today we made the decision to go remote and i think you know two months ago we all felt like man isn't that aren't we glad this is behind us and i don't think any of us are happy to be in this position right now and having to make a decision like this again and i don't think once again that any of us are taking this decision lightly um we all in this meeting right now all the school committee members have kids in our schools right um i hear it from my kid that he does not want to wear a mask i get that people don't want to wear masks but i've talked to him about doing what's right and what we need to do to keep people healthy i've also been doing reading there is a really good i thought op-ed in the new york times from researchers who studied over a million students over the last year across north carolina and other states and they say although vaccination is the best way to prevent cobit 19 universal masking is a close second and with masking in place in school learning is safe we know in school learning is better we need masking to keep our students safe the delta variant is unknown we're going to see lots of schools in the south have started opening down in atlanta they've already seen thousands of cases in their schools in the first week because of the way the delta variant is rampaging through their state we can't have that we have to have our kids in school we have to have them safe and until they can be protected right until vaccines are available to our children i cannot in good conscience not recommend a mass mandate that's my job and if people don't like me for it i'm okay with that because i'll sleep okay knowing that the kids are going to be safer and our teachers and our staff as well and i think that's the most important thing right now um i will say that i do think none of us want these masks to be in place it is a question that miss wade's point we should keep coming back to and asking our public health officials right when is the time because we do want um to be able to not have our kids mask so we will revisit this decision um i think we can bring it up again in our next meeting as well when mr nunes is here but i think we all felt it was important to have this meeting and to make clear what it's going to be so we are we can prepare for the school year um i will just close in noting there's a meme going around on facebook but i think it's really an important one and it says basically right we can have our opinions about masks but we need to project to our kids that they can do this and they will be okay in school if you send the kids into school with negative attitudes they're going to have a negative experience so you can vent to whoever you want but really we need to get kids on board because this is what we need to do to make them safe and our attitudes matter more than anything right for how our kids are gonna are gonna have this in their school year so i would ask people to do their best right to um help their kids prepare for this as miss amaral said right it's about attitude kids can learn to do this um if we help them to do that and so i hope everyone in the community regardless of whether you're happy or unhappy with this decision um takes a positive attitude and does our best to have a positive school year for our kids um as we move forward um the one thing i'd like to say dr gifford i know that you um you raised a number of things that we'll cover at our next meeting i think in some of the emails um that we've been receiving some of the people you know again a lot of people were remote last year my kids were were in remote school last year um that's not an option for some families and i think some of them have questions about protocols and what we're going to do and so i think it will be helpful at our next meeting if we can put that on the agenda to sort of talk through what's the same what's different what we're doing people can feel comfortable with what with what we have in place to keep their kids safe right agreed and as last year we'll continue to keep the community updated through um not only this meeting but uh newsletters and and those kinds of things as well so we do have a few more things to work through um but we'll be able to update everyone asap so i'd like to ask the committee um you know as i noted we don't really need to vote on anything tonight because the policy is in place um if someone would like to make a motion regarding masking or something we can do that but i think we're fine with not making any motions unless someone wants to do that mr oliver would you have something to add or no i would i would agree with you madam chair we have the policy on the books as is i i i'm comfortable keeping it as is i don't think emotion at least in my opinion i don't think emotion is necessary at this time um you know just reiterating i going back to what i had said earlier um i just want to see our students back in school day one in one cohort not two cohorts um in front of their teachers and i think this is the best way to accomplish that so thank you everyone i couldn't agree more with mr oliver that the most important thing is to get our kids back in school safely this year um and and we're going to do what we need to do to do that safely um the only other item on our agenda for the evening is any other business that may not have been anticipated at the posting does anyone have anything else that they would like to to add miss amaral i um i just want to pull up the date so i say it right um so um just in in reference to like some of the esser funding and the stakeholder requirements around um around that that um i've been working with our special education office through my special education advisory council hat and we will be hosting um on the 25th of august there'll be two sessions there'll be webinar sessions um where we will invite parents of students on ieps i think it's ell homeless is like a certain criteria it'll be it'll be on the facebook page and i'm sure the district will will pat will share the flyer about it i just don't have that out yet um so august 25th an information session and then an opportunity to sort of fill in some thoughts around um the funding and ideas uh and that will be 1 30 to 2 and then 5 30 to 6 like i said via like a webinar zoom so be on the lookout for that that's all great thank you so much does anyone have anything else that they would like to add mr oliver thank you dr jenkins i would just ask that i know that the committee received a couple of weeks ago an email from dr gifford regarding some additional positions that were being created um through the use of esser funds and i was just hoping that maybe i don't i don't expect it tonight but maybe at our next meeting uh dr gifford if you could just share a little bit more about the specifics around those um team leaders special ed positions um that were created i'd be interested to hear a little bit more about the scope of those absolutely we'll be prepared to provide you with all that information as well as um i just want to mention tonight to mr amaral's point we've also scheduled meetings with our special education staff and as well as our related services and we're planning on doing a short survey to various groups specific to like the uh el population uh parents of foster children so we can make sure that we've hit all the hit all the areas so uh we'll be doing that as well but we'll have that information at our next meeting follow up on mr oliver's comment i think we asked two at our last meeting just to get some regular updates i mean mr kylie's point at the last meeting we're talking about large sums of money that are flowing from all sorts of different programs um and you know as a school committee we do have a fiduciary responsibility to see the you know spending so i think it would be helpful along with those positions to just get a sense of just what we're spending this money on and some regular reports on that so if that could be included as well i think that would be helpful anything else to add all right hearing none i will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second okay all right i have a motion by mr oliver a second by miss wait um oh i should note our next meeting is uh scheduled for monday august 24th um that having been said further discussion on the motion hearing none miss gentler can we have a roll call please shannon jenkins hi hey wait hi kathleen amaral chris oliver yes excellent thank you everyone miss wait rest of your vacation good night everyone thank you everyone good night bye you