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choices have consequences to date over 35 schools have decided to remain mass optional please don't tell me there is no choice because 35 plus school districts would prove there is why are there no considerations being made for our special needs students the data shows they were impacted the most during the shutdowns and you are continuing to ignore this fact what laws are in place giving schools authority to discriminate based on medical inability i'm not aware of any and why would you create a policy that can expel a child for simply not wearing a mask this is unacceptable we have a choice we can get scared and run away or we can stand up and fight isbe does not have the authority because it would be in the school code the law isbe does not have authority to strip a local school district of its discretion to force upon them this guidance it is not expressly delegated by the legislator hb 2789 is conclusive as to what our legislator intended with the current state of the law it's pending in the legislature right now so therefore it can never be inferred that the legislator never delegated that power you can't infer this as part of law while simultaneously the legislative branch of government is considering an amendment to add it don't let fear run our lives and not the rule of law don't wait until our children pass out in gym class because they are forced to wear masks don't wait until our children's education and ability to hear adequately proves more devastating effects than it already has thank you [Applause] ashlynn pearson hello sorry hello my name is ashton pearson i'm 19 and i've been going here since i was in fifth grade i'm speaking in support of the safety plan and following the mass mandate at k through 12 schools i am a part of the class oswego east class of 2020 and my senior year my second semester we had our graduation online in my life in the last two years has been completely destroyed by this pandemic and i've seen the way that it has affected the world i've seen the way it affected my class my friends my family and i can't fathom living in a world where my siblings aren't safe i'm the oldest of five four of my siblings go to district 308 and they between different health problems different things they need to be safe at school they need to be able to go to school and try to go back to some sense of normalcy and we cannot do that without a safety plan we cannot do that without mass and while i understand that there are difficulties on both sides and i understand that it is difficult for some students to wear a mask all day there are laws and we have to follow them the law has been in place for years and while it can be questioned right now is not the time when there are lives at stake and for the greater good you have to protect people you have to protect kids you have to protect teachers it's not it shouldn't be a partisan issue it should be a health and safety issue that everyone cares about and everyone unites on so overall i just am hopeful that the safety plan will go through i think that it will support the teachers it'll support the overall staff and whether or not you agree with it it will help people in the general and as a former student i wish that we were able to see ahead of time and maybe take those safety precautions more ahead of time so that my year was not as destroyed but now we are in this place where we need mass and we need to have safety and cleaning and the different policies so that everyone can be safe so thank you i'm hopeful and i understand that you guys are in a really tough position so i'm grateful for you guys coming here and having these meetings and doing what you can so thank you guys [Applause] kelly harms good evening my name is kelly harms first thank you for letting us all speak our daughters graduated from ohs in 2018 and 2019.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i'm going to give you five minutes and then i'm going to pull you back and show you some additional things is [Music] um [Music] before you want to sign up [Music] yes i'm not sure [Music] okay is [Music] all right [Music] all right ladies and gentlemen [Music] i apologize for that so for today only i'm actually going to give you a different demo that i used two days ago that worked i promise um the only difference with this one is actually for a different organization um so the calendar might be off just a tiny bit but you're only going to use this demo for a couple of days until we get you on your own so um if you want to take a snapshot of this or write it down we're going to move along from the screen in just a moment again this is only for those folks who don't have your own username and password but for today use hyder at beyond textbooks.org as your username and password hider 2 and i apologize for that i don't know why it stops working so what i want to show you now since i have your attention i'm going to show you from the calendar point of view kind of that normal flow for weekly lesson planning so everything that i just showed you there on page 15 those are kind of those quarter long or whole course long pages don't forget about the summary page for your grade level and your subject area because there's a lot of great resources there by the way there's some that i haven't even shown you so as you go to your grade level pages that are outside of the calendar but you go to your you know grade level and you pick one of your subject areas i always talked about a few of them there's a lot of resources here i encourage you to check out okay but what i want to show you now is the calendar piece and kind of hey i'm less planning for a specific standard i'm going to teach next week what do i do so for that you will start in your calendar i'm going to share with you some calendar navigation tips when you click into your calendar nothing will populate here until you go over to the left and use this separate scroll area and choose your grade level in a subject area once you do that it's going to default to the current week of the school year and yours might look different than mine because we're on different demo accounts okay i want to share this though if you teach more than one subject which many of you do you can pull in multiple subject areas and look at multiple calendars at once you can pull in multiple grade levels special education teachers for example love that saying hey i support kids in third fourth and fifth grade what are they all doing in math i'm gonna look at my third grade math my fourth grade math my fifth grade math calendar at once for example you can look at you could look at every calendar k12 if you wanted to don't do that though it would be incredibly overwhelming but you can choose over here on the left by pinning check marks next to the standards that you want to see and again i'm just going to really encourage you to have your attention up here at the screen for about four more minutes and then you'll get back on your own computer i also want to share with you this this calendar you can click all the way through to the end of the school year all the way back to the beginning of the school year it just defaults to the current week oftentimes you're gonna have to move it a week forward because if we're on wednesday you're probably less planning for next week right so you could say hey i know that today is the 11th but i want to click forward and look at the week of the 16th you can look at a week at a time or a month at a time or a year at a time again though don't go to a year at a time because you want to see that list of all of your standards that's where you want to use that that summary of standards that i shared with you because it's just a cleaner way to look at it you can look at different formats you can pop these calendars over to your ical or your outlook or your google calendar you have a lot of navigation pieces or a lot of choices here once you decide okay i'm looking at this fourth grade math standard i know it's an essential standard because it says it has my standard coding it says my highly proficient student can piece if you want to point out this so this is an example of every now and then there's those additional standard links so for additional standards it's just going to say hey don't forget about these and this is when we suggest you maybe introduce them first month or any month seventh month but how when you introduce those is totally up to you when you get to the essential standards look at your approximate days click on that bt link this is now that page i showed you in screenshots right curriculum documents start there you have unwrapped documents those formative assessments and variety of other things that change from grade level to grade level and subject to subject use those and take some time sometimes to explore what's there then as you scroll down teach your submitted resources one thing to mention anytime at the end of a list you see those three little dots there's actually more there open it up a lot of resources there and then if you're interested hey what are these six worksheets that jessica shared from bullhead city you can click into that and again you have them in a variety of formats these are the same six but in pc and mac in pdf or in google i always open the pdfs first so i can see what they look like but then if i was gonna use it maybe that editable version so i can modify it a little bit if i choose to and then as a reminder if this is something i'm considering i'm going to add it to your favorites here questions about that um take running a little low on time take about four more minutes and explore your calendar if you're in a great level with some area that has a calendar otherwise stick with where you were four more minutes for exploration i'm going to layer on a few more pieces for you you may get at it good night [Music] okay i [Music] crazy there's no resources [Music] just one more minute [Music] what is that and she says much time for you to dive in but hopefully by having the handouts and you're taking notes you'll know where to go and you can explore a little bit later what i'd like to do is now point you to page 21 in these are some additional resources that are there for a variety of great levels and subject areas i'm gonna go big picture and show you what's here i encourage you to jot these things down so that you'll know which ones you really want to explore maybe a little bit later which ones might work best for you um i'm on the home page so i'm going to use the bt logo and go back to the beginning um everything on the left hand side of this page is actually in the bucket or the button that's called additional resources so and i would i would definitely encourage you to maybe indicate that left-hand side is all going to be in additional resources let me explain what these are multiple objective projects choose your grade level and you'll come to teacher-submitted resources that are things that teachers need to teach that aren't congruent to just one standard but to multiple objectives over the course of say a quarter right so you get to the war at the end of the quarter and you're doing a review and you want to you know bring a couple of different standards together those resources will be there under multiple objective projects and again there's this little these three dots so you can choose your grade level urge you to check that out on the right hand side here next one down is professional practices these are things if you interact with students at all during the day for it with any reason for any in any context there are going to be some professional practices that will help you out so these are grouped into grade level bands because they're not academic in nature from there there's resources for the beginning of the year it's not too late to do some fun like get to know you some continued relationship builders there's classroom management resources there's communication things for holidays and special occasions and then lit circle resources and those are grade level bands all right so that's professional practices data collection sheets if you give the formative assessment if you teach math or reading then you'll want to go into data collection sheets and you can download for your grade level an excel spreadsheet that makes it really easy to keep track of your formative so that whole scoreboard on throughout the game piece you'll know exactly it'll really help you pinpoint exactly which students need what in terms of support free teacher enrich for each academic standard yes question after that yeah i'm also looking like where do you find it all right let me show you again but again if we can look up here instead of at your computers i would really appreciate that so all of these five things that are on the left hand side of your page these are all under from the home page the button that says additional resources so from the home page the button that says additional resources okay so we on the left again it's just the left and i'll show you the things on the right but on the left the top one is multiple objective projects that's going to be the first one second one is professional practices so that's going to be here data collection sheets are down just a little bit further and those are going to be right there you're very welcome that's when you click into that and it'll ask you and you'll download the version for your grade level behavior standards also are here behavior standards are also here and these are great for supporting student behaviors right so these are not academics they're not even based by grade level um but we've got professional resources classroom skills interp maybe you have a student or a group of students who have stru who have a hard time getting along with others or working their problems alcohol right any behavior you want to support come here dig in and you'll find teacher submitted resources to support that behavior i'm going to go back to additional resources so those are behavior standards finally social emotional learning i highly encourage you to check that piece out again for any student if you interact with a student during the day for any reason some great social emotional learning pieces and then there's some mindful minute resources as well that's essentially everything that's in this additional resources bucket from the home pages are those things over there i encourage you to check this out on the left hand side i already actually showed you these bottom two the standards for posting and the parent portal there are some project-based learning tasks that you can find on your summary pages and some benchmark reviews that you can find on your summary pages for certain grade levels i'm sorry for certain subject areas so again i'll go into a grade level math is where you're going to find project-based learning it's right underneath those daily math reviews project-based learning takes multiple standards from multiple content areas into a project and there's at least two created for each grade level one for semester one standard one for semester two standards that's where you're gonna find those and then benchmark reviews are more quarterly reviews for a benchmark whether that's an assessment or just over the benchmark time frame that you wanna do review multiple standards you're gonna find those there as well and then finally if you teach science science standards are relatively new as you know but if you go into individual standards while we don't have formative assessments for science there are unit plans that are super helpful and pretty complete big hefty pieces right yeah so this is going to be on an individual science standard unwrapped document check out those unit plans if you teach science i want to show you that's not what i want just a couple more things while i'm here because i know we're getting really close to our time to our end time but from page 21 are there any certain questions that i can clarify for you from what's there before i continue on i want to share with you one other thing should you choose to share your own resources on beyond textbooks page 22 has a one pager that will show you kind of how to do it step by step but then what i'd like to do is actually point you to page 23.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um the cove would leave that the board reinstated in january 2021 and that was 134 employees that took advantage of the program that you approved from january through june 30th 2021 so again bringing to you a motion ask you to approve the continuation of the plan for this school year for our employees and i'll stand for any questions you don't have to stand you can sit thank you okay um question for you dr croto um how would this uh interweave with uh fmla if the person happens to go need to go into fmla fmla would take if they're out for covid reasons uh they would use the covet days and if they need to use the fmla so this would be on top of that this is not considered part of the fmla it would be on top of that so they could use the 10 days and then still have all of their fmla available okay um do we have a we have a donation bank correct we do have a sick bank sick bank and in the event somebody needs instead of 10 days they need 15 days can they borrow from those extra five days madam president member sawyers think bell they could if they meet the requirements one of it is they have to donate a sick um day in order to get into the bank so if they are not members of the bank obviously they cannot do that but they can use that sick bank um if they meet the requirements um to do that okay thank you are the 10 days per is that just one per year per incident that is 10 days per year so if they get covered twice then we don't cover that second time that is correct under this plan correct and you had mentioned that this is even these are this is for all employees so even those that maybe used up all their sick or had an accrued sick time they would still get the 10 days if they showed a positive coveted correct okay and i think in these hard times it's just reassuring to our employees i know some that are conversations that i've had with employees right now they're very stressed about that they're willing to be back they're glad to be back in the classroom they're excited but it's that anxiety of what happens if i do test positive or and regardless of where you sit with vaccinations or not we know people vaccinations are also contracting it once again so it just gives them that reassurance that we're behind them and we appreciate the efforts they're putting forth for our district are we being um just supportive or mindful of those who let's say get it a second time hopefully that doesn't happen but um if they do and let's say they don't have 10 extra days but they have to be out or they're they have a long recovery time are we doing anything to help preserve their job rather than them looking at possibly losing their job madam president uh member pritchard we are we our objective is not to get employees so absolutely we will work with them in any way like i said before it's up to 10 days so sometimes depending on the timing of when they caught it they may only use two or three days out of this 10 and still have some left over so it's a balance of that and we will definitely work with employees our objective is not to lose employees especially in this climate with needing all the employees we can get so definitely look to help our employees out any way we can with that i will make a motion to approve the district plan to cover up to 10 days paid leave for any employee who contracts covid19 and presents a positive coven 19 test result for the time period of july 1 2021 through june 30th 2022.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
as we move forward with the one-to-one initiative and and start to hand out the computers this is really at the 7th to 12th grade level we had adopted back in may what would be deemed an insurance fee as part of our fee structure uh several individuals had concerns and questions about the fee and review and uh statute uh the interpretation of statute has not really changed although there have been some updates with the new legislative piece and then talking and reviewing the statute with legal counsel this is something that's typically been done in every single district around the state but if you read the statute of the way it's written it does create some issues and and in fact there may be some violations that are taking place therefore when you look at statute there's three different statutes that govern registration fees the first one deals primarily with co-curricular extracurricular activities as well as fine arts and cte problematic with that is that they reference computers specifically in that statute that you can't charge for those again it wouldn't apply the computers wouldn't apply to the co-curricular extracurricular activities but they would apply to cte and fine arts if you go to the next section it talks about damage uh deposit which is what this report proposal is and that is seven through 12.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so my only interest tonight is to express concerns about the direction the district is going please raise the tide of this district our oldest daughter kendall swam for coach darrell lugner under delta aquatics and oswego co-op for 10 years while i could add to the course of praise for daryl lubner based on impact he had on kendall and our entire family i would rather take this opportunity to raise what i see as a systemic problem lack of diversity we teach diversity and inclusion in race sexuality and religion however we no longer teach diversity in thinking we need to teach our children to respect authority figures even when they don't agree with the consequences of the t of and not teaching them this is sending our children out into the world unprepared daryl's name has been dragged through the mud by a few noisy parents who are weaponizing buzz words like bullying and emotional abuse because they don't agree with his coaching style despite the success their daughters have experienced these parents are district employees and they are aware of the impact of these words i respect that they have a difference of opinion on coach daryl's coaching style however i resent the idea that their opinion is more important than the rest and they get to decide whether this coach stays or not we need to teach children that is okay to disagree without retaliation as you can tell by tonight there are many of those who feel coach daryl has been a positive impact on swimmers and the community while the accusers are asking you to remove the best coach and because their children didn't like coach darrell's style how arrogant is them to think that the rest of us think they know what's best for the rest of the kids please raise the tide of our district by allowing different viewpoints to co-exist thank you thank you that is the end to public comment and we'll move on to board comments would anyone on the board like to make a statement i do um it's really a follow-up to the safety plan and many of the comments that um i listen to and and the hundreds of emails that i've read and i don't think that there's a person in the world and not just in our community that does not want all of this to be over and i personally know families who have struggled greatly with the impact of wearing masks of being out of school being away from their friends social socially emotionally and mentally i've had i've watched parents have to adjust i've know parents who had to engage therapists for their kids and provide individual support for their kids to help them to learn to adjust and really just to help get through this crisis i personally know and have experienced student athletes who have lost opportunities and time to prepare and to train and to dr and to fulfill the dreams that they have worked so hard for for a very long time and i've watched witnessed i have watched and witnessed athletes play sports and mask in struggle and some and many of them got through it but on the other hand covet is not just deadly i know that personally but it's a reality that attacks the body in ways that are still being discovered in adults and in children recent studies around the world have found that kids with covet have the following conditions after the kovic diagnosis one it's a multiple system inflammation syndrome they have long-term effects even after having no symptoms of covet headaches fatigue heart palpitations brain fog not being able to function after not experiencing any symptoms from covet but being positively diagnosed there's also been a 60 percent increase in the onset of type 1 child type 1 diabetes in children across the world only in the last year and a half and that's higher that's the highest on record kids as young as five after having covet now has type 1 diabetes kids with no family history of type 1 diabetes now have it studies have shown that covet appears to be attacking their pancreas they're not sure if some kids have had a reverse after covet has left their system but some have not not just in the united states but across the globe they are alive but they now have a condition that will impact them for the rest of their lives i personally know and am aware of families and people in this district who have been impacted by this the questions that i have to ask myself as i sit here and i consider the safety plan are i have to really consider the safety of all kids in the district massacre no mask all kids what is the transmission rate in the community where i live work and recreate here are the questions i'm considering what can and should parents do to take responsibility for their own kids safety at home but also the safety of others when out in our community how do i partner with parents as a school board member to make sure that all parents can be safe and the last question i really consider is is it possible no matter how small is it possible for kids ages 5 to 17 5 to 18 4 to 18 to transmit covet and so upon our research i found that children and adolescent can and can be affected with covert 19 can get sick with cover 19 and can spread the virus to others and then compare this is according to the to information on cdc.gov compare with adults children and adolescents who are affected by the covet virus are more commonly asymptomatic meaning they don't have symptoms or are mild or non specific symptoms but they still do they still do carry and transmit the virus so this means that we may not even be aware of the risk that we are placing ourselves and other people under and so we have to take that into consideration so for me for me having to support a child's emotional and mental health after losing a parent a grandparent or a loved one someone close to them to me that could be far more detrimental than the con the temporary consequences of the season that we're going through right now and so for me and lastly as i think about the basis for my decision i must be consistent so that i can use those same guidelines throughout this crisis and that will help me as a leader to set benchmarks to make predictions and even adjustments if i make missteps because i know i'm not perfect because i'm human and so all of these things have to be taken in consideration but i'm also not the professional and so for that reason i have to continue to recommend that we follow the guidelines that are set by the institutions such as the cdc and idph and so forth thank you okay um i did write a comment for tonight which i will read but i did want to address um one thing because it's a uh i believe it's a misperception in our public that just needs to be straightened out when people email the board and dr sparlin a lot of times you will only get two responses and the reason why is that dr sparlin is the voice of the district and the administration and myself as the president and the voice of the board and the board is really not able to to give board comment and so you may get an email back from my board members saying thank you i received your your email but anything really more than that you can expect from me and so i just want to clear that up everybody here has a huge heart and is reading the emails and cares about what you are sending in it's just that's the way our system works so um i just wanted to say thank you all for coming back to today's meeting and for some of us this is the second meeting of the week and i think um all of us being here again just really demonstrates our strong desire to do what is best for our children in our district and even when we don't agree we are showing up and i want to acknowledge uh all the passion that i see out there for our parents and our students and how great it is that we are hearing from more of our students whether it's the email comments or or showing up for public comment um and i think that's a great thing to see in our district for our students to be voicing themselves and sharing their beliefs as you know tonight we will be voting on our mass policy and our safety plan as we presented on monday and i just wanted to note that there are some some changes to that safety plan based on the feedback we received monday and that includes social distancing at lunch for all grade levels the adjustments were made after careful consideration of what is in the best interest of our students as well as consistency as mr gatewood spoke about being consistent in our mitigation strategies and when we're using one strategy what does that mean for another strategy we won't be discussing the plan tonight because we already did that on monday tonight we will just be voting on these two items but i did really want to thank uh teresa and dr sparlin and everyone involved in creating this very lengthy safety plan and going through many many revisions to try to get it right and as mr gatewood said we don't expect anything to be perfect right out of the gates but as we learn we will continue to revise for what is the best interest of all and then um finally i just wanted to give a shout out to all of our staff including our custodians teachers support staff administration and parents who right now are working so hard but behind the scenes to get ready for us to return to school for five full days in person which we haven't done in 18 months and i know we've all waited for this for a long time i know i'm super excited and just the thought of seeing all those smiling kids coming back is is exciting and i just want to say that we're eager to get started again and really focusing again on on education and making our kids bright students thank you okay can i get a motion to move on to 4.1 approval of safety plan i make a motion to approve the safety plan as discussed and presented mrs croner hi dr marino aye mrs johnson aye mr gatewood aye mrs swanson aye mr storial aye mrs simelton aye motion passes 7-0 and can i get a motion for the approval of board policy second read section 7.165 students i make a motion to approve board policy section 7 students 7 colon 165 second mr gatewood aye mrs johnson aye mrs doyle aye mrs swanson aye dr marino aye mrs simultan aye mrs croner aye motion passes 7-0 can i get a motion to move into closed session i make a motion to enter closed session under statute 5 ilcs 120-2c1 the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of certain employees and individuals 5 ilcs 120-2c2 collective negotiating matters between the public body and its employees or their representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees second mrs simonton aye dr marino aye mr gatewood aye mr swanson aye mrs croner aye mrs toriel aye mrs johnson aye motion passes seven zero
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
this is how to get help with beyond textbooks now we're coming pretty close to our uh shot clock here but i want to make sure that you know i've shared with you a lot and my hope is that after today you kind of dive back in and use these pieces you took some great notes use them yeah i wanted to go check out those standards i didn't get a chance to look at the you know benchmark reviews whatever the case may be maybe you have a question right so i'm talking really fast and i'm throwing a lot at you today and you have a question it's tomorrow it's next week it's next month what do you do because on page 23 the first thing is bt staff and your own colleagues right because again i'm throwing a lot at you you might have heard something that the person next to you missed and vice versa ask around there's a bunch of different levels in terms of how much you get how much you use beyond textbooks as well ask the folks around you but also feel free to reach out and ask that and ask us i shared with you my direct email is here on your agenda there's a contact button on the website as well so feel free to ask i'm also going to show you our faq section for frequently asked questions and the help desk as well we're not going to worry too much about those changes and updates um but let me show you these two pieces again i'm back on the homepage i'm just going to go back all the way to the front i'll actually start here first if you'll notice bottom right hand side bottom right hand corner of every page even as the page scrolls there's a help button i promise you this help button is essentially the same as using our emails it comes straight to us so if you click on that help button it's going to ask you for your name your email address and how we can help you and what's really cool is we know exactly what page you were on when you asked that question so if you had a question about a specific you know standard page that you were on and you click help from there we know right where you were and it comes straight into our emails so and we work to get back to people within the same day 24 hours typically at the most if you use that help but same thing with email though when you get back to school right away so that's that help button i also want to share with you where you find some frequently asked questions and their answers of course if you scroll down we just spent some time with that additional resources but but uh bucket but the next one says helpful link so you might want to write that next to faq on your page helpful links and if you click into helpful links the first option is frequently asked questions from here if you have somebody new start here in continental halfway through the year and we want to give them a quick overview of the seven starting points there's really short little videos here on each of the seven there's also website navigation basic website navigation short video maybe you get pretty comfortable and you know we have a couple of weeks under our belt of school and you want to do some advanced website navigation say i know there's stuff out there that i'm not that i don't know there yet watch that planning tool navigating calendars etc and then there's some how-to videos as well this is the other piece if you want to add your own resource to beyond textbooks and the page 22 isn't quite enough for you watch a short video on how to do that or how to use the google formatives on bt we'll talk about that a minute ago how to navigate the el section how to use those data collection sheets that i mentioned there's some great things here as well and again if you still have a question use that help desk because we're here to support all right so that's it for page 23 any uh questions about this again i'm throwing a whole lot at you today um my hope from here is that you will get this my hope is that you will take some time um after today take these notes and dive into the pieces that we didn't have time to have for you to dive into this that i showed you um you can ask questions as they come up with the folks around you of myself of the help that us all right well with our last four minutes together as any good teacher um i'm going to ask you i'm going to kind of modify this a little bit look back through your nose those things back through the things we talked about identified the seven starting points we talked specifically about each of the seven briefly but specifically and then we did a lot of website work right um identify one thing you already knew maybe a new learning put those things together and come up with your one takeaway for the afternoon something new that maybe you didn't know was on easy or that you were forgotten about we learned how to do something your takeaway for the afternoon when i say go i'm gonna ask everybody stand up just stay right here get your chair but go ahead and stand up somebody will share out their takeaway when you share out your takeaway you can just sit down if somebody else shared the takeaway that you were thinking you also get to sit down and they say but you don't all have the same tastes that's the first person i promise go ahead i hope you can click on multiple subjects i like to be reading and writing support section life skills section and the support section i love that and i also i didn't show you that so make sure that as you're finding cool things that you know other people would appreciate share them if you would i appreciate that sir there's a music lesson subjects like grammar and reading or math and yeah it's your math review daily your bell work is done if you want it to be you can modify it if you want to say thank you very much there are standards for spanish world languages yes there are standards for those for for spanish for french for germany um [Music] um i like the additional resources so you don't have to spend your own money on teachers pay teachers additional resources right there's some really good stuff in there all right you know having science and social studies they have the standards on one page and it's easy to read and to and they have resources so we're excited science social studies matter right they're big deals all right well thank you so much for your time this afternoon i three o'clock on the dots back tomorrow um one moment thank you so much chelsea we appreciate you we're super excited to have an in-person presentation i want to thank you all for your cooperation today we've sent i sent you all an updated email about you think it was lightning that struck they're still working on stuff but we did send a e-note and it's gonna be posted on social media for our parents to know that school will resume tomorrow and we'll keep you posted and updated on if anything happens but the weekly news that i send out carrie aaron and ariana were the first next week please really read through that weekly it's important that you read through it so we're all on the same page it takes you like five minutes if you could just read through it okay and thank you oh wait one more thing dress code handbooks we're going to be posting next week we have our middle school open house we're going to be posting the handbooks live talking to the middle school parents there letting them know that they're going to be able to um verify that they've gone through it with their students will be sending those emails out to all the schools starting next week but there's going to be some corrections if you ran through anything one of the things was with the dress code with the jeans i know it's big with middle schoolers they're asking if they have holes i i had sent an email at the start of the year but i'm going to re-edit it and i'll send a um update to parents if it holes above the knee that's when they have to have the
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
second seconded by ms pritchard yes um oh there it is sorry thank you moving to item h2 dr kellos madam president members of the board this is the uh the opportunity that the board has been waiting for for a full year to come together and to identify the um the delegate to represent this board at asba's delegate assembly which is coming up in a about a month and there's also the asba political agenda that you would be sending off with this delegate and perhaps a delegate alternate to represent the board when it comes time to to vote at the delegate assembly um mrs brown has prepared for the board a copy of the political agenda draft and if you could take a look at it and if there's anything on there that you feel like you would like to eliminate off of the political agenda mrs brown will take note of that but your opportunity at this time as you look at the motion there are two parts to it one is to motion to appoint somebody to you don't have to appoint anybody you don't have to participate in this but to appoint somebody to represent the dysart school district as the district delegate and somebody else as the alternate and then the next part of the motion um direct the district's delegate to support all of or to support um all items or all items except and then eliminate from the list of the draft agenda so madam president i will turn it back over to you to facilitate this conversation thank you thank you very much dr kellis um i will open it up for discussion but uh just before i say one two three not it i would not like to attend this i would not like to be considered to attend this and i was appointed the last couple years so i can take a break as well okay don't want to be a delegate either i got to work this saturday yes i have to work tracy don't you usually go to this anyway yeah i do but shooter jen exist the night before are we try are we are we going to draw straws no tracy we could not participate you know that was on the table as well i'm fine with not participating i i think we each district should be there well if that's the case there are a couple things i might want to scratch i don't know how the rest of you guys feel but um so so just to be clear this is not what we have voted on this is what their legislative process went in and drafted correct madam president you are correct earlier last spring the board submitted five items plus i think two others and then those were collected from all over the state from school districts all over the state and they were compiled into this document so some of the things you sent may or may not have found a place on this document and so basically we'd just be voting to say to whoever our delegate is please do not support this or please support this correct and president chaffin yes and you can get a testimonial of somebody who has participated as a delegate to get an understanding of the experience of being there and how the process works when you don't support something or you'd like to change something on this at the assembly it might be interesting for you to go mm-hmm you might have some good information for them good perspective to share are you kidding me it is anonymous voting but it's interesting to you know when you're the only one in the room that you know it says like you know 120 and you're the one that voted against it that was me a couple times yeah it feels a little defeating sometimes to be a part of it but they don't know you're thinking about it no but i i know and i just announced it well you can speak to it too because they'll they'll ask for um discussion from the floor present your position and then you should have other people standing up to share their views on what you just said and can be very interesting it is interesting but defeating well depending on what we and i don't know if you guys want to go through like just the the redlined areas um coming off of what we just spoke about i was i was curious that they included um under that that first heading support for the arizona teachers academy and efforts to increase the diversity of the teaching workforce um does diversity mean is that is that almost like a affirmative action type thing i i believe in hiring the best qualified so i guess i would have an issue with that there was also another part where it was talking about um talking about you know the same kind of responsive and culturally diverse well you're looking for that one crystal i'll say the defend against efforts to chill the free speech rights of school employees i'm a firm believer in keeping politics out of the classroom so i do not want to see that happen that's on me that's under improve outcomes for all students page i think four can you turn your mind on sorry actually no three was it stuck into the left or uh let's see third third bullet from the bottom okay so did i put that in there i found the one that i was talking about i think it's on the second page it's it's in black it's the second bullet above preserve and strengthen local control it says provide funding for districts to improve student achievement by addressing social emotional learning needs and create training programs for school staff and cultural proficiency and responsiveness you're saying remove that yes please page two and how do we feel about on page one where it says protect voters intent in funding k-12 and oppose legislation that attempts to supplant or divert additional voter approved funding such as prop 301 and 208 i would like to exclude that so while we're going through and excluding if we do not send someone out is is what we're doing right now still important so should we agree or not whether we're not we're sending someone let's do that first i mean i don't mind it the conversation but why waste time if we're not going to represent ourselves right well and although i think it'd be important to advocate for some of that some of these things be removed i think i don't know how successful that position would be so right whether or not it's important to send anyone it just be in principle i guess so so do we have any volunteers to represent us okay yeah they're they're that's stephen okay okay so who i'm sorry who's going and who's the delegate tracy wants to go i'll go okay i just think we still should have a representative from our district i appreciate you both i'll be dead tired they have breakfast usually aren't you going to the law conference no shooter jennings is the night before oh wow i just got my tickets good vista plug there all right so i will make a motion to a point we haven't gone through the other oh okay sorry because now we have to do that okay well we've got three of them right we have three let's so the first one we're taking out or proposing we take out let's keep track of what we're doing so i know is that correct or am i the only person that is concerned about that no no you're good the first one i've just said is diversity i guess that would be the question on to the legislative committee what does that mean i think that would be a question to the legislative committee what did they mean by diversity of the teaching workforce and we won't know until they comment on it that's why i asked dr kellis he thought it was like affirmative action ish that's how i interpret it but i wasn't on the committee so then how would we since if we wanted to wait to ask the committee that question then well then i guess you can directly the person would have to way to go so in my opinion if they're saying that to not look at qualifications and who's the most qualified for the position and they're looking at more of a um just increasing the the diversity cultural diversity if that's what they're saying i would not be comfortable with that and the other one was provide funding for districts to improve that was being removed social emotion well before that one crystal head spoke about um the protect voters intent and funding k-12 education it's on the first page it's in red oh okay i see it and then crystal brought up the second to the last bullet about the social emotional learning needs it's on page two yeah excuse me i'm curious how districts are going to provide affordable housing options to teachers is that for like um dormitories indian indian reservations and madam president members of the board um it can have several different looks there are those who are on the reservation and there's nowhere for a teacher to live on the reservation so there is district provided housing in the form of a dormitory for the the employees and their families there are also some initiatives that are being pursued um because it is becoming almost impossible for some places like sedona you can't live in sedona and be a teacher and just the high cost of housing and so this allows districts to pursue some of these initiatives it might be grants it might be some external funding sources that the districts can work with to provide those housing opportunities i'm also curious about this one i'm not quite sure what do you guys how do you guys interpret this oppose legislative and legislative intrusion on school site budgeting decisions or patreon on the second page under preserve and strengthen local control i'm not quite sure what they mean by that do you guys know mr hicks [Laughter] oppose legislation are there instances where the legislature intrudes on your school site budgeting decisions um madam president members of the board there could be some very minor funds that do have some certain restrictions that you spend half the money or no more than half the money here there but that is um a fringe element of our budget our main budget is complete and total control by the governing board so i don't know how big of an issue that is but there are some instructional improvement fund or results-based funding those have some very specific requirements maybe that's what they're talking about all right thank you you're welcome what did we decide on the defend against efforts to chill the free speech rights of school employees i kind of agree with you i feel like politics should be left outside of the classroom like you can say whatever you want to outside of the classroom i mean that's your free speech that's keep that all the way say whatever you want to but inside the classroom we should definitely keep our politics outside of it so when you say that they can say anything outside of the classroom do you really mean that no okay madame president miss jeff and members of the board i think as i read that statement it says oppose any legislation that has its intent to lessen the legal authority of local boards i think any time that there's something that preserves your authority as a local board you might want to support that that was a curriculum based yeah yeah i think the one crystal was talking about was the um defend against effort fourth but fourth bullet down i was asking about the legislation legislative intrusion that's what i was asking oh yeah that one's curriculum so like the recent legislation um around crt for instance the last bullet on that section basically they're advocating that you preserve the power to decide what you teach yeah yep that makes sense so how do we feel about the defend against efforts to chill free speech did we decide we want to oppose that or are we keeping that i don't like it okay okay i just wasn't sure what our final consensus was uh no that's five isn't it oh let's talk about this one spot i think we're just pulling them for now madame president right now we count three items that you're asking to be eliminated we we're missing two yeah we got one diversity of teaching workforce three um remove content defend against efforts to chill the free speech right did you say yes to politium i'm sorry defend against efforts to chill free speech to chill free speech i thought that was the one that keep that early defend against efforts to chill the free speech rights of school employees defend against efforts so basically defend against efforts to chill the free speech that's saying defend against people who say right right that's how i interpret that that's how i is that not how you interpret it no we're just we're not sure if you said yay or nay any additional ones on page two can you reread the ones you had because i think i caught half that conversation the the um the first one right the first bullet yeah i have a bullet one um the red edition to support for the arizona teachers academy and efforts to increase the diversity of the teaching force that whole bullet to remove that correct correct and then on page two bullet eight eliminate that entire bullet okay and then to defend against efforts to chill the free speech rights of school employees yes that's four and then let's look at this repeal any program that gives public funds for private schools vouchers esas and private school subsidies and prevent future expansion i'd like to oppose that one i oppose that oh um it's the same pages defend against so page three it's under require public accountability bullet two oh okay that's the parent choice one yeah i'm good with those let's look at this last one on that last page what is this talking about oppose any measure that would result in fewer qualified voters from being easily able to vote or register to vote what does that have to do with school districts and school board i don't know but i don't have anything required it has nothing to do has nothing to do with us it's the last page oppose any measure that would result in fewer qualified voters from being easily able to vote or register to vote why did they put that in there yeah i see it so i'm i'm looking at the heading require public accountability for textiles spent on education so i'm just wondering why they yeah that's plugged it in there that's what we thought too page one in the fourth bullet in its entirety protect voters intent in funding k12 education dot dot dot page two bullet eight in its entirety provide funding for districts to improve student achievement dot dot dot page four bullet six under improvement outcomes for all students in its entirety page four bullet two under require public accountability for taxpayers in its entirety and page five first bullet in red oppose any measure of the oppose any measure dot dot dot of the draft of the asthma 20 22 political agenda okay so i got page one first bullet page one fourth bullet page two bullet eight okay wait page one first bullet page one fourth bullet okay page two eighth bullet okay page three was it one two three four five six bullet okay and i think i might have did that one wrong and then page three second bullet under require public accountability and then the last page page five first bullet opposing measure so it's page three on both of those did you have two page threes yes sorry yes i just threw me off because you said bullet six and then the second bullet and three and four sorry pitch four and then bullet two six on page three was missing earlier okay page one the addition in red in the first bullet support for the arizona teachers academy and efforts to increase the diversity teaching workforce page one in the fourth bullet in its entirety for tech voters intent funding k-12 education is that right these two age two bullet eight and its entirety provide funding for districts to improve student achievement am i going to be reading each line or just no i'm going to say this and you guys are going to agree and then [Laughter] i've read it and then motion thank you yeah okay page four bullet six did you do page three yet wait page one i'm at page two eight in its entirety yes okay page three this is where i got it page three bullet six one two three four five six in its entirety provide funding for district or defend the chill sorry page three bullet two under required public accountability for taxpayers in its entirety page four right no yes three page four sorry i miscounted the first bullet in red to oppose any measure so basically you're going to make the motion and then someone seconds the motion you want me to read again just okay no i'm here all night i'm not sure what you mean so i i will make the motion to a point to okay to appoint tracy sawyer sink bell to represent dysart unified school district as a district delegate and miss joe grant as the old as the alternate no nobody nobody motioned an alternate nice try i'm sorry i misheard i totally miss her so sorry she won't show up i know that rodeo okay tracy sawyer sink bill to represent the dysart unified school district as the district delegate yes okay for the arizona school board association annual delegate assembly on september 11 2021 and direct the district's delegate to support all items or accept except sorry that we're discussed to support all items except the ones the ones that were just read and discussed um of the draft asba 2022 political agenda do i have a second second yes i was gonna say maybe ours are slower because we're down here no we got yours i think we're just waiting for christmas oh sorry she's reading i didn't see it up there oh here it is motion passes okay moving to item i one request for future agenda items any requests i have a request all i request is that maybe we follow up with the transportation issue and then just give the board an update afterwards thank you okay with that we're moving to um adjourned so i would move to adjourn this meeting second in my miss grant all oh
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
if you go to the third section you can charge a fee a reasonable fee but it's a 9 through 12 issue not a 7 through 12 issue so the recommendation at this point would be to move this to a damage fee non-refundable or non-return so if someone does not turn in the device at the end of the year then they would they would not receive their money back obviously the fees are collected we would keep we would keep the fees and then uh return them at the end of the year statute requires that we put a date specific time on uh the return so that is the recommendation for june 1st the other piece that's in statute that may create some issues as as long as they're returned in reasonable condition they define what reasonable condition is i think i got it written down let's see reasonable good condition means textbook or other items that is in the same or similar conditions as it was when the public the people received it plus ordinary wear and tear so i think the conversation will come up to what is ordinary wear and tear but that's the way the statute's written and so for this year i'd recommend we change it to uh we'll change the the fee structure and that is in the agenda uh and eliminate the the fee for one-to-one computing textbooks uh as a as an insurance fee call it now a damage uh slash non-return deposit therefore would it predicate that we would have to return that deposit at the end of the year so we'll work on that process it will create some some effort on our part to do so but we can do it what we do next year i think we'll sit down and have a discussion over the course of this year as to what's the most feasible way to do that uh whatever we decide to do we'll bring to you in the spring i don't want to get into what the the various what if so that we could or couldn't do i think give us a chance to see how things work and there's in my mind right now there's probably two or three options is what we can do we're not moving away from the one-to-one initiative in any way since uh in any sense at all but we may have to look at what does that look like and how do we distribute devices for future years so if on this particular one please read the agenda item as is presented because in state statute you must read the the portion that speaks to the ability to waive the fee uh for those families that cannot afford uh uh this fee deposit whatever you want to call it um so please read the agenda that way but i'll be more than happy to answer any questions i do have a question so um i think at the distribution they were told that at the high school that they were not to return it until right they're they graduate right as a result and based on what we had in our in our mind uh and i will tell you that what what we developed was what's being done in lots of different districts um as i said several people raised concerns and issues and so in communication with um legal counsel uh this is direction we have to go so some of the things that were communicated we're gonna have to put something back out to parents here in the next week or so uh and there will be some some uh conversations obviously if we're returning the fee then the expectation would be the the device has to be returned to uh four-year knowledge if someone doesn't return the fee because hey 50 bucks is a pretty good deal on a computer we'll lock the computer down where it becomes useless and so we have the ability within the profiling system that we have that basically if it doesn't we do it right now if someone hasn't returned a computer from covert 19 stuff then we have the ability to shut it down so it doesn't work and so it either becomes a fancy paperweight or uh hopefully we got some of them back from some several families once we shut them down um so that takes away that piece we will probably have to collect them quote unquote collect them all back although that is an issue we we did and the reason for the fee to begin with is we are out about 393 uh computers over the course of the of the coba 19.
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uh four basic round numbers that's probably in the neighborhood of 150 thousand dollars and so that's going to be taken into consideration too uh again the one to one is the right initiative it's the right thing for kids the practicality of what we do we'll have to reassess and communicate it uh again next year and again we'll do some communication with this this piece too because this changes the game a little bit is there any way that it can so they're a sophomore this year they're going to be a junior next year could you just let it ride the well i've had conversation with uh legal on that um and there's a question is just how long you can let it ride and so uh that'll be part of the more detailed conversation that we get into this year to see what our options are uh because i had the same question and there's a possibility but there's a question as to whether you can let it ride for four years as an example so and the other question is the the assumption of letting it ride suggests that you're going to hand the device to every kid one of the other options is just to put these in carts in the classroom and then the teacher distributes them as needed another option is to go ahead and distribute them to the kids there's some schools that distribute them at the beginning of the day and collect them at the end of the day those are all the things that we're going to take a look at to see what's what's the most feasible so before we say let it ride i think we have to figure out those other issues and then decide which direction we're going to go on okay any question and it besides me uh i have a question on all the other fees that are presented have any of those changed and if so no those fees were already approved on the 12th so the only fee that will change is this structure on the insurance fee everything else is is the same as what it was on on on may 12th okay my i have one more question you said you read it as presented just the recommended action or do we have to read the supporting documentation information also just the recommended action right yeah right right the recommended action okay yeah i can do that well go for it then i move uh to approve the damage non-return deposit for student computers for 2122 as presented and authorize the principles to waive the assessment of all or part of the deposit assessed if the deposit create if the deposit created an economic hardship i'll second that all in favor aye motion carries five to zero okay you guys it's almost there 8.7 8.7 is annually state statute requires that uh the emergency response plan come is brought before you and there's a policy that that describes it uh just for knowledge uh only uh you as board members saw the emergency plan because it's an executive content because there's material in there that could substantially compromise the district if someone else got their hands on it uh this is exactly the same as last year with the only changes being two individuals that are new to our district have been placed in the in the document with the correct phone numbers um and obviously changes from 21 you know to 2122 but otherwise it's essentially the same so um i recommend approval as presented all right i hope you approved it nope sorry no questions [Music] no all right all right i moved to approve the 21 22 joe combs unified school district emergency response plan as presented hello second um favor hi five uh motion carries five to zero so now we'll go down to our discussion items yeah the first discussion item is on student achievement their request to the board to bring this on a monthly basis i'll ask mr berkshire to give a presentation for this month good evening madam president members of the board dr wyman uh so at this time i don't have any new data to present um but we wanted to talk about our district achievement plan assessment plan and the state assessment plan so basically what kind of data are we going to be collecting over the course of the year in terms of academic student academic achievement um next one please um so again coming back to that comprehensive assessment system so our focus today is going to be on our district benchmarks and state summative assessments so for our district benchmarks we're focused on is the retained learning aligned with our state standards and uh are the state assessments um have the students retain that learning that meet our goals as well as state goals so so that's really the kind of objective what uh use of both of these that we're going to be looking at advanced please so in terms of the district ela and math are the only subjects we're going to benchmark this year uh illuminate for third through eighth grade has what's called an aasa mimic and so it mimics the state achievement test it's a comprehensive assessment so we'll give it three times over the course of the year we're currently in the process of administering that to third through eighth grade right now and it provides some norm reference data to show student growth as well as how they will do on the state assessment for ninth through twelfth grade their state assessment has now become the act act is not a standards aligned assessment and so instead of doing an act prep kind of thing we want to ensure that our course courses are still aligned to state standards and our students are still working with state standards so illuminate has what's called an interim standards-based assessment we'll be administering that at the end of each quarter the end of the first quarter into the second quarter and the end of the third quarter um we're so three times over the course of the year because they have three different versions of those interims they're they are more uh focused on at the end of first quarter this is the intended learning that we have for students in the second quarter the intended learning that's the way that those are set up and so our coaches will be working with the curriculum maps that we have to to align those appropriately go ahead chat oh just quickly so um so um when when it comes to the act preparation then are are the ela and math teachers formulating plans in which to actually so look at some of the things that we we do know some of the things that are going to be on the act so so currently ade is working with um pearson to crosswalk the act two to our state standards that document still hasn't been uh produced however um one of the people that we work with with icle our coach that comes in and works with us he's from wyoming and they use the act currently and his experience in talking to him has been that focusing on state standards and making sure that kids really strongly understand and can transfer those skills leads to success on the act and so rather than focusing on preparation for a for a college-based test we want to focus on state standards and ensuring that our kids really truly understand those standards that they retain those standards and that they can transfer those skills into different types of environments and and that kind of thing that's great i have another question if that's right this one's more just curiosity um uh i'm just curious how does illuminate how do they make sure that they did they do they make an agreement with the state how do they do that mimic so because the state hasn't even released blueprints for the aasa mimic the reality is it's still a-z-merit okay that's what i figured so the the that they have retained the questions that were written by the state those are still in there and sixty percent of azmerit azm was state written assessment items the state got to keep those so the other forty percent are uh going to be coming from pearson but they're they're doing all of the work right now to um make sure that those are appropriate and all of that that kind of thing um and so illuminate has pretty much said we believe that due to the nature of the way that the aasi will be constructed that our norms from azm will still be fairly accurate but they do admit it takes a little bit of time and that's the reason why we don't have science azi is a brand new test there's nothing to align it to and so illuminate doesn't have a mimic yet for az side they they anticipate that will be about three to four years down the road um until there's some solid data and some release tests that they can get that data with due to the timing we weren't able to develop our own internal benchmarks with using the illuminate they have azsai type items available but we just don't have the time to put that together for for district benchmark but um i've already started working with christine murphy our science and social studies coach to start thinking about that for next year that's a good idea cool thanks go ahead and advance we are also doing screenings using um fast fast bridge um so as a district we will be screening k-12 reading math as well as social emotional behavior using savers so currently we are doing the fast track reading screener and then we are actually going to be doing the fast track math screener that date is going to change because our trainers haven't been trained yet and their dates booked up before we could get in so we're going to be pushing both that and the savers back a little bit but we anticipate doing those three times a year and it as opposed to the benchmark test what the screeners do is they basically are looking at the basic skills and do get our kids at risk some risk or low risk and that allows then our teachers to look at interventions for tier two tier three um and the great thing that about um fastbridge is i screen kids there's a report that i get to click on that's screening the intervention report and basically recommends for the whole class based on their performance here's what i should be doing with the whole class or i can group kids into small groups and here's what i should be doing with that small group or i can even look at individual students and come up with an individual plan for that that student and it has recommendations for that in addition i click on another button it takes me into a professional learning module that says here's how you do it so we're very excited about being able to use that and move forward um so those are the dates uh the the january and the april dates those are solid it for math and sabres we have to massage that a little bit go ahead and advance all right state assessments that will be coming the big ones as you know are asa and act um aasa will be third through eighth grades ela and math that starts april fourth through april 29th act 9th grade will take the act aspire test and that will be testing english math reading and science for both act and act aspire 11th grade takes the act that will also include a writing assessment and then act aspire has a language and editing tasks and open-ended questions as part of that test as well asa um while those are the dates for the actual test uh there will be a writing standalone field test that we're gonna have to administer from january 24th through february 18th for grades three through eight that'll take about 60 to 90 minutes per student um ela includes one writing to write reading test sessions math will have two test sessions just like azm was and then in addition this year they're adding a third grade oral reading fluency component so that will have to be administered in small groups kids will have to wear a headset with a microphone and they talk into it we we do that currently with the zella so now it's expanding to all of third grade then we have azsai that'll be grades five eight eleven um they start that the week before aasa so there's a three week overlap between the two of them and then obviously is zello right now we're placement testing all of our new students as well as our our virtual students that we weren't able to get in the spring they are also changing their tests because they've got new standards so we were supposed to conduct a standalone field test last spring ade pushed that back into this fall they also removed the kindergarten so that'll be done first grade through 12th grade rather than k12 and then we do our normal reassessment starting in january through march 18th um ct has their assessments that those happen march 22 through april 29th and then msaa is the alternative assessment for for those students that um qualify and i believe the the standard is only one percent of our students can qualify to take the msaa and that's ela and math they are still identifying the actual dates right now all i have is just mid-march through late april so and that's all i have so any questions yes mark when um the results come in on the student's performance on these tests is it still proficient highly proficient is that the same kind of grading or don't we know yet i haven't heard that they're going to change those at all my my you know what well what happened with azmerit is after we administered azmerit for the first time they brought educators together to look at multiple benchmarks across the country so they looked at we looked at nape smarter balance park and established a cut score um with azmerit and i got to participate in that process it was a very lengthy in-depth process i have not heard from aede that they are planning on doing the same thing with this i believe they feel probably again because they feel like they've got questions that have been already vetted and worked through from the azm work that aasa will probably use the same cut scores the only one that might be different will be 10th grade math this past year they use the geometry end of course cut score but i believe that they want to actually go and look at those 10th grade results and establish a more solid 10th grade overall math cut score but that i think they're still trying to figure out all of the details around all of that so we'll probably know more as we get closer to the spring i just holy smokes how many more tests can they have like seriously is there any way that they can like share information with each other like when do we teach them their information every day just wondering because it looks like all we're doing is testing so the benchmarks uh those are about 30 questions um one of the great things about illuminate is that i can send out what's called a quick code kids can log in they don't even have to log into the computer they just hit a button on their chromebook they type in the quick code they type in their their six digit number and they take the test so it's a short test it's not as lengthy our galileo tests were closer to 45 50 items the screeners they take depending on the grade level ideally when our teachers are proficient at administering the one-to-ones they take about five minutes per kid the a reading auto reading takes about 30 minutes total per child and those are whole group so it it's it seems like a lot of testing and but in in the reality the information that we're getting from our district assessments will help us understand what gaps we may have where we need to focus on the screeners really help us identify which kids need additional help and support um and are hugely necessary for that mtss process um and then the state testing that obviously is that that's to that's the accountability side of it that's for for the legislature to be able to identify what i get i just feel like it's a lot of testing and once i just i don't know one of my the kids are just probably gonna just be like yeah i'm checking out hopefully not so all right well thank you so much that was great information all right thank you fantastic thank you for that update all right um 9.2 so uh with recent legislation um it doesn't technically become law until 90 days after you end the session but it's house bill uh 80 28 62 there's a type of there i apologize 2862 and it provides additional options for school districts to address issues related to instructional time and the pandemic issue initially it's it was sold as a hybrid model we weren't interested in hybrid model and so not really moving forward with it as we move forward into the cl into the school year we have the quarantining issue that we have and the number of positive cases that we have in review of 2862 it provides an option that would allow us to go ahead and put kids into a remote learning situation while they're quarantined and still pull adm on those kids at 100 percent not move them over to the online program the it's the reason we don't want to move them to the online program is the um edge annuity and or florida virtual are that's not necessarily lined up with everything in our curriculum so you can't just bounce kids back and forth on an online program it just doesn't work and so as we move forward with this new statute and it is so new that i just received information from ade yesterday with a component of of how you're going to take attendance so this is still being developed quite frankly the problematic issue is is we have to submit our application to ade by august 31st and the other requirement is that there's two public meetings so our recommendation is to and this is reason this is in discussion today is because this will be the first of two public meetings and the recommendation is to move forward with an approval of the instructional time model the gist of what we'll do is that we have a instructional plan that we've already been working on with teachers got input from teachers that just says what is it you're going to do to go ahead and work with kids are going to be out for quarantining or positive cases and so we have a plan that that speaks to them using the google classroom to set up the schedule for the week that there would be three different types of learning that could take place uh those three different types of learning could be asynchronous synchronous and or just using additional resources so it's not going to be like last year because we're trying to respond to concerns that were raised last year by both staff students and families so it's a slightly different version on that and so we're moving forward with that instructional plan anyway it fits into this particular model the attendance issues again that was dictated to some degree yesterday that what came out from ade uh your approval of the plan ade is not going to deny approval of any plan their purpose is to go ahead and have a plan that we're using and then if there is a request at the legislative level for oversight of what took place by schools that they would then come back and ask us to fit to tell us how our plan worked we believe with this particular model we give families options especially when we have kids are going to be out that we know that they're going to be out if you just look at currently we're sitting on uh a hundred and i believe it's 150 cases i'm looking at caleb and i'm not quite sure but basically about 150 cases of those case load that's probably 80 20 kids to adults this year last year was closer to 50 50.
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we probably have another 400 to 500 kids that are uh quarantined due to close contact and so this gives us an option for us to have the kids do work while they're home and still generate the adm that we normally would generate not give them an absence an absence per se there's some slight nuances that we'll have to work through with ade's requirements like i said we just got them yesterday so we're still reviewing them so leave it at this point for just open conversation about it and then the second piece that you got to give me direction tonight is so when would we meet for the second meeting for a second meeting it could be a zoom meeting it does not have to be an in-person meeting it would be a one agenda item which was i will probably present the exact same thing that i'm presenting to you right now um and then if there's particular questions you have uh or issues that you want that i would answer uh over the next whatever length of time it takes do we have the meeting i would bring those back um or if there's not particular questions or issues and you're okay with it then it's really going to be a quote unquote functory meeting in the sense that it would be just for approval of the of the plan i don't believe i believe i understand what the intent of the legislation legislature was relative to hybrid learning i don't believe the devil's in the detail and most everybody understands what that really looks like i think there's any number because we've been reaching out to other districts in these valley and i think everybody at this point time is trying to look and say what does this really look like it's probably gonna look a little bit different in every district depending on what you're doing within your district uh but this fits into what we had already planned to do and already provided for our our kids to uh to continue their learning while they're out and then still be able to [Music] get the full funding and it and this allows for funding at 100 versus an aoi which is at 95 or 85 depending on whether the student's considered full-time or part-time i'm open for questions so you're going to write up something specific that we can see right yes and then we have to do we have to look at it before the 31st or to actually uh vote on it you have to vote for the 31st right right i will be able to give you a i will share with you the instructional plan tomorrow that we've provided to teachers already and they're already doing it that's the essence of this is this instructional plan the the what i give you tomorrow is going to really speak to i'm summarizing a little bit but in essence not is that the expectation of teachers that they go into google classroom to put the class the workload for the week up there at the beginning of each week within there will be synchronous asynchronous and additional resource work that kids can do it will not be a case right now if i use this word in the district for some teachers it's a swear word but it will not be a case of swivel on for the entire day it'll be you come in you do this there may be a large group instruction from 9 to 9 30 then we may do small groups where we're going to collectively bring kids in while the other kids are not in the small group here's the assignment that you're doing then we're going to move over to the next assignment obviously middle school high school a little bit different i can give you that report but that's the essence of the plan that's available then we have to describe what the attendance pro process is again because the direction just came out yesterday we're still fine-tuning it we already have an idea what we're doing with it but i need to make sure that it's compliant with what ade put out yesterday and there is one other component of the application that i'm drawing a blank on right now that will will present to you does it describe how a student gets to participate in that yeah i mean when you have the plan uh when you have the the the schedule for the week there's information there that says okay we're going to use the sixth grade but this is no what i mean is so can a parent say that's what i want or is it a result of does that is that going to be explained in the document yes it will by the time we get that done we're working on an option for parents as we speak right now we've done some work on it today we want to put some parameters on this the one issue the same as last year given the way this works this is not a process that there's a hey i woke up late today so i think i'll just do hybrid today right right now we're looking at some specifics and and bruce can speak to this if i miss anything but we're looking at some specifics of a time frame that it would be and also some if you choose to go that way and then you do not do any of the work especially if it's voluntary choice then we would ask you to remove you from that put you back in person because this is this is designed to make sure that the people are doing the work i know we had issues last year where in some cases uh uh there was no engagement whatsoever and we're trying to set it up to mitigate those concerns bruce is there anything else you want tad no no i think you bring up a good point no i just think it needs to be pretty specific i mean i know that there were you know i spoke to a lot of parents who you know during the time of sports you know they decided hey i'm keeping my child home so that they don't have to and so like i think we just have to be really careful with that so they're like well during basketball season i'm going to take the 50 by 50 at home so and and and what we're looking at and trying to have a conversation is is in some cases there may be situations where the the true online permanently is is is a better choice but that one is a case as of right now that says you're in there once you go in you're in through the end of the semester so if you're the scenario you just said and someone says i want the online that's fine but when football season's over you don't automatically get a jump out of this i'm talking about but what i'm saying so as we do that then when you get to this other one we're trying to find that middle ground in between that option and the other option versus the in person so we're trying to find three distinct options that are available to them with their own set of criteria so that when you make your decision as a parent you're understanding that this is now what it means to you and you don't necessarily just get to change because you feel like changing that if you choose option a you get this if you chose option b you get this choose option c you get that and that's what we're developing as we speak but we have a good scale i mean a good plan to it we're just trying to fill in some all the little details right no and i i don't know that we could think of everything but i'm just all right right yeah well and i think too that one of the reasons i think this is a there's wisdom in this is because there's uh besides you know whether a parent choice kind of situation but but to help with the situation related to to covet you know with the number of kids who end up having to get sent home in many cases it's not necessarily the kids who are actually sick it's the ones who need to go home because they had close contact or whatever and this this this would allow right for school to continue for those kids and not be interrupted and again i would i would let you know that that that plan to address those kids has been in place for what bruce about two weeks now i think we put it out to that we put it out to leadership and out to to staff so that plan of how we did that was was two weeks obviously what happened last week with with the the huge tremendous influx of of uh situations of cases we're now looking to to just utilize this as a as a method for for funding uh issues also um so and i will tell you within the cases just for you we're we're up threefold in terms of the number of close contacts that have become positive it's at least three times greater than what we had last year okay okay so what we need to do is figure out when we're going to meet again right yes so we can just i would prefer to just do a google meet if that is okay with everybody yeah we'll set it up that way um so if we can um working around schedules i would say is there any way that we could do it i don't know um august 20th friday august 20th noon or before well it'd have to be between nine and noon where because you probably don't get up before that well we could do at 4 30 when i wake up what do you want i get up at 9.
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well then we don't want to do it at nine we weren't you brightened weren't you woken up woke up so is is that going to be can it looking at your guys's schedule it's just a quick issue it's just going to be a quick i would anticipate unless there's a ton of questions uh literally at 15 minutes i mean if you can get that out to us before and we can answer get our questions answered before that that would be great lisa how do you feel about that that sounds great um if there's any way we can not schedule it between 10 and 11 30 that would be great so before 10 or 11 30 to 12 would work great with my schedule how's 11 30 feel with everybody that was on the 20th yes friday august 20th do you have a hot lunch date i will hey after eleven no i just work [Laughter] isn't that on your lunch break don't you wanna work on your lunch break tell me the time again 11 30 on the 20th look i'm i can only do one thing at a time [Applause] yeah that'll work that will work for you yes okay so we're all yep that's gonna work for you that'll work yeah we can do that you can't be late because it's going to be quick you don't miss it i don't know why you would assume that okay so can we just our now given that direction we'll go ahead and move forward and i'll do what i need you did too and you will get us um yep you will send us everything we need to know yep 11 30.
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all right guys good job all right 9-3 this is just the the policy recommended policy changes from uh uh asba and the latest advisory from policy advisory 680 to 7-eleven this is just the first reading i'm not going to go through all of it 122 pages long it's just coming out of the last legislative session so i would ask as you read it again most of it is is related to changes in state statute therefore i mean we can have a philosophical debate if you'd like next meeting but there's still the law but if you do have specific questions about one of them or not uh please just give them to give them to me before the meeting on the eighth and then i'll be able to answer any of your questions um but unless there's a burning question right now um i would just suggest we take a look at them and and then move forward with uh the regular meeting in september okay does anybody have any burning questions right now no no all right okay so then um i'll make a motion to go into executive session at 705.
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a second all in favor hi hi hi hi okay motion carries five to zero and lisa we will bring in a phone so we can check in so that you'll be that's good thank you bye thanks for coming bye everybody
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] do so [Music] so [Applause] [Music] check with jameson i called to order this workshop for the bullhead city elementary school board on thursday august 12th at 5 30 p.m roll call corey burgess here amanda amen here charlene d is here item 1.3 introduction of district leadership for the school year 2021-22 dr stewart uh mr president and board members for the first time in over a year we've been able to bring the uh leader team for you to meet some of whom you didn't even get to meet last year and so i'll start with oh i'll start with fox creek so if you guys will stand up and introduce yourselves that's not the same for everybody okay um uh and we're so glad she's back okay so this is the team i didn't know if you'd have any uh embarrassing or i'm sorry any questions tonight or not this is your opportunity and of course you know lance and james is director of uh technology so um any questions for these folks no welcome it's good good to see you guys and have people here yes nice to meet nice to meet those you haven't met yet okay all right and thanks deanne for being here a former employee of our district so we're glad to have you too okay so okay um moving on to 1.4 policy gcr non-school employee by professional staff members dr stewart if we can get it to show up okay so this is uh paul our current policy that you all asked to review uh it's non-school employment by professional staff members i went through a policy bridge and looked to see if other districts had something else in place of this one which was the standard one and almost all of them have exactly the same one but i did provide for you examples from other school districts in case you wanted to look at them this one isn't much different they just made a couple things bullets that were not bullets in hours uh come on i kept reading this and and trying to figure out what was different and i truly couldn't figure out much different although it doesn't have the little um see it by that so i think it's pretty much the same the one that is uh different the most different is this one from pima that have had a definition and had some other things spelled out a little bit so i wasn't sure where you wanted to go with this but i thought you might like to see uh some alternatives and back to hours i do like in the pima one where they have the definition of what actually outside employment um intel um i just think it's important because one of the things we talked about the last meeting was um you know we share employees with coaching and with other assigned duties with tutors with you know any any number of things including bus drivers it's just kind of nice that if we we just know that the main reason for looking at that was just the support and make sure that the employees are taking the proper time off because that was one of the discussions was the excessive time off if they are leaving at noon but they're taking the whole day versus a half day so good glad it was on here do you want consideration of any changes are you wanting to pretty much leave it the same can we go back to ours sure and if you would like because we don't have a regulation attached to this if you'd like something that spells out a little more uh you know what's acceptable what might not be acceptable i could give you a draft of a regulation uh because regulations you know this is pretty formal stuff and regulations usually are okay here's how we make this happen or whatever so that's up to you okay then we can decide if you want to adopt that regulation at that time or make changes that we see fit and i'd send it out to you in advance a couple of times i'll send you a draft and you can make changes and whatever before we ever brought it back to the board sounds good any other questions about uh 1.4 no all right item 1.5 policy jjj extracurricular activity eligibility dr stewart mr president in working with fox creek and the middle school i went back and looked at a couple of these policies and realized that this one needed to be updated relative to the change in our grade banding so it's just a matter of changing that one that one those two words are the word and the parenthesis uh six and to seventh because that's really the only place that we have interscholastic interscholastic sports and i wanted you to have a chance to talk about it if there was anything you wanted to say about it it is on the agenda for first reading but i thought it might be worthwhile having it on this agenda as well any question on the eligibility all right hi genie glad you're here at 1.6 housing project okay well this is pretty exciting actually folks i've put some photographs in front of you and they were not in the uh in the published agenda but i'm going to share them with if i find the right thing here uh where are they well we'll do it this way okay so uh the committee which actually is a really nice committee of community people and builders and whatever went out and found several properties and then they went and walked the properties and then talked with the people who are selling them or wanting to sell them and the brokers and narrowed it down to two that they thought would fit kind of fit what we were looking at and the interesting thing is that in both cases uh the broker has decided to work without a fee whatever it is we do the broker is not charging us and we'll work both ends of the deal so so it's one more gift to the district donation to the district helping us do this it is very nice the first property is this one uh in arroyo vista and you can see it's eight lots it's just off joanne and roya vista and there's that little cul-de-sac and i don't know what the name of it is but you can see it's eight properties the utilities are two are in the street to the front of the properties and uh and the properties have been kind of generally graded you know like any properties are in a development there is actually one other property available which is this one across the street that would make a ninth one but that's kind of a separate then you know it's kind of separate from the others so that's one of the two properties the other one is this is silver creek at the top and uh corona vista here and the other one is this property with this with the rectangle uh box around it it is five acres uh undeveloped the utilities only come to this uh corner of um caya de mercado and i'm sorry i don't remember the name of that street that comes off of there the the owner of this property indicated initially he was willing to give us at least two and a half acres but is certainly interested if we want to have the whole five acres and so the price probably would even be negotiable but uh he was asking originally 150 000 for the whole five acres in the on those properties in arroyo vista those range between 60 and 70 thousand dollars per lot that sounds like a very big difference but by the time you put utilities to this piece of property we probably come out to somewhere close to the same it might or might not be depends on how many how many units we would put on this property and so i wanted you to be able to discuss those i indicated in my memo to you that i kind of have a favorite simply because i kind of favor this one because i think we could do what we want with it and we can make it what i found out today is called a mini neighborhood and make it a neighborhood kind of thing and then the other uh the other drawing that i had for you and it's just a sample of what could be done in this in this kind of a property this particular neighborhood has it was in a developed area already and so they were really conscious about not having not not adding more driveways and whatever but it strikes me that if we have our own property we can do whatever we want with it but this shows you quite a few houses that can be on a reasonably small piece of property i'm guessing based on what i could find out that this is about a five acre five acre spot and so you notice there are uh four townhouses and then a number of it looks like uh eight uh 10 10 single single-family homes and i just i just pulled it off the internet just as an example of what could be done um in this one they have kind of a general space in the middle and i know that one of the things we talked about was considering having something like a clubhouse and and that kind of thing so i it just occurs to me that this gives some flexibility so um we haven't filed our plan our plan with the state yet on uh for our sr3 money but i'd like some direction from you so that we can be much more specific when we're submitting that plan so please give me your input and if you'd like me to put anything back up i will i kind of want the open space to end only you can do more with it i think um the aurora best one you're going to be limited by whatever the hoa approves or not approves and i don't know if because like in your scheme here you've got little townhouses i don't know townhouses are allowed in there yeah i don't think so yeah so at least this this one where it's open space you're kind of a blank slate you can do whatever you want so that's kind of where i'm headed i agree i'm leaning towards the five acres that we can develop i like big one of the nice things that i didn't say to you is the properties surrounding this five acres currently none of them are for sale but they could be at some point and and it would certainly give us an opportunity to expand um on you know by another five acres or whatever it is um to expand if we wanted to at some point any other thoughts ideas where would we like to head at this point have we determined kind of what general idea we're looking um because we don't even know what this is going to run um so this is kind of way up in the air right now yeah i mean personally my thought is is i mean i definitely would scratch the ones in norway vista i mean i live up there we're restricted on everything and it would be a minimal amount of housing available i'm still having a lot of anxiety about spending that kind of money on housing for teachers when we're only going to be able to offer it to a very low percentage of our staff and how do you justify who gets it and who doesn't and spending the salary on somebody to run this project and we're in the business of running a school not a housing complex so that gives me a lot of anxiety and i see a lot of the issues that happened with the field house and i don't want to have those types of issues for our district i mean we need to keep keep the teacher i know we need teachers i know we need to find a way to do it but we need to keep the ones we have and if we're not able to offer something to everybody it's a lot of money to put into a project and what happens to the other 90 of our teachers who are ticked off that they're not in this housing program or they're not getting housing i mean the military if you can't get into housing you get a housing subsidy we can't afford to pay housing subsidy so i don't i don't know that's my thought i mean in the grand scheme of things it sounds like a really good idea but i mean how long is this project going to take how long is it going to be before family can actually move in there and the teachers actually see results in it our target would be for the beginning of next school year and we know that that's tight um starting with a blank slate we know that that's tight but there seems to be a whole lot of motivation from the people who are on this committee of wanting to get things to move as quickly as possible it is helpful that we've got city officials on the committee who are amenable to fast tracking some of the zoning and those issues for us um and and i'm not talking about fast tracking in the sense of you know sneaking us through and not doing what we're supposed to do but certainly keeping things moving as opposed to sitting on somebody's desk or in their in basket sure like this is what our ideal village would look like well i don't know that it's an ideal it was just what i found today yeah i know well it helps to have something to look at right that's what i thought it helped me if i'm gonna get out voted no matter how i feel if i don't see a purpose in single family homes i think everything should be multi multi-family four plexes doubling it up and getting you may get less yard space but you know we're not here to give you a big backyard and a swing set we're here to give you a place to live that's affordable i mean when we i lived in military housing for years i mean we lived with 10 other families and we had a community play area you did have a small fence area but i mean it was better than an apartment we had parking one of the other uh one of the other ones of these that i i found actually is a little bit more like jeannie's talking about when i was looking at it it was a little more like the housing along the parkway on at fox creek where there are the houses that are kind of long and skinny with the garage on the front and the and the yards are small where you could get you know a lot of people in a lot of units in um and corey's talked about um casa del sol uh or vista del sol sorry el camino right the only problem with those because we did talk about this at the last meeting those prefab units uh one of the things that uh they told us that the realtors told us is that as soon as you place those they start depreciating and that doesn't happen with a stick built and i hadn't even thought about that so that was why in my mind i kind of went back to the others you know if we wanted more units than these those you know the smaller lots and the longer skinnier or whatever and in some cases if you wanted to have a little additional savings is to butt them up against each other and have them be like duplexes or whatever and um so you know that whole discussion is we just wanted to know kind of where to go next which of these two directions to go and then bring some ideas back to the board because if you do do more of the town home or the duplex style and you still have that community area where they can go to a park or take their dog or go for a walk with their kids they're giving up the backyard we're able to get more in the community center area of it would be you know an area that could be utilized i want to see us get the most bang for the buck so when i look at the aurora vista just the initial land cost is kind of puts that out of there because you've got a single house you're putting there paying association fees on top of it yeah because your tree [Laughter] well died but by having the bigger place we can do so much more and if it is already zoned multi-family it really does open up the windows of what we can do my vision really was originally doing something like genie's talking about where we put a community area in yeah as many housings as we can get in there and knowing we're not going to house our entire staff but you know there's still a lot of other things we have to figure out ultimately this will be good for everybody even those that aren't living there because we are going to create a something that is going to give us a return and that return anytime we can turn a positive return without we're basically taking money that was federal tax money given to us to set aside we're not bonding this out we're not going to the community and saying hey i need i need tax dollars from from your property taxes they gave us a structure we have to work in we work in that structure we're going to need a return on that structure that's what i'm looking at and in the long run is going to look you want to talk about return i mean oh my goodness there's an opening in the housing area you're a new teacher coming in you know can you this would help a lot i think in the return of just drawing more to our pool so it's more than just monetary return i i agree with all that but i'm still really leery about the teachers who don't get in there that need it well there's no reason that existing teachers who might need housing could not get in if we had openings it's not just for new people you know we lost teachers and paraprofessionals this year uh because the housing they were renting they were kicked out of and so it would be really nice to have you know to have something available to say okay you know we you're in a tough situation we don't want you to leave here you know here's what we have available this is for staff members not just teachers employees no in my head it's employees it's any employee because they're all valuable to us absolutely there's not a single employee who's not valuable to us so at this point i think we really need to say we want to look at the multi-family not not the individual lot um we got to kind of figure out dollar figure so we know where we're headed because where i was talking and where you're talking it's still very far apart um but if that's kind of we have to have some guidance though and you all gave me that so i will tell you that what i told the committee was 2.3 million turnkey okay and then and then i felt like we have a little gravy for if we want to sell the uh the laughlin ranch property so that you know if we're getting close because we don't want to be in debt we don't want to we can't be we don't want to go for bond we don't want to do anything we want this paid for up front done done deal okay so i said to them turnkey and for me that means whatever units we have are going to have a stove and a refrigerator and a washer and a dryer and be ready for somebody to move in and not furniture you know not that kind of thing but but appliances and those things so that when they walk in the door with their own furniture and their own things that they can that they can start living okay and so i just simply said to them 2.3 we're working with that and if that ends up being fourplexes if that ends up being duplexes apartments whatever that the best bang for our buck where we will not be over budget i mean because if we ended up with one fewer units so we don't go right not be over budget right um and and where we're going to be at from there okay but it is definitely needs to be a multi okay okay we have agreement on that yeah all right everybody okay that gives me some real direction thank you so much for that uh i i will tell you that this is really exciting oh i'm sorry jeannie i i know you're not quite against it but no it's well it's it's anxiety it's it it yeah it's exciting but then i also have moments that i gotta go it is i think we need to look at if you have you know i know we've had teachers come in from the philippines do we have options where four can live together so there's like a four bedroom option so we can if there's single teachers out there that want a house together i think that should be looked at too so a mix maybe of one two and three bedroom that's a great idea maybe rather than four bedroom but one two and three for sure in these three one two and three make it a mix i think it's a great idea i'm sure that the teachers we're getting from the philippines would appreciate knowing because they have some trouble when they get here anybody coming has trouble but they kind of have an additional and we're not alone in that you know that's true in many many communities okay that gives us some real direction to work from and uh and so here's what i will tell you the next step then with either of these properties but for sure with this one since it is a blank slate so we will need to have a survey and we'll need to have core core drilling to make sure it's not on clay and will not shift and do whatever so it means engineers coming in and doing that kind of work the estimate from the advisors i have on the committee is that that would be probably in the 25 000 range to have all of that done and so that's less than we still have to have quotes so we will follow all the procurement rules but i can go ahead and do that and then once we get the grant we can journal that journal that over because i don't want to wait until september to get started on what we need to do for the you know the baseline stuff on this so if you're okay with that we will just we'll proceed with those first steps that we need to do and of course the first step is negotiating with this landowner uh for the purchase of the land right are we are we good on that okay helps me have direction thank you all right okay item 1.7 oops sorry wrong thing and get it up here there we go all right round seven yes and one point seven i need a motion to adjourn the workshop make a motion wait during the workshop that's like of that motion all in favor aye corey burgess hi genie portland amanda ayman aye charlene diaz we are adjourned we have just a few minutes before we can start a regular meeting so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] i called to order the regular meeting bullhead city elementary school board on thursday august 12th at 6 00 p.m roll call corey burgess here jeanne borland here amanda amon here charlene d is here okay if you join me for the pledge of allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all citizens presence if you please sign in the back item 2.4 call to the public this is the time the public may speak to the governing board regarding issues within the jurisdiction of the governing board and subject to reasonable time space and manner restrictions as the governing board may establish comments will be limited to three minutes per individual unless specifically weighed by the governing board at the conclusion of the call of the public individual members of the governing board may respond to criticism made by those who address the board may ask staff to review a matter or may ask that a matter be placed on a future agenda however the governing board cannot take action on matters and not been noticed in advance as part of the agenda we have a couple present and a couple that were sent in by email if i could find my emails here uh i'd like to read the emails first and then we'll get to the ones present our first one is a parent said to whom it may concern i have questions regarding the masks i have two girls at sunrise i love the staff and everyone is great my concern is both my girls are of age seven and eight my seven-year-old is considered high risk i wear a mask and do so my girls and so do my girls for the sake of my kids and and my parents who are elderly i am fully vaccinated my girls are not of age cove numbers have started to climb again especially in young children many schools like schools in flagstaff and even arizona state to name a few have gone against the state legislators in or requiring masks in the classroom and school buildings when are we going to make it mandatory again how many kids have to be exposed and taken out of school before we do this this is not fair to our kids teachers or everyone involved we want to be back to our old normal but i feel as i'm pretty sure other parents will agree that now is not the time to back down please help keep please help our kids to do your part requiring mass skins no more optional our second one i'm very concerned not only about the kova 19 but about the delta virus my kids are 9 and 10 and both are underage to get the virus shot i feel much better if not only my kids wear masks but all kids please take my concern into consideration thank you we have two additional call to the public uh paula hello um my name is paul sir philippe i'm a parent i have three children in the district one graduated in 2020.
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you want to check see if we're ready andrew thank you good evening everyone uh carol kevin roll quorum please here thank you carol i ask god to be stanford a pledge of allegiance so good everyone it's uh welcome thank you for coming down in person it's been some time since we had actually attend these in-person meetings so we had to get used to seeing friendly faces again so thank you for being here this evening uh the agenda is published but just to give folks an idea what the unit looks like we have a presentation coming up next on the opening of schools update including clover19 update we're gonna have an audience section after that where folks can give public comment we have a consent calendar after that report to stand in committee we have a very long packed business agenda so i'm going to keep the board of that moving along uh after public comment but toward the end of the meeting if folks are still here uh toward the end before the superintendent's report i am number seven's correspondence we'll be reading uh correspondence that we received and was asked to read into record at that point in time and that's pretty much the highlight so bear with us we'll try to keep things moving along for you that being said dr sullen would you please give us an update on the opening of schools thank you very much mr paragini uh uh i can say that all of us are eagerly awaiting uh august 31st to have our students back in school we're very much looking forward to that the goal again this year is to have all of our students in school all day every day certainly as safely as possible and what we've been doing to prepare for that we you may have noticed the the large tents go up around town at the local schools again so that we can have our students eating outside a little more distance and outside to reduce the risk of spread we also are having our students like we did last year distanced as much as possible in the classroom we're continuing our intraday cleaning through the fall where we had someone in each school spending time that would clean bathrooms high contact areas throughout the day we're also reducing seating on buses and of course you know i think we know why many of our guests are here tonight many of our families because we are requiring masks and when i say we that's really an executive order that uh is is making that requirement you know just today our um our director of the chesapeake health district maura who's with us sent me uh a release from the state that indicated that again you know subject to the executive orders that inside pre-k-12 or non-public private independent boarding school buildings excluding residential dormitories when students are present for example fully vaccinated custodians or office staff do not need to wear a mask when the school building is on a weekend or after hours when students are not present in the building but basically inside all public schools uh all the occupants are required to wear masks so uh you know that's where we are um miss esposito as i mentioned was really you know kind enough to join us this evening if anybody you know has any any questions related to that yeah foreigners have questions faith we'll start with you and i'm sorry thank you thanks so thank you for joining us tonight uh i just want to get clarification on some numbers if i could so according to the dph the number of cheshire cases are 17.3 per thousand is that correct correct that was reported today yes so how many of those are in the prison none of those are in the prison okay thanks um so it's a total town infection right correct okay and then how many of those infections of those cases are hospitalizations i do not know that information so we don't know the severity or whether they're asymptomatic no we never have had that information available to us throughout the pandemic okay and where does cheshire stand on death right now i think we're at 50 well the last time i looked it was at 53 okay which was about where we were in the springtime so we have not suffered not that i have news we did check today and there wasn't any updates okay thanks um now i just want to kind of go generally does um does the johns hopkins covid dashboard accurately represent connecticut cova data i don't know i didn't i'm sorry i don't know that i i mean it's my understanding that they get the connecticut dph figures i can't comment on that because i haven't looked at it okay i just would like to point out that they do get it according to their citations from the department of public health and the seven day rolling average for deaths is hovering since june between zero and one and um it also shows that and i find this interesting um based on the news reports i'm reading that through 8 10 78 of our hospital beds are occupied but fewer than 10 percent are with actual covid diagnosis and our icu has no covid patients at this point i can't comment on that okay i'm just putting it into that information um i can tell you nationally what they have been providing us information on is that about 90 of those people that are in the hospital with covid are unvaccinated the doctors are predicting that with those numbers will rise but probably still remain about 90 percent will be unvaccinated and 10 will be those people that have been vaccinated and i understand i'm just trying to get to the lethality of this delta variant and i just wanted my only parting comment is that you know we've got parents here who are genuinely concerned about their children's welfare as we all are we are and um they are obviously questioning the necessity of the mask mandate and i know this isn't your decision um but this is in light of a virus that's gonna become endemic if it isn't already and is not killing people at the rate that it was and at a zero to one rolling average has seems to have lost much of its lethality and so you know knowing that johns hopkins has historically been kind of the gold plate referral um because it takes data from the states i just am asking how to reconcile this mandate with what the data tell us well those mandates were decided above way above me as you know those mandates come from the governor's executive order as well as the commissioner of health's order that was dated just august 7th the delta variant now pretty much is 100 um the variant that is amongst us it only began in may so we've only had a couple of months we've come a long way since a year and a half ago but there is a lot of things that we are learning from the other states that have a very large amount of unvaccinated individuals and how it is affecting their children so i would imagine i cannot tell you exactly why and what impetus just made them to make that decisions other than we are being on the side of caution um the govern the the mandate right now only goes till september 30th and again it is so that we can gauge what is happening and then as of september 30th they're going to have to reevaluate that so it could extend much longer it could extend or it could be rescinded depends on what's going on we've through this whole pandemic we've had to really go on day-to-day data um things were changing left and right um and as we get these new variants we're unsure of them and what their effects are um you know we didn't see a lot of children getting it per se in the earlier earlier variants the with the normal one but we saw that we're seeing throughout the the other states that we have are in seeing higher cases of children you're hearing it in the news you're seeing them we have you know children being on ventilators now that's not connecticut data to my knowledge but it's a potential and in public health we are all about prevention and we don't want to cause that kind of incident to occur in in this state i guess my concern is that if we're all about prevention we have rsv that's out there we also have the group that's it are we going to have to ask when we have created a good question to put forth to the people that make those decisions but i don't make those decisions but you're absolutely right but this is a new novel virus that we do not know a lot of information about while we've had influenza and rsv for many years where that information is available okay thank you thank you faith editor adam yes the other mike hi maura uh thanks for um coming to our meeting tonight i know that you've been doing the tour for you know i'm sure you're very popular um so just to to clarify the authority in which we need to mask our kids comes directly from executive order from governor lamont through the the department of health because of it because of a a health declaration emergency that is ongoing for the foreseeable future it's ongoing until i don't know i could i my crystal ball has been fuzzy through this whole pandemic and i cannot predict when it is going to end i mean if it was up to me i would have asked it to have left a long time ago but unfortunately virus's job is to keep reproducing and by doing that they find the hosts and will keep on going so until we can do something to slow the spread and the large most important tool in stopping the spread is doing public health mitigation strategies which all of us are doing in this room today by wearing our masks washing our hands keeping our distances and so even if we had instituted a policy here to not wear masks that would be superseded by the governor's executive order would that be a true you know i'm not an attorney either so you know i i don't want to get on legality issues that i cannot sit there and say yay or nay about right i mean because i know those are questions that are happening in other states and it's not in my authority to to comment on that so what i'm trying to get at is that we have always um here at the board always want to hear from parents and their concerns uh but uh it is my understanding that uh we do not have the authority to rescind a governor's order would that be correct correct right now that is an order by the state of connecticut in order from the the governor in hartford right okay thank you and i i would add there that you know i don't think most people recognize board of education members are not agents of the town board of education members are actually agents of the state and i don't know that people actually know that yeah and tim's gonna speak in a sec i just want to update something so we did find out earlier today that uh is it executive over 13 that's in effect december 30th so in our board attorney advised that you know it's a rule of law right so if we if we decided our attorney advised us this is a violation of rule law so if we voted to order we would start paying fines and then get the attention to state on that so we did get clarification on that second question is that is that the only order in effect because i keep hearing no they updated another one 13b uh came after this one and that was more towards long-term care facilities okay thank you tim you want to mike thank you thank you is it on hello yeah it's on thank you uh thank you maura yeah i appreciate everything that you do and you have been doing for the past year and a half thank you um so one of the things that goes through my mind recently is you know i keep hearing the media the surge contagion i'm wondering is that creating more hysteria than would be appropriate and i'm not asking you to answer that question that's not my point mike what concerns me is hospitalizations and deaths but if a if a virus leads to runny noses um i'm personally as a parent entering kindergarten entering second grade i'm not that worried about that i don't want it you know i never want to get music so the the sort of barometer that goes through my mind uh is the flu based on so you have the history the past year and a half you can't speak to the next year and a half as you just said i think you're concerned about what could happen the uncertainty of it but just looking at history being the best predictor that we do have in terms of like could you speak to it being in relation to the flu like number of deaths in terms of school-age children uh deaths or hospitalizations across connecticut not i know you don't have the chester data but i don't have the data in front of me i'm sorry okay no no it's okay i wasn't sure we knew connecticut data right but the flu does have fatalities in children um and i don't mean to make light of that in the least no no but it is what you've lived with for decades yes yes and that's why you know we're out there every year talking about the flu season and getting your vaccinations and doing your hand washing has has masking been part of that not in our culture but if you look at other cultures they do do do that um you know this is a novel virus that's that's you know mutating um and so there's a lot of unknowns and i wish i could say that i had a lot of data as far as the delta you know and we're really taking day-by-day data looking at those other states where those cases are really high and those kids are in the hospitals so that is where the governor and the commissioner of health is basing a lot of their recommendations and a lot of that is coming from the cdc who is directly having direct interaction with all of that so in the in the other states it is leading the delta is leading to hospitalizations and you know death among kids uh it is about it is of all much higher rates of kids than in the past is my understanding the delta versus the original and they're right now the hospitals are surging and um they don't have enough space for these people and we don't want to get to that state here yeah no no we do not want that yeah yeah no i appreciate that um and so one last question uh masking does it i i i'm sure it doesn't stop it does it mitigate it i mean it sounds like that's what you said before in terms of in terms of that is a public health mitigation strategy i mean we all know that in the beginning you always usually when when i go into a home that has a communicable disease i have a n95 that i have been fit tested for so it's like 90 that's why it's 95 95 points blah blah blah effective to keeping me safe you know back when this virus started we didn't have them and so these things became the new norm now are they a hundred percent effective no but they're darn good and it's about the fact of keeping those particles both if you're coughing it's only staying to you and if someone else is is positive and they're coughing and they have a mask on they're breaking down so the exposure amount is less um so it is a good strategy but the ultimate goal is to more to get the vaccinations and get the vaccinations approved for the younger ages that is our goal okay thank you yeah no i i i appreciate all that and i mean i personally would prefer to not have the masks um including if it was including if it was like equivalent to the flu in terms of like deaths and hospitalizations um but i'm also i also sort of look at my life through a lens of risk and risk mitigation is critical for me um it's not i don't live in a i'm not looking for perfection um but if it does mitigate that's that that can definitely be worthwhile so thank you thank you tim and our board members with questions tomorrow so just a point of clarification so later in the agenda dr stones will be given uh his superintendent's update and uh maura hopefully will be here too late tonight but if you don't mind sticking around as i suspect by time we get to that folks will have more questions i really like this everything so but unless there's any more questions from board members and move on to the audience portion okay thank you thank you thank you tim had one more thank you yeah more so in terms of uh wearing a mask the the detrimental so there's the benefit of it and what's the cost of the mask i mean like i have people ask you know people have told me that kids get sick it actually does for me personally i have asthma and you'll you can see me here tugging at it very specifically because i have asthma and i ran up the stairs so i get that completely but i'm not sure about i'm curious if you could speak to the health uh give some health perspective on the drawbacks to a mask well i can only tell you what i've what i have heard from the medical community regarding masks is that they do not see any reason why people should not be able to wear a mask i'm not a medical doctor okay yeah there's nothing that has been reported on none that i have seen in a year and a half okay thank you [Music] mark quick question since we're on that topic so during the last school year we instituted a mass policy for the majority of kids that were in cheshire public schools and i don't have the numbers in front of me but did we have any when you were doing your contact tracing and when the quarantines were happening certain uh personnel and so forth was there any situation where the virus transmitted among students in the classroom was that mostly from contact tracing going back to i remember correctly the last thing we got in june was large gathering spokeswoman mask and what has been okay the outbreak so i can tell you i have three schools stungs so we do three um so it's not just cheshire um believe it or not we only had maybe and we couldn't find the direct connection we only had one situation in the cheshire public schools where we thought there might be a connection we would i can honestly say that through all the contact tracing and we did contact tracing right now 101 000 we're just shy of 2000 positive cases in cheshire most of the time these individuals especially the children their transmission was via their family um usually the direct relative being the mother the father the grandparent our recent ones right now are all coming back and being a lot of them are being exposed on vacations so i will say that all of the ones right now younger kids um when we're finding out they've been into states outside of connecticut during the two days prior to when they were infectious okay thank you maura this next one's for dr sollins and sort of topic of mask and unpacking students i i know of one grandparent that reached out to me during the school year uh leona uh that the only complaint was their grandchild to get enough water breaks not almost for mass but i don't recall and i don't see everything but i don't recall getting complaints from parents or children that the mass was impacting them did we have any i'm sure there's a case out there do we have any situations last school year where the mass were problematic for kids either because it's a medical issue or something else yeah i don't want to say zero i mean uh to be fair we're talking about the course of hundreds of days and we're certainly inundated with stuff but i will tell you you know in terms of concerns that parents raised masks were at the very bottom of that list i mean i wouldn't say that there were none i think last year you know probably different perspective on the world and i think people were just really grateful to have all of our students in school all the time but i wouldn't say it was a significant issue for us one reason i'm asking too is uh one of the correspondents i received i actually was a phone call this morning was is there a way for parents to who who they speak to if during the course of what let's hope doesn't go past september but let's during the course of the school year if there's an issue with an ask and they feel they're not getting attention who can they talk to to bring that a lot of that issue and can the board have some insight into the number of complaints or number situations i mean certainly we can try and tabulate that from different places i think if a student is having an issue with the mask if there's a concern with that the first person you should talk to is your pediatrician and then you know talk to our school nurse um and you know maybe it's a fit of the mask or a style of mask we could try different types of masks but you know that would be my recommendation thank you doctor song any yes faith please yep um so could you speak to um special ed's situations or situations where children need to see their the facial expressions in the um in the speaking and what kind of exemptions do we have this time around for those because i i believe we had them the last time didn't we uh it would be incredibly rare uh for a child to be exempt what we've done and then as uh mr mastiana's our ppes are here he was able to secure clear masks and you know for those limited you know cases where speech was a real significant issue time yeah uh recess or pe say at the high school level when it's outside i'm not talking about contact sports but if it's whatever the sport might be softball or you know and that's in the spring but yeah so students are permitted to take off their masks outside for recess or pe class when we can ensure distancing the uh state has said as recently as this past tuesday that they're issuing revised guidance uh you know obviously the clock is ticking here for us for our principles they we were talking about this you know just wednesday uh so you know it's hard for me to be incredibly crystal clear on this because they did indicate they were changing guidance so we'll wait and see on that right now with respect to athletics students don't have to wear masks to participate in athletics so we are following that as well and looking at any potential updates there thank you sure thank you tim all right yes ann dr solin i'm uh wondering especially in the uh elementary classrooms but certainly across the board uh would i be correct to assume that we have a plethora of boxes of face masks in the classes so if a student needs to change out of a mask to get a fresh one maybe after lunch or if something happens to it um that we have masks available but i think a lot of kids are like my kids that they get really particular on a specific type of mask and so you know we we do have masks available if that happens to be your favorite style you know i think that's great um if not you know most most students wore bra masks that they preferred to wear some may change it out through the day but we obviously encourage that they continually be washed to ensure they're hygienic thank you the other thing that the state has indicated with respect the cdc is change guidance where last year if there was a positive student in the classroom i'm sure many of our families and experienced this at one point or another throughout the year if there was a positive student in the class then the students that were within six feet of that individual for a cumulative 15 minutes would be required to be quarantined the cdc revised guidance is now three feet and that's you know if you're wearing a mask so with mass being mandated my my hope is that that will substantially reduce the number of students that get quarantined and get to keep more kids in school all the time thank you board members before we move on to the audience section uh again it's been a while i had to brush up on our bylaws so bylaw border bylaw 9325 stipulates a timeline of 15 minutes for public comment now obviously i don't we're not going to have 15 minutes i'm going to extend much time as possible for the folks tonight so i'm going to make a motion that the border vet extend public comment for one hour and 15 minutes which i believe should be enough time to quick head count with folks in the room hopefully get three minutes of peace so that is the motion is there a second faith uh all in favor asianas thank you fellow board members and again because it's been a while let me read our our guidance for public comment the board of education welcomes public participation and asked that speakers please limit their comments at three minutes speakers may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them to protect the integrity and partiality of the board we discourage an expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about the board education personnel and students nor against any person connect with chess for public schools such issues should be brought to attention to school administration and of course if you don't feel comfortable doing that in a situation uh some of the barney's been more happy to help you shepherd down that path but for this evening we welcome the public to the podium if you would like to speak with us we'd love to hear from you the microphone is there please limit your accounts in three minutes and i ask that you state your name so we could address you appropriately my name is tucker deming 230 oregon road so what we have here is best described as diabolical silliness to speak to the efficacy of masks did you realize that the cdc some years ago funded two very long and thorough reports studies on the efficacy of masks they found out that they were not effective at all in inhibiting the viruses or anything we might expel from our body because we're always shedding viruses you know so you wear a mask you actually do more harm than good you're trapping so you can go through a cytokine storm it's called so why are we wearing wearing masks by an edit from the governor who's following his probably uh orders from the federal government we as citizens i speak for myself in this small community don't want an agenda or a program foisted on us from the federal government or even the state government we'd like you guys and i appreciate your dedication to try to steer us through this mess we like you guys to stand up and say no we're going to do what makes sense and not just follow an edict from a tyrannical government let's talk to vaccines many of you probably know the um inventor of the vaccine he has uh published his remarks about vaccines the r uh the mrna vaccine which is now being used he says it in vaccine no it's not really a vaccine it's actually a gene manipulation it's gene therapy they've thrown a lot of spike proteins into your body circulating through our body okay very interesting that the inventor feels that there's great harm and risk we have no idea down the road how all of this substance that's traveling through our circulatory system is going to affect us because we're the guinea pigs that moderna and pfizer did have a several month long i believe maybe longer process of having a control group and those who had the vaccines they gave it up they just saw but they just gave the vaccine to everybody so now they have destroyed the control group and that's basically what's going on in our country this thrust to get vaccines in everyone's body they want to control they want to eliminate the control group so that there's no issues i mean you can't compare what happened here to this person who did who didn't have the vaccine so dr dan malone i'm sure you've all read him right you read about his remarks you know about him well if you don't you should uh i don't know where this information where you're getting these days of course you have to be very careful about what information you're going to receive and interpolate but it's everyone's responsibility to do that i'm not a medical doctor certainly not but we can all use our common sense and see what's going on here it's diabolical silliness thank you [Applause] thank you thank you tucker uh roberto 1146 will phil wrote cheshire i'd like to ask everybody on the board of ed what your personal feeling would be if we did not have this mandate coming down from not from the governor but from the connecticut board of health the governor has actually pushed that down to them to make this decision and legally has no authority to do so so therefore you do not have any authority to have to follow that because it's not actually coming from the governor's coming from the board of health and they don't have the right to do this so look at that follow your laws go back do your due diligence and see like he just stated i don't feel these kids should be pushed to wear masks it should be parents choice i ask you all would you have parents choice or would you be pushing this mask on your own if it wasn't for this edict from the governor these masks don't work the data's there uh you guys should be showing us the proof that these masks do anything more got a parent spoke no proof i don't see anything uh there's a letter that i gave to all of you there's actually proof in there that shows these masks do not stop this it does cause problems i mean we talked about clear mask there's a reason why you bought clear mess because we know that young kids have to see the face to be able to learn how to speak and and learn words so it's it's causing an issue and that's a risk that's now it's not a risk that maybe they'll get it maybe they'll get sick right let's do a a risk to reward analysis on these masks this is ridiculous okay my daughter's hair hopefully she'll come up and speak and see what happened to her she had migraine headaches went to the doctor the doctors aren't posting and telling you guys everything that happens and where it comes from and if it's from the mask or not they don't even know on half of this stuff that they're going to the doctors she was with a group of kids that were forced to wear masks running around a school playing some kind of sport in gym while running when you have to breathe and you need the most amount of oxygen you get in your body you're gonna put mask on these kids so they can't breathe and reduce the oxygen where the hell is the brains in that what is wrong with you people this town republican talent should be stepping up for our free rights the constitution of this state and our government and our country is for me it's for the people not for the governor to be telling me what to do but for me all the teachers if you have if you have issues with uh ask more right there was no kid to kid contact tracing there's no kid to adult contract tracing only adult to kid so what the teachers are paid force them to wear the damn mask our kids shouldn't have to wear the mask if the parents want to send their kids in with mass or the kids want to choose to do that that's their right give them the choice i don't understand why you're forcing non not for the parents not to have a choice in this community especially this community with that it is a parent's choice all your teachers everybody that's it works for the town they all have unions protecting them the people that are protecting our kids are the parents and you're taking that away from us you don't have the right to do this i think my wife might come up and say something where she's founded in the laws that that you actually have the right to make this decision not the state the state gives you the right by law to make this decision and i think you should make the right decision and make it parent's choice i have no problem with some kids want to wear the mask they're scared out of their minds the parents are scared of their minds they see it all the time breakfast i see parents coming in without masks but their kids have the mask on does that make any sense right stop scaring us maura stop scaring us point put out all the right data every last bit of data you can so we can make informed decisions not the decisions that moore said you see it in the newspaper you see it on television yeah well they're corrupt they're telling you the stuff they want so they can push their agenda i'm sorry i understand that this virus it's scary for people it is it should be nonpartisan but there's a group of people that are using it as a tool against you to control you it's blatantly obvious tim's over there pulling his mask half off his face i'm getting harassed by people downstairs that i have to wear a mask when i'm bad asthma and today's one of the worst days i've had my inhalers in my pocket you'd have to wear something thank god i have this mask and i don't have the mask you're wearing because i'd be like tim dying over there our kids are going through the same thing you can go outside and you can play in recess you don't have to wear your mask you can tumble around on each other all the sports do that but when you're sitting in the school nice and calm and not breathing heavily doing your work you have to wear a mask does that make any sense to any of you up there and i'm sure you don't feel all that great wearing that mask right now because one it reduces your your oxygen intake two your body god designed us to breathe to get rid of toxins out of our body you're now trapping those toxins within your mask and you're re-breathing it there's also dad out there showing that people with mass that come into a plume of covid they get it more severe than people who don't why because they get that into their system and they rebreathe it and they have no way of getting it out of their lungs and getting it out because the masts are making it worse it's common sense folks look at the box the mass that you bought they tell you right on it it's not for coving yeah oh no the health department's telling us to wear this damn mask don't wear the mask right they'll uh a couple other things cheshire as of august 6 the numbers the kids are at point zero zero zero three percent getting sick out of the population of cheshire is that a reason to wear a mask or to do anything that is less than the regular flu when we had regular flu season come on wake up thank you rob [Applause] good evening um olympia brocado volkl road um i understand you said earlier that you had to follow the executive order so i encourage you to explore the statutory basis for challenging the rule of law the executive order and talk to an attorney because according to section 10-220 duties of the board of education each local regional board of education shall maintain good public elementary schools and provide such other educational activities and its judgment will best serve the interests of the school district including up to including shall have the charge of the schools of its respective school district so i understand it's it's a little bit uncomfortable you don't want to defy the governor's orders but i would encourage you to speak to an attorney that will help you to explore the statutes and and the articles of our connecticut constitution where you do have legal foundation in order to push back against that because you probably do have more rights than you realize and um another thing i wanted to say you know in terms of common sense i miss the days of common sense i miss the days and this is going to sound really crazy i remember when my daughter went to her local elementary school there was a stomach bug or a flu that went around the school and half the kids were out of school and i remember this very vividly so i i think my daughter was out some of her friends were out and then the notice we got from the school was okay we understand that there's a stomach bug a flu that's going around and their way of handling it was this weekend we're going to clean the school just keep in mind come monday that if your kid if your child has a temperature above 99 just keep them home and that was how we handled that that was before the day the days where the fear just spread we don't we didn't know what kind of flu it was what kind of variant it was all we knew was that we just operated with common sense and before you know it nobody was out because the hurt immunity went around the school everybody caught the bug and everybody had their immune immunity built my concern is that in the long run if we keep these masks on there it's going to have immunological suppressant against our children that in the long term they're not going to be able to fight real diseases that come along and we don't want to do that and i think i want to operate in the spirit of common sense like we've done in the past because i love this town i really do and and i love that this is a constitutional town we value our freedom and i don't want to see us losing that because of fear and i'm probably just going to just come out and say why i'm concerned and i think i've sent this to the board of education some of you might have already seen this masks affect respiratory function of the body you okay some of you have already seen this you know the heart muscle needs oxygen to survive that's according to the american heart association um the oxygen lowering effects of masks forces the body to compensate by increasing the heart rate i can't believe that we're doing this to our kids that we know that this affects their breathing and their heart rate and yet we're forcing these masks on them and so even though when people say has any parent come forward and complained about this i have a nephew who has terrible terrible asthma and this is really making him feel this is just having a lot of a negative impact on so many kids nobody is saying this nobody is going to come forward and say this because nobody wants to be the one who's complaining this is having terrible effects on on their breathing co2 levels breathe back into the lungs or an extended period of time causes drowsiness dizziness tiredness headaches and lack of concentration masks harbored germs just as you know robert bricato said my husband just said it's unfair to force them to wear these masks for six to eight to eight hours and i think in back in the days of common sense before fear we would never have dreamed of doing this to our kids facial recognition and social skills social interaction and being able to read one another's expression for social development and lastly what i'm really concerned about is the long-term psychological and depressive effects that masking them is potentially causing depression in them nobody's going to come out and say that their child is depressed or that their child is suicidal nobody wants to point any negative you know press on their on these children but i would urge you especially when you i think you know better i i think in your hearts you know better and i think in your ground it's common sense you know what the truth is and that's why i would encourage you to talk to an attorney and explore the statutory basis for challenging any executive order that comes down so that the town has autonomy to make decisions based on what you know you know based on the participation of your constituents so i i just wanted to you know thank you for for taking the time and to hear our concerns and i i would like to us to move forward and operating out of sound judgment and sensible conclusion and let's continue to do so for this town in the same tradition thank you for your time [Applause] uh olympia i just want to say thank you this is a very uh thoughtful you know well written email the whole board has that i just gotta point i'm gonna make a note that i absolutely will follow up with a board attorney on challenging state statutes and because i suspect that you know if we're not able to address this now come end of september i'm sure folks won't have an answer because uh it would be good to know officially what you know where our legal team stands so i have a takeaway for that and uh i'm not sure if your letter's the same as mr brocados that he sent today but uh if you wish i had to run into the record i could do that later but i do have that but thank you okay thanks yes sonia brucato um 11 46 wilfred road so um at my school we had to do this thing where we had to run laps and while we had to run mask we had to wear masks and so some of the kids they looked even more tired and they looked like they were going to pass out and they had a lot of hard bree hard time breathing than when they were outside without the mask and so um [Music] i just felt really bad because i actually had um a better time because my mask was under my nose and the kids actually kept their their mask over their nose because they're afraid of getting covered and so some of the kids told me to put my mask up when i had my mask over under my nose because i thought it just wasn't right for me to wear a mask because it just affected my breathing and also when i was in class i just the mask was like i had a very hard time breathing because like it was just sitting there in class me trying to focus while i was struggling with breathing so i even had a migraine to go to the nurse and i had to go home because i didn't feel good of the mask thank you sonya how you doing mike ropetzky 855 ives row i'm here speaking concerning the mass mandate being implemented by our school system my son will be starting the special education pre-k program at thursday at the end of this month he has an iep for speech delays and i'm concerned that him wearing a mask will delay this further as well as hinder other developmental and emotional progressions seven percent of communication is from the actual words spoken 38 percent is from vocal tones and inflections and the remaining 55 is from kinesics which are body language facial expressions and other social cues that means up to 55 of my son's communication ability will be covered and inaccessible by a mask that allegedly protects them from a virus that has an affectionate of 0.057 amongst children nationally as educators please tell me how that makes sense i want my son's peers and teachers to be able to read his emotions appropriately because i feel the non-verbal percentage of communication is higher for him due to the verbal component being below the average for his age i want my son to have the best chance possible in catching up to his peers and feel allowing the mass to be optional for him will help him do this i'm more concerned with these four min aforementioned development issues than the probability of him contracting or being adversely affected by covet 19 which his age bracket is amongst the least affected in both the transmission and severity of the virus the governor has left masking mandates up to the towns the town has sent an email claiming it's the state's decision yet numerous other towns have mandated a mass optional policy with the most recent being woolkit connecticut practically our neighbor why is everyone passing the buck i want real answers on who's making these decisions and why i would also like to know specific criteria for implementing this mandate as well specific criteria on what needs to be met in order to end this mandate right now it seems like nobody has an idea what's going on when it will end or quite frankly why we're doing this this should be a parent's choice this is my child not the board of ed's not the towns and not the state of connecticut thank you very much [Applause] thank you mike i just want to say uh first of all welcome to cheshire and uh if you haven't had a chance to talk to robin and carrie our director uh please reach out there for any concerns questions you have and how to mask may impact your kids she's been very helpful in that regard thank you my name is tony sparrow 40 burntwood drive um okay good evening my name is tony sorry i'm a little nervous um i have two children in the cheshire public school system tonight i'm here to speak on the subject of mass mandates in the upcoming school year we speak so often of looking to science of looking to the numbers and making these difficult decisions but the science clearly shows that children are not greatly affected by this virus and the majority of kids exhibit nothing more than what we would see with a cold in the state of connecticut the number of confirmed deaths due to covet within the age group of 0-19 was four in the united states the number of confirmed deaths between the ages of 0-17 was 337 according to the cdc the population of children in united states is 73 million 0.000462 of the population died of the coronavirus yet we sit here debating whether or not our children should be masked for six hours a day whether or not our children whether or not our children should have the ability to breathe fresh air these masks have become such a topic of debate but the effectiveness of these masks are not debatable the cobin 19 virus measures around 0.125 microns the mask our kids are wearing for six hours a day does not prevent these fibers from penetrating the only mask that could potentially block this virus is the n95 mask the cloth mask our children wear it's a petri dish for bacteria and often times our children come home with filthy masks filled with leftover food and saliva last year it was herd immunity will get us out of this then it was getting the vaccine will get us back to normal then it was if a certain number of people got vaccinated we would be able to put this all behind us connecticut has one of the highest vaccination rates with about 70 vaccinated but yet we sit here with mass gone now with the delta variant all viruses change that's what viruses do we will never get back to normal we're waiting for this virus to disappear because it won't my son spent the majority of his day when he did return to in-person learning wearing a mask he did not get a mask break during recess because the mass break on the playground meant he played by himself or not in close contact with his peers he came home several times telling me that other kids pulled their masks down to get fresh air while playing zombie tag and was quickly reprimanded for doing so the only time my son received a mask break was during lunch snack or the occasional trip to the restroom to pull his mask down so please do not tell me that kids will have masquerades i love my sons dearly and will fight for what i believe is best for them every parent should have the right to choose what is best for their children i have spent hours researching masks and the effects they have had on children both emotionally and physically and i have learned a great deal and now i do not know how i could possibly ever consent to allowing my children to be masked for six hours a day five days a week so i stand here today asking you to please let math be optional for our children thank you [Applause] tony thank you you did great you you weren't that nervous and also thank you for your correspondence i appreciate what you said been sent back and forth to jeff all the board has that by the way too thank you hi my name is amy bahata singh 455 budding ridge road cheshire um earlier tonight somebody had said you should check with your pediatrician on masking and it just turned out i was at the pediatrician this morning doing the health assessment which is due and i asked do you have any data or reports or something that you can share with me that shows the effectiveness of mass protecting kids against covet 19.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
okay [Music] thank you dr mead thank you dr wallston i mean mr walterson hello good evening everyone okay so i think we have everyone here let's go ahead and start welcome everyone i'm ann mead i'm the director of family school partnerships and we are so happy that you are here with us tonight we're going to hear from many of you but first we'd like to hear from a stella who's going to give us some basic rules of the road if you would like to call them just to make sure that um we're all on the same page and so this will enable us to be able to hear from a majority of you in this two-hour time period recording in progress hold up do you want me to go ahead and start i don't know if you can yes please if you can mute others okay i know okay okay is [Music] is or carmen can you repeat that last phrase okay hello go ahead we're gonna have carmen or cara put up the powerpoint is go ahead i i just clicked on it the host has anything your volume is it's oh you know what it won't let me give anybody a co-host because cara is actually the host okay okay so just explain charming everybody else okay that's all right carmen just explain to people that we're having just still a little technical let me work on it um so what we're going to do is we must have a set up that no one can share but the host okay so just explain to everyone we're still having technical difficulties and go ahead and introduce uh mr walston as our superintendent and then we will um ask people to put questions about masks wearing of masks in the chat box and we'll start with those first okay um kevin watson so what do you think mr wallston would you like to introduce yourself mr has the microphone um oh neat there we go you're muted kevin yeah [Music] can you unmute it and or deb can you unmute mr walston [Music] um gracias thank you for for being there you know so we are trying to give the most information for this forum so [Music] they saying and uh the the microphones most of them are muted right right and also mr kevin yeah he is too okay so i can um i'll be glad to take the first question yes they want to have information about the school and they want to so families the principals just return this week and they will be sending out information and packets to their families early next week and in that we'll have bus information we'll have some classes listed and it will have more information about each school director is go ahead okay so we have another question in here about will children be required to wear a mask yes the guidance from the cdc as well as from our state department of education is that all children will wear masks return when we return to school as well as teachers and all staff in the school and there will be mass great for children right and i believe mr walston is back with us go ahead mr watson thank you carmen um good evening everyone and welcome to the danbury public schools listening forum as we begin to talk to um and speak to our road to reopening schools um on august 30th 2021 we are really excited um to have our kids back and welcome and open our doors for our kids to come back in school on august 30th and we want to hear from our parents this evening we know there might be a lot of questions clarifications that might be necessary i mean we want to make sure we provide that platform this evening so we're looking forward to hearing from as many of you as possible so buenas noches mr kevin waltz this is you can continue mr kevin thank you carmen deb next slide so i i just want to share with the families just some kind of background on what we've had to do to try to reopen our schools this year carmen um you just tell me when you feel like i've said too much i'm happy to stop there um so got it okay so um going from left to right the district it was important for the district to review the space capacity at every school um in classroom in the district um the cdc has guidelines recommending that we are at least three feet apart um and we had to reevaluate space throughout the district i'll stop there coming okay [Music] foreign is thank you and then and then we we went to the board and and spoke to the board about leveraging some of our federal funds um esther funds and american relief act funds to support some of these goals to get all of our students back 100 percent in the fall so um i thank you carmen that we can go to the next page and so i just want to walk the families um in our community through the problems um problems some of the solutions um that the district is recommending um so so part of the problem is social distancing guidelines will limit how many students we can have in one classroom in our secondary school 6-12 we did not have enough space to house students in our cafeterias and in our elementary schools we did not have enough teaching sections to accommodate enrollment plus the social guidelines at the same time problematic and so some of our solutions begin here carmen um and some of those solutions include adding furniture um staff and leasing agreements um district-wide and so we have um ordered furniture for new classrooms throughout the district in elementary schools we've ordered desks instead of cafeteria tables in our middle schools and elementary schools to space students out and we've also um leased a new building in brookfield um and we and at that at that building uh we have three different schools uh sending their kindergarten section south street stadley rough and ellsworth uh to that building um and so we we know how popular danbury public schools has been over these last particularly five to ten years our enrollment continues to grow and so with increased enrollment and then limited and limited space to put students because of the guidelines the district has added 14 additional teachers to the elementary schools and 15 additional classroom teachers to the high school this has allowed us to spread kids out a little bit more and just allowed us to have a better student-teacher ratio across the district okay for example [Music] a thank you carmen deb we're ready for the next slide and so we and i and i mentioned um the additional teachers that we've all um hired district-wide uh at the high school specifically we previously we had what we call the seven period day um now having an eight period day at the high school allows us to spread students out even more and so if you can just envision if a student has a schedule and they have seven periods now that they have eight they have more options different classrooms to go to so we're out where that allows us to spread students out a little bit more and as i had mentioned previously we have um we we have the additional sections also at the elementary school to spread kids out as well um and carmen if it's did you want me to keep going you want me to stop there i stopped there so come on mr kevin right um thank you carmen and so we have four uh topics we would like to review uh with our families tonight um and i just wanted to provide some background before we begin to talk about the four areas we've received a lot of comments emails requests suggestions regarding the reopening as a district we certainly understand parents position there are four um four areas that we've received a lot of feedback on we wanted to make sure we focused on at the very least those four major topic areas tonight and and that's masking we've received a lot of questions about masking we've received a lot of questions about social distancing uh whether that's on the buses in our classrooms and cafeterias we've also received questions about classroom quarantining and what the expectations will be for the upcoming school year and last but not least number four um is what will the mode of instruction be next year so i just want to make sure we cover those areas and and provide an opportunity for families to ask questions in those four areas and then they're up on the screen for your comments or referrals okay sure yes thank you so much and so um right now i'm going to ask dr me for some help with facilitating and and of course you as well carmen uh but what i would like to do is begin to start taking questions on or any comments that families might have regarding masking and what i would like to do is just review those four areas and get feedback from our families and answer questions that we can and then if we can't um certainly you know accept that feedback and make sure we capture it to inform or share with our reopening committee a moment you are muted i mean myself thank you so our first question is if a child has asthma will they have to wear a mask all day si la si los ninos thinning asthma alone go ahead kevin okay thank you and so i i just want to share with the families that these you know we we recognize that we have students who are coming to school with pre-existing health conditions and so we we we will continue to make sure we do everything that we can to keep all of our kids safe so certainly for the majority of our students whatever our policy is going to be regarding masking is going to apply to the majority of them but in some instances we have cases that we have to make exceptions for in those cases that will be a shared decision with our school nurse in some cases with our pupil personnel team and those decisions will be made on a base on case-by-case basis um is okay thank you um and can you tell us a little bit if school is a full day and will there be mass breaks um sure thank you carmen uh so we the school we will certainly have um mass breaks for students the plan is is for all of our students to return return back to our schools in 100 um on august 30th and this will be five days a week for full school days we certainly understand that it will be a challenge for our students to have that mask on all day without some type of break um two there are two breaks potentially three breaks that will always be built into the school day um one one of those breaks is during recess which is required for all of our elementary students another break opportunity will be lunch every day because the students will be able to remove their mask while they're eating and then we will be asking principals and reminding principals to provide at least you know at least another break throughout the day for students uh to make sure that they're getting the mass break that they need on throughout the school day um so we're we're certainly mindful as a district uh that it's going to be necessary um and particularly during at the walmart months except in september so um okay so [Music] can you just explain to folks that this seminar is covering all of our schools tonight this is a district-wide policies we're talking about district-wide recommendations please um thank you and also if you could explain to the parents that if they were remote last year they do not need to re-register their children again okay and this one is for kevin our mass mandatory and how will it be reinforced that the mass stay on during the day um so carmen does this mean i don't have to answer the other questions only this one that's for me um i believe so both it's okay that you can answer because you're already saying that okay let me just be really clear one more time on that that this year we are not doing remote and that if students were remote last year they do not need to go to the registration center and re-register us so regarding masking for the fall um currently our policy uh requires all students and staff and faculty uh to wear their mask inside um of of our school buildings um so as of right now and until the reopening committee reviews the policies and recommendations from the cdc and state health department and unless something changes from the city of danbury because they recently shared a mandate that masking is required in all buildings unless that changes that those whatever recommendations are still in front of us next week we will share those same recommendations with the board uh the following week at the fourth meeting recommend foreign thank you carl yep right more questions yes so we have a question here about if a child is ill and quarantining what's going to be the protocol about quarantining this year and if it's not a child who's sick what about if a teacher becomes sick what is the plan okay um thank you carmen so so one um i just want to start off by saying that the quarantining rules continue to evolve and change really week to week and and day to day right now but as i understand it right now if a student and the staff member have been vaccinated we recognize all of our students are not eligible to be vaccinated but if a student and staff member are vaccinated and they are asymptomatic meaning they're not showing any symptoms um they do not have to be quarantined so i'll stop there for i'll let me stop there comey let me keep going you guys keep going okay and so if if they've been vaccinated and they are not showing any symptoms they're asymptomatic they do not have to be quarantined um however if they are not if they are not vaccinated um and i'll just talk about students first if they're not vaccinated uh we will we will do our contact tracing the same way we did last year um call all of the students and to call all the students and staff members if applicable who are in a radius of three to six feet um and and again the three to six feet changes you know kind of week to week um and so and and then if if the student is if the students who have been in that contact tracing if they've been um vaccinated they do not have to be quarantined if there's another student in that radius that's been in part of the contact tracing and they have not been vaccinated they are likely to be quarantined and so um the you know the status of the vaccination uh plays a role in whether or not you have the quarantine and the same is true of our staff as well okay um [Music] so i'd like to ask david cardenas if you're still there you had a question you'd like to ask yes i speak a little bit english so my question is i have my kids um but the problem is i have my kids and they're really low uh small how they're gonna um how you guys are gonna help them to wear like masks the whole day because sometimes with myself uh sometimes when i go grocery shopping and my kids wear a mask even though we tell them you need to have your mask on every time don't touch the stuff don't don't put your hands there you're touching your in your face and still they do it so how uh like little kids will like will not have their mask on the whole day or how you guys are gonna you know tell them to wear them so in my case is uh i'm a little concerned because right now with this variable thing of the travis that's happening it's called delta i'm a little bit scared because uh um that says he's affecting phuket so it's when you guys say that if the kid comes with um fantasies and it gets really worse who is gonna help us with with our child if you know if they get worse who is going to be the responsible or if my kid gets sick i think i heard at least two questions in there and in the first question um i i believe it was and i'm sorry because i'm not sure i caught at all but the but but the first question if i recall was about masking and um will we be able to ensure that our kids mask of being worn all day um um and number one i i understand the question and the concern um i i think it's a question and a concern all of our staff members had last year and although we only had students in for the hybrid we did have a lot of experience with this last year and frankly with great success our students we you know we had if our families recall we had our hybrid in which students came in either three days a week or two days a week um and during that time uh we had tremendous success um with with with the wear and the mask in our schools and so we we anticipate we'll have similar success in the fall our teachers at this point are very used to ensuring that our kids wear their mask all day you know recognizing that it's it's the the true mitigation strategy to keep us all safe and in the event kids need a mass break you know we make sure we find opportunities and that's why the built-in mass breaks is so important make sure our kids get the mass breaks that they need which will help them keep their mask on all day okay so and carmen i i i understand mom's question um and concerns about um you know her child and i'm sure a lot of families on this call feel the same way um you know they're concerned about our kids getting sick in school um and this is why the ware net mask is so important um i i think um given the science and the recommendations from the cdc about mask wearing if we can keep our kids with their mask on and our staff certainly also have their be wearing their masks throughout the school year and then for our families for our kids were eligible to be vaccinated um you know we are learning that these are the two strongest mitigation strategies uh to make sure our kids don't get sick and our staff does not get sick and so you know we'll continue to encourage um vaccinations and we'll continue to ensure that everyone is wearing our mask in the school system um so our next question is if a child comes down with covid and is out for two weeks is there another way that the student can learn and keep up with this school work yes that that is a really good question and the uh i'm sorry carmen you want to ask that question foreign okay so our our students will continue um to have work posted um in in in google classroom um and so although our students will not be necessarily working behind a computer screen every day in their classroom uh because we want to get back to you know more normal learning but we will continue to use our laptops um as a as a vehicle for kids to uh submit their work uh for kids to students to communicate with their teachers um and in the event a student um is quarantined uh we will contin we will post work in that google classroom platform um and and although there will not be a live teacher available to work with students um i'll plan right now is to make sure that there is work available for that student um in that google classroom platform we're all we are also looking at different resources to provide throughout the school day in the event we need some adults to check in with students because students and families might have questions while kids want quarantine so we're working through those um last couple of details carmen but uh for sure there will be work available for students um via the google classroom platform possibly thank you chrono yep right so uh we do have a hand raised from a josephia cordova would you like to ask your question on mute yourself and ask your question buenos is a okay the question is um she has four kids um she has the husband who it uh has a illness problems so she he is vulnerable right um he can get any any he can get sick any time so she said that she she didn't think that she's gonna send the four kids to the school um what another options you can give it to her about this case more about um the question that she has for you um so so one um carmen i i would recommend that mom in any of our families that have a situation as unique as this um definitely call their school principal to kind of work through and share their concerns with them to and see if we can't reassure them that we can ensure their child safety i would like to think that we can uh but again i i understand there may be some pre con pre-existing conditions in the household with the family might have to make some difficult decisions about whether or not to send their child to school right now as a district we are not providing a remote distance learning option the way we did last year and so some of our families might recall that we had in-person learning options for kids last year and then families also had the option of being taught at home we we've decided to invest our monies um into getting all of our students back in school this year we and and we understand there's going to be a small percentage of families that might need to seek out another option and if we can provide support for them guidance for them was certainly available to do that but we do not have a remote option at this time yes she's she's confirming if uh she need to send an email or a phone call to the principal of the school is that right yes i i either would be fine and then we can start to support her from there hello our next question is are vaccines required and this person is questioning um that they heard that that you can still carry the virus even though you have the vaccine so will we be doing any testing in our schools [Music] thank you thank you so so vac vaccinations are not required um in in this school district um however um we we will continue to encourage um students and staff in our community um to be vaccinated um the cdc is um stating that vaccinations are the number one mitigation strategy uh to prevent um getting um covet and um you know the second leading mitigation strategy is the wearing the mask and so we will be strongly encouraging both and one another take away from the cdc is that we encourage vaccinations in the community which is why i have included uh the vaccine mobile units in our uh superintendent uh communications um and and you know continue to remind families of its availability uh district-wide i i don't recall the second half of that question um ann uh about the testing question oh okay thank you uh do you want me to answer that one now yes okay no problem go ahead so [Music] thank you and the next um answer mr kevin about the testing thank you um and so the the testing that um we um i'm sorry one of the mitigation strategies on that the cdc is we're recommending um is that districts participate in pool testing and so pool testing requires let's just imagine all of us are in you know one of our classrooms we're all in the same class all 132 participants let's just imagine we're all in the same class as part of a pool testing we would all have a swab and everyone would take a swab test and then the swabs would be part of a tool um a part of a pool test i'm sorry and then and then and then the lab would come back and let us know if anyone in the pool um has has has tested for code only parents the only students who would participate in these tests are the families who allow us allow their child to participate in the process as of right now the district is something the district is considering because the state health department is recommending that we participate in these tests district-wide as of right now again this is something we're considering but we're not definitely doing it yet but it is a recommendation on that we will ask the reopening committee to consider um and it is likely a recommendation we'll be making to the board given the cdc's recommendation in the state health department recommendation so again as of right now it is not required as of right now it is definitely not something the district is doing but given the cdc recommendation in state health department recommendation it is something that we are considering um but even at the end the parents still have to agree to it for their children to participate in the process [Music] next one okay um so we've got a hand up here uh by the name of mel could we hear from mel please yes hello hi hi si buena is i'm sorry okay mr kevin uh and dr ann uh mr smell is gonna say it in english because she speak english and i offer her because i don't wanna dismiss or or misinterpreted whatever she wants to say so i offer her to saying in english and i will uh translate that to the other parents in spanish go ahead miss mel okay thank you and i have a question so if like you said the entire danbury public school office department we're thinking about our kids health as a priority why is that we just you just let us know on august 10th that we are not going to have the distance learning option because we have been waiting in my case i have been waiting for the entire summer to know what we're going to be my options and right now i i just have the option to send my kids to school when in my in my uh household we are high risk patients it's not like a um mrs joseph said that it's not just her it's not a unique situation it's we have plenty of families in danbury with the same situation that we have someone in our house that we are concerned so we don't want to send her kids to school so i also talked to the principal and she answered that is not something that she she cannot control that and i understand her position because she didn't she didn't make that decision but why no one told us before so we we have enough time thank you yeah hi hi miss mel um and i and i i i think i'm hearing a couple of a couple of things here one uh the fact that um you know their situation at home where you have a family member that might be compromising you know the family might be in a position where they have to make a difficult decision um and you know i'm i'm learning over these last two nights in particular um that you're not certainly not unique in this in this regard um and then secondly you know just going back to um whether or not we were going to offer a remote option we we actually made that announcement before the school year ended we we we decided before the school year ended um uh before before june uh close to the end of the school year we announced that we were going back had every intention to go back 100 in full um this fall and that we would be investing heavily making all the necessary investments to get all open the doors for all of our students next year i believe it was in the late spring the state department of education stated that school districts were no longer required to provide a remote options and distance learning option and at that time we articulated to the board in the community on that we would not be providing a remote option and that we will be pouring our investments into teaching and resources to get all of our kids back in the fall and so we will you know continue to make sure and and i'm sorry if that's not a notification that you are aware of or have received but you know i will make sure in our subsequent communications of families um that that everyone is aware of the intention to get all of our kids back into our buildings um thank you carmen thank you miss mel we'd like to go to catherine now please catherine grier herrera uh um is he has a concern and also a question he say um what are you gonna do um with this new um new vitals kind of right the original one was the covet 19 now it's the delta so as you know they they they always listen on the news um you know that is very contagious so um they are thinking why if last year um does the school close when the original vitals was there and now the delta arrive why why the school are opening they don't get that what what what is that what is your um what is your options what are you gonna do um what are you gonna do um um about that what is what is your suggestion what is what is going to be if if there is no remote classes there is no distance classes what is what it what what is your position what are you going to do about that right so carmen um just going back to last year and and and i'm glad um dad asked that question just to uh provide some context and uh for our families um last year um this the the state health department and our local danbury department of health uh we we had a criteria in which depending on the number of cases per 100 000 um in danbury that played a role in whether or not we were um eligible to come to school uh 100 percent depending on how many uh families um people in danbury had coveted um that determined um whether or not we were allowed to come in and hybrid and then if we were in the red and we had a a really high increase number of cases in the community per hundred thousand uh we would be on distance learning and um at the moment we have not reached any of those thresholds yes um you know we've had cases in the community but i think everyone on this call can you know is aware that you know over the summer we've experienced um you know the relaxing of rules throughout not only danbury but throughout the state of connecticut and across the country and certainly the variant has raised some concerns locally and nationally but but it has not reached levels um that where our local state health department where our local department of health is recommending uh we cannot be in school uh 100 um so we we continue to review that data with the local health department um and and stay in contact and work in collaboration with the local health department if the numbers um you know begin to be too concerning uh um if we if the numbers begin to get too high but we should not where would be unsafe to have our kids and staff back in building we will make a different recommendation but right now we are not at that threshold right [Music] is [Music] right and we have a parent that's written in if a decision is going to be made can they have a week or two time to be able to make other arrangements for their children and i just want to make sure i understand um it's if they need more time to make a decision about returning to school or no it's more um not for for us as a district all of a sudden saying you know next monday that we're going to go remote that they would like to have like two weeks notice okay i understand yeah so hey mr kevin carrier go ahead mr kevin right yes and and so i i think we as a district we will be providing as much lead time and advanced notice as we possibly can with any changes um changes to instruction particularly any changes that might impact child care any changes that might impact work schedules for our families we will be looking to provide as much lead time as possible for our families uh we you know certainly we don't want to create a situation where we have schools that are unsafe because of the virus but we also don't want to create a situation that's you know means we don't have supervision for our kids at home on a system on a district-wide level and we don't want to create unsafe situations for our kids at home either without supervision so you know certainly if the health department if the local health department you know made us aware that this is a decision that we had to make just from experience over the last 18 months as cases began to increase we began stepping up communications uh regarding the the the increased numbers um and make our families aware that it could this is something that could happen uh but we we will not um announce uh one day and then expect our community turn around child care etc uh we will absolutely provide as much lead time as possible um we're certainly hoping it doesn't happen uh but in any event that it does we will certainly keep our families informed so that they can prepare so uh um [Music] so we have one more question and then we have a bunch of odd stuff that i can work with mr walston and get those answered so if uh jacqueline marino would like to address her question that would be great [Music] gracias so um mr mr kevin she she has a preschool child all right so and this child has asthma so she wants to know um what i'm going to do um what are you going to do with respect of that the child has asthma about the mask how are you going to consider a um not just that health issue other other health issues too um that's the sky of the question question that she has right um and so carmen i i understand the question and the concern and um you know we we want to make sure that all of our families particularly with kids uh with pre-existing conditions uh they they work and consult uh with the school nurse um and and share those concerns with the nurse and make sure that we come up with a plan um that's going to meet the best needs of their child uh while they're in school um so typically um that would be with the nurse um it could be with the pupil personnel team um it may or may not be you know with special educators that that will be determined at the school level um but you know first the conversation will start with the nurse and whoever may be the program um leader or principal of the program um can help to facilitate that that that that that arrangement but we you know we deal with um obviously we haven't had to deal with mask all the time but we certainly can't make accommodations for students in situations like this and it would be no different now so i i can appreciate mom's concern i know we had a couple of other parents express similar concerns but we do have kind of systems in place to help address [Music] is [Music] right we'll go to margarita please margarita miss margaritas is she's in dao she she's not sure about this when you say the vaccines are not required uh what do you mean about that with the students we in general or or what is it so carmen i was responding earlier to a question if uh vaccinations are required for students and staff um they they are not required uh for students and staff they're certainly encouraged particularly encouraged for students who are eligible uh to be vaccinated but but currently they are not required in school systems astorida margarita [Music] uh mr kevin i mean now she knows about that but she she's not agreed with that because she say that for example you know she thinks so it has to be obligatory because as you know children's under 12 you know they don't receive the vaccine and how come the kids are going to go to school and what about the teacher doesn't have the vaccine how come is no required or obligatory when they can get contagious yes carmen thank you for that question um and uh miss rodriguez also thank you for that question um we so so within our school systems we have um labor contracts in unions um you know we have an entire state and it's not just in connecticut it's not just in danbury um this is something that has to be agreed upon throughout the state oftentimes these things come from the governor's office to mayor's offices um to require certain you know certain professions to to require being vaccinated i i think just recently they've started to require vaccinations in hospitals but i don't even think that is in all hospitals across the country so it's it's it's a unique situation that we're in right now uh but it's it's not required um and i we as as a as a school district uh and as your interim superintendent i am not authorized to require this of any of our teachers administrators or other faculty members professors and and carmen i i just also wanted to say um you know our teachers our staff our faculty uh you know the the vast majority of them have been vaccinated um you know they've they have gone out and and taken advantage of the vaccines that's been available to them uh but you know to the parents question um we cannot require it but but but you know i want our families to be reassured um you know our teachers and our staff they've been great great in this effort and they have going out and they've been very proactive and you know making sure they're safe so that all of our kids are safe professors foreign right thank you carmen uh estella we've i've addressed a couple things to you there in the chat if you could answer them and also we have a couple questions about bringing medicine to the school and physicals if you could explain to our parents that they'll be getting packets from their school and that type of information will be in there of what they will need to do and bring to the school thank you we [Music] is thank you great and mr wallston if you could answer how many children are in each classroom at the elementary school and should children bring their uh laptops to school every day um so i i don't know if dr castamero is um i see a great photo but i may need some help with the with the laptop i want to translate that sure wait what did you want to translate of thank you thank you carmen um so dr casimiro the first question there was a question about um laptops being required to come to school every day would you mind taking that one for us sure yeah um sorry i was on a phone call um so the you know most of our students uh at this point especially if you're with us last year already have a laptop so um right now we're thinking students you know at least in grade two two and up should be bringing their their laptops to school um as we're still continuing to um use some of our funding we're trying to see if we have enough laptops to have some of our younger students have additional laptop carts in the classroom so that they don't have to go back and forth they can keep one at home and and have one in school but um so we're definitely working towards that goal correspective thank you dr casemero thank you carmen so carmen if i'm not mistaken the second part of that question was about the numbers the number of students we can have in class right and so that that number varies um unfortunately and so it's a the answer varies from school to school to classroom to classroom to grade level um and and let me just explain it this way um i'll just one just talk about the guidelines themselves so the cdc guidelines they are recommending uh that we have students in classrooms um at least three feet apart we're permissible um and so we're trying to follow that guideline uh to the best of our ability so starting in our high school this is the reason why one of the reasons why we have hired uh 15 additional teachers this allows us to spread um more of our classrooms out and so instead of a seven period day we now have a period day kids have more classes and so by having more classes we're able to reduce the class size but even even those class sizes really depend on requests that students are making um the the class sizes are driven by requests um and then how many teachers we have in english and science and social studies so it can vary um but you know in in in most instances um the the highest number we can get in the classroom and be socially distanced is typically 23 24 in the classroom right and so let let me just start there however um in some of our classrooms okay go ahead carmen yes thank you i know that's fine um s the okay thank you mr kevin thank you great and so what i'd like to do is call on a family with the last name of castillo to have them ask their question and then i will go ahead and uh answer the last four questions that [Music] carmen you froze estella can you translate that one yes well uh karen was such um she was inquiring was you know the children that are vaccinated or not vaccinated can you hear me yes okay um you know for them to be to have to be quarantined just as um both whether they're validated or not vaccinated um to in quarantine would that be a possibility i believe in a case like that the nurse would make the determination the school nurse would make the determination unless kevin has another thought on that one i i didn't hear the whole question this though i'm sorry can you repeat it it was a little broken up on my end oh not a problem um she noted that you know basically she's saying uh for the the students are not vaccinated and those students that are vaccinated but um for the what we had said earlier was that the children that are not vaccinated they don't have to be quarantined and this parent is asking would it be a possibility to have both students whether they're vaccinated or not um if necessary be in quarantine right so so for clarification if if the student who is vaccinated um is asymptomatic and you know or not showing symptoms they do not have to be quarantined uh our students who are not vaccinated they they will um and so those are the guidelines um as i understand them and we will have uh the most updated guidelines available for the for the staff and the community um next week after after we have we meet with our reopening community [Music] great thank you thank you and to wrap up we have a couple of odd questions here important questions so yes breakfast and lunch will be served each day at school carmen go ahead [Music] supply list the supply list will go out in school packets if the schools are requiring it or on their website materials right and will there be before and after school programs at the schools yes and they should call the the elp office 797-4733 to register um and lastly all of this information will be put into a frequently asked question document that will be put up on the website probably by midweek next week in english spanish and portuguese website right and we are at our time tonight thank you everyone so much for all of your questions all of your concerns tomorrow you will receive our weekly communication and in it will be a survey that we ask that you fill out it's our reopening survey and that will help us to make further plans to keep your children healthy and safe [Music] thank you so much i just want to wish everyone a good evening thank you thank you thank you bye thank you bye-bye bye thank you bye all right buenos noches let us know bye you
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thank you and today we are um celebrating it's um we're celebrating we're celebrating many things um a joyous occasion um and a not so joyous occasion so i want to um start off in honor um first want to honor the uh youth that we lost yesterday um unfortunately uh we lost to youth um senseless violence and his name was steve ruben gutierrez i mean he was one of our students from renaissance so just thinking of him and his family at this time holding him in our thoughts and lifting them up as well as our entire alum rock community and also want to honor that we are celebrating 90 years here at ellen rock today a very joyous occasion as well for our community for our family here at elim rock celebrating all the wonderful things that 90 years has brought to our district from the inception of the idea the dream of having a school district forming to the many schools that have opened up and the many children and families that this district has served um very happy thank you min fam again for helping organize um that celebration that we had with ringing the bell there at paula middle school um and then having um an intimate um celebration um due to you know all the things that um we're dealing with wanted to make sure we marked the moment which was very important but also do it in a safe way so thank you all um thank you for joining us here today uh now we're gonna move on to item 102.
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[Music] so [Music] so [Music] wow [Music] so [Music] no no no no [Music] [Applause] [Music] go [Music] no no no no [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] mind [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay the board of trustees will reconvene in open session and we will begin with the pledge of allegiance in a moment of silence will you all please stand i pledge allegiance to the fire of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for our moment of silence this evening i would like to refer to what is happening here in our great state up in the north and we are so many of the families who are facing devastation and burned homes and luckily so far really no one has died as i understand but we've had a lot of injuries and i we have to be aware that we're in different times climate wise and we can all help by trying to conserve and be aware of what is going on but keep them in your minds because there's hundreds of people who have lost their homes and it's it's a rough time okay and now we will have the closed session re report from the clerk of the board 4.1 no reportable action taken regarding public employee performance evaluation superintendent 4.2 no reportable action taken regarding negotiations 4.3 no reportable action taken regarding personnel 4.4 the board of trustees unanimously voted to make the following appointment leanna williams director risk management management and insurance 4.5 the board of trustees by a vote of 5-0 approve the settlement agreement in oah case number 2021-060909 resolving all issues in students due process complaint by amending students iep providing supplemental education and providing reimbursement in the amount of five thousand hundred 4.6 the board of trustees by a vote of 5-0 approved the settlement agreement with student amending students iep and providing reimbursements in the amount of three thousand dollars thank you now the board of trustees would also like to recognize our community stakeholders for your interest in the anaheim union high school district and for your attending our board meeting we thank you so much to each of you for your participation and your contribution as we create an educational environment that graduates socially aware civic-minded students who are college and career ready for the 21st century and our guests tonight include our new student representative to the board who will take his seat next month abdullah fahdi would you like to stand up do and say hello [Applause] next next month he will be on the dice with us okay and also we have grant shuster in the audience our ask the president grant are you there you are okay hilda vasquez our altar president that's our anaheim leadership team thank you hilda um and i'm looking to see if we have any other representatives gail apgar is that sylvia is that sylvia all right sylvia yes hi i'm sorry okay now you got to stand up more often i can't see you no thank you and gail kyras from a rop hi gail [Applause] i guess i should have roamed around the room a little bit more before i sat down so i could recognize people okay and one other person i would like to introduce now is we have a new employee who is with us this evening who's going to be starting real soon we had an opening for a risk manager and we have finalized and hired leanna rose williams leanna please come up to the podium and if you have some introductions of family with you and comments good evening uh yes leanna rose williams i'd like to thank the board president percy the board of trustees for this opportunity to serve the district the students and its community and i'm eager and excited to be a partner with the district and helping it fulfill its mission so thank you very much for having me uh with me this evening i do have my husband kevin raise your hand kevin there you go all right and and our baby girl malia all right [Applause] well welcome aboard we uh got lots of work for you i'm ready to hit the ground running so thank you very much here we're starting out and uh you know you know in light of what we've been going through the last 18 months we have a lot of work on our hands i bet all right thank you thank you welcome welcome welcome welcome [Applause] okay next we will have the reports of the associations so we'll start with asta grant shuster you have a report for us i do president piercy and trustees cabinet just wanted to give a report as to asa the teachers and the progress here at the beginning of the year i can tell you traveling around to the different sites this week and all there has been on campuses is excitement and joy i think sometimes people forget that there is nothing more that teachers love about their job than being in a classroom with students and the the more difficult or the mundane or some of the annoying parts of their job is what was added on during the pandemic and when we went to distance learning had to go to distance learning and to get back in the classroom and just be with students it has been phenomenal to go around to campuses and see teachers and see students and the joy on their faces and how happy they are to be back together we also had last week the district brought back after several years the week of welcome and to see over a hundred new uh teachers and other staff together um learning about what our mission is and what we do in this district and also how we work together you know it there's not many districts where the first morning that teachers are here at a district uh being introduced that a teachers union president is brought up to talk to them before they're introduced to the superintendent and that that sort of gesture to say we're all in this together i i still know of districts in this county that superintendents that board members they don't even speak with their uh union leadership um and when they or when they do it's it's in negotiations and it's over uh you know debates and quarrels it's not about working together and that is something that we're continuing to do here and it is greatly appreciated by by everyone by the employees by the students and their families the way we work together to solve any issues that we're going to face i think it's also important to acknowledge that we are in a situation in this country where it's not as bad as it is in other places but we know that if we had had the original uh a tiering system if it was 12 months ago we'd be in the middle of the purple tier and not allowed to open but because of the vaccine because of the progress we have made and the protocols we have put in place the the the hvac systems we've put in the purification systems we've put in every room we were able to do that but we've got to make sure that we're following the protocols we've got to make sure that everyone is doing everything they can on campuses to keep our students our teachers our employees to keep everybody safe so it's really uh just incumbent upon all of us to make sure it was easy to get lacks over the summer i got lacks over the summer you get we got vaccinated the numbers went down but now they're going back up and those that are unvaccinated are most likely to be our students and we need to make sure that we're protecting them so i ask everybody whether they're in the district office the teachers the other employees the students we need to make sure we're following these protocols because they were put in place to keep us as safe as we possibly can be and they will do that if we are following them um also i wanted to point out that a lot of people have been asking questions about the the mandate that the governor put out yesterday and we had already been talking about it with cabinet members as an association that we wanted to implement that in our district before the governor even suggested it this is something that should be done vaccination and testing is so important to make sure that we keep everyone safe and we're able to do all of these things we're so excited to do this year with our students now that we're back in person so we look forward i know i've already spoken with carlos hernandez i've spoken with nancy about how we can expand we know that in mid-october it's going to be time that every school employee is either going to have to be tested or show that they have their vaccination well let's start now let's get those testing facilities up and running let's offer the vaccines let's publicize it in the daily news reports you know news announcements on school campuses any way we can to get people out here and make sure that we are vaccinated that we're testing and that everyone is safe so we can focus on all of these exciting things that we want to do one other thing that i wanted to mention about what ast is doing we've started our community school meetings with stakeholders from community groups parents uh teachers we have the the um the community school uh coordinators as part of it and it's just phenomenal to already we have the steering committee up we're gonna start with the individual site committees and be able to come and present to the board what is it that all the stakeholders kind of like a mini lcap when dealing with community schools specifically what is it that each community working together has developed as a plan for what they want to see in a community school in their neighborhood the needs of western high school may not be the same as the needs of south junior high and what are those parents and community groups and students and teachers coming up with that will best support them as the community schools continue to develop and we know there's going to be a lot of money coming in very soon from the state to to support these programs and we want to make sure we have all of the stakeholders in place giving input and making sure that these community schools you know outlast all of us that we set up a process where the community will be so uh just bought in to public schools and the community schools that this will go on you know uh you know year after year and then finally the last thing i wanted to mention is that from the superintendent through the cabinet the district office the teachers at the school sites all of the support staff we have so many things that we want to do but right now i mean all of our plates are full we're planning to be there to support kids from before school our classes at lunchtime after school there are teachers already working on extra programs extra service programs clubs we're there to do what we can for the students every single day and so as we move forward this year i just want everyone to to realize that any sort of new training or new program or new responsibility we have to weigh that and realize if we're going to implement anything we need to pull something else away there's just not any time left and so if anything new is brought up and implemented that requires you know a couple of hours of training or requires time each week that it's going to come from somewhere else and we don't want it to come from the in-person time that you can have with students before after school to support all of their needs that is the top priority that we have to make sure that all of these students are getting their needs addressed when they come back to school this year and we're building those relationships that can do that so i appreciate your time tonight we're so excited to be back you almost forget and you come back you know 18 months later and just see how excited even through the masks how excited every teacher and student is to be back on campus and be back with each other to learn thank you thank you grant all right um our next one apga sylvia do you have a report and i apologize again for not recognizing you but these masks don't help that's okay and i'm sure and i was sitting in the back you probably couldn't see my face good evening trustees district cabinet auhsd students families and community members i am honored to speak on behalf of apga first i would like to let you know that i will be sharing this position with mrs natalie zeldavar who is not here with us tonight but will represent apga at our next board meeting counselors have been back since july prepping for the return of our students and i can say the first days of school was a success since we are starting a new year i thought it would be good to remind everyone the role the school counselor plays school counselors design and deliver school counseling programs that improve student outcomes they lead advocate and collaborate to promote equity and access for all students by connecting their school counseling program to the school's academic mission and school improvement plan school counselors work to support students in the following domains academic college career and social emotional school counselors work to create a future where all students thrive here are just some of the things that we do in each domain under academic scheduling of all students including new students ensuring proper placement a3g and career pathway graduation checks transcript evaluations academic honors and golden state steel for graduation signing students up for credit recovery and summer school rop recruitment and sign ups dual enrollment recruitment and signups frontie counselor recruit and support the program el coordinator cielo by literacy ap testing psat ieps 504s six-year academic plans goal setting parent-teacher conferences at-risk meetings graduation support transition to junior high and high school events and a classroom lesson that supports academics and the college and career domain college and career fair college career exploration college systems awareness the tgr foundation program in classes dual enrollment special admit for community colleges career pathway recruitment retention and placement rop recruitment retention and placement college applications for two-year four-year and private letters of recommendation financial literacy financial aid applications and a classroom lesson on college and career for the social emotional we provide crisis support short-term counseling risk assessments well-being plans we screen students for the district social workers provide check-ins with students with low risk provide community resources help with linkage to outside providers provide conflict mediation at-risk meetings re-entry meetings and a classroom lesson on social emotional topic lastly i would like to thank the district for providing the funds for a college and career readiness specialist for all of our high schools and for providing 17 temporary counselors to give our students the extra support they will need this year it is worth noting that the american school counselor association recommends a ratio of 250 students to one counselor it should also be noted that none of our comprehensive sites come close to this recommendation in addition there are two schools that are truly not getting any extra support this year and that is south and sycamore two of our most needy junior highs these two schools have traditionally had three plus counselors however at the end of the 2020 school year with the school closures and the uncertainty of the economy due to the pandemic the third counseling position was abruptly cut they are now staffed at what they were pre-pandemic i stand up here tonight to advocate for those students to give them what they deserve i hope that as a district we can find the funds to bring back the additional counselor so that those students can get the support they will need thank you thank you okay and hilda vasquez elsa president good afternoon uh thank you madam president piercy board of trustees superintendent matsuda executive cabinet and auch community students and parents it's my pleasure to be up here at the beginning of the school year to talk a little bit about what our schools have been doing in particular from the perspective of the administrators so i want to just recap and let you know that summer has come to an end but it was a super busy and successful summer so we had a lot of summer programs and we had also credit recovery we had programs for students to get involved and reappointed with the campuses we also spent quite a bit of time building up the capacity of our student leaders so our asbs went to summer camp and also we have met with the ambassadors which i am proud one of the advisors so yay um so i want to let you know that there's a huge focus right to continue supporting students wellness their mental health needs and also making sure that we value their student voice and choice instructionally in the classroom so those has those have been some of the topics and through student activities how could we be intentional about building those those things that we're talking about in terms of community and making sure that students feel like they belong so a lot a lot has gone into that also this year we had four teacher days in which we focus again as mr schuster talked about the wellness not only for our students but also for our staff we had a great presentation put on by the team here at the district level so that we can talk about wellness self-care and also some strategies dealing with trauma in the classroom and also personally at home right everyone has a different story we want to honor and validate that but we also want to prepare for what comes into the classroom additionally we are also building our skill set in e-cadence and also making sure that we're following all our safety protocols so great days and also many of you stopped by school sites i had mr o'neal at mine and mr colon and dr freed so thank you so much for taking the time to come i hope it was electric and energetic for you was super excited for us and it was great to see just kids wanting to be kids right and hanging out with each other lots of lots of energy and so we had a great care opening on all sides maybe you saw cheerleaders and sports teams our archetype particularly we also have clubs and organizations and i want to highlight a link group because every high school has link group and this year they really have taken ninth and tenth graders and done a lot of activities and a lot of preview days to make sure that students get to come back to campus and their anxiety level is lower also we've made the recommendation of not assigning homework right we're really talking to our teachers about making sure that hey these first two weeks easing back and making sure that the workload is also appropriate and to think about that for the the rest of the year also let me see we're very excited about the in-person instruction we've been visiting classrooms um i thought i was going to be late because i was over at the football game today so it was really exciting to see the the team play out there so again people are getting involved out and about um and we're building lots of relationships and so with that i just want to thank you for all your support has been a great first week almost friday tomorrow um i'm gonna have to say go big blue i don't know i see that trifecta of western uh prior principles here and again i just want to thank you for your support and we're having a great time and thank you for taking time oh my nancy came by too dr name came by so now i have a blue bucket um thank you so much and uh have a good evening thank you hold on [Applause] okay i don't see any other representatives of any other association anybody's wander in while we were having the reports okay moving on then we will uh there's no ptsa person here okay uh we have some presentations this morning okay uh this one this evening our first presentation is item 7.1 we rise together campaign perfect it gives me a great honor to introduce mrs amy quan who will lead us in this presentation okay she is our coordinator of steam good evening auhsd board of trustees superintendent matsuda executive cabinet and the greater auhsd community like dr freed said my name is amy kwan i'm the coordinator of steem and i would like to share with you the inaugural project of auhsd's ilab internship experience in february 2021 the ilab leadership team composed of doug noah karen clark yamamoto ray solorzino and raquel solorzino duenas selected 18 auhsd students for an aim internship and partnered with a company called manifest 5.
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yesterday august 11th i received a call from ms godwine principal at diamondback elementary school informing me i had to pick up my daughter marley who is a third grade student because she had been exposed to another student who tested positive for covet 19.
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and she said no so i the pediatrician couldn't even help i've spent time looking to see if you know there must be data out there we're all wearing these things cdc says to wear them um it and i i don't even know where that comes from but anyway um i lost my train of thought uh i the only data i found was negative data just like all the people before me have said and and i can only speak from personal experience that my kids my two children go to school here they came home with headaches they came home tired they came home just not their usual selves and um i know i last year i had plenty of conversations uh my daughter who was in sixth grade she just stopped talking she stopped talking because nobody could hear her in the mask so i don't know what sort of education that is but it's it's it's not up to par for me and i mean if the pediatrician couldn't even say you know give give you a good reason for wearing the mask i don't know why we have them on thank you thank you and and uh there's there's an update uh later in superintendent's report and responsible to covet emails and a lot a lot of what we've heard so far tonight are similar questions you saw there so i think uh we'll address some of these questions one of the questions i had is in that situation where you know there's uh the child doesn't feel they're being heard and becomes quiet later on you could address this but what support structure will be there if that happens can they talk to the teacher can identify it be ahead of it but we're taking notes on this i'm going to try to address a lot of these a little later so so thank you for that detail bye yes good evening chris constantine 978 marion raul treasurer um i guess the questions that i have are the executive orders in executive order if we send our kids back with no masks on are they gonna police gonna come and arrest our kids there's somebody gonna i've i've emailed uh superintendent no email back i've emailed that uh ned lamont no email back and actually it's getting quite frustrating and annoying because i'm trying to figure out when is this going to end is it this month is it next month is it when the cdc says it's over are we going to wake up and it's going to be the omega variant in october we own well i mean i don't understand i have three restaurants if i listen to what uh governor lamont wanted i would have shut me down put me on a business if i listen to the people calling the police on me the health department on me because i'm not wearing a mask in my business it doesn't work like that if anything we've strived from it but i if i listened to what they wanted to do we would have shut down and have 100 people would have been out of work so i don't understand why we don't have an option to send our kids back to school who's going to enforce the rules when the health department comes in wallingford and says chris you have to wear your mask and i said no i don't they don't say anything because there's nothing they could do if miss moore comes to my place in chester and says hey you got to wear your mask i said no i don't because it's an executive order it's not a law there is no law if i read the executive order it says i can get a doctor's note that i don't even need to to give to anybody and just tell them i don't need to wear a mask but i'm not going to argue with police officers here about wearing a mask so what science are we following are we getting money from this that's what i want to know does the town get money to follow the recommendation it's a recommendation it's not a mandate so let's not be fooled here do we does the town get money can anybody answer that do you get money does the tom get money funding from federal government to follow the mandate no is that what is that the carrot i don't get it no there's no money as far as i know there's no federal funding right jeff we receive esser grant money but it's not to follow the mandate it's an executive order which is the rule of law by the governor the local health departments could fine you if if they chose to they have to get paid from us they can find you all you they want so my i guess my question is is what is the grant for we have grant money to provide there's it's on our website actually everything that we're doing we're also you know using that money to purchase tents masks uh continue our cleaning but we've really invested predominantly in uh supports for students academic supports for students do the teachers get more money does the superintendent get more money from it okay no no so i mean i guess my question is is why don't we have an option this isn't a the mandate is a mandate why don't we get an option i don't understand if kids want to come in in astronaut suits wear an astronaut suit if they want to wear gloves wear gloves is there somebody every time somebody touches the door handle sanitizing the handle at the school no so what good is it so it's the 500 students going to doolittle elementary school touching the handles and then playing with their mask is that going to save lives unless you have somebody there sitting there wiping every handle every door every knob what's the mask going to do i mean i just i'm really confused on this the cdc says get vaccinated the cdc says wear a mask even though you're vaccinated so where's the science who are we listening to is it father fauci is it the cdc who are we listening to as far as i'm concerned my job is i'm bringing my kids to school i got restaurants i don't have time to go pick them up bring them to school teach them give me a tax break then give me my money back for school because i feel i'm getting ripped off i got to sit there and teach my kids on tv and the computer and how to do math zero minus two three doesn't make any sense i'm not a teacher i'm a pizza guy cut eight slices that's it i mean i'm i'm honestly i'm frustrated because at the end of the day when the governor says close your dining room down close your bar down open at 10 open that one don't do this who's paying my bills nobody so i chose not to listen to him because nobody's going to help me just like nobody helps our kids out isn't that what we hired you guys nobody wants kids wearing masks and schools if they want it's an option if if we listen to everything the government says i'm confused uh cigarettes are no good for you they still sell cigarettes they cause cancer alcohol causes liver failure still sells alcohol so when people say to me it's for the greater good it's not for the greater good it's it doesn't make sense it's not for the greater good so i i give me the answers that we need to hear why should if it could be made uh optional why can't we be optional why is everything mandatory [Applause] thank you chris you're on the four-minute mark but i ain't going to follow up with the wolcott i was not aware of that situation but thank you [Applause] for that maura do you mind do you know any information on the local decision so we could do the same thing they're doing well i'm going to follow up with i'm going to flip up the look at board event and find out what's going on but thank you tony yes sir people watching at home probably did not hear what maura said so the question and this is amy right amy hi amy uh the question from uh amy to actually once you come to the microphone that way the folks at home can hear you which we're probably going to speak anyway segway um my name's amy borden and i'm a mother of four i've lived in cheshire for 10 years i did not grow up here um which is always the first question from cheshire people um i would like to first address what's what's going on with it with wolcott and um why we don't have an understanding of why they're able to have an option for masking and we're not seems like we do have an option because first of all let's address masks the health director indicated that n95s which is what she wore when she went to someone's house lucky her um is what protects against viruses so if the pandemic is happening out in the world and not in the hospital with all due respect to the first line the first responders and nurses and doctors that that do have a medical need for uh things well above an n95 and ppe um how come we're not being told that we should be wearing n95 masks by the all-knowing government that has all of the data and all of the access to the manufacturing facilities and the textiles to put these things together why are we wearing surgical masks that i've already touched probably five times now because it keeps slipping um so it's totally at this point it's not sterile um why are we telling our kids to wear something that isn't protecting them number one it says on the box clearly by the manufacturer that it does not protect so it says so my child that they've taught to read comes to me and shows me the side of the box and says mommy this isn't gonna help me this says right here it doesn't protect against viruses and especially the coronavirus okay then somebody at school told you so go home spray it with lysol okay so now she's breathing in a mask that doesn't work that's infected with saliva that she's been spitting all day because there's no policy and procedure in place so we're using a experimental use authorization for a medical device which is what this is our children were asked to wear it we complied we complied thinking that it was going to make a difference it has not made a difference it's made a difference in our households where we're coming down with strep impetigo fevers from breathing in these germs rsv is on the rise okay that's the truth so i don't know if she wants to talk to me about that later but i could probably fill her in on it we will be filing a freedom of information act request with the superintendent board of ed department of public health and department of education in conjunction with the uh with the board of ed before me that promises to check with the town attorney on the governor's orders and in that information we would like to know everything that's been discussed about masks and we would like to know if there's any policy or procedure in place to roll out in two weeks for our children do you have anything in writing for us to review by any chance no but if you make the request for so we honor it and amy just a heads up you're on the three minute mark i'll give you another minute okay um the reason i'm asking for a policy and procedure is because it seems like when i ask questions out in the parental world and in the educational world nobody seems to understand that masks being a medical device are supposed to be put on in a proper procedure known as donning and removed in a procedure known as doffing they are all supposed to be also supposed to be fit according to the shape and the size of the face with which children is critical they're supposed to be taught not to touch them they are supposed to be taught to be doing hand washing after doffing the mask and prior to donning one they are supposed to be provided a special receptacle for them to be disposed of does anyone know if that's being done or are we just throwing these things in any garbage can or paper basket or wherever i'd also like to know like the gentleman before me who's going to be enforcing this who's going to be recording the fines for the day and will we have to come pick up our child if we send him to school without a mask you mentioned sports i was extremely excited having been a three sport college athlete in division three to find out that our teams would be able to participate again this year but it's completely dumbfounding to me that the kids in school that are sitting a minimum of three to six feet apart then leave the doors and go smash into each other spit on each other sweat on each other run jump and play with each other like normal kids they don't have to wear a mask that does not make sense um when all this is over now that we know what we know i believe it was one of obama's administration the person said no crisis should go to waste so are we going to take this and use it as precedent for the flu season and rhinovirus are we going to be telling our children to mask which by the way you will pay for because you did get money for coronavirus mediation and mitigation and there is funding so if you have funding i suggest that you start stockpiling some masks for the first day of school because this gets pretty pricey when you put together your policy and procedure for donning and doffing masks how quickly and how often these things are going to have to be replaced and that needs to be detailed how many minutes a child has to wear it then they have to take it off dispose of it wash their hands and put a fresh one on they're not supposed to be wearing these for six hours a day and i'm not there to enforce it so the burden is on you guys so i'll be asking for that i have studies for amy you're on the five-minute mark i just the pharisee i want to all right i'll throw more seconds i'll finish up real quickly i have studies published in jama java uh reviewed by the apa new england journal of medicine i really find it um unfortunate that i showed up tonight with this amount of information and our health director has nothing in our hands i'd have i'd be happy to hand this out um our kids most to my knowledge are not going to be interacting with 70 to 80 year olds during the school day so i think that we should rule in favor of parents choice which is the group that i'm representing behind me and also at the southington board of education tonight and um we will be following up with letters to each and every board of ed member and administration to find out where you stand on this issue thank you thank you amy [Applause] thank you good evening my name is kalyn cotino and i thank you 118 birch drive cheshire um i want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight i'm an emergency room nurse i've worked the past 14 years in the er like everybody in the beginning of covid we did what we had to do we stayed home we locked down my husband's a police officer i'm a nurse nobody wants to be around us we did what we had to do everybody was caught off guard by this novel virus and i wanted to ask maura how do you know how do you differentiate between delta because in the er right now we send rapid covid's we do we do pcr tests that we send out and it's either detected or not detected we never hear back how do you know it's a delta virus public health at the beginning provided us when they sent the tests out to cdc they were sequest sequencing it um they are not doing that anymore but uh they are giving us that information um on the websites that how many are percentage-wise and it's been growing since may and i believe it's almost at they don't give us individual they don't tell you how they actually figure out it's delta okay all right so as an essential employee i worked in the er while pregnant with my now one-year-old daughter and at the height of the pandemic we didn't know what was going to happen as time went on in all my years of being an er nurse i battled tuberculosis bacterial meningitis and even had ebola training worked through all that to do this you need speaking that amy's donning and duffing doffing sorry i should know what i'm talking about we have to have a nurse actually for ebola training read us through getting ourselves dressed and getting ourselves undressed as well as the only mask we wear at work for covid patients are n95s a face shield and a gown and that's what is like standard practice across care after initial worry i moved on and i realized that this virus unfortunately some people die but people die every day and i'm just again i'm a no filter er nurse and i apologize for saying that but i realize that it really goes down to the elderly the vulnerable populations and that those that don't take care of themselves and that's the nature of the beast um it soon became that most healthy people quickly recovered from their symptoms and have moved on with life like most of us we've all moved on in life well people that i'm friends with here and a lot of people that we hang out with at home have all moved on from this the only thing that's abnormal is our kids going to school with masks the past year there was no flu there was no gi bug and now rsv is coming back what did he do i understand that some people are still skeptical and have many worries regarding govid and the spredicovid it's their right to continue to mask and or receive the vaccine and those who have wanted the vaccine they're there and if people want to vaccinate their children that's on them but as time goes on i do not think it's okay to keep masking our children there is more harm than good there's hypercapnia there's hypoxia there's just it's just not good for children and as a mother and an essential medical employee i'm demanding that mass be optional our children need to enjoy their childhood they need to see each other's faces and as americans we have the right to that choice so thank you [Applause] hey everybody my name is michael sheehan harrison road cheshire i just wanted to start to say thank you for all the hard work that you guys have done over the past year and a half and the people in here that have been supporting us and supporting you in the every way we can you guys have done a very difficult job and despite some of the differences we have on how things are done i do appreciate everything you do um sorry i need to take this off a little bit uh to quote section 9030.1 part 4 the cheshire board bylaws titled the relationship between parents and schools parents are recognized as having the primary responsibility for the upbringing of their children including education parents who send their children to public schools delegate to public school educators some of the responsibility for their children's education in so doing parents acknowledge the crucial role of educators without abdicating their parental duty in short the bylaws recognize the primacy of my responsibility to raise my child in that role i agree to delegate some of the educational responsibility to his teachers not all educational responsibility but some our role as parents should not be self-limited nor restricted by educators and administrative staff to serving as a room parent or fail or field trip chaperone in fact a parent's role is to serve as the lead partner in a relationship between parents teachers and administrators for both the academic and moral instruction of a child lately i've become increasingly concerned about that relationship surrounding districts are erupting in wars of words over critical race theory separation and segregation of students into affinity groups an activist educational framework that reaches all the way down to elementary grades and seeks to challenge the legitimate of this country's founding principles i do not want this for my community and i certainly do not want it for my child sorry my hope is that cheshire public schools would promote open multifaceted conversations on this subject rather than ignore the issue which could lead to vitriol however i am concerned that our district has already aligned itself with agencies via paid contracts and membership dues to have all unequivocally embraced critical race theory the connecticut education association the connecticut association of boards of education and the connecticut association of schools have all come out to endorse that notion that the difference in the performance of students in our state which are vast are all due to systemic racism which has been sustained by a white dominant culture i urge this district to take the lead and critically examine this issue seek the existing scholarly voices that counter this narrative you will find diverse voices of people who played active roles in the civil rights movement of the 60s and other voices that have all personally experienced deep-rooted racism they certainly do not deny racial issues of the past or present however they discuss the fallacies and dangers of critical race theory its emblem its emblems and all of its offshoots most importantly these voices seek to unite and uplift all people i urge cheshire public schools to latch onto that goal i urge you to commit yourselves and our schools to uniting all students in a common goal of achieving equal opportunities for success for all members of the cheshire community thank you [Applause] thank you mike and thank you for your correspondence i think was back in june of july on the topic just a heads up on that topic we are going to be having a quick curriculum committee the curriculum committee meeting at the whole board of ed sometime mid-september talk about exactly what the schools are doing and are not doing on that topic so stay tuned thank you hi i'm megan jones i live on 925 east johnson avenue um i'm terrible at public speaking so it's okay though so am i not alone so just on the the my own personal experiences with my own children if you put your mask on your face and you wear glasses and you breathe like a sweaty kid they're gonna fog up my daughter has my myopia and she takes her glasses off for the entire day when she's in school and so she's gonna have a lazy eye if we can't keep her glasses on her face and a lot of that has to do with the mask that honestly she came home with someone else's mask someday on it one day on her face like this is she's six like this is kind of crazy to even think that this is like going to protect them from anything when i'm explaining that it's like putting underwear on your face and she's like yeah but she had a pokemon mask so in the aspect of just being children this is crazy they're not getting sick i mean last year when we didn't know what it was my kids were at camp sloper the entire summer we did not social distance we played with our friends we hung out with our families they shut my salon down for two and a half months in new haven i worked there i complied i shut down they're trying to shut down again or like put masks on again let me tell you that mass mandate started on monday and there has been 20 maybe 15 percent of people wearing masks in there i have yale doctors nurses they contradict each other on whatever's going on i i just think there's no science behind this i've done a lot of research kids should be kids and i think we should just move on with this and stop abusing this when they should just they're not going to get sick and if they do then there's an underlining condition because there's no data saying that healthy kids are dying from this thank you megan my name is uh matt long i live at 50 autumn court uh i'd like to start off by saying that i'm genuinely happy to see so many people who care so much about their children and what is happening to their children in their classrooms and i'm glad that they have come to this space to work it out and to settle it i hope that it's because you trust these people because it is their job to look at all the evidence all the data not just what is being given to them by whatever news network and i trust that they all do that i trust that they look at all the data and will come to the best decision and i hope everyone in this room also trusts them and that they will trust them even if a decision is reached that not everyone here likes i urge you guys to make sure you follow the science and i hope that that will result in healthier children and a healthier town and good health for everyone here and everyone in the town that's all i have to say thank you trust these people matt thank you [Applause] hi my name is mark edwards i live up on williamsburg drive and i do have a nine-year-old at highland going into uh fourth grade this year and um you know i i i'm kind of shocked and surprised especially with um maura not having um the data with her or the school board having the data with them because the data for children as some people have said there's no science that these kids get sick and um i heard more talk about other states i don't live in texas i don't live in new haven i chose to live in cheshire for one reason because i wanted my my grandson who we who my wife and i raised to have a great education um what happens in other areas um really not a conservative mind i think this school board needs to look at what's happening in cheshire and cheshire only um and for you guys to not know what the data is how can you make a legal or responsible or educated decision however you guys want to put it not just the science so what's your legal rights to follow a governor's mandate or health department's mandates how do you guys not know that coming into this meeting because everybody knew that we were going to be here tonight so how do you guys not know that um or if you do you're not letting us know that you know that and that's not right either because you should have that information in front of you right now of what is the legal right of our children if you don't know the legal right of our church children you should not be on the school board you know i it's kind of like i'm thinking shame on you guys for not knowing that and if you do know that you should let us know exactly whatever it says per the law what statue you guys should be telling us what that statue is um somebody had said we'll look into the talk to their attorney look into the legal thing and you know what i do know wolcott they're they're gonna have it's gonna be parents choice which is the same health district as us and moore knows this she's not gonna say it here because if we know it she sure knows it and um you know and to me that's just playing games with our children's lives they're our children not yours they're ours and i think that every child um should have the right my grandson talks horse all the time and people here who my kids my grandson plays with their kids they know it and this started when he started wearing masks you know uh we're putting two to two together he's very active you know he was at football practice at bartland park i saw 50 kids on top of each other you know and um and i've heard them people say okay we're going to play sports which i want him to do and it's not going to change um you know we're in each other's houses all the time you know we're having pool parties for having birthday parties and that's not going to change outside of school so why have this mass mandate and i also do know parents who are very afraid and they want their kids to wear masks that's their choice and you know they they have the right to have that choice but we also have the right to have the choice for our children and how we raise them and i always thought the school board was here to make sure that the parents choices you know that we that you guys make sure that we did have the choice um not do this especially if you don't have the laws and data in front of you maura should have said what the data showed that was it 300 and like 30-something kids across the country across the country how do you not know that maura you are the health person here how do you not know that why is it the school board asking you maura what is the data nationally what is the data for cheshire that's the questions that you guys should be asking the professionals not opinion not because of personal affairs because there are a lot of health professionals that do have personal affairs or parents or maybe even you guys do but that should not affect your decisions um i really don't know how more you don't know this marcus that's up you're on the five-minute mark so you can wrap up again i appreciate that one second though but you know in all this stuff it should be data educated decisions based on science for cheshire accurate data accurate data exactly for cheshire what what happens at the border or in texas or in california is none of our you know it's concerning but it's really not what's going on in this town covet is is is to a point where it's rare in this town and and that's what the decision should be made on thanks thank you mark [Applause] can i speak again uh unless there's someone else we've never had 15 minutes left so there's a little time i just wanted to base something off of what i heard morris say where uh the state wants us to get vaccinated i know i heard rumors that the state is going to try to put a vaccine curriculum together that might be handed down at some point i don't know if that's true or not but just keep your eyes open on that and she was talking about getting vaccinated trying to to curb this and thinking that mass are going to get rid of it mass are not going to get rid of it the type of virus it is it's in animals it's in humans you're never going to get rid of this like you can like a polio so live with it get it if you get it if you if you take the numbers of the people that have had it take the numbers of the people that are vaccinated you're going to be around herd immunity if you're not already so there's really no reason not to to be afraid of this and and be afraid of getting it especially for our kids actually anybody under i think it's 54 or something like that the numbers are so low that you're better off just getting it getting over with it and live on right the numbers of death are so low it's point zero zero zero eight percent in all of america if maybe that was just connecticut that's connecticut so it's really low uh i don't know what everybody's afraid of why you're forcing these masks uh i had another reason for coming up oh that and just getting getting hurt immunity what yeah we talked about we know you can yeah are the teachers going to enforce a mask right what happens oh that's my point you were talking that there was a fine i saw that in the mandate there's a hundred dollar fine that you can get if you're if you're in a restaurant you're not wearing a mask the restaurant get 100 fine i don't know if that's the same for the schools i know as a person outside you can get that fine well we have a 40 million dollar dog park or park that's been that we want to put up on uh on the chapman property you know what take that 40 million dollars use that for fine money for when you get fined for these kids have not wearing their mask and take the masks off the damn kids not waste it on a park i think the park's a good idea i'm not i don't want to really throw it under the bus like that but right now our kids health is more important than a 40 million dollar park in this town the other thing is i'd like from the board to mention uh another gentleman brought up critical race theory and other curriculum that's coming down i'd like to see this board of ed put put in their bylaws that any any new curriculum any new books that are out there has to be a public notice put into the paper so that everybody in this town sees that it's coming i think it also should be on the front page of your website as a banner any new curriculum is coming down i know in the past years ago i came up to the board and talked about curriculum and was pretty much told to shut up uh i didn't like that oh the respect rob no one told you to shut up i know i didn't no you didn't okay but i was we did listen to you just so you know yeah i was told that i had to go remember no i i don't want to go there but just let me know i wanna so we are working on that okay and the reason why we have correspondence number two on our agenda after years and that is because of your feedback so great i would love to see that so we all know what's coming down the pike to see you know so it's interface so we know we don't have to look for it or get digging around in a meeting but uh that's all i'd like to say thanks thank you [Applause] thank you robert hi my name is tina ruddy and i'm a cheshire resident we are now in week 72 of flat in the curve the curve is flat the goal post for regaining our freedoms is constantly moving when we complied with stay home stay safe and removed our children from their friends forcing them to sit for hours behind a computer screen that's when we began justifying taking away parental rights and started to allow elected officials to make health decisions for our children i'm not here today to convince you that we shouldn't be wearing masks i'm here today to remind you that wearing a mask is a health decision and any health decision made regarding a child belongs to their parents not the board of bed not the superintendent and not the governor it's my job to protect my children and it's your job as the board of ed to represent us the parents and the students we have medical professionals and various medical institutions telling us that masked work yet we also have medical professionals and articles in peer-reviewed medical journals stating that it's not safe for these children to spend hours a day in masks not only is it physically detrimental it's psychologically damaging with such conflicting information and our children's livelihood caught in the middle how do you justify taking this decision away from parents what data do you have that supports the position that a parent is no longer qualified to be in control of this choice children ages 0 to 17 account for 22 percent of the u.s population a report generated yesterday from the cdc cova data demonstrates that the total number of deaths across the u.s in children ages 0 to 17 is 543.
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