uh any modifications of the agenda from the trustees or uh move change i'll wait for hands or if i don't see anything we'll move forward all right seeing them we'll go ahead and move on to item 103.
manifest 5 is an llc that specializes in providing help to businesses in automating their supply chain finances and marketing manifest five and the aim interns were given the freedom to launch a district-wide campaign to represent the student experience during the pandemic from this opportunity the aim interns initiated the we rise together challenge in order to seek out the many stories of hope and resilience from our students the vision of ilab is to have a space to nurture staff and student innovation prepare students for the workforce specifically to fill the high-paying high-demand jobs here in orange county while instilling in our students the importance of compassion and service to our community we want to share that the vision of ilab was implemented long before there was a title or a beautiful space auhsd is special and that there's always been a connection to our community ray and i are both alumni and had the calling of coming back and teaching in our community we loved working with this project because manifest 5 was started by an auhsd alumni just like us we thought it was so cool that the vision of ilab has come full circle in our first ilab project dan taw an alumnus of oxford class of 2018 went to uci and started his company manifest five out of uci's entrepreneurial ecosystem and he too had the calling of coming back to provide guidance and mentoring to our students and help build the entrepreneurial and innovative ecosystem here at auhsd in january 2021 the ilove leadership team developed a civic engagement lesson regarding the importance of understanding covenanting mask mandates and the vaccine we developed a three-day lesson that over 10 636 auhsd students completed and our numbers showed in our post survey data that many of our students wanted to do more with civic engagement the we rise together challenge was one of the ways that our students could take action from the civic engagement lesson we ended up having 60 finalists and we selected seven winners that represented three high schools three junior highs and one special artist category our civic engagement lesson has also been presented and shared with several other school districts across the state students in the internship conceptualized comp the competition promoted it created a rubric for scoring and scored it manifest five provided the guidance and mentorship to the eighteen student interns which were divided up into four teams the teams consisted of content planning website development multimedia development and project management our interns determined they wanted to focus on stories of hope and resilience across four categories they were visual motion visual arts auditory arts and special artists two of our project managers are here with me today to share their experience glenna lustina who last year was a 12th grader from western and tina ketzen who was a 10th grader last year at cyprus and is currently an 11th grader at cyprus this year throughout this pandemic isolation loneliness and the ever gloomy future lingered over our heads day and night as fellow students we knew that these everlasting thoughts were rampant throughout our school we created this challenge to embrace and emphasize the five c's creativity communication critical thinking collaboration and compassion within our adhsd community personally this experience helps reinforce the values already instilled in me by the unlimited you mantra i felt that being able to have some semblance of control over something anything in the midst of a pandemic empowered me to my fullest potential through this aim opportunity i've learned how to balance being a leader and a team player there was no set person in charge rather we were all played a large part to ensure the resiliency and strength our community showed was highlighted being able to partner with the company truly allowed me to have a glimpse into the real world of business and consumerism not only was i able to learn the ins and outs of marketing the support and guidance of manifest five granted us the credibility and confidence we needed to flourish i truly believe i will be able to carry the skills i've learned from this internship to further myself and my education thank you to the entire ilab team specifically mr noah and mrs kwan for their continued support personally managing a district-wide project like this i miss a pandemic with other amazing students is a unique experience and i'll be starting college soon and through the entire lab experience i was able to learn how to communicate professionally manage and assign tasks with other interns and collaborate not just within ourselves but also in other expertise such as with other adults throughout the auhsd district and as someone who learned how to work as a group we all had to work together and identify our strengths and we had groups with specialized skills such as web design content creation graphics and then there's us the project managers who had to essentially make sure that we were on top of our game and that we had our objective met and that objective was to make sure that we showed the resilience of our students and it was incredibly an emotional experience to see so many of our students rise up and show how amidst this global pandemic they've managed to take something and make it inspiring make it so much more productive and it's all because of i love that we were able to do this and i would like to say thank you to everyone for all your hard work and thank you for giving us this amazing opportunity and now i'd like to present to you the winners of the ilab we rise together challenge our winners were awarded their certificates at the end of last year so they're not here in person but they are watching us virtually and i'd like to say hello to all of them our first winner in this special artist category is angelica rivera from magnolia ninth grader instead of titling their pieces we had our students fill out the sentence i rise because and you will be able to read each winner's irise statement in the junior high category for auditory art we have eliza ahmad from orangeview junior high eighth grade visual arts category we have hannie lee from lexington junior high eighth grade for visual motion we have brielle drunkers from cambridge virtual academy seventh grade in the high school categories for auditory art we have kevin nguyen from western high school ninth grade visual art doin co from cypress high school 10th grade and for visual motion jade monette from lawera high school in 12th grade jade was our only winner last year who happened to be a senior she has now graduated and doing amazing things jade's story was featured on the may 28 auhsd future talks with our very own superintendent matsuda tune in to hear about how she turned the pandemic into an opportunity so now i'd like to thank the board thank you superintendent matsuda executive cabinet and our partnership with ro rop for your support not only in the ilab program but the ilab brand new space at western thank you all um i just wanna can we send this uh we rise together winners uh by email to board members so we could actually look at their presentations too they are on the back aren't they no they're on the back but i'm saying for us so that it's easier to click on it when we get our email oh okay gotcha yeah that's right you don't have to write it all in yeah okay our next presentation will be on can i say something real quick i just want to publicly again thank uh miss quan i mean she was the principal at western she helped lead this this effort but then also the the amazing teachers that are part of this work i know gail is here and mr noah we're also really grateful for our partnership with rlp they share the same mission and vision that we have as a district in preparing kids for college career and life uh so really excited about the work they're doing and there's so much more to come from the eye lab i can't wait to see the great outcomes for our kids so thank you guys thank you again yes i missed your bar you have no i had more comments i thought other board members had comments so i was reserving it but i just wanted to say uh amazing amazing right i also saw the facility virtually and that looks amazing i can't just say more about the facility itself i'm a big believer in sending students to like facilities which look like state-of-the-art building so that way they really come prepared and i think this is a excellent example we have many jewels now with many of our bond related projects but this is one of the great projects including the work that you guys are doing so thank you to the teachers thank you to the students for sharing your story i am very excited to actually click on these and listen to your winning uh projects because i think that's the key for me to kind of see and that i like to crow about it at other uh places that i go saying that look at our kids excelling right so thank you very much and i also want to comment on uh mr ta who's a great example who came back and was actually being part of this project so thank you on behalf of the board as well thank you mrs trejo yeah and i just was just reflecting on you know the students you know what an example you are of showing um you know you showed this community uh example to the world of of your resilience and just like um you know the creative process that you all went through it wasn't easy uh but just the the the the honest truth of what you were feeling uh and just i'm just so enamored that you're just a really shining example a lot of people really couldn't get through this pandemic and a lot of grown-ups couldn't get through it and you just really set a such a wonderful example to to to me you know to all of the adults here um how you can turn um you know hard times uh into into creativity and and and learn and grow a lot of us resist resist change we resist learning new things but uh what a shining example i am beyond uh proud of all of you and i can't wait to look at your your examples and thank you so much thank you for putting yourselves out there and being honest thank you yeah thank you to the leadership team for leading the district through this process i visited the lab a couple times this last week during the process of it being set up and then on opening day when it still is in the process but it is looks like it can be a fantastic learning environment for all concerns so thank you for your leadership and look forward to to seeing and hearing more about it as the year goes through thank you okay i just want to thank all of you these have been such difficult times it's hard to even put it into words and to have you share your resilience and what you're doing in education and for yourselves and your peers it's a beautiful story thank you okay thank you all okay then i will refer to dr freed for our e-cadence tech squad yes so here's another great example of how our staff and students are creating a better world through our unlimited you i'm proud to bring up our program administrator scott rendell of call of career readiness thank you dr fred um so uh good evening board president piercy board of trustees executive cabinet in our community both online and here in the audience uh yeah very excited to share another aim opportunity that our students had this summer that was very unique and specialized and so i'm gonna i'm gonna speak quickly so we can get to our students but i want to share with you first just the goals around this and a little bit about what it was but the the idea behind this program and the vision that mrs manville brought to us that i'll uh introduce her in a moment was to provide a work-based learning experience for students where that would support the district-wide deployment of e-cadence our new learning management system so involving our students in that process of building this new system for learning and what the high school high school and junior high school students did was develop screencasts for a cadence support site and a few other items that that mrs manville and the students will share with you and then our junior high students participated as assistants so we actually had junior high students experiencing a work-based learning experience and they just they just did a fantastic job so i'm going to turn it over to one of our teacher coordinators mrs manville who brought the vision to us and uh and she'll start talk with you about the participants in the program all right so first of all i just wanted to say how proud i am of our e cadence tech squad because and i have two representatives today with us two students a high school student intern and a junior high assistant both who were cva students and one of which has moved on to kennedy high school so like um so to start to say is that um our we had eight high school interns um 11th and 12th grade students and then we had five junior high school assistants and students were recruited from cambridge virtual academy what students worked on each week like scott was just saying a few minutes ago were screencasts and at the outset we thought we would be working on 10 screencasts and you'll see how many the students actually completed in a few minutes and those screencasts were an answer to a question and that was how are we going to support our auhsd students and parents in the rollout of e-cadence we're supporting our teachers but how are we going to also do the same for our students and our for our parents so the e-cadence tech squad were in before we go to this they're in collaborative teams they worked on four teams one um intern was a project manager and then there were other interns as well on those teams and then of course there was the junior high assistant which i think was the first time we've had junior hires participate in aim so the students like i told you were their primary goal at the outset was to create 10 screencasts but they created over 52 screencast gifs and then screenshots with directions and then they also worked on user stories and user stories are something that we do in software development and those user stories were were um ideas that the students had from their participation and use of e-cadence during cambridge uh virtual academy during the year and what that meant is they um with the user stories they um they came up with ideas to either refine what was something that they wanted to refine in the e-cadence cadence learning management system or they added to something that they wanted to add or something in the also then the e-cadence learning management system i would like to also emphasize that they used agile which is a professional project management methodology used to develop software and professionals may take courses in the ins and outs of agile and receive a certificate it's also a way to manage a project by breaking it up into several phases we conferred with the ek team to condense those phases for our high school and junior high squad and now i'd like to introduce our first representative oh i'm sorry and now i'd like to show the screen one of the screencasts that the students created is so congratulations so ariel will be coming up in just a minute he's our junior high assistant and he actually created the e-cadence intro that you saw and that those intros are at the beginning of every single e-cadence screencast all right thank you for that work that creative work and now i'd like madison ochongo to come up and talk about her experience hello everyone my name is madison ochenko i was a team lead for t1 today i'm going to be talking about retros which was similar to a weekly reflection so every week the entire tech squad would come together to participate in a retro for the retros we'd use a website called jamboard and we'd put up sticky notes answering the three questions what do you want to keep doing what do you want to stop doing and what do you want to start doing after we answer those three questions we then put two dots on two sticky notes we believe were important or we believe we just need to come back to in the future and once we're all done with our sticky notes and our dots would then come together as a group and discuss what we put down i personally really enjoyed this part of the internship because it made me reflect on my work at the end of the week these reflections are really important for everyone in the group setting because it strengthened our five c's talking about the changes we wanted and having an open communication is incredibly important in a group setting because it makes sure we're all efficient at our work we all also needed compassion to help strengthen the success of our teams by listening to each other and problem solving our cadence team developed a really strong bond it was an honor to be a part of this program and i really look forward to the success of our team thank you all right hello my name is arya barangi and today i'm going to be talking about my experience of the cadence tech squad so when we had our e-cadence internship we focused on several methodologies such as agile and date and in this agile in this agile approach we had daily scrum meetings and we would talk ab as previously mentioned about our progress and how we should deal with it and i believe that we exemplify all the five c's in in these daily scrum meetings but not only in these daily score meetings but also in the whole internship and however i believe that compassion was the most the one i valued the most throughout the internship because without compassion you do not have fluency and coherence with your peers but when we do use compassion we can see that you can not only create a comfortable workspace for yourself but for everybody around you and you can see that when using compassion in our own work in the e-cadence tech squad productivity skyrocketed and as previously mentioned the e cadence tech squad was originally supposed to create 10 screencasts wow and but at the end of the ek internship we created 73 pieces of content i mean that's just amazing how an act of kindness can truly define and change our progress so thank you for allowing me to and giving me this opportunity to speak here today and initially thank you everyone for coming out here today thank you thank you arya thank you madison so we you want to continue to support e-cadence through the cadence tech squad and support continued implementation through help support desk additional online support those sorts of things as it rolls out to our teachers and students i wanted to pause here though you heard from the students how involved e-cadence was in supporting them in uh through this process so i want to give a special thanks to tim nguyen and deng vu from e-cadence the cadence team members eric tang nathan ha ethan masuda mrs lori manville and mrs valerie hamilton who are our tech squad coordinators our teacher coordinators who made this happen and it just turned out to be a great program and we look forward to continuing it in the future thank you very much [Applause] i have to say i was extremely impressed with the two students who gave reports you're really sharp kids let me tell you and i think you're doing a phenomenal job and your presentations were very good it's just says a lot about our school system we've got such bright students who are involved and doing great things and i mean they ask you to do 10 and you end up with 70.
ms godwin stated it was the district's protocol that any student who had been within three feet for 15 minutes or longer um sorry i got this or or any other staff member who had tested positive for covet 19 would have the quarantine for 14 days from the day of exposure which was last thursday and that she may return to school august 23rd ms godwin also stated that if marley was tested for a covet 19 and had a negative result she could return to school this coming monday august 16th as long as she wore a mask for the remaining of the 14 days since exposure any person with common sense would have been just as shocked as i was when i heard that even after having a negative test she still has to wear a mask that's what i asked the response was that it could be a false negative negative meaning she could actually be infected so she'd have to wear a mask just in case in order to attend in-person instruction which violates state law how so on july 1st sorry i just had surgery i ran out of breath how so on july 1st of this year arizona governor ducey signed into law bill hb 2898 which reads section 35 prohibits a a county city town school district governing board or charter school governing body from requiring students or staff to use face coverings during school hours on school property a school district be a school district or charter school from requiring a student or teacher to receive a covet 19 vaccination or to wear a face covering for in-person instruction by requiring marley or any other child to wear a mask in order to attend in-person instruction which you do not require all students you are violating state law as well as our children's right to equal protection of the law protected by the 14th amendment of the united states constitution section 1 nor denied to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws your protocol is absurd and quite ludicrous as it contradicts itself you want to subject our children to an invasive medical test in order to be able to attend in-school instruction a test you clearly do not trust otherwise you wouldn't mandate the mask to return to school after a negative test as the science you claim you follow proves they're not infected if you don't trust this science how are you creating a protocol that restricts our children's education based on that science haven't our children suffer enough in the last 18 months i had a lengthy conversation with dr stewart yesterday dr stewart who is a doctor who has a doctorate in education half a century of as an educator under half a century as an educator under her belt has given the privilege of being in a powerful position that allows her to make life altering decisions for her children during our conversation every time i questioned different elements of the protocol her response was continuously that she was following the guidelines of the arizona department of health services and the certain center of disease control all in the name of what is best for our children so after hearing the same answer so many times i asked her yesterday as a government employee for such a long time do you blindly and wholeheartedly trust the government do you believe they have our best interests and that of our children at heart she chuckled and said that of course she doesn't so that she is not that naive so i asked her as a highly educated individual have you done your own research she said no that she had not done deep research on this matter which shows she is and has been making decisions that affect our children's lives based on guidelines given to her by a government she does not trust that she knows does not have our children's best interest and without bothering to do research disregarding how it affects our children's lives i ask you board members the same question do you do you blindly and wholeheartedly just the government has their best interest please raise your hand if you do do you blindly believe them do you believe them trust them sadly this protocol implemented shows that just like dr stewart you blindly set protocols for a children's education without any regard of the outcome even though her answer was no she's quarantining the healthy she's discriminating our children and depriving them of the education they deserve disregarding the emotional damage it causes them statistically more children have died from suicide depression physical abuse and other related mental illnesses due to clove with 19 school shutdowns than ever before than the actual virus where is your concern for that where is your concern for the children's safety then dr stewart brought up the delta variant are you aware that on average 75 percent of the new coveted cases the delta variant are from people who are vaccinated doesn't that tell you something i have two friends who work the covet unit at ymc they both have told me that the majority of the cases are from people who are vaccinated you may say that's hearsay okay well i spent this past weekend at ymc getting my appendix removed the nurses had treated me just for reference i was in the covet unit told me the same thing i refused to take the covet test that they were demanding in order to admit me i asked the doctor if i text if i test if i test positive are you going to kick me out and let my appendix burst he said of course not we will take we will just take extra precautions i said okay then just take extra precautions as if i have covet let's do this the doctor pause till that he said and said i guess we can do that i have had four c-sections and have four kids numerous and numerous trips to the r i wouldn't have i wouldn't say i'm an expert but i'm quite familiar with how hospitals staff operate when taking care of patients both in an emerging situation and when admitted do you know what extra precautions the stuff took during the three days that i was there zero they did the same exact thing in the exact same matter as always they came in close proximity to me to take my vitals draw my blood check my incision area sign paperwork just as i have all other times prior to covet the only difference with your story time is up may i ask for an extra minute we've actually already gone three minutes over can i finish my statement i'm sorry we're out of time if there's time when everybody's done talking can i come back we'll see what time we have left thank you mr my name is noel regan i teach at fox creek junior high i'm here to speak in regards to the air conditioning situation at our schools our air conditioning units are old and are going out because we know that and because we live in an area where air conditioning is not just a luxury but an essential there needs to be an expedited process for getting those replaced i was informed that my classroom air conditioning was out two weeks before we returned to school that is easily enough time to get the unit fixed or replaced in a timely fashion before students begin showing up that is not what has happened another teacher on campus had his air conditioning go out last april though there were two months of school left and an entire summer vacation his air conditioning was still not working when teachers returned to school this year when i have asked about progress on mine i have been told on three separate occasions someone has been here to look at it i'm not sure why that needs to happen three times to figure out the air conditioning does not work i was informed yesterday that initial approval has been granted by the sfb and now the district will be getting paperwork together for a final approval to be submitted that means an ac unit has still not been purchased and we are not very close to the work being done to replace the unit again all this should have been able to be done before we resume classes i've also been told the ac unit in the office copy and supply room is higher on the list than a classroom in which students meet and will be replaced first the district solution to the slow and convoluted process of fixing and air conditioning is just to simply move classrooms asking teachers to simply move classrooms is not so simple there's constant movement of supplies and materials issues with technology being different or unavailable in other classrooms and more and no answer can be given as to how long that situation will continue before a successful solution a fixed air conditioning is in place while it seems too late to have any sort of expedited process for fixing the ac in my classroom i am asking the district to review their methods for addressing the situation when an air conditioning goes out so that teachers and students in the future do not have to suffer through the heat or the status of not knowing when a fix will come because our air conditioners are going to continue going out i know you know they're old and they are on the list but something needs to be done to expedite that process thank you that was our last call paul if you wouldn't mind forwarding on the rest of your statement to the board and we will review that item 2.5 adoption of the agenda any questions i move that we adopt the agenda as presented all second all in favor nay we can pull okay i jeannie borland i amanda ayman i'm charlene item 2.6 superintendent report mr president and board members um you have my report you will also see i would like to um show you oh i'm sorry it didn't turn there we go we had on the first day of school 200 2163 students enrolled and that is up by 41 students from the number at which we closed in the spring and that's good news excuse me as of today we had 2266 enrolled and we didn't have that many bodies and seats today but that those are the numbers that are actually enrolled we have not done the 10-day drop because this was only day six of school so we will keep you informed uh as as we get to the tenth day and and let you know where we are the only other thing i would add as an update a miscellaneous update we received word today that the district all three of the elementary schools in the district qualified for early literacy funding and i had my numbers written down but i don't have them with me the amounts range between 50 000 and 65 000 for the three schools two years ago we had only one school that qualified last year too and now all three are qualified for these extra funds and we use them for various things assisting with salaries and other things but the target is early literacy so it's four k through three i'll answer any questions you might have about the rest of the report any other questions for dr stewart all right moving on 2.7 uh no itemized donations at this time item 2.8 board member updates any updates from any board members item 3.0 the consent agenda i do have a few things that i'd like to pull from the consent agenda the item 3.3 personnel and 3.6 evaluators so with those i would like to move that we adopt the consent agenda minus those two items all in favor aye corey burgess hi genie borland hi amanda amen hi charlene dies the reason i ask for those to be pulled is there's some discussion that i would like to have on a future meeting uh considering concerning some of these things i'd like to send that over to dr stewart so we can break that down so we do it the proper way um there's certain items that i'd like to like okay on both of those table those two items at this time oh table both of these are both of those so we can have those on the next agenda for discussion in a separate way okay all right is everyone okay with that okay we're just gonna table it then you need a motion to table those two items thank you so much table items 3.3 and items 3.6 second all in favor aye corey burgess hi junie borland i'm anna hi charlene diaz so i moved [Music] all right item 4.1 uh bullhead city return to school plan for august 20 21. dr stewart mr president excuse me and board members as with last year um i thought it was probably a good idea that we bring back each time for your consideration each month consideration of our return to school plan i did not print out a copy for you i can get it up here for you to look at i made some suggestions for they're highlighted in yellow for some changes but i think there are other things that you all might want to discuss relative to these things that i was not aware of and so by putting it on the agenda this way it pretty much lets you talk about anything that's related to our return to school plan i did also give you some other information presented it to you this evening that relates to the return to school plan for instance the student protocols and and then a sample of how that that protocol is carried out at the site so whatever your pleasure is relative to a the the recommendation chain recommended changes that i've put in there or any other changes that you want to make any comments i have a few but i'll let you go first go ahead and get this get us started okay um i did a some some numbers trying to put this all together wrap my head about what's going on um and i've been through several different uh academy of american academy pediatrics the cdc a lot of different reports uh the biggest problem i'm running into is the actual numbers on how kids are affected we're seeing stuff above the age of 14 not seeing very much below the age of 14.
that is a mere 0.11 of the total cova deaths in the u.s 543 deaths representing 0.11 of the total deaths our rate in connecticut is even lower to put this in perspective i looked at a report generated from cdc data for the 2018-2019 flu season it states that in this same range 477 children died from influenza so that seasonal flu accounted for a similar number of deaths for this age group in an even shorter period of time yet we did not consider masking them canceling their sports keeping them away from their friends and filling them with fear now we let the parents care for them as they felt was best in my understanding this board does not work for the department of education and you don't work for the department of health you work for us the parents and to clarify to say that the board of ed members who work for the state is based on the idea that towns are incorporated based on state approval board of ed members work for the citizens that elect them they do not take an oath to do what the dph commissioner says they compete for support from the residents they have sworn to represent so i respectfully ask you if this guidance is coming from the dph when did the board of ed and superintendent agree to be the arm of enforcement without an alternative platform for learning are you prepared to deny an education to students if they do not wear a mask if i send my child to school in a mask can you guarantee that they won't come home with coped are you prepared to defend yourselves against a lawsuit because you denied a student a public education guaranteed by the connecticut state constitution it's never 100 safe to send kids to school and parents always assume some sort of risk from bullying to the flu playground injuries school shootings parents are qualified to assess risk for their own children and take action accordingly allow them to do so thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight thank you miss ridden mr was your first name i apologize i didn't catch it earlier tina sorry that's tina hi i'm meredith nielsen i'm a cheshire resident my children attend dodd and cheshire high school i'm here to state for the record that i vehemently oppose putting mask on children in schools it appears that the governor's office has put out conflicting information about whether schools have this choice either way this issue will likely come up again at the end of september it would be nice to see more districts notably this one standing up for what's in the best interest of the students rather than waiting to be told what to do in silently falling in line with procedures that are clearly not good for the children masks are not good for kids i saw the information sent out this week about the supposed myths of mask use what i saw were theoretical concepts and general reassurances based on guidance from alphabet soup agencies what i did not see was any actual science those who have seen the studies more than 20 years of gold standard science are aware that masks are not effective in stopping the spread of respiratory viruses even if they were why aren't we concerned about the harmful effects the masks are having on our kids did you see the study from germany where health effects of masks on over 20 000 school-aged children were documented headaches difficulty concentrating malaise impaired learning fatigue skin conditions fungal diseases in and around the mouth anxiety wounds behind the ears impaired vision shortness of breath nausea and more what about children who are hard of hearing hearing and i know you mentioned earlier clear masks but it sounded like that was for a very few children have been doing speech therapy with masks on really even i find it hard to communicate with people because i can't see their mouths i can't imagine how stressful it is to deal with this all day in an actual learning environment healthy children should not be forced to cover their breathing organs just to get an education i would like to briefly address the vaccine issue while i'm here first concerning the policy of only unvaccinated students having to quarantine after being contact traced i am truly disturbed by the willingness of this school system to call out our children's medical status creating situations that could cause them to be harassed teased or bullied by their peers this policy also isn't based on science the vaccine cannot stop transmission i am also disturbed by the pressure put on students directly from the school system i'm mainly referring to a recent video that was sent out that was essentially a vaccine commercial and which encouraged everyone to run out and get the shot since when is it the school's place to be giving medical advice is everyone here 100 certain that this injection is 100 percent safe for every single student can you imagine if this school system or any of its leaders could be held liable for any health issues resulting from the shot because you advised everyone to go get it perhaps you'd start considering some of the scientists and doctors who are shouting warnings but whose voices are being silenced this includes the guy who invented the mrna technology by the way he pointed out the flaws and the dangers in the way this shot is being used and has thus been portrayed by the media as an anti-vaxxer it seems to me we should be listening to him which brings me to my final point where is the critical thinking in all of this we have been reassured time and again that our kids are learning to think critically in school why don't i see our district leaders doing that if this board and administration is truly interested in advocating on behalf of the children everyone would be gathering as much information as possible that includes what's being censored and dismissed by mainstream media and our so-called experts it means asking the hard questions and being willing to read what you were told was wrong because looking at another perspective can only deepen your understanding on the issue at hand and that's all i had but i just wanted to follow up on a prior question a gentleman asked about whether the district is getting money by following the guidelines i've also been wondering if if the orders are not law do we lose money because there were private schools i don't know if there were any public schools last year and they did not require mass all year long the kids went to school without masks they sort of flew under the radar um but i know people whose children went to these schools and i think from the people i talked to they were private schools so the question is why were they if they're licensed the same way and they have to follow the other mandates they have to follow all the vaccine requirements so why did they not have to follow the mask mandate and i can't seem to find an answer to that so if anybody no i mean do we lose money that that's what the assumption was because they were private schools does anybody jeff do you have any yeah i first of all i'm not familiar with any private schools that didn't follow mask requirements i i just don't know that's not my venue but uh with respect to losing money if we don't follow uh health guidance i'm not aware of that i don't know that we we do lose money if we don't or we you know i don't know well i think because the question keeps coming up what what happens what does the state do if you don't follow nothing because it didn't exist so is it money is that what's leading this no i i no but so krishna just a heads up you're you're on a five minute mark which is fine we'll go a little longer because we have a few more minutes but uh federal funding we don't know if it's affected because there's nothing tied to federal funding on vaccines mandates masks etc that's a whole different avenue the sr money is that was grant my private federal government to give additional resources to districts to deal with uh additional resources staffing academic needs to bring kids back up to speed to what we call bounce forward in school system i don't know what the state would do if they would pull actual our pilot money and move uh tax money to us i don't know we know about the fines but like i said earlier we'll so we'll see if we can release our answers part of the question i'll see if we can release our um privileged responses from our attorney on this but it's a good question and for what it's worth and uh actually let me i'm gonna wrap up with something related to the state afterwards related to this but so as far as i know i don't know what the impact would be on federal funding or state um but you know we're we'll we'll get back some some official legal response in that somebody has that okay thank you hi i'm mandy sweet i'm here to request that our children have the option to wear or not wear a mask regardless of their vaccination status this is the only way to appease all parents of the cheshire school district there is alarming evidence that she was masquerade and effective and can do more harm than good if there is risk there must be choice if masks are mandated again us parents are being backed into a corner since virtual learning is no longer an option all children in the u.s have the right to a free public education it's discrimination if you do not allow a child that's right based on whether or not they wear a mask are you willing to face legal action because the parents that stand beside me on this matter are willing to do so i will not spend another dollar on a face diaper that promotes bacterial growth putting my child at risk for infection you do not pay for our medical our medical bills and until you do you have zero authority to force my child to do anything i birthed him i raised him he is my child and i will make any and all medical decisions for him thank you [Applause] thank you mandy hi my name is jane bate and i live at 454 riverside drive in cheshire i spent two delightful decades teaching instrumental music in this system two former students happen to be in the room tonight i mention that simply because i'd like you all to imagine how teaching wind instruments or chorus would go with masks required but here's the main point of my message oberon herbert in his book the right and wrong of compulsion by the state writes and i paraphrase that the only reason the government should restrict any freedoms of an individual is if that person has already restricted the freedom of another he follows that with and i quote when governments do so act when they interfere with the energies and faculties of innocent men they simply join themselves to the already swollen ranks of the users of violence and the despisers of rights and they lose all true title and to be obeyed or respected by men that concept has haunted me throughout the lockdowns required masking and now the pressure to vaccinate with an experimental vaccine that has killed and permanently injured untold numbers of victims yet i'll bet few if any who have bent to the will of the state on masks and or the vacs have abridged another's rights to the point at which the law whether state town school system or other should step in i believe that every one of us not just in the schools but throughout this nation must be given our freedom to make these decisions for ourselves and for our children anything else is tyranny [Applause] thank you miss bates miss pete do we have anyone else yes please hi my name is being a teacher resident for 20 years uh i just want to offer some my personal experience first of all thank you for all your effort for last year too to put kids into a school and deeply deeply appreciate that for the parent uh first of all i think let's see i mean i i live in stone because i used to work for bristol mars square as a research scientist my personal experience we all need at least a couple of years to develop any drug at fda approval i'm not looking for a generic company we only need a year to make a general copy of approved brand drug how long did this take for this vaccine to get emergency authorization think about that it's uh the people being told it's safe safe at a world time frame because at the cme a lot of side effects won't show up i think i forgot the name i think it's a little probably it's you know later might something like that it's given to a preg woman to suppress their pregnancy reaction i think eventually found that that caused the birth defect for the kids [Music] so i mean for this vaccine if you feel like you have a high risk it's your freedom to choose that but i never want to see the board education put a mandate for students it should be the choice of our parents [Applause] i'm sorry we're a little past the uh the time is anybody else that wants to come up can we actually hear how you feel about this sure i'll offer board members if they want to give some general responses they don't have to but we're saying welcome to tim yeah i'll try to be brief just i think i basically tried to explain myself before which is you know if this is akin to the flu and somebody was saying something about that um i don't i really don't want to be wearing masks but that i i have to hedge that because basically in relation to the trajectory and not knowing what this is i i i just don't know i need more information and right now i'm basically looking at it saying i'm not a constitutional lawyer i'm not about to engage i don't know where it goes you know to the u.s supreme court in some of these areas if it's a gray area asking our attorney to go all the way down to dc i'm not ready to go there at this point um i hate this situation i do i mean some of it honestly some of this to me it really does border on i suspect i do believe that the masks have a mitigating factor here but at the same time my son who just finished preschool i mean for the past year basically i would go pick them up at preschool and the kids would pretty much be like here maybe here at the end of the day and the teachers the the teachers were doing everything that they could but this was the reality of dealing with preschoolers and he's going to be going into kindergarten i absolutely believe that the masks are going to have a mitigating effect on this but i don't want to i don't want to go down a path where masking and public health takes over from what we've known for a long time like with the flu when people die i i don't want anybody to die i don't want anybody to end up in the hospital but it is what we have lived with and we've been comfortable with that risk for a long time i i honestly i wish i could give you a better answer right now these are just the thoughts that are going through my head that's that's all thank you tim uh next board member uh well we want the board members to and data it's a speak or no answer it's not a personal feeling mark i appreciate it but we're going to have the board members to speak we're not going to go back and forth on the topics andrew do you want to speak me you can address that question sure so um during the pandemic i watched my vibrant seventh grade daughter go from a student who was involved in multiple sports activities drama be stripped of everything and sitting in front of a computer in her room for six hours a day being on this board we if you guys didn't watch all the meetings or we were on zoom multiple nights a week we did everything we could to keep when we had to keep the schools closed and then when we did open the schools we implemented every policy that was required by us in order to keep the kids in school the most and you know as a district we did have the students in the schools the most we possibly could more than most of our surrounding towns what i do want is i want my daughter to be in school all the time i want her to be able to participate in all the different activities i do however think that we need to base some of this on data and numbers and facts and actual reports of the cheshire community um and i was going to ask earlier tonight if we like if i decide not to send my daughter to school with a mask on what's going to happen she's going to get sent home we're not offering a at home remote option this year so i want the kids to be in school i want them to be safe but i also do think that it is apparent it should be the parents decision um [Applause] thank you angel um i'm going to take this down sorry um i am can i i will confess i am after my line of questioning i am concerned that our public health director who's been guiding our policy doesn't have the data or the the arguments ready at hand to support the mandate um i don't believe the data anymore support the fear that is driving our community um i do believe you guys have the right and responsibility to raise your children as you see fit and i do think we state that as um as mr sham pointed out in policy 90.30.1 and i advise all of you to go home and read it it's on the cheshire public school website um under policy you'll find it under board of education then policies read it please i really hope we do ask our attorneys um what obligations we do have um so just a couple of points to go back to 90 point 3.1 yes uh there is a law that requires students to come into school and i really applaud you for being here and exercising your constitutional both state and federal constitutional rights to speak out keep it up it is so fun to have an audience here that that being said um you guys they're your children and you have the right to raise them and sometimes those decisions that you have to make if something isn't following according to what you believe is right you have to make a really hard choice and those choices are expensive sometimes they're inconvenient and they're sacrificial and you can take that for what it means for however you want to interpret it i am a duly elected member of the board of education and as i understand the law right now and this was brought this cove the governor's covid mandate was challenged this summer by rob samson and some others went all the way to the supreme court and unfortunately was tossed out on standing so it stands and i fear i i this is not equivocating because i truly hope we get to a point where you do have the choice but right now the supreme court isn't even supporting our choice in this state so i hope someone challenges it and we get a favorable ruling but i do fear breakdown in the rule of law i think the consequences of that are going to be far more worse than what we're dealing with right now so again i'm going to close i'm not i i i fully support your i love the idea of your having a choice but i'm sorry we are tied and i'm not happy about it at all and as a citizen um i'm not happy but i'll go back to it again if this policy is not in your child's best interest then you've got to ask what do you have to do to and act on that thank you thank you i just have one question i mean we keep going back to the governor's mandates laws requirements whatever you want to call them if we make it optional what's going to happen if we send our kids back with no mascot pay the funds who's going to find us maura that doesn't know the facts who's going to find it i'm i'm genuinely curious are there going to be police officers arresting my ten and seven-year-old i went to school at chester i grew up in chester i have a business at chester and a business in walworth so i don't understand who's gonna enforce these laws nobody and it's not my new norm and it's not my kid's new normal i'm not even using that word what's the new norm i don't understand this isn't the new norm what next month is going to be another variant they're going to put more fear all over tv six months from now they're gonna come a booster shot another seven months is gonna be another variant this is gonna go on forever where's the end i just i don't know where's the end is it this month was it last year was it six months ago where's the end are we scared of the parents backlash that want the kids to work then wear it fast wear a mask nobody responds to emails so just continue not to respond to them i mean i don't understand chris thank you i'm going to address some of that in a little bit yeah i just want to know who's going to enforce this if i send my kids to doolittle next monday tuesday whatever when school starts and i send them i drive them there and drop them off from the front desk and bring it and tell them to go inside i don't want to do it to them because they feel like they're outlawed this isn't about being an outlaw we have choice are we in america what country are we on i don't get it what world are we living in so if i drop them off my ten-year-old seven-year-old it too little what are they gonna do send them home okay send them for one send them home twice or deny my kids an education send me a tutor at my house i'm not teaching them i'm not educated i'm a dumb pizza guy so i'm not being serious so you send the twitter to my house and pay 50 grand a year to teach both my kids or give me my money back my taxes i mean i won't put what choices are we left with you guys just say it's mandated by the governor well he managed me to close my restaurant i didn't close my restaurant chris i hear you i'm just i'm just trying to we'll circle back nobody so it's not even an excuse let us finish the answer but no no listen first of all you're not a dumb pizza guy because you're pretty you're pretty articulate so thank you for your thoughts i think you give yourself less credit than you deserve well let us continue answering yeah i'm sorry i don't know if we can ask the enforcement question but i will say this i know in our administration i seriously doubt uh the the teachers administrators are going to arrest your kids or arrest you but it's a valid point and so bear with us as we go through this i'm not going to force them out will they send them home i'm going to let dr stone answer that toward you uh dr sloan are they going to send my kids home we're going to need legal guidance on how to navigate a governor's order yeah the enforcement has stolen we've asked for it and so let us continue having our responses to you folks and we'll circle back so please thank you adam you want to say something thank you mr chairman um the unfortunate reality right now is that what faith says is true that governor lamont's executive orders are the force of law no they're not yes they are yes they are it's not it's a mandate okay we can debate the point well actually so nobody enforces because there's no law what are they gonna force so for fairness of just moving forward not to stop discussion let's assume that adam and the room we agree to disagree but let's hear what he has to say thank you right now our hands are tied when i ran for this board four years ago um i i thought that i had more power than i did right i thought that i could effect more change than i have um and that i could help the parents more than i have and i'll continue to fight along with the rest of this board to to give you as much parental choice as we can right right now it's not a lot as the chairman of policy we read policy all the time and everything is based in state law we can only change so much of that policy but there are policies on our books right now where your legislatures that you vote for can change a word and transform this school system to things that you will not like it's there i'm sorry i'm speaking right now i'm speaking right now please i'm i'm sorry but i'm speaking right now i'm here to help you and i want to help you and we will continue to work we work sometimes three nights a week during covid we would have meetings for hours and hours trying to keep these schools open and i pledge to continue to do that and pledge to to help your children and give you as much choice as possible but as of this moment that's where we stand as we led up to this meeting every day guidance changed the governor crept as you know crept day by day by day inching towards that mass mandate you could see it coming from a mile away and so here we are today and now we need to research as to what we can do as a board to restore parental choice so we just need to know what that is and we will continue to research that thank you adam uh before i go and did you want to say anything thank you so just briefly um one of the reasons i love cheshire is exactly what we're seeing here tonight uh concerned parents expressing their views and their desires and and being involved in what's going on day to day with your kids and being involved with the schools and it wasn't that long ago when my children who are now young adults um i was the parent at the schools at school board meetings expressing um my parental rights to raise my children the way that i see fit um i also would like to extend my deep deep gratitude to maura esposito director of jessica because i know or i don't know exactly but i do know that she is working really hard every day and her goal is the same as all of my colleagues here on the board the same as our goals and it is basically to keep our community safe and it's not fear-mongering i don't i'm not fearful i have um i have been vaccinated because i want to keep not just myself safe i want to keep my family's members safe and i want to keep my community safe as parents we are responsible for our children as board of ed members we are responsible for 4 500 approximately children and that there's a difference in that you should be here you should be here advocating for your particular children and to get the best for your children but we all whether we have kids in school right now or not we're responsible for all of cheshire's children in public schools and um i just want to assure you that we are doing our due diligence each and every one of us your superintendent is your administrative staff that we have here and the people at chesapeake health everybody is doing the best that they can i think some of the reasons that we get conflicting scientific data and facts is because this situation changes on almost minute by minute basis we're we're treading water here to keep up with um what's going to happen schools open in a couple weeks we've got to make some decisions parents need to know what to expect when they send their kids to school and we're making those decisions based on what we're hearing uh today and yesterday it may be a different set of data that were that we're talking about um in the future and when i talk about feeling responsible for all of cheshire's children in schools i i mean that sincerely and i take it as a personal choice that i make that i continue to mask up when i go to the grocery store when i go to public places and i do that not because it's mandated but because i want to do whatever i can do to help others in my community if enough of us are getting um are keeping this virus from from spreading if i can do just my little part in all of that then i will do it and i will do it gladly and and a half i happily we have now it's time to move forward we've done it for a year and a half you've done it more than a year and a half thank you i hear a lot of people stay safe how about free free we can replace a lot of things but our freedom is cherished thank you i know the doctors care about us but how come we're not giving out free chemotherapy free insulin to help the people out i mean i don't i'm confused the doctors love us they care about us our government loves us i mean i don't get it my father or my mother paid 400 for an inhaler an inhaler so you know 68 years old but if they cared about it so much and you guys care about it so much give us a choice i don't what what's the fear what's the backlash what's going to happen chris all due respect i'm just i'm just yeah i hear you but this is not but this is not that we can't do that you already had the public i know i guess forward and you have anything else you want to finish up with i just want to say thank you all for coming out tonight thank you and um expressing your views because i know that i speak for all of us when i say we're we're listening to you we need this information i i personally like to hear what's going on by the first day of school we're in writing we need to know what our kids are expected to do we need to know thank you amy but we could we're beyond that public comment please allow us to talk we'll keep moving forward so moving forward on the agenda so i just want to wrap up so you guys ask what the board of comments are you're hearing it so so i'll take my mask on as well so i am a supportive parent's choice i'm a parent i got two daughters well one is a school system my youngest who graduates his senior year pretty much missed a whole hole last year because she was worried about coping to schools and learning actually helped her she's anxious to go back to schools she's willing to put the mask on and be there because we know deep down her being in the schools is the best bet for her to get the best education best emotional output even with the mask time so i'm with you and quite frankly i wasn't on the board i'd probably be with you tonight because it's um i do feel these mandates are getting a little ridiculous and what i looted earlier in the evening when i asked uh and more wouldn't have the answer because it's more more a different level but it's not just the governor's mandate it's out the executive orders the normandy phd if that doesn't expire it stays in perpetuity and i know how to change that what i don't want to do is fight the state and put us at legal risk and we're going to disagree tonight i this argument this well this conversation i should say because you all have been very very vocal but in a positive way even you chris you're very passionate thank you i know where you're coming from this is happening everywhere and i sit on weekly this is about you tonight it's not about the board members what we do but you should know you know all of us work our butts off i can tell you you know adam and i myself there isn't a data goes by where i don't hear from folks a phone call a text an email these conversations i can't always tell you what you want to hear but if you follow me over years you know i will do what i have to do to get your voice to the right person and i'll continue doing that that being said we are getting legal advice or what we can and can't do we hear from the state education department we hear it from our board attorney i don't have the answer what the enforcement is going to be but knowing our professionals we're not going to arrest your kids you know i wouldn't get behind that you know we send them home i don't know but you're right amy will have a policy on mass guidance what your kids what you can't expect in the first day of school if you have a mask you don't have massive clarify those things i would hope that the folks that trust us and i hope you would trust us please send your kids to school we need them in school they want to be there i'm hopeful this thing lasts very short not past september i'm hopeful where you guys can help us beyond tonight where you can help me fight for you is i sit on uh two weekly state calls one's a board of eric check-in that the connecticut associate of the boards runs all the board chairs in the state we meet every week we have we have these same conversations we have represented from the state in that call they hear our concerns they hear our feedback i did not hear about the wilcott board chair he was actually on that call this morning my guess is they were taking a gamble there i will find out i have no problem finding out that if that's something we can leverage we'll we'll bring it to the superintendent and discuss it but i also sit on uh a weekly call between the state department and the department of health and that's where these decisions are more or less happening in near real-time discussions i think yesterday you sat on something where i don't want to get into it but they're starting to relax some other restriction i believe that's happening because it's folks like you that are being vocal that are writing some very incredibly uh emails lists of facts and and i i tell you i haven't read all of them i think i responded to all of them that data i am bringing right to those meetings in fact um tomorrow or this weekend i will contact all of you that email us what's your feedback i will send you email address where you can forward information to the same people i talked every week because i do believe that is having an impact and this is my personal opinion a few weeks ago you heard governor lamont after the cc changes guidance with effect within two hours that the only requirements of mass transit followed by oh yeah we're gonna require uh masks in public spaces lamont on a news conference uh i guess he didn't hear the whole thing but he preferred to leave that decision local superintendents and we got very hopeful and then the next day he changed it and then last week he put a mandate through a press release it so that tells me he is feeling the pressure uh but i will tell you this i i i wish i could tell you tonight that we can vote on parents choice we can't i'm not saying it's out of the question but dr solomon feels very strongly about the safety of our kids he believes that well they're not going to speak for him if if mass were useless he wouldn't be recommending him but this is not the only solution there's there's more to it there's the hand wash and sanitizing the appearance that you've been through last school you'll notice more this is not the only thing that's going to help and i don't want to help so i i get that but i'm trying to find a way to have the right fight with the right people so that maura and i'll do sweat with maura i i understand what i just paired with facts tonight i have no reason not to trust her not because i trust her blindly or department but i know what a department worked for the last year i know how to help us i think we all appreciate how they help the town they were tremendous help to cheshire public schools and help us set up these safety guidelines and contact tracing and that's was one of the main reasons why we're able to keep so many kids in school last year so in other respects tomorrow i appreciate the fact that she doesn't have some answers i'm sure by next time she'll have the answers but i would not i would not let you trust uh sway with with her in her department but i'm trying to i'm trying to find ways that you know we get to push down from the state that we can do the things we need to do but i'm also trying to be conscious of the fact that we'll be careful about this this is still highly contagious but you know we're following their advice we're trying to do what we can but uh again i can't tell you telling your parents choice we want you to have that but we need to do it in a legal way and one that's safe i'm trying to get there i wish i could tell you what you want to hear tonight i just can't chris you keep raising your hand i'm sorry and then just listen and i usually no no no no i just want to start to set the timeline because normally we don't do this back and forth and i'm going to know i'm always i'm always uh i'm always uh warned by cabe not to do this interaction because it goes very south and i i think we know we we could probably do this all night i can't we have a lot of business the only thing i wanted to point out was in lamont's uh newest executive order 13-8 if you look under revised mass requirements one underneath its a nothing in the order so they require their use of a mask or face cloth covering for anyone whom doing so be contrary to their health i can go to any doctor and tell them i got a toothache and give me a letter i'm just i just want to know what a parent's rights are yeah can you find us the way around this i know no there is right it's right here it's right here it's exempted so it says you can read everything get a physical disability documentation by any agency any agency i can go to my dentist to tell me two thirds because my allergies from breathing okay such documentation but this is how absurd this is such documentation shall not be required to name or describe the condition that qualifies that person for exemption i can send my kids i don't even need to show the teachers why he's exact what the condition so it's it's not even so when you guys go back to the governor's orders well he just put it right here for everybody we can all be exempt i just go to my dentist tell my kids they're a teether they don't need to wear a mask that doesn't even i don't even have to show it to anybody well that's no we don't want to fight with the teachers in the same boat and yet in the same in the same executive order he mandates mass in schools so we're caught in the circular circular uh the circle jerk of logic unless you have a disability my kids are disabled they can't wear them like i don't know what you have to say it's just chris i i'm not i'm not i'm not laughing i'm not smiling because i oh i know i just i i appreciate we all appreciate the abso absurdity of this a lot of this stuff but i'm sorry you had you had i'm sorry chris you had your hand listen by the way after olympia we're going to move on to the rest of the agenda dr solomon is going to address more public questions as part of the super update later but um i would we're all available to you and and you know i'll make us all available to you first anybody but olympia i read the please it reads like a delegation it's actually a delegation i mean that's why you know people were hopeful i don't want to give you guys a hard time no and you're not giving encouragement because i work with statutes all the time and i work with the department and we we drop statutes and regulations and we know that there's it's how things are worded and sometimes it's what we don't say we're so it seemed when i read the stat when i read the we call it a mandate we got to stop calling it a mandate it's an executive order but if you read it it reads like a delegation and then within the delegation for those who choose to do it will have to follow this mandate so sometimes you have to re-read the statute more carefully and just because sometimes like when you first read it um it reads like a mandate because now we're trained in the thinking it's a mandate but but it is an executive order with but it implies that it's really a delegation to the municipalities and it becomes a mandate so just look at it from that perspective you know that i don't know i'm just so i find myself doing this because i want to talk about the masks you know so i don't want to poke holes in it but olympia yes i agree and and just to get off this for a second then there's the connecticut state department of education if you go on their website it's mandated masking schools and it starts right so this translation starts happening the point the point is every board checking meeting we have every week with all these we're in the same argument and every board attorney comes back with a similar response as a rule law and i know we're going to disagree on that bear with us i know this is not an easy situation i i i trust dr sullin our teachers our administrative staff and my students lives in schools we can't guarantee your safety heck i can't guarantee my kid's safety in schools but we're doing everything as we can to keep your kids safe i know this one's very problematic for us if i had any doubt whatsoever that we're jeopardizing our kids or your kids i wouldn't be doing this i know we're going to disagree on this but bear with us i'm hopeful that in september we make more progress on this but that being said i got to move along on the agenda all your points will be in the media minutes which are going to believe is a very lengthy afternoon's meeting the letters you sent will be in the minutes for those you asked for it we're gonna get to those a little later there's no consent there's number one there's no consensus of the board you're gonna bring it to a vote this time otherwise we could try that but there's we're not there yet mark thank no thank you please thank you everyone i would entertain a motion in recess for a few minutes the board wants to take a breather i make a motion to recess for 10 minutes second second all in favor would that be a mask break the with a mass break if you want to you know peruse we'll be back in 10 minutes at 10 o'clock we are recessed you border vet is going to continue in session continue to meeting if any board members made a run for it please come back up next uh committee rep so committee reports so mr gripple do you have uh i'm sorry i apologize this is where i need uh regular caffeine not decaf which i've been trying to drink tonight i'm sorry on the agenda item four is a consent calendar uh so i in our boardwalk packets we have essentially three items in there i was gonna keep stretching out until andrew gets here while i was opening yeah agenda for the consent calendar you have the details there's three items contained in there it's approval statement on class slice policy it's approval of the aces area copper education services that we partner with our annual membership agreement and the appointment a hearing officer that we normally do every year do i have a motion from tim move that the cheshire board of education approves the consent calendar as presented is there a second [Music] adam seconds is there any discussion really all right tim so uh being there's no discussion uh the motion is that the cheshire bar education approves the consent calendar as presented all those in favor it is unanimous thank you now up next is report to standing committees starting with finance mr grippo and mr massiana i happily uh turned the report over to mr maciana thank you mr grippo good evening ladies and gentlemen i will make this super fast the board members do have the financial report as of july 31st 2021 really the only notable item there is one that the approved budget is 77 million one dollars and like 77 million 1052 for this fiscal year we only have one month under our belt um you could see that we've encumbered and expended about 49.9 million dollars most of the payroll encumbrances are done so those are done you know a little bit ahead of schedule but we still have to do the remaining encumbrances and grant entries which will happen most likely during the month of august as we sit here tonight we have no major variance concerns to report thankfully it's only one month um and you know we we recognize that um you know with the pandemic there's going to be some uncertainty as we go through this budget year however we do have 1.34 million dollars in esser funds which we could use if we need to for safety and health related devices that's all explained in the report but that money really is targeted to learning loss and academic improvements and those grants are good for three years so that is the long and short of the financial report for tonight i can jump right into medical benefits if you would like board members do have actually the june and the july medical benefits report so the few things that i want to point out one that the budget for this year for medical benefit contributions is eight hundred fifteen thousand dollars per month we do expect claims to be nine hundred thousand dollars per month so we know that each month we're under funding by about eighty four thousand five hundred dollars however the uh town council when they approve the board's budget for this fiscal year they did make a direct contribution of 1.5 million dollars right to the medical benefits reserve so if you look at the top section of the report we came into the year with a reserve fund balance of 814 000.
um actually that's there for uh notice for our entire community here today that we do have the opportunity for those that are wishing to speak um you will be giving the moment through public comment on each item and if you're here to talk about any other item then we'll also give you um time in our next um agenda item so just want to make sure that you are all aware that um we do have time for the members of the public to speak to the board so with that we'll go ahead and move on to item 201 public members who wish to address the board on any matters that are not on the agenda jose if you can help me identify any members of the public wishing to address the board on this item good afternoon madam president uh at this time we have no speakers um excuse me we we have one speaker our first speaker is area member miss sandra rivera miss rivera please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hello good afternoon my name is sandra rivera i'm a tk teacher this year at cesar chavez elementary school and i was just commenting tonight asking that the board take a look and reconsider some of the things that have been asked of us to do this year one of the things is the safety protocols that are for our classes trying to squeeze 22 kindergarteners or tk students into one classroom is horrendous there's no room to do anything tk and kinder is supposed to be about exploration and co-existence and everything else but with all of the desks and plexiglas barriers and everything there is no room to do anything else in our classrooms we're also having a lot of difficulties trying to set stuff up i spent three hours yesterday trying to rearrange my classroom only to come in today and have mot undo every single thing that i did yesterday take plexiglass dividers off put new ones on and then change the setup of the classroom so that now one student will be facing the board and the way the plastic partition is put in the other student will be facing the back of the classroom so it's not things are being done hastily and without any consideration for the time energy and effort that the teachers have already put into the classroom and we're not getting any guidance and it's just making us all frustrated and extremely uncomfortable with starting of this school year so i ask that you take some time and talk with the teachers more and look at the procedures thank you our next speaker is miss adrian day miss vayne you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin we can't hear you in case you're speaking are they unmuted what's that yes uh miss me can you please try and meet yourself i'm wondering if we should go to the next person if there's anybody else while they figure out maybe the audio issues and then uh our next our next speaker is miss calma mentosa miss mendoza you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin we can't hear you almost speaking hmm let's see [Music] if you see alma [Music] it's unmuted can you try speaking into the microphone i'm not sure they're having audio issues um [Music] and if [Music] i wonder if uh adrian audio works now maybe we can go back and then pour it back to mendoza after [Music] i really want to hear what they have to say let's try it again um yes uh we have miss dain or miss mendoza okay um i don't know we're gonna be able to hear them uh please um if you're able to come back at any other item um we'll go ahead and take your comment when you're able to hopefully fix the audio issues or we can figure that out um i'll put your name down here and then at any point in the meeting i would love to hear what you have to say and um [Music] okay anybody else um [Music] yes our next speaker is jessica levodi miss livoti you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin can you hear me yes yes okay before i make my comment um madam president there's a big um echo or bat like sound bouncing off of when you speak there's it's like a loud piercing sound i don't know if you're in the room with someone else who's on zoom but there's like a big um bouncing off sound um but just just so you know [Laughter] thank you no problem we're gonna yeah make sure we turn down all the volume and then i appreciate that because i want to make sure the public isn't like squinting while they're here yeah we're better squinting right now it's better wait let me say something uh testing one two three yes much better okay thank you i appreciate that you got it of course um i just wanted to speak on um as the safety and that i feel that we as educators right now are in the dark on what is happening as well as parents um and that i feel that we could have done so much more for safety and mitigation and we could have done so much more um we're cramming all of our students back into the classrooms um there isn't a testing protocol happening we don't know in regards to when there is exposure um when we will be um informed of exposure is it going to be within 24 hours you know because of the delta variant it's just rapid and and crazy um the we could have had smaller classrooms but we're not we could have had testing and screening but we're not doing it to the best of our abilities we could have had upgraded ventilation systems and not just air purifiers um today i was in the um opening of schools uh training today and the presenter said that if we have our ac on to close the doors because so we don't blow the ac and that's just scary you know because then we're just circulating air um just for the sake of the air conditioner um and why why are we not hearing from people um and administration about what is happening and the guidance and it's just so uncomfortable and it's i'm scared for my lives my parents are scared for their lives and their students lives um and they don't know also what's happening with the independent study i have several of my my students signing up for it and they don't have any guidance on that and i feel we could have done better and we're now down to the wire as in 48 hours thank you anybody else will say maybe yes we have we have miss elma mendoza miss mendoza you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will be good thank you yes hopefully it works now not working still not working hopefully we can figure that out during this meeting i do have your name alma um anybody else will say yes our next speaker is richard collins miss collins you have two minutes please send me yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi can you guys hear me yes yes okay hi um so i'm a teacher and i have um my own child that attends arusd um i do have a lot of questions at this point and i feel i'm feeling a lot of anxiety because we have not had any word as to what to expect if we were gonna if we're even gonna be teaching independent um studies um and what what this means i know that negotiations are happening and stuff but um and i also want you to know that i think i i believe i'm speaking on on behalf of a lot of teachers when i say that like the area is fighting for us and there's more than just you know the people that are negotiating we all are behind them and we all want what's best for everybody including the students um and i have concerns because my i have a son that is immunocompromised and i'm in a situation where i don't know what to what if he's going to be an independent study and if he is what does that mean if i'm going to be teaching independent study what does that mean so there's so many questions um that we need answered before i mean basically before tomorrow since we only have a couple days left for planning um i just that's all i have to say i just think that we need to get it together and be like the surrounding districts and do what needs to be done so that we know what's going on thank you miss collins our next speaker is mister lolinda mendoza miss mendoza you have two minutes please tell me yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi can you hear me yes yes okay um good evening um i just like to echo you know what my colleagues are saying um i feel like we are very unprepared um we don't know what to expect as teachers i know that dr bauer sent out a letter issuing or stating like what to expect or what layers of safety protocols are in place but i feel like that's not enough you know i know that we don't want crowds we don't want visitors on site yet you know tonight at my school there was a bienvenida where you know we were asked to come in and meet students my reasoning is to make it normal it's not normal times are not normal um i'm i didn't go um but some of my colleagues did and i asked if back to school night was gonna be the same way and according to my principal we are expected to be at back to school night in person because uh it's after school hours what is the difference between back back to school hours at night time and the daytime um i just think that zoom is much better for this uh last year when we did this we had more parents show up because it was through zoom so i i want to suggest that this be done again this year also um some of the protocols that were in place are good that these guards um and the three feet could be when possible um i like to suggest more benches for eating outside for our students i have little ones and they're going to be taking off their masks and if they're sitting next to other kids um you know they they still don't know um that they should not be you know talking with their mouth closed you know all that i think that leads to to be addressed thank you ms mendoza our next speaker is miss tanner miss tanner you have two minutes please send it yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hello can you hear me yes yes great so i'm loretta tanner i moved again i'm back at cureton and i'm teaching fourth grade with a little bit of fifth grade and i echo all of my colleagues and their concerns i also have a concern that we don't have a contract and other bay area districts are giving their teachers that worked last year twenty five hundred dollar bonus thousand dollar bonus and a raise and we i it's just hard it's hard to feel unappreciated um so please settle our contract do the right thing don't let us be the bottom of the barrel again and that's all i have to say thank you very much thank you miss jenner our next future is miss adrian bean miss vane you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin all right can you hear me now yes all right thank you uh hi my name is adrienne bain i am a teacher at joseph george middle school and you know i i love my job i love teaching i love the kids that i work with it is one of the most fulfilling jobs i think everybody can agree with me on that um i'm just tired of with this district not having any foresight and not knowing there's a plan that's going to happen and i still don't know what the plan for this year is or you know what the safety protocols are i know i have the basics down but it's really disheartening and it's frustrating and it creates a lot of anxiety and on top of that knowing that gas prices are going up and now it's i i have a ford focus a 10 gallon tank and it's costing me 50 dollars to drive to and from school and i don't make a lot of money and we haven't had a raise a cost of living raise in two years and other schools have been getting bonuses and you know it's really gonna suck part of my language if we decide to do work to rule or god forbid we strike because we haven't been appreciated and we haven't been thought of and it's hard to sit there and think that and to not to not feel good about your job when you don't feel appreciated and you're not part of the conversation and you don't know what's going on and so please i beg you if we could have a little bit more communication and start thinking about each other that would be lovely thank you i appreciate your time for listening to me finally thank you mystery our next speaker is happy lori miss zoe you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin i can't hear you you're speaking i wonder um hopefully she's able to fix the issue maybe we can go to the next speaker and then come back yes madam president our next speaker is sherry miss duarte you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin thank you for letting me have an opportunity can you hear me yes mister okay uh thank you for giving this opportunity to speak um i am proud to say that i am celebrating my 25th year in the school district um on of the 90 years i've spent uh 32 years in the district whether i was a student or a parent or a teacher and i i love this school district but i don't feel very respected as as a professional as a person who's constantly trying to improve my educational practice it feels like it's it's really not respected in a way that makes me want to come back to work i mean that's really the bottom line tomorrow is our first contractual day and i really don't want to be there i went into my classroom that was set up in the spring and actually uh it was shown on a video uh on the news with ten desks set up with the um the sneeze guards and of course i'm not gonna only have 10 students this coming year i'm going to have um you know 26 to 30 something like that and i went into the classroom and 30 desks are like sardines in that classroom kids aren't going to be able to even get in and out of their desks much less you know learn while they're in there so i'm just feeling under appreciated um and unprepared to tackle this large job that we have and i put my whole heart into it and i wish that the district did that for their teachers too and their students thank you very much thank you miss lecter our next speaker is miss kathy lowen miss louie you have two minutes please underneath yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi can you hear me now yes okay thank you sorry my microphone uh failed to i don't know to work um so i i have some big concerns about and i know this isn't really something that we can deal with because it came from the state but i have some very big concerns about the modified quarantine um i don't think i think it's designed to keep more kids in school but i also don't think it's designed to detect active coveted cases the the rules are if you are vaccinated even if you've had uh close contact with someone who tests positive for covid then you don't have to quarantine you don't have to get tested and that is very concerning to me because um there's evidence that there's a lot more cover cases out there than we're detecting at this at this point in time and i'm worried that we're going to have a very large outbreak at our schools that goes undetected until it's until our hospitals fill up and people you know i don't want more people to die i don't i don't want that to happen and i don't want to be in the same state that that other states in this country are in currently um in a couple weeks so um i'm concerned also about what we do with during fire season when we when the smoke is outside and the air outside is toxic you know i think the plan is to you know open doors but what do we do when we can't do that that reduces how much circulation we have in our air and i see 152 students a day um you know i think my largest class is 35 it's really packed in there i don't think we have enough safety protocols in place at this point thank you thank you mr matter madam president at this time we have no more speakers thank you um with that we'll go ahead and move on to item 301 uh we have anybody from teamsters here today so we can help us identify anybody from the audience i don't see any race hands okay welcome mr trevor um at this time feel free to give us your update from teamsters mr trevor please unmute yourself mr trevor if you're speaking we can't hear you if you can please mute yourself hmm hopefully we're able to figure that out maybe um as mr trevor figures out the audio issue we'll come back we can go on to california school employees association and then come back to uh teamsters adam president i don't see anyone from csea okay please raise your hand over here from csca otherwise um i see alma raising her hand jose um hoping that alma was able to we were able to figure out those issues maybe she can give her miss mendoza please try to mute yourself hmm hi hey yes hi everyone how are you oh great you can uh you can make it by voice hi i'm my name is alma mendoza and i am a teacher at ryan school um of 35 years now and i wanted to address two points to the board tonight if possible please one we are going on our second year with no contract in the middle of a pandemic last year we work without a contract this year we're working without a contract starting with that one we haven't gotten a raise we haven't gotten a bonus and some people might be thinking in their head my my aren't these teachers greedy but you know what any teacher who has worked through this pandemic the last year and a half and is still at our district loves their job believe us we're not in it for the money but we also want to be appreciated and the best way to appreciate a professional in any profession is to monetarily award them so i ask to please have our contract settled we have so many questions and most of us are at our wit's end trying to get things ready and so anxious but we're going to show up and we're going to be there we did it last year we'll do it this year so i asked the board and the negotiation team whoever is there from the district to please put on their big boy big girl pants and get our contract settled we need a raise we need fair information on a timely manner so we know what the heck we're doing and what to tell our parents that's the first point second point i asked you to please please please look into our cba the kinder teachers and the tk teachers have to give one and get one so that means i go into my partner's class and i teach for an hour and they will come into my class and teach for an hour and we are very concerned because that would be mixing cohorts so what we are asking is that we spend that hour that we give our partner with our own thank you miss mendoza thank you yes uh and would she do you know we'll say if she's from um csea she's not okay okay great thank you miss mendoza let's go back to um teamsters and see we can get trevor back on we can have his audio mr trevor if you can please mute yourself hello hello can you hear me yes welcome hey how's it going no i just i just uh i'm here representing teamsters i don't really have much to say just want to let you guys know i'm here and uh listening you know taking notes and representing teamsters i guess great welcome thank you for being here and thank you all for the work you do um at this time then we will move on and keep me focused here um if you can help me i don't think we've had anybody from cse yet correct i don't think we did okay so we did not i'm correct okay so just checking if you're here from cse please raise your hand otherwise we'll move on to area okay i don't see any jose help me identify if i miss anybody otherwise we'll move on to area if you're here representing area i don't know if jocelyn is here please raise your hand nice yes we have miss mers welcome thank you i i just have to share i literally just flew in my house from the beautiful event of this afternoon aside from traffic there was some road closures and this and that so i'll take a deep breath and i do want to just comment on i don't know what's been said i don't know whether it was shared out about the afternoon event on the anniversary celebration but um if regardless whether or not it was or not i just want to tell you how much i appreciated being invited and being a part of that celebration it was it was just really um very exciting to hear all of what what all of you had to say and the history behind the district and pala middle school and and just the you know what a special part of the founding of east san jose that alum rock is and how it was a great celebration and thank you um i also so reset i i want to again say good evening on the eve of area members returning to prepare for the beginning of another different start to this school year i remember learning in my early days of teaching some 45 years ago um not all in ellen rock but a long time the important life skill of being flexible it has served me well throughout the years but i have to say that over the past 18 months i'm getting feedback from many of our teachers that they are absolutely stretched to the max and from what i understand you may have heard from some of them tonight or you may still hear from some um some of them stretch so far that they're like a rubber band ready to snap i have shared with some of you the sense of panic that i am hearing and seeing from them increasing in correlation to the increase in the number of cova delta variant cases rising around us rather than going into any of that detail again i'll leave that up to those teachers who would like to share their personal stories with you um i did hear the very end of miss mendoza talking about the the time in the transitional kinder and kinder classrooms that we commonly refer to as our given get time and i know that there's been a lot of concern on that i've heard from those teachers but i and i hope that i'm not being premature but i did sign the mou this afternoon that was agreed to between the district and area to make that a choice at the schools that those teachers who do not want to do the give and get have an option of providing the same lower ratio to their own students rather than having to mix classrooms and switch cohorts so that's great news that i know has probab is probably giving a sense of relief to many of those teachers that might be listening right now and i appreciate that fast work that we did with um the district bargaining team i literally sent it night before last and it was sent back today and signed and i sent it back to them i mean it was like in the midst of everything else going on so thank you for that i understand that there are different safety mandates and guidelines coming out daily from all levels of our government making it difficult to set a goal when there's a moving target my hope is that alum rock chooses to err on the side of caution and take the safest approach to protect our students and community that may not always be the most popular position but i do believe it's the wisest for everyone uh i would also like to take this opportunity to welcome the 35 plus new teachers to alum rock i we were had a zoom meeting and were part of the new teacher orientation yesterday so i had many many many of the members of our exec board had the opportunity to touch base with those new teachers and i want to make a pledge to them again if they're listening that um aria's commitment is to have your backs this year and please don't hesitate to reach out to your colleagues for support and guidance also realize that we are all arriving on this same boat for this school year we it's an it's not the typical start it's not the start of a typical new school year so don't feel like you're alone because we all feel like it's there's many new things that are happening and we are all in this together and if any of those new teachers or any of our current members that aren't new need help please don't hesitate to reach out to myself or any other member of area um i i'm going to um use the words of trusty fam at the end of what you said at the um at the celebration earlier and that's like ready or not here we come so thank you thank you jocelyn vick for uh being here um now we're going to go on to alan rock administrators association do we have anybody here from a-r-a-a yes madam president we have dr muntesque welcome good evening trustees superintendent bower and community members i i want to take a moment to join in the celebration of ara's of arusd's 90th anniversary it was a privilege and honor to attend today's event and celebrate this moment in time to honor the arusd community past and present for the long historical legacy of our district which we are fortunate to bear witness to our araa members are diligently and collaboratively working to prepare for the start of the school year and have been doing so throughout the summer schools have held community orientation meetings for our families in preparation for the start of the year additionally we have uh work to secure uh backpacks and supplies to provide the students and families we serve um to highlight a few of our sites at renaissance and and at my site san antonio we facilitate a voluntarily a voluntary and well-attended professional shared learning opportunity for our school teams um through with seeds restorative practices which was well attended our members are energized to launch the year in community and to move forward together so thank you board president and trustees thank you dr yvonne montes now we'll go ahead and turn it over to our superintendent dr bauer thank you madam president um today was a very emotional day for me in so many levels uh celebrating 90 years of alum rock eight of them as a superintendent and eleven of them as a staff member it has been a privilege of mine to serve this community it's a beautiful community and it is certainly the heart of san jose at the same time i my heart goes out to [Music] the family of um gutierrez family who just lost one of her students and i also my heart goes out to the family of renaissance at fisher who lost one of their students it's a very difficult moment for any of us educators to learn the loss of a child it's a lot more difficult to learn the loss of a child to violence so my prayers goes out to the family to everybody in renaissance at madison we are here to support you staff please don't hesitate to reach out i also want to share my deepest condolences to sharon fontaine who is the president of csea on the loss of her husband this was unexpected um our heart goes out to her she is an amazing partner general we love you and if you're a csea member please convey these words these humble words to her i've been checking with her we miss you we love you and we want to see you back soon we're very very sorry for your loss thank you alem rock here we go ready or not but let me tell you who we are thank you dr bauer um now we'll go ahead and uh turn it over to the board trustees i'll go ahead and call your name as i see you on my screen and feel free to give us a report or safe pass we'll start with trusteem and pam all righty uh thank you madam president uh first of all i i too would like to express first uh my deepest sympathies to young mr gutierrez it's always very hard to have children pass you know a life with you know a future ahead of them cut short i express my deepest condolences also to his family secondly i'd like to also express my condolences to sharon fontaine the president of the alan rock chapter of csea on the loss of her husband i real you know that those are some of those uh deep deep wounds that uh will take time to heal i again you have my most sincere sympathy and my deepest condolences um you know today was a great day uh i i we had a though it was intimate uh we were able to have a great celebration great delayed celebration of the 90th anniversary of alan rock it's been almost a quarter of a century since i or 20 years since i last stepped foot on pala and you know it i am gratified to see so many members of our community our elected officials supervisor chavez the supervisor alvarado representatives from assembly managed coloradan state senator dave cortesey council members carrasco uh uranus and esparza for being part of uh [Music] the recognition of a truly original east san jose institution one that has uh served its children and families through good times and tough times i certainly hope that you know as we get into a position again of moving forward and building upward we look to the next 90 years and uh we continue you know to be here to be to be the provider of public k8 education in the alum rock region of san jose i'd also like to thank well my board all my board colleagues dr bauer the administrative staff as well as the you know employees of alan rock maribel carrillo barbara campbell patricia kovar who helped me you know bring the you know original i had my i was set on just a simple bell ringing and i this commemoration is sort of like uh the a plus but extra credit so thank you so much last but not least uh i didn't want to make uh known that next third one week from today at 6 pm the city will have a public hearing about its uh draft proposal on the disposal of a surplus school property and i'm i will be attending as well you know and i hope my colleagues will but i also encourage uh all members of the allen rock community to come there and make your voice known because what the city is doing uh will negatively impact the future of this school district and if if we're if we're to be here for another 90 years providing the road to opportunity for for so many for the children of uh alum rock in san jose uh let the city know that you know you are opposed to the city's proposal on the disposal of surface school property and uh let your members of the city council and the mayor know that you know this this is wrong for the people of alam rock and it's wrong for the people of east san jose thank you very much madam president thank you man and now um welcome ernest i know you've been here for a while um thank you for taking care of our community in the ways you do and i'll go ahead and turn it over over to you at this time okay thank you um madam president and uh for those words and i'll just say um you know most of us that are on this for all of us that are on this board and staff and you know everything that we do here with the district we do because we have an interest in the future of our children here in this community and you know some of us are also lucky enough to do that similar kind of work during the day and sometimes that work takes us you know in different directions and so unfortunately i was unable to attend the event this afternoon i very regrettably you know had to take care of some business and finish that and so i missed it but it sounds like it was a wonderful event and i although i wasn't there i want to thank all of the attendees for going because it is truly momentous and trusty fam for kind of bringing it to the forefront and pushing it and and making this you know helping to make this happen um and so i want to just thank everyone for that and apologize for my late arrival here uh i also want to say that you know [Music] as dr bauer mentioned you know it's been the difficult day for me on a number of fronts um and i can't say anything more than what has already been expressed with regards to sending condolences to to the individuals that have already been mentioned um but one thing that i always hold on to that maybe was spoken to at today's event is just this community in spite of everything that we're bombarded with all the time historically we we've we have the grit we have the fortitude whatever you want to call it we have what it takes to not only survive these things but to get stronger and i know that's no solace to someone who's going through something at this time but i just hope that they know that this community is is supporting them as around them and that's what we do here in east san jose and in alamo um and finally i also want to reiterate what trustee fans said about the upcoming upcoming meeting with the city i think you know go back to the community and this the strength of this community obviously here at our board meetings we have different groups of parents different individuals who are always very interested in advocacy for whether it's their particular student or the district as a whole or certain topics and i think that for some of those individuals or some of those groups this may be a wonderful opportunity to to you know direct some of those abilities that they very clearly have to organize to bring people together to advocate and really bring that perspective to the city because you know we have been we've talked about it already as board members and as district staff we've had discussions um you know between meetings and we try to do what we can but really there's a place for that but the voice of a community the voice of parents and families is really heard whether it's at the district the level or the city level so i would encourage um if anyone has that interest to really um you know direct some of what they've proven to be so effective at earth's district to this particular topic so um thank you everyone for allowing me to kind of settle in and get my feet under me for tonight's meeting and um [Music] and that's it thank you thank you trustee and now i'll call on trustee chavez uh can you hear me my condolences to each and every family member and parent brother and sister and friend who lost a loved one recently um i just want to thank all the teachers for their efforts and and thank you for speaking up what uh you you feel in your heart and also i want to thank everybody because it's an honor to be here and um i want to thank dr bauer for putting together and then bringing up that it was the 90th anniversary and i'm i'm glad to see everything that was in the district office um i think sometimes we we learn a lot from history as well as the resilience that has been here all along and everybody working together not always agreeing but always working together and making sure that the students are taken care of i thank each and every one of you for doing that and putting your efforts um all the staff all these years and everybody in the administration the teachers all the union um people they're fantastic all these kids that are that were serving um they're worth it and to see that this educational foundation was put up 90 years ago it's like very noteworthy but to found a school in which to instruct and prove and develop all that is best in the souls to gain the education wisdom and discernment that they need to reach the fullness of life god intends for each of them the alum rock union school district represents so much more than just a building this district will forever be in these kids lives and hearts as well as ours and it is a place where the children may realize the blessings of an education and learn how to make for themselves all of and all around them the best that they can of their world and the want and the spirit to rise above and all these kids are all smart they can all do it and thank you all all the people who have been working these past 90 years to do that in this community thank you trustee chavez uh board vice president um [Music] madam president um it was a momentous occasion and uh very very happy uh to have been able to be part of it i want to thank um board member mint pham for having the foresight to uh go out there and in revisit this 90th anniversary we felt as if kobet stole it from us thank you for helping recover as has been mentioned it's a very very sad day in alan rock and i want to express my condolences to jedis family for their loss and um it's just there's no words um looking at the age and the one year difference between one of my children and the child that was lost it makes it very personal it's very sad and tragic um i uh with that said i want to wish all the students who started at eastside union uh my daughter started uh this week uh as a very very successful year and uh and um very very excited for what the future holds for them and you know also want to wish the best to all of our students who start off uh in on the 17th so um very very exciting time i want to while we were talking about the 90th anniversary in the history of rock it's important to note that our district was in place uh well before a very very controversial topic that has arisen in the community and that is uh reid hilvey airport we as a district took action in november of 2020 to ask for the closure of that district and i appreciate all of my colleagues who supported that um i know that um there were some members of this one member that voted to not support it you know they have their reasons but history uh will be on our side when we go ahead and take a look at the results of the lead study that demonstrates that our children are being poisoned especially those of us who live adjacent to the airport day in day out um and at a rate that's even higher than the lead poisoning that had been in the children of flint michigan at this highest level and so that's that's very very serious it needs to be dealt with immediately um we cannot take platitudes and pats on the back and one day we will deal with it no the damage is being done day in day out to our kids it needs to be dealt with immediately and there's an opportunity for the public to take this opportunity to notify the public that on august 17th that led study will be presented to the board of supervisors and there will be an opportunity for the people of east san jose to rise up and speak to uh the members of the board of supervisors and let them know how you feel back to the history this district was formed in 1930 while before that airport was established the schools around the area were already in place before the airport was fully expanded to what it is today do not be fooled people continue to tell the story that the airport was already there forever and ever and ever the airport was not what it is today it was a small a very very small private airport that was expanded against the wishes of the education leaders of east san jose against the very explicit wishes of the of the education leaders of the san jose who foretold in san jose news that that airport would kill kids and so lo and behold i'm not sure if they were talking about the light study they were probably thinking that planes were going to be fallen as they have they've fallen onto our campuses onto our parks so that's another danger and so august 17th in the afternoon approximately 6 p.m um you will be able to go ahead and speak your piece to the santa clara county board of supervisors hear about the lead study that took place and that has been published and that you can read yourself you have some time perused through the 131 page report that lays out the dangers and the damage that those planes are having on the health and safety of our children day in day out so meyer elementary school was there before the airport was expanded hubbard fisher all of these were except for meyer all were built in the 50s while before the expansion in the airport had already taken place thank you madam president thank you vice president quintero let me bring my audio up here okay um and at this time i will hear an echo we can bear with us uh we're transitioning to come back to our board room um so we're doing our best here um please provide feedback if you hear an echo um as uh um i think to ms lavoie did earlier uh we appreciate that um so in regards to i just want to reiterate um can't mention enough the heartbreak that we feel of losing any one of our members our young man uh especially looking forward you know to starting a new school year and all the dreams that he had along with his family um and with that i call on the rest of us you know um to take advantage of the time that we have here on earth you know as parents as teachers as administrators whatever it is our role you know as students um as we start this new school year on behalf of his life um and how we can you know positively impact um whether it's our child our home our school our classroom our our community um with this opportunity that we have to just take another breath here on earth and um with that uh thank you trustee pam trustee vicarano quite for reminding us about those opportunities to show up on behalf of our community um you know i know we have a lot of you know all of us right um we have alum rock near and dear to our hearts this is our home this is where we chose to raise our children um and you know the many other reasons that you all live here and um and you know teach here at elem rock and so those opportunities to speak up as a vice president that'll mention august 17th at the county board supervisor and then trustee of fam at uh august 19th at this uh at the city um city of san jose uh council uh meeting our city meeting um on behalf of our children uh because one you know affects our health um any human being but especially our children who are being poisoned by lead um so speaking up on behalf of our children and future generations and then also speaking up on behalf of our of our district um of the space that we have for our children to learn to play to grow in to thrive in um so ensuring that you know um we all show up and we all speak up um and with that also um just keeping in mind that we are you know as i think john jocelyn mentioned on the eve of some teachers coming to their classrooms setting up starting to think of their curriculum and how to teach it which should be very exciting times i can only imagine as a teacher and then also our children you know having setting up their uniforms getting their backpacks together their folders um whatever it is that that that that excitement of first day of school i think and i take myself back of what that's like but i also can't help to you know highlight that it is a very very very tough time for us all in one way shape or form and we can't continue to go by without you know acknowledging that and i think jocelyn did a good job of of you know and speaking to the teachers it's hard it's tough um and thank you you know jocelyn and all the other leaders available to you know listen to be sounding bored to release um but also let's not forget our little ones you know and the things are going through um you know excited but yet scared and then they hear these adults you know speaking around them and like whoa should i be scared and i can only imagine and so you know being mindful thoughtful as we speak as we move forward around them um as we have these classrooms i know it's not going to be easy i know it's not easy i know in my job it's not easy there's some of us that are willing to go back to the office and there's some of us that are really upset about it and everybody has you know their their a good point um and so you know let's just be extra gentle with one another um and you know take an extra year to listen um to one another and um really you know just have compassion and move forward in the best direction for us all um and then with that i'm not you know i'm gonna also use this opportunity to remind everyone that getting vaccinated and wearing our mask wherever we are away from home are still the two safest ways to protect ourselves um you know we all have our own thoughts opinions on that and that's fine respectful of all that but i just want to remind you know our community that um that those two are the ways that are going to continue to keep our community safe and ourselves safe so get tested if you have any symptoms you know don't think it's just something that will go by we want to ensure that you know we all are safe um you know your children if they have symptoms test them take care of them everybody's health comes first um and you know know that as uh the board president here um in my conversations and the questions as we move forward as a mother of a 12 year old also going into the seventh grade here in our district i'm also asking some of those questions and ensuring that we're doing what we can um to make sure that when we open up next week on the 17th that it's safe that it's a space where all children are welcomed and as hard as it might be for you know some or others and even as a parent you know that um we feel good about this here and that uh 21 22 um is that year that you know really brought us back like you know strong trees with strong roots with all the resiliencies that we carry with all the things we've gone through the hard times the good times um and that we push through and that we have new green leaves grow off of our branches that you know that compassion that nourishment the teaching the learning you know will be like water for our trees um and i look forward to celebrating you know once we move past this this difficult time so i look forward to continuing to be here during the school year and to go through this ride with you all thank you all right now we'll move on to item 401 um and i'll turn it over to superintendent bauer thank you madam president this is just a very brief presentation about parent square we aim to communicate with our parents in multiple using multiple tools we have heard very loud and clear that we need to use different kinds of ways to reach out to parents and we honor that but um well while i was talking to the staff especially our it staff that is really committed unlike many other techies in our county we are very blessed with an amazing team who really wants to work with parents and make sure that parents get the information that they need so that's what we're going to present to you today and i'm going to turn it over to assistant superintendent of business just to give you a summary of what you you will hear thank you thank you dr bauer and good evening madam board president members of the board and the alamo community at this time i want to introduce mr daniel pena who along with jose chavez has been leading the i.t department during this transition but daniel tonight will will be providing a brief overview of some of the features and important data in parent square so with that i'll turn it over to danielle all right good evening uh boy president herrera trustees and superintendent bower parent square is our parent engagement tool it's the tool that we use to communicate to our community to our parents to our students and actually to our staff as well one thing that i do want to make a note the 89 89 students and families that currently is not accurate our database has not refreshed but from this screen in general we're able to see the percentage of the families that we're reaching currently the district stands at 98 percent um and it also tells us how many families were actually not able to reach and this is a great tool that lets us physically see the reason why whether it may be a student that doesn't have an actual number assigned to them home phone number a parent that doesn't have a cell phone number we have no way of communicating as not everybody does have a cell phone and not everybody does may not have an actual home phone further we can see and we can separate by school site you know what percentage are we reaching out to our families and we can just simply scroll down and just see broken down by school site the green little box is the percentage that that school is able to reach out to the families um the numbers in red are actual posts that that particular school site has actually made so that the parents are able to read that announcement receive that email or receive that text message sending them a link with the information that is needed for them another place um that we can use looking deeper into parent square is our dashboard one misconception is that you know oh i i don't receive the messages i don't have the app the parent square does not work on the needs of a family downloading the actual app itself the way parent square communicates is if we're providing an email address if we're providing a cell phone number or if the parent wishes to download the app those are the different ways that it's going to communicate with them the purpose of the app is it allows the family to do two-way communication very similar to social media where somebody puts a post and they put a little heart that means that they liked our post and so this particular dashboard breaks it down as i scroll down through the through the data but it also lets the parent choose the method of whether they wish to receive messages in english or messages in spanish as well as to decide how they wish to receive the message in your screen you're seeing hey how the messages are physically broken down via email chose to receive their method of receiving messages through email uh 45 receiving their messages via text while are actually using the app for two-way engagement um so here you that's how the actual information is broken down um on how we're actually reaching the families it also tells us you know the different features that we're using and how it's broken down whether we're using things for sign ups whether it's going to be parent teacher meetings whether it's a post where they need volunteer work whether it's a permission slip they're sharing photos so currently we're using nine out of the 14 different applications just at the beginning of of the school year also it tells us the interaction those how many actually community members are are actually interacting with us in two-way communication as the application allows for that you know a parent could start a conversation with the teacher uh through the actual app if they chose that method of communication the distribution um how many posts has the district actually made as well as how many posts just currently this month of august has and actually have the total school sites and the volume you know spread out by by the school sites how many staff members have actually posted something to the class or to group um and it also tells us who are our busy bees um you know judging um by this you know uh miss gloria hayes perkins at one of our elementary schools she's been a busy deed just relaying content and information out to our community and so other ways that we've used this is during back at the end of the school year we were using the online health forum to have our parents actually fill out the health forum before they were actually dropping off their child at school so that we could see hey there would be an alert that would be sent out if anything on the help form was selected as a yes um i i unfortunately am i'm not able to to show that uh just because it discloses some student information and we don't want to violate any any laws but that is parent square in a brief summary yeah thank you so much um very helpful information i don't know mr chang if there's anything you want to add or uh dr bauer before you move forward very briefly i just wanted to thank mr pena for his uh presentation this was something that was very reassuring that in terms of connecting with families we are able to reach we are able to know who we didn't reach so that we can try other ways thank you so much for that hard work thank you so much um at this time what i'll do is we'll go to public comment and then um we'll bring it back um well i guess it's only for information only um i'll open it up to the trustees for any questions comments on this presentation and then just reminding those that are here i know it's kind of hard to you know do the mew on mu turn it down but if you're not speaking um if you can mute it and mute yourself and turn it down if you're here in the boardroom thank you anyone um okay i see trustee go ahead i do have a couple questions but i wonder if there's any public comment just maybe to add to or inform my questions or if not i could just ask mine now however you want to do it madam president public comment on every item [Music] yeah i just wanted to confirm so trustee you're saying you would like to hear public comment before asking or your comments i would like to i have some on my own if you want to go that way but i i might hear something from the public that i might also want to um or any of you you know okay um so we'll go ahead and do a public comment first and then we'll start off with you um depending on what you hear then thank you man jose if you can help us uh any members of the public wishing to address the board on this item yes ma'am president we have one speaker our first speaker is miss sandra rivera miss andre rivera you have two minutes please send me yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin good evening i just wanted to say thank you thank you thank you for parents square um through my this will be my 16th almost 17th year in the district i have looked for a communication skill tool like this and can you hear me yes ms river okay sorry um i have looked for a a tool that we can use like this to communicate with parents and i know we have had some in the past that were very cumbersome very hard to use very not user friendly for both us and for the parents and i can say that i am not a very technologically savvy person and i have come to really depend and rely on parents square whether it be to send gay friday notices your child completed all their work this week give them a pat on the back or if i need to get in touch with a parent i love the fact that the messages go out in both english and spanish and i believe also vietnamese daniel can correct me if i'm wrong um but it allows for uh i don't want to say a more intimate form of communication but one that's not just the school district telephone number popping up on the parent's cell phone all the time and so thank you for having this app thank you for allowing us to continue using it and i hope that we can go forward and continue to use this program because the longer and more continuity we have the easier it is for us and for the parents as well so thank you very much thank you for your comments madam president at this time we have no more speakers thank you so much okay at this time i'll go ahead and turn it over to trustev you're muted trusty with harano thank you uh once again um for walking us through the the dashboard and the app and um it's really informative um and i my questions i guess couple questions number one um so i see on the there on the dashboard that there's the term deliverability is used and so it looks like that means that that is the amount of the percentage or whatever of messages that were actually delivered end-to-end and i saw one of the second pages that you looked at or second or third it looked like it also shows like a little red section for maybe emails that bounce back or text that don't go through or something like that so it looks to me and i i guess i'm looking for clarification on this for this question it looks to me like we're able to see the amount of messages that are going out um and then the percentage that are maybe not reaching the families and it looks like they're in the high 90 percentages that the parent or the individual receives that message with a small percentage maybe bouncing back is that kind of accurate from what we saw in the presentation yes um let me go ahead and share our dashboard so the dashboard anything that's in the light pink that is messages that were that failed and this could be uh anything from when the parent first signed up um that was their cell phone number and for whatever reason they had to disconnect it for the email it could be anything that their account was disabled or the email address is no longer working or they actually declined to receive the emails and so with everything there is always the the portion of you know working with our school sites working with the with our community liaisons to make sure that our system is as more most up-to-date as possible so that we can continue to eliminate and get the highest percentage as possible and of those thank you for that answer of those pink sections does it also allow us to it sounds like it does individually identify what number or email those came from and we can tie it to a a student absolutely um what i can't do is i can't um because it's going to disclose information i don't want to click on it but yes that's exactly what it physically does it tells us exactly who is the student who's the parent and where the mistake is made okay so then in that thank you again for that answer to you so i i appreciate what dr bauer said about um you know we hear oftentimes that you know for whatever reason parents are not receiving communication we hear that in the comments that we get and so it's good to see that we have a platform and hear from at least one member of our our public our staff that it seems to work for them um and it's good to see this at least we know that the parent or the individual in the large majority of cases is receiving that whether or not they see it or remember it everybody's so busy maybe it just it doesn't land with them but we know that it's getting there and we also know who it's not getting to and we can address that individually so i think this is very helpful um i had one other comment but uh the only other thing i'll say is i wonder if this seems like the kind of application that we might be able to produce reports and i'm wondering if maybe um the board members if we could if it's possible to receive i don't know if it's quarterly or yearly or just once um based on the information that you shared a report just so we can take a little bit more time to to look at you know the numbers and and just analyze it a little more but overall i think it's good i think it's um you know what we need especially in these times when instant communication is so important with all the changes that are happening and it's excellent that we can identify those that are not getting them and work with liaisons and everyone else to get there so i'll leave that request for possibly a report that we can dig a little deeper in maybe as a board and thank you again for the information um i i don't know if you have something in response to him i also see trustee chavez with your hands uh jose i don't know yes yes madam president one thing i wanted to add in regards to what mr rivera mentioned in in the communication the app also allows to for the parent to set it in their native language and the app will automatically automatically translate the messages back and forth and so if i write something in spanish the app will translate it to the teacher in english and we'll do that back and forth thank you nice thank you for that information trustee thomas my question is kind of along what uh the hedano's questions were but once you tie it to the student and to the parent and to the teacher what does the district do to reach that i think it was three percent that that uh you don't get the response from um like how do you follow up once you you haven't reached them you follow up with uh like i don't know if in their applica if the information of siblings or other relations like friends or cousins if you could reach them in that manner is there that extra information there when they do give their information other ways to reach them if you can't reach them through their sales or through their emails do they ever put other contact information is what i'm asking i guess a superintendent or anybody that can answer thank you so much for the opportunity to answer the question the answer is yes and that is precisely why our community liaisons are such a key team member for our schools because they are the ones that follow up with those families with a home visit usually we during the pandemic i want to honor and praise a number of our community liaisons principals some teachers do that we also have the school um schooling services uh coordinators who because we're able to know which phone numbers are no longer you know uh current and what if that those messages that are bounced back we're able to reach to those families there are some very hard to reach families and we have had a number of stories as the pandemic evolved that we that was our our connection with the parents especially some of the parents who were homeless and we that's how they were able to communicate with our uh district in constant way it was the lifeline we had the story of a single mom with a first graders who ended up in hayworth in a hotel and our ability to communicate with her to parent square and connecting with her through the phone we were able to provide her the services that she needed over there in hayward when they were connecting for their school in alum rock and so countless stories about that and i think that that was why i wanted to highlight tonight this uh amazing tool because a lot of times you know we just kind of get into other things and we forget about communication and this is something that we are very uh focused as the this year begins to make sure that we're connecting with every single family thank you thank you trustee chavez one last thing does the district also ask for the work numbers if they can't provide sales i i remember in the past there was a lot of neighbors that they uh worked in the same shopping center as us and we would go and interpret and also receive their calls because we knew that they didn't have cell numbers and they didn't have a home phone number and it was easier for them to that worked in the same mall as us for them to just you know we'd say hey you know tell someone so to come over here and the school's calling and we interpret for them but you know this is just people helping other people and sometimes uh as a community you want to do that to help the the students you know what i mean but do they also ask for work numbers okay thank you thank you um and i had similar questions so thank you all for asking your questions um very excited to see most of our parents signed up i just want to reiterate i mean 99 is is exciting um and you know hearing the teachers also express themselves about you know how it's helped them do what they do um a little better you know um something less to be frustrated about right and a good tool to use to communicate with your families um and you know of course it's it's very small but it's kind of like you know when you see that hole right in something a very small hole out of the big picture but still you know my questions and i did ask dr bauer in our one-on-one was regarding how we are connecting with those that are not connected and now that i'm understanding it even better thank you for that um explanation now that i know that we have that piece of the parents that are not connected yet as one item um so thank you community liaisons and staff who are you know working hard and diligently to connect our families but then also the emails and texts that are connected and are not working that we can identify those um and ensure that you know we connect those parents in one way shape or form one of my friends actually this morning was like i missed the message about the school i got a new phone and i'm trying to connect and haven't been able to connect so i know the impact you know when the family misses that you know welcoming event or those things so um we get to ensure we get hopefully we can get 100 um and then even thank you trusted chavez for bringing up those ideas right of how we can maybe use a community phone or you know what those options are that might look a little different than you know when i was younger where you know there was one one phone number and you call that number but now with um you know internet and things like that what that might look like nowadays um so excited to just make it better yes something that's working great and how do we make it even better i do see uh trusted fam's hand up so i'm gonna go ahead and turn over over to you if you thought of something that maybe didn't come up before uh no i just wanted to express my appreciation to our information technology services for pushing the boundaries here this is um you know uh the sites for president mentioning the phone it used to be a hard a hard paper notice in the mail so this is uh this is very good i i wanted i know that this took a lot of effort and so i wanted to express my appreciation to to everyone who was a part of implementing this thank you trustee fam all right seeing no other hands and i don't know if you can hear me sorry working on my uh audio here i don't see any other hand so we'll go ahead and move on to item 502. uh i'm sorry 402.
that's pretty good that's darn good excellent job and i just hope that a lot more people will take up and understanding cadence i'm going to try i'm going to take the introduction i want to know how to do it too so board questions comments oh gosh well you said it you said it all those two students were extremely impressive boy what you can put on your resume now we probably will uh you know hear that you're going to get hired tomorrow at a company for for this work but uh 73 that's amazing that's not easy stuff um to to understand um and uh i hope that the adult that you were patient with the adults trying to understand all of this because sometimes we adults are uh we have a hard time learning this so so thank you for taking the time to do that and thank you for helping us out that's just tremendous and um just please thank all the teachers and i neglected to thank all the teachers in the room uh for we we have these tremendous opportunities for our kids only because our teachers are willing to step up and do this this extra work um and take the time to do that so we honor you um the board i know i can speak for the board but thank you teachers for doing this and giving us our kids the opportunity this is uh just um blowing my mind the the careers that you that are that are happening you know in our own uh district so thank you all so much we appreciate you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] yeah thank you for the teacher leaders giving all the students their wisdom their guidance during this process but i have to really uh give a shout out to the two students that spoke this evening especially to alma sliding the older student but especially a junior high student being able to uh present as you did you did an excellent job we look forward to you when you become a senior and i can't imagine what it's going to be like getting the experience between now and at that time where where you will be in life so uh thank you and we look forward to hearing more from you well i'll i'll double down on that but i i gotta say madison and arya both of you uh kind of examples of what we like to see in auhst and i hope that the superintendent will use both of them as ambassadors to actually put them out there hopefully if i know both the parents are here i think both their parents we are going to use them to actually promote auhsd arya you are very very eloquent in talking about the five c's and i think that what captured was you were talking about the compassion piece of it and how you connected it back to the output right that's incredible for us as board members we are very proud to see that coming out of students and madison same goes to you i know that you guys will i think anne marie mentioned it use it on your resumes but we're going to use you on our resume so we got to make sure that we promote what excellent work you did but at the same time show what excellent work auhsd is doing for our community and our students so i hope that we'll do that in the future so thank you both of you and i would like to thank aria and madison both impressive not everybody has the skill to get up and speak to a room full of people that's not something that you just get you have to work on it you have to have that feeling in your heart when you're speaking and i was so touched by you both of you outstanding thank you mr matsuda yes i also like to echo everything that the board has said but both of you talked about how you learn this uh project management program called agile right that that's a corporate level program and that um i know i spoke to mr dang boo about the level of our students and he was blown away that you embrace that and um and this is something that you know corporate people are exposed to this agile tool and now that you both in high school and junior high have that on your resume that's huge and thanks to the aim folks there scott rendell and our teachers as well as our partners at cadence thank you so much all right fantastic job one last applause for that phenomenal job thank you okay and we have one more presentation tonight we have a our 45-day state budget revision dr nin thank you so much good evening for president piercy members of the board superintendent masuda cabin members members of the public and everyone viewing online tonight i'm presenting the 45th day update that is required by the educational code governor newsome signed the budget act into um on june 28th and so the 45 day is actually due tonight on august 12th on the state budget the major addition is the local control funding formula the new concentration portion of the grant for our district our our new revenue that will be coming in is about nine and a half million dollars now so with the new um grant there are there are strings attached so this will actually increase our funding from the 50 percent funding factor to the 65 percent these additional 15 percent would need to be used to increase the number of credentialed and or classified staff to provide service direct services to pupils and this is including custodians that was clearly outlined and how this will be measured will be to compare the prior year staff to pupil ratio at schools that have the greater than the 55 on duplicated people those are students who are free and reduced foster youth and english learners versus the schools that have less than the 55 percent so this is a a different um add-on for this program by by having these new dollar amount there will be a one-time adjustment in the lcap supplement as part of the lcap annual update the annual lcap update for this portion of it will be due out to the board by february 28 2022 and we are currently working with joe camona and his office to make sure that we've included this update at that time so we'll be bringing that later on in the year regarding special education there's a lot of new update new and revised funding for special education the biggest funding we are seeing is the increase of the statewide rates from 625 dollars to 715 dollars per ada and our increase for that is estimated to be about 2.8 million dollars so our uh previous funding was about um 18 million dollars and we were now going to be about 20.7 for the special at ab602 base funding so this will be ongoing and so we are really extremely grateful for this funding to our district regarding the summer and after school program we are projected to receive about 115 from 790 000 to about 900 000 in funding and these are the programs that will partnership with the y the next new funding is a one-time funding of the a3g completion improvement grant and we are estimated to receive about 5.6 million dollars in this one-time funding to help to increase the number of high school students to graduate with a to g eligibility currently um then our numbers from last year is about 52 percent and so then we uh our total um allocation is about 5.6 million dollars for this one time nancy just so that you know folks are paying attention to the i i just don't want everybody to get confused okay watching it is one is i want to pay attention to the top part right the summer and after school programs the additional 115 848 dollars coming to auhsd yes so but we partnership with the y to run those programs for us so because i think a lot of folks when looking at it says 215 million in federal one-time funds used for after-school programs could have the idea that we're getting that amount no let's do our partnership with the y that's right so thank you i want to make sure that we're clearing that part when we're making that presentation to highlight that portion of it perfect thank you the next piece of is the unemployment insurance uh initially projected back at may revised the unemployment insurance was at 1.23 percent which was equivalent to about um almost three million dollars and so let me and then so the new rate it will be down to about 1.2 million dollars of savings of about one point um about 1.7 uh million dollars but really the thing i wanted to make sure i bring up is are projected last year to in 2021 school year it was only about 125 000 so imagine our last year's expense was only 125 000 to this year of 1.2 million dollars so that's the number we're dealing with and this isn't because of the additional unemployment in california so the state adjusted this number so even though the savings it's not really a savings it's it's an um over a million dollar increase for a budget and is ongoing currently so it is a savings but it's not really a savings and um the purge rate um unfortunately the uh employer pension rate the thirst and purse there was no relief for that um in this budget that was um enacted and we do have some good news regarding the educator investments the government over 2.1 billion dollars have been slated for the educator investments into four different pots the first one is the educator effectiveness block grant and that's the bulk of it about 1.5 billion dollars that will be to help to for coaching and induction standard align instruction as well as student well-being and re-engaging pupils and accelerated learning the next piece is the national board certificate certification the third one is a teacher residency grant program to have mentored teachers to support teachers coming through especially in the field of special education bilingual education science teacher as well as other high knee areas and the last one is the other professional learning will include professional learning for literacy as well as lgbtq and online training academic behavior and social emotional learning practices so we're very excited about all these investments that the state is making to our field additional educator investments these are for the classified employees um once again we are very grateful the governor has put in the classified summer school employees summer assistance program we our district have many employees that have elected to participate in this program and just this last year the match was actually 99 so we're excited for our employees that have participated in this program there's also the classified school employee teacher credentialing program to help to train classified employees into the teaching field as well and finally this is the although it's not a state program this is the esser number three from the federal government we just received the initial allocation back in june and our district's one-time allocation is estimated to be about 64.5 million dollars and so really this is basically to um safe return to in-person instruction um for our for our school district and now there are also additional of expedited exponential um a plan that we are working on with joe crumo's office as well regarding this regarding this categorical program and as you will see here this is the summary of all the additional dollars that we will be receiving the concentration grant as a an adam program about 9.5 million dollars special education 2.8 million dollars the asus funding one time of 115 thousand dollars a to g completion about 5.6 million unemployment uh um insurance this will be a savings on to our district about 1.7 million dollars and the esther one-time funding of 64.5 million dollars so all those a really great news that we're getting a lot of um some ongoing and some one-time dollars to our district however they are measure risk though to this budget at this point there is a potential for overheating of the economy due to the inflation as we can all see um at this point there are supply chain issues as we all know uh in different things we're buying or even when building homes workers shortage that is um a problem uh continuously at this point and we have never seen this much money from the federal support and so this is a risk to the budget because we do not know down the road how could this could be there's also the um wall street reaction to the in inflation pressures and then as well as the feds at this point and obviously the one thing that um i know it's all in everyone's minds the coven 19 the new delta variant at this point um so just yesterday the governor announced the vaccine mandate and so obviously we'll be bringing out to the board shirley to give additional information regarding that and so that could be part of the risk to the current budget as well and so that concludes my presentation and i'm happy to answer any questions that you may have okay any questions here and marie thank you nancy um i love this this was a very comprehensive on going back to page nine um on the classified school employee summer assistant program can you clarify just as uh our my trustee um did a minute ago with the other the 60 million general fund that's not money coming to us no that's for the entire states for yes thank you for the qualification the 60 million dollars is for the entire state so um it will be our portion will be depending on how much um the employees elect so it's a up to a dollar for dollar match and um our our um in districts we have a lot of our classified employees um that elected to have this program and so we're so excited for them um and it just it's they're so grateful to to the board and to the district for making this happen and we're so grateful to do this so just clarify this is a cost to the district this is a program that is matching the employees funds employees who put their funds in a savings throughout the year but it's a at a cost to the district there is um yes there is the statutory um benefits that districts have um that district does have to contribute to that program um but at the end of the day when we did um how much our employees are be able to um get back it's it's a lot and we're very happy for them that they have this opportunity to do this and this is our third year already doing this program um in our district and uh we're just really happy that um the board is able to to do this for all for the classified employees who are eligible correct i just wanted to emphasize that this is this is that at a cost and we are uh exceptionally happy for our classified families to to actually have some savings at the end of the day at the end of the year yes so thank you for clarifying that on the on page 11 the fiscal impact projected uh what is the time frame or is there a time frame where we have to spend the money that they uh give us so um so the program for the concentration is basically uh for example that one will be current year so we are expecting to put a plan together to how to spend the those money um the goal will be to spend it in current year for the concentration portion okay and then the special education um that's we always make contribution into special education so that will basically reduce the district's contribution into special education so we will be spending all that money in this year as well okay and then the asus funding program since we have a partnership with the y's at one time so we'll be working with the y to come up with the plans um with with that funding and usually it's whatever number of stock that they would be able to increase for for the district um adg completion improvement grant i believe that is um i think that is a year and a half or about so i believe it ends in august of 2022.
the best source that i found was academy pediatrics looking through their numbers they went through the changes in coveted cases and kind of broke it down a little bit more by kids what i found very interesting is the testing testing among states reporting for children is up eleven to twenty percent depending on the state so they're doing eleven percent more and twenty percent more testing on the kids uh culminated between all the states and between eight and 17 percent of those ex of the all children tested were tested positive so they're doing many many many more tests than they ever did in the past uh but we're still getting a very low number of kids that are they're actually testing positive hospitalizations was was quite interesting uh 23 states including new york city new york reported uh among the state's reporting uh children range between 1.5 and 3.5 of the total cumulative hospitalizations so when they when they reported these tests it wasn't just covet hospitalizations of all of the hospitalizations 1.5 to 3.5 were kids um of that 0.1 percent to 1.9 was a coveted case so of that very small number of the hospitalizations that are children only 0.1 to 1.9 was a covet hospitalization um the last one which we all are probably the most concerned about is the mortality rate 43 states new york city puerto rico and guam all reported on this the reporting of children mortality rate for kovid was between 0.00 percent and 0.26 percent seven states reported zero deaths total uh the state's reporting uh 0.00 to 0.3 of all cova cases resulted in deaths so all of the kids cases total reported the highest possible number was .03 percent now we never want to see that number any number is too high when it comes to a kid but that number is drastically so low it's almost non-existent um i have been anti-mask and ant since the beginning and now the new protocols that we're kind of we're thinking of adopting here with uh students being isolated which is once again a recommendation but the number one priority from both the cdc and from the american academy of pediatrics is children in the classroom from both of them the number one number one priority above all number one priority is kids in the classroom because they understand the suicide rates are so high all these other problems that are coming from this so i'm of the feeling that to if we absolutely we get a kid that that test positive for kovid that kid should be out he should be quarantined but the idea of quarantine other kids who may have come in contact that may is way too big for me and and i don't agree with with the idea of of isolating um a kid that may have come in contact so i am not in favor um of quarantined kids uh because these numbers are so small um when looking at those that's vaccines and i know staff has been a big concern how are we taking care of the staff are these kids passing it on to staff the actual numbers that come from that every reporting i found is there are i didn't bring that spreadsheet so i apologize for my numbers might be slightly off but i think it's 33 000 people that have had the vaccine have tested positive for covet after receiving that no vaccine is perfect so some people will still get that but we're well over a million people vaccinated and only 33 000 that have been vaccinated now are getting covered people that are choosing not to get vaccinated it is their choice and i'm not saying they have to be vaccinated but people that are choosing to not be vaccinated i really struggle with people telling me because i got vaccinated that i should wear a mask because somebody chose not to get it vaccinated and now they might be a potential risk they're also finding that those that have been vaccinated and do catch that of those 33 000 their symptoms are very very minor so although not 100 it is reducing what's going on there so where i'm at is we're getting back to normal we can't keep putting restrictions in we can't be coming up with these ideas and telling a kid that you get coveted you're too close to somebody so you're going to be the next seven days in a mask i i'm not in favor of that and that's not and that's not the protocol so if you'd like and and i respect your views on that if you'd like one of the reasons i gave you the calendar was so that you could see what we're doing this year compared to what we were doing last year um and let me find it so that the folks in the room can see it as well so if a student's tested positive we haven't quarantined other kids within that classroom who were not positive we we have we're doing mini quarantining last year when we had a positive case in a classroom we quarantine the entire class we're not doing that and this is on advice from county health and so i gave you a calendar i didn't put any dates on it i did that intentionally so you could just see how the 14 days flow and and these are where the recommendations from county health based on cdc so if you'll bear with me a little bit to track through this so that you can see how it works so we have student a who is in school on monday has no symptoms student a comes to school on tuesday and has symptoms and gets sent home that day or maybe doesn't get sent home but has symptoms and so the school learns about that student's positive case on wednesday so that becomes day two for that student it now becomes day one for the students who are sitting immediately around that student in their main classroom or a classroom that they're in so instead of 25 or 24 students going home it's two three four and as many as eight if they happen to be sitting in the middle of the class and then you can follow the blue line for what happens with the student who has covid so it is um the science in uh presumes that the student had covid before they showed symptoms that's why the days start when they do and that student may return to school on the tenth day after the first onset of symptoms if they have symptoms um as long as they have no fever because if they have the fever they're still contagious um and no symptoms so they can come back on day 10.
we received 1.5 million dollars as a direct contribution this month's claims unfortunately were a million forty one thousand one ninety one so about a hundred thousand higher than what the expectation was if i can give you any good news tonight this month last year claims were 1.2 million so it's not as high as it was last july but certainly higher than what the actuarial expectation was and so the bottom line is we are ending this month july 31st with 2 million 89 564 in the medical benefits reserve that gives us 2.32 months of reserve assuming hundred thousand dollars of claims per month uh the only anecdotal information that i did want to add is i did look at this month's large claims over twenty five thousand you know we did have six claims that totaled over 300 000. so six claims accounted for you know roughly 30 of the million dollars in claims so we are still seeing some um you know extraordinarily high claims that are you know bringing out claim totals up we'll keep watching it and continue to report out and unless there are questions yes um i i i am concerned that we're continuing to look under the cushions and everything else for ways to shore up our funds and you know we get 1.5 which has given us 1.5 million which is give us some breathing room but we're just consistently missing the mark and i don't either i don't know what to say about it i don't know what to do about it other than have we heard back from the actuary why you know we we ask this every month why why are we missing it so badly and is where's the problem and we don't have an answer well no the problem is the large claims are extraordinary and they can they have been all of last year and they work for the first month of this new um of this new fiscal year you know we will provide a a summary of last year cigna is is going to provide that you know for us and we will share that with the board and um you know it's claims there really are not that's the non-controllable portion of you know what happens in a given year on the medical benefits side so there's really not much that you know the board could do there's not much that we could do as administrators other than to watch understand you know what the underlying trends are and um i always do hope for you know better period this is a period that if we look at all of last year you know was extraordinarily high an increase that we had never seen previously and there's no one thing that's driving those large claims we did share with the board some of it is cancer claims some of it has to do with you know bone hip joint type heart um and vascular disease and um you know some you know birth and fertility claims it's really not one thing and some of it is covert but that's not the lion's share of it either i wish i had a a better answer and can give you confidence that the rest of the year isn't you know going to see high claims like this so again the only thing i could offer tonight is this time last year the claims were 200 000 higher is it fair to say then that your crystal ball is as fuzzy as morris yeah it's bad it's bad working on it though ann thank you adam um yeah then i'm just curious so we're at the beginning of the year uh and most of the i'm looking at the certified salaries in classified salaries yeah most of it is maybe not classified salaries but even so just looking at certified salaries most of it is expended or encumbered okay so you got a million dollar balance there what does that million dollars represent is basically teachers you're gonna be hiring the next week or two depending on sort of what happens with the classrooms though you're saying the the money that is you're looking at the current balance column correct 1.183 million i'm just why is that money there because i would think that most of it would be encumbered at this point unless it's teachers you hire in the next like two or three weeks well that's some of it but right because we don't have a hire on board we can't encumber those funds and we won't incumber the funds until we have somebody in the position oh and then also some of it's going to be a few hundred thousand because of retirements that's also part of it and then part of it is we don't encumber all of the of the salaries necessarily so there's extra pay that is paid to a teacher for additional duty that isn't going to be something that's got it okay um and some of the um some of the balances especially on the certified salaries will change as we um adjust for grant funding that's going to be received so you'll see as we get really in through august and into september's final report you'll start to see where those final encumbrances land but there's always some certified salary dollars that sit in that current balance uh sure through the rest of the year yeah no no i i could think of it like a few hundred thousand but over a million uh that that'll make sense thank you you're welcome [Music] one last quick question a medical benefits report so i just doing quick math you know obviously it always seems like june is a higher than normal month when we started out this the school year so we're all we had to dip into 308 000 into the medical benefits account obviously that rate you'll be out of money in you know seven months hopefully it's not the case but uh but i know it's on the town count so we were gonna keep an eye on this so you know assume the next couple months are a similar pattern we're still having more discussions on what we have to do if that continues but sure thank you for the update though okay that concludes the finance report thank you mr gripple up next is uh personnel uh who wants to talk about the item tim or jeff or both tim go ahead you start it uh yeah so item on the personnel personnel me personnel committee met a couple days ago one item on the agenda was what i'll describe as a tweaking of a job there was someone who retired and the responsibilities are changing a lot of it is the same and there are some changes to it that was the only item on the agenda and with that i would like to make a motion based on what came out of the personnel committee and then discuss the motion the board of education sorry the board of education moves that the position of family and community engagement coordinator be added to the contract between the cheshire board of education and the cheshire administrative personnel thank you tim is there a second faith second discussion yeah so this is like i was just saying a second ago this is a this is a position there was a position that existed um she retired many of the roles that responsibilities that had existed for the retiree will still exist in this position it's being tweaked a bit with some new responsibilities i think one key point here is that and jeff you could speak to this this was not in the administrators union before and this position would now be in the administrators union um the reason that i i supported this the roles the the responsibilities covered by this position are uh in my opinion important and valuable uh one is covering adult ed which i believe is state mandated anyway right for things such as uh uh getting a ged graduation equivalency diploma and there's other things that in there that are really um i feel we're very important from a policy perspective something like internships what has you know i graduated cheshire high in 1990 and what i always remembered back at the time was you go to college you go to college and i am a firm believer in education but i do not believe that a formal education such as college is necessarily better than an informal education and so with some of these internships what you could find what could happen with something like that this role is assisting high school students to be looking at you know like being a plumber or an electrician or something something a little bit different than just simply going into um what's often expected of cheshire high students going to college and i think that's really important um i think broadening options and helping students believe that there are other there are options besides college i think that's at least at that moment particularly at that moment in time i think that is really valuable so i think these responsibilities are all really important and that's basically why i'm why i supported moving forward with this position are there any comments from the board of ed members and just for the record we had a personnel committee meeting discusses in uh much more detail tuesday night i mean it was tuesday and then also a couple months ago it came up today and uh another key plus another key benefit of this position is that uh uh by the way kelly lens is returning october she's the one that's leaving uh the current role but in the current position uh that person cannot conduct uh teacher observations which is just key for for reviews so having um this role augment the way it is it frees up ms solano from doing reviews and focus more quickly so it does buy us some capacity and bandwidth in central office which is you know it's much needed so i'm in full support of this that being said the motion on the table is we move at the position of family and community engagement coordinator be added to the contract between the cheshire board of education and the cheshire administration personnel all those in favor it is unanimous thank you board up next is planning thank you mr chairman the planning committee met back on july 27th comprised of mr white catherine helen and myself um a few months back we contracted with energy resources to take a look at the district buildings as a whole to study for installation of solar arrays at any of our school buildings um fast forward to this last meeting on the 27th and they came back with two different options one at highland school and one at doolittle um i have been pretty much against any ground installations at the school buildings in order to not encumber any of our playing fields um they did look at both ground mounted installations and as well as carports um coming back with the car ports because of the cost of steel and copper um being so exorbitant at the time that it really didn't make sense from a zurich application standpoint in order to move forward with any of those installations um however vin will you pick up from there and get into we the next phase of it sure thank you mr martelly and i will try and summarize this and if i go a little astray i'm sure mr white will get me back on track but the uh really the end result of the work that was done with energy resources and we've been working on this project actually for over a year inside of the planning committee is that they have two potential solar arrays one at too little one at highland that could work and and generate a significant portion of the power for those respective schools the um energy solutions on our behalf did submit uh two z-rec applications one for each school and they were approved and so the next step in the process uh for us which the planning committee um opined on and voted in favor of is to move forward to basically lock a contract for these z-rex at doolittle at highland and what that means is that we have the right to take advantage of you know this financing program so that we can do solar arrays at doolittle and highland it's it's at our option we have until april of 2023 to complete the installation um the thing that you know was striking though about the approval of the z-wreck is that the school district actually has quite a bit of of um flexibility in terms of what actually gets installed it does not have to be a solar carport array it could be a roof array it could be some other type of ground-mounted installation and so the decision that the planning committee made was to go forward and we did submit the signed contract which eversource has accepted our only commitment was for doolittle two thousand one hundred twenty dollars in the form of performance assurance which is essentially a performance bond and two thousand nine hundred ninety two dollars for highland if we do go forward and we complete the arrays that's refunded uh to the district and so you know we now have the ability to continue the design work continue the discussion with planning on a solar array solutions at one or both of those schools whatever the planning committee on the board ultimately decides and even though the contract indicates we have until april 1 of 2023 to complete the installations we actually have the right to extend two six-month additional terms so we can actually go you know one additional year april of 2024 to complete the installation so you know working back from there you know ideally by april of 2022 we would have the design work done and a decision made to go forward so um all the paperwork has been executed with eversource the funds have been sent we're just waiting for the um executed copy of the contract to come back from eversource so it's on its way and we'll continue to work through the design phase so that is the update um from my perspective thank you vincent tim just mind i do want to get out of here before 11.
uh superintendent i'm going to turn it back over to you at this time thank you madam president uh and i know mr sanchez is eager to provide a lot of information i know that um i heard my teachers our teachers and i i understand the hesitation it's hard to anything that is that we don't know is difficult i just want to reassure everybody that 95 of what we are gonna present tonight has been the safety safeguards that we uh that you were presented when we reopened the schools in april and we worked together i do appreciate uh jocelyn's comment to the the fact to keep a pretty stringent safeguards remember the county has only given schools really very very little guidelines in terms of requirements wear your mask indoors that's it and there all of the other kinds of safeguards were removed because the best way to stop the pandemic and stop the contagion is through vaccination so i encourage everybody who's able to get a vaccine please do so but we decided to keep some of those tools to ensure a safer return to school so mr sanchez mr chang uh the time i'm gonna turn it over to you and i just wanted to make sure that our audience especially our teachers and our parents know that we kept the majority of those safeguards thank you thank you dr bauer board president uh herrera members of the board um our community um we we did want to give you a brief uh overview of the tremendous amount of work that has gone into the reopening of our schools you will be receiving a lot of these documents in the next uh 24 hours we've been working diligently updating information as it's changed and evolved you know a lot of you heard the announcement from uh the governor just yesterday in terms of vaccines so all of those things uh having have been evolving and changing and so we did want to make sure that we gave you the most accurate information possible so today ms campbell's going to be sharing the presentation with you and um mr covero chang his department his division has a lot to do with keeping our schools safe for students and staff the curriculum department has done a tremendous amount of work ensuring that we have all the different tools and resources available to teachers as well as students to make sure that not only are we providing the instruction that they need on a daily basis but we're also bridging those learning gaps right and we're also addressing the social emotional uh learning needs of students um you will also hear from uh director um garcia around all the different interventions that we're we put together and all the different resources that will be made available to our families so um i hope this this is helpful for the community but i can assure you it's been non-stop for our team here and i i want to commend um everyone right in all of our departments because it has been non-stop in getting our schools ready and getting our teams ready uh for the reopening so just wanted to open up with that um next slide please so this is the overview of what we will be sharing with you today and the three big buckets are around safety protocols our instructional program and then the additional supports that you will see and you will hear about um at the various schools and throughout our district and um i will remind everyone that the big day is tuesday august 17th uh we're very excited uh our principals have been working diligently day and night making sure that the classrooms are ready um i know that superintendent power uh mr chang and many staff members have been going around to the schools to ensure that you know they're ready to go so with that um i will turn it over to mr chang to share with you some of those big pieces that we've done with regards to safety protocols thank you mr sanchez um and as he has alluded earlier i'll be covering the safety protocol section of this presentation next slide please so first and foremost is following all guidelines from the cdc cdph as well as the county protocol and these are some of the safety measures that districts has implemented safety signage is posted on all campuses water fountains will remain closed students will be provided with a reusable reusable water bottle water bottle and or water filling stations will be available to refill water bottles on campus students will be reminded to wash hands frequently especially when transitioning from one activity to another all of her front office are open and ready to support and assist the community and parents screen guards have been set up in the front office and ppes will be made available to anyone who needs them lastly non-essential visitors will not be allowed on campus at this time next slide please next slide please just some minor technical difficulties thank you for being patient next slide please thank you the districts will also require all students and staff to wear masks while indoors uh physical barriers such as these guards uh will be continued to be used in offices and classrooms there will be a two to three feet of physical distancing in classrooms where possible and per the cdph guidance in-person instructions can occur safely with minimal physical distances requirement when other mitigation strategy such as masking are implemented individual instructional materials will be provided for students to limit sharing and mass are highly recommended outdoor except when eating next flight please in terms of sanitizing uh classrooms and offices will be disinfected nightly with our foggy machines classrooms have touchless hand sanitizing station in all of them and commonly touched areas will be sanitized frequently during the school day in terms of ventilations all classrooms and offices are equipped with air purifiers um air filters have been upgraded to merv 13s were compatible and the filters it shows itself will be changed every three months in addition that doors and windows can be opened to maximize air movement without harming the ac units next slide with respect to the bathrooms bathrooms will be will have high touch area sanitized every two to three hours soap or hand sanitizers will be available a number of students entering at one time will be limited and bathrooms will be disinfected and fogged each night uh with regards to prevention and this is where we will need parent support health checks will be done at home by parents and sick students students who are sick will need to stay home isolation room will be used if someone does become ill wrong while on campus and contact tracing will occur in collaboration with the santa clara county of public health next slide regarding transportation everyone will wear masks and use hand sanitizers as they enter the bus buses will be sanitized after each use drivers and students will be separated by one row uh family members will not be allowed on the bus at this time and students will be seated from the back to the front next slide please with vaccination and testing uh vaccination is currently the leading public health prevention strategy to end the cod19 pandemic school employees have been eligible since february uh and all are encouraged to get vaccinated uh we are also working with our labor partners um to reach agreements to have all unvaccinated employees covet tested on an ongoing basis as required and we are also looking into the ability for regular students covet testing with parents permission next slide please regarding the meal programs breakfast lunch and suppers will be offered at no cost to all students during designated meal service times to ensure a signal service environment the following procedures have been established meals will be offered and served in the classrooms at selected sites where they're doing it right now and from the cafeteria meal service line all food items provided are individually wrapped cupped or bagged to ensure minimal exposure to potential contaminants students will have access to hand washing sink and or hand sanitizers dispensers to be used before meal service seating will be available inside the cafeteria and or outside and students will remain three feet distance when eating with regards to independent study and community meal community meal distribution free meals will be offered to independent study students and children 18 and younger at three of our curbside grab and go mill location uh the hours are from 10 a.m to 11 a.m on tuesdays and thursdays uh and the three locations are renaissance academy and fishers renaissance academy at madison and lastly shepard next slide please and at this time i'd like to pass it on to miss barbara campbell who will be presenting the instructional program good evening um i will be talking sharing a little bit about our academic program and what pieces we have in place for the return to in-person instruction so our academic program we will begin with in-person instruction for all students we will uh bell schedules for start and end times are being distributed by sites and posted on our on the site web pages we will continue the traditional 4-1 schedule where thursday is a shortened instructional day teachers will continue to use the online platforms see saw google classroom to continue and maintain communication along with parent square instruction will continue will include whole class and when appropriate small group instruction a combination of online and instructional platforms will be used to support student learning and all subjects will be taught using the district adopted core curriculum and all of these include some digital components along with hard copies and textbooks this kind of gives you an idea of what are our what's our core curriculum what our ed tech supports that we are providing and continue to provide as a carryover and some of our online platforms for engagement digital citizenship and also assessments the top part talks about what are our core curriculum pieces that are providing for math ela social studies and science then we have a variety of programs like seesaw levered learning near pod raz science a to z that are being provided to support uh additional instructional pieces in the classroom we have three online assessment pieces and actually there's one more missing which is isis i station which is for our dual language uh schools which is english spanish and then for engagement again google classroom is seesaw and then we also have nearpod which has a variety of modules that support digital citizenship we have modules to support social emotional learning we have modules to support english language development but also modules to support college and career exploration and readiness as you all are aware um we ab-130 was passed this summer and alum rock will be offering independent stock study option for our students whose health would be at risk by in-person instruction as determined by the parent the in the independent study teachers will be using our district adopted common core standards aligned curriculum parents who are interested will be signing agreements to have their child children participate in independent study and just to give you an idea students in grade tk 3 will be receiving daily synchronous instruction which will include live interaction to support social student social emotional learning and then students in grade 4 through 8 again we'll be receiving weekly or daily synchronous instruction along with daily interaction to support their social emotional learning and connectiveness our music programs have had to do some adjusting and we as you can see along the bottom as we're waiting for more guidance from the california department of health of public health on in around instrumental music but uh singing and playing uh wind instruments will occur with ppe outdoors only um masks are being designed for choir and band and covers for instruments our band mariachi and choir rehearsals will occur socially distanced outdoors and if weather does not allow for outdoor rehearsals teachers will plan alternate classroom activities and our fourth and fifth grade classes usually get a general music prep class and that will continue but without singing or playing wind instruments physical education will resume as normal with additional safety precautions so masks are going to need to be worn during pe when not social distancing so during close contact activities while lining up entering and exiting locker rooms in the middle schools again that they will be needing to be masks mass will be worn inside the locker room while children are changing for pe and as um mr chang had mentioned locker rooms will be disinfected disinfected with foggy machines daily hand washing will occur before and after class and then equipment will be sanitized between groups of students our special ed services um are going to again we will provide services based on the student's current iep for in-person instruction at the their assigned sites especially classroom sizes permit social distancing related services will be offered via pull out or push in a small group as indicated in their ieps and all district-wide safety procedures will be will be implemented in those classrooms um any request for independent study by a parent who has a child in special ed it will be handled through an the iep process to consider the change of placement which because it would be a change of placement and services for independent study for our special ed will also be a combination of synchronous and asynchronous instruction and i now going to hand off to mrs sander garcia who will be talking about support services that we're providing for our students good evening everyone um i am going to go over some of the support services that we have planned for this school year next slide please first i'm going to share some information on the social emotional learning support and support that we will be providing this year through our sel department uh we will continue to support uh sel implementation at all school sites with such programs as commodities restorative practices and second step we will our sel department is coordinating a professional development for all staff site staff in trauma-informed practices as well as providing professional development for elementary and middle school counselors we will be providing counselor services across schools be our school counselors and we have increased the number of counselors this year and provide training and placement of our intern counselors at both elementary and middle school sites we will also be facilitating parent trainings on social emotional learning competencies and part continue to partner with our community-based organizations to expand services and resources to all families and students next slide are after school programs so we will resume our after school programs after school as they are intended in person at all school sites um our five service providers are city years city of san jose think together ymca and envisioners and uh they have been busy uh preparing with the site principals and staff um for the reopening of the schools we will have program monday through friday immediately after school through 6 pm and students will be receiving supper as part of that program and just to remind you that the after school staff uh their main responsibility is to support with homework and provide uh enrichment activities such as art physical activities stem activities health education etc we will work towards adding some sort of school day support ramping that up through our aces providers when possible and this is just a list of the five agencies and the schools that they provide services to so in terms of tutoring and supplemental learning support we do we have been working with several agencies some are continuing there are a few new we've been having discussions with them over the summer on ways that they can support our our students as they return to school and have the need for these supports we will be having services at all school sites in terms of homework and intervention type services and it'll be a combination of teachers and paraprofessionals providing those services and in some cases using some of these support providers in addition to what they're able to provide with their staff members some of the pro tutoring support that we will have are sylvan learning tutor works paper which is an online personalized tutoring service booknook tutoring varsity tutoring springboard collaborative other support services that we have been partnering with and will continue this year are the city peace project grail family services little heroes and reading partners and we'll continue to investigate other ways and other services that we can provide our students and you know we really want to make sure that the students that need the support receive it and that we provide it for them so that's the end of our presentation and you know we just want to thank you for listening and just say that you know this is a time to come together celebrate the beginning of a new year and welcome everyone back to our campuses um and again um congratulations on 90 years of excellence in alum rock thank you i don't know dr barbara we were going to add something no okay great thank you so much for such detailed uh presentation and painting a clear picture for us um and so at this time i'm gonna open it up for public comment first and then i'll open it up for the trustees for any questions comments or concerns we'll see if you can help me with the public yes madam president we have uh one speaker miss jacqueline argani mr donnie you have two minutes please tell me yourself when you begin speaking the time will begin oh you can uh unmute yourself sir donnie are you able to unmute yourself maybe while they um figure out the audio issue we'll go on to the next one and then come back to jacqueline yes our next speaker is right yes you have two minutes to speak please emit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi i found it hi my name is lynn white and i am a tk teacher at linda vista elementary i've been teaching close to 20 years i'm i'm trying that i didn't see much information about your contact tracing screening and testing protocol will you test sample groups how will that work and when will we know and then my other concern is that in tk it's all about socialization and kids working together and a big part of what we do is have families involved so will you do rapid testing so that volunteers can continue to come onto our campus and be welcomed and so that we can have field trips um and try to make this as normal as possible for the children and i'm very concerned that we don't have our contract negotiated we love working with kids and we want to be in the class and we want all of us to work together towards mutual mutual agreeable outcomes but it feels like we have not taken the time to get our plan together so that we all feel comfortable for the first day of school but we will do our best to make sure that the kids are safe but if i had my drivers i would wait till the kids could get vaccinated and then you know hopefully they said in the winter we come in and you know maybe achieve herd immunity within our classrooms so that the kids aren't transmitting the virus as you know what i hope doesn't happen but i i'm hoping we can all work together and do what's right and what's safe for our kids but i am terrified to work with tk kids 20 kids in my class thank you for listening thank you our next speaker is miss jessica libody who's the voting you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi yeah um so i was i was waiting for this presentation and can you hear me yes oh okay sorry um and uh i still again my questions weren't answered in regards to quarantining in regards to at least weekly testing i looked at our numbers today and the zip codes in in alum rock are like 24 25 000 per 25 per 100 000.
i can i can verify that the adg one okay and then um the um unemployment one that is um the goal is ongoing that we will get that savings and hopefully with economy getting better the number would go back to what it was in in the past so because right now the 0.5 is still much higher than what it was before and the answer on number three is the september 30th of 2024. 20 what september 30th of 2024 24. okay thank you i had another question man our special education funding while we're so grateful for the extra funding um can you tell me uh how close this gets us to the actual cost of special ed we're laughing we don't we don't yeah so we we love all our kids um so now we're nowhere near there obviously um so this is something that we continuously working with them there are going to be other one-time funding coming through as well for special education but no we are we are no near what how much we spend on special education and so but it's you know this due to the different program needs so we're nowhere near to that number nowhere near okay thank you mr jabar yeah so if i could give a suggestion because this is a public document and going to be available for folks if you can't identify what comes to auhsd versus what's a general budget uh that you're projecting here because there are some numbers big numbers which are shown that are statewide project or statewide allocation so somebody who's looking at it could say like oh you know all this money is coming to a uhsd right so i want to make sure that we're distinguishing that yeah so making sure that auhsd portion is like saying like hey this is what we are receiving for auhsd right perfect well the amount we see for ahsd is in the summary page here right no but i wanted to do it throughout the presentation because i think that's important for us when we are making presentations that folks in the public know i mean i i could know it but i i got solidly confused too when i was right yeah sitting here i watched it and said wait wait a second that's a new number for me but then i then i realized that oh that's the state allocation not the uhsd allocation right so i think just putting that by their state allocation so much money right you know clarifies it because i was confused too when i looked at that that's a key part that i wanted to make and then the second part is so on the summary of fundings i know you're mentioning one-time funding for aca scs the concentration grant add-on of 9 million is that ongoing that's ongoing okay so the ongoing will be receiving it and that's going to be part of the lcap process where parents and community members get to be a part of that definitely decision making process yes same thing with special education ongoing it's ongoing so any um anything that doesn't have the one time is ongoing okay so i i want to make sure i know that you know parents who are watching and community who are watching this is an opportunity to get involved in the lcap process if you're burning desires to advocate for a program this is the opportunity for you to actually step up and i'm looking right in the back got some parent advocates so the opportunity to actually step up and organize and be a part of the lcap process the other question that i had was regarding the uh insurance so the insurance just explained to me that one more time so that i could i could understand it and also the rest of the folks could understand it okay okay go ahead so in may when we projected the budget for 2021-22 our estimate for the unemployment insurance cost was about 2.9 million dollars so um when the budget came through they reduced the rate to 0.5 percent then the total um amount then became 1.2 million dollars okay so we have so we have we do have savings in the budget right so i think what i was trying to figure out is you mentioned it's a savings but it's also not a savings is what you meant because yes so the reason why is because in 2021 just this last year that we finished we spent about only 125 000 oh okay okay so even yes so it's a savings but not a savings from last year yes okay all right i think uh those are it for oh yeah and then the uh esser 64 million again that's a one-time funding for us yes and that we have till 2024 to spend yes right and is that is there a process or is that part of the lcap process as well no that's separate so that's separate and so as board members we get an opportunity to weigh in on and obviously you guys are going to recommend to us how you're spending it we've been recommending and also we do take the lcap process into mind because there are a lot of different things go through it and so we meet with um you know joe akumala's office to come up with plans and make it make that recommendation and so whatever plan that we put it's pretty much spending through 2024 and we can't actually plan for anything beyond 2024.
i've given an example of three students who are sitting next to that student in class so we have students b c and d and that we send them for quarantine under this protocol on day five they may test the reason for that delay is that over the past year the scientists have found that any test given before day 5 is questionable in terms of accuracy so they may test on day five as speedy as testing is these days the results usually are on day six and uh so students can come back on a day eight on day eight uh if they wear masks for the remainder of the 14 days so i've given you an example of the two students who do that and they have missed in terms of our school and i'm sorry in my example i had kids in school on day four and they really day four for the blue student and day three for students bc and d it might have been a flex friday it doesn't matter it's still day three so students bc and d have missed wednesday and thursday gets at home wednesday they've missed thursday they miss monday tuesday and they may come back on wednesday so they have missed four days of school three and a half four days of school and may come back if their families want them to come back on that day with masks we're not requiring that they come back that day we're not requiring masks other than the fact that they're coming back on day eight so they're in school starting on that wednesday the student who the student see who does not test on the fifth day or does not test it all continues with the quarantine through day 14.
everybody just i'm going to be very quick because i don't think i heard it i could have missed it not against you tim just in general uh basically the issue with regard to this is if we did the project right now due to supply chain issues the costs have increased what do they say about steel like 150 it's gone up in the past few months or a year or something like that so it actually would have made a lot of sense if we could have done it say six months ago we didn't have the z-wreck at that time we could do it now the z-wreck being the financing incentive um so giving you know given another two or three years it's entirely possible that the costs of raw materials will drop that's the hope um but that's that's why we're not doing it at this time because we would end up paying a higher rate than we would be and that really doesn't make a lot of sense at least not to me so thank you [Music] thank you tim mr martelly or mr messiana thank you for watching on school construction projects this summer i mean in the interest of time i will just tell you that there's a lot of staff is back in the school buildings on august 26th our students are back august 31st there was no construction project and many are still going on that will prevent school from opening so i want to reassure everyone of that although we do have a lot of moving parts this is the time of year that our administrators get very nervous so most of my job from here on out is to keep everybody calm and we will do that and we will open on time and i'll save the project by project update for the next meeting if that's okay well absolutely vince i figure usually that time you have more throw update on the completed projects and all the work that went into it with the before and after pictures yes like flip this house right the before and after so we're looking forward to that okay thank you that completes planning completes planning thank you speaking of flip this house and by the way i i think we uh can go to 11 or we can extend it but i mean i'll stay as long as we need to but i know every time i say that my board members go nuts but that being said up next the school modernization committee update mr martelly again school modernization well we do have a special guest here this evening but before we have him come to the podium i believe mr chair um the quick update is the town council continues to review the report of the school modernization and scenario 6 which was their preferred option town staff is reviewing the financial implications implications rather of that scenario the next meeting of the town council specific to school modernization is scheduled for august 19th at 6 30 here in council chambers coliers who is the consultant hired by the district continues to do the test fits of the school buildings the two elementary school options related to scenario six and what i'd like to do is once we do get those test fits is to schedule a planning committee meeting of the whole to discuss those test fit reports and also the financial implications to the town school modernization really quick and now we have um mr jinx for uh i don't know what we're calling this option all right well according to the herald cartoon today this is jimmy's option jimmy's option three yeah i was gonna say the best sand castle that sounds like guilty talk right there well thank you for sticking it out this long let me turn this on is it on i'm on you guys mind if i sit down instead go ahead [Music] so for the record jim jenks 244 academy road i'm the town counselor and uh school of modernization committee member so first of all i just want to say thank you again for the the meeting i appreciate it very much um you know my goal is to kind of come up with a a proposal or a plan that we all can kind of agree on and the community can rally behind and and and we can have a successful referendum on sooner rather than later um my uh so what i did in in in looking back through our our data from the school modernization committee was come up with a kind of a hybrid plan i know a lot of you guys have heard this already to some degree but i'm going to kind of go through this go through this again since we're all here so the uh i think this kind of addresses a lot of the kind of would have been brought up to this point as negatives as far as the um the current scenario 2a which is uh the new six state middle school plus uh plus a new chapman and also some of the um some of the uh critiques of scenario six um so first of all just kind of before i go through the the details on the second page just wanna point out that um the uh my proposal called the the casper tunnel fields campus proposal um includes a new second six state middle school as well as a new chapman on this kind of a campus property on jarvis and in marion road the um the highlights being uh in the first phase which is that uh the sec the second six state middle school new chapman uh cost there being about 75.5 million and this number is based on estimates from uh from colliers it's derived from their numbers is about 12 million 13 million dollars less than the current preferred uh two too large elementary school plan and then the second phase it's also about 20 million or so less on an overall scenario is about 26 million dollars less the uh obviously the middle school plan includes a a modern six day middle school curriculum um the uh the capacity uh point i'm making there is that with this with this plan we're at by the end of the decade we have a capacity of about 92 percent in elementary schools rather than uh with the current preferred plan would be about 97 um i've raised this many times and it seems like we really haven't kind of discussed that um that challenge or that issue um you know obviously when we once we build the new schools we don't want to be in a situation where we're already near capacity um you know what that 97 means and for example with uh with the new chapman you'd be looking at um at least at this point based on what's in collier's the the student number there would be i think 640 or 653 students at that new school and the um you know obviously the state preferred size is about 700 so we're really bumping up against that um you know that high end there you could you could imagine that if we're going to grow potentially 13 or so over the next decade um growing a few more percent in a few more years beyond that is pretty reasonable and also in the case of norton i think the number we have for norton is about 669 students for the new school so they were even we're even at a kind of worse situation as far as being at the high end so that's why i point out that it's a the proposal that i'm making is both a short term and a long term solution uh it's district wide the impact is district-wide because the middle school 68 middle school is part of the plan and then also it's incremental meaning that we can address the short-term population challenge uh over the next five to six years that we kind of know is coming for sure and then kind of have the have some flexibility in the out years to determine what else needs to be done what schools need to be done after that my proposal also has a hummington resolution which the uh the other two proposals don't really have at this point um and then obviously with the um with my uh the cass atomic fields campus we have that we're well within the preferred school size uh you know the state had commented that they didn't want the school to be over 900 students but my proposal one school is about 550 students and the other one's about 600 students and also my plan we have uh we're really maximizing the the cep savings as well kim where is where is hamilton going so um if you're looking at the second page now what i'm proposing is the in the second phase board of ed offices move into the renovated dot and then the alternative high school would perhaps be somewhere on the high school property in a later phase so going through again the first phase is new chapman k to five about you know max of 515 students the 32.2 million number comes directly from collier's estimate um the new second six state middle school about 550 students and that on that campus property is about 43.3 million one thing i point out there is that the estimate that i used uh was based on about 102 000 square foot building which is probably a little bit bigger than we might need but we obviously want to leave that to colliers to figure out for sure but the the chapman building which obviously it's a middle it's a elementary school so it's going to be smaller but that building is only about 73 000 square feet with about 515 students so it's a similar number of students i'm sure we need a little bit more space for middle school but i'm not sure if we need 30 000 more additional square feet it's also the estimate that i use the 421 square feet is perhaps a little high it is based on the collier's number for their um their six state middle school that they they proposed to us that the 1200 student won but um colliers did mention when they were here when i presented before that their their middle school estimate could be in the high threes rather than into the four so there could be some more savings there as well the so the second phase includes a renovated middle school as i said the board of ed offices moving in there and i'm proposing that we also perhaps move park and rec offices perhaps arts place programming and yellow house programming into into either dodd or you know perhaps the new middle school third phase is uh capital improvements to highland um of about 20 million dollars you know actually something that's probably going to be happening before then but um i'm just kind of showing that in the third phase and the renovated high school number is the same throughout really so it comes to about the 300 million or so happy to take questions so um jim you proposed putting arts place and um yellow house into the buildings um what would that do for our reimburse i mean what would that do for our reimbursement from the state for school construction these aren't school projects and then would the town and the board legally be able to mail their services together in a single building yeah that is an unknown um although the i think in terms of the arts place in yellow house i think the idea would be to um they would be using space in the building but not necessarily have their own space so it would be uh the building would be renovated to be a school um you know but it's it's a piece of this that we obviously we need to look at a little further to see uh exactly what the savings might be there uh but i think it's it's a potential um especially with the park and rec building being where it is and being that it needs some renovation now um and i think some people have recently mentioned it as a potential location for the alternative high school um if we get to the point where we're renovating the high school um you know there's probably something happening to that park and rack building so i'm trying to think of a way to address that sooner rather than later i i could tell you that the park rec building arts place yellow house would not be reimbursable by the state because the way state does this calculation on square footage is based on a number of students so to kind of put in perspective because i've heard this from the community even five years ago when we're looking at the the sixth grade middle school could we build a bigger auditorium than that goes beyond the needs of the physicals kids in the building to accommodate more community events and we knew back then that that cost above and beyond certain square foot in size is the burden on the town not the state now there's a it's a not bad idea uh but i like the fact that you're trying to address you know the buildings are around the area at the same time because i think those also need help work as well but that that can answer beyond that i don't know if we can keep that in the same space as the educational programming that you're asking me right yeah you're the expert so yeah i um i just wanna i guess i could first directly answer your question and then i had a couple of thoughts the including them having a little bit more intimate knowledge really about the yellow house than arts place or or the park and rec building i know how that facility is used during the day actually it's it's often used by us during the day for special education support services over there i think it would be very difficult to house additional components of our town programming without having significant modifications to the building for security so park and rec are its place yellow house i would expect individuals to be coming and going from those locations throughout the school day and we're we're currently if you've driven past chs and other buildings taking great space taking great pains to provide enhanced security so i think that would would have to be done i but you know more uh generally speaking i want to reiterate my appreciation for what you've done mr jenks in the sense that it underscores i think the uh importance that as a as a town councilor you um have been so invested in this process from the beginning and our entire town council acknowledges that we really need to do something to move forward and the fact that you've taken a lot of time to creatively effort to solve you know what i think are the biggest challenge here like the financial component plus how do we enhance six through eight because there seems to be a very strong voice for that as well uh is is definitely commendable i think when you know i talked to marlene and our teaching staff about that proposal there are real reservations about creating two six through eight buildings uh there are a lot of benefits to uh from an instructional perspective of keeping people under one roof um of course the competing challenge there is the the state has said you need to have a really compelling argument for having a middle school of that size and i think that's actually an easier hurdle to clear for us than the instructional uh challenges and a lot of that is also in in ongoing fiscal costs for us when we add those six through eight programs and mr peregini also trying to solve that same problem you are had asked me what can we do about you know what if we were to move some of these programs into our existing elementary schools we could i mean there's always you know if there's enough money you could make anything happen but it's just uh in our opinion just not long-term cost effective to create two elementary schools when we started to look at shared staffing the additional staffing that would be required to offer that programming that we're seeking in the two buildings but you know i think the campus thing is a really interesting idea i know adam had brought that up too and i think the more that we can all continue to collectively you know take you know hits at this to try and get to a solution that really works for our town is is the way we're going to get there in the long run just thank you sure tim you had a question earlier i'm sorry yeah thank you uh so thanks for doing this jim i appreciate it um uh first point just on history talking about the park and rec building the harman j leonard um that was originally created uh per my per the can my mom telling me the story she donated money to it back in the 50s or whenever it was built army j leonard killed himself he was a student he accidentally killed himself with a hand grenade and his dad went out and um you know raised money and made that youth center happen so i just want to mention that i don't like history to be forgotten um but i do have one real question here which is um scalability of this you the number you put in here was it 400 421 dollars per square foot for the middle school i'm just curious in general i mean is that the reason it's reasonable to say you could scale that number from the building they were talking about at 421 down to a smaller school i believe so yes okay although like i said when we were when we had the meeting uh with collier's in the council he mentioned the middle school rate in in like 350 to 365.
we are it's so high right now and we are opening our doors full throttle with just masks um we need at least weekly testing on everybody regardless of vaccination status and this modified quarantine is just asking for a super spreader event um we're seeing now like mountain view already has you know a couple days in have several pieces so what is our quarantine will we be then distance learning will we be zooming in for the kids or are they going home with packets like we need to know this the first day of school because we know there's going to be cases the first day of school we've seen it now across the state as they open up it's within the first couple days there are kids and what are those kids doing when they go home to quarantine and then we need to quarantine we can't be saying that they can stay in our classroom even though they've been exposed with a mask on as long as they get tested twice a week and we know with the delta variant that asymptomatic we can spread it just as being vaccinated just as much as the unvaccinated so you can't say that teachers can stay and teach if they've been exposed they need to go home and be safe we need to know this the first day of school because we're gonna have that kid in class who comes with a positive coveted test so we need to know this now and it wasn't in the presentation and these are the questions we're getting from parents what are we doing with quarantine what about testing what about health screening that's what's important and we don't have that information and that's not okay it's not safe um because we know what the first day is going to be like and we won't have answers thank you thank you or our next speaker is miss kathy louis and so you have two minutes please send me yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi um i'm at shepherd middle school and um i'm i'm an art teacher and i've already planned to you know keep separate supplies for everyone but um i keep hearing things about cohorts and i don't think that's happening in middle schools um i'm going to be having like 35 kids in my classroom um at least one of my periods and i think the other periods are close to 30 each one of them and it equals out to 152 kids and like jessica was saying um i'm very concerned about this modified quarantine and i mentioned it earlier um it seems like it's designed to keep the schools open but it's not designed to mitigate cases um our new our case rate keeps going up i have been keeping track of new cases every single night since june 24th 2020 and i've been watching it fluctuate and i've been watching the patterns and the trends and everything and uh i'm extremely apprehensive about just opening the way we are doing that and i understand that a lot of it comes down to funding from the state um but what i'm concerned about is that i'm not hearing a backup plan if the state does say or if the county says you know we're shutting things down because things case rates are getting too high like it is like they are in other states um i don't know any backup plans i don't know what's what's going to happen i don't know what to plan for myself what to plan for with my kids my kids are going to ask questions like kids are always asked questions about what happens if this happens i have no answers for them and that's really disconcerting this close to the beginning of the school year and i hope we can get some more answers thank you our next speaker is miss adrian bing miss finn you have two minutes please submit yourself subscribe hello uh thank you for um listening to me again um first off my first question is about the fogging um i once again i am a teacher and um sometimes things are left in the classroom is what what what is the chemical composition of the fogging because i was i usually have a pitcher of water and will i have to empty that and wash it every day that's number one uh quarantine if we have to quarantine as teachers we're gonna lose our sick days even though we won't we only have quite a few and what happens if we lose all of our sick days do we have to take a pay cut because of that um i usually have classes of 31 students i don't know how i can do a class of 31 students and how and distance myself from them all together throughout the day i will have over 150 kids on that note with regards to computer programs we had a program called hapara which we could control students from a remote computer and it was wonderful why are we not investing in a program like that anymore um another problem is that teachers right now we're not allowed to have lunch with each other we're not allowed to share a space with each other i don't know about you but after dealing with a hundred kids for a couple of hours i need some time to talk to my colleagues and lunch is usually that time and how are counselors going to be able to social distance and deal with kids i just think these are things we need to think about thank you miss wings our next speaker is miss sandra rivera mrs rivera you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hello can you hear me yes mr okay um i was just echoing with what some of my colleagues have been saying i the school safety plans that have been put out from a teacher's standpoint seem like the superficial stuff whereas we're in the classroom with the students what are the new protocols now if a student starts throwing up am i supposed to evacuate all of my students i have tk students are we supposed to be i can't leave my classroom doors open because my door goes directly to the parking lot there's not a lot of windows that actually open in my classroom out of most of them have been painted shut from over the years so while we appreciate a safety plan from people built by people sitting in the district office i don't know if teachers or people who are actually in the school sites have been consulted to help create that safety plan there are a lot of questions and issues that we have that are not addressed and our answer kept being told oh we'll address that later wait till the safety plan comes out those questions still have not been addressed are teachers allowed to take the student's temperatures in the classroom if the kids are saying that they don't feel good because how am i supposed to now send a tk student up to the office before i used to have two of them hold hands and walk to the office together we can no longer do that there are still a lot of unanswered questions and i understand that hopefully some of these will get answered but this did not help any of us tonight it actually it made us a little bit more apprehensive thank you miss rivera our next speaker is miss joslyn mars mr mars we have two minutes please submit yourself thank you um i had not planned to speak since i i think that many of our uh teachers have covered a lot of the um issues that we're concerned about but i guess the bottom line is school starts tuesday and i noticed that on the um slide presentation it said that there was safety some of the safety plans were being bargained but that hasn't happened yet when when will that happen i mean if work kids come back tuesday when will those tests be done and they should be done on site if we're going to have testing if we're not vaccinated i guess again it's all a matter of we're down to the wire and instead of saying we'll get it done or we plan to we have to get this done and put it behind us so that we can so that teachers know what to expect because they come and ask me and honestly i don't know what to say because i don't have the answers until we have a written agreement in place it's all speculation thank you miss smirks madam president at this time we have no more speakers thank you jose um at this time i will open it up to the trustees for any questions comments or concerns and uh before i do that just want to let you all know after this item we'll take a five minute bio break um so i'll go ahead and turn it over to trustee fab i see your hand up uh thank you madam president hang on we're good um getting used to all okay uh first of all uh question to the administration uh drew through you madam president uh in the event a child is put in quarantine here and and does it i kind of feel like the child would be placed into [Music] independent study or you know please walk me through what what do we do say if a child knock on wood tests positive and has to be quarantined how uh how do they stay with the class or how did they learn for me so i lost my signal oh so uh maybe renee so can you help answer that question please absolutely so um what i want to remind everyone about is that every single case is is different and we take every single case on a case-by-case basis we consult with our district nurses we work with the health department we look at exposure we look at we do contact tracing to see who has had that level of exposure we look at individuals that were exposed are they vaccinated so all of these things have evolved over the last few months and it's no longer an automatic if you were in the same room with somebody that um tested positive for covid you all of a sudden have to quarantine right so we need to look at these things case-by-case basis and so i can't just do a blanket response as far as the student if the student is ill he is ill and then he won't be able to engage with the classroom right um if he's going to be out for an extended period of time we can definitely assign him assignments just like we are doing with students in independent studies so we're going to have to uh take a look at the individual situation and they make accommodations accordingly okay uh thank you renee uh then the guess the second half is uh you know based on public comment uh what does quarantine look like if if a staff member fall does test positive or falls ill we have to follow the same things the cba the this is um different times uh we it's not like last year last year we had some mandates that we had to adhere to we're going back to the um what we have agreed in a lot of the dispensations that were provided last year are no longer digit and we need to just accept that there is no way for us to change laws or contracts or anything like that at this moment because we are no longer in the same status that we were last year so i understand those are concerns um i think that the best way to avoid a whole lot of concerns is to make sure that we get vaccinated and that we continue to wear our masks remember what i said at the very beginning as far as the county is concerned as far as the state is concerned all they want us to do is to wear the mask and they took off a lot all the other safeguards we are not doing any of that we are keeping extra precautions because we have learned through the we started we were the first district with a care pot back in september last year and we worked through the most difficult times in of covid we reopened our schools and we conducted a summer school and we never had a contagion studying in alamo rock we learn a lot of lessons and those are the ones that we're putting into action i do understand the anxiety for people who have not been part of the reopening or teaching summer school this is normal to feel that way but i also know that we are going to be acting swiftly whenever something happens we learn uh very quickly how to uh whenever there was a a contact in our midst and and we address the classroom uh the whole concept of modified quarantine is what the public health department is telling us to do this is not something that our team hilaria bauer the board we are not health officials we are educators and i understand the concerns we are going to provide the safest environment possible for our students and for our staff thank you mr from any other questions or comments uh uh you know one last question to administration uh any pasta does a situation look uh safe enough for a class to potentially have a field trip this year future future i think that we need to bring everybody back first and i think that as we become better acquainted with the the new reality because that's what we're all facing um we will gradually bring some of those more normal things back i do i heard the comment from the teacher regarding back to school nights i will be addressing that i um have said very clearly that we are not going during the regular school day we're not gonna have anybody who we don't we you know visitors i don't know because of that extra layer of protection and uh that includes volunteers because there are some people that we cannot demand we cannot ask them whether or not they have been vaccinated so i'm very clear about that um we are doing that because we want to protect the only case and we totally hear tk um even first grade um their the first day of school the first couple of days of school are going to be normal children are going to cry parents need to suit them the principles are setting up the appropriate environment to address those specific circumstances thank you very much thank you uh and now i see trustee chavez's stand up trustee chavez yeah i i have uh two questions and the first one is i guess uh for miss barbara campbell when she spoke of the bell caps uh or the bell covers for the instruments um for the win woods and the brass and and they're gonna do that outside that's that's fine but um a lot of those like the like the woodwinds they require swabbing and they're supposed to be uh disposable uh is the student gonna have to uh pay for those disposable ones or is that going to be provided from the district and also on the horns on the brass and the horns they have spit valves so um i know they recommend like i looked up the recommendation that it's 20 minutes and then they do the aerosol and are they going to do that aerosol outside as well as if they have to perform inside because at winter time it gets really cold the poor little kids are going to be out there freezing that they're going to have to be uh playing outside i i just wanted to know how are they going to address the caps and especially when you're playing an instrument to have a bell on it uh you you're going to get a totally different sound unless you're muting it like if you're gonna do uh the ones for the horns how was that how are they gonna handle that and then i have a question after that if she can address that please if you don't mind i i'll i'll respond to that that's fine thank you yeah and we're working very closely with our coordinator um music programs right so we are looking at all the guidance and we understand this is not ideal by any means just like it's not ideal in our gathering to all of us have been wearing masks right but we want to provide the best possible scenario for students and we want them to have that experience so all the safety measures um that are put in place none of those costs will come to the families or the students all of those are costs that the district will take on right so we want to make sure that students are safe we want to make sure that students are receiving the best possible experience but at the same time we don't want to expose them unnecessarily um to you know possibly catching something right so all of those things are in place i shared with you that we will we have ordered all of this extra material we are going to be doing all the cleaning that needs to happen to ensure that it is all appropriately and adequate for students and i have another question um i don't know if you want to answer this one as well but um one of the things that the teach one of the teachers said that if she has a sick student before they would have a another kinder student welcome to the office so um there's a there's there is some solutions to do that like i seen in other little schools that um i work and there's like little schools in front of our the other side of a parking lot in lafayette the way they do it they have actually gotten a jump rope which is six feet long one handles one handle and the other student handles the other handle and they walk them around like that and and they put them to the side and then they take their temperature and everything and then when they take them out or i know min fam asks about the field trips when they take them out they put them on this big old long rope and each one gets a little circle and they put their hand in it they're all distance out six feet apart they look so cute like little ducks walking in a row but there's a lot of different things that they can do as well as putting little plastic gloves if they do have to handle the jump ropes and so that the other little kid doesn't get sick um but you know i i know that that this is coming down the line but i still think that if you have that things little things like that in writing that would make the staff feel a lot more comfortable about when a child is sick and you know different things so that the whole class doesn't get sick just things on paper i think that it might put a little bit of their concerns to rest um but ultimately this is just a suggestion i'm not telling anybody what to do but i'm just saying that there is solutions thank you for president yes you don't mind if i can respond to that um thank you i appreciate the comment um we have been sharing a lot of these details with principals and we've had some presentations for teachers um we do have outlined the protocol if somebody's asymptomatic if somebody has been vaccinated exposure and so they they we do have that and that has been shared uh we will make sure to reshare it i know that principals uh were have it available to them so i know that some of them are meeting with their staffs on on friday or on monday so they will be sharing all those details right and as i shared with you um a lot of the things right now has to do with whether the individual shows symptoms right even if you're just exposed to a situation doesn't automatically mean that you're quarantined it has to do with um developing symptoms and those are our details that we we have shared with principals and that they will be sharing with their teams as well and we do have it in writing and outline for everybody and okay one more question sorry one more question again this is just a suggestion so a lot of times in emergencies you kind of don't think straight because of what's happening especially if you have a classroom full of kids like you know like on the first date when somebody's choking you know how they have step one step two step three can you put those things in the classroom say when you open up the closets can you put it in the door or something like that so that they know what steps to follow um sometimes when you have an emergency on your hands um you're emotional about the kid because they're sick and then also the class might be upset and and things don't always go the way they should but if you could like when i said put it in writing if you could also you know like there's this rules for this do this there's that you know system for that do that and have it there in case something happens i i don't know maybe that's just over overkill what i'm saying right now but it's just a suggestion like i said thanks thank you thank you trustee travis um uh i'm no that was it just want to make sure i okay oh awesome all right just saw the hand up okay um i disney trusted with harano's hand up um i'll go ahead and turn it over to you at this time all right thank you uh so i first of all want to thank again the staff for the presentation i particularly want to thank at this time our you know our custodial serve team our maintenance team food services because the um you know the details that are laid out in the presentation and and what we got tonight i mean it takes a lot of work to put all of that stuff together and these schedules of sanitation and under understand some people may not think it's sufficient or clear but at least um from what i gathered from it i know that that takes a lot of work to set up and ongoing for our you know our custodians and our food services to be cuffing and bagging and sanitizing and disinfecting that that's monumental and actually had a question um related to that so one of the questions that i have is do we have have we added additional staff to um because of these kind of stepped up um needs or or is it realistic to expect the staff that we had to be able to follow these um schedules of sanitation and stuff and is there like a kind of like you see at a target bathroom or something like they have a little signing sheet when the last time somebody cleaned the bathroom i assume we have something like that and it looks like we do so the question is just staffing for that but also gratitude for those teams um but kind of prior to that i i wanted to also go back to dr bowers uh comments about i feel like we're kind of we're fortunate in some ways because even though people you know some people are worried or scared or or um you know anxious about whatever they perceive as is this current situation um you know that's real and that's real for them you know so that's we need to respect those sentiments but i think we're fortunate in that we have as dr bauer mentioned learned both through our own efforts and what we've seen other places do that you know it is possible to to function in a way that's nothing's ever going to be 100 safe but that is that can be very safe so i know as dr barr mentioned we had our care pods we had summer school we you know we've had different stages where we've been able to kind of beta test in our own district and roll stuff out and and i frankly i told dr power when i met with her recently i think it's either an example of all the work that was put in or just miraculous that we didn't have any you know any problems with it and so the fact that we were able to put that together and did not have any problems at all and i know we had a lot of discussion prior to that about people's worries and concerns all valid but when the actual product rolled out and we implemented we had zero problems i'm sure there were some bumps in the road and but overall it's something we were successful with that i know also my wife is works in early education and for months they've worked with from infant to to tk pre-k students or children and they've been able to do that very successfully in person um for many months and so i think the models are out there and they may not be ideal they may not be perfect they may not be 100 risk-free but i think if we go into it with a mindset of learning adaptation um not that that phrase of not letting the perfect get in the way of the good i think we can you know move forward there's always room for improvement as i say but i think we're we're in a good place um and i think it's something that maybe it sounds like there's been some challenges with um kind of negotiating some of the details of what's going to happen and i think it's unfortunate that the state and all these changes have come very rapidly to us and i think we heard very loud very clearly that you know people teachers wanted to have their summer respected and they didn't want to have to you know they wanted some time to refresh and to not have to deal with you know negotiations and stuff so i think just the the junction of people trying to get that well needed refresh time versus these things that were coming in from the state it causes challenges to try to um you know get everything lined up perfectly in the amount of time that's necessary but we did want to respect that um those statements that were made about summer that's deserved and the other last question i'll have is so the first question was about the staffing for sanitation the other question i have is i saw that the merv 13 filters were all replaced and will be replaced but it says where compatible so i'm wondering about what is the um situation and the places where it's not combat compatible or if we could just have a little more description of that and the last thing if we can have that report emailed or the presentation tonight emailed to the board members i'd like to look through it a little more um on my own time as well so thank you those are my comments or questions as well thank you and i see uh mr chang with his uh mic open so i'll turn over thank you board president um so let me first respond to the rooms that do not have the hp system that are compatible to the verb 13.
correct for right now yes okay i just want to make sure that i highlight that part yeah thank you and it comes with its own strings right yes okay my only comment is this last page risk to the best budget they should all be flashing red lights for us these are very difficult tenuous times and when you look at a runaway inflation shortages federal spending wall street wall street wall street that is a very very iffy situation so i hope the public is tuning in to the reality of what we're all in thank you nancy thank you nancy it was a good report any other questions or comments thank you and let's hope everything keeps going well you know what i had a question i'm sorry i had a question i was going to ask that question but i almost forgot so i know i in the past we've asked to have like an agenda item to kind of give an update on covet a stand a a status or stand-alone agenda item so that we get an opportunity to ask questions i want to see if we could insert that back in even if you don't have a report we could just skip saying that there is no report at least if there is a agenda placeholder we can ask questions based on what's going on with kovid in preparations which leads me to get a update on the state mandate from which came through for teacher covet testing and covet vaccination can we can i don't know if it's you manuel or you nancy but give the boat and the public an update in terms of what we have planned i know we already planned for it even before the state came through but i want to make sure that we're transparent in saying what we are doing to pretty much implement that great absolutely mr dubar thank you so as you know and and i think doctor in yen mentioned it that the governor announced that um you know there is there is a mandate or actually a state order to the california department of public health that really is required requiring that we all employees oh well the item is is not specifically agenda so we can do a very short report if as it relates to you know the budget or or we could do it in staffordshire um it could i could tie it to the budget in terms that's one of the reasons i was going to ask that question during budget because we do have a an opportunity to ask in terms of allocations for budget in terms of spending so that's how i'm asking the question so i think we're okay with the uh brown act i'm stretching it i think it's not stretching it's actually we have an item in terms of some of these funds are going to be towards spending towards uh testing and uh core with vaccination so we have an opportunity to ask that great thank you mr jabbar for that question i don't think your mic's on tap it hard can you hear me now so again thank you for that question and as miss dr nian mentioned um this was something that was announced by governor newsom yesterday and came down to our district as a state order from the california department of public health requiring that all employees in our district show proof of vaccination in our district and again this is for for all employees within the anaheim union high school district and really all districts in california so in terms of our district we do have a plan where we will be asking employees through a system that we have in our district called talent ed that is part of our human resources department where our employees will be asked whether they have current vaccination if they do they will upload proof of that vaccination if they don't they will let us know that they do not and they will go through weekly testing at our sites ongoing until they show proof of vaccination okay thank you for that i just wanted to make sure that we had a plan and the public knows about it so although it was just announced yesterday we have been contemplating this so thank you very much for that short report okay that's it we'll move on to public comments this is our open session items this is the opportunity for our public comments at the beginning of each agenda item or at this time for items not on the agenda persons wishing to address the board of trustees should complete a speaker request form which is available on the information table at the back and submit it to the executive assistant as soon as possible each speaker is limited to a maximum of five minutes each topic or item is limited to a total of 20 minutes board members cannot immediately respond to public comments as stated on the speaker request form our first speaker this evening will be ron flores mr flores we would ask each of our speakers to state your name and your city of residence yama ronaldo flores ron flores from huntington beach california thank you ron we're never raised except yesterday it's so great to be here tonight with three western principles that have never seen anaheim beat us [Laughter] and it's gonna continue this word means master it means enough i think wrong you just jinxed it and it's not enough we're going to beat them again this year i just texted lou correa to come to the game again because every time we beat him i make him wear our varsity jacket well i'm here tonight for a couple reasons first one is good good to see you all again it's been a year and a half i've been locked up i put on 14 pounds so it's good to be back out here first thing is a while ago maybe when anaheim last beat us we were promised a security fence on orange avenue and it's still not there a few years ago a homeless person came right into a classroom because there was no security fence so i'm asking you gentlemen and ladies when is that fence going to go up we should have that up as soon as possible it's a security risk second point is thank you for the improvements that you've done you've really stepped to the plate a lot of things are changing especially out in the football field my question is when are you going to finish the field out in the back by the parking lot you did a great job on the parking lot it's excellent a lot of comments on that from the alumni and then lastly is i spoke to mr jabbar the other day it only took me 20 phone calls but i got through i think it was your hat we are interested in having a competition between anaheim school district and santa ana in an event we're planning it would be consists of a spelling bee and talent show between the two district high schools in anaheim versus santa ana each school would pick a winner and then the winner would go to the location where we're going to have the finals and then they would compete and win trophies and other things there might even be a scholarship feature that we're going to add to it so who would i talk to in the school district to implement that or begin investigating that mr freed i saw your movie on youtube thank you all very much for your time and continue to do a great job and put western number first and move that thing i can't see western high school okay it gets in the way put it in anaheims over there thank you all very much thank you ron it's good to see you again okay our next speaker will be maritza bermudez good afternoon um superintendent matsuda board members staff and people in the audience and virtually my name is marita bermudez and i'm happy to be here again i'm from anaheim california and i'm a parent of students in the anaheim elementary school district and also of anaheim union high school district i have an eighth grader here there oh sorry i have an eighth grader at sycamore junior high school she's here with me today and i'm here also um representing my work i work for orange county congregation community organization and i'm here to speak on kind of celebrating a little bit of the work that we've been doing and i say we because i've i feel that i'm as a parent and also through my work that we have here in collaboration and we're working really i guess um closely in trying to meet everybody's needs and our vision and what we want to see for the students and families of this district i know we just started the school year with the care opening and also the care approach which i love that i saw here in the presentation and also being on the school openings committee i thought it was great that they took that approach and that they were keeping not only the students but also the staff in mind right and also working on that um on a restorative opening so that was great so i'm kudos to you know everyone that's been part of that i know our i was at anaheim high school the first day the teachers were back with the ptsa evan east there and so it was nice to see all the teachers everybody like uh mr grant said everybody looked really happy and i know my daughter came really home excited yesterday so that really lifted my spirits too that i made the right decision to send her back to school with that a lot of the great things that are happening you know sycamore is looking great but one of the things that i think we are in in line with that we're going um closer into achieving is with their parent involvement we did meet with umuerta miss tanya garcia from the community schools which was great that we had a space with them and talk to them about the upcoming work and the work that's being done with the community schools at sycamore and anaheim and we also talked to um mr carlos hernandez and um miss alas um chavez from the district also they actually came to our workspace and had a meeting with in our anaheim intersections um committee meeting which i think was great because i feel that um doing those connections we can move forward because i've come here in the past to speak about you know the parent engagement parent involvement because i always feel like there's that one piece missing of everything that we do we kind of leave our parents and our families you know kind of to the side and not too much involved so i know with these uh meetings that we're having with them and that we are given the space to um work collaboratively together we're going to reach the desirable right of seeing our students um succeed i could say a lot more today i'm sorry i'm really tired i'm just losing my train of thought i have kids going to four different schools and i'm just thinking today was just a wild day just seeing all the families i guess it's still in me seeing all the students and um i wish you know that when we see those parents there dropping off their kids on the first days of school right that they'd be more present and so um we want to work together to try to achieve that right and make sure that the kids have what they need um another oh i know what i was going to see the other thing i wanted to speak about was the mental health um i did have an opportunity to meet with them dr um cruz which my respects amazing amazing person we have here we're so blessed to have her in the in in our sp and here in our um district leading the work on mental health i can say i'm probably par um part of the parent ambassador mental program that i'm hoping it's going to do its purpose and i'm very excited so in that sense i feel like we are on track and and the fact that we are given the space to collaborate it speaks huge about our district so i really want to thank everybody who's given us a space but there's still a lot of work to do and we're here to work together and see the outcome be great for um not just the students we hear of all these great things i was very inspired by the students here and oh man i wish we could see more students being able to have those opportunities right so you know want to work together to make sure that everybody's getting those opportunities and giving those spaces to just thrive thank you and have a good night thank you hey okay our next speaker will be rosa bond hi good evening my name is rosa bond i am a mother of two sons who are in the elementary school district so shout out to them and also a parent organizer with the anaheim intersections initiative you know we've been coming to these meetings because we appreciate the collaborative work and you know like marissa mentioned the celebration of the contributions that the district has offered you know i'm very proud and i don't even come my my kids are not even in the district yet but i'm excited to share with other parents of all these great opportunities that the students have you know compared to when i went to schools like you know uh the dynamics change and you know that that that's something to celebrate and looking forward to that and you know like marissa mentioned as a parent you know we represent other parents as well you know this is not things that we're observing these are things that we're hearing as well that parents want to be included in conversations and they want to know what the district is doing and they want to also make decisions you know they want to be part of that because i think it takes and we all know that it takes a village to raise a child and i think the more participation the more opportunities that parents have just to even listen to the great the amazing things that their the district is doing is is making you is making the parents feel part of we understand you know that the the parents have limited opportunities because you know we're not able to be present at the school but i think in just knowing that all these great opportunities that the child has you know like for example video games or there's so so much opportunities out there and parents just need to know that so that they're more comfortable in uh supporting their kids when they want to do something you know that it's not a doctor or a lawyer it's you know some things that have not jobs that have not been invented yet that there's an opportunity for that so i think just very motivating and yes you can participate these are the activities that you they're able to um participate in just listening and and also the the student voice you know hearing these students with great talents the way they speak the way they uh share it's i'm just blown away and i was like why don't you have a microphone here and and share your thoughts and as a parent i just want to see that you know i just want to be able to uh be part of a a collaborative because it really takes all of us and these conversations that we're starting you know with um selling the community schools i think we want to distribute that through the whole district and say this is a community this is what we're doing for it and this is how you can be part of it as well so i'm just excited looking forward to upcoming conversations this doesn't stop here this is just the beginning and we just want to let you know that we're here to support the work that you guys are doing and and to know that you know we're just so so proud of the work that has been done we just want to be part of it and let you guys know that we're here you know so i really appreciate the time and really looking forward to the parent engagement piece and looking forward to that so i appreciate it and hope you guys have a great night thank you very much [Applause] what we need is a lot more gabald parents okay our next speaker will be isaac romero uh good evening everyone i'm isaac romero and i live in the city of anaheim i'm a senior at adelaide high school and i'm a community leader i'm sorry i can't understand you could you speak closer to the mic could you start over please good evening everyone my name is isaac romero i live in anaheim and i am a senior that attends anaheim high school i'm also a community leader at oco in the anaheim intersections initiative coming back to school it's been great seeing how my school in particular and i'm sure you know the schools in the district have been handling the culver situation uh before things were not that great but uh seeing all the precautionary measures that my school has been taking and how they uh continue to follow the guidelines it's definitely great to see the same goes for not just the faculty but also the students right you know they keep on their mask uh it's not just uh it's uh not just the faculty that you know tries to follow these guidelines but also the students themselves uh in particular i'm part of the anaheim browns and uh we've been helping you know yesterday and today uh we've been handing out massive students that you know may not have one when they're coming in seeing as a anaheim one of anaheim's guidelines is that you need to have a mask when you come in through the gate seeing all the changes that have been made it really calms uh it really gives me a sense of peace you know and you know definitely caused my nerves as well as you know the other nerves of my fellow peers and students because uh all these precautionary precautionary measures definitely make us feel more safe however just like uh things have been going great you know in terms of covid however there's still a divide between uh our faculty and students i think one of the biggest things that came up today was uh the assembly bill which definitely helped students with some other grades however my one of my teachers didn't even know that it would tuna you know stop uh i think there's a that's that's something that really needs to be a a gap that needs to be closed because many of our students they don't just struggle with grades they struggle with mental health personal problems and you know i think this gap isn't just for you know the assembly but it's a stat it could be a gap for many other things um however it definitely has calmed down uh many parents that i've spoken to we're definitely happy to see uh many other students involved you know i mentioned that i'm part of the night bros and we also have been heavily involved during this time uh during the quarantine and i'm sure that we will continue to be involved helping our school um i'm just i just want to you know show my appreciation for my school and the district for everything that they uh do to ensure that we have a a good school year you know for me it means a lot since it's uh my last year at school and i wouldn't want to spend it you know through distance learning so thank you bravo okay thank you isaac hey isaac can you stay up here for a second i think i'm going to be the first of many of the board members that are going to say we really appreciate you coming and talking to us telling us how you feel whether it's a criticism or whether it's a compliment we always want to hear from our students so we really appreciate you coming here and and getting through this i know it's kind of tough for some reason you know we're there's people up here you know we're parents we're we're really uh people of the community where you come from but i don't know it's the microphones or the dice over there somehow we're a little bit intimidating but really honestly we're really we really do listen and we really want to hear what you have to say so i truly salute you for coming up here and doing it because i i know it gets a little tough but as a bro oh my goodness you guys did so much work last year every weekend you were out there every weekend and you kind of you know you put yourselves out there um you messed up you you put your your you know gloves on and you took care of our community so we thank you we honor you so thank you for coming and telling us what we really need to do what we need to think about what we need to improve and how we're doing it doing things well but we honestly salute you thank you so much isaac all right [Applause] it's always a pleasure to have our students come and talk for sure and it is tough okay our next speaker will be frida sanchez another one of our students all right hello uh hello superintendent matsuda and and board members um like my mom mentioned earlier merza bermudez my name is freda sanchez i'm an eighth grader at sycamore junior high i am really excited to be back at school especially since i didn't really get to experience my seventh grade year so i really appreciate that uh thank you um anyways i'm here this beautiful night um to speak to you about mental health mental illness support and education not only for students but and school staff but for our parents and families so you may be asking why is an 8th grader specifically saying this when there's so many other adults here that could probably speak to you about this um but the thing is i'm fortunate enough to be from a supportive family that understands mental illness and is informed about it and me as someone who suffers from multiple mental illnesses i'm really fortunate to have that and when they saw the red flags they reached out for help which if they didn't i most likely would not be able to have the opportunity to speak to you today so i'm grateful for that um but i want to say thank you for all the resources you guys are pushing out to the schools about mental health because it really is a struggle um in many teens today uh and uh just informing the parents since unfortunately uh that's not the case for all families uh although i may come from a very supportive family and informed not that's not the same for every family uh which i wish it would be but unfortunately it isn't uh and therefore i believe we should help educate families as well as provide the um the resources necessary necessary sorry because um it could be not only students that can be suffering from mental health illness but it may be apparent as well as sometimes you know you get stressed with kids life struggles adult stuff but i think we should provide those resources to everyone here in the auhsd district um and have you guys probably seen this pandemic has um affected many people including myself and that's why i feel we should keep these resources we have not only have them short term now because of covid but long term because it's not only cova that has impacted people with mental illness or caused mental illness because mental illness is never going to go away but we can make it a lower percentage if we work together and i think it's really important that we pay attention to this uh and like henry ford said if everyone is moving forward together then success takes care of itself that's it thank you i would like you i would like to say to you freda and all of your peers and people that spoke here tonight i can't give you a hug but i can give you all a virtual hug to express your thoughts and your feelings and your experiences so eloquently it just brings tears to my eyes and he chokes me up and i just want to say to you thank you thank you thank you a very strong young lady and very well spoken yes it's just i commend you as an eighth grader you said yes all right i expect to hear from you in the future [Laughter] all right thank you for speaking up i was going to ask uh who's crying and who's not crying because i think everybody choked up frida i got to tell you i've known you for you know since you were teeny bitty and i could tell you that you just really really i'm so proud of you for standing up and speaking up and you're actually advocating not only for your your peers but you're advocating for your parents uh that is amazing and maritza i'm sure that you're probably proud there and tearing up too uh really to talk about you and your experience and advocate bravo uh you are so strong and i am so proud to say that i know you and you're going to be my future heart surgeon that we talked about a long time ago i know that you're going to be the future heart surgeon for me so cardiothoracic surgeon what's that cardiothoracic surgeon there you go cardio thoracic surgeon okay let's just hope that i don't have to go through what i was going to say but either way i just want to say that i'm so proud of you and so proud to know you and i'm honored to know you so thank you and keep it up i know you're going to do great so thank you yeah i have to do what everybody has said so far you showed a lot of bravery standing up there and talking about yourself and issues and obviously it's not just with you it's with many people that that need assistance so thank you for uh bringing it to our attention we already had it on our forefront of our minds but it's nice to hear from students and parents also bringing it back to our attentions and keeping it alive thank you so much thank you have a nice evening well frida you know i have to speak to you just to tell you how much i am so proud of you um i think you are the bravest person i i know and this was before you mentioned what you had been suffering and going through i always knew that you were going to get through it and pull through it and i know it's not over and done with but to be to come up here and and reveal what you're going through that sends a bigger message to to everybody than um you know than than people just kind of talking about it you are a shining example of why we do what we do and to bring it again as my colleague said to bring this to the forefront it was just so brave of you to do that i was crying up here because it just takes a lot to be honest and to be truthful sometimes but that's really what is necessary to pull through and to move through right but i think that you just set an example for all of us we all need to step up and be honest and truthful you know and again to not only talk about the kids but to talk about the adults and that was part of our care opening the care opening in our districts was not just for the students but it was for all of the adults surrounding the students too we reminded ourselves that we all went through this pandemic and reminded ourselves that we need to take care of ourselves and and help ourselves so that we can help the students but we are going to continue with the mental health and thank you for bringing it to the forefront again and you know how much i feel about you thank you so much bravo all right have a nice evening thank you super young lady all right [Applause] okay that is the last of our public speakers thank you all for coming forward this this evening and speaking to us now we will move on to our normal items of business and our first one will be 9.1 which is a rejection of liability claim this is an action item second i have a motion and a second any questions or comments okay seeing none all in favor aye opposed motion passes item 9.2 this is the consulting services agreement for john fenton dba fenton or1 i mean point llc action item second i have a motion in a second any questions or comments all right seeing none all in favor aye opposed motion passes item 9.3 this is a revised board policy 7807 independent study first and final reading now i have to say something about this this is a bill that has been passed as an urgency legislation with immediate effect and has significant audit and fiscal impacts if not timely in place at the start of instruction of this 2122 year so it's recommended that we waive the requirement of a second reading in policy and adopt this revised policy and administrative regulation on one vote so moved second okay so i have a motion in a second any questions or comments okay seeing none all in favor aye opposed okay we have a revised board policy one one time all right moving on to 9.4 this is new board policy 91302 school connected organizations first reading this is an information item do i have any questions or comments i do yes um so i just wanted to kind of highlight this i know it's the first reading do i know we didn't have a policy so this is a new policy that we're putting in place right i read through it but i you know just wanting to know that the boosters and the other organizations which are part of it how we looked at it to see how it will affect them differently if the policy was in place the way that it's operating right now i don't think it's too different is it okay right now with no policy there's um not a lot of there's not a lot of district oversight and with some of these like boosters there's money involved this will allow us to have better controls and and oversight and support of what's happening at the schools also in this case we had a non-profit doing great work he was using our school logos and stuff as part of the work which we weren't part of so this allows us to now have some of that control so that way which i figured was the answer but which leads me to then say what are we doing to reach out now and educate these boosters to let them know that this is a policy that the board is looking at and here here here's how it's going to look at look and how you have to pretty much adhere to these policies are we reaching out and doing that yes we will be reaching out it's not just boosters it's parent pta organizations it's any organization that that's that's not necessarily a part of the school structure uh we're gonna be meeting with a lot of these different folks and educating not only the policy but on kind of the policies procedures and practices that we would expect as part of our organization okay are we going to basically send them a copy of this so they can read over it yeah but it's it's more than just the here read this it's yeah it's going to be as well yes and i i recommend that we at least have a possibility a forum just so that everybody knows and you know it's out there so that it doesn't become an issue later on saying like hey we did this uh uh you know 15 20 years and now everything is changing and why do we have to do this right so i think we have to take that approach of educating them and then answering the questions and possibly i i know we're going to go ahead and approve this in the second reading but and i don't think we have enough time to discuss that with the organizations but maybe have a mechanism to come back and do what we need to do if there are suggestions so thank you any other comments okay that was all right very good all right that's just an information item moving on to 9.5 we have another information item we have another board policy multiple which are multiple policies for first reading now we are going through all of our i just for the public's knowledge we're going through all of our policies and we are following the guideline of the uh orange county school boards association california california you know school boards association and so either revising policies we've had to be more up to date or actually instituting some new policies so we have 9.5.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 and 0.5 are all either totally revised policies or new policies so we have five policies here that have our first reading do i have any comments or questions on any one of them nope nope seeing none okay that's just an information item they will be back up again for a second reading okay 9.6 an action item which is a quote instructional materials spanish math textbook for dual language academy so move second i have a motion in a second questions or comments no just uh uh no i don't have a comment but i just want to uh thank you for this on behalf of the dual immersion yes i know this will this will answer uh concern for our dual language academy parents and i want to acknowledge the work that i know carlos did with the math task force but amy quan most recently has been working with the math task force and this specific piece to ensure our dual language program has the materials they need to be able to do the work in spanish in this case okay very good that was my comment too so that was going to be my comment right yeah thank you for listening we really appreciate that we listen we lose we do okay any other comments or questions see none all in favor aye opposed motion passes 9.7 action item educational consulting agreement telos educational services so move second i have a motion in a second any questions i do comments yeah i have uh questions okay uh i i read through this and i like it because uh one of it is that we got to look at different modes of delivery of our concepts that we have within au hst to our community i know presentations are good but animation videos are kind of the new thing so i'm glad that we are actually looking at it but i do have a question in terms of while looking at this is this something that our current pio or his interns could have done or could do no one well john i don't know if you want to answer that but john is talented and of course but he has so much going on this allows this person to go deep in focus and if you've seen other videos that we have used we've actually used his videos before and this is his area of expertise uh he's worked closely with scott rendell our coordinator of 21st century learning and in career readiness and then also with amanda bean so this is this is something that um we feel is is definitely a worthwhile investment i use the word investment because it's not just for our presentations but when we work with our families it's going to be tailored to actually have our message our ed division staff was part of helping to develop the script john did you want to add to that yeah i'll just add a couple more things it's a valid question i i truly appreciate you asking um animation is a whole different medium than um you know live action and that does require a specific type of skill set that quite frankly most peop i don't know anybody in our district um that could do for that long like you know students could do a couple of seconds here there maybe even a minute but it's a very time consuming specialty uh type of video when you're talking about 3d animation so that's that's the main reason so i'm glad that you answered that so the second part of it is that um just just based on what you just said i had that as my fourth question but i'll i'll move it up the the fact that you just mentioned that it's a new medium and you know it's something that you need to have more talent i know that we are actually giving 28 000 to get this done is there a way that we could actually ask him to incorporate like we did with e-cadence maybe some of our students were interested to give them that opportunity to work with i don't know if that's an availability but that's something to think about do you wanna i believe that the gentleman that we got into agreement with and mr ryan doe maybe uh can speak to it a little bit more he's actually using a third party that's how specialized it is so uh there's actually a third party involved to create the specific animation well i believe that the gentleman you know the thing is too it's very time sensitive we got to get this thing done so we uh it's a good question but i don't think we can uh we have the bandwidth at this point or the time and i just to add to that again it it kind of underscores um the idea of the specialization because within this group there's a script graphics and then the actual animation itself and editing and putting it all together so um my then well let me go through a couple of questions first and then i'll come back to that one is that this will be strictly for auhsd auhsc branded right correct so it will be for us where we are using our stories and it would have a uhsd banner on it it would because the part is we're spending this i want to make sure that it's for us and it's not going to be circulating anywhere else with the work that we're asking we actually hope it does circulate with that you know circulate with our it does absolutely that's why we're doing it but i'm saying is that it will have our brand it's going to have our brand it says that as a tool to be used for our branding the district the the the question that i had was i've seen animation uh done where i'm actually i went online and i was trying to do something for what a project that i'm working on and there are opportunities to do it where we pay like 9.99 a month and then we get on the app and then we tell the story and then the story actually they they do the everything on the app where we're just giving the script and uh utilizing the characters that's only 9.99 a month so my question to you is 9.99 a month doing that versus 28 000 i just want to see the uh why the disparity yeah the value there so so just um you know addressing the timepiece you know not only the animation the storyboarding as various subcontractors he's using uh the translation is done by voice talent so we have uh it being translated with voice talent uh into our our languages here in the district um but the piece i think on the animation um if you watch kevin fleming's videos they're they're very direct to the point with powerful animations that drive a point home and the vision behind this piece is the cpsf the career preparedness systems framework there's there's a lot to it and in four minutes we think he can really drive the message home and help our stakeholders understand it that quickly as opposed to the presentations and things that you referenced thank you yeah with that no questions awesome anyone else have a question or a comment i just um i just really did some research too on this because i questioned that's all that is a lot of money but um i've had the opportunity to uh to do uh to view a lot of that over the summer and what he does is it's a specialty um and and he uh really will hone in our our branding a message so um i really recommend um that we do this and of course it's so time consuming out to try to come up with the you know with all of the the script and all of that so i think all of our staff is you know we have they have a lot to do too so the expertise and the time consuming and the quality of the work that i saw when i did the research it's it's valid a valid expense okay anything else anyone else all right seeing none we'll have a vote all those in favor aye opposed all right motion carries 9.8 licensing agreement document tracking services this is an action item so move second i have a motion in a second do i have any questions or comments all right seeing none all in favor aye opposed all right 9.9 school-sponsored student organization salute we only have one uh currently considered that's uh orange county an oxford academy cyber security club so any questions or comments seeing none all in favor aye opposed all right motion passes item 9.10 revised board policy 8806 child abuse prevention and reporting first reading this is an information item any questions or comments just the sign of the times we have to have policies for everything so we'll be catching up some of our policies i don't think we have been revised for over 20 years so it's time to update them all okay 9.11 new board policy 6219.01 duty to report all employees first reading yes all right no this is an information item also okay no impact of the budget just going to be you know all reporting of misconduct and investigation etc any questions or comments all right we have an action item next 9.12 this is a memorandum of understanding of scaling student success community of practice some move second i have a motion in a second any questions or comments okay i had some questions on this but uh i talked to mike about it and i didn't get a chance to reread this was this all a new explanation i think okay well you kind of explained more to me so i'll hold back on my reservations and um is this what you were going to give in the friday letter or is this are you going to be pretty much the friday letter but um just uh we do have amanda bean the director of cpsf implementation to give a little more context behind this agreement with uh and participation in a statewide consortium okay and when you explain us amanda tell us what what outcome do we want from this in other words what's the anticipated outcome absolutely so um so basically this is a consortium of like-minded school districts that are working together to to operationalize processes that authentically evaluate student outcomes and so for us that's the five c's and so how do we create the system and the metrics the key performance indicators for us to demonstrate that students are communicators collaborators create creative so on and so on and so um so that's one piece of it also it's just a time to share promising practices seeing what's being done up and down the state work together to um to just help push each other's thinking and to create those systems it's also an opportunity for us to introduce the cpsf statewide and to push our mental model around cohesion around this work of cte pathways dual enrollment um the 5c civic action and to push our model into into the more of the the view statewide and so we get exposure as well as support in developing some of our systems okay i will say one of the things that threw me and confused me was this utilization of the phrase graduate profile and that's and i brought that up with mike and i'm going you know you've made it yeah a lot more clear now what they're trying to do but but but this this i guess the graduate profile was what was throwing me and i'm going away what is that right it's uh um so basically uh so well it relates to what we see at savannah high school in the student learning capacities so savannah went through their revisioning process and developed the capacities and then a capstone which is their execution of things that their community values and wants to demonstrate that is exactly what a graduate profile is they're just using a different terminology so we would relate it to the five c's civic action leadership and concepts like that okay it's not super expensive and i mean and like you say it's a consortium of school districts and all but it was just at first i'm kind of going ah okay yeah absolutely no problem okay any other questions or comments seeing none all in favor aye opposed all right motion passes okay 9.13 no no we're at 10 point consent calendar do i have any requests to pull items 10.8 uh w and 10.9 anyone else move the balance okay i have a motion and a second and i have a second okay all in favor aye opposed okay item 10.8 hello w wait a minute let me see w 10.8 w okay and 10.9 and 10.9 some moves second all right all in favor aye opposed abstain all right passes okay we are on to let's see eleven superintendent and staff thank you madam chair i do have a quick report uh regarding the fireworks proceeds that benefits uh primarily our vapa and athletics and as the board might recall of the city of anaheim supports the six auhst high schools as well as canyon and esperanza so all eight high schools within the city of anaheim with fireworks stands and our we we've been averaging about twenty five thousand dollars net per school yeah so that's a hundred and fifty thousand dollars that's going to our boosters and vapa and our athletics program that we did not have before that's great that is amazing yeah i didn't realize it was that much that's it's been rising every year wow okay staff no report other than happy new year all right happy new year yeah new school year yeah no report no report no report no report no report okay board of trustees reports oh mr colon he wants a story no report report okay well you're on that side see i have to remember that okay all right and then moving up to mrs trejo do you have a board of trustees report okay there's some activity it's so exciting to report on on things uh so i uh was asked to speak to some realtors that represented the anaheim community in orange county and uh they were delighted to hear all of the great works that uh that we're doing and um they asked for a repeat you know so ran out of time uh there's so much to tell and so they they um they they want uh another another go at it so i might uh we might bring um one of the cabinet members to come in and speak to them so dr dr freed yes so uh you know it's just really it was a great opportunity to to um you know as a as a trustee to to really talk to folks in the community because they're getting misinformation um you've all seen the the the great school report on on some of the the you know when you look to buy a house on zillow or whatever those of those apps are they have scores and they're they're they're not um representative of what all of our schools are doing and i know uh you know the elementary schools um as well as the high schools are are we're really concerned about that and and they were too and so we did uh go ahead dr fred you wanted to speak i'm just i'm happy to go to the next one to speak and i know it's you only get a short amount of time but i have a literature to give to them they can give to prospective clients and i was talking with mrs smith earlier about uh ranks and how they use antiquated data um to determine which is not reflective whatsoever the work that we're doing it's unfortunate these these sites are very old and and have bad inaccurate information from what we're really doing and and so they were very uh they're very anxious to to hear all of the information and i did get the little pamphlets hot off the presses to pass them so they asked for another meeting so we can so we can brag and tell them what really is happening in our schools um i listened to the orange county department of ed liberty and justice for all colloquium which featured our distinguished superintendent on ethnic studies telling what it is and i really enjoyed that so thank you for representing the school district and and a lot of the other school districts in orange county uh i attended um although it was virtual it was um a csea conference uh it was from sunday to thursday and they have their conference meetings um every day every day it was from like nine to four or something like that so it was very interesting um to to actually it was my first time as a delegate uh for to represent csca i was happy to do it and i learned a lot about their advocacy advocacy for a lot of the things that came through in the governor's budget so very proud in my other life i work for anaheim elementary school district and i'm classified employee so i am a csea representative so i was happy to do that i attended a uh cpr training and this time it was actually in person with uh gasalpa and so they had all the staff come and do that and we learned um cpr from a firefighter and this firefighter's approach was uh very very very simple simple you know how you go through the program and then you you wonder afterwards how in the world can i remember all of this stuff well he really made common sense out of out of saving folks lives and taking us step by step and actually explaining really uh important things that that you you think you know about saving someone's life and you think you know about cpr but really made it um you know uh comprehensive and so um i am certified now to save everyone's life here um i attended uh our rop board meeting uh last night and uh they had uh really fun in service they always go all out uh rop does um and this year it was a 70s theme and so we had to think back about 70s of course you know i was a really little tiny child but um but they asked us questions about like our favorite tv shows and and things like that and they talked about all the things that happened um in the 70s but uh it's this it's their 50th anniversary so um their anniversary is in the 70s so uh it was a really fun time the board members are there for a couple of hours um and then they do their their in-service training very successful attended the white cap ceremony at magnolia high school celebrating our cyber security partnership with cypress college and got to view the the campus um part of the campus the the quad at magnolia and it's just beautiful and i know the kids yesterday when they saw that had to be just blown away and i value our partnership with cyprus [Music] i came to the teacher onboarding and although i had to leave i didn't get to hear the teacher speeches but i was there for a few minutes beforehand and greeted some of our our eager new hired teachers and i was really impressed that you guys gave them the same leadership advanced training so that was pretty pretty cool for them to um to get that on boarding and the leadership advance modeling the behavior that i know was demonstrated yesterday at our opening and i'm so grateful um i asked for that as a board member to really um really think and pull back from um you know uh this this idea that there was a learning loss and there was you know wasted time last year and all the negatives and for us to to focus on a care opening i mean our district is just um we're we're we're so compassionate and we really when we say we think about the kids we really honestly think about the kids um because it's not about the scores it's not about you know we're just talking about the realtor numbers it's not about that it's about our health and welfare and all of that all of the success comes after that when you take care of the of the needs of the students it'll it that will all come for them and we see that demonstrated tonight with our students and so i wholeheartedly think our leadership team for really envisioning that that that start of the new year with love and concern not only for our kids but for our staff so thank you so much for that and the best for last um as much as i love the the the grown-ups i got to meet with the ambassadors and spent i intended to go in there really quickly i kind of invited myself into a meeting but uh i stayed for a couple of hours uh dr cruz was there giving a presentation but boy do we have some amazing ambassadors this year they're gonna keep you all on your toes i promise you um and uh and i wanna publicly thank uh them they sent um they sent uh me a thank you card and i think they said oh you're here thank you thank you so much for the lovely card and the treat on the card i really appreciate it um but it just goes to show how how aware you are of what's happening in our district and i know you've got that onboarding there was a lot thrown at you but you were so eager to to learn and and boy did they have some tough questions for for dr chris i think she was only slated to be there 45 minutes and it was like a almost two hours that she stayed there um graciously because the students had question after question for her and i kind of interrupted and kind of asked i kind of said okay and there she go you know gave her kind of an exit strategy because they would you would have kept her there another another hour so but that was a great highlight of my couple of weeks so thank you for that and that's my report thank you mr o'neal thank you well i attended the the cyber security whitecap event at mongolia high school and uh seeing the changes that are going on there but what you didn't uh did you get back to see the the new tennis courts miss ronaldo freyjo you did oh they're fantastic beside the tennis courts but also the quad and it's it's uh wasn't quite finished when we had the ceremony but i'm sure the very end is going to be even more fantastic than it was that evening i attended a couple days of the leadership advance and that was uh very well put together and i think the message uh transcended itself as miss randall trejo said on opening day i was fortunate i got to nine schools uh on uh yesterday and i i saw in every classroom i went into and i went into a lot of classrooms that every teacher was was working with the students in getting to know the students and the students getting to know each other which is so great i even heard some teachers said don't worry we're you know we're not going to be hitting you with with assignments the first couple weeks we're going to get beginning to know you and and that's exactly that's a verbatim what they said and that was nice to hear um this the campuses are looking good the ones that i i got onto i really like the the number of shades that are out there um i'm looking forward to seeing the next nine campuses and see what kind of shades they have there and i asked some students i said how do you like the shades and a comment they said was the seats the black seats are hot they're too hot to sit on uh direct sunlight just beaten down and i felt it and i said oh i see what you mean they said can we paint them white i said well i will take that to the district because white reflects and and black absorbs okay is that the ones with the uh solar power it doesn't make any difference some are solar some are not but they're still black so that's a uh a request from from some students directly sitting on them but they also like the uh the ability to charge their their phones and and pads and whatever they had going on there so overall it was it was a great opening i i loved what i saw and look forward to getting back out in the few days and and seeing the rest of the campuses thank you all right well thank you uh yeah i visited uh anaheim high school i i think i don't know if i mentioned gilbert high school last uh one or not but i visited gilbert and then also sycamore i think my highlight was uh dale junior high i had i got to visit with the superintendent and man it looks like a actual campus and i was uh actually quoting about it yesterday at the rop meeting as well and i offered all the board members in the opportunity tour one of the brayer board members said well maybe i suggested maybe we take a picture and send it to their community and say this is what you could have if you have a bond so it was uh it was interesting but i i just i am just so happy for the students i was also i also visited the cva which is adjoining so that was nice to see i think the one part which i was very late with is the science classes where you could actually open up and bring up the tables and the chairs and do work outside i think that's amazing for our kids and then my my son enrolled in ymca swimming class i was so proud to take him to anaheim high school and i'm jumping in that pool and taking that first picture that was awesome to see him enjoy the pool community to enjoy the pool i think it's a great opportunity i know that they have only a few sessions there i'm sure we're going to build up to open up more sessions in that school rop 50th year and in service that was great to see there and then the rop meeting yesterday and then i also stopped by our new teacher recruitment or the presentation for them i was fortunate enough to say a few words but i was uh loving the fact that they were all very excited and then i was loving the fact that yesterday at anaheim high school in sycamore our students were elated to be on campus but our teachers they were so happy i think grant mentioned it during his remarks but truly the teachers were so happy to be back on campus uh and and doing what they loved doing right so that was nice to see that and nice to see you brad and then renee are a pio extraordinaire who actually takes pictures at every event she does a great job of actually talking about all our programs so thank you for doing that i know you do that besides what we do at pio and i'm so glad to hear that uh the fundraising efforts for our boosters are working out really well i know i spoke to an anaheim uh booster president who did the who ran the uh booth and he did mention that they did very well than any other years that they've had maybe it's the covet effect but hey welcome welcome for auhsd right so it's nice to see that they have 120 a 25k averaging but if i could get a breakdown of how anaheim high school uh divide up their funds through boosters i like to have that breakdown thank you i don't have a lot to report i've received calls from some parents whose children have started into our system and some who have been here and they just were elated about the condition of the schools the kids how happy they were to be on campus happy with the response uh the openness of the teachers and the principals and it was very gratifying to hear that and i happened to have uh was able to view the orange county department of education a three-hour meeting they had several weeks ago on critical race theory and um the first part of it was uh people could come and speak to the board as they do here and i could understand everything each one said and i thought that the community people spoke eloquently and it was understandable uh where their their feelings were coming from what they think is going on and then when it came to the five panelists the system i just don't think it was operating or it wasn't set up well but i couldn't understand what the panelists said and it was very frustrating because they were going giving us the viewer the listeners what their opinions were from their professional work life so i was very dissatisfied the fact that we were put to that for three hours and with no understanding fully of what was going on so they've said that there's going to be a second meeting i think it's the 23rd of this month or 28th and i'm going to try and see that too because this is an issue i think that's elevating in this country and it's not fully understood and i think it's being confused in people's minds what they think is being taught in this nation about these issues related to critical race theory and what we are teaching in our schools which is ethnic studies when i came on the board i think i'm telling you this accurately 24 years ago i was given information about all the different related items to this school district and when it came to languages it said we we had 72 languages and dr billings was our superintendent at the time and a wonderful woman and i called her and i was just i couldn't believe that so in a period of time i would say maybe a few years those languages were re-rethought and they changed the number for our school district to 55 and i happened to be in a closed session with the board over at the tiger woods center and we our purpose was to find to select a new superintendent so in the closed section session when it was just the board i made the comment about all these languages and there was a state superintendent i believe in south carolina or georgia who was speaking related to that on cnn and she was saying how across the nation they had to revise the languages that were taught because i think it's so unsettling to people at large how does education deal with this issue so it's changed over the years i've seen so many changes and i think it's always something that we have to deal with because we're dealing with human beings and our community is very very diverse and with so many different people from all over the world i live in west anaheim which it was would take in savannah and and dale brooker and brookers and magnolia and just in my community alone i've known throughout the decades that i've lived here i've known so many people that have come here from vast areas around the planet and it's made our country our community wonderful and we all get along so the other the issue i just wanted to say that when we get reports from the superintendent and the district about different items related to our schools we are getting the updates of what is going on with the bond and what patty neely is accomplishing with her team it just takes my breath away what that gal and those people have managed to do and when i came on this board i told the superintendent then i did not want my kids to go to school in this school district because the schools were in such terrible condition i walked over at magnolia and i said no and then i walked to savannah i said no and i could have put my kids into luera but i just thought no they're not going to go in this district today i would put my children in this district what mike and his team have done all i can tell you is i care deeply and love these people because they are ethical hard-working concerned americans and it's the essence of what makes us a country and i just want to say to all of you that are sitting out here thank you for what you do because i have seen the changes and they've gone from here from down here up there so end of speech okay okay the year is revving up i attended the orange county department of ed's uh ethnic studies colloquium also it was very interesting um that was a zoom program i went to the white cat ceremony at magnolia and that was delightful to see the campus and what these kids have accomplished in the four or five years we've had our cyber security program going we had a young man two young men who came back who are already working in tech you know cyber security and making good salaries with just a high school education and certificates earned i went to the week of welcome for the new teachers and counselors and whatever and i counted 126 because we had to add chairs and tables on the side of the thing that was really well done you know it was like i had the opportunity to speak to him i said you know when i started many moons ago teaching we didn't have week of welcome they gave me my keys and said good luck it's a different world okay um that was really good it was fun to meet a number of the new teachers and what have you and i i ran into another one i met at the week of welcome just coming in here because he's a teacher at south and i when i was coming in for the board meeting it's just really nice and then i went to the opening i attended the opening of schools task force which you know we have all these teachers that spend time every couple of weeks working together in on issues that are a daily concern for a lot of teachers i also went to the leadership advance and i participated in that and that was interesting and i tried not to give too much of my opinion but every time i you know i ended up giving it anyway i was trying to be just there to observe what the you know principles and assistant principles were doing but huh yeah yeah they got me okay then i went to an ambassador's meeting the ambassadors were meeting that same week as week of welcome and what a group of great kids you know of course i helped pick them yeah but that's because we had them i spent an entire day saturday from eight to five uh interviewing these kids which was great and i was at the river doing it you know so i couldn't even go outside i had to stay inside i enjoyed it because it's a great opportunity to meet some absolutely superb kids oh great bunch of kids and they got me talking and i gave them a little bit of history about the district oh and then i attended a pancake breakfast at cypress high school the first day of the teachers back to school that was fun i got to see a lot of the teachers and say hi and give them pancakes i'm in the cypress kiwanis so they had cypress kiwanis come and serve breakfast for the teachers it was really nice because they were able to meet outside in the quad there's all these seats now and shade and so they had their initial meeting out there so they didn't have to wear masks and they could eat breakfast then i went to the lexington seventh grade orientation that was on tuesday of this week and they did a really good program with the kids they had a meet in the in the gymnasium and then they split them up into two groups and had one group playing games while the other group went around the campus being led by asb students and that was uh it was interesting then i went around in and talked to a few of the teachers and got to see some of the classrooms and then cyprus i went to visit cyprus yesterday oh my heavens i was amazed i hid it at lunchtime oh a sea of kids oh it was great though i loved being in the middle of all these kids and walking around it was just and they were playing music and you know they had a thing going and it was really a nicely thing but it was just amazing how many kids are there they got almost 3 000 kids there and we were talking about that and it's sort of like okay nobody eats inside right what do we do if it rains slim chance but you know as we get into winter time you know let's hope we can relax that no eating inside you know because it might pose a problem okay um i visited oxford okay here's okay and then i have a a conundrum with that parking in the front okay i was flabbergasted because i went to pull up in front and it's all red it says buses only and drop off oh okay so then i went around back and i'm going well how do we get in this is the middle of the day yeah okay it's very difficult so i but i did find the one gate in the very back by the gym that had the pass so i could get in the side doesn't have it okay but then i caught then i walked in through the campus and i'm going to go to the main office and i i'm not there's no main office door the sign says this way so i'm finding the sign and it just leads me to to leave and i'm going okay so then i tried the work room door it didn't open then i tried the second workroom door and it opened so then i went in that way and i'm going how are you supposed to get into this school okay so i got i talked to the to the ladies in the in the office and i talked but i come to find out i guess part of the reason we can't park or have any green uh you know momentary parking is the fire department i guess says they need the whole space in case so it's not wide enough for parking but a lot of the parents don't pay attention to that because that's how you get into the main office but i mean i was ready to bring it up and say we've got to do something about that but i already talked to patty neely about changing that in the front she told me it cost a million dollars to get back to the parking we had before it was torn out and put grass in and i mean we're going to have to face this thing about all that grass that does nothing okay when it comes time to talk about water conservation you know whatever we need to go back to concrete and parking and and there's not a lot of parking at that so that's something for the future or another bond you know we'll get a better parking situation okay so much for that and then oh the robotics room beautiful now evidently they've had some problems because if kovid got interfered and they've got all that equipment sitting in there that has to be put together and it has to be done by the you know the company that they bought it from or another company that has the technological knowledge it's nothing our our our you know our guys can do so i was talking to the the teacher and he said you know with with what happened with covet and then you know lack of people you know coming out so that's an issue we may have to look into because they're it's going to cost them extra to have that those that equipment for the robotics put together is still in boxes in there but that's a great facility we have 68 million yeah 68 million it's it is super really nice and i love the bench out in front that's made out of the wood that is super and they got a lot of new oh that's the other thing the old benches you know lunch benches the tables they're sitting in a pile yeah at the east end and they're they haven't been picked up yet so we got to get a fire on that one you know get them you know so and then my last visit was this morning i went to lexington for coffee with the principal danny did a good job of going over over everything with the parents that were there and then they had about another hundred online plus what they had in in in the auditorium i mean the multi-purpose room and then i took the time after his coffee i went around and introduced myself to about eight new teachers and counselors and what have you because there are a number of them there that i had not had the opportunity to meet that are new since the time i was there and uh and a little bit of it was personal because i wanted to get to meet some of the teachers my grandson would have so because i have warned him i'm going to be around you know so you know i warned him if i know your teacher they know me they're not going to be upset if i want to sit in their classroom because they know me as anna not as a board member so but it was i have to tell you this it was cute oh this new teacher leo ramirez is a teaching social studies at lexington it's his first year here at you know in the district but i was impressed because i was standing outside of another teacher's room waiting for the beldering and he brought his class out and he was getting them lined up to take a picture and he knew all their names already and i'm going i was amazed because he's saying come over here you know that so then i i was really amazed and i said that is really neat i said it didn't take you any time at all to learn these kids names he said well he'd had him fill out cards and he said he tried to remember he said but he was having trouble on you know on pronouncing some of them but i was impressed that was really neat how and then he got them out there and he wanted to take a picture and then he was going to share the picture with them the next day so i thought that was pretty neat but then i did when i was i stayed talking with him it was quite interesting and then my grandson was supposed to be next door and i thought he'd run away from me but he didn't he saw me standing in the classroom and he stopped at the doorway and he just kind of gave me a grin and i went oh i had to go over and hug him and kiss him all right you better do good because grandma's going to be around oh so anyway that was my day at lexington this morning and then um did i go to another school lexington in oxford that was that was it today i was going to try to make it to orangeville but i was tired but it does i'm sorry there's no way i can make nine class schools in a day i talk too much i you know i i cannot go to lexington without talking at least two hours for three of my business what would you please let our teachers teach oh no no i'm not interfering with the teachers come on it's not unless they're on conference you know okay but i'm talking to them come on i gotta get to know everybody so so that was it okay moving on enough of that uh we're on to item 13 advanced planning future meeting meeting dates we will be meeting again on tuesday september 14th at 6 pm now i just noticed the tuesday is there uh do we know why we're meeting tuesday uh yes the um unordered actuals has to be presented to the board by september 15th of the year so we'll be bringing you the audit actuals okay for approval on on the 14th okay because of the audit okay very good thank you all righty so that will be our next meeting uh any suggested agenda items just a a question uh about when are we slated for an update on uh mental health do you have an idea well we had a double present um i think it was a month until two months ago we can have her present again if you'd like just uh maybe just if it's an update or yeah yeah just uh just i think what particularly would you want um i've had a friday update yeah yeah that's fine what particular information is pretty broad you know maybe uh the the actual numbers of students that we we service you know during during the summer and then and beyond uh during the pandemic um i don't read i don't remember i'm sorry if if that was presented but i don't remember that that being presented um okay well i try to get and if you think specifically what you want have them know okay all right anything else see none we will you know i have a motion for you got it second uh motion in a second for all in favor aye we will adjourn at 8 46.
i'm sorry may return on day 14. that's in green because that's what we were doing that was our protocol last year that was the standard protocol in the state that students who were quarantined were out for 14 days so what we've done with this is not only a mini group a much smaller group quarantining but also arranging for an opportunity for students to come back much earlier and so instead of missing these days of school one and a half year or two four days here and a day here they're missing three and a half instead of seven so this was uh these are things that have been changed over this past year and it's the protocol that was recommended by county health so county health came up with this or did we submit to them and they said this i submitted a protocol to them and they sent it back with many of these additions now they they were much more they were much more specific about these timelines than i was i was a little more i wasn't quite as specific as they were and i wasn't sure about the day eight uh guideline or the day 10 even for students who have covid because in their in the way the guidelines were written by cdc it talks mostly about people going back to work and though and the day eight was a thing for people to go back to work so county health is saying we can apply that same that same guideline to our children coming back to school as opposed to making them stay out the 14 days so actually that was a benefit to our kids because it got them back in school sooner and it's a choice you know the parents can choose to you know to have them come back with masks for the remaining days or or keep them out the 14 but it's a very small group and given that we have right now on the sixth day of school 18 students with covid and they are all in different classrooms so a year ago if this had happened we would have 18 classrooms on quarantine we don't we have depending on the classroom depending on where the child was sitting in the classroom you know two three four five kids on quarantine as opposed to 25 kids on quarantine from 18 classrooms and in a couple of cases we have teachers because they worked closely in a small group with the infected child i i understand dr stewart is put in a position because she's given direction by us right that first and foremost her direction is to take care of the safety of our kids and then you have to go by the recommendations of the guidelines recommendation by this and make a presentation to us so i totally get the position you're in and i really understand and i really want our kids in school you know to me this gave us some options to get kids back in school quicker and keep kids in school so you know this is a rock and a hard place for all of us right it truly is because we all i mean number one we all care about the safety of the kids that's why i wanted the numbers to see where we were because i feel when we when this first thing first came about 18 months ago whatever it was it was knee-jerk reaction what do we have to what's what's the worst possible scenario we ran with that because nobody knew but here we are 18 months later and then they're still saying oh well you may have exposed somebody so you might want to quarantine these kids best case scenario kid who's just sitting next to somebody's out for four days and they're missing four days of school and because they might be exposed the way that the disease is affecting these younger children not seeing the numbers now is there a situation where a kid can get really sick and unfortunately get you know you know mortality issues here absolutely but you have that in everyday life we have that everything we face i just feel very very passionately and very strongly that what we're giving up by protecting the maybes or what-ifs is costing us way more than that the numbers to me just don't just don't speak a quarantine to a maybe when i look at student c who you know who just missed seven eight days of school gets on the bus with another student a and then they miss another eight to ten days of school and then plays on the playground with another student a and they're going to miss half their school year and never be sick in the high school my kids you know they got exposed i three out of five of mine had covered last year my father-in-law passed away from copa this year and i i would still believe that the student with covid stays home and the rest of them use precautions in the classroom so one of my questions and because i was listening to everyone talking we talked about parents choice and i feel like at this point we've kind of taken away the parents choice to have their their non-sick child um stay in the classroom what if we moved from the three feet to a six feet of notification so we notify that if there's been an exposure within six feet of that child and allow those parents their choices i feel like sometimes we get really restrictive when we talk about what we are going to have them do we what did we do we uh closed out at the end in june or may with retiring the previous plan and that plan had masks as a requirement and we went to masks or encouraged or recommended for those especially that may be exposed or have an exposure at home or may need to reduce those those at home and i just feel like our our parents are being restricted once again on their choices um but if they're notified and they have the information in front of them and it's not just because then i just wonder where do we stop because we're with them three feet right here and we've been sitting here for an hour and a half already together um but i also work very closely with people at school i'm in your classroom i come through and man if you have to notify 1200 kids that you know mrs could have become contact with mrs amen um it'll be an empty campus so that's my concern is notification is wonderful i think that is a great step i think that's a great way to get that information to the parents but i still think that as a parent i do and should reserve a right to my child's choices and their education and we're not restricting um we're just taking away some of that that opportunity and i'm with i've been with jeannie her example's perfect that kid who was never sick never sick maybe even tested negative every single time has now lost out on their education because of this because of a recommendation of a protocol and i'm not opposed to calling the parent in every you know miss miss classroom today had a child with kobit you as a parent have a choice to keep your child home and quarantine for this many days parent choice 100 okay with with that and we do notify the other students in the class of possible exposure and amanda something you said triggered also some of the phone calls that i've had in the last uh three or four days um just for information for the board um i've had a handful of phone calls uh two of them were very much kind of in the same words that amanda just used in terms of choice and i said that i would certainly bring it to your attention because first of all there and those parents happen to be in favor of masking but they said if you know since we can't since we don't have that choice they wanted us to consider again the option of virtual school and we pretty much in june when we didn't know so much about delta and we didn't know some of these things in june um you know made decisions and moved forward with some things in june for that for this this whole plan uh but i said i would definitely share that with you and one parent was pretty adamant about the fact that we that folks who choose not to have mask their children she recognized that they have a choice to do that but that that process then she doesn't have the same uh option then of asking that her at-risk child have virtual school and um you know she said that's that's a balance you know and she should have an option just like that parent has an option but they do have an option for virtual school i had my child in a virtual school when public school wasn't working for him for a year and i agree with that but she wanted me to be sure options for virtual sure and they are public it's just not our district right and she just wanted and i and i agreed i didn't want to hide from you any of the things that parents have shared with me and uh and i said you know i would absolutely share with you her can you know her her choice and she said i want my child to stay in this district and um uh and it's an at-risk child you know a child who's at risk because of health things and family has risks so um uh at least then every voice is heard which i think is important all right do we have any other additions so can we bring back up where we're back to school um yes please yes i will do that thank you what i hear you saying is that um you would like maybe not so much changes on this document but changes in the protocol definitely right is that where we're at yeah i don't know does anybody want to continue with a quarantine of a non-ill child i do not okay so we understand that we don't want okay quarantine a non-ill child okay and i'll ask you to put that in motion if you would please in just a minute but the other thing i do want to call to your attention it just occurred to me i am not sure if that if that change will or will not have any any effect on our application for so3 funding i suspect it will not but i don't want us i don't want you to go into this blindly knowing that you know not knowing that there might be an effect on that on that thing because it did require that we have a back to school plan and which we do which we do and uh and protocols so um uh you know i'm and i'm not sure if what our protocol is i'm not sure that the details of our protocol the changing those would be enough to risk that but i don't want to i don't want you to go into it without knowing that's a possibility if we do run into a situation that please bring that back to our attention oh absolutely um but i i just can't see that um because we aren't meeting the requirements okay but if that is the situation we definitely will re-address that that at that time definitely um so thank you we will need a motion and so i would make the motion that we accept our back-to-school plan but the protocol will not quarantine healthy children right is that what we're doing did i miss that we that puts us in a position of us being medical people to determine that they're healthy so maybe what you want to say is that consideration of proposed revisions if we don't if we don't make the revisions well but the protocol is the protocol is the piece you're be you're able to discuss the protocol because it's part of the other plan does it give us page three i want to withdraw my motion first and then page three is you should have a copy it's in the protocol so the protocol is with the the protocol is not specified in the back to school plan but exactly but the protocol is the methodology that we use to conduct the back-to-school plan uh and it's how we carry it out so um so where is it at on here so i don't know my paperwork online uh it wasn't online but i did put the protocol on your desk i have extras here genie it's good cause i obviously don't have it and if i missed it's because i'm not kim under the return to plant school protocol for quarantine students and this looks like third says students who have been quarantined due to exposure to covet 19 may res return if they meet all the following it would be part of that so we just want to take that out we are not going to quarantine due to exposure due to exposure we will be following the quarantine um for those that have tested i just want what i hear you saying is drop the third section that starts with return to school protocol for quarantined students not all of it just the section of students who have been quarantined due to the exposure coven 19 may return the exposure part i think we might need to look up this policy gbgcb um what does it have take reasonable and lawful measures to protect the staff members of communicable diseases that's the quote right out of them yeah that's that one talked about being allowed to quarantine a whole classroom without okay give me a second i'll get it no that's okay we'll get it one of the nice things about technology gb gcb this is about staff um i mean this one this particular one is about staff if it's in section g there should be a similar section in right authorized to take a reasonable and lawful measure right and there's a similar policy under students let me see if i can find that one they are and and i was careful to look up all of you know all of those references do we do all call like the high school does if there's a no no we don't do all call we protect students privacy we do that and we send a written notice as well the screen is making it difficult for me to find [Music] jl has to do with student wellness and it focuses a lot on nutrition and physical fitness and those kinds of things when she brought up his i know she brought up the one that's g policy gb gcc authorizes superintendent reasonable and often yes yeah and that's the basis on which i've proposed any of these things to you all in the last 18 a full classroom months didn't know if that was the same one that was in that was in last year's uh return to school plan that you gave me permission to do that um i'm sorry if i overstepped by trying to withdraw you know draw that back to a handful instead of a class but i thought that was logical especially since that was the recommendation from the county and please understand i'm not interested in us doing things to close the schools you know that was that was horrible last year we're trying to do everything we can to keep our kids and our staff uh in school and particularly our 12 and unders because of the they can't you know they can't vaccinate yeah a lot of a lot of the wording in the new uh in the back to school plan instead of the word shall has the word may and uh in those sections that i highlighted that i was asking you to approve adding you know we don't have masking we know we can't but if at some point somebody says okay you you could or should i didn't want us to have to come back and change it i wanted us to be able to just roll with it without having to have special meetings and those kinds of things so you'll notice there's not much of the shoulds and showers there's a lot of maze so that way if we get mandated again we're covered but in the protocol so i'm uh okay so some of the discussion that um trying to just edit to make it flow would be keeping the return to school protocol for quarantine students and if we say students who have been quarantined due to exposure to coven 19 shall will may whichever word you'd like to use be notified and recommended to self-isolate and be evaluated by a health care provider if they experience symptoms consistent with covenant 19.
so he was saying it was lower um but this is based on the number that was in the proposal from colliers that we got from the smc okay thank you thank you ann yes please jim thank you for bringing this up i think it's really important because we have been hearing a lot of support for a six through eight middle school for various reasons and i just really want to say i also appreciate your efforts and going out there and and trying to problem solve another another scenario that um is intriguing uh so i just have a simple question that i'd like you to answer just very as simply as you can um what do you think is the biggest benefit and the biggest detriment of your proposal over the new six through eight middle school over the news you mean over the like a single six to eight minutes yes well the i mean the reason why a big reason why i'm suggesting we obviously got the two schools it has to do with the uh the what we kept hearing as far as the uh the challenge of the the size of one school um so um you know i guess having the the two schools um was is the biggest benefit i suppose uh i mean obviously there's a significant cost difference as well um at least in terms of the upfront uh capital costs um you know i i'm not sure as far as what the biggest detriment is i mean it sounds coming from from what dr solon says it sounds like that that's you know the ongoing operational cost of probably what the the biggest detriment is as well i just don't know what those costs are exactly um so another way to put that might be what do you think is the biggest benefit of the scenario 2a yeah i mean the biggest benefit of the singer 2a is i think is is having a single having a single middle school um that is i mean the the reasons for my falls are similar to the reasons for scenario 2a you have you know we're addressing the short-term uh the short-term population bubble we have coming and still having flexibility down the road you know a big one of the biggest concerns i have and why i tried to manufacture another scenario was because i had this concern i'm sure other people do as well as far as how big our elementary schools are going to be when we're done when they're going to be you know chapman the new chapman based on the current preferred scenario is going to be 653 students which by the way is 104 larger than our current chapter the new norton would be like 40 or 50 bigger than the current norton new doolittle is going to be i think it said six well it says 612 students in the colliers report that we put together and the capacity of doolittle right now is 606 students so it's going to be bigger than highland is also going to be near 800 students so we have um we're supposedly trying to address a population issue where in very near future we're probably going to be having that same population issue which so if we get to the point where at the end of the decade again where we have to maybe add on to those elementary schools again and make them even bigger is the state going to reimburse that since they're so big um are we we're going to be trying to do that and still have not touched the middle school still not touched the high school and i also just think that i mean the community prefers smaller neighborhood schools and i just don't see that i just don't see it i don't think it's going to pass and we don't have time to be failing for the wrong project when we're trying to get to the right project um you know so i just i really think we need to think hard about the size that these elementary schools are going to be um and it's they just don't leave us a lot of flexibility down the road thank you so much jim thank you man any other board members adam yes hi jim um thanks for this plan it's a very interesting and unique um i'm just curious as to why you chose to phase uh the second part the renovation of dot into phase two when you're when we would be expanding you know we would be transitioning from the uh k through six through k through five model and then building a smaller six through eight brand new school and potentially not being able to renovate a uh dodd and so you'd be cramming in a sixth grade into a school that already you know potentially has some deficits already and adding an additional grade um i know the population would drop but um i was just kind of wondering what were your thoughts on why you were phasing it that way is it just cost rather than have it all in the first place yeah i mean yeah i think that the um you know we we want to have i think we want to have an initial project that gets gets us a long way down the road um but is also reasonable cost-wise i mean this is even at 75 million it's the largest project largest referendum that the town will have i think will have ever approved so um knock on wood so it's it's a significant project that's you know if you were to do obviously if you're to do the renovation of god at the same time then you're you know you're you're pushing up to the same cost as the scenario 2a at that point um and it seems pretty clear that that's a cost that you know council seems unlikely to move forward with right um and and how would you envision the casatorno campus to be arranged because we know that there are some constraints there in that property if you had a second building did you have any thoughts of that or is it just like your no i mean it's i think the property is is we've looked at it for uh a you know a 1200 student middle school so presumably we could fit um a thousand or so students on that property um but as far as the design you know that's that's well down the road right but i mean you you're envisioning some sort of sharing of field use and that sort of thing i would think so yeah i mean i think that the the property would probably demand that uh it's it's not that big um but uh and i would think that there would be some some savings in in constructing the two buildings in the same lot and having some shared uh parking and and um and field usage i i would hope that that would be a savings there okay thank you sure oh i'm the last one thank you jim and and just folks like they reach out to jim you know as soon as he talked to jeff and yeah you know invited him to come out and talk to us because he put a lot of work into this and i do appreciate the different take you put on this in fact uh you're trying to solve not just the cost but you know you're trying to get around that 1200 student uh population at the middle new middle school it's narrow 2a which no cgr is going to give us a lot of issues with as they told us a number of times what i don't like is that there's two six to eight schools and that poses a lot of overhead for us and for the administration in fact i'll tell you after you get that presentation the other night i get emails from teachers saying please don't do two sixth grade middle schools if you're gonna do it do one um but i love the fact that you're looking at the constitutional property in different light because my concern is not which scenario gets gets passed six or two ables they're both great options and don't detriment our kids whatsoever it's just that if we have one large property at 30 acres and we put a small monthly school there and in the future as you said if we do run into our own problem norton because that has not been proven by colliers yet in their moment study where do we put that new building if we need it we're kind of locked into a big piece parcel with you know no space to grow so i like the campus approach idea um i i think we're better served if we really want to push a sixth trade middle school i i think i would ask you to take that same analysis and try to get clever with the cost savings in scenario 2a one of the things that gets lost has gotten lost in this process and man we could spend days talking about the history of this stuff but in 2016 we looked at this and the board of ed not only chose to move forward to sixth grade middle school that was the only option scenario ever discussed was you do sixth straight middle school you're running all the other schools as is so they didn't push it forward just for the education value it was the fact that it acted as a swing space so that for example and you have to think in the con in the context of the entire long-term plan all the schools all the schools need work it's it's evident the plan we've been through that i know you see you're trying this a lot of buildings so the idea was if you did a new sixth grade middle school then if you have to run into highland of doolittle uh chapman maybe even parts of chs we can move those kids to a swing space renovate the school faster than if they were in school and get that project done sooner and i remember asking colliers you know informally you know what was a time saving something like that you know off the cup it would be like hey if you were going to do that yeah it's quicker if the kids are not in school you're probably shaving maybe four or six months off the timeline debatable costs we don't know but there's i think there's an angle at this scenario 2a and i would like to see the town council look at that scenario uh after six is finished with the analysis is is there any value any cost savings to that what i just said about using the swing space tools that might be something that falls into whatever could be afforded and probably get that done i don't know but i think i like how you broke this down i also like the fact that you're looking at the other town buildings because throughout the modernization committee meetings in fact even in 2015-16 we always talk about what happens to parks and rec if we can we use that space for something for cheshire high school expansion if we were to do that where would that go um but i i think there's a there's a lot of good here i think there's a lot of challenges in here too i i don't know i'm not sure what to do with it um i want to do something i mean yeah we we talked a lot in the smc process about how how the dodd would make for great swing space i mean it made it makes total sense um because the uh you know something that that parents i don't think you're necessarily thinking about and and um you know as this goes on there's a lot of disruption going to be a lot of disruption with the new construction and that's you know what is that going to do to learning environments and what is that going to do to uh just the the experience for everybody and it it's going to lengthen the whole process that's going to and i know colliers had made a lot of um you know they said they can kind of section off buildings and work on one part with but our schools are so small now it's i i i struggle to see how that's going to really work really well um renovating as they're occupying the space but um i agree so um you know but we're i don't know we're not we're not talking about these things anymore until now and it's it's it's a little bit concerning to me that we're we're kind of moving so far down the road and in scenario six um and again uh not really thinking about things beyond the next decade and obviously well see jim i gotta disagree with you on that i mean it's concerning for you but you know and i mean there's an all sincerest you don't serve on the board of ed and you haven't been here as long as ann and catherine and myself have so the board members and this goes back a long time this this started for me in 2010 when we were it's a town debating when i do a turf field and over the course of those few years between 2010 2013 through all these piecemeal projects are popping up right there's a turf field there was a boy's locker room with the high school there's debates about the field house and was never a long-term thing so it i i can't say that anybody that's worked on this effort uh it's not about a short-term solution these two plans are long-term they're long-term every scenario six options down to two uh we've had many discussions debates over the years i think too much focus is my personal opinions being put on the sixth grade middle school and now looking at the big picture i think you're trying to do that that's important because the worst thing we can do regardless what option moves forward is we put all our eggs in one basket in one phase a partial phase and we build either two elementary schools or one through six middle school and we do nothing else we just left every other school building in worse shape that we can't get to i don't want to be i know the board feels the same way too we don't be constrained financially that you know we we do one or two buildings we can't address the rest until the money's freed up so i i you know again and uh so i again i i love this i i just i don't know what to do with it you know especially if our administrators are you know concerned about the two sixth grade middle school operation or where the city emphasis put on 2a if that's the direction if the town council gets that scenario but i don't unless they had is there anything else from up here so i'm not sure what to tell you i was like i i wasn't expecting an up or down vote don't worry about it no i know i i just want i i i there's just something here i know that we can build upon i i'm just trying to figure out what that is and but i just want to make sure you had a chance to talk to the board members directly because you know not everyone was at the town council meeting last week and sometimes you know things get lost in translation and paper but now that we have this and we're gonna chew through it further so probably reach out to you for questions for sure okay yeah just like i said i just want us all to kind of work toward a a proposal that's going to be successful so do we referendum first first time out yeah um yeah but we can't get through all the analysis completed though so i know town council's working the financial side of things right and uh and i don't even know yet if any of these numbers even your 75.5 million in your scenario if that were you know gonna happen is you know is that something the town can afford i think we're gonna begin to go to town council last week of august i didn't speak to chairman ours this morning he's gonna try to get a meeting together that week so uh so town council can hear from board members dr solomon the feedback and hopefully when we have test fits have a better idea i hope you know i want to pressure town council but it's kind of hard for us to even do a survey at this point because when we did the other survey while folks were very uh behind doing something it's how much what am i getting right and what's it worth to me and we don't we don't quite have those three variables yet so we need that if we're gonna have a successful referendum so but we'll be there last week august with some more dialogue okay thanks guys thank you thank you jim have a good night thanks for sticking out sure there are no other standing committees we have up next is approval of minutes in our packets we have minutes from meetings how june 3rd june 10th june 23rd and june 30th uh do members have any changes to those meetings or updates tim none nobody has any would someone like to make a motion then andrew move that the board of education improve with minutes from meetings held on june 3rd june 10th june 23rd and june 30th is there a second 10 seconds all in favor be unanimous thank you board correspondence uh we do have a lot of correspondence not all of it was asked me right into record uh however um i do have of course my pc is freezing up on me i do have a few letters i will try to read in their entirety i'll paraphrase where i can and by the way the the entire contents of these emails will be in the minutes how can i lose mr paddles packet thank you so uh i know mr papado's not here but he was kind enough to send us an email today and also give us a print out by the way this entire letter will be in the pack i'm not going to read through all of it but uh his email uh pretty much if he weren't attention earlier summarizes uh his family's thoughts on the mass effectiveness and why they're ineffective and the ways that they harm he cites several references including a 1950s paper on anthrax that show the bacterial spore count you know again very thorough analysis on his part um you know essentially it comes down to you know they were like parents choice um at least give them the option of having their kid not wearing or not wear masking in class we saw earlier and again i can't read all this into the record tonight but it will be in our minutes tonight so please look out for if you have one for more information mr brocado and olympia and especially your daughter thank you for being here tonight and i'm not here right now to see this but i also have we really have a lot of emails it's uh it's interesting and while i look up the next one from mandy sweet she had asked uh her letter to be read tonight as well uh mr piragini uh this is manny sweet i'm writing to request our children have the option to wear not wear a mask regardless of their vaccination status that is the only way to appease all parents of the cheshire school district uh she goes on to cite the alarming evidence she's found that make madison effective she's also included linked in the email that contains all the actual peer-reviewed researchers able to find she had summarized that she will not spend another dollar on a face diaper that promotes bacterial growth putting a child a risk of infection uh you do not pay for medical bills until you do you have zero authority to force my child to do anything i birthed to them i raised them he is my child and i'll make any and all medical decisions for him thank you mandy sweet thank you mandy and this entire letter will be in the record we also have kristen d francisco who's the other one i believe carol yeah one second i got it at least the wi-fi is working time uh i'll summarize this as well miss miss stefan d francisco emailed the board a few times and and had some responses by dr sullin but she isn't strong this agreement to wear the mask to children's school this should be the parents choice not the school's choice she states that the children are not state's property or nor are they schools property she cites several references in email she includes several points on research and science that's proven some of her points here on cover 19.
in those rooms itself we do have temporary units or window shakers or window units in those rooms we provide additional air purifiers so um so those room would get two air purifiers and if they're larger rules we could we would consider um adding additional ones um we also provide fans for this room so they can circulate the air in those room much more efficiently and so those are some of the measures that we've added to some of the rooms that doesn't have the merv 13.
so change the the should to me should immediately be notified and recommended too okay i mean the recommendation is still there we're not forcing we're not requiring okay and then um students who test positive for copa19 should follow isolation guidance that's that's fine and then i was thinking that if we did students who choose to quarantine due to exposure to copen 19 may follow the following criteria and then you have your criteria listed that's going to make it really hard to to manage they don't have to quarantine okay but if the parent says if the parent says they're quarantining then we apply that is that what you're saying you're saying what i'm saying is if they choose to quarantine right maybe it should just say if you choose to quarantine here are the following recommendations okay and that's fine because it's the same thing because if they choose to quarantine this gives them an idea if i was a parent who is not looking up all this stuff and i get a phone call and i choose to keep my child home i would love this gives me a nice little step-by-step guide for a recommendation but it's not required so if i look at that and my kid after four days has not now they're they're full of energy they're symptom free oh man they need to be in school i choose that that's my choice i don't have to follow all of them it's just a recommended criteria for them okay i was just trying to are you done with that we can pass it down because you've got the writings right on it that would be helpful to me thank you excellent all right so then we will need a motion to adopt the protocol the new protocol as submitted i will make that motion and please state that it's part of because we don't want to get in trouble for it not being agendized by itself it is part of the plan the protocol for our return to school plan for the fiscal year 2021-22 thank you okay so can we have a second second all in favor aye corey burgess aye cheney borland i am in amen so moved all right uh item 5.1 annual single audit approval dr stewart okay let me get back to our things okay the single audit i'm not going to pull it up because it's all those numbers and things but then recent legislature passed uh passed a bill that says that we have to formally uh present this as a an agendaized item and for your approval we have addressed the recommendations from from the auditors we've addressed all of them there were 11 and we've addressed all we actually got a notice from the auditor general's office they only cited us for one of the items and it had already been addressed i sent them a statement and they responded that that was acceptable so of the 11 recommendations only one was cited by the ag's office and it's already been approved all right and can we have a motion to approve item 5.1 make a motion we approve 5.1 all second all in favor aye corey burgess hi jenny borland i'm amanda eamon so moved item 5.2 candidates to complete the term for brandy dubois dr stewart mr president and board members i think our folks who are interested are here in case you want to ask them questions or have them come up and introduce themselves you have in front of you we did not publish publicly the their letters but you have their letters and uh it's your pleasure would you like to hear from each did you want but um dr stewart should have received an email from grace she messaged me stating there was a big family emergency so hopefully everything is okay so because she's not here yes okay and it must have been recent because she acknowledged this morning so i'm sorry to hear that that's uh the first one on my list uh let's we're gonna go through with the other three of you that are here uh the first one on my list is anna boyd it's a nice way for the public to get to know who you are right too what would you like me to say um first just tell us who you are where you're from and why you'd like to be on the board okay um i'm anna boyd i'm originally from miami florida but i've been here for over 20 years i'm a teacher at mojave high school why i would like to be on the board is well one i would like to to have the experience as well i'm a big like to learn and get the inner workings of things a little bit better but also to have a place and a purpose with helping with the elementary district and seeing how i can take my knowledge and expertise in education and the fact that i do have kids in the elementary district and apply them to you guys and of course i have a degree in mathematics which helps with numbers so things like that you're right so that's about the gist of it all right did anyone have any questions nope all right thank you thank you thanks theresa dembek teresque i apologize i am used to it my name is teresa dembeck and um the reason i'm interested in feeling it is as apparent with a child in elementary school i would also like to learn more about the inner workings of how things work i would like to help in giving our children the best learning environment and the best learning opportunities by being becoming involved in the process that's used to to do that i am well my family moved here to bullhead in 1991 i graduated from mohave high school i graduated from mohave community college and then i moved away to further my career and then i moved back and i've been back since 2000.
she references cdc about the k-12 monterey rate what code is point zero zero zero three percent among children uh she lists uh a report that she found that has five to six mass contained dangerous pathogens it's very thorough uh and in that sense she does not support the mask she also supports parents choice uh she's respectfully christian d francisco thank you kristen uh and thank you for your free correspondence that will be in our minutes the other thing i i didn't get i just want to before i wrap up correspondence uh normally captain helen our board of secretary would do that she couldn't be here tonight so if i don't sound like her that's why i was i'm doing it um what i couldn't say earlier i thought this earlier in the conversation with our folks that were here um we received a lot of emails to cbs covert 19 from parents that are on the other side of the argument where they do want masks in school they do want their kids to be safe i don't know if we're going to be able to go through those emails tonight jeff maybe we can summarize them for the next meeting but one that i want to point out earlier uh again i just skipped my mind uh i think we're all a little emotional and exhausted earlier is that in addition to folks that showed up tonight there are a lot of parents out there that we also heard from that are asking us please follow the science follow the data follow your trusted authorities locally keep the masks in place until it's safe to to take them off otherwise and there's a lot of those out there and by no means am i trying to pit one against the other um but you know unfortunately those folks did not come out tonight for various reasons but we've been hearing from them too and uh you know we'll summarize some of those emails at the next meeting uh all right so as just on the topic bear with us we're trying to balance the safe needs of our students with the flexibility of parents that they make for choices for their kids it's a tough one but we do trust our our administration and our superintendent and our local health director to guide us down the right path with data and science but we will continue to hear your voices and continue to try to find some solution to this uh that being said that's the other correspondence yes point of order could i um make a motion to extend the meeting to 11 15.
in terms of staffing let me start off with cns first uh cns you know i think it's it's a challenge all across the board in terms of having [Music] enough staff or or hiring there's a lot of shortage in labor right now um but i do have to commend our teamsters units um because in just one sitting they were able to agree uh for us to offer uh additional hours to the current staff to help prep those um those individual bags for foods to be delivered to students um and we were able to do that in one sitting so i do want to thank the teamsters unit uh for always working with us and getting things done in terms of custodians we just recently had a job fair this past weekend and i believe the the results were were helpful and we are working with our mlt department um to get any additional staff in terms of custodians um to be able to support the additional efforts that needs to happen at the school site this did i miss anything uh trustee berhana thank you mr chang any other trustees um any questions comments or concerns all right i'm seeing that uh just reiterate you know i know it's hard times for us all us all um and i want to shout out to to all the staff you know all the staff from those that are assisting to putting up the water stations to the teachers to adjusting i know how frustrating it is i work at the emergency operations center and it feels like we set up at the end of the day and the next morning all of it's turned upside down and we got to start fresh so i know that feeling it's frustrating um it's tough uh and you know it's just it's not easy um and then you know to also have the direction from an another entity from you know state um bringing out new announcements you know on a weekly basis on a daily basis it feels like and so um just sending you know uh round of applause to you all um to administration you know to my peers who we kind of we see here you know and we hear the frustration and we are with you all and we understand you know and and and just getting it from all areas and doing our best to continue to provide not just the best education but ensure that it's you know in a healthy way um and that we're all taking care of of one another um so with that um if i don't see any others i'll go ahead and move on to our five minute bio break it's 808 we'll see you back here at let's say 8 14. thank you all right i know we're gonna slowly be trickling back in so i said 8 14 to hopefully start by 8 15.