Reader
Browse passages, annotate evidence, and export with full provenance for citation.
you're in the show the broadcast is live okay now seeing the presence of a quorum um i'll call to order the budget subcommittee of the regional amherst helen regional school committee when i say your name please respond that you're present heather lord president kerry president allison present oh so question since you're not actually on the committee should i be asking you if you're present does anybody know okay well i just did um it's okay all right um and stance are present uh so uh dr slaughter sent us an agenda and the first order of business is to approve minutes if i only had gotten them done so i was hoping to find my notes from the last time we met which was back in january and i didn't get a chance to do that so we don't have any minutes sorry okay that's okay um we will move on to public comment and i have received no public comment so i think we'll move right along to the next item which is new and continuing business and the first item there is the fiscal year 20 audit review and we received documents from dr slaughter and i am going to turn the next section over to him okay so this is the fiscal 20 audit which just to make sure everybody's that's the fiscal year ending june 30 2020 which is now more than a year ago um uh traditionally this is you would have this kind of review kind of uh december january probably um usually the audit is done in the late fall and early winter and then we have uh the the report uh ready by by january so um with last year being what it was that all got delayed um and so that's why we're doing this as late as we are um so it'll be interesting because we'll do it and then basically turn around and do it all again really really soon and from my office standpoint we've finished supplying things to the auditors and then we're going to basically turn around in about six or seven weeks and do it all again if not sooner so it uh they'll kind of come back to back in that regard so just to sort of take you through the three documents that i sent to you they're really sort of three pieces there one is a really short one which has to do with the um review of the end of year report so the auditors take a look at the interview report that we do with the state and they look for anything that looks off uh relative to uh your the other financial information they're looking at they found a couple of things so that's what those findings are um one of which i actually is one i discovered when they were asking for things and i was looking for that information and looking at what i had reported to the to the state and actually kind of simultaneously discovered they would have found it immediately as well and recognized that i uh needed to to alter uh one of the entries and then uh there was a subsequent one that that they also notice and mostly is having to do with the fact that um this is my first time through this and it's quite the process to say the least um they weren't huge they were not ones that were um you know sort of materially worries them i think it would be the best way to describe it they they were ones where we wanted to make a correction and the state does allow us to make corrections to our submitted report um a rather extended period of time but nonetheless the corrections were made and so that's uh the two findings that they had were ones that that we corrected without without issue um and i think the other thing that it states there and one of the things i'll note about all three of those is that the the otters spend a fair amount of time talking about what they do and what they don't do they're very very clear about the things that they can't determine and i think part of the reason they do that is because i think people have an expectation that an audit is that they go through every single transaction and it's not the case they sample our data um and you know test uh to a level of degree that that they consider is sufficient to make a determination about how we how we're doing our business so so even with the interview reports the same sort of thing they're doing a uh a review of some uh probably the interview report they're probably a little more extensive because it's it's not quite as lengthy to look through that as as the other parts of the financials um so they talk about what they can and can't do what they are or are not going to do or can make statements about or not make statements about but i think the key things you want to look you know sort of be aware of are the phrases um whether the uh when they consider the the opinion to be modified or unmodified and what that really says is that when they looked at the financial statements we gave them and they put it together if if they have to modify those to represent our financial picture accurately that's a much more problematic it's not you know unheard of or anything like that but it's always better to have an unmodified opinion which means that they look through the financials and how they were structured what they said to you know to them and to the public at large is that that's a true picture of what what what happened with your finances in in fiscal 20.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um just as a reminder for everyone that is here there is a statewide mass mandate so we are in this school building it's required that we follow this law so i'm asking anyone who does not have their mask on currently and does not have a medical exemption to please put those on right now if you do not have one we have them up here for you um but um okay [Music] agenda that public comment would be by sign up only i do see that there are quite a number of people signed up so actually at this time i'd like to make a motion to move the public comment portion of meeting until after new business we have a number of guests here tonight that are in their 12-13 power of work and so in respect of their time we'd like to get the business all right moving just like to welcome ben a senior ben bogus doing a great job really proud of him making it all the way to senior year and he's going to be with us at the student representative actually ben because of the setup tonight turn around and wave hi to the camera so you can say hi mom make sure very important and i'll give you an advanced thank you and advanced congratulations on your first report go for it for tonight i don't have too much to talk about but just kind of report on how the school year has started off for the high school so i live here counselor i've gotten to walk around the building and help a lot of students to their classes and just from that i've seen that compared to past years a lot of students are like a lot more familiar with the building right away than they would normally be which is interesting but um it's kind of like walk up to a student they need some help you ask them for some help or if they need some help and give you help and then for the most part they become independent right from there so it's interesting it's interesting to see like that um i'm definitely happy with that we have a lot of the clubs that are going to be starting up again we'll get to meet after school right at the school so that'll be nice um the next item is written correspondence um issues thank you um the next item is exactly okay thank you rosa thanks everyone welcome uh this evening to everybody here tonight uh really an exciting time for the first day of school um just uh yesterday really really went well um the first people i want to thank uh is our brookfield police department they were fantastic in terms of being managing traffic and giving us a hand with everything in the buses and with dan very having a kindergarten center over at st joe's at the extra traffic over there that really really helped us out with construction and the like and still going around in town can't thank him not from chief purcell and major crazy and then of course our teachers administrators nurses custodians uh maintenance secretaries paris everybody really pulled together it's been it was really nice to see in comparison to the nerves of last year the energy and excitement in the building of the staff and the kids followed suit um i had to thank the parents um the kids are fired up they're excited as ben was talking about um i know joy as freshmen you know and the kids finding their way around the high school and some of the bigger schools and they're just doing a great job so that's the first thing really excited and thank everybody for a great first couple of days the other piece is one to let everybody know today was the first day for kindergarten first grade yesterday at center school kindergarten today and then tomorrow three days so we'll have a full compliment tomorrow at center school our welcome back convocation was held on monday to bring the staff back together mr buckley our district teacher of the year did a great job with his um with his message to the staff we also showed a video i showed a video called fish philosophy centered on some of the work at the pikes place fish market in washington uh seattle washington uh when some of the practices that go along with that building uh climate morale especially in the times we're in right now we've been really well received by the staff we also had our principals introduce all the new staff it was exciting to see all the new faces and everybody excited to get going i'd like to congratulate mr post uh our business director ken submitted the year-end uh educational finance system uh submission i know our finance committee gets very excited about that that was all submitted today and we received no red flags when it went through the first time so that was actually really exciting uh in addition to that um i shared an award late last week we received approval of the 828 thousand dollar federal grant for the ark esser funding and some of the things that we're finding in this school year summer school intervention supports chromebooks for the students and the tech integration specialists so we're really excited about that full approval of that grant now for the next three years uh kindergarten enrollment we are right where we were talking about two weeks ago as a matter of fact with all the ebbs and flows uh mrs diamond shared with me at 4 40 this afternoon that we are down two students in kindergarten from 179 to 177 at as a 440 today and down one student in first grade 167 and 166 so really managing and watching those numbers closely um a reminder for the board a big meeting on the 15th where the principals will come and share their opening week reports and introduce all of the new faculty in district that we introduced at next time is the board meeting and then let's see i did want to add that we are we have a memo on the executive order from the governor uh 13d about the covered workers which board of ed employees fall under um and so we're working on the collection of vaccination status and if there's exemptions and the testing protocols and all that so we're working with our staff on that uh over a third responded within 24 hours to the survey and that was on the first day of school so they're really responding and they're being very responsible and we appreciate the staff on that and then the final piece is um i invited um if there's no other questions for me i want to let everybody know invited dr garcia if any of the board had any questions regarding safety opening of school and you know he's a resource for us he's a consulting medical advisor he's a pediatrician in town um so i invited him to come to the podium if any of the board members had any questions um i wanted to talk to him about some of the follow-ups from last time you can do that thank you um the informational portion of the meeting um we're not here to make any decisions there is no decisions we may have already asked but because of all the public comment we've received and some of the interests in this particular topic we wanted to invite dr garcia to answer any of our clarifying questions that any of the board members might have so would anybody like to start so thank you for coming you're welcome uh i'd like to start first with a more environmental a discussion about what's going on in brookfield um last time you and dr sullivan came we were at a very low point in terms of our infection rate and i've been watching the weekly reports and had gone up steadily in terms of what you're seeing on the ground and could you just describe a little bit about where are we in terms of infections and in particular as a pediatrician you know the kids right what are we seeing with kids in birth i want to be very specific to vocal not the national like i think we have to make decisions about what's happening here [Music] so i'm gonna start with the office we can test we have a pcr test machine in the office all of the kids who are sick who come in with possible coping symptoms are tested we have had very few positives um and i was looking at today's numbers i don't have anything in particular about in particular but [Music] that my reference is covetacnow.org and there's a website that um numbers so [Music] the total new cases in fairfield county was about 17 new cases for 100k so according to the levels of community transmission [Music] put out by the cdc that is a moderate which means that the total new cases per 100k is between 10 and 49.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
uh evening everyone welcome to our school reorganization uh team meeting it's been a long time i missed you guys uh it's been a long time since i've seen some of you so welcome back and uh thank you for uh being here with us if i could just do a quick summary of where we have been thus far and what lies ahead of us uh tonight um at our last meeting it was decided that this team wanted uh to wait until they saw data from the staff survey and from the community parent survey as well we also per request also shared with you student survey data as well [Music] and so that was sent to you via email to your inboxes again to help fulfill that request that we had at our last meeting the consensus was that after looking at that we would be prepared and ready as a team to move the process over to the board of education a lot of you spoke about your your thoughts around that uh about you know moving it forward and um you know doing doing the work that you had done uh because we are literally months away from uh celebrating our one year anniversary almost uh so we've been together for uh for quite a bit um again i always say and i'm gonna say it again one more time this is your process and and i'm we're just facilitating you along the way uh but i want to start off by uh just asking a couple of questions just to get your mindset uh here um and so that we know we know how we're going to do today and so just trying to to wrap wrap my head around that to make sure and ensure that that we're being transparent that we're being open and that all of us in the room understand what happens next so as you know today at least in my head based on what has been happening in this team uh there will be a vote today uh for model three or for model four is my understanding of what what's gonna happen tonight but before we get to that uh there are there are some some things that i would like to put up for consideration and if these are not things that we that are not if they're not necessary then awesome just tell me they're not necessary and we'll move on but here here's the things that are swirling in my head and as your facilitator i'm just thinking about them now prior to voting so that we can kind of be in the same mind set so for example my first question would be or am i wondering maybe that's a better way of putting it is the is the desire from the people on this team to send one recommendation to the board or is the desire we have gone as far as we can go we're going to send them two models and you are going to just give them the data from tonight so we're going to take two mod like we're going to say here's a two models board the school reorganization team 45 70 30 and so it's not really a recommendation it's just we've narrowed it down to two this is the best that we can do and here is our data as a team very different than the first question right which is no this team's desire is to have one recommendation right so i'm wondering if there is a preference or a desire or a strong opinion about that piece right there and the reason i ask is because if it's if it's option two like hey we we've been together for a long time we've we've gone back and forth and at this point in time let's just send the two models send it with the data and again celebrate what we have been able to accomplish if that's if that's the opinion then again all right let's let's move on but if there's someone in the room that has or you know if if i don't know if the team's temperature is more like no based on based on this this this vote today i still want to see one recommendation go to the board then i would have i would have further questions so i'm gonna stop talking and turn it over to you to see if anybody has any opinions about that yes ms amberfish i think we have gone as far as we can go and it's going to be best to recommend both models um i won't talk about it currently but i have some notes and some concerns regarding the surveys that i would like to share when you let me know it's the appropriate time to do that so yeah and i see meg said her um microphone is not working but she is agreeing with miss amber fish uh miss kimberly c well the um information that was emailed to us with the the outcomes from the surveys be also be given to the board is my understanding correctly yes absolutely okay okay um actually i'm going to pause right here just really quickly just again just to add transparency because there's you know maybe there's more than us in the room listening right now right so um right now the plan is to go to the board of education for a study session so that means that there would be uh no vote no motions nothing like that it's just to study um school reorganization and so what does that mean well that means study what this what this team has done study the data um study the numbers that you have been seeing all along right so it's just about studying and getting their mindset into that and right now we are scheduled to do that on september 14th so roughly a little bit less than two weeks from now but yes to answer your question that yes they will i think miss melissa wilson perkins has her hand up thank you i also think we should send both having read um so many of the comments i think it's not really clear people are voting for one model but absolutely stating they would like something that's not included in that model which to me says we give them what we have so far all right so we have quite a bit of people um [Music] championing this we've we've gone as far as we could let's send the two models with the data tonight to the board and then they they pick it up from there okay i see another uh another person another person so quite a people backing up all right another person let me ask a different question is there anybody in the room that thinks the opposite like no today we want to get one school reorganization okay all right it looks overwhelming uh that we're gonna go to uh to both thank you for uh for uh for that for entertaining me for that um this makes it clear for me as we're facilitating uh the process um all right so what i would what i what i will propose is that um that we open it up just for some some final um questions or or or clarifications and um we are we have we have um prepared the um the google form and then once once we're ready for that i'll ask vika to put it into the chat and then we'll we'll we'll move forward with that uh but miss fish did you say you had some questions uh yes please i had i made some notes regarding all the surveys so uh so i had a couple big takeaway notes from everybody um i was really sad to see that even though all the information was provided on the district website a lot of the people taking the survey didn't take the time to look at it so a lot of um a lot of things were confusing in some of the comments um model four is not going to be a close campus you had mentioned that to us on the june 16th meeting that it's not feasible for it to be a closed campus and a lot of people suggested that it needed to be closed keeping the two the middle school area kids separate that that's not going to happen i think we need to be transparent and let them hear that also we put new high school in new middle school and i'm i kind of feel like that might be our fault as we did the survey with you we should have put azusa could be rebranded because a lot of people seem to question that why were we going to close down both high schools and rebuild a new one so they specifically voted for model 4 because they felt that it was a waste of money for us to do that and had they known that that's not what was happening it may have swayed their vote a little bit um sorry and it was also important to note that students if we closed if we were to choose model three um the students from gladstone would still graduate from gladstone because it would phase them out so no new students would go into gladstone and not graduate and it was a big thing that moving their kid over to a new school and not letting them graduate from where they started was a was a big point there was some comments about sierra high school we're not talking about sierra high school so i thought it was important to note that as well um i saw this on the staff survey the parents survey and the student survey that well a majority of those surveys preferred model for they preferred model 4 but specifically noted that the middle schoolers should not be on campus with the high schoolers that we need to keep a middle school or a tk8 option open as well so i felt like maybe they could have voted for model 3 but said we'd prefer two model um two high schools to stay open it it makes that's why the numbers don't seem completely fair um when i was going over this because they were i think it would have been best if we would have like shown the models without the schools attached because the schools can change and i think that's important for the public to know this was like our suggestion our ideas but the board will have final say so people were voting for ellington uh model 4 because it kept ellington or model 3 because it kept valley dale that's not true that we need to be very transparent that those two schools could change depending on the board recommendations or what the board actually puts forth um so picking one over the old over for a school was not good um uh there's a lot of concern about lee being a walking community and we we had suggested to closely in one of the models um i don't know if this is true and maybe mr fernandez can answer this for me um one of the parents on i'm sorry no one of the teachers uh commented that her she has a son at gladstone high school and he's playing freshman football and at the time that she took the survey only four students were signed up on the freshman football team um again that number may have changed but i've also heard from other parents that the jv and varsity football teams don't have full teams that they're playing the jv and varsity students are playing for both teams and i don't feel keeping two high schools isn't going to help us have those full teams to be competitive within the district and within the cif standards um keeping model four all schools walking [Music] sorry i i have a lot of notes um because it's a new high school uh there are a lot of concerns from the secondary students about overcrowding um they feel that their current high schools are already overcrowded uh so if they move to one high school um that they would be there would be extra crowding especially with adding the middle schoolers in as well um there's there's a big push to want to keep two high schools from the from the secondary students as well uh there was a comment that really concerned me from the secondary students that said that they had concerns over the maturity levels of the seventh and eighth graders that someone they said that they can tell the difference between the students that come in from the middle school and the students that come in from ellington because those students don't seem to be as mature and they can maintain their child like innocence this is this is what we're asking to do we're asking to send our sixth graders straight into high school in that four model four um and then i and i just had some concerns over the survey itself we didn't ask for a way to verify the people who were um taking the surveys and i know that it's it's a um oh i don't know what to say um like a blind survey that like we you don't know that i'm the one who filled this out or x's that but it also gave the option for me to fill out the survey more than once and i noticed that some of the comments were very similar and then especially on the parent page um just between pages 19 and page 20 there were 109 blank answers where anybody could have just gone in and hit submit model or model this model nothing model this submit and i just feel that the numbers are not very accurate because we didn't at least say you have to put in an email address to make sure that only we were only filling it out one time or if you filled it out more than once you know you at least put in a second email to to semi be tracked so thank you all for listening to my my notes thank you amber i mean i think you you hit on a couple things right and so um the advantage that we have in this room again we're we're close to celebrating our one year anniversary and so you know you have been in the in the in the thick of it you have you have seen and so um i think we we broached this topic um last time right that um you're gonna see the survey data and at the end of the day you're gonna have to decide right um what you know and what you feel even if it is contradictory to the survey even if it aligns with the survey um right this is your time and your voice to do that uh yes uh miss fish i think is the one that no yes um yes uh when we get to when we get to the actual uh board agenda item where where there's going to be actual discussion and consideration um that is always open to public comment and public and public input so but not the study session study sessions typically don't have um i don't i don't believe they have they have that because again there's not going to be any any motions no one should be saying you know i want this or i want that it's really just an opportunity for the board to try and get immersed in the school reorganization as they prepare to begin to have the roll up your sleeve real conversation about um what we are going to go uh from there um so okay well thank you thank you for that uh anymore anymore anybody else wants anything before we put the uh google form in the chat is that your hand up miss wilson perkins yeah okay um just echoing what amber said i also noticed i i really read all the model 4 um preference comments really closely because i really wanted to understand that perspective um and it seemed like 30 something percent always mentioned that they would like at least one um junior high middle school or to have tk8s which to me says it's more about the two campuses the buildings the the history and less about our district having a seven through twelve we're operating two seven through twelves and i know we've talked about this before but um i just wanna put this out there that the the percentage from model 4 is like what 76 something percent is what our capacity is that keeping um gladstone high school as a middle school for our entire district puts us at the same capacity i know we've retained our sixth graders i feel like if we could you know not um continue um the um the amount of money needing to be spent on retaining them that i saw in our budgets for the for the different models and make that a middle school that it would be a sort of middle path um forward and it would give our district the most amazing middle school in the valley uh maybe in miles and miles around and um it could also maybe slightly ease some of that um tension some of that continuing legacy and making sure that the people know will be fiscally our district was fiscally responsible with taxpayer dollars with uh measure um measure k money and stuff like that so anyway that was um i know we talked about it before and the numbers didn't really work but with the sixth graders they are it's a very similar um low capacity thank you thank you all right anything else or anyone else uh before i asked lita to go ahead and put the google form in the chat well she has two hands up oh i'm so sorry uh i don't see them uh mr anthony and then mr gabriel i'm not sure who was first let's go anthony alphabetical order thank you i would let gabriel go first but that's okay uh first uh first and foremost i just want to say thank you to everybody who's been here the for the last year i didn't know we had an anniversary i was looking for a card is it paper is it money i'm not sure what our anniversary is here but uh i was looking for something but time goes by quick so thank you to everybody all the all the staff all the parents uh mr ortega just kind of spending the time and really uh really digging into this uh a really a difficult issue because no one really wants to close schools and it's not an easy decision to make but it is one we need to make um so i did appreciate everybody's time in being here um i still i still run with the same sentiment is that i hope the overall ones and i only say this because i know it goes to the notes is you know creating the best school system that azusa can offer i want the best school system i i do want the one that everybody is trying to clamor into and trying to get into i want people changing their address to come to an as usual you know i want them so that's kind of my overall premise let's create the best school system we can with the best opportunities for kids and and that that'll guide it i think that'll shine i want to create that winning travel all-star team that everybody kind of wants to join and try to get into so that's that that's my overall premise that i wanted to have in the notes um i do have a few things that i collected from colleagues as just as a administrative and a middle school representative and i i promise to share and i do want to share a few things out first was on the phasing out part uh one thing that we collaborated is that phasing out doesn't have to be out of five year or three year i think that's debatable as we talked about it in middle school right now for everybody's reference we're only seven eight and we're really running out of skeleton crew right now um sections wise staffing wise et cetera um we're we were collaborating that you know what if we needed to stay this way one more year so things could settle and the planning could be done however just moving all the students all at once to whatever setting it happens to be doing it all at once in one year is fine a one-year move was okay it might be easier on staff and it also might be easier for us if we try to just keep we were just talking about it if i just try to keep eighth graders on campus right now for one whole year we were already running thin on resources right now as is and we're only uh we're only a third weekend day this is day 10 so this has been a challenge so the phasing out part can be debatable you know that that shouldn't be in stone uh we were amenable to to looking at a shorter time frame depending on situation um just enough time for also for receiving sites to be able to receive let's say it's all done and settled and we know certain sites are going to be receiving do those sites have time to prepare um classroom needs that whole bit so that they're all coming in we're all ready for the party as they say you know we don't want to be setting up tables and chairs and your guests are already arriving so we really want to see that that if we need that extra a little bit of time frame so we can drop three portables or another wing or something somewhere um that that's there we hold on our kids boom and the next fall we all start off just go we don't need a phase apart from a middle school perspective um i i need to i need to reiterate something that was brought up a little bit before on those little charts where it said you know counselors aps and 0.5 0.3 0.27.67 people it looks really cute on paper and as a mathematician it looks great i love numbers but in the practicality of having half people right now honestly i'm a few weeks in right now and we're out of middle school city we're really struggling with those those human resources um we to staffing and support has been really difficult um so keeping those half positions uh if we can sign up and find a different way that we're having people be able to stay and make a home somewhere i'm speaking for this wasn't asked of me right now but i'm speaking for the people that are working at split sites right now they haven't necessarily said it but i read people and i could read their faces i can read their language you know you get a little lost of where you're at talk about my my people that go from one side on a friday and they don't even know what spirit to wear because they're they're at a couple of sites and or they say the other school's name when they're at that site because it happens you know when you're moving around so much so if we can find a way to eliminate that i think that's the model or the approach we want to take so if the board can take that which is why i say to hear in the notes that we really want the man power and the resources um to be able to match that so that we're limiting those 0.5 supportive you know 0.5 counselors 0.5 assistant principals uh that's been difficult both on the school site right now and those and those people i'm just trying to think about the people and stretching them out as well so i'd really like to take them into considerations um one other part i kind of wanted to just mention real quick and this has never been said out loud and it still hasn't and this really is year 32 here in azusa for me and and at center uh a good majority of that and uh we had we still had five sites that never got modernized and no one ever said oh sorry about knocking into your site ish you know i here at center at lee uh at slauson i was here from here i was here in 9293 when they said oh next year you're on the next wave you're on the next oh we're just about to and honestly it's like 25 28 years later and nothing necessarily other than our we had the fencing and we had an air conditioning unit and twice but nobody ever actually touched the physical classrooms and that that's kind of a shame that's a shame for the city i know i i know some of the community members are um take that into point about how not all the sites all the promises kind of went in there and it was never kind of addressed i'm happy to be like one of the sites that literally heard this um for many for two decades about uh the addressing of needs so um i don't know i don't want to feel i'm sorry sorry to some of the city members that are out there watching right now because we made some promises and they didn't come to fruition and now we're at a point where we're we're going to close some sites and i'm i'm very hopeful that going forward when we do this reconfiguration that we make the site's remaining the the envy as as um i don't know what miss fish said that envy the jewel of the of the valley now people are looking i want i i do want that good-looking schools up and down um all our all our city and they go wow that's an asus expo you can tell so i'm hopeful that moving forward that gets done as well and i will reiterate my my statement that i made uh one of the other meetings if we're closing this many sites i really do hope we take one of our properties and make it uh make it to a benefit of the whole community something such as a stadium or performing arts center some kind of combination if we want one big aquatic or we're just going to redo the one at the high school however however that might be but i think using one of those properties for the benefit of the school district and the community in general something to be proud of would be a great a great addition going forward and with that i am done thank you thank you mr fernandez i just wanted to kind of speak to what miss fish was saying regarding high school sports right now um kind of hard to make a judgment call based on kobe going on at the same time a lot of schools in the area have smaller teams every team that we're playing only has one level or two levels max so it's i don't know if it's necessarily a figment of a gladstone resource it's it's everywhere right now with just kids and parents not wanting to have their kids out there given the circumstances uh but going back to just thinking through the process kind of like what dr contreras is saying we've heard a lot of deliberation regarding our ability to deliver programs for kids and i go to like facilities constraints because when we talk about consolidating onto one site for middle school and one site for high school we are going to run into besides the perception of being overcrowded from the students we are going to feel overcrowded in terms of facilities in terms of world our ability to have science labs like i heard some of our colleagues here say our ability to deliver other things that are particular and be able to have available space for high quality learning and i think that to me is is my biggest uh uh vantage point right now in terms of what i see in highly effective seven through twelves uh edgewood high school in west covina uh my two children are enrolled in a 712 another unified they are high class learning environments and i think like what dr contreras said we're trying to develop high class learning environments so our kids are college and career ready and give them the opportunity to play sports and a sports team with two levels of football can still be a pretty good football team a sports team with two levels or three levels of soccer is still going to be effective soccer teams again what is it develops players is playing time when you have a squad of 100 kids you're not every kid is going to get that chance to play so i think that's i know it's different some we want powerhouses and but i've seen small schools do quite a bit with players so and then that comes from playing time but again we need to think about facilities overcrowding and being able to really hone in on the cultures that we have on some of our sites that are outstanding and i know i'm not going to brag too much but my staff is outstanding and they are why i'm here and say what i'm saying right now so thank you thank you sir all right anyone else before we uh move to the chat i'd like to echo a little bit about what anthony was discussing pretty much everything you touched on anthony was on my list of things to talk about tonight is the idea of the phase in at middle school or phase out at middle school you know we see these same issues at the elementary sites that have 12 teachers it is not acceptable to have 12 staff members cover every single yard duty extra events there is at middle school right now there is not enough people to cover classes if somebody has to be out or when a substitute doesn't show up we are you know had a lot of problems with that in the past and i'm not expecting it to get better because it's been a problem you know for over 20 years that i've been in the district but um trying to have a small staff and then the contraction of that schedule you'll be overstaffed at three schools but it won't seem like it's overstaffed because we won't have enough staff to run what we need to we won't be able to have the band and choir like we would now because we can't expand those classes you know right now slauson has i want to say we only have one class of choir i actually haven't seen a master schedule this year so um but you know we used to have five and then we you know lost sixth grade so it's just that contraction of not being able to offer a number of different electives so the kids have very little choice now and coming up from an elective and that's needs to be considered before we do a phase out of um at middle school especially thank you anyone else before we put the link in the chat i have something to say good evening everyone um you almost thought i wasn't going to say something huh i'm just kidding uh so um what i was going to bring up listening to everybody is there's one common uh element in this and i think a lot of it is what we're currently going through and what anthony has said you know it we're currently we are short staff across the board everywhere uh there's currently more demand of a lot of us because of the current events that that are happening it's changing constantly as we're reminded um and uh there's a lot more on our plate there's a lot more when it comes to the students the parents and the staff and administrators there's a lot more and every day we're trying to figure out hey we're live i was telling somebody today we live we work in a live environment and it is like anything live there's there's hiccups there's this and that and um we're trying we're trying to stay above we're trying to stay afloat with it all as much as it's coming at us and with this occurring um i know we're looking strictly at numbers i know we have departments that are looking strictly at numbers and numbers is money i know that you know it's we've discussed that but with everything currently going on and what we're doing and what's happening that when we do eventually get to this that we have to consider to look outside the number you know i hate to use this analogy but it's like going to a potluck and somebody brings 10 tacos to a party and there's 50 people how are you going to feed all 50 people with 10 tacos i you know i and but we got to make it work we have to kind of not think that way with this because with the way we work in this live environment we need to have that support we need to kind of have that cushion we need to have the leftovers you know what i mean and i'm looking at it is now and what we eventually decide that to please consider that the board considers that we don't just say we have only room for 12 teachers because of the numbers because that parents come and go students come and go and sometimes we may be drop low but then all of a sudden we have a surge of kids i'm still enrolling kids as of right now but tomorrow i might lose to but then i might gain five or six and if we're totally tight now we're failing our community and saying i'm sorry there's no more room or we can't help you and and so when it comes even to staffing yes it might hurt the bank but in all the ones that will be will succeed and what we all agree and what anthony says is our students will succeed because we're there and there's enough of us that we can provide their needs we you know like i put on my survey is that we need to bring back what we had in the past of we need to bring back more in the arts department we need to bring back more in the uh trade department because not all students are meant for college bound we wanted them to succeed of course every parent everyone in education wants them to succeed and go to college but there's so many in history that's place that they are successful without college but with the gift they have with their two hands and that's what we need is to support them in that we need to have every dynamic available and not say unfortunately we cannot afford i get it but right now with funding going on and and being able to provide instruments also that's wonderful but we don't have the the manpower to handle all the instruments we don't have the manpower to handle all the textbooks we don't have the manpower right now to handle all of this wonderful things that are coming our way and and we're and we're setting ourselves up for fail and we should be setting ourselves up for success because these kids our success are them it's them and we need to be prepared and ready for them not about always the numbers so i know this is going to happen and that's you know i know everybody here has accepted it we want to move forward with it but we have to be able to be realistic and say the only way we succeed is by having the means for our kids and not saying i'm sorry but our numbers show we can't give you what you need because that's the only way this is it will succeed that's the only way we can compete big or small you know that's the only way is to say i gotcha you know we're here for you kid we're we're we're gonna be there we're gonna you know whatever it is oh we've got you know and instead we're gonna you know i just i'm like totally feeling it right now with everything going on right now like they said we have we don't have enough and how are we gonna have enough that we just shrink everything it's gonna happen but we really need to consider the staffing thank you okay uh anyone else before we put the link in the chat room all right lika can you go ahead and please put the link in the chat everyone in the room if you can please click on that link and cast your vote we're at 11 responses right now i'm if i'm doing the correct count i think we need 19.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
foreign good evening everyone and welcome to the um special meeting for september 1st of chico unified school district board of education if you would join me in the pledge of allegiance to the flag please i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you um do we have any announcements dr kaiser excuse me my family welcome it welcomes a new member at 1 48 this morning and that is graceland violet and she and she's beautiful i've seen a picture native american yes she's gorgeous any other announcements oh yeah the next one is mine thank you um we have with us tonight for the first time jessica hunt 13th district pta representative jessica if you um wouldn't mind uh stepping to the podium so that i can embarrass you by officially introducing you thank you and welcome and could you let us know how you communicate what goes on here tonight back with our very valuable 13th district pta is it fine uh it should be okay yes um so we have a monthly meeting towards the end of the month we are in the process of switching out that meeting because our district meeting actually meets the same night as the third week meeting of yours so we're going to change that so then at that meeting at the end of the month i will report to them what is discussed um we'll also get a copy of the uh upcoming meetings and stuff like that so that if anybody on our board or any of our pta members want to weigh in on something they'll have that information um so that we can be prepared if we need to speak at the meeting thank you and welcome any other announcement any any other announcements okay then we'll move into our consent calendar item number three there's only one item does anyone wish to um pull or speak well not pull but speak to this item okay hearing none i am ready for a motion of the approval of the content calendar second thank you there's been a motion and a second um [Music] any further discussion board okay all those in favor by name dolby aye kaiser i landed robinson aye thank you and um mr tennis is absent this evening yes i did want to let everyone know the public and the board that mr tennis is involved in the water board meeting tonight and it is expected to go late so it was a conflict yes we're all um we're all hoping that the water board issues are uh getting squared away and we appreciate mr tennis's service on the on the water board thank you just a clarification it's the butte county water commission meeting not the board okay board our discussion action calendar tonight is going to be we'll be opening a public hearing at some point during the after the presentation we have with us tonight our representatives that are going to be introducing our trustee area establishment process um dr uh okay yes superintendent staley thank you i just elevated you i would like to introduce jamie and jamie and rob are here tonight but i'll let jamie go ahead and make the introduction of the presentation thank you superintendents daily members of the board it is a pleasure to be here this is our first in-person board meeting and we're just thrilled as much as we've enjoyed zooming it's nice to see actual faces so it's nice to meet some new board members and see everyone here in person we are here tonight we have an agenda uh we're going to kick off the presentation um and hand it over to legal counsel to give you kind of a discussion of the california voter rights act from a legal perspective and then paul threw it back to rob and i i want to do a short introduction of our firm for the new board members um and talk about the services that we provide just to give an overview i've known some of you for quite some time there's some new faces we're going to review the cvra and timelining criteria i think moving forward with this process it's really important to look back at the work that was already been done and kind of the foundation that was laid kind of what brought us to this point here in the district review the initial draft trustee area maps and data that was compiled so that you kind of know what to expect as this process moves forward and then some summary and considerations before moving into the public hearing um so paul i will hand it over to you and just let me know when you want me to scoot a slide forward there's some information on the slides and then paul's going to speak in general thank you very much can you all hear me fine on on the zoom yes yes thank you so much uh and thank you uh board president robinson uh superintendent staley and members of the board uh le thank you for letting us speak this evening with regard to this ongoing process for the transition of the district from its system of what we call at large elections for board membership to to what is projected to become a by trustee area or district election system now um several board members of course were on the board when i presented at least two other times in the past on this topic there's also a memorandum that was drafted early on in the process and it is attorney-client privilege so i'm not going to um go into detail in a public meeting of the contents of that it was drafted at a time when there was a direct risk of litigation over this topic it is dated january 15 of of and it is available for those board members who have not had an opportunity to review that as part of the background and it can be made available to you um including the asylum board member to review just to get some of that background why we got here how we got here and why it's so important uh that the process continue uh suffice it to say that uh this this was moving forward with all due diligence when um when a little incident called covet decided to come along and uh as a result of that uh it was determined at the state level that holding the kinds of public hearings with the kind of public input that would be expected in this process would be unfeasible it would be unpractical there'd be many members of the public who really wouldn't be able to come in and give their point of view on how trustee areas should be developed and for that reason the opportunity to suspend the process was provided now that the district as many districts in the state if not most at this point have moved back to the option for in-person board meetings and the public can come in as as well as board members are available in person to hear from any stakeholders uh the idea is that the time has come when the process needs to be reinstituted as you'll probably hear from our forensic at king king's con consulting the um the other factor is that with the recent recently conducted census and the expectation of relevant census data for local agencies being issued here probably at the end of september if i understand the scheduling properly then the data necessary to draw the trustee areas in a legally compliant manner will be available and once that happens the district can move diligently to develop those trustee areas and be in place in time for the next election cycle that's really the key because in order to continue to stay on the right side of of our legal requirements and to make sure that we don't again become the target of potential litigants that are dissatisfied with the at-large system it's very important that the process proceed and be completed in time for those data maps and those trustee areas the projected trustee areas to be provided to the registrar of uh and implemented for the 2022 election and um of course i'll look to our consultants to correct me if i've made any miscues here in the process particularly regarding the technical uh data that they develop to support the district in getting this done getting it done right and making sure that it's going to be secure from any type of legal challenge so i think i'll leave it at that at this point other than just to again remind the board that we really were under a very real threat of litigation and that given the if i can say you know preference in the legislation and preference in the state for the development of by trustee or by district elections in order to guarantee the participation or the full participation of of every group a subgroup that exists within a locality or or within a within a jurisdiction um we were we were satisfied that this was the most um safe route to go that it was the least likely to lead to litigation and that of course in in engaging the consultants that we have my firm and working with the board were convinced that we would have a team together that would help you draw districts that would really be the most responsive to the public as they possibly could be and would serve you over the long term serve your community over the long term as you enter into this new 10-year census and into this this new system of voting for your public so with that i'm happy to to field any questions although i do want to reserve plenty of time for our consultants to give you the full rundown if you will on this process and where we go from here um ford do you have any questions of mr gantt before we excuse me move into our um the rest of our presentation okay thank you paul thank you it's always a pleasure and uh i will just kind of piggyback on what paul was mentioning you are not alone so nearly every district in california is moving to by trustee areas because of that litigation and it's been quite common over the last several years additionally um the census 2020 data you are required if you already have trustee areas to take that data and to revisit um you know your trusty areas that are already in place so it's quite common it's happening in most districts throughout the state um so i wanted to give you just a brief little introduction of our firm and our services it's really brief we do a lot for your district and we have all the way back since 2004 we've been providing services i'm from chico i grew up here i graduated from chico high go panthers um my family still lives here we have an office here we also have an office in sacramento because that's where the california department of ed and the office of public school construction offices are so we bounce back and forth so we have a lot of knowledge about your district the neighborhoods like i said i grew up riding my bike from henshaw all the way down to chico high so i think that gives us a unique perspective to kind of attack this this project with we provide capital facility funding services to your district we work really closely with your amazing facility team this facility is beautiful and you're awarded state funding for it right now the total sum of all the applications and i won't go through them all um in progress being progressed awarded or submitted or on the workload list is a little over 48 million dollars so you're doing an incredible job as a district of leveraging all of that good state funding that you have the opportunity to leverage to maximize your local constituents bond dollars i it's quite phenomenal not all districts in california are are working as diligently as you are to do that so kudos um your developer fee studies that's a bi-annual study that studies in progress and you'll see that coming to the board in the spring when the fee goes up in january and then any other funding so the cal shape the 841 funding for hvac and plumbing and we're providing support for is needed the fema money when covid hit basically anything to do with capital facility funding um you know that's that's the service that we provide for you in addition demographics and planning services so almost every year since 2004 we've provided an update to your demographic analysis and student housing report so that you have accurate enrollment projections by which shipperjack that's going to be critical in this year because of the universal tk rollout so you'll see us back again in the spring to present those projections and talk about the impact to your facilities and because of that new program also boundary analysis and adjustments we helped kind of with the algae process the last time facilitating the meetings and shrinking the boundary at shasta which is necessary to kind of balance enrollments tonight we're here to talk about the california voter rights act and then we offer other services on demand as we get calls from the facility department or the business department so that's just a kind of a short introduction to our firm we're all about relationships and we really value the relationship we have with you and we appreciate the opportunity to to help you with this process as well i'm going to introduce rob murray he is wonderful he's been with king consulting and working hand in hand with your district since uh for seven years now it's hard to believe it's been that long he um and i worked together to do this review review of the initial data and findings to determine if you did have what's called racially polarized voting in your district and we did find evidence i'm going to introduce rob let him present that he's going to talk a little bit about the history and then i'll jump up and give like a kind of a summary and conclusions and we'll build questions um before the public hearing thanks jamie and i'll just echo why jamie said that it's really wonderful to be here and to be in front of this district again but we know we did want to as jamie said go back and just revisit the process that we began going through last year and the first part of that uh before we even got into drawing maps was just an election or sorry an analysis of the election results and uh we won't go into a lot of the nitty-gritty details here but again we're looking at racially polarized voting being defined as a difference in the choice of candidates and electoral choices and this is straight from the elections code that are preferred by voters in a protected class versus the choice of candidates and electoral choices that are preferred by voters in the rest of the electorate so in plain language basically if members of a protected class are predominantly favoring a candidate that is not winning at large elections because the rest of the electorate is voting differently than that is an example of racially polarized voting and so what we see here this is uh no names involved but this is just one of the election results of a candidate that did not win a seat on the school board in a large election uh you see we did we looked at this for every election between 2004 and 2018 with every candidate who did not win a seat and we found multiple instances of this kind of pattern we're looking at the hispanic slash latinx voting populace as the protected class and so you see on the up and down way there the higher it goes the more that voting precinct has a makeup that is more predominantly made up of that protected class the further to the right you have this candidate's support and when you see in that shaded box that upper right part that's where that candidate is drawing more support than they did from the rest of the district from the precincts that have more of the protected class making up the voting population and you see in this one it just you really see that scatter of dots up there and this was not the only one that had that pattern and so given that uh the timeline did start with february 19th and the adoption of that resolution of intent and then we went into uh holding those initial public hearings so before you even put i would say pen to paper but in this case mouse to mouse pad to begin making a map you've got to get input from the public on what considerations the public believes are significant when you're making these trusty areas and you have by the elections code two separate instances where that input is solicited before you even come out with the draft maps so we did that in march and then after receiving that input worked through the back part of march on developing those initial maps which were presented on april 1st and of course by then we were already into feeling the at the time very new and staggering effects of life changing all around us due to covid and then by april 15th when we were due on the schedule to have the first public hearing on those draft maps instead pursuant to those executive orders from the governor the process was suspended and as it turns out was never picked up again and then as paul was mentioning we are now to the point the this this whole process was based on the 2010 census data because you have to use that full count whole uh decennial census data when you're doing these trustee areas and that was still the most recent one at the time now we've conducted the 2020 census and the census bureau has promised by september 30th to have the data packages sent out that local governments need to exist yell school boards and city councils county governments water boards i mean everyone that has elections by any kind of district to voting needs to adjust those boundaries every 10 years for the census and so there was a delay this year just the census bureau like many other organizations was not able to do its job as efficiently as it has in the past and some various other political delays but we are now set that september 30th is the date by which they have promised to have that data available so that lets us still come back into this process begin you know just recapping like we are tonight uh how we got here and what we have previously done and again begin soliciting that public input uh because again this will be different data than we looked at last time and there'll be some different voices i hope in the room and we might uh wind up having a slightly different version of priorities than what we had the last time but i will be getting into some of that so we discussed the criteria that should go into these maps at the public meeting and we kind of separate these into the ironclad legal requirements and these were up on some of the slides that were up while paul gantt was speaking but a couple of the big ones each trustee area has to represent approximately the same number of people and so you take the whole district population in their case divided by five and then you get a plus or minus five percent of that but approximately equal populations in each trustee area and again so based on 2010 we had that range of 20 000 385 to 22 508 so you you get some play because it's all it's difficult enough to stick within that range when you're trying to meet a lot of other considerations but that's one that you cannot ever get away from we also look at honoring the california and federal voting rights acts we are looking at geographic concentrations of the protected class and in which case again we are looking at the hispanic and latinx population in chico and i will show you a map in a minute that again using the 2010 data did show a significant enough concentration that we wanted to work to keep that concentration from being split between multiple trustee areas so that their vote could go towards the candidate that that protected class might prefer so those were the legal requirements and then with the community input what wound up coming out of the mix last time around uh was a lot of discussion uh on kind of two different aspects of looking at high school boundaries as a major guidepost for building trustee areas there was some preference for trustee areas that were within one high school boundary or the other and then there was also a lot of vocalization four trustee areas that spanned both high schools so that each trustee had territory that was in both of the high schools and then we also had some input about the very strong neighborhood identification that you have in the city of chico and that some of these neighborhoods should not be split between trustee areas as people in that neighborhood represent what is called a community of interest who would have again common interests in their voting for school board members and then on top of all of that again you still want to uh try to keep things as contiguous as possible uh not have things that just look like they are gerrymandered and then the board also uh brought up the point along with some members of the public to keep an eye on socio-economic data so not necessarily as something to draw around but to look at the maps that were developed and see how they grade out when you apply some of that data to them so that was what we came into the initial map meeting with so this is that map i mentioned the area outlined in black there are the areas of the district where you can notice a concentrated population of the protected class of hispanics latinx residents and so that area we made sure was never split between multiple trustee areas so that was the community input process and then we got to the point where we presented a set of three initial maps to the board and to the community and so we just opted for a color coding system so that there was no kind of preference of numbers or letters signifying a rank but this was just a blue map a green map and a purple map and these corresponded broadly to those main criteria that had come out of the community input so you had a map that as much as possible tried to put the trustee areas entirely within one high school boundary of the other you had kind of the inverse approach where you had trustee areas that would be incorporating territory that was in both high schools and then you really looked at the neighborhoods and the ones that were called out by names were chapmantown south campus and the avenues and i believe there was one other but thank you and yeah so those four neighborhoods were kept in focus on the purple map and so again those were presented on april 1st they were up on the district website we have that capability uh ready to go again so that the public can especially now that i think a lot more people are used to engaging with these processes via remote means have some people checking out what's being put up on the district website being able to provide input and feedback but again no revised maps were produced the way the process was intended to go from this point on would be to have a hearing on these initial maps gather more public input and then almost certainly come back with some combination of tweaks and variations on these initial maps or even an entirely new map if some people brought up some points that they felt like none of the maps were addressing very well but again before we got to that point uh we did not go any further in the overall process so we're not going to go into all of the detail but just a quick look so these were the maps that were developed last time so this is your blue map and you see especially on the inset zoom out to the whole district uh it's not a perfect fit with the high school boundary just because the numbers again just don't quite let you do that but in general you had two trustee areas that were in the pv boundary and three trustee areas that were entirely or almost entirely in the chico high boundary and then with the green map again as much as possible you had trustee areas that had significant territory in both boundaries again just keeping between the need to keep the protected class concentration within one area the need for population balance and the need to keep things reasonably compact we had a couple of areas that were definitely more in one than the other but we thought that this as an initial map meant that community input and that desire from the community to see an option that reflected that and then the last map that was presented at the time the purple map uh kept the avenues entirely in one trusty area and the other three named neighborhoods within another of the trustee areas and just provided a again very distinct look from the other two maps and so again video definitely not going to go over all the numbers in this but this is the information that was presented last time an accompaniment to the maps and what's highlighted here is the verification that we're meeting that straight legal requirement so you can see the population that resided in each area then we also look at that 2010 population broken down by ethnicity just to get a sense and again it's not necessarily that you want that balance because again part of this is that we are making sure a concentration of a protected class by race and ethnicity is kept together so you will see some variation particularly in the percent latino latinx hispanic column and then we also at the time were looking at the voting age population because you have the general population and the voting age and just to make sure that you're not seeing major discrepancies and that's especially it was restoring the process with brand new census data what that is really helping you with is viability of these for a 10-year life cycle and that do you have do you seem to have a lot of the over 18 versus general population that might be moving a different directions then the socioeconomic analysis that was requested by the district uh we at least started off looking at what at the time was the most recently available household income data from the census and uh from the district enrollment standpoint as far as students who lived in that the percent who qualified for the free and reduced price meals program as it was at the time and so that again uh not going into the numbers here but just an example of the information that was provided to accompany the maps in that initial presentation and then there was also some interest in seeing the actual school composition of what kind of what schools might feel they were represented by certain trustee areas so again lots of numbers on this but what we're really looking at is the percent of the students who live in that trustee area by what school they go to so in the elementary sometimes you see there might be a couple of schools that between them make up more than half of the enrollment uh like in that uh blue one there there's a you know just a couple of the schools that you would say are the predominant schools for that trustee area of course as we mentioned every time we do your dasher presentation you do have you are a district of choice you do give your families a lot of options so regardless of where the trustee areas are what really jumped out was you have every single school just about represented within every single trustee area in terms of where someone who lives in that trustee area is enrolling their children in school so i think jamie did you want to come up and speak to some of our considerations now from this point yes very well done rob um so i think we just want to kind of go over really quickly all that information we just gave you so paul kind of discussed the legal requirements we provided the empirical evidence of historical racially polarized voting and i will say that is easier to prove than to disprove so from a legal challenge perspective it's it's much easier to show that with uh historical voting data than not um though we've been over the overview of the process in 2020 prior to covet and paul feel free to jump in if i'm wrong about that um and the governor's emergency orders which kind of hit the pause button brought us where we are today we reviewed the criteria both the legal requirements and then the community input that was gathered and reviewed the maps and the data so just some considerations to mention or mention again you know you've got some new board members now that weren't a part of that previous process the new census data is coming out so it doesn't really make sense to kind of get that not even really time to get it done before that comes out so it makes sense to begin the process with that new census data and we're really hoping that with increased public meetings and increased in-person meetings that we can get even more community input and public input which is a critical to this process and now that you know well at least for the time being things seem to be relaxing a little bit that being said we don't know what the new delta variant what we're headed into but um safe to say i think that you know if at the board's purview we could move forward with the process as planned in the public hearing tonight and that is all that we have and we're happy to take uh questions from the board uh and and discuss this board member uh yes dr kaiser yeah so there's quite a bit of evidence especially uh along the south campus area not only with students being sent away to do online education in their back 65 percent at chico state in person classes but a tremendous amount of new construction that really concentrated uh students and literally just a long nord i mean it's it's rather dramatic so and then we have the impact of the paradise uh the fire that caused a lot of people to be forced out of that area and who moved into this area so how uh how dramatic are we expecting the changes to be do we have any indication any sort of i wish i mean we are data nerds so we cannot wait to get our hands on that data we are doing an appeal actually for paradise so we're working there as well and we we work in other districts in the area also orlando etc so we're aware of how those kids moved and where they moved and how many you actually got here how the families have relocated how they're rebuilding so all of that is part of your dasher which is why it's so wonderful that we provide all these different services is because of access kind of to all that information we have some anecdotal ideas about how it might look now but we just won't know until we get the census data and rob obviously wants to say something so yeah just butt in but yeah one other point is you brought up a lot of those recent very significant changes but keeping in mind that we were also looking at that census data from 2010 last time and just other development in the north and in the southeast that also occurred during that decade and in addition to those more recent kind of pressure points of movement of people so that just kind of builds on jamie's point that yes i've i have been eagerly waiting to see this i mean this is the best data we'll have had uh literally in a decade and we'll certainly be presenting to you what it appears to show uh once we have that look but i think what you said was is accurate that you know we will really have to see what it reflects from that period of volatility that of course coincided with the census being taken yeah well the other part of that is the advertising for the new housing on nord all states uh luxury you know it's appealing to a student body class that presumably wants higher living standards than the dorms very uh i mean a very blatant appeal yes absolutely we uh we're seeing a lot of that throughout the state actually kind of those luxury higher end you know we're not going to generate any kids type of places um but we work really closely like i said with your facility department we do what's called a student generation rate every year to determine from those newly constructed units how many kids are they generating for your district but like rob said it'll be interesting to see once we do that once we get our hands on that census count how all of these kind of demographic push and pull factors a global pandemic the fires you know how has that changed the demographic um profile personality if you will of your district um and we should know in very short order yeah okay thank you i i just pulled up the the schedule that we have for this beginning this process because i was concerned about the public outreach meetings um coming before we had the the census data but as i i can see from how the process develops that that's not going to be a problem because the issues of preference right will be um addressed after we begin the hearings on the draft map absolutely absolutely yes it really is i mean it's a lot like boundary change works for your schools you want to go to the community and find out what it what is important to you right um can we move this program absolutely not can we you know we look at things like their legal requirements for cvra and that are similar to boundary change for school like major roads transportation things like that that need to be considered so it's very similar in the way that you kind of gather data from the community critical part of the process develop the criteria and then use that criteria to develop some scenarios and then get the feedback on the scenarios in the community as well can also develop a scenario and bring it and present it to the board or use the maps that are on the website and i think there's some printed out here tonight to draw what they consider to be the boundary of their neighborhood because some for some people those boundaries are different um and then we analyze all of that and disseminate it um and then provide it with the initial draft scenarios so there's one of them there's two weeks between the first hearing on the first draft map that's november 3rd that that um oh no october 20th is a presentation of the first draft trustee area map so that's when we first get to see it but the first public hearing isn't until november 3rd and then another one november 17th november 24th for the uh basically the final wrap-up for the board to to um adopt the map just before winter break right so we are going to have to move quickly we'll be depending on 13th district pta getting the word out and getting information back to us [Music] i'm looking again because we we do have to get this to the registrar of voters by uh doesn't say seems like um sorry for interrupting uh ms robinson but if there are questions paul about the timeline and you know is that set in statute that they must adhere to a certain timeline or could that be extended or wrapped around the holidays what what is the date that they need to to have this prepared at this point um given that we don't necessarily have or we're not marching to the same tune if you will as we were before the uh before covet and before the emergency order came down uh the primary uh limitations are going to be uh that you have to have a certain period of time as you know jamie between meetings uh in order to allow proper public input and then ultimately you have to be watching the clock to make sure that we have time to get the data to the registrar voters uh insufficient time to implement those areas for the for the next election because so that that's really the parameters what if someone claims that the census data is flawed dramatically flawed because of the difficulty of reaching people in that context and a lot of people you know being very concerned about answering questions from quote unquote strangers what do you want to address that jamie i mean from a legal standpoint we're required to use the census def we are not allowed to use any other source to draw the boundaries um and i think what i would comment on that uh dr kaiser is that um there is uh there are things that are within the jurisdiction of your board and there are things that are not within the jurisdiction and um disputes about the accuracy of the census are are not within the school board's jurisdiction as as a lot of things involving public health and other things are not and sometimes you know members of the public may need to you know come come forward with concerns and they may need an explanation that that we are required to follow that census data unless something intervenes such as a court where to issue an injunction or something like that that was brought against the u.s census bureau or or other agency and we dr kaiser have as you know have a wealth of information about your student population which correlates to some degree to your general population and we've mapped all of your students in the district to do our spatial analysis to provide accurate projections and it's all confidential we sign a confidentiality agreement um but we can always determine if that you know once the data comes out how it correlates to your student population in those areas you know so we can kind of do some data validation uh if it would help the community have a better level of comfort uh interpreting the census data that we provide i think rob's gonna be very busy he is gonna be very busy he's gonna be chained to his desk this season of cdra so it looks as though we have three benchmarks to meet after the december 15 date that we have selected to approve our maps and and we have to get them to the county committee first which then takes it to the state board of education and then the state board of education approves what we've done that has to be 120 days after the trustee areas are established or the first election is 120 days after the state board of education approves it okay so we do need to move quickly so that we are in time to meet the november election um timelines yes yeah i have several questions remember dolby did you have a question i have a few um so uh going back to the study that's done on racially polarized voting um will that will that data be updated at all um absolutely okay and then so i had a wrong you can get it that's not my like burning question my burning question is if you all or somebody else studies that for the city council as well because i'd be interested since city council has moved towards district voting in the most recent election to see sort of uh the writing on the wall if it's if it is is effect it has is effective in this community for for um mitigating okay um any racialized racial poor as one does does that make sense it does make sense so the the racial pull sorry and i sh i miss about the racial polarized venting um is really based on historical voter records and that data so that won't necessarily be updated we did a 2004-2018 we could look at the 2020 election that's the only one right so we could include the 2020 election as far as the city goes um you know i'm not sure they i think they recently implemented those i'm not sure if they've had an election since they implemented their trusty areas if they have and we could certainly look at that to see if there are similarities in what they found in the population and and how they drew theirs yeah i mean rob do you want to speak to that can you no i i i can come speak to a on kind of a more general level because then the analysis does get a little more involved because then you're looking at and again i'm not as familiar with the city if it's five or seven but you have the number uh looking at separate elections uh with just within that area and the idea behind the cvra and the federal voting rights act is that those candidates supported by the protected class when they are voting within a smaller area uh getting in the case of chico usd where you really had that single concentration of the protected class that would now just be voting uh within an area where it makes up a much proportionably greater voice you would see less disparity between what the rest of the electorate just in whether that's trustee area number four or two or whichever one that is voted versus the protected class and then in the rest of the district where you don't have as much of a presence of the protected class of voters uh then we probably wouldn't be looking at those trustee areas as closely we'd really be looking at the one with the uh you know that was basically contains that protected class and if it's doing its job you should see a much closer alignment right between a successful election yeah but but not as much of a spread of that uh difference of the the precincts with the highest proportion of the class also voting in a way that differed the most from the rest of the electorate so but again you're really then shrinking the focus to just again essentially just one seats race rather than everyone who is running for the board so i'm not that gives any help to what you had asked yeah i guess just because i'm i i would like to see there be preliminary evidence that that the district lines that were drawn in this community for that purpose are doing what they were supposed to do if that makes sense yeah i think you know that was a public process in the trustee areas that they developed and adopted i certainly if there's been an election since that time well there was there was okay in 2020 we can analyze it's all public record i think we can access and analyze that um doing its job i mean i think ultimately the spirit of the cvra is not to give anyone kind of a leg up really it's just about these protected classes not having their votes diluted um by the the majority voters in the community um so it's not necessarily looking for a successful election as is it's doing its job i don't even know if i use the word successfully i just want to know that that it's doing its job to mitigate any of that and they stay based their trustees if they base their areas on historical voter records and then it should be it should be that's the key and that's what i want to know okay and then one other point that might be a little counter factual but another big part of the platform of the rationale for this is that as far as access for candidates to run is that campaigning within a single trustee area is more accessible and obtainable for some people who might be part of that protected class than having to campaign and try to build up votes throughout the entire district in an at-large election and so that's where you might see a candidate who was running who might not even have run under an at-large system kind of kind of conversely on this city council side of things and in a little bit this year with the school board election even we're seeing bigger chunks of money seeping into the campaigns and so um it is a concern everything that we're talking about is a concern as well as access accessibility to bigger funders um and and that kind of um bastardizing the entire the entire district election you know system i did have actually more questions i'm sorry i i'm sorry i know that was a question i forgot i had more questions like my brain's just going it's a little it's a lot going on it's a lot yes um when we're looking at the census data is there consideration taken um for renters versus homeowners um because that has had a significant shift since the campfire a lot of our renters were pushed out of their homes um uh pre-campfire because paradise folks that had the ability to buy homes were buying out those rental properties so as far as a requirement again we're really just looking at the total population but that could absolutely be a criterion i cannot speak with absolute certainty if that will be in the data package that we get but we can certainly again still look at the most previous american community survey data to get some kind of metric of uh the renter versus owner occupancy of units and like we did with the socioeconomic data last time around provide that as an accessory to any maps that are produced so that you can track how that looks across different options yeah if that's available and and easily accessible i think that that would be yeah the census does provide accounts of renters versus homeowners so if that's a criteria that you know is included and what we are to look at as we're developing these then a scenario that includes that and renters or homeowners each is a protected class then we can certainly look at that um as a clarifying and follow-up question to that because i think it's very important um for members of the public and the board to know uh that there are a host of factors that the community can look at but would it be accurate to say that we have to be cautious that the factors that are implemented do not cut against the requirement to in essence ensure the uh the voting strength of the protected population is not negatively impacted in other words you can look at a lot of different factors but they can't work against the the cvra's primary purpose which is to um promote the opportunity for those protected classes to have a voice in the elections thank you one of the the things that we had split out in the way of data the last time around was the um the income level of the uh the median income level of the different districts and i was surprised at how significant some of those differences were and so what in paul's caution to us i i want us to remember that again that when we're looking at this that we we take a look at those median income level disparities as well yeah yeah that was part of the analysis that we provided last time and it will continue to be you've got a unique situation with your media and household income because you're a college town so college students tend to have very low i know i did median incomes so it just kind of pulls everything down and then when you're looking you have to remember which potential priest you know trusty area you're looking at and take that into consideration if you see a very low one it could be highly populated with college students yes that was my next question actually because dr kaiser sort of i think i was asking or was close to asking about how csu chico students might skew this data because you know they are included and possibly included in the census but but maybe they don't vote in this area and so if they're not voting here if they're actually registered voters at in their home towns but they're being counted as part of the the you know do you understand what i'm saying absolutely i'll stop talking yeah it's okay don't stop talking i talk all the time i drive my husband crazy um the they're all very good questions um unfortunately we're stuck with the legal requirements so we can't the part part of that statute doesn't say only count the population of the registered voters in your town so it's just something that we're going to have to to consider you're going to have to consider when you're looking at the trustee areas and there's no way to split the population or kind of segregate out the the college students who aren't registered voters here in the county is there still a at least a qualifiable way to take it into consideration where we you know we would look at you know density of students versus you know i don't even know all registered voters by precinct i think it might give you an idea compared to the 100 percent count of population there over our brains think alike yes absolutely we can correlate the registered voter data to the 2020 account by age group actually or the voter registration doesn't come by age i don't think sorry we're talk sidebaring about what data is available yeah but i think this is a good uh just kind of indication of what this process is really about is hearing both now in person at this meeting and through the ways that the district is making it possible for people to provide input in between meetings but just so that again the factors that people believe should be taken into consideration again before i and jamie take the first step in actually making maps with this 2020 data the we'll have this list of things to just be considering and then to when we present those initial maps uh update all of the interested parties on you mentioned that this was important to you and here's what that looks like and then but then that we didn't get to this part the last time around but this time we will get to then have that really real follow-up of i like parts of this but i want to now really emphasize this data point with this and can we tweak this one can we make a new map that takes this criterion that didn't come up as much at first but obviously has become much more important since then and so i think this these kinds of conversations these questions are all great because it tells us the many kinds of things and of course uh i will do my best and jamie will do her best but finding a single map that perfectly balances every point is probably not going to happen so it will be a matter of finding the one that hits the most points and does the best job of balancing multiple interests in a way that a lot of people feel does a good job with the many ways that you can approach this one of the things that was a surprise to me in working with the voting analysis was that the college students actually are registered and do vote to a much higher degree than you imagine they would that was a surprise and the areas that have a lot of retired folks in them also they're yes they're retired but boy do they vote so yeah it um it was an an interesting look so i do want us to to take a look at that because the the who votes is a surprise i think and you know unfortunately uh we weren't able to bring back everything that we presented um you know the last go around every single data point but we will be looking at all of those same that same kind of data during this process any more questions board members yep um i'm a new board member uh so i know that our um protected class uh group that we're focusing on primarily here is our hispanic and latinx we do have a growing number not terribly significant i guess compared to that particular group of um of in our i'm just looking at our demographic information for chico unified of students who are identified as two or more races is there a threshold where we would consider an additional protected class to be taken into consideration and i'll paul feel free to jump in on this one but i think in this case uh especially when you get into the really detailed census data because again for the state department of education tracking where you just have that two or more category with the census that or more gets broken out so you have the two races and exactly which combination of races and three and four and five and i think at that point when you're breaking the data down to that fine of a level uh because i would imagine a lot of those groups might not consider that they uh would be a common protected class with the same voting interests as every other member of that if you just broaden all that up into two or more races so that that's where i'm looking at that from but uh where i thought you might have been going with that but when the 2020 data comes out if they're one that's one of the first things that we will look at again by legal requirement is that in addition to what was identified last time around confirming that the hispanic latinx protected class still demonstrates that geographic concentration to remain part of the process but if any other groups emerge so we'll certainly be looking to see if there are more but i think with the census data we would be looking at that people who identify across multiple races and ethnicities in those more particular combinations to see if anything might emerge and i don't know that there's necessarily a threshold but it that that's a really important term that he just said that i want you to keep in mind is that geographic concentration i'm having trouble with my words tonight i apologize uh with that so that it's really is there a protected class and are they geographically concentrated and could represent a majority of the votes or more a higher majority of the votes in our trustee area thank you for explaining that absolutely i have one more question sure um and it's a i guess a slightly uncomfortable elephant in the room question but our next election might not be as late as next november okay um and anybody can argue how likely or unlikely it is but as early as or i guess as late as may there could be a special election okay um would this need to be a process that's fast enough to to have those districts drawn for a special board election or would that be do you i mean do we have any idea i don't know that there's enough time and paul might be able to answer that better but there's a certain amount of time required in between each meetings i think this is our fastest timeline right now paul that we put together right you've got that 120 days um your first election has to be held more than 120 days so if you pull back from may january that would be january and i i'm not sure that the approval by the county committee and the state board of education uh there's no way it could get done between december 15th i mean you got chris even if we're all home for christmas because it's still covered i'm not sure that that's enough i i think the county committee may be a little more doable uh quite frankly when we get into the board of education they are generally going to approve these at their quarterly meetings you have to get on the agenda they're not terribly flexible about this um so so chances are that would be it would be a heavy lift to get that done by a special election and then this kind of segues into something that i can go ahead and speak to which is so in that case it sounds like there would be a very high chance that a special election in may would still be an at-large election just because the full process for transitioning to the trustee areas would not have been able to occur and then what happens with the trustee areas is that everyone who is elected through an at-large system serves out their term and so if they're uh so then so and then and so then just whenever a seat would be that a term would be up then uh at that point whichever election that is you would move where that seat would be elected by the trustee but only by the voters within that trustee area and if the can and if it worked out such that uh there were say two current of the at-large candidates who lived in a single area with an area that did not have an incumbent then you know there are procedures laid out for how that is dealt with but again every candidate who was elected at large even if that was someone who was elected in that special election would serve their full term uh their full term meaning the the term that they would would replace so let's say you know it's next november is when the term is up um three out of four of us term next term is up next november so um let's just say the whole board flipped and you know there's three terms that were up in november do the three replacements then they have to be at the at the like run again in the distinct districts in the november election next year thanks for clarifying okay if we're done with board questioning i'm going to open the public hearing for this issue and ask if there are any public comments we had none submitted we have no public comments coming in from our online viewers and we have no public comments coming forward here so i'm going to close the public hearing okay and if i'm not speaking out of turn i will just mention again that the district has a now i believe live uh web page up that has uh ability to uh just put in just written comments if you just want to write we also have maps available if people feel that it would be easier to draw on a map to communicate uh either a community of interests or even ideas for what trustee areas might look like that is all considered public input and we'll take that into consideration again once we have data and then next month can really begin uh in earnest looking at potential math options thank you so much thank you thank you and um just to remind everyone we will do this again at our september 15th meeting without the um the broader presentation uh just to give the opportunity for public input and uh yes do take advantage of the things that are online on our website and just to clarify we did send this information home to every family in the district and we will do so again and i can include some of the forms if people want just to make it easier for families to be aware and provide input thank you superintendents daily this erica did you have any oh okay um this is an information only um item uh and our next uh agenda item is to ask if any board member has um a topic that they would like to bring forward for consideration for a future agenda item ms dolby did you have a question hey i'm becoming increasingly concerned about our coveted cases in our schools and i'm trying to formulate in my head if there's any particular thing to actually try to try to agenda as i said i'm becoming increasingly uh concerned about the rising covet cases and quarantines in our schools but i i don't know that there's something to agenda per se um i don't know if um we're gonna have any more presentations from the staff or just you know updates that are a little bit more clarifying we can we can certainly provide an update we do have the dashboard that is up and running that i'm sure the board's aware of um but we you know certainly can talk about uh what we're seeing and what we're doing and how we're handling it uh i came just to this meeting from pleasant valley high school uh helping to make phone calls home so happy to share some of that information obviously i cannot do so here but i i recently went to write a to check on the availability of the quote unquote you know rapid tests and um wright a told me that the only place that they knew was getting uh they said at that point daily but apparently it isn't daily delivery of tests but it's the walgreens and they told me call that four o'clock in the afternoon on thursday and then we'll know how many tests we get so the tests are flying off the shelves literally but apparently have a very high false positive level so perhaps one of the things we can do is encourage people about where they might get a more accurate available test um and certainly it's impacting the entire community i mean we put we've pushed that information out to our families as well and happy to do so again i think that might be helpful okay we are going to go into um closed session um do we have any public comment about closed session we have no public comment um thank you okay we will um adjourn to renato journey we're um just going into closed not session foreign thank you the board met in closed session to consider agenda item 6.7 public employee appointment the board voted unanimously to appoint jacqueline krueger to the position of assistant superintendent business services no other action was taken thank you you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
the other things that you want to look for you know i think that are particularly of of note are what they call material weaknesses or significant deficiencies um because again that's where they're using their uh i mean that's a bit of you know auditor lingo but at the same time what that really is is identifying is that when they went through things if they found something that you know would or could cause uh the financials that were reporting to be inaccurate whether they really did or didn't if they were just such that they would potentially cause that and especially if they were to potentially cause some inaccuracy and we wouldn't have a way to notice it so a lot of times the you know they talk about the third thing they talk about is is internal controls and internal internal controls are basically your process policies and procedures that you follow they compare those to you know general accounting standards and and uh if they find something in your processes that that would cause a material weakness or a significant deficiency then those are things they're going to mention they're going to call out they're going to ask us to address and take corrective action on it and so um those are things to kind of those are phrases anytime you look at it whether it's ours or any other one that you might ever do those are phrases that are pretty uh you know pretty red flags pretty much red flags if you see them um because they indicate that you know something could be going on that we wouldn't notice could be going on in other words there are things outside of our control in a way that would you know we think our financials are one way when in reality there's something else um and so in in looking through those uh you know our finances they didn't find any material weaknesses they didn't find any significant deficiencies which is always good news um you know we do want to know about something like that um if they have uh opportunity to find things that they feel could be done better they will let us know uh they didn't have any comments in that regard um and so that was also a bit of good news with regard to our our audit um so those are the sort of overarching things i would say the end your report review again you know we do an audit because required by the state to do that so the end of year report we file one for each of the three districts the region in particular uh and actually amherst and pelham also had interview report reviews by our auditors um just like the one you see here for the region um the second one is what's called a single audit sometimes called a single audit or or a government uh or federal funds audit that's this medium-sized document of the three um and what that is is they look specifically at uh you know our grant funding like idea and title one and those grants uh because we receive over 750 000 worth of federal monies uh we're required to have that type of audit and again they're looking for the same kinds of processes procedures that meet with general accounting standards and allow us to represent how we spent their money and on what accurately and so again uh you know the the short story is that that there were no uh there were no findings there were no material weaknesses or significant uh discrepancies or deficiencies in what they saw and then the third piece which is the big long one which is uh looking at today and thinking wow there's a lot of filler here but not really i mean it's it's actually it's intended audience is the public and so therefore that's why it goes into so much detail about how the retirement system works it goes through how mtrs works it goes through how uh the hampshire county retirement works and what the options have and it goes through open in a fair amount of detail so there's a lot of just additional information that they're providing along with the financial statements and again the fact that it was unmodified indicates that what we gave them and demonstrated as our financials for the district were were an accurate representation of what really happened which is good that's what we want to say and what we want to see you know they often comment about whether or not we're our policy procedures are effective um so they're not looking for i mean obviously if they find some sort of mistake or or discrepancy uh they'll point it out but that's not their intent they're what they're looking for is that if you're doing processes that will lead to accuracy in in the hole but they don't look for errors particularly um so it's kind of a funny thing with audits that you think they're going to find oh where you made a mistake or this that or the other it really isn't they're focusing on whether or not how you go about doing your business is in uh in such a way that it would maintain the accuracy and fidelity of the numbers and represent what's going on financially for the district uh correctly and so um if there were something problematic then it's likely that they would have then commented on uh something not adding up the way it should add up um and so that's you know they didn't have any of that so that's again a fortune thing um the other couple things i'll point out is one of the big ones that you show on an audit in the financial statements is uh you have to represent your oped liability on your on your balance sheet and that really it makes it look really bad it looks like we're in the you know negative 70 million dollars um the and well and the other concern is when you compare from night fiscal 19 to fiscal 20 there's a significant increase in that number um so first is just it's a large negative number because the liability or the you know the the money we will at some point in the future owe has to be sort of put onto your balance sheet so they they're basically saying you have to represent what your obligation is to all your current and existing retirees your current employees and existing repairs you have to represent that on your you know because that's something you're gonna have to pay at some point um so there you know probably eight years ago or so that became a standard to put that onto the balance sheet so it made everybody's balance sheet go really negative because no one's got their retirement benefits funded fully so um that's one thing the the other thing is a bit concerning in looking at that number you know is that it went up significantly um from the previous year and what that really is an indication of is how uh our evaluation change so every other year we do a full evaluation of what our our liability is in other words what our um future responsibility to retirees is uh around benefits um we do a full renewal of that every other year in the off year which is current fiscal 21 they make an estimate so do kind of a quick estimate of what that change has been but one of the significant things between 2019 or more importantly 2018 when we had our last goal done in 2020 when we had our more recent full analysis done is who we had do that work is different and they made some very different assumptions about how much health insurance costs are going to go up how much uh return on investment we're going to have um and those those two in particular were things that they did very differently than our previous uh actuarial who does that calculation and so that made uh you know our opeb liability go up significantly the town had the same thing happened to them so uh they were much more conservative in what they thought um health insurance was going to do in other words they projected much higher health insurance costs over the next 30 years as they project out they also projected more conservatively relative to what essentially what interest earning there's going to be so as you put money away into our opeb trust um you know that you get interest and an interest on your interest and that helps to to uh reduce your your liability and their you know estimate for what that return is on investment is was more conservative much smaller number than than the previous uh the previous actuarial so that those two things uh how they go about doing the calculation uh were pretty significantly different and therefore made our our open liability go up quite a bit so that's you know it's the portion of things we have to pay it today um so it it's you know it's a number that's going to change a lot over the years plus minus as things go along but it gives us a sense of how big that liability is and a sense of the urgency to continue to fund our opeb uh trust fund as we as we move along um so that's those are things that kind of jump out to me on the on the financial statements that you know i know them but then you sort of see them and start reality when they when they put on paper like that and so i want to explain that a little bit for for you guys um but i was pleased you know kind of going through this one for the first time fiscal 20 um i only had a tiny part of that one as far as you know being in this role but but uh and you know the full end of year responsibility and some of that so i was pleased that they didn't have a lot of things that needed correction or or things that they were worried about that's really a testament to my predecessor and of course this my staff and in the work that they do and how well they do their work and and so i'll ride their coattails on that for sure i think i'll stop there and ask if anybody see any questions as you went through and looked at that i think it jumped out that you were like what the heck is that or or something that looked concerning or off-putting or or not so does anyone have questions i i actually do have one question um dr slaughter the so you said that they look at the full liability um how do they determine what the full liability is do they have some kind of actuarial formula for saying you know this person may live this long and therefore require benefits that's exactly the kind of idea that they do yeah they they get a list of current retirees and a list of current employees and they make estimates about how long people are going to live uh you know how many are likely to become retirees for the current employees how many are likely to become retirees what their likely lifespan is like what their life likely you know health burden is going to be um so they make all those kind of estimates on on that um they also you know like i said they estimate uh you know our our trust fund and how it's how well it'll grow or how quickly to grow or how strongly it'll grow they will also uh estimate uh what they think is going to happen in the marketplace relative to cost of health insurance um so they use all of those things and and as part and parcel like it's pretty extensive kind of thing to do and it's it's funny that that you know people will often you know and kind of rightly so look at that number and be it's very scary but it's and there's a lot of of you know significant uh and thorough uh computations involved but at the same time there's a lot of estimates um you know they're rational and reasonable and appropriate and you know it's what actuarials do all the time it's how the whole insurance injury industry works though um but yeah they take into account all that sort of stuff okay thank you um any other comments or um so i guess i have another question it so will you be presenting this to the full regional committee i will um you know and i think how we do that will be a little bit determined by how you want to do it um it could be a thing where i could do kind of like what i did now except probably even more brief hopefully uh but um but if you would like to do that kind of introduction it's perfectly fine too i think it's up to you and the chair uh as to how you want to approach that but but i'm happy to sort of explain the terminology which is really i think one of the biggest pieces is like what are the terms that they're using uh and what are the sort of key takeaways from from what we've seen and i can do that okay does anybody have any feedback about that what you think we should do or what dr slaughter should do no well i i think it's it's great that there weren't any important findings um so well done and everybody else on your team i think um it's it's i mean that should be i think one of the things strongly communicated to the the committee and the public um i i i'm also i mean this opeb number so i i think i'm the figure out what my title is pebb is that like i i think i'm the one who signs the documents for gopeb and some of the papers so if i remember correctly we slowed like we slowed down our contributions to op to deal with some of the financial right we more conservatively the challenges we're facing so we were worried for fiscal 20 i've got to remember now i think for fiscal 21 i think we went from like 98 000 to like 68 000 i think we reduced it i think we brought it back up this year i have to look i haven't looked to see but it is one of those things the more aggressively we can put money away the better but obviously it's like you know it's like spending money on capital it's means you're not spending on operating so then you can't you know there's a sort of the uh the balancing act between the here and now and the and the future and trying to strike the right balance there but that's kind of my question is like are we going to have to um because it's changed like i guess the concerning thing is is is that if if if it's a moving target and if it just got harder to hit um are we going to have to take a hit in some other areas to address it or are you not worried about it i guess that's one of the things i'm i'm curious about if it's going to become an issue under already kind of tight financial yeah i don't think we need to take immediate action i mean i think it's you know it's it's a bit of a bellwether for the future i think there's a couple of pieces um i would suggest that they're their estimate of health insurance costs are um we're pretty pretty conservative maybe a bit too conservative i don't think we'll see health insurance costs uh rise as much as they expect them to for us um so i think that's one differential i'll make in in sort of how i would characterize that number i you know it's still a very big number the other piece is that you know we've got time um if if um so we you know but we do want to keep it in mind keep working at it the the excuse me uh the other thing i would say is that we are currently funding trying to fully fund our retirement um so the folks that pay new hampshire county uh you know that's a system they sort of you know that one and that problem kicked in earlier so in the mid 80s the state required everybody to kind of make a plan for funding their retirees because they had done a kind of pay as you go on that it was starting to show up everybody's uh budgets and so the the payment we make to hampshire county each year includes some sort of one way to describe this we're trying to catch up so there's a there's a when you're doing that kind of funding for a future retirement benefit whether it be you know pension or or health insurance um there are estimates of what you need to put away sort of every year to sort of make sure it has enough when the the group of current employees retires but for our pension we're doing that chunk plus some because we've got people who we didn't fund previously and so we're still trying to get caught up and when they talk about being fully funded so before the great recession in 2008 the target was i think 20 30.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um we have a the percentage of positive cases the past seven days in fairfield county is i think 4.7 that's the number today so if you if you track it and so the the website has a graph and the graph is steadily moving upward um it used to be very very low a couple of months ago and like you said and now it's coming back up i have a couple of i just drew a couple of um numbers of the american-american pediatrics there are two there were more than 200 000 positive tests in children in the last week and that is in the entire united states and between eight between august 20 and august 26 there were 330 children admitted to the hospital every day so those i that was not part of the numbers uh whether it was the delta variant it's assumed that it is it's not uh i didn't see any verification i think that one of the two best places to look at in terms of [Music] the current numbers are the kogidak now site and also johns hopkins has a site that keeps track of all counties and considering considering the data when do you think you might be advisable in the future um very good question [Music] i think the answer to that is if we consistently have low levels of community transmission so there's a a um description at the ctc website um the transmission is um the low level is the direct the uh the definition of low is zero to nine total new cases per 100k in the population and um the percentage of positive cases should be less than five percent i think that at that point if it's consistently um that low in the community [Music] it's hard because um it's hard to determine because this is new when we don't have uh a lot of data to base what consists of consistently but yeah that's frustrating so related to that the last time we met you and dr sullivan reported on the guidance that was coming in from the dph to stay low right it was and we learned a lot about the course of law if you will of the governor's degree at that meeting um what is the latest guidance that you're getting from dph or should that be something we asked i've sold about so um it's it's the same which is masks are recommended for kids to win up and all of the adults in schools nothing has changed since the the declaration last july the recommendations so the positivity rate so positive rate is positive cases by the total test correct percent of positive cases positively rate is positive cases divided by total cases correct positivity right yeah okay i'm just clarifying that sure so positive tests are total uh total cases uh what about actual total tests are they going up as well in your practice and around that one person can test positive twice in the same weekend get double counted have you encountered any situations like that you mean they go to two test places yeah two locations why would they go to because if they tested positive [Music] i'll step back so uh testing is up right we're testing more people uh we are yes uh are we testing whether vaccine it doesn't matter this matter positively rates around again um are we now both of those websites and i like tt go actually and it's all about the same you said 17 per 100k i believe brookfield has a 26-16 point whatever so it's really it's really interesting uh any idea of hospitalizations deaths i mean you haven't had the i did so would you think the increase in testing would could inflate the positivity rate if you're testing a lot more people than we did a month ago it can i was going to say that i don't think that we actually i think we meant i'm just talking about our office which is really small um i don't think we slowed down on testing um throughout the summer we and i'm there four days a week um we we didn't go we didn't decrease the um our threshold for testing so whether they're vaccinated or not uh if they have any kind of symptoms related to coping we tested the kids um and our numbers were very very low to nine four weeks in the summer and then it started to slowly climb up and that's just us across the board if i if i see if i look at the uh it follows the every hospital senses information about their positivity rate and their number of cases those zones are so hard to get hospitalization but yeah actually saw this in the last death of brookfield was invented because that's right i think dr sullivan has more information about that i don't dr garcia i'm curious about any um children presenting in your office with health conditions that contribute to mass wearing are you seeing any detrimental effects of children suffering from any respiratory issues that can contribute to wearing honesty i don't i for example for kids who have asthma and um are on masks all day we haven't seen an increased need for treatment with their medicine although beautiful i think it's more the kids get tired of wearing it and um they they they they just don't feel like wearing it at the end of the day um i've seen one of the things that i remember seeing is a couple of kids who i saw in the afternoon they were little they're like six or seven and of course they're masked in the office and then i have to check their nose and mouth right and when you take off the mask it's dirty looking inside and i worry about that you know um that's like the full day's worth of breathing but that's all i remember i don't really see any relationship with so illness sounds like the benefit of wearing them outweighs the risk of not wearing i'm convinced yes that it is definitely outweighing the risk of getting sick thank you you're welcome dr c have you written any exemptions [Music] for instance i have not i have not i have written some recommendations on modification um for maybe an increased number of aspects for a couple of children into practice very young children who um who could be in the spectrum may benefit from that so it's been mostly most immediate reasons yes are you making recommendations to clean those send multiple masks it's best to send a couple of spares and also to keep them clean every day and wash them but yes i do speak with the parents there's a potential that kid can break breathe in you know toxins everybody actually does get rid of um no i'm worried about just the you know the the the dirt that gets into the mask like mucus for example from your nose well okay [Music] thank you very much for being here i know that um answering some of these questions it's not what you're here for but thank you for answering our general medical questions and um do parents get to ask them questions no they do not thank you and i will actually pause here and remind you to keep your mask on um like i said this is a state law the board holds liability for following that law so if you're not going to keep your mess done [Music] um let's move on to subcommittee reports actually governon so we can run to the consent agenda um is that's unanimous um on to new business and we have first up is the summer technology update so um [Music] um good evening good evening everyone we're excited to start the school year again and get everything off and running um but i won't take too much time tonight to explain some of the projects that we got to work on this summer uh we have a couple projects that we got to finish a couple projects in the works a couple projects from last year that we didn't get to finish either um so first some of the big budget items that we're on um all of our high school staff got new laptops this uh this summer um most of them actually came and picked them up over the summer so that gave us the ability to repurpose their laptops to huckleberry and center for one over the year because those staff members will get new laptops um which in a replacement lifecycle works out perfectly for the new building so that will work out very very well um one of our other big projects was um the 15 display boards um that were to be installed and finish out the high school so we can move on to even those ones called the whiskey um those words can be completed by the starting school but with the shortages of everything happening there is currently a glass shortage um that uh the company that recorded um the smart the smart boards i'm using the word smartwatch they're actually digital display boards uh the company view sonic witnessing a huge um shortage um and so we're looking for installation hopefully from the end of september early october um the staff still has projectors and ways to show their screens up in the middle of the classroom so we're getting by there um excuse me we got our one-to-one chromebooks plus our additional 300 chromebooks that we asked for our team uh worked very quickly as they arrived we got them ready we got them sent over to the schools we got them ready uh chromebook handouts started last week at the high school also last week at whiskey here as well um i don't have the numbers to listen here um at the moment we're a little bit further behind on handouts there but um for the high school since last thursday we've handed out um almost 550 chromebooks already to the one-to-one program so that is a great start for the second day of school so we're really happy about that the team worked really hard to make sure that we made the process uh efficient for families to come in pick up the chromebook from the library while they were here for orientation or dedicated pickup times we followed the same procedure from the eighth grade at wisconia um we had some come in and pick them up they're in orientation uh we're having students pick them up during the year we collected chromebooks at the end of the school year from families that had them due to remote learning um or anything like that and uh so this year we are because of a lot of a lot of uncertainty in what the school year is going to look like um with the virus we are having devices available for students in k-7 we're giving three options we're allowing students to bring their own device again byod we're allowing students to obtain a device from their classroom we're handing out everything through the classroom this year they can get the device from their classroom bring it to and from school as needed um as we're doing we're not giving as much in front of technology all day anymore but we are utilizing this regular part of our classroom instruction through google classroom and other various resources that we use um and so they can take it to and from school another option is some may not want to carry it back and forth in their backpack they might have a device at home so they're going to have one assigned to them in the classroom they can leave it in school they can have one at home so we're hoping that um giving without some good feedback on it so far we're going to start handing them out um and assigning them to uh to students in k7 and huckleberry tomorrow at whiskey near next week once we get a determination of who's doing the byod so the chromebooks are going very very well it's a lot of chromebooks it's a lot of students but the team is doing a really really great job in getting those all done we spent a good amount of the summer working on some infrastructure work we were working on dividing up some of our wireless traffic from our wire traffic and our phone traffic create more reliable connections and really take advantage of the additional bandwidth that we purchased this year from the connecticut education network um and so to separate the traffic and um and dedicate the traffic going out of our network and back in has really made a difference so far um and we've seen um not only better quality wifi but also better quality phone servers too inside the districts and i'm talking about the district landline phones not so long so that's going very very well um our other big projects um have included we followed a couple years ago i think some of you may not have been on the board yet at that point we removed all the computer labs from huckleberry um to focus on using more chromebooks we followed suited wisconsin so um there's one out of i believe we had five computer labs at whiskey here we're down to one now um the influx of the chromebooks and the need for space in the classrooms and the ability to do more inside the classrooms has led to this and so we're really excited to be able to offer more chromebooks and and repurpose those computer lab spaces the chromebooks give us a lot more flexibility inside of school and so that's great everybody's really excited about that another big project we've been working on is addressing and i don't want to go too much into detail on this right now but um we've been doing a lot to address cyber security we're very aware of what's happening in education outside of education and you know nobody's immune to it um you know so we are looking at taking measures like multi-factor authentication for all staff and administrators enhanced device protections in and out of the district and that includes chromebooks even though they don't do as much necessarily and they can't get as many viruses as a windows device there's still a risk and um so we're taking a big look at that that's an ongoing project but we did kick off to do a lot of that over the summer um so those are some of our big projects this year um a lot of a lot of infrastructure work the chromebooks are always going to be our primary front and center and of course we're excited to provide staff with new technology as we can so any questions for eric that was a lot of work thank you very much the next item on our agenda is the summer fall athletics update um but our athletic director steve baldwin had a scheduling issue so we're going to have him back in the next couple of weeks so that would bring us to our public comment portion um i just want to read a couple of things before we get started all right so while others are speaking please remember that they are the ones that have the floor so there should be absolutely no commentary from the crowd um this goes for the remainder of our meeting if you choose to stay after that as well with masks again there's mass mandates i ask that you please wear it when you come up to the podium as well if you have a medical exemption for this which should be a distance from others when you step up to the po to the podium please just take your name your address for the record you will have three minutes to speak on matters that are within the board's purview we have these visual timers here to help you out so we'll also indicate to you when your three minutes is up we'll tell you to finish your thought if you go much beyond those three minutes we have the ability to turn your mic off so please just respect um the time that's here that's given so that everybody else gets a chance to speak as well um and that's pretty much it so we're gonna go run through this list and the first up is logan's cylinder hi my name my is and i have three kids in the district a first grader a fifth grader and a seventh grader and i'm here tonight because i wanted to ask you as you've done my last year to continue to follow the science the data the medical what i understand from the past board meeting is successful for normal transmission to no transmission last year so we would look towards that and determine the protocols for the future uh second i wanted to say that as this conductor evolves i'm glad to see that uh silhouette is one so i know our kids were in person last year and this year i could see a difference already in the two days of school or two of this come here and working and we have lunch with their friends again they love being able to move around the classrooms um even having some of their playground equipment back so they can play with their friends last year not having the desk shield has been helpful they always chucked them out sometimes to be able to see not having a computer is a huge thing they were getting pretty tired and sitting in front of the computer for all of their assignments and really for them the masks have not been a problem um for them they saw the launchers don't even notice that they're wearing it and when i ask them if they would prefer to wear it or out of school they say they would refer to their like they do not want to have to worry about increased potential for transmissions of the virus or going into quarantine or going back to the season they want to be in school and so the final point that i would read is that i know that there are um you consider the concerns of parents that would like to have asks the option i would ask that you also consider the concerns of your children then we'll be sitting in there some of the masks if i'm not and those are may be afraid of a potential increase of transmission from being indoors with other individuals that are unmasked near them for the risk of bringing it home to younger siblings to older ones or to families with health issues for me last year i went through treatment for cancer and the same time endemic so the thought of having coded brought into our house on top of that was something we wanted to avoid at all costs and knowing that there are actually things that you can do to minimize your risk to bring them into the home is important and so i would say the actions of one or two or two have an impact thank you next is good evening my name is ron jaffe i live at 21 white pine drive i'm also here to talk about masks in public safety a bit of context i sat where you now sit for seven years i was on the board of edge so i know the challenges and realities facing the world i can tell you that the one thing that guided my actions with the commitment to do what was right and then to spend time and energy explaining my actions to their feelings i also never wanted to be in a position where i had to tell parents that i wished i had done more to protect their children while apologized period if i were sitting in your chair right now i'd rely on the overwhelming consensus of scientists researchers the cdc the nih and more follow the science not the outliers then explain your actions and address the noise in clear language politics are complicated but doing what is right to protect the students teachers staff and community is not complicated at all regardless of whether the governor's powers are extended please continue to protect all of brook field thank you up next is tara carr good evening my name is tara carr i'm a resident of 54 indian trail a taxpayer and a concerned mother to four children aged 12 10 8 and 6.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
we are at 16. eighteen one more one more before you put it up like let me know when you're 19 and before you put it up i want to say just one more thing okay okay we're at 19. okay perfect um so again just in the most genuine way in the most authentic way uh on behalf of our district on behalf of the board um i just i can't say enough how uh grateful uh i am uh for every voice obviously we have different voices and obviously we have different opinions but that's what makes us uh stronger this is not an easy topic uh obviously it has a lot of ramifications uh but i think anthony said it and if i misquote you anthony somebody else said it um as as uncomfortable and as tough a decision uh we know that it's a decision that we have to make um you know no matter which way no matter which we which way we go um so in a second i'm gonna ask lika to show our our results again uh per our conversation in the uh at the beginning on the onset of this uh of this meeting uh when we go to the board of education um and we talk about the school reorganization team it'll be about this journey about how you rolled up your sleeves you put in the work you came up with these two uh models and at the end of the day we will share the data that lika is going to display right now and and let them know that this is how the the team landed on these two models okay so as you see there uh 50 57.9 percent uh for model 4 and 42.1 percent uh for model 3.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i think they kicked that out for pensions to 2035 or something like that they kind of extended the time horizon um and depending on the you know how that retirement system performs it may we may realize uh or get to sort of a fully funded state sooner than that when that happens our assessment for hampshire county and and uh you know will drop significantly so then we can just switch and use those resources to help fund our opeb at that point um you know things that would happen that would cause us to take a different strategy would be if health insurance we started having health insurance go up you know 10 12 15 every year and there wasn't anything we could do about it i mean you know we we've had circumstances like that in the past we've generally had things we could do with plan design and some of that sort of stuff to alter um and you know sort of mitigate those cost increases but you know you could be in a circumstance where you know that you don't have those options anymore um i think we're not in that place and i don't foresee us being in that place i think we've been pretty good about being attentive to our um our costs um in a way that that uh we shouldn't see that kind of sharp spike if we had a really sharp spike in in health insurance costs then that would change the conversation considerably because what we would find is that um you know the chunk of the budget that goes to benefits in particular for retirees would become much much larger and and really eat into to our ability to operate our schools so i don't foresee that happening so i think we've got some time um you know it is disconcerting to see a big jump of 14 million dollars in what we think we owe but um you know i think we you know we don't want to explain it away we don't want to minimize the need and the need to continue to address it but i think it also indicates i mean you can just see how the difference in going from one actuarial to another can make a huge huge difference in what that number looks like and so it's um it's important to kind of keep an eye on it as we go through the years to to try to shrink it or try to have it you know be working in a direction where we we fund more fully and and have uh um you know that number start to come down uh you know and and and not have the big jumps like that but you know i think changing actuarials makes a big difference um and that's not to say they're good or bad it's just a much different set of assumptions and so but it also indicates how you know uh how volatile it can be and how how much you could change but unfortunately we're not going to suddenly stop and everybody retire tomorrow so we don't have to come up with all the money right now so that's good um any other comments or questions at this point um actually i do have a question um dr slaughter is the hampshire county retirement is that what all of the teachers and the staff are part of is that their retirement plan so teachers and administrators all pay into the mtrs which is massachusetts teacher retirement system which is its own system but everyone else all the custodians clerical paraprofessionals those are you know the folks that pay into the hampshire county along with the municipal employees at the town hall and that sort of thing and so um it's roughly half and half first into the two systems they're very parallel in a lot of ways um the state teachers retirement system i think is a little more mature in some respects um but it's you know the concept is the same in both cases all right thank you that that's helpful to understand that for me um all right well um i guess if there are no more comments or questions um thank you dr slaughter for that i learned a lot listening to this tonight so thank you so we'll move on to the next topic on the agenda which is the school budget basics for the public and um as those of us who were at the the regional school committee retreat know the budget this is something that came up um in that during that time and i guess the thing maybe to do um miss mcdonald shared a couple of documents with them one of them was the notes from the retreat regarding the budget things related to the budget um which miss lord prepared the notes from our meeting um and the other was is a document that she shared with some suggestions about how to proceed with this particular item so i'm not i guess what would be appropriate for tonight is to perhaps discuss i think miss mcdonald's document and the suggestions that she makes in there and see how people feel about that does that seem reasonable to everybody dr slaughter so when we last met as a as a subcommittee we had been talking about this this topic about how to present things to to the public generally what are what are good ways to do that and we were i think a bit in the throes of of budget so it's a little difficult to sort of really spend some time on it but uh but so that's part of why i wanted to put on the agenda tonight is because there's been subsequent conversations not really knowing that you guys had talked about it at the retreat but knowing that um you know the superintendent myself and ms mcdonald had a conversation uh regarding thinking about how do we outreach sooner and and you know sort of build some some uh you know some knowledge base and awareness in the public about how we go about what we do and and uh and and what all is involved in getting the budget constructed so that the people if they want to uh you know sort of impact the budget when's the right time to engage i think is one of the things that i think and and this has been true i've been in you know town meeting and on you know around budgets not just school budgets for a long time and one of the struggles that most folks have is that you know the budget starts way earlier than anybody knows unless you're in it for a while and so to impact the budget you really have to have that conversation essentially this fall because once we kind of turn the corner of the year the realities of what finances are available what resources are available start to hit and it's really uh difficult to make any sort of major shifts in how you're thinking about spending your money at that point so you know that's a piece i think that the public generally uh it's hard to pay attention nine months early right you know because that's really what it goes down to it's like we're talking october about something it takes in effect the following july um so it's it's it and and it's the other thing i would suggest is that um you know it's really complex and i think that's one of the other things to convey to people is that in as much as some aspects are fairly straightforward there's like so much revenue and so much expenses and you know you can't have more expenses than revenue right um but the number and types and constraints on on the different revenue sources and expenditures you know is it's really complex really quickly when you talk about like assessment methods and you know chapter 70 formulas and you know all that sort of stuff and i think that tends to to numb people a little bit um because it starts to they get out of their depth and they get uncomfortable and so i think it's imperative i think i mean this is my opinion so i'll share it with you and you guys can go from there is that it's imperative to kind of keep the the basic through line of the conversation always in a in a frame that anybody can access and so you know when we get into talking the specifics of assessment methods or you know capital funding or you know whatever it is um you know i think it's always good to have that sort of touchstone that that most people can kind of come back to and understand broadly what's happening and and because the the details get really nuanced really quickly and really um difficult and and you can talk to business officials around the state and there are aspects and i'll admit to this myself i mean there are aspects of of some of the things that i don't know exactly you know i mean partly because they don't come up for us i mean that's part of it um you know the things that just don't come up in in our circumstance uh and and yet but there are also just subtleties of of things that you know i invariably am going and looking up the details on just to to make sure that we for execute the right steps to you know sort of get the funding right or get the the uh projection made properly or you know make it a reasonable estimate about how this that or the other thing is going to be funded or not funded so um you know it's it gets really complex really quick so i think it's it's helpful for us to keep in mind that it's that complex and we want to have a way to kind of come back to touchstones that are uh broadly accessible for people to kind of keep the conversation where it needs to be which is about what's really important to us where we want to spend our money in the broadest sense you know and and how do we have those conversations which are are ones that we can all have and public can have and can be meaningful and and so i'll say that and stop there okay i i assume you looked at the document that miss mcdonald shared i did yeah okay um so i'm not quite sure where to go from here i guess i'll ask for comments from either miss lord or miss spitzer if you have any thoughts about the timeline or that she's suggesting the kinds of things that that are suggested in there i certainly i think they fit into keeping dr slaughter's comment in mind about how complex it gets um i still think there that we can do more with the public about how the budget happens starting early trying to get input from people about what they feel is most important those kinds of things so um and timing is important because of the budget process starting so early um so any comments this video thanks um so i think this is useful to have this document and i apologize i came in this today so i didn't have a i'm just reading it now and reacting to it so i um not fully formed but i a couple questions i had kind of for um doug is what um what pieces of this are we already maybe not doing because it's been i know it's been hard you've been starting in a time of covid and a pandemic and i know some of the but i feel like some of this stuff was getting done um in years that were non-pandemic years in terms of some of the reports that we put together for the like those big budget books we had i feel like some of the bullets under the ideas might at least intersect or overlap a bit with some of the work that's already ideally getting done in a in a regular year um and then my other question was this idea of i'm curious about when it says possible timing like considers regional budget process advisory committee like how is that going to be different than the budget subcommittee um i i've been hearing a lot of feedback from folks that um they don't want to commit to additional subcommittees at the last like in i think we heard that somewhat in the meetings i'm curious about how um this is this a separate committee and if so how would its task be distinct from the budget subcommittee would it have members from outside of the the school committee and is that what makes it different is maybe we'd bring in folks who who are constituents rather than just members of the administration and the school committee um so those were my initial questions but i think it's a really great idea to start trying to bring in town officials who are part of this process where especially at the region because i think the more information they have in the better understanding hopefully the more smoothly the process will go if i can just offer one quick thing um yeah i mean my goal this year you know certainly for a number of reasons is to get back to some of the things so like we you know traditionally published a timeline of of when we were looking to meet and you know when the decision points were you know i'd like to get back to doing that and and making that a more public document getting that i think there are some opportunities to put that more clearly on our website um i think the you know the sort of big budget books i mean there are aspects of that that um not having had an opportunity to really build them it's been unfortunate because they they do help answer a lot of questions for folks and i i think getting back to that is is helpful i do think they are an overwhelming document because they're usually a couple hundred pages and people you know start to get trepidation about opening something that large but uh but same time i'd like to do that independently just so that of the whether the public leverages it much or not but for you know for the school committee's sake is as well as my own and really quite honestly my you know the the you know the staff and principals and administrators those are those are really useful tools for them as well and so certainly goal of mine to get back to that and many of the other things we've done in the past to help paint the picture do i think there are ways we could to you know update our website or make things a little more um uh you know well easy to find but also visually you know simpler i think there are there are aspects of of that budget book that are a little i mean the text is great but i think it's oftentimes um a little overwhelming to kind of get through all of that and and so um some some i want to do some thinking about some simplified versions of of some of that same information so that it's a little more uh hands-on i'm sorry sean mangano probably two years ago about this thing goes yeah i'd like to have one of those pictures with like a dollar bill that like the slices of the bill represent the pieces because that you know when you think about a dollar people can you know get their heads wrapped around oh 50 cents a spin on this and 12 cents is spent on that and and you know i appreciate that you know pie chart does the same thing it's just not always as tangible when you sort of lay out a dollar bill and say okay well this much of it's for this and this is for this for this that gets a little more digestible in some ways so i think there's a few different ways we can can approach that um relative the other topic which you ask about about the the you know advisory committee i'm going to defer on that let maybe the chair mcdonald weigh in on that a little bit more or the rest of you because i don't have opinion i mean i have some opinions but it's not my purview i guess um so i'm gonna call on miss mcdonald even though she's not a member of the budget committee i'm still gonna call on her because she has presented this information to us miss mcdonald um thank you so i i just want to uh answer um the thought just just a start as a starting point this was um the intent of this is not not to proscribe what we should or prescribe what we should be doing um it's really just from conversations um uh just captain encapsulating all of them in one spot because i think that's easier than having sort of abstract conversations it's easier for us to look at like words on page and be like oh no that's not what i want um that's not what makes sense um so none of this um it really is just a starter for conversation and the advisory committee um you know again i'm not sure on this i uh that but there's conversations um and i and i think you know conversations that i've been having with um folks from the town council for example um and just uh just remembering our four towns process last year um that there's a desire to or just a energy maybe as a word i don't even know if the full form desire but to to think about the process um and um you know in a way that sort of brings the groups together and brings our member towns together in the region in a different way then i shouldn't say different um in a way that is as collaborative and open and in working on the budget um and sort of not sort of getting to it i think when did we have it was it february i think there was some sentiment that that was so late in the process um for for some things to begin to be discussed and so this was a thought to create a way to sort of create create a committee to talk about that process and the process only sort of to do to collaborate across across the towns before we get to the actual four towns meeting um i know that like there's significant downsides to this to this idea um not least of which is it's more committees um and um you know ensuring that the right members from different from the member towns are involved um and i shouldn't even say the right enough is probably more the right word um defining the scope narrowly enough so that it isn't creeping into the role of the actual four towns meeting i mean i i'm sure doug has lots of other sort of potential downside perspective on it um so i i'm not i'm not thinking that that's what we would do it was just a sort of an idea of like how do we bring build a more collaborative process um you know around sort of the four towns meetings that can work um and has worked um so i guess that's really the question there thank you um miss lord do you have any observations or comments all right um well i guess um i had a s so um hearing ms mcdonald's comments and looking at this i wonder if we could think about if there's going to be an advisory committee i guess my opinion my feeling is that that would have more to do with it sounds like what you were thinking miss mcdonald of getting the the town people together earlier in the process i think that some of this work is really work that the budget subcommittee should probably do not an advisory committee i think you know if we're going to try and prepare some information for the public where maybe we can define some of the things in a way that might be easier to understand keeping it general enough that you know we don't get people down in the rabbit hole but keep them general enough i think that might be the role of the budget committee too so um i wonder i i don't know anybody else want to comment on that i i can see a role for an advisory committee if we want to bring other people in from outside at some point in the budget process miss mister i guess i'm just trying to understand if the is the idea to bring folks in earlier so they understand how we got to the numbers we got to like is it an edge like trying to help them understand our constraints or you know the the the values that led to those numbers um or is it more because i think the thing i'm worried about is it's not is it going to be or is it going to be a meeting where we're trying to get those that information so that we can the district is changes what is spending its money like is it supposed to have any impact on how we actually are spending the dollars or is it all about trying to get them get a baseline understanding of the process so that hopefully the meeting will be a little more harmonious because i i guess i'm a little worried if it's that one of educational piece or is it more about like participatory budgeting so that they're having more say in how we're spending the dollars because i think we're all elected officials from the four towns that are represented and that is kind of our role and so if it's i hope it would be more the educational piece dr slaughter if i if i may i i think you yeah this sort of there's sort of two pieces here i think in in the broader sense i mean i think there is you know opportunity for uh well let me back up so traditionally in a four towns meeting it was here's some information about how we're thinking about our program studies and that sort of thing and and you know obviously comments could be made as to whether you know the select board in leverage or truth very likes it or doesn't like it but that's more critically the school committee member from that town's responsibility to sort of weigh in on that uh in regional school committee meetings as we do our budget you know i always have you know sort of envisioned the four towns meeting as a conversation about uh you know sort of ability to pay and capacity to pay um one of the struggles we've had more recently is about the mechanisms of of how the assessment's done because there are you know sort of multiples it's and it's you know it's a long-standing and ongoing issue it's it's so i think that my thinking is is the following is that i mean obviously you know they can offer any of the four towns and their members can offer a suggestion about you know we think you should spend more on this you know the bright program or the this you know or that but that would be something they could do through the regular sort of budget hearings and process that happens i think that um you know there's an i think there's an education piece about how the assessments work and how um you know the different methodologies impact how much a particular town pays independent of what that you know sort of target is but just sort of you know what is the burden that's borne by each town you know one of the mechanics of that how what influences it what impacts it what doesn't impact it um i think that's an educational piece we can do and then the second piece is then to have those conversations that we've had but in more of a tangential way which is um you know how do we get to a place where you know some very different philosophies about um how that you know sort of cost should be born um and and i think that you know knowing the tools we have and the mechanics we have one piece but then the second piece is um how do we productively work to a uh a place uh of agreement you know a compromise you know that that is uh palatable and understood and i think that's the area that's been more of a struggle for us in the last you know few years and and i mean it's always been there in some respects i think it's more strident of late because i think that there are you know some uh you know there are different pressures in different towns um the three smaller towns you know really in some ways have the same kinds of pressures in that uh you know their ability to raise taxes and the costs are in sync you know um uh and differing and and you know different views within the community about you know what's uh what's a fair way to divvy up that that that cost and so um i think getting you know thinking about ways we could engage that conversation about how to um balance those different points of view because i think that it's been clear the last couple times that i've been involved you know uh there's a very strangely different point of view about you know a full statutory method versus a full uh regional assessment regional agreement method and the varying flavors in between that um and i think that and one of the other things that's really a significant difficulty is with amherst being so large you know uh how that impacts things good and bad you know if amherst has a great year financially its ability to sort of have a huge positive impact uh on the on the finances of the of the region is is pretty significant whereas if you know if leverage has a great year and they want to go five percent uh you know amherst may not may only be able to go one percent that's you know there's a huge difference there and so understanding that and how those interact is also part and parcel of that conversation about how to strike that compromise and and i think that's that's the real you know sort of there's learning the mechanics of how it fits together and you know um what's at play between the sort of two primary tools we have which is a statuary method or a uh a rolling average method um we can invent an entirely new one if we wanted to go there um but then i think the second is how do we you know get participation and find common ground about where we land uh relics of that and where we see ourselves in the future too i think which is also hard um you know communities are are facing the prop two and a half limits of twenty five dollars per thousand dollar evaluations you know once that hits you're stuck you don't really have an option to go above that and that's gonna create uh some crisis in a number of communities around the commonwealth not just ours but but i think that that's coming in the next you know three to five years maybe not quite that quickly uh depending um that's going to change the conversation in it i think because the the um the ability of towns to to take action is going to change they're going to have less tools at their disposal so i think that's that's kind of how i see it i think you know i think keeping ourselves focused on those those kind of two aspects would be perhaps most productive um and can be started you know i mean it's always a concert tomorrow i mean i don't you know those are not things that need to know what the estimated revenue needs to be for you know fiscal and i think in some ways kind of keeping i think in some ways to have those conversations having um you know using a generic number as the target and then and then uh talking about how those different mechanisms of assessment method and that sort of thing play into that um might be valuable because it it abstracts it from the immediacy of the coming budget um and so that that might be a way to to have the conversation about the mechanics which is one of the things i think we really need to have without it getting quite so tied to the specific more personal things of how does school work next year and what's involved and what's not going to be there next year or whatever it is so good long-winded sorry but um it's good sort of i've sat in both sides of this you know over the years so i've thought about it quite quite a bit in some ways so it quite it's it seems to me like we're really looking at two pieces on this um both you know both have some educational component to them we're looking at the assessment method process and we're looking at how the budget gets created and what you know um and what perhaps defining some of the things for people in a more general way about you know special education regional transportation those kinds of things in in that affect the revenue and also some of our expenditures so i don't know it seems to me like we're really looking at two two parts to this and um [Music] i might suggest that the the budget subcommittee would continue working on some of the part not the assessment method part initially but the how do we talk to the public about the budget process when it starts how you know um what the at the parts of it are and then maybe we have an advisory committee that kicks in that might bring it that deals more with the assessment issues and that might bring in a couple of people from outside maybe a person from each of the towns somehow um anybody want to comment on that no i'm sorry so to bring in the the folks from the towns would we would we be bringing them bringing them into this committee that were proposed i'm sorry i i it's around dinner time and i'm getting i think my hunger is getting in the way of my ability to prosper so can you just restate the last bit about bringing in members from the town and what what we'd be doing i wonder if we were going to have an at a at a point some point if there were going to be an advisory committee that was going to deal more specifically with the assessment part of it um as opposed to the budget process part um i guess that's what i'm suggesting and and if it were an advisory committee if we wanted to that means we could bring in outside people we wouldn't have to but it would mean that you could so go ahead i'm just trying to connect this to the work that was done previously on like wasn't there this entire assessment working group that tried to get to a new method and so we wouldn't be trying to find a new method we'd be trying to educate about what we're currently doing or what the what the goal be to to try to come because i feel like there's this there's the bringing together and and sometimes i and sorry to be negative about this it's just but it does feel like there are some fundamental conflicts that are not going to be easily um addressed because of you know these structural issues that that the school committee doesn't have any ability to to really fix on its own and are not going away as as as was mentioned so with the convening be to try to just get people to understand that we actually don't have a like this is the statutory method this is the regulatory method this is what we've been how we've been muddling through for the past few few years or is there some sort of goal of actually trying to amend that process and get to a more um consistent way of figuring out um i i can only tell you i guess what my opinion is from the conversations that that we've been having is it wouldn't be looking at trying to create a new assessment method um i do you want to comment on that dr slaughter um i can't um i think that you know uh the state definitely would prefer us not to have a different method every year um i think that you know and i think that what what their concern is or what they think about is um it becomes more difficult to be planful if you're always sort of moving the you know changing the rules of the game and i think that's hard for our our communities to be able to uh to evaluate the the method as well and so i think that you know um i i don't know that there's a particular outcome that we would necessarily be able to get to you know in in what would make my life a little easier you know because it's all about me uh no is is that uh if we could get an agreement on a particular assessment for a few years i think that you know then if everybody's like all right we're going to do this and this is how we're going to do it yes you know this methodology whatever that you know is some variant on what we've done in the past few years and just hold it steady for a couple years i think than that uh we can see how that plays out over a couple years which i think is also constructive to the communities as to how a consistent method kind of plays out um but i do think that there's you know and i think this happens within communities as well as across communities that you know fuller understanding of what are the pressures you know financial pressures um because i think that you know if you go to you know within amherst certainly and i think it's true in all of the other towns it's like uh you could you know you spoke to 20 people in each of those you might get very different opinions about where uh where they think the stress points are and it's not that they're inaccurate they just may you know their view of how important something is versus another thing so i think that's that's a that's a piece i think we have to that i think would be valuable to explore and to have the time to explore and and have each community understand their own sort of mechanics of of finance and and constraint and as well as the other you know three communities and then i think that gets us in a place where we might be able to have a a a way to find a more permanent solution to an assessment method but you know which is part of why the state came up with the statutory method um you know there's things i like about those things i dislike about it um you know uh one of the pieces that one of the communities likes to talk about a lot is is that it includes income and you know my counter which is great i think that's not a bad thing to factor that in but my counter argument is that well yeah but a local community doesn't get a tax on income they can only tax on property value so it's you know yeah if you have people who have a lot of income then you potentially could have them pay more but you know and they would be willing to pay more for their schools however you're still limited by 25 per thousand so there's a limit to how far that can go so you know there's there's plus and minuses to you know to to any method we have and and so i think it's um it's going to be difficult but if we could in the shorter term come to some agreement about an assessment that we could hold steady for a few years i think that would be a really big win for everybody and we could all take a collective deep breath and then kind of continue to you know understand the the difficulties we all have internally and externally and and and how to maybe get to an assessment method that we can get to more permanently miss pitzer i like the idea of getting to something consistent and i guess i'm wondering if the school committee is the one to convene this working group just because it is such a contentious issue is there any and was the assessment working group prior convened by kind of an outside party or a figure that was i don't know it's just a thought i have in terms of maybe being able to break down some of the um barriers to good communication might be having a third party who's not the school committee trying to navigate these i don't know just a thought i i don't know the history of a previous working group do you dr slaughter so i think that there's um i don't know if it was you know formally the formally not formerly formally um school committee that necessarily convened it it was clear in i think the way um the previous working groups and there's been a few have been started was ostensibly through school committee saying we'd like to do this in communities than you know offering people to participate um to be honest i think sometimes the people that have been in my role have asked for it um so i think it's been kind of this uh organic process that it's happened in some ways i mean i think the more recent ones have been more formally the school regional school committee said hey let's put this group together can you offer a few members that can participate in an active way but i think that that you know how that charge would be written would be a critical could be a very helpful thing if done critically i guess and and the school committee could take a different uh tact than they have in the past and that's not a criticism it's just it might be necessary to take a different approach to frame the work uh because i think we've you know we've taken i mean we've hired a consultant you know so it's an outside person to come in and talk about you know different methodologies and how they play out in each of the towns and and that's helpful and and you know um and useful but i but um i'm not sure that's the i'm not sure the mechanics is where we need the consultant help uh if we were going to have that i think there were other sort of mediation skills that might be better um you know but uh i'm not hungry but you know certainly i think that it's kind of been driven by the school committee saying hey why don't we form this group to talk about this people have been you know the membership of the school committee are hearing from their town officials that like hey we should have this conversation and so i think it's kind of uh somewhat organically but somewhat directively through school committee happened in the past well it's seven it's actually a few minutes past seven um [Music] uh i don't know that we've really gotten exactly to a place i so if i could yeah i'll offer a couple things so i'll say that i'm hearing a few directives from the group about things that we can do and and so we'll talk you know sort of the small bite-sized things or or well-defined things so you know i think i i think around sort of broader educational sort of stuff you know getting back to a budget book in a timeline that's more easily exist and are more easily on our website i think having other documents not the full budget book but other documents and you know both specific to the upcoming budget but also generally about the budgets i think building some of those kinds of of materials for folks are all things that myself and folks in my office can kind of put together and then give to you guys for feedback on you know those are going to be useful and powerful and helpful perhaps more explicitly in the conversation about fiscal 23 but at the same time i think they're going to help this broader conversation we're having i think on that sort of broader topic um i mean i think there's some educational things we can put together uh around you know assessments and and constructs and and um you know that are kind of things we've talked about before but we can be you know perhaps present them in a way that's a little uh more digestible i've been thinking about that a little bit over the last year or so um and i the other thing we i would suggest is a sort of takeaway that you may want to discuss at the at the regional school committee is whether or not the members of the school committee want to go back to their towns and and and do some work in the town to sort of sit with the you know their finance committees and their select boards to articulate you know uh here's the the things we are you know thinking about concerned about constraints we're operating under you know things we think are important or not important in our community as we build our budget this being one part of it i mean that might be a useful first step for um starting to get at that other kind of question is this to sort of in in a parallel to you know this mcdonald's sort of putting together this list of you know things that have been discussed by making a a sort of concrete document that we can look at and react to um is often very very productive and so i think if if it might be worthwhile to have uh you know the members reach out within their own communities to sort of try to elicit from those folks in their community with those things that are top of mind relative to you know assessments and and you know in their financial constraints and some of that so you know so it's going to be things that the town administrators are going to be able to sort of articulate fairly clearly or your finance committees are going to say hey these are things that are coming up that we know we have good or otherwise you know that uh are in her you know our horizon you know or they can say things like well our community you know really values having you know x percent of the budget for contingency or our you know our community really values uh if we have access in our in our savings to you know essentially lower our tax rate you know it was in a town meeting uh i can't remember which one it was but they actually they literally took money out of of their savings and in order to lower their tax rate uh for the coming year that's that's the strategy you can use uh you know other communities don't do that they're like no we've got this in the bank we're gonna use it for capital expense or whatever you know so there's different strategies there um so so i think there's what i suggest as far as you know moving ahead i've got a boat list of things from that list that i think you know are all going to be things we're working on and then i want to work on uh but i would suggest maybe a conversation that at your you know soon regional school committee meeting about kind of a listening from from the town sort of uh their worries concerning constraints etc that that kind of helps sort of build this frame of of specifics um which i think is we've often talked in more generalities i think and so i i think getting more concrete with some of those uh discomforts in each town or or around their finances and that sort of thing would be would be helpful i mean it'd certainly be helpful for me but i think it would be helpful for the conversation amongst the four towns to be more explicit about what uh what's driving their their thinking i i think that sounds like an excellent idea it would be a way to to involve them early you know and the idea that we are actually reaching out to them to understand more about their situations and in addition to helping us i i think that might be a good good thing to do so okay i'm going to make a suggestion see what you all think um i'd like if it's okay dr slaughter to maybe have a conversation with you um and to write up some of the notes from tonight that we can bring to the next regional committee meeting which is next week um and i can i'll loop you all in along with miss mcdonald since she's the chair of the regional committee um does that sound reasonable to people i would send something out before the meeting so everybody can have a look at it is that that sound reasonable dr slaughter does that seem reasonable to you it sounds fine to me i think you know you have time i know yes and no is i guess the answer to that question it's always yes and no i've got there's no shortage of things to do so if this is of importance then it obviously sort of takes take some precedent there and i think the other you know i mean i think it's it's key that miss mcdonald is is willing to put on the agenda so she's gonna have to put that on her amended you know basically sometime between today and tomorrow as far as i mean but the topic can be broad but i mean it does uh it will need to be formally on the agenda okay so i will need to communicate very quickly you know if we don't have things together until tuesday that's a different story but right but to at least get something on the agenda so there's a placeholder right we're meeting on wednesday actually next week because of russia right okay that's because of the holiday um on monday we have to post tomorrow right so um okay all right so that's sounds like maybe the next thing that we do that's okay with everybody i'm seeing nodding heads okay all right thank you um again i'm learning a lot which is really good um so i guess i'll take a motion to adjourn i move to join the amherst regional legend subscribe [Music] um thank you uh all in favor miss lord i miss pitzer spitzer aye and stance or i and thank you everybody have a good evening i'll look for emails from you good night thanks all right
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i have spoken with many parents who feel very strongly that they do not want their children wearing masks all day parents instincts tell them that masking their child has unhealthy ramifications and they have done their research which we all know it includes the harmful effects of this constant masking for example strep staph and other dangerous bacteria have been found on freshly laundered masks after just one day of wearing studying dr garcia alluded to an increased risk of chronic headaches depression anxiety due to lack of oxygen and increased inhalation carbon dioxide that they're being forced to endure and although dr garcia's small office which he said it is doesn't experience that doesn't mean it's not happening there are scholarly articles on both sides of the mass effectiveness issue we all know that and yet health officials tell us that keeping our mass kids in masks because we need extra layers of protective strategies well connecticut.gov statistics show that children have an almost zero percent risk to themselves or others when it comes to dying from this violence the social and emotional ramifications of this chronic masking is yet unknown but it's not hard to predict human beings especially babies and toddlers observe facial features to develop their sense of empathy with others and to fully comprehend emotions young children rely on visual cues that inform a lifetime of socialization and communication but we're putting our three-year-olds behind these masks beyond those developmental concerns there are psychological ones which i think mrs logan said we know that mass wearing depletes oxygen levels putting the brain into a relative state of fear and anxiety layer that with the constant messaging of fear that children currently receive from tv social media and other influences and it's not hard to see that the unintended cited unintended side effects of this precaution are anything but harmless we are conditioning a generation of fearful children who believe on some level that they and those around them are vectors of disease it's absurd we're also encouraging children to simply be compliant and unquestioning how does that encourage critical thinking all one has to do is look around society and see how mixed the messages are that our kids are getting it's okay to unmask at a crowded restaurant but not at school it's okay to be massive all summer playing with your friends going shopping at target well once you're back at school you're in danger again most kids want to please their parents and teachers so they comply and they go about their day they want to be able to be in school with their friends which mrs lokman said so they follow the rules even if they don't make sense to the kids in my opinion it is our job as parents to advocate for the health and well-being of our own kids and to not accept what i've heard some parents say that the kids can tolerate it that's from finishing i'm here to say i think our society will look back on this time with a sense of shame that people who are standing up for parental rights medical freedom and freedom of speech were mocked and censored in so many ways what i support is families being empowered to make their own decisions based on their own values beliefs research and in consultation with their doctors thank you [Music] [Applause] i'm here tonight because i'm tired of misinformation i'm frustrated with refuting flimsy arguments from the unmasking contingent most of all i'm sad to have to speak out in opposition to some i've known as friends for many years i watched video from the last board meeting where unmasters passionately cited scientific proof of their cause i don't have the time to counter every claim so i randomly chose one there was reference major research titled non-pharmaceutical measures for pandemic influenza in non-healthcare settings personal protective and environmental measures which allegedly concluded that mastering had no bearing on preventing disease a quick check of the pointer institute's politifact indicates this claim was a misunderstanding at best first the research does not mention coronavirus or copepit 19.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
uh so again we will take that we will take that with them um again thank you thank you so much for taking this journey with us i so appreciate uh everything that you've done along the way you have brought up extremely well uh thought out points uh and um and opinions and so um again i'm just i'm very very grateful for you so so thank you um you are always welcome to tune in and participate as we as we begin this process with the board again this this process begins on tuesday september 14th uh at 5 30 pm uh that is our board study session uh again uh this is not about recommendations this is not about thoughts this is not about opinions it's literally just gonna be a study session um and so that happens uh tuesday uh september 14th um if you don't know uh at our next board meeting september 7th uh we begin uh our opening uh of our board meetings to the public uh the board of education i applaud them they have taken the stance that moving forward uh they're going to continue to oh to to offer a hybrid opportunity for our community our parents and our staff and so that is awesome so you don't physically need to come to the board meeting to participate in board meetings they took it one step further and have also uh decided that not only will you be able to watch the board meeting live from wherever you want to be but we are going to offer public input and public comment via zoom as well so a big applause for the board for allowing that for our parents our staff and our community to be able to still connect and participate without having to come physically to the board meeting so thank you very much everyone i wish you a very good evening and if i don't see you a very good three day well-deserved weekend thank you everyone
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
second none of the 10 trials reviewed was done during a pandemic the kicker is said texas a m university texarkana fibrologist ben neuman quote just weeks later a group with the same senior author plus some coronavirus specialists produced a paper demonstrated that masks are indeed highly effective in stopping infected people from releasing airborne viruses unmaskers fact check yourself stop politicizing a public health issue stop trying to sway local officials to do the wrong thing based on junk science and half truths do better let me lay a few more real facts about masking and hope at 19 on you masking in schools is recommended by the american academy of pediatrics the centers for disease control and the world health organization among others in mid-june child cases of cobalt represented about 10.1 percent of total cases in mid-july that number uh jumped to 22.3 percent of public cases as of last week in eight atlanta school districts where masks are currently mandated student body copit positivity over the previous two week period range from 0.6 to 1.7 in seven where there is no mass mandate the rate range from 1.4 to 3.5 hardly a coincidence you think that great philosopher arnold schwarzenegger once said know your strengths and listen to the experts it takes strength that you don't know to admit that you don't know everything weakness is thinking you don't need expert advice and only listening to sources that confirm what you want to believe to close i'd invite you on masters to simply admit it you just don't want to do it at least be honest about that it's the only fact you have [Music] [Applause] i give you credit for saying it right so hi my name is luisa i reside at 1600 road and there's just two things i want to address so it's brought to my attention that some of the high school teachers may not be wearing math because they're supposed to be facts so if that's the case um if we're all to be wearing masks i expect that to be addressed immediately so um from what i understand whether you're vaccinated or not you can still contract and spread over it so let's not pretend that the vaccines are helping anybody second thing i want to address are iep students my son is an iep student and the whole thing was about quarantining and whether vaccinated you won't be quarantined and if you're on ambassador you will be quarantined regardless of the status to me if my son is in the unlikely event quarantined i want to know how he's going to deceive his iep services since there's no remote learning so i just did his case manager who told me they'll stay in contact with him that's unacceptable we have a legal obligation to provide services to my child and any imp student and i expect some kind of plan to be put in place to address imp students and whether it's a zoo for their iep if you don't want to do the remote part of thing that's fine but someone has to address services and if it's not going to happen over zoom in the timely fashion that it's supposed to at whatever number of times per week then it needs to be made up at some point when the child is returned back to school so that needs to be addressed immediately because my son needs services and he does well with his services so i expect a plan to be put in action soon because there is none so those are my two things i hope you address the teachers immediately if we're gonna be mad forever thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] uh uh so everyone in the room um want the same thing you know they want kids to be healthy masks uh i mean they help mitigate the spread of viruses which help protect the children as well as teachers and staff and there's less risk to them so nobody loves masks i mean it's an inconvenience more than anything but nobody said it's forever and uh i've observed most children they're not even phase 5 all right and they were you know they were wearing an ass all last year once it went in seven okay you got coconut numbers going up you got the other variants uh males are something you just you should accept for now and everyone's well-being and you know look why tend to faint by not learning uh just stay the course the last point um i'm not a politician not a scientist i'm not a doctor but um try looking up your average surgery open heart surgery for example that's six hours i'm pretty sure that a surgeon you know that's not they're getting plenty of oxygen so yeah and to say well you need to worry about uh strep or something building up if the strength is already in you what difference does it make if you're wearing a mask why was it going to hurt anymore if anything you should be protecting everybody else a little bit it's just you know coping aside you can touch it do a lot of the benefits there um [Music] yeah i i can't think of a reason logically why you stopped learning math now it's it's for kids it's with teachers you know we care his community for everybody thank you for your time [Applause] i'm speaking tonight to support them to voice my support from lasting in our schools i'm a parent of a seventh grader and the fifth grader the youngest one is not eligible for that solution and i was relieved when the state mandated its mass wearing was at the end of the month to give us a start to the healthy school and despite the increased vaccination around the brookfield we still have a large group of students and siblings who are not yet eligible for the vaccine the delta variant has proven to be more infectious and contagious even though the vaccine reduces the risk of severe illness vaccinated individuals and still spread the buyers i'm asking our kids even the vaccinated one will increase the risk for our young women on vaccinated community members and students in our return to school this year was closer to normal than how the end of the year which means that our kids are now moving around more and have more exposure as a result the class sizes are also closer to normal with all students in person and this is great for the socialization abilities for our kids and i think it's really helping them start off with school year but please keep the mass in place until our younger students are eligible for vaccination so i encourage the board of ed administrations to follow the advice of healthcare professionals and medical experts um who really are the key holders of the knowledge for vaccination and mastery um [Applause] grass good evening i'm a freshman in brookfield high school i'm speaking on behalf of my mother anna solomon who is a nurse practitioner of 17 years i'm here tonight to state my support for the brookfield school district in the following cdc recommendations to keep our students masked in school and ask that you continue to follow this recommendation after the september 30th day i come to you with unique perspectives not only as a high school student but also as a daughter of a professional my mother is an accused care nurse practitioner her mutual assignment is in the cardio thoracic icu however during times of the public search she has worked in the medical icu which has been filled with code with patients she has the heartbreaking misfortune of attending to her patients as they died horrible deaths they even have a patient of the almost 18 died with a code 19 infection additionally she was infected with covenant in december of last year which as a student was terrible for me to watch i share this to all for you of my mother's background and expertise opponents to the masking policy might think that your child won't get sick and exposed to this i would like you to ask to look at the rapid rise of pediatric admissions to the hospital recently the american academy of pediatrics report that the pediatric code cases have increased from 38 000 reported the week ending july 22nd to 200 for 204 thousand reported the week ending august 25th that's a five-fold increase in cases and the cdc has reported 309 children per day or 2 000 plus children per week with golden infections are hospitalized in the usa and maybe a child won't get sick but they can still bring the virus home and pass it along to others or pass it along to another student with a chronic illness remember asymptomatic infection accounts are nearly 50 of transmission if the hospital is filled with failed and pediatric medical collocations or will the child go with the acid attack if it gets sick when two people wear a mask the rate of transmission is greatly reduced cdc reports a multi-layered cloth mask can reduce 50 to 70 percent over carrying droplets signs have proven this this isn't taking away your freedom it's about the safety of others the schools are opening which is remarkable wearing a mask is not unbearable as i and especially my mother can tell you what is unbearable is losing more people to the pandemic especially if it's someone you care about please continue to support the cdc recommendations for masking indoors at school thank you [Music] um hi mary campbell 135 candidly pro today my husband tony and i lived in brookfield for 32 years our three children went to brookfield schools k-12 tony and volunteered in town for many things through the years as a matter of fact he would figure that he's serving the conservation commission tonight among other things i was a math teacher in richmond for 11 years most of us here tonight are parents from before our children are even born we want to keep themselves safe and healthy we go to doctors appointments take immune vitamins eat well don't smoke a dream while pregnant we give birth in clean modern hospitals with the best doctors nurses in medicine and technology we put our babies and children in safe car seats and seat belts we put our children in lifecast while out on the lake we love the healthy competitive social team building skills that our children learn while playing sports of course you buy them all the necessary productive gear for that in some cases helmets pads are not parts we can do a little more to protect our children having had children in school and been a teacher i know that everybody wants a safe learning environment for our students staff and teachers we have fire drills and active shooter drills we have enough free classrooms we keep kids home and off the roads during snow and iceland we can do a little work to protect our children right now so here we are in the middle of a panda i'll never expect you to be living through something like this these things happen in our history textbooks not my life i listened in class so i knew what a book says but i didn't really know i really understand but if a virus keeps spreading and youtube can become more contagious and more deadly well at least it's good to know there are some several layers of protection to try to stop the spread of the virus vaccination masking social distance and airflow these work best and everybody does it together in the community i know that we've worked with face diversity before we always work together to get through it we worked together when we found asbestos in the schools late on spring almost 20 years ago we got in the mood and even met our students several more weeks of school thanks to collaborating the bethel we worked together when our beautiful town and power grid were designated by rockworkers three years ago we put our children in sports and scouts for them to learn how to work together and help themselves we put our students in groups for them to learn how to work together on projects and to call themselves equally important we teach our children compassion for others and personal responsibility our children are watching us in this moment we need to show them when times are tough grown ups care enough about them and each other to work together i support growing massive school in all of us at this point because a delta variant is more contagious we our students are tuned in to be vaccinated yet see the sooner we work together regarding vaccination masking and social distancing the sooner we can defeat the virus and get back to normal indeed master safety we can do a little more our children and teachers from coming for a little while longer i want to thank the board of ed teachers paris custodial staff office staff administrators and bus drivers for the enormous work that they've been doing so thank you all for volunteering the countless hours of your time that you do i'm here tonight to encourage you to continue listening to scientists and health health professionals and following cdc guidelines and proven strategies to keep our children safe from the transmission of hogan 19.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
while i imagine most people would prefer to live life like we did pre-poked we're still in a worldwide pandemic with children being diagnosed and hospitalized more than four we've seen the preventative benefits of mask wearing and vaccinations worldwide the results are clear where vaccinations and mass wearing are low transmission and hospitalizations are high where vaccinations and mask wearing are high transmissions and hospitalizations are low the cdc guidelines state that when teachers staff and students consistently and correctly wear a mask over their nose and mouth they protect others as well as themselves i asked that school staff remind students and each other to wear their masks properly as many tend to allow their masks to fall below their noses we know that consistent and correct mask use is especially important indoors and in crowded settings such as on the bus and in school especially when physical distancing cannot be maintained this was proven last year with our low transmission rates in our schools vaccination is the leading public health prevention strategy to the code 19 pandemic the cdc recommends that schools encourage teachers staff and families to get vaccinated as soon as they can thank you dr burel for sharing the information about the vaccine clinic at the new milford school that was organized for students this summer i know many students received their vaccines there yet there are still many students who have not been vaccinated either by choice or by age therefore it is that much more important that masks be warned consistently and and correctly in school the the cdc recommends that this be followed in school during sports after school programs and on buses physical distancing should be maintained as much as possible doors and windows should be opened for ventilation where able and i'll add that if classes can be held outdoors it's a welcome opportunity allowing time for hand washing and sanitizer use and covering coughs even with a mask on should be encouraged students are taught to think critically learn the facts and consider reputable sources they are taught to make responsible decisions based on the days that they compile my 15 and 11 year olds both know that the most responsible thing that they can do to end this is to be vaccinated but my 11 year old can't be vaccinated yet however she knows that the best thing she can do to protect herself from catching the virus is to wear her mask consistently and correctly she also knows that the most responsible thing she can do to protect her peers is to wear her mask even if it's inconvenient she deserves a station she deserves the same protection from students and staffs that will surround her on the bus and during activities and in school please continue to keep our students safe thank you [Applause] i agree just uh scientific opinion is built on consensus is achieved through the process of qualified experts conducting professional research having professional debate and doing professional peer review it does not require a 100 agreement consensus is achieved when most experts agree about something there will almost always be a small segment of experts with minority opinions but consensus is enough to move forward with actions endorsements and plans the scientific consensus about masking is very clear it has a large consensus amongst medical doctors scientific experts and other people relevant to the concern masks slow the spread it is a mitigation it's not a guarantee the science is clear mass slowed the spread of this disease when ventilation and distancing may not be enough others have talked about the mental health of students as a school social worker of 27 years i've been working with students for a long time i work with students over the past two years few if any have had significant anxiety or other difficulties due specifically to maxwell are they having trouble with the pandemic like all of us of course specifically to mass not in my experience could there be exceptions of course but those would be rare while i have no doubt that all parents care for their children it's very clear when we hear these parents speak but there's also something else happening there is a well-organized and manufactured effort that is feeding some of these concerns that force definitely seems to be political this should not be the basis of health and safety measures finally in regards to parents being able to choose what is best for their own children i want to say this what is best for my children is for all children to be wearing masks while they're in school personal freedom does not include the freedom to make choices that endanger the well-beings of others personal belief of whether or not there is a danger is not a replacement for mass scientific and medical consensus so i'd like to say thank you to the le the town of brookfield the district leadership and to the state of connecticut following advice of true experts and implementing the mass mandates [Music] [Applause] howard last week 116 power road good evening i know the primary responsibility for which we were all elected is to ensure quality education in a safe environment for our children but we live in unusual times and your decision in this regard may have a profound effect on the lost call and i'd urge you to consider this in your deliberations now somebody say i don't have a dog in this fight and i hate to refer to as a fight because i don't have children in schools in fact my children are having children but children do not live in a bubble there are so many social interactions among our community that you cannot possibly isolate the impact this decision may have on this call now i listen to the public comment tonight and in previous meetings i'm glad to see there's a more balanced presentation tonight that's great i've heard citations of various studies and other information that was presented i'm confident that you know that in any issue there are outliers and if anyone's if you search for it you can always cherry pick some information to support whatever narrative you want but clearly and others have said this already tonight the overwhelming consensus among the medical community the experts is that masses are part of the solution to preventing further spread of this insidious disease and that the benefit of wearing masks far outweighs any ill effects including areas of mental health and linguistics now as for the suggestion that requiring wearing mask somehow takes away someone's freedom in any free society freedom does not come without obligation and responsibilities we all have a choice as to whether we follow the recommendations of the medical community those choices have consequences if the consequence of a choice is to be excluded from a public venue that is a decision we each have to make and accept now i just want to address one thing a question earlier that was raised that sort of indicated more testing gets a higher positivity rate um we've heard that before somewhere but this is personal for various reasons i've been tested four times all negative which in effect lowers the positivity rate so the suggestion that higher testing raises positivity rate would be ill-advised to make that conclusion and finally regarding the suggestion that there's low risk or that our infection rate in brookfield is low consider you know look at it when when there's an earthquake offshore there's a high probability that there's a tidal wave that will follow and to wait until the waves are lacking in our shore would be too late to save lives if we look to our neighbors to the south we can see the consequences of a failure to do the right thing and we cannot prevent people from traveling to our community so as long as the nation is in the throes of the pandemic it is incumbent on us all to live up to our obligations to our neighbors for the good of the community to take every reasonable and responsible precaution to reduce the risks associated with the spread of this disease [Applause] [Music] i am here to speak as a mother of three young children if you have any trouble understanding me it's because i am experiencing my absence and not my mask this is such an influence right but we should all be able to understand this importance in reducing the threat of others who are in favor of masking too many of us have been sitting at home and just listening to some other parents arguing against masquerading enough is enough for me tonight i i felt the urge to speak please keep everyone asked many of our children are vaccinated or at least until our health organizations and doctors say it is safe to do so i want to thank the board for listening and keeping in mind the well-being of our children and our community two comments that i want to make in light of other arguments i've heard from other parents talking about unmasking of children i'm not bathing my children's immune system by exposing them to closely and i do not want my child to be the one effected my goal is to keep my children safe so that they can outlive me and i ask everyone do you need to see a child close to you die before you keep before you respect and follow healthy guidelines that keep your neighbors safe thank you [Applause] 95 stonehenge [Music] since june the majority of public comment has been about masking specifically parents requesting that the board of education advocate that we abandon the mass requirement in our schools parents have spoken with great passion and provided information to support this request claims about freedom and my child my choice has come into play the role of the board of education is complex in that it requires members to set aside the luxury that we as parents have in advocating for just our own children the board of education must make decisions that provide a free and appropriate education for all organs children however when it comes to the decision of masks its role is also simple our board of education is not required to sort through all the data we as parents provide it is required to answer one question how does it provide the safest and healthiest learning environment during the cold nineteen pandemic the medical community which includes the cdc the american academy of pediatrics and our own health department is in agreement that given the current state of covid19 which is an airborne bias masks provide the best protection for our students that is the answer parents do have the right to choose alternatives to public school but when the medical community is in agreement about how to best manage a crisis of public health our public servants have done their job my request to the board of education is simply that you follow the recommendation of the medical community the experts in infectious disease control i think kids need to wear masks but i am not the one you should be listening to on this topic the issues that our children are struggling with from the pandemic are real but every hour that we spend debating masks in public schools against the advice of the medical community as a matter of personal freedom is an hour that we are not spending addressing the social emotional and mental health challenges that our students are struggling with no one prefers wearing masks to not learning parents who speak at these meetings want what's best for their child and their voices should be heard as input to meeting the social emotional and mental health needs of our students infectious disease experts should dictate the decision on wearing masks to keep kids safe and our schools open during the scandal [Applause] um and i encourage everyone to read the articles and study um that says holy doctrine people are at greater risk for hospitalizations that's a cool vaccine by the way that's the correct injection from the other ones so 13 times more likely to get um conveyed than those who have natural energy and 27 times more likely to get symptoms but i wanted to focus today on giving you some quotes from interviews dr chalk hoff who has doctor from canada and who has been practicing medicine for twenty eight years i apologize if this is two months ago so maybe somebody already talked about this but um he um can't quote everything he's the main cut of eight minutes um but he's played in detail um how this shocks result in many blood clots um so he describes the science and i presently it's a predictable mechanism of clotting and um these are not the clots that you hear about in the media that will show up in ct scans and mri those are huge clouds but he talks about the little class that are scattered throughout our capillary network and they're not going to show up in cg scan so the only way to actually prove this predictable mechanism is to do a de-dynamic test which only would show unfortunately my understanding is after only the new clocks not the old cloud so he was doing his uh testing four to seven days after the vaccinations and he founded of his patients had the body so that's a big number and i recently went to um listen to a local doctor our doctor um uh who said that his prediction our numbers are much higher numbers of plotting block lying and much higher and i again read some quotes um from this interview i encourage you to sing not only the kids but like your bus driver that drives the child to and from school that's already masked and has you know less oxygen while you know black modding of pilots who are probably flying you know our kids from locations that are so um which is much dangerous up there examples of patients who like could walk two miles easily but then after the shot cannot walk in the so the terrifying thing is not that these people are now out of breath and can't do what they used to be able to do but once you block off significant number of blood vessels in your lungs your heart is now pumping against much greater resistance trying to get the blood through your lungs that cause this condition called pulmonary pulmonary artery hypertension high blood pressure in your lungs because the blood is oh i'm sorry all right there is a lot more here and he says that it gets worse and worse with every shot so if it's accumulative it accumulates in your system and um so the damage will add in out of that and it's going to be cumulative because progressively getting more and more damage capillaries so that's think of this when you're going to be encouraging the third shot because you're going to say you're not fully vaccinated until you have the booster [Applause] hi it's actually kathleen charity calvin carter jerry 51 north mountain road um i'm here fighting for my future grandchildren i'm not really here to speak to the board because i believe the members have done nothing and are biased there's about five to ten people running our lives right now taking our freedom away they don't care about our children like we do this actually is political because info has been censored by anyone speaking up against the cdc the who the mainstream media i'm here to speak to the parents who have been protesting and begging you to do your jobs in the best interest of our kids but you will not dig for information parents if you do not want this to continue we simply must say no i have printed out a document resources data legal and medical that is not on the news go home and research harm yourself with information know your rights you will find that these mandates are illegal masks mitigate the virus so they say therefore it is considered by our government a medical device you must give informed consent for your child put a mask on they cannot mandate our government is lying to all of us we are essentially having war for our freedom but police are not enforcing this for lamont i got a call from the school police officer saying that he is all for us and that if kids remove their masks he cannot and will not arrest them he said there's nothing he can do mandates are not lost he said he needs the parents to speak up to end this the people who are enforcing this and standing on the enemy side of this at this point is us yes it is us every time we put a mask on our children we're enforcing lamont's mandates every time we walk into an established establishment [Music] we are enforcing lamont's mandate we are helping them take away our freedom there is no mass police go home and talk to your teenager encourage them to be leaders and do not fear this tyranny will the school kick all of them out the school can't arrest them the school will not function in your child's best interest until we take back our freedom tell them to grab friends and refuse get team captains to unmask their teammates build a group of soldiers if we do not say no we will lose more of our medical freedoms when they mandate this experimental vaccine that's killing people sterilizing people paralyzing people i asked the pharmacist for the vaccine insert he said there is nothing on the insert it says left intentionally blind because there's not a doctor in this world who can say they have data and that the vaccine is safe other countries in most states are not muslim children to the board lamont and dunn we the people do not consent we do not give informed consent to cover our children's airways i'm giving you a copy of this document take this document and consider yourself on notice you will be held legally and medically liable there's thousands of doctors and lawyers suing parents we need to re we need to unite and just refuse don't leave don't let these people take the spirit out of our children public school enrollment is at an all-time low because parents will not allow their freedoms to be stolen the most important video on this document is this it was from a doctor who worked on the task force at the white house he said in this video that the task force deliberately lied to america i can't explain it all because i don't have time but i will give you these documents if you want them and i pray that you people on board after you watch this i pray that you first of all will watch it okay because you will not see this on the news every single thing that i've printed out you will not see on the news because you're not digging so i pray for all of you that you will read this information and then make up your mind because you'll be very clear in those three minutes i'm done you'll be very [Applause] um the next item is the candle lake elementary school building project that also does not have any updates um the abc has not met since our last quarterback meeting so we are actually onto three big points it was a very brief meeting but um [Music] all schools will be closed on monday and tuesday september 6th and 7th and also on thursday september 16th center school has a virtual open house on wednesday september 8th and a pto meeting on tuesday september 14th alberta has a pto meeting wednesday september 15th and at the high school virtual houses thursday september 9th and underclassmen photos will be friday september 10th and monday september 13th during college classes okay um the last item on our agenda is an executive session um rather than give you the mic again also that the board entered into executive session for the purpose of discussing the superintendent's goals [Music] portion of tonight's meeting
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um a reminder to cite your uh local municipality and we'll go from there heather uh heather if you could go ahead and call the roll sure well let me pull up my list right now all right stephen uh president and i were michigan jennifer not here alan yes i'm i'm here in dan ray france sarah here in ann arbor jeffrey jeff here in ann arbor camilla here in ann arbor all right frida you're in ann arbor alice president attending from ann arbor michigan frank um eastport antrim county michigan adam uh you're in my car in oklahoma's mission jack kerouac councilmember briggs here in ann arbor [Music] excellent i think that means we have a quorum um why don't we go to approval of the minutes from the last meeting of august 5th any questions or comments on the minutes i'd move their approval a second all right gotta move uh motion and a second uh all those in favor say raise your hand and say aye all right any nays okay scene none uh the minutes are approved from the last meeting uh we have uh three minutes of public comment for speaker heather do we have any uh speakers for public comment we do robert black you should be able to go ahead and talk now thank you heather nice to see you all again and thank you for the opportunity to speak before you again tonight congratulations once again on your effective working session in july i encourage you to carry out additional facilitated working sessions around specific themes to continue to build momentum for this important project speaking of momentum the garden project reported to you by jeff crockett is an excellent example of how a coalition of community volunteers is forming the groundwork so to speak necessary to bring diverse members of the community together in common purpose the upcoming fan event fun art nutrition which you'll hear more on this evening from jeff henney is another step in the right direction to gradually activate the site an opportunity to engage the public gather their input and build their support and a key part of this effort here in my opinion is creating an identifiable image a memorable name or logo for the commons or whatever name you may decide to call it that will be used to market events and activities into the future and build public buy-in and trust another activation step is public art with already good examples in the black lives matter teaching mural at the library the engaging community of people art on the blake transit center and david zinn's instagram ready singing in the rain mural building on these three strong examples of public heart our public art perhaps we could start with a simple mural painted on the concrete wall that is backdrop to the garden there are several well-known examples of delightful local mural projects like this many led by the creative artists of treetown murals who are really good at getting folks of any age involved providing wonderful educational opportunities and attracting support from local businesses good art is really good business in this town and discussion on these items fits well under your agenda item 7 community partnerships but also for item 7 i strongly advocate for your exploring informal discussions with the potential block partners surrounding the library lot in liberty plaza the initiating committee has already reached out for positive relationships with jerusalem garden and the university of michigan credit union however in my opinion there are two crucial players that will definitely impact the future of this community commons first martin corporation and the ann arbor district library cultivating posit positive relationships with these two especially will help to shape your work in the coming months and year one of the public input speakers in your second meeting in april louis sasquez asked why not have a representative from the aadl on the council of the commons i support his idea and encourage you to reach out in whatever manner you decide to all the key players on the commons block their positive engagement and willing participation will contribute to your success over time best of luck in your discussions tonight and thank you was that three minutes heather rest of his time we appreciate you robert thank you for being here this evening yes any other speakers heather no that's it all right excellent so uh with that we will close public comment and move on to uh member up member news and updates and we had to have a a few uh pieces of news regarding fan and other things so uh jeff do you want to go first sure yeah uh can i share my screen here heather or uh let me try this again that permission what thank you let me give you that permission um oh i think camilla you wanted to say something no you can go ahead first yeah okay sure okay i'll try and share my screen now can you see the uh presentation here i can everybody see it okay so i'll just be real quick um so here's some key developments since our last meeting as far as fan is concerned we decided to move the data up because of not enough time to get all the insurances and approvals and what have you uh to from uh originally it was going to be september 12th we moved it up to october the 3rd november the 7th november the 28th um and we got our net our annual insurance from kaepernick which are the insurer the brokers who handle uh the decade folks and they gave us a a one-year insurance policy for the equivalent of what normally would have just been one or two events so that was pretty pretty great for them to do that um we got a provisional permit from deborah williams and uh so we've been providing the information i've paid for that and so forth uh we have a target vendor list out of about 120 vendors we uh called it down to about 40 and we've been contacted and we assume they'll be about somewhere between 10 and 15 ultimately and we've put together marketing materials i'll just show you a few things in a second uh we've refined our budget and we've gotten some selected sponsors uh financial commitments have been obtained uh we've [Music] got a entertainer list developed and contacts have been made with those entertainers i'll give you one example and uh we've put together facebook marketing and some artists have been contacted i'll mention something about that allen sorry uh robert referred to uh them the folks of some there are others as well but i'll just talk a little bit about that briefly and then we have a a preliminary program design and sequencing developed and a new website we've redone our website uh and i'll just if i have time i'll just say what our next steps are okay um so let's see if i can uh yeah so here's an example of some marketing materials can you see that uh those materials um you know uh i think uh it's those have been kind of well received and kind of give the feel that we we want to get across just so you could see it i uh heather sent out uh this presentation and and i i've got a slightly updated one which you may or may not send out but anyway so you have this um [Music] here is uh our i just found out this afternoon that we are able to get our lead entertainer uh kip maestro kip berry who has a very successful um cabaret and um performing arts center in anaheim california but he he lives here in in in ann arbor and he comes back every week and uh he will be available for the october the third event and will be performing his magic act and his singing and dancing and everything else that he does he's a really quite an extraordinary performer he's performed in you know 80 countries been on 100 television shows and was an honest graduate of the only magic college in the world chavez uh college of magic i believe it's in michigan anyway he's really a lot of fun and he'll entertain the kids and uh we'll have a probably have a booth or he'll be part of the decade to give kids some fun as well but he'll be our lead but we'll have others other local folks um singers and artists and uh just to keep things going while you know during the four hours that the event takes place give people something to to to watch and be attracted to um so robert mentioned the uh treetown murals folks we met with them and we are working out a way to have some entertainment uh have have have chalk drawings and paintings and stuff during the event for kids and for other folks and to have some illustrations about you know we could put together a potentially some temporary art that would be up and down uh you know at each event uh or be uh put in place um you know when there's not events going on we'll have to obviously talk to to the city about that but you know obviously you can't paint you can't do a mural on on a whole lot of places uh in this lot but there are a couple of places where nice murals and signage could be done treetown uh will also be consulting with us about uh um you know signage that we would want to put up temporary or some permanent again we'd have to consult with the city about that so that's that story there's some examples of the kind of things they've done temporary kinds of things and permanent kinds of things they they're very skilled at getting the community to um to actually do a lot of the painting they do kind of the design and then they get people to actually start painting by the numbers but it gets people engaged and gets people excited and so forth it's fun to do and they've done a lot of these successfully and and they've involved business and a lot and uh so that's been a a great positive uh the garden i just uh you know put up a few slides here they it's still going great this is part of our webs our new website which which talks about uh the commons growing and being the center of the city and then um i just wanted to say that uh he uh robert mentioned that we've been talking to the credit union and the credit union has asked us what level they want us to contribute uh at they seem very willing to sponsor what we're doing as i i think mentioned before and there's a number number of other organizations that have have stepped up to do the same so i think we're we're in pretty good shape we've gotta uh our next steps are really gonna be to sign up uh more of the vendors we've signed up a few but we're going to try to get everybody signed up as quickly as possible and to really push that marketing out there to all the different potential partners so that's my story and i'm sticking with it any questions yes any questions at all for jeff yes i have a question um i see that you have uh little badges or logos that uh say ann arbor community commons is this your uh name for it or is it the city's name for it or um have we agreed on you know that uh is this promotion of something that does not yet exist well no i mean it it the initiating committee the ann arbor community commons is a is a um a michigan uh non-profit and since we're kind of running this event doing this event so we've we're trying out different logos to see i i just put this together for your purposes there's nothing official out there yet i did not know that uh the name of your non-profit was ann arbor community commons which is the name of the proposal that way back 10 years ago um and i think it's it's it's confusing because i don't think we haven't you know nobody knows what the name of this thing is yet and um so we're getting into that quagmire now of who's doing what and and what it what it actually means or established so i just have to stop there because i'm really puzzled sorry alice i what i'm trying to say is that it's not actually the ann arbor community comments the the the the um the uh nonprofit is the initiating committee of the ann arbor community commons yeah but it wasn't it didn't initiate the report and that's the name of the report so i don't you know we're in this this quagmire again okay i mean nobody i've used this but we've all used this before the previous meetings and i didn't hear any objections so obviously we need to consider what you're saying but that's what what everybody was okay with up until now so i you know if you have an issue with it let's talk about it well it's different in speech than it is in print or in paint uh so um you know produce this event produced no i i like it i like the idea of having fan i just don't know if it's a good idea to kind of slide in um a name that hasn't been settled on i i prefer center of the city but sorry that's not that's not an entity either okay so also you're saying that that our non-profit should not be called the initiating committee of the ann arbor community commerce or are you saying this term should not be used in association with fan because it are not i think that i think they're kind of both i mean you you i can't i can't control how what you call your group but uh it does the name initiate initiating committee of the ann arbor community commons is first of all really long and second of all um still promotes the confusion between what we're doing as the council on the commons as a city appointed commission and your non-profit that's i think there's some confusion there oh okay so what i'd be interested in what other people think about that i mean you know i'm open to whatever you want me to do but i mean i i i this first time i've heard this objection and that could that that name was has been used as far back as the task force and nobody ever objected to it well it's been used farther back than that that's there was one that elena came up with for the proposal so and that's you know the proposal became city property for whatever reason and so i had to give up uh you know i don't i don't know we had to give up the ownership of that name and now it's it's taken on a new life and i i don't know i'm just confused and i hope it doesn't confuse other people because we're still so far away from naming this place so i i i i don't want to to go on a little a little bit of a rabbit hole here and you know why don't we why don't we just focus so jeff first of all thank you for the update uh and appreciate the fan event that you're planning um you know we can get into the discussion around you know if there is a discussion frankly around what the the name of the initiating committee should be referred to ultimately it is a non-profit and so i i don't want to go down to too much of a rabbit hole there with regard to you know what the name should be i think you know the initiating committee of the fan event it seemed seemed to be at least at the last meeting that this was pretty widely supported and folks are excited about this and i i certainly share that same excitement so i think it's this is a great update uh from jeff and the initiating committee event uh team and i think we why don't we just stick to that for at least for the tonight's meeting and uh and and go from there jeff are there any other updates that from your end of things that you'd like to provide i'm not not at the moment i i just say that our next steps like i said are to kind of uh get the the vendors on board and get the marketing really going and and finalize all the sponsorships and so forth that that's all i have at this point uh yeah i don't want to put i don't want to throw a bucket of rain on on the fan events but i think it's it's sort of usurps some territory to incorporate a name that is selected by somebody and you have a group you have to have a name for your group the sponsors but i think the fan events is a is a good name for the event i don't know how how we reconcile that so i'm not going to say any more about it at this time are there uh is there any feedback for jeff around the uh fian event or um you know things we have that are going to be happening on the center of the city lot um over the course of the fall i think uh alan has his hand up it looks like yeah ellen please feel free well i just wanted to comment on this last question besides my own uh report the city council recognized the initiating committee of the ann arbor community commons that's a name recognized by the city council on the uh on the 5th of uh october and 2020.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
[Music] good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the holton meets coaches corner presented by houlton meats trap house steak burgers here at aces wild we're here this week for week two the waterloo game we've got coach jermaine here with us this week and before we dive in uh just a reminder if you want to become a sponsor contact coach horner and we got all sorts of levels and sponsorships that you can have and get us into the future and what we've got going on here coach jermaine good week at practice this week coming off that mosquito game and getting ready for rivalry rivalry week yes alex anytime uh you know you come off a game like you did last week kids are they're motivated they're fired up especially like you said with a rivalry week rivalry week that's a tough word to say um the kids are ready to rock and roll um excited like we've talked about i know coach horner talked about it last week and we talked a little bit before the game um we had a lot of kids getting their first varsity snaps so uh it was pretty good this week that they got thrown under the fire you know thrown to the throne of the wolves a little bit last week um so uh we'll see what happens this week i think they'll be ready to play yeah rivalry week it's always fun and whenever you've got waterloo going down there it's going to be a good time first time they're going to be playing on their turf against columbia i guess they played last week at home but they got that new turf down there so they're going to be hyped up and always going to be hyped up columbia waterloo uh last week took one on the chin it's the first time we've taken one like that since 2012 or 2010 rather it was a a week nine game that you win and you're in and we didn't win we uh play in the uh nashville hornets in week nine i think alex you were the quarterback that year junior year yeah unfortunately yeah they uh we're all hyped up you know senior night you're gonna have a great night and brady hari i believe or bryce the two brothers i don't remember took the opening kickoff 90 yards and uh it was a new ball game right away they had a pretty good team and they ran that double wing to perfection so uh yeah they were they're pretty tough to stop yeah yeah so that was the last time the columbia gave up 49 points we're coming off the 42-14 loss three hours and three minutes talk about a long game uh 30 turn or 30 penalties rather 24 on the scooter we did a good job that first game of the season only having six penalties me and jared talked you always want to keep that first game pretty clean and i think columbia did a good job with that keeping it clean yeah we did you know there was a couple times on the kickoff returns mcconaughey you know they did a great job of blocking for him but he busted a couple of those loose um a couple of them got called back but uh you know we never want to see and as a defensive coach i don't want to see our our kick return team out there a lot and unfortunately that wasn't the case friday night having six returns for kyle um but coach kendall does a great job with our special teams and getting those guys prepared every week so it's good to see kyle get a little bit of recognition for getting some good returns yeah so like i said 42 points given up was the most we've given up since uh 2010 and the 14 points was the least amount of points that we've scored since 2012 a waterloo game i believe it was a rainy game one of the first years i think we were on the turf and just a game we couldn't get anything going so in typical columbia fashion you know we score a lot we don't give up a lot this time rolls for change was a little different for us but like you said you're going to have to bounce back this week and got a good week to do it and it's not all negative what we had last week we had a couple positives coming out of it we talked coach horner and i talked you know you got eight guys going both ways and a lot of those guys were getting their first varsity snaps on the season yeah i mean you look you look at the moscuta team you know and kids don't know it but as a coaching staff we knew going in that they were they're pretty good team you know and obviously you're not going to tell the kids that hey you're going to be in for a dog fight they're really really good but they had a lot of kids back from two years ago when they made it all the way to the semifinals in 2019 and then last year they won their first outright mvc title in 20 plus years of going 5-1 and if you look at their scores from last year all those kids that were playing this past friday night played in those games last year when they went 5-1 and won the mississippi volley conference uh bowl game beating triad 40 to nothing in the tail last game of the season so they got a good squad they've got athletes all over the field and uh you know our kids we battled for about a quarter and a half and then you know then we started you know fatigue started setting a little bit with our kids going both ways and uh getting their first snaps but you know for the first quarter we were right there with them but uh i think fatigue started to set in and that was the determining factor and that was one thing you know we talked about too you don't get too many 100 degree weeks coming up to the first game of the season and you know fatigue obviously was a big factor and i don't know how many guys we had cramping up but once you get that first cramp you're not getting rid of it very quickly it's going to stay with you for the for the entire length of the game and i think ethan said we had 15 kids go down just just of cramps alone so and a couple of them were multiple multiple times so did you do a couple extra rounds of spirit sprints for them to try to get we pushed we pushed the sled a little bit this week so their legs are a little bit more conditioned i guess well i hope so that's going to be big with the waterloo team we'll talk about a little bit but typically a run team so you're going to need those those legs to be with you so uh we'll talk your specialty everybody always likes the praise of the offense getting the big numbers up there but defense wins championships and uh for 21 years here in columbia you've been doing a heck of a job as defensive coordinator well i appreciate that alex and you know that that goes with uh you know kids buying into the system that you're trying to you're trying to sell you know coach horner and i've been like you said been together for quite some time and you know i played i played defense in high school didn't play it in college and you know got got here back to columbia and you know worked a little bit at the underclass level for three years learned from under you know my dad was a coach for a long time learned under him learned under joey oreo but then scott horner and i took over or he took over and asked me to be his defensive coordinator and i accepted and you know i've learned a lot from coach horner you know he's a very great mastermind of the offensive side of the ball and every day in practice i'm going against one of the best coaches in you know southern southern illinois the metro east so a lot a lot goes off to coach horner for for the job he does with the program but i i i think he's made me a better coach for just being around him and you've made him a better coach too because i remember sitting in class back in the day and you say okay schlem here's the formation what are you going to do and i'd say well i'm going to do this this and this and go all right well now you're going to snap the ball and i'm going to do this this and this you're beat i got you beat and then we you still do some of the same calls that you did 10 years ago there's call there's calls that we use that we've had in since uh oh 10203.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
good evening everyone we're going to call this being the order mr zenski have a roll call for quorum please here thank you carol ask that we please rise for the pledge of allegiance thank you welcome everyone it's nice to see what looks like our entire administration staff our teachers and our valued educators thank you for coming out tonight i know it's an important night we get to get a very important presentation opening the schools so that being said we're going to move around to agenda item 2 which is the update and the fall opening of 2021 so dr solon you want to absolutely forward presentation sure thank you very much mr peregini we're going to step down front for the presentation that we have this evening so i invite the board to come down so we can lower the screens and get started thank you check all right thank you again mr paragini uh the opening of schools this year was obviously unlike any experience we've had in the sense that this year for the first time in you know 18 months or so we had all of our students coming back for in-person learning it was incredibly exciting and you're going to see that in some of the pictures as we flip through um we have uh uh overview actually to kick things off from mr maciana to take us through the summer before we get into our opening of school so i'll introduce our chief operating officer mr vin massiana thank you dr sullin good evening everyone i will be presenting from here it's good to have a nice audience and i know many of you were at convocation so some of this may seem a little bit familiar you could still laugh at a couple of the slides if you like that's that would be fun so the um presentation that i'm making this evening is really an overview of you know the work that was done over the summer and i just wanted to start with a an introduction i know those of you that work in the school district or where school district operations is a team of over 100 employees that work in the areas that you see there technology facilities human resources fiscal services nutrition transportation benefits budget payroll and so what you see there is just the name of the leadership team but we have a lot of very very very dedicated employees that work in the background to make the school district work uh and especially and um you know i always like to emphasize that what we do in school district operations is they're really to support the important work and that is to educate the children of the school district here in cheshire so i'm lucky enough to be the spokesperson for the group but the group does all the hard work each and every day not just over the summer so most of my presentation tonight is in the form of pictures that i took over the summer and as i was going through i did see this particular picture that i took back on august 5th we were having trouble in our central office and so you see if you can read it says trouble and system that's pretty much where school district operations thrives you know we we work through the chaos obviously we do a lot of planning and project work but you know things like snow and wind storms water main breaks bus delays technology issues funding requests and issues you know distributing ppe to our staff which is something that was new to us last year and even dealing with mold outbreaks those are the things that we deal with you know on a week to week basis so that's what we do in school district operations as far as the summer is concerned we operate on a slightly different calendar our summer begins the day after graduation so this is a picture of our superintendent dr sullin with one of our graduates that was on june 16th so on june 17th we started in earnest on our summer projects i'm not going to bore you with all the details but we do a lot of routine summer maintenance things like painting cleaning the schools inspecting playgrounds fire sprinklers our emergency lighting those all the things that we do each and every summer obviously an important part of what we need to do to have not only safe schools but also clean and healthy schools and then this is a list again i'm not going to walk through the details but this is a list of some not all of the projects that we did by school that essentially were funded through our operating budget and you'll see that we did everything from repairing front step set at the hummuston building to um making improvements at the high school we had installed windows right here when the addition on the high school was added in 2000 we had about 80 windows that over time the openers failed so we got those fixed this summer this way those windows can be opened to allow better ventilation well you know which is certainly important in the school at all times but especially so in a pandemic where that air circulation is very very critical to good ventilation again these are more projects by school and then the other type of project that we did this summer like we do every summer larger projects are funded differently through the capital budget so you could see and i'm going to show you pictures of some of these we completed quite a few major projects this one was the ada compliance to upgrade all the doors and the entrances and the classrooms at cheshire high school there were well over 100 doors and doorways impacted that was a project that we'd been working on to get approval to develop the plan for many years so you know the check mark here indicates the project's fully completed um you'll see that there's three projects that aren't yet complete the uh there were four schools that we are improving the security entrance building in person traps um that work is almost complete it will be completed there are some delays due to materials delivery having to do with pandemic so we expect that project to be completed at the end of september and then boiler replacements that do a little high at highland are well underway those will also be completed probably towards the end of september certainly in time for heating season so to give you uh kind of a more interesting explanation of what we did so this is dodd doolittle cheshire high school and that's highland this was mid-summer around mid-july and you could see that all the entrances were taken apart and and boarded up you'll see here this is principal scott jeffrey okay again this is july 15th you really can't see unfortunately but you know typical of a school principal when it's mid-july and you've got construction going on they start to get very nervous like how are you going to get this school back together and so fast forward to the start of school which was a couple of days ago you could see dodd's entrance is complete doolittles is complete cheshire high school is complete and there's highland and there's mr jeffrey in like the same spot i promise you he wasn't there the entire period waiting for us to get done but it did get done so that was you know really key improvement that project we had funding for we had to delay it a year because we couldn't get good bids last summer so it's getting done this summer this is picture of some of the improvements the ada improvements at cheshire high school what we had to do was make the doors compliant so we had to extend the door frames which meant we had to cut into brick in a lot of these cases the doors were upgraded also with security locks so that um teachers from the inside can see if the door is locked it's a push button instead of a key requirement now so as part of the ad upgrade ada upgrades we also improve security in those rooms and then this is a picture of the computer lab at doolittle under construction uh this year doolittle has two kindergarten classes that were at darcy in previous years so those kindergarten students we had to essentially take some first grade classrooms make them kindergarten and that has a domino effect throughout the whole school so we had to wind up taking this old computer lab space and we made two offices for the school counselors so that they can work with their students so again important upgrade gun um this is another project too a little this was under construction this was this tile was going up and that is the completed uh boys room at doolittle over on the on the back end of the school so we upgraded boys girls bathroom as well as a faculty bathroom pictures don't do it justice necessarily but it looks great this is some of the work these are three new boilers that are going in at doodle doo little uh we increased the redundancy there were two boilers now there's a three boiler system and this is at highland the pads were prepped and those boilers um are in partial completion already we also did some network upgrades these are just pictures of a couple of boxes of aruba switches again we're very reliant on our um our internal network a wi-fi network you know that's how education works these days and so it's very important that we continue to keep our schools upgraded technology-wise and then there are some things that we do that i call them invisible because this is a couple of ceilings in the auditorium area of cheshire high school that the ceilings really needed to be replaced but as part of that that project we go up into the ceilings we take out any wiring that's no longer used we've found some ventilation infrastructure that could be removed so we really clean up the guts of the inside of the ceiling and this is a building that you know cheshire high school is over 60 years old so you do get a lot of accumulation of items that you no longer need or no longer needs so they get pulled out so this is what it looks like now it certainly looks better when you walk in you may not know if we didn't do the work why it looks better but it's brighter it's cleaner but what i'm saying is importantly everything above the ceiling infrastructure wise is in better shape as well this is another invisible improvement this section of floor this is in what i call the one of the two norton permanent portables this is where the art the art teacher does her work this section of floor was kind of bouncy when they went to fix the floor they realized that it was all rotted uh subfloor and some of the structure in that in that floor area so it had to get ripped out repaired and that's what it looks like today you know including a new water heater and some of this mill work is new as well and i happen to be in the classroom when the teacher returned that day and you know she knew it looked better but had no idea that we had to really demolish that subfloor to get it back into condition so i was jumping on that section of floor to prove to her that it was fixed and i didn't fall through which is good and then this is a picture of the doolittle parking lot um looking out towards the entrance into the parking lot front entrance of the school is here just to orient you if you're familiar with doolittle and you could see other than a patch of asphalt that looks looks pretty normal and so what lies beneath is the question and so what lies beneath was one of our toughest projects you know this summer so this is a six thousand gallon underground oil storage tank the one that was in the ground had to be removed because it was at the end of its 30-year life so this one that's going in is has a 40-year life i will not have to worry about it i won't be here for the replacement is what i mean um so the answer is what what lies beneath that parking lot you know is a six thousand uh gallon tank but to get it in first of all we hit um a buried concrete barricade we actually couldn't get through it so we had to relocate the section or where the tank was being placed there was an underground water main leak that we believe was leaking for a long time it didn't result from the excavation work so we had to get that repaired then at the back end of the school leading into the cafeteria there was a buried loading dock which nobody knew at least nobody that's currently working in the schools ever knew that there was a loading dock at one time it do little and then for good measure of a main electrical feed got severed because it wasn't buried at the required depth it was down only about 15 inches so the good news is the work got done so that's what it looked like in the ground and that's actually what it looks like today so that oil tank is now on the ground and you can see the grass is already growing in that area and the reason i brought this picture up again is because while that was a difficult project board of ed meeting which i gave an update on august 12th what i said to the board is that there was no construction project that will prevent schools from opening and so that's true what happened though because we did have one school that couldn't open and that's too little i'm sure that um most of you know that we had to delay the start of doolittle this is dr solon this is a section of chromebooks that was stored in the library there was mold discovered on top of some of the chromebooks that are you know stacked here and in the carts and then exploring it further when it was discovered we found that there were there was mold in other parts of the school and again this picture is not great but this little white edge that you see here this is a student desk if you lift up the desk and look at the edge there is some white mold and so there was enough that we felt we could not get it cleaned up in time to get school open we discovered it the day before school was scheduled on august 30th at about 2 p.m so we were able to hire surf pro which specializes in mold remediation this is just a couple of pictures this is a dehumidifier that they um had in in the library but they had them scattered throughout the school this is a commercial hepa air filter and so surf pro came with a very large crew over two days was able to wipe down all the surfaces that needed to be wiped down you know throughout the school including all the books in the library as an example so it was a very extensive amount of work that had to get done and it did get done in time so that school was able to open today so what they do is they wipe things down they dehumidify taking the moisture out of the building and then they run these help filters to pull the mold spores out of the air and then the last step that they do is they disinfect the floors so you know the kids were in today we had no reports you know of any issues mold is naturally occurring it does happen from time to time the two things you have to do when you have mold is eliminate the water source in this case it wasn't a roof leak it wasn't a perpetual water issue it was just very high humidity in a closed up building that doesn't have um you know forced any kind of forced air movement really so the the eliminating the water was not difficult because it was a humidity issue and then you clean the surfaces and that's what was done so school did start today that is a picture of the students in the school and again i think they had a good day overall last couple of things that i wanted to mention as part of the summer we did unfortunately because this delta variant is still you know spreading throughout not only connecticut and the united states but across the globe so we're back to providing all the ppe disinfecting supplies this is a box of merv filters we're 13 so that we try and pull out as many particles as out of the air as possible across the schools so we're doing all the things that we were hoping we wouldn't have to do is because everyone knows as we got through may and june you know we were looking pretty good but then the delta variant changed all that so we have everything we need and that was part of what we did leading into the summer this i wanted to show you just to remind the board members that student meals are free in 21 22 so that's this whole school year this was a planning meeting it looks odd to see people without mass but this meeting took place in late june and it was prior to the uh mass mandate coming back so back then if you were vaccinated you didn't have to wear a mask when you're seated next to each other last couple of things here we now do our compliance training using an e-learning platform it's called vector solutions this is the eight required compliance courses that all employees need to complete i can't tell you enough about what an improvement this is in not only employees being able to complete the compliance training but us being able to track and monitor and then follow up with employees who haven't completed and as this bullet said even the day before we came back to school 40 percent of the staff already completed that online training and they have until september 30th to go through and complete it um and you know that is a big improvement we made two years ago and it's it's working very effectively for us and then this school year 2122 we also added additional personal development opportunities for all staff and in particular our non-teaching staff so our secretaries are building maintainers our food service staff and you can see here some of the titles we're looking to improve communication skills conflict resolution interpersonal skills leadership skills all available most of this is done either online or you know in a video presentation or on a webinar some of it will be in person training but again that not only helps employees improve their skills but it also increases job satisfaction and helps create a career path for our staff and so i explained that our summer began the day after graduation in school district operations our summer ends august 30th not september 22nd um and so this is a picture of the first student day at highland that again was a success a lot of traffic last couple of days but other than that students were in and did did quite well in our schools and so i'm just going to close by saying all systems are normal including at too little now so welcome back you know to the board and certainly all our administrators and the parents that are in the room and let's have a great school year on 21-22 thank you [Applause] thank you ben i'll add you know vin talked about invisible improvements everything that his team does touches our school system uh it is a critical component of making sure that we have a successful experience for our students our families and our staff so you know thank you very much again vin for you and your team and everything you did this summer to make sure that we were ready to go tim you have a question sure go ahead um two things uh first of all the boilers you were talking about the doolittle so there's a heating seasonal kickoff they're going to be done by then like september 30.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
thank you [Music] this thank is calling the meeting to order i propose to add the following item to the agenda become becoming item number 1.4 of this regular meeting pursuant to california government code section 54954.2 section b section 2 because there is a need for immediate action which came to the attention of the board after the agenda was prepared in order to add this item it must receive a two-thirds vote of the members of the board of trustees i need a motion to approve the declaration of need for fully qualified educators i move the item who's gonna say second all in favor aye any opposed thank you the motion carries before the closed session i had read a comment about our student representatives being in the room and the requirement for masking while they're here so we have kept them outside and i'm going to ask that people put a mask on or you may step out while they're doing their student represent their presentation that they do each board meeting so we're going to pause while people either put mass on or step outside while the students do their presentation absolutely as soon as the students leave you're welcome to come back in so we have to delay the meeting until people will comply because thank you i appreciate those that put their mouths on instagram we still have one more person that's not still have a gentleman here max can you close the door just so that they there we go [Music] thank you student representative granny hills high school ella houseman [Applause] good evening board members superintendent nelson and attendees my name is ella houseman your 2021-2022 granite hills gc president i am already so stoked about the school year starting back up and just the overall vibe on campus sorry about that okay so and just the overall vibe on campus is looking up in fact a group of students recently came together and created a multimedia club where they record and post news on activities sports and interview students bring up sports our current teams are starting off great volleyball being two and two tennis two and o cross country starting their first race this saturday water polo season being two weeks out and let's not forget about our mighty cougar football team starting the season off with 2-0 not only that but they have even gained more support with more and more people attending the games than past years we have our homecoming game this friday against colton leading up to that we have our spirit days every day being posted around school on our asp instagram it has resulted in great participation including the asb account getting more followers every day we are almost at 1k followers also we have our outdoor homecoming game september 18th people seem to be excited to have homecoming outdoors cooler air than in the gym more opportunity for creativity and safer for everybody although there are a lot of students decided to be back many still may be suffering from the effects of covid we now have put more focus on mental and academic health and it has become a top priority at granite a way in which granite is addressing this need is by providing the student body with an on-site licensed health professional so they may have access to therapeutic services and resources students are bringing more spirit to the games tennis are doing great the homecoming game is tomorrow overall students have been excited to be back thank you all for your time this evening and always remember maroon and gray lead the way [Applause] thank you so much ella apollo valley high school daniel orrella oriola [Applause] [Music] good evening steam board members the 2021-2022 school year is off to a great start at apple valley high school students are excited about returning to a normal school year and during the past clubs and extracurricular activities are returned to the campus during the past month over 15 clubs have returned to our campus the fall sports season has officially started with our football volleyball cross country and girls tennis team working hard to bring pride to the school we are happy to announce the return of the bell game and many other exciting events that we have planned such as our annual caller run and powderpuff game we are working hard to maintain school spirit and make the school a safe environment that guarantees our students success we thank you for everything that you have done to ensure that students could come back to a regular school year and remember sun devil pride is contagious [Music] [Applause] um time for union represented representatives california school employees association csea um student uh representative if we would like to go you are free to go do so today thank you and i just want to thank both of you and i loved that you high-fived him or knuckled him on his way back that's what we love to see across town well done okay we can let them back in so reports from the union representatives csea employees association you have no reports from them any reports from abu ta thank you i don't know what to do with them make sure they speak to the maya yeah some of us can't hear [Music] good evening ladies and gentlemen of the school board district representatives parents students and fellow colleagues i'm here today as a representative of buddha to share some of our yays and nays related to the start of the school year i'm going to gloss over most of the nays it's already been addressed in a previous speech it is a new year in a new i hope not normal that we are all navigating and i'm certain the district office especially mr conrad has a clear understanding of buddha's feelings on the grace being offered and asked for a small native i'm sorry i'm going to skip my small name thankfully the start of the 2021-22 school year is full of yays our buddha president started a thread on august 4th on our facebook page asking teachers about their first day back with students so many comments about being thankful to back with students crying tears of joy cute stories of students who didn't quite remember how to student one telling a teacher you forgot to hand me my lunch pail but overall excited to be back in student back with students face to face and an awareness that students have a lot to offer the classroom setting now that we've gotten them back there i recently told someone the students in my class retain information despite themselves and i've learned a lot about other departments as the students make connections between the different department strategies such as hippo and the english department cers or ace writing strategies we even had a discussion about the difference in how the h in hippo does actually apply to english we're currently exploring inquiry questions from science and maybe some cers along with english language aces overall the a's always will outweigh the nays and make being a teacher in apple valley unified school district and being a member of avuda an amazing experience thank you [Applause] this session reports the clerk of the board will report on any action taken in closed session okay the first item that the board took action on in closed session was b4 public employee appointment resignation retirement reduction on a motion by bender second by ocpara the board of trustees approved the recommendation of the superintendent naming sabrina pop ick of the dean of students of phoenix academy effective 9-3 of 21 on a 5-0 vote congratulations i'm sorry i got your name wrong i got the same kind of name nobody gets it right i'm sorry item number two that the board took uh action on is b5 conference with labor negotiator agency negotiator dustin conrad employee organization california teachers association on motion by opara and second by nunez the board of trustees approved the addition of language to article 19 compensation to now include article 19f supplemental retirement benefit one commencing with eligible retirees at the end of 2021 2022 contract year the district shall provide a supplemental retirement health and welfare plan benefit to those who qualify eligible retirees will receive a one-year health and welfare contribution of ten thousand dollars towards their plan for every four full-time years of district service provided to av usd with no proration for any number of years between those four-year increments the maximum duration of benefits is seven years or until the age of medicare eligibility whichever occurs first eligible retiree is defined using the following criteria a employee as a full-time employee for apple valley unified school district prior to july 1st 2015 and has maintained continuous employment which shall include leaves provided in article 15 with av usd and retirees after may 26 d has received an annual salary based on placement of column 4 step 22 or higher on the certificated salary schedule in the full-time year of service immediately preceding strs retirement and retirees under strs by 8 31 following the final day of district services f qualified retirees that move outside the geographic coverage area of district health and welfare plans shall participate in the health reimbursement arrangement providing the same ten thousand dollar annual cap for those years of eligibility two all full-time permanent unit members shall be eligible to enroll in 403 b plan with a district match of up to 1500 annually enrollment in this plan may begin on or after 71 of 21 and disqualifies a unit member from eligibility in the retiree health and welfare benefit in item one above so on a motion by oppar and a segment by nunes the vote board unanimously approved b5 b6 conference with labor negotiator agency negotiator dustin conrad employee organization california school employee association on a motion by okapara and a second by nunes the board of trustees approved a memorandum of understanding dated august 10 2021 regarding minimum wage and compensation the compensation agreement is as follows one percent salary increase on the salary schedule effective gli first 2021.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
calling the meeting to order roll call rick rolling here dennis bender here also here chris nunez here maria para here um will mr uh bender lead us in the place of allegiance [Music] one nation under god indivisible with mercy of jesus thank you as a reminder student representatives will be present per item c2 reports student representatives apple valley high school um and apple and granite hills high school the apple valley unified school district will continue to follow facility mass guidelines per california public health and cal osha requirements which require all individuals regardless of vaccination status to wear a mask indoors in all indoor settings while students are present when our students representatives arrive we will pause and allow those in attendance to put their mouse on we have mass in the back of the room that sergeant mcneely or any of the police officers can provide if you do not have one those that are unwilling to wear a mask while our student representatives are present we wait outside if students are present at the facility um at the time of f1 public comments you'll be required to wear the mask to enter the facility denial of following mask entry guidelines for the california department of public health and cal osha requirements for fits you the opportunity to address the board while students are present kylie do you have any public comments com pertaining to closed session thank you jessica cooley for christy croft good evening school board members and of apple valley unified school district employees unfortunately i cannot be in person tonight because i'm on a plane to see my goddaughter get married this weekend i did want to make a report before the closed session the voter vice president jessica cooley will be reading the speech on my behalf and on behalf of all abuta members wow this year feels like my first year of teaching and i know most of our teachers staff and students feel the same way we're all struggling but still have to do our assigned jobs we've had many hiccups this month but awsd and avodah are working together on most issues to fight a solution however we have two main problems that need to be at the forefront and get resolved immediately the avuta members are often asked to show grace to and by the district administration but it is tough to do that when our members are not shown the same grace in their time of need time of need being caused by district policies or lack thereof our first problem is the coven 19 protocols our members are constantly being exposed which is fine it's part of our job we are being instructed to stay at home by answering honestly the self-assessment or risk being disciplined however there are no clear end goals stated currently the way the protocol works i could just say i'm systematic daily on a side note to clarify my understanding i have seasonal allergies this mean being jessica cooley i am consistent with my medicine as you do not experience the symptoms however if i experienced symptoms but knew it was allergies there is no requirement for me to prove i do not have covit either by a doctor's note or a negative cova test this allows people if they were unscrupulous to gain game the system however i'm going to believe they're just confused and want clear direction from the district last year when our area spiked with covet cases many of our members used the 80 hours of government granted coveted leave awsd and evuda have discussed this but we still do not have a solution to our problem currently there is one member who has docked all of the sick time and five days of deferential pay this month teachers should not have to use their time when it is a work illness related issue or directive for us to stay home if we have symptoms or risk being disciplined this is where a clear end result would help clear up confusion for this and other members who might daily exhibit symptoms and earnestly want to abide by the district's instructions to report symptoms and thus be required to stay at home despite a stated wish to return to the classroom having to use our own sick time and having to get paid differential pay because of employer issue issued directive should not punish us the employee consider the plight of new teachers who along with the risk of exposure to covet also are risking all the illnesses that new teachers tend to catch without trying their first year and without a bank of sick days to fall back on avuta is asking to sit down at the negotiations table to get something agreed upon otherwise the president will have no choice but director members to start filing workman complaints to get the paid time off they need we are in complete agreement that there needs to be stipulations in place but we have yet to see anything and our people are paying to be out for a work related illness our second issue is a level one grievance which is frankly ridiculous we have to go through a grievance because some of our members are have been requested to i'm sorry some of our members are requesting to be paid for being requested to stay after their duty days for the safety of students for the first three weeks of school some members had after school outside duty worked past their dvd for an average of 15 to 60 minutes because the site had to establish routines for student pickup the weather was brutal during this time and they were outside working without water or shade and when asked to be paid we're told no because it's expected of the teacher they had no access to cold water because they're not allowed to have refrigerators in their classroom and duty starts as soon as the bell rings so they could not get water beforehand it is not readily provided at the site avuda even offered to bring each site cases of water however they were told they did not know if the sites had cold storage built several teachers at different areas got heat exhaustion and were sick afterwards but they went out day after day until the routines were established in our district mandated kenan training one of the modules specifically goes over situations like excessive heat and how to treat employees in excessive heat we do not treat our students like this and often call inclement weather when the heat is so high so they are not exposed why is it acceptable to treat professionals this way the members should get paid for staying past their duty day which is in the contract even in emergencies we would get paid instead awsd is telling the teachers you should expect that you will work overtime the first few weeks of school after school this is not in our contract school board members avuda is asking that you instruct the district to pay these teachers at these sites since they perform the work in good faith and under unhealthy conditions we need to work together during this pandemic we are short staffed overwhelmed with independent study packets and subbing for co-workers both ill and presumed ill until otherwise cleared during our prep times and duty days i realize that the admin are busy too and often at sites because no one is available for recess duty or classroom supervision however we are expected to our obligations plus you grace we readily agree that the district is busy and overwhelmed too but it is a business and has very strict contract language and deadlines to follow which has been a constant issue this month thank you for your time and consideration in this manner we want to work together but our issue with being pushed off to the side is not currently working dr christy croft thank you okay okay item b item b we're gonna be going in the closed session but bear with me will i read uh what we're going to be discussing oh okay okay thanks okay there you go i guess i don't like to hear myself talk okay number one people personnel annual reviews a1 21 22 ar 20 1 and 22 item 2 conference of litigation government code section 54956.9 subsection a current litigation seven cases cibds one eight one three nine five two one nine zero seven one seven two zero one one one eight three two zero two two nine five six two zero two three three six six two one zero three three nine six two one one one three o three government code section five four nine five subsection excuse me point five subsection c and subsection d and subsection e anticipated litigation three cases 2018 1907 2020 2105 2020 2107.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
that is the official recognized by the city council with no you know ambiguity about it and so called this uh ann harvard community commons since uh the time of the task force so i i would uh just respectfully asked to all those involved here i i think it's probably not a very productive use of our time to uh debate the name of um the nonprofit here that we're talking about i totally respect a lot of folks opinions and uh the reality of of where we are at what has brought us up to this point um but you know i think our purpose for this event was to have jeff update us a little bit on what was actually going on and you know certainly there's a confusion piece we can take that offline uh but uh do do want to just respect everybody's time tonight we're at 7 30 already and i for one would very much like to be done by nine o'clock um and uh so if we can keep moving on the on the you know updates related specifically to the faint event i think that would be really helpful i think frank's got his hand up frank i'm mute frank i i'm not uh going to comment further on that i was going to report on a couple items um up on updates good i think frank you're the only one who who has uh his or her hand up so if you'll feel free um i just wanted to report that the library green conservancy has uh surpassed the fifty thousand dollar mark in uh outright gifts and pledges our initial goal uh continues to be to raise a hundred thousand dollars and hopefully down the road uh you know other uh goals will be set based on uh you know specific uh needs and uh aspirations as they evolve um it it always feels good to get past the halfway mark in any campaign i can tell you that um so i'm pleased about that the other thing i wanted to report and this involves both myself and rita uh we uh established initial contact with the downtown detroit partnership um this turns that turns out we learned a bit in the initial contact is a 100 year old business uh consortium in the city of detroit and uh we had a very uh interesting uh initial conversation with a gentleman by the name of david cowan who's the chief open space officer i love that title we need one ann arbor uh of uh the downtown detroit partnership and if this is if people like david cowan are in our communities around michigan and around the country uh with wealth of knowledge and an eagerness to be helpful as we chart our course we are we are going to be in good shape um so i just wanted to report that we've made that initial uh contact and uh he um he's eager to be helpful to us and has a just very wide and deep knowledge on many many issues that we're you know talking about and wrestling with here so we were pleased and encouraged by that contact and i don't know if rita wanted to add anything to that um just that it was a a wonderful conversation inspiring and i would be really happy for us to continue being in touch with this group and thinking about others other groups sure excellent thank you for the update uh frank and rita uh camilla also has her hand up camilla flow's yours thank you um i'll be brief uh i was approached by a staff member of ground cover news uh to write an article on the council of the commons um uh the staff member specifically asked to introduce the council of the commons to the public give some history of the space and its politics and then ideally open a method or a forum for interested readers to engage um i just wanted to let you know that this is going on i don't want to blindside anybody and and i'm going to be really conscious about toeing the line between representing my own opinions and then um you know representing myself as an elected member of this advisory body um if people have feedback i'd love to hear it because [Music] there have been many more people who who know more about the history than i do i i think that's uh good and wonderful and um i think that we have a opportunity for you to maybe write tonight uh you know based on what you hear this evening obviously your participation in the previous meetings um so i think uh just from my perspective i think it's a it's a good thing that you that the opportunity is affronted to you and um you know i'm sure you will you will do a very uh good job of representing our our collective uh opinions the fact that basin you've uh you've had uh you've even been a moderator in some of these things um so i think it's wonderful camilla very very good news yeah i agree i think that's excellent excellent thank you uh let us know what you need from us camilla if anything um but you're obviously more than capable uh alan you have your hand up heather set out in our behalf uh odile and i is right over there we've been organizing the peace week from uh sunday september 19th to saturday the 25th around the international day of peace which is tuesday uh september 21st and we've been doing peace day it's a pretty interesting program everybody has some anxiety about the state of the world and that peace and the uh unhappy extinction in which it progresses and the uh doomsday clock but seconds before midnight so peace is on everyone's mind both locally and globally and we have a program that begins with actually the fostering a culture of peace and non-violence which is one of the recommendations out of the task force is the vision of the commons and bringing art to the uh commons and uh what are the questions that need to be on the peace table what are the discussions that can go on that are on people's mind and how to search for knowledge we will have some exposition of the books for the giveaway and say and uh conclude on saturday the 25th with restating the visions that people have as to how advanced peace in the world peace in the community and what's on people's minds so you saw the basic outline of the program which is subject um to certainly change in development as if you want so really we hope that people can participate in that and it's the kind of program that goes on that has gone on so it's now part of our framework of what we're doing and everyone is invited it's basically an open show and we'll see what happens and i guess that is my uh my report on that and uh [Music] i guess it also might fall into the question of community partnerships because this sort of program is the kind of thing that goes on on the commons more thereof on there on other days that are recognized on the calendar uh people's day and the human rights day into the nation's day and [Music] so that's that is the uh report it's not a a specific program of the uh initiating committee of which i am also a part of just something that i've been involved in with odile and many other people since 2014 i think was the first one that we did on the center of the city thank you alan thank you a deal um council member breaks a follow-up question for camilla and then i adam i didn't know if it was useful for us to do the update to this if this is where you wanted to talk about kind of um could it be a little louder please yeah um can you hear me now yeah okay um well i'll ask the follow-up question first so camilla would um for the article you mentioned that the article the request was to to do an article about the council of the commons i just wasn't i wanted to ask for clarification is it actually about the commission itself or is it about is it a is an article really about the space it's a good clarifying question i'm not entirely sure i can get back to you i i would assume it's it's both okay yeah just curious um and then uh adam is this a good spot on the agenda to discuss what happened um at the last council meeting with regards to me uh why don't we why don't we do that at the the next and item actually okay any other points regarding member updates i drop into that that the ground cover september issue has a brief outline of the program of the peace week excellent any other member updates before we move on to community partnerships agenda item okay adam excuse me oh yeah sorry rita go ahead um this isn't an update but we missed the part about approval of the agenda and um i i do have a thing that i would like us to discuss um ideally it would be tonight but i don't know if we have time so the issue that i would like us to discuss is a plan for the council of the commons for us you know to have a plan and some of the targets of activities as we move forward um so that we have goals yes so i apologize for missing the approval of the agenda but you are totally right uh rita and that was obviously part of uh part of what our plan was this evening so why don't we go ahead and approve the agenda uh for the evening and then we can get into since we've already approved the minutes uh from last meeting we can get into um what is going to be on the agenda here so can we have a motion to approve the agenda this so evening so moved we have a second okay uh all in favor of the agenda this evening say aye all right all right any opposed excellent uh so with that um why don't we get into uh community partnerships and rita we can talk uh i think about you know community partnerships i think on this agenda item is meant to be a little a little more fluid with what uh you know we're thinking about here so i think it was intended to discuss a little bit about what happened and uh transpired last uh city council meeting the councilmember rig suggestion but also to talk a little bit about some of the work that you and frank have been doing in other communities and decide how we want to do this work going forward so i think first uh why don't we talk a little bit about uh we'll see the floor to councilmember briggs and she can highlight a little bit of what she would like to highlight and then we can get into uh some of the good work that you uh rita and frank have been have been doing so erica why don't we turn over to you first um so you probably i'm i'm sure you all received the the email from adam that that gave an update as to what happened at the last council meeting so i think you're up to speed on this but essentially um we as council um received a fair amount of um push um concerns around this resolution that was being that had come forward from um from this commission with a recommendation of bringing food carts as an activation technique um to the center of the city and you know this is something that kind of we had mentioned in um had come up in our discussions uh in july i think that we might want to get some feedback from from from stakeholders and see what they thought um but i had we had you be a little louder please yes sorry this computer's um microphone doesn't work as well as i would hope um so anyway we received feedback from the main street area association and from businesses downtown about concerns about essentially bringing food trucks into um into the spaces particularly following a very difficult time for businesses downtown so i think it was based on the the um the stakeholders the community partners that were that were providing that feedback um it seemed that there would be adam and i um adam did a did a fair amount of work because i was actually up trying to camping at pictured rocks with very with no connectivity when all this happened um and uh i'll let him report on those conversations with main street area association but um it seemed advisable to take that feedback that we were getting from um from not exactly official block partners but from community stakeholders and figure out um what would be an activation strategy that might be met with greater support um and so i am i was regretful to have to you know to to pull that from the agenda um but i didn't want to have the first thing that brought brought to council from the commission um we met with so much controversy i guess immediately based on the feedback we were getting so adam you might want to add to that and i will work on my microphone yeah so i think that i think erica highlighted uh you know some of the more uh direct points you know i would just like to say that i think that when we started out this process a few months ago you know we were talking about who would be uh interested in being a partner and who would be uh you know interested in helping us move forward on these things and so uh i often found that in those discussions that scope of who we were who we were thinking might be you know limited in some regards you know and we were mostly focused on those who we thought were interested and i think the fact that we put forward a resolution and it was met with some resistance actually uh in consequence provided us with an opportunity to try and bring in additional people who are who are certainly partners in the downtown area and have the ability to help us move something forward and so while i am absolutely in no means stating that uh the main street area association is uh interested in in helping that i don't think they are an obstacle in helping us accomplish our goals here and so i feel like this is an opportunity to build partnership in a real uh serious way and so and based on the conversations i've had uh of which i don't particularly want to get into the exact details uh this evening you know i i feel like there is a real constructive way of utilizing this opportunity and i think that's what erica and i saw on that that day of the city council being that we had a real opportunity to either meet obstruction head-on and not have it be constructive or to turn it into a way of trying to build partnership and i think that we chose the latter that was part of the reason that i sent out the email to all of you uh and and noted that and i think we are still working on that you know it's by no means uh settled we frankly do not have a ton of resolution on this but i think that we are in a constructive spot and i'd like us to give some um weight to the fact that we are that we have the ability to build additional partnership in this and that ultimately if we all want uh this effort to be successful it is about community and is about uh engaging more members of the community to help move this forward and so uh you know i would just like to state that that's i think where we're at right now um i think we have an opportunity uh we are by no means of the woods with trying to uh you know broaden support but i think there is a healthy and constructive process that we're engaged in right now and so um you know while certainly i'd love it to move as fast as i think we all wanted to during the last council of the commons meeting i actually think that this provides us with an uh unique catalyst that we didn't when we when we all voted for that resolution last time we didn't have when we all voted for the resolution last time and so uh i'm a optimist by nature uh i think that's what you gotta have when you look at public policy and i encourage everyone else to hopefully share in the same optimism that erica and i have uh in uh in moving this far because i really do think there is uh the opportunity you know is much better to have more people talking about what you're trying to do even if some may have opinions that are they want to shape a little bit but are not necessarily opposed then to have nobody talking about what you want to do and i felt that this is very much the case with this opportunity so that's the only addition i'd like to add feel free to have any questions uh they have regarding um where we're at and the resolution i i just wanted to make a point uh i put my hand up here earlier um that i have made it my business along with dana to reach out very widely to the main street folks and we have not focused on food trucks or anything like that at this point we have gone out to all the restaurants we can find all the community organizations and you know local shops and so forth mainly you know in the main street area and so forth have been have been talking to them and that's our focus because we recognize that's extremely important so you can be assured that's uh top of mind jeff thank you frank i just want to uh kind of second and support what you've said uh in this initial conversation with the gentleman from the detroit partnership it was clear that the business community is front and center uh in all the positive activity that has developed around seven downtown detroit parks and open spaces and uh you know it it it's kind of obvious when you think about it the who would have a greater uh stake in this than the the community of businesses that operate not only on the block but in concentric circles around the center of the city and so i think we can you know positively engage these businesses and the associations that represent them in conversation and so i'm i'm wholeheartedly wholeheartedly in support of what you've observed already anyone else i can add a little bit more of some feedback that i also received that might be helpful to this group um as that resolution was coming forward um i i heard strong support for the non-profits that are activating the space um working you know the fan uh sort of uh approach of of having um that that approach in terms of short-term activation that that was uh i was definitely hearing support from that on from from some council members um i heard also heard from both the community and um a interest um that this commission might focus um in terms of thinking about activation thinking about more about liberty square plaza um as a place to start as well that that might be an easier place to to start with activation um a little more just um and um also focus um support for focusing in on the long-term design components of things and so um that's that's some initial also additional feedback uh that i kind of heard from community and and unlimited feedback from council as this resolution is coming forward for a couple of days and so i think that's just some some pieces that we might carry forward with us um about thinking about what we can do next it may take us a little bit more time to figure out working with community partners what is that that strong um short-term activation that's that's going to work for us but um we do have money on the table that we need to work with on that's um focusing on on physical design and i i do hope when rita talks about what's what's our plan um that is that's that is an area i want to suspend a fair amount of time um and i think there's there's definitely opportunity to be thinking about the entire site that was the entire space that was that voters consider center of the city thank you uh councilman briggs others uh anyone else on this topic uh yeah i just wanted to um say i totally support uh the feedback you've gotten i do think we very much need to involve liberty plaza and look at the long term critical the reason why liberty plaza has not been part of this initial fan series is because of couple things one i was gonna have some difficulty getting insurance to cover that um because of some issues that are out there which would need to be addressed and i think we can be helpful in addressing them but i there it's not something i could do this early on you know without consulting the council and and i could get into a quagmire also my understanding and i may be wrong about this but my understanding is that the liberty plaza comes under the parks department and so that makes it a little more complicated and so i didn't want to get into that uh situation uh again again without due consultation and um [Music] so that's that that's the reason thanks thanks jeff uh rita you have your hand up you're muted still rita sorry all right um i was just gonna ask erica if you could explain a little more about the comments about the long-term activation um that you mentioned um yeah i think just that we um there there was support that um council had had supported this this um physical design of the space and that that's you know that's definitely something that that um there's interest in seeing the commission moving forward with and um and and you know getting that rfp out there and really working with the community to to understand what you know what what is our proposed you know design for the space so just um nothing not extensive feedback on that just continued support to see the commission working on that element okay so there was support in other words yeah yeah you know okay exactly continue support interest in seeing us move move that forward okay thank you i i would argue um that in order for us to do that as professionally as we can and involve as much of the community as we can i think um it would be good to have some more of these facilitated sessions um and working groups perhaps associated with focusing on that and as i said before we we can make a small contribution to that by collecting some information further information to help the process over the fan uh events but obviously you know this design element we obviously need to bring a lot more input um to bear and and and to have some of these sessions that would be my opinion i know how other other people feel about that but i totally support that notion we have to do that so i think there's uh it's actually a very good prelude into the next topic of discussion which is uh really an effort that frank and rita have uh led and i guess i just saw alan's hand pop up here so before we get into that we'll uh we'll give the floor to allen but then i think we should really talk about uh some interest in other communities that frank and rita have been looking into and how that plays into a forward thinking uh role uh related to that design element so ellen the floor is yours but then we're going to turn it directly over to rita and frank well i do think it's important to see how other communities have developed open space and center of the city focus i wanted to say as we began to look to the longer view that there have been a lot of ideas out there and there's some drawings that i'm glad that people will be they will begin to look at what is the picture of how to uh create a central park and a civic center uh which is viewed as a building something that is four season that we have to figure out how that fits into the physical capacity of the space and whether there are additional facilities that can be drawn into the commons in particular the noble house and carriage house that the martin company said they'd be interested in having the city take over and that could serve particularly the noble house as at least on the first floor uh which could be made accessible as a social center as an adjunct to the community that finds liberty plaza as it's you know itinerary home so i'm very interested in this long review and i think that the pictures that stefan trendoff developed not so long ago have been shared with the uh council of the uh commons and maybe that could be shared further for people to look at of how the various elements can fit together but i wanted to back to the more media to see i think one of the things that we really need is the uh calling into a service of the so-called block group that is one of the recommendations in one of the uh of the uh task force and one of the elements of the city council resolutions on this that that block group of the immediate basically the immediate neighbors you know be convened so that people can see that we're all partners in this common development and uh they're reflecting also on robert black's comments that the first martin corporation and the public library need to be brought into these conversations and they've sort of stepped to the side watching what happens rather than being invited into the actual conversations so there are big elements who have been silent in our conversations and they need to we need to hear their voices but furthermore the uh from the very beginning the uh the uh all resolutions have said you know remove the the surface parking on the parking lot so that it can actually begin to be used as a public space and and develop and that's what when we have a public program we got to go through a whole process to get the dda and the republic parking and the community services to agree that the cars are off so that people can go on and i just wish that that long term or long commitment or instruction from the city council would be carried forward to instruct the the dda with the republic parking to terminate the surface parking on the lot it was never intended as a surface parking lot there only until you know further development is takes place and that is a center of the city central park and uh so uh if we would you know carry out what has already been mandated to create a block group of the immediate neighbors and partners and to remove the surface parking we would then have a little more momentum towards seeing how the community can begin to use this space and see from the bottom up what people actually want to do so that's my that's my comment on this i'm glad that we would move also forward to see how we envision a long-term development they would see the integration of liberty plaza a connection between liberty plaza and the uh we current library parking lot and the creation of a four season civic center uh building of some sort as part of this total downtown center of the city development thank you alan um so i'd like to turn over uh to rita and frank to talk a little bit about some of the research they've been doing and potentially make a proposal for some initial next steps rita uh frank feel free well i guess i'll start because i see frank's muted for the moment but jump in frank we uh i think we're just um trying to explore at a very elementary level on connecting with communities that have downtown open spaces and that had come about as a result of just some brainstorming really with uh initiating committee members um talking about detroit uh plymouth dexter as local examples i'd consider them all local um and we would certainly like to um the thought was to just make a connection and see what would happen and so it's like i can't tell you how excited i was after talking with david cowan and i really believe that everyone in this group would appreciate listening to him describe what he's done um and and his team of people that he works with um it is definitely a coalition of business and um this group as support and and it will call us to calling us to figure out some things that that we need to do for us locally um but i i i it's sort of like i don't want to like read you the book because it was so exciting it's like i don't want to i i sort of like you all to experience it it really is um impressive the service that they've provided for their downtown so the proposal from my perspective is that we start forming an approach to work groups or committees or whatever we want to call them that will investigate how other places do this and set some criteria some descriptive information that we would like from each so that we can either investigate it as a whole group and bring in speakers or whatever of representatives of these places or compile information that we would review as a group that would be up to the council to make that kind of a decision so i think i'll stop there and frank please jump in and let me say that frank made this first connection and i'm really happy that he did uh i couldn't have said it better uh uh rita here i just think there's uh great potential for learning uh from uh other communities that have uh have tackled these challenging issues and detroit uh as i mentioned this is a 100-year organization uh that has obviously morphed over the over the years and decades and there was a a conservancy formed uh at the time of detroit's uh 300th birthday in 20 2001.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um and you know it's a system yeah you know and you tweak it with your personnel from year to year but for the most part you know we talked you know certain things mean certain things and they still mean the same thing and some some of the kids that played with you we still use the same terminology and when we tell the kids why we use it and we bring those kids names up when we're talking about it and why it means what it means so it's kind of just a tradition of the of the defensive side of the ball so this week gave up 578 yards 292 yards passing they had some pretty big plays in their scoring plays rather i mean you get running play 32 yards 43 yards 27 yard pass uh 29 yard pass and a 68 yard pass so they get the big chunks now with all those big yards you got two safeties and kyle mcconaughey and dominic vaguely that those guys run the alley so well on the run game they're not afraid to stick their nose in there and make that tackle but that kind of leaves you a little susceptible to that default especially when you're playing against team that has the athletes that mosquito has you can't rely on your safeties to be your leading tacklers in a game right okay you if they are then you're in trouble that's why they scored 42 points right so we've got to do a better job up front you know we've worked with our dn's this week and our linebackers a little bit about understanding their role i mean everybody has a job everybody's responsible for a gap it's your job i mean it's no different than the offensive side of the ball you know you're responsible to block down you're responsible to kick out everyone's responsible for their job and if you don't do your job up front then now our safeties from 12 yards are the ones having to roll down to make the tackles and when you've got athletes out on the perimeter they're coming down on play action to help make a play and then people are running by you in the secondary so we got to do a better job with our front seven front eight and uh you know don't rely on dom and and kyle to make plays in the secondary right and i thought we did a good job of forcing our corners did a good job when the play started to get outside they forced it back in which is where he wanted to be and had a couple arm tackles and that's all week one kind of stuff you don't want it to be any weak no but it's week one you know i think those get those kinks out and i think everything would be good but we did a good job forcing it back in you get it to where all the guys are sitting and you hope somebody makes a play and those athletes i mean you can't take anything away from mosquito they're a heck of a football team this year yeah like like you said you know we had drew meganson and elijah jarvis elijah went went down you know early in the third quarter and you bring a kid in like zach wetzel who all summer all summer long was there practice working his tail off and you know he's not overly he's not a big kid but he's going to be in the right spots he's going to do what you tell him to do and we have all the confidence in the world that he's going to come in this week against waterloo and and fill elijah's role and do a good job for us well that's good that's good to hear that you got somebody next man up kind of mentality yeah the the big play of the weekend though i think was the first touchdown that the eagles scored and it's not something that you're always going to be saying your first touchdown in your defensive lineman but you get brendan weak in the backfield forces a fumble and then you had i believe it was kaczynski making a big play making a big block and owen brewer picking it up rumbling stumbling his way down for uh 55 yards i believe it was for that scoop and score touchdown you know owen is uh probably the in the whole program of our 47 kids he's probably the 10th fastest kid we have in the program so i knew once he got that ball and the quarterback fell down he was going to take it to the house so you watch the highlight up here right now you've got doubles formation out of moscuta looks like you're going to be bringing the blitz on the pre-snap reed and if you let it run a little bit let me figure out how we get that got it going there so you got them getting ready to bring the house there yeah so you had a you had a little show and no go from your from your backer on the inside up top and you still had brennan coming off the edge and i think we did a pretty good job on the back side here with uh like you said kuchinsky and i think this is owen brewer down on the end so you have doubles running back to the right side yeah he goes untouched he goes untouched to the quarterback and you got a fourth and nine situation here so let's go let's straight pass go back to that spot fourth and nine what are you thinking as a coach thinking all right they're not going to run the football i want to get pressure on the quarterback and i want to keep him inside the pocket that's why i was bringing two from the field side to keep him from being able to escape and roll out to the right which is what he attempts to do what he attempts to do and as he does bernie does a great job of getting a hand on the ball pick it up pick it up when owen does the rest then owen who is a kid quiet [Music] [Applause] it is and it was great to see him show some emotion there because like you said the kid is uh you know he's like a mouse he doesn't talk much which is a good thing sometimes but uh great to see him get in the end zone and score our first touchdown of the season so we just watched that that's how coach watches a play right there you played for two seconds so we'll let the whole thing run right there and it's just a great play all the way around cut across coming back and just forcing it to be a big play gets things rolling for us doubles running back to the right side absolutely alex so now that takes us up seven nothing real quick thinking everything's looking like it's going to be a good deal you got the emotion coming out of some of the players that you don't always see and then after that it was just mosquito's offense kind of did what they had to do and went off we took we took advantage of you know they came down and scored to make it 7-7 we forced them to punt and they had a they had a bad punt that only went about 10 yards and put our offense in good field position um to get a score on the board to go up 14-7 and we kind of traded score theirs for a little bit and they went up 21-14 and then we had a uh we were driving i believe and had a holding penalty uh that knocked us out of uh you know great field position down inside the five or ten um and then we were forced to i believe we punted from there i think so you can talk about that we'll get into offense here in a little bit but we're going to go to a break real quick and we'll talk offense we've got the defense out of the way and we'll be back with the houlton meets pre or coach's corner rather after this [Music] welcome back ladies and gentlemen to the fulton meets coaches corner here in week two alex schlemmer and jared germain coached remain with us here for this breakdown at aces wild coach now let's go into the offensive side of the football you were pretty good offensive player back in the air but you haven't had to do too much other than stop the offense anymore but this week couldn't get too much going only had 79 yards of total offense 65 of which was uh was rushing so gonna have to do something a little bit different and it all starts up front like coach horner says every week got to control the line of scrimmage and i think we had a little bit of a struggle trying to do that this week yeah we did and uh you know like we said we've talked about it i'm not trying to make excuses for our kids but they were thrown under fire against a pretty good team and that you're gonna see good teams from week to week with our with our schedule this year i know coach talked about our schedule so i won't spend time on that but you know this week's no different you know waterloo plays in that conference in the mississippi valley and their kids are you know they're battle tested from year to year from playing in that level of competition so you know our kids are going to have to crank it up a little bit stretch strap up this chin straps a little bit tighter and be ready to go i guarantee you coach horner will have his kids on the offensive side of the ball ready to go this week i guarantee it i know he'll have a few wrinkles in there and uh you know not giving away any tricks or anything but his kids will be ready to play and it's always you know you come off a big loss you're going to be out there firing and you're going to be trying to get that you want to get up to where you know you need to be and where you should be and where you're accustomed to being as well so um the one big thing though it all starts in the trenches but you can't have any trenches if you don't get a snap we've took kyle jackson for granted i guess for three years you never once talked about a bad snap from him and you never talked about him grant matheny comes in last night and he started a couple games last year at center i believe but we didn't have any issues at center at all as far as snaps go not one i i believe they were they were all on the money we did you know what and with our offense everything is a read so that snap has to be on the money uh if it's not then it screws up the whole timing with the play so i think grant and i know grant did a great job with center with with his snaps uh coach baker talked about that the other day we were watching film uh applauding him for his effort snapping the ball and that's you know it starts right there so that's something good that you like to see and you hope that it is able to keep up for the rest of the year um vaguely passing wise didn't really get too much going i believe he only had 19 attempts on yeah 19 attempts on the night seven for 19 for 14 yards so nothing spectacular he's scrambling a lot of times i think rushing wise because every time he takes a sack hurts on his rushing side of things and i think he had eight attempts for 13 yards elijah jarvis you're starting running back nine attempts for 25 yards and i believe he was on the sideline with an injury early in the game yeah we unfortunately this week built the bilteman kid jeremiah he'll be out for the season um elijah jarvis is basically week to week i do know that from our offensive side of the ball with our running backs um so uh kyle mcconaughey is going to see a little bit action in the backfield this week and we're going to move some other people around out at the receiver position and kyle's accustomed to that he was you're starting running back last year so hopefully he's able to jump right back into where he was and keep going from that perspective and if he can give us six returns for 115 yards on the kick returns hopefully we don't see them six times but all the you know with any of our running backs all of our all our line has to do is give them a scene you know those kids elijah biltman and you know and kyle mcconaughey they they have that breakaway speed so if they give them a crease they've got the opportunity to take it to the house so we didn't have many creases the other night but we did have one crease and that was when dom went in for a four yard touchdown run and um like you said that was all set up by the the muffed punt we're going to call it or the miss punt from the scooter gave us great field position and uh we just had to go 15 20 yards i believe it was to get into the end zone and uh that makes it pretty easy on all the coaches to only have that short field ahead of you and uh got the highlight here pulled up big thing that started this whole drive right here the play before cunningstein goes out he was supposed to go out he had a helmet fall off so with that high school rules once the helmet comes off you have to come off the field and with that we call the timeout and you said coach horner drew up the play from there yes he did he called the running play that you're going to see here on the screen i can't give out the terminology i don't want to do that no we don't want to do that at all but uh you know i think jared said on the broadcast you want to get the ball in your playmaker's hand and that's absolutely what we did here on the goal line so on that play dom's flanking out to the left side he makes a move playmaker's hands and he's able to make the move and get into the end zone and on that like i said though with that timeout coach warner draws it up and with that i mean you're feeling good there you're up 14-7 so i mean that's i mean it's like i told you for the first quarter you know it's back-to-back back and forth back and forth yeah unfortunately and we turn them all over and give them a short field they have with their athletes we talked about it earlier our kids have to come up get out of coverage in the secondary their kids are good athletes let's face it you know we've had we've had several of those type of kids right in our program in the past and you know not knocking any of the kids we have now but there's speed kills you know speed kills and uh muscutous kids they won the state championship last year in track and field and a bunch of those kids are out there on the football field i believe you had a shirt back in the 0304 area the uh there's a white shirt speed kills strength punishes absolutely that's a pretty good phrase to live and die by there when it comes to football yes sir so now we're gonna look ahead week two the waterloo bulldogs come in on an 0-1 season they lost last week to modern day we go man 0-1 obviously columbia again 628 students waterloo coming in 827 students so they're at 5a school i believe and so you're facing 5a muscuda 5a waterloo back to back and that's i mean i can't believe waterloo is that big and they've never seen that big but you know columbia in the series 18 and 16 overall last match-up was in 2019 35-10 victory i believe that was a home victory correct that was at waterloo was that waterloo at waterloo yep anything you remember from that game they scored first they had a long pass and uh london came from the opposite hash and tackled the kid on about the three yard line and then we held them to uh a field goal in that possession and then we scored 35 unanswered and then they scored one late late in the fourth quarter to get their touchdown and make it 10.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so they're on track yeah i mean the season the kickoff there's actually a firm date i forget if it's the 12th or 15th but they'll be ready in advance of that and we have a contingency if there is an issue but at this point everything else is done before school opens but the heating system doesn't um and the other thing you mentioned like a new type of door lock without a key i'm just wondering sort of how that works like each side of the door like i'm wondering kids or parents might be curious i'm curious yeah so the question about the door lock working and those are locks that we install installed for ada compliance at cheshire high school uh you want to take it yeah yeah so the the lock um the lock set that we installed has a lock on the outer side of the door but if you're inside the classroom it now has the new these new door locks have a red push button when you push that button in it sets the deadbolt and it has a red indicator so the teacher can very quickly see by looking that the door is locked because they see that red indicator the you know across the district and at the high school not all the old locks work that way and in some cases to lock the door you physically had to open the door and lock it from the outside and then close the door and so you know this gives you greater access to the door lock and excellent visibility if you need it if there's a lockdown called you know the teacher can quickly see the status of the door but yeah there is a key on the outside none required on the inside on those locks so that's certainly something we'd like to do all across the district um so i want to take you back a week ago today last thursday is when we kick off the school year for our instructional team our staff comes back uh every year we kick that off with something we call convocation and we have a really firm belief that school should be fun for our students it should be fun for our staff and so we make that first day of school a day that many teachers across connecticut or america kind of dread we try and make it really fun and engaging and you know thanks to a lot of folks that are good sports and our kids and a lot of cooperation i think we always accomplish that goal and and have a lot of fun so these are a couple of pictures of convocation on day one what you see up on the left there is our chs cheerleading squad uh led by marlene solano uh and i'm on the far right there with our on our staff is on the right um here i am dressed as zac efron uh that ram right there is scott jeffrey and kristin pells and john parasino served as referees we had the chs ram band playing outside it was a a really good time the gentleman here you see uh is a man named peter roby he's the acting athletic director at dartmouth university or dartmouth college and he has a really unique background growing up in new britain ultimately went on to play basketball at harvard and coached at west point and stanford and uh harvard and before he is now the like i said the athletic director at dartmouth but he also had a long stint for reebok and really uh is just such an interesting and grounded man and gave us a great presentation on coaching and leadership because really so much of what our teachers do is coaching but they also are coached because we aspire to always be better i think we're an incredible school system but we're always working on getting better and personally for us that means you know taking feedback willing to to learn and work hard to be better at what we do so peter gave us a great presentation on that so there are some wonderful uh opportunities we get during convocation like naming our instructional assistant of the year patty motto who's works at dodd middle school working with our reading program there and then our teacher of the year lindsey grant she's a teacher at highland elementary school uh and it's just really incredible to honor these these folks that lead our organization in their really shining lights so we're going to go school by school to take a look at the opening and are projected in actual enrollments so we'll start with darcy school darcy's a little bit different this year as you know given the enrollment growth we've had we had to take two kindergartens out of darcy and slide them over to doolittle school see the kids are having a great time to to kick off their year it was great to welcome our students we projected uh in kindergarten uh 55 students and had exactly 55 students for the september 2nd enrollment at chapman school let's hear our little buckaroos looking a little bit more normal than things looked last year thankfully for them a lot of fun to get back i thought those boards were really cool celebrating your children's first day of school with who their teacher is what their favorite things are great keepsakes so chapman school our overall enrollment projection was to have uh 350 total students we ended up with 345 so we're fairly close on the 2nd of september to the projected enrollment and then you'll start to see a trend of exceeding our enrollment projections so welcome back to doolittle school unfortunately delayed but exciting nevertheless the real thrill of my day today was going to do a little school and i just hung up with another connecticut superintendent who called me about mold remediation because they were dealing with the same issue and i walked up the driveway here to watch kids playing kickball and the cheering the screaming the fun they were having it was really really cool to see that back in our schools again so doolittle there you can see it at the bottom we had a total projection of students now we have 488 students so that's you know pretty far in excess of what we anticipated but like you know i've said before our enrollment is growing and we're seeing that become more typical that we're out out uh enrolling our projections highland elementary they did a really cool thing with the chalk on the on the entryway welcoming kids taking picture tent dining a lot of smiling faces so we again our projection was 767 students we enrolled at this point 780 students at highland elementary school norton so our total projected enrollment was 439 and we were pretty close to spot on it 436.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above