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infections in the community from literature published during 1946 july 27 2018. it pooled analysis we found no significant reduction in influenza transmissions with the use of face mask yet the cdc still published the mask because this was clearly not about the science i have much more to say there's there's uh there's data on the increase in suicides the the kids are getting outside and playing in school yards and playgrounds together and in sports and then they're come back to school and have to force to wear masks which serves no purpose so for the sake of our children's well-being we the group of parents here want all restrictions removed immediately including mask social dissenting temperature checks plexiglas dividers contact tracing and want all extracurricular activities and classrooms to return to normal [Music] donna white first of all i want to ask for extra time because i'm an oral cancer patient and i just had surgery ago and it affects my speech so bear with me did you guys hear that yes okay so bear with me my name is donna white i live at 3304 newton boulevard and i'm here tonight in reference to what our school corporation is going to do with teachers who hides telephones in his classroom and is taping little children in the restroom at smith elementary school i don't know i think mrs scheid said you you're aware of it i don't know if your other board members are aware of it dr roberts i know you're aware of it but she informed her mother at the beginning of august august and this happened last year at smith elementary school the teacher taught third grade this little girl knows one cell phone from the other he admitted to having cell phones in the kids bathroom doctor shed i'm going to interrupt here just real quick if i could our board policy is not to single out an individual teacher in our school corporation that could have that i think that you mentioned a school building in in grade level and we're starting to there's there's i i have not mentioned this this teacher's name he's not a third grade teacher anymore probably didn't help or hurt the uh identification of different individuals did it mr model i'm referring to school counsel in terms of uh public comment on individual but i think that we have to be very careful on that i would agree that this is sufficient identifying information that it does indicate yeah so if you have general statements regards to the done i think that's a that's appropriate well you know i think that every principal at every elementary school should be aware of this all these parents should be aware of this and you know what i'm afraid of the repercussions of what's going to happen to this little girl and the reason i'm of that is because that little girl is my niece and not one of you has replied to her mother not one of you school board members it's a shad you have yes so so one we're not going to generalize that's inappropriate and if you'd like to offer more detail you're welcome to share that in writing but as we have the advice of our legal counsel i have to ask you to stop okay that's fine thank you it's time for these parents to teach our children at home enough thank you next on the list is jason meyer major oh major sorry [Applause] all right is it on now yeah it's on okay um i just wanted to first of all i wanted to thank you all for you guys did answer my question that i had about the percentage of children or uh staff that were traced and positive so i appreciate that five percent uh while it is a little bit more than last year uh i want to focus on the 95 percent of the kids that are at home that are unable to attend school for whatever reason i want to just say that i love my parents i love my wife but most of all i love my daughter my daughter as most of your children are is the best of you and your spouse and there's not much i wouldn't do for that uh for that child um today she sent me a text that says i used to be excited to go to school now i hate going it drains all my happiness away i'm not happy like i used to be i can't find my happiness i just feel empty i have no motivation for anything and i'm stressed out to the max that's what she sent me after being covetrace for a week the term liberty means positive enjoyment of various social political and economic rights and privileges and what i want to focus on is the fact that she had her rights to due process taken away as has every single other child that has had been coveted traced and my concern with the cova tracing policy is that you're allowing vaccinated children to stay in school non-vaccinated children have to go home that's also an indication no different than the conversation we just had so thank you for allowing me to lead in with that too as soon as you send a kid home and let another kid stay you've indicated to all the other kids teachers that that child is not vaccinated that's violation of their privacy for their medical rights also because there's kids that are at school that have been vaccinated we all know that even though you're vaccinated that does not prevent you from being ill and ill an example i have is i know a family of four three of them are vaccinated the fourth is too young both of the parents and the older child all three over the weekend tested positive so my concern is is while you let some children stay because they're vaccinated and make other kids go home you could be contributing to having other kids get sick my suggestion as i noted was to if you're going to send kids home make sure that they test negative before they're allowed to come back um also real quick i wanted to just highlight too when when i went in to talk to the nurse about this my biggest concern when i walked in the building was the very first thing i saw was a secretary behind a barrier that had no mask i'll i'll be brief i'll try and not do more than one more minute but that secretary did not have a mask on for me to read the document that you guys have that unequivocally says everyone in a facility should have a mask i walk by an administrator's room in their office no mask i did two of those i go into the nurses area uh both of the secretaries and the nurses and counselors area no masks uh behind a barrier and uh the thing that really set me off the most was when i went to the nurse's office and the nurse was talking on the phone with a student in the room the student was sitting in a chair across from the desk leaning against the wall the nurse had no mask on talking on the phone could you summarize so um yeah i understand my time's up um but i do want to make sure uh i do appreciate mr grimes thank you for acknowledging you read my letter uh dr bills dr roberts thank you for acknowledging you received the letter uh i know you guys get a lot but i do appreciate the acknowledgement thank you thank you abigail bryant okay i'm abigail bryant um my address is 524 high school drive edinburgh um i'm the librarian at taylorsville elementary um so i had two points i might not get to the sel problems but i'll address the masks and i love all the information that they've given just now i've also brought the articles on the cdc website which you might have already known about that so the pcr test could not distinguish between um influenza and cdc so the numbers that we have the numbers that you're using to um mandate masks and all that are skewed at best um there's also a graph that shows that uh influenza was practically gone last year miraculously so i understand that you guys are public servants you can't do nothing about the pandemic you can't just say well just come nothing's going to happen you can't do anything about it i get that you have to have a solution to the problem to address the pandemic i get that and you have received an eso grant i don't know how after only two days in school that we had to go to that immediately i don't know how the numbers grew that greatly in two days time meaning that the kids were the problem kids went back to school the numbers are astronomical now we have to wear masks at school it doesn't add up but whatever it's there we got what 10 million dollars that's for grant to me that seems like you could properly ventilate schools give each classroom hepa filters multiple even with that amount of funds which could be a nice compromise for now i know masks are probably not going to go away but it's an option we're not getting any other solutions to the problem so can we they're giving these filters to nurses in in secretaries and doctors offices how are they efficient there but not at a school you can have one hepa filter at each pod of students whenever the air is it's cool outside open the windows it's the ventilation in rooms has proven to be more effective at keeping numbers down than a mask has imagine these masks kids are going to the bathroom they're wiping they're putting their masks back on a nurse would be written up for touching their mask but kids can go all day go to the bathroom multiple times they touch their mask before and after lunch and it sits there they say if you can smell what you just use in the bathroom it's in your nose if it's all in your mask it's there all day i don't i don't like that for my son i don't like the mental the anxiety that he gets from it but there are other options there's filters you have 10 million dollars you can get the best ventilation systems for these schools and have a compromise to all this i was going to get into csel but i'll have to come to the next meeting for that but i won't compromise i want something thank you very much richard lynn hello can you hear me okay my name is richard liu i'm sorry you're good i grew up in columbus and i'm a former bcsc student i live at two four two nine winham place south dr roberts i'm your neighbor and i graduated in 2017.
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that's our next school committee meeting too right meeting [Music] do [Music] come in good evening everyone i'd like to call uh the september 13th meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order per governor baker's order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law glc 30a section 20 and the legislature's extension of that order the public will not be allowed to physically access the school committee meeting members of the public can access the meeting via live stream at www.youtube.com dehs tv media in addition the event will be rebroadcast on dc tv channels 9 and on the following days wednesday and thursday at 5 pm friday at 6 a.m saturday at 8 a.m and sunday at 2 p.m the school committee reserves the right to implement additional remote participation procedures and will notify the public of these practices soon as practical i'd like to have invite everyone to stand for the pledge of allegiance please one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i'd like to ask everyone to remain sandy i'd like to have a moment of silence for the victims of 9 11 and also for dartmouth's own the oliver leah oliver i'm sorry thank you you may be seated all right so um i just want to remind the public that comments are welcome during our meeting please forward comments to the recording secretary kathleen genthner at dartmouthschools.org ms gentler forwards all emails that she receives everyone on the school committee so if you want to comment on something that is on our agenda this evening please email her with those comments miss gentler have you received any comments so far this evening i have not okay i will return to you at the end of the meeting and see if you have received anything during our meeting um with that i will entertain a motion to approve the oh i'm sorry thank you mr nunes i'm out of it today ms ganther can we have a roll call please shannon jenkins here mary wait here kathleen amarillo here john nunes yep chris oliver thank you mr nunes now i will entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the regular session of august 23rd 2021 so move second i have a motion by mr nunes and a second by mr oliver is there any discussion on that motion hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed sentience and one abscession all right so that motion carries with four in favor and one absention from mr oliver um all right next up we have our student representative report and we're joined tonight by josh moniz i'm super excited i coached josh in soccer many years ago so i'm excited to see him here all grown up sorry josh we're embarrassing you um please uh just maybe introduce yourself tell us a little bit about you and then go ahead and give your report sure thank you dr jenkins um good evening everyone my name is joshua moniz i'm a senior at dartmouth high school i'm honored to serve as a representative to the student body on the school committee i would like to give you an update on what is going on at dartmouth high the school year kicked off on september 1st with an extended advisory and class assemblies administration reviewed some points of emphasis for this school year and our class focused on building relationships and getting to know one another our athletic teams are in full swing with several items off the strong starts including our football team which had a 35-0 opening win over bishop staying last friday night the game featured a back-to-school bash with inflatables lawn games a dj and more it was a fun night for the dhs community this past friday september 10th at 8 46 a.m dartmouth high school observed a moment of silence to remember those who lost their lives during the september 9 11 attacks in addition to honoring first responders who served and sacrificed their lives in response to the attacks mr tevo shared the story of leah oliver a dartmouth high graduate who lost her life while working on the 96th floor of the world trade center during the 9 11 attacks her memory lives on in the dartmouth community with a memorial in front of the front steps leading to the student parking lot and the leah oliver scholarship awarded yearly summer reading book talks will take place during the pace period on the early release day this wednesday september 15th students will meet with their book sponsors for a discussion about their book for the first time ever students were able to sponsor books for summer reading and they will be hosting this discussions as well i look forward to the opportunity to lead a discussion with my peers about suli by john grisham this coming wednesday coming up there will be a clubs and activities expo i encourage all students to find a club or activity to join there's a clever activity for everyone and if there isn't then students can create one we had we added six new clubs and activities last year students with questions about clubs and activities can either speak with the club advisor or contact mr shea on wednesday october 13th all sophomores and juniors will take the psat nms qt exam this is not only good practice for upcoming sats but it also provides juniors an opportunity to qualify for a national merit scholarship that concludes my update on dartmouth high school thank you for your time thank you josh thank you so much josh does anybody have any comments questions mr oliver yeah i'll just very quickly say great to meet you josh welcome aboard looking forward to hearing your reports thank you thank you nice to meet you all right as as you dr jenkins i have the privilege of having josh in a high school band for the past five years so you're right you see him grow up and when i saw her on the agenda that he was the new student rep i was thrilled so we're very fortunate to have him i look forward to his reports throughout the upcoming times year yeah thank you nice to see you um it's been a few years but nice to see you and have you here reporting on the all the goings-on of the high school yes thank you josh it's amazing that you guys are all seniors so uh it's gonna be an exciting year for you and we're happy to have you thank you thank you yeah and i'll just say thank you again like my colleagues it's great to have you on board um as i said earlier you're welcome to say if you want if you would like to see how it all works but you're also welcome to go because i know you're probably very busy and have a lot of homework so um either way is fine thank you so much all right thank you very much thank you pleasure to meet you all night safe travels all right next on our agenda i'm going to turn it over to dr gifford for the welcome and introduction of new teachers such a fun time of the year yes you're right we always look forward to this time of year i'll just mention that as you know in the past um mrs oliveira has done all of the yeoman's work for the project time work um this year we made the decision to ask or at least you know see if a couple of our teachers wanted to take some of the lead on that and run the meetings and and form those relationships so um we're very happy to have miss jeanine tavares as well as miss kelly duarte miss kelly duartz doing the secondary level coordinator and janine is uh working as the elementary coordinator so they're great assistants and i'm sure they've done a great job i know they have i've observed a little bit of it but done a great job planning meetings for the teachers and making sure that they're all feel welcome and have good mentors for the year so i'll turn it over to you thank you for having us we're going to start by introducing our elementary level new teachers and our first teacher is jennifer fitton she is the demelo math coach and her mentor is jen cloon and then we have deborah mcgillick she is the math specialist at demelo and her mentor her mentor is liz vosey hi and then our last teacher at demelo is danielle karen she's teaching grade three and her mentor is leslie gamache and so now we'll move to potter we have rachel farmer teaching fourth grade and her mentor is lori murphy [Laughter] thanks ladies mr calista i was like pat yeah yeah yeah he's doing a great job mark and then we have a special education teacher kaylee stevenson at potter and her mentor is michelle dyas also caitlin durand is a fifth grade teacher at potter and also michelle is her mentor as well so we'll move on to quinn elementary and we have bethany dumont who is teaching grade 4 and veronica smith who is teaching grade five and their mentor a little closer and their mentor is paul paveo next at quinn we have taylor salt marsh and keisha julian both teaching fifth grade and their mentor is wendy candace then we have brian wildeman he is a sped teacher in fifth grade his mentor is shannon salvador she could not be with us tonight but here's brian and we have ashley raposo who is the pals teacher at quinn and her mentor is lindsay vaffides moving to district and or cushman we have carrie walsh and hannah renker who are both speech language pathologists and their mentor is lori dionisio and then we have kristin green who is a team facilitator and elizabeth de barros who is an occupational therapist and their mentor is lori o'neill coaster come on don't fight and then our last new teacher at the elementary level is megan phillips she is a physical education and wellness teacher at cushman and her mentor is paul paveo [Laughter] and that's all of our new elementary elementary people okay moving on to dartmouth middle school we have matthew doan and his mentor is joseph silvio matthew dolan be teaching grade six next up is william garcia he's the dartmouth middle school social worker with his mentor daniel lafaye then we have francis goffier who was our grade six special ed teacher and linda de silva medeiros who is our grade seven special ed teacher their mentor lisa lisa katz turjan could not be here today at the high school we have laura long who is the high school school psychologist and her mentor is caitlin kolbeck you're on candid camera next up we have amy glacier with her mentor catherine thomas and she is the dartmouth high school social worker next up we have samuel bianco and nicole seamus samuel is our chorus teacher at the high school and nicole siemens is a physical education teacher their mentor is deborah august [Laughter] next up we have nathan cavallo and jason borges they're both our high school world of language teachers and their mentor is hilary souza [Laughter] that's great next up is jared brown he is the dartmouth high school physics teacher and he is the mentor is douglas smith next up is michael jaggers he is our dartmouth high school guidance counselor and his mentor is nicole heath next up and i think it's our last one yep it's our last one amy career she is the dartmouth high school special ed step up teacher and her mentor is lily chamberlain [Applause] thank you for that thank you any of my committee members like to make a comment you want me to start or go ahead mr oliver thank you madam chad thank you first of all to both of you for organizing this and um you know pitching in and doing the program uh i always enjoy and this is for everyone who has since uh left but i always enjoy reading the biography of the spotlight and all the spotlights exactly it's just it's amazing to see the type of talent that we're able to to get in dartmouth so you know it i always enjoy these nights it's unfortunate that we couldn't have the reception that we typically do but it certainly it's great to be in person and be able to see them um you know at least come through and walk through and get to put a name with a face so yeah no it's just exciting it's exciting time always having new fresh educators come in so yeah that's all i have thank you to everyone and welcome aboard to the top of public schools yeah no i kind of echo mr oliver's comments welcome aboard it's great to you know see all these new teachers and it's always thrilling that you know they they want to come work for us type of deal and glad to see it and thank you to uh uh jamie and and uh kelly for uh sorry for uh for doing this and taking the lead in that this year so it's appreciated it's a lot of work and but you know the teachers they learn a lot from it and the mentors help them out so that's always great so thank you you're welcome yeah it's it's it is always great to see the uh new faces and and who they're paired up with and uh for mentoring and great matches and some folks doing some double duty there i noticed mr paveo uh yeah i love it i my my sixth grader has one of the new educators um that she uh thinks he's wonderful so far so good right so that's all we can ask for and uh good luck to all of them and thank you for organizing this yes thank you so much for putting this together i know having you know as a teacher it certainly is so important to have mentors you know that are there to support you someone that you know when you're coming to a new environment that you can lean to and to have you know it's critical so i we really appreciate to see this program you know um coming to fruition and again that support network continuing and it's just so great to see so much excitement this year and these new faces coming in and that energy so thank you you're welcome i'll just talk about what my colleagues have said thank you so much and please you know at your next meeting um tell all the new teachers and the mentors how grateful we are we didn't have a chance to you know thank him because they were they were running through but we're super excited to have them on board and so please um convey our appreciation for both the new teachers and for the for the mentors thank you so much thank you thank you for having me thank you thank you ladies good job all right so the next item on our agenda is a resolution about the dartmouth memorial stadium renovation phase two mr kiley i'll hand that over to you thank you dr jenkins so this is exciting um you know it's been a while since we've talked about the stadium project obviously for those who are lucky enough to be at the game friday night you know we get to enjoy our field but it also puts the microscope on the rest of the project every time we're in that facility it's obvious that you know we still need to address some other issues besides the field itself so we uh are excited to move the project forward the first part of our plan to do that is to consider this resolution before you so i'll i will read that and then answer any questions you may have so it's resolution number 22-1 it's a resolution awarding a contract for the construction of the dartmouth memorial stadium storage building whereas bids for the dartmouth memorial stadium storage building project were duly advertised and bids received were opened at 2 p.m thursday august 12th and whereas the bid from jj cardozi inc 150 emerald street riverside rhode island was reviewed and deemed to have met the public specifications therefore be it resolved that a contract for the dartmouth memorial stadium storage building be awarded to j.j cardozianc riverside rhode island based on dartmouth public schools specifications dated june 23 for the amount of 1 million 675 thousand dollars so move thank you mr news can i get a second second you got you beat me to it kathleen so i have a motion by mr nunes this uh second by ms amaral do you guys have comments questions discussion uh mr nunes yeah thank you thank you madam chair i just you know threw you to uh to mr kylie when you know forgetting the two high bidders type of deal it's you know it was nice to see that per se everybody was kind of in the ballpark i mean when you've got 119 000 you know on a project that size from one to four you know at least you know that everybody's in you know those those four were and everybody saw the same thing right and the blueprints so mr oliver or mr nunes i'm sorry did you have another oh i'm good okay mr oliver thank you dr jenkins yeah i'll just say that i had a great opportunity to speak with mr kylie as well as mr tattlebomb and mr mickelson who's also part of the um the turf field committee and um you know we had we had some good conversations while this was certainly a little bit higher number than what we're anticipating it's still like mr noon said uh especially in this day and age right now with everything going on in just materials elevated across the board that i'm very comfortable and confident with this number and i i got to give credit to mr kiley for the work that he's done to get this project rolling again as you know the town meeting awarded us the money um several a couple of years seems like a couple of years now right right around two years um so it's exciting to to start continue get the project back on track and uh let's finish it up so um no and i'll i'll just add a couple of other thoughts afterwards thank you samurai no can i let me i can i just ask you uh before we go back to mr nunes can you remind viewers what the scope of is is the project in phase two and then also we know what the cost was remind everyone what town meeting allocated for us sure i'd be happy to so um tommy allocated 3.6 million dollars for the next phase of the project and the next phase encompasses the repairs to the um to the structures themselves the concrete stands the bathrooms the concessions the storage component the concourses are in and around the stadium so really everything else that needs to get done this is a piece of that to be followed by another bid in which we would then proceed to concrete work the the renovations are significant that need to take place the bathroom component of the facility needs to be expanded greatly which necessitated us eliminating the storage component in the existing structure because we need the space for the bathrooms so this is sort of a step in that in that process but i just want to assure everybody that we are moving forward with the design of the remainder of the the facility we haven't forgotten about the need for those bathrooms um which is really great need so um so that's part of this process uh this this next step this storage component is sort of a standalone little piece of that that was easily you know bid out uh as a separate component it would have been regardless of the timing but but yeah so we're anxious to move forward with this and continue that process with the other you know the next bid uh to hopefully finalize the project um the construction climate is an interesting one right now so we'll and i also want to remind i can hear the questions at town meeting why does the storage building cost so much as a you know state a local government organization we have certain rules that we have to follow that make construction of buildings for us different than the storage shed that you put up in your backyard and so that's why it's going to cost more because we have to follow those those those rules um other questions comments one last question i wrote it down and i forgot to ask do we have a start date on this mr kyle uh well so after the fall season lead time right after the fall season and lead time on steel is a is a major factor in this so our hope is you know to be starting um the the groundwork to lay the foundation for this um fairly soon we probably need about a month to finish all the submittals that are required to get this project actually to break ground uh but at that point we very well might be able to do the concrete work it is set off this the actual you know stadium it's a little ways from the field and it could be fairly easily contained with construction fencing so i don't anticipate that we'd have to wait um to start construction now materials in this climate are a problem so we'll adjust accordingly absolutely thank you i'm good madam champ other comments questions all right go ahead someone going to say something no i'm just saying thank you yeah it's great to be moving forward on this all right so here are no further questions or discussion [Music] so that motion carries unanimously thank you again thank you for your sir kylie so madam chair yes may just add something in regards to the stadium so outside of uh what we just approved in conversations with uh mr mickelson and mr talibaum and the select board they just wanted me to remind everyone and i think they'll be doing it as well in their meeting that they're the fundraising committee uh that is that they was established pre pandemic they're going to try to get that um up they're going to make some phone calls and try to get that up and running and they're going to be looking to you know cooperations and other other businesses in town as well as any individuals to maybe try to raise some money to help us supplement uh the cost of you know whether it's this phase or next phase but supplement some of the cost of um well the one phase this bid or the next bit um but yeah no they're really excited about that even if even if it's a little bit every little bit helps and there'll be you know some certain things we can look for for naming rights and all that but they did want me to mention that they're really going to try to work on getting that fundraising committee off the ground to go along with the stadium so that's all i wanted to add thank you awesome thank you so much mr oliver all right so the next item on our agenda is the consent agenda for fundraising activities for the dartmouth school music association entertain a motion to approve all right so i have a motion by mr nunes a second by miss waite is there any discussion on the motion i actually thank you madam chair uh just really quickly um i i'm just learning about it and all that i i got to say that it's amazing to me what the uh the dartmouth band parents do um to help with uh this committee and just the piece of uh hearing about like what you do it what they do at gillette and all the other pieces so um it's just amazing and i get to give props to everyone that's part of the dsma so that's all i have thank you yeah and i think i'll just add to that i'd just like to point that out every time this comes up how much funding we get from what is essentially private sources this is not public taxpayer generated revenue it is revenue that is provided basically by volunteers who um who put in time for our for our schools and i know that the dartmouth band is a big pride of our community and i think it's important for us to acknowledge that they likely wouldn't be so successful with so without so much sort of what is essentially private fundraising and it's great that they do it sometimes though i just wish they didn't have to um that we could fund them at the the levels that they that they really need but as we know i have a broken record on this funding is short um but i think i'd like to i always like to highlight these things so that people are really aware of that um any other comments all right so hearing none all in favor aye opposed good madam attention i will abstain okay so that that is approved with uh four in favor and one ascension from mr nunes all right so the next item on our agenda moving on to new business is school committee policies i'm gonna turn it over to dr gifford to walk us through some of these thank you so the subcommittee the policy subcommittee met i guess it was september 8th if i recall correctly and we reviewed these policies and as we said there the sexual harassment harassment one can be a little confusing but really it's not so i'll walk you through that so on the advice of uh one of our attorneys kat lyons uh lions um her office they created these policies for us based on some of the changes that have taken place over time with the harassment and sexual harassment um legal issues so what we're proposing is to add aca which is a small policy non-discrimination on the basis of sex and and some of these you will see they kind of intertwine this various line which that overlaps but they said these are the ones we should have in our policy booklet so we're proposing to add ac a that would be a brand new policy then the more a little bit more confusing i suppose is we do have right now a c a b on the books and that's called sexual harassment policy upon their advice we are proposing to eliminate or actually should say replace that with the one that you've received the proposed it's simply titled harassment it would still be a c a b and with along that we gave you what would then become the proposed procedures processes to implement that policy and this was all as i said on the advice of our attorneys and the process the due process protections etc and how folks would go about reporting harassment of any kind is all laid out there and that would be in our posted so folks could see that in our handbooks etc etc for this year right now and um the teachers were alerted to this during our opening day they received cat lions actually came down and did training on this for them along with the 504 training it's you know the yearly training we do but we did ask her to focus in on this to give folks an idea of how to report any kind of issues and what it really meant and the differences in the old policy and the new and uh the administrative team the leadership team for the district received actually a probably a two-hour training with her this summer on of this so a very thorough training so this year uh mr kiley would be one of our title nine coordinators along with beth townsend we have kind of told folks that they could report to anyone but um mr kylie would more handle the uh kind of an adult staff issues and and miss townsend would uh handle more of anything you know with students so as i said we're just proposing to replace add aca as a new policy replacing our current ac ab with the proposed harassment policy and we would separate into having these process or policy procedures that folks would be made aware of so that's that one probably want to take them separately i imagine yeah let's let's start with any questions comments or concerns about these two policies before we move on to the next ones so this is the first reading tonight you'll get any feedback and then we'll come back for a second reading does anybody have any comments mr oliver thank you madam chair so i'm just reviewing it when i looked over it earlier the proposed acab harassment policy i see employee to student student to student but what could does this policy also cover staff on staff or is that something different so it would be same it's just not specifically outlined here uh bolded out um but it does this policy is all-encompassing all-encompassing okay perfect thank you very much welcome it's quite thorough other comments questions no i have a question about policy aca which is new and that's the policy based on nondiscrimination on the basis of sex acab has a broader sort of list of categories covered do we have another existing policy that says we don't i mean right because it says aca sex but it's missing race gender identity creed all those other things that are listed there so i just want to make sure that all of those things are covered elsewhere we do we i didn't i don't i'm not sure if we followed it to you but i have it here uh we also have ac already we're not changing that but that is addressing exactly what you're saying that's our non-discrimination policy okay so i'm a bit confused if we have ac why we need aca if sex is covered already in ac it just seems weird to me that we would separate out that one and not any of the other so i'm sure there's a reason i'm just trying to understand and i think probably just because of as time went on and more and more cases came up in those kinds of with that kind of issue that the legal people decided that was a good thing to kind of add that as a separate separate one so to really make emphasis on it i'm just gonna say probably make an emphasis and just pushing it out there to bring it more yeah it's just my understanding the title nine covers more than sex it covers sexual orientation and gender identity covers a number of and that is a number of things right it just seems odd to decide it out on its own yeah exactly and with specific reference to title ix which also covers non-discrimination in other areas um i'm probably going to read this a little bit more carefully again um it's a really complicated issue there's been a number particularly when the harassment occurs between particularly between students but but it's not on school grounds and that's the really complicated issue in today's day of social snapchat and instagram i'm an old person i just use facebook so i don't even know what the kids use these days but um i'm sure the the lawyer knows more about this but i think i just wanted to take some time to read it carefully so if i have any questions i will email those to you yeah that would be good because i could get answers from her um specifically because obviously she's the expert and i'm not okay exactly other questions or comments all right so i think we're good on the first reading on those two we want to move on to i guess ff now okay so ff as you recall last year we had a request from a community member also coach to name one of our areas of our schools after someone and we decided we would need to revisit our policies before we did that if we were entire um inclined to do that so our old policy really was about and and not to say that um this committee at some point in time and i know mr nunes forwarded some information to us have addressed some of these things before but we never had it kind of in a policy as this were subsections of a building so our old policy as you can see ff was just naming a new facility so we've enhanced that and are proposing the new one was naming facilities or subsections of facilities so again you could name it a library or a gymnasium etc so um that's that's all that's what we would propose that it would include that and how the committee would go about you know we would probably do a subcommittee again like like in the past i know that has been done um when they've named some of the schools etc so that's what we're proposing uh for that one and again any questions or i know folks will have a chance to read it mr nunes yeah thank you madam chair yeah i went back and dug out some old uh information that i had on this and forwarded it to dr gifford one of the questions i have is as i'm kind of in maybe this is going to come up later on as as this comes up is uh one of the things was like you know what was the wow factor right type of deal and i'm not seeing that here or well anything of that or is this just to get it going and then yeah develop the policies after yeah and so what we would do exactly so if it you know it says that we have the authority to do that but um that we would then similar to the past you'd have a committee or whatever what and you would have those um procedures identified that someone would have to submit and like you said i looked through the the wording and stuff that you gave us and they submit the why yeah and and actually if i recall looking at the documents we have it actually kind of almost detailed certain questions that the committee was asking for these people yeah to to identify why that they were submitting that i remember one week yep you know exactly so we can put this way back probably you know and you would uh authorize uh us to create the committee and and entertain the requests and and go forward yeah okay all right questions comments i'm good other than that right at the moment i guess i just have one question about this and if i'm reading this right the old policy says whenever possible the wishes of the community including parents and students should be considered in naming new facilities i don't see that in the new facility and while i don't think that public input has to be the be-all end-all i do think um some engagement when possible as the old policy said um is is good and youthful um so i'm wondering if there's a reason why we dropped that or whether we want to maybe add that back mr nunes you have some thoughts on that i do and i think i go right back to what the question i just asked the superintendent about the wow factor and her comment about if we as a committee deem something viable than forming a subcommittee and getting the letters and that's going to generate the community involvement and things of that nature unless i'm misreading right but i guess i would rather it was in the policy and it's been dropped i'd rather just see it stay in there so it's known i trust all of you right but we want to create policies that survive beyond the people sitting in the seats and that institutionalize things so i'd like to see some sentence like that remain in the policy and how the wishes of the community are taken is you know up to the committee but i think it's important to say to the subcommittee and the committee we should be listening to the public yeah okay mr oliver i i would agree with that i don't i don't see any i don't see any issue with that i know mr news is shaking his head but um i can see but i can certainly see both sides but i do agree that you know it should it should be some kind of language in the policy i guess my other question is have we reviewed have we are we able to look at like what the masc model language is to policy do they have model language for this through masc i was just curious um this is all i found okay i could be wrong certainly you know if someone has something for sure but the old one was all i saw to tell you the truth but yeah i would agree with adding some kind of language like that because that's really what happens when we go forward with the process so you can put it in writing for sure right any other comments or questions all right so that one will come back to us up two and then we're on to um k f okay new use of facilities and this kylie will be uh reviewing that one thank you dr gifford so kf um itself is the sort of broad community use of school facilities policy that that policy is actually not up for revision uh kfr which is uh really kf was presented to you for context just so you understand what we are trying to address in kfr so kfr addresses the terms and fees associated with use of facilities requests so the primary changes to kfr most most of them are just sort of housekeeping changes in who does what and some changes in process where to look for things who to get things from uh for people who are prospective users of the facilities but i think you know there was a couple of important changes that we did make to kfr one we highlighted the fact that users need to be need to familiarize themselves and follow dartmouth public schools policy and procedures they also we also added in some safeguards um and added in regarding the use of the stadium obviously you know this policy long predates um you know use the the the turf field at the stadium we really think it's important that we have someone on site to to assist users of the of the field um throughout their you know rental or period of use so that was not addressed in the previous policy and we we uh have received numerous requests and some comments from other elected board members throughout the town regarding um use of the facilities by recreation groups we have had use since the since the turf field opened by some recreation groups of the facility um time to on the field is somewhat limited because we have unfortunately a very robust uh program between athletics and music use of the field but we are sensitive to the fact that um you know community use of the is important and we hope to be able to um you know to to expand that as much as possible after our own school activities are scheduled so uh in thinking about that again we just we you know when when we're using it we have someone on site who is responsible for the facility um and we need to make sure that that's happening whenever someone is using it so that that was really the primary reason for making the changes that we did kind of subtle changes to the policy i just want to say i appreciate it's super helpful to me personally to see a markup version of policies it's really useful to be able to see what's being added and what isn't um if we can continue to do that that would be fabulous just because sometimes it's hard to know what's changed where this is all marked up and so it makes it really easy to see so i appreciate that actually with the money right yeah exactly are there any um comments questions mr nunes yeah thank you madam chair and you know been around when you when you look at this and you go yeah i remember when this was put in or that type of deal but uh and somewhere down the line i don't know why i didn't bring it up way back when but uh and i already had this discussion with mr kylie um wherever we see like uh the assistant superintendent of finance or operation can we put or designee i mean if you know just like you know if mr kylie's not there somebody can you know somebody could come in you know and give authorization type of deal just thinking along those lines too right i mean mr kylie if that's a title that he has and maybe if someone replaced him we wouldn't we might even want to make it like generic so that because some we have this problem with our contract right it references positions that haven't been on campus for 20 years right and nobody has gone through and line item edited to take out those dated references yeah so where we might want to just think about making it whatever we insert where you say that right um generic enough so that we don't have to change the policy when personnel change yeah again you know how about something like office of finance and operations so whatever the title of the person becomes yeah right still a designee from the office yeah exactly maybe that would work oh go ahead go ahead you could put superintendent or designee i mean you're always going to have a superintendent so you could put that i mean it just doesn't it's not as specific as for someone who's looking at the policy who they should call right but but yeah i don't i don't feel strongly about it i'm just more sort of spitballing about it yeah uh mr news do you have other comments helpful i'm good man i'm jail okay other comments questions concerns i guess my one question would be about sort of the rates right [Music] how do we set these when did we set these i mean we're making proposing many changes to them presumably they were set at some time based on something and presumably our costs have gone up since that time so i'm just sort of curious about um i don't want to charge people more money but i do want to make sure you know that we are covering sort of the cost of doing business yeah and i think if we in in that regard if we look at um kf which describes who's going to be using the facility the school activities aren't going to be paying any fees obviously um the town meeting and other town board activities aren't going to be paying any fees the parks department at this point the parks department sanctioned leagues they do not pay a fee they pay for custodial coverage or you know obviously maintenance coverage if we're talking about the stadium but um but but they actually don't pay a fee so really there's not very many people who are paying fees for use of our facilities because there's not after after we exhaust all this the time that those groups uh you know take up the spaces there's not much more time to be had um generally speaking we have some dance recitals and things like that i've taken a look at the fees based on that i i think um you know the the surrounding communities that i've taken a quick look at we're not you know we're we're not really far off even though that these have been in place now for i think the last time we looked at them was 2013 so yeah they're a reasonable fee if if we do have enough time to offer okay great though madam cheer mr news thank you i do have one as i just flipping through i came across one i forgot the note 8 at my fault uh 4.3 which is just before the fee schedules uh talks about food and beverage stair sales and the stadium are permitted that type of deal somewhere can we put in there that these organizations have to have a certificate from the board of health okay or you know some license you know a license type of deal and you know somebody that's served safe we can do so thank you all right any other comments or questions all right so i think we're done with the school committee policies yeah and we'll bring those back to us for a second reading um and the next item on our agenda ties in a little bit with what we've been talking about and that's the use of school of space by outside groups um miss amarillo asked me about this and i actually sort of wanted to to bring this up with you all um there was a window i think last late last spring when we all thought it would be a nice sort of normal school year we wouldn't have any of this and i know the def um put in to host an in-person event in the schools in november there have been some other organizations that are approved and i wanted us to have a conversation about that about whether or not we are comfortable with large outside groups hosting events in our schools right now i don't know the answer to that question i'm not even sure myself um you know i'm just concerned right our policy is you wear masks right when you're in school buildings um you know mr kyle you said you know when we have our events we have people that we are you know making sure that those policies are followed i'm just not sure how that's going to work for outside groups and so i'm just a little bit concerned about that i don't know if dr gifford or mr kiley you have any thoughts on this or anyone else and the committee has any thoughts about this go ahead mr kiley i i do and you know after you brought it up dr jenkins um you know giving it some thought and you should shared some uh some points with us um i i think that given that there is at this point not a gathering restriction in the commonwealth i i think there's a few things that we can do and still not be contrary to the current guidance so i think if we include in our in our approval letters for use of facilities requests that um organizations are subject to the change to the current guidelines and any changes that may be put in place by the mass department of public health or the governor's office [Music] and that we always have the right to cancel we always include that anyway but that you know we have the right to cancel or alter their approval based on you know conditions and basic based on any conditions and that there's a mask advisory in place and that we would encourage folks to self-monitor for covet-like symptoms and encourage their guests to self-monitor basically mirror the language that's in place in the commonwealth at this point the the mask mandate is is for students and staff in school that's that's what the let me just push back on that because some of the events like the spelling bee are held on a week night when there are in fact students and staff in the building right and i just don't feel comfortable i mean in my book if you're in the school and there are students and staff in this building you got to wear a mask right that's there's no exception to that all right and so if that's the case how do we ensure that these groups are are masking right it's we are different than other organ places in the commonwealth and that we're school and there is a mass mandate and so i would feel if we're going to allow and i'm not sure i believe that people should be required to be masked at these events i don't know what my fellow school committee members think but i there are times when we're having events and there are children and staff and our custodial staff are here right i mean they're here right on those times mr oliver thank you dr jenkins but excuse me my personal opinion on this is that i i do think that we should be allowing outside groups to participate in using the buildings however i am strongly in agreement that any outside group should be masked obviously athletic groups you know the players i'm not sure where under you know right now what the guidance is on athletics in in players however in general i think we any group outside group using the schools any of the schools need to be need to be masked inside the building once again though we go back to the question of you know enforcement of that um and i i don't have i don't have a simple answer to that i mean i think maybe we could have the organizers sign sort of like a covid agreement that acknowledges that they are in fact responsible for it um you know given how social media is in the community i'm sure we'll see and hear about it right if uh if things go wrong and i think you know that may affect future ability to use the facilities if people aren't following the guidelines miss wait you know i was just going to say that you know as you know my husband's a coach for dysa is they had a in the spring a cove coordinator that every team had to have um and that person was responsible for you know coordinating with the team keeping everyone accountable following covert guidelines so i think it's reasonable for us to hold you know groups that are coming in to and say that they should have a coveted coordinator as well someone that you know is responsive to us you know or to you know um mr kiley and and setting up the protocols for any expectations for their group and holding that group accountable so i think that's a pretty you know moderate way of accomplishing our goals because i also think that we should you know we're trying to make life as normal as possible bringing the kids in i'd love to see you know doia playing basketball and all of that back again i think it's exciting and you know but again we have to protect our staff and our students and our larger goal of keeping kids in school so that's that still remains our priority yeah miss amarillo yeah i would i would agree with the my colleagues here um you know just thinking about uh what you're saying uh dr jenkins and that you know i think about events that i've held like with the cpac um over the years and while our event is happening we'll often have students coming in playing a basketball game or the theater students in in the other room music students are always here working really hard um at their craft um you know and so i would think it'd be reasonable to act to ask that folks coming in if that is decided upon to to have someone responsible to uh to us for that um you know and and honestly though i think about you know i don't well i would like to see us you know we open house was canceled and i don't know the reason we can talk about that after but i hate to see us not having you know the things that we have in a district we don't have folks coming into our our um our school committee meetings we don't have um we had to cancel open house potentially for a different reason but then allowing the community to just use it in numbers coming up and not monitoring how many people are coming in and whether or not they're really you know abiding by those kind of precautions worries me um and also concerns me because i think you know students and families should come first yeah thank you madam chair there's a bunch of things that that come into play here type of deal yes we want to see our buildings used i mean they're for the community and one of the things you know years ago we talked about was you know these are community buildings and we want to see them use for the community the thing that concerns me and i totally get the mask wearing i no no issues with that type of deal but how do you enforce it okay i mean you have 50 people here for xyz activity and two people come in without a mask now who's the person that says you know hey put a mask on no you gotta no i'm not leaving you know that type now you get into a whole hullabaloo type of type of deal so that there's i think a lot more here than what meets the eye with what you know we've got to we've got to come up with i mean you know we need to get i think we need to get these buildings back operational type of deal but we've got to do it sensibly we've got to do it fair and in all seriousness we've got to have the onus has to be on the people coming into the building okay it's as simple as that i mean you know again we've talked about it to a blue in the face with covert and everything else if you know if you don't feel good stay home type of type of deal but we've got to just be able to control things and and use it in in that sense and do you you know i i think if we're going to do it then you we're going to have to put that onus on whoever signs the paperwork to use the building and that's how it's going to be i mean because other than that you know are you leaving it again going back are you leaving on a person that signs the paperwork or there are going to be custodian or custodians here you put it on a custodian you know that time and i this is 100 my my dilemma here mr nunes i agree with you that right now on the one hand i don't want to say don't come in without a mouse but if we say who comes in with the mask who enforces it um but i don't think i'm not comfortable saying no mess to because there are there are students here yeah there are staff here so i don't want to say oh you know just just we'll follow the commonwealth guidelines because all the students were saying you got to wear your masks they have to wear their mask regardless right after school weekends if they're here they're wearing a mask yes so now we have situations where there's a group of people who have to be masked and there's a group of people who don't have to be masked i dr jenkins i can give you a perfect exam when i came in tonight the drum line was coming up from practicing okay they stopped where they always stop and they started to come in and the section leader said don't forget to put your masks on so i mean the kids the students are well versed in that type of deal but but i think we've got to tell outside groups that if you want to use our facilities you have to mask up yeah there may be problems with enforcement you are right but i think that like it's like any crime we're not going to solve all of it but we've got still got to take a stand to say what we need to do yep there's wait and then mr oliver and i would just say again if they have a covert coordinator or whatever whatever the designee is they're responsible and if they violate the rules they don't come back i mean it's you know it's a bummer but i you know i kind of want to you know echo what um mrs amaral is saying is that you know we do want to prioritize using our buildings for ourselves and i think mr news was saying this as well that you know if we are considering and this does kind of bring into question if we're allowing outside groups what does that mean about our what we're holding ourselves here in other words why are we canceling these events why are we not going on field trips if we're allowing other groups to come in i think it does you know bring up a whole other layer of issues and questions because everything should be centered first and foremost on our students and their experiences and their quality experiences and on our families as mrs amaran was saying so you know thinking through that if you know if we're not allowing our students to go out into the community are we allowing inside groups you know in field trips and those things and we're allowing i think we have a little bit of an issue there and we have to think about it i'll get back to what mr nunes was saying is that it does deepen our um questions and concerns it's a it's not a simple issue mr oliver you had a comment yeah a couple of things now right now you got me thinking a little more and this this way thank you for that um but no i agree i think um you know we just i don't know um if we're already those groups that are already coming into the buildings um if they've already been um you know some kind of notice to them but i think it's as simple right now um that we we give them notice that this is the expectation using the building uh everyone needs to be masked i think with the whether it's a covert coordinator event organizer whoever it may be that the notices on them and i have no doubt that we will hear about it um but as far as putting that responsive i can't see putting that responsibility on a building custodian or someone else so it's really it's really going to come back to them in which it's only it's going to hurt them in the future if they if they choose to to not you know uh enforce and help us help us enforce and help the administration and the school community enforce the the policy that's been set in place um but yet and then going back to what my colleagues have spoken about it certainly brings up some interesting points in which you know ways and the optics of that to see how we can um do more for our own um for our own students and in some kind of normalcy if we're going to be allowing if we continue to allow outside groups in but no it's certainly certainly an interesting discussion thank you so it seems to me it seems to be the consensus of the committee that we do want to allow outside groups to continue to use the facilities that we'd like to have maybe some form or acknowledgement saying that under you know current jesse guidelines or whatever mask wearing is mandated maybe there's a name that they have to sign and contact information about whose responsible and acknowledging that on the behalf of the organization so again it may not be perfect and we're not going to ask our custodians to but the organization is aware and know that they have to try to do this and then also we might acknowledge in that form that non-compliance may have a negative effect on future use of facilities that seems to be where we're at and then i think there's a separate sort of bucket of issues that probably not tonight because it's not on the agenda and i don't like to discuss things when they're not on the agenda um but you know things that are school-related about sort of going out and things like field trips and stuff like that that we might continue that discussion at a future meeting does that seem about right yeah okay so um it would did you i'm sure miss gentler got that and relay that to mr kylie and and i would just it would be great if we could you know reach out to groups that already have you know like the def i'm not even sure we're going to do the spelling bee to be honest but groups like us that last spring signed an agreement to say okay this has been updated and just so you know this is what you have to do that would be great all right so moving on the next item on our agenda miss wait and miss amarill asked me to add to the agenda discussion regarding nut products and school buildings would one of you like to maybe miss wait since you brought it up first would you like to go ahead and sort of explain here sure so um i know last year in a conversation considering kovid and everything was going on and students were eating primarily across all schools in their classroom in a conversation with dr gifford we as a district went nut free um had parents who would ask me you know as of the week before school started are we continuing to be nut free um i had asked some administrators too and up to the few days before school started i was under the assumption and it seemed that some administrators had told some other parents as well that we were going to continue to be a nut-free system you know it it was only you know really the friday before school started that i learned that that change had happened um i don't know that parents were aware and certainly parents of allergic children were aware of that change i didn't see any you know i was you know i'm in that situation myself i didn't have any you know heads up or anything any literature come home to say that there was an official change and i guess i would say you know i know that if i've looked at the language i've looked at you know fair and certainly another quite a number of other advisory councils on this and i understand that there's kind of a changing thought on nut-free schools um you know there's i think it's what they call the good and the bad and the ugly and that you know we want to have schools where students feel safe and you know enable to participate fully in activities we don't want to create stigma for those children you know and so there is some thought on that but you have the complications of covid and with students you know in safer schools students would be eating in the cafeteria they would have designated tables in the middle school certainly that's not something we can do right now students are eating in their classroom seats um it's my understanding that the students themselves are wiping down those seats but that they're then moving from one desk to another throughout the day um you know wipes or you know um what am i looking for um like clorox uh well um you know hand sanitizer doesn't deal with any kind of one of these issues hand sanitizer doesn't deal with any food particles so they have to wash with soap and water i don't get the impression that every student in every middle school classroom is going and washing their hands with soap and water after so i feel like the fact that we're dealing with masking and my concern is dealing with masking and also students eating in their seats and rotating different seats creates a continuous dangerous atmosphere for these kids and also mass it's difficult for the younger students to see what's happening behind those masks in terms of hives and other early warning signs of allergic reactions and so that's another concern so i would just say like i would hope that while we're continuing with masking and we're continuing to eat in our classrooms just to keep these children safe that we would continue to stay nut-free and then once you know we remove mass and return to a more traditional setting with eating the cafeteria we can reevaluate that would be my hope so brother you have a comment or question yeah i i brought it up i think i forwarded you one email that i received but i had not known and very fortunate that my family is not affected by any you know um nut allergies however i just hearing a little bit of buzz on social media and getting some facebook you know messages and and emails into my account i thought oh i really didn't really know the answer because i did think that i guess similarly that we were still not free um having said that when school did start my daughter came home and i guess there was some attention to it that i wasn't aware of after i had emailed that um but it's still a little bit of a concern i thought and so i didn't say don't put it on the agenda i think it's a good conversation to have and an important topic to talk about um that my my daughter came home and said oh because nobody in my block has an allergy we can bring in nuts and i thought oh i mean or have nut products we're like a sun butter family but um anyway my son's school has is not free but um i just thought that okay that sounded good but then you know they are intermingling um you know they're not the blocks are intermingling in gym in other places so at any rate i just thought it would be good to just revisit it officially at a meeting um and not knowing that miss waite had also brought it up but i know she's personally affected by this so dr kevin can you talk to us a little bit about what the policies are and it and where kids are eating in the diff i mean i think this is the big concern right when they were in cafeterias the nuts were contained there there was usually a table or whatnot right and so that way kids could know that they weren't in other places but because we can't keep all of the kids in cafeterias because of the distancing that makes it harder particularly to clean right now so you talk about what our protocols are for cleaning and where the buildings are that kids are not eating in the is it just the middle school or is it also here in the high school um well and you can correct me if i'm wrong but i did um reach out to all of the administrators and got an answer to and they just resorted pretty much back to their traditional practices which we've been using forever other than last year the high school has signage in the area of dining hall this is what i was told as well as the auditorium that's not free so they have specific areas and the monitors and administrators obviously there's a lot of administrators around to know where those areas are and obviously then educate the kids as well of course high school is a little bit different and they're pretty much responsible for themselves um at demelo same thing kids are at their desk in the cafeteria and there's a red dot on the desk of any student who have allergies so they can do a deep clean between lunch shifts of those desks that's demelo and there are um katie says there are certain rags that are only used for those deaths so they separate those middle school students while eating in their classrooms are situated as as we always say approximately three feet apart um and teachers have been wait always as usual made aware of the students in their class that have the allergies that's always one of the things the nurses work with um and as you said they have the wipes etc to make sure the areas are cleaned and he says well they're creating a column and this was last week so we had just started school on the menu ordering google document which enables teachers and caf to effectively cap staff monitor the lunch orders relating to food allergies and of course if a student if a parent asked i'm not sure they have they would make even another accommodation for those parents of safer seating cushman cushman has done a little bit different that they have said out that they will they would look that it when they're giving a snack they don't have the nut products and if the children are bringing nut products for lunch the teachers are made aware and they're they're in the cafeteria but that's separated out um potter same thing resorting back to the previous practices the nurse actually calls each family to work out any individual plans they may have the general practice of course is that the families of students in the class they're all made aware and it's classes that have just like we used to not free not de no not free desk areas or a nut free classroom completely in the cafeteria there's an allergy aware table for students who um sit there because of their allergies other students are allowed to sit at the table but they must be eating a lunch that obviously didn't have the nuts in it and the same thing pretty much at quinn they have an assigned desk for nut-free students and each of the deaths are cleaned separately from the rest and classrooms that have students with no allergies are peanut free well not free the whole classroom so that's what the um administration forwarded to to me just to be certain that everybody was back can i follow up on the middle school yep um so uh miss amber all noted that in her daughter's block you know yep are they are they not free are they our blocks are blocks with kids who have allergies this is my first question are they nut free or no i was not told whether a whole block was not free i wouldn't i wouldn't that that is concerning to me that particularly we've got three feet of distance and say i'm not free and mary's sitting next to me with her peanut butter and jelly sandwich right that can be a problem i think the other if i can just interject and you know and i will say like my son's going through desensitization so i'm you know but i'm aware having gone through this that i you know i certainly empathize with these families it isn't even just so much that because if you're in the cafeteria you have a adult who's going to be cleaning that table i didn't get to that the cleaning part sorry so this is really a concern is that if i'm sitting next to dr jenkins and then we all of a sudden switch the next block for math or another class comes in and i unknowingly sit in dr jenkins seat which has been you know cleaned by a fellow sixth grader you know it's concerning if she just ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then another child comes back and sits in that same seat because they are moving it's my understanding that now without social distancing this is the difference i actually thought last year was safer because they were sitting in their same seats they weren't moving from room to room now they're going to be sitting in each other's seats so it's not just during the lunch period itself it's the fact that they're they're switching seats they're going in sharpening pencils and you know i if this protocol is going to consider it's going to those kids are going to after lunch not only have to sanitize their their desks but because we don't want these kids to you know i mean we don't want these kids to go in anaphylactic shock so those kids every student in that block wear peanut butter and jelly if they've eaten peanut butter and jelly they're gonna have to go and wash their hands with soap and water too so there's you know there's multiple the cleaning issue if again it's just much harder to control if you're eating peanut butter in the classroom or peanut products or not product or any you know these major allergens and then you're moving from seed to seed and asking the kids to clean the seeds themselves who who does the cleaning the kid who's eating the peanut butter and jelly i haven't been in the class when i watched this is my other thing my son's best friend is allergic to peanut butter and if you ask him to clean the table that table is going to be clean if you ask my son to clean the table i'm not entirely confident that that table is going to be clean right a sixth grade boy is not no offense to sixth grade boys but i've never had that they do not have attention to detail that's necessary in a life-threatening situation so you know at first i i didn't realize that they were eating at their desks if they were reading at the cafeteria i think we have those protocols we've had them for many years right and i think that's fine but we're not entirely normal right now and so i i do think at least in my personal opinion maybe hear from mr oliver mr nunes too that i think particularly at the middle school we really need to evaluate this um because i don't know the risk the risks are high and you know the the i'm just not sure the losses are that much if we say if we clamp down on this a little bit you know mr oliver do you have any thoughts on this yeah i can add a few things so what what i'm hearing here is that really the the concerns and the issues are around the middle school for the simple reason that they're eating at their desks in their classrooms as um you know someone who is very familiar with someone who has the tree nut allergy um not a peanut analogy but a treating analogy that you know just just the dust alone can cause anaphylaxis that it is concerning and i would be certainly be in favor of um you know not allowing um nut products at the middle school you know writing in the classrooms because i you certainly bring up some good points i'm not going to believe be labor or anything but uh the points that you made uh this is wait and mrs amaral are certainly justified um in my opinion and you know i i would certainly support um don't be staying that free until a time in which um we're back in the back in the um cafeterias mr news yeah no i i hear what everybody is saying my concern becomes how far down do we take this okay what do you do about if someone's got a gluten problem if somebody's got bread that's not gluten free are they going to have a problem you have someone cause anaphylactic let me finish please if okay so that's fine but you know there are situations where people have allergies to other foods you know celery carrots strawberries how far down the line do we have to draw this that's my that's my only concern i think the easiest way to do this my opinion is just go back and just say to the parents please until we get back into cafeterias make everything not free okay i mean i wasn't going that way but i got a hunch that's going to be the easiest way to solve this problem i think we're all in agreement i think that it's an unusual time right now and unusual circumstances i i would agree with you 100 mr nunes thank you for that thank you all right so can we you will follow up with the middle school about this middle school well i think the middle the middle school is where people are rotating desks and not eating in the cafeteria right in an elementary school you're not rotating dust i don't know mr news you're you want to just do the whole nine yards you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna no you're gonna you're gonna you know pick on no distance you're gonna pick on the middle school students i mean again it's the oldest building that's why we're stuck with that right yeah that it is i mean i i think if you're going to do something of this nature so as to not you know segregate or quote unquote pick on one group type of deal you do it system wide other thoughts and you know that's my opinion i'll just i'll just say like you know i also think it's fair that we you know we also say that you know once we're back to normal we re-evaluate because you know again there's been a change in thinking you know certainly about this you know and so i think we want to address that as well once we get back to normal and we're not wearing masks and we're not eating in the classroom so i do want to be you know fair on that as well mr oliver i don't know um it goes back to if it's just the middle school if the middle school's the concern with the rotating i can certainly appreciate and understand it would be easier to just go right across the board um either way i'm okay with it honestly either way it's just a matter of protecting the students at the end of the day that we're protecting the students can you say that i'm sorry i didn't hear that at the i'm sorry at the end of the day it just comes down to protecting the students whether i'm okay with it either way whether we just do the middle school or if we want to do a blanket right across the district um you know it's the committee's pleasure uh i will go along um with the committee however it to me we need to just protect the students so how about how about this is a compromise i think it's clear that we're all um in agreement that the very least we'd like to look at this at the middle school i trust in the judgment of our superintendent and our administrators about other buildings and whether those are safe so it doesn't ultimately have to be up to us i think i would like to we could say if you think it's easier to do the whole school and you don't have to sit in the whole district you don't have to say this tonight right if if your team thinks it's easier to have a consistent policy across the district that's fine with me if your other schools that are eating in the cafeteria they're not switching dust feel they're confident about that that's also okay with me would that be acceptable to you all that's fine i'm fine with that so we'll we'll leave it to the administration sort of discretion but we do at the very least want that addressed at the middle school okay so next on our agenda is our superintendent's update all righty let's see what shall i do in order here um i know what a couple of uh really big things we want to talk about but i'm just seeing if there's a couple little things along the way all right so um just i know a couple of folks asked about where we are kind of with positive cases and close contacting right now so as of today what i see on the drive and i'm only going since school started nine one because of course we had reports previous to that but nobody the kids weren't in school so um we had 42 cases of positive across the district since that was staff and students and as of today we have 89 students across the district in some kind of as a close contact whether they're coming back this week or monday etc so 89 that i was given today we have put in place some protocols for supporting students that i have to quarantine and will continue to try to enhance that one of the things we did at the elementary level is and we've actually already got three folks on board to do that is we're providing some stipends for what we call student support liaison and these are just grade level teachers that are obviously first of all back up we've we've asked all teachers to maintain their google classroom throughout the district so that would be continuing to put up resources lesson plans assignments etc with students are all knowledgeable on how to access of course and with that said these student support liaisons would be working collaboratively with their we did two for each school and we always say demelo and cushman go together because it's the case students in there a literacy in math who will be collaborating with the grade level teachers to enhance any kind of lessons or if it's on the fly kind of thing to keep working at maintaining that google classroom but also to offer a before school check-in meeting with those students as well as giving them direction for the day how to access what they should be doing setting them off on their way and then also a check in or an hour after school as it could be a tutorial they could say i didn't know how to do that math problem or whatever it might be and obviously we're hoping that these are few small small groups across the grade levels that are having to do this so that's kind of the elementary what we've got in place right now we also worked today on how the related services beth was going to put out email for them that just give them some direction because if related services are normally already that's their block anyway so they can do a virtual speech or whatever it might be um middle school is similar where we have a couple of folks that are already in what they call like the acceleration um i've i can't remember if no they weren't here last time speaking about that um i'm thinking i'm already ahead of myself that they're preparing the school improvement plans um but they're obviously they're all maintaining the google classroom and they they're working with the secretaries as well that every day they will remind them who's having to quarantine so that the academic support time is available for those students uh darren asked that all of the teachers submit plans in writing and how they will look similar to last year they provided a schedule to kiddos um and the guidance is deeply involved we do have the extra guidance person this year so that's helpful to connect with students and families if they're just you know gone and they don't pay attention they don't come forward and meet with these things but don't forget also this is a shorter term usually shorter term quarantine that we have to do so and then we have the student support center person that we put someone in there we were able to man that center with um a person because of the ester money as well so that's the added support for that person as well actually uh when i talked to sarah about it they said they had a student already working really well with the teacher maintaining grace so hopefully it's a good um start to help kids continue to access their learning and the high school would be doing the similar work i did speak with renee last week as well as ross again today about the use of the pace period but scheduling in remember we have that pace period that the students will be able to access and come in for extra help should they have to quarantine so that's kind of what we're doing right now those plans are in already going and uh at least the google classroom we want to make sure that students when they are out to continue to access that and make sure that they you know stay involved the we are meeting again with dea tomorrow to talk a little bit more about this and how teachers can continue to support kids the test and stay as we've been i emailed you all about as well it's been a bear to to really get into it i was at superintendent's executive board meeting this weekend and about 20 districts are in the same boat so it's not us the commission is well aware that cic health hasn't come through like they which we all said in the beginning when those these promises were made it was going to be a little bit more difficult than i think they thought uh the cic is aware of it as well and as promised that within the next two weeks they would be up and running i've i've literally spent more hours than i can count working with this trying to get this up and running between webinar sessions meeting with the nurses meeting with chris mishru emailing not ad nauseum every email address and contact that they give to get support for simply to get logins and passwords that don't then expire the next day i'll have access to the system and then the next day not we have had three program coordinators assigned to us that's supposed to be our big helper and um finally the third one met with us last week and unfortunately i think just got the job and really didn't know anything more than we did if not less so but to her credit she was trying and she you know it doesn't help us much she i did email her again today all of the nurses contacts my contact that we needed logins and passwords there's two systems one of them is the consent form system which we had all the parents fill out and then the other system is what they call the crush the curve it's a software package which you maintain all your data in so finally today i i did get another email and i'm not sure if it was her or another part because i keep emailing everyone and i was able to access both systems this afternoon i've i've emailed the nurses so i have to they have an email me back it to see if they could as well but i think even if i had it i could just get my password out and they can use it so with all that said um i was able to see everything so i can see all the consent forms i can i'm working my way through the software package itself it was not very user friendly and how to what do you do with it kind of thing so you know you test just a little kiddo and then put the data in so we'll get there we we have thought a little more thoroughly on the logistics of testing it depending on the number of students that you have to do um laurie jodwan and chris mishu and a couple other folks visited actually vogue this today's i don't know what day it is friday thank you um to watch the process now it's a very large school as you know 22 and they had 100 students they were testing it took over two hours so the k it's people have to understand there's personnel involved in doing this it's not only and depends on how many students you have each day so they show up at school or somewhere we're thinking possibly a central location for some things because of the personnel needed if you had a large number of students you might have your nurses already manning the nurse station which is very busy anybody that's been in a nurse's office even in the morning many students are coming in might be diabetic students etc they need attention so we kind of wanted to hope to keep our nurses in let's just use the high school for example the two nurses could we use one in a station where kiddos were coming in and testing we have to log them in you have to um the the test itself is a the test itself once you've administered it and prepa prepared and administered it is now a 15-minute wait to get the results but you've also had to prior to that now think about even if it's 10 or 12 kids one at a time you drop your droplets in the little hole they swab that goes back in another hole you swirl it around a few times close it and then you wait so you know the student 15 minutes now this one so it backs up so you need people that's what i'm saying you need people to help with the process and vote they had five people so we're working on that we think we can use some of our own staff um perhaps some might be paid extra overtime if they come in before their own school like if it's in elementary let's just say an elementary nurse happens to come to the middle in high school earlier to help with that um so there's been a lot of logistics and planning and frustration about it but um we have a couple of meetings planned for tomorrow and we're gonna really reach out and try to coordinate um how we could start at least with the middle and high school because the numbers are much lower and the kids being older thinking they could come in do it you know move along and and that we could probably access some elementary folks that would want to work a little bit extra and and help out with that so um we're still positive that we're going to be able to get this up and running very shortly now that i can access the system unless my password goes away again tomorrow um so that's kind of where we are with that and uh like i said we're hopeful comments about any of that all right chris thank you dr gibbon for your report um it's a mammoth undertaking and of course the state has not delivered on what they've what they promised no surprise there with that though is there any specific requirement you say staff as far as maybe using our own staff is there any specific training requirements i think i'm i think this i'm familiar with the test that's being used um i know that there was some some school spring postings i believe for lpns as well can you talk a little bit about that and are we you know that where you how did that come about and obviously i know how that come about that came about but um just to share with the committee as well as the view of the public yeah i'm glad you reminded me of that um so we have right now 10 nurses in the district obviously anybody can be out at any time we had two so that's why we're trying to expand that one of them was the nurse that we hired last year with the grant money and um luckily with grant money we were able to keep her on so that added that additional staff but we decided with this um bear of a program that we're trying to not only assist our nurses in day-to-day because they're very it's very stressful and they've really really worked very hard on trying and of course just this added piece that unsure and they just want to do a good job um so we decided again with the yes or money that we would post for um the ta lpns which we have a few in the district now one works in our nurse's office here and then a couple others they assist medically fragile students in the schools so we just posted that hoping that these two folks along with another one of our nurses that we use as kind of a floating nurse would be able to fill in those gaps and and really help us get the program running but to your question also about training there are some videos that's very easy training and but we have to attest to the fact that people that are doing natural testing have have um looked at those which all of our nurses have um but even it doesn't have to be a nurse per se but the kiddos from k up can administer their own so if a nurse prepared it for again i'll say someone prepares it they can swab themselves and we put it back in so um then we're thinking even to move it along quickly again depending on the numbers we'll we could just maintain a spreadsheet and then worry about inputting the data into the particular system later on through the use of somebody else so but just to kind of get this going and and then you have to think about protocols of where where you're having it because you know we think like the high school we haven't we've just discussed it today would be a good spot where we like we did the um clinics themselves if you if anybody that went to them they came in through that side door into the gymnasium so if that was before school and other kids were coming here that that could work well too so we're thinking of that um the elementary is a cause causing a little bit of more of a problem because once again there's many buildings so the point of trying to have enough help at each one or using a central location so we're we're tossing those ideas around but we're hoping to get that solved this week a couple more questions in regards to uh the software that generated the parent consent forms did we have a large percentage what was the percentage of parents wanting to participate in i can't tell you the percentage we do have a lot there's a lot in there um i only can't tell you because i kind of just got into it today but i do see a lot of names sure yeah so that seemed to be successful and then the the other question that i had was um based on you know because there was some confu i think there's been some confusion in not you know not just with the district with the state with the protocols with the contact tracing and you know i as as a parent i still have more questions than answers yeah um around just all the different requirements like and i won't i won't go down the political road um but i i just i certainly have more questions than answers but just so everyone at home can understand the test and i know you've sent out some communication but just so if we can just reiterate again that the test and stay program is really about trying to keep those students who are close contacts um in school instead of having to go home and quarantine right right um so that that's really and if i'm missing anything but that's really the gist of the program that's what we're doing yeah and that's what that's what we're trying to do um and i know it's a monumental task um but i think we you know anything we can do to keep our students in school um instead of being at home and quarantined because that's a whole other thing and i know you're working yeah with the pieces exactly with um the chair of the dartmouth educators association as well right i'm trying to try to come up with some agreements there for those students that may have to go home there's so much to think about um so you know that's that's all i have taken up enough time thank you and you know we really do as much as we have the rules and the protocols we still depend on our nurses judgment calls sometimes students are symptomatic there are major symptomatic pieces and there are minors which would have to be in combination with others to automatically even if we tested and they would the test was negative they would go home because of what those particular yeah so we really depend on the nurses judgment as well and they're very well versed in all of this so important that that we have yeah you know the nursing staff that we do yeah thank you other comments questions mr news yeah thank you madam chair i just i'm curious you know when the superintendent is actually doing superintendent school work for the last two big deal i mean i'm looking you know i'm kind of going through this and looking and it's like you know what else you you know that that type of deal i guess the only thing the only comment i have to man thank you for the update in all seriousness but uh and i don't have the reports from last week uh our last meeting with us but you talk about using the the grant funds to cover the ta nurses llp that type of deal i guess i kind of made the comment at the last meeting that this was going to be very fluid and it looks like this is one of the fluids that wasn't in it that's going to get plugged in so you know hopefully we get candidates yeah exactly but i mean i appreciate the update and you know i know everybody's working hard and yeah i appreciate it you're welcome yeah yeah that goes without saying but i'll say it thank you it's it cannot be easy glad it's not me i'm glad i'm not the only one that has more questions than answers and just so appreciative of all the work and the constant kind of navigating this who thought we would still be here i know um one thing though in terms of that test and stay program um and thinking about my own family um's needs and hearing from some folks in the community who had unfortunately needed to quarantine i think the first day of school they told me and you know all kids matter and all kids need to stay in school but particularly our youngest kind of vulnerable kiddos who we're not going virtual here but who really can't attend to virtual virtual sessions um very concerned about if this were to continue on a rolling basis throughout this year hopefully it does not um that perhaps and you you may already have talked about this with your team when you mentioned starting it with like the older kids who can kind of come in quickly and move on um if if you haven't already and i trust your judgment and your your administration as to why things are the way they are or protocols are what they are but um me not knowing much but knowing that it really stinks to have a child who can't attend virtually and and missing class and the routine and that you know anticipated routine and all of the havoc that can ensue when not when you're not in your normal routine um if we revisit or visit the idea of maybe those younger kiddos who were prioritized in the return back may be also added to the try it out first with them if there is a consent if there you know is a case where that is uh the only reason we we said we would focus on middle and high school first right now like immediate is um because we have the one building it's diff more difficult to think about spreading it out through the elementary so our real thinking right now is do we do a centralized location where they all descend on to go back to their school because once again about that personnel that we can share but that's the only reason and i just want to make one other note that because of what happened in the very beginning first two days of school um as you know social distancing is out the door however and and we're trying to maintain as much as we can some classrooms the deaths are less than three feet etcetera um teachers were still already trying to do collaborative learning etc so unfortunately they really couldn't determine with accuracy who were the close contacts so we've we've shifted that immediately when we knew that because i i worked with once again mr mishu kelly stole our lead nurse and they're in full agreement um so we we had teachers obviously they have to have seating charts we've also had them do now what we call pods so if you're going to do collaborative learning it's like we three are assigned to that pod that's it you're not going to know work with him and her so those pods would so it'd be much more accurate to say no those are the three kids that were in that so we're trying to um enhance protocols because social distancing was out the door but but not really when you do a close contact so um so we're hoping that that will help us really decrease on the the number of close contacts and need for quarantining thank you just wait thank you for that and i think that you know first of all again thank you for all of your work and you know it's exciting to hear and it's so important to hear about you know how many support networks are being put out in each of the schools to help these kids that you know especially who you know we talked about that as being so critical and we know google classroom but everybody you know having personnel to who are going to speak and work with the kids assigned i think that's critical yeah um you know i did was going to ask because i know there's you know we've all heard through emails and communications that are questions about quarantining and um i think the pods are you know might should be going through that it's gonna be really helpful and you know another question i you know i saw from a parent when you are determining close contact if those children and this is i'm a little bit confused if they're fully invested right so this i mean we all are but if they're fully mass and they're you know i'm talking to shannon but we're both wearing a mask shannon or dr jenkins excuse me it ends up being positive does that mean if we've been fully masked that she's my close contact yeah that's fully masked at least three feet apart in a classroom so we still have to be you know three feet apart but the problem became when they were in groups maybe sitting on the floor because that was a little confusing as you look through the chart like where that is if you're fully masked and so those were some of the questions the parents were saying you know if my children are still wearing then what's the point of mass you know and that's where we kind of you know went through and i can go through that whole i mean there's a lot of purposes of mass and certainly but but we still have to adhere to that so okay does that change right in the high school if the students are vaccinated and our school is exactly you're not distance but you're vaccinated you do not have to quarantine that's right so just throw that in there that's right if your child is in the high school and vaccinated they will not middle school middle school yes please get them vaccinated asymptomatic vaccinated um mass do you have to do test and stay if you're vaccinated in your clothes okay yeah and how will you record you know so will students then bring in there to say that you know you know i can say like my child is vaccinated are they bringing in cars how is that information being conveyed to you and are we putting that on a file now that's a really good question um we the nurses were under the impression and i don't know i haven't followed back up with kelly uh that they had access to um it's some m something a rather database state database yes yeah yeah as the health they should we have access to it yeah i think that's and also um kelly actually was going to do a volunteer voluntary survey she asked if she could do that i said as long as it's voluntary if people want to come forth and say just so she might have that but we're hoping that they have that access to that database and just i know because they could fib and i know we're running a little long but i think some parents were confused what exactly what services cic health provide and then what do we in turn provide like that's the i mean that seems to also be the question as you know why were we delayed why were they you know what yep and that was mine well in the beginning when we were attended all this informational sessions etc was that they were going to have a program coordinator and we could also have on-site help like let's say we had 20 kids to test they were supposedly sending a team and down to to help us so we didn't have to use all our personnel so we weren't really waiting for that our big hiccup was we couldn't get access to the whole system the consent forms nothing so and it just became a big hullabaloo but we're going to move forward and even if i can't get in anymore to the database for the crush the curve software we'll keep a spreadsheet okay thank you i'll just like with my colleagues and saying thanks yeah well um it's it's been rough and um appreciate all the work that you've put in here um did you have anything else to add in your report i don't know we wanted to talk about that uh just that um and another thing that dussy changed we were told we weren't going to have to report the positives and that changed last week so as of today we today's numbers will start to go into a portal at least this year i don't have to make phone calls every day so you know i think it will still come out on the thursday um like last year but that changed again that every they just as we always say they change every week for something new right um i don't know if you have anything about facilities or anything or we're all set well i think no okay i think that's it all right that's it um so the next item on the agenda if everyone's okay to move on yeah um is the report of the chair um i have a few things one we said we returned to discussion of physical access to school committee meetings every meeting i think we're all in agreement we're not there yet is that right okay we'll move on quickly on that one um number two the select board contacted us about having a joint meeting on the 27th which is when our next school committee meeting is scheduled um as is evidenced by the fact we're going on two hours right we're back to that part of the year where we have a lot on our agenda and i know mr nunes has thoughts on this i share some of those thoughts um i'm i might be willing to go for maybe a half hour but i just feel like we've got a lot on our plate and i'm just not really sure what we're getting out of this miss amron the mr news i guess my maybe my sorry to ask a question that might be obvious right but what would be the purpose of us meeting with them i mean i think it's really go ahead mr kiley it was relayed to me to request your presence to discuss the town's financial policies the upcoming budget cycle and the town meeting that um you know is nearly upon us in october and so i'll let mr nunes go first and then i'll take up where wherever he may leave off uh uh on that yeah thank you madam chair uh no okay in all seriousness uh number one they're not meeting in person so we'd have to have a zoom meeting so we basically would probably have to start our meeting flip over to their meeting finish there go back to army you know it's and again i don't have a problem being here in meeting this link that's that's not the point but the last time we had a joint meeting with them we were an hour and a half if my memory is any good and we did not get to say two words except for i am john nunes i'm shannon jenkins right down the line that was it so i i have no idea why they even want us they want to talk about financial policies even if we object to them or we have questions about them you've got the finance committee and if income have been working on them we're not going to have any you know two cents into it anyway the budget cycle you know yeah i know it's up it's going to be the end of september beginning of october and you know yeah they're already starting to think about you know fye uh fy23 i understand that but i mean they can relay those to uh to mr kylie and he can relay him to us i'm good i'm good with that and and for town meeting i mean we'll all get the warrant we probably won't be able to ask any questions because i had some questions at the last one and never got a chance to ask him i had to wait till town meeting to ask my question so uh i mean don't get me wrong i appreciate everything the finance committee and border selectmen do for us you know with the capital items and things of in in that type of deal thank you very much but to go there via zoom for an hour and a half or however long it is doesn't just you know the ends don't justify the means in my opinion personally however this committee votes i or agrees to do i will be there yeah i will i will have to say i'm i'm inclined to agree with you mr nance i i didn't feel like in our last meeting the policies we discussed our presence was necessary to that discussion um and so if there's an item that they want to discuss that's necessary to us that hasn't already been conveyed to us through mr kiley i might be sort of inclined to do that but i trust that mr kiley does a good job of conveying you know the town's schedule the town's priorities and all of that and so i mean i would agree with mr nunes i'm inclined to go ahead with our regularly scheduled meeting um but we've got three other people aside from me at mr noon so i'll hear your thoughts mr kiley do you want to add something sure just just so you're aware dr gifford and i attended the town department head meeting this morning which is a monthly meeting in which they had a brief discussion regarding the town meeting agenda one of the items included on that agenda is expanding the reserve fund uh and and creating a larger reserve fund as a percentage of of um you know the overall town budget so just just so you know i know i'm sure that was one of the things that they were going to discuss so if you have an opinion about that certainly i could relay it but did they say why uh i think it is in an effort to um get positive traction on bond rating that's my understanding um okay and listen something but that's okay thank you mr oliver you madam chair yeah i'm in agreement as well um i don't think i got very much out of the last joint meeting obviously thank the select board as well as defence for their time and always supporting the school department but once again if there's something specific that we want to collaboratively jointly discuss i'm i'm all ears um but i agree we you know there's just way too much going on right now and then to switch back and forth between zoom but once again if it's specific if they if you find out mr kiley or dr gifford that there's something more specific around besides these general topics um um certainly all the ears i mean i think part of the problem i do appreciate them inviting us but you know just the quick math there's 20 people it's just not when you have a meeting that size it's not particularly productive um because to mr nunes point right i mean if everybody takes five minutes it's two hours later and right you haven't you haven't gotten anywhere um so i will if it's okay it seems to be the sense of the committee i will miss gentler can we respond to the select board and respectfully declined their invitation um this is a pressing issue yeah and unless there's a pressing issue and i would also say you know again to getting at the size maybe they want to do a meeting that's you know just a couple people or something like that may be more productive it just feels like when there's so many people on a meeting you're all just kind of sitting there and a few people talk yeah all right so um the joint meeting will cross that off um the next item i had for my report um public comment ms genther i know you've forwarded one email we received we've all received that you haven't received anything else okay so we've all received a comment um the only other thing i'd like to say is i'd like to thanks but thank mr peratti and mr galisha the microphone setup is really great now that we have to we're back wearing masks and it's very helpful to be able to hear each other so i'm appreciative of that with the air purifier yeah last in the summer it was hard to hear but now with the microphones it's much better so i very much appreciate it i just want to say thanks for all the hard work they do here um that is it for my report um any other matters that anyone might like to add mr nunes just just one quick one madam chair and i'll bring it up at our next meeting also but uh people are interested you can put uh october 2nd and october 23rd on your calendars uh we're going to be having a u.s banned competition at the stadium on october 2nd right now we've got eight bands signed up for that and uh on the 23rd we've got a 23rd of october we have a nesba competition right now we've got 16 bands wow so i'll be getting a letter out to you dr shannon dr gifford and mr tebo for uh trophy presentations i don't have times yet but i'll get there i i will not be available on the 23rd but i should be able to make this second well we can otherwise mary will be in the concession we can swipe her let's wait did you want to add something yes can we just on our next agenda make sure i know we touched on tonight um talking about students you know and field trips and also with the travel that we're looking at with um the band and other groups if we can you know think about a discussion sure on those topics yep that's important for those groups mrs did you get that thank you any other um items that anyone would like to bring up all right so our next meeting will be here on the 27th at 6 30 at the high school i'm hearing no other discussion or items i will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second all right i have a motion by mr nunes a second by miss amaral any discussion hearing none all in favor aye opposed that motion carries unanimously thank you everyone [Music] thank you everyone [Music] what did i do
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[Music] so [Music] so [Music] i'm sorry john the anaheim union high school district board of trustees meeting of september 14 2021 is called to order at 3 16 p.m the following members are present anne-marie randall trejo brian o'neill al-jabbar katherine h smith and myself anna l piercy staff has requested the following amendments to the agenda page 13 of the agenda item 11.15. how would we have ever been able to catch that four times uh field dispensers versus 15. that's not somebody caught it here at the district i would think i don't know so okay so the what it should we're going to amend the language under current consideration to read four time fill dispensers and one fast fill dispenser instead of the 15 time fill dispensers okay thank you secondly page 35 of the agenda full item 12. the brandman university okay 12.26 no well i think there is something okay do i have a motion to adopt the amended agenda so i moved do i have a second okay well i have a motion and a second all in favor aye opposed okay public comments or closed session items is there anyone that wishes to address the board of trustees regarding closed session items only at this time okay seeing none the board of trustees will now hold a closed session to discuss items 4.1 through 4.7 on the agenda it is now and we will move to closed session
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so we're hoping that it continues we find out on thursday mornings is when the results are posted and i'm hopeful that we can continue that downward trend and things will be okay john if i remember last year we were down at the rough five percent range testing positive at some point we were correct so it just shows you how much that has increased last year and i think we were between 10 and 50 for the cases per hundred thousand at one point um but uh these numbers are nowhere near what we were in in january um when we hit the really bad peak but still still significant we still need to be careful and but it's a positive trend um that hopefully will continue the community health services department released an updated letter for parents basically describing how the school district is required it's not optional we're required to contact trace and to quarantine and isolate those students off of campus we can't control what happens at home for those that either are positive or close contact that's something we do not have options about we have to do it and so um i know it's tough on parents and um it's tough on our nurses to tell the parents but um we appreciate those families that are um keeping their kids home when they're sick and helping everyone else out in the process um i uh there was a on friday there was an announcement about the possibility of requiring vaccinations for employees of businesses over 100 employees we have 280 employees it's still unclear what those regulations if they apply to schools unfortunately arizona is one of the number of states that follows the federal osha regulations and this is going to be mandated through federal osha it's just uncertain if it's just private companies or also uh government entities and so those regulations are being developed as we speak and we should know within a week or two how um if at all we're going to have to address that so i have a question what is the percentage of our employees that have been taxed um and um people don't have to tell us so we don't necessarily have a firm number my guess would be probably about half yeah now it doesn't mean that you have to get backstage because the option is that we that you get tested weekly and that's something it's either be vaccinated or be tested weekly and we have access to the tests so it's something that we if we have to do it we can hopefully do in-house um so that that would be the option that people have if they choose not to get next to so if they do sign a positive sign i'm testing then we can quarantine them correct we'll actually isolate right now yeah exactly right so we are protected either correct but again don't know if that's gonna that it is um in con it conflicts with state let's anticipate the state law to start on the 29th um and uh federal law typically trump's state law but i guarantee there's going to be court challenges and so this could be tied up for a while who knows what's going to happen i would not get any money on either side so anyway uh really good news um we have a certificate of achievement for excellence in financial planning um i would pat john on the back but this is not his year that this applies to next um this is something that actually talked to john before we learned about this that we we want to continue and it's something that i started with this business manager basically a third party looking at the audit and uh to make sure that we are doing what we need to do as a government entity and reporting um in a way that is how it's supposed to be reported so um there is going to be another one i think from asbo international is that the other one that comes out that we're anticipating but this is basically a sign that our finances are the way we report them is accurate and um transparent so that this is a it's something that we we strive to do to kind of a stamp of approval on our um books so we're excited about that uh the denise pearson scholarship i wanted to talk spend a minute or two about that um and also i wanted most of you know pastor wayne ballard he's in the back here he's here because he is the chair of the board president of the board for the chino valley education foundation so um i'm going to read a little story to you this is um what i read at graduate or at the that's on the back page this is what i read during awards night about the denise pearson scholarship so in the early 1990s a former superintendent dr rob minnick was called by an attorney asking if a scholarship fund could be set up for students at china valley high school after his client's death dr minnick spoke with the attorney a few times to develop some language for the client that dr mick was never told the name of the client at the time fast forward several years dr minute received a call from another attorney letting him know that ms denise pearson had passed away on december 13 1999 and left a significant amount of money to the school district to set up a scholarship fund for graduating seniors at chino valley high school miss pierce has also left money for her two horses to be taken care of until their death of dr never met ms pearson and no one else in the district seemed to know her we don't know what connection ms pearson had with the district but we are grateful for her contribution to the students of tino valley high school so i karen and i got an email a couple months ago saying okay the denise pearson scholarship trust which is the trust was run by wells fargo bank um is some saying it was a 20-year trust and the trust is going away so here's the money that you're going to get and you take care of it for the scholarship fund so we talked to our attorneys uh consulted john and talked to cindy and we said we don't want it and the reason we don't want it is we can't do anything with it so if we take this money and the amount of money is 430 000 just so you're aware it's a good sizeable amount of money and all of the scholarships are having um paid for using the proceeds from that 430 thousand dollars last year we gave 17 000 away on scholarships which was the earnings off that money but we said we don't want it because if we take it we cannot invest it against the law for us to invest that money and though any scholarships we would have to give we'd make what half a percent if that and it would likely be just going into the principle into the purpose of the amount so we i contacted cindy and that's where uh where wayne comes in where we are partnering with the education foundation and um with the help of our attorneys convinced the wells fargo bank to write the check to the education foundation and i'm going to let you take over what you what your plans are with the um uh denise pearson scholarship after that well great hello esteemed board and thank you for giving me a moment of your time tonight the education foundation just uh so you know is a 501c3 organization we're actually a qualified charitable organization according to arizona statutes and so there's a lot that we do with hungry kids project homeless project and a variety of things part of our vision over the last couple years was to develop scholarship funds and and to provide that for the students of china valley unified school district as we were working and building and trying to establish that we found out about the denise pearson and and wells fargo wanted to wash their hands of it the great news is this is such a time that we're prepared for um we are in the process right now of uh getting all of the legal counsel all of our bylaws set up we would like to continue the denise pearson scholarship as is where we have financial planners we have a fiduciary already lined up who will help us with investment advice and all of those kinds of things we're in the process of getting legal counsel to make sure that everything that we're doing is completely above board and with that we want to continue this in as long as we're around and and the great thing about it is is my children have been recipients of it and so i know how significant this scholarship is for our students here in china valley and the greatest part about it is it's for our kids none of the money goes to prescott it's for kids here in chino to assist them in going to college so we're very excited about the possibility and we're very excited about being the conduit for for this at this time so you'll be able to use just the interest correct for the scholarships and you won't have to touch the principle correct in fact uh my understanding is that is how it's even been working in previous years and uh one of the things that's happened we've had several years where only a few students have applied and so they've gotten large gifts from the scholarship but again because it's all based off of the interest of it the principal will remain and what we can generate now this year because we're receiving it halfway through the year and because of some of the things we we will be working with our board to probably use some of the principal in this first year looking at the scholarships and needs but our goal and intention is to generate the interest and off of that interest to provide scholarships for our students so the so the foundation would set the criteria then correct for eligibility and then review the and a lot of that would be worked off of the uh previous uh policies and so on that we will receive from wells fargo as well as from the cougar center that counselors and so on who work with them now so we'll be developing all of that we know that in in january uh that will all have to be completed in place so that we'll open up the scholarship and then in february we'll receive all of the applications and hopefully by the first of ours we'll be prepared for the end of the school year in in the past it's been based on gpa ct or sat score and economic need and uh it didn't go just to those that it well there was what he said we had three students that shared seventeen thousand dollars last year and we only had three applicants and that's i think in many years or most years that i've been involved every kid that applied got a good amount of money so last year we had two good seven thousand dollar scholarships and one with a three thousand dollar scholarship so it's definitely um for those out there that are here listening to this i i was with student council the day said apply apply apply um you know to the denise pearson scholarship fund absolutely is the criteria weighted then i'm just curious it so wells fargo had a weighted um system i think this is going to be up to the education foundation to determine their criteria how they want to do it thank any other you thank you thank you for coming thank you thank you for your time two more things um we continue to experience a driver shortage um those that have kids got a nice nine o'clock call for me last night i apologize for that that was um inadvertent but um anyway we had to cancel the prescott valley route indefinitely um we wanted to focus on those chino and paulden routes to make sure that the in-district routes were secure and that we could service those then our next focus is going to be on field trips which is our athletic teams um we you know i my understanding is it might have worked out with some buses and everything but we got quotes was going to cost us ten thousand dollars this week to transport kids for events uh because of um we didn't have drivers we were gonna have to charge some buses so um we can't afford that long term so we want to make sure that our that our field trips are taken care of and then our intent is to bring back our prescott valley route in hopefully the near future so we'll be coming up with some ideas that we may have to throw some money at that we want to bring back to you in the future one thing that's that is happening um now or shortly is that chris walton our transportation director has gotten permission from the trust to offer like a school bus rodeo say where people that have no cdl or school bus experience can come and drive a bus over at the transportation department just to kind of see what it's like if you if you're afraid of driving a bus come and try it out it may work may be a good fit for you we train people to get their cdls you train you get your bus certs um you get paid while you're doing that training and so um it's a it's only a part-time job ultimately but you get full-time benefits you can actually get health insurance at 20 hours a week so it can be for the right people a parent a mom a dad that wants on safe schedules for kids that kind of thing it can really work out so the last thing is just a reminder make sure it's on your calendars that we have the october 6th meeting is the first wednesday of the month so it's not a it's not a monday october 6th is a wednesday and i believe it's after national night out is that correct so national excel is on the fifth this is on the sixth five o'clock at the paulden community center so it's not karen's gonna send this email you're gonna send an email out there so paulden community center five o'clock on october 6th um we're excited this is kind of our first field trip as a as a board and reaching out to those you know half of half the current board lives in poland so it'll be a home game for you guys and um so that will be good that's my reporting questions when you're coming up 89 turning on the big chino is a big building on your right hand side kind of right across from ace hardware yeah national natives is the fourth on the fourth on monday it is monday on monday gotcha yeah okay sorry so the night out on monday the fourth our morning is on wednesday the 6th and there's a big sign there it's hard to miss it's an old fire station oh i know exactly oh we're getting it for the cell phone tower yeah where's the big something okay anything else mr schultz that's my report any questions any comments moving on to items six so with the month of august month in we've got three or four numbers i'd just like to report and then if you have any questions that's great we ended the month of august from last year the 2021 year with a grand total of 2.8 million in all the accounts in the 2021 year we spent 2.1 million in colder related grants we had four of those grants two of them will be closed as of last year uh ed stabilization and cobit one we just got our buses today so we can pay for that this year because we have that grant once more here so basically those two are closed after two and three go forward into this year and into next year so we're grateful for those but 2.1 million was spent last year covered related funds and this year i have incomplete reports because most of the cash in all these reports is stuck in last year so when we approved the activity annual financial report october 6 all that cash and those fund balances eight hundred and three thousand all right we'll all roll into the 21 22 year and then we'll be working from that real cash so you've got reports from last year and i won't give you one for the month of september uh from last year but you need one month why so it shows those ending fund balances and the activity the last check we wrote out of the 2021 year was august 25th we had some late utility charges and things so now we'll be after the october 6 meeting in october activity reports september's activity reports you'll see just the 21-22 going forward and i appreciate you approving the fundraisers and talking to elizabeth lexmark my office so there's going to be several more fundraisers this year than we had last year so you will get notice of those and we do have a consent item here our auditors want the board to be informed of all our auctions so that's on the consent as well that's the ussr change they want you to know when we're going to auction strip this material basically we try to recycle it two or three or four times and then finally it's it's worn out not used useful at all we dispose of it and we do have in our student activity report 112 000 and things are picking up quite a bit more than they were last year so i can just mention that those monies are present accounted for and used correctly in this new internal control activity that's fraudulent and we have excellent advisors that watch those funds fantastic well you covered everything thank you any questions comments here no not yet oh he's got another one covered he actually did all three of them once correct well i gave you a little tip there on seeds just that it's complete and it's accurate so if there's anything else you'd like to discuss looks like there's gonna be here john it's just a real quick question i was surprised to see the encumbrances that high this this early in the fiscal year it almost looks like you rolled over the ones from last year into this year i'm just going by memory it seemed to me earlier this year in the fiscal year our conferences were not right up to your budget line well i'd like to say that the difference and i'll get back to you with an email and i'll show you last august or i guess last september meeting and how many encumbrances we had i would just like to say that maybe our payroll communication is a little better and maybe we've got all the payroll encumbered okay that's all i'm going to project that that might be the difference i personally rolled about 85 purchase orders over from last year to this year what we call annual ones utilities and uh the one for the ag center over here the 59 000 we paid the city from the water at the farm uh so there's a few things i'll i'll put in a detailed report and so i appreciate it yeah because we don't have a lot of flex right now you know our customers deserve within two percent of our uh income yeah so i wasn't playing right for you i was just busy today didn't get a chance to call you so i apologize for it and there is with that there is some really good news that we know we're going to be sharing and it probably will be the december meeting it might even be back to the november meeting we know that we've got more students on site than we budgeted for right so with that we know that our budget is going to creep up and then that will increase hopefully that uncovered amount as well so rather than going down which inverses uh student count is up compared to what we budgeted 2150 adm and we're standing right at about 20 22 15.
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we currently have 10 parents signed up we did send out a robocall to have parents rsvp for their attendance and we will plan for evening session second semester but i know we have some of our ptc officers who will be attending a lot of parents have contacted us and just wanting more strategies for their students they've spent time with their students during covid with their children and have more questions on discipline and parenting style so we're excited to provide parenting with love and logic for our families enrollment update you can see we present this at every board meeting meeting for new parents who are here we are currently six students over where we landed last year in terms of enrollment you can see on the first grid compared to where we were at the end of school year 1920 we are still down 39 students so we're almost where we were prior to cobit in 1920 as you know we lost a lot of students either they remained virtual online or students who have perhaps moved but we're looking good in terms of enrollment our class sizes are good so we're doing well special education update i'm super excited that we are getting our interactive metronome training expansion off the ground we have miss haley wilcox and ms marsky are demonstrating the program in four of our wednesday afternoon pd sessions for students to begin sessions in the near future and data will be collected and presented at a later date we also have the tools colts learn attainable skills for success class program updates so we have miss haiti and a programmatic assistant currently serving four students under a self-contained classification k5 ms quillin and programmatic assistants are currently serving two students in a fully self-contained classification and 16 students under the partial self-contained classification for academics so you may or may not know that this is our first year that we have our new special education director miss stacy schaffer bertram here so she literally hit the ground running and we're moving in a positive direction with getting making sure that we are meeting the needs of our fed students and families thank you upcoming events the asb law conference occurred last week and it was attended by mr osborne in person i rema i did not go i kept my registration so that i could download powerpoint so we could be informed and be sharing those um as time goes on with the board members the asasa principles law conference is tomorrow so mrs cuevas mr nathan and miss stacey bertram will be attending tomorrow in phoenix the rural schools conference in flagstaff is thursday and friday and saturday morning so i will be attending that and i'm super excited because i was able to get a meeting with the dean and the associate dean of the college of education so that we could talk about what student teachers they have what possible psychologists they have so that we can start our recruiting efforts in case we have any vacancies next year the alas national conference is october 6th through 10th in washington dc and all of i will be attending and the expenses will be paid by asialas and it's during fall break so i won't be missing any work parent and student advisory meetings have all been planned for the year i reached out to some parents we have new parents who will be joining us so parents in the audience if you're interested in being part of our parent advisory please let me know we have monthly meetings and they are in the evening and we typically talk about title 1 we review our parent climate survey results and talk about school improvement efforts so please let us know if you're interested our first student advisory meeting is scheduled for september 21st our parent advisory again is scheduled for september 28th that's the first meeting and we planned our new student meeting september 22nd so we meet with all of our new students who are new to continental um to check in with them in small groups to make sure that they're that they're getting acclimated that they're making friends that they're feeling okay get a feel for how they feel school is going so again as a reminder this is not the opportunity for questions or discussion if there's any questions on the information presented please let me know and we can put it as an agenda item for the next meeting so we can discuss anything that needs to be discussed next one thank you and again i just have to show off my new grandbaby that is three weeks old today there's kyrie my four-year-old she's the new big sister with baby avi and again our theme if the big rocks don't go in first there aren't going to fit in later so we're really focused on increasing student achievement and making sure that we have the big plans so that we the little noise in the system doesn't interrupt what we really already need to do this year so thank you very much thank you good evening everybody and deanna love us the principal here at continental so i'm going to start with just those of you who this might be your first meeting here my principal's report reports going over updates for the month so on wednesdays we have professional development wednesdays with our teachers and our staff and this is just a list of things that we have are going through and have gone through so we've done beyond textbooks refresher training english learner training and daily math skills training with our teachers and staff parent teacher conference prep discussions and nwa map growth reports and teachers started working on the organizations of their student binders so the students can take accountability for their work and also be tracking their growth throughout this school year we did an mtss oh and then our parent teacher conferences began on wednesday september 1st so thank you all for coming out for those we went over mtss referral process and that process stands for multi-tiered systems of support and that is for any any um concerns that our teachers or staff have with students that they might need some extra help academically or behaviorally for interventions and then this wednesday we have rotations we're going to have an average series for our teachers and staff introduce introduction into wicker which is an avid program writing inquiry and organization so it's a it's a big process and mr magayanes is our coordinator for that and we're going to be going over that with our teachers and reveal math lesson planning our math coach will be leading that so it'll be sort of like a rotation parent-teacher conferences we had a great turnout to parent-teacher conferences during the september 2nd and 3rd 516 parents attended conferences so if i could give you all a hand have 658 students enrolled in pre-k through 8.
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he's in college first birthday he's never had with his mom so there's that but um so i live in gurney my husband teaches at zion benton high school so we met in nashville and we kind of decided that i would move up here and it worked out well so thank you um so again i'm sabrina fortuneski a third grade teacher um this is my fourth year teaching my first year big hollow obviously um i taught three years at woodland and i heard a lot of great things about big hollow so i chose to come here um and my fiance is mr summers and i think that's it hi everyone i'm vicki stewart i'm a third grade teacher here at big hollow this is my first year teaching i was so cute i was a student teacher here last year in fourth grade with mrs strickler and i loved big hollow so i was super excited when i was offered a position here so thank you to everyone that was involved in that decision i was born and raised in chicago i went to school through the chicago public school system i am bilingual english is my second language my parents were immigrants from greece and they still don't speak english very well so there's that but um i'm happy to be here thank you so much for having me thank you hi there my name is heather kolaski i'm the new fifth grade ela teacher um i have this i think this is my 16th year as a teacher i've taught in lots of different places evanston we'll met grove glenview and i really decided to make a change and i wanted to come out into this area this year i have four kids they are 21 20 18 and and between all of their football games and their activities i enjoy um just spending time with my family and reading and doing artwork so i'm excited to be here at big hollow the teachers have been great administration has been great and i love the students as well thank you hi again i'm tom shorsh mr shorsh eighth grade ela teacher i'm really really excited uh to be a part of uh the big hollow community this year um i'm very excited to be uh teaching our new accelerated curriculum um and i'm from the city of chicago as well i come from a family of teachers and musicians and intellectuals and i'm just so happy to be here today thank you so much all right we welcome all of you it's been a great start to the year and we just thank you for giving big hollow a chance so we appreciate that you're welcome to stay for as long as you'd like but i am going to our next thing i'm going to honor our certified teachers who have gained tenure this year so uh i'll read off the names and i know we don't have everybody here but i'm just going to read them off and if you hear please come up and i'll give you a certificate hannah ball doug erickson heather fisher kim frazier i did see kim kristen glover mike gorlick [Applause] tracy who's christina lancaster sarah lessel sophia mansooka [Applause] saranetis aaron pesca christina vanderworth and bonnie walters so that's our group of 10-year teachers for this year a great group of teachers thank you and again you're all welcome to stay as long as you'd like but so my next item return to school discussion i'll keep this brief i want to give the board a chance to ask questions but if i can just a few talking points to start with i cannot say enough about our students and staff they've done just a fabulous job students are are getting acclimated back to school the staff is working probably as hard or harder than they've ever had to work and that includes the administrative staff as well i think everybody every day we walk in and you wonder what's going to hit us today so people are working extremely hard and i can't i can't thank them enough the uh it has been an adjustment for kids and staff but uh it's definitely been an adjustment so we're seeing some some some issues social emotional behavior those kind of adjustments that we're working through uh but you know probably a little more than a typical year but you know we've had a spike in cases in the area but we're still handling it well on campus it does it does cause some anxiety with parents with staff with you know our support staff and our nurses and administrators trying to keep up the office staff trying to keep up with the number of quarantine situations the test to stay program i think we have 40 students right as of i looked late today we had about 40 students on test to stay and that might have increased uh with some things that happened today so there's a lot going on um but it's manageable right now so we're we have kids here and that's a good thing so uh testing update i want to give you a quick you know i mentioned to you the shield test that we were we've been trying to get this going dr pittman's been doing a great job with it melissa has been helping do a do get us signed up for this as well and uh the shield program honestly they're just been hard to work with and uh so we would hope to have it going right after labor day that didn't happen so we are still still working with shield but we've shifted gears a bit and we have another program ready to go possibly actually tomorrow we're going to get some of their supplies and maybe it'll be a take-home test that these fans because we have three to 400 families right now that want to be part of this program and we haven't been able to provide it yet so um we have a we have an alternative we're looking into to get this this roll in because shield has not been very responsive to us they don't answer our emails phone calls we're kind of just waiting right now so i plan on sending an update to parents tomorrow on that because you have some parents wondering about the weekly testing as far as staff we're we're short on peras we're short on subs those are two big areas that we just have kind of urgent needs um there are other areas as well but those are two areas that significantly impact kids right off the bat um you know masks was a big issue coming into the year and i will say for the most part at least what i'm hearing is it's really been a non-issue for kids uh there's gonna be some cake there's situations where uh you know that we're dealing with but overall the masks have been a non-issue and been really good to see the kids just adjusting to the environment lunch and breakfast our numbers are increased significantly a lot of kids are eating breakfast that didn't eat breakfast before but they walk in the door and they get a breakfast if they want it they take it to class so uh i had a complaint an interesting complaint last week i didn't think about um apparently it was a valid complaint was that my kid's eating too much food and how do we limit that because we're handing out food so it's a good point so we had to kind of problem solve that transportation has been a a tough one and they've been doing a great job we are bare bones on our staff and and so every person is just working really hard in transportation being flexible um covering routes that they don't usually drive and they don't know the kids so there's a lot to that and i would say today i felt like today was maybe our best day yet when i was both pick up and drop off and pick up so middle school is really not an issue they get in and out here pretty quickly primary in elementary there's more kids and they're younger kids so they don't always know where their buses are at those kind of things so it takes a little longer but all in all it's gone really well and i commend the uh the leadership staff for trying to organize everything and many many many parents have been so uh patient with us and trying to help us work through this i'm hearing horror stories from other places about transportation and ours is not near you know the issues that we face are not near that bad and really once we get uh past this shortage of drivers that we have right now which we have some people in the in the pipeline so once we get past that it's going to get a lot better so but all in all i think that's going well so i want to give you a chance that we've been in school for a few weeks now if you've got any questions anything you want to throw at me fire away can you clarify on the food consumption it's too much it's because kids are eating at home and then when they come to school they grab a breakfast too before they bring their own lunch and they take one of our lunches i can confirm that's happening so parents give them lunch to take and say this is lunch i want you to eat and then they grab one of ours for free so that's that's that's one i didn't think about happening but it's happening so but i would say this um as a community and this our community is no different than any other community but people are just on edge right now about life in general and so little issues that uh happen we're dealing with a lot of uh our staff has to deal with a lot of anger sometimes from people and they're not necessarily angry at us they're just angry at the situation and uh um when we have to fight when we find out there's a there's a group of close contacts that have to be called you know and i see our staff taking those and splitting those up and going to the phones they're going to the phones knowing that they're not going to be pleasant calls but they're doing it and and many many people are very understanding but but we also understand when people are angry because they're just angry about the whole situation and uh so i wish i could protect our staff from that a little more than i am able to but uh they're doing a wonderful job with it and it's all of them everybody is digging in and doing what they need to do how's drop-off and pickup going uh much better much better it's uh i would say today at 3 45 the place was empty so when the buses or the belt rings at 3 30 and we're we're we have a thousand kids in that building or and we're dismissing in 15 minutes that's a pretty good day so i think we're in pretty good shape again there's going to be some traffic issues from time time to time but uh uh overall i you know i'll apologize to people sometimes when the line's long and they'll say hey don't worry about it you know because they know it's but more people want to pick up their kids because they don't want to want to on a bus that's full of kids so we're seeing that's why we have more traffic a little bit but uh once we get more drivers we'll be able to maybe add a bus and that'll lower some of the bus sizes maybe but won't be many though so it's going better though anything else with that all right i'm going to open the floor up to our diversity equity inclusion updates uh miss jessica olidapo and dr vicki king so i'll let you guys take the floor here we have the slide on the wall it's also part of the ford packets jessica has worked with us just to give you a little background um we started the african-american parent advisory council about two to three years ago and we started meeting and i think last year and i'm gonna i want to give dr king some credit because last year i felt like we made more uh we made more progress because we got to a point where prior to that we were meeting and talking and we were working through issues but last year we kind of said all right we're going to go with this committee and uh it was it was a suggestion of you know one of the committee members was you know providing our staff with some training and i always felt like a one day sit and get's not going to be what we need we need we need consistent uh training that's ongoing and and jessica was recommended to us by one of our parents and we've been partners ever since and it's gone really well she's worked with every area of our staff so i'm going to let you give her i want to give you an update of the work she's been doing perfect thank you mr gold um thank you all for having me i'm so sad that he left because i wanted to also say that i'm from chicago a family of teachers and musicians and intellectuals but he left so i couldn't make that connection um this meeting has been so moving for me so far especially considering the work that i do also i should say i am so unaccustomed to speaking for like 15 minutes so i'm going to keep looking at the clock i'm a professor of sociology and psychology and we tend to be quite verbose so my bio is on the on the slide there and also you should have it in on the slides in the packet my pronouns are she and her i am a sociologist by trade but also with a great deal of education in psychology i'm finishing up a degree currently in counseling psychology to be able to provide therapeutic services around issues of equity and inclusion and belonging my focus really is how do we create spaces of belonging for all and so the work that we have been doing and the goals that we have are here um the first goal is to ensure a space of belonging for all within the big hollow school district considering all partners in education i call partners and educ i call everyone who takes part in the educational experience of students partners in education so this includes the families this includes the students themselves this includes the school boards the teachers support staff everyone who takes part in the educational experience for that student is a partner in education so the goal is to create a place of belonging for everyone who is a partner in in the educational experience another goal that we have is to review the practices to ensure that we are meeting the unique needs of each student so it's not just that we are providing trainings to teachers and support staff and administrators but instead that we are actually looking at policy and procedure and also practice making sure that those things are in alignment um initially when we were brought on we were just doing some training then we were like wait a minute there's some other stuff that needs to happen as well in conjunction with we're also expanding the definition of diversity to include multiple levels of multiple levels and identities so i should also say that frequently when we talk about diversity and what diversity means frequently the conversation shifts to a conversation about race and then it shifts to a conversation about how do black folk feel but really we're thinking about how everyone experiences their identities what is marginalization look like kind of across the board right um so we're expanding the definition of diversity for everyone so that we all understand how we contribute to a diverse school community and community at large we're also hoping to empower and encourage teachers and administrators to see the value of inclusion and belonging and effectively model um the model belonging for students and families i was just saying to dr king that it is our job you know even in those moments where we feel um overwhelmed by the task it is our job to model what that looks like for our students and for the families because again we're all partners in education and then finally to empower students and families to engage in and see their agency in the co-creation of spaces of belonging for all in the vic hollow school district and i say co-creation because students and families also have agency in power and it is our job to recognize and see the agency and the power that they have and so students our students are actually co-creating their educational experience which is a little bit of a shift from the way that we have traditionally thought of education right the traditional model is the teacher is the person with all the knowledge and they pour into when we think about what does creating a space of belonging look like it also means that students have power and agency to co-create that experience and so what does the path forward look like and this is actually a model that i share with teachers and support staff and administrators during the professional development training so this is the traditional model of education and the traditional model of education begins with the teacher who is the green square and the students come in and the students are the pink triangles and so the truth again the traditional model of education looks like everyone in the classroom is the same or at least they appear to be the same because they're all students right and the teacher again is the picture that pours into what we know is that um this model as this is the model of education that we tend to be comfortable with we also know that the model of education that is that works fastest is this where the teacher is the green square and the students are also green squares but that's not really what happens and so even if we have this model we spend a great deal of time trying to make the pink triangles into green squares right and so then it looks like this there's the pink triangles and we try to turn them into green squares right what this means then is that students are coming into our classrooms and trying to fit into a model that doesn't actually work for them or they are putting on a costume temporarily that they then take off and so that is not a space of belonging right that is only comfortable for the teacher what we know about this model though is that that allows for work to get done very quickly and efficiently and so if our goal in education is to get things done quickly and efficiently this works well this however is not the best model because students are not pink triangles nor are they green squares students come in with all sorts of different shapes and sizes and colors and textures and they float in and they twirl in and they slide in and they glide in and they said sometimes you just show up and they write this all of this different diversity that exists in the classroom diversely diversity along racial lines along gender identity lines gendered lines um immigrant status linguistic ability all sorts of things and so the goal is to ensure that in the classrooms and in this in the school space in general that we are recognizing and appreciating all of the different shapes and sizes and textures and the way that students come in and the things that they bring into the classroom because what we know is that with this model the green square is just like every other shape in that classroom that the green square is also learning because they are engaging this is what co-creation looks like in education this is what creating a space of belonging and education looks like as well now there are pros and cons to everything the con is things don't get done always so quickly right and that's fine because the learning and the interaction is more meaningful and more long-lasting than the other model the traditional model of education and so this has really been our our goal so making meaning of it what does it mean and um it's incredibly important to see our students and to see our families seeing them has a positive impact on self-efficacy seeing them has a positive impact on academic achievement when we see our students for who and what they are then that increases academic achievement students will rise to the occasion right it increases and improves relational interactions and it has positive outcomes for the community at large students will want to get their education here go away to college and come back and be celebrated for the unique diversity that they bring to the community and so long term from a from a business standpoint from a financial standpoint from a social standpoint there are positive outcomes short term there are also so many positive outcomes and so questions to consider what might this focus mean for individual students what might a focus on belonging mean or have an an impact on classroom learning or how might it have an impact on classroom learning what impact might it have on recruitment and and retention for um for talent of talent at big hollow school district in terms of staff teachers administrators families right as a i'm a mom of four and one of the things that i'm always concerned with if i move which i never hope to move again but when i did move one of the biggest concerns for me was what does the school look like and not so much what those test scores look like right but really is this school going to meet the needs of my unique students who have different neurodiversity needs and all sorts of different needs right so what does this mean for recruitment and retention across the board and then finally what impact might it have on relationship building what are some of the greatest strengths that the big hollow school district has as it relates to relationship building with families and community partners and then also considering what might be some barriers and so one of the questions that we are consistently having conversations about we just had a conversation last week about respect right and and in the room of i don't know 30 people there were like 10 different definitions of respect well if we're not speaking the same language then that might pose a barrier to how we are interacting with our students if we say to our students you have to respect people in the classroom what does that even mean right so coming to an agreement on the language of diversity equity inclusion and belonging it could pose a barrier but also as we are doing this work we are kind of normalizing language such that we are creating these spaces of belonging and then the last question that we can ask is how might a focus on belonging impact and mitigate the barriers that we see including again the barrier of rather of kind of speaking different languages or barriers of implicit bias barriers of preconceived notions about someone based on the language that they speak or don't speak etc right so again the focus really is on how do i think about myself and my own identity within this space and then how do i create a space of belonging for for all or rather co-create a space of belonging for all and then there are some additional layers that we are tapping into including classroom management and self-management because there's a relationship we're tapping into relationship building and strategies including things like vulnerability empathy courage compassion and more we're also talking about self-care both engaging in self-care and then modeling it for our students knowing when to like you know what this is let's take a break right yes the curriculum is there but let's actually take a break such that we can tap into our humanity um and then finally unpacking and uncovering our own biases through a lens of social and cognitive psychology is an additional layer that we are tapping into so it's all interwoven into every aspect both in in teaching and also looking at the policies and procedures because those things should be in alignment and dr king really quickly just to show where this work is also showing up across the district so all three of our school improvement plans we have the same two goals one of them one of the goals is around the idea and the work related to the diversity inclusion i would say and also belonging and so there'll be a survey that goes out and our goal is to really create a space in our district where all families feel like they can belong and then we also started work on task force work and we paused it until we had this conversation so you'll see more information eventually come out but if you remember at the end of last year talked a little bit about some of the work that we're going to be doing um there was quite a bit of interest when we initially launched this out where i have a lot of families uh community members excuse me interested in being on various task force as they align to some of how we're recruiting and retaining i think um diverse staff but creating a place where people feel they belong and they want to stay that's a big deal for i would say the principles and now sitting in that role as well it's it's imperative that we do what we need to do to keep the staff we have because the pipeline is so small and i can't over exaggerate that also our curriculum resources we've already started looking at that but we've got some awesome accelerated work that mr schwartz kind of talked about that dr hetchevitz has been working on community engagement pieces a lot of the stuff that dr biancolana and miss janus and then they're not here anymore but we had a number of staff who are working on our um just our hispanic heritage month all of those pieces that we're seeing is a way of reciprocal sharing and getting our community involved and then finally looking at our discipline and that idea of respect and what does that look like so we're looking at some of those pieces and then finally our assessment but that is our current and future work thank you that's good thank you so much any questions from the board that was a lot of information uh jessica thank you so much for the work you're doing and uh does anybody have any questions i think this is great man this is something that we've asked for for i don't know how many years i think it's thank you so much um i just have one question is how are we going to get updated on this goal that's all i want to know because i mean i see a lot of these things we've talked about at plenty of board meetings in the past probably everything on here regardless besides discipline yeah but i know human resources was a big push anything related to our school improvement plan we'll give you updates on that once we release those plans to you and then through at the end of the year we'll give you updates on that but the um the the apac the african-american parent advisory council some of these goals are tied to work we're doing there and we are giving them updates as well on this work so um but i'll definitely be passing along the information to the board don't agree anything else that you think of however you want us to get to that we can we would happily provide you feedback because i know some of those pieces that we're doing for like the re like the principles that we're working on to retain our staff and some of this work with um jessica like those those are big pieces that we're we'd happy to be talking about and then i know dr hechowitz could probably write up on the curriculum there's a we could present that if you ask any time we have training built throughout the year this is ongoing throughout the year it's already built in the schedule so for all staff would this be part of our like what a buy yearly goal update that you give us yeah if you can make it part of that i think that would be helpful yep i can do that all right thank you very much thank you thank you okay a couple more items uh item 13 or exhibit 13 is an item e approved the recent board policy updates on the second reading that's uh the press plus exhibit 13.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
note this plan would need school buses to arrive 20 minutes later relative to high school start times in fact both the american academy of sleep medicine and the american academy of pediatrics recommend that both middle and high schools start no earlier than 8 30 a.m which would require a one and a half hour shift back in all school schedules furthermore studies have shown that a later school start time can lead to better grades when a high school in seattle washington shifted their schedule back 55 minutes median grades increased from 77.5 percent to 82 percent allowing students more sleep can also help prevent driver deaths from drowsiness and a host of other benefits some may argue that transportation for elementary students may become more difficult however elementary school could be shifted in front of both junior high and high school starting at eight o'clock others claim that for students with extracurricular activities they may not have enough time to finish their homework however they could wake up when they currently do to finish it getting more sleep when they don't have as much homework the final argument would be that students may find it harder to get to out-of-school clubs but getting more sleep for all kids is certainly a worthy trade-off especially since for high school students school would end at 3 56 allowing more than enough time to get to out of school clubs which usually start after work hours i know many of you have children in our school district and i hope that you will choose to take action on this matter it may be difficult to reschedule but the long-term benefits for all students are well worth the effort and the student included citations so thank you isabelle from [Music] no can you speak up or move the microphone near you i don't think it's her i don't think it's here nice you try again what about this one nope he was hit brother he's trying in the regular room they could just use the table one yeah i'm fine with that okay can i speak now yes okay hello sc308 board members my name is isabelle and i'm a freshman at oswego east i'm here to speak to you about the inequities in our dress code throughout my first month at oswego east i've noticed serious issues of sexism and racism with how the dress code is being enforced i thought i would share a couple of examples with you tonight many female students have been dress coded for showing their shoulders by wearing tank tops and spaghetti straps this is supported by the official sd-308 student dress code which states that we should be that these would be a disruptive or suggestive clothing item though i do not believe that anyone's body should be deemed too suggestive for the public eye for just existing i acknowledge that the dress code is what it is for this year my question is why is this only enforced on female students students of any and all genders wear tank tops to school to beat the summer heat so why are only female students disciplined for this the dress code applies to all students not just girls another thing that is commonly dress coded at oe is when girls wear skirts that are deemed too short as one of our deans has cited multiple times that this is because one student could woke up another student's skirt while walking up the stairs why is the dress code the only policy cited to reduce sexual harassment this clearly brings up other disciplinary issues and moral conduct for the student who is staring up a young student's skirt this is not the student wearing the skirt's responsibility and students should never be blamed for their own harassment i've also heard of students being dress coded for the possibility of a wind hitting a young woman's shirt and therefore her under garments would show the current dress code does not state anything on the possibility of uncontrollable factors so why are deans dress coding these students under the policy of the board lastly some black male students have been dress coded for wearing dewraps which is a piece of clothing used to protect the hair of african-american people senate bill 817 signed into law by our governor states the students cannot i mean schools cannot prohibit hairstyles associated with race or ethnicity if we allow headbands why not do rats administrators open out okay administrators need to be brought up to date on current state law regarding these citations of the dress code i speak to you today to alert you of the inequities occurring i know many board members here believe deeply in equity and that's why i'm bringing this to you i have many concerns with that with what the current student dress section states and i urge you to consider these changes next year however as we speak many inequities are occurring without are occurring without any support from the written policy my ask of you is to please make sure the policy is understood by all school administration and enforced in a way that is equitable to all students i appreciate your consideration for future updates on the student handbook and dress code for next year thank you for your time thank you are there anymore okay so we'll now move on to board member comments i just wanted to acknowledge that the board does meet and greets now at each of the buildings and we had our first meeting greet at wolf's crossing and we had a lot of positive feedback from the staff and teachers and administration on our presence and so i just want to let the community know that we will be visiting all of our schools throughout the year that our board members will be scheduling times in these teacher cafeterias to just meet and greet and talk with our students about anything that they want to talk about i just wanted to um i've got the opportunity to meet with a lot of teachers and parents over the last couple of years and um is it on and um there is a collective sense of exhaustion a collective sense of um just heaviness in the air and i was so buoyed the other day by a story that happened via social media on one of the oswego moms groups regarding one of our students our one of our students in the uh he's got to speak right into your life speak right to it oh is this better and um i just i really wanted to say that even through all the heaviness of what is going on in the world and parents really advocating for their students whether they are advocating for one thing or another i'm very proud that this community came together i want to um thank coach allison and all of the students who really supported one of our students um that is what this is about that is what community is about and i was just super proud to be a part of our district thank you that's all i had i just wanted to um acknowledge hispanic heritage month that is about to occur and acknowledge all of our hispanic and latinx community we really appreciate all of our students and staff and community members from this culture and are excited to celebrate with you all right so we'll move on to the superintendent's report well good evening board and i have a few items to share with you this evening we are now entering the fifth week of school i've had the opportunity to visit the majority of our school since the start on august 18th and through my conversations with both students and staff schools seems to be going very well i had the opportunity to attend both the oe and ohs first home football games last weekend or two weeks ago now and i had the opportunity to watch our marching band at oswego east our cheerleaders our dance team and both football teams playing and both of the games were very well attended and it was great to see and feel the energy and that the sense of normalcy and the school spirit at both of our high schools really a great evening on sunday september 5th the school district participated in the prairie fest parade we had a great showing this year as the marching bands and the cheerleaders performed we had many school district personnel that were walking in the parade and we had some mascots from our schools we had flags representing all of our schools and a whole lot of teachers and administrators and uh with the parade route was lined with a lot of smiling people cheering people and it was just a wonderful family atmosphere and a well-attended parade uh now i'd like to share that the united states congress has designated the second week of september september 13th through the 17th as national arts and education week the high schools will be highlighting the importance of music theater creative writing poetry visual arts and dance and last week i received the congratulations from the illinois art education association informing me that oswego east high school has been named as the 2020 as a 2021 school of distinction and oswego east was only one of five schools receiving this prestigious award this recognition celebrates schools with rigorous art design and media education programs and the school of distinction recognize recognition extends from 2021 until 2023 so congratulations to the students and staff and administration here at oswego east high school i'm also happy to report that we have 32 students from both oswego east and oswego high recognized with academic honors from the college board national recognition program last week these students were recognized in the categories of hispanic recognition rural and small town recognition indigenous recognition and african-american recognition these recognitions and achievements were earned based on the students outstanding performance of having a gpa of 3.5 or higher and of except and having excelled on the psat nms qt or psat 10 or earned a score of three or higher and at least two or more ap exams the students will receive their awards in time to be included under college and scholarship applications and colleges know that students who have earned this recognition are some of the most talented students in the country so congratulations to all of our students who earned these prestigious awards and dr moreno as you can see there's a lot of great things happening in school district 308 and that is my report for this evening thank you it was definitely fun walking in the parade okay we'll move on to uh six point approved consent agenda can i get a motion i make a motion to approve all items under consent including 6.1 minutes of the board of education meeting on august 23rd 2021 open and closed session and 6.2 to acknowledge the foyer request received by the district second mrs simonson aye dr marino aye mr gatewood aye mrs swanson aye mrs corner aye mrs doyle aye mrs johnson aye item 7.1 is financial statements does the board have any questions on what has been presented this evening item 7.2 is an informational presentation on the work we are looking to do as we identify our capital project needs for the district in the upcoming years two of the goals in our newly adopted envision 308 strategic plan is to develop a five-year plan to address the physical capacity of our building and program needs as well as reviewing the needs of general maintenance for the next 10 years dr petzke is going to present the work from several review meetings and discussions with our architects and the proposal for preparing a comprehensive facility management plan dr pesky good thank you dr sparlin um so board of education i'm very excited to share with you some information about a facility and maintenance improvement plan i've also i'll be presenting a little bit i also have rob allison sitting in the guest chair today who'll be addressing you as well so this is presented by me but prepared with a lot of support from rob allison and buildings and grounds eric simon who is an assistant in buildings and ground and dead nervous who does an amazing amount of work in keeping track of all of our projects and finances as well as charlie johnsos who is our district architect from kluber and clayton haldeman who is a second architect from kluber as well an interesting thing about this engagement both charlie and clayton from kluber were involved in the initial vision 2020 plan that we'll give you a recap on so it's nice to have that longevity and have the same people who were in involved in that process in 2014 also looking at doing that process now in 2021 so just to give you a little a little history on what was called the vision 2020 plan um that was that started in 2014 and the goal for that plan was really developing a deferred maintenance and improvement plan that would span two thousand fifteen to two thousand twenty twenty the process that was identified at that time was begin with the staff the principals the building engineers staff at the building who lived in those schools and could really give us a uh give us some really important information about what the needs in that building were um that also then lent itself to a facility assessment to take a look at things like the roof systems the hvac systems and things of that nature and the real goal was again to look at a deferred building maintenance recommendation plan based on the building needs and what was being talked about we also at the time included a building energy consumption how efficient are our buildings what benchmarks and what goals did we have for our buildings and that information was collected as well and then each of the projects that were identified kind of came with a project cost summary and what the architects really did for us at this point is they helped to group a lot of the needs into uh efficient packages that could then be bid on and we could realize the most cost saving from grouping those projects together so that was our vision 2020 plan and i'll give this slide to rob thank you dr petzke can everybody hear me all right thank you good excuse me uh the slide is actually an example of some of the things you'll see in the current 2020 plan architectural items would reference things such as roofing masonry and classroom case work i think the hvac plumbing electrical and fire items all speak for themselves site items would include projects like asphalt concrete and landscaping and those were on the agenda for from the architect when they talk to the staff they were given an opportunity to identify projects in all of these areas and what what they did it was about a three-month engagement that the architects did with every building and they came up with uh this is just one page of the vision 2020 plan if you look in the upper right hand corner you can see they you know this is for churchill elementary school and then over on the right hand side you can see the year it was built you can see if there were any additions they would be listed in that area it shows you about what the square footage is of that facility and at the time what was the enrollment of that facility then to the right of that information is a summary of based on this plan in this work you can see priority one projects were identified at uh you can see there for churchill a grand total of about 370 thousand dollars priority one for the architects was really what is a one to two year uh project that should be completed priority two which was a three to four year project was uh was next and then there was a priority three which was kind of a facility improvement what should be added to that building and if you have some dollars to uh to do some school improvements what would they offer doing so you can see their churchill back in was about a 731 thousand dollar school with all the projects we had so then looking at the rest of this sheet kind of the bottom part you can kind of see the item number like you can see ar031 ar stands for architectural project then going down that column you can see an ml that's a mechanical project and then el an electrical project so they coded the different projects the locations um they had a little bit of detail about the uh the product and the components and then the condition fair was the best that they gave there was a fair poor and then unsatisfactory some unsatisfactory items in this plan were simply because it was an improvement that didn't exist for instance at one of our schools they suggested more video cameras there were no there were not as many video cameras as they wanted to see so that was unsatisfactory because they didn't have that at the time you can kind of see the priority number that they assigned to it which correlates to the upper right hand corner and then you can see what the cost for each of those individual line items were so that's just kind of a rough breakdown and they had this done for every school and i'll let rob talk about this one i know it's a little too tiny for everyone to see but rob walk us through this what are we looking at well this is actually a summary by school excuse me of the total estimated cost each build each building and the annual projected spend over the course of five years on the lower right you can see that the grand total of this five-year plan was projected to cost just over 29.4 million and i can say that to date we have spent about 4.4 million against that 29.4 on 20 20 plan projects some examples are thompson restroom locker room renovations cooling tower refurbishments at fox chase homestead and benarsik we also replaced the cooling tower at old post and replaced the chillers at old post in bednarcic and we did quite a bit of district wide asphalt work good thanks rob and i think it's important to know this was kind of a living breathing document so while they gave us this document what rob was referring to is we did some of the projects listed here but then through living in the building some projects came up that were not on this list or other other systems maybe came closer to a critical failure so we kind of balanced this plan along with some of the other systems and and things that were happening at that time i think it's important to point out on this we were able to use what you guys will um will be referring to as dsab dollars or debt service extension bonds we sold those in about 2015.
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i now work online as an economist for the department of labor i wanted to start by thanking everyone for being here and i mean that sincerely because in school we are taught the importance of civic engagement and if there's anything that we can see around the world is that there is no guarantee that we are allowed to speak to provide input on civic matters and to deliberate on important public issues secondly i wanted to thank the school board and i think i'm speaking for many individuals here i've spent some time and looked into your backgrounds you are a group of educators citizens in columbus to run for school board you don't even list a political party i don't believe that you got into this position to play politics you came to volunteer your time and energy for the task of supporting your students education and i think you've done that i think that your mask mandate was the right decision i think that you've saved lives i think that you've kept students in school when they could be online and for that i respect that decision i thank you for making this decision when you also knew that it could possibly be unpopular i think that's an important example let me finish with a request and a recommendation my alma mater is indiana university of bloomington and last week in indiana university bloomington there were 64 positive cases of chronovirus 64.
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so we've got about 65 in the bank so to speak uh and last year we had 2057 so we're up about 165 to 370 students i will send you i'll send the board my answer on them consent agenda [Music] um all right should i entertain a motion then to approve tonight's consent agenda all in favor aye aye aye all right we are going to hear from mrs cox item 8a edition of one paraprofessional position at tarrant department so i'm coming tonight with a couple of different things originally we asked for one paraprofessional which is ahead of the other one the paraprofessional we are still over our staffing model even when we get to the next one to meet the needs of these kindergarteners that are keep coming in as i walked out today we are enrolling another one so i don't know where the floodgates are gonna stop but um so we're asking for one pair an addition a kindergarten paraprofessional to help with the surplus of kiddos just to help the teachers with all of their prepping and working with the students mainly giving us more individualized attention what is your uh right now what is the highest student per classroom that you have in kindergarten right now i have 29 in one class okay i mean that's a lot 30.
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78 of our students were represented by parents at these conferences the additional 142 students whose parents did not attend in person the teachers have contacted them in the following ways phone call conferences email correspondence and they reschedule times to meet with those parents this is a move on when reading this superintendent rico referred to in in her presentation and this is a letter that was sent home to our parents of uh in regards to the obama reading program for our third graders this is a middle school academic support letter from our academic behavior support specialist bertha manbrila she's going to be going over the data of our students to see those that need academic interventions and that letter would be sent home to parents they won't be pulled out of poor content classes but they'll be provided with extra academic help in the area that's needed and this is the title one contact agreement that all parents in our school should have received so double check that you did receive those and we're also keeping track too so you might get some more that are sent to you in the summer we went over a critical race theory resolution and our board voted on this resolution on july 30th i just wanted to give you all an update uh school site administrators we read through the resolution and discuss continental's critical race theory resolution we discussed how our curriculum is free of the critical race theory and teachers and staff are aware of the resolution here at our district they were given a copy of it and we will all abide by it classroom walkthroughs mr latham and myself and then other administrative leadership mr madrianis has gone on walkthroughs with us this this thus far this school year and what it is is we're just walking through the classes and taking giving feedback to our teachers but also so they know that we're a source of support as well and they know that we're going to be going through throughout the week and we have a feedback form when i was a teacher myself sometimes it was hard to have people walk through your class and then not know you know they'd be talking and stuff and then you'd never have feedback on it so once a week they will get a formal informal but in a formal kind of way but it's informal classroom walk through follow-up so we just choose the staff member we put the date the time it has um it has these are things we're all working on school-wide and we've discussed as a whole entire staff that we wanted to have alignment in our school so it has lesson plans posted outside of the school door out of the outside of the classroom door where objectives daily objectives displayed for the students so they understand the relevancy of their learning for the day a lot of times when we were growing up we thought was the point of this so having those objectives up there is really important and the standards in accordance with the state and then what domain was observed so we've walked through and done planning looked at the teachers planning and prep based off of lesson plans that they've had and right now we're going over classroom management as we walk through and provide feedback and we just mark you know what area was observed in our walkthrough because at any point in the day and then we give comments and feedback and it gets sent straight to them shortly after we walk out i got i got one teacher that answered back and said this is pretty awesome and we had really great conversations with teachers weren't constructing and students were working and we walked through great conversations that we were able to have and that's the whole point of that our whole point of sight leadership is to be able to collaborate with our teachers and and to work together as a team so teacher formal formal observations are to begin we'll begin conducting pre-observations meetings and formal observations this month with the goal to be completed with first semester rounds by december daily and weekly and formal classroom walkthrough feedbacks given on these following domains which is what i just showed you and then a gifted education update we've begun the referral process to identify students to screen for the gifted education program we have received gifted education testing materials and we'll begin testing at the start of second quarter we will keep you all apprised of the progress we are making with testing and identification of gifted education students reteach and enrichment site leadership's meeting with teachers this week to establish the reteach and enrich protocols and procedures for each grade level team teachers will collaborate weekly to determine students who are not meeting poor contact standards that are taught throughout the week students not meeting the standards will be retacked the standards and reassessed students who show proficiency of top standards will join an enrichment class to continue to expand their knowledge in that standard area and that will be happening in our elementary levels students that are in middle school we will identify and we will be recommending them to after after-school tutorials for them further we teach enrichment will happen throughout the day in their classes but middle school parents will be hearing from myself and will be getting phone calls from site leadership and teachers if your child is referred to after school tutorials so that they can focus on those standards that they are struggling with students who continue to struggle will attend those tutorial interventions as well as saturday school which will be taking place for a good month in november through december so we really want to make sure that when we have that saturday school to understand it's not a punishment but it's you know we do have some students who decide that they don't want to do their work not that they can't it's that they won't and this might you know light a spark that it's like come on i gotta get my stuff done because i do not want to attend the saturday school but it also provides an opportunity for the students who do need that extra help to get the help that they need because that's what we're in the business of helping students and doing what we need to get them to progress a plus school of excellence application for next school year update schools that ultimately earn at a plus school of excellence designation consistently share the following traits model quality and equity demonstrate a strong commitment to academic excellence respond successfully to the challenging environment of education cultivate learning centered safe school environments encourage innovative instruction by supporting teachers actively address student social emotional physical and intellectual needs demonstrate superior ability to go above and beyond the norm and providing services to children families and the local community do you think that we meet those can i okay do you think that we might need those can we hear some more because next year we're going to be applying for an a plus school and part of that process is it's a day and a half of observations from the a-plus committee it's a big application process for us but our families and community are part of it they have you on the second day invite the parents and community members to come site leadership is not in the meeting and they will ask you why do you think your school is an a-plus school and they will meet with you for a good 30 minutes to one hour and you're a part of this because this is huge for us and this is this is where we're an a-plus school and we've got to work together to make sure that we can meet this so we'll be giving you more updates throughout the school year and as we head into next quarter the continental parrot teacher club these are some upcoming events that our ptc's have asked permission to plan for this school year thus far trump retreat on october 29th grandparents bingo on november 19th and father-daughter dance which would be all inclusive we know that not all families you know might might have other grown-ups that can bring them we want to make sure that just because it's a father-daughter dance we want to make sure that everybody's included and knows that they can be included in this and our wonderful ptc our president has said that they'll make that very clear with the flyers we've sent out as we planned for that and um then we have a teacher lunch that they're planning for us they're very great gracious and very kind to us so thank you to our parents for volunteering to help with the work at wednesdays they make copies for us they laminate they help complete teachers needs weekly and we are so very grateful for your help we have our continental foundation i would like to take the the time to thank our foundation for the support through mini grants that they've already awarded 12 grants and grand grants are awarded up to 250 per applicant their constant support is greatly appreciated this is a picture of them at last month's foundation meeting for the first time after cover they hadn't met we've been meeting on zoom and having all these technical issues for over a year and we're so excited that we got tuned in person so they do have a it's called a sweet art gala and it happens in february we would like to get a lot of you to be there so please spread the word because that's i know that's the goal of all of ours but it's also a goal of mine to make sure that we can get as many community members out there it's a beautiful night and it's it's just a fun formal event to help raise money for our school continental substitute teachers i see some of them here in the audience but we have new substitute teachers who joined our cult family we had our second substitute orientation for this school year on august 26th the last thursday of each month is now designated as a new staff orientation led by site leadership and then i'd like to take this off a moment to thank community members for their generosity we have arthur wall who donated a telus a beautiful telescope with the tripod we're hoping to have a us looking at i don't know kind of an astronomy night to stargazing night soon um frederick hearts who's donated a beautiful trumpet stephen techner who's donated books puzzles and miscellaneous items and mr mrs thomas johnson who gave a monetary donation of a hundred dollars to our school so thank you if you're listening or if not but thank you for your generosity to our school are there any questions yes yeah i have three questions um i want to move on when reading notifications um did we have any third grade students that were retained no we did not i i just i i i i'm wondering when we only had 30 percent of our students that tested as proficient in english language arts in the spring easy merit testing uh that intrigues me a little bit the the state had waived that for this past school year due to everything that we were undergoing with kobe on the contract agreement with student teacher and parent signatures what percentage of those have we received that we have i don't know the exact percentage but i would say over 50 percent thus far and we're going to be sending out another compact for middle schoolers that myself and wendy fanning have been working on for our middle schoolers in regards to privileges that they get towards the end of the school year it's going to kind of look like that one and mrs i just want to add mr ollery that the title one compact is a requirement since we are a title one school that our reading specialist is lori romanelli she collects them she makes sure she works with the teachers to get them all returned so after parent conferences now they'll be following up and sending the letters the compacts home again to students who may not have returned them okay and in a title with audit that's what they would come and look for also and lastly the a plus criteria that are in the application i find it interesting that there's absolutely no mention whatsoever of academic performance so there's more it references demonstrating a strong commitment to academic excellence but doesn't say anything about how well our students are doing in order to qualify for an a plus rating so if you are rated as an a or a b school you can apply but if you also follow the link there's a lot more information they're starting to adjust and modify because of kobit 19 and if there's schools out there that are c schools that want to apply to be an a plus school they have to justify what they're doing in their in their schools to promote academic progression interventions and enrichment for their students so i think that's one thing that a lot of people hear of a plus schools or a schools and i think one of the biggest things that you know we have to remember is their state guidelines for that and that's stuff that we could talk about even more so in the in the department any meetings questions thank you very much now as far as i'm concerned this is the best part of the show we have an introduction of our cults of the month take all right so if we can have our quotes of the month line up if we can have we'll start with let's start right here they can bring your little slips of paper with you first right here second right here third right here okay and feel free to come forward when your child is up and you can take pictures we're looking for the most depth um [Music] i'm in preschool all right so mrs lichson from preschool wrote rebecca is always kind she's responsible with her things she's safe in the classroom and at school good job very proud of you rebecca shirt [Music] azalea is in second grade in miss navado's class azalea has shown she's a kind student by helping her classmates and welcoming our new students in class she keeps her hands to herself and makes sure students are as well azelia has finished her work early and correctly and is always willing to participate and ask questions great work azalea my name is okay joaquin is in mrs rodriguez's class and she writes joaquin has many positive characteristics he's kind to his classmates and his teacher he consistently makes safe and responsible choices wherever he goes throughout his day at school he completes his classwork in a timely manner and keeps a positive attitude about learning he gets along very well with his peers my name is owen mcginnis and i'm in third grade so mrs montoya writes owen he comes in every day with such positive attitude ready to get started he works hard helps his peers and make sure everything gets completed keep working hard on when you're doing a fantastic job good job my name is ava salisbury and i'm in third grade so mrs lathan has nominated ava and she's our librarian eva comes to school each and every day with a big smile on her face she always greets the staff members with the hello or good morning she has been a joy to have in library she remembers her book and computer each week she's always ready to lend a helping hand to a friend or myself thank you ava for being such a wonderful student good job mrs wall writes isabella always follows classroom and school roles even when no one is watching she's the first to assist a fellow classmate when they need help organizing their desk or picking up trash around the room she shows kindness kindness to fellow classmates by including others that might not have someone to play with great job right miss mills writes peyton is such a great student and friend to his classmates he's kind to everyone and he's there to make sure everyone has a smile on their face he makes sure that he's safe in the classroom and when walking to anywhere we need to go he's responsible with his schoolwork and make sure his assignments are in on time thank you peyton for being such a great student [Music] miss greer writes jace is always willing to lend a hand to help his fellow classmates in and outside of the classroom he's dedicated to his studies as well as dedicated to having fun out on the soccer fields good job mrs adams writes erica has started off the school year being a great example of how to be safe kind and responsible she is always on task and is thoughtful of others great job erica all right the middle school team writes whether in the classroom or on the football field camilla exhibits a grit and determination that is rare for her age her high expectations for herself drive her to succeed and she takes opportunities to help others along the way she's a true leader good job hi um i'm elijah and i'm in seventh grade the middle school team writes eli is a wonderful student to have in class he's polite respectful and works diligently on his academics he's well respected by both students and staff he's very deserving of this award good job [Music] consistently goes above and beyond an orchestra he's responsible by learning his music and coming prepared and on time in addition calton is kind to his peers and teachers he often will go out of his way to help others in class whether it be tuning or identifying notes calton is safe by making sure he's organized in his space and orchestra overall calton is an outstanding student and i'm so glad to have him in my class good job um we're not a writer i'm in eighth grade so mrs zabo writes of otter i have had the privilege of watching many of my students transition from one great level to another and i'm very proud of each and every one i'm always impressed when kiddos make eye contact and say hello well i know it's normal that most students are shy otto has always been very respectful and has taken the time to stop and say hello thank you otto for continuing to be the kiddo irena did you want to take a picture with all the kids yes yes students yeah all of our quotes of the month if we could get you to come up here we're actually going to have you help us with the next part as well so all through the months go ahead and come on up here we're actually gonna face it this way and have a picture about right right here [Music] oh all right just stand here for me okay so this next part of our meeting is something that we added a couple years ago and it's something that um we really felt our staff works very very hard to create a family environment in our school and they do a lot of things that you know is required of them but then there's some that just go above and beyond and do a lot more that deserve that little extra and so instead of an employee of the month we have what's called the golden horseshoe shoe award where since we're the colts and there is actually a wooden plaque with their name designed on it but we're working on getting the material in and so the plaques will be coming to them last year because of cobin we actually didn't do the award monthly it is admin typically we sit and we discuss who's deserving of this and we decided that last year deserves more than ever some awards and all of our staff stepped up and that's what made us one the only school in pima county that the public school that remained open essentially the entire school year is because of our staff without them it could have happened and so as we discussed that really came to our attention um and so for and we do one for the certified and one for classified staff and so this year for last school year the 2020 2021 overall golden horseshoe award we would like to and unfortunately she's not here so we'll do this again next month when she's able to be here is marine sports and trooper our school nurse who the reason why we felt that she was our candidate is you know it's hard enough being a school nurse any any year but can you imagine doing it during a pandemic with the only school and school board that has decided to remain open and so she took that challenge on and it was a very challenging job and lots of added duties from the county she had to do daily reporting with them as well as health as health screenings for yoga so we just really can't say enough about maureen and being here and being a part of our team and that's really what one of the key big players last year for us being able to remain open as her willingness to cooperate accept the ideas that all of us came up with and helped us execute that school line so big round of applause we really appreciate her the next one is kind of a tough one um and there the reason being is in the meeting lots of the admin team is there and they nominated this person and this person humbly declined and said this isn't for admin this is for our people but she wasn't here today so we reconvened and we decided mrs cuevas was a principal who in her second year as a principal stepped up and led our school through a pandemic and she did it with such class and ease and really listens to our parents and our students and did everything possible to keep our school functioning and keep everybody happy and going including our teachers students parents which is not an easy thing to do in a normal school year let alone a pandemic when everyone has different opinions and she was able to bring us all together and as continental colts we call ourselves a family and this is our mother that really led us through a pandemic so really appreciate it and i really think that every one of our teachers will stand behind me on this nomination so thank you for all that you do all right so now we can get to our somewhat normal year this year so we are looking for our august 2021 certificates for our classified staff this person is amazing i i call her the face of our school because she's the first one that we see when you walk in and she greets everybody with a smile and she tries to help in every way she can from the time she gets here until the time she leaves trying to make sure kids are on the right buses helping us with attendance but anything and everything in between and so once again starting off a new school year she also stepped up this summer and came in and was willing to give up some of her summer time and vacation with her family because one of our staff members was out with medical and took over a job that she didn't know that well but she learned it so that we could get all our students registered and ready ready to go for this school year so miss jenna lynn can you please yes you got it all right we have one more for august of you got to stay up here jen just like the kids do come on for 2021 for august our certified teacher this is one of our teachers that last year was new at teaching for our district came in and we've done lots of changes and you heard about a lot of those changes up there as well but this teacher really really really cares for her students unlike most teachers that i've seen and the compassion and coming in on the weekends and making sure that everything is perfect for those kids and that is our middle school special education teacher sandra quillin please come up stanley came up last year and said you know we really need to do um change our model to reach the students that i have and so she confronted that with admin and with our special ed director we were able to make that happen this year when she came with us fourth quarter with that and so it put on added responsibility and duties to her but you know she hasn't wavered in her endeavor to serve our students especially those with special needs and for those that may know kids with special needs or have special needs you know that's true and she's always there for them and they absolutely love learning because of what this lady does and also she leads a group of programmatic assistants in the middle school that really just are right behind her all the time and really support her so great job she got more congratulations to each and every one of you thank you thank you very much for everything you do uh we understand we we don't want to have a late night for a lot of your family so we'd love to have you stay through the meeting but you're more than welcome to leave if you'd like to so we completely understand grab something grab some pizza that's uh that's a requirement for leaving two pieces okay let's move forward with our consensus yes mr president and i'd like to remove items b c and k thank you okay any further this will entertain a motion on the amended uh consent agenda minus b c and k we'll address those in business [Music] so we dive into these three that are accepted later in their new videos correct yes thank you okay so um what i have provided for you is the handout from the law conference on the mass mitigation phobia 19 so if you could please refer to that presentation and we have been abiding by all of the coping 19 mandates as you know it is mandatory for it's not mandatory for our students to wear masks it's recommended that they wear masks if they want it's an option so i just wanted to refer to page four again is that based on cdc guidance that it is recommended universal indoor masking for all students and staff teachers visitors regardless of vaccination status so we do let everyone know that they are and can wear their masks if they want also added recommendation is for fully vaccinated people who have no exposure to someone who is suspected or decoded maintained to be tested three to five days after exposure so if they've been vaccinated they don't have to stay and expose they don't have to stay out the entire 10 to 14 days they can be tested between three and five days and return if they have the vaccine so i just wanted to make sure that everyone is aware of that on page nine is the face mask required on school buses so again i just wanted to publicly let everyone know and remind them that on january 29 2021 cdc issued an order that required face masks to be worn by all people while on public transportation school buses are considered public transportation and according to the order passengers and drivers must wear a mask on school buses including on buses operated by public and private school systems regardless of explanation status we at continental have not mandated that massively worn on the bus it is still highly recommended that students wear masks we have three out of our nine drivers wearing masks and approximately 25 of the students wearing masks so i just wanted to inform the board of that and make it public that although that is an order that they're required to face we are not requiring that um again also looking at we did send out the acknowledgement forms that we sent out again acknowledging the liability for schools and we sent it out on friday and as of this evening we had 160 signed parent acknowledgement forms which is good so we'll keep reiterating and keep trying to get them in we didn't have any claims filed against our school last year so we're anticipating the same we've been able to continue to mitigate the plan and keep our students safe and we are ensuring hand washing we are giving mass at the gate in the front if two good students want and as they get off of their buses they are being provided hand sanitizer at the gate and as they enter the bus as well so i just wanted to make those few announcements and at this time i'll entertain any questions or discussions that you may have any questions thank you one other thing if i may add we're looking at paying for vaccinated employees who may have to quarantine so i currently have it with our council right now because we did have funding was provided last year for employees who needed to be quarantined or isolated due to covet the funding is no longer available for us so i will get information from our attorney because there are some districts who are using sr3 funds to pay teachers or staff members who have been vaccinated who may happen to either acquire copic or have to quarantine due to exposure and we are um going to be discussing whether we can pay them so they don't have to take their personal safe days being that they were vaccinated so i just wanted to let people know that we'll be getting um information from council on that as well so that we can discuss it at the next board meeting so just fresh off the asba law conference last weekend last week um there was obviously a lot of cova talk a lot of school work talk et cetera and it's fresh off of la voting and i don't know if you all saw that where the la school district the second largest in the country is mandating that vaccinations begin all students 12 and over or you need um the normal excuses for any vaccination or you can do online learning so i don't know if that's in the future in arizona or here but i just it's something that is going to flow somewhere i don't know um and the event that i was at it was last 100 of the time just to give a feel for the asba like him or not and then i think we're going to address the some of the other stuff later on that that happened so for the questions okay thank you kindly okay mr trooper you're up all your wisdom on the well sir right now all right so i don't know if you've seen our big old well digging machine out there um they have got the well down to 700 feet like they told us they would attempt to get it down to um they have laid in all the casings so we are probably about three to four days from completely wrapping up that entire project there's some backflow i'm not a mechanical guy but there's some sort of backflow thing that they still gotta to build and put onto that and i think they still need to drop the the pump down the well as well but other than that the well is just about done um again by hopefully by the end of this week but this was the right choice to go ahead and try and repair our well because if we were to dig another one it would have been twice that yeah i agree it sounds like it's working yes yes everything everything is going according to plan so i just want to give you all that update since we approved that that purchase a couple months back so there's where we're at with that good question that's certainly good news thank you okay i hope you're still up on the district financial report all right inside your packets you have the district financial report as of last friday thursday or friday thursday thursday night and i will go ahead and entertain any questions anybody may have on the current district financial report please remember we haven't closed out last year yet so none of that information from last year has not carried over into this year again one question wouldn't be a meeting without it esther ii funding yes sir we show 187 thousand dollars of salaries and benefits being coded to the federal esser2 fund what does that represent that is the retention stipend that you guys had approved back in what was that may april may that was the retention stipend for those employees who were with us all of last year and then came back and remained with us this year so that was the retention statement that we they told them that we would pay and that stipend ranged from i believe a two and a half hour employee got about hundred and forty dollars up to just over two thousand dollars for an eight hour so when was when was that actually paid not this pay period but the pay period prior when that's right two pay periods ago okay thank you you have the last payday in august okay further questions okay that's all i got for that one okay so that i'll obtain a motion to approve the financial report motion in a second any further discussion mrs allen yes mrs kais yes mr austin aye mr ollery yes and mr mckibben yes mr passes welcome new business purchase over to american civic center like this one's me too so tonight we're asking for approval to issue a purchase order to the american civic center this is our annual washington dc trip um right now we're asking for a purchase order in the amount of 134 625 we did get two bids for this trip um american civic center was the higher of the two bids but we chose to go with them we took one because the other company gave us a bid had filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protections as well as um the trip with american civics also included the dinner crews as well as the uh the theater show so that more than enough but those two items in itself outweigh the 200 difference for them in a trip so tonight i'm asking for your approval to issue that purchase order okay entertain that motion please second motion in a second any further discussion yes this is the same group that we've been doing with wendy how long oh my gosh a long time um i would say probably 2007 yeah so we've had great success most of you guys i missed it because of it but they're a well-done company and especially since we get the extra the cruise and whatnot um yeah i'd fully support it and our track record with them is spotless and i believe that show's also at the ford theater so it's also a nice historical place to see the show right now it's unknown um the amount for this purchase order is basically for every eighth grade student that's available that's eligible to go there will be someone who will lose eligibility because of grades so it's right now i couldn't tell you an exact number and the funding all comes from fundraising i'm sorry it's a firm fixed price that is for every single student to go so if if we lose students on a trip that price will go down so this is the maximum that the trip would be so do we have money uh carrying over from last year on this there is and there is tax credit funds available from previous years but then so approximately do we know how much we're going to have to raise between now and so i want to say that right now there's about 30 000 or so within the tax credit fund we did use those funds last year for the students who didn't get to go and plus they killed the students that were here last year to go on the arizona trip okay so we currently have 72 8th graders so it'll just determine which ones maybe they will hopefully be sending and we would love to be able to send all 72 8th graders if they earn it we'd love to take them so typically the students do raise their funds through tax credit funds they solicit tax credit funds from their family members that goes towards their trip and then they do their dances and their sight and auction and the christmas wreaths the gift the gift raffles so they do a lot of fundraising throughout the year to raise the money so will i be able to buy one of those boxes of candy again oh you sure will all right then they're all ready here all right i'm ready all right good job davidson rumor says the dark chocolate is the best just saying yes okay any further discussion okay mrs allen yes this is yes mr australia mr thank you purchase order cdwg in the amount of 14 264 5.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i pulled out the one policy that we talked about quite a bit last month that's going to be the next one so if you just look at exhibit 13 it's pretty pretty standard i don't think we had any questions last month so we just need to if you don't have any questions again we just need a motion to approve that one all right anybody have any questions no okay please have a motion to approve on second reading uh the board policy number 107 motion warren and doug now all in favor's emotion is red hi any opposed eyes have it all right so then item f is the policy we spent quite a bit of time talking on and i spoke with our attorney i don't know if you had a chance to read this in the packet or not but i said we worked on this together and uh we once we tried to write this policy so that no one can use use our identity our trademarks our graphics uh for personal gain without our approval so is that did that read better now the way you see it just one question bob who would be the person that they would go to for approval without you i think so yeah any questions on that well we inc what we include that in the policy like who to yeah i can add that good idea that's it for that item then so we would if you want to set that for approval kevin we can do that all right anybody have anything else okay please have a motion uh to approve policy to call two two seven zero motion gary and lauren all in favor of the most red say aye aye any oppose eyes have it right my last item is the analysis of enrollment i do this each year in september for you um we did bounce a little bit from last year's low we're up to 1716.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
it was a way for the district to borrow some money to accomplish these projects in 2015 we sold about 14 million dollars in dsub debt service extension bonds so we use that money for these projects as well as like rob said other projects that came up that needed to be addressed and i take that back it was about 10 million dollars was for operations and maintenance and 4 million was used for technology projects for our our technology infrastructure so the dsub dollars were a funding source to help accomplish these projects so that brings us to instead of vision 2020 now that we have kind of branded our envision 308 thanks to faith we're gonna we're going to call this the envision 308 facility and maintenance proposal plan and the idea here is we'd like to build on the success of the vision 2020 plan but with a focus on kind of a facility strategic planning mode what we'd like to do is we'd like to review that vision 2020 talk about the work that was completed what work came up in between the time the plan was developed and 2020 and what work remains to be done what we'd like to do in the previous staff engagements is we went with one building a principal and a building engineer and staff at that building what we'd like to do now is take the notes and there's some really great narratives and and about what some of the issues were at the buildings and to group the buildings together based on a common floor plan so why not have churchill talk to wolf's crossing and south bearing prairie point and say is there something common and i think that getting more voices to talk about the needs of their facility they might be able to identify some things or at least prioritize some things that are really key to that floor plan so we've done that work already uh identifying the similar building floor plans we'd like to update our facility assessment to make sure you know what what work has been done what work is uh is aging and needing to be addressed and then build a facility maintenance schedule so this was really a deferred maintenance plan and we'd like to instead of just focusing on the small parts what's broken and what needs to be done now we want to put it in context of a scheduled maintenance plan which rob has a really good sense of but it would be really interesting to balance his operational maintenance plan with more of a 10 year 15-year maintenance schedule to really find out what are those what are those big dollars those big projects that have to get done to keep the buildings running as efficiently as possible we do have an opportunity to update the building energy consumption uh benchmark and gold data we'd like to look at project cost summary to kind of serve as a financial plan but as you'll see with the envision 308 plan one of the big things that we really want to do is identify not just how much the projects cost but what are our funding opportunities to help us realize the completion of those projects and when we when we do this engagement we want to link the cost of the projects to where some of those dollars could come from and how to best utilize our revenue some grants other funding opportunities as well so here's just a reminder on our envision 308 the finance and facility portion of the the four-tier plan and you can see here the bottom two items review the needs for a general maintenance for the next ten years to alloc and allocate funds accordingly this goes right along with that goal and then also develop a five-year plan to really look at the physical capacity of our buildings and program needs and this also could be looked at in light of this engagement as well so it meets a lot of meets a lot of the efforts that we'll be doing with our envision 308 plan so our next steps our first step was to come talk to the board of education about about that tonight and have a discussion or see if there's any questions about that what i'd like to do is really review the envision 308 facility maintenance proposal in detail with our finance and facility advisory committee we meet on next monday september 20th and we'd like to use board and committee input to update the facility maintenance proposal to make sure it's exactly what we want and what we need and then we'll return to the board on the 27th to talk about the updates to that plan and then we're really excited to start engaging our our building facility groups uh to start talking about common floor plan needs so just wanted to share that with the board and see if there were any questions on that i have a quick question um and correct me if i'm wrong but this is how i heard that in that vision 2020 we had identified just over 29 million dollars worth of projects to complete over that five-year period and we actually only did four million worth of those because another 25 million worth of projects came up elsewhere like that's a little bit concerning to me because that tells me that we didn't do a very good job maybe planning um that we did not anticipate at least some i mean 25 million dollars a lot of facilities issues to have just like crop up unexpectedly um i can i can probably speak to that uh given my history versus dr petsky's um the big uh hurdle if you will to accomplishing that 25.9 million was funding the 4.4 that we did accomplish out of that came out of decent bonds so we didn't you're correct we didn't spend 25 somewhere else we just didn't spend it so we had identified 29 million but we didn't have 29 million to spend on it correct got it oh that i mean does it make me feel good but yes in this better than i did i guess yeah and ruth to answer that or address that a little bit too i think it's important to note that um we part of that 29 million was also um was also improvements so if you take out the improvements and i'll i'll have to get those numbers i'll break them down by pro 81 priority 2 and then priority 3 which were those improvement projects one of the challenges with our one of the challenges is we need to look at a schedule for a schedule for completing the the maintenance and the efficiency of the building so if we get off that schedule like if if we need to save dollars we can easily do that by not doing some projects that year but then this plan will help show us well if you don't do those projects this year instead of spending those dollars you think you can spend them next year but wait there's other projects right behind that that also need to be done so i think it will give the board a more comprehensive view of what a schedule looks like a project schedule versus just deferred maintenance what needs to be done the next five years versus what when's the last time we replaced the the roofs at churchill let's find out when that is that's a 20-year span and really laying them out and putting that in a schedule for replacement did we did we talked about at one meeting about using esser funds for some of this we did and uh the thing with esser is it's really esser funds are really focused on air quality and things that are related to the pandemic so we have to be real selective in what we can use us or dollars for the dsub dollars really are for more like parking lots and roofs and other projects that also need to be done but wouldn't fit under the esser scope but that's one faith and i have been talking about about what is the budget with esser what are our remote learning needs pandemic learning needs and then where could we use some of those dollars for some building maintenance projects i don't we never got the final list of what we were spending on what where correct correct we're going to provide that to you soon can i just i want to clarify that the assumption that you're making is that the board would vote to take out more decept bonds sometimes people call that a backdoor referendum i've heard that before um but d sub bonds are can you explain a little bit more about what they are and what they can and can't be used for yeah so uh debt service extension bonds the the school district uh way back when had a certain debt uh debt service and were able to borrow against that for some of these building improvement needs i would say we're not asking the board to take out more what i'm asking the board to look at is when we put this project list together really take a look at what is what is realistically able to be done within the borrowing limits that we have and uh and um rather than looking at 29 million dollars to do in five years maybe we do identify 29 million but we say you know what in the in this next five years we're going to issue some bonds to pay for projects that cover this eight million dollars worth of projects because keep in mind too we we have to go out to bid and we need to make sure that um uh the projects are done in a timely manner uh that takes a lot of coordination so rather than saying here's 29 million dollars worth of projects we do want to show you the scope of the work but we want to put that into a funding model or start aligning a funding model that's within the district's capacity to be able to accomplish so i just heard you say issue some bonds and then i heard you say also just use the bonds we've already issued and just keep using them no no we're we're paying off this year we're paying off the d sub bonds that we issued in 2015 which um will allow us to have the capacity to borrow borrow dollars towards future capital projects as well so these would be new issues these would be new issues correct thanks for clarifying dr petsky when we are looking at um students in buildings i i'm sure you'll provide updated numbers because i know just by looking at my home school that that is incorrect but also can we show capacity as well so that we understand where we're at with um capacity of these schools so enrollment and yeah capacity and it'll be nice i'm glad i've got a seat at the table in both these capacity because when you talk about student capacity it's okay there's four rooms in this building and each room can hold 25 kids well that's 100 kids but there's also an instructional capacity correct is 25 the right number is it only 20 and if those four classrooms can hold 100 kids what if the lunchroom is only scaled to hold 80 kids so there's the classrooms there's the ancillary spaces there's a lot more to capacity than just square footage so that's a conversation that we've had in the past but i i think we need to revisit that and make sure that we're in agreement on what is instructional capacity um that uh that we stole my my thunder there because that was what i was getting to was perfect the educational outcomes for those students in the buildings um knowing that you know there is there is that so thank you i just would like to see that present in the updated document so thank you and speaking of implications when we're talking about priorities when we give the the report um could you give clarify just clarify and you may know some of this already given that this was you know five years ago what percentage of projects have now moved to priority one and then what are the implications if we don't act on those projects right away because again if you if if you named it in a technical term i may not know what it is in order to to know that that's a priority yeah and then based on those priorities given the percentage of of dollars needed to accomplish that will also help us from a budget perspective knowing what we need in the first two years versus the year three four and then five and beyond yeah and that's what's interesting about where we are in terms of a district and our maturity now too it's you know you look at when oswego east was built you look at when the additions were put on the buildings the wheatlands homestead several other buildings we're right at that age where we're at that 20 year old mark and that's where we really need to look and say we're not building new facilities anymore but we do need to put some dollars into keeping our buildings running efficiently so and the architects will give us that extra set of eyes to let us know is this is this uh really something that needs to be done now or are we end of life on this do we need to look at five years rob when i sat down with rob the first time i appreciated his kind of analogy said john schools you know they live from the time you acquire a like a boiler and they give a life to it and that end of life and you know a couple years before that end of life we start looking at it and saying you know what is our history with this been how reliable has it been sometimes things last a little little bit after that end of life and sometimes they start failing a little before that end of life and some of our systems we're in that part where rob is living in end of life to critical failure and we're doing what we can to keep those systems up and running but as we don't do work more things go from you know three to four years approaching end of life to now they're two or three years into that critical failure mode and that's a very stressful place for anyone to live yes so we wanna we wanna help bring um we wanna help bring some efficiency back to the district or at least find out where we are in that overall life cycle yeah and that's why i pushed a little bit because you you were so eloquent when you said to make sure they were running efficiently but i wanted us to get to the point of thinking about it from a critical failure standpoint just like the cooler we just had recently at what school was that boulder hill boulder hill yeah and it was a significant impact to student learning so i want us to make sure that we understand what mechanicals are at that critical failure because it could impact our schools and our students significantly i have concerns um so the you know the previous study was done it seems like it produced the you know the pie in the sky this is what we would like to do and it's going to cost us much money which we know we don't have and so we spent a tiny bit on what we needed to do now in what i'm looking at i don't see i did not see a single priority one listed i saw twos and threes that page was just a sample of the whole so it might not have shown priorities oh yeah this here this was a fair and unsatisfactory that's just a sample of about uh about 30 or 40 pages in this plan but the point still being is those are you know lower ranked ones as eugene said we have to go back and look at what we've missed but if the if the study can't be implemented then it doesn't help anyone and we really need to think about where the funding is coming from our our district really a big piece of how our district got to where it is now financially was through this huge expansion and now not being able to maintain our buildings and so it just it makes me a little bit nervous thinking we're just going to keep borrowing and borrowing um and so i i would love to see that calendar of how we're going to do this lay it all out and i just um in in this this slide here it's kind of hard to see but you'll see that is the blue column is the first year so 2015-16 and 2016-17 and that does have priority one projects you'll see it's about seven million dollars the first year and then about 6.3 million in kind of critical things that needed to be addressed and then the the next kind of salmon bars that you see there's 2017-18 and 18-19 then we go down to about another six million in priority two 5.6 million in priority two the next year and then the final year those are all priority three are kind of improvement projects that's 4.4 million so you can kind of get a sense of where we were with those dollars there but we really want to flush that out more and like like rob said our our intent now is instead of just saying here's a bunch of projects and this is what it costs to do it we want to take time to really delve into our financial situation and say what is our what are our capital dollars that we can afford without any borrowing how much of this can we do and then where is that tipping point where we do need to borrow some money to address some of these projects and what does that cost so we really want to delve into what rob is calling a what did you call it just a this is instead of a spending plan this is going to be a funding plan well and i'd like to see us explore um just additional sources of revenue whether that's grants whether that's corporate sponsorship whether that's community fundraising i think we have to also look at where can we bring more funds in where we're not just borrowing yeah i agree so good other questions or ideas robin i really appreciate you uh taking a listen to this and all of your questions and i'm really looking forward to rob and i are both on the finance facility committee and we'll we'll bring this to that group and have another conversation as well thank you dr paxty thank you rob appreciate the presentation 7.3 is an informational item regarding the district dashboard and the calendar of annual reports for envision 308 we feel it's important for us to share our progress with the community and board on the initiatives outlined in our strategic plan on a regular basis by sharing the progress of the work we are able to tell our story and how well we are accomplishing the board uh what the board has approved us to do in the classroom we ask our teachers to formula assess our students how they're progressing towards their intended goals the district dashboard will serve as a form of a formative way of assessing how we uh while we are accomplishing the work at the district level in a transparent methodical way so faith aquest is going to be covering the various components of the dashboard that will be used to report the health and progress of our initiatives faith all right thank you for this opportunity we want to talk tonight about the big pieces that would go on to our website that the community staff students would be able to refer back to as we chart our progress and it's important to note that there are different kinds of dashboards as you view other school districts there are some that are just numbers like student achievement and attendance data and all of those things are important there are other dashboards that are more of a narrative where there is a story and there are updates and progress the approach we'd like to take is both of those where we are sharing the news both in our numbers and things that are easily measured but also some of our narratives of the progress that we are making on some of our plans so we want to get into a rhythm that every year we have a calendar of reports that become part of our process where we update the board and our community on progress in key areas at previous board meetings we've shared this calendar of annual reports where if you look at facility plans like dr petsky was just talking about we could get into the routine of every october we would see that and then see those updates november after student learning data becomes available in october we would always be looking at student learning and achievement data followed by the budget and get into this routine of these are the plans that we've done over the year these are the next things that we would do that does it doesn't mean that we couldn't change the order of these things or that additional reports would be made but instead of waiting for community or board to say how are we doing in a particular area we would be proactive in providing that schedule on the updates this next piece and if you can't see it that's fine the next few slides break into this and i really want to thank um scott fidel and theresa komitas that they've put some mock of what this would look like and i'll go down just to the bottom piece of that for each of those gray tiles that is that annual report of calendars that i just showed you two slides ago so we'd have an envision 308 review tile there in 2021 of august and then climate for learning which i'll be doing later on this evening in september followed by special education facility plans all of those pieces and what we are thinking is that after we give this report we would provide a link to either the board report the slide deck or video that people can go back to and look to when they want to revisit progress on those pieces in addition to having the tiles and those linked we'd like to highlight that what we're suggesting is at the time of each of the annual reports it would be evaluated for the amount of progress so the evaluation would be done by the administration and the board at the time of that report and we would jointly decide is that making adequate progress is it making great progress and then color code that tile with the corresponding amount of progress we're suggesting that we start this in february because a lot of things are just now being put in place so it would be hard to say in the first month of school how much progress has been made so i thought that might be a little hard to visualize so i'm going to go through and do just an example with that so those are the color coding with the making great progress being that kind of sd 308 blue and then making progress holding constant and regressing so for example if we were going to do that tonight on the climate for learning framework we would give our presentation and then we would make a recommendation on the amount of progress that we think is making and is it appropriate or not and then we would jointly decide which color we would turn that tile and then also put in the link and or the slide deck or a video that goes along with that that community members could look either right after the board meeting or they might want to review it four or five months down the road and then they wouldn't have to hunt through all of the board meeting reports so that was the first section where we were talking about an annual report i also wanted to highlight a second section of the dashboard that we are wanting to include and this would be a separate section just on key scores and state comparisons and goals the sections that were looking about would also be jointly evaluated at the time that we have this data and say are we making adequate progress toward where we want to go or not and the six areas that we're looking at right now are the percentage of students passing state reading tests the percent of students passing state math tests the percent meeting with state s.a.t scores the percent of freshmen on track to graduate our graduation rate and the percent of students taking dual credit or ap courses now this data can be desegregated and it would be as part of the student learning report but these are some of the large numbers that are already available on the illinois report card that community members would see and we put these front and center and keep track of these as major milestones and mile markers of the progress we'd like to make questions that sounds cool it does sound pretty cool doesn't it i guess i have one question in regards to the jointly deciding the amount of progress appropriate appropriate is there a way or can we predetermine benchmarks and timelines and automatically update the progress based on those so that it's a little bit more definitive and objective versus subjectively figuring out i'm thinking this through at the same time i'm saying it because like for the student for the student achievement i think it works if we determine what percentages are needed or what percentages are our our goal and each box or you know segment is updated color coded accordingly is there a way to do the same thing for the other areas i would say yes and no first on the student achievement piece where it does appear a little easier percentage of students passing reading and math tests as we want those to climb that gets up pretty easy when you look at graduation rate where you're already at 96 percent or 97 showing that you're going to make great progress there isn't a whole lot of room to get better than that so it might be hard to have many different ranges of what adequate progress would be but that could be ascertained with the pieces around i don't know pick professional development or what that would look like i think after you do the first year or the first report where we say where do we want to be by next year that becomes easy but to say right now here are the measurements over the next five years that are going to be there when we haven't done the staff survey to get through we haven't asked our parents or the students about what that would be it might be a better place to stay at the initial baseline when we do this to project out what adequate growth would be for the next year and the year after that and kind of agree at that time would be my suggestion or my recommendation rather than us coming to you with what all the adequate progress would be in the next month here when a lot of this is still being built for the first time in my life i'm also a little about student learning data because as covid and things come back it's going to be very hard to predict what amount of growth or where we're starting from hopefully we will be leaps and bounds and make great great gains but then after that you might you might not have as many amount of percentage growth five years in a row especially if we come out of the box doing really really well also my experience would tell me that when you start a new instructional practice in a regular time not a pandemic sometimes you see a little dip in instruction and achievement data while everybody's figuring it out and how to teach it so you wouldn't want to say well we to slice the next five years in equal amounts and say well we're not making progress so yes i think we can do that but my recommendation would be to do it at each of the times that we make these initial presentations to say what are we looking for by the next year and then do it that way guys maybe not a question maybe more of a so the illinois you guys can everybody at home can get most of this information that she's talking about already for and literally any school district in the state it's on illinoisreportcard.com right so literally i guess my question is would it be better to color code it the same way that they're coding it or are we just anticipating that our parents aren't looking there well and they don't look at what is necessarily the adequate amount of progress for our district as to you know what our attendant what our graduation rate is or what freshman on track you can compare it to the state um and there are some pieces of what that growth would look like but we would set our own targets for where we want to be in the percentage of improvement so i just like i would question that like right now i'm looking at it and it says we've got a 96 graduation rate 94 of our ninth graders are on target to graduate right so like i i caution setting our own numbers for somebody that's really looking to move into this district maybe and wants to look at the whole picture i'd just like to keep it kind of the same right on those two examples that you gave when you're already at 96 percent i'm not going to say we're going to be at 100 yeah in four years um well there is no data for covid for the reading and the no this year is going to be have to use be used as a benchmark data and then move on from move on from there as faith said so that's where i was kind of going as well so what are we basically saying that we would use start this dashboard a year from now since we're not going to have the data i'm wanting to what we were suggesting when we talked about it in cabinet is starting in february with all of the reports that are here we will still be doing a student learning presentation in november but that would be more of a baseline of where we're at setting goals and things for the next school year partial and and for ali's point that report card i i think is what two years off two years behind or is it some of it is up to date two years off there's different pieces of data that are available okay what other feedback and questions does the board have oh one more narrative can you give me an example so would it be just an anecdotal story of when you're saying providing the narrative as well because i think stories are great to tell but how would we incorporate that so part of what we are wanting to do is conduct interviews with students conduct those types of pieces so that when we come back and we talk about not only here's what the staff data or the survey data had we have some of those anecdotals of are we improving in engagement and instruction with students and not basing it just off surveys but talking through that it might be some feedback that we received in narrative form from staff or from parents but something that is more of than just hard numbers from survey data and it could also be here's the progress that we've made and just showing some of the things that we've done as far as professional development training pieces that are more of a checklist or a story of the year than it is a score or a percentage and you may not be able to answer now but i just want to make sure that we have that those stories are representation of the whole so that it tells the entire story even if it's a story about how we're about an area of improvement but just telling the whole story so that if anyone looks at that video they won't feel like it's sure she only could put in the good stuff exactly oh i'm thinking what a great opportunity for our student ambassador committee he's making homework for himself i am any other questions okay all right item 7.4 is an informational presentation on the climate for a learning framework the climate for a learning framework incorporates seven different components needed for perpetual improvement in the areas academics social emotional learning and many others faith's going to share the seven components and just talk about how they fit together to provide a comprehensive education experience for students so i'm very excited to talk to you about climate for learning climate for learning is this vision of where we want to go of incorporating all of those pieces that are so critical to making a learning environment it's not just instructional practices and a standalone it's not just behavior and a standalone sel and you can't have people working on three different pieces of all of those things without combining it into a common vision that explains how it goes through so just an example from my own teaching career i had a year where well behavior management was not the greatest and i had a month where i really struggled my math vocabulary was phenomenal in the instruction but if classroom behavior isn't there it doesn't matter how great my math vocabulary instruction was so this is a vision on how we are going to go through all of these components so the next few slides just break this piece of the climate for learning down into its different components the very first one is social emotional learning standards need to be taught within all of our classrooms and also reinforced and where it really comes home is when we give students an opportunity to reflect on how they're doing on learning those pieces and kind of monitoring their own social emotional health and their own social emotional standards as they react with others the next one is expectations or behavior believe it or not we wrote this well before covet happened but oh these last two pieces have been so critical as we've come back together and we really have to teach our students um what are the expectations for behavior uh and then reinforce them and with positives and those kinds of things and making sure that we're all in agreement and have taught what our behavioral expectations are and then the next piece is having social emotional learning targets you'll see later on in the presentation that we talk about academic learning targets but eventually we want to be really upfront with the students and sharing with them what it is we want them to learn and practice with social emotional and how it integrates with what we're teaching the next piece with youth voice and engagement is really what will drive change if we get a lot better at honoring and elevating not just the aggregate but the individual and the range of our student perspectives both at the classroom at the school level we will become better at our instruction we need to you know encourage our students to become leaders encourage them to not only identify problems but help us solve those problems and then help make decision makers not only will it make our system better it will also be great practice for them as adults for they can be civic minded and advocate for for themselves and we're excited to to work more in this component five i'll apologize in advance i could probably spend four days giving institute on this on what this looks like but it's having this type of learning environment that is really supportive culture responsive and i'll talk a little bit more about what that looks like have to have strong relationships and then instruction needs to be challenging for every student but it also needs to have a time in every day that is students can have success it needs to be engaging so i'm going to talk a little bit more about cultural responsive instruction because there's been a lot of talk about that and i believe that there may be some misunderstandings so culture responsive teaching is an approach that we want to weave into every aspect of student learning it really focuses on students from their assets and then what do they bring to the classroom so i talk about how this is more about how do we support students than sort students and know what their successes are and then build from that and it has to raise the expectations and make all of our learning materials and our instructional practices relative for all students and finally it means that our students need to see themselves in our curriculum so some examples of what that means here from the literacy framework that we have at k8 we really need to examine our current curriculum and make sure that our reading selections reflect our students diversity some examples we need to examine our practices and make sure that each student has success and challenge if you look at our own reading data our girls outperform boys by a lot and this was pre-coveted and when i walked classrooms some of that is due to instructional practices at the elementary level people tend to teach the way they learn elementary teachers are predominantly female so it is not shocking that you see a lot of instructional strategies that are geared more toward the female brain and the female learner there are ways to adjust to that and not have girl to be student achievement go down but to bring boy student achievement up alongside there are districts that we've already done this in and it can be really successful another way to look at this is we have white student achievement that is higher than our black or hispanic achievement some of this is due to instructional practices or the type of material that we choose if a student can't see themselves very often in the material it is not very relevant or engaging to them i included at the bottom of this our differentiation statement and our diversity statement that is actually on the one page literacy framework and you'll see how strongly the committee felt as this was authored about making sure that as we choose instructional practices and as we choose materials we are choosing with all of our students and each of our students in mind the next example is with math and as you will see in sd 308 our boys outperform our girls in math when we walked classrooms we saw a lot of instructional practices that was more geared toward how boys learn and this can be changed by including more discussion work and again when i've done this in the past that doesn't mean that the boys aren't doing as well we just raise the instructional practices to meet the needs of all students another way to look at our data and to make sure that we're being culture responsive although i know when i talk about this with staff we often just take culture off and say responsive to the needs of the learners in front of you our low-income students perform much much lower than our non-low-income students and research would say that's because we're not spending enough time on explicit math vocabulary instruction if we change our instructional practices it won't cause our non-low-income students to do any poorly anymore wow my mother the mathematician would be excited for that one they would not do poorer is that the right word they would not do as well they won't go down but the other students would increase with what that looks like another example if we spend a lot of time in math or consumer education and we're talking about checkbooks but we're not talking about debit cards we're not being really relevant so it's about knowing what students need what they want and their learning styles the third and final example i'll give is we need to make sure that all of our students have a trusted adult at school our high schools have been doing some work pre-pandemic and we'll do some more again this year surveying students and if we have students at school that do not have one trusted adult we can put all the great instructional practices in place but if you're not coming to a community that you feel accepts you and you have somebody that trusts you it's not going to happen so we also have to be responsive to that need about building relationships and and feeling connected and by creating these types of classrooms we hope to address many of the needs of students that we currently aren't i want to take just a minute and talk also about critical theory it's unfortunate to me that critical race theory crt also can be culture responsive teaching and the acronyms have been used interchangeably critical race theory just so that everyone knows is an academic concept that's over 40 years old the core idea is that race is a social construct and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice but it is something that is embedded in our policies and our systems critical race theory is a very complex topic it's reserved for higher levels of education often in graduate school critical race theory is not being taught in sd 308 so just a side by side comparison again culture responsive instruction or if you just want to call it responsive instruction is an instructional strategy that we are embracing that really mandates and makes it imperative that we get to know our students we know their backgrounds we know their aspirations and we are doing our best to tailor instructions so that they can be successful that is being implemented in sd-308 critical race theory it's a concept that's sometimes used in college and graduate programs to study the constructs of race that is not being taught in sc308 all right then um this slide i'm also really excited about this is a component of the types of classrooms that we want and this affects staff and students because i'm asking administrators to join me we were a little hokey on august 6th and i got down on one knee and gave them engagement rings and said will you engage with me and you know we did all this because that engagement and creating and designing around this we can model it for our teachers reinforce it for teachers and so that teachers see it and then call attention to the teachers that are already doing this with students we will see more and more of this and what this is is just what's the district administrator's role in creating and designing these types of environments what's the building administrators the teachers and the students and the critical area is incorporating learner autonomy do we have some choice and some different differentiation in that and then collaborative structures you need to have engagement with people talk to one another and structure that so the learning really has an impact you need to be explicit about what learning instruction is going to be with learning and targets and how it will be assessed we need to spend a lot more time on inquiry and less time on memorization in doing those things where students are applying whether those students are teachers or principals or third graders what does that look like and how do you apply that and finally and critically we have to have a level of trust and safety between all of the members of the learning team or people can't learn and be at their best and then component six is staff social emotional learning if our staff aren't taking care of themselves and are very stressed out or are not where they need to be they can't possibly teach at their best so we have to continue to provide ways for our staff to take care of themselves but for them also to cultivate and develop their own cultural competence their own emotional confidence and maintain that they have a strong community and then the seventh piece of this is supportive discipline so i talked about how we have to have behavioral expectations and be very clear about that you also need to have consequences but you have to have discipline policies that are instructive and restorative so that when they come back to school from the consequences or those pieces you're still building that community and then working together to find solutions to make sure that this doesn't happen again questions on the climate for learning framework i don't have a question but i'd like to say thank you for clarifying crt for all of us um i know many of us understand but it's important that we as a community understand it and i just wanted to acknowledge that the this work of the district and faith knows and a lot of other people in the district office were a part of a presentation that was done nationally and this work of ours is being asked for around the nation so thank you dr sparlin and faith for for the work it was the presentation with the midwest naked woody plain center yep actually yep yep we're getting a fun few follow-up phone calls how do you do this i was just gonna say the exact same thing that you did latonya i appreciate the clarification hopefully that can help going forward and i think i know for me if i know that somebody cares about me then i'm more likely to care about what that person is talking to me about and i think that's fairly universal so when our students know that they have people that genuinely care about them as a person i do believe that that will help improve student performance so good stuff absolutely um i would just want to talk a little bit about the student column specifically that the kind of first and second well all of it to be honest with you but really talking about student efficacy when it when we're when we're looking at engagement making choices and taking ownership you know that really is um i think like with it the first but the students and the teachers those go hand in hand they can't really be you can't have one without the other teachers designing classrooms that are student-led so it's really you know what are we what we're doing to set up students so that they are creating their own goals achieving their own goals because we know that student efficacy increases when we do do that so it's nice to see that i just wish we had that language more student-led and student efficacy driven just to make sure that we're capturing that okay but again i this is incredible work and when it comes to student achievement and efficacy incredibly important in what in what you're doing so thank you one of the things that i met with some parents a couple of weeks ago and i think this is a very important distinction to make as well but there is a concern or an idea out there that social emotional learning is a vehicle through which crt critical race theory is delivered can you touch a little bit upon we know that we know what social emotional is but i don't know how that distinction happened or that came up with that but i think it's very important um and i think it's something you know that parents are worried about and they should we should provide them with that answer right and i'll i'll give you an answer but they're also if parents are like well i don't want to go on what faith allquest says um there are social emotional learning standards for the state um that are linked to our website that they can go look at and and scroll through by grade level to see what those standards are and you won't see things in there that are related to critical race theory at all social emotional learning is not something new we've always talked about the importance to having rules to talk about how we would set goals for short term and long term how to manage your own emotions how to understand someone else's perspective how to take care of your own physical and mental health and know ways to de-stress all of those things are critical pieces of social emotional learning um that didn't have anything to do with critical race theory thank you i think the um the framework is great it's really beautiful and hits on so many different areas of what we want for our children the questions i have and they might not be answerable tonight but my next thought is what you said okay how right people are calling you how like how are we implementing it what does it look like in the classroom and then how are we supporting the staff and implementing it and providing that professional development um you know especially when i think of restorative practices that's a whole mindset change well we're not trying to do all seven components at once by october okay um so one of the things that we worked on over the summer with junior high and high school staff is developing training for learning targets with key leaders and department chairs and those were delivered in the first couple of institute days and then we're getting ready to do all of our classroom walkthroughs we start next week where we'll be looking at learning targets and this isn't an evaluation time of staff this is more of formative assessment how are we doing so we know whether we need to go back and do professional development for lots of the staff or a portion of the staff and then looking at what are the next pieces collaborative structures we were just talking about today once we get learning targets in places collaborative structures and pieces of that what does that look like and is that a next piece of this and then social emotional learning we had brand new curriculum and materials to get out to our staff and they all received training k-12 on social emotional pieces and are now putting that in place but we haven't said social emotional learning targets yet you know there are other of these pieces because you need to really get in success builds on success so you have to do some of these pieces well and then go a little deeper but we thought i'm a believer that you also have to know the whole picture of where we're going so that a new initiative isn't one more thing that's not we do death by initiative and education a lot and unless you tie it all together into where you're going it can just feel like a whole lot of disjointed things that don't make sense the literacy framework fits into this the the math framework fits into this as the high schools were working on their behavioral expectations for the first time that fits into this so different levels or different schools even are in different places and we'll have to differentiate that instruction but we are going to have minimum expectations for the whole district as we move forward so that no one's left behind in that progress and if you want to talk about it more or chart it out more i'm glad to do that too so i i see and it's this and envision 308 really have to be like yes and then yes that's your golden thread to follow in making your decisions correct how is this tying into the sst days at the high school so with the student support time that you're talking about then there are that differentiation piece now the first few are really getting out some of the big components of that everybody needs to know about how do you work navions how do you do you know those pieces where it is instead of taking time out of every second period that's happening but what we're looking at for that success piece or even that relevant piece some of our students need a lot of intervention and i know there's different ways and you've shared some of the things about that your high school is doing but this also is a time that if students are not needing intervention that it could be let's go work on making this really relevant what are some things or projects that you want to really do that are going to get you excited about school or connect to school and could also be that application or inquiry piece of what you've been doing in regular physics class and how that would and students will have some choice and some autonomy to make those decisions and it wouldn't just be for our struggling students and hopefully by giving students choice and places to really practice some of those skills it flows very nicely into what we're attempting to build here with the climate for learning but i just like i found it as a as a teacher i found when you said death by initiatives like very hits home for me so i guess my concern is more particularly at the high school because i have a kid in high school so i see all the meetings that they're going to right so like i guess my concern is that we're we're not putting more on the staff without training right or like you know like my fear in general is that you know like we just keep adding and adding and adding and piling on and on top of everything else that we're doing now we've got to implement social emotional learning and i will tell you that there may be some staff members out there who are not comfortable with that so my my fear is that you know not only that we're pushing them out of their comfort zones but what happens when they don't do it well because it will happen depending on and with anything that we roll out we have some people that do really well at it that could probably get up and teach it already to others uh and then we have um staff that are struggling with that and part of that is being really clear on what the expectation is and the training that is needed and then just like at the classroom level you do a formative assessment and you look and you see by walkthroughs or by discussions at department chairs is this three or four people that need assistance i'm going to pull them aside and do what i need to do if it's more than half boy we're not you know we need to back up and we need to spend some more time at department meetings or institute days and kind of you have to be responsive to the learners whether it's the teachers that are there or the students and then react to that and some of that is knowing their stress level knowing where they're at we have you know just at the high school level different departments are in different places and embracing learning targets because some of them have been doing it for a while or doing some of it some of it's brand new you're going to have different discussions with them based on what their background knowledge is and where they're ready to do that you have to meet the learners where they're at right i just if you're going to get student buy-in you've got to get staff buy-in yes right and so when we talk about designing for engagement this isn't just hey teachers go do this for students we have to do that for the types of learning environments for teachers when i talk to principals i got to do learning targets i got to have collaborative structures i need to give them time to interact with it and apply it not just sit and get meetings or sit and get professional development i mean how are we making sure that's happening i guess would be my next question well one of the things that we've done is i've created a staff evaluation piece and when i did the learning targets for the department chairs i had them grade me okay for uh for principal autonomy or for teacher autonomy how do i do for the level of inquiry how do we do so then we're reinforcing this and giving evaluation of ourselves and then as our principals have been doing trainings like this with their staff they were encouraged also to use the same assessment tool that i gave so they're getting feedback on how they're doing because part of it's being authentic and being real with where you're at and not saying that you're an expert on everything but here's where we're going along that progress i think that's how you get teacher buy-in anything else before we move on good okay 8.0 action items can i get a motion for 8.0 action items 8.1 8.1 approval of bills for payment i make a motion to authorize the payment of bills in the amount of two million four hundred and three thousand three hundred and thirty thirteen dollars and seventy-two cents as presented mrs corona aye dr marino aye mrs johnson aye mr gatewood aye mrs swanson aye mrs doyle motion passes 7-0 can i get a motion for 8.2 approval of resolution to join jewel settlement i make a motion to approve the resolution authorizing litigation against manufacturers distributors and sellers of electronic cigarettes and vaping products second can we describe this before we vote on it yeah this is the litigation where um school districts are targeting are focusing on jewel because jewel targeted youth with their vaping you know watermelon flavors and things like that marketed toward youth and the schools see a huge disruption in the academic program we see discipline problems we see supervisory issues we see a lot of we see a lot of negative impact due to vaping in the schools and so this would help us to recoup some of the funding and the resources that we put into countering some of those activities just want to make sure i didn't know if we had talked about it okay mr gatewood all right mrs johnson hi mrs doyle hi mrs swanson aye dr marino aye mrs simultan aye mrs cloner aye motion passes seven zero eight point three approval of intergovernmental agreement with kendall county food pantry can i get a motion i make a motion to approve the intergovernmental agreement with the kendall county food pantry second mrs toriel aye mrs swanson aye mrs cloner aye mrs simelton aye mr gatewood aye mrs johnson aye dr marino aye motion passes 7-0 can i get a motion for 8.4 approval of recommended new board advisory committee members i make a motion to approve the recommended candidate candidates for the equity policy and legislative and the teaching and learning board advisory committees second mrs croner aye mrs johnson aye dr marino aye mr gatewood aye mr swanson aye mr storial aye mrs simonton aye motion passes seven zero can i get a motion for 8.5 approval a personnel report i make a motion to approve the personnel report as presented second a second sorry mr gatewood hi mrs johnson hi mrs dorial aye mrs swanson nope dr marino aye mrs simonson aye mrs corner aye motion passes 6-1 can i get a motion to return to closed session i make a motion to enter closed session under statutes 5 ilcs 120-2c1 the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of certain employees and individuals second mrs krohner hi dr marino aye mrs johnson aye mr cate boy aye mr swanson aye mr storiel aye mrs simonton aye we now enter closed session
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
iu iub has over 45 000 staff and students on campus those students live together party together they see a lot of one another bcsc last week had 67 positive cases i do not know how many staff and students are in bcsc but my guess is it doesn't exceed ten thousand so a place with less than a quarter of the population has more positive coveted cases the difference here is that in iub over 92 percent of the staff and students are vaccinated have received at least one dose of the vaccine the best way to ensure that students can remain in school and continue to receive an education is to increase the proportion of bcac staff and students that are vaccinated whether it is through whatever means i don't know what you have available to you i don't know what you as the school board can do but that would be my recommendation to you in order to keep students in school and if at all possible to continue to save lives thank you thank you mr liu [Applause] please i will ask that you will always be respectful of everyone who is speaking mark nimmolek i do apologize on last names uh it was check check mark neymar okay i have a little something i'd like to read that i wrote about a gas called carbon dioxide not an insignificant gas when it comes to masking carbon dioxide is a waste product of human respiration like any other biological waste it is harmful to re-ingest the earth's atmosphere contains only 0.041 percent of carbon dioxide higher levels are considered a pollutant and hazardous to humans anything greater than about four percent is very dangerous to breed yet four percent co2 is exactly what we humans exhale when resting like sitting at a school desk the average volume of that exhale is about a pint the average volume of space inside a standard n95 mask is about half that that averages out to to breathing an atmosphere of 1.5 percent co2 that is three times over osha's limit on indoor air pollution in the workplace but that's just for the first breath after applying the mask the math is cumulative and the percent increases with every exhale of a higher percent co2 comes an ever increasing percent of inhaled co2 humans are not designed to breathe 1.5 plus percent co2 besides increased respiration and heart beat heart rate the body is subjected to a litany of health consequences let me reword with every exhale an n95 mask traps about a cup of 4 percent co2 which is breathed right back in with every inhale this waste co2 mixes with a double volume of regular air from outside the mask and raises the co2 level of inhaled air to 1.5 percent this is extremely high co2 atmosphere to be breathing it may not sound like much but 1.5 is 38 times the concentration in the natural atmosphere and in violation of osha's standards by 300 percent impaired cognitive functioning and other health consequences occur at only five times the natural consequences and i'm not an expert but impaired cognitive functioning doesn't seem like it would mix with school and education very well thank you thank you very much thank you for those views made the point of coming and sharing your thoughts we do appreciate the articles and i'll be sure to share them with all my colleagues that's it for those who signed up so we will move on to the what on our agenda please okay doctor said you have a few items information that might take a moment or two one is just getting through the policy revision recommendations that were made for the first time at the last school board meeting so second reading tonight and then we do have mr phillips will be doing a budget work session here shortly so i'm just going to quickly review the various revisions that we had again this is a group that we work with to make sure we stay on top of federal changes in legislation state changes in legislation uh any uh case law or anything else that that might result in us needing to change or revise our policies so starting with bylaw zero one one two which is a governance this simply gave us the option or we we confirmed the option of making sure it's clear that our school corporation does accept transfer students and there are other school corporations that don't and they're just language that was needed to explain that in that governance part of our our policies uh three policies here all related wording very similar but it breaks it down by my office as well as the offices of or the employment of professional staff members as well as employment of support staff members and gets into anti-nepotism and anti-nepotism provision so changes in that language that was in your in your packet again three different places in policy 2266 gets into nondiscrimination on the basis of sex and education programs or activities so revise policy that we've had this is specific some terminology changes so as of january 2021 there was a federal change in the recognized definition of rape and that is included in that policy 2266.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
that's a lot for one teacher to have i mean it is a lot it's a lot of classroom manager our staffing model is 225 any other questions nope i'll make the motion to approve of the addition of the peer professional and territorial channel second only paper thank you next the next one is an additional paraprofessional for preschool and this is one typically it's for a special needs child but our child find is doing a great job there as well the kids are coming in and a lot of them are requiring more support and this one's more for safety this little guy or this little one that's coming in but we did receive a grant that we can cover with a grant to cover this one so um thank you moving right along to item 8c and now we're going to ask for an additional kindergarten teacher so that we can get closer to our staffing model and pull a couple of kids up while three to four kids out of a class will still be sitting over the staffing model slightly but that pair will help out and do you already have somebody in mind for this um well we have a student teacher right now who is in kindergarten giving a certification that we could put who has also worked for us previously um so i know our classroom management style i know all of that and she's if i went off my last applications nobody fell other than the one that didn't truly fall out of the sky so i would probably lean towards moving this student teacher into the position i heard an emergency start until she gets finished now will the paraprofessional be in addition to this or all right i'll make a motion to approve the addition of one kindergarten teacher at territory thank you thank you item 8d personnel report i have one correction so there is a supplement so make sure you get yourself as well uh on the initial personnel report number four if you look all the way over to the right we have a an effective date of five i can't read the 24 excitement it should be 5 24 22 the end of this school year okay that was going to be my quarter right so that is the end of this school year that as a correction needs to be made this yes um i am after reading over this i'm not okay with the way that this is coming and here's why is i see a letter visitation and then i see it come back uh-huh and i feel like we i've been on this board for six years and i've seen lots of letters of resignation that hasn't given other people the opportunity to state what they have an issue with so i'm just asking why why this one because there were in the letter of resignation there was what i thought was a personal attack and so i i gave the person that was the subject of that personal attack the opportunity to respond because i i do feel like we've had personal attacks on other employees before yeah i don't think to the same extent though and you know i i think you're right but i don't think nearly to the same extent i just like things to be done fairly and i just i would hope that everybody that had a chance to defend themselves gets a chance to defend themselves so you don't necessarily have an issue with that the response being included you saw other people haven't seen myself i don't have a problem with the fact that somebody is able to respond right but i think that everybody should have the chance and that's fair to me that's fair because there's been certain situations that have brought been brought in front of us that we don't know the second side and so i think what i'm just asking for is that one person is allowed to state that that everyone should be allowed to update their sites yeah and john just for clarification that if we approve his personnel report tonight his resignation will have been effective as of independent this year no next year is next year he his his letter well that's where i read his letter as that's that's why i was i was confused by it also but his letter is effective the end of this current school year uh okay that's that's my concern so this is my question and i don't know if we should discuss this now or an executive session uh we can't do it in the executive session because it's not noticed i can answer it later okay yeah yeah uh so even though he has all this communication he still wants to teach this coming year correct and we're working through it i met with him today and we're we're coming to some agreement that that will allow him to finish the year our goal is to afford to finish the year um strong and doing what he's doing in a in a way that works for the district and for him okay i i again i was going to ask for an executive session i can't now so i can't talk about him yeah uh so basically i'll say is that you and cindy feel comfortable us approving this report as it stands well he's resigned so yeah you know there's not just phobia on the staff well but we can't terminate them so yeah that's the only option that really didn't know we're just gonna make sure we all understand he will be on staff this year yeah okay and you you and cindy feel comfortable dealing with it during this year well we yeah i believe so right to me that's the most important thing uh i think all of us read very carefully uh both his letter and cindy's response cindy which was excellent uh i can't believe what you've done over this last year to try to resolve this but uh no i just want to feel comfortable that you all feel comfortable letting this person continue on uh understand i believe so we had a good meeting today so that was so just as a summary one new classified 40 classified subs eight resignations one certified change four classified changes 14 extra duties and 135 timesheets [Laughter] a lot of those were friday school which we had we started last week which was um those are those not those were on the supplement correct but there was other timesheets so yeah so all right so i'd entertain a motion to for the personality report but please picture that says with correction update yes i will make a motion to approve the personnel report as presented with the correction on number four um the year corrected to 2022.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so this is a purchase order uh to go through our s or three funds we are going to be purchasing some uh some tablets for our teachers so since this is over the procurement limit of ten thousand dollars even though it is on a purchasing contract bringing it to you tonight for your approval to make this purchase okay entertain a question please some move segments motion second in discussion yes maybe it's just me but i don't recall in the past however many years that we've had lineups on this for individual just for full disclosure or because it's out of a different budget any time that there's a purchase over the limit of 10 000 the board has to approve that purchase before us moving forward with that so that's why you're seeing these purchase orders tonight okay you'll be able to get these with the current situation with the inventory you think you'll be able to get in there so some of these some of these quotes are a little bit old uh but we will be purchasing up to that amount with with these uh purchases okay and since that's the amount that the purchase order has been approved for we will not be doing over that amount so if that means i can only get 13 tablets that's what we will get okay any further questions okay mrs allen yes mrs keith yes mr ashley mr ellery and mr mcgivin yes motion passes thank you another purchase order cdwg in the amount of twenty one thousand nine eleven thirty five yes so these are gonna be for 85 new chromebooks this will be for student use so tonight we're bringing this again the same with this one applies to the last um if the quote is a little dated so if that means i can only get 80 chromebooks we'll get the 80 chromebooks but then we will not go over that plan on the 911 amount okay any discussion yes yes i'm sorry mr i.t what's your average lifespan on these notebooks um we get approximately uh five years out of really then yeah as much as these ones be the most the kids beat them up as long as they're not broken beyond repair right so we have about a seven to eight percent you know lost damage a year on those that's incredible that's pretty good thank you for the discussion mrs ellen yes mrs heist yes mr australia mr yes mr mckinnon yes motion passes thank you purchase order no contenders nor con industries 26 000 6575 okay so this one tonight is i don't know if y'all have ever noticed the uh the mechanisms to lower and raise the backboards in the gym they are getting to the point where they are unsafe to operate um whoever is raising them or lowering them has to get up on the ladder hopefully the drill works that way we can hold oh raise them and lower them and then we have to use a burrow to push [Music] so tonight what we're asking for is for approval to replace all those mechanisms and we will also be replacing the new the backboards on the main port right now the padding on those backboards are being held together with duct tape and spit so just in order to make sure the kids are planning a safe environment and those that have to operate the mechanisms are also offering operating in a safe environment we're asking that you go ahead and approve this purchase order in our economy thank you new back boards in a room i'll move that w backwards a second any discussion yes motion passes thank you all right purchase order plate safe playgrounds 97 126.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
you see on exhibit 15 kind of the history over since 2006 7. so last year we dipped low with the covid situation but we did see a bounce i will say that i was i thought we'd have a i would have predicted a larger kindergarten class if you go to exhibit i would have predicted a larger kindergarten class this year but it didn't happen so we are at you can see the class sizes for the total class size for each class kindergarten 162 first grade 174 second grade 176 uh third grade 169 fourth grade 195. on the prior exhibit you see the middle school numbers but this this exhibit on executive 16 lists the class sizes which i think is the first time i can say i feel really good about our class sizes at k4 we are we're closer to our target of 20.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
policy 4425 is a new policy regarding nursing mothers and making sure that we permit additional unpaid break time for support staff members for that purpose of breastfeeding or to express milk that's a nursing mother's policy that has been advised policy 4430 is leaves of absence just a technical correction there was a word misplacement in that policy but even something as slight as that needs to be changed by you policy 511 is determination of legal settlement and eligibility for enrollment students without legal sediment in the corporation this is kind of timely in that this friday is count day for our school corporation it is a day where we turn in the number of students that we have enrolled at that particular time each student that is submitted we have to have certain pieces of information to verify indiana residency so that information is outlined in that policy policy 5410 promotion placement and retentions also revised policy already exists but just make sure that to ensure that any decision regarding retention is made in accordance with the student's iep or service plan so making sure that that is a part of that conversation our corporation has done a nice job with that but just making sure to articulate that in policy policy 6250 is a similar to the one just a couple of policies ago required adm counts for the purpose of state funding and verification of residency for membership uh it goes back to this is about a year ago the doe actually put out a memo but we're needing to revise it to incorporate the requirements of verification and again it does impact funding for the school corporation uh several pieces here so hopefully you understood much of that changes uh chad can probably explain that for us but policy 7450 on property inventory and policy 7455 on the accounting system for capital assets a lot of federal changes so just getting those federal references put into the policy was most of that that change and changes had not occurred for quite some time uh and so i think 40 years up into december 2014 there's some other changes here just recently but so you said a few slides and information your packets on that those policy revisions the technicalities of that policy 75 30.02 is staff use of personal communication devices those are updated as we get changes and this was house enrolled act 1070 from last year so it did change indiana code and just talked about the options for safe and appropriate use of cell phones and how that practice should be policy 8500 is on food services just a revision to make sure that we aren't stigmatizing students who lack the funds to pay for their meal and that's just now expressly stated in policy a bad thing to do good good to have that in policy policy 8606 is also a cellular telephone use piece it's been revised to reflect state code again hea 1070 and the then corresponding change in indiana code that's the reason for the revision so really all of these based upon either federal or state recognition recommendations revisions i don't know of any case law changes that changed these and we're just bringing ourselves up to speed with uh both federal law and indiana code all right are there particular questions colleagues have you consider those questions um we will certainly ask what you need to then we'll be bringing this back for approval during the consent agenda item so that's one of the items under the consent agenda all right you mentioned adm is friday it is 17.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
second thank you moving on to item 9a our targeted student achievement goals okay so i did start and i wanted to talk about a few things just so we understand because arizona's state assessment system over the last couple years has had quite a few changes and it's a little bit confusing how it's all sort of evolved over time part of that was because of cobit and not having students in the building during fourth quarter of 2020 and then having some of those students take state testing in the fall last year but not all of the students do that and then doing state testing this year but with most of the grades not a test that we're going to do in the future so like trying to come up with longitudinal data that's helpful trying to understand where's this train headed you know all those kinds of things so i wanted to just remind everybody that the test that we took we had rolled to arizona merit and then a few years ago we rolled to what was called azm2 but testing was suspended and in high school we had opted about three or four years ago to do the alternate state assessment which was act and you guys approved our like opportunity to do that we did that at the time believing that the state would eventually choose act as the 11th grade high school assessment and it turns out they did so that's great so for us we're very unique compared to other districts in the state going into next year and this year when it's official we already have a couple years worth of data to help us plan so that was really great foresight on the part of this governing board to do something that allowed the high school to be able to start preparing for what we assumed was coming so that was pretty cool so and i want to talk a little bit about the fact that territorial does not receive a school letter grade because they granny's so excited because they don't have any tested grade levels testing starts it used to start in first grade many years ago when i started my career state testing started first grade poor ms bryce was teaching and all those and miss reader all those poor little first graders trying to have to learn how to bubble test and not lose the line and all the things yes yeah it was so hard yeah and the first year that like it counted was that you know those those uh california achievement test a million years ago so at brandy school they use assessments they use some local assessments from our textbooks they use dibbles which is assesses how a child is progressing with their language acquisition skills reading skills and they use an assessment called esgi in kindergarten they also use some star math assessments and things like that so they do a lot of monitoring using very sound assessments at third level they just don't participate in state testing students in grades three through five we locally we are using um english language arts assessments that were developed at territory excuse me at del rio and we use assessments from our wonders curriculum and we use mcgraw-hill math assessments and star math to monitor progress monitor kids throughout the school year in heritage we have quarterly benchmark assessments from star math and star reading and we have textbook based local assessments and one thing i want to share with you we have been able to roll to stronger textbook-based benchmarking because you guys bought new books and those new books came with a fabulous set of assessments that go with them that that help us get a whole different kind of data set than we ever had in the past and so that was something that was super exciting is that now we have some tools and it was really cool because carolyn was really digging in and brandi's really been digging in and like they keep calling me oh my gosh we found all this amazing stuff so i think it's really cool because last year was our first year with the books for english language arts but it was such a crazy year that this year we trained everybody all over again and sort of did a reboot and started fresh with it high school students take a ct practice assessments some locally designed text-based assessments and the pre-act john and i have the opportunity to go around and visit with each administrator on their campus and talk about some assessments and to really talk about it and we ask them there are some questions you'll see them answer in their presentation there were questions that we asked them but one of the most basic question that we asked was is learning loss real because we hear lots of stuff about that and the answer we found was different on every campus that learning loss looks different at each school because for example and you'll see some amazing things in our spring test results you'll see some things that really prove to us that learning loss is real so for example heidi and i have talked even quite a bit more since the three of us met about the fact that in high school we have some introduced material you know like in higher level math classes or higher level science classes but in high school we're using all the skills we learned at other levels to learn new things we're not necessarily learning you know long division for the first time or how to write in cursive or things like that we're applying all that core learning that we did so we can learn individually and take in new content not necessarily new skills the exception of course is things like trigonometry and calculus where those bar new skills but one thing that we learned was and it was pretty interesting miss bryce shared with us and she'll talk a little bit more in her presentation that they saw learning loss profoundly in sixth graders and part of the reason was that they miss a lot of that crucial instruction at the end of fifth grade that fourth quarter when everybody went home and then their sixth grade year because we had so many learning modalities was patchy you know some kids stayed at home all year some kids you know came when we had hybrid some kids you know so it was and we did some online instruction and because of that there are certain grade levels where we feel most that learning loss most acutely and miss cox is going to tell you that we really saw it or miss reader will also tell you that we saw it where kids were needing to learn really important cornerstone skills so for example if they didn't we did if they didn't have fourth quarter of kindergarten two years ago and then went into maybe a first grade where their family opted to have them be an at-home learner all year that the students came to second grade i saw mr schultz today i just reviewed mrs cox's first round of dibbles test our second graders almost 59 are well below grade level starting second grade in their language acquisition skills and their reading skills and so they're places where in certain grade levels it's the most glaring because the stuff that came before that was so crucial and so they're going to tell you more about that and what they're doing to address it i want to talk to you a little bit about the state test results are in your packet on the sideways pages like that and i wanted to you know i would love to say oh my gosh it was fantastic but it wasn't fantastic and one thing um i wouldn't do differently and i've thought about it since then and we talked about all this i've talked about it kind of individually and collectively last spring we told our teachers don't worry about state testing you guys have had a horrible year the students have had a horrible year don't when we all were finally back in session and we knew we weren't going to be hybridine or distancing or all the things it was almost fourth quarter and so it was one of those situations where don't feel like now that you have everybody back in the building you have to just go berserk for like the next six weeks to try to pack everything in because the kids weren't ready to learn some of the kids hadn't been in the building we have kids even this fall who haven't been in an actual classroom for like 18 months so you forget even like how to be a student like a good citizen in your classroom you know to use like that elementary language that we use like you forget how to like share your stuff keep your hands to yourself you know that mom isn't the one answering your questions and you have to raise your hand and so they spent a lot of time just rebooting some of that like the citizenship-ness of coming back to school and because of that we do see it reflected in our test scores and i wouldn't tell you that our teachers just kicked back or anything like that at the you know at the end of third quarter into fourth quarter they just didn't try to close a whole year's worth of learning gap in a few weeks and so that shows too i wouldn't regret i don't regret saying don't make testing the most important thing just get back to the business of doing school i don't think i would give different advice even in light of our test scores but i do want to tell you we had some amazing bright spots and i would tell you that our most amazing bright spot was the fourth grade i can see that and when you look and see and we have some of our most experienced teachers in fourth grade and that really really shows our fourth grade scored 11 higher than the state average in english language arts and they scored 14 percent higher in math i mean there we and i would tell you even this we were down a teacher in fourth grade we had an unexpected resignation about a month into the school year and the rest of fourth grade said you know what don't hire anybody we'll all take extra kids and they all took extra kids so even with extra kids it was like the most amazing thing and you know i guess i would tell you the sad part is some of them are like really teetering on the brink of retirement you know they're there um but to me they've been in our district for years that stability shows their experience shows and they they just knocked it out of the car and we had some areas when you kind of glance around at the ela scores for the most part except for at the high school level we we were within you know swinging distance of the rest of the state um high school 10th grade yep not so much but when you think about it some of those kids had very little direct instructions starting with fourth quarter of their ninth grade year and then we're kind of hit and missed when we look down at the math scores mrs reeder's gonna she'll tell you a little bit about that that third grade math deficit and i would tell you if we all think back if they're great for you know it's a bit of a stretch i'll be honest i remember my teacher's name mrs ferguson but the um what do you learn think about what you learn in third grade multiplication and division and at the end of second grade they learn a lot of the cornerstone skills that enable students to perform successfully you know whether it's um you know when you think in terms of am i doing single digit digit addition subtraction now i'm doing multi-digit where i'm having to carry and borrow and things like that that really showed and so but you know what i would tell you last year's third grade it was rough but i know that they have headed into the grade level with the strongest teachers in our district so i have a ton of faith that even though they left third grade behind we've got the team to help help turn that around at the fourth grade level and you'll see that fourth grade did an amazing job and then as you glance through we talked a little bit about what ms bryce has said regarding some of that sixth grade issue and then one of the things i would like to help us remember is that the state test in math [Music] for high school has items in it that our students haven't taken yet it contains algebra 2 and a lot of our 10th grade students are only as far as geometry so when we look at that score it's a bit deceptive because we know that not like our honors kids or some of our kids that are more advanced in math i've had that algebra too but a lot of our um gen ed students have not and so that creates a deficit as well so it still requires graduation it is still required for graduation for all students except our center students so and then if we turn the page we have the aim science i put it on here just because i didn't want you to think that we didn't do it it was a field test so they don't give you a score we don't even know how we did they don't send us a score but just so you know we did do it we didn't test in 2020 and then 2021 was a field test so we don't know how we did and then you can see the atc um the act results um i would tell you that we are when you kind of look through and see where are we composite score wise in english we actually improved from 2019 to 2021 our math composite is virtually unchanged our reading composite went down a little bit miss wolf's going to talk to you about some things they're doing in that regard our science composite went up and our overall composite was within kind of a statistically insignificant range of change and so even though we're still behind the national average this was actually two cohorts of students so juniors from last spring were in this score mix and seniors took it in the fall they should have taken its spring of their junior year and it was the one group the state decided well you didn't get to take it but we want you to do it in fall of your senior year and the craziest thing happened and we all were like what the heck the kids we weren't in session when the kids had to take it they were like at home learning and so miss deangelo they all created a day they sent the word out to all the seniors hey we need you guys to come in take act and we thought yeah like nobody's gonna show up right like nobody cares they're not we actually had a really good turnout and the kids blew it out of the water and we were like they didn't even go to school fourth quarter last year you know we were at home learning and here they and they came in to take the test we weren't even fully in person and they did really really well so they kind of helped carry the day and so our 11th grade was a little bit lower but that group of seniors really helped carry the day so i wasn't um i wasn't disappointed with how our students performed on act i think it overall you would expect that we would have you know done that and we did not see it so that's a testament to me that a couple things happen students did take advantage of um whether it was learning lab or online tutoring from our teachers we also offered the high school offered before school and after school tutoring last year and we had quite a few students take advantage of that miss wolfe was a coordinator for it and i think that because students are feel that impending graduation cliff that i think some of them were more diligent about taking advantage of some of those opportunities and academically came out okay not great so that's the summation of what the test scores look like i can talk to you about um what it's going to look like this spring we have a new test that's called a a s a something like that it's a really bad acronym that only makes a word that sounds naughty when you try to make it to a word and that's this will be a field test year so we probably won't have scores from this coming spring but we will have act scores and aim science scores this this coming spring still do the act yes yep and the whole rest of state's doing it now too thank you so you're welcome i it's a lot to take in and i've had a lot of time to kind of ruminate on it um i wish it was better than it was but i'm confident that we have a plan and i think heidi's up first yep and we're using the thing today we're in the process of changing up our boardroom presentation systems and cameras it'll probably be about five months we'll have moving cameras better mics better springs for you guys but for now we're all going that way all right so learning loss i like um cindy talking about the train so for for me and for my other principles i think about we need to mine the gap there is there is a gap um if you've been to england they always tell you when you're on the train to mine the gap so this is what i'm thinking about for my students lining the gap so as far as learning loss um as we talked about or cindy talked about we have test scores that we wish were higher um and we know that the loss of instructional time and especially at the high school level that guided practice time where the teachers there and practice the skills that the students need were especially in our cte programs and some of our science labs and those kind of things where you actually need that guy to practice and the teacher wasn't able we weren't able to accomplish and then there was a technology barrier and the decrease in daily academic schedules at the high school a lot of my students were sharing computers with their siblings or um or having to go ahead and blend our two computers with four or five kids um combined family so that um played into it um also in inconsistency with the school schedule just going from hybrid to in-person to whatever distance learning and it's not um it's just the reality of what we faced last year and then um students missing school due to once we were back in the quarantine time and then some of our students um did not take advantage of the student support lab that we had available every day um one of the things that our the transition from eighth grade to ninth grade the kids really didn't get that that normal transition and learning how to be a high school student and i see some of that even right now with some of their habits they got out of practice of being at school and then also that social interactions that's really important to them um with the staff and with their fellow students um emotionally um there was a lot of anxiety um the biggest one that i heard about was am i on track to graduate they were very concerned about because of the age of my kids they have a lot of not that the other students don't but there's home stressors that happen financial stressors where some of my students had to work to help their families out during that time and then some of my students had jobs and they really had a hard time coming back to in-person learning they stayed online so those are just some of the things that played into the last 18 minutes excuse me some of the concerns that you've been talking about obviously you would expect those last sprint are you still hearing those same things as falls of school started yeah i think that the the seniors have that anxiety about being on track to graduate and i'll talk about what we're doing about that and then also some of my students are really relied upon to be part of the income of their family still and um i know i lost a few kids even though we gained kids overall um to going on completely online somewhere else and working with social behaviors yeah all righty so um sorry so what we're doing um as our focus so we went with all of our departments and looked at the the standards and you have their goals and your path yep and we identified um them and developed by each department um and then we know that we're going to do benchmark testing and we're going to use pearson math and biology assessments um sciences heart is difficult the high school because usually it's one teacher that teaches one thing like i have one earth science teacher i have one chemistry teacher i want physics biology is the only one where i have three teachers teaching that and then algebra one in geometry and other science classes may use the pearson assessments that go with it that came with the textbook and then um teacher created assessments um we'll be using our english nine decided to use grammar as their um benchmark testing they designed a test to get to all english ninth graders and all of our benchmarks will be done every quarter once a quarter so we felt that the grammar would help the kids with both their reading and their writing skills and then um if the teachers were teaching the same course then they use the same benchmark test because we want to see how one teacher compares to another so they can say your kids did really great on that question my kids didn't what did you how did you teach that so they can kind of work together on improving with their teaching and then of course we have the act practice test and we decided that english 10 would take the practice test they don't take it till 11th grade the act test because one of the input i got from this lawyer who's one of my english teachers is when she was a proctor she saw that the kids were freaking out with the time constraint with act so she felt it would be good if we started practicing that the year before so the kids would get used to that being timed um because you only get like i think it's like 45 minutes for the english um reading portion it's very limited so we want to make sure our kids are used to that time constraint and then of course english 11 algebra 2 and some of the science will use the ac practice test up to the level and so we're um how will we know our students of learn will utilize our assessments from curriculum pertaining to those essential standards we'll use summative assessments conducted quarterly again pearson teacher created assessments and a ct practice test and of course we'll have our state assessment the act in the spring to see how we do any questions so far i'm going to i am going to let them know too because i think i left this out that ninth grade takes a test called act aspire as their state assessment we pay and give the pre-act to all 10th graders even though that's not required we do it so we have good data and then the 11th grade takes the act so three years in a row will practice practice practice so moving forward so where um database decision making we're going to use our data collected from benchmark testing any local school created test textbook test practice act and we're having monthly data meetings to go through um what how the students are doing on those um you know like chapter tests and the teacher created tests um instruction includes kegen act um active engagement strategies we're focusing on that now that we're back in person school might focus on integrating reading writing and mathematics across the curriculum before and after school tutoring counseling we have a social emotional support from our certified counselor for those kids that are stressing out about stuff and we do our annual credit checks with all of our kids so we want to make sure and we always do our seniors first so this is dia angelo has met with just about every senior to make sure they're on track and if they're not on track we make sure that they're in the right classes if we need to give them an online class through our cvi program we do that to make sure that they can graduate with their cohort and we've sent a few students that are very far back from their credits that aren't on track the two aspire currently we have about 20 students there so so hopefully they get caught up and they come back to us either in january or in may to graduate with their with their class and we've already had workshops with our math and ela teachers at the lead we devel develop smart goals for all other subjects so they came up with goals that teachers could help math and english because those seem to be the areas because a lot of the science act is about reading comprehension it's really not about science standards it's more about if you can read this read the chart gather information from it so we went ahead and all of our teachers who are not math or english have made smart goals where they're going to go ahead and work on things that will help all of our students achieve on the act or just in general just to improve achievement and our instructional code meets regular with our students and all teachers are being taken trained and we have uh sei refresh um videos for our teachers if they're struggling with students that are learning english and finally we for our parent outreach we have parent-teacher conferences we are having our first one this thursday night and we also have ones that we go ahead and set up between administrators and counselors to meet with students who are struggling our spanish speaking family night is planned for the 23rd and we have that in all in spanish so that we can go ahead explain graduation requirements attendance everything so we'll have rosa maria and anger johnson come in and yvette translate for us and then we i've already started our dnf list on our first progress and we will be calling parents and letting them know about our tutoring so that is our plan to mine the gap as i called it heidi has about 17 students this year who have no english skills speak no english this is our highest number in quite a while are these people who've moved into the district recently i presume that and we have about 30 percent of our student population at each campus comes from spanish-speaking households except at heritage where 34 does i don't know i have no explanation all righty any questions for anyone i'll send it over to julie i would i would surmise that other districts are having the same kinds of issues yes yeah i mean i have friends that teach in california colorado arizona michigan and everybody's kind of in the same boat you know and they're having success with the same kinds of remedies that you've described yes they expect to have yeah i talk with them about what they're doing give me some ideas they talk to me about what i might be doing here um well and i'm going to brag on heidi she is um high school is undergoing accreditation this year and so not only is she dealing with making sure that all our paperwork is in line for that because of that she has an opportunity to be on teams that are monitoring accreditation for other schools around the state so she is getting the insider's view on what other schools are doing yes i'm going to be doing that the last week of september virtually though they are not doing it in person this year yeah miss julie that's pretty cool thanks sarah good evening well um so is learning loss real so cindy covered a lot of this um and i met we met with peter as well and i mentioned this in our meeting so um we do have load test scores um that's right in front of you you see it but i want to bring some things to your attention of our school days last year were distance learning were hybrid so they were coming every other day 45 percent we were all in person and i think that's really important that we realized that so is learning loss real sure it is but i've also done some research um to see what the experts are saying about learning loss and if it's real due to the pandemic and one study here i have is that it says that the learning loss for reading isn't going to be minimal which our test scores show that and the reason for that is because a lot of the learning was done at home and that parents are better equipped to support reading in their homes then they are math which makes sense i wouldn't be able to help my students with their math so that makes sense why could first grade so um so but the math um they say to expect math achievement to decrease by five to ten percentile points low or lower also in the study it talks about um that we're also going to see low scores scores due to unequal opportunities for learning depending on whether students had access to technology and parental support during school closures which i think we saw that and heard about all that in your meetings throughout last year also um it says do we even really know what the learning loss is just by comparing tests um assessments for the last couple of years and it says the long-term ramifications we haven't even seen though yet and so those are yet to come for all of us but i asked my colleagues my staff um if they thought learning loss was real and i'd like to read what some of them said um i would then this is um came from my ela team i would say it depends on how you look at it i do believe students will often forget what they learned especially in the area of math although some students do forget the foundations they have learned are not lost um i see they're able to pick things up again once they're reminded of how to do something or given the opportunity to practice the material again here's one that my title one teacher nancy morgan wrote and i thought this analogy was very good so i'd like to share it with you she does not believe that learning loss is real learning is continuous our path to learning can vary the pandemic for example our students were forced to adapt to a learning path that required much more independent accountability and the ability to grasp a completely new concept and routine virtual classrooms i had the quote unquote i would venture to say that students have learned a great deal in the past couple of years due to this pandemic if i found myself stranded on an island for a year without any reading materials i would not lose my ability to read once i was rescued i would be able to pick up something and read it i'm not going to she wasn't going to lose that in fact i would have learned much more about myself how to find other modes of communication how to adjust my role in my current situation and how to complete new tasks so new learning simply ignites prior knowledge learning is not lost it does not need to be brought back up i it does excuse me it does need to be brought back up to the surface once in a while but it's not lost you know nancy is one of my teachers that has a strong relationship with every one of her students she could sit and talk to you about every one of them and feel very comfortable with that she is one of my teachers that does believe in the growth mindset and if you walked into her classroom you would see that every day and everything she teaches and um her approach is that in life we approach many different obstacles and that's how we um we have many obstacles in our life it is how we approach them that will determine the outcome and as we know that is true so is learning loss real it's a matter of opinion um by some as we're seeing so one thing i want to talk about and cindy brought it up is the social skills if i was working on my doctorate i would want to study the class of 2027.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
all right so let's talk about one of the big ones what we're asking for today is something that when i was meeting with the capital budget community one of the big things we need is shade so what this would do would provide three areas of shade the one that is up here on the on the screen this is kind of a cantilever system that will be over by the sandpit at the cafeteria so it will sit at an angle and there's also a sail on the back side to prevent you know so it would provide shape there for those kiddos that want to play in the sandpit so the next one this this one is i want to say it's 20 by 30 23 by 20. this will be on the upper playground right outside of the cafeteria so if you're looking at the cafeteria you've got the sandpit over here on the right which will now have a nice cover on it this will be on the left side of the uh so with the north side of that playground so it'll provide a place for those kiddos to have some extra shade while they're playing up in that playground open up the next one this one here great so this is a rendering of what this one will look like this is a i want to say this is 33 by 50.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so that has taken an investment in more staff to do that but especially in this year we don't want crowded classes this was a year to make that adjustment so um we couldn't make that decision until we knew how many kids were coming back so that's why we had some teachers hired in the middle of summer that's it for my report all right does anybody have questions on the august employment report can i please have a motion to approve the august employment report motion second ashton gary bennett yes challenger yes peter yes lions yes ederson yes uh anybody have any questions on the mou between the board and the big hollow federation of teachers for clothing 19 related issues for the school year no no no can i please have a motion to approve the memorandum of understanding between the board of education big house school district and the big hollow federation of teachers for the 19 related issues for the 2021-2022 school year motion second doug and lauren patterson yes yes bennett yes ballinger yes peter yes lions yes anybody have any questions on the budget that we went over earlier no uh can i please have a motion to adopt the 2021-2022 budget promotion [Music] yes peter yes lions yes edison yes question yes uh anybody have any questions on the leasing of the additional school bus this was a need that we didn't realize we had with the handicapped uh transportation until august so that's why it was a last minute purchase do we currently have any handicap accessible buses is this in addition to this this is the only one that's the only one we do hire out sometimes we have to hire it out so this will be an opportunity to in the future to not have to do that too anybody else have questions can i please have a motion to approve the lease of an additional school bus for the purpose of transportation of students requiring handicapped accessibility motion second ash and vivian bennett yes peter yes lions yes edison yes yes ballinger yes uh resignation is accepted we accepted a resignation from tad gravnick middle school graphic arts teacher effective august 10th we accepted a resignation from amanda masini elementary para effective august 11th we accepted a resignation from carrie miller boys soccer coach effective august 17th we accepted a resignation from renee link transportation and lunch monitor effective august 27th we accepted a resignation from mary lavin holy lunch monitor effective august 23rd we accepted a resignation from gail peterson middle school apparel effective august 23rd and we accepted a resignation from anna marie houghton food service worker effective august 23rd no for your request anybody have any questions on the monthly reports for the board no no the next regularly scheduled board meeting will take place on tuesday october 12 2021 with closed session beginning at 6 p.m an open session beginning immediately following closed session can i please have a motion to adjourn gary and lauren all in favor aye aye any oppose eyes have it both meanings adjourn thank you all
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above