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um this data along with many other measures was used also to develop and and look at what we needed to do in the way of meeting student needs in our 2122 lcap and as i stand before you today and i'm going to say that again as i stand before you today the state board of education has said that we will be returning to the traditional s back a little slightly shortened version in ela and math but we will be using the regular state assessments this spring um and that again includes usbac and ela and match the cast which is the california science test and then also our caa which is the california alternative assessment which is for our students who have that identified as an assessment method in their idp so uh district wide will continue to use multiple data as we make instructional instructional decisions this year for our students so thank you very much and i can take some questions thank you for your presentation here board member career yeah i thank you i hear how you know as we look at this we continue to say that this is this is but one data point there are multiple things for us to look at um i i do want to be careful though to not move too quickly past this and what and and what we are able to gather from this data because there there are there are pieces as i look at some of these some of this data and some of the graph their pieces that are concerning and so i so i think let me be careful not to this is not a question i'm posing to you individually maybe i'm posing to us all collectively as as as we look at this what what does what what does this what is what does this communicate for us as about what you know we need to do how how do we look at some of these numbers um and some of the numbers are low looking at these numbers how do we it's instead of instead of us saying that uh that there are other data pieces which i understand that there are what do we do with this with these this piece of information specifically these assessments are what we call common formative and these are assessments that we use to be able to engage our instruction um the scores are not typical of what our district assessments normally are in you know in-person circumstances so these were assessments that were taken um could have been online could have been at home right um and so we were definitely in an investigative transition um i think what it tells us is that we can use that in conjunction um with you know our diagnostic assessments to see you know teachers can take a look to see where students were before um last year and they can also take a look at where they are with their diagnostic assessments to get a bigger picture um so again these are really assessments that we don't use in a summative way we use them to kind of gauge exactly where students are and where we need to go in many cases with these assessments there's a rubric right and so when the teachers are scoring these assessments there are multiple measures within that as well and so um that's that's just it's a way for teachers to be able to look at those you know for example mathematics problems for for example writing and then determine what are some of the trends that they see overall that students need to work on as well as what they would need to do individually for students we have any more questions yeah i have a couple um so can you explain to me um one why we chose our local assessment i know we also administer i ready so um at the time we had not purchased i ready for all students we did that just for this year and i ready only is for grades pay through eight as well so those are the factors that led us to part the decisions we made and discuss the options that are most feasible connections i thank you for having us having this presented publicly as required by the state waiver that we thought that we've done so i appreciate that um so that's another first question and then my next question is really around um so you say that these are these are formative assessments right they're not benchmark tests so can you explain to us um in what way do we use them differently that makes them a formative assessment versus what i think on its surface would look like you know a common sub accommodated benchmark common benchmark that we give across the district right either one i i can start and then you can have it so one of the things that make these formative assessments is that teachers can turn around and use this data immediately within their classrooms to adjust instruction when we look at some of the assessments like the s back the students just take it once and when we get the spores back the students are out of that teacher's classroom so it's summative in that they don't have a way to then adjust for those particular students that they were working with before and so that's one of the big differences with um with these formative assessments that we use in our district compared to some of the summative assessments the other thing i like to add is that these assessments are are written to be um of a similar quality rigor task that students would see on the smarter balance assessment we want to be able to give students that practice they'll see what kind of tasks those would look like as well and so there may be where um that maybe it maybe a student isn't quite ready and hasn't mastered those uh those standards quite yet but it's a it's a great way for teachers to be able to um you know take a look to see what are some of those areas in terms of again writing performance tasks problem solving so for clarity are you saying that if i'm if i'm a fourth grade student i am taking this assessment and this this is an assessment for what i am to to have learned by the end of my fourth grade here and so so i have more learning to do throughout the course of the year um so then we would see these numbers increase or or is this based off of what a student should current where students should certainly be at that point in their school it's based on what the students should be at that point um this is what we would expect them to know and so this you know an assessment is able to tell us you know to what extent are they able to you know show proficiency or mastery on those standards so then going back to my question um so i appreciate you differentiating although i think what you just described to me could also be used to describe a benchmark test that you give throughout the year so um thank you for clarifying how it's used so can you just give me a sense in terms of like let's say the kids take the steps right they take a common format of assessment what what happens with that and what's the turnaround time and who ends up looking at it and what time frame great question um so we have our professional learning communities that are are set up at our school sites i typically the student the teachers will look at the data um can be twice a month or once a month it just depends on how they set it up if they're looking at language arts for example sometimes they're looking at the mathematics um when they have assessments and so um we do uh we do data protocols with our principals we model different ways to be able to do protocols we'll look at some of that data um teachers would work together and um kind of a plan do study act model so they would look at the assessments um they would disaggregate the results and really talk about what are some of the trends and maybe i'm looking at my class and i'm seeing uh that students have some success on a specific standard and maybe um mr ortega think oh gosh my students you know um maybe didn't do as well in that standard what were some of the strategies that you used when you were teaching that so it's an opportunity for in the professional learning community to really talk about what are some of the strategies that we can use to be able to you know assist our students to meet those standards so we do this in a professional learning community the teachers have opportunities to be able to take a look at assessment results have discussions around um best practice and then be able to do any um you know again any additional re-teaching so how often do we give do we do formative assessments let's say with language arts yes so we have three assessments in language arts and math that we do as a district however teachers also do their own common form of assessments that they're doing as well this is just a way for us as a district to be able to say this is something that we do with uh with all of our grades and our classes but certainly teachers are also doing this on a regular basis as well and not only just common form of assessments but really taking a look at student work as well okay and then my final um i guess request would be because i don't think i was here i i really like to understand and i understand that it could be i mean if you're looking at it like great great degree comparison and maybe different cohorts or if you know from another book i'd like to understand how this um how these these results compared to previous years right just trying to understand the effect of the pandemic that that is had on our students and so along those same lines i would really i really think it's really important for us the board level to understand what are the if we're administering diagnostic tests right to bring back a summary of that data so we can understand really where we see and aggregate our students are in terms of having been in business learning for a year plus and then you know this modified proposed at the end of last year so again that's the request for i guess in the future not you know in the near future and just to understand and really publicly have a conversation about where we are continuing yep certainly and the other thing too is that we continually take a look at the assessments and we're currently doing that work actually right now with our the work that we're doing with our preschool um the third grade collaboration um something that we have been doing for example is doing an analysis of the standards for example algebra algebra and operations um what are some of those uh standards that we see um to help us with not only um coherence among the grade levels but really taking a look at an analysis of our of our assessments and to determine um can we make them stronger and clearer right so sometimes our assessments um they will change on year after year because we're just trying to improve we're trying to you know trying to really um create a system of assessments that's really going to give us the data that we need but i don't disagree yeah being able to give you some you know some information on you know what those assessment results are you know okay uh just just one question you you talked about um how plc's play are are utilized with this information where you can have um different instructors who are comparing some of the hows and whats and commonalities does that happen across site as well because as i look at some of the numbers um that are displayed here it shows differences at various sites does that happen across the site or are you talking about the sap local does it happen across the district or customers or school yes one school to another typically with our our plc's they do happen at the school sites by grade level by content area but it's not uncommon that we've had professional learning opportunities where for example we'll have high school uh integrating one teachers get together and do some protocols around student work or analyzing some of the assessment results but typically it really is done at those individual sites and we have board member both hi dr brian i have a couple of structural questions and then a strategic question um in looking at this year's the common form of assessment data that you've presented can you share with us the assessment window the may 1 to may 20th yeah but did everyone take it during the same three week period yeah we do create windows for our district assessments and have deadlines but this was in the springs for spring assessments yes and um being sure if that's the participation rate i do not have that data right off hand i can get that for you and report it back thank you and then my kind of strategic question around the data is um if we're assuming then that the assessments were administered earlier in the spring um were these results incorporated or did they inform that fellow heartbroken yes actually they all of these assessments were completed uh by the end of may and and you know the last week of school there in the first week of june we were able to then get the data ready to report and so um yes we were able to look at these as one of one of the pieces that is in our lcap as a measure of our students achievement we combine this with our s course that we get uh from this coming spring if that plan goes ahead as the state board intends thank you board member just for clarity he said uh you originally said that one of the differences with this data is that the students are currently in their classrooms and so there's the opportunity to to make adjustments in real time so is that the case but then you said that these assessments took place in may so these this assessment took place last spring and so some of our students may have taken this in the hybrid mode or happened to be in their site some were perhaps in a living room with three other siblings around them doing class another was in their room by themselves logging in um so there were multiple factors that went into these results which is one of the big reasons we were not alone in the challenges and thus the boards did the state board's decision to just create some flexibility and and just give to give districts an ability to get a snapshot of achievement that make sense can you clarify what you meant when you were saying how this data is used in real time for our instructors i think i heard you say that uh adjustments yeah and i think what i was referencing was just all of our common formative assessments that dr mitchell mentioned that we use ongoing throughout the year our teachers can the students take this assessment and illuminate our system and the results are there and can be disaggregated within that and then the teachers can use this right away after they get the results for example that when we use a diagnostic as an example they've got these results and now they're meeting and saying okay here's here's where this student is and here's where this student is and when i create small groups i'm going to this way so i can address the needs of this and they can use them in ongoing instructions right now thank you yes anybody else have any other comments question um as you just said right now i was gonna ask that question um how the teachers use this you know this data in real time you know for example i'm thank you for for presenting and sharing this one thing that um um what interventions um the teachers use do principles put you know when they have i'm looking at the scores here and and we're really low and so what interventions are we doing right that they're using in real time what are we doing to be able to go ahead and put in place to assist with you know with these students to go ahead and they're like nearly met how can we push them over the threshold right to to meet those standards right i think if we if we look at this from a teacher and a site perspective if i'm a teacher i'm going to take these previous years results and i'm going to look at them and then i'm going to want to see where are my students right now and i'm going to pull that diagnostic assessment that i just gave and then i'm going to begin to develop ways to support those students and sometimes those interventions will be within the class for example if i see a student has a struggle in reading i'm going to scaffold and create ways to help that student access the text but also then maybe create some opportunities for that student to improve in their reading skills so that they're not losing the content we don't want to go backwards and teach the past we don't want to we don't want to remediate our students and say oh they're not at grade level let's just reteach the past we don't want to do that what we do know is we want to support them in accessing current grade level standards supporting them and accessing things for example like i said reading but i'm also providing opportunities to accelerate and to touch up on the specific things that they're struggling with and our diagnostics are one of the one of the powerful ways you can do that because it breaks down the real details as to why a student maybe isn't quite uh reading for example at the level we hope they were at this point in time one percent of the teachers are are using this this data that you this data or all of our formative assessments and follow this formula um a hundred percent uh we give us diagnostics this is just third through eighth and eleventh but we give formative assessments and diagnostics to kindergarten through fourth graders so every teacher has access to that data one of the things one little question i guess board member opinion no i have a question so um when these students took this test last year we'll say they're third graders now they're fourth graders i'm not sure the process here but okay so the test scores go into their q final or how do the teachers they didn't have these kids last year get these you know uh results so they can have the intervention or work extra with the child math reading or what whatever how do they get these in their hands these are fun kids good good question one of the great things about illuminate is a teacher when he or she gets a student in his class can go back and look at previous results for that student they all have that illuminati yes okay so the second question so how how are we guaranteed that the teacher is doing just that well one of the things dr mitchell just mentioned is through our plc process through the leadership of our principals and our district uh instructional leaders that use that data as part of their their school process partners i totally understand the timing you know that they may be at home and i i totally understand um because of scores yeah when i first saw them they're horrible i was not really happy about it but i understand the situation but that doesn't mean we cannot continue to intervention them and to make up hopefully next year we're going to see these signals should [Music] didn't you bring in somebody to help train the teachers on how to do accelerated learning we did we brought in thank you for that we brought in um two uh just powerhouse experts on monday we brought in dr nancy akavon um her specialty is actually a lot of specialties but one is around literacy and small group instruction and um for president arianes you ask well how do we do that whatever we do that is one of the uh the best strategies is to use that small group instruction when you're in the professional learning community process you you look at the data and you're like well first you ask yourself what is it we want you to don't be able to do you identify that right and then you you teach it and you do it and then you determine to what extent the students are actually learning and mastering the standards but the most important question in response to that is what do we do when they do and what do they do when they don't and so this whole idea of learning acceleration is not about this you know this constantly going back and and this idea of remediation as a matter of fact on both dr nancy akavon and dr douglas fisher who was our secondary uh uh presenter on monday uh really advised against this idea and this notion of remediation it is about learning acceleration so um making certain that we are providing our students with the grade level material and then what we need to do is be able to help you know the kids that will access that if we live in this this notion of remediation um the gap is going to be wider and so that's why it is very very important to be able to um to structure a small group instruction and really using those assessments to determine exactly what those students need so i would say that that's that's that's a big focus for us this year um and uh at another board meeting we uh we'll be bringing back another um a contract with uh dr akuman um because we would like her to be able to come in and actually do some um in-person coaching with the small group instructional repository i just want to say i really appreciate that because i think i see a lot of distribution faulty to bring in like packaged programs like let's test the kids and the reading and let's get them really and so i really appreciate that you're having an approach where you're focusing on strengthening the people power that we have the teachers around the business thank you [Music] but i'm like there's no more questions i want to thank you for this presentation [Music] again we're going to go ahead and move on to 13.2 now our agenda is dual immersion program update good evening board tonight we would like to provide you with an update on our dual immersion program i would like to provide you an update on our enrollment our investment in the program our plans to build capacity and next steps to continually improve the way in which we serve students and the community so our current enrollment we serve students in dual enrollment um uh for our zoo immersion for pk through fifth grade at longfellow odds and valley dale and we currently have 439 students we have an lcap budget that supports our di program with a budget of over 2.2 million dollars and our lcap actions and services denote the long-term advantages of bilingualism and dual language immersion programs on the achievement and reclassification of emerging bilingual students we know that by increasing dual immersion program on our schools our students will have the opportunity to develop balance bilingualism and increase academic achievement we've had a very successful and growing bi program that has resulted in increased academic achievement of our students particularly our emerging bilingual students as well we have local assessment data that show that our di students are excelling as a matter of fact they are outperforming other student groups at the school reorganization meeting that we're meeting at the last one we talked about a possible idea um to have a dual immersion school as you know as a possibility in the uh school reorganization um we have plans again to continue our program our very strong program [Music] as we as we have the students continue on through sixth grade and middle school and high school as well um i want to talk a little bit about some of the changes that i've heard and so i'd like to turn it over to um mr monkey uh to tell us a little bit about some of those class changes that we went through yes thank you dr mitchell and in hopefully in the um course of what i present here i will be able to speak to some of the comments that were uh brought forth during some of the comments um i see that the second bullet is 10 day challenging class changes it's a reward permission i would like to go a little further back and provide some context to how we got to where we are with this point right now uh so in the spring of 2021 we offered our temporary contract dual emerging features of both uh valley dale and hodge a probationary contract facilities traditions at valley dale elementary both uh temporary contract uh bi a teacher and an english only via temporary contract teacher took the probationary contract uh positions and uh in effect the staffing for d.i at vallejo was uh was satisfied uh we implemented the same approach at uh hodge elementary where we uh we went first to our temporary contract ci teachers um and offered them a stationary contract a little promising to begin with uh and then um during the summer one of the future that we didn't offer to you i decided not to return to this upcoming year uh we also looked at our temporary uh teachers in the english only program to build the uh growing fifth grade class and um we did not find a teacher within our ranks of teachers for for that position uh we did do that during the spring um and then we um we went into the summer we needed to build these fishes so we did fly the positions on edge as we normally do um and he did not find a quality candidate uh we um there were there were some uh issues with uh we tried to work with the candidates on um some of those some of those issues were insurmountable um and so we did make a difficult decision to um wait until the beginning of the school year to evaluate our uh and look at our enrollment uh we are the finance enrollment district and uh we do uh want to see whether or not um in the course of the beginning of the year and looking at our 10-day count um there would be a decline in enrollment at a school site that would yield a administrative transfer to build this week however our enrollment projections or the elementary science were pretty close to the actual enrollment at the elementary science and so we did not find a teacher that possessed a d5 uh credentials that we could transfer to the option that did emerge as we did our analysis uh which is essentially our 10-day count uh was to combine two first-grade classes um at five and two secondary classes of select five uh to fill the vacancies um that we had in the fourth and fifth grade level uh so by doing so uh we saw that the uh two first grade classes could be combined the class size would uh it exceeds the contractual maximum um and it's the same scenario played out in both first grade and second grade um and so we um we then uh interacted with the teachers uh in accordance to the contract so there's a provision in the contract that is 9.1.1 that states that there could be situations um wherein the class size could exceed the contractual class size maximum and so there are a set of steps that we need to take in order to determine whether or not this would be a suitable option we i met along with the principal with the teachers teachers also had our ada association president and savella in the meeting and we discussed the issues the option and ultimately we landed on a solution that we have um we did with it wherein the two first grade classes were combined and the two secondary classes were combined the teachers that were um that were part of the first and second grade team then went up to support for those um and then we were able to stop i i know that there are concerns and there's an ask for additional staff which we've heard um in our meetings with uh with parents last week uh and those have not fallen on deaf years we are in thank you mr rpo i'd like to turn it over now to uh north carolina norma is our director of multilingual programs and categorical services to talk a little bit about um our plans in terms of building staff capacity and enrollment okay so we continue to support and build capacity among our di staff by offering professional learning opportunities we are also looking to this year expand the sobrato early academic language program which is otherwise known as steel you will often hear our preschool staff refer to it in that way um from our preschool and tk's to three of our elementary sites which include valley dale and hodge where our di programs are housed so cl is an instructional model that emphasizes bilingualism by literacy and multiculturalism along with academic language and inquiry-based learning it's a program that's highlighted in the california english learner roadmap as an effective model for english learners we continue to support our di teachers in earning a dual language certificate through loyola marymount we have seven teachers currently who have earned their certificates by completing rigorous courses in spanish linguistics as well as academic spanish and all of the different content areas we continue our efforts to increase interest and enrollment in our program by promoting our program all year round highlighting students and teachers on social media your videos um also um through the posting of banners and sending out mailers and um of the new year we also are going to be partnering with our california state preschool program to capture some of our youngest learners um to invite them and their families into our dual immersion program as dr mitchell shared earlier our data for english learners who are participating in the di program for about four to five years indicate that the els and our di program are actually outperforming our el students who are in a structured english immersion program even through the pandemics and distance learning so we do continue to support our and want to increase our students who are earning the seal of high literacy and also recognizing our younger students who have a second language a home language and we want to celebrate that students bring that asset into our schools by recognizing them with our own district bilingual service awards and can i um something to them completely unscripted but today i was uh at hodge um visiting and uh happened to bump into a teacher uh who's in the dual emerging program uh and again i'm prompted with this normal conversation uh she mentioned how excited she was about the skill training um and the comment that really stuck to me was that um that she sees how beautifully it fits to what we've been working on and it's not contrary or against and so she was very very excited about this i just wanna just happen to um and just to kind of summarize here um we met with hodge parents uh last week for families who were affected by the classroom changes and the parents had an opportunity to share their concerns and as a result we are working on improving our communication providing additional classrooms of work and improved parent involvement and services and hr have a meeting next week to begin staffing planning and as we solidify our plans we will be happy to share that with our di community and the board do you have any comments um i have several questions [Music] to start off with so i know you talked about waiting for somebody counts but so and so what was the impact and so what did what did those classrooms look like on the first year so what did the fourth so i get you you talked about we already heard first and second chat about those two classes with the two kids what important [Music] a similar number uh for the good great class but i'm not trying to know i'm not thinking about it what do those classrooms look like yeah so the kids went to school what what happened okay uh so they started off the school year with uh our intention was to start off the school year with a substitute teacher um we um have experienced a shortage and substitute um and so my understanding that one of those classes uh did have a substitute start off the year uh and then the fourth grade class i believe third grade teachers um had divided the class by the fourth grade class and were essentially splitting the fourth graders um amongst the teachers who had those students in the third grade so we had two three four combos and then a fifth grade is that what it looked like when [Music] to start off the year because there were there wasn't a subs uh took place in in the fourth grade class so so my question is what what are we going to do to ensure that we are fully staffed for next year and i mean i guess i'm including the first grade second grade and then the upper the question number one so like dr mitchell stated i mean we um we've already started the conversation as far as the what having the conversation having the the plan starting a campaign earlier um then we did last year um i think the other thing aside from taking a look at um teachers that we have in our district who might be interested in our program um is also [Music] reaching out to other networks um there are other universities that uh have you know programs um and so how might we be able to establish some networks um to recruit uh all by candidates so do we so i know i heard you say that you're recruiting you are contemporary teachers was there any effort to recruit any of our b-class teachers who are not temporary teachers so i i did give that some thought um and so but we do have some being high features that are not uh further teaching in the um measurement program uh we uh there was a point in the summer where we uh try to make a difficult decision um because the teachers who we had um who have because are already in scientific sites throughout the district that would have been impacted by pulling those teachers out to place them in a program that um they during the summer may not be prepared to start the school year off um so we have in the past have experienced declining enrollment um and in some cases we've had some large numbers of teachers who have moved from one class from one school to another uh so but we were we that may were a less disruptive less disruptive option for us to pursue so i guess what i'm asking is not i i appreciate you saying not want to do this in the summer right but thinking about long-term right thinking about we don't need a staff we know we have many people teachers in our district who may or may not be interested but have we thought about recruiting early on some of these teachers if they have the skill set and the desire to be to be in that group of course we're looking to begin the recruitment process to see if there are teachers interested in um the program who are raising that's a d5 correct and then i i know i'm sorry and then my last question just around teacher recruitment then is around the middle school so these kids are going from fifth grade to sixth grade right so what kind of plan are we putting into place to make sure that that we have now singles of differential teachers who can teach in these primary in spanish and that process does have to start early as well um and so it will be the same process right so what we need to do and i think what we will have in middle school it would be two classes um that they the students would take in spanish and so it's a matter of taking a look to see um you know who who are the available staff that would want to do this than that um and starting that conversation now we have a question by board member bow i'm just a kind of a truly love the box out of the box idea to think about in terms of teacher recruitment um perhaps you could look into the feasibility of recruiting out-of-state teachers especially in states with high spanish speaking populations and successful dual language programs like arizona and texas i've been really thinking creatively about identifying perspective teachers early and determining what kind of credential support they would need to become certified in california as well as relocation and incentive support yes i like the so this this question may be rephrasing i may be rephrasing some of what we were chris gonzalez's questions um as as we i we got to a point in the summer or not even this summer we got to the point as the school year started where we realized we found ourselves in a pickle and so we pivoted and we made it we made adjustments to to um to ensure that the the the program you know if we stand a stacking shortage that that we encounter um [Music] so i'm i'm grateful for that i'm great i'm grateful for the fact that we saw them and we made the adjustments and then to take it even further parents communicated concerns we had meetings with parents and now we're even still saying like we're making those adjustments we're making those pivots in real time to address the concern that's all great i love that as we reflect back as we reflect back on this past year do we look back and do we see things that we didn't do that we should have done the reason and i and i asked that question not to kind of you know just spend time and dwell on that but to use that to reflect on how we respond to this in the future one but also because if we have parents who are communicating a lack of trust or or or that they're saying that confidence has been diminished as a result of how things played out i think it's important for us to acknowledge and and acknowledge if that's the case if there are things that we didn't do that we should have done or should have done that we acknowledge that as a step toward saying hey all we though we didn't we see this and we acknowledge and we recognize that we didn't and as we move forward these are the things that we're wanting to put in to benefit yes of course and um i'm glad you you phrased it the way you did on board remember and i apologize for not saying this uh earlier i do acknowledge that there are definite areas for for improvement and i'd like to think of myself as a reflective practitioner and um and i have i have identified areas and missteps that could have been done um differently to to not have maybe to prevent this from from from from happening um there are um and i only say these other statement to provide some context in a larger sense that we have been experiencing extreme shortages and um in in positions at all levels and it was there was a um and maybe i didn't read the tv as as good as i could have um but what i what i see now being 2020 is that um some of these some of the the pool size of folks who have applied that was an indicator that we were we were in dangerous waters every day we should have started a week today we should have started uh a lot earlier so i do recognize that and so that's why we are starting this process for this next year for 22-23 um in the next couple weeks for that so that we're not putting ourselves in this position and what i'd like to say is i want to thank you cabinet and superintendent for meeting with parents because they were very gracious that you met with them and just explained to them the situation because as we know your transparency is so important in our district and with our community and our parents and once they knew what was happening and you know we're going to work on making it better or fixing the problem they have more trust in our just and i think that was really great and i really appreciate that i have one one last question i i hear the conversation first of all yes thank you for meeting with the parents dual immersion is there's a great asset that we have in our district and i truly believe in dual emergency immersion and learning from these you know hiccups that are happening and putting into motion um what uh being proactive and putting into motion what can um make this program you know better for our students is really important one of the things that i heard tonight was um [Music] additional staff so does that mean that that are dual immersion processes that will they be receiving will they will they be having an aid um is that what it means clarification on that board of education that um our secondary results in the area of our substitutes and then when we had to quarantine um to create some professors so we actually had passed a pretty wide map part of the school year even starting for for a set of teaching positions um that would work uh and so we um in the process of identifying and going through that a lot of the folks that applied um have either been picked up or uh didn't are no longer interested but there were a couple of folks who i've interviewed um last week uh who um are showing promise that i may be able to offer them a position um and have them start at home as a teacher's aide but as a as an actual teacher to provide uh pull out intervention support um for for the site um so so that's that's something that we are um were in our final stages in the hr onboarding process that they materialized as early as next week crazy so that that would be for the entire school site are you saying that's for the dual immersion program the position would be for the entire school site to provide for over support but they um they the intervention could be targeted at uh for the for the intervention i'm trying to do murder program so let me ask another question um you know i asked i asked as a request for the board member to step forward about how many of our classrooms are overstacked right now and you let me know where how many do we have just a boy are overstaffed or are we over over capacity over the class size yes i believe they have the answers that person was spotted right and so two we know two of them are dual inversion and then the other three are not and so can you just let me explain to me what what we're doing with those other three classes that are over capacity and again just just like this previous point where we're final talked with a candidate to um position as well to bring them on board um to to create an additional class for that for those classes that will essentially create a um or reduce those oversized classes so then at the end we'll only have two over for us and it will be the two billion correct so i just i mean i just i point that out because i just want us to understand you know what what we're doing right in terms of whatever what i think actions speak louder than words right and so that that that i think that sends a message to our community about about regardless of how much money we're spending on the program way of creating things but i do think you need to reflect on what we do i i did want to just shift and talk about the um the recruitment piece right right so one of the issues that i'm hearing right is that maybe that these courses are are not fully they're not under in terms of student enrollment they're under capacity right we don't have two classrooms with 24 students at kindergarten so my my next area of questioning is around recruitment and how recruiting families especially the language learner families english learner families where you are you are telling us they're outperforming all the other english learners here so how are we making families aware about this option and encouraging them to to choose the dual immersion program so our efforts are going to be to target those schools that have high populations of english learners and especially working with our csvp program to identify those students early so that they can come into the program as early as tk or kinder so that's going to be something that we're kind of sure yes i am working on that this year okay and i'd like to add something to that um [Music] i know that we do put up a a flyer in the summer one time we learn our dual emerging program for the community right because actually my hairdressing you know we're talking about about all of them uh programs and she's telling her kids go to um community valley her grandkids because she said well they have the program that they speak to languages so this summer um i was surprised because she i got a call from her daughter looks good and she goes you know my mom's telling me that you guys have to do immersion program just like they did at covina yes we do where belly dale she went there and she registered that two other grandchildren they were coming to mexico because their mom had to stay there but anyways they brought these two of their little cousins and they were at camino valley and guess what they're valuable like ausd we're the mom so my concern really is the bill behind it they do and they had no clue that we were going to do a murder program it was just out of a conversation so i'm really concerned about that and i know we did once a year i mean i don't know i mean we can do it in the fall and in the stream just to remind and to the community and i understand in the school sites yes to recruit but what about the community that the kids don't come here that they have no children and it's a university how do we reach them we do send a mailer a postcard kind of mailer to believe it goes to everybody in the community um and we usually send that about january um to promote the videos in spanish so one of the ideas that came up in one of the ideas that came up in that in that parent meeting was around something about the idea of a family council and i just i think i mean i look at that those parents are so um you know they really believe in the program they're they're our best advocates there are best messengers and i think about right and really who listens to the same right and so i'm just wondering if we can think about how do we really engage these parents to immersive parents for some of the most engaged parents that i've seen in the district how do we capitalize on that and give them the agency to feel like they they are our messengers and they are the ones that can help us strengthen the program and also recruit other parents so i'm wondering how we can maybe formalize that piece in terms of how are those parents going to be engaged to help grow the program we have already had a conversation about putting together a dual immersion steering committee which would consist of staff parents community members and then to really look deeply at the program promote the program talk about how we can make some improvements um and have a stakeholder group um that continues to support this program if if i heard you correctly earlier someone's right maybe a while ago someone said that uh if we compare the numbers of our version students um and maybe think of the academic achievement results looked at that those those numbers are are higher than we're doing emergencies is there is there a way for us to see those i can share that data with you so what i was speaking to is when we look at english learners who are participating in dual immersion versus english learners who are participating in a structured english immersion class which is where they receive integrated eld throughout their day and then a designated time are english learners who are in a dual immersion program which obviously is high target language which is a strength for them when you look at their data over five years which is where we are at in the program we see that those english learners outperform english learners in the internet program so i can put together some graphs for you to look at in terms of how they perform on the lpac the english language performance test and also on our internal assessments reading assessments those kinds of things can we can we include um kind of a general yes so do you want to see a comparison between english learners and an sbi versus english learners and correct along with and then my last question is just a tiny thing so i appreciate you saying that you're going back and you're looking at the staffing to figure out um you know how you're going to build situations so when can we expect to have an we actually have our meeting next week i believe um to begin to plan out our process uh create a timeline um and then we will update you uh in uh weekly board packets but the other goal too is to be able to communicate with that to our parents as well um that was a commitment that we made at the meeting that we would be communicating that out to them all right thank you so much um um jorge for uh hope for um shared and thank you for board members and the parents and i really like i said before i really believe in this program and it can only get better it's each year my daughter's a junior and she started with the bill emerging program and she wants to take that skill so i i look forward to the improvements um and hearing with the parents and the input that has been brought forth and i trust that it will become an even stronger program thank you moving on to human resources 14.1 california school employees association csva sunshine proposal for the 2021 2022 fiscal year negotiation yes board of education this is a government requirement this is a an information item announcing the beginning of negotiation um and this is csca's proposal for the articles that they want to open and negotiate during the negotiations year there are um there is three components to this uh the first 14.1 is the information item 14.2 is a hearing and um i like to say that this is the uh one opportunity that the public and community have speak to the articles that will be negotiated during the um during the negotiations and then the last piece is before to action great thank you move on to 14.2 and i get emotion to open public hearing second and this is the time where we receive public input on csa's sunshine proposal yeah i'm just i forgot to read it and then i was gonna [Music] um to receive public input on csc sunshine proposal for the 2022 fiscal year negotiation between the california school employees association csva and exclusive unified school district okay can i get a motion to [Music] do we have any uh comments at this point the motion is to open the public hearing correct yes okay did okay let's go ahead and vote now this time it is open to the public do we have anybody online okay actually do not have any handles great thank you and from now moving on to it passes by zero moving on to 14.3 and technically we probably should close that public hearing before we move on to 14.3 at this point um i'll go ahead and close the public hearing 14.2 that'll have to the board of education is required to officially approve the california school employees association csva sunshine proposal for the 2021-22 fiscal year negotiations with the smoothie unified school district ausd a negative motion to approve 14.3 seconds they have a first by board member second by board member virginia kenyan vote i'm so sorry i forgot the student conference so sorry yes yes okay we have a casper vote and it passes 5-0 food now to our german 15.1 the german mechanically get a motion to adjourn first by jordan first opinion and can we please thank you and it can we please our vote process 5-0 it is 9 54 and our meeting is during fifth night everyone have a great rest every night and we hope to see you guys soon
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okay all right seven o'clock we'll start everyone um good um evening has been adequate notice of this meeting provided by the board of education the september 2nd 2021 notice and the co-star setting for the date time in place for this meeting similar notice has been posted in the town hall the brielle school website in the borough clerk has been notified can you please call the roll okay you're actually going here here jones here yes payroll the united states i have a motion to accept the minutes for the august 26 2021 regular public meeting to make a motion valley tonight a second dave can you call the role visitors are permitted to comment on agenda items only at this time okay i think we're good um miss cherry any correspondence this evening no correspondence committee reports uh ted is in here so nothing on finance uh dennis represented to mana swan i have no report no report uh mr becker curcumin programs thanks karen uh i do have a report uh i haven't officially submitted it but i i wrote it out uh it's as a result of a meeting that we had on the 16th with the entire committee including myself miss deadlinger miss jones mr vitale the administrators in attendance were ms carlson in this law as always we discussed a number of topics my reports do not give proper justice to the full discussion but uh in brief we discussed the gifted entitlement program where miss club provided a printout presentation titled brielle elementary school gifted and talented program 2122 to the committee it covered much of what was previously discussed publicly and within community level meetings pertaining to the program defining what gmt is the new jersey statute which requires each school district follow the new jersey department of ed gmt coordinator and it's with its requirements as well as some national research information for trainings in gmt programs the criteria of rubric used to identify and place children into the program the separation between k2 and brick and grades three through eight uh criteria including i ready math teacher recommendation report card grades and kodak results it also included a kodak overview goals and objectives for k-3 and then through 4-8 district-wide enrichment for grades k5 and grade 6-8 and the tnt program had a glance it also included an appeal process and items such as twice exceptional students and other professional development opportunities with cogat testing finishing the following week of the meeting we should be good to go with an october start for the program for grades four through eight and january through fourth grades k through third those with ieps and 504s were allowed all accommodations pertaining to koga such as extended time to complete the testing currently grades k-3 will continue with when what i need on and about the end of october when during the 20 wi during the 21 22 school year students are being provided with additional instructional instruction based on need this includes one support period a week in ela mass where teachers and interventionists will work collaboratively to provide targeted instructions on specific skills where tnt students will receive instruction during event periods varying themes along with the desired and intention to expand the program beyond academics into music and hearts were also discussed we also discussed that kelly cardman was working closely with gen love to ensure the proper fulfillment of the gst program we further discuss policy and regulations of the gmt program which is firmly in the hands of the policy committee where we are compliant and that updating of regulations will be needed to be put into place toward publishing we also discuss programs in clubs and the sports that will be continued such as basketball soccer cross country la crosse and field hockey but we also discuss clubs which in the past included art baking photoshop yoga chess board games where the sports were able to have based on a proctored unavailability we won't have as many clubs we've discussed equity diversity and inclusion as a continued pain with curriculum and we ensure that the infusion of edi into the everyday instruction of k3 continues under deadlock there is an in-service schedule for the middle of october for the teaching staff which will ensure ideas are provided to teachers to incorporate into ebi into their lessons teachers will be expected to ensure gen love is able to see how they are addressing edi through lesson plans faculty meetings activities and with within the units that are taught we also discussed that a job description for the curriculum supervisor is being actively drafted and will be put into place shortly an additional and final item we discussed was how the recent elevation of maria pendergrass and lisa matter into reading and map coaches respectively how that impacted the school and we're happy to say that their roles have been a huge help they positively impact things such as the gdp program and such things as analyzing student data like iwriting and will help to create professional learning communities amongst the teachers for enhanced at that there were no additional items from the administration or board members and we concluded the meeting thank you kurt as always very thorough important details i appreciate it does any board members have questions for her i have a few questions can we get a copy of that gifted um powerpoint yeah yeah you know one thing i did forget to mention that this is really for jen's uh for the committee to look back there will be a full detailed powerpoint presentation when we're done when it's completely in place because she didn't feel that she was giving it justice just through this and even though she's giving us a lot of work did you say it starts october 1st though no we're hoping i'll meet up when you discuss the part about the inclusion criteria if you remember did you discuss if um students who have external validation by a professional would be included even in the absence of the tools that are being used at the school an external psychologist or a psychiatrist or pediatrician through testing so i think that should be accepted well that's another question that's in that okay that's twice if the child has an iep a 504 please just you know yeah that actually and maybe i should have went into a little detail there is that twice exceptional means a child whose ability to creativity and potential for a human are so outstanding that a child's needs exceed differential general education programs adversely affects educational performance and requires specifically designed and struggling so yeah that will be um you know i'm fun that i'm privy to this and everybody isn't out there in the world but i think once jen gets this in place you expect so do you expect that by mid october parents will be notified and everything will be going yeah and then there's an appeal process yeah now truly you know to that point and and this is not a benchmark we're not using this as a as a benchmark for brielle but one of the things that struck me was that of the population and this is the national but typically it's it's only two to five percent which was low so you know i think that some people may be surprised i think people who really look at their children and picture the smartest things might be surprised once this is all hashed out but again who knows brielle is one great you have 10 15 20 you have the whole her you're not getting enough to it as a student who needs a person that meets the criteria if it's two percent or ten percent of the population that's great because we're not putting any number on it um i just also wanted to point out what uh miss club said in our meaning kurt is that this is an ongoing process so they're starting right now with the academics of like what we would think as gifted and talented but moving forward we are going to focus like more on the arts and like you know because it's obvious we all know we're not just gifted academically always keeping in mind that we have children that are different learners they have different learning styles and we want to make sure that they're incorporated in this they're included in this and and sometimes it's not just academics we look at the arts we look at creativity we look at different things and um and this is a work in progress this is a living document um and that's why um we weren't prepared to share it with everyone because she's still working on this ms love is still working on this the criteria everything um but i just wanted to say that um with the twice exceptional we're taking into consideration on those students who learn differently that have every right to be a part of this program um and there are when we look at how they're being evaluated there are multiple measures you know it's not just the one test there are multiple measures that we're taking into consideration for personal reasons giftedness doesn't just mean a kid's got a high iqra that is smart in math there's a lot of different manifestations of giftedness it can be music it can be art you could have a six-year-old who doesn't can't hand five plus five but can play a concert on the piano and that's that's just this gift that somebody who can do complex math it seems like that's all being taken into account right that's true that's why you can't just look at texts right it sounds like that's what we're doing yeah so again it's going to grow forward so one step at a time but i think we're headed in the right direction and like first said as far as policy is concerned on the we do have a policy but the regulation needs to be updated so um that's something that as i spoke with miss love as soon as she completes this then she and i and the policy committee will be able to sit down and rewrite the regulations so that's in the works as well great okay thank you appreciate it um i don't know if you included this part in your um presentation but during our meeting i asked on where we were as far as inclusion um and diversity in our curriculum and so miss love shared that um one of the things that she's done is she's created like a crosswalk um k through faith um for with ideas for teachers to be able to include on the contributions of african americans we also have the lgbtq community that as well and also for um people with disabilities you know so um those that those are things that she's working on as well um and how that will be embedded into our curriculum so i'm excited gave me some of his notes on wednesday september 15th we met with the blades and grounds committee president for the meeting mrs cherry we invited mr erickson to be president as well this is uh myself mr vitale and joe milan switch during the meeting we discussed and as for kind of an update as to the status of the building with regard to response to measures uh invoked by cobit so he gave us a little status report firstly noting that and citing the success of preventing any kind of transmission into school last year you know there's very little transmission that happens within the school buildings and certainly here in brielle is a testament to that partially because of the mass brand partially because they've done preventative measures such as changing air filters to where 13 where where possible with devices that could handle learn 13 their bird 11's with devices that can't they've also begun the practice or initiate the practice of keeping doors open keeping windows open as much as possible through their work they discovered various rooftop fans that were inoperable and there's a plan in place to remove those fans and replace them part of the large-scale projects that are hampering the buildings and grounds committee currently is the fact that we have solar panels on the roof that are nearing their end of life in order to do the roof work that we need to get done we need to remove the paths in order to remove the panels we need to get to the end of their life and we're facing that issue because it's hampering our ability to do the large-scale projects however we have the plan in place to replace fans in various parts of the building that's a capital expense that has to be approved by the state part of the problem with the state is that they are delayed in improvement plans at this time as well so we said in the interim while we're waiting for these things what more can we do to improve the air quality and the environment for our students and talk about various possibilities inclusive of a scale hiring an actual hvac contractor mr milan switch rights will be bringing in a mechanical engineer that specializes in hvac to review our proposed ventilation projects review the hvac system and make recommendations for upgrading replacement but in addition to that and more immediately we have uncovered those fans and while the fans are not operable we've at least opened them so they can escape the rooms we're talking about exchanging and monitoring the co2 levels of any classroom because we know that we know that uh cobia 19 is transmitted via airborne molecules so if your mod if you're monitoring the co2 levels thereby you're knowing how much the or how much human breadth is in the air and you monitor that you can adjust accordingly move students to a different location if needed open windows open doors as much circulation as possible so that's where where we were at that meeting basically um looking and gave authority to mrs charity to begin searching for this hvac contractor but at the same time also gave authority to contracts and do whatever it takes to get as much airflow in all of our classrooms as possible because we believe that air exchange is the single best thing you can do during this time but again cite the success that you've been having without the transmission happening in schools uh dave anything on personnel tonight i'm here for negotiation uh fidelity policy i do have something um so we didn't have an official uh meeting but i did contact the committee via email to discuss two policies that i felt needed to be put on tonight's agenda because they're covet-related for a first reading i want to put it on her first one and i see that it wasn't added to the agenda but um maybe added to the two to the agenda um so i have two policies here one is um it's policy 1648.13 and it's school employee vaccination requirements this comes from the governor's executive order it's a mandated policy so there aren't any adjustments or changes that we can make to this policy and basically this policy requires that all employees to either provide adequate proof that they have been fully vaccinated or submit to covet 19 testing at a minimum of one to two times each week and the other policy that we have is to and this one is the road forward cobiah team health and safety this is similar to the restart and recovery plan that we submitted last year and so this one provides a range of recommendations rather than mandatory uh standards these recommendations are meant to assist school districts and implementing protocols to reduce the risks to students and staff from covet 19 while still allowing for full-time learning this document is also it's mandated but the state has allowed schools to make some adjustments since that will fit each district so this is one that i want to present for a first reading tonight um but next week we're trying i'm trying to schedule a meeting for wednesday so that we can discuss this and review all of the appendices that um this policy requires and then we'll have it ready for our next morning okay great so let me get those [Music] it does um now [Music] you know what it has on some recommendations but we we have when we did the um the recovery plan last year we already had a list so we're just going to take that same list and just um make some modifications um but they the state is allowing some flexibility with this so we'll simply discuss it thank you anything else okay um i know anyone who's talking to children that go to brielle elementary school i know they're reporting to you that they are so happy to be back in school that what's happening to them compared to last year being able to you know travel in different classes have lockers uh go outside of the daily lunch or play just been a wonderful start we have over 510 students involved in our school we have over 20 new students in our school we have 45 students in our kindergarten program currently our sports program has begun ball teams as of today are undefeated we have over 80 children in sixth seventh and eighth grade involved in our scores but today two of our records from um our field hockey team who both scored today we viewed freehold six to one our girls soccer team um our boys soccer team began from today and um our our kids are preparing for the olympics at um antrim school that's held in october october 12th we'll have many children from third grade through eighth grade participating in olympic night there um our back to school nights have been planned to keep everything safe we're planning three back to school nights the first one is tomorrow night uh pre-k k-1-2 on next tuesday the 28th is for grades 3 4 5 and then that thursday the 30th his first grade 67 name i'm asking and i'm not demanding but if only one parent show up to keep everything safe from the classroom um we're asking parents to do that for us and this allows you know we always do two nights but i think having three nights allows parents to get to see every teacher that their child has so um i'm glad we were able to pull that off today is day 10 school we've already had our first fire drill and as kirk's report reflected our teachers in 10 short days have done amazing things in their classroom with students um you know working under the conditions that we're working under our kids are fine uh wearing a mask getting their masks great doing everything that we do every single day to get the kids outside or have the breaks that they need i feel that the teachers are doing a tremendous job um our pen uh came in i don't know when and decorated mums and plants to our courtyard and so uh we are going to encourage parents to come see what our courtyard looks like we'll have spotlights on but when people come back to back to school tonight so they can see that's another environment where kids are learning outside and so uh we're very very happy with the first 10 days of school it's been a great start the children are happy the teachers are happy parents are happy for the most part our attendance has been wonderful you've received the letters it's ten days of school we've had um free staff and three students test positive since school and i have we have no hiv report thank you chris um here in town uh had reached out to some pto members and even some board members said he heard that you know parents have the brown bed lunch and he met with us to say he's willing to help we don't collect any money parents will be able to set up a school camp through him and you pay him directly you can order sandwiches up until i think it's seven o'clock in the morning um custom sandwiches he will deliver them and right now looking for volunteers to just be in the cafeteria to help us hand it out to kids and so um you know i just wanted the board to know this tonight uh if any i've heard if uh anybody else reaches out to say they want to help us out when we don't have this food service until january so this is just a service um as the pto season so just help parents who you know are making sandwiches every day for the children so if uh and any parent that is going and i'll put this out in a letter if any parent wants to volunteer in our cafeteria even if it's three times a week two times a week um they have to be vaccinated according to the executive order so they want to volunteer for something like that they have to be vaccinated that's enough thank you chris i'm very excited that jimmy has agreed to help us with this to give some kids some good lunches and some parents some relief of making lunches every day does anybody have any questions for chris this time all right um action item let's move on on the agenda uh do i have any questions i do yes um only two promotion that's the board approved for 21 22 members police department i guess chris could answer this um this is essentially the same agreement that we've had in the past is there any increases in knowledge nothing not at all and all the protocols are still the same okay thank you good question um i just when i was looking at the pt that the teachers are going to be receiving and um and you know i'm always happy to see what we have on pd where we're learning about children with disabilities and also i see one here it says from mathematics challenges to mathematics success for students with adhd and other learning disabilities and that's so important because so many of our children do have that challenge of adhd and it's so important for our teachers to understand how to work with them it's not the easiest thing um so i'm glad to see that um they're receiving this pd and uh you know and it might even be just an idea for this um teacher to almost turnkey this information to the staff because our teachers that teach special education they are knowledgeable of how to work with children um with learning disabilities but our gen ed teachers usually don't or our special area teachers and our kids go to different classes and work with different teachers so it's nice to it would be useful um for them to be knowledgeable of how to work with our kids that have um learning disabilities i'm so glad to see that um they're going to that train and then i see that miss love is attending the national association for gifted children um convention we've been talking a lot about this program and that's actually the national association for gifted children where brielle is using their standards on you know to base our programs [Music] and many school districts do not experience the born support for teacher professional development but this tour has been committed i've been here for a long time this board has always been committed to approving administrators and teachers to improve their craft because they know that that directly impacts the children's learning so thank you for pointing that out i think it's important in the sentence thank you and thank you can you call the role ms chairman any questions there's nothing for building things around tonight's um board members we are going to add d1 for our first reading um so to report the first reading for policy 16.48.13 and 16.48.11.
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i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for his hopefully recovery he got another infection today yes okay thank you thank you mr sturbach yeah sorry about that that's okay i'm worried to thank um mr alfano then you want to oh let me read a quick statement if i may mr roman gina the new jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the rights to the public to have advanced note 7 to attend a meeting of public bodies in which any business affecting their interests discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provision of this act of course i probably would if it has caused notice of this meeting be published by having the daytime in place they are posted in the offices of the borough clerk or a library for erector pump the office of the board of ed the office of school number three four five six in the high school on august 30th 2021 and notices were 42 reporters of the record august 30th 2021 this is an official meeting i'd like to take the role if i may mr roman gina mrs abreu here mr capano mrs fredo here mr garcia dr pantaliano here mr raincourt here mr russo mr shelley here i'm starbuck yeah mr yanozzi okay mr roman gina okay mr founder thank you very much i want to welcome uh our community members who might be viewing the meeting through our stream just a couple of items i have before we look at the consent agenda just want to make mention and i want to thank our staff and our administration for a successful opening of school all of our students k through 12 returned on september 9th our pre-k students started that monday and so far with all of our students back this year i have to say things are going very very well i know we're still going to be struggling with covet as it's still around we have a mandate by the governor where all school employees and all students are wearing masks during the day except for physical activities or during lunch so we are and i and i assure our parents that we are taking every precaution possible to uh provide for the safety of our students and our staff but this is the first time probably in a year and a half where we have a full program all of our students are back in the classroom and things are going very very well and that's really um a tribute to our staff and our administration who are making sure that things are running smoothly this month we are running parent visitation evenings in all of our buildings uh for the safety of our staff we are limited to limiting it to one parent uh per child uh no students in the building so far we've had parent visitation evenings at school three school six and um the high school and i have to say that the turnout was exceptional uh everybody adhered to all the safety protocols as far as weary mass are concerned and um our turnout was not as big as let's say two years ago but considering covert and what's gone on we did have a good number of parents that turned out and that night as always the teachers provided them with an overview of what goes on in the classroom what the expectations are for students and so on and so forth and i just always want to emphasize with parents that uh this is one night during the year but at any time during the year if you're concerned about how you stood how your child is doing uh we have guidance counselors principals uh please call them setting up an appointment to either meet with our teachers uh uh in person or virtually or by a phone call to make sure that uh students are keeping up academically athletic wise all our sports are in progress uh girls volleyball uh football which is a cooperative effort this year between richfield and palsy and cliffside park and that's running very very well we're very happy with that cross country is also um working out very well so again we're battling the possibility of uh covid but so far our coaches have done a good job in terms of emphasizing with students safety and uh being careful if they're not feeling well coming to a practice or coming to a game and uh so far so good as far as our four sports are concerned i just want to remind our parents that if there is a cliffside park app that's um pretty active in terms of sending out notifications to parents you can download that app by going to the apple store or the google play store we also have instagram accounts we have a district account that you can follow as well as some of the schools have accounts i know the middle school account has been very active mr pinto also at the high school has an instagram account which also uh allows you to see some of the events that are going on uh information that goes out to uh to the parents so with social media as it is today uh it's important to keep up with a lot of those different things again i want to do mention that on our website because i know parents have asked questions um regarding safety measures what happens if a child is positive we do have opening guidelines posted to our website but i do want to emphasize as we have in the past we follow the guidelines or the direction of our local health official as well as the new jersey uh health department so if a child was positive with covid uh we look to our local health official as far as who has to be quarantined uh for how long and so on and so forth and um if anybody has any questions regarding that uh they're welcome to call their school principal or school nurse who uh would answer any questions they may have but there is an outline on our website regarding our guidelines and what protocols we do follow tonight the board of education is going to approve um a vaccination policy for all staff this is a result of a mandate by the governor so basically the policy that we're approving tonight would be that any staff member um contracted with cliffside park a custodian the secretary cafeteria worker who are unvaccinated be tested twice a week beginning or have to be tested twice a week beginning october 18th those are guidelines sucked forth by governor murphy uh we are in the process of coming up with guidelines for our staff who are unvaccinated at this time i will share those guidelines with our board of education but the policy itself which speaks to that will be approved tonight and then i will get information out to our staff and and to the board as far as the guidelines are but again i want to reiterate that um staff members who are unvaccinated for the safety of all will be tested twice a week beginning october 18th on a monday and a thursday and it's up to the staff member to fulfill that that obligation i also encourage encourage parents uh if you have a child who's 12 and up vaccinations are available and again i know there's a lot of parents that are concerned about the safety of their children as they should be uh but those vaccines are available and if anybody has any questions about those vaccines where they're available and so on they can call our school nurses or laura lucanic who's the local health official for the town okay i'll stop here for a minute uh any questions from the board regarding anything i just spoke about okay so at this time what i would like to do is look at the consent agenda and go over a couple of items page two on the consent agenda at the top of the page as we always do we approve professional development for staff some of it may still be virtual some of it now is becoming uh in person but those are amounts for registration fees that we are approving for various staff members uh the very last uh resolution at the bottom of page two we are approving an unpaid medical leave for vicki bucko who's a middle school social studies teacher uh effective september 1st through november 1st uh page 3 the fourth resolution down a resolution recommended by the superintendent to accept the resignation of joseph stanziani school psychologist effective joe uh january 1st 2022 joe has served the district as a math teacher for many many years and then joe went on to become our school psychologist he's worked at the high school in all of our elementary schools and he's done a great job with us and i wish joe the best uh next resolution we are accepting the resignation of jamie speliotis our teacher uh from the middle school uh effective august 31st 2021 we have a number of resolutions where we are appointing uh bus aides teacher aides and we're still filling a number of positions on pages three and page four uh bottom of page four uh to fill vacancies we are transferring um ghani maluku who was a part-time custodian at the high school to uh laurenk kovinski from part-time and number four full-time to the high school these are not new positions they're positions that came about by uh either someone leaving uh or someone being transferred to a different building and um we are also transferring uh giovanni oriella from a part-time custodian number four at number three to number four and again this is just some uh shifting up positions to fill spots uh top of page five um as per contract with the cpa we are uh moving people from one classification to another uh as they've successfully completed some graduate work we are approving as per contract the next resolution staff members who applied for graduate reimbursement tuition reimbursement and fulfilled those obligations from last school year uh substitute teachers were approving additional substitutes uh we're approving lunch aids and by the way substitutes lunch aids still have to fulfill all of the vaccination requirements that i referred to a couple of minutes ago uh page seven uh we have again we're approving tuition reimbursements for this coming school year uh for the following staff members as per cpa contract and again uh these are people that are applying the application has been approved but they have to fulfill those graduate courses and they will be reimbursed at next september after they show proof of taking the courses and getting a b and above uh page eight we are filling two co-curricular positions a morning duty at school number three of beth molinado assistant high school robotics ed jones at the high school uh we are rescinding an appointment for lucy spoletti saturday detention uh that was an error that i made last meeting by appointing um lucy uh silly the phillips is our um after school coordinator at school number four uh again i left orcilla off last time she's been there i believe this is basilius third year she does a good job in the after school program uh then the next resolution are as per contract we are approving staff members who are teaching an extra class in the middle school in the high school or are using a dual certification page 10 you'll notice we have a number of staff members where we're just appropriating their salaries from local funds to title or ncob funds so basically what we're doing on page 10 is we are instead of paying these salaries out of local budget we're paying out of federally funded programs that we've received uh grant monies for one being title one another being title two uh preschool handicap and so on and so forth and page 11 we're second reading of policies that are being revised and updated in addition to the school employee vaccination requirement policy uh page 12 um as i mentioned unvaccinated staff have to be tested twice weekly we are going to use lab cue initially this might not be something that might be long term but we are going to be using lab cue at no cost to the board uh lab cue will be on site monday and thursday from three to six and any staff member who's unvaccinated can use this um company to get i'm sorry to get tested for cover not unvaccinated to get tested for covert and uh the labor the land results will come back to the nurses within 24 hours so in case there is a 20 a coven positive we could take action quickly in terms of quarantining possible students or staff that need to be this may not be long term if a staff member who's unvaccinated chooses not to use this uh lab cue they can go to their own doctor but the results have to be with to us within 24 hours and again no cost to the board uh page 13 i had emailed the board uh a week ago about our uh the school district's emergency plan that has to be submitted to the county this is basically the same plan we submitted last year when we were remote with just some minor adjustments uh regarding um some updates from the the governors they call it the road back so you have a copy of that plan and that will be posted to our website uh as soon as the county approves it um hopefully within the next couple of weeks buildings and grounds usage and then mr alfano do you have anything as far as finance just a couple items you know for uh 2021 the orders will be on site on starting on monday for uh 2122 in regard to uh getting you mentioned getting the euro to a good start we've got about 18 routes running so far seamlessly the majority of our special needs students both in district and out of district that's good news and uh pretty much all our summer projects of the summer of 21 have been uh completed up to spec so that's good news also that's pretty much it on off side okay uh before i call for a uh a vote on the consent agenda any questions uh from the board mr savastano any questions from the public on the website okay what's that mr tarabak may i have a second if i may what's up that's a mr shelley yes okay let's take a vote now on the agenda um this is a brew this is brooke yes this is fredo yes except for php with mr jones thank you mrs freda mr garcia yes dr pantaliano yes on everything except on page eight mr jones and page twelve lab cue i'm going to extend and dr pantheon you said page 12 abstain correct okay thank you mr raincourt yes mr shell yes mr bakker keeps yes gino still moved okay um any other things to discuss any any one thing i did leave out and i know our president mr uh capano was not here tonight but were there any additional committee reports or anything mr alfano since he's not here i don't know if anybody is going to meet this morning at the high school yeah well at a meeting here concerning the gym everything is progressing well and uh all the change orders are you know are in line with our uh you know whatever project budget with the password so we don't find yeah it will be on schedule okay okay november first date chris well three months ago we changed the schedule to two yes two years ago so we're on schedule s as i mentioned yeah we received the parts for the rtu unit that sits on top of the roof which is good news correct and public service so far is on board to your point carl and uh dr pavliano your point is that months ago we knew that the parts were on back order we got the parts when we thought we were going to get the parts so to your point call is that we change the uh timeline to more of an end of october november first when we can get phys ed and the kids back in that calendar deadline right now is still holding we're going to have a meeting in two weeks october 6th and we'll keep everyone posted in regard to the stats anyone else anything else committee wise okay motion to adjourn make a motion that's mr uh raincourt i may have a second if i may please oh sure and that's mr garcia thank you thank you very much so
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] um [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] like to call this meeting of the eastern township board of education to order pursuant to the open public meetings act out of the public notice has been given by the secretary of the even township board of education in the following manner posting written notice on the official bulletin board of the board of education office emailing written notice the berlin county times in the courier post and filing written notice with the municipal clerk of eastern township can i have a roll call please mrs cappello mrs everhart mr fizzakiro here miss fleming here mr canton here mrs knoll mr lanzalotta here mr megan mrs ryan here we have a quorum thank you at this time i'm going to need a motion to go into executive session whereas in njsa 10 4-12 allows for a public body to go into closed session during a public meeting and whereas the board of education of eastern township is deemed necessary to go into closed session to discuss certain matters which are exempted from the public and whereas the regular meeting of the board of education will reconvene following the end of the closed session at approximately 7 pm now therefore be it resolved that the board of education will go into closed session for the following reasons as outlined in njsa 10 4-12 items 2.2 through 2.4 any uh do i have a motion motion by miss ryan breve a second second by ms fleming any questions or comments roll call please mr frozen cairo yes miss fleming mr canton yes mr lanzalotta yes mr megan yes mrs bryant yes motion carriers thank you we will uh reconvene at approximately approximately 7 p.m [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] uh [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] please [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] my uh [Music] hmm [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] we're reconvening this meeting of the yesham township board of education if you could please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the god united states of america and to the republic of which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all at this point in time i will read the eastern township school district mission statement the mission of the eastern township school district is to promote excellence in an environment that engages students in meaningful learning experiences in partnership with students dedicated staff and families and community the district provides a strong educational foundation that will empower our students to achieve their unique potential embrace self-directed lifelong learning develop the skills necessary for appropriate risk-taking and responsible decision-making respect themselves and others problem-solve individually and collaboratively and become contributing members of a diverse global society okay at this point in time um we do not have any presentations i want to make sure i don't see the agenda okay we're going to move past uh presentations and go to number five which is public comment now this is public comment for agenda items only that means it's anything that is currently on this agenda all other comments for our for the end of the meeting after we're done the meeting will now be open to the public referencing agenda items only however if your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or personnel items or negotiations we'd ask you to see the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public please limit your comments to three minutes per person again this is for anything that is on the agenda seeing none i will close that portion of the board of the meeting well not the board that makes no sense i don't do this for a month and i get tongue-tied all right at this point uh we're going to go to item number six approval of the minutes i need a motion to prove items six one through six two do i have a motion motion by miss noel and seconded by miss fleming uh any questions or comments pertaining to our approval of minutes seeing none let's go to a roll call please mr fizzicaro yes ms fleming yes mr canton yes this is noel yes mr lanzalotta uh due to absence i have to abstain from six one 6-1-6-2 mr megan yes this is ryan yes motion carries thank you okay we're going to go to item number seven superintendents report and administrative items i need a motion to prove items seven one through seven six do i have a motion motion by miss ryan second at my mr lanzalata uh before we go into questions and comments i'm gonna give the floor to dr smith for a superintendent's report thank you mr pascaro so this as this is our first board meeting since the return to school i'll focus my comments on where we're at this point in the year so our schools are open with every kid attending every every day and full days and if you stand outside our elementary schools any morning you know they the kids are masked but they're skipping into school you know and i think that it's important to focus on what we do have and what we have is kids wearing the grass down uh across they cut across from the sidewalk to get to the school door in our middle schools if you were to stand inside them you hear our students engaging in discussion raising their hands practicing ways of finding their voice and expressing themselves and it's a powerful wonderful thing this is my 26th year in education and for 24 of those years all the simple facts i just shared i took absolutely for granted right just the notion of all students attending full days every day but this is no small feat i was speaking with one of our principals today by cell phone and i heard in the background the sound of swings in the it was recess and uh that simple sound kind of symbolized that joyful noise symbolized the outcome of a very complicated process because actually everyone in town and everyone in our district makes that sound of that single swing possible it starts with the taxes right that every morrowtonian provides from kids at cherokee working local businesses onto all of our retired community members who whose kids may have kids by now the efforts of our board efforts of our township leadership our ptas our business community the efforts of every staff member right now are indispensable in making the sound of that swing happen on top of the fact that many of us as a staff thought at least back in june that this year might be a return to normal only use air quotes there a new normal but a normal maybe no masks maybe no temporary remote learning maybe more or less no more covered to cause quarantines just school in all its wonder guess what instead this year behind the scenes is another marathon and our nurses our teachers our custodians our drivers our administrators our secretaries our everyone's are stretching to keep things whole for the kids and our families right who last year had to juggle schedules remote learning days temporary closures again this year are going to continue to deal with changes and challenges as kobet is still with us some of those changes and challenges roll down far above a local level state level and national level it might manifest as bus delays as we stretch our busing capacity to keep things full it might manifest as the time needed by a school to prepare a packet of papers for a student who from one day the next goes out on a quarantine it might manifest as say a virtual back to school night and not yet quite at the point where we can have an in-person back-to-school night so that we judiciously are avoiding exposures and on and on but the reward is the sound of that swing during recess the sound of that student raising their hand and sharing thoughts in class whatever we know the kids are insulated the most that's right we are always trying to keep it away from the kids so that they can just experience as much pure joy as possible about being in school and to that end as well after a one year break we will have the sounds of extracurricular activities after school which are on the agenda tonight for approval and gratitude tremendous gratitude to our staff who have stepped up and committed to serving as advisors and coaches for those clubs a lot's changed perhaps in some of some of our staff's lives right in the last two years and they step up and they and they take on those additional rules we're grateful for that you know and if you look through and you see the activities and i'm just going to read a couple because they're just the titles of these clubs are so rich and i think act as windows into the the variety of um engagement that is offered for our kids kind kids broadcasting theater club yearbook safety patrol frisbee golf morning show happy helpers sign language and dodgeball i can't wait to see the happy helpers just gotta just picture what that looks like right that's amazing that's just to name a few these activities are gonna look a little different at each school right depending on the variables of staff availability and expertise but each school has many choices you know and this year in part through our extracurricular activities and other things like opening up our facilities to outside groups this year right because at the end of the day our buildings belong to everyone right and it was painful last year to not be able to open up our buildings because they truly are community buildings we are going to do that this year you know and we're very glad about that and that's another leap beyond what we did last year so we we continue to encourage everyone in our district community to remember that during a pandemic we all right all district families we live together under the same roof the school roof right and interconnected in ways we never were before and it takes everyone's sense of responsibility for each other to make that work and that helps us help everyone right as school administrators and school staff keep things safe i'll just give a couple examples but the little reminder plugs that means for example like when our children uh are showing symptoms or siblings of our children are showing symptoms of cobod let's be safe and just keep them home all right or when we take our children to get tested keep them home until the test results come in and then to share those results with us as soon as possible you know and again those simple steps help us help families and help kids and together all stakeholders all those working together it helps us keep those swings moving at recess keep those hands going up in class and providing all we can for all our kids every day every full day all year and that was a bit longer than usual but we have full days and every day so i think per minute i'm allowed a little longer so thanks thank you doctors are there any questions or comments in the superintendent's report um i i will personally echo uh dr smith your sentiments i uh for the the clubs and activities in particular you know obviously education curriculum is extraordinarily important in schools but a kid is truly completed as you know they they're completed by what else they do and sometimes your extracurriculars are where a child finds who they are that's where they start to really define who they are and it's like you said it could be something like um like theater or something like orchestra or i saw in in one of these i think was van zant maybe or maybe it was moral to middle uh where they have like a ukulele club and it may seem like something that is you know on it might be small or or insignificant on a on a spreadsheet but when when that child is engaged by that they're learning to love and i always believed extracurricular activities where that's always a big deal for me and to see them return for for me as as a school board president as a father as a teacher myself um and an advisor it's incredibly important because this is the foundation where they begin to learn to love what they are before they master it when they come to cherokee so after a year and a half of of feels like emptiness i'm just very happy that this is back i just want to say thank you for everyone who did that and um i feel like again we're just another step towards being completed of who we are so thank you any other questions or comments let's go to a roll call please mr frisicaro yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noll yes mr lanzalotta yes mr megan yes this is ryan yes motion carries thank you all right we're now moving into curriculum and instruction i need a motion to approve items 8.1 through 8.8 do i have a motion motion by miss ryan second hit by miss noel i promise i'll look over here first i feel like i always go left uh any uh any questions or comments pertaining to curriculum and instruction yes mr ryan i just wanted to give um kudos to the whole curriculum department teachers who worked so hard on updating our curriculum especially in the world language and science you spent a long time and we appreciate it and you guys did an amazing job after reading through it a curriculum thank you miss ryan any other questions or comments all right saying none let's go to a roll call please mr fisticaro yes miss fleming mr catherine yes mrs noel yes mr lancelot yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carriage thank you now moving to item number nine finance and operations i need a motion to approve items nine one through nine fifteen do i have a motion no of course not uh miss snow uh with the first mr lanzalotta with a second i literally looked over to your side any questions or comments pertaining to finance and operations yes mr every donation um is is huge and i want to say thank you to 7-eleven on green tree road they donated hand sanitizers to the schools yeah you can never have enough of that absolutely we don't want to run out yeah thank you miss nell any other questions or comments to finance operations seeing none let's go to a roll call please mr fizzakero yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noll yes mr lancelata yes mr reagan yes mrs ryan yes mission carries thank you mr rashenti all right at this point we move to item 10.
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i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for i all up police mrs allen here mrs tyke here mr australia absent mr ellery here and mr here thank you i'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda please eye motion we approve the agenda do i have a second on that we have a second any discussion okay mrs allen yes mrs kais yeah mr australia oh i'm sorry he's not here it's really yeah and mr mcgibbon yes thank you agenda the agenda is passed as written anyone online from the public public okay bring no one uh any call to the public let's go to our consent agenda i'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda please i have a motion and i have a second on the consent agenda any discussion okay mrs allen yes mrs kais yes mr ollery and mr mcgivern yes senator jenna passes thank you new business approval of new food service position yes part of the reason why we've asked for this special board meeting is so that we can approve two new positions within our food service department uh we currently have three eight hour positions in one four hour position we're asking the board to approve an additional seven hour position that would be a cafeteria worker and a three-hour position which would be an assistant cashier in the past prior to kobig our food service department was doing about 300 lunches a day we are currently serving north of 450 lunches a day and that does not include any staff meals that we're providing we're averaging between 15 and 20 staff meals a day so we're we're quickly approaching that 500 meals per day just at lunch we are in the past prior to covered we were doing 75 to 100 breakfasts and we're currently serving over 200 breakfasts today so we're asking that these positions be approved not only for our staffing needs now but as the neighborhoods grow and more students come in we already have these positions in place so we're asking for approval of these two positions we're out of the food service budget food service is rather well within their funds they've they carried over almost 175 000 in the previous year um and in order to get her to spend some of that money i've asked her to look at things like buying new ovens at 75 000 each you know so the food service department has the funds to cover this entirety okay i'll entertain a motion please on approval of the new food service positions i know that we approve the new food service position you have a second i'll check it any discussion i have a question greg you say before coven we had a certain number of meals um i understand our community is growing but when cova subsides you see this going down and if not why not so in speaking with our food service department what we are seeing is that more and more students not just because we're serving free meals but because of the the quality of the food so when when the free food subsides yes i do see us going down but i still see us well and above that 300 meal per day mark and just having the three ladies back there to serve it because right now i'm using parapros and everything else to to to to do a complete operation on a daily basis so by having this assistant cashier i can get kids through the line faster you know and i'm not worried about having you know my last lunch of the day is getting their meals with five minutes left did that answer your question sir i mean that's fine um what what is this going to cost us on an annual basis for these additional salaries and benefits you're looking at 14 to 15 an hour 11 hours a day so we're talking an impact of 50 to 60 at most because the one the one position will become benefit eligible so we'll have to offer that person our health insurance and things like that any further questions discussions well i think i think part of it is just because everything that we are deserving is free but you know we're also serving things that kids aren't you know getting at home for in the mornings for breakfast you know we're serving hot breakfast every morning with the occasional cold cereal but we're doing things like smoothies and things like that so we're getting we've got items that kids normally wouldn't do from home i also think that we have more students riding the bus than we did during um kobe we had parents dropping students off um right closer to the bell so now the kids are on the buses they're eating before they go to class well i guess the question that i would want to answer is is this trending toward a food insecurity issue and possibly even a community issue but that's one thing and now why are these all free again and i'm sure you told me and i forgot the usda has deemed it that all student meals will be free for last year and again this year they haven't made a decision yet as to what they will do for for the upcoming years but you know we are serving free meals for the entire school year this year per the usda and it was really big sorry on the implications that um parents were laid off or not working and the hardship for school lunches to be purchased um that was another way for government assistance to help families out to provide free lunch and i do remember you bringing this forward to the board i just couldn't couldn't place it but i do remember you talking about this so did um well so this didn't happen in the last four days of break is that correct no this is something that we've been monitoring for the last month or so and we've had meetings with our food service department and i also we had that meeting with ms cuevas and mr latham and within this group discussion with our food service department and the three of us we felt this is the best way moving forward to not only make sure that we can get these kids through the lines faster but also prepare for future meal this services could have been on our meeting agenda nine days ago there was i mean this isn't like it's something that just happened in the last nine days it actually is we actually had this meeting on monday when we had that discussion when the food service manager came to us saying that she definitely needs to help sooner rather than later but you've been monitoring this ever since it started and you've noticed an increase in the number of breakfast served since the beginning of the school year so a marked increase and you've been using parapro to just try and get the luncheon served so you know that this has been a problem the personnel side my people in the cafeteria are wearing down the amount of work and the prep time put in just to get everything and then not being able to prepare enough food and then struggling to make sure we have enough food during that last lunch you know that's that's the part that you can't see when you're just standing out there watching the lines go through so it's just the amount of stress and everything else that the folks are under that we're trying to help alleviate as well and i understand that but you know what my concern is we're having a special meeting at a time when our board doesn't normally leak and we have a board where i i know of at least three maybe four people who are employed uh and i would say that 8 30 would be considered normal duty hours and this is taking away from your time your job your superintendent's time the board's secretary's time and if we knew this was coming i'm not sure that we need that special meeting i would just like to recommend that we try and get things in to our normal we're school of about seven countries and i uh i met with some other school board members and you know we see school boards but uh school districts that have 16 17 000 students and they're having a meeting once a month and they're having a study session once a month so for us uh four days after a meeting to have to call a special meeting to talk about something that we've we've known has been building i just don't want to see us get into that it's almost kind of like a frivolous lawsuit only it's a meeting we should have been able to address and and this is this is really the first time hearing about this and again when i you know when i see a 150 percent increase i i think this potentially could be a big issue i don't think it's just free i think i think some of our kids may be broaching food insecurity and i think i don't know how you find out about that but stop worrying and i know our people haven't been in the classroom i've been in the classroom and hungry kids don't learn well well shelley so i you know i want to live feeding them and feeding them efficiently and i'm all in this but this sounds like an issue that we should have been made aware of and been addressing long before a special meeting that was called four days after a legume well shelley for one we do have a way to monitor food insecurity as far as public schools can we make everyone apply for free or assisted lunches every year we really really have been pushing it this year um we're at what 41 right now so that is something that the board has been aware of also monitoring an ongoing situation and keeping it on your radar and say hey i need help right now so it sounds like our administration has done their job keeping this on their radar and moving quickly when the situation hits the fan which they have done at your request to call a special meeting for and i just want to reiterate that we primarily set the meeting so that we could approve the preschool staffing and miss tesla for after-school tutoring because that would mean that we just interviewed and this preschool person the day of the board meeting so having to wait a whole other month for this person to start um obviously we need to finish staffing preschool this will be the last and then with miss tesla analyzing data for after school tutorials for kinder students rather than her volunteer her time for the entire month before the next board meeting we thought this would be a viable reason to have a special meeting to get these personnel people on board and then in the conversation we figured since we had had the meeting with food service that it would be a good time to put this in because we have to get the positions approved so that we can post the positions interview and come with a recommendation for our our next meeting okay any further discussions and i've i've spent 30 years doing forecasting and so i i understand all of this and i've worked with the city's lunch program at the so i'm very saying that we just want to make sure because of questions don't see have this problem so that's the only reason that i'm i'm thinking that maybe we need a better solution well hopefully the this might take care of that any further discussion on new new food super food service positions okay mrs allen yes mrs heiss yeah mr ollery and mr mcgivern yes motion passes thank you um any governing board information no anything yeah this is guys anything yeah i hope everybody got their invitation to jcax yes i got mine okay all board members should have received an invitation to seize a new building and everything that they're doing at jpeg uh it came in your cool email you spelled my name on i'll have a look yep i found it okay mr older anything no okay that being said turn yes please
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he could come up to me and be like hi my name's john and you're like hi david at this time i'll call the meeting to order let the record reflect that all board members are present and we'll go ahead and stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and next up we have our theater performance dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet we are so excited this evening to have some of our extraordinary students present some of their extraordinary talents and dr dean will introduce this group good evening madam president mr governing board dr kellis and members of cabinet this evening we are absolutely pleasure to have mr walgren and the willow canyon high school theater group who is going to perform for us an excerpt from their upcoming show mary poppins and tonight we're going to hear supercalifragilisticexpialidocious the floor is yours [Music] we foreign to find a [Music] of it way something quite true [Music] [Applause] [Music] sail and wild animals [Music] um [Music] delicious [Music] [Applause] [Music] which is very hard to spell [Music] is [Music] smartypants [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] supercalifragilisticexpialidocious [Applause] and we would invite all interested out to see their musical on which dates september 29th through october 2nd that's next wednesday through saturday seven o'clock tickets are available very good and thank you so very much willow canyon theater troop fantastic job this evening give another round of applause please next we have audience with individuals we do have one tonight so i'll go ahead and read the statement this is the time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ars 38-431.01 h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration decision a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record tonight we have reina felita bialta sorry good evening everyone my name is reyna bialta and i'm here to address an assault that happened at daiser high school last thursday the 16th my son was assaulted by two individuals even though i had previously reported to the school on the on september 13 that there was a previous harassment from that individual and nothing was done by the school to protect my son and as as a result of that he was done by this individual and now my son is scared to be at school or even to you know because he's getting all this harassment like from like the website and i just want everyone to help me and see how we can escalate this to uh you know protection for our children that's cool thank you dr kalis you're following up with the family madam president members of the board dr dean will follow up with his family thank you that's all we have this evening next we have student update madam president members of the board we are thrilled to invite kirsten cole to give a student update from the dicer student leadership council good evening madam president members of the board dr kellis cabinet in the community my name is kirsten cole and i'm a member of the dysart student leadership council at our most recent meeting we did a campus post check to see how all the schools are doing now that we are fully in the new school year it is great to report that all students are taking full advantages of opportunities they have on campus and are attending sporting events participating in spirit weeks and overall are building up the school's culture we are also so excited for all of our district councils to work together together with valley vista student council they're hosting the annual aasc arizona association of student council spirit conference this is giving us an office awesome opportunity to get to know the other councils and work together towards a common goal we all look forward to sharing your accomplishments with all of you thank you thank you kirsten thank you next we have the superintendent update thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet um speaking of student council i would just want to put an exclamation point on what you just observed that we have some great leaders in our schools i was at a student leadership classroom today i've been to several over the last couple months and it's just always a thrill to see that we are in great hands that our schools have students who want to do positive things and are using their leadership capacity to plan those positive things there's always something negative in them in the media and yes there are unfortunate events that happen but by and large the student experience is extraordinary and i just appreciate that again mr greece haber is taking the lead with our dysart student leadership council and that these students are doing things that impact students all across the district that's all i have to report thank you very much dr kelly next we have the governing board update i don't have any big updates but happy fall even though it doesn't feel like it and i'll open it up for anyone else that wants to jump in um i had the honor of visiting all the cte classes at willow canyon high school and it was very impressive and looking forward to visiting the other three in the very near future wow just want to make sure that anyone that happens to be watching please please do not partake in the tick tock craze that's going on right now across the nation arizona and it's not the right thing to do there has been vandalism and destroying of property and dysart will take swift action against anyone that happens to be doing anything like that so please be forewarned um i attended the country music um uh the weekend that was here at the vista uh one of my favorite artists uh shooter jennings was on there and he was he was performing like crazy and sweating like crazy so you know his heart and passion was in it so it was a great great thing i also saw lee rocker of the stray cats it was a great evening and attended the superintendent certified council where teachers can bring any issues from their particular school and the teachers were just bringing lots of ideas and lots of concerns that they had and so that was a perfect place to share that and also i had the privilege of attending uh the cactus cafe today that's over at the support services um i was looking for something different to eat and i was told that dr croto really recommends the grown-up grilled cheese sandwich that was very good the nutrition area is open to the public so i believe it's from seven to one 130 something like that so anyone can go in and it's at the support services building and i even had the opportunity to speak with a couple of bus drivers they didn't know who i was but i did ask them how's it going how's your day they were a little tired but they knew what their job was to actually go pick up transport the kids and they all did it with smiles even though they were tired they all did with smiles so i would recommend going to the cactus cafe and the grilled cheese grown up or the grown-up grilled cheese sandwich so thank you very much this is awesome all right i got to attend the constitution day at canyon ridge and that was pretty cool like it was super cool mr rosso put a lot of hard work into that it was nice because all the kids chose a founding father or founding mother and they all researched it and then they had like a little bio and so you'd walk up to them and they'd be like hi my name's so and so and they all did great all the kids were all behaved everybody was friendly it was really cool to see all these kids just embracing the constitution and really getting to know the history of their country thank you so much all right moving on to item e1 the consent agenda and i will make a motion to approve the consent agenda items as presented second i'm not sure who seconded tracy motion passes thank you next we have item g1 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet um this evening we go on to our next section of policy monitoring as we do each year we bring each section forward for a review and ken hicks will introduce this item good evening madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members this is as aforementioned our policy review section this one took it back to our department and team and started making sure they're operational so there's a little typos little changes so very minor change in all of these but just adjusting to make sure that it is aligned to what we're doing and also checking sometimes with law change sometimes state board of ed changed so all the changes that you see although all of them are minor are fully aligned to how and what our practices are thank you i'll open it up for discussion okay um i had a few questions then um for policy 4.2 can you give us an example of a situation where a fingerprint card would not be needed that is a great question when a valid fingerprint card would not be needed um madam president members of the board i believe statute there is a provision that if vendors are not in with around students and not with a regular contract contact they do not need a fingerprint card um there is some leeway of what regular contact means at times we we've defined that as five times more in a year that they're on our campus than they would require so certain vendors say a soda machine vendor they're changing out if they're there every single month that's 12 times or 10 times during the year we would say yes but there are times if they're just one time on and they're not going to be around students then we would not require a fingerprint card for a vendor madam president if i could also add that if they don't have a fingerprint card the requirement is that they be accompanied by a staff member so that even if they're there one time they're not just free to roam but they are under the supervision the entire time that they're there and they would be supervised the entire time yes that's the actually the law that says that whenever including restroom breaks things like that um they would if are not around students um well yeah so there are times for example where we do nighttime projects where the schools are essentially closed and they come in the middle of the night to put in air scrubbers right um so we would not require the the fingerprints for for those people to come in but whenever school's in session yes the entire time that they are there they're under the super fix the law says they have to be under the supervision of a staff member so after hours so after normal school operating hours many times we have different groups of students using our facilities still we would have choir marching band things of that nature so that would apply to those times as well would those be considered school operating hours uh madam president regardless of what the law says to that i would expect that yes that would apply okay thank you that would be our rule okay i may be supported by law but i would say definitely for our purposes okay um anyone else have anything on that one i just want to touch on that um i believe this law came out correct me if i'm wrong dr croto about eight years ago nine years ago about then um i think about twelve twelve okay gotta think about that um and there were um at that time several vendors that did not want to pay that price in order to do it but the law was the law and so there was a lot of pushback but it was almost like a too bad so sad they still had to have the uh the fingerprint clearance card so are you saying that this is a new exception no no no i'm just saying no no no no no no i just wanted to clarify your worst pushback years ago okay when this first came out understood do you think that our um administrators understand that difference that it's not just a matter of escorting the vendor back but it's actually making sure they're supervised during the time that they're there doing the job madam president miss pritchard if that's a concern of the word we can uh reemphasize that point that there's clear understanding what the law says and what our expectations as a district are i would appreciate that when you say to clarify that would you be placing that in this policy or just doing a separate communication madam president that would be separate communication okay thank you oh actually just follow up on that then so that's not um i mean would there be a benefit to changing that wording and just adding that in there for clarity but vendors without a fingerprint clearance card will be supervised at all times while on campus i don't think that let's send some more that's the statue so i don't know whether to be able to change a statute not changing the statute adding a future okay man press miss pritchard um you will note that there's not a reference to procedure to this policy and we can establish procedure that would include those details okay okay thank you and um we don't need to do this right now but i know there are several statutes listed here if you could just maybe follow up with us and let us know which statute that applies to president can you specify are you talking about the supervision right yes okay thank you um i had questions on a few more anybody have anything else on this one okay um moving to 4.28 um so this is for the travel related expenses and i just was curious whether this policy would apply to persons with contracts with an uh automotive statement madam president members of the board they are not we do not reimburse them for travel within the state okay thank you anyone else have anything on that one because you say you don't we don't reimburse travel within the state did that change uh madam president members of the board i've never approved cabinet's members uh travel reimbursement she was talking about with an automotive statement are you talking about contract employees other district employees are reimbursed for travel within okay okay moving to 4.29 so this is for the monies collected by school employees and by student organizations that all money should be receded accounted for and directed without delay to the proper location of deposit so because this is very specific to school employees and to student organizations does that encompass parent-teacher organizations as well as booster clubs um madam president members of the board no this policy does not okay that was it i just have one quick one on that policy do all schools have saves in them madam president members of the board yes okay thank you okay no one has anything else we'll move on to um item g2 school reports dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board this evening we are pleased to have two of our schools present and dr pauline will introduce this item madam president members of the board cabinet it's my pleasure to introduce stephanie lawrence principal of riverview and she will be our first presentation tonight good evening madam president president members of the board cabinet dr kalas dr polling i will start my timer to make sure i do not ramble on for too long they told me several times stephanie please use a timer because i talk too much so timer is started my name is stephanie lawrence i am the principal at riverview elementary school with me i have kathy sylvester my assistant principal and brian nowaka he is our tls on campus so thank you for allowing us to speak to you this evening we have the same presentation format that everybody is using so i'm using this to do this and it works so riverview elementary school is a school of about 844 students that is up from previous years with the redistrict redistricting of dysart so we accumulated about 150 or so students from luke elementary school into our boundaries there was an a section over there that was within walking distance of review and it made sense for them to come to our school so that was a consideration for this year how to integrate those little jets into our barracuda family and so that was something that we planned for intentionally our signature program is civic minded leadership so we have adopted about five years ago stephen covey's the leader in me program and we teach intentionally uh how to be a leader of yourself how to be a leader in the community how to work together and our mission statement is up there for you riverview barracudas believe that leadership empowerment achievement determination are the key to building successful learners we commit to these principles and we'll be to build a community that leads the way now i will preface that with when we first came to riverview and started working on that mission statement this was a very uh staff and teacher-driven mission statement we are at the point now where we are really hyper focusing on student voice how do we infuse student voice this is not student friendly at all so we have a committee in place this year for students to look at the mission statement what we do on campus and to rebuild that mission statement in a student-friendly manner questions are threatened right all right i'm shaking a little bit you guys are very intimidating i'm just gonna sitting up there with your we don't podiums i know i know they told me don't be intimidated but i am it's just the way it is all right so talking about the opportunities for riverview there's plenty of opportunities i think in all of the schools one of our big opportunities this year that we're looking at is closing those learning gaps we always look at closing the learning gaps this year we're dealing with the added stress of some of the loss that happens through the pandemic as all of the schools have experienced so we're intentionally looking at areas within our data um where we saw an like a like a real what we called the covet slide uh one of those things that i would say is from the the 1819 to the year that we tested last year in ela we dropped about seven percent and in math we dropped about eight percent give or take that's not that's just a school average that's not um like different uh grade levels we saw pockets of success other places so we're looking at those and trying to figure out okay so how do we work extra extra hard to try to recover some of those coveted slides another opportunity that we're looking into is fostering resilience within our students so we take many surveys throughout the course of the year and one of the surveys that we took dealing specific to our leader in me program really questioned the students in many different ways how they feel about themselves and their own capacity for learning and their own capacity to do better we were shocked actually to see that there was kind of this general attitude that um students felt like well you know if i fail i fail and can i do better i don't know not really so they had this you know this feeling about themselves like hey you know like you either got it or you don't um so it's one of the reasons that we really believe in the leader in me program really providing a vehicle and an intentional um curriculum that supports student efficacy right like they can and they should and they will pick themselves back up when they fall down so one of the ways that we're doing that is making sure that we are beefing up our student action teams and our student leadership finders so a student leadership binder and i did bring a few copies if you guys want to see the beginning stages of these binders have a student focus on themselves their personal goals they build wigs wildly important goals so they build a wig for themselves and then they build academic wigs so as they go through with their teachers maybe attendance is a problem they set an attendance goal and then they track their own attendance in there they set academic goals based on what it is that they're learning in class and then they track those academic goals so that's one of the ways that we're combating that so increasing proficiency in both ela and math obviously is a huge focus for our school we are using the vehicle of some of the west ed protocols so this is a a program that the district has brought back to dysert we've had it a focus in this for a couple years and it is in building teachers the art of teaching strengthening the art of teaching to build that core instruction in the classroom so we're using that as one of our vehicles and then another area of growth for riverview is empowering empowering parents to support student growth i don't know i think sometimes we don't give our parents enough opportunity to support student growth we think oh well the kids aren't returning their homework anyway so why give homework right it's more of a hassle than it is a benefit and i think that maybe we should strengthen some of those relationships you know so don't just throw the homework out give homework and then concrete strategies for parents to be able to follow i think school today is sometimes confusing to parents you know they might say um i hate that common core or you know new math stinks you know what's wrong with old math right so instead of just throwing the baby out with the bath water you know how can we strengthen parent understanding of what we do in school why we do what we do and what's a very concrete strategy that you can use to help your child at home so those are some of the opportunities that we're trying to take advantage of at riverview some of our celebrations we were very pleased to see that we got all 50 points of our growth points when the uh the data came out from azm2 we always struggle in that area um there's a couple of different reasons for that thank you amy for explaining it to me so but we were definitely pleased to see that the hard work that the teachers had done throughout the course of the year um did show up and pay off in um the point system uh we decreased our referrals by another 20 percent and for i don't give you just a real brief history of riverview in the past five years or so when kathy and i first took over riverview our referrals rivaled the high schools so yeah so at the time we had about 750 kiddos on our campus and you know we would have i don't know almost 1300 referrals a year it's a lot a lot of referrals um we are down by like 67 percent now and last year decreased it another 20 so um we are back into very respectable and normal referral ranges and i'll tell you that those referrals um have moved from some pretty serious offenses now down to like head offenses you know like if i have to tell you one more time to stop riding your skateboard in the front of this school my head's gonna pop off my shoulders you know so those types of things now there's normal kid things too but we've definitely been able to work with students on how to manage and do self behavior our staff retention is really good so we keep our staff and we actually do a really good job recruiting staff now um last year was a super celebration during the uh the opening you know where staff move what do they call that transfer right i was gonna say open enrollment that's wrong see look how look how nervous i am i'm gonna just throw out a bunch of words don't make any sense so oh what's my time looking like oh you're fine oh gosh four seconds i told you they told me i do this all the time darn okay so we keep our staff and during the staff moving process we actually were able to move quite a few other people from other schools they were like hey we want to work with you guys so it was really nice to have choices you know we were like well let me see your scores and um you know you know do you follow procedure those types of things so we were able to recruit some highly desirable teachers that was very exciting for us our parent satisfaction survey last year came out favorable which was another shift for riverview um so it's good to know that our parents are satisfied um with the school the schooling that their kids are getting that their kids feel safe and the teachers are supportive and then we had pockets of increased proficiency even with covid and let me see if i can even find that so sixth grade both um i was intentional with that so sixth grade both the ela and the math were able to gain um from years previous and our eighth grade math also and eighth grade math and ela were higher than the years before so that was very exciting to see i mean they worked their tails off and it paid off so that was a good celebration let me see there's amy's page i printed it left it and curl it and circled all your numbers thank you amy so focus for the year we are focusing on data rich conversations for both tier one tier two and tier three um so we're trying to make those connections with the teachers in our conversations we have some extra staff on campus you know so we have the interventionist like other schools have but we also have a couple of aids that we were able to purchase with some title one monies so we use them to do hallway classes you'll see them wandering around in the hallways with their little quiet signs pulling extra kids out and uh working with them individually to help take some of that off of the teachers you know so we use we take the gap or the bubbles kids and we try to move them over the bubbles the ones that are a little bit easier to move and don't need that intense teacher attention so maybe we can help them move a little bit faster again we're focusing on student data binders we really want to take the students and make them intentionally intentionally look at and focus on their own data make those goals and reach those goals we set campus wigs all of the time this year our big focus is reading so just getting kids to read so we've got goals set in reading we are focusing on student-led action teams and that's coming along nicely professional development is a big thing for us this year as well we're trying to focus on backwards design and the west ed protocol so we've already done trainings in dok2 or higher so right how do we focus on dok how do we specifically focus on checks for understanding in the classroom making sure that we set goals uh in a 20-minute time period have you done at least one check for understanding are you waiting until the end of the class period and then all of a sudden you're like oh shoot the kids aren't listening to me well that's too late right so and then aligning our checks for understanding with the objective that they're trying to teach so those are some of the things that we're really focusing on in professional development this year and those are some of my beauties time for questions i was close super close thanks thank you so much first of all and do you have a copy of the binder the student i do so we can share i've got six oh wow we can pass them out so there are various grade levels thank you very much teacher understanding of what to do with these finders and just talking about student voice i was kind of laughing because um yesterday i had some boys come to my office there's three of them and they came in and they were like hey do you have a minute i didn't but i was like sure i've got plenty of time for you come in and they were like we want to talk to you and we have a petition okay so what is this petition and they handed it to me and it said we the seventh grade demand they used a very strong word that we're able to take our backpacks from class to class so the teachers had implemented a backpack strategy because the kids were i don't know what the kids were doing but the teachers decided to implement some kind of backpack strategy they were not happy with it they had all these signatures all over the page i was pretty impressed with it actually and i was like okay well what's going on they're like well mr sedano our social studies teacher we're talking about rights right now and you know what we have rights and he said well why don't you do a petition and we said okay and here we are okay so they set it up they talked about it and they did a little um seventh grade class meeting today they organized it the boys did this we didn't do it and they started talking about some of the solutions that they could implement and still have the right to have their backpacks in closer proximity to them i thought that was pretty good so i don't know they come to me with a lot of demands lately maybe they shouldn't have as big a voice as i'm trying to give them i don't know that's really cool now you're talking about your floaters your aids who float around they pull out the proficient or the higher level students no um so they pull out the lower ones they pull out the bubble kids so well i mean it could be a proficient kid that's ready to move over to a highly proficient so we look at the different bubble students right so the minimally proficient that are ready to move into partially proficient the partially that are ready ready to move into proficient okay um so we look at those bubble kits the ones that just need an extra little push okay and that way we can kind of track that data we we tried it a couple of different ways last year and we it took a while for us to land on something that would give us some concrete data to show that it was working um so the staff i have to give it up to them because they it was a new position and we were like look this is going to shift underneath your feet plus it's a coveted ear so um you know you're gonna have to be flexible and they really were you know so we would throw something out we would try it we didn't think it was working the data wouldn't support it we would say let's shift it or they would say hey what if we did this and so it was really a partnership between us and them and the teachers to try to find something that would work for the kids very cool thank you yeah i am so impressed with this binder i don't know which one you're looking at i'm looking at samir's and it's so well done but i mean i'm guessing that all of them are really well done but it really i i'm just at a loss for words because like the fluency they're graphing their own fluency on here that's that's amazing to me because most kids don't know what where they're at or don't care this is really just pushing them into the process and partnering with them so they can see and i'm sure that they've got to feel good about the progress that they can visually see yeah on these graphs so that really speaks to a student's resilience doesn't it right you know so i can i can not meet my goal right and i can set a new goal and i can say well i didn't meet my goal guess what i didn't read i didn't read at home so what if i really do read at home can i see a difference in how i score and perform right so the the idea then is that students will lead their own parent-teacher conferences so student-led conferences but with actual data this is what i do at school here's how i track myself and here's how i plan to do better and then that more in-depth look at a student can then be had with the teacher sitting there in partnership with the student and the parent wonderful thank you well this is really cool because a lot of times we just think charts like we're in classrooms and we have our charts but we don't necessarily have the kids name they have their number and then they have this and kids don't necessarily go look at a chart and be like oh where's my data but this is just super kid-friendly and it's like right in front of them and they're owning it yeah they're like internalizing okay this is where i'm at this is where i want to be it's not just random numbers that don't mean anything to the kids yeah you know so this is really cool very organized now not every teacher is on the same level right because teachers are like kids you know so i have um um i don't think i have really any true dissenters on the campus can i brag on my staff for a minute so they are so good i know time so they are so good you guys like it is a dream to have this staff all gathered under one roof i mean they just care about kids they care about kids and it's a hard job it's a hard job there's a lot of things that we are dealing with in a much higher rate than than is um then we're used to so we we've done a lot of self-injury tax and safety plans for kids that are not coping well and um we've helped a lot of parents and and community members that aren't coping well they're not coping well so it's a very very hard job and these teachers they come and they show up and they try to do the job as the expectation they try to do it and do it well so like my staff is amazing all of them kathy is amazing she deals with the kids in the most amazing way every single day brian is amazing i just had um two people compliment brian today um with the way that he knew his staff so dana k was on campus and walked through and she was very impressed with how well brian knew the staff and then i had a teacher say you know what i just love having uh mr nawaka as my mentor he is kind he knows what he's talking about and he doesn't make me feel dumb i mean that's great to have somebody supporting you and leading you that can take you where you are and help you take that next step yeah i have a really good staff miss lawrence question for you um not really a question but more so a um compliment congratulations on your um referrals decreasing by 20 or even more since thank you both you and ms investor have been there um but the fact that you are having the students revisit the mission statement to have them craft it and talk amongst themselves in order to have it focused around the students is a really big thing a really big thing so congratulations to them thank you thank you did you have a question thanks guys i just want to follow up on on two things one is when you talked about the student survey and you kept saying we who is it by grade level so do all the grade do the teachers at that grade see those surveys or is it just so we have a very shared leadership system at riverview so in fact you know they would be shocked if they do some of the things i say because they very often say we'll take care of it ms lawrence um so we have a lighthouse team um so we have two lighthouse coordinators and then we have i think like five different leaders that talk about different areas of the school so we have we focus on parents we focus on academics we focus on student leadership culture we have an action team for that we focus on staff leadership culture so we all take this survey and the other surveys and then we visit it together and look at that data together and then each action team will come up with an action step to support some of the lowest areas and take it to the next level and then how do you um empower the parents to understand the new math or how the whatever they're reading or to so they can help their student at home so what is the question of the day um we are trying to take a very concrete approach right so give them something that they that parents understand and know how to do so i'm going to send home a weekly homework and i'm going to give you an action step let's say that it is focusing on sight words for the littles so you're going to parent you can take these sight words and you can tape them to the pantry door where they get their snacks you can tape it to the bathroom mirror where they brush their teeth you can tape it to the back door and this is an easy way for you to help us practice those sight words i hear you going out the back door but i didn't hear you say your sight words right and the parent can then have them yell them back so we want to give them simple and easy ways to just help their kid at home we'll do anything that's complicated we want you to help with the simple and easy things like number sense is an easy thing for parents to do um and make sure that the kid knows how to count you know they that they know how to group things by 10.
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good evening we are going to call this meeting to order uh dr foley roll call president reese members of the board please let the record show that all members are present thank you we are going to have a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance and we just ask um that you keep mr fowler our bus driver and his family who we lost a couple weeks ago in your thoughts and prayers of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i move that we approve the agenda as it's presented second any questions or comments regarding the agenda all those in favor aye aye aye that motion carries five zero just a moment let me get my okay we're to go on to 4.1 which is our action item and i move that we provide or that we approve the direction to our attorney um as directed in executive session regarding our auditor general's report second any questions or comments okay all those in favor aye aye that motion carries five zero thank you dr foley our superintendents report president reese members of the board we have several meetings coming up now as you know next week we begin our fall break and next week we also have a bond road show we have a couple of them coming up we also have lots of meetings in october including a saturday retreat where we'll have the opportunity to begin to do some updates on some of our strategic initiatives including where we are with uh strategic planning and other things so lots of updates and um forthcoming in these meetings um president mrs anderson dr foley when do the teacher and student recognition start up are we going to have those again president reese member board member anderson those i believe are starting no one of the things that um good question one of the things that we've been working with our administrators on are looking at our our second quarter mitigation strategies and loosening some of things up and so we will look at probably second quarter we're going to be restarting our superintendent visits you'll notice that those are on your calendars again and so i believe that we will start those again here real shortly so we will we will confirm that and update that in your status report okay good question thank you we will move on to board comments president reece mrs wilson uh i just wanted to thank every member of the asba we went i went to the law conference with dr foley and mrs martin's i believe it was two weeks ago now and it was fantastic and they had just such good presenters this time and i was very excited to have some board training on that um also just thank you to mr moore for doing all of our road shows i've been to two of them so far and they were fantastic both times and great questions were brought up for our bond road shows and a special shout out to our ptos for conference dinners last week for our middle schools and this week for elementary i know they're providing a lot of those conference meals that we don't provide to our teachers and just being especially encouraging online i've noticed chaparral is even reaching out their pto is reaching out to other ptos to encourage them on those fall fundraisers and all the ptos and their fall fundraisers that are raising so much money um to help our schools in areas that we traditionally do not fund so thank you to all of those mrs anderson did you want to speak i didn't interrupt you okay i was going to talk about the delegate assembly um wow i'm so glad i i loved it and i i would love to go again and again but um i'm glad miss schultz made it of course whoever gets chosen next time but that was fantastic i didn't expect anything i thought it was gonna be boring i even brought like schoolwork because i wasn't sure like they're gonna understand people who go but there was there was good conversation i didn't realize they followed robert's rule of order for how they ran the whole meeting i just want to touch base on a couple of things that i participated in as um for some votes there was on one of them for revised the school finance formula but they had taken out no that's the wrong one forgive me oh yes they had taken out revise the funding formula to add funding for student mental health and well-being initiatives and we said wait a minute why and why are you taking that out i said well it's over in um underneath r we're talking about rq funding to improve student achievement by addressing social emotional learning we said well we understand that but we we wanted to add you need to put the language back in for health and well-being there's social emotional then there's health and well-being so um i did an amendment to with a couple of others they were on the same page and we invented it to add that language in there there was um there's under section 4e um one an odd an odd request oppose any measure that would result in fewer qualified voters from being easily able to vote or register to vote and that one caused like concern just good conversation of why is this kind of being brought up everything is focused on classroom and funding and kids and then this one's about voting and um it was a it was almost split 55 yay and 45 percent in may i mean it was hot topic and some people said hey listen that's more for the county maricopa and you know or you know who's ever handling the voting office why we have we'd rather you spend more time on the other measures than this but anyway i just found that interesting um that that was on there and that was definitely something that caused a little contention but anyway it was wonderful thank you for allowing me to go and if nobody wants to go next year i volunteer thank you thank you for the update i'm glad you enjoyed it it is something to see for sure when seeing all these school boards across the state come together and essentially have a large meeting and um it is it's very interesting also because different parts of our state different school districts have different needs and like you said there was a lot of conversation there were some hot topics and what's important to certain areas can be different so for sure and a lot of personal opinions also got interjected into into it which made a difference but luckily they got back on track to be able to um more about policy than personal issues so it was very interesting i didn't get to vote but i attended and i was it was very good you talk about the different districts and their needs the one of them was give all districts the authority to provide affordable housing options to teachers i'm like what but and then the gentleman sitting next to me was pointing out you know there are some areas in which they need to get teachers out there they're driving very far even for reservation land but it's also in some of the expensive areas where teachers can't afford to to live and so they're driving very far and so this that was super informative of um things i had no idea were going on in the variety of economic status of some of these districts i can't remember which district it was but there was a district who kind of out in the middle of nowhere were providing like tiny homes the tiny houses they had a little row yeah like a a little neighborhood a little group of them that they would provide for their teachers um just the little tiny houses because they are they're not really within driving distance and sometimes we forget about that considering especially in our area you can get to any of our schools ten minutes max probably um and so i get teachers come from other places you know from they drive further than that to work but when we're in this small little area you don't think that teachers are driving two hours in the middle of nowhere just to get to work so it is it's i i enjoyed going any other board comments okay and we'll go on request to speak misreach no okay we'll go on to our consent agenda i move that we approve the consent agenda as it's presented second questions or comments i just wanted to make note of a couple especially mrs wilson mentioned where ptos are doing stuff and funding things for our schools that don't typically come out of our mno budget and gateway point pto purchase three shade structures that they've gifted to gateway and that's over seventeen thousand dollars and so we get the shade that they need and um and we really appreciate the ptos and that's what people's fundraisers and in the schools are going to so we have several people who have donated and power range pto as well so i also want to give a thank you to chart wells who is providing our veteran day coins for our veteran veterans day celebration coming up in november so i want to thank them those are on our gifts and donations um for our consent empower ranch pto is also giving something i think yeah power ranger and then um jennifer avale available mm-hmm okay yeah i thought that was really yeah donated to higler traditional academy right do we know where the um shade structures were at gateway point i was just they're going out front of the building for kids at pickup from my understanding oh there will be three of them uh going um right along that pickup line for those kiddos to have some shade and the teachers were really excited about it i went to their pto meeting at the beginning of the year and they were talking about it and all and all the money this year went to that so and it was a direct donation fundraiser that's wonderful i know shade is much needed across the district for a bunch of yeah that's wonderful thank you all right any other questions or comments all right all those in favor aye that motion carries 5-0 president reece mrs kaler um i just looking at our 8.12 i'll just put a little plug out there that higley hi higley unified is hiring bus drivers is anybody looking for a job i know in my in my dad's kind of retirement years he was a bus driver here for higley and so just our snowbirds are coming back and maybe some of them need a little job so thank you yes we are hiring bus drivers i think we're hiring a lot of positions actually dr foley do you want to mention any others that we're hiring that you might want to share please check our website we're a wonderful place to work yes check our website all right we're going to go on to 9.1 the monthly governing board report our mno financial report for july of mr moore is there anything specific you want to point out good evening board member reece excuse me president reese and members of the board there's nothing specific this is our first excuse me first months financials for july everything is in line with what we would expect a lot of our ending balances are being finalized as we finalize our annual financial report which we'll be presenting at the october 13th board meeting so anyone have any questions for mr moore as always thank you we we appreciate getting that information and being able to stay on top of it knowing where we're at what we've encumbered and what we have and so i i can tell you i always appreciate that all right we're going to go on to 9.2 which is going to be some policy revisions dr foley president reese members of the board as you know policy is one of the jobs that we that is plentiful and that comes every year and we will share with you that in july asba because out of the legislative session comes updates to policies because we need to make sure our policies are in alignment with the law so out comes a document this summer that looked like a dictionary that we began working through i want to give a special thank you to darlene reach who did you know in addition to being a wonderful governing board secretary she is also known as the policy goddess around here who has helped us begin to go through each of these new policies and helped the cabinet and our team begin to identify what are new pieces that are added or modified for us to review to operationalize than to bring to you for review so you'll begin to notice there's a theme on several of our meetings over the next several several months as we go through new policies because with the dictionary that came to us each of those will come to you and then the joy is there's more going to come there was a lot of work that came out of the legislative session and so it's a good it's a good part of the update it's a time consuming process tonight though we are starting off simple there are six policies and one of the things you saw in your packet um there are there are slight additions sometimes if they have a copyright at the top that means that we're recommending exactly what asba would say so basically they took a look at the policy they they felt through the need of any new addition to add a piece that clarified that keeps us in compliance and keeps our policies updated and relevant if very if we decide to modify sometimes we can modify policies to customize them a certain way so that it fits our own district we no longer then have the copyright sign at the bottom at the top of it but when we do that we work with our attorneys to make sure we didn't customize this in any way that would contradict state law or make our policies you know violate um anything so tonight you've got five policies that we are recommending these are some standard policies that we are bringing to you that are typical ones that have been updated the advisory committees and one of the things you saw on our summary is we just kind of summarized exactly what asba said your team reviewed it goes these are perfect we wouldn't modify it change it so the first five advisory committees rules of order board member development opportunities audits and financial monitoring and bus driver requirements trainings and responsibilities are all keeping our policies up to date and the most compliant as asba would recommend them to be the instructional school year an instructional time model one aspi had one but it was a very generic one and we figured while we've gone to all this trouble to have two public hearings let's make our policy match what we have prescriptively put out there so it's our policy thus we worked with our legal counsel to craft it they helped us so that when we finish our public hearing tonight we now have a policy that matches and mirrors that so tonight you have um six policies there five of which are asba copyright and we support and agree with the other one is modified to match our need which would then make our policy up to date as recommended because that was one of them they wanted done this is the informational session part of it of course you can talk and have questions and if there's anything we want to discuss we can typically what we do is a a second read and then in the action you approve it historically usually we would do it on one night or we would do it one meeting and then come back the next meeting and bring it back for you to approve with the amount that we're going to have and we're going to start a policy party here as we go through these the thought would be that you can wave a second read and approve them in the same night if they're pretty straightforward if for instance there was a policy you went uh what about could we should we we would bring it back for you to review and then a second read so this way we'll it'll allow us to be efficient as we try and bring our policies up to speed like you as you can imagine in the era of of covid management policy updates and revision hasn't been the priority hints i think the reason why asba sent out a like a thick document it's time for us to get caught up so that's our informational you've had these are there any questions concerns with any of these policies tonight dr foley i just wanted to touch on what you just kind of said that the ones that have asia copyrighted they're the asba policy um being part of the asba we have their policy bridge so which gives us access to their policies um and we have the ability to adapt them just as we were just talking about at the delegate assembly there's a lot of different needs different districts have different needs and and sometimes we have the need to change them but also we receive our board packets and this information's in there if there is a policy that we do need to pull and maybe have discussion or have on here and have discussion and bring for a second read if we just get a heads up for that we can always put it out here have discussion on it and then we can have a separate item for that for a second read but we do receive our our board packets and ahead of time for us to review to read over we have time to submit questions to get those answered so if we have a question about a policy we can get it answered when we get those answers if we're still not comfortable with it please you know just give us a heads up so we can list it that way and we can have discussion and we can have discussion anyway but if if we feel that there's one that needs additional revisions then that way we can try and move through some of these like you said we have a lot and try and move through some of these at least standard ones that aren't changing at all fairly quickly so any questions on any of these policies mrs anderson thank you to understand for the the um instructional time model policies mirroring what we're talking about in the public hearing and the public hearing is just announcing what we're going to do there's no vote there's no formal it's just what we're doing so this policy if approved today just goes into effect with everything okay thank you which this is the second public hearing so it's gonna simply reiterate what the first one did so and you saw the policy requires it spells it out that were legislatively where we required to have the two our policy spells out that's what we did to have it um and so it customized it to the legislature included the legislation but also customized it to our district so it's more our policy that aligns to our practice any other comments questions okay we'll move on then to our action items for 10.1 i move that we approve the policy revisions as they've been presented all right any questions comments all right all those in favor aye aye that motion carries five zero we will go on to 10.2 i move that we approve the addendum for the chandler-gilbert community college intergovernmental agreement for an embedded advisor as it's presented second questions or comments president reece mrs kaler um i it's not so much as a um i guess this is a comment i love this i'm all for it um i just wish when it comes down to um when it comes down to dual enrollment that there could be a simpler way to enroll our students every year i feel like it's going to get better with cgcc it's just going to get better and it it didn't this year and last year was rough and my husband he's a smart guy and i mean he had to go in to the school and have a conversation with our liaison who is wonderful by the way but i just feel like there's got to be some kind of better way that we can get dual enrollment there's got to be a better way i don't know what it is it's way beyond my little brain of technology but it just is not smooth for anybody it seems to be the biggest complaint that i've i've seen i don't i'm not there but that's the biggest thing especially the first time going through it it is a lot to do the second year i think it gets a little easier i board member taylor i don't know if that guy was here i felt like it was easier the second time through it could have been because i have twins and i'll be honest that can be an issue sometimes because children have the same birth date and for some reason the computers just melt down with it i don't know but it's just crazy that it's so difficult and i just wish we could make it easier i don't know enrollment was easier than dual enrollment i will say college enrollment for my son was easier than dueling any college application is easier than dual enrollment for especially twins i'm sorry i'm complaining i know but it it's it's an issue president reese members of the board we will we will share we we we have we have meetings with them and provide feedback what we can do is probably work with jasmine to identify what is the best vehicle for us to share this i i would i will tell you your your feedback are echoed across the valley and as a parent i had similar experiences too and i think that we make steps forward with some resources and some processes take forever to catch up with those resources so we will continue to share that feedback i didn't have to do that this year but i i didn't either but it's my last year i know but i was last chance changed the hard part i think people also don't expect is essentially you have to re-register again and when you're dealing with minors then they have locks on their account and they're like well just do this and you're like i can't the count's locked and they're like oh yeah we're paying for it but we're not allowed to see it exactly well then you have to get permission your kids have to give you permission to talk to the college counselor and it's like i mean literally you want my money but you won't talk to me and they're a minor and they're like yep so i know it's frustrating but um yeah i i know that they just recently changed their process too it's like it's a three-step process or something where you do something and then they send you an email and then you have to follow that email and go do something again with photo id and then you have to upload it it made it where it couldn't all be done in one process because they had to send you stuff so yes please share that and i'm sorry if people are still having issues all right all those in favor aye motion carries and hopefully with our embedded advisor fingers crossed hopefully it's at least helpful somebody who knows their system but yes all right we are going to go on to our public hearing so i move that we recess our general meeting for our public hearing second all those in favor aye aye aye we're now racist and dr foley you want to go forward with our public hearing president reese members of the board i'm going to ask dr borzidge to do a quick review of our presentation on our instructional time model it will rhyme with our first that there is there has not been any changes with what uh we presented so she will quickly go over that and that way we can answer any questions so we meet the legislative requirements president reese and members of the board um thank you for the opportunity to present this this is our instructional time model and to recap from our last presentation the reason that we have the instructional time model is because it essentially takes the place of the distance learning plan which was in place last year for the purposes of remote learning and prior to the establishment and approval of our aoi so now that we have an online learning academy or online learning school the our distance learning plan is no longer in effect and we have come up with this time instructional time model the purpose of the instructional time model really is to um to identify what it would look like if our students were out of the classroom for more than a day because we required them to be out of the classroom so obviously the most common thing that we think of right now is covid but it could be simply another jus you know a water main break a fire um anything that would keep the students away from the building for a period of longer than one day and so we we are required of course to get this our time model approved not only by the governing board but then submitted to the arizona department of education where it will stay on file it will not expire unless there's something that comes up that recauses us to have to revise it or make a change to it next slide so in elementary schools just to recap um if we're required to temporarily transition to virtual learning synchronous learning will be offered for students and students will attend daily live sessions attendance will be taken for students on a daily basis and we'll be able to mark them as being present when they sign in we'll be using the canvas learning management system and that will help us to track attendance so that we can submit that as being a payable day lessons will be shorter and the duration of the assignments will be provided through the district's management system there will be live instruction much the way there was with our distance learning plan and then prescribed instructional or independent work times for students to complete that work as well so you can see a sample this is a sample of what it might look like in our elementary schools secondary schools if they're required to temporarily temporarily transition to virtual learning or asynchronous learning students will be expected to participate in complete and and complete daily assigned work but attendance will be taken on a period basis so every period or every class that they have versus just once a day um they'll be marked then as remote for our is present for any of those classes that they sign into during the day there will be no direct instruction provided if only a portion of the kids in the school are required to be remote they'll it'll be more of an independent learning opportunity for them along with our in within our campus management system however um at the secondary level if the entire school is required to temporarily transition to remote learning then the learning becomes synchronous because teachers wouldn't be required to teach on campus and off campus simultaneously or online simultaneously so they will have some live instruction if a situation like that occurs and then once again we'll be using the canvas management system so what you see there is just a sample schedule of what that might look like do you have any questions looks great and i hope we don't have to go there thank you for the hard work though to put it all together president reese members of the board i think one of the things like for our policy if we were to have to change our instructional time model it would come back to you in two public hearings so this would be what our plan looks like in the event that we need to utilize it and if anything had to change we would come back to you in two public hearings anyone have any questions anyone nope okay thank you for taking the time to do that then we will adjourn our public hearing and we will resume our regular board meeting so we will we will go on to oh no no no we approved the policy of it so i was like wait and actually that takes us to the end of our meeting do we have any other future agenda items i just want to take a moment to thank dr foley and the staff it's been crazy um i think kind of our theme has been please let us get back to educating we you guys are professionals in your educational professionals and you do an amazing job educating our kids and our staff and husd so it's been difficult and i know you've had so many irons in the fire because we are trying to continuously educate our community our kids um with the quality that our community has come to expect um and i think as this board has come to expect um and you guys are working so hard and then we have we have to do this public meeting and then we have other coveted things and then we have um laws changing and then there are so many things that you guys are having to deal with um bus driver shortages i mean when we thought we had we've talked about in the past bus driver shortages but we were not even close to where we are right now like serious um we were concerned previously and we are so much lower than we are right now and we want to get all we want to do is get these kids to school so we can so we can teach them um and i just i think you guys are working so hard and thank you um mr moore everything you're doing with our bond our auditor general report i mean just all this stuff that takes away from i get it it's all encompassed in your in your responsibilities in your scope of work but these are all extra things that take away from your daily focus and so we recognize you're putting more time in and and thank you and miss richards i can't even i don't thank you i don't know how you're getting through each day so but i think that we need to recognize everything you guys are doing i hope my fingers crossed that you're able to take some time mr lotzenhauser i know you you got to go golf and you got to take a day but everything you guys are dealing with that is so beyond education that in this industry we've never had to deal with and yet you're managing to juggle it all so i just want to put it out there and and say thank you for everything all of you guys are doing our site administrator is dealing with tick-tock issues that people are encouraging kids to do stuff that we've just never it it takes away our time from our main focus and um so we we know it we recognize it i i have no doubt our community knows it and they recognize it but i know some days the bad just so overshadows the good but um you guys are doing good thank you um we recognize you're working hard so keep it up please try and get some rest over over break if you can hopefully nothing big is coming down the pike i hope who knows but um i just think it's important that you guys know that we do recognize that so thank you president reece this is kayla i i echo sentiments and i know over at um higley high they were they took a fun together and they actually blessed all the custodians in security that had been dealing with destructive and disgusting things in bathrooms and so again the good of humanity is still very alive and well in in higley and i appreciate that very much but in the same token then i'm going to speak to the kids please knock it off do not come to our schools and destroy things because everything costs money to us and that money needs to be used to educate you and not to be being in repairs and so i i'm really upset that kids can think that this stuff's okay because it's just not well into the be the leaders that we know that they are that this is out there it's encouraging it recognizing this is wrong it's ridiculous we know that that their leaders and and your best leaders don't follow those things so um yeah yes yes and thank you for for bringing that up there's a human on the other side that has to clean up the mess that's shouldn't have to so we know everyone throughout higley is working hard and and we are dealing with so much more that goes beyond what i think everyone got in all of this for um and we're faced with new issues and we're learning it and it's a learning it's a learning curve and we all have to adjust and adapt and what used to not be our like that's not us it has rolled and it is us and we've got and we're learning how to roll with that and and incorporate it and that's all of us so um yes thank you every time i talk to dr foley i tell her spring is going to be the semester where she we could just get back to education and so spring is what we're holding out for we are hopeful spring do you dare spring 2022.
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[Music] good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the week five coaches corner presented by houlton meats trap house steak burgers here at aces wild we figured we got a big week got a big game we're gonna have a big crew tonight we got coach warner coach jermaine jared germain myself alex schlemmer thank you all for tuning in and thank you guys for joining us this week coming off the uh big week four victory at roxanna the first conference game of the year always good to get off on that hot start in the conference and roxanna we took care of business from opening drive with the defense starting the scoring off early coach germain yeah i mean you know they're a team that's going to run the football and you know it's assignment football up front our guys did a good job and jay mister was able to uh you know see the ball laying on the ground and obviously picked it up and ran it back for scoop and score so we're expecting big things out of our defense this week as well but it's just assignment football everybody's gotta do a job and now that makes your job a lot easier too coach warner because once you get on the board early you've got a lead and you can play with the cushion you can play with and makes your play calling a little bit easier as well yeah for sure i think that's the third defensive touchdown of the year and uh i think they're i'm better be careful they're gonna score more than i do but uh no yeah i mean it definitely makes a big difference and really what it does i think for the whole team is uh kind of gets everybody to kind of settle into the game early whenever that happens and so that's a big part of it and obviously it's a momentum shift for us when the defense can score because you know it doesn't happen as often so it was was a great way to get the thing started offensively we came out didn't really light up the scoreboard or the stat sheet once again i mean we haven't really done that this year we do enough we get the victories uh 120 yards rushing the night or last weekend though you have kaneki nine rushes for 65 yards and don vagley eight rushes for 55.
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okay there it is okay what we just picked gregory can you pull that would you mind dragging that out for us i got a couple in my car no no we have one it's over there we know it's there okay maybe that wasn't such a good idea this wasn't easy to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all kate will you do the roll call uh joseph britton uh not present at the moment but maybe joining us virtually here catherine hodgson is absent at rich ginelli here kathy molinaro here al russo here amy spolino here okay thank you so we have one up okay uh would you read the public participation strip that we use the board welcomes public participation and asks that comments be limited to three minutes the public may offer objective comments in school operations and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about board of education personnel and students you're against any person connected with the danbury public school system danbury residents are also invited to send brief comments and questions via email in advance to dps underscore public comment underscore d-o-e at danbury.k12.ct.us thank you kate ogre do you have any comments would you read them please you have one from september 10th from dominic reynolds um and it's a question to the board will changes we may be made to bus rooms my child is still arriving late to school every morning thank you from the same parent from dominic reynolds this is monday september 13th past the district thought about a keyboarding program app for the elementary students since the pandemic and because students will be expected to continue to use the chromebooks students need to learn how to tell you thank you for your consideration thank you ogre next on the agenda oh do we have anyone in the audience that we want to come before the board seeing none we move on to the consent calendar kathy i make a motion that the board of education approved the item on the consent calendar exhibit 21-101 as recommended second most promotion made by captain second by joe the silver any questions concerning consent calendar cnn cape newton royal corporates rachel celestine aye cape canetta aye gladys cooper aye lauren daly i'm joe dasilva all right catherine i'm sorry rich ginelli aye cathy molinaro aye al russo aye amy felino aye thank you ted emotions okay uh we move down to our educational staff representative i don't see anyone here unless someone you know okay so move on down the agenda our student representative i would just like to say on behalf of the board thank you uh for being here with us tonight and bringing the information from your particular school to share with the board so however your three young ladies want to start we have dhs and we have a second so however you want to work between yourself to bring your information hi my name is nicole i come from eighth i wanted to say thank you to the bad members cabinet and community members thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative center for example a staff participated in a 21 student entrance interview this past june and four more interviews on august 27th both of the new students start this fall the staff is continuing to run interviews and welcoming new students during this month of september last week six more students visited ace and there will be six more students student visitors a special that our ace student hosts who play an important role in the visitation project on august 30th ace ran a structured orientation day to deliver expectations for student attendance and course schedule behavioral norms and social emotional very mechanisms students follow the orientation day schedule with their guidance groups to begin the process of building communities as a part of the orientation process i aced students and staff gathered as a whole school under the test on this property to have our first large guidance in person ace held the teammates department grade level benchmark on friday september 10th the ac managed department has created a benchmark cooking classroom that the entire student body participates in based on your highest grade level in english and social studies thank you acma's department for all your diligent work on this school-wide learning activity the benchmark process takes place during a three-hour block and students worked extremely hard this year on their tasks after the benchmarks were completed ace held an afternoon barbecue to welcome students and staff back to the 2021-2022 school year it was a great day filled with both hard work and team building base will be holding its first parents night of the year on monday september 27th at 5 00 pm under the ace 10.
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i thought we were waiting dr lee hi uh mrs anderson hi this is phil hi mr um i was hoping you could share your statements before we do the pledge certainly uh welcoming all and in recognition of this free speech item noting that saying the pledge of allegiance is not a requirement to participate in the business of this board if you do not say the pledge for religious political social or personal reasons you are most welcome here as an equal participant in the business of this public school board thank you that said if you would like to join us ready pledge i pledge allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands with liberty and justice for all we are also going to be expressing that later okay uh adoption of the agenda [Music] we have vanessa mason with cta hi good evening uh good evening online folks thank you for coming um so cute is working really hard among all the other professionals in the school district and would like some support from the community so you know we have lots of social media going around about ways to be mean to each other and cause harm to campuses just be generally disrespectful so cta and i'm sure this would apply to bus drivers and cafeteria workers and everyone else in the district it's just a general level of kindness could we ask our students our staff our families our school board members to think first about kindness like how would i feel if somebody said that to me and so students have seen two years now of social media posts um about horrible things you can do to your campuses and to your friends we've watched um an election with democrats and republicans trashing each other nonstop we've watched school boards across the country get into fights and so i think our students have watched this for two years non-stop and now we have reopened our schools and the teachers and the staff on the campuses are barely holding it together and so you know i just had a union meeting that was an hour and 45 minutes long and it was non-stop i don't think we can do this much longer so i want to say that it breaks my heart in the school district to have to say that because i love where i work um but the teachers can't take much more and if we could just treat each other with kindness and say thank you and if somebody asks for a mask don't send them to the office say here's one for you ask them at the door how was your day say please and thank you act with kindness and that's what makes the world go round we have students who have never been socialized with other people so when we have kindergarteners and first second graders acting like three-year-olds we have to know that that's where their emotional development stopped they went to preschool maybe back when they were three and so when they snatch something out of another student's hand and then the other student responds with a hit as a staff member i have to know that that that's where they are developmentally and i have to respond appropriately and the students need to be coached and so you know the teachers in my union meeting were asking is there a program out there what can we do because we're desperate to find things that we can do to help the students become successful citizens and um of course there's no magic bullet just like how do we get everybody to read a great at their right level there is no magic program but i think starting with kindness and i appreciate that you know our own school board has struggled and we've begun acting kind to each other here in the school board room we see a little bit more kindness on in the politics on the news i i mean i will say i stopped watching but um and i feel like we're pulling each other through but that can only go so far and so as a staff we have bonded together we a lot of the school sites are saying we're taking back our campus we have to do something and i can't it's absolutely not the administration's fault because there's only one or two or three of those individuals on a campus of 400 500 1400 students and so it takes the entire community to get through this when we came back to school in july and august most people thought the biggest problem would be masks i mean i don't know about you guys but we thought well we'll go back to school we'll do what we've done what we've always done last year was an anomaly phenomenal what am i saying it was an outlier yes and things will go back to normal but i think that again we're in a whole new world and it's not nice it's really really ugly and so if people can come to our school district and know that we all care about each other because that's the thing that makes center unique when i go to president's meetings with other 13 presidents for sacramento county that's the one thing that i am like glowing about is how amazing our relationship is with our superintendent on our school board our negotiations team um where it's not like that in other districts so we have a laid out among everybody else in the county because we are already a family each school is a family close-knit family and then the other schools are our extended family and so if we can just remember that unlike when you were a child and your sibling i know i didn't punch them um we're going to treat each other like family and like you know the students are our own children and if we could just ask our community members to remind them that we're just working here we are just asking you to wear a mask when you come in the cafeteria to drop your child off for breakfast we're not looking for an argument we're just doing our job and so um if we can just remember if we could all do our job with kindness maybe things could get better push your pusher i know that we're adding to the higher positions of school psychologists and things like that seems to me that more feet on the ground in the lower positions that could deal with health in the classroom we could get two price of one would be more effective is there money anywhere in me we actually have spots for that and have vacancies for that to help so yes that is actually in the mix we are struggling with the people at all at all levels i can tell you the people we brought on and our people who are here are doing an outstanding job um but yes we do we have currently have vacancies for folks who can help out in classrooms who can you know help out at yard duties help out at different things so across the spectrum absolutely and that's what a lot of the covert funds are designed for uh to address this so we we're constantly whether it's myself and the union or myself in csea we are constantly working to to create better ways to support each other um it's it's i i appreciate your worst time vanessa because it's it's true yeah and i know it's not i mean it's not just us i mean every school in every district yeah and they've been watching hate filled messages for a long time so it's really difficult to retrain your brain to ask for something with them well it's mr versus what do you do when you're at home and your brother hit you you hit that yeah you know they deal with things on a family level that are totally different than you do at school and i appreciate the postings i mean there are three pages where the postings on edit join so i'm reaching out to the community members online if you would like to work for the school district apply we need parents are we still utilizing parent volunteers or is it because right well and not parents in the community don't know to go to that link and so we talked about that this afternoon about how we could send out a message to say these are the jobs we're posting walk into mr grimes office fill out an application we'll help you fill out an online application what can we do to get community members on our campuses and being role models for our students are any of those um like three-quarter time or full-time or what are they all just two or three-hour jobs no a lot of them are full-time yeah and to be honest we would work at mr ground we would work with people with the hours they could take so and we're even having some of our part-time people are picking up extra hours because they want to help out so yes perfect and i just want to thank um miss mason um and thank you and all of our teachers for really focusing on moving forward and co-regulation um i think that's so critical right now because our students really do they take their cues from the educators who are in our communities and so i appreciate that we're really focusing not on what needs to be fixed in students but on getting ourselves ready in our learning environments student ready given our new reality because i really feel that going back is not an option moving forward right we can only move forward and i i strongly believe that our students need to be coached and supported and so do our teachers and our staff members towards greater kindness empathy and compassion so i just want to thank you for calling that and naming that in the space it's so needed and as long as we keep that focus i think on our center family and every member of it it's going to be you know as good as it can be given these really strange conditions that we're in and i know san juan put together some online videos to watch and so i would appreciate mr laird mr bryant you could reach out to the san juan school district and they had put together i don't know 18 hours of canned they called they can videos to watch about how to support students that have experienced trauma in their lives how do we react to that trauma and and when they are having a moment um so we would love to have everybody trained in that so not just teachers but bus drivers and custodians for everybody kindness i can't even imagine the challenges you guys are going through i mean i have no i have no gauge and i would challenge the board and the administration in the room to walk on campus check in the office but not walk around campus with the principal walk around as just another adult on the campus and see what it's like because it's challenging i mean when you walk around with the administrator they know mr holmes lead and they act a little different around mr helmsley than they might with me so well i think another problem too is it's been very politically charged so some of these kids have set home and listen to their parents trash the schools with very massive not very masks and you know so now they have a very negative imprint of schools right and everywhere i mean yeah it's happening in the grocery store or at mcdonald's so that's why i challenge everyone in the community don't yell the mcdonald's lady at the right there we know it's so happy either let's just remember we're all we all showed up for work today so there we go you're doing the very best you can do and we so appreciate it as a board history and you guys have just been amazing absolutely amazing we appreciate your just want to point that out vanessa we're going to kill him with kindness yes thank you thank you moving right now and we have marty huggins with cfca well greetings happy first day of fall oh thank you that means we're hoping for cooler weather right at least i am six tomorrow um i wanted to shout out to vanessa thank you so much for reminding us that kindness is an option and um how much just one little word or one smile can make a huge difference and i know for me i have to remind myself constantly about being kind and i have a note on my computer at work that says are my words kind true necessary and i think that goes a long way sometimes before i respond i kind of look at that and remind myself okay i don't need to say anything here sometimes what's not said is is better but um thank you vanessa for your hard work your heart [Music] just thank you so much for what you do in the classroom and what the teachers are doing in the classroom and trying to support with classified employees and all of us trying to work together to help the children to have an environment where they can flourish and be nurtured and just thank you for that so um as classified employees right now we're um working on uh we just finished up our initial proposals for our negotiating year so we have we've submitted those down to the district and they'll submit them to the board um and this is a successor year for our agreement it's a three-year agreement and um it came to an end in june july and so we will be renewing for another three years and so that is something that when the when we're in a successor year uh the whole contract is pretty much open so we'll be able to actually go through and do some collaboration with the district and maybe do some language cleanup and we're kind of excited about what the options are for this year um helping our language and our contract to be more um conducive to a an ongoing good relationship with between the district and the union um i also wanted to say that uh in october we begin negotia we begin i'm sorry nominations for um our president and secretary positions and two of our negotiation positions um we will be looking at a new president for the 2022 school or the 22 school year as i will be retiring in december so um i look forward to seeing who wants to step up and and make a difference and and work with you all to to just continue to improve our district so um that's pretty much it for me right now uh anything any questions thank you so much you've done a wonderful job and it's been a pleasure working with you well i hope to get to see i hope to get to see you all in person again before before december yeah so we'll have to make a point of it for sure okay i think they're going to put me on an appointment of once a week or once a month to bring in goodies i i think that's that is true thank you all right uh moving on to item number six reports and presentations uh i won panorama 360 right jordan i think we might have skipped one item i'm sorry mike almost oh i'm sorry it got tucked in five committee updates facilities update by richard i know my favorite part of the agenda good evening everybody um we're back in school so we have pretty much we've gotten just back into our standard mode uh taking pair of work orders hitting items uh the maintenance department is um short-handed we are coping has uh come in and we're gonna i was out for two weeks my supervisor is out for two plus weeks almost three weeks now so we are taking care of work orders addressing items as they're coming up i've had some other information that came to me so we will be getting uh some more of our subcontractors and vendors to help us take care of any ac issues and items like that we are waiting on the appraisal for the land for rex fortune and i'm hoping that will be coming sometime soon we're kind of at the mercy because they're even backlogged and shorthanded and that's about it and for you remember pope uh i did meet with the fence company for mcclellan so i'll be getting some numbers here soon for getting an actual fence portion in the front of mcclellan there and then we're also getting the gate result for the part appreciate that thank you very much me know that is all we have right now thank you and i'm glad you're back without your help but your family is doing well yes do you want limited questions just thank you thank you okay now sorry about that moving on to item number six one panoramic receipt all right good evening so panorama 360 is an online survey platform that we started using last year to replace the uh healthy kids survey but it has many more capabilities and one just do a brief presentation tonight to show you what they're what is available to that platform and we have joining us virtually the virtual world samantha seeker and rachel irwin and i don't know how to oh there they are okay all right uh they're with panorama joining us from other parts of the country here and they're going to give us a brief overview of what the panorama has to offer so take it away great thank you let's see if i can just share my screen here with you all that will work are you able to see and hear me okay you see my screen awesome well hello and thank you for having us today we are really excited to be joining you uh we'll be using this time to share some background on panorama education and what we do and then we'll give a brief overview on our partnership with center joint unified school district sharing some of our goals and details on the survey plans that we have so on the panorama side of things we have myself my name is rachel irwin i'm the account director at panorama working with center joint unified my role focuses on developing long-term goals and strategies for our partnership i also handle anything contract or professional development related and i work alongside mary keough who is the client success manager for this partnership and she works on the day-to-day logistics involving survey planning integration and platform use so we work together to support center joint unified and i'm also joined tonight by samantha seeker who's another colleague of mine on the account director team who has also worked to help support center joint unified and she might just jump in at the end to help answer any questions and we've been working directly with ryan miranda at center joint unified who has been leading the initiative of getting our partnership off the ground and continuing to develop the work that we're doing together so here at panorama our mission is to radically improve education for every student our hope is to help create a world where every child has equitable access to opportunities in school and society at large so we currently support over 12 million students across the country as you'll see here these are some of the districts specifically within california that we partner with and we've we've developed a focus on social emotional learning and multi-tiered systems of support to help educators gain a holistic view of each student in order to support them fully so educators can use our platform to get actionable data drive change and ultimately improve student outcomes so i just want to start by giving a little a brief overview of what panorama has to offer and then we'll go into a little more detail of what our partnership is specifically focusing on in a couple minutes so our work at panorama falls into three different buckets so we have our feedback surveys to gather input from stakeholders on topics like school climate family engagement teacher-student relationships then we have our focus on social emotional learning where we have developed a universal screener for students and staff to measure and improve sel and then we have our student success platform which is essentially a multi-tiered systems of support dashboard it shows data on academics behavior attendance by syncing with the school's student information system as well as sel data collected from our screener so it brings all this information into one place allowing educators to see the connection between these areas and support the whole student okay so now we'll focus on the specifics of our partnership with center joint unified so our work together includes our use of our sel screeners for students as well as teachers and staff our climate and culture feedback surveys for students staff and families as well as one of our newest tools which is the check-in feature which offers quick pulse check surveys to monitor and help understand how students are doing and how they're experiencing school in a specific moment rather than their perceptions over the course of a semester or school year so this is something that ryan is really excited about rolling out this fall to help ensure that student voice is heard and and used to build stronger student-teacher relationships make sure that students immediate needs are met and inform school-wide action so these are some of the high-level goals of our partnership that we've heard from ryan and district leaders one of the core reasons for our partnership is definitely to be able to measure sel among students and staff and using that data to drive action planning so here's just a timeline for this school year that we have worked with ryan to develop so we're currently working on the integration process for the check-in feature which will be ready to be rolled out a little later this fall and then we'll do a more of a deep dive with the sel surveys this spring for students and staff so we ran this survey with students last spring as well so that provided some baseline data and we'll get to start seeing a monitor change over time and then we'll also be setting up professional development workshop with our teaching and learning team after the surveys have been completed in order to help sender joint unified faculty dig into that data and identify areas of strength and opportunities for growth and of course throughout the partnership mary and i will offer continuous support including regular touch points sharing various resources and product support just to give a little background about our survey instruments so we offer research back surveys for different stakeholders including students teachers and staff and families our research team has worked in collaboration with the harvard graduate school of education to develop these survey instruments grounded in advanced survey methodology and practice and here you can see some of the different survey measures and topics that can be selected for our surveys and schools and districts can customize the surveys by selecting the topics that they value most or want to prioritize and now we'll just take a quick look into the platform at what the data actually looks like what and what we can do with it so we have a variety of reporting layers so you can view the data at the district school teacher and course level down to the individual student level for sel data so this allows districts the ability to see connections between schools identify strengths and opportunities for improvement both at the high level for the district down to the each individual student because we have a variety of standardized survey topics many of our partners choose to use them so that they can pick can compare their results to our national benchmark data set so this really allows you to put your results into context and you can also monitor change over time and track improvement so what you're seeing here is the ability to break down data by school on the right hand side and also by different groups of students on the left hand side and so this offers the ability to really identify gaps and make connections and take more pointed action as you really have the data to back up that information and here we can see what the student level results would look like for the social emotional learning data which really helps teachers identify areas of strength or development in individual students or by class so we've talked a lot about taking action on the data and our panorama playbook is one resource that we offer to support educators in doing so so we've developed this tool by partnering with several non-profit organizations focused on developing seo and schools and improving student outcomes as well as getting input from teachers in our community and panorama's partners have access to our playbook platform which helps answer the question what's next after they run the surveys receive feedback and the sel data so the playbook offers a developing collection of validated strategies and actions that teachers can use to see improvement in certain topics so for example growth mindset or emotion regulation for sel topics or a sense of safety and teacher-student relationships for more general classroom feedback topics so we've created this playbook to be an application with information to help educators take action and better serve their students that's all we have for you today i hope that helps to give a better understanding of panorama and our partnership with center joint unified school district i don't want to take up too much of your time this evening but um we can certainly open the floor up to any questions that you have no i think it's a great tool mr jordan you must be very excited it is fantastic yes and ryan really is one that sought this out random damage field so the other great part is we'll be able to bring the board data actual concrete data around these surveys where before we would use google and we'd say well it's kind of this way it's kind of will actually have it's more referenced too so we can prepare ourselves to see how things are so we're just scratching the surface i believe of what we can do with this um and as you saw there's many topics that we want to get into that there are actually great questions that it's not sorry no disrespect to mike or myself they're they're actually researchers creating the questions to get added not just we think this is a good one so right now i think it will be pre-done surveys that within our area so that's that's great correct can you tell oh no i i was just gonna say it's just great also to to remind people to make that connection you know by having those individual dashboards for each individual child and just reminding them to make that connection between what's going on in their life and how they're performing in in their particular class sorry can you touch a little bit about the data disaggregation possibilities with uh panorama our board's really uh looking at equity-mindedness and you know beginning to start to look at disaggregated data how can panorama help us in that effort yeah actually sam do you want to jump in on that one sure um and excuse me i'm i'm coming a little bit off a cold um so please let me know if if you all can't hear me um but in terms of of data disaggregation we can really do any sort of you know demographic information that you'd like to capture we can can use um essentially what we do is we pull a roster and we attach a student id code to that um student information so any kind of demographic information that you have available to you in a student information system we'd be able to pull in here and show in those disaggregations but um is there something in particular you're wondering about so we're looking at our achievement scores and um you know lowering uh those achievement gaps that have been persistent for certain sub populations yeah that that totally makes sense i'm i'm sure we'd be able to talk to with ryan about um if you have anything specific in mind too we can we can talk about pulling that in yeah and i i would be interested as far as to segregated data i'd be interested in um both disciplinary records and um like academic um aug you know who's in the who's in the classes where where are they at right now and what are we doing to bring them up to that next level kind of a thing so that might be a five lab thing five lab is another data segregation tool we use this might be so or in conjunction but we can certainly we can we're learning with our five lab um pilot that we got we can pull some pretty impressive data related we need to put the variables you want um so this is more survey and we can designate the survey information but to go where you're going we're on it we're hoping in the coming months they'll share with you some of the bylab stuff that we're doing in addition to some of the panorama stuff because we want to know where the kids are and then use some of the data piece academic behavioral to help drive where we want to go with yeah and then not in regards to disaggregated data but another question on the surveys as i was wondering about um i'm sorry i'm not getting on you i'm wondering about the counseling whether that's part of the survey if you know counseling services is part of one of your standardized surveys right i would say it would probably get at support for students which would be a counselor which would be a social worker which could be better yeah yeah i'd say counseling but you're talking about a supportive adult on campus student and staff be and i was wondering what are the plans regarding implementing that we we're going to dig further in with panorama once we're able to get those surveys out to our staff as well and look at what are all our options one of as a data guy i just want to dive into this the other question i have is the integration with the student information system is that like a daily sync um real time once a week how often um does the video get synced between the two systems yeah it's a great question um so with the check-ins tool that integration that we set up would be on a nightly basis so then basically it means that up-to-date student roster information would be available to pull in so if i'm a counselor and you know i know i'm going to be working with a couple kids over the course of the afternoon and i want to get perhaps a check-in ready for those kids it's a really easy quick way for me just to be able to click all right i'm gonna survey rachel and marie today and um i'll be able to ask them these two questions and so you can kind of get that quickly set up and then be able to administer that survey shortly after who has access to the panoramic survey is it your team administration teachers everybody admins that search the results or from the district perspective right now it's brian myself i believe cambridge bailey has access to that as well and possibly rebecca lawson so so at the higher level and then we can work with them on protocols and gets access to the data and all that it's it's set up on procedures since we're just getting started we're really establishing that but the data can be shared are you sure about that correct yeah we could open that up sorry i didn't mean to cut you off you're you're on a roll um we have a few different levels of access here exactly right one on like the administrative tools and setting up the surveys and then the other on on the results side and so um yeah we're working closely with ryan kind of on the actual setup pieces now and and getting all of those pieces kind of ready to go and then in terms of of results the administrator or the report side of things we have a few different levels so there's district level access where folks perhaps in this room would get to see you know kind of everything from district level all the way down to individual student reports we have school level access meaning that principals would be able to see all the data at their school and then aggregated district level and then we'd have teacher results and that means that teachers would only be able to see the data at their school aggregated at the district aggregated and then only the specific students that they work with um and that's even if we want to set that up if teachers are ready for that great we can absolutely go ahead and get that set um but we can work with ryan to kind of customize both the levels as well as the timing with which we roll that out so that we can make sure it's really thoughtful and intentional and matches the the pace that you're wanting to share that information as well thank you for the clarification because that's exactly what i was looking for what about uh security safety you know we hear a lot about data being out there obviously the data is not going to be sold but can you tell us a little bit about data security data safety on your end with that transfer yeah so um data security and privacy is super important to us we have a whole team actually dedicated to it knowing that this is such important information that we're holding on to um i can actually share a copy with you all after this just kind of of our data security and privacy policy and that kind of lists out our super kind of formal stance there and the care that we take to protect data thank you that'd be great um you mentioned the counselors could say i'm going to do rachel and tommy or whatever is there a way we can also randomize that so that it's not their choice of who they're doing um i think what she was getting at was you could look up specifically how students are checking in so if scott fills out the survey and checks in if i'm gonna have a meeting with scott then i can look him up it's not that they're assigned to be with the counselor it's based on giving the counselor or social worker the knowledge of that exactly so if you already have a meeting set with a student and you want to see what their seo check-ins look so it's not a randomization that science you know mr bruno to work with nancy this is more of a resource for our staff to get the better picture it did sound a little bit different the way you said it though that you could set up a survey for the students and so i think maybe we're talking about apples of oranges i'm not i'm not sure so there's there's two different pieces of the of um the sel tools and i'm sorry i may have um may have fudged that a little bit so there's two pieces there's what we're running this spring um that rachel mentioned and those are our kind of district-wide social emotional learning surveys we might pick a series of you know four to seven topics things like self-management emotion regulation um and kids are self-reflecting and then we also have what's called our check-in tool and those are designed to be smaller shorter pulse surveys so let's say um you know perhaps i identify um as a counselor that the you know one a few students in my caseload um need some support with self management i might just do a pulse survey on self self-management as i'm doing some interventions or activities with them um to kind of monitor the efficacy and see actually how those things are working so it's a slightly different kind of two different use cases if that makes sense thank you i found what i was looking for um it's the uh panorama 360 equity and inclusion survey um so that was i i was wondering if you could touch on that and what is it exactly and it says it's a survey so i wasn't quite sure on that yeah so um our equity and inclusion surveys are our newer surveys um we came out with them within the past couple of years um and they really kind of stemmed from the desire we were hearing a lot of need from districts saying that equity and inclusion is super important to us and it's super important that we kind of understand where our kids are as the world is changing and so um there's a variety of topics similar to the ones that rachel had listed out earlier um i can send over or we can actually send over user guides that kind of list out all of these different survey topics in detail um but the idea being that we can or we have a series of questions about um things like cultural awareness and action um diversity and inclusion and so it's asking um kids and and this is designed for grades six through twelve actually it's a little bit of an older geared survey um asking kids just about their experiences in the classroom um related to um learning about equity learning about inclusion what that means to be a student kind of learning about that and what their experiences have been so it's just students it's not um students teachers and staff and all of them reflecting on that i guess i've maybe read the literature that that's put out by panorama incorrectly perhaps no there there is a um a teacher and staff version as well our our initial version is um was with students so that's where i was speaking from but yes we do also have teacher and staff measures okay and are those supposed to all fit together to paint um a picture of you know diversity and um and equity and inclusion on a site and is there training supports or how does that all work or is it just data that's dumped and not no action comes from it um that's a great question if you um are hoping to use that survey content we actually require a pd along with it um that data is super meaningful and can be um a source of of um difficult conversations and so we want to make sure that we're kind of helping to be a neutral party and facilitate those discussions in a way that'll be productive um and helpful for the people that have spent time reflecting on it um so it comes along with a pd it's a great question um and i can share again just kind of what those questions exactly are and give you some time to look over those i'd really appreciate that thank you yeah oh and and you did mention too just about the reporting all of our reporting will kind of um mirror what what rachel was sharing um so when you have students staff families that take uh the same survey topic so like a school climate topic for example you'll also be able to compare not only by stakeholder group but also by topic so seeing okay kids staff and families that have reflected on school climate how are they all feeling are there people that are feeling more or less favorable about this particular topic and what does that mean how do we stay low on the ladder of inference and actually help to get a little bit deeper about the why before we um jump to conclusions thank you that sounds like a tool that you know we may have use for based on some of the comments that were shared by our teachers union rep earlier and that i've just been hearing from the community about school climate yeah it was really interesting too to hear some of vanessa's comments at the beginning of the meeting because um i think kindness and just being open to kind of what others are going through seeing this sel data well it's one piece of data and obviously shouldn't be looked at in a silo hopefully that'll help to kind of you know give a little bit more perspective on on what's going on with students and how they're feeling too so i'm excited for this i'm sorry great conversation and as long as you guys are done i want to kind of circle back to this conversation about the uh check-ins i i'm a little confused because i feel like we're talking about two different things like you're talking about giving surveys and we're talking about looking at the results of regular check-in so are the check-ins done on a daily basis or a regular basis how how is that done or or are we selecting when we do the check-ins yeah it's a great question so it is a little bit up to you all um like i said the check-ins are because they're supposed to be like a smaller pulse survey they might not necessarily be done district-wide um they may be done for groups of students or pockets of kids depending on the need that's identified by a responsible adult so kind of to that example that i mentioned before we would do these large district-wide surveys similar to the one that rachel referenced that we're going to be doing in the spring um but leading up to that we may check in with pockets of kids based off of the results that we got this past spring just doing a quick pulse check of like hey how are you feeling um and i use that in the sense of like you know potentially to kind of move kids through either an intervention but it could even just be a teacher wanting to administer a quick check-in at the beginning of their class just asking kids how they're feeling today happy sad frustrated angry automatic it's something we do rapidly right but in addition to that a lot of our classrooms use that type of check-in where you're in a simplest form how are you feeling today is it a happy face sad face content face yeah it just would be nice to have it all in one system so that when you pull up the dashboard you can see possibly a trend line or you know something showing what their daily check-ins looked like that would be amazing and so you'll have that in panorama you'll be able to see how kids have reported on their past um check-ins any other questions [Music] i i just want to thank hannah for the time i know they're east coast so for them it's late so i really appreciate you guys uh sticking with us and uh answering our questions and being so supportive so thank you both very much uh for that yeah great presentation thank you so much thank you for having us yeah thank you so much for having us and thank you for your time we're excited to be working with you all and we'd like to chat more to thank you all have a good evening i'm sure you guys don't want to listen to the rest of our boring videos if you'd like to you can stay but i'm going to say good night all right um moving right along to where we do i'd like to ask how often do you think we'd be doing the entire survey so i i think i think we had a slight different three [Music] we get from them will pass along to as well yeah like there were three different types of surveys the middle one was i think maybe more february but it was november and may i saw basically they said fall spring and spring spring whatever that's for okay um i'm sorry moving right along and i just need to get the number one item number six two which is the bond program update and issuance opportunity from caldwell flora's winters we'd like to welcome kusu guyana [Music] good evening ladies and gentlemen i'm chris guerra with cfw very pleased to be over here tonight um our firm has had the privilege of serving your district for more than 30 years i've been with the firm 29 and so um my first trip one of my first very first meetings and trips without descending unified so thank you for having us for all of those years uh i won't be here tonight to give you just a brief overview of your this response programs and then also present you an opportunity uh to be able to issue additional thoughts if there is a need so to do so in the future so with that just by way of introduction or by way of background i should say the district uh bond uh the district has two general obligation bio programs one of the first the first one was in back in 1991 where there was almost 16 lists 59.2 million dollars approved by voters most of those bonds have been issued there's about 5.8 million dollars of bonds that are available to issue at this time that authorization never expires somewhere in the future whenever the board chooses to issue those parties can issue those properties in addition to that back in 2008 uh a little over 62 percent of the voters voted in a large bottle 500 million for your district on the prop 39 uh we this district is always being very fiscally prudent uh when you have the authority to issue once you did not go and immediately issue ones because he did not need the funds at that time uh the first time we needed the district needed some money from that was almost 12 years later in 2020 that's when the first series of bonds was issued in the amount of 12 million dollars and there's approximately 487 million dollars remaining to be issued over time there are a couple of constraints when you issue bonds though one is how much the voters have authorized which in this case is discounted over 430 million dollars the second limiter though is the tax rate for this type of election and the future tax rate is limited to sixty dollars per 100 000 so under this election the limiting factor of the amount of bonds you can issue is primarily uh the tax rate uh the tax rate limits samples by drop 39 so a little later in this presentation you'll see another much lower than 470 units capacity and that's because this side of the election is limited in the amount of taxes [Music] the next page on page number two i know there's a lot of small numbers in the nine tests i'm here but i'd like you to request you to focus on the column the second on the right which is the repayment ratio and once again a reflection on the improvement financial management of this district over the years has been what uh how you have borrowed your money and the conservative approach in the nature that you have used to borrow monies uh you may recall that about six or seven years ago there was a large district down in southern california that issued bonds at a very high rate for every dollar that the voters borrowed it would have to be about ten dollars so that district issued a hundred million dollars a box and would have to pay back over a billion dollars that was that was understandably uh got the attention of the press the events of the legislature and a law was passed that or regulations were passed uh under a one two that limit the amount of the repayment ratio so for every dollar you borrow the state deems that is acceptable to pay back up to four dollars but no more than four dollars so you can't do a ten to one kind of a bond anymore what's interesting to see if you look at the ratios over here in the second fell on you'll notice that long before there was regulations long before there was laws long before there was legal requirements to have a payback ratio of less than 41.
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yes correct medallion would you like to make the motion yes i'd like to make a motion that the board approves policy number 1648 between 11 any questions can you please call the roll okay yeah yes [Music] thank you half a second do i have any questions can you please call the role yeah yes yeah yes great thank you everyone visitors business visitors are committed to comment on agenda and not agenda non-agenda items at this time good evening um thanks for getting the school year off to a good start it's great kids are all here i'd like to know if the governor has given any metric when these things go away does that concern anybody that there's nothing there if we just continue to go by one man rule for what we're going on 19 months now of executive orders and do as i say do you try to explain to my kids i've heard this many many times yeah and the governor is the governor of people in new jersey everything he's done whether we like it or not hasn't been within the wall um that's great well it's true because people may have different views it's true the wearing of the mask is onerous for everybody i they make my ears go on a floor that's why i'm looking like an idiot right now but my point is is that nobody wants to wear dancers but what about we don't still care for nobody why can't we demand an answer about when will this happen i i appreciate your observations ms carlson i don't agree that you guys are fine i don't i don't think this makes sense they leave here they go to a restaurant they don't wear it they go to a store they don't wear it they come in here they wear it here they don't wear it there and my son asked me why he says well until the governor says so if it's any comfort we can't answer that question but i think as a board you need to push back this board for the governor has been zero i believe that you're correct that we should all be pushing to our own convictions the board has gone to its full extent can i answer you calling every day are you pushing i have to send emails to all of my representatives you know what i get back but the zero yeah you're right honestly you're asking a body here to go to the fullest extent and we are there's no doubt in my mind for that we are getting no response and we will not get a response don't stop who said we're stopping and then right now our area is in the orange zone so we have to you know we're told that we have to be very careful because we're in the orange zone right now i repeat that one don't stop there are your convictions that's a great question one man government that isn't and i have to explain to my son whether it's legal or not isn't that a dictatorship a dictatorship living up in addiction our dictatorship is one person i think we all as citizens and as boards on checks and balances need to push back repeatedly and aggressively [Music] into consideration and we see your frustration as well thank you thank you it doesn't mean we'll get an answer i i appreciate that but i'm not asking you to i recognize the limitations i recognize what's legal i also recognize that you are the elected representatives for this district and you speak on behalf of the children that's correct what you've said to us tonight we do not disregard that please don't not at all all right um discussion i don't have a discussion uh this evening um 21 bill's list and then the secondary is authorized to draw a warranty treasury total amount of one million three hundred thirty four thousand four hundred twenty one dollars and sixty seven cents [Music] yes um we do not have an executive session planned this evening so um okay all in favor thank you very much everybody congratulations
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uh this is personnel i need a motion to approve items 10 1 through 10 10. do i have emotion motion by mr lanzalata do i have a second second if i miss ryan any questions or comments pertaining to personnel miss ryan i just have one quick question it's i mean statement it is so nice to see someone who has been in the district for a while as an aide in an elementary school move up to a full-time teaching position i love that and i'm so happy for um ms jarzinski who's moving into demacia van zandt's going to miss you and i'm sure miss alexey will as well but the students at demacia are so lucky to have you excuse me sorry thank you ms ryan any other questions or comments pertaining to personnel seeing none let's go to a roll call please mr fizzy cairo yes miss fleming yes mr catherine yes mrs noel yes mr lancelata yes mr megan yes this is ryan yes motion carriers thank you mr rashenti all right we're going to move into policy i need a motion to prove items 11 1 through 11 4 do i have a motion motion by mr cantham second by miss ryan any questions or comments pertaining to policy i'll say something again um as chairman of the policy committee i just wanted to thank all of our members of that committee for working so hard to revisit some old outdated um policies that were in effect so i appreciate you mr meegan for calling in and joe for being there in person and mr danteen thank you for all your hard work researching we appreciate it i think we did a good job and pretty happy with the way things are worded so thank you for that i'm going to chime in there too thank you miss ryan in particular for one of the bylaws that's zero one five two uh that one uh one that hopefully we will pass today is a revisement of board officers for president and vice president um this policy in particular this bylaw will cap the presidency at three years so it will term limit what the board president will be and then it will allow for another board member to move through i i just wanted to put my two cents into this a little bit and and uh just tell you how i believe this is really important and i'm going to speak from my own personal experience on this the i believe it's it's important that board members gain the experience of the leadership position and i believe it's really good that even three years and sometimes maybe even less than that there's a time that you need to step away and take a break i personally even before this was a thing i'm looking forward just to being in this after december to sit on the wings again only because you will feel in in this position sometimes that you know you're it's sometimes a little psychological and you know you you will need a break from it every once in a while and so why i think this is good is because i think for who will be here next and i am confident the person who sits in this position and in a seat starting in january is going to be phenomenal at what they do all right i think it is good for them as as it will be for me that they have a limit to keep themselves mentally fresh psychologically fresh emotionally refreshed because when we as a board and the leadership included is is at our our level to perform without the constant anxiety i think it ends up helping the entire district out and so i was very happy we did this and i was also um i was i was very glad about the input we got mr negan some excellent input um miss ryan's excellent input and mr dante did a phenomenal job with this and i just wanted to speak to that particular one because i thought that was so incredibly important so um yeah any other questions or comments all right seeing none let's uh go to a roll call please mr fizzicarro yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noll yes mr lanzalata yes mr megan yes this is ryan yes mission carries thank you all right at this point in time we will be moving into committee reports are there any committees that uh that feel they need to report anything to the board all right seeing none i am going to move us into old business i got none all right so at that point i'm going to move us into new business i have none of that either all right so now we're going to go to item 15 which is going to be open public comment i can get my there we go okay so now we're at open public comment for any item of interest this meeting will now be open to the public referencing any items of interest however if your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or personnel items or negotiations we would ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public please limit your comments to three minutes per person is there anyone who wishes to speak seeing none oh yes i thought i saw a movement so that's why i was holding a little bit when you come up just please uh state your name and address my name is nicole lucas and my address is uh 102 kettering court in marlton i am a lifelong member i met mostly everybody on the board um i lived in marlton my whole entire life and i represent um dion so a lot of you know about our group and i don't typically attend the meetings in person but i do view them online and for those of you that are not familiar with our group um we really just are a local non-profit we're advocating to address issues with diversity equity and inclusion in our schools and our community we've been successful in hosting the book drive we've donated hundreds of books to the libraries here backpacks you know to back to school um and uh we've liaison with you guys and we're looking you know further um you know in the future but tonight i am here specifically about some comments that were needless last meeting and it's a little bit difficult for me to speak in public it's not what i typically do so i just felt compelled to come in person just to talk about some of the comments that were made last week about the critical race theory um the board knows i i think you know dion knows that nobody here is wanting critical race theory to be taught in public schools to children this is not a matter that anybody's recommending it's a term that people are not really understanding it's a catch phrase with no educational understanding whatsoever some of the comments were kind of troubling a public comment meeting regarding dr martin luther king was made about his famous line not judging some his children by the color of their skin but the content of their character and somehow that means not teaching critical race theory um don't even know how that point translates but you know either dr king's words were either shamefully applied to argue against any discussion of the different colors of our skin or our full american history or accurate information on black history or the historical enslavement of part of our population or maybe the commenter simply misunderstood what dr king meant i unlike many people prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt others may take the comment as disingenuous regardless i think education is needed on these topics another commentator stated that critical race theory is like diversity equity and inclusion and that's where i felt like i needed to come because you know dion would like to clarify and make sure it's noted to the public that that's not what it is and i think that the board is dedicated to you know you know we've talked with you guys you know that you want to make sure that every student is included is the practice of including involving people from a range of all different social and ethnic backgrounds of different genders sexual orientations etc equity is the quality of being fair and impartial and frankly there's an opportunity for us to do a better job and that's dionne that's that's what we want to do we want to help and i think that's what we've done and i don't think anybody thinks here that children should not be treated fairly so i hope not so i just wanted to you know say something about that because this is what we're here for and for parents to get up and say that really upset me um and i would just like to ask that any future commentators on the false narrative that critical race theory is being taught or being recommended to be taught or anything crazy like that um you know reach out to us that that's just we'd be happy to explain it to you that's not the case and now we can we can educate you on that we want to slay that political dragon that's a term that's thrown out there that's we don't want it to take hold on our lovely town and called the divide and misunderstanding so i just want to thank you guys thank you dr smith thank you members of the board and my fellow community members for your time you know i really want to know that we let you guys know that we are here to work on ways that we can fully implement new jersey's already existing curriculum you guys do a wonderful job here for the students and i'm glad to hear if the things are going to come back all the extras for the kids this is really wonderful news and we can help to continue to robustly implement the homicide commission's recommendations for teaching a fuller american history which includes black history dealing with racism the lgbtq community and persons with disability achievements and all the required middle school curriculum along with the required diversity course curriculum those are the efforts we continue to provide support for and training information for teachers and things like that um and i'll just conclude by saying that we are having an upcoming um cultural day the dance partnered with eastern township everybody's invited it's october 17th and we appreciate your guys support thank you so much thank you for your comments um i will say that i know you you were listening to it last last last month and hopefully in all of that you were able to hear our solicitor's comments in return back um his his comments do identify with what we are doing here so um you know just make sure i'm glad you're able to to capture that part but that was what mr donio said was incredibly important about what we are too just when i had ms lucas thank you so much for for coming and that was a very powerful statement really appreciate it slightly took down a serious moment [Laughter] what's that you said on this on october 17th or september where where is that a savage okay okay thank you we just we couldn't hear we couldn't understand you no we i get that um anybody else with a comment or a question or anything yes please please state your name and address for the board samantha hurley 11 light horse court um so i my oldest daughter attended bieler for half a year kindergarten when kova decided to enter our lives that very same week i signed papers on my car to sell my house my husband and i it was a really good time we had a house in the works we were moving it was supposed to be normal and then that house fell through we spent the rest of the year doing some fun remote schooling in vermont so i wanted to give compliments to that because we did it from afar while still being marlton student um this last year i chose to homeschool my first grader then i have a education degree myself and elementary and stay-at-home mom so it was like begging for me to spend a lot of time with my kids um it went really well and i sent her back this year as a second grader at mes um and i'm very grateful for her happy face her smile she's just had a tremendously great back-to-school experience i was very nervous on how that would go and she not that i let her know it but um i just want to thank everyone that kind of you know goes into that she she really um she smiles all the time so thank you um and continue all the great work teachers everyone very very grateful so thank you thank you oh go ahead doctor miss early i just want to welcome welcome to our district okay fantastic um and thank you for those comments especially out of the your ability to make comparative comparisons you know with different different modes of learning that you and your daughter have experienced over the past 18 months of the pandemic so um really appreciate that that window you opened thank you um you said you were in vermont oh we our educational staff is talent enough that they can reach kids even that far away that's that to me that's that's what makes this that's what makes this awesome thank you so much any questions other questions or comments all right i'm going to close that portion of the board for us um and that is going to take us we do not have a second executive session uh so announcements any announcements from the board mr cantham uh yeah so uh at the board meeting last month we mentioned that we were doing a backpack drive um partnering with the council there um so thanks to to everyone who helped us out everyone who donated um everyone who helped us out from the council councilman freeman the mayor and the deputy mayor as well as mrc and dion who helped organize and really drive it we ended up collecting 211 backpacks for our kids um so that's that's just spectacular yeah um and then as far as the cultural day just to echo um cultural day is october 17th it's from 11 to 5 at savage field um so that's being hosted by the township uh in conjunction with dion and then the human rights advisory council as well so hope to see everyone there thank you mr cantham any other announcements ah miss no sorry i just wanted to um thank the dion representative for coming i'm sorry i didn't hear your name nicole um absolutely agree with you and you know we need to move forward in marlton let's look around we are diverse i don't want to walk backwards you know we're in we need to do as much as we can to celebrate our diversity in fact it's in hispanic american heritage month and um you know we were diverse community let's embrace it so thank you for coming and any of those commenters you know they if they come you come so we are listening and i don't want my children to grow up in a town that is that thick or you know moving backwards and it won't happen on my watch so thank you for coming and you're welcome here thank you mr uh miss fleming anybody else miss ryan i would just like to say to all the staff welcome back and shout out to all the pto and pta for welcoming everyone back i saw some great pictures online and a lot of smiling faces and it was really nice of those organizations to welcome the staff back with open arms and smiling faces and just the kudos you're here let's do this kind of thing so welcome back to all the staff of you sham and uh thank you to all of our ptas and ptos thank you miss ryan anybody else all right at this point let's go to a motion to adjourn do i have a motion motion by miss ryan do i have a second second by miss fleming all in favor awesome all right we'll see everyone in october [Music] hmm [Music] you
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that's a big one right now but what about the older ones the older students or is this focused more on the younger ones uh no i think that we're trying to focus on everyone and again we're trying to focus on something that the parent can easily understand like number sense i can tell you right now that um all the way up through the eighth grade for most of the students like like they need to work on their times tables it's a thing it's been a thing for a thousand years and how many high schools got high school how many eighth graders are taking high school classes do you happen to know uh we get about i don't know so we started out at riverview with maybe only four or five kids that were willing to take that step into the high school algebra class and we now have a full class even during the pandemic last year a full class so 30 some odd students taking the high school test they got through algebra one algebra two some of them went through geometry as well thank you we want to expand it but now's not the time so we we i mean i feel like if they can do algebra then why don't we have them doing you know their english class so they can probably do it but we just need to build the road just a couple things first of all amazing presentation you should have never indicated you were nervous because you didn't appear nervous at all i really hate talking in front of adults it gives me the options if you're five i'm all about it you know so you did a really good job um and i had a few i made some notes as you were talking i'll get to those but we kind of jumped around a few areas and no no i mean in regard to like someone had mentioned how awesome your staff is and you are complimenting so on that note of it i want to say because i i have one student's book here who has miss james and her class mission and starting out with these very um just these positive affirmations and very the verbiage is so positive starting out their day like that's just amazing that's just so um that's awesome so i i believe that you do have awesome stuff if they're anything like miss james so good job miss james if you're watching in tvlan um so there's that so in regard to and i'm sure you're not going to get in any trouble tomorrow because we're hearing all the things we want here about your school this is the stuff we want to know so i'm sure you're fine um in regard to thank you number again for being honest transparent about your scores what in regards to your drops in ela and math have you found so far an intervention that you feel particularly proud of or that seems to be driving some good results to help those particular areas so i feel like um so the answer is yes and i did speak to a couple of the hallway interventionists so that's kind of above and beyond what you might hear about from the other schools um we are being very intentional i think with some of that extra staff support to try to pull those extra small groups so that the teachers can focus on the kids who need like i need that hyper focus of a teacher so that's one of the things that we're doing in intervention that we hope to gain ground with the older students the the teachers have really divided up the ela and the math and supported each other so what i mean by that is this so sixth grade you've got four teachers um and so maybe uh math and science they partner up and they are going to do the intervention for math and then social studies and ela partner up and they do the interventions for ela the teams have been really good about meeting together and saying look i'm still really low here i'm still really low here let's cycle that in in all of our warm up so that the kids see a united front so they've had very intentional conversations about these types of strategies where they can kind of synergize their own needs and move it along with the kids that sounds awesome let me just brag on the kids sorry one more time so some of the leadership things that we have going on with the kids too um at the beginning of the year this just two two quick examples um big problem with the kinders in the cafeteria because you know they can't open their milk they can't sit still they don't know how to eat without talking for a thousand years um so we were really struggling with them and i was like why are we doing this what grade level comes in after them it happened to be fifth grade and so i talked to the fifth grade team i was like hey can we get some student leaders and their what the kids were like we'll do it right they came down and they started uh being the ones who you should have seen them they were little dictators man no you walk on this line you walk this way here's your milk you only get one and uh made them sit down in their little spaces and all of a sudden our lunch was just moving at the pace that it was supposed to be i walked through the hallways the other day and i saw kids sitting in the hallways working with students not adults so we have some some older kids being leaders in the hallway and they're down there and they're they're running sight words with the kids they're running letters with the kids they're running counting with the kids and so we're trying to maximize and it's good for them to be leaders right some of those kids that struggle with their behavior in the upper grades are beautiful with the littles like they're totally different children and so it's really good for them to find a way to be successful and be a leader and it supports their own learning in the process last example and that was a dramatic decrease in referrals that you referenced oh gosh yeah how did how would you do that it was a lot hard work kathy should be talking about this but um we were very very consistent first of all um with the discipline matrix so they had to know who was in charge that's us and then it was getting all of the teachers on we trained the teachers before we trained the kids right so leadership starts with me and i have to be a leader of myself i have to be proactive i have to think when when i have to seek first to understand that's a big one right now people are not doing that they're not seeking first to understand they just want to be understood and they don't want to understand and so we're really hitting that one hard so we trained the staff first and then we trained the kids and we invested it's pretty expensive so we invest in the product for leader in me and then we continue to train the staff and we continue to think about it and talk about it and because teachers are leaders of themselves and they model that to students students have begun so you mentioned tick tock that's not cool but i will tell you that we have had what i would say is maybe a lesser degree of it so the kids have taken off the lid for the soap but the soap is still there so i took the lid off and i ran so they haven't destroyed it they haven't pulled it off the wall they haven't stolen anything off a teacher's desk we did have one little thief but let me tell you his life sucks and so um you know that is a manifestation of the terrible terrible life that child has so we're working with him on a different level um you got to meet people where they are and that that's kind of your explanation and what you just shared right now kind of kind of blends into what i'm going to say next under your opportunity is empowering parents to support student growth and another board member asked you know how do you make that happen i'll say that i firmly believe a lot has to do with you and that when you and i used to work together at surprise you have a very real down to earth approach about you that engages people and you're very relatable in that way and you're great at building good culture and climate and i think that that's um that's what i think is a huge part of probably that empowerment piece and getting parents involved is a lot of the work that you that you put in in the front so thank you for all that you do no you do a great job and i really again appreciate all your detail and um and your presentation tonight it was wonderful thank you thank you okay all right she can't get in trouble tomorrow do you mind shooting do you want your binders madam president members of the board cabinet and community it's my pleasure to introduce stacey brown principal of western peaks good evening madam president members of the board dr keller's dr dean dr polling dr croto and mr hicks i am the proud principal of western peak's k4 elementary where we don't have to worry about tick-tock challenges all right uh right now western peaks has an enrollment of about 595 students our school colors are silver and black we are the falcons and we call ourselves the falcon family where our pbis expectations are to be respectful responsible and kind our signature program continues to be innovation and we are kind of revamping that and what it looks like on a k4 campus so we have a few opportunities for this school year one of our um first initial opportunities is that we have half of a new staff um joining us from simran springs and so as we have created new teams then there's an opportunity to create that cohesiveness among the team members especially because we don't have a shared prep time with them we have five to six teachers per team but only for special area teachers so they're split up on their prep times but in order to alleviate that uh we met as an instructional cabinet and brainstormed and every team has now committed to scheduling a specific day every week where they meet in the mornings before school so that they can have a common team planning time with everyone together and work on building that cohesiveness and sense of team so that's been getting started now and we're making some improvements there also we have gaps in student learning of course with the covet slide so we have been working on identifying the gaps in learning looking heavily at data and we're also really working to find this lowest skill deficit work at that deficit and provide interventions to to seek growth in the students and so we started that right away within the first couple of weeks of school we're already seeing some good growth with our students we also have an opportunity to increase proficiency in fourth grade ela and mathematics this has been a lower performing grade level for a few years at western peaks in the 2021 azm2 only 38 of fourth grade students were proficient or highly proficient in math and 54 were proficient or highly proficient in reading which is a slide from where those that same cohort was as third graders and so this is an area that we've really targeted this year so that more of our fourth grade students can gain proficiency by the end of the year so we are doing week very like consistent data talks with our fourth grade teams we are doing more heavy interventions with them and bringing in some new resources to help our fourth graders because especially this year they aren't the reading level that we normally would see fourth graders and so we're bringing in a lot of our 95 group phonics support to help those fourth graders where they're at in ela also getting families re-engaged with the school community after the pasture of not really being able to be on campus and be engaged so that was really important to our entire staff was that sense of community and so we are doing a lot of ptsa events we are doing family nights like literacy nights math nights so that we can get a ton of community engagement our first family night we had a bingo night and we had like 135 participants it was our biggest event ever so that was great another area of opportunity is we are working on systems to support some of our more significant student behaviors um and staffing to support that we do have some students with some really special behaviors and so we are working through our pbis program bringing those students to pbis tier two to implement interventions with them and track that data and success of those interventions and then this year we're actually starting our tier three training with pbis for the students who need an additional layer of support for behaviors we're also working with the district behavior team to support them our social worker support and of course staff and paraprofessional support but along with that we do have vacancies in paraprofessional positions on campus so that's added to that area of opportunity for some celebrations uh we had some really great third grade uh proficiency on the azm2 in math and ela last year our third grade students uh 68 of them were proficient or highly proficient in math and 62 percent were proficient or highly proficient in reading so that was a quite a area of celebration for us also we had a successful opening of our primary campus the k4 teachers have overwhelmingly exhibited a really positive can-do attitude in all aspects of the school despite whatever they're um you know facing the systems are running really smoothly and both students and staff are positive and happy on campus you walk around the campus everyone is just really happy smile on their face great place to be another area of celebration is that our teachers even though we're just about six seven weeks into school they are very knowledgeable about their students and have been from week one they've demonstrated during our rti meetings that they have deep knowledge of their students abilities they began the interventions within the first couple of weeks of school and they've been differentiating support to be able to meet the students where they're at we also have a celebration because we have a real focus on learning the teachers are highly honed in on student learning not only are the teachers tracking data on all of their students but like riverview all of our kindergarten through fourth grade students are also tracking their own data our second through fourth graders have data binders our kinder and first don't have actual binders but they are tracking data for instance our kindergartners have little caterpillars and on each segment of the caterpillar is a different phonics skill and so when they master a skill they color that segment and they watch as they track their data while our other students are creating bar graphs and things our students are setting goals for themselves so after they take a test a fluency test or a unit test they'll track they'll graph their data and then they'll set a goal for growth because we are very focused on growth mindset at western peaks and so we want to teach students that it's all about making growth every time and so our students are setting goals tracking their data and really on top of that and our phonics core is already providing incredible results and growth in the phonics skills that new phonics core program that we're using for tier 1 and k3 so that's been really successful we also continue to have a really successful implementation of pbis last year was our first full year of implementation and we were able to reduce our referrals by 47 from the year prior so this year is our second year of full implementation but we got half a new school of new teachers and new students and so we had to train all of our new staff and all of our new students it's going very well and as i said we are getting training in the tier three portion of pdis this year another big celebration is we have created a very successful partnership with transformation community church they actually rent out our facilities on sundays and they approached us wanted to build a partnership with us at meet the teacher night they gave away 150 backpacks full of school supplies they also gave away several pairs of new shoes for students um and so parents were thrilled to get those they are going to be sponsoring a weekend backpack program to feed 20 families every weekend throughout the entire school year well they will send home backpacks of food every weekend with these 20 families and they also sponsor monthly staff appreciation meals for our staff every single month they're going to be volunteering to help with our some of our school events and so that's just been a great blessing to our school to have such a strong partnership with someone in the community and then our final celebration on here is we had the best fundraiser in western peak's history we started out the year with a read-a-thon and we raised 35 945 dollars in our read-a-thon so that was just mind-blowing so i will be getting slimed and coach sullivan will be getting a pie in the face and all the students will be getting an ice cream party uh we'll make sure you know when that is if you want to come see because i want to see that all right so our focus this year our first focus is on the response to intervention we have partnered with the district curriculum department both dana noble and holly johnston to revamp our rti process this year we are meeting monthly and having all-day rti meetings where teachers come during their preps and then we do the rti meetings during the teachers preps this has allowed us to be able to meet about several more students than we normally would have done it when we were doing it just be after school once a week it allows us to put interventions into place sooner and track the interventions and their success and then determine what the next best steps are and dana noble had said she was just so impressed with western peaks with our teachers because they came they had all their data they knew their students and she had never seen another school where the teachers were so prepared and knew their students so well so that made me very proud of course i know how awesome my teachers are but it was great to hear from someone else we're also focusing on effective intervention in the past we were doing intervention four days a week with mondays being short but we are on a strict five day a week schedule for reading and math intervention students are doing walk to read so they do split up amongst the other teachers in the grade level so every teacher takes a group based on a specific skill and works with those students to drill down to the deficits differentiate the learning fill in the gaps and then move them forward into the next deficit i'm sorry to the next level of deficit so like i said they've already been making incredible improvements and um it's been really good to see that we started that on august 30th and then we're also focusing on effective instruction using the west end dysart protocol we did already in previous year give professional development training on the depths of knowledge aligning standards to the correct depths of knowledge and student objectives we had already done training on student engagement and so this year we did a refresher of those and then we have just recently done professional development on academic conversations because those do have a very high correlation to student achievement and next week we'll be doing checks for understanding and being able to do those checks along the way so that we catch any misconceptions before it's the end of a unit we are also between myself my assistant principal and my tls we are doing in and out coaching and so we'll go in the three of us observe a teacher together come out debrief one of us will go cover the teacher's class while the teacher comes out and the other two of us coach the teacher on the spot right then and there so the teacher gets immediate feedback that they can then implement that's been really effective and our teachers love getting the feedback right then and then the other area of focus this year is on the plc plus structures and the plc plus really works to increase not only student learning which we've been focused on for years but also increase student teacher learning as well and so we have started that by training the instructional cabinet on the plc plus structures and in turn then the instructional cabinet will be facilitating the training with their grade levels so that the whole entire staff is trained on the five questions and how to use the five questions really well which are where are we going where are we now how do we move learning forward what did we learn today which really focuses on what did the teacher learn today how did the teacher improve their learning and who benefited and who did not so that's where we can really look at some of like our sub populations and um you know are we really meeting the needs of every student on campus that's all my presentation any questions thank you it sounds like you have a lot of um strong instructional supports on your campus and the more you keep talking about the different things you're doing all seem to be geared towards improving instruction so i think that sounds awesome i especially like that on the spot coaching that you're talking about so that way they can apply it right away or be able to relate to what you're saying rather than the end of the week it's like okay i think i might know what she's talking about it sounds sounds wonderful and then just for clarification the pbis implementation do you just mean just the school-wide program or do you guys now have pbis like behavior classrooms on your campus there's a difference so pbis is positive behavior intervention supports which is a program of positive behavior support school-wide with school-wide expectations reinforcements and um then pbs is that um like how countryside has those pbs classrooms for students that need that type of support so this is pbis okay you guys don't have pbs classrooms no okay double checking yeah thank you yes thank you i am just so impressed with your fundraising [Laughter] i was blown away i just every time every day it would just keep going up and up and i thought oh my gosh surely we're plateaued now and then the next morning i'd wake up and there'd be thousands more it was incredible do you think people were just so you know eager to donate since they didn't have any fundraising opportunities with kovid i don't know possibility because we really didn't do any fundraising last year we we didn't want to hit hit our community when a lot of people were out of work or things like that um i also think a lot of people really kind of attached to reading and so they really liked the idea of a readathon oh you know the kids are reading yeah i'll pay money for these kids to read and then i think that being just a k4 campus might have a lot to do with it too yeah we know that in fundraising in the past it's always kind of been the younger kids that we're able to raise the most and the older kids a little bit but so i think having they're cuter yeah so what are you going to do next year this year you're going to get slimed i mean come on for 35 000 you're gonna have to talk you know yeah i mean i've been made into an ice cream sundae i've had you know there's been kiss a pig this year it's slime i all i just keep saying is i will never do the ice cream sundae again i don't know i'm open for ideas you know they're skydiving oh boy i don't know if the trust will go for that um i did have one thing um well actually two um are you going to share your secret regarding that 35 000 fundraiser you're going to share it with other schools you can just absolutely no we actually got the idea from luke elementary who had also done the read-a-thon i think they had raised around 20 20 25 000 something like that um so i had brought that idea to the ptsa and they said yeah let's do it so yeah i'm definitely going to share it with with my fellow colleagues okay um congrats on the 47 decrease in the referrals okay we'd love to see those big numbers um i did have a just a question regarding um you were talking about the fourth grade um being proficient the 38 in the ela and the math and 54 in the reading um what specifically do you think it is that is making that the 38 and the 54 in reading you know that is what uh myself assistant principal tls that is the question that we have been scratching our heads and trying to figure out because we have strong fourth grade teachers who really are excellent teachers um and so one thing that i know is that with their intervention they never really had kind of a core resource to use for intervention time where as our k3 teachers like always had the certain like 95 percent to focus their interventions so this year my tls trained the 4th grade team on how to use the 95 phonics program they are using that in their tier 2 intervention because so many of our students are not up to speed on reading because of that covet slide so they're getting that phonics piece that they're missing during intervention time and my tls also trained the fourth grade team on another component of 95 group called multi-syllabic routine cards which really helps students learn how to read multi-syllabic words which is you know a lot more difficult as students move up into fourth grade they're coming across these more difficult words and so they're going to actually be teaching that in their tier one core content area in ela and we hope that that will help improve the fluency because as they improve their fluency and accuracy then that comprehension will help to follow with that with math we're looking at incorporating more like academic conversation number talks so that we get students to start being able to really talk about how they solve problems the strategies that they used being able to compare that to their peers because the more that they are able to talk about it and explain it and justify what they did then the more that they really will be able to understand the concepts and skills i'll be interested to find out your results on on using that so thank you very much thank you thank you thank you very much thank you good luck with the slime yes okay moving to item g3 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet um it is the intent of administration to ensure that the board is informed about school performance data on a more specific level this evening you will receive information about the high schools and mrs amy harchen will present that information good evening madam president members of the board dr kelson cabinet as dr callus mentioned i'm here to share with you high school data from um this past year and kind of give you an update on where the high schools are at all right so we're going to start with graduation rates and i'm going to start off with you'll notice that 21 last year seniors data is not in there because we haven't finalized all of the last year's senior codes so um it is very common that you spend the first part of this time cleaning up all of the state withdrawal codes and doing those types of things so our high school graduation data from last year is not clean yet so we don't want to share that information with you so we will share it at a later date but um you can see and i think you may have seen this at the heart of last year but there was a little bit of dip um in our graduation at dysart high school from 1920 um that was during the closure and we did lose a group of students but um a positive is that their five-year graduation rate meaning those kids came back for that fifth year um did bounce up to 92 so that puts um them back in line with where they had been previously so um a group of them did come back and finish um in that fifth year so the national average at that time was also 88 so um our district is above the national or um yeah above the national average and well above the state average so another component of um the high school graduation piece is our ccri indicator which is our college and career readiness it's broken into two parts blue academic side red college and career readiness or career readiness side and you can see that the high schools have done a really great job since it initially came out that first year of improving their data um each year and really understanding how these different components that are on there help our kids be prepared for what they're going to do in the future the little asterisks on each one show that the schools earned their bonus point when the state does their adf lettering schools can earn bonus points in various areas one of them is the ccri index if you increase your number of kids who are college going from one year to the next or you increase your military enlistments from one year to the next so for the past two years all of our schools have gotten their um increase in um either college or military attainment and the submitted to audit means that we have not finalized again with the state because we're still cleaning up seniors from last year so that is what we submitted to them based on last year's um graduation list and dropout rates um you can see all four uh or all the schools had a slight increase again due to covid we had students we've lost and we're still working and making phone calls um trying to get kids back in school or hoping you know making sure that they've found other schools other places so that we can this kind of ties to the graduation rates so we get a list of students who have codes that are related to consider dropout and we want to make sure that they've enrolled somewhere else or managed to get their diploma in some way so this is another piece of data that we track for our high schools um and you can see that we are far below the state average in our students dropout rates which is a great thing so cambridge um in up through 1920 both dysart high school and um willow canyon had the cambridge program on their campus 1920 was the last year that dysert high school had it we went away from it and um 2021 was the first year uh or was the first year that just willow canyon has it so you can see there's part of their decrease in enrollment um in the student number of students who tested um and the um number of exams that were given so um you can see the passing rate for 1920 is considerably higher than the others and that was due to the fact that the schools were in shutdown and normally the students come and sit for exams similar to an ap or ib exam they did not do that this year they didn't take exams all they submitted was their coursework so in science they submit labs in history they submit papers and then teachers do predicted grades and say this is how i think the students are going to score and that was all they used to score kids for that 19 year because the schools were shut down worldwide and students couldn't take tests so that um just kind of to give you an explanation of why that was such a an increase compared to previous years so for ib which is just at willow canyon you can see that um their enrollments for this last year also down we had a lot of um you'll see in ap and dual enrollment as well some of those enrollments dips there was a lot of uncertainty people weren't sure how long we were going to be in class whether or not we were going to be in and out so students and parents were a little hesitant to kind of invest in these exams and doing these types of things but the students who did choose to take their test willow had really high 92 percent of their students who sat for an ib exam last year passed their exams so they did very very well in those who persevered and chose to sit for those exams so um you can see their number of exams given dropped but the percentage of kids who tested from um 20 to 21 was the same so they have been very successful in getting their students to pass those exams next is act and for the board if you are not aware starting this year that is our state test um the high schools will not use azm2 this year the ninth graders will take the aspire test which is a version of the act test and our c um juniors will take the a.c.t so this will be our state test for um supposedly seven years we're hoping that the state holds true to that and we can actually get a good pattern of the test going but um there's two asterisks on this slide 1718 was the last time that we gave it to all students so we had a grant that year all of our juniors took it in 1718 and then um in 2021 you'll see that the numbers are even higher than that 1718 in terms of participation because our juniors were supposed to take it in 1920 and they didn't so we gave it in the fall um during their senior year last year and then our juniors took it in the spring so last year we tested two grade levels we tested seniors in the fall and juniors in the spring so that is why that number is so much higher than our normal amount this year just the juniors will take it but you can see um our juniors are the 2021 scores are relatively consistent with our 2017-2018 which was way pre-covered so we were pretty proud um our junior numbers actually in several schools were almost a point in a point and a half higher than they were in 1718 so our high schools have made good growth on this and we have two pilots going on some hct prep programs we're using method prep and chalk talk which are two practice programs that our juniors have access to at all four high schools to help them be prepared for that a.c.t test to help them be familiar with the types of questions and the structure of questions and those types of things so they were able to take a full-length act practice this fall they'll take another full-length act practice in the spring it's part of that um program that we have and then that way they'll have they get good feedback about things that they need to work on and then there's lessons within those programs that let them work on those skills and strategies in preparation for that test so we're hopeful that we will continue to have good increases in our ect scores um ap and i'm gonna when i talk about ep and dual enrollment um remember that at our high school some of these courses are taught concurrently so i may be an ap language a senior english class but i might also be taking it for dual enrollment so when we're talking about ap these are the courses that are all listed as advanced placement courses in our in our course sequences um so these numbers just reflect those and then when we get to dual enrollment it is only dual enrollment um it does not include any of those concurrent courses just so that they are separate pieces um you can see in 20 and 21 those are obviously our covet 19 years the change also occurred between 1819 and 1920 the college board switched when kids register for exams you always used to register right before we went to spring break was always the deadline so that kids made that decision right before testing started about whether or not they wanted to take that exam starting in 1920 students register about now right before fall break they make that decision about whether or not they want to take that ap exam the rationale was well kids will be more invested in the course during the year if they're going to take the exam but for a lot of our families in the community they don't want to make that decision until the kids are confident that they might do well in the exam so we've kind of noticed a drop off in some of our schools and the number of kids who are choosing to take that test because they have to make that decision so early but our numbers of students success on the test based on the number of students who scored a three or higher three is typically considered college equivalent um and can be usually um earn college credit when you get there most of those were relatively consistent valley vistas was exactly the same willow had a um a small dip shadows was about within a margin of error and dysart had a little bit of dip also in 1920 because they were in shutdown the kids were allowed to test from home and they gave a modified exam so the test the exam in 1920 looked very different it was very shortened they didn't have all of the essay components they never normally have so those tests really get a big asterisk um there were some universities who ended up not even taking the scores because they were um so very different than the high quality um that the ap usually has with theirs so um the middle column really is hard to compare to the um with the other two and last year they went back to the normal testing kits tested on campus you had to be in person um there was no um out at home option and then dual enrollment as i mentioned so any of these numbers when you see these first columns of student enrolled those are numbers of students and not numbers of courses kids are taking so one student could take one class they could have five or six classes so these are independent student numbers and these are students enrolled in a course that is being offered as dual enrollment so i may be in the dual enrollment english class but i may not be signing up for that course with rio salado however i'm still being i get that opportunity i just am not paying for that credit so that's why we offer um we show all three columns because any student who's enrolled in a course that is offered as dual enrollment gets to count that on our ccri rubric when we um when they file that with the state so it's really important for us to offer those classes even if a student chooses not to pay for that course through rio salado um the dual enrollment paid for dual enrollment and then received credit they obviously have to pass the class to receive credit um and for us to count that you can see our students are very very successful um the students who choose to enroll at very high percentages earn those credits so our numbers for this year as of right now are higher than the number of students who were enrolled district-wide last year so it looks like we are on an uptrend again students obviously register for classes as soon as they get back to school for their fall semester classes and then for those courses that are spring um spring semester separate from fall they'll register in january when they get back so some run all year and some run one semester to the next and then cte programs um so this is um a comparison of our district compared to westmech which is our um partner um cted and then all of the state average for all of the career and technical education districts so you can see um 2021 the first two columns are based on last year's cohort and the two columns before are based on cohort information from 2020 because that new information obviously is still not available program completion means the student started a sequence and finished it so this is the in the class of 2021 and dicer almost 47 percent of our students completed a cte sequence start to finish so i took sports medicine one two three four five six or whatever the sequence is for those courses the state tsa passing rate which is this technical skills test that the students have for each of their cte programs our pass rate was 86.1 almost 86.2 for our state average and you can see that is well above the state cte average so we're very proud of our cte students they do they're very passionate about their programs and they're really invested in those tests that they're taking the graduation rate for um that year was 94.86 and then our total placement rate so that is the students who complete a cte program every fall all of our cte teachers make phone calls they call their kids from the previous cte programs and they say hey i just want to check in and see what you're doing right now and the idea is to see how many of those students enter college the military a job specifically related to their program of um study or any kind of service program so if i join the peace corps or do any of those job core type things um those are all considered as being program placed so 91 of our students last from the class of 2020 were program placed in one of those five criteria so that's a really um testament to the hard work that the cte team does that students follow a path that is either college excuse me career or military related to those so i think that's really um well above state average as well so we're very proud of that work and then the last slide is just our skills assessment kind of trend data for you so um the state did not give their test in so the skills assessment you can see the number of exams given last year was much higher and that is because any student who was still on campus who didn't get to test in 1920 was able to test in 2021 even if they're not still in that sequence they could still take that test lots of campuses did study groups for those students to help them refresh and get ready for the test so that they were able to do that and um you can still see even with that gap we still had an 86 pass rate for our skills assessment for last year so um it was really great that they still got that opportunity since they missed out and they've done that whole sequence and missed out so it was good that they got to come back and still take that the following year so with that i will take questions i have a quick question so just to clarify instead of the azmerit the act is what our data is going to be based on for next year right for the junior class for the high schools it will be um aspire the state is not listed what they're going to it's going to be benchmarked just this year because they have no cut mark data or anything on it so act will be the high school one okay thank you on dual enrollment [Music] when a student picks a class do they know ahead of time that that's a dual enrollment class or do they find out oh i've picked an english class and then the first week of school that the the teacher says oh by the way anybody wants to duel and roll they can because this is a dorm or is it so it's both so in the um course selection process um students fill out the course request forms every course that's on that campus that is offered as dual enrollment um is tagged that way so um when i was at dysart high school it was an asterisk and it said dual enrollment eligible um so then when they signed up they knew that if they were looking for a dual enrollment course they had that opportunity um and then when school starts the registration process starts so then teachers will talk about that within their class and say this course is dual enrollment um teachers obviously have to be certified or meet the criteria to do that so for example you may have two teachers teaching it and only teacher a has the certification or ability to do that so what they do typically say okay if you would like to take it in dual enrollment then they will switch kids so that the kids who want to be in the dual enrollment class have that opportunity to be in that classroom and not miss that opportunity okay thank you it was good information it's sad to see the dips but we know you know why and and we're hearing that there's a lot of things going on to help students kind of make up that gap um will we still get uh the data we typically get in like later in the year then or something in regard to like the ela and the math how we usually get it broken up from high schools or is this in lieu of madam president members of the board uh miss pritchard um so we will continue to provide um other data um this is from last year there's going to be ongoing data i hope almost every single month that there's data coming as far as specific to what you're asking um are you referring to elementary high school well like usually for high school i could be dr aside dr wiefer choose to do it they'd give more of the in-depth like academic type scores to per high school we would be looking at the sometime in the second semester to show the the academic data from the first semester obviously we don't have that right now because we're in that first semester but this is all from last year but um yes we would be able to share any of the benchmarks the grade completions those types of academics thanks thank you so the items that are submitted for audit those are the ones that are going to be coming out in october i think right correct so right now the high school principals are all cleaning up graduation coats calling kids who um disappeared at some point last year with drew but we haven't received a records request calling um and doing those you know where are you now what are you doing so that we can clean those up with the state and then um the assist team communicates with the state and gets all that cleaned up for us okay and i i have other questions but i'm going to save them for you yes for a rainy day um but my one question uh had to do with the dips like for the act and i know we had the cove time but this was back on from 2017-18 to 2018-19 the dip from the number of tests taken was that the last year that we um paid for the okay yeah so we had to do the grant in 1718 we were supposed to have it in 1920 and of course um the world shut down right before we were supposed to stay test so we should have had it in 1920 we did have that grant again okay so that's funny thank you i may have missed this question so i'm sorry if it's a duplicate um miss way or sink bell mentioned the the graduation rates did you mention when that information might be available i'm not sure if you did so like i said principals are currently updating um is team asked for us to have everything to them by october 1st so that they can finish everything um on the state side and then the state will get all those cleaned up and then they'll release graduation rates it fluctuates so even some of these that we have posted as kids enroll other places or graduate in other places the rates change so they look different um every time you go in they fluctuate just a little bit gotcha so by the end of calendar year we should have that at least okay thank you last question amy are you enjoying your new this shift job leadership and things so i actually spent a little time with luke today so i got some kid fix it okay just want to make sure all right next we have item h1 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet at in previous discussions with the governing board administration was tasked to come up with some solutions for transportation this evening dr croto and mr hicks will be presenting a plan to address the the concerns with transportation thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board superintendent kellis cabinet guest as dr kellis mentioned we're bringing forward tonight a plan for some modifications to transportation and asking your approval for these so we will outline some of these along with some of the modifications that have been made already down the road that did not need your approval but we want to update you on those modifications that have taken place as well so we'll start tonight with the proposed transportation compensation structure we are asking that you approve moving from the current structure to a tiered compensation structure which i'll outline for you in a minute it's going to be valid for the following transportation employees that you can see on the screen there bus drivers dispatchers routers trainers safety training specialists and a transportation technician why are those positions you might ask why those positions those positions are tied to driving and you know right now our biggest need in transportation is drivers they hold cdls and they assist in driving so they were identified as priority positions for this compensation structure the pros proposed structure right now our current starting salary is 1681.
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yeah do you dare do you dare put a year on this i'm putting it out into the universe spring 2022. everyone wish for that all right well with that i move that we adjourn second all those in favor aye aye aye that motion carries 5-0 i hope our families have a great fall break and be safe you
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both those guys averaging seven six yards a carry it's a lot easier on second and three rather than second and ten or even just getting that third down and manageable as well yeah i mean we we actually moved the ball pretty well in the first half offensively against roxanna and uh you know what probably doesn't show up in the in the uh in the box score if you didn't watch the game was uh our defense had trouble getting off the field in the second half and uh we had ran uh up until the very last series of the game before we took a knee we ran four offensive plays in the entire second half and uh credit to our defense for standing strong and stopping them on the one yard line stopping them again inside the 20. uh so that was huge but uh you know the offense starting to click a little bit more i think i mean it didn't seem that way in the second half because we didn't run the ball that much but uh you know we're getting into some more of those manageable second and third downs and you can do a lot more stuff as a play caller whenever you're in those those positions so uh but but we'll have our hands full this week freebird's good defense uh uh we're gonna have score early let's go early and you said that a couple weeks ago you said we're going to start off early or we're going to be thinking oh shoot here we go again and last week you did it two weeks ago you did it so that's starting early thing something makes it pretty easy and whenever you can only rush the ball 120 yards you pass the ball for 85 makes a pretty balanced attack you know might not be the 100 100 but it's still pretty balanced uh last week dom vaguely once again he had six for eight for 84 yards the one touchdown pass went to missler down the left side and uh you know going first six for eight and throwing the ball to four different receivers nobody can really hone in on one guy you're gonna sling it around to anybody on the offensive side of the ball efficiency is important and you know when you uh when you throw it you want to make sure that we catch it and and we we did that last week and uh you know minus minus one mistake that dom made on a ball that he under through and and uh one that he overthrew you know for his his two incompletions were probably uh he played pretty solid game yeah an offensive little line once again giving you plenty of time giving you plenty of holes to run a couple highlights from the week um on one of the russian plays dom cutter ran left he could ran right he could have ran up the middle he had down field blocking all the way around and that makes it easy too for him yeah i think one thing that uh that you lose sight of all our offensive lines starting to gel and play better and come together is uh the job that our receivers are doing on the perimeter block and that's been a big part and you know that's a tough job out there when you're in space not only to tackle but the block is it's tough and yeah jared you know from your days of playing wide receiver and those guys have been doing a really good job of that and you know all it takes is to kind of get in the way sometimes but to be in the right place to get in the way is important and to give dom and kyle just a little bit of space so they can go make plays is really really important now it takes a split second that's what jared said before he's like all you got to do is just get one hand on him push him off his line get in one step and that's right that's all you need so now we'll flip it over defensively pitching the shutout uh had the shutout last year to open the season at redbud or against redbud last year then we had another one back in i believe it's 2019 also against red bud so three years three shutouts for coach duran no pressure we need another one this year but you know like coach warner said you get a stop on the one yard line you get however many plays they ran they had the ball for 33 minutes i believe in that in the game so your defense had their work cut out for him and they answered the call for you this week we have nine kids that pretty much go both ways you know a lot of them are skilled positions but a lot of those kids are down people as well so especially midway through that third quarter the offense we played last week you know it's two yards three yards four yards and they bust one for five so it's the mentality of bend but don't break and uh you know we picked up a couple i think silly penguins on that last drive in the third quarter face mask or something kept kept the chains moving forward we got to clean that stuff up but uh we've got to get teams in situations where it's second long we can't let like coach knows he hates to be second long we can't let it be second five second four we've got to get people in those situations and now you love that second and ten because you can pin your ears back and let the boys go play and they love it too i know i told jared i think it was this past week i said i got 11 guys on the field right now i'm sending all 11.
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after meeting as a group families will have the opportunity to meet with staff individually ace would like to publicly thank the district for providing an attempt on the locust avenue side of the property we have been using the tech verbal school assemblies terence night school lunch and several teachers have run collaborative classes under the tent thank you for supporting us with this resource thank you all for allowing us to share what is going on with our ace family and have a nice evening and stay a strong hello i'm gregory parker i'm the bog president for denmary high school um the first couple weeks of school have been going really well um the hallways are probably one of the most biggest concerns there's definitely traffic in them but it has gotten better um as weeks continue people are starting to remove more routes hallway traffic is clearing because of that as the underclassmen begin to become more comfortable with the different ways to go to class masks were another big thing that we were worried about but all students seem to be wearing them there haven't been any real big issues it does get a little uncomfortable in the heat but as the buildings start to cool down mass definitely become easier to wear as for the cafeteria the lungs haven't been a problem cafeteria food is being served efficiently and the tents personally i think are super cool they're super popular everyone does like to go down to the blue tables and have lunch social distances still applies outside at the blue tables especially the students just are a fan of the tents and eating outdoors it's nice it's nice to be outside and eating lunch with all your friends so um i do have to say that that's a personal favorite bluetooth but other than that school opening has gone really well that's all we've done so far hi i'm tina mcgill i'm the bog vice president of danbury high school so moving forward these are some of the events that we have going on so senior fest was supposed to be this friday on september 24th but it got postponed due to bring until october 29th um our first home game is this friday against norwalk at seven o'clock and it will be orange and blue paint and then on october 13th we have multiple events going on so the freshmen and sophomores have their psats while the seniors have captained down um the senior 2022 photos and the hand prints will be done during that time as well we're planning to have a movie night um either on the field or through a drive-in on either october 14th or october 15th since we can't have a homecoming this year we thought like that might be a better alternative um to having a dance and then i'm me and greg and the rest of the bog members are super excited for in-person spirit week this year um it will be on the wake up october 25th and we chose that week instead of the week of homecoming because we wanted a full five days of spirit week since that week we had columbus then psat so we thought it would be better if we moved it um the themes are so pretty up in the air and undecided as we still need to ask the rest of eugene um council members but our themes will probably be red white and blue day in paradise orange and blue day either character or decades day and 20.
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european regulations have always been well under 41. and i'm just eyeballing this on an average i would say it's probably a little bit less than two to one so you're borrowing a lower number is better your borrowing is half of what the state considers the acceptable limit and once again lower is better so this is a reflection on your district so good management finances the next page talks about the ability new issue balance is my understanding that the district is anticipating the construction of additional school facilities and also be looking uh do you see those empowerers available to modernize statistics facilities and if there is a need for funds that's envisioned within the next three years the district does have a position uh is in the position right now to issue bonds either under the 1991 authorization or the 2008 authorization for the purpose of this illustration i'm using the 2008 authorization because the 1991 authorization has a limited amount of dollars available 25 million dollars and it is my understanding that you need to construct the school facilities that are being proposed is in excess of that number so we've been looking at the 2008 authorization there's another item that limits the amount of bonds that could be sold but as you may remember the district had anticipated that they've been in two issue bonds later this year and earlier this year you had sought and successfully uh garnered a definite increase of 3.23 of the state but that number indicates is that number as a percentage of your assessed valuation is the maximum amount of bonds that you can understand so when i look at all those numbers together and i look at the tax rate limiter uh based on where interest rates are the time the pricing of the sale of the bonds today you have the ability to issue up to 40 million dollars of additional bonds to be able to start school facilities i know folks are still taking the impact of the pandemic i know that uh people are watching their wallets as they always do but the chart below what it presents to you is as the bonds get take down and you may remember a couple of days ago there were several bonds as those bonds get paid off the blue bars represent what the tax rate is for the existing bonds that you already have outstanding and you'll see that those are dropping all the time the green bars indicate what if you were to sell an additional 40 million dollars a month what the tax rate the estimated tax rate would be for the new bonds that you would be selling and what's important to see over here is that we will not be raising taxes if you issue these bonds above what folks are paying and the bond the tax rate will continue to decline slightly over time but it is anticipated that once all of the old bonds are paid off and you only have the new election bonds that actually will drop substantially because you are limited to sixty dollars a year so i understand it was important that we put this ground together presented to you uh and for a while we will watch this meeting make them aware that teaching these new ones will not exist exceed tax rates above the current levels we're coming and backfilling the tax rate as well so what that is now on the very last page and now some of you are familiar with this but the process of issuing bonds is if directed by your staff the finance team will get to work and start preparing documentation to bring back to you at a future board meeting where you will at that point officially take action and set the parameters upon sale and delegate some of those tasks to your staff the next step would be to be able to conduct a an interview with the rating agencies uh and that you know because once again your staff will uh meet with them in the old days uh we would have them come to san francisco to meet with them the folks face to face today's these are the foreseeable teachers we have zoom so we would have been meeting with them as you did last year the district currently has a very strong rating it's got an eight plus credit rating uh our goal is going to be to maintain that credit rating uh is it possible to go even higher i guess you can go even higher than an a plus this a double a category but at this point given the uncertainty of the pandemic given everything that's around us our goal is going to be to maintain that rating i'm pretty sure we're going to maintain that rating but uh that's that's the part of the interview process with the rating agencies and the conclusion of that meeting they will um about a week they will be able to sign a rating and we will unleash the inform your staff what that rating is obviously we want the highest credit rating we can get a higher credit really means we can borrow money at a lower cost borrowing money in the lower house means that's where that's impact so that's absolutely the goal of the writing process it's pretty rigorous you look at the finances of the district they look at your local economy they look at the structure of the bonds and then they look at the management of the district who's the board uh who are the administrators and uh what uh is their tracker in managing our school districts i think we're going to do very well in all of those but all the factors that are within our control including the fact that the development coming in which is the positive thing because more development means more value in the community to support bonds all those positive things um that somewhat uncertainty certainly surrounding where the economy is going to go and where the state may go in the future with funding is uh we hope this videos the headlines that we that we're reading is but seriously though i do understand we're going to maintain our rating but we're going to have to work together assuming the board adopts the documents we have debating the next event that occurs is the prospectus is submitted to investors in the old days you would actually print two or three hundred books about two or three hundred pages each describing all the factors the district and mail them out by fedex it was not a cheap thing to do uh today of course with email and websites it's an electronic distribution uh the so that'll be distributed about a week later uh we get our phone call together with the underwriter the underwriter is the broker who buys the transfer district uh your staff gets on the phone my uh uh organization and a couple of my colleagues here on the phone we always invite the county treasurer to participate as well uh because they have a good question where the market is and then there's an agreement on the interest rates maturity maturity bond by bond the underwriter will read our interest rates uh it is my job to advise your staff and recommend to your staff what is an appropriate rate what is not an appropriate rate based on constant market and this is one of the few remaining businesses that works on the spoken word and if the district just elects to proceed with the bond sale on a phone call uh where tim gender and they say yes these rates are acceptable to us that's the 40 million transaction that occurs right there and then yes eventually everything is documented and it's written down on uh and the lawyers get involved to to close it up but it is a phone call the deal has essentially gotten the phone call that's where the interest rates are i don't know what the industry support we are in a rising interest rate environment um several months ago but we had to speak that the industry of the bonds will be somewhere in the two percent range and when you're borrowing money for 25 or 30 years and three percent that's near historical losses at the history bills but once again this is not about them to be borrowing money did you say two obviously i know about three percent three percent is the maybe slightly less likely but right around three percent uh for a 25 to 30-year term that would be the term of the bond summer usually i know last time it was amazing the little percentage we got do you remember what that was yes i uh it was in the tools uh that was a little while ago big interest rates have moved since then and they have continued to move upwards but yes we have been able to get into the juice in the past with a lot of luck we may be able to still get it there this time as i understand but uh i i want to just uh once all of that occurs about two weeks after that pricing the transaction closes the money is deposited with the county and then the dollars are available for you to be able to spend on construction projects the process is usually above 60 days so if directed by staff uh to get going it's usually about 60 days after that that of the bonds could be sold and the fastest deposit in the bank the district always maintains the ability if there's a spike in interest rates if there's some reason they want to therefore change the pricing uh your staff ultimately controls the pricing and their credibility but we like to usually target it okay we're going to do it this year probably the first week of december is the latest we can go to the market and sell months after we start losing buyers for holidays uh so it would be either they're done by early december or roll into sometimes so with that ladies and gentlemen i'd be happy to answer any questions that you have over here or of via uh the video link uh and see if i may answer any questions [Music] it's in the packet it's in the packet thanks for your concerns yeah thank you so much i was able to follow along uh with your presentation and i really do appreciate uh the information you provided to us and i know krishna's pretty humble but but he has done great work for us over the years prior to my time prior to super dead four but cfw has been a great partner and really looked out for us and really you look at those bond ratios that is the work of the district but it's also the work of our our consultants and kusuru i know you've led that so i'm thanking you this time because you always thank me and the board so we're thanking you for your continued leadership and support of center unified thanks i always think at the same time he's telling us what a great job we're doing but it's really you that's doing it thank you for telling us we're doing great um my questions probably don't need to go to country mine are more directed towards you know what are our facilities gold you know protections at this point when are we gonna need the money how much money are we gonna need for construction i know that's kind of arbitrary but just a general idea yeah so so thanks kelly for rehab so one of the things mr patton brought up was the idea we're waiting on the purchase of the property that 12 million i think that we had issued was really for beginning phase of architect work and then also purchasing a property and then also matching for our cte project so we're waiting on that final cost number and then we're putting numbers together and then we're going to bring kushroof back to see what we can get at that moment and then we'll come back to you with some financial projections of where we are right now we believe we have a shortfall for the cost of the school to where we want to be so as i think i point out to the board in the past we may need to face the school but we need to to see some of those numbers see that that property this property is going up so we want to get that number and then we can put it all together and we'll come back to you probably with cpm's help to share with you where we are and then we'll loop uh mr cruz on this one too to help us out with where we are project wise with the bonds and taglines so i and i would suspect if not well i don't know october is just to get the thing so maybe our november meeting that we have a better picture for you i know we were the first they were we were their first clients i believe they were already on board with i came on everex spoke very highly of them at that time i've never heard a bad word about that company working with us they've done a fantastic job all the way through 29 years they treat us well and i appreciate you giving us the um version because when it comes to bonds i know zero i thank i also want to thank you so much for everything you're doing as a dad 7th grader and 9th grader it's amazing what all of you have done over the last year and a half and i always thought this year would be much easier and then miraculously out this summer but i know it's so basic so thank you from all the parents and the kids in california we all look different too though so we'll keep great okay um moving on to item number seven comments from the audience regarding items not on the agenda do you have any comments from the public or in the i won't room the whole statement here we go moving on to the board of superintendent reports and i'm going to go first i have no report next we'll have dr lee okay so welcome everybody and thank you um september is a really busy month uh with respect to multicultural education uh it's the month when we celebrate hispanic heritage contributions to this nature nation's fabric along with constitution week and constitution and citizenship day and i'm really excited to hear and learn about some of the activities that our district engaged in to recognize constitutionally it's so important especially at times like right now um our schools are really the primary vehicles where we learn about our rights and responsibilities and those are the things that make our nation great and so i always recognize constitutionally it's always been a favorite time of mine as an educator to increase civic competency and awareness um in addition this month does hold special meaning for us as a community as we marked patriot day and the 20th anniversary of 911 and as we prepare to commemorate gold star mother's day next week and i want to thank you to the many for your service and sacrifices so that we can live free in this world which seems to be coming as scarcity in so many ways that freedom and so finally as we look ahead to the upcoming native american day on september 24th i just want to take a moment to know and acknowledge that our meetings all of us are sitting our bottom somewhere here in sacramento county uh this is really the land and the ancestral homeland of the miwok new book nissan and maidu peoples and they are the indigenous people of this land and i feel it's super important that we recognize that as we seek to build a more inclusive and just learning community and finally just wrapping up it is here in this district and in our community uh the pandemic hasn't ended uh it's been ongoing since i became a member of this board i did enjoy a very awesome webinar from the california school board association recently governing in a time of chaos board meetings in an age of covet and crt there were some great suggestions and strategies that were shared there about how boards can work together more effectively to navigate the sticky topics that we're all facing things like covid and ethnic studies and critical race theory and i really have to say that we are seeing some strange things in our public schools and higher education right now and it always trickles down uh just last week hundreds of students were dropped in our local community at sac state which is a public university all because they had not uploaded covet vaccination records by a deadline more recently i have had some folks reach out to me with concern about impending mandates to vaccinate our k-12 students and i want you to know that we are listening uh we're bringing your thoughts and concerns to the decision makers with the power and authority in this situation and i just want to encourage everyone to keep speaking out keep raising awareness and when we fall complacent oppression wins and as someone who's deeply committed to equity full stop i have deep concerns that we're potentially creating a two-tier citizenship system among the vaccinated and unvaccinated right before all of our eyes and now our students and our children are becoming involved and it certainly seems that we're getting a living lesson in how the wheels of oppression exclusion separation and othering are set in motion through this public health effort and i truly hope that our efforts to ensure public safety do not serve to further marginalize penalize or ostracize some groups over others or to effectively segregate ban or exclude some groups from public education so as always be safe and be well and i truly look forward to welcoming you at my next drop in office hours october 4th four to five on zoom the zoom links on our website and please drop in anytime that concludes my report i have no report for tonight thank you i'm just going to wait until all the dust settles with the stuff just know just for the parents to know that those decisions are not made by us they're made by the experts on the issue thank you kelly um as i am reflecting on miss mason's comment um i'd like to say that if everybody could just be mind their behavior their language their mannerism it could be beneficial to everybody our district employees work very hard they do not need to be treated with disrespect we have to value our teachers and our employees and we have to value the property that we have at the district because it does cost money to replace things that are broken in a bathroom or a gymnasium or whatever as miss marie said kind true and necessary words if we could remember those three it could be a better place so be mindful of your actions please nobody needs to be treated with disrespect recently this month we had two families within our district that lost their father their husband their son and i want to give sympathies to those families it was due to complications of covenant so i want to give my sympathies on my heartfelt prayers we also had an employee of our district that was hit by a fighter who was driving riding his bicycle home from work and was hit by a motorist thankfully this employee is safe and he's going to have a long road to recovery but i wish him well if everybody could please wear a mask wear their bike helmet and let's work together to keep everybody safe on a positive note congratulations to mr bruno you just got married [Music] may you have a long happy life i did have some communication with somebody at the high school who was really concerned about morale in high school and what between the teachers and the administration and just the general billing at the high school so i hope that things can um get better there i hope that the kindness communication can get to them and they can treat each other with respect and an extra kind word and i know that they're all under more pressure even than the little grades with kids and not knowing how to react to each other not wanting to be there because they had a year off where they could just walk the streets or do whatever they wanted in some cases and i think the pressure it's a pressure cooker all the way around right now so um hang in there to all of them and just like kelly said treat each other with little respecting kindness and we'll get through it we'll find a way to get through it we always do so on that personal note um my wife and i we consider ourselves married for a considerable length of time but uh we decided to finally make it official paperwork wise this year because unfortunately my daughter had the nerve to go and become an adult and so i can no longer claim my taxes and you know finally single versus uh finally having households is a significant difference so yeah the proposal to do it this year happened while filing taxes responsible for more marriages but um so first of all i'd like to apologize to everyone for being late today um i hit a lot more traffic than anticipated but it took me about half an hour longer than i thought uh unfortunately these things happen sometimes um i regret that i missed the uh comments earlier i will make it a point to go back and view what i missed later because i get the feeling i miss some important stuff so please please know that it is important to me and i will get caught up um the other thing i wanted to add um i had a community member reach out to me after our last meeting and they pointed out that we're asking students and staff members to wear their masks all day and although it does make it easier for us to take our masks off to speak we really should make a point to try to keep them on the same screen so i'm going to ask that we all try to speak up and maybe move our mics a little closer and then keep our masks on our face during the meeting so that's all that i have thank you thank you and mr lear and i think uh vanessa created a theme here tonight the first word i'm going to say is kindness and uh i think vanessa that i appreciate words tonight i think it hit home not just here but but in our home as well so thank you for that um and then obviously the hard-working staff of center unified everyone is working extremely hard right now doing things that we thought we would probably never thought we'd have to do as educators and i i can't say enough or thank them enough for what they do each and every day and each and every day is a new day and with new things um so i want to acknowledge that uh to to trustee popes and dr lee's comments covet is settling right now down in our district which is good in the schools we're seeing less cases however if you look at that on hospitalization and in the community we're still seeing it so we can't let our guard now we have to continue to be vigilant and and make sure that we are doing everything we can to get through this and hopefully we won't be seeing it research again during winter hopefully but by keeping vigilant on our protocols to do it and with that thanking the staff that have taken out of their normal jobs to do contact tracing um contacting families it is a very time consuming process for the right reason but it's an addition to what they're normally doing um and so i heard today it was funny one person just saying they were racing just figure out who they needed to contact took about two and a half hours per episode so that that's a lot on top of their normal day um and then also as uh it's kind of an allude to the sacramento county grand jury released a report recently that asked superintendents and districts to respond to the recommendation of a k-12 mandate for vaccination for students and so just to let the board know that's in process we're talking as a collective uh county with our health officials uh to look at an appropriate response and i'll keep you guys informed along the way as that comes up um but there there's definitely some some red flags associated with the recommendation and so we're going to take our time to make sure we respond appropriately and likely it may be a collective response if if we can get folks in the room to all agree which is never easy with 13 people but i i feel confident that we're here for the kids we're here for our staff and we'll do the right thing for our families um and finally kindness that's it i'm sorry i always end up needing to say something so i'm going to go back because last month i neglected to make a completely unrelated announcement that has nothing to do with the district but for those of you who know my daughter jamie kelly she is now jamie lucky she got married on august 4th so i just wanted to announce congratulations some of you have known damn jamie since you missed her they've known each other since jd was born so wow yeah congratulations all my surprise what yeah okay um all right boarding superintendent reports are over let's go to consent i do want to just thank um miss hunt for updating those minutes um i did see them in the packet and i know that involved backtracking so i wanted to express appreciation uh again for uh miss hunt and everything that she does for us okay and i'll be ready for the night we are let's go no suggestions mr bruno hi cisco hi mrs anderson i'm dr lee hi and the general side agenda is passed by all right moving on to business items we have uh item a monthly recognitions and resources i'm going to go ahead and read this statement at the august 18 2021 board meeting the board asked that the district investigate the process other districts used to acknowledge special recognition such as the ones referenced by the california department of education and provide a summary of their findings established providing a summary of what the district learned in contacting other districts so i i can go ahead and provide it so so we did oh i'm sorry we need a motion to bring it to the floor or those ships go through and thank you mrs pope and was that you making a motion yes um absolutely she made a motion to bring it to the floor for discussion i'll second thank you mr bruno okay so at the last meeting as trustee kelly had mentioned there so we did talking with other districts found that boards have different ways of acknowledging it which probably won't make this process any more clear for us but some boards have not previously acknowledged any some boards or a district department or school side or even a class may bring forward the item as a board agenda item in recognition and then the board would consider that the board could approve it and then uh go from there or community or other individuals bring forward the recognition the board recognizes through some form of formal resolution or some other formal acknowledgement um another way that's happened the board at the beginning accepts kind of a yearly calendar of events and then those acknowledgments are then brought forward during the month or the previous month of recognition so the community recognizes that the board is in support of these um and puts that out or the board approves a yearly calendar one district and they sent those out to the school sites the school sites and their newsletters and some of that put that out and then um they publicize it through their communication so to be very honest there was not a clear easy way to to address it but that's the the ideas or themes of what we heard um i i guess i do have a question just so we can better understand what is the goal for this item and i don't want to speak for anyone but it was my understanding that it was the request that the board would acknowledge uh special recognitions um that such as the list provided by cde uh for events that happen during the month whether it be a recognition of a month or a day uh and then it would be publicized so then with that they would be and welcoming and people would understand that the board is a support i think that that's a dr lee is that i know you and i kind of talked a little bit about this is that acknowledgement that seems to be what i remember and especially around the heritage month um you know official recognition um from the board and support of those heritage months and i appreciate those examples from you know multiple boards and districts in in the area and how they you know address or celebrate um these heritage months that have been you know established to really bring in marginalized communities um into the mainstream well um another question how do you see this being implemented before we answer that can i i don't know i [Music] but i think we need to walk a very thin line on how we're implementing it who are we recognizing how are we recognizing them who's selecting who's recognizing them um you know and at some point i had said oh well well the california department of education is recognizing them but we could just go with that but then i saw columbus day and there's there's no there's absolutely no situation in life where i will support anything that has to do with celebrating columbus day so um you know that poses a problem for me so i think that's why we really did um at our last meeting from my recollection we were focusing more on the heritage months because when we looked at that list it was so huge and there were lots of different like you mentioned um uh president kelly i don't see things on there at all i think it's just gonna be a big mess because there's just too many um too many different things that can come up and and there's just the teachers don't have enough time in a day to address all the issues they have now let alone adding more that the recognition is really just us making like an official like hey we welcome you kind of a thing but again when we recognize one group we're not recognizing others well so it's really difficult i mean it's just i just i don't know i'm reluctant to to to go there and it also depends on who's going to choose these days if we're going to ask staff to choose these days i don't want to put it on them to forget or not include a group um not for any reason but just because you know it may be just and this was not our district at all in any way shape or form but i read online where a teacher was saying i don't have an american flag in my classroom and i and a student asked me what they were supposed to salute and i told him they could salute the gay pride flag i had that's not going to happen in our district period i don't care who the teacher is or what the situation is um i expect there to be an american flag in every classroom so i think i think to get back to the topic of we're talking about different months and not the flag necessarily because we do we got flags but i think the point is we as staff would need to know i i mean mr jordan and i kind of offline talk i would be concerned i might pick one wrong or the other and and so i would want a bigger if we did go that route we would i would want a bigger group to research some of the things because uh that's a lot of time well it's a i don't want to i wouldn't want to make a mistake yeah well i don't want to put that on you and i hate to say you know i don't want to recognize some heritage group it just goes against everything i believe in but at the same time when you recognize one you're you run the risk of forgiving someone else and i just their high schools always been good at um recognizing different cultures having different events to recognize different cultures i have a question here um my recollection of last meeting is that we were mostly talking about going to the yes a lot more on it than i anticipated but um something you said president kelly really leaves me questioning you said you wouldn't want to honor columbus day ever now sorry columbus day is particularly tricky because if you exclude it there are some people who feel very passionately um i know for instance um in the italian american community some people are very passionate about it and i know that some people are passionate about it the exact opposite direction and i mean honestly i can see that one offending people whether we include or excellent but if you know i'm i'm thinking if we spend time discussing them at the meeting every month with the length of some of the things in some of these months that could get time consuming but if we were to put it just on the calendar that the uh you know the district calendar would you be opposed to including columbus day because it's on the cp list was not put on the calendar by any district staff it was put under by google right because if there was a day or a recognition staff the superintendent would come to the board and say you know we would like to recognize these days that has never happened so what's on our calendar is provided by google and google and google does or the system that does do it does it's extensive i mean they cover you can unselect that right to our schools that we don't necessarily want to add to our schools but there are people who are offended by halloween there are people that are offended by columbus day apparently there are people that are offended by other things well we keep losing the american holidays but being forced to add other holidays that the americans or some people possibly don't agree with i mean so there's if you're going to open up a political battle so these are heritage months um and i would encourage us to focus on the heritage funds in this list from the cdc so september for example is national is national hispanic heritage month um october for example is filipino american history month um in november we have california sick uh american awareness and appreciation month so these are heritage months um that i was um bringing this item forward to and and that's what i would encourage us to consider and the motion i would make is that we focus on the cultural heritage months that are provided by the um cdc so moving forward in february there's national amer african american history month um in march um that's women's history month in um april pardon me i'm just uh scrolling the list here so we can um hopefully have a clear understanding i don't see anything there in april may is asian american and pacific islander heritage month um and in june we have lgbt pride month and that's those are the months that are under consideration june is lgbtq pride month exactly that's not the heritage one oh yes it is it absolutely is it absolutely is part of american culture and tradition and that's why these months were established uh so that folks who have been historically marginalized and oppressed that's what this is space um and so that they can you know so that we can all celebrate the various members of our community and the diversity and richness of diversity in our communities so i'm i'm calling out those specific funds um and motioning that we approve uh board recognition of those specific months so so but i'm clear about what what i would be proposing okay let's hear from mrs mason and then i also have some thank you moments thank you ms kelly we have a wonderful english language development department within our district that has surveyed all of our students that are second language learners i would ask that maybe they share some of their data with our school board and that we recognize our own so we talk about our heritage within our own district maybe it might not be what is identified in the traditional months that um dr lee has listed i'm not i don't have the list that she's sharing but we have a lot of um middle eastern we have um yes we have people from all over the world so let's honor our own we can of course include other groups of people but i think um you do run a slippery slope of excluding somebody and somebody didn't fill out a survey at some point and so their culture might be excluded but then um at least we could honor our own to maybe involve the data that we already own from our english language development department and pardon me i just have to say stridently that these heritage months are nationally federally established and states recognized uh because these are our own uh all of these groups and heritage groups are our own and um so when we talk about celebrating our own we're talking about celebrating um those groups who have been marginalized and that's why i'm really focusing in and hoping our board can focus in on the heritage months uh because it's a it's a small step in the right direction just to recognize and acknowledge uh the different heritage and the different groups that contribute to our community and our society so i i just have a couple of things to say first of all i want to reiterate that lgbtq plus is a cultural heritage topic there and they are part of our community um i also kind of feel like women's history is also cultural heritage um absolutely and if we could phrase this to where we are recognizing the ones that are identified that we that are cultural um cultural recognitions in the cde and also put into what we're approving that any other cultural group that wishes to um propose that the board recognized them we can add them in and i think that might help us in avoiding um that slippery slope of missing somebody and can i add that the teachers are not expected to instruct on the cultural heritage months am i clear without curriculum is just like this we've already done that i would say that if teachers can find a way to work the stuff into their curriculum i think that's wonderful yeah but um having grown up with a mother uh doing lesson plans i would not want to try to get away yeah okay i just wanted to clarify the heritage months really do um give us an opportunity um to think across disciplines it's not just social studies it's about american culture um and that's what schools are are all about and so um for me it really always was a time and is a time when i think across the disciplines across the subjects what are contributions that are made that are maybe not necessarily highlighted um in our textbooks or in our traditional approaches so it's an invitation it's a recognition of that um time and that's why um you know i i hope that our board will move um you know on the motion that i put out on the table about the heritage month and maybe the board could start with a definition of heritage month and then move forward from there because if the definition of heritage is not clear it's hard to select heritage groups and i do agree the ctc is already or the cpe has probably already invented this so i want to make sure i'm sorry right before you go i did have a question so when you were talking about the survey that the um english eel group has done yeah i would imagine a home language survey yeah i would imagine that there's so many languages that are not part of the california department of education's list already right because now that right that would be so because there's there's over 30 languages spoken over and that was the last time i had done the report so i know i i think if you're going to go at the heritage months then i would say what i would prefer to do is to look through culture this list bring that list back for you guys to verify that these are the ones because again i want to make sure we're all sorry above board and that you guys all know what we're looking at and then we could determine at that point what's that next step i mean does the board want to approve a calendar or does the board want to say okay each month prior that the board would have an item that acknowledges these so the first step i think is defining what what months it is this is a great list to start from i think some of these you know are pretty easy to determine fireworks safety month is about heritage month um i'm going to just say something um i don't want my remarks to be construed as being against the lgbt network or individuals because there is no one in this district who fought harder for a past employee who um was transitional so i'm not against those people uh and that that didn't come out right but i'm not against any individual whatsoever um i'm just against starting to add all of these events to our calendar because we're gonna lose somebody we're gonna insult somebody we're going to have issues one right after the other and we're going to end up with a mess on our hands all right i would just like to add because it was asked what is a heritage month it truly is uh periods in our calendar in the year that are designated and designed to celebrate and acknowledge various ethnic and marginalized groups that is the definition uh for some someone had asked a heritage i'm sorry i didn't catch that i want you to add portuguese i'd just like to make a couple of comments here um fussy anderson you said that the we're being told not to recognize american holidays to recognize other stuff instead i think the very important point they're missing is these people are all american and these are all americans hang out please let me finish the whole reason for these months is these are people who have been marginalized and not treated as part of america and when you're saying that we're losing american holidays in place of this you're continuing the pattern of treating them as if they're not american and say that lgbtq is not a cultural heritage could not be mortal and i'm getting a little fired up so i'm just going to stop at that okay thank you mr bruno um let's go ahead and end the conversation i can i call the question myself no they're we're not doing the uh question tonight so or maybe we are i'm not sure it's amazing actually it is an action item however here's what i would like to recommend rather than us make a motion tonight let's go back call the list come up with a specific process of you know which ones we're recognizing how we're recognizing and what the expectation is um what that recognition means like okay the board will recognize it the month prior and it is simply a board uh action item that says we're recognizing these groups period or in addition to that we would like you know communications to now or in addition to that we would like to encourage teachers to include this and whatever it is that we are recommending needs to be spelled out exactly um and i apologize if it is spelled out but um i think it needs more detail and so i would like to move that we table this until next month okay i apologize can i make a motion um that in addition to table i guess i'm ending your emotion um president kelly um that a list is brought to us of the heritage month selected by uh superintendent blair um using the definition that we've provided here in our session today i would like to second that yeah you know i don't think we need a motion we could just provide direction to them to bring it back to us with more with with the called list based on that definition i don't think you need to correct you could provide me direction and and vote oh i thought you had made a motion and i was amending it maybe i misunderstood and i apologize if my my choice of words was i'm sure definitely wrong um in my frustration to try to relate what i was feeling um i chose the wrong words and maybe i'll get into that in a one-on-one basis that i'm not taking up more time and i can do a better job of explaining myself to you it's just a very frustrating thing to me whatsoever and i want that to come out loud and clear yeah it's very difficult norms change verbiage changes and i'm proving that change and and you know we're all learning every single day how to become better at eliminating these disparities and marginal marginalized populations and it's just a learning curve we just all have to think about what's my role in doing this and how am i contributing to the negative or how am i contributing to the positive so don't beat yourself up about it mrs sanderson so just i know there's a motion for a table i know there's a bunch of motion so let me here here's the direction that i have and then can i just make sure that by knotting or whatever yeah that we will i will bring back a list based from the cdes uh recommendations of heritage months i'll bring a list back by month and then with that we'll bring that back to the october meeting i can get that done by october and then at that meeting the board will want to recognize from those they would talk about those heritage months or heritage in november i'm not here in october finally so so so pinning that for a minute so november or october and then the idea would be at that time we'd agendize it to say how are we what's the process for recognition so we identify what the list is you guys agree to that list and then the second piece of that item would be how are we going to acknowledge or recognize is that is that it corrects yeah all right that's going to require further discussion correct which i don't think we're prepared to do and so it and then the second piece that was someone asked that we do in november is that agreeable to everyone i'm sorry what i didn't catch the um what's happening are we not meeting in october well we have a member who will be absent um had a prior commitment so we're thinking november so all five could participate but will we have a forum in october a quorum yeah yeah yes i think the business of this board needs to continue um and just because one person's not there if there's a forum then we're able to act and i i don't see why we wouldn't um because i'd like to participate in the conversation and i will not be here so i'm asking for another it's just a request i i think that with a matter of this level of personal feelings i think it's better to have a solid it's only going to delay that's my opinion i don't see any brush in it all right so we have a motion on the table to table this to november with direction to the district do you have a second hi second thank you yes to november uh mrs anderson i and dr lee hi terry so for my clarity november i will be bringing back a list called from the cde heritage month with an item to verify those for you in november and then also uh with an item to recognize how we would acknowledge these months or heritage months exactly okay i just want to make sure i'm restating it bring back the right thing all right let's let's get moving so we can get out of here sorry that was just a joke it was not meant to be tonight okay um item 10b meeting format at the august 18 2021 board meeting the board proved the addition of a statement to be included on the agenda prior to the pledge of allegiance moshe also included that the board will review and make a final approval of this statement so um i had i have a motion to bring this to the floor thank you mr bruno and wait okay great so i had drafted a uh revised version of this and unfortunately i did not bring it but i made some notes here so um i will wait until everyone has had a chance to participate and then i will read what i unless you guys want me to go first it's up to you you didn't have it but you haven't i wrote it while we were sitting here um my idea on this is just to clean up the wording a little bit and streamline it so um you guys all have what it is in your book right now and i'm right i am recommending that we change it to in recognition of free speech and the following agenda item we welcome all and will and we welcome all and we will note that saying the pledge of allegiance is not a requirement to participate in the business of this public board if you do say the pledge for any reason or if you do not say the pledge for any reason you are most welcome here as an equal participant in the business of this board that's essentially the same statement it's just a little bit more streamlined and that's my recommendation i have one you have the right to remain silently seated during the pledge note however that if you've declined to say the flight that you do not have the right to just disrupt the proceedings did you choose not to save the bunch for any reason you must you most you are most welcome here as an equal participant in the business of this public school and i will just say that each of those um different um versions really reflected each member's personality i think um and um you know for me uh i'm certainly um not uncomfortable with continuing to make my statement i i'm not i thought i understood the intent um and but if the intent is to just completely rework it i would prefer um to you know continue to exercise you know my free speech so that i can um include uh those various constituencies um religious political social or personal reasons those are all the different reasons why a community member might not say uh the pledge and i think it's important to call that into the space and that's why i do um and and so i would i would have a great problem with stripping that or telling folks they have the right to remain silent uh or anything of that nature um because that's not the the intent or even the tone uh our measure of the statement that i make um at the beginning you know during that item it shifts it shifts the tone it shifts the tone to a negative for me i just have to agree with dr lee i think telling people that they can remain silent just just hearing that it sounds like you're being right and not disruptive you know you're being read your miranda rights it's very confrontational and i'm sorry it's just the way the way that it was received by me it was extremely confrontational which completely eliminates the whole intent of the statement i'm sorry is anybody anyone else have anything to say so dr lee just to clarify um with trustee kelly's version of it if we add it back in um sorry religious political social yeah back in the religious political social personal reasons were you okay with the other change yeah i i it kept the it kept the feeling of a welcoming and of an inviting and of an acceptance of all the different people i i really appreciated president kelly's you know it's very flowery and sounds nice but a professional writer for the public's view is told to write at the cemetery level that's somebody who's writing for public consumption every single day that's what they're taught i don't know that that's gonna fly with most of our our parents and i mean it i don't know it just let me read it again with those words we've got to do something about the deficit ideologies i i i it just keeps coming out and we keep making these negative statements about members of our community and their abilities and their capacities and it really uh bothers me because i'm i'm on this floor because i believe in our community and i strongly support our community and so the deficit ideology is uh um i i hope i can get a value on i hope we can get a handle on them because they're stifling our progress they really aren't all we're getting off them yeah we're getting on track so i understand what mrs anderson is saying that you do right to a certain level however i don't believe that this is in excess of that let me read it one more time the only words in here that may be more difficult would be requirement participate participant um none of those words are beyond a seventh grade reading level so or eighth grade which is actually what it should be or i don't know whatever it is let me read it one more time in recognition of free speech and the following agenda item we welcome all and would like to note that saying the pledge of allegiance is not a requirement to participate in the board and the business of this public board if you do not say the pledge for religious political social or personal reasons you are most welcome here as an equal participant in the business of this board so it's just slightly different just eliminating a few words changing sentences starting i have a feeling that if we do vote on this it's gonna be a split vote and i'm gonna pay with that we just need to move on and decide if we want to make a vote [Music] i'm not stopping discussion i'm just saying are there any public comments not online is there any mr bruno companies um frankly aside from a minor nitpick thing that i don't have the brain capacity to try to correct which is business of this board followed by business of this board is yeah repetitive wording but it is i i don't have a problem with that personally okay i don't see why it has to be read at every meeting uh nobody comes to the meetings except for the people that are here i they all know there's people listening they're live streamed and they're all employees it has to be read for the same reason that the pledge is dead i would say that part of the reason for admit is because yes we have a fairly empty room tonight but this pandemic will end at some point hopefully and um i yeah i'm anticipating people coming back to the meetings and also don't get your hopes up and also it applies to staff members as well they are welcome on the agenda but i'm just saying that having it there and saying it i think is just good practice to try to involve the community and make sure people don't feel excluded do we have a mission to approve the statement as revised i'll make that motion thank you mr bruno wait a second and we'll take a roll call vote unless there's any further discussion the motion is to approve that the statement be revised as i read it and added to the agenda and read prior to the point of allegiance any further discussion are we ready for the vote all right dr lee aye mrs anderson no mr bruno hi this is pope no that's chairman's i for our sake would you mind sharing what you've written there too so carol can make sure i think she does it'll be right here [Laughter] i'd like to say why i wrote it now before we continue the statement i am not happy with and the second thing is i think just written on the agenda is fine and it does not need to be read out loud but i agree with the statement i mean i like what it says i like the point i just don't think it needs to be read out loud as well as written you reword it i just i just think it can go on the agenda it doesn't have to be granted every meeting and i just think that um you know i appreciate um the vote um and i think it's important um that we're inclusive of everyone and i think it's one step one small step but an important one and if we weren't giving the same space to that statement as we do to the act um then we wouldn't be being inclusive the past three to two and we are moving on two this is item c instructional materials adoption for grades 10 through 12 science next generation science standards textbooks we have a motion to approve the recommendation i'm watching to approve thank you second all second thank you mr bruno do we have any discussion on this item just thank you to everybody that participated in the adoption of the t12 autocad excuse me 1012 science textbooks i know it's a lot of work and it's much appreciated any further discussion we'll call vote dr lee hi this is anderson hi this is pope aye mr bruno aye chairman died i didn't see it's passed um moving on to business item d appointment of center endowment for educational excellence officer and let me just read this brief sentence the board will discuss and appoint a current member of cj usd's board of trustees to serve as an officer for the center endowment for educational excellence do we have any um emotion [Music] through the second second okay um i'm not sure why we're bringing it to the floor but for discussion for discussion yeah so so just so the the board is aware and communities aware so we do have a center endowment for education excellence it's an endowment that was formed gosh back in 0.8 i believe and with that part of the bylaws stipulate that myself and miss coronado as cfo and superintendent but then also we have a community member which currently is dominic mecklenburg who is the community member and also the president of the bank at umpqua and then ms pope but it does also require two current trustees from the senator unified school district beyond that one position is filled by mrs pope the other one was vacated by mr wilson when he uh vacated his spot so we would just be seeking for the endowment someone to fulfill that other responsibility on that endowment board and this is the center endowment for educational excellence do you have any recommendations or volunteers so i would say as you do with your group in december make a someone like like a motion to appoint someone and then you could then vote it that way or if there is just like you do with your president um since mrs anderson has been here the longest and is familiar with the endowment unless somebody else is interested i think that mrs anderson would do that would be a good choice this is interesting would you accept the nomination do we have any other nominations okay i just have a point of information can someone tell me what does the endowment what does it do what does the center endowment for educational excellence do um what what is it sure so it was established and i uh forgive me for the the year i believe it was 08 one of our board members times established it to support uh the arts uh education within the the school district uh with that it was also established uh as the development was being built a mechanism for us to receive uh donations and now uh money different things like that to then distribute instead of coming right into the district it would be done through a separate uh entity for the district with that early on we did some performances we did different uh you know wine and cheese event a lot of nice things actually this folk did a couple events early on um to do that then it to be honest that one board member who was on it left um and then we didn't get a lot of support for activities and then financial times fell on people and so it just kind of sat and so we felt that it's best to keep it going it's it's a small fee and then at least it does some work behind the scenes to keep it up but it's a good entity for us to have in the event that we do receive big uh donations from uh anyone it's a dream i'm just glad that mrs anderson has already been nominated because you know i would raise my hand and volunteer for arts and i do not have the bandwidth it would be nice to see some arts back and well we have arts but yeah maybe the kings will donate we should try that okay do we have any other nominations caring none do we have a motion to approve nancy anderson as being appointed to the uh center endowment for educational excellence so moved awesome thank you miss dr lee and mrs pope and the roll call vote dr lee hi mrs anderson hi so no i said this is amazing i was waiting for all right i mean 20 20 20 201 unaudited actual report we should really do this when our brains are fresh but let's let's hear it oh it's only eight fifteen i mean we used to go to midnight all right the 2021 unknotted actuals report covers all the fiscal activity of all of the funds in the year 2021.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
it is not the top in the state it is competitive when you look at school districts it is not competitive when you look at outside competing industry and that's a shift that we need to take more and more as you can see the rather large warehouses around us opening up amazon opening up if you just saw amazon hired 300 drivers they're in our backyard and those are our employees so we need to take a bigger picture as we look at our compensation structure to not only be competitive with school districts but competitive in the industry and that's what we're doing with this tonight so we are proposing to you to go to a tiered structure where years of experience zero to three uh proposed allergy rate will be twenty dollars an hour if you have four to six years of experience uh twenty one dollars an hour seven to ten twenty two dollars an hour and uh greater than ten years of experience twenty three dollars an hour now some outlines so we are proposing to you tonight and asking for your approval that all current employees move to the corresponding tier based based on current years of service in this district that new employees will be placed at an hourly rate of the tier corresponding to their years of experience at a like position so we are asking you to allow us to grant years of experience to get get some bus drivers in here that have cdls and have years of experience in other places um and and and compensate them for those years of experience uh current employees that are compensated as we move them around on this tier structure if they're compensated at a higher rate of the proposed tier rate that we move them to we will they will receive the average increase of all the employees in that tier so we'll add up those employees take that average we'll give them that average raise and then training for our new employees will be paid at a tier rate that is much different right now as we bring in bus drivers currently we pay them minimum wage to go through the training they are not paid at a bus driver rate and certainly we want to attract them to pay them at their rate for their tier other pieces accruing the years of service so as they accrue years of service with the district they're going to be able to move from tier to tier or keep their hourly rate which is higher whichever is higher obviously if through the iba process and all that their continual percentage raises they will be higher than the tier rate as they get going so they will be able to stay with that higher rate they don't have to move down we're proposing to you that this pay structure tonight this evening is effective october 4th if you approve it tonight we will begin this structure on october 4th and after the initial launch and we place everybody on those tiers that we're going to calculate years of service in the spring of each year and we're only going to calculate one time so in the spring we'll calculate where they are for the following year before we issue their noes and go from there so in mr hicks now we'll talk about the other pieces thank you very much one additional request is to recommend an additional driver trainer we currently have three dryer driver trainers and a trainer specialist this would add to that all of our driver trainers currently do drive buses so sometimes they're covering sub routes they're covering where people are out they're covering extra field trips sometimes they're covering they're taking out buses if one breaks down so they're behind the wheel on a regular basis but it will allow us to increase our training capacity so if we're going to have more coming in we'll be able to provide more training opportunities as an example uh three years ago when i first got here we would only start a class every six weeks because of the time involved and training behind it this would allow more people there is a separation of duties for trainers when they're training the ones that's training cannot give the test so we do have to have at least two different this creates more flexibility so that we could start more people training quicker and not saying wait until this class is ready and then also as we've been brainstorming a lot of ideas we come up with great ideas but sometimes we need to make sure that it's in line with dps rules and other things an additional trainer just provides the opportunity to make sure that we're doing things with the utmost safety involved with our students and everything we're not just coming up with a great idea that nobody from transportation is really thinking about and so they need to vet it putting more on their plate this will allow them to handle more of that as well and so um additionally um as dr croto mentioned we're currently working on and so i'd just like to just hit a few of the things we've already started working on we have a plethora of options that we've already identified and started working on external exclu exploring the external recruiting assistance options a fancy way for saying we're working with the professional marketing company right now to look at some options to increase that social media posts hopefully everybody has seen um hr dysart hr has resurrected their twitter following and other posts and i'm liking them and so hopefully more people are like and we're just trying to increase that we upgraded our indeed.com.com account which allows us to boost it more for more people to get more uh exposure school business promotion i know i was at western peaks a few weeks ago what did she have on her marquee bus drivers wanted and new hires and other positions and so schools are putting it on their marquee we're asking them to continue to do that more newsletters social media posts more emails when they're sending emails home to parents and others for a great opportunity to work in our transportation department uh we are also looking at um getting some quotes on the movie theaters billboards roving truck ads um a we'll get the quotes we also want some input from professional uh marketing does that really i i don't know how much it works we're trying lots of things but the more it costs the more i get hesitant if things don't cost at all we'll do everything so i know i'm well we are ordering more buses so coming into this year our capital process allow was budgeting for our transportation department to have five yellow buses and eight activity buses we've increased that now to eight uh yellow buses with the eight activity buses he's currently working with vendors right now to get quotes and and that we want to increase the number of banners we have one we want a bigger bolder simpler more magnets pushing out the opportunities also flyers if things are approved tonight we'd like to print out a lot of flyers and start putting them we've already had requests from people asking can i get something to hand out we'd like to put them in our curbside meals advertising to all of our community members coming through we're utilizing uh and going to increase our utilizing our geo-targeted ads to increase visibility something akin to like a google ads words to continue to boost and promote that we're asking hr to call applicants of other prison positions maybe they didn't get the position they wanted but maybe there's a fit in transportation it could be a bus aid it could be a bus driver and maybe seeing if they'd be interested in coming over there we did have some that left us because of covid maybe we could contact and contact our people that left us and do to covet and see if they'd like to return back to coming back and then also we started just started this week but some people are out right now but to work with our ess department to identify uh some the targeted looking at some of our routes where they can have the most impact of some of our special ed routes and see if our parents would like to be paid to transport their own students that would then free up just taking one student off if there's three on did not save us a route so we're looking at how can we get a critical mass to actually reduce a route that we could then take that driver somewhere else to do something else so we're going to try to reach out to see if we could partner with with some of the parents to see if that will also help and i did not uh none of these slides have as you've been aware as i've done some updates on some of the improvements that we've made to the el mirage area with their dysart middle school we've already made those have already been implemented and created a shuttle on a few other applications so we haven't that's not listed on this slide but we have also done those improvements to help improve our situation and the transportation one that's not on the slide is the cost what does this cost so the the tiered structure on a full year would cost about four hundred and seventy thousand dollars um this is not a full year because if we implemented it uh about 25 percent a little bit more would be gone so it's a little bit less um and then also the increase of yellow buses is a uh 500 000 so um but that being capital the tiered structure is actually um uh an emino type expenses so it's the additional fte what what i'm requesting is that this is supported via mips this year so that it does not hit our mno budget and so what i'd like to do is we do still have a good healthy balance in our mips funds and that we would move these expenses or similar expenses over i don't want to say mips specifically because it could create 10 000 journal entries if i say it the wrong way so i really would just like to say mit supported which means that that will cover the funding for this year but then i would like to move this into the m o which means that it has to come off the top of our iba process so that it is now paid for so that we're not deficit spending that it has to be addressed with the inflation funding coming in to start iba for next year and that is how we pay for it mr hicks can you briefly explain uh what mips means i'm sorry yes madam president members of the board that's our medicaid and public schools there's a reimbursement of for certain access eligible students when we provide certain services we get reimbursed from the federal government for those services and so we probably bring in about 2.6 million dollars a year most commonly presented to the board in the most recent times was that that's where our social workers are being funded out of we had a large balance it actually has not gone down as much as i previously told the board because our revenues keep increasing because we have an amazing staff that just does not let any reimbursement go past without submitting it to the feds so we're probably going to end this year if i had to guess with still around seven million dollars i think when i we were doing social workers i said when we had seven and a half million i said in a few years this will be down to four or five million so i'm way off on that but to the positive side that's the good thing is that we do have a healthy balance still in medicaid and public funds public schools is fun with that we'll stand for any questions you may have so um the current employers excuse me the current employees for the bus the bus drivers dispatchers routers trainers it's going to be four tiers based on the experience right now which tier of our current employees is most saturated i mean do we have a lot of employees excuse me a lot of those employees that are four to six years are they seven to ten um madam president a member uh sawyer singh bill um surprisingly one in four um we have a lot and four that have been with us for a while and we have uh the lot in one so the middle is kind of thin the middle is kind of thin okay and uh if this passes tonight um october 4th you're looking to start it october 4th that's because of next payroll that's correct and last but not least um does the current staff know that this item is on the agenda current transportation staff yes ma'am we met with them yesterday cool thank you i have a couple questions just um math is not my thing so just might sound silly but not knowing i guess the higher end or what our highest paid bus driver or any one of these employees that fall into this category what their salary is now is there a chance through the averaging that anybody would be looking at taking a dip in pay madam president member pritchard nobody in this structure will take a dip in pay okay and then in regard to the option offering parents the option to transport their own student how much are we proposing that we would compensate for that madam president members of the board hasn't gotten to that point we do have the template that ade has for the contract to allow it we do have done this historically and do it at times it's normally private placement so this would be maybe on a non-private placement student coming into ours and so not yet determined and then you're talking about using the mips money now possibly rolling it into iba next year knowing that iba is you know consensus based if there was a problem with that as far as the the team agreeing to this then would you just revert back to mips or would this just be like a non-negotiable or how madam president members of the board if the board is approving the presentation and saying this is coming off the top then i i would be coming in with this as a non-negotiable unless the board is expressing other interests at this time we also have a future agenda item that we can talk about other iba priorities but for this agenda item right now unless i hear different from the board it would be a non-negotiable is that even in the motion or it would just be presented that way as presented and so that so it's in there okay thank you um you went over a lot of information thank you for that um but in this action discussion we're only approving the salary uh schedule and the potential um what do you call it the additional compensation and opportunities for increa increased earnings um but you also mentioned in your presentation something about the purchase of buses we're not approving purchases of buses tonight correct madam president members of the board we don't need the board it's in the capital budget okay um for that yeah just i just want to be really clear on that okay thank you all right with that i will move to approve the modifications for the transportation department as presented seconded by miss prichard motion passes thank you okay moving to action discussion two dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet in our discussions about transportation additional ideas were generated that could support more than just transportation definitely transportation but also other areas and so this item is to address those other opportunity opportunities and dr croto will present this thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board superintendent kellis cabinet guest tonight we'd like to bring to you a recommendation to create an employee referral program as part of our district recruitment process as you saw in the last presentation we are doing a lot of things to attract employees to this district one of the things that we know is one of the most powerful things to attract employees is word of mouth from current employees of spreading the word and trying to get people to come work for this awesome district and we'd like to put a program in that recognizes that and that encourages current employees to go out and spread the word about how extraordinary that dicert is so we're asking you excuse me to approve a program tonight that will reward current employees 500 for recommending employees to the district they have to be hired number one they don't just recommend them we have to hire them and they have to stay in our district i have down here for three consecutive months that is up for discussion if you think it needs to be longer if three is great three consecutive months to start so we're asking you for that approval tonight for that referral program and it would start immediately if you approve this tonight so i will stand for any questions that you may have is there a cap so if i refer you you don't get anything [Music] sorry you don't get it [Laughter] if i'm a bus driver and i refer a bus driver and then i happen to know somebody who's looking part-time and now i encourage them to become a teacher or whatever especially now with this ottawa scholarship program is there a cap or can i get two or three referrals madam president members of the board at this point how it's structured there is no cap so hopefully all our jobs are filled and that will cap it that is the best scenario that all the jobs get filled and there is no more room for referrals so at this point there is no cap on that is there an eligibility process for that i mean can a cabinet member be involved in this i mean or can a school administrator are there parameters around this madam president members of the board um at this point cabinet is excluded by choice it doesn't specify this that in here but we will recuse ourselves from that and other than that it would be any district employee and this isn't is there first where's the money coming from to fund this madam president members of the board uh we would also ask that mips support this program so this year there's an estimated cautious looking at our vacant positions this could cost about sixty thousand dollars this year on an annual basis going forward this could be something that could be stopped by the board at any time but it could be upwards to 180 to 200 000 a year going forward a lot of money so so unlike the initial guest teacher program um that this is creating a permanent process for this not temporary correct correct okay can we also add it into the motion that it is only for a year and it has to be up for renewal you may add that when we when we if we do the motion can we say motion to approve as presented for the 2122 school year or to be renewed annually annually to be reviewed annually or renewed whatever the wording is so we could theoretically pilot it for a year see how it goes see how much it costs us and then review it next year because ideally we would hire so many people with this that we'll just be and the full then goes to zero the more effective the program is the less the cost right yes not impressive ms jeff and the i would suggest that for um your recommendation that you just approve it for the current fiscal year and then the administration would naturally bring it back again but to say that it's a pilot or to say that it is renewable or just to clear up any any confusion and just put a sunset on it at this time thank you when i've seen this in other organizations and correct me if i'm correct if it's different in other school districts if you've seen it in other school districts but usually it's like six months that the the employee would have to say six months not three that's a little short in my opinion but then the other the other piece that i usually see this associated with is it's connected to [Music] harder to fill and i know we give must stipend for hard to fill positions but um usually with this type of employee referral program it's it's because they're having a hard time for specific areas not just maybe an easily filled position you know i don't know what the thoughts were in recommending it this way if you want to share how you came to this madam president members of the board um as cabinet discussed this and we discussed this in the terms of building this program we consider every position right now that's open hard to fill because we're not filling them so we did narrow that down at first but then we opened up the scope because right now we have a lot of positions i won't say a lot we have some positions that are harder than others but we have open positions and um it's you know very very competitive right now in the employment market to fill our all of our positions so you know our our goal is to fill all those and that's how we kind of broaden that scope to say you know what we want to have this for all positions and all employees madam president uh if i could ask dr croto to just um even to take some some liberty here and share with our general public what positions are we lacking and the the numbers of openings currently we are lacking our bus drivers obviously that is a huge piece paraprofessionals we have in our teaching our special education areas there's numerous teaching although we do use contract companies it is more it's more cost effective to search for our own but we don't want uncovered classes so we turn to contracting agencies for special ed positions um we have a hard time in our maintenance and landscaping and facilities right now those are very competitive out there so we have uh openings for those kind of positions and yeah that's probably our biggest challenge is those positions i understand what you're saying about kind of having so many open it's all hard to fill you know so thanks for appreciating that piece i don't know what the board thinks i i would personally feel better about it at least being more than three months you know maybe if it was six um we have a full school year so even six months has been asking hold up we hope people won't leave you know coming and leaving but to come and leave every three months potentially that's a i don't know maybe that might encourage employees to put a lot of thought into you know who they're reaching out to to refer someone that they know okay they're they're not just going to come and go every three months and um get some longevity possibly i i don't i don't want to complicate things more but i'm wondering if we split it um i know that this from a payroll perspective this could be a nightmare but what if we did 250 at three months another 250 at six months i was just about to say that because peoria did the same thing whereas at three months they got half and then in the six months they got the other half like a little carrot right if i remember yes that's correct we we will be happy to work this program how you would like it to work so how difficult would that be um madam president members of the board you are correct uh it puts a lot of work on hr and payroll together um but on the same chance the same tone this this isn't at the beginning of the year for next year when we have three 400 openings we do not have three or four openings right now i mean just crossing guards bus aids bus drivers parapros landscaping um they're it's not the volume of hundreds and hundreds so there is less to do on this and so um i don't think it would be there's more work just doing it once you do it once you're probably going to create a routine in a process so it's probably not as bad splitting at 50 50.
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i'm calling it geronimo you know it makes a little bit more fun for everybody involved um mistler in that first drive i think it was the third play of the game we were just talking a little bit ago on that play it's all set up by your defensive end doing their job the linebacker comes up to do their job and like you said jay kind of got away with jay got away with uh shooting the closed window he went to the wrong window there but uh owen brewer did a great job of setting the edge up and then even brandon jackson from the backside linebacker was able to close the window and i think it was dom and i think he might dom might have had three strips in that game the other night and we got credit for one the dom stripped the ball out and jay was in the right spot at the right time kind of like you know being at the casino he was the right spot at the right time was able to pick the ball up and found the way to get in the end zone so i'm happy we practiced that uh every friday and then pre-game scoop and score so i was happy to see jay get in the end zone not only on the offensive side of all the defensive like you said he made a little shifty move there juking the guy out to get into the end zone get that on his on his touchdown catch too so yeah we give him a hard time all the time you got to love him he was he was an offensive lineman when he was a freshman so he's he's been wanting to be a receiver for a long time so it was nice to see him catch a touchdown and get in the end zone on the tumbling cover bruce's time to shine as we as we would say in the longest yard mistler led the tackle or led the team in tackles with 12 owen brewer another 10 tackles and then meganson with uh eight there looks like sam denny coming in with eight as well and that's a kid that was a linebacker and now he moved him back to a defensive back and he's still making the plays when you need him to as well yeah we've had after the first two weeks we had to move some people around just from the you know standpoint of putting some people in different positions and you know credit to all of our kids they've learned new positions and then they're adapting to those positions and uh you know we're trying to put people in the best spot to get give the defense the opportunity to do the best we can on the field well there's not too much to talk about second half like we said roxanna had the football we had seven plays three of which were knees correct uh correct so not too much to talk about we kept the shot out good job you kept them out of the end zone when they had the ball at the one yard line so we're gonna head to a break and we'll come back we'll talk conference standings conference schedule and the big cokia conference vic or uh match-up hopefully a victory against freeburg this week so we will be back with the holt meets coaches corner after this [Music] welcome back to the holton meets coaches corner presented by holton meats chop house steak burgers here at aces wild we got kokia conference week two match-ups here this week in the conference standings so far salem leading the way they are 1-0 free central 1-0 and columbia at 1-0 salem brie central are both three and one on the season columbia comes in at two and two freeberg wood river roxanna all took the loss last week going 0-1 freeburg 2-2 wood river 1-3 and roxanna 1-3 so big pivotal match-up here for the eagles and the midgets this week coming in fairly even freeberg scoring 33 points a game giving up 21 and columbia scoring 22 giving up 26.
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thank you all so very much and i would just like to say the board members uh i know we can't hear and and ask questions like we are normally doing we're at beaver brook but um when the minutes come out probably tomorrow you can have the you can see the comments that all the students brought to us tonight so on behalf of the board i know it's difficult uh you know to try to understand people when we were in this mess but we all are trying to be safe okay again thank you so very much okay we're moving on down the agenda action item nine uh i need a motion to table this action for tonight please uh i'll make a motion to table action item a is that one of the terms the stretch the simplification for the system okay i'll make a move in that table now my pleasure so i just want to make the board and the community aware i believe it was last week we heard from the state construction authority they made us aware that if we wanted to receive the reimbursement for the installation of the solar panels and of course we do they would not uh reimburse us for any solar panel installation on a roof that's any older than four or five years old and so given that information and as our partner partnered with the city the request right now is to seize and desist from the project until we can reevaluate kind of reassess and then so further notice we will seize and assist on this project is that a new rule of the four or five years because usually roofs are a 30-year yeah at least 25 yeah so is that something new that they put into the statute for reimbursement i don't believe kathy it's a new development and so what happened like what happens and i don't know all the details on this um we had the company approaching many districts across the state of connecticut and in this case of course they come to the district but they come to the city making the cities and municipalities aware of the cost the potential cost savings um and so what we heard from this construction authority is that they had to come back kind of in you know after the fact and tells school districts that these projects they would not be improving unless the groups are less than five years old i was going to say i think i remember that when we did have those installed on the other roofs they were in conjunction with the new roofs at the time can i correct them i think yeah probably like park avenue yeah yeah yeah yeah okay thank you thank you sure thank you mr jadel we were part of and this is really an embarrassment or a major disappointment because at the meeting that that kevin myself and city officials and the mayor attended as well as the the consultants of the utility company they never approved they never specified that this was a a glitch in the system the the uh it was applauded there was a tremendous amount of positive press on this the 13 million dollars you know value and half of that was a grant an arrest was guaranteed to us in savings the amount of work that was involved up to this point is really wasted by kevin and his staff and his department rich albert on behalf of uh antonio and and his engineers spending time as well as david saint-hilaire i mean it's a tremendous amount of work that was done to jump foods the through hooves for a short period of time if you remember one of the summaries i said we came i think it was the sixth of the month and uh we had to get an approval for kevin to file the grant because it was between the first and the tenth of the month and and then all of a sudden somebody from the state wakes up and notifies us or somebody here of this glitch as to why the consultants never told us this what was beyond these so it's really an embarrassment and and uh a sad thing if it doesn't go through i mean we were certainly it certainly would help us to to do this and the fact that they were giving us a guarantee for the five million dollar payoff uh in the savings based on a performance uh fund performance contract we were doing was also excellent because it cost the city nothing so it's uh i don't know where the the mess up happened but at this point here we're just waiting to hear and everybody uh is on on is on hold i mean it's really a shame thank you okay the motion was moved in a second we had our discussion okay please sir uh joe britton joe i need you to you can hear me i've got a yes in the chat rachel celeski aye kate metta aye loves cooper hi lauren daley hi joe dasilva aye rich gianelli aye cathy molinaro aye al russo hi amy bolino hi thank you the motions okay we move down to action item d um mr janela you want to read the motion please it's going to be hard my classes are up here just bear with me they unfold that the board of education approved the end of the year physical 2020-21 financial report the general funds in accordance with exhibit 21-103 most promotion made by mr ginelli seconded by kathy uh with the discussion yes just my thoughts my thoughts are that there should be some numbers attached to this general statement and it's a bit anorexic uh it doesn't give us numbers of where we actually stand it's sort of an explanation so i i would too for a motion to tell you listen until you get we are just proving the leaflet that we have the one-page flyer the consent in the in the book okay we're not attacking numbers the numbers i'm sorry i don't know what i'm consenting to yeah but we have our finance directors that's going to give us some information so we're not going to okay mr watson you want to go ahead and actually yes sure sure thank you mr russo and i certainly understand the question so i understand that the board is accustomed to getting a budget detail associated with the report i'm going to ask uh frank connolly our interim director of finance to just try to provide an update or kind of summarize the update and then i will provide some rationale on why there's no budget detail for this month but the expectation is is that we would have it in subsequent months but frank i'll ask you to go first i think we'll be able to hear you from there and then i'll just interject at the end to close out okay uh excuse me mr uh uh superintendent all right you have a question if you want to go ahead and no that's okay i just i have the same concern as al um just that we're approving a memo is kind of so and it's funny that we tabled the previous motion because that's and before coming to the meeting i i had that thought at the table this motion just because it just seems odd to approve a memo and not have an actual report of figures for the year-end so that that memo maybe could be better served in information rather than an action item okay so it's already on the table so we can defeat this and then table it and then make a motion at the table do you want to take this i i do think it will be in the board's interest to hear the report um and we're happy to still table it but i think we'll be in the board's best interest to still hear the report just so you have an update uh from the office at this time okay okay okay yes okay thank you i concur with your remarks um we were working on the end of the year numbers and they were just changing around jumping around so much that we thought it more prudent to delay and to firm up the numbers um and so what i did was put together a report just give the board an idea of the issues that we which is not only numbers issues but the personality institutional financial history uh and then the change in the software and as i came in on your finance director was walking out the door there's so little to work with and we're trying to consolidate your old phoenix system in order to come up with end of the year numbers we've got to take the old phoenix system which covered 12 months out of the year and splice it in with the tyler system which only covered six months out of the year but the tireless system did not include encumbrances between the phoenix system so there's a myriad of different things and as i put the numbers together and i said i said wow your end of your balance was really climbing um and so i try to highlight the key elements as to why you're entering your balances were refined as much as they are and you're not unlike other boards of bed in the state at the end of the year with your schools you had less than 90 days in in the classrooms and that impact electricity that impacted supplies that impacted special education so you had and health insurance as i noted in my report to you it impacted your health insurance also because a lot of people put off uh having electric surgery and i expect that to change going forward so i try to highlight um the problems of the personality problems of the software and it comes down to coming up with some fairly substantial numbers and i was reluctant to come out in public and say here's your number and it's still a little bit fluid so what i'm saying is that it's a substantial number uh we plan to have an informal discussion with city officials on this uh and we do expect you have a full report next month to the board and uh the motion that you have on the table to to approve i concur my suggestion to you is either table it or just accept the report and what that means is you're not approving it there's nothing to approve but accepting it is acknowledging a receipt of your financial status and it'll be the same thing in the next month he could vote to approve of the uh financial report which i'll be working with the new finance director of of uh going over with him we've already started this is his third day on the job now so um we'll have a firmer number but again we're lucky to come out with a number it winds up the newspapers it changes somewhat and i i'm just not comfortable at this point for the reasons i explained so my suggestion to you is rather than approve this report accept it which is the form of acknowledgement that something is writing that's what it is and it's your call whatever you decide and the and i i just wanted to add um to frank's presentation this evening uh we are anticipating at least as of right now close to a two percent um excess at the end of the year and so the board might recall last year we went to the city and asked them to put monies in reserves for us for this for the school district we anticipate even higher numbers than last year for that request we gave dave st hilaire a couple of weeks ago on the heads up that we were anticipating these kind of numbers and so we hope that the city will continue to work with us in this regard but those numbers are also not firmed up yet and we want to make sure those numbers are firmed up um we we have every um all of our conversations with the city and and dave st hilaire on this we feel pretty confident that we're going to get the cooperation that we need uh but we want to make sure we have the firm numbers for the board and for the city before going to them thank you thank you chairperson thank you manager i do have a motion to table his vice chair of the finance committee uh mr chinelli is chairman of the chairman of the finance committee do you have any guidance on this sir my suggestion would be since the the board based on the conversations is uncomfortable is that we table the the motion and basically from what we heard from frank in terms of the volume of work that was necessary over the summer with the transition in computer systems and and the lack of personnel led to the delay in firming up these numbers having nothing to do with the integrity the numbers that's not the issue but i think for the comfort level of the board not seeing any numbers or specifically hearing numbers that we just table it and accept the the discussion as to the the reasons the trials and tribulations of what frank had to do with the temporary staff during the summer months in order to get all this work done and and so my recommendation would be to tailor this and bring it bring it back when everything is is solid and and uh and we're out of this mess and can just go on continually as normal in the past we've generally had the year-end done about this first or second board meeting so we're really not that far behind considering you know i i'd like to say chaos that that happened uh this year as you you know during the summer i was keeping you informed as to what was happening in the department uh with the turnover with the volume of work and again with the switching from one accounting system to another which is an enormous job in itself uh so you know it's physically impossible to with a limited staff uh you know that they had to accomplish the the normal year-end work agreed sir this is no reflection on the man's efforts so i concur again i'm asking the board i was making a motion to take this so in order to make the motion to taper we would have to because emotion was made so i need those two people that made the motion to take withdraw their motion and then i need someone else to make a motion to the table okay so i need kathy and rich both you will brought your motion to uh for the action item and one made the motion in one second and then i need if you will grow your motion then i will ask someone to make a motion uh to table it but before we table mr watson do you have anything additional that you want to add is there a specific reason that you wanted uh this uh completed tonight no no that i then but the important thing for me was to make sure the board had an update okay um and so as long as that information is out and available for the board i'm very comfortable with how we're proceeding okay okay so mr uh er you will make the motion to take it i will okay thank you second bye no second i think okay okay so um okay i'm gonna do the wrong call because there's no other discussion when you take this joe britton he is a yes rachel celeski aye kate canada aye gladys cooper aye lauren daly aye joe da silva aye rich janelli aye cathy molinaro aye al russo amy spolino okay okay so the motion is carried okay thank you all okay so we moved to action item c uh amy would you do action i didn't see yes that the board of education approved the 2021-2022 teacher evaluation plan as recommended by the t ballot committee in accordance with 21-104 all seven promotion made by anus segment by kate on the end of discussion i just wanted to ask yes i just want to ask what the you know the basic changes that we're approving okay um sure and no no no problem so i'll start out and then i'm gonna ask um kelly to add a little bit extra um one amy i just want to thank you for your participation on the committee um there was some great partnership from the t-val committee and so christy who's from losing christie's elite dr zolita who is our union representative from the administrators and then of course erin daly from nea and our teacher group and then all the rest of the teachers and administrators on the group um the big focus for us was certainly to focus on similar to last year in terms of the state goals and that was the focus on student and parent engagement and the social emotional support for our students and given kelly's expertise in school climate and social emotional support kelly's going to just provide a little bit of additional information on the changes for this year but it's not significant other than what we did last year counts now that that's really the big shift and there are other couple of tweaks um regarding uh teachers supervision uh under like teacher observations etc and so kelly will speak to those students so the um just as in last year the um social emotional learning piece is an essential focus of the state and the district so we are recommending that teachers focus on that along with parent and student engagement um but both for the benefit of supporting and improving academic achievement for students um so their teachers will still be scored on their action steps meaning the steps and programs that they implement to achieve those goals um the number of observations has been changed slightly the number of observations um for our um what we do is our beginning teachers which are classified as year one year two teachers or any teacher back from the last year we were scored which was the 18-19 school year that was shown in need of support those teachers will be evaluated with two formal and two mini observations so a total of four annually we've also added that they have the right or ability to request an additional evaluation an administrator can always go in and do extra evaluations this is the minimum but a teacher can also make the request and you formally wrote that into the plan which is a change um that's kind of been the informal practice going on but we thought it important to reflect for our year three and up teachers and those are also teachers that have shown that they're proficient or above um they are doing um one formal observation i'm sorry too many observations or informal observations um and then we're also required to have our teachers do a mid-year review and an end of the year review with their primary evaluator for our newer or teachers in need of support those both have to be in person for our um 10 you know for our summer season teachers that are shown being proficient or above they can do the mid-year virtually um through an electronic submission and the end of the year is in person um some of the dates year to year always tweak we always have to reset the dates to make sure they abide by the school calendar um but those are the basic highlights um for this school year are there any other questions seeing none the emotion has been moved and seconded okay kate would you do the roll call uh joe burton is off the zoo right now so i'm gonna skip him rachel toleski hi kate canetta aye gladys cooper yes lauren daley hi joe da silva hi rich danelli hi kathy molinaro hi al russo amy spellino hi promotion so kerry thank you we can move down to the superintendent report thank you miss cooper so i have a couple of updates for the board in the community one i would like to speak to our challenge around our buses and transportation just want to acknowledge one of our families asked the question earlier in public speaks that's one i've received um several and when i say several i mean 20 30 50 plus emails from families regarding busing and i understand i understand why because we continue to be challenged with our bus routes certainly it has been improved over the last week the first week was we were so concerned quite frankly we thought we were going to have to do something drastic to make sure kids got home in a timely fashion it improved the second week and it continues to improve this week we have a tracking monitor for arrival and departures at every school something quite frankly we only typically do for late buses now we're just tracking every bus every day just to get a better handle on where the problem areas are what we have learned number one is that we have two or three buses that are habitually late and so we're trying to find that understand the root cause of that number one number two we continue to be challenged and so i'm on a phone call actually with a parent this morning and the parent acknowledged that the dispatcher is driving the buses and they recognize that because they called called the dispatcher the dispatcher was unavailable and i guess they just recognized the dispatcher from over the years being in a school system and so the shortage that we have talked about in this school district around the state in our region is real right here in danbury the commissioner sent out a correspondence to all the superintendents on monday also acknowledging the bus shortage there was a call on monday with all the superintendents making superintendents aware that the state and the governor's office was doing everything that they could to unwind any challenges with the motor vehicle around certifications and any hold up and try just trying to figure out ways to expedite cdo licenses for anyone pursuing bus bus license of our certification so the state has been working with us or trying to work with us to help unwind some of the challenges and any backlogs in the system to help expedite as soon as as quickly as possible [Music] the state does not have any answers outside of that right now um in the in the in this the state educa education department doesn't have any answers outside of that right now but they did make us aware that they are trying right at the motor vehicle office to help unwind any challenges that might exist there and so they they shared with us they would have some further support and guidance as soon as they could as a district you know we will be meeting with our contractor provider because i think we need to sit with them and then figure out how if there are other ways we can kind of explore some solutions right here within a district we understand the routes got a little bit better this week and although i understand there may be some families out out there that it didn't necessarily impact them to improve routes but my understanding is we received two drivers back to the fleet on the sta this week which allowed us to add a couple of extra buses and so we hope we're going to continue to have some improvements but what we're learning um is that we have a couple of buses again that are habitually laid i just want to also remind the board we have i know dan donovan presented at our first board meeting last week as part of that conversation and dan's presentation and i just want to thank him again for doing that he presented an option where we could potentially get out of the high school up to 15 to 20 minutes earlier by not providing lunch for the kids which i'm a little hesitant now as gregory just talked about how much fun he was enjoying the tent and eating outside um so i uh but we will we in a community relations committee meeting um and speak to those options and the potential impact and see if it's something we should further explore um i'm mentioning this because it could have some there could be some benefits also to have in the high schools leave early because then that means our afternoon runs would be a lot more efficient i'm not suggesting we do it for that reason but there could be some benefit if we decide not to select that option i think it's going to be incumbent upon us as a district to maybe look at our high school times in middle school times and see if we can find more minutes in between those runs not exactly sure what that would look like right now not sure what the impact would be on teaching time but i think in some ways somehow we need to find some additional minutes for about to just provide some more space so that our particular elementary families who are impacted we need to provide supervision for kids at bus stops and at homes and child care make sure that those those buses arrive in a timely fashion whether it's pick up or drop off at the end of the day and it's not just it's not just the timing issues yes um i do not i do not disagree with that at all um and so what we have learned you know at the same time we have more cars i think on the road than we've ever had um you would think that would reduce the number of students on buses and that's not the case because we don't have as many buses in the fleet as we've had in this house so i i totally agree with you and we are we are feeling the impact of the bus shortage here in more ways than i was hoping we would yes jeff two two questions uh chips on the stream you'd come in last meeting and said there was an issue with sports has that been straightened out or not been straightened out um joe uh chip had a couple of other issues like literally the next week after he left the board meeting um chip is very resourceful and you know found solutions to them without costing the district too much money um in the last couple weeks i have not heard any challenges so i'm assuming we're okay there uh but i i am aware of some situations that vary next week from the board meeting but you know through resources we were able to resolve it so we didn't impact um impact our activities for kids the second question is is sta are they complying with their contractual obligations i understand they have challenges i understand there's problems with drivers they have a contract they have certain things they have to do are they doing that's part of the conversation we need to talk to them about okay i i understand where you're coming from and i i understand that you know is the problem but i think we also i mean they've been in tremendous partners over the years um but we do need to talk because it's having impact from the district on another side because we have to pay staff to supervise kids at the school because our buses are late and so they're the impact is real now after the first week which is understandable but now we're in week three and we still have some sites with late buses still mr janelle kevin i'm having a hard time understanding something it was my thought and understanding that in last year's conversation relative to the financials and a bunch of presentations that we were paying the drivers the full salary to ensure us that opening day they would you know we'd have full staff and therefore to eliminate the need to lay off people and then to re-hire people in addition to that i thought my research be correct that we were i think adding on 10 buses you know a need for the for the brookfield location and another a need for the the enrollment increase that we projected so with that being said where is the shortage happening and i can understand you know in order to become a driver they're of motivated logistics so that's something but at least on a status quo i looked at it that the the payments that we made for full salaries at least would assure us the the opportunity to be fully staffed with drivers and and not have this problem normally in years fast we've always had glitches in the first couple or three weeks to get roots squared away so that's normal but i don't recall this particular issue and i don't understand why unless i'm missing something so mr j i think part of just kind of unpacking some of the things i just heard you say one the agreement we made with sta last year was to make the drivers whole right so to make sure they didn't take a cut and pay a reduction in pay they could have taken reduction play and go on unemployment we made sure they were kept whole during the pandemic sta also hired additional buses to the fleet but this is assuming once this school year started their all of their bus drivers came back to start the school year which my understanding is that did not happen in addition they added additional buses and we didn't get additional drivers to fill those to drive those buses um so that's that's my understand how they began the year um and so they have substitute drivers and that that helped the plug-in but this is then of course also assuming that every driver is at work every day you know they have people calling out just like our staff calls out from time to time um and so a lot of our families they may have the bus 20 and then the next day they may have plus 20 and plus 35 and 38 on the windshield i mean that's because the bus company is collapsing routes um because this is what this is their reality at 5 5 30 in the morning as they're trying to get ready for a school day all right i think it makes sense that another question is to keep track of this uh i know some parents were in the in their portal when they go they have what they call an excuse absence or an excuse delay which is not necessarily the the child being laid but it's more attributed to the the bus being laid but yet reflects on somehow the student there is there any way to at the end of a period of time is to calculate this data or to change the software so it delineates that this is the bus issue and then go back and say sda you know what the statistics or at least alert the parents that this is not an issue of your kid being late but it's just a transportation issue right so it's the general practice um and i would like to thank all of our principals for doing this i'm sure they are when there's a bus that arrives late there's kind of an announcement bus 22 is coming in and so all the students on bus 22 they're not going to be monthly um if the if there is it should be overturned quickly you know because sometimes a teacher might mark them late for getting that the child is home bus comes to the same example so there may be a couple of instances where it needs to be overturned but generally bus comes in there's an announcement from the office that that bus is coming in late um and that child is excused accordingly we may miss some at the high school but there's enough gap in between the high school that really shouldn't be an issue because those buses get there before that seven twenty drops it was also you know something that may alleviate some of the necessary calls the our office have her parents said my kid wasn't late yet it was marked excuse me so but i apologize for asking the second question i heard from a lot of parents i've seen this a lot on social media the app that tracks the buses shuts off at four o'clock it goes dead at four o'clock is there a way to fix that because we now routinely seem to have buses that are going running for late elementary schools after four is there a reason why it shuts down at four can we tell the bus company to not do that i can um i'll answer you this week so and thank you for asking that question because i had a number of parents also asking about the app as well this is what i learned from the bus company and so just going back to the example that i shared earlier five o'clock i'm not trying to make excuses for sta like this is part of my job but i think this also speaks to the shortage and so it's let's just say five o'clock the bus company is going in for maybe the bus company is going in we're all used to um reviewing the app to find out where the buses are and so my my child is on bus 20 and the bus company and so i'm watching the navigation and hoping this bus is going to be on time so i can at least go to work behind the scenes at 5 30 6 o'clock in the morning whatever time it is the bus company if two or three people are out they are combining routes in early in the morning and so the the app and the navigation that's associated with your child's route is going to be off considerably because if i pick up if i'm bus driver 20 and i pick up half a 15 round half of 38 route and my understanding is that i learn from one of my colleagues that's right and then another bus driver and they pick up the other half of 15 and 38 and so the app has been off consistently it shuts off in the afternoon at 4 o'clock the app goes dead and you can't track the bus after 4 it goes dead after 4 pm you can't track where any bus is it just shuts off i was not aware that have not i have not heard yet okay so i i'll look in that fight i've got a point it may just be that they assume that the buses are done by four and that's when it's automatically set like a street light set on a timer but they if they're not gonna have kids home by four and they don't seem to be able to do that and we need to fix the time thank you thank you so miss cooper i do have two more items for the board in the community one we have we received our latest update from the governor executive order 13 g executive order 13g i believe the board is already aware it requires that all of our staff is vaccinated for those for the staff members who are not vaccinated they have to be tested on a weekly basis then we had an emergency meeting on friday with superintendents and then another meeting this week with even further clarification by the expectations of districts across the state of connecticut kim has been working with all of the union leaders across the district and i can't thank all of them enough for their cooperation uh throughout this entire process uh kim thompson and her team have done a great job just trying to manage all of this data and so if you guys if the if the board and the community can just kind of envision we need to have result vaccination evidence from every single staff member certified and non-certified and then we need to have either vaccination results or a plan to test every staff member and kim is going to share with you shortly we learned that on september 27th the rule takes is in effect immediately we got some good news early this afternoon but i'm going to ask um miss thompson to share some more details on it because this is this impacts all of us extracurricular activities requests to work in schools after school any volunteers that we may accept and you know approve for them to work with our children all of our staff so cam ready thank you um so this has been a journey um and and it's been a journey across the state and so we're fortunate that you know we have some colleagues out there to continue to kind of commiserate with over the requirements um here's what i can tell you as of today um and as my team is actually still weighing in and sending the tests so they're still updating um right now we have we think an accurate count of 1767 employees now that does not include for example the 75 to 100 tutor vacancies that we still have um it also does not include topping up our sub pool so we will run about 2 000 employees as we typically have give or take is my expectation but as of today we can see that 1767 folks were collecting paychecks from us in the last pay cycle and have been in process of those about 400 have not responded to my two emails asking to please submit vaccination status a vaccination card or some explanation of where you are in the process so we are as we speak um hitting send on an email to those roughly 400 or so employees that says congratulations you're going to join your friends in the testing pool um and the testing pool protocols are coming out tonight um so i expect that um of the 200 vaccinated staff that we have so we're running about 70 right now of those we're going to get some more cards in from people over the next few days so that's big idea number one is i suspect that we are much closer to 80 than 70 vaccinated but we're trying to rustle up those last um handful of cards so that we can get a handle on those folks um the trick for this week or the the sleight of hand for this week is how do we then get weekly test results from what is probably going to be several hundred employees and so um you know just one point to note is um and it's a bit of a bird walk but there is a provision for requesting an exemption either religious or health related from showing a fully vaccinated vaccine card that exemption does not exempt you from testing so all those people that we are now in process with their request to be exempt from producing a card still have to go and test so right now i'm dealing with the big group of people who need to test um we don't any longer have the capability of testing in-house so what we do know is everyone needs to test out in the world who need the test and when we know from the executive order and the guidance and the update that came at two o'clock this afternoon because it continues to update is that there are free locations where folks can go and test it can be rapid it can be pcr but it needs to be one of those it can't be the home test and people can go to a place of their choosing to get this test we have devised a google form for everyone to use and it looks very much like the one we used last year for covid related absences so what our employees will do is go in and fill out a google form that has name location um phone number where we can reach you email address and a an assertion that they have taken a test on a certain day and it's going to have to be within 72 hours and an assertion under penalty of law that they are either positive negative or inconclusive and they will upload that test what's then going to happen is that google form will populate an excel spreadsheet which is going to allow us to monitor those multi-hundred folks and see whether they've got positive negative or indecisive tests right now and and this is a conversation that's ongoing with our union partners right now the plan is for anyone who cannot produce proof of a negative test so that means the test center lost my test i didn't get a result on time or it's inconclusive those folks are going to stay home on an administrative leave with no pay no sick time no pay and that's one of the things that will be the subject of continued bargaining with our union partners um you know there will be some cases like if you have a case that or a test that is inconclusive may say you can use your sick time for that if you're positive you're going to be using your sick time to stay home but right now the um the guidelines make pretty clear testing failures are on the employee so failure to get the results on time is going to be on the employee what we're going to do for this week because i think everyone across the state anticipated that in this week one which starts on monday that you could test during the week and submit a result what much to our surprise at 6 pm on friday we learned was you had to have a negative test in hand on monday morning so everybody did a lot of scrambling everybody i think honestly kind of said can't do it um don't have staff on the weekend but can't do it and so today's guidance is you must test no later than sunday and we can receive negative test results or test results at any time from this friday the 24th through next friday october 1st for week one so we got a bit of a buy honestly for this week um and then in week two our plan is to set a testing schedule so we would like to receive or we will require that we receive your test no later than a tuesday night which means you need to get a test either sunday or monday or tuesday and a rapid test is fine submit by the close of business four o'clock on tuesday so that we can then let you know we've got you'll get a receipt on your google form but if you are negative or if you are sorry positive inconclusive or no test at all you do not come to work on wednesday so we picked wednesday because it gives everybody a weekend day and a weekday to get their tests done and also if we picked a monday um we couldn't process in time and honestly we have trouble with subs on mondays anyway so we still have to get around what are we going to do when we have people testing positive that can't come in and how are we going to cover those people in the classrooms so those are kind of the remaining burning questions for us on how we're going to process i suspect that we're going to get more and more people who are submitting vaccination cards this is going to be a hard goal i think for people to go through the testing we're very sensitive to lots of different concerns some people simply can't get vaccinated others have very real reasons why they're not getting vaccinated and so without even approaching those we just are trying to send the message we are extremely sensitive to how difficult this is this is a very emotional issue for a lot of people and i think our union leaders have been excellent about advocating for their members and really working with us on how we're going to get through the nuts and bolts of this um it's going to be bumpy in in the first week um i asked mr wilson who approved by bringing in um some temporary help for us to get over this hump and i think once we get it automated in the way that we foresee it's going to really start running pretty easily but right now we've got some challenges so um as i said the email is going up tonight to those of our folks who have not produced a card yet and we'll see how we go with the next couple of days and then next week into the week one of tesla yes mr genelec can the testing sites are they definitely treatment are they dan very specifically yes so there are there are two state approved free testing sites in danbury that came from a list that i received from kathy o'dowd today one is the pal center and one is the war memorial and those have afternoon hours um they really cover the landscape of availability there is also on the 2-1-1 site there is a constantly updating list and if you filter by no-cost tests you will also see some pharmacies and that kind of thing that are providing those no-cost test sites my understanding of our insurance and remember we have some of our folks who have cigna insurance we have some of our folks who have teamsters insurance um it is not clear that the insurance companies are going to continue to cover surveillance testing after october middle of october so um that's in my email to folks that i can't make any representations about what's going to be covered or not covered i will say that what is clear is if folks are going to try to access the insurance they need to go in network because out of network is very um spotty to me on cost so we would do we would drive them to to always consider in-network but the question of whether cigna is going to continue to cover the cost of those if you have not been exposed and if you are not demonstrating symptoms the person that's outside the danbury area you
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