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[Music] unified school district board meeting coming up i pledge allegiance [Music] [Applause] [Music] any other questions seeing them [Music] is there anyone that wishes to speak wishes to speak on anything uh on the agenda or we can wait until that time [Music] [Applause] education services agency to come on and speak about the final mile project which is slate to bring hopefully high speed department so go ahead and um um so the final mod project here is really brought to you courtesy of the schools and the libraries um about five years ago we we brought federal funding through our iraq program for the federal corporation commission uh to all the schools and libraries to get high-speed fiber to 74 locations throughout the county and one of those locations is actually called the library so there are communities that now have this fiber brought to them and when the county received arco money so the american relief plan act money they received 43 billion dollars and they could input it into anything related to infrastructure and they the categories supervisors decided to put 20 million dollars towards that they're also bringing in other towns so all the eight municipalities that also receive that mark of funds um they're basically buying into a bigger project um because we realized that the middle mile through the schools and library race was already built by county and that's significant because it really accelerates the process of the broadband to the areas where all the other counties at this point are just trying to build that whole life so we're postured in a great position to bring fiber to the premise racing well it is fiber to every residence so home establishment and business throughout the county so that's that's over 213 000 people in the county uh to do it they're doing this in places all over the country in big communities small communities um flat communities deadly communities like boulder colorado they also use a mix of fixed licensed wireless too because the united states navy just released a frequency band just for this so it's not going on any other type of uh wireless means that it kind of gets bogged down you know when you think of wireless so time is a significant opportunity for us to utilize this money and uh and the schools and libraries are again in the lead for this project for the cabinet because they figured we've done it once why not do it again for everybody else and i'm so excited to do that that's what the spot online project [Music] um yeah i am very involved with our library next door yeah so we're doing this i went over and ahead of my very new download test and she got 90 bags per second download i'm on the same since you're good grind down the street i get 30 my question is did you do an upgrade at centurylink or did you bring in a new service to the library so for this particular location it was specifically a sparkline in there yeah so there now next is how do you plan how do they have that service from technical standpoint how can they expand that hi-fi your high download speeds now to the rest of the community or whatever could be contacted for the director from the library itself yeah excellent question if sparkline was very smart when they put in lines they put it in they put in a much larger capacity than what the library was ever going to use because what they they put in the capacity for the community so if the community were ever to get to pull off of this fiber line there would be enough fiber in so so they did that on their own since the trench was already open since the conduit was already run but the problem was that it never penciled out for them to pay for all those lines by themselves it wouldn't be enough homeowners to really compensate for that fast forward now we have this money that's that can use to use for the build that the internet service provider doesn't have to pay for and so a bigger piece of this is not only just bringing the fiber or the high-speed internet to the home but it's going to greatly reduce the price to the customer because they don't have to recover that cost that's right and we learned that through our project because we even the fees that we put to our are more rural or urban schools that already have the they've thought why would we buy into we have a fine enough connection well the price reduced by 87 of the cost so the price that like chino valley was paying for the broadband they could increase it to four times as much for the same amount of money so that's that's what we've [Music] because there's a lot of communities here there's no uh [Music] because of the magnitude of this project we're getting national broadband providers that are coming to the table the line that is already in these locations from spark life they're going to lease from spark plugs will bid on it but i guarantee there's going to be lots of other providers that are going to show that they can do this at a certain cost cost of the customer so all those things are really going to be at play for this so sparkline may have use of that but but the biggest piece they will have is that leasing power to whatever it is but the problem is right now is so unfortunately there was no interplay between the private areas getting any existing providers any other questions i have one please so stay amazing rv is a 45-day kind of expect something to be happy right so we're being very aggressive with this um so from the time we are requesting it's an 18-month bill from the time that the award is asked and that's a concentration on all those easier to reach locations as well as the harder reach locations we've we've buffered in an additional six months just in case there's a place like crown king that's really really difficult but those are going to be kind of a more difficult place like sedona that we know so it's an 18-month timeline from december is what we're looking at and there's two reasons for that one we know about all the supply chain issues that are going on around the country and fiber is is is one of those issues there's already warehouses full of fiber that's that can get drawn from but we want to be first to the table also whoever reward the it's important for them to get out get going get this under under their hats show success so they could then roll into other rmps or other connections so they could show proof of success and so that's why we're driving somewhere we're here thank you a little bit about the emergency so don't want me to come and talk to you about the emergency connectivity fund and i believe we brought this up before but this is more of a refresher because we just are on round two so originally the emergency connectivity fund was part of a lot of family packages that came out and his intent was to get devices and internet to students and staff at home to use there was a filing window open where we could ask for devices during that time we tried to collect as much data as we could it was the summer time not a lot of people were engaging with us as we could and in that time we identified 360 chromebook devices 63 hotspots and we're also able to get wi-fi request wi-fi devices for school buses so should this be approved eight of our school buses will be hardwired to be hot spots is we also identified two portable units that we could put into say a band anywhere that would have a microphone called cigarette lighter which they have a fancy need for that now you can plug it in there and you can put on the signal so if we say we had a sports trip anything else all this is filtered by the way just so you know that's so that's kind of one of the conditions so we've already asked for this august the budget originally was supposed to encompass everything from this school year and then what was left over was supposed to potentially cover any costs we had during the lockdown year from march 281.

hi good evening thank you for joining us to the information session about health and safety uh we really appreciate you being here and um superintendent mike morris and we have three panelists who are joining me tonight and we really want to appreciate this is our third since the pandemic began i believe third session with medical experts in our community so we're deeply appreciative i'm deeply appreciative i think collectively as a community we're deeply appreciative that folks who are connected to our community here in amherst uh and are knowledgeable and in many ways in the front lines of working uh on the pandemic as well as well as other health and safety issues are able to join us and share their expertise experience and wisdom with us so i think with that maybe i'll uh ask each of you to introduce yourself a bit and and um so peter would you mind starting us off by sharing a little bit about your role and uh where you work sure i'm uh peter everett i am a pediatrician i am at northampton area pediatrics uh northampton in amherst and i have lived here in the area since uh 2012 after coming up from from dc of new york and then dc um and so i've been a pediatrician there and live over here in amherst with a daughter in the school system at uh fort river and really um happy to be here to to talk about um about covid and flu and vaccinations and our kids and how to keep everybody healthy this winter right thank you so much peter lauren would you uh you mind going next sure i'm lauren westbrook i am an er doctor and a researcher down at bay state and i have young kids that are too young to be in the school system but my wife is a teacher in wildlife thank you so much lauren and bill hi everybody i'm bill soros i'm also an emergency physician at bay state medical center i've been practicing there since and also we have three kids now in the crocker farm system so um yeah we are heavily invested and i'm really happy here to be able to talk and hopefully answer some questions and share some information thank you so much and so just a couple things that i'd like to go over beforehand some of the topics that we're going to be talking about tonight are about moving towards winter where being outside may be less desirable for many of us and how to stay safe during that time period some vaccine information both about the flu vaccine as well as the potential of a vaccine for younger children coming up and booster shots which is another topic that's come up a lot in our community i'll start by talking about an update on school cases and school safety we'll also touch on masks and any questions folks have along the way so as people were are interested there is a chat box the bottom right hand corner and people can ask questions i do want to note that as it relates to school-based policies i'm happy to answer those questions these folks don't work for the amherst public schools that'd be my job so if there are questions about school specific things i'm happy to answer them and i just ask that everyone maintain a respectful tone as you can see from lauren's screen there's there's some young ones with us so we want to make sure that the tone stays consistent uh because you know we know some of our students are watching with their families so again thank you for joining us this will be uh replayed um and shared um in uh in our newsletter um and on friday for people who can't come also the youtube channel you know the link that you're on now can be shared so um i wanna just start by talking about school-based cases and i think the thing to note is what we've experienced this fall is consistent with what you'd expect us to experience at the beginning of the school year late august early september we had a significant number of cases locally and we had significant number of cases in school as those numbers have went down in our community the numbers have went down in school so you know this afternoon i put in every week in the state database we have to put in how many new cases there were in the last week and there are no new cases in our district this week and that's the first week in the school year that we've had that so you know that is a little different and then we've had and some great news but i think the thing that i want to note is that what we have found between last year when kids were in and this follows we're over 20 cases and we still have no evidence of school-based spread we've had close contacts those close contacts have tested negative and so we feel um good that our current measures at the current time are promoting healthy safe school environment i am conscious that there are some folks who really wish they were didn't have to wear masks to school um you know i think probably collectively all of us have that feeling in whatever our workplace is it'd be great to be on mass from a comfort perspective from seeing people's faces at this point um you know even though at our high school level we probably do meet the threshold of 50 or 80 of students and staff who are vaccinated we're going to stick with the mass you know our folks our public health department in the town is has been really clear that at the current time they believe that's the best course of action and as we keep continue to have positive cases and no spread it really does make us recognize that those mitigation strategies are effectively are being effective that students in school when we when the contract tracing's done they're more often than not when it's known they're finding out that it's from a non-school-based exposure we have no evidence again of a school-based exposure so you know the distancing we've maintained uh the ventilation that we worked on the universal masking we know by next test available for anyone who's symptomatic and in school during the school day you know those have been measures that we've seen as being successful in our schools and we're going to continue them during at the current time and you know as public health guidance evolves we may you know evolve along with it but there's no indication right now from our local public health department or lead nurse that we want anything to do anything other than maintain the course around our health and safety measures so i just wanted to start with that kind of broad summary of what we're doing and where we are with things and i thought maybe at this point i would turn and talk a little bit about the changing seasons about um right now today was beautiful this next couple days really gorgeous uh you know sadly for me i'm not a winter lover it's not going to stay like this you know we'll be having the traditional november snow ice muck weather coming in and not so long and i think there's a lot of concerns i've heard in the community about being indoors more often not just in school but actually in general as well and concerned about so many people have enjoyed outdoor play dates and things like that for their kids that may not be as accessible as we head towards winners so i think i'll just turn to the panel and see if you have thoughts about as the seasons change what are some strategies parents can can use and some thoughts about how to maintain that safety but also maintain that social connection that we know our students have craved and have really enjoyed as things have opened up a bit more over the last couple months so anyone can uh start off and speak into that i mean i guess i can start with uh some general statements um so i you know as mike said i'm definitely not part of the arps system um and that being said i i really kind of admire looking from a physician and from the standpoint of a father with three children the effort that the school has made and i think that's really shown in the data that we really don't have school transmission and it's based on this idea i think of really harm reduction of taking multiple strategies and i think that's really important especially with delta there's not one thing that works for everything unfortunately you know vaccines are very important but it doesn't work for everything maths are very important but it doesn't work for everything and having multiple strategies and multiple things that you can do makes it much less likely that you're going to get covert or it's going to spread so right now that has been a combination of vaccines and ventilation and masks and spacing and i think the worry from a lot of us um as was said is that we lose a little bit of that in the winter mostly that idea of ventilation and going outside so the first thing i'll say it's just obvious if we're losing one of those reduction strategies we really want to make sure we strengthen those other strategies i don't know about you but i've been kind of lacks with hand washing and other types of things thinking about that thinking about you know play dates and you know talking with families and what are some exposures and and so i think the first thing is to make sure that some of your other efforts are just a little bit stronger as we come to those colder months where we know viruses like to to propagate indoors yeah i would absolutely agree with you there bill i think as the things that we can do is to just to do multiple things to kind of this whole idea that if you do a number of different things and you're more likely to to reduce the transmission um as we get into these colder months i you know it is nice outside i think i would still you know being outdoors during the winter and having outdoor play days and all that is still something that's really good and even as it gets colder um you know finding more time to spend outside even not just from a you know southwest spread of cobia perspective but as a pediatrician getting more kids outside and playing outside and being active and all that is a is a big benefit here uh and so i would still encourage that as much as you can and get your you know extra layer on and be outside as much as you can um and then the other thing to remember is is the social aspect too is just i think you can take all these measures and wash your hands and you know have your masks but um i think taking that step and and start one of the big important things i think is starting to reintegrate into to connect with people again um and so finding a way to do that in a safe manner is is important for our kids and sort of in that vein one one way that i personally found um helpful in doing that social connection in a way that i feel safe because i have very small children as you might be able to see i have a eight week old baby here is through testing but we test our family on a regular basis because it's free through umass if you're asymptomatic you can go you can pick up a kit and then you can drop it off without contact whenever you want um and usually if it's not a weekend you get test results back um later that day or by the next morning and so we do that regularly just to kind of surveil our family because i'm an er doctor my wife's a teacher um and while we mask and we do all those things our kids go to daycare one of our kids is is in a toddler classroom where they don't wear masks so we want to make sure that if we catch something that we can let people know as soon as possible even if we're not feeling symptoms yet the other thing that we do um is they're a little on the expensive side at seven dollars a test but the buy max now test you can get on walmart.com so we bought a bunch of those because we do need to have some of their social connections um and sometimes whether it's rainy and we plan to have people over something um it can always happen outside so what we did is we had people swab themselves um before they came into our house and so it made us feel comfortable that they weren't contagious at that time it's not a perfect test um but it's pretty good at saying are you contagious right at this moment um and so these are those tests it's a pack of of two tests um and so those are just some additional ways that that we feel better um and that we are in our family preparing for the winter when some things may need to move sort of indoors um but also preparing for there's going to be more colds because cold we're already seeing more colds in the emergency department i'm sure dr everett is as well um and and things like that to help us differentiate is this cobit how how worried do i need to be right now um before i can give to the pediatrician those sorts of things great thank you uh we're going to transition to other topics but you know as i said there is that chat button in the lower right hand corner so you don't have to wait till the end if you do have a question comment or an idea something that's working well for you we'd love to see that too and be able to share good ideas like you heard from from our folks on the call i thought the next thing there's kind of three categories of vaccine related questions that i know i'm getting and i'm not an expert and not a doctor or medical doctor and so you know sort of those three things one is the flu vaccine um you know as that's become more available i got mine uh on friday or saturday last week something like that you know thoughts about getting the flu vaccine particularly this year uh the second topic is around the you know at least the hearing and the potential of the ages five through 11 vaccine that's uh being talked about in the data is in and it's been at least publicly reported in terms of a press release not the literal data just any thoughts you have what you're hearing about that particular topic and the last one is for adults who are eligible for booster shots we have a number of staff members all of our staff members actually work in schools to be eligible so i think starting with the flu vaccine you know i think they're they're all topics that people have a lot of questions about and um so i don't know if anyone wants to start with any thoughts about flu vaccine in particular as we head towards winter i'm i'm more than happy to talk about flu vaccine it's something that we i mean in a way i guess look plan for every year and this year is no different um as far as getting kids and encouraging kids to get a flu vaccination you know it's it's a recommended for anybody over the age of six months to get their their flu vaccine uh and this year you know last year we didn't really see any flu at all um i think i think nationwide there was i think just one uh one death from influenza which you know usually will have a couple of hundred per year and just we really didn't see any flu at all um but what that means for this year is we don't know um we don't know if if you know is the unmasking that we've been doing and all this handwashing and separation gonna be true this winter or not like we are starting to see you know other viruses not flu yet but other viruses coming back rsv and other things and so the flu vaccination is another thing that's going to be really important to help reduce the risk of getting the flu but also reduce the severity of it and so it is something that we definitely recommend it's it's widely available now we've been giving flu vaccines out for the the past couple weeks it's available you know all the possible centers and all around so in the pharmacies um one of the things i sometimes hear is that should i wait to get my flu vaccine or should i get it now or when is the most effective time to get it in general my advice has always been to get it when you can get it because a lot of times people will come in sometimes people come in and say well we want to wait we'll come back to get it and then you know we never you never get around to it and so all of a sudden it becomes december and then you start hearing about flu cases spiking and then you have to rush around side but generally recommended that if you're in the doctor's office and you're offered the flu vaccine or you're in the pharmacy and they're giving you the flu vaccine to go ahead and get it we're really not sure what's going to happen um like like i said with the flu season this year is it going to be you know bigger or or more cases or less and so one of the best ways we know to prevent it uh is to get vaccinated i think the other thing that i've heard um just and again you all can comment on this if you like but just is is right the flu has its own right as its own illness but also the not knowing is was really hard this year because a lot of the flu symptoms are pretty similar to to covet symptoms um and so you know i think that's another thing that i'm hearing a lot in the community is fears that um if if someone gets the flu that they it then triggers a whole number of other things and fears um that that feels a little different than you know in prior years prior to covet being what it is now so i don't know if that messes with what you're hearing or concerns about but i know from families where uh people are having a lot of concerns because you know fever you know a lot of the symptoms you know might feel similar especially to kids um so you don't have to comment on that just something that i know i'm hearing a lot about um but as we you know uh we continually talk more about the flu vaccine but i think you know i am getting you know of all the vaccine questions uh probably because of my job the the five the potential of childhood vaccines both five to eleven but i also know we have preschoolers in our district and um that that seems like that's on a little bit slower timeline um as well and you know not at all expecting you to know what's in data that's not been publicly released um in all of its detail yet but just things you know questions i'm getting are what's the what's the dosage is the doses the same as as it is for the 12 plus what would it be two shots one shot um you know in terms of cost benefit of it you know since since students um since children in general compared to like an elderly population the risk factors are different for you know what happens if you can track covet you know how should we think about those risks so those are the kind of the three things i hear a lot about is what's a dose how many shots and then how should i think about that uh relative to young kids so i don't know anyone can jump in if you'd like to to weigh in on those sure happy to do so um so the fda meets on october 26th to discuss this pfizer has applied for that five to eleven so uh the the twelve plus already has emergency use authorization the next step they're doing is five to eleven and then they their trial is ongoing for two to five still um and so a lot of the data we don't have yet uh it'll be uploaded to the fda website um under the meetings information usually a couple things prior to that meeting so we unfortunately don't have a lot of data yet so the data that we do have is largely from advisors press release thus far um and sort of some inferences that we can make so with regards to the first question the dose is lower so they tested three different doses they tested uh the 30 microgram dose which is what uh i got back in december so it is sort of the adult uh or the 12 plus dose and then they tested lower doses as well and what it looks like they're going forward is the lowest of those doses so it's a third of the dose that many of us who got the faster shot got for that and it appears that it is given in a two dose series um you know looking even at the adult doses we know that a lot of the protection is confirmed after the first dose um and then you have sort of more protection after the second dose but it does look like they're gonna go ahead um with the two-day series um for this and we don't know how effective it is and to be honest that's not what they were looking for with this because we know it reduced cases and we know that you know cases of bad bad covet we we've seen them unfortunately we've seen them in our community amongst kids thankfully they're uncommon um so they couldn't go and they couldn't look they'd have to recruit tons and tons of trials and we would never get this vaccine after just tens and thousands of kids into into this trial maybe a hundred thousand um so what they looked for was they looked at the antibody levels they wanted to see uh did they achieve a good level of antibodies but the main question they wanted to know and they really want to make sure it was safe so their their primary outcomes the main things they were looking at were really what were the adverse events what reactions did people have um and then they also looked how how what was the antibody response making sure that uh kids nothing bad happened to them we don't want that to happen um and then making sure that they are producing this immune response and then they also looked at cases and stuff like that um but due to the fact that a lot of this happened when our case counts were really low across the united states like in massachusetts we we had we had a great early summer there were no cases um you know you wouldn't expect to see a lot of those um so we don't have a lot of the data yet but i imagine that we'll say there's a robust immune response um because that's what the press really said um and that that 10 microgram dose produced side effects similar to what we saw in uh adults in the 12 plus group which are a certain proportion will have fever a small proportion a lot may be a little bit tired but overall people handle it very well um lastly sorry i'm talking a lot here with regards like how useful is it i already said you know kids thankfully don't most kids don't get really really sick from coved for most illnesses right kids are a little more robust it must be nice um but we do know that even the young adults are looking at like 18 to 29 year old time range age range um with the primary series so even after the first two doses you would have to vaccinate just under 400 to prevent one hospitalization um which is insignificant right like you look at how many 18 to 29 year olds there in the united states uh you're saving a lot of hospitalizations with that so with kids the thought is you'd still be saving a lot of hospitalizations you may be also you know you're protecting them from getting ill so that's days at school uh that they're not missing because they are not getting which as a parent like i know i don't want my kids to mistake you because they're sick so i want them to get vaccinated also not just for my convenience so they don't miss school so they're not you know isolated as well and then because you don't want to see your kids sick and you really really really don't want to see your kids in the hospital so uh the trade-off is is less there um you have to vaccinate a lot a lot more little kids um to prevent that hospitalization you have to vaccinate um a lot of kids but not as many kids to prevent kids from also getting a symptomatic infection um which is also as apparent something i care about even if they're not super safe and uh it's a lot of kids but we have a lot of kids in that age range in the united states so those are my general thoughts and interpretation of what i think we're going to see yeah i think that's you know it's really important i want to emphasize kind of what lauren said there um when we when we talk to folks we hear people want to get back to their normal lives right and so how do we start to live with covet and part of that although you know it's exactly right that kids thankfully have less hospitalization less serious disease there are those other impacts of kids can still get sick and they can be out of school and i will tell you all of us will tell you on this call that our health care system is still stretched right and if you are a parent and your kid gets sick it may be hard like it may mean if you have to go to the emergency department you may have to wait a lot longer or to your regular doctor you might not be able to get that same day visit and that puts added stress on families that puts added stress on everyone in it and it makes it so you're not back to your normal life right that you know if your children do happen to get sick and they're out multiple days and you're not able to bring them in or get them tested so i i do think that you know a lot of this when we when we talk about these things about wearing masks about thinking about getting your your children vaccinated presumably once it's approved it does get back to that allows us to get back to some of that normal life that that we all want to have and i think that's a really important point comments are enabled so i saw eric has he wrote a comment our comments enabled so you know definitely jump in with your uh comment or question um i you know the other thing that i hear a lot is um in the community is concerns about um long covid particularly with kids so you know you know some people are concerned about all the things that they were mentioned here but also you know the potential of longer term challenges coming stemming from covet even if it doesn't involve a hospitalization or something you know even worse that it's it's not something that three days later the kid feels okay that there are um some longer term implants and i don't know if you've seen that in your work or just have any concerns about you know long covert but i know it's something that you know over the last couple months i feel like it's grown in terms of conversations discussions and concerns around that so i don't know if anyone has something to share uh along that dimension yeah i mean i think it's not something that we've seen a lot of it certainly has been reported and is out there um you know there are other you know rare things that can certainly happen in kids like i said what kids generally are fine there are certainly um some serious things that can happen with kovid you know we were seeing this inflammatory syndrome we still do see it to some extent um and kids i can personally i don't know if you guys have seen it down there in the emergency room but um you know that is something another reason to get vaccinated is that even though the risk is low of getting a severe illness from coveted if you have a young child it's certainly not zero and it's something that it this is you know having a chance of one and a ten thousand or one and a hundred thousand it doesn't necessarily matter if it's if it's your kid that is happening to and so this is one way that you can you know take you know you can protect against um you know those illnesses the things that we've been seeing so far we'll get more data certainly from the vaccine files once the fda combs through the data and this is what they're doing it's one of the reasons why it takes so long for these kids i know that you know kids are you know i think many of them are eager to get vaccinated so they can be protected but i think one of the reasons it takes so long for the fda and everybody to go through is that with kids you really do want to make sure that it's safe and they're going through it to really make sure that we're not going to you know we're not missing anything here um and so yeah so i think once it comes out and we review it it's another reason to to to get to get vaccinated uh the other thing i guess i wanted to point out another reason to think about it is uh just the standpoint of even if you're in a situation where you're exposed even if you're not necessarily you know sick but this is something that would help to keep kids in school as well because if you know if you're you know exposed you're a close content of the case right now you're you know out for 10 days and you may be doing perfectly fine but that's more time you're spending at home and so being vaccinated is one way to both reduce the case load potentially and reduce the amount of time out of school for our kids so there's a couple question um and i think it's uh the questions asking about what percentage of positive cases at the high school were among vaccinated or unvaccinated individuals so we have we've had a total of five cases at our high school since the start of the school year that number is you know and because those people are out for two weeks it's a pretty easily identifiable group so i can't get into the details i apologize in terms of privacy rules but what i can say in responding to the general question is that across our districts elementary middle school high school and summit academy from last year to this year we've seen a disproportionate number of our positive cases be unvaccinated individuals have we had vaccinated individuals test positive absolutely have the majority not everyone but the majority of those cases been mild they're completely asymptomatic oftentimes when they knew they were exposed to someone and chose to get tested not because they had symptoms that's true so you know i think our data matches the state data and the national data that can quote-unquote breakthrough infections happen yes do they happen absolutely are unvaccinated individuals more likely to test positive our data is consistent with the state data that that's true and are those cases in general more likely to be um more serious we've experienced the same thing as the state and national data so we're no different you know so i apologize i can't get into specific numbers when our end size is five it's just too identifiable uh along that dimension but you know what we see like i said at the beginning we're seeing the same trends that we see in our community in our state and in our country about the differences there and um i think that there shouldn't be a surprise there you know there's nothing unique about our our community or our schools you know at the high school both in terms of students and staff we're over 80 percent of um folks vaccinated at the current time and if you look at places i was sharing before this pa before this show um you know propublica put an article about a different community in a different part of the country and the level of outbreaks they had and i feel very fortunate we're living here and our schools have the vaccination rates they do another question can you share the risk of severe illness or death of healthy unvaccinated children compared to other diseases and risks like flu west nile car accidents etc i can leave that up that's helpful yeah i think that's a that's a good question i'm not sure i have numbers off the top of my head i mean the risk of severe illness or death of healthy unvaccinated children death is really low um i think if you're looking at um yeah i guess i don't have the numbers right off the top of my head but compared to other disease and risk the risk the issue with uh healthy unvaccinated kids in covid i think it's multiple factors about why you would want to get vaccinated um but i think that actually the flu and rsv and several of these other viral illnesses in kids is something as a pediatrician i'm actually a little more worried about uh from a kid perspective than necessarily kids getting covered but i also but so from that standpoint um you know the covet as a risk to the kids themselves is lower than some of those other things um but if we can kind of take a approach to to reduce the risk of all of those uh other viruses we're going to be able to take the pressure off of the emergency rooms and the pressure off the hospitals and keep kids in schools so um yeah but i think i i think [Music] since we so yeah so i guess overall the risk to the kids who are not vaccinated you know is low overall so and i guess i'm not sure what the yeah that answers the question or if it gets to what the question is just sorry if i interrupt there's a little delay here um i don't know if the intent of this question is but reading it a couple ways is um the risk is is is really low right for severe illness or death a lot of it in the younger group is about protecting those around them um but also ensuring that they can uh continue to go to school and things like that and then protecting the rare complications because uh we don't want our young kids getting the inflammatory syndrome um or things like that the other thing is i look at the comparisons and it's hard to know here because it depends on whether you're talking about the risk of severe disease the flu in somebody who's vaccinated gets a flu or not vaccinated against the flu um or car accidents the risk of being in a a death in a product if they're wearing a seatbelt or not so um you're looking at the comparisons here look at these are great examples of other things where there are significant uh public health measures um that have reduced the severity of all of these things so we can't you know as somebody who's trained uh has a master's in public health i look at this and i'm like flu we have amazing public health stuff washing hands um you know staying home when you're sick uh and flu shots and from west nile it's again being where mosquitoes are from the south so like deet everywhere um and for car accidents it's you know the seat belts the booster seats the five harnesses until my children go to college um or i guess until uh they grow out of the five-point harnesses um but yeah the the thing with cobit is it's it's very very low but as a parent or as a doctor i feel really bad every time i take care of one of those patients who they are 21 and their risk is really low but they were unvaccinated and it was preventable and those are the really really sad cases can i add on to that a bit i think a couple of things i think first we have to bring up the public health because we have delta right and part of the reason we have delta is for many reasons we couldn't vaccinate and lower the transmission right mutations happen when you have unchecked transmission right that's how these viruses work when it spreads kind of like wildfire even if it spreads in folks that don't get too sick you can start to get mutations that cause delta and all of a sudden delta changed the game right whereas initially vaccines seem to prevent even illness because of that high replication rate it changed so i do think part of it and part of that consideration to folks is we really overall as a community as a nation as a globe want to get the rates down so it is less likely to turn into whatever the next variant is going to be and the other that i would say i totally agree but like i think all of us as clinicians it's not just about the one risk it's weighing the risk and the the benefit or the the risk of the disease versus the risk of the treatment and in all of those things my understanding and i don't know the 5 to 11 data but all other data sets the risk of this vaccine is pretty much as close to zero as we can get right the risk of dying from this vaccine is zero the risk of having a severe reaction is you know one in hundreds of thousands to one in millions numbers that we can't even comprehend so i think when something continues to prove to be that safe and we do want it to be proven to be safe that's why we're waiting for the data and waiting for the fda but if it comes out that yup it's the same and there really aren't downsides to that then it doesn't take as much for me to say you know what i know the the risk of severe disease for my kid is really low but the risk of this vaccine is really really really low and there's other things that this can help so it's it's i think weighing that aspect thank you uh that's really helpful and a good question and and i think you know choices that families have to have the data to be able to make for their for their children um here's another one our outdoor play dates on mass no distance still considered safe as we did over the summer i can speak to that from the school perspective and then certainly you can jump in it's a question i've gotten quite a bit this fall it's interesting seeing our recess um you know we you know based on and i'll explain in a second the guidance we've gotten both from state cdc but also from our local public health authority um you know we're continuing that practice of not masking at recess and that's because what we're seeing in the community is we're not seeing spread from those scenarios i think if that changes we'll change our strategy but i know a number of people emailed me right when school was opening and i talked to the amber's health director said let me know and she's like well you're not going to have 5 000 students you know convening on the same site for hours on end being you know static and i said no that's not you know our schools aren't that big and and kids move around and um and she she expressed that that's not when they did the contact tracing of the cases that's not where they were seeing the spread so for us at leaning waves at recess at school we've maintained that it's interesting that you know i'm at the elementary schools every week i i would say about 50 percent of kids are continuing to be masked that they're choosing to be masked at recess and we would support them in the choice that they and their families make um and about 50 of students are taking off mass and it ranges based on kind of factors that are known you know age level right so we see a little different behavior in kindergarten first grade than we see in fifth and sixth grade at the elementary level and then some of it's just you know random factors of who's choosing to wear that so i think um just wanted to share at least our perspective of why we've made the choice we've made at the school and again if the public health director sees different trends in our community we'll be making different choices around that topic but um you know in terms of outside the community and play dates i opened it up to the the rest of you if you wanted to jump in yeah i was uh just gonna say i think it's it's generally okay i mean the number of cases that are being transmitted outdoors uh is is really really low and i think i mean so from that standpoint you know you have play dates particularly if you're talking about you know small numbers of people outside i think the risk of transmitting covert in that situation is going to be extraordinarily low and certainly if you have you know i guess large groups of you know your people you don't know in indoor outdoor situations you're there for a long time then you may want to rethink that if you're in a different situation as well where you've got you know a lot of unvaccinated people in the household or you're not sure people you don't know then you're masking you know makes some sense but certainly outdoor play days if it's going to get more kids outdoors and active and playing and being able to socialize then um i think in general that's that's fine yeah i think the other thing i'll just add quickly on that topic is there they're also you know we're talking about young kids here and there's a wide variance in risk in mass tolerance for long periods of time so when we think about recess and we think about school school starts the elementary kids you know a little after eight and ends at 2 35 whatever it is that's a long day other than you know meals to be masked and for some students you know well what i would say for all students the safest place to take a mass break is outside and so you know we want to balance those needs of students to to have that mass break to socialize it for some students it does matter that their mask is off around socialization for a whole host of reasons so you know i think there there's a different com different comfort levels for kids for families and that's why we see you know the range that i described of of masking outside at recess and we want to support kids and families in the choices they make in that environment while we're not at you know at the point of really considering uh anything but a universal mask makes mandate inside of the current time lauren bill anything you want to add to it yeah yeah just a quick a quick sort of looking at this uh look at this question from a research lens uh absolutely could a case happen from an outdoor play date with how infectious delta is yes uh like i i don't i don't want to sugarcoat things and say like this is never going to happen however that is as safe as you can get particularly in a highly vaccinated county uh like we have here or in a community where we know a lot of people are vaccinated um and and so i think that you're looking at all the range of activities that you can do um that's the lowest and it also depends so if i i take an eight month old and another eight month old and i put them together for an outdoor play day they're going they're going to lick each other um so the risk is going to be a little bit higher there than if you have you know five seven year olds 14 year olds running around playing soccer or whatever um but it's as safe as you get and especially if you compare to other things we're almost two years into this pandemic and what we have seen especially in our emergency department is a is a rise in mental health crises um among our pediatric population which is something that um is really devastating uh many communities um and even you know people that sound up to be uh physicians and mental health experts uh because this is it's really sad to see this and a lot of it comes from the social isolate isolation so you know there there are ways to protect ourselves against cobin but covet isn't the only thing we face and we kind of obsess about that um but you know if it's uh going to instagram or a social media site um or you know something that they could be uh detrimental to the mental health or playing outside um unmasked uh certainly i think that might be safer from a host of reasons not just the coveted standpoint um but from thinking about how how do we support the health of the children and the family in the community from sort of a more holistic uh sort of whole person perspective as well yeah i i really like um what you said there lauren and i think it's it's true and we are to the point of trying to balance um you know i think one of the what i feel like one of the falsities i've heard is that right it's the mass themselves that that children that's affecting children's psyche and and maybe for some and i don't want to discount that and there definitely are children where it's very hard but i think for the majority it's not that it is that social isolation and it is that more the disruption of life more than the mask um and so you know having those trying to do that kind of harm reduction standpoint of okay you know we're going to play outside but realizing like my children they're going to have to come in and pee every 15 minutes so they're going to be inside so what am i comfortable with maybe they mask inside maybe they're not going to mask inside maybe that's the time where i take out my binax kit and they're okay you know and this is not for those that haven't done it it's not the swab into the brain it is a like a little tickle that all of my kids have tolerated and maybe i say look i just want to make sure now things are okay and i don't have to worry about outside or inside so we're just going to do a quick test and everyone is fine and now you know we don't i don't have to care as much if you're cold and coming inside and gonna play inside for a bit maybe without your mass and you're gonna have a snack so i think you know that's i think an important point is developing some of those strategies to figure out what you're going to be comfortable with when that happens because ultimately for many of us the play date outside turns into something a little bit different and and are you comfortable and are your kids comfortable with that as well um because i think some kids especially as they get a bit older start to have anxieties themselves about what do you mean i can go in without a mask and this so so i think that's important to explain as well so i really i don't think it's the actual strategies i don't think many kids are worried about the mask itself but but explaining that to them and how they're going to be safe and and what they can do is really important yeah and i guess one other thing that occurs to me or i've been thinking about is that you know if you look back to you know a couple of years ago or two or three years ago you know you wouldn't be you would have your eight month old outside you know crawling around and licking each other back then and there were risks then about getting rsv or getting the flu or getting adenovirus or any of the other number of viruses yet and our kids would get sick and then last winter that changed partly you know part mainly because it was spreading so much and we didn't have a vaccine and that virus could spread and then a lot of people um you know all the reasons we wanted to stop the spread of kovid and not have sick adults and kids caused us all to go into isolation last year now we're at a point where particularly in this community and you can make this decision in your families as well if everybody if all the adults are vaccinated in your household those two eight-month-olds you know are going to be the risk of covet is going to be low and if before you are okay saying okay you know it's important for us to have these kids playing together and we also are now thinking more about okay you know i my child doesn't have a sniffle you know if they have if they are sick i'm gonna you know probably be more likely to keep them home instead of just sending them off to school or to this play date then having them play together outdoors or getting those eight-month-olds you know toddlers together uh is going to be you know a similar risk to where it was in the before times meaning that you know yes they might they may be at risk for getting something like the flu or rsv and that's the risk we take you know being out there in a social community you take you do all the things you can you vaccinate the best you can you wash your hands the best you can you stay home when you think that you're sick you do the you know you get lauren's tests from wherever you pick them up from and um yeah do the best you can yeah and i think i just want to comment a lot of what was said is an interesting it's something i've spent a lot of time thinking about is what's the arc of this right you know in my job in the schools um you know i don't think schools are gonna mask forever right you know and i know it may not end as soon as some people are hoping and and probably sooner than some other people are hoping but at some point you know i don't know if what normal is and whether we want to go back to it but i i don't imagine us indefinitely masking in schools in the united states or in amherst or in massachusetts um using places that i think are looking in a week and a half uh because that 80 percent rule the state put out on december excuse me october 15th and we're not in that category and the public health guidance i've received locally is that we're not going to be in that category for a while that we're more conservative on that front but i think it is going to be a challenge of risk tolerance how it changes and how that arc shifts over time it's going to it's going to be an adjustment for everyone and it's i think the only advice i'd give for folks is to take things slow that you know as your kids are getting more comfortable or as more kids get vaccinated this fall they may be really excited to try more things and and be inside more with other kids and for some kids it's still going to feel strange you think as a percent of their life they've been living in this pandemic a pretty high percentage of their like if you're talking life if you're talking about four five six seven year olds and you know the excitement they have in theory may not be realized immediately and just to give everyone some time uh to to get acquainted with that you know for us anytime there'll be a change in health and safety protocol in the schools we'll be sure to communicate it well before it's implemented and i don't anticipate anything coming very soon for us you know that's in my conversations with again my lead nurse robin supernod and jennifer brown at the town you know we're not looking to do masks any time soon in this particular district but it it's not going to be indefinite um you know and so i think that that's a hard message to share um it's something i struggle with is saying we're not gonna change now but it's uh we will have some on some some folks not wearing masks at some point you know and perhaps even towards the end of this year it's possible that that that will happen we'll have to see how the virus tracks and the guidance i get i make this decision based on folks like you who are much more knowledgeable than me and and my job is to communicate and implement it with fidelity and so we'll see how that goes but there is an arc to this and it's not a straight arc it's not a linear thing where it's a straight line if it was you know thankfully we or unfortunately we would be if you if you if if it was a straight line uh where we were in early july and that continued we'd be having a different conversation tonight but that's not where we are but we'll just you know make sure we're communicating with that and um i think just just being generous with with yourself and with your kids and understanding that it's going to be a process even post-vaccination for the young kids i think the last topic we have yet to get to uh that we talked about was about type of masks which is i think the smallest perhaps of the topics we said we would do tonight but i don't know if there was some thoughts that anyone has about types of mass you know in the district i know we don't allow things with you know we don't allow the gator style and some of those other ones with valves uh you know but we are open and we've seen students wearing kn 95s kf kf94s we've seen cloth masks we see surgical masks and sort of everything in between and i don't know if you have thoughts to share about your recommendations or what you see particularly as it relates to younger kids i think some some of this might have been fueled there was a recent study that looked at mass use in communities it was all at the adult level um and so there were a lot of headlines like clock master or surgical masks and i think that when as a family when we elect what type of mask to put on our small children um to put on ourselves for various activities we kind of think okay what am i trying to achieve right here um and you know there are sometimes when we really want to protect ourselves because we don't know the community that we're in or it's a risky community for example i needed to fly um and so when i needed to fly even as a vaccinated person i've unvaccinated kids i have an elderly mother-in-law so i wanted to wear it in 95.

how you can do that the reason that we've done this is to protect the order of this session of this meeting and we've had issues with that in the past the meeting i want you to understand is held in public as it must be but this is not the public's meeting the meeting belongs to the brookfield board of education and we have to conduct our business and so we're holding and prioritizing our business tonight and holding public comment at the end we do want to hear from you so if you wish to stay until the end our meeting is probably going to be brief um but i want you to also understand that this board has no jurisdiction on the mass mandate since there's no decision to be made there is no discussion that's appropriate for this board to have regarding a mask mandate this board unanimously adopted a mask policy last year and we are not in a position to advocate against our own policies again we'll continue to listen but i ask that you all please respect the order of this meeting and the rules under which it must be conducted so with that let's stand for the pledge 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 i also need to remind you that this is a school building and masks are required this is a state law so please if you do not have a mask there are some provided over here if you have a medical exemption then you should be sitting at least six feet away from everyone ma'am that includes you please put your mask on there are some up here if you don't have one yes i am here you need to put your mask on it is the law thank you are masks up here please then you can sit six feet away from everybody else please it is regardless of vaccination status you must wear a mask regardless of vaccination status so please put a mask on or sit away from everyone thank you we have all seven of our board members here tonight as well as our student representative and dr john dorel superintendent of schools so the first item tonight is our wms spotlight um so dr brielle do you want to introduce our students sure so i'd like to start with inviting up dean renna the proud principal of wisner middle school and this is a when school is in session we have our spotlights every other meeting and we're really excited for dean two of his tremendous staff members up there you can see them smiling away right now there they are right on cue smiling away um and uh they will be talking about the ruler and also a little bit about wellness week and we've got several students okay can they hear me we're good yep all right i am as always i am always very excited to spotlight uh things that are going on at wisconsin and um some of you may know the name we have peer leadership well uh this year for seventh and eighth grade we decided to change the name similar activity but same uh change the name to the ruler crew it wasn't my idea so i can't take credit for it but i have two of my great staff ms trotta who's a fifth grade counselor and ms reese who is a seventh grade literacy teacher and i'm going to turn it over to them to introduce the program and our students okay so hi everyone i'm christy chana i am the fifth grade school counselor and um one of the advisors for ruler crew so we're just going to talk a little bit about ruler crew today and this new exciting club that we began um so just a quick overview what is ruler most of you are already very familiar with it but ruler was developed at the yale center for emotional intelligence and is an evidence-based approach to social emotional learning so this approach teaches emotional intelligence to students of all ages which is the ability to understand use and manage emotions in a positive way so as a school counselor one of the first things that i ask students when they come into my office um is where are you today on the meter and it's a great conversation starter and it really gets the kids being able to understand and pinpoint where they're feeling um to get the conversation going so i was very impressed that all the fifth graders that i've had so far have been able to identify where they are on the meter or at least understand the computer um so that shows that they are learning it at an even younger elementary level now um coming up from huckleberry which is cool so our students have spent years learning about mood meter the charter how to recognize and regulate their emotions and ms reese and i wanted to integrate social emotional learning in a little bit of a different way after school to empower students to think about how others feel and how to create desired feelings of others which is why we started ruler curve hi everyone i'm jess reese so a little bit about ruler crew like mr ender said we are transitioning from peer leadership and taking on a lot of the similar activities but with the framework of ruler so we've been using the yale resources through this program they run called inspired students where they have lessons and activities that we can use to um assess full climate the students will look at the school climate and then think of the activities and the projects and the ideas that pretty much you can use to create those desired feelings in school so during our first few meetings we asked the kids kind of what they want to focus on over this year and how what kind of emotions they want everyone to experience while they're at wisconsin and our two big things have been uh fostering excitement and belonging especially since some of these kids are coming in um for the first time in months so the big focus for was on fostering that excitement and belonging so we did some of those lessons we're practicing building perspective taking and we actually have a student from ruler crew here today to help us out to explain some of the things that we've already done this year and some of the things that we're looking to do over the next few months so marley you can go ahead and unmute yourself um there she is awesome okay so during our first meeting of ruler crew we brainstormed some ways that we wanted to feel at school and how we could make wisconia a positive environment we wanted to plan events to help students feel comfortable and want to get involved so some things were one of the things were birthday bags we wanted people to feel happy and appreciated on their birthday so we made them this bag with lollipops and a bouncy ball it looked really cute and we added a card to make them happy sometimes having a birthday at a school they can be difficult because there's a lot of work involved and we really just wanted to make it hard for them another thing is the classroom charter conversations at our last meeting we came up with some words as ideas of things to add on our charters this way we can help class conversations and share some ideas to help the class and for the walkathon we have an idea called chop the walk and we want people to feel motivated while they're walking the walk-a-thon so right before the walk-a-thon we decided to draw motivational quotes in chalk where everyone's walking to make them feel motivated and the last thing is holiday card making we would like to get some stencils for halloween theme for holiday themed drawings once we finish them we can send those drawings people nursing homes and hospitals people in nursing homes and hospitals don't always get many visitors and it can make them sad hopefully when they get these drawings it will make them happier through the holiday season awesome thanks so much marley um and here are just a couple pictures from the birthday bags in action we've had three meetings so far one of them making the birthday bags um and it was really cool to see how excited the students were there was a lot of laughs um we had music blasting too so it was um just a really fun atmosphere and environment right marley okay so um going to kind of changing views a little bit hold on one second miss trotta can she hear me can you hold on one second yeah okay um is there any questions about uh the ruler crew or what's going on before we jump into the next thing i think it's great yeah this is great i mean obviously we obviously we wanted to continue the theme as we talk about ruler and charters and the mood meter and like i said it was the advisors that came up to me is the idea could we change it and just having you know being able to use the vocabulary that we are with the mood meter and things to that nature in the charter i think absolutely helps it to come alive more than it really is so i love making it like a community service type of oriented project that's right and i know i wasn't at the meeting but they talked about how kids that's that's really what they want they want to find ways to give back and find different ways not just their classroom but obviously in the school but also even ideas in the community and like marley talked about giving back to uh some of the different places in town to write letters and things to that nature so that's great makes someone feel good that's awesome i love the birthday bags and the chalk the walk i just think it's i'm just hoping we're still in school on june 20th yeah not even note that date is my birthday so that that to me i i thought that was awesome yeah yeah all their ideas which is even better great way to give their classmates a boost really nice yep um the next thing we're going to talk about as well on this wednesdays and i'm just not going to take the thunder and let ms try to talk about it okay so wellness wednesdays is something that the school counseling department um brainstormed this year and we're working together myself um marianne kish who's sixth grade uh allie fitzpatrick who's seventh grade and then rachel gilbert who is eighth grade so the purpose of wellness wednesdays is to promote positive mental health awareness and encouraging positive stress relief strategies so we are in the process of planning and figuring out the logistics of our wellness wednesdays um i want to start off by giving a big thank you to the brookfield education foundation for helping us um for helping fund these exciting and important wellness wednesdays so again the main thing promoting the positive mental health awareness regardless of whether cobit happened or not it is so important for elementary middle and high school to have the mental health awareness and the positive stress relief strategies so that they can bring themselves from one quadrant of the mood meter which might be blue or red to another quadrant of the mood meter which might be green or yellow so we want them to have those strategies to be able to be self-sufficient and do that so currently some of our fun wellness activities again it's still in the works but we've been reaching out to numerous different places um puppies and popsicles so bringing in a local organization to bring stress dogs for one of our wellness wednesdays and of course students would get a treat as well hence the popsicles art therapy also going on so stations of origami or mandala coloring to promote that um mindfulness which leads into the next one so also writing thank you cards and playing mindfulness bingo for some really cool prizes play therapy stations to help students focus and destress activities like puzzles and legos and then of course like yoga and stretching so we have a lot of different ideas and activities that we want to have going on these will most likely be one wednesday a month all throughout the school year so we really want to bring something fun and exciting that promotes positivity and you know positive stress relief strategies to the students so we are very excited to be working on this and we will make sure to provide any updates um and of course follow us on our social media for um wms school counseling because we always have updates on there as well you miss trout um and the reason we're saying we're still in the process because as you can imagine um trying to uh get people to um come up with these activities for a whole entire school is not easy at all and we can't we have to have certain time frames and we can only use certain parts of the building because we have so many kids so um we're trying to come up with those different activities and days so it won't be like she said once a month we're going to try to be figuring out these things and another thing that we've come up with is even at the end of last year we came up with uh one month end of the month on a friday for like spirit spirit month so they wear a certain you know act uh shirt or or something like that to um just to kind of keep up the spirit keep up the uh positive you know vibes with the kids and the kids have been doing an unbelievable job the beginning this year so and again that's these are things that come from either student council and in this case from ruler crew any questions on that and again thank you so much to the brookfield education foundation for funding some money for that for us to get materials and things and also having the puppies lollipops is there any more movement based activities um excuse me sorry this is not an open session so so so the activities again we're in the process i mean part of it could be maybe we're doing something with uh yoga i mean they try to get um what's it called goat yoga um in uh zumba i don't know if we want the you know little things nibbling on us um but um but we also talked about zumba you know again exactly we're trying to find different ways for kids and again it's a whole idea helping them to find ways to relieve stress you know whether you know obviously it could be there could be food involved although we're not allowed to have food this year but you know some kids listen to music some kids may draw you know everyone has different ways that they deal with stress so that's really the idea behind all of it it's cool anything else all right great stuff thank you thanks guys thanks there's our juliana marley thank you miss reece all right up next we have our student representative report hi ben um it should be up yep there you go just speak into it you should be fine okay so for going back to about or a couple weeks ago when um for the last report um just starting off with some four national merit scholarship semi-finalists so that was prompted by their psat scores that ended up bringing them through the running and now they're semi-finalists so we have sam cotron samita shersat sophia kemp and zane kaiser so just recognition for them and then on top of that um going into different clubs that we have going on right now we these are a few that i'm a part of but of course outside of that there's definitely a bunch going on so there's outdoors club which is currently um we're having meetings and this friday we're going to end up going on a hike which is going to be just right out back in the gursky open space area there um and with that we'll mark the first like day of our scavenger hunt which is going to last a month and that's kind of getting different students to get around town and figure out maybe where it's different parks might be that they haven't been to before because there's definitely a lot throughout town that maybe people don't know about so that's raising awareness about those trails and then outside of outdoors club there's also key club which we're currently getting into the swing of things with planning different volunteer events future teachers of america we've definitely started off with meetings um peer counseling continuing to help out the different students who may be transitioning from middle school um national honor society which we actually had a scrub and grub recently which was kind of like a car wash and bake sale mixed together and we actually were able to raise over twelve hundred dollars which was really helpful and actually according to mrs lazorchek the nhs advisor one of the most successful scrubbing groups she's had in all of her time so definitely people were happy to see faces of students out there doing the car washing and we're definitely very happy with the result sports is also in pretty full swing recently a lot of turnout to the football events especially so students are happy to kind of be back and cheering for bobcats student government is currently holding student elections so for each grade nine through twelfth they're able to run for positions for their student government and we also have this week the club fair so that's an opportunity for students to kind of get around to different clubs that they might may not be familiar with so last year we weren't able really to have something like that in person but this year throughout ilt they can visit the clubs and find out about them and kind of get some information about that and then two other things psats next wednesday for ninth through eleventh graders so that's um kind of gonna i think there's like a change in bell schedule but um that's when the psat is for them and then finally next week is spirit week which will end up um coming to a close on friday with a home the homecoming football game and a pep rally for which again was a little different last year but this year is going to be more normal so which is nice to see any questions on all that all right that was great there's a lot going on yeah thank you thank you next item on our agenda is written correspondence uh jamie clavins and marianne gaffy wrote regarding mass ryan rodinis shannon leyda anna prendi and michelle french wrote regarding quarantine guidelines monique matthews wrote regarding bus issues nicole rogers eve turn your notes on glenn rooney and brianna wrote regarding the september 15th meeting jenna gusto and nicole rogers wrote regarding public comment procedures aaron scalera wrote regarding coven numbers nicholas schmidt wrote regarding meeting minutes and agendas and kim gerardi wrote regarding busting concerns and mitigation strategies okay next item is approval of board minutes i'll move that the board approve the minutes on september 15th and the special meeting on september 29th second okay any edits discussions okay all in favor all right hi okay thank you next item is the superintendent's update all right thanks rosa good evening everyone uh so a piece that i wanted to just start out with at the beginning before i get into the what's officially documented as the superintendent report is just to give a quick update for everybody regarding uh what most people have heard about is the tick tock challenge september was vandalize your school basically and take take trophy pictures of yourself vandalizing the school uh mr blanda and the team uh have been very vigilant about that and are addressing that um and and we thank them for that and and we are certainly not in a position that some of the other schools find themselves in although we are not immune to some of the hijinks and so we're not we're taking a very firm and uh hard stance on that and there's zero tolerance for that kind of vandalism in our school in addition to that october is slap a teacher um month according to tick tock and so we want to make sure that not only our staff and our teachers are well secured and reassured that that is assault and we there's no changes we never never tolerate that kind of behavior ever we haven't had any incidents of anything like that and i have reinforced with the administrative team that anything um and also with our teacher teacher union specifically that anything like that is considered assault an immediate call to the the police and possible arrests and and however they would guide us on that we are not again take a very firm stance with that uh no tolerance for that so i just want to get that out there to make sure everybody's aware that we're taking it very seriously we're well aware of the situation um we we do educate 2 700 children all you know all year long uh we are aware of these social media um challenges and things that come along so we're paying attention all the time to those things um coven numbers wanted to just talk a little bit about covet updates and some figures um are 12 to 17 year olds in the community the vaccination rate is up from around 60 to 65 percent uh over the last few weeks vaccinations for our staff this was important with a uh one of the executive orders from the governor in terms of people probably heard it all over the news with workers and vaccinations and testing and all kinds of things like that uh approximately 95 of our staff is vaccinated and have provided that documentation to human resources in addition to that the others which were hovering around the number 30 that are not vaccinated have the proper documentation and are doing the uh conducting the weekly testing and submitting that to hr so we are at this moment 100 compliant and so i have to thank the staff and hr for all the hard work to make sure that has occurred and to me that's the sentiment of the cooperation in you know in our in our community um i did want to mention that we do have a covet dashboard some people might not be familiar with that and we've been doing that probably since mid-year last year um and each friday we update that with the numbers of staff and students people are coming to numbers and doing that probably since after your last year positive cases with the numbers yeah q all of those were around vaccinations quarantine expectations the executive orders the bus driver shortage that's something that we've had to to deal with and frankly i have to thank allstar and in brookfield while again like the tick tock challenge i mentioned at the beginning while we're not immune to these things we're actually considering the shortage we're actually doing quite well although buses are still late and we acknowledge that we'll continue to work on that and also taking the quarantine change from the 10-day quarantine down to the seven-day quarantine with the test out option so we can get our kids back to school sooner um and and those updates are reflected in the opening plan so we did another update last week for that um some really positive news to keep moving forward on um and jen if you could i think you took a look at those already maybe you could pass those down um first that will do afterwards the the framed ones there so over the last two years because of covid things were slowed down at cave the connecticut association of boards of education congratulations to the board of ed once again recognized and acknowledged for excellence in communication specifically going green district budget flyer and the remote learning website page and that is those were all honorable mentions and then getting near the end here strategic planning wanted to let everybody know that i've been uh in touch with that advance and we've been looking at the calendar and you know timing up our budget discussions last week we had a special meeting we talked about actually the budget calendar and getting input from the community um and the concept of the thought exchange tool and some things we might be able to do not only for the annual budget but thinking for strategic planning and making sure we can get some very efficient input from the community uh quickly as we begin that process in the winter time and then um i will be sending out at the end of the week not a coveted update thankfully but a winter weather advisory update to remind everybody at this time of year um after that october storm about eight or ten years ago we make sure we get it out a little bit extra early reminding families that we want to have a plan in place how the communications will be sent out regarding early dismissals delayed openings cancellations and all of those things and how those decisions are made and who's involved in those and then the final thing is a real shout out to mr renda who was up here tonight uh someone who is uh in the in the region grew up in the region and has been serving gosh for over 25 years here in uh in brookfield as uh as a coach a teacher and ultimately as principal of wisconsin for quite a long time now he was actually recognized and inducted into the greater danbury uh old timers association and so we have a lot of fun with the title old timer for for mr renda he he is a year older than me and i make sure i remind him that often um and uh it's really an honor uh you know for his athletic prowess uh as a young man and all the service he is engaged in our in our area so mr renda congratulations and we're sharing that shirt with the board and that is all i have um sure so i mean i could there's a lot that goes on with it uh certainly the nurses um sometimes secretaries uh and the administration is always involved with it um it's it's really mainly uh when we get the word on a positive case we immediately move right into the seating charts who's that child been near we look at the bus seating charts the classroom seating charts and so forth and that happens quite quickly because when students are close contacts and are possibly infected we don't want them to continue to have further contact with others so just as a matter of fact today i was actually at huckleberry and we found out a call came in while i was in the in the office that a child was positive hadn't been in school in a day or two uh and immediately they went right to work and then from there to answer your questions specifically i i actually heard mrs labrichado say okay we have to get this out and we have to get the calls in right now we have to start making them because we need to get the parents here before the buses roll in so you know i know the effort is there to make that happen um and thankfully it's been reduced over time with the with less in schools infections a long time now and i think some of us on this board would be interested in understanding maybe what some of those impacts have been so do you think you'd be able to gather from nurses and other counseling staff perhaps if students have been significantly complaining about am i sorry am i my cousin yeah so since our students have been wearing a mask for a while is is it possible for you to gather any data regarding um any emotional or medical effects impacts that they may have experienced maybe prior to you know i mean during covid compared to before kovid sure if we're seeing any significant trends just to understand the impact and perhaps you know yeah and able to act on it yeah no i know that the the nurses and the counselors if kids come in and complain they do keep logs um and so we can certainly go to those those folks and take a look at their data ask them to report out that um what the effects could be for sure absolutely so um it might take some time to pull together but i certainly could look into that yeah i think it'd be worth it yeah yeah absolutely okay thank you anybody else questions yeah go ahead jen john how are things going with quarantining and the instructions of students while they're on quarantine like how is how are the systems sort of evolving to meet student needs while they're out so um we put out an update um to the remote learning or we're calling quarantine learning because there technically isn't any remote learning um so because it's for students who are on quarantine um each each principal has actually taken care to develop a specific plan with their their staff for their building so it's not a one size fits all for the district so right now specifically for center school it's been more hard copy materials and actually asynchronous work frankly because of the students age at this moment and working with the teachers and getting everybody trained on google classroom they're just not ready yet and that's been a lot of the feedback that mrs diamond has received although there are zoom opportunities and so forth huckleberry we have had a um zoom sub or zoom teacher if we we call that person and there's an actual synchronous schedule and an asynchronous schedule as well for the day for the kids uh who are quarantined there um and certainly it's as the kids get older and get to wisconsin into the high school they're well versed in google classroom and there is well it's mostly asynchronous there's opportunities to check in with counselors and teachers and so forth uh in that regard so for the there was a rash of quarantines at huckleberry especially but also center school to begin the year it was very difficult for all of us there was some seating chart uh frankly mistakes and things made um you know that were involving the the buses and we've rectified that so there's many many less kids and so when there's less students on quarantine there's opportunity for the staff to have better and more quality interaction with those kids who happen to be out at that time all plans though are subject to evolution over the course of the year so like i said about center school as those kids get older and they're comfortable with their devices certainly there'll be much more opportunity for live interactions and things like that um but being open to the feedback you know we've all been through it parents have been through it kids have been through it for a year there is a stress level with synchronous learning it's not it's not all sunshine and rainbows it's it's very difficult especially with the younger kids um i i have such compassion for our parents of the younger kids because i you know my i had a son in high school and cut and then now in college and another one still in high school very independent it's different at that age than it is for the younger kids you know and it affects work for families it's been very very challenging but i think all in all we're doing we're doing pretty well and obviously the less close contact we have with students who are infected the less quarantine we have to implement and going from the 10 to the seven day with the test out opportunity that's three more days in school so we're doing doing everything we can within the rules to make it work as best we can for our kids and our families anyone else yes i have a quick question have we explored or looked into the busing you know i had brought up before you know in states like massachusetts and new york if all the windows are open it's considered um an outside area and quarantines aren't necessary so i i actually was so i'm sorry joy did you finish i didn't know yeah something else okay so i looked into that that there's no one who's um heard of when the windows are open they should be i mean that makes sense to have them open we all know that ventilation is critically important um and we've asked ken post has worked with deb jones over at allstar to have the bus drivers getting those windows down but it when i inquired about that of the different public health people it's not been considered an outdoor space if the windows are open um there is a national mandate that um can't explain legislatively how it's in that it's actually a mandate but it comes through the cdc and it's for all public transportation including school buses that the the main the mitigation strategy is um mask wearing on the transportation um the windows it's a recommendation that they should be open it's not a have to but i think it makes sense obviously to the toleration of cold and um buses are are able to run at full capacity that's what we've been directed so that's what that's more of a dph role here in connecticut i don't know if that answered everything you asked joy okay could we stay on buses for a second so how short are we on bus drivers right now um ken i'm going to look where's ken about about three or four right now and they're doubling up and you're welcome to come up here ken if that's easier for you this is ken post he's our director of business operations and he works directly with the ms jones in the bus company we're pretty well fully staffed i think the problem it's got to be up again it is okay you got to talk into the microphone yeah so i think we're we're at fully staffed but we don't have any spare drivers so if somebody is out sick or has to quarantine or anything like that or takes a day off for any reason then it's when we have to start juggling runs and and moving people around okay and i think there's two two to three drivers i think in the pipeline correct we're working on and that's a two to three month process once a driver applies and is accepted to be with all-star or any bus company through dmv and other state tests they have to take to become a bus driver so they don't just get a job right away it takes time two to three months is it two it can take up to that long debbie said does all-star pay them give them a salary during that training that i don't know i don't know that but i know dmv we are working with um you know the superintendent organization connected association public school superintendents and the state department of ed and we my group as you know the western connecticut group were very very active at the state and we we lobbied uh very uh firmly at the end of the the summer as we saw this really continuing is that we need some help you know enticing people to become drivers in the whole you know with the shortage and so we've been doing everything we can and i know those two organizations are you know they have the governor's ear and they're working on things dmv is a slow spot and i know it's easy to pick on dmv we we all do when we tease and joke about it but it really is they're trying as i understand it to become more efficient because of the emergency nature of the driver shortage because that hits everybody oh yeah yeah they've gotta they've gotta release that bottleneck but do it in a safe way because we want safe drivers so but so we're kind of at staff and we've got a couple in the pipeline yes yes and so when there's a shortage it's like when there's a combined bus ride it's because a driver was out for the day that's my understanding yes i can verify that but uh that's my understanding okay thank you you're welcome thank you ken uh john i had a question on the seven day uh quarantine so it's i just want to be clear so it's you test on day five negatively you get you come back day seven uh day eight day so seven full days of quarantine seven full days okay yep and you could test on day five six or seven five six or seven yeah any of those days yep and if it comes back if you get it right away it comes back uh negative you're able to come back on day eight and we just ask that the parent bring that documentation in to school nurse and you know they'll go through their intake and get the kids back as fast as we can does that have to be a pcr test or is it as a rapid test acceptance pcr and antigen i believe are the two tests okay and again that's why it's always important our school nurses um have have always been at the skill level they're at in the engagement level with our our parents um but none more than during cobit when all these kinds of questions come in and so i always encourage the parents give the give your child school nurse a call and um they're busy offices but they'll make the time to get back to answer these kinds of questions because it's very confusing for people any other questions okay very interesting thank you thank you all right subcommittee reports facilities okay we met on september 1st we reviewed the school dude reports we focused our attention on the hvac issues and roof leaks we were updated about the water at the middle school we applied for a 90-day extension and it's been granted and the installation began that week of september 1st we got an update on the custodial staff and summer cleaning the buildings look great and the custodial staff is working very well together and communicating really well with each other as well and we're operating at full capacity so it's good news uh we got a capital project update and review the 10-year capital plan the high school boys locker room product project is going back out to bid late fall so with a due date of about january the hvac system is ready to go to pricing we need an rfp for the 198 valves that need to be installed we also discussed the need for an updated building condition study the middle school wall the nbc is now involved and the town is in the process of engaging a structural engineer to find out what exactly needs to be done or if additional restoration work needs to be done we didn't have any updates on the fire marshal inspection or the high school boiler room we discussed floor tiles at the high school the maintenance staff had replaced some floor tiles but we'll need to return to some of that work after they finish performing some maintenance on all the hvac systems we discussed the high school media center air conditioning the rooftop unit has failed and it's time to replace the compressor and the condenser they are not in stock and the lead time is at least 14 weeks we discussed the thermal study that's in the works a contractor performed tests on the section of the roof over the main office in high school to determine the source of a leak and propose a solution and we're waiting for that report and that's it um any questions question about the question about the um the whisk in your wall was there what was going on with that was there anything going on with it over the summer was there like a shortage of so it's kind of uh that work has been halted um because we have to bring in a structural engineer too we're still waiting for them to come in yeah to make sure it's structurally safe and the work that we want to proceed with the best plan moving forward so we need a little more time okay any other questions all right uh cape so on september 8th mike joy and i attended it in lieu of our meeting or as our meeting we attended a presentation at the high school that maureen ruby gave about this amazing grant opportunity that our high school students have maureen was able to secure a a very large grant that allows for our students to participate in an after-school program that includes art studied at the brookfield craft center some exercise and wellness at the ymca as well as government and politics activities through the y as well and uh it was well attended for a nighttime event of parents uh we had a lot of parents interested and engaged um and i think we hope i didn't misspeak i think there was a 60 students we have space for in the grant maureen we had um we have space for 60 and we had over like 80 students uh and parents who were said that they would participate only did our survey that was required for the grant last last spring and we currently have 41 students several of the students who actually signed up have since uh withdrawn and uh we we will take uh new students okay because we have the space okay so that's good to hear so i'm gonna be sending a notice out again um next week but we're trying to actually get the people who signed up to show up okay all right so there's more room and you know what i left out a piece tutoring there's also another piece so it's like free tutoring for the students so it's this really really awesome program so if can i just add the tutoring because sometimes uh folks think that tutoring is a you know like a remedial or negative thing and it's not it could be if people needed help but the tutoring can be anything that a student needs if they've gotten feedback from an english teacher or a history teacher on a paper they can go in and meet with the teacher in these sessions and you know get that work done if they want a quiet place to do homework while they're waiting for sports they can go there and they're all the teachers are also willing to do individualized sat prep work with them so that's and it's it's an amazing opportunity for students and students who are not in the full program can still go to the tutoring after school and mr belanda has made that public you know to the students but you know this is an amazing opportunity after school yeah so so be on the lookout there's a follow-up email to come if you're still interested so we'd really love to as many uh students as possible to take advantage of this great opportunity thank you maureen for securing that funding through the grant and that's it any questions for jen okay finance all right so the finance committee met on september 13th a couple of brief updates uh first of all i've been talking every month for the last uh every meeting about how our year end last year ended the final numbers are 76 better than budget which is very well received by the town that will go back to the fund balance and i will say in the budget that's four hundred thousand dollars of covet related spending that was absorbed and it was offset by 481 000 of underruns the biggest drivers of which were special education transportation because people we weren't actually transporting kids right and and we had other runs and some staffing costs so it was good news all around we talked about the current year budget and it is very early in the current year budget as you can imagine we have some risks in special education costs already that's been something we've talked about as a board consistently and we had mrs wagoner come talk to us about that um but our staffing replacement savings that we always build in our budgets coming in a little better than expected so we agreed that we would monitor these two items over the next couple of months to see how they're tracking we did have a discussion on the arp esser grant and the need to have a half of an occupational therapist we went through it with mrs zygonic the student needs that led to the decision and we agreed to support that uh ken did we did we find out whether this board needs to vote on that or not that was the follow-up yeah we do need to vote on it okay so we'll have that on the agenda at the right time correct so we'll have that come back at a at probably our next meeting um we are in the process of doing uh discussing buses right and the bus our bus contract ends it's an awkward time to be negotiating a new bus contract both because of covid but also because we're having significant changes next year so we're actually looking at a one-year extension of the existing contract under some controlled conditions so uh mr post will come back and talk us through that in more detail he had some homework to go do to look at the options there uh the uh we got 123 thousand dollars idea grant preliminary plans to use that for a social worker a half a social worker and the rest on yet defined and they but we we can't commit that yet because we hadn't gone through the training yet that's still kind of in development we went through the budget calendar which we reviewed at our last special meeting and that's been approved now and the rest was starting to talk about the budgets that's coming up and of course the biggest single item in next year's budget is going to be our transition right we have a very significant transition to a new school and that will have some cost to it and there'll be a lot of timing questions about when we move into the different schools and or have center come in and huckleberry come in and the whisk and here kids could be moved into the new school so there's a lot that'll all come out in the budget process as we uh move forward and that's it i'll take any questions i have a question i see in the notes this has some facility issues at the high school that could impact the budget for the special education costs yeah we actually just talked about the items that you reported in the uh in the facilities committee he was just informing us okay so there was no reason to repeat that here so any other questions all right policy okay uh the policy committee met on september 15th and um we we reviewed the face mask policy that we adopted from in november of 2020 to make sure it's up to date and we all agreed that it is compliant so we have no changes to that policy at this time we just wanted to review it take another look and make sure that no changes were needed we also took a look at the bullying policy because in july of 2021 july of this year there were changes to the definition of bullying public act 19-166 which is called an act concerning school climate went into effect which changes the wording in the definition of bullying from pertaining just to a student to now pertaining to an individual so the bullying policy will now encompass bullying between adult to student student to adult and adult to adult and our current policy is not written that way so um we're waiting for guidance from cabe and our board attorney to you know advise us how to make changes to that policy but um you know it was just a heads up that we need it's going to be coming down the pike um the other main thing that we discussed was the k policy audit that took place over the summer and we have that as an agenda item later so i'll go into more detail about that and the last thing we talked about was under communications with the new school opening up soon we there's lots of development happening lots of great progress being made so we talked about the need for more frequent communications and maybe some in-person meetings where people from the community will get to really share in the progress see some um maybe video or photographs um see you know everything that's happening in terms of the interior of the school and the outside of school so we really want to engage the community and and share the progress that you know we're very excited about so that's all going to be coming in the next few months okay deb might i be able to just add something about that because you know it's really great conversation and um one of the things and we'll talk about when we get the candle with lake but um once we talk about the transition plan formally with a presentation in early november at a regular board meeting um we're we'll try to stay on a pace at each board meeting to do a little sharing and an update uh whether it's personnel or to your point maybe it's just a photo montage and just to talk it through some of the things that are going on um and there's just a lot of excitement out there i did send out we sent out a school message probably two weeks ago with um and supposed to be posted on facebook and everything else but it was just a little video that showed the drone pictures going over the uh over the construction you can really see everything coming together so um but but to the point of the committee and the thoughts we have going forward you know it's important to open up the school year and get things rolling and as we start talking about next year in strategic planning and the transition that's really going to take the lion's share of certainly my time and board's time to make sure we do that right um and we're looking forward to that so that'll just be fun it really will be it's a lot of positive news for the students and for the for the community so thank you deb yep any other questions for debbie okay um up next is our consent agenda i will know that the board approves the items on the consent agenda which are new hires resignations transfers all right okay moving on to new business we have um the sub the policy and communications subcommittee cave audit recommendation so do we have an update on that debbie yep i do that's not emotional okay sorry okay possibly so as i mentioned earlier we got back this very comprehensive report from cabe this is our policy audit that we engaged cape to do over the summer it was a very favorable report they said overall we're in very good shape we really did a lot of work in the past five to six years and i just wanted to share a quote from the summary of the report they said it is obvious from the analysis that the school system gave more attention to the adoption and or revision of policies in the last five school years beginning with the 2016-2017 school year during this last five school year period 56 policies were adopted representing 16.1 percent of the manual in this same time period 36 policies and bylaws were revised this is a desirable trend to witness representing additional board attention to its policy responsibilities we've reviewed a total of 149 policies in the last five or six years and a total of 165 revisions so it's been a lot of work um so this audit really looked to identify policies that uh we could keep the current language or identify policies that needed to be modified or replaced or identify policies that are mandated by statute or recommended by cave cabe and we don't have so what they found was that first of all they mentioned that a large portion of our policies 45 percent was originally adopted in the late 1980s or early 90s so our policies are quite old however the majority are appropriate as written but there were 43 policy areas recommended by cabe that are missing or you know that they they suggest that we add and mandated policies are missing wow so um they they did provide us with a ton of detail if you look at the report there are a lot of charts and spreadsheets in here that outline specifically which policies or regulations need modifying and to what extent you know it's a very interesting report but it's also a lot of work so these 43 areas that they suggest we have these are areas not policies so there are policies within those areas yeah sorry um let me see if i could deb while you're looking for that so what's important to understand about it is by series so you know we have the nine series essentially the zeros through the nine thousands they the dr um star dr mastar of the cave sets up a grid kind of a timeline of what we need to move on and where we're okay um and so we could then schedule the work as a committee going forward over the next couple of years um this this is this audit in adopting either shipment in goodwin which is a leading law firm and they have a service in connecticut or the cabe service was something early on in my tenure here we talked about with a policy committee early on and i have to thank all the policy committee members over the years because clearly we've done a ton of work um but we all knew and we used to we used to jest about some of the the former younger board members that the policies were actually older than those board members um so we we understand the critical nature of it the decision at the time of those those earlier committees was to not um invest in a cave or other uh entity to come in and give us a hand and help support us um you'll in the in the possible motion that's that's here the action is to discuss that as well and i think that deb certainly can can talk to that because we need all the support we can get um just talking with attorney murphy today on a different uh employee matter i asked him about the audit he had taken a quick look and said well you thought it was very comprehensive for the two thousand dollar investment that it was for three months of work for them to produce that that report um he said you know a heavy-duty policy that he needs to invest in given you know the billable hours he has can cost you up to three thousand dollars he said you you don't want me looking at these policies you want to go with a firm that already has a plan in place and can can do this in a much more efficient way so the mandated policies that are missing include reporting transportation safety complaints food services personnel code of conduct title ix under personnel evaluation and employment of coaches physical exercise and discipline of students title ix relating to students um surveys of students and student privacy alcohol drugs tobacco use and possession on school property preschool students with disabilities alternate education programs so so um cabe does have these policies written right that would be easier for us to review and adopt right so i mean i would suggest we move quickly on the ones that are mandated yeah right i think it's important to rose i agree with you wholeheartedly i think it's important for folks to remember too that um we are subject to state law as as we all know we're all wearing masks right now right um so we have to follow state laws so regardless of our policy we're subject to state law so so we still have to adhere and we do yeah um it's the pace at which we have a volunteer board how how quickly can we turn this around clearly we've done a lot of work um but having the services of cabe to not only give us this report but what debbie's going to present uh as kind of the culmination of a report tonight i think is is really the direction the board needs to go yeah john also some of these policies will affect other policies so it's it gets it gets into a tangle message we just say okay there's a doc malt and then it's sort of like yeah yeah it's sort of like a web like when you when you it has references to other policies right exactly this one could be related to seven other policies and then you have to dig through and find okay if i change the definition of bullying on this i have to change it on the bus or for example mike i'm so glad you brought this point up because you have you know there's that title nine reference right there there's other title nine policies but one you know so those are the ones we don't we've got the other ones so it's it really is um and again we have to follow federal and state law which we do um and we're subject to that so um it's critical to get the policies up to date that's one of the critical functions of the board of education um and so that's why we're talking about it it's a big deal yeah by the way just as a reference if you go into the package that we all received at the end of each section they list the mandated policies lacking and the recommended good practice policies lacking there's actually nice little listings in each section of our policy manual so there's a summary of the missing mandated policies on page five okay so they included three options for us um to consider the first one is cabe's customized policy service and this gives us a totally new policy manual cable review all our policies for compliance to federal and state statutes and regulations also review all bargaining unit agreements and things like student and personnel handbooks and any other relevant materials they will then update all policies and um they will revise and update all the codification and that includes an electronic copy of the new policy manual for future updates you know for us to do on our own so that's a total comprehensive overhaul of all our policies and that cost is ten thousand eight hundred dollars and we have they've offered us two options to i mean could pay it all at one time but they also said we could spread it over two years at fifty four hundred dollars per year or three years at thirty six hundred dollars per year so that's option one option two is to maintain the current manual and cabe only does revisions to the mandated policies and then they would provide us with a sort of a sampling of revisions to or sampling of the policies that they recommend or that they recommend that we revisit and then we would sort of see where you know what they're suggesting and the guidance they're providing and then we would make the additional changes ourselves and we would do all the codification in-house they would provide us with a first draft we would have to go through our normal process of presenting it to the board getting comments making revisions and do that part of it on our own so the total for that option is five thousand four hundred dollars and again they offer that we could spread that out over two years at twenty seven hundred each year the third option which cabe was very honest with us in saying they really don't recommend it and they have not seen very good results but it's an option is for us to purchase a cd of the connecticut reference manual of school board policies and that comes with 450 examples of policies and we would basically use that to continue the work that we've been doing as we can tackle each policy and then using their audit recommendations as a guide and chip away at it sort of one by one and the cost for that cd is four hundred dollars so we had a lengthy discussion and we reviewed you know their charts and some of their suggestions and um i think mike and amy and i were all in agreement that we thought that the number one option the customized policy service made the most sense and that we would recommend adopting that and spreading it over three years at 3 600 per year but of course we want to open it up for discussion and get everybody else's feedback what did the committee feel was the primary draw towards that option um uh legal legal stuff so as far as it was told me that legal protection for the school district was better preserved on the first option than leading us like what we were doing on technically like across between option three and option two uh left us open to you know policies one policy saying one thing and then having them you know cross each other out and then yeah very inconsistent policy so it was for me it was mostly like a legal argument exposure time i would say too we can get this done over three years where it would take us doing it on our own a lot longer and i think there's a way to do it all over again there's also the piece that if things change right john during the policies change during that three years they will keep that updated as well so if there's a new policy that comes in that will get rolled in as well and the overall cost of 3 600 per year over the so it's just those three is it just those three years that they make those updates okay that's the initial and then you know even if you paid it as like a long summer it's like a three-year window um i i think i don't know that they'd be able to do this um i know we would not be able to do this given right you know 10 to 11 maximum policy meetings per year when you look at one meeting a month in a volunteer organization yeah it takes three months just to get one policy approved um the pace is just designed to be a snail's pace um and and frankly i'll be very candid we have to thank mrs grambling for all of her work uh the the board secretary and my assistant um there there isn't any office capacity to you know to move any faster than we do we move as fast as we can um the the day goes by and um you try to do this we got a i would say quite a positive report but i heard a collective gasp when people heard you know that some mandated policies aren't there yeah um again i must reiterate this is something we discussed early on in my tenure and you know because of budget concerns and we weren't frankly in the position we're in now with really uh as a board as a board of finance and board of selectmen trusting what the education budget was seven years ago it's a very different context now so there was reluctance um to spend some money on an outside agency to come in and support but given our track record um of frankly just moving at this slow pace although very positive and thanking not only the current policy committee has done a ton of work on this and lisa in the past members who put all kinds of work and time into this it just doesn't get done fast enough the capacity is an issue we need that outside help to be very honest and they're experts at it why should we reinvent the wheel and frankly i purposely mentioned the cost of our board attorney um in the billable hours there i mean that makes no sense to be constantly checking is this the right way to go when the folks have vetted these policies up at cape with with the you know their legal team up there done for us so while it still has to go through the process proper process of approval i think this is the way to go um i really think it's a bargain frankly to get us to make sure we're up to speed and we stay up to date on everything i also feel like um i don't know john if you notice this or anybody else on the committee but i feel like in the last year or two things have changed very rapidly and and all of a sudden it's like oh we got to update the mask policy we have to update the bullying policy we have to update the therapy dog policy like things that it's not keeping up yeah you know that everything in like in our environment in our society is happening quickly which is resulting in things that we didn't you know expect to have to revise at this point and that's happening at the same time that our district is dealing with a lot of communication issues as well so we have the new school opening we have the school start time changes so as a committee you know there's just kind of a lot of moving parts and i think it's going to be difficult to manage all these revisions and changes at the pace that we would like to or that's necessary especially for the mandated ones and i think if it gives the board some comfort you know i think bethel and several of the districts in the area and many many districts in the state take advantage of this uh service so this isn't something you know new and nouveau that we're trying to to go with this is something we've been been available to us for years and so neighboring districts have availed themselves with this as well so i think it's tried and true process i think it's something worthy of investment okay [Music] i would i would just say we probably 95 of the policies we deal with it's relatively easy for us to look at what cave has and recommends and say that's applicable right they write very good policies um we have to be careful on the last five percent because we're not a cookie cutter uh the school district we're brookfield and so i just think we have to guard against being complacent and just saying okay they gave it to us let's go we have to read them look at them make sure they're pertinent to our environment so but man 3 600 a year for that level of a service man i'd keep it going that's the deal of the century um speaking of this is that what you would be if we approve this that would be going into the budget for next year going to budget for next year and then we could have a conversation because we have some things when i was listening to bob's finance report there's there's been some news and some homework completed that we want to share on monday at the you know the next finance committee meeting so this is something we also wanted if there's room to do it this year would we uh would we start it this year i i think it's it's yeah we should seriously consider it okay yeah so do you would you like a motion i i think that'd be great okay motion for the lump sum are we doing the 36 for three years 36 yeah yeah um okay so uh i move that the board approve the option presented by cabe as recommended by the policy subcommittee do we need the amount yes in the amount of 3 600 across three years beginning well if possible beginning if possible um during this year the the 21-22 school year um but no later than the 22-23 school year all in favor all right all right that's bananas good job okay we have no old business so we are on to the candlewood lake elementary school building project just a few um kind of exciting updates for them we're getting it into the nuts and bolts of the project now but um the foundation for the gym wall is the next thing that you're going to see going up and hopefully the roofing starting by the end of this month the gas line is going in and all of the exterior finishes and materials have been selected and they are gearing up for design and development on the interior so uh the other thing is the ffne yes and actually maybe you can touch on some of that some of the meetings that have been going on yeah so we've had a couple of meetings over the last month and a half um where ff e stands for furniture furniture fixtures equipment and we have a number of our user groups in classroom teachers ot special education et cetera administrative team um to look at the kind of the choice furniture selection that techdon and the mbc shared with us and uh we're able to narrow things down and make some selections on uh function and advise on color and you know how how things are going to work in those classrooms so it was really exciting for that eric our tech director is starting to work directly um with uh techton on all the technology that's going to be uh in that building as well as communication system and parlaying the phone system um at the new school with upgrades to the phone system in the whole district and we've had some discussions over the years about that so we've got we've got some really good plans going on there very exciting um the other piece is that on november 2nd which is the professional development day we're very excited um both mrs lavroshano mrs diamond and dr ruby and and many others are putting together a day where all pre-k to five uh faculty will be together to begin team building and think thinking and revisiting the developmental um continuum of kids pre-k through five and being in the same building and what that'll look like and um although just all that exciting stuff as well as over the course of the year starting to think about different committees where we can have you know committees that across grade level that haven't really worked together uh over the the last number of years and so start working together and start gelling as a team so we're excited about that pre-work that's going in um i will be sharing on november 3rd um an overview presentation we originally had we're looking at the the second meeting in october but we're waiting on some information and schedule information supply chain information from the nbc and omg um so i want to be as accurate as i can in my presentation and discuss the transition plan going forward we'll do that on november 3rd which is our november board meeting and then on december 1st i can't believe we're talking about this but it's a budget again presenting the budget for next year and in that presentation talking about those puts and takes and changes and needs for personnel which is which is a big piece and it's always a um sometimes a bittersweet time of year because you know sometimes you you move some personnel or transfer some people that maybe didn't expect to and um you know that's the time you know folks find out about those things so but we plan well in advance and we have the opportunity to really be intentional um about the timing of everything we have going forward so hopefully things continue to go smoothly with the project all right any other questions about that okay let's just keep urging everybody to swing by after school hours and take a look at it it's fun to watch all right three main points i was thinking that we would um talk about the whiskaner spotlight and i thought there was a lot covered in dr barrill's superintendent's report about kovid and quarantines and busing and so i think we should share some of that information and then i think the new school update was yeah important unless you want to talk about the cable yeah we could do that too it's not glamorous it's not glamorous but um deb can we sneak in a plug for that um after school high school program yes yes just to kind of make sure people realize there's still space for that sure okay all right so what what are our three main points whiskener spotlight covet update and the after school grant yep i think that's right yep all right upcoming events okay all schools are closed on monday october 11th at center school there's a pto meeting on tuesday october 12th at 7 pm huckleberry has picture day tomorrow the huffleberry hustle fundraiser kicks off on tuesday october 12th and the virtual book fair begins monday october 18th and there's a meeting wednesday october 20th at 6 pm at whiskey near the walk-a-thon is tomorrow there's the pto meeting wednesday october 20th at 9 15 a.m and at brookfield high school as ben mentioned the psat for 9th 10th and 11th graders is next wednesday october 13th and it's also spirit week and friday october 15th is the homecoming football game amy i had one other thing yeah october 11th um that is uh is columbus day that is a day off of school for students um administrative team um many other folks faculty are working as a professional development day so just want to let everybody know that we'll be working on that day students have off so we can have that pd all right uh the next item is public comment so um just wanted to remind everybody that um we are going to hold for our three minute per speaker allotment we have these visual timers here and we will give you a warning when your time is up we just ask that you please respect this time we would like everybody that's here to sign up to be able to speak and thank you for hanging out and watching the rest of our meeting so um the first person who is signed up is igna stepney app good evening today i'm speaking to you oh just uh name and address please oh i'm sorry that's okay agastepnea 38 short oak drive today i'm speaking to you as someone who at the age of six lived through two years of martial laws and as a teenager witnessed the fall of berlin wall what is happening in our country right now is unprecedented and needs to be eradicated deadly and unconstitutional vaccine mandates mass squaring critical race theory program push down our children's throats are tools that are being used to control the order in which the society operates none of this is about the virus or saving one li one child's life as mr dunn or governor lamance has been preaching to us for months now we can all agree that connecticut is one of the most vaccinated states in the country have you seen any relief and protocols or and we have not instead we are experiencing more control more division between between vaccinated and those unvaccinated on more deadly unconstitutional mandates every day we do risk benefit analysis and in it is my view the risk of the vaccines outweighed the benefit every day the media and the government officials deliberately covered the side effects of the vaccines and now are trying to shove the vaccines on our children same with mask squaring we don't know what the long-term effects of the vaccines are but we are start we start seeing an increase in reoccurrence of cancers new cancers people having major issues with their hearts long-term mass squaring contributes to the development of bacteria in your lungs we know from history the majority of deaths during the influenza pandemic was not caused by the influenza virus acting alone instead most victims died to the bacterial pneumonia following the influenza virus infection i know people who wore masks and still got covered and i p and i know people who rushed to get their vaccines and now have to wear heart monitors i will find out in december if i will have to undergo another cancer treatment i say you want to wear a mask or put one on your child go ahead you want to get the vaccine or have your child vaccinated go right ahead that is your right but do not trend on me as in a social contract we agree to follow certain rules and we we give up bare minimum of our rights and liberties but nowhere in the social in that contract we give up the right as to what enters our bodies as a matter of two girls and as long as i am alive i will not let you touch my children with your illegal testing your vaccinations and everything that comes with it this is this is no longer a pandemic dishonesty of our government officials health officials and griezmann you're at three minutes so please finish is slowly eating our freedoms thank you jerry hoppa oh ha good thank you you can step up yeah go ahead yeah jerry hopper 14 cottontail lane my husband and i have lived in brookfield since 1972 with the exception of a few years when we lived in milford and i'm just here to apologize for what happened at the board meeting the last time i viewed it on youtube and i was appalled at the way you were all spoken to no one deserves to be spoken like that and so i i want to offer my apologies and i'm sorry for you and i'm sorry it happened in brookfield thank you okay um lisa i'm sorry i don't know thank you hi lisa zolbrecht 16 half brook road um actually i don't think i could say it better than our first speaker if the mass are working we shouldn't need to quarantine any of the students secondly i'm going to be quick still haven't heard anything about ieps and how students with ieps are going to be addressed and serviced and that leads me to believe that students who are quarantined with an iep are not being serviced there is a legal mandate that the district is required to serve as students with ieps and therefore if they are not being serviced that means the district is out of compliance um i'd like to hear something this is probably about the fourth month in a row that i've asked for some kind of information regarding how students with ieps will be addressed if they are unfortunately in quarantine thank you all right we have no one else signed up for public comment so without objection these meetings adjourn thank you to all the speakers by the way yeah sorry

onset just a little housekeeping measure there are some other board members on the call which is awesome um i just wanna for the dialogue tonight i just want to just make sure that we're starting with the committee members first i'd love to get other people involved if they'd like to speak but just want to make sure that whenever we start talking we're going to start with the committee members first and see how the discussion goes from there so mr walleston superintendent walleston i will i'll hand the football off to you to start thank you thank you thank you mr britton so i will share the screen share the agenda and good evening again everyone so john being the rookie that he is was planning to go home for the meeting for the sights and facilities meeting and because he loves it here so much already decided there's no way i'm going to make it home and so him and i both are in our office conducting a meeting tonight um so we have a small agenda but but heavy and so the first item um is review request for elementary middle school expansion and then the second one is a solar panel installation update i've asked john stang our new chief finance officer to join us this evening and then also our director of facilities mr richard jobert who has been busy busy busy these last two months like no other um and uh the solar panel installation update i just want to remind the board and the committee that at our last board meeting you might recall we had a motion to approve the solar panel update at our king street intermediate school we ended up pulling the motion because of what we had learned from the state in terms of their requirements for the solar panel installation a couple of days after that meeting there was considerable discussion and dialogue about that the project itself had not been totally shut down we continued to get mixed messages i had asked rich to help pull the the different constituents to the table so we spoke to state representatives we spoke to the city again and then of course johnson's controls as well to make a long story short what we will do is continue to do what we've been asked to do and that is get all the necessary paperwork submitted to the state which includes a motion from the city and the board of ed and then hand this over to the state in a way for the state then to make the decision um i think rich and i both have some concerns if this thing is gonna if the actual project is gonna go through uh we had heard and learned uh that the the age of the roofs was to be no more than five four or five years to be considered um and i think he was just updated recently i think in the last couple of hours uh with the true age where our roofs are so we we will see if it's going to be approved um but i i've actually switched to join us to give give us a more thorough comprehensive update so i um my fellow red sox fan i've cleared away for you uh good good evening everyone uh yes so our initial review uh the initial phone call i got from the representative from the state department of construction grant the information he gave me that was that we would not be reimbursed for any solar projects unless the roof was less than a year old and he told me that he was going to deny all the projects so at that time it sounded like none of this was gonna get improved so uh since that call i received another phone call from another person in that department and they were much more amenable to uh reviewing the projects and potentially making a commitment for uh i think our reimbursement rate is 63 percent so for a total of a 13 million dollar project we would be getting reimbursed by the state uh eight million dollars um and and the change in information was that um we would we would uh be able to get reimbursed provided that there was uh special protection involved in the installation of the solar panels which uh johnson controls has assured us that they would do and the only uh the only uh i'm sorry i'm getting phone calls on my other call so at this point i don't think we have anything to lose really um you know there's there's no money at stake on our side uh from johnson controls i'm gonna i'm gonna work with sean hanley to get the actual ages of of the roofs and submit that to the state there's a few other things they've requested um and the worst they could say is is no but you know we stand a chance of getting an 8 million reimbursement um and the not to mention the uh the energy we would save on the solar panels thank you rich uh for the update um i have a question if there any questions yep i have a question rich um who is the second phone call from is it higher up than the first phone call or i mean who did you talk to first the custodian or you know uh no well that that's what's sort of confusing uh it was more confusing i was more or less told that that no doesn't mean no unless i hear that from the director of the department or the assistant director of the department um so the first person i spoke to was knowing that now yeah knowing that now if if i ever run into that situation i'm going to call the assistant director and say okay what can we do here to work this out okay okay thank you you're welcome joe i don't know if there are any other questions on that i was yeah i was just flipping through the screen to see if anybody might have their hand up but i didn't see anybody i'm i'm good okay okay and rich do you have anything else on the panels or do you feel like we're good as i had um initially had described with the motion and um and then handing this over to the state uh for the review because right now they don't have the entire packet to review yeah i would i would recommend going forward with it um one one of the uh items that the state was looking for was a project development agreement and the project construction agreement a few of these items we wouldn't actually really have until after the state committed to the the project so um i'm going to communicate with them to to ensure them and it and i believe it protects us and the city of danbury that there's no financial commitment on our part until we get some kind of commitment from the state i i have one other question where is antonio on on where we are with this where is he in the loop um i've been keeping antonio in the in the loop um and i actually uh had a meeting with johnson controls yesterday regarding this and to to keep the project as clean as possible what we would discuss was on on the board of ed side regarding the reimbursement for to have one contact per person or one point person um so i would be the point person for for that and then sean hanley of public buildings would be the operational uh point person once the project gets approved rich yes so excuse my ignorance but 13 million the state will give us eight which cost us five which budget does that that five million dollars come out in our in our initial ad hoc the ad hoc meeting for at the city of danbury i believe the city of danbury finance department is is leasing the money towards the project so that it doesn't actually come out of the board of vet budget okay so it'll be coming out of capital improvement or a bond yes okay thank you from the city mr russo um we're actually submitting the grant really on behalf of the city um because we occupy the schools but the city owns the schools so we're really submitting the grant on their behalf understood listen thank you i'm good anybody else all right kevin if you have anything else on the solar panels i think we could move on great thank you so much okay so we will make sure that i think everyone should expect to see that motion in the friday packet for the next board meeting next week and i will provide any additional information that i can um in just an event any of the board members have any questions so the the next item is review requests for elementary and middle school expansion i know it's been a while since we have talked about numbers in the district i'm sorry we've talked about enrollment numbers in the district but i i thought i'd take the opportunity to just kind of review our data and our enrollment over the last number of years and then speak to some of the projections from the demographers and see um if the board had an appetite to move further and um investigate further so just give me one second let's see if i can find this page here i think this might be a little helpful for everyone to just tell the story so the demographer they they do their own study um here are the hard numbers october 1 numbers that we submit to the state i'm sorry can you see this my document is saying that your screen sharing is paused yeah we're looking at the agenda okay now it's gone is this working there you go okay great and so what what you are looking at is um public information public enrolled school enrollment by district and this is a trend data report which will share which will show to you our data our enrollment by every school throughout the district over the last six years and of course we will have an update on the 2122 data for you next week and the you might recall the school year which is when we had the bump in enrollment and that is this number here of course we kind of froze if you will uh during the pandemic second half the pandemic in the pandemic here getting down to 11 8 but i thought it was important to show the board in the community on the numbers over the last six years and the growth that we've experienced um in the last six years so you'll see the closer and hovering around 11 000 and we've continued to get closer and closer to 12 000 um in the last two to three years and the projections across the district at least the high projections um across the district they are seeing us and there were two there was a study done and there was an updated study done where we actually flatlined a little bit because they did that last study during the pandemic so give me one second during the pandemic and so the the um the demographers they did a low medium and high projection for us and so i'm just going to read from the medium projection uh that they had for us and so we will see here we have a 834 and so that's the number that's actually in our projection they projected twelve thousand one hundred and thirty six and twenty one twenty two school year um of course this was pre-pandemic and so not being aware of those interruptions um twelve thousand three hundred and twenty-five i mean 22-23 and then 23-24 growing up to 12 385.

okay good evening ladies and gentlemen welcome to the october 6th special meeting of chico unified school district board of education we'll start with the pledge of allegiance if you could stand please i pledge allegiance thank you okay the next item is announcements are there any announcements seeing none um we'll move on to our consent calendar is there an item on the consent calendar that anyone needs to pull and to address later i'd like to pull item 3.3.1 any others okay then we'll we'll move to um all of the items on the consent calendar with the exception of that last one um all those in favor um by book oh i'm sorry we do need a motion in a second thank you all second thank you okay by voice vote all those in favor ms dalby dolby aye robinson i okay because um we don't have our other two members yet they are expected through the door any minute we will delay that last consent item until another member arrives okay uh our next item is the discussion action calendar educational services i believe mr marchant is presenting tonight thank you miss robinson tonight is our board workshop under if i could get somebody to pull up the presentation our two board liaisons for our our board workshop for systems of student support in this usd learning and recovery um we're caitlin dalby and president eileen robinson at this time i'm going to call up christy and chase to come on up and introduce yourself their job and go over the first slide which is the multi-tier system of supports or mtss i am a teacher on special assignment working with christie and the mtss program um mtss stands for multi-tiered system of supports and when we think about these supports we're looking at the whole child we're looking at the academic needs the social emotional learning needs of our students as well as the behavioral needs and tonight you'll hear from staff who will share how they support students at their site or the sites at which they work in those three areas their academic social emotional and behavioral needs and one of the major goals that we have for chico unified with the mtss program is we're looking to create or not so much create but make uniform the interventions and the supports that we have for those three things site-wide on every site in chico unified so that we can create a place where like it doesn't matter which student goes to which site the similar support services are going to be there they're going to be identifiable and they're going to be able to attain those things and the big driver here too is using data for all those decision making things whether it's collecting data on who needs a sel support and academic support or behavior support so once again mtss stands for multi-tiered system of support and this graphic shows the different tiers when we think about the supports that are being provided to the students at our sites all students receive academic behavioral and social emotional supports at our sites we know some students based on data as chase mentioned will will need additional supports and so they are in that some students category and then some students will even need additional intensive support for academic behavioral or social emotional needs and so tonight you're going to hear from our positive behavior intervention and supports lead in the district as well as a student from chico junior about how the pbis structures on a school campus can really support the social emotional and behavioral needs of the whole student body you're going to hear from our two special two of our special education coordinators and counselors about the social emotional supports that are provided on a school campus and then you're also going to hear from one of our elementary reading teachers about the reading support she's able to provide at her elementary school site this year as well as two chico high teachers and students and about the academic courses specifically career and tech technical education courses that are available to students especially with the change in their schedule for this year thank you so academic supports lcap goal number one provide academic instruction and interventions to ensure students learning and high achievement for each and every student some of the highlights we have under that elementary is our full-time reading teachers our reading pals extra time to support reading groups and before and after school tutoring at this time i would like to bring up one of our reading teachers i'm jennifer denzel from shasta elementary to talk about the program hi my name is jenn denzel and like jay said i'm a reading teacher at shasta elementary as a reading teacher i offer tier three small group reading instruction to 22 first and second graders who have yet to meet their grade level benchmarks in reading so what do i do so our small groups meet every day monday through friday 25 to 30 minutes each session for these groups i've set specific reading goals for each student based on diagnostic reading assessment data and then i designed targeted lessons to help each student meet their goals as quickly as possible so in every lesson if ever you came to watch me you'd see lessons infinite or skills being taught such as phonemic awareness phonics decoding and spelling and each of these are explicitly taught and then practiced to the point of mastery having a reading teacher at shasta has been a game changer for our site i can't express it enough it's like um it's like how it's been dry for forever and then today it just sprinkles a little bit and you feel this sense of hope like yes we needed this um research tells us that students who are behind in reading by the end of first grade will not catch up unless they are given targeted skillful intervention and as early as possible and i can say this year that because of our tier one team and the extra support of some newly hired reading intervention aides and also myself being full-time this is the first year that i can say with confidence that every single first grader and a second grader at shasta's school who is performing below reading expectations will get the opportunity to get reading intervention this year so i can't tell you how grateful i am to have this position and to be able to share that good news with you and to know that there's a reading teacher not just at shasta but at every elementary school site just brings me great hope so thank you for giving me the chance to share thank you for being here tonight i appreciate it some of the other highlights we want to talk about is our foster homeless and youth teacher on special assignment that's jamie mclaughlin she's in our audience today there she is you guys met her last um last board meeting and she again helped support academics and getting what our foster and our homeless students need to make to be successful also i want to talk about secondary marsh after school program chico high block schedule and pleasant valley zero and seventh period are some of the other highlights that we have at the secondary academic supports but at this time i'm going to bring up uh two chico high teachers um ronnie and lindsay if they can come up and talk about the positives of the block schedule and if they want to bring up their students too that'd be great and introduce their students good evening you guys my name is lindsey swickert i am one of the agriculture teachers at chico high school and today i have hailey christopher and jacob fairbanks as well as ronnie cockrell so i'm going to have the students go ahead and talk first and then i can answer questions and ronnie and i will also add a few other things in there haley you want to go first sure you got this i promise hi i'm hayley christopher i am a senior at chico high i'm also part of the agricultural pathway i personally really enjoy this block schedule that was created because personally my first two years of chico high there were a lot of classes that i wanted to take but there's also a lot of required ones that we have to do and looking back especially as a senior about to move on you know i do wish i was able to take those classes and i'm very happy that with these added classes and at a time that i'm able to take more electives and classes that may pertain to my future goals and i also enjoy the also possible extra time for the older upperclassmen so we are able to take other [Music] opportunities like i am doing butte college classes right now and i'm still able to do that while with my schedule thank you good afternoon my name is jacob fairbanks i'm also a senior at chico high and i'm part of the agriculture program i spend a lot of time in the welding department with ronnie so block schedule also helps out with working on projects so we have a lot of times setting up our machines and taking down cleaning up just to keep that uh welding environment safe so uh that also uh is a good thing with the block schedule another thing i have a work a full-time job at a our local bike shop so that kind of helps you know bring in some money for uh odds and ends and uh yeah so thank you so yes thank you madam president so you work a full-time job uh yeah i put in just about 72 hours in two weeks wow that's very impressive and you're able to keep up with your studies doing that yep you're taking a normal class load i am not i have six classes so with the block schedule you can take four each day so i have two free periods one is work experience so that also helps me give get those extra hours with a without a normal work permit a normal work permit is about 25 hours a week so that also kind of helps well that's awesome thank you for your contributions to you know our economy and in your own education and that's just really impressive thank you so just a couple more things about the block schedule we have the opportunity now also to take the students out into the field so for example here on thursday and friday we're actually going to be taking students out to our henshaw pumpkin patch or horticulture classes and they'll be able to work out there and it's nice because they don't have to miss their other classes with the block schedule in addition with the added electives our program went from 375 students prior to the block schedule and now we're at 630 with the ffa program we even hired a fourth ag teacher because of that and so it's been a huge help for those students to have that on like hands-on programs yes mr tennis thank you madam president i'll try not to make this meeting all about me um that henshaw pumpkin thing is so cool um i've got four young kids uh 13 and on down to three and a half and and man it is just the most fun thing to go out there and pick out pumpkins so um if anybody out there in our massive um you know internet audience doesn't know about the pumpkin farm on henshaw check it out yeah hello ronnie cockrell here um i just wanted to also reiterate we went from me teaching five periods of welding to now where we have eight periods of welding that are being offered because it got it had grown so much that kids weren't able to get in prior to the schedule now and so now that we have the block schedule our welding shop now is eight periods solid which is a huge you know benefit for these kids that weren't able to get in because it just didn't allow them the schedule before was like i tried to get in my freshman year or my sophomore year and then i'm getting welding one kids as juniors and seniors which that's kind of a lower level class so it's been really nice to have four periods of welding one two periods of welding two and then an advanced capstone class to go on top of that so it has been just remarkable to have that that kind of growth in in the welding program and on top of that having the 90-minute block schedule it has really opened up so much for us as instructors to be able to lengthen the lesson a little bit to where we can get more done in 90 minutes than we can in the regular schedule on our side of things so it has been really beneficial for us yes who raised your hand first caitlin or dr kaiser so ronnie you going to win us some more awards yeah yeah we're i mean i don't want you slacking just because you know that's not going to happen so no um i will i will have to say um you know on the pumpkin patch henshaw farm side we did run into a little bit of an issue this year on the pumpkins just like everybody else if you planted your pumpkins in the middle of june as we did we ran into one of the hottest weekends with the 30 mile an hour winds that stressed our plants out so the pumpkin patch itself is not as as good as it should have been or has been in the past so unfortunately the pumpkins didn't mature but we should have some pumpkin pumpkins to be able to bring to the elementary school kids and then still do some of our um you know field days that way but as far as a pumpkin patch itself it's probably not going to happen just because they didn't really mature and develop because the heat and then the virus kind of stressed him out which is which is unfortunate it was the first time this year that we had had that happen but it was also the hottest june in record for chico so it kind of really hurt us a little bit so that's unfortunate but back to the block schedule i i couldn't imagine teaching it the other way now that i've been doing this for even the short period of time it's just been amazing for us to have that much time with kids and i just feel like the rapport you should see our classes at lunch just at lunch alone we have so many kids coming back because they feel like it's a safe place they got to know us a little bit better because they have us for a lot longer period of time which has been awesome alby um so i know that leading up to implementing the block schedule there was a lot of discussion and back and forth and some contention even with the cost of going to block schedule not financial but just you know some of the drawbacks of block schedule and i'm curious if if you all feel like the general vibe is that whatever costs there may have been are far outweighed by the benefits so far um i mean at least personal feelings i'm seeing nods and and i'm i'm anticipating that this is probably pretty general among most staff maybe a couple departments might be a little still like i don't know but um for the most part it seems pretty site-wide you would say i i would say um i would say yes to that only because i've i've never taught in a blocked schedule before so i i came into this not knowing anything about how this would look and so now that i have i'm like whoa why weren't we doing this years ago i mean this is amazing so that was kind of nice to see but as far as the you know i'm not i can't speak on the the financial side of it but i know for the kids and i know if i know what it's going to do as far as benefiting them and having you know having the ability for like that study period for those kids to be able to get stuff done you know their homework side of it it is it has opened up so much more for us in the elective side and the ag side um where we're getting kids that are just coming in droves i mean it's amazing yeah i think that um what i'm hearing just from you all is that it really does hit on those those goals of ours to allow for more personal choice by students to to to get involved in things that are feeding their soul and like you know and and their future right i mean getting to work and and do all your classes that you want to do and being able to expand your skill set that much more i think is amazing personally i i got to have a block schedule in my high school and i know as a student what the benefits of that were um and as a science teacher i always begged for block schedule for the same reasons that you explained that they're so beneficial as a teacher so i'm glad to hear that that's what's coming out of this already so far well and just to give you an example just my juniors and seniors alone in my welding one classes have all came up and thanked me for being able to finally take this class because they're either on an ap schedule where they're really taking advanced classes to move on but they really wanted to learn the skill sets of welding but they just couldn't get it in because of how crammed their ap schedules were so it's it was interesting to see how many kids each period were like oh thank you mr cockrell finally i get to take your class and i was like whoa i didn't i didn't realize it until you know we had we had been put in this position yeah i was that student i didn't get to take my cte classes until my last year of high school yeah yeah for sure so i i don't know i just really think this is a cool schedule yes mr tennis um thank you mr cockrell for what you do um the welding thing i of course never had a chance to do that when i was at chico junior in chico high but i did take a woodworking class in june junior high with a guy named bart rulin and um man just life-changing you know i mean to to shatter the barrier that exists between you know some teenage kid and and the world of band saws and table saws and jigsaws and you know i mean it goes from being meaning nothing to you you know because you're just some kid to now it's in your hands and hopefully not cutting them but it really was really life-changing i mean you know i know that every subject has the potential to completely turn somebody's life inside out you know in a positive way but like things like wood shop and welding i mean that you take somebody who just had no exposure to that and now all of a sudden they're learning how to do it you know i mean they'll just look at the world in a whole different way so thank you for what you do and and um yeah all you guys you ad guys are just just some of the greatest people out there thanks thank you for having us um when we uh brought senator nielsen up to visit your programs uh you remember how excited he was with his background and support for these types of classes and living right in the middle of the greatest part of agriculture in california you're giving tools to folks who either move on to uh you know chico state and and their farm program or with the welding especially moving into some incredibly well-paying secure jobs if that's you know if that's what the student wants because we need welders and farmers oh my gosh so thank you for the students and the staff thank you yeah thank you guys [Applause] thank you again for coming all right for the second portion of our presentation we're moving on to social emotional learning supports i'm sorry jay i don't mean to interrupt you but um the slide is still it moved ahead and um we didn't get to touch on the district-wide summer activities extended school year early background or recovery yeah and i had a couple questions on this slide so okay perfect um the last thing that she just talked about some of the other things that we want highlighted with our academic supports again we had our summer academies some that we talked about at a previous board meeting that we had over a thousand kids attend extended school year and early back for our kindergartners and some of our other programs and our credit recovery summer schools that we were able to do over the summer um and so with the march after school program um is that's new this year correct and um is that modeled after what's been happening over at um chico junior and bidwell so we're running the same type of programs there we were able to use um some of our sr funds to provide that for marsh that's great um and hopefully that'll be able to continue afterwards i hope so yes for the next couple we're we have enough for the next two and then we again we continue to look for grants so we continue to do that marsha's um recently became a title one school so um we'll be able to qualify for them to go after that it should be after this year right yeah for the blast grant we'll be able to um on the next round be able to um add them into it great that's awesome to hear thanks for sharing that and then um what's the pleasant valley zero and seventh period so um this year like chicago high went to a block but what pv decided to do was a zero and a seventh period so kids can attend zero period before school starts um there's academic study halls and seventh period with the same team am i correct on that um john yeah so the kids are able to sign up for those and also earn credit for coming to zero period or seventh period can they do both i would imagine so yes they can yes so it in a sense opens up not quite the same level of opportunity that the block schedule has at chico high but it does allow for a little bit more scheduling options for students correct there's still 56 minute periods so it doesn't have all the same benefits of the long time with with the teachers um however they can gain some more credits they can do some um some extended study hall type of activities and some electives are also offered so it's uh they're creeping their way there awesome thank you thanks john okay all right if i move on to the next slide is our social emotional learning supports that's under lcap goal number two provides social emotional learning and support to provide healthier student attitudes about themselves and others some of our highlights i'm going to bring up first are two two of our four special ed coordinators um damie troubridge and joanna mang they um help us oversee our secondary and elementary counseling programs and our social emotional supports hello i am jamie trowbridge special education coordinator and in this role i am part of the district crisis response team as well in the event of a crisis i help organize our counseling teams to provide mental health supports to students and staff and then i also oversee our educationally related mental health service counselors and they provide the tier three service for our students whose mental health is significantly impacting their ability to make educational progress good evening my name is joanna ming as mr marshawn said i'm a special education coordinator and it's also my pleasure this year to support the elementary school counselors we are very excited this year to have a full-time school counselor at each of our elementary school sites and so that is something that we're really enjoying i'd like to introduce jenna johnson who is a school counselor at little chico creek elementary school and laurie mcloan who is a school counselor at citrus elementary and they're going to share more about our various social emotional supports and how we're tracking student progress within those programs thank you back here scrambling writing notes because i want to tell you all the things but i'm going to start out with what every kid in chico unified should know as our breathing tool which helps calm jitters because that's what we teach is kids how to regulate their emotions but this year we are fortunate enough to have full-time counselors at each elementary site along with the support of our amazing counseling assistants whose contract days were also increased the positive impact of those decisions has been tremendous many of our counselors last year served on two different sites in one case that meant one counselor was supporting over 1100 students between two schools that counselor is now very happily grounded at one site and is thrilled with the consistency that she's now able to provide she also has been able to start a peer mentorship program in which students support each other out at recess with problem-solving skills another counselor created an entire wellness center and our site is currently planning parent training opportunities to help really support our families knowing the research about sel which is that it sticks with kids for their whole lives and can be linked with positive life outcomes even 18 years down the road our wellness team prioritized providing classroom lessons each week this means that every single class tk through 5th grade receives a weekly specialized lesson on social emotional learning using kimochi's toolbox or the second step curriculum every student on our campus receives social emotional support on a regular and ongoing basis which teaches them the life skills of regulating their emotions social skills etc another significant impact of having full-time counselors and counseling assistants at each site is that we are able to truly integrate our services throughout the entire school setting this year i've been more involved in the decision-making level on our positive behavior intervention teams our student-based intervention teams as well as directly supporting students with things like check in check out which is a daily one-on-one intervention this full-time integrate integration is what has allowed our counseling teams to really access all of our students through really quality tier one services recently in our district our teachers completed a screener which identifies at-risk students with at-risk behaviors and we are seeing a higher number of students in need so our counseling teams are currently putting together additional small group counseling individual counseling and other interventions to support those students my fellow counselors and counseling assistants are in very high demand right now and because we're full-time there's always a trained professional on site to respond to challenging behaviors whether it's a situation involving mental health struggles or challenging behavior all of which we know will block a kid's access to learning and memory and you know progressing academically so in conclusion our kids now know who we are they know where we are and they know how to find us and access our services so i just want to thank you for that [Laughter] no i i didn't notice your hands are up who who was first dr kaiser i saw the notification that we're going to start at rosedale and at emma wilson with a parent a special parent education support structure at night and it appeared to be extremely interesting so who's actually doing the work and then jamie would you like to come up she's our homeless and foster liaison she's one she'll come on when jamie's name came up on the screen i was gonna give a shout out to that but we just kept kind of rolling so that would be uh me and the targeted case managers working with ted sullivan to put on a parenting all-star parent program it's what i talked about last month um and with the flyers and i said i would update you guys on the progress of the the program and our update is that we will be launching next week and um you guys are all invited to come in and pop in and see what it's all about and we're able to provide either breakfast or dinner depending on whether the family is coming to a morning or an evening event and child care for the family so that we can remove the barriers so that they can access the the parenting program it covers 40 developmental skills for the family to learn and to incorporate within their family and if you guys would like more more information about that i would love to share with you over coffee oh okay thank you jamie i'm glad you're back i mean back this this meeting um um mr tennis yes i'm sorry i was about to ask my question but then oh no no no no no i remembered you had your hand up first um let's see you are jenna johnson right you mentioned that um you're finding that the kids are more in need can you elaborate on that please um so each year we do an at-risk screener which looks at kids behaviors um and we changed our screener this year so we don't get to really compare apples to apples but it's still really quality information about kids who might be struggling with anxious feelings or who might be you know lying within the classroom or struggling to make friends or really withdrawn and so looking at our screener results we are seeing a higher number of kids than we typically have in the past coming out as needing some additional supports and that is where um like ms bangsan was showing us in that tier system that's when we look at bumping a kid up to either a small group counseling that's really designed for what that child is needing or if the needs are high enough we'll pull them into individual counseling i am have got four kids of my own three of whom are on in the school system right now and yeah i've been in the meetings with i mean i've been in private schools i guess religious um with my kids and i've been here and and it's a complex world education you know providing a good education program no matter where you are it's it's it's not an easy endeavor and when kids start having problems behavior problems in class then i think that's when the depth of an organization becomes apparent because um in this school district i can tell you that there is incredible depth uh with the counseling services and all the various interventions some of these meetings that i've been in with my my my kids at different times have involved gosh five six different people you've got the teacher you've got the principal you've got the the counselor you've got you know the the the random person that they i know that's not their title but there's that that those staff who just they know all the kids they're interacting with the kids constantly they're there they're available i mean there's just so much backup and and you've got a great opportunity to make a difference in these kids lives and i know that you're doing that so thank you thank you i don't get to go away yet i had wondered if the if you if you feel that some of the struggles that the families are going through because of covet and people being out of work and people being displaced and other things uh do you see that reflected in the severity of some of the issues that our little ones have you know it's no secret what our county and our entire world has been through in the last couple of years um so while i don't have you know data at hand we do know that when families struggle kids struggle and so the more you know that is why our site has really looked at providing some parent supports so that we can offer kind of the same social emotional lessons and you know teach things to families so that they can really use that in their homes so that kids have that continuity about what you know what their feelings are and how to manage it in our social settings right whether it's school or home or wherever um as well as really trying to target that classroom intervention like our counseling teams really decided we're going to push into those classrooms so we can see all the kids as much as possible because we know that small groups targeted things that is great but the more we can kind of surround our kids with the skills that they need that will be helpful because we know our county has struggled with so many big triggers um so again i don't have you know specific data for you but yes whenever a kid or a family or a whole town or a whole county has a challenging or traumatic event that that will show up in our children so you know i think that's the value of sel i don't remember now who mentioned the the peer counseling groups who is coordinating that at what grade level and kind of give me an idea of how peer counseling is is uh formed so when i was asked to speak um i reached out to my counselors because oddly enough i actually i actually don't work full-time and i feel like i'm not i you know was someone who i needed to look to my others who really had gone from um part-time to full-time i share a counseling position with one other person so i asked everyone what they're doing and that was happening at shasta by one of our fabulous counselors mikko and i i actually just learned about it i want to know more i told her oh i really hope you'll share it sounds like she coaches a certain group of kids and then they go out she said with their clipboards and their vests and they go out and they support their peers to solve problems and so hopefully that's something i'll be able to learn more about and we can get going in other sites and that's elementary the only peer that you know i remember from my days working in this the district i know there were some at junior high level many years ago and it at the senior high level and again we we lost the ability to work that in because of the scheduling the scheduling mandates that we had so i'm i'm glad that you know that that kind of experience it's so good for both sides right for the person that's doing and receiving so thank you yeah absolutely and i will diane i will just add in eileen that we do have some peer counseling in different venues um at both junior and senior high based on what that school has established for example you heard from chico high i think it was last week last month before that they have that nami group and they do some peer counseling at marsh jr they bring in additional intern counselors from chico state and they establish some peer counseling groups that happen so it happens in different avenues it isn't always directly through the counseling teams from elementary secondary our psychologist actually runs it at chica high school so it's just different at all different sites and we admire our elementary counselors this time so i can get more information for you on that if you like though i always interested in the peer counseling thing i've i've just seen such significant benefit from it in my you know many years with uh with the school uh at different levels and yeah if it's something that we can utilize um it's it's like the um the parent education uh tool that oakland uses where they the parents go to college they don't call it college but you know parents are able to interact with people from the school to to learn skill levels and things and it's parent-to-parent a lot of times so anything that uh that's working right don't necessarily need it but know that this board member supports it wholeheartedly thank you up member dolby hi i just wanted to add one more tool um my name is lori mcglone i'm the school counselor at citrus elementary school and i of course echo a lot of what jenna said she talked about the screener that the teachers do and historically we get a lot of information about what students might need higher levels of services when it comes to social emotional supports but we're really trying to expand our ability to hear directly from students as well so we have a new tool that we're using we started using it last year at citrus and now all of the elementary schools and actually the secondary schools are using it as well it's called kelvin and it's a really great tech technology based tool where we have created four climate surveys that the students get throughout the school year we did our first climate survey when they open their chromebooks the day of a survey there's a little dog and he starts barking and when the kids you know the more they ignore him the more he starts trying to get their attention and when they click on it they're given a series of questions at the elementary level it's eight questions that ask them about the climate and how they feel about the school and it kind of just taps into a lot of those social emotional questions we have from their perspective and we do it grades two through five in elementary um and we're going to be using that information to really drive you know to kind of balance it with what we're seeing in the data and what the teachers are telling us to adjust our curriculum we also give the kids the opportunity on those surveys and the smaller pulses that we do throughout the year in fact at citrus tomorrow we have one that has three questions we give them the opportunity to say would you like to talk with the counselor and if they say yes then as quickly as possible we go and meet with the students and so it gives them one more opportunity to kind of let us know how they're doing how they're feeling about school it gives us really good feedback and it gives them an opportunity to kind of raise their hand and say i'd like to talk to my counselor every time we run a pulse i get anywhere from five to 20 kids who want to talk with me for a variety of reasons and it's great because i get a lot of kids that might not come by my office otherwise so we're just trying to expand the ways that kids can tell us how they're feeling and ways that we can be really responsive to the needs of the kids at our school um you know that day that week that month so just wanted to share that with you right um so i guess just my my line of questioning starts with um you touched on this concept that without an intact social emotional well-being that academic success is very hard to reach and we talk a lot about these three backpacks that we have we have our academic our social emotional learning and we have the behavioral and they're they're frequently discussed linearly or horizontally but really research shows that it's actually a hierarchy right so you have your basic needs which would be your social emotional needs if those aren't being met then your behavioral stuff is not going to be in line and therefore you're really gonna have a hard time accessing that academic piece which is their top of that that hierarchy so that in mind um what i've always kind of wondered and and um i think it's a magical thing to me as a classroom teacher to see how our counselors handle the juggle of prioritizing student needs first and foremost even if it means that they have to miss some academic time and so is that at some point that's where the multi-tier comes in because you know the kids who are more targeted and you know that there's just this small core group of kids who they're going to miss some lessons but they're going to miss them anyway whether they're there or not and i guess my question is is um is there any conflict so far that you've seen where um where that might your ability to reach kids when needed as needed um is is conflicting with the classroom or disruptive in pulling out or meeting with kids or anything like that um no i mean our i think our campuses that i'm aware of especially my campus i know uh we work really closely together a whole school as a team of when's going to be the best time to pull a kid for a small group and we try to be really thoughtful of that whole child approach like miss things and had that excellent um visual that we know that our brains the limbic system right if we're calm and regulated we can access our memory we can access the ability to learn new things if we're not regulated that goes out the door um so you know a that's why we really look at the tier one and getting a lot of social emotional supports just embedded into the classroom and their everyday functioning and how the teacher speaks and you know different tools that the teacher can prompt the kids to use and then if we do know a student needs to be pulled out for one thing or another we try to work with everyone so that we're thoughtful of when that happens and it's the least disruptive and you know we know that or we hope that the benefit will outweigh any you know loss of recess or classroom time or whatever they're maybe losing but great thanks i honestly it was less about the question but more about just making sure that we're all like hearing that concept that the social emotional piece is the is the carrier for everything else that is that leads to success in our classrooms um and um mr tennis wasn't here for the beginning of the presentation where they talked about the tears i know that you have access to that but the first couple of slides of this presentation like really lay out you know tier one is all the supports that are available to all students and then tier two is where you have some you know more targeted interventions um and then and this is for all three different categories and then the top tiers where it's intensive interventions for the the smallest percentage of students who really really need it thank you so much for all you are doing and i'm just so so so excited that we have counselors at every single elementary because as a middle school teacher you we see that effect you know of not having enough counseling staff at the elementary schools once they reach us there at the middle school so it like makes me emotional to know that our kids are are really being helped this year so i'm grateful for you i just want to plug really quickly our counselors and our counseling assistants do fantastic work in this district so thank you thank you [Applause] i'd like to highlight one other thing if i don't know if um phil or one of you guys can click on that link that's on that slide it says access to staff can they i don't know i'm done can you see it it's done john's this isn't gonna do it sorry is it this is one of the things that marsh has right now one of our things was that we heard from our students in our lcap student meetings was they needed easier access to our counselors and ways to get to them without just walking into the office and signing up on a clipboard this is one of the things that marsh has available um also if so on the barcode reader on the scan reader there if we click on it you'll you'll see when a kid clicks on that what comes up thank you and then you okay okay then again the student can sign in with their email but then it goes down who would you like to see it shows all the different support people on their staff that they can sign up to see so it's really cool um again it makes it more accessible to kids they know the faces not always the names so they can go right under there and click to see who they feel comfortable with seeing and then that person want me to see him so that's just one of the ways that we're trying to make it more accessible to our kids so i just want to kind of highlight that okay yeah go ahead i know that uh emily wilson has a god my brain just went blank i want to say a social emotional dog but that's not what we call it um but does marsh because i see the dogs there yeah yeah every every site has a police where they can click on their website to get to a counselor marsh just wanted to make it this is just where they made it friendlier and then they every school does um the kelvin um dog no i mean a real dog oh wilson has a real therapy no marsh does not marsh doesn't i believe it's citrus has citrus has the dog yeah and emma wilson also has one yeah i believe those are only two i mean they're very uh they play very key parts yes yeah we we met citrus's dog when she arrived he okay yeah he he came to him came to a meeting also there's one other thing on there it's called educlimber what educamer does for us attracts kids um for us so it will literally if a student is falling in their grades or if they started having more discipline or they're starting to miss school it educamer attracts those kids for us not only does it say their name it brings up their picture and to show this student might need support so that's what the edgy climber is i'm desperate i don't know if i'm hitting that correctly but tim's our expert on that but what that does is attracts our students for us and the student could fall off the edge of climber if things improve but it continues to do that for that's what edgy climber is on that site any more questions on that slide because i know i've been bad before okay okay behavioral supports okay that's our el gap three provide provisional instruction and supports as a proactive approach to creating a safe positive climate and school culture things that we do we have district wide things we do we have a additional target case manager time on our school sites and we also has our s bit teams our school-based intervention teams on our site which meet of teachers psychologists counselors administration that a teacher can turn in a student's name and then they can through the team see what kind of supports they need it could be like any one of the backpacks could be an academic support support or sel support so they will talk about that student in those espa teams and see what their next steps will be for that student and then they can constantly through educlaimer and and these these meetings decide if it's what's working what's not working and what they continue need to do for that student um at this time i'm going to bring up jessica capen she is our pbis our positive behavior intervention support lead for our district she's also that's one of the assistant principals at chico junior it looks like she has a student with her i do all right okay all right well hello um thank you so much for letting me present on a topic i am absolutely passionate about many of you are familiar with pbis which stands for positive behavior interventions and supports but i thought i would just give a little overview if you need a little refresher just in a just a smidgen um basically it can be broken down into four basic parts explicitly teaching our our behavior so just like we would teach math like we don't expect our students to know how to solve algebraic expression but we sometimes think that kids should come to us and know exactly how to behave in school well the research shows that that's not true we need to teach kids how to behave in school and if we teach them explicitly and then we reward kids for when they do the behaviors that we want to see and then we have consequences and also correcting and re-teaching students when they might have trouble with those behaviors and then we look at the data so we collect this data and jay actually mentioned educamer so that is one of our places where we're going to collect data and be able to kind of look at it and be able to determine where precisely our problems at our school lie so that we can then go forward and say okay here's our problem places how are we going to fix those with our behavior so we actually are reacting to our data um so i wanted to let you guys know that pbis is currently implemented in all of our schools which is amazing um the high schools are actually just rolling out their this is their first year um and so a lot of people think pbis can't can't work in a high school um those kids are already they already know what to do they already know how to behave and you know they're on their way no it really does work in a high school um and uh chico high and pb are showing us that it does and fairview has actually been using it for for a little bit of time um longer than those schools so um so that is a really exciting thing um and then our other sites our elementaries have a really really vested they have tiers one tier two tier threes and they're incredibly they're functioning at incredibly high rates our secondary are junior highs we're doing a really good job and consistently implementing all the three tiers as well so our goal this year like the previous presenters talked about is to really infuse sel lessons into our tier one practices so while elementary schools do this quite naturally and are able to push in because they have a little bit more time with the students secondary sites have a more difficult time being able to carve out in a 50-minute block maybe a little bit longer at chico high but in that 50 minutes where do we go in to teach these skills that every kid needs but we at least at chico high i mean at chico junior we created a five minute first period where we were able to dedicate that time and teach these strategies sel strategies to all of our students such as breathing um and doing different strategies that we that we've come up with so um the other thing that i wanted to tell you is that um we have teams all of us have team all of the schools have teams and we look at the data um and we meet regularly at least once a month and determine where we're gonna where we're gonna put our efforts and on our teams our students and so i would like to introduce miss abigail perrin and she is one of our student reps on our team my name is abigail perrin and i'm a sixth grader at chico junior um so during my first week of school each teacher taught us lessons about how the students behave and how to do things at school like line up for lunch or where to play and not to play so they either had a slideshow or a video to help us learn the rules and last week i went to the pbis meeting at the meeting we talked about the school's problems and we are giving data up the school's problems they asked me about the problems and my perspective of them and then i gave them some ideas on how to help all right so i'm going to kind of model how we would reward our students but this is a cougar cache and i want to say hey abby i just want to give this to you this cougar cache because you are such a respectful cougar you were on time to the meeting and you represented us really well thank you i have a question i know that we're making an effort to push in and and fully integrate our special education students [Music] is there a special plan to make sure that that you're involving them in the pbis programs do what's what's the exchange so all of our students every single student receives tier one pbis services doesn't matter if they have an iep or not um and then as we go up the tiers we would consider a student who has a an iep to already be at probably the the tier 3 level with that iep however if a student came to um having just it's not it's not quite working and maybe the behavior plan isn't addressing it we as a team they could call us in and have a different perspective on it so perhaps it's a little bit outside of that iep realm we could come in and just say hey here's some ideas for you but yeah every single student is included yeah including our um severely handicapped students remember kate ah remember dublin that's me all of that's me um so you alluded to a little something that's a little bit of a hot topic for me personally um in a good way don't like this is going a good good job no um it's the fact that our secondary schedules really don't allow for for these programs um and and really going back to that social emotional learning leading to behavioral you know positive behavioral effects and or not um and then the academic success and it's unfortunate that we don't have it better built into our system and and um you know it's what i guess what why i'm a little it's a hot topic for me is because um i really thought that we were on the right track at marsh when i was a teacher there and we implemented we we transitioned from just our tutorial program or or silent reading program which was you know 25 minutes out of the day it kind of changed what point of the day it was every year depending on how things worked out um to an advisory period we think we called it advisement because of contract things but what it really was intended to be was that place and the the last year we had it um before covid um or i guess the year cove had started um it was 25 minutes at the beginning of the day which allowed for some of those students who just couldn't get to school because they had anxiety so it kind of gave a little bit of flexibility even for late students so they weren't missing academic time which was just one small piece of it and for the teachers who really embraced it it was that time to to do those those pbis teachings i use that time to you know to talk about suicide awareness month and to talk about um a goal setting with with smart goals you know almost like a home room but not a home room because it's not just homework and um and to check in with students and to really be like that that person that can like be an extra layer of support like a counselor but in the classroom and build those relationships and and you know i'm just one person on this board but that is a dream of mine is that we can go back to having some type of you know even if it's just 20 minutes four days a week on days that there isn't a plc that you know a little bit more than five minutes to build those relationships with a particular group of students i had the same students in that in that room every single monday tuesday thursday friday i got to build those relationships with those kids i got to pull them out of of other places to touch base with them because i see in in english you have 15 missing assignments let's come up with a plan you know and um just being that on-site adult support um was a huge piece for me so that's my plug um that might that's my my dream and just if anybody else out there has the same dream know you have my support yeah and i know it's not a question but it's a really good comment and that we have we have things outside of academics that need to be addressed through explicit teaching and we need time to be able to do that to all of our students not just specific you know tier two interventions and tier three intervention so um and and i would like to say and i didn't mention this before the goal of going into all of the classrooms at a tier one level is to give every student the skills to be able to to help themselves regulate in at least in this sel piece to know you know know how to do this on their own so that they don't have to leave the classroom at least 80 percent of them if you give them a few strategies will be able to use those strategies and not have to access that scan and go see the counselor or be frequent flyers at the nurse and all those other places we know kids like to escape to um so that's kind of the goal and it does take more time and so i think being creative in and having those discussions is really important i do agree all right thanks thank you thank you one of the other things about i'd like to point out on there it says this says el cap highlight i'm going to have them click on that for me what we're trying to do or miss erica smith not me is our communications person we are trying to highlight different things that our lcap is paying for and the people that are actually paying for it and this is one of our first lcap um highlight people that we did it was nancy medina she's a target case manager in our in our district oh she's wonderful by the way so we are putting these out um every month and we have another one getting ready to come out and so we will continue to highlight the different things that our lcap is paying for people that it pays for to try to improve our one of our ways to improve our communication about our lcap and again other things that we will be starting to do um coming probably right after winter break is we'll start doing town hall meetings about our lcap so we'll be inviting people onto their campuses which we will zoom into to give more people the opportunity to understand what we did with our lcap dollars this year and what we want to do to move forward for next year jay where do people see this it's on our website on our district website i also saw it come out on um facebook yeah sorry i shared it i shared it on facebook and got lots of good comments comments yeah um yeah about nancy so we're trying to um erica does a good job she pushes that on all our social media and our websites we just uh on those for people to see yeah i think mine came through facebook too i remember seeing it and thinking wow this was great i guess my concern is about the areas in our county which we know don't have access to internet and so if everything is internet accessible then there are parents who aren't going to see this who might really need to see it right and i understand that i'm just going to tell you um with our hot spots and our free internet right now there's probably not a student at least we have not been told that we have any students right now that do not have access to internet between all on the free uh comcast that we're able to give to certain families that qualify and if they don't we can't get that for them we give them a free hot spot for their family so they should not have a internet um issue at their home caitlin and uh just to maybe clarify or jay can maybe clarify more on this um these lcap highlights each month is really to demonstrate um how the district's strategic plan is having a positive impact on our students and this is really like the early stages of our alcap outreach for development in the next for the next school year as well yeah again it's more of awareness again on what we're doing again with our lcap plan and showing what people are involved in the lcap is it's not numbers when we're saying that we're spending one 1.2 let's just i'm just making that number without the numbers in front of me for target case managers we want to highlight okay here's one right here for us um i know our next one is one of our um computer uh technicians on one of our elementary sites that'll be highlighted again that's who our lcap dollars and so we'll be highlighting that person too and what things about her so that'll be coming out her name's kathy frost and that'll be coming out real soon also spoiler alert yep i know i just want to be able to demonstrate once i would demonstrate once in a while i do pay attention in my meetings okay so we can go back to our presentation so again some of the other things that we just want to highlight again we did up our counseling assistants at our elementaries from um 160 to 180 days we do we increase our campus supervision this year on our campus all all of our campus campuses and again we were able to increase our bilingual aid time so we just wanted to be able to say those are some of our highlights again what kaelin was saying if we don't take care of the whole child they're not going to be able to do the academics and so again we just wanted to make sure that we're highlighting all three backpacks and not just our academic interventions tonight again i would like to thank everybody that made it here tonight for me because i didn't i know that you guys hear me talk a lot on these presentations but i wanted to bring the actual people in that are doing the work at the school site so i appreciate every one of them that came here tonight yes thank you and if you don't have any more questions that's the end of our presentation ford okay we do have i just want to salute both the presentation the students who are participating and all of you out there who are doing critical work thank you yes absolutely thank you i'm really excited to see where we're at this time next year yeah yeah and having having this as a for a full year play out i'm just i'm i'm hopeful also the rain that came today also made me hopeful but that was a great analogy for our for our kiddos as well so thank you and kellyanne i will build sheridan bring it with me tonight because tim tim gave me that information today our counseling um services so right now we track how many times our counselors see students stuff like that it's just about doubled this on every one of our sites our students seeing counselors our counseling takes so i'll be able to send those slides so you can see those numbers too yeah and that's to meet a need but also to fill a need that was already there correct yeah that's that's the point the capacity for filling a need that's been there for so long that we weren't able to meet um we made little steps in the past but this opportunity you know is wonderful now i'm going to put my wet blanket on that as a board member it's our responsibility now to make sure that we manage the uh the fiscal part of what we're doing so that when the one-time money train leaves we have a plan to make sure that we can continue this work because this is foundational this is the kind of thing we can't let go away and so that's you know that's my job as a board member that i take very seriously dr kaiser should we go back now that yes fourth person has joined us and uh look at the on the consent calendar 3.1 yes we um now that you've mentioned compensation yes i'm going to go ahead and let the staff that we're here for this presentation go thank you so much for being here excellent yes we appreciate you um mr tennis while uh we were waiting for you we took care of the consent calendar with the exception of one item that was pulled because member dalby can't vote on it because it pertains to her so we waited for you to come back so we could consider that item and if you go back to number three number three one consider approval of resolution number 1552-21 resolution on board compensation for missed meeting that's what we're considering now if you or dr kaiser have any questions i'd be happy to answer them or put the if not i'm ready for a motion i make a motion to pass that resolution 15 52-20 second thank you i have a motion and a second any further discussion i don't see any then okay um ms dalby you can cast your abstaining vote now dolby of steen tennis i robinson i passes um 3 yes one abstain thank you members okay we're on to our next item um which which is um human resources mr hanlon and michelle bunch okay thank you um so we've had a number of executive directives come down from the governor's office and one of them has been by october 15th we have to have determined which staff of ours are vaccinated and not vaccinated and the ones that are not vaccinated we have to have a testing system set up so a few meetings ago you were introduced to michelle bunch who has worked incredibly hard to get this set up and she's going to discuss kind of get you up to date on um where we're at and where we will be on october 15th and then uh taking a look forward um where we're going to be down the road so i'm going to turn it over to michelle good evening i'm michelle bunch and i'm the covid lead for chico unified school district and i'm here to give you an update on our employee kovid 19 testing program and as jim said as of october 15th we have a mandate to test unvaccinated employees and also unverified employees so anybody that cannot provide verification and vaccination we have to start testing them weekly starting october 15th the california department of public health assigned chico unified to mobilemed to provide trained staff to administer and monitor site testing so we will have nine health aides that will work on three teams and they will work the schedule that we put together with mobilemed to test our employees we will utilize the binax now kovid19 antigen test provided free of charge by the california department of public health and anybody that test posited on a rapid antigen test will then be administered a pcr test which will be a send out test for confirmation we set up a weekly testing schedule for all cusd campuses including the district office and the corp yard so that we can get our employees that are in maintenance and operations transportation and different departments out there we'll begin testing october 11th and this is during the the week before the mandate actually begins and we wanted to give it a test run just to make sure we work out any issues we have with our testing schedule and i believe all of you received my staff announcement with the attachments and the testing schedule that we have set up basically there's there's three testing times for every high school two for every junior high and every elementary site has one testing window dr kaiser you had a question uh it's noted to be a rapid test and a rapid tests have been almost impossible to get in chico so how fast is a rapid test i.e will the results be known yes so the binax now rapid test that we're utilizing and these health people professionals will be conducting for us take around 15 to 30 minutes max so basically the testing from start to finish when an employee comes into the line if they've pre-registered it's four to five minutes it's a self-swab so every employee will be handed a sterile swab they will swab themself under the direction of these health professionals and then hand the swab to the person to do the testing and they will leave the testing center the test will be run and then primary health has a database where all the results will be posted and the employee notified so if after 15 to 30 minutes there's a positive we can then call that employee back to do the pcr for confirmation can you describe the test uh is this a kind of a basic swab in the nose this is the nasal cavity cranium i like to call it the brain tickler so this is not that test so this is a very shallow swab it's done in the lower one inch of the nasal cavity and the employee does it themself and it's actually certified to be used down to four years nine months old so when we start student testing it is available to tk students that are four years nine months and they can successfully do it themselves i also posted a video of some students that that primary health provided so employees could see how a student administers it to themselves because a lot of people are nervous they think of that deep sinus test and that is not what we're doing and this is i think i know the answer to this question but staff is basically currently not required to get the vaccine correct if they agree to this twice a week no they're test once a week so they have to test one time in a five day period and stay compliant to weekly testing if they're unvaccinated we also opened up our testing to all vaccinated employees as well because it's just a good practice for periodic testing and breakthrough cases and so we've invited all employees to this program so while there is a mandate for unvaccinated anyone can take advantage of the testing on site yes just to reinforce that a member of my family who had been fully vaccinated found out the day after she gave birth that she was asymptomatic covet so those breakthroughs are sneaky yes they are so we are we're encouraging all staff to test intermittently and it's just a good practice for the health of our district this may be off topic and maybe i should wait for the next slide because it does relate to students so okay let's let's i'll wait are there any other questions about the employee testing and then i can address where we're headed next caitlyn um yeah i guess my only concern is just um the the potential for um false negatives with us with a self rapid test um i think that that's the only like real crack that things could fall through right i mean if there's a if there's a positive then they have to do a follow-up test but if it's a negative um it i just know that there's a pretty high percentage higher than what would be ideal percentage of false negatives particularly if the swab is too shallow since the higher farther back in your nasal cavity you go the higher the viral load is if you if you do happen to be in your early stages of covet infection um so i guess it's it's less of a question or maybe a question of awareness or any kind of like um a quality control question um has that been uh considered or how has that been i'm sure it has been considered so mr hanlon and i were actually really thrilled to be assigned mobilemed because they come with trained personnel we have the option to train our own people if this third party does not work out but ideally you want trained personnel they're monitoring the swabbing to make sure it's done for the appropriate amount of time and that reduces the number of false negatives so they are trained and people are monitored thank you and if it's not done properly you get an you get an um basically a neutral result and then you have to do the pcr testing so it has to show negative or positive but it also has an undetermined or you can't tell and then they'll do the pcr testing so there it is so there is some kind of quality control that is built into the test too and they have pcr tests with them so anybody that requires that pcr test can immediately be administered that on a callback great thank you one other thing just real quick because kathy you said that those tests are really difficult to get and the state has provided them free to us we have almost 2500 of them so we have enough for a couple months to do what we need in our district and then we will continue to order them and until we don't need them any longer so um at this point they have arrived on time they're here in our offices and actually they'll be distributed to school sites on friday i think that's tremendous i had a family member who had to go to san francisco for a special medical uh exam and they wouldn't let the person in until they had a rapid test and they could not get it in chico so literally a day trip to san francisco for nothing to then go back and have it done there so that's it it's an incredible resource that you don't realize how critical it is until somebody in your family needs it well i just want to say if you've ever worked with the department of education or the department of public health it is layers and layers of bureaucracy and michelle has been on the phone for hours and hours and hours getting this set up so it's it has not come easy but she has bulldogged this i can tell you we got it done and i we're ready to launch and it won't be perfect but we will start next week and we'll work out the bugs and so basically our next steps are to solidify our staff testing so we want to make sure it's going well everyone has access the employees from mobilemed are arriving and things are staffed well and we're able to retrieve the results once we can ensure all of those things are happening we plan to bring on our chico unified students on modified quarantine so that is our next priority we want students in school and not having to select home quarantine because they don't have a way to test because currently modified quarantine requires students to test twice a week so that's why we created these long windows for access for students and you know we want them at school also in any way we can do that we want to provide help in accomplishing that that is a tremendous asset for families to be able to know if their kid really has it so that's incredible thank you any other questions about next steps so i do your email that you sent out to staff was great thank you um thank you for just paying attention to all the little details and i guess that's your job but you to me appear to be doing a good job at it so um so teachers have this option of not getting the vaccine and you'll do it by testing will students we know that governor newsom has made announcements to the effect that you know he's going to require all kids to be vaccinated um apparently at least that was my interpretation of his recent comments do you see this similar option being available for kids whose parents don't want to be vaccinated jim actually had some information on that didn't you jim that you looked into today yeah it's kind of murky but um the the language that has been shared is there some opt outs for students they have a medical opt-out a religious top-out and they also have a personal preference opt-out so it's appearing that as it is stands right now it may not be as tight for our students as we originally thought so parents will have some choices um they may have the same choices they have right now but we'll see how when the fine print comes out we'll see how that how that all pans out um it doesn't look as promising for staff um right now when students when the older students are required to be vaccinated required unless they opt out our staff will be as well and so it doesn't appear that they have the same list of opt-outs other than just medical so we'll have to see how that plays out could be some court challenges on that but nothing can really happen until the vaccination is approved for um younger people right now it's approved for 16 and older but um but uh it is anticipated that it will go down all the way down to age five so we'll just have to see how it all plays out so for now we are doing this system and until we know different something i want to throw out just because we're on the topic um the thing that's kind of most drawing in my attention right now when we're talking about vaccine mandates that has me concerned is um i've been looking into this myocytis which is some sort of heart condition associated with men predominantly i understand and as you get lower on the age scale the frequency of this thing i'm no doctor i'm just kind of doing my best to study upon it the lower you go age-wise the bigger a concern this thing becomes with with young young boys that's got my attention and i'm looking seriously at that so i might be complaining about it to to you you all at some point in time but anyway i can be on your radar screen too myocarditis actually heard a presentation uh on that today from the california department of public health and they certainly are aware um and i can share that information with you the doctor speaking was very articulate about that particular issue thank you for letting me know about that so we'll keep you posted as things move on and and uh we'll we'll let you know how things go um after october 15th thank you yeah i just want to salute you thank you michelle setting it up yeah same michelle i was impressed by your email as well and um i just had like this the littlest comment that um i've seen a fear perpetuated that the more you test the more positive you know the more cases there will be but really the more we test the better we know exactly what's happening um you know the more data you have the more sure you are about your assumptions of of the you know the state of things so i'm really grateful that we'll be able to keep track on the wellness of our staff and students a little bit better with this testing internally thank you so much for all your work and thank you all the time you've spent on the phone um i don't don't invite you but i'm super grateful for you well thank you do we have any requests for public comment uh we did not receive any request for public comment uh for this agenda thank you okay this is an informational only items board so we we do not have an action required and we'll move on to our next item which is 4.2.2 approval of chico unified teachers association tentative agreement so um basically this is the culmination of our conversations we've had before regarding the agreement with cta we have been in negotiations with cta through last year and we decided to postpone the financial part of it until this year until we could determine what our enrollment is so obviously we've reached the tentative agreement and that has been sent on to you to review and today voting ended with cut members and it was overwhelmingly approved so the next step is essentially board approval and before we can implement so i bring to you for the the vote for the implementation of our tentative agreement with cota any questions let me move forward here dr kaiser this has been a long drawn out but i think very thorough process and so i would like to move the passage of the tentative agreement with the teachers association dr kaiser thank you but we do have to ask if there's been any public comment on this actually yeah okay justin thank you there were no public nobody cares for any of the items on this did you have an additional question mr tennis yes i do um attachment d lists stipends including sports and non-sports and drama etc am i looking at the right agenda item here yes yes you are yes okay um i was drilling into the details of tonight's meeting this morning and we don't see anything for after-school band i happen to know that that there is a band activities going on after hours um like a jazz band type of thing is that an item that needs any funding and why is it not in here and i know the people who are conducting it i.e mr phil happy so i'm going to speak from experience when i was principal at chico high school and um that was a considered a class period that they were included in their schedule often many of the jazz members were already in the main band and so they wanted to do something specialized such as jazz so those are often done in the evenings or right after school so those are included in the the schedule that a teacher would is paid for anyway so it's not included as far as um an extra stipend for that i'm assuming that that's the way it it works even now mr shepard is shaking his head yes so he he's not volunteering his time when he's there no no they're they they may only teach four periods during the day and then have jazz band um after school is out so and sometimes that is in the evenings especially when they're preparing for concerts yeah all right thank you for clarifying that i'm happy to second doctor yes i'll now accept dr kaiser's motion uh yeah and i was just gonna follow the comment um because i actually think it ties in extremely well to our multi-tier social support many times those teachers who are coaching or working with special groups choir music drama that is where they have the closest possible relationship with the student and it's a really critical person that they'll talk to first so i'm very very much in favor that we recognize this is not just extra time but it's a really high quality personal contact time and really is significant and over 50 of our high school kids are involved in something like this so it's really important remember dolby i have a couple questions um on the attachment d for junior high stipends department chair is listed here is is that something that's still not happening it's in here but it just doesn't happen it is not happening right now we did not take it out because someday it may and then you have to renegotiate all those things so but we do not have department chairs for junior highs we do reason that there aren't department chairs at junior high is because it just hasn't been asked for they went away and the work that was associated with them went away during budget cuts what 12 years ago or more um and they just you know have not come back okay i just never understood why there weren't chairs when there were teachers who were doing the work of department chairs at the junior high level so it sounds like there's not really any good reason okay um and then the other question is about teacher in charge um how are the teacher in charge selected or how is i guess for a singular class campus usually it's chosen by the site administrator somebody's taking a leadership role on the campus some it also could be one of our teachers that is in the the program at chico state to become an administrator so we want to give them the opportunity to get some experience in that program but yes it's selected by the site administrator i'd like to see that explored a little bit better just because it's not necessarily consistent and sometimes it's a little bit um what's the word for nepotism almost like nepotism where it's it's a it's a either a favorite or they just you know it's a friendly a friendly gift to the favorite teacher i just happen to know for example that um it's happened on a campus that it was a first year or a second year teacher on that campus and and it wasn't offered or or solicited to any experienced teacher on the campus who who had been there for at least a few more years um and so uh that the fact that that position is a straight stipend for the that's for the year right this 2000 yeah they get two semester so they get they get appointed the teacher in charge and there are so many days that they have to be in charge and don't get me wrong it is a hard freaking job i've known of our teacher in charge being spit on bit punched in any given day that they're in charge for some reason those kinds of things just happen on those days um not to take anything away from that but just to know that there's a a more diplomatic process to select who will be the teacher in charge it's a it's an important position and to just you know make it be whatever is the will of the administrator isn't always isn't always the best option in my opinion i can only just talk about myself when i was administrator at marsh i wanted to make sure that if i was off campus that and i had a teacher in charge on campuses somebody that i knew that i could trust that when i'm leaving my school that they were going to do what they need to do or do the right thing most of that time was to give me a phone call but i wanted to make sure that i chose somebody that i know um the steps i wanted now again i don't know the person that you're talking about right now but most of the time i chose somebody that i knew that was going to be in a leadership role or wanted to be in a leadership role or talk to me about being on leadership role and i wanted to make sure that i trusted that person on my campus when i was off campus dr kaiser yeah just clarification so if i understood the exchange that happened about department chair at the junior high there's an amount identified but nobody has that title was that the clip no even when it's requested any any further discussion board are we ready for a vote we we don't have any requests for public comment do we have a motion well i made the motion i can repeat it i'm moving the approval of the cuta a tentative agreement do we have a second i'll second that thank you no further discussion i'll call for the vote member dalby voting on the yeah yeah i was just thinking we could all if didn't we not because you knew abstain on the last one that's right we have not voted very much tonight i apologize daldi i kaiser eye robins and i thank you and thank you to cuta and glad you're here kevin thank you so just a note i'll be bringing the csca agreement forward at the october 20th they are in the process of working through their 610 process and also then they'll vote before the october 20th meeting do we do we know if the 610 approval has gotten any any shorter or are we looking at it appears not but that's why we that's why we didn't bring the fort tonight so yeah but we can get it bring it to you on the 20th and um still be in time for payroll at the end of the month this gives our payroll department a head start on half of our employees so this is this is a great start for them there they're short-handed now so they appreciate that uh a meeting that i attended where we went monday indicates that there have been staff cutbacks at cse field offices and headquarters so uh nudge because we um i think we're ahead of schedule with tentative agreement approvals so we should be getting that 610 on time yes we've been assured that it will happen so we've been in contact with sacramento thank you okay let me move on to business services um three discussion on ab 2756 public disclosure documents for compensation agreement with the chica unified school district that's that's the wrong one nope that's right that is that's right oh that's the yeah got it that's the other thing we have to do when we reach an agreement thank you so i'm going to carry this one um so um just an explanation um anytime we reach an agreement with an employee unit we have to disclose that to the county office of education under ab2756 and essentially it's a submission to show that we can afford to do what we're doing and we're going to remain in positive what they call it certification positive certification in so doing so jaclyn who couldn't be here tonight prepared all this and is ready to submit it upon board approval so the numbers are essentially what we've discussed before um with the incoming dollars that we get from the state so so ready to do that with approval by the board mr hanlon you just confused me which isn't hard these days you said that yes we have run the numbers but aren't we supposed to get something back after it's sent to certification by the county and that that can't happen until jacqueline gets back or is that what you're saying no no anytime we reach an agreement um with a with a yes we have to submit this to show that we can afford it essentially and so this is a follow-up to the vote that you just took to approve the agreement and then we have to we have to certify that with the county to show that we can we have the funds to to support that i i yeah it's a requirement that we have to do every year anytime we reach an agreement yes thank you okay that's um we do are there any public comments there were no requests for public comment okay any other technical dr kaiser i just wanted to uh it says discussion action to point out that we have verification internally that we can uh afford this and that's what voting on this will then send to the county yes so thank you i move ab25 27-56 thank you i'll second it board president doesn't get to second much but i'm gonna second this one okay do we have any further board discussion okay all those in favor signify by saying i i for with um [Music] board member um lando absent um okay charter schools measure k project requests ah there's there's julie julie did you get the message about what i relayed about the black strip out in front of campus no ma'am when i arrived it had been raining my i saw it i tested my crutch tips on it it is slippery as ice so i wanted you to know that because had it been any wider i would not have been able to enter without having a carpet or something thrown over that very slick surface on that black cement thank you for letting me know i'm on it okay you're you're up with the um uh measure k project requests thank you on september 27th the measure k charter facility committee met and they evaluated a recommendation and made a recommendation to our department from forest ranch charter school they would like to be allocated seven thousand four hundred and fifty one dollars for a new phone system for their school any questions the questions okay do we have any public comment we have no public comment do i i'd like to have a question go ahead sorry this is a staff recommendation you're recommending that we support this yes um it's it's newer technology for them uh which they can utilize the voip system you know voice over internet protocol and it will it will help with their school safety to have a reliable phone system on their campus thank you okay i'm now ready for a motion i moved the excuse me i moved the passing of the measure k project for uh forest ranch is there a second yes i'll second okay moved by dr kaiser seconded by member dalby all those in favor signify by saying i i the vote is um four yes one absent thank you julie next thank you this next item is resolution number one five five five dash two one and uh an accurate description of this is the approval of a change order for slater and son contract on the cte project at pleasant valley high school to add the fire alarm campus-wide retrofit and upgrade to the project the reason we're bringing it forward as a resolution is because the value exceeds 10 percent of their contract so it must come through you as a resolution can i answer any questions nope dr kaiser yeah i'll make a comment i just was struck on these about the number of improvements that we are discovering need to be made as we are doing these improvement areas or expansion areas including the phone aspect that really relate to critical safety aspects so i just think it seems like that we're lucky these discoveries happened when they did and not after the fact when somebody discovers their fire alarm system doesn't work because a building burned down for example so i just think it's really critical and to me it made total sense not to do a public bidding i have a question and maybe i just don't understand as well um but so when we put a project out to bid and we approve the lowest bidder because that's what's required by law and then they come back and say actually we need to increase this by eight hundred thousand dollars and if they had included that in their original bid they wouldn't have been the lowest bidder i'm just i'm kind of perplexed about how this shakes out well that's a really good question and that's why this law is a law that the 10 percent contract value law this work was not included in the project for bidding initially so we didn't include it in in our ask correct gotcha there is fire alarm included on the buildings that slater is working on for cte projects this includes the other existing buildings on the campus so when we are completed with all of the cte projects the mpr the culinary arts medical child development the whole campus will be brought up to current code some of the key features are you know we're using our cte dollars to leverage so we have the ability to do this now which is really wonderful the equipment that's in some of those older buildings that haven't been updated is old and finding parts when they need to be changed out is getting more and more difficult so this is really a good opportunity it will bring the whole school up to current code but one of the biggest advantages is that it provides additional warning for individuals with visual and hearing impairment which is really a great deal and that is code now but a lot of our campuses don't have that voice system where when a staff member or a child hears the alert over the speaker it's speaking to them saying this is a fire you know you need to evacuate and instead of just a ringing bell and they have to try to understand what that means there's actually a voice speaking to everyone on campus over the speaker system telling them exactly what's going on and what they need to do yeah so it's really a great advantage i definitely was not arguing against that at all i have no problem with upgrading our system to be as inclusive and you know reach all people with all types of needs as possible um i just am always a little concerned about the bid process sure you know and so there's a law you're telling me this is i know a little bit of an aside but it's helping me understand for future reference there's a law that um you know if the the winning contract was bid at 500 000 and they came back and said oh well it turns out there's also this that we need to add um or we we miscalculated this cost and it actually is going to be this much more they couldn't surpass 50 000 right um the law is actually put in place to protect contractors from the district and requiring them to do more work without giving them the ability to be competitive and put the markup that they want to put on it but what you're saying is true that they we cannot authorize a change order that exceeds that 10 percent of their original bid price in this case that scope of work was not ever bid so we are choosing to add it and we have got a competitive bid from the electrician working for slater sure and um yeah it's and it is i'm assuming this feels weird to ask us but it is legal to do that even with our cte funds even though those facilities aren't cte facilities because it's under this contract correct the the whole project is funded with a combination of cte funds and measure k measure e developer fees so it is legal yes okay i hope that my questions are annoying and that not at all okay thanks for helping me understand then i would like to move the passage of resolution 15 1555-21 as soon as we check to see if there's any public comment i'd be happy to do that [Laughter] thank you i didn't want caitlyn to be raising her hand that i'd missed something i am now ready for a second if any member would care to second the motion i'll second thank you mr tennis i have a motion and a second um we have uh uh uh asked we have no more discussion correct okay uh all in favor signify by saying i i that passes four yes one absent thank you board okay this is also you ms kissel the number three on the resolution one five five five dash two one um the declaring the futility of public bidding change order work on pleasant valley high school's career technical education project that's the one we just finished that's the one we just approved yeah so the next one's a resolution as well the next one is the lee's sublease agreement yes thank you ms kissel good evening um i believe we have katie dobson on the zoom i'm grateful she's here with us tonight from jones hall jones hall is our attorney on this matter this item is resolution 1553-21 and it is a mechanism to allow the district to borrow money um using a lease sublease agreement and if katie can come on katie up on the zoom that'd be great on the screen good evening everyone good evening katie go ahead hi so the resolution you have before you this evening relates to the purchase of a new piece of property that the district is considering and as you know there are certain restrictions on multi-year borrowing for school districts in california one exception to that is voter approved debt like the district's bond measures and another exception to that is a lease agreement and so this is a mechanism that's widely used by um by public agencies in the state and allows the district to borrow not more than two million dollars i believe the current anticipated borrowing amount is expected to be 1.87 million dollars so this resolution authorizes the district to enter into this financing agreement for not to exceed 2 million dollars i believe that makiko sato of isom advisors gave a presentation at last month's meeting with what the expected finances of this transaction are and some of those numbers are also included as an appendix to the resolution before you and the district is planning to use its rda pass-through funding to make the debt service payments on this lease but the lease will be secured by the general fund of the district so i'm happy to answer any questions if there are any so all the language in this refers to hooker oak elementary school but your initial statement was is this about using this money for the property that we had approved going after earlier yes so hooker oak is what will what we call the leased asset and so in this financing structure the district effectively leases hooker oak elementary to the financing corporation which is made up of the district's board members and the corporation then subleases that back to the district for its use and the right to receive the rental payments for that are assigned to a bank by the corporation by the financing corporation and then the bank gives all that money up front to the district and the district then makes those debt service payments to the bank through the assignment by the corporation i think it was confusing to me because the language of it always referring to hooker oak made me think that we were going to spend the money on hooker oak but that's no the money can be spent on anything that the district wants to and it has identified the purchase of this new piece of property but hooker oak will be what we call the least asset in the transaction so it will essentially be encumbered and you all may be familiar with certificates of participation i know the district has entered into those previously i believe back in 1996 and again in 2004 and so the district's financing corporation has been in existence since 1996 for this purpose uh with assisting the district with financings and you all have done a great job at keeping the corporation up to date and running the way that it's supposed to be running since 1996 so you still have it available to you to use which is a great asset but so hooker oak elementary um what we will do is record this lease in the real property records of the county and so you're then you are prohibited from leasing it out for another purpose until this lease is paid off uh i think your explanation gives a lot of clarity to something that was quite murky thank you okay yes no problem thank you sure uh julie is that all the information you need to give us unless we have other questions yes it is okay thank you um do we have any public comment madam superintendent we have no public comment um do we have any motions associated with this item i move approval of resolution 1553-21 thank you we have a motion by member tennis and a second by dr kaiser no further questions okay all those in favor signify by saying i i thank you that's four yes with one member absent okay next we need to do a recess so that we can take care of business with that financing corporation that we just referred to so we're going to officially go to recess and reconvene as the annual meeting of the board of directors of chica unified school district financial corporation so we are in a brief recess and i have the um let me click on the stuff we need for the meeting i don't have an attachment doc [Music] it's in a separate agenda it's a separate agenda so we need to um thank you daniel meeting i need to call um the meeting of the um [Music] where's the official title again yes chica unified school district financing corporation is now called to order approval of the minutes of the last annual meeting november 18 2020.

they changed their mind and decided the world was left over they would open up the second filing window which began on september 28th and it's running through next week on october 13th is the end so this has given us the rules haven't changed this has given us another opportunity to reach out collect data from our parents um trying to find out who needs devices dedicated devices for their students at home there's a there's a online forum that's on our website that people should go to and fill it out [Music] because we have these many families say they need devices or enter hot spots for their families so we put out bicourt connect calls numerous times since we knew this was coming so this is just kind of our final push to the end because we're gonna have to collect this data this is a department of education survey that we're using i have to reach out i have to collect our data go through it make sure somebody didn't apply again for the already added first batch and then we go from there everybody next wednesday we have to get those clothes they have to be put in put in and then hopefully work waiting for the approval we still haven't got approval from the first batch this month [Music] english and spanish translation linked the form itself is in both english and spanish it asks for simple things like your email address your name your school district we accept any you know territorial [Music] do you have any barriers [Music] is the speed we're talking about that is the speed barrier and so we're just trying to collect this data and try to come up with another list of devices that we can get for students musical and it's only at home we can't hold these devices to school districts the district holds the devices we will identify the students and staff as equivalents by the way and we will check those outs for those individuals super independent delivering systems [Music] with the board and those watching on youtube um family of thoughts five kids um what could they get as part of this program if all five kids need a dedicated device there will be five chromebooks uses problems we have control over chromebooks anywhere there's internet access and those chromebooks are filtered vr filter and then each household is eligible for a hot spot or something that provides access we have some hotspots that we're going to have we're going to follow up their data plans on and check those out so it's one internet access one device per household and a device per student so larger families might still struggle a little bit because of those restrictions when you try to bump four or five devices [Music] and that goes [Music] and hopefully we can take care of it it's important that people sign up because those that sign up in either the first survey of the second survey are going to be first on the list and only those any devices can go to others that are anonymous it's imperative if you're interested to go on the this website help desk and fill out that survey because that's the only way you can be guaranteed if we did this we get the devices the only way that you'll be first off one last question so during the candidate we gave up hot spots fair horse and issues with i believe my name is the data being used all at once or initially are we going to have [Music] we received 147 hot spots for zero cost with a very what we're doing is actually requesting for that really low data plan to be bumped up to the limited per month and greater than only for a year there's still some talk about these programs being extended into year two and three some of this may actually be incorporated we just don't know so it is [Music] hot spots on school buses and then nothing funds and now we have decorative tournaments on our school buses because we don't want to pay for the neighborhood that that's a possibility does anyone have any questions anything comes up [Music] to um a board meeting home uh and so this has come to fruition obviously i want to hear it was kind of it was our liaison with the um who is um at the community center here in paulden set us up on a date um i want to thank um larry and matt santos is not here and lawrence who kind of technology and uh [Music] so [Music] i did a uh call i did you know the information got on so and thank you for coming sir i appreciate you coming but um that was a lot of changes in our enrollment um sold about 150 over the last year but it's at two minute levels um and again we'll continue to lose throughout the year high school and meeting people uh cycle that happens but for the most part our overall number should remain fairly stable through the squared until that number becomes [Music] or something like that yeah code 19 update you have on your uh behind this this update we have two reports um we are still in the substantial height transmission for our cases positivity um that's probably been demonstrated for a while but actually we did have a complete last stream from uh [Music] so it's going been a good substantially you can also see um the last page is the cases and the cases the first two columns are timo valley and paulden and you can see [Music] okay um [Music] was uh double digits and even highest uh the end of september it was but hopefully that number will really be amazing as well um one thing to do is this is the entire county including the birdie valley um there's been i would say this is just based on the numbers uh a disproportionate number of cases in the birmingham uh compared to the president's economy and you can see that i tried to show that by daily basis you fought city but if you look um for example last friday there's 100 pieces 52 million we have about two thirds of the population the second mountain and only have cases so um this this you know we have to kind of look at that information when you're looking at the entire time but in the community we're doing pretty good and and since that class when things started we always had fewer cases per population than other areas of the state as a county and so because we are the fourth i think the fourth largest country after [Music] any other question so far accounting um is scheduled for october 18th it's going to be held by us i have signed up if you are interested in five o'clock on that day on the 19th you can have karen and she'll sign you up you can watch [Music] thank you so tonight i want to recognize peter and he is receiving his certificate of orientation for arizona [Music] [Applause] congratulations [Applause] [Music] they're careful um the county media uh then following up we have the asb a annual conference um which is going to be december 16th and 17th and there is appropriate conference on the 15th this is going to be held in jw's mary there's a bridge hotel which is in north phoenix on norfolk 101 i think and registration begins next week so if you are interested please let karen know and she will sign me up you should have been receiving some emails from yesterday about this uh and um you wanted if you're even thinking about it please let her know because the rooms will run out um so you can look here you will probably cancel and just get in um [Music] uh especially if you want lots of vendors uh with some sharing of what goes on kind of neat things going on in there just let jeremiah [Music] scheduled lastly one of the neat things that we get to do as administrators is we get to honor our teachers and other staff members and if you recall that this on a monthly basis and we scaled it back to beyond important a little bit more exclusives a little bit before these three years and yesterday morning we were able to go out to our schools all four schools can recognize all of our teachers and staff members of the quarter i do want to mention that donna and jess she is our sponsor list when you get a supporter matt takes their picture on facebook with a little frame um and then donna gives them the nice sweet video along with a district kit for lunch so i'm thinking of donna ted's for sponsoring us so just to kind of name who we had at the territorial early childhood center our teacher was cody gibbons who's new to the district and so that's exciting to see you new to the district teacher our staff member is mary zaborniak and del rio gave a brand new teacher um albus and our staff member was linda gilman at heritage we have a former student of mine cbhs grad um brian carnell and our staff is lauren thompson at the high school our teacher was matt dunn and our staff member was and our district staff member who's been working our tail off to get our bus going um with all kinds of challenges and it was funny i had a meeting with chris on monday afternoon and she goes can we just now she didn't know department because they've all been working so hard to keep things going so um you know chris is just one of the the main persons [Music] and so everyone's working hard in that department to try to bring to get our kids from school and we're trying to come up with some ideas on how to address that travel shortage but it's not just it looks like there's a great personality yes [Applause] [Music] i know we have [Music] and in some cases the principal will reach out to other staff members and administrators but ultimately it's the principal's responsibility although the district is is something i didn't change from others but i'm ultimately for the district [Music] reports so i'm going to just uh summarize three things uh president boards and joel stafford yes uh three things on the financial report for the month ending september 30th we had a little discussion at the end of last month's meeting about the uncovered amount and the amount of our budget there and if you look on that page you see our budget this year for our operating is right now 14 and a half million if you take the 110 000 there then we've got if you haven't covered yet and you add the grant monies to it you get the 644 000 and that's not really got any hands on use that uh four hundred thousand people that don't get money a lot at the beginning of the year to keep them in black the counties are cash so you can see out of that fourteen and a half million that our budgets have right now there's about four percent uh really close to four percent that we haven't truly budgeted it's in play and if we loan it to these other funds and then once the money comes in they repay the opportunity so that's the short answer any questions on that mr tony thank you [Music] so if you look at the cash funds is what i wanted to highlight a little bit and it's fun 691 if you look at those cash balances that page instructions there's five columns on that page the first one is beginning cash and 13 000 in that page of 28 000 an expensive 28 000 and that's the way that fund works right now we've got purchase orders out there for about 650 000 for roofing projects and for air conditioning projects and weatherization projects at every site total all those purchase ordinances we're getting right around 650 000.

um and thankfully supply chains are running now so there's not this huge shortage there wasn't the beginning of the pandemic so i stocked up on like some can 95s and things like that so it at least allowed me a little bit of mental protection and we know that these add a little bit more protection to the user now when you're looking at protecting those around you a cloth mask is better than nothing a surgical mask is going to be better than a cloth mask but again to achieve when you have high levels of vaccination in the community a lot of that really becomes a lot less relevant it depends on the behavior of the community um in general to determine how effective those various things are and what the added value of a surgical mask of our cloth mask is it may be negligible if everyone's vaccinated and doing other things it may become more important if you are immunocompromised if you have you know a transgender you're on medications that make you uh more susceptible to infections and things like that there may be different reasons to select different levels of masks and i know in our family we select different kinds of masks for different reasons whether they are off of the face a little bit more for my small child um or if they're more comfortable for me to wear at work all the time um or if it just makes me feel a little more comfortable in the situation or maybe it really will protect me because the people around me um aren't vaccinated um or are sick things like that so that's sort of my take on where i think the evidence stands at this time and just being realistic about what the goal is at various times and in various situations yeah i think that's a really important point and i think it can be further subdivided i think into medical personnel and what we wear like what we wear in the emergency department and how we wear it versus in the general community and especially with kids and i think just like lauren said right for me with the kids the most effective mass is the mass that they are wearing right if there's a mask that's uncomfortable if the mask doesn't fit then i don't care if it's a kn95 versus something else they're not going to wear it they're going to wear it out they're going to pull it down their nose and it's not going to kind of provide that that protection to themselves or to others you know that being said i think you know there are some things that are just false right so the mass that folks wear surgical mass things like that they're not going to decrease your oxygen there's no evidence they're not going to build up carbon dioxide they're not going to malform your kid's face right those are the most common things that we see for evidence against are there some potential behavioral things and issues totally i will give that credence that that this some kids struggle with this but some kids do struggle with this because of the way that it fits and the way that it feels and the way that it annoys them so some of my kids with the cloth masks which we we still have some of the cloth masks it would stick to their face and they would literally be eating it the whole time and it'd be disgusting and soaked and then they pull it down and we found that the disposable kn95s more for the fact that it stays off of the face a little bit it and it's much lighter it's much more comfortable and they're able to keep it on and i tell you it comes back a lot less dirty so i think it's about finding what is right and there's a lot of different mass right now with regards to the last thing i'll say with it with the guards the 95 the kn-95 the n95 i would be a little bit careful the idea of those mass for us in the hospital is that we've been fitted for specific n95s that actually seal to our face because the n95 loses its n95 capacity if air is getting in through cracks right and there have been a lot of false things on youtube where they're saying this doesn't work it's because it's not fitting them because they're not wearing it properly we don't expect kids to wear an n95 properly so to think well i have to use an n95 for my child it really depends and it depends on their fit and if it doesn't fit them you know a surgical math or a cloth mats might be even better so so i think keeping that in mind that especially with kids having something that makes them feel comfortable and fits well no matter what it is is going to help great thank you so we are just about at our time so i'll give another minute or two to see if anyone has uh any additional thoughts questions comments or tips uh for us here tonight but i didn't know if there was any kind of final thoughts other things that any of our panelists wanted to share before we head off and let lauren be with her little one thank you very much for uh for joining particularly with that uh additional friend with us tonight but anything uh peter you wanted uh anything else you want to share from the pediatrician's point of view for uh for folks for families no i mean i think you know it's been it's been a hard year and a half for everybody for a lot of reasons um and i guess the you know i'm starting to see people get out more and and having the prospect of these vaccines coming out for the younger kids and for for my daughter is is great and really important um i guess the thought would be this the biggest thing that we're seeing actually now in the office the pediatric office apart from when we're starting to see some more viruses but it is um i think bill alluded to it before was just the amount of just mental health stress that's going on with with particularly with our teenagers but also with you know with everyone around and i think we sensed that and so i think uh that's something that we're really working on a lot and our office is trying to reach out to our teams making sure that they're feeling heard and supported and um i guess i would just ask everyone to just take some deep breaths and to continue to be kind and show some grace to everyone wearing a mask not wearing a mask whatever it is is just to be kind when you can because i think that's going to go a long way toward helping us come out of this uh pandemic is just is that piece we're doing all the other parts the hand washing and the mask but also just you know talking to one another and listening to one another is going to go a long way so so i appreciate actually like you in putting these these talks together and getting information out there so that we can be talking to one another it's good to be here to be talking with lauren with bill about all these these things so i appreciate that thank you for uh your participation and and what you bring to it thanks peter lauren bill any kind of final remarks you'd like to make i'll go i'll leave you for last lauren save the best for last um no i agree and i really commend the community because we are where we are um with our relatively low number of cases because of all the work people have done um so i do think you know this winter is different than last winter and we are going to be able to let our kids enjoy and have some of that life and i would say for those of us that that really want to push through that finish line it is it is getting folks that are unvaccinated vaccinated we can talk about things we can talk about boosters we can talk about types of mass but if we're looking at we really want to make the impact even though we're at a relatively high percentage kicking that percentage up even more is going to make that extra difference and that's covid that's flu the more that are unvaccinated can become vaccinated the more we will be able to to loosen those restrictions and kind of get back to normal so so now's the time to make that final push and um yeah thank you everyone i uh just agree on that i think that uh the vaccines have really been a game changer and we can obsess and talk about the minutia about breakthrough infections and things like that um but the thing is is that if you look at almost all of the people that are in the icus and in the hospitals they're nearly all unvaccinated and they have that chance to protect them and their family um and it's not it's it's not too late for the people that haven't been vaccinated yet or that that opportunity exists there are plenty of vaccines um we're fortunate in this country um and then there are other ways so like my children aren't old enough to get vaccinated yet as many of the children in the public school systems aren't yet um but we live in a community where there are things like free testing at university of massachusetts where you can do it at your house it's a little tickle they email you the results um and and uh they're relatively cheap although seven dollars a test it depends on how often you test um ways that you can kind of keep your family safe as well um when the vaccine isn't an option um for for you uh due to uh sort of the age cut off so i think that we live in a community where there's a lot of resources uh for even the young kids um as well as the vaccines um and so taking advantage of them i think is really important great well i put a link in the chat um to what dr westerfer is talking about and the umass testing with the pickup kits that she referenced earlier so if you click on that link in the chat it'll give you all the information of how to pick it up and uh what happens with that and and you know it is easy uh and it's also a great resource that most communities don't enjoy that level of free pcr testing that comes back as dr rushford said so quickly so it is nine o'clock which was our end time so we want to thank you all for coming we will be sharing this in our newsletter this recording it's also as i noted in the chat it is a um if you click on the youtube link that you're watching on once we end this it'll be immediately available and indefinitely available so hopefully some of the things i said hold up in time but if not you'll be able to go back and say i was wrong so that's okay that's the way my life is and yeah it has a public official here but i really want to thank our three guests from the medical community appreciate your continued support of of our community and of our school district and hope everyone has a good safe night thank you thank you

so they are continuing they're they're projecting that this is with the median projections they're continuing to assume that we will experience growth to 4 to 500 over the next couple of years we do have we are anticipating a really large 9th grade group next year because we have i believe it's i'm sorry i have the number right here so you can see it in broad view between broadview rogers and westside academy the numbers we have looked at we have almost a thousand kids going into the ninth grade which would be one of the highest numbers that we've had and so that's when we're really going to begin to experience the bump at nor at normal high school so we're really going to start to see this number continue to trend up because our middle schools have been maximized and you'll see the 989 but this is mostly because of this bump through the 1920 school year and you'll see that number has increased again at broadview and then the same thing at rogers park and so those are the numbers that we're concerned about we learned that we had a number of students and i'll be able to share this data with you on wednesday a number of students leave us in june and then we had a number of students come across our counter over the summer and they're still coming and you know our our reporting date is october 1st uh we have another 200 students in the queue um that you know unfortunately for enrollment purposes official enrollment numbers will be after october 1st but we have 200 more students and families who are registered in the system that will that will be processed after october first and part of what we're learning is um and we're looking to partner with the city and the state where appropriate we have a lot of families who are trying to get their vaccinations um they can't afford vaccinations um to actually get access to our schools uh we're learning that the vaccinations themselves are very costly at urgent care um to get a physical we're learning that um our our um places where our families would get these physicals are backed up from other appointments and so we're trying to work with the city and outside agencies to see if we can have someone come in to help relieve some of this log jam so that we can get our kids and our families serviced but we're learning that has been a frustration in the system and part of the hold up for some of our registrations in the system but i i and i will share this link so everyone can have it and we can share it for the board meeting as well but this is these are the numbers actually that we reported last year the 11834 number uh this number will be obviously updated for 2122 experiencing you know significant growth leaving the middle school going to the high school over the counter this summer we've had a lot of kids coming in at the high school um you know and that that growth also continues and hopefully we will be out of the school in the nick of time and that building is built at the matrix to help relieve some of the pressure for danbury high school so we will have this data available on this screen i'll share this link but we'll have this screen shared for wednesday um in addition to the 2122 updated enrollment numbers um and then also broken down by kindergarten first grade second grade third grade all the way up to pre-k-12 so on the board in the community you can see that see that data as well but i just wanted to give an update just so everyone can kind of see where we are uh we are projecting right now at around 11 7 11 6 for our 2021 numbers as of october 1st uh but like i said we're expecting an additional 200.

any questions on the minutes dr kaiser this is an odd question and so hopefully our lawyer can answer this for us since we have two people that were not at that time on the board and one who was but is not here uh can we vote on these minutes yes yes you can the board makeup is is not um not important for that okay thank you for that clarification yeah of course i moved the passage of the minutes of 11 18 2020.

you subtract that 28 000 that you've paid and you're left with 594 000 still to be collected and paid and those projects were ongoing in fact they got the second round of invoices the 29th section so we submit those to the school facilities for they turn around pay it to the county when i pull down the revenue from the county we're in any questions on that report [Music] student activity fund is more activity than we had last year the first two more months of this did last year you'll see a line item there for uh 224 is from the ag account we've got departure from miles lower one of our teachers 16 students and three advisors heading to indianapolis at the end of the month and they've spent close to sixteen to seventeen thousand rooms and transportation and shuttles and you see a little bit also came from this event lucky for them they've got about five different fun sources that they're using to transport those students to that national uh ffa in indianapolis at the end of the month and that's really all i have to highlight we had 120 000 in that connectivity most of last year now we're down to 106.

uh we already have 200 additional families in the queue waiting to be processed so they won't make the october first number but it will be here so joe i'm i'm not sure i'm i'm assuming there was some discussion just on the numbers alone um but i i just wanted to make sure i presented the information and uh see how the committee would like to move forward if at all yeah i'm gonna open it up if anybody wants to um start us off kevin in terms i mean enrollment is what enrollment is it's been going up every year it's showing no signs of abating it's picking right up where it left off pre-pandemic um the agenda is you know look at elementary slash middle school expansion am i correct in understanding middle school is the more immediate concern um well yes based on numbers and and i think joe i think it makes sense given we have a high school slash middle school being built uh to help offset some of these numbers and i i don't think it's any surprise that we're experiencing you know the growth and you know some of the concerns we have at the building um but i i'm hoping just kind of given the projections and the growth uh that we have enough space even with the 300 that's going to the matrix right now and i believe our last submission was going to be and i think cara is still on the call it would be um 900 i'm sorry 1 000 high school and then 300 middle school or some number like that does that sound right carol yeah it's about uh three and a half ish or so i'd have to go back and look at the exact number but it's a total of 1400.

thank you i'll second that motion is there any public comment thank you no public comment any other comment from the board members no hearing none then um i will call for a vote to approve the minutes of november 18 2020.

thanks for the information thank you all right [Applause] she it's fairly straightforward we have a young lady who um has autistic and has never been in school in the united states and we don't think the school of mexico comes from mexico and so we need a paraprofessional to help and part of the issue is we want to spare confessions so this this uh para would be in the center's classroom at belgium under the supervision and work um individually with the students at the same time they work with other students when available but um but that has been allowed motion to approve this action level conditions [Music] there it disappeared anyway there's your stuff in there all right she just doesn't count for me [Applause] um and uh the excited number four is actually returning cphs grant so that's exciting some classified substitutions i think are what you're talking about officer atona we have a substitute van driver and three driver trainees two of them um are strictly want to do field trips which is okay because we have had that chance for a couple of athletic events because our focus has been on transporting kids home from school and we had to cancel this one football game and so these drivers will allow us to not worry about athletics that's that's probably going to do is some resignations we have some certified changes one includes our psychologist who's in the netherlands um [Music] they suggest that you go to eastern europe or romania where you can come to the united states but um we've also heard indications that they may travel by the travel banners on the next [Music] um our um preschool special teacher has finally arrived and so we're excited to have her in the united states so she's um has started for us some classified changes and coaches a long list of extra views are the normal time sheets that you've been signing on the supplement you have a reservation a certified change which is nice to see teachers moving over on the classified survey some ways just changing positions and again um immediately [Music] as that resignation doesn't really speed up the process so all it does is work next year if you don't want to lose and then you've got 109 to have that discussion outside right yep [Music] for a um congratulations we don't [Music] [Applause] [Music] any questions [Music] great thank you so we have the regular annual financial report that's landscaped in long long pages of those in addition we have two supplements i don't think the motion asks for supplements but we'll discuss that briefly first questions one of the food services one's the classroom site funding this money's only to register teachers or get working under a state contract and the last one is page you will have the opportunity to sign and improve this and just talk about our main funds here if you look at the lower right on that page full expenditures i'd like to just give you the budget for those funds and the expenditures of a little bit of information our operating fund budget is 14.4 million last year expenses are listed here at 13.72 cash flow 800 3 000 right into this next year and that's a lot of uh about 86 of that is salaries and benefits and then we've got also more utilities our next one is our classroom site fund and we did a really good job of budgeting and extending their 1 million 163 000 what's our budget that's based on cash and your revenue we spent 1 million 141 so we sent that down to about 22 less than our budget and we have really good news on that this year we've got a slight increase in that we'll be able to increase the eighty five hundred dollars the average gross paid to our certified teachers last year in addition to the regular salaries from that classroom cycle this year we'll be able to bump that too i believe the goal is 95 gross rate and of course there's just a cost so that's a real great sign for the state of the economy because that's based on six percent to six tenths of one percent of the there we go of the sales tax that the state brings in on a monthly basis they really are aggressive because they will make an estimate of june the joint legislative budget committee for the funds for the entire year so some of this extra funds last years and years past before they have been accurate that's a good sign the last one is one million eight federal money went up a lot in the 2021 year we had budgets full budgets for all federal programs 3.8 million we had revenues of 3.3 million and an expansion of 3.2 million and we had those four big funds we had the debt stabilization grant plus that's your one two three we've also got some cash in our forest fund and our e-rate fund anything that's a better project has included and that's our synopsis operating here in a nutshell there's several pages of data i can go through let's have a look at our major funds capital operating and classroom site in our federal conference any questions on the financial reports [Applause] and you just have a really good job thank you all right [Music] [Applause] um um i think you're all aware that john and i have scheduled three interviews with potential attorneys that we hire on the contract to represent the district we're very fortunate and we're able to interview all three attorneys and i've got to tell you all three attorneys not only significant firms do significant work for school districts all across the state of arizona so from a technical standpoint i couldn't say anything more than all all the three friends of the school in my opinion what john was upstairs is one firm did stand out and the reason for that is very straightforward two of the firms basically spent enough time with this without a lot of time existed everyone [Music] the one firm they say seriously is interested in knowing more about this mradini is already familiar with it uh and wanting to make sure that we knew that we had his full attention [Music] [Applause] the one difference was incredibly confident that mr ledbetter showed a truly sincere interest in working with getting to know each others and college districts and that's why i joined my afterwards my recommendation was mr and actually it was recommended by patrice our you know our priority so we needed a third-party investigator to come in she recommended him he's actually uh from the regalia but you know i agree with uh with peter he uh well first of all he's local i think that's one thing that i like um he understands small schools um he's a former court member he was a board member on the municipal high school district uh which is it's smaller than us but that's significantly smaller it's one of the bigger districts and so he knows what school boards which you guys are going through and ultimately he's representing you guys [Music] to me i think he will be in excellent changes to the asba bylaws has various um members at large but there also is a hispanic and native american indian caucus that provides a member to board one year is a hispanic representative the next year is a native american representative what this would do would be to provide two representatives of the border one from the hispanic side of the caucus and one from the native american side of that conference so they were going to be expanding board by one member that one member would be so they had instead of swapping back and forth they would have a membership spot um [Music] yes [Music] um and uh [Music] is second reading of policy j-i-c-a-a recognition j-i-c-a-r student address we discussed this class correct the big change here is just changing the verbiage and adding violent images which would not be allowed which would allow other other things if that weren't necessarily micro or appropriate that kind of fell under was maybe didn't [Music] the is aren't appropriate the idea and that's the um correct as is [Music] um [Music] well we you know one of the things is we talk about a lot of these things in our district leadership team so we have an idea the [Music] in this case the student through the parent has a you can always come to a higher level to me and we have this discussion and i would have a discussion with the administrator hey is this really what it is hey what do you think about this that's where this came from this was an issue at middle school we had a discussion with the middle school administration we brought into the dlt um conversation prior to the blt it was the interview that actually came up with this um this language in here so the answer to the question is nothing you know administrators have a lot of discretion unfortunately we have a very good idea is just a first reading of revised policies and this actually means a little bit yes so these five releases you actually approve the current version as a last month and i've seen this finally we have this conversation there's there's been some important action since our last meeting um and so this this relates to um there were some used some policy plans that were put into the state budget into budget bills that were non-budget items and in past years they've always gone through there was a um group of well there was a school board just aspa we were just talking about asa i think was part of that and there was another music said they weren't arguing about the individual items that include the ban on mass mandates a ban on the vaccination mandates there was a ban on race period there was something to do with elections that related it's not an argument about those individual items whether they're constitutional enough that's not what this is about it is how those items were put into the budget building when they're not budget hikers and but there's a constitutional amendment that says that each bill coming out of the legislature means one item and that item needs to be part of the client so what would happen is um these four items by themselves could not get voted by the legislature so what somebody says it might have brought up or might have did a sponsor in the building she said i'm not going to vote for the budget unless you put this or i'm not going to know and then this this is how these non-non-companies policy items [Music] themselves but the process is not constitutional according to the way i read it so when the laws when these were supposed to take effect on september 29th there was the policy was changed based on law you guys approved it now those um laws [Music] and so are not have not taken effect so these are basically taking out that language however this has been an extra expedited to the state supreme court which is said to hear these items on november 2nd so our next meeting is november this is the first week i see two things happening november 8th at our next parking this will be on the engine okay for a final vote the first thing i i think could happen [Applause] is that the supreme court comes out with a decision before that date and you either and it is saying that these are things are unconstitutional this just goes away or if it says that it was a constitutional place though [Music] the second possibility is that we don't know if the supreme court doesn't count with a decision then we probably hold off on this amount until we do have [Music] are there questions about that does that make sense mr pogba was at that perfect sense okay so that is [Music]

that's my recollection was like 350 or 360 years about it would only pull about 40 kids out of a grade level at each school of the middle schools right in light of the career academy in process and the middle school space that's coming with that should we be concentrating on elementary or middle school first so i and i'm sure kelly is chipping at the bit here um we we have uh which you know and we have this number here that's also reflected and kelly continues to remind us and anyone who will listen quite frankly that her numbers are continuing to grow and we have i believe i think it's 18 to new students pre-k students who are in the queue to be registered and so kelly already you know we have the i believe it's 10 classes at the grandville site we have a couple of more classes spread around the district um and we're going to continue to experience growth in this area as well on the board may or may not recall and job this i'm answering you this long way so please forgive me um the board may or may not recall as part of may abouten's bond effort there were a number of things on the table at that time one of them it was the high school growth and address the middle school growth and you know we addressed certainly the high school and um and and certainly chipping away at the middle school growth um the elementary school growth was something that was also discussed um in trying to plan for pre-k and pre-k programming and when serving the schools in a district uh the city landed and the architects landed on great plain as a potential site uh where they we would add on to that site and that could potentially serve as a pre-k kindergarten kind of center or we would move more more classrooms to that to that area and if i'm not mistaken we it was a number of classrooms which would be an opportunity for us to avoid some you know the various leases we have across the city um that one did not get moved forward as part of this initial bond um but the um the career academy and and the and the ellsworth's annex work did get moved forward but we you know when we put the shovel in the ground for granville uh we knew we were two or three classes short already um and that's and that's when we started that project so the the great plain kind of center and the exact academic focus is was really i don't think we had really solidified that plan but the thought was that would be at the very least a pre-k center so we can pull out our pre-k classrooms uh from maybe pembroke or hayestown uh great plain already has some so that was part of that discussion at that time um but again because it wasn't part of the bond we had kind of abandoned abandoned that conversation right so it sounds to me like i'm hearing we we need to seriously look at elementary soon like now i i believe so and and you know depending on the appetite of the board um you know we certainly given the pandemic which has frozen some enrollment or unleashed some enrollment in kind of different pockets although we certainly got a heavy enrollment push um in late august and i believe as i was um communicating with the board over the summer we really had not experienced much growth and then all of a sudden there was an explosion in late august like we didn't even handle it with so many families coming in across across our desk for registration um so but joe that that's my long way of saying given the plan the initial planning around the elementary before i think that is something we might want to revisit um and then i i think we also need to impr probably more appropriate to have some professional help here re-examine the idea to make sure our plans for the 300 plus kids at the middle school is really addressing our needs if it is addressing our needs that's great uh but if it's not i think this is the time to to re-examine and revisit that study in turn i'm gonna ask a question we may not know the answer and and that's okay because it's just something that i'm curious about in elementary school obviously you need a lot of room for high school a lot of room but not as much for middle school and you need a lot of room for an elementary school just in in various great gradations going up i i know the zoning minimum i think is at least an acre for any school i think in residential zones it's two acres i think a multi-family zone since one do we know if the city has any concepts or ideas on property that might be available either to rehab or to build a an elementary school i'm thinking of that first just because that obviously requires the least amount of land and the least amount of parking comparatively so we're not making any more land so it's hard to find but um do we have any ideas or no so i can i i haven't heard anything uh new joe i can tell you um in in the board um i see cara smirking so she might also remember um but we were at the table um with glenn with antonio um some members of the sites and facilities committee as well like i recall and there were a number of options we were looking at none of them included new land it was looking at our school sites to see what school sites had the potential to add more to that site and you might recall there was one school that was mentioned as maybe a middle school site there was another site that would be considered for to add on elementary space and and we landed on the space that made the most sense for elementary growth from a pre-k and possibly k perspective would be great playing and even that came with some challenges but i i think that's where the demographic i'm sorry not the democracy the architects and antonio landed um but again that didn't make the cut in terms of the bond proposed submission right career academy which of course we're all happy and grateful for um and the and ellsworth annex certainly did and i'm excited to talk to john about our girl at the ellsworth annex and share the back story on that initial school brand new school being built that didn't meet the needs of our downtown growth kevin i just i have a question just thinking about something that could help kind of better paint the picture of kind of the dire situation for for the enrollment um numbers is there's a difference between max capacity and like ideal capacity for these buildings and i think you know they're clearly not at over max capacity because they wouldn't be able to open but they're way over i ideal is there any way to maybe and i'm not asking you to produce this now because but if you could come back with it and forward it to us maybe what the ideal capacity would be at the current buildings right now just to kind of better allow us to to gauge what it is we need to look at in terms of new buildings what the difference is between ideal and what is existing absolutely joe and i i antonio and our architect who work with this initial project because i think after so many years of us being in like we've been accepting that the enrollment is just going to increase and increase so i think after so many years it kind of becomes the norm that we are accepting that we have these many kids in these schools when it's really not okay anything over i think ideal capacity for anything education related is a hindrance on education so i think it'd be good to kind of see just where we're at right now relative to what the ideal um conditions would be for those schools would be really nice to see and i think paint a clearer picture first i would think the fire department would have that for you for us right yeah i i can also speak to terry him and i were talking about um talking about this recently anyway um thank you kathy for bringing that up um and also joe i think when they make this assessment you know some of those larger spaces in the building um some of those spaces including but not limited to you know our pe space um our cafeteria our auditorium right and so if they have the capacity to handle so many kids in a in the school day that give us a really good indication of you know what kind of capacity we're talking about um but i i i'll rely on the experts uh for the feedback for this one evan thank you sir just if you could clarify for me are we presently being held hostage by either the state or the democrats numbers uh but we cannot bring this closer to a level buoyant number as far as our expansion are we expanding to the limit that the state will help us finance right now yeah thank you if i understand your question correctly it's um antonio who's been an amazing partner in this work with us um reminds me reminds me reminds me and he can't stress enough um kevin you guys can explore all you want but the state is going to have a formula and i know joe knows as well the state is going to have a formula for um for reimbursement and so unless the board in the city has an appetite for paying for any new expansion without any reimbursement we're going to have to meet the threshold for the demographer's um kind of submission and so a a study if i'm understanding your question correctly to we would never okay the demographers would need to come in do a study make recommendations we would have a building committee we would make a request for something and then the state will let us know if we met that threshold i don't know if we would meet that threshold or not but i think it's something worth considering and i think that's what's bringing us here this evening but we would definitely need to meet that threshold to even consider it because i don't think there's any appetite to to to finance the project 100 i think that would be a very logical statement thank you for that question and clarifying clarification because i'm sure there are others out there that were wondering as well kevin if i could build because that's a great question that i'll just ask question and maybe this is something we need to talk to the demographers about before they start can we maybe we need to figure out what our increasing trend is how much we've been blowing through our demographic estimates year or over year after we're exceeding the estimate by two percent three percent five percent one half a percent whatever that is because maybe it's in i love the way al just phrased that we're being held hostage to the demographers in the state maybe it's time to go to the state and ask for a different formula to ask them to take into consideration the fact that we're growing at a rate exceeding the demographers abilities to project and exceeding the the uh operational limits of their formula um but i think we need to know from the demographers how we're growing in order to make that argument or at least can make it convincing it makes sense no absolutely absolutely and a question i recall hearing um i don't know if it was i i believe this summer and it was clarification how we were doing with our growth in kindergarten um and we you know we we are we are we lost students in other grades uh but we are at 900 plus in kindergarten and so we did see the growth that we were anticipating in kindergarten um and so that that number is now in the district uh we experienced a little growth in first grade we were wondering for the parents who kept their kindergarten students um children at home last year we were wondering where they were going to land um a lot of them did decide just based on the numbers a lot of them did decide to put their kids in the first grade but we definitely got our growth in kindergarten we were you know over 900 um in that grade and so you know we we've kind of reset and kind of have a new high number again um we were initially as part of the demographers media projection for 2122 at 8 39 and we're a little over 900.

all those in favor signify by saying i i passes for yes one absent okay resolution 1554-21 um [Music] and directing the execution of documents and certain related actions that with respect to a lease financing for the chief unified school district do we do we have those those documents are part of the agenda when you go to the agenda for the financing corporation and uh miss dobson wants to walk us through just briefly that this is really what we just approved under the previous item yes this is the um the exact same thing and it's the lease agreement which provides for the lease and sub lease as i explained and then the assignment agreement which assigns the debt service payments to the bank making the upfront payment to the district thank you do i have any public comment none i am ready for uh a a motion i will move resolution 1554-21 do i have a second i'll second thank you motion by dr kaiser second by member dolby all those in favor signify by saying i i cape that's four yes one absent thank you board okay now going to adjourn the special meeting of the financing corporation and it's adjourned so we're now back to our regular agenda i feel like you should have had hats that you changed or something like that i'm sorry i said i feel like you should have had hats that you changed yes you know like we need to put our white hats on pump bags yeah foreign the hat with the the little monopoly thing on top of it that would be fun okay um why does it look like uh the first reading of the um we have board policies to uh yes we we do have two board policies um under 5.1 yes and keene is here and she can address them if there are questions however this is a first reading these came about as a result of our involvement in the federal program monitoring uh fpm so i don't know if tina if you have any words of wisdom well periodically there are new language additions that come to board policies that um come out of sacramento that we're obligated to include in our board policies so this is an example of that just a little bit of language added and shifted around it is in draft form as it's your first read and then second read will come back cleaned up looking sharper and we'll go from there so the first one and the only one i have is the uniform complaint new language added onto that board policy i i see a red language at the bottom of the conflict of interest oh there it is the ford bylaws yeah 92-70 is the conflict of interest and that's a board by-law the um 13 12.3 is the uniform complaint procedure correct and if you notice there's quite a few crossed out and some red added in there that's what i was oh there it is and again that's the example of the language that has we've been asked to include in as an update yep okay we'll accept this as the first reading there's no action to be taken correct correct okay thank you board and if you have any questions uh or wish to have something addressed at the second reading you can uh submit it before the meeting yes mr tennis basically this is dealing with um inappropriate behaviors some sort of profiting on the part of of board members i guess are you talking about the uh the uniform complaint procedures or this amendment uh am i looking for conflict of interest the conflict of interest one yes i mean i just like receiving gifts and things like that you know like if if we on the board are you know um profiting from from this in inappropriate ways correct that's what this is about and so what this would do is uh it would appropriate disciplinary action in accordance with some other laws that have already been written or we would come up with those so this clarifies and and we already do have policies in place there were just some minor changes that had to be made um to the policy to the board by laws okay i'm gonna follow staff's leadership on this completely so we we um are instructed on what things we need to keep track of and report which we do we occasionally do have things that we must report and we take care of it this is not it's unusual that we ever go over the the limit of what we are allowed to receive in the way of of a gift but we we are made aware of it at each time that something like that occurs so yeah they take care of us okay um the first reading no more questions board members okay thank you our next thing i believe is the request board member request to agendize an item do we have any requests from members okay hearing none we will um adjourn to closed session and if i could ask the board before we go into closed session uh erica needs to get some signatures okay sign whatever whatever erica asks you to sign and then okay thank you we will take care of erica thank you you

now in our other grades we went down um and this is pandemic related this study was done pretty pandemic but we did outperform kindergarten you know just because thank you just curious kevin do you know how when we uh get these studies done how long they take to to finish i mean if you don't know the answer you don't know the answer i was just curious yeah so the i i feel like the last one the update joe that we had done um rebecca turned around really fast but i think that's because she had already had completed a really comprehensive study the year prior um i don't remember when the request was initiated like i'm looking at one that's dated february 2020 and then the update was provided april 2021 um and i feel like we reached out to rebecca um kind of in january and she provided that update um that i i don't know how long it's gonna take them but i can find out i definitely can find out for us no worries thanks kev if if the committee feels i don't know if there are more questions on this but if the committee feels um like they would like me to pursue an additional study uh for our information i am happy to reach out to them um interestingly enough i had called a couple of weeks ago just to touch base with rebecca who was our point person um she's no longer working with the company uh you know just to make things more difficult because this transition i feel like everywhere so and then i said well can i speak to another person um who was working with rebecca on the project that person is gone uh so the company is still there but the company has changed names um and uh we will find someone but the the group was called malone and mcbroom i forget the name of the new company now um same number uh so they but they do have evidence of our report and i don't think it will take them long to wrap their kevin excuse me how much are we looking at as far as it costs for a new study i'm just trying to justify the need in my own mind for how much we're going to put out right right and i will look it up mr russo i believe this study was about 30 40 000 last last time um and but i i will confirm okay thank you now i i don't want to speak on behalf of the entire committee but i i think that the intent of tonight was kind of just to open the discussion on how we want to move forward and i and i think you know the the the logical move here is to get a little bit more informa another another study done to kind of see where where we're at but i really think joe joe uh made a very good point that if it's possible to talk to whatever company we use and tell them the history of us blowing over the projections and kind of lay that foundation first i think would be ultra important because at the end of the day i think every nobody wants to spend out of pocket to build a new school so the reimbursement is what's going to drive kind of the decisions we make so if we can absolutely if we can get uh a very favorable um you know demographic report uh that would be right yeah and and i can see if ryan um who is our point person to see if he can work with the legislators to see if there's anything they can do on their side to advocate for us to get this formula changed for our um specific situation as well you know i i don't know if it's a reasonable request but i don't think it hurts in asking um to see if they can advocate for us in some way this this will be the first time we've outperformed they're just they've i've underperformed under numbered us for a while now several and it just yeah why right yeah yeah if in a new demographic study i think is going to show what we all know it's going to show that we keep getting bigger and in a way that doesn't seem to match i understand the state's got to have a policy they got to have a formula but i i don't think it's unreasonable to ask them to show some flexibility in the formula where we keep exceeding what you know those numbers show you know it makes no sense to continue to build buildings that are too small when we open them so i'm thinking about uh mr russo's question about the cost of the study and if the committee is okay with this um i would like to ask antonio um if he would be willing to join us for a meeting to talk through the study from his perspective which certainly certainly will not cost us 30 000 maybe a cup of coffee from my office um and and see if i can bring you [Laughter] then i'm definitely coming yeah that's right and see if it'll speak um speak to these numbers and speak to our initial planning um and maybe just kind of better inform this conversation before we make the investment and study if you guys if you're okay with that sure works for me it works for me because we we are sitting on two studies done one year apart i mean we wouldn't have needed them yes i know it's different because of the pandemic so the pandemic is kind of challenging the the study itself but we do have some data to look at and i just think uh kind of a refresh from antonio might be helpful for us because it's been a while since we've sat down and looked at all of the plans and et cetera so joe if you would be okay with that i'll be happy to reach out to him yeah i think that would be best i'll i'll what does everybody else think we cool with that absolutely so then i don't think we actually need to make a motion on that so i think i think we're good on that end right joe what do you think is that we're fine i think we're fine it's it's we're setting up another meeting it's not like yeah you're not taking an action yeah i'm putting it and i'm putting it in the minute so and when we talk to you obviously it's going to be good to see what the new numbers eventually look like because one of the challenges we have and this is a conversation i think we should have with antonio we can only build to the eight year high estimate that's the formula we want to change but the interesting thing is that's what you can build new it doesn't factor in this goes back to joe's question before what the optimal occupancy is you know broad views almost a thousand students we can only build a new middle school that would accommodate x number of kids that doesn't take into the fact the account of we should get some kids out of broadview or or doesn't necessarily consider the number of kids we need to take out versus the number of kids we're also going to be expanding because it's going to be growing um so i think that's where we're going to hopefully at some point we can meld that optimal number with the formula the demographer in antonio and talk to the state about trying to fiddle with the number a little bit ideal number i think it is an idealistic goal sure we could try it's ideal ideals we're not getting an idea definitely definitely not maybe maybe i'll settle for better item number two and i will i i will i will definitely follow up with terry i think um kathy had make that recommendation to see with the the fire department so i will reach out to terry as well and see if he can get us some help on this because i think that you know we have a class size kind of class size limit but we don't have necessarily a building limit and i i think that number would be interesting it might also help to inform our inform our conversation as well i will make sure we have that for the next meeting all right well it sounds like we put in a nice agenda together for the next meeting yeah definitely now timeline kevin what do you think in timeline for that we don't have to pick a date right now but you think in two weeks or three weeks i'm give him a month or whatever i'm i'm comfortable with any way the committee would like to proceed um i don't given these questions two or three weeks works for me because i can i mean all of them that i'm looking at i'm not gonna need more time than that i don't think okay okay okay and i can i can have cara pompano reach back out to you and try to set up some dates with you in the committee works for me okay and let her know we don't have to wait a month to come back great all right um anybody else any last-minute comments nothing all right well um i will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved a motion made by joe is there a second someone seconded i'll second it all right all those in favor second all right we're done good everybody thank you have a good night everyone kevin thank you all right thank you

um and do a roll call uh heather could you help us out with that sure let me pull up the list just taking a moment so jennifer's in the waiting room or in the house where did she go there she is hey there she is hi jennifer hello wildly overdressed for this meeting sorry to be late i dressed up sorry i came from another event i apologize to be late that's fine and our brazilian army time okay we are just getting to bro call and if my list would come on so really you're just right on time jennifer well my list has taken its time falling out so why don't we go with who i see here we'll start with that jeffrey honey hi i'm jeff and i live in ann arbor all right uh councilmember briggs here in ann arbor adam zumke here in ann arbor rita mitchell you're in ann arbor frank wilhelm here in ann arbor camila lazandia here in ann arbor sarah hammerschmidt here in ann arbor alan hamer yes here in ann arbor back from france welcome back thank you stephen forkster i'm present from ann arbor great jennifer cornell aaron ann arbor am i missing anybody alice ralph is not here and who else are we missing anybody else i think that's it well our city administrator interim city administrator is supposed to be here this is i think the third meeting he has not been at isn't he in a member of this and supposed to be a regular attendee as our liaison with the uh city administration yes i think it would move to him so yes he's aware of it he's been invited to the meetings i think this verification i don't think he's required to attend all meetings i think that was if i remember how the um it was set up it was um city administrator or um or their late liaison but i'm not a liaison i mean i'm not a member of the i'm not assigned as a member of the council of the commons so i'm the staff liaison that's what i mean that's yeah that's what i mean so you're i mean you're representing the city we have we had two but you don't have somebody that's sitting on the council from the city from city staff just to clarify that that person hasn't been appointed well that is a city administrator the city minister is one of the members of the council yeah right or or their appointee and nobody's been appointed we'll bring this up with the a new city administrator as they are uh just starting very shortly i believe yes i'm hopeful for november uh then we have did we have frank before yeah i wa i went off camera to take a bite off okay allowed very good very good all right um in that case um we'll go on to the approval of the agenda uh has everybody had a chance to take a look at the agenda that's posted online all right any questions or amendments yes i want to add to the agenda it may come in the area of block partners but i was at the dda meeting as i've been at a number and they have a regular position of report from city boards and commissions relevant to the dda and we are such we are indeed are in the center of their downtown development authority and i would like us to pass a resolution requesting the dda to put us have a regular monthly report to the dda on what is going on on the council of the commons and the development of the commons such as the downtown citizens advisory committee has they have also a monthly meeting and they report regularly to the dda for as to what is going on so i think the place would be for that resolution to be when we were talking about block partners but it could be in some other place on the agenda all right thank you any other amendments the agenda okay we have a motion to um to prove the agenda as amendment as amended or as noted emotion all right motion second all in favor say hi all right raise your hand all right all right all right um then let's go to an approval of the minutes uh from the last meeting heather um is there a way you could pull those up um or put the link i suppose uh sure uh yes i can make yesterday all those up but typically uh the expectation is that people have read them over prior they look rather uh thin to me the ones that i saw at least uh on the link prior to the meeting and it just had sort of like the section headings of what had been discussed but not really any of the substance of it i did have a few remarks from my from my notes i was wondering if it would make sense to maybe table this uh until we have a chance to maybe flesh them out a little more only motions are noted in there in the minutes so they're not they're not notes of that they're just minutes that give the basics so if there's a motion that's passed it'll say that that's passed and it shows attendance okay so if somebody wants to take extra notes and have that attached to the agenda we can do that but i just want to like things like public comment like there was public comment there were a few people that talked at the last meeting and it just says public comment and then goes to the next thing like like no one was there so i didn't i i think that people who had made public comment at least the name should be noted but we did have a a decision to establish a subcommittee to look at the cities that might be involved to aggregate the list of cities and the criteria that was some enough of a formal decision that it seems like it should be reflected because it's now you know coming back and you know i would like actually following what stephen says that uh we maybe among us that we selected each meeting somebody to take notes or that we allow a uh an informal uh any of us to append notes to the agenda as uh unofficially but uh that is not his formal emotions but if somebody is trying to look at what goes on they see nothing by looking at the minutes and uh much is going on hello alice is this i think this is one of those situ i guess i might be misunderstanding but my unders my understanding was that this this it's fairly formulaic across different commissions and different groups that it's there's a standardization under which sort of the minutes are produced so i don't i don't know heather if you could comment or who's the right person to ask on that but i feel like this has come up almost every meeting and we we address it almost every meeting but i feel like there's a standard to which we're adhering and to deviate from that would be unusual yeah this is a discussion that we've had before yeah so the minutes that um i am to take as the staff liaison are really meant to be the bear the bare minimum so just reflecting whatever motions are passed and who moved the motions and who seconded it and the outcome of the motion but not really take any notes on what was actually you know what was said we do have all the recordings posted so if a member of the public or if anybody wants to go look at the recording of the meeting and see the substance to it you know that's available to people and with the center of the city task force um there was a desire by the group to have more in-depth notes to it but a member of that task force took the notes and i attached those to the agenda so you know somebody from this group is if you would like that somebody from this group is welcome to do that but that's not part of the formal minutes so i think we don't necessarily and maybe i'm wrong on this uh it'll stephen but i don't know that we really need to table um the eight minutes if that's the case do do we want to go through with the minutes we can obviously bring up a scribe if somebody wants to volunteer to do that job but um stephen are you okay with uh going forward with improving the minutes i haven't heard a motion to approve the minutes i look at the minutes and i see just like a list of the same agenda items as we started with yeah there were no there were no motions at the last meeting i guess to allen's point didn't we decide that we were going to discuss and identify certain criteria i mean i i if someone wants to make a motion to approve the minutes i would probably vote in favor i've said my peace but i'm not going to be the guy making the motion i'll move to a proof thank you erica i'll second it all right all in favor say aye all right all right are you opposed all right motion carries um are we able to such as stephen has notes and some note on what the decision actually was about appointing this subcommittee to determine can we subsequently any of us just attach notes uh as informal uh uh scribes uh to the minutes without having to go through uh calling them official i think heather yep i think heather offered that she'd be happy to add in any notes um and attach them to the uh in the public uh public document area i think i think if you have notes you'd like to submit go ahead and submit them to heather and she'll put them out there is that right heather yeah i can attach this to the agenda i just when we've had this discussion in the past i recall us suggesting that there might be concerns that each of us captured different um components in the meeting and that one of the reasons we didn't want to do this is because we didn't want to necessarily have sort of one versions um one person's version of of the meeting i mean i i get the point that is it is nice to have to be able to look up it at some notes and understand what's going on in a meeting without having to watch the two or two and a half hour meeting um yourself so i don't i don't think the discussion is bad i think it's i just i'm bringing up what we had previously why we previously decided not to go this route well we could have kind of a side note uh dialogue on such questions if steven has a representation of what this decision was and somebody else has a different view that could be added on it and it seems we want to be more open and uh representative to ourselves and the public as to what the discussions are i i think just to weigh in a little bit on this i don't think there's any harm with attaching somebody's notes to the um to the in the public documentary as long as they're clearly articulated that they're notes from that individual and so you know i think as long as we're clear on that um that you know they don't represent the official record of the meeting then i don't see any harm in this if if folks are not satisfied with the level of detail that are in the standard format of uh minutes i don't see any reason to sort of police it just individual notes i asked can i ask how the recording isn't a actual literal capturing of everything that's discussed in the meeting i'm sorry i'm i'm not trying to like i'm not trying to derail the idea i just i don't understand how if it's the whole thing is recorded anyone could watch it why the public can't access the discussion in a meaningful way verbatim literally and without bias which i think we all as humans are probably naturally predisposed to well one is getting a quick snapshot with some clarity as to what the discussion was and another spending two hours to you know watch the meeting which uh few people seem to be uh interested in doing i just have very modest goals i was thinking like the minutes could reflect if it says like public comment it could say two members of the public commented about and maybe not even about two members of the public comment and then it could say during relevant boards and commissions it could have a sentence under there that says the commission heard reports from the relevant boards and commissions or something because it just at this moment it just has the headers there's no substance beneath it and that's my only concern is that it literally looks like we didn't discuss those points and i'm not asking for like motions and seconds and whatever i understand those would be there but that was that's my only hope is that it would at least indicate that there was discussion or not discussion about those topics and on pac i don't think that's inconsistent with what we see on the pac minutes it would be odd for me to look at a pack minutes and have it just have nothing for us something that we looked at in the meeting and got comment about and discussed that there would be nothing in the minutes that even reflected that there existed a discussion not that it's a detailed log of everything that people said but that that that's my only that's my only comment and so i and i i agree with what was said before i i don't think people need to submit their handwritten my little handwritten notes would not be helpful um to the discussion but so so just for the sake of uh of keeping us moving here i think if it let's take a let's take a discussion offline um and we'll see i know honestly i don't think i've ever looked at the minutes from any other city meeting but we'll take a look and we'll see what we can come up with and thread the needle on this thing so um and um is that sufficient for now i will note that previously it was requested that i do know that when things aren't discussed so i have done that in the past just noted that when it so you can assume that if there's not a note in there that it wasn't discussed that that would be reflected but otherwise there was discussion on the topic i'd like to just give a little more support to jennifer's comment about our biases um if we get into one person or two persons or three persons who are consistently putting their notes in as their point of view anybody any member of the public could could get a a partial picture of of the meeting and and the recorded uh the video recordings i give you a full picture so i don't see that it really adds much to the uh recording uh just a quick comment i think it would be helpful and i don't know whether uh heather or someone else could from city city hall could uh cite some examples of other commissions or committees have dealt with this in an effective way that seems to work over time um i i don't know we're kind of i don't have a reference point uh how how this is handled by other other groups appointed by well and i've never worked with another group aside from the center of the city task force and in that instance the request was to have a member of the group to take more detailed notes that people approved at the next meeting to try to eliminate that bias so one person took the detailed notes and then it was it was either accepted or not at the next meeting similar to minutes but the direction that i have from the city attorney in the clerk's office is just the bare minimum you know you just that i'm just to reflect what if there's any kind of decision a formal decision that was made like a resolution or if um like our emotion i should say or you know if the agenda was approved or the minutes were approved and then if the if the agenda was amended for example i would put in a note about what the amendment was so that's that's the direction that i have and if other you know people are doing it differently and there might be different styles but that is the question that i've been given so yeah go ahead jeff sorry i was going to suggest i always like experiments and research right i'm an academic so uh i'd be willing to volunteer to do short very short minutes next time to see whether we can do something useful for steven's purposes um and to see how objective i'm capable of being okay so if you want to take that offer i'm willing to to run an experiment next time and take the minutes it's up to you guys just to break the log down i'm comfortable with that well i say give it a try why not can't hurt might help the one question i was concerned with we did make some at some substantive discussion about you know searching out relevant other cities and criteria uh that led to a decision and a into intermediate process and it seemed like that should have been somehow reflected as a uh action of the group whether whether we had a formal motion for it i don't remember but we did have moved to a consensus decision that well let's go forward in that mode so so i'm going to suggest that we we do take a look at this a little bit um in between now and the next meeting and jeff we can have a conversation uh to try and uh figure out what we're gonna do and if uh if we need to make amendments to the formal uh meeting minutes or jeff if at that point um you know we'd collectively decide that we want to accept your offer and try try that does that sound like a fair fair point i don't i don't know that we're going to make any progress on this right now yeah i agree i just wanted to put that out there it's up to you for sure thank you if it's okay with folks then we'll we'll move into public comment um let's see if there are members of public and we have robert black you should be able to speak now thank you heather good evening everybody thank you nice to see you again and thank you for this opportunity to speak before you again tonight um since the inception of the council of the commons i have watched each meeting steady progress to build common ground with more focused actions toward achievable goals this is encouraging for those of us in the public and builds trust that the process is working well i look forward to hearing more tonight about your research into other communities experiences with their commons and how this will establish meaningful criteria to inform your next steps concerning next steps i'm heartened by the recent events to activate the center of the city well not directly associated with the council of commons i want to acknowledge alan and odile haber for their tireless year after your commitment to peace week and all that they do to build awareness of what i believe is an aspect of the commons vision more recently the first fun art of nutrition it came off as a great success which you'll hear more of from professor haney tonight and also from mr haber some of the good feedback from attendees i call these launch and learn events where you could posit critical themes related to the center of the city development process that can enliven community involvement while learning each time about the critical elements that will make this part of the city unique to the world i offer the following suggestions from my diverse experience within armor and many other communities i encourage you to set up a strategic task in time framework to guide your efforts while individual tasks of holding themed events and researching other communities experiences are important i believe they are more effective when held in the context of a holistic visionary view number one begin informal conversations with each potential partner on the commons block seek to understand their attitude toward the commons project whether pro or con hearing their concerns now is essential component of the next phases of your work specifically seek to engage the aadl and its coming director to explore the wonderful new possibilities for public libraries that are playing out across the country number two lay out the criteria that you need to have in place to solicit rfq's rfps from professional planners and pick a date say june 2022 when this would be completed number three set key milestones to develop an emergence of solutions one or two dynamic compellingly articulated artistically rendered design scenarios to put before the public city council dda and other players in commons for their feedback and input this all leading to number four the time goal to complete a master plan for the center of the city by 2024.

[Music] do so do mr mecca are we good i'd like to call the regularly scheduled meeting of the clifton board of education to order if everyone would please rise for a salute to our flag followed by a brief moment of silence 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 please be seated mr uc roll call please mr abba drabo here mr awad miss beltran mr canova here i'm sorry miss bassford mr daley here dr danny here vice president casper here president here david mission statement uh vice president casper the mission of the clifton school district in an open and reciprocal community partnership is to provide all students with a quality education to develop the skills necessary to become literate lifelong learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to a democratic society in an ever-changing world the open public meetings act the new jersey upper public meetings law was enacted to ensure the rights to the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the clifton board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv in the local press on the district's website and mailed to presidents of parent teacher organizations this meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy zero one six eight i remind everyone order of the governor of the state of new jersey that everyone in attendance in a school building is required at all times to wear a mask i will allow when you come up to speak at the time that you're speaking to lower the mass down when you're done speaking to please put the mask back up okay so everyone please adhere to the rules of the mandate by the governor that mass are to be worn at all times while in the school building i thank you all for your cooperation i'm not sure i understand totally too bad oh just give me a minute i have to do this by manual here's my agenda okay we'll have the uh approval of the minutes uh mr president yes um just a question to from through to attorneys that mean also is that for public and board members it's just public for what matters mass yeah yeah all everyone has to be wearing a mask mr can mr mr canova you gonna wear a mask sorry when we speak yeah thank you all right we'll have um approval of the uh minutes of september 23rd 2021 regular meeting so i moved so moved by mr abu drab second second by vice president casper discussion roll call mr abedrabo yes mr awad yes ms passport yes mr canola yes mr daley yes dr danny yes vice president casper yes and president smith yes uh the superintendent's report dr robertosi thank you mr president good evening commissioners and members of the public i just want to remind the commissioners on stage that this friday night is our annual homecoming game will take place at clifton stadium kickoff is at 7 pm and the homecoming court will be announced at halftime it's also a great opportunity if you have not already seen our national anthem which has been performed in american sign language by one of our seniors kate lower during the band's pregame show and i believe this friday night we also have before the game the middle school band will be performing at the stadium on top of that we have a pretty good football game too with our undefeated clifton high school football team trying to keep their winning streak alive take a moment to congratulate a senior clifton high school student who i'd like to recognize at a future meeting anissa frazier who has made the special olympics team in new jersey and will be representing new jersey at the national games this june in track and field that is a tremendous accomplishment um if you you might have seen it it was on our social media there was a video of her opening the the letter and just a great honor and the fact that she's representing clifton that's exactly what we like to see in our in our young people so at a future board meeting i'll recommend that we um honor her as of today we have over 7 600 students who have taken the imagine math benchmark assessment these are assessments that students complete to they complete these assessments independently to develop their initial baseline for the imagine math program and the imagine math program the reason why we use it in our district is because it's an adaptive program which very simply means that it adapts to the level of the student and if a student is struggling a student gets a couple questions incorrect it will adapt to their level but then it works to build them up to grade level and it's been very very successful in our district so i'd like to recognize the top schools with lessons started and benchmarks taken this week christopher columbus middle school woodrow wilson middle school school 13 school 2 and school 11.

interesting play off that kickoff trying to get something going right off the bat and it won't be successful as esau metal end up with the ball that'll be ben weldon making the throw in here as he looks to move it up field now that's going to be directed towards more now more now putting it up towards number 11 on east lawn meadow brunel and that ball ends up going out of bounds and it is well then with another throwing that will be directed towards nasa mazza puts it towards the middle that'll be evans trying to get the ball it'll be back to 21 for ludlow joe conkelvez and now is isla meadow back the ball morneau making a quick chip pass to the left side that was meant for mazza mazza that passes a little bit too far that'll go out of bounds on islam meadow and it'll be a goal kick for i believe anthony shea no sorry devin santos santos puts it deep that'll be more no getting the head on that ball mazza receives that pass tries to put it to the right side and stolen that'll be a foul called on ludlow there so it'll be islam meadow with a free kick about 35 yards out from the goal both mazzles will be lining up sonny and enzo that'll be an attempted shot on that it'll go a little too high and it'll be a goal kick now for santos going the other way [Music] santos takes the kick brunel will be there to try and defend he's able to get ahead on it and it'll be intercepted by ludlow here oh aggressive play by walden there on number 10 joe kitario and fortunately he will get up it'll be a free kick for ludo now that'll be played to the right side number nine for ludlow fair thumb advances it to the middle and it'll be drew who picks that up after mazza directs it towards him nasa looks towards luke mazza and now it'll go to bernal brunel making a move on the left side nice play he's tripped up and that'll be a free kick for islam stevens comes up to take it and off that play mazda will tap it to stevens and he will play it up ludlow trying to control on the left side that ball is directed out towards the middle quran with the ball he's able to try and get a kick and it'll be deflected off a ludlow player and out of bounds so it'll be a corner kick for east all meadow now morneau must go retrieve that ball because there is no ball voice tonight unfortunately so more no we'll play it from the corner scoring opportunity free salmato here we'll see if they can capitalize that's played right to the middle tries to get a head on it is now weldon with a deep shot and it almost slips by low left side and santos is just able to get a hand on it outstanding save i have like an arrow or something there but that way you can switch it on here i've been corrected the sheet is incorrect is thomas wadas and the ball ends up going back out to salman and that is a nice shot on net directed towards evans who was able to try and redirect it with his head and it wasn't able to slip by so with us with the goal kick and as bruno was able to get ahead on it now to mazza that ball ends up with love though and now more no more no trying to make a through pass to brunel and that ball will go out of bounds is just a bit too far number 16 christian casares for ludlow we'll take the throw in brunel is once again able to get a head on it and redirect it love those way evan's fighting now although i was able to kick it out [Music] now it's on the left side with mazza and mazza is boxed out by number 16 christian saris and it'll now be a goal kick nice play by ludo there a boot past midfield it'll be stevens trying to defend and weldon boxes out 10.

soundcheck Jason let me know tell me when thank you again sound check on those thanks for coming Javier how's it feeling how's it sound good thank you Javier are you getting a stream from the other room are you getting a stream from the other room do they be able to hear two more minutes all right thank you for working on this foreign any change Javier how's the sound in the Overflow room thank you I'm just asking you that so they have some test audio thank you for doing that I appreciate you being here to do that they can hear in the other room well all right thank you [Music] okay foreign thank you Mr Buchanan have sound in the other room better oh thanks excellent thank you so much do you need to start a new stream Jason do they need to start a new stream or we've stayed with this one all right we'll bring them back and get started baking here now thank you [Music] is today thank you foreign thank you still good got it working out how about now okay thank you so much um thank you so much for letting us take this few minutes so that we can fix the sound system hopefully uh everybody can hear now thank you so much um it's Rudy in the house everybody Rudy is not in the house I'm gonna go on with is Jillian here yet Jillian Jillian Ash de Brenna that's veranda yeah yes please um I'm gonna keep calling out the names and when they're coming we will get to them is Ben here [Music] good girl [Laughter] is Ben here then let's failed and Ben Litchfield thank you Ben you saved the day hey guys my name is Ben uh when I yeah everyone's here talking about vaccines and and masks and everything and and everything that's going on and that's great um kind of leaving out another thing uh yesterday or two days ago uh there's a teacher at at Apple Valley High or Granite High School named Miss Ruiz and uh she was asking everybody in the class who's got a chance at life and how do you get ahead in life and she called on my son specifically who proceeded to tell her well hard work and you work hard some guys start from a different place but we work hard and we all get there and uh he was told that's your white privilege yeah teaching critical race Theory at Granite High School Miss Ruiz needs to get fired she segregated my son from the rest of his class and four other boys for their white privilege okay so I just want to let you guys know this critical race crap ain't gonna go down we're not going to stand for this racism thank you thank you um is who's next who is Rudy thank you [Music] Mr Rudy can you please give me your last name Rudy Rudy so Mr Bender you taught a lot of us to be American Proud stand up for what's right why are you in a mask up there are you getting paid to be in a match no no you know what what am I we're just going by what the state mandates right now but it's but I'm not in favor of vaccine mandates okay but there's a public forum not a school with kids in it all right can you guys discuss the covid suicide rate at Apple Valley I know this various numbers but are you guys allowed to say it without giving names the board does not respond to things on the on the floor please that's all right I know of no suicides from Kobe but we have suicides I know that right so I don't know someone came home last week Apple Valley High School Kevin Walton Kevin Walton yes Brandon Walton okay I know he came home last week and said Mom some kid committed suicide and it was mostly probably related because of the all of this coveted stuff okay you guys really need to get your you know what together and please listen to us mom do you have a car did you submit it did you submit a card okay can you hold up till this you're trying to speak please okay thank you so we can hear so do you still stand for America vendor or you sure did okay because what you're doing is the first amendment that's great I figured democracy at its finest I figured you would be the best one up there because you were a U.S history teacher you taught us history them removing all the history that's all that racist crap that we used to be there is going to repeat history in 30 years there's nobody on this board in favor of CRT that's right thank you [Music] [Applause] I don't know any of your counterparts up here I'm guessing they're not as tough as you but you raised a lot of us Fender that are doing well for ourselves because of you I only graduated because of you better yeah I've been super fast of you and like just knowing you used to call me Whittier I don't know if you remember me or not I do okay but it's just weird seeing you in a mess I thought you'd be the one not in a mask because you taught us to be proud of America love law enforcement like and you're up there in a mass like it's just shameful like I didn't want to say anything tonight but seeing you on the mask right away like it just hurt you oh you made us proud of America like get [ __ ] done before America and I don't know thank you I lost a lot of respect I think it's just saturated so start fighting for what's right so that way nobody gets rebooted what's it called electric reelect it I know I've always voted for you vendor when you're up now avoid the problem there's a lot of law enforcement that you raised throughout this country I know many and they still support you if you still talk the fun things we had like Ringo's you remember that yep okay we love offender we're proud of those so you got to start renewing your idiots up here that don't want to do the right things thank you thank you Mr Paul gostania [Applause] Mr Paul gustania is Jillian here we keep calling the same Jillian he's not here she's on her way okay there's like 900 people five at a time so they can all come up here and be ready I only have two more cards so right now and I have Jillian and I have Paul Paul on the same time so I was running over my name is Paul I have two students in Apple Valley one at Sitting Bull and I've served in the high desert for several capacities over the last 23 years first of all I understand the crossroads and decisions you have to make I know and believe the Trinity School Board superintendents principals and teachers are not our enemies I know each of you love and care for our students for our kids and I know you want the best you're our neighbors we see you at the grocery store Little League Soccer eating out and around the valley like you I have bosses and parameters mandates and policies that I don't agree with or I don't like to follow I'm sure all of us in the audience know what who know it know knows what it's like to sit under authorities in our workplace that we don't agree with and yet we have to comply with those work policies practices and procedures I'm sure most of you on the school board and in the do don't agree with the mass mandates or now the covid-19 Mandate I know you are not the ultimate decision makers and in some ways your hands are tied I know it's not as simple as just complying I get it I've read the Ed code related to vaccines Senate Bill 277 related to exemptions and I honestly wish that wish that natural immunity counted for something in our current political and health environment especially when it comes to covet I'm really angry and sad it doesn't the question I have for you are School boards specifically to answer if you would is since covet is not currently a law well the UV U will the school district make a statement and choose not to enforce this mandate until it is a law I recognize that might just push the ball down the field a little bit because I'm pretty sure California we try to vote out people pretty sure the legislator will vote this into law and I recognize that's a reality the Murrieta Valley Unified School District made a statement on Tuesday night on their uh website and I quote says this our school district is not currently requiring the new vaccine like you we were notified of this at the same time through the same governors press conference this written order has not been made public for review however according to our education associations and initial assessments this mandate will not be available until July 2022.