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i just want to remind the board the deficit spending is just distributed meaning that we are projecting to spend our carryover dollars in the in the following year so in order to not deficit spend that means your current year revenue has to cover all your expenditures for the current year but if you're using prior year funds to pay for expenditures you'll always show a deficit spending you'll also notice that our transfer out in the 21 22 school year is only 26 thousand dollars going to fund 14 and that was because we brought to the board um last month to purchase the um 14 the 40 vehicles for the mlt department and so but going forward and out years we're projecting to continue the 1 million um transfers to fund 14.
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color ending in two four five you can mute okay um hello um hi this is kathleen murphy again 315 linda vista street ann arbor and i'm just going to say that i want to thank you john mursky and all the commissioners for the seriousness with which you've taken on this issue and uh it's been great working with you i've learned a whole lot as we've gone through this these considerations for the last year and um i think this resolution really could take this forward fighting the climate crisis it's a little step forward for the planet so i thank you very much thanks for sticking with us that's all chairworks that's all okay great so that just uh leaves items for the next agenda and the german um our next meeting as i mentioned is on january 11th uh can anyone confirm that we're still meeting virtually yes you're 100 virtual yeah okay that's what i thought um so we have um agreed that it's going to be a work session i think we mentioned that before um but missy and carlene and i uh had a meeting about a week ago and and confirmed that we're going to do that and we're going to focus on the workings of the commission topics for the next year and in order to prepare for that the three of us worked on a survey that we will be sending out in roughly the next 24 hours it asks a little bit in in the rear view mirror what are your thoughts on what we've done in the past year and then it also asked several questions about what are priority topics for you going forward and things like that and um i'm going to ask that you respond to that within a week if you don't do it within a week you're we're probably not going to do it at all and then we're going to get really into the holidays and we don't want to be sending out 25 reminders because we gave you uh five weeks or four weeks to uh to answer so um please take a you know be on the watch for that um we'll maybe send out one reminder after a couple of days um just so it stays near the top of your end basket it's going to be an anonymous survey and we will compile and share those results with all of you of course when we are in the working session we hope that that prompts a lot of open discussion and of course at that time people can share their specific comments from the survey if they want to do so but they don't need to i think it'll be instructive hopefully for all of us um and then i'd just like to open things up for additional comments by carlene and missy and then for any other comments about items for um future agendas one thing that missy mentioned that i noted and she will certainly keep track of his presentation on bryant um but missy and carlene did you want to say anything else about the planning or the work session right now we'll be working on details of the the agenda and put some structure to it once we have the uh the survey results back i think just having please everyone just please answer the survey completely it would be great really valuable yep be frank with your your comments and assessments that'll help us all i think you know what we want to do is um help reach the goals of and uh a20 and help missy and her staff and to be you know as efficient and effective as they and we can be together and hopefully this will will help us do that did anybody else else want to bring up ideas for the work session or for future meeting topics that we should capture and be aware of going forward okay so i would suggest um we all take a copy that we probably printed out of the resolution that we passed tonight put a bow around it put it under your christmas tree and be glad that uh you got a bunch of new things that we can tackle going forward once the feasibility study results are back i'm sure we're going to have a lot of discussions again on the topic but that was i think certainly a present for all of us uh to to get through this and um it was a pleasure working with everybody on it and um i it's been a pleasure working with all of you over the past year i hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and get in some good r r and um i don't know if we're going to have a white christmas given temperatures are 30 degrees above normal but we'll we'll hope for that and i hope that uh you know like i said you all have a wonder time wonderful time and i look forward to seeing you all in the new year so with that the meeting is adjourned it is 8 56 or 15 need a motion to adjourn permeate you need a motion to adjourn oh i need a motion driver i move we adjourn ah good point thank you got a bunch of a bunch of seconds ember and uh council member radina um so do we take a vote on on adjournment no okay so we have plenty of seconds and therefore the meeting is adjourned thanks very much good night everybody good night
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any questions on our multi-year protection yeah and in regards to the surplus number 21 22 versus the deficit for the two subsequent years that it does it doesn't appear can you communicate that doesn't appear to balance out so there still is even even with the surplus that we're anticipating this year there still is definite spending that we're projecting for the two subsequent so yes because we have our surplus and we're projecting to spend the surplus in the next year it's going to show a deficit in order to identify a deficit or surplus you take your current year actual revenues received minus your expenditures but if you're using dollars from the prior year to spend in the next year those expenditures go against your current year of revenue for this calculation so in the 21 20 21 22 school year we're showing an ending fund balance of 26 million dollars that's going to carry over and be our be become our beginning fund balance in 22-23 once we start spending any of those dollars that's going to make us have a deficit because now we're spending money for a prior year even though we have it but it just shows on paper that we're definitely spending because we're spending revenue beyond the revenue that we actually earned in the current okay any other questions on the nyp mr mall yes i'm sorry could you go one slide back just to clarify the um the middle column so the 26 million at the top beginning balance is that a part of the 121 million dollar total revenue for the 22-23 school year or that was that in addition to that's in addition too so that's the indian fund balance the any fund balance from 2122 becomes your beginning balance for the next fiscal year in addition to that big eating fund balance we also are projecting a revenue of 121 million but you'll see our expenditures for the 22 20 22 23 school year is 100 i mean 134 million dollars which exceeds the current revenue that we're actually going to receive because we're going to be using any fund balance to cover that that automatically equates to a deficit but if our expenditures were only going to be 120 million or exactly 121 we would have a surplus and we will still have to become the beginning of the balance there you go and latasha of the 13 million odd dollars how much of that roughly how much of that is one time dollars that we have to spend i would say almost all of it that's mostly primarily one time adult yes ma'am any other questions on nyp um i was going to say it to them but i mean and maybe if it makes sense you can answer it later i just i'm really curious as what happens after this right you know i hear a lot about a cliff right um declining enrollment catching up the whole timeline so what does this look like for us in that year once we spend all these one-time dollars and i'm assuming that we don't get we're going to get increased this year right but you know something that doesn't continue what does that look like bro so right now with the additional funds of the cola that's projected for next year um i'm sorry the additional add-on from supplemental concentration our nyp for the next year six years show that we will beat our financial obligation it wouldn't be until year seven that we potentially would have a cliff but that would all change if our decline increases of any of our projections or if we're unduplicated decreases and because that hits you in turn here and in terms of our unduplicated since um we're now giving out meals right because it had an impact on the number of people filling out the forms and that's identifying it has not no ma'am actually i'm um had a heart attack in the beginning of the year um i thought we dropped um and we projected that were going to be at 84.64 and after well miss ing sent us a inga thank you and mis sent us a number and we're projected to be at 85 so it's almost like 0.46 better than we thought and that's a huge attribute i'm of our nutrition services department as well as all of our site administrators who've been making all the calls to help our families get those forms filled out so here this is our unrestricted any fund balance that we're projecting to have um this is 18.9 million dollars of that we have our three percent reserve which is 3.7 million dollars we have our prepaid we have allocated 1.1 million to set aside for the aea reserve which accounts for six percent of our any fund balance we also have our board election already budgeted and allocated and that's about one percent um we have our current negotiations that we have on the table we are allocated 2.3 million dollars for that and we have a 723 thousand dollars allocated for a future rising call any questions here yes can you please speak um to that one percent first saturday school yes so we are um looking to um start saturday school for second semester to help recruit any lost ada um for this year um and so we are going we're allocating one percent of our any fund balance to pay for that what does it mean in dollars as you're saying that we are going to use this to recuperate the aed so it means we invest a little to get more yes correct yes and so our goal is actually not to um have any cost um but we're projecting uh we've allocated two hundred and twelve thousand dollars just in case so when you i need a backup per second so when you say unrestricted ending fund balance that's referring to what what fiscal year this is the current fiscal year so this is our current balance but it's unrestricted but so the so half of it looks like it's so it's the concentration grant add on what you said you're going to come you're planning to come with a plan for that in february um but then the other 36 is a supplemental concentration carryover we had a conversation and i'm looking over here because this is a program right we had a conversation about how we plan to expand those carryover dollars that we didn't expend because we were in povid and we were you know distance learning yes and if i can start with that answer so um so yes so we at the adopted budget we budgeted out the entire lcap supplemental concentration everything we're projected to receive we did not budget out the 5 million that was a carryover from 2021 right this is what we're showing for 2122 we're just looking financially trying to be physically responsible saying okay which funding lines that we budget the plan for and we currently don't have expenditures hitting so until we start hitting having expenditures hit we just put in the any fund balance because if we leave it in expenditures that increases how much you have to set aside for a three percent reserve so we're not letting it fall out to any fund balance it's still part of the lcap it's just that when we get those requisitions for those expenditures we will now take it from the assignment of supplemental concentration and put it back in peoplesoft so we can actually spend it but the goal is to actually spend this but right now there's no current expenditure hitting the lines that these budgets are so but i just want to understand so this is the current year supplemental concentration or these are carryover dollars from previous years this is 2122 supplemental concentration that will be a carryover if we do not spend it so so your unrestricted andy fund balance would be the anticipated any fund balance at the end of the end of this fiscal year then so it's not that it's not current it would be this is the fiscal year spending okay so we don't have a 36 percent carryover from last year no ma'am we only carried over less than 5 million dollars which is still significant and we've actually been spending that way down lots of technology replacements we've been able to do so we're getting that dr mitchell is doing everything to spend money that makes us a little nervous i also want to say that it's attributed to us being physically responsible by signing it because we're not required to do this it's just one of those that we wanted to identify the funds that we receive for the population of students to make sure that we're utilizing those funds for the sole purpose that was available and here's our restricted any fund balance um we have 7.1 million dollars so 5.5 million is attributed to our elo grant uh 800 000 is distributed to the elo grant that's allocated for our paraprofessionals and then we have 716 000 which is allocated are it belongs to our sites for their donation account i want that is our recommendation that the board approves our first inner report with the positive certification and i will take any questions if there's any remaining any additional questions on the board okay then do we have a motion to approve 13.1 question 2 approved 13.1 second moved by board member ariana seconded by board member rodriguez pena any additional discussion and we'll move to a vote the motion passes five to zero moving on to 14.0 curriculum and instruction and specifically 14.1 approval of the azusa unified school district a um educator effectiveness grant expenditure plan dr mitch excuse me action is there a motion on the floor make a motion to approve 14.1 moved by board member rodriguez pena seconded by board member audianus any discussion then we'll move to a vote and the motion passes five to zero moving on to 14.2 approval of an mou agreement between azusa unified school district and cal baptist university is there a motion on the floor make a motion to approve 14.2 second moved uh by board member rodriguez pena second by board member arianes discussion the high schools to register students um they one of the five colleges that came to glaston is the high and that motion passes five zero moving on to item 14.3 approval of the clinic services agreement between ausd and planned parenthood los angeles is there a motion for president that item was pulled forward uh 14.3 which is 14.4 approval of the jointer agreement between azusa unified school district uh and core district motion to approve 14.4 second moved by board member rodriguez pena executed by board member ariana any discussion then we'll move to a vote and the motion passes 5-0 moving on to 14.5 approval of the services agreement between ausd and amaze work your motion to approve motion to approve 14.5 moved by board member rodriguez pena do we have a second second seconded by board uh member beau any discussion then we'll move to a vote and the motion passes five to zero moving on to item 14.6 first quarterly williams uniform complaint report thank you so much um yes we submitted our quarterly report to the county and i'm happy to report that we did not have any complaints that regarding insufficient instructional materials teacher vacancies or miss assignment thank you dr mitchell moving on to item 14.7 approval of the consultant agreement between ausd and carlos a flores is there a motion to approve motion to approve 14.7 second moved by board member ariana's second by board member rodriguez pena any discussion uh yes i just have a question regarding the um funding is the funding coming out of the special education funds or not because aaron cramer on our pan believe it's a special education funds but i want to be sure latasha yes so aaron the question um is for um carlos flores for the consultant agreement is that paid out of special education funds it is it is paid out of special education funding good evening i'm sorry i should have said good evening first good evening um yes that um contract is paid out of special education funding it is aligned to um a parental request for an independent educational evaluation through the parental rights and procedural safeguards under the selpa guidelines thank you very much erin absolutely any additional discussion then we'll move to a vote and the motion passes five to zero moving on to 14.8 approval of services agreement between ausd and hey tutor is there a motion to approve motion to approve 14.8 with ausd and hey tutor second moved by board member arianes second by board member rodriguez pena any uh discussion then we'll move to a vote and the item passes five to zero moving on to 15.0 human resources and 15 1.1 in particular approval to establish the position and academic tutor job description is there a motion to approve take motion to approve 15.1 second moved by board member rodriguez pena second by board member arianes any discussion hearing none we will move to a vote and the motion passes five to zero so i'm sorry i just had a question is this um similar to the avid hooters or the different yes thank you for the question and i'll start answering the question and then i'll pass it over to dr mitchell to bring us home uh the job description was adapted from the avid uh tutor job description um but it does it there are some some key differences um that will be specific to the type of work uh that these tutors will be doing with students that is not specifically aligned to the avid coursework but i'll pass that over to document so thank you for the question so this is part of our what we're calling the high dosage tutoring strategy so this is one strategy that we would use whether it is uh through uh tutors that we would hire um with this or with a tutor that you just passed um and so this high dosage tutoring would be for select students that we've identified through their assessment data where they really need some extra help and so tutors will be assigned to specific students they could work one-on-one they could work with some you know small groups but they would be working um alongside teachers in the classrooms with with identified students okay thank you yeah because i when i read it it just was the job of the navigator but now i individually work with only avid student this one is not necessarily for only attitude thank you okay which brings us to 16.0 adjournment 16.1 adjournment is there a motion to approve 16.1 you did it adrian and i second that good job on your first meeting as president moved by board member rodriguez pena second by board member arianes any discussion we barely made it good bye and we'll move to uh to a vote you can't go yet and the motion passes five to zero you now you could go have a good day everybody you
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good evening there has been adequate notice of this meeting provided by the board of education march 18th 2021 notice of the co-star setting forth the date time and place for this meeting similar notice has been posted in the town hall the real school website and the borough clerk has been notified can you please call the role here i indivisible [Music] can i have a motion to approve the board of education minutes from the november 17 2021 regular public meeting make a motion to approve the minutes dally can i have a second can you please call the roll uh okay yeah yes [Music] yes well good evening everyone [Laughter] well uh tonight is a very uh special night for us and special because i've had two uh wonderful board members who have been serving the children and the teachers in our community on the board of ed and i'd first like to talk about dennis ngoglia a former board president vice president and a member of the board for uh nine years nine and so uh dennis would you please stand up i'd like to tell the story about dennis we met a long time ago uh and it was a time when when we had school budgets and we had to have meetings and go to different places like the firehouse and pto meetings and people's homes and the community center uh the library and i met dennis at his community center many many years ago when things were a little tough we would call it it was a little tough and dennis spent some time talking to me and uh talking about our school he came in and met with me and um you know as you can see dennis uh represents his community uh and our community in many fashions he serves on many courts mom vocational he's on the mastermind board of education and very involved in his own community as a board member and i would say that he represents many seniors in our community and we haven't had that on our board because often we saw on our board it was mostly parent representation and so dennis looked at things very differently than some other board members but he looked at it in a way that he knew he said to me i moved to brielle for a reason the community i came from new jersey this community had a great reputation i wanted to continue and i care even now about the education of children and how important it is to have great schools and so dennis was a really great advocate for our school and uh served on many committees when he was a negotiations chair i remember sometimes in this building at 11 and 12 o'clock at night worrying about his wife saying i hope she's okay that you're coming in this late but to do good work sometimes it takes many hours and so dennis has served on many committees always always with the focus of we have to do the right thing for our kids for our teachers and for this community and every decision he has made has been because of that he always asked great questions he always collaborated with board members he was a great communicator still is but a great communicator and i think great communication is what's key to great board members having that great communication and so dennis on behalf of the board in our community we have a special gift for you and some of you have heard me say this before but on the front it has his name his nine years of service to the school but um we have a clock because you know he had to look at the clock a lot because he attends a lot of meetings so we're giving you a special clock but it also says and it's same with you karen that 100 years from now it will not matter what my bank account was or what um sort of house i lived in the kind of car i drive but the world may be very different because he was important in the life of the child and that's very true of dennis and karen and so that's why we won't have him to have this gift from brielle school and nine years is a long time to serve as a board member i sometimes think one term in three years for some board members is a long time but to have that much time devoted to your community and he's not just here like i said he serves on many boards and to do it the way dennis did it uh you're telling you're gonna be terrible in this room so dennis thank you for your friendship your trust and we're certainly going to miss you [Applause] and now uh believe it or not our president karen detlinger who has served six years on this board and uh karen detlinger was no stranger to our schools you should say yes uh prior to getting on our board six years ago karen was a very involved very involved pto member and you know so she did a lot for our kids volunteered in the classrooms remember those days when we were in the classrooms don't we miss that but in the classrooms uh doing whatever we needed and she was one of the founders of our enrichment program our summer our spring and our fall and our winter enrichment program and you know karen reminded me that well you know now everything is done online she was collecting checks and checked her in her on her dining room table so i guess she didn't feed her kids and the applications of the programs kids wanted to be in so and at that time we had well over a hundred children every season doing our enrichment program and uh she really changed um our program and got many teachers involved so that kids would stay after school and be involved in those richmond activities she is also an officer on brielle wreck so she serves our community here and she is an educator she's a teacher in a local school district mound school and she was an educator prior to that at biotech i mean allied health and so um so having spent many years as a teacher she brought that to our school as a board member and shared ideas and was always very creative and suggesting things that could help improve our school karen again as president but as vice president as a board member was a great communicator a team builder a great listener a great a great person to you could give advice and she could take advice and she was always very fair and i like to use the word kind and trustworthy and those are great qualities for a person to have especially on the board our board our entire board but dennis and karen have seen some tough times and we've been through and we still are going through cobin and i would think i've seen teachers retire i've seen board members in other places want to leave because it got hard and a lot of sometimes negativity was given to the board members and we stayed strong and dennis and karen and she had to do it as president stayed very strong on she served on our we restarted school and we had many many meetings that people don't even know about hour-long meetings um and they were often and karen was always here guiding us as our president through those difficult decisions that we had to make to keep our kids safe and so karen everything that you have done and you continue to do she'll be serving our community still on wreck uh she'll still be an active parent in our school because uh he's in the audience i don't want to say little will but little will is still here and still wants his mom involved in our school so she's not going anywhere but she she will definitely be someone that we can you know ask for advice go to because she's not going anywhere but you won't be at least you won't be at this table but karen again we have this special gift for you i thank you for your service to our school to me to my teachers to our children you've been invaluable and we're going to miss you at our meetings [Applause] [Music] and thank you chris for those coming words i hardly recognize myself but as you say nine years ago i ran for a receipt on this board i had never run for any public office before and i didn't think i would be elected but i was and then twice more and over that time i've had the pleasure of working with some of the finest people i've ever met my colleagues sitting here tonight and those that came before them labor long and hard to make our school one of the finest in the country board president karen edmondson and vice president becker have done an outstanding job this year in leading the district likewise the talented professionals who they keep our children first ms carlson mr sabia miss cherry and some of the best teachers and staff in america have made our school real's crown jewel shakespeare said troubles come in battalions and so it has seemed over the last years but at the age of 72 i suppose i am entitled to the lord yes it still affects us but we have come a long way since the days of the quarantine and though there will always be legitimate differences of opinion all of us are united and working toward when we fully return our school our kids our lives back to what they were i see you all the voters that trusted me the wonderful people i've worked with the parents that care so much the taxpayers who flip the bill and the kids themselves who every day accomplish names that amaze us and make us also very proud it's been a great nine years and i thank you all for letting me be a part of it [Applause] thank you very well um oh what a ride it has been um thank you chris for your nice comments and thank you to my family who's here some who are here tonight um for helping me during this adventure other ones are so busy um for those of you that know me know i'm a firm believer in giving back to your community as much as you can it is ingrained in who i am um which might be a negative thing for my family because like i'm always out doing other things um i never realized how or why i'm like this but after reflecting recently i realize it's because of my father he lived his life to help better his community he taught me that you don't volunteer to directly help yourself or your individual family unit but rather to help the whole to make the whole better to help the whole grow to look out for everyone and to focus your mindset on others it is really necessary to do this to keep small towns small and of course when you do this in the end it will be so rewarding for you and your family this position over the last six years has been so rewarding extremely difficult at times but rewarding to see students come to these board meetings and to honor their accomplishments makes it all worthwhile to see the programs we implement and flourish makes it all worthwhile but none of this could happen if it wasn't for trust trust in my fellow board members trust in this administration trust in the faculty but most importantly trust in the process it'll help us all in the end thank you my friends it's been a pleasure [Applause] agenda items only at this time do i have any answers is that uh correspondence ms chair joining the correspondent this evening committee reports uh finance ted [Music] thank you ted no need to apologize thank you glad you're feeling better um dennis uh representative to mana spawn by statute any sending district to madison high school depending on the size of their enrollment may occupy a stream of their board and vote on issues affecting the high school and dissenting districts there are almost as many real kids at manuscript high school as there are kids from nascar which entitles our district to a permanent seat on their board this is critically important not only to the policies and the everyday operation of the high school but to the financial obligations of tuition which is a large part of our budget throughout my three years as badass swan's representative i found minus one to be a dynamic district well-led and forward-looking the field house is going to be an incredibly important asset to the entire shore area student athletics um as braille's representative i have asked a baby and was made a part of their budget process i have received assurances from both court president gene kitany and also their superintendent on occasion that brielle's representative will continue to be part of that process again i'd like to say that my experience in mansfield was very positive they're great folks they do their job very well um and uh i'm sure that they will be as collegial and as helpful to the next representative for the last three years thank you dennis has anybody buying board members any questions for danny okay uh current curriculum thank you karen um the crucial committee did meet uh this month open engagement we met for about an hour it was attended by ms carlson mr shady of his love miss jones and myself and uh you know as always my reports try to give a good idea of what the meeting was like but uh i encourage any other committee members to come in if i'm done if there's anything i've missed or haven't represented properly but during that meeting the big focus was uh obviously on diversity equity inclusion as we've always done and policy 2422 as it relates to comprehensive health and physical education we determined that there's always consistent and continuous discussions amongst the administration of driverless surrounding all of 3l elementary school curriculum this includes policy 242.
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okay we are live all right thanks okay seeing the presence of a quorum i'll call to order this meeting of the pelham school committee at exactly 6 30 and we'll start with roll call attendance ron menino here sarah best kenny present margaret st dancer present and hall present um all right next up is approval of the minutes um which i had sent around and are also posted for la at on last month's meeting on board docs um so any questions comments edits on those no comments margaret go ahead um i think that principal darlene needs to be added to the attendees okay thank you yeah okay all set um all right it was a quick comment by maylene that she's having some wi-fi issues but she did have a quick comment to make oh okay sorry a minute so um got it okay we'll wait a minute for her then are you all ready to hear me or yeah we can hear you go ahead okay great i just wanted to bring up the um the regional and amer school committee asked that i put the draft minutes in a pdf format that could then be accessible to the public um usually really close to the day of the meeting i wasn't sure if that's something the pelham school committee would be interested in um i essentially did i attached it as a pdf but to the administrative side of things so the public would not be able to see it but i just wanted to bring it up if that was something that the committee was interested in it's very simple for me to do yeah thank you i was actually going to bring that up with you separately so yes if you could do it the same way for pelham that you do with the region that would be great that way would work for us um and that way i think everybody who needs to access the minutes can and then we can still approve them and post them to you perfect sounds good all right thank you um okay anything else on the minutes all right and we'll take a motion moved let me accept the minutes all right is there a second second okay we'll do a roll call though ron um that was it you got it sarah best kenny eye margaret her eye and i i wasn't there i think i i usually i think i had stain if i wasn't there hall abstain um okay thank you um next up is public comment i did not receive anything um so we can keep going um so mike and mickey where are you who's mike do you want to go first sure i'll go first and then pass it to mickey i enjoyed i was up in pelham today so i got to see a couple couple classrooms uh hang out with mickey of course but also got to see technology space and see students working in multiple spaces around the building so uh just always nice to see pelham kids it's just you know the students in the hallway and and mickey knows every single kid and i miss darling and you know it's just seeing those interactions and seeing really the kind of the beauty of a small school is just a treat you know it's not that i don't like any of my other schools but it does feel different uh given the size and pelham so uh thanks mickey for hosting me just a couple quick updates uh one is that tonight was our last in a three-part series uh that was focused on equity and diversity and we had different speakers in i think no surprise one of my professional highlights in general um not just for this week of this month was being able to interview cornell west to be three weeks no two weeks ago today uh it was amazing and actually got to hang out with him beforehand so that video is archived on the youtube piece so people can go back and look at it last week i was able to interview dr j dr j matthews and this week i was not able to do it uh but jennifer ortiz was able to interview rhonda soto so um it was uh they were wonderful events and you know they they live on forever in terms of the recordings so um that was my first update second one of the things that we put out for folks it's really hard to teach in a mask all day and one of the things that some of our teachers in some of our schools have found is wearing a headset with a portable relatively small speaker did not blow out the room you know wasn't like oh my god you know people can hear me 10 miles away so we put that out and we did have some folks who were interested in demoing that and i think it really the feedback we heard across the three districts is it's helping students particularly students who may uh struggle more you know in school be able to hear more clearly when teachers are wearing a mask but are mic'd up you know that's been an intervention for certain students with special needs for many many years back when i was teaching i remember my second year so about 20 years ago i had kind of the technologies improved it was much larger device but it really helped all students what i found not just the one student had an auditory disability and so that's hopefully something that will grow but we made that available for folks recently the next update is i'm happy to share that the pelham elementary school received and it was announced today a 3 stars grant a mass cultural council grant that will continue the work with the hitchcock center and helen and there and environmental education so we're thrilled that we're able to enhance our curriculum with our good partners at the hitchcock center in terms of health and safety updates yesterday was the second shot clinic uh for um we had a number of five to 11 year olds including uh folks from pelham who took part in that so it was nice to see we had a lot it was really nice because they opened up a booster clinic as well so we saw some children getting their second shot and their you know one of their caregivers to get the booster you know sometimes with the kids still in the arms uh it was i know it sounds strange but it was a really nice event um and we actually are just about confirming that uh when we get back from break pretty soon thereafter we'll have another opportunity for five to eleven year olds uh in amherst and pelham to be able to receive uh their first and second shots in that sequence uh as well as boosters for adults in those communities so we we hope to get information out actually in the next 48 hours uh and uh like we did yesterday we sent it out to not just staff but also families in the community and i think we had 62 booster shots given yesterday um and 39 k to 12 shots and they squeezed in a couple of our 16 to 18 16 and 17 year olds who became eligible just so recently for boosters and they walked down because the high school they was at the high school so they walked down got their shot and then went off to a basketball practice or whatever they were doing um so it worked out really well that way but uh emerson pelham uh in-state reporting because they share a zip code are reported um together and as of last thursday is the reporting day so as of last thursday 64 of emerson pelham five to eleven-year-olds uh had at least one shot and 44 had their second shot and so that's about double the state average so kudos to emerson pelham and the students in those communities for their high vaccination rates uh and we want to keep going uh you know we want to see that number get up and certainly with omicron which i'll talk about in a second we want to see you know as many adults get their boosters as possible and so we're trying to schedule actually um on wednesday january 5th hot off the press not officially confirmed but in pelham i you know it's a trusting community i feel like i can say that and um the nice thing is that there's no school on the six there's three kings day um so for folks who are concerned about getting a booster and then potentially the impact of a next day uh being in front of kids it provides that uh opportunity to do that and it's it's done three to like i think last night it was three to six so people can scoot down right after the end of their work day in pelham in terms of the staff and then for families it's a pretty wide berth and wide window and it's a pretty short ride from pelham to the high school so it um it's worked out well um you know the state put out or there was a uh someone at harvard put out a comparison of positive cases among multiple districts across the state pelham and then amherst pelham and amherst pelham regional all did look pretty good in terms of number of cases per capita until i can't say it i'm going to keep on saying that we have no school-based transmission no evidence of school-based transmission in pelham or any of the other schools that i work for and we're going to keep up the same standard high standards of distancing of masking you know i sent a reminder to staff this week given omicron that we're really uh we got to double down particularly on the distancing part um and and i think it's only become more important if you look around the world you know it's it's unlikely that we won't see some similar trends in massachusetts and in western massachusetts as as the rest of the world is seeing in europe and africa and asia and other places we're certainly seeing higher numbers right now just even from mostly the delta piece and so the vaccination is incredibly important for us um but i think the long term it's we're at this inflection point where uh i think even a couple months ago we might have said we're not going to eradicate covet but we can get it you know there were experts saying we can get it to a manageable level at this point i think we're we're learning to live with covet you know that it's not going away anytime soon and uh we're going to have to adjust what we do we're not going to mask forever we're not going to have all these precautions forever but i think sort of the the optimism of last spring if you remember last spring when vaccinations were there numbers were incredibly low and it did feel that way even the optimism of pre-thanksgiving uh when we felt like we had a better handle on it some of that optimism is it's hard because it's not in the same place the new york times was a really good article i was speaking about with some of the our leaders in the district the other day where there's a numbness that has come right it's it's you know with the news and the increased cases and seeing what's happening how many times can people get optimistic and then have that that other feeling and so the good news and that's what i keep saying is all the strategies we've already put in place vaccination distancing masking the same things we need to do with any variant that comes so we've got our good systems in place we're going to double down on those systems it's certainly possible that we'll see an increase in positive cases as our community increases that's going to happen in in pelham elementary school as well if there's more cases in massachusetts or our surrounding area it's going to affect our school but we work really hard to make sure that our school doesn't have community spread as to the best of our abilities we can't promise it'll last forever but we've been school a while now and we've been successful in that regard along that dimension i think the two other quick things i will say is one is that the state regs and this was reinforced in a deci call i was on right before this uh continue to say that the um closed contacts the only close contacts who should be uh tested as part of our you know sort of district protocol are unvaccinated close contacts or folks who come to school and feel sick they're not close contacts but vaccinated close contacts um they can't our nurses can't give them a binex test because it's part not part of our protocol but we're particularly sensitive to the cost so the districts purchased uh a set of binex tests the quick test for paraeducators um so if a power educator is a vaccinated closed contact we can't give them a test like we would but we're just what we've been doing is giving them the test to bring home into themselves uh because we are acutely aware that the cost of those binx tests it's still despite what you hear it's still not inexpensive and for some of our employees who that may be more of a barrier for we want to support them in that service and that's been positively received and my very last comment is that we are ending our test and stay program for elementary actually for k-12 students as of the new year so test and stay as a reminder has been a program that we've accessed for unvaccinated close contacts they can the students can continue to come to school under certain conditions the family drive them they're tested right at the beginning of the day if their test is positive the parents take them home if they're able to stay and they do that for a week um it's based on a utah model last spring that showed lower than one percent of positive cases and in as close contacts that was pre-delta of certainly pre-omicron and so at this point where vaccination is an option for all of our students at pelham school uh we there's a risk cost benefit there's a risk to that the risk felt really worth taking when there was no vaccine available at this point there's both a vaccine available and there's you know a potentially more transmissible variant out there and so the risk no longer lines up so starting in january if there are unvaccinated close contact students in pelham they will have to quarantine which is what the cdc recommends anyway the cdc has not fully endorsed test and stay and as has as most states have not of we are looking to provide some online tutoring for students who are in quarantine or frankly just out because they don't feel well to go to school based on our protocols but they're okay to continue doing work so we are we have hired or in the process of hiring some retired teachers so we offer some tutoring and support throughout the day so students can maintain contact for the younger students probably looks more like you know an interactive read-aloud and some connections and tutoring for the older students much more on the academic side but we do want to support those students but at this point we we're unrelenting on our focus on health and safety and and with vaccines available um it's the cost benefit just doesn't add up in the same way it did um up until this point so that program will sunset in pelham uh after the december break and uh it may potentially mean we have more students in quarantine but with a high vaccination rate uh we don't we don't believe to be overwhelming and that is a lengthier update than i usually offer for the pelham folks but it's been a little while but i'll turn it over to principal darling for a principal's update also principal darling has i believe multiple commitments tonight so she will not be able to stay for the bulk of the meeting but we chatted and i got her input on the other topics we have this evening but with that principal darling thank you um yeah so i do have to leave after my update i hope that's okay i'll save for questions or comments um so lots of great things happening in in pelham it does continue to feel really great uh we're having our first all we're not having our first all school meeting but we're gonna have our first talent portion of the all school meeting where two students or two groups of students from each grade except for kindergarten we're gonna let the kindergartners watch it the first time so they know what we mean when we say talent um perform at our all-school meeting tomorrow which will be fun and exciting in hopes of showcasing all the talents that our students have and and getting to see each other you know we're just sitting at desks with masks on so this will be a great opportunity to shine and also the pto has been so generous to volunteer to bring hot cocoa tomorrow to the kids don't tell anyone um a little surprise it actually came today they messed up in a game today but they're gonna bring some tomorrow too um i've walked into you know lots of great things happening in classrooms one highlight was sitting in the fifth grade classroom and listening to really unbelievable discussions about a book that they're reading they're reading sophia's war and i'm i was just like blown away by their ability to understand the characters and make inferences it was just it was really cool um mr a the pe teacher is has taken on uh helping the kids select a mascot for pelham school which is really fun he decided to do it with the brackets like the basketball brackets for like march madness and so they're little by little week by week narrowing down who their mascot is going to be and he said the students are really getting really excited about that um i was so lucky to go into the art room a bunch this week and past weeks and i love how miss emily has set up the art room and having different stations and the students get to choose what they're gonna do and create and they're just like seeing what other students are doing they're not just kind of doing a scripted art which is really great one student is basically making a mansion out of recyclables it's like all across the floor and she's painting it and decorating it and it's just awesome so different ways for kids to shine for the staff um we've had some professional development from bright on trauma informed classroom and teachings with some really uh easy to bring to the classroom applications so that was really great we've got a bunch of committees going that are doing some great things the social justice committee we invited parents and community members and that's been really it's just been a really great opportunity to expand our thinking and having other people join um we have a couple interns working with jess nardisi our school counselor and one of the interns is has decided that we should have a book club and so we're going to have a book club that kind of coordinates with the social justice committee and so that's exciting i recently sent out a survey to to the families and um it was really nice to see how people are feeling overall i would say families feel really positive about being back in person their kids experience at pelham i ask questions like does your student feel safe does your student feel seen and most of the students feel safe and seen which is like the two one of the two of the most important things right everyone wants to feel like they're seen they love the small community and the staff the emphasis on kindness and our and well-being mental health um and then the negatives is they feel really disconnected parents feel really disconnected from the school they really wish they could be at the school for events so the school climate committee has been thinking about that and trying to have different events where we can have parents outside so the turkey trot was one of them and we have an idea for when after our first big snow fall when we're in school i'll give you a hint the students are collecting sticks and the pto is going to provide some carrots so we'll have maybe a little contest see who can make the best um i'm not going to say so we're trying to think outside the box and have parents involved because it really did come up as something parents were really missing and they they felt like there was great communication but they didn't feel as much of a part of the school as they have in the past so that's my update any questions ron parents do feel disaffected my daughter has a four-year-old in preschool at the montessori school in virginia and she says she's never been inside the building she goes to the driveway somebody comes out picks up the kid walks in she doesn't really know what the school is about they had grandparents day where we did a zoom meeting but i couldn't see anybody's face they were so tiny but parents do feel disaffected because they they can't get in the building yeah it's hard other questions for mickey all right vicky thank you so much for the update you are free to thank you see you later have a good night um just because you did your update mike and then we went straight to mickey can i just go back to do folks have questions for mike from anything in his update that we want to go back to okay all right just wanted to be sure um okay school committee announcements anyone have any school committee related announcements i should say this is not like personal life announcements okay um all right new and continuing business first up is the esser spending update and there was um a document in the memo if you want to pull that up um and mike i'll go back over to you this is just a i think hopefully a relatively brief update um some tech issues that are now solved so let me pull it up um there we go um and uh so in short the items that are shaded green are items that we have started spending uh funds on and the articles that are unshaded have not yet had spending happen and so um you know i think i just want to mostly highlight the areas where our spending hasn't happened because of where it has happened i think you know you can certainly ask any updates but uh hvac staff we are still looking for hvac staff so that's something that we um are aiming for there is as is no surprise to anyone a staffing shortage everywhere in every field uh and that is certainly one of them so we are fully staffed now at uh pretty yeah we are fully staffed at facilities which we're not at the me of the year but we haven't able to add sort of excess or additional staff members uh to that so if we do find someone we will start spending it on that uh the outreach for kindergarten preparation that really is thinking much more of next year uh once we get enrollment uh there so it's a as just as a reminder esser is a multi-year grant we have three years to spend the funds so it is something that we plan to do next year and the last one to note is that um at the bottom is that some funds will be used to purchase a new math curriculum for next year uh in my update um to the community on friday all will get you the community get a larger update about the math curriculum review uh which includes both the amherst and pelham schools so it's likely that we will move to a new math curriculum next year and sr funds will be used to supplement um that purchase and i think that i'm happy to answer any questions but you know unless people want me to go to line by line i certainly can but i'm happy to answer any questions on any items uh on here ron i saw your hand up go ahead a technical issue am i supposed to be viewing some kind of document because i can't see any document i can i can certainly project it it was in the board docs so you were just talking that you weren't yeah it's going to be hard to see i think on this screen because it's an excel document but i'm happy to bring it up if it'd be helpful for that another technical thing where what's the agenda for tonight's meeting because it's always going to be on board docs now so we're using that site for everything okay and how do i get the board docs again well so when sasha sends you all of the okay and she provides all the links in there so you just need to follow the links yep sorry i'm technological dinosaur that's quite all right don't worry about it um any questions for mike on that s or funding i just have one i so i think i've asked this exact question word for word before and i cannot remember the answer these these funds are these funds that the district is already holding and then i know we have the discretion i mean within certain bounds but is this like we can spend them as we need to or do we have to go and get reimbursed for things so no we can spend them once the grants have approved and our grant for this year was approved you so you have to apply with you know basically the the information that's in this document um uh once it's approved it it's not like fema reimbursement this is direct it has its own budget line and we spend from it and the money is live got it okay great thank you questions on s or spending okay next up um potential sixth grade move to the middle school sure so this will also be i think a pretty brief update um so the thing you know the two parts one is to update the pelm school committee on the progress for uh another committee i i work with and then the other was just talking about models that may make sense so um i did meet with a group of sixth grade teachers who are uh kind of agreed to continue to work with me on this and our next step is next month we have scheduled sessions with all the sixth grade classes in amherst and we decided to start with the current sixth grade students and ask them to help us with visioning you know because they they know sixth grade like nobody else right now they know what it's like to be in school and really uh sixth grade teachers from across the amherst schools came up with a list of guiding questions to understand what their priorities would be in other words we're trying to develop a vision uh before we develop a program because it seems like you know what often happens you develop a program and the vision fits into it and we're trying to be very intentional about this is an opportunity to revision uh what sixth grade looks like what do we wanna maintain that our students are experiencing uh and don't want to give up and what are they ready for that's new you know like world language electives all those kind of pieces how integrated would they want to be in a middle school environment we originally were going to follow that up directly with engagement with staff and families however this is going to sound like an amherst elementary update that i gave last night but i think it is relevant for you all to hear because the msba the state building process demands a lot high levels of engagement from the community in the months of february and january we're likely not going to engage other stakeholders until march because you can only ask so many people you're almost you can only ask folks to go to so many meetings on so many topics before people stop coming or the feedback you get is is less high quality than what you want so we are slowing the pace so that we don't overwhelm our community with um asking for too many things uh all at once so you know really the only update that way is we do have scheduled visits to the mr6 grades we do have guiding prompts that were developed by sixth grade teachers and we do plan to engage the larger amherst community in march on the other topic that we're going to talk about tonight which is what model might make sense for pelham if it chose to send sixth grade you know i did some thinking and the only way i could see pelham sixth grade being at the middle school is if it was a joint venture with the amherst public schools in other words i can't i can't imagine the pelham 6th grade program being plopped in the middle of the middle school as a solitary classroom disconnected from other items because even like you think about electives you think about the nurse like it had it would have to be some level of integration and connection with the amherst public schools um so i don't think a standalone program you know is probably worth considering um and then it brings about some other questions that we talked about last time because i've been thinking about financial there was a question last last month about what are the financial implications of that um now we're getting complicated because we've got three districts at play right it's the amherst pelham regional school district renting space and perhaps uh sharing parts of personnel with both the amherst and pelham elementary districts so my head started hurting a little bit and i started thinking about it and uh the tangible suggestion or next step would be perhaps for pelham if it wants to request a meeting at some point with the amherst school committee to have this discussion of you know sort of joint venture possibilities because this is where it gets really complicated so i'm gonna i practice this one i'm gonna try to be really clear so you have the amherst pelham regional school district opened the door for elementary school districts to send their students they would negotiate kind of like a space a rental fee agreement if elementary districts want to participate you have the amherst elementary schools that has voted with by their school committee to send their sixth graders in the fall of 23 to the regional middle school and they're going to work out that level of rental agreement um over the next year and a half for pelham i think there's there's multiple barriers right because you'd want to have an integrated program and try to work with amherst uh i think logically that's the only way this would make sense but you'd also have to be negotiating with the regional public schools about rental of space and potential sharing of staff like the nurse and custodial and and that sort of thing so it's quite complex financially um since i work for all three districts i'm going to be really cautious about not creating any perceived conflict of interest because i can't negotiate against myself which i wear different hats and tonight i'm have a pelham elementary school hat but that's probably as far as i can go without getting myself in a little bit of trouble on the conflict of interest front you know i did contact and get some advice about conflict of interest because it is a complex set of circumstances because i work for multiple districts and negotiating between them happens from time to time but on this scale it's not consistent with my experience but that would be the process that if pelham wanted to engage would be um first to in my opinion to engage with the amherst school committee to see if they wanted a joint venture made sense uh and then next trying to work with both the amherst and pelham re both the amherst and amherst pelham regional school districts about rental of space and and how that process will work so um i don't know if i added clarity or took away from it by explaining it but i've been i've tried to map it out and i failed like my visual only made things worse so i i bring no visual just oral representation of the complexity of this situation well yeah so don't worry and for sure we can do questions i guess i just would caution given the stage where we are to just try tonight not to get too far into the weeds i mean absolutely i'm sure folks have questions and i'm not trying to silence anyone but i'm just guessing probably that mike's ability to even answer a lot of these conflict of interest aside is probably limited so i'm just throwing that thought out there ron go ahead i assume we would not make a decision until all the debate and the discussion is done and we know what the budgetary implications for the pelham school are that's correct go ahead mike yeah i mean that's your decision to make that's me my recommendation the process really this spring as i i noted but i want to be more explicit about it is to develop that vision of sixth grade what sixth grade could look like and then for the summer work to be to take that vision and and make it a practical reality and map out the plans so in terms of that it's hard to do the cost estimating until you know what actually the program is we can't do the program until we're doing the visioning so we're starting with the visioning next month so you know that's where we are in timeline and amherst and and and again i'll defer to to the committee on what action steps and when you know the pelham school committee wants to engage in it but that's that's where we are sarah bass go ahead um i just wanted to say i really appreciate that the current sixth graders are being asked to be part of the visioning i think like you mentioned they have the best idea right now about what it is like to be in sixth grade so i think using that resource is huge so kudos to you know the grown-ups who thought that was a good idea to make sure that the kids had a voice too because i think that's really important margaret i lost my cursor i just would like to comment that in regards to financials i would also want to know what it would mean for the town to keep the pelham school going if we have a decrease in the number of students in the school so for me that's a piece going forward that i would want to know about yes sure can i say so in terms of doing a joint venture with amherst when you say that meaning that like amherst and pelham would come to some agreement as two separate elementary districts and then together would negotiate with the region is that what you mean when you say joint venture um yeah i was talking more instructionally uh oh wow okay and programmatically but i think your point is well taken and accurate as well but uh i was thinking about it more you know if pelham's just going to stay as a solitary classroom that doesn't have access to all the programming and you know the visioning that we're doing and how that gets realized and you're also right that it might make sense for a rarely used union 26 group to um a little outside its typical boundaries but to be thinking about this uh and in guards to negotiating with the regional schools all right thank you other questions comments on this knowing this is far from your last opportunity okay all right well thanks for that update i mean understood that there's a lot of work left to do and we'll just keep chipping away at this as we know more um okay next up is preschool and fy23 yep and this one i would like to come with a recommendation for a potential vote tonight which is to continue to not operate a preschool in the next fiscal year um i've talked to principal darling she's supportive of this measure um there's multiple reasons why we talked about it last time one the uncertainty of the world we'll be living in the second is the kind of the getting startup costs uh of a program that's not been running for a while the third every time i'm at pelham that including today that room is in full use um it's really you know i know for the other specials uh for the specials teachers as well as for small group intervention it's been wonderful to have an additional um you know it's not as big as the other classrooms but it's still a pretty decent sized space uh for students to work in and you know some of the other quasi breakout rooms we've used are really tiny throughout the school you might remember them even though i know folks haven't been in them but they're like kind of around the big bend and there's like two people can fit in there distance way and it's not not fabulous so i think it's really opened up it means the gym is truly a gym um and you know you heard principal darling talk about the art room and how uh the art teacher is able to set it up and that's true for a lot of the other specials you know today was technology and i saw how the technology teacher was using it um and the other thing is you know it's a tremendous undertaking to operate a preschool in terms of resources and i don't mean financial resources i mean really the human resources part and i think everyone is really maxed out at trying to do the right thing for students at this point in time principal darling had a big agenda for her faculty meeting today and in my opinion really wisely decided no we're gonna be outside we're gonna have some treats have some hot beverages uh and not talk about work for a little bit because people are working so incredibly hard and the staff are doing a fabulous job at pelham and i think you know we're at or a little beyond our capacity running a k-6 school and our preschool is wonderful it takes a tremendous amount of organization work for many people uh clerical staff principal guidance counselor um and at this point my recommendation would be uh to hold another year and maybe a year from now we're in a different place well we'll be in a different place hopefully we're in a better place and can reconsider this but the prospect of trying to open a preschool and all the work that would have to take place this winter and spring um and we'd lose the internal spaces we've had to me doesn't make a lot of sense you know i know one of the purposes of the preschool was to increase school choice numbers you know we're back up to school choice in the year where we don't have preschool uh and school choice is where we need it to be so i think you know lee last year and mickey's taking that on or have found ways to uh engender interest and participation in the school choice program stanza preschool and so for that reason i just i'm recommending that we not include preschool and the reason we're bringing up this now is that next month we'll be talking about budget so we want to make a budget that accurately reflects the impact i know ron i feel exactly the same um uh it's yeah um but we want to make a budget that is reflective of the programming that uh you all want to see so again that's just my recommendation but you know if the committee would like us to uh look to open it up again we certainly it's not a non-negotiable we can do that it's not my recommendation or principal darlings all right thank you um questions for mike or comments opinions on the recommendation sarah best go ahead um i really appreciate you making the burnout factor point i think that is a huge piece like you know we've all had different experiences with the preschool like my my own kid went there and it was phenomenal um and i thought it was a fantastic program and i'm sad to see it not be there but i think we need to honor our staff and recognize that they're fabulous humans but they have limitations and we're already asking so so much of them and they're doing such a fantastic job that to push them to do more seems uh unkind to me so yeah thank you yeah i mean i think i know it's been stated in these meetings before but you know this the the stated mission of this district is to educate kids in grades k through six and the preschool for a while has been a really really great add-on and it is too bad when it's not operating um but it is you know it is sort of this extra thing um so [Music] i i personally am fine voting tonight are other folks feeling okay voting okay um okay i will make a motion to not open the preschool in fiscal year 23.
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so ladies and gentlemen welcome to the john h storm auditorium home of the cheshire public schools music department designated by the national association of music merchants foundation as one of the best communities for music education in america since 2004.
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it's a niche that one minute Mike's alive thank you Patrick oh away from me give it no I'm good okay I have no strength in my left leg good evening welcome to the December 15th Chico Unified School District Board of Education regular meeting we will be going into executive session is there I there are no visitors wishing to speak to Executive sessions so I will adjourn to Executive session and see everyone at six o'clock for our regular meeting okay good evening everyone it's supposed to open the meeting the board has been enclosed session since five o'clock I have an announcement about an action that was taken um the board voted by a unanimous vote to pass a resolution to reject a claim brought pursuant to the tort claims act and to give the claimant notice of the done aisle that was the action okay open the meeting with the flag salute please could stand and salute I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you okay this is now our organizational meeting where we will vote to elect our officers for this upcoming year how this process works is we will begin with the office of president after filling that office we will go to vice president and then Clerk and then Secretary of the board so we will begin the process and I'm going to open it by nominating Dr Kathy Kaiser as president nominations do not have to have a second um it's now anyone else would you like to nominate anyone for president here oh go ahead Tom okay Caitlin dalby has been nominated Brent Caitlin are you willing to accept the nomination yeah I'll accept the nomination thank you okay and Dr Kaiser I forgot to ask you that same question yes I'll accept the nomination okay we have two nominations for president any further nominations are we finished with president looks like we are finished okay the first nomination is for Dr Kathy Kaiser to be elected president for the upcoming year all those in favor raise your hand okay we have three that elects Dr Kaiser as president for the upcoming year congratulations Dr Kaiser there's a gift [Laughter] and you are now in charge Madam president yeah the kind of gift that keeps on giving yes yeah okay so our next uh activity is to elect a vice president may I have a nomination for a vice president Eileen I nominate Caitlin dalby okay I'll accept your nomination thank you Eileen are you willing to accept yes okay another any other nominations only once going twice all right so all those in favor of Caitlyn raise your hand okay no all right uh the last position we need to elect is a clerk any nominations for Clerk all right and Matt are you willing to serve okay any other nominations for Clerk all right show of hands all those in favor all right Matt's having trouble with this sound oh okay thank you okay so we have we have President Dr Kaiser vice president Caitlin dalby and clerk Matt tennis and then the secretary of the board is appointed and we typically appoint Kelly Staley and Kelly you're willing to serve right yeah now's your chance to opt out so um we need to set the date time and place of our regular meetings we did get a list of dates was there any uh anyone have an issue with those proposed dates all right um and then um that's awesome no why yes Eileen Madam president um just a notation that if we find um later in the year that because of a change of a holiday or some other movement of a schedule we do have the option of changing the dates as long as we give notice to the public yes um so the time has been that regular board meeting start at six with the closed session at five and special board meetings start at five um and are we going to continue to use Marigold as our all right so we're going to continue to use this facility as our regular meeting location okay we need to vote on this literally the dates we do okay I wasn't sure all right so uh all those in favor of the dates that we were given as our examples and the times that we've been doing and this location please uh we need a motion first all right okay yeah we do have a point of order we need a motion okay so the motion is to agree to the set dates that we were given the times of six o'clock for regular board meetings and five for special board meetings and Marigold is our regular place I'll make that motion okay all right point of clarification yes um doesn't uh closed session though begin earlier five o'clock it's very confusing frankly on the agenda very confusing I mean because the agenda says five o'clock board meeting but it turns out it's only closed session so I know personally from experience that a lot of people show up thinking that this meeting is going to start at five o'clock so we could change how we label that we can put board meeting starts at six and then in parentheses closed at five if that would make it clear okay Eileen uh thank you madam president uh just some background for Mr tennis on the reason for special board meetings are what we call workshops and in other parts of our publication and because staff is usually the most significant part of those meetings with their presentations on certain issues that the board has selected we we didn't want to have two hours between the time when their work day ends and the time when they have to start here so that was why we moved it forward that and if we involve children in our workshops which we often do it gets them a way to homework and stuff earlier it's um and and you're right it uh having shown up at the wrong time several times it is confusing but that's that's the distinction special board meetings mean Workshop meetings I don't know why we just don't put Workshop okay thank you so was the suggestion that I heard from superintendent Staley that we will simply uh post those distinctions on we certainly complete the announcement yes okay okay so thanks for the suggestion if you're still asleep there's something wrong with you we oh oh yeah that would have been yeah so John are you going to do that to us again oh God oh God yes I believe we have a motion on our meeting dates and times but not a vote not a vote we had a motion and a second but not a vote all right so if I can ask you then to vote on the again the sample sampheims that we two different times uh six o'clock for the regular board meetings and five for the special board meetings and the place being here will all those in agreement raise your hand on sorry this will be a roll call vote since it's our first vote on a motion okay okay thank you all right well that's why she useful Dolby I okay Robinson I tennis eye so uh yeah what is the specifics of that so this would be the opportunity for the board if you don't like the order in which the agenda is currently uh presented if you would like to change uh the layout if you'd like to remove items that you don't think are pertinent any longer this is your opportunity to do that or you may leave it in the format that it has been for the past year but yes it was me that made that comment earlier I just think that um anything we can do to spell out the the fact that closed session in the case of meetings which by the way I mean most people lay people are not going to distinguish between a board meeting and a workshop so let's get over the idea that that there's a difference in the eyes of Joe schmoe public because there isn't it's true so anything you can we can do to give Clarity on the agendas you know about that that stuff and big headline on there saying when the meeting's going to start would be valuable that's all that's all I want to say thank you Dr Kaiser um I I agree uh one of the things that I would like to encourage though now that we have a facility where we can accommodate um public attendance that the workshops be outlined in a way that the public knows that we are inviting them to come to those very valuable workshops there's really a lot of of good information for anyone who has an interest in the school district so I I don't want us to do anything to discourage attendance now that we have a facility where that can happen the more the merrier in my opinion uh on on that note I don't know if this is actually changing the order of anything but I I would maybe encourage us to just be mindful of putting items on the workshop agendas that when this happened I think one time recently um that may push back the actual presentation from staff for our Workshop topic to to later in the evening like make sure that that stays closer to the beginning of the evening because I think that's what we're talking about right wanting to make sure our public stays engaged um so we don't want an agenda item to come in maybe it's something that we need to speak on or have a discussion about um lately it's been you know the changing covid mandates or or things rolling out so we've used special board meeting or Workshop times to talk about those and have those discussions even then that's not typical um uh typically that that meeting type um but if we have them before our Workshop sometimes it tends to make our Workshop be later and later in the evening so I'd like to just make sure I don't think we have to like change anything but just make sure that the workshop stays close to the beginning of the meeting and then we can take care of business after that okay is that agreeable okay Mr tennis Mr Lando um I think that if public is here they need to be heard and given their opportunity to speak you know I mean I don't think you don't agree I think you probably do agree um but um you know if we need to make comments to people like uh trying to encourage speed and efficiency so that we can get to the workshop item I think that's that'd be valuable but but making people come and sit through something that may not be pertinent pertinent to their life and why they're here wouldn't be something I'd want to make them do in order to earn the right to speak and be heard so just for clarification on that point is that we do not have items from the floor on our board workshops so people that come to speak at a board Workshop would be speaking on a topic that is agendized I add our regular board meetings such as tonight we do have comments from the floor um I have a question my mic is really loud um I think I maybe took all the volume from Mr tennis's make you can hear me just fine all the way back here right um so uh what about the concept of doing timed items which is a little tricky but for that reason you know if there was a particular item we could still get through the workshop which is the purpose of those meetings let our staff present to us all of the the things that they put together for a topic that we've asked them to present on and if there is another agenda item that we need to either have information or take action on that's special in nature we could maybe put that at a particular time so the public knows when we'll be speaking on that topic um just taking a cue from How The Board of Supervisors does it just a thought I don't know how difficult that would be to do but it would maybe take care of that that piece a little bit you know if the public doesn't want to come here a workshop on our communication or our you know how our special education programs are doing which is the purpose of having that meeting but there may be a topic to discuss later on um after that workshop and we could say that will be on we'll be speaking on that at 8 pm because we know those workshops are roughly an hour and a half long those presentations are are meant to be about an hour to an hour and a half long so we should know about what time um those additional agenda items that the public may want to make a comment on would be in in that in the evening of those board Workshop meeting nights questions yeah when your mic gets turned down that I can't hear you I it maybe have even gotten turned up because I was asking for well I I am good at talking loud uh so um I just I'm not liking hearing myself talk so much so I'll stop talking how's that yes I mean yeah on on the issue of um the purpose of the two different types of meetings um and special meetings that are held just because of an emergency topic or something which is which is um something I think different than what we're talking about tonight I um I actually support having people come and and have to not have to well yeah have to listen to the purpose of the meeting the presentation the subject matter being covered and and then speaking on a topic that they're interested I I think it's a valuable thing to have our school public come for something other than a support issue or a complaint issue the business of this school district has many topics and covers many many areas and I think it's important for our parent public to listen to the rest of what goes on to support and run our school district um spending you know uh hopefully less than two hours in most of our meetings well I'm not going to say most because there have been a few that were over three hours um I think it's important so I just I support um it always bothers me when we have parents who will come and speak for their 30 minutes and then everybody leaves it's like no no don't leave stay um and so that's that's my opinion I have one other thing on the agenda um item number eight negotiations update I don't believe that we are currently making use of a negotiations update time um we we don't have any controversy and negotiations that anyone is interested in Mr Moretti I'm sure would make us all very aware if we were not being good Partners so I would like to take that out in order to cut down on time in the agenda that's that's not being used um that's that's really the last of my comments Mr Dennis um I have no comment on what you said about the uh just now the um bargaining update um but I want to go back to something you said about how you feel bad when people and I mean this at all good will and respect and and friendship toward you um you don't like it when people say their piece and then hear the hot ticket item and then they get up and leave and as a parent and some of the people who come before this board are going to be parents right maybe a high percentage um I can tell you that it's hard right now I'm out there man I mean the struggle is real you know there's stuff going on at home that that totally demands your attention and you know you've got to be there for it and you're taking super valuable time out of that to come here and so um if there's a hot ticket item on the agenda in my opinion we got to put that right at the top we got to give those people a chance to come in and say what they need to say and and get out of here not that that they shouldn't know about what's going on in their school district they shouldn't hear the communication program update and you know the maps and stuff like that but you know life is about priorities and people's time is incredibly precious so we got to keep that in mind when we lay out those agendas to put the hot stuff toward the top and and only people who really want to be here should have to listen to things that don't directly apply to them in a in a super meaningful way right now thanks so first of all I want to come agree with Mr tennis completely we can't we can't control people into into caring about stuff we wish they cared about um so that seems like a non-starter to me um I do like the idea of timed agenda items so people know exactly when to show up for a certain thing um especially because that'll keep us on track during some of our longer we all like to talk I mean we got elected we Meander a little bit I would love to see a schedule that was set so hey we'd have to have the workshop done by X time because then we're going to get a huge influx of parents who are gonna want to talk about what they came to talk about I think it's a really good idea so in response to that let me add that we now have two minutes towards our anticipated time for student reports so um what I've heard from the group is that having a greater sense of the timing of the presentations of board workshops these are not the meeting you're in now you're in a regular board meeting these are literally special topics and they don't have any uh items from the floor at all in those meetings so is there any other specificity or suggestions that we might want to take I have one little comment and that applies to public comments submitted but that might not be for this item right here I'll leave that to your discretion Madam president well we've been talking about workshops and they don't have public comments from the right on items from the floor I don't care about that I just meant public comments in general so so maybe this doesn't pertain to this agenda item I I would address that here since we are talking about how we run May needs and the agenda so there's not really another place where it would fit in okay um I think that when people write a letter or an email into the board I think that their name should be published in full no no it's not names are are almost universally stricken from we get it in the email but what it shows up on the PDF document available to the general public it's not it's not it's stricken out so we were redacting to um so we weren't giving out emails of people that had submitted items um the name I believe we are leaving unredacted correct on public comments but we were hiding the IP address and we were blocking out the email address it shows the oh my gosh him right but the last names redacted and the rest of the information correct I am sorry so we can definitely leave the name we were just really trying to we didn't want to be making public somebody's email address I'm for leaving them in so I would I would move that we um publish somebody's full name when they make a public comment in this very public forum and an important Forum where public testimony is you know should have the backing of identity if somebody wants it to be anonymous I think they can they can drop an anonymous note at this district office or or maybe specify very clearly please make this Anonymous or something like that my concern is one of your school board's annual Association where the Attorney General noted that some individuals were being physically harassed at their homes from it being made very public what they had said or done and so I'm a little concerned about that if somebody I think we we require that a person give their name but if someone doesn't want their name presented publicly what can we do for them so that is if they are here in person it's not the written comments that they're submitting via email the Red McCombs don't have their names the written comments that what I've heard it was requested is that the written comments that are submitted to public comment have the name left attached so when somebody comes to speak here at a board meeting from items from the floor not the public comments but items from the floor they do not have to we cannot require someone to give their name at that point two different issues right that's a little confusing um I mean I don't see the distinction between items from the floor versus public comment on an agenda item why is there a difference in the way the name is published or not during items from the floor versus the other board and are attached to the agenda they do not have to be here in person sometimes they may want to do both but they don't have to be here in person for the board to receive those the items from the floor are individuals that are now in person that have either submitted a speaker card for priority or are here in person and want to address the board and legally we cannot at that point require them to give a name okay so I would just reiterate my motion that I think the people's name should be published when they when they comment to to us in writing so does that motion I'll second the motion all right so the motion we have about the agenda is that only items from the floor that are email comments correct so that would be public comments that are sent to the board yes all right public comment so if you are in agreement with that can I have the point of clarification um are we are we right now voting on the entire agenda we're just putting this one part and then okay that one point thank you okay yes Tom I had any discussion for a second now all right um just I want to go on the record of saying I think this is a really bad idea um we are in a time when there are really strong feelings by many different groups in this community and effectively doxing people in public if we know who they are and we can verify that they're people who are legitimately have an interest in communicating I don't see what the benefit is in letting everyone who might disagree with them know who they are and how to find them like it seems like we're asking for trouble any other comments um I think that yeah that's it's tough it's tough because there has been some doxing that has happened in our community in the last in the last year plus um when I as a citizen submit public comment to other governing bodies in our in our area I know that my comment is going to be published publicly I know my name is attached to it and I do that without fear and because I want those people to know my opinion um as a citizen so I would think that if somebody's submitting public comment they're doing it knowing that their name is is published with the comment because it's public comment they can still email the board as a private comment that doesn't get published that is also possible um but to me public comment is some a comment that you want to make available to the public from your perspective but yeah so the discussion continues my question would be that if someone asked not to have their name made public how does this motion affect that I would put that particular question if it were me in charge probably to legal counsel you know um but uh yeah I mean I would I would say that I'd like to go ahead and make that anonymous you know if somebody wants to write an anonymous email or is able to state to the secretary that they want to be anonymous I would I would I would favor that anonymity yes um there already is a way to not have your comment identified and that's by doing a direct comment to the members of the board rather than going through the comment section on our website it's the person would be able to do that themselves so I support what you've the motion you've made Mr tennis and believe that there is a way for the public to communicate just one-on-one with the board without having it be you know a public comment for review as published if they're because they're published as part of the record of the of the agenda and and I support that any other comments I have a thought um there are some interesting comments that have been made to our districting some that I think May almost sound like they weren't even sent to the right governing body um perhaps interesting comments um and so I'm I'm definitely flip-flopping here in this in this discussion and thinking like all the scenarios and um you know those those um those folks their names aren't attached to those comments right now that are posted right it's maybe I think it's just a first name um so do we want that to be an automatic they get outed with their comments um I don't know I'm I'm still struggling with this decision I'm going to just defend my my motion here I feel like yeah we've got things in our society that we're emotional about you know um I mean some of us up here you know we were on like opposite ends of really emotional things but we've figured out a way to you know come together and have intelligent measured conversation and and work it out you know as a small intimate Community um I mean we worked it out in that we have a professional relationship and we're moving forward and we have a respect for each other so we need to do that as an entire community so like being anonymous and like all sniping at each other you know from across town or whatever is just not conducive to you know coming together and putting our heads together and you know building on the community that we have you know so that would be my my reason for wanting to do that you know there's people in town who just believe way different things but doesn't mean we can't know each other's name and you know respect and appreciate each other you know if people are being violent and stuff like that you know punish the criminal you know be tough on crime is what I would say in response to that but we can't like all just pull off into our shells just because you know something happened somewhere once upon a time excuse me um that said the history of Anonymous or pseudonymous comment in public discourse goes literally back to the Constitution I mean it's a it's an honored practice for people who definitely want to share with people but don't want necessarily to incur the direct Wrath of people they're going to upset I mean think of the Federalist Papers right like we've been doing this forever my concern would be that um if someone wanted their thoughts known but they didn't feel that they had the resources personally or maybe at their home or their business to be protected if someone knew their name I'd be really concerned then that we never got their thoughts we only because they were concerned about protection so um that would be my concern or their children's protection or their businesses protection so that would be my concern are we ready to move forward with the vote okay so if you are in favor of all public comments to have a name attached to them publicly uh raise your hand okay that's three okay passes all right so back to the agenda layout um is there any other thing that requires uh emotion it appeared to me that most of these were just suggestions about sequencing what would time items need to be a vote yes yes you need to vote both if you want a timed agenda and you'd also need to vote whether or not you want to remove negotiations from this Madam superintendent can you repeat what you just said about negotiations so I heard Miss Robinson say that she would recommend removing the negotiations update from the agenda so the board would need to agree as a whole to remove that item and then there was also a recommendation to have a timed agenda and the board would need to agree to that as well what are the arguments so to speak to having a negotiations update on the item on the agenda as a standard item sure there was a time when there was not a lot of agreement between the district and the unions and that allowed it ensured that the unions had the opportunity to publicly address the board and share the concerns and what was happening in negotiations from their perspective and also allowed the district to share with the board and and the community what was happening from their perspective thank you Mr Moretti do you have any concerns about this item being removed from the agenda no before it was added to the agenda if we had those kind of issues we used it from the uh the items from the floor and then and then during that really tumultuous time it was solidified into the thing as things stand right now I don't know if the public has an interest in what we're talking I mean that would be the only I think you guys get the the reports in closed session um and then if we come to an agreement the public has you know um that that's where they'd find out is there is there a public interest in what we're talking about as we talk about it I I don't know if that's true and for our members we send it out you know and uh so they know what we're talking about so I have I at this time I have no objection to removing it I'd like to move that we remove the um negotiations update from the standard agenda all right so uh this would remove it as a consistent item in the agenda my understanding would be if there was something going on it could be brought up as a special topic is that correct that's correct and we could certainly always out if there was something that we wanted to update the border that the union requested we could put that under human resources and add that as an agenda item at that point okay all right so the the motion is to strike negotiation updates from the agenda so if you're in favor of that would you raise your hand all right I think we need a roll call vote don't we oh yeah you're right on the Dolby eye Orlando Eye Tennessee I need an actual motion yes I would like to move to um create timed items on our board Workshop Agenda night or board Workshop night agendas only so not all special meetings but only our board Workshop agendas I'll second that Okay so uh Caitlyn has made a motion and Tom has seconded that the regular board presentations would have a timed agenda correct board Workshop presentations would have a different Workshop presentation okay I'm sorry all right okay so is there any uh just I'd like to offer a friendly amendment to this um I think it sounds fine the only time I could anticipate a problem is if we had a room full of people who wanted to talk about say like agenda item number two or agenda item number three and then we started talking about it and then 25 minutes in oh sorry folks we have a timed agenda item that five percent of you care about and um so you have to stop that discussion with those people here and they have to listen to something that they didn't come here for and and then before you can go back to it after that would be over that would be unfortunate if that happened as a result of this so maybe my proposed amendment would be Madame superintendent maybe you can help me out here is there any way to denote what something that might be likely to be a um like a hot topic that people might show up for or would you have um just the president and superintendent together anticipate that something like that might be right in front of a timed item and so therefore they would use their expertise and sense of responsibility to try to make sure that that didn't happen does that make sense yeah it does I mean you know you're hitting exactly on the issue with the timed agenda that when you do have a timed agenda it really does let people know when things are coming up the flip side of that is um if people expect something to happen at a certain time because you publish that and now you don't uh you have people upset because they've shown up for something that now is not happening at that time so it's really a double-edged sword Arlene one of the things that is the truth about those red uh times uh down the left-hand margin of the agendas those are estimated times and it there's no legal requirement to stick to them what we are required to stick to is when we have given an opportunity to speak each person has three minutes or if the president of the board the board elects to shorten the time because of having to limit the number of speakers to fit within the um the actual required time that the public must be given to speak on a particular item but the the estimate of times down the left-hand side of the agenda is just that estimate has no legal bearing on closing discussion or anything that's contained in the actual um part of the agenda that is our legal agenda I do want to clarify the the red times is just for our information up here right that's not publicized so the public doesn't see that so um right so um the way that I Envision this working well for both our staff who are presenting at Workshop evenings as well as the public who may want to make comments on our particular item that was added to that Workshop night not because it's a regular board meeting but because it's something timely that we need to discuss and we can't wait till our regular board meeting two weeks later is that we go in the order that that is already laid out which is call to order announcements consent calendar that generally goes pretty quick we know how long that's going to take um and then we do our Workshop also we know how long that's going to take and if you're talking too much as a staff member presenting we're gonna have to say your time is running out you're it's valuable but you only had an hour and a half to present and you're going a little too long um and so really we should know when we're hitting those agenda items if we go in that order and I think that that's valuable so the the folks that are that are waiting to speak on that really hot topic item um they can you know get off of work go make dinner for their family and then come here you know at 7 30 when they know that that's when that agenda item is going to come up um because we're sticking to a very particular um agenda uh um layout for workshops this would never work for our regular board meetings but I think for our Workshop evenings when we do have those you know one or two added agenda items that sometimes tend to be Hot Topic items um I don't see it as a drawback to to guarantee that it's going to be at that time because otherwise we can do the workshop our presenters are sometimes have students involved you know get the those those folks through the workshop which is the purpose that we're there that we set in the beginning of the year and and then move on to the other topics on it on a time on a time limit and then yes use discretion yeah so it's not if we understand that it's not going to be something that we're using all the time just something where the president and superintendent maybe use their radar and spot that this is going to be something it would be valuable to bring it in and I would say as a board member sorry for nothing but I would say as a board member you could even also have input you know know like hey we really need to think about this and send that input to to okay those folks making the agenda and as has happened with this board you do have the prerogative to change the order in the agenda if you see that there's people here on an item that is lower on the agenda and you want to move it forward and you have done that before okay so currently the [Music] is that workshops have an agenda structure that is structured so people that are interested in that will know a general time when it's going to be presented no I think this is on rare okay if I understand correctly on relatively rare occasion you madam president in consultation probably with the superintendent would choose to make an item a timed agenda item not something that you'd be doing regularly but it's something that you might you know just invoke as as part of your powers to lay out the agenda um so the the motion actually is to do that for every Workshop which is our first Monday sorry first Wednesday of the of the month which don't typically have an extraneous number of items so it would be somewhat rare to have timed items because we don't always have a whole lot of other agenda items to get through but we would get through the workshop first and know what time we would we would get to the next the next items on the agenda that was the yes Tom but then the uh the system kind of works the other way if we have something we know we need to spend more time on we can temporarily suspend rules and rearrange stuff to make sure that we're giving enough time to people who are if there's an extra you're saying you could move a timed item yeah we could always move to spend the rules if we need to if it's in the Public's interest absolutely okay any other comments all right so the motion was for workshops I do have a question if there's any particular input that the cabinet would like to give on this on this ID or topic and you don't have to but I'm always curious about your your input since it affects you as well I I do think we can make this work for the board workshops because those typically are scheduled for 90 minutes um I do not see us being able to make it work for a regular board meeting because um you know right now we've already gone well off our allotted estimated time yeah but for a workshop because it is set there's fewer items I think we can make it work any other comments okay so the motion is only for workshops to have an agenda that has a appropriate timing sequence correct yes labeled estimated if if the top of that yeah that would be an amendment and um I wouldn't agree with that Amendment as a friendly Amendment if we're going to have a timed item it's a timed item we're telling the public this is what time we are starting this item no that's so so I'm just saying that I wouldn't agree to that as a friendly Amendment but you could make that as an amendment and we'd have to second it and vote on it and all those good things yeah the um I don't believe that we can do it without designating it as estimated because we have no enforcement otherwise I mean we don't have any important way to enforce a timed uh uh you know the the thing will be an hour the presentation will be an hour and a half well if we get involved with asking questions of the presenters and we are now at um an hour and 45 minutes instead of an hour and 30 minutes we can't stop the workshop presentation and say you'll you'll have to wait until the end of the meeting now to finish no we go on and finish our workshop and and by just the fact of doing that we have lost our times that are on that outside edge in red we have no way of enforcing it so my my impression from superintendent Staley was that we could actually follow a timed agenda for workshops because of the nature of the workshops and having a fixed time for presentations and accounting for time for questions and perhaps we as a board stick to our timeline and to say if we have extra questions we'll save those for later we can ask those questions later if we move the asking questions later then we're asking all of our presenters to wait until we finish the rest of our agenda and that's not going to work any other comments or discussion um sure um to your point I think we could ask I mean especially if it's a workshop presenter politely and I love you guys uh presenters for workshops of staff and I if we're trying to prioritize the needs of parents who come and speak in a particular item I'd much rather prioritize them I just have to stay a little bit later to finish up what we're doing I think this could be um used to squelch public comment because you could always schedule something that you didn't want anyone questioning you or bothering you about what you were going to do you could schedule it right before a timed item that you knew was going to take a long time can you clarify put on the agenda you could say create a timed item for seven o'clock right and then you could put as the third item on the agenda that evening something that you wanted to sabotage if you were in charge of the agenda not that Dr Kaiser would ever want to do that but you could create problems for for a certain agenda item by putting it on the agenda you know before a timed item um superintendent Staley so I I can see that there's going to be a lot of discussion that we still need to have on this topic and my concern is that we do have students here tonight and so I'm wondering if at the will of the board we can move this item to maybe when we're talking about board policies just this 4.6 so that we can get our students up and and present I erroneously told them that they would be right at the top of the agenda and so I do feel bad about keeping our kids waiting I think that's a perfect example being expressed and I just want to address by saying just address that that concern by saying that we also have the ability to extend public comment time so we could vote to extend public comment um but but we can continue this discussion later on I just wanted to at least say say that much well my concern is it's five minutes to seven and we had a student presentation correct at 6 25 so they've already been on hold for a while yes in alignment with what uh superintendent Haley just said um May I make a motion to uh table this until we get to the board bylaws discussion okay can I get a second I'll second that all right so we have a motion to table uh and a second uh any very brief discussion I I don't see where you're tabling it too Lord by loss so 10.3.1 11.34.3.1 I missed the whole pager look at that all right 11.3.1 thank you okay I'm not fighting it but that's my fault thank you okay all those in favor signify Brian racing hands thank you okay only okay oh you're not voting yet oh okay okay thank you for one all right so student reports you've been so patient well first of all thank you to little Chico Creek for being here and for your patience and you are seeing government in action so I'd like to invite principal Kristen schalk to the podium to uh tell us what we're going to hear thank you and good evening I'm here to tell you quite briefly about a battle of his ex which is an acronym for balance auditory Vision exercises and these exercises use sandbags and racquetballs and they increase in difficulty they help students who struggle with visual tracking Focus memory auditory skills impulsivity balance anxiety and emotional regulation Bell of his exercises can be done individually with Partners or in a group they Foster cooperation peer teaching and Leadership skills their purposeful rhythmical and repetitive repetitive movements enhance learning and regulate the brain so that it's ready and able to learn and over the summer little Chico Creek staff had a two-day 17-hour professional development Series where we had intensive training in Bella vizx exercises anticipating our students coming back with some amount some degree of Trauma from the past few years so with me I have brought four of our students and I would like them to come up and introduce themselves and then they will demonstrate quite briefly for you [Applause] I'm Cruz banegas My Name is Izzy Cartwright my name is Madison Boyd my name is Carter Boyd foreign any questions you uh do realize you're gonna dog drive my dogs crazy with the ball bounce you know that right how long wait a minute how long did you guys do it I mean you know practice a little bit every day five minutes ten what 10 minutes 10 5 10 15 minutes cool what do you how do you notice it makes you feel over because like it keeps my mind off a lot of stuff A Little Closer it made me feel calmer I've been watching can you share um has it helped your academics at all there was somebody in the audience were you at wanting to ask a question we don't I think it would be an interesting addition to the process the the tenants that followed that was the auditory piece and the Rhythm and so really when they when they're not nervous they can do their rebounds and it's all in sync and so that Rhythm keeps them going and it keeps them focused um I'm not sure what the edition of Music would do they haven't tried that yet it didn't come up in our training but we can also do it like in syncs and like it has a rhythm to it yeah okay thank you so much hey thank you guys thank you for staying with us and sharing and I may go try that I'm sorry that our Rhythm was a little bit off so that you guys were late I didn't know we were gonna do that but so I'm going to move right on into the superintendent's report and this is the time when we like to honor some staff that are doing some exemplary work out at our school so at this point I would like to invite Emily Mullins to come to the podium Emily is our principal at Hooker Oak Elementary School [Applause] good evening thank you well I'm delighted to be here tonight I have two staff members with me that I would like to recognize with the superintendent's award and I'm going to start with the classified so it is with great pleasure that I present the classified superintendent's award to Jess smiley [Applause] Jess was hard as our health assistant at Hooker Oak School in February 2020.
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moreover mrs love has confirmed that the incorporation of any new policies takes time and beginning in january and what may go well into the summer there will be an ongoing process of meetings committee and committees of faculty focusing not only on pd but also all the other curriculums like social studies math ela and science des has partnered with 100 of the other sending districts to impact digest and create a similar approach to the curriculum related specifically policy 2.22 and this includes their administration supervisors and faculty alike a fair portion of the curriculum as related to policy 242 is being addressed by the high school levels nine to 12 grades spotlighting our continuing partnership with descending districts and the numbers as standard operating procedures and as molds parents will be notified of any sensitive related subject sensitive subject materials in advance underlying the administration's commitment to communication and consistency in working with students in similar sensitive curriculum for example in the past the cap program which has been cooked ongoing for at least 20 years similarly emails and letters are sent home regarding the access of certain folks within our library which contains certain sensitive subjects the administration and faculty are keen to the understanding of age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate teaching because of this and combined with the high degree of professionalism and quality of the brielle elementary school faculty as a whole a fair level of trust should be afforded to them by the school community as a community as a committee we discuss portions of the policies that may be construed by parents as sensitive there are about 12 lessons as they relate to pe and health and parents will be made aware of them in advance per chance of family belief would necessitate any individual student being removed from any individual lesson overall the administration and faculty knows that the school community is supportive of the work they do this support allows them the right environment and the tools to do their jobs to the high standards we expect including and addressing policy like 242.
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is there a second second okay any further discussion all right we'll take a roll call vote ron menino why sarah best kenny i margaret stancer i and hawley all right um okay next up something a little lighter rental of school space and so for this one there was um a memo that mike had put together that was on board docs um if folks want to pull that up um all right and mike do you want to just tee this up oh there it is um yep um i don't know why it's coming out funny tonight but it is um so the short story is that last year we did quite well uh it was the only game in town in terms of gym space that was rentable in our area um and you know thanks to generosity of town because technically the money goes to the town we were able to build our coffers with about fourteen thousand dollars this year the ventilation challenges in some of the amherst elementary schools have been resolved so there are less seekers there may not be many or any um but given that we are up to full staffing with our custodial folks uh you know i did talk to our facilities team and uh even if we get some income some income is better than no income uh it was also really a benefit to the pelham community i can't tell you how many students whether it's basketball or soccer pelham students were overrepresented in the participants as compared to when things are done in amherst i think people love being in their school if you remember a year ago we weren't the kids weren't in the school at all and uh being able to dribble a ball or kick a ball or whatever it was was really beneficial so we wanted to make the pricing competitive so that more folks would be apt to do it um the time that works with the after school program being done but before the night custodian leaves would be from five to seven p.m and so we feel like if we offer a competitive price at that time perhaps that will encourage or engender uh either soccer or basketball programs or even small group basketball and we got some interest from someone who does like small group training for basketball um but you know to me it's how do we get some income and use the space effectively after school hours uh without incurring additional costs so um you know really what this would mean is since we're not paying overtime for custodian we take out the administrative cost that goes to administrate not directly to administrators but to the administrative uh funding of it and since it's not overtime we don't have to pay that so it's a very competitive rate below what the amherst elementary school gyms would charge and hopefully that drums up business so uh entrepreneurship is not a course i've ever taken so i'm not very good at this but last year we were really effective and 14 000 a lot we're not going to we're not going to bring in that much but if we bring in a couple thousand in pelham a couple thousand goes a long way uh and so um because this is an adjustment in uh what we typically charge and it's kind of a very defined time period only five to seven uh i may want to make sure i brought it to the school committee for your consideration and potential vote okay thank you questions for mike sorry mike would you um stop sharing thank you questions or comments on jim rental ron two questions one are there any leftover germs from people using the gym and affecting the the regular running of the skull so uh the gym's air exchange rate uh without the two purifiers in there is over four air changes an hour so that means every 15 minutes every single piece of air recycles through the system with the two purifiers it's over six so that means every 10 minutes it's recycling air and so relative to germs you know contact you know surface contact is not as much of a risk for covet as was originally believed you may have remembered emergency room doctor with a ponytail in michigan then how to wash your groceries that had like you know 100 million views last year that has not proven to be in terms of covid uh the concerns that have been most prevalent you know to your point it is through air um it's a very well ventilated space and you know what we're finding is um it comes from close contact so you know who is in the room 10 minutes before has not seen not appeared to be a transmission risk second question this is somewhat facetious but could i rent the room for two hours and just sit there alone to feel a part of the school again uh you'd need insurance so i think no um you know i uh i think in the memo it lists that all other aspects of the rental process including require insurance legal protections for the district town would remain enforced you shut down that idea uh if you do have some uh insurance on that then that's something that you could do we actually in a serious note ron we did talk about opening it up beyond there but we didn't want to any potential even slight risk for liability felt like it was not worth it i i believe i mean just i believe the health precautions that the pelham school are engaging in are laudable and should be further enforced yeah and it's more just the financial limitations of letting allowing renters who don't have insurance and then someone trips over something and then it opens up liability for pelham not the person who rented it i do have an umbrella policy on my homeowners service does that count you can maybe check in with your legal counsel um so can i maybe i'm misremembering i i don't recall voting on renting it out last time around did we vote on it when it was rented out last year we discussed it and we use the same uh i don't know if it was a vote but it was we discussed using the same rental fees as the amherst pelham regional school district and the american public schools so we sort of recreated that um but pelham doesn't have an existing it pelham hasn't rented out space before so we sort of just mimic that and this is just an adjustment to the the fee rate but not an adjustment to the expectations or application that would need to come right okay yeah i mean maybe i'm just being really nitpicky just i guess to me it seems like something we wouldn't need to vote on i mean i'm glad we're knowing about it i'm fully supportive i'm fine it just seems like something we'd be like that seems like a district thing that you guys can take care of is that do you feel better if we vote on it dr slaughter would feel better if you voted on it well i will do it for doctor is there a motion i'm gonna make this motion for dr slaughter i move to approve the rental of the pelham school gym on weekdays during the hours of five o'clock p.m to seven o'clock p.m at a rate of 35 dollars per hour is there a second second any further discussion okay we'll do a roll call vote run sarah bess kenny i margaret stance or i and hal eye all right well thank you i mean it's great it's just extra right anything we get is a bonus so um okay next up is an update on the principal search timeline and process there we go um so uh yeah so um two things that i'd like to share about this one is that we're actually along with uh your colleagues in amherst and pelham um we've decided we being uh district administrative staff have decided to do a study of the challenges of being a principal in one of these three districts we've seen a fair amount of transiency across the districts for many many years it's my 21st year in the district it doesn't feel like transiency is any different than it was 21 years ago it's a lot uh nationally the trends are that there's more transiency in that role fewer people going into the role of principal and um so the way we did it is we interviewed excuse me we hired someone named rick rogers who's our principal long time principal retired he does a lot of principal coaching and he was recommended to me by my professional organization um and he interviewed i believe he ended up with 14 leaders some of those folks are current principals in our district some of those folks are principals who left one of our districts and then at the very very end he interviewed during cunningham and myself so he slated to create a report for a potential joint meeting or we'll figure out the way we want to do it he's going to present his findings sometime next month and both about why people stay what people really like about working here and also some of the challenges that come from being a school leader in amherst i've done it it's it's it's not an easy place to be a leader it's not an easy place to be it's not easy to be a leader anywhere these days uh given cobit and some other challenges but we do have some unique aspects to our three districts so we're hoping that that study yields results that we can use to aid us in our future searches by both by understanding uh who's been successful at staying here and enjoying the job uh what attributes that those members have as well as how we can support future principles moving forward so the first part of the principle search is i think that's going to be a critical linchpin for all of us to be able to us being collective like the larger community including staff and and families caregivers to be able to understand a little bit more about the role of principal and um so we expect that report to be out sometime next month on the part of timeline what we're finding is that is we'd like to start the search probably in early march a little later than we typically have started it and what i'm finding from talking to neighboring districts is everyone's starting a little bit later because of the uncertainty of the situation we'd love to do a search where people actually come to the school have in-person interviews meet kids uh meet the staff and you know we're not sure that january or february are going to be the ideal months for that with what we're seeing we don't know if march will be but the idea is to have a position posted in march process play out through march and april and have an appointment in the month of may i want to be clear that none of that precludes principal darling from applying for the permanent job that's um she's done a really nice job i know people when i was at pelham today came up to me saying oh can she can she apply absolutely when we hired an interim we don't preclude them from applying for a permanent job if they so choose so that's a general timeline we're thinking about one of the things that things continue to change i was on a conference call with the department today about kind of folks in emergency licenses who have temporary licenses and there may be some changes afoot coming from that that may we may want to come back to this topic in january so that's literally like two hours ago i got information that i'm not at liberty to share but might have bearing on this situation about how folks get licensed to be a principal in the commonwealth of massachusetts i talked to mickey like five minutes before the meeting started saying hey mickey this is what i've heard you know and um and so i think what i'd like to do is come back to this topic in january along with mr rogers report uh and then have an open conversation with you all about um you know what the path we'd like to take i'd like to make a proposal to you all but at this point we're still accumulating information both about kind of the larger picture of the role of principle in our districts as well as some perhaps evolving rules that deci may have around principal candidates so i i'm sorry i can't be more explicit but i don't you know get myself in trouble um i know there's looks like there's one person watching this uh beyond us right now and that one person may be uh you know contacting desi as we speak so i want to be cautious about sharing things in public that have not been shared by the people making the decision all right thank you questions for mike okay all right well so we more on this um next month then um capital planning usually this time of year is that usually where we have like there's the draft of the request we don't have that yet is that right that's correct this may be another one perhaps to come back to in the month of uh january i apologize that we're not quite there on our capital planning um we don't foresee huge needs we want to keep on working on accessibility and some of those other parts uh you know the big capital request that that we've talked about in the past is uh cooling of the two rooms that often get quite warm you know we do have a cost on that i'm not sure it's a cost that the town has capacity to bear um but that's the other sort of capital item that is sizeable and so what we can do is come back next month and be more clear about the capital requests but we're we're just a little behind on on uh on the capital front this year my apologies for that okay no all right that's okay um in terms of i guess so there is a capital planning committee which i am on because of my role on this committee um and so i will just provide that update at that time right and then we can follow up with john tricky and others as we need to yeah i think technology wise because of last year we got chromebooks so we're you know we're we're in pretty good shape you know because that was always should it be capital should it not be capital if you remember that whole uh discussion um so you know the capital needs you know primarily um are focused on um if we want to cool the those spaces in a way that doesn't reduce ventilation which is always the challenge um and uh you know that's going to be the big ticket item you know we had a couple years ago we had that costed out so we know what that cost is it's a really high cost relative to pelham and yet i don't know how long we want to have classrooms that get really hot in the early and latter parts of the season because they do get i mean i've been in the rooms when it's hot it's very very hot yeah yes true rob go ahead i'd like to remind you about four years ago or something like that during september it was 95 degrees in the shade i think it's a necessary expenditure okay anything else on capitol planning nope okay um warrant report i have a couple extras um because i wasn't here last month so i authorized by my signature um to payables and the amount of 35 892.13 for the warrant dated october 27 2021 and that included general fund expenses of 33 983 and 26 cents and grant fund expenses of 1 908.87 and i signed that on october 31st 2021 i authorized payroll in the amount of 62 907.45 and that was a warrant dated um november 3rd 2021 and i signed it on november 4th i authorized payables on the amount of 35 048.84 for a warrant dated november 17 2021 that included general fund expenses of thousand four hundred fifty two dollars ninety eight cents grant fund expenses of four thousand three hundred ninety dollars and ninety seven cents and other funds of 204.89 i signed that on november 19th i authorized payroll in the amount of sixty two thousand eight hundred twenty seven dollars and forty seven cents um for a warrant dated november 17 2021 and i signed that on december 2nd 2021 and lastly i authorized payroll in the amount of 63 812 dollars and 58 cents that was for a warrant dated december 15 2021 and i signed that on december 13 2021.
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before we begin the program please note the following fire safety instructions in accordance with state of connecticut general statutes this building is equipped with a functioning fire alarm system as well as a fire sprinkler system there are six separate exits from this auditorium the first exits are to the rear of the room through either of the two doors located on each side of the control booth there are two exit doors to the middle of the room on each side and there is an exit on each side of the stage please take a moment to identify the emergency exit closest to you out of safety concerns for our performers and out of respect to other audience members please refrain from taking flash photography during performance in addition please turn off all electronic devices such as cell phones and pagers at this time also if you need to exit the auditorium please do so between musical selections during the applause for those of you with small children please be seated in your exit door in case you need to make a quick departure into the lobby in order to take care of a crime child and out of consideration to all of the student performers who have worked hard preparing for this performance we ask that you stay for the entire concert thank you and enjoy the program [Applause] [Music] three [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] good evening and welcome everyone thank you so much for joining us this evening we would normally have all of our groups performing we decided to split it so we could have a little more space but we're really pleased to be back performing with all of our members again and with all of you here uh joining us to celebrate uh all of their achievements this stream orchestra so we're so happy to be back and playing um and that was hungary dance hope you enjoyed our opener the next piece rosa madre was composed based on three preludes on a welch hymn for organ originally bottom lanes and this is a string orchestration of it foster an english composer who is a student of bond williams orchestrated this piece and it really follows exactly very challenging beautiful inner voices presented by our viola section and then later by the first violence uh just a magnificently written beautiful um variation on this beautiful welsh tent a tune of resonance [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] we have some students actually quite a few students participate in the cmea southern region auditions as well as the new england music festival solo and adjudication festival this fall which is a big project for students to learn an additional piece of music a solo for reaching their scales and then the next step on that will be also if they make it in the region build lines the allstate audition and then we have also some excerpts included in that as well we actually were fortunate to have 30 students accepted from treasurer high school into the southern region so it's a great big number and quite a few of these students participated i want to take some time to have you recognize them and celebrate that accomplishment let's have everyone stand to audition for and participate in the solo ensemble audition process [Music] and we'll have those remain standing who are accepted into the southern region congratulations we don't know about the new england results i know elena took a seat but she did participate in new england vegetables so we're still waiting on those results um but all of you can be seated so i just want to take that moment to do a plug for our festivals um it's really an important process for our students musical growth to be able to participate in these festivals and uh if a student didn't do it this year uh they should maybe consider it next year and we certainly can provide them some support um getting them prepared um so that in fact all those lists are published are announced that solo up now and start practicing and be ready for next call if they'd like to be a part of that process uh we're just going to take a moment and take a little breather and we'll get set up for our next piece um just give us about a minute [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so our next piece is orchestra and it captures a lot of the peace and we know that we'll enjoy that so when the risky quarterback listens to all of the spanish book songs and other pieces that he used to compile this um he uh put in a lot of other effects for percussion and wins that we're not going to hear with this but the strings you'll get a good picture of the piece and maybe you'll enjoy that piece some other time in its entirety i know our students have enjoyed listening to parts of it today we do have two soloists and we do have two co-concert masters and two solos will be played by ella cregar and veronica rubinski our two principal labralists hope you enjoyed appreciate [Music] me [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] foreign [Music] here [Music] [Applause] [Music] um [Music] okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] soon [Music] [Applause] this next piece needs some introduction maybe a little background information slay ride was written in july during heat wave anderson was a resident woodbury was for many years he was ready for the boston pops at his prime this is one of those pieces that he was inspired by that he played and penned it in one day one weekend and become a classic for this time of year so we hope you enjoy our last piece this evening before i before we get to that i want to thank some very important people that um helped us put this all together and provided us with so much support and guidance along the way and i'm going to grab my notes just to make sure i don't forget anyway first uh in the back uh we have mr salamini who's taking care of our live stream and some video and also mister tusillo our assistant director so thank you very much for being here and being in the back providing a support and also louis valente who's one of our subs i shouldn't call this up because he's really like an assistant has done really incredible things with our students and we appreciate him being with us on stage today as well also to our administration dr gav mr peltz this is dr reed and mr tararelli of course to mrs sandy lakes our department secretary who put this program together as many as well as many other things to all of our music department faculty k-12 um this would not all be possible without a good foundation for our students and seeing them all the way through to the high school years to our faculty and staff and maintenance personnel to our central office administration dr stollen and mrs alana and mr maskiana and also to our board of education for their continued support uh as you may know we received um some large grant funding for the music department this past year and uh many of it was allocated much of it was allocated for new instruments uh district-wide so we're very appreciative of that support so we continue to have opportunities for our students and i think we'll be well on our way to recovering from covet hopefully soon musically and in every other way we're so glad that you're here today to celebrate with us and we hope that you all have a wonderful holiday with your families and that's this will be a fond memory for you and a starting point a launching point for us to come back and come back strong and have a great spring semester putting together another terrific program so thank you for joining us we hope you enjoy sleigh ride so [Music] so [Music] oh [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you
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as you can imagine she had little time to learn the ropes of her new position and a new school before the world came to a screeching halt for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year while the students were doing distance learning just came into the office a few days a week it was during that time that I really got to know her and experience her witty sense of humor and her positive attitude when 2020 2021 began and we were all back to work full time Jess amazed me with her work ethic and her ability to learn under pressure as well as to adapt to the constantly changing landscape of covet 19.
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the committee continued to discuss diversity equity and inclusion it asked the administration and challenged them in the areas of professional development consistent and continued use of the resources provided by this love in the administration and the review of lesson plans to ensure each eye is abundant and infused into all curriculum mrs jones added to the conversation that the importance of sensitivity training and any extra training or tv that can be provided would be welcome mrs love reinferred to pursue [Music] including things like breaking bias and lessons from homicide emails pushing out our resources to the faculty to create an access for lessons was also confirmed by islam she has standards she is looking for with regard to ddi to ensure resources are being utilized and infused like all curriculum this is an ongoing process that we are committed to and mrs love is on it the exposure to multicultural lessons and adapting dei into subjects like social studies or literacy is happening i noted separately because aaron brought it up earlier it is the huge importance of trust trust in the administration trust in the faculty is huge and should not be wavering at this time on any subject but of course at any time if any parent or community had any question regarding the curriculum they're welcome to discuss it with their teacher or the administration or if need be board members for proper response but trust is what goes to purpose there were no additional items from anybody at the meeting [Music] that was my request thank you mr bester does any board members have any questions i just have a comment that thank you for the report um that i was looking at the pt that we're being asked to approve tonight on tonight's agenda and i saw that um we have three um staff members three teachers that will be attending the new jersey state bar association breaking bias lessons from ronnie scott and um you know i just want to say you know this is an example of um a couple of months ago i expressed a need on for us to be more inclusive with african-american mandated studies um administration heard and um they listen and they take action so thank you to the administration um uh for being uh just taking action and um and seeing the importance of our teachers being trained on all right thank you kurt again for such a thorough report appreciate it um cool things do you think i would just like to reference one on the agenda the specifics uh and the enhancements that uh terry provided us uh for the weekend regarding that uh i like attacking charities charleston for their work to get this project to where it's at currently it's scheduled for summer of 2022.
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gifts no gifts this month i will take oh yes margaret go ahead i should probably have done this during the committee announcements but i just wanted to say for anyone this is not helen business but if you're a pelham person who's interested in the regional budget information about the regional budget and how it's created there's a public forum tomorrow night from seven to eight o'clock and i believe that it's posted on the on this website the school committee website i think for anyone who's interested okay i'm gonna count that as a gift a regional budget forum that is it thank you no thank you for that margaret okay i will take a motion to adjourn i move to adjourn my second no further discussion okay roll call run menino i sarah best kenny margaret dancer i and hall i we are adjourned thank you so much everyone good night
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during our many shifts and pivots last school year she was instrumental in communicating with families and supporting our office staff with whatever it was that needed to be done this current school year Jess has not only been able to keep up with the demands of her position now that all of our students are back full-time but she has also taken on a growing number of responsibilities as our coveted site lead as things constantly change and evolve Jess stays up to date and she maintains a positive attitude it is such a blessing to have someone of her caliber in such an important position I obviously think Jess is amazing but I went ahead and reached out to some of our staff to see what they think here are some of their responses Jess is patient and she has the best sense of humor Beth geise I've had the pleasure of seeing Jess in action on multiple occasions she makes anyone who enters her office feels special she cares for our students like they're her own children and she has even taken care of some staff members we are so grateful for Jess she is such a valuable member of our school family Melinda Hildebrandt Jess is so positive and awesome she shows up for the students and her colleagues in a real way she can handle any challenge thrown her way we are so lucky to have her at Hooker Oak School Megan grudy this is just a small sample of some of the many reasons why Jess is so deserving of this award it is an honor to work with you every day at Hooker Oak thank you for all you do congratulations [Applause] you got competing camera angles here alrighty so next we have our certificated staff and I'd like to invite Carrie Jamison [Applause] so I have worked with many speech therapists during my years in education and few have been as outstanding as Carrie Jameson it is for this reason that I would like to recognize her as the recipient of our certificate in superintendent's award Carrie began working at Oak Grove School at the start of the 2019 school year I was immediately impressed by her friendly demeanor her positive interactions with staff and students and her ability to manage a large caseload of both IEP and school-based speech students the first time I attended one of her IEPs I was impressed by her ability to explain speech assessment and share goals with families in a way that made them not only feel included in the IEP process but really help them to understand any of you who've been through an IEP can know that there's a lot of jargon and a lot of complications and she has a really uncanny way of making parents really understand what we're talking about she has a way of making everyone feel valued and feel that their opinion matters she never makes decisions without seeking the input of all stakeholders and carefully weighing all of the pros and the cons when most people think of a speech therapist they think of someone who's working with students on pronunciation of speech zones Carrie's work with students goes far beyond the basics of speech zones she uses social stories to help students use language to advocate for themselves to make friends and to solve conflicts she is a master at creating visuals that support students in their Social Development she is often sought out as a resource to port to support students and she gladly does regardless of whether or not they are on her caseload or not I often see students skipping down the hallway with a smile on their face saying I have speech today with Miss Carey as a principal that fills my heart with joy students don't see their speech sessions as something they have to do but it's something that they get to do I'm incredibly incredibly grateful to have Carrie Jamison on our hook rope team she truly makes our school a better place thank you Carrie and congratulations on this well-deserved award [Applause] thank you Dr Kaiser and that concludes my report I'm sorry uh all right so I really appreciate the recognition and the activities that are helping students and families so much in both cases so now we're open to announcement does anybody have an announcement all right uh so we moved to items from the floor so items from the floor are things that are not on the published agenda each speaker is limited to three minutes is there anyone that would like to speak or an item from the floor so I do have four individuals who have signed up using the speaker card process which they'll be given priority the first is Gina backs okay good evening my name is Gina box and I have five kids I thank you for the opportunity been here um I would like to take this opportunity to request the use of metrics to end masks at chica schools as of today and according to the Butte County dashboard 54.49 percentage of the population has received one or more doses so why are we enforcing masks according to Dr prasa an associate professor for the University of San Francisco open quote the educational costs of facing covering is far better established than the benefit of the masks an article reading by Zach Schultz a senior political reporter from PBS Wisconsins note that wearing masks as a requirement for in-person learning have been particularly challenging for students with special needs as an immigrant I know that much of language learning and comprehension is based on visual perception of facial body language the use of a mask delays comprehension and results in mispronunciation many people with ASD are highly sensitive to touch especially in the face wearing a mask involves many unpleasant Sensations for them I have an IEP kid who struggles with masks and as our past speaker says visuals supports learning since I've been involved with the boards and the meetings um I have found very interesting that all the boards and all the person the people representing other community always pay too much attention to communities of Interest immigrants and special kids but then your decisions are affecting us negatively so I find that very interesting the same kids who we are supposed to protect and defend are the ones losing big time it is going to take years for these kids to be at the expected level of Education within our failed public school system since April 2020 we have learned young kids are not the primary divers of covet transmission and schools are not the center of a spread as I was dropping my kids at school they told me they forgot their masks and I told them that it was okay they say it was not okay and they were scared to get in trouble seriously a friend of mine who is Hispanic and she is Latina stop sending her little girl to school because her glasses would get foggy and she got frustrated and didn't want to go to school anymore the American education system has turned into a system of restrictions in mandates parents should have the right to decide what is better best for our kids and citizens have the right to invalidate any laws deemed unconstitutional thank you thank you I forgot to announce so for our next speaker you have three minutes but that when you have 30 seconds left there'll be a yellow sign and then at the end of that time a red card you were fine I mean you were right on it our next speaker is Robert Keane good evening everybody my name is Robert Keane I've been working with the Chico Unified School District for the last five years my main job is a school bus driver and that's the subject that I'd like to discuss today we have a new bus bus 57 just came out of the garage after it got delivered to our bus yard on Friday brand new bus looks really nice but I'd like to talk about the other end of the buses the buses that I want to talk about is for our kids that are the ones that need the most protection that is special needs I drive a type 2 bus this is a bus that is transporting kids that have needs where they are emotional a mental physical and they have needs that are very specific what I've found out of my five years driving is that it seems that there's a difference between the general education kids in their transportation and the special needs we have gotten new buses for the general education buses and what I would like to point out is the special needs buses which one of them I drive are of a different age and different safety um class the bus that I drive was manufactured in May of 1992. it's coming up on 30 years the bus that I drive if you notice a school bus it has certain features that are required one of them that is most prevalent is when you stop at a school bus stop the red lights are flashing a stop sign comes out if you look at my bus it does not have a stop sign that comes out this is a danger meant to the students on the bus and myself the reason why most people when they're driving they see that sign that tells them to stop I had a kid that I picked up this morning on West Sacramento taking him to Chico High I had two high school students in the bus I asked one of them to count the cars while I got the special needs students on the bus he counted seven cars that passed the school bus with the red flashing lights no stop sign it is against law to pass a school bus with lights flashing basically it is the same type of Tiff kit as if you read run a red light now another thing that I would like to point out is that our buses that we have for our special needs are of an older type bus and the newer buses they have what's called death which is diesel emissions fluid what that does is it makes the buses exhaust cleaner Robert I'm sorry yeah your time is up okay um if you want to look there's the date um here's what it says this vehicle conforms to all applicable federal motor vehicles safety standards in effect in August of 1992.
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thank you i'll be yes tonight we're going to keep everybody in our hours [Music] so he did he met on december 8th and um you know at the meeting we had dennis sean mrs carlson we had dawn and also board attorney um sherry adams and so we discussed at length on policy 24-22 um and the concerns um especially with the two two statutes which were of the sexual abuse and assault awareness and prevention education and the other one was corporation of age appropriate instruction relative to consent for physical contact and sexual activity um and with um so of course there were many concerns about that we spoke about it on for a long time and um and we and i'll go into detail about that but we also talked about um uh policy regulation guide 5751 which is sexual harassment of students um unfortunately we did not get to cover all of that so um we are going to i'll schedule another meeting um with board attorney so that we could um be able to discuss this policy and so it's on the agenda for birth reading it's on the agenda for a first reading so i i will ask if we could remove it because it's not prepared on her first reading okay so as far as um 24-22 as you may be aware there is some discussion and commentary regarding the first reading of policy 24-22 this policy reflects legal requirements imposed upon public boards of education in public school districts although the policy was approved for a first reading due to the nature of the concerns raised the committee met with the board attorney to review its rights and obligations in this area with an eye towards clarifying the issue for the board and school community as explained by our attorney the proposed policies are mandated by law members of boards of education take an oath and are required to comply with the laws governing them and the school districts they represent in addition boards of education when audited are reviewed to assure all mandated policies and procedures are in place while there are some issues which are sensitive or upon which members of the border community may have different opinions this does not alleviate the lord's responsibility to follow the law or implement such policies in addition failure to failure to comply with legal requirements puts the district funding in jeopardy and places the districts and members of the board at risk and potential litigation matters if required policies have been voted down with that background we also discussed that the policy in question simply outlines the legal parameters it does not approve or adopt any particular curriculum on these topics the district administration and the board curriculum committee are in the process of reviewing and developing appropriate age and grade level curriculum modifications to address the legal requirements and that curriculum will be reviewed by the board and voted upon before any curricular changes are implemented the community will also have access to that curriculum and may provide public comment on the policy hopefully this clarification will respond to some of the prior concerns raised and provide an explanation of the board's actions in recommending and adopting this policy thank you [Music] as part of our uh your report last week could we clean that up whereas it's items number 11 and 23 specifically state that it's for grades nine to twelve and then number fifteen specifically states headed for public high schools and charter schools i'm not challenging them all out my challenge in the curriculum just it does not work you know pre-k in school okay um you said i'm starting to say which one is so that it accurately depicts the grades that we follow okay so 11 says um in grades 9 through 12.
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we are vast approaching 2022. all right thank you so much I really appreciate you coming I really appreciate your driving too all right uh Julie three is that now it's pronounced okay thank you hello there school board I thought it was actually in our 12th so this is fine a couple things on the communications I was just going to add that the one thing you all do that the other two bodies don't do is you broadcast on YouTube and I really find that I'm very convenient and so to your point about encouraging you know people to come to the meetings I actually watch all of it on YouTube so I appreciate that a lot um I'm here to talk about planning for the vaccine mandate that we know is inevitably coming down the pike I've been following the Sacramento City Unified School District who had kind of gone ahead of Governor nuisance mandate on July 1 and it took them about three months to implement their January 1 February 1 implementation date when everybody over 12 is providing proof of vaccination so to me that kind of means that things are going to start rolling around probably March 1 so one suggestion I had was maybe on your agenda and I know you already talked about the agenda but is to replace that legislative piece with a health mandate or a vaccine policy something like that so parents know that all the time they're going to see that on the agenda and here's something from you all about it but then the last piece is um tomorrow is the Nullification um holiday date and I want to just read really quick about the Nullification holiday tomorrow nullification is a legal theory that a state or person has a right to invalidate any laws denied unconstitutional with respect to the United States or state constitutions mad any that we be vaccinated for a virus that has a collective 99 survival rate with a drug that does not prevent infection or transmission violates the Constitutions of this state and Country we the people are not bound to comply with such laws we are within our human rights to nullify them as did our founding fathers the day America was born at the Boston Tea Party December 16 1773.
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sherry does that matter is it wait is it said 9-12 or not am i policy no it doesn't because we still have students that we send to high schools just representing the board's funds right but it can still say in there and it should say if it's nine to twelve but it would still be part of even though we're at pre-k to eight building and technically our budget is prepaid and twelve so that's right and you and the students don't go to another district who's responsible for your responsibility they just attend school mandated whether it's policies county school or any other schools i'm sorry so if a high school student that we pay their tuition segregation school you know outside you know it's a unique circumstance that we have board members sitting on the county schools well they're all obligated all of the boards are operating with the same laws and policy so any high school that's a public high school that we would send students to would have to say our curriculum that we're going to write and approve will only be updated but our policy still has to cover tell me if i'm wrong cover up to grade 12 because that's what our budget does and what our students are responsible for but the curriculum that we write obviously when we've written up to grade 8 because that's what building what we educate in this building [Laughter] responsible for those children so but the correctness of the policy the umbrella policy will cover that but the curriculum that we write will only go up to grade 8 because that's that's who we're educating but we're still responsible for the children up to grade 12.
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we have tried to reason with our government to no avail when reason fails nullification will prevail in preserving our freedom just as our forefathers said no taxation without representation we say no vaccination without justification thank you okay Catherine Posey and that's our last speaker that signed up okay gotcha good evening everyone I have my timer up here to make sure I stay within my three minutes um so this evening I invite you to consider ways you might respond to the frustration of many families and students over the continued Universal masking in our Chico schools and the fact that as Gina mentioned previously there are no metrics in place for California schools to end masking I recognize that you think you can't go against sustain their policies and this isn't a complaint at all Blitz just brainstorm together so today marks day 636 of the coven pandemic if we're counting but here in Butte County actually this is a great thing we're looking at a downtrend in coveted cases and hospitalizations um so I'm going to have to skip some of that you can find it on the kova dashboard though but on October 24th there were 63 cases of covid-19 and ages 0 to 17.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
yes that school would also have the same policy if you as a sending district had a concern about whether they were properly implementing it you would raise it with them but it doesn't change the legal mandates i thought i think we clarified two straw sesame said you can remove whatever you want but it doesn't make it right and we've done that before especially on policies that are not mandated policy right where there's just revisions what we'll do is we'll modify them so that it applies to our district so i asked strauss estimated um just like sheriff said on and i'll quote this is what he sent me he said should a board not adopt this policy or remove certain provisions required by law the school district is still required to comply with the requirements so even if we remove the um you know the 9 to 12 or whatever grace don't apply to us we still have to comply with the law another thing too that i was reading about was that so on some of these um statutes it will say grades uh it may say grade five to seven right or it may say you know okay let's say um fifth grade to twelfth okay let's see just giving an example we may decide here the curriculum team may decide you know this this topic right here it may be better taught at an older age so we're all working together the curriculum team is now going to be working with others you know with the districts and so on and so they may say they may say you know we don't want the fifth graders to be taught back here it would be better taught at the high school than they're in my degree so right there we're complying you know with um the uh with the law if that makes sense yeah yeah let's just try to clean something up that doesn't particularly yeah right but it does yeah thank you any other questions from madonna thank you um mr wrecker community thanks again erin the community relations committee did meet on the 14th uh we met for about 45 minutes it was attended by ms carlson dr dean perezio mr walton uh i did not type up a formal report uh but i do have my notes uh i will type up and submit a formal report within the week the notes focused on three basic things uh one of the three was the ability for parents if so concerned or their beliefs led them into this in the direction but you can opt out of a curriculum or a physical health if you so desire it's a very easy process and it begins with the teachers and the administration so if by any means i don't believe the school board recommends anybody opting out of your curriculum because we have a great breakdown here but it is possible the other point we focused on was that ms carlson has implemented what's called rubicon atlas where all the curriculum will be ultimately placed on our website and available for review it's a process that will take time it's something that was on our wish list for many years and we're there now we're happy to have it and the the training of the teachers for rubicon including possible website upgrades to our own site are forthcoming uh it'll get it all out there and uh you know i hope the word transparent to that because it's something that we've always been but now it just adds to it uh and then finally we discussed the uh fact that miss shaw cheryl one of our own a faculty member is uh the uh kind of real this year something that we're so proud of because uh again it underlines and it speaks directly towards the uh the professionalism the high degree of of uh nature of our teachers not only within this school but outside in our community so it's something that we felt should be uh mentioned we're proud of and we're happy that she got the private realm uh again i will submit a formal report in more detail and if you do have any questions or dr dan brozier would like to add anything please feel free i would just comment um we had a really good discussion i think from i think a lot of the stuff from the last meeting which seems we're kind of dancing around these these seem to be trigger words of trust and transparency these nefarious things which i can only speak from my own point of view but i i that this whole the whole issue that came up last month when we voted on 24-22 from my point of view was not about anyone here in particular trying to sneak something by the goalie what i what i wanted my objection last month and the discussion yesterday was that i just want to make sure that parents know what's what's going into the curriculum where normally it might be something they wouldn't even look at and i think these this new program that mrs carlson was talking about where parents can look at it online i think would be helpful um to this whole concept of approving policies as a board that even if we don't approve them we are still obligated by law to follow it to be honest with you i don't really understand the purpose of approving a policy if our objections have no bearing right uh having said that if that is indeed the truth which i trust that it is based on what you said i don't see any other way that we can notate our our objection to a policy that we don't agree with other than than voting against it even if we're all of you to follow it so that that's at least documented in a public forum um but my concerns were all addressed and i think i'm happy with what we talked about and i i think i don't i no longer object based on this thank you dave thank you thanks for the conversation is obligated to comply with the law and and the board asks your policies and the purpose of the policies is in one sense to notify the members of your school community of what the requirements are relative to education just like you have your anti-bullying policy you have all these policies that set forth what the legal requirements are board members are taking a host to support the legal requirements and that's why they've got the policies as well as to provide that information out to the community say you had a policy just for by example you have your policy on anti-bullying and you disagree with it but it was required by law if you vote no to it and it is voted down or doesn't go into your policy manual and then someone something happens to a student and they sue the school district one of the first things that would happen is they would say you don't even have a policy that's made known to your public that supports the legal requirements that's what i'm talking about so you're not going to be excused from the legal requirements and the purpose of having a policy to set them forth is to show that the board is complying with these rules even if some people disagree with it that's really a legislative type of argument for us to address but from my standpoint as a board attorney my recommendation for minimizing legal risk to the school district is that mandated policies being done and if you disagree with the content that would maybe make a statement but i don't even think voting now is it's something that it could undermine in certain circumstances like the one i just gave this example so let's so let me give you an observative example let's say that they decide to pass a law saying that no one's allowed to be candid right i mean so because that's law we should just say yes to it nine zero it doesn't say you agree or disagree with it it just says this is what the law says who knows what the purpose of that that's exactly what i'm talking about is that the first thing hey look in an employment case say for example the first thing if somebody suits you for discrimination does the lawyer have the policies that prohibit discrimination because if they don't you're already behind them thank you sherry okay um moving on administration report chris has stuck for us this evening um i'd like to begin i'll just follow up with uh kurt's you know cheryl shaw being our pride of brielle is just a wonderful thing his first time a teacher has ever been selected for that so i will be inviting her to our january 26th meeting so that the board could recognize her uh then the dinner for her is uh january 19th of the wednesday before she totally deserves it often she comes to work and says i got home from a call last night at 4 30.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
on November 21st there were 12. um so skipping ahead many states as you may or may not know have ended their school masking mandates some of them were giving dates in October November or December for their expiration some in January or February 2022 one example to point out the Michigan State Board of Education voted to allow individual school districts to respond to the pandemic as they deem necessary which includes the authority to mandate masks or not I wanted to draw attention to a Washington Post article the risk you've probably heard this before that children is too low to justify the remaining restrictions they face somewhere between 0.1 and 1.9 percent of covid-19 infections in children result in hospitalizations and but recent studies suggest approximately 40 percent of those admissions were misclassified so jumping ahead um this is an interesting quote I wanted to read our kids May sometimes wonder how it is that they can Master entirely new fields of math in a single school year but the adults who run the entire world can't figure out that a .0007 percent risk is not worth worrying about okay so I share this information to connect with the frustration of many families actually all over the state in relation to the their children wearing masks they're not agreeing that the masks are harmless in the fact that they see no end in sight I'd like to see Public Schools succeed here in Chico and I'd like to see students receiving the full benefit of in-person Education connecting in positive ways with their classmates teachers Administration and staff however that may not happen if you have a significant portion of your school families who decide to take their children out of the system because there's no end in sight to the masking so in light of that here's what I'm concluding with I would encourage you to intentionally clearly and wisely ask the state to develop the metrics to make masking optional in our schools our County should have local control I know that that's not the way it is right now but at the moment Mark galey is simply saying mass will continue into 2022 he's provided no off-ramp adults have off ramps so I would encourage you in any way if you can do that thanks so much thank you at this time we do have about 10 minutes left in the time period so if there are speakers from the floor we would open it up to anyone from the floor at this point so if there was someone who wanted to speak for three minutes on an item that's not on the agenda that's the question okay I don't see anyone yeah I've seen none thank you oh in the back yeah you've already spoken I would request it was my understanding at one time the board was going to ride with a bus driver at some time I would love to have somebody ride with one of our buses so you can experience what the students and the bus drivers go through I think that's an excellent idea and I'll I'll put that out to the board to see if anybody's interested thank you thank you Robert okay so um we will move ahead [Music] now we have our negotiations update which is still there let's be his last time on the agenda be the last time okay so um real real quickly with UTA we've been talking about a number of issues special education caseloads and class sizes we were talking about the long-term prospects of block schedule at the two high schools and we currently have it in place at Chico high for the short term but we're talking about the possibilities long term and and formulating some parameters around that we're also talking about elementary prep time in order to reduce the immense drain on our sub pool for elementary prep time and and trying to figure out how we can do that best and then we're also talking about additional stipends for CTE which have grown uh considerably since we wrote the contract language many years ago because we have a number of Grants we built buildings with our CT program and our CTE programs which the board has supported over the years has grown considerably with regards to CSEA we continue to talk on Merit system rules and hiring mousse in order to increase pay for some hard to fill positions and then some issues regarding health benefits so continue to have those conversations and we'll be meeting again right after the first of the year when would you like to add anything to that nope all right thank you short and sweet okay all right so we are now moving to the consent calendar does anyone wish to pull an item from the consent calendar all right seeing that one from the board oh okay I'm sorry uh Dr Kaiser it's not that I want yeah I have to pull them in order to comment I do believe um so I'd like to pull the number 10 number 10.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above