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into order welcome everyone thank you for being here tonight and joining us for this meeting if you would i would ask you to stand and let's have a pledge of the please states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice thank you very much item number four is the adoption of tonight's agenda i would appreciate a motion to adopt tonight's agenda okay thank you seconded all in favor [Music] thank you um item number five is our call to the public and we do have two pieces of paper for call of the public any of our other audience that is interested in speaking to the board this evening we do ask that you fill out a request to address the board and they are right out where you signed in for this evening so without seeing anyone jumping up to go get a piece of paper we're gonna move on with these um the first one to address the board this evening is going to be cheryl may you come up here yes yeah well i haven't been in this room since december of 2004 it's lovely decorated it represents the district very well and so the first thing i want to do is say thank you i also appreciate you volunteering for this very important board work been there done that so i know the time and energy commitment that you're making it's fairly important and then um i just have a really kind of easy statement more or less to make um i was at the community mat force meeting last month and i got the pleasure of meeting um china valley resource officer jeff peasy dizzy just trying to remember how he told me he's but anyway um the thing about that was he gave us a report about his interaction with our student body especially this year in comparison to last year just kind of the things that you know he's called in on and the things he does for the students and so i see that he's made it really important have a relationship with them one that's no nonsense but also professional and very approachable that's the feeling i got and um uh what i really want to say is that i thank you and watching what i appreciate and fully approving the support that you're giving him i understand that he knows our principles well and especially our superintendent john schull and that relationship is one that's building a strong foundation for the children as they're moving through the younger grades to high school and um you've taken a strong stand as far as having marijuana on our campuses and i think that's a really good thing so that's the reason for my visit my statement thank you thank you cheryl it's a it's a it's refreshing hearing things like that so thank you well that was what i was feeling i i have you know no no idea can hardly imagine what you've been through the last two years but it hasn't been easy and i and i live in this district and i have since 1984.

um the february 6 numbers come out on thursday i anticipate that to go down when i have the numbers that i'm tracking down to about 250. so it's a very precipitous drop ms the entire state has experienced the same the same numbers when you look at our percent positivity the week of um january 16th was 33 it's down to 26 i think that's going to be in the teens this week which is would be the week of february 6th the numbers come out this week so things are looking positive uh the number of cases in amongst um and i'm tracking that also there were weeks the end of february where we had 31 47 43 school-age children testing positive for covet in the in the county in the 30s and 40s this week we're talking about or this past week 7 6 13 and 16.

is up to an oversight but i expect it to be rectified and i expect a comprehensive list of curriculum for the zen dead class to be made readily available for all parents who wish to review thank you thank you all right thank you paul unfinished business um is erica there yes good evening yes so i'd like to provide an update uh we were at the board meeting on december 14th i want to wish everyone a happy statewide day two months later i want to provide an update we have provided the term sheet out that to more than 40 banks and that was at the end of january um i think we received a few questions from a few of the banks and those responses are all due tomorrow afternoon from a market standpoint interest rates had increased uh in the last 60 days um so in looking at our results um our estimates in december versus now um i i mean i think we're still going to be in the range that we discussed before in the presentation we had used an all in true interest cost so that would be the cost of financing including all the estimated expenses we were using 1.60 um the bids may end up going a little higher just looking at the markets whether you're looking at the u.s treasury market or the municipal market but they both gone up over a half a percent but as i said before uh the banks have their own cost of capital that they're estimating so even if um i estimate in all true interest costs of 1.85 that would be a quarter percent higher um it's going to reduce the savings each year by around nine thousand dollars so um the overall aggregate savings is would still be over a million um like i said before tomorrow afternoon we were going to get all those bids in i don't expect all 30 banks to participate they're all going to look at their portfolios and see if it makes sense a bit but i expect at least three to five if more to set this response some other information i wanted to share the district assessed value so we had estimated an estimated growth doing half of the five-year average so the five-year average is 4.8 percent and looking at the information from the county that was sent out in the last few days the district assessed value for tax purposes has increased over 4.5 so what that will mean is when we are estimating the savings we were estimating three cents a year and so we're still looking right around three cents a year it's just uh like 0.297 or zero point you know three zero one versus it was you know over point zero three rounded uh so it's very similar um but that's great for um for the district and um so i mean that's an update i feel very very positive about where we are um looking at the um the public market there is a lot of volatility so the districts or issuers that are in the market right now are experiencing um some of the investors are sitting on the sideline um so i mean i getting a quote from our desk and running numbers cost to all in cost of capital would be over 2.1 so even if we end up being you know between 1.6 and 1.85 um or maybe you know wherever we end up being um if we're gonna be below um then if we went out to the market and put together an official statement and got a rating so i feel like this private placement is um we're still on track and that's still going to provide the district the lowest cost accountable so i will be sharing those results in a spreadsheet to share with with the district and um and then we'll be looking to lock the rate with one of the banks that um have the best rates and the terms for the district and then we'll look to close that the in early early april and that would be as soon as we can close it to have a current refunding so any questions erica this is steve australia um our current rate is roughly between four and a half and five and a half percent right um the coupon rate yeah for yeah for those for the um for the boss that we're looking to are i mean they've got a um those rates are between 3.15 and a little over you know 5.35 percent so so yeah so um so it ranges um but obviously a lot higher than you know we're gonna be below two so yeah here we go eric is richard when can we lock so so what we'll do is um in the response term sheet that we sent out we ask the banks the soonest they can walk and there's a number of banks that will walk in the road rates 30 to 45 days before the closing so our goal will be to lock it as soon as possible and i also will say if they're you know if there's any fluctuation with the banks we will be i mean if we need to move if a if a bank you know one bank is really close then they can lock the rate and now in the other blank it's you know just a little lower just a little higher but they can't block it um we'll be negotiating that to make sure that that when we know we can lock it in that we're blocking it as soon as we can um for that or april closing so some of that i'm not gonna know until we get those responses but um most of the banks would be 30 to 45 days um so that would be at the latest i think in early march you know two weeks from now ish um but maybe sooner and i really don't i mean we will keep you know like i don't see a bank submitting a bid and knowing if they thought it was going to be drastically different in two weeks and and if it is we'll go to a bank that's more competitive um so but yes i will be we will be negotiating all of that and making sure the district has the lowest um the lowest cost of capital does this require another vote of the board as far as a decision to lock um no so the resolution provides the district administration to move forward um and you know we will will send the information recapping all of those big terms and if there are if there is you know some gray area on that we will bring that to the district's attention um and i mean i can send out a recap to be shared with the board um but um the action took place on december 14th i'm good okay thanks erica of course yes and i look forward to sharing results and um i appreciate everyone's time thank you so much thank you thank you have a good night thank you erica yeah all right take care bye [Music] drum roll please good evening so we'll start with the continental cults and what we've been doing they've been very busy we had our continental spelling bee and we had our champions we had many of our students who participated and um we had our it was lewis harvey from eighth grade and runner of james ricketts so they'll be going to well louis will be going on so we'll keep you posted on on the results and what ends up happening with that our 8th graders are still very passionate and working hard to fundraise for their washington dc trip so they had a mcdonald's fundraiser night it was a very successful night and they worked really hard they made their signs they were they were working inside the mcdonald's outside the mcdonald's they were getting donations at the drive-thru we had many parents families come out to support them and cheer them on so very happy out of them we had our jenny lichtsteiner and her team got together and they put on a boat the cult point 5k little race and it was really fun and it's to raise money for shade structures and i still have a little ways to go but it was a great event to bring the community together and the students and their families and it was a really fun successful event our eighth graders have been preparing for high school they went last week to walden grove they had it kind of set up like centers outside on people's off fields with all the different classes the teachers and students were presenting so they after so many minutes they would just keep rotating but they put on the student council was there and they they answered questions they put on a big assembly outside for them and they got to ask a lot of questions in regards to their classes and then we had saudi the high school come out and meet with the students who are going to be going to saurita high school and they went over electives classes registering and so forth and then we have our fourth and eighth graders participating in n8ep we call it nate testing which is the national assessment of educational progress and it's a way for um this organization government organization to they randomly choose schools each year and we were chosen not just our school but for them to test fourth and eighth grade and those those results helped them with determining data in regards to state testing across our country so they said that they would give us those results it might take months for us to get results and it won't necessarily have students by name but it'll it'll give us information it'd be very interesting to find out since we were one of the schools who were open most of last year five days a week they said it'd be very interesting to see what the results will be for us to look over and and study great news is our girls basketball team the a team which is comprised of mostly our eighth grade girls are undefeated right now so and their families came out last week and we did a little celebration for them one of the parents had posters made for them and we got to recognize and celebrate them with their parents and thank them for all their hard work and efforts state testing dates state testing's just around the corner currently we have a zelda testing going on and azela testing is for english language learners so miss lina zabo is doing that testing right now we have a writing field test that will be taking place monday february 28th and tuesday march 1st our new state test is no longer called azmerit or ezm2 it's called arizona's academic standards assessment so these are tentative testing dates you might you might see the dates change just a little but they for the most part this is how they're going to remain the writing field test is a test that is not going to count towards us but it's for them to decide what kind of changes they need to make and modify for next for next year's state testing then we have arizona science testing that will be taking place with our fifth and eighth graders so monday march 28th our middle school will be testing tuesday march 29th they'll be taking part two and then we have the 31st elementary's fifth grade they'll be taking part 1 a.m and part 2 pm we're not doing that for middle school because of their periods and the changes that they have to do throughout their schedule for the week and then writing state testing writing has to always go first when we give the state test because they give us two week a two week window to get writing completed so we will be doing that tuesday april 5th middle school on thursday april 7th elementary and then on to ela which is english language arts it tests their reading and writing skills so monday april 11th middle school they'll take part one and then third through fifth we'll do part one mid morning tuesday april 12th middle school part two and then mid morning third through fifth wednesday april 13 and thursday april 14th there's an oral reading fluency test that is new this school year for our third graders we will have to take them out in groups of no more than six students and test them on this portion of the test in a separate testing area where they will have headsets and many mites will be asked to answer questions and they'll be testing their oral reading fluency it may also be them reading passages and they'll be testing their fluency and comprehension state testing for math will be april 19 for middle school and as well as fifth grade and then april 21st for middle school in fifth grade and we have to have all of our makeup tests done by april 29th because the window closes at the end of that day so we're working on all of that right now we the month of january well all year we've been talking about data but we really went over our benchmark data from fall to winter so they've been studying global progression from our benchmark testing students standing at proficiently level proficiency levels have been identified so we are clear on the students in each class who are highly proficient proficient partially proficient and mentally proficient data transfer grade level cohorts are being studied and discussed so identified subject area needs can be addressed when we say the cohorts that means our sixth graders we've been going back the past years to see where how they progressed or what the trends are and so on state subject area blueprints for ela and math have been studied and looked over those blueprints tell us exactly what state standards are going to be on our state tests but those blueprints help us to that's our map on how to prepare our spoken sequence calendar for academic standards for math reading writing science social studies but specifically ela and math as they are tested subject areas those blueprints were modified and re-released so we are going over those blueprints and already starting to plan our scope and sequence calendar for next school year and our teachers are also looking at those blueprints right now to assess students where they're at before state testing also starts going back to we teach based on those standards all right questions thank you [Music] members of our board our staff and our community members thank you for being here um lots to report like ms dana said we've been super busy this month so i'd like to just um wish you all a happy valentine's day today first off hope it was a good day um we had a very successful sweetheart gala another huge success thank you to all of our foundation members staff students governing board members and community members for their continued support total raised was 28 000 so we had 19 000 in sponsorships 3 000 was raised on our online auction and 9 000 was raised at the auction at our live event and we have a few items in the community room um here in the conference room that items that were in the auction that nobody bid on so if you'd like to check them out and see if you would like to um purchase them they are there for us so there's a few pictures of mr ferguson are just then i want to say that our kids have been coming for zero hour at seven in the morning to practice jazz band we have um chamber orchestra and also our drama kids have been coming at seven in the morning so we have dedicated students and staff meeting these clubs and choir again we appreciate our continental supporters and there's the three deities that helped with the auction items and getting things out and collecting funds validation of our many community continental supporters it was a very nice evening two years ago when we had it it was very windy we couldn't be outside so it was really nice evening our continental foundation grant support phase three of our outdoor musical playground was made possible by our foundation and mr nathan and mr ferguson worked on the install and mr joe bertram last wednesday so you'll see it there in our playground 20 mini grants have been given to teachers this year and there's just samples of some of the things that teachers have asked for that the foundation has covered and they're still taking applications by the way for mini grants so it doesn't there isn't a deadline just as teachers need it throughout the year our enrollment update you'll see we're down by two students from where we were at the end of year last year um and we are still less 36 students pre-covered here from 1920 but we are doing well we received two new students just this week who are coming from one from honor state i believe and another one from in tucson so they're still enrolling attendance update just wanted to share we are improving as we've been sharing attendance and through coven we knew that we were hit pretty hard after october and the holidays so today we um only had 28 students absent on friday there were 29 and you can see that the quarantine numbers have decreased severity and our mass to stay students are still coming and we decided to start to look at tardies since we've been talking about our tardy issue for a while also and developing a goal to get kids here on time but it's improving so i think everybody's work and our messaging is helping 100 day celebrations so we had a lot of traditional 100 day activities that took place you can see some of our kids they love dressing up like they were like they're 100 years old a lot of math games a lot of building of number sets and concepts counting to 100 so kids really look forward to the 100th day of school read better be better is a program we started this year through it's a partnership with sawarita and a company out of phoenix but the idea is that the middle school students are reading with younger students they all have consent forms we've done an interest inventory where we talk to the kids about how they feel as readers and how they feel about reading we worked with our middle school kids this is the second phase of second graders that we have and we added more middle school students because we only had five last nine weeks and we have 11 now so i'm pretty excited the kids love it they get books at the end of the program and also the middle school kids like i mentioned before we have some true teachers in the making who just get the books and take off reading with kids saturday school and summer schools a little bit of information um i know that at our study session we talked a lot about kids who need interventions and if they're coming and what we're offering so we just decided to show you there in november 13 42 students were referred and 18 attended december 4th 46 students were referred and 15 attended january 29 42 students referred and 13 attended march 2nd 33 students referred and only 13 attended so we do have saturday school coming this saturday we have and then we have two in march and when in april so we had mentioned that our study session about the fact that maybe we need to have a town hall with these parents that were and the students that we are referring and recommending and maybe talk to them as to what what do they need and what do we need to do differently in order to get kids here to close the achievement back summer school we are currently teachers have signed up these are our dates january 6th through january through june sorry june 26th through june 24th 15 days monday through friday from 8 to noon so we really are hoping um we have title funds title 1 title 2 and esser funds for summer school so we are able to invite more teachers and more students to attend but we really have to get them to commit to come a learning walk so we completed three or four learning walks for the year our next learning walk is scheduled for april 26th and we will have two groups from eight to eleven thirty and another from twelve to three our goal is to build consistency in identifying effective instructional practices and building capacity and knowledge amongst all teachers pre-k through eighth grade so you can see here we go in as a large team we observe the classrooms for anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes and we have a walkthrough form where we're looking at classroom structure we're looking at how the lessons being taught what are the students doing what are the standards how is the teacher engaging the students are teachers doing less talking students doing more talking and overall environment so we asses we assess we come out and we uh talk about the feedback we're going to give specifically to the students and to the teacher and we return and give the feedback and and then we go to the next class so we observe three classrooms um in the morning and three in the afternoon and um drew um came in for the morning session with us mr mckibben so thank you for coming and hopefully we can get the other four board members to come and be part of the process of april because even if you can visit one class one process and see it it's it's pretty effective and we're getting good feedback from teachers by the end of the year we will have almost all of our staff have gone through the process of being observed and being on the observing end as well announcements and updates for our ela adoption we are in the process of final cost admissions and entering committee scores for curriculum presentations we'll be meeting with the committee members this week to present the final scores and to discuss the cost for both curriculum we've narrowed it down to two benchmark events and wonders and both are there on the side table committee um after the committee selects the curriculum it'll be on for public display for 60 days february 21st through april 21st we will recommend for governing board approval at the may 14th foreign meeting and just one more thing both of those curriculum have a spanish parallel for our dual language class where the the students will receive the same topic and curriculum but in spanish where now teachers are using different curriculum that doesn't necessarily align with the english content that they are receiving so we're very excited about that annual financial audit preliminary information so based this is based on our 2020-2021 school year conducted by heinfeld meech who are our selected auditors so the state gives the school district 25 000 annually for us to in turn pay our auditors which is required by law so there's 430 questions in the following areas that are listed there account accounting records budgeting cash and revenues expenditures financial reporting procurement student attendance governing board and management procedures so there were approximately 31 findings or questions in which mr schubert and i addressed with the auditors mr osterly was also present for the exit interview the findings that we received were expected however there's one major finding relating to the balancing of cash with the pima county treasurer which um you know we had been discussing and are trying to rectify according to our auditors an audit receiving 25 to 30 findings is a good audit so i know you know we talk about a clean audit and what that entails and that is what the auditor told us but obviously we would like to get to the point where we have less than five audit findings if possible our next steps final audit findings are currently being drafted heinfeld image will attend a special governing board meeting prior to the march governing board meeting in order to review and discuss the findings so we thought we would have a study session to better understand what the findings are and they can go through them and explain the process governing board must publicly accept the audit by we'll call both on or before march 31st um and there's the statute so we did want to have the study session so that we can address this at our launch governing board career fair and vacancies for 2022-23 so mr marianas attended the u of a career fair so this year we have two teachers that are not returning next year one is working on an administrative internship and the other was an after july 1st hire which you know we have the policy that states if teachers are hired after july 1st um they have to reapply a re-interview for their position the following year and this teacher is electing not to interview for the position for next year last year we had seven employees who did not return two retired one left the teaching field one left to people with her baby one moved and two left to go work for another district so just wanted to give a little recap of last year versus this year's vacancies conferences and trainings as we mentioned everybody's been busy um mr malayanis attended the asbo bi-monthly meeting he is on the asphalt board so again the spring conference is april 6th through the 8th in laughlin and as a member of the asphalt board for information technology mr malayanis is the chair for he's the chair for the technology pre-conference and general session so mr mayanis has been out there and really has been doing a good job of leading our technology efforts in our state and so they're replicating a lot of what we're doing here at continental school safety security and trauma summit was attended by mr nathan and mr curtis and they will plan to share specific information at our march board meeting as well as the asba bolts training i attended along with miss lavina and mr osterley and there's some of the topics that we discussed and we we talked about developing board agendas which was mentioned in being able to put the meetings in consent and additional information that will be shared along the way as well miss collay attended a creative mathematics workshop got the basic fact blues in gilbert arizona on saturday so she came back very excited with some ideas that she's going to be sharing with our staff as well the double asa national association of superintendents national conference is this week i will be in nashville for that on wednesday through sunday and now it's going to be super confusing because double asa is the national association of superintendents and now it is the uh the test the state assessment so we're going to be really confused when we say double a state of what we mean um the ixl conference mrs colley misloco and mrs tesla are going to be attending that later on this month so we're looking forward to them bringing back effective strategies to enhance the current diet sound use that is taking place at school via their rotary events they have mini grants and we're submitting two one for field trip for avid to go to college campuses and a peaceful project and our continued campus beautification and rain garden projects jazz in the desert is saturday march 5th the matinee will feature our jazz band students at one o'clock continental has purchased a table we have 10 tickets so if any of our board members would like to attend these email monitors so that we can save your spot and they are also looking for silent auction items if you have anything at home that you think would be beneficial for the rotary jets in the desert love of reading week we have many fun activities planned this week that were in mrs cuevas weekly update please make sure to read and keep updated and also let us know if you're interested in reading in the classroom this week we have um mr olerie i believe you're already scheduled to come in this week to read the preschool so you'll have fun that's the preschool group that i was reading to this week as well last week okay so again thank you very much um and that concludes my report well thank you on to the consent agenda there's 10 or so items taken there you don't discuss each one do we have a motion to approve a motion um two questions uh a couple of the doctors mr schubert we've got another forty eight thousand dollars of payments to reveal math um i just wanna understand i mean it just seems like we continue to pay more and more and more for reveal math in addition to the original uh payment for the curriculum you had mentioned before that one of them was based on the estimate of students we ended up having more students and so we had to buy more kits but now we've got another 48 000 that was just uh just paid on the two vouchers this month so we've already paid them just over 58 thousand that's 48 000 it so is a partial payment on the hard copy and digital curriculum this is the balance that's due on the rest of it so i remember correctly the the reveal map was 98 in check for the impact and i want to reiterate that that's why we are taking our time and making sure with these bids that are coming in for ela that it's everything right now and that we're not piece milling or that we don't find out afterwards well we could do this but we need this kit which is what happened with reveal math because a lot of the kids and supplemental items that were required that we had to purchase is that the tool the hands-on kit yes yes the manipulatives for the students so after this we should be we should be done with reveal math and um we shouldn't need to keep paying out that amount every year uh second question is on certified staff for the school year we're putting on um cars for the 22-23 school year for 32 teachers and six support will we be able to honor these contracts if the african expenditure limit is not waived so the aggregate expenditure limit only affects current year so these are contracts for the upcoming year now granted next year we are in the same situation as we are this year um that's why these contracts are for the exact same amount this year um there are currently i think five or six bills within the legislature dealing with the aggregate limit and one of them is actually resetting the baseline from the 79-80 school year to believe it's last year so there the legislature is actively pursuing trying to fix the aggregate limit understand so your answer is that we will be able to honor these regardless yes thank you you know all right mr gray so within your packets are our district financial report as well as our budget versus actual that you had asked for to show line item what each category looks like i bring this to you for your approval tonight but if you have any questions before that please feel free to ask i'll move will we approve the consolidating the board report and the legend versus action second president one question on the board consolidated board report unrestricted capital outlay shows a negative 16 000 left is that is our unrestricted capital outlay fund exhausted for the balance of the year so we currently have about 2100 left in our budgeting we're within our capital outlet we just haven't received every payment those payments come in monthly so with us having a negative cash balance there it's not unexpected so to give you an example at the beginning of the year if we were to purchase a bus in july that account's going to show a negative 150 000 because we haven't received those funds but as far as a negative balance a native balance is perfectly fine so how much in capital outlooks funds are still available to us to spend for the balance of the year two thousand one hundred and eleven dollars thank you okay in business um every year we have to review the conflict of interest and i actually have the forms if you guys want to sign up after [Music] which is basically you got a family member okay and let's see the revised calendar board here so i can change a couple dates i'm going to do at one from spring break march 14th since we do have our 11 month employer on spring break at that time so we're asking to move it to march 21st it looks like that's an action item so we need a motion to uh move the governor board meeting agenda discussions yes this is kai yeah mr mckibben yeah mr allering yeah yes all right open enrollment that's rico um this is just um authorization to approve our own enrollment dates to start accepting open enrollment applications for next year dates are as follows okay thank you this is an action adam as well so you need a motion to approve the open enrollment do we have a motion i knew to prove the overall information outside the district that we accepted this year yes that's what i was opening the list right now so that we could see we have um we have we have approximately 100 kids a hundred plus students on opening one so and that includes that steps open and that's what i i can send that to you on the on a report just with staff kids and then other open enrollment students but there's students on the spreadsheet so with returning and new and staff students how many of them are on an iep and require transportation currently on ieps um my roundabout guesstimate would be that approximately 20 to 25 of those children are on ieps and requiring transportation but i don't have mine i would but all of our open enrollment students at this point um are transferred transported by parents so for open enrollment as far as special education i'm just throwing a number out there we would have to i would say no more than seven that are on open enrollment that i can think of roxanna off the top of my head that are open enrollment students and a lot of times what happens is they've been on open enrollment with us since let's say kinder or first grade and we've identified them by second or third grade as needing additional support and obviously we're not going to say just because you have an iep that we're not going to accept your open enrollment status when we have the last three years and all the siblings are here so that's typically the case but as we look at new students coming in we obviously look at the needs level of service that is needed and whether we can provide what they need so we have that option for new students we ask for reference and information do we have any estimate of students within the district that have opted for open enrollment to other districts we can pull that information um it's very it's slim but we can verify with ms eva from thank you mrs allen yes mrs kais yes mr mcgivern yes mr allen yesterday yes the american intercontinental university system intergovernmental agreements so this is just another school that will provide opportunity for our teachers to pursue higher education which also at a discounted rate which is also available to family members whereas we have an iga with gcu and our teachers get a discount but their family members don't necessarily get a discount and this university is an online university offering that so we are bringing it to the board for approval so our employees and family members can take advantage of the savings and the continued education motion fee i'll make a motion to approve the american intercontinental university system intergovernmental agreement i did a lot of work any discussion who are they accredited by i don't know off the top of my head but we can find out is there a cause no yeah yes appoint a student treasury student activity treasurer i learned a lot during the audit how this works so it's kind of interesting so during our audit one of the findings one of those 31 findings is that we did not appoint the board had not appointed a treasurer um after ms matthews is left for this [Music] so it is now to the board to appoint someone as the treasurer for the student activities account and the district's recommendation is that that person be me discussion what's your rationale if i made are the student activities funds under the auspices of the district so student activity funds are technically student funds it is all student organizations students vote on how this gets spent in in the such um i am just the overseer of those funds as their treasurer do we have a separate bank account for those monies we have a separate fund for those monies that would be the 850 fund when you look on your district spending reporting right just uh okay but they have to do a true accounting of let's say they buy 50 pizza kits at two dollars a piece they got to know how many mary and johnny and billy sold and what it is and you know some of the teachers a lot of them are more laps than others because that's not their fortune to keep track of that so they really have to keep decent books when there is a fundraising activity i i mean i agree i would have just thought that this was a normal activity of accounting that's what we that's what we thought we do i have never and who was it before miss matthews miss stacy matthews so we need a motion to approve uh how we have ready mrs allen yes mrs kais yes mr mckibben yes mr hollery yes and mrs so in our study session we talked about just district goals and strategic plan so after meeting after our meeting and meeting with our leadership team to figure out where and how we were going to incorporate our timelines our measurable outcomes and our project updates and status so on an on a district strategic plan this document i am requesting that you approve this district strategic plan as presented at our study session that has the goals and it does have the annual measures without the specific metrics on it because when we do the specific metrics for example one thing that we talked about with our team in terms of certificated teachers and the number of certificated teachers that are not appropriately certified if we had seven and one in our goal to be five one year and narrowing it down to three we didn't want that to be those specifics to be on our district plan on our website so we are asking that this district strategic plan be approved to go on our website and what we are doing as a team if you remember our priority goals and objectives this one that has the timelines we realize that because these goals were initially and these um action steps were started in 2017 they have changed and evolved as we have done our needs assessment and have our lay up and our saya so we are taking this document and we are aligning the specific district goals that are here will be action steps on this document with implementation and completion dates with measurable outcomes and current status okay so this will be our working document that our teachers and our board refer to on a regular basis as means to accomplishing what's on our website as our overarching district goals and i know that as we taught that it was the district goals there wasn't a question in how they were stated what's in question and we've discussed is how we get there how are we meeting the goals and what are we measuring as we meet these goals so we will have this document finalized and updated and a draft format for you at the march board meeting but i want you to keep in mind that we are we'll be doing our needs assessment so by april may the layup and messiah will have to be updated and action steps may be eliminated or added to this document as well because this is a live document that will be ever changing sometimes quarterly sometimes by the semester or annually as we work on our needs assessment so therefore we are recommending that we improve the district goals and the strategic plan as presented and discussed at our study session so this is a motion item i'll move to approve the district goals and strategic plans 21-25 and second discussion yeah i guess i'm one that truly believes that we spent a lot of time talking about target dates and the metrics that we're going to use to measure progress on these in in my opinion they are critical to work in tandem with this document and i have a struggle in improving this document if we don't know what the metrics and and the specific timetable the specific metrics and the timetables are to achieve these so i would like to move that we postpone approval of these until we get to also to our march meeting that we can look at both intent second so we have two things on it and two motions so we vote on each so the first vote will be on the original approval and then the second will be on postponing and doing both together like this girl already suggested i just you have to vote on the most recent motion is that [Music] which overrides the original is that an understanding all right okay well it's not too bad is there any more discussion on them moving into march i don't um i would like to say that i i think we spent an hour and 45 minutes on this document and we did not have any initial input and yet if you look at 15 341 this ars 15 341 is one of the items that we're responsible for it doesn't directly say strategic plan but board members are responsible for setting the vision so if i may interject when we worked over my evaluation and we had discussed it in july you saw this document i shared with the work that we had done with our team based on our fishbone with our layup and our staff and our discussions in our board meetings and in my evaluation is where these goals came from based on your feedback so you did see it in july and we should have brought it for board approval in august which we didn't but this is a document it doesn't stifle or work or change the work that we do on a regular basis because everything that's in here is what we do on a regular basis on a daily basis thank you i think it's a strategic plan and and i do think it's important for the board to have more input into it um as i indicated in a review of the ten top elementary school districts in the country one of the number one across all schools is teacher-student ratio and that's not addressed in a strategic plan and i think it's for it to be such a critical element of success in schools i think it's important for it to be in there so it goes back to and we can have another discussion on this but it goes back to realistically is that like when we look at a strategic plan and our budget if we wait till we can afford to have 14 students per classroom we have student achievement goals and gaps that we need to close immediately so this is a five-year plan on increasing student achievement and operating our school based on these goals so if if the board would like to have a plan of a vision of eventually getting there but i don't know as the superintendent and with our leadership team when you talk about what what we can and cannot do to close the achievement gap right now i don't see how having 14 students in one classroom is doable feasible or something that that we are willing to say okay that's going to make a difference in our school when we have teachers and programs and curriculum and assessments well you know you used you used a great uh term you said it's an operational plan but this is a strategic plan so those are are vastly different so operationally i understand the importance to reduce the gaps the learning gaps etc but strategically we need you know anybody who drives here from over where i live knows that we need to look at this whole district in five to ten years when you look at the number of homes that are going up we need to be a little bit more strategic a little bit more visionary and i understand the operational piece of it but i think there's there's more to this and granted we may have seen it in july but we didn't participate it so we have been asking the board to develop board goals and vision on your own so that has not happened so when have you looked at other strategic plans national in our state of arizona if you go to other districts and look at their strategic plans the goals are all fairly similar because everybody is trying to ensure increasing student achievement safe and orderly looking at retention of teachers looking at social emotional learning looking at extraordinary opportunities so is there any board discussion yes there there always is more discussion but i but i feel that when i presented in july where this strategic plan came from and asked for feedback at that time i would have expected some more dialogue and more interest in the plan but like i said this is what these are the themes that we operate on and how we operate our school and there's nothing wrong with the goals that are in this i mean but the timetables and the metrics that we're going to use to determine progress on these goals are a critical part of it they're they're not something that we just look at separately from this document to me they're part and parcel that's why i think we should look at them in tandem together at the same time we would have an opportunity then if we wanted to to make amendments to recommend the change to vote on changes that we feel need to be incorporated in this and i'm not disagreeing with this document i'm just saying it's only half of the puzzle this the way it is is for what i would say as the superintendent my recommendation that this is on our website with our goals now how we get there is not going to be part of public information on our website this is our daily it's like this is our nitty gritty detailed numbers we are not going to put on our website that we have a certain number of special ed students who are not meeting standards therefore our goal is for the 10 kids to close the achievement gap that is not going to be on our public website so i agree and i since our last meeting keep referring to this in my mind um like a lot of the documents at my work there's i mean just gobs and gobs of manuals that i have to read all the time and there's all these appendixes and it's all electronic now so in the manual there are all of these hyperlinks here and there and if you need more detail about a specific thing you click it and it takes you to another thing then they have mandatory letters but it is all part of the the manual it's all or our bible because we say something um but that's kind of a common in my mind in my world that's a common format for these kind of documents um to have predictions and links to take you here and there that break down certain things in more detail um i i don't have a problem approving the strategic plan as it is and the nitty-gritty the timelines and the metrics which the metrics are going to change every year because our standardized tests are going to change every year and our needs for those of improvements are going to change so i think that's something that should i i don't have a problem with putting that separately because i know that these goals aren't gonna change whether we want a three percent improvement each year or five percent or ten percent we're still going to want the improvement our goals aren't going to change um as far as mrs kai's gotta i would love to see smaller classroom sizes that's i feel like it's a pipe dream honestly but i think that that's a great then when we look at schools because i did also bring the report of the top 20 schools in arizona that we looked at and when we looked at the trends none of those schools had 14 students in a classroom they their trends that we looked at were based on the we looked at their curriculum we looked at again the parental involvement we again looked at clubs and tutorials and all that stuff visitors that were not allowed to be on campus and teacher and teachers teaching a grade level up to students is what made the most difference but we also have to look at you know comparing light schools and demographics because you had some of the schools that were listed as top schools are schools with 200 kids private schools with the demographics not light bars you know they don't have the freedom regions rates that we have they're not title one schools for a reason and so we have to make sure that we're looking at schools that are comparable to our school if this document were to be approved with the data on our website that would have to be updated basically weekly would it not yes i mean to be accurate right right right for it to be real-time data that's that's basically my issue with it it's just a logistical issue i don't think that data i think it's obviously public information but i don't think that um it needs to be on a document that needs to be updated every week or so it's just to me it seems like busy work well maybe we need a district like roxanna said a district plan if it is to have class sizes below x to have x number of days in school to have you know it's a if they're all pipe dreams then whatever that's what the board agrees to that our long-term goal is to have this utopia of the school whether it's realistic or not you know that's that's a whole different conversation i guess i don't see it i mean when i read develop and implement a comprehensive curriculum management process to provide system-wide direction for design delivery monitoring and evaluation of the curriculum my question is by when i don't expect to see it next week so it won't be changed frequently but i would expect to see something like that maybe in 18 to 36 months which and we do have the dates because we did it for math so we're doing it for la now so why can't that just say by uh school year 24 25 well it says annual measures so annually these are the things that we address that we look at so it's just but that doesn't tell me when you're going to implement this and the goals or the strategy is to develop and implement and so the question is by when will you develop and implement not how will you measure well and curriculum is implemented in an annual basis at the beginning of the school year so we implemented renewal math in august to start the school year but we worked on the process the year before to go through the adoption process but it's not curriculum it's the curriculum management process so the curriculum management process when when would that be finished and women's day like all right i'll bet we've got no more on that i would bet we haven't now no we don't because we're working we have that in place we're working on reading but don't isn't that a process aren't we going through a process so then this is done but then no it can't be done because after this we'll look at science after that we'll look at you're talking about the core courses not the process of curriculum management we have a curriculum management process whether you're looking at ela whether you're looking at math so if we've already done this then we need to take it off we have a process i i know you do because you just said that in may you're good may 6th or may 16th or something we're going to prove that so we must already have this process that's why it would be in our so our priorities are it would be here where we had math as our priority last year ela was our priority what she's saying is that right there like um going out and seeing what our holes are our weak curriculums and updating them that is the management process you already have that laid out you know what you're going to do next year so you already have the curriculum management process worked out right so i would just but i would just propose wording it differently like instead of develop and implement a comprehensive curriculum management process i feel like um i don't know constantly seeking out better curriculum and implementing them within our sportsmanship i do have a couple of comments that um i had mentioned that i felt it was really important do we have a board goal for this district to achieve an a school we're currently at b i think that's a great board goal for this district and it's not in here and then to move to an a-plus of that's not in here as far as measuring academic achievement there is no mention in this document of azmerit or aksa it's all based on map growth it is not it is something that it says it says nwa map on comprehensive system of assessments there's nothing in here that refers to aasa or azmerit ac merit it's not a thing anymore well it's aasa that replaced it's just terminology aasa replaced azimura so the harm is pushing this i'm sorry let's say the harmon pushing this further to another month is what nothing there's no harm [Music] clarification of the motion moving into march uh yes mr mcgivern yes mr allen yes um modification of rating scale of the superintendent evaluation process this is an action item yes if you recall we needed um to change the blue grip from a high point rubric to a four point rubric because on the on the scale score four and five in needs improvement was really the same move to accept the modification of the rating scale of the superintendent as shown in the board documents discussion listen mrs allen yes mrs kite yes mr mcgivern yes mr johnny yes okay events february is a busy month i guess our thing we got rodeo breaking nothing a couple basketball games wrestling match um we had our sweetheart gala and um our next meeting is going to be march 21.

what 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 do we have any items to add to the agenda no no accomplishments and recognitions i think we need a motion to approve the agenda oh i'm sorry i have a motion to approve the agenda second gary and doug yes okay accomplishment yep okay all right each month we have our employee and student of the month awards and i'm going to call up first our student of the month emma corbett emmett would you come on up i'm sorry emma i said emmett sorry emma i have no idea why i said emmett all right and i'm going to call it miss colada she's going to share a little bit about why you were nominated for this award so come on up miss colada hi um i'm mrs claude i teach stem here and i chose emma for student of the month because she's just a fabulous human being as a person um academically she's wonderful but she doesn't get involved with middle school drama she takes things under like she just takes ownership solves problems she's just a wonderful human being thank you so much this is uh you know this we all of our staff had an opportunity to nominate someone and there i tell kids there are 1700 kids 750 kids here so each month one student is selected and our staff selects it so you should feel very proud of that so should your parents so congratulations let's get a quick picture here with us [Applause] there i tell kids there are seventeen all right we also have an employee of the month each month and i have uh the honor of introducing andrea woods come on up andrea and i can speak to the fact that andrea is an amazing teacher big hollow i'm going to call it ms dawn smith to share a little bit about why she nominated andrea for this award this month and i love that andrea's mom and husband are here that's awesome um i nominated andrea for a few reasons many many years ago andrea and i did some book grants together and we had gotten for our library some nominee books award books and andrea carried on and was able to get for our libraries even more items some books that were in line with our social and emotional learning program and also some books to increase the diversity of our collection and also she has taken on a leadership role in um organizing our um hispanic heritage month and our black history month and has also put together some programs for veterans day andrea is a national board certified teacher since she was a good study pal when we went through our cohort together and she's up for renewal and i'm hoping that all these great things help her to get her renewal in the next year or two so congratulations andrea i do um to be nominated by your peers and your colleagues is quite an honor considering that there was an amazing list of people this month who were nominated and i'm just so very privileged and blessed to accept this and to work in a district that recognizes and honors not only um employees but staff not just teachers and students because i think that's really important and i just want to say that i wouldn't be where i am without the backing of so many people lenan who first welcomed me here and dawn for nominating michelle for building into me and encouraging me and vinnie for standing by and you for just continuing to give us a place where we can grow and bloom and thrive and um years ago my father had given me a book to read and it was called the one minute manager it's a very old book but one of the quotes in that book was the best minute i spend is the one i invest in people and that is what this school is about as we are about investing in people and i'm very pleased and blessed to do that every day so thank you very well said let's get a picture [Applause] thank you very much [Applause] okay mr lyons you're up no i will avoid any conflict of interest for the appearance of impropriety which could result from my position and will not use my board membership for personal gain or publicity wait a minute consent agenda does anybody have any questions on the consent agenda nope can i please have a motion to prove the consent agenda motion second lauren vivian blusha yes peter yes yes ballinger yes lions yes patterson yes bennett yes public comments we have two tonight um miss abraham you're up first you have five minutes to speak i just know that when you speak we can't respond to you in any way shape or form okay so the microphone is yours please step up it's okay thank you my name is aaron abraham um i actually wrote to you guys last week so thank you for responding um and when you're this pregnant it's very hard to breathe as i'm sure some of you know and with a mask it's also a little bit harder um so and i know you're gonna have a discussion or talk about this or vote on this so i don't know if my comment is helpful but anyway my son is seven years old and a first grader sorry my husband's gonna he's gonna laugh at me she's watching this it's totally okay you're fine one of the things i love most about my son is he's a rule follower i'm a rule follower when the rules are reasonable last week we were leaving a locker room after swim lessons as we got closer to the door a sheer look of terror came over my seven-year-old because i couldn't get his mask out fast enough he literally panicked he yelled at his little brother to put his mask on my heart completely broke [Music] this is not okay i went home told my husband and gave it a day i asked my son if he gets in trouble at school over his mask that look again panic in his eyes he said not me but other kids do this is not okay by continuing to keep our children masked in school despite being told we don't have to wear them anymore after february 28th is crazy in my in my opinion how do i explain to him he doesn't need to wear one at the grocery store he doesn't need to wear one at camp he doesn't need to wear one at his cousin's school in illinois when we go watch her perform but he has to wear it here this fear that has been instilled in our children is not okay parents should have the choice to mask their children or not teachers and staff should have the choice to mask or not we all keep hearing covet isn't going away we need to find a way back to what is reasonable i know we can do this i know you guys can do this give families the choice thank you thank you thank you thank you [Applause] we have one email public comment from michael briggs good afternoon miss morley i am the parent of a fifth grade student at big hollow and i'd like to submit the following public participation statement to the school board for the 214-22 board of education meeting distinguished board members i am writing to express my support for the continuation of current covenant mitigation measures including universal masking throughout the campus while it was encouraging that case counts continue to drop from the extremely high levels of a few weeks ago it is simply too soon to change course community spread remains high and the request for stay on a temporary restraining order is still pending a consistent approach is warranted for the well-beings of students and staff within the zip codes that make up the big house school district the northwestern university covet dashboard puts the seven-day average of new cases per 100 000 residents at 256.8 using the district's own metrics a number above 100 is considered high transmission it is premature to remove masking when local cases are still this high quite simply the mitigations put in place by this board are working and should be maintained until local community spread has come down to lower levels i commend this board for consistent measured approach throughout the pandemic one that has properly balanced the health with the need for in-person instruction for all students i ask you continue with current mitigation strategies thank you for your consideration respectfully michael briggs is there any more public comment superintendent's report mr gold all right uh first action on the agenda is uh says forward action on covet mitigation strategies i have um some thoughts i want to share first as we get into this and matt if we can yeah so i'd like to start by just saying that the big hollow community has been really really strong through all these all this that we've gone through last two years i'm very grateful for the people who uh have been supportive of what we've been trying to do even during times when uh it has been easy and they may not agree i'm grateful that we haven't had uh some of the experiences that some of our local districts are experiencing right now this is a pretty emotional time for everybody feel we've worked hard to put our own personal opinions aside as we serve this entire district as board members as superintendent which consists of people on all sides of this issue for the record there were others that board members know as well that we've been receiving emails pretty consistently this last week from people on both sides of the issue we're here tonight to discuss uh a recent ruling that was handed down in sangamon county and how that impacts us that's what's stirring the discussion tonight the summary of that is that the just the judge issued a temporary restraining order against statewide masking mandate the ruling only covered districts named in lawsuit despite some of the judge's comments in the footnotes of a ruling which caused a lot of confusion we are currently await an appellate court ruling on this case which is due any day and that's kind of where we are at right now we didn't jump into this lawsuit right away because we didn't have to and we didn't want to make our kids and communities shift from one thing to another and then have to maybe go back so that's why we didn't jump in right away as some districts had so in the meantime school districts across the state have been left in limbo school leaders have been asking for an off-ramp uh for several weeks from the state but we really have heard nothing um i don't think anybody could argue that at big hollow we've really tried to stay consistent with the executive orders uh all along throughout this entire pandemic however with no plan for what is next it's really becoming difficult we are now just one of few states who continue to have a mass command day for schools you're all aware that this single issue is a very hot topic with many and all we've asked for is a clear road map for what it will take to eventually take the mass off and ease some of the current mitigations that's really what we've been after over a week ago the governor announced the state mass mandate be lifted in february on february 28th but he also stated that with the exception of schools and this comment alone just did a lot to fire more people up to come after school leaders and boards to end the math requirements so we've still not been given any plan or metrics that would be required for a masked mandate to be lifted in the schools for the past few weeks i along with districts across the state have really been having to develop our own off-ramps which is uh not a good state to be in when we are when we have these districts having to do this on their own because every community handles this so differently so tonight i think i'm gonna share with you three we have three choices to consider and i have two resolutions in front of you um our first choice is to do nothing we could keep following the governor's executive order as we also wait to see the outcome of the appellate court ruling on the case if the current restraining order temporary restraining order is upheld then it's likely we would be shifting to new relaxed requirements at that point if it's overruled then we could just continue under the current guidance from the governor so that's our option is we have it's one option is just to stay put and do nothing our second option um i have a resolution in front of you resolution one and i don't know matt if we can get that up on the screen so if we can get on the screen um section one is what i'm gonna read from so board members it's on page two section one so in this resolution i'll re i'll read it and try to explain where this is coming from so it says unless and until there's an appellate court ruling overturning or dissolving the sangam and temporary restraining order gro that you're giving me the authority to communicate and implement the same mitigation measures that were in place as of friday february 4th except unvaccinated employees will no longer have to submit to weekly screenings close contacts will not be required to be excluded from school and students and staff will not be required to wear a mask in schools except as required by the district's situational masking plan established by the administration face masks will be required on school district transportation so what what this is uh what this um is stating is that if we approve if you vote to approve this resolution we would be shifting to what the tro the temporary restraining order has stated to do but we would also shift back if that tro is overturned so that's what this resolution is stating if we can go to the next resolution option the resolution number two and matt if you could jump to section one there section one of resolution two says the uh the board's intent regarding delegation authority the board delegates to the superintendent the discretion and authority to communicate and implement the district's situational masking plan established by the administration for the remainder of the 2021-22 school year or until further action by the board face mask will be required on school transportation uh pursuant to the own voice authority students who have tested positive or ill may be sent home so this uh this resolution um without reading the whole thing to to everyone this resolution basically would shift our position to what i'm going to share with you in a second on the screen is a situational masking procedure regardless of any of regardless of any court rulings that come out so regardless of if the tro gets upheld or overturned i'm sorry i should restate that if if if the tro gets upheld we would then follow the the the law the way it's written there if the tro gets overturned we're saying that we would continue with our situational masking plan is what this is stating so when you read the entire thing so matt if you could get the situational masking procedure on the screen and i don't know there were copies up front for anybody that wants them but i'm going to show it on the screen as well and board members you do have one in front of you the situational masking the first page um if you just want to go slide one there we go uh there's we're looking at three situations universal masking is where we're at right now and again i guess i need to clarify this is what i would call our road map so this is something we have been looking for from the state we haven't been get we haven't received anything so this is what i would consider our roadmap to determine what mitigation strategy we put in place uh universal masking is where we're at right now that's everybody's masked in inside the schools and on the buses situational maxi masking and blue there i'll just read it mask will be worn the following times while transport on a bus in hallways during band choir and physical ed went indoors during instructional activities which social edition may not be maintained or in a large gathering such as an assembly um there also may be isolated cases when masking would be required so basically this would be like walking into the restaurant you wear your mask till you get seated that's situational masking so that would be a phase we could get in i'll get into that in a minute the green is recommended not required masking so that would be uh where staff and students and visitors choose to wear mask while indoors when masks requirements are lifted there may be situations in which masking be required due to isolate increase in cases but they must be worn on a bus so that would be it's recommended not required so go to the next slide matt the guidelines for universal masking and i'll go through these numbers in a minute but guidelines would be uh if our buildings we're not looking at community transmission rates we'd be looking at building rates right here if building rates were greater than two percent uh we would shift universal masking and we would follow all idph quarantine guidelines at that time so go the next phase map next page situational masking and these percentages will become a little more clear when i show you a couple of charts but situational masking would happen when we're between 1.25 and 2 positivity rates current guidelines for quarantines would also be followed at that time the next page the recommended not required masking is when we're as long as our buildings have less than one point two five percent uh contact tracing will be completed with quarantine recommended for close contacts not required uh students and staff who test positive for cova that will need to do one of the following quarantine for five days return on day six to ten with a mask or they can quarantine ten days so we still wanna make sure we have that so next slide matt is uh primary elementary this is this would be putting actual numbers to those percentages for you so you could see so it would take 21 or more average daily cases that's a five day average for us to be over 2 percent in that building and go to a required mass situation between 13 and 20 cases would be would be a situational masking situation and under 12 cases would be a recommended but not required if you go to the next table this would show you if we had that plan in place all year this would show you where we would have been the entire year as far as recommended situational or you know or universal masking and you can see we had that surge in january with the omicron variant and we would have had to shift to uh some situational masking and then some universal masking but for the remainder of the year we would be in a mask optional recommended not required so that's the primary elementary i would be surprised if we see another search but you just never know what's going to happen so but right now we would be in mask recommended not required so middle school if we shift to the next slide 16 or more cases would be universal 10 to 15 would be situational under 9 9 or under would be would be recommended not required so we go to the table mat on the next slide the table shows you that this is what the year would look like had we been in this the entire year so we would have had to and i would be honest with you these these numbers um when we went through the surge in january it was hard to keep these buildings open so i would i would argue that we would need to put in any mitigation strategy we can during those times to keep the buildings open the remainder of the year it's not been hard that was a hard i mean i shouldn't say that that was that was not a good comment this year has been tough i'm saying that the remainder hasn't been as difficult to keep the buildings opened it was very difficult in january to keep the building open with the number of substitute teachers we needed and number of students out it was tough but we were able to do it so the i think that that the situational masking universal masking is supported during the time if we were experiencing something like that again so that if you were to approve resolution two that would be what we'd be looking at right now but you're really what you're approving is not this situational masking plan you're proving giving me the the authority to implement that plan um that plan could change we may find things that aren't working or things we haven't that we've just not included that we should have included so i'm not gonna say it's it's a finished product but that's where we're at right now with it um but that's where uh so that's what that's what approving resolution two would do now i do wanna say you know there's there are risks and you're gonna be i don't wanna i don't want to pretend like there's not there are risks to doing uh this plan because we're doing this when there's an executive order in place and uh the risks are is the enforcement action a potential loss of tort immunity potential labor dispute and ocean enforcement action possibly so there's there's risk to it i think you're seeing a lot of districts that we've been we've been trying to follow the executive orders all year because we want to limit the risks to the district we're just at a point now where um we need to bring it up for discussion you know how far do we want to go with it can i ask a question yes so so if we move to situational masking you're saying that we still can incur risk yes yeah as long as as long as the governor's order is still in place so i there's we just have not received any indication of when that could be lifted right now that this one is in place till march 5th um but we don't know after that what what he's been doing is renewing this one was renewed for a shorter period so there's kind of thinking that maybe it's going to be done march 5th i don't know but i don't want to bank on that and i do have our attorney here jeff galitz he's back here so if we have any questions for uh that i can't answer i'm gonna point to jeff and what's the difference in risks for not required versus situational masking what's the difference in the risk i don't i don't believe there'd be any difference in the risk because we're just okay because we're not following we're not following executive order yep resolution option two can you go into the mic lauren sorry one more test if we do resolution option two will we be testing uh non-vaccinated staff yes we still will be yes i didn't take that out okay bob on the situational one you said you showed they're using five-day averages why are we using five-day averages where you know on day one we have let's say 50 new cases we know we have a high positivity rate for the next 10 days shouldn't be strictly on number at that day because otherwise i see you're you're you you know the spike is there but you're waiting four more days before you actually do anything about it yeah i get what you're saying there um this this is uh the way this is written too i would have the flexibility like to to make the call when we switched from one to the other this is a guide but if we were to see a surge like that we would probably like we saw that surgery came back from winter break we definitely saw that sir we went from to 70 from the time they left to the time they came back so it was close to 70.

it's getting closer to our pre-covered numbers we're not quite there yet but getting closer the item d we got a lot of we've got some interesting things this month to talk about so item d is the uh approval plan for changes in to contract and leadership structure for building grounds and transportation so um i gave you an exhibit nine uh hopefully you've had time to read that it's a memo to the board that just discusses our facilities planning and and what we've gone through the last few years and i mentioned in there that my in my seven years we've had three different cleaning companies we've really had troubles um getting uh getting the cleaning to the point where we feel good about it in our buildings and the maintenance and so um so we're at a point now where we feel like we need to take it over there are some risks to that there's risk to us maybe not being able to find enough employees that scares me a little bit in this job market so i'm not saying we're going to do this without risk but we feel like at this point we have we have three really fairly new buildings they're beautiful buildings a beautiful campus and we really need to take good care of it and i've been i'm concerned with what we're getting right now and what we've gotten with the last two companies so the challenge has been that i'm making this recommendation as you saw in the memo and it's not a cost savings thing for the district because we're going to have to hire the cost of hiring more staff is going to be more than the cost of what we're paying the cleaning company now it's just it is what it is and uh i gave you a high number there i think we're going to be less than what i showed in that memo i think i guessed it at 125 000 to 150 at the most but we could see that kind of extra cost and uh you know i think we'll be able to to reduce that but i want to prepare for the worst so i'm just i guess i'm asking for your approval to move forward with this plan and start trying to build that for the sum uh and start hiring employees this summer um we've been talking the building grounds committee about it for a few months and i think we're you know i think we're all ready to give it a shot i'll do you know that i'm very budget conscious so i'm going to do everything i can to keep this a budget neutral decision but i did want to put in the memo that it's possible that it won't be it's just going to depend on on really help our staffing issues so does anybody have any questions on it so is this the current number of cleaners you have now with the contract uh no that that that one facilities coordinators is that with those numbers there uh no those are our current staff okay we have uh two maintenance employees we have three and a half custodians uh one in each building and then we have one that floats a little bit and does some food service as well so what i'm going to try to do is maximize the use of that staff first before we start adding more staff for the nighttime duties that's a great question because we can't get a clear answer from them uh i think it uh it's one of the reasons why the buildings are not being cleaned well um they might send two people per building so six but they're not here for a full eight hour shifts so um in my opinion but uh we just don't have a lot of control over it but yeah you know i want to do some more research on exact numbers how many we're going to need i think we definitely need two people in this building we're going to need probably two people in primary or two people in elementary at the nighttime shift so we probably have more control over the end product we will have more control of the end product yes sir oh that was me sir are you hiring for eight hour shifts yes and we we've considered we've been talking back and forth i mean second shift or could he consider a third time a third shift crew if we've got people that would prefer third shift and we have i just could get concerned about supervision uh in those situations but it's possible we could work something out i was thinking maybe a third shift floor crew that comes in and just gets all the floors done after all the cleaning's been done yeah who would supervise the second shift i'll probably have one of the hopefully have one of the six that we hire be a lead but dear uh the way this is set up though i would pull derrick swadersky out of transportation and he would be all facilities and so he would be the he would be the one responsible for all those new employees and all the cleaning and and so he would be the technical lead but but he's not going to supervise him he wouldn't be on site every night because he'll be here during the days on site as well but he's you know if there's any problems he's going to be the the the nighttime supervisor will probably have to be a shift lead and then uh derek would uh be the one responsible for he'd be the i guess the supervisor of the whole department and so the shift lead would be one of the two employees yeah cleaning yeah yep and would you hire any extra staff for absences because if you only are running with six and one or two are out so in my prior district we would use uh our daytime custodians would do uh overtime night work if they we had those issues can't guarantee that would happen but i would try it first so this might sound like a stupid question no it's okay since there's not a ton of activity here during the summers are the these 12 month employees or these 10 month employees no that's a good question um in the summers they would they would be doing all the it's actually kind of a busy time because they have to go through and do a deep clean of all that to strip down re-wax do all the carpet cleaning painting and just do a deep clean of each classroom so it is a busy time in the summer for them this summer we might do something a little different because that's that's a hard transition to hire new crews and teach them how to do all that flooring work so i might have to pay the current custodial company to just go in and do our waxing and let our guys let our crews do all the cleaning and would they shift switch in the summer from from second to first maybe go go to day shifts in the summer and what if they work our first job um i would probably i'll probably have to handle that on a individual basis but the goal is to get them all shifted to first shift in the summer and work together okay and they'll be listed in like the job description so they know and they would have insurance benefits yeah yep full-time employees building the grounds what did you guys think about this plan we liked it we've been hearing continuously throughout the years how the the current yeah it's a it's a three-year struggle it's like three every three years every three years they come in and everything's great like the first couple months and then it's kind of gross the cleaning whatever process starts in the beginning of your deteriorates as the year will fall yeah no people done properly all right i guess my i mean my only concern is supervision but sounds like you have that cover yeah that's my concern too to be honest with you i mean i've had bad experiences with that in the past with nighttime crews are they required are they required to go through the same background checks yes yep yep everything because i find it hard for the knight lead to be one of the cleaners and supervise three buildings because they're cleaning so how do they know what the other so this is something to think about yep yep are the employees evaluated i'm sorry are the employees evaluated yes okay yes all right anybody have any other questions okay please have a motion to approve the plan for changes to contract and leadership structure for building and crowds transportation motion second lauren and doug flascha yes patterson yes yes yes bennett yes yes item e is an easy one hopefully uh school calendar for next year uh we have uh it does start a little later than normal um first days for staff will be the 22nd of august uh students will come after three days of in-service it'll be the 25th of august and then we line up our winter and spring breaks with grant high school so those are those are lined up last day of school is friday june 2nd quick question for you on the schedule yes i thought we'd do every other friday as an early release but september there's two in a row of full-time days on fridays 23rd and 30th oh uh yeah we've always done first and thirds oh it's just yeah it's not every other no it's first and third yeah two months yup good question though all right anybody have any questions on the calendar you said it lines up with grant yes right the brakes do all right please have a motion to approve the proposed school calendar for 2022 2023 motion second joe and gary all in favor aye aye aye any opposed eyes have it four policies okay um i don't even know how to start this one we had the largest press plus update in history and uh this is a very large one i don't think it's it would be good use of our time to go through every board policy i did put notes on every one of them and i'm you know i don't want to assume that everybody was able to have time to read through all those this weekend so i guess we do this on two motions or two months so we do a first reading this month so i would just ask for approval of first reading and we can discuss any questions that you might have had looking over it this weekend um if if there are no questions yet then we can approve it first reading and then we will come back next month and you'll have a whole month to look it over and look at my notes and see if there's anything you're concerned about so whatever you want to however you want to approach this is fine with me there's just so many policies all right does anybody have any questions on the policies no no no all right we spent a long time in the policy committee interesting conversations come up in policy yeah absolutely sure very much i'm trying to remember i don't think there's anything in a minute there's something major major it was more like just reviewing and learning that change but nothing that i think was controversial that we had a debate i think a lot of it was changing um taking scott wiggles name off some of that a lot of that was on there there was some curriculum issues that we've had to really look at was around sex education oh yeah so we've taken the route on that policy to kind of uh we're we're taking the stance and we're basically waiting and seeing because the state standard the standards are not out yet they're wanting to know if we're going to commit to those standards now we haven't seen them yet so we're waiting on that so we the way we address it in the policy is that we're not we're not committing to anything on that okay anything else all right i please have a motion to approve and first reading the board policy updates second lauren and joe let's just go uh all in favor aye aye opposed eyes happy i can just keep going here under other action items the occ yeah just a real quick this explanation is uh our you know i've got to give matt mccully some good credit on this with our e-rate consultant they really jumped in and grabbed grabbed some funding that was available and i know that a lot of districts missed this because they're they just weren't on top of it and i'm just very thankful those those two were on top of it but we were able to snatch 520 000 in funding uh we'll purchase uh 1100 chromebooks next year um and then we will also those will be fully covered and then 400 towards the purchase of uh new devices for staff so it's up to 400 so it's a good time to purchase those devices because we're getting 400 paid for out of probably a thousand dollar device so so i'm just getting your approval to accept this award of 520 000.

we're gonna have a call to order uh prior to the roll call i'm going to appoint asia johnson as secretary pro town asia thank you for subbing in tonight no problem mike davenport here christopher espinoza here jenny hackstrom here terry pivozic here joanna vasquez drexler present nancy kupka here scarlett o'hara here jay toledano here okay we have a quorum let's stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we're going to mix things up a little bit we're going to start with dr thiele's presentation on the return to in-person instruction plan and then we will have reception visitors thank you dr kupka i as we get started i've prepared a statement for the board in the community we have been following the guidance of our local state and federal agencies since the party start of the pandemic in march of 2020.

i've encouraged this board and individuals on this board several times to be leaders for all parents when discussing the mass optional proposal my words of encouragement have consistently fallen on deaf ears it was one time after the last board meetings when i realized my family's rights were not being protected or respected i also began to understand that governmental overreach is allowed to spread when good people do nothing i decided to act i am one of two district 99 parents named in the lawsuit governor pritzker and by extension this board denied my family process under the law due to the judge's ruling my son will no longer be forced to wear a mask he will wear a mask if he chooses to wear a mask because my family is exempt from wearing a mask you might ask why am i here tonight i am not here because of my son his rights are now protected i'm here tonight to fight for all parents each family member should be entitled to choose the best medical decisions to protect their family in the letter that was sent out last night it said masks are a symbol of division and disruption i agree if you continue to deny families the right to choose what is best for their lives you are fueling division and problems in the school students health should not be political this should not be a left issue or a right issue this issue alone is about freedom of choice my family and i will respect anyone who chooses to wear a mask i'm also asked asking you to respect people that choose not to i'm encouraging this board to respect the dignity and sovereignty of each individual to make their own collective choices now is your time to lead courageously and vote for mask optional i generally want each person on this board to be on the right side of history and correct for these divisive and illegal mandates [Applause] uh noel manley is next followed by barbara allen good evening my name is noel manley and i'm from darien illinois superintendents across illinois have been given a false sense of control by governor pritzker enhanced by prospects of receiving huge funds from the rescue esser fund money from the federal government in 2020 d 99 received 313 thousand dollars in esser funds for covid relief in 2021 d99 received almost eight times more esser funds four million dollars how much money is this per student what exactly is the money being used for students are at low risk for covid and always have been so one has to ask what kind of rescuing is going on to obtain this money d99 had to do something in return keep kids masked and muzzled provide locations for covet testing and vaccines surreptitiously placing sexually explicit materials on school libraries and to push boundaries of sex education in issuing his unilateral executive orders governor pritzker ignored and bypassed the do the duty elect the duly elected representatives of the people the governor is governed by fiat refusing to work with the legislature with tonight laws to obtain input he purposely disregarded the people's right to due process in so doing the governor has exceeded his authority violating his oath of office to uphold the constitution of the united states in the illinois constitution the illinois department of health was never authorized by the legislature to delegate authority to any other body of government including school districts thus none of the school districts in illinois ever had the authority to mask or quarantine our kids judge grishall's order confirmed this was an abuse of power and has gone on for the past two years d-99 board members which side are you on the people of district 99 or the federal government do you care about students and the psychological impact two years of masking have caused or are you politically motivated to keep kids masked in order to get more federal money are the yeser funds worth it is the damage to our children worth it thank you barbara allen is next followed by [Music] david pintinger hello dr thiel and members of the board my name is barbara allen i currently have a junior at downers grove north and two children at downers grove district 58.

[Music] good evening everyone i'd like to call the february 14th meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order will you please rise for the pledge of allegiance thank you i'd like to ask everyone to just please check that their cell phones are turned into silent mode um this meeting will be re-broadcast on dc tv channels nine in the following days wednesday and thursday at five friday at six a.m saturday 8 a.m and sunday at 2 p.m the meeting will be rebroadcast on dc tv channel 18 on monday and saturday at 12 p.m and thursday at 3 p.m ms genther can we have a roll call please shannon jenkins yes mary wait yes kathleen emerald yes john nunes yep chris oliver yeah thank you everyone uh the first item on our agenda for the evening is public comment if anyone would like to make a comment and any of the items that are on our agenda i would ask you to please step up to the podium state your name and briefly share your comments so that everyone has a chance to share their thoughts hello my name is lynn turner and i am speaking to the item on the agenda that is listed under old business and it's called face coverings and it has the word vote next to it i first want to say i'm very grateful to governor baker after consulting public health officials and and considering that kids are very low risk for serious illness from cobia 19 and considering their mental health from being in masks for two years for six plus six or more hours or six hours a day for school school days for two years and the low covid count in massachusetts and uh for the number of our states we have a low covid count we're on a steep decline for covid and even in the hospital beds we're at pre-pandemic levels in many hospitals his decision to lift the mask mandate i think is a sound one i applaud our superintendent for quickly trying to react to the celebratory news for massachusetts and how well we are doing facing this pandemic it's time to give our kids a sense of normalcy they've earned it even jeff reilly the state education commissioner said it will make it easier for the students to learn and our own and let's see i i know that many will still be wearing masks which is great and it should be by choice the mandate should be lifted that is my very strong opinion and i think it is a sound one and i think many think it is sound so i urge our school board to please support this ruling by governor baker i hope that we can instead support uh that we focus on creating a supportive environment that respects everyone's choice of what is best for them thank you anyone else like to provide public comment please step up to the podium and state your name good evening my name is pedro castanera i am a member of the community here in dartmouth i have two school-age children in the school system here and i'm also a product of the dartmouth school system i'd like to strongly uh reinforce what was just said that i also agree that it's long been long enough two years of masking forced masking of our children is uh more than enough if they want to wear them by choice that's fine but if they shouldn't and if their parents and their families choose that that's not appropriate or necessary i don't think anybody else should have the right to tell them to do it i'd appreciate that the school committee today uh take the information that desi provided and move forward with the 28th of february as the date to unmask our children thank you thank you anyone else wishing to provide comment please step to the podium state your name and share your thoughts hi good evening thank you my name is jeannie tripp and i no longer have any children in dartmouth schools i am a product of dartmouth schools i've lived here since i was seven years old i have three children who graduated dartmouth schools i knew the dedication and the love that this community showed my children i only want to reiterate what lynn said and the previous speaker as well that i firmly believe that we as parents should be making those children the choices for our children and if the governor and dusty is going along with it then everybody should be thank you anyone else wishing to make comments please step up to the podium and state their name my name is dan turner and i am a parent of two children here at the dartmouth school systems and i want to thank you for the opportunity to have public opinion on this matter the children have been going on now for two years with the uh the lockdowns the mandates on the masks and uh there's plenty of evidence now that state that we are really getting to the point where we should be returning to normalcy there are countries around the world that are actually lifting all the mandates states in this country as well there's evidence that is uh now out that proves the fact that these mass do a lot more harm than good as far as cloth mass the virus can travel right through it it doesn't really prevent the spread if it does it's a very low percentage so i implore you today to make the right decision an educated decision to lift the mask mandate and return our children back to a state of normalcy within the dartmouth public school system thank you thank you there's other comment please step up to the podium state your name good evening my name is adam herrera i have three children in the dartmouth school system and just to piggyback on what the previous speakers said um i just want to reinforce and say that it is very harmful to kids as a gas detection specialist i detect harmful gases every day and i've measured the levels of co2 under they get under the masks and they reach over 30 000 ppm which is very hazardous and i just also wanted to ask if there's going to be support for kids that are having difficulty after the masks come off as far as mental health suicide rates are up for kids depression anxiety is skyrocketed and i just hope that there is programs and the nurses are looking out for these you know signs of suicide and depression that is all thank you thank you if anyone else would like to make a comment please step up to the podium state your name share your thoughts briefly hi my name is ken raposo i'll try to be beef so much to say so we moved here from brazil a few years ago my daughter is a school choice kid we are from westport she was very happy freshman and sophomore year here on top of her class in junior year with at home and then hybrid learning she crashed she has been rejected from every a-list college she has applied to so far we have all heard about the mental health toll this has taken on kids my daughter had the crisis center called in to help her last month and will now miss a day of school per week for inpatient group therapy why because the eight hours have covered this and covered that and vaccine this and vaccine that has driven her nuts she's not alone last week the governor and deci said schools in the state can go mask optional the school has always followed desi the superintendent has also agreed with that call for two years students like my daughter have done what the school board and the teachers unions have asked of them now it is time for the school board and the teachers turn to do what the students want and by the way have you ever polled to see what they wanted because i don't think you ever have the boston globe in the boston herald told local parents about masking and at least 80 percent in boston said it was time to go boston if tessie's rules were fined before they should be fine now let's just call it a truce follow what bonnie gifford had said the students will be happy and anyone who is still worried can still wear a mask it's a win-win thank you anybody else would like to make comment please step up to the podium state your name share your thoughts briefly hello my name is nicholas pike i have uh two twin boys that are going to be entering the school system next september they follow the eec guidelines through their local daycare in dartmouth that they're attending now which states that when they turn five next month they'll be required to wear a mask eight hours a day i don't think it's right for my children to have spent the past four years unmasked and now be forced to wear a mask i also don't feel it's right that children of that age should be forced to wear a mask at all for eight hours a day this should be our choice as our parents of our children and i think it's time for the mass policy to go thank you we have a few more minutes for public comment if anyone would like to step to the podium and share their thoughts please do so now hi elizabeth neto a school teacher in the dartmouth system i see 398 students and i believe that masks are keeping us safe as a teacher who sees that many children every week please keep us safe thank you all right seeing no other takers on public comments all right please step up to the podium state your name hi good afternoon my name is name is stacy martin i have two boys in the school system i also work in the vocational school nearby greater nebraska volk i work hand in hand with them and the nurses work tirelessly through this the masks in my opinion they don't work we have a positive case maybe rate of one or two kids per week they're not transmitting it in school they're having sleepovers they're doing sporting events how can you prove that this is happening in schools and you're punishing them and letting them sit in masks for hours they don't have a normal life they have it depression anxiety this is wrong it's child abuse please end it thank you [Applause] all right so it's now 6 45 so unless there's anyone who else who wants to make one last brief comment we're going to move on to the next item on our agenda seeing none next we're going to move on to the approval of the minutes i'll entertain a motion to approve the regular uh session minutes from january twenty-two move madam chair second all right so i have a motion by mr oliver a second by ms wade is there any discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed abstentions so that passes unanimously uh next i'll entertain a motion to approve the executive session minutes of january 24 22.

okay so just to confirm that we're still pulling from master two we haven't touched esther three yet have not spent any of us or okay and obviously we do have several positions that's funded through these grants as we know um which leads me to my next question overall i know we proposed one teaching position at quinn the in the behavior person rbt do we expect i guess at the end of the day are we looking at a um you know a net gain or a loss of fte across the district what are we looking at for ftes is it going to be constant or we know through attrition through retirements whatever it may be um where do we stand as far as um gaining or losing overall staff there's some information in your okay on your budget about that so um based on where we are with this proposal as it currently stands we would have an increase over the fy 22 budget of three and a half um staff members okay so thank you mr colley one last question in regards to which i i i agree with the um this restructuring of the curriculum position i would just ask before we you know at some point before we take a vote on our final budget that i'd like to see some type of job description as well as a salary range for these positions as well as long as you're speaking about that one thing uh as soon as the committee has discussion that i i expect those positions to be um i expect us to have a lot of internal very qualified people that would be applying for those positions sure so i've heard yeah and um which i'm hopeful for because obviously these are people that know what we're doing and have been doing for many years in the district with that said then i would expect a domino effect so it will be imperative for us to get those postings up sooner than later and as far as the budget pro so it's almost like it would have to be even an anticipated posting without even final approval with the town etcetera because that will be way too late to get those posts so what what are you thinking for a timeline doctor given as far as post as far as getting the postings up which i fully agree with yeah at least myself i would i would like to do them like after right after vacation to be honest so okay think about that yeah posting and then starting the process can still have time we'll still have time to take place and we'll be going through the budget process but to be able to get folks um interested and applying and then i i just would like to get that done sooner than later sure no i completely understand i'm just speaking for myself you know even if you can get us some type of draft description and what you're thinking of as a salary range for these positions as well thank you mr dance yeah thank you madam chair uh just to piggyback on what mr oliver was saying i agree i mean personally uh at this point uh you know get them posted you know with the with the caveated you know approval you know budget approval will be required so at least you know who's interested who's out there and what that domino effect is type of type of deal so that way you know every again i agree with chris get it get it get it started and get it going with regards to the budget uh you know it's always disappointing to sit there and see you know the wants and and the haves and the have-nots type of deal that that take place and then you know i've said i've said this before and i'll continue to be the broken record this is not you know people are not looking for the taj mahal here they're looking for the basics to to keep things running in in that so um it's it's disappointing i applaud the the use of uh you know the grants you know for the rvt and the uh the school choice monies for you know the after school activities and other things you know again one time you know the school choice being the one time that that they're being used for so i i have no issues with that i will go through this i will you know make an appointment with mr kylie with all my questions and come in and sit down and kill three hours of his afternoon but uh no seriously and thank you very much you know sorry i killed the tree but you know miss amarillo thank you yeah i i tend to like paper as well but um i'm trying i'm trying to be a little bit more technologically savvy um yeah um so let's see you know going in the middle at least there's some more questions that might be a little original when you collapse that everybody's pretty much asked a lot of them in terms of you know i um the rbt i think this uh but you know this position is is certainly uh necessary um it's a it brings a skill set to kind of nuance just a again bring it into my i have a child who benefits from this type of position where that redirection at the right time in the right way makes or breaks the day the week really and um you know seeing kiddos coming back to school um and having you know learning well and everything but still kind of uncovering those struggles and and and and difficulties that they have that are most vulnerable students um this position though is district-wide um and i can only imagine looking at although different types of positions the not funding you're not able to fund some interventionalists for special education middle level um i think in quinn would this position kind of hold like a high caseload or how are those trained ta building the credentials within rtas going to work in terms of district-wide are they going to be sitting in a certain school are they going to be floating um or do we not know yet yeah we have folks on staff now that are in schools assigned to schools but we're just seeing an increasing need yes as you know requirements on ieps so we're not quite sure um there could be a small caseload to start but the need is definitely there and rather than contracting out you know having our own people on staff is certainly a savings so we're not sure uh okay and each year actually sometimes these kind of folks might get moved just like an slp we arrange the schedules and stuff like that yep yep um thank you and let's see and i just had a question you know you talked about the sr2 the s3 money um how does sort of our obligation with uh soa kind of uh um you know what are the implications of pre-pandemic you know i'm all for the equity but those the monies from that didn't come to us we were kind of held harmless if i remember correctly um the student opportunities act i do know that i see online our proposal and our plan and all the the you know the deadlines of the start dates and all of the the requirements needed how has that implicated the resources needed for some of all of the all of the above we've gotten no funding from right at all but we do have the obligation to do all the reporting and paperwork and you know so it's um right statewide it's it's great that they're spending more money on education yeah i would have liked that they spent a little bit here but they didn't yeah so yeah were you able though to sort of put things that we're already doing you know we've got a great emphasis on social emotional health of our students even pre-pandemic and obviously we're you know still working through a lot of that it's very difficult when we developed the plan we basically used what we were already doing it's what you're saying knowing we weren't getting extra money for it but we had to continue to do the work that we're doing yeah okay thank you and thank you for that and and jim thank you i'm i know i'm going to have more questions um you know i'll be looking through this and studying this some more but um thank you for your continued sort of uh ability to just break things down for us um in terms of yeah all of the dollars i'm welcome thank you for your consideration just wait yeah no i just will echo again what my colleagues have said and you know say thank you very much it's hard to look at these numbers at times you know i'm not gonna lie especially those unfunded requests um certainly i've sat in school council meetings at demelo and every you know and i know that when they're asking you know it's not it's not to go to disneyland for the fourth time the year you know they're they want to buy fruit at the grocery store you know it's that kind of thing so i really feel like um you know it's hard to see um i'm really grateful for all the work that you've done and i think it's significant to look and see that you know we're dropping our administrative costs by 14.5 i mean that's that's a lot of work on your end it's a lot of restructuring i think it's you know i i'm again i'd like to see the breakdown of those positions i think it's going to help us you know i i have been concerned that we don't have enough connect you know relationships aren't as strong as they need to be between our schools you know from a vertical curriculum standpoint so i think it's really going to make a dramatic difference in that so um so i'm excited to see that um you know and ultimately you know so much of this what we can fund is not enough and we're so dependent on our parent teacher organizations and our music organization it's just a shame that they have to do as much as they do but you know i'm so thankful that they they do work so hard i'm seeing a lot of great work happening in each of those elementary schools i know over at the middle school um you know it's it's just a lot and so and certainly you know there's the music association i mean the amount of work that those parents put in but it's you know again it's unfortunate and i i look at things like text and library books you know just when i think of that broken out you know and even our um you know our online text and the same funding i know what our history books look like i mean it they are incredibly dated and it's uh and again that those resources don't stretch that far so again whatever funds we get from other groups you know i'm very grateful but it's it's a shame that we are in the lowest 16.5 percentile for per people spending in the state i think that's uh that's a that's unfortunate for and i think we get way more than that from our schools and our educators i think we are very very lucky for what we put in so that will be my thank you miss waite uh mr kylie i have a couple questions um can you remind me we talked about the the student parking fee did we eliminate or does this budget eliminate the transcript fee yes we're prepared to eliminate the transfer that one you know yeah okay yeah it's no money i already put the money out of my pocket to pay for my kids but going through that process it just made me realize what a barrier is to some kid so i would really like to see that fee right go away so this budget did not eliminate the parking fee though i i get that and i can live with that but i really do want us to get rid of that transfer because it is an active access and equity issue um the second one i want to go back to uh mr oliver's points about esser and you know i've mentioned this before that i have concerns about our um these are all needed positions but we're going to fall off a fiscal cliff and also it's it's we've got some recurring funding going on here so i would like to see at some point some sort of report about how we're spending and where we are um because i think you know down the road in a little bit whoever's in these chairs and this and this table are going to be have to go out and make the case for that funding those needs are not going to go away those positions we're going to have to do so i think we have to from the start be very careful about tracking what we're spending and the impact of that spending whether it be you know for hiring a social worker how many visits are they doing what are they doing if we're hiring you know a behavior how many students are they serving so that we can really make the case about the need when it when it comes that time i will also say i have some concerns about this is just my thing about the use of school choice and i think that perhaps it's time for us as a committee to have a discussion about school choice we have treated it as one time expense at the same point in time it's been i don't know five or six years now that we've had school choice um our budget is tight i mean this is using being used to combat inflationary costs but i don't think prices are going to roll back anytime soon so that's like there so if we're going to use school choice funding for recurring expenses i think we as a committee should develop some sort of policy so 62 000 i'm not particularly concerned i mean the balance in school choice now is considerable right but we i think at some point maybe we should have a discussion that if we're going to put school choice on recurring spending under school choice we need to have an x balance it can't be more than x percent of the balance that way if it if we do vote in one year right to get rid of school choice then we have several years of reserve fund to sort of back that out so i think it's worth us sort of developing some sort of potentially a policy around that and we don't obviously not tonight but i think i'd like for us to have some sort of discussion about that if we are going to use that money for recurring revenues well i think two things you did put in place a ten thousand dollar limit if you recall that right you did put that in place so if we would like you have to come to you have to come to us for more than ten thousand and then we did um something what i think you're talking about we talked about the ta position because that is a recurring um correct so we did bring that so those are the kinds of things yeah and other than that like a two thousand dollar stipend or something i can't imagine you know that's that's fine i just i mean my concern is if we start building up what we're we got hundred fifty thousand dollars in school choice in a recurring budget and then next year we it votes to go away we got to figure out how to make that up right we have some time balance that can help us get there right to ease us off right but i think we need to think about sort of what our fiscal policy is going to be around that if we're going to build that into the budget um so i don't have a problem with using the 62 000 but i want us to sort of think carefully about how we're going to do that yeah um and so those are those are i think my only sort of uh questions or concerns at this point in time anyone else mr nudes yeah thank you man i'm sure i wasn't going to mention this because town hall gets upset when i do but mrs wade brought it up you know with funding and everything else and did some quick math tonight and you know if we were at the the state average of uh 17-5 we'd have another 9.5 million in our budget so we wouldn't have to sit here and no disrespect have all these wonderful we could we would have the taj mahal and i'm being facetious here but understand what i'm saying you know we would have been able to fund the other you know seven hundred thousand dollars and things of that nature i mean no disrespect and thank you to our state fathers 100 they're not do it you know nobody's doing us any favors up up in boston right now with with our budget and the numbers they're getting if you look at the cherry sheet with what's going on with other communities and more so they've gone with the gateway communities you know the new benefits and you know their chapter 70 and other have gone through the roof type of deal and you know we're uh we're looking for for nickels and dimes and they're getting hundred dollar bills so it's tough yeah i'd also follow up and say though that it's not just on our state representation it's on us right i mean our tax rate is really low and so the state looks at us and says you can afford to do more i mean that's what it comes down to at the soa you can afford to do more and so we don't get more because we're not we're not giving effort um you know i would love to i agree mr runes i'd love to just be at the average right it would give us so much more room but we're not and you know maybe we'll get closer but that's going to have to be on us to if we want to make that progress oh yeah all right any other questions or comments all right so we'll come back to the budget at our next meeting and then the meeting after that is the public hearing on the budget thank you excellent thank you all right um so next we have old business we have a student representation to the school committee um miss waite sent a document to me ms genther passed that circulated too late it's just to start we're continuing this discussion but i thought i'd let uh miss wheat talk a little bit about sort of what she's been working on and we can come back to it sure so i met on tuesday with mr tebow at the high school and kind of went over like his thoughts um he had also looked at the documents that dr jenkinson shared as well just to kind of start lining this up we looked at milton has a pretty solid policy but again like making some adjustments so you know after that conversation i wrote out some of his thoughts um you know if you want to take it you know some time to read this you know think about it and we can you know certainly circle back to it um but one of his you know when i talked to ross he really felt strongly that we should while there are five members that are mandated by the state he definitely felt that we should include a freshman i think milton only does sophomores juniors and seniors he was of the opinion that when we look at freshmen they have certainly very unique needs concerns coming into the school so he wanted to see them represented so you know just you know trying as we sat down we talked about what that representation would look like again we were leaning towards having two seniors who would be elected as juniors so that election would take place within the current freshman sophomore and junior class prior to june so in theory when they're electing other officers is what he was thinking and then the freshmen when they came in they would be elected at the same time that they're also doing their other officers so he felt like that was a pretty seamless process he also um as we talked further you know it became clear as he kind of anticipated how it looked in the school he thought the initial plan i think milton might have had that group meeting by themselves every other week he said at some point it becomes just like needing to have meetings so he really thought a monthly meeting plus then they are meeting with our body and again adjusting the timing to trying to avoid you know large vacation months we thought september november coming back in january march and then finishing off in may um you know and again like other you know details you know i listed there some of the and this comes back i also reference the boston public schools as well and some of what they do because we don't have models everywhere but um you know in the boston public schools you know they pretty well articulated some of the responsibilities of course they're coming from multiple buildings in this case so i consolidated those ideas for what the students would be doing for us you know but really they're representing their classmates on policy issues when they they come here so you know in distinguishing that from those students who would be a student council he did think it would be helpful to possibly have i believe it's miss and the karen dealy who is the is that um who is the advisor for student council she or stu um student what am i trying to say student student council is that yeah student council so yeah so he actually thought it would be nice that it'd be helpful if she's willing to take it on and you know talking about a stipend if she would take on the role of advisor of this group as well so that she can you know she'll know what's discussed within the student council and again the kind of art you know articulate this is more policy which would be more appropriate for the student advisory committee so again so we kind of talked about some of those different you know um ideas and you know trying to convert them into a policy so but again we can certainly circle back to this i don't know if it's appropriate to send it over to the policy committee um again you know i would anticipate that this would need to take place in there at the same time as their normal elections and then we would get that group on board starting in the summer and part of that too is that we talked about the uh the regional committee which was something i'm actually haven't been that familiar with um that we actually have a regional representative to the school you know from our school um to the committee so i i believe josh moniz has that role so i thought that was interesting so perhaps our chairperson could be of this student advisory committee could then be the representative to that committee so that was and then could circle back and tell us some of the happenings within the regional committee as well and again extend that performance and they offer some training so i did put down at the bottom that you know we could consider training as being you know not compulsory in the summer but they could take advantage of that leadership training and i think it would be great for them and that could be part of the meetings as well so again just i know it's a lot to read it's pretty lengthy but just as an overview and then you know you can go from there thank you so i know this uh circulated late so people probably haven't had time to read it yet um you know i i skimmed it i think it looks good um i just want to miss wait to a chance to explain it to everyone um and we can we can bring it back up um dr gifford i do have a question for you though um does this need to go through the policy subcommittee or no it's it's up it depends on how you want to take it i mean this if you wanted to do a little policy that the committee would have this body and then this all becomes the practice behind it right or it depends if you really think you need a policy in place because it i guess when we talked about this this is like what is it j i i b or something actually i actually listed in the so the first page is actually a state law and i just lost my screen right but there is most of the school districts list that first part um or a small part as a small as an actual policy yeah and then the bulk of that stuff it's all procedure yes it's not a an official policy so i don't know do we have i think it's i want to say it's j-i-i-b j-i-b-v j-i-b-b thank you thank you do we have that already on the record i mean i guess if we have it on records already then it probably has to go through the policy subcommittee because we're talking about changing an official policy right um and then we as a committee will go through the regular process of voting on that right exactly and and i did have a question as i was kind of digging through this and me and uh maybe dr gifford you know you can answer this do we have i was under my impression on i was reading through this state literature that it seemed as though we're supposed to send two representatives to the regional school committee is that but when i spoke with ross it was you know he's mentioned that we have um joshua neese so do we have yeah and that's that's what i mean this was all kind of i mean i would love to hear from him and have him come in i just um i think you know honestly he should be thankful you know carrying out this position but i would like to hear more about it as well so um but i just was curious because again i was looking at the state policy and it does seem that we're required to have those too so you know hopefully we uh again held harmless with everything else that's going on i don't think it's too uh critical but i just uh it was something i picked up on as it was going through yeah i'm on the the doa site and it says the ssa the state student advisory council is composed of five regional councils according to state mandate every secondary school must elect must is in bold that's why i said it like that must elect two delegates to a regional sac well that's what i just caught up on too right before i sat down with ross and i was like so you know and again i wasn't even aware that josh was a uh a representative to that group so i think it's really it's important i think for us to order their work because actually they then those students meeting together elect a sitting and voting member to the state um you know board as well so i think that that's a you know you know it's not only is a great experience for those students who go there but i think we should hear from them so all right so can we do we want to refer this to the policy subcommittee is that the pleasure of the committee so where does this stand right now do we have a policy on the books we have a student involvement in decision making policies very small it might need a little adjustment but maybe not so we'll take a look at this and then if we yeah it doesn't include what we're doing we can certainly bring it so we'll have the policy subcommittee look at that policy and then we as a committee can discuss the procedures because it might be okay and i'm on that policy as well i believe yeah okay okay okay excellent um the next item on the agenda is um school school committee policy ebcfa the face coverings policy as you all know on this committee this board the policy when enacted the last line of the policies the policy will remain in place until we're sending by the school committee which is why this is on the agenda this evening for a vote so i will open it up for discussion motions anything from my committee members [Laughter] mr oliver so i guess i'll start madam chair thank you very much thank you to the uh audience members that are in here uh that shared their thoughts and views as well um so i i'm in agreement that it's time for us to um to drop the face face mass mandate as per the governor um you know i think it's it's time we're at a point which we can start to move forward and not look behind us um just just a couple of points uh one being as i don't know if any of you had the chance to look at the masc guidance that they emailed us today um just making sure that if we were to drop the van that stu according to this the policy would still state students and staff returning from five day quarantine following a positive covert test must follow strict mass use for the next five days other than eating drinking or outside so i'm not sure you know as far as what we should do with that just making sure that the district's following up with that on the other thing which i just i didn't know that i did not know this until i just read it was mass will be required in all school health offices how's the district handling that um and the other thing that i have and obviously it's a federal uh regulation with busing right right it's it's still that's at the federal level with transportation i guess my question is with the um i guess i have a few of them with the um the the classrooms and all that and with the buildings uh would we continue would what's the plan from the school district from the administration as far as right now we're in pods i believe we're plotting students will potting stay in place for for the at least for the next couple weeks so we going cafeterias so if you could just share a little bit about like the the procedures that have we we've put in place is it just going complete you know right back to normal sure um well i actually met with the elementary admin team today and um we decided you have to remember that some of these things that are put in place then we have the resulting contact tracing so the potting while we did the pods was to make it easier for contact tracing and prevent that so that's gone away right so there really is no sense in maintaining a pod to be honest there's no sense so what we discussed today was the only thing we wanted to keep just as is for now is just the structure of the lunchrooms with the desks the kids can talk before you know now we've been keeping them kind of quiet they've been showing movies etc but let him talk and function normally but just not get rid of that little bit of a distance right now i mean you've all seen it with just the desk and only because one of the things is it's kind of um almost impossible to hurry up and move everything between now and sure next week so just to kind of slowly get back into that the middle school i know is doing the same thing they're just slowly evolving back into the into the lunchroom you have to think too some of these kiddos haven't even been in there in two years right the way they've been separated but um they they really want to focus on creating as much normalcy as possible get rid of the pods all of that and to your point mr kiley's made sure that we have enough mass for the nurse's office that's because of the dph any medical area you have to have a mass just to make sure when kids go in or whatever that they have one and getting on the bus as well so we're hopefully uh be able to keep that in place for now i didn't know mr kylie just told me march 18th perhaps the bus uh restriction goes away yeah it's at the at the current time it's through march 18th now they could revisit it i don't know but it's the cdc and the tsa yeah so okay we'll see what happens with that thank you uh thank you for your comments so last but not least my i'll just leave the committee with uh with this that uh i'm fully in support of dropping the mandate um you know my only thing is we're doing it right after school vacation i've had several people several families reach out to me that i also had a family i think we all got that mother reach out to us about you know putting on a survey to solicit feedback from all the stakeholders the families she had some concern i guess i don't know if she works for all rochester regional but someone someone in her family was there and she thought that was very you know she welcomed that um to still get a gauge from the families um so you know it's neither here nor there that's something we we didn't do you know maybe we should have but at the end of the day um we didn't and i'll just say you know my only concern is dropping it the day after um returning from february break and do we do we leave it in place for another five days other than that i'm in support of dropping it mr nance yeah thank you madam chair um a couple of questions i have for the superintendent uh with this coming up on september 28th what does this do for like visitors coming to school spectators at you know athletic events music things coming up you know band competitions in we've got you know a band competition coming up the 19th of march nezba finals you know the beginning of april what does that do for spectators and and the light coming here it just allows them to commit even now with athletics like for example at the um the ice arena there's no mandate there it's not our property so we've we've strongly encouraged so with that said with the mandate being dropped we we won't require it one thing we did talk about this morning was we're just going to hold off on visitors per se to our elementary schools like we've really held off on that as far as presentations and things but we thought we'll just hold off a little bit as the warmer weather starts to come in and windows are open and we can be a little bit more outside so but to your point um really the mandate would be gone at that point the other one was the role of yes questioned on lunches so that'll take care of that yeah i i kind of agree with you know this policy you know going going away one of the things that i you know struggled with but i think that we need to do is you know put you know i know we're going to have to make a motion to uh amend this policy to make it go to rescind this policy but what i'd like to see happen is that uh to be a caveat on it uh that if you know unfor fun you know god forbid this blows up again with whatever whether it be the covet or another variant or something of that nature and between federal state and local authorities they come up with you know they come back with the mask mandate that the superintendent be allowed to implement at asap without coming back to this committee because it could happen tomorrow and we're not meeting for three weeks right type of deal so we end up between a rock and a hot they end up between a rock and a hot place so that would allow the you know the administration to to implement that policy back so other than that that's all if the state implements a mass mandate we have to comply with them well i understand that i'm not sure dr gifford wants to get out over skis without us on a mass mandate if the state doesn't implement it but we can talk about that we can right yeah fine that's all i have this amarillo yeah um yeah to me this is like a formality so um you know we talk about the numbers going down um i think of this body i think i was the last to be vaccinated because i was worried about implications and my son has medically complex and i was worried about you know reactions with him and uh you know and all has been well uh barring a couple of scares here and there um and you know you talk about social emotional well-being i know my daughter is very um you know is active in softball and in sports and she she's a black belt in taekwondo she's wearing a mask you know she's complying or not outside and basketball they didn't have whatever um and i know she has some worries so you know of of of her brother who goes to hockey games wears his mask down below his nose sometimes but he manages well because he knows it means it's access to you know over the last few years he knows he knew enough that it was meant access to fun stuff for him but um you know students like her are probably going to be a little bit more concerned about the well-being of you know some kiddos just might they're gonna have to get used to this and so i think if we're just gentle and kind and and um i i try not to but i read social media and it's like oh you're talking about me and i'm right here but that didn't happen but um you know there had been some comments that i was reassured to see some comments around parents who might have used the disparaging phrase around what this is now saying well we're going to teach our kids to go to school and be kind to those students my daughter i asked her she's in the middle school she can make some decisions some and she's very mature and i asked her she is going to be um she decided she wants to wear her mask the first few days or first week after february vacation good for her and and maybe she'll change her mind by that time but as long as i think we're concerned i did i think chris and i i don't know we received a few just to us emails i noticed and maybe others oh yeah i don't ever get them from the town side fyi i just get them to you know through the school department website but so i wonder if i miss some sometimes but um you know there are family you know parents that are concerned and there are parents who have a strong opinion on it one way or the other but all that to say i think as long as we're kind and compassionate and understanding and and make it not a big deal whether a student right you know and nip anything in the bud where you might hear a student kind of reiterating something they heard from somebody or a comment from a particular opinion one way or the other whether a student is or isn't wearing a mask it's go we have to give each other grace again and just kind of let that kind of play out but with um you know compassion and understanding that's how we're gonna get through this so i mean i again this is a formality to me i was like what what's the hubbub but you know uh but here we are and you know we made the policies so we have to get rid of it and you know if we so choose so that's it miss wait yeah so um yeah i i think it's time you know i'll just you know i i i do have this share mr oliver's concern then and it probably will happen we will have a bump when we come back from vacation i mean that's going i anticipate that will happen um i know that my daughter has already said she's gonna wear it through the hallways because she feels less comfortable in the classroom she may not you know so again but i i do appreciate the sense of you know we've come to this we're the kind of the last group still wearing masks which again which again i think we're at that moment if things change i think we you know from the state we need to reassess but um i think we do i do believe that you know certainly they've gotten us through the a lot of the worst effects of the pandemic it's why the students you know haven't gotten ill is because of the safeguards from schools because safeguards that we've had in place i think it's happened from sleepovers and things like that that have been happening outside of school so i am you know i have to say that i'm happy with our policy i think it was good i think it's time now for us to kind of move on you know and you know we want our little you know youngest learners to be able to see their teachers faces in each other's faces and you know with language i mean there are certain concerns so absolutely okay so that's so i i vote to every sentence so i'm i'm also inclined to to remove the mass mandate but i do have a few questions um you know i i talked to our our campus you know virologist about this question look to him for guidance because i mean he's been consulting for businesses movies schools every you name it he's been doing that and you know his his sense and in my sense too is is it's time to remove the mass but not because we're not in a pandemic anymore i mean i just looked up our 14-day positivity rate in dartmouth is 12.99 our vaccination rate is 65.7 percent right so i'm not i'm not willing to make the argument that we're out of the pandemic yet we're still in it but we do know that kids are far less really likely to get sick right and so um there are benefits to removing mass but um so a couple of questions one of the things he suggested to me is that there is there are questions about sort of access to high quality mass one of our speakers noted right that the cloth mask they don't really work right for those people who might want high quality masks particularly children's mask and 95s but do not have access to them would we again this i'm not saying that everyone has to get a can 985 nas but if you feel uncomfortable from mass unmasking and you want a quality mask would there be some way for us for the children to provide access to them through our suppliers we don't have any youth size kn95s okay it's something i think i might like us to consider to see if we can do i'm not sure i'm not sure there'd be a huge run on them but for someone who um you know might be low income might have immuno-compromised people family at home this does represent an increased risk to them and coming to school when more people are unmasked and so i'd like for us for through for equity and access sort of you know thinking to be able to provide some of those students if they can't have them with the sorts of things that will keep themselves and their families safe um so i'd like to just potentially think about that um i also i understand the the um keeping the lunchroom sort of as they are now if there's anywhere that i'd like to see us kind of try to move back to normal it's in the high school you know i know my son is a senior he's gone through many of the similar challenges um that some one of our speakers talked about we have had some severe mental health crises in our house as well and so they only have the seniors right they only have three or four months left lunch is often the best part of the day you know for some of these kids let's just put it that way and so i'd like to see if we can prioritize if it's taking personnel that we try to figure that out here in the high school because those kids i think have the have the least amount of time left here in in these schools and then you're not taking comments from the audience at this point in time i'm simply saying that as we prioritize the personnel to make our lunchrooms back to normal i would like to start with the high school finally i will just reiterate what mr noon said that we are removing the mass now this is no guarantee that mass will not be needed again and the best way for us to make sure that we don't need them again is for all of us to be vaccinated that having been said i will entertain a motion from a member of my committee if anyone would like to rescind policy ebcfa or if there's any further discussion i will entertain questions or comments mr nunes you have your hand up madam chair i'll make a motion that we rescind policy eb cfa that we accepted on august of 2020 with the caveat that if the virus should start up again and between federal state and local authorities they put a mask mandate back in place that the superintendent is authorized to implement said mask mandate under this policy a second discussion on the motion i'm just gonna say i'd like to ask dr gifford i am in favor of rescinding policy ebcfa i think we ought to rescind the motion do you want the power to implement a mass mandate without the authorization of the school committee we as a committee are giving up our power to the superintendent um this is not about the recent rescinding of the mass mandate to me this is about us giving up our authority i'd like to ask doctor i mean i'd like your opinion either you would like that or not i just think mr nunes is getting at the point that if it was a real emergency like there was something trending you know we have meetings in between yeah so like a real emergency i would certainly want to do that if need be i hopefully doesn't happen but it's just we have the meeting so spread out sometimes that it's hard to yeah we have the ability to call an emergency meeting yeah mr news you have a comment no i was just going to say exactly what dr gifford said and that is you know we're not meeting for three weeks i mean and for discussion purposes you know maybe not march 1st but march 2nd is you know everything blows up and they put this back in place we're not meeting well we meet the following monday but understand what i'm saying in between times the superintendent has has the ability she's going to bring it back to us yeah right okay it's coming back towards the following meeting to reins to reinstate it but and we're just going to ratify what she's doing not what this says no i don't know she has no ready to do it so you know what's going to happen you know she's going to do that well if it's a state mandate isn't she compelled anyway right but this gives her the authority to do it on her own without a state mandate okay well fine i don't need it no i mean i'm just this is the motion on the table and here's what i would say i will vote for a clean motion to rescind the the old mandate if the governor implements a mass mandate we are compelled to follow it what's on the table before us now is a motion when the in the absence of a state mandate to authorize yes no i said and federal state and local authorities put the mask mandate back in so isn't it we don't need it isn't it a moot point if if the state local or federal authorities are putting a mass mandate in place isn't it a moot point that it you know about the school committee local intervening because the way i'm reading this dr jenkins is that it's only if there's a a mandate put in place by riley and we don't need that well that's what i mean exactly we do we don't need the language all right fine miss i think you're sort of responding to the fact that it was always very gray for many many many many months throughout all this sort of leaving the municipalities in the state in the commonwealth to sort of fend for themselves in a way to make the best decisions so i think that's what you're leaning toward like if we had something written just in case they were so vague as to say do it i didn't say do it you know i mean that's sort of what they've been doing this whole time let's be real is that sort of what you're you just wanted something clear so that we don't be stuck we're stuck sort of in a predicament where we have to call it there's a meeting and oh all i'm all i'm saying is is if it hits the fan okay let's put the cards on the table if it hits the fan okay the superintendent has the authority to put the masks back in okay you know for a fact we've all been around long enough no disrespect to mary at least i've been around long enough something pops up you know the superintendent makes a decision it comes back to us at the next meeting and says here's what i had here's what's had to have been done period you don't want i'll rescind my amendment okay i'll keep my motion to rescind the the policy and i'll rescind but i will rescind my motion so are you rescinding the entire emotion or just the amount the just the amendment okay the warfare i appreciate that very much thank you mr dan whoever said because we disagree but also work we also all work end up working together any other discussion on mr noon's motion did we have a second we did i did okay i just want to go back motion by mr nunes the second by miss wait this is ms gunther all set oh my gosh yeah i just went okay yeah i just wanted to make sure that we got the motion the second and we and i just want to make sure that she's all set so the motion is to repeal school committee policy ebc fa on face coverings any further discussion hearing done all in favor aye aye aye opposed abstentions the motion carries unanimously moving on to new business dr gifford appreciated its update a couple of things you already heard about the sale program we have the vacation math academy ready to go grades three through ten we already have 76 students signed up and we're desi is really strict on the attendance so we're trying to squish a couple of waiting list kids in i just want you to know that the naming of the basketball court is will be in process andy christophuli took over that for us so he's working with things like maybe painting the floor etc and it looks like probably early in the new season it will go forward to give us time to prepare the the gym so but that's improv i didn't want you to think we forgot about it uh we're beginning work to review and update our emergency management plan and once again it was kind of covered put everything on hold i'm like we have to make some adjustments to that so we're working on that as well and we're also planning for another phase of team chair training for the district for folks that facilitate the teams because we have some new folks on board plus we need to review for people that have been doing it for a while to make sure that we abide by all the legal restrictions etc um part of school you heard a lot about them the only other thing i wanted to mention for them that they collected soup for super bowl sunday last week to form to bring cans of soup to the council on aging so that was another nice thing that they did and they also also received i think i mentioned last time 5 000 but it seems a total of 6 500 from the feinstein group and the uh high school edmond teams attended the ed camp this past weekend and um that is let's see they've been doing it for three years now and each year it was nice that they gave up their time to do that and they focus on social emotional learning uh engaging new teachers etc and project-based learning and other things so that was nice and also the aesa conference starts wednesday so i'll be going to that and a couple of keynotes speak as speakers it's actually in person finally again michael cardona who's the u.s secretary of education and a couple of other folks that you may or may not know so other than that also on our covid numbers we only had six as of today from last week so it's going down and down so that's it they travel excellent i don't have anything so i'll see if anyone else on the committee has any other items you may not have considered miss amarillo only because it's in front of me that the hockey team won oh four to three that's exciting uh anywhere else mr nunes yeah thank you madam chair a couple of things good luck to our sports teams that are going into the winter tournaments coming up um i did manage to catch uh the tail end i mean literally probably the last five minutes or so of the last vocational school committee meeting that they had and you know mr watson they talked about being here and and such and it was i was able to hear better in all seriousness that's great and uh you know they did they did mention that they were going to be you know working on that and seeing what the problem was and that type of deal so they listened well listen they listened and they mentioned it so we'll see what happens but i did i did see that so i did want to say thank you to to vote for for doing that um with regards to the uh the the music department uh march 4th which is a friday night is going to be our annual uh pops concert uh finally going to be able to get back to that after a two-year hiatus and uh we're going to be honoring mr kingsland we're going to actually going to honor when the night before everything got shut down so almost two years ago that's right so we are going to finally be able to uh to on a bk so it should be a should be an interesting evening and uh our home indoor show that we normally have uh february vacation is not gonna happen it's happening on uh saturday march 19th uh starting somewhere around 12 o'clock and with both color guide and then percussion i don't have the times yet but there'll be two sets of awards for uh one for color guide one for uh percussion because the percussion will be you know 8 30 9 o'clock just for discussion purposes i don't know about the color guide yet i don't have those times but i will be looking i'll be sending out an email to uh look for uh trophy presenters what was that what was that date again the 19th i enjoy that the 19th which is a saturday of what saturday of march 19th oh if nobody else offers yeah no that's fine but i'll be the parent i'll be the parent so she can help it's fun yeah you got a chance to sit i mean we've got our uh jv color guy we've got our varsity color guide who took uh started out this past weekend they started up in salem after one of the wgi regionals were the second place so for the first time performing in front of an alive audience in two years right they did what they did quite well so i'm glad glad for them that's all i have madam chair thank you anything else and then mr oliver okay i just um just kind of circle back to what i had mentioned when i was going over the uh the student representative report and i put it in an original email to dr gifford is you know i because i didn't know that josh had this you know um position i think it'd be great i'd really like to invite him in if we can and hear from him um and hear if we can a little bit about like that role um and with that i think we have a number of students who and you know i imagine that you know dr gifford and mr tebow know a little bit more that are representing dartmouth and you know on regional and state committees you know and so i i'm kind of curious to hear like who they are i mean i don't know again if it's you know if we have a little build in time and a meeting i mean that's a little different but i just i'm curious i know this project i think it's 351-51 you know so there's a number of those students who are out there who we just don't you know again they are chosen to represent us and it'd be nice to hear a little bit about what they're doing in the you know extend extended community for uh dartmouth just a just a thought sure it's kind of a nice fun happy thing too mr oliver thank you i was just curious um dr jenkins if you had made any headway for the march 8th i had uh actually dr giffett had reached out to the aquina tribe and um we are waiting to hear back so i'm just not sure where we're at with that i have had confirmation i said names today ms ganther from the uh pocasset wampanoag and the uh p wampanoag are going to attend the national congress of american indians has not confirmed yet they don't know but we do have representatives from the book cassette and the mashed people up in oak for the eighth okay i'll have to re re-emphasize the invite because yeah we didn't hear back okay yeah right thank you okay thank you any other comments input all right hearing none the next regular meeting of the school committee is scheduled for monday march 7th uh at 6 30 at dartmouth high school i will entertain a motion to adjourn always in autumn all right emotion by noon mr nunes it's so late i haven't had any caffeine today in a second by miss amarillo um favor hi hi motion carries happy valentine's day everybody yes it's a late one [Music] so [Music] you

all right i just got the message that's been a live stream yep okay so i'd like to uh call the special meeting of the uh brookfield board of education for uh february 14th to order um please join me in rising for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of america and to the republicans to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay um so first of all um happy valentine's day to everybody um i am hoping that we don't go a long long time this evening because i am sure that people would like to spend some time with their significant others this evening um but thank you for making the time uh the board has had a very busy calendar uh late last week we did our budget presentation we have we're meeting with the nbc tomorrow night to uh review the furniture for the new school and we have our regular board of education meeting on wednesday so it's one of those moments in the year where there's a lot of meetings for all of us so um the uh and for the people members of the public and there are a number who joined the zoom call and uh and there's a number who i am sure are listening on the youth youtube live stream uh thank you for joining uh uh the the legislature uh the senate passed the extension of the governor's orders to the february 28th this afternoon which we uh eric now you're good at pause it pause it pause zoom but didn't pause youtube so keep going okay there you go yep um so we're in a position where the board needs to make some decisions we chose to do this meeting by zoom this evening because there was another meeting just before this and it was just logistically challenging to get all the board members physically together in one place so so i may i made the command decision to make this a zoom call there is no public comment on this evening's meeting um so those of you who've joined the the zoom call you will note that you are muted and your video is off that's on purpose and and one of the things we have to decide as a board tonight is are we going to go through a process of a formal public comment process or do we have enough information already to uh to make the decisions that we need to make as a board so that's actually one of the decision processes we have to get through this evening i will say though to my fellow board members i've been answering an awful lot of emails i counted them up just before this meeting since uh the the governor first made his announcement i've received 84 emails in the last uh week and uh and uh and uh i spent the super bowl responding to emails last night so um so the uh we've gotten a lot of public input i know you all had a chance to read through those and there's some good and very useful uh input so um eric mike is pinging me saying he's uh he's locked out so if you could just find him and i'll give him this yeah mike i just got your email and i took care of you thanks man appreciate it um so tonight we're working through our process of what what are we going to do to make whatever decisions or uh and we have to ask ourselves very fundamental questions like you know do we have enough information are we clear enough with what's going on in the state uh do we need public com a public comment session uh or do we have enough information to make a decision that we might need to make and move on this evening i mean that's the fundamental question that we're going to be facing so what i thought we would we could do is dr brill's pulled together some very basic information some of the statistics some of what's going on at the state what is he hearing and most importantly what is the advice we're getting from our health advisors and uh and i thought that what i could do is turn it over to dr burrell and let him walk through this presentation uh and at the end of that we i think we as a board have some decisions we need to make on how to move forward so with if everybody is okay with that um then i'll turn it over to dr barrow okay all right a gorilla floor is yours sir thanks bob eric can you share the screen please with the slides we're gonna have eric run this uh tonight for us so obviously we're here to consider uh the mask wearing policy uh based upon everything that bob just said is uh the introduction in terms of the governor's announcement last week for the extension of the uh mask wearing uh until the 28th of february and then leaving it up to the local districts for march first so eric if you could go to the next slide i want to give a little brief uh status update of exactly where we're at so the the legislative actions that have occurred thus far it's really important for everybody to understand this to kind of just level set last week as we said the governor recommended that mask wearing in schools be a local decision and as most people are aware his legislative executive orders end uh i believe it's midnight tomorrow february 15th he asked for an extension of two weeks and after that everything moved forward as a local decision regarding masks and the department of public health actually um endorsed uh his announcement last week and endorsed that position the commissioner of the department of public health was on and spoke at the press conference last week then on thursday which was february 10th the house voted to extend those executive orders uh for the two weeks literally two more weeks to the 28th and we just found out this afternoon probably within the last hour and a half that the senate also agreed to that to extending those executive orders so we now have the legislature the governor and the department of public health um basically saying to us the mask mandate is is essentially ending uh officially on march first that's basically what this means here one thing that's important for everybody to understand that the transportation the public transportation mandate um that deputized the cdc to mandate that transportation still uh consider mask wearing and have mass wearing that also applies to school buses that is still in effect because that is federal that is not actually a state mandate so that's still in effect as far as we know obviously if there's any changes we would let folks know all right next slide eric all right it's important as we consider moving to um local decision making in terms of mask optional if we go in that direction and again that's for the board's consideration i have a few slides just to go through before we discuss is that right now we've been awaiting department of public health guidance uh in regard to if we don't have masks in school as a mandate for all and it's optional what does that mean for mitigation and as as you know in talking with our medical advisor with our public health director some of the key mitigation factors still remain and so those are things like obviously one of the things they all recommend is vaccination as a matter of fact our town has almost an 85 vaccination rate if you're ill stay home if your child is ill keep your child home hygiene and hand washing things we're very familiar with keeping paying attention to ventilation distancing and cohorting where possible and of course quarantine protocols uh applying for when you've been ill and you've isolated and then might be feeling better when you come back and timing all that out so right now in the absence of absence of that direction as we figure things out over the next two weeks we would want to pay attention to update w-1 that was sent out a while back which talks about all those things and we could always resend that to families and so forth um one thing that's a couple of points that i want to make is that superintendents are hearing coming out of the state department of ed in kind of out of the department of public health that the the csde and dph might not be recommending anything for us so that's why it's important to think about what are our uh mitigation protocols that have been effective for us and what has worked and and what do we do on the local level and getting that local advice because we may not get any more state advice going forward we may get some again we don't know um the other piece to that is the department of public health doesn't plan on establishing as far as i know or my colleagues know any metrics where it may mean we have to ramp up mitigation or continue pulling away from mitigation efforts and getting even more back to normal so um those are those are things we need to be aware of the indicators that i understand that the dph will look at and the commissioner has talked about is vaccination rates and hospitalization rate indicators nothing further than that we think that the you've heard a lot about positivity rate we've all heard about that over the last year and a half um we don't believe that that is going to be an indicator any longer and then like i said other protocols uh may terminate as we progress through this we really we're getting into a place where it's positive we should be excited about this and energize that we're even having this conversation right now um one thing as we start to consider mask versus no mask and optional is that through this whole process and to bob's point about the 80 plus emails we received um what i really appreciate about all of them is the points were made but they were respectful and kind and people really sharing their stories um about what their kids are going through and on either side of the issue so again it truly is a positive time and we need to take that take heed to that so please next slider so some of the metrics that that we all hear about and know about are uh case trends um across the state we hear the national ones but i want to focus on the next couple of charts state trends in brookfield our vaccination rate in brookfield broken down by age range and then specifically i think the most important one is what are the infection rates in the schools for our staff and students and similarly what are the quarantine rates it's really important you're going to see some really positive trends across all of those metrics so we're going to put those slides up so we go to the state one eric the next one please all right so you can see um the number of confirmed cases and probable coveted cases uh in the state if you think back to the end of last winter beginning of last april things were getting much better and then you have this large spike as you progress through the years this large spike in january you can see there and this precipitous drop if we go right to the next slide eric it's important to see the match of the state um brookfield mirrors that and you can see the confirmed versus total cases uh here at the end of january and then the first two weeks in february and you can see we've really dropped down quite a bit again we're in a very nice position here so these dynamics are the same as the state next layer this is an important one we've highlighted the the right hand column of the chart this is the actual brookfield vaccination rate we have a weekly report from ed advance our local um resk and they share with us by age each week the vaccination status so it's an interesting chart for people to take a look at it's not one that we publish regularly but we do have that information and it's there for you if you're interested so that's where we were as of the 10th next slide to me i have the next two slides especially this slide is a simple line graph you can see on the yellowish orange line that is our student um actual covid cases at the beginning of january down through last friday i think we're down to 13 across the district and zero for staff that's the dark blue line you see there for infections so again that precipitous drop-off we're a very good place and then the next slide is uh i thought it'd be of interest to folks uh that is our quarantine counts and it's a it's a similar trend you can say and remember quarantine is uh students and families sharing with us that their child um tested positive and then quarantining their child from an out of school trans uh uh infection that is uh in school we are no longer uh doing contact tracing so if you're not doing contact tracing in school then you're not gonna have close contacts and you're not gonna have those quarantine so that's just something this is really out of school quarantines that we're actually tracking at this point are out of school infections and then subsequent quarantines in close context all right next slide all right so so here here it goes so the governor department of public health our metrics all trending positively our health director dr sullivan saying it is time to eliminate the mass requirement and he is in alignment with what the department of public health talked about in the press conference last week with the governor which is through the extension for the next couple of weeks and being ready for march 1.

so um let's all hope that trend continues as would be very difficult to turn back school officials should be aware that the federal order for mass wearing under the prep act remains in effect on public transportation including school buses in addition my recommendation still stands as to all other mitigation strategies to reduce or eliminate the spread of sars kobe 2 virus um so and those are the ones dr bruhl let you out in your earlier chart yes so this has been an evolving discussion with our public health uh director i mean two weeks ago he was much more cautious last week when he sent us his views it was a mezza this last thing which we received i believe on thursday or friday um was was more firm and and he's evolving as we're learning uh more about what's going on on cases so i think that's important to just kind of absorb that the the second page is the recommendation from our pediatric um physician advisor and just for everybody we have two advisors to the district one is a public health director right who's work of thinking about the general public health and the second is actually a local pediatrician who actually sees patients and um and is dealing with just kids so here he writes this is dr garcia i think it is prudent to recommend mass optional policy starting march first based on the following facts and i like that he did this off of facts um a one a sharp downward trajectory in daily new cases infection rate positivity rate in connecticut including fairfield county two a high vaccination rate for the state um which is you know 80 basically 85 and up um i'm a little disappointed that brookfield's on a little below the average of the state but it is what it is clinically at the front lines i have personally seen less than five percent positivity rate in my brookfield office in the last three weeks um i do propose the following in addition in addition to the recommendation to optimize safety of everybody one parent should continue to act responsible responsibly to keep their children home if they're sick and or are noted to have coveted symptoms two individuals who test positive will still have to follow the quarantine recommendations three everyone should be treated with respect regardless of whether they choose to wear a mask or not one of my biggest personal worries is if we let it go there'll be a lot of student peer pressure right and we have to spend time you know talking to students and faculty and other people in the that will be in the schools about you know having um respect and care for those who choose to wear a mask and those who choose not to wear a mask um and uh because it's a ch it would be a choice and then fourth the decision may be reversed at any time if there's a spike um and so there's always a risk in this sort of thing that you know you try and do all the right things and then you know you have a new variant shows up or some other influence shows up or all of a sudden everyone takes it as an opportunity to go party and everyone's starting to get sick again right so um so we have to be careful as i guess the message from dr garcia so um but both health advisors have said we've reached a point where we could do this if we choose to so dr burl back to you yes thank you thanks bob i appreciate you taking the time to to walk us through this well i just think i think it's important we all said we all said that we were going to listen to our advisors right that was important to us yes i wanted to take the time and say you know the decisions this board is going to make is about is about health in our schools and safety in our schools and we want to make sure that our health advisors had a big voice in that and neither of them sadly neither of them were in town tonight so and we felt an urgency to have this meeting so we decided to go with a written input from them instead of having them appear in person and that was very that was very good of them to actually reduce it to writing for us as well so that's greatly appreciated all of their hard work um so eric if you could go to the next slide so one of the things that's just important as a reminder kind of the center of the board as we near the end of framing up the conversation tonight so we really we've got the executive order extension only for two more weeks that is passed by the senate in the house as well as recommended by the governor supported by department of public health our health advisor and our medical advisor who is a pediatrician a little bit about pro more about process i think is important as a reminder for the board the board adopted the opening plan and those first two highlighted bullets really um taught this is from our opening plan is the the mask section and it talks a about in there the board's um ultimate goal would be to have the kids not wearing this and and when the time is right to revisit this and giving that consideration um to make it optional under the appropriate circumstances and here we are arriving at those appropriate circumstances now uh the third bullet just references the cdc order on the mask wearing on on bus mandate so i just wanted to again it was just the center of things it's not to go through and read it word for word and then the next slide eric if you could go to that just another piece um is to remind everyone that about a a little more than a year ago a year and a half ago or so the board per the state department's mandate we were all um strongly recommended and or mandated i forget if it was a man they started mixing our words and i apologize we've got so much of this over the last two years but the uh for every district have a facebook a and so uh working with connecticut association's boards of education like we do in our board attorney this board adopted a face mask policy the very latin the policies linked in this presentation which will be posted after the meeting the very last line in the policy talks about the board having the right to interpret the provisions of the policy and to modify modify excuse me any or all matters contained in the policy at any time subject to applicable law of course that means that that implies executive orders so really what we i'd like to board to consider is is have a discussion tonight not only about where we're at with the data and comfort level and any questions you might have uh or thoughts or ideas or suggestions but really consider a suspension of the mass policy given uh everything that's occurred over the last few days and i believe that is the last uh can you go to the next slide yeah and that's it so really it's time to have the board have the discussion okay why don't you uh take us off the presentation so we can see the screen again so um [Music] all right so we um hold on a second i'm just um i'm just i might my screen has been uh um going crazy on admitting people um so so guys i think first order of business and it's a process question i would ask everybody is when you make a decision this is a decision of high import to parents and to families and to our district so the first question i had in coming here and i wanted to get everybody's input is are we prepared to make a decision tonight yes no um or do we need more information and i just let me expand on that we have the legislature's actions i was really worried we weren't going to have the senate's action by the time we had this meeting but we know what the legislature's done we've seen no input from either the dph on things that we need to do or not do or from the state department of education on things we need to do or not do uh john i think you told me that none of the superintendents are expecting much so right but that's that's often something we were we would wait for we have some written public input but we haven't actually run a any sort of public forum or survey or anything like that so we have a goodly amount of input and i'll just remind us all we got a lot of input last summer too both on both sides of the discussion so um so we've uh we have received a lot of input um and we've stated publicly that we when we had the opportunity and it was the right time our goal was to not have kids wear masks if we could um it was all about safety so i guess the question i will ask each of you is do you think we have enough information to proceed with a decision tonight or do we need to go do uh collect any other inputs and if so what so let me kind of open it up to the floor and see what anybody has to say on that joey do you want to go here sure i'll go first um so yes i'm prepared to make a decision tonight and i don't feel that i need further information as well oh sorry rosa yeah i'm pumped well i have enough info too go ahead yep same i have enough info sharon mike oh i'm sorry same same as joey wrote and amy sharon sharon is trying to get off mute i think [Laughter] debbie how about you i have a i feel like we have enough information but i do have questions um about just different protocol and and implications um should we vote to remove the mask mandate but that you know could be a separate meeting or could be part of this meeting but well let's let's come back to that so let's log that let me see what sharon has to say and then we'll go back to you you know let you ask your questions so sharon am i am i good can you hear me yeah i can hear you enough okay um i feel that i could make a decision tonight okay good as as kind of as do i by the way i'm just so that's unanimous that we all feel like we can make a decision tonight um debbie why don't you go ahead and pose your question and uh maybe we ought to talk about that for a little bit and just for everybody i have uh assuming that we well i'm gonna come back to the decision process why don't you go ahead and ask your questions and uh i emailed um john over the weekend to ask if we had received any input from the teachers union um you know we've heard a lot from parents and we've taken that to heart and you know there's a lot to think about but i think in addition to students we have to think about our staff as well so um john i don't know if you want to share what you shared with me sure dev uh thanks for bringing that up so um it's not it i would have put it in the powerpoint but it was not my survey to share but uh mr petrino the president of the bea brookfield education association which is the teachers collective bargaining group has approximately 240 members uh put a survey out of uh basically asking you know are you you know where where are you at with moving forward in terms of mask optional or you know your comfort level with keeping mass on and extending uh you know mask wearing for all for for a little longer and it literally of the 140 of 240 members that responded to the survey was 50 50.

so the funds that are left over in this federal state foster school program is like 1.3 million 800 000 for infrastructure and about 500 000 for non-infrastructure at this time there's an ii in safe routes to school is recognized again map 21 took it out um iija recognizes it again but there is no funding that's dedicated to it so we don't anticipate any more funds being added to this safe routes to school program not in the existing legislation so the way the way that the congress had pushed for it is identifying it as a program again but not identifying any funding towards it so there's a potential that there could be funding in the future that gets directed towards it but there's no funding at this time so what would it cost to hire a full-time safe routes to school coordinator i think all loaded i mean loaded rate i'm assuming this would be like an sr26 sr28 kind of person loaded rate would be about 120 000.

and we have a county-wide um safe routes to school task force and we've been able to the in 2012 if you recall governor amber crombie signed that hb 2626 into into law and um that was the um a fine based mechanism for moving traffic violations that's what the special fund is about and um h dot has done an exceptional job i just have to say in the disbursement of these funds to the counties based on the formulas that were established through the administration rulemaking and um providing annual reports to the legislature and i guess it asks you a question sorry i just wanted to give a little intro is i think that it would be very very beneficial we feel kind of like a little bit alone out here to have a statewide effort to move forward some of these goals to actually establish performance measures and goals and um it would also be very great to secure some funding with this uh on unburdensome funding from the fine based funds i just am curious where is that money now like none of the counties have seen any of that money for their safe routes to school program this this i'm just wondering is there a mechanism right now for us to be able to apply for that money or um prior to this just counties were given um distributions of the money is that not right ed it was i'm just thinking right and that's not that's not happening now and it sure would be helpful for us to move forward with our programs but what would be more helpful and what would be a big win is to have a state wide safe house to school coordinated full time that could bring us together and we could come up with these performance measure goals statewide goals that we could really start to create safer ways for the kids to walk and bike to school and roll um they love it they love to walk to school and the benefits of it are numerous too numerous to take up much more of your time so i'm gonna sorry yeah i know if we could wrap that up thank you i think what i was trying to get it is why are we here and um is it doe with us i know they had submitted late testimony hello chair randy tanaka the oe hi mr tanaka thank you very much and i apologize um i it might have been a glitch on our end getting your testimony processed um but that being said i think fundamentally what we've been looking at is trying to help our schools collectively whether they're on kauai or wahoo or wherever is there is there additional basically is there additional benefit that can be had trying to coordinate with doe and dot here in a way that we can put in place some basic goals or structure to some of this um the way you know our our end goal is the same a safe pathway for our our students to get to school and return home um of reason in the last year and a half i've worked much closer with ed sniffen and we're talking about this bill a little bit and it seems like there are a number of things in place um that is led through the dot so i think that needs and deserves maybe a a revisit on what we're doing there but it seems like uh we have a good pathway there so i would once again objective is is the same i think we're all on the same page safety first to school and from school and go from there thank you thanks and following up ed just on your end so in your testimony i believe you had referenced um existing structures within dots the state uh highway safety council and whatnot to sort of be the place if we made them the repository where they could come up with programmatic goals and um metrics to track progress etc etc is that generally a direction that you'd be open to absolutely as long as it's part of the overall program like i said this shouldn't be considered just just the program the program is a statewide bike and program to ensure that we connect everybody but we're starting with schools first because that's the area that we see the most conflicts between vehicles bikes and pedestrians so if we're looking at that i'm good with it um if we're trying to carve this out as a separate piece to just be funded by by safe foster school very difficult for anybody to deliver a program on on six hundred thousand dollars so if we're looking at this as a programmatic as a goal as a whole that's that's perfect and just following up on that how can we be so i think this has been part of the the issue that's been raised right you had uh obviously way more need than there is resources part of i think the frustration that we've heard from some folks through the safe routes to schools working group that's been going on for the last two years that there hasn't been the capacity to um or really the programmatic structure to make it easy for schools to or community groups to come forward to apply and then make sure that that stuff's prioritized in a way that obviously delivers i totally agree but but again this is a federal process we've got to follow it's not one that we made up it's one that we have to follow because that's what's required for that federal funding which is why i'm saying that the difficulty in this whole program is that federal peace i'm trying to pull that out because there's no more funding coming to safe routes to school and it should be funded by ta that taps i'm trying to look at absorbing into the dot and making state funds available for that ta program if that's the case then there's a lot of community groups that can develop or that can deliver on state funding we don't have any work to worry about nepa without having to worry about the federal requirements and we're not having to worry about those difficulties in that federal program so for me that's the goal to make sure that we can absorb those ta funds into state projects make state highway funds available to uh to the communities for this types of projects to ensure that we can push that kind of funding out to the public thanks and so just following up so for all the the working group folks department of health department of education other various community stakeholders and so forth have been going at this over the year i mean is there a way we can incorporate everybody into the same room because you know as it stands i mean i was in most of those or a good number of those meetings dot was the only one that wasn't actively participating what's interesting this was the product that came out i mean that was the interesting part i was never invited to any of those meetings so i don't know what happened during those discussions i did what i do know is we i want to make sure that we can treat this as a full program not just the portion that we that we portion out of it we want to make sure that our bike and ped plans are tied into schools and tied into funding that's available to push out on significant projects versus just these small pieces so i don't know what was discussed in the meetings i do know that that all of these groups are invited to the hsa hshc meetings and a lot of them a lot of them come to those meetings to to provide input and then lastly on that point if we were to do something parallel to the state highway safety council within d.o.t that incorporates a lot of these folks because the highway safety council itself obviously is every issue under the sun when it comes to highways and safety and it's mostly prosecutors and law enforcement and other folks and it's only half filled right now uh is that something you'd be open to can we craft something that brings everybody together on the same page so that we know that this particular issue is a priority when it comes to focus on school areas so this issue is a priority but i would rather make sure that we look at it from a programmatic perspective talking about one portion of the program without considering the others is very difficult so if everybody's on the same page with everything because i get it that bikes and pads gotta be required for safety but there's still vehicles on the system there's these are still conversations we have to have so on that state highway safety council it's not just law enforcement we have bicycling league on it we have tommy noyes from kauai who's also a bicycle advocate we try to get as many people from different diverse backgrounds as possible we just can't get enough people involved so if these groups would like to be members of the hschc to have these conversations not only about bike and pedestrian safety but safety overall on the system i would happily endorse that all right thank you any further questions from any of the members or anybody online all right if not let's oh sorry sorry go ahead senator favela um basically this uh uh dlt uh and um i know in the beginning um when i first came in i know we had this the program that we did with paulken elementary walking from the community park to the school and i was partially with with your um with your d.o.t division so you're telling me you guys do have this program within your division uh it's just that it's not funded is that all that i'm hearing yeah there's two pieces right state brought to school program there was a state program and there was a federal program the state program was transferred from d.o.t to the state legislature so it's like a granting aid now the federal program is still with d.o.t and it's funded up to was it was funded up to 2012.

is that going to be recorded i don't know if it'll be recorded or not but look it's going to be kind of funny i'm assuming the kids i hope we'll get a kick out of it uh march 4th our kisa we'll have a kisa meeting in the district and that's just working on planning towards our accreditation visit that's coming up in april into the third nine weeks crazy march 11th spring break and then that state assessments come up the window has gotten a lot shorter this year not sure why but you see that we have quite a few assessments that we will be giving in the month of april mainly and so and i try and stress to people it's one test it doesn't tell us a whole picture of a child so you know take it ask the kids to do their best and that's all we can do so any questions thank you thank you our reconciliation before the bank statement statements all matched uh the high school girls or the champions of the saint john tournament cassidy nixon maddie mcguire and brenda hammackey were named the old tournament team the boys tournament our lake scholars bowl where was held on january 31st in ellenwood where kids placed second in league regional scholars bowl was held on february 3rd in the city we competed well but didn't place junior high scholars bull starts today they're in chase junior high ended their basketball season on february the 5th with their league tournament at victoria the girls placed fourth and the boys lost their friend ellsberg county spelling bee as jade was talking about was on the fifth carissa benavidez placed third ben threw off place fifth central plains as a whole to three out of the top five places so they may represent the district very well student-led conferences were on the 10th we've been 92 and a half percent attendance which was awesome um and probably half those didn't fill their stuff out but i scheduled them and sent it in and they showed up anyways that was great um senior parent night will be tomorrow night before the varsity girls game if you don't have any senior boys uh kspa this kansas scholastic press association regional contest is virtual again this year we have three students that are going to represent cphs they'll have eight entries if they qualify for state it also will be virtual what they do is write stories or do articles and things that they send in to get judged so basketball season is coming to an end this week is the end of the regular season sub-state quarterfinals will be on the 24th and 25th they're held at the higher seeds home gym and then claflin will host the sub state semifinals and finals on march 3rd 4th and 5th we'll administer the act test for free on march 1st for those juniors who registered cpl all league music earl league basketball selection is on march 2nd middle school lacrosse music festival on march 4th high school cpl music in bartlett county on the 8th and end of the 19th march 11.

it's not seven so it doesn't pull fifty percent of it off if you're fifty percent of that and here that what's in what i find interesting is we tried to pass a bond five six years ago that was [Music] less than that final bid for central something 7.9 million yeah yeah yeah um yeah material is hard to get rooftops are really hard to get chips are possible now we have real supply chain for album patrols if you told me hey let's do controls i can't even i don't think i'd get anything for five months boards it's just there's not available so the tricky thing is there really isn't a whole lot you could do over the summer you're ready for next fall fix your unit or went by without anything for long i talked to jesse and i said i was having larry come up here and look at this unit together because he's replaced some fans and i've noticed back from larry on the number of actual compressors i believe we are at before working up there out of the eight they are all the large compressors where like in hollywood you have four large four small those are all four large ones and i do i have eight and i only have four that are working and when i started here this summer i only had three work one got replaced before school started well i kind of agree and think that this is going to take more in the discussion the time to kind of sit down go i discussions all your information sure hopefully this gets the conversation started giving us some options to consider thank you thank we'll be in contact let's take a round of applause time i took off too early you had to call me on the road i'll just i'll just sit here we're actually going into some executive sessions vice president i move that the board go into executive session to discuss teacher negotiations for the purpose of noticing items for negotiations under the exception for employer employee negotiations under coma and that we return to open session in this room act um let's think positive and say 7 at 7 15 with superintendent greg clerk and john sherman i'll say okay yes vice president i move that the board go into executive session pursuant to the kansas open meeting act to discuss confidential personnel matters related to non-elected personnel as they relate to an individual employee of the district's teacher staffing needs and placement and that we return to open session in this room act what time uh let's do seven thirty five is that okay seven thirty five with greg clark and johnny all in favor say hi uh we'll be right back daniel do you have an extension okay all right excuse me okay um on the agenda next is plains elementary school [Music] stewart brad he's the one okay did you yes i okay all right and next gabriel herzog pam fleming and emily denim for substitution troops okay those are all the emergency subs i believe okay the one the first one gabrielle uh she actually has a regular emergency substitute license the other two pam fleming and emily denham have that new license that's just the temp they call the teal license temporary emergency assistance license and they're only good until june the first the legislature passed that because there's such a shortage of subs so those two license only goes to june the first and the qualifications for those licenses is just a high school diploma whereas gabriel herzog she has a regular substitute license she's actually did getting a degree in elementary education and so she's willing to summon that to go into teaching so she's going to be more are they district-wide um uh pam fleming only wanted to do holyrood because that's where she lives emily denham and gabriel both said they would go district white okay so i have a motion from brad to second from dalton and all in favor say aye opposed same sign it passes here okay then we have the resignation of sheriff sarah schartz social worker at central plains elementary in pan styles the nurse first you have those letters that are on the page there are questions any further questions okay anybody seeing that i'll take vote all in favor say i i all kind of the same sign you should pass year uh more approval of sydney's contract [Music] that was a haircut yeah that was he had talked to us about that last month in regards to coming out for zero cost to kind of give the board some feedback on what we need to do as a district i would recommend the board except that if you see down there it says the owner shall pay zero dollars here's a motion from chad a second from josh any further discussion and then a report from the district steering city sabrina corbin i'm one of the members of the district steering committee so um just we're coming today to kind of give you guys a rough idea about what's been going on so first on behalf of the steering community thank you for the opportunity to form a committee of educators to have a seat in the discussions that would directly affect the staff and the students of usd 112.

so it's very important to me to be a part of community and i also went to the town council because i know that chief winn is using money from his budget to find this resource officer position and in support of the position the relationship and so on so i've marked my calendar maybe you guys will too for the annual kickball tournament that they're having to make yes yeah it's 8th grade students fantastic thank you thank you very much thank you very much this morning all right our second call to the public is actually from one of our board members mike fogle who i just want to preface is speaking as john q public he is not speaking on behalf of the board he is just addressing the board as the public so thank you mr fogle and thank you president thomas the rest of the board superintendent john troll for the record my name is mike fogle i have lived in chino valley for 29 years where my wife of 42 years and i have raised three sons i'm a retired educator having served this district for 21 years as a high school teacher as a coach a librarian and some assistant principal and i currently serve on the school board i relinquished my seat just for a moment across the dais to enable me to speak a little bit more freely about my candidacy for the arizona senate and how it relates to the public schools in arizona and more specifically county our public schools excuse me in yavapai county have been relegated shamefully to the poorest of the poor arizona is currently 51st in per-pupil funding in the united states and this status is nothing new as we have been battling for this unfortunate distinction for 30 years within the state of arizona our district as it turns out finds itself in the lowest five percent of funding this was also evident last tuesday when i went to the capitol to testify before the senate education committee rarely are the issues of rural arizona schools mentioned this is why we are the poorest of the poor our kids and families deserve a different kind of leadership in state government and i'm calling for that change now there is some good news there is no need for us to be the poorest of the poor the state's economy is strong we are swimming in tax revenues we can pour more money into public schools right now and never without ever having to raise taxes we just need to change our legislative priorities finally i'm running with kathy ransom and neil sinclair on a clean slate for democracy to remove corruption from politics and strengthen our democratic institutions like traditional public schools i can guarantee you that i will be the only candidate for arizona senate from ld1 that will serve you in a manner that will resolve the inadequate funding issues of this district and those in the rest of the county the time is now from the leadership in government i ask all of you to support our campaign and to act now if you're so interested i would encourage you all get a hold of me i'm sure you know how to do that thank you look i didn't even have to turn it over you mean i made it thank you is there anyone else that wishes to address the board this evening fantastic scene then we're going to move on to our information and discussion items which the first is our student council reporting we have a representative here yes that is me you are not leslie are you no i'm actually what's that i'd ask i'm leslie um yeah i'm standing in for leslie because she could be here today i'm the student body vice president so um to get started um the us as student council our first big event is happening this week where you're going to aasc which is the arizona association of student council it's a big convention that's hosted at north high in phoenix we will be leaving thursday we're bringing 12 people and we'll be back saturday so we'll be spending the night in phoenix and we're going to this big convention it's all about leadership and all the student council so arizona go there um just today we finished our crush can gramps for valentine's day kids could buy a piece of paper and we tape it to a can and then we deliver it to whoever they want that delivered to we sold approximately 110 and this it was a service for our school not necessarily a fundraiser because we don't make money off of it but between buying the cans and the kids buying the paper we don't it's kind of it evens itself out so it's more of a service for our school to just make it a better place and what is also a service is our extravaganza which is coming up in april um we host we kids at lunch they we will hide eggs around our campus and kids at lunch can hunt those eggs find them bring them to us and they get prizes it's just a fun thing that we can do for the easter holiday and then prom biggest thing of the year is happening at sam hill warehouse in prescott um we will not be buying a dj because we have our own he's been working as our dj for three years and we quite frankly are disappointed with all the dj's we've hired in the past so it's just an extra expense we can save and we will be buying a new light set so we can compete with those djs that we would have been buying so ours is going to be better um this will be april 16th from 8 to 12 p.m um 60 for a single ticket and 100 discount for couples and um the person in charge of this is our 11th grade class present and for the towards the end of the year for a gift to our seniors we will be doing a senior trip it's to disneyland in california about 75 seniors have said they want to go however we do not have the money currently to get a second post to get all of these kids to go so what we've been doing is we've talked to we have talked to the china valley education foundation we're going to talk to the lions club and we're working with the chamber of commerce to hopefully get that extra money so that we can afford two buses so all 75 kids can go because we don't want to say no to everybody because it's 160 dollars per kid and it's an overnight trip to california so it would break our heart if we had to tell say no to somebody so we're really trying to gather the money and we as a student council we're putting money forth as well the bus is about 2 000 so we have to gather that money and it's quite a lot so he's working on that and that is it wesley will you come back and report on the conference to us your aasc conference um either i will or leslie fantastic any questions comments great good job can anyone donate to the senior trip if you're unable to oh yeah i forgot um we're sending out letters to the community to ask for donations thank you appreciate it all right next is the yavapai county education foundational grant update oh my gosh josh [Music] sorry i'm not miss bryce you did not look like her uh so first off well i'm josh steinberg i teach the cte program at heritage middle school the woodshop program and i want to say thank you to you guys for allowing a program like this to come forward in middle school and thank you for the electricity put into the facility thank you seeing you at that um so i was awarded the young pike county education foundation grant of 500 and we have already spent some of that we're using that for safety glasses wood glue uh scroll saw blades and and some brooms the program is definitely in its beginning stages and and we have a very long road to go to get it to where we want um but the kids are enjoying it it's it's been a big success there at the middle school and um i think it's going to be really really really well well congratulations on being a recipient any other questions or comments real quick yes please i want to commend mr steinberg for the work he's done he's gone out into the community he's hustled he's he's got donations he's identified some equipment that was a good price that we were able to buy um you know it's really this is a program that's teacher-led and he's doing a fantastic job in energizing those kids um to do this program and we're happy to support that kind of energy so i want to give some kudos to him as well how many students do you have right now seventy-five [Music] yes very nice great well thank you so much and congratulations together thank you all right item 16 mr shaw topic of the night this is the aggregate expenditure limit um there is a presentation up on the screen for those that may be watching this at home this same presentation is available on the school district website it got put up this afternoon if you go to um chinovallyschools.com at the top of the page there's an aggregate extension limit button you go to that there's all kinds of documents including this presentation if you cannot see it but or if you want to look at later it is there so a little bit about what the aggregate expenditure limit is and what how it's going to impact chino valley schools so the let me wrong way oh come on there we go what is what is the advocate limit well the aggregate limit is you know what i'm going to actually walk up here select it the aggregate expenditure limit is in 1980 the exp um expenditure limits were placed on all levels of local governments by a referral to the voters by the legislature and the town has gone through this and its self rule is our that's what it's called where every five i think five years they go through an election to to go above the budget of 1980 it's called home rule and the the uh citizens of chino valley vote on that to go beyond that budget it was approved by the voters at special election prior to the november election where voters decided the prop um 13 proposal they created a baseline year with a growth factor to limit the spending of government entities cities counties community colleges and school districts for school districts an advocate limit was applied which worked off of the 1979-1980 base year plus a growth factor cities counties community colleges have not been able to stay within their limits they have sent them to the ballot to be increased 77 times by cities three by counties and once by community college can you hit the space bar and see if it goes perfect um what is the limit the limit is determined by adjusting the 1979 to 1980 expenditures for all school districts to reflect changes in school population and inflation in 1986 they added 10 percent to the limit and that was a vote of the state people of the state arizona um federal fraud funds state grants other funds are excluded and a local voter approved funds are excluded so if it's a bond or an override they don't count so if you think about what school in 1979 and 80 look like versus schools now technology special ed english language learners these are things that have grown immensely our special ed population right now is at twenty percent in china twenty percent the nation's average i think is about 14 these are students that cost upwards of 50 to 60 000 to educate that we have to pay for and that's not included in this the special ed funding is included as part of the calculations for student budgets and it doesn't cover everything but at the same time it's not included in what the initial baseline was okay so the statewide expenditures taking away those things that don't count is about 7.2 billion dollars the constitutional limit is just over 6 billion that means right now there's a plan or if everything goes as is that the state as a whole and this is not a chino valley issue this is not a yavapai county issue they're using all the numbers from the entire state to do this calculation not just chino valley so we have as a state it's expected that the state will exceed the limit by 1.154 billion dollars a lot of money i understand that's just kind of but that's every single district in the state of arizona does not impact charter schools because charter schools did not exist in okay that means that there's about 16 over the limit go ahead karen please what does that mean for chino valley there's three main funds that we have to cut we have to cut our maintenance and operation fund that pays salaries utilities um things like that daa district additional assistance that's capital our capital funds and then our classroom site fund which is also called the prop 301 that um the classroom site fund prop 301 100 of that goes to teacher salaries so we have to cut 2.7 million dollars 16 of our budget with 25 of the school year left is what we have to cut think about that cutting 16 of your budget with 25 of the school year left 80 about 85 percent of our budget is people so in order to cut 16 with 25 of the school year left it's people's salaries go ahead okay so issues with the limit schools don't look like they did in 1979 special education was in its infancy at the time that was prior to k3 reading and ell increases in funding before career and technical education districts the kind of stuff that josh was just talking about the the ffa program that we have here our computer network technology classes our biomedical classes our sports medicine classes everything that happens out at the cted at the career technical education center that yelp college has all those did not exist in 1979-1980 time frame it uses this is a big one it uses prior year number of students to calculate this year's number if you think about what happened last year we were in the middle of a pandemic the state as a whole lost 50 000 students just no longer enrolled in school we lost over 100 students that we've actually gotten back this year so this year's limit is based on last year's numbers which were artificially low because of the pendant arizona low education funding has kept kept it below the limits so far as increases in funding have been happening there's the 20 by 2020 which was the governor's initiative to get money into teachers pay there is the special ed funding gifted funding the restoration of district additional assistance we used to only get 15 of what we're supposed to get for capital we are getting 100 100 but we may have to give up 50 of that just to meet this limit so these expenditures have put us over the limit and then the last one is our prop 301 our classroom site fund it used to be a proposition it was passed in about the year 2000 it was 20 years long so what happened is when it was a proposition it wasn't part of this limit then the legislature said we want to keep it going otherwise it would have sunset and that that um money would have disappeared out of teachers salaries but when they took it over instead of it being a proposition it was now into putting to the limit so that's part of the calculation good so this gives you a chart of what the um blue line is what the aggregate limit shows and it's pretty much steady since 2012 it's not going up a whole lot it went down initially then it went up a little bit and then down last year and then up the red line is what school spending looks like and what it's expected to look like all the way through 2023 so we are going to have the same problem next year go ahead so the timeline in this whole process by may 1st this would have been may of 21 there's estimates that are determined the annual basis for the limit on november 1st we found out how much we were going to have to cut this is the big one march 1st which is in two weeks from tomorrow the legislature has the ability to waive the limit and we'll talk there's something to happen today that i'll talk about in just a little bit but they have they have to have a two-thirds majority in both the house and the senate down at legislature and if they they can vote make that vote and this would basically waive the limit for a year and then we're in the same issue next year and they would have to either take the same vote or i'll talk about another option that they can do to fix this if they don't do anything by march 1st we have to cut 16 of our budget with 25 of the school year left and we have to make decide or change our budget by april 1st we'll have to do something put something in place well before that in order to get this accomplished okay go ahead two-part solution i talked already about this the short term avoid a crisis in education funding by legislatively overriding the expenditure limit this afternoon both the house and the senate issued their resolutions that would waive this limit all that is basically they've dropped what they call drop the bill so it's now out there the language is right what this is um exactly using the numbers that i gave you that they could we could waive the limit by that amount so that information came out and the board got copies of that and that's on azleg.gov i think is what it is where you can find that information so those resolutions have been published the positive thing about that is that both the karen fan the senate president and mr gowan the speaker of the house are have co-sponsored those so we have the house and senate leadership that are on board with these resolutions they still have to vote on them but at least they're out there okay that's the short term solution long term is referred to the ballot a solution that addresses the issue going forward okay this is a this is part of the arizona constitution and so they could redo the calculation they can get rid of the calculation whatever the vote says um but that would be the long-term solution and the legislature can take the lead on that as well by referring the question to the voters in november okay go ahead is that it looks like um two questions that came up that i want to share um i've talked to a couple parents and i've talked to some staff members um no matter what happens well first of all we cannot make that 2.7 million dollar cut unless we cut days of school and the story we can't do it okay there's gonna have to if we have to cut we cannot go the remaining 70 or i'm sorry i think there's 30 35 days or so of school in the fourth quarter we cannot go every day and make that 2.7 million this can't happen but the two questions that i've had one is from parents is my child going to graduate and my answer is they are going to graduate no matter what happens seniors well i get i have i see mrs wolf shaking her head this is not kid's fault this is not the fault of kids the kids will graduate okay as long as they were set to graduate we're going to do whatever we can and kids are going to graduate that's something the board has that decision on and we would come to the board to make sure that happened okay that's part of the plan the second question i have from employees is there's most employees particularly teachers they don't get paid over the summer so what the district does is take a little bit of their paycheck out of each pay to pay them over the summer okay the concern was am i going to lose that summer pay and the answer is no you've earned it it's your money it's held in trust by the district we can't take that money because it's not ours it's not the district's money so that would be paid out however but you would not lose employees are not going to lose summer pace okay i want to make that clear so from here where do we go from here so we have a march 1st deadline we have a march 9th board meeting if nothing happens by march 4 first we're going to have a plan and we've we've talked about some preliminary ideas and a way to get through this but we would come back on march 9th and let the board decide is this the plan that we want to move forward with and then probably another meeting after spring break that would involve mr livingston in a updated budget revision before april 1st so if the bill was not passed this is this is all that was what would happen if the waiver through the um concurrent resolutions did not pass exactly yes i understand we're hoping and this um i was very hopeful when this dropped the concurrent resolutions that means the legislature's moving forward on it okay it's just we were hoping that this was going to take place probably about a month ago right away we wouldn't get to this point where we had to worry about it there's some um political wrangling going on involving prop 28 i'll let you do your own your own research on that but that's the big part of it is what's going on with prop 28 and again you can do your own research on that but um again we cannot survive this and stay in school the entire time if this is not waived questions for you i have a question so there's a look i mean obviously there's a lot of parents that are concerned that i know that they've all gotten phone calls and emails and everything like that but there's a lot of children that are concerned and i know that a lot of them are you know considering with the pandemic and stuff i know my child that's in junior high he's had a lot of kids that are kind of freaking out thinking you know they a lot of these kids can't take being out of school so you're still i mean i don't know what the solution is obviously but your solution is to at least we're going to keep them in school i don't talk about that at all well i don't want to make any promises exactly i i you know i can what i can say is they'll be it's right now the plan is not to close for the whole fourth quarter um there'll be some of those days that we're in session and some that we're not um that's where we're at right now i just think that that helps a lot of people's minds right there but you know my biggest concern obviously is the kids that are worried you know kids don't want to be out of school and you know this is the last thing that we want yeah um you know we want we want kids in school we really do um we also if we also want teachers and staff uh we want to do what's best for kids and minimize the impact of teachers and staff because if we if there's a large impact to teachers of staff they may not want to come back next year and not want to be a teacher or a staff member because this may happen again next year because we're looking at the same exact situation a year from now so it's important that this be taken care of that minimizes the impact on kids on families and employees because they could have a long-lasting impact that could be devastating in the district for many years and again this is not us just us we are 2.7 million mesa unified 73 million dollars they need to cut tucson unified i heard 54 million dollars that they need to cut if this happens and it's just a matter of of scale though they're much basic unified the largest district in this in the state tucson's right behind them so i think cindy has a comment um actually did you have a question yeah so john if it doesn't pass and i'm hopeful that it will especially with the resolution in place now reason the politician would vote against it um if it were to occur and we cannot would not be able to have school or we're going to have to eliminate some days does that mean we can still fulfill all employee contracts there would have to be furloughs which there's language in the contract for that and so they would have to so the entire contract no but there'd be furlough days that employees and we're talking everybody um from superintendent down to whoever would have to have furlough dates and to save that money so would you explain furlough furlough is basically a short-term layoff where they're not working for a short period of time benefits would stay in place um they're uh you know everything stays in place except for their daily rates yep thank you yeah i think we need to be super clear that the money exists thank you yes it's this is we we actually have the cash we don't have the legal authority to spend the cash that we have so it's not because of fiscal mismanagement it's not because of budget issues we based our budget on the number of students that we have by a calculation just like every other school district in the state we have the cash but can't spend it because we don't have the legal authority because of the constitutional loan and i think i just would also like to to mention that the court does not have the authority to override that this this is a state level issue not a local school board level and just to speak to that mr carter who's this county superintendent he actually writes the checks for the school district if you get a paycheck his his signature's on that so um he has made it clear that it is actually against the law for him to approve what are called vouchers basically checks if it exceeds the budget not the cash if it's a budget account he cannot exceed the budget or the cash that there's no cash but he does not have that legal authority so even though we may have the cash we cannot go over the budget if this takes place the other question that may come up is well districts have esther money which is the um stimulus money or art money from the federal government the department of education has made it clear that that is for coveted related issues and this is not coveted related and they said they we cannot use that money to make up for this deficit and they made that clear as well the department of education did so we have to take our existing funds maintenance and operations district additional assistance which is capital and our classroom site fund which is teacher pay those are the funds that we will need to cut in order to get that 2.7 john could you explain how it is that or from what authority we ended up with the cash well that was part of the budget process so we did the budget process did the proposed budget in china valley the district we did the we had a calculation that was based on legislative values per student that we um were given we did the proposed budget in june the same proposed budget was adopted in july and we are on what's called current year funding which is our funding is based on the current number of students that we have and so we did a budget revision in december because the number of students that we were estimating actually went up so our budget went up a little bit in december we'll have to if everything goes hopefully we won't have to worry about this we'll do a final budget in may that's based on the number of students that we have and that's the money that we are given but that was based on a calculation the legislature gave us so the district didn't even come up with that number we don't have it when we when we do the district i mean when the district goes through the budgeting process there's no discretion it's a formula based on the number of students and the number of um the amount per student that the legislature is determines and some other factors that the district has no control over that's determines the budget all we do is go through the process with the numbers that are given to us every district has the same number of dollar per student and there's a couple other factors that are different but that's for the most part yeah so is it correct to say that in the last legislative session the legislature approved the 1.2 billion dollars that it now says is over the budget yes and there's some some um state laws in place that determines the amount annually that has to go into effect for example right now our budget is going to go up two percent next year our maintenance and operation budget based on inflation factor and state law so the legislature doesn't even have you know that's even out of the legislature's hands that's already passed by a prior legislature on that budget increase which is two percent even though inflation's going up seven percent we only get two so that's something that's already in place that's automatic and it would be any additional funds that the legislature decided to give to the district we'll be on top of that any additional questions or comments thank you very informative uh yeah it's fingers crossed all right item 60 is our superintendent's report um a couple of items here first of all the cobit update is attached very pleased with how things are going um if you look at this chart right here on the week of january 16th we were at a thousand cases for a hundred thousand student uh people in the county um as of the week of january 30th we're half that 504.

so less than half of that so the number of kiddos county wide is is going down as well so questions on code we're going to continue as is and things seem to be working out pretty well um we do have a lot of people out but there's just this the cred going around that's normal we've had it too 2019 it was in december that was going around now it seems like it's they're not even necessarily code related it's just sick people yep yeah yes flu's back uh legislative updates so in here there is a legislative update the district belongs to a group called the rural arizona school coalition and we get together and with the guidance of some lobbyists we um they basically tell us what's going on and then the group which is other other schools in western utah county talk about it and then we may have we may support we may oppose or we may just take no action on each one there's um there's 14 12 baccalaureate degree basically they're changing they may change substitute certificates so you do not need a bachelor's degree there's already a process for that that we've been advertising as a district for emergency substitutes this would make the emergency substitute process the same for all substitutes there is um uh 1211 which requires school districts and charters to post on its website the list of learning materials and activities used in the classroom including websites worksheets and more this is a concern just because of the amount of work that it takes it's unfunded and if a teacher wanted to use something last minute it may limit that because it hasn't been on the website so this this is you know we're all weird we are a proponent of parents be involved with what goes on in the classroom how that is done if it's not a burden to the school district or burden to the teacher this takes up time important time that the teacher may have um civics test this is from one of our lb1 legislators right now the civics exam is a 60 passing rate this would change to 70.

so um i think you're in a situation like that i would have the ability just to say we're going to switch over right now so these percentages though that you have in here these these aren't like hard limits it's still at your discretion right so for resolution one or two the duration of these would only be so long as there are still state legislated regulations against us and then at that point they are no longer yes if the executive order is lifted then none of this pertains okay that's a very good question it needs to be clarified because i don't think we want to have more restrictions resolutions when yeah and jeff i believe i believe we wrote that that way to cover that right yeah i can give you a copy if you want oh i see it's section six duration of effect no it goes through june 30th unless terminated early by the board so it would need board action to terminate it early will a knee board action to terminate early good evening uh so with respect to option one you have a clause in there so section one subsection e which is if the governor were to revoke the covet mandates then the goal would be that you would revert to a mask optional approach it's the same thing that's under 1a but to the extent permitted so for example if the governor were to roll back a mass mandate then you would have the flexibility to roll back from mass as well same thing with respect to exclusion of close contacts and testing of staff so under under scenario under resolution one you're saying that you would be making a move to i'm gonna i'm gonna call it mask optional or mask recommended but it's it's not just mass there's there's the three mitigation points up there you would be moving to that mask optional approach for the time being until there's an appellate court ruling and if the appellate court ruling affirms or reinstates the executive order then under under resolution one you'd be going back to the same thing that you've been doing up till now right matches in place and so on you'll be following the state mandates um but again if the governor were to roll those back you would if he were to remove the mandates you would have the ability to go to the mass optional approach once again is it built in though so that no board action is needed should the executive order be lifted or do we need to reconvene to dissolve these under option one it is uh is that what he is saying is that what you're saying that's what e is saying so it would not require additional board action okay certainly if um if at that point if mr gold were to roll back more than the board wanted you have the ability to discuss that at a board meeting and act accordingly but it would not require additional board action okay and then in resolution two you don't have that same clause but that's because under resolution two you would be implementing your situational masking plan regardless so again if the if the state mandates are restored and say by this time next week the mass mandate and these three mandates are all back in place officially uh under resolution two you would you would no longer be in compliance with that with those mandates and so that's that's in particular where the risk that mr gold highlighted would be of most relevance so then is there a reason why e is not included in option two the same wording well if yeah so in in resolution two the idea is you'd go with the situational masking approach regardless yeah if there were if the mandates were rolled back and the state was no longer imposing that on you you would still continue with your situational masking so there wouldn't be there's no longer a necessary step for that so we would we would be control of that piece and if if i were to implement something you thought was too strict or something you could as a board convene and say we don't want to do that okay right either either way if things are rolled back to a point where you're not comfortable you always have the discretion to discuss that at a board meeting so am i reading then right with two it's it basically gives local control of whatever our numbers are we make the decisions of whether or not to be mass optional or fully vast solely based on our numbers and not based on statewide numbers or anything like that exactly right and and the conceptually it's not any different than if earlier in this year you had said we know those the state mandates are there we're choosing to go our own route based on our local conditions all the same risk would be in place is there always a possibility that the appeals court will never rule and they'll just let it that they will never rule yeah there's the possibility for uh some delay some procedural things to happen in the litigation that might mean we don't get a ruling as soon as we think and hope i mean the the appellate court ruling the substantive ruling we expect by this coming thursday well this thursday it is conceivable that that would get pushed back or that they might make some kind of procedural ruling and then kick it back down to the trial court and so we may not have the clarity but um i don't think the the procedurally the order that is being appealed is a temporary restraining order a tro and that is different than a typical lawsuit it is a much more expedited process and the appeal has specific timelines in the in the rules so i i don't anticipate that this will be a lingering issue with no ruling i would i expect the appellate court to rule yet this week um i certainly expect a ruling in if not this week in short order i don't expect it to linger weeks or months here another question on the tiara just because i'm not a lawyer so it sure was a little bit money but i remember reading something in there about the judge making comments about more focus on pushing things back to the local areas versus the governor making a full decision what specifically in the tro would stop a board from having something like the situational policy where it's really geared to just going back to mass if we as a local area see a huge surge so the tro uh did they did the judge did speak about local authority she did not affirmatively rule about the extent to which school boards have that local authority so the issue would be whether as a local matter if you decided on a certain course of mitigation measures whether that's with mass or without mass or other measures um you know there's there's the same argument people who are not wanting to wear mass they could make the same sort of arguments against you as a local school board that they're making against the you know the governor's state mandate potentially so um yeah i mean the the judge left open the possibility in fact she noted at one point that she agrees that there is local authority but she also said it would be conducted in conjunction and consultation with your local health department so depending on how they would go about assisting you and supporting you if you're doing your own mitigation measures that varies widely from health department health department one other question i have on the legal side of it how does the tro on the in the school mask mandate work with there still is an indoor mask mandate in the state of illinois doesn't that conflict that they left one open and not the other uh well it doesn't directly conflict but it is accurate that what was challenged in these these lawsuits on this tro was just the school specific mandate so the governor's uh statewide authority with respect to indoor mandates was not addressed um so i mean i understand your your point about the logic may be similar um but it just it was not impacted it was not the subject of this particular litigation and the only reason i ask is we're still indoors here in school and we're still winter in chicago and i wish we could just tell the kids go outside and then it solves it but it seems like there's two conflicting issues at this time yeah certainly if um well yes i mean it is there's a challenging thing the fact that we've got kind of these two dual roles the the indoor mandate generally and then the school specific one um yeah i just have a question on option two um i'm not i know you kind of address it with ash but i'm not quite certain how this is not rolled back without bored action because would it be possible to add e in there you know sure so so the concept you're saying you're asking about it so say the governor comes out on on march 6th and says no maths are optional in all schools no matter what yep so that negates this resolution but it doesn't say that in here if we under that if so if the governor comes out and says that then mr gold still has situational mask authority up until june 30th based on what's in here correct correct so if if you don't want that authority to continue then yes it would have board action or alternatively you could we could modify it and have you could approve it so that it is only in place for a certain you know shorter period of time and then you would re-up it each time each month at your board meeting if you're so inclined um could could we sorry i keep saying the same thing but could we also modify it with the same wording as option one section e where if the governor removes everything it then this is removed as well or is that not i think it's certainly so this doesn't follow any mandate by the governor that's why the statement's not needed correct correct correct so we're saying under resolution two you're saying effectively um regardless of what's happening with the governor or the state mandate you're doing your plan your situational masking plan now if you reach a point where you know the state is no longer even trying to require masks and you decide that you want to roll back to something that is less than than the plan that mr gold just rolled out the situational masking plan um you could do so but well you could do so it would if you and again you could either trigger it at that point by taking board action at that time or if you prefer to have us add a clause into this resolution to have it be sort of a temporary measure with a finite deadline and then you could re-up it in future months um we could certainly do that ash if you don't mind just a quick question for you on what you were asking about because i'm looking at like the charts that bob provided which yeah show us that theoretically if we had situational masking it's a very small window where we looking at we're pretty much good so i see why yeah it's more for the teachers when the executive order is lifted if you know the test to stay and stuff like that i think that's it's not so much the mass kids aren't going to be wearing them anyways but there's other situations that we're still continuing to you know to keep make sure everybody's safe so when would those do you have the discretion that if the executive order is lifted you know on the 28th he decides to do it then do you have the discretion to stop testing those teachers at that point yeah because i think that would also that probably also does this suit i mean i guess that would i don't even know if you're allowed to keep teach testing them because we're not going well we are not uh approving the situational masking plan you're giving me the authority to implement it's a situational masking plan so if the executive order goes away our situational masking plan will change okay and that's yeah because that's what i was more concerned because if you're not wearing a mask it doesn't matter whether you're you know required not or optional or not because i didn't see anything in here about those other mitigations it seems like that's just totally left to whatever the law is at the time yeah i i do want to point out because the question was asked about the testing of your staff and the exclusion of close contact those all three of those measures so masks the exclusion of closed contacts and the testing the weekly testing of unvaccinated employees all three of those mitigation measures are are impacted by this lawsuit and we'll see we'll have to see what the appellate court does with those it is it is possible that they could say all three of those are illegal you know they would uphold the tro and say those are all null and void it's possible that they could say all three of those are in fact legal measures right they would disagree with the lower court and all three of them would remain in place and it's possible that they could go somewhere in between you know they might uphold one but rule against another so you know for example it might be that they say requiring masks like that mandate can stay in place but the mandate to exclude close contacts needs to go away uh so that's that's also why you know in resolution one where you are um kind of reacting to the outcomes of the appellate court there's one see about if the tro is upheld in part but overturned in part then what what mr gold would be doing is trying to implement you know your your wishes to the extent that the court decision allows that i'm sorry kevin i don't know if that was i kind of stepped on you at the end of it no it's fine i don't know i think you were trying to ask the same thing as i don't yes i just i i get i guess i understand now i understand that option two doesn't follow any executive order so what is choose to be implemented is we're leaving up to mr gold correct inclu including the ending so if he chooses to even though this resolution would be in effect but if he chooses to downplay the situational masking plan due to some governor's future decision then that changes that so we're still covered with the i guess that was my question at any time you could reconvene the board if you're not liking what's happening with that too right so i get that so i'm sure there's probably an enormous list but what kind of legality does the school face by ignoring the mandate and going with option two uh it's it's essentially all the same risks that you would have born all throughout this year if you were not complying so the primary one and you may have heard about this with other districts is the state board of education taking enforcement action against the school district and that looked like it would put schools on probation and then they would move towards revoking their recognition status and that has implications in terms of state funding and so on now as a practical matter there were a number of schools that were placed on probation over the course of the fall um none of them got to the point of actually having their recognition revoked so we didn't see it play out quite to that extent but certainly isbe was not just sitting idly on that they were taking action now whether isbe will continue to be as assertive in doing that is i think in large part based on the appellate court ruling here um if the appellate court kind of bolsters and reinforces that they do have that authority i i would expect that they will continue obviously of course if the appellate court rules that isbe does not have that authority um then then they won't and your risk would be much lower so that's one certainly there's um mr gold mentioned toward immunity liability you know if someone were to get sick in your in your schools and were to sue the school district um you know in that scenario you will not be following you know the the mandates and the guidance that both mandates and guidance that are put in place you know that are established and you can think of those as sort of the standard of care like doctors are held to a certain standard of care um that would be the standard of care for the school district as well at that time and if you're situational masking plan left you less than right meaning you maybe weren't requiring mass on that particular occasion and someone got sick it would be much harder to defend that in court as to why we shouldn't be liable should not be liable if um for the injuries if if we were not following the the requirements so that's um those are a couple risks we have seen to lesser degree we've seen osha trying to step in with school districts that are not compliant so there's there's the possibility of things like that but um those are the the primary risks one other issue regardless of all this and i know that mr gold has been having conversations and working on this is your bargaining bargaining obligations and obligations to discuss and work through this with with your staff as well you know i think in most districts that there have been good conversations around those and people have been able to work through but there might be some things that we would need to work through on that front as well and the risks apply equally to both option one and two for us as we stand what was that the risks apply equally to both option and one for one and two as it applies no i think i think that risk is primarily option two some of those under option one you're saying for the time being because there's this tron effect now again to be clear the tro does not directly bind you as a because you're not a named district but you're saying for the time being while that tr is in effect it seems as though the governor and the state don't have the authority to impose those mandates therefore you're not really out of compliance right there's enough in the ruling that you can point to if the appellate court overturns the tro right and they say these three mitigation measures are valid state mandates their requirements um if you under resolution one you go back to following those in which case those risks um largely go away i mean there's still the risk of getting sued if someone gets sick but um but under option two you'd be saying even if the state mandates are restored you're you're nevertheless doing continuing to do your own thing so if i understand correctly and you're the lawyers i'm looking for your advice we have three options and all three of them have legal risks to us yeah well that's that's the unfortunate reality of the times we're living in that no no option for anybody is without any risk but if you were looking at the three and having to weigh them which one in your opinion has the least harmful impact you're the lawyer you're the expert we are gary there i mean i think this is a decision we're ultimately going to have to make together i understand but we hire a lawyer to give us expert opinions so i'm looking for his expert opinion well so the if option one is stay the course continue to implement mass requirements and so on you know we're we're looking at a a couple more days hopefully and then we'll have an appellate court ruling um and that should give us more clarity right if the appellate court says these mandates are illegal and they should go away then then i think you need to look at rolling backs and measures certainly but for the time being i think that option one is still a safe viable option for the time being option two which is again to roll back these mitigations for the time being but but knowing you may have to roll them back into place if if the appellate court rules in the states favor um i think that's a reasonably safe option for the time being now i do want to be clear that's a safe option from the from a strictly legal and liability perspective i'm not i'm not a medical professional i don't pretend to be so i can't really speak to that side of it but so i think those those two options are um you know safer ground for the one other legal question i have and this is on two if we have and i'm referring i don't know if you could pull this up but the recommended but not required masking guidelines okay yeah where we have the whole the option of quarantine for five days and the return on day six through ten if they wear a mask is there any liability we run into by then identifying students who are walking around because they're aware if they're coming back that it might be identified that they were now out with pelvis does that cause any issue um it's not it doesn't create like a hipaa violation if that's what you're you're sort of thinking certainly there's uh frankly any which way you turn on this issue there are risks and these are real risk of bullying and ostracization of students or and staff you know made to feel like an outsider so that's that's a consideration regardless um but the way that it's drafted is on they'd be out from days one through five while they're actually positive and recovering days 6 through 10 they would be masked or they could have the option to remain out for the entire 10 days so i guess if an individual parent is really concerned about the stigma of sending their child back that's that's one thing the second thing is um it's probably well different districts will vary on this but it may not be the case that even if you go mask optional that you're gonna have no one wearing masks right it's likely still the case that some students and staff will choose to continue wearing a mask and some will not so the student who returns after five days and is wearing a mask they may not be the only one there but then again i'm not naive to the fact that students look around and see who's who's there and who's not so uh legally no i don't think so but be careful about the bullying piece of that thanks sure but if it's not required then how do we enforce the mask wearing when they come back at six to ten days yeah that's that's a really good question so and that's well as i say that's why i spelled it out there because in those situations that would be required for those kids but if it's not but it is oh if it's not required no but still if it's not required they can still make a case and you you know and then you have to hunt things down you mean not required by the state or anyone this is not required it's an exception it's an exception here because these are his rights but they still going to come to school without a mask so then what do you do we would have to exclude them because they they're coming back with covet so we'd want to make sure so i was just trying to put a safety valve in here for those situations how would you go identify that though to let teachers or anybody know that those that kid needs to keep their mask on for the next five days without sharing information about their health details to all teachers we're okay to do that the way i understand it yeah yeah there's uh there's a an ability to share student record information that would otherwise be confidential to the world but you can share it to those those individuals who need to know meaning like their classroom teacher um you know in fairness though that that would be a delicate issue i mean it will be um challenging for you know parents to make the decision that makes sense for them it'll be challenging for your staff to kind of monitor yeah i mean you want to be careful not to turn your your staff your teachers and so on into the police of you know this person is this student is supposed to be wearing a mask this one is not and that one is and that one is not a it's really hot that would be really hard to ask of them and b that really gets to singling out students so that's that is a challenge um i i will admit yep so bob under the situation i'm asking student staff basically is the classroom the only place other than like lunch when you i think the way i pictured is that students would walk in and when they got into their classroom they would be able to basically have their masks off you mean at their desk or walking around the classroom that would be up to the teacher's discretion on that yeah but it's it's stated as uh you know in the classroom hopefully their social distance in the classroom if they're if the teacher brings them all up to the carpet in front of the room they could have them put the masks on because they're no longer social distance so those kind of it's gonna be teacher discretion on that so in option two we would be in the recommended not required currently yes so we wouldn't have to outside of getting on the bus right it would just yeah be recommended not required and it would take quite a surge again to get us up into the blue or red zones there that that i mean not saying it can't happen i have no idea i've quit predicting that stuff a long time ago but um you know it would take another pretty big surge what is the number of cases we have right now i just pulled it up we have we have five in the the whole district whole district yeah okay i'm worried about the message that we're sending because if we're saying we're not going to follow the rules whether we agree with the rules or not yeah what is saying that students can't follow some of the other rules if we can't follow the rules what kind of i understand what are we setting what example are we setting when this might not be an issue in a week three days or potentially a week but like i just think we're setting a bad example for our students yeah i understand if the board chooses to approve resolution one or resolution two and we go mask optional what happens in the classroom are kids segregated based on mask or unmasked no not at all is there any circumstances is that honestly that's what i don't want to see that will not be our direction no we'll have to you know we'll have to so it'll be the direction of the administration to not segregate kids based on mass status we can do that yeah i can do that in a communication if that's passed i haven't made that statement yet or i mean obviously i've written that up but um that would not be that's not something i prepared for so i would not recommend that that happen and we can make a direction that that doesn't happen yes what if the parents wanted to ask like and i'm just using a hypothetical situation they want to continue wearing masks and they'd like to make sure their child has significant or enough room yeah we would try to accommodate that yeah procedurally none of the three options are not listed on the agenda do we have to vote on each one no no so we have to pick we have to i can i mean if you pick anything we have to pick option so the first option is to do nothing and we could just say we're not going to do anything we're not going to vote on anything we're going to keep doing what we're doing so that's an option then the resolution i shouldn't use that word option the resolution there are two options and that's the option one which was uh basically to follow the tro now and then if they rule a forward or against it we continue to follow whatever they say so that means we would change now and possibly change again in a couple days then option two on the resolutions is to go situational masking yeah and we would we just need to pick a resolution to to go with i mean if you want me to give you a recommendation i'll give you a recommendation and then uh you can you can vote on that or if a board member wants to uh pick a resolution that you want you feel passionate about you can vote on that whichever way you want to go i will support it i'll if you want to hear my recommendation i'll give it to you if you want to a board member wants to propose it you can do that so could we even wait until the ruling if it's supposed to come within days yeah that would effectively be option one which is continue status quo until we have a ruling yeah all right so it sounds like we've got procedurally we have to decide whether or not to stay the course or pick a resolution first what was that we have to procedurally decide to stay the course or pick a resolution yes can i throw one thing in there if we stay the course could we come back at a special board meeting after the appellate court makes their ruling i think we could call a meeting at any time no i'm just saying is that something the rest of the board will want to do i think it i think that all depends on how yeah everything plays out here right now i think we yeah i just want to put that as an option to you i think that what concerns me is that there's not a sure thing that it's going to happen this week would that be correct but i i mean yeah i mean they right the court has a deadline of this week but you know who am i to tell the court what to do with getting its order on file so so procedurally somebody would have to make a motion to approve one of the resolutions if we wanted to correct if you wanted to do that yes so another question i honestly don't know how we proceed with this so we have two options here theoretically both of them might get enough to pass but one might get more than the other how do we decide which one no i pick one oh you got to pick one we can't we can't well no that's not like how do we pick which one is your one it's more supported i mean i'd like to make a motion if should we vote on it if it's not an agenda to vote on yeah it says you you have uh says board action support action you have an action item it's not listed specifically as a resolution but the issue and the action generally are on there i didn't put i put it on the agenda differently because i knew this was going to be a different discussion so i just made sure it said board out that we be taking action so we're letting everybody know we're taking action or that we could take action and take action yeah i see that but usually there is a okay i mean if the discussion is done i'd like to make a motion that we adopt resolution too but i don't think discussion is done that's why i said if the discussion is done i would like to make a motion that we adopt resolution too and i would obviously need a second situational that's yes that is the situation i'm asking is that emotion because you actually asked it if the discussion is done so i don't know if that's actually a motion to move forward or not technically well is the discussion done that's what i'm asking his discussion done well that's what i wanted to ask the group as well is do we want to just make that approach to pick one and go for it do we want to discuss our viewpoints of which ones we feel one way or the other before we go forward because if you had to actually go for two right now well all right then let's option one or option two those are our three options and this is just our opinion right now yep we'll stay the course like is what we're doing okay we can go with option one which is state of the course but we're gonna take a break option one i'm gonna be honest with you option one would be would be difficult because we would be switching tomorrow right and then possibly switching back if the ruling goes so i'm trying to eliminate state of the course right because option one is like it's stay the course but we're gonna take a break until the appellate court rules correct no no no does that mean tomorrow we would switch to option one optional masking no more testing no no my test to stay no more testing teachers until it's actually a little more than option two as far as eliminating okay that's not true option two follows the tro until the court makes a decision no no oh so no because we're going to continue to test with option two not during the court not the period where there hasn't been a decision by the appellate court are we talking okay okay so option two tomorrow if we go option two our teacher is going to continue to weekly test no yes yes yes i didn't i didn't take that out that's not list it's not addressed on the situational masking so we actually have one i can change it but i didn't address that so we were gonna i figured that was something that has not caused us a lot of problems so we would just continue doing that um so there's actually more precautions in place for the time being with option two than with option one just for the sake of clarity then with the the three mitigation measures that i are at issue in the litigation right there's the mask mandate that applies for students and staff there is the exclusion of close contacts right those who are just in contact but aren't symptomatic or positive and third is this employee testing and so mr gold on on the option two you're saying the situational masking would be in place but but the other two mitigation measures where would we be on the you said no employee test or you would continue employee testing yeah we didn't address that at all in the situational masking plan but we did address the quarantining and it would be recommended we will do close contact contact tracing we'll recommend quarantine that won't require the quarantine unless we were to go into a higher level of cases the blue or red rose that's when it shifts over so where does that leave you joe where were you still no i'm just trying to clarify so resolution two doesn't cover any of the aspects of the restraining order well the it's making changes to the masking fluid yeah not no parts of the because then it's his own plan it's intense from starting tomorrow yeah or yeah yeah whatever day we want to start yeah all right okay anybody else have any questions all right doug you stole it too yes yes theory i think i'm with two yes two lauren i'm a state of course because it's not worth illegal i agree i would stay the course option two all right i'm actually with option one but and then bob what would be your recommendation what's your recommendation i would recommend going with two okay um so do you want to repeat your motion yes i'd like to make a motion that we adopt resolution option two for situational masking plan a second ash and gary yes peter no yes no all right okay all right next item is strategic plan update um just a quick update we met a couple weeks ago on a weekend and we went through two days of strategic planning great group and we will uh in the next two months i would say we'll be finalizing everything getting that to you so but we don't have anything ready to prepare yet uh next item exhibit eight is the enrollment update um you can see there that we we picked up uh some students over the course of the first semester went from 1716 to 1750.

all right anybody have any questions okay please have a motion to approve the fcc's emergency connectivity funding before you vote on i just want to make sure you do know that that is going to look weird in our budget this year because i have to i didn't budget for this and we have to make the purchase and i'm hoping that we make the purchase get the devices and get the refund before the end of the budget year if we don't it might if it rolls over into like august it's going to look weird on our budget but the money will be coming so all right all in favor the motion is read say hi hi any pose not and support available seniority lists motion vivian and lauren all in favor aye any opposed eyes have it school fees can i just have one clarification on school fees i want to make sure you understand we threw in the fees went up 15 only for the purpose of we are incorporating the chromebook insurance into the fee if if students qualify for a free uh a fee waiver or if they qualify for free reduced lunch we don't charge them school fees but we will still if they want the insurance there's a note at the bottom that they have to pay 15 for the chromebook insurance to to cover any breaks i think it also goes to if somebody doesn't pay their fees their registration fees they would not have the insurance so if they don't pay the registration fees and the student breaks the uh device in december then they would not be covered because they haven't paid the registration fees are the fees required is the the 15 fee required technology insurance we have it as part of the registration fee we just wanted yes it is required part of it yes how's the current insurance policy work has anybody used it um anybody using our current insurance policy yeah we've had a lot of a lot of use out of it uh so far um it's definitely made our lives in the tech department a lot easier because it's a much easier conversation to have when that happens um so it's a lot harder to have that kind of it's been even more difficult now for those that haven't taken it when that when that happens but um i think this making it required is it's going to take a huge burden off of off of our plates it just makes sense there's no more debate after that first right you know and then in hopes that it also gets more people involved in paying the registration fee [Laughter] out of curiosity have you seen an increase in people bringing broken laptops now that they have the insurance um no the only thing that's spiking and we kind of anticipated that this time of year was the chromebooks that are on their their fourth year the the batteries are starting to go so so we've been dealing with that a lot more um predicting those are particularly housed here so they get used the most here um at least from what we've collected that gets used most here so yeah so the batteries here have been dying the most and that's not something that we've been charging the students for and that's just expected okay all right all right thank you maybe else have questions on the school fees okay please have a motion to approve the school fees for 2022-2023 second ash and gary bennett yes ballinger yes yes yes lions yes patterson yes yes the entry flooring project so this this is just uh part of the the school maintenance project grant so half of these funds approximately half will be covered through the grants uh we're we're taking the main entryways and replacing the tile with the uh the floor grades that you see when you walk into it to kind of get rid of the salt uh and tracking through the building so we're just trying to help that all right oh can i please have a anybody have questions okay please have a motion to approve the bid from charm floor covering uh for the entry flooring project to be completed in the summer of 2022.

the board voted to continue this practice on august 2nd 2021 which includes requiring masks during high and substantial transmission rates shortly after the board took action as you will hear tonight the governor took control of the pandemic response and took that control away from the local school board i believed then as i believe now that that was not the best course of action as schools should always be afforded as much local control as possible as you will hear tonight on february 4th a judge temporarily restricted the governor's executive orders for district 99 and other school districts named in the related lawsuit the board's policies which include requiring masks were then in effect school administrators must follow the local school local rules established by the board of education including those in place intended to maintain the health and safety of students and staff after the judge's ruling was released a flood of misinformation and frustration that had built up over the past year led to a fracturing in our school community we have called this meeting tonight based on the board now having the authority to discuss these matters i have been discussing this topic with members of the board throughout the pandemic and students actively violating school rules in protest are not the result of this meeting and should not be the result of the board changing their policies regardless of your views on the pandemic response the adults need to take the lead and start helping this community to heal rather than working to actively tear it apart our students will never heal from the pandemic until the adults step up and show some resilience in navigating the world by productively working through both the decisions we agree with and those we do not agree with i have tried to model this for our students as i shared in a message to the community yesterday and i shared with the board in july i believe that parents should be allowed to determine the specific measures they have their children follow at school when it comes to the pandemic i believed then and i believe now that schools should limit the mitigations that apply holistically to all students i do not believe in masking in the school setting or exclusions due to close contacts should be included as mitigations at this time because of the negative impacts they're currently having on learning and the school environment now that we have lived with these mitigations i feel our own experiences and the experiences in others in the education field should also weigh into our decisions even as my opinions have been misrepresented by a great number of individuals in this community i have not wavered in my approach i've remained professional i've responded to your emails and your questions and i have carried out my responsibilities to this community and to this board with fidelity i've tried to serve as as an example for how one can disagree with the rules and still disagree with others while remaining respectful and responsible i have encouraged changes within these rules behind the scenes with health officials and government officials with limited success throughout the pandemic after tonight it is possible that measures i disagree with still remain i appreciate the community's interest and involvement in our schools and i believe that it stems from everyone just wanting what's best for their children first the administration board of education and i need to make the best decisions for over six thousand students and staff members while also considering the needs of all of the individuals that make up our community i understand how difficult these times have been on our students and families in these times nobody can be 100 sure they're making the right decision and that uncertainty uncertainty causes anxiety and stress i also understand how difficult this has been on members of the board of education i appreciate their dedicated volunteer service to this community and the difficulties and challenges they face in making decisions in these times no matter what the board decides tonight whether to support my recommendation to make changes or to follow the protocols it established last august based on the advice of health experts the administration will follow their direction i ask and expect our students and the community to do the same i'll go now into my recommendation and some of the information behind why i'm making this recommendation so this is a officially our 2122 return to in-person instruction plan that we're addressing this evening all right so tonight i hope to provide an overview of how we got here including the recent court rulings and some background on how that impacts us i will propose an alternative set of mitigations based primarily on evidence from the educational field and i will ask the board to take action on mitigation measures related to the 2122 returned in in-person instruction plan really key factors to consider as we go through today really this is about the health and safety of students and staff and to provide a a safe learning environment in times of covid we have these layered mitigations that are in place some of that comes from idph guidance cdc and the dupage county health department so we call that the health experts right you know or the health agencies we have continued to prioritize in-person learning i've been advocating for that throughout the entire pandemic the board is well aware of that i believe that we need a path towards normalcy and over the course of this year because of the executive orders that have been in place that is limit our limited our ability at the board table to talk about what that path towards normalcy might look like it the local control as i mentioned in my opening statement was removed from us and i'll demonstrate that towards you demonstrate that again in a little bit but i think we need to to start getting back towards normal we have a goal of providing rigorous instructional opportunities we continue to do that we also have to balance in the social emotional needs of all students we need to support our students and staff and i as i said in july and i continue to say i value the parents role in the educational environment all right so lessons from the pandemic one state leaders haven't provided any path forward for this uh superintendents have been advocating uh since it started give us some ideas of what the off ramp is give us some ideas of what comes next quite often and once again recently we receive a superintendent's guidance at the same time that everybody else in the state does usually after 5 pm on a friday we understand that there are strong and legitimate views on all sides as i will demonstrate today in my presentation right now you can find any bit of data to back up whatever you believe right now okay um that doesn't make anything illegitimate right it makes it uncertain times where things are changing rapidly maybe we'll know 20 years from now that we made right or wrong decisions but right now it's really hard to see what is the correct path to take we know that right now communities because of this inaction at a variety of different levels above us are being torn apart we at the local level have nowhere to go the board and the superintendent have to make decisions to keep our students learning and to keep our students safe there is nowhere we can pass this to like leaders above us have and that has caused this to be firestorms in school districts around the chicagoland area students and staff are tired they are tired of everything they're tired of the pandemic the division they're tired of rules they're tired enforcing rules they'd like for all of this to go away and so would everybody and but it is it's wearing on everybody right now in school districts across the country there is a growing trend in hostility towards public boards and towards staff members take a look at any social media page and you will see once again a million different perspectives a lot of hostility and a lot of behavior that if it happened inside of our school building we would address it i once again call on the adults to start behaving in the way that they would hope that students in our hallways would behave the board and the staff here have continued to meet every challenge we realize that it hasn't been in the way that not er that everybody would like it to be met but we've had to step up and make decisions and we have and we know that right now there's no perfect answer to any of this obviously everybody has the answer that they believe is correct however we're trying to make the correct answer as i said for over six thousand people and factor that those decisions into our larger community as well all right so i'm going to quickly just review for the board how we ended up where we are now i don't want to spend a ton of time going over this but just to hit some key touch points july 2021 i came to the board and i presented that we were planning as an administrative team for as close to return to a normal school year as possible within that i talked about limiting the mitigations that apply holistically to students these are the slides that were presented to the board and the public in july we talked about a shift towards families managing risks that this is what the administration was working towards over the summer and you can see there was starting to be indications if you remember that there would be different sets of rules for fully vaccinated and unvaccinated we were working through that at the time but the administration spent the summer with the idea that we were coming back very close to what we had pre-covid except for we knew that coming soon was probably uh pieces related to isolation if you were sick and quarantined if you were a close contact all right the board knows that behind the scenes i was already advocating with the state at that point that i did not believe that close contact was a thing we should be doing at schools because our evidence from the first well for the second half of the first year of the pandemic was that we were not seeing a large number of students that were close contacts ending up ill that data trend has continued throughout this school year and then after that board meeting this thing called delta started making it in the news and you can see there in the data across dupage county the spike that happens between that meeting or starts to happen between that meeting and our next meeting on august 2nd in that time the board asked me to come back with please report back with what the health experts are recommending that we do in schools this was the updated guidance that we brought back this guidance was mirrored by the health agencies that are listed there so face coverings and masks was consistent across those three health agencies close contacts in quarantine was consistent with idph and dupage county health department the recommendation from the cdc at that time was that face coverings and masks would occur during times of substantial or high transmission the board adopted looking at case rates across the county is our indicator as to which one of those transmission levels we would be in and that would determine if masks were universally worn or were recommended or mask optional we laid out a return to plan a set of details we talked about close contacts and quarantine and then the board took action on that plan on august 2nd 2021 on august 5th 2021 the governor took control of what schools would be doing across the state in response to the pandemic so for three days the district 99 policies were in place we had no students in school at that time then you can see all of those dates in yellow were the entire time that the executive orders were in place then on february 4th about 5 5 30 pm so after that school day we received a judge's ruling which depending on which attorney you talk to right now they will tell you it means a different thing the board's attorneys recommended that it means that the board rules that were in place before the executive orders went into place are the rules of the district as a school administrator it is my responsibility to carry out those rules and policies as the superintendent i am the sole administrator the board hires to carry out those responsibilities so beginning on february 7th we defaulted back to the board's plan we were in periods of high actually high community transmission at that time which made masks universally required so where are we at now with covid in our in our schools okay you can see where this i bring the board a month at a time in these snapshots each time we meet you can see that omicron spike that occurred in society and here in our school districts about a month ago you can see we're down to last week seven positive cases in the school district one close contact so if we look at that trend over the school year you can see we're back down to where we lived for pretty much the entirety of the first semester right the the omicron spike began for us over winter break continued as we returned and now a month later or about six weeks later we have emerged i believe out of it so let's talk about the mitigations that are in place uh in response to this okay uh we have federal mitigations in place these are fed remember everybody goes back to their constitution right federal laws then state laws then local laws so right now uh universal masking is required on all public transportations including school buses and school transportation such as driver's ed vehicles that rule remains in fact in effect nothing has been touched with that that will need to be continued no matter what decision is made tonight state mitigations that were in place due to the executive orders in other school districts that weren't named in the lawsuit some of their attorneys are recommending that these are still in place right in our school district the district attorneys are recommending that these are not enforced within our school district and that the as i've said the district's uh policies that were put into place on august 2nd are now in effect and these are the district mitigations that remain in place now due to board action on august 2nd universal masking schools with limited exemptions isolation one sick that universal masking would change to optional if we dropped into the lowest two tiers of community transmission we also have isolation one sick when your sixth day home that's always been a school rule 24 hours fever-free close contact and exclusion policies are currently in fact and we still have staff level mitigations in effect i won't be talking tonight about those staff level mitigations we're still in discussions with the district attorneys about what the next steps with those would be all right so that's kind of the rules as they sit so let's take a look across the country and look at some data to see what should be in place right so uh where masks are mandated or recommended you can see it's a smattering of different policies across this the country as you know some of those have changed in the the last couple of weeks in a variety of states i think this this was from uh the new york times from just a couple of days ago so it may have even changed since i screen grabbed it we're going to take a look at some of these different mandates and kind of what's happening in some of the states with different levels of mandates so just sorry the last one that's masks are mandated or recommended by the state right so they're universally recommended by a health expert correct this is by the state governmental agencies right yeah they're still recommended by the cdc recommendation [Music] all right so here's a snapshot off the cdc's website for today now when we met uh superintendents last we're invited to we're last invited to a webinar with the idph we haven't been invited to many but we were invited to one uh the week before winter break on that call with the idph we asked them you know why are we still masking here when many other states are going away from this and to summarize the conversation from the idph the key data set that they pointed to was negative pediatric outcomes beginning with hospitalizations okay so what i went today was to the cdc website and i grabbed for for the states that are around us in population okay the the two states above us and the two states below us in population a couple of snapshots so you can see what has happened with uh admission of patients uh by age group i'll give you a summary of this at the end but it kind of interesting to just look at maybe just the graphs right and see how the trends have been similar i'll break down the numbers for you in a second in a table so it's easier to read but so the states that i'm giving you illinois which has a statewide mass mandate in some shape or for fashion as it works its way through the courts here new york which now is statewide masks recommended and it's in the process of transitioning to that state sticker that into that fashion statewide right now right so you can see kind of their graph we'll talk we'll take a look at some things in pennsylvania their mask recommended in some counties oh i don't know why that says seven i typed over the top of it but seven is ohio so this is ohio they have no mask guidance and georgia they have mandates are banned so you can't have covid mandates in your school okay so if we pull all that and put it together you can see we're ranging between four and eight in population centers in the state right so that's where the rank you can see the different mandates that they have in each of those places and as i said 80 idph said take a look at hospitalization cases that's a key data set that illinois is looking at at least that's what they shared with the superintendents as to why they believe the mask mandate should remain in effect and i pulled the data just to see okay you know they didn't have the data for us then but i went and pulled it using those charts that you saw today and i looked is this still the case because i pulled for the last seven days okay and i what idph told us in that webinar checks out right current seven-day pediatric cases average pediatric cases this is hospitalizations per hundred thousand is 11 in illinois in all of those other states that i pulled that are of similar population size of us those numbers are greater you can discuss whether or not they're significantly greater or not i mean that significance is a relative term however what the idph said was that they are greater they are okay and the peak pediatric cases so this would be over the two years of the pandemic what was the highest number of cases per 100 000 of pediatric cases in the hospital over the term of the pandemic and you can see that illinois never hit a number as high as the other states in similar population yeah now there's a lot of different ways you could interpret what that is but i'm telling you i verified what the idph told us and what they told us was accurate okay when i heard that i thought well you know illinois this is so i will show you earlier you remember i said you can find data to back up right now pretty much whatever you want it to do so when i heard that i said yeah but illinois is doing really well at vaccinations right now we know vaccinations have been proven to negate to reduce negative outcomes so maybe the difference between us and other states like this is things like vaccinations so i looked at vaccination rates across those and [Music] okay illinois new york are both way at the top in comparison to those other ones but it's not you know it's it's not driving the trend that we see there okay so you know it checks out to some extent what idph told us in december that they're looking at the data and a factor that they're looking at is statewide masks and the data that they showed us you know at least in comparison to like a vaccination rate would say okay maybe masks do check out that way and it makes sense why the idph is recommending these but then when we look at some other data sets this is uh cumulative cases per 100 000 this is from american academy of pediatrics this was in their study from february 10th where they break out the rate of pediatric cases versus adult cases illinois is not doing so well in that chart right the percentage of cases skews higher in illinois amongst children than children in other states so i don't know how to square this data right i don't pick the data set i can tell you what store you want me to tell you okay if we look at overall cases this is the last seven days from the cdc you can see the number of cases per hundred thousand in states with a variety of different mask mandates there's really no correlation between now this is all this is everybody this is adults and kids right but i know a lot a lot of the discussion is will the masks in schools prevent the community from having increased cases cdc and idph and dupage county health department say yes it should i i could probably pull together some data that might indicate that as well i'm just giving you the raw data from the top i'm saying that it's hard for me as a superintendent not a health expert to go pull data that would indicate to the board clearly you should take this direction so what we end up with are these differing professional perspectives and since the beginning of the pandemic i have heard from the health experts that they have a standard of care that when the answers aren't clear you should go towards the conservative direction you should pick the direction that you believe will keep people safe because you don't take risks with people's health and all of those health agencies are currently recommending universal indoor masking by all student staff teachers and visitors regardless of vaccination status and it's based on community transmission just like the board well for at least the cdc and dupage county health department it is both of those dependent on community transmission dupage county health department in a meeting on friday told a small number of us that that was the recommendation today they sent out a document that they're going to discuss with superintendents tomorrow that continues to recommend that during periods of high or substantial transmission that universal universal masking occurs in schools so that guidance from the health agencies that influence the board and making their decision in august has not changed what has changed since august is evidence from the educational field you saw on the map of the united states that different states and different counties across the u.s have taken different paths than and this all has happened since august when we met in august that that hadn't happened holistically you know all these different changes across the united states since then other school districts other counties other states have chosen to run an experiment with students in their locale around masking either making it so you can't make a mandate making it so the things that can be recommended making it so things are optional highly recommended there's all of these different things and for the last year i've been talking to my peers in different places around the country i don't have data here to tell you [Music] as i demonstrated that there's a right decision to make i can tell you that it is mixed from the educational field it's not mixed from the health agencies but i will tell you what i hear consistently from my peers is that making it so that masks are recommended and not required begins to change the culture of your school and the learning environment in your school in a better direction i can also tell you i have asked all of them why do you think that you can keep your kids healthy even though you're going against what the health agencies say and these are the things that i've heard from superintendents in arizona and iowa and indiana and wisconsin and different places in missouri and as i talk to my colleagues around how can you possibly keep your kids healthy and safe when you're not following the guidance of the health agencies and this is what they tell me is there's a couple of key things and it all comes down to the adults one is that parents they are fanatical in a lot of these school districts with parents about keeping your kids home when they are sick we talked about this in in the summer that uh keeping kids home and isolating home for those five days and for in past that if they still have symptoms or have fevers for 24 hours past those symptoms or fevers is essential i believe that this has been emphasized since the pandemic that people are keeping their kids home and that when we know that they're sick we keep them home as a school district something else that's different from schools than the community is that we have highly trained professional caring adults our teachers our support staff our nurses our administrators that are all there even our custodial staff that's keeping an eye out for our kids and for our environments and making sure that they're safe and we are working hard to take care of our kids just as we always do and our staff is always watching for students uh to for signs of illness if they're sick they're going to the nurse's office and and we work through the process there and we have been reminding students for the entirety of the school year to follow safety mitigations with masking at times that's been with limited success it's hard to constantly have people wearing masks appropriately however we still have students separated especially in classrooms with the physical distance we have hand sanitizer we have uh you know we're encouraging students to maintain a clean environment and then we have other layered mitigations in place obviously hand washing hand sanitizer is available hand sanitizer is available in every classroom in this district we've increased our ventilation and our flow of outside air uh greater than 20 percent um it it exceeds the expectations of the recommendations we've received we also have expectations of things like you cover your cough you cover your sneeze you know you do all of those kinds of things you stay home when you're sick and then we have increased cleaning protocols that have continued throughout the pandemic there is no evidence that i have seen of greater spread at school than in the overall community if you look at our charts you see that same graph just follows the overall community i don't think we're any different than the community that we serve and i believe we're safer because of all of those things those bullets up above on that sheet so at this point um i actually have asked principal schwartz to come forward and speak from the principal's point of view to just share his experience as a school leader because you hear from me as a district leader but ed and courtney they're in the buildings they're there working with students and teachers i i spend a lot of time there but you know ed and courtney are ultimately responsible for their buildings and i thought that it would be unfair for you only to hear my perspective and you needed to hear there so ed is has graciously volunteered to share that perspective with the board thank you good evening everyone happy valentine's day while you're going to hear my words and my thoughts dr demand and i have had conversations many times over the past month especially about this and so i my thoughts and opinions are representative of her as well i will tell you in hindsight in looking back masking at the start of the year may have helped us transition back to an all day in person school i i wasn't crazy thinking about it at the time but we probably needed that transition and i think that's where i'm at now and my thoughts over the last few weeks i'm going to just highlight a few big reasons i'm not going to get into everything that that we've talked about but first of all a few weeks ago the governor announced that he intends to remove the mask mandate for all indoor spaces at the end of the month so two weeks from now our kids will mask in school if we don't change anything but walk out and go to their jobs or to the gym or to a concert or a bulls game or wherever they want and not be wearing masks all of those places i think are probably less safe even without mask than what they experience at school so that inconsistency troubles me and makes it hard to communicate that to students secondly the recent dro their ruling we have schools now having different mitigations our students compete against other schools not only in sports but in chess and the math team and our students will be wearing masks and they may be sitting across the table from kids who don't have to wear masks so we're putting them in a position now and even if we made a rule of homeschool rules follow that still compromi compromises mitigations we would be trying to be doing here so those are a couple things our school climate our staff and our students have done amazing things this year to make the experience what it is for our kids but there's still too much predictability of our school climate based on outside forces and i mean that i've seen it in a positive way and negative last month when they reduced the mitigation measures from 10 days to 5 days for quarantine exclusion you could feel the collective excitement in our staff because now our kids are only going to miss two or two to five days depending if it's over a weekend instead of seven to ten hey we can work with that right we can really get behind our kids academically so that change from a health guidance had an impact on our climate and i'm going to tell you a story a week ago friday great weekend at our school i spent friday night going to the conference swim meet we hosted i left there and went to the girls basketball game who they not only won their game they raised thousands of dollars for the pat summitt foundation i left there and i went to our black history play we had a great black history play we had kids in that performance who have never been on a stage before the excitement was palpable and then they all released about the same time i spent about a half hour talking to parents in the lobby and the excitement and we talked about oh tomorrow it's bowling and wrestling and speech and so the excitement in the school we were kids were doing kid things then i walked back to my office and i had an email telling me about the temporary restaining order my heart sank because school was going to be different on monday and it had nothing to do with school so selfishly i want us to drive our school climate we've got two great student reps here so they tell you all the time i want our school climates to be driven by our students so finally i consider myself a steward of the district's resources and i've always been frugal with the district's resources i should probably be better with that with my own money but and one of the things i've noticed is the amount of resources we're pouring into managing covid and the mitigations right and you know several years ago i've been working with the police on traffic safety the last two weeks several years ago we did that safety study and somebody suggested we put a big parking garage on a campus now the cost of that was astronomical and we would never spend our district monies that way and get such a small gain i'm worried that the slight increase in safety we're getting from covid is not worth the resources we're putting into it much like we wouldn't put into a parking garage or something to that effect so i just wanted to share that and again i appreciated all we did first semester and throughout the school year to get us to this point and i think it's the next time to transition so i appreciate you taking the time to listen to our ideas and some of our thoughts and we won't extend it anymore thank you ed and courtney all right uh so this is my recommendation this evening and this is to be effective this friday in the i've received a lot of questions today about why friday this is a significant change for some students and staff especially those that are immunocompromised we need to provide them an opportunity to talk to their health practitioners to acquire the proper masks that they need to meet with our staff we already have meetings set up with families in anticipation that the board might pass this we have meetings set up with several families to discuss their concerns over the next several days i would like for it to be in place uh for friday that gives several days to adjust it's kind of equivalent to our neighbors district 58 that made the change and then it didn't go into effect for several days as well i would like for it to be effective on a friday just because we know that this will drastically change our school environment or has the potential to and administratively selfishly we would like to do it for a day and then have a weekend to work through whatever steps we need to take to adjust to any changes that happened before we come back on the 22nd we know come the 20 seconds just four more days until it's uh released across the state so we're just slightly ahead of that with this change so the recommendations the administration is making this evening is that we need to still follow all federal and state laws including enforceable executive orders as we know the tro that's out there that's restricting the enforcement of the current executive orders is in appeal right now and that is expected back by thursday at the latest which could change things and could put the executive orders back fully in effect we are required as a public school in illinois to follow those um universal masking on buses will continue as i outlined earlier uh there could be pending future litigation at many levels against us against the state against anything right that could uh ultimately result in some kind of a change occurring and we would follow those rules as interpreted by the district's attorneys and then move forward we still will of course expect that six students and staff will stay home from school it is for five days or until symptoms go away that won't change at all [Music] contact tracing will end and there will be no related exclusions to that as i said there's no evidence that we have here that indicates that there is a significant transmission of covid in close contacts here at school we'll move to an environment then that mask wearing is respectfully recommended i use the word respectfully intentionally there in the last week the level of respect in our halls in our classrooms in our community has hit an all-time low we need this to rebound back and we need if we move in this even if we don't move in this direction we need more respect back and i understand that stress and anxiety makes it hard to think of others because we're we're just you know not in a great spot but we need to get back there and if we move to this it will be the expectation that students and staff and parents respect each other's choices that we are making here and whether it's to wear a mask or to not wear a mask that we respect one another in that and as always any bullying harassment or negative impact on the environment that would happen because of this change will be addressed uh universal masking on transportation and health offices would continue we have to assume that in the health offices people are going there because they're sick so mask masks would be provided on the way in through the door if somebody didn't have one and then it would be required that it be worn we'll provide at least two k n 95 masks to students this week if we make this change uh in the next day or next day if the board adopts this recommendation we will then communicate those procedures to everybody as i mentioned this time frame allows for discussions at home and we want parents as i said in july and i said again tonight that parents need to have these conversations with their kids and outline what those expectations are for them while they're at school if parents want their kids wearing a mask all the time at school they need to tell them that and they need to make sure that their kids know that that's the expectation and then finally i think that we need to take this caring approach we talk all the time about being respectful responsible and engaged in our schools so i i expect that our students our our mission statement in district 99 starts with the word caring and i say this all the time to staff we need to care about those around us as we make this change and if somebody uh if we move to mask recommended if somebody says like i really need to keep your you need to keep your distance from me or wear a mask because i have a medical reason or i'm uncomfortable or whatever we should care about those other people and consider what their needs are around us and recognize that that might be the right thing to do because we're part of a community and care about those around us i will expect as the superintendent that our staff reflect that and that our students reflect that as well that is the end of my recommendation um dr kupka i'm not sure do you want to hear from the public first or do you want the board to discuss this first i think or just take questions i'm going to ask the board for their fee but i have one question about your slide sure so to be clear no more contact um tracy tracy so no student or teacher would be notified that our staff member would be notified that they were within uh whatever certainly three feet well with masks off at six feet yeah um they just wouldn't be notified and students would not be expected after return students or teachers or staff members who returned from um a having called it after five days would not be expected to wear a mask it's recommended that they wear a mask for days six through and it would still be recommended that they wear masks days six through ten yes but not required yeah at this point yeah we're we're not it would all be over yeah it would be recommended to everyone that they follow those guidelines yes so i think there are two questions to that i'm just gonna we're not voting but we're gonna just take a little little straw poll here we've got two questions would you like to discuss prior to hearing um public comments is the first question anybody wish to discuss it prior to hearing public comments okay we'll hear public comments first yeah and then the second question is we have how many how many comments are you like uh about 17 i think let me see what it's numbered too we'll go over our a lot of time is there any are people finding that 17 comments okay so we'll we're all 17 and we'll ask people to please be respectful of the three minutes thank you were there any other questions you wanted to answer before i went to public comment since i have the slides and everything right here yeah that's fine nope can you put the slide up with the numbers that we had from december to now okay i gotta go back a little ways bear with me i just want to get a sense of how many positive cases we've had in the last six to eight weeks so that we can you know those people are all immune right for the next 90 days so right up until about spring break right that group would be exempt from being a close contact so yeah you're you're looking at several hundred students right when you look over january yeah so around or less around ten percent of less than ten percent of our entire population correct just yeah but uh the recent you know we also know that in the county uh you're sitting around seventy percent of high school students are vaccinated right so very high staff percentage and 96 of our staff so you're going to say too that we we don't know this for the students but knowing we do know that a significant portion of the positive cases we had for cove among staff were among the unvaccinated correct i would say over the first semester that is correct yeah i don't know what how that breaks down though now i don't know how that breaks down for students right so you know it just seems to me though we're getting we're getting to a point where we've got almost everybody vaccinated and if you haven't been vaccinated you've probably had covet and you've probably recovered i think that was definitely true the trend you were talking about for delta i think omacron was a different animal okay yeah all right and i would just say everybody over five yeah correct but every one of our students that's right all of our students yeah yeah some of those students though would have been vaccinated and still ended up with kova though right so it's not like necessarily a unique group of ten percent no but it's a pretty no it's a large number yeah i i just don't want to misrepresent the understand the impact um try to keep skipping ahead here to get to the i need to get to my reception of visitors did was that your only question john or did you have anything else okay everybody else i'm fine okay all good all right perception of visitors oh i'm sorry this is my spiel the reception of visitors is intended for audience members to address the board about any agenda item on which the board will vote there's only one agenda item comments are limited to three minutes to provide all visitors an equal opportunity to address the board individuals needing more time should submit their thoughts in writing to the board secretary visitors addressing the board need to submit a comment well have submitted a comment slip to ms johnson and will be invited to the microphone by dr thiele prior to addressing the board audience members should state their full name the proceedings are being tape recorded and are being streamed they're being taped recorded also for the purpose of producing accurate meeting minutes i reserve the right to modify these protocols if circumstances warrant we appreciate your observation of these protocols all right so for those of you that are new i will call you up in the order in which we receive the slips once you begin speaking a timer will start when the timer stops i will cut you off no matter where you are in your presentation to allow everybody an equal amount of time to speak so please respect be respectful of the timer and uh that helps us move through this in an orderly fashion uh i will tell you who the speaker is and who the next speaker is we have found that that helps kind of cue things up a little bit better okay so our first speaker is debbie robertson and then followed by anna guido and of course the action item this evening is dr kupka said good evening thank you fellow board members and dr thiel for allowing us to speak tonight my name is debbie robertson i am a mother of two boys one that attends hillcrest school in district 58 and my other son is a sophomore at downers grove north on thursday night district 58 listened to the community and made the decision to make masks optional because they agreed that the time is now we implore you to do the same our children that attend your schools also have siblings as district 58 which is already caught using added divide you're right dr thiel we are a divided community already the social media bullying is at an all-time high on both sides hank you know and the deans know this you've seen examples of this and it's awful behavior we want it to stop and you board members have an opportunity to stop and unite this community by choosing both sides and allowing the parents and kids to make the best decisions for our own families you're also right dr thiel that this period in our lives will be judged by history by the actions we all took or maybe more importantly the ones that we didn't take to make our make things better our children have borne the brunt of this and have lost out on education sports school and social activities we've been overly cautious long enough through remote learning hybrid learning and masking while others went back full time and didn't miss out on their education like district 99 kids it is our jobs as parents to protect our children not the other way around over 400 585 districts across our state have already voted to go mask optional for this very reason states across this country or including our bordering states do not have mass mandatories in place and have been able to keep their schools safely open without issue as you spoke to every time we are here for another vote this board has chosen a more restrictive approach that has set us backwards while we watch just schools around us including district 58 progress forward and who suffers the most our kids and their education at one time there may have been a reason to lock us in our homes shut down our schools mask ourselves and our children and live in fear of the unknown but that time is over enough is enough and our children in district of 99 including yours jen deserve better and are no longer going to follow a mandate that is illegal the time is now for you to lead this community forward and vote mask optional thank you for your time [Applause] uh anna guido is up and then followed by deb de vero hi sorry good evening board members of district i'd like to thank you for coming together with your community to hear our children's voice my name is anna and i am a mother to four boys ages 20 19 17 and 10 years old i am extremely nervous as i do not love public speaking but i am here tonight because i believe it is important that you hear from me as to why voting yes to mask optional is important i currently have a son who attends downers grove north as a senior my son has i'm sorry my son was a multi-sports student who along the way built friendships with his baseball team his wrestling team football team and where his coaches were his mentors the culture at north was one of a kind unfortunately covet 19 impacted our community and many sacrifices had to be made by all my son has always struggled with his academics however remote learning made things more difficult for him he became withdrawn sad and had no motivation he is not the boy he was two years ago and he's passed 650 plus days have impacted him in ways i do not know he will ever forget nor will i ever know and now due to the mass mandate he no longer participates in any of the sports he once did i am not sure how many of you are parents but as a mother i am here tonight to ask you to consider all the data in science evidence of the effectiveness of math mask proper fitting of masks recommended length of time of wearing masks and reality on how these masks are worn in our schools as a district and as the board you have the authority to be a beacon to our community and fight for our children as if they were your own we seek mass optional policy that would allow everyone the freedom of choice and the opportunity to unite our community thank you [Applause] next up deb devero followed by jordan raymond good evening board members i know this has got to be one of the most difficult meetings that you've had in a while uh maybe not um my name is deb devaro i'm a mother of a sophomore at north and i would first like to commend you all on the endeavor of holding these positions of authority during a tumultuous time with so much uncertainty where you are truly struggling with the community that's divided on many issues regarding the pandemic i do not envy you or the tasks you've been called to action on over the past years so thank you for your time and sacrifice you've heard many parents tonight and speak to to the issue of allowing the district to be masked optional and over the week i'm sorry i too am imploring you to consider voting in favor of that issue however i would like to share a perspective on just how life-changing your votes are going to be tonight with not only within the microcosm of the schools but will also significantly impact the community as a whole and as well as i believe facilitate beginning stages of healings healing this obvious divide amongst many for almost two years our country government schools and in some cases families have been divided pertaining to issues related to mass wearing vaccines testing and quarantine protocols excuse me there's an evidence split on perspectives now so more than ever we become a country and community that has adopted a dichotomous way of thinking which has become very isolating this is not about right or wrong red or blue parties vaccinated or unvaccinated masked or unmasked this must now be about getting back to respecting each other's differences without judgment whatever those opinions might be and allowing for our personal choice of freedom to return to our communities schools and families by voting in favor of allowing mass to be optional you will be helping the community to begin to evolve out of this pandemic and help to bridge the social gap that this crisis has created which in turn will begin to open doors to healing our children families businesses and precious downers grove community thank you for this time [Applause] jordan raymond followed by erica rauch good evening board thank you jordan good evening board my name is jordan raymond i'm a junior at north first off i want to thank you guys for calling this emergency meeting and giving me the platform to speak i want to focus on the legality of everything going on and one thing to bring that up is a similar court case that happened back in 1969 that was tinkerbee des moines this case brought up was brought up by the supreme court because students wore black armbands and a silent protest against the vietnam war students were suspended because of their armbands and exercising their first amendment the supreme court ruled that as long as their silent protest does not disrupt the classroom learning process then they are allowed to continue their silent protest and return back to class however for some reason our small group of students are being treatedly treated terribly with no respect and being placed in a small room all day away from everyone and everything in the school building just because we decided to partake in a silent protest that is not affecting anything involving the classroom process the legal definition of segregation is the separation of individuals or groups from others and bored i would love to hear from you guys an argument as to why our group of massless kids being separated in a different room having a separate bathroom separate water fountain and a separate lunch time away from the mask kids is not segregation board why are we not allowed to silently sit in a classroom without a piece of paper on our face we're losing our right to an education and lastly i want to bring up last friday last friday the illinois court system ruled for the illinois mass mandate to have a temporary restraining order in schools in the case the court ruled that if you interfere with a student's attendance because of their mass decision then your school is liable for class a misdemeanor this is relevant due to the fact that downers grove north is now giving out unexcused absences and will and that will be detrimental to the students records because the absences can lead to suspensions and ruin kids chances of scholarships and or job opportunities that leads me to my final statement and question why are you guys allowed to illegally ruin your kids students opportunities to grow in life for what seems to be a money scam or just so your district can receive more funding and ford i thank you guys for giving me the opportunity to speak and i encourage you to rule in favor of freedom education the first and fourteenth amendment and most importantly unity thank you guys [Applause] next is erica roush followed by brooks johnson uh my name is erica roush and i would like to thank you for holding this meeting um i have an eighth grader and a junior at downers grove north and today was the best day for my eighth grader going into school mask free i would like to see the same for my junior i'm standing here today because as an american citizen it is my right to choose and i want my children to exercise their freedom of choice without being bullied and harassed by their fellow classmates and peers to date we have been wearing masks because we believe that it can help save lives but i can tell you a piece of cloth will not we recently lost my husband and my children have had to listen to kids say shouldn't you wear a mask your dad just died we have given society the false sense that wearing a mask will save your life there are other much more effective measures in place that allow us to protect the vulnerable but an ill-fitting improperly worn cloth mask students and teachers are wearing is not a mitigation strategy two years is enough so much damage has been done already and it must end we need to put our kids first the mental and emotional toll that we have put them through is unacceptable so i am begging you please vote for your freedom for our freedom for everyone's freedom that is what living in the united states is about give us a choice to unite us all you can go to a concert a sporting event a casino soon enough public spaces throughout our community where you are yelling singing bumping into people but in school where you spend most of the time quietly learning trying to listen to your teacher while they are three to six feet apart you have to wear a mask we are failing our children while many other states are living their lives without a mass mandate with no safety issues please unite our community and let our see our children smiling faces again we all need this thank you [Applause] next up is brooks johnson followed by kevin custer hello all my name is brooke johnson as dr daley just said currently a senior at dgn before i start i just want to quickly say thank you so much for giving your time and a chance to speak tonight a majority on behalf of the majority of the senior class even though on paper it may not seem like it there are many more students and staff members that are pro-choice than you are led to believe according to my own head count there were anywhere from 75 to 85 students masculine students i should stay held in the auditorium last week some might think 75 students was way more than they thought would be pro-choice that's just at north i'm here to tell you that's not even a fraction of the total number of students and staff that prefer to go mask optional kids and staff are scared to do what they believe in due to many reasons to begin with many kids are in sports and are unable to demonstrate their right of not wearing a mask as you all know the student the current student policy is that students are unable to attend after school sports as punishment because i am currently not in a sport i'm able to practice my right with no repercussions in terms of sports and activities however if it were football season it's a sport i play it would be the other way around and those not in the sport would be fighting for me i know this because i am thanked multiple times a day by my peers and other staff members also a very small percentage of kids in school have already committed to a university and don't have to worry about their grades as much my grades have already dropped since last week and this just adds on to the list of reasons why many kids still wear their masks and are forced to finally what i think is the biggest factor is bullying as the deans have seen and hopefully they've showed mrs demet and dr deeley there's been an extremely high number of bullying reports since last week and the past two years specifically because of masks and the students opposing views on the matter i think you would all agree that only a small portion of bullying actually gets reported to staff members and deans whether it's online or in person so as a student i can confirm that i constantly see fire from kids to other kids or staff members behind closed doors because we support going mask optional we appreciate and respect people's opinions to continue to wear a mask however this is not the case when you flip things around i can't speak for everybody who wants mass required because some people are very respectful however many mask required supporters have consistently delivered hate and threats to myself and others since last week there are pictures of people calling us derogatory words giving us hate and death threats i personally have received a death threat both directly and in general towards everyone who doesn't want to wear a mask this is obviously another problem in and of itself but it clearly shows why even more kids who want to are unable to not wear a mask as them now now as you know very few kids are able to sacrifice their grades time respect and clean records to practice what they believe in going mask optional thank you [Applause] kevin custer is next followed by noel manley good evening board my name is kevin custer i my son is a senior and i've been a resident downers grove since 1972.

the burden of my mother's guilt has been heavy this school year as i have watched my sweet innocent third grader walk into school with a mask plastered over her beautiful face because we were told it is the law in illinois and she has been brainwashed to believe that if she did not have her mask properly fitted over her nose and mouth that someone's grandma is going to die last thursday district 58 voted for mass choice i hope you have the courage to do the same i was at that district 58 meeting and spoke at a board meeting it was the first time i had spoken at a board meeting in my life when the board voted for a vast recommended mask recommended policy the entire room burst out ensuring an applause board members i hope you will also vote for mask choice after the vote a heavy burden had been lifted my third and seventh graders would no longer be forced to wear a mask at school my focus quickly shifted to my daughter at downers grove north i will fight for her just the same i will fight for her rights and i will not give up until my daughter is given the choice to wear a mask or not in school a few facts fact k-12 schools across the state and country have been masked optional for this year with no significant difference the health and safety of staff and students compared to schools who require masking fact at downers grove north most students and some teachers too are not properly wearing masks over their nose and mouth i ask you how is this offering protection for anyone fact a properly fitted n95 is effective at protecting the wearer and does not rely on the behavior of others around you for protection high quality one-way masking is more effective at protecting the vulnerable than universal use of low-quality masks fact concert stadiums restaurants and bars are full of massless people with no significant rise in cases fact schools are not a high risk environment fact district 99 is currently following an illegal mandate by the governor for required mask wearing in schools we are well into our third year of living with the ramifications of cove 19 mandates it is time to give the students and staff of district 99 the choice on mask wearing it is time to give our students the chance to heal as members of the school board you have a great privilege to make decisions that support our school and our community the best decision for our school in our community is one that moves toward a past path toward normalcy the first step in that is to make maths optional thank you david pittinger is next followed by steve peters i'm going to ask that you need to put your mouth put your ass on please oh but he doesn't no but he's named in the lawsuit all right please so now i completely understand what the other folks were talking about when they feel like they're second-class citizens right in the definition by the other north student who was here who was talking about that as well but that's not why i actually came to talk to you guys the reason i came to talk to the board here was because what i see in the way boards public health officials hand are handling this pandemic is not consistent at all with how most people in risk management handle issues and i say that because i work in cyber security i run a global team of people who assess issues potential issues deal with what people perceive to be issues and then the other thing we do is put in place mitigation plans and prioritize those and one of the things that our biggest thing is to try to get the biggest bang for the dollar without having too many additional spillover costs or lost opportunity and the way that that works in a very risky uh business where there's there's billions of dollars to lose where everyone is trying to protect themselves their assets their business their employees jobs is not consistent at all with the way i see government school districts uh the health department at all dealing with this one of the things that i've that i spent a lot of my time doing certainly all the way through college like i have a math degree in addition to computer science degree and one of the things like and i study statistics a lot when i see that 100 cases and i'm talking about sick people we're talking about cases constitutes high on a statistical basis like unless it's actually extremely deadly that that's a rounding error in most statistical things that that i deal with that i've dealt with in the past and and and um mr feely you mentioned earlier that um what did you mention earlier you mentioned see i don't bring any notes um oh yes you mentioned that statistically you could go and you could find anything you wanted to support a data point is one of the things you said and that's exactly right you know because i've read i read a long time ago how to lie with statistics and you can do that the question though is if i can go out and if i can shorten the data periods of certain things i can grab different groups but i only compare certain numbers i can prove any point i want pretty much with numbers and the thing that i have seen though is that with the masks if there if there was true efficacy it would stand out in the numbers like crazy and it doesn't it doesn't at all so i'm asking you just to make a mandatory i mean make them optional because mandatory is certain out of time thank you all right thank you appreciate it i just asked everybody to bring their mask over their mouth and nose people's masks are slipping down thank you uh steve peters followers could i ask you to put your up please so we can continue steve over your nose steve peters ladies and gentlemen of the board thank you for taking the step of holding this emergency meeting steve steve give me a second we asked him to pull his mask up yes yes he did yes we explained that uh steve peters will be followed by ben pittenger go ahead steve thank you all for taking the step of holding this emergency meeting my name is steve peters none of you know me none of you have ever received an email from me or a voicemail or a phone call i wish it would continue to be that way i've never attended a board of education meeting and in fact i've never watched one the last time i watched for the first time ever was last month because you all were gracious enough to invite my son a junior at downers grove north to speak to you about his incubator class that was a classy gesture it was appreciated by everyone including him thank you all for doing that that same student who you lauded in january last week was forced to endure ridiculous treatment from your designated disciplinary reps at downers grove north why because for the first time since march of 2020 he went to school without a mask let me quickly read a civics lesson that i recently received via email we respect a student's right to participate or not participate in any demonstration while one might see a student's behavior as earn a civic action and therefore educational the full lesson requires students to accept the consequences both intended and unintended of their actions the civics lesson is compromised by reducing those consequences it is to put it mildly hard to believe that the same group of individuals who i praised in my first paragraph for the would are the same people responsible for those words last week used as an unveiled threat against a group of district 99 students i imagine you're all embarrassed that you allowed your lawyers to convince you to use that phrasing and if you're not yet you will be someday it's okay we all understand how pressure forces individuals and groups into making bad choices personally i thank you and i especially thank you for the timing of the message as it really helped me frame a discussion i was heading to that night so while pressure forces bad decisions fear leads to truly disastrous actions and your reprehensible message can only be taken as a disastrous act disastrous act born out of fear please understand though the students you're so desperately trying to punish and segregate fully understand the tactics you're employing and why you're doing it they know it's because you're afraid of them finally demonstrating who has the power in any school district the students do it's okay though as superintendent thiele began last night with his message his suggestion would be to remove the mass mandate it's not too late for this board to do the right thing damage has been done and i think it will take a long time for students impacted by your decisions to forgive you however america has an incredibly forgiving history it's true that recently our politics and culture have been less so but on this one fairly small issue it's okay for all of you to quote take the loss start the process of reconciliation superintendent thank you for doing it last night now it's the board's turn my name is steve peters none of you know me or most of the other parents with whom i've been in contact for the last week and i hope that remains the case thank you ben pittinger is next followed by hugh calif hi i'm ben pittenger a student at dgs i'm here because i believe this is an issue that needs to be addressed i'm not one for public speaking and i wouldn't be here unless i believed in what i'm about to say now for the past week i've spent my time at dgs locked in a room e233 us students call it purgatory because we are at school but not allowed to attend our classes we are stuck in a limbo now over this past week as mr thiele said we have seen a lot of disrespect for our stance on masks and just on the way to get lunch we would get yelled at multiple times by people sitting at a table mask list with all of their friends now i want to talk about choice it is my choice to choose to not wear a mask at school and i understand that i was put in that room because of my choice but it is also your choice to keep my education going and put me back in class masculists and i feel that every student has the choice to wear a mask or not wear a mask i respect everybody who chooses to wear one and everybody who chooses to not wear one and i feel that if you want to reduce your risk that you have you can get vaccinated your grandparents can be vaccinated me personally both of my grandparents are fully vaccinated and up to date on their boosters so i have no one in my family that i'm looking to protect everyone in my family is healthy and ready if the virus was to come their way and now to address some things mr thiele said in his presentation the high transmission rates that he quoted was a hundred plus per hundred thousand that is point one percent of the population in no other term besides right now talking about covid is point one percent high that is a rounding error and to talk about what he said proper masking it is frustrating as a student who chooses not to wear a mask in school and to be locked in a room to walk out of school at the end of the day to leave that room and walk through the hallway and see hundreds of kids wearing their mask improperly to see it below the nose below the mouth below the mouth or just resting below their chin i would say that at least 30 percent of the school in the hallways does not wear a mask properly thank you for your time uh hugh calif is next followed by isabella felice i believe it is hugh hello uh thank you for um having the meeting tonight um in october of 2020 i was at the downers grove park district and i had a heart attack and i died on the in the weight room and i was dead for about five minutes and there was a nurse there and she's actually a mom from downers grove north and she gave me the aed and brought me back to life wow i was in icu for 18 days and they changed it to the covid floor they brought all the covet patients in and i didn't i didn't have to wear a mask and when i got switched to another floor just i think it was the sixth floor i still didn't have to wear the mask and my my exercise was to walk around the floor and i would do that and i still did i got tested i didn't have covid i still haven't i haven't had a vaccine in 50 years the last vaccine i had was when i was 13 years old going into high school so the masks science has not proven that these masks are effective i'm not even sure that the uh that the virus is airborne because it's look how much space there is here there is here these masks should be optional and um i just i just think that until the there's too many too many scientists are giving too many different answers and that just tells me that nobody knows so you just got to keep going and you got to find out for sure what's going on and if you use the oxygen those little oxygen sensors if you're at 95 percent that means these kids these young kids their brains are still developing so in five years or 10 years is something going to happen that everybody is going to regret so for six or eight hours these kids are in school and they're going to have 95 percent oxygen when they should have a hundred percent oxygen because because we made a mistake we can't afford to make those kind of mistakes and if in the future we um if in the future we we can't take the chance of making a a regret like this so i think it's safer to not have the mask because covet is 99.95 percent mild and that's all i have to say isabella is next followed by sydney mccormick hello board of education dr thiele dr dement mr schwartz parents teachers and students my name is isabella felice and i'm a sophomore a sophomore at our north campus over the past week as i'm sure you know our schools have been fighting for a mass optional ruling and i'm in support over the past two years school has looked very different from normal and we thank you for continuing to support us through those times however i believe it is time for a change over the past week my peers and i have been painted as a distraction in this situation however when we asked what the distraction was it was that we were getting called out of class to be escorted by deans or security so i would like to ask how does this make us a distraction along with being called a distraction we have been degraded by faculty as well as students one teacher even went as far as to tell their class i hate all of them as we're respectfully exercising our rights as a student who continues to listen to my peers thoughts and opinions i believe it is unacceptable for teachers to be talking in such a degrading way that was just one example from teachers outside the classroom inside of our asynchronous learning classrooms on wednesday i personally was declined to lunge another example from inside of our asynchronous learning group groups was a group of students being yelled at by an administrator every day the blinds in the room got closed more and more and when a student asked if he could open the blinds he was yelled at being told that he couldn't learn if the blinds were open with all these factors given i would like you all to know that we aren't anti-mask we are pro-choice we believe that a mask optional ruling for our district can make us all feel happy healthy and safe thank you [Applause] next is sydney mccormick followed by carolyn quigliama greg limo i'm sorry i probably butchered that hello board my name is cindy mccormick i am a freshman at downers grove north and i would like to let you know or tell you about how it was like to be a student last week during all this um i have never really been good at like public speaking but i thought it was like necessary enough to come up here today and speak i've always been told by my parents no matter what your someone else's opinions are even if you do not agree with that you should always respect it and down in school north they send out emails telling us even if um whatever your opinions are you will be respected and even if you choose not to wear masks you'll be respected and like and you'll have a good learning environment all this stuff so i thought it was right like i wanted to like use my right not to wear a mask and they that it was not how they told us it would be students were posting photos of like kids like not wearing masks giving us death threats saying like they should be hospitalized and like a lot of stuff and i and many other students told their deans about it and i showed photos and all they told me is we're dealing with it which was not very like for kids saying death threats and having their names and stuff and not even getting punished i feel like that is kind of like and they also told us that our education like well you'll be in asynchronous room and you'll still have like the same education like you'll have like all the learning stuff you need and i have iep ip iepd so i've never like i've always kind of been behind in class and like i'm it's really hard like for me like like in some of my classes and stuff so it's always like been hard like doing like work so my being in the asynchronous room and learning like having a week without some of the learning has really put me behind and a lot of my grades like all my grades and each have gone down significantly and yeah so that's basically all i wanted to say thank you for your time [Applause] carolyn is next followed by lily roche thanks superintendent teal and um hey i'm going to repeat my last name i'll break it down gu yelmo and when i first addressed the school board back in july i appreciated the fact that you guys always like to try to get hard names right so my name is don't always succeed i know but you try and i appreciate that and i think you you des you should have a well-deserved vacation this has been a very difficult time for you as a superintendent and first i want to commend you um on having to deal with the politics and the fall of the united states and they are putting it on the school boards and public employees because all of the public employees in this nation are funded by working people tax dollars who don't have recession proof jobs and your school district teaches a lot of children who come from recession-proof families from skilled trades who don't have jobs a lot of school school children in the last 20 years their families lost jobs had to move out of illinois but first i want to commend you on your handling of this you didn't ask for this i know the school board didn't ask for this and i also wanted to commend you on your presentation tonight and as you know as i've spoken in the past i am a nationally recognized workplace safety and health expert who has a lot of peer-reviewed publications and respiratory protection and i heard this gentleman earlier talk about the risk management field and every protocol and policy coming out of the cdc has been countered to real science i have addressed many national uh public committees in the government on these things so i want to recommend to you one kudos for your recommendation tonight and i hope the board will follow suit in that recommendation but it would behoove you not one person in this school system is a certified safety professional a certified health and safety tax technician there's not been any air sampling done through certified industrial hygienists whether it be and there's a profession and you guys don't know that yeah so so anyways i would behoove you to perhaps reach out to me or perhaps this gentleman and um i've also worked on respiratory issues in another school system outside of washington it would behoove you to have an audience with us where we can explain the whole science of controlling hazards and i just wanted to correct you on your um presentation in in the business of hazards it's not mitigation measured it's called the control of hazards that's the proper term time thank you [Applause] lily hello board teachers parents my dad and everybody else who has joined us here today my name is lily rochet and i'm a junior at the our north campus along with many of my peers here today i'm in favor of a mass optional ruling i know that this brings fear to some people as well as discomfort but to some this is what they've been waiting for within downers grove there is such a split politically and it's very discouraging to me who's a student about to get ready to go to college and into the real world over the past almost two years there's been a lot of fear especially at the beginning as no one fully knew what to do but over the past couple of months this fear has been promoted one example could be cook county requiring people to be vaccinated or else they could not be allowed into the business while yes it has been proven that the vaccination can help lower the severity of symptoms people who are vaccinated are still getting sick along with that the kova death rate is significantly lower than when the virus first came out because it is no longer as unknown as it once was people are recovering from this virus this virus should no longer be causing people to live in fear there are many things that bring people fear that eventually they do have to face i know for many students it could be not getting into the college that they want to or maybe into the program that they're trying to get accepted into but even then they're still forced to make a choice for themselves i believe it is start to time it is time to start preparing people to face their fear of the removal of masks and choose what best fits them each day within many schools as you know they are granting students the choice to make them the most comfortable and confident inside of their learning environment and i think as a district we should follow their lead with that being said i think your plan to give students n95s is a fantastic idea as it's proved to be the only effective mask and that it does not let people around or does not require other people around you to wear a mask as well i believe that if you vote mask optional you're promoting a safe environment where people can have their opinions heard and cared for we are not anti-mask we are simply pro-choice once again my name is lily roche and i thank you all for giving us the opportunity to speak today [Applause] okay that closes our reception to visitors correct that's everybody who has submitted a form i want to go back to the recommendation here and then i have a couple more things before you continue okay your conversation um because we expected a large turnout of people that wish to speak and we realized with safety and coveted mitigations we wouldn't be able to even if we were in a larger venue hear from everybody right we opened up the forum for public comments immediately upon announcing tonight's board meeting the board has had access and has been reviewing those comments as they came in some came in while we were sitting here tonight and the board obviously has not had a chance to review those however everything that has been submitted will become part of the official board minutes at this point in time we have received 235 comments i've been asked before to summarize those and i can tell you the summary is they're all over the place right just as everybody's perception is right now as we know that we also the board and myself over the last week have also reviewed or received comments all from all perspectives from individuals that were concerned that they didn't want their point of view recorded in the board minutes because they were afraid of repercussions that would come from others in the community and that that's not one side or the other it was both sides it's unfortunate that that's the the point of time that we're in it was wonderful to hear from a respectful group of speakers that followed the protocols this evening we've heard from and the great majority of the comments is the public will eventually see as they become in our heller felt are well thought out people are sharing what they believe is their opinion on this at this point i believe that the board has heard my perspective they've heard the perspective from hundreds of people through the community i will turn it over at this point for the board to discuss i'm here to answer any questions that you have and then dr kupka will ultimately to ask the question okay we're going to open for discussion i think we'll start with there is does anybody want to even make a motion at this point and then we'll open to discussion for the recommendation okay so you have to read it i hope that we adopt the superintendent daley's recommendation to go mask optional okay is there anybody who is just assigned not a second okay can we just say as presented as presented so let's open discussion would either of you like to start go ahead all right well well first off i just want to say you know my fellow board members here know that i've been i've i started bringing little props with me to kind of keep me uh focused on why i'm really here because sometimes it's hard and so tonight i brought i brought a couple of shirts so south side pride right and better together and this was from a few years back but positively north right remember this one respectful responsible engaged and i i appreciate very much um the public comments this evening and and um and how respectful this has gone um so i have a statement i prepared so now i get to i get to speak right my three minutes of fame um attorneys and judges will continue to debate legal opinions regard relating to coveted mitigations just as they have always done for things non-code related while they do we have students who need to be educated and that's my concern in response to those who have threatened me with untold consequences know this i do not make board decisions based on what's best for me and never will i care about my kids and your kids i had four kids in this district the youngest of whom just graduated i currently have three nieces at downers grove south it's personal for me i'm thankful it's personal for you too your threats have consequences for not voting the way you want me to your threats of consequences for me not voting the way you want me to vote or at least a demonstration that you do care it's my sincere hope that one day soon we can set our differences aside we are one community as shirts i just showed you were better together respectful responsible engaged i recently read an article about our cove masking dilemma by journalist joe philippic that i found compelling here's an excerpt that really hit home for me if case rates are low the vaccinated should have more opportunities to live mask free because let's be honest masks do come with costs they can be uncomfortable especially when worn for long periods at a time they interrupt basic human communication so much of how we understand each other and send subtle cues is through our facial expressions which mask conceal when we can't see each other's faces we lose a primary means via which human animals connect and at least anecdotally we can become even more atomized and less empathetic to each other and while the impact of masking out on children is still being studied experts largely say that kids are flexible and can adapt or catch up many parents and some experts worry that prolonged masking could impair children's language skills and their social emotional development and argue that kids shouldn't have to continue catching up and be resilient as a society we have to balance competing interests and potential harms we do this all the time we set speed limits and mandate seat belts in cars we don't but we don't expect to have zero traffic fatalities and we don't even set highway speed limits low enough to radically reduce traffic deaths because we've essentially decided that we need people to be able to get to where they're going and that is worth the trade-off what we need is not just clear guidance for the here and now but a clear formula for when mass mandates should lift where they should lift and when they may need to be reinstated covet 19 is not a static disease and public health guidance should evolve as the disease does some experts have already weighed in on this on what this might look like and it seems to be based on a combination of case rates hospitalization rates vaccination rates and variant type and those will vary as dr ashish jah put it on twitter we should quote think of like think of this like the weather when it is bucketing rain umbrella raincoat boots all are essential when the storm turns into a drizzle those become less critical in other words tweedeja quote during periods of low infections restrictions come off during potential future surges public health measures may need to temporarily return one commonsense approach would be to require covert 19 vaccination in schools given that public schools in all 50 states already require a whole host of vaccinations before students can walk through the doors but in a country where there is a right-wing backlash to basic preventative public health measures though it's hard to see this happening but when case rates are significantly down hospitals aren't overwhelmed and community vaccination rates are high it's time for a reprieve students and staff should be able to unmask in these conditions this article captures a sentiment many of us share we need to evolve balancing competing interests in all potential harms indeed it's that sentiment that caused myself and another board member to call for this emergency meeting our guidelines based on cd and cdc and health department guidance have not evolved they were put in place at a time when most of us weren't vaccinated and or caught and recovered from covid society and our partner districts are unmasking recently enforcing our mask requirements has created a chaotic and device divisive environment in our buildings it has forced too many of our staff to spend more time on enforcement and student learning as we heard tonight from principal schwartz i support and encourage wearing masks in our schools however enforcing a requirement for masking isn't sustainable without broad community support in a time when nearly all of us are vaccinated or recovered from covid and no longer at risk of severe disease we now have kn 95 and n95 mass for staff and students who need them which wasn't the case several months ago there are also reliable treatments available for those who contract covet circumstances have evolved significantly since we approved our return to in-person instruction plan it's unfortunate that guidance from our political and health care leaders hasn't evolved as such it falls to me it's time to move to a mask optional phase which i believe should begin immediately i'm afraid that waiting until friday to allow staff and students to make arrangements to adjust to new protocols is preferable but may not be practical because i believe that our action this evening regardless of what action we take will only increase the level of masking disobedience and loss of learning focus tomorrow and that's all i have to say thank you can i ask you a question mike yes certainly when you talk about like you know your raincoat analogy yeah or your umbrella analogy at what definition does one put their umbrella back up who decides that that's the whole i think i you know that that actually the article that i quoted actually spoke to that and that we don't have that clear guidance and it has to it has to fall to us right so it's how you know it's the speed limit and how you know how how high how low do we set the speed as a society we ultimately have to decide what the risk and the rewards are and find a balance so high and substantial transmission is not that speed limit so the question would be how you define so somebody else is defined for us what high and substantial is right and that hasn't changed and it hasn't changed despite the fact that we've had vaccinations we've had so many of our public infected and recovered um and and we have now n95 mass which people can use to protect themselves and so i i i believe we've reached we've just reached a point where this makes sense and honestly even if i didn't think we did it we did okay we've got such disruption going on in the schools because we have so many so many students and parents that feel that way that it's our eyes are off the ball we can't we cannot continue this way the students need to be we need to get back to being together and we need to accept the risk as it is right now which i believe is acceptable risk i was in favor of our return to in-person instruction plan before and that was several months ago the conditions are different now and this is why i'm taking the position i am nancy i'd like to can i can i address your question just um i do i will still regardless of what the board decides tonight we'll still continue regular conversations with the dupage county health department they're still monitoring case activity in our schools and in the past with any other disease that's been like when the flu has been around i i even hesitate to use the flu because we know this isn't the flu but i'm going to um dupage county health department consistently monitors case activity of illness in schools and has made recommendations in the past that it is time to send kids home for an extended period of time so they can get away from one another you can do deep cleaning you can do all of those things are still at our disposal if the board accepts this recommendation tonight all of those practices will continue with the dupage county health department moving forward so if it is raining we still have the opportunity to open an umbrella and the board's resolution remains with if there are changes made at government or health official levels above us i have the authority based on the on the board's approval to put those changes in immediately if needed and then call a special board meeting to then vote on those things so i believe we do have the measures in place where if things do go the wrong direction here because of this change that i have the authority and the board obviously has the authority to step in and make changes so it's the health department did anyone say something i was just going to say think that part of that rain metaphor is that it is it might be different for any one of us but that's why it's kind of time for choice and you know i think it's just it's too disruptive we now have our elementary school district following a policy so within households they're going to be you know following different protocols it just doesn't make sense school has been way too disruptive you know they should be educating they should be in person learning shouldn't just be the minimum you know we want our educators educating we want our children thriving we want our classrooms engaged we don't want some in this room some in that room some on a monitor some in person we want them together they're better together [Applause] um do you wanna okay i i guess this has been like the most difficult decision for me i i go back and forth on it um i think you both you presented a wonderful i really appreciated what you said in dr thiele i think you make a very good argument however you know i guess my background as a social worker and i think first before i go on i want to commend all those students who came and said your views and um you i'm glad very happy you exercised your rights as citizens that made me i was very pleased whether i agree with you or not that's not the point but i will say being a member of the 60s i remember protesting vietnam and there are consequences for what we do and that kind of comes along with the territory so i just might want to add that but my background is as a social worker and i have worked with primarily the most disadvantaged of students and we have some students in our in our own community who are that way and if we had someone in our own family who was weak we would want to support and protect them and and i feel like we should be that same way in the school be kind i know that this is difficult for everyone i hate wearing this mask it's just awful but i feel it's a small sacrifice in order to keep those who are not as strong as others safe and so i'm still i gotta say i'm still not quite decided but um i just wanted to express you know that view that and this is a hard hard decision for all of us i mean and dr thiele has been the most fantastic leader and given us great guidance and information and i hate whenever i hear people detracting from him i just want to add that did i had a few comments did you want did you want to go first or it doesn't matter i can go next because i wrote some things down and i'm i'm sure there are many arguments for both sides of the situation and they're very extensive so what i have to say is to our 99 families in our community i understand your desire for choice that has been the american way [Music] for centuries but these are very unusual times if we make the wrong choice there could be devastating consequences for those choices keep going please let me let me make my my statement uh i would love to go without a mask it's uncomfortable we all know that but to keep our students teachers staff and community safe i think keeping them on is the right way to do that until our numbers go down and our health care professionals are asking us to continue to wear masks for a little while longer maybe just until the end of the month which is just two weeks away two weeks we've been at this for 18 months let's just go the distance it's it's like we were in the chicago marathon and we stopped at the 23rd mile let's finish the race and hopefully it will be a positive outcome on another note i'd like to address many of the comments that were emailed to myself and many of the board members to threaten board members does not accomplish anything in fact sometimes it makes us go completely opposite of what you want to say many of them have said that i have not been concerned about our students and that's very hurtful to me those statements couldn't be further from the truth our children are on the foremost of my thoughts and actions every time i come to this board and i have been an advocate for students in this district for almost 30 years more than most of you have been alive and i find that so offensive in many of the emails there's been threats in bullying we do not accept bullying from our students and we shouldn't accept bullying from their parents this has been very divisive and is very detrimental to our 99 culture which we have worked very very hard to create this is as much work to be done to repair the damage that has been done i am hoping that in the future we can work together to give tips on behavior and actions that will get your point across without animosity and detriment to our students that's important and there are many reasons for keeping the current path for just a little bit longer our health care professionals and organizations recommend it we made a commitment to our teachers and staff that we would follow cdc guidelines and most important i think is what we should do to deciding to give to the administration a direction on our positive rate positivity rate excuse me maybe if we went by that number rather than just a date it would be a better outcome and um we have lost many people in our community and to not encourage masks vaccinations and boosters would be uh the wrong move and when we work together to fight this virus the whole community wins so i'm if i could just counter i think one of the issues is that we are running the race but we don't know the finish line we don't know if this is 26.2 miles or 31.2 miles or may 1st miles or spring break miles we know that for the rest of the state for the indoor venues there's two weeks but we we aren't being told anything consistent for schools and and as hank pointed out schools are the last line here that are being forced to enforce this at a level that nobody else in the community is being is being subjected to you know you can see even in a room like this that it falls down when you talk people take drinks imagine with you know a school of 2 000 kids what the practical effect is in a day of people wearing what has you know cloth disposable whatever masks and we're just you know we're just asking for choice i understand that but i'm looking at our positivity rate in the community right now it's a little bit above six percent and i'm saying maybe what we should do is regulate that down to three percent and then we know that's where we want to hit our target to take off our masks and make it a choice terry can i can i say about there was a time when i really you know we used to say i remember hank saying several times you know the data is imperfect but it's the only it's all we've got in this and this is what we need to go by so uh we got a couple of those um uh the government sent us some uh some free tests okay oh did you get yours and put mine in the day before and haven't gotten a thing yet i got mine and in fact last week my wife had a cold she had some coveted symptoms so we used we used one of the tests and she was a negative okay so it occurred to me that now people can test on their own none of that data is getting reflected in any of the data that we see and people aren't aren't sharing the information because they don't want to get somebody else you know it's it's it's become it's become less reliable and i'm not i can't i can't look at it the same way i looked at it before right so um i i just i guess i get you know we're either we're either gonna apparently we're either in the camp of i'm just gonna do what this what the department of public health says no matter what that is even if if even if we have a significant population of people who are saying hey wait a minute this doesn't make any sense to me anymore you know or we're going to look at as hank presented tonight in addition to that data that we're getting from the health care professions we look we look at also the data that we've been able to collect within our own school community as well as other schools in general and we and we see that hey schools have been a safe place whether they've been masking or not masking and and that's that's the data and i i guess i'm i'm just i i suspect that our our our leaders you know here who have come to us with this recommendation are looking at the same way that i'm looking at it i wish the i wish that our experience was being reflected in the guidance that's being offered to our schools it's not happening it's not happening and i and there isn't any sign that's going to happen anytime soon and you know i i get better safe than sorry uh but uh i i just i'm just very fearful that we have we've got we're reaching a point where even if we think that we should keep wearing mass it's just it's becoming more and more it's difficult to enforce and it doesn't make sense to our students into our parents and so it's it to me it's almost a moot point you know we can do and say what we want and our staff is going to do their damnedest you know to uphold the rules and they should and they're obligated to but be aware that the the cost of that is going to be less learning more disruption and more divisiveness and it sucks that we're the ones that have to make this decision i mean honestly you know it really does flow downhill here we are okay we're the board members we are we don't have political ambitions we don't get paid a penny to do this okay there's no there's no risk or harm in throwing us to the wolves right so we're not going to see any of that leadership coming from above and it falls to us we've got it we've got to be the ones to make the decision and and i i have to weigh everything and i listen i we we've been we care about the kids we we want to be sitting here if we didn't okay um but um these are tough decisions and sometimes we're you know we're on our own and we have to do what we think is best and i and uh if if you're not if if we have board members who aren't going to support this um i think we need to decide tonight when and how we're going to okay because we seldom i mean i don't know remember the last time that that our staff came to us with a recommendation and we said no i don't think so okay i mean we we placed a ton of trust in our leadership who we've paid good money to bring to us recommendations right and and and they've got their reasons for doing it i think they've done made a good presentation tonight why you've heard from head as well and i i think we need we really need to do this so so i would just like to say we still have christopher and i i would also like to hear from our two student board members i'm gonna if our if either of our two board student board members would like to say something they certainly are welcome to or if they want to wait and see it later let's stop put them on the spot can i like take one second like if chris wants to go first i will i'm 100 willing to talk but if i could just have like a second to process my thoughts without you put on the spot real fast i didn't mean to i didn't need to do that too you know you don't feel like you you certainly you certainly can take whatever time you need but you also don't have to say anything like that i apologize no you're okay did you do you want a moment as well to think or go ahead yeah the microphone thank you yeah um this is tough uh because there's a lot of different moving parts and there's a lot of interest from parents and students and there's there is no direction there's no there's no guidance from the state there's no guidance from the health department specifically i mean there's we're being asked to make a decision that most of us are not really prepared or qualified to make a lot of ways and to suggest that any of us are not considering how this is going to impact no matter how this goes to suggest that any of us are not considering that's right the weight of this vote uh disregards our our presence on the board and no matter how this vote turns out all of us care about the students and the health and safety and well-being of our students all of us want our students to be in person in the safest environment possible it's i understand the desire to move to a mass optional environment because of you know the the divisiveness and the bullying and it's it's unfortunate that that has an impact in in a situation like this because it should uh it should strictly be about the health and safety of all the students and the community members you know we have immuno-compromised students and disabled students we have students under the age of five who come into our daycare centers and we have teachers and and staff who are immunocompromised who live with immunocompromised people yes and i think it's somebody's got to be looking out for those people and it's i think more attention needs to be brought towards the fact that it's my mask doesn't protect me from you it protects or my mask doesn't protect you from me it protects me from hold on there's no right thing to say it's been a long night so it's it's and and it doesn't work one way right like it doesn't work if if if half the students aren't wearing masks and the other half are it essentially nobody's wearing a mask like because we're all sharing the same error and and so it's like this optional to me is sort of kind of off because it's like in my head it's either we all we're all wearing a mask we're all not because it the guy like the mask doesn't work if half of us aren't wearing it so yeah i don't know if anybody else wants to either the doesn't work if half of us aren't wearing them is true because yeah they're not wearing them pro i mean does this work no you know and and you know does it work if we're 75 students sorry are in the building and and they're not wearing a mask they're in the building yeah yeah i mean precisely so if you have mask optional i mean i really think if you go mask optional that mo everybody else it's gonna it's like contagion i think all the masks will be off i i know it's gonna go that way i mean that's just our whole state is going that way that's not what we're hearing from other schools in the area that have made they're really keeping them out there no they're but it is still the majority of students are still choosing to wear masks they're especially choosing to wear masks and settings in which people tell them i i it would be better for me if you did kids care about one another and i think that's why i said respectfully recommended i think if we share those things i've heard from a lot of the students that were protesting that said you know i i just i want the choice if i go into a classroom and a teacher tells me that there's a reason for it when you're around me i need you that they're gonna consider that if a classmate says that to them that they're going to consider that i would hope that they would because that's what we believe in here but it's one thing to to say that that's the culture we want to build and then this other aspect of the forced compliance that it with no no hope of a history of it falling off that's creating this tension right i understand that and i know how disruptive it is in schools i've worked in schools before and and they've had protests and it is it's highly disruptive to what's going on and i feel for the staff and for the students but at the same time i really feel for those people who are vulnerable who as chris put it who is advocating for them whose families are voting their families maybe but does that prohibit them from coming to school and receiving their education they're as entitled to it as anyone else no we would definitely like i said we already have appointments set up with families today to work on what the mask options are for them what the learning environment setting things are for them so that we can do our best to meet their needs and we've had to do that for students with uh health related issues for a variety of things schools make those adaptions but we have as we say people many of our families have extended family members that live at home who are vulnerable and it and the community is i feel yes i care extremely much about kids that's been my whole life work but there is the community at large that we have to consider too can i say that you know it's one of the reasons why we got vaccinated right that's why we got vacations okay and boosted you know is because i i listen i i don't think you know i had coveted at labor day i had a breakthrough infection okay i i survived i you know i know that you know thanks to the vaccines my own personal immunity whatever you know my risk is very low going forward right and and so but i still got my booster shot right and i still continue to wear a mask especially if i'm if i go into a client's house that you know they've got small children you know i'm i'm doing that and so you know it occurs to me so two things that once again you know we didn't have kn 95 and n95 mass available to give to people before okay we do now so there is as much as you know we were i was wearing that quality mask right for you know in for you and you were wearing it for me and you know now i actually have the ability to wear a little bit better mask um that actually does provide a little bit more protection for me and so that's a difference right um i yeah i i i could go on um i do we all we we we absolutely need to look out out for the least amongst us we do and and we need to continue to be that voice but we're not going to get to a zero risk well it's going to be on our table forever yeah yeah it's good and who's the governor is willing to remove it in two weeks for everybody except schools right he said all right the cd you know also i want to point the cdc and the department of public health have made a recommendation that mass be worn in schools they haven't recommended that we mandate it well because i'd like to hear what nancy has to say because she's a health care professional she's a phd so thank you terry so i you know i agree with many things that other people that all of you have said here and i i get it but i i did have a few thoughts that i wanted to share with the group um and i i try to organize them based on a lot of the major points that i saw people in the hundreds of emails and the hundreds of comments that we got um but i do agree with with because i think we're all coming from the same place we're all coming from we really would like our kids to be back at normal we really would like them to maximize their school day and i cannot explain some of the decisions that have been made regarding why this group or why the i can i have assumptions because we're in a congregate setting sure as opposed to a restaurant it's a different it's a different setting from a public health perspective uh but i i'm not privy to those conversations so i can only has my guess but i did want to share some thoughts and i would remind our board members we have two new board members but you know two years ago we sit in this very room struggling with covered mitigations remember how angry we got because nobody gave us any direction and we were trying to figure it out much like you're advocating for today how we leave we were when people finally when we finally got recommendations from both the cdc and idph and the dupage department of public health who i kind of grip in with idph those recommendations haven't changed and this suggests the assumption that they've not been they've just been there they're just sitting there like something stagnant that they're that they have not been continuously evaluated by public health bodies i think is not a right assumption they remain the same no question about that and can i defend all of them i absolutely cannot but i can defend a lot of them and i think we should not assume that people like wrote these recommendations and said we're never going to look at this again they're saying in spite of the fact that that um we have a high vaccination right in spite of the fact that we've put in air exchange in our schools um our recommendation remains the same there is an end point identified by the cdc and that is when we are out of high and substantial transmission it doesn't matter you know whether whether you think the it should be the positivity rate should be whatever or i think the hundred thousand should be whatever those those guide posts have already been established they haven't been changed that doesn't mean they aren't continuously evaluated right so you know to the argument that masks don't work we do know that school transmission is observed more often in school districts that did not enact mask requirements is it horrendously overwhelming it depends how you define that but we know that there is more transmission where there are no masks and if your argument is that masks are ineffective i would just remind you that calving masks is how we moved back to in-person learning from remote because now we had masks and unfortunately now we have higher grade masks that we're supplying to our students and that does provide additional protection to the individual wearing those but it does not change the fact that public health officials continue to recommend universal masking even with that knowledge again to those who argue that differences in mask requirements from our elementary partners will cause confusion i would remind you that district 99 has seven partner districts six of which require masks some hope that removing cover mitigations are going to reduce the divisiveness in our community this board as other people have said this board and administration have received threatening and abusive communications on issues before covet on issues unrelated to covet since kovitz onset now as evidenced here today many students and community members on both sides of this issue although only community members on one side of the issue came tonight but in the in their in their responses to the open survey and in the letters we've gotten we've seen that many students and community members have articulated their perspective without divisive speech without threats still others have been out now cruel to each other the weight and divisiveness in the community is not to remove safeguards but to respect other people's opinions and to civilly disagree this pandemic has negatively impacted all of us especially our students we're all in agreement on that therefore i would like to see us enhance our mental health services for our students and staff if you you may recall that right prior to the pandemic we just fortuitously because we knew there was a need and mental health has always been a large concern to the district we increased the number of counselors we have social workers we had all of our mental health the health staff and then coveted so what i would like to do is hear a plan from administration on how we're going to consult going further going on with mental health experts teachers students and parents to assess how to provide better support to those who are struggling with the effects of the pandemic even long after the pandemic mitigations are lifted so from my perspective i disagree with the motion i advocate to continuing following the recommendations of public health bodies for the nearly 5 000 students and 1 000 staff members within our buildings and that if and i believe that if we air we should err on the side of safety that's what i have to say yes i have some comments in response to board members but i'd like to give our students the opportunity to share if they were to if they would like to i thought it was loud okay i'll go first okay i was typing something out while you guys were all talking because i was like i knew like someone was gonna put me on the spot mike i didn't think it was gonna be you really didn't i might actually have to pinch you afterwards i'm just saying anyway um this is really hard i want to start off by saying i truly truly don't think it sounds so bad but i don't think there's a right choice either way we go tonight someone's going to be upset you can make everybody happy and that is truly tragic um this week going to school has been so hard not just for me i'm sure not just for scarlet but like a lot of people there has been bullying on both sides um a lot of my friends i have friends on both sides of everything um and i have seen them if they're not wearing a mask get told wear a mask you're like you're gonna hurt someone and if someone goes up to someone that is wearing a mask and coughs on them it's also not okay i i truly try to see like the whole perspective right because although i may think something i need to understand that i represent everyone at north and that's not easy especially right now i have so many people that i know that are immunocompromised and i understand why it's important for them to keep wearing a mask either way we go tonight i'm going to keep using a mask to keep myself safe my friends safe their families and my family safe and i also see it from those students who i truly am very pleased like you said that they use their rights um to do a protest i know they did it during school they did it on friday after school on main street and i understand their perspective as well they have a right to an education and i understand their point of view that that it may feel like that was taken away from them and i don't think it's all of them that are being rude or anyone not just one group of people is being rude there has been a lack of kindness on both sides a lack of respect and i think we all need to take responsibility for that and take ownership for that and i wish i could tell you what would be the best choice to take i i don't know i really wish i did and i don't um you put it very well thank you i'm trying hey okay so it's my turn um i first want to say thank you to all the students for coming out and speaking because i really respect that the students are here they're the ones in the building so i think it's most important that we hear from them personally like jade said i'm not just speaking on my behalf i'm speaking on the whole student body at south's behalf for me either way i probably will remain masked it's a personal choice for me and i think that's the one i want to make and now this might be bad to say but it's become a norm for me over the past 18 months i just i grab a mask when i leave the house it's normal and i do see where the other side's coming from optional masks i mean it has been 18 months and it's crazy that we're still masked but my biggest fear is going to be peer pressure in the classroom i think either way people are going to be pressured to do what they don't believe in a class if you walk in and you're comfortable wearing a mask but your whole class is not wearing a mask and you're going to sit there and the only one who's masked everyone's gonna be looking at you and you're gonna feel that you're gonna feel everyone's eyes on you and i think students are gonna feel pressured to take their masks off even if that's not their belief i've had students come up to me just today on my own team and say that's how i feel i will probably remain masked but if my whole class doesn't have a mask on i'm not keeping it on because i'm going to feel pressured to take it off and i've had teachers also say you know for me i'm going to probably stay masked but it's about respect i think like jade said there is no right choice in this either way people are going to be upset about the choice that's made so i think either way the biggest thing is we have to respect both sides you have to respect your peers if they choose to wear a mask or not wear a mask you have to respect your teachers because we don't know everyone's stories i mean just today i learned teachers have immuno compromised friends who haven't left their house in six months because they have transplants like we have to respect everyone and their own personal choice so i think that's gonna be the biggest thing when you make your decision tonight you have to think about how it's gonna affect the students because they're the ones who are in the building and they're the ones who are gonna be affected by this decision so if it's gonna make school unbearable because you're getting pressured and you're getting bullied like jade said then you have to take that into consideration when you make your choice tonight thank you right before the so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] yeah see if i can mess this one up now all right all right so uh as usual i will ride the middle here and and i have things on both sides first of all i don't think any board should ever make a change because students are breaking rules said that at the beginning of the night tonight regardless of how students believe if it is their right or not the board under their authority passed a rule in august to require masks to be worn at school it is my responsibility to ensure that the administration carries that out regardless of whether or not people in this community believe that is the right decision or not when the board gives the administration a direct instruction it is the administration's responsibility to carry that out and we will do so i understand that people feel like that this is something that shouldn't be done to them therefore that gives them the authority to break the rules there's a lot of rules out there that people feel that shouldn't be done to them that doesn't give them the authority to break the rules and if they break the rules there are consequences to those as was demonstrated in civil rights in the times of civil rights and every time after that you you can make choices you can protest if you don't like what your employer is doing you can walk out on them but something's going to happen to you as a result of that your your perspective will be heard and these students perspectives have been heard however breaking rules at school no matter how much somebody agrees or disagrees with them comes with a consequence and we will continue to carry if whatever the board's actions are tonight as i said in my opening statement it is my legal responsibility to carry out the directions of the board and i will do that so make this decision today on what you think is best for learning for our students for our culture but don't make it because it's going to make it hard on the administration lord knows the last two years have been as hard on the administration as anything ever could be if we can't survive the next as terry said whatever it is coming next we'd be given up at the end so make the decision based on what you believe is the best decision to make i will ensure that my administration and staff will carry out what the board has directed us to do because that's our jobs and i believe greatly in demonstrating for our students the integrity of doing what you have said that you are going to do and when i took this job i agreed to do that and i will continue to do that with integrity for as long as the board directs me to do that if i can't do that i'll turn in my resignation i know that would make many people happy right now but i'm not going to do it because the board gives me a direct order two i've said this to you many times dr kupkin private conversations i'm going to say it in public the health experts are not education experts i believe the health experts for the last couple of years because they were forced to at the beginning were very focused on eliminating the risk of covid and at the beginning people were dying at unprecedented rates we didn't have any idea how to respond to this it was our responsibility as a community to step up and protect everybody since then vaccines access to high quality masks access to treatments just understanding that we need to have these conversations with one another about how we behave around one another our new established expectations as a school educator as an educator as a school administrator i must consider the whole child and nancy you brought up the idea of social emotional supports i believe that the masks as mike said earlier or i talked to earlier are getting into the way of the whole child experience that there are social emotional impacts at school i could have brought a whole nother data set to talk about those tonight there are social aspects there's communication aspects that right now are being blocked from this and when our students are leaving school those are not blocked when students leave school they go out into the society into society and when they're hanging out with their friends they're not wearing masks in a couple of weeks students will be able to go to target starbucks walmart taco bell anywhere that they want in society and will be able to have the choice of being masked or unmasked quite frankly i am exhausted over the fact that kids continue to have to be the front-line defenders against kovid and for the last two years our kids have been held to a different standard than our adults have and then all our adults do is about what goes on in schools and as a school leader i am exhausted by that not by our kids i love our kids i am exhausted that our adults haven't had been held to the same standard of our kids in their behavior in their covid response and in their expectations and that is why we are exhausted in schools not because kids are protesting not because kid we need to tell kids to put masks on because we continue to be held to a different standard in schools than everywhere else and in two weeks it's gonna happen again and i am just exhausted by two years of having to hold children who are statistically not as negatively impacted by covet i understand they're part of a larger community but that larger community of adults sure doesn't seem to care very much and our kids continue to have to carry their water and i'm tired of forcing our kids to carry the adults water in this community and in every community and for that reason i'm bringing you this recommendation tonight i'm i am exhausted that the adults will not hold themselves to the same standards that kids need to if the adults believe that everybody should be masked then do it right if they believe that our kids should stop bullying each other stop bullying each other and stop bullying us the adults need to step up the kids have done it for two years kovit has been carried on the back of kids who had to go remote who had to learn to teach to or who had to learn to learn to learn differently of a teachers that had to learn to teach differently and did a fabulous job of it yeah on a dime with no training and no expectations and did it and you know what our kids fell behind last year you know what this board did with esther monies that i heard people complain about tonight they made summer school free and you know what we did we got our freshman on track data back to the where it was before kovit as a result of that and they put mental health experts that they hired and this board put student support coordinators in place they made sure the kids that were out in quarantine didn't fall behind and they put interventions and interventionists in place to catch kids up and they put in path coordinators to make sure that kids that were disciplined would be caught up and they put in more social emotional support and counseling support so when i see the criticism that comes in from this community that says that this board doesn't care about kids i call bs it's hard i'm here tonight to call it so regardless of what the board decides tonight i will continue to lead with integrity but i'm telling you that it's becoming hypocritical that kids have to bear the brunt of this and i am quite honestly exhausted by it that is why i make my recommendation tonight that it goes effective on the 18th because it just can't happen soon enough that the kids stop having to carry everybody else's water if the board cannot do that tonight i will recommend an alternative recommendation that it goes into effect on the 28th because there is absolutely no reason that kids should have to do this when the adults don't have to so with that i will turn it back over to the board i'm done very well i think though to be clear it would not be the right we should not assume that all adults feel that children should carry the water that all adults are not out to find the cove mitigations no i would say that the actions have been put in place by those above us have forced kids to carry that water i would agree the kids have to carry it and the adults don't i don't have to wear it at work you know i it it's constantly on the kids you it's it's time to give families a choice it's my job to represent the kids that i that's the best way i feel i can at this point and we'll help the kids we always do the kids that are marginalized the kids that have health issues the kids that are just concerned about this change we will help that's what we're here to do that's what we've dedicated our careers to we will do that i think too the kids will surprise you i think they will i agree they want to get back to that standard too and this is part of it making a choice all right is it there's a motion on the table right now we have wait wait mike you have you have no i so i yeah i i would like to know i would like to know from those that are undecided or haven't stated uh with certainty how they're going to vote um if they would make a suggestion friendly amendment um something something along those lines because we need to do something tonight for me i don't want to leave here tonight unless we get something done and we just can't i don't we can't go on this way i want to make an amendment to your motion and make it the 28th i can live with that do you want to vote on the your original do you want to vote on the original one your original or just accept the amendment is it a one-shot deal no no we can make another do the other two want to want to speak before uh i i i think terry's amendment i i might go along with that yeah all right so well i would say we just accept the amendment then because we need the we need four votes to get it done so you need to amend your i do yeah okay so i would like to accept the recommendation of the superintendent and the staff to be effective on 2 28 starting that monday exactly okay can you call the vote asia okay you want me to do it you start with gentlemen mike mike okay jenny hackstrom hi mike davenport hi christopher espinoza joanna vasquez drexler aye nancy kupka no the motion carries and to be clear that masking is still recommended oh respectfully respectfully recommend we expect people to both mask or to to make the choice respectfully and respect other people around them it is recommended until the 28th it is still mandatory that students wear masks at all times at school can i um can i ask too we heard from at least one student who claimed this evening that he was locked in a room can we can we state with certainty that that is not a truthful statement yeah not locked in a room students want to kind of an in-school suspension right i just want to make it i just want to make it clear to those those following along that we aren't locking students in rooms correct um and and they um are getting their schoolwork in there and they're allowed to do it is there a certified staff member [Music] excuse me excuse me could you answer the question yes we are ensuring the teachers are communicating with students putting stuff on google classroom and following up with homework however it is impossible for a student to get the exact same student experience i understand that when they are removed from the they some of them were saying they had no work at all and i go well you can't sit there all day if the student feels like they aren't getting that work they should be reaching out to their teacher or they should be reaching out to the administration and we will ensure that they get the work that they need okay the other thing is you know peer pressure was brought up and that that is very concerning to me um how are you going to ensure that as you know because some kids really feel i do think that masks will fall away i truly do and how are you going to ensure that that doesn't happen i mean you've given us a couple you've given us a good amount of time now for our principals to work with the staff and the students to make sure we've taken proactive measures to make sure that that doesn't happen we recognize that that is a concern that's what we have the experts in the building to help lead us through and i trust that ed and courtney will help us do that and since we don't have a plan prepared for you right now at this moment no i know you don't i know i think by by removing the mandate component of it that respectfulness will will return i think it's easier if not we have our work cut out for us yeah we meet again if not we meet again yes i will call the board back together if things are not working or you know if the health department tells us to you've given me the authority to respond appropriately and i will so so since we're also addressing other issues that were brought up could you just for the benefit of those listening we've had quite a few emails come in and questions there is a process if any student is bullied yes or has an issue with the teacher there are processes in place yup to address that can you just review those really quickly well it's all on a case-by-case basis but you know they start with going to start with going to a trusted adult or a dean or an administrator and then we will follow through on all reports of bullying and harassment and we'll lead that to the appropriate outcome depending on the situation this isn't something where i can just say if this than that right we'll investigate it we'll look into it if it's determined appropriate there'll be appropriate outcomes so start by going to a teacher start going by teacher trusted adult administrator me we're here for i also wanted to i also want to point out that we heard we heard several times that that some people are getting consequences and others aren't and just because you don't know that the other person is getting a discipline or a consequence doesn't mean that those consequences aren't happening i know that i know that they're not with anybody i know that they are just because you don't see something happen right immediately in real time does it mean some consequence wasn't issued exactly correct much like a guideline being reviewed all right thank you board for your service we need a motion to adjourn so moved second terry and mike all those in favor aye aye aye all those opposed we are adjourned thank you

so move madam chair with the stipulation that they build until the matter for which they were intended is complete second all right so we have a motion by mr nunes a second by miss wait any further discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed abstentions that motion carries unanimously thank you everyone next on our agenda we have our student representative report uh senior evan garcia is going to update on the committee on the goings on at dartmouth high good thank you dr jenkins and happy valentine's day everyone since our last meeting a lot has been happening here at dartmouth high school our winter track team competed in the sec conference championship last wednesday both the boys and the girls teams took second place while senior athlete james martin broke the school record for the 55 meter with a time of 6.78 seconds this is a great accomplishment so congratulations to james dartmouth high school is celebrating black history month all month long miss bontes callahan and student caison chavez have created an interactive bulletin board featuring prominent african-american actors activists civic leaders poets and musicians with qr codes that can be scanned to reveal biographical information the multicultural club will be holding a pace event showcasing the works of prominent african american poets writers and orators and it has also been working on producing weekly morning announcements focusing on the importance of black history month ap research is one of dartmouth high's newest and most unique courses and is part of the college board's capstone diploma program students in this course are currently collecting data for their research and their classmates are encouraged to help take surveys and even participate in some of their experiments dartmouth high school will be administering course selection for the 2022-2023 school year over the next few weeks students will meet with their advisors and attend assemblies facilitated by dhs's guidance department our program of studies was shared with all parents in principal tebow's weekly community update last friday thank you and that concludes my update for this meeting thanks evan does anyone on the committee have any questions or comments for evan going on yeah just thank you very much evan for your report as usual well thank you for having me of course thank you evan and you are welcome to go which that's good you're on your way out thank you have a good evening i know you're busy all right so the next item on our uh that's up is our consent agenda we have a number of items under here we have the deca state career development conference and competition the indoor percussion dance team wgi east power regional the varsity color guard wgigi east power regional indoor winds wgi east power regional indoor color guard wgi world championships indoor percussion dance team wgi world finals and indoor winds wgi world finals i read those all because i think we can probably consider them all together unless anyone wants to speak about any one of those so i will entertain a motion to approve all of those requests that i just read off there so moved second all right so i have a motion by mr nunes and a second by miss wait any discussion i would just uh wish all of them all best of luck so exciting it's good to see the the students for deca back in boston in person that's that's a great time my daughter's excited i was telling dr gifford a funny story that um the students were a little worried that the school committee had to vote and we wouldn't approve it and i said it's okay that's just how we do it every year it's a normal matter of business don't worry about it we're all very excited i'm pretty confident that we're good with that so good luck yeah they were they were nervous because i think they're excited to be going absolutely i don't blame them all right so any hearing no further discussion um all in favor oppose those carry unanimously all right next on our agenda is our spotlight on kids potter elementary school i'll hand it over to dr gifford for the introduction thank you dr jenkins we're very happy to have mr porter and miss mchenry here with i don't know how many people they have back there but leave it to mr porter to get a big old group on a frigid night to present um what's going on at potter so well it's valentine's day and of course they want to be with me right where else do they want to be happy thank you very much so good evening and we are pleased to bring you potter schools spotlight on kids as i believe many of you know potter school has three big beliefs that guide us every day they are paused to be kind pause to be safe and pause to be a learner in the past we have shared with you how our students are engaged in creating a kind culture at potter school tonight our presentation is going to focus on pause to be a learner with an integrated focus on how we learn to be safe we are firm believers that it takes a village to help educate a child so tonight we have brought some members of our village to demonstrate to you some of the learning that happens at potter school as we go through this presentation you will see that learning in school is not the learning of previous generations it involves technology differentiation teaching beyond the school day teaching kids to be safe and incorporating the arts by offering children an integrated experience we take the heart we take to heart the words that are found in this quote our job as educators is not to prepare kids for something our job is to help kids learn to prepare themselves for anything so tonight you will hear from our math coach dana giusette one of our special education teachers michelle dyess grade one teacher christian martino who is currently coordinating the district's after-school program at potter school social workers paul reynard and carrie gregoire and visual arts instructor beth nedo also we would like to extend a huge thank you to our instructional technology specialist sandy chika she really is the executive producer director of this event and she's bringing this presentation together through the power of video following our presentation we have one brief appreciation that we will highlight the work of a special group of adults who make a huge difference in the lives of our students now before we begin i do want to let you know that some of the pictures in the video were collected from before the pandemic began so you may see a few children who are indoors without a mask so we're ready to begin and first up mrs ducette thank you mr porter good evening and thank you for having us here this evening giving us the opportunity to share some of the learning that's happening up on crossroad a few weeks ago my colleagues over at dimelo school gave you a thorough look into our new math program bridges but i'm here to share an extension of our math learning known as st math and the st stands for spatial temporal because st math consists of highly engaging puzzles presented visually without the use of language numbers or symbols the founder of this program matthew peterson struggled with traditional language-based instruction due to dyslexia so he created a different approach to mathematics gigi the penguin is the mascot for st math and by answering a puzzle correctly gigi will happily cross from one side of the screen to the other if an error is made gigi will bump into an obstacle and retreat back and the student will have to try again so the first video clip you will see is a first grader working through a puzzle the second video clip will be a first grade class checking their progress and moving their little gigi's on a stick toward their 100 percent completion students feel empowered when they can track their own learning alina what do you have to do with this puzzle same amount of luck oh and what happens when you get the same amount can you show me [Music] wow [Music] what were you doing when you were touching all of them holding oh [Music] he made it across the bridge um [Music] don't [Music] all right seattle i found you you were in the 20 let's see where you are now 24 so you're between those two which one do you go to what is 24 that's your pocket nice job yep [Music] congratulations you move all right whoa what's your number oh my gosh here's gigi which pocket are you going to look at your numbers that's the one you jumped the whole pocket congratulations radar you looked excited in the room where are we going what are you on my man which pockets yours so look at the numbers that's the one nice job up top that will be starting after the february break it was inspired by one of our fifth grade teachers mr craig dutra it's set up as a basketball bracket and last year mr ducha did this and it was a huge success for the children thank you very much and next up is michelle dice one of our special ed teachers hello good evening um happy valentine's day um i've been using the sunday system level one this year with some of my fourth and fifth grade students this program is based on orton gillingham which is a well-respected reading intervention program many intervention programs are designed for use with individual students for several hour long sessions every week and this isn't practical for a public school setting i can't work one-on-one for a whole hour for very many kids at all so it's great the author of this program arlene sande designed the program to be used with small groups in just 30 minutes for at least three to five times a week each part of the lesson is strictly timed and is designed to provide repetitive practice and reinforcement of skills the program uses a multi-sensory approach meaning students will see the word hear the word as they say it and feel the words as they trace it with their fingers a placement test is be given at the beginning of the year to ascertain the level at which the each student should start and every third level there is a mastery check to assess the student's proficiency in reading and spelling of the words the students need to pass both the reading and the spelling portions in order to progress to the next level though the program is regimented it also allows for fun they have a ball toss game and other board games too that the kids really enjoy so they like to have that you have your marker and your eraser ready we're going to do our spelling sounds we can cancel this put it back two minutes and you can start it when we're ready the first sound is in in the next song is um say it um what's the next next one is on say it wrong um and then it's four say it four seven minutes for the next section so the first word is sing say it sings and so we should be tapping it out or on ourself or uh fingerspelling it up here good i like to see alyssa tracing it on just to make sure it's in good next word paul say it like i'm going down the hall oh jacob um let's check how you how do we spelling hall how do you spell that all sound isabel a-l-l let's make say hall to right hall two more times to just get it right yes remember all it's just like the word all but it's the sound in other words as well [Music] how do you spell that sound after a short vowel alyssa ck awesome i'm going to read these words starting from the top [Music] black [Music] excellent you ready for the first sentence yeah yes and then we'll get scared yeah mango okay all right we're going to just do one sentence today i'm going to just cancel this so it doesn't make noise um what's our c for capital letters what's the capital letter jacob t and the um all the words the b may sting you one two three four five words make sure you have all five words the punctuation dylan what kind of punctuation goes at the end period and then with spelling the b how many e's at the end of this b when it's the little instinct insect two yes the b may how do you spell that long a sound at the end of a word jacob a a y a y maste in you check check check have some new sight words that we're going to be adding to our list you said once upon a time and this is what one looks like so i know you know one but so let's choose one and one let's trace it again because not everybody you don't have to write it you can just trace it good now we've got once as in like jacob said it's a part of town oh and now we'll hear from our school counselors good evening we are here tonight to give you a snapshot on how we teach a safety lesson to the students it's the alice drill also known as the sheep shepherd and wolf drill where the wolf is the dangerous intruder in the building and we must do things to ruin his day the book we use is i'm not scared i'm prepared by julia cook and it uses a kid-friendly message the sheep are the students and the shepherd is the adult in charge the number one lesson is always follow the adult in charge the slide that you're looking at here is an actual page from that book it goes through the steps of alice with a meaning alert that there may be an intruder in the building um l for lockdown i for in form c for counter and e for evacuate what you're about to see is some actual slides of us practicing with the children in the classroom doing a lockdown you'll see here that we have the kids moving some of the desks and furniture up around the doors it's intended to be proactive and to provide options in case of a real emergency such as this and here we have c for counter so they're holding their special something getting ready in case the intruder comes into the room and they will throw and run and the most important part of the lesson is the evacuate you'll see here that some of the kids are running out through the back door they're waving their hands they're trying to present in a chaotic way to cause confusion if there was a real intruder and to meet over at the rally points and we pass it over to kristin martino first grade teacher thank you carrie and paul members of the school committee dr gifford i'm kristen martino i'm a first grade teacher over at potter but tonight i'm here as the sale site coordinator sale which stands for student adventures in learning is a free after school program that's offered to elementary school students through a grant provided by deci its intention is to accelerate the learning after the school hours so a big thank you shout out goes out to desi as well as mrs tracy oliveira who applied for and received the grant for dartmouth it's been my pleasure organizing this and running it as well as overseeing it in action we just concluded session one which was ten sessions five weeks long we offered two crazy eights one for the younger kiddos and one for the upper grades which was math based we offered comic books um with children learning about superheroes actions speech bubbles and that one spread from kindergarten all the way to fifth grade endangered species and we did a kids who code we're on a little hiatus right now and then february 28th we'll be starting up session two where we'll see comic books again as well as crazy eights but we're also adding in shark attack sports and fitness and then for the younger kiddos we're gonna have a mad science class so here you see a couple of the classes doing different things the children always had smiling eyes lots of action going on thank you and now i hand it over to our visual arts educator mrs becknetto thank you kristen good evening school committee and thank you all for this opportunity to share with you the value of our visual arts program at potter school i get the privilege of being the art teacher to amazing and unique students don't tell anyone but i have the best job at potter i get to spark the creativity of these children and expand their knowledge of the visual arts all while getting to know them for six years each carefully crafted and thought out lesson consists of at least one of the elements of art what are the elements of art they are line form color value space shape and texture these elements make up the standards of art from which i teach many of the standards that are mapped out in our massachusetts frameworks are multifaceted and cross the curriculum our fifth graders get to discover one point perspective as they use rulers and lines to give the illusion that their art is three-dimensional a crowd favorite is our rubber stamp carving and printing using native american symbols art is an awesome way to bridge cultures fourth graders have a hands-on experience with informal balance just like math we can balance our art formally and informally third grade creates radial designs that dive into repetition symmetry and design in second grade we become color experts as we create tint and shade ice cream cones we also invent our very own colors and name them in first grade we explore texture as we paint like eric carl with combs rollers and sponges kindergarten is where it's at if you want to see the awe and wonder of art at its best discovering that yellow and blue make green is magical making rainbows using only our primary colors is quite exciting when you are five learning about famous artists is one of the ways that i engage students recently we studied piet mondrian a dutch artist whose fame came from creating abstract art broken down into its simplest form all the grade levels studied mondrian and created art inspired by him each lesson was age appropriate first and second graders painted a mural inspired by mondrian and our potter expectations studying famous artists is a great way to cover our standards while inspiring the next generation of art enthusiasts our engaging 40-minute lessons are filled with discovery weaving print making sewing sculpting clay painting oil pastels and soft pastels are some of the materials that we explore the benefits of a great arts program is invaluable students learn problem solving skills critical thinking skills as well as how to collaborate and cooperate they learn to share organize express themselves and clean up our preschool class in our preschool class i work closely with mrs weaver to choose art lessons that are engaging age-appropriate and aligned with her weekly themes our collaboration enhances her curriculum while building a strong foundation of arts education at any time of the year you will find the hallways at potter filled with art murals and bulletin boards made by our potter artists fill our school with color and excitement thank you for allowing me to share about some of the learning that takes place in art with you i think the best people to share why art is important at potter school are our students introducing madison and edward from mrs pamental second grade to share a little bit about why they what they have learned in art what i like about art is i like seeing miss nedo she um she does great art and she teaches us a bunch of cool things i love that everything about her it's awesome and i love art my favorite artist is pablo picasso because he draws what he feels and he had several art styles and periods thank you and next i would like to introduce to you our fabulous assistant principal melissa mchenry good evening thank you mrs ducette ms dyess mr schwinnard and mrs gregoire mrs martino and mrs nedo for providing the committee with some of the ways our students pause to be a learner at the potter school pausing to be a learner at potter particularly during a pandemic has been sustained and supported by our amazing teacher assistants our teacher assistants work closely with our classroom teachers and staff in a variety of ways well during a pandemic it might have also included covering multiple recesses covering multiple lunch duties arrival and dismissal duties it may have meant taking over for a classroom teacher during a period of quarantine while trying to learn their all about their google classroom in a matter of minutes it could also be acting as a building based substitute where they were teaching pe one minute and music the next it might also be supporting our school nurse paula lassie with our test and stay program in most cases our teacher assistants would be hearing about this the morning of or sometimes minutes before we needed their help potter school has always been fortunate to have such dedicated and professional teacher assistants who work hard each and every day but most importantly they create positive and caring relationships daily with our students so to this end we thought that tonight it was only right to give them a special shout out this evening and thank them using the words of the students whose lives they touch every day mrs warren helps us with our reading writing and some reading group some days mrs g is the best because she always helps us mrs g is the best because she makes our material mrs g is the best because she helps us learn mrs g is the best because she's helpful kind pretty and awesome thank you for all you do mrs goyal mrs braga was always really nice to us and whenever we had a share or a story to tell she would always have a very fun story to go with it thank you for helping us with the measurements and for the rotations and thank you for helping the teacher with the printer for getting stuff and thank you for helping me with my math when i sometimes don't really get it or i have a hard time mrs frankie helps me with my work mrs patnaud is very helpful she helps us with math when we're confused she also does a great job doing friday friendly letters mrs patnaud does a great job working with ms oliver we love when you read less we love when you do math with us we love when you teach us new things you make us mr jasmine helps us understand our math mistakes so that we can be smarter i like that mrs jasmine is kind and patient which benefits the students and helps them learn better [Music] mrs b is amazing because she's kind of nice also mrs b is amazing because she goes out of her way to help so as you just heard from some of our potter kids our tas are the heroes for the entire potter community and tonight we have with us mrs botello mrs morin and mrs bragger i think they deserve a round of applause rather than [Applause] [Music] so we thank them on behalf of all our students and with that we thank you for allowing us to present tonight thank you thank you thank you is anybody in the anybody in the committee have any comments questions want to start mr oliver sure i'll start madam chair thank you uh first of all thank you both for the i thought it was a very well-rounded uh presentation including uh many of the uh subject areas and much of your staff and students you know one thing that stood out for me and i i thank you for recognizing it is recognizing our teaching assistants and then not just here obviously you have some spectacular ones here at potter but across the entire district because as i know from being on school committee and being an educator myself that um teacher teacher assistants during the pandemic have played a huge role in a huge function um and we really couldn't have probably opened some days without their without their support um so and they're also provide that um you know that familiar face a lot of the times uh whether it's as soon as the students get off the bus um you know it goes a long way for what they do so um i'd i'd like to personally thank them as well um but overall wonderful presentation to all to all your staff so thank you very much and mr oliver i can just um second that as you said um we probably couldn't have opened on most days um last year um i had coveted and mrs mchenry and i share an office so she became a close contact amazingly the school continued running if any one of those teacher assistants were out we would have a problem so clearly that's a very it's a fair point mr porter [Laughter] thank you thank you mr nance yeah thank you mr porter miss mchenry thank you very much i was making some notes and it was just interesting to see the enthusiasm of the students which trickles down because the teachers are enthusiastic so it's trickling down to the students and and their enthusiasm you know with uh you know with the reading i'm excited i got a kick out of the march math-ness not madness mathness type of deal you know coming up and such and you know i think what was real interesting in the question that i have is i noticed uh when the reading specialist was working with the students and that it's almost like they were writing on a whiteboard table type of deal you know because then they could correct and you know so that was you know technology before it used to be pen and paper so exactly and actually those tables um we actually had purchased for our computer lab um with covid we had to kind of spread things out so we decided to give our special education teachers their own teaching space and those tables came in handy because as you could see the children were able to immediately engage with their work we also want to make sure you saw the sunday system up close because you folks in your budget last year were able to set aside a certain amount of money to be able to support that we wanted to let you know that we're very excited how it's really meeting the targeted concerns of a small group of students but an important group helping everyone it is thank you yeah well i just really i enjoy hearing from you know all the schools and hearing about what your teachers are doing and what you're sort of facilitating through your leadership of your buildings um you know my kiddos none of my kids went through potter but we were lucky at least for one of my um my children to experience your leadership at quinn and i just you know i've taken down notes and just really uh love always hearing about your your kind and your supportive school and the work that you do and i really appreciate this presentation but then you had me at the tas i mean having a child who uh relied heavily um uh individually for for for that um for all of his needs throughout the day and the relationships that you know have been built because of that and the you know above and beyond attitude um and just the that tas the teachers and teaching assistants sort of present every day and just their dedication to the students and they really are that thread that fabric that makes everything work so well and i just of course you did honor them in this way and i'm just so appreciative of that because you know nothing new you got me emotional so i just really really you know applaud everything that you do on crossroads and um how that kind of filters through as those students kind of become you know independent learners and really prideful around you know what they can contribute to their community moving on up to the middle and the high school um you know it starts it starts at that pre-k and and i just appreciate having you here so thank you thank you and i just also want to add as you mentioned that the tas are the thread um as you notice as the ta's names went up you see that they were in like in kindergarten or third grade especially for our more anxious kids when they start school every september it's not their new teacher that they're excited to see they don't know their new teacher yet it's seeing a mrs vitello a mrs moore or mrs braga who they remember from kindergarten so it eases that fear and that anxiety and we do go to them frequently and say someone that you worked with last year is having a really hard time and they're always up for that challenge so they're very important thank you i mean i i have to echo everything my colleagues have said you know clearly you have a wonderful team um you know and the fact that you're leading them and you know your leadership is always evident you know i think this uh cohesion is very clear and again we showcase for us you know a full day you know i think you know we saw and i and i loved you know hearing you know seeing the arts seeing it's such a vibrancy that you know i see within the school and i'm like anxious to walk through those hallways and see that but again we were able to see the curriculum as it emanated up from kindergarten the whole way through fifth grade and then you know while we're doing art we are also focusing on our students who are challenged with reading and dyslexia and i know again like that for me you know to zero in on that that attention and that and i think as a parent you know we see a lot of the the fast pace highlights the fun but you know that kind of skill you know repetition and everything is such a fundamental and you know um just such an important skill to learn and and takes you so many places but to go there and you know and see you know that work happening you know and even to see that the technology that's helping you know again i was very very impressed by you know by watching that because we don't always see that again so um so thank you thank you to your staff as always it's great so thank you thank you and we don't want to um minimize it has been a challenge the past two years and obviously in many school committee meetings you folks have asked us questions how we're handling the pandemic but i do want to reassure people and hopefully the videos and the amazing words that tonight have shown you that although it's been a challenge learning is not just going on we are succeeding right and children learning yeah thank you thanks i also enjoyed the presentation and i particularly appreciated how i think people sometimes still think that you know the modern school is just a teacher in a classroom but i think you showed the range of sort of what's needed to run a modern school a math coach special education teachers teaching assistants social workers after program um because you know we're about to go into the budget and sometimes i think people say well what do these people do everyone contributes to the education of our kids and it's that team that makes the education complete and i thought that that what you showcased here really showcased that sort of that whole range of teamwork that's required to provide that education to our kids so i very much appreciated that so thank you very much thank you thank you all very much appreciate it thanks have a good evening all right next on our agenda is a fiscal year 23 budget i'm going to turn it over to kiley thank mr thank you for relating that wonderful presentation to the budget patient perspective get the presentation up here okay testing so john while jonathan's getting that up i just want to thank you all for the opportunity to talk about the fy 23 budget so the budget was prepared starting with the schools and departments and expanding that to talk individually with those groups and then bring everybody together and talk about where we are with this budget process and then meet with the school committee subcommittee on budget to discuss the budget some more so this is sort of the next step uh in moving forward and the first time this budget is really you know going to be made public it's our process is to make needs-based proposals that were submitted back before the holidays in december and then discuss evaluate then discuss some more and re-evaluate and try and come up with a plan we do that in the framework if you could back up a little jonathan to the second uh the second slide thanks um so we do that in the framework of the overall strategic improvement plan um and where jonathan has us right there really looking at teaching and learning access and equity and community engagement which have been a part of our strategic plan now for for some years and continue to be our areas of focus and give us some guidance as to how to move forward with this budget proposal these guiding priorities i'm not going to read through them all but you'll note in our proposals and our recommendations in the budget that they're very closely tied to these guiding principles that's something we try and frame each proposal in terms of uh con consideration of of these principles and make sure that um our focus is is where it needs to be in terms of allocating funding so the overall budget uh for fy 23 proposal is 49 million 383 406 dollars so what does that mean how does that break down so uh instruction is 75 of the budget so instruction category includes teachers principals teaching assistants substitutes other instructional staff instructional technology professional development special education services materials books and other supplies so that's 75 percent of our budget that's the big green piece of the pie there other services which is the next largest area is about 11 of our budget so that's transportation attendance health services athletics student activities that's eleven percent maintenance and utilities which includes things like custodial services snow plowing um timely topic and maintenance of the buildings and grounds that's eight percent of our budget administration so that includes our district-wide administration our administrative technology like our student information system and other types of technology legal services that's two percent of our budget and then uh tuitions so this is for students who we can't serve in district and have to be served at out-of-district placements that's four percent of our budget so actually none of the percentages changed um from last year so i just found that interesting although you'll see that there's pretty big increases in some of the categories you'll see that on the next slide here so instruction increased 141 dollars so a 5.6 percent uh increase in that area so that um as you could imagine most of our budget is salaries um and so that is for contractual obligations provision for collective bargaining and some budget recommendations that we're going to talk about in a minute administration decreased relative to our restructuring of our director of teaching and learning position again we'll talk about that coming up maintenance and utilities that is for the increase there's three percent uh which was for projected contractual obligations and utility costs other services uh increase of 2.9 percent that is an increase for transportation costs and some contractual obligations and the increase in the minimum wage as well which impacts some positions in that category and then tuitions is again that's just services that were required to provide by iep for certain students and the state increases prices every year so that it's incorporated into that so the bottom line budget the change from last year is an increase of two million two hundred and two thousand eight hundred and fifty seven dollars or four point seven percent so specific recommendations that are incorporated and you'll you'll see some of the on on the next slide in a minute some of the things that you couldn't incorporate but some of the things that we could incorporate and there's not a lot on this list unfortunately this year were the quinn school teaching position so really we took a look at we always watch enrollment uh carefully and we found that we had an inequity in terms of particular grade levels at the quinn school and that we needed to address that so we were going to have 27 plus kids in a classroom not ideal for learning and we so we've attempted to address that in uh in this budget proposal restructuring the director of teaching and learning okay so um i think i think you all know that tracy oliveira is retiring in september so our proposal includes shifting things to have two positions one elementary school elementary level teaching and learning director and one secondary level teaching and learning director so in terms of budget wise what that means is the fy 22 budget included actually the assistant superintendent position which we never filled so we've removed the assistant superintendent position and we've split into two director of teaching and learning positions so then we've also removed grant funding that supports those positions so the net of all that is the 136 thousand 000 increase and that'll really allow us to target the needs more specifically and and not be spread so thin in terms of the curriculum work that needs to be done in the district so have much more focus and be able to provide a better transition from level to level um by by having these positions in place and then the third and last recommendation that we've included there is registered behavior technician teacher assistant position so it's actually a little more than just that but it is to hire one rbt who can meet the needs of specific students that are required in their ie in their ieps and services that they certainly need it's also identifying teacher assistance in our school now current employees who would like to be trained as rbts and putting them through training providing them with there's a contractual stipend that goes along with being a registered behavior technician um and so it would be providing them with that and having them in place so that we would have a more robust flexible system to provide the services that we need and make sure that everybody gets exact all the students get exactly what they need in that regard so those are the three proposals that we've incorporated into this budget proposal this is always the sad uh the sad slide so the budget request is not funded um there's there's quite a bit that's not funded there um the high school is postgraduate transition program there are um throughout the schools there are supply needs um the the middle school requested a sped interventionist there's behavior specialists social workers teacher assistants there's a fairly long list there including on the list eliminating the high school student parking fee which was the topic of the um school committee earlier in the year so what that would have represented was that 752 thousand dollar uh increase and one point almost one point six percent we would have been our overall budget request would have been six point three percent had we incorporated all these items i i think it's important to note that um from dr gifford and i in in preparing the proposal have um our thought is that we would commit some funding to support some of these things outside of the operating budget so our proposal would would um use school choice funding for approximately 62 thousand dollars of cost the the target with the school choice funding would be to combat the inflationary costs that we've seen most of our requests for supplies are not to buy things that we haven't bought before they're to pay for things that we already buy and need and the costs are increasing and the availability is difficult and um you know just like all of us at home the schools we you know we're we're fighting that um inflationary environment and um it's been it's been difficult so our thought is that we would use again approximately 62 000 of school choice to support those schools in that regard and then we'd also look at sr funding the esser the federal covid related grant funding to support approximately 75 000 of requests relating to after-school programs programs for kids um and staffing that we really feel is you know is critical so that is the good news i guess is that there are some things that aren't built into that operating budget request that we we feel we could support and be able to fit into the grant and be able to fit into the school choice funding for that and basically those are the those are the factors um that make up the fy 23 budget proposal so i know i have provided you with uh electronic version of the backup for the budget i am in an email last week um i'm be happy to provide you with a printed copy if you like um please let me know yeah we can save the trees yeah yeah that's fine thank you [Laughter] so the the budget timeline just you vote you voted that back in the fall but that's included in the in your packet we have a number of opportunities to talk about the budget between today and and moving forward we have a projected public hearing on march 21st for the budget and a vote some time after that by the school committee so we we have some time to talk about talk about where we are the town part of the process i think is probably a little behind where they normally are which i guess isn't surprising in these times i guess um so we don't have we haven't received a whole lot of information from them as they are part of the budget process yet there are factors that we do know we've we've got a a one percent increase on on the table from the governor uh in terms of chapter 70 funding so that's almost like a step backwards there's information included in your budget packet about about that so that was fairly disappointing look does look like grant funding is going to remain fairly stable there's also information in the packet about that so you know i'd be happy to field any questions you might have and obviously you know we have lots of several opportunities to talk more about it along the way i'm going to take the chairs prerogative to ask you one question then i'll open it up um do we get our health insurance numbers yet are we still waiting on those we don't so um just informationally i think i shared it with the budget subcommittee so the town uh the the range given to the maya members that's our health insurance group was somewhere between zero and seven point five percent increase now that's a pretty big range right but the good news is that somebody's going to get that zero percent increase so i i don't know that might be us um so last year we were below average so the average they've told us is 3.7 percent makes sense right in the middle of those two numbers and uh last year we were below average so i'm hopeful that we will be do you have any sense when we'll get those numbers uh i think that it should be in it should be it might be before the next school committee meeting but i'll i'll certainly it's unfortunately you know kind of out of our control um but that can have a big impact on where we are it does zero versus seven percent difference yeah it does make sure the funds available yeah exactly uh all right so we'll start down there mr oliver go ahead thank you manager thank you mr kylie uh for your presentation uh just a couple of questions i guess around the budget because it does it does matter how are our enrollment numbers been have they rebounded since my assumption is probably no but have they rebounded since pre-pandemic are we seeing more students still home schooled are we seeing students that you know are in private my assumption is that you know once the mask mandate is lifted that maybe we may see that turn around a little bit but how how are our enrollment numbers our our enrollment is down considerably yeah i mean it's it's it's down slightly since last year the enrollment numbers some of the enrollment numbers are in there and i can provide you with more uh detail but you know the enrollment is is an issue for sure it is down um we're fortunate from a chapter 70 perspective from from the state funding side that we're held harmless at this point with that so that there's no decrease in state chapters based on that but um it's it's over time we've we've seen a decrease in the last you know 15 years a gradual decrease in enrollment the covid issue um you know was a was a pretty big one and and still remains okay so yeah it um in regards to sr2 and sr3 funding where are we at with uh have we completely depleted sr2 um and i know sr3s can be carried through what 2024 2025 yeah yeah so so how are we looking with our esser funds sure so i can give you more information uh for that but what we've done so far we're currently using sr2 we will not exhaust sr2 this year we won't um so we'll be using esser 2 and 3 during fy during this proposed budget cycle and then the following budget cycle and it's going to be a challenge of course as you know dr gifford and i have talked about it a lot um as to the staffing that we've incorporated into esser is fairly significant and it's needed i mean the intent of the sr funds is to support student needs as a result of the pandemic so when in two years when that money's gone does that mean that there's going to be no more needs sure i don't think that's probably i don't think that's realistic so we're going to have to find a way to either incorporate it into our budget and increases in our budget or find some other method um because i don't think we can necessarily rely on the federal government to keep uh adding additional funding out further than this so it's it's a challenge for us but we have funds for fy 23 and 24.

so let's let's let's pause here i'm going to read this out loud so we all orb this one and the and dr garcia's recommendations so he says last week revealed 26 reported cases down from 53 the week before now those numbers from the prior chart they're always a little fluid so but they're very consistent with what he said the case rate at 33.2 is a little higher than i had hoped for but the third week of decline i think we can reasonably assume that we can recommend eliminating mass requirement in schools when any executive order from the state expires case rate down from 59.8 the week before these numbers are adjusted for town size positivity rate was 11.7 percent based on 825 tests reported as was said i based my recommendation on the assumption that the numbers will continue to decline state standards for removal from the red zone for schools uh formerly used to determine when to go to remote if you remember is 25 cases right so last week was 26 this week we're down to 15.

it was right down the middle um which both mr petrina and i um uh anticipated would be the case just based on anecdotal feedback and kind of everywhere you're at in any community it seems to be right down the middle do some people have a little they're a little more anxious about things and others are ready to to take that mask off but that that was the response on that uh so so my question coming off that is you know if if 50 of the teachers would opt for a continuation of mask wearing um are there any implications in terms of our liability you know do if teachers are feeling unsafe or uncomfortable is that you know what's our responsibility there um and similarly you know i that carries into the area of families too so if if masks are optional and up to you know the choices made by families whose responsibility is it to make sure a child whose family wants them to wear a mask actually wears it um and again what is our liability what what is our responsibility in those cases yeah i think debbie i think there's two distinct questions there so let's start with the the first one um one we have it's important for everybody to realize we have two we have two weeks from from tomorrow essentially going forward uh to getting information from the department of public health or state department of education or in the case you're asking about liability um to double check with insurance or whatever the case may be but we we are insured through perma and um there's all kinds of communicable diseases and lots of lots of um issues out there that are potential risks for for any organization such as ours um so while that question in all the different in various conversations that i've been involved involved in has not come up um it's certainly something that i will i could certainly bring forward to attorney murphy um and talk to mr post about and checking with our insurance company on that that's something i can do i can't answer that off the top of my head tonight uh the other when uh can you just refresh me on the other one you're asking about mask wearing the students wearing masks well yeah i mean i feel like there could be a lot of um you know sort of an added layer of complicating factors for teachers in classrooms when some kids are wearing masks some aren't some parents feel strongly that their kids should maybe they have other health you know risk factors maybe somebody at home has health risk factors so you know what what's our responsibility for making sure those children wear their masks and are you know that are the teachers supposed to report to the parents you know those kinds of things sure well i think one of the one of the things we need to consider you need to know is actually we have an administrative council meeting tomorrow morning where this topic is on the agenda so again we have two weeks to work with this uh should the policy be suspended this evening going forward and and must be optional um so that gives us some time it gives us an off ramp uh to figure these some of these details out the things i can tell you that i know are our principals and our teachers would do at each of the schools and we'll again talk about this in detail and if we handle it each building appropriate to the culture of that particular building and obviously to develop developmental level deb for your question there is there are many things that that i think every parent who's watching right now uh know that if they call or write a note to the teacher especially the younger ones i get the feeling you're asking about the younger ones probably more than the older students that is there are lots of things that teachers know about a particular child based on a conversation or a no a meeting with a parent that they handle day in and day out and uh i don't want to be cavalier and just put that on our teachers uh in a conversation tonight in in my response but it's important to know that i mean we have climate teams we have developmental guidance opportunities we have social workers we can do uh mini lessons and videos with the students to talk about all of these kinds of things but also for the mom or the dad that contacts the teacher about their little johnny and his need to uh make sure he's wearing a mask or the parents desire to have that child wear a mask um uh you could bet our teachers will be paying very close attention to that doing the best they can um but we can't guarantee anything will the mass slip down past the nose right now does the mask slip down past the nose will the child pull it off to yell scream and have a good old time when they happen to hug their friend i mean we we just you know this is human nature and human beings being together in a classroom all day long so i i don't want to sit here and guarantee things either but we will be very very cognizant of that and like i said it's already on our agenda for our meeting tomorrow to talk about it's one of the first items uh as we consider a possible off ramp to uh mandatory mask wearing for everyone you know it's it's interesting john just listening to your talk one of the best letters we received um at least that i really uh tuned into was a parent who's talked a little bit about how they were talking to their child right it was a little bit on the older side um that when they're with a teacher who's wearing a mask you should put your mask on right and you know be respectful right if you're with an administrator if you're with a fellow student and you're in close proximity and they're wearing a mask be respectful right um and i think one of the the interesting questions is how can we use our uh all the uh social emotional stuff that we've been building up on caring for each other right to reinforce the what's good what's respectful behavior maybe you don't have to wear a mask all the time but have one in your pocket if you have to go meet with somebody and they and they feel like they should be wearing a mask and it may not be that i was thinking about what you were asking it may not be that a teacher could go tell everyone in the class has to wear a mask that's not what the deal here is but uh but i man i think we have an opportunity to reinforce that we're all in this together in a positive way and yes you don't have to you know masks would be optional if that's the decision we take but um but understand there are people who feel that they should wear a mask and and just how do you behave in those environments is a great discussion for students and bob that's exactly thanks for reinforcing that for me that's exactly what i was talking about when we you know the the principals talk and lead discussions with our climate teams and what that could look like in communicating that to the students absolutely um so i think that kind of goes a little bit with what debbie's asking which is i think you were asking really is is a teacher going to be responsible for policing masking and i think in the end parents are going to have to make sure their children know what they have to do but the especially the younger kids the teachers can be big help there so um but i think that's a discussion yet to be had so yeah i think that's a good point okay did you have other questions debbie or was that kind of the core of it i just well i was curious about even the current protocol when because i think i think now if students test positive their home for five days and then i is it still the true that when they come back they have to wear a mask until day 10.

okay thank you thank you further questions i have a question for sure yes um so ed since the department had been doing this before and you're already familiar with the program so if you have a position for the as noted in the bill the coordinator do you need a committee to tell you what to do i i don't think so senator from my perspective so we've had this program for a while yeah that's what i thought yes we're trying to wind down the funding that's existing in the program the problem has always been when we push funding out towards communities community groups or counties it's very difficult to get applicants coming in for the program partially because when you use federal funding on anything the requirements for delivering that project go up so it's very difficult from our perspective we're trying to see what we can do with with federal highways to see if we can potentially utilize that funding within the state program and then put out state funding to replace it i think it'd be a lot easier for a lot of community groups to use state funding versus the federal one and you can continue the program rather than wait until you got federal funds exactly makes sense the premise of this bill is that there is no point of contact within the division or within dot to have these conversations with which is not the case we push out our hawaii hoist bike plan refresh and our pedestrian master plan to ensure that we get as much input as possible from the community happy to have the conversation with anybody we absolutely support getting kids to school safely but if you look at eight hundred thousand dollars for a statewide program it's not going to be enough so we've been advocating for pushing for these as cip projects that we push out from the division to take care of a lot of big needs versus just small little ones in different areas okay thank you thank you other cheers on this measure i have another question of ed with d.o.t um so with the 1.3 million in the fund currently is this money spoken for do you have projects to use it for um good question chair we had two projects that were taking up to 800 000 but both of the recipients dropped out they said they couldn't deliver the projects so it's back into the system again we're pushing our project forward in nanakuli um to improve the pedestrian paths on the mauka side of the farrington highway and as you and i both know that area that has rolled curb it's slanted very difficult to use and it connects up to the nanakuli schools that are in the valley so we're going to change those out it's 15 million dollars and we're thinking if we cannot find a recipient for the 800 000 we would roll that money into that project to make sure it gets expended thank you for that yes thank you further questions um it's not i've got just a couple and following up on um uh senator kiddani's questions about sources of funding as far as iaja i mean at least notwithstanding who knows what may be in the future let's just count that out for the moment but for what we have right now what's in the pipeline for the next five years are there other grant opportunities for these kinds of projects that the state and counties and so forth can apply for absolutely there's significant amounts of money in discretionary grants that are available to states and counties and some of those discretionary grants are only available to counties so all told in the programs that are coming through about 50 billion that's available over the next five years in discretionary grants that's all competitive that we have to compete with other states and so forth nothing's guaranteed correct thanks and then just following up with um hph i believe it was unless department of health is here [Music] and chris i should add just on on that note our our statewide programs are gearing up towards those discretionary grants for the state i got to say though 85 percent of the schools actually on the county systems so there's only about 15 of schools that are on state systems on those for those areas we're pushing the priorities for those schools but in in on the county system we're not dictating to the counties what their priorities should be thanks is h is excuse me department of health or hpha still here i'm sorry not hpg i'm sorry hawaii public health institute i'm reading this wrong my apologies i'm here and then i also saw that uh bev brodie is now on the zoom okay thanks very much um so just following up on this uh obviously we're having a discussion here where i think everybody's generally in agreement with the young purpose which is how do we keep kids safe and upgrade infrastructure particularly in school areas where we have a lot of accidents and crashes and so forth i know obviously this particular bill came out of an effort with a bunch of different stakeholders over the last year um meeting with i think the doe department of health other community groups etc they're obviously not here testifying before us right now but is there what was the genesis of that and really why are we here and not just i guess business as usual funding projects as they come i might actually ask to to share the time with bev if um it would be possible to unmute her i think she could really speak well to the the need for the srts programming um but i will say that we hear a lot from communities that would otherwise want to apply for for funding um with the dot that the compute that the process is too confusing or burdensome and so what the advisory committee would really do is get all stakeholders on board it's a collaborative process it brings the counties and the state and the different agencies as well as community members together to figure out what are the metrics of success moving forward how can we streamline these funding sources from the state and the federal government so it's all of these and i i would love to pass it over to bev if you have anything to add i know you didn't get the opportunity to testify earlier hello we can hear you oh i can speak i i apologize profusely for being late thanks for calling my name my name is bev brody i'm the director of get fit kauai which is the healthy eating active living coalition on kauai county we have about a thousand affiliates just a little over that represent multiple sectors and disciplines they include educators parents students elected officials engineers city planners business and community leaders health officials bicycle and pedestrian advocates law enforcement hawaii department of health and hawaii department of transportation and numerous uh community individuals and we've been promoting active living for the past well since 1994.

after that there's no funding that came in from federal government so it stands at about 1.3 million about 800 000 for cip and 500 000 for non-cip work and that's the only funding that's in that portion do you think having this [Music] coordinators school rousey roadster school coordinator would enhance this program we already have a we already have a coordinator that was that's responsible for it was responsible for this the state portion and is now responsible for for the federal portion so that position still exists in d.o.t until we expand this funding out that being said we have our bike and ped and active transportation group within the ot already so adding another position won't necessarily help us in implementing this program and then you know like when it comes to state and city jurisdictions with the safe route to school is this if if this goes through is that going to enhance any more things that you guys already have in the pipeline so from my perspective senator and this is this is what we always try to get done we we want to make sure that we push the priorities on our system we coordinate with the counties on theirs last thing i want to do is direct them on the priorities for their system so for those 85 of schools that are on their system we would definitely talk about how we connect to them and how we can make be additive to it but having a statewide committee that directs the counties on what they do i don't know if that's if that's stepping over their purview thank you chair thank you chair if i may please i'm sorry who's speaking here i'm sorry this is bev brody speaking hold on if if uh no okay i can't i can't believe i'm going through members questions at the moment so if you could just sit tight please i know there are questions from members of the committee if not uh just real quick back to ed if you have one i recognize uh we've been here for a little while now um if we were to have the ability to continue the safe routes to schools efforts have been ongoing for the last year bringing everybody at the table and i know dlt was invited to every single one of those is that something you guys would be open to participating in going forward so chair i don't understand why we wouldn't continue this conversation within the statewide bike and pedestrian programs that we already have in d.o.t i don't understand why we wouldn't pull it into an existing committee like the uh um state estate um safety committee i mean from my perspective there's those are groups that have already been established the programs are already moving forward and the robust communication has already gone on with the communities so i would much rather roll this through the coordination that we already have versus creating a new group i think i think let me uh just wrap this up real quick um if there's one last thing on this basically i don't know what the answer is here for how to get everybody at the table i think that's the end goal that we're trying to achieve because it seems like they're conversations happening in different areas i think for the moment we're not going to solve this right here but for the moment is d.o.t open to working with all these other stakeholders we can figure out what that looks like as as we move forward in session i guess is what i'm getting at absolutely yes okay okay thank you no thank you thank you any last questions from anybody else all right if not thank you everybody we're in a recess for decision making recess good afternoon we're reconvening the joint committees on transportation and education uh here in room 329 and online we've just heard sb 2544 relating to safe routes to schools which establishes the safe routes to school advisory committee given the conversation and i think some of the questions raised what we like to do is keep the conversation going but we're going to defer this measure for the time being we'll come back and see if we can't follow through with a uh task force and and something else to make sure everybody's at the same table that both uh the departments and the other community stakeholders are all engaged and we can get everybody on the same page so we're going to defer the measure for today and that wraps up our agenda mahalo everybody good afternoon welcome to the joint committees on education and higher education welcome to this joint committee hearing today today is monday february 14th at 3 35 we are in hearing room 229 this meeting including the audio and video of remote participants is being streamed live on youtube you will find links to viewing options for all senate meetings on the live and on demand video page of the legislature's website the zoom meeting and youtube live stream event will include the 3 30 3 10 pm agenda for the committee on education and committee on higher education in the unlikely event that we have to abruptly end this hearing due to major technical difficulties the committee will reconvene to discuss any outstanding business on wednesday february 16 at three o'clock p.m in this committee room i'd like to take this time to remind our testifiers that due to time restrictions on our hearings we will be limiting testimony to one minute per testifier per bill for people participating remotely please remain muted and video disabled until shortly before it is your turn to testify when i call your name unmute yourself and your time will begin after your one minute is completed staff will mute you so that we can move this hearing along in an orderly and efficient manner thank you for this agenda we are hearing senate bill sd1 relating to education to establish a working group to study and prepare an implementation plan for agricultural career pathways and report to the legislature and it makes an appropriation to testify interim superintendent ki payashi please good afternoon cherokee dhani chair kim and members of the committees keith hayashi interim superintendent of the department of education the department supports the intent of senate bill 2928 and provides comments the department believes in the importance of a career and technical education programs and their ability to prepare our students to be workforce ready we stand ready to continue dialogue with the legislature as to the best way to move forward move our programs forward thank you for the opportunity to testify thank you erica lacro vice president for community colleges not present chair [Music] tammy are you giving erica's testimony right i am so tammy chun for the university of hawaii i will stand on our wrist and testimony supporting the bill thank you tammy brian miyamoto executive director testifying for hawaii farm bureau fees good afternoon chairs kidani and kim and members of the committee's ramyamoto here on behalf of the hawaii farm bureau we'll stand on a written testimony in support of this measure thank you thank you brian that concludes the oral testimony members are there any questions of the testifiers no question senator kim thank you question for superintendent hayashi hello center kim aloha so um according to your testimony how do you your this bill and what you folks are already implemented how is that differ or how is it similar um the the department has our career pathways um our agriculture food and natural resources program of study uh has four different programs of study it includes agriculture and food production of business animal science food systems and natural resource management so those four areas definitely align to to the intent of this bill as well as the department um within that particular pathway within all of our pathways have pathway advisory councils and the advisory councils were formed to advise the standards associated with the courses uh offered in this in the particular pathway it's comprised of industry professionals uh post-secondary instructors secondary teachers and an administrator from the uh post-secondary or secondary level so um definitely aligns with uh with sb um and so um it we are able to um work together and moving forward with this effort so is is it are we duplicating what you're already doing or is it enhancing or i'm a little confused here well it's actually enhancing what we're doing um building upon what the department has are are it is it is it is not a duplication at all and so is the doe supportive yes we are okay because you just had comments so i wasn't sure if you were commenting in support or yes we're commenting in support thank you senator thank you chair the questions members do we need to go into the room no need to break up what do thank you after discussion with the uh higher ed chair the recommendation for the department i mean i'm not the department the recommendation for the chair of education would be to pass this bill out with amendments the amendments would be to move the working group to report to the due also to have working group members selected by the doe in consultation with the university third the appropriation will go to doe for the purposes of the working group and for technical and non-substantive amendments members questions [Music] if not for for uh education pass senate bill 2928 sd1 with amendments cheer votes i for the committee on education on sb2928 sd1 chair's recommendation is the password amendments chair votes i vice chair kim aye senator de la cruz excuse i vote i senator favela hi four eyes chair and one excuse your recommendation is adopted thank you for the committee on higher education same recommendation senate bill 2928 sd1 to pass with amendments discussion not your vote side shares recommendation for on higher education sb 2928 sd1 is the password amendments chair vote vice chair kidani hi senator keith agaron excused senator wakai excuse and senator favela chair you have three eyes and two excuse your recommendations adopted thank you thank you this meeting is adjourned welcome to the senate education sorry welcome to the senate committee on education today is monday february 14th for our 315 agenda we are in room 229 this meeting including the audience video of remote participants is being streamed live on youtube you'll find links to viewing options for all senate meetings on the live and on demand video page of the legislature's website where this agenda we have two bills and we will start with senate bill three three three relating to education appropriates supplemental categorial funding for remote schools repo appropriates funds to testify superintendent hayashi please all right geron vice chair brian hallett do you assistant superintendent for fiscal services on behalf of superintendent interim superintendent keith hayashi the department stands on his testimony in support of this measure and will be available if there are any questions thank you brian next to testify osatui junior president hawaii state teachers association aloha chair and members of the committee laverne moore speaking on behalf of osatui junior president of the hawaii state teachers association we support senate bill 233 since the passage of act 51 in 2004 weighted student formula has had the unintended consequences of limiting academic programming for children in small and rural schools the hsd agrees with this legislation of subject to legislative appropriations a remote school may receive supplemental categorical funding to support additional instructional and support staff in addition to the allocation determined under the weighted student formula that is made to remote school as identified in this bill to provide all keiki in hawaii with access to a quality education the hsd asked your committee to support this bill mahalo laverne next to testify ivan lao interim executive director for hawaii state public charter school commission good afternoon chair kidani vice chair kim members of the committee the state public charter school commission appreciates this opportunity to submit our testimony and strong support the commission deeply appreciates the inclusion of our public charter schools in this funding measure we look forward to working with you on this thank you very much thank you yvonne that concludes the uh oral testimony members any questions on this bill if not we will move on to our second bill which is senate bill 2564 relating to after-school programs appropriates funds for the department of education's resources for enrichment athletics culture and health program to match federal dollars that the state receives for the 21st century community learning center to testify interim superintendent hayashi please aloha chair kidani vice chair kim and members of the senate committee on education and kara tanimura interim assistant superintendent for the office of strategy innovation and performance on behalf of interim superintendent hayashi department of education the department stands on its written testimony in support of senate bill 2544 and appreciates the attached appropriation to provide high quality after school programs for intermediate and middle school students thank you thank you yvonne next to testify yvonne lau intern executive director hawaii state public charter school commission good afternoon chair vice chair kim members of the committee the public charter school commission appreciates this opportunity to submit testimony and strong support of this measure just to note a lot of our public charter schools do apply for and have received funding for this program so we are deeply grateful for its continued support thank you very much thank you next to testify also to a junior president testifying for hawaii state teachers association aloha chair members of the committee laverne moore speaking on behalf of osatui junior president of the hawaii state teachers association we support this bill after school programs provide important learning and enrichment opportunities for potentially thousands of our k-12 students across the island 72 percent of parents surveyed in hawaii agree that after-school programs help working parents to keep their job the intermediate years are important for reversing high school dropout rates and ensuring students remain engaged in their education and community the reach program meets this need to provide this up for appropriation to match federal dollars to fund the reach program in hawaii the hawaii state teachers association asked your committee to support this bill mahalo thank you laverne [Music] next to testify dean nathan morata college of education please good afternoon cher kadani vice chair kim and members of the committee nathan morata dean college of education here at the university of hawaii manoa we stand in support of our written testimony and i'm available for any questions thank you thank you and this testimony is also from michael bruno provost of uh manoa next to testify paula adams executive director hawaii after school alliance chiara kidani vice chair mercado kim members of the committee my name is taula adams with the hawaii after school alliance since the beginning of the pandemic we have been hosting community meetings with after-school programs to share resources talk stories and support them as much as we can in those calls stories have been told like the one from a middle school in the big island where half of the kids choose to stay for the after school programs the parents are so thankful for the opportunity to have their kids engaged in enrichment activities explore their passions and learn and fun in a fun and safe environment on another program in waimanalo where the kids learn math through cooking or a program in waialua where students are fully engaged in stem for all these reasons i'm happy to see this bill supporting after school programs for the last years and a half i've been receiving phone calls from parents saying that they need an after-school program for their children if if this field passes we'll have more programs for our children to learn be safe and engage thanks for this opportunity to testify thank you paula next to testify maria glidden individual maria there please not present chair thank you that concludes the oral testimony we had 23 testimonies all in support members questions of the testifiers if not do we need help we have a question okay senator kim let's see who's here i guess some superintendents uh so currently the um after school program the funding what where what's the funding like or is that the is that the obstacle is getting getting people to hire people and getting resources as far as bodies to get the program up and to where it was before aloha senator kim this is kara tanimura um yes so the current funding is just under 600 000 that's what we received this past school year so an increase to 6 million is quite a bit and yes the challenge has been getting personnel so i guess i'm just wondering from the six the six hundred thousand to six million um why the big gap in that and and again is it the funding or is it getting the personnel i believe it's the personnel so general right now the reach funds that we receive in the 600 000 is about is from general funds and is it and it funds all of the pro it's been adequate in funding all of the programs it's just for the middle school grades so just three grades um it has been adequate but um we believe the intent of the bill is to match the 21st century funds that's why it went from it went to six million okay and 21st century excuse me 21st century is k to 12.

kids are busy kids are running doing things involving stuff that's good more questions our bank statements and match and balance up i attended a pd over industry ready certifications um the early part of january uh i learned a lot about that got a lot of resources for the district on industry ready certifications and how we can go about getting those for our students our junior high basketball had their league tournament in natoma our boys placed second and our girls placed third [Applause] we hosted the district right social studies training here for the fourth grade teachers and the junior senior high teachers in the district jen stetler came out and talked about that they started working on their state assessments that will be given in april uh our junior high scholars bowl has started and we've been really really successful they placed in the top two whatever you need they've gone to in fact they're at chase today um so our high school scholarship team placed fifth originals they missed qualifying for state by two places uh but that was a really good success for them we have 90 attendance at our junior senior um parent-teacher conferences and we will get probably close to a hundred percent once we get all of those uh makeups done and then we had 87 at our elementary and again those will be teachers are working on getting those made up as well so we'll be pretty close to having 100 on our elementary side as well we host our home junior high scholars bowl tournament here on thursday we host the first of three forensic tournaments here on february 25th and 26th if you're not doing anything on the 26th they want to come out and watch some amazing kids do some amazing work we would be more than glad to have you come judge for us just let myself or mrs mcguire know our spring pictures are february 28th for our elementary school and then j.c larson who is a seventh grader won the ellsworth county spelling bee and will be representing the district and wilson uh at the state competition in wichita so any questions okay we don't get it from the superintendent all right um presentation from mr rick that's okay so for you new board members uh i'm gonna take you back to september uh well first of all joe ranch is with the train company uh out of which stop done business with district for several years uh was part of the bushten project and then was not part of the movie to the equipment back up to hollywood to put in bush but i was part of the original project in september we presented several procurement options and a proposal to do an indoor air quality assessment and capital development budgeting exercise for the district so this what i'm getting ready to share with you and what you have in your in your packet there is the results of of that assessment now what i did not include are the indoor air quality assessments i do have them available if anybody wants to see them mr clark got copies of these we can reproduce them but basically this provides the justification for tester funding okay so the federal funding for health and safety of schools there are several things in here that could be improved to better meet cdc ashrae guidelines which is what the federal dollars are for okay so i can pass these around if you guys want to see them um and i could speak for two or three hours on these buildings so i'm going to try to keep this pretty consolidated we will follow through with a pretty comprehensive report okay i'll send that through to mr clark in the in the finalization of this effort but at this point what i'd like to do is go through wilson high school first and then claflin and tell you what the options are from our perspective i have had a mechanical contractor i've got a licensed engineer on my staff i'm a mechanical engineer and then our controls team and our equipment team at train working together as a team to try to put together the right solutions for these two buildings we also had a meeting i believe it was in is that october with principles around hey guys what do you think for these buildings right what makes sense let's get some input from you and your staff on what direction you think we ought to head um so two two uh two things that were identified during those conversations were redundancy right wilson high school has one large rooftop right now if that thing goes down the whole high school's down basically okay uh single point of failure was not something that any of the principals wanted to see in the future uh same goes for claflin's boiler complex basically right he was pumped in this boiler he kind of out of luck you know there's some ways to protect against that but generally that that loop if you have a big water leak you're kind of kind of out of luck on your hot water system so what we try to do is put together systems in budgets that would offer resiliency okay and easier maintenance for local folks up here okay and the school district not something so exotic that you have to call somebody from denver wichita kansas city to service right a little more self-sufficient a little more resilient okay so those were kind of concepts as we move through the design options so let's go into wilson high school if everybody just grabbed this document which just says budgets there's a bunch of budgets on here but the the the idea here on wilson high school is start out use what you have okay replace what you have and enhance what you have or replace it all together and here's a couple more options right so we start from small and large what's what's the best thing we can do immediately so right now the rooftop unit on this building has eight compressors okay we think two of them are dead maybe four okay and that needs to be confirmed but i had our service company price two compressors at thirty thousand and four compressors at just under 60 okay so you could just fix the rooftop right it might run another five years um the problem is it's right at its life cycle okay so it was put in the late 90s um and in this i will see a picture of the controllers that were all removed out of that rooftop so all the controls were taken out of it all the safeties and all the original boards and replaced and there's really no way to prove it but we can't be assured that the original sequence operation or the intent of the operation of the compressor was maintained okay and that might be part of the reason of your failure i'm not saying it is exactly because i can't prove it but we ran into this same problem down ahead of the bush when we looked at bush and it was the same same situation okay so you could do that and that would maybe get you through the season right um you could not do anything and you'd be just where you were at the end of the year last year so went by you know it wasn't too bad but if it gets hot you might have some elevated temperatures okay so your heating system is functional talk about the boiler your controls are functional but challenging okay so you're not you're not dead in the water okay now what can you do what's the next thing we could replace the 130 ton unit okay just pull it off put another large unit on problem is you're back to a single point of fitting okay uh budget for that is about 350 to 450 depending on the options and depending on where the bids come in and we're once again right now everybody needs to understand last year equipment went up about 20 they announced another price increase of about 10 percent of january okay so if you wrap your head around that we'll know what's going to happen but equipment is probably two times the price it was five years so it's gone up substantially so we tried to build escalation in these with some ranges so that's why you see the range so you could replace the unit you know that's that's about where you're at on that one of these units takes about 18 weeks to build okay so to get it in over the summer is a challenge already and we're running across that with with many folks you could probably get that replaced in the fall if that's what you wanted okay next step let's replace that unit and let's put in new controls okay so on option 1b we would replace the unit but the epm controls that are in the building will remain intact the unit would just run stand alone and not be connected so it could have all its factory savings option two is basically replace the unit and put a whole new control system in the whole building okay on the existing vab boxes so you have one big rooftop unit and each classroom has a small vap box that serves okay we would leave the boxes in place just replace the rooftop unit and all the controls so now you'd have full visibility brand new controls on a brand new rooftop unit with existing boxes then again you only have one unit okay so we keep fine 550 to six fit option three you could replace the big rooftop unit with two new rooftop units and controls now you have fifty percent redundancy okay so if one goes down at least you don't lose the whole building you have half of them both both rooftops serve what one rooftop currently serves right so you can do that now keep in mind the elementary portion down here also is served by those two rotations so that that's that is a real option and that's probably for a full replacement that's probably one of your one of your best options if we keep increasing that now we can go back and replace that rooftop unit but this time replace the vav boxes because they're 20 years old when we place the bav boxes we have new controls so new rooftop new vav boxes so a million to 1.25 okay so we keep going all right what if we place the two rooftop units and the boxes and the controls 1.75 and 1.95 so we keep climbing now you have 50 redundancy but you have all new boxes and all new controls okay option six would be a interim solution if you left the rooftop unit in place okay either fix it or leave it like it is and then we take the elementary school portion and we pull it off the existing system entirely okay we put two new rooftop units on to serve the elementary wing and new boxes and new controls okay now it's standalone 100 on its own no matter what happens to the high school system elementary science so 1.35 is 1.5 that also includes new hvac for the office so that means the office can run stand alone without the rest of the school running or the elementary school so that gives you kind of three independent systems okay but keep in mind this option six as soon as you leave the existing rooftop version okay now repairs to that existence if you repair it or leave it yeah either leave it don't do anything or leave it repaired okay that would give you three total rooftops to serve the whole building and then independent systems for the offices okay so if you wanted to come in before school in august you can run the office you don't have to turn on the huge system okay or you know over christmas break if the office is occupied it's on its own you're not option seven for wilson basically is okay if you could do everything what would you do so you can read through the details on that but basically we would put two units on the high school portion two units on the elementary school portion redo the office and then take care of the locker rooms air conditioning uh the two gyms okay and so that would take care of the whole entire episode okay all new controls everything up to code proper ventilation more of a bond issue tight budget okay 3.4 to 3.7 is that the only option that takes care of the gym and locker room yes yes it is and if you wanted to and that's why i don't have the final report published because if you want to dig into well hey we really want to just air condition this gym also we can break all this up okay and i can provide line honor breakdowns um as part of our contract and here's some budgets for you guys to look at right but basically that that would take you to a full replacement project okay so i know that's a lot to get through right there but i kind of took you from how do we use what we have all the way up okay and then the obviously new boiler two new boilers and two new hot water pumps is included in that large so you would have everything brand new except for the water pipe which the water piping isn't that old flat one that's a little different store any warranties with a with the option 1a um oh with the press replacement yeah just the compressor itself i think it's just a one-year parts warning when you do a replacement compressor now there are third-party companies although if they came out and took a picture of that thing i don't think they'd want to they might you know there are warranty companies that would write an insurance policy on bars pieces of equipment i can give you the names of some of them but something that old i don't i don't know if they take it or not quest that car cut quest takes care of cars it's kind of the same thing exactly so it's kind of the same thing people do it on like large chillers i mean that is a large piece of equipment i mean it's you know the unit itself is probably a couple hundred thousand dollars right the rest of it's the install crane and everything else but um yeah you might be able to find that so but that's that's kind of what you're up against um i you know it's it's unfortunate you only have one rooftop in it you know i don't see that very often but whatever you do in the future it would make sense to at least put some resiliency redundancy we might also mention i would be really leery of spending a large amount of money and continuing with any of the control system that we currently have i don't trust it i think it's been the root of our issues because it be like buying a new car and they go in and they take all the electronics out of it on how it's supposed to run and then say we're going to put our own in that's basically what happened here i don't know that was some odd years ago i don't know um definitely do not i would not ever recommend that well if you replaced it or you went with two units and they would have their own inherent controls they could run standalone but you really need to integrate it i was trying to get him just to give me a thermostat and take control of it and just yeah he can't do that that's the tough thing it's a it's a good system it really is it's a bab system is a really efficient system and it does provide really good comfort but there's some controls aspects it has to be kept up any other questions on this building i mean you could get into the gory details of everything i've got all the scopes of work that we drafted up so you guys can review that if you want to get into it you know i know there's there's talk of a lot of these these big decisions are going to take bond dollars but you know you're going to have to do something between now so that's why these earlier projects uh represent the way they are so i i wouldn't replace the one unit unless that's the one thing you could do because then you're stuck right back with one big so that's how they passed the bond issue back in the 90s it cheapened everything up yeah i wasn't i wasn't part of that decision i did sell the equipment back in 1999 or eight whatever it was but i didn't design the job but that gives you guys a good idea of what you're up against okay so what are your thoughts on uh is there options not doing i know nothing about air conditioning or any of this so like not doing the big rtu units but we're like maybe we looked so we talked about that um in our in our earlier meeting and the problem is you have such a yeah such a capital investment already in this building to do anything else you'd be throwing that away and you have all the piping run you already have the boilers in place so to do something like residential style systems on this building would make sense because you've already gotten the infrastructure and you have a very good system in place you just have a control issue and you have aging pieces so on this building no but on platform yes and i'll show you that i mean it's not impossible that it's just the challenge is if we do a whole bunch of individual systems for classroom now you have a whole another upgrade for electric and gas type right you already have the gas and you already have the electric going where it needs to be aside from the elementary school if you split it off right so good question nothing's impossible it's just doesn't make sense what option to split up the system for elementary in high school no that's just replacing the one big unit put two yep no pull the one option two has just replaced the existing rooftop it's 130 tons that's how big it is that's not in weight it's air conditioning it's a big unit the only one that's splits the elementary school off is option six option three um option uh yes option six so if you wanted if you wanted to that's why we could go i could have 50 options right that's this is part of the challenges i got to get you started and then we can move into changing this around as we go but if you took option six that would take care of the elementary school and that leaves probably option three on top of option six okay so you'd have to add three and six kind of except for the controls we'd have to reconfigure to take the controls out but we could build a a plan that looks like option seven without the gyms that's basically what we'd be looking at right everything except the gyms in the locker rooms the problem with locker rooms is they don't need code because you're supposed to have proper ventilation too so you know there are there are some esser funds to play with here right to make a case for and the committee has been granting funds to improve ventilation so the locker room you can break that off it's a separate project and we could probably get that fund the gems since they're not conditioned at all uh cooling wise and humidity wise you could probably get that so there are several things that we could probably get through if you wanted to move into okay what will the esther committee fund and what is your allocation and how much have you already decided to spend on catch-up education okay okay talk a little bit about cloud it just started yeah um like i said we could keep going that's what we might have what we might end up needing to do is have a board work session or something just to discuss and we'd be glad to do that i can bring my developer in and we can get into the nitty gritty where we're going to be so uh such plans okay um i have a an assessment of some complaints too for the newer board members and i i don't know if you sent that around because we sent out that full assessment with photos and everything like the original job site assessment i need to get that to you okay i don't know what you said it to me i'm pretty sure i did but i didn't break one thing okay i'm sorry maybe if you did but it was one of our early visits we did photos and said okay here's the situation i don't remember that so for those for those of you that don't know claflin is it's an older school you know that but it has a boiler that sends hot water around and then you have unit ventilators which are up against the wall they bring outside air in through the unit ventilator and has a hot water coil in it okay so we pump hot water all the way around all the way back out to the boiler plant and then each unit ventilator has what you basically would see on your house outdoor condensing okay it's like three times four times residential size okay um the nice thing about that is every condensing unit serves that classroom so if it breaks it's just one classroom it's not that big a deal right below the hole in the water pipe you've got a problem on whole buildings but that building is pretty resilient in the fact that if one classroom goes down just move the kids somewhere else okay you get it fixed right which is nice so we kind of stuck with that concept so let's continue that idea what could we do with cloud well claflin's a big school um and we didn't break this one apart into little pieces because you really don't have to do anything today okay the challenge of claflin is you have r22 condensed units which is the older refrigerant okay which it's not unavailable but it is the old refrigerant at some point it may come out and those units are starting to get towards their age of return okay that's the out-of-door condition you can't just place out the reprehension because the coil inside is built for r22 okay so now you gotta replace the coil inside well the cost of the coil inside is about the same cost as the whole individual by the time you put the labor price in the coil so you're kind of stuck replacing the system okay so we put together and you can read the scope of word but basically replace the entire boiler plant okay new boilers reuse all the hot water now we did get the hot water i did a water sample analysis out of wichita got a sample took it down there and they found a little bit elevated levels of iron but not extreme okay so we don't think you have major piping degradation but i gave mr clark uh the name of a company a celina that'll come out and do a uh it's basically an x-ray test of the pot right and it'll it'll analyze the wall thickness basically to see if you have any code okay so this first option 6.5 to 7.15 replaces everything except for it uses the existing pipe the hvac systems would be new unit ventilators okay and you can read down through here but if you go to see here if you go to this map um we've got a protein end of life and these replacement in orange so you basically have a an air handler serving the auditorium band room you've got the classrooms applying you the ventilators you've got cafeteria units and you've got the 1962 chin so we would replace the boilers and pumps um existing hot water stays in place replace all the unit ventilators with new unit ventilators and outdoor units and then the other problem with those is the the outside air entrance is right at great length so it's it is on the ground so it's easy for water to get in there it's just you know the ground has come up a little bit right from grass and everything else and we think we probably ought to lift it up to get it above the ground a little bit so you don't have insects and water and that kind of thing coming in the other problem with all the ventilators and claflin is most of them are shut with plexiglass so you don't have any ventilation coming into classrooms which is probably because they were tripping free stats and freezing coils at one point well it's good to ventilate right that's another cdc ashrae suggestion so that's that would be fixed okay um new rooftop unit ductwork to serve the gym do outside air duct work to serve the locker rooms which doesn't exist right now and then new rooftops to serve the cafeteria kitchen to the metal shop areas and then we replace the air handling units in the auditorium band rooms and another thing i did say in all these instances the principal is one of the gyms to run stand alone right not part of the rest of the school system so if you've got a weekend you know a basketball game or whatever or you want to do it an event in the gym you want it to stand alone so it doesn't you don't fire up the big system okay not fire up the boilers the big rooftop that kind of thing so we stayed with that concept for platforms as well we'd add cooling coils to the existing weight room furnaces that's heat only right now so you can cool the weight room and then the big ticket item is the new electrical service upgrade to get everything that's that's the trick in both cases where we're adding roof tops to gems you don't have the electrical service to do it so there's a huge electrical upgrade to get the cooling to get the power for the cooling over and then obviously new controls across the whole central plain school okay now another option at central plains is get rid of the hot water pipe get rid of the boiler room and go with all dx cooling furnaces residential style all the classrooms okay and everything else roofed up so no water anywhere which is nice because you don't have a boiler you have a boiler plant you have oil inspections you don't have boiler maintenance now you have simple equipment that everybody knows how to maintain and there's several people you can talk to it's just expensive because now we're building a closet in every room okay and we're running ductwork this is exactly what we're doing out of simpson uh elementary and russ right now but you have to upgrade all the electrical now we've got to get electrical to every for all the gem systems you have electrical for the for the you know ventilators right now but you don't have gas so we've got utility so there's there's a lot of exposure laughs to replace the entire system of clathwood is it's a tolerance okay um so but right now you don't have to do anything it works okay so platform is not an emergency and really neither is wilson but eventually if the rooftop of wilson dies you can't serve the school so it is critical questions around that and then once again i have a full scope of work that we've worked with contractors on we can include that in the final report as well as the breakdown of costs so you can kind of see where everything's allocated some thoughts on decisions that's one of the big expenses that doesn't exist hot water and the problem with the hot water loop is it's exactly but it's four years yeah and so it's not falling apart but you know it's probably not going to go another third so you'd be rolling the dice a little bit on the on the pipe but the the other challenging thing with waffling is you've already replaced part of it right the boiler plant to the building is all new piping so you've already made that capital investment you already own the boiler building itself so to put new boiler boilers in there it's a good boiler is a good system that's nice and you put two in so you'd have some redundancy so i you know my my recommendation to the board would be you know give us a little board members and myself a little more time to study this possibly have a work session um here late this month early next month and have just where we can sit down and have some discussions thoughts from the board where you get the money that's part of the discussion we're going to need to have that night yeah when we originally thought about this we thought what could you do over the summer that would get you out of the current situation right so that's that's why the option now the option six takes the elementary school off the rooftop so could you limp by with 50 pull some of the capacity off of it take care of the elementary school problem is we're only taking off about 25 tons out of 130.

please know that there has been great discernment and thoughtful consideration taken into a lot of the into all discussions that we have had and it's one of those things that not very often we get to work together and so it's been nice to sit down at a table and have these discussions together um and it's been also great because we have a lot of these discussions on our work days so that you know there's no we don't have a time constraint really staring at us while we understand that there has been some um there has there is a need for some change we want you to know that we love our buildings and we like our buildings like they are but we understand that there has to be some change made with that being said it's nice to have a seat at the table for those discussions and to understand the need the current members of our committee are teachers lisa kreitz reed weber tony brokish stephanie locke angie mcguire sarah martin aaron gonzalez brittany myself daisy adams the principals at our buildings and mr clark um we added a few elementary teachers um with this last meeting so they're really new to the whole process and so we're just slowly easing them in um this committee has both of our both ends of our district working together and so it's not just it's not one side versus another or it's we're all working together and we all have equal say in the conversation and that's been really nice to have our concerns and our needs heard there's been give and take it both at from both built from all the buildings in the in the district not just one building it has more needs than others we've really had give and take when it comes to those discussions um as far as the discussions um we have some plans that were solidified for the most part at our last meeting and those plans are keyboard and accounting will be distant distance taught from central plains high school to students in wilson and also forensics and possibly personal finance will be taught from wilson to central plains high school students and both of these options will have a virtual teacher but then the virtual teacher will visit this the opposite school so the school receiving the distance teaching on a regular basis um the details about what regular looks like are still being ironed out but this is where we have come to through all these meetings i think we started was it november this fall but it's been many meetings and lots of discussions to get to that point um we're looking at options some of those options are facts with central plains junior senior high school students earning the servsafe certificate tarina has been currently offering that certificate program here at wilson and it's been very successful and the students really enjoy it so it'd be nice to have that offering down at central plains then um there is a woods option where we're looking at to adding an afternoon class of two to three hours for construction and we talked about doing a rotation of construction projects between the communities so every community will be equally represented um of course construction projects take time and so it's not going to be a quick project so it may take time to get around to the other communities but we did we made sure that was spoken to and heard that we really want a project in every community um it's important to remember that this is still in its infancy and we're working towards with these ways to add value to our students um education the construction project and then the serv-safe are both things that those students their lifelong skills and they add real value to what the students are learning and taking those skills away to their adult lives we're looking at a need of a family advocate for our discipline they would help with home the homeschool connection and help families in need mr clark thinks he has an idea of somebody that could fill that position but it's really important that we recognize that some students are falling a little bit behind academically maybe not completing work and it would be nice to have that family advocate to have those conversations just seeing what we can do to catch johnny or billy up or sally i'll make sure that i say a girl too but if the family advocate is really important because we need to be able to somehow bridge that gap between home and school in a more meaningful way teachers we can communicate with parents but it's also nice to have that second party that second person that can check and see oh maybe there's something going on maybe there's something that we don't know about that is maybe hindering performance in the classroom or maybe just something where we need to know maybe we need to know that there's some social emotional needs maybe there's some financial needs that somehow we can help with [Music] sorry i lost my friends all right um and then they would work on both ends of the district so it would be both ends the district so it would be here wilson and it would also be in hollywood and also in mclaughlin and um the other thing i wanted to add is that we had talked a lot about block versus traditional scheduling and at this point it looks like both the high schools will retain their schedules um and that's you know that's just one of those things that we came down to the when we talked about it wilson has a very functional block that our kids are really strong excelling at and they have a schedule like clapping that's working and so that was something that we decided would just kind of stay where it was um we're looking at a number we're looking at numbers to see if there's interest and from students at wilson to be able to anticipate in golf and tennis and i can and we have a few don't have a couple of those yeah so we have some interest there and so that's one way that we can add value to our students is that we can offer them because we don't have golfer tennis here but you guys have it in claflin and so why not offer that opportunity to students up here and so they would participate with cleveland's teams to play those sports we've also talked about cross-country and forensics being a team that we work at together but then when it comes to league and state and regional they can split off into two separate teams representing their own school and so it's it's a great option for these kids that really want to do maybe these sports that maybe don't have such high numbers in one school or the other for a particular year it'll give them opportunities to be able to do to participate in these sports and these events another item that was discussed is that the central plains office will be moved out of central plains elementary to free up space for jane's elementary classes this has been a real need for her to have more space for her title and her special education and to free up some some much needed space in that area and so that was discussed um the reading specialist position for the district um would be working mainly in both high schools and also um on consult for both elementaries um the dyslexia initiative by the state of kansas department of education requires that a reading specialist review beginning of the year middle year and empty your data for those schools so that we can figure out how to best intervene for student success um 20 of all esser funds need to be spent on to serve our at-risk students so the position for the family advocate and then the reading specialist position both check that box those two positions will serve our at-risk students mr clark just recently submitted for a five thousand dollar grant for a drone program in both buildings that's pretty exciting i know our kids are excited about any kind of robotics and drones are definitely going to be up there by on their list we recently formed a subgroup to work on scheduling for these two for the two high schools it's really important that we try and meet up and meet up where we can so that we can make sure that those courses that are going to be offered are offered at the correct time so that it maximizes productivity for those students so they can take exactly what they want to take and based on the timeline and that that group so far is um mr holmes and mr dawson they'll be heading it up i know myself i volunteered to be on it wait and it so i just really want to convey to you guys that the committee has worked diligently to come to a middle ground on how to best serve the students in our district and how the administration can come to a middle ground i know that we have budget needs we all know that we have budget needs and this group has been great for being able to voice our concerns voice what we think will work and what won't work um you know we had talked in the beginning a lot about traveling teachers and it was not well received we do have some teachers that are willing to do so and i think we're utilizing those people that are willing to do so when we can it was not easy to it was not easy and there was some strain from time to time but in the end we feel like for the most part we negotiated to a place that we can say we can offer alternative ways for students to take courses they normally would not have been able to it is not perfect but it's a compromise and i think that's what life is it's a compromise and so i think we've come to a good place and we're going to continue to meet we're excited about being able to meet on a regular basis and to be a sounding board you know we know we don't make the decisions we're just part of the discussion piece but it makes us feel valued as educators to have a seat at the table and in that sounding board you know being a part of it and especially when it was the two high high school groups meeting first you know we were able to talk in the group and then go back to and talk to our own teachers um in our own buildings and say hey what do you guys think we sent out some surveys we did all kinds of that stuff from the beginning too just to get some of their their thoughts on it so i think that was good too that we weren't having every teacher in the room but there was at least a voice for the for the groups in each building i think it's important that we have this communication too i mean not only and the teachers and teachers being able to come to the board i mean you need to know what you guys are thinking too and that's one of our affordables is you know that we have open communication and better communication with all the stakeholders that does include the teachers obviously and everyone that elected us to support so it's good to hear that communication thank job it's good so now is there any other questions for them while they're here or anything okay moving on or policy updates what yeah they're pretty pretty easy this time i i kind of sometimes dread these but these were good ones and they're they weren't terribly uh you know not a ton of changes uh first one on d g a j e basically we school employees are not allowed to purchase personal items from vendors using districts accounts we really haven't ever allowed that i mean it happened for a little while like right when i started like through food service or things but that has not happened for quite a while um so my my recommendation be that the board adopted that policy change the second one uh gaad which is child abuse we need to get back here to the third page uh where basically just talks they added some additional updates on phone numbers uh some updates on who we refer to uh and so forth and my recommendation would be that we adopt those those changes to that policy uh next one would be iia which is performance-based credits and this one i really like because i spent some time reading through it you know we can give some kids some high school credits if the principal and the instructor determine you know the task that they're going out and doing warrants some credit uh so my my uh suggestion of that would be that we adopt the change in that policy uh i'm not i i know some superintendents in the past have read everything to you i don't do that um jbcb foster care students uh just again some updates on phone numbers we do have foster students in our district uh just some updates on on how we respond to students that might be in crisis who are foster students so my suggestion would be to adopt bd or excuse me that's the next one uh jc jbcb foster care students uh jcdb is uh dress code students one of the things they added there traditional tribal regalia or objects of cultural significance shall not be prohibited at a public event i think to keep yourself out of trouble with different organizations we probably ought to adopt that it's not we don't have not that i can think of any ever had any issues with this but but i would like to have it as policy in case that um happens next one is kg which is use of personal property or equipment basically this entails individuals using district property [Music] basically you know they need to go through the principle to get the get get what they need and and if they need you know they can go through the superintendent uh to use and and we you know one of the great things about being a small district is if a church is having a soup supper and needs tables we loan them tables that's no big deal they need chairs we loan them chairs we've done it for years not a big issue so uh the next one could be a bit of an issue and this stems from a lot of things that are happening around our country which is if and basically what this is is this is a form and i would like to see us adopt this that if anybody were to find anything in our district that they felt were was objectionable they would fill out this form this form would be in our policy and then it would come to the principle of the building and then it'd probably end up with me uh but this was just a formal and maybe john you'd speak to this because of some of the things that have happened in ellsworth and across across the state across the country this just would be a i'm going to say a way to track that yes you presented it to us yes it's been brought to the superintendent yes it's been brought to the board here's where we stand on so my suggestion is that you adopt all those policies [Applause] for policy reviews or policy updates because these are all part of our book all right a vote all those in favor of accepting the updates as reviewed say aye anyone in opposed state foreign yes sir we have sr2 we still have about 000 left in that we did spend 4 thousand dollars to pay for the audit from adam's brown baron ball but since we had the federal money that he requires to audit it but then they let you pay for it out of the audit it seems kind of like a circular firing squad to me but we we did and we do have used it to pay for some salary for the after-school program up here i broke the subject with the board about using some of that money for retention bonuses for our district staff any thoughts on that i've thrown out numbers in the 850 to 1 000 range uh we will be getting our s or three money too so four thoughts on that my recommendation would be that we use that money for some retention bonuses for our staff is the board okay with me figuring out on a number between let's say 850 there's a low side a thousand as a high side is that okay or do you want me to try to do more i'd like more let me get my let me get my yes or three money too okay okay let me do a little work i'm i'm working on my esr3 bit and it's a little more involved as far as what it takes to get that but um yeah that's i've had districts that have used every i mean i don't know they it's i'm just saying missouri i go to this kansas missouri superintendent's forum and kansas is like a strict school master on using this esser money compared to missouri missouri superintendent used to i mean they've used it to put in a turf field which i don't think that's what it should be used for and we have to really abide by certain guidelines so uh i will work up some information there and we'll get something out for teachers um and go through them do you want to get numbers together and bring those for the board for good motion i can do that because we need to check the balance yeah we'll need to check the balance is that going to be you said teachers it would be all staff members yes everyone we don't want to forget about our dianes who keeps me from running into the wall uh bus drivers custodians all those people it would be for everybody we're all spokes in a wheel and we're all all these people are very important to this district running smoothly and i would not want to leave any of them out the only people that it would not and i will not cover is special education people who are 305 employees they got their own and when i requested help for the last time i got the cold shoulder and then we'll just leave it at that so uh working on answer four three uh you wanted some graduation alliance numbers um the uh you have two sheets in your packet uh since in just in 2021 we had 860 students uh for uh 58 graduation rate uh 304 graduates and there were over 3 000 credits earned since this has started with the district we have had over a thousand students a little over a thousand thousand seven 345 grads and i know that went up because i got a whole bunch i got a sign right here um we have earned 4 000 these students have earned 4 325 credits each credit is worth 709 dollars that's 3 million of that we get so our partnership with graduation alliance as of the printing of this has been an additional three hundred and six thousand six hundred and forty two dollars to our district coffers i bet you there's not a district in this state 6a biggest 6a to the smallest one in that has figured out a way to add 300 000 over a year and a half or so to their coffers through a program and trina shared with me tonight a very nice slideshow that i'm going to send out to you on the students that have graduated these young adults who are so excited they drive here to get their diploma and stand there you've seen the pictures already it's an awesome awesome thing uh legislative update any questions on graduation lines i should say um we only make money if they earn a credit uh where did my mind go i put it on the table and i stapled it all together so it's not enough let me find my i sent you this last night late sorry and hear it here it is there's several several yes the house k-12 budget committee i laid it at your place they're working several bills uh page three uh house bill 2550 that's the one that allows parents to take bay state aid foundational aid and use it to private school their kid or homeschool their kid you know as a public school administrator i'm against that i'm afraid we don't have a lot of private schools around here we do have a few catholic schools and surrounding communities but my biggest fear is i'm gonna homeschool my kid they take them home for two or three months and then like well this is more than i thought it was going to be here they are and we didn't get any of the funds for them they call quote unquote an educational savings account but i no i'm not for that second one requiring schools to allow virtual home or private school students participate in activities cash has been strongly against that a we really have no oversight of those students are they passing are they doing what they're supposed to do um punishment in case something similar to what we had happened go on house bill 2553 uh this is another squirrely one uh it's like they shook the oak tree and saw what nuts would fall out and this is what they're trying to do basically if a kid gets mad at us for whatever reason they flunk a test they go home and say i don't like it at central plains i'm going to ellenwood ellenwood here you go ellenwood takes them they're there for however long i'm not getting to play as much as i want i'm going back to central plains if they live in our district we have to take them no matter what i don't i don't and what's the big concern is not necessarily for us but you get down in a wichita metroplex area derby is known for quite the football powerhouse i talked there my gosh it was all anybody talked about some kid's a good football player and he knows derby's got recruiting ties to this this this i'm going there a lot of concerns on that one uh i know keisha has been on a little on that one as well the house bill 2662 that's parents villa right we do a lot i mean we inform kids we inform parents we have parent-teacher conferences we don't want to lay out lesson plans july the 1st for what we're going to teach on march the 1st because if you get a class that's accelerated you might be well past that lesson you have a class that struggles a little bit you might not be quite there yet that's not i mean we meet each kid at their individual level we don't it's not i've always said people want to make educating kids like building cars and it's not ford is building my truck and the bumper comes to go put on its bent they don't spend a bunch of time getting it straight and making it perfect and put on they just get a new bumper and put on we'll get kids that are dented and need a lot of extra time and need a lot of extra care need a lot of extra help and we're going to make we we get them and we do what we can with them and do a great job with them so um christy williams she is the chair of that special subcommittee on education christie is from augusta her children went to the elementary school where i was principal at one time she thought i was a pretty good gal guy but i don't know if she does anymore because i kind of hounded her on this but those are all the uh people that are on this committee alicia straub is from down around ellenwood i would encourage you to contact her uh and voice uh your non-support for these three bills or four bills uh torrey arnberger's in the great bend area stephen johnson's from over in assyria representative waymaster is from over by russell and then representative williams is the head of it so i have been emailing these folks i'll be honest with you if you don't vote for him i mean in a sense if you're not in where you can vote for him they ignore me the only people that if you can vote for him that's the only people that'll call you or email you back so just wanted to make you updated on that uh i believe on the 23rd i'll be up in topeka doing a little lobbying work on some of these uh with sqe small school or small school group that goes up there so any questions on any of that substitute teacher pay you have a list in there diane it's the blue sheet thank you i would recommend that we take our set of pay maybe try to increase a few more folks up here and the reason i i'm suggesting 105 where we're at 95 right now is it puts us ahead of otis bison ahead of ellsworth some of our direct competition ahead of sylvan by quite a bit chase gets us a little bit ahead of them in that calling contest in the morning to try to get us up to come to your district so i would suggest you go to either 100 or 105 any suggestions from the board i might add that um we've had a quite a few since well about of january because of covet and so we have to pay a substitute teacher to cover a classroom because that teacher is out with covert or their child has coveted or their quarantine then i can take that code that can take that money out of the earth serve funds that's an eligible expenditure so we've been having a little bit of increase in substitutions but then again they're hard to find we've got to cover here and there and it's kind of difficult so we're going to try a little bit better by the day yeah or elementary school um do you want a motion yeah that'd be great if you want to make motion i'll move we pay 100 there's a second by josh so we have a motion and a second to increase substitute pay to 105 per day any further discussion thank you we'll start that tomorrow distance learning grant this was again something that was presented to me uh and made contact and became friends with the sue cooper out of barton county thought of us when it came to this one million dollar grant uh we've developed a another committee taylor simpson mr dawson mrs ozier mr holmes lisa kreitz we're still going to get a couple more from wilson that have not joined yet excuse me one of the exciting things about this grant is most of the time when you write a grant somebody's got their finger in the pie one piece of it this costs us no money to write this okay she's done three of them before and each one has been awarded the grain so i'm excited about that uh we just kind of sat down the other day and did some dreaming on what are some things that we might want to get uh new promethean boards interactive boards possibly some virtual nursing or doctor care manufacturing options different software our potential partners would be great men high school and barton county community college we have another meeting with her on thursday i think there's some great opportunities to help our students and get some exciting new technology in our district so i look forward to these meetings continuing and moving forward so so that grant is just for the technology for the classes or technology training uh of the teachers to use that uh that's why i've been in contact with great men mr thaxton over there chris texting their superintendent where say they would maybe teach science or spanish for us or physics we would provide them through this grant the technology we would then you know our kids could zoom in or whatever it would be but it's it is mainly the hardware some training things like that what i was wondering is like if they did that if the grant could be used to pay for some of the ftd that i don't know i don't know i doubt it but i mean again diane what's one well one tenth of forty eight hundred bid the 48 bucks right 400 bucks so you know we might it might cost us each kid if they took one class over there one seventh 4 800 you know you're looking at thousand 400 bucks or so i doubt it i will ask but i i'm gonna say just in our initial conversations i'm going to say probably not but it's a good question to ask for sure so kind of excited about that one to see where it will lead as we move forward [Applause] i didn't know maybe we wanted a table the first executive session the next month but i think we're all right this is vice president i move that the board go into executive session pursuant to the kansas open meetings act to discuss confidential personnel matters related to non-elected personnel as they relate to individual employees administrators evaluations and that we return to open session in this room at hello 8 35 right at 8 35 with uh superintendent greg clark and john cena there's another table second by josh all in favor say aye aye oh take branches yeah i kept brad in executive sessions this is present i don't know how long this is vice president i move that the board go into executive session pursuant to the kansas open meetings act to discuss an individual related to non-elected personnel to protect the privacy of the individual to be discussed that we return to open session in this room at let's do it here age 45 was superintendent clark and mr john sherman in attendance not on this one well we could have mrs zozier in there too sorry amanda say aye aye brad i'm going to keep you right over here because my chad's okay that's fine thank you hey we're back open agenda items coffee tomorrow night clock here at wilson for anybody who wants to come i know cindy's got cinnamon rolls uh also was part of a the federal government has kicked out some money on a homeless grant uh there's a consortium of a bunch of small districts going to be some training for staff on some different things that i'm really excited about i was on that meeting today so and mrs ozier i i kind of she wanted to share some information on her plans for next year i took off the item where i was going to have her talk and i'm going to let her do it now just for space in our building i mean i've been trying to put together something so i i truly want to keep my sixth graders in the building in the future i truly want to keep them with us so share this with you it's the next year and then it's back for the next three years [Applause] yeah this first one i mean it's it's asking the district office to find a new location right but right now if you look over here in room 109 on that front page where it says special ed that room right now this year is cut in half and i special that on one side and title one on the other i'll have 32 identified special ed students next year and around 25 to 28 title one and so yes they're in and out of that room but there's just too many so if if the district office would move i would let special ed have that entire room and all as well in fact if we can find two teachers they're allowing us to hire two special ed teachers next year too because their caseload is not supposed to be over 25 so we are trying to find a second special ed teacher um the title room would go where diane and bobby are right now they would have that entire space there kayleen and i thought we would move across the hallway and the reason for that is our nurses area is so tiny there are times i have kids laying in my room there's kids laying in chairs in the office there's a kid back on the bed that would give the nurses area a little bit more and plus that bathroom is 107 so we want it to where they still have a bathroom and then that would give us a conference room where my office is this year and that's plenty big to have iep meetings and things in there so that would be my proposal i mean for next year and if you flip the page the following year i'll have only one single class unless a class does something drastic and we lose you know a crew and we can go back to a single class but next year or the following year 23 24 um there will be two fifth grades and two fourth grades so where you see highlighted that's where by pre-k three is right now they would have to find we'd have to find them another location whether we can visit with the church again or bring in a module unit or something but that would allow my two fourth grades i mean to do and that's a smaller group that's like right now like 25 kids so 12 and 13 would work okay in that area there and then the following year you see like fourth or sixth up there in that corner this is where we would either i mean i'm going to need another sixth grade room so could pre-k-4 be put in another location potentially pre-k3 and pre-k4 whether that could be in the church or in a unit unless we decide to add on at some point um and then you would see you know kindergarten could maybe take those two rooms where i have highlighted so anyway just some thoughts that this doing this would allow the sixth grade to be able to stay in there at least for two more years and then if we could find something you know this doesn't help me still with a lot of space i'll be honest with you i still feel like i need an art room some smaller rooms for special ed services that we have there's still some need for some space but this would buy us a little more time to think about what we want to do and uh give us some space still have a cafeteria launching the cafeteria or moving into the classroom well i want to get lunch back to the cafeteria yeah it would be to get them get us back in there okay yeah again i wish i had more space in there too we honestly need a walk-in freezer you know then i could get rid of how many freezers four i think that are in there that would give me more space for tables because we could add another another table if we needed to we could still make it work now it is going to be packed you know but i mean we could make it work so you still have lunch in the classroom we have half and half just really because of coke now we're we're talking about trying to maybe fourth nine weeks if our numbers start to go down a little bit so putting kids back in there two sessions of lunch three is there a room under the gym there under the gym there's just there's nothing under the gym there's locker rooms as well is that an option of i don't know of putting something under there i don't think we can put much under you can't have class i don't think certain grade levels can't be underground i know that you know because that was the issue we ran into at claflin they had to be a certain age to be down in that cafeteria i think it was or at least the scent and uh and that this space down there is not the one thing that was talked about was for art is there a way of making the stage more soundproof by closing up you know putting something that would be more soundproof to be able to have art there instead of art in the classroom the issue with that is it's hot august september and there's no air conditioning out there and they'd be pretty toasty there for the first couple months after that it wouldn't be too bad but with pe in there there has to be would have to be some sort of a sound barrier because it's just too loud on this stage that's what i'm saying if we could put because we do currently put some art out there when they're painting and stuff just because we don't want them painting on the carpet um but the noise in there with the you know pe handle but if there's a way of making that more sound proof in there or something we talked about that a little bit today too what's the rules on like an exterior exterior building like the modular can they go outside like an art room you know like one of those 12 by 40 yeah i don't know if i'd want it for an art room because that would make every class go out i would prefer it be like pre-k three's there a half a day i mean they wanted to be if there was a restroom in them you know or something maybe i mean that's what i was thinking more maybe for that i looked at not purchasing one just see what a release would be for one year like drive up set it up everything was 42 grand for a modular clutch did that include a battery and everything yeah but i think we would be responsible for getting electricity and sewer and stuff and i asked him back i said well god how much would it cost me to buy it they don't sell and they just reach them so then would you think about putting an older class out there you know that would be easier for them to get in and out little ones are a little more difficult to get in and out there's your construction project yeah there you go all right just want to share that thank you very much one more thing on open agenda and i think we're going to do agenda items for next month or open agenda next month's meeting is the monday of spring break we've had that happen before and we went ahead and had the meeting but i didn't and that was but we haven't gone chad's gonna be gone i know we have parents that might be on vacation with their kids um if you wanted to move it up a week to the seventh that would be something we could do or move it down a week to the 21st well when are we talking about having our work uh what would you think of having a work session on the 28th we would probably just have it in hollywood would that work for anybody or everybody or we're the 21st which is a week from today is that right yeah which day 21st february it's a weird month 28th or 21st no probably just in the evening is that okay six o'clock holly read okay brad i'll get with you and tamara on agenda is that okay um yeah the 21st it'll be a special meeting but a work session especially because you're going to have more than four people yeah it's considered yeah you and i'll talk here maybe tomorrow on that but is that okay yeah figure out how to figure something out there i need to go back to march 14th do you want to check yeah do you want to change that one to a week earlier i think we should we do a work session i think i hate to throw a in the chain there i would to make the 21st work i would be skipping city council and i had to skip to which i'm fine skipping on the 21st but i feel bad doing that too you want to move it up to the seventh is that all right diane diane it doesn't matter to me but i want to protect the ball because she doesn't count to payable and that's what she no i haven't so i have city council on the 7th and the 21st oh so if you shift either to those mondays but if you went on the 21st i would probably just skip that's fine we need to publicize that and everything so yeah but so everybody knows so add apologies and the special planning meeting is february 21st 6 o'clock holiday yeah a week from tonight yes yeah we'll do strategic plan and did we do it in january no december december march it'll be march june december it's march every four months so board goals first strategic plan board goals yeah right we'll go over next month is that all right personnel calendar updates on the distance learning grant and our steering committee yes [Applause] is there something going on with bleachers that a patron asking something about bleachers maybe in this old gym down here there have been a request from tony brokish but i'm not i'm kind of waiting until the end of the year see where we are financially yeah that's all i know just what i said yep it's for a handrail on i believe the visitors that i think is where what has been brought to my attention we have a handrail on the home side but we don't have any on the visitor side and that's one of the concerns that's a good thought don't jewelry oh those features in the answer yeah those are awesome i talked to stephanie locke about the handrail but i think rogers maybe got a plan of action for that all right all right thank you thank you brad [Music]

um the february 6 numbers come out on thursday i anticipate that to go down when i have the numbers that i'm tracking down to about 250. so it's a very precipitous drop ms the entire state has experienced the same the same numbers when you look at our percent positivity the week of um january 16th was 33 it's down to 26 i think that's going to be in the teens this week which is would be the week of february 6th the numbers come out this week so things are looking positive uh the number of cases in amongst um and i'm tracking that also there were weeks the end of february where we had 31 47 43 school-age children testing positive for covet in the in the county in the 30s and 40s this week we're talking about or this past week 7 6 13 and 16.

we don't really see a huge impact from that um you know we have we had anyone not graduate because of the civics test no yeah so it's not something we've had really good success with it something that will continue we don't see that being an issue 2124 doesn't really impact us that's where some common school districts which are elementary school districts we have a lot in this county kirkland school valley model creek which is yarnell congress they actually tuition their kids to districts out of high schools a lot over in the verde also um caught widow creek and stuff like well i think they do it a little different because they have a union high school district but there's one example was i think down in in congress elementary school district they send kids to different schools and the amount for the same student at each school was significantly different and so they want to try to do something to fix that and they're thinking about just getting rid of tuition there's some issues with that that we're um talking about but that's what that is a school district lapsing that's where if the district had less than 150 students in a year and there's a fair number in yavapai county that fit that bill then the county school superintendent and the county board of supervisors could actually dissolve that school district and have it be absorbed by neighboring school districts without a vote of the people that are involved in that school district so that is a concern um i know that the county school superintendents are really pushing that we think that they have it down to maybe 25 students and there's still districts in the alpine county that have 20 less than 25 students and then the county school superintendents would like to get that down to eight and we still have school this one school district with less than eight kids in the empire county believe it or not crown king beautiful school um and a pretty big district but they have very few kids um school library books this is where districts would have to basically post books before they buy them for review also we would have to keep track of give lists to parents who requested it what kids are checking out the library again not we are a proponent of bringing parents into the classroom but the burden on the school is just an additional unfunded mandate that the school district would have to deal with uh school buses through transportation um for those that know uh you remember beginning here i was driving a white bus picking kids up or in our case it's the yellow bus this would formalize some of that part of the problem is what they're proposing is not in um does not follow federal law so there's some issues there and then last is school facilities this is 2180 facilities replacement renovation funding if you look down at the bottom they can deny new funding for buildings if a district has a d or f so districts that are struggling academically which a lot of times are they're also struggling financially get less money yes and so we have a you know just in general the philosophy of this this group has a has a you know is is against that just because it's it's penalizing districts that may for in many cases it's not even their fault are struggling and they need better ways to help them out than taking money away questions on the legislative update so i'll try to be bringing this to you into while the legislation isn't just the legislature is in session and keeping you up to date on that last thing is our next board meeting is a special day it was scheduled for march 14th initially we moved it to march 9th because march 14th was during spring break so our next board meeting is wednesday march 9th at five o'clock yes karen would you pretty please send out a reminder [Music] thank you any questions for mr shaw this evening thank you for all of those updates we'll move on to item 6e1 and 6e2 mr livingston financial reports please okay president thomas members of the board district administration and staff ladies and gentlemen i'd like to add an item it's just a quick review of the 2021 financial report and it could be considered part of the consolidated working for i've got 158 page documents if you want one you can certainly have one i would like you back at some point it's nice to have when people show up this is now it should be today on our website you go to financial transparency and they changed they talked about bureaucracy but i don't know who did this but for years it was comprehensive annual financial report for some reason the bodies that review the government finance officers and arizona school business officials and school business officials international changed it so it's now an acfr rather than a cafr so don't don't get confused if you see an annual comprehensive on there instead of a comprehensive annual it's our report for the year ended june 30th 2021 and i'd just like to go over a few highlights again if you want to take one page 24 has some nice circle graphs and it's got the percentage of the 23.6 million that we spent last year i'd like to just review where those percentages were by category 49 was spent on instruction last year non-instructional services 80 student transportation services six percent maintenance of plant that's custodial that's facilities maintenance support services administration 12 and support services students and staff 13 percent and a couple uh sentences again our private sector audit auditors einfelden beach put this together after hours and hours they're here probably 35 hours on site august and november and i did probably 70 hours work preparing for this and a lot of staff did and kathy little spent probably just as many hours as i did with student attendance reports data and this was a couple nice sentences the following are significant current year transactions that have had an impact on the change in that position increase in operating grants and contributions of 2.6 million dollars primarily due to increased grant funding related to cobit 19.

it's getting closer to our pre-covered numbers we're not quite there yet but getting closer the item d we got a lot of we've got some interesting things this month to talk about so item d is the uh approval plan for changes in to contract and leadership structure for building grounds and transportation so um i gave you an exhibit nine uh hopefully you've had time to read that it's a memo to the board that just discusses our facilities planning and and what we've gone through the last few years and i mentioned in there that my in my seven years we've had three different cleaning companies we've really had troubles um getting uh getting the cleaning to the point where we feel good about it in our buildings and the maintenance and so um so we're at a point now where we feel like we need to take it over there are some risks to that there's risk to us maybe not being able to find enough employees that scares me a little bit in this job market so i'm not saying we're going to do this without risk but we feel like at this point we have we have three really fairly new buildings they're beautiful buildings a beautiful campus and we really need to take good care of it and i've been i'm concerned with what we're getting right now and what we've gotten with the last two companies so the challenge has been that i'm making this recommendation as you saw in the memo and it's not a cost savings thing for the district because we're going to have to hire the cost of hiring more staff is going to be more than the cost of what we're paying the cleaning company now it's just it is what it is and uh i gave you a high number there i think we're going to be less than what i showed in that memo i think i guessed it at 125 000 to 150 at the most but we could see that kind of extra cost and uh you know i think we'll be able to to reduce that but i want to prepare for the worst so i'm just i guess i'm asking for your approval to move forward with this plan and start trying to build that for the sum uh and start hiring employees this summer um we've been talking the building grounds committee about it for a few months and i think we're you know i think we're all ready to give it a shot i'll do you know that i'm very budget conscious so i'm going to do everything i can to keep this a budget neutral decision but i did want to put in the memo that it's possible that it won't be it's just going to depend on on really help our staffing issues so does anybody have any questions on it so is this the current number of cleaners you have now with the contract uh no that that that one facilities coordinators is that with those numbers there uh no those are our current staff okay we have uh two maintenance employees we have three and a half custodians uh one in each building and then we have one that floats a little bit and does some food service as well so what i'm going to try to do is maximize the use of that staff first before we start adding more staff for the nighttime duties that's a great question because we can't get a clear answer from them uh i think it uh it's one of the reasons why the buildings are not being cleaned well um they might send two people per building so six but they're not here for a full eight hour shifts so um in my opinion but uh we just don't have a lot of control over it but yeah you know i want to do some more research on exact numbers how many we're going to need i think we definitely need two people in this building we're going to need probably two people in primary or two people in elementary at the nighttime shift so we probably have more control over the end product we will have more control of the end product yes sir oh that was me sir are you hiring for eight hour shifts yes and we we've considered we've been talking back and forth i mean second shift or could he consider a third time a third shift crew if we've got people that would prefer third shift and we have i just could get concerned about supervision uh in those situations but it's possible we could work something out i was thinking maybe a third shift floor crew that comes in and just gets all the floors done after all the cleaning's been done yeah who would supervise the second shift i'll probably have one of the hopefully have one of the six that we hire be a lead but dear uh the way this is set up though i would pull derrick swadersky out of transportation and he would be all facilities and so he would be the he would be the one responsible for all those new employees and all the cleaning and and so he would be the technical lead but but he's not going to supervise him he wouldn't be on site every night because he'll be here during the days on site as well but he's you know if there's any problems he's going to be the the the nighttime supervisor will probably have to be a shift lead and then uh derek would uh be the one responsible for he'd be the i guess the supervisor of the whole department and so the shift lead would be one of the two employees yeah cleaning yeah yep and would you hire any extra staff for absences because if you only are running with six and one or two are out so in my prior district we would use uh our daytime custodians would do uh overtime night work if they we had those issues can't guarantee that would happen but i would try it first so this might sound like a stupid question no it's okay since there's not a ton of activity here during the summers are the these 12 month employees or these 10 month employees no that's a good question um in the summers they would they would be doing all the it's actually kind of a busy time because they have to go through and do a deep clean of all that to strip down re-wax do all the carpet cleaning painting and just do a deep clean of each classroom so it is a busy time in the summer for them this summer we might do something a little different because that's that's a hard transition to hire new crews and teach them how to do all that flooring work so i might have to pay the current custodial company to just go in and do our waxing and let our guys let our crews do all the cleaning and would they shift switch in the summer from from second to first maybe go go to day shifts in the summer and what if they work our first job um i would probably i'll probably have to handle that on a individual basis but the goal is to get them all shifted to first shift in the summer and work together okay and they'll be listed in like the job description so they know and they would have insurance benefits yeah yep full-time employees building the grounds what did you guys think about this plan we liked it we've been hearing continuously throughout the years how the the current yeah it's a it's a three-year struggle it's like three every three years every three years they come in and everything's great like the first couple months and then it's kind of gross the cleaning whatever process starts in the beginning of your deteriorates as the year will fall yeah no people done properly all right i guess my i mean my only concern is supervision but sounds like you have that cover yeah that's my concern too to be honest with you i mean i've had bad experiences with that in the past with nighttime crews are they required are they required to go through the same background checks yes yep yep everything because i find it hard for the knight lead to be one of the cleaners and supervise three buildings because they're cleaning so how do they know what the other so this is something to think about yep yep are the employees evaluated i'm sorry are the employees evaluated yes okay yes all right anybody have any other questions okay please have a motion to approve the plan for changes to contract and leadership structure for building and crowds transportation motion second lauren and doug flascha yes patterson yes yes yes bennett yes yes item e is an easy one hopefully uh school calendar for next year uh we have uh it does start a little later than normal um first days for staff will be the 22nd of august uh students will come after three days of in-service it'll be the 25th of august and then we line up our winter and spring breaks with grant high school so those are those are lined up last day of school is friday june 2nd quick question for you on the schedule yes i thought we'd do every other friday as an early release but september there's two in a row of full-time days on fridays 23rd and 30th oh uh yeah we've always done first and thirds oh it's just yeah it's not every other no it's first and third yeah two months yup good question though all right anybody have any questions on the calendar you said it lines up with grant yes right the brakes do all right please have a motion to approve the proposed school calendar for 2022 2023 motion second joe and gary all in favor aye aye aye any opposed eyes have it four policies okay um i don't even know how to start this one we had the largest press plus update in history and uh this is a very large one i don't think it's it would be good use of our time to go through every board policy i did put notes on every one of them and i'm you know i don't want to assume that everybody was able to have time to read through all those this weekend so i guess we do this on two motions or two months so we do a first reading this month so i would just ask for approval of first reading and we can discuss any questions that you might have had looking over it this weekend um if if there are no questions yet then we can approve it first reading and then we will come back next month and you'll have a whole month to look it over and look at my notes and see if there's anything you're concerned about so whatever you want to however you want to approach this is fine with me there's just so many policies all right does anybody have any questions on the policies no no no all right we spent a long time in the policy committee interesting conversations come up in policy yeah absolutely sure very much i'm trying to remember i don't think there's anything in a minute there's something major major it was more like just reviewing and learning that change but nothing that i think was controversial that we had a debate i think a lot of it was changing um taking scott wiggles name off some of that a lot of that was on there there was some curriculum issues that we've had to really look at was around sex education oh yeah so we've taken the route on that policy to kind of uh we're we're taking the stance and we're basically waiting and seeing because the state standard the standards are not out yet they're wanting to know if we're going to commit to those standards now we haven't seen them yet so we're waiting on that so we the way we address it in the policy is that we're not we're not committing to anything on that okay anything else all right i please have a motion to approve and first reading the board policy updates second lauren and joe let's just go uh all in favor aye aye opposed eyes happy i can just keep going here under other action items the occ yeah just a real quick this explanation is uh our you know i've got to give matt mccully some good credit on this with our e-rate consultant they really jumped in and grabbed grabbed some funding that was available and i know that a lot of districts missed this because they're they just weren't on top of it and i'm just very thankful those those two were on top of it but we were able to snatch 520 000 in funding uh we'll purchase uh 1100 chromebooks next year um and then we will also those will be fully covered and then 400 towards the purchase of uh new devices for staff so it's up to 400 so it's a good time to purchase those devices because we're getting 400 paid for out of probably a thousand dollar device so so i'm just getting your approval to accept this award of 520 000.

motion second joe and doug yes the bus software yeah this is uh something we're pretty excited about um upgrading our bus software which will uh the current software does not talk well with skyward we've had a lot of problems for ever since we started uh so this new software is a very compatible skyward got a good history with that the there's a significant upfront cost as you see in the proposal um the each bus will be equipped with a tablet the tablet will have gps on it for drivers that are driving new routes the tablet will provide turn-by-turn stop-by-stop directions we'll also give information on riders that are coming onto the bus the parents will have an opportunity to download an app and be able to see where the bus is at as you can see close to the routes and we can also send messages easily through this software only to specific buses so your bus is late you'll get a message to your phone your bus is five minutes late whatever so those are things we'll be able to do so this is gonna be much better there's a big upfront cost i do want to reiterate though that this money is all through transportation we get about a 70 refund of transportation costs to the state of illinois so 70 percent of this cost will come back to us at some point it needs to be probably either next year or the following year so so that will come back to us eventually so this cost is significant but just know it's uh upfront costs that we pay but then we will turn into transportation reimbursement so any questions yes we're going to train uh several on the software uh well our in our transportation department yeah probably at least three we'll uh be able to do the routing that was the other thing that was a good selling point the routing is a lot easier our current routing system is kind of difficult um fox slicks actually using this software and we went and looked at it looked at it and our staff really liked it so in our version we'll have the real-time tracking yes yep it'll notify you when your bus is one step away yep you get a new student you plug them in and optimizes the routes automatically it's cool stuff yeah it's pretty slick all right anybody else have questions can i please have a motion to approve the purchase of transportation software for 2022 2023 motion yes peter yes lions yes bennett yes ballinger yes all right anybody have any questions on the employment recommendation can i please have a motion to approve the employment recommendation for january 2022 motion second vivian and gary peter yes ballinger yes lions yes yes yes bennett yes i am 12 resignations accepted we accepted a resignation from katie polgazi middle school teacher effective january 31st 2022 we accepted the retirement request from amy howard as middle school social studies teacher effective at the end of the 2025-2026 school year congratulations to miss howard uh anybody have any questions on the fully request is that correct that she's retiring three years from now yeah yeah they have to give notice okay any questions on the foia requests no no how about the monthly reports no no the next regularly scheduled board meeting will take place on monday march 14 2022 with closed session beginning at 6 00 pm can i please have a motion to adjourn second video all in favor ay opposed i

i've encouraged this board and individuals on this board several times to be leaders for all parents when discussing the mass optional proposal my words of encouragement have consistently fallen on deaf ears it was one time after the last board meetings when i realized my family's rights were not being protected or respected i also began to understand that governmental overreach is allowed to spread when good people do nothing i decided to act i am one of two district 99 parents named in the lawsuit governor pritzker and by extension this board denied my family process under the law due to the judge's ruling my son will no longer be forced to wear a mask he will wear a mask if he chooses to wear a mask because my family is exempt from wearing a mask you might ask why am i here tonight i am not here because of my son his rights are now protected i'm here tonight to fight for all parents each family member should be entitled to choose the best medical decisions to protect their family in the letter that was sent out last night it said masks are a symbol of division and disruption i agree if you continue to deny families the right to choose what is best for their lives you are fueling division and problems in the school students health should not be political this should not be a left issue or a right issue this issue alone is about freedom of choice my family and i will respect anyone who chooses to wear a mask i'm also asked asking you to respect people that choose not to i'm encouraging this board to respect the dignity and sovereignty of each individual to make their own collective choices now is your time to lead courageously and vote for mask optional i generally want each person on this board to be on the right side of history and correct for these divisive and illegal mandates [Applause] uh noel manley is next followed by barbara allen good evening my name is noel manley and i'm from darien illinois superintendents across illinois have been given a false sense of control by governor pritzker enhanced by prospects of receiving huge funds from the rescue esser fund money from the federal government in 2020 d 99 received 313 thousand dollars in esser funds for covid relief in 2021 d99 received almost eight times more esser funds four million dollars how much money is this per student what exactly is the money being used for students are at low risk for covid and always have been so one has to ask what kind of rescuing is going on to obtain this money d99 had to do something in return keep kids masked and muzzled provide locations for covet testing and vaccines surreptitiously placing sexually explicit materials on school libraries and to push boundaries of sex education in issuing his unilateral executive orders governor pritzker ignored and bypassed the do the duty elect the duly elected representatives of the people the governor is governed by fiat refusing to work with the legislature with tonight laws to obtain input he purposely disregarded the people's right to due process in so doing the governor has exceeded his authority violating his oath of office to uphold the constitution of the united states in the illinois constitution the illinois department of health was never authorized by the legislature to delegate authority to any other body of government including school districts thus none of the school districts in illinois ever had the authority to mask or quarantine our kids judge grishall's order confirmed this was an abuse of power and has gone on for the past two years d-99 board members which side are you on the people of district 99 or the federal government do you care about students and the psychological impact two years of masking have caused or are you politically motivated to keep kids masked in order to get more federal money are the yeser funds worth it is the damage to our children worth it thank you barbara allen is next followed by [Music] david pintinger hello dr thiel and members of the board my name is barbara allen i currently have a junior at downers grove north and two children at downers grove district 58.

so um let's all hope that trend continues as would be very difficult to turn back school officials should be aware that the federal order for mass wearing under the prep act remains in effect on public transportation including school buses in addition my recommendation still stands as to all other mitigation strategies to reduce or eliminate the spread of sars kobe 2 virus um so and those are the ones dr bruhl let you out in your earlier chart yes so this has been an evolving discussion with our public health uh director i mean two weeks ago he was much more cautious last week when he sent us his views it was a mezza this last thing which we received i believe on thursday or friday um was was more firm and and he's evolving as we're learning uh more about what's going on on cases so i think that's important to just kind of absorb that the the second page is the recommendation from our pediatric um physician advisor and just for everybody we have two advisors to the district one is a public health director right who's work of thinking about the general public health and the second is actually a local pediatrician who actually sees patients and um and is dealing with just kids so here he writes this is dr garcia i think it is prudent to recommend mass optional policy starting march first based on the following facts and i like that he did this off of facts um a one a sharp downward trajectory in daily new cases infection rate positivity rate in connecticut including fairfield county two a high vaccination rate for the state um which is you know 80 basically 85 and up um i'm a little disappointed that brookfield's on a little below the average of the state but it is what it is clinically at the front lines i have personally seen less than five percent positivity rate in my brookfield office in the last three weeks um i do propose the following in addition in addition to the recommendation to optimize safety of everybody one parent should continue to act responsible responsibly to keep their children home if they're sick and or are noted to have coveted symptoms two individuals who test positive will still have to follow the quarantine recommendations three everyone should be treated with respect regardless of whether they choose to wear a mask or not one of my biggest personal worries is if we let it go there'll be a lot of student peer pressure right and we have to spend time you know talking to students and faculty and other people in the that will be in the schools about you know having um respect and care for those who choose to wear a mask and those who choose not to wear a mask um and uh because it's a ch it would be a choice and then fourth the decision may be reversed at any time if there's a spike um and so there's always a risk in this sort of thing that you know you try and do all the right things and then you know you have a new variant shows up or some other influence shows up or all of a sudden everyone takes it as an opportunity to go party and everyone's starting to get sick again right so um so we have to be careful as i guess the message from dr garcia so um but both health advisors have said we've reached a point where we could do this if we choose to so dr burl back to you yes thank you thanks bob i appreciate you taking the time to to walk us through this well i just think i think it's important we all said we all said that we were going to listen to our advisors right that was important to us yes i wanted to take the time and say you know the decisions this board is going to make is about is about health in our schools and safety in our schools and we want to make sure that our health advisors had a big voice in that and neither of them sadly neither of them were in town tonight so and we felt an urgency to have this meeting so we decided to go with a written input from them instead of having them appear in person and that was very that was very good of them to actually reduce it to writing for us as well so that's greatly appreciated all of their hard work um so eric if you could go to the next slide so one of the things that's just important as a reminder kind of the center of the board as we near the end of framing up the conversation tonight so we really we've got the executive order extension only for two more weeks that is passed by the senate in the house as well as recommended by the governor supported by department of public health our health advisor and our medical advisor who is a pediatrician a little bit about pro more about process i think is important as a reminder for the board the board adopted the opening plan and those first two highlighted bullets really um taught this is from our opening plan is the the mask section and it talks a about in there the board's um ultimate goal would be to have the kids not wearing this and and when the time is right to revisit this and giving that consideration um to make it optional under the appropriate circumstances and here we are arriving at those appropriate circumstances now uh the third bullet just references the cdc order on the mask wearing on on bus mandate so i just wanted to again it was just the center of things it's not to go through and read it word for word and then the next slide eric if you could go to that just another piece um is to remind everyone that about a a little more than a year ago a year and a half ago or so the board per the state department's mandate we were all um strongly recommended and or mandated i forget if it was a man they started mixing our words and i apologize we've got so much of this over the last two years but the uh for every district have a facebook a and so uh working with connecticut association's boards of education like we do in our board attorney this board adopted a face mask policy the very latin the policies linked in this presentation which will be posted after the meeting the very last line in the policy talks about the board having the right to interpret the provisions of the policy and to modify modify excuse me any or all matters contained in the policy at any time subject to applicable law of course that means that that implies executive orders so really what we i'd like to board to consider is is have a discussion tonight not only about where we're at with the data and comfort level and any questions you might have uh or thoughts or ideas or suggestions but really consider a suspension of the mass policy given uh everything that's occurred over the last few days and i believe that is the last uh can you go to the next slide yeah and that's it so really it's time to have the board have the discussion okay why don't you uh take us off the presentation so we can see the screen again so um [Music] all right so we um hold on a second i'm just um i'm just i might my screen has been uh um going crazy on admitting people um so so guys i think first order of business and it's a process question i would ask everybody is when you make a decision this is a decision of high import to parents and to families and to our district so the first question i had in coming here and i wanted to get everybody's input is are we prepared to make a decision tonight yes no um or do we need more information and i just let me expand on that we have the legislature's actions i was really worried we weren't going to have the senate's action by the time we had this meeting but we know what the legislature's done we've seen no input from either the dph on things that we need to do or not do or from the state department of education on things we need to do or not do uh john i think you told me that none of the superintendents are expecting much so right but that's that's often something we were we would wait for we have some written public input but we haven't actually run a any sort of public forum or survey or anything like that so we have a goodly amount of input and i'll just remind us all we got a lot of input last summer too both on both sides of the discussion so um so we've uh we have received a lot of input um and we've stated publicly that we when we had the opportunity and it was the right time our goal was to not have kids wear masks if we could um it was all about safety so i guess the question i will ask each of you is do you think we have enough information to proceed with a decision tonight or do we need to go do uh collect any other inputs and if so what so let me kind of open it up to the floor and see what anybody has to say on that joey do you want to go here sure i'll go first um so yes i'm prepared to make a decision tonight and i don't feel that i need further information as well oh sorry rosa yeah i'm pumped well i have enough info too go ahead yep same i have enough info sharon mike oh i'm sorry same same as joey wrote and amy sharon sharon is trying to get off mute i think [Laughter] debbie how about you i have a i feel like we have enough information but i do have questions um about just different protocol and and implications um should we vote to remove the mask mandate but that you know could be a separate meeting or could be part of this meeting but well let's let's come back to that so let's log that let me see what sharon has to say and then we'll go back to you you know let you ask your questions so sharon am i am i good can you hear me yeah i can hear you enough okay um i feel that i could make a decision tonight okay good as as kind of as do i by the way i'm just so that's unanimous that we all feel like we can make a decision tonight um debbie why don't you go ahead and pose your question and uh maybe we ought to talk about that for a little bit and just for everybody i have uh assuming that we well i'm gonna come back to the decision process why don't you go ahead and ask your questions and uh i emailed um john over the weekend to ask if we had received any input from the teachers union um you know we've heard a lot from parents and we've taken that to heart and you know there's a lot to think about but i think in addition to students we have to think about our staff as well so um john i don't know if you want to share what you shared with me sure dev uh thanks for bringing that up so um it's not it i would have put it in the powerpoint but it was not my survey to share but uh mr petrino the president of the bea brookfield education association which is the teachers collective bargaining group has approximately 240 members uh put a survey out of uh basically asking you know are you you know where where are you at with moving forward in terms of mask optional or you know your comfort level with keeping mass on and extending uh you know mask wearing for all for for a little longer and it literally of the 140 of 240 members that responded to the survey was 50 50.

so deb i actually have update y1 prepared ready to be edited based on the results of tonight's meeting so we can send it out right after the meeting to parents and inform everybody as to what's what's going on staff too inform them what's going on um one of the pieces in there is like i said at the top of the presentation in the absence of direction from the department of health update w1 that has all the information on exactly what you're talking about that we want to have in there which would be at this point and again this is why we need this two-week off-ramp frankly is the um exactly what you said so someone test positive and they're they're out for five days they're feeling good for day six symptom free ready to come back at this time the recommendation is that they come back from our health folks is that they come back wearing a mask through day 10.

and we have a county-wide um safe routes to school task force and we've been able to the in 2012 if you recall governor amber crombie signed that hb 2626 into into law and um that was the um a fine based mechanism for moving traffic violations that's what the special fund is about and um h dot has done an exceptional job i just have to say in the disbursement of these funds to the counties based on the formulas that were established through the administration rulemaking and um providing annual reports to the legislature and i guess it asks you a question sorry i just wanted to give a little intro is i think that it would be very very beneficial we feel kind of like a little bit alone out here to have a statewide effort to move forward some of these goals to actually establish performance measures and goals and um it would also be very great to secure some funding with this uh on unburdensome funding from the fine based funds i just am curious where is that money now like none of the counties have seen any of that money for their safe routes to school program this this i'm just wondering is there a mechanism right now for us to be able to apply for that money or um prior to this just counties were given um distributions of the money is that not right ed it was i'm just thinking right and that's not that's not happening now and it sure would be helpful for us to move forward with our programs but what would be more helpful and what would be a big win is to have a state wide safe house to school coordinated full time that could bring us together and we could come up with these performance measure goals statewide goals that we could really start to create safer ways for the kids to walk and bike to school and roll um they love it they love to walk to school and the benefits of it are numerous too numerous to take up much more of your time so i'm gonna sorry yeah i know if we could wrap that up thank you i think what i was trying to get it is why are we here and um is it doe with us i know they had submitted late testimony hello chair randy tanaka the oe hi mr tanaka thank you very much and i apologize um i it might have been a glitch on our end getting your testimony processed um but that being said i think fundamentally what we've been looking at is trying to help our schools collectively whether they're on kauai or wahoo or wherever is there is there additional basically is there additional benefit that can be had trying to coordinate with doe and dot here in a way that we can put in place some basic goals or structure to some of this um the way you know our our end goal is the same a safe pathway for our our students to get to school and return home um of reason in the last year and a half i've worked much closer with ed sniffen and we're talking about this bill a little bit and it seems like there are a number of things in place um that is led through the dot so i think that needs and deserves maybe a a revisit on what we're doing there but it seems like uh we have a good pathway there so i would once again objective is is the same i think we're all on the same page safety first to school and from school and go from there thank you thanks and following up ed just on your end so in your testimony i believe you had referenced um existing structures within dots the state uh highway safety council and whatnot to sort of be the place if we made them the repository where they could come up with programmatic goals and um metrics to track progress etc etc is that generally a direction that you'd be open to absolutely as long as it's part of the overall program like i said this shouldn't be considered just just the program the program is a statewide bike and program to ensure that we connect everybody but we're starting with schools first because that's the area that we see the most conflicts between vehicles bikes and pedestrians so if we're looking at that i'm good with it um if we're trying to carve this out as a separate piece to just be funded by by safe foster school very difficult for anybody to deliver a program on on six hundred thousand dollars so if we're looking at this as a programmatic as a goal as a whole that's that's perfect and just following up on that how can we be so i think this has been part of the the issue that's been raised right you had uh obviously way more need than there is resources part of i think the frustration that we've heard from some folks through the safe routes to schools working group that's been going on for the last two years that there hasn't been the capacity to um or really the programmatic structure to make it easy for schools to or community groups to come forward to apply and then make sure that that stuff's prioritized in a way that obviously delivers i totally agree but but again this is a federal process we've got to follow it's not one that we made up it's one that we have to follow because that's what's required for that federal funding which is why i'm saying that the difficulty in this whole program is that federal peace i'm trying to pull that out because there's no more funding coming to safe routes to school and it should be funded by ta that taps i'm trying to look at absorbing into the dot and making state funds available for that ta program if that's the case then there's a lot of community groups that can develop or that can deliver on state funding we don't have any work to worry about nepa without having to worry about the federal requirements and we're not having to worry about those difficulties in that federal program so for me that's the goal to make sure that we can absorb those ta funds into state projects make state highway funds available to uh to the communities for this types of projects to ensure that we can push that kind of funding out to the public thanks and so just following up so for all the the working group folks department of health department of education other various community stakeholders and so forth have been going at this over the year i mean is there a way we can incorporate everybody into the same room because you know as it stands i mean i was in most of those or a good number of those meetings dot was the only one that wasn't actively participating what's interesting this was the product that came out i mean that was the interesting part i was never invited to any of those meetings so i don't know what happened during those discussions i did what i do know is we i want to make sure that we can treat this as a full program not just the portion that we that we portion out of it we want to make sure that our bike and ped plans are tied into schools and tied into funding that's available to push out on significant projects versus just these small pieces so i don't know what was discussed in the meetings i do know that that all of these groups are invited to the hsa hshc meetings and a lot of them a lot of them come to those meetings to to provide input and then lastly on that point if we were to do something parallel to the state highway safety council within d.o.t that incorporates a lot of these folks because the highway safety council itself obviously is every issue under the sun when it comes to highways and safety and it's mostly prosecutors and law enforcement and other folks and it's only half filled right now uh is that something you'd be open to can we craft something that brings everybody together on the same page so that we know that this particular issue is a priority when it comes to focus on school areas so this issue is a priority but i would rather make sure that we look at it from a programmatic perspective talking about one portion of the program without considering the others is very difficult so if everybody's on the same page with everything because i get it that bikes and pads gotta be required for safety but there's still vehicles on the system there's these are still conversations we have to have so on that state highway safety council it's not just law enforcement we have bicycling league on it we have tommy noyes from kauai who's also a bicycle advocate we try to get as many people from different diverse backgrounds as possible we just can't get enough people involved so if these groups would like to be members of the hschc to have these conversations not only about bike and pedestrian safety but safety overall on the system i would happily endorse that all right thank you any further questions from any of the members or anybody online all right if not let's oh sorry sorry go ahead senator favela um basically this uh uh dlt uh and um i know in the beginning um when i first came in i know we had this the program that we did with paulken elementary walking from the community park to the school and i was partially with with your um with your d.o.t division so you're telling me you guys do have this program within your division uh it's just that it's not funded is that all that i'm hearing yeah there's two pieces right state brought to school program there was a state program and there was a federal program the state program was transferred from d.o.t to the state legislature so it's like a granting aid now the federal program is still with d.o.t and it's funded up to was it was funded up to 2012.

so yes okay and so even though the funding might be there we may have problems just being able to yes okay thank you very much thank you members further questions do you want to vote so members the um recommendation of the chair will be pass out with amendment senate bill 2333 which authorizes supplemental category funding for remote schools senate bill 2333 to pass with amendments chair votes i oh i'm sorry the amendments are to expand the definitions to include the additional schools mentioned in the department of education testimony which is kaunapakai kilohana mauna loa elementary and molokai middle school there's also technical and non-substantive amendments questions if not senebil 2333 to pass with amendments chair votes i share vote sign senate bill two three three three pass with amendments uh let's see i'm gonna call roll just to see who's here i special bonsai senator de la cruz and senator della cruz on senate bill two three three three with amendments okay excuse me four members present all voting eye one number excuse recommendations adopted thank you members moving on to the final bill sent bill 2564 relating to after-school programs recommendation of the chair is to pass with amendments amendments is to delete the appropriation amount but noting the amount in the committee report for consideration by ways and means the next committee and also to defect the date to july 1 2015.