WSD Public Board Meeting

001do you see the note from paul that he's going to be late i didn't okay david did he say how late he was going to be a few minutes okay we have 517 participants okay wow stream is now live we're ready to start okay great and wait can you start us off with roll call yes mr badger mr bliefeld here mr frank here this is ginsburg here mr uh mrs hayman here this is kerry and ikus here mr stoloff yeah mrs walsh here mr antonio here uh olivia welsh here h benning here eight board members president one absent two student board reps uh also joining us great thank you and uh hopefully paul will join us shortly but it's now time for the pledge of allegiance and um again please unmute so i'm not saying

002it alone and john can you display the flag yep killing it up now is it up not yet there we go all right i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states i'd like to welcome everyone to this july 13 2020 special meeting of the whistle hicken school district's board of directors our primary agenda item is a discussion about reopening schools for the fall and um before we get into that though we're going to have our first public comment period and we gave people the opportunity to submit public comment and questions prior to this meeting and we've consolidated all of them to read out during the first public comment period and any subsequent questions that we've received after about 6 p.m today we will address as part of the second public comment period after

003the presentation and discussion of the school reopening plans yo can i interrupt you for one second sure um i just got a text from a parent that said that they can't get into zoom and that it's not on youtube john can you take a um take a look at that uh well we're over our attendee for the live zoom but uh it is playing right now on uh youtube live i can see you youtube live okay yeah um so it looks like paul has just joined um yes i'm here i apologize i had uh another uh meeting that went over but yeah no problem so wait i guess can you know for the record that paul falls here as well um okay so getting back to the first public comment period um i'm going to

004enlist my fellow board members to uh take some of the responsibilities for reading out the public comments that we've uh received by the meeting and we're going to start off with zephy who will uh take the first set of public comments receive prior to the meeting great can everybody hear me okay yep okay great the first group of questions are about health and safety protocol first question it's a multiple step question what is the what is the plan would for students who are asked to quarantine i can envision a scenario where students are exposed quarantined for two weeks go back to school and the cycle repeats maybe they miss four out of eight weeks of in-person school will they just have to keep up with school work at home without any classroom classroom recordings or

005will classes be recorded for at home viewing i do not know how that would work possibly work but it seems to be like they would need more than just trying to keep up at home without seeing lessons submitted by aaron crump on july 7th second question at the elementary level if temperatures are not going to be taken in school as a proactive measure has the district considered being proactive in putting a policy in place to deter parents from giving their child tylenol or motrin and sending them to school i know this happens during a regular school year and expect the same will still happen even with covid submitted by rachel stalzenberg pardon me if i pronounce anyone's name incorrectly submitted july 9. question 3 what is the district's plan for how plexiglas will be used

006and where also submitted by rachel stollensberg july 9th another one from the same what are schools doing to check the water systems i.e stagnant water and l filtration filtration systems also by rachel stolzberg what will be the district's policy on a child's coughing in the classroom are they allowed in the room if they have a negative covet test and coughing or are they required to stay home until the cough subsides another question with the awareness that teachers may need to quarantine due to potential exposure or become ill what measures or steps are the district putting in place to make sure that the kids maintain the pace of learning based on the district's scope and sequence continuity of their education and rigor i know all districts will be looking for subs but what would be the

007plan if there if there were to fail to fill um also submitted by rachel can the district install hands-free automatic soap dispensers sinks and paper towel dispensers if not can the district have the restrooms clean throughout the day at least next question for the students that will need to self-quarantine due to being in one of the high-risk states is there any option to have the class be taught with a zoom option so that students could dial in and not miss a full two weeks of instructions submitted by laurie poulter july 10th given the continued investigation into kovit's potential to be airborne and the recommendations for increased ventilation what is the district doing to better improve their ventilation system in each building detailed specifics would be appreciated submitted by catherine lefevre on july 10th similarly what

008if my child is exposed to coven 19 outside of school and needs to be quarantined for 14 days what are his options for continued learning what will what will be the absentee policy will kids be exposed to stay home if they have a cough and or coven 19 symptoms but no fever will children be reprimanded for missing more days than usual as parents attempt to keep them home while they're displaying symptoms that normally would not keep them home will children be sent home from school if they display coven 19 symptoms in school but again no fever will children be quarantined if their teachers test positive quotes for covin 19. what if a member of the support staff test positive submitted by allison brenneck rogers on july 13th what if anything excuse me what if anything

009has been done to improve the air circulation submitted by carolyn may on july 13th could you please clarify how the district plans to handle what happens when a child gets sick for example if one child in a class gets a fever and is sent home will the district be sending the entire class home at the middle school high school level will the district be sending every child who has been in the in class home with the child as well similarly what if a child is diagnosed with covid will the entire class be expected to be quarantined submitted by christina de mateo on july 13th what steps has a district taken to acquire extra max hand sanitizer and janitorial supplies and personnel to maintain the additional cleaning needed will plexi-class greens be installed around teachers desks

010submitted by rob stavenger on july 13th will we be notified if anyone in the district including full-time part-time and temporary staff test positive for covid in the event that children are sick what if any additional information will need to be provided in order for them to return to school is someone test positive for kovid will children be required to be quarantined if someone tests positive for covid will children be required to get tested if children are required to be tested will the district offer any assistance of any kind if children are required to quarantine will they immediately be switched to virtual submitted by amy hughes july 13th quarantining i have three kids in all three schools this year high school middle school and stoney creek if a child in my son's class in the alum

011elementary school test positive not just exposed but is positive for coronavirus i'm assuming his whole class needs to quarantine for two weeks if that is true then my other children also need to quarantine and if yes what will their lone learning look like when their class still meeting face to face every day and they're stuck at home quarantining submitted by kim shreer on july 13th is the school district truly capable of providing a safe social distance socially distant environment for the children the buildings are overcrowded and we have yet to hear the specifics of any plan for keeping the children masked and socially distant let alone for adequate precautionary measures such as frequent surface annotation contact tracing and disclosure mechanisms to alert parents of potential exposure prior to opening will you have a comprehensive plan

012for each of these items will parents learn the specifics of these plans prior to being forced to make a decision submitted by ellen goldrich on july 13th coverings will face shields be acceptable for kids to wear when returning to school they may be more comfortable and easier to wear for the younger kids in elementary school if they are acceptable could the school district order a book order in in turn saving everyone money so parents can order right from the district and the teachers can have a supply submitted by kathleen de clemente on july 9th as as far as face coverings for students will schools permit mass gaiters and shields what precautions or proactive steps will the district take to promote clean ppe being worn there's no point in a child wearing a mask if the

013mask has not been cleaned since the previous day submitted by rachel stolzenberg on july 9th will kids be allowed to wear the neck gator type mask and or will they be allowed to wear baseball hats with mask attachments so their ears don't hurt submitted by amanda cobb on july 13th virtual option families juggling home virtual school and jobs need flexibility can work be posted for the week so we can have more flexibility to complete assignments from one day to the next if not possible for parents who work it is not possible for parents who work three 12-hour trips to shifts to operate a daily eight to four school day submitted by lynn platt on july 13th i have questions about what specifically the district is working on to enhance the virtual school experience how will

014the work be more challenging will there be more synchronous learning at the end of the year my son's first grade class started to break into smaller groups by level of understanding and this was very effective will more of this be done submitted by laura dawson july 13th if students are forced to return to school the traditional way what options are available to parents who refuse to send their kids back will the virtual academy extend to grade school students submitted by asha gordon on july 13. what is the difference between the wsd virtual choice and the distance learning program that we'll most likely will need to implement if there's a case and the school is closed for an extended period of time submitted by carolyn may july 13th if a child starts in the virtual program

015at the middle school or high school but then wants to transition back to regular school at the end of the first semester how will that work if the course offerings do not match submitted by christina di mateo on july 13th and i believe here i transferred to um amy amy i'm at question 25. thank you zafi can everyone here maybe yes thank you i am wondering what the structure of the virtual option will be for elementary school students what platforms will be used and will there be live classes will there be an online interaction with classmates will current elementary school teachers be teaching this submitted by dion morris on 7 13. in regards to the virtual option for elementary students will parents be informed of the following prior to being asked to commit to a

016decision this information is needed for parents of young children to plan how to manage at home schooling when both parents work hours day of school work anticipated for each grade how much live schooling there will be and what time of day that will occur as specific as possible how much involvement from a parent is expected to be needed for each grade what accommodations will be made for children who cannot make the lives schooling due to their parents work schedule and that was submitted by cara finn on i understand that the previously discussed third option is now off the table what were the main factors in arriving at this decision how was this decision made and who made the final decision to focus on only two options and that was submitted by amy hughes on 7

01713. i have another one from amy hughes in if one option is chosen for the start of the school year may that option be changed at any time the next question is first could you give me more details about the virtual learning option at the elementary level our daughter will be entering first grade the q a document mentioned there will be dedicated teachers for this but how long would she need to be on zoom or receive live instruction each day for example she just finished a virtual summer camp week that went extremely well with the teacher on zoom from one to four with ten minute breaks on the hour and lots of interaction and engagement with other kids the q a noted there will be more rigor around the virtual option can you elaborate on

018what will be the what will be different in the fall with remote learning second i presume that once you choose there is no going back correct if we go with virtual or in person we cannot switch later if it's not working out and we have a change of heart and that was submitted by holly fair on 7 13. for the virtual option will it be live stream from the classroom if not why many school districts do this and is important to maintain a consistent and universal learning environment for children to feel part of their community even if they were doing so virtually families that choose this option should not be forced to choose between the risk of a deadly virus and their children obtaining the same experience as those who are sending their children to

019school and that was submitted by ellen goldrich on 7 13. for the 100 distance learning option you stated that a wissa hicken teacher will be the student's teacher if my child is entering kindergarten will the teacher be a current whistle-hicken kindergarten teacher also you stated one teacher does that mean they won't have instruction in special area classes such as music art and gym lastly will any instruction take place synchronously with this option why isn't mr hicken virtual academy being offered to k-6 students and that was submitted by madison greene on 7 13. the next one's a little bit longer my daughter goes to shady grove elementary school a previous message from the west haven school district described virtual learning instruction as taking place much like it did this past spring with added elements of accountability

020and rigor this statement concerns me as there is little active teaching and a lot of assigned work without accompanying support my daughter star teacher in live video approximately six times the entire shutdown period all of which were for less than 20 minutes and not for the purpose of teaching this was disappointing but something we could swallow given the suddenness of the transition going forward with seven months to plan design and repair i was anticipating much more than virtual learning looking much like it did this past spring i hope that this evening's meeting will fully explain what added elements of accountability and rigor are being implemented if there are plenty of clearly defined checks and balances in place to ensure that by choosing virtual learning for our children and will not be unduly it will not

021in duly hinder their education many more parents will select virtual learning that would result in smaller person in headcount and will result in greater ability to social distance those students who are attending in person i would like to hear the following specific requirements as they relate to virtual learning total minimum hours of live video conference education required per day confirmation that a technology training plan is in place to train the students on accessing and utilizing the tools plans to standardize the technology choices younger children should not be expected to locate log into and utilize five different web platforms especially where the additional technology selected provides no advantageous distinction from the other tools specific grading plans including which courses will and will not be graded and how grading will be determined the plans for reporting and

022mitigating issues such as technology complexity subpar teacher engagement etc i would also like to hear confirmation that anyone who selects virtual learning can switch back to in-person attendance should virtual learning end up providing a substantially lesser education than in person would have assuming this meeting is structured like the previous one where questions received prior to the meeting are reviewed and answered at the beginning and additional questions received during the meeting are covered at the end please provide a 10-minute notice before closing down the windows to submit follow-up questions so that everyone can hold off on asking questions that may be answered further into the meeting and that was submitted by jonathan schreiber on 7 13. uh the next section is called in-person option the most likely scenario is that in-person reopening of schools will increase

023community transmission of cover 19. what is uncertain is the degree of increase in the associated public health trade-off to provide some data to evaluate before broader implementation while also mitigating potential public health issues would the district consider having only one class per grade in a school example for elementary and one pod example for the middle school return to in-person school for the first two months and survey the number of students and staff to test positive for covert 19 and evidence of school transmission parents who wish to do so would volunteer for their children to participate in the in-person attendance option and be selected on a lottery basis schools remain virtual for all of their students during this time if all goes well an in-person option of return to school will be offered to all children

024in the district after two months the end of october this would also allow schools to assess what is and is not working well within the well within well with in-person covert related protocols learning before potentially expanding more broadly um and that was submitted by ralph and cigna on 7 13. in case of in-person classes can you kindly list the precautions which the school district is planning to take and are these measures being discussed embedded by a doctor or a virologist or is it being based on common sense um and that was submitted by abhijit naf on 713 i'm sorry if i'm saying any names incorrectly on the next session is called hybrid option why is the hybrid option now off the table the safety of all children should be paramount and should take priority over

025all other considerations including concerns regarding funding and the public provisions of child care and that was submitted by ellen goldrich on 713. is the hybrid option still off the table it seems like many districts of all sizes are planning for this and the safest option and most sustainable for the entire year to keep students in school as often as possible that was submitted by madison green on 7 13. is there a hybrid model mixed up in person and online which the school district is thinking about if yes how will that work that was submitted by abajit math on 7 13. um the next section covers technology and resources does the district have enough technology for each student to receive their own device ipad or laptop that was submitted by rachel stolzenberg on seven nine we

026use webex zoom microsoft teams business skype to conduct web video conferences with teams located globally for our work on a daily basis these days in fact these technologies are most widely used in many counties for school purposes some examples settlement music school philadelphia uses business skype to teach and conduct concerts human uses zoom to conduct their classes why is the school district not thinking about leveraging these great i.t tools and conduct virtual classes for everyone i see the students have microsoft teams installed in their laptops already the laptops have webcams enabled um and that was also submitted by abjet on 713. the next section is called transportation what happens with the north maco tech students if they choose virtual academy can they still take bus transportation from the high school to and from the tech

027school um and that was submitted um by amy no last name listed on 710 the next section is called social and emotional well-being how is school going to balance coveted safety with active shooter safety what mental health initiatives will be put into place to help students at all ages with stress social isolation anxiety etc in an effort to prevent school shootings or suicide and that was also submitted by rachel stolzenberg on 7 9 and i think i'm passing now to um who's next i'm sorry david frank david that's my thought okay thank you can you hear me okay how's my audio good thanks the next section is entitled or organized into remote teaching and learning slash stay at home order what metrics will be used to determine if in-person learning ceases will we be following

028state mandates only or will any sort of additional measures be applied to determine if schools should close for example if a case is found in the school or in the family of a student if our local community has a certain level or rate of increase of coronal case coronavirus cases can the criteria for closing schools please be shared before parents must make the commitment to in-person versus remote learning that was submitted by alexis wasserman next comment is from lynn platt the email states virtual learning for the fall will be similar to the spring but with more vigor while i understand live recordings are difficult will there be lengthy videos of teachers teaching concepts daily before assignments are to be completed i felt the spring was more like homework of previously learned concepts not teachers teaching

029new material as they would in the classroom can't waste a hicken provide a better program for children below seventh grade aren't there virtual charter programs you could purchase and use you say the virtual charters do not have great success but we cannot compare it to in-school teaching of western hicken because i doubt the online program this spring was equivalent either as a working parent with two children learning at home we need significant virtual instruction or it becomes homeschooling will a sample or detailed description of these virtual programs be shown difficult to make a decision when you have nothing tangible to review is it microsoft teams how are teachers teaching the new material can the can the outline curriculum and a sample of how the program looks be available online to parents to review now again

030that was from lynn platt next comment or question if my children return to physical school and the school is closed for cleaning or by governor's orders what is your plan to educate those children during the closure that was from allison brennick rogers the next three comments uh are gathered are grouped into category of focus groups slash survey so the first question from rachel solzenberg how were parents chosen to be on the focus groups and how many parents were involved for each level next from shefali dar could the initial survey results be shared with the parents and finally from amy hughes are we or may we be provided with the results of the survey that was conducted and the next category is elementary specific questions first from rachel stolzenberg how will instruction look in the elementary

031classroom which relies on small group instruction will there be small group instruction in the elementary regular ed classrooms next comment is from carolyn may what will a typical day look like i.e from drop off to pick up where will the students be throughout the day will students be kept in pods interacting with same group of people only what will the environment look like that is plexiglas dividers for teacher's desk plexiglas for student cubes etc if we do not have encore classes can we stagger start and end times that was from carolyn may the next comment is from amy hughes please explain in detail how the virtual learning at the elementary level will differ from last year more rigorous in quotation marks does not provide enough information for a decision the next category is secondary specific

032questions what plans are in place for high school students who attend north monco technical career school that was from asia gordon next question is from allison brenneck rogers what about seniors if my senior chooses to participate in elisa hickon virtual academy will there be a problem obtaining letters of recommendation from teachers and transcripts that need to be sent to colleges not all classes offered at wesicon high school are offered at wizarding virtual academy and vice versa how do you propose students transition between the two if they would like to use the alternate option for the spring semester next comment is from dave circus we're asking specifically for middle and high school why can't wes have synchronous learning environment seems teachers would have who would otherwise i'm sorry since teachers who have otherwise taught in person

033can do so via teams we're not losing sight of obvious issues with certain activities such as science lab and physical education as two examples however it seems the majority of the students school day can be taught virtually using the same teachers as the students would have if physically in school perhaps the teachers are in their respective classrooms materially reducing the amount of people inside a building and the students are remote via teams it seems it could provide for a second best situation for the learning to be interactive and collaborative in the event there is a disruption school closure or teacher having to quarantine some degree of consistency is available to the students thank you next comment given the current pandemic it seems like having the first semester as fully online in a synchronous setting would

034be a good idea this will keep everyone staff students and their families safe and all the students in sync with everything they are doing the school district resources could then be channeled appropriately to making this one option successful if the above of only online is not an option following are my questions for the wba option the virtual academy option since this selection is for the first semester only if my son comes back to in person for spring will he continue to be placed in the courses he's enrolled in will the curriculum taught online and the virtual academy and in person at school be in sync with virtual academy class meetings are asynchronous is there a way to make online courses synchronous for the upcoming year students would be more engaged in that format will additional

035courses be added to the virtual academy for example my son had planned on taking german 4 which is currently not in the course list that was submitted by shefali dar next comment or question my question concerns high school students who choose virtual learning if a student chooses virtual learning and the district moves from in-person learning to virtual would my daughter have to stay with non-muslim teachers or would she be given opportunity to continue with district teachers and classmates are virtual learners allowed to join clubs and participate in sports if they are to continue as i write this pennsylvania is reporting an increase in cases so i highly doubt what the hicken will be holding in person classes putting our children and community at risk and that was submit submitted by andrea cocadrilli on july 13th

036the next area is staffing let's see what about substitutes when my kids were in elementary school classes were frequently unable to obtain substitutes and the class was split between the other teachers of the same grade will there be an adequate number of substitutes to handle teachers leaving for illness as we know there will be more teacher absences as i'm assuming they will not be allowed to return to work if they display coven 19 symptoms until a negative cover 19 test is confirmed will these substitute teachers be adequately trained to teach higher level subject suspect higher level suspect subjects including calculus and ap classes that was from allison brennick rogers next from rob scavenger how are the teachers administrative and support staff views being collected how many of them are supportive of an in-school opening uh

037from amy hughes how does the district plan to handle the teachers and staff who elect not to return in person will they be offered alternative positions such as virtual and another question from amy hughes is the district adequately prepared to hire long-term subs temporary subs etc for all positions what details are you able to provide i think i'm going to stop there and turn it over to [Music] whoever's next in line that would be uh ron [Music] ron you're on you hey ron uh you're on mu now can you hear me yep okay uh general comments overall i believe the district did a good job last spring with the short notice they were given uh regarding school closures however unless something big changes in this country i only foresee a very disruptive uh disrupted in-person

038school year next semester i realize a hybrid model is off the table at this point however it would be extremely helpful to have an option that if the school closes again on short notice or a child is absent for quarantine or other illnesses they're able to continue some type of quality uh classroom education learning and this is from allison bennett rogers on 713. next my kid goes to stoney creek elementary i'm a local physician and i'm 100 for opening schools like normal and not having any two elementary and not having my two elementary age girls have to wear masks all day people do not want this and have the resources to stay at home and cyber school have the right to choose but it does not work as well the other way so i feel

039a normal opening needs to be offered otherwise i would consider pulling my kids out of the public system for a private option which would hurt your funding i do not want to have to do that my girls love stoney creek and their teachers i hope you can make this option happen thank you for your time and that's from dave bozek and uh from 7 13. next dr chris field on the uh the whiskin school board we understand that the coven 19 situation is unprecedented within living memory and coupled with ever-shifting mandates and scientific recommendations leaves you with an unenviable difficult task putting modeling one with regard to the plans for in-person learning we are concerned that there may not be a robust effective plan for students who are forced to school from home this could

040be triggered by district county or statewide conditions forcing shutdowns along with almost inevitable large-scale student body quarantines due to infection or even exposure other school districts were able to provide reasonably rigorous academic programs utilizing significant synchronous class interactions this spring the missing school district needs to be paired be prepared to implement something comparable to the other districts in the fall two consider calling for community volunteers for the preparation efforts both parents and students could help prepare for the return to school doing everything from fabricating and or installing desk fields to setting up cameras in classroom for remote part remote participation there is a wealth of talent in our community let us help you help the students thank you for your efforts in guiding the school through this and that's submitted by david and susan rothchild

041713. i realize this is a lengthy one i realize everyone should uh would like to have a normal return to in-school classes but i think most people agree it is not possible several points about the current plans in the district point a mixed model should not be dismissed outright there is in many options a high likelihood to have additional school closures and or large scale quarantines of student and staff therefore having a mixed model up and running will minimize a disruption and concurrently class sizes next point to the point above the schools should consider streaming classes especially the larger ones this could allow for a the ability of students to follow the instructions from different locations within the school or b the opportunity of continuity of instruction should a student need quarantine next point mass

042should be required even with less than perfect hygiene mass can provide some protection from transmission next point temperatures should be checked prior to entering school temp checks do not filter asymmetric asymptomatic carriers but they will identify kids and staff with the fever who technically should not be in school anyway next point some short-sighted suggestions on social media here and across the country have suggested that students or their families who would be considered high risk should consider a virtual virtual school option the school the board and the community have a responsibility to make the school as safe as possible for all students and staff therefore students and staff should be required to wear a mask and have a temp check those who are not comfortable with these requirements should then choose the virtual schooling option rather

043than force the entire school population into a less safe environment that's rob stavenger whoops okay next whoops sorry about that if it is not safe enough for board members and district administration to meet in person to discuss reopening schools it is not safe enough to send students and staff back into the buildings even in school with face uh to face instruction teaching and learning will not be of the same caliber to which whiskin families are accustomed the hands-on engaging collaborative activities that make our classroom so great are not safe in the covet 19 climate the socialization that is so essential for student child development cannot take place in typical ways either as students may not go near one another speak aloud speaking aloud will be limited and touching sharing materials will be prohibited it has

044been said that if teachers are not comfortable returning to work they should find a new profession please let it be known that nowhere in a teacher's job description or undergraduate graduate training are there required trained or are they required or trained to act as human shields bodyguards doctors sanitation workers or babysitters school is not daycare teachers unwilling to risk their health and now to the students are not selfish or unfit for for their profession they are concerned for their own safety and well-being of their students and it appears that those who care for the safety and quality of human life are in the minority here please do not sacrifice your children or their teachers school staff in your efforts to return to normal the risk is simply too high and that's submitted by tom scott

045if it is not yet safe to hold in-person board meetings with masks why would it be safe for students to return to regular classes if even with an altered schedule where board meetings resume in-person of in-person meetings beginning on 8 31 and that's by john lee okay and uh to the school board this is a rather lengthy piece i think the virus is uh as a rapidly changing impact and the future is not predictable so the district must be prepared for the worst case scenario which would be a complete shutdown of the schools again it is very possible that pennsylvania experiences a second wave sometime during the next school year it is possible a second wave is brought on by the very fact thousands of students return to the classrooms i want to believe that

046this district which is a leader among school districts in pennsylvania and the u.s has a leadership technology and financial resources to implement a solution which solves for a possible shutdown as well as serves all of the differing needs and desires of the parents clearly there are two different groups of parents there are those who prefer their students to learn virtually and those who prefer their children to attend in person no one will dispute that both sets have valid concerns that need to be addressed so how does the school board address both parents sets of concerns and prepare for a possible complete shutdown i believe there is a third option that the school board has not pursued which should be applied for middle school and high school students when the virus first hit corporate america within

047two weeks every major corporation set up its employees to work from home and to communicate via video conferencing using zoom every employee was provided with a zoom dial and number so they could arrange for their own conferences employees downloaded zoom to their laptops or home desktops and obtained a computer camera if they did not already have one this was neither difficult to implement nor costly i propose that the school district conduct classes in the classrooms according to a normal schedule where students change classes as they normally would do in addition each teacher would have their own zoom dialing conference number and each classroom would be equipped with an overhead camera and microphone which would tie in the internet tie into the internet so that classroom lectures would be broadcast via zoom students who are who

048are working virtually from home would dial into the zoom conference and be able to view and hear the teachers lectures when each class is over the students at home would proceed to the next same proceed on the same schedule as they would if they were physically in school and do so by dialing into the next teacher's zoom number with regard to homework and exams it is my understanding all of these are circulated completed and submitted by schoology so there would be no need to change or implement anything new in this regard if an exam were given the students would work virtually uh the students working virtually would have to submit their completed exam by schoology before the end of the class period just like students who would be taking exam physically in the in the

049classroom a zoom camera image can be adjusted in size on one's computer screen so students working virtually could view both the teacher and textbook or other written materials simultaneously on their laptop as a teacher lectures if a laptop has a working microphone and this goes on okay uh i'm gonna i'm gonna stop you there that those comments have exceeded the three-minute time limit the rest of it kind of continues in more detail about the implementation of right and lots of suggestions on the live stream and this is by uh michael uh yulesman so somebody want to pick up at this point or should i continue i believe that was the last the last of the submitted comments and so thank you ron and uh zephy amy and david um so just to clarify for folks

050um prior to this meeting we gave folks the opportunity to uh submit comments that we had stated would be part of the meeting minutes and in it we were in essence trying to attempt the public comment periods that we would have in the in-person meetings that we used to have pre-coded where folks would have the opportunity to come to the podium and address us as board members obviously that's not possible um and to try to simulate that i mean again we gave folks the opportunity to submit their written comments and there were quite a few as you can see and what we've been listening to for the past i don't know 30 40 minutes at this point um but even though there were many and there was an overlap maybe in some of the the

051questions um in the topics uh we felt it was important just to honor the fact that those comments were submitted in advance to us and we did say that we would uh read them out and make a part of the meeting minutes so thanks uh everyone for uh bearing bearing with us as we went through all the comments what i'm hoping is that the questions that were raised um in the comments read out loud will be addressed uh more at least touched upon by jim and his team as they present with us the board and the public their school reopening plans and if after that um discussion and presentation there are still open questions we can have some follow-up that the administration can do with some frequently asked questions or some kind of document after

052this meeting so um with that i'm going to hand things off to jim who will talk to us about the school reopening plans jim okay thank you i know it's been a long one already but we had some important questions ask so i'm going to try to do a share screen and have a presentation that i think i'll try to get through it first and there's a lot of information here there's not as much information or perhaps not as many details as everyone would like but there are a lot of details and then we can uh discuss you know next steps and that sort of thing from there just want to make sure can everybody see the uh is the zoom for the okay good so let's go ahead and start this let me get

053let me get out of there so i don't [Music] okay so this is presentation two uh the first one was back in june and it's going to have a similar format and i hope to have many more details uh tonight for everybody the purpose as i say is that we have some major outstanding issues and then at the end we'll tr hopefully as as joe antonio pointed out we'll have touched on many of those topics and we'll share with everyone a way to get additional detailed questions answered as well moving forward so our priorities remain unchanged from the last time we spoke which is uh these three very important areas some people value one more than the other we value all three of them uh highly that's all i can say they're very very important

054we have some guiding principles and that is to be realistic as to what we can do i i i don't know how to really describe it other than our capacity as a decision-making entity is stretched to the absolute max right now and that's not uncommon districts all over have that problem so we're trying to be realistic as to what we can actually do we are trying to sift through the literally thousands of pages of guidance from experts people send me links which is nice i have state level national level professional organization level pages of guidance helpful often contradictory and we're trying to follow them as best we can our guiding principle is there is a continuum of safeguards at work here all of these guidance documents have you know dozens and dozens of areas that

055they suggest to do this and they suggest to do that of our guiding principles is if we fall short in one of the areas then we need to see if we can do better in another one and the net is getting to a place that's that's acceptable or at least that some most people would find acceptable so we we can't possibly meet every single recommendation um if we fall short one on the continuum we'll hopefully make up for it in another place guiding principle minimize number of people and maximize outdoor time that's that's a pretty well established way of preventing the spread and principals and teachers are challenged to get creative in this regard they're going to like that no because it's hard and if it's pouring out obviously it's not possible but we have

056creative people and i know they can figure something out so we have complications all these official guidance documents are oftentimes contradictory one says you need to have six feet the other one says you need to have three feet one says you got a mass one other says no all these other things and we're trying to kind of like let the the common threads percolate to the top and pick them but you would be amazed at how often these official guidance documents contradict one another likewise these official guidance documents change almost overnight american association of pediatricians literally over the weekend changed from all students have to be into well if students don't have to get in maybe that's not the worst thing in the world and that's not bad they're not the boss of us we

057are used their guidance as one of many many sources but that's an example of of things changing literally overnight and then this other complication i'm going to try to put this delicately but everyone in our country including everyone in wizard hiking as a community falls on a spectrum of how we as a society should be dealing with this crisis and there's we have people at all ends of this both ends of the spectrum and everywhere in between and as you all have found out passions run high on either end so that's a complication for us because as soon as for example i'm going to say tonight we are complying with the governor's order on face coverings i know i can guarantee that i will receive tomorrow emails from people telling me i'm crazy because they're

058passionate about no face coverings and vice versa so it's a trick it's a complication we're dealing with it but i just want us to all keep in mind that for every opinion on these things there are other opinions out there so so we're just trying to balance things as best we can so our options for the fall now getting into the meat of the presentation we have an option number one this is this is back these were presented uh in june and i'm going to share with everyone the what they look like and what grades they would apply to you recall we had these three options option one uh in person every day option two some sort of hybrid maybe every other day maybe split session and option three 100 virtual so that those were

059our starting points now a little bit more detail option number one this is to where we stand now is this is the only in-person option available for students in grades k to five because i'm gonna repeat that elementary school grades k to five this is our one and only in-person option all students back all day every day hey jim jim sorry interrupt um do you want us to are we can we ask questions during the course of your slides or would you prefer the way to the end or how do you want us to uh whatever you prefer well i guess what i'd like is to hear more about um you your and the team's rationale for having um this option one all students back being the primary option or really the only option for

060grades k through five all right you uh read my mind just hold on for a couple of slides okay an example of how things are changing is as of basically today or maybe recently this option of all students back isn't viable in grades 6 to 12. in other words it is not viable in middle school or high school and we're going to talk a little bit about that below so just to be clear option number one all students back is what we're planning for grades k to five and is not what we're planning for grades six to twelve i'm gonna go over rationale in a minute so what does it look like in the elementary school when all kids are back concept is to maximize distancing as much as humanly possible so in a classroom

061desks will be between four and six feet apart that's much more than they are now students will sit facing the same way minimizing the use of tables if we have to use them they'll sit on either end of the table which is four to six feet apart from one another and then there'll be another row of desks or tables that are four or six feet apart we're going backwards in time in terms of what classrooms are going to look like but that's the only way that any any school can get distancing you can no longer an elementary school have a pod of four kids sitting around a table i mean there was an option to have plastic screens uh partitions up um they have to go with the student you can't share those so you

062you lose the movement piece of elementary classrooms anyway so it'll look like desks apart everyone facing the same way idea is to limit movement as much as possible so perhaps encore classes will be taught in the classroom we will try to minimize how often kids are out in the hallway of course they'll be allowed to go out to the restroom if they need to what have you but generally speaking not as much movement which is another step backwards we all know in a kindergarten classroom that movement is just about the first thing you build into a lesson plan but you can't you can't accomplish distancing with with a whole lot of movement i mentioned earlier get outside as much as possible either outdoor classrooms or recess or or just to be outside and face coverings

063will be uh required at all times we'll talk a little bit more specifically about face coverings but just to give everyone a flavor what it looks like face coverings will be required at all times there are some exceptions and again we'll get to those in a second now the two the hybrid to joe's question this is not being considered for grades k to five at this time and and we're not going to why those are the the age of those students we have heard is creates the child care concerns that we can't meet we don't know how to meet them we can't partner up with a why to use buildings because we'd be using the buildings anyway ourselves we also know that younger students in this case grades k to five uh really don't do

064well with asynchronous learning on average older students on average do so those two things uh there's another re there's a logistical reason for this our schools are small so if with only three sections of say grade three or four sections say it would be very unlikely that we have the perfect break to have one of them be hybrid and then kids would be so if we didn't then some kids would be in school every day in mrs smith's classroom some wouldn't and that's we just couldn't see how that would work so option two is not considered for grades k to five now this is the this is a change from the survey and we'll talk about we're going to talk about the survey in a second this is what we feel is our the only

065in-person solution for grades 6 to 12. this would be an every other day arrangement where everybody let's start with letter a or b or what you know and it's not gonna be perfect but every other day students are in the other day they're out with asynchronous learning that their teacher has arranged for and has planned out for them and then she'll see them all the next day and we just keep leapfrogging like that one of the things that generated this change is that i'm not sure i don't think anyone is sure how long governor wolf's face covering order will be in place as long as it is uh you have to have a mask on if you're less than six feet apart from people and we we just couldn't one of the problems is we

066couldn't figure out how to do that consistently at the secondary level with with uh the passing with lunches uh just think about the high school's knuckle you you would have and it's not like you can have one class of students at the secondary level just go on to their next class it doesn't work that way because all the ap bio students then disperse some go to math some go to english and so you just you can't have it as regimented as you might and as planned out and as segmented as you can at the elementary level jim can i have a question about this slide sure so as far as the an option two four k through five this was not included in our survey that's correct the parents so how do we know that

067there's a lack of interest in this area i've heard from some parents that they would be interested in this hybrid model they might feel safer sending their kids and there are parents that don't look to the school for child care i agree and it wasn't included because we could not figure out a way how to how to offer it and option number one at the same time can we have one section if we have four kindergartens or four first grades have one section in each grade that's dedicated for this model that's hybrid if if it broke that way um it it could be possible we just we just didn't we didn't want to leave it to chance at the end of the month maybe like into august and we find that not enough people choose

068the hybrid option we thought about combining kids from from you know schools to go to different neighborhood schools didn't see how that would work um it we just didn't feel we knew there was interest and we're going to talk about surveys in a second survey is a good way to to for us to get a sense of pulse of things but and we we wished we had included this grade 6-12 in the recent survey we didn't but it was just a late development so it wasn't included not on purpose it was it wasn't included because things are changing so fast we can barely keep up i think that's the best way i can put it i think we've been helpful though to find out the k through five level if we have enough interest to

069do that some parents might be concerned sending the kids back every day but might not earn spending i don't disagree i just don't know we just couldn't figure out even if there was interest we couldn't figure out how to meet it so so knowing that there was interest wasn't going to help us because we just couldn't see how we could do it [Music] okay so what does it look like in in grade 6 to 12 which is where it'll be come to school every other day we're working on the impact uh on athletics and extracurriculars everybody will be welcome the problem is if you're at home that day you got to get back to school for practice if indeed we still have practice but that's another matter and it will look like face coverings at

070all times same as in elementary jim i'm confused because on the last slide you said that high school and middle school can't go back full time because they don't wear face coverings no because we can't we can't guarantee six feet at all times and if you were wearing a face covering that's that in a hallway that's okay if you are but lunch was it was a was a major sticking point that we we couldn't figure out how to do that and we weren't comfortable with the hallways and the knuckle with the governors at all times uh eating i mean i think i don't know personally i think that the secondary level kids can figure out how to wear a face mask and follow those directions so to me sorry having some work done um to

071me the problem then would be lunch and figuring out how to have the kids coming in every day and doing lunch well there's another there's another piece of this and the reason that hybrids um across the country are gaining um or not gaining but have advocates is that it just naturally has fewer kids in the building you i should say well yeah fewer students in the building and generally speaking that's a good idea if you can make it happen uh to prevent as a general principle to prevent the spread so um like i said there's going to be some people who are uh are good with things some aren't but you're raising good questions and and generally speaking i agree older students will have a much easier time with face coverings than will younger students

072um and we're gonna get to the governor's order in a second but that was not a distinction from him okay the fully virtual i'm sorry can i just follow up on tracy's question no we can't maintain the six feet in the middle school in high school and that's one of our reasons for doing the hybrid model how are we doing that at the elementary level especially like my kids go to stoney creek it's overcrowded how are we doing this we once time we believe we have figured out for 6p we can we can use utilize different spaces increase and we're going to talk about that later also increase the numbers of lunch periods and and we think we have it figured out at the elementary level um i mean it's it's not going to be

073it's not going to look the same and it's not going to be awesome all the time but and sometimes you'll be the classroom and sometimes it's going to be somewhere else and sometimes it'll be in a lunchroom and sometimes it'll be lunch at 10 30 or earlier and later you know it's it's just going to stretch things out a little bit um it's just another example a good example stone is a good example of of a challenge for sure okay uh the fully virtual option is as we know uh students choose to be home every day remote instruction this will be an option families can opt into this if they want it it does need to be by semester and they can change after one semester if they want and it will look different at

074the k to six level and that is a that's an accurate that's k to six is correct it's not k to five k to six is going to look different than seven to twelve and we're just and the reason is as follows the next slide so what i'm going to show you next is what the 100 percent remote instruction option [Music] looks like should families choose this option at the beginning of the year beginning of semester okay busy slide didn't know how to really get the details to any other way there's three columns the left column uh discusses or lists various program aspects and then the two other columns are the two different um schemes either k six or seven to twelve an obvious d they're both pennsylvania standards based so that's good core academics

075you know records the same the big difference is at the k to six level almost all the instruction is synchronous which is a huge difference as you know and we've heard from comments and parents compared to spring 8-6 instruction is synchronous now that has some challenges to it because that means there's a set time where johnny has to be in front of the computer for this or that activity and that's awesome for some parents and that's not awesome for other parents and we know that we'll try to work around that but we listened to the feedback about synchronous we know that that there's more more that's needed and so that's where our k-6 program is going on the other hand 7-12 is our wissa hicken virtual academy that exists now it's existed for a couple

076years haven't had that many students in it yet um it's essentially an entire virtual experience asynchronous it's facilitated by montgomery virtual program which is uh a organization that the mciu helps organize k-6 program will be wissa hicken teachers we anticipate having for example one first grade teacher for all of the virtual kids in the in the district which is different from the hybrid because we can do that everyone's virtual so they'll be mixed in with the kids from their three schools but it's all virtual anyway they're going to have classmates it's just going to be from three other schools and we're saying teacher following what's happening curriculum in grades 7-12 we're using our virtual academy model which is pretty common across the state for virtual academies mvp has got it's standards-based it's uh it's good

077instruction it's just asynchronous which is not ideal but high school students have mentioned every now and then they don't mind sleeping in and getting and doing their class work later so anyway hey jim a question about the montgomery virtual program sure um last school year we launched uh whistle hiking virtual academy in partnership with the mciu it's essentially being this montgomery virtual program behind the scenes uh as a cyber as basically a cyber option for parents who didn't want to go to school full time but with that with that option uh my understanding was that students at west haken high school if they wanted to be in the whistle conversion academy needed to first withdraw from the high school and then enroll at wisdom virtual academy like it was in essence kind of like a

078separate standalone school um that was that was kind of my understanding um for this option being described here would parents be able to participate in this montgomery virtual program without having to first withdraw from the high school and then re to enroll in the lucid virtual academy i i i was not familiar with them having to technically withdraw i'm gonna have to verify that joe uh if so we're gonna we we would see what we can do to not have that happen i i'm not sure about that um our our goal in the west and virtual academy is to have these students be with the hicken students in every way um that's we issue them a computer device they can participate in any extracurricular athletics teams they want they get support from our teachers either

079writing lab or math lab or after school they can come into the buildings and be a regular student is before this year it was really more about it being convenient because they had a special athletic commitment or something at work you know something working on their their schedule um i'll check well i'm going to make a note to check on having to withdraw or not well obviously it would be much simpler if folks could switch into the virtual program without having to first withdraw from the high school and re-enroll in a virtual let's do this let's just assume for the moment that you do not have to withdraw and i will verify that and report back excuse me it was my understanding that the students in the virtual academy got a wissa hicken high school

080diploma so i don't know that they were actually withdrawn i well that it's something that i agree wrong we'll get the facts we'll get the facts on that our goal is to make it as seamless as possible and that withdrawing doesn't seem seamless to me but i will verify it i have a question if the um for the virtual academy this is for the people that are electing to do 100 virtual at the beginning of the year correct okay what happens if we are mandated to do 100 virtual okay so is that going to be different than this correct okay what will happen is if if we're forced to close if the governor closes all the schools again then we will have these students will stay where they are and do keep doing this everybody

081else will stay with their teachers that they have for the in-person part and all the teachers will convert to virtual and we'll learn from our spring experience have many more synchronous opportunities and much more rigor much more accountability if we have to and we're going to have that in these as well but um it's we it we it's kind of hard to go back and forth into either one of these midstream in the middle of the semester jim i may ask a question if choosing the virtual option puts you in there for an entire semester regardless of whether the school district shuts down or not and if the school shuts down the kids in the school program will stay with the teachers why aren't we simply adding webcams zoom options webex options into each classroom

082to prepare for this in case it happens that way all of our kids remain with the hicken kids in the wissa hicken schools with their peers with their teachers and although we hope for the best we have to prepare for any scenario if we have to go completely virtual we've now put the test into practice because the teachers have already been doing it with kids who might choose to do it by webex zoom or some other web camera why aren't we just starting this from get go and that way it's in place ready to go and if we have to change everybody stays the same anyway it would seem by going to a virtual academy you are putting those kids at a disadvantage and saying you're sort of out but if you decide to deal

083with whatever risk there is of going to school you get the benefit of staying with your teachers in your classes if we shut down again can we simply if we if we're going to have a virtual academy fine but can we simply add the cameras now and start it that way i think it would lessen probably the amount of kids in classes to begin with which would certainly be i think a positive for parents and for teachers and it will also get us ready if we need it i know we were there was discussion about that and i'm gonna uh i'm gonna ask gary and or jeff to to help us with this um can either you gentlemen shed some light on the camera topic please yes so we did explore the potential of a

084camera and a speaker system in the classroom we initially thought of it doing it in select classrooms because the um the capacity of of the district to actually equip all the classrooms with this feature in time for the start of school um in our discussion with vendors seemed relatively unlikely um the the earliest they could tell us that they could actually accommodate us could be as early as as early as october or even november at the current rate of things so it seemed to be an um an impossible opportunity for us to begin the school year equipped ready to offer that feature to the students that really was the challenge we did look at it um because it's of course one of the options that's out there and it does have some tremendous value and

085benefit i would agree with you but the the feasibility of getting it in place and actually having it ready to operate on day one or even the first month of school is unlikely at this point but if the kids have computers anyway with cameras as does the teacher why can't they simply just like we do for every board meeting businesses do for every meeting where they never have an in-person meeting of 12 or 15 or 20 people why can't we have that option by opening up a laptop and turning on the camera we can do i i know we can do it safely because all companies are doing it and and other people are other uh organizations are doing it safely instead of installing a particular type of camera system until that's done if that's

086the way we choose to do it why can't we simply turn on a zoom or webex meeting and have it go i don't understand why that would be difficult at all it would seem to be the easiest way i agree with marshall or the school district could buy uh time on the teacher's cell phone and then just buy a bracket in the back of the room or a or a tripod and work it that way i mean believe it or not our kids know how to use this technology better than we do and i would think in within within a minute they could be online watching their courses with their teachers and their peers with the ability to not only watch it but interact with everybody as opposed to being in a program where they

087don't feel like they're part of the school district and to me that's counterintuitive with what we're trying to do if we're trying to make people safe which i think is an overriding um principle here well if we're going to put kids in school that increases risk but if you're going to keep kids at home if they're going to allow be allowed to stay home they shouldn't be penalized for doing so and i don't i i i don't know that you're going to you're going to convince me that that's not a viable option day one regardless and i know that there are factors to be considered in terms of whether it's a particular program or camera system but i don't i don't see why we can't at least at the beginning until the program ready to

088go some other way get these kids online immediately they could do it now and and also with the with the high school if we're already talking about doing um a hybrid where some are in one day and some are in another day the option of being able to do some kids are in class one day and some kids kids are in class another day but everybody is learning the same thing every day by doing it through zoom i i would think that that would make a difference too we don't have to have all the kids in the school at the same time so we can do the social distancing part of it but every kid that's in that class can participate every day with live teaching one of the things one of the things i'd

089like to suggest here uh i think we can look at the camera issue a bit more i don't think we take the virtual academy entirely off the table i do think people will like that as a as a standalone program yeah i don't think we take that off the table either so so we can look at at possibly adding the other option um i can't do it before we go on those so dudes do not have to disenroll when they go to the virtual academy does that i just got that confirmed so they do not disenroll they stay in they just have a little different code so that's that's helpful but i like i like the camera at least to explore and and see uh what hurdles there may or may not be yeah me

090marshall uh whether we have enough bandwidth for this many uh broadcasts to go on at the same time we're talking about every uh classroom in the high school are broadcasting every day and i think this may uh drive our tech staff uh somewhat to distraction we'll check but that's a that's the excellent point we'll check on that we'll check on uh if if there's any privacy or union concerns and we will report back and we'll do that on a priority basis and jim just to be make clear i'm not advocating for the removal of the virtual academy option there are always people who may watch that i just think there is another option equally or better uh potentially implemented for our kids uh to to remain part of of our district and active members of

091the district yep understood okay thank you this is duffy i have a quick question um for the virtual academy um you had um in your previous slide indicated that you could go you know you could switch back and forth between you know virtual hybrid and or in person you know based on your grade level how um how in sync especially in the 7 to 12 bracket is the virtual academy with the 7-12 program that's happening live so will i be able if i'm student x and i was in semester one in algebra at the end of that semester if i'm going to an in live situation will will i be at the right point or um you know following along or tracking along as my peers who are in the in live program very good

092question the answer is it's it's not in perfect sync it's they're both standards based so eventually it gets in sync okay maybe a couple there might be some sequencing issues gary do you you have a uh some insights on that yeah so so when we first began with the um virtual academy uh last school year um we did sort of line up our core academic programs our math our ela science social studies to be aligned fairly closely so those courses are reasonably close they're not identical they are standards-based from pennsylvania but the sequence is not always exact so you know there could be a little bit of an out of sync piece but nothing so dramatic that it would would cause difficulty if a child was going to enter in to wissican high school courses

093in the middle of the year perfect um quick follow-on to that and i forgot uh but to marshall's comment i know we threw around zoom and webex a lot but i know that the kids have ms teams on their laptops i i use ms teams at work and i do think that is a good platform you could do lots of stuff on that so i think we should look at all technology options i know zoom is kind of a default that we all go to yeah i agree in the band with well technology is an issue and we'll we'll uh we'll definitely uh consider that strongly and report back uh no later than monday which is where our next meeting is actually i remember my question okay the 7 to 12 west sahic and virtual

094academy how are encores handled or are there no encores in this in in this track no the virtual academy does offer um the academic courses it offers health and pe because it's a requirement of the state of pennsylvania to to be done and they have a range of courses in the field of health and physical education and then they of course have electives so students would be taking their um core class classes they'd be taking a health and pe and then they would take electives as well so it would be a full complement of courses thank you all right so there was a illusion uh earlier to the survey i'm sorry can you flip back one slide i think so yep so at the the bottom row there special ed accommodations and supports um i

095guess can you can you talk a little bit about how in either side k through 6 or 7 to 12 we or the district will be accommodating students with um ieps obviously as well as the gieps yes so for all students joe all students k-12 who receive special education services whether that's iep giep any of the related services the students would still be monitored and still be um with their iep they would still have their case manager they would still have their annual iep meeting if there was a need to meet again at parent request or school request to adjust or modify adapt any of the programming approaches with specially designed instruction all of that would still take place as though the child was present in the brick and mortar um that all has to

096be there um our special education team would remain the support and and and work with families and students to support them and monitor them as they're going through the programs just like they were if they were in school so those special education accommodations um and all required meetings take place and the case manager still remains in place for the family and gary in a similar fashion what about english language learners and uh how we're going to manage or handle delivery same thing so whether we're whether a child is getting speech and language services whether they're getting esl certified services whether they're getting reading intervention all these services continue to run and they will continue to run um in the in the case of the k-6 program they would run just like they ran in the

097school day except in a virtual way with the virtual with the teacher who's operating virtually so the child would get a service and would be probably getting that virtually from the provider and then probably synchronous i would assume too right that's synchronous yes right okay thank you okay okay so to the survey results we administered an initial survey in june almost exclusively about to gather uh feedback about the spring virtual teaching learning there was one question at the end which of the models very vaguely described would you choose if you had to in the end of june which was or middle of june i guess it was even beginning and those are the composite results i'm going to put pdfs of both the june survey and the july survey up on the website which has

098many more details i don't want to go into all here but you can see that there was interest in in all three not quite as much for virtual at the moment at that time um what happens is as the national response to covet and and and whether or not we're doing a good job gets sort of publicized people's mindsets change which i understand the july survey which we just administered um again we didn't ask about the hybrid because we we uh you know we just didn't didn't have it in place yet but in the event about the same percentage by all six schools about a quarter would have preferred virtual and 75 percent 100 percent in person now that could certainly change at the 6-12 level uh when we now we're doing the hybrid so

099we'll get those out and we're going to also um as there's where we did it we didn't include it which was a flaw we were just things are just moving too fast i mean i don't know what else to explain it i just want to point something about surveys though is that they inform decisions and solutions they don't really determine them and i think that's an important expectation thing because what happens is you know up here they'll be like well you know we have to have this we have to have that the surveys help us get a sense of where people are and where their mindsets are and it's helpful now especially help always but now especially since things have changed so fast but as i said i'm not so sure that june survey has

100much validity now since so much has changed since then the july one does more and and we're moving forward we what we do know is that that one of the important takeaways from this is that there is substantial interest in the virtual option for whatever reason and i don't there's no way of knowing for sure but but this was a good good helpful uh insight from these so again i will we'll make sure that all the questions the ones that have an open-ended response those are a lot of the ones for the spring i don't know that we'll put all the open-ended responses up there but we'll put some some of the the quantitative ones up so if people are interested but again they get kind of stale pretty fast so we have i want

101to share with you some major issues essential questions and the first one being perhaps everybody's favorite topic face coverings as a philosophical sharing out the district leadership team believes in the efficacy of face coverings very strongly i know that that not not everyone in the community agrees with that but i i just decided i would come out and say that we believe it's an essential element of the overall strategy now face coverings by the way can be masks they can also be face shields it can also be the gators that get pulled up to function like a mask they can also be the baseball hats that have like a little face shield coming off of them so it's comfortable basically the way to attach the face shield your head so all of those are okay

102governor wolf's recent order is very restrictive everybody knows that very few exceptions exist to this and if you have a medical condition okay that's accepted and maybe if it if you you know if you have some sort of something else but for the most part every human over the age of two is wearing face coverings and it's in place quote until further notice which which is the one of the things that started throwing us for a loop because we just didn't know how to deal with that if it was going to be around for a long time our plan our district plan is to comply with the governor's order for however long it is in place i don't know why i felt compelled to say that it was kind of obvious to me but i

103just decided to say it if and when it is rescinded our approach will change slightly to require them whenever practical guys frankly i feel like a six-year-old probably needs a 20-second break for every now and then and and we'll just figure out ways to do that that doesn't mean 20-minute break but we would have done we i i would recommend we adopt a slightly more practical approach still requiring and uh they will be required on buses at all times and we mentioned that previously the only caveat there is the driver when driving the bus is moving and it's and perhaps not the person doesn't feel as uh that's in the in safety's interest to have it when he's driving or she's driving then okay otherwise everybody on the bus will have a face to cover

104so that's the update on that somewhat controversial for reasons i don't know maybe political topic i don't want to spend too much time on it other than to say hey we're requiring it jim can i just insert something when we're talking about the face coverings i know somebody had uh one of the questions that were read we're asking if the school um could order face coverings um and i just wanted to put out there i don't know if people saw that there is a school store right now that is offering face coverings for sale they're the gators and the the masks they are i believe being offered at a very low price um i don't know that the school's making any money off of them they're just trying to get them out there for the

105parents so i just wanted to make people aware that there was the school store is offering face coverings for sale that's correct thank you for that and also we will have spare talk about this later but we will have spare face masks available uh on buses and at schools in case somebody forgets um so jim if i may this is jeff saltanic just briefly uh there's two things that i need to say in addition to the face mask issue uh first of all from both your own personal exp uh perspective and uh dr abbemont's perspective that you are absolutely required as commissioned officers of the state to implement the orders of the department of education or your commissions will be lost in the commonwealth of pennsylvania so you have no choice but to enforce the

106uh order of governor wolf secondly if we as a district elected not to follow that order uh and there are some people maybe not on the board but maybe in the community who do not believe we should follow the order we run the risk that the state could even stop state funding to the district under that circumstance so as long as that order is in place we have no discretion in terms of the implementation of that order all right thank you okay bussing is a tricky one because it's basically a moving mobile confined space um we considered going from two bus tiers which is we know we have that now secondary all comes in together and then there's a second tier for elementaries each one of them has their own bus uh to four splitting

107up the element basically cutting the number of kids every bus and a half middle school would be separate from that from the high school and then we'd have separate secondary runs four tiers would be awesome for distancing but and here here's the the caveat it would have required middle school to start 20 minutes earlier than it does now and we did some did some uh pulse taking and that really wasn't a popular option at all two k to five schools would get out later and the price tag would be over half a million dollars jim i have one question on that if we are doing hybrid for high school and and middle school where it's half the people would would we only wouldn't we only need one tier for the for that run wouldn't we

108just need to do the same run since it's half the students anyway yeah so so exactly uh that's one of the reasons why at the end of the slide we're gonna not recommend this but because because we're sort of achieving it anyway and there's another reason so i'll get to that but yes you're absolutely right so the price tag is costly for i'm not so sure how much benefit but here's another thing we alluded this at the last meeting society in general is going to have a real real problem on its hands with bus driver supply and we we can't know for sure right now we're trying to get that nail down but this could be a real problem so so one of the other cons of this would be it would just make that

109it would just exacerbate that shortage because we need some more drivers to do these more these other runs the july survey although the the question flow was confusing and i think that was very good feedback and we apologize for the confusion um uh told us generally speaking there's going to be some sort of some amount of ridership reduction really hard to say exactly what we didn't make anyone commit so again that's that's going to be really just a broad brush but that survey did uh indicate that whatever the accommodation and again the flow was crazy but um there may there may just be many fewer families comfortable putting their child on the bus even with these precautions so we're recommending we keep it as is in two tiers uh tracy's point about the hybrid at

110the 6 to 12 is gonna is going to help basically 50 automatically there every day and we have these precautions in place 100 face coverings all times spread out no three to a seat by the way bucks county department of health to go back to an earlier point published their recommendations and they don't have any problem with three people to a c shoulder shoulder okay we're not doing that that's this is an example of on the continuum we're going to be a little bit better than that we hope we can have spread it out much more no three to a seat keep the windows open that's a that's a known help as long as it's not too crazy out disinfect frequently that will help so we have these precautions in place that will help with

111the busing but we we know it's not perfect and we know there will be hesitation about the busing so what does that mean with hesitation about busing comes car line expansion we know that and we're gonna have to just deal with that and i don't have the details of that now but we i can tell you that we know it's going to be an increase in the car line hey jim yes regarding regarding buses you have the phrase no three to a seat does that mean that you can have two in a seat and when you have two students in a seat isn't that i don't know what the dimensions are but that seems pretty close together it it uh it could be if it's a if it's a if it's a narrow seat maybe

112we'd only have one way around this is uh siblings can sit obviously next to each other so that could be i suppose three there's we have some families with three go in the same school so okay no no no i i'm not advocating three to seed i think we might definitely not have three receipts but i'm saying are we still gonna allow two to receive even because we probably approach it like if we if we have to we will but approach like the airlines like they're they're selling middle seats now but no one really wants to be in the middle seat no one ever wants to be the middle seat but especially now so um jim the issue is that currently we have over 60 children in a bus so um if you have 24

113um you know uh benches and a bus in general you're gonna end up with at least two to a seat in many many uh areas to even get fifty percent so that's gonna happen um at the elementary level frankly we're going to have to do something in order to make it so that it's not going to be three to a seat so that's that's the reality of it and it backfills to what jim started with which is even if i was able to acquire 10 buses i don't think i'm going to be able to acquire 10 bus drivers so um that's not going to be something we're going to be able to fix and not only that but once a bus driver gets sick you know there's not going to be a huge backfill of

114bus drivers waiting in line to take over those spots so even if we could manage the 10 if one of them were to get sick now we are down one at least it's it's it's going to be tricky but so that's why it's up there is a major issue central question but we're recommending keep it at two tiers at this point with these expanded precautions has been and and just see has there been any thought for the elementary schools to have maybe two different start times for parent drop-offs we we could do things like that uh the problem is it is going to be supervision on the other end we can get around that we can't use large spaces with all kids that you know in them at once for supervision so we're going to

115have to crack that nut in creative ways but yes that's a possibility jim last year we had two vendors that were competing for uh our contract for busing um obviously we chose one is there an option to go to the uh to the other vendor to either split those services or to actually add them for additional bus support we'll let you take that one yeah so um say one bus run would answer it um i probably have a few answers or people that i can call if if the answer is could we add 10 runs and likely even more than that was what would really be needed i think that would be very very difficult but i could certainly make those calls and then present the numbers to the board but again uh dr cristfield

116noted that um the incremental cost of just doing the four tier was about five hundred thousand dollars i suspect if we start adding bus runs um you're looking at five hundred thousand dollars pretty quickly as well um if we added you know even one or two at the elementary level per school okay what if we were to do one additional tier for elementary level you're figuring 250 would we be able to get that yep we could do it but it would be the general cost would be about 250 000 and then you'd still have the same issues which are um dr cristfield mentioned the busing uh on the driver's side and one of the things that we are worried about is that um sometimes the bus drivers have two jobs this is a job and

117then it leads to a second job and if that extra 45 minutes or whatever it took at the second elementary tier both in the morning and the afternoon um it's possible that some of our bus drivers would drop out and uh if i may add to that i think there's a substantial likelihood that uh if this is the case in which and this will be in the case uh in many other surrounding school districts and there won't be enough bandwidth to do the kinds of busing that we may want to have even irrespective of cost i would consider running uh students in a morning shift and an afternoon shift with the split things up that way which would maybe not require more bus drivers if we just had an additional run in the middle of

118the day uh coming and going is has that been considered at all uh i think you're talking split sessions correct yeah um that was initially but it goes back to the same reservations about hybrids in general which is um the younger kids would be home for half a day right there that half the day will be something asynchronous which isn't great for them and there would be additional runs it'd be a whole another tier of runs midday right so we then we go into the same problem that we just spoke of of possible shortages and anticipated uh staffing issues it would reduce density of students on the bus and in the building it certainly would but you're right yep okay all right i want to go to a list in these are in no particular

119order just other details that i can share out in response to many questions we've been getting and some other matters first special education gary alluded to our approach to special education general which is to say our own case managers will still be involved every step of the way however special education individual situations are so unique sometimes that that any any uh either situations or conflicts or something uh resolved and communicated in time for families to make that decision on july 31st okay so i i don't i don't want to go into details now because it just kind of depends on on the specific needs and the ieps and things but that's our commitment that people have enough information to make that decision by the 31st a a really awesome topic that made us send something

120out and then send a correction was that there's a new approach to travel where if people travel to one of a certain number of states then they are to be they need to quarantine when they get back and as you know we we initially included delaware on that list but that was a mistake because that's philadelphia's list and so we're not going to follow philadelphia we're going to follow pennsylvania's but there is a very real uh need to quarantine after travel if your family member travels no you know like if johnny's dad goes and mom goes to tennessee no johnny's not quarantined johnny will have to quarantine if johnny's mom or dad comes back and starts having symptoms okay because that's a problem but but it's not like a like a second degree of quarantining

121required but if johnny goes out of the state to tennessee yeah johnny has to quarantine for 14 days in general quarantining now this is one of the areas that is actually still a little bit in limbo i have some details to share but i can tell you that the montgomery county department of health hasn't fully nailed this down just yet so as soon as they do we're going to share that out generally speaking i read off my little cheat sheet here because it's pretty complicated fast it's require you or quarantining is required if you yourself have a positive test if you have symptoms and go get a test you know you get sent home get a test comes back positive okay if you've had close contact with somebody who's tested positive now we get to

122the complications what does close contact mean currently defined by montgomery department of health as within six feet of the person who test positive for 10 minutes or more all right that's some arbitrary numbers but we gotta draw the line somewhere now how do we find out who was in close contact with johnny over the course of the last day or two okay that's still the contact tracing which is incredibly elaborate incredibly important and montgomery county department health hasn't told us yet if they're doing it or we're doing it other counties have told their school districts that they're doing it the county department of health we are very much hoping montgomery county comes that same conclusion but we haven't heard yet if somebody has to go out on quarantine it's counted as an excused absence and

123without going into too much trouble or details right now we're going to take a realistic approach to absences this year because in general we're in unchartered waters we still have to count absences we're taking attendance for sure you still might get that annoying letter of five or ten days or whatever that's those are all state requirements but i would suggest we not get caught up in the technical um classification of a student absence right now because i think we all have bigger fish to fry so you have to stay home because you don't feel well or you have to quarantine that's that and then this last piece is really important when johnny has to stay home our intention is to get them into the virtual option for for 10 days basically 10 school days um

124um excuse me uh there used to be a code for absences for quarantine i haven't seen it recently but there used to be one there may be in which case we'll use it we're just we're just going to do what we have to do for coding and counting but we're not going to drive families crazy worrying about sending johnny in with three advils because it can't be absolute one more time otherwise it'll be a felony crime okay we're not doing that and we are going to accomplish instruction at home with our our various virtual options temporarily 14 days is essentially like probably 10 school days or so um so con construction will continue and the trick here is that normally if somebody's home sick you know we have instruction some things that get sent home

125from the teacher and it's usually depending on the age of the student hey just read a really good book if you feel up to it we hope to see you soon okay well the difference here is that these kids will quarantine they feel perfectly fine it's a very strange environment to be in so they can be expected to do a normal day's worth of work so we're going to see we're going to get that to them through one of our virtual options why would that then be counted as an absence i know you're saying not to get caught up in the detail being called an absence or not why would it be called an absence that the student is still expected to do normal work um you might have put your finger on a way

126around it in the sense that if we somehow count their attendance in the virtual option as like attending that day maybe it's not an absence you bring a very good point if the student is actually the one positive and so it's rather than well in quarantine but can't really do work that might have to be a day out sick but i like that thought of of counting as a virtual day if they're perfectly healthy and doing all the work i think that's a really good point and has has the state said whether they're going to um be less stringent on these types of things for this coming the coming school year uh stringent in terms of of what as far as absences and you know after 10 absences you get your letter home and yeah

127so probably not those are probably things in code that were specially weighed in the spring due to crisis so probably going to have to go back to those days but as i said without saying it officially we're going to be sending these letters with a little grain of salt in there i won't say anymore jeff sultanak's on this call and and i don't want to get myself in trouble but that's that's what we're going to be doing here in what's happening nursing matters this is this i'm sorry jim can we go back to the previous slide um so with your first sub bullet under quarantining um you know we're counting 14 days of the positive test or the close contact or when we come back from travel and then do we need to have a

128retest of a negative to come back to school and how is all that going to be governed very very good questions what we have done is we have compiled a chart with those questions and the various reasons why you would be out which symptoms uh re-entry uh things i don't want to go into right now but i can tell you this chart will be shared with everyone before the 31st so everyone can see how we're the department of health is telling us to handle quarantine matters we're not going to make a whole lot probably none of these decisions ourselves because while we have some people very very well versed in in matters regarding you know nursing and medical uh situation we have district physician these are the sorts of things that really need to be

129at the state or maybe county level so we'll get this chart together and we will share that with everyone as soon as this as soon as it's ready if i may i just want to caution anybody that the department of health may change its protocols on handling these items as time goes on during the year so even if we develop one that's based upon best available knowledge right now i would not count on it remaining the case generally if somebody tests covid19 positive right now the protocol of the montgomery county department of health is two successive negative tests within 24 hours and that goes for employees and will also go for students and if you were exposed it's a different methodology so i would not i know people want are hungry for answers but on

130these kinds of issues i would not spend a lot of time on those issues because it's going to be based upon the best available information at the time and it'll be a function of what testing is available and what contact tracing is available at that i heard that time you jeff that's a that's a really good point and um uh i'm gonna say it was this chart we we're have we'll have we'll put it i think it's a good the note that could change and put some some disclaimers in there um but this is the this is an area where many of the questions have come in and people are very interested in how we're doing this because that might i'm projecting that might influence their decision whether to choose virtual or not and i

131think that makes perfect sense to me so i know that people need these answers and what we'll do is we'll take a snapshot as jeff points out at the most latest and greatest guidance and and we will share it out so that people have that information i i want to also you know people are concerned i do want to emphasize that the montgomery county department of health is one of the most activist departments of health in the commonwealth of pennsylvania and they have taken probably some of the most safest protocols and implemented them in the county there are a number of counties in pennsylvania that do not have county uh departments of health and are left up to their own devices to determine how to handle some of these things or rely upon the state

132department of health which is spread too thin so we're fortunate in montgomery county that we'll have a much more vigilant safety organization in place than the rest of the state tim i had um a question going back to the the last bullet in the quarantine section so if if you are a student that is required to quarantine at home for 14 days and they are going to get assignments just to try to keep up because they are otherwise you know not symptomatic and can do work how is that instruction going to be delivered um is it just assignments from the classroom teacher being sent home is it content from the virtual program i think i might have missed that yeah gary you want to take that sure so at the k to six level um

133remember we'll have it we'll have teachers um teaching virtually to students at grade five for example or grade six um if a student is in the brick and mortar school and the child child needs to be quarantined for 14 days 10 school days or three weeks whatever it happens to be um that youngster would be assigned to the teacher who's teaching virtually for the period of time that they are home and they will experience a typical daily uh day of school at home with synchronous teaching um where they will start the day at 8 30 quarter quarter to nine in the morning they will have their typical flow of classes during the day um live with the teacher introducing the lessons um conducting class and all those pieces the teacher who's teaching virtually will be

134following the curriculum of the teacher of the district um and keeping pace um along with the teachers who are teaching in the um in person classroom settings so that that's how it'll be handled at the elementary level at the secondary level they would be assigned to the we would enroll them for that period of time as little as two weeks into the virtual academy and the classroom teacher would identify the um particular skills concepts being discussed in that two-week period and the lessons would be assigned to that student asynchronously for them to work on to keep pace with what's happening in the classroom now i will say that with the hybrid discussion that sort of emerged um that we're being sharing this evening we're looking at that um option in other ways possibly based on

135the fact that students would be in one day out the next day and is there some way to keep that youngster who's quarantined in sync with the classroom that they're actually assigned to in the building we're looking at that as an option um but our original thought was to put them on the um academy with the asynchronous plan that's custom customized to the instruction they're currently getting in the class the main thing here to point out is that we're trying to keep these students up to speed with instruction not just sending home work to be done over a two week period that's the goal so if we are looking at um what marshall suggested and having uh you know some phone camera or something like that so that if we're doing a hybrid for um

1367 through 12 and each kid is actually getting classroom learning every day instead of every other day or however else the the hybrid would be then these kids that are having the the 14 day quarantine would just be doing 14 straight days of the hybrid over the camera however you know if we're able to do that correct they wouldn't have to do the virtual academy because they would be just doing the virtual that would be set up at the high school for the hybrid that's correct so we could look at that as an alternative to what we just discussed um definitely okay okay then move on okay so as i mentioned nursing matters uh are very very important we've got an awesome team of nurses helping us on the task force they put a ton

137of thought into specifically at each school where the isolation room could be that's a place where a student would be kept apart from others until somebody comes to pick them up it's not easy it's it's building specific so i'm not going to go over each each specific one um the nurses by the way don't all of a sudden magically have their normal duties go away once you know they have to deal with all these new covet 19 duties so we're uh they're they're being very diligent about plans for that this is an important topic i think it came up a couple questions our approach will be to have temperatures checked at home we we are not uh recommending that we check temperatures either before getting on the bus don't see how that's practical or coming

138into the building while tech technology exists it it's just not practical and we're asking that staff and families check the temperatures at home before leaving for school i think a question may have pointed out too please don't slip an apple or two so that everything's okay for a couple hours i know that no one ever does that but just hypothetically if anyone ever did that we really don't need them to do that now because this is really important stuff jim um once we do if there's someone that goes to the isolation rooms um how's that being are we having two nurses at each school uh if there's gonna need to be elements of supervision doesn't perhaps have to be a nurse and and as i know you know real well we're going to run into

139shortages there too um there will have to be supervision of of everyone at all times of course and whether that's accomplished with a nurse or another adult is yet it's probably going to be building specific given different layouts have we thought of instead of maybe implementing some lpns instead of rns for just like extra help for something like this like i would you know i would not want it to be like just an lpn at the school but in addition for you know if someone's in the isolation room then maybe the lpn could be in the isolation room while the rn is in the regular nurses office i don't have one going back to the temperature checks um i recognize you're saying temperature checks at home and we can recommend that and ask people to

140do that um but obviously we can't control that um what's the reason for not just doing temperature checks ourselves at the front door of the schools as kids come in um like it's like what's what's the argument for for not doing that at all um it's done it's some districts are trying it um we we tried to envision what that would look like practically every day um it would look like students lining up which all of a sudden becomes a distancing issue there are a lot of their there could be uh some false negatives which then defeats the whole purpose anyway and if a student is found to be positive it it would be important information but it could be due to something else it could be that they'll feel fine soon we want to

141know if they have a temperature but it just didn't seem practical to do it on premise versus before they leave home if i may uh joe having heard a lot of districts debate this particular issue as well as uh private sector companies temperature testing is not considered to be the most accurate means of covert 19 diagnosis and secondly in order for it to be effective temperature checking needs to be probably taken at the bus transportation level because that may be where the possibility of transmission may be greater arguably than at the school and the transportation logistics would be enormous no less slow down the entire transportation system and what do you do if a child's at a bus stop and test positive are you going to leave the child at the bus stop there are

142a lot of logistics associated with temperature scanning and i think most districts after weighing the pluses versus the minuses felt that the benefit of safety that's achieved from that is minimal it could cause a lot of congregating at the entry of buildings and at buses which will make social distancing less possible also and may actually contribute to the transmission of the disease so a lot of districts aren't going to be engaging in temperature testing okay thanks i have a question am i on here yep you are okay this is a question for gary so we're expecting that whoever is teaching online say first graders or second graders that the teacher in the classroom and the online teachers are going to be in sync with one another and covering the same material so that if somebody

143has to leave the regular classroom a student and then go in quarantine if they just go online yes so we're we're expecting that the the teachers will maintain pace with the pacing charts in the curriculum and they may not be exactly to the day but they'll be teaching long division at the same time of the year they will be teaching the same units in in wonders um those they'll be matched up and and they'll be maintaining um pacing and they'll be in communication with the teachers at the school where they're where they're taking the kids can the child who's in quarantine why couldn't they watch the teacher teach from home from their computer if we if we use that technology we could do that if we use the technology we could do that we hadn't

144been exploring that as a realistic option at this point and that's why we didn't pursue that further one of the things we do know is we feel as though the kids at the elementary level do need to be with the teacher and interacting and part of the experience of the class so we felt that the virtual teacher who's working with a community of children would be able to integrate the child right in and actually be interactive in that computer as well um the other options possible and that's something we're gonna have to look at over the course of this um next few days to see whether we do see that as realistic and as as a and is a good idea for elementary in particular okay thank you you're welcome i could follow up on

145that who then is assessing the student going to be the actual teacher that's in the classroom or is it going to be the virtual lecture some combination when the teacher when the student goes into quarantine the work that they complete while in the quarantine time period would be evaluated by the teacher the virtual um the teacher who's teaching virtually and that teacher would then share those results that work performance with the classroom teacher upon return okay thank you [Music] okay so um as i mentioned these are in no particular order because staffing matters uh are as a topic is a really hot one there are some very specific hr provisions from state and federal levels and and i'm not convinced that they've fully played out everywhere yet and i know that jeff will back me

146up on that um staff leadership has been involved today with these planned but one of the tricks is this tonight is the first time i mean i shared this presentation with staff members just prior to the meeting but so today is the first time that many staff members will have seen what it looks like so at the same time that parents are are hungry for information and details so are staff members and because they may have a situation at home they might have a medical condition or they might live with somebody who's particularly compromised so they are eager to share that with us and they have been to some degree a little bit already and kathy rossi and her team stands ready to respond as best we can but there are limitations there are limitations

147written into these state and federal uh i guess you call them laws code that are different from what was in place in the spring spring had some emergency provisions just to make sure everybody kept getting paid and we didn't have an entire collapse now things are different so staff members will digest what it's going to look like ask questions of their principles and and of uh kathy director personnel will confer one-on-one bases keep everything private of course uh protect their privacy rights and then do the best we can to meet to meet everyone's needs but we can't the problem is we're just not gonna be able to promise anybody anything specifically we just can't so i'm gonna i'm gonna inject a pregnant pause right about now because i know i know ronnie's getting ready to

148hit this the the space button to unmute so anybody else jimmy i had a question we did a survey of the teachers what was their response uh are they interested in coming back or more interested in doing virtual um i'm gonna have to dig that out i mean it's what happens is if we're going to have them share individualized concerns with us because let's just say for example we ask the question and 30 of people say well i'd rather be out virtual i don't want to come back to school okay we can't do anything with information we we can't accommodate that number and that's not going to inform our decision making but if mrs smith comes to us and explains her medical condition or that she lives in a three-generation household or whatever oh okay

149she's she's on a list of people we see if we can make it work we might not be able to though the teacher that may have reasons to stay home may be forced to come in and teach yeah kath i don't know if you can share kathy or jeff share some i mean in real short order how that works in the hr world yeah and jeff please feel free to jump in um we um there are specific situations where um and we have presented this information to our staff under the ffcra leave of absence rules that um will allow us to provide our staff with some ability to stay out if they have medical conditions if they are advised to stay home for some reason if they're caring for someone else who has coveted or

150any other issues and again we're we're going to follow the federal law and um i have spoken to probably about 10 teachers already who have indicated issues um we have been very specific and and i've told every teacher who's contacted me you're not going to lose your job because you can't teach during coven 19 crisis however there will be limitations to what the district can do as far as full year leaves go but also we will be trying to also provide for the virtual options for those teachers that have the most serious needs if i may supplement that please first of all a generalized concern of a faculty member about coming back to school and remaining safe is something that we can fully appreciate but certainly if we want to deliver an educational program for

151our students we will not be able to regularly accommodate because we won't have enough of a corpus of professional staff to come back and teach students that people just express generalized anxiety we have to and we will and we understand that certain people will have their own particular disabilities and under the law we have to have an internet active discussion with them to comply with the americans with disabilities act to address whether or not we can make an accommodation and actually by going to a virtual program we will have more options to accommodate and employees issues by providing them an option to teach virtually to the extent their certification works and to the extent that we have a position available to them so we will have more options than we would normally have to accommodate

152disabilities on the part of our faculty but it's going to be a fine balance going into the next school year of encouraging enough staff members to come in to teach our students to meet our intended goal to try to re-initiate school and then at the same time honor individual disabilities there have been a lot of studies that are done going beyond our survey done by better survey takers than ourselves uh that have concluded that there may be a large number of individuals who will be concerned about returning to work but we i think the approach that is being taken by the administration as jim started out in his presentation was that the district is looking at all forms of guidance trying to put together the best available safety techniques that are in place to assure

153the safety of our faculty and our students uh subject to reasonable and practical limitations and that's i think the guiding force on this issue and we need to have enough teachers willing to come back to make this program work because none of this works whether it be virtual or live if we don't have enough teachers teaching and jeff this question is for you and maybe this is something if it is better addressed than executive session uh please let me know but i mean the attorney amy wonders like what liability do we have as a district by requiring our teachers to work in these if somebody would get sick for example very limited liability if at all first of all school districts are protected under state law under the political uh subdivision tort claims act which

154means that under the concept of sovereign immunity we can only be sued if the state allows people to be sued and there's really no lawsuit for negligent maintaining of somebody on staff or putting somebody in an unsafe condition clearly if somebody can prove and that is very difficult to prove that they got coveted 19 as the result of the district not imp uh implementing appropriate safety requirements they have the avenue of workers compensation under pennsylvania law as would be the case with any kind of workplace illness or injury but unlike the private sector we have very limited uh liability risk thank you [Music] okay so that's a big wild card um generally speaking large gatherings like assemblies are out um that's just common common or i should say that's just a generally accepted precaution against

155the spread athletics we will continue to operate under the piaa procedures and protocols for the time being i have not heard of them changing in any fashion we'll leave that one on the table for right now lunch we alluded this earlier it's going to look and feel different and there's going to be some building specific solutions so here in a second i'm going to address what to do with additional questions and as you can see we have a bunch at the end of this meeting um but then there's going to be more in the coming days this one is probably as building specific as any of them because they're different spaces different size cafeterias all that sort of thing a question came up whether or not we have sufficient supplies in uh in place and

156the answer is many have been ordered or at least on order can't always deliver or can't always guarantee but we do have the extra masks that came up we're going to have cleaning wipes and hand sanitizer every district in the planet is trying to get the same exact things so wade has to use his very best and most skilled methodologies to get these things and if anyone can do it he can so we're we're stockpiling we are uh ready with supplies uh as the best the greatest degree we can cleaning procedures we do have a the ability without going a whole lot of detail right now we have the ability to increase the percentage of outside air that gets pumped into buildings through the hvac system we regularly pump in outside air that's just a

157natural thing to do with hvac in a big building like a school you can you can adjust it to do more or less depending on say things like temperature so more air is good more outside air is good better circulation is good we'll have windows open in in cases where it can be done and you know it's not inappropriate whatever and we'll adjust the hvac but but just everyone needs to understand that in the winter time with all the complaints about temperatures is going to come more complaints about cold because that's more cold air being injected that's just the way it works and in warmer months the opposite we believe it's worth it because we know the values of of air circulation in in the entire fight against spreading this thing but just wanted throw

158a little caveat in there there will be some temperature i should say more temperature concerns than perhaps normal and i know there are some out there we have daily uh evening disinfecting protocols in place we have things to be done during the day high touch surfaces uh doorknobs and such uh we stand ready for an urgent disinfecting if the the nurse feels the need for something like maybe even like the uh isolation room or something personal items generally speaking should probably be removed from the equation like uh you're not going to really sit on a if you have like a sofa or something like a beanbag chair or something maybe we save those for when uh things go back to normal so here's the thing that the principals are love about this presentation like i

159just know it i feel their love right through the zoom and onto this screen what we need to do to be more efficient in answering people's questions because i get it tonight is not efficient and i get it there's frustration out there we've hopefully answered some you're going to have many many more detailed things have to go to your building principles so you can have an efficient conversation or a quick email we're getting too backed up and we can't get to specific questions at the central office level as much as i'd like to i tried creating a q a for the first meeting it took almost a whole day that's not efficient use of our time right now and so many of the questions about details will be building specific so please direct specific questions

160to your building principle now they're going to know the answer some of the time and they're not going to know it others well they then they'll go dig it out they'll ask me or gary or kathy or wait or something and then they'll respond we want to get your questions answered but it's it's becoming virtually impossible for me to respond to the inbox every day i wake up in the mornings 100 emails and and for me to get through them i want to i don't want to be rude but i also want you to get answers more quickly so we're going to try this new approach moving forward between now and starting school speaking of moving forward a week from tonight is when the board officially approves the plan that gets submitted to the state

161and that will fill out pages of of charts that the state is having districts fill out we are all required to submit to the state the state does not look at them does not approve them which is a strange arrangement but whatever so it's this is an important document and as soon as it's ready we'll share it out it's going to encap capture everything we talked about tonight any possible tweaks between now and next monday and as jeff alluded is things are moving anyway so our approach to quarantining might be changed by the department of health for us in which case our health and safety plan quarantine section is stale before it even hits the ground but in any event we'll fill this thing out and that will be a major approval item monday night

162um at the board meeting of other items also monday night this coming monday is not just this health and safety plan jim um jim on the previous slide you've referenced um or recommended that parents um send some more additional specific questions to their building principal about school reopening or details related to school reopening yes um i know like there was a change a while back that if you go on the district's website and you went into the staff directory and you just searched let's say on lynn blair would bring up lynn's name but it would not have any of our contact information in the staff directory like that was some kind of change we made for security purposes correct so where where should parents go if they want to get the actual contact information of

163the principle of their school you're right we don't we don't print or we don't we don't share email addresses for the general public because of uh phishing and and ransomware concerns so where if a prince if a parent doesn't know the doctor chris field the principal emails are on the website they're just not in the directory they're on each school's title page okay thank you mr mcgowan that was very helpful yep okay so if i go into the wizarding high school school specific page it'll it'll give the content information of the administrators in that building um so just for folks maybe we could mention this on the staff directory page because on the district staff directory page we do not have specific content information for principals or other school staff um so maybe some kind

164of if a parent for example if i'm a kindergarten parent i don't exactly know where to go i go to the staff directory that's on our website and i type in you know the shady grove principal's name i won't be able to find the content information i might not know to go to the actual school page so something that could point people in the right direction i think would be helpful okay well it does have the actual uh it has uh for instance at blue bell elementary it has c lupo at uh uh wsdweb.org so that's probably a specific address just for just for her that's it's not a common address is that correct it's it's the accurate yeah we're we're trying we're treading a fine line between between keeping our our technology secure and

165and enabling uh important communication so the quick answer to your question there on is yes and and we'll get that publicized to the greatest extent possible we don't want to publicize it to uh people who want me wish to do his harm either so we'll figure that out in a way to get parents that information right because it's on the website now okay yeah correct ron my point my point was just that if you went to the main district website there is a staff directory page which is a staff directory for the entire school district if you try to search someone's name through that staff directory it'll give you the person's name and position but it will not give you any contact information the content information is on the website it's just not in the

166staff directory is my point then people might be confused by that and so something that directs them to where they can actually get it which it sounds like on the school specific web pages it has that content information for the administrators of that building yeah okay so um money is important and then just as important 11 days after that we need families to commit to 100 virtual or not so that's what that's 18 days from tonight where we have some more questions to answer we've got some things to figure out and then we need to know and this will be one of those things where we don't need to we're going to assume everyone is all right let me just put this way we're going to have families opt into 100 virtual but this that's

167just for practicality's sake and some have already told us and we're making note of that and and you know the the schools will will uh keep a tally but some many are waiting to hear some details and do some more thinking and ask more questions so that deadline date is 18 days away very important deadline jim i've heard some concerns from folks about the idea of making uh the commitment as of july 31st without feeling like they have enough information to make a well-informed decision or commitment right and what happens if let's say august 15th i have a change of heart um you know what accommodations are or what allowances are going to make for people to essentially change their mind after july 31st or on the flip side if after the second week of

168school for whatever reason i'm unsatisfied with the choice that i made for my child yeah and i want to switch like what what's the protocol very very limited ability to do that um the reason we need this deadline is we need to you need to get our we need to get our staffing in place and every summer this is a challenge anyway especially at the elementary level this one is going to be a 10x challenge we can't have final decisions any later than this we just need that we just need to know so that we can figure out who's going to be the teacher for third grade virtual to uh to somebody's point what if we what if we have 40 third grade virtual then we need two okay that sort of thing we can't

169i can't wait because then the teachers need to know where they're going to go too our our ability to accommodate requests to change a decision after this school after semester starts is going to be incredibly limited i know that's not an answer people want to hear either but for the same reasons if all of a sudden um too many people decide they want to go virtual and we we can't handle it because then then we we just don't have the capacity to go in back and forth like that we are going to try to do it with the students who are in quarantine because that's a limited basis 10 days or so um and of course there'll be emergencies you know that that we're not going to be like some zero tolerance for this but

170generally speaking we won't be able to accommodate change requests nearly as often as people would hope we can so jim just to recap for elementary level it's you have the choice of 100 in or 100 out for the first semester is that correct correct and then you'll have a choice again for the second semester right so for the secondary level you have the choice of the hybrid or hybrid um 100 hybrid or 100 virtual correct and we're still looking at the hybrid to see if we can do something where it's every day um learning but you might be two days at home three days at school or vice versa depending on the week but we're looking to see if we can do the 100 everybody's doing the same lesson plan every day you talk about

171the camera technology yes yes we're going to look into that um we need to confer with a number of different uh vectors but we're going to do that as a priority basis next few days so we will know that for the 7 20 meeting yes okay jim am i correct that once you choose your option you need to stay with that option until the end of december or is it for the marking period uh semester so it will be whatever the second or third week in january yeah okay why would it not be per marking period isn't the second or third week of january mid way through the second marking period our schools are our secondary schools are on a quarterly base which would work with the semester our elementaries are on a trimester base

172so we'd be making a shift midway but again we would still we would still be whether the students are in the school or in the virtual option they're still following the same program and would be assessed in the same areas and skills as they were okay and what what will be the circumstances under which we allow students to switch from one program to the other program uh that's that's classified amy um i don't know that enough people on this call have the clearance to discuss that uh but the serious answer is some only some very unique possible health situations family situations i mean we all have things that we can't plan on that just happened to us and so as i say i don't really want to be i don't want to be like completely

173uh black or white on this but on the other hand um it's gonna it's gonna require it can't be just because i don't like this it's gonna have to be because i my grandmother has to live with us now but she just lost her house or something or she has to come here or whatever okay we're not going to be cold like that but if you don't like it i mean i i sorry you know like it will work to help you try to light you know work to get better the things you don't like but that that can't be a reason we we would we would be able to accommodate and if there would be something like major that would happen with uh coven between july 31st and august 31st um within the state

174of pennsylvania would we allow people to if numbers would spike or something will we allow parents to reassess their decision at that point or once that's a really good question i mean a lot of us are talking about i think one of the questions came through what's the i think the word metric was going to be was used like what would he what metro going to use to close schools and i would just reiterate that we don't we wouldn't be doing that okay the governor would you know close schools or not but in that scenario you're speaking of if there's such a spike that people are going to get you know have it be enough to local here in pennsylvania to worry about i would hope that we get some direction from harrisburg on what

175to do if it's just something that happens nationally it's a development that somebody reads about and decides that they're they now have a different mindset than they did when they made the decision july 31st that's going to be hard to accommodate for the same reasons we we can't accommodate wholesale changes and really i'm not really finding the best words to use to describe the reasons why but it's just for not lack of a better freight uh thought it's it's just a matter of practicality frankly okay [Music] okay so we have a couple of dates we're aiming once we get everybody's information to finalize staff assignments they have a right to know what they're going to do so they can have three weeks to actually prepare if it's different than what they thought they were going

176to do like we do every year we we this is mainly at the k-5 level but we finalize student assignments class assignments basically those are the things that everybody loves to get that first monday of the following week which is this week 8 24. there's a lot of specific staff training sessions required not just about health and safety but also teaching and learning that we're going to suck up that those three professional development days and by the way and this is not something that everybody doesn't know but there are a lot of other important things going on in the world and we have some other trainings and things that we want to get to that's not the topic for tonight but we're not ignoring them and we're not going to ignore staff training on other

177important things it's just that this has dominated our thought processes for the last frankly three months and then first day of school august 31st we'll move off of this slide real quick on and that's the end of the presentation where i thought i guess i would probably stop sharing screen if everybody's okay with that just take questions you go with that joe that send reasonable yeah so jim i just want to reiterate and i know you're tired of hearing it already but from having a student that just graduated for the option for the high school with the hybrid situation i truly believe that we need to find a way to do the camera situation where every student is having a class every day because i will tell you especially the seniors but not just the

178seniors that if they are in school two days a week and you are expecting work from them the other three days for 83 of them they're not doing that work those days they are going to skate by with doing as little as possible and if there is no nothing put in place where we are holding them accountable they are going to get a not a very good education um and i'm gonna say especially the seniors especially the second half of senior year like last year that they just won't do it so i think that the best thing that we can do for them for the secondary level is find a way to do this where we're doing a camera and even if you're home that day you're getting the same lesson that the kids in

179the classroom are getting and you're being held accountable and you're having your tests and you're you're doing what needs to be done and you're participating in class every single day i think if you if we try to do it any other way they're not going to get the education that they need to get um so a couple things one is that even if we do have the camera option in place um just i think people need to recognize that the quality of what you're seeing through whatever the camera setup setup's going to be will not be as good as actually being in the classroom i mean so that's that's number one but i guess um regarding regarding senior perspective on that i mean we have two seniors or rising seniors on the call with us

180here i like to hear i guess olivia and paige's perspective on um you know the hybrid model that we've talked about and and the prospect of like the cameras for the days that you're not actually in class so leave your page any thoughts yeah um i mean i think i agree with miss walsh i i mean i personally would still do the work but i definitely know that like a lot of my peers it can it can be really hard to focus and get that motivation when you're not in school and you're not like right there with your teacher and with everyone especially like for kids that have already been accepted into colleges um and then as far as the hybrid option yeah i i really liked what mr bliefeld was saying um about trying

181if we can to get the cameras in there i know that's what the school that my dad works at is doing um and i just think that that's a good way to keep everyone together make sure that they're in the same place the kids that are home for a certain day if the other half of kids are in school are like right there in the same lesson can go in the next day with questions for the teacher about whatever happened exactly in that class i also think that like making sure that stays the same like if i'm getting the same lesson as my peers in school on a monday and then they're getting the same lesson as me on a tuesday it probably makes it easier for the teacher as far as like with assessments

182because we're all getting exactly the same lesson we're all on the same page about the material so you're not going to get one class that knows this concept really well in another class that isn't because for some reason you missed something on a certain lesson day well said olivia um paige do you have anything to add oh sorry i cut out for a minute um i'm assuming it's about the cameras um i completely agree with olivia and i think that if we have the cameras in class it's really going to be more beneficial because i know personally when we were doing um just the assignments over the i you know the end of the last school year it was it was a lot harder to keep yourself motivated and i also felt like you know

183i wasn't i wasn't necessarily learning as much as i would if i was in an in-person session and personally for my teachers i didn't really have a lot of um synchronous classes and i felt that that was kind of a downfall and i think that if we can keep the kids on a schedule even when they're at home they're going to benefit so much more because i know i wasn't on a schedule in the spring and i suffered from that so i think that that's something really important especially for kids in middle school and the kids that are transitioning into ninth grade with the heavier course load let me jump in for a second please and i think olivia and paige's insights are awesome there as usual um one of the things i don't want

184us to get too far down this road without first running ideas by uh teachers and the teachers union and the reason i say is because i don't want to and have them end up being the reason we do or don't do something i mean we should do we should we're definitely going to have a conversation as soon as possible and i know many are dialed in tonight so i want in a sense speak up for them to say there may be elements of this that we in this call right now don't perceive so let's let's just hold that open as a very real possibility and please know that we will definitely confer with teacher leaders and union leadership and report back what we find out that's fair marshall before you get there i just wanted

185to to say that we have a second public comment period after this discussion wraps up um where we are going to review the comments that have come in and have been submitted to us since the start of the meeting and at this point there have been well over 50 additional emails that have come in um which is quite a lot and i think we're i want to make a commitment to give air time to all the people who submitted questions or comments but at this point i'm going to close the window for any more additional emails for tonight um as i said we've gotten 50 plus i think that's ample um for this evening so with that being said marshall i simply want to just add with a lot of the comments we've been making

186about trying to figure out how to best do this we are beyond the point of eliminating risk we're not going to eliminate risk it's clear from a large percentage of our families that they want in class learning we also have a large percentage that doesn't so what we are doing is essentially trying to reduce the risk and if we can simply focus on finding ways of reducing the risk the best we can i think that's our best course of action our teachers are on the front line and i understand we need to run this by them i think we need to know what they're thinking and how they feel about this but if we implement some of the things we talked about tonight i think we're going to do our best to reduce the potential

187of risk to everybody i think that is how we need to vote on this because as a board of nine we're not just voting for our own families and our own children i i have a child in this school district but i can't simply sit here and say i'm going to vote for the best interest of my child our oath was to do what's in the best interest of every parent student administrator teacher no matter whether they're in school or going home to their caregivers so we have to look at everything from the from the perspective of reducing the risk to everybody as much as we can and providing the best opportunity under those circumstances and i think some of the things we discussed tonight will help in that regard and i know there's a

188lot of frustration it's a long meeting a lot of people are hearing things for the first time a lot of people are throwing up their hands but the fact of the matter is we're not dealing with a once a week episode a once a year episode even a once in a generation episode this is a once in a i in a century experience hopefully we'll be out of in a year or so if if we're being honest about it but we're just trying to do something to help everybody through this and i hope everybody understands that i like all the questions everybody's been asking they've asked the right questions a lot of questions and a lot of comments and if we just stick to that to making sure that we're all in it together we're

189all on the same page and i think that's what everybody has to understand is that as a group we all want the same thing we want the best education for our kids and we want to keep everybody safe as best we can not everybody's going to be happy we have 4 000 students which means 4 000 voices and almost as many opinions but i think we can do the best we can by simply saying how can we best do this for everybody in a way that reduces the potential for risk as we get everybody back to school the best we can i just thought we needed to offer that thanks well sad marshall and uh actually i think we're at 5000 students he said even more voices and opinions out there um but again those

190sentiments i think we're spot on thanks amy thank you i just had a couple questions um in terms of the k through five synchronous learning would there be an opportunity and the scary maybe best free dancer for parents to maybe see what that's going to look like like have a sample a day where they can go online and see what that would look like like i know for myself and just my experience as a parent this past spring i have a kindergartner and second grader and having them sit there even for the one or two hours per week was a lot for them i had to sit there with them to make sure they stayed at the computer and didn't wander off um so having having an understanding of what that's going to look like

191sitting there with your child for several hours during the day or making sure your child is capable especially since they're not going to be able to switch because they don't like it um i'm just wondering if that's a possibility to give them like a sample of what that's going to look like i think we could certainly provide a sample what the schedule would look like it it frankly would not look much different than a school day with a child proceeding income into class they're in an english class and and they begin with a with a lesson with the with the teacher the opening with attendance and what our day is going to look like they may do a short mini lesson with with the students uh maybe have some questions and answers and then they

192might put them in small groups to do work together or they may send them off to do a test for 15 20 minutes and then bring them back as a class and talk about what they did this is a stretch we realize this especially for the youngest children the early childhood section but one of our challenges is we're expected to main instructional pace and meet the instructional hours and requirements by the state um over the course of the year so it's not like we can do a reduced time of like two hours a day or three hours a day um we've got to ensure that there's lunch break we've got to show there's mid-morning break or an afternoon break got to put the encore class in so there's a little bit of a diversion from

193academic to a little bit more um like art music pe these different things um so i think it's it's it probably is difficult for parents to imagine and frankly first it's difficult for us to imagine what it looks like for a young kindergarten or a first grader to do this but it is an expectation moving forward that we are going to do synchronous instruction that the teacher will be there interacting with the students um much like they do in class it will not look much different or feel different to the student other than the fact that they're doing it through a screen um and and that has its own quirks we know okay sorry my next question was um as parents how are we gonna apologize i don't think it was mentioned earlier but how

194are we gonna be notified if there is a positive covet case in the class will there be a letter sent home like someone is pink eye but it's gonna say someone in class is covid yes uh we would not uh include names of course but we would say a student and this and such class uh has um been tested positive recovered uh and and that student has privacy rights so of course we wouldn't say who it is but peop just like you know other situations you you can infer things and and that's when the contact tracing comes into play too because we have to contact tracers have to do interviews with people this is really a labor intensive exercise so contact tracers will know names and we'll actually call others and we'll have to use

195that name in order to track its trace so um the official notification will go out and and quite frankly the the uh i was using this in a different context but i have noticed that in the spring you recall we had a case of covet and the whole school was going to shut down for a day for cleaning right before before the stage shut everything down okay uh departments of health have have gone quite a far away away from that now and it's not gonna be like that it's gonna be the student who test positive is out whoever was in close contact with that definition of of uh six feet or less for ten minutes or more um we'll be out for quarantine and then the next day back to back to school every everyone

196except for those people have to be removed back to school so um that's decidedly different than the than the mindset that was prevalent in the spring with departments of health back when we didn't know as much about this as we did and are we going to have um the counselors on staff for obviously will be upsetting i think for students if you find out someone in your class has coveted um for something for them to talk to if they do have any sort of stress or anxiety related to this well uh we we will have our normal uh array of of guidance counselors particularly the k-5 level they know the students and are awesome with them um i hadn't thought of covid specific counselors we would have our district physician who's really really good with

197this um at the ready but that's not really counting as much as medical um i i guess my answer is we would meet the mental health needs of our all of our students just like we normally do as best we can and will buses will they have a signed seats again aid with contract tracing if necessary yeah that's a good question of the bussing we did not we have not contemplated assigned seating um yeah can i need to yeah so what we're very very likely to do is to reduce contact the first people on the bus have to go all the way to the back so that you're not passing everybody on the way so first students on going to be in the back and the back other seat and then the next seat and

198then going forward so if you're the last person on the bus theoretically you're going to be going on to one of the first benches as opposed to walking past everybody on the way back to the that'll eliminate some um distancing that'll include kindergarteners also who traditionally set the front of the bus uh it will probably be able to take that into consideration and then obviously we will also have families together as much as possible so it's likely that if you have a kindergartner and a third gardener third grader we're gonna make um you sit together and we this is a different question now we have um a patient where we can refer families to for testing like if somebody is exposed then we'll be able to say this is the location to go to to

199get your testing done we will have information like that but one of the one of the things that's not decided yet is exactly what role the family physician is going to play in all of this the i should say the the health care provider of the family there's some suggestion that that a family physician will decide if a test is required or not and there's another suggestion that says the district shall require it that's one of those pieces in that chart i was referring to that needs to get nailed down for sure it's kind of a minor point but on the other hand um we've we've come across families who understandably get very very uh upset when their family health care provider is out of the loop and the decisions made for them so i

200think that's where the montgomery county department of health is is struggling because they know that and they want to respect that piece but on their hand they want to make some definitive have some definitive answers so people know exactly what happened so that will be in that chart and we're trying to get clarity on between now and monday and i just can i just interject something here um because of the hour it's 10 o'clock at night um and paige and olivia have been so patient and so helpful it is their summer break i think that we should let them off of this meeting so that they don't feel obligated to have to sit here and still listen to us that sounds fair to me paige and olympia unless you guys have any like final questions

201or comments uh thanks for uh for uh joining us this evening and uh that you guys can feel free to drop off thank you um we appreciate that we do have one thing that we want to add before we leave so from both of us um thank you we can completely appreciate what a complex and difficult situation this has been to navigate and we're really thankful for everything that you're doing and all the hard work and thought that you're putting into organizing this for us um but with that said like dr christian said earlier there's other things going on that we can't just gloss over because this is really complicated um so paige and i would be remiss not to bring up the community conversation that took place yesterday on racial issues within the district

202i spoke with mr antonio there and i know that several of you attended virtually and i'm hoping that in an upcoming meeting we can have a serious discussion regarding the concerns presented by the students um at the meeting and the changes that they suggested which i know will be presented as an official petition by the end of the month again i know that the concerns addressing covet and the roadblocks that that brings makes it a particular particularly difficult time administration wise but i think this issue is too pressing not to immediately begin working to address the serious and extensive issues within our schools um one particular issue that i can speak to from my own personal experience and observation is the severe lack of black and latinx students in our gifted program as well as

203our advanced placement classes which is definitely something that surrounding communities have struggled with and continue to struggle with and we looked into this a little bit at the meeting where we discuss the achievement gap but i think it's an issue that needs to be targeted and addressed among staff more directly and we know like as a community as a country and college focusing on it too that diversity really benefits everyone and nowhere is that more true than in a learning setting so i think it's really important that the conversation started by students and community members on sunday is continued by the board very soon as well we really do urge you to continue the conversation and we also ask that the board acts upon the concerns brought by the students as student school board representatives

204it is our job to help voice the student body's concerns and being that the community conversation was spearheaded by both alumni and present students we cannot stress enough how important it is to us that we enact change directly influences the students involved if you were not able to attend the community conversation either in person or virtually we strongly suggest that you watch the live stream um the link is tinyurl.com forward slash community conversation live i don't know if you can see it here oh online um once again it's tinyurl.com forward slash community community conversation live um the stories that were shared were incredibly powerful and helped provide perspective on something that many of us do not have personal experience with and for those that would like to view and sign the petition um if you

205could i wrote this one down too um oh my word um you could go to tinyurl.com forward slash wsd anti-racism petition here i have it written down once again it's tinyurl.com forward slash wsd anti-racism petition and we're hoping that the demands listed could be added to a consequent meeting agenda once it is officially submitted as a petition thanks to libra page um yeah i mean what you said i think a spot on the the event yesterday just not to beat around the bush was about anti-racism and um you know making wisdom as a school district more inclusive and a place of more racial equity for all students in particular our black and brown students and it's an important topic that i want to actively engage in in the coming months and obviously school reopening is

206something we have to deal with right now because it's very urgent and pressing but i don't want us to lose sight of this issue in this topic and i look forward to hearing more from students as well as the speakers the recent alums um at the event on sunday to address us and dialogue with us as a board in august or september certainly in the coming months because i don't want us to lose sight of this very important topic and i want us to be able to make some positive change towards ending anti-racism in the district so thank you thank you and uh would that have a good night yes you too all right see you guys later paige pedro olivia before you leave if one of you could send us the links that write

207that down but if you could just send that to us an email that would be great perfect thank you thank you thanks guys have a great night okay um after that brief interlude any uh additional questions or comments or discussion about the school reopening plans um i have a question do we know how many kindergarteners are going to be coming or going to be in virtual kindergarten whenever whatever do we have an idea of who those families are we have a list of people who told us at some point in time they like to come to us for kindergarten yes at this time of year we're normally fully engaged with kindergarten screening and in processing and that's been slowed to a crawl for obvious reasons i'm not so the answer is yes we have uh

208all we have names and i hope we have since fixed the point about having them get district emails and invitations to surveys and whatnot and and actually enrollment not just kindergarten but k to 12 is vexing at this point and i'm not too sure how that will play out in the next six weeks i i just have this feeling that people are going to be coming and going more this year and so incoming kindergarten is always the wild card but this year i think we have all grades as a wild card and we're just trying as best we can to communicate with them and and confirm coming back or not but i just think people are going to be changing i think you're right anyone else yeah amy i just have one question sorry i

209know i had a long list um for those that are choosing to keep their kids home and do the virtual option what are we doing to make sure that they still feel like a part of the whistle hiking community like will they'll be like regular newsletters sent home will they be included in spirit days to the extent we have them extend we have extracurriculars or are we going to try to include them in virtual extracurriculars like how will we make them feel included um our intention is to have them be in every respect a uh second student i don't know gary we have anything more like definitive than that uh not really at this point we haven't really talked about some of those things i mean i think at the elementary the k-6 um virtual

210option will certainly feel more included because they are really part of the same system experiencing the same learning um connected with the teacher from the district that'll make it more so and certainly we would try to do the kinds of things we do in a regular classroom and in a school and include to make them involved so whether we're doing a kindness focus or something like that we would want to extend that to the virtual option there as well i think with the academy it's a little more difficult to do that i think with the seven to twelve because they would be experiencing a standards-based program but it would be different than what kids are getting in the school day but we certainly could think about that i mean the schedule still allows for us

211to bring students together and have academic periods at the middle school and to have ie times at the high school so we would still be looking for opportunities and we could certainly involve students who are in an asynchronous program to join in with those events even though they're not necessarily in the programming of the of the high school directly okay i know that's a i know that one of the things coming off the spring amy that we were very very clear about was that the the students needed to have that social interaction have that connection to one another um and so in the in the synchronous push that we're we're putting forth now it's really recognizing that our kids need to learn together they need to be interacting with one another they need to collaborate

212with one another do projects together and engage in class discussions and build that sense of community so that's got to be there and certainly it's something for us to be challenged to do for all of our students regardless of what option they're in the students that currently do traditional homeschooling not through our virtual academy but do traditional homeschooling do we allow them to participate in our activities at our school yes so a student who is involved in the homeschooling um through the state basically i mean we we helped we helped to facilitate the process but essentially it's a it's a parent parent-directed program that's put forth to the state and they um have an opportunity to apply to engage in extracurricular activities sports drama theater musical and musical programming they can be a part of

213all of that in wizan um the whisk and virtual academy students also have those options um we have them complete like a sort of a registration form of sorts not to register with the district but to just give us all the health information so when they're on site we have all the information about the youngster we need to um to be sure that we would know what to do in a case of an emergency or things like that but yes they're they're fully involved and able to be a participant in all facets of our extracurricular sports program thank you and my last question um what are we doing as far as symptom screening is this going to be something that the teachers are trained on during one of their training sessions in august if we're

214not doing temperature checks like what are we doing to check for symptoms i'm sorry to doing about what kind of training symptoms like understanding what the symptoms are teachers can identify and know when to send the student to the nurse because it's concerning that the student might have symptoms of coped yeah we have that's part of that that uh in-service week uh the week of the 24th is all teachers back the week of the 17th is new staff only and so the new staff only won't ha week won't have that but the next week will and we gotta carve out time for yet another thing with our scarce professional development time but this is important obviously thank you so much [Music] okay sounds like that's a wrap for board member questions now uh i guess

215we're then on to the second public comment period as i alluded to earlier we during the course of the meeting have received um in excess of 50 additional emails with comments from the public um unfortunately you know there is going to be some degree of overlap in terms of individual uh people's comments and questions because people are not aware what other people are submitting wade was kind enough to compile all the the submitted questions into one document and i'm going to run through those those comments and at some point when my voice is starting to give out i'm going to ask the hand the reins to uh one of my other fellow board members and maybe we could uh sort of tag team the remainder of the questions um if you guys check on your

216email inbox you should see an email from wade earlier this evening just a little while ago that has a word document um where he attempted to consolidate all the emails that we received during the meeting so if you can open that up and follow along that would be helpful joe i would just say and some of these um it looks like some of these we've answered already so it was like as far as face coverings will schools permit mass gainers or shields or only mess like there's there's gonna be some that we've already answered and i think if somebody starts reading it and realizes that it's already been answered i don't think we should waste the time and read the whole question of a question that's already been answered that's fair um okay so with

217that i'll take the first batch of questions i mean the comments that have been submitted and then as i said at some point i'm going to um hand it over to tracy i'll hand it off to you okay since you didn't get the pleasure of reading some of the questions of the first first round okay so um in the list i noticed in the first few that were in the document that wade put together there was actually some overlap with the first document we had so the first the first new additional question is from stephanie crowley or comment i should say and it's uh stated as follows for the sake of transparency if there was a reason that synchronous learning sessions were not provided for the high school students this spring please let us know

218what it was and additionally due to the nature of the high school building narrow hallways the knuckle and many classrooms that do not have windows are ventilation issues being taken into account 100 capacity in the high school makes consistent and sustained social distancing unachievable why was the 100 in person option chosen instead of the hybrid option and what is the contingency plan for the situation of being shut down again will such plan include another two week break for students again submitted by stephanie crowley so i guess this is one where i think was largely answered during the course of the discussion and i think was submitted probably in advance of realizing that we are doing the hybrid option for high school students um the next one is a pretty lengthy one from beth danoff and

219it's a series of questions it starts with number one if we have more than one child in the district and we need to keep one child home sick will the requirement be we must keep siblings home as well similarly if a parent or other member of the household is sick will children be required to stay home same if a coveted test for a member of a household is pending three will parents be notified if there is a positive case in their class and or be required to quarantine how will this be handled what are the thresholds school will be using to determine if it's safe to stay open if community spread increases or there is an increasing number of cases at a specific school if a child is in a brick and mortar school program

220but needs to quarantine due to exposure but is not sick themselves will he she be transitioned to a virtual learning class or will they simply be missing class for those 14 days if it is determined that schools need to close due to community spread how will children be transitioned to virtual learning specifically will schools just decide that day and close is there a plan in place seven are you able to provide a basic outline for what in person in elementary school will look like will classes be held outside at all will kids remain in their classrooms all day will lunch be in the classroom how many bathrooms for those classes that don't have one in their classroom be handled will recess be outside will children be at their desks for the majority of the day

221how will arrival and dismiss will be handled with social distancing guidelines eight if your child gets sick at school will you be required to come get that child and any other children you have in the district nine well i absolutely understand the district while i unders absolutely understand the district needs time to plan and is therefore asking for parents to make a decision on in-person or virtual a month out if something happens in that month which is a long time given the rapidly changing nature of this disease that makes us need to change our decision will the school honor that 10 can you please make clear the dates of the first semester that is being discussed slash committed to again submitted by beth daynoff so tracy i think this is a part of the challenge

222of determining whether or not the questions have been answered when it's a long laundry list of questions but i believe most of these were addressed during the course of our discussion as well the next is from leslie powell what is the process to participate in family focus groups will students be required to obtain covet antibody testing before the start of school the next is um another one from stephanie crowley this looks like it's like a repeat of some of it but then like the blue area i think is the new stuff okay so yeah i think the new portion is for safety reasons i feel that classrooms without windows should not be used i feel that the hybrid option offers the best balance of safety for the students with in-person teaching and should be the

223option chosen for the fall i feel that the school district should prepare a contingency plan now for the eventuality that the schools will need to close again in the fall this plan should include synchronous distance learning for core classes at a minimum and not through the montgomery county iu but by wishicon school district teachers there should not be a two-week break for students before distance learning commences should it become necessary the next one is from kat myers thanks for your time what do you say to those parents who do not approve of mask use and will unenroll their children from your school and instead move to public cyber charter school specifically because of your mass requirements and the next one is let's see it looks like a pretty lengthy one and not clear who it's

224from but it's really long yeah i think that would be over the three minutes honestly i will jump down to the tail end where it starts with the paragraph in short it is time to reopen our schools the risk of keeping children out of school are well known including serious deterioration of future educational achievement to deterioration of mental and physical health the risk of children contracting coca-19 and having significant health issues is very very low the risk of children dying from coca-19 is essentially non-existent according to the pennsylvania department of health as of july 11th there have been no deaths zero due to covenant 19 in individuals under the age of 20 in the entire state of pennsylvania the flu has been more deadly for the underage 20 population than cobit 19. um it goes

225on with some additional statistics and i think um it closes with this is an educational crisis for our children our children are not at a health risk due to coca-19 or are at a major educational and mental health risk due to school closures our children must go back to school and that is from stephen lau the next one is has the district considered slash implemented hvac system improvements such as additional filters or uv treatment and that's from leah gaffney the next one is from shoshana murray and it is what is the point of reading questions at the board meeting if no responses are given i find it extremely frustrating and a waste of time can i just say that we do give answers that they already yeah and just as an editorial aside um even

226the volume of responses we had i think it would be um impractical i think to try to answer each of these in sequence and especially since several of them have overlapping or very similar questions [Music] the next one is from eric bellis sastoni outside is all torn up will it be ready for 831 can you please provide a brief plan for outside play and learning as a result of the construction to ensure the kids safety the next one is from lena booker the la the la and san diego unified school districts announced today that those districts will be virtual next year to prevent school from becoming a petri dish for infection what would be the target or threshold in terms of teachers staff and students testing positive for cover 19 that would automatically result in

227a district closure for wsd the global response to covert has resulted in greater success in other countries the models include more outdoor teaching opportunities including building tents and large outdoor spaces as well as joining with teachers parents assistants and staff to create smaller indoor learning spaces for our children can the district provide more outdoor teaching spaces across all grade levels in the district okay and the next one is from anthony scalise when blue bell elementary was closed this past semester both our sons anthony and rafael experience academic and social connection challenges lisa and i are both essentially front essential frontline healthcare employees and we are not available to provide home educational instruction to our children for cdc guidelines schools are to are able to be opened we are pleased imploring to have in-person instruction available

228for all our children as other neighboring school districts are providing this as an option for parents for essential employees and this next one is quite long [Music] um think this is more of a letter about the um racial injustice is going on right now so i don't know if we want to read the whole thing or if we just want to post this one yeah this is um this is one from devon boatwright and yeah this is in regards to the community event on anti-racism that happened yesterday and it is an important letter and the topic is is a significant and important one for us as a district but uh in the interest of time given tonight's topic let's can we save this um jim and wade to include as a comment in uh the

229subsequent meeting um let's say let's say in august to address after we've kind of gotten past the whole school closure school reopening uh issue but i don't want us to uh to lose sight of this one absolutely yes great thanks okay so the next uh comment was uh from allison scuda or scooter one i heard some districts are considering having older kids do cyber school wba would be perfect we already have it while allowing younger kids to spread out in the middle and high schools for better social distance thoughts this will solve a lot of care issues for working parents older kids can fend for themselves two if kids go to school and the school closes what will be different for them versus kids who choose or chose the virtual option in the first place

230and three will you share the results of the last survey and then um let's see this next one is from denise brown um i'm not expecting this to be a perfect production but this does not feel conducive to answering the many great questions that parents are asking why not maybe present something new tonight on the proposed plan and then give us a period of time to send questions or maybe send all of these parent questions a few days prior to the meetings so that we can review them we are over 30 minutes into tonight's call and we have no more answers than we did at the top of the hour like many parents my wife and i were anxious for tonight's meeting because top of our minds is trying to make an educated decision regarding

231the fall thank you dennis brown um let's see the next one is well this person says i guess that they want to be confidential and i think it's another complaint about the amount of time spent up front reading all the submitted questions is the gist of it the next one is from stan and shana taylor thank you so much for all of your hard work i know this is not an easy task to figure out please see my questions below again thank you so much as a teacher in the county if my district chooses online learning for my students i would like to keep my children home for me for virtual learning if at some point it is decided then but that i then have to do in-person learning i would then have to send

232my kids to in-person school i think it is unfair to make parents choose and lock themselves into a decision so early and then not allow them to switch later to piggyback on that if i'm exposed at my own school what i then need to contact my children's wisdom school district school and keep them home to quarantine as well and that's from shannon taylor the next one is from matthew coop it's very short i appreciate you reading them all but maybe limit it to one comment per person per email thank you something to consider i think for future meetings um the next one is from leah john's if the high school students must attend virtually because assembling and or parent has a compromised immune system how does that high school student who might have an iep

233receive that extra help from a random stranger at the montgomery county county college instead of virtually working virtually with teachers and guidance counselors who know them who will give them accommodations going to school is dangerous yet being schooled by non-whis teachers but going to school is dangerous yet being schooled by non-whis teachers i'm just reading this verbatim the next day the next question or comment is from amy hughes this meeting with 12 pages and 50 minutes of comments is ineffective why can't the board investigate the robert's rule of order and vote to change the format you could post the questions and it would be far less painful than hearing redundant and poorly read question allowing more time for actual answers again from amy hughes the next is from grace lee we know there is no

234precedence for this and are thankful for all that you are doing there is so perfect no perfect answer and know you are trying to make the best decision possible the next is from carolyn tatco how is this going to be divided i have a 7th grader and 10th grader and would like to make sure that they were in school together and home together if it is by last name this would take care of it is this the plan the next is it looks like another one from amy hughes it is clear that at least some members of the board are not slash we're not aware of these changes to the options they are clearly looking to admin for answers does this board understand that the board makes the decision not administration i will be reaching

235out to all board members directly tomorrow the next one is another one from allison scoota actually it looks like a repeat of the earlier one and the next one is looks like another comment from leah john's a hybrid for k-5 issue why couldn't you use a hybrid model where a2l kids attend for two days wednesday offer all students for cleaning the learning at home and then m to z to kids attend thursday and friday and virtual assignment for the days they aren't in the classroom these options are not okay for kids with special needs or medical issues also why can't we do synchronous learning for high school students the next is uh we have another one from carolyn tatco hi it seems that now middle and high school are hybrid i teach in another district

236you said below that you are in lockstep with other districts in the area is this still the case yes i'm going to say it's 10 30. yep and i have work tomorrow so i think that we should adjourn this meeting and not read the rest of these questions the answers should be posted onto the website um and we do have to figure out a better way to do this because we can't this is like torture we can't do this to people or ourselves yeah and i uh i do not disagree with you um i think a better a better approach might be um rather than people who submit comments just posing questions with with an expectation that there will be some kind of dialogue or some direct answer um we can maybe go back into

237the format that we use in the past where people from the public when we have the in-person meetings could make a statement or provide comments to the board but again it was not structured to be like a like an ongoing discussion or an exchange or a dialogue so um and we and if you think about it too at a meeting we limit how many people can come come up and talk about the same subject yeah so i think we need to do that right now yeah i think that's fair i mean i think looking through the the consolidated list of comments and again 50 plus emails that were received there are a lot of um frequent flyers in the in the comments and questions and it's sort of turned into a message board or like

238comments on like social media stream as opposed to um public comments or statements to the board so you know i mean it's it's a lesson learned and we're evolving in a new environment operating virtually but i appreciate your perspective so i i make a motion to adjourn the meeting i'll second that okay i see ronnie and ron second those meetings of the meeting okay any uh any discussion i just want to thank all of the parents that sent emails in and we are not dismissing those but we i do need to get up for work tomorrow and um they will be answered just not read tonight that's all yeah that's fair and in in fairness i think a lot of the questions even the ones i just just just read out as well as the

239ones that are below the below that in the list um were questions that were to some degree answered in uh jim's presentation and the subsequent discussion before we journey let me just set expectations um as we were talking we are unable to actually answer the questions submitted if if they weren't answered tonight we need the people to please reach out to building principals who will get the answer more quickly to the people who ask because i think it's very important but i don't want expectation of there being a q a or faq we we right yeah it's too much volume okay i appreciate that that's fair all right any other comments before i take a vote to adjourn the meeting all right all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed okay meetings adjourned

240thanks everyone thank you for everyone who attended this uh we had at one time 514 people that was and that's just on zoom there was a lot more on youtube amazing goodnight goodnight [Music]