LCSD1 School Board of Trustees Work Session & Meeting - August 2, 2021

001it's five o'clock i call this meeting on august 2nd 2021 of the laramie county school district number one board of trustees work session to order at this time i will turn this meeting over to dr crespo and her team for our presentation madam chair members of the trustees um margaret fresco i am here tonight uh with our cabinet to share some updates around our smart start plan first i just like to watch today also to share some information um we'll start with our first slide our goal here is to stay in school one of the benefits was that last year we really did a great job of practicing and doing uh [Music] how's that yep all right so um last year we did a wonderful job in lcsd1 as well as throughout the region being

002able to stay in school as many of the states around us were not able to do that and our goal is to stay in school and with that we have been complimented on our ability to stay in school by practicing um some of those uh big four and big five areas of which we'll get to here in a little while so to begin with i'd like to let our parents and community and our board know that you this timeline that you see here is a continuous timeline every two weeks we anticipate providing information to our board around what's what's happening in our smart start plan where are we what's going on in our schools in a variety of topics and then following up with a parent update we started our first one two weeks ago

003we will have another one this week on the sixth just really letting families know what they can anticipate and expect in terms of what's happening um nationally and locally and what those trends mean for our community and for our kids so that we can open schools and stay in school on the 16th we'll have another smart start report hoping that we'll have some specificity available we did a wonderful job last year we hope to continue to do that by enhancing communication and then as you can see our updates will continue um 8 20. our first day of school is 8 23 we anticipate that by 8 20 what will be will be and we will start school with whatever those guidelines are that are available in a way that we can have our kids come

004back on the 23rd really excited to have them back and then we'll continue an update you can see two weeks later which is 9-3 there'll be a parent update just giving status where are we what does it look like and then an update to the board on 9 6. many of you may remember this protocol this this was our system of green yellow red for our tiers so tier 1 tier 2 and tier provided the opportunity for families to know what they could expect our classes in our green were in person we had minimal adaptation to our learning environments most of the students were in school at the same time provided that we were following the current health orders and we tried for social distancing as i said before many of our states around the

005country were either in two or three if not for part of the year for the entire year and our goal certainly is to stay in that green category um we are working with local health department uh both state and our um county health department and i'd like to hand it over to dr hartman and this and kathy emmons for our update around what's happening in our community good evening thank you for inviting us to be with you folks tonight take this off so you can hear me so my goal tonight is to just provide you some information on where we're at as a county and a community and then dr hartman is going to talk a little bit about the cdc rules just to provide any clarification we can as always our job is not

006to tell you what to do our job is to provide information so you can make informed decisions i've given you two handouts one is the color coded excuse me transmission indicators that was updated today from the state and then the second is some slides uh from the department of from the city county department of health that we'll go through um i thought maybe having some handouts would be helpful so from a big picture perspective in the county we've had to date 11 503 confirmed and probable cases of covet approximately 16 of those or about 1800 have been kids under 18. and we've had 130 deaths in the county um we've had 10 more deaths during this month but they're not in those statistics yet we have to wait for the clarification of all of the

007death certificates but we know there are an additional 10 from the month of july as of today we have 226 active cases in the county um from the first of july until today we've had approximately 780 new cases again those are both probable and confirmed cases of those 152 are children under the age of 18. so that's about 20 of our cases i'm sorry i can't see you guys about 20 of our cases are kids under the age of 18 in this month um and on pay on the third page of the handout you can see the confirmed cases by age group so you can see that the 19 to 29 year old age group is our highest group at this point 30 to 39 is the second most populated group and then the under

00818 is the third group so that's kind of where we're at as of today as far as variants i wanted to just touch on these because these are very important in laramie county right now for some reason and we don't know why but the delta variant which was previously referred to as the india variant is uh has taken stronghold in laramie county and if you look on the third page you can see each of the different variants that are are in laramie county and again you can see that for both the state and the county for whatever reason we seem to have been hit very heavily with the delta variant we only have 28 of all the variants in the state but 69 of all the delta variants at one point we had all but

009four in laramie county so for some reason it really landed here and stayed if you look on page the first page there's the the first graph shows the variant curve of that delta variant and then below it is the lab confirmed cases for that same time period and you can see that with each of those variant cases we had an increased number of cases in the community the reason for that is that it's anticipated or the the um range that they have come up with is that the original variant for every one positive resulted in one to two positive cases of the chronovirus the delta variant however results in eight to nine cases so again that's why that's so important in laramie county and why our numbers went sky high all of a sudden compared

010with other counties at one point we had over 200 cases and natrona county had 13. and it was because that variant the delta variant was just sitting on top of us so that's i just wanted to provide you that information about the delta variant the hospitals in early july we were up to 40 plus people in the hospital at one time which was a significant number that's one of the highest numbers we've had to date in the hospital from the coronavirus um currently this last week we're down in the 20s so we're very optimistic that those numbers are starting to come down the average age in the icu as of today is 39. so you can see that's a huge discrepancy from where we were at when we started this when our patients were in

011their 80s during the last two weeks we've had a three day old admitted to the hospital and a 10 week old so we've seen some babies in the hospital in the last week if you look on the second page that's some information on our vaccinations and where we're at to date as you can see laramie county the entire population 39.7 percent of our population is fully vaccinated which means they've gotten both vaccines if they're doing the pfizer or moderna or what the one and then two weeks later for johnson johnson 19.3 percent of our kids from 12 to 17 are vaccinated and then our senior group has done really well at 64.8 percent it's interesting looking at the adolescent group when you look at the other counties in the state fremont county i'm sorry teton

012county has about 61 of their kids have been vaccinated um albany is is behind them at about i think they're about 25 so um that's where we're at with the vaccine with our young people we are providing covid vaccinate vaccinations today um today tomorrow and wednesday we're at east central and south we're doing that for interested teens or parents in conjunction with the impact testing clinics that are going on for the athletes we knew they were coming together to do those clinics so we partnered with the school district to go ahead and provide co-vaccinations for any parents coaches teachers kids that are interested we're also providing our annual age-appropriate immunization clinics for the junior high kids that start next week so we will in addition to the measle month rubella and the other vaccines that

013we usually bring we'll also bring cobia vaccination vaccine for that too and offer additional vaccinations for any of those kids who are interested in are eligible um vaccinations continue to be provided in over 20 locations in cheyenne we're very lucky that there are many many places that you can go and get a free vaccine in cheyenne outside of the health department so you know we're very happy about that opportunity and then we continue to work very closely with the school district we continue to meet every wednesday with the school district both laramie one and laramie two to make sure that any questions that we can answer are answered and we provide as much information as we can to them so that we can make sure as dr crespo said that we have a great start

014and a full school year so that's the data that i wanted to provide does anyone have any questions how do you know which variant can you test every positive you send that off to the lab and see what it is madam chairman trustee herman we the the state lab sequences all of the tests that come through them so granted we don't have every um every test is not sequenced and in all honesty we probably have more sequence in laramie county than other counties since the lab is here but um that's how that works is that when it runs through the state lab they do sequence for all the variants for both the um the rapid and the full test as well for the pcr just for the pcr any other questions thank you very much

015thank you take this down so you can hear me a little better my voice doesn't project the best so just get as close to the mic as i can i'm going to talk a little bit about the current cdc guidance it is guidance as all of you are aware there are currently no state or county health orders nor are any planned for the foreseeable future it's conceivable that we could resort to health orders if things were to get really really bad but we don't really have a specific definition of what that would be but we're hoping to not have to do anything in the way of health organs which means that we really just need to have a good conversation about what the cdc the american academy of pediatrics the state health department and the

016county health department are all recommending and again as several people have already mentioned the preeminent goal is having every kid in school for the whole year we've said before that for kids to be out of school is uh extremely detrimental that's the last thing we want to see we want to see in the school and we want to make sure that we do things to keep them healthy keep the community healthy and keep the teachers and staff healthy i want to go through a little bit of the science behind the current cdc recommendations there are actually two documents they're almost a companion document there's the there's this uh a science brief put out by the cdc that gives a pretty good review of the current literature on schools and then there's the actual guidance for

017kobe 19 prevention in k-12 schools i'm going to hit the high points here i'm not it's going to be like a 30 000 foot view pretty high level i'm not going to get into the weeds at this point there's a lot of weeds to get into but let's just talk for a little bit about some of the science behind the recommendations let's talk a little bit about covet 19 among children and adolescents we know that infections in children and adolescents are generally a lot milder than they are in adults not always but generally frequently asymptomatic or mild there are occasional severe cases of clovid 19 or its complications in young young people fortunately that tends to be fairly rare but young kids of any age can be infected and they can spread the infection to

018others there have been well-documented outbreaks in schools in sports events in camps an incident written up pretty in pretty much detail by in the morbidity and mortality weekly report detailed a summer camp where an adolescent infected quite a few other people including several adults initially we thought children weren't infected that often but a lot of that may have been an artifact of the the circumstance that at that time which was last year a lot of schools were closed and there just simply were not very many opportunities for kids to get infected but recent studies and there are eight of them in this in the science brief suggest that rates of infection in children can be comparable to adults and they can transmit the infection so we're not out of the woods in terms of children

019in schools uh kovac 19 transmission is closely linked to community transmission and vaccination rates high levels of community transmission low levels of vaccination rates lead to a more likely scenario where where kids will come to school with the infection and possibly infect others outbreaks in schools typically parallel the rate of community the rate of transmission in the in the general community however so if community transmission is low there tends to be very little association between in-person learning and and community spread but when community transmission is substantial or high as unfortunately it is in laramie county at this point there can be a fairly high correlation between in-person in-person instruction and transmission but that's the whole point of the precautions and the recommendations that the cdc has given us and that we want to discuss today

020many cases that are discovered in schools are actually acquired in the community not in the school and that's important to remember and i think last year correct me if i'm wrong i think a lot of the cases that we found in the school were do we think a lot of those were community acquired so so what happens in the community is extremely important the schools are not separate from the community the essence of the cdc recommendations is a multi-layered prevention approach using a combination of things including social distancing mask use hand hygiene cohorting when possible good ventilation a whole uh array of different strategies to reduce the transmission especially in unvaccinated personnel either unvaccinated children or staff and since what we're talking about for the most part here today i think is k through six

021they're all unvaccinated because they can't be vaccinated so we're going to be so a lot of what we're going to be talking about here today is going to be addressed uh to that uh age group masks are effective and safe if they are correct correctly and consistently used there's a lot of misinformation out there about masks a lot of strange ideas that they do terrible things that they cause oxygen deprivation or carbon dioxide intoxication or that they cause pneumonia or various incendiary other things and those by and large have no have no substance to them the the the key with masks is consistent and appropriate use um in general masks are not needed for outdoor activities unless the venue is particularly crowded there is there has been very limited student to student transmission in schools

022if preventive measures are in place and appropriately utilized in that new met and that includes multi-layer measures like the ones i just mentioned physical distancing has generally been described as six feet but there were four studies in norway switzerland israel and through the world health organization that suggests that one meter or a little over three feet is appropriate with other prevention strategies and that leads to one of the recommendations in the cdc recommendations that i'll be coming to shortly there were seven studies in the u.s even when students were less than six feet apart transmission is limited if other layer prevention measures are in place however whenever masks cannot be used for whatever reason the priority should be six feet of distance there's some uh uh stuff in the science brief about screening testing but

023that's probably getting a little too far into the weeds i'm going to skip that for now so let me just uh jump to the current guidance for covid 19 prevention in k-12 schools again it's going to be a very high-level view and we will be happy to take questions again the key point here is that students benefit from in-person learning and the top priority was the safe return to in in-person face-to-face learning of students with teachers and staff and that is our absolute high priority vaccination is currently the leading public health approach to the control of the pandemic but that doesn't apply to kids younger than 12. the current cdc recommendation masks should be worn indoors by all individuals two and older who are not fully vaccinated consistent incorrect mass use by people who are

024not fully vaccinated is especially important indoors and in crowded settings when physical distancing cannot be maintained and i'll just read verbatim one or two of these bullet points but i'm not going to read them all you don't need me to stand here and just read this to you you have it anyway but i'm reading it just for emphasis cdc recommends schools maintain at least three feet of physical distance between students within classrooms and that comes directly from the science brief that i just uh discussed that reviewed numerous studies in various countries and through the world health organization that suggests that one meter which is roughly 1.24 yards about about three feet is sufficient with other measures in place um when it's not possible to maintain a physical distance of at least three feet such as

025when schools cannot fully reopen while maintaining these distances it is especially important to layer multiple other prevention strategies such as indoor nasty um then there's the obvious no-brainer recommendations students teachers and staff should stay home when they are sick [Music] and then obviously localities should monitor community transmission rates vaccination coverage etc and be prepared to adjust their approach appropriately that's really a very high level view are there any questions thank you dr hartman um and madam chairman i was just curious um cdc came out last week i believe it was in the news i didn't read it personally but i heard it on the news that um unfortunately they're finding that even vaccinated folks are now very are are subject to getting coveted because of the different strains that we're seeing develop so um i

026am thinking about the obvious question and i know that cdc is recommending vaccination but i'm also wondering about your thoughts on um the usefulness of vaccination at this point given people with that are vaccinated are at a high risk of of getting these new variants people who are fully vaccinated such as me for example are having eightfold lower incidence of getting infected at all the 25-fold lower incidence of having to be hospitalized and death among people who are fully vaccinated is essentially zero let me repeat that in another way currently at cheyenne regional medical center and we get these data directly from upper level administration so we know they're reliable roughly 90 of admissions are unvaccinated i don't i think they may have had one death amount of vaccinated individual who was very elderly and

027had a lot of other issues nationwide roughly 97 to 99 percent of alcova deaths are among the unvaccinated population so yes vaccination is important it is the primary strategy for bringing this pandemic to an end can i follow thank you um yeah i'm sorry i did i did hear that too and and that's a very good point um what i'm curious about though is is i i'm worried as a board member with our district i want to make sure that we're not asking people to identify themselves as vaccinated or not vaccinated it's a very personal issue for a lot of folks and they feel strongly about it both sides and i recognize that having said that too i i heard the cdc's recommendation you just read about having um being exposing not exposed but actually

028getting coveted outdoors is is very limited to you know they don't feel like that's a risk unless you're as used as you pointed out when you read their point in a crowded situation or crowded area um so what what i'm getting at is how important do you think it is to allow um kids that are at recess to take their masks off and especially i know you just said that there's no substance to some of the studies including the stanford one that came out about kids breathing in their own carbon dioxide all day long but um i i actually think there is substance to it so if we are in an outbreak situation we can't give choice and we have to mask our children i'm curious about giving them recess breaks and athletic breaks when

029they're out playing sports on the field that sort of thing to allow for some some fresh air no i think when kids are outside on recess i don't see why they should have to wear a mask and with regard to outdoor sports i don't see any reason for someone doing track and field for example to to wear a mask i mean those are generally outdoor uh sports the the tricky ones are wrestling which is indoors and and there's obviously very up front and personal now with regard to the carbon dioxide and oxygen issues with masks i'm aware of the study that you just mentioned it was a german study not a stanford study and what they discovered or what they claimed to have discovered was that when wearing a mask children tend to breathe in

030re-breathe on some of their own carbon dioxide that's been exhaled what they didn't manage to show was whether that matters or not there was another study an italian study and i can send both of these to you if you want to see it the italian study was actually uh quite interesting in that they measured the partial pressure of exhaled co2 in the breath and the reason why that's important is because that is a direct indication of the co2 levels in the blood and children with 30 minutes were in a procedure mask like this those levels were normal they also put a a transcutaneous pulse oximeter on these kids and in small children they usually put it on the big toe and this measures the partial pressure of oxygen in the arterial blood it remained normal

031for 30 minutes for 30 minutes if there was going to be carbon dioxide buildup or oxygen deprivation it would happen within 30 minutes the other thing you have to remember is that if if masks caused oxygen deprivation in anybody surgeons and operating room nurses that have been using these things for a hundred years some of these problems already been noticed by now do you think so no there's there's very convincing evidence that that is not a risk of wearing a mask okay if if you may if i may i'll just go ahead and share the study that i i read too i don't believe it's a german study but it has to do with a heart so i'll send that to you thank you thank you i know it's a little too early to really

032tell for sure but since the frontier days have been gone for a long time do we have any indications that levels have gone up you had any increase in cases because of fraud three days you're in china we don't know yet remember a lot of the people who work frontier days were from out of town so if there's any increase in infections or illnesses we won't see them somebody else will but i have to give the frontier days leadership tom hersey and the entire committee a big pat on the back because they really went out of their way to have a safe event they brought in consultants from the university of nebraska who specialize in large events like this they consulted the state health department they brought us into the loop they consulted with other

033rodeos and other venues they brought in a lot of best practices can we guarantee that there will not be a spike in infections due to frontier days no we cannot but i have to give them credit for really going the extra mile to plan a good event so no we don't know yet if there's going to be an up tip we'll wait and see but if there is it won't be for a lack of planning well the crowds were really large this year so they were a big event right i was just wondering maybe we had seen any kind of increase because you know it's been 11 days since it started so well our number of positive lab positive cases are down but we're not sure what that means it may be that people just

034didn't want to come in and get tested during frontier days because they were afraid if they were positive they'd have to get quarantined i don't know but we'll see what happens over the next several weeks do you know whether that testing site got out of the grounds was being used much then chairman uh trustee bohlen we did about 140 tests out there and excuse me there were three positives one was from colorado and two were from white thank you rich had his hand up next and then alicia thank you oh thank you man i'm sure dr hartman just really quickly what is the incubation period for kovid from the time of exposure until a person might see some some symptoms two to 14 days okay thank you all right trustee smith thank you um i

035actually just wanted to follow up on something you said about um frontier days and what a great job they did with protocol and you know being safe um because i when we have hundreds of thousands of people come into our town maybe 200 i don't know but um you think about those crowds and i was at some concerts and i was at the rodeo um what were they doing that we could use in our schools because i didn't see anybody masked and we were all pretty close together and we were not following any of the cdc's safe practice guidelines their recommended guidelines so well when i say that the frontier days worked out a good plan they worked out a good plan they really had uh a lot of um allowances for appropriate signage and

036hand washing stations however when you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people a lot of that behavior is just out of anyone's control and they were outside so yes i meant that when i said they really did their best to plan a safe event that doesn't mean that everybody that came there you know followed recommendations and you can't police that can i follow i just i just was curious because i it was a fabulous event and i you know i was thrilled for our community that we could do that again i was just wondering if there were some takeaways that we might be able to apply to our smaller um school settings if you know what they were doing was you know to be commended um i wasn't complaining but i mean i was thrilled

037we hadn't just having plenty of allowance for hand washing basic things hand washing okay appropriate signage uh appropriate you know um education for parents to keep your kids home if they're sick you know all that really just really basic common sense stuff trust me yes um is there any way to tell how many of the visitors were vaccinated i mean that would have helped as well a high vaccination rate but we don't know who we no we we have no way to tell yeah there was no allowance at frontier days to ask people their vaccination status yeah okay very good dr crestford thank you dr hartman i just want to say thank you to both of you i very much appreciate your time and just giving us the information as we're ready in our work

038session so we'll continue with our presentation and uh we'll be in touch wednesday so um just to clarify the information that was provided is on our web is on this uh county website as well as cdc you certainly can check that out excuse me we're at a work session i'm sorry man so we i'm sorry guys i'm not the only one yep i understand during public session uh there's a sign up opportunity so and actually the document is in the back if you want to see how that works and what that process looks like so um the other piece is that we also there are a number of other communicable diseases that we're making sure that we're aware of as we move through typical that we would normally have this time of year school is

039starting pertussis chicken pox so all of those things have to also kind of be tracked and followed i don't want us to forget that as we're moving forward on the coveted piece the other thing that i think is important our operations team has done an incredible job of keeping our summer cleaning up to date carpets are extracted all of our horizontal areas are clean we've got our floors waxed and then during the school year cleaning as the health department mentioned so much of this is really related to that multiple mitigation strategy so not sometimes we get stuck on one of one of those strategies it may be the clean air it may be masks but really what our operations team has done is made sure that we're cleaning and disinfecting that all of our rooms

040have a deep clean at least once a week there's daily cleaning and you can see what that looks like and if there is a suspected exposure or an exposure we have very specific steps and the team meets on a regular basis for those as well because again it's really about those multiple layers of support many of you may remember this big four we had the back to mitigation making sure that if you feel sick you stay home that you wash and sanitize your hands frequently socially distanced by six feet when possible uh the face masks are recommended when you're indoors in common areas and cannot socially distance by six feet we've added the big five for our adult audiences uh this one won't be with our kid audiences because that is based on a parent

041decision for their immunization and making sure that if they have the opportunity and have an interest to get the vaccine and these are things that are uh really important as we make decisions sometimes um have to remind ourselves why we make decisions around this uh situation so first we are working with public health um as well as with the state all of our partners we're following cdc guidelines as was mentioned we meet once a week we have three factors that we that are looked at um levels of community transition which was the document that was shared what are the current hospital rates often it's the number of cases um the hospital rates can't keep up we want to make sure that our hospitals are able to stay open and address all needs of our community

042and that the number of cases per 100 000 um is is an indicator as well and you can see there that we've provided the link for the covid data tracker that's really important information um just so that you can keep track also really important to remember that cheyenne doesn't really have 100 000 people so that number seems much larger when you're comparing yourself to other major cities and then according to cdc laramie county is currently experiencing a high level of community transition which we certainly will continue to monitor one of the things that we want to be really clear on is that we want to make sure that we understand that if we're using a number of mitigation strategies that we want to use them all as much as possible so that we can release

043pressure as we um are able to so right now the most important component for us is we want to stay in school it's better for our physical emotional academic well-being for our students and for our staff to be engaged in our schools we will continue to monitor every two weeks and we will continue to communicate to parents and staff as we have started that process so if we have to do a mitigation strategy we'll look at it for two weeks we want to make sure that our kids feel that there's um a process involved and that our parents are able to kind of communicate with us alongside they're definitely the partnership is going to be important it is key to remember that this is a journey not a field trip i used that today on

044a principal's meeting and they were like oh that makes sense um it's not going to happen in just one day the current cdc guidance includes mass recommended for all individuals indoors um systems for each protocol is based on guidance and will continue to monitor with the goal of returning um returning to school as the year ended and that really is going to be dependent on what the next couple of weeks show which is why we're trying to apply um two-week increments along the way and with that i am here for questions that the board may have questions from the board for dr presto or staff yes ma'am go ahead um trustee we um okay thank you thank you madam chair i i just want to say thank you to dr crespo for um putting together

045a communications plan and for um letting everyone know what the plan is based on what the numbers are in our district i think it's very important um that we are in i don't think any of us disagree that it's very important that we we go back to school in person we did it last year so we all know we can and we want to continue that but we also we also every doctor i talk to i always ask them this question do you think we are going to be able to eradicate covet and i never indicate what my position is or what my personal beliefs are thinking and they all say no and so i'm wondering i i personally think that we're going to have to learn to live with it in some way um

046and of course none of us want to see us all messed up the rest of our lives um so i i appreciate the communication i appreciate that the idea of checking on our numbers on a regular basis and and trying to work toward the option of choice and also i would very much appreciate if our protocols included letting kids take these masks off during recess thank you okay i think um trustee hermann had her hand up next and then we'll go to trustee leaders thank you madam tournament i guess the question for dr crystal is that um we have moving targets here and a lot of it is as i dr hartman said and he said is that i'm sorry okay sorry um that and i'll just i'll repeat the whole question that um many

047people have said tonight that what we do is um is very directly connected to what's going on in the community and that will change with vaccination rates probably that's the main feature so i guess i'm wondering um i appreciate the information tonight um how will if it changes how will it change what will we do well what will trigger a change and um just how does how is that going to work how long in two weeks you'll you'll take a snapshot see where we are can you let us know sure so i'll share a little bit of an example that we've used in the past um you know i'm sure we all know what swiss cheese looks like right and when you look at swiss cheese you can't see the hole all the way through

048but things could get through and what we're trying to do is come up with systems that allow for hand washing is one perhaps masking is one vaccination might be one so that all of those pieces never align to come directly to us and it could be distance any one of those big five that we're using with that in mind as things get better then what's the what what's the most um uncomfortable right like we all the mask may be something that we say okay we're at a point where we don't have that infection rate we're not seeing the hospitalization the health department is comfortable cdc has made those decisions so we can begin to eliminate now certainly i hope that everybody continues to wash their hands but that may be a strategy that somebody said

049well i don't really want to wash my hands i'll do something else and and really that's all we're trying to do is come up with a net for our kids so that they can stay in school and and we'll see things like breaks in between if they have to wear masks we'll come up with schedules so that if they are in close proximity make sure there's a because it's for their well-being overall so those are types of strategies that we'll implement to make sure that the kids are able to come schools across the country that have been able to stay open did not see the transmission we can say the same for us so we just want to keep that going so that we can we don't ever have to close right that's never our

050goal and and now i'm trying to follow up just to be to clarify will it be a periodic check or that that you will then take a look around and see where we are and then make changes or not absolutely thank you um madam chair i trust you um thank you um i'm already down the sentence so uh what i wanted to share was i think the the piece that's really important for us is the two week we use that two-week communication to our community and parents and to the board so that they're aware that we're constantly checking and frankly the minute that we're able to say you know yes we can do something else or yes we have to increase whatever that might be we will do that um going months and months without

051information and granted cdc takes their time based on their numbers and what that looks like our health departments have to value what they're doing in the hospitals and what that means but over time our goal is every two weeks there will be some update okay thank you i'm dr wiederschwald yeah madam chair thank you dr kruskal where are we with regard to volunteers in schools so right now based on the current status we are not going to be able to open with with volunteers at all um it's just one of those strategies right if you open to public then you have to have other other factors that you're measuring our goal would be that school will open we'll check in again in two weeks we love our volunteers we love having parents in our buildings

052but we also want to make sure that everybody's safe and the last thing we want is for that transmission to happen in the building for some a volunteer to become ill um so we want to make sure that we're really practicing that safety and then once two weeks which actually i can tell you that as a principal i'd be jumping up and down because i'm so great i'm so grateful for my volunteers but those first two weeks opening when you have kids and everything going like crazy it's it's much better to wait anyway so i would just say be patient at the two week mark we'll come back and check in okay thank you any other questions dr wiederspaund took mine so thank you very much thank you all right i'm hearing no further questions

053um at this time we will uh adjourn our work session we have about 11 minutes until our regular board meeting starts at six o'clock um so thank you all and uh you will have an opportunity please read the guidelines for those of you that are in the audience now please read the guidelines on the um public comment page that was with the agendas over there so you kind of know what that format looks like thank you very much six o'clock i call this meeting of the laramie county school district number one board of trustees to order um august 2nd 2021 um thank you all for coming if you would all stand for the pledge of [Music] and to the allegiance for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all

054thank you again welcome everyone um at this time uh do we have any adjustments to the agenda dr presbo no we do not manage that very good madam chair i move to adopt the agenda second all in favor say aye aye opposed no motion passes i think everybody's trying to get their mics on dude get them all on yeah it very good thank you all right moving on um we have uh do you have any recognitions of students and staff for outstanding achievements not at this time okay um moving on to information and reports items from visitors um if you have a public statement for the board this is your opportunity to comment there's a page that looks like dr crespo um says dr crespo superintendent of schools as a heading up there gives you

055the meeting procedures uh the board recognizes the value i would do we have this to put up on the screen or not that's all right i'm going to read it to everybody and help me out here the board recognizes the value of the public comment on issues related to operations of schools to ensure our meeting is conducted in an orderly manner we ask that you address the board directly that'll be up here at this microphone any questions directed to the board or superintendent will be answered through clicking the blue box um that smart board meetings faq next to the site um that has the gavel for the board of trustees meeting box this can be found on the district's home page and you may also email or call dr crespo and the board with any

056questions please recognize that students often attend or view our meetings speaker's remarks therefore should be suitable for an audience that includes kindergarten through 12th grade students please um the first public comments section up to 60 minutes is for individuals to address this business meetings item agenda items the second public comment period which is at the end of our our session is up to 30 minutes and will be reserved for individuals speaking to non-agenda items please state your name keep your comments two to three minutes this will allow for the maximum number of individuals to speak please confine your comments to matters that are domain to the business of the school district keep your comments general in nature not directed at a specific individual or individuals please try not to be redundant it's really helpful to

057the board if you can provide additional information or perspective while the board sincerely values public comment if at any time this meeting is locally disrupted and cannot continue in an orderly manner the meeting will be recessed and reconvened at another location and time please see the wyoming state statute below disruption in public meetings if any public meeting is willfully disrupted by a person or group of persons as to render the orderly conduct of the meeting unfeasible and the order cannot be restored by removal of the person or persons who are willfully interrupting the meeting the governing body or agency may order the removal of the person or group from the meeting room and continue in session or may recess the meeting and reconvene at another location only matters appearing on the agenda may be acted

058upon in a meeting recessed to another location a governing body of the agency shall establish procedures for readmitting an individual or individuals not responsible for disturbing contact of the meeting duly accredited members of the press or other news media except those who are participated in the disturbance shall allow be allowed to attend any meeting prevented permitted by this section thank you sorry that's so long but i appreciate your patience through that and we also in order to be a little helpful in guiding timelines because we really do want to hear everybody and we have that three minute we'll we'll hold up at one minute you'll get the yellow circle and the red one means you need to wrap it up and that'll happen about 15 minutes before so two forty two two two minutes and

05945 seconds into that three minutes so that we can kind of keep it together and everyone will have a chance to speak and i appreciate you all being here so at this time with you razor well we're going to go to zoom first because they don't have that is there anyone on zoom if you raise your hand and you would like to speak and address the board at this time i do not see any kyle mr mckinney do you see any okay all right at the steiner and we'll just go starting in the front to the back if you raise your hand if you'd like to address any of the agenda items at this time yes yeah are they addressed to the agenda or are they going that's what i was going to make right

060now okay so i will be reviewing this information okay there is one question i would like to ask because i have not seen it and i would like to know if the board of trustees has discussed anything about adding the critical roast theory to the academia program in hilary county service group okay go ahead and if you would go ahead and sit down thank you very much i appreciate that we are going to address adenda items that faq that i talked to you earlier about has that question answered um and um the one that i showed you the little box and you marked it thank you very much moving on um is there anyone who has anything to address on the agenda hearing none um moving on to uh item two c2 upcoming meetings august

0615th and 6th 2021 at 8 30 a.m summer law conference at the uw gateway center in laramie several of our board members have attended that in the past we did not have that last semester or last last year sorry um that is put on with the uh wyoming school boards association august 16 2021 a 6 p.m regular board meeting august 20th 2021 um at 11 am to 1 uh our all staff picnic at story gym august 24th 2021 5 pm wsva fall roundup meeting at the albany county school district number one several of our board members have attended that as well so individual board communications and reports number three do i have anyone on the board that would like oh busy all right um trusty ashford um i just wanted to say thank you to

062the district and and for continuing to hold the challenge rodeo that was occurred last week as a part of shine frontier days a lot of the staff was out there dr crespo um all sorts of dignitaries that can actually rope things if anybody is under the governor can actually wrote things i learned and it was great fun and the kids loved it it was the first time i'd gotten to participate i i didn't get to go out wednesday but thursday was very nice and i appreciate all the work that you put into that very good um who had their hand up next all right well i'll just go down the line trustee herman thank you madam chairman just two very brief things i want to mention first of all again referring to my tier days

063um i went to the first parade um and and uh i know all the parades featured um our three general education high schools have marching bands and what those bands contribute to the parade for the just enjoyment of the crowd um it it just um is essential every year that we have lots of music and the bands sounded great i would have to say they would sound as fantastic and so um these these kids come out they get out there at the crack of dawn summer band is very tough um and they show up and they and they march and they do a great job a lot of not everyone but every many of them go up to cody and help out with their front with their um cody stampede and so just um a

064contribution that our district makes to the frontier days parade and it's a very important so i want to let's get shout out to the band directors and all the kids who once again you know give up their their summer mornings by um getting out there marching on the pavement the second thing is i just wanted to mention in passing and passing we we lost two um great educators on the past in the past several weeks ken trowbridge and bill du bois and i i'll they both had great um all bits in the newspaper you want to follow up and read about them but they contributed greatly to laramie district one as teachers and also to the community at large so i just wanted to mention them it's a loss to our for our district and

065to our community thank you condolences to their families um we appreciate that uh margaret thank you margaret thank you go ahead um trustee wiederspaund madam chair thank you so i just wanted to mention an issue that came to my attention about two weeks ago i happened to be at albertson's and like we all do i was shopping and i went to the counter and paid for my groceries and you know you put the credit card in and it prompts you and says would you like to donate to your local schools and so i looked at that and i thought well you know what is this so i asked the cashier and she was a young lady who just started and she didn't have a lot of information in fact she didn't know anything about it

066and she said but i'll check on it for you and i'll see if i can find out well of course she had no way of knowing who i was even and how to get a hold of me so i thought well maybe there's another way i could find out about this so i called the administration building and talked to a couple of people and i ended up talking to someone in mr ciccarelli's office and they weren't aware of the district at that level receiving any kind of donations from albertsons for people donating to the school so so if you and i are shopping out there and you see a prompt that says would you like to donate to your schools most people would like to know well where does that money go or who collects

067this money and so i'm on this quest and i'm trying to find out what's going on so i get a hold of uh a young lady in mr ciccarelli's office her name is sean metzler and and how helpful could she be i mean she really was just outstanding and i really do appreciate her so she calls the manager of the local albertson store on pershing and she doesn't know anything about it but she'll find out so sean follows up on this well the manager got a hold of the district office for albertsons and albertson's own safeway as well so it's really the two albertsons in cheyenne i think they're just two and the safeway store apparently are all involved in this this collection effort on behalf of our schools and so come to find out

068what the corporate office said was well we leave it up to the store manager to designate the school they would like the donations to go to and so i'm thinking okay so as far as i know there's no record of any donation being made or collected so i'm talking to sean metzler and she's talking to the lady at the corporate office and we're thinking that in in all fairness really the money should go to the cheyenne school foundation so that all schools can benefit rather than let's say i'm the manager of the albertsons on pershing and i have a son who goes to east high school so i think east high school should get a month or i have a i have a nephew that goes to south and maybe i think south should get

069money so in all fairness i guess we kind of agreed that if they were going to collect money from people in the community that would go to our schools the recommendation was that that money go to the cheyenne schools foundation and as many of you know that money goes to teachers at all schools for grants and so that that seemed like a fair thing to do so one of the one of the store managers agreed to that and they haven't gotten apparently any consensus from the other two but they're still working on that so i think there's probably additional information to be gained on this because i think if we can get everybody on the same page what a great way this would be for the schools to just collect some money from the community

070if people choose to donate they can donate and then that way everybody knows where the money's going and how that's all working so so i think hopefully we're gonna and my thanks to to sean metzler and mr ciccarelli for assisting me and kind of tracking this down because the people in the corporate offices of albertsons were really helpful but apparently they just don't pass that information down and a lot of people weren't aware of what was going on so just wanted the public to know that if you see that that prompt when you check out from the grocery store you'll at least you'll know that it looks like that donation is probably going to go to the cheyenne school foundation so if you choose to do that you can do that or of course if

071you don't want to do that you don't have to do that but hopefully it'll clarify things and things will be a little bit smoother going down the road in the future so thank you manager thank you um dr weiderspahn um i just have one quick uh update for individuals the wyoming department of education um is seeking some public comment and input on um the uh chapter changes in the chapter 38 rules the house enroll act of 20 um act 29 authorizes additional courses taken prior to grade 9 to qualify for the hathaway success curriculum the proposed changes to the chapter 38 rules can be viewed at the wyoming department of education the person you can make your comments online there's a way to make the comments online um so you can look through their website

072if you have any questions or issues with that bradley baker the third is the individual that's seeking that information the hathaway scholarship program is an amazing opportunity for our students and our district has worked very hard to assist students and align curriculum and really work great our legislators have been very supportive um with that and so if you have little ones coming up the way um and uh you're looking for a great opportunity for uh an entrance into the university of wyoming the hathaway scholarship is a wonderful mechanism to help you take care of your your child's education um so please check it out if you do have kids coming up the way and you'd like to look at what that curriculum is now and if you have kids there and want to weigh in

073on whether or not that should happen um please please do that so um that's all i have dr preston oh friend me yes sorry i have a couple of shout outs and i have report from the community um first of all following up with with this herman said with the bands i really appreciate the bands look great that's great i'd like to like to point out the south band from seeing them in their first grade of 2010 until this year they have made great strides and they have absolutely wonderful sound this year their lines were great their uniforms are good so really shout out to south and they were great improvements they made over the years um in the band um also i'd like to shout out to the we had some student athletes and

074cheerleaders possibly um at the pancake breakfast and i was there they were from central they have other schools maybe another days that appreciate them helping out there there are also a couple of days at the rodeo there were some cheerleaders from south and from east that were selling programs i think they were a little frustrated with the how the sales were going but at least they're up there they represent all of those students that i saw represented our schools very very well so um then also a shout out to our transportation department i was riding the bus from central high school which is a volunteer bus up to frontier days every day and and our staff did that a great job with that we had a little confusion about masks we weren't requiring mass to

075begin with and then we were requiring mass and i think it was great that we finally got it all cleared up and the last six or seven days we actually haven't met so um that was good um stay with the cdc guidelines on on that the orders there they're going there and then i heard from several people i didn't do the park and ride that department ride was doing just the same they were doing a great job despite tremendous traffic on several of those days up there and some long waits our staff was very patient with everybody and did a great job with that so that's a great service we provide the community frontier days does pay for the most the cost of that but you know they do provide our buses and our drivers

076are actually doing that and that brings me into my transportation committee meeting which happened during french few days which is a little unusual have a meeting right here it is on tuesday july 27th and we discuss a few things and the reason we have to have it then is it has to come to a board meeting here before that first part of the year so at the next meeting we'll be taking some votes on the endorsement of our routes for the 21 22 school year those will be divided into two groups so the group groups that have no exemptions and then there's going to be the groups that have exemptions the exemptions are for various reasons um you know you may have a very busy street that's in between there so you can't um enforce

077the the no travel the no transportation zone so there'll be two different groups and you'll vote on those at the next meeting um then we also started talking about some of the changes that are going to happen this year to the no transportation zones and this has particular to do with metalmark we had been operating under a different pretty much giving everybody the one to ride the middle market right to meadowlark but we're now having to change to meet the new guidelines from the state and so meadowlark to get the kids from mustang ridge will continue to provide the same kind of service they've had they'll not be affected by this but the students from the um schools of building and anderson and buffalo ridge um they're most of them are not going to be

078in the are going to be in the no transportation zone which means they wouldn't be provided but we're pretty confident that a lot of these parents can apply for a space available on the bus current buses at a current stop and if there's space available on that stop they can be transported to their elementary school and then take the bus goes to the elementary school over to memphis so we're pretty confident that anybody that was currently running a bus and still wants to should be able to um with those combinations of a space available and that's something that's allowed under current rules and then we're going to be voting on the hoa agreements um for the 21 22 school year and there's three of those one of those is cardinal estates and if you don't

079know cardinal estates is by us 30 and railroad road and it currently has two stops and that's going to stay the same then we have cimarron estates which is by horse creek and it currently has five stops and that will stay the same and then we have jordan pasture which is by crazy horse and powderhouse and it has four stops and three of those are going to be new and we don't know for sure until registration happens in the next couple of weeks whether we'll need any of those new stops but they haven't planned and they'll be put into place if they're needed so right now they're currently in one stop that'll go up to four uh delby is going to keep the same no transportation zone okay during this year um four routes were

080eliminated and we always have to show to the state that we've made our best effort to try to save costs and so the fact that we eliminated four routes and we're still able to provide transportation to every one of our students that needs it is great and so it saves a lot of money and a lot of those were eliminated because of the fact we don't need to have the buses going for from dildon over to the east ridge building anymore and some of those one of those i think was moved to the south and but most of those were um just consumed with the other so those were not needed anymore um in the sweetwater edition they added one stop and bus 17 was moved from east to the south tryout that's the one

081that that was because of the transportation was going between fertile life was that sweet water or sweet grass sweet grass i'm sorry right right and that actually has not been approved yet they actually haven't applied for it yet but because they're students there obviously we have to stop and so um that will eventually go through the process well they'll do the official application for it and then but still we have to provide that this year just on a temporary basis to make sure those kids can get to school and i believe those kids are going to go to park elementary unless our school and then we might have to put some over at the bottom very good thank you for the report thank you much for the thriller mr bowling yes question that um just

082to review what the state um regulations say is the the um you call it no transportation zone i call it a walking song so what is the walking radius for elementary and the second gate just can you say what that is uh i need to be wrong for that dave will be able to announce i was going to ask dave to come up and make that i know they did change it this year from having just a circle and before it was it was done by a walking route so there was a new change this year to put a circle in there it doesn't matter what the blocking rate is so yeah okay go ahead dave bring us up to speed madam chair trust your good question on the walk zone for elementary is a

083one mile radius uh and for secondary it's two months and those new um changes i mean we talked a lot about this those changes actually went into effect last year and they did start going to effect last year obviously with covet and some of the changes we've had to do for that and limiting our members on the buses we've delayed the implementation of some of that um so it will be in full effect when the students come back in the fall okay thank you and um uh it's those when we talk about those regulations and those changes those come from the state of wyoming correct that is correct um they are through the department of wyoming department of education and transportation chapter 29 20. okay thank you it's hard for me to keep track of

084all the chapters but thank you i knew you would have it so and i um mr bartlett is the superintendent of uh support operations for our district and our kind of go-to guy for for those uh history but thank you mr boland for a very very thorough report are there any other questions i did not mean to miss you earlier any other or comments okay very good all right moving on to our reports from our superintendent and staff dr presbo thank you manager we're going to keep it short tonight i just want to share uh first as was mentioned uh before the challenge rodeo was an incredible experience really very much appreciate those members that were able to come out huge shout out to todd burns and terry kirby for doing that work as long

085as well as their team uh it was really an amazing opportunity so many dignitaries were able to engage with our students and so much laughter and giggling in their faces when they got their buckles was just incredible um frontier days was a wonderful opportunity for all of our students as well as our community and certainly a welcome sight this back this year and i was able to participate in a variety of activities as well today was our first principal meeting of the year very exciting to see everybody's face and we had a very long meeting and the team did an incredible job mr bartlett mr fraley um miss thompson all as a matter of fact mr ciccarelli did an amazing budget presentation so i want to take a minute to just acknowledge all of those

086people on the team as um an update of during our last board meeting we have members of the air force base come in regarding the stem day we do have plans thank you mr farley to make sure that mr freely sorry uh we have that opportunity coming up for our students and uh there'll be buses sorry about that and uh last but not least i've been out in the community doing the 100-day plan really excited to talk to people um just really again asking them those basic three questions very strongly about what we want for our districts and what we want for our kids and making sure that we're meeting those needs moving forward so thank you for the opportunity manager and awesome very good is there anyone um that has any questions on dr

087presto's report nope all right very good moving on to d1 the consent agenda all items listed with the designation of cons ca are considered to be routine items by the governing body and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion on these items any item removed from the consent agenda will be considered in its normal sequence on the agenda does any board member request to remove a motion from the consent agenda seeing none madam chair i move to approve all motions listed as consent agenda second all in favor say aye aye opposed no hearing then the consent agenda is approved on to our old business or no we're on to our new business three uh d3 chair i moved to approve the appointment of david haggerty in the position of assistant

088principal of east high school and to place him on the appropriate step of the administrative salary schedule effective for the 2021-2022 school year only second is there any discussion seeing no discussion all in favor say aye all right um suppose no hearing none motion passes welcome aboard um david um we i appreciate your here okay let me see ah could you give us a stand up and a wave well welcome aboard looking forward to having you on board with us um at east go ahead d uh 3.2 man i'm sure i moved to appoint fred george as official representative of central high school sam mirage as official representative of east high school phil thompson as official representative of south high school and troy lake as official representative for triumph high school for the wyoming high

089school activities association for the 2021-2022 school year second is there any discussion no discussion all in favor say aye aye opposed no motion passes madam chair i moved to grant permission to purchase commercial kitchen equipment for nutrition services for an amount not to exceed 114 thousand six hundred and seventy two dollars and fifty cents second is there any discussion hearing none all in favor say aye aye oppose no motion passes madam chair i moved to grant permission to contract for irrigation contractor services for an amount not to exceed 350 000 seconds is there any discussion seeing none all in favor say aye aye opposed no motion passes madam chair i moved to approve an increase to the inter-fund note of 2 million 250 000 from the general fund to the federal grants fund to cash

090flow the expensing of federal grants through the reimbursement process managed by the wyoming department of education is there second discussion mr ciccarelli could we have you come up here just for a minute um and give us the the big picture of what that means since we have individuals here that might be curious about how how that works um manager certainly um there's really two aspects the first is the kind of the functional purpose of the the interfund loan um so as you know our federal grants are on a reimbursement basis so we will expense not only cares money but things like title one title six idea funds and then we'll seek reimbursement from the state so from the time we post those expenses we have to utilize the district's cash and then the reimbursements come

091later that can take anywhere from a week to three weeks so we have to have resources and cash available in our federal funds to be able to perform that function um procedurally i believe five or six years ago the government accounting standards board issued guidance around interfund activity and what that means is just guidance on how to record the proper accounting entries for things like interfund loans reimbursements transfers and one of the criteria they utilized was an expectation of repayment and so what the interfund note does is provides that that documentation that shows that this is a loan these are resources that belong to the general fund and they're only there and with an expectation repayment back and so that's a standard practice uh typically for a lot of local governments including the state when

092the state borrows money from the lsra the cash flow to school foundation program account there's a promissory note that that outlines the terms and conditions of that loan so that's what you see here for you tonight very good any questions for mr ciccarelli since we have a hostage no all right well thank you mr ciccarelli all right um with that and no questions um all in favor say aye opposed no motion passes man i'm sure i moved to approve a contract with alcoa fencing company incorporated for fencing at various sites second any discussion hearing none all in favor say aye aye opposed no motion passes man i'm sure i moved to approve a contract with ponder company to replace approximately 10 000 square feet of water damaged wood floor in the auxiliary gym for an

093amount not to exceed eight hundred 158 sixty eight dollars plus a ten percent project contingency is there any discussion yes whoops looks like we have a few um mr mullen had his hand up first trustee golan i thought our recent report was that that had been repaired and was usable did something change you're referencing the main gym um the main gym was water damaged in november we did get that done um the auxiliary gym um [Music] we had to first do an asbestos abatement which is taking place over the summer and of course your gym floor companies they were very highly specialized and they were booked so um and ponder is the one we typically use so we had to wait until they were available so we will move east high pe uh and lower

094level volleyball over to east ridge um until the floor is ready we didn't attempt to fix it though right pardon me we did attempt to fix it um there was no attempting to fix the floor with the damage it was we had we had swelling as high as three foot so it was irreparable i'm misunderstood thanks i'm trustee herman thank you madam chair all you have to mr bartlett so how much of this was um covered by insurance because it was weather related damage that's correct uh madam chair uh trustee herman um we we will um it will come from a couple of funding sources one would be major maintenance which we use for the abatement while it tore apart we plan on doing um quite a bit of painting we've got some uh bleacher

095repair that we'll do because we've got to pull them out to do the flooring so all of that will be taken care of at a major maintenance or a majority of it uh we do have a 50 000 deductible which will come out of our funds and then the insurance should cover the remainder okay thank you okay and just one quick question on the asbestos abatement that's not covered by our insurance and i'm sure that would not be covered right that's a pre-existing commission okay thank you all right any other questions thank you mr bartlett all right hearing no more questions all in favor say aye aye opposed no motion passes madam chair i moved to grant permission to contract for new boces for needed board certified behavior analyst services for an amount not to

096exceed 120 dollars second is there any discussion yes please if you just have someone maybe briefly explain and it was in our board materials that why we need to go to an outside boces for this position instead of just hiring someone locally um and so i guess i don't know maybe mr prey oh oh yes mr mr danny perhaps good evening jp denning director of special services adam chair trustee hermann this is a highly highly qualified service it's called the board certified behavior analyst the services are not readily available it's something that we have used on occasion it gives us the ability to access somebody with a high degree of training most often the board certified behavior analyst is used with students with significant disabilities in which a team is struggling like we know we

097want to address a need and we just don't know how and so the behavior analyst analyzes the behavior analyzes the function of the behavior uh creates a teachable plan uh creates reinforcement plans if needed um breaks up how to how to how to work with the skill how to build a skill and sets us forward with a plan and so we we would access those services on an as needed basis we would be in control of the amount and quantity of service we purchase and use and we would we would look forward to it to it making it a difference with our students and assist all schools throughout the district and then i'm sure it's good that we were able to find someone in wyoming even if it's from another bose so thank you mr

098jenning i just had a couple so and this money is refunded through um the special special ed um throughout that that legislative ruling right manager correct these are special education reimbursable funds that we work with wyoming department of education um working with new boces is one of their recommendations for how to access staff that we are not able to maintain on our as a staff member with us very good i just thought it would be important for our audience to to hear how that works so thank you so much i appreciate you and what you would do for our district so um hearing no more questions um all in favor say aye aye opposed no motion passes moving on to item e future business the next regular board meeting will be held on monday august

09916 2021 at 6 00 pm at this time we are on our last uh opportunity for public comment um i will again refer back to these rules um the board recognizes the value of public comment on issues related to the operations of schools to ensure that our meeting is conducted in an orderly manner we ask that you address the board directly that will be at this microphone here any questions directed to the board or superintendent will be answered through clicking that could that they'll be answered through clicking the blue box which is uh titled board meetings faq and it's right next to the gavel um that can be found on the district's webpage homepage so if you would like to call dr crespo or board or email any of us or dr crespo um we'll

100be able to take care of that for you please recognize that students often attend and view our meetings speakers remarks therefore should be suitable for an audience that includes kindergarten through 12th grade students the first public comment uh took care of that the second public comment um period is up to 30 minutes we'll show you a yellow when you're one minute left and a red when you need to start wrapping it up that'll happen about two minutes and 45 seconds um into your talk or wherever you are so um uh and we would like uh individuals to state your name um keep your comments two to three minutes this will be that allows the maximum number of individuals to speak please confine your comments to matters that are germane in business to the school district

101keep your comments general in nature not directed at specific individuals or individuals please try not to be redundant it's really helpful if you can add additional information or perspectives for the board while the board sincerely values public comment please note at any time the meeting is willfully disrupted and cannot continue in an orderly manner the meeting will be recessed and reconvened at another location in time please see the wyoming state statute i won't read it again thank you all very much and we'll start in the front if you would like to raise your hands we can go through oh i don't have one here in the front right here yes um no go ahead did you let's start with you i saw you first and then if you have the next one yes go ahead

102um madam chair thank you um my name is angie rose is this this one yeah let's check one you may just be really tall i got an it okay so um yeah i can i can slouch a little i do that a lot so thank you again madam chair my name is andrew rose i am a pediatrician at cheyenne children's clinic and um i guess you know i just wanted to first of all tell you thank you my colleagues and i at the children's clinic are very grateful for your all of your guidance through this last school year as was mentioned before in the work session um our goal is similar to the academy of pediatrics and similar to your goal to keep our kids in school and i think i i think you all

103and the teachers and everyone in in our lcs you one and two should be commended for being able to keep our kids in school as you know so many of our neighboring states even were not able to do that all of last year and i think that's a great goal to have um but i want to get through this quickly my um real intention tonight is to take you through the academy of pediatrics guidelines currently the aap i came out with new guidelines just within the last couple of weeks that basically say the cdc they they kind of go off of each other a little bit but the aap guidance and i have a here on my phone that's what i'm pulling up um basically says that uh we should be focusing on exactly that

104we should be focusing on getting kids in school which was a little different than last year last year you know it was safety and and that a lot of places it wasn't going to be okay to be in school so the priority of getting kids back in school around their friends and teachers that obviously will help mental health more than anything else and i will touch on that again here in a minute but that children should be wearing masks to school essentially the aap recommends universal masking because a significant portion of the student population is not yet eligible for vaccines and as of right now we don't really have a great estimate of exactly when that is going to happen um so you know and i think it then goes on to say more about

105the similar methods that the cdc that you heard from stan earlier uh you know hand washing and distancing and etc so um going back to my other notes we you know i think working in healthcare we're all so used to wearing the masks i mean i i don't see a time when i will not be wearing a mask anytime in the next little while while you know examining newborns etc and i think our kids are able to do the same they've shown that through this entire year our kids are resilient and our kids that what they do is they will there's good psychology good research behind this but what they do is they basically look to us for a response to something new and you know when we talk about masks they're they're they're not

106great i don't love wearing a mask either but you know our kids look to us for guidance and for how to feel about things as well and so what we do is we um need to uh show that proper um be a good guide for them so i'll let another colleague of mine take over thanks thank you thank you so much um did you have a did you have your hand raised the young lady you did not okay all right thank you moving on to the next row behind is there someone in that second row the third row back raise your hand if you would like to address the board so um mr ciccarelli you're the gentleman in the white you are the gentleman in the white so is there someone in that row or

107behind mr ciccarelli that would like to draw i see someone directly back there please come up and identify yourself and address the board thank you yes madam chair and trustees my name is joshua fitch thank you i wanted to address the most recent changes 27 july 2021 to cdc guidance on mass square and effects regards to our children my job the united states air force has been and currently used to strategically assess risk and then provide my assessment of that risk to decision makers to sum up in my assessment the risk of community spread in our schools and from there to the greater community is negligible compared to the damage psychologically developed mentally and physically that we're doing to our children the word health organization had statement on children of mass said that the no

108children 5 under should be masked for ages 6 to 11 it recommended considering the following factors one whether there's a widespread transmission in the area where the child resides i don't believe our data supports this if you look at the pcr tests that were shown to be faulty and recalled via class 1 fda recalls or the current code pcr panels that do not differentiate between flu and covet i don't think you can accurately say the data says the amount of code we have in our community the next factor that who listed was the ability of child of a child to safely and appropriately use a mask they don't in my experience as a parent of a seven-year-old a six-year-old a four-year-old and a two-year-old they just don't know and won't be able to use masks

109access to mass was another factor for the world health organization as well as laundering and replacement of mass in certain settings as a factor such as schools and child care services i have a question whether this can be guaranteed we talk about providing equal opportunity but i don't think it exists here for every member of our community to have those same laundering replacements the next factor they talked about was adequate adult supervision and instructions to the children how to put on take off and safely wear masks our students our teacher to student ratio i don't believe allows this the potential number five is the potential impact of wearing a mask and learning and psychosocial development in consultation with teachers parents caregivers and or medical providers i would say that i think data has shown that

110massive damage children are more than code specific settings and interactions is the last factor they talk about the child has with other people who are high risk of developing serious illness such as elderly and those who with underlying health conditions covenant is shown to rarely if it all spread among children or from them to other groups we must not accept inaccurate or biased data we must make decisions not based on fear we must boldly and bravely accept the right risk to give our children a future and show them how to face it without fear i think the data shows that the cdc's the aaps and the state health organization's most recent recommendations are politically and not scientifically motivated in our july meeting i had a lot of hope for the school year thank you now

111my heart is heavier my wife and i love anderson we want our children to attend there we love the teachers the principal the secretaries and everyone else i missed i love the friends and other parents that my wife has made that connect us to our community we've spent hundreds of hours in the midst of great personal tragedy and prayer and research to try to make the best use of our resources for our children but if this body chooses to take parental choice away in this district in regards to masks vaccines and parental involvement with a heavy heart i'll be forced to not allow this district to have access to my children in our last meeting we spoke about decreasing abm for the district parents not being involved will continue to decrease the long-term adms the

112district as well as the available funding to this body i beg you give stability back to our children thank you very much i have another person who would like to speak yes please i just want to back completely what that gentleman said we are leaders of our children let's stop fear-mongering the masks are ridiculous we don't need them for our children let's get over it let's move on with life the numbers aren't there thank you so much thank you very good if we can remember to do that we can move through our time quickly if we don't have the applause so who's the next person that would like to speak because i would really like to hear what everyone has to say thank you the gentleman that raised your hand my name is donald carrera

113and you guys can essentially take this uh what is this wyoming state statute 16-4-406 and you guys can sit on it because my constitution first amendment guarantees me the right to speak you guys haven't presented any evidence whatsoever that says that we gonna be two to three minutes you guys have no problems with clapping when you guys congratulate your little uh kiss-ups in here but it's a problem where is that a disorder in this okay another thing is as we sat here at this board last this uh last board meeting and we were lied to the public was lied to when they said that critical race theory was not going to be in our school systems when in fact wisdom is the exact same thing as critical race theory so for all you people up

114here and all of everybody else that's sitting back here you guys should be ashamed of yourselves i mean we're gonna have a bunch of people fighting and causing problems because we're all racist because of our skin color i should apologize which part of me should apologize if one wants to assume my ethnicity i am i'm half hispanic half white so i think that it's funny that you guys sit here and you guys want all these rules you guys want that respect but remember as other people have said before you guys lock people out this is our public meeting you guys work for us so here's what i'm prepared to do i'm prepared to go to everybody's house in protest i'm prepared to go out to the school districts to the schools to anybody that enforces

115this nonsense on our kids we sit there and say on one hand that kids at those ages can't make choices for themselves when it comes to sexuality when it comes to all kinds of stuff but you guys want to impose this critical race theory which by the way it's not science it's a theory okay it's not even remotely close to anything that's solid but you guys sit here and do all this kind of stuff with um wanting us to adhere to this and we can't applaud we can't we can't be thankful this is our public meeting you guys work for us so for everybody that's listening and we'll listen take down every single one of these people's names when it comes time to re-vote for these people make sure that you vote them out be

116informed and get out there and protest if you don't want your kids in the school with this kind of nonsense take them out we don't need this socialism here this is america and this is wyoming thank you for the applause and i don't understand how a simple applause of gratitude is taking up time because i'm still speaking during that you guys sit there and talk about how we should have trust with you that we should reach out to you but you guys give us the shaft almost every chance there is with this kind of nonsense right here well the constitution says otherwise and i'm an infor i'm going to go ahead and step up and do that but it's absolutely crazy that you guys lied to us you said that you guys will not support

117critical race theory that you guys would not have that in our schools but yet it is and then when we come and ask questions we get shut down no nobody can be honest there's no dialogue there's no back and forth it's absolutely ridiculous on what we got to go through and then when the emotions get involved lord forbid we get up here and we're a little charismatic about what we want to speak about and then you guys this is exactly how they get control of everybody we're going to set up our rules so that we can sit there and say that you only got two or three don't interrupt i'm not done that we can sit there and only get two or three minutes of time but then we sit there and say this is

118how a dictatorship is this is how you can slap that all day long all you want let me have a chance to speak and let me say what i need to say [Music] and we will reconvene in [Music] it's a bunch of cowardness