SCSD Regular Board Meeting 10-8-2020

001Veronica, is the chat, is the chat open? Okay, it is not. Okay, excellent. All right, okay, so we're ready to go. We are recording in that case. I'm going to call our meeting to order. Good evening, everybody. I'm calling the meeting to order. Today is the Thursday, October 8th board meeting. This is a regular board meeting of the San Carlos School District Board of Trustees. I'm gonna call for approval of the agenda first. Are there any changes to the agenda? All right. Carol, just real quick. I wanna remove closed session item anticipated litigation from tonight. Okay, thank you, Michelle. So we're gonna remove 14 D. Correct. Thank you, any other changes? Okay, can I have a motion to approve the agenda as amended? Move to approve the agenda as amended. Thank you, Wendy. Second. Thank

002you, Irene. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries four to zero. Well, five to zero. Michelle, have we sworn in Sarah yet as a voting member? Okay, five to zero. We are going to do a ceremonial oath of office, item 3A, to welcome our newest board member, Sarah Casanaga, who was provisionally appointed at last week's meeting. I'm gonna turn it over to Michelle. All right, good evening, board of trustees in our community, and welcome Sarah Casanaga as our new trustee, filling in for the rest of the term for Kathleen Farley. And that term is in place until December of 2022. Sarah was appointed last Thursday at our special board meeting and going through an appointment process versus an election. Tonight is her first actual meeting. She came in

003today and did her official oath of office with witnesses in our district office, so we had a chance to do that. And so that's an official document that is sent to our county office and also the county to validate her appointment. But I would also like to invite her to read the oath of office tonight. We would normally do this in person at a board meeting, but we'll have her read it tonight so that the board can hear and the public can hear and make her an official member of our board. So Sarah, when you're ready. Thank you. All right, here I go. I, Sarah Casanaga, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic,

004that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation for purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter. It's official. Thank you so much, Sarah. Thank you very much. And so now you're officially a voting member on the board. So thank you again for dedicating your leadership and your service time to the district, especially in such a challenging time ahead. And we appreciate all that you bring to the board with your special service, your skills, your experiences, your perspective, even as a parent, is gonna be very valuable. So thank you again. Thank you. All right, thank you and welcome, Sarah.

005We're gonna move on to item four, a special recognition. We have a remembrance of a staff member who we lost recently. And so I'm going to, am I gonna turn over to Pam or Michelle? We will have Pam do our presentation here. And it's always really difficult to lose a staff member and a family member of our SCSD communities. So Pam Jasso, principal of Heather Elementary School will recognize and remember Lynn Riley who worked at several sites and has been in the district for a long time. So let me know if you're ready, Pam. I'm ready. Mayon? Yes. All right, well, it's been a difficult year for Heather and our district with the loss of staff members this year. And so it is again with great sadness that I share that we've lost another staff

006member, Lynn Riley. Lynn was a paraeducator serving special education students for 15 years in the San Carlos School District. She started in the district working at Britton Acres. Then she joined the LEAP Preschool Program when it was at a Randall School. Before moving with the LEAP Program to Heather where she served our youngest learners. Last year, she split her time between LEAP and the Heather's Second Third Grade Learning Center. And this year she was working in our Learning Center K1. Lynn enjoyed facilitating reading and math groups and prepping for art projects. She supported students developing their independence in the classroom. Watching students progress over time brought Lynn great joy. Lynn enjoyed working with students and cared for them deeply. She always had a few ones that would latch onto her and stick by her side.

007She was sensitive and had a lot of empathy for people in tough situations. She had a funny sense of humor and loved to laugh. Lynn will be reminded for her silly humor, stylish fashion, her love of music, the Women's World Cup and NASCAR racing. Lynn Riley will be missed. I've got a few photos that I got from the LEAP staff and there's her little preschoolers a couple of years ago. And that's Lynn in the pink sweater and the boots on the right by the fire truck. Thank you for letting me present tonight. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much, Pam. You can see by that first picture how the bond she had with her student. And she will be missed. And I'm glad that we could take this time to remember her contributions

008and to hold her fondly in our hearts. Thank you. All right, I'm gonna move us on to 5A, communications. And this is public comment on items that are not on the agenda. We will take a comment for items that are on the agenda during those agenda items, unless the commenter indicates that they would like to do it now. Irene is gonna be reading our public comments tonight. Irene, do we have any public comments for items that are not on the agenda? No, they're for agenda items. Okay, in that case, we're gonna move on to 5B, employee group comments. Dan. Hi, thank you. My name is Dan Lanier, and I'm proud to be the president of the San Carlos Teachers Association. I'm here to speak on behalf of the amazing teachers of this town. Globally, we're

009in a horrible situation. This pandemic has brought our society to its knees, dealing with all of the effects of COVID-19 has been very challenging, as all of you know. This is a time where we should be coming together and to help support one another. Our real mission as a school district right now should be to work together to find ways to take care of the people, especially the children of San Carlos as we face this crisis. That's exactly what the teachers have been doing. Since March, last March, the teachers have been working in good faith with the district under a memo of understanding because our regular contract did not cover pandemic teaching. Our union willingly worked with the district all spring and all summer, as Angela and I can attest, and we worked with the

010district to come up with a plan to continue the quality education the teachers of this town are used to giving while keeping everybody safe. Part of the MOU says that the district will work with our union on coming up with a plan for our return to school. The plan for returning to school that you are hearing tonight is a breach of that MOU. This plan was created without input from our negotiations team, whose job it is to help write it. The plan was not formed with any input from our own opening up schools committee. The teachers and parents who volunteered their precious time that committee, they believe that their input would be valued. This plan was not written by even one person who has any experience with teaching during a pandemic. We have 150 teachers

011that have been teaching since last March in this manner, and we should have been consulted. The fact that the plan was written without our input is disrespectful, irresponsible, and probably illegal. We are returning to a place where we lack confidence in our leadership. We were talking about these very same things last year, only they weren't a matter of life and death. Now we are. Safety has to be a priority, and you cannot have safety without honesty. Please let me make this clear. Every single teacher in this town would prefer to be working with the children in person if it were safe for us to do so. Teachers would love nothing more to go back to business as usual. We miss our kids terribly. Teaching from a distance is really hard. We are working long hours,

012and many of us are exhausted, but it is working. Our teachers have stepped up and gone the extra mile and have provided a fantastic start to the school year and to the children of San Carlos. We are hearing this loud and clear from our families during parent-teacher conferences. They're happy with how we are teaching, and they're happy that their kids are learning. We didn't sign up for a job where we'd be sitting in front of a computer all day. I personally have a headache almost every evening. We never intended to become Zoom experts. Our credentials programs didn't prepare us for spending hours a day doing tech support, but we've been doing all of those things without complaint for the last seven months because that's what our kids needed. We figured out a whole new way

013of teaching to do our jobs. We're willing to continue to do these. We are willing to continue to do these things from a distance, but only if it's safe. Of course, we, like all of you, want nothing more than to go back to the way things were. Unfortunately, that's not possible right now. We, the teachers, are going to stand up for the San Carlos kids again and tell you that our classrooms and our schools are not ready for them to return safely. It's not even safe for us as teachers to return. We do not have proper ventilation in our rooms. We still do not have air purifiers for smoke that the district had promised us. We don't have contact tracing. We don't have regular testing of staff or our families when they return. We don't

014have proper PPE for really teaching safely. Our special education teachers are going to be asked to return first. And those teachers have extra challenges in helping their kids to learn and to be safe. You can't ask us to trust you, to have the very best interest at heart when we can't even trust you in good faith to come to the bargaining table and create a plan. You are legally bound to do that. I am hopeful that this board will encourage the district leadership to acknowledge their grave errors and apologize to the teachers for their blatant disrespect and disregard to the proper process. I will return again to what I said in the beginning. We all need to work together to meet the challenges forced on us by this pandemic. The stakes are literally life and

015death for us and our family members and even our students and their families. We must proceed together with thoughtful caution. And now Angela Naughton, our SCTA negotiations chair, would like to speak as well. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Hi, everyone. My name's Angela Naughton. I'm the bargaining chair for the San Carlos Teachers Association. And tonight, Dr. Harmeier will be sharing a proposal to bring students back to campus based on a hybrid model. However, the steps followed to initiate this plan have been in violation of good faith bargaining between the San Carlos Teachers Association and the San Carlos School District. The National Relations Labor Board states that employees have a legal duty to not bypass union representatives and engage in direct conversations with union employees about working conditions when a signed agreement, as we have with

016our current MOU, is already in place. And the current memorandum of understanding states that both parties will come together to discuss next steps for a return to campus. However, over the past two weeks, even after my team has asked Dr. Harmeier and district administrators to cease such operations, Dr. Harmeier and district administrators have attempted to engage staff members in meetings about steps to be taken in employing a hybrid model of instruction. Staff have received multiple emails, including one this afternoon, that fails to address the fact that a return is to be assessed at the bargaining table and not through formal or informal conversations at individual sites. The information shared has been misleading, and it's created an unnecessary sense of anxiety and fear in all of our members. We continue to rely on science and not

017politics or threatened lawsuits to guide this process. At this time, I do not feel confident that we can fairly negotiate an appropriate and safe return for our members. And I pause you to, I urge you to pause the discussion related to hybrid learning and allow for them to be taken up through appropriate channels. When I see a meeting like this through our board members cannot be held in person, it is not in any way equitable to expect us to do this in person with our students. Thank you. Thank you, Angela. Thank you, Dan. Are there any other association members that will be officially reporting? Okay. All right, thank you for your comments. I'm gonna move us to 6A, our consent agenda. These are items that are routine in nature and we approve them en masse.

018I will call for a motion to approve item 6A through F. I move that we approve the consent agenda items as indicated. Thank you, Irene. I second. Thank you, Wendy. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? The motion carries five to zero. All right, item 7A, section seven is our information items. 7A is the San Carlos Charter Learning Center un-audited actuals for 2019-2020. The board is the official oversight for the charter for the San Carlos Charter Learning Center. And so we received these as information items. Is there anything, Christine or Michelle, that you would like to share about these? Let me just say that Christine, are you unmuted so you can make a comment? Veronica, can you confirm that Christine is unmuted? She's been asked to unmute. Okay. As part of

019my fiscal oversight, I've reviewed the charter learning center un-audited actuals and they have ended the year with a positive ending fund balance with a 21% in reserves. Thank you, Christine. Do trustees have any questions for Christine about this? All right, we do not need to take action on this. So I'm gonna move us to 7B. This is a San Carlos Charter Learning Center learning continuity and attendance plan. Like all schools, like all districts or LEAs, they were required to submit a learning continuity and attendance plan. Michelle, do you have any comments on this? I'll go ahead and take this, Carol. Thank you. That's correct. It's just similar to ours. And I've reviewed that plan and it's found has many good ideas in it. And similar to ours meets all the requirements that were a part

020of the mandate from the state. Thank you, Hans. Trustees, do you have any questions? Okay. Then we're going to move on to our discussion action section, which is number eight, item 8A, our next steps in diversity, equity and inclusion work and taking action on the agreement with inclusion counts, which is the expert we have engaged in this field. Michelle, would you like to start? Yes, I'll start off and hopefully Amber Cechy can be prepared to be on board and she'll be able to pull up her presentation and she'll share her screen. So, Veronica will prepare our guest. As we've talked about in the last several weeks, there is a need for us to do some deep learning and knowledge building in our district amongst our employees first and foremost. And we want to take this

021next step of looking at our diversity, equity and inclusion practices, policies, really listen to our community about where are we with our awareness, with our understanding and our advocacy for all students to be successful, feel welcome, feel safe on our campus with a particular focus on anti-racism at this time. We really felt we needed expert help to facilitate this kind of discussion. We don't necessarily have the capacity internally with the experts that we have on staff, though we have leaders that are committed to this work and have done some of their own personal work and they're starting to lead some things on their campus. We really wanted to have a broader engagement of our whole community. So, we have gone through an interview process with Inclusion Counts and we would like to engage in an

022agreement with them to facilitate some processes this year for us. And we've asked Amber Cechy, owner and CEO of Inclusion Counts to share a little bit about her and her company, her background, her expertise, and then some steps that she's recommending that we might be able to take on for year one. Knowing this is typically, when I've engaged in this conversation with other districts, there's usually a five-year plus process. There's a lot of pieces to this and a lot of ongoing learning. So, we don't see this as a short-term commitment. We see this work as a long-term commitment, but we would like to engage with this group this year to get us started in those conversations. Carol, did you want to add anything before Amber has a chance to come on? No, just welcome to

023Amber and thank you for joining us. Awesome. Good evening, everyone. And thank you so much for having me into your space tonight. Appreciate the introduction. I don't think I have an ability to share my screen yet, so I'll go ahead and just get started with introductions. Before I do that, I feel really compelled to share to any members of the community that might be dialed in today that I really appreciate you all being here and can understand the collective shock, grief, sadness, anger that many members of the community might be experiencing, both due to this pandemic and due to the calls for racial justice happening all over the country. The last eight months has really turned our worlds upside down and it's shaken me too. Really, there's a lot of work to be done and

024I want to just call in that I see a sincere desire from San Carlos District to want to listen and want to collectively work to create sustainable changes within the community to become truly anti-racist. So I'm moved by their willingness, their desire, and really their accountability in this work. So let's see if I have a presenter. There we go. Okay, so like I said, my name is Amber Cechy. I am the founder CEO of Inclusion Counts, which is run by myself and my partner, Heather Cechy. A little bit about my background. I have spent really the last 19 years engaged in diversity work in many different roles and capacities. So prior to launching Inclusion Counts, I served as the executive director of an organization called Anytown. Some of you might be familiar with because we've

025got locations in California, all over the United States. It's a 100-year-old human relations organization that brought diversity education to youth, businesses, and educators. So most parallel to this work, I've had experience providing training to schools, providing coaching and consulting to leadership team members and HR team members on inclusive educator practices and on leading diversity working groups and committees and in steering them to action. Now, outside of, I want to also add, outside of my work with diversity, equity, and inclusion, I've also spent about 10 years working in education, primarily with K-8 schools. So elementary schools, middle schools are really near and dear to my heart. And I spent many years working on social-emotional learning initiatives, school culture and climate initiatives, and safe schools policies while working at an organization called Playworks, the Alliance for a

026Healthier Generation, and substantial classrooms, some of those might be familiar to you all as well. So I work with dozens of schools and districts across the country from Massachusetts and Connecticut to Texas to Indiana. And I'm really excited at the potential opportunity to be working with you all in California. So a little bit about inclusion counts. We are a humankind organization that is dedicated to making diversity count. So we partner with educational institutions, individual schools, and entire districts to provide training, coaching, and consulting on diversity and anti-racism initiatives. And we really do this because we believe or we have a strong conviction that every individual, every student, every teacher, every parent should be treated in a way that they are seen, valued, respected and engaged, not regardless of, but with consideration and appreciation for differences.

027So diversity really encompasses a broad range of different identities and different people in our community. So this is really who we are, what we live by. Our work with you would be really owning in on the anti-racism work, but important to call in how many of these identities are very intersectional to that work at hand as well. So to introduce our model, which you'll see in the proposal that we submitted to the district, our model really encompasses four different phases, okay? We start with the assessment phase. We then move into the strategize phase. We implement and we provide ongoing support. And like Michelle said, really this work is meant to be long-term work in a lot of ways. Sometimes you have to go slow to go fast because you want to do the work well

028with understanding and with humility. And so it's really important that we take that time to assess and to strategize to make sure that the decisions, the policies, the practices, the procedures that we're tackling to provide more inclusion on our campuses is done with an intention and done in a way that's reflective of what the needs are. So this is our model. And I want to show you what we've proposed to do with San Carlos School District over the next two years. So the first phase, like I said, is the assessment phase, okay? We began all work with schools in the needs assessment phase because we needed to develop a deep understanding of your district, your teachers, your students, and your parent and family needs. We have to assess where we're at. We'll do this in

029a number of different ways. First and foremost, we will set up and facilitate community listening sessions or let's talk sessions where members of the community will be invited to come and share openly what the needs are in the district, what the requests are and recommendations are in the district, what the grievances are in the district as it relates to anti-racism and inclusion on our campus and our successes, okay? With particular regard to race and ethnicity. Schools that are really successful in implementing anti-racist initiatives are the ones that take the time to accept and analyze feedback before setting strategic goals and priorities. Some of you may have heard the famous quotes. One of my favorites about Stephen Covey says it about listening to understand and not to reply. I like to use the framework of thinking

030about it as listening to believe rather than to understand, okay? Because every single child's experience on your campus matters and all of the priorities that we set need to be heard and affirmed in a way that we believe that these things are happening. So these community listening sessions are really key to the assessment phase. Secondly, we will conduct one-on-one interviews with members of the community. Anyone from certified teachers to non-certified teachers to parents to students, faculty, leadership team members, we'll sit down and do one-on-one interviews to gather deeper insight into what changes really need to be made. By facilitating these in a confidential setting, it allows us to really dig into where the areas of growth and areas of opportunity are. And we have an ability to provide that confidential setting while sharing themes, trends,

031points that we need to acknowledge back to the broader community. Number three, data review, data, data, data. We will spend much time analyzing your district data, demographics, policies, practices, anything from school discipline data, handbooks, wellness policies, teacher wellness policies, everything and anything and give you an insight as to whether or not all of those things are written equitably and are actually supportive to every student and every person within our community. And from that, from the assessment phase, our goal is to provide you with a comprehensive equity report so that San Carlos really knows where you currently stand, okay? So this is again, related to all the data that we look at, all of the interviews that we do and all the listening sessions, really to investigate areas of representation, engagement, interactions, practices and systems, and

032to provide clear recommendations for what priorities should be moving forward, as well as what time allocation is needed to make those changes happen and happen in a sustainable way. So that's the assessment phase, first and foremost. Next up, probably around January, 2021, okay? We'll move into the strategize phase. At this point, we're gonna work with you to launch a diversity, equity, inclusion, anti-racism steering committee, okay? This committee should really be reflective of our San Carlos community. The steering committee needs to be diverse and needs to have a diverse range of perspectives. So we're thinking teachers, leadership, parents, community members coming together to really drive and embed the work moving forward, okay? This committee would really dive into the equity report, analyze the equity report, set strategic goals for the district at large, and then whatever

033those goals may be, serve as the drivers to make those things happen. For example, if the committee decides we need more diverse curriculum and books at every school site, how is that gonna happen? A, B, C, and D, what do we need from a financial side to that? How do we integrate it? How do we make it happen? How do we make sure our teachers can effectively teach that curriculum to include all students, okay? Those are examples, things that we see at other schools, but they'll really be responsible for providing or creating those goals and messaging it to the broader community and working to make it happen. And then most importantly, this is really, really important. We know that even without listening sessions and one-on-one interviews and an equity report, that education is always needed

034to do this work well. We would like to ensure that everyone within San Carlos has foundational knowledge and understanding on how to do better and how to really be an anti-racist educator or support staff within the community. So we will be providing training for the school board, training for all school staff, both certified and non-certified within the district, customized to meet the needs that present themselves during that assessment phase, okay? Training, training, training is important and it's important that that training builds to really move towards progress. It's not just learning for the sake of learning, it's learning for the sake of making our schools safer, braver, better for every single child, all right? So training, lots and lots of training. So this is year one, a lot happening in year one overview. And then year

035two, I would be really foolish to say that we have a firm projection of what year two will look like. The work that we do within your district has to be responsive to the need and it has to be reflective of what progress has been made and what has been implemented and what has been done effectively. So what we anticipate or what we typically see with schools and districts as we move into year two or even year three is that we need a lot more customization, okay? So we anticipate individual coaching and consulting for every individual school site, okay? Every individual school site will retrieve, receive customized training, customized coaching, customized consultation to really do some action planning around anti-racism and what that specific school site needs based on demographics, based on school culture and

036climate and all of those things that are important. So year two, it'd be a lot more customized and tailored to each school. And last but not least, continued consultation with leadership, work with the steering committee, which I anticipate would meet either on a monthly basis or a bi-monthly and then more training and professional development at the start of the year and or also mid-year. So that's a framework for year two. Okay, so I just spewed a lot of information on what two years of work could look like. I would really, really welcome the opportunity to work with this district and any district because the need is there, the passion is there, I believe from the school board that's brought us in today. And we're really actively looking to make a difference and make a difference

037that is long-term and sustainable. And that's why the strategy behind it needs to be really intentional. And so we welcome the opportunity. Thank you so much, Amber. Michelle, did you have any comments before? No, thank you very much. I appreciate that. And we went through a few different interviews with Amber and with principals, with board member. And I really feel this is a good match and a business that has direct experience with our K-8 population and our needs. And I'm really just excited about moving forward with this work. Thank you so much. I'm equally excited and I'm excited that we are able to get momentum so quickly after just really giving direction at the last board meeting. So this is really exciting. And Amber, I really appreciate your thorough presentation. I'm gonna open it up

038to my other trustees first for questions. I know I have one or two, but I wanted to invite them to share their questions and thoughts. Irene. Sure, thanks Amber. Yeah, I had a couple of questions. I think my larger question was on the steering committee. I was kind of curious what type of, who composes the steering committee and what you've seen done successfully in the past. And a follow on question is, I'm wondering if that steering committee then kind of guides subcommittees or different work streams. And if you see work streams being staffed, I can just imagine that there's a lot of work to get done that needs to extend beyond the people on the steering committee. Absolutely. So I am, to give you just a mirrored kind of reflection, I'm currently working with the

039school district here in Arizona. That's a smaller school district. I think it's about 14 schools. And we launched a diversity equity inclusion committee that was composed of about five principals, a couple of non-certified staff from the school, a good number of parents, and about three or four members of the district team and one school board member. So they decided to, as a unit to have again, a wide variety of perspective, making sure to have some leadership team members again, given they have the agency to really drive a lot of change within their district. But the perspective and insight of parents and non-certified staff was really valuable to having that committee function in a way that's reflective of all the community needs. So that committee meets bi-monthly for about two hours. So it's a little bit

040more extensive. And at the beginning of the work, all of the community members received training from us as a team. And at that point, after they received training, again, they come together every month to focus on, to really go through the equity report, analyze the indicators that really need worked on. They're forming subcommittees where there's a different co-chair for every committee. So there's like a co-chair for the curriculum committee. There's a co-chair for hiring diverse staff and retention of diverse staff, which is equally important. And they've identified subcommittees that really drive the work based on their series of about five or six different goals that they've set for this year. The committee as a whole is about 16 individuals, although their intention is to have that door open every semester for new members to come

041on, keeping in mind that capacity is really limited, especially in this time or these trying times to be able to rotate folks in as they have interest and as folks feel like they've given as much as they could possibly give to the work because it's gotta be sustainable. Yeah, so we would determine again, what the appropriate size would be for San Carlos, who wants to be a part of it, as well as really keeping in mind, making sure that representation is as diverse as can be, because we need that. Thank you, and my one last small question was, can you just quickly remind me the difference between the empathy interviews and how that's different from the listening? Yeah, so the listening sessions would be done in some larger groups with opportunities to break into smaller,

042we call them affinity groups, okay? So if we do a listening session, for example, families and only families, we would invite them to the listening session and have different parts of the meeting parsed out where folks could come together based on racial identity to have conversations with folks who are like-minded and wanna share similar challenges or similar successes in a space that's really comfortable to them. So those are large group listening sessions, okay? Might be 100 people, might be less, might be more. The one-on-one empathy interviews are really for folks who have something to share and have a lot more to share that we would like to hear, not necessarily in a large space, okay? So that could be folks that we really need to talk more to because they've got experiences that need to

043be heard. And it could also be individuals that are not able to attend the listening sessions or individuals that represent minority groups that don't feel comfortable speaking in a larger setting that we need to seek out because we do not wanna make sure that our Native American indigenous population is not heard just because they were not able to come to one meeting. Sometimes you have to intentionally go out or go outside of that network to make sure voices are heard because not everyone's gonna be represented in the space that you set. Thank you. Great questions, thanks Irene. Wendy. Hi Amber, this is Wendy. Nice to meet you. And yeah, I just wanted to ask if you, Amber, and maybe Dr. Herrmeier had had any conversations around as far as the implementation of this, as far

044as like pacing. Because when we say, you know, year one, year two, that can be calendar year, that can be school year. The reason I raise it now is that I really appreciate that our community has voiced their desire for this work as a district. And that's why we're here discussing it tonight. I also realized that we're in a very unusual year trying to teach and learn during a pandemic. So I just wanted to ask, you know, what your recommendation is as far as pacing, and if there is some flexibility in terms of, oh, I don't know, the structuring of, you know, the focus groups and surveys. And I mean, I think we know we wanna get started with this work and there is an urgency around it. But I just kind of wanted to

045hear your thoughts on flexibility around your model. Yeah, sure. So as far as flexibility for pacing, again, I've worked in education for so long. I fully recognize that flexibility is all of our middle name right now. But I typically recommend, again, to launch the work quickly. That assessment period takes about three months, okay? Two to three months to really understand what the needs are, what the issues are. And for us to go through, like I said, every single policy, practice, handbook, statement that currently is out there within San Carlos. I'm aware there's a Facebook group that I'd like to take a look at. I mean, we really, really do dive deep and analyze everything and anything that's coming forth within your community. So depending on when we start, we would jump right into that assessment

046phase first. And I think a lot of the urgency in the work is that leaning in and listening to believe, which can happen for us almost immediately, okay? So if we decide we'd like to move forward with our proposal and our contract, we can jump into that listening and that analyzing pretty immediately. And then hypothetically, if things across the country shift with the pandemic and we're closed in November, in December, and priorities need to shift, everything that we do, we do essentially on an hourly basis. We've got an hourly rate and we can make sure to bank that, to hold that and continue the work as long as it needs to continue to make it happen. So we're very, very, very flexible on timing and pacing. You've got to go slow to go fast, but

047we want to hear these people, affirm these people and acknowledge what people are feeling and carrying in their hearts as quickly as possible. And I think too, just to add this first year of work, a lot of it will be facilitated by Amber and her group, which really doesn't have a big impact on staff demand. I think that's the key to this and getting started and knowing that that first year really is looking all the way through September of 21, that's kind of that frame of what one year looks like. And we really decided not to rush things. If you look at a full year program, we could have tried to have goals and initiatives and things defined before the end of the school year. And we just didn't feel that we could probably handle

048that kind of pace. So we really slowed it down and really kind of stretched this work over the next couple of years, conceptually, with the possibility of them helping us this year. And then if we want to continue to work with them, we would do another contract for year two. The other thing I would add, not to go on and on, but when you jump right into your priorities and goals too quickly, what happens is those goals don't come across as well-intended and can often read as aspirational rather than goals that you really intend to implement and sustain across your district. I've worked with several schools that say, we want to set our goals within the first week of launching and we understand that and we understand the urgency, but you don't want the goals

049to be only aspirational. You want them to be things that we know and have full intent to change and integrate within our, into our school district so that we can bring about that meaningful and systemic change. And so our pacing rolls with your pacing. That's a lot of sense. And I just want to say, in hearing about your approach and your model, having that year two with ongoing support, I think that's critical because change takes time and having that expert lens that can help us reflect back after a year or we're getting into it. So anyways, I just really appreciate that. Thank you. Thanks, Wendy. Sarah or Neil, do you have any questions or anything you want to share? Sarah. Yeah, I just want to say thank you, Amber, for your presentation and the proposal.

050I think this is incredibly important work. It's something I've been working on over the summer with other parents in our town. And I know there's a lot of interest and passion around this issue. And I'm just excited that the district is taking this first step and I'm excited to participate however I can. And I do, I am curious, Amber, to just hear how, over the past few months, if you've been doing listening sessions and empathy interviews with other schools during the pandemic, how that's been going, or do you find that you're able to get the information that you need even if you have to go about it in different ways? Yeah, I would say at the, when we first started doing more of the listening sessions, we ended up having to do a lot more

051of the empathy interviews. Because again, there's a lot going on right now, especially I think with the launch of the school year, which is why we reserve so much time for those one-on-one interviews and intentionally seeking out who really needs to be heard. So I feel, it's interesting, I feel because it's October, October and November might be really great times to do that, whereas December, January might be a little bit more difficult for folks again. So we'd really have to, we'd really have to identify what the timeline of that kind of looks like. But I'd say for the schools, we've had a lot more success with the empathy interviews, at least for parents. The teachers definitely show up to the larger group listening sessions, but parents, we really have to work around their schedule, considering

052a lot of them are home and intending to multiple kids and doing the remote learning and whatnot, so. Thank you. I don't have any questions, Amber, but I appreciate the opportunity to be working with us. So I'm excited about what you can bring. Thanks, Mel. Amber, I just have two questions. First of all, thank you so much. That was just really a fantastic presentation. I appreciate the thoughtfulness and how, and the stages, how you've laid them out. I know I've seen you in action in my day job. And so I know the quality of your work, and I'm just really, really excited about this. I'm curious for the training, really excited about the training for the board and training for staff. Do you also see training being available for parents and other community stakeholders as

053well, because I think there is a tremendous value to, you know, to everybody being, using the same language and being kind of, you know, aware of the direction that we're going in and how we're looking at this. Yeah, so as far as parent training goes, that is not something that Michelle and I have directly talked about, but I would love to do training for parents, just as a side note. I've done many trainings with like PTAs of different schools, and it really, really makes a difference for both the parents to understand how schools operate from a systemic side and what leadership has autonomy and agency over and what they don't and how to modify things to meet the needs of every kid in an effective way when they can't necessarily change things that they cannot

054change. So we definitely have that willingness to put on some parent sessions. And you can tell I'm already very excited about that because I do love connecting with parents and families. And I definitely see and understand the need and feel that the call to action is there for so many individuals right now. I think that'd be a great addition, just in terms of like a really comprehensive strategy with all of our stakeholders. Michelle, do you have a comment? To add on, we have really developed a robust parent education program this year with real intention around supporting parents with all the distance learning and the emotional challenges and things. And I think this would fold right in to this and we can just start to find ways to blend the work and correlate that and really

055promote it to our parent education workshop page and just integrate it with our work. I think that's a great idea. Something Michelle and I talked about last time we spoke to, many schools and districts are creating areas on their webpage, on their district webpage, their school webpage that really pushes out external communication around diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives, what the goals are, where things are in the process. And then a lot of pages right now for districts have an area or a resource area kind of parsed out for educators, for parents, lots of attachments, lots of downloads on like how to talk to my kid about racism, how to talk to my kid about the pandemic, different things and different ways that we can engage that parent community in addition to training. Oh dear, Amber, you've

056frozen for a second there. So I, until she comes back. We did talk about how do we set up our own webpage and she had suggestions and ideas that we can look at other schools and have add that to our district website pretty easily by replicating some things that are done. And there's a way to maybe, I think open up and have people engage on that site as well or for different ways to either ask questions or input. I think Amber, you can take that over. Great and then Amber, I have one other question and that is, and I don't know if you've had a chance to look at our strategic plan, but it's something that we really use as a guiding document and do you envision that's part of the work of the steering

057committee would be to create language and really incorporate this into our strategic plan? Yeah, I do remember taking a look at it and I can't recall, is your strategic plan one year or two year? It's ongoing. It's ongoing and we updated every few years as needed. Great, yeah, a lot of districts do a two year, but I always recommend having a pillar for diversity, equity, inclusion, always, always, always be embedded in your plan because there are different indicators that trickle down into any other part of your strategic plan that needs to happen with that filtered DEI glasses lens. So we would definitely, again, once we develop the formal kind of DEI framework statement to the external community and the goals, it should be a part of that strategic plan and some of that coaching and

058consulting work with leadership, the school board would involve us helping you include that. Excellent, all the questions I have. Trustees, do you have any other comments or follow up questions? All right, this is a discussion slash action item. So we have the option and opportunity to approve the contract with Amber and inclusion counts if the board is ready to take action. We always give the board an opportunity to think about it when meeting it and bring it back the next. We don't require the board to take action at your first read, but if you're prepared to, and if there's a willingness, we can take action tonight. Carol, I have a quick question. Are we being asked to approve both years or just is it the contract for one year? The contract that is on the

059agenda is I believe for one year, is that right, Michelle? And then we would reevaluate and bring a contract back for the second year. Correct. Move to approve. Thank you, Neil. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Wendy. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, the motion carries five to zero. Thank you, trustees. Thank you, Amber. And we really look forward to you launching this work and this initiative for us. All right, I'm gonna move on to item 8B, our return to school planning. Dr. Harmeier. All right, thank you. I'm going to share my screen for a moment here. And this next item, what we are doing is really starting our conversation about what are those next steps we need to take as our health conditions approve in

060San Mateo County. We know that we're in the red tier, which is tier two and the county's been there for two weeks, which means it's now okay for schools to start having in-person learning without a waiver. And we kind of saw this coming last time we met, so we've been preparing. And there's a lot of work to do in order to start that transition to in-person. So this is really the beginning of a conversation. What we learned is the first thing that we need to do is have a return to school procedures handbook or guidebook, a plan that really focuses on the health and safety of our staff and our students. And this is mimicking the requirements that other schools have had to submit for a waiver. So schools who got the waiver essentially just

061have a head start on where we are right now. So we are not in the waiver process right now, but we do have to still submit to the San Mateo County Office of Education and the County Health Department, a plan to demonstrate that we have the capacity to keep our staff and students safe and we can follow the four pillars as recommended in the pandemic recovery framework from the County Office of Education. So there are two documents attached to this board item that the public can read and see. I'm not going to go through the entire return to school procedures handbook, but it's important for you to know it's in draft. And I think the importance of sharing this information is there's a lot of complexity and a lot of challenges that we are going

062to be working through with our teachers, with our principals, with our secretaries and our custodians to make sure that we have everything in place before our students come on campus and start to interact. And we've made some great progress. We've been working on this document since the summer. And this document is really inclusive. And our nurse, Terry, you heard from last meeting, is really helping to guide this along with Mindy Hill, our director of wellness. And those two staff members are key to this along with our director of facilities, Doug Johnson. So this is really, this booklet here is nuts and bolts that are compliance-based, that are procedural, that are training-based around wearing face coverings. And as a district, we've said all students will wear face coverings when they come back. That's a decision so

063far that we're all consistently agreed upon. Some kids just can't, and we know that. And we make accommodation for students who have that kind of a waiver or interactive process. And we will make some adjustments for certain students who just aren't able, but that's a fundamental. All adults and students on campus need to wear face covering. The other one is we have to prep as much as we can, follow the six foot social and physical distancing procedures. So we have to arrange for that. No large gatherings, which means our kids need to be in stable cohorts or bubble cohorts and only interact with the group that they can interact with while on campus. And then the last part is following the health and hygiene, washing our hands a lot and making sure that our students

064are able to follow those procedures. So I wanna invite everyone to take a look at this. It's incomplete. We have work to do. And a lot of the work is going to require engaging with our teachers, which we just haven't had the opportunity to engage because we've been so focused on the first six weeks around distance learning. But we have produced an employee handbook already that all employees received at the beginning of the school year. We produced a distance learning handbook and a response to COVID cases handbook. We've created three handbooks already. This is a summary of all of those. So this is the one that we'll submit to the county for approval to start when students are ready to come back. So work in progress. Any questions about our return to school procedure book

065in general without drilling down into specifics? Great. Next, I'm going to have Alex Friel share her screen, I think, unless you want me to do this, Alex, trying to think who's the best person to screen. She's got most of the slides. So I think she needs to be on the screen. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I'm happy to do so. If you do that, I'll do a couple of intro and then hand it over to you. So Alex Friel, our principal, are you able to share? Actually, I was wondering if maybe Mindy could share her screen because I don't have the dual screens, I'm so sorry. I'm not at my desk right now. So Mindy, are you able to share this? I'm happy to do it too. Okay, give me a quick second. Okay, so Mindy

066is pulling that up. So this next piece is just to talk about the beginning stages of how we return to campus. We're in a distance learning mode right now, but what we're doing is preparing and planning for the time when students will come back. So there's a lot of steps that we want to take, very measured incremental steps so that we can ensure safety of students and staff. We posted this presentation Monday night, we did some revisions and just slight revisions and uploaded this new presentation this afternoon. So again, we are really looking at our building block model where health and safety is our number one consideration. And then we really are focusing on our academics and making sure students are learning at high levels and not experiencing learning loss. And that was clearly communicated

067as a great need to us by our community, our parents and our board during the summer when we were in that decision to go to distance learning. And equally important is the social and emotional health of our students that we are taking into consideration. So with a kind of a quick process progress update, next slide. Sorry. So remember when we adopted distance learning, the board said, let's take a look at where we are in six weeks into the school year and that's now. And at our last board meeting, we started to examine some distance learning data and progress that we were making. So we did do some surveys, we looked at attendance data, we looked at mental health data, we looked at a lot of different things to really demonstrate that we're really analyzing our

068progress as we're in this brand new mode. And then also what we know is our health conditions are continuing to improve right now in San Mateo County, as I mentioned, we're in red, which is still a substantial spread concern, but it's better than purple. And again, now this status allows us to return to school without a waiver. And so we start making some progress toward a plan. So tonight, we wanna focus on a measured incremental phase in approach to bring our staff back and our students back on campus based on our health conditions. And then as we know, those can change back and forth, especially during this winter time, and also with our campus readiness. So with that, I've asked our principals to be our main presenters throughout the evening. So they're going to help

069us out when we get to the next slides. But I did wanna start off with comparisons. I'm getting a lot of emails and communications from parents asking us to be compared to districts that are very different from us. And I wanted to educate our community and our board a little bit about how we compare and why we are in a different place than some districts. So there are some highly funded school districts in the San Mateo County. We have 23 districts. About five of them are highly funded and they're called basic aid or community funded districts. They receive significantly more dollars to fund their public schools than the LCFF or state funded district like San Carlos. They're very affluent communities. They essentially get to keep all the property tax that's over and above the minimum

070funding level that the state gives to us. And therefore they have opportunities and resources to do things that districts like us cannot do. So they've been working on a waiver process and they really essentially just have, they just have a good start on coming back. That's essentially what it is. They're smaller. They have more resources, smaller class sizes, a much higher staff ratio to students. They can afford more teachers and staff members. A lot of specialists are helping out when the kids are in distance learning instead of just a teacher. They have a lot of other support staff. And they also have enough funding to completely pay for private testing, COVID testing for all their staff weekly and bi-weekly. And they've made some pretty significant investments in PPE, personal protective equipment and some outdoor learning.

071And also these buses, none of them are dealing with busing and transportation. So they are in a different league than we are and they are able to do things. And we appreciate in one way that they are able to go first and they're kind of leading the way for a lot of us and kind of modeling some really good approaches and we're learning from them, but we just don't have the resources to be in the same place where they are. In our district, we're an LCFF or state funded district. So we get whatever the basic level of state funding is. Like us, very comparable districts are Burlingame, Belmont Redwood Shores, Pacifica, missed an A there and Millbrae. So we're all LCFF districts were comparably funded. So when you look at districts like ours, I have

072contacted all of these school districts. I know where they are in the return to school plan and how they're spending their money and their resources. And we're very similarly alike. I mean, aligned in where we are right now. So there's a lot of commonality, but between our LCFF districts, none of them have a specific plan to return in person yet that's been shared in public. They kind of have limits with us with numbers of teachers per kids and custodian that are very lean on their custodian specialists. They haven't done a lot of big planning on outdoor learning spaces, but they're starting to some conversations around that. And they too will have to rely on a hybrid model because they have regular class sizes like us. Hillsborough, for example, has decided this year to put all

073the resources into having classes around 16 students per teacher. They won't have to have a hybrid. They're just going to have really small class sizes. So they don't have the challenge of alternating day schedules. Menlo Park hired a few more teachers for first grade. So all of their first grades are about 16 to one. So they don't have to have a hybrid. So we don't have the luxury to hire more staff. We are still in a budget crisis and very much concerned about our fiscal solvency. And we're just really being careful to buy the essential items that we can to do the best we can. And again, we do have busting programs like the rest of these districts listed. And we have to look at the transportation challenges and schedules and safety as well. So

074I wanted to make sure our community understood why we can't necessarily be at the same pace and then do the same kinds of things as some of the more affluent districts in our community. Next is Alex from Mariposa. Thank you, Dr. Harmeyer. As Dr. Harmeyer has stated, we definitely have come a long way since last spring. In order to understand how we've arrived this proposed framework, it's imperative we remember the road we walk to get here. There have been many questions asking what we've done over the summer and up until this point. In June, after a very difficult spring, our teacher work groups came together to develop that hybrid model that at the time we felt was the best move forward for students. Prior to this, our distance learning program was a response to crisis

075learning. The best we could provide under very uncertain times and circumstances. It was agreed we would return to school and distance learning for six weeks and reevaluate after that. We spent July working on developing professional development opportunities and rethinking how to connect with students we had not yet met with. In August, teachers returned to participate in PD, development of schedules, understanding blended learning techniques and building an entire program from scratch. Every system we had in place for school had to be re-imagined to fit our online platform and evaluated as to whether or not it would benefit our students and teachers. Once teachers developed their new procedures, lessons and support, they put support underway for their students. They created an implemented assessments in September earlier than they've ever been required to do in order to plan

076for learning loss. Administrators and teachers who spent a large amount of time finding unique ways to address student needs remotely. And this is continuing now. This week, teachers are also wrapping up conferences which required an additional lift to ensure they would be as informative as in-person conferences. Okay, you can go to the next, thank you. And so now here we are. We've built a true remote learning program, a robust, rigorous virtual learning education for our students. All students are receiving a minimum of three to five hours of teacher engagement depending on their grade level. Teachers are offering various opportunities for support online engagement and to help them feel connected. And schools have included online options of PE, art, music, lunch bunch, social groups, student councils, and other engaging activities to increase student connectedness. We have

077a high level of attendance and engagement and our current program is overall successful in ensuring academics for students. Please do not mistake this praise of our remote learning program as a preference for distance learning. We know it is a hardship on families and some students are struggling and we'll address that in future slides. I am sure I can speak for almost all educators when I say we truly wish we could be in-person. Teachers and staff began this job to have daily interactions with students. However, due to our current global pandemic, this opportunity is severely limited and therefore we must evaluate our academic supports through a different lens. Next one. After, so where are we going? After the last board meeting, our principal team worked together to reflect on the work we've done over the last

078six months. We reviewed conversations with our staff, feedback from students and parents and our input surveys. This is only the first step of a very complex process in looking at bringing students back on campus. I cannot stress this enough that this is a framework for us to begin the work with our staff for the best way to return to our sites. We do not take this task lightly as a leadership team. We know this is a highly charged issue with strong opinions and desires on all sides. This framework has felt like an impossible task to create and we won't be able to make everyone happy and we acknowledge this and accept it as a fact of being leaders. In order to create this plan, we want to continuously focus on our why. We strive to

079ensure academic excellence and social emotional growth for all of our students and support our teachers in their jobs to educate children while maintaining proper health protocols and ensuring their safety. We have broken this plan into five distinct phases as well as paying particular attention to each grade span. Given the unique opportunities and challenge of each grade level, the reopening of schools will take different trajectories for different age students. And this plan includes distinct sequences for elementary, upper elementary and middle school. I'm gonna turn it over to Leah. Hello, can you hear me? Yep, great. So when we talk about in-person instruction, we want to make sure that we're focused on the why, like Alex said at all times and using the lens of equity in our three goals, health and safety, social emotional learning and

080academics, our why is to meet the needs of our students. And our priority is to meet the academic and social emotional needs of our students while also recognizing that another very real need for in-person instruction is childcare. And I believe you stated at the last board meeting, Trustee Layton, that everything on a global level regarding reopening and COVID needs to happen with a phased in approach. And as we build this framework, we are letting our why guide our process. And because health and safety is of the utmost importance while in this global pandemic, we're limited in our ability to meet all three of these needs at the same time. So we must prioritize. And as educators, we look at academic instruction as being a top priority, of course. And we need to focus on the

081students who are struggling to access their curriculum in its current format, which is virtual. And we call these students our urgent learners. Let me go to the next slide, please. So to ensure equity, it's really important that we collaborate on the shared definition of what an urgent learner is. So here we've listed the criteria that define an urgent learner. And in order to identify students who have not been able to access learning thus far, we're utilizing the expertise of our teachers and staff who have been working with these students every day. Each school principal and teacher have already identified our urgent learners. And MTSS here stands for multi-tiered system of support. And we use the system to not only identify concerns regarding student needs, but also specific interventions to help address those needs. And using

082this system, we hold meetings called student study teams or SSTs with families. We provide accommodations or modifications to the instruction and curriculum. And we pull data using assessments, anecdotal notes, and observation of student engagement on Zoom and asynchronous work. A significant number of our urgent learners do have IEPs or individualized education plans or 504 plans. And that doesn't mean that all students with IEPs or 504 plans have not been successful in learning virtually, but rather that some of these students with identified specific needs are not able to access learning via the virtual platforms in a sufficient way. So in addition to these factors, we're also developing a tool that we're really excited about that we'll be able to objectively measure demonstrated needs across school. And that's gonna be shared with staff soon. And we're looking

083forward to that tool as well to measure and identify urgent learners. Next slide, please. That's not me. Hi, everyone, I'm Mindy Shelton. I'm the principal at Arroyo. And we also wanted to share some of the considerations that we're looking at as we develop this framework and these plans and go deeper with engaging our staff and community in these complicated phases of bringing students back on campus. And so we've kind of broken them into two parts. One part is kind of the considerations that have a really big impact on families. And the other is some of our staff and facilities and district considerations. So we're very mindful that we're coming up on flu season and the similarity and symptoms between the flu and COVID and how that's going to impact students' attendance and their engagement in

084school and ability to engage in person. And also just that contagiousness of colds and flus and other things that come up this time of year. We have the impact on families with children in multiple schools. If we're really looking at what's best for kids at different age levels, knowing that families might end up with different models or different schedules and trying to kind of keep things as stable as possible for families at the same time. Socialization is a really important part of what we've been thinking about. And we know that kids really wanna be back in school. We know families want their kids back in school and teachers want that too. And a lot of what kids want and are really missing is their playtime at school, their social time, their recess time. We know

085that has to look really different both in the classroom and outside of the classroom. Wearing masks all day isn't easy, keeping six feet of distance, not sharing equipment, having limited playtime and really their limited time on campus focused on learning is challenging. And I've heard lots of stories from people in schools that have started back that it's not what they wanted it to be. It's not what they thought it was gonna be. It's not what they were excited to come back to. And so keeping that in mind for our kids is important too. When we developed our hybrid schedule back in June, we did so in a very different landscape. It was kind of in the context of what was happening in the spring and the crisis teaching and learning that was going on. And

086so knowing what we have in place now, we're really concerned about the reduced instructional time of two days a week of direct instruction versus five days a week of direct instruction. And then we think about the loss of instructional time due to illness or symptoms, even if they're not actually sick with either COVID or the flu. But knowing students needing to be out of school for illness or needing to quarantine because they've been exposed, even just the abundance of caution that we would require of having students with any kind of symptoms stay at home really limits that instructional time as well. And then from a district perspective, having minimal support for contact tracing and following up on health concerns. We've already seen with the limited programs that we do have on campus with Smartie and

087preschool, the amount of time that it takes to do that any kind of contact tracing and following up on students who have symptoms while they're in school is a huge tax on staff. We know that we have some limitations with our facilities and working through those plans that Dr. Harmeier was sharing earlier and preparing our campuses. Limited restroom capacity, especially if we have to kind of close off half of those spaces to maintain physical distancing in the bathrooms. We have variable outdoor learning spaces on campus and then managing our ingress and egress on different campuses. Some campuses have one entry and exit point, which makes social distancing really hard. Others have multiple, which makes the supervision aspect really hard. So working through those challenges is really important. And then we know we have staffing challenges.

088Limited custodial staff on campus to do cleaning between programs and just to maintain everything that needs to be maintained. Limited staff for at least recess and lunch supervision. Reduced administrative staff in middle school means less support for them. We also know that one of the questions that has come up is if preschool and SMARTy and our ACE aftercare programs can run, why can't schools? So I just wanted to share that the staffing challenges are very different. In those programs, they have a smaller teacher or leader to student ratio. Their staff is paid on a different scale than teachers. They often have 10 to 15 students with one or two staff members. We just don't have the capacity to do that with teachers. We know, especially in the older grades, we have a one to 30

089or one to 32 ratio and fitting those students in a program and being able to maintain that, all of the four pillar requirements is challenging. So we're gonna share, again, a very draft proposal of our phases of reopening and five phases and what that could look like. Again, very much in the draft phases. We know we have work to do in engaging our staff and engaging the community. And so we're looking at a gradual phase in approach. We know that the county framework requires at least three weeks in between each of the phases. And so we are prepared to do this slowly and safely and Lea is gonna start with our primary grades. Great. So yeah, we wanna make it clear that in phase one, it's already in progress and we'd like to move forward

090for full and phase one focuses on bringing back all staff to campus as a first step. And teachers would continue to deliver instruction virtually from their classroom. And the purpose for having staff onsite is to have them actively be involved in the physical process of preparing students to come back to campus. We can't do that part without having teachers here. And as they need to be able to determine what they need for finalizing their classroom setup, it helps that they're in their classrooms making those decisions. And this will also help them visualize the new routines and procedures that will be put in place and for them to be able to provide that input as well. And also while they're on campus, they can either continue to or start distributing materials as well as begin to

091administer in-person assessments and prepare for trimester one report cards. So like I mentioned, this phase is already in progress as many teachers are already distributing materials and teaching from their classrooms. And for teachers who have been primarily working from home, this first phase will give them the time that they need to adjust to the protocols that we all must follow when onsite and make the final adjustments needed for the future phases. So formally approving this phase would help us move forward in preparation for the following phases by finalizing staff training on the four pillars and the health and safety procedures. And like Mindy said, in terms of the timeline, according to the San Mateo County Health Safety Guidelines, each phase would then need to be put in place for a minimum of three weeks before

092schools can move forward into their next phase. So for the following three phases, I wanna preface with the fact and reiterate that the details must be worked out in collaboration with our teachers and staff. And the draft here outlines specifically a framework for the conversations and work that will help us continue moving forward. And we have to start somewhere and talk more about that engagement process towards the end of this presentation. And then in phase two, that focuses on bringing just our urgent learners like I talked about before on campus in some capacity and virtual instruction would continue. And in addition to that, we would also phase in the in-person learning for those specific identified students, perhaps in the afternoon. And students who meet our criteria through the MTSS process that I mentioned, they would

093receive the in-person instruction they'd need in order to access the curriculum. This may be through one-on-one or small group instruction and would ensure equitable intervention. Having these smaller groups of students on campus first, not only will help meet their academic needs, but also give us the ability to train students on the health and safety guidelines and give teachers real-world practice in building the new routines and procedures. And then for phase three, we continue to build our capacity. And by bringing more student cohorts together in person, again, perhaps in the afternoons, core subjects would still be taught virtually. But the idea here is that students would come on campus in person in order to address the social-emotional learning needs we know they have, as well as learning that is much more difficult to teach online. And

094this would also provide opportunities for more in-person assessment and more valid data and the continuation for student training on all of the health and safety procedures. And then when we look at phase four, this is essentially the final stage before we're able to ever go back normally, whatever that would mean. The assumption being in phase five is that when all of us can be back on campus all the time. And it would most likely be an alternating schedule with two cohorts of students per class. And again, the details need to be developed with the teachers and we don't know yet what that best model is going to look like in terms of the number of days, et cetera. However, we would want to ensure that our most urgent learners do receive five days of in-person

095instruction at that point. We can go to the next slide. So these are the considerations when looking at these four phases that really it has a lot to do with time, you know, as I said in the first slide I presented that because we're in the middle of this global pandemic, we have to prioritize. And so what that means is that in phases two and three we're looking at bringing cohort back maybe in the afternoon and we have to understand that that time is going to take teachers shifting to plan and implement lessons. And that time that they're taking to focus on the in-person learning will impact the amount of synchronous time students have with their teachers. And in addition to that, we have to take into account the amount of time it'll take for

096students to follow the safety guidelines on a daily basis. And we need to understand how that's going to impact the integrity of our in-person instruction. So for example, giving time for a group of 12 to 15 students to wash their hands for 20 seconds each, and then teaching, promoting and maintaining safe mask wearing for our young students all takes time away from what would in normal circumstances be instructional time. And teachers will also need to weigh in on the appropriate amount of time needed for them to adequately prepare lessons both for continued online instruction and the additional in-person sessions. So once live instruction begins, that will need to take priority over the independent or asynchronous work happening at home. And that's not to say that the independent work won't continue to be provided in an

097intentional and productive way, but that teacher's focus will have to be on the students that they're physically with. And then we can move into the four or five phases. So Mindy and I are gonna do this together. So our first phase and second phase look very similar to the lower elementary school. Where things start to change is between phase three and four. What we know about COVID is that as students age, the infection rate gets higher and age 10 is really that turning point. And so when looking at our programmatic models that we have for fourth and fifth grade, we really have a strong academic model. We are lucky our students, the majority of them are much more independent or strive to be, and they are adapting and really taking ownership over their learning. So

098when we get to phase three, we look at it as we want to continue that rigorous core subject online because that's how students will really thrive. But we do understand the social emotional need and their need to interact. And so some sort of social emotional piece really needs to be in place at some point to support that. But to Leah's point, that does come with alternate issues and concerns. And I think as we look at that phase three and continuing the core instruction in the mornings and bringing cohorts of students on campus in the afternoons to do some of that social emotional or maybe some science lab work or other things, assessments, math tests, things like that are a little more challenging to do online. We also know that that affords a bit of flexibility

099for our families that may feel less comfortable and less ready to go on campus. We know that we have the connections program that families committed to at the start of the year who really wanted to commit to a full year of distance learning with no in-person instruction. But we also know that there are families who did not choose that connections option, who don't feel ready to come back on campus. And so having, maintaining that core instruction in the morning means that those families can still participate in core instruction virtually and then may have the option of coming on campus for those afternoon sessions as they feel ready to do so. And hopefully by the time we get to that phase three conditions in the county look even better than they do now and everybody feels

100more comfortable, but it's nice to kind of have that option. When we look at phase four, again, we have a lot of work to do with staff in this area, but based on feedback that we're hearing so far, the idea of going from five full days a week of instruction to less than two days of instruction is really concerning from an educational perspective when we get to the fourth grade level and above. And so at this point, that's not something that we're recommending and it's something we can continue to work on ways to sort of enhance that phase three without sacrificing our academic program. Some of the other things that we considered, looking at phases two and three, really wanting teachers to be able to support students virtually and still find ways to support those

101more urgent learners on campus as Leah was sharing as well. In phase four, we were really considering that reduced instructional time for students as we talked about a little bit already. And as Leah mentioned, that the students in person would really take priority from the teachers. It would be great to think that teachers can take care of both students at the same time. What we know and what we've also seen from schools that have tried it is it's incredibly hard to serve the students in front of you and the students who are at home. I wanna chime in on that. I've been talking to people up in Sacramento who have returned to in-person learning. And my friend is a teacher and a parent. And when I asked her, cause I thought, okay, maybe I'm looking

102at this wrong. We need to really consider this in person. She said that her children are getting two half days of instruction and she wishes that they were not getting that. They want the full five days of remote instruction because they've lost instruction. And I thought that was interesting. I'm sure there are parents that are very happy with it, but she recognizes the loss of instruction for her fourth and sixth grader. And I think these are the ages too, all ages, but this age, they need that consistency with math and they need that consistency with those pieces. And I think the consistency is really key. At this point in the year, we're really into a routine. Students know what's expected of them. They know their schedule and their routine. And so going from this daily

103routine to something different every day is really challenging for kids. It really breaks things up and they lose that sense of routine and stability, which is incredibly important for them right now. And I just wanted to also share another big challenge in the Upper Elementary is that we are super fortunate to be able to offer our students a great enrichment program with their electives and PE program. And because we use a combination of middle school staff and outside contractors this year, La Garza, Music for Minors, we have some other outside contractors as well, along with our Taralinda and Central Middle School elective teachers. It's really challenging to be flexible and when and how we can provide those programs. And we have a great system going right now where students who have the capacity to take

104advantage of those programs are really enjoying them. And for some students, they really need that outlet along with everything else in the world right now. And making major changes to our scheduling may cause us to not be able to offer those programs because of the lack of flexibility in staffing them. So that's something else we're taking a close look at. And I'm gonna turn it over to Tom Domer from Central to talk about middle school. Okay, I'm Tom Domer, principal at Central. Thank you, Mindy. So we have this phased in approach here. Much of what's on middle school five phases is not that much different than Upper Elementary and Elementary. So I'm not gonna go through everything. What Dr. Harmeier said was the board wanted to hear what principals thought. So I'm gonna tell you

105what I think. So first of all, I liked what Amber had to say about our work around equity, that we need to go slow to go fast. And I think the same thing applies here. We are educators. Every single person has said, we want our kids back in school. We kind of need students to do our jobs. So we want them back, but we have to take health and safety into account. So every one of these phases is done kind of informed by our health and safety protocols. So I just wanna go through kind of some of the phases here. And first of all, phase one, I think much of this is happening organically within the schools. We do have teachers that are on campus working. We have material distribution going on. And I wanna

106talk about that a little bit just around our thinking around this. We're trying to limit the amount of time kids are staring at a screen. So we can have kids work with eBooks, for example, but then they're staring at a screen even more. So we would like them to actually be book in hand, old fashioned way. So we're having the kids come on campus to pick up the novels that they're reading in their English class or the math that they're working. And we're actually trying to get our students to work with their math books. The way they would in class, when we have algebra tiles that we teach kids with math with, we're having them come pick up those algebra tiles and work with them. So they've got something in hand that looks like the

107classroom as much as possible. So as I said, a lot of this is just happening organically. And we would like that to continue to happen. Phase two, this is what's keeping me up at night, our urgent learners. I believe that distance learning is working. It's working well. We're working really, really hard. We're exhausted. As Dan said, everyone is tired at the end of the day, but it's working. But it's working for maybe 90% of our kids. What I'm worried about is the kids that it's not working for. And those are urgent learners, which we defined earlier. And we need to do something differently for them because status quo is not working. So this is what I've been putting a lot of thought and effort and time into, is how can we address the needs of

108the kids who we are not, that distance learning is not working for. And we can't just say, oh, throw our hands up and say it's not working. We're not gonna do anything about it. These kiddos deserve an education. So we've got to get them back on campus somehow. So however that looks like, we're gonna make it work in phase two. So, and as we said, we define what these kids are. It may be different, but we are going to work very hard to get our urgent learners back on campus and try to meet their needs in a better way. Then phase three, I just wanna talk about this emotional component here. That's another thing I'm very concerned about. At the end of the year in March when we went into distance learning, all of us

109were saying, thank God we know our students. We know these kids, this is gonna work. So now we've got a bunch of kids that we've never met in person. And we were very, very concerned about the social and emotional component. And we know for all kids, that connection with their teacher is so, so, so important. And how are we gonna do that over a Zoom meeting? So it's something that we've been thinking a lot about, but I would have to say that the social emotional component, it's not either or. It's not that they have to be back on campus in order to have social emotional connection. We've done a lot of work on the connections piece, and I think we're doing a pretty good job. I know at Central and Terra Linda, our ASB and

110teachers have been working on how we can make school more fun. More to come on that. We're thinking about Halloween right now. What can we do to make Halloween fun? So we've got some ideas and we're gonna keep working on this. So phase four, I wanna talk about in the consideration piece a little bit more. So because that is kind of more part of the consideration slide. So could we go to the next slide? So I have to say that for me personally, presenting this slide, I'm doing with a great deal of humility. Because back in June, we were tasked with coming up with a plan for reopening schools and to come up with some sort of hybrid model. And I was part of that team that came up with this plan. And we approached

111it in a very can do attitude. This was back in June. As I said, we all wanted our kids back. And I like to think that I really try to stick to my word and we came up with this plan and I presented it to the board. And we said, we can come up with an AB schedule. And the only thing I would say about that is that we were developing this, not having any concept of what opening schools would look like in a global pandemic. And I said, it was like walking in the forest, blindfolded at night, backwards and in heels. Like we didn't know what we were doing. So we came up with a schedule that was a hybrid AB model. And we didn't know what staffing was gonna look like and how

112many kids were gonna come back to school. So there were so many unknowns there. And so for me to be presenting this consideration slide, like I said, I'm doing it with humility. I wish that I could be saying to you, yes, we can bring our kids back and an AB model and that it would be perfect and that all we could do it and keep everyone safe. And there's some things I'm really worried about. The first thing I'm worried about is the connections program. We have 95 students that have enrolled in connections. Up to this point, it hasn't been a problem because basically we're all in connections, this distance learning. If we come back on campus and we have 95 kids and that's for both schools that aren't gonna come back, that means we would

113need to come up with 16 classes for just core academics. Because of the math pathways, we would need 16 different classes. For middle school, middle school teachers are single subject teachers. So that's a large number of teachers we would need to teach the connections program. We don't have the staffing for that. So right now, I cannot figure out a way and we've thought about this a lot as a leadership team and we just can't come up with a way that we could make connections work in middle school. We don't have teachers to teach 16 different classes. So then our hybrid model was the two days on, two days off. So there's some limitations to this that some of these we anticipated and some of them we did not. But I'm just gonna go through them

114quickly with you. So first of all, in that the first bullet under hybrid model two part day on campus, the first one is supervising kids, students in class while the teachers rotate. So the idea here would be in order to limit contact, we would have the students stay in one classroom and the teachers would rotate. The problem with that is while the teachers rotate, the students would be in the classroom by themselves. For me as a middle school principal, the prospect of a bunch of kids in a classroom by themselves is terrifying. So I don't like that idea. And I don't know that we have the staff to be supervising this. Another thing we know about middle school kids is they don't always follow the rules. So the second bullet is that we're worried about

115kids complying with staying six feet apart, wearing their masks or even listening to an adult. It's sort of their jobs as teenagers to push back. And normally that's okay. But given the conditions that again, back to the health and safety, I'm worried about that. Another thing that the third bullet is instructional model two days in person and three days independent. And it equals less student engagement and less time for instruction. To me, this is critical. We really wanna preserve five days of instruction. We've got five days of instruction with distance learning right now. If we went to an AB schedule, basically it would mean some kids were at school and the other kids were in home doing asynchronous learning, which is great. But that's not five days of instruction. And there are certain ways that

116we can get teachers to do maybe record part of their lesson and push it out. But as awesome as our teachers are, they're not magicians and they can't be in two places at one time. They cannot manage distance learning and teach their students at the same time. It's impossible. So in order to preserve five days of teaching in middle school, I really think the distance learning model is the best. Another consideration is our class sizes. We have some class sizes that are 32 or 34 students. We had to given the amount of teachers we have. So if we cut that in half, half is an A schedule, half is a B schedule. We've got classes that potentially could have 17 kids in it with one teacher and maybe a paraeducator. That could be 18 or

11719 people in one room. That concerns me. And then that leads to the next slide where teachers could have up to 130 contacts per week. I just feel like that's unsafe. And that would all be happening under the fact that we have less administrative support. So we have Kristen and I as principal and Megan Vizier as vice principal at both schools. And we're all working very hard, but again, we're not magicians either. We can't be everywhere at once. And that kind of leads me to the next point. If we were to go back to a hybrid level, we would have to completely redo our master schedule, which we did anticipate and we built that into our distance learning, but it would still take a tremendous amount of time. And what we would need to do

118for ingress and egress is to have a staggered start time. So sixth grade would start at a certain time, seventh grade would start at a certain time, eighth grade would start at a certain time. That would be the only way we could get students on campus in a safe way. The problem that that is is again, not a whole new bell schedule, but also for families. I'm concerned about what happens with the family that has a kid in sixth grade and a kid in seventh grade that are starting at different times. This also is a unique challenge for TL, Mariposa and Charter because of the amount of students on that campus, which that's always been a challenge up there. And then there are a lot of moving pieces and I'm concerned about the more moving

119pieces that are out there, the more we compromise health and safety of our students. So again, that's sort of our considerations and I'm hoping that you hear us in this. And that's it. Almost. So our next steps in our engagement process. So at our October 13th staff meetings, we plan to work with our teachers and get their input and ideas and thoughts. And in the same time, our negotiations will begin with the union. And we also are hoping that there will be a COVID testing contract completed so that we can share that we would have the testing available for our staff to help them feel more confident in all of this. And we really can't stress enough that this is just a framework and an outline and that we have a lot of work to

120do in order to get to each phase and each step. We do want to move forward with helping our teachers feel more comfortable and understanding all the PPE that we have, as well as what we need and getting their input. It is critical for the next steps for us. And we wanna continue that staff engagement and begin that collaborative planning, bring our work teams back together and then move from there once the teachers feel that they have a solid understanding and input, move that to our opening up schools committee for some final input and then present a final return to school plan on November 5th with all of that information. That would include what type of hybrid plan that each level would be comfortable with and all of those pieces based on the feedback from

121teachers and also our health pieces. So that is our presentation. We really appreciate your time. We're done, we're ready for discussion. We just really hope that you'll hear that we have put a lot of work and a lot of effort into trying to look at all of our options and making sure that we're taking all of our students and teachers into account during this process. Thank you, Alex. And thank you principals for all you've been doing. They're really doing double duty, leading their staff and their schools in this whole new world of distance learning. And at the same time, having to shift their thinking into a new complete model. And it's hard to shift between these things. I always say there's cognitive dissonance when you're focusing on one thing and you're having to start to

122think about a different approach, even though you might not feel ready or comfortable. And that's what we've been in. And I really appreciate the thoughtfulness our leaders have put into this next step. And I, like Alex said, we are committed to having really meaningful engagement with our teachers and staff over the next few weeks. We are dedicating some time for that. And just as we did in the summer, we brought to you a plan in June and you approved our hybrid plan, our distance learning. We just, we knew we had a dial that we could approach and we approved that plan. And then next step is to sit down and work out the details in a collaborative model with our teachers and our classified staff to make sure that everyone is united on how we

123move forward together. So I'll turn it over to you, Carol, to facilitate discussion. Thanks, Michelle. And I just have got to ask one question off the bat to our principals, all of our principals, including those who didn't present, have you gotten any sleep over the last two weeks? Because clearly you must have been working 24 seven to really put this much time and thought, deep, deep thought and consideration. And it is just really reflected in the level of detail and just the extensiveness and the ways that you were thinking about the priorities for our students, our staff, our campuses. So before I weigh in on the plan at all, I just want to have deep appreciation for that, mirroring what Dr. Harmeier said as well. I see Irene's showing some love as well. Yes, I

124want to check in on public comment. Yeah, we do have five comments. Would you like me to read them now? Yes, that would be great. Okay, there. Okay, from Stacey Wentzel. I appreciate the outstanding efforts made to deliver a high quality distance learning instruction in our district. The staff is doing an excellent job. I am concerned about the request for the teachers to teach on campus before this is needed. I believe the vast majority of the teachers reported not feeling comfortable returning to campus in August due to pandemic for safety reasons. Also, many teachers will have childcare challenges if they return to campus and their own children do not, or if their children have half day schedule. We have an outstanding teaching staff and I feel that it is important to respect their personal challenges

125during this difficult time. The teachers have already demonstrated that they do not need to be on campus to effectively deliver distance learning. Currently, teachers can opt to be on campus and approach that treats teachers as professionals. Secondly, I am concerned that ventilation is not considered one of the top concerns. My understanding is that the longer people are together, the more risky it is. I don't think masks are enough inside. I think the district needs to research outdoor classrooms, entirely outdoor classrooms, not just being outside when possible, extending to Burton Park for Arroyo and Central and other outdoor spaces for other schools. A private school that I know opened is only conducting outdoor classes and only for 45 minutes. I believe they are also testing every four days. I do not think classes should be inside

126until the cases are much lower. I do not see specific requirements around ventilation and measurement of ventilation if classes will be inside, but maybe I'm missing something in the small print. Thank you. Next comment is from Sal Burns. I want to address the board and community about the issue of young children returning to school in person. I understand that there are many issues to settle before this can happen safely, to name a few. The cost of testing, how we transition back and forth if infection happens, how to set up agile classrooms, cleaning and more. I want to acknowledge and thank the board and staff for everything they've done so far. The planning in late spring for a summer return was thorough and distance learning is going as well as can be expected. But the fact

127remains that with the same set of constraints, many other schools, private and public, are either back or returning back within a couple of weeks. And if you include preschools, they've been back for months. They have been able to manage all of the nuanced issues. It's clear that some people are ready for in-person school now, be it teachers or parents ready to send their kids, and some would prefer to wait until there's a vaccine. I have no judgment either way. One thing this virus has taught me is that everyone deserves the space to deal with it in the way that feels best for them and their families. But our elected officials have told us, after extensive consultation from outside experts, that once we are in the red zone, we are safely able to return to in-person

128education. As you all know, we have been in that red zone for just over two weeks. This is an unprecedented time, and the challenge we're all facing is incredibly complex, but the community wants to help. We have professionals across many focus areas living right around the corner from us. I posted late last week in the Moms of San Carlos Facebook group just a few days ago looking to survey the community on what they would like me to cover in this public comment. Within 12 hours, there were opinions from quality infection prevention experts, childcare directors, engineers, marketing executives, and consultants, and we were just scratching the surface. We have a ton of expertise locally, and we're not using it. My proposal is that we get a tight team of people together immediately with a goal of

129assessing the situation, evaluating the largest gaps, consulting with other public schools, and providing recommendations to the board within two to three weeks. Okay, kind of the third comment is from Greg Zilmer. As a teacher in the district, I write to you today to provide my perspective as it relates to return to school. The return to school in person is an issue that has recently become much more personal for me. My sister is a teacher in another state. Although she is pregnant, she was required to return to the classroom recently. Today, she tested positive for COVID. She's exhibiting symptoms as is her husband. As her brother, I can only hope that the disease doesn't progress and that she doesn't suffer any serious long-term effects and that she hasn't already spread it to other more vulnerable members

130of her community. In addition to the very real health concerns that come with a return to in-person learning, as a teacher in the district, I am concerned about the disruption in learning the hybrid model may cause. As teachers, we have established routines and expectations. Students understand what they need to do, when it needs to be done, and how to do it. A change in model would necessitate a new set of routines and expectations. Teachers would once again need to reinvent how we teach our students on the fly. Students and their parents would be left with more asynchronous work. Instead of attending a Zoom where students can ask questions and interact with teachers for hours each day, a vast majority of instruction will happen through videos, apps, and websites. As a parent of a student in

131the district, this feels like a less appealing option. Please understand, I want nothing more than to be able to teach and interact and be with my students. It's why I became a teacher, to be there for that aha moment, to see them laugh uncontrollably at the silliest of things, and to dry their tears in those difficult moments. What I am not in favor of is putting myself, my family, and my community at risk. I also want what is best for those, and eight and nine-year-olds whose faces I get to see on my screen every day. While fully distant learning isn't perfect, I do firmly believe it is the best alternative at this time. Thank you for your consideration. Greg Zilmer, third grade teacher, Britten Acres Elementary. Okay, there are two more comments. And Carol, this

132particular author wanted to know if she could read her comment out loud herself. But I think our policy has been good, just to maintain consistency. So I'll continue to read this comment, okay? All right, this is from, hello, my name is Nancy Silver, and I am the second grade teacher at Heather School. I want the board and our San Carlos families to understand that I truly want to return to teaching in person as soon as possible, and by that mean, as soon as it's safe. I love teaching, there's no question about that. Like other teachers, I chose this path because I care deeply about children and their future. Obviously, distance learning is not what any one of us wants. For me as a teacher, our distance learning program takes significantly more time to implement, and

133it's not nearly as rewarding. Of course, I miss the social interaction. Of course, I miss the kids. And of course, I would never choose remote teaching as a career. I don't like it. There's a lot I don't like right now, but we have to deal with the facts. We know a lot more now than we did back in March when we closed the schools. The fact that COVID is airborne and it's not safe to gather indoors. The fact that children get sick and sometimes die from COVID, and the fact that children can spread COVID to others. The fact that asymptomatic people can spread this disease and sometimes even become super spreaders without knowing they have it. I'm also a parent and I empathize with all of you for having to balance and juggle work with

134the needs of your children. Public health officials are warning that with winter and the regular flu season almost upon us, there will be an upsurge in COVID cases. This puts an added risk to having children and teachers back in the classroom. I trust the scientists. Although I'm very eager to be back in person with my sweet little second graders, I don't want to risk their lives nor my own to do so. Give the scientists time to come up with a vaccine so that we can all go back to the joys of teaching, learning and laughing with our kids in class. We can do this together by respecting the health of one another. Thank you. Okay, and then this is our final comment. Hello, I am a third grade teacher at Britton Acres School. I would

135like to share my thoughts about part of the district's phase in approach to bringing children back to campuses in SCSD. I have many thoughts about each phase, but I will start by addressing only phase one here. Phase one suggests that all teachers should be required to work at their school sites as they continue to deliver instruction virtually to students for a proposed three week long phase. I'm currently working daily from campus. It is working for me. I cannot afford to live in the community where I teach and so I commute to San Carlos from Half Moon Bay and I bring my four year old daughter to Britton Acres Preschool so that I can do my job while she also gets the care that she needs while both of her parents are busy teaching all day

136long. This was a tough decision for my family because we really wish to continue to hunker down and keep our circle tight to keep ourselves and our family and community safe. I am having a good experience working from campus. My site is equipped with a manpower and materials to provide a safe working environment for the few of us who are on campus. I leave my classroom only to use a restroom and occasionally to check my mailbox. I am safely hidden away in my own space and I have access to my own toilet that is used only by myself. In no way are our campuses equipped to deal with the presence of all teachers and staff on campus at one time in a safe way. We are not equipped to handle students on campus either by

137the way, but that may be another email. If this proposed phase one is forced upon us, I will no longer feel comfortable doing my job at my school site. If kids are not present on our school campuses, requiring all staff to report to campus is not essential or advisable. The idea of requiring all staff to come back to campus simply for the sake of requiring it feels like a control move by our administration. It reminds me of something we would expect from our president, a power move with no understandable motive. Is it accountability? Is it control? What I do know is that it is disrespectful. SESD teachers have proven that we are doing this job and doing it well while many of us teach from our homes. This should be enough. Thank you, Deanna Hawkins.

138And that is our last comment on this topic. Thank you, Irene. Let me know if there's any other public comment that comes in and we can share that during our discussion. Dr. Harmer, first I wanna make sure that I understand correctly from you what the board is being asked to provide direction on. So that's my first one. The second is, can we give an update on testing availability with curative and also contact tracing? Those are things that were discussed in our call with County Superintendent Nancy McGee today. Yes, let me start off with testing. We are planning to do a contract under the umbrella of the county contract with curative. So the County Office of Ed has created an umbrella contract for testing for employees. That master contract, we're gonna be able to piggyback. And

139many of us as districts, especially the LCFF districts I was checking in with today are planning to do this because that's our affordable option. We just don't have the funds to do as you saw in our last presentation to do some kind of custom testing program that we pay for completely. So we are in that process. We have filled out our interest form with the County Office already. Nurse Terry has in close contact with the County Office about next steps and Veronica and our team are working on that piece. So it's in progress. And what we are still learning about is what will our frequency, we're gonna learn about what kind of testing frequency or pacing do we want to choose? The state is requiring every 60 days each employee needs to be tested. And

140that's the guideline for having a kind of a staff screening process. The County Office is looking at a cadence of every 30 days. They really think that's more appropriate. We're looking at every two weeks. We just feel that the feedback that we've received from some staff that we have talked about really feels like more frequent testing is gonna be more effective and just more comfort level for staff. So we're going to inquire about having a pace of every two weeks for staff member. What we learned is insurance will cover the testing. So curative is kind of that administrator that will charge people's insurance for us. So they're managing the payment system. That's our agreement with them. So there's very little cost to the district. We will have some administrative costs if people don't have insurance.

141There should be every employee that has insurance that that's a requirement, but sometimes maybe something fell through the cracks. So we will take care of that for those and make sure that they get on to an insurance plan as is required. So we're really optimistic about that. So we're hoping in the next few weeks to have that solid and learn about how to manage it. We'll have to have a facilitator on each site to kind of help organize, print the labels. And it's a system where it's self-administered. So staff will swab the inside of their cheek, add it to their, a little vial, and then make sure the label is stuck on there and it goes in a courier bag and the testing company picks it up. So that's what I've learned so far. I

142have, that's my novice understanding of how this all works. And I would just add to that, Dr. Harmeier, it is PCR testing, which is the gold standard of testing. It's not the antibody test. Yes, thank you. I don't even know what PCR means, but I heard it was PCR testing. So that's a good thing. I just know that's a good thing. So that was a big stumbling block for us, is just having this testing program in place. And I'm a Kaiser person. So I've been to Kaiser and I've been able to get tests because I tell them I'm an educator and I've been able to do that. But some people don't have a Kaiser plan and it's a little, it's been a little more challenging. So this ensures that our staff will have a regular

143ability and a confidence that their peers are also being tested as well. This does not include student testing. That was the first piece. What was the other, the other piece? Contact tracing was covered in, by Claire Cunningham in our call with County Superintendent Nancy McGee. So I can update on that if that's, cause that was a question that came up with trustees in the County. And what Claire shared is that the County Health will be in charge of all the contact tracing for cases that are related on school campuses. It is seen as a extremely high priority because of the risk of outbreak if there is a case on campus. So they've been adding contact tracers. There is a robust communications protocol between County Health and the schools. And there would be absolutely robust contact

144tracing by trained contact tracers that are part of County Health. And that's, so I know that's been an outstanding question that happened to be covered today. And so I wanted to share that because that's something that's come up. There is something to that. That's a big relief because we just didn't have the staff to manage that. We have two nurses. One's gonna be coming on board soon, right? So really we're down to one nurse right now. We're in transition where one is leaving, one's coming on. So that was a real concern for us is how to manage the contact tracing. And we had been hearing from Nancy McGee that there would be some, that would be addressed. So I had some confidence there'd be a solution but I'm glad you heard that today. I missed

145that call today. One, what something else we're looking at too is to make it a little easier to do symptom screening for students and families. We're looking at using an app called Hazel. You heard that in Terry's presentation. It's no cost to us, but that will really ease the burden of making it manageable and easy. And once they're signed up, it's gonna help us. If there's ever a case or a contact, it really helps manage some communication too. The teachers are different though. We have to, we have a contact, we have a screening tool right now. We're using a very simple Google form which is adequate and it meets the requirements. But we are looking at more of an app to make it a little easier and more efficient for teachers to do screening and

146our employees to do screening. So there may be a cost to that, but we're still finding the best approach. And then the other thing that I was wondering if you can speak to just again set the table in terms of process is the process for submitting the plans to the County Office of Ed, the plans, these are the return to school plans. There is no more waiver anymore since we're not in the purple anymore. It's a plan, it has to be approved by the County Office of Ed and by Dr. Morrow, our County Health Officer as well. And so in terms of the plans that you or we are planning on submitting, what is the approach that you think we'll be taking in terms of how much of a plan will we be submitting at

147a time? Will it be for the next phase or the next couple of phases and maybe not looking out farther than that until we kind of have our learning in each one and see what we need to tweak? What do you anticipate? I feel like we should try to turn in a plan as soon as we can when all of our safety measures are clearly defined. So there's two pieces to this plan, all the safety measures and our map and ingress and degress approaches. The principals are working hard on that right now with Mindy Hill and Doug. And I think we have a couple of weeks to go to kind of work on those plans. And part of it is we really need some staff input on those and we just haven't had a lot

148of time with staff. We've been focused on other things. So now is the time to start to engage our staff and we need really input about how to move kids around on campus. So I think we would like to maybe look at, approving a plan from the board with the first couple of phases, which are already things that we can do with that we know we don't need approval on, but I want our plan to include them. Having staff work on campus, most of our staff were already working on campus anyway, that a large portion of them are. And those who do have some childcare issues, we've been providing significant discounts to our childcare program for the staff who need some childcare and some bring their own child. So I think that first phase is

149already in progress, but it's an important phase because we just need everybody back, not just some people. And the second phase is really looking at working with targeted small groups of students, our urgent learners. We didn't need to have a waiver or an approved plan for that, but we want our board to endorse that and approve that. So I would like those first two phases to be really solid because it's where we are. We're not applying for a waiver. This is just where San Carlos can be. Then I think if we look at that as our baseline, as our next step, then give us time to look at then what comes after that. Because I really want our teachers to weigh in with what should the hybrid approach be. We know a lot more now

150than we did in the summertime. And I've really talked to a lot of friends too who have already returned and their hybrid plans were like ours and they've rethought them. And so I want that time. So I think it could be, we don't have to approve the entire plan tonight or even next week or the next week. This is our plan and it's really board directed that we can approve a plan in one phase at a time. And so what I thought tonight, what I felt most comfortable with without having a lot of engagement with staff, we just haven't had that time and opportunity. I felt phase one is appropriate to adopt as our launching point and that we at least have a starting point to have a beginning. And then really start to look

151at the phase two and three together with staff. Can you go into a little bit more detail in terms of phase one and the teaching from the classroom and why that's important and also what that would realistically look like between now and I guess the middle of November? Well, I think with everything else, we want to have everything as kind of a phase in, a ramp up to a completion. And it's our hope that by the end of the first trimester, which is about four weeks from now, that we would have all of our teachers working from campus most of the days. Right now, like I said, a lot of people are, but some people haven't been on campus really at all since the COVID outbreak. And it makes it difficult for them to engage

152with their own learning space and setting it up. And so being in their room will offer some opportunities for them to, first of all, psychologically and physically get comfortable with being in their room. Teachers have their own room, their own space. The second part is it enables them to really engage with their families more by providing materials, hands-on stuff. Like Tom said, we want books in hands with kids. And if a teacher's not there in their room pulling their collections and getting those materials out in the front office, on the table for parents to come by and pick up, then it just doesn't happen. So some of our kids are not really engaging with a lot of hands-on materials. And some teachers are really relying on complete digital access. And we want to start to

153provide more of those hands-on things. It also, when teachers are in their classroom, right now our teachers already have permission and they have the ability to do some one-on-one assessment with kids, small group assessment. We don't have to have approval from the county for that. We already have approval. We also have agreement from our union that teachers could choose to do that right now. So it just gives them that kind of that stamp of approval. Like, okay, we're moving to a next phase. Let's go ahead and start to take some baby steps into engaging in person with kids when you're ready for that. So the hope is that they would start to take advantage of that opportunity to do some assessment when they're ready, as we kind of ramp up to report cards. Because again,

154it's not for four weeks, the end of the trimester, but in the next four weeks, it'll be a good time to get some authentic assessment and some eyes on kids and see how they're doing. So those are some advantages. What it's really doing is it's easing us back in and it's preparing us for future phases when the time is right. And I think as you heard from our principals, we don't want to rush this and the time for that next step needs to be right for each individual school and kind of where we are right now. So I don't want to rush phase two, three and four right now. Okay, so you are looking for the board to give direction on phase one that was presented by each of the kind of the grade level

155principals. Okay, all right, so trustees, Irene, do you have a question? You know, Carol, we in past meetings, we've often kind of, before we dived into discussion on complex topics have often reiterated our values. And I was thinking about how much our community can only uphold high quality education and keep everybody safe if we really have this level of trust with our staff and our union leaders. And I thought maybe you might be able to provide some words and I'm happy to share my thoughts too, but just to kind of ensure that people felt that we are really upholding a level of trust with key partners as we kind of navigate our way through the forest, as you put it. I think our principals really talked about it eloquently that this is kind of like,

156I think of it as a framework for a complex conversation with staff engagement to come in the coming weeks. So I certainly wouldn't want anybody to feel that we're making a plan without them, but Carol, you always have a better way of framing things and so I was on your perspective. I really appreciate that you always start us out with the values, Irene, and you always remind us to ground ourselves in that. And in so many ways, the teachers, the principals started us out that way by really focusing on going to the needs of sites, the principals know their staff, they know their students, they know their communities, and they know the developmental needs of the students that they're serving. As Tom so eloquently put it, and Tom, I really appreciate your frankness and saying,

157listen, I'm gonna tell you what I think. You asked us what principals think, and I'm gonna tell you. Really, really appreciate that. And we know that for so many students, distance learning is going really, really well. And yet there are those students who, for whatever reason, aren't being well-served by it. And so we want to balance these trade-offs between that have to exist within the limitations that we have, the limitations of time, of resources, of the strict guidelines by the county that are there for our health and safety of our staff, the social distancing so that we can't have, our classrooms really can't be more than half full, mask wearing, hygiene, no large gatherings. So we know that these are things that can keep our staff safe. And I think it's also really important to

158root this conversation in the way that the board prioritize health and safety in the summer. That was front and center, and we didn't hesitate. We went out in front of this before we were required to by the state because we saw what the infection level was and we heard from staff and parents how that was making them feel. And we knew that that was really important, an important piece to keep our staff and our families safe. What we have seen over the last eight weeks from an infection standpoint is that it's really dropping dramatically, less than half. Our county health leaders, officials, the state are all signaling that this is an environment with minimal risk when we use the proper safety precautions. And this is one of the reasons why I think proceeding so measuredly,

159so slowly, Tom, I'm not even sure I wanna go slow to go fast. I wanna go slow to go slow and just keep iterating and learning at each step and making sure that at each step, we're not overwhelming our system. We have the infrastructure, we're not encountering any unintended consequences. And so I think consistency, keeping health and safety as a priority. And I think it's also really important to validate all of the concerns and the fears that are out there. Those are really real for people and people are living with them and it's very personal. And I don't minimize that in any way in this and what's weighing heavy on my heart is how do we balance the needs of the students that are not being met? And how can we slowly move towards the

160next right step? And so that's what I'm really asking the board to discuss and I also just wanna say how grateful I am to the principals that they brought a variety of different phases and options and that it looks different from elementary to upper elementary to middle because it really takes into account the developmental needs, the needs of our sites, all of that. So keeping health and safety, being flexible and iterative and going very, very slowly because we wanna make sure that we're keeping those top of mind. I invite any of my other fellow trustees to root us in values as well. This is one question, what's the question before us? Yes, the question before us, which I was getting to is that Dr. Harmeier is asking us to provide direction on phase one, only

161phase one of the plan. The principals have presented the framework for considering future phases and what that might look like and that depth of context I think is extremely helpful. We're not being asked to do anything except for consider phase one tonight. Carol, can I just say just one more thing? I mean, I just wanna acknowledge directly, I think I know I was probably receiving a number of letters from staff feeling very upset that we were having this conversation before October 13th and I just wanna directly say that I think a plan requires the teacher's input and a plan also requires dates. And so I really, this is not splicing words. I really do think that the conversations to be had on October 13th and in the coming weeks actually through October are better served

162when, rather than start from scratch, we've got probably 100 hours worth of work and thinking from our teacher leaders and principals. So this is a good starting point and I'm hoping that we'll have richer conversations on the 13th and beyond because of all the hard work put in and then together as a team, we can come up with a plan. So I just really wanted to acknowledge and I hope that people might be able to perceive it that way and can understand that potentially that the board was simply asking the district leadership knowing how long it takes to kind of hold all these conversations and all the details to be thought of was just to kind of gather thoughts and get it started but not to complete it without our teachers. Thanks Irene, that's a

163really important point and I really appreciate the ways that principals have started to reach out to their staffs to listen. That is incredibly important and engaging and I think it seems like it has been misconstrued as going around a legal process and I don't find that to be the intention, the case or the reality. And so I just wanna thank principals for beginning to engage and for the teachers that have started to provide their input. I deeply appreciate this and I'm assuming that it's really helped provide context for the principals as they are thinking through these phases and I would hope that that type of input would continue in partnership. We're all operating in suboptimal times and systems. There's only so many hours in the day and I know everybody is doing the absolute best

164they can. So I think that's important to acknowledge as well. I guess I'll just build off of that and then maybe ask a question about what we're being asked to decide on tonight. I just wanted to build off of what you just said, Carol, that I truly appreciate the transparency and humility that the principals brought tonight to have a dialogue. This is our only opportunity to dialogue as a team, as a board and hearing from the leadership team tonight was incredibly helpful and I think no one's intent is to, you know. Wendy, can you move a little closer to your microphone? Sorry, thanks and I'll put in my headset if I need to. I mean, we have talked about the importance of stakeholder engagement of all stakeholders in our community. We diligently read every email

165that people are sending us, public comment and we're weighing all of that. So we can't, that dot, anyways, and it's a continuous flow, it's a continuous flow of information. So there's no one stakeholder group that has ownership of that. And I'm just trying to say, let's all come to the table and put on the table what our concerns are, what your fears are, let's hear each other. And I really heard from the leadership group tonight, you know, the humility around what we think we can accomplish for middle school. You know, we didn't have a lot of time back in the spring to think through all the issues. We didn't know all those issues. And so anyways, I just want to say, I think, you know, every time we have this opportunity to be in dialogue

166together, we learn from each other and we're understanding each other better. So I think that's gonna help us as a board help move us along and make the decisions, you know, that we need to make to provide transparency for our families as well, so that they know what to expect. That's what we're trying to do for everyone. So on that, I just had some clarification because having not really been able to digest these phases until tonight, you know, phase one, you know, sets up the other phases. And I guess what I'm having a hard time grappling with that did come up tonight is that we know that distance learning is not serving all of our learners well. And I appreciate the honesty of Tom Doher to say that, that it keeps him up at night.

167And it's what is what keeps me up at night. It's about equity. And when I receive emails from parents, parents of children with special needs, parents of young learners, parents who have left the district because they feel that it is not serving their needs, that is troublesome. It's worrisome to me. So what I wanted to ask is I'm just not really understanding why phase one has to be in place before phase two, which is really addressing the needs of the urgent learners. It's to me, it's a timing issue. And I would just like to get some clarity around, you know, how soon we can submit a plan to the County Office of Ed, that could be just for phase one and phase two. You've said that, Michelle, you asked that question, Carol, but you said

168we're not even ready to submit the plan for two more weeks. And I kind of want to understand why. And- I can start to answer that for you, Wendy. Now phase two really requires some engagement with our teachers because through this first six weeks and through our conferences, we're really beginning to identify the urgent learners. So there's an important process. First, find out who they are. Then, I'm gonna start that. First with urgent learners, we need to find out who they are. And now we have a really good sense of who they are. And that's happening right now. And we're really having engaging and meaningful conversations with parents. Next step is to engage the teachers around, what will it look like? So our plan has to have our, I feel, a clear idea about how

169we're gonna meet the needs of our urgent learners in order to submit it. So as we're working on some of our maps and our infrastructure things, then that work around urgent learners will be that next step. And I want to engage teachers around those conversations. So I think that's the pause. Michelle, can I just add that we had talked also about needing to get our contact tracing and our testing up and running too. We don't want to bring people back to a situation that could be unsafe, right? That was the biggest thing is that health and safety piece. Until those pieces are in place, we really need to make sure that, and then our teachers understand how to go through that process with the testing and hopefully no tracing. And then also then just all

170those procedures, bringing kids at the same time as teachers, it doesn't make sense. The teachers would have to see how they would bring these urgent learners back. And it would take all of us to determine that and at each site. That's one thing is the idea that, because I'm also, Deanna Hawkins in public comment raised the comment about why all teachers need to be back on campus. If for example, I'm just hypothetical, if six through eight remain in distance learning and those kids don't transition on the campus, is it necessary for all the teachers to be back in their classroom? However, if you are considering addressing urgent learners and if assuming that each teacher might need to be working with a small group of their own students on campus, then that to me has a

171rationale. So I guess it does seem like sequential and logical, but I just kind of wanted to understand again, yeah, how you see working with those urgent learners. And if it's just really small pockets, two or three here or there, we don't need to worry about egress at this time. Like we don't need to have everything approved and in place to be able to start with baby steps. So I'm just trying to get a sense of this phase two because I think what's key tonight and really listening to our leaders who are truly our experts is we wanna take incremental steps. We know that step two, we've already been in discussion with our teachers about step two and we have some work to do. So I think that I feel like a solid, what would

172success look like is moving forward with phase one and starting these conversations about how to work in phase two and three. And that's where we need more time with our staff. And just for clarity, are you saying then, because I don't really understand the three weeks after phase one, if phase one ends November 13th, would phase two start right after that? So in our pandemic recovery framework from the county, what they're saying is you should have a minimum of three weeks between phases so that you can get into a routine with whatever you're doing. So right now having all staff on campus, learning the routines, the health and safety routines with all campus, which restrooms to use, those kinds of things are important for our adults to learn. So then the guideline says you should

173wait at least three weeks before you phase in your next steps. And so we would wanna look at a pause or that cushion of time. Michelle, does that mean that after we've done it for three weeks, so hypothetically, if we start in this in two weeks, then it would be three weeks after that? Or is November starting on November 13th, that starts the three weeks that we have to stay in that model, which is it? I think that's for us to decide. If we said everyone was back and then we started counting three weeks, I think then that we have implemented that for three weeks. So I think it just depends on when we reach that goal is having everyone back on campus. And then you implement that for a few weeks and then you

174move into your next stages. So I don't really wanna determine like exactly what the date is to start phase two. I think that's where we need some patience and some time to give us time to work with our staff and make sure our staff, our sites are ready to go. I don't believe we're gonna have our contract with testing in place in the next two weeks. I really think we're gonna work on this. There's training still to go. So I think we need to know that we still have some steps to take before we start to bring kids on campus. Even though they could come on campus for assessment, one-on-one assessments or small groups. Yes, and I think that's based on the feedback of the teachers who are not participating and engaging in those opportunities

175right now, even though they could be. And that speaks to me that they're not comfortable. And so I think we have to prove to our teachers that we have the safety of them in mind and their rooms are ready, the sites are ready. They know how to use the equipment. They know how to move around the campus. There's a big shift. I don't know how many of you work in a business setting, but we have a dozen people in the district office in one big room. And with some of us have an office, we can close off and kind of hide from others, but we're all moving in one space. And so most offices are asking staffs to stagger their weeks. So we've been managing it all summer. And we got more and more comfortable

176in the last couple of months after the smoke finally died down. I mean, that was an impact on us too, because the smoke shut us down even in the district office. So I understand that we don't eat in the lunchroom together anymore. So how do you do your lunch? And if everyone has the same kind of lunch break, how are you gonna get everyone in and out of that lunchroom? So those are little things that make a big difference. And I think that's why what I'm asking for is let's give our adults some time to ramp up, get back into a routine, feel safe and comfortable. And then let's talk about how do we bring some kids on campus? And our principals have been actively working on the urgent learner dilemma since the beginning of

177the school year. And just know there are some strategies in place. There are some interventions already in place. You can provide support for an urgent learner without being on campus too. And we are providing some intervention support through some different strategies for kids who need more right now. Irene. When it comes to phase two, thinking about safety for everybody, I do have different feelings if it's outdoors versus indoors. And so it would be good if you as staff could clarify, can we do phase two with everybody outdoors? And you don't have to have that answer now. I think that's part of the conversations to come. But that would be good to clarify at our next meeting. I think we all know that outdoors is far safer. It is, and I can give you a brief

178update. All of our principals are working on what can outdoor learning look like on their particular campus? What can we do to make it comfortable? So the principals have ideas and they've been working with Mindy. But until we talk to the teachers and say, what does it look like for you? What do you want on your patio? What would help you to feel comfortable in the outdoors? But we haven't had those opportunities for staff to really engage with their principals on campus. And that's another reason why having everyone back gives us those opportunities to do some collaborative work together. Thanks Irene, and thanks Wendy. Neil and Sarah, do you have clarifying questions or thoughts you'd like to share? Do. And I'm conscious of the weight of weighing in on this as a brand new board

179member. I want to, for everyone who sent me an email this week, I read it and I am trying to listen and learn. And I hear there are teachers who really don't want to go back. I hear there are parents who desperately want their kids to go back. I hear that there are kids for whom DL is great. There are some for whom it's really not working. I hear and I'm trying to digest all those things. And as a parent, as a community member, I take them all seriously. Clarifying question I have for you, Michelle, is about the testing. You just said that you thought it would be a couple of weeks before the curative contract was in place. Does that mean that we would be asking teachers to come back for phase one before

180that testing infrastructure and contract is in place? Yeah, that's a good question. I think what we're talking about is ramping this up and have people come back. Right now we already have, testing is not required right now for adults to be on campus. If we were going to have students on campus, we had to have a testing program in place. All right, so we don't plan on having students on campus at first. So we have about four weeks that we would like to have the rest of our staff come onto campus. Like I said, some schools already have half to three quarters of their staff already working on campus. What we're saying is let's continue that progress. And because part of our first agreement with our distance learning MOU with our association gave teachers the

181option to work from home or on campus. It was at their discretion. And now that we're moving into a different plan, we're moving from distance learning plan to an in-person learning plan. And this will be many phases in our new in-person learning or hybrid kind of plan. So this is just that first step. And so we wanna get testing set up and started as soon as possible. The contract I think will take a couple of weeks and that'll be on the agenda on October 22nd. That'll be as soon as we can get that approved by the board. I can go ahead and approve that contract because there's not a cost involved. So as soon as I approve it, we can get started, but you'll see the contract hopefully and activate that on the 22nd. So

182as soon as possible. And Nancy McGee did share today that contract is ready. I think she can send it out. So you could get it tomorrow if you wanted. So that's very actionable, very quickly. Great. And as you said, it doesn't require board approval because there's no cost involved. And folks should also know that the insurance companies cannot deny these claims because teachers and school staff are tier three essential employees. And so therefore, surveillance testing is, mandatory coverage of surveillance testing is mandated by the state. So this is in place. There will not be any cost to the district no matter how frequently we choose to do it. Great. And I think that that's really important to understand. We didn't do a waiver. The waiver required some things that we just weren't prepared for. And

183that was mandatory testing. Because kids were going to come on campus during purple. Right? There was a reason. Now we're in red. So the risk is lower. Testing is not at the same level of requirement, but there's still a requirement for testing. Neil, I'm curious as to what you're thinking. I mean, I guess I try to choose words. I think some just don't ramble. I guess I'll give you the first part of it from a board perspective. So as a board, we need to provide direction. Right? That way staff can do all the things that they need to do. If this board is interested in phasing in, in-person learning, then we need to give the district to tell them that we need to do this and they need to go do it. The details, the

184devil's in the details, but they're not going to be worked out until we provide direction. That's just the simple matter. So we're searching for answers we do not have, but we're asking the district to collaborate to do it, which is mandatory, but it's the board's decision on how this works to provide direction. And then the details are going to be worked out between the collaboration of the district, the union and staff, like we've done always. I appreciate the honesty, the candidness of the principals. The principals, I appreciate the honesty and candidness of staff and their concerns. I empathize with their concerns. I empathize with their concerns because, as a county employee myself, I am asked to go to work when I need to. That involves a jail population. It is not stable. It is not

185a bubble. It is not a statement cohort. It's random people at court that you meet and go and hang out. So exposure rates are high. And I get the fear because, as I always tell my family, is that if someone's going to be exposed, it's going to be me and my group of friends. That's just the reality of the situation we're working. On that flip side, I don't get tested. I wasn't provided PPE, I wasn't provided masks. I was provided the guidance of the state and everyone else. So, I only mentioned that to say that, we got to work through things together and collaborate to get the best results for everyone. What was frustrating is that everyone's talked about how hard they worked, but we seem no closer to collaboration now than we were on

186June 18th when we made the first decision. So it's hard to provide guidance or make the best decision for anyone where that's just where I feel. So, I don't know, that's my thoughts. Hey, Neil, my response to kind of your providing direction and you have to ask yourself the question of like, where are we going? I think you said something about like, moving towards like in-person learning. I think that for grades four through eight, as I listened to our educators and the case they made, my perspective is that our students are right now best served with this distance learning. And I don't see any rush at all until we, I do not believe that a hybrid model with like two days of instruction is superior to the distance learning plan that we have in place

187for grades four through eight. So I think the reason we're going through moving slow, going slow to go slow and taking all these baby steps is because we know that it would be tough for our kinders through third graders and urgent learners to be in distance learning mode for another 12 months. I mean, you know what I mean? That just seems like really tough to hoe and we got to figure out what are the baby steps to make it better for that population. I just wanted to put my personal point of view out there, just- Sure. I mean, I guess maybe I don't know where something may have gone wrong along the lines. At no point in time did everything need to flip the switch and bring everyone back, right? I'll give you my kind

188of general idea and plan and general thoughts. If you look at the analysis of people who emailed us about the struggles, right? It's been a primary group. Hans' survey said that as well. It's younger students, K ones, maybe some twos, are the ones that are difficult, right? So those are the people that struggle because you're having to teach, which I'm completely not qualified for. And I think a lot of people would probably fall in my boat as well. On top of trying to get them to enjoy learning, have connectivity to a classroom, to build the foundation blocks for the future. That's from at least my perspective of everything I've gotten, the biggest struggle. And it's also seems to be where I think most people's focus is, right? On trying to build back from that small

189point. Even if you're looking at our neighboring districts who have come back, is that they've started with kinders and firsts and they're building up toward everyone else. All of the different issues that have been discussed tonight by the principals are exactly what I would agree with you, is that I don't think, we're just phrasing it differently, is it has nothing to do with, I think you need to start building it in. It's just you need to have a plan to build up to where you wanna go. Distance learning works better for older kids. Distance learning works better for advanced students. It's just the way it is, from at least my observation. It works incredibly well and people are doing Herculean efforts to help every student out. There are gaps and there's holes that I don't

190believe it can address, which is, and I'm not asking us to, like, I guess I'm not asking us to flip the switch and build back. And I'm not saying that we need to figure out middle school at the same time we figure out our youngest and urgent learners. That's not my ask. I don't think that's ever been my ask. I agree with your point that there are far more complications to certain campuses than everything else. So I get it. Like, I'm not saying that, but I mean, the question to me was, what do we want or what are my thoughts? Those are my thoughts. Those are my frustrations. If the general question is, do we think we, if the question to us tonight is should we phase back, have staff come to campus? If that's

191what's gonna help us figure out those other aspects to how you move around a campus, to how you keep people there and safe to have that conversation, if that's what we need to do, then I guess that's what we need to do. I mean, that's what the question is before us. So that doesn't necessarily help anything, but I think it clarifies, hopefully it clarifies my stance. I know, Neil, I think that does, I think what you're saying really does clarify a lot because it's the first domino. And if you don't push over the first domino, the rest aren't gonna come. We're just spacing these dominoes really far apart and giving ourselves lots of time. As Dr. Harmeier said, we wanna have the testing in place. We wanna make sure that having all of our adults

192on campus works first. We wanna make sure the restroom system works. We wanna make sure all of those things work. We want teachers to be able to give input onto what their outdoor space looks like. There's just a lot that can happen when we bring adults back to campus in a safe way. So I do think that that was a helpful framing of it, Neil. Irene, I just wanted to just clarify a comment that you made. When you said you don't see a need to have middle schools in hybrid, did you mean also the urgent learners, bringing back the urgent learners, or you just talked about phase four? I did not mean that, I meant phase four. And I really appreciate the thinking in phase three of trying to incorporate some SEL outside of the

193core subjects. I found that a very thoughtful scaffolding and prioritization of bringing staff back first and really getting it right with the adults in a lower risk way, and then urgent learners, and then SEL, and then hybrid. And I too, I deeply respect the input of our upper elementary and our middle school principals and their perspective that this is not hybrid, two days hybrid is not gonna be the most effective, it's not gonna be as effective as five days distance learning. Developmentally, those kids can, they're being served by distance learning. And if we have systems in place to support our urgent learners and can bring kids on campus for SEL, then that is the hybrid that we need, not a two day hybrid. So I'm very much in favor of plans that consider this type

194of differentiation between our different school levels, knowing that we're not approving anything and they just phases two through five right now, but I just wanted to provide that feedback and gratitude for staff on that. And then I think a question for Leah, if she is still her, is she still unmuted? For you, I think, could you speak to a second, speak a second to the trade-offs that you were weighing and your staff was weighing when you were thinking about what students would gain by being on campus two days a week in stage four? Yeah, I don't know even if it would look like a two day a week model, but what I was speaking to is the fact that, and I think Tom brought this up too, is that teachers can't be in two places

195at once. They can't be teaching distance learning and attend to the students in person at the same time. So they have to prioritize that. And it makes sense to prioritize the students that they're working with in person. And so naturally I think there's a compromise with the balance of the distance learning, whether that's synchronous learning or asynchronous learning. It's just a lot to ask of primary teachers to try and balance all of that. So there has to be a give at some point and we really need teacher input to see where that priority really needs to fall and how we meet the needs of their students in the best way. So really it's just to say that we can't have the amount of face time we're having now virtually and the support that they're giving

196with asynchronous learning in terms of office hours, et cetera, and phase in a hybrid model, whatever that looks like. Thank you so much for explaining that. So it really sounds like that phase four, that's just going to be heavily reliant on staff input and kind of a design process to really look at what is best. So that's very, very undetermined at this point, but knowing that that's kind of the direction that ultimately we think will serve students best, but again, it's undetermined. Okay, thanks. So with the request from Dr. Harmeier in terms of what will allow us to move forward, I'd like to understand from trustees if there is support with moving forward with only phase one of these draft phases that was presented tonight. And if there's any specificity or anything that you would

197need in order to move forward with that. Can I just ask one question or just one thought I wanna put out there might be a little provocative and I know what the consequences of this are, but I think this framework is very thoughtful for all the reasons that have been stated. So I won't restate that, but top most in my mind is also preservation of relationships with our educators as well. And I'm wondering if people might just feel better if we made this approval at our next meeting on October 22nd and I don't know what the governing team feels about that, but I just wanted to put that out as another option for us to consider as we think about short-term and long-term. I guess just quickly, the reason I'd be opposed to that is

198that there's a negotiation schedule for the 13th. We don't provide them guidance for what to talk about and have a plan, then we're wasting opportunities. Irene, I can understand where you're coming from and how time to sit with something can help. So Dr. Harmeier, I'm wondering in terms of how this phase in phase one looks like. What I heard from you, it wouldn't be everybody is returning to classrooms five days a week starting tomorrow or Monday, for example. It's actually a gradual process over the next four weeks as people become more comfortable and find support for whatever types of childcare and transportation and so forth. I feel like that's why we said, let's look at a four week ramp up to this. So if the board wants to hold off and take action, I think

199I still have clear direction on what our next steps are in collaboration with teachers, regardless. So yeah, I think the key is this has really pushed us to get that return to school plan really solidly in place and that's our county approval process. So I think that's a big part of our work that was introduced to you tonight. And I think it places accountability on us as a team to make sure our sites are ready, our health and safety procedures are ready to go. That really is the basis of the plan. And then the part of the plan that has to be in there in order for us to get some approval, next steps for kids on campus is to have the incremental steps of students coming on campus defined. And we know that's gonna

200take at least a few weeks or several weeks. So I'm comfortable either taking action tonight and saying this is officially the first phase and I'm also comfortable with doing that on the 22nd. And either way I think is fine. I think we're at least have started our conversation we've made some progress. So I think either way, whatever the board is most comfortable with. I'll just chime in with a couple observations that Dr. Heimer you've said that it's important for and Carol you've reiterated it, that it's important for the adults to feel comfortable on the campus, learn the routines, start to do the testing, learn that routine as well. So I mean, that's inevitable. So I don't see that by delaying approval of phase one that phase one is gonna look any different. I mean, I

201think phase one is an important first step. And my other sort of input on it concern is that by delaying us saying, go forward with phase one, this is a good part of the first step of the framework is that then does that mean phase two then doesn't start until, I don't know, mid December? I don't know, it's very unclear for me you know, how much after the first phase we can start phase two. And I frankly don't wanna delay phase two any more than we have to. Obviously we need that the testing is huge and we've talked about that tonight. Like we need to get that into place and have the adults be able to do that and feel comfortable on campus with the testing to ensure the safety. So for me, I think

202this phase one is, you know, it's obviously can't skip that step. So we might as well get it started. Thanks Wendy, I think you pretty much summed up my feelings and I also wanna point out that no matter what we do, there will be people that are highly dissatisfied with it. And that is just the world we're living in. And no matter what decision we make, we're not gonna be able to make everybody happy. And so I do see a benefit in putting a stake in the ground and saying, this is the direction that we're moving in. We feel it as the indicators and we have the scaffolding in place to do this safely. And this is such a small step that we will discover from it what we need to know in order to

203pivot where we need to. I think it's really important to actually take action on this. Thanks for that conversation. And thanks for raising that Irene. I appreciate that. And I just wanna say too, I don't think we would, I don't know, I think we always have to survey the conditions and survey the environment. And based on our conversation last week, which was very informative about our options for testing and contact tracing, and then knowing that the county, thank goodness, has curative, has the contract, it's not gonna cost us half a million dollars. Thank goodness we have found a way. And I would also like to comment that we know that in California right now that the transmission rate, the positivity rate is 2.6%, it's going down. We're in a much better place than we were

204in June as far as the trajectory. And our conditions, I honestly feel like we need to seize the moment. We have the right conditions right now to take some steps and to learn from it and learn if there are more needs around bathrooms or sanitation, whatnot. Like we need to identify any gaps before we bring kids on campus. So I have appreciated Dr. Harmeier, like how hard your staff is working to try and find the solutions. And now we have some real solutions in front of us in terms of providing the health and safety for staff. So that makes me feel much more confident than we were four to six weeks ago. Sarah, would you like to weigh in? Do you have any thoughts? I think, I mean, I think it's clear that at whatever

205point we want to start to bring students back, the teachers will have needed time to get used to being on campus and getting comfortable with the procedures and the space and all of that. So I think just in terms of the phasing of this process, that having the teachers back on campus without kids for a while absolutely makes sense because it seems like it would just be a recipe for disaster to have everybody returning to campus brand new at once. I am hesitant because of what Irene raised about kind of the sense of distrust that there is and that this is a really challenging time and a really challenging conversation, even when there is a high level of trust. So that is weighing on me. And I want to move ahead. I want the, I

206think it makes sense for the principals and the teachers to begin talking about what that return for the teachers to campus looks like. But I guess I'm not sure I'm totally clear really on the distinction between us approving, giving directions to yes, have that conversation and figure out how that's going to work. Is that what we're saying? Or we're saying tonight we would be directing the staff to return to campus. Do you understand the distinction of what I'm asking? I think it's a conversation that it's clear that needs to be had because that is the first step to this process, however long it takes, however slow, whenever it happens. But in terms of the direction that we're being asked to give, I feel a little hesitant to make the vote to direct teachers to return

207back to campus immediately without some more conversation. That's how I'm feeling about it. With that more conversation with teachers? Yes. For about phase one or about the later phase. I mean, if it's something that would be done over four weeks, what does that mean? Does that mean that the teachers, do the staff sort of determines at what point each teacher feels ready to make that transition? Or what is that exactly? What is a phased in approach to phase one mean? And are we, we're being asked to kick off that phase or we're being asked to direct that conversation about that phase kicks off? Am I splitting hairs? I think I can help clarify. I think as a board right now, what I'm asking for is to understand we have a new approach to a plan.

208We have a new plan and the phase one is proposed. And once you approve that piece, then I work with staff to implement and move forward. So you provide direction and then we work with staff to work out all those nuts and bolts. So that does not need to be done here in public in this kind of conversation. Those things have a time and place for that to happen. And that's what happens. The board makes decisions and then we discuss the impacts of their decisions through a process. And so we just kind of need the kind of the green light to go ahead and start making these discussions. And we've really talked with principals about how to do this and how to work with individuals and how to ease people back in, help them out.

209Everyone has unique situations. Some people have daycare and children. And we've really talked about how principals can really work individually with their teachers and support them through that transition. It's not gonna be a kind of a directive like immediately you must report to work on Monday. That's not what we're talking about. So that's why we wanna phase in and ramp this up. And the goal is by the end of trimester one, we've got people back on campus most days of the week. And I think that's a reasonable first step. I am perfectly fine with that to go forward with phase one. I think it makes a lot of sense. And I think you're just hearing as the principals already stated that to really engage the staff in October for, I think it's really the future

210phases. And how does that look where you really want that rich conversation? And kind of to Irene's point, I wouldn't say we have a plan as I don't know which principals that we have a framework of a plan. And so I don't wanna overstate how detailed and how baked this is. This is a framework and we wanna fill in the gaps in partnership with our principals and our teachers and our classified and our custodial staff and everybody contributing to this. Okay, so I'm hearing support to approve the phase one of the draft phases of reopening. And so Michelle, I'll call for a motion to approve that so that you have an official direction from the board. Yes. All right, is there a motion to approve phase one of the draft phases of reopening framework? Move

211to approve phase one. Thank you, Neil. I second. Thank you, Wendy. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? I think that was five zero, just making sure. Okay, the motion carries five to zero. Thank you everybody for your contributions. Thank you, especially to our principals, the presenters and the rest of the principal team. Just incredibly thoughtful and innovative work. And I just really support the individualized approach to looking at the needs of each level of our students developmentally and not doing a broad brush across the entire TK to eight district. So thank you very much, very much appreciate that. And yes, lots of gratitude. Okay, we are moving on to number nine, agenda setting. As always, we just have the governance calendar year attached for Sarah. Dr. Harmer may

212have gone over this already with you, but we can go over that calendar later with you to kind of fill you in on the process and the cadence. Was there anything that was identified at this meeting or anything else that we're gonna be bringing back? I know October 22nd, we are, what is October 22nd? Cause we're not doing, we aren't doing a, oh, we're doing, we are bringing back kind of some budget considerations, no decisions, but Dr. Harmer is gonna share some needs that are emerging so that the trustees can keep them in mind for when we talk about first interim, which will be, those conversations will begin a little earlier, we're gonna start in the beginning of November with that. And so we can take that into consideration how to prioritize some of the

213emerging budget needs that we're seeing. Yes, and to layer on that, we're going to have our first quarterly report from enterprise that impacts budget, especially this year, next year. Layering that is our annual staff report. And those things all tie in very closely to our budget conversation. So all of those things are, it's really truly a budget focused meeting on the 22nd. So we can really be thoughtful and strategic with the funds that we have, because we again are planning for three years out and making sure, and with so much uncertainty with the state level and the federal budget situation, we've got to be very cautious. So I think that's gonna be a key. So we will start our public meeting at 5.30 on October 22nd to build a little bit more time for more

214of a study discussion amongst the board, facilitated by our CFO, Christine, to really help you understand where are we now compared to August? What are some things to consider? And let's do some prioritizing. Is that, that's October 22nd or is that gonna be November 5th? October 22nd is the really studying as much as we can. And then I think November 5th is when you should be making some decisions, but so that we can prepare the first interim report for December 3rd. Okay, are there any other items that trustees would like to be adding to future agendas? I think maybe in a month or so, maybe an update on the DEI work, or are we just gonna leave that as a standing item at every meeting so we can kind of check in and hear the

215updates? Yeah, I'd love to be able to do that. Even if it's an information item, just to keep informed. Okay, so that'll be it. Can I ask about the, I don't know if this is where this would be on the governance planning. It's around the opening of schools task force. Like that was something that we had built in as part of our process in the spring. And so. If you notice Wendy, at the end of the presentation, the principals had kind of a draft timeline. So kind of take a look at that last slide and that we will integrate some feedback and reflection from our opening up schools group. When we do have a more solid plan where we want to start to get some broader input on that plan. First work is with our

216teachers and our principals and then broader work with the broader committee. But definitely we are building that in. One of this is the right place to comment on it because there was a public comment tonight and I missed who actually introduced the public comment. Wendy, I wanna be careful because we really can't discuss public comment. And I just wanna be sensitive to that that we don't have a dialogue with public comment. If you can just be general, that would be helpful. And I can always talk offline too as well. I guess what I wanted. I mean, this is a thought that I had had before and it was around the opening up schools task force is whether or not we want to have a couple of things. Because that was so large, thinking of, do

217we reorganize that by school site, like K3, four, five, six, eight. So have groups of people, stakeholders around that. But then, yeah, yeah. Is this a topic that you're asking to add to a board's future discussion is how to structure the opening up school committee? Yeah, and it's also, yes. And so I was wondering like where that falls. I mean, I was looking at this calendar of what we're planning to talk about. I don't know. So it sounds like maybe including that structuring of the opening up schools committee, Dr. Harmeier, probably could be included as part of the next discussion we have on return to school planning. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Okay, thanks. Because I just had some other ideas around that. So yeah, we don't need to go into the weeds

218on it, but I'm wondering. And you can feel free to give feedback to Dr. Harmeier offline. Okay. I think board members, right, that are part of our opening up schools group, was it Wynne and Irene? Yeah. So the three of us can do some little planning together and we'll engage in, since we are all part of that committee, have that further up discussion. I'd really appreciate that. Okay, super, thanks. Okay, anything else under future agenda items? All right, item 10A, board member comments. Are there any board member comments tonight? I'll just give one brief one. It's been, I think, suggested in a lot of emails or comments we've gotten that I think sometimes, you know, if the board either disagrees with an opinion or a direction of someone that we're either tone deaf or deaf

219or don't listen to their comments or thoughts. You know, I can't speak for everyone. I can speak for myself is I put lots of thought and time and effort to try to get the best we can for this district to achieve. I think what's best for most people, we can't please everyone, right? I live in a world where if, you know, it seems like everyone's unhappy, then we're doing a job because that just seems to be where you always land on trying to, you know, give someone everything, something. So, you know, when I say this to the community, I mean it in the sense of a disagreement I may have about direction doesn't mean I don't hear you, doesn't mean I don't feel you, doesn't mean I don't get your opinion. It just, you know,

220there are many things that I do that are outside of these meetings and other meetings and other education, other than what I do to try to make the best decisions. You know, I always strive as a leader to make sure people understand my point and why I'm in there. And I'm always happy to talk offline with anyone who ever wants to have it about why I got to those decisions and how I get there, no matter what your position or parent or staff or anyone in this district may be to hear your point. Email is not the greatest form of communication, but it seems to be the easiest form of communication these days. But it's always something I like to say in times like this, given the fact of, you know, everyone's frustrated, the tone

221comes out often, but we're all working hard to try to achieve what's best for kids, right? The ones that don't email us, the ones that aren't present at the meetings, the ones that hopefully are asleep, unless you're my children who continue to be on my Zooms. So I always mention that at times like this, just as a reminder of the work we put in. Thank you, Neil. I'd like to make a comment on a theme that's come up sometimes in emails, sometimes in public comment, which is if the board isn't meeting in public, then why are we thinking about going back to school? And I think it's just really important to reflect on the structure of board meetings. In order for the board to meet in public, we must let the public in. And as

222anybody that can see from how many people are on the Zoom, you know, we are regularly having over 100 people on Zoom for our public and our meetings. This is a way that we can accommodate 100 people, not just five board members, but 100 members of the public for our board meetings. The reason we are not meeting in public is that would be against the county health guidelines right now. So it is auspicious to draw parallels between the two. I would be more than happy to meet in public if it was allowed, but it's not. So not to mention the public then not being able to participate. So I just wanted to put that out there as something that I get questioned a lot. And I don't know if people are saying it sarcastically or

223off the cuff, or if they're serious about it. And if they are serious, then I do take their questions seriously. And I want people to know that's why. Any other board member comments? Yeah. Oh, go Wendy. That was me. Perhaps I should have said this earlier when I was sworn in, but I did just wanna say thank you to you all for my fellow trustees for this opportunity to serve with you. I have a lot of respect for all of you and the tough decisions that you have made and are making. And I also have a lot of respect for Dr. Harmeyer and her staff. And I'm just really honored to be a part of this governance team and to always be trying to do what is best for our kids and our community. And

224like Neil said, I take all of the comments that I'm getting seriously and I will continue to do that. I commit to doing that as part of this role. And I also, I don't know if they are on, given how late it is, but I wanted to say thanks to the other candidates who are being considered. We got to know each other a little bit in the breakout room during the interview process. And they were all very committed to making San Carlos the best community and the best schools that they can be. And I hope that they will continue to stay in touch and to continue to be involved. And I guess the last thing I wanted to say was just that part of what I'm looking forward to in this role is meeting people

225that I wouldn't otherwise cross paths with or hearing perspectives that I might not otherwise hear. And I know that the process of doing so looks different right now, given the pandemic, but that is something that I want to do as a trustee. And I hope that people will reach out and I want to listen and learn from anyone who wants to talk. I just wanted to say with such a deep thanks to kind of like our principals, not only for like the incredibly thoughtful plan that they developed in conjunction from all their years of experience, but just all summer, this entire fall, leading your staff and teachers. I mean, we're kind of reinventing school. It's exhausting, it's tiring. This staff is doing an amazing job. And I hope that everybody is just kind of looking

226out for their own mental health and wellbeing. And I feel like everybody should be finding a buddy and holding each other to account that you are getting a nap or going to the beach or reading a book over the weekend, but let's all please look out for one another. I'll just build on what Irene said. I think coming into this meeting tonight, I was thinking about how we can look back as we did last week at the last meeting and celebrate how hard and what effort our staff had been putting in around distance learning to make it work for our kids. And so we saw that feedback that it's not 100%, but it's working pretty well. But what I wanna say is it's the social emotional part that we talked about at the very beginning.

227It's one of our core principles and values, the whole child, social, emotional health. And so I just wanted to say too that we need to give each other grace and we need to find that time to connect and go do yoga, go do meditation, something that will help you to center and just feel better. So thanks for all your hard work. And I like the idea Irene just said about having a buddy. And I'm just gonna throw this out there. I have said to Dr. Harmeier, if there's any way that board members can connect with principals or staff, we had talked about that as an idea. I don't know how often you're having meetings, but we wanna listen, we wanna know that we, we want you to know that we are trying to listen and

228we read emails, but if there's any other way that we can find that connection, I just wanna put that out there because I think with my own small staff and team in the nonprofit I work with, we're doing even what Irene just said, like just finding a buddy and finding a time to just connect with people because you're so busy just trying to get those tasks done that you forget that you need that connection. So any way that we can help do that as a team this year, because it's different, we can't go to your school necessarily. Maybe we can once testing is happening and maybe we can. So I'll just throw that out there because I just want you to know how much we appreciate you all and we miss you too. Thank you,

229trustees. All right, superintendent comments, Dr. Harmeier. I'd like to really thank our principals and for their presentation and their real leadership. We're being asked, we're asking them to do really hard things right now. And just like they are helping their teachers to do really hard things right now. And my goal is just to continue to navigate the best I can. There's no perfect way to start having a conversation nobody wants to have. And at the same time, we have to start making plans. And I know that's uncomfortable, but I am making my best effort to collaborate, engage meaningfully with people, really listen and build in process so people can have input in the time that we have, which is really restricted. So I'm gonna continue to do my best. And I feel like when I

230talk to anyone, I am representing everybody in our system. I'm representing the parents of our district, the teachers of our district, the kids, the administrators. I really have to look at everybody's interests and everybody's needs and really balance those. And it's not easy. And I'm committing to continue to do the best I can to help bring everyone together. We need to stay united in a climate that is intentionally trying to divide us. And I'm not falling for that. I want us to work collaboratively. And I have shown nothing but collaboration with our associations and working groups. And I will continue to do that because it's just, I'm not going to take that kind of a road where we don't need to be in a battle. We are gonna work together even when it's uncomfortable, we

231will work together and we will figure it out. And look what we've already achieved. So I wanna thank all of our teachers, every single teacher for what you're doing right now. And we'll keep talking. We'll keep working through things even when it's uncomfortable. And I appreciate the relationships our principals have with their teachers and that trust that they have in each other too. I wanna thank you, Pam, for acknowledging Lynn Riley tonight. And it's very difficult to experience a loss in our staff. And we all went through that recently and that was really hard. And that's just another weight that we all bear and have to manage those emotions. So thank you, Pam, for beautifully recognizing Lynn tonight. And also thank you to the board for starting this journey about equity and diversity and inclusion.

232I'm excited about the work ahead. Even though there's so much work going on, I'm excited and looking forward to what that next step will be. So I thank you and we'll bring more updates to you each meeting. So thank you, everyone. Thank you, Dr. Harmeier. All right, I'm announcing that the board is going to adjourn to closed session. Irene, is there any public comment on closed session items? I'll give you a second to open it up. Dr. Harmeier has sent the link in our emails to the closed session Zoom. So Sarah, what we do is leave this- No comment. No comment, okay. Sarah, what we do is leave this Zoom go into a closed session Zoom. Okay, so since there is no public comment on closed session items, I'm gonna adjourn us to closed session.

233Let's take a five minute bio break and we'll meet back on the closed session Zoom at 10 17. And then I will come back out after closed session to report out. Thank you, everybody. Yay, I'm unmuted now. Okay, we are recording. All right, I am calling us back into session from closed session. The board has nothing to report out from closed session. I am adjourning the meeting at 11 33. Good night, everybody. And thank you so much to Alejandro and Veronica. You're welcome. You're welcome, good night. Good night. Night.