001in the school board for the district school district of america in order and uh welcome you all here um we're going to start out uh with open session consent agenda items not who had that or i think it's just the agenda and the minutes from our last meeting yeah but john 10 minutes and the agenda is uh to be approved but minutes we're still working on since we had half the time we usually have okay so just the agenda so it's just tonight's agenda yep just tonight make a motion that we proved tonight's agenda all right in the second second jar all those in favor aye aye aye opposed no okay and now we'll move to our community comments uh section i like to read that uh we're glad that you're interested in the school
002district of amory for your educational issues your input may be very beneficial to the development of appropriate educational programs you may address the board during the community comments time on the agenda amy school district residents and district employees may address the board at the discretion of the presiding board member in order for the meeting to flow smoothly we would appreciate that the following guidelines be followed by anyone wishing to address the board of education please limit comments or suggestions to five minutes or less comments and suggestions related to the school district operation are welcome personal criticism of members of the board of education or employees of the school school district is out of order please stand to be recognized and after being recognized please give your name and address for the record the board normally
003receives citizen input and does not respond or debate if there is a need for an answer or response to a concern or issue the district administrator or one of the other administrators will get back to you within the next week if your concern requires board action it may be placed on the agenda of a future board meeting uh first one up is scott carny yeah please come up to the microphone hi this is the first time ever this first time i've ever been here so i don't know all the rules or whatever but i got like five minutes i'm 220 south street west deer park wisconsin and my daughter's going to the elementary school and i have some con i have some concerns about um i've heard some ideas that you guys are buying books
004that kind of make the homosexual agenda look more appealing to young children and that concerns me a lot being that people that follow that agenda and that lifestyle die 20 to 30 years young younger than they normally would have and i don't want my daughter desensitized to think that it's just okay to go do something that's going to cause her to die 20 to 30 years early and not only my kids but other kids too that's one of my concerns and also i think it's too young for elementary students to have to deal with these issues i think these issues should be dealt with when kids can just think for themselves when they get to be you know maybe in high school or something and when you do if you do address it in high
005school i think it would be better if you just gave a full disclosure of the dangers of such lifestyle if so if you just tell people it's okay and people can be like that that's fine but it's not fine if you're not going to disclose the danger isn't relating to that when you buy a pack of cigarettes what does it say in there it says the surgeon general says this is hazardous to your health where's your disclosures i want to see the disclosures and i want that to go to the students in high school if you do address these issues the critical race theory i don't really think that pertains to our community i've never seen black people discriminated against here i don't know why that has to be pushed i think it's actually discriminating
006against white people trying to make them feel bad and i don't want my little daughter thinking she's bad because she's got a white skin that's that's racist so i would assume that was cancelled and taken out of our school thank you next is joseph beercat joseph your camp blackberry township i wanted to discuss and i was just hoping well first of all i want to thank you for not letting us be somerset i think that's a big win for us and providing us with a plan so that we can see it and especially with you know i was looking at some of the verbiage and the opportunity at normalcy that we want to get back to thank you for that the other aspect here that i want to speak about is hopefully the revisiting of
007some of the curriculum and i want to read the next uh an excerpt from dear martin and i'll start it off where justice is uh already pulled out of a car attempting to help a friend of his who's extremely intoxicated uh placing her in the backseat of the car so that she wouldn't drive impaired and this is where the cop already pulls him out handcuffs it hits him mellows drunk beyond belief in the back seat of a car she fully intended to drive yet just is the one in handcuffs the cop shoves him to the ground beside the police cruiser as he asked if justice understands his rights justice doesn't remember hearing any rights but he but his ears had been ringing from the two blows to the head so maybe he missed them he
008swallows more blood officer this is a big misunder he starts to say but he doesn't get finished because the officer hits him in the face don't you say s-h-i-t to me you son of a b-i-t-c-h i knew your punk ass was up to no good when i saw you walking down the road with that gd hood on so the hood was a bad idea earbuds too probably wouldn't have noticed he was being trailered without them but officer i keep your mouth shut the cop squats to get right in justice's face i know you're kind punks like you wander the streets of nice neighborhoods searching for prey just couldn't resist a pretty white girl who locked her keys in her car could you except this doesn't make sense if mel had locked her keys in the
009car just wouldn't have been able to get her inside would he justus finds the officer's nameplate castillo it reads though the guy looks regular like a regular white dude mama told him how to handle this type of situation though he must admit he never expected to actually need the advice be respectful keep your anger in check make sure the police can see your hands though it's impossible right now officer castillo [Music] no disrespect i told your punk ass to shut the up [Music] do i need to go further please not i'm not even sure what the point is i don't think we i mean i'd like for you to explain the point but i don't think we need this kind of language being spelled out dr martin was on your curriculum for our our students
010or sorry and it's it's um it's dear martin sorry dear martin correct the other one i took the time to read was all american boys and it really goes over the racial divide social injustices talks about white privilege and again police brutality the new york times bestselling novel two teens one black one white grappling with repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school their community and ultimately their country bitterly divided by racial tension a bag of chips that's all 16 year old rashad was looking for at the corner bodega what he finds instead is a fist happy cop paul galluzzo who mistakes rashad's for a shoplifter mistakes rashad's pleadings that he stole nothing for belligerence makes mistakes rashad's resistance to lead the bodega as resisting arrest mistakes rajad rashad's every flinch that every
011punch the cop throws has further resistance refusal to stay still as ordered but how can you stay still when someone is pounding your face in the pavement so i did some research on the authors just some of the things and again that i wanted to address were many of the things that were brought up here and any of the things that you're already thinking one of the authors stated that it's it's bringing up conversations around white privilege racial profiling fear and discrimination racism poverty he made the and i will quote this the problem is about white people not talking about white people about whiteness enough i will not tolerate racism and as a law enforcement officer of 20 years i put days in our schools to earn the trust and respect of our students and
012staff and i'm not okay with what happened to george floyd but this anti-police sentiment has to stop somewhere there has to be a rational area where yes there does have to be conversation but again this is this is overboard would you please review some of the books that we're going to be providing our children and maybe if they're going to get them i would be happy i read this book i would be happy to go over with the teacher to see how it's going to be portrayed to our children i want to also say i did do some research and found that the author jason reynolds during an interview had to address that this wasn't about all about police brutality and he said that all cops are not bad cops but i think if you're
013watching the media lately and then if we're going to throw these books at our children i think they're going to think one thing thank you and now we have stella johnston and her dad hello my name is kevin johnston and we asked our daughter if she'd like to speak and we let her say whatever she wanted to say we didn't help her except for spelling so we gave her a little hand with it other than spelling this is what she wanted to say today so i'm here for support to bring the mic down for her would you all right honey here there you go i appreciated my experience at the amree district until 2020 and when it all went down masks are unneeded for students and should be removed forcing to wear a mask makes
014my breathing slow down and it makes me feel sick i can't see my friend smiled and i would miss that for me being quarantined was hard because school became lonely and staring at a screen made my vision blurry please take mask off what does that say um next time we have school so i just noticed last meeting we had there was comments that kids had no problems wearing masks and as a parent i know we're hearing it at home so i just want to make sure you do understand there is kids that are having problems thank you thank you and julie verkin good evening julie verkant blackbrook township uh thank you again for being here tonight um i'm here asking you guys to please vote to remove the mask policy from our handbook right now
015you guys have put the cdc and fauci on the pedestal and that is now crumbling with the leaking not leaking the um i missed the knowledge now of his emails has been going around if you haven't heard about them you can go find them but he's openly stated to constituents that the masks don't work for containing viruses and i don't know right now but there's a nuremberg 2.0 that's starting out in germany a thousand lawyers and ten thousand doctors have filed a lawsuit for violation of the the inaugural code for crimes against humanity for the cdc the who and the davos group and they are charging with violating all 10 codes in that nuremberg code book and i and last we're here the same place we were last summer last summer it was about it
016was recommended to wear masks and then a week later changed to mandating wearing masks we need this policy removed so any point in time you can't mandate the masks because of the flu season or whatever males may else come up and if you're afraid to remove the policy due to a loss of teachers being scared to teach our children those teachers need to leave i am sorry but we have great teachers here who love children who love seeing children grow and smile and learn new things the teachers who are too scared they might get sick from children they have options too they can go teach virtually at an online school or an online college but if they're too scared be around children this is not the career they should be in we all have choices
017and that's also a choice we as parents don't get to choose who gets to teach our children if you guys give us teachers who are too scared so please take the if we all focus on what's good and best for our children things will then turn around but we keep putting our focus in the wrong places nothing will be fixed thank you that's it for our community comments so we will move to our action items and the first one is the coven 19 mitigation plans for the fall of 2021. dr durfler okay you'll see on the screen the very same powerpoint presentation that i'm speaking from here in front of me the mitigation plan for the fall of 2021 in the emphasis here would be face coverings there are a lot of other mitigation factors
018of course the first slide are the numbers for the most recent window which trailed us up through june 8th you'll notice there the blue tally at the far right was 42 and the red tally is three which would be cases within district the 42's cases within counties this is the very same tracking of information that we've done since basically this time last year and formerly tracked it online on our website on september 1st forward so the numbers are as low as they have been and well past a year the next slide is a summary of the cases within district broken down by staff student and then a percentage at the bottom of each of those columns and also each particular area running from clubhouse all the way through high school and again other is just
019not a staff person that has a specific building that they're in they're in multiple places so these are the numbers the full picture from september 1 through june 4th to the best of our knowledge the decision for summer that was made it has to be four six weeks ago by now in regards to face coverings and we actually started a clubhouse for summer last wednesday and we started summer school today face coverings are not required for students and staff at summer school they are optional and parents staff kids have known that for a while now so that's where we came down on summer school the sisa sisa 11 are the 39 schools that make up northwest wisconsin uh the the seven that we are aware of we don't have everyone having filled out the survey
020that cesa 11 sent out most did but not all uh seven are requiring face coverings there is a batch of 25 in the middle amory is in the middle of that batch or actually first within that batch and then lastly i'm not here to say that these seven are or are not we simply don't know and in some cases they were undecided they hadn't yet made that decision i imagine most everyone's gonna have made that decision by now though that survey is about three weeks old now because everyone's starting summer school right now so this is what it looks like within this part of the state the summer school guidance or the summer clubhouse child care guidance sorry as of monday june 7th face coverings became optional for all students and staff at clubhouse child
021care that was for non-school-age kids because school-age kids did not start until the ninth they weren't there monday tuesday the reason for that changing decision came from the department of children and families they updated their health guidance by their directive face coverings for students who attend and those who work in wisconsin child care settings are now optional so we follow that direct that in essence guidance and allowed us to make that decision on our own and we uh followed suit with clubhouse so they're optional there as well the policy uh for face coverings this is from july of 2020 i'm not going to read every word there for you for those who have a hard copy you certainly can do so the um portion that has been highlighted was highlighted by me in the policy
022itself it isn't highlighted i simply wanted to make mention where we presently sit is that if there is a county or a state order there certainly could be face coverings though there is litigation going on about that right now or as directed by district administration and or the board of education district administration and board of education could make that decision about the summer have and they could also make the very same decision about the fall and what i mean by that is you could decide to keep things as is and follow a policy and wear mass you could decide to take a a a big sharpie and put an x through the policy and say there is no policy anymore or you could go ahead and buy your direction say we're not doing mass in
023the fall you could do any of those things or something altogether different that i didn't just mention recommendation for the fall of 2021 which is the next school year face coverings would be optional for all students staff and visitors while on school grounds at school transportation and at school events so that again is for september one moving forward uh face coverings requirement for the fall there hasn't been a survey about fall that has gone out the only district that i have knowledge of um that has made the decision to have face coverings in the fall is somerset the other 38 maybe there are some schools that have made the decision uh most are probably doing that here in june of july so there's a whole bunch of folks that haven't made up their mind on
024that yet recommendations for the fall students and staff who are positive for covid19 would be school excluded students and staff who are symptomatic for covet 19 would be school excluded and then the school district of amory wouldn't be doing contact tracing and quarantining of students and staff who are close contacts to someone who is positive basically meaning that if you're positive or you're symptomatic you'd be on your way and everyone else would be here and not be in quarantine so that's the recommendation for the fall again you can choose to do what you want there recommendations for the fall we would return to normal procedures for visitors there are a lot of visitors particularly at the elementary and intermediate school though there are some at the middle and high school parents allowed in the buildings
025to drop off pick up volunteer in eating lunch with kids again that's most likely for younger kids for drop off in for eating lunch outside groups would be allowed on to schedule and hold activities on campus we have had all sorts of instructional opportunities over the years with them recommendations for the fall for events and field trips we would return to the typical event schedule in student field trips would resume we went to a play in saint paul at park square we would go to a play in saint paul at park square like we've done in the past recommendations for fall of 2021 many of these recommendations are sort of ongoing as they're as in they're happening right now the spring sports season was pushed back by wiaa so that spring sports season is continuing
026for instance we had track regional today in track state you typically would have been last weekend so it's ongoing will be wrapped up by the end of june the school district of amy would follow covet 19 recommendations from wiaa and what their recommendation basically is in a nutshell no one's wearing masks on the sideline no one's wearing masks competing no one's wearing mass in the stands as a spectator and particularly so in that pretty much everything you do in the spring is outside so there aren't any masks required there they're entirely optional continued mitigation efforts for the fall continue to use hand sanitizer sanitizer would be available in classroom areas in common areas continued coaching of proper hygiene and respiratory etiquette and frankly even before colva we were seeking to do that at the elementary
027and intermediate and then sanitation of classrooms in common areas will also take place and the last slide is recommendations for the fall if circumstances change district administration and or board of education may revisit the fall coven 19 mitigation plan and make changes as necessary i couldn't begin to tell you what's going to happen in september but that's up to you how we want to proceed on that so those are the slides of the day and if you have questions or comments or conversation i'll turn it over to you comments well i guess one of the questions i have is um under quarantining that students and staff who are symptomatic for covet 19 will be school excluded are we talking you know kids that are showing symptoms of covid19 which can often look like allergies or
028a cold which i think if you have a cold you should probably stay home too but you know in the past we've kind of been like stay home for a day or two and get back to school you don't want to miss too much and you know now we kind of have maybe have said oh you can stay home a couple more days and make sure you're well before you go back so i guess i'm just trying to determine how we would you know navigate that with i think it's probably going to be kid by kid in a conversation between parent and school nurse as it spends for the better part of a year or more um school excluded meaning if they're symptomatic for covid outside of their baseline if they're a kid with allergies
029which is what we've said from the beginning then their allergic condition would kick in when it kicks in and that would be normal so they wouldn't go anywhere they would stay right here and work through their allergies some kids have allergies but it's going to have to be a kid by kid i don't think you want to say across the board if they have this this and this they got to go and they're gone for 10 days i don't i don't think we want to do that yeah it's a good question absolutely it's always a moving target yeah i think our recommendation and our policy has always been if you're sick stay home i think that we see that that works it's probably one of the best mitigation measures that we can take and if
030you're sick stay home if it's outside your life selling stay home it's always been the policy and whether it's covet or just the flu right nobody wants any of it no no although in the past it's been a little bit trickier because you've needed to get doctor's notes or whatever if you're missing too many days and so that has that like this last year you weren't requiring sure well we just met uh last week actually on attendance policy attendance secretaries the building principles people services myself and talked about what attendance policy would look like it looks very similar to what it did in 2019 2020 it would have been really impossible to say you need to go home for this this and this and oh by the way you're out of days we just completely
031went lacks on the attendance policy with reason because covet was in full swing here particularly in the fall so it looks very much like 2019 with additional days given to parents in an overall sense but that's probably a topic for another day but we'll work with families i mean we want them to be here that's the best chance for success for a kid in schools for them to be here and i think parents want them to be here too it's a huge inconvenience to have a kid at home for your work schedule and you know they're not getting what they need at home probably so attendance isn't is a topic that's on the radar we just met last week yeah i think we need to understand that these none of this stuff is set in
032stone by what we do tonight it's always going to be changing it's always going to be moving if any of us would have thought in 2019 that in march of 2020 we would be shut down for the remainder of the school year i think we would look at each other and said you're crazy but it happened so you have to go with the flow sometimes so i think this is a moving target i think we can plan a good plan tonight and if things change things change dale well i would look at this as um a positive step i think summer school what started uh today so you know hopefully all goes well there if all goes well there i would certainly see this as being the direction we're going in the fall if we
033find out that you know half the kids or all the kids are getting sick in summer school then it's a different conversation but i personally don't see that happening i think i think we're you know the people that have chosen to get vaccinated probably have students staff any community members so i think we're heading in the right direction we've done just about all we can our goal was to make it through the end of the school year we did that and now i know a number of the people here tonight have you know had to maybe uh put up with wearing masks longer than they would have liked to and there's a number of people that probably don't want to get rid of masks yet today but it's i think it's time for that side
034to um make some adjustments in their beliefs and thoughts and we move forward with mass being optional certainly for the summer and i would certainly hope so and expect so for the fall as well so i like the plan i like the plan moving forward and hopefully all goes well that's our hope what is that plan are you indicating that we would be striking the policy leaving the policy as is and then the discretion of the board is to do this or that i mean that would really be the question at this time well i guess i would certainly i guess at this time i would like to see mass being optional in the summer which they are yes with the plan of mass being optional in the fall um and like we mentioned here
035looks like parents you know basically it's returned to normal i don't know in that regard yeah it would likely be um what would be different other than uh i think you'd see increased sanitizing increased disinfecting which are all good things i'm sure we should people should be doing you would see less social distancing you wouldn't see mass so those would be dramatic differences from 2020 what would look like 2019. yeah so i think if we could look like 2019 and if we're we're practicing better um personal hygiene you know having hand sanitizer out and available to me that's a good thing that anybody and everybody should be taking advantage of so i guess sorry no go ahead so i guess looking at the face coverings policy um and i'm looking at you know looking at
036it closely here um i would say we um i would like to see the last line of the first paragraph taken out because that kind of makes it sound like we are requiring masks versus if we just leave the first sentence in it says that masks will be required when masks will be required by a county if they're required by a county or state ordered or as directed by district administration under the board of education i think the rest of the policy is fine to leave in place because it basically just uh says what would happen if people don't follow this directive and what defines a face covering and defines how they could get an exemption from a face covering um but i guess i would like to see that last line in the first
037paragraph stricken if we're going to keep the policy in place which i think is fine because again the first sentence just says that it'll be required if it's if there's a county or state order or as directed by us which leaves it open for us to change you know to to require face masks if necessary but again i don't think that any of us really want to do that i don't know if we if it would be best if we had some kind of a a matrix or a chart or something to say when that would go into an effect so it doesn't seem so arbitrary um i guess that's my opinion on policy if you were to tweak the policy you could uh do the the first um reading reading of that as an
038action item at the earliest on the 28th and then the second would be july 19th so there wouldn't be any word to anybody about not having mass in the fall until at the earliest july 20th if that's the route you want to go in regards to a matrix i've mocked up a matrix for the fall but haven't done anything with it in that the numbers have been incredibly low and i i didn't pursue it because i didn't know that it would be something that would be necessary so but if that's something you want to see and work with you certainly can so what if we just decided to strike this policy all together okay and then stuff goes off the rails and then we where is our option then to either bring back the policy
039or to rewrite the policy and then require masks again but that would give feeling people some feeling of well it's it would not set something in stone that say when we meet these criteria we do this it's that seems like a lot of hassle sure if you want to adopt a policy you can do that at any subsequent board meeting june july august september october whenever you wanted to if you struck it tonight you can bring it back you can do that with any policy if you wanted to do that right so if we just struck it if you wanted to there would be no harm no fault anybody at this point it's the plan going forward why not just strike it the the only um the only drawback is it's another meeting but maybe
040right that's what you do right if that's what you want to do this is a meeting too yeah this is another meeting you're right yes we're having a special meeting tonight we've had seventeen thousand special meetings this year seven what's one more well it's one you can schedule a meeting just like you scheduled this one yeah yeah i think it's probably the best option and we just we we just get rid of a lot of headaches a lot of hassles a lot of extra work that nobody has any more time to put in so i would be in favor of striking the policy completely at this time so maybe i will make a motion that's that's in effect the policy slide number seven is that what you're talking about right yes yes on page four
041page space coverings policy yeah so my motion would be to strike the face coverings policy as written at this time i'll second that all right motion is made in second to eliminate the face coverings policy uh discussion are we going to address any of the recommendations uh i think we can do that in a minute i think we can talk about the other recommendations are you going to add that or now you're you're kind of wandering from eliminating it all together to now bringing some of it back well i think we're dealing with the face coverings policy in this motion and then we can talk about the other recommendations there can be several motions to this you want to do it as separate i want to just cover this as it as is so the
042first of your emotions would be to strike the policy the second of your motions would be to follow the recommendation that in the fall face coverings are optional students staff visitors school grounds transportation and school events right yes we can put that all as one if becky doesn't have a problem writing up that whole complete motion okay so that would be my formal then amended motion is that we strike the face coverings policy as written at this time and then follow all other recommended mitigation efforts going forward in the fall of 2021 2022 school year and aaron would you want to second that yep i will second that amended motion okay any other discussion on that done all those in favor say aye aye opposed emotional carry [Applause] next we have the personnel action personnel
043okay since we didn't have a chance to look at this uh in closed session i'll rattle it off here in open session we have new employment contracts for sonya kelly as aim advisor gina ernst elementary school secretary carlea moaning from for clubhouse assistant teacher gene edwards speech and language matthew brisk for science extra c contracts forensics two times danielle erdrich and lindsey myers jeffrey stoner and girls girls assistant soccer coach andrea juhas av coordinator resignations bus drivers alan carlson and robert elson-peter d.i co-adviser shane curtis carrie grondell special ed para kelly gruby van driver mark ullman 8th grade science tara rose for high school science and varsity softball cameron schaefer middle school cross country assistant and lastly jennifer swenson high school special education teacher so you would need to make a motion whether to accept
044or deny those personnel items or would you like to deal with them in closed session yeah well personally yeah i am i i guess i hate to see some of these people resign in addition i guess there's some new people coming on but um i think we would move to approve the personnel action okay second second motions made to approve the personnel action items all those in favor say aye aye aye aye opposed no okay do we need to get in closed session yes we do okay all right we'll move to closed session considering employment promotion compensation or performance evaluation data of any public employee over which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercise responsibility in order to take personal action pursuant to wisconsin state statute 19.85 sub 1 sub c roll call vote aaron
045yes shower did we get a second on that um i was just did you move it i'll second it yeah okay okay aaron said yes char yes dale yes i say yes we're enclosed all right thank you