001okay we're all set in live all right thank you very much and what do we have um is it 5 30 can you tell is it 5 30 5 29 all right we'll just wait just a few seconds we'll be good to go i guess yeah okay it's 5 30. all right thank you miss pero so 5 30 we'd like to call the meeting of the amity board of education policy subcommittee on to order at 5 30. so our first item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes from our last meeting march 23rd would someone like to make a motion i'll make the motion to approve all right thank you and any discussion okay seeing none um we'll just what do we show hands or um we can do a quick roll call
002it'll be very easy so mr davis yes miss eichler yes mr howard yes perfect thank you um next on the agenda is public comment i don't know that we had any no miss pero is confirming there's none all right and then the next one is um discussion and possible action on policy four one one one recruitment and selection uh page five of our packet so i'm going to defer to mr davis he was the one who asked it to come back to the property uh one of the things that i've come to look at policies that we pick up from caves sometimes maybe relate to specific instances that don't really impact or represent the amity school district it was my understanding that this particular language the second and third paragraphs related primarily to local school
003districts that had a fairly large minority population and a faculty that was not representative of that uh so the way it looks here to me is uh you know factually speaking i i don't think our school district uh is a uh uh one that uh is defined by heterogeneity and if we use that term in saying that our district should reflect that particular heterogeneity of our district uh it kind of looks uh slaps us in the face when we're talking about minority recruitment basically it's saying we should rep the faculty should look like our school district and i i think one of our goals is to help increase diversity within our school district staffing whether it's certified or not certified so you know we have one uh policy that we're looking at about minority recruitment
004and this kind of almost says that we should keep things the way they are so i wonder if we looked at if we are defining heterogeneity very very narrowly as simply race which i think was some of the concern that dr turner had raised right then yes i think you it would be fair to say that we are not a terribly um heterogeneous school district and therefore this policy would seem to perpetuate that kind of um very um very homogeneous population but i think if we considered heterogeneity to be much broader whether we are talking about um race gender identity religious affiliation ethnic background and we considered it in that aspect um i would probably i would argue that we are a fairly heterogeneous um district mr pickering when he first came said it's like
005walking through the through the u.n when you go through the halls at our school because it's just it's it's just different it's so i i wonder if if there's a way of clarifying the use of heterogeneity to be much more inclusive than just race which is what i think really is addressed in the subsequent 4 11.3 so that one i think kind of calls out that particular area of heterogeneity but i wonder if there's a way of clarifying that when we talk about heterogeneity we mean something much broader than race you know you just spoke to diversity and to my thinking i i was thinking along the same lines of substituting specifically instead of saying the board recognizes the heterogeneity of the people the increasing diversity of the people or the diversity of the people
006who live in the school district and diversity can refer to any particular thing uh you know i know heterogeneity is uh you know a term that maybe people don't identify quite as much with all different types of uh diversity so you know if we mean diversity we should say diversity maybe the definitions are the same but i don't know if people look at them the same way so in if we change the word heterogeneity and paragraph two to diversity um and i i almost i would almost be hesitant to use increasing diversity although i think it is i think we just are firm that we have a diverse population and we acknowledge that right um and then how about um in in the third paragraph instead of beginning it to this end how about we
007just say the board shall develop and implement a written plan for minority staff recruitment then it's not necessary then the it implies that those two paragraphs are linked and it really establishes the precedent for the next policy i i i would be comfortable with that okay george or carla do you have anything that while we're working on it anything you would want to put in here to make it i i always worry about adding more detail that may cage you in but would it make sense to list all of the different types of protected ethnic religious um lgbtq um like all of the categories that could become part of having a diverse population to make it even more clear or does that then like if we exclude one one kind you know one one category
008then it puts us in a hole yeah i think i think it would do two things i think one is every time the federal government changed what the protected status was we would constantly be back in this policy revising it and it's one of those things that when the four of us five of us aren't sitting here we'll forget that we have to keep going back to this particular policy and revising it um and then i do think um i do think that you know when we we i mean we would value diversity just for people who have worked in different school districts who have come from urban areas and that's not necessarily captured in protected classes um so i think just leaving diversity open to interpretation um in in that sense that i think
009that that's probably a safer bet but again i would certainly welcome other thoughts on that and also could you say i'm sorry i couldn't hear because my dog was barking um how do you mentioned how we could transition to that next paragraph where they mentioned written plan for minority staff so that it seems like it was two separate ideas so i would just cross out that initial to this end okay because that seems to imply that that's what you're doing to achieve paragraph two and i would just begin with the board shall develop and implement a written plan for minority staff recruitment yeah that makes sense that's good i like that as well yeah just another area and and maybe it's just a bit of an explanation if you could help us i know we
010are required to follow the provisions of title one and the every student succeeds act but we have an awful lot of information there about title one schools and uh you know i i don't know if we need to have that in there or uh you know it's it's something that people thought was required so we by definition of receiving the dollars from the federal government you're a title one recipient even though you may not necessarily meet the true qualification of a title one school so we still have to do all the things you have to do as a title one school like notifying the parents that they have the right to request information about their children's teachers so yeah it is something that yeah yeah and then another thing that i just notice and it's
011i don't know it just seems a little odd that hiring of retired teachers is grouped in with this the first topic of recruitment and selection like it seems like it should be two separate things i don't understand how they're related i'm not sure either other than when the state significantly did the revisions to trb and limited it to that 45 percent they they realized that they had to capture that somewhere in policy because it is a state statute and i don't know if they just decided this was the best policy to capture it we could certainly pull it out and renumber it as another four one one one point something and it could be its own standalone um i don't have an issue with that and then um then you know miss pero and i
012can go in and look at the legal references and just cross-reference them appropriately um that would certainly not be an issue i don't know is it i don't want to make a big deal out of something if it's you know not a big deal you know the the area that i looked at with that because i was kind of thinking the same thing is uh it does relate to uh recruitment since this part of it requires us to certify that we couldn't find any recruits that met the standards and i guess it also kind of i mean the hiring of the retired teachers right it's a recruitment thing that changes year to year depending on where your shortage area is so i just have a general question like since this came out of the second
013it was up for second read at our last full board meeting this goes back to the board as a second we would send it back as a second read yes so so just just wanted to clarify that so mr davis is that satisfy what you're thinking and yeah it does i just wanted to make sure there was no conflict between that and the minority uh uh program that we're putting forth that's next on the agenda right that's right perfect yep i'll move that to uh second read okay um so do we need a motion for this individually or are we going to try to yes yes they're each individual numbers so this one would have its individual motion which mr davis just made we've already had a lot of discussion i don't know if we
014need any more i think we we're good okay so then mr davis miss cycler yes and mr howard yes okay thank you and now policy 411.3 minority recruitment on page seven in our of our packet and so that was the one that um dr turner had asked us to have some reconsideration of just um just because she felt that this one really did um the the top part sort of limited um to just the racial ethnic and economic backgrounds and her question i think to the policy committee was is that too narrowly defined um or is it something we should broaden um the challenge i have to say in this policy is that in while we can recruit i guess through specific avenues i'm not supposed to know any of this stuff as an employer
015right so like i'm not allowed to ask what their race ethnic background is socioeconomic status what their gender affiliation is i i can't ask any of that so so part of the chat this is one of the more peculiar things is that and and you almost feel like you have to uh make certain assumptions that are kind of counter-indicated indicated of like what we're supposed to be doing so i know like one of the the strategies is that you recruit at predominantly black colleges which means i have to make an assumption that i'm going to have a predominantly black candidate pool from predominantly black colleges but that's still an assumption on my part that i'm making so it's definitely a strategy but but there is there is something a little bit challenging in this plan
016and i think i liked it when mr davis created one that had such simplicity to it because it shows a commitment but it also doesn't write something that we actually can't technically do um so you know and i underst like i said i understood dr turner's concerns and maybe what we did with 4-1-1-1 has now addressed that so that these sort of our partners um but that was why it came back to policy was sort of to have that conversation and see if there's anything else we can do with this so mr david other than um like historically black universities as as dr byers was just talking about what did you say that you were writing i'm sorry i missed something yeah i wasn't uh very honestly uh i i think we came as close
017to the language as we possibly could in this uh i was about to say similar things they said there are limitations on to what you can ask which means that you kind of stuck with what you could see and uh you know and who you're interviewing you you you know going to a historically black college is one thing but if you ask for a bunch of recruits uh uh you know you never know what you're gonna come up with and uh and you may even hire somebody thinking than one thing and it just may not turn out to be that way so uh you know i i guess i guess our best situation is that we're going to be hiring the best teachers possible for students and hope that we're hiring the ones that come
018from these diverse backgrounds i can't say that and i i think that i agree that this could sit as it is but i'd be more interested to hear about some of the creative ways of broadening the pool you know so maybe dr turner would be um happy you know it's pleased to hear of some of the strategies to you know kind of attempt this without changing this in in any way you know because i i do know that you know when you're recruiting really you're do you actually go out to fairs to meet people or we did once um but we went to you know we pre-covered yes we did um but you know again we go to fairs that are in the state so your job fair is that uconn is probably the biggest
019one that sponsors and then the community or i'm sorry the um state um university system has one and so your recruits through that are as good as the diversity of the student population of the education department at those particular universities we have never and been the type of school district where i post you know jobs in south carolina because the person who's going like i'm not going to get people to move to connecticut from south carolina unless they have a real reason to but we tend to we tend to recruit locally because connecticut kids tend to stay as connecticut teachers um you know i think we have tried there are partnerships right now with the rests to um really build um a student teaching force um that is diverse but they're working only at the
020elementary levels right now so i don't even have like someday that i hope is available to us but even something like that isn't actually an option for us right now um what i can do is i can forward to the committee the regulation that goes with this um that's really what i borrowed from bethany and that had specific strategies and steps um and so so if nothing else you would be able to hopefully alleviate dr turner's concerns by saying okay we made this adjustment in four one one one and we have seen the regulation that goes with four one one one point three and it really speaks to to recruiting from as broad of a net as we can possibly cast within reason of what we're able to do and also what we think will
021actually net us quality teaching candidates that sounds good so is that it for well do we want to have a motion and then any further discussion we're really bad at that part we should work on that someday as soon as it comes up on the agenda so we i we make a motion to move this to be back to second read back to second read because it was that first read in our last full board meeting um i think it was at second at the last one i think both of these came back at the same time i had it under first read just i had the agenda from the last board meeting so okay yeah that's all we're good um i can read either way yeah thank you and uh so are we done
022with discussion then okay and then we'll call the roll please all right mr davis good morning i'm sorry who made the motion to move at the second read i didn't catch that i did thank you and mr davis was a yes vote miss eichler yes and mr howard yes perfect thank you all right so then now we're on to item six which i hope then we'll be able to take these all together because they're all under one number so perfect yes so why don't we make a motion to um to uh move um these policies based on our recommendations and we can do them all as once so moved okay thank you mr davis and now we can have discussions there we go all right so um excuse me i think we have to vote
023on that we have to vote on that motion now no they're already listed all as one we don't have to vote to take them all together right we just but but but because what we're going to do is we'll probably have different language attached with each of them at the end we'll have to sort of summarize that okay but it could be all one vote because it's all one item okay gotcha yep yep okay um so policy four one one one four one one five you guys get it um the evaluation and support program so carla's probably going to be the most well versed in this but um about four four-ish years ago the state did the massive overhaul of the teacher evaluation system they put into place the pdec committees the professional development and
024evaluation um committees and we had never updated our policy to reflect all of those ginormous state statute changes so this policy really reflects those changes that came into place under state statute that we've basically been operating under for four to five years now um and what i did when i went into these is um make sure that this hat is aligned with the language that we actually have in our tea eval plan just for terminology's sake so these two things mesh very well together both from the statutory requirements but also what we actually have is our t val a lot of this is statutory like the um the formation of the p deck um how the plans are adopted the fact that we have to have the improvement and remediation plans the training all of
025this is inside the statute so um so so this really just spread but yeah the complimentary observers um the dispute resolution process so i think that this brings our policy up to speed with what we are required to do at the bare minimum for teacher evaluation i was going to say this all looks exactly the same as what i'm familiar with so yeah yeah i figured it was pretty um standardized it's a little boiler plate yes i think that's a fair description and that's very helpful to hear carla so thank you for that um any other questions on four one one five no so and and so yes so my recommendation would be to uh uh to um to uh move it forward as revised um for a first read to the board of ed
026um so for 115.3 um the evaluation of coaches uh again this one um was a um policy that was reviewed by cabe we have it as an existing policy and they um recommended some updates uh to um align it with some statutory requirements um we do conduct annual evaluations of our coaches we do sort of attend to the four purposes of that coaching evaluation and we do um [Music] we you know part of it is um the the self-appraisal part um as well as coaches are not protected by the tenure law and so that last paragraph kind of clarifies that even though they're certified staff they do not fall under the same ten-year requirements as a teacher does that sound familiar to mr davis well actually there is an issue i have okay and i
027don't know whether it was intentionally not included uh the the policy speaks to non-renewal of athletic coaches as you see on the agenda but there's no discussion in that policy about non-renewal and it is there is language and statute about non-renewal that uh specifically relates to coaches who have uh served in the same position for three or more years there is a statutory policy statutory language about how that's to be handled that could impact the board of ed because the language actually came into existence as a result of a boardved seemingly wanting to fire a coach without any type of valuation and it was specifically one of the schools was before it was the amity board this happened in 2001 i believe uh so the language there uh does have specifics and i don't know
028whether we need to include it in policy or we should uh because it does have an option of uh appeal to the board of education in that statutory language so let me do this let me um let's let's uh put this policy until the next meeting i will go back through cave and see if i can't find what that language would look like specifically and what they sort of recommend like the level of detail to which we include some of that language versus just part of the statute thank you dr byers i just have a question on the topic um so if there's a teacher who is also a coach um are they also evaluated as their in their role as coach or and yes so so if you're you're a teacher and a coach
029you're gonna get your teacher evaluation and then you'll get your coaching evaluation so you could be evaluated as a coach and then ask to step down because of your performance as a coach but then kept on as a teacher yes that is possible okay there it's my understanding though that if the teacher is a coach there is representation by the bargaining unit whereas if the teacher or if the coach is not a teacher there is no representation yeah that is also accurate all right well so we'll we'll look forward to hearing back about that policy and and now we're on to the administrative leave suspension dismissal on page 14 of our packet yes um so this is a policy that we do sorry wait hang on no cave manual okay um so the administrative leaves
030suspension and dismissal um i actually took some of the language so so the original amity policy was they said it was okay as written but what i didn't like in our amity policy was we didn't separate out non-tenured versus tenured teachers and there actually is a difference between those two and that's something that the k policy did do so what i did is try to preserve the amity language which cabe said was appropriate as written but i applied the cave methodology for the non-renewal of the non-tenured versus the tenured um because i think that that clarifies it a little bit more and part of this because we just went through this as part of the board meeting um i was you know looking around trying to find all of this information and so now that
031it's here it's much clearer um that it's just part of our policy the process of the non-renewal especially when it relates to the elimination of a position so um that was my recommendation for how we revised it so you're going above and beyond that's a thank you for that you know well only just because i had to look so many places to find all of the details so i was like it'd just be so much easier if it was all in one spot is is it a requirement that we in the case of a non-renewal of a non-tenured teacher that we give them a reason um you you yes you still have to give them a reason um yes it's still it's still part of the process yeah simple question yeah yeah i'm like sitting
032there racking my brain but i'm like yes you still have to give them a reason yes anything further on that one or shall we move to suspension page 16 of our packet oh rates so that's four one one seven four one four one yeah yeah so this is a policy that we don't actually have in place right now um but the concept of progressive discipline is a pretty common concept when we're discussing um our staff and when there is an issue with performance um it applies to typically certified and not non-certified individuals and i happened again i this was just my preference um the the policy committee or the board could decide whether or not to do this but the idea of outlining what progressive discipline looks like i think is helpful um i find
033it helpful when you're addressing an individual who has a performance issue to say here is the policy on progressive discipline and this is what can potentially happen to you um and i also think um i i think it helps administrators or supervisors when they are in that kind of situation to sort of be reminded of the process of progressive discipline um and then the other thing that i liked in this policy was um differentiating that concept of suspension with and without pay because again that is something that we typically have to do at some point um so it clarifies um kind of when those uh those situations would happen um so i am more than willing to take revisions and suggestions on this but again it's a brand new policy that we haven't had that
034i think would be helpful in our personnel policy practices is this current practice it's just not in our policy yeah it and and it's it's almost unnerving because it's kind of unwritten practice and it's pretty significant thing to have sort of unwritten practice around um it's certainly in in the teachers and administrators contracts it's probably a little bit more well defined but in some of our other uncertified contracts it's definite this is definitely just the unspoken practice the the line that says you know it's uh as a teacher it's the uh the oh they're gonna put a letter in your folder you know so when i actually saw that written in the policy i said oh i know what this is not not personally right i've heard that before right you're gonna get the letter
035in your folder okay so now we know where it falls yes i'm perfectly comfortable with moving this forward to the full board because the more eyes the merrier you know really yeah and especially if this is um already in practice and having the outline of the without pay and with pay i think makes a lot of sense to have this here so so the next one um so it's item e policy 4117.5 termination so that's on page 18 and you'll see at the top it has the word optional um and there are two things that um that i am a bit uncomfortable with in terms of this policy um the biggest one is the opening um paragraph of at least the whole policy where they talk about settlement agreements it is not our practice to
036have settlement agreements with employees that we are considering to terminate typically um and then the second reason why i would um probably suggest that this is not a recommended policy um is because the process of termination is spelled out in collective bargaining contracts um under teacher tenure law and again it's a very specific process um basically if you get to the suspension policy and things don't get any better and you're in that termination point it's it's like this just doesn't this isn't even comprehensive enough of how termination actually happens um so it's almost it's it's just an unrepresented unrepresentative of what actually has to be done um but it would the settlement agreements was the part that i really was not fond of because that's just not typically our practice it's not thing yeah i
037i think it's rare that anybody gets a settlement agreement in education i could be wrong about that um but again because it's just so governed by a very specific manner in which we terminate in school employees so i would recommend that that one is not adopted i i support that recommendation i think we should remove that and i can't tell if ms eichler speaking or you're just look oh i'm sorry i just said um i found i found this all altogether confusing when i read it and especially the first sentence i so yeah okay so forward dr byers yeah all right great thank you um so the four so we're moving on to four one and this is our this is a non-discrimination and equal employment opportunity policy um and it's essentially the existing amity
038policy but the red area that you well the place the second paragraph where it says equal employment opportunity that i pulled from cape because we didn't have a statement in our policy that said that and so i inserted it into this policy so cabe had reviewed it they said our policy was okay um but i just thought that adding the eeo statement was probably an appropriate additional revision to that policy and this is again the idea of the protected classes that we were referring to earlier yes yeah that's a good one thank you very good yeah thank you all right so that one would go back for a first read um so policy four sorry turn this page um i guess it's page 24 of the packet yes we're on page 24. so back a
039couple months ago maybe even in the fall we revised policy 5145.5 um that was the revision of the sexual harassment policy which has always been in the student section of our policy manual when the board's attorney wrote the policy if you read it and also the way the title 9 revision occurred it applies to everybody in the district whether you're a student or a staff member my recommendation and again she wrote it very specifically updated to the new title nine i would simply recommend that we just cross-reference the number so that it's apparent that it's not just a student policy but that it's also for 118.112 which means it's also a staff policy and not change any of the language because we don't need to it would just be a renumbering issue to make that
040very clear that it applies to everybody in the district that's very clear thank you so i'm not even sure if that has to go to the board i think we can just remember it because we're not changing the content of the policy at all so that's discussion any any thoughts i you know i i i don't think it would necessarily have to go for a board vote but i think the board should be made that sounds fine okay all right so then that comes brings us to page 31 which is the four one one eight point one one three and if you notice again the cave um identifies it as optional and this one is specific to harassment broadly um i believe that the way the i believe that the way existing policies are already
041written we have this all we have this covered in other places particularly in the one that we just revised and one of the challenges that i think we have found in the past in amity was when we had too many different policies for reporting harassment and how it was investigated and it got a little murky with bullying and so we had bullying and harassment and sexual harassment and we had actually had different processes in place um in policy so i think it would not be my recommendation to add this one because i do believe it's covered in other policies and i'm afraid if we did it actually just creates that same murky mess we just kind of swum our way out of um when we revised our title ix policy any thoughts from the committee
042no that sounds sounds good to me it makes sense yes all right um then we have the cave policy 4 118 which is the freedom of speech policy you'll notice again at the top on page 34 they say it's optional um it would be since freedom of speech is governed by the bill of rights um i don't see the need for this policy because it's pretty pretty much yeah it's pretty much covering freedom of speech um so it would i just feel that there's a redundancy to it um that i would not um recommend the board a board moving forward and adopting that also makes makes sense um i mean i know professionally i as a teacher there's freedom of speech and then being you know speaking appropriately um in my different roles so um
043yeah i was curious to hear why this would even be you know i'm you know i so at some point we are going to tackle um because i have it's it's been sitting there and i've had people reviewing it a social media policy yes and so and and that one i actually the attorneys wrote it because again we tread very lightly on freedom of speech when we do a social media policy it is the one area at least as of right now where it's a bit of a challenge um so i have to assume that some 25 years down the road people are gonna be like why do they need a social media policy on speech i'm assuming that this came from the some sort of the same place so um but again i just
044felt like this is really kind of uh almost overstepping our bounds um and kind of goes beyond what we do as part of policy all right right good idea not to consider that thanks i don't want to have that debate on the floor it was optional um so let's see so that brings us to 4118.13 conflict of interest um this is again it's it's not a current policy it's an optional policy to consider um you know i i i just i don't see the need need for this um i i understand what they're doing and you know what they're saying in terms of suppliers and contractors but we have bid processes we have other we have other things in place through our afc and through how we do bids how we award contracts how we
045purchase supplies um that i just don't see the need for this particular policy um i also know that the having had one of these in the prior districts that idea of a gift limitation is a very challenging thing to to monitor and is also something that it gets again a little bit murky because we're not quite sure what's a gift and what is a gift in some cases um and it it just can sometimes create a bit of a challenge for us so for example like what could be you know a difficult one is if you are planning a field trip right that's an overnight field trip and you work the sponsors hotel fee into the cost of the trip to the kids is that a gift because they just got the hotel for free
046but they're also like working there as a sponsor so it's just becomes a rather challenging um thing to monitor so anyway long and short it would not be my recommendation to approve this because i do think we already have mostly the conflict of interest in place by the way that we handle our suppliers and our purchases but that wouldn't be so how would that also um cover like gifts from student families it would yeah yeah yeah that's that's tricky yeah and with that mr davis might be wondering this too is that like amity booster like is that amity both you know that's where well i i think the problem is is that last at that last statement where the the gift is intended to influence somebody right so how do you know whether the gift
047was intended to influence somebody i mean it's it's essential you know and again we have policies on fraud and things like that i mean they're implying that the gift is a bribe for lack of a better word but how i could ever prove that or not no i i agree i i like the explanation of what is a gift the question that you posed you know like just let's let's avoid this you know i i understand the intent of it i just i it's i think we have other measures in place that help us achieve integrity and honesty and how we conduct ourselves the afc it's a big part of it yeah all right so um the non-discrimination on the basis of disabilities that is on page 38 and it's for 118.14 um it is
048a policy that's considered good practice um but you'll again see it's not recommended and i believe that the non-discrimination policy that we just looked at covers everybody i don't see the need to single out the disabilities as a separate standalone when we have a policy that covers many reasons yes yep that makes that makes sense okay perfect um so that brings us to page 40 of 41. um i feel that cave is a little behind the times on this one because they have a separate policy for adult bullying um and the recent revisions in the bullying statutes and mandates have added that adult peace to it so i think at the point when we revise our bullying policy we'll see those changes but i do not see the need for this one to be separate
049because we already have it in our bullying policy and then finally policy four one one eight point two one is a current amity policy and they they the review says it's still appropriate so i would just um suggest that we mark it as reviewed and that it's up to date and that we are good on the concept of the academic freedom so to summarize before we take a vote um item a would go forward for a first read item b is going to go back for revisions and we'll come back to policy in may item c will go forward as a first read item d goes forward as a first read item e we would not recommend moving to the board of ed for a read item f would go forward as a first read
050item g we need to make the board aware of the change but not move it forward for any action item h i and j we would all not move forward to the board of education as well as item k and l and item n we would not move to the board because we're just going to update that we reviewed it a boat you mr davis did we already have a motion i'm just curious we had emotion we just need to vote the thing that i shouldn't have said in the first place you're fine all right so any further discussion or we said thank you for summarizing so clearly all right so mr davis yes miss eichler yes and mr howard yes all right excellent um so i know that that brings us to the end
051of the agenda but just um so that you know in terms of your radar um we will bring the social media policy forward hopefully at the next month um so that way we could have it i'd like to have it in place by the june policy meeting so it's set for us to start the school year because it will be a little bit of a shift for for our staff to wrap their heads around um the other thing that i think we just to be aware of and perhaps um policy could start having conversations um with the board chair and then ultimately the board itself on may 19th the executive orders for the governor expire and at that time um all public meetings should be conducted in person um and we do and after consulting
052with cave absent any policy the option for remote remoting into a meeting or participating remotely no longer exists for our board members or for the general public so um i do wonder if that's something that the the board and the policy committee might want to consider um you can either say no um or we can say yeah it's a way that we can i mean i have to say we've had far more participation from committees and board members at meetings when they've had the option to remote in so there's definitely a benefit um there's also the fact that it's not quite the same as being in person as we have noticed from other meetings that we've attended so i i don't know what the answer is um but it is something that if it's a
053practice we want to continue we do actually have to write a policy about remote meeting conduct and participation so um just throwing that out there for something to consider would that be for just members to have the option to do okay totally up to you guys how you write it i can go i can start to look and see i know there have been a couple samples that have come out and some people already had it codified as part of their practices so i'll see what i can cobble together for possible suggestions um and uh yeah and we could we can see what what options are available i was hoping mr demaio would have been able to zoom in today um but that also is to your point that sometimes it increases participation and sometimes
054it doesn't so yeah yeah um i think it works effectively for meetings like this when you only have four or five people i think when we get to our board meeting where we have 13 members two students plus any number of guests terry myself i think that's when it becomes a little bit more challenging just because of the number of people but to get work done like this i don't find it to be ineffective so um so anyway well i'll look for some samples but it's something that i think we will have to at least have a conversation about either as a committee or as the board as a whole so thank you dr for bringing that up and mentioning the date may not 19th so that's very helpful something changes because that's also the
055name of the game around here okay well are we at our time to adjourn the meeting would someone like to make that motion mr davis in motion to return all right and can we just show it do a show of hands instead of the role or yes that's fine