Avon Board of Education Meeting - 8/24/21

001[Music] [Applause] [Music] i'd like to call to order the regular monthly meeting of the avon board of ed on tuesday august 24th at 7 00 pm if everyone would please stand and recite the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance all right thank you everyone for joining us i always like to start our meeting reading the mission statement to remind us all of why we're here working together our mission is to inspire in each student a joy and passion for learning and a commitment to excellence personal integrity and social responsibility this is our first meeting in person in a year and a half now and this is a new venue for us as well so thank you for joining us we are happy to be here with you we did discover that uh zoom ended up

002being a bit of a silver lining during this time and that we were able to have more attendance um with that format and i know i have parents that even reached out tonight that couldn't find child care to come so we do have nutmeg recording this this evening and it will be posted on saturday but if there is a purpose or a reason to use zoom we may still return to that format for some of our meetings including some of the committees so i just wanted to say that in advance i want to also do a roll call this evening so in case there's new people here who aren't familiar with us we are at least introducing ourselves so i will say each person's name and they can just raise their hand and acknowledge who

003they are my name is deb shoot and i am the chair jeffrey fleishman our secretary jackie blaia present jason and domenico laura young present david cavanaugh lisa seminara those are all of our board members now i'd like to go to our administrators doctor our administrators dr carnamola our superintendent dr nessler roussack our assistant superintendent of teaching and learning mr medic our director of human resources ms russo our business manager ms moy our executive assistant to the superintendent she will be helping us this evening and attorney ms alfano our attorney for the board of ed thank you everyone all right so now getting into the minutes from our last regular monthly meeting can i have a motion to approve our june 15 2021 meeting minutes so moved moved by jackie do i have a second second

004second by david thank you all in favor aye all right passes unanimously surely secondly our board of education special meeting that was held on august 3rd 2021 can i please have a motion to approve those minutes all right jason thank you second second by laura all in favor aye again passes unanimously thank you shirley this next section communication from the public is here as an opportunity for us to listen to you we appreciate and know that many of you have come here to speak to us tonight so i just want to be clear that this really truly is your time to speak to us it isn't a conversational aspect so if you do ask a question we unfortunately don't have the opportunity to answer your question at this time of the meeting however as we

005move to the actual old business on the agenda hopefully you all have hard copies in your hand perhaps we'll be able to answer some of your questions at that time each person that comes up to the mic will have up to three minutes to present their comments we did also have a stack of written in comments for people who weren't able to attend this evening so in all fairness what i'd like to do is alternate so we'll start with one person and it's really just the honor system of coming forward when you would like to speak then i will have surely read a written comment and will alternate in that way so is there someone who would like to start us off oh yes thank you jeff is reminding me we are in person doing

006this again when you do come to the microphone if you could please state your first and last name and your address for the record so that we can make note of that try to be clear if we don't understand we'll just ask you to repeat it and we are ready if someone would like to speak first not yet okay sir come on up i did the three minutes right if you have up to three minutes good evening my name is dominic violante i live on tamara in a circle i have a daughter here in the school that is a sophomore a few years ago uh i was uh granted uh the the permission to present an active shooter response training program to the teachers the educators of the avon school system that was under the

007former uh superintendent gary mellon um i was told to put on hold until they hired the new superintendent which is dr carmola she was gracious enough to grant me a meeting a couple years ago with her the former chief of police and former lieutenant kelly walsh who no longer with the department i made my case about what i've been doing i'm a national trainer for the alice active shooter training program it's the oldest active shooter program in the country it's been around since 2001. it's been taught in over 4 000 school systems across the country and my offer to the avon school systems because i have a vested interest because my daughter goes to the school system was to teach this for free so the the uh advice that lieutenant walsh gave to dr carmola

008was that we shouldn't do this we should just continue to do lockdown only and when i asked lieutenant walsh what happens if a shooter breaches the door where the children are locked down in a classroom and she had no answer for him she changed the subject and that's how the meeting went i asked several questions and they had no answer for it so my offer is still good i'd like to teach this training program which has been taught again all over the country i've taught in 12 different states i've taught about 25 different school systems as well as churches corporate buildings i've taught mall security and so on and so forth anywhere an active shooter program can be taught and i'd still like to offer this free of charge to the avon school system and

009have all the teachers come and take the training um you know one of the things that was told to me was that we have an sro now a school resource officer which which is great i'm glad that we do but my question for them was well what happens if the sro is in the high school and a shooting takes place in one of our other school systems one of our other schools the middle school or thomson brook and again no answer for me so there's parents that are here tonight um my my pitch is if you knew that there was something i could show the teachers that would help mitigate injury and save lives and wouldn't cost the taxpayers a dime would you want me to come in and do that yes thank you for

010coming forward i will ask that the audience please refrain from clapping so that we can move through and we're not talking to one another at this time shirley if you would read the first written comment please the first email i have is from hilary horgan who is an avon resident she writes dear avon board of education members my name is hilary horgan i am a mother of two boys ages six and nine both of them attend pine grove school my husband and i have been avon residents for 12 years and we feel so lucky to call this wonderful town home i'm writing to you all to express my support for masking in schools and my concern for folks who wish to undermine or circumvent the mass requirements let me start by saying that i get

011it i understand we are all sick of this virus i know we are tired of wearing masks a couple of months ago when people were getting vaccinated before the spread of the delta variant i thought to myself that maybe our kids would be safe in schools without massive school year i was hopeful but here is what we know to be true we know that the delta variant is here and on track to get worse we know that the delta variant is much more contagious and much more easily transmissible than the early strains of the virus and most importantly we know that the delta variant is affecting children much more than the previous strains it is making our children sick and in most cases it is killing them oh in some cases sorry it is killing

012them if that isn't a wake-up call i don't know what is my family is from florida and i have three nephews attending public school in palm beach county where they are not allowed to require mass but they do strongly recommend them in just under two weeks there are over 700 confirmed cases in their school district some teachers have died of covet next door in broward county it's terrifying but here is what else we know we know that mass work even against the delta variant we know that with certainty that everyone wearing masks will keep our children much safer because of our mass requirement last school year that covet cases were kept to a minimum and there was zero transmission in our schools if we were dealing with a much more contagious version of the virus

013why would we change anything i'm writing to you all today because i'm fully supporting the mass requirement in avon public schools this is the right thing to do i'm also concerned that some folks are trying to opt out of the requirement this is dangerous i would not feel safe if there were multiple children in my boys classrooms not wearing masks we should not be open we should not be opening up our children and teachers to this unnecessary risk please keep the mass requirement until delta is under control and we can begin vaccinating younger children thank you for keeping our children healthy and safe sincerely hillary foreign thank you shirley do we have another person in attendance that would like to speak okay i'm kathryn lewis and i live at 54 lord davis lane and um

014i won't be talking about masks tonight i'm going to offer an observation and that's the level of disrespect you just showed the audience and telling them they couldn't clap they can clap it's part of freedom of speech we elected you to this board and we'll clap when we want okay and i'm gonna go ahead and i'm to say you're not the boss of us and you're not our children's guardians deborah shoot you recently said in the media that you're not our you're our children's guardians and if my husband and i dropped dead you wouldn't be our children's guardians get on the clue buds my friend you don't know the law and you're not our children's guardians there's your lawyer from shipman and goodman and she can tell you in no way shape or form is

015the board of education ever our children's guardian when our children are in school the school is in loco parentis that's the term so the school has some authority over our children but the board of education is not our children's guardian and you as the chairman of the board that's a jaw-dropping statement and it's frightening it's everything people fear with democratic socialism what a clueless statement please lord almighty now like i said i'm not here to talk about my fat masks but good lord woman now what i am here to talk about is some scary statements recently made by the board of education and i'm an independent voter but i i am an expert witness i do litigation for my living i've testified all over the country and i'm qualified as an expert witness people people

016pay me a lot of money i'm doing this for free here tonight for you so listen up and as you know i helped see you on this board in 2015 by overturning the the republicans who didn't want to hire social workers so i'm i'm free range person here a year ago one of these board members said on the record and you guys can google her statements that her primary agenda as a board member was support to support black lives matter are you kidding me look at your mission statement that is not why you're sitting up here on the board you're supposed to be furthering education and representing children in this community are you hitting me people you're supposed to be furthering education of our children our children are getting ready to come back to school

017i asked my 16 year old are you excited he's an honors student my other child graduate he's a special education student both of them deserve to do the very best they can in this school system the best they can they don't deserve equity they don't deserve to both do the very same they deserve to do the best they can the best they can each and every student the best they can okay in june a bunch of students did great a bunch of students did great our baseball team our baseball team that didn't do very well for years they almost beat the state champions a bunch of track kids went to the to the national champions we had sat people that did great we had we had people winning writing awards we had track stars we

018had and this is only in the high school did we hear about any of them no we heard about somebody who made a pride flag over and over and over again by the way my kids didn't do any of that special stuff not any of it but i was proud of all those kids we didn't hear anything about them not one thing about any of them we had a softball team that almost couldn't field a team and they made it through the whole month we didn't hear anything about any of them i'd like to hear about all of those kids i'm proud of all of them so i'm sick of this drama this political stuff that's been the three minutes thank you okay thank you i say [Music] get a new chair who doesn't think

019she's the guardian of our kids thank you all right thank you we will have another red comment and then ms moses if you'd like to come next this dr next barron who is an avon resident and avon parent he writes dear members of the avon board of education i am a parent to three children in three different schools avon high school avon middle school and pine grove school i am a board certified practicing internal medicine physician for pro-health physicians in plainville connecticut additionally i am the hospice medical director at mclean home in simsbury connecticut i have witnessed firsthand the impact of covid on my patients their families my employees and my colleagues i wish i could paint for you the most realistic picture possible of a patient dying from this horrific virus the exasperation i

020feel on a daily basis towards those who refuse to get vaccinated has overwhelmed me my wife and i and our 8th and 10th graders are fully vaccinated my 4th grader is ineligible due to her age but she will be the first in line to receive a vaccine once it's available to her i constantly worry that one of us will bring home the delta strain infector mass wearing can prevent this so simple such a small sacrifice to make a selfless gift to others in my practice the patients who are becoming infected now seem to be those who are gathering with family and friends without mass in small indoor spaces these conditions are similar to those of our schools i think it would be irresponsible and fascifying to pretend that anything other than wearing maths in school

021is the right decision as parents my wife and i have abided by every suggestion put forth by you our board and superintendent these past 18 months fortunately not one of our children in three different schools last year was quarantined or tested positive we believe this was a result of following the guidelines of the cdc our governor and you we believe in science and as you do the same we urge you to not be swayed by those who are anti-vaccination or anti-mass on tuesday august 24th you will hear from those demanding that the mass mandate be reversed they will beg of you to listen to their message and i am begging you to listen to mine masking works out of respect for the majority of families who do not mind the very small sacrifice of having

022our students who have massive school we ask you to put into place a firm plan of disciplinary action for any student attending school who refuses to wear a mask when it's expected keep our kids in school continue to support the mass mandate keep our kids healthy continue to support the mass mandate keep our first responders and essential workers safe continue to support the mass amenity with gratitude for your service to our town kevin and robin barron 182 woodford hills drive thank you shirley i think ms moses was up first i'm sorry my name is linda moses and i live at 31 brian woods drive in addition to being a parent who's had children in the a1 schools i'm also a school social worker i want to first acknowledge that there are very strong feelings on

023every side of this argument and i would really hope that those sides could be expressed in a respectful manner i appreciate the amount of work board members do and understand that it's not always recognized i understand and respect that there are vastly different opinions i worked in a school throughout the pandemic year and was you know quarantined several times and exposed several times and worked with kids who sometimes struggle with wearing masks but i really believe that the most safe and appropriate response to what's going on now with the delta variant is to continue to have masks mandatory in schools i think it's how we keep our community safe and it's a way of showing respect and care for one another and i support um doing what's scientifically indicated and i thank everybody who's here

024tonight and i thank everybody for caring enough to be here and i hope that this can be a respectful meeting thank you very much one moment normally our communication from the public section is 15 minutes long but i think we can recognize that there's more people that would like to speak can i have a show of hands for those of you that came prepared to speak tonight all right plus with the written comments so i'm going to ask the board if i make a motion that we extend another half an hour would the board be comfortable with that okay do i have a so moved jackie moose do i have a second oh second thank you jeff all in favor aye all right thank you so we will extend and now since we just had

025a verbal comment i'll have miss moy read a written comment and then i'll have you next sir this next message is from jennifer huber who is an avon resident and pgs parent she writes dear dr carmola and board members i'm writing to express support for mass distance cleaning cohort etc policies that maximize the health and safety of students faculty administrators and staff as well as the greater community i have read the blueprint for return emails as well as guidance from the state and the governor's statement on masking in september to the extent that the administration has room to develop local rules under guidance from the governor and state board of education throughout the academic year i support policies that prioritize health over other concerns a strategy to minimize the spread of covet and existing forthcoming

026variants is prudent for public health moreover effective policies driven by public health will provide the greatest probability of keeping all children learning in person all year remote learning is untenable i appreciate oh i'm sorry i anticipate children will attend school in person this year with the greatest care taken to ensure the safety in that of everyone else i've been informed that there are parents advocating for optional or non-medically necessary exemptions for mass and yvonne public schools this note serves as a counterpoint i'm grateful for your service and commitment to our children and our community thank you sincerely jennifer hubert thank you miss moyne next sir it's your turn my name is [Music] sorry my name is marcelo maldonado i'm a general dentist i went to uconn graduated 2008. uconn is one of the best schools

027in the country we do medical school for the first two years i own two businesses looking to open a third i have three small kids your home address is 25 fun run avon thank you um i'm here i'm listening to these pre-selected emails and i can't help but say it's so typical and i tell you i would really challenge the people selecting these emails to put every email publicly because i'd really like to see what other people have to say because i see a very common theme with these emails and it's the same excuse me it's the same thing over and over again and it's very typical that we see this in the media and this isn't my main point i had to comment on this there are many many many medical and dental professionals

028all around the country who are not for mass mandates and the various types of things these people all have a scientific background scientific education understand the nature of studies and the nature of viruses and all these types of things and there's only one point of view that gets a platform anywhere and i'm seeing that right now put right in everybody's face and we're all smart enough to see through that everybody can see through that now um a number of things that i've heard i've heard a number of things i've heard a number of um emotional polls people want to you know people are dying we understand that it's very sad that people are dying but there's there's this virus and it's a reality and isn't going away i've heard people say tonight that masks work

029and i'll tell you there's a study out of canada it's a called the waterloo study and if anyone wants to message me after the fact i have a link for it i tried to find the link online through google and rail regular search engines i could not find it had to go through twitter to find it and if you do google this study what you're going to see are all the headlines msnbc cnn abc you're going to see all the headlines and the headlines believe it or not waterloo study makes the case for um you know more better masks basically kn 95 masks and the like okay what the study found was that cloth masks like the ones our kids are gonna wear to school that have darth vader on them paw patrol um spiderman

030they're 10 effective if that okay so we have a virus that's everywhere and we have a mask that's quote 10 effective in any one given social situation these kids are going to be in school all day every day they don't do anything the blue surgical masks 12 effective now if you're lucky enough to have a properly fitted kn 95 mask with no gaps you're 65 that's not too bad now we're talking science okay that's 65 that's not too bad okay um but the study also said that a well-ventilated room is better than any of those masks now of course we're gonna hear okay so uh that must mean that a well-ventilated room and a kn-95 mask is better i'm not finished um i don't want to hear that the bottom line is if we're going

031to follow the science we're going to take a look and see that the reason why we didn't have kids in quarantine we didn't have problems is because studies have shown over and over again that these children are not affected by the virus they are not affected by it there are no symptoms so we have a population of people who have no symptoms and are not affected by the virus and we're all in here saying that pleasure please wrap up your ex liberty and justice for all being wearing masks that we're forced to wear that don't even work that is crazy that is insane okay now you are asking our children to wear something on their faces which is unnatural that they come home with food cake on it and he's missing no i'm not done

032we need to respect everyone's time are we when they come home it's not sanitary okay so the bottom of the line is we're not following the science we're following the politics okay we are disagreeing about how to mitigate a public health issue and these issues these these arguments that we're hearing if we're really talking about the science it does not follow does not hold water we should not be okay sir thank you our children to give up a portion of their childhood to possibly maybe protect some adult who has now had the ability to be vaccinated and wear any kind of mask they choose it's not right it's not fair and it's not the norm in this country either this is more of a northeast california new york type of thing point of order thank

033you that's that's it i'm done okay thank you we all see what's happening all right next i have a written comment shirley if you can read they've been submitted in order and that's the order in which we're reading them this is from jamie paul james who is an avon resident and avon parent she writes new members of the avon border bed and superintendent i would like to request that the statement below be read and she writes my miss jamie paul james and i'm writing as a mother of two elementary school children in avon public schools i am tremendously grateful to you and the entire district for so closely abiding by the cdc state and regional health department safety protocols that allowed my children to be in school all of last year my daughters both had

034a fantastic experience with in-person learning in our schools despite the unprecedented challenges we have faced and are still facing with regards to this ongoing worldwide pandemic he made this possible through the thoughtful consideration of the entire aps student body their families and our community my kids are five and six they aren't bothered by wearing masks they can breathe just fine and are excited about starting another fun and safe school year the adjustment to wearing masks to school and out in the community has not been difficult and they understand why it has been necessary i want to acknowledge that both varying virulence and transmission fortunately to date have been low in younger children however with variants increasingly circulating in unvaccinated children the long-term uncertainty of this trend and the potential for long-lasting effects of saris copic

035cov2 warren conservative decision making the body of evidence clearly indicates mass are an important tool in preventing the spread and it seems to me a small thing we can do to help protect everyone in our schools and wider community thank you for all you have done and will do this year to keep our kids safe and in school sincerely jamie valheinis thank you there was a woman over here my name is tracy my address is 61 ryan lane come on can i get your name tracy beloin that's awfully dark i'm going to read this i'm going to pass this to you guys after if you want to take a look at it and i'm sure this statement on every box masks you by it reads these masks are not personal protective equipment and are not

036intended as replacement or substitutes for personal protective equipment these products are not intended for medical use or to prevent any disease or illness each mask is intended for single use only disregard immediately after use so you tell me what is this masculine for my child your child or anybody it's not doing anything you're kidding yourself if you really think this mask is going to save your child okay you guys talk about this delta variant and its contagiousness i understand that we all appreciate that all we also hear is get your child vaccinated get your child vaccinated for a vaccination that's not fully approved by the fda has no no no it's not do you know the long-term effects of this have you read about the health of the heart inflammation that affects primarily teenage boys

037yes do you am i gonna stab my son with that hell no hell no okay and for all the people who think that a vaccine is going to save your child and they're not going to become infected or you that is incorrect you can just as easily get the virus and spread the virus vaccinated or not that is true i have a friend of mine whose son contracted covid him and his buddies were together eight out of 11 contracted it five of them were vaccinated of those eight okay the grandparents got it they were vaccinated yes it may help decrease the symptoms if you do become infected but it does not prevent you from getting the virus it does not prevent you from passing it on to somebody else so let's stop kidding ourselves okay

038again every package of masks you buy these ones you passed out to me today when i walked in here it's not saving me from getting any virus it's not going to save our children either [Applause] [Music] okay thank you ms moy [Music] they write we are writing to support implementation of the mass mandate and avon schools [Applause] please be respectful of every comment that is being shared we are respectful of and it's you lethal delta variant we understand that in individuals who want to unmask the children may be at the board meeting out of concern for our health and others we have no choice but to stay away their efforts are misguided selfish and dangerous no one is forcing their children to be mass these parents have the option of home schooling they can even

039form pods and educate all the unmasked children within the anti-mass contingent a math mandate must be implemented and enforced no child or teacher should have to be in a room of unmasked super spreaders thank you for your consideration sincere marcy kane and robert thank you do we have another one hello my name is chloe noff um i live at 18 youth groups drive i'm a proud graduate of avon ivan high school i love this town i wanted to i wanted to state this because i've been wanting to say this for a long time i'm 23 years old and i know it's unorthodox for a 23 year old in this climate to think this way but i strongly believe that there has been a point way back where masks have become less of a public health

040concern and more political theater and i think it needs to stop thank you okay thank you ms moy [Applause] the next email is from aaron erin sullivan avon president she writes dear members of the avon board of education i am an avon resident and parent of four children who will be attending evan public schools this fall three of my boys who do not yet qualify for vaccination will be at pine grove school and one who is vaccinated will be starting seventh grade at ams i'm writing today to voice my support for universal masking in the schools this upcoming school year and to express my concern over medical mass exemptions which are allowed under governor lamont's executive order number 13a i am extremely concerned that many in the anti-masculine community will seek out medical exemptions to

041circumvent the mass mandate that the governor has put in place and the guidance of the farmington valley health district american academy of pediatrics and the state department of public health and the cdc who have all recommended that all students and staff regardless of vaccination status remain mass due to the delta variant and the increased spread and transmission rates in our state i'm also extremely concerned that and you know you know you know compromise sorry individuals who may actually need such an exemption will be put in even greater risk of mass exemptions erroneously granted to all who apply simply because they wish for their children to remain unmasked i'm wondering what parameters have been created to determine who qualifies for our medical math mandate and and if there will be strict guidelines about what type of

042medical mass exemptions will be accepted by avon poured a bit at the start of the last school year i was very hesitant about sending my children back to school for in-person learning but recognize that after the four months of remote learning and lots of frustration tears on both my children and my part then person learning was best both for their education as well as for the social emotional well-being i'm full i also fully admit that sending my children back to school full-time in mass also made me concerned i was worried how it would impact my very anxious and shy kindergartner or how a mass would impact my sixth grader socially or how my third grader might tolerate being in a mass for almost six hours a day five days a week the amazing thing was

043after some initial whining and worrying on their part prior to the start school they all rose to the patient and they for the most part remain unfazed by the mitigation strategies created to keep them safe my husband and i talked with them a great deal about the reason for the mass and the death shields and the hand washing and the science behind it prior to the starter school and as a result all four of my boys including my preschool blog my preschooler rose to the occasion and without complaint more than mass daily i would often have to remind them when they got to the car at pick up that they could remove the mask as they frequently forget that they were even wearing them as a result of the mitigation strategies put in place last

044year there were no school transmissions each one of my three children enrolled in aps had a case in his class [Music] okay surely we'll have to pause there in order to respect the three minutes but these will be added to our minutes online so they will still be attached is there anyone else who would like to speak please through the chair if i might i'm sorry hi can you speak i i'm i'm i may be there i'm having a hard time hearing some of you and so dr maldonado i believe we were able to hear well because he was louder but some of you it's it's i don't mean that a bad way some of you it's hard to hear and then honestly that's why if you could not clap it would be great because

045as soon as you start clapping i can't hear where that they're saying not because we don't want you to be happy thank you my name is kate buffon i live at 33 paperchase trail um i have two children one thank god only two and a half and the other one uh four and a half she's in preschool to be blunt mask mandates feel like you or the district are essentially saying that you don't trust us the parents we the parents know how to protect our kids we the parents know what's best for our children if a parent wants their child to wear a mask for whatever reason they are free to do so they want protection okay they could fear that their child might catch covet at school and spread it to the rest of

046the family to grandma etc okay please have your child wear a mask that parents should be free to do whatever it is to protect their child and their family as for my husband and i and many other avon parents we feel that being forced to wear a mask all day will do more harm than good to our children my daughter suffers from severe allergies and has a very difficult time breathing when her mask is on last school year she would come home complaining of feeling very tired imagine a four-year-old tired have you ever heard that i know i haven't and what's funny is i haven't seen that tired four-year-old this entire summer she went to an amazing summer camp for a few weeks completely indoors each day almost as long as a school day where

047masks were optional the owner of the camp trusted the parents if the parent wanted their child to wear a mask that child wore one if the parent did not want the child in a mask the camp instructors and other kids were able to see the beautiful smiles on those maskless little faces this past school year she would also complain of headaches or as she would put it my head is bouncing fatigue and headaches her doctor said it was most likely due to her not getting enough oxygen studies have shown that when wearing a mask oxygen levels can be reduced anywhere from five to twenty percent my skin crawled when i heard that my daughter would also tell me in her own four-year-old way that the mask blocks her peripheral vision when learning how to read

048and write her tiny face with a one-size-fits-all children's mask trying to learn how to write her name they have it rough as it is that brings me to my last statement research has shown that it is critical for children in preschool and kindergarten who are still learning phonemes to see how words and sounds are formed she struggled she's behind she started out the 2020 school year with anxiety even before she was forced to wear a mask she's by nature a cautious sensitive little girl she was not able to see her new classmates and new teachers faces that did not help her ease her anxiety it obviously increased it as i'm sure it did for many children is mental health no longer a concern on september 30th give parents the choice about masking our children all

049day at school i sincerely try to understand the concern and respect and the opinions that other parents have i would hope that they and you will respect and understand mine we all have our own concerns because each child is unique it would be my hope that each parent can choose what is best for their child whether that's wearing a mask or not wearing one please give us the right to make the choice that best suits our individual situations we can all protect our children in the way we see it best and all together co-exist without sacrificing their health or ours thank you thank you ms moyer next [Applause] i am able to attend tuesday's meeting and i want to reach out to you in regards to the meeting this is such a challenging topic and

050i understand both sides of the situation i am the mother of two beautiful children a typical 14 year old boy and a very mediocre medically complex seven-year-old daughter she has a rare form of epilepsy and many other challenges and disabilities my daughter is unable to wear a mask kovan has been so hard for so many people i can't speak for everyone and only from my own experiences my daughter was able to attend school successfully without getting sick the staff did such an amazing job keeping her in safe situations and cleaning and sanitizing my son on the left hand had such a hard time with copic and mascara he would come home from school often miserable with headaches he was uncomfortable and it affected his concentration he developed very bad acne in the areas of the

051space with a nasty touch he became very depressed and again and it's been very difficult he is very upset with the idea that he has to wear masks again even though the plan is in place for one month it is very concerning that the mandate will continue there has to be some kind of middle ground for each kid they need to have access to fresh air in a healthy learning environment i realize the complexities of this matter i pray that perhaps the school board can come up with some kind of creative thing get the kids outside in the mass list sincerely elsa thank you there's another public comment please come by the woman in the dress yep [Music] hi my name is wando frica i'm a mother of five children two are avon high school

052graduates and three are coming currently in the school system where is the evidence that masks are safe for kids are masks considered a medical device with no safety testing having been done why is the us the only country masking kids and why is connecticut one of only a number of states with a school mass mandate or are masks considered part of a dress code certainly it does not seem appropriate to require them as such but they are a piece of cloth how long are you willing to mask children to restrict their breathing and hinder their development and their education what is the metric by which masks will be removed what is the specific threshold at which masks will not be required i do not consent to the masking of my children and request parental choice

053i am hoping you will understand that i am speaking to you with love it is with the love i have for my own children and for all children my life has been dedicated to children being an adoption and foster care caseworker directly out of college followed by being a preschool teacher then mother of my own children and a librarian everything i do is out of love and concern for my children to me it utterly breaks my heart and feels abusive to mass children i feel like the worst possible mother when i send my children to school to mask for six to seven hours each day i cannot in good conscience ask my children or any children to do this again there is no metric that exists as to when the mask will be removed at

054the very least if a metric or guide post existed as to when it would end at least an end could be in sight yet there is none clearly following science has gone out the window as there is not a single study that supports masking children the proving that the proven efficacy of masking children does not exist yet somehow masking is being done in the name of protection from covet when it is known that mass do not help and children are at incredibly low risk anyway virtually zero i am beyond confused why there is no risk benefit analysis done to assess children and masking in schools we are ignoring every negative repercussion of masking in the name of covet protection when it isn't even shown that masking works or is safe how can we continue to

055harm our children in the absence of such data and just in the name of fear we are destroying our kids their world and their hopes for the future every day we face fear in our lives every day there are risks and we face them do a quick risk analysis make a decision and move forward often this includes such things as driving in a car which is much much riskier for children than coven we cannot protect our children from everything for their whole lives sadly things happen so often completely out of our control but we choose to live to interact to move forward and make mo the most of our time here on earth the argument has become that we are only doing what we are told well when do we stand up and say enough

056is enough when do we say our children simply deserve to breathe at the very minimum accommodations and out of the box thinking could happen in our schools can we create classrooms of students whose parents do not wish them to be masked can we let parents choose whether to mask their own children and sign waivers if need be can there be true data shared with families about the low risk that children actually face from coven how in good conscience can we allow people to live in such fear your time is up please i'm almost done enjoy life again masking is a big deal it interferes with communication understanding academics and breathing and for those who have suffered previous trauma it can be completely debilitating stand up for our children and let them breathe thank you thank

057you ms moy this is uh from a parent who is a doctor jason kutzman he writes to the members of the avon board of education i am unable to attend tuesday night's board of ed meeting but would like to follow to like the follow statement read for the public record my name is jason kutzman and i am a physician working in urgent care here in avon we see more patients and perform more cova tests than anyone else in town on a daily basis and i've been working full-time in this location since before the pandemic started i would like to speak very forcefully in favor of having our children wear mass in school as they did last year it is inarguable that wearing masks prevents the transmission of viral respiration illness the flu the data simply

058cannot be debated what has been argued like that children do not appear to be as strong a vector for the virus as adults that language and social development are hindered by having one space covered and that children as a group do not get as ill as adults these points are well taken however much of the basis for these statements come from last year's school year and the beginning of the pandemic the delta variant which is now the dominant strain here in connecticut has absolutely changed the playing field i've seen a huge uptick in childhood cases of coped in just the last few weeks it is undeniably more transmission transmissible in children than the original strain delta is also emerging that it is making kids sicker the greater dallas area ran out of pediatric icu beds

059earlier this month because of the increase in pediatric copic cases sick kids who needed admission to the intensive care units of their local hospitals i will freely allow that language and social development are handed by wearing mass but aren't they equally hindered if our schools and classrooms need to close routinely due to an increase in frequency of copic cases shouldn't we do everything we can to keep math will will reduce the risk of kids passing this on to their classmates and teachers they will not prevent all cases just as the vaccines will not prevent all cases they will however reduce the likelihood that your child gets mine or your neighbor's child sick more likely they will reduce the likelihood that your child or my child will pass it to another child who will then get

060their in immunity i'm sorry immunocompromised family member or the elderly family member very sick masks are the seatbelts of the pandemic you do not know that they will say someone you love so you wear them all who need to get involved whenever someone child or adult gets sick every time someone gets covered seeks care for testing or because of the symptoms medical assistants nurse pas physicians the folks who clean the medical facilities the ambulance okay surely thank you very much that also concludes that 30 minute time frame that we had given could i have a show of hands of how many others had intended to speak we do have a second public comment section at this time does the board want to continue now or should we continue at the second segment i would like

061to make a motion to continue now for another 15 minutes ten minutes at a time okay do i have a second second second by jeff all in favor aye okay that passes unanimously who would like to go next please come forward hello my name is liz summerhorn i live at five westland road i have four young kids they're eight five three and one i am very concerned about my kids wearing masks this school year uh when i first prepared words to tonight i wrote three minutes of all the reasons why i was concerned but then i realized that nothing that i could say to you matters at all because you guys don't seem to have any power to make these decisions for our schools so i wanted to spend my three minutes asking you why

062we don't have local control here in avon i listened to lamont's copic briefing last week live on facebook someone asked him to justify his town by town approach instead of statewide mandates he said around minute 49 that some towns are highly vaccinated and some towns aren't and this was his quote so i think i'll give a little more discretion because i think that the mayors know their communities pretty well why doesn't that apply to school districts and why aren't you the board of education screaming about that over the past two months i've been writing emails to you guys my principal the health department the town council and even the library staff i was including anyone i could think of and the answer is always the same thank you for your email we have no control

063we're following orders 18 months ago i get it nobody knew what was going on at that point but at this point that answer is not good enough anymore 18 months into this pandemic it's time to take control of our town back and make decisions for avon based on what's going on in avon i keep hearing the governor say things like in mississippi in alabama we are not in mississippi and we are not alabama we are avon we need to be acting locally and reacting and not reacting to nationwide headlines that have nothing to do with our local situation so please demand local control from the governor so you can start doing again the job that we elected you to do i'll also say that i'm very much opposed to masking little kids especially at this

064point in the pandemic when all the information and the dado that we have we know that covid barely affects kids we know that kids aren't super spreaders and we know that the teachers are vaccinated we know that our community has reached hurt immunity in avon we're currently at 75 and a half percent total population fully vaccinated and 80 of our total population has initiated the vaccine that is well above heard immunity our adult population who are the ones that have the real risk factors for coping is 89 fully vaccinated and 93 has initiated the vaccine i'm not sure how you can expect to get any better than that cobit is never going to be zero in america we're never going to be 100 vaccinated so i just wonder what the magic number is that we

065have to get to before it's acceptable to unmask the kids we had 30 cases in the last reporting period in avon that's 30 cases out of 18 000 people over two weeks um our narrative of wear masks to protect others is no longer relevant everyone who wants to be vaccinated is vaccinated including myself and my husband adults in school buildings are vaccinated even if my child did somehow bring cobit into the school he's not going to get his vaccinated teachers sick that's how vaccines work and even if the teacher does get a breakthrough case the chances of that ending up in anything other than a mild case of cobit is negligible i have little kids it's my understanding that no one on the board or ned lamont has young kids therefore you don't actually know

066what it's like to put a mask on a three-year-old or a kindergartner thank you [Music] [Applause] ms moyer are you ready yes next email is from annie simpson avon resident and aps parent few members of the board my name is annie simpson and have been an avon resident for the past five years i want to first thank you all for your hard work and commitment to our community and our children in the past 18 months you have been challenged and thrown her goals and you still manage to keep our teachers kids administration staff and the rest of our community safe so thank you for your tremendous efforts my five-year-old daughter will be entering kindergarten at pgs this year and attended rbs for pre-k the past two years you can imagine the excitement but also questions

067and concerns she is bringing up about the upcoming school year like how does the bus know where to take her who her teacher is if she has any friends in her class and where she'll be eating lunch etc but there's no but there's been no mention of wearing a mask i reminded her that she'll need to wear one and it didn't even faze her just okay masks have been good have become second nature to our kids they are fully aware that there is a germ and we need to protect ourselves from it they understand that mass are necessary to stay healthy just like backpacks are necessary to keep school supplies in from a parent's perspective i strongly urge you to make the right choice a smart choice to continue to mandate mass throughout the school

068year in order to keep our children safe we can all agree that school is an important institution in our children's lives and even profoundly more effective when it's in person so please let's keep our schools open by continuing to mandate mass thank you for your time sincerely annie simpson thank you who would like to speak next please come forward hi my name is carrie firestone 36 cambridge crossing um i'm just here because i feel like it's the beginning of the school year and we don't always get a chance to say the things we want to say to our staff and administrators because we get busy but i've been around for a long time and i've worked with lots of staff and administrators here we've done projects together we've worked on like mundane things like schedules

069we've we've actually had plenty of disagreements where we had really good hearty conversations and i would just like to say thank you because you have always always remained professional you've been thoughtful you've struggled with really hard things and you've always been what i think would end up being the right choice or at least a choice i can live with because i've seen how hard you work to get to that point um and i know sometimes it feels like you're human so you're going to feel like you know maybe nobody's on my side but that is not the case lots of people are here to say we support you we trust you and now to the board the same thing you're elected people you don't even get a paycheck i know how hard you guys work

070i know how exhausting this is i know how emotionally drained this is and yet here you are sitting here listening to your constituents and your community share very difficult things so as we go into the school year i hope many of us who are sitting here remember to thank our staff our teachers our administrators and maybe show up with cookies or something to show the gratitude because we really feel it and it may not feel like that tonight but it's there and we are with you and i don't know what decisions you're going to make on these things but i trust you because i've seen how hard you work and how thoughtful you are with your decision making thank you thank you ms muy [Music] and we certainly believe the importance of vaccinations as well

071as the hilarious the later use of impacts of copay that said we are right to urge a fundamental district to reject any mass mandate for the schools and lead this decision to parents we are sharing below a recent wall street journal editorial written by the head of pediatric and technicians who is also on the fda advisory through the claims open vaccines and johns hopkins medical school professor they summoned up quite well basically kids have very low risk from coded and considerable risks and harm from being involved all day including physical medical and social at the same time every adult has had ample opportunity to get themselves vaccinated forest mass has school sacrifices the well-being and development of our kids in order to protect adults who are not willing to protect themselves by getting a vaccine

072the school system should exist for the well-being development of our kids full stop as such the only conclusion is to leave this multifaceted decision to the expression of the parents thank you for your consideration dan and michelle thank you next bogdano creeka stephen street i'm not sure if it's going to be well organized try to get my thoughts together but this is a matter that is deeply important to me i think i'll start with some facts so teachers and the staff who work in our schools are a cornerstone of our community i think we all agree on that i'm urging the board of administration to protect and defend the fundamental human rights of our teachers recently the governor our governor put a direct output directive mandating that our teachers be injected [Music] i don't want

073to hear about the test out option because two hours away we have a city who just announced that they will not allow a test out option for their teachers they have a choice either get the injection or lose their ability to earn a living feed their family and shelter their children i'll try to follow the logic of the governor's decision-making process on march 19th the governor announced that capacity limits will be eliminated at restaurants retail establishment libraries museums on march 19 there were 1207 new cases and 10 deaths so he he reduced the restrictions then on august 22nd i try to find a day close to when he implemented these these new mandates there were zero cases um so then this is when he decided to implement what i think is the most intrusive most

074draconian measure a measure that's a direct attack on the human rights of our teachers the right to make medical decisions the right to own their own body with a threat of losing their livelihood all this for no logical reason i know we've heard people talk about the injections having some efficacy sadly we all know these are more facts that vaccinated transmit covid vaccinated get sick and vaccinated have passed away with covid um we've seen countries where their rates of vaccinations are extremely high israel gibraltar are two examples um where cases and hospitalizations are rising so i don't see the logic but i do see the the danger to basic human rights for our teacher so i urge the board to really think about opportunities to protect those rights because i am concerned that the governor

075will keep pushing forward with this type of agenda there's many who vilify those who made a choice to not get vaccinated those of us who who got vaccinated made a decision weighed the pros and benefits those of us who didn't choose to get injected i should be allowed that same right to make that decision for themselves those who vilify those who chose not to get injected in the media um claim things like their even politicians and and others claim that those who chose not to get vaccinated on a petri dish for for infection and for disease um it's kind of akin to saying that the another alarming trend we're facing in in health care is antibiotic resistance it's as if we're playing antibiotic resistance on those who don't use antibiotics again there's no logic thank

076you mr aprica and thank you for your service ms moyes [Music] as a parent that has always been one of the worries as we put up kids on the bus to drop them all will they be safe at school today from gun violence safe and fire safe from bullying announcing from coped many of the safety bills that schools are required are required to run each year for fires and shootings are designed to keep kids safe the many recent school building changes like locked entry lobbies and security changes are designed to kids safe the vaccination requirements for entering school are designed to keep kids safe from common illness common diseases now i'll face it rising clothing cases and a more contagious strain that avon schools need to follow the guidance from the local and state departments

077of health and keep our kids safe at school by employing everyone in the building to wear masks i was hopeful in june with lower face rings and vaccinations that vaccinate students and staff to be massless but the recent trends have shown that everyone should be mass inside the buildings to keep all kids safe although some may suggest that coba is not a big deal for younger kids the fact is that no one can predict who may die from covet and who may not even know they have it none of the 11 and under are eligible for the vaccines yet many of these students live in households where siblings or parents of guardians may be vulnerable to that disease i'm sure every student would be happy to wear a mask to protect their families at home

078and their teachers families at home many wearing massive school will not only keep kids safe but will keep the families and communities safe moreover since the guidance on quarantining has changed mass will better enable the schools to keep kids learning in person i'm sure we are we all agree that students learn best when they can be in person as much as possible no one wants our kids to face multiple weeks of online learning due to quarantine if we can minimize the risk by mass wearing wearing mass and distancing will keep help keep our kids safe and our school is open thank you carol shipinski thank you shirley that completes the 15-minute section how many people were there that had raised their hands before we have one more perhaps we have um you come forward and

079is the board comfortable with that and then we'll move on through the thank you very much okay so please come forward for your three minutes meegan belleville 64 daventry hill road good evening i'm here tonight to express my great concerns about masking our children in school i am part of a growing movement with over 215 members in my unmask our kids avon group to share the truth about the dangers of forced masking of our children it doesn't take a medical degree to understand that our kids can sit with their friends at a table in a crowded restaurant then they can sit unmasked at their desks 36 states do not have statewide mass mandates and connecticut and rhode island are the only new england states with such mandates and now eight states have banned mass mandates

080for children why are they banning mass if they are truly so benign as some in this community believe wouldn't it be nice if there was a study conducted over the course of this pandemic which looked at the side effects of masking our children well good news a study was conducted in germany with parents reporting on over 25 000 children who were masked over the school year during covet the results are concerning 68 of the parents reported side effects in their children from masking these include irritability headache difficulty concentrating less happiness impaired learning drowsiness shortness of breath nausea skin and other infections rapid heart rate and more all of these side effects happen in children who have an almost zero chance of dying from cobit the common flu is a greater risk for our children than

081covet and we never messed up for the flu death by suicide is much higher in this age group than covet deaths this cdc chart right here this cdc chart ranks the causes of death in children and covid is very low on that list you can see age 5 to 14 covets down here suicide much much higher way up here so considering that anxiety is a known side effect of mask wearing maybe we should consider that mandatory masking could be one of the reasons why our town needed to host a special seminar to address the growing anxiety in our children why don't we push for unmasking our children as a first step in reducing anxiety after reading this study no one can claim that masks are just a minor inconvenience another claim is that masks are

082not dangerous because doctors wear them surgeons wear masks so they don't spit in an open wound during surgery by mistake here's a quote from an experienced surgeon quote surgical cloth surgical and cloth mask do nothing to prevent viral transmission unlike public wearing masks surgeons work in sterile surgical suites that filter the room air at a high level and increase the oxygen content to limit the negative effects of mass on the surgeon surgeons only wear fresh sterile masks for short periods of time and change them out at the first sign of moisture build up can i just finish a couple more sentences i know your hands are mostly tied by lamont's mandate until his emergency powers expire on september 30th i hope the board is now making plans to immediately terminate the mass mandate at that

083time in the meantime we must take the least restrictive approach on mass policies allowing for exemptions when written documentation from a child's provision physician is provided the medical issue between is between the physician and the patient and his parents teachers need to be instructed to focus on education rather than policing mass compliance mask exemption status is a privacy issue that is legally protected by privacy laws thank you all right thank you everyone we will now continue on with the regular parts of the meeting i do need to make a motion to amend the agenda to add on possible action following our executive session regarding the agreement with the custodians and maintainers do i have a second second uh okay laura second all in favor aye aye okay that passes unanimously so we will add that

084on to the end of the meeting please next is items of information and proposals ms russo is there a financial report good evening everyone uh the finance committee did not meet uh this month but i do have a report um last night the board of finance met and approved the board of education's requests for the additional appropriation for the open choice funds uh the hundred sixty six thousand fifty four dollars that was requested to supplement the purchase of the interactive panel boards for our classrooms excellent thank you do any board members have questions okay thank you ms russo as well um miss you i was going to go over the transfers to make it a little bit easier on the consent agenda that would be fine great uh the transfers that you have in your

085packet which start on page 18. uh the first one for seven thousand dollars is a reallocation of expenses to a new account that we put on the general ledger to differentiate uh supplies and testing equipment for our special education department and the remaining transfers are within supply and equipment accounts to reallocate resources as we purchase additional items to open the year excellent thank you any questions about that all right thank you miss rizzo i appreciate the explanation next is committee and liaison reports which should be brief over the summer we take july off from meeting except for negotiations so there is no report other than for mr and domenico to update us on the negotiations yep thank you deb um just a couple things a report uh i'll start with the i think the best

086news first we have a tentative agreement with the custodians and maintainers so we're gonna discuss that agreement and executive session later and uh hopefully vote uh on that afterwards uh we also have completed a mediation with the paraprofessionals the interventionists and the food service workers we did not reach an agreement at the mediation but board council and union council are still in discussions were were hopeful to get to an agreement and teacher negotiations started up about a month or so ago and are underway excellent thank you jason under liaison reports um i do need to apologize that the agenda is under a different format that we once used positions one two and three no longer exist we do still have our board rep to correct but again we don't have an update on that from

087ms blair correct no update the next meeting will be september 15th all right excellent thank you the next item is the board chair update i want to start by thanking the administrators and teachers and staff for getting us ready for the new school year which starts just next week it's always an exciting time and obviously this is a very challenging time that we're living through i do want to acknowledge and that i appreciate the comments that have been shared with the board um over this past year and a half we've been living through this together and we're all trying to figure it out as we move along i understand that it is frustrating and i know that there are emotions that are attached to it i'm a mother of three as well and i do

088appreciate that you took the time to come here tonight and put your thoughts together and share them with us so please know that we do respect your position and i hope that you do feel respected by the board because we we hope to encourage that kind of relationship between us with you so please if you could just bear in mind that we are elected and we are required to follow the law and that's the position that we are in so regardless of what our personal feelings might be about masks i can't i haven't met anyone who likes wearing them we do need to follow the directives and there really isn't a choice in the matter so i just wanted to say that but i am excited for the kids to be coming back to school

089we're doing everything we possibly can to make that a reality that is our priority we truly want the students to come back and to be with their friends and with their teachers and we're able to provide that for them and i'm grateful that avon is one of the few districts that pulled that off last year many other districts were not open they were only active remotely or they were simply waiting until they could come back into school and we were able to continue educating our students so i am grateful to dr carnamola's leadership and for everyone on her team that allowed us to do that so please know our priority is always the best interests of our students and staff and keeping your kids here in school so that's all i have to say but

090thank you next is the superintendent's report thank you before i continue on it surely i i think this might be helpful to you and i know some folks left already so any of you that are still here want to pass this along if any of you that spoke tonight have what you said written down either you know on a phone that you could email or something that would be helpful to us in terms of minutes because we try to capture every word of the minutes which is part of why we were listening intently and and recording uh but otherwise miss moy is listening to a lot of hours so as you can see the the comments that were read were sent in prior to the meeting and i know some of you did that so

091you can let me know if you want to use that or else it would just be helpful i just would ask that we make sure that we are clear in what you stated here tonight thank you so i'm going to just go through the hiring and the enrollment report very quickly because i speak to them we will speak to them also in the strategic plan update tonight um you can see on page i believe it's 15 and 16 we have hired a number of staff since really since april but if you look just in these two pages it has been a tremendous amount of hiring and so we've been very busy with that replacing some of our folks who retired and adding in some of the staff that were necessary as we moved into this

092year with some of our enrollment and also utilizing our grant funding to keep our staff moving i want to stop for a moment there and thank all of our administrators and our committees that got together over the summer to help us to hire as many of these individuals to put a regular process in place even though it was the middle of the summer so for example for those of you who may not know that means with teaching candidates for example even in summertime we try to get together a mini class to to see sample lessons and so on so it's it's quite a process that takes place as we hire both certified and non-certified staff and you can see uh tonight just how many that has been so i just want to extend my gratitude

093to everyone out in the buildings that helped us to do that and of course the central office team our enrollment we have seen a surge of enrollment as you would expect i think based on the housing market and also hard to quantify but we think some of it might be in the younger grades some folks that maybe had not registered their children for school last year based on the situation with the pandemic or one way or the other folks not necessarily even homeschooling them with some of the youngers but holding them back for kindergarten for example so we've been working on that also feverishly and readjusting class sizes and so forth again we'll speak a little bit more to that shirley if you would could you put up the um we're not in our normal

094venue so it's obviously a little bit more difficult to project we have kind of a temporary projector but i thought you might like to see what we were speaking to board members you have this printed out because you cannot see the screen we just wanted to share as we normally would um you know fortunately for us kobit 19 and the pandemic and layered mitigation strategies are not all that we talk about and we are very excited to prepare for our students to return and i guess one thing that i would say is that on top of doing all of that because i think it's it's very clear by now the amount of time energy and what what i'll call bandwidth we spend as central office and also the building administrators working through the various pieces

095of information that come to us from the state of connecticut from the department of public health from the local health department those are all of the things that we now just have to do and they take a tremendous amount of time but in addition to that we're still looking to move the district forward and make progress toward our strategic plan and also to do what i would call the more mundane things that we do during any summer to get ready we're especially proud of of how much we've accomplished this summer i'm going to turn to my team here who helped put this together for tonight and save you from having to listen to me do the entire thing and just speak through we're not going to read everything to you but we just want to

096add some context around the highlights of the work that we have accomplished in pushing us forward toward our strategic goals and also opening up for school next year and so i'll pause there and say dr nesslarusack as you heard as our assistant superintendent and manages and oversees the teaching and learning office i would ask you donna if you would speak to the first piece related to students and staff and then technology sure so we've had a very busy but very exciting and fulfilling summer we started the summer by creating and launching what we called our summer skills and fun website there was a lot of concern that you know students may have lost a little bit academically so for our incoming kindergarten students and our rising students in grades one through seven we did a

097website that was intended to help maintain and strengthen their academic skills so it was really focused on literacy math social studies and stem and then we included some enrichment boards on the website also this was the first summer that we ran a summer program for our k-8 students so 159 students who are receiving tier 2 or tier 3 intervention were invited to attend and 37 of those students were invited to attend for both reading and math those are the two areas we focused on the summer so we had 115 students that participated we had 10 teachers or interventionists staff the program so the program was held remotely four days a week for the month of july and it was a combination of synchronous and asynchronous work so the students met twice a week for 30

098minutes with their teacher and then completed assignments on the other days the software that we used was also available for the students to continue using through august with their families so we also kind of gave them some enrichment to keep it going if they chose to for our high school students we did a summer credit recovery program we had 50 students who attended classes during the school year either in person or remotely and received one or more f's those were the students that we invited to participate so they could recover some credits 50 stu students were enrolled in a total of 94 courses that needed to be made up and as of this morning 21 students have participated and 31 courses have been completed with students earning credit recovery needless to say as we get

099closer to the school year we have many students that are still in the process and feeling a little bit more of a sense of urgency of completing the courses so you know we're anticipating those numbers going up that program was staffed four days a week for the month of july by two teachers we had a humanities teacher and a stem teacher students could participate remotely or in person every day we had an average of one to three students that came here because they felt the library was a good place or in a couple cases their parents felt the library was a good place for them to focus and get their work done the courses were specifically designed based on what each student needed in edge annuity and what our teachers did was they provided that

100support they monitored the work completion they were in constant contact with parents and students regarding progress lack of progress participation lack of participation and i really need to commend the two individuals because why they were contracted to work from eight to twelve they pretty much worked all day long and into the evenings in terms of reaching out to students and families so we were very very thankful to them for that support that they did and going above and beyond obviously the summer program was only for the month of july but students were able to continue to work independently to complete their course or courses we ran our extended school year program which is for our special ed students that was held in person this year at roaringbrook for the month of july we had 85

101students attend and 55 staff members working with our students we continued curriculum work and unit development especially focused on k-12 for reading and writing workshop which as you know we recently adopted and we were very fortunate to have the opportunity for our new curriculum specialists to come in and do some of that work with us so that they'll be really in a good place as they start the school year we also provided access to a two-day professional development in the administration of the fonteson panel benchmark assessment so we had our k-6 reading consultants curriculum specialist and the director of curriculum who are going to be supporting this transition from the benchmark assessments to the from the developmental reading assessment get further trained so that we can do that trainer trainer models and they will train

102and support our teachers through that we also which we haven't had in the past but this was a request of the buildings was to create pacing guides for english language arts math and science we did that and they parallel the assessment calendar and we've gotten some very positive feedback on that so we drafted those out worked with building administrators and those will roll out to the teachers probably this thursday or next monday so we're very excited to have that in place we also came up with common expectations people said it would be helpful to know what are those common expectations for reading and writing workshop implementation for the next school year and also for the foundational skills and assessments so we have those common expectations that we will be sharing again with our staff within

103the next few days data teams we are going to be kind of revamping those we spent last year with our assistant principals revamping all of the forms we took them out for test drive got faculty feedback so those were all finalized this summer and are ready to roll for pre-k-12 we keep trying to improve in how we leverage our systems especially powerschool which is our student management system so we are moving all of our student assistant team forms there so more people have access to it and the information will be readily available in the fall we're going to be bringing back our unified sports program back into district and the preparations were finalized for that so we're excited to have that back in district our new staff orientation began last thursday in a downpour we

104had anri on monday and no orientation but we are still swimming our way through it and moving things all over the place so the first day we had about 55 certified and non-certified staff and what we did is we looked at the district mission beliefs and the blueprint gave them an overview of the district's systems and structures they got their new technology we did an activity with them they created bumper stickers from our mission statements um and came up with some very cool things i can share those with you later if you're interested and then the certified staff had four more and now it's three more days where they do a lot of work on the curriculum the assessments our data collection they set up their websites we train them on all our software because

105we really want them to be in a very good comfortable place when they start having everything in place and then finally we've welcomed 373 new students to the district we've registered completely registered that number and we have quite a few that still owe us paperwork so we can get them through so excited about the numbers of folks that are joining us in terms of technology of course i just touched the powerpoint you can't see it because of your gracious vote on the chromebooks we did receive our 1500 chromebooks they have all been inventoried and prepped and they are ready to go out to our students and we have created that plan of how we're going to roll out the new ones collect the old ones and then replace chromebooks for the students that aren't getting

106new ones this year but they will get the newest models that we have available to them we've started removing some smart boards and replacing them with the benq interactive flat panels to date we've only received a few of them so we have put some in the high school here and the bulk are going into pine grove because they're quite large and storage is a problem at pine grove when the students come back and we have so many there so that's our priority school right now we have a number of software programs we have a class link which is a rostering software and it will be a single sign-on so our students will be able to get to any of our platforms with one single sign-on which will make life much easier for all involved we

107have implemented a chromebook management system and we're working on getting our world language moved from two labs to a virtual environment so building those servers a couple more things we created and deployed a new technology asset management system so that we can manage all of the equipment that we have and keep track of it um in a better or more efficient way is probably a better term and a new work order system was developed this summer and what the team did was they took the frequently asked ticket questions like here are my problems and wrote a frequently asked question so that people can click on it and see oh if i do this it will take care of this problem so while we'll still give them any support they need it may speed things up

108we deployed eight new ups units or battery backups ours weren't as long-lasting as we hoped so not that we ever had a problem but we didn't want one so we have updated those we've identified a new website uh final site goes down in january so we'll be moving to intro to intro to intro to replace final site and then finally we rolled out the new technology device protection plan and we've had 858 students opt in 266 have opted out and we've got 23 that have asked for hardship assistance so those are a few things we've been working on this summer let me just pause there a second any questions about any of that i know that's a lot you have it in front of you but it really is just a portion of what we've

109done in june july and part of august um you can see surely if you could put up the next just so people can see and the board knows in the area of systems and communications and and to be clear we tried to match this up with our strategic plan you may recognize the language uh we have four areas that we're focused on in our strategic planning teaching and learning of course personal growth and relationships um systems and community uh partnerships and communication so we a lot of these overlap but we did the best we could to kind of quantify them without bringing out the gigantic plan and spending the time going through that tonight certainly there'll be another time for that you can see we did quite a number of capital projects um our stage

110floor uh at ams the gym floor at the high school the gym floor at tbs and we finally got that skylight replacement in the pgs media center that was a long time coming and of course did some carpet replacement and so on mr medic i i should allow you to speak to the remaining parts uh on the hiring and like a lot of the covid protocols that certainly worked closely with me and us to finish as you can see from the board packet the hiring report was pretty lengthy we've onboarded 54 employees since april 27 certified 27 non-certified and still counting we do have a few more vacant positions that we are looking to finalize hires for in the next day so that we're ready to go for thursday and obviously for monday the group

111of educators that we brought on both certified and non-surf are truly talented individuals and we had the opportunity to welcome them to our school community this week through orientation at the same time we did update our cover 19 procedures based on the information guides and directives that we received from the state of connecticut department of public health we have continued to update policies and make the necessary revisions to school handbooks in accordance with them for the upcoming school year our security plans at all the schools have been reviewed and updated in addition to some of the capital improvement items we also have some security enhancement items that we've put into our buildings and have tested the operational impact of them and they are ready to go so thank you to our staff and um one

112of the biggest things many people probably saw the foyer walking into the high school today our buildings were prepared clean and ready for the start of the school year two weeks earlier than normal and we are very much appreciative of our custodians and maintenance staff effort we're currently on punch list items in all the buildings we're excited um for the care that they've taken to prepare them this week they do look gorgeous and we're excited to have our staff see them on thursday in fall thank you and then just quickly uh ms russo and i wanted to ensure that we gave you just a quick update on where we are in terms of the american rescue plan the esser funds the grant funding that is yet another thing that we've had to do over the

113summer to apply for it's an arduous process we have talked about everything here before but i just wanted to take a moment and quickly allow susan to uh be clear about what the uh the dollar amount of the money is what we are spending it on you've heard a number of things that will connect uh to grant funding thank you so our allocation from the state um from our june meeting changed slightly our final allocation was 748 of that a mandatory minimum of 20 percent had to be set aside for to address learning loss and that equated to 149 626 dollars a reminder the rpsr or american rescue plan was the purpose of that grant from the federal government was to transform the district to take this opportunity with these funds to address the learning

114loss but also to move everything in our blueprint forward take the next steps in our evolution currently um the status of the grant is approved so we've submitted our plan we've got it approved we got feedback from the state make tweets as necessary and we're all set to go some of the things we're using that force is address the needs that dr bruce had talked about in teaching and learning we've hired an english language learner teacher and tutor and we have that position for two years funded through the grant as well as teaching assistants in our buildings grades k through four an interventionist and additional one at our high school for two years as well our social and emotional learning supports we've added a counselor to the high school in the second year of that

115if you remember in our sr2 grant that we spoke about earlier in the year we funded the first year of that position this gives us an additional year for that position in our curriculum supports and resources we've contracted with a reading workshop consultant to move forward that work that we've started this last year we did some more work with fontes and pinel in the benchmark training some foundations word study intervention materials to support all these efforts were purchased as well as contracting with kelly services to provide building substitutes to keep things static in our buildings when our teachers do have to be out we have a full-time person in place that will be a substitute for the each building who knows the teachers knows the staff knows the students environmental health and safety upgrades we

116are contracting with lunch monitor at avon middle school to support the new schedule changes there to have additional supports we did our air quality testing in our buildings to ensure that we have that proper ventilation airflow we did some upgrades to the thompson brook hvac system to ensure it was working appropriately we have some additional money set aside for more repairs that may come up as we use these systems to meet the cdc standards and also we purchase air filtration units to be used specifically in our nurses in our quarantined rooms so that we have additional protections within those spaces thank you any questions about any of that before i move on wrap up i'd just like to acknowledge how impressive all of that is to have been done in a shorter period of time

117thank you for all of your efforts to do that um shows what we want to provide for our students here did anyone else have any questions or comments so that's the uh big picture on where we are in terms of strategic goals as we move forward into the school year we are happy to be moving those things forward i would be remiss if i didn't say that we are ready otherwise for the students to start to the bus routes are completed they've we've worked with the bus company to look at those again we are working at looking at what's on the website and making those updates finishing up scheduling those are being sent out as you know they were held back as we processed registrations and also awaited to see what we would be able

118to do in terms of spacing and class sizes so that's been a lot of work and again i'll thank the administrators and the clerical staff and our counselors for the help in that um we are excited and ready to go when the students return and when our the rest of our staff comes in it's new student or excuse me new staff orientation right now as you know thursday the rest of our uh faculty and staff everyone that works in the district will return we are doing convocation we are doing a modified version of that this year building by building uh we've got a bigger and better version of that this year we're excited to be able to go back to some of the way that we've done it in the past and i'll leave it

119there because i don't want to spoil uh particularly one of our surprises i'll just i'll have to thank that person at the next meeting and that's it we are ready to believe it or not we are ready to see summer come to a close uh it's been it's been very busy and it might actually be a little bit of a rest for some of us when the students actually come back and we can see the fruits of those laborers so thank you for all of your support and to everyone who worked with us over the summer [Applause] thank you very much our next piece is consent calendar do i have a motion to approve all right jason do i have a second second by jackie all in favor i passes unanimously thank you and next

120is old business discussion of the reopening plan i guess this is an opportunity for us as board members just to get clarity or to ask questions that we think might be helpful not only for ourselves but for those in attendance and those who might watch nutmeg on saturday um to talk with dr carmel and our attorney about some of the pieces i was hoping that um ms alfano if you could possibly speak to the role of a board of ed member in decision making on these kinds of requirements for mandates the position that we're in um is it really optional or is it expected that we would follow the law did i do that correctly yes okay i think that um i believe that information about this has legal opinion about this has probably been

121shared with the board members so far so i'm really reiterating what i believe all of you have already read in writing which is a recent opinion um which we had actually our law firm had provided to to caps to be to be shared with superintendents all over this isn't specific to avon and the underlying issue is and we've heard a lot of really heartfelt important comments here tonight the problem is that right now from a legal perspective regardless of your personal opinions about whether or not masks should be required legally in schools for all children and all people who enter the school building like all of us they are they are legally required currently by the governor it's an executive order there's discussion about also it's an executive order it's also the department of public

122health it's also from the department of education i think all of the speakers here have acknowledged that that is whether people agree with it or not that that is the current state of the law and the most important thing and i know you all got this from the memorandum so i don't want to you know overstate because you're all capable of reading it and digesting it is that it is um absolutely the legally necessary thing for you to do for you to follow the law as board of education members you're obligated to do that and if you failed to do that not only could you potentially experience personal liability because you're going beyond the protections that you're extended by being a board of education member but could also potentially damage the school districts its receipt

123of funds and could cause liability for the district as a whole so while this remains an executive order this particular piece that we are talking about right now which i think is what you're asking me about which is the mask mandate unfortunately the board of education members can of course have personal opinions but you can't act counter to the law without bringing serious liability to yourself into the school district and that's not you know it's your duty to to not do that as board of education members so that's the important piece the other thing i'll just i'll just add on kind of gratuitously right now because i can kind of anticipate a follow-up question is that you don't know yet what decisions you may have the opportunity to make as board of education members as

124we sit here on august 24th you don't know yet whether or not that mandate is going to remain in place you don't know yet whether it's going to be potentially potentially um lifted early you don't know yet whether or not it's going to look differently in terms of governor lamont deciding that it's not going to be a statewide mandate but that there are going to be other metrics we heard some questions tonight about metrics which makes a lot of sense is it not going to be a mandate it can be handled some other way but it so you you can't yet you can consider all of these factors and and your own personal you know what you might think about them but you can't yet make a decision because there are too many moving pieces

125for you to know what what your legal obligations are going to yet be nobody knows yet everybody that's that's kind of been the the problem for school boards and administrations throughout this entire time period right is that we're always there's new guidance out and and for us attorneys as well as a matter of fact i mean there's new guidance out constantly that you're you're supposed to it's it's thrown at you it always comes a little late you're trying to digest it you're trying to understand it for the next five weeks you you really can't without breaking the law and bringing liability to yourselves and and one another in your school community do anything but follow the mandate and it really depends what happens to the mandate i would imagine that prior to and this is

126just my opinion right i would imagine that prior to the the drop dead date on this mandate that you're going to hear a lot about it from you know from the legislature from the governor's office from other constituencies and then you'll see where you are and you may have to have other meetings and other conversations i'm assuming that you will but right now you don't know the answer to what your department of public health your executive order your department of education and what all those factors will be and there will be a lot of decisions to be made but you're just not there yet i hope that is very helpful thank you very much did anyone else have questions jackie just turn on your mic thank you for that that's helpful information um i guess

127the question i have is going forward if the executive order is terminated or ends how how does a board relate to the depart their local department of health or their state department of health they're not really requiring suggestions or highly highly suggest are we held by the same standard to support what our local and state health department are suggesting even after the mandate yes unless they are just suggestions so it depends like on on the terminology on what what the state is at that point right like right now the departments of public health around the state have are the ones who are supposed to be regulating what you're doing here in school right it's an executive order now that we would all listen to this department of public health that they're all intertwined so if

128that was relaxed somehow and it was suggestions recommendations but right now it's mandated guidelines and you know just like we wouldn't want the department of public health you wouldn't as board members telling you what to do for curriculum in your classrooms and all of that because they're not experts on that similarly you could easily be liable held liable for taking over public health decisions when there are firm guiding slash mandates and it depends what form those are put out there but the bottom line answer is yes as as boards of education i don't think that it would be prudent for you to ignore what your health district is telling you thank you jeff thank you and i'm not sure if it's a question for you or for the superintendent but the superintendent is always i'll

129use the word skull thus when it comes to policy we vote on policy she's responsible for implementation and enforcement and so i understand with the executive order our policy is that everyone who enters the building must be masked that's the extent of our authority so my question is what is mandated and required in terms of the enforcement on the staff the superintendent what does that look like do we have to suspend students who do not wear a mask is it a detention what does that look like because i think that may be a question i need an understanding so i can understand what the policy is yeah i don't i don't know bridget if you want to speak to that if you want me to speak to it first okay so yeah i might do

130so that's a really good question the law as it stands now the mandate does not dictate the consequences for lack of following the mandate right so could can the um uh police in in a forum like this enforce the law yes i think your question is what do you do within the school building if a student does not wear a mask i do not think that it you would call the police i i don't think that that would be a normal you know i think that you would handle um it i think that there is not a legal dictate about how that would be handled is my answer and so that would more be there is discretion there about the implementation of that within the school building but that's beyond the realm of this board

131right if i understand because that's the policy and then it falls to the superintendent and her staff in terms of the implementation that would be my understanding too is that the board is not going to set up how the policy is enforced within the school building that is correct um if i can ask one additional question too and i i know some of it's here if an individual has a medical notice regarding an exemption are you talking about an adult or a child child okay um because staff would be someone different right in my mind how we would handle that they are different in terms of a child yeah a student within the school business a student in the district who has a medical notification is it my understanding that it would be submitted and

132have to be treated through the 504 process is it a superintendent's discretion i think originally we were told it was superintendent's discretion and the state has made maybe i misunderstood no it's the process would be and i've been working with many districts on this exact thing as the school year starts again and a number of parents you know have submitted um or have requested mask exemptions and in directing them what the district needs back in order to make that decision what the district needs back because it's a medical exemption or related to disability so there are two different prongs there okay if it's medically related not due to a developmental disability or that type of thing then it would be getting the medical from a physician similar to what there's a process that we use

133within schools for homebound instruction it's like medical discussion between the district's medical personnel and the physician or healthcare provider about discussing why the child can't wear a mask is there any way that we can teach the child how to wear a mask is there any way that we could accommodate the child not wearing a mask that type of thing but it would be analyzed and then if the physician signed off that this student needed a mask exemption the student would have a mask exemption and that would be you know that if it was medically you know and and for disabilities it's a little bit of a different analysis that really would be done through a ppt process a planning placement team process or a section 504 process looking at and it really wouldn't be a

134504 usually because if it was to the extent of developmental disabilities that really would fall under a planning and placement team kind of analysis about you know is there any way that we can get this student to wear the mask can we work let's work on a plan through the iep about how the student can learn to wear a mask and in the meantime how are we going to deal with it and what are the ways around it and so that is an individualized process depending upon whether it's related to a student's disability or related to a a medical exemption and you know we really haven't i think there are a lot of kind of things thrown out there about oh everybody's who doesn't believe in in you know uh wanting their child to wear

135a mask is going to get their physician to write a letter and ask for a medical exemption really haven't found that to be the case you know the the really found it to be that if there's a medical reason and a physician writes a letter then the school district works with that family and and works around it great thank you so much other questions go ahead lisa yeah i just needed a clarification i i i don't know if i understood you correctly so if a a parent submits a medical exemption written from a physician the physician now has to negotiate with the with the staff or the administration it may not be a negotiation if that's how i made it sound it was not there usually a lot of times there would be a conversation

136between the person who was reading the mask exemption and and a clarification of if there's any way to work with the child is there any way that the student can be encouraged to wear a mask what is the medical condition that kind of thing it's not a negotiation the district's goal in in my experience at least now i'm not speaking specific to ava and i'm speaking kind of generically would not be to um not respect or to override the physician but really to understand because the the kind of medical exemptions that are kind of listed in general in a lot of the stuff that we've read for adults are really extreme kinds of situations right where somebody has emphysema and truly you know or um i'm going to say it wrong of the cpod or

137you know some a really significant breathing issue and so um i think that that that's kind of the mindset of oh those are the people that need mask exemptions obviously it might go a lot further with a child there might be a lot more reasons why a child medically might need a mask exemption so i'm not suggesting it would necessarily be a negotiation but typically i think there would be a conversation about it between the medical provider and the um school and i'm not i'm not suggesting i just want to be clear i you know i do a lot of special education that kind of thing i'm not suggesting that the law says that if you submit a medical mask exemption then there has to be xyz process i'm more talking about in the day-to-day

138that's what i'm seeing districts do is have these conversations so they can understand yeah and i guess my question is who in a day today is the uh administrator or who is the person having these discussions um with medical professionals it would typically be either the medical advisor for the school district or potentially the school nurse okay i it might yeah in my experience it hasn't it wouldn't be somebody at the administrative level kind of just calling up the doctor okay i i just curious just curious yeah thank you anyone with other questions jeff because i always have multiple questions so one of the things that has bothered me in terms of the mandate is not so much the mask issue but the restriction of things that we've done in the past for example the

139remote learning right the governor said point blank there will be no remote in learning during this academic year if we chose to offer remote learning we would be in the same type of violation if we said no masks correct that is a much more finessed and very complicated answer is the best that's an honest because it's something that that districts are talking about every day districts are talking about it based upon some districts that i work with have very large populations of parents who don't want to send their kids back to school for whatever reasons and um so districts are some superintendents and and administrations are talking about what can we offer what should we offer um are we supposed to be offering everything and frankly the state department of education which is the one

140that's putting so that's not coming from um you know everybody the governor's administration and the department of education want children in school right that's a kind of general proposition um [Music] the we're not doing remote learning this year really stemmed from districts wanting to know do we have to offer a remote learning program this year we need to know it stressed our staffs out very much last year to be doing both things do we have to offer both and the state department of education came down and said no we're not doing remote learning this year you don't have to offer remote learning this year so if you're asking are you good are you breaking the law by offering some not in school educational supports i don't think that that's a fair analogy to um the

141executive order about a mask because one of our mitigation strategies we implemented last year was the remote instruction and we have heard from individuals who are very concerned about sending their students to schools for various reasons mass no mass that's the common thread i hear on both sides of the argument we have spent so much time and resources preparing and setting up a remote option for students in order for parent comfort and student safety and now i feel if my understanding is we can't offer it is it not that case can we as a board to tell the superintendent we would like to provide the opportunity for our students to remote into class not at this juncture it's not being supported by the state at this juncture all i would say is that could change

142based upon we hope it doesn't i hope it's so solely fun that's i'm just based on the information right now no we're not offering remote instruction at this point um and that it is not supported at this point you are not offering remote instruction at this point the reason i was saying it might it could change is because the health metrics could change that right they're kind of saying don't offer remote instruction right now but be ready just in case things get really bad again and we change our tune again right now you are not offering remote instruction that is correct but the health metrics is what i've been complaining about for the last year and that the the inconsistency that they've the governor has chosen the state has chosen to use the county numbers

143and not the local farmington valley health district i'm not i'm not defending and no no i just yeah and i'm trying to understand are we held to the mercy of the state on which metrics we use or do we as a board have any latitude let's say the governor allows the executive order to expire i i know we're probably in fantasy land here but is there any way we can talk about any other metrics besides what the state is feeding us currently the way the law is regarding the mask mandate that's executive order as i said you can't readdress that yet and that could change a lot in the next five weeks right because that's about how long we have until this runs out unless you hear something sooner which could very well happen in

144terms of your question about remote learning that too could change right now the state is saying we're not doing remote learning this year you're doing in-person learning so can you can you bridget if you want to speak to this you can can can you as a board do something different well we obviously can't right that would be the violation of the executive order so i get that i just that's my frustration and i i guess my next question may be directed to the superintendent in terms of now i'm blanking oh i know there's been some changes to the mitigation strategies we implemented last year for various reasons and and so forth is that based upon the guidance from the state or is that has been based upon your administrative decision okay let me go back

145to the remote because i think you're also you might also be asking something else and if you're not i just want to make sure that we're clear so alice is answering your question can we offer remote full-time as an option and the answer is no okay yep it would not count toward the mandatory school days that students towards meeting your education right that was my question so that said though um there could be times where we would have to so let's use an example if students had to be quarantined again we're going to have to figure out what to do with them obviously the state didn't say that we had to offer them remote learning it said we had to make a plan for them so that in the state's eyes could have been you

146know as simple as just some homebound tutoring um which is a um a smaller version of what we would like to offer as a district so we have a plan to um be able to provide a combination of services for students if they have to be quarantined and some of that would be remote so that's when we can use it um likewise back to the idea of if a student had a 504 you know plan for or an iep for a disability and was unable to be present in school for those reasons like we've always had happen or not um we could utilize remote instruction in those cases if it were a part of the student's plan for portions of it that is allowable right i just want to clarify one point with what bridgette

147said i was dealing with the district on this exact thing today about for an identified special education student and if there's going to be a portion of the instruction for that student that is going to be what last year we were calling remote instruction we're calling it something different this year because in fact we're not supposed to be doing remote instruction right now so as the primary learning field so we're still talking about we're not in the same physical place but we're not at this juncture calling it remote instruction thanks for letting me know yeah they haven't so it's it's you know that one that's a term and again it's very districts are really torn right now about what they are allowed to offer but the the bottom line of what bridgette said is exactly

148accurate that right now you as the avon board of education can't decide we're going to offer a fully robust remote option as we did last year and that will count as if we're fully educating you can't do that right now even to the extent that we're not allowed to use it in the coming year for weather days which so now there's this you know now the state department of education setting up another committee and there's going to be discussion about what that will look like in the future um but right now as we sit here today that is not a current option for you as a way in which to deliver education and i you know yes some people are frustrated about some people are happy about it but that's kind of the current state

149of the union and in terms of the changes in the mitigation your second question was related to the mitigation strategies that we have to employ um first of all i i guess i would say that in in many ways the strategies aren't really much different than they than they were in the previous year um and i think that it's a misnomer perhaps because one thing that you know i hear a lot from folks is well you know six feet versus three feet last year when the state uh released its uh and remember there were requirements and then there was guidance so again back to alice's point there's a difference in the language what do we absolutely have to do and what's recommended that we do if it's feasible and you remember that um the requirement

150last year was at least three feet between students the recommendation was six feet were possible and so what we did as a school district in our reopening plan last year was plan for the minimum of three feet and remember we went out building to building there were measurements of desks and we had i mean we had to go to those links to be able to ensure both you as a board and the community and also turn our plan into the state that we were actually able to fully reopen and we had always at least three feet and in some cases where there was enough space we had six feet it's the same as it is this year the difference i think in part is what we saw in other school districts where if you couldn't

151even maintain the three feet minimum it was impossible for you to bring the students back into school and that's why you saw districts stay hybrid the entire year some even that were remote based on the number of students that stayed home and so on but here that's really not a change for us and i just want to you know point out again because i know there are these concerns too from for some implementing those strategies we did not see one case of transmission within our schools that was documented at least we you know we did what they asked us to do i'm not again i'm not the public health expert i'm not saying i'm not claiming one way or the other how it is that that happened what i'm saying to you is as you

152know our goal was to be able to be open for all students to be here and for the majority of the year we have the majority of our students here i think that's another misconception regarding the numbers of students that were in at our worst what i'll call our worst point our lowest point of student attendance was the month of january for students who had gone remote and at that point um i believe we had 880 students that were fully remote in january um that was kind of a peak after the holidays when folks were worried i think about you know traveling and so on and more and more people pulled their students out to stay home and waited it out to see you know what happened well what happened was we continued on and

153we did as you know have to send out numerous notifications regarding positive cases but we never had to send out any notification that someone uh traced their covid uh case back to our school district so as we went back through the year more and more students returned by the time it was june we had 550 students out and that's of approximately 3 500 students and it was throughout the entire district as you know also so one of the things i bring that up because i think it's important to speak to the fact that our plan last year was a plan for everybody to return when we got together as an administrative team and then as a reopening committee and with you as a board we said we're going to do whatever it takes that the

154schools are fully open and we're going to assume every student comes back to school because ideally that's what we wanted to be able to happen so our schools ran that way last year whether or not the kids were here so that part of the plan is no different for us so part of the reason we're in this room tonight obviously it worked out with the size of the public that came to see the meeting or to participate but the reality is as you know we're utilizing every possible space in this building including where we normally meet because that's part of the way we were able to meet the requirements and allow enough space and all of the other factors that we've been told to do so that happened last year that'll happen this year lunch

155looks very much the same some of the students we have students in the cafeteria we have students you know we've converted spaces and classrooms and in other areas of the building students were not wearing masks outside at recess last year they're not wearing masks outside at recess this year some of the ciac guidelines have changed a little bit we're still working through those and i'm going to speak to those tonight because it's another example of something that just came recently but generally speaking i think the two main differences that you'll see are the following one that the death shields were removed and as you all know that was that started to dwindle as a possible recommendation even at the toward the end of last school year using the plastic barriers and now but at the

156time as you know we were told to not change anything even if the recommendations started to change we were told to stay steady so that we weren't as school districts i guess the test cases for having a lot of um individuals in one space and then worrying about spread so can you just clarify who's said so that's a recommendation from the cdc in the department of public health thank you um to to not rely on plastic barriers um we do still have them we still have dust shields you know in storage lord knows you know there were a number of them and um we put them away if if there are individual instances where they would need to be utilized again then we would do that just like there are individual cases where people need

157to wear a shield over a mask or need to wear shield because of a disability instead of a mask and so on so it's a possibility but it's no longer a requirement and the other thing i think you'll see that is different is another example that the requirement changed even over the course of toward the end of last year when we first were giving the information from cdc in the department of public health i think everyone knows this we were we were continually told about you know surfaces and so on continually sanitize the surfaces they have later put out from the research that people aren't they don't find that there's any or any substantial transmission from surfaces so we are not now wiping dust down continuously doesn't mean they're not getting clean of course they're

158getting clean but not in the same manner that we had to do before and the other piece of that i think is actually more and important is that we're able to bring back into the classrooms more of the materials that students used so you know at the beginning of the school year last year one of the recommendations and some pieces of the requirements were to you know quarantine materials so you know if you jeff and you jason went outside and played basketball when recess was over that basketball had to go into you know quarantine and sit in a spot for 24 hours or something and so it made it incredibly difficult for us and for us you know first for our staff to continue to allow students to engage in you know some of the

159pieces of what i'd call normalcy so of course we just bought more and more things so that we had enough to go around but another difference is um something that if you have little children you you know more about in our younger people uh younger our staff that teaches our younger kids know the centers for example in the lower grades we had to take most of those out because again it from logistically we couldn't you picture a three or a four-year-old playing in a playing house in a little kitchen that we have in pre-k and they're both touching things last year we were told that they couldn't do that without completely sanitizing it that wasn't logistically possible for us to do so all those things were had to be removed all those things are now

160back in the classroom so in terms of differences jeff those are the main ones that we're actually able to utilize the materials that our students and our teachers need to be in the classrooms and that you won't see as a requirement the plastic shields everything else that we did last year for the most part you're going to see that we're continuing to do but they are the pieces i i would contend are less restrictive any changes to the quarantine in practice practice so the quarantining practices as you know remember we don't determine those we aren't we as a school district aren't quote corning quarantining you the health department it's a health department order so there are some changes i'm not going to go through every one of them now because everyone will it it's a

161decision tree and it would take me about 25 minutes between probably mr medica and i to explain how the decisions have to be made um it's online but there have been some changes in the length of time you know the 10 days instead of 14 if you're considered close contact and also the um the those that are vaccinated obviously we've all heard about that i think in the news versus those that are not if you are say a teacher that is fully vaccinated and you are determined to be a close contact of a student who is a positive cova 19 case you are not required to quarantine anymore as long as you're asymptomatic for example so asymptomatic vaccinated individuals um the health department does not require quarantine so those are the main differences and the

162and the fact that you can now test out of the quarantine which they were not allowing they were allowing the general public to do but they were not allowing school districts to do last year lisa is this the time to ask these questions about the oh i have like a list of questions about the opening and i wasn't sure if this was the time or okay so um so the quarantine rules are they different for the staff versus the students because that's i saw that yes okay so can you just explain the differences to the public so and me matter three the cdc recommendation that went out to the department of public health was to make an exception to the um the guidelines related to who was considered close contact and of a positive case

163and therefore needs to quarantine they made an exception for students only not adults in classroom settings so this is one of the differences back to the three and the six feet if you are math if a student is masked and is um three feet or more from another student who tests positive for cova-19 they do not need to quarantine anymore as long as they are again they're asymptomatic that's a piece of it last year um it was six feet as you know so we have a smaller range now and i and that's actually one of the things that i think that um them taking the research and the statistics the data from some of us as school districts in the united states that actually were open with students in and back to what i said

164earlier about not reporting because any secondary transmissions because we had to report that if it happened to the state and that was reported to the federal government so we were told that some of that data was utilized across the united states to make that exception if you are an adult though the rule is still the six feet okay do you want me to continue go ahead okay um will we be requiring those who are exposed to get a test to come back to school if they remain asymptomatic are we requiring or i mean if they are asymptomatic so a student is exposed they're asymptomatic are we requiring them to get a test at any point three to five days after the exposure whatever so again if there can if they're not considered a close contact

165so if they were you know further than three feet away and and they had their masks on indoors classroom setting they're not going to quarantine they're not going to need to do anything unless they're symptomatic if they're symptomatic they are subject to the public health or quarantine and they could produce a test after three to five days i believe it is right mr medic to return back sooner than the 10 days okay uh will we be doing any screening testing no you answered some of my questions just a second and then in terms of athletics are we requiring athletes to get a covet shot no if not what if any testing requirement are there any testing requirements for our athletes there are no testing requirements for the athletes either it's the same conditions as what

166is determined to be a close contact or not and whether or not the department of public health requires a quarantine okay and for spectators if observing a sport outside um yet on school grounds are we required to wear a mask are people not required to wear a mask no and we weren't left at the end of last year either okay that wraps it up for me for questions thank you is that because it's outside and not because it's outside thank you and again that's the mandate not the it's not the policy just one comment it kind of ties into that last point and reiterate something i brought up i don't know january february but you know we're dealing with a lot of complicated issues and a lot of complicated mitigation strategies and i really feel

167wholeheartedly that one of the things we need to focus on and i i don't need you to go through what we're doing but we need to really focus on utilizing that outdoor space especially when we go back to school and reopen in september and we know masks are going to be in place at least september 30th again you took us through the the different things we have been doing to get outdoors and get mass breaks and to be in the open air but i just want to reiterate my feeling that to the extent we can really maximize that especially when we get back to school the weather is nice people are trying to get get back to a routine i just i feel strongly that's something we should really put some effort into so i

168remain of that opinion just absolutely just to be clear if we could have logistically had this meeting outside and been able to report it that would have been ideal and we wouldn't all be sitting here with nasa thank you other board members wasn't a question as much as just to say that the reopening plan reflects all the hard work that has gone into in the recommendations that have been made to us to allow our schools to remain open and i want that to be reiterated and emphasized that all these strategies that are put into place are there so that we can keep our students in school okay i just wanted to extend you the opportunity if there was something we didn't ask that you wanted to share with us i think you were pretty good

169question askers so not in particular thanks one thing that i think we should uh point out though and i just asked uh attorney the final this tonight when she arrived because i talked to her this morning and was wondering if anything happened between then and now because that's how quickly things have been happening at some intervals if there was any update on the the issues of full school staff vaccinations that the requirement that the governor spoke about that i think we've heard a little bit about tonight and also more guidance related to the mask exemptions because and not that you did a good job already with that i just wanted to relay that unfortunately this is another example of where some of what is put out by one agency doesn't necessarily match up with another

170and then we are left uh waiting for that to be rectified that's where we are in the mask exemption piece i know that and i believe you said to me we still don't have anything solidified there but we also don't have very much information related to the mandate for public school employees to get vaccinations am i correct yeah well the mask exemptions i think you were talking about in the mask exemptions no i mean there's a process in place and and families can ask for a medical mask exemption and we'll go through the process and you know when a physician signs off i have not i have not experienced a school district that received a medical mask exemption signed by a physician and the school district said yeah no we don't believe it that that

171that's not happening so you submit medical mask exemption there might be some discussion back and forth but it's not like a yeah no i i don't i don't think this doctor's right that's not going on but what bridget was talking about just now was um you know governor lamont came out and i think it was last week the days are all blurring together and and there's a necessity that um all school employees now get vaccinated there was conflicting language in the executive order about whether or not in connecticut whether or not employees had the right to test out instead of to test negative for covid instead of getting a vaccine in lieu of getting a vaccine because there was conflicting language and communication between the executive the governor's office and heads of the teachers union

172and a lot of back and forth so some caps for example you know superintendent's organization and others are asking for clarification on the language in the executive order because the governor's office has been talking about it both ways therefore there it is still confused whether or not school employees will in fact have the right to test rather than get vaccinated and there is no as we said here right this second there's no conclusion on that computer i think some people think it's definitely one way some people think it's definitely another and we don't have an answer because we've pointed out the conflicting language in the order so we're waiting for further clarification on that one so our staff doesn't know whether or not they have to be vaccinated or not i don't know what yours

173how your staff is responding i'm just sort of giving it stated you you know like for we all heard that new york city no there's no test out option you i don't know city or state there's no test out option you got to get vaccinated connecticut we're still trying to find out what the bottom line is that's all i know bridgette what does our staff know at this point what i have communicated is what i know which is what they know that we received the word from the governor that all school district staff would have to be vaccinated to continue working in schools and that the first dose of the vaccination if it was a two dose vaccination should be administered by september 27th and that at this time that was all that they had

174given us they hadn't spoken about test out options to alice's point which is why i wanted to bring it up or anything else and certainly that currently at least leaves us in a place of not being able to practically or logistically um work with that information so i've put it out so that they knew the staff basically knew that i didn't have any other secret information so to speak what you saw on tv is what we have and that's it for now to the best of your knowledge what percentage of our staff is vaccinated fully vaccinated sorry roberto no that's okay we haven't um we haven't recollected that we have not collected that information as of yet tomorrow morning we'll be communicating with our staff about providing copies of their vaccination cards to various school

175medical folks in the buildings we'll have a better handle on that in the next couple days we did have a very high number of staff get vaccinated in february and march concrete number i don't i won't it wouldn't be fair of me to speculate and staff is all employees not just teachers certified non-certified thank you lisa sorry i thought of one other question um it's my understanding that government gov governor lamont came out with that um vaccination i wasn't sure if it was just vaccination or medical records of students would be made available to school nurses is that accurate i'm not sure what you're referring to i believe and we just had uh part of this conversation today i was asking some of the same questions uh lisa on the local health department call today

176it was it was put out publicly by the governor and this is not something that was talked about much with us as school district personnel that by way of verifying covet 19 vaccinations the school medical personnel would be able to do that through i believe it's called whiz uh see-whiz or connecticut whiz apparently and and i just learned this today in asking this question of the health department that um database of vaccinations already exists for any vaccinations whether or not doctors pediatricians or otherwise put upload your child's vaccination records into that system is whether or not they do number one or number two whether or not at some point as a parent you've given them permission to do so as a parent i don't ever remember anyone asking me for permission about that but that's

177what we were told today and so that that's there and now they would be linking up the kovid 19 vaccinations obviously with those other vaccinations but more specifically that the school nurses would be able to access that information i don't have any specific response to that question except just in general because i deal with a lot of you know confidential student records and all of that as you know when you enroll your child in school and every year you have to give them medical updates and part of that is typically the the vaccination records and i could certainly see that you know with an additional vaccination as part of that but i i don't have specific information about that any updates or what what he meant about that sorry okay i just it was something

178that i read and was curious about like are our nurses gonna be you know have access to a database where it says whether our children were inoculated or not but yeah and i guess i i don't know except i mean they do know in general what what your child has been vaccinated for right because when you fill out your medical form and submit it to avon public schools the vaccination record's part of that so correct just in that sort of general sense i'm saying it kind of makes sense to me but i have no idea what he meant and what he said and yeah okay i guess in the coming days or weeks we might get some clarification on that hope so okay i can tell you right now that our nurses do not because

179we don't have any clarification on what that would even look like and i just want to circle back just quickly to the mass exemption my point alice was in the fact that there's a from a process angle even there have been some updates by the on the one hand the executive order and on the other hand what the state department of education has put out they don't necessarily match that's what i meant by their even in the in what constitutes a mass exemption and or what a process for determining that might look like which is more from the state department of ed than it is from the governor's order and so my point being that all of us now as school districts are every day calling legal counsel and saying which which which do we

180go by what do we do with this and i know that from shipment at least any of the districts that work with shipment we know that the legal team is working on that and putting something out to us so that those discrepancies can be rectified right thank you for clarifying that point i probably didn't speak to that clearly enough um so their districts can put in place a process for analyzing the request for a mask exemption and we have gotten we our law firm for example have gotten requests from a number of districts for how are you advising that we go through this process and that relates to what i was sort of you know anecdotally saying to you about a conversation with the medical provider of this that and i was also saying though

181i have not yet experienced a situation where a parent had a verifiable you know medical exemption and the district said i don't care no so that's not the point of the process the point of the process is to make sure that there isn't abuse by people just you know saying anything trying to get the exemption and that districts know what should constitute the questions to be asked for a medical mask exemption right so that the process is not finalized yet i think people know the longer we talk the more questions i have so dr carmola so hypothetically i we present a medical exemption from my child there's that back and forth with the medical provider about what that looks like what does that look like for my child if there's an exemption not to wear

182a mask what protections are in place for my child that won't be targeted folk you know and so forth the same that would be in place for any other medical exemption or you know other condition disability or the life that a student might have information is disseminated to we usually refer to it as a need to know basis by staff which means you know as a person working with your child i might need to know about that because whatever the whatever the either condition disability and or exemption is to be able to effectively work with the child um it's not hung up and and commun communicated with everyone it's need to know basis but again jeff this is back to part of what i'm what i'm speaking to from a practical standard i'm i'm i'm

183not i'm not getting into the the weeds around what should or shouldn't constitute a medical exemption that's not what i keep coming back to it's more what does all of this how does all this play out for us in practice and that's what really is still to be determined because we did manage some of that last year but it was very few because the majority of students who would have had a mask exemption last year generally speaking a lot of their parents kept them remote because in most cases that student was severely immunocompromised and or multiply disabled those you know kinds of conditions that they felt would not have they would not have been able to be here and not have a mask on so many of them if they could not wear a mask

184they were not here they were remote so we're in a different situation in some of those regards this year right because now they have to be in school because we can't provide the remote option again unless we go through the pp3 or the 504 correct and that's why i wanted to be clear about how the two of those match up yeah i'm just trying to understand what it's going to look like and i think my downfall always is as a teacher i know what it looks like in my building or what it's supposed to look like i don't right now and i'm clueless and that's what i'm saying because and that's why i you know when we sent out the information that we had at the time with the mitigation strategies and so on you

185know the communications that went over the last couple of weeks it's referred to but there's nothing else with it for you to go to and look at what the process is except last year's information and that's what i'm getting at in terms of the state department of ed who really is the one you know the governor can make an executive order for things that we have to be mandated to do but the state department of ed also then puts out what the requirements to us are for following that mandate they just now did that a few days ago and we met again this morning on our you know typical tuesday call and there's a number of mistakes in the document they're working to fix now so that's that's where we're left not distributing back out

186and i understand things are changing and you're put in this awkward position but what i hear in public comments what i hear in in in in the emails and what i've heard in my own household is fear of what monday is going to look like i mean i sat and had a conversation with my family for 20 minutes whether or not we want our child on the bus right and i think it's the not knowing what it's going to look like for our children regardless of everyone's opinion i think that part is missing and i understand you don't have the answer because the state's not giving the answer but the kids come monday and i think that that would help so many more people understand what is going to happen well not knowing i assume

187you're speaking specific to what a masking exemption would look like because the rest of the knowing i mean that's everything that we've put out this is what it looks like on the bus you you know you have to do you're going to do this this is what our procedures look like and what's coming from what is the mass mandate because i understand i'm talking about the rest of it right so our buildings have been sending out building specific information too related to this is recess this is launch and so on so and we've been doing that to be able to speak to what you're saying on the mask exemption piece what i can say to you is there are very few that i'm aware of that have actually come through and that are somewhere in

188the process so what is school going to look like much like it did last year hopefully better any other questions all right thank you for walking us through that we really appreciate the guidance a lot of it is a refresher but it's also just reassuring to know that you are leading the charge and helping us to have another successful year so thank you our next piece is new business we are looking at the board of education committee meeting dates for school year 2021 2022 has anyone seen a date that stands out to them that would not work or are we all pretty generally available on the dates that have been provided so that we can approve is okay all right do i have a motion to approve the month the um i guess board of

189education meetings so moved all right thank you david do i have a second second by jackie all in favor aye okay passes unanimously shirley all right we do have communication from the public again was there anyone who did not have the opportunity to speak that would like to at this time thank you so again it's three minutes and just state your name and your address please for the record my name is leighton off and i live on oak ridge drive i'm wondering i'm sorry repeat the name again just as an aside first of all with all the email reading and whatnot first of all you didn't say their addresses and also why are we listening to that rather than having that posted that takes a lot of time people are here can that not be

190posted and then more people can come up and ask questions does that make sense for clarity they will be posted they will be in the minutes but all the time spent reading it looked like we got through the public comments so i think we did okay with it but i do respect your position on that there might have been more i'm just pointing out and i just don't understand too like when you're asking for our addresses and then you're not delivering those when you're talking they are written in the emails so i okay never apologize um as far as the question i was very interested in this gentleman's question because i i my head was spinning with it you know round and round and round where the there was never an answer i believe and

191it it may not be your question but i thought it might be and i'm interested in the answer to that too if there's a medical exemption is the child necessarily having to be separated out from the rest of the kids so that they're you know identified you know treated differently in the classroom that's a simple question i understand unfortunately during communication from the public we don't have a conversation i don't know if you want to do this so excuse me but it seems to me that we should have a conversation that way information is shared and transparent right i understand what you're asking it's more about decorum and following protocols but we could certainly should we get back to her or do you feel comfortable answering that so typically just to be clear what typically

192happens is if we're able to answer it like i think you may have noticed tried to make sure that we spoke to many of the things we heard in the first public comment by way of what we talked about up here and it's part of why i was asking questions related to the same one that you just asked um so why don't we why don't we do this in terms of there's no there's no information on that that i just asked right and but in terms of um procedure why don't we wait until everyone has gone through and then if it's all right with the board we'll speak back to it when we get closer to board member comments board is that comfortable just quickly too i'd like to mention that with this idea of

193science and what the best science is and what not i think we all should remember that we live in a society now where information is not that freely distributed and exchanged we live in a time of censorship we have to be savvy about that and we have to look for answers better than we all seem to do there's a lot of information a lot of studies that do not support the health and well-being you know idea of masking children there's there are a lot of studies about the bacteria all that all this stuff that they could just become ill with just by wearing this rag over their face all day there's a study about babies born during covet whose iq and this was done by brown university in rhode island by the way their iq

194is something like 30 points lower on average because they are dealing with adults with this stuff on their faces excuse me your time's expired oh my times expire i did want to also ask about crt if that's being taught in the avon schools i know there's something called social and emotional learning is that crt has that ever been discussed here this is the first time i've been here could somebody answer that no well again when let me ask the board because all board members have had access to the submitted emailed comments and they will be attached to the minutes are we comfortable with allowing public comment and simply attaching these to be read for others that want to see them they were addressed to the board of ed so we have read them and so

195we're doing a service for the public to see them as well so if we're comfortable with that then we can continue with public comment does that work for everyone okay okay all right next hi i'm still katherine just one second katherine was there anyone that hasn't spoken yet that wanted to i'm gonna go okay so i'm still kathryn lewis and i still live at 54 davis lane and an oppression nod to the woman behind me yes critical race theory is being taught at avon high school and i was going to address that we were talking about depression and anxiety in our children and it is correct that that is an issue with covid critical race theory is specifically being taught in an ec course that came into avon high school from through a course specifically

196from yukon and it was being taught appropriately as a lens through which to look at literature that was pirated in an english 12 or class and taught inappropriately specifically in my son's class by an english 12 class i made this known to the superintendent and it was addressed very appropriately by her and the principal my son was removed by that class it was because it was abusive um in the in by that teacher but yes critical race theory is being taught inappropriately in the high school this is the point that i'm going to make to you when teach when kids are already stressed by covid the last thing they need is politics in the classroom injected by teachers and abusive practices our kids don't need this they're coming back to school they don't need name

197calling they don't need to be told they have white white privilege they don't need to be spoken to this way no child needs to be spoken to this way ever okay and so i'm just asking the board to really ride heard on rogue teachers no child deserves to be talked down to they've lost sports they've lost things they love to do they need to engage in exuberant mammalian play they need to like tease their principle they need to enjoy each other they don't need to be spoken too badly this transition is going to be hard enough they need their childhood back my mother was raised in world war ii europe she was bombed by hitler she died of lung cancer when she was about 50 because of participating in the resistance of the north of

198france she still had a great life okay covet is small potatoes it doesn't kill most kids my mother if she was alive today would say what is all this hysteria about pull up your socks people stop your findings stop being babies she would say what is this crying about you know this isn't serious you can go to the store you can still buy meat you can still buy bread for heaven's sake what is this this is america these are the people who saved me from the nazis and yes i can use the word nazi don't call me in the night and threaten me because i used this word the nazis tried to kill my mother for crying out loud i'll feel free to use thy with this word whenever i want my mother said thank

199god the americans came and saved me from these pieces of crap i'll use that word when i want in america i love america but anyway our kids are coming back to school and they need to feel good about it they don't need language arts teachers telling them they're racists for god's sake board of ed help our kids love america help them love the school okay they don't need to be told they're racist they don't need hate speech please let our kids engage in an exuberant mammalian play let them have fun they're children they don't hate anybody thank you okay so the next section is communication from board of education members but prior to doing that dr carmola did you want to possibly address those questions if i may through the board i know this isn't

200procedure but thank you for allowing it um short answer no social emotional learning isn't um really isn't about uh critical race theory i'm happy we have talked about that at some other meetings i can't fully go through that tonight but we are talking more about how to support our students to have a good experience at school to have the skills necessarily in life to persevere but uh resilience so on um and i'm happy if you want to be in touch with me outside of the meeting um and i'm sorry you said it twice but i still didn't hear uh first name was it nina lee excuse me i there's there's something there's something making noise behind me it's making it harder for me to hear some of you um but i'm happy to reach out

201and have more conversation about that with you if you like outside of the meeting because it's not on the agenda tonight back to the the mask exemption piece of it your question is a good one and that was what i was trying to reiterate via my questions to the attorney and my answers to the same we have not had conversations about what it looks like for um individual students in large class settings who have mask exemptions to your point would we would the recommendation or the requirement either way be that a student had to keep a little bit more distance than the other students that's none of that has been discussed at all in in a large scale classroom setting all of the issues in which we have had to deal with the same in

202the previous year we're in smaller settings so that's one of the examples of what i'm talking about the difference between what we managed last year in terms of mass exemptions and what we are trying to prepare to manage this year and i don't know if you want to speak more into that yeah i just have one additional point if i may superintendent which is that um that may be a very individualized um answer it you know depending upon the student depending upon the the grade level the classes that that student takes obviously the goal by the district would be to make it the most inclusive school experience that is safely possible right and so it really depends on the the um the nature of of the student and and the classes and hopefully it would

203be individualized to to maximize the student's participation the opposite the district would work very hard i assume to to do the opposite of making the child feel different and excluded correct thanks for clarifying that and we're saying the same thing we have to we have to look at them case by case there has been no this is wide scale this is how you employ it that was my point to not having any other information to put out we are right now managing them case by case all right thank you now this is the part of the meeting where board of education members can make comments on their own again it doesn't allow for conversation is there someone who'd like to go laura a couple of things first just as a point of clarification the reason

204that the addresses for the letters that were emailed to us and for which the authors specifically asked to have their letters read into the record their addresses aren't included here because we have them here in the emails they often write them there or we have the email addresses so we're able to identify who they are and how to reach out to them again [Music] if somebody's in the audience and they come up and they want to speak it is common practice at all town meetings to ask the name of the person speaking and their address as far as the letters that do come into us i read every single letter whether the person asks to have it read here publicly at our meeting or not does not separate out in my mind the importance of

205the letter in august 2020 the avon board of education unanimously passed a number of policies in response to the covet 19 pandemic including a policy pertaining to health and safety protocols language in that policy states compliance with such health and safety protocols shall be mandatory for all individuals while on school property or participating in a school-sponsored activity unless a legally recognized exemption or exception applies since that time the wearing of masks in schools a widely recognized cove mitigation strategy worldwide has somehow morphed into a national debate about the perceived loss of one's personal liberty versus the intentional support of collective responsibility many boards of education now find themselves faced with a seemingly forced partisan divide over public health when one becomes a board of education member one is expected to uphold all avon board policies

206including the code of ethics policy which among other points states that each board member will act as an agent of the state uphold and enforce all laws regulations and court orders pertaining to public schools and will strive to bring any needed change only through legal and ethical procedures in an effort to act as a responsible ethical board member of the avon public schools i have and will continue to uphold our policies as part of my legal and civil duty that being said i respect and understand that we don't all agree at the end of the day though everybody who's sitting up here i'm speaking for myself but i can tell you we all care about the families and the students and the staff and the members of the community who are here tonight but our

207goal is to keep students in school first and foremost and to keep it safe for all students that's my opinion thank you laura jeff last year i was very proud of what we did let me start by again i want to thank mr medic the staff last year who went to great lengths to sort of figure out what mitigation looks like and then i appreciate them taking the time to allowing us as stat as board of ed to tour the schools and you got all my questions i was in every building roberto and the principals i appreciate it and despite all the procedures and precautions i voted on and supported i chose to keep my child home we have a very complex medical situation in my home i have spoken about it part publicly i've

208spoken about it privately with the superintendent and fellow board members but i was given the option last year to make the decision for what is the best interest of my child no one is going to protect my family better than me and i'm frustrated that i'm feeling restricted on options the fact that i had to have a conversation where that we feel safe sending my child on the bus this is a tough call for us and i'm frustrated and i understand that we can't do anything and that's what i don't understand we were supposed to be a voice for our constituents and it's it's about allowing individuals to make the medical decisions for their family based upon their individual conditions i don't want to judge anyone else's situations i don't want anyone else to judge

209mine but now i'm in a situation and the only alternative i have is withdraw my kid in homeschool or send him with the fear real or not it's irrelevant because it's real to my family that this fear is going to kill a member of my family because of immunocompromise stated by our own doctors this week to us and so that's my frustration i don't have the right i don't have the right anymore to decide the outcome for my my family except withdraw from the public schools and and that it's not unacceptable and i think that's what we're hearing and i and i i implore the state to use the standards and allow us to use the local data i raised this question before right let's talk to the farmington valley health district let's ask the

210numbers here in town let's have a conversation i understand we're not experts but we represent the voices the people here in town and we can ask the questions that they may not be able to ask we have the ability to call these individuals forward and have them explain to us but this executive order prevents us from even discussing those options and that is my frustration thank you jeff david okay a little bit in support of jeff's comment regarding the frustration a year and a half ago when a lot of this started when it was a matter of emergency people went along with a lot of mitigation strategies and there was a lot of voluntary compliance people didn't know what else to do and we did the best we could with what we had a year

211and a half later into this we're getting to the point where people want options but instead they get orders and we're getting to the point where if parents want to have their rights back they're going to have to vote for them back it's really up to the voters to fix this you can't come to but we can't vote on this and give you your rights back you have to get them back for yourselves and um in the long run it is the voters who decide how much authority to delegate to government instead of the other way around which is what we have now so please fix this thank you thank you david anyone else all right jackie um i wanted to also share um tell you jeff that i share your concerns about that i

212do hope that as we move forward the governor and the powers that be will provide options for families like yours especially and i i feel badly as a friend of yours to hear um i can hear how painful this is for you to have to make this this kind of a decision and really have no decision to make so i i understand that and i i share your frustration about that um i want to thank chairperson shoot for her stellar leadership this has been a really hard year and a half as well as you know bridget donna roberto the whole team um susan for doing such really fantastic work and for propping us up as a district at some times when it just seemed almost impossible also want to thank people who came out and

213spoke tonight i am really grateful to have heard from every single person i've learned a lot tonight i tried to keep an open mind i want to be the kind of person that can truly learn from others and that's what i strive to do and i appreciate everybody's time tonight coming out and and sharing their thoughts the pandemic has been hard on all of us but none have suffered more than those families decimated by loss early on in the pandemic many avon families were impacted both young and old alike i attended drive-by support events for those families we prayed for them and we tried to imagine how they will continue on as i know many of you did their pain is always in the forefront of my mind i'm always aware that we as board

214members are expected to act in the best interest of the students and also the wider community we all have lessons to learn here i know i certainly do while simultaneously looking out for each other as a board we have taken action on many items that are solely intended to protect our students from the what-ifs in the world we have invested in robust security we have hired the best and the brightest we have implemented policies that protect the vulnerable and we have invested in programs that provide broad experiences for our students we have tried to mitigate any unpredictable variable and make the district the best that we can knowing it will still never be perfect so for me going forward my north star is going to be the students the first day of school is right

215around the corner my hope for them is that they can greet the new year with excitement and curiosity the fun of seeing old friends and making new ones meeting teachers comparing school supplies and high-fiving their favorite custodian i know everyone in the district is ready and anxious to welcome them back i believe we are truly in this together one big falcon family and while we have differences i am hoping and i know that we will find common ground as we go forward thank you thank you jackie lisa yeah my glasses keep fogging up so i gotta pull it down sorry although there are many differing views and opinions regarding the pandemic where it came from how it was handled the efficacy of vaccine the threat level to certain age groups and how to best balance

216safety versus individual liberties people on each side of these issues can find credible sources to support their arguments some will claim their views are supported by science others by statistics some will dismiss opposing opinions because in their view those opinions are tainted by politics despite all of these differences we are a community and must keep the end goal in sight to keep avon a thriving town with a successful school system avon in comparison to other towns has a very high vaccination rate approximately 80 percent while other towns and cities have yet to get to 50 percent avon also has a low transmission rate in fact in our school district to date we have no transmission at all this again will bring very varying opinions of how this was accomplished and more importantly at this time

217how it will be maintained all of the decision-making power has been seized by one individual our governor now there are those who are looking towards elected officials on this board to disregard the orders as much as as much as some of us may feel that the executive branch have overstepped its boundaries and had hoped that the decision making would have been relegated to each town that did not happen whether we like it or not we as a board are not empowered to override the state orders if we had the ability to create our own plan i believe we could mitigate risk while still allowing parents to exercise their parental rights employing vaccines wellness checks periodic testing and guidance about what masks are best to protect the wearer are legitimate tools i take my position very

218seriously and feel that as an individual and as a board we must represent all constituents but as things stand now we do not have the ability to create a plan that is outside the one-size-fits-all executive orders i regret not being able to affect change in this instance however i can still say what i believe i believe that these decisions are best made at the local level rather than at the state or federal level and parents are best situated to know what is best for their children for many that includes wearing a mask and for some it does not as for those that say allowing one child not to wear a mask puts others at risk i would say many cloth masks and ill-fitted paper masks on fidgety children will not reduce the risk nearly as

219much as making sure your own child has a well-fitted effective quality mast that filters the virus from the air your child breathes this along with vaccines for those who are eligible to get them social distancing staying home if exposed or sick will greatly mitigate risk and although some think that parents should not have the right to seek medical or religious exemption i will advocate that those with a good faith need for an exemption should be able to retain that right i will do everything in my power to ensure that we continue to provide a safe and respectful environment as we ensure that a quality education in math science language arts history the arts athletics and civics while also respecting parents right to provide guidance on the rest what i ask in return is quite simple

220first that everyone continue to provide the board with feedback and suggestions i can only speak for myself when i say i appreciate hearing from you because in the end i recognize that i am a representative of those who put me here and my job is to amplify your voices second remember we are a community that sometimes has differing views and everyone deserves and has the right to be heard with respect and an open mind it is my hope that we can return to a time when people can disagree without being disagreeable or expressing disdain for those with a different view with that i say good night and wish everybody a very successful school year thank you lisa jason sure thank you deb um you know i think i would i would like to really pick

221up kind of where where lisa left off um all of this boils down to me to community right we're a small town we mostly know each other i'm i'm sure i know most of the people left out there tonight and we're in an interesting situation i mean i don't think any one of us when we when we got into this position you know foresaw what was going to be happening with covet and masks and you know it's difficult because we are a tight-knit community and i i i appreciated the comments from both perspectives tonight i think it's important that we listen to everyone's perspective like lisa said i think it's important we'd be respectful of our differences we're going to have differences and they're not necessarily going to be political as people and as a

222community we are going to have differences it's going to happen and we need to be respectful of each other that's something we need to teach our kids i mean we need to lead by example in that in that way in particular right even if we have differences let's be respectful to each other in terms of how we've handled this whole situation you know what it's been extraordinarily difficult and i think the group of us as a whole we're doing the best we can under the circumstances i don't think any one of us either side of the aisle has been politically motivated i think this group has tried to do in their hearts the best that they can for the community and for our students not everyone in the community is going to agree with me

223or or or everyone on this board but we we're trying our best absolutely um you know i applaud the efforts that the superintendent and the administration and all of the all of the staff has put in over the last what has it been a year and a half now i mean nobody nobody could have predicted this situation and everyone is doing the best that they can under the circumstances under the rules that we're under right now trying our best to to to follow the legal obligations we have um i truly believe and maybe i'm naive that all of our hearts this board the community the people still here at 10 30 or whatever the heck time it is right now you know i i think our hearts are all in the right place and we

224need to figure out a way to stick together be reasonable support each other and get through this i you know i'm praying like everybody else that the end is near so you know i think the bottom line is whether it's the school the town let's remain a respectful community and support each other so that's my hope going forward and i hope we can continue to make strides forward thank you jason after hearing all the board comments i do feel compelled to offer a little bit of clarity for the quote that was mentioned in the paper regarding what we see our role as on the board of ed and our commitment to the safety and security of all of our students and staff as soon as a student gets on the bus in the morning or

225enters one of our school buildings they are in our care and it is up to the board of ed to support the efforts made in the buildings by our administrators and our staff to protect your students and to keep them safe so that is a role of guardianship in that regard i would never presume to parent your child i would never take that right from you in that regard but we have to make decisions that support the safety and security of all students and staff when they are within our care that is what we're here to do so i hope that offers a little bit or a little bit better understanding of what the comment was meant to say at this time we will move into an executive session can i have a motion to

226move us in and we will invite in dr carnamola uh mr medic dr rusek and miss russo and do we invite in no okay so miss alfano you're released in order for us to hold the executive session it is just us on the stage can i have a motion to motion to move into executive session okay laura and do i have a second second second by david all in favor aye aye at 10 10. you