001p.m um today is monday august 23 2021 this is the regular board of education meeting for district 65. i'll start by roll call um lindsay ryan here weatherspoon here hernandez here sue here halepern here kim here tanya booty here this is the land acknowledgment and acknowledgement of the contributions of the enslaved we take time to acknowledge that the land we meet on is the traditional homelands of the council of three fires the potawatomi the ojibwa and the odawa this land also served as an important meeting place for the miami ho chunk the menominee anoka fox peoria arapaho cheyenne and other tribal nations this land has long been a center for indigenous people to gather trade and maintain kinship ties located at the intersection of several great waterways the region has become the site of travel
002and prosperity we acknowledge evanston and john evans are tied to the massacre of the arapaho and cheyenne for railroads and westward expansion upon which john heavens developed his wealth and founded evanston this land was violently taken under settler colonial colonialism through genocide and open warfare and the region that is now illinois and chicagoland is still home to thousands of native people who are actively struggling for sovereignty self-determination and justice the genocidal acts of settler colombia colonialism extended to the peoples of africa and their enslaved descendants despite illinois eventually prohibiting slavery slavery was an accepted practice before and after statehood the vestiges of slavery remain present throughout the united states and directly affect the descendants of enslaved peoples descendants who helped define the african diaspora rich and heterogeneous communities descended from african peoples the genocidal patterns
003of violence against people peoples of african descent and indigenous people have been replicated to exclude and harm people from many intersecting marginalized identities religious minorities disabled and lgbtq identified peoples life and people of color writ large in the united states these patterns of violence demonstrate that the pursuit to end state-sanctioned violence against bipoc is daily is a daily struggle for liberation from continued social political and economic anti-black racism and oppression today we acknowledge that we are living breathing loving grieving laughing and sharing space on unseated territory may we learn to honor the historical and contemporary presence and power of the people and their belief that we must be caretakers of the lands and waters for the livelihood of future generations the land that surrounds us is part of who we are it reflects our histories
004it is within district 65's responsibility as an academic institution to disseminate knowledge about black and indigenous peoples and marginalize people's writ large consistent with our commitment to equity we will work towards sharing truth and promoting healing for the sake of our children and families it is important to understand the long-standing history that has brought us to reside on the land and to seek to understand our place within that history land acknowledgments do not exist in the past tense or only in a historical context colonialism is a current ongoing process and we need to understand our present participation we encourage everyone consuming this message to continue expanding their knowledge and reduce their harm through awareness of local mutual aid models for survival and engagement with online and local resources such as the chicago american indian community
005collaborative and the shore front legacy center all right i'm going to go to the approval of the meeting agenda i moved at the board of education approved tonight's board meeting agenda as presented lindsey ryan yes weatherspoon yes hernandez yes sue yes halpern yes kim yes tenure booty yes motion passes 7-0 next on our agenda is a district update well we are here we're one day away from opening our doors for the return of school our team have they've been working hard all summer i want to thank each and every member of cabinet our all of our union members our custodian staff just central office in general definitely our school leaders they have been soldiers in this process of these unprecedented times as we're trying to return to normal as far as the day-to-day operation of
006our schools we are expecting all of our students to to be in full throttle reminder that middle schools have now moved to 8 a.m start time that's that's actually going to be really beneficial for just how we're scheduling structure in our days and that has been a huge benefit for us uh when it comes to finding bus bus drivers it's a shortage across the country and so by us consolidating some routes we had there were less routes that we had to accommodate and so now we have all of our routes covered and as long as no one quits before now and you know wednesday we're in really good shape for that we have some mitigation efforts and some new work that we're going to be talking about in a presentation later during the board meeting
007tonight but again thanking each and every one of you and happy to welcome back all of our unions our teachers and educators to uh the new school year we're expecting really great things this year and i just wanted to also extend our gratitude to all of you um this is a really a historic moment in in the lift that has occurred in order to get us ready to safely open our doors to everyone for five days a week mid global pandemic and i know my children are excited to to get back to school and excited to see the friends and and teachers that they so love that make so that have a i guess an intangible effect that you know they that they miss um and oddly enough one of the things that my daughter
008would say that she missed about school was the smell of the cafeteria [Laughter] so those are those are the things that you just cannot replicate um that are that are unique about you know sharing space and time with one another and i know that a lot of intent and care has gone into that and lots of time committed to to district 65 time away from families you know mental and emotional commitments to our children our families our buildings our structures and we are so fortunate to have such talent on our team and we are grateful for you all so thank you to all of you all the educators who are not in this space but who make up this uh this district and all the the parents and caregivers that have been along with us
009on this journey who have shared your wisdom and your bravery and your love and your commitment um this is an exciting moment and just want to express our gratitude anybody else have any comments from the board before we move on thank you um so next item on our agenda is public comments members of the public and by the way how's the sound with my mask on it's okay okay great thanks um members of the public are welcome and invited to address the board during open public meetings speakers are discouraged from using the public comment period to air specific concerns about staff members being mindful that the public comment period is not a suitable forum for fact-finding or resolution of disputes rather we encourage members of the public who have concerns about specific district employees to
010follow the district communications guidelines found in the student handbook please remember to state your name and that you have three minutes to address the board um so the first person signed up is kristen white can you hear me okay okay good evening district 65 school board members and district 65 leadership my name is kristen white and i'm an evanston resident and a district 65 parent and a member of the coalition of local caretakers who organized stronger together evanston in support of district 65's commitment to anti-racist values and initiatives i invite all those in the room who support district 65's anti-racist efforts to stand with me from your seats we formed stronger together evanston to stand in unequivocal opposition to the lawsuit filed on behalf of teacher stacy diemar we believe it is essential for white
011people in our community to directly confront and call out the white supremacy values beliefs and behaviors of white community members who seek to secure their systemic white advantages at the expense of our black brown and indigenous students i am here tonight on behalf of stronger together evanston to read our petition into the public record and as of today it was signed by 1888 community members a statement of support for anti-racism initiatives in evanston skokie school district 65. we the undersigned district 65 parents caregivers and community members support district 65's anti-racism initiatives that seek to repair centuries of public school indoctrination into white supremacy ideology a belief system that serves to justify and protect white political economic and cultural dominance these initiatives are based on years of widely accepted research and aim to promote historical accuracy
012they will make district 65 a place where all students are fully valued and history is not distorted to position one racial group above all others we are grateful that district 65 is eliminating materials and practices that marginalize black brown and indigenous students and create unfair advantages for white students on june 29 2021 southeastern legal foundation filed a federal lawsuit against district 65 leadership on behalf of white district 65 drama teacher stacey dimar the lawsuit alleges that the school district has discriminated against ms dimar because she is white it is part of a national strategy led by conservative commentator chris ruffo and others which aims to have the supreme court strike down all anti-racist curricula in public schools sadly miss dimar offered up the students and families of evanston as ground zero to those who want
013to launch a legal challenge against anti-racism education we strongly oppose this attack the problem of racism is a problem of whiteness and white supremacy white people created white supremacy to protect privileges and advantages for white people anti-racism education does not harm white students and staff it simply gives them more accurate information as well as the skills they need to understand and fight against racism we value the way that anti-racist programming empowers students of all races to advocate for justice we understand signing a petition is only one of the many steps we must take white supremacy and create a school system that aligns with our anti-racist values thank you for your work and your commitment and we support you 100 thank you the next speaker we have is heather sweeney okay i'd like to not take
014it off if i don't have to um i wanted to just take my time to read some of the testimonials that came from the petition we had over about 200 testimonials and also in addition to the 1000 i think it's 888 signatures there are also 97 organizations from evanston that signed the petition so these are testimonials from families of color and white families as well and i'll read as many as i can get through and the rest have been submitted to the board the fact that this work is happening and is one of the top three reasons we bought a home in this area when it would have been less expensive to live elsewhere everyone goes on about good schools but the schools aren't good if other families are gobbling up opportunities and resources and
015if families of color color are considered even unintentionally to be second or third class in the community this work is critical and folks need to be brave enough and accountable enough to make a space for unapologetic anti-racism my white children have learned more of the truth about all of our history which has allowed them to hold complex narratives they have been exposed to opportunities to understand humility and how to repair harm they have become fuller human beings through district 65's anti-racism work i appreciate and value the the learning experiences that are made available to my children around race racism and historical and systemic oppression as a latino family we feel that this is an indispensable component of our children's education thank you district 65 leadership as a teacher in another district and a parent in
016evanston i have been very impressed and happy with the anti-racism work evanston is doing that benefits all students evanston is a model for other districts and other districts are working hard to follow evanston's lead kids want to know the truth about the world we live in and the history of our country once they see it they can't unsee it and that's what needs to happen for change to take place kids are stronger than you think it's the grown-ups who are clinging to systemic racism i am a recently retired district 65 teacher for the majority of my 34 years teaching i was sorely unaware of the racism and inequalities of the district i am grateful for the workshops professional development and book groups that became available to me while not currently teaching i know i am
017better equipped to start understanding my role in working to change the culture of our schools and community i will take my new knowledge into my all new and into all my new endeavors and continue to work to understand more i'm looking forward to the opportunity to share this critically important programming with my two preschoolers our middle school white son has been engaging in district 65's anti-racism curriculum for years and not only does he feel strongly and positively about wanting systems in society to do better but most pointedly when confronted with pushback against learning about race i heard him respond nothing will change if we aren't learning what we shouldn't be doing kids get it as a white parent i deeply value the anti-racism education in district 65 schools i appreciate that my children are beginning
018to learn all people's history to speak up for themselves and one another and to value and respect the diversity of thoughts and experiences we each bring to the world i'm grateful to be in a school district that prioritizes equity and is beginning the work of repairing generations of harmful practices and teachings that have marginalized black brown and indigenous students in an attempt to whitewash history and prioritize white student education and success above all others positive steps are finally being made toward the world i want where we can each be seen as whole individuals of essential value and stronger as a community together thank you very much for your work the next speaker we have is kelly baldwin hi there um my name is kelly baldrate and i'm here to speak about inclusion for a few
019minutes um i have two sons in the district they're both sweet bunny charming kids and one of them has down syndrome and i am co-chair with marquis weatherspoon of a new group called cpac whose purpose is to advocate for kids with 504s and ieps in the district but i think the mission is really fostering a sense of belonging and inclusion for all kids including our kids my experience is that disability is sometimes an afterthought in the larger discussions we have about identity marginalization inclusion and equity and cpac hopes to widen the circle of people who understand how our kids can fit into this vision as well i wanted to find inclusion because people mean different things when they say it and when i say it i really just mean belonging right inclusion is a vision
020and a belief that everyone belongs as a contributing and valued member of the group um when there really is that shared belief and vision that everyone belongs the actions needed to make it happen tend to follow right as they would in the family you figure out how everybody belongs i don't think we are there yet with this shared vision of how kids with disabilities fit into how they belong at school which is why i hope to be part of moving this conversation forward i want to tell a story and then end with an invitation um this is a facebook post i made about four years ago when my son sean was about nine at a playground today on the michigan shore a boy about sean's age approached us and said so i understand he has
021down syndrome and i said it's true and he said i thought so so i introduced them and i asked if he knew someone else with down syndrome and he said yes my friend emmett he sat down across from sean on a rocking toy and proceeded to engage him in conversation for five minutes which is no mean feat with sean i heard discussion of pets and movies and although it's true that sean did not give accurate answers we have no pets never mind three this was an entirely new experience for us it was truly lovely inclusion really matters and i want to say three quick things about this this story it certainly was lovely but it hadn't happened before sean was nine and it hasn't happened since so it's still too rare and the story doesn't
022really speak to inclusion for sean but inclusion at that other child's school right he had a friend with down syndrome and he was interested in meeting someone else which which illustrates why it matters to all of us because i've also often thought about how different the first six months of sean's life might have been for our family if my husband or i had at any point in our decades of life to that point had a significant interaction with a person with down syndrome before we got the diagnosis but we did because that didn't happen then and honestly it doesn't happen enough now um we can do better and i want to end with an invitation because cpac is having its first meeting uh coming up on the details will go out but on november 15th
023it's a wednesday evening these are not meetings for families of kids with disabilities to talk amongst themselves about how things could be better but invitations to the community to engage in the conversation and how we can make it a working reality here so and i want to say we're fortunate to have two amazing nationally known inclusion experts facilitating this 90-minute interactive um session and i've been privileged to hear them because for all the bad that kobe did it it allowed me to go virtually where i never could have gone in person so i've heard them do their thing they're terrific and i just want to expressly invite all the members of the board and administration here tonight and i just hope you will come and consider inviting others we'd love to see you thank you
024that concludes our public comments for tonight thank you for our proposed action items i move that the board of education accept the recommendations outlined in the attached group motion and approved the personnel appointments leaves and separations july 2020 board of education meeting minutes may june 2021 list of bill and treasurer's reports and may 2021 budget amendments second it was the july 2021 board of education the july 2021 board of education the second bullet points sorry july 2021 board of education meeting minutes great lindsay ryan yes weatherspoon yes hernandez yes sue yes helping and then the bond resolution i move that the board of education adopts the resolution declaring the intention to issue 1.3 million dollars working cash fund bonds for the purpose of increasing the district's working cash fund and directing that notice of such
025intention to be published in the manner provided by law second and then so what is being requested here is an opportunity to refund bonds it's uh the series 2020 uh series 2012 bonds that were issued about 10 years ago at the rate of interest now we're paying 2.76 what we're asking for is to refund those bonds it will allow us to pay a low interest rate because of the ongoing interest rate now of just 1.62 so this request doesn't lengthen the uh the lifetime of the bond all he's doing is taking advantage of an opportunity to redo to reduce the interest rate that we are paying so the interest rate savings all in will be 1.3 million and that 1.3 million will be used hopefully for some of our capital repairs that is needed in
026the district so just to recap is an opportunity to use interest rate savings from 2.76 to 1.72 the life time of the barn doesn't doesn't get longer it's still the same length of time it affords the uh the district to accrue a savings of 1.3 million dollars they'll be used the discussion of the spending of the 1.3 on future capital will happen at a future committee meeting yes it will be it will be and approved at a future board meeting yes so a couple of things we will wait for the master facility uh planning report to be concluded and based on that there will be a capital project recommendation that will be presented to the board uh no later in november and that will be the time that this will be a conversation thank you
027so i just want to be really transparent so this this action is asking us for approval to do the transaction to recoup the 1.3 million all future actions will be discussed in public sessions in the future that's correct so in order for us to to be able to do the refunding there's steps that the board needs to follow the first step is what we think were asking for from the board today is the the resolution of intent to do the refunding and there are a few other steps along the way which will bring before the board and the closing of the refund will happen in november later on this year thank you and again as stated it will definitely be presented in person buildings and grounds and then of course brought to the board but
028our goal is to get the master facility plan completed before we bring recommendations to the board so if massive facility is not completed by november december we'll we will delay what we're proposing until that's done but there's also in this resolution there are directions for people if they have questions about this transaction or if they wish to protest it for how to do that yes great yes thank you is the timing of this sensitive for um interest rates i i'm sorry i did that is the timing of when we take action on this sensitive for the sake of benefiting from interest rates yes it is as it stands right now interest rate as we all know is announced it's at an all-time low and by moving towards the process we will probably when we close
029in november we believe there shouldn't be that much of an increase in interest rate but i think it is important we have the window to be able to do this now when interest rate is low so essentially the 1.3 million that will be getting back is what we would have paid anyway if we didn't do the refunding so we keeping our money in-house instead of paying into bondholders so are we locking in a rate by taking this action now we there's really no way to lock-in rate what is going to happen is we're using a benchmark interest rate right now what is going to happen when it's time to do the closing is going to depend on what interest rates are at that time and based on all the analysis that we've seen there shouldn't
030be a significant interest in increase in interest rate from the projected 1.62 to when we close in november okay thank you thank you okay lindsay ryan yes weatherspun yes hernandez yes sue yes pill pen yes kim yes tanya booty yes motion passes seven zero i move that the board of education adopt the resolution mandating covid19 vaccination for all employees all right in support of keeping the district schools safe for staff students and visitors and families minimizing student staff absences i'm asking we are asking that the board require that all district 65 employees submit proof of full covet 19 vaccination by no no later than october 15 2021 or request an exemption for religious or medical reasons no later than 9 15 20 21. employees who have not previously reported to the district that they are
031fully vaccinated must be tested once a week at a minimum until october 15th and then we are also asking that the testing starts on september 15 as a requirement employees requesting a religious or medical exemption must submit documentation to the superintendent showing a medical justification for being exempt from the vaccine requirement or a sincerely held religious belief that prohibits vaccination employees who are approved by the superintendent for a medical or religious exemption must be tested for covert 19 once a week at a minimum throughout the school year employees who do not provide documentation showing full vaccination or do not have an approved exemption by 1031 of 2021 will be deemed and eligible to work and not will not be paid until they provide the district with documentation of full vaccination or determined to be exempt
032and may be subject to disciplinary action in addition to this we are also going to require that any consultant that visit our campus and physically are located in any of our schools or buildings also show proof of vaccination more details will also be coming from that through partnership with hr and our business department all right so before we take a vote do are there any questions comments from the board for administration can i just ask a follow-up question in addition to consultants being required do all after-school program providers or any any other um entities that we're in partnership with have that same expectation yes everyone if you're going to come on our campus at any point we're asking and we're going to require vaccination or the exemptions and be subject and be subjected to weekly
033cova testing so prior to shield which does not start until september 13th the week of september 13th is there a recommendation for where folks are going to be getting their tests and how they're going to be verifying the testing like the mandatory submission of your vaccination status won't be until september 15th so we won't start the required testing until the 15th so like it won't it won't be required until then because it's we can't control the testing and we don't want to create a burden on excuse me on our staff so similar to how families have an exemption date for their vaccines when they enter their children in school of october 15th or something that it's kind of a similar yeah it's very similar yeah after the 15th testing starts for for as as a
034mandate and then we have to the 15th of october to provide the um actually the end of september actually have to provide their religious or uh medical exemption and about the 15th everyone has to submit their vaccination status and then the 31st is when employment will be impacted if neither uh either submitted and we have recently done a vaccine clinic is that correct or is it coming up it's coming up saturday yeah it's coming up saturday i have some logistical questions um where would the vaccination card copy be validated and stored yeah so we're gonna we're using crisis go so they will upload it and uh take a picture of their card and upload them to the crisis go system hr handles that they'll receive notification and they can go in and see that it's
035been uploaded but it's secured and only hr can see that so yeah great so i noticed with the crisis go there's also a place for students to be able to upload would they also be able to take advantage yes we've also asked parents to provide copies of their vaccination for volunteer um for their students thank you all right thank you and to clarify vaccination status impacts quarantine requirements for adults and young people who are vaccinated absolutely has major implications for uh not having to quarantine uh if exposure uh if they're exposed to uh someone who has cova so in case we haven't clearly put all the lines together if your child is vaccinated you want to provide proof of that vaccination so that your child does not need to quarantine should there be a case
036in there in their contacts that is correct thank you for that you mentioned please submit those you mentioned that um all of our providers and partners will also kind of have a similar standard um this resolution doesn't cover people that are not our staff right this does not um we're we're also not asking or i'm assuming so i'm asking now um when a parent comes to their school to meet with a teacher or for something they're not going to have to pass a vaccination no we're not we won't require that for our parents but we are very tight on visitors to buildings so more than likely um we're going to try to really use and take advantage of our remote opportunities for meeting with parents to keep the visitors down in our buildings unless there
037are some unique circumstances i just had a question tonight sorry i didn't send this to you earlier but will we be able to get kind of a breakdown of what percentage of staff have been vaccinated after the 15th i think it would be great for our community to know what percentage and do we have a sense now like in terms of voluntary self-disclosure we don't have a sense now but we will be able to do after after that date absolutely okay thank you but really good news the city of evanston uh i'm not mistaken it's like a 73 or 74 uh vaccine rate vaccination rate and i'm not skulky i'm not sure 6076 and 60203 are two of the highest zip codes in the state okay that's great names i'm going to ask one more
038question um staff that needs to schedule vaccination is that supposed to be done not during the work day like what's the coverage we are going to uh talk with our unions about impact we have to impact bargaining that that's something we'll be talking with them about is it possible that we amend the resolution to add language about partners to be specific about our adding partners and after school yes we can we can add that sure i move that the board of education adopt the resolution mandating coping 19 vaccination for all employees as amended second and then i think we're ready to call the vote lindsay ryan yes weatherspoon yes hernandez yes sue yes hill pen yes ken yes tanya voody yes motion passes seven zero yes so here we go i am excited that all
039the parents and staff and our school board have really pushed our thinking as a leadership team and making sure that we cover the details and how we open our schools safely and securely and today we're going to present what are just the high level shifts and changes that we've made around key pieces that has been continually to be asked and inquired about and so without further ado let's get started so high level overview of in-person learning and health and safety guidance we'll be using contact tracing mass communication as we've done in the past and quarantines you're going to hear about that focus on mental health there'll be a pretty deep presentation on that sel student transition in to in-person yeah deal are you ready perfect right there based on proven and effective strategies of preventing
040covet 19 in schools we are following cdc guidance for covert 19 prevention in k-12 schools we are also following idph guidance and cover 19 prevention in our k-12 schools as well and is the revised public health guidance for schools fall 2021 uh an executive order 2021-18 for universal masking collaboration and ongoing support for contact tracing quarantines closure from local health departments we'll talk more about that and continue consultation support from d65 medical advisors i just want to take this second to say our medical advisor group has been phenomenal they are answering questions if they're employees of the district and haven't complained about anything it's exciting to have such committed individuals to supporting us getting our schools open safely commitment to going above and beyond recommended health guidance in response to delta variant and increasing covet
04119 cases again welcome back right here to our district full return to in-person learning for all students is directed by esby we will offer five full days of learning strict adherence to idph and cdc recommended health and safety measures of course our first day of school is we're less than 48 hours away and for jeh it's september 1st return to traditional schedules k-5 will change classes for specials 6 through 8 will change classes throughout the entire school day child care programming offered before and after school will take place phase return of after-school enrichment that one was a little bit more challenging to get off the ground due to us shifting the resources and exactly who's managing that but we feel that it's going to be really an awesome opportunity for us to organize in a
042way that sort of after school and before school programming can be available for all students that that desire remote learning option for students required to quarantine an ineligible for covet 19 vaccine we need to remain flexible and adaptive as health conditions change and guidance evolves i want to say that again we are we have to remain flexible as we've done in the past and adaptive as health conditions change and guidance also changes we are we are well we are a school district and we have an elected board we all have to follow the local in our state guidance for reopening closing and all those other things in between health and safety measure measures overview universal masking regardless of vaccination status that is what we're doing we will do that until uh covet goes away we
043will continue to have masking as a mandate physical distancing in accordance with idph cdc guidelines distance to the greatest extent possible minimum of three feet for students we will be using our outdoor spaces for learning and meals as weather permits more information will be coming as we talk about that later in this slide require daily health certifications for all students staff and visitors continue to focus on hand hygiene hand washing and sanitation stations sanitizing stations optional weekly covet testing for students and as you heard us speak as the board approved the resolution for those who are uh who who are not going to be vaccinated have medical or religious exemption will have a required facts of that required testing through university of illinois shield program context racing in accordance with cdc guidelines and we will
044continue to update in our covet 19 dashboard that was really useful last year for as we heard from many parents and families right now there's voluntary submission of vaccination cards for our students and as again the board resolution we will be requiring staff uh for vaccine or the exemptions with mandatory testing there have been enhanced cleaning and facility upgrades to make sure that our buildings are safe and secure decision making on closures and remote learning this is important that we share this district closure or district-wide pivot to remote learning under current isb resolution no basis for district-wide closure a remote learning pathway continued monitoring of covet-19 situation in adherence to latest guidance from isb idph cdc and state as well as local officials school or classroom-based closure or pivot to remote learning contact tracing to
045determine positive cases quarantines and weather and weather spread happen in our outside schools of classrooms it's very important that we're clear around the contact tracing because if the cases the difference between three cases and one classroom and them being connected to each other versus three separate cases where they were not related impacts how we operate our classroom and what we do as far as shutting down or uh or or quarantining not quarantine or shutting down our classrooms so it's going to be important that we that that you understand the difference in that and that we have to be clear as a school district what that really means and we're working on getting some communication out to you all as early as tomorrow if there's evidence of spread within a classroom or school to a more
046connected cases it may be necessary to temporarily pivot to remote learning in that classroom or school again key word is that as we report our cases to the local health department and if they can connect the cases to each other and the spread work was caused by the same individuals that is what will warn us to shut down the class every situation is unique and decisions will be made under the guidance of local health departments these decisions are scary but we have we have done a really good job as a district and as a community the city of evanston as well as skokie with uh communicating and keeping our our community members safe and our students safe safety remains our top priority implementation and continued monitoring of the effectiveness of our health and safety plans
047as conditions shift we will make the adjustments necessary and we will be sure to communicate with you all with our board talking to them and getting clarity and also to our families and our staff remote learning in accordance with isb guidelines remote learning options for students doing quarantine period and you're going to hear about that coming up in a little bit romy all right so i'm going to share what happens um if and when there's a positive case reported in the school we work with our health department to identify any closed contacts the cdc recently updated their definition of close contact and it differentiates for adults students vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals for unvaccinated adults the definition remains the same being within six feet for a cumulative of 15 minutes throughout a 24-hour period for students
048a close contact is defined as being closer than three feet of someone who is positive and this is regardless of whether or not they were both wearing their masks however students who are students are not treated as close contacts if they are between three and six feet of an infected student and they are both wearing engaged and consistent and correct use of a well-fitted mask the cdc is clear in directing school districts to follow guidance from our local health departments and we work with both evanston and skokie health departments next slide so again when there is a positive case internally district 65 conducts contact tracing for any positive case that occurs on school grounds staff and families can expect the following steps to occur in every building every time there is a positive case the
049building administration team and often the health personnel will work together to review the student and staff schedules to see who they might have been in contact with they'll review seating charts and this also includes the bus there'll be a discussion with staff who were with the student just to confirm the level of contact if any and then to identify whether or not any additional circumstances are in place that require some further investigation and then as part of this process we always expect those that are interviewed to keep this confidential as we are discussing another student or staff members and again throughout this process we are in collaboration with our local health departments when there is again a positive case there are different levels of communication that go out to keep families and staff aware first
050there's a general notification that will go out if there's a positive case within the same space so that would be uh in the classroom or on a bus so the same space general notification goes out and in within that letter it will let the receiver know if your child or if you are a close contact you will receive another letter so if you don't get a second letter after that same space then you know that your child or yourself were not considered a close contact anybody who was a close contact after they've done the contract chasing process will get a separate close contact letter the cova dashboard is also updated weekly on fridays and this includes any reports of positive cases or quarantines and again just um there are always lots of people very interested
051and curious and concerned when there are these positive when they receive a letter and just want to remind everybody that there are federal privacy laws that do keep us from disclosing uh the name of any person who is diagnosed with coca-19 all right so moving into quarantines the need to quarantine is different for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals as you've heard if an unvaccinated student or staff member is identified as a close contact the health department will direct them to quarantine vaccinated individuals will not have to quarantine unless they have developed symptoms if a person is vaccinated and they are exposed they should be tested three to five days after that exposure and they should continue to mask and distance for 14 days after the exposure the evanston and skokie health departments have slightly different guidance
052for quarantines both departments have individual quarantines for 14 days from exposure however currently skokie says students can return after the 10th day with a negative pcr test decisions about quarantine are at the direction of our local health department so we are not directing those quarantines the health department is parents and guardians get a release from the health department when that quarantine period is over and as you've heard and dr beardsley will share soon we do have a plan for students to continue in virtual or remote learning during a quarantine period we're also currently looking into utilizing the test to stay strategy which would be an alternative to quarantine if it would also require that close contact test on day one three five and seven from the date of exposure and as long as the tests
053are negative the student would be able to remain in school again more information will be coming as we learn more about the feasibility of the test to stay action romy can i just interject the reason why we haven't made the full commitment to it we're investigating is because it comes with a price tag that's pretty hefty if we're going to do that so we are trying to lock in some numbers and make sure there's something that we can do right okay next slide and dr horton already highlighted this so i'll be brief but we will continue to partner with the local health department to monitor cases and transmission in our schools if there are multiple cases that are linked or connected to in the same location in our school this would trigger for us a
054need to do a closer look on our own to see what happened and if there are any additional prevention measures that we need to make sure that we're putting in place to ensure it doesn't happen again and our schools remain safe any decisions about a classroom or school closure will be made on a case-by-case basis and this would come at the direction of our local health department i'll turn over to you dr beardsley to share more about what the student experience will look like in quarantine wonderful thank you dr christopher so district 65 will provide a remote learning option for students who have have excuse me have not received a coven 19 vaccine or who are not eligible for coca-19 vaccine and while under the quarantine order consistent with local guidance and requirements the students
055will ascen once identified as a need to quarantine will be connected with a site-based contact that will gather the necessary information from the family about any learning needs in regards to technology hot spots school supplies an invitation to the quarantine remote classroom will be sent to the family and they will be attending the qrc quarantine classroom which we are calling qrc they will attend the qrc for the duration of the quarantine it will be a zoom classroom we'll continue to use seesaw in kindergarten through second grade and google classroom in third through eighth grade the students will receive synchronous instruction predominantly in math literacy and social emotional learning um an alignment with the goal that's stated on the slide we are working to provide access to standards aligned learning for students while experiencing a 10
056to 14 day quarantine that allows the student to stay connected continue learning and transition back into their grade level classroom with minimal loss of learning and so what we are looking to do is to organize the qrcs at the district level in order to essentially create a centralized space for students to come to a grade level classroom and we've moved away from any multi-age classroom ideas in order to ensure that it's a grade level aligned experience they will experience synchronous instruction and then have an opportunity to complete the remainder of the day the last two and a half hours through asynchronous assignments those asynchronous assignments will provide additional practice aligned to the standards in addition to access to fine arts and fine arts and pe activities through a choice board option and those will recycle
057over the trimesters as we move forward in the middle school we'll have an educator assigned to provide math learning literacy learning and then support for the remaining subjects in the asynchronous learning for that content and so students will every student will have an opportunity to engage in grade level content have an opportunity to connect be supported with social emotional learning and then continue with asynchronous learning until the end of quarantine when they are then transitioned back into their grade level classroom the intention is to also transition them back in with a quick report from with their engagement with qrc which would indicate attend the number of days attended the level of engagement work completion and feedback will be received on that work however it will not be included in a student's grade do that situation
058if a child is symptomatic to the point that they are not able to engage in the qrc then we'll lean on our handbook guidance and they will have opportunity to make up that work upon returning to school and recovering from from recovering their health and that is essentially an outline of our qrc approach at this time okay um so elijah and i are just going to talk a little bit about our plans for student transition and social emotional learning both in the our current stage and also in the qrc so first all educators and staff are provided with an updated sel roadmap and sel toolkits for the first six weeks the sel roadmap lasts for the entire year this also includes sel our daily sel and wellness check-ins so we're building up that work that
059we did last year it was very successful and continuing to use it for this year in the in person and in the remote setting if needed special resources have been developed for students in quarantine due to covet exposure so those will also be kind of rotated throughout the trimester so even if they are in that qrc they still have that attachment that sense of belonging that wellness check-in as well as those sel practices that we've been uplifting the past several years we're continuing our professional learning for establishing and maintaining a positive classroom environment and we're utilizing the responsive classroom approach as we begin that implementation so all of our new educators actually got an initial opening to that this year for a four hour training we're going to continue with job embedded professional learning resources
060for the initial implementation of responsive classroom for all schools we've also led some workshops and we'll continue to lead workshop series both elijah and i on with school-aged child care for implementing whole child supports around sel and well-being as well as restorative practices so yeah and i'll speak on the bullying i spoke on it last fall i mean i'm sorry last spring but right now we've had training around the implementation of average bullying program with lessons and resources and materials developed by our summer project teams and tomorrow we're actually going to have full implementation into all of our schools in the district off 15 of our schools with the exception of rice park and jh so it'll be it'll be district wide and there's some things on the district website you know to resources to
061assist with office bullying program as well and uh donna also jump into the inclusion of our elementary sports uh we've been talking myself dr horton mr little brandon lane about just including our sports and our elementary schools is obviously that it's apparent in our middle schools and we think in coming back from covert it'll be vital and very instrumental that you know our elementary schools have the opportunity to be a part of the sports program as well and we're looking forward to conversing with ryan on thursday to just try to build off that can i say i also would just like to add what's really important with the ova is bullying prevention pritzker governor pritzker just passed a bill where bullying will now be recorded and reported out by schools it's going to be a
062part of the school report card and it's important that while there's been some amazing work with the restorative that's happening here uh that we go even deeper in how we're going to support uh and do be preventive from these things happening so i think it's it's important to highlight that all right our final piece i'm very excited for this uh is a launch of a new sel screener using the it's the deserts the devereaux student strengths assessment for all students to one identify all the students strengths it's a strengths-based assessment and then any students who may need additional instruction or support so we're able to monitor students throughout the year and provide that tier one scl support for all kids to increase social emotional competence and academic achievement thank you i want to introduce the
063next speaker because i don't think everybody has met anna marie candelario she's the new director of special services and she started earlier this month she has hit the ground running um doing a great job and she has a passion for mental health so she wanted to come and speak to you all about the district's focus on mental health good evening everyone as romy spoke i'm very passionate about mental health and supporting all students with their mental health needs so healthy children are more successful in school we know that the short-term effects are school engagement long-term effects or positive relationships and also working skills as they grow older according to the u.s department of health one out of five children experience a mental health or behavioral concern within their school years and so with those numbers
064there is a growing unmet need of mental health support within our schools in our community and it is important that a school and a community have a continuum of services around mental health so with this diagram here you see the pretty shades of green and blue those shades of colors represent the school and community interconnected to provide services for our children with those services that you can see in the lower tiers that as the growing need occurs for children with more intensive services the higher need we need to work alongside the community so with data analysis from the screener such as desa we can utilize that to adjust our tiers for mtsb or what we call on the right side of the triangle the behavior support we also could streamline processes to address the disparities
065in mental health and figure out ways and work together to address and the access of medical care for all students moving up this year our school service providers will provide sessions such as around coping skills grief and loss resiliency especially during the pandemic our resiliency is definitely going to need to increase for our children as they experience the spintomic over the past 18 months iep evaluations initiate child fine for families who bring to us concerns about mental health and then of course training our staff around crisis intervention supports i we also offering wrap around services through our mental health practitioners so with wraparound services here we are focusing on family strengths their connection to the community utilizing their group to provide those services based off of the family and student need and lastly with the
066most intensive services are referrals for counseling medication management and intensive outpatient programming partial hospitalization programming and inpatient hospital programming you can move to the next slide please so here are the numbers of our providers throughout district we have 21 assistant principals 14.5 psychologists 30 social workers 8 guidance counselors and two mental health practitioners in 2021 and 2020 and 2021 we increased one full-time psychologist in 2021 to 2022 we increased two full-time mental health practitioners and also this year we added eight guidance counselors so looking over at these roles then how they support the mental health this is our mental health school team these individuals encompass the work to provide our students the accurate care that they deserve so assistant principals are the ones who will bring the team together to find the appropriate skill set
067an individual to support that child psychologists guidance counselors and social workers really review the needs of the children and refer them to the appropriate mental health services within the school or the community and lastly our mental health providers that we have refer students and their parents or guardians to appropriate staff member and or the community health agency ongoing professional development plan for our staff building effective school mental health teams becoming a trauma-informed care school in districts adverse child care childhood experiences also called aces and lastly training our staff through mental health first aid we also want to provide family's contact information of course the first line of defense will not only be your building administration but also a home run teacher and or building social worker we also have the two mental health practitioners listed
068jennifer bergner and ali hardin the families are more than welcome to contact me um as well and then we also have listed um dr romy de carsofaro also it's very small this is a list of our social workers at every school and we also have a social worker directory on our special services page as well so thank you for letting me talk about something i'm very passionate about all right that's a lot of information to take in but it's all important and valuable just a reminder uh that this weekend we're going to be hosting this district 65 along with the city of evanston it's our second partnership two weekends in a row with the city involved that's awesome first of all saturday august 28th the second dose will be saturday september 28th and then we're
069going to do 18th oh yeah put the two there for no reason yeah the 18th uh and we will be hosting it here uh in uh in in our building in the center so that everyone can you know easily know how to get there and we're using it'll be from nine to two and it's the fights of vaccine there's no cost all ages 12 and up regardless of immigration status so families can come it's not just for students it's for the entire community so please put the word out and the registration is is not high right now so we're going to ask that you really you know dig into your resources and help to identify families or individuals who would love to get vaccinated all right thank you now we're here for questions and discussion
070from the board i got a couple some of them are just for clarification for the people in the back there's always a constant debate over the three feet six feet but cdc idph and isb all are recommending three feet at a minimum but more when possible in terms of social distance yes they are recommending three feet so there's no reason for us to to explain or to try to do something different than what all those medical professionals are no uh it's our medical advisory group um idph all stand three feet great just major um on crisis go it's it says the first option is my child meets the recommendations to come in but at the last the last one says um i don't have a fever like above 100.4 you still need to be fever-free
071for 24 hours before you return to school is that correct yes i'm delaying did you want to come over me okay um i don't know if people would be confused by like hey i don't have a few i don't have that fever so now i can go but i had the fever eight hours ago you know um just thinking about people wanting to get their kids back in school who decides the pivot to remote learning i think what i heard was we're going to rely on our local health departments to give guidance to us as to what the best recommendation would be yes and in partnership that will also come from isb as well so the best mechanism for parents who think they know more about what's going on with community spread would be for
072people to report to the health departments when they know something about covet in their circle yes they are definitely a better resource than we are so calling the principal and emailing you doesn't actually inform that decision better we're going to move that communication right over to the health department if it comes in just making sure yeah and i was wondering about communication procedures for the same reason as my last question um there's two communications that go out one is to people who are in the same space so if my child's a second grader in a classroom and there's covid in the second grade at that building do all second graders get like the flu letter no just if they were in the same classroom so my question is should a more general first letter go
073to the grade level so that people can be more aware and alert for symptoms should that be occurring within their their pocket or like is there a reason that a more general letter to that building would make sense that we're not doing we were advised that that it creates pandemonium and chaos when it's not clear uh so we were told to the the guidance is to give it to those individuals that that's in that space they need to know only yep awesome i've exhausted my question i have a few more that are similar to joey's that's why i didn't ask the other ones um my first question is do we have translation available at the vaccination clinic so if folks come in and english is not their primary language they will be able to get
074the support they need to get vaccinated we're still recruiting volunteers so i can look at the list to see but very good point thank you and then i i wanted to just there was a lot of information it was really helpful thank you for everybody who's figured out all of these pieces and make sure that we're communicating them effectively i wanted to highlight two things because i can anticipate that we're going to hear about this number one it is entirely possible that what happens at school a will be different than school b for a variety of factors right so just because your friend who goes to lincoln's second grade class shutdown doesn't mean if you go to dewey that your second grade class should shut down because um it's based on the number of students
075it's based on what how with the exposure happen at a slumber party versus in the classroom it's based on vaccination status of those students there are a myriad of factors so when you hit the facebooks to say this district is being inconsistent um it is not necessarily being inconsistent it is likely because it is not based it's not random how this is being determined it's not um it's being directed by idph and other health resources um it's not accidental there there have been there is a rationale for all of the ways that this will happen um and so i and then the second piece to that is it will look differently than it did last year because many factors have changed our board decisions as i think joey was alluding to but i'm going to
076be even more explicit right we don't have the capability of shutting down the district in the same way because isbe is has different restrictions on how that goes it will it's not a board decision moving forward and we need to make sure that and that because vaccinations have changed a lot of different factors what our protocol is will be different than last year not because the district is being inconsistent or that there's a lack of transparency about these changes it is that the guidance on what we should be doing with this pandemic has changed based on a myriad of factors and so before people assume that there is some kind of nefarious plot as to how this is going school to school know that there is a very clear rubric that we are working from
077um that we will be using that will that will rely heavily on contract tracing and the health department's guidance for how it should go but but vaccination rates and other things have changed the game since last year is that fair to absolutely yes thank you that's two in a row with uh translating and putting it all together so thank you that's exactly what it is thank you so um another translation that i wrote down um was just when you were mentioning dr horton about um and this you were also alluding to the where the spread or how the spread has happened is going to be really important in terms of the action that we're advised to take um so just something that i have recently learned is that the prior thinking was that if there's
078high community spread that there would likely be high spread within a school building but some of the revised thought on that is that if in a building there is the cases are traced back to the building then that is evidence of an outbreak that needs to be contained in that building or that classroom and that is when we would need to think about shutting down classrooms or buildings but if those cases the spread is not traced to the building but the spread is traced to the community and it's happened outside of the building and come into the building the issue is quarantining individuals and addressing the the activity that led to that spread yes i could use you all at home to help translate for my wife that's correct she's watching sorry about that yeah
079that's correct so i just wanted us to be clear about the fact that where spread is happening is going to be critical to why things look different and different classrooms or may look different in different buildings and that's that the contact tracing responsibility is primarily within the building is something that district 65 will do but the rest of the contact tracing outside of the building is the responsibility of public health departments and therefore they determine whether or not we need to contain classrooms or absolutely so just to go even further if you have two classrooms that each have three kids that have tested positive they might not do the same thing in terms of current of of how the classroom responds because of where the spread happened so it's not about just the numbers of
080in a classroom so just being overly thorough because we know people are nervous we know that people are feeling anxious about coming back to school and i think the best thing we can do as a board and as administration is to let you know that these things are being thought about this is these have been considered there are plans in place they will look different building to building but not because um things are not being adhered to but because we understand the nuance at a greater level than we did last year and have better resources and support and data and research to drive our policies from can i say that i i think this segment of the meeting that we've had right now where we're working through the explanations and interpreting should be something that
081is kind of edited uh because again just like my just like your wife my wife i've tried to explain and it's like okay but but i think you know my arc my board cogs here have done an excellent job asking the right questions and really kind of walking through and being very specific about these different scenarios that we have to go through so again i mean for communications maybe that'd be something that you know if we could illustrate it or or do like a cartoon or something but well that's just ready for yours possible you know that that's always my mo is that however clear we can be with families uh just to kind of switch ass wage their fears um and nervousness and anxiety uh coming back i think is always the best practice
082i did want to talk a little bit about how excited i am about some of the mental health supports and i think you know key to our families coming back and and helping them with the anxiety is reconnecting and building rebuilding relationships with their kiddos and and and with their families so i just i really appreciate this is something that as a board we've been asking for for for quite a while around social emotional support so you know kudos to the uh team um for again finally bringing it bringing a measure and i'm excited to see the uh social emotional measures from desa in in one of our uh reports you know you know later on in the year around student achievement and just it's just so excited around how we're thinking about mental health
083uh in a tiered way and how it almost aligns to the multi-tiered system supports you know is what i think about but thinking about it in terms of mental health and it's just so so exciting to me in regards to how we how we approach families and students coming back to our district uh but also having and preparing our adults here uh to to engage but also you know hopefully providing them the supports as well for themselves as educators because i know that i'm pretty sure many of them are have anxiety as well so just you know really appreciate the the detail and how we're thinking about mental health going forward in this district just phenomenal kudos to the team they're doing some awesome work so we're excited as well i have some additional questions
084as well first of all i want to say the piece about the meals being able to provide food breakfast lunch to the students is a really great resource you know feeding them physically as well as the mental and emotional piece i was wondering is there any update about meals outdoors sure absolutely i can i can take that you know my friend i can do it so what we're having um all uh all of our elementary schools k through k with k through five even our two magnet schools will have lunch and their meals prepared we bought we've purchased tables chairs they'll have it all outside when there's inclement weather they will go back to the planet they originally design during inclement weather but it will be required to have lunch out outdoors and then we
085are also making that the case until and they still should be using them even after this but once shield testing is available if they want to have a little bit more flex and have something in and out they can do it but we were able to launch that in our our team raphael's team we were able to put together some nice uh structures and our principles got extremely creative really fast and so i'm thankful that we will be offering uh meals outside i'm sorry and dr horton can you speak to the safety of having meals indoors sure um we still have we have clearance um in our so what's going to happen in this indoors we're going to inclement weather uh when things do make it almost impossible to have lunch outside uh where some
086of our schools will have meals in their cap in their lunch in their classrooms with additional personnel to help have that spacing with with the proper three-foot spacing and then also they'll use the cafeteria so you may have a classroom where half the class is eating in the class and the other group is in the cafeteria for proper spacing so all of the same metrics that we put in place for safety will be act will be adjusted so they can have indoor mills well and according to the medical advisors there's not necessarily greater safety gained by spacing greater than three feet significantly yeah the the primary safety is staying greater than three feet or staying three feet um away or greater but it doesn't necessarily exponentially increase by going six feet um and so having
087the unmasked children eat indoors with the proper spacing so far has proven to be a good mitigation practice yes absolutely and then just to add to that we will have some buildings where it looks different because they have additional indoor space so again if school a is having lunch inside but has you know two or three different spaces that they can spread out kids they that might look different than school b not and it's not time to start sending the principles messages that school a is doing this thing that it's determined based on a rationale based on spacing based on numbers yes enrollment in space option looks like yeah absolutely that's correct i also appreciate our first measure and then staffing and operations and physical space being the second limitation yes those are the things
088and we've also hired some additional florida custodians to help navigate and organize that dean palmer uh mr brunson our new operations director and raphael has been they've really been organizing and making sure that the resources are there they were able to accumulate a little over 260 folding tables that they can use for outdoor meals which is pretty awesome i i appreciate it from our medical advisory team i haven't talked to them in a long time but um they're very good at articulating the fact that some of them are even infectious disease doctors right they're they're receiving people with covid um in a normal in a normal world for them at work and they're like look masks hand washing we still eat lunch at work with other people and there's just there's things you can do
089to be safe and and these are the things that they that they recommend that idph recommends it's absolutely doable that doesn't mean people won't be anxious about it that's okay too lots of people have gone through a lot during the pandemic but this we can do this and similar sorry similar safety measures are also put into place for our music band and orchestra as well stacy do you want to chime in on it sure the guidance for abandon orchestra as well as vocal singing is that we need six feet of spacing and so the educators have had that guidance for a window of time they will move outside when appropriate and when indoors they'll ensure six feet of spacing that we also order or order ppe specific for instrumental and they will ensure 60 to
090spacing indoors or we will engage in different activities thank you i have a question about the test to stay i know that um you said you would talk to us more about it when the costs associated is clear what occurred to me when you were describing that model is the timing of the return of the test so if children are testing in order to avoid quarantine is the test coming back each day rapid tests are less accurate and so are these rapid tests they're coming back the same day i i think that that is what is supposed to happen so that we get the results but in addition to there being a cost to it just some other things that we'd have to work out is it's not something like right now shield is coming
091in to support us with the testing this is also something that we would have to to manage as a school district so we would need potentially some staff to to support it um and then there's just a number of different logistical things our priority right now is getting the shield testing up and running and getting that into a smooth place um and then exploring more test this day yeah so i i feel like there's a significant amount of additional information that we need about that that option before it's employed in order to feel like it's a safe mitigation measure gotcha the other question i had was in regards to the quarantine remote schooling option um was if magnet how how magnet programs and special education services are going to be provided via that option or
092or not what accommodations will be made to accommodate students who have special education needs in our magnet programs absolutely so first um in speaking to the magnet aspect we're focused on primarily in the synchro synchronous space the provision of math literacy and social emotional learning and that essentially scope and sequence and curricular guidance is similar across elementaries and magnets in the asynchronous learning space there is option to be able to address some of the more specialized programs within magnets in regards to our students that essentially require different supports for learning our model is to give the core and more essentially all students including rice students well we have a few different answers so for jh we are moving to asynchronous options fully because age-wise that's what's proven to be most successful in that space and
093in that environment um there's some different nuances on quarantining that we've worked through with jh rice will be included in the qrc classrooms as well as all other students in twee and acc and then for students with ieps 504s or language plans they will attend the qrc and then what we're looking for to do is to provide additional services through remote learning for those students and the goal is to continue to meet the demands of the iep or 504 in those spaces and so they'll get the core and then they'll get some additional support from their service providers in the case of park we're looking to work with a particular case manager to design a custom plan to serve those students during quarantine should we need to do that okay and then specifically for students
094in tweet we will look for educators in the qric space that are bilingual if we are not able to secure that what we're looking at is providing additional office hours with a spanish language educator that they can access to support their learning particularly assignments that require spanish spanish language okay thank you um the other note that i wrote here was just an appreciation for the focus on mental health and social and emotional learning um we've been as a board as said you mentioned talking about this for several years and stacy as i know you're you're also keenly aware of um however i one of the things that we have consistently i think that has been a part of this conversation is making sure that whatever tool we're using doesn't cause unintentional harm by not being
095culturally relevant or being biased in its measure of social emotional assets and so i really appreciate the strength you mentioning the strength-based nature of the the desa screener are we going to be monitoring the data to account for if it's disproportionately measuring children of particular backgrounds in the same way great question um so yes so first the the desa is um both reliable and valid uh both psychometrically and for disaggregation across race uh age and gender so that right there is like one of the main reasons that it was selected because we can use it for the model of tiering for mtss as well as for providing mental health supports and using that as a screener the other part of jessa that's really great is that we can disaggregate by race and by class and
096a lot or by phrase class school you know that stuff too but um by race by gender things like that and the norms are all the same so it does allow us to make those comparisons um and also identify uh if we have you know disproportionality again but it's a strength space it's not like a an at-risk thing which is typically what you will see in some of these type of like behavior screener type things is oh this kid is at risk and this is a flag versus this is the student's strength in resilient areas and how do you build on these strengths in order to get those areas of need so it is really a tier one that can then support our educators in providing you know instruction and also help our social workers
097and our psychologists provide uh additional small group and those you know the same groups things that they provide and they have data in order to to measure that as well as measure throughout the year so we will have a pre-post it also provides a diagnostic that allows you to go deeper to identify exactly what skills and competencies the student may need so it's hyper focused and then also provides resources for educators immediately ready to go and is it available in both english and spanish so it's it it's the yes it is available like the all the reports are available in both languages but it's done by the educators um so it's not sent to students students at the younger age aren't able to quite understand their perceptions there and then we also have the optional
098addition of the seca which is the social emotional competency assessment that we can actually give directly to students in alignment with that both from the same tool so i feel like one of the things that we've heard from our dual language educators a lot is that in the past you know curriculum is bought in english and then they're required to do their own translations um so if even if the educator is administering the assessment are they required to translate it themselves okay all right great no translation needed okay wonderful thanks and those are all my questions my question i see did you have me well you stole one of my questions but that's okay it was answered um but so i was for another clarification our remote learning option is an option that will be
099given to our children that are quarantining and also that are unable to get the vaccine this is not an option for if you just would like to keep your student home or if this is if you just don't want to come to school our remote option and that is based on the guidelines from the illinois state board of education this is not something that district 65 has implemented we are doing this at the guidance of the illinois state board of education that is correct the qrc is designed specifically for short-term quarantines of 10 to 14 days which in our case will be 14 days and students will then return to their on-site classrooms and students will qualify when ordered to quarantine by a local health official is be driven absolutely five for five translations good
100it looks like we have uh exhausted the questions and comments that we have for the return to school quarantine learning for now so we will um thank you all for taking the time to answer all of our questions and also for preparing such a thorough and thoughtful plan especially the extra sweetness on the side with the mental health supports and social emotional learning that's a nice touch which we very much appreciate let's move our discussion onto board planning calendar did you have an image or a slideshow of the board planning no we didn't have a presentation or anything we've got the document you put the document we can put that out give me a minute and welcome anna well that's by donna but also anna marie anna marie anna marie yeah she's out there welcome
101thank you this is going to take me a minute i'm going to transfer it from here i would if it's okay um i would just like to say it's connected to the presentation i forgot to mention that melissa's going to kill me there was a 20-page faq that she's worked with our team to put together 20 pages there are tons and tons of questions and responses on that and we're going to upload it to our website tonight so for some many other questions that may come up it'll be in a document so please take a minute to check it out if you have a couple of hours to read through faqs and will the the presentation match you all that be up on the website as well yeah yes and will we have a spanish
102version of it thank you and then just to i see the calendar has been pulled up to demystify how this beautiful document comes along each june we have a conversation as a board about what we hope and wish to see on the priority on our calendar for the upcoming school year and dr you and your team over the summer take a look at that list and crosswalk that with your capacities and other priorities and responsibilities and put together a calendar that reflects when you all can accommodate and bring those discussions and updates to us along with what is legally required and meeting the timing of all of those requirements as well yes um dr green and adela they spent a great deal of time speaking and meeting with key members of our of our team
103to align where these uh discussions really should fall and then we then we debrief at the end and we share them so yes so this is our opportunity as a board to loop back about the conversation that started in june about the priorities for this governance body and i think we can add it to our next meeting agenda and update about our retreat but um we try to do a lot of due diligence as a board to make sure that we are discussing the things that we need to discuss so that our governance body is having the conversations with each other and the community that folks want and need to hear and see about this is our opportunity to reflect on that um dr horton did you want to share anything with us before we
104get into a broader discussion of the content that we've looked over i'll pass it over to dr green she can walk us through he's doing that because he has six slides tonight on the return to school turnabout it's fair play thank you we just behind the curtain so um what's the question or we're just highlighting i guess ideally the board meeting or just some key topics that may have came up you know you put them you consolidated them absolutely um we take the consideration of requests in the team as mentioned tries to put them in logical uh groupings so that they are presented at a time and obviously this year with the newer structure around our policy committees so we had a another uh opportunity to just ensure that we were kind of spreading them
105out we try to leverage and be mindful of how many discussion topics which ones are really big hot topics um obviously we want to start the school year with you know items that are relevant to our transition back we've got updates and things that are related to our plans strategic master facilities student assignment those are coming up within the next month we also know that um there were a couple of items that we missed actually in placing and so those are on adela and my radar for tomorrow um and thankfully to the team who got on that immediately to kind of space those out and so you basically should see a reflection of the topics that were required topics that are just uh important to where we are on our journey um in terms of
106planning and some updates on some items that are really relational to our create program and our academic skills centers and our budgeting processes so these are just the the norms of topics that we discuss you should see by the addendum once we make the adjustments we'll be adding the social studies update which is uh somewhat of a newer report for us but definitely relevant in terms of the work that's happening out of the cni department and um i think when elijah was here we have a annual culture and climate report and so um that's typically i think in november when that data is shared i'm checking with kylie because we talked about that earlier but then elijah will also be trying to come back in the spring to share some updated information as well so
107we really have tried to be thoughtful about progress monitoring sharing some updates but then also really digging into some culminating data and information thank you i just want to add just a little bit of historical context one of the things that we as a board have talked about probably for at least three years is about um making sure that everyone has you know the ability to enjoy their work and not constantly be working at untenable paces with workloads that feel um feel unsustainable and so part of this calendar is to help us with pacing another issue that we've looked to the calendar to try to manage is the the length of our meetings so that we can spread out important conversations give them the time that they deserve but also allow for the digestion of
108discussions so that you all don't have long evenings that and then have to come to work early the next day but also so that we can bring our best selves to these governing um discussions and so i think i say all that to just know that what we bring up in discussion will be related to content but also pacing um and also workload management um and so you mentioned a couple of the things that so sometimes we email y'all ahead of time to give you a heads up but that doesn't preclude us having that discussion in public as well and so you mentioned a couple of things that i had emailed about so it sounds like the academic skill center update will get on this calendar but it's not currently there yes and just to
109clarify um what elijah's presentation include the kind of discipline data that we have historically actually is a part of the november uh presentation as well but it'll be from the previous school year so okay um we talked a couple of times tonight about getting the master's facility planned which is going to go to the sap before it comes to us is is the sap on this calendar now or did i miss it see it in yeah in november um right i thought it was gonna it needed to happen in november or december did i miss it is it there yeah it's here it's here um on the regular meeting it's under curriculum and policy okay so i think currently the sap team is um about to break down into uh subcommittees i think the intention
110is to put out a survey the week of the 13th and so they'll be utilizing that information to kind of work in the subcommittees and have something to share with us in november okay great and and also so just in terms of workload management if you all in case you don't recall for the academic skills uh center update we were looking for what's the demographic breakdown of who's taking advantage of it as well as what are the social emotional measures of the folks who are taking advantage yeah kylie her team has been working on on what that data report will look like so we definitely will have all of those pieces covered um and where did you all answer i i'm guessing that maybe a couple of updates about academic skill center would be useful
111did you all have a proposed placing for that or is that something that you need to discuss further yeah my initial thinking was to place them in the curriculum meetings and my suggestion was october 4th and april 4th the october 4th would be a launch update the april 4th would be more of the specific demographic demographic data over time was my original recommendation that considering depending on the degree i could move that october 4th back a little bit to ensure that we had an opportunity to fully gather the demographic and social emotional learning so maybe november 4th was the better i i agree stacy i think moving it back would help us to at least wrap up close to that first cycle close to it yep so it's i think then my instinct is to
112do the november 4th and april 4th and actually the date closest to november 4th that curriculum meeting anya i had a question but i want to make sure you were through with your list um i'm sorry i'm having problems with my visibility here but um yeah i mean i have other questions but they're not pressing um mine is not pressing either so go ahead okay um the uh when were you all anticipating because i believe that when we had the discussion about social studies back in march it was anticipated that the social studies curriculum would be done in june so when will you when do you imagine a social studies because i heard dr green you said that you're going to add a social studies update when would that be on the calendar yes currently
113recommended from the cni team for march okay and the reasoning i selected march is that we've made grid paragraphs on the curriculum development we have identified units for implementation in k-5 and an approach for implementing sub-modules of the units in middle school and that's an opportunity by then we will have implemented aspects of the curriculum and worked on gathering some feedback and we should have our community advisory up and running so it seemed like a good opportunity to pull the learning from this year and be teaming up the next year which would include a fuller implementation of the social studies curriculum okay and that's not currently on the march but you want to add that to the my recommendation was placing it there curriculum policy committee yes thank you so that yeah that was the
114extent of the questions oh there were two dates in here that did not have two regular board meetings that did not have any discussion items in the fall did was there a particular reason that those meetings were left with no discussion items october or no october is the joint meeting um so that would be that's why determined by the joint committee right is the other one the other one is the november 15th there's a lot of information but not discussion for that meeting so i understand looking at this again that the october one does not have discussion items because that will be determined by the joint committee but the november 15th meeting was there a particular reason why that one was left with no discussion items i think it was just an oversight um one
115of the things that i was talking with sarita about is possibly making the um student assignment uh process recommendations part of those discussions i know they should have at least two meetings but i know that they'll be doing some disaggregation of data so i'll consult with her again yeah that could also be a really tight turnaround i won't can i just add really quickly so under the curriculum policy while we don't have what policies we will address there will be policies that will be placed in these months of uh for direction of course we have to get more more information from you all regarding which ones we would like to address so while you don't see it up there we will be addressing some policies this year changing and editing and making some adjustments i
116did so and for the academic skills center updates their proposed it sound like you were saying they were proposed to be added to curriculum and policy committee discussions um and i really appreciate our new committee structure and and relying on my colleagues leadership in those community structures but i would say add that that academic skill center um discussion was uh passed with the idea that we were going to monitor the the impact of it so if it's at the committee level i guess depending on the committee structure committee discussion we may or may not need to move it to the regular um board meeting for full for discussion and that's exactly how it flows i mean so if we presented in the committee and the board would like us to present it at the poor
117we we could do that so yeah okay i just want to i want to i guess make that explicit also for anyone who is paying attention to the discussion that we had that we will be monitoring the the impact as we had intended and we'll do it through the committee structure that's a really good point madam president because there's like the phase two budget conversation is not explicitly named on the document but like it's in the student assignment planning work it's in it's in a few different places on different committees um and it's a really big part of the financial planning future work um but it's happening amongst all the committees in a lot of different places well that should be a discussion we could talk about that this would be a discussion possibly in
118what november rafael um phase two for the budget and where's the strategic planning um the update from the strategic planning yep you got three dates on there for strategic planning so we've got september 13th we'll have an update um you have another one in november 8th these are all at the curriculum level and then by december 13th we anticipate bringing a plan for the board for discussion and presentation all right curriculum and planning committee yeah um before i ask this question i just want to highlight again that for each of these bullets there's a ton of work for our staff to be ready to have that conversation and you know navigate through the decision-making process so i greatly appreciate all of the coordination to make this calendar work one thing i was concerned about in
119terms of our sequencing was that we don't have special education on the calendar until march and i know you know i know that we have a kind of routines on how we do this but certainly with the transition back to in-person learning i'm i'm wondering if there could be any consideration for some kind of update before march maybe it's not the full update but that we make sure that that's a priority this fall as we deal with all those transitions is that possible yeah yeah yes we could definitely do that could we move it to the 15th yeah you hear that green uh full potential november 15th thank you yeah yes yeah and i don't i'd like to add you know i was very touched by the the presentation around or the public speaker who
120talked about you know inclusion and maybe thinking about certain policies so as you suggested there's room to add into the you know i don't want to have too much work to to to folks but it is something that i think as as we try to reconnect with our special education families uh maybe really being considerate and in any recommendations that come out of the uh the special education uh advisory uh or group or parent group uh would be really great to have them on board one of the policy committees to kind of talk about some of the issues that bubble up they'd like to see us address through policy what was the i'm sorry there was a november date for that kelly shared right you know what it's actually september 15th december 15th no september
121september okay great so that we can make sure we coordinate whatever conversation we have in november with what happened in that session and you know making sure it's a continued conversation that we include all our stakeholders in sorry i don't know did i miss here or did no she did say that but it is september 15th that sounds like a while ago okay september 15th we'll have a uh presentation from inclusion specialists and is that going to be over zoom yeah it's virtual mhm other calendar questions suggestions i appreciate seeing the calendar i always appreciate seeing the calendar just from a planning perspective and i think it's important just for the public record and for people to be reminded when we talk about something in march and it seems like a surprise that these things
122were on the calendar now and sometimes people have to be reminded that there's a plan and when they try to when outside forces try to bring a new topic in um it impacts everything on this calendar um and if these are the big rocks for the organization then we gotta you know support the administration and stay in the course managing the workload so that we can do our work as a board but they can do their work and lead in the district yeah yeah i think it's you know important to think of turning an oil tanker it takes a a lot longer than you know navigating a speedboat so yeah when we're making decisions they're very very long term because it requires the coordinated work of more than the seven of us or eight of
123us up here um it requires the coordinated work of a lot of folks that are unseen and in labor that is not necessarily visible though we hope these committee structures hope to make it more visible and thank you for for highlighting that joey we definitely have to work with the very long view and if we don't then it could cause a lot of chaos and disruption that ultimately would impact children and families and it's our job to think of their their care and their experiences of this institution the best practice for all of us is to have a plan and execute that plan and one that we could share at the outset of our work so that is what we are modeling the board absolutely plans are important thank you um so those were the
124the main items um on our agenda this evening given that it appears that we have exhausted all the questions and concerns and requests of our two discussion items with no further business for the board i will join this meeting at 905 thank you everyone good evening thank you good night thanks everyone you