Fairview District 72 Board of Education Meeting - 2-16-2022

001[Music] good evening everyone thank you um i'm calling back to open session the regular meeting of the fairview district 72 board of education it is february 16 2022 at 701 we have already established that we have a quorum um i would just remind the members of the audience um and all those presents that uh we were requiring them to wear their mask and observe the social distancing at this time and i would like to remind everyone also to silence their cell phones and join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance thank you so first item on our agenda this evening is can i have a motion and a second to approve the minutes um of the regular and closed sessions of january 19 2022. so are there any um changes or corrections to

002the minutes okay in that case all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say the minutes are approved next item is can i have a motion and a second to approve the payment of the bills in the amount of 676 dollars and 68 cents a second are there any questions regarding the bills bearing none could the secretary please call the role vote yes miss boosting yes mr yes mr guliana yes miss downing yes i vote yes miss brown yes good girls are paid uh next item is a pta report do we have a member of the pta with a report this evening excellent hello sorry uh this last month we were able to distribute the last piece of spirit wear that people ordered we appreciate everybody's patience um the company was delayed because of

003all the stuff going on with the pandemic we had been at midnight on thursday january 27th at benjio's another one on february 10th at noodles and we um thank everybody who is able to participate with those because the pta gets a percentage of that um of that day at that time's uh money um we held a two-week clothing ride a couple these last two weeks in place of our winter dance and bingo night um so we also we wanted to thank miss kilpatrick for all the help she she gave us um helping organize the event and we thank everybody who was able to to donate clothes um we also had our room parents and guardians provide games and activities for the kindergarten through fourth grade classrooms for their valentine's day parties and they delivered everything

004that the teachers could uh do all the tests on monday um we held uh in person for the students in person book fair this last monday through wednesday today and then the parents and the rest of the community are able to access the book fair online through sunday february 27th and we want to thank ms bastian for all her help to make that possible um our general pta meeting will be on wednesday march 9th at 6 30 via zoom one of our new topics we will be discussing is multicultural night which is coming up on friday april 22nd and we hope to showcase just how diverse every south really is and thank you thank you very much busy as ever okay so school activity report does anybody on the board or administration have good news

005to share i was just going to say i had an opportunity to attend the robotics team competition which was fascinating to watch my first time to be a part of and to watch all the different teams competing and representing fairview was really wonderful they all did a fantastic job great colleen thanks um so we had um each year mrs shredrath one of our math teachers particip has students participate in what's called the noetic math learning contest so students took this um contest a few months ago but um due to covered we just have given out all the awards because our students were all back in person and we really felt like we wanted to acknowledge their efforts with all of our students back but um i wanted to share some of the data with you

006so there were a total of about 23 270 students who participated in the contest from 400 504 schools throughout 49 different states so um a huge amount of students and fairview we had five students placed in the top 10 of the nation of all of those students and the students that participated were in second third fourth fifth and seventh grade collectively and we also had 61 students um score in the top 50 of the nation um then we also had team overall kind of team captain winners as well so a couple of our participants are in the audience tonight behind me and it was really fun to be able to give out the awards in person this year um and we had a lot of students participate so that's an amazing achievement definitely thank you

007very much can anyone beat that yeah so i do have good news we finally got the green light and the go ahead with the collaboration event that i've been working on with the skokie public library and district 68 so very excited about that is going to be geared toward our families and middle school students specifically and it'll take place on march 9th and 10th there will be a flyer that goes out to kind of let parents know about all the details that will come out in our digital backpacks coming forward so very excited about that and then also i have been working with middle school students um with a really simple yet meaningful um engagement initiative we have been observing the random acts of kindness which is really tomorrow but since we have parent-teacher conference

008we started monday um there were some middle school students that took time out of their lunch hour to meet with me over the last couple of weeks so we can get that together and there is a board that we worked on together in the t hallway and all the students have been able to write things on there about kindness and really just kind of get involved so that we're making sure that we highlight what that really means for our school so that's been good thank you anyone else we're good anything sports wise well here are the results great thank you so uh moving on we have our administrative reports and uh first report this evening is from arkhan our architect george marcus is with us this evening to provide the board a full update we

009have been really really really busy a lot of details are starting to flush out in terms of the project uh so we are looking forward to sharing all of this hard work with the board tonight this is a great opportunity if you see something you love to let us know that if you see something you hate now is the time uh to let us know that too um so we're hoping you know you will definitely let george and the rest of the team know how you're feeling about things at this point in time so i'll hand it over to george well i'm hoping you're gonna love it all so let's see so uh you should have it on front here as we go through it but i'll be walking on the big screen in in

010uh the lines so the last few weeks i have been us meeting with teachers and staff really making sure that as we look at the classrooms and we look at libraries and all the kind of specialty spaces that we are getting everything right that's going on the walls about how's the landscaping coming along what are those outdoor learning spaces going to become uh and you'll start to see how those are kind of coming together as far as uh where we're standing right now about a month a little over a month from where we stand today is when we should be finishing up getting our drivers together to get ready to go out to bed uh i put a hard deadline for all our engineers [Music] understanding how circulations how the district office relates to everything

011and as we kind of understood those once again we we made a couple of adjustments that you're going to see today that are a little different than we have before one of the key adjustments you'll see is a number of the district office items that were spaced that were living here we've really located them to the south of dishes one has a more uh distinct identity to come to the front off of laramie knowing where the district office is it's easier to close off for night events you got a multi-purpose room that we call multi-purpose so what are the different purposes you could use it as it's a potential for having a board room and being functional from a standpoint from a technology standpoint and from a size standpoint having that front and center uh

012easy to go into a closed session through conference rooms and then here are other district office items offices and reception that would be in the front by relocating this to the front it also provides us additional supervision for the pre-k and k wings so as you are trying to have double duty of having people monitor and having staff look over what's what's coming perfect thanks uh who's coming to the building and how those daily operations work you now have that added layer of security to be always having someone on staff in that area that is a good secure measure to watch over who's coming naturally you see a close-off area of doors right here that that easily can lock off that lobby for night functions and not let anyone into the rest of the building

013so this is one of the key changes you'll see it's not a change of square footage and if that's the first question you're wondering we actually fit it within the square footage of the footprint that we had originally so this really becomes a it was a movement of spaces and reshuffling to make sure how can that best suit in the rear end of the building where we have the old areas offices as we learned those will be open for custodial staff additional storage office spaces and for bus drivers to have indoor spaces when they come in using toilet facilities waiting in the lounge before they get out so it's really getting that whole back area not to be as flexible as possible for all your needs that you could use it for so that was

014one of the keys changes uh in the front of the building of the east edition a lot of the work was spent on getting the front plaza area when you first come to the building uh organized and kind of clear for visitors so uh there is an elevation change if you notice now when you come up to your front entrance there's a ramp that leads you up and into the you see all the steps here existing so everything we have is at this level including this corridor space right so how do we uh allow the public or students to kind of gather like they do now utilize this space as best they can but also provide an entrance for night events or for community events into the library that you could easily secure this whole

015area off from getting access to the rest of the building you have ntdse in the front so this is kind of a special co-op you have your main library in the front that you could easily use for multiple functions at different times a day and easy to easily secure that from the rest of the building right uh so one unique thing you'll see here is there's a ramp up so in the front we'll show you a lot more pretty pictures as we get towards the end it ramps up to a landing then you can take a couple steps and go right in or you could follow the ramps and use this as a guide all the way around and getting into that same level so there's really different ways of kind of engaging the students

016giving them different zones that they could they can be in different levels to be in gathering spaces for pickup gathering areas for exteriors for night functions or just in general helping you to help organize students coming and going into your building in the building we spent a lot of time in the library which will show a lot of interior spaces that you'll see of how we reworked it we really opened it up worked with the librarian and staff to understand how we want to organize the different zones of the library from where the preschool in kindergarten and primary kids will come in to where the upper grades will be in and having the same types of furniture that will accommodate every level uh you're building i mean you have a large range of student population

017so how can we make sure that we create a space that engages all of them uh as well as this courtyard area when we zoom in i'll show you a little more on that um in the back by the primary oop i did something wrong patrick but here we go and in the back area we continue to work on the outside area from the landscape and procession perspective we have this bus loop that would be coming around the back i'm sorry this vehicle yeah this bus that comes around the back and allows for drop off and pickup but once we're out of the arrival and dismissal time there will be gates that close us off and this whole area becomes your play area of black house so we've supplemented your existing black top spaces i

018know one of the concerns was are we going to lose no we've actually reformulated it and just shipped it into a different area that is kind of tied directly to the to the track and the outside green spaces so this area becomes a lot of additional blacktop space for play we've relocated your trash enclosures to be out away from against your building so we're not having students up against it and that is going to be landscaped you'll see in the landscape plan and covered over here so pick up and pick up times and how those operations would work would be a lot easier and kind of out of the way can i ask a quick question yes so if that's the new black top area on the it's hard to look at it and talk

019sorry right here a new black top area so you've got the lower grades down here the preschool and the lower grades down here how do they get to that blacktop area for recess we wouldn't expect them to have recess there kindergarten in first grade will have recess and shaq park and they may use the track area or those new green spaces that are formed uh right between the classrooms and the gym but we would not expect kindergarten and first graders to be moving over to that side of the building for recess um not to say that a teacher couldn't take them over there if they wanted to but it wouldn't be a typical uh location for the younger ones to be playing okay we have access right here off the corridors and off these classrooms

020we have sidewalks and pathways that lead to the park over here uh and one of the primary goals of getting that multi-purpose service remember up here was really to do your pre-k k assessment spaces but having them have a play space that can actually easily let them go out and get to that park as well so from a supervision standpoint you're you're putting your indoor outdoor side by side in that front i have a question were you able to relocate the basketball hoops in the gaga ball well that's our next so we located the blacktop spaces and we know that there's basketball courts living in between the track our our next piece of the puzzle is making sure that we're accommodating all those types of equipment and see where those fall so from a big

021picture perspective we have the room and we know where that zone is now we just got to make sure we show that but yes that is that that blacktop space is that also parking uh where do those dotted lines represent so that alliance is really as we worked with the village and understood your parking needs for a building they have two stipulations which one is more uh restrictive one is your day-to-day school operations which is how many staff members you have versus students to see how many parking styles you need and two two if you have a larger larger space i think it was 110 stalls while providing 120 permanent stocks your large event is 175 so for that one time of year that you guys have something big here we want we need to

022make sure we accommodate the overflow for parking so this parking lot the way we did it is this is your player here but in the case of you have an overflow and you need for large scale events we are showing that you could have additional parking here or along this perimeter using your bus strap or the car traffic and these parallel spots that get 275 you need it was our way of getting you uh not getting any variances and making sure we can accommodate all the requirements by the village so normally it won't be there we're showing you data to say if you do have overflow you have space to do it does that make sense yes thank you i have a quick question is our like main entrance where you like pick your kid

023up for a dentist appointment the same place is it that same atrium entrance yes [Music] to not dominate your entrance so we know that your entrance is your main entrance and our addition tries to complement it this will always be your primary this is a secondary floor this is mainly the pre-kk so you know that and then the rest of the building is pretty much dead as quote and all your entrances getting in and out one other question can you remind me you put the district offices over on that sort of left corner now um that was a classroom before was that right it was now being built into sort of four or five different offices rather than just one big classroom is that increasing the cost overall is it included is it increasing the

024cost uh no so as we were working with the construction manager on it because it's drywall and kind of same spaces and office spaces the square footage is the same the pieces of the puzzle don't vary differently so when they were doing an analysis and we'll find out in about a week uh where we're standing but there i looked at it as a net zero in the analysis of one versus the other it was trying to maximize our efficiency on the plan and get you as most as much space as we can right if we were to go to page two online i gotta zoom completely out right uh page two shows you kind of the second floor spaces that has still remained pretty much as is um fourth grade up here library to have

025easier access better learning on displays getting people excited and it allowed us to uh put a ceiling in it so putting a ceiling in it allowed us to get a second floor to it so that is a team space that would be used in the middle school levels that is accessed off the corridor of that so now they have another breakout space for students going into uh the library so what you're seeing here was uh don't get hung up on the shapes of the furniture or what it was it was more us starting to do an initial stand but how of the layout can work for the library from uh a zoning perspective uh main circulation perspective and really the way it looks here is in the front of the library the idea is to

026get uh different unique nooks and crannies that are that you'll see in the into your red ring that allows students to have comfy seating fun little seating at the front of the library and then the second performance those unique nooks are going to happen on the corridor side so you can look down into the library really get that reaction in that two-story volume so you can kind of see everything happening in here and really opening it up for the public to look into the library space you'll see a circulation desk that has it's kind of suddenly located they can watch over every single space of the library from a supervision standpoint uh on the north corner which is the right is looking to get more of an upper grade level classroom zone that has technology

027uh tables and chairs to get a whole class in there that also is complicated right next to it to have an outdoor courtyard so you can have students in and out but it's an enclosed courtyard so you can easily supervise but it gives you a natural perception to both zones in the front of the library was that maker space we mentioned so that maker space is going to have actually sliders that can open up so you can do experiments in here and bleed out into the open library if there's any if you need more room to kind of expand there is a green screen that will be in there to allow them to do video av so really on the opposite end over here you'll see we started getting more uh campfire seating or smaller

028seating and and kind of uh rug on the floor for the primary kids so if they're if the primary grades are pre-k through two are coming from to get into the library utilize this zone from a teaching perspective without getting them to kind of cross paths with the older kids and keeping that separation uh that's kind of how the big picture of the library is kind of organized behind it we have both classes that are that are the primary and middle school stem that are happening side by side we have shared storage we as students are coming from different grade levels they have quick and easy access to get things fixed and you can easily get in without having to pass through the library so that's how the library is starting to look and if

029i were to take a picture here i don't want to lose you in that regard but uh we've been put we've been modifying and changing this but really from an architectural standpoint these are those boxed out on the upper and lower levels where students can sit at right and kind of kind of have their alone time reading and doing work assignments also that would be more on the left is your maker space that has easy access to come in and out a lot of visual connections in the rest of the library upstairs is that team room that you're seeing built on top of the maker space so if you're in uh if you're in that team you look down yes there's a lot of different connections but we are using everything kind of give a

030little accent to it here are those doors to those zones where the students are going to be uh and again we're still working through furniture these are just representative types of solutions as we get a furniture vendor on board they will mold and we will work with them from a fabric perspective perspective and kind of uh another way of doing this one more time so you guys can see the final products looking the other way this is more that upper grade level classroom zone that looks up into that courtyard space [Music] and you can see that we are trying to get some glass into it from either the corridor side and in the library side so you can have a little more uh learning on display getting people excited as they pass through that to

031to inspire curiosity because you know stem is one of those programs that everyone likes to see uh what's going on in there and kind of invite more people in as we get to the multiple person back in the south edition this is where that assessment space for the pre-k this is giving you a feel of the volume and the look inside uh from the way looking out towards the playground that's in the backdrop here so we've kind of framed the view of the playground in this edition and if you are in the market versus the first room chewing up students to get picked up or dropped off you now have an easy way to look out at the cars that are coming and make sure who's who's easily supervised what's going on outside if we

032look the other way this is looking into that courtyard or the plaza area that leads in so if you were to walk past this wall and circle the corner delineate how all the landscaping is going to be throughout your building so uh we've changed our landscape to create a nice and inviting plaza out here so when people are getting dropped off or getting picked up they have a nice procession for the gymnasium entrances uh they're we're looking at areas that you could have uh small group learning so multiple business areas over here that you can bring a class and you know that right so my playground next to my house my kids never want to go on it because toy's hot there's no trees so here we're looking they're easily usable and accessible and you

033want to use them right uh we also look at the zones in this area that it butts up the existing gym to our new addition and we'll show you a little bit what that's looking like uh we started playing with the courtyard that's happening between uh the library and the class and actually this is the the offices areas that are looking out in there in the third grade wing that's on the on the first floor how to make that one uh and then we've started today with how that plaza is gonna be which you'll see a little more of as i filter through a few more pictures um this gives you a little closer looking from a teaching zone to bring students out to that's right here uh i in the pre-k and k-wing the

034big thing here was how can we create zones outside of these classrooms that you want to go to so it's not just an alley or not just a paved area that is just wide open how do you kind of segment it to the uh classroom so the way we're doing it is as you can see here you can kind of start seeing that each one of these zones is is pocketed for a reason for a classroom each zone is adjacent to a different classroom so that's one that's one and that's one we have a woodwork that would be coming out here there'd be loose furniture that potential to be put out here for groups to come out and then we were putting in that so we're trying to build some mulch and some landscaping away

035from it so you're not looking at remember one of the one of our board meetings so instead of might just look at a wall of a building right so we wanted to describe our way we're going to put some native plantings we can grow a little taller that it'll be going in this building and then having little packets of green spaces in the benches is helping to liven up this zone uh there is also add-ons from over here to get up from these classrooms and then another bench over here i believe the next slide should show a little sketchy version of what we're talking about um this is one of those early workings we've gotten a little further but i still had this shot to show you for this version to show you where this

036is that bench that's right outside this classroom the doors right here on the right this is the type of furniture the playful furniture you can have out there imagine it being in color uh and then as we go against the building trying to look at some tall grasses that can get grown behind it and things that can help kind of liven up this whole environment in the middle of those two sciences at the front of the building this is a closer version of that plaza that i was talking about with the ramp originally when we were when we first tried to take a stab at it we actually had people we kind of forced people to navigate through this to go all the way up and get in but as we started talking about how

037your day-to-day operations work we figured that we should be a kind of a cut through that let you in and out so the person is gonna actually do it if the path resistance is what you tell right uh so actually you've brought this down here so you can easily go from this ramp up and into that entrance or you can take the long way around and kind of get in by the time you look at this landing you're at the same level as your main entrance so now everything is at the same platform when you come into the building how that looks like from the outside is something like this so this was the preset so imagine this brick disappearing and they're just being a step to get in and this is kind of how

038we're showing how you would kind of naturally pass through this zone it's a buffer away from here it's kind of gives you a good amount of spaces that you can gather multiple students up while still having it guide them to in and out of your building this is the school and here's kind of a more lower perspective of what that is starting to look like the good news is [Music] are there things that we want to modify this is our chance oh [Music] i think i'm my big question is like again sort of like how are you going to do all this time wise so brown what are you hoping so here's how it's going to play out let me go backwards backwards to the beginning um it will be a little uncomfortable for a

039year but i'll tell you this the goal is this we're going out to bid at the end of march to get april bid bids in so the public we have practices we open all the bid packages and find out what the numbers come in and with our construction manager they'll put a letter of recommendation to the board so by may we will have the green the goal is to have the green light to move forward okay um to do all this work the biggest one of the biggest pieces is getting uh utilities out of the way moving around it's not necessarily doing all the site work first but it's more making sure that your sanitary your storm and your water are all rectified that time date to all of you there's a lot of stuff

040there's a lot of existing lines happening on the south side of your property right here so before we get started building this edition or the east edition the first thing that they're going to do is and we've been talking a lot about this to try to understand it the first thing you're going to do is going to reroute your lines to kind of be in their final locations so anything that was happening on the south end is going to flip-flop and go north and go into this street right here and get in to laramie so that'll be one of the biggest pieces that happens in the summer that's the first thing get those lines in right away get them under your street next normal so then you guys can keep using it as you can

041there will be a disturbance we're trying to work out as how much of that disturbance will happen in the summer because we know there's a lot of things that want to happen here from from a summer school perspective or in general activities perspective um so once they get those pieces out of the way they'll be able to start constructing the goal then is to use my august to defense off from this gym all the way around the style end all the way along the front end still leaving the sidewalk on the army all the way to our entrance that will have construction fence to allow them to start building what they're going to build uh the construction manager is working uh with the park district to say let's have staging happening on the tennis courts

042and they've been accommodating on that front so we've had a good there's been multiple conversations in the planets because they have all construction um leading to the south bend all uh supplies that are gonna be on site trailers everything happening on that tennis court area so everything's happening to the south away from students right uh and once that starts you are talking august august that they're gonna be in there working um then the main bulk of the auditions will happen into the winter the winter it should be getting roofed in pretty much everything and then they'll be working inside the build those editions when next summer kicks in we'll be circling and doing any renovation work like those stem labs so the way we design the library is to be able to build that entire

043library without ever touching the inside of your building in the early stages of design half the library was in that renovated area and it became a construction right so we designed it to make it work easier and less disruptive so if i'm going off the rabbit hole i apologize but i'm going to keep going um the the big picture that is the edition starting in august they'll be done by the time the school year of august 2023 is right yes uh and then the renovation that summer 2023 the beginning of that summer they'll kick in and hit those offices that we gotta get the stem labs we have to get done in one science lab so therefore we're out of your building for most of the time so that is probably the easiest way of

044explaining it any other questions or thoughts well it was a very extensive update thank you um it was uh it's just quite amazing to look at actually i mean i can't wait to see it i think my only envy is that my kids won't actually get to be part but uh but you know it it's a fabulous uh representation thanks for coming along and thanks for keeping us in touch and uh we'll see you next time there's stuff to report yeah well we'll be at the finish line the next one so thank you very much everyone thank you very much thank you thank you okay the next report on my list is from our dealt team the district equity learning team leadership i'm sorry that's okay do we have sure yeah i can introduce this

045really hard time hearing you back here i'm sorry i will ask assistant superintendent fair to start us off with this report we do have members from our last equity leadership team here with us so we'll get them up to mike momentarily but jeff if you'd like to start us off that would be great sure thank you doctor whatever thank you board work of our district equity leadership team since the last time we talked um there is the team right there blessed to have some of the team with us tonight mr lepak and miss larkin dr whitaker mr patrick this is tony miss marin miss and though we've met you know relatively infrequently because we were waiting for the district equity ought to be completed it's really wrapped up in october when that presentation came down

046our progress today of course in november from dr dubia where we went through the findings from the audit and the results of that process uh november 29th to unpack the audit to go through it and to actually distribute it to the team to have them review it and go through the highlights sort of like we did in the board level here uh january 31st we had the uh delta team meeting where we went through an equity statement brainstorming and really throughout this process we've been trying to look at equity statements from other organizations you created that statement and i mentioned to some of the committee members it's extraordinarily tough to do that when you have 25 to 30 people in a room and you say okay let's create that statement but the process was very

047productive because we had 25 or 30 very motivated people to try and finish this out into some sort of statement and today we're proud to present uh our equity statement and some of the other results of that process i'm gonna ask members of our team to come up and present good evening everyone um i'm very pleased to present our statements hashtag one is providing individuals the opportunity and resources they need to be successful we acknowledge that disparities exist among students and adults in our community we recognize the critical need to examine inward in our efforts to advance equity fairview is committed to the ongoing process of cultivating an environment that embraces diversity equity and inclusion district practices policies and curriculum will foster an equitably safe and supportive culture that empowers individuals from diverse backgrounds these

048include but are not limited to socioeconomic status and race ethnicity gender identity sexual orientation abilities and language proficiency thank you and for those of you who don't know her that's yolanda tony one of our spin-out teachers thank you yolanda please introduce yourselves uh for the board members in case they haven't met you yet hi i'm jenny ross i teach fifth grade uh another guy that i'm working together to present some of the ideas that we're talking about our statement was in this wordle uh our team came together and talked about key words that we thought were important important to include in the statement hi i'm henry hannah and i'm a sixth grader teacher and just just speak a little more to the process i think mr fair did a really good job of really emphasizing

049how collaborative it was um so we started by looking at some equity statements from neighboring organizations and districts we broke into some subgroups and tried to kind of craft some of our ideas and what we wanted to include in the statement and then we had representatives from each of those groups and form the instructional teacher i want to go back to the wordle because how the wordle is created just in case members don't know is that we don't select which words fall in which order or the font or things of that nature we basically put words in an english form and then it's created and so all the words kind of then form this beautiful kind of picture which just highlights all the different terminology that we came up with similar to how our learners

050all kind of learn throughout the day so this is just like a nice visual so that anyone can just kind of like look at it quickly thank you all right some of the next steps that we're taking is obviously we're meeting with all of you to discuss this we'll continue to meet with dr dupiel and our dlt to continue this process and check in yeah and part of those next steps um we would like to expand the district equity leadership team and we think at this point in time it would be very beneficial to the team um but to board to have representatives from the board join the group so uh you know not to put anyone on the spot but um you know i would appreciate if you think about it um you know

051we can have you know one number or two members we can't have more than two um but we really appreciate uh members joining this group um so we have a broader representation of stakeholders working on this important project i would just like to say thank you to the brave ladies who came this evening to talk with us but really this is an opportunity for the board to provide your input on that statement your feedback your comments if someone could just go back to the actual statement so it's um able to be seen and for a little bit longer by the board please we open this up for discussion and conversation any thoughts feedback for the group our intention would be to you know take the feedback received from the board tonight um make any adjustments

052that need to be made and then to bring it back to the board at your next meeting in march for your approval of this uh statement so um i know sometimes it's hard to think on the spot um and if you don't have feedback this evening you can certainly provide it to us at any time or the course of the next couple of weeks during the collaborative process statements that were created by these groups we had a subcommittee that morphed them all together and word-smithed it but one of the groups came up with the idea of having this hashtag really this that started in 2017. i believe um when we had a situation both principles and we have two new principles we're trying to unify the school because we have one retirement but really we

053really we headed out there without really i think it wasn't meeting one school together yes we also sent out the um draft statement to the full faculty and staff for their feedback prior to this evening um and we did receive some feedback um which some of which was able to be you know responded to and incorporated so we feel that we've done you know our due diligence and vetting this through the various stakeholders um and so you all are sort of our last stop i'd just like to take the opportunity to thank the group and you know for their commitment and for this work i mean it takes a lot of work to get this done and get this done right and your vision of one fairview is i think something that we will see

054one day through this work so thank does you have any thoughts [Laughter] i just wanted to echo sargon's statement thank you all for all the hard work um i i i need to think about this but my first at first lesson i think it's it's fantastic so thank you so much for for all the hard work uh we really appreciate it anyone else um thank you quite simply having written a number of mission statements and worked collaboratively on teacher teams this is a true piece of work um i am very moved by the one for every hashtag because i have lots of visions there was a board meeting we walked into some point in the last two years where a number of staffers were sitting together with their one fairview shirts and it made me

055really remember why i ran for this position so now that we have words and statements behind it uh it means even more so i think this is gonna be great but i am gonna ask that we get a copy like can we get an emailed copy just to kind of chew on it a little bit but i the one that really sticks out is about examining inward our efforts to advance equity like we don't think i've been thinking about that like advanced inward rather than everything that's around us let's look at what we have here and uh that that's a very key phrase that i just want to compliment you on i also wanted to excuse me i once wanted to say thank you for your work on this um it's a long statement i

056mean it's several sentences but there's an awful lot packed in there um i it really does cover everything i mean even just the not limited to you know we're open that there may be something we're not thinking about but but we still recognize that everybody needs a chance everybody needs a opportunity to do their best and achieve their best so um thank you very very much for your work we're all going to take a little bit of time and give our feedback to dr whitaker and uh but i think he's done a fabulous job thank you very very much okay so um at this stage we're just going to move into our next uh report concerning the future of covert mitigations at fairview and at this time i just wanted to remind anybody that's come

057in later uh to be uh continue to be respectful to each other and continue to please wear your masks so our presentation is from dr whitaker yes thank you so i want to start us off um with the rationales for why we've placed this on the board agenda this evening um although it's been on the board agenda for a couple of weeks um in light of recent uh circumstances reasonable to have you be having this conversation this evening um so one of the reasons we're talking about it tonight is because we are anticipating changes in cdc and idph guidance regarding clothing 19 mitigation measures including indoor masking we also participate increased local control of decision-making and mitigation planning we've seen increasing vaccinations within the village of skokie which is currently at 85 percent which is

058fantastic we are also seeing that there is increased access to vaccinations and increasing vaccination rates among staff and students currently our staff is at a 95 fully vaccinated rate we've seen the low impact of positive coveted 19 diagnosis during this school year 11 staff members and 89 students have tested positive covid and 100 of them smoothly recovered and returned to work in school additionally our families our community and our needs are extremely responsible about monitoring personal health and staying home when they're sick the board approved the ability for the district to offer free pcr testing field testing to all students we've continued our layered irrigation approaches and i'll underscore the word layered because there are a multitude of approaches that the district has taken for the past two years um and that layering i believe

059has proven to be very successful in keeping kovid under wraps here at fairview and finally i just want to underscore that the district has had a commitment to maintaining stability and we have deliberately planned for in-person teaching and learning that supports our students academic progress and social emotional health while keeping our school and communities safe i couldn't be more proud of our faculty and staff and board for supporting the what seemed like a kind of crazy idea that we're all coming back in person and we're going to offer parents choice about remote or in-person learning but it's worked out extremely well for us thank you oh i need access to my own documents i'll let doctor figure that out this document lays out in charts from that all of the current proven mitigations at fairview

060um and i will um so i'm going to just pass by um but i do think it's important that the board and the community see what we're talking about when we talk about layered mitigations and what it could look like if the board chose to remove any number of mitigations um the one important piece to this i'm sorry technical difficulties just seem to follow me these days i don't know why that's why we haven't thank you okay let's see okay so um you can kind of see how i've laid out this chart uh february of 2022 that column is all of the mitigations that are currently in place at fairview in the second row and third row i showed just two examples of mitigations that the board could consider removing um and how it impacts

061other mitigation strategies currently in place so let me just walk you through very quickly the mitigation strategies we know that vaccine is available for individuals ages five and up we are currently social distancing in the classroom and at lunch time there's access to free coveted testing to all students and staff currently we are all universally masking while in the school building we are masking on the school bus and that is still a requirement regardless of anything that local school districts are determining bus riders will still have to wear masks we provide disposable masks for students this is a new mitigation that i'll talk about in a moment we have invested deeply in increased ventilation and air filtration our teachers have promoted good hygiene habits we have hand sanitizer we've enhanced our daily cleaning people stay

062home when they're sick we've limited the visitors and thus the exposure to our students by other adults or visitors to the building we had to modify student arrival and dismissal so that we could socially distance students our seating on the buses was modified and we have seating charts for contact tracing we installed additional water bottle fillers because we needed to close the water fountains we quarantine for positive cases we contact trace and we've limited the mixing of class groupings so there's a long list there and i'm really doing this for illustrative purposes um if the board were deciding to make a change for example making masks optional i would recommend that for a period in time we maintain the other mitigations that are currently in place in speaking with our teachers union one thing that

063they would like to see is that kn 95 mass be provided for those staff members who would like that type of protection i think we can do that so it kind of gives you a sense of if we pull a mitigation off keeping others in place potentially adding new ones another example would be eliminating social distancing in the classroom in the lunchroom if we did that then i would recommend keeping other layers in place okay any questions so far okay we're gonna switch computers there is currently an executive order by the governor there's public health guidance for schools the village of smokey has a mass mandate that expires on march 7th yesterday the joint committee on administrative rules made a decision about the ongoing ability for the illinois department of public health to continue with

064their uh regulations there's the county court ruling and appeals process which is currently going on well we were hoping that there would be some indication as to where that was headed some decision there but it hasn't happened but it will happen um in the next couple of days and other considerations uh that i have to put on the table um this any changes to the current mitigations and the current work environment would require bargaining with the local union the fairview teachers association i have had conversations with the union president um and we have had a conversation about what types of things uh the union would hope to see happen if the board were to make any changes to the plan i think it's very important that before the board consider changes that you understand what

065the teaching staff is thinking um they do support a tiered approach to eliminating mitigations uh in in other words uh they they don't support nor do i eliminating all mitigations all at once continued they do n95 masks available for staff and most importantly they want time to allow for planning of changes i'm going to talk about that a little bit more when we get on in the slide deck but the time to prepare and the time to be thoughtful about any changes is something that is very important to the teaching staff finally uh my colleagues in the other skokie school districts are currently maintaining their mitigations so as we plan for reduced mitigations and we all know the day will come that we need we will be reducing mitigation so we need to be ready

066it could be in the next week it could be in the next month uh we feel that it's important for staff to be fully prepared for changes which will require time to meet and discuss expectations students deserve to be prepared for the changes which could include classroom discussions social stories for younger students who might be anxious about not wearing a mask conversation at home that parents can have with students we want to continue to promote and support kindness and understanding while we seek stability for our students and staff i can't underscore that bullet point boldly enough we need time to work with our students and parents need time to talk with their children about respecting each other's decisions whether they wear a mask or not wear a mask whether they ride the school bus or

067they don't in an inclusive school community we respect one another and all of our unique differences and it relates to this as well and i've encouraged the board to be thoughtful and to take your time and to wait until tonight to have this conversation because i didn't want to subject our students or staff to confusion i didn't want to make a decision about mitigations and then one week later say oh we have to do something different i didn't think that that was helpful in fact i thought it could be hurtful especially during uncertainty and difficult times we want our parent partners to be able to support our commitments on behalf of the children and we want them to know what to expect every day so communication on anything that we do is going to be

068key to having this be a successful process so the board has some decisions to make currently if the governor changes his executive order or the appellate court upholds the tro in sangemon county i'm recommending a thoughtful and planned approach to changing the mask mandate to optional for students and staff so for example if tomorrow we hear that the temporary restraining order is upheld the district should proceed within two weeks to adapt the covet protocols allowing time for teachers to have conversation with students and for parents to discuss this choice with their children i also recommend a tiered approach to scaling back mitigations over a period of time all of this with the caveat that if the covid data were to change if the case numbers were to increase the positivity rate to grow that we

069would re-look and rediscuss re-implementing the mitigations if the governor doesn't change his executive order or the appellate court decision is to overturn the sangamon county ruling you could do one of two things you can direct me to maintain all the mitigations until the time changes are made to the executive orders that remain for schools or you can direct me to begin scaled back mitigations beginning with optional masking within two weeks there's there are pros and cons to both uh and i think that you are all well educated on on the issues related to both possibilities so so that being said i did invite jeff bayliss our school district legal counsel to join this evening so if there are legal questions that he would be more adopted answering than i would he's happy to to do

070that sure good morning board i i'm just here good morning good evening whatever it is um so i i'm here to help answer any questions any discussion that may need to be had i think dr whitaker uh gave you a nice summary of the issues in the options the appellate court ruling again is anticipated to be out tomorrow that is in a lawsuit that does not involve your district directly but everyone in the world has heard of it at this point so uh certainly that ruling is is going to be something we're monitoring very closely and you know discussing with you know with your district as to what it means and and how to move forward but i i do uh it's not even a legal issue but the dr whitaker's point about uh controlled

071rollout i think is a point uh worth noting because a number of districts have are in the process of making this transition or have already made the transition and and the opportunity to have at least a little bit of time to make that transition as smooth as possible uh has tended to play well play out well um because what we don't want to see no one wants to see is whenever that transition happens uh that we have students or staff who are you know being rude to one another treating each other poorly uh and so having a thoughtful approach to that i think is helpful obviously there's a lot going on with with the case with various you know procedural things that have happened over the past week that are making it very confusing and

072challenging for everyone but um that being said i'll well thank you for coming this evening to help us out with this decision and um i think we all know everybody in this room knows that this is a pretty heavy decision we um we've all seen it played out on tv and in the newspapers as to the kind of thing that is happening up and down our state right now we've heard uh of many incidences uh of discussions like this at uh board meetings like this uh we're all very aware of the kind of opinions that are being put forward by members of the community parents and other members of the community either advocating for a change in the mitigations or advocating for the mitigations to stay in place entirely i think it is an important

073uh discussion to have that we're talking about a lot of mitigations here um we all know that the elephant in the room is the masking and i know that that's uh certainly what people are here this evening to to hear about um but it is more than that and there is more than one answer to the uh dilemma that's placed before us right now and i also very much want to hear from every single board member this evening i want everybody to feel like they can have their say and uh and make their case so um please go ahead anyone i i can start i i'd like to see an off-ramp i mean it's been two years now i've been kind of like cindy mentioned you know access for vaccines and um sloki's highly has

074a high population of vaccinated individuals and i think it's time i mean fear of you has always given families choice with in person or remote the shield testing i said i'd like to see an off-ramp on the mitigations and move in that direction for fairview how do you feel about the multiple medications that we have what do you actually want to see can you repeat that of the mitigations that dr whitaker laid out yes what exactly do you want to see happen i think it's starting with the mask i i don't say to remove everything at once i think that we start with one step at a time i think it's an off-ramp it's not jumping down and i like the direction that she suggested so some of the other considerations are things like the

075social distancing i think we take one step at a time so let's start with the mask thanks thanks for your talk could i ask a question so in the slide you had before this you said if the governor's executive order is maintained there was a sort of either war right the how does the second order work if that's the case so the that second scenario is just make sure i have this correctly here yeah so in effect what you would be saying at that point is you are as a district you're making a choice to implement your own course of action notwithstanding the fact that there may be an executive order in place at that time so the um you know certainly there are there are so many um the primary attention over the past

076year has been uh is the state board of education's reinforcement process where they would uh come and put school districts on probation and potentially revoke their recognition status which has impact on state funding and so on um at this moment right now the tro is pending appeal um they're not really implementing those immediate steps in this scenario that's outlined here though we're saying if the appellate court overrules that trial court and the executive order remains in effect then uh you'd technically not be aligned with that executive order whether isbe will then um take enforcement action again you know and try to proceed that way remains to be seen um and you know there's there's a few other factors that go into that um certainly if there's a stated standard of care in terms of the

077executive order saying you know that these are the mitigation measures that are required anything short of that carries a potential risk if there was you know a student or staff member who falls seriously ill and were to you know sue the school district so there's there's a bit of exposure there potentially um but i think you know just to give context uh a broader there are just school districts in illinois that are all over the map in terms of these options some of them are continuing to implement mitigation measures uh some of them have gone mass optional for the time being and are waiting to see what the appellate court ruling how that shakes out and others are just saying sort of the the same as this option too is we're going to chart our

078own course here regardless and you know when and if those risks materialize we would we would address them accordingly um you know a point to consider in whatever decision you make is the possibility of having to shift shift back and forth between one right it's for every squad big transition from an appellate court ruling or is me taking enforcement action down the road but but i will say what happened hopefully tomorrow court decision is expected tomorrow um if it is the three mandates that i are at issue in that case are mask wearing for students and staff the exclusion of close contacts when you know when they're within the required distance and have to leave and then the third one is the employee vaccination or test mandate so those are the three that are really

079the primary focus of the litigation um dr whitaker laid out that whole laundry list of other mitigations that you have in place and you know those would you've got a lot of authority to to continue enforcing those regardless of what happens here in the the case that answer your question yes thank you so much just to quickly summarize the going against the executive order could have potential going against the executive order could potentially have consequences for the district it it could i want to i want to be sensitive to not overstating i want to be fair to the assessment of the risks yes there are risks to that certainly um of course continuing mitigation there are there are risks as well for you know if people are not compliant that there's there's some issues that

080would have to work through there so unfortunately there's no perfect easy answer that is going to make everyone satisfied but yes you're correct and have everyone offer an opinion um sorry this is so uh as as a as a fairview parent as a scientist as an educator i am fully in support of continuing to wear the mask i think that is absolutely where the data is pointing is the safest uh most conservative course of action uh however i have heard uh from the community and um both sides and and i will agree that at some point we we need an off-ramp um and given an appropriate amount of time that the teachers and the school can uh pivot safely uh conservatively i know uh you mentioned a march 7th deadline or end of the skokie

081public health uh on march 7th um you know removing the one mitigation of masks and maintaining all of the others and providing the teachers with the additional masks that they can choose to wear um i i spoke with both of my children before coming here and i just asked them honestly if tomorrow masks were optional what would you do and they both said we would wear masks uh they didn't hesitate so again i understand that's not everyone's view um but but if we can have a the removal of that one mitigation and that is a compromise and we can do that in a duration that keeps the teachers and everyone happy and feel that they can move to that safely i would not be opposed to that um i also agree i think starting with

082the masks first and then keeping the mitigation layers in place is the smart way to go about it um i'm also happy to have discussions about n95 masks and any mask in general and i offered to cindy as well um it's the way that we wear them versus the actual mask and then we've seen our kids wear them under their noses over you know all over the place but if you really want to be protected you have to work correctly so again i offer that to everybody um that would like to talk about it i would offer that i think that if we start with the masks and then see you know give a couple weeks at a time and slowly as we can do the other mitigations but i wouldn't do it all at

083once well i appreciate your professional input on that too thank you um so um oh go ahead aaron oh sorry now i wanted to just add um that would be if the uh executive order is overturned this week i guess if it is not overturned to protect the district from potential consequences i think maintaining the mask but if it's overturned we can then allow a time window um to to start slowly removing those uh mitigations i would be in favor of that if it's not overturned tomorrow if it is overturned what's like the time frame can it take a week can it take two weeks so there's not a designated time frame the the lawsuit that is pending obviously there's a whole slew of school districts that are named defendants in that case it's it's

084actually a combination of multiple cases uh some involving students some involving employees between the two cases of most importance or most note there's roughly 170 school districts for those districts whatever the appellate court rules tomorrow is you know essentially in effect immediately um now that said they are also currently bound by the temporary restraining order that was issued by the trial court um which is different than you because you're not a party to that case regardless of the appellate court ruling tomorrow um it is going to impact the direction of probably every district to some degree because hopefully the appellate court will give some clear rulings as to of those three mitigation measures which of those are permissible and which are not and although what's really at issue in the litigation is the the state

085authority i mean the governor and isb and idph um you know the analysis may have some relevance to what school districts can and can't decide at the local level as well so in short um the appellate court ruling should give guidance that some districts will probably make the switch instantaneously you know the if it's if the appellate court ruling is tomorrow uh one way or the other depending on where they sit currently if the appellate court ruling requires a switch they'll make it possibly the very next day in other districts they're trying to take a little bit of time to transition like what you're what you're discussing here today um and you know during the transition period it's a it's a challenging period for any school district because you know you've got a bit of

086potential exposure on either side right whichever way it goes those who are not supportive of it um you know you'll have a challenge kind of working through compliance either way whether it's requiring math still or or not so it's not a firm timeline to say that rules tomorrow and you have until x date to implement uh i suppose they could do that but probably they won't and it'll be a matter of implementing coming into uh alignment with that as quickly as you can but also recognizing that a transition period is um ideal if you can as a community if you can tolerate that everyone follow the question since isb has been quiet and all these other districts have implemented and what they were going to do if it be was to come back and now

087say you know you have to have masks back on would that be and the understanding that all these schools that have to go back to doing that because they agreed with the governor um i mean it's possible that if if isbe resumes enforcement actions against school districts that are out of compliance after the appellate court ruling um it is possible that some of those districts would would course correct and come back into alignment with the executive order um realistically it's also possible there are some districts who are you know again charting their own course and saying we're going to do our thing regardless so you know maybe there's more legal battles ahead on that front hopefully not but never say never on this one could i have something um there seems to have been um

088a big change in the last 24 hours um due to the the j car judgment yesterday can you explain exactly how that fits into this whole mix because we've been very much talking about the tro and whether that gets upheld or not tomorrow preferably tomorrow but can you explain how the j car rolling comes into play i can it's it's complicated but i'll try to explain it as simply as i can so if we rewind to the start of the this school year the governor issued an executive order requiring among other things but mass was the big one and in august um that was it we had the executive order the idpa regulations that were on file were what they were and they included various definitions and requirements about quarantine and isolation um in september

089of that year both izb and idph issued emergency rules that modify those regulations in certain respects i won't get into the the fine detail of all those things but uh a big piece of that was a change in the definition of what a quarantine is specifically what a modified quarantine is um because there's you know there's been different interpretations i mean we're all familiar with the the county judges ruling most recently about what is or is not a quarantine but there have been other judges around the state that have considered these issues and some have reached the same conclusion and others have reached a different conclusion in those very temporary phases um so the emergency rules about what constitutes a quarantine were in effect from september 17th of 2021 and and they are only in

090effect emergency rules are only in effect for 150 days which expires on sunday this is sunday the 13th um it is coincidental that it fell on the you know the week following the segment county tro but those two things were uh technically not contingent on one another the the right the period at which that regulation was going to expire was february 13th all along so um so the state specifically idph proposed to reissue the same regulations with the you know the modified definitions and so on and those would have gone into effect uh however jpr which is the committee that is charged with sort of overseeing that the rules process they voted to block or to suspend idph's reissuance of those rules so the the simplest way to think about it and i know probably

091none of you were pouring over idph regulations in the interim but what as a practical matter it means that the regulations that were in effect back in august are now currently in effect for idph so what that is prompting is and you'll see differing interpretations about this in in the media and depending on who you talk to but the um the definition that is in effect right now under the idph regulations people are key on that and saying that that means that mass and exclusion of students and employee testing are forms of um their forms of modified quarantine and therefore the reason it's important in the lawsuit therefore there's the there's a process that the local health department has to go through um before someone can be quarantined so the big those regulations are important

092in so far as the issue that's being litigated hinges very much on the definition of what is a quarantine and in particular is a is wearing a mask a quarantine some believe it is that the judge in saying the county believed it was um others don't but so so that remains sort of an open issue what you have right now in effect still is the executive order that requires mass requires excluding contacts um and requires the employee vaccination or testing but you don't have the idph emergency rules that were adopted to implement those those are not currently in effect um so it remains to be seen part of the rationale that was stated by j carr in suspending yesterday was that there's this ongoing this pending litigation so depending on what the appellate court does

093is the litigation may or may not impact what what happens with those emergency rules i know that's very technical and maybe that but i don't that helps at all kinda i just know that there just seems to have been a major shift in the last 24 hours um yeah so you know put simply there there are a number of people and it's been reported this way in the media that what happened yesterday by jay carr eliminated the mass mandate uh i think that's an oversimplification although i do acknowledge that the regulation that they're talking about is a key issue in the litigation and so how that's impacted remains to be seen so it is in fact the case that some people are pushing the envelope after yesterday's events to say these are all quarantined we're

094we're going to do what we're going to do and schools are left to try to deal with that so issue unfortunately great thank you um did anybody else want to go ahead and speak oh i mean i'll just share um a couple of things i'm i work in a school i teach in a school kids are fine kids are okay it's not great right but i'm tired of it and they're tired of it but it is not something that they focus on in their day um we are all very excited about the offering my concern as an educator and a parent is i do not want there to be an on-ramp back to this so i think the pacing of when we do this and how we do this just like dr whitaker said has

095to be thought out and has to be planned because i don't want any of our kids to have to like do go through this again um the students i've spoken with are all over the map and i spend time with friends who wear masks and don't wear masks and i feel like we're role models for them that that it doesn't impact how we engage and how we treat each other so i'm excited that we came up with the one fairview statement as we move into this where you're physically going to start to see differences right people who wear masks who have been a thing fairy has done such an amazing job of the laying the foundation of how you treat each other regardless so as a health and safety issue my school district will continue

096to wear masks where i teach and i know that for a fact so i think we need to look at the school calendar which is the most natural progression for kids and teachers like you guys said the timing of this and the teachers need time so i am kind of curious what that might look like but if there's like a natural break where we can discuss a transition that's what this is right so kids are going to feel sort of like a natural progression towards spring break and towards warm weather and you know i have when i've asked students they were like well i might not wear a mask in gym but i'd probably wear it everywhere else or that kind of conversation the kids are thinking about this but they're okay they're doing okay

097they're just as tired as we are so when you talked about teacher time would it well do you know what that meant or just not like an instant decision sure and you know nick not to put you on the spot if you want to jump in nick is the uh fta president and he's the one that i've had the conversation with but you know i don't think there's no mat i don't think there's a perfect answer to that question um you know i think it could be two weeks it could be a natural school break you know you could pick anything um but i think what we talked about was providing time when we can have meetings with teachers to lay the foundation of what our expectations are and avoid some of the issues that

098we've seen in neighboring districts where kids were negatively impacted um because of their interactions with school adults we want to take the time to be able to really lay that out well and let our staff have the time to wrap their minds around how this is going to work um i also think we need time to have conversations with our students in school about what the expectations are for how they treat one another around this issue and for parents to have the discussion of their with their children so you know i am not recommending that we implement this on tuesday uh we don't have school tomorrow or friday or monday um so tuesday would be our next school day i am not recommending that but i am recommending that we look at a time frame

099shortly thereafter yeah so that makes sense like this is a um this is a process and i think what i'm getting at is like i don't want to have to rein right we don't want to have to come back to this so let's do it thoughtfully um i think uh does like the data is there so i think the data is pointing too it's time for a transition plan it's time for a conversation um i am in favor of keeping all mitigations until further notice but i understand that there will be a time we need a plan right and so your chart of eliminating one item at a time or doing mask optional seeing how it goes you know that's i think the eventual plan and given the current information that we have available right

100now and while keeping other medications in place sorry i'd be in favor of moving towards a mass optional program provided that we give a reasonable amount of time for teachers in the administration to implement oh sorry i thought you were going to say something it's okay just changing seats so um i haven't really tightened it yet um but i'm listening to what everybody is saying and i i just wanted to add my own comments um i've seen a huge shift in the last 24 hours i also work at a school district and they sent out a very fast um email to all staff last night saying okay as from tomorrow no masks done and it it threw people for a loop um it is a high school so i don't think we have the same

101sensitivities that we've been talking about with our own students but um but even so i know that there were students that were suddenly thinking what the heck you know i i'm suddenly feeling quite unsafe so um i can only imagine how um how difficult it would be for some some of the young children and certainly some of the staff here if we just jumped into this and and jumping into things is not what fairview does we always take a very reasoned approach to making decisions and we look at all the facts and it works because we were able to keep the school open for most of the last two years and i know that that's because what we did worked so i have faith in our teaching staff and i have faith in our administration

102and i think that they are ready to take that off-ramp um with or without the decisions tomorrow um i'm assuming it's coming tomorrow um regarding the tro um we have a situation with six of us here this evening that has the potential to make things difficult we could have an even split as far as i'm hearing it so far we have jackie and sargon and diana who would like to see the school progress towards no masks in the near future like in a matter of weeks yeah i mean given a reasonable amount of time but whatever the school feels [Music] i think i heard two weeks then i heard spring break i just do can you clarify that i would appreciate a clarification from the board so that we know exactly what's expected of us

103and so that we can you know begin those plans and preparations i would ask you know what is a reasonable amount of time to implement that change i mean from the school's perspective from the teacher's perspective if a change like that were to be put in place how much time is needed to do it in a manner that in our discussions we centered around monday february february 28th as being the first day of the removal of a mitigation and if the board is telling us it's going to be masks then that's what we'll focus on and that's you know we'll get to work uh on that and move forward and and just to clarify that i'm hearing correctly and please do correct me if i'm wrong your concern is the masks and you're actually comfortable

104with keeping other mitigations in place yes yes got it so then i'm also hearing from aaron that you are more hinging on the decision on the tro but if the tro is upheld and [Music] then you are willing to um remove the masks i think going mask optional of course families should have a choice thank you are you completely hinging on the decision tomorrow i i i i think the decision tomorrow is i i think is extremely important because i do not want to put the district in a position uh where there could be legal consequences to our actions i think the two-week uh buffer or three week or whatever is decided on is a reasonable amount of time to allow the teachers to prepare should hopefully sort of get us around we'll know what

105the landscape is looking like but if it is not upheld uh again i would be in support of uh a mask optional of removing that single mitigation and making it optional uh for students and maintaining the other levels of mitigation can i just share um i do want to be clear with the board i don't want to get into too much detail but there are i know we're talking about trying to eliminate all legal risks and any which way you turn here there's the possibility of legal risks i just want to be clear about that um and certainly the appellate court decision hopefully comes tomorrow like that's that's what it's expected um but if there's any there's nuance to it that affects whatever you're discussing here tonight obviously i'd be informing dr whitaker and you

106know we may need to revisit but i i do want to just note that that's there's a lot of writing on what the court has to say about these issues i have a follow-up question to that we've been come you know parents have been complaining kids have been coming to school with masks even though this has been going on if it is upheld tomorrow and pritzker the mandate's completely gone come tuesday what what would that look like that's a very good question um okay calm down please we'll try and speak closer to the microphone so that you can all hear can you hear me okay my question is come tomorrow if the decision is made in pritzker's mandates are no longer upheld come tuesday children come to school unmasked what is where do we stand

107with that it's a good question and one that you want to decide you are uniquely situated in that you also have a local order that is you know a local mass mandate from the village of skokie um so there's there's that layered over over this and you know you'll need to decide are you going to take the stand of um you know requiring mass and calling parents and sending kids home or are in that scenario are you going to go ahead with with what the appellate court is essentially saying and and and just accept that and move toward a very quick implementation um you know hopefully in any community hopefully regardless of which way it plays out there is um a certain amount of support and cooperation in folks there's always going to be a

108period of transition whether it's a two or three week well-planned transition or a very quick you know hasty one either way hopefully folks in the community are willing to work toward that off-ramp as as quickly as either the court sort of dictates or or according to your plan thank you so so now i just wanted to summarize what you were saying that you were actually keen on keeping the mitigations regardless of any decision tomorrow i'm really focused on health and safety and we have maintained health and safety to this point so despite legal decisions we have to follow whatever the mitigations are i still am in favor of a slow off-ramp because i don't want our kids to have to have backlash and come in i also am really concerned about our teachers who are

109the ones who are going to be faced with what we're hearing come into our classrooms so it's a really tough position as a teacher to be in to teach during coven it's hard so the one thing i'm going to ask our community is that you have the utmost respect and patience with our teachers and that you teach your children to listen and respect their requests because it is for the safety of all so i'm a firm believer of like we're all really important pieces of a much larger puzzle it's something i tell my students all the time i personally believe part of my piece of this puzzle is to remain in full mitigation until further notice until i know my vaccination statuses are higher my kids are safer then let's go but these teachers are

110going to be faced with a lot in the coming weeks so that's my one request is that we support them and i know they're all mixed right we're all mixed up so if we can have the n95s ready for them and we can teach the kids with social stories and in a timely fashion how to ride this off ramp then let's do it but for now i'm going to hold steady until further notice personally i think spring break is a great off-ramp but it does feel really far right now given it's mid-january or mid-february um so if we need to reconvene and discuss it in march then we do it's not like an end i'll be out so okay so no no specific date from you then okay um this is this is just really

111difficult and i hope you understand members of the audience you're looking at six community members we're not qualified we have experience of doing this but we're not the professionals we have to take the advice of the professionals we have to take the advice of our legal counsel we have to look at the data this is an incredibly emotional issue and no matter what we decide around this table there are going to be people in this community who are living one way or the other they're either going to be really unhappy or really happy so we can please everyone we've never been [Music] in the in the early days of covid and we had people saying i'm not sending my kid to school with a mask and we've had people saying i'm not sending my kid

112to school unless he wears a mask we've had this dilemma of some people being in favor of masks and some people not and now it's really hit a peak it's really hit [Music] but i also really trust our staff and our teachers to make the right decision for our students i personally as you know don't have children in the school right now my kids are grown up but hey guess what they're both teachers so i do have skin in the game i'm not making a decision for them because they're not teaching in this district but i'm making this decision for teachers overall and i do want to see an end to the medications eventually i do want us to get back to normal we all want to get back to normal so i trust that

113the school will take the necessary actions over the next two weeks to educate the children to listen to the teachers of what they have to say and i strongly hope that the members of the community will respect their decision as well so if initially like as of tomorrow we're still asking students to wear masks well they're not in tomorrow but tuesday that does not mean that we're not working towards having a mask free school we are working towards it just because it doesn't happen in the next 10 minutes does not mean it's not going to happen so if i feel that if the the staff an administration of the school can implement working towards removing uh making masks voluntary in the school i can support that happening [Music] by early next month by early march

114so based on the fact that jackie diana sargon and myself are keen to work towards um not having maths in the school but not an instant decision we're working towards it these are young kids we have to make sure that they feel comfortable with this so marianne are we empowering the administration to make the decision on what date to implement this i i don't know do we do we want to tell you a date or do you want to tell us about it uh you know you you all are the decision makers i've suggested a date um you know my date that i suggested was february 28th monday uh that's one week week when stokie's lifting it is that the date that skokie mitigations are being lifted no it's one week from this coming monday

115it gives us four full days of school to meet with staff and have conversations with teachers and students i'd be comfortable with a date following that um but we need some direction and you know i i just i'm throwing out a date to try to bring some closure to the conversation because i think we should go back and forth um and that's not real productive as long as you feel like that's enough time for you and your staff to to go through everything with all the teachers and all the other stuff then i think that's great if if something happens and you feel like you need more time just let us know but i think that's a good start date unless something changes yeah i suggest we take motion to to take her proposed date

116and implement the proposed changes on the date the recommendation then that we're settling on is that we um we direct the administration to move towards having mask optional recommended but optional by uh february 28th and then the caveat as in with any decision like this is if the situation in skokie changes and we're really lucky we have our own health department when we look at that data from skokie it's our database our community it's not the entire cook county it's our community so it's reliable data if those numbers we are going to have to reconsider things i don't think anybody i agree i think we would be um you know exhibiting poor judgment if we didn't continue to monitor the numbers and continue to monitor the fairview cases um and revisit this on a regular

117basis um we have to pay attention to what's going on around us but what we're seeing right now is that things are moving in the right direction um which is why i think this is a conservative and appropriate approach at this time and sorry in your conversation with the or the the bullet points that you had from the teachers union recommended yours said two weeks was that a recommendation from the teachers union i guess is the four days of kids being in school enough time um from the teacher's perspective um to to to to get the the sort of buy-in and to have the conversations and create the social stories that they want so i'm trying to balance giving teachers time but also not putting ourselves in a position of having to manage students coming

118to school without their masks on i don't want to send kids home because they're not wearing masks over a few days i don't want to put in that position i don't want to put our principles in that position and i don't want our teachers to be having to have these conversations with kids who are simply coming to school and in showing you know maybe it's their parents beliefs maybe it's their own beliefs but i don't want to have consequences for students when we're this close i don't want a few days to create that havoc um nick i don't want to put you on the spot by any means but please come on up um nick is our fairview teachers association president and we've had this discussion for a couple of weeks i'd say but please

119help me out here yeah thank you first off for giving me a minute to speak i know it's uh not a typical thing at this moment in the meeting so the discussions we had have focused around maintaining the relationship with both the students and the families in the community um the teaching staff really believes that that's paramount in making sure that the learning experience is preserved and part of that is creating an environment where everybody can make their own choice in the classroom and not feel judged or peer pressured or bullied for it and in order to [Applause] in order to get us to that place it's going to be a community-wide effort there's going to have to be communication um from the board and from the administration to the community there's going to have

120to be communication amongst the staff so that we can all get on the same page and that's going to take some time and so i think um in terms of the teaching staff we are across the board split in our beliefs on this just like the community is but at the very end of the day we want to make sure that every child regardless of their families and their personal beliefs on masking and mitigations feels safe supported and is in a space where they can learn and so this time this buffer that we're asking for i think is gonna allow us as a community not just teachers not just administrators not just board not just parents the entire community to build up that safe space where our students can maintain their learning great thank you

121that's important to hear from you thanks so i think that's your direction yeah we're going to move towards the of mask optional um with a implementation date or whatever you want to call it of uh february 28th we're going to keep monitoring the situation in skokie and uh obviously within our own school um we're going to be keeping an eye on the actual rulings that are happening on the state level um [Music] and most importantly we're all going to respect that we are in a a holding pattern right now between now and february 28th thank you i appreciate the direction um and we will do our very best to prepare ourselves and our students um so that we can just focus on learning um looking forward to that and appreciate your board support and your

122input on this decision thank you okay that discussion over we've still got stuff to do so uh fy 22 personnel plan dr whitaker if you've got uh yes about this i will um i will make this quick and succinct um every year at this time we request that the board approve our personnel plan for the following school year um within this plan i am only going to touch upon the highlights currently we are undergoing kindergarten registration so we don't know how many students will actually be enrolled in kindergarten so we are moving the number of sections from four to three in addition we are carrying five sections at the second grade level um and we i'm sorry at the first grade level and we don't foresee that number of classes moving into second grade part

123of my error there um so we will be reducing um that first grade from five to four we are also uh recommending that the board reclassify our current special education director who is in the collective bargaining unit she is classified as a teacher which means she works the teacher contract and we're asking that she be reclassified to be an administrator so we have her support and her services for 12 months out of the school year the reason i'm recommending this at this time is because we do have uh in a very short time we will be bringing back an additional ntdse classroom to fairview we are keeping more of our students with special education needs here at the building and we will be having a preschool and so there are a variety of reasons why

124at this moment this is recommended and then finally we are recommending the addition of a full-time maintenance staff member we believe the next two years is going to be um filled with meetings and pressures um on our current maintenance staff and our current director of maintenance and adding an additional person will allow him to focus on construction whereas currently he not only um is the director but he's also a working supervisor so he he does work in the building he drives the school bus so we think that we need additional support in that department as well um so i'd be happy to take any questions on the personnel plan um you know that you might have i included the class size rule of thumb that was approved by the board several years ago this allows

125us when we see the kindergarten number or the first grade number or the second grade number increase to that class size guideline we can immediately post the teaching position uh we don't have to wait for a board meeting we can just go ahead and do it so i included that just for your reference to refresh your memories on that um and that's really all i have on the personnel plan happy to answer any questions um any any feedback on that um if you all are comfortable then we will ask that you approve this later on in the meeting okay thank you any questions good i do like the idea of the head of special education being a 12-month employer i think it's going to be extremely important going forward so thank you for that thank

126you for thinking of that okay um if there's no other questions about that we'll move on to um the second reading of the board policies uh we talked about these last months and uh you'll remember that there was literally dozens and dozens and dozens of them there were 56 policies but the only things that really needed um a decision by the board were the ones where there was an option of the wording that we include in the policy the first one is the curriculum content and that was a decision whether to have anti-bias education as part of our curriculum content or to have it as an extended instruction program like an after school program as part of uh six column 180. um dr and i have discussed this and she favors having it as part

127of the curriculum um does anybody have any thoughts about that i would also support having a part of as part of the curriculum i agree as well me too i agree good in that case on that particular one we will select to have it as antibiotic education as part of our curriculum content the second question relation relating to curriculum contents um relates to health and sex education and there were actually five different options for this one they all relate around the uh national sex education standards or nses um at this time this school district does not teach according to those particular standards they're quite new um so the option that dr whitaker's recommended is the one that illustrates that we do not teach to those standards but we do offer a developmentally appropriate consent education

128so uh that was her recommendation i agree i agree i agree excellent so we're ready to move with that one uh the next question was regarding um six column 180 but that's actually uh negated now because we've now adopted the anti-bias education as part of our curriculum so that that is not included um and finally student appearance 7 colon 160 is a board policy which indicates that schools cannot prohibit hairstyles associated with race ethnicity texture etc unless it disrupts the education process or compromises health and safety and there was an option to extend that to all protected classes mentioned in seven column ten so that's the kind of uh thing that includes um different minority groups um beyond beyond just race and ethnicity so it would be things like gender identification sexuality that kind of

129thing um and the the uh school district dr whitaker has recommended that we do extend it to all those protected classes as well agree agree i agree excellent so we are done so i'm not going to talk about all 56 so we'll be ready to vote on those at the point and finally we have the superintendent's report for february thank you um i'm happy to and yeah a lot of this has been spoken out um one thing i would like to um just highlight is that our food service uh department served our 100 000 school meal we have never hit 100 000 meals in a single school year and we're only in february so compliments to the chef [Applause] and that includes breakfast and lunch so you know we're very proud of the kitchen team

130and we're very happy that fairview students are taking advantage of the opportunity to eat breakfast and lunch um through our school programs so um other than that are there any questions on the superintendent's report a lot of this has been spoken of already so i know it's getting late all right i don't have any questions does anybody no no okay dog well thank you quick summary and a bit of good news um we'll move on to the board committees and representatives and the first one on my list is the education technology committee do you have a report yeah a quick report uh jd and i met with superintendent and um principles and mr healey [Music] and what did we talk about uh we talked about the kindergarten registration and kind of adjustments to those um

131we highlighted what's going on for black history month and celebrating the lunar new year across grade levels on a great uh the nba benchmark data came in that was um really highlighted the success of our great reading program that we approved last year at the beginning of the year for intervention so the kids in the younger grades are really showing progress which is fantastic um we also master healing highlighted the new website which we're all so excited about and i can't wait for it to be is it rolled out yet it's coming it's very interesting um [Music] then i just kind of talked about like the positions in the enrollment upcoming and future years and that was kind of it highlights okay good i'm sorry i got rather distracted um so um thank you uh

132so finance and personnel committee report yes thank you um so we had a very productive uh meeting it was last week um and i just have some notes here because i wanted to make sure uh that i got this right so we we discussed the personnel plan that we had talked about previously and then i also wanted to give a brief summary of the facility project financing uh so that everybody has an update so on tuesday january 25th the district bond sale took place approximately 10 million dollars in working cash bonds and five million dollars in debt certificates were sold to interested investors in the bond market this sale was handled by raymond james and chapman and cutler our bond council at the time the market saw a slight increase in interest rates uh but

133the all in interest in the total sale was below the projected interest rates that were presented uh to the board in november those funds have since been wired to the district and are now earmarked for our pending construction projects those amounts are not reflected in this month's board financials but will be in next month and then there will have to be corresponding transfers approved at the board level for budget adjustments uh an amended budget prior to the end of the fiscal year and this was all planned at the beginning of the process and presented as part of the uh budget presentation back in september um for our construction projects financially wow um well aaron you were very awesome i'm sorry i accidentally turned it off um so i will give you a quick edward report

134i did attend the meeting last friday and they had a representative didish there who was talking about a couple of bills that he's working on at the moment with with uh ed red um the key ones that are of interest to failure in particular are the ones that relate to um uh because it would give us an opportunity to challenge any uh [Music] increased revenue that we could have received if we had uh levied the right kind of level unfortunately if you if you miss it it's gone but it would actually give you an opportunity to go back five years to be able to to claim that uh the other key one is they're still pursuing um special education uh residential placements because there are insufficient places so they wanted to go outside of the

135recommendations of never stops at ferry they wanted to go outside of the recommendations of isbe um so they're looking to allow that um i think that's about it and i apologize i i left the notes at home but uh it was a very good meeting there was also a presentation from robin schwartz who are a firm of lawyers uh they were speaking about um the tro judgment that had just happened um literally a week before so that's my quick report uh ntc dse back to you yeah but there was no medium between our last meeting okay good and is there a pta liaison report stephen was here but he just just wanted to compliment them another hard work they had a successful um book fair my kids were so excited came home with lots of

136good stuff um and the clothes drive i heard was very successful as well and um just wanna thank them for trying really hard given the circumstances they're not how they used to be so they did a really good job they all doing a good job um so that's ourselves representatives reports for freedom of information requests i can report that there was one freedom of information act request received in this last month and it was responded to as required next item is information items and correspondence mr secretary do we have any uh yes uh the board receives the following correspondence following the last board meeting on january 19th uh as always the letters are being summarized however the board of education did receive the full correspondence prior to this evening's meeting um and there are a

137number of things that i'll read through and i just want to apologize in advance if i mispronounce anyone's name uh mary albrecht a grandmother of two fairview students and a resident of district 72 requested that the board allow masks to become optional she feels that the masks are causing undue stress her grandchildren love school at fairview and she doesn't want that to change due to the masking being required uh joanna a parent of a fifth grader urges the board to allow students to have the option to wear masks immediately she states that all people have had to make sacrifices for kovid and that now is the time to make the change uh for the better raphael fairview students appreciates that the board and the administration have provided parent choice throughout the pandemic especially allowing for

138in-person learning uh now parents should have a choice about whether or not their child needs to wear a mask the choice should be respected by all members of the school community students teachers and staff please give parents the choice as to whether or not to make their kids wear masks a second communication was received from mr cover regarding uh the jay carr decision um unmasking that came yesterday uh lorenzo cavar fairview 6th grader wants to let the board know that most kids don't wear masks properly and he suggests the masks be optional a family should make the decisions for their children and whatever the decision that is made to be respected by other kids and the staff at fairview please make masks optional um [Music] immediately she states that damage is being done to children

139wearing masks at school she feels that it is a contradiction on february 28th students can attend venues without masks but at school they still have to wear masks please put children first uh a parent of two fairview students requests that the choice to wear masks or not be put in the hands of the parents she shared data related to covid and the fact that science is changing and moving towards a shift towards um one-way mask wearing she stated that mask wearing is uh is not damage free to children uh and then joseph pettachick parent of two fairview students states it's time to give parents the choice about masking due to the recent court case in sangamon county a large number of illinois school districts have gone mass optional now it's time for fairview to do

140the same and allow parents to make the decision for their children that's a summary of the correspondence thank you and i just wanted to add that all those emails were sent to each of the board members and my address was put as m brown and it would have probably kicked back to everybody but those messages were all forwarded to me so i did see them all um it's m.a um so at this time we'll have public comment um excuse me at this time members of the public are invited to address the board on issues pertaining to the actions of the board and on matters that are in the purview of the board members of the public are reminded of board policy 2 colon 13 participation at board and education meetings the summary of this policy

141is that the law will allow a minimum of 30 minutes for comment if needed there will be a 20 minute minimum on any one subject if needed comments will be heard in the order that the members of the public approach the microphone members of the public are required to identify themselves and may speak for a maximum of three minutes the board secretary will keep time when the speaker has 30 seconds of their time remaining the board secretary will inform the speaker that they have the 30 seconds to close their comment speakers that have addressed the board in the same subject in the past two months can be denied the opportunity to speak and both speakers and other audience members are reminded that they are required to conduct themselves with respect and civility towards others in

142line with the board of c80 which pertains to the conduct of a person's while on school property and with that and starting at 9 16. and i would also just remind anybody that comes to the microphone if you could please wear your mask because we are still under the mask requirement in the school so with that starting at 9 16 please go ahead with your comment hi my name is uh i have a son in fifth grade sixth grade it's hard to keep track i have three kids that went through fairview so in regards to the mitigation i would like to see if they could put that the wow many kids get their water bottle they forget bring it and there's there's no water bottles for the kids in class i asked my son to

143go to the nurse he said no she doesn't have any so my son decided to bring cops to school and leave it in miss hannah class so she could she can pass him out to his friends or whoever needs water so i don't understand how two years of covid you haven't decided to bring cops to school or water bottles for the children and now you don't have this option of taking it off the the list kids touch doors kids touch each other kids touch lockers kids touch the front door kiss at each other the football parks whatever they can touch the water and get it themselves and drink it so another thing i want to touch on is i already have a homeschooler because she decided not to wear the mask anymore kids have emotional

144issues they have social issues they have all these other things she decided not to go to school and i supported her because i didn't have another option i don't have an option to send her to uh like i have to send her to public school i can't send her to another district i can't drive her there she doesn't drive i can't she has to homeschool so she's by by herself at home at 16 years old homeschooling so you have to understand that if you don't change something a lot of a lot of these families will decide to homeschool their kids and no matter how big your building is going to get you're not going to have kids showing up if you're going to keep the mask and you're going to keep deciding against the parents

145we send our children here these are our children this community supports you our tax money pays you so i don't 30 seconds thank you so much thank you for your time my name is elizabeth palmer and i have two children at fearvue and i want to make two points tonight um i fully support your plan to provide n95 masks for fairview staff when masks are phased out and i'd like to ask that you also provide n95 masks for students who request them last week's data from the skokie health department shows that we're still in the red zone which is the highest category of transmission a lot of fairview students have siblings under the age of five who cannot be vaccinated yet and a lot of them also have intergenerational generation in their homes because they

146have elderly people with them who are actually at risk they're basically precious too and their families secondly i just want to thank the adult team for the work that you've done in creating this wonderful equity statement i know it's a lot of work to to talk about these issues and yeah i have more i can say about that but i'll just say that conversations about equity are hard we've seen that and i want to just thank you for supporting your work and continuing to really hold up the complexity of these conversations and the multi-dimensional layers of aggression that happen and the ways they intersect with one another thank you thank you for your comment hi my name is evan and i'm in sixth grade and i would like to give a short speech on why

147i think masks should be optional first i don't understand what the points were a mask when private schools have the masks as optional and their statistics are no different than fairview district my cousin's school in lakewood is optional my friend's school in morning grove is optional starting next week i respect my teachers and classmates that prefer to wear a mask i just don't want to wear one because it doesn't make any sense following the sciences statistics thank you hi my name is lorenzo cavore i'm in sixth grade at fairview i've been wearing masks for two years now i've been told that wearing masks protects you there are many studies that show that they're not as effective as everyone thinks especially the way that most kids wear them for two years i haven't been able to

148see my teacher or friends faces class and we were doing hard workouts and my mask was down so i could actually my gym teacher called me out on it and forced me to put my mask back up i would also be forcing some of my classes to drink from my water bottle outside the room governor went against legislative branch to enforce mass mandates we're independent of the law but our governor went against that wearing madness causing people to have more health problems and we don't even know what the long-term effects will be no one wants to smell their own breath especially when it's stinky the first amendment says i have the freedom of speech that's what makes america a great country but if i step out to tell my friends or teachers masks don't work

149they say stop talking don't say that when someone says they do work the teachers praise them that's bonus i believe that not giving us an option to not win a mask is unconstitutional they traumatize people first graders have never been to school without wearing a mask kindergarten is the most special parade and kids have to go through it with masks that's not right and think about it if we go to mask if we do go mask optional what our teacher is going to say well they're going to say we still should wear a mask and what do you think the younger kids are going to do they're going to wear their masks that's why if we do go mask optional teachers shouldn't say that it should be up to the individual person and their parents

150i've been told that people have the right to fight for what is wrong that's what i am here today thank you a mask i don't have one does somebody have a spare mask okay thank you very much for your help thank you for doing that hello my name is montgomery and i'm a sixth grader at fairview i would like to ask the board now it's been two years of not seeing my friends faces and smiles i really think it's time to let kids have a choice i was watching the super wolf my dad everyday and i didn't see any other 70 000 people wearing a mask anytime there are baseball basketball or football players they don't have to wear a mask i'm playing basketball at fairview right now and it's very hard to run across

151the court back and forth with a mask on i wear all day and it gets really hard to breathe when i take off the mask is very sweaty and nasty again trouble i lower my mask to get fresh air in school i think that kids really need to have breaks and fresh hair my cousin lives in wisconsin he does not have to wear a mask since school started in september he never missed any school or had to do remote learning because of cohen i truly don't understand why he lives only one hour away but things are so different i was watching tv last week nurse teachers saying the kids don't gotta wear a mask anymore and the kids were so happy how come over 600 schools in illinois don't have to wear a mask and

152we get treated differently you and it's like you have to wear mask fairy all day and if you don't you'll get sent to the principal's office i feel very sad as a child because i'm not in danger to anybody please give us a choice and help us have a normal school year and good memories thank you thank you does anybody else wish to address the board could you come to the microphone with a mask please thank you all right hi uh my name is helen levinson uh i'm a parent of a seventh seventh grader in fairview so um you know it's been two years for our kids uh we have to be really careful um about society declaring that science is clear uh as this pandemic has been over politicized i think we all know

153this the reality is that some of the things that we're doing in the name of protection are actually harmful so a recent study conducted by brown university scientists working with consulting firm renaissance they gathered information from 600 children and their parents and caregivers the study looked at children's cognitive development from infancy through adolescence and specifically analyzed how the covet era affected development in three areas and the analysis began prior to march 2020 when masking and lockdowns began so the study looked at development uh to measure how well a child is mature in their language skills and other skills as compared with a sample of youngsters their own age and these brown university scientists that found composite mean of these scores dropped by 23 from 2019 to 2021. it was concluded children born during the pandemic

154have significantly reduced verbal motor and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre-pandemic masks worn in public settings and in school or daycare settings may impact a range of early developing skills such as attachment facial processing arming our children and we don't see this information or hear it unless we dig for it unless we actually run across it by accident so it's obvious that there is a lot of censoring going on in our media and we can't possibly know the damage some of these restrictions and requirements are doing now and what problems they're creating in the long run so i have here a list of schools school districts there's 500 i think there's 577 illinois school districts optional and with the recent ruling with jamie carr i just asked that fairview implement a mass optional

155policy and let our kids get back to normal and to a happy life thank you thank you for your comment my oldest she's in third grade and she's had half of her career with the mask and she's she's scared to go against what her teacher says and what most of her friends say because they feel the pressure that's what we're doing for these kids pressure bullying and another level now the psychological emotional social development that happens to our children between first grade and third grade those are not years ever so i think it's time this past all of us 100 million people just watched you know the biggest sporting events jamming to an indoor stadium very cute on site and the next day world war across the country and the community truly appreciates that we

156really do um you proposed solutions you gave parents a choice about remote learning plans about in-person learning you know we want parents to make their own decisions with their children and we want to call for acceptance for all regardless of choice so lastly i'm not going to sit here and recite data points back to you because i know those are available for everyone to see but yes this is there's thank you so much good evening my name is [Music] um a little more about where what the board's standing is and then we talked about it tonight and i'm still so confused um where this emergency takes place um going on two years living with this virus and it doesn't make sense to me to still use emergency measures that were initially put in place um

157two years later possible um you know the jay car voted 9-0 to reject idph's attempt to reintroduce emergency rules for school hovid10 protocols my kids were getting texts from their friends in niles and morton grove and palmer ridge and disciplines and all over saying you know what what about you guys what we want is not just another email from the school asking for continued patience um is at this point in our lives and i'm going to continue to stand by this opinion respectfully as a parent i want to we're going to be dealing with the damage that it is um [Music] hi everyone i'm esther i have uh i'm a parent of three children here at fairview fourth grader sixth grader and greater um i personally wanna thank dr whitaker for everything you've done for

158our children and our community and a shout out to dr michael apatow my eighth graders last year he's having a great he has been in time principal's office multiple times because of this issue and i just want to let you know i thank you for just being positive in this situation for him okay so i thank you for that um my free time to explain it is a respiratory disease but there are measures that it's not something that you have to do against someone's will like masking children it is not right please listen to the parents please listen to us listen to the community and please please we are a voice for our children they are minors please don't force them to do something that they cannot do i thank you so much for this

159time thank you for your comment good evening uh my name is glenn i'm a former alum i have three little kids that go to fairview i want to thank the board for taking their time to listen [Music] it's been brought up already about uh [Music] is [Music] um [Music] thank you at this time we're almost at 30 minutes of comment on this particular issue we're required to give it 20 minutes so um i think at this time we will switch to the two comments that we've received through the um email submission thank [Music] we don't read it twice my name [Applause] with the scotland health is to plan for cobia 19 mitigations and mask wearing according to the stadium community is still in a state of high transmission and your other current mitigations while the

160transition rate is still high the mitigations that are currently in place have helped the school district to have in-person learning all year if the transition rate comes low in the future then please have a plan for gradually rolling back the mitigation of our students okay so that concludes our public comment for this evening um we'll now move on to our action items uh the first action item is to approve the personnel plan for the 22-23 school year uh we already have discussed this earlier in the meeting so could i have a motion on a second so moved one second could the secretary please call the rover uh yes mrs richie yes the personnel plan for 2022-23 is approved so next item is to approve scorpios for the same yeah 22 23. can i have a

161motion in a second motion seconds is there any discussion on this uh i i think it's fairly self-explanatory there are few small increases with a notation at the bottom of the page explaining those increases but we discussed this at the finance personnel committee um i don't think there's really anything more to talk about does anybody have any questions okay in that case could the secretary please call the roll call vote uh yes mrs brown yes mr juliana yes i vote yes yes mr yes okay we've approved the school fees for the next school year uh so uh next item is to approve the release of the closed session minutes for august 18 2021 september 22nd 2021 october 20th 2021 november 17th 2021 and december 15 2021. can i have a motion in a second okay

162all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say name those minutes will be released um uh the next item is a uh can i have a motion and a second to adopt a disclosure compliance policy our motion a second essentially out there in the public market so it's just basically compliance [Music] thank you does anybody have any questions in that place um if this concerns money we should roll those right it's the power [Music] and lastly [Music] because there is way too many to actually speak out but it's the policies that we discussed earlier this evening plus a bunch of other ones that are renewals and five-year reviews and things like that so and very little change so can i have a motion in a second to approve the policies as discussed second okay

163all those in favor say aye aye okay we're done with the policies you're off the hook hello um there was a couple things i wanted to mention uh we talked about it last month that there are the iasb equity diversity and inclusion webinars there was one this evening and obviously we all missed that one but there is the final one on march 2nd the equity journey continuum so i would recommend if you haven't already uh signed up for that it takes place it's obviously a online webinar and it's from 6 30 to 7 30 in the evening on march 2nd so i shall be listening again i hope you can join me um and we had a a proposition actually to change the meeting of april 20th a month from now the april 20th meeting

164for a couple of reasons first of all i'm sorry oh you're right sorry two months um i want it to be spring already i think um first of all it is the iasb lunch at dinner i'm sorry not lunch and we already missed the full one because it coincided with our meeting which was unfortunate um we have an opportunity now to you know to shift it if we want to so that we can actually attend that dinner i i can't recommend them enough because like we talked about earlier about uh getting to understand what other boards do and uh how are the boards function and the kind of issues that they're dealing with versus what we're dealing with it really is a valuable experience so i would like if we could change that if possible

165either to another day that week or to possibly the following week uh there is another reason that uh dr whitaker tells me that if there's a possibility it's not definite but there's a possibility that she and mr fayette wouldn't actually have to be um at a skokie uh what was it a village village that evening as well um so that's not definite yet but uh there's a chance that it might coincide with that so if we did change that april 20th which was wednesday could we change it to another day that week or could or do we need to change it to the following wednesday which will be april 27th diana i believe your work schedule is an issue yeah i would say if we're gonna go attend the dinner that week maybe the following

166week if that's okay so to ship to what about you aaron do you what's your schedule like you're obviously consulting it right now yes um i i think um i could definitely do another day uh the week of the 20th um but i i believe the 27th could also work uh what do you feel 27th whatever is the best for all of you i agree with diana i i appreciate being able to not be out you know several nights for my kids but whatever works for the board works for me how does the 27th work for you that works for me okay all right well we'll make the suitable notifications on our um board listing for the meeting and we'll be switching the april 20th meeting to april 27th same time same place different day

167okay uh is there any other items for future consideration that anybody wants to discuss [Music] as a board if we could um kind of review our policies if there is a way that we could um use ourselves to further support the great statement that the faculty have put together i think that's a good idea having just looked at all those policies it's a good time to review how we can support that mission and uh if you could let me know if you're interested in volunteering to be a part of the committee i would appreciate that i also just want to clarify with the board that based upon the direction given to us about the coveted mitigations i will be sending a communication to the community uh likely on monday um you know i'm not going

168to work on it tonight but i think monday is good timing so that people um kind of know what to expect and what our plan is it gives me time to talk about this evening with my team as well as the teaching staff so we'll work on the communication this weekend we'll get it out before school next week so everybody knows what our expectations will be on tuesday i'm interested in being part of the committee oh thank you jackie's volunteering thank you okay uh with that all then can i have a motion and a second to adjourn the meeting at 9 51. could the secretary please call the roll sorry one second yes thank you very much [Music] you