001e e e right I think we're going to get started plenty of room up front with the cool kids [Music] see all right thank you all okay here we go Mrs milk you ready you are all right the March 3rd 2025 Committee of the whole meeting will now come to order Mr Lok would you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance vies over here pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic which it stands nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice Mrs Mo roll call please miss Ryman miss sarento here miss manik here Mrs buter here MREs here Mrs Hill here Mrs Sayad here Dr M here Mr lobach here Dr Bruno here thank you all uh it's great to see everybody here this evening wonderful to
002have the room filled up uh I do want to ask you to make sure at your table you have signin sheets would you be kind enough to uh fill those out this way we get a sense of the participation this evening thank you very much uh and today's one and only important topic is student personal technology that's what brought you here and I'm going to turn it over to our superintendent who will explain the procedure if you've been to a committee of the whole meeting you may be familiar uh what our process is but I'll allow Dr McHugh to explain what we're going to do this evening and facilitate the engagement so Dr McHugh all yours thank you Dr Bruno thank you everyone for coming we were wondering if we were going to break the
003record for the committee of the whole meeting from the kindergarten session back in October um I don't know if we're there yet but the doors aren't closed so text your friends tell them we have some some extra seats for those of you who have not met me my name is Jeff McHugh I'm the proud superintendent of District 41 I I I can still say the new superintendent right I'm G to use that up until June and then I'll be I'll be the veteran and I'm I'm happy tonight to engage in conversation one of the things I love about the committee of the whole structure is in a typical board meeting the conversation's more oneway this is going to be a two-way conversation and if anything it it's most important to us that we hear from
004you and any ESPN 1000 listeners Wad and Sylvie anybody for you sports fans my team is like he's making another Sports reference are you kidding me um Wad and Sylvie they're an afternoon radio team and they tried to find a statement once that everybody agreed with and they had them like the sky is blue and puppies are cute and no matter what callers called in and they went the opposite way on things I still don't think they ever found a statement everybody agreed with so at the end of tonight not only will we not have something everyone agrees with there may be a fair number of people who disagree with where we're going but I think the important part of this is the conversation we have everybody at the table we have about 2,000 survey
005responses we're going to share some data with tonight your voice is going to be invaluable today to help us figure out next steps and at the end of the day we're all going to be clear about where we started where we got to and why and everyone will be on the same page from the students in the room to the teachers in the room parents the board Administration so that is the goal of tonight is to get on the same page about student personal devices now the original purpose of talking about this came from the anxious generation I'll share that in a minute but tonight we're really going to focus on the student personal devices namely smartphones and SmartWatches along with airpods we did ask some questions in the surveys about Chromebooks at the very
006end if there's time we might dabble in that a bit but that is going to be the next piece of this because we got a lot of feedback about instructional technology in school but tonight I really want to focus on student personal devices because the board's book study on the anxious generation finished up I think it was about December and at that time they tasked me and the administrative team to come with a recommendation on do we change our policy or not about student personal devices they gave me until April which was generous and they wanted me to engage with the community on this so with the help of Erica cral Erica thank you so much she spearheaded the effort on how do we talk to as many people as possible how do we come
007up with a plan and we started in January raise your hand there I think there's at least one student in here who's on my student superintendent Council advisor Council there's at least one right over here and oh a round of applause for Ethan actually two did you raise your hand too Alesia Alesia you're on everything you're a student board member oh and Helen Helen is here too Helen yes so we have three students who were part of this that was the first focus group that we talked to about student technology student personal devices um any members of the superintendent Community advisory Council here think there's a few okay this is a group of people from the community some are parents some are not some are former parents and some never had kids in our district
008who come and give me their perspectives we also had the Glenn Ellen unplugged formerly wait till 8th um I'm not sure what the name is now but a group of parents who have members at every single building I met with them several times they have been highly engaged um we met with our teachers through are continuous Improvement team we met with our principles assistant principles cabinet and all of that feedback back in January created those surveys in February one went to students one went to staff and one went to the community the student survey was grades fourth through 8th I was going to go a little bit lower but the students actually they were the ones who said you know what Dr McHugh no no lower than fourth in fact I think there was even
009a push we weren't even sure if we should do fourth we landed on Fourth but the the students helped also craft the questions for that student survey all of that student data then we brought or student staff and Community data we brought back to our cabinet our district level administrators our principles our assistant principles and based on that at this meeting tonight I want to share with you where I'm at where our team is at and where we might be going next and finally I hope to bring a recommendation if not at the March 17th board meeting no later than the April board meeting on are we going to do any policy changes and if so what would those be so for those of you who aren't familiar with our policy we have a very
010strong policy in District 41 from my understanding it was put together by a number of um staff members the board was involved there were community members involved essentially at the elementary level all student personal devices again when I say that I mean cell phones SmartWatches and airpods often out of sight that's the elementary policy at Hadley personal devices can be carried but not used during the school day unless approved by a teacher or staff member so this is where if a if a staff member says yes we're going to use our phones for something the kids can take their phones out I do want to dispel there was a notion back when the board was doing the anxious generation that boy kids have cell phones out all the time and it's that's not the case
011I when I'm in buildings I am not seeing phones out all the time we do not have the same problems that if you read the anxious generation it sounds like it's the wild west it is not like that in our buildings however this is a great chance for us all to get on the same page of what do we want school to be like for our kids when it comes to these devices Erica Andrew Peterman a number of our administrative team engaged with other districts around us to find out what are we doing at other districts around us and especially what are we doing at West since that's where all of our students are going to go for the most part and in talking to Ben Peter selli the principal of West at West cell
012phones and earpods should not be visible or in use while students are in the classroom and that the expectations consistent across the building but teachers might manage that a little bit differently and finally uh they do have cell phone wall pouches in every classroom I believe that is new this year not every teacher uses them but that is something that they can that they can use so we wanted to see where students are going to help us figure out where where we want to go here so surveys we're we're going to show you some of the data from the survey we're going to put all of the data we're going to scrub some of the comments because we don't want to have to go through 2,000 comments to see if there's any identif identifiable information
013but we are going to publish the survey data we don't publish all survey data just from the standpoint of we give a lot of surveys this one we thought let's put it out on the website if you'd like to pick through it on your own you're welcome to do so but tonight I want to highlight what we felt like was the most pertinent data from almost 600 parents and 36 community members who answered the survey saying I do not have students in the district there were 151 staff members who filled it out and roughly 1,400 students grades fourth through 8th grade and I want to thank our principes and assistant principles and teachers for working with the students to make sure that we that we could get that large of a sample size and here's
014what they said so first of all um Erica put these slides together and we had to do a double take we thought maybe there was a typo when we looked at these two slides so this is feedback on the approach to Elementary our current policy which is often out of sight how do the parents feel and how does the staff feel if they look identical it's because they almost are and again that's a sample size for parents um of over 600 and it's about 150 staff members over 34 of them said full day restrictions no personal devices full stop the red is schedule-based re restrictions maybe maybe they could use it at sometimes during the day and you had 15.9 and 14.6% of the respondents saying that and then teacher classroom based restrictions basically each
015individual teacher has discretion 7 7.2% and 7.9% yes Jacqueline um I just wanted to know what's the percentage responders so 600 parents how many what percent of parent District parents is that and what percent of Staff that's an excellent question is there a Cabinet member out there who has those numbers off the top of their head Jacqueline we can get that for you great question though jumping to Hadley with the Approach at Hadley again the parent and staff feedback was almost identical so the blue is full day restrictions off and out of site 53.6% of parents and 51% of Staff said that was the approach they feel is appropriate the red is schedule-based restrictions 34.6 for parents and 38.4% of staff and then 11 and 10% for teacher-based that's what they were saying they think
016is most appropriate in the response uh the basically free response at the end there were a number of themes that came out of this one of them was a desire for stronger policy enforcement so parents said we want this to be more consistent across schools across grade levels across classrooms there were mixed views on communication some parents were saying I like being able to text my child on their on their watch during the day and others were saying no that should go to the school office it shouldn't be going directly to the to the student and then there were concerns about exess excessive technology use some of it was about student technology devices but some of it was about instructional technology which is going to be part two of all of this with the Chromebooks
017that are in the classrooms so that was that last theme I think was not just about the student personal devices themes from the staff like like the parents staff was looking for Clear enforcement of policies it's hard being a teacher is hard for those of you that are in here who are teachers you know um maybe one of the hardest jobs I ever had was being a teacher and enforcing these policies are tough especially smart watches have thrown another um basically thrown a curveball into what it's like to have to teach in in 2025 staff also wanted to balance technology use with social interaction when kids are just on their phone they notice just like they said in the anxious generation they're not having that person to person person interaction and finally communication for this
018staff was saying we want everyone to know we want parents to know students to know Administration to know just clear up and down everybody knows what the policy is everybody knows what we're going to do to enforce that policy and now let's get to the students to hear what they said we had students the pie chart on the left is showing the fourth through e8th grade distribution and as you would expect there were more fourth graders and fifth graders we have more of those students across the district and then we had six seventh and eighth graders all weighing in and on the right you see that all of our schools were represented with had Hadley making up about 50% of the p and all of the other buildings being anywhere between about 11% and 15%
019so before I go here we did asked the students how many of you would like phones in schools and as you would imagine three qu said they want them in schools they want their phones they want their watches we we anticipated that but we still wanted to ask them in fact nine out of 10 wanted their watches which we thought was interesting so the kids told us that that's important to ask our students what they're thinking on that but then these questions I found very interesting so do you think it distracts you and again this is self-reported by the students uh about half said nope these are never distracting but 48.2% said they are sometimes distracting and 3.5% said they are very distracting so over half the time the students are telling us yeah this
020is distracting Us in some cases a lot and then we asked them what about your interactions with your friends and about 23 67% said it never causes problems but a third said it did 30 .4% said yeah it sometimes causes problems for us with again about 2.5% saying it it's a big problem this data from the surveys also mirrors what we heard in our student advisory Council where um our students were very honest in that meeting with me the stuff that they told me I'm like wow thank you for sharing that with me they told me how it was and it does Echo this these are distractions for our students in class here's what came out of the students free responses the number one reason and this was this this came out at our student
021advisory council meeting this was not the reason I thought students wanted their devices and what they said to myself and and to Erica were we want our our phones and our watches in case of an emergency they weren't talking about games they were they just felt more comfortable having their devices with them that came out loud and clear in the surveys as well um some students didn't mention the convenience they' like be able to check their time or listen to their music but they did acknowledge that yeah they cause a distraction whether it's my own device or the person next to me so for the discussion and I'm going to be popping around table to table I was trying to figure out how to lead this discussion and in talking with our administrative team they
022said Jeff just let them know where you're at right now so I'm going to tell you where I'm at right now I've been trying to be a in the wall remain curious listen I I have been in very deep on this topic um I have been in on this topic from reading about the research of what technology does to our young students Minds I read the anxious generation I read the new C con book um all of it is pointing to technology is impacting our students and not only not always in the best way um I talked to every single focus group I was involved in those and I feel like um I'm in very deep in this and I want to make sure that I'm not pushing what I think is right but what
023we as a community think is right for our kids yes question call Sims here um my question would be since um the teachers do play a big role in this how did they mention on how often it's a disturbance in the classroom I just know from working in classrooms that the teachers that I work with that they instantly say phones away come on buddy just not right now but how often does it actually occur at hadlay in elementary school level do we know the percentage of that how many times during the class we don't have an exact percentage we know it's a problem um the watches in particular I've been hearing we have a number of principles maybe during the table discussions principles you can pop around in assistant principles and let them know um
024with the watches the students are texting one another they're getting texts from parents during the day in the middle of class and I want to say a week or two ago we had a student accidentally dial 911 from the start his smartphone or his Smartwatch because it was new and he was trying it out um the watches are from my understanding a constant distraction in ele Elementary and the survey results showed that too um hadly students are older so it's a little bit different um and and that's something I don't want to put Steve or Bob on the spot here but I'm going to Steve or Bob Steve uh Mr diely here Hadley principal is this a problem at the junior high or to what extent from your perspective yeah that puts me on the
025spot thank you appreciate it you're welcome uh well you know when an adult walks in it all looks great right what's happening under the desk and what's happening that we can't see is what I unfortunately I can't quantify um I do know that the what I've seen sometimes I'm sitting in the back of the room are like a typical Behavior might be of almost like we would do as adults uh they something Triggers on their wrist the kids look at it tap tap and they're back at it so what I want to say is that the watches don't seem like a a major disruption but I also see the same data that everybody else does and we also know U Middle School Behavior and the things that are happening that we don't see so sorry
026that was a very waffly answer but um do I feel like overwhelmed in a wash with uh with watch issues I don't that doesn't mean it's not there yeah and this will be so this is going to be one of the key things you're going to talk about in a moment but let me tell you where I'm at right now because as I looked at all of this information the big thing I was looking for in the in the teacher the staff responses were Jeff we need these devices in our in our classrooms because of X Y or Z we have Chromebooks but we need to have these personal devices with us that didn't come out in the data there were no compelling reasons to me that educationally we needed those so right now I'd
027say I'm probably 80% maybe 75 80% and if I had to make a recommendation to the board today I would say board I would recommend we keep the K5 policy as is except we enforce it and that means the SmartWatches on our kids wrists would not be on their wrist they could bring it to school they just wouldn't be able to have it on them they could get it after school and text their parents for grades 6 through eight if I had to make the recommendation today I would say do the exact same policy I would say rerun a K8 um and of course the three questions I'm going to ask you to discuss to to discuss could talk about some of the nuances based on the preponderance of information I have what districts around
028us are doing what districts at I mean States at the national level are doing our own state is talking about possibly bringing down where we would have cell phone bans regardless of if that happens what is right for our kids in our community I'm at 80% that when I go to the board I'll say based on all of this data this is where I think we should go um but I'm not 100 and I'm not even 90 because I need this tonight I need to hear the answer to three questions from you the first of which is the big one if we went to this rolling up K5 to K8 and said we're not having cell phones airpods SmartWatches during the school day kids can come with them we know some kids need to bring
029the devices texting people at home but once we get to school they're off and out of sight and at the end of the day they're back on if we went to that what potential challenges should we anticipate there will be challenges what what might those be and how could we as a district address them that's a big one I want to hear your thoughts on number two I don't know how many people realized when they were filling this out we're talking about SmartWatches folks I think a lot of people answered this oh we don't want our kids to have cell phones in in in school not thinking we're talking about watches too and as I've talked to people are like wait you meant watches too I'm wondering do do people realize our policy right now
030in K5 says they can't have watches during the day and and that's been hard when you saw teachers and administrators saying we don't know how to enforce this it I I don't think there's a Clarity for everybody involved that right now that that's going against the policy I'm not sure parents know that um and then third if we were to differentiate between smart watches and other personal technology devices are are there exceptions to this we have a medical waiver right now it's part of one of the administrative procedures that people can fill out but are there exceptions to this that we should consider that's something I want to hear from so what I would like to do oh yes question we don't have one hi you mentioned emergencies was the top reason why students want
031them did do you have any insight as to what constitutes an emergency in their mind in their minds something at the school level that they felt like they needed to reach out to their parents I didn't get the feeling that it was I forgot my yogurt at home but something bigger and just in that situation they just felt more comfortable I'm I'm looking to my two eighth graders does that I mean we talked about it and Ethan we talked about that in the group does that summarize what what our group was saying when when we talked about safety or did I miss it you go um yeah I think definitely like not the little things but definitely like something really important like I wouldn't take my phone out during like a tornado warning no maybe
032it was bigger like a schoolwide shutdown maybe or like I don't want to say this with school shooting even so so big safety events is what they were thinking and that's a real concern that came out through the survey that I didn't know going into all of this that didn't I thought the students wanted it for the fun in games and that was not the top reason so that I thought that was really interesting to hear but what I would like us to take some time to do and I'm oh yes and this will be the last question because I really want you all to get talking I've been talking far too much yes sir thank you hi I my name is Adrian I have a second grader and a fifth grader um my question
033is about the extent to which we're educating our children about um responsible use of technology cuz I think it's inevitable that these devices will increasingly impact their lives as they age so what conversations if any have occurred about educating them on responsible use and the potential values and pitfalls of using these devices excellent question there are already components of that happening in our schools but we're continuing to talk right now to see do we want to look at that and do it differently um as things evolve so yes that's absolutely a subset of this that will come into play um because we can't just expect students to know how to do it uh we have to teach them so that's a great point so here's what I like to do we could sit here and
034do Q&A all all day you've heard where I am I'm at about 80% of based on everything I've heard when I do go to the board and again the board is going to say yay or nay to this but I am representing I feel like uh the administration and what we've heard but this will be my recommendation so for all the people that are going to be upset please don't take it out on your principal set up a coffee with me and I would be happy to talk I'm going to try to come with a recommendation that is best for our kids I want to I want to make that loud and clear that's my job I feel is to try to do things that are best for kids however the people in this community
035will have different opinions about what that means our staff will have different opinions about what that means so I want tonight's conversation I don't want it to get from a norm standpoint let's be curious and let's listen but if the person across from you thinks differently we had a norm in our community advisory um group no punching please no punching tonight either physically or verbally stay curious and listen and if your neighbor has a totally different opinion great let's talk and let's hear from them there is a computer at every table we last time did um paper charts for the for the kindergarten one and I think ju we must have had like 16 charts that our cabinet was trying to dissect it was very difficult we thought we learned from that there's a Google
036form that's set up one for each box we would like somebody at the table if there's a Cabinet member that would be the easiest or a board member but but otherwise [Music] someone okay not Jason but anybody but Jason will be taking the notes and uh just capturing what the conversation is about these three questions I would love it in the next 25 minutes or so if you got to all three but I recognize this might take some twists and turns that's okay document it what I don't want is you to have nothing in your box at the end I'm going to read every word I promise you that we look through Erica 1,400 student surveys and comments six we're gonna read this because we need to hear it but at about 725 is 7:30
037we're going to go around the room for a quick share out because I want you to hear what other tables are saying too then we'll talk about next steps based on how all of this goes that will drive next steps at the end of this meeting I might say okay we need to go back to the lab and we need to do some more work on X Y or Z or I might say wow that was easy we're definitely going to go this route based on what I heard so I don't know what the next step is but I will in about 45 minutes when you're all done having some conversations sharing that out and I'm going to want to read all the feedback talk to the team but I want you to hear right
038now the reason you're here is to help us make decisions not lip service I said I'm 80% but I am not 100 and as my cabinet can ATT test I was I was at 95% where's Eric Eric deporter uh where are you Eric Eric quter I was at 95% on something and Eric I believe he said well I strongly disagree with that and then all of cabinet was nodding like yep and then we went a different direction because you guys changed my because I was wrong so I try never to go a 100 because I'm wrong a lot I feel I'm about 80 but I need this group to really weigh in for me for the team on where we might go who can repeat back what the task is for the next 25 minutes
039at your table somebody want to be brave and give it a shot discuss the three questions put it in the form the end with no punching at about at about 7:25 7:30 we'll stop wherever you're at we are going to do a sort of a walk around the room and and share out and then we'll talk about what the next steps are okay enjoy the conversation e e e all right ladies and gentlemen about two more minutes two more minutes two minute warning e e e all right ladies and Gentlemen please wrap up your conversations my compliment is I know I need the gav the compliment I want to give is I didn't see any punches thrown is that accurate I didn't see any punches and in fact I didn't even hear yelling but what
040I did hear is people giving alternative perspectives that's why we're doing this if we all were sitting nodding saying the same thing we wouldn't need to have this so I appreciate that thank you to the not takers a lot of our cabinet members and and we even had a couple student board members taking notes um I can't wait to in and read that what I would like to do just to take a couple minutes now and just do it around the horn and because this whole board meeting is supposed to end typically by 8 o' I don't want each table to spend time reading through every single word but if one person from each table could share maybe one whether it's a theme or something really poignant that came out of your table we have
041it looks like around 10 or 12 tables we'll do a quick whip around about 1 minute each and after about 10 12 minutes we will wrap up here so what was a big takeaway at your table and please use the microphone if you don't have a mic raise your hand and we'll get it for you who would like to start us off okay so one of our big takeaways is that change is hard at first always no matter what we're talking about so we use datadriven storytelling to connect parents and students to the student feedback that our phones and devices are distracting but they want them for emergencies so two-pronged approach test positioning nothing's ever final right we can change it so we're going to test this way of working for a year or whatever
042time frame um which will remove the feeling of it being a permanent threat or something that will always happen except when you see it working it just keeps going and the second piece would be providing a solution for an alternative to a phoner watch in the situation where there's an emergency so when that happens or if that were to happen here's what you do instead and we've sort of removed those barriers sure who's next okay thank you um we had talked about several different things but I I think we kind of branched off into a a little bit of a piggyback on the gentleman's comment from over here about being able to discern and to have a student population that is also educated in how to use these Technologies safely how to discern what's safe
043what is a safe app how to to figure out how you know somebody could be tracking you on your phone how to change your location settings how to use um understand what media sources are coming uh to you and and discern your sources and be able to um critically think using smartphones or technology so while I think we're all in agreement though of having these devices handy or like on you or on your person in school hours is something that I think we're all at least on our table here uh not for but I think it was a very important point that um in the same way that I think for speaking like from my generation when we were in school and high school and and things like that we went off to college and
044nobody knew how to use you know what credit cards were or how to actually do personal finances and all these things were like were dependent on your parents to teach you which is a good thing in some ways but so many of us fell through the cracks in that kind of kind of aspect and I think it's an important thing that using a device that's 6 in that fits in your pocket and has all the information at your fingertips it's important to have like a a cohesive approach to education on how to use those devices in a safe Manner and whether that be something that is um I mean I guess this is more of a kind of a curriculum question or a regular Workshop type of thing just so they're going to be using
045technology one way or another at one point or another whether it be in high school in their jobs let's give them the tools to be able to use it safely and effectively and learn collectively with their peers so everybody's on the same page thank you who's next okay Chris so we had talked in our group about the fact that yes there's going to be some education of our students so that they understand there is a trans position here uh but we also suggested that maybe one of the challenges might be also our community and and educating parents and helping them understand what the rationale is for making the policy more restrictive at the middle school level and and what that might mean for them as parents as well so I think we talked about clear
046communication rationale kind of the why behind some of these changes and I think any of those steps would be helpful for both the parents and the students great thank you who's next Amy so I feel like we're kind of the outlier with what everyone's saying in that we didn't necessarily think that they should be completely banned throughout the day we had an idea for a check-in period where like first thing in the morning so let's say you have a student walking to school like your kid could get their phone and say got here safely like text Mom and Dad and like lunchtime check it to make sure there's not like an alternate um like pickup or whatever and then same thing for like just before the day ends and just like quick three minute check-ins
047and then the rest of the time it's away either in a locker in a cubby or if a classroom has like umip pouches spaceship would be awesome no but a really good idea let's all get spaceships and we want spaceships um like the little shoe Cubbies I know my daughter has them for her headphones in class that's okay um that kids could put their phones in okay thank you you documented that right you got that all in your form okay thanks uh and when it comes to emergencies one of the things that I've noticed is that it's very helpful when the students aren't just receiving information about emergency just on their own device to have the adults in our community in the school to be the people that can assist them in that so whether
048they get a text that's not good or a pickup changes and they're confused about that um or something distressing happens we'd rather there also be an adult there to help them get through that possible situation and help them make the best uh decision about what to do next or if they need assistance with something that having the adults the teachers that have the walkies and the landlines and the email they can deliver messages as well and help the students make good choices thank you who's next s we can piggy back on that one of the things that we had talked about was teaching and reteaching the expectations for the students that if they are experiencing some peer conflict during the day or they're feeling sick or they left something at home um to know what
049their resources are at school so that their first instinct might not be to text Mom and Dad um and have Mom and Dad come to the school with without notifying any of the school staff um because that's something that we've encountered quite a bit so for the students to know that they have the adult support at school and and who their go-to are at school first thank you in in terms of potential challenges we we said a lot of what um the woman just before me said um and we thought that the district should potentially plan for additional um calls an Outreach from parents to teachers and office staff um in the early stages of the transition um another thing we thought might be a potential challenge is just we understood that it's a burden
050to put on teachers to enforce you know a strict removal of all devices and so we think it would be helpful for the district to provide guidance and maybe it's grade specific as to how um teachers should go about making sure te kids don't have SmartWatches and um phones um yeah and also maybe be consistent about the consequences thank you I we'll jump in here no go ahead over there Mike and then David um we had a variety of different uh ideas and opinions and thoughts um one of them was that we'll probably need some parent education on how to use the devices and maybe do more of a lock down on the Apple watches during the day or whatever uh devices they have uh we discussed the concerns of if we're not letting the
051students have apple watches or uh cell phones where are they putting them the phones in the pouches seem like a good idea but I feel like watches might get left behind and then how do we track them down to the owners and things like that uh how are we going to manage that um there are some very uh things that have already happened this year that people have talked about at our table uh for reason reasons why emergency communication might be necessary um so I think somebody already mentioned we need to have a policy of like if they don't have that option what's going to be the policy there and I think those were some of the main things that we we talked about thanks Mike David yeah yeah we had a we had a
052great conversation at this table um one of the things that we all agreed K8 universally is the second bullet was about having smart watches and smart devices all the same we said we should have a unal oh thank you um we said there should be a universal policy from prek to8 so that was one thing that we agreed on very similar to what everyone's saying about the challenges uh on the first bullet um all the same things and the last one we talked a lot about um just about mental health special needs um disabilities um servicing all those pieces and making sure it's clear so that everybody understands what we're how we handle it and how we manage it thank you Rebecca uh yeah we also had a good discussion with some different perspectives at
053our table we also agreed on the second one to that smart watches and other devices should be all the same um one good discussion we had was about Perce with that's a potential challenge of kids feeling unsafe um was about the concept of perceived safety versus real safety and really wanting to emphasize probably through as many have mentioned more training for parents more training for kids or education um that schools are safe places and that during school hours it's the schools that should be keeping our kids safe and really you know the devices don't actually keep them safe but there is a perceived safety so what do we do about that um so we had a good discussion about that and then another thing we talked about um related to enforcement I think that was
054mentioned over here was what is easiest for teachers let's not do something that is going to make their enforcement burden greater um and make that more deal difficult so ideally a policy that is actually decreasing um teachers enforcement burden and not raising ing it thank you just real quick we we had a lot of the same things at this table one thing we didn't haven't heard yet is just that sense from our very helpful young man here said there's going to be kind of a sense of withdrawal or anxiousness or anxiety amongst kids when you take their devices away and what can we do to address that because that will be a very real thing that was your idea huh Ethan that's a great idea thank you for sharing Molly yeah um the one thing
055we talked about is technology is moving faster than any of us can really keep track of and you know we've talked about SmartWatches and personal technology devices and earbuds um but what about AI glasses right any one of us could be wearing those right now and we don't know right so uh one of the things we talked about was how do we write a policy that captures how quickly technology is going to to change so that we don't have to constantly rewrite our policy to keep up with the the technology as it changes that's a great point Thank you did I miss any tables looking around okay before we close I want to throw it back to Dr Bruno Dr David Bruno uh you have an update Jacqueline had a great question and our crack
056research team got the answer yeah shout out to Nancy in the back for helping me get these numbers um so we have 3,100 families in our in our in District 41 multiply that by by two if there's two heads you know of Guardians that would take us to 6,200 roughly um we had 630 responses so we're floating around about 10% where the the the community participated on the other side with staff about 500 staff members we had 150 response so about 30% staff participation those surveys you know that was just two questions that you were looking for so rough data rough percentage but in the guy in the are how does that relate to previous surveys you guys have circulated that's a good question I would you know it's interesting I guess if we use
057like the five essential a to plug make sure you please take your five Essentials if you haven't yet thank you to do that um they also like right the state tracks that around like 20 to 30% too is what they're looking for participation from the schools so you know I mean you can go Plus or negative on that if you want to but I think our other surveys we've we've had higher and we've had lower than that because of whatever the topic is yeah thanks so I want to bring this home for tonight and then I really want to focus on what I think our next steps are as an Administration and regarding this topic and then the next topic instructional technology so with this topic um first of all thank you for coming here
058I do want to read through all the comments and I want to talk to our team about this I do anticipate bringing um some information to the board I'm not sure Dr Bruno what that would look like if March 17th what we would have but I do think there will be an opportunity for the community to hear here's our thinking on this so what I don't believe would happen is we would come everything buttoned up and we just move on something I want to make sure that I am from a process standpoint I can stand behind this process that we're doing but possibly March 17th is when I would be bringing something to the board to talk through as a follow-up on this but again I want to look through all the comments I want
059to talk about it with the team before moving forward there my mind is jumping to the next topic because in those surveys Chromebooks came up a lot and that was almost a feeler survey on what are what are people thinking about Chromebooks what are um kids thinking what are um teachers staff thinking and what are parents thinking and there were a number of different arms of this some of which is how young should we be going kindergarten first grade is that too young um should the Chromebooks be coming home every day especially for our youngest students that was a question on the survey um Should students be allowed to use them during lunch and recess or is do we need to be more targeted do they need to be used at all there were all
060sorts of different perspectives about instructional technology and each one of those is a different arm I feel like we've done a lot of engagement on this topic but it's a fairly narrow topic to have this engagement on on what we're doing the instructional technology part is going to be bigger so what I can tell you is this is an excellent next step toward that and we will be engaging at a I think an even higher level because this is impacting every single student staff member family this is a big one and that this is coming next and we are going to need your engagement so what I can tell you is it is not going to be one committee the whole meeting and we talk and then we make a move on this it's it's
061going to be longer I have some ideas thinking about pulling together a working group running it through various channels um really being thoughtful looking what the research says it's going to take longer though for this topic because there's a lot of different arms to it but I'm looking ahead to that already because people want to talk about that that's many of you in this room likely want to talk about that so that's coming but I think this was step one let's nail this down uh and I I absolutely think by April we'll have that if not sooner um so I just want to thank you for your engagement on this because we were going to try to get out by 8 I don't want to take a lot of closing questions I'm sure there's there's
062a lot what I would recommend if there's something you want for the good of the group we'll have public comment at the end if you'd like to make a public comment you could also hang around afterward I'd be happy to talk you could email me personally your to your your thoughts on this um I do want to engage I just I'm worried that if I open up the questions right now we're going to be here till 10 o'clock um I think the last board meeting was 10:30 so Jess question I just I just want to make sure everybody knows that the board's um current book study is s Khan's Brave new words and Ai and education um and we've done the first three chapters um this meeting and the next meeting we'll do the second
063three chapters so invite you to um follow along with that it's a it's a big interesting discussion it's AI is certainly changing the world at the moment and it has um some very powerful positive things that it could do for education but we always want to be mindful of what our community thinks about that as well and the Catalyst for this really was the board and and I'm grateful that we did that anxious generation book study that we're doing this one because this is the board wants to know what does the community think about this so these opportunities these engagement opportunities uh this is the exciting stuff that will only continue if you want to talk more if you want more thoughts email me directly you are also welcome to email the board but I
064think for right now the balls in my court because I'm and my team are bringing the recommendation I keep saying me because if people are upset I don't want don't yell at my team just come come and yell at me but we're going to be bringing something to the board so if you want your voice to further be heard email me I would be happy to I promise I will read it I will listen I will respond and then just pay attention the March 17th board meeting what's coming in April and we will get that communication out to everybody so on that note because we do want to wrap up tonight there is again going to be public participation at the end if you feel like at this point you're good and you want to
065back out and head out no harm so we'll give a couple minutes for transition but I want to thank you again for coming for taking part in the conversation for not punching and really be involved in an extremely important dialogue that's only going to continue when we talk about instructional technology so thank you so much be before you um take the offer uh that Dr MCU gave you to exit the room as quickly uh as possible I did um as board president and on behalf of my colleagues on the board I I wanted to thank certainly the district for listening to the direction and bringing the cabinet together and putting together a thoughtful multi-layered process for collecting information uh I also want to thank all of you um we this room is full of lots
066lot of people uh lots of smart people who really care and you have put the interest of our children at the Forefront uh and have brought diversity and difference together into this room uh in a way that Schoolboard meetings don't always elaborate um and we created the idea of the committee of the whole because we really wanted to be more in conversation uh with you uh I'm hope I'm glad to hear that the book study proved a catalyst and other book studies perhaps will do the same but this is what a community really of Learners uh really looks like uh and that kind of unity is very inspiring uh to me uh as a as a board member and I think it's true to all of my colleagues and and it fills me with lots
067of Hope and encouragement that we can tackle difficult things uh in this District um and come out at the end with something really smart in which there's plenty of buyin so thank you very much for coming out and spending the evening with us and you're more than welcome to stay through one bit of business that we have to take care of and if you're here for public participation we we'll welcome that opportunity uh otherwise I'll pause for a minute or two and let you transition if you'd like to do that um but give yourself a give yourself an Applause [Applause] please e e e item one business item board that we have to address and this is uh on that other little project we got going the full day kindergarten Center um and this is
068about a project bid results uh on the Bloomington road work as part of the kindergarten Center projects enhancements are required to be completed on Bloomington Road the district construction manager fqc received bids connected to the required road work on Bloomington Road and are now presented for approval what am I saying Bloomington well yeah okay well we'll go to Bloomington Road next yeah correction Bloomington Bloomingdale why do it be in Bloomington I can't read yeah all right Bloomingdale Road may I have a motion for the board to accept the bid for the blooming Dale Road work by Abby Paving for a total of $574,950 and authorized assistant superintendent of Finance facilities and operations Eric deporter to execute the appropriate contracts with the trade contract contractor outlining in the fqc recommendation letter to be paid out of
069the Kindergarten Center budget you get that great I need a second any discussion Mrs Mo roll call Mr eses yes Mrs buter yes Mrs Sayad yes Mrs Hill yes Dr M yes Mr lobach yes Dr Bruno yes thank you and then uh public participation members of the public who wish to address the board should sign in with Mrs Mo the board recor secretary speakers are asked to maintain respectful deorum and limit comments to 3 minutes or less at around 30 seconds ago on your time I'll politely ask you to wrap it up Mrs Boke anyone willing interested we have two Chris Martelli Chris would you come up here to the podium and make sure the green light is on first of all thank you to Dr Miku and the board for tonight's event this has
070been very helpful and a very critical topic um I don't know if I was reading your mind or if you were reading my mind but everything I want to say tonight is around educational technology so this sounds like it will be the next conversation to be had uh but my name is Chris marelli I have two children that attend District 41 schools one's in second grade one's in fourth grade I've also been a public school educator educator for the past 28 years and I'm speaking tonight as a parent and educator and share Dr Hattie's concerns he's the one who wrote the anxious generation the technology is adversely adversely impacting our youth in a variety of ways one of the questions I continue to ask myself as a professional is what does technology what role does
071technology play in our students lives while at school and this is a question that I hope the Educators here in District 41 are asking as well I know better than most that every resource a school now considers for instruction comes with an online component and while this isn't entirely bad we must consider the amount of screen time our students are exposed to while at school as the evidence would suggest putting the developing brain in front of screens instead of a more authentic learning experience is not beneficial to the child's academic progress or their social emotional well-being we mustn't fall captive to the notion that online learning applications or instructional asynchronous formats can somehow replace what teacher what a teacher is better suited to provide does technology play a role in filling the gaps in learning
072and assist in individualizing the instruction to better meet the needs of all children yes and it should be utilized to meet these individual needs but it must be done with balance and with a clear understanding of how much time should be spent in The Silo of a Chromebook while we first when we first moved here to Glenn Allen District 41 was praised for its opportunities to engage students in problem-based learning experiences these experiences were based on real life issues that require critical thinking collaboration creativity and the ability to communicate with others it appears that these expectations have been replaced with Ayn instruction from a device so I would ask that d41 consider reducing the presence of screens and technology in our classrooms and return to a more authentic learning opportunities thank you thank you Dr
073Martelli hel basaki I know that this meeting is centered around the Electronics policy and so my public comment might be a bit off topic although really quickly just to hop on what uh Martelli said um I also had students in D4 children in d41 before preco and Chromebooks were not um a thing for I don't remember what first grade you first got a Chromebook but it was for sure not kindergarten first grade I don't quite remember second grade if my son had had one preo so it would be great if we could return to that um especially because they don't use them at home so to bring them home every day seems a little extra but um firstly I think I know a lot of parents have left but I wanted to commend the parents
074that brought this topic to the administration and the school board and put into whatever motions took place to lead to tonight happening I'm both proud of you and also jealous of you um for about five years now I have begged and pleaded with every administrative level in District 41 to had a meeting or discussion like tonight happened surrounding the literacy curriculum that we previously had to this past August and also um a community meeting about intervention services special education and kind of the issues that a lot of parents have had with all of the above I've only been met with um dismissal patronizing we hear you but with no action I started this off in 2019 super patient polite professional all with the naive that they just didn't realize what was going on how many
075students needed outside Services how much money parents have spent to supplement with the district should have been providing and I thought just by staying after it surely one day someone would listen and do something about it or at least engage in a discussion about it um like I said that started in 2019 and here we are in 2025 um and I have with taking minor breaks have not stopped in this whole time um over the years I've amassed hundreds of parents that have agreed with me and shared with me their heartbreaking stories many teachers that have asked to remain anonymous but all agreed with me and um having done that for oh dear um the board will remember that last spring I asked for a survey to be sent out asking parents similar to what
076you guys received about electronic communication um just asking how many pay for tutors how many use academ other academic programs to supplement their children's education to ask about their comments and concerns with intervention services and special education and I um asked if we could have a meeting just like this one to get the community together so parents voices could be heard and I was told in so many words that that was a rid ridiculous ask and yet I stand here today with that exact thing happening on a completely different topic that is completely valid however I'm hoping that many parents could also put their voices towards the special education needs and conversations we need to have um so that we can have a conversation like tonight happen again in the future on academic topics thank
077you thank you Helen thank you very much Megan H um so I have kind of two topics I wanted to mention to the board and the broader people that attended the board meeting today the first one um is on black Plastics and the renewal of the lunch contract that I believe is up I don't know when the board's supposed to vote on it but um I I think it is something that the community cares about I didn't bring stats with I was talking came for the other topic today but um I just want you guys to be well aware that Forest gland has a very robust one Earth Community you have over 50 fourth and fifth graders combined that choose to give up their lunch hour and recess to sit and learn about the Earth
078and what they could do better and are proactively changing the school um and lots of students have opted not to eat the school lunch because of the black plastic um my children no longer eat it I have I could give you a lot of parents here that have pulled their school lunch funding and are no longer paying for it but I think I'm someone that provides my child a lunch and I think we should be the voice for the people that are actually on the student School provide lunches because they don't have a parent maybe here or that can actually give them a cold lunch to bring to school um I just urge you to really do your research on the black black plastic before you guys sign that contract as someone who signs up
079vendors you should know what your vendor is giving you before you sign up with them so make sure um you know they're not giving our kids cancer and I challenge you to think do you put your food back in the microwave and zap it with the microwave and then eat it I'll happily bring you all black plastic lunches and feed them to you for dinner at the board meeting here I don't think you do that I don't do that at my house I don't read microwave black plastic we've been trained not to microwave plastic and that's what our kids are eating out of it sits in the black plastic they get hot lasagna for like 3 hours and then they're giv their their lunch so just really think about it before you vote on that
080I'd happy to talk more um but my second topic was the Chromebooks I think there's a shortterm solution and a long-term solution I think there's a lot of FaceTime that is given to the elementary school with the Chromebooks you could short-term cut it out of indoor recess you could cut it out of the free time um I actually think they shouldn't read on them right they're there in elementary school to learn to read and the number of children that have headphones on that are reading to them and the number of children that were struggling with the reading stats is uh almost appalling in my opinion and then do phase two right cuz it's going to take time to get budget approval to get hard textbooks back into the school but our recess our indoor recess
081our gym time our free time should not be spent on the Chromebooks an anxious generation that's directly linked to this ma convers seconds please oh perfect I'll keep going then so I just think we should do a shortterm approach and and make our children socialize again bring out Legos bring Hands-On activities because my children play Minecraft on their Chromebooks and that's not I think what the point's there and I think you should educate parents how to lock them down I've asked the school and the school doesn't actually know what bloxy does they changed it from last year to this year but you can actually make your Chromebook not have Wi-Fi when it walks in your house I don't think parents know that so thank you very much thank you m Caroline Kirk oh look at
082this kids don't bring out their phones during the day I almost never get messages and if I do I won't read it unless it's from a family member even if I do receive a message I I always wait until my teacher is done talking then I quickly say I'm in class I when I have a when I whenever I get a message I always wait until my teacher is done talking talking like I said and like if there's like a little bit of free time like my science teacher she gives us free time like for like 5 minutes but and I don't use that to go on my phone but like if I get like a message or something then I'll quickly go on my watch and respond with I'm in uh school right now
083and I can text you back in lunch and I know we're not supposed to have phones during lunch either but whoa we'll edit that out um but like it's important because if it's from my mom or something then I always know I need to respond just in case there's something going on like there's a family emergency and for the Chromebook and also um my bus like it gets late a lot like my like I've switched bus drivers several times and like for the first couple of weeks of school um we had um it was like late like it would be like an hour late so like it that was complicated and I had to tell my mom because I have a lot of after school activities um and for the Chromebooks I understand that people
084get distracted with them um but they also but like in Middle School most of the Chromebook uses um they're for homework and a lot of kids um do use it for um homework like I was just doing it in the back of over there um so yeah thank you very much okay well thank you all thank you very much all right we will uh close here by noting that our next regular board meeting is Monday March 17th here at 6:30 uh and then we will have a regular board meeting also on April uh 24th uh uh 21st I'm sorry again here uh and then the first Monday in May the regular Board of Education reorganizational meeting which always happens after the Consolidated spring elections all right with that we do have a reason to go
085into close session so may have a motion to adjourn the close session to confidentially discuss section 2c1 the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees second thank you any discussion roll call Mrs Mo Dr Michael Mr Loach yes Mrs buer yes Mr Estes yes Mrs Hill yes Mrs Sayad yes Dr Bruno yes thank you all the board will not be taking any action after close session have a good evening