001okay bob all right thank you the september 14 2020 board of education regular workshop meeting will now come to order mr loebach will you lead us in the pledge of allegiance please yes i pledge allegiance allegiance to the flag of the united states of america of america and to the republic public for which it stands one nation a nation under god under god indivisible visible with liberty and justice justice for all miss smoke roll call please mrs buttimer jess you're on you sorry here mr estes here mr lobock here mr curry mr guzman mrs hill here dr bruno here i want to thank all of our zoom participants and just remind them that unless they're speaking to please put themselves on you as we begin our meeting i would like to note that due to
002the coven 19 disaster and in-person meeting of the board was not prudent feasible or practical for members of the board and the public mrs milk and myself for president at the central services office as provided for in section 75 of the opec meetings act board member participation is being conducted electronically and the meeting is viewable by the public by live stream through the district's website and public participation will be provided through email and a portal viewable by the board and the public watching the live stream of the meeting details for public viewing and participation were posted on tonight's agenda in the district members of the public who wish to make public comment virtually during the live stream board of education were invited to complete and submit a form earlier today the four individuals who did
003so will be admitted to the meeting via zoom by director of technology mike wood speakers will have up to three minutes for public comment which must adhere to board policy 2 230 public participation at school board meetings and petitions to the board any comments not completed can be forwarded to mrs moak and will be attached to the approved minutes so the first person wishing to make public comment via zoom is soha khan i think i'm struggling to connect right now bob okay so let's um go to the next person and then we'll uh come back uh to this individual if they're able to get on all right uh the next one and i'm my apologies if i do not pronounce this correctly but it's soon michael do you have no i'm not seeing that one
004in the waiting room right now bob all right then let's go to the next person on the list um uh jess in gaglia jess can you hear us yep i can hear you guys all right wonderful jess you can begin you have three minutes all right perfect so actually bob i'm actually going to direct this speech towards you um so since you have taken control over how our children learn during this pandemic i find it interesting for the man who has taken um learning from our children during this pandemic i find it interesting for the man who is president of our school board and you quite honestly don't have any skin in the game you don't have any children in the district and while you're highly educated let's not forget where your loyalties lie they
005are very pro-union so who are you working for the best interest of our kids or for the teachers because based on your action and your voting record during this pandemic it is clear that you are that you are working for the teachers and not our kids i find it so interesting that you as a professor when given the option to teach in the classroom you opted to do it you gave your students the courtesy of in-person learning yet you're robbing our children of that why the double standard if you look at the data which you're so much about college-age students are the ones who currently seem to be contracting covid and spreading it but by no means are they hospitalized or dying yet when you look at that same age group in our district it
006it virtually is non-existent so much so that as of this afternoon and for glenn allen in the last two weeks we've had one case in the age group of five to 14 and eight cases between the ages of 15 and 19. and yes i do understand that there are other kids from other towns but bob quit writing this hail of doom and gloom when the reality is that we have passed the pandemic and there is data to prove it i'll also draw you to the georgia high school that made national headlines in the beginning of august with jam-packed hallways and not everyone had masks on people were horrified by that photo however here's the truth they are a community district and as of today they have 20 241 students in school and a staff of
0072 928 and in the last two weeks they've only had 98 confirmed cases of covet they are normalizing playing sports and letting their kids be back in the classroom because they see the benefit it is made clear that you're working on behalf of the teachers and their union you claim on your u of i website that you became a professor because it was the best way for you to act on behalf of the working class yes glenn allen is not all blue collar workers but we are a town that works very hard in our own careers and have not taken and you have not taken those who work outside of the home and to consider what into consideration when formulating any of your plans yes 30 seconds okay we don't need a school board president
008who is trying to emulate the obama era all showing no results we need a school board president who truly works in the best interest of the american people and the children and so far that's not you it's time to push up your sleeves and stop being everyone's friend we demand results and action get these kids back in school in the next 30 days thank you jess uh mike before you before you invite the next person hold up while one second someone has actually come into the building here hold on okay i'm sorry that was uh just actually someone giving me some direction on um setting the alarm uh in the building so we're we're all good uh thank you all right michael did uh it looks like our it looks like is that miss khan
009is that soho khan or sang who's who's entered i believe i have um abigail emerson in the waiting room and yes we can ask her to unmute oh abigail okay that's just abigail that's the only person you have in the waiting room correct right now all right that's good yes let's bring abigail out abigail can you hear us yes hi hey you're good okay you can start you have three minutes okay thank you for having me um my husband and i made the difficult decision to pull our first and third graders from d41 and enroll them in private school for in-person learning he and i work full-time and are used to paying for full-time child care so we were fortunate enough to have the choice to do that for another year a choice that so
010many families that need full-time in-person school and who feel as we do the risk is well worth it cannot make for financial reasons or because private schools are now full a choice and a right that was taken away from them without their consent and without their involvement as we all know at private schools the existence the success and the employment of staff relies on tuition so there's direct accountability to deliver on the promises it makes to paying families so they have to get creative to stay operational and they are mass mass and social distancing where feasible is of course in place there's creative use of space indoor and outdoor daily student attestations minimal class switching blender desks mass breaks multiple short scheduled recesses to keep students moving and to maximize outdoor time under tents there
011was almost a full teacher of attention from the year before no requests for special accommodations although they were offered it they weren't fed misleading fearful information their jobs weren't held hostage for not falling in line with the union agenda and like in every other industry if they choose not to do their job or do a good job in the safe environment that was created for them they don't get paid based on conversations with teachers we know that most of them want to be back in the classroom they dislike remote learning as much or more than the kids they want to be there for our children and like in the private schools they pride themselves in helping deliver on the promises made by the school and helping create a better future for our kids it's why
012many of them became teachers in the first place and the only way for them to do this is for the board in the administration to go against union lines to get creative and take the lead to reopen schools now for this entire community i got both my my kids tested for cova twice and 13 days for slight runny noses they were crying hated it but i would do it every single week if it meant that they continued to come home with energized stories of what they did in school a new person they met and connected with face to face a good job in a worksheet corrected in pen with a smiley sticker and even the tougher moments when dealing with an unkind social exchange or for getting something at home it's all part of their
013development path and it's crucial to their success and their happiness and it's abigail you have 30 seconds please okay and it's crucial for many family family units to continue to function much less thrive i know that many have been waiting with beta brass to see how it goes at schools that are open so i'm here to assure you that first of all the kids generally do not care about the mass the kids are happy the teachers are happy we're healthy and staying stay cool and it's time to get d41 open so the rest of the families can get back on track and they're able to access the same opportunities as private schools and surrounding districts that are opening thanks thank you abigail individuals were also invited to submit comments by email before 5 pm today
014at this time we've received 9 emails any emails received after 5 pm we will be forwarded to the board after the meeting and posted with the official minutes once approved i will now read the emails received by email and the first one is from vanessa plath as a parent of two elementary students in your district i am asking why our children are not in school in person and what is being done to get them in the classroom on september 4th you sent an email entitled what does it take to get kids back in person and stay in person at school in that email you provided no information on what has been done or what you are doing to get us back in school the lack of transparency is concerning please respond to your bullet points
015so the community can actually know what it takes to get kids back in person and stay in person at school health data please let us know what exact metrics you need to see for our children to return to school when are we and where do the numbers need to go for our children to return to school under the current dchd framework we appear to be in the moderate community transmission guideline which encourages a hybrid in-person virtual education model staffing do we have staffing shortages what are you doing to fill these positions for our children to return to school safety protocols and equipment do you have the personal protective equipment and sanitizing products if you do not why not and what is your plan to obtain them our children are at a disadvantage and your message
016has been very unclear as a board you need to be held accountable for your decisions and hold the district accountable for theirs it appears that you are not doing what is in the best interest of our children and as a concerned parent and community member i want to know why i believe my questions are clear and warrant a clear response in my communication with dr k i was unable to receive a clear response therefore i'm asking the board for answers now thank you the next person is marie de soltails sotos excuse me and marie has a fourth second in kindergarten student at lincoln i'd like to state my concerns with e-learning and strongly encourage the board to consider moving to the hybrid plan earlier than 1031 for the following reasons the first one surrounding schools
017both private and public have had success with a hybrid program with no major shutdowns including say pets st james and public preschools uh number two according to idph positivity rate is in zip code 60137 4.4 that is under the five percent d41 committed to this summer as the rate acceptable for a london model if the model is changed the community needs a tangible metric as a goal this cannot continue to be open-ended three e-learning is not engaging our youngest learners for children who can't type or read yet this is an almost impossible feat it requires an audit to sit near them the entire session oh an adult i'm sorry it requires teachers to redirect students over screens number four this is not sustainable our children social and emotional well-being are at stake and number five
018for teachers feel fearful of their health ppe works there is no spike in health care workers that have worn ppe if teachers need better or more ppe i'm happy to start a gofundme and know many parents would support this they should not have to sacrifice on this thank you to our teachers and administrators we all know this has been a long hard road and you've worked very hard to give us everything you can through e-learning our numbers are now acceptable let's kid let's get kids back to school sooner than november and number three dan cassander's i am saddened by the recent decision to push in-class learning another six weeks the data that accompany the decision is absolutely meager sad for my children who i have watched struggle mentally saddened for those families that don't have
019a desk or dedicated space within their small homes or apartments to do their schoolwork i'm so proud of the states and schools that have led the valiant effort of managing life in a new way and doing it face to face courageous being a leader in these times is all about making incredibly hard decisions that involve creative solutions the decision the district made was easy and cowardly i'd like to share a question my daughter asked me recently dad why is it that i can hang out with all my friends on the weekend but i can't go to school with them life is moving forward you all are not we have to manage this or the continual profound side effects will cascade into major mental health challenges as well as drugs and or alcohol addiction your decisions
020are having profound impacts on our children this will continue to further educational or economically divide especially with families that can't throw a ton of money at this challenge please step up and be courageous leaders and this is from stacy harvey i am writing today with great concern about our district's current position on in-person learning and the lack of benchmarks that have been shared with the public regarding when students will return to the classroom much has been said by those advocating for our district to remain exclusively in an e-learning platform regarding science and the data driving these decisions some have called into question those in the community who are advocating for return to the classroom by insisting the science doesn't support it while i agree that many are making an emotional appeal for the return to
021in person because of the alarming social and emotional tolls the current setup is causing among our youth the data and science also support the argument that a hybrid return to school within the month for a district is not only possible but safe i took some time this morning to look at recent stats her nbc news confirmed coveted tracker as of today the state of illinois positivity rate is 3.7 percent with glenn ellen's positivity rate at 3.2 for illinois department of health's website as of today 328 of the 3754 icu beds in the state are in use meaning 91.3 of beds are unoccupied additionally 136 of 5727 staff ventilators in the state are in use meaning 97.7 of ventilators remain unused again to cite cdc overall positivity rates pr visits related to covid and hospitalization are
022all on a decreasing trend over the past eight weeks and that has been a time of return to schools and colleges in many areas it's important to note that on college campuses where cases are up hospitalizations remain almost non-existent for covert related issues the numbers and data support a serious effort to provide students and families with an option for some form of in-person learning and immediate future for all students k-8 why was the initial 10 30 potential return date chosen is it because of lack of staffing where does our district stand on long-term substitute teacher hirings many of these questions remain in the community and should be addressed to provide transparency there are many schools all around us either in person or accelerating the return to hybrid options with success private parochial and certain public
023schools are returned and are managing to maintain their plans while addressing any outbreaks a district with noting while out of state is cherokee county georgia operating at three feet social distancing a student body of 42 000 and a staff of 4 800 as of last week there were 27 active cases this data pulled from their official district website this is five weeks into their in-person school year districts are successfully navigating tracking and isolating outbreaks district 41 has the means to do the same if we put our mind to it we can allow those staff and students who feel vulnerable to maintain remote learning but the overwhelming majority of both the teacher and student population is not at risk for severe complications from covid and we are seeing school district day care and learning pods across
024the country currently providing evidence of that i implore you to find a path back to the classroom we know it is possible given the proposed hybrid plan while there are no while there are new guidelines that the illinois department of public health has rolled out to make it more difficult there are schools and district finding ways to navigate let's learn from them quickly and implement the community and family support for this is huge we support our teachers staff and students and continue to learn from the real-time data coming out which affirms the ability to return in a way that is reasonable and safe while maintaining the option to move to e-learning should conditions change our students social emotional mental and academic well-being depend on it thank you for your efforts on their behalf the next
025one is aaron pavlich i would like to comment on the decision whether or not to return to in-person instruction and policies for returning to the classroom i am a mother of a kindergarten second grader who i would very much like to have in person in school previously my kids were signed up for the hybrid schedule that said i realized that we were in a pandemic i know that the perfect situation is not possible and then i cannot expect any part of education to be as if there was no pandemic i suggest the board do the same i caution any rush back to the classroom for the following reasons one coven 19 infection rates have not improved since the time the district has decided to go fully remote the cobia 19 rates in glendale have continued
026to worsen if infection rates justified a shift to all or in learning in august rates certainly do not justify a shift back to in-person world number two any reopening plan must include a plan to stay open we cannot have our children switching back and forth from in-person to online instruction every time there's a case identified not only is this educationally disruptive but most parents especially those who work will not be able to constantly switch gears without having to quit their jobs so long as we adhere to an e-learning model that lacks flexibility what we have today we cannot switch back and forth on a regular basis many parents scrambled and made arrangements to deal with the current system such as by hiring a nanny or signing up for the ymca program sadly many parents chose
027to leave the district altogether if we switch back to in-person learning that support system will have to be abandoned if such a support system is abandoned and cannot be easily reactivated for every shutdown leaving parents and alerts and in need of care therefore if we're going to reopen schools the plan must ensure that kids are not going to be sent home every time there's a new infection and that online learning be more flexible to meet the needs of working parents you might argue that parents who are concerned keep their children all online however for those of us who are saying our kids to the ymca or other similar programs these programs will likely close if school is reopened leaving us with no choice but to ride the open close roller coaster third point we must
028consider our teachers needs our teachers have done a really good job adapting to online learning and they need to be commended however we need to keep in mind that they have their health and their families that they must juggle too we must show respect for our teachers and their hard work by not expecting them to constantly uproot their lives and their child care arrangements due to constantly changing course with regards to online in-person learning and four we must consider the mental health of our students children and teachers while we all want to be back in the classroom together constant changes and uncertainty are very hard on our children parents and teachers one of our most important goals should be protecting mental health by providing the most stable environment possible this may mean prolonged online learning
029until we can ensure schools can stay open thanks for taking the time to consider the need to find a stable long-term reopening plan for our entire district families including students teachers and parents the next comment comes from ryan potts thank you for your service i serve on several boards myself so i can empathize with a difficult decision that you're all being forced to make that said you've been elected to make difficult decisions and i'm not ashamed to admit that the burden on your board service is much greater than any burden i have been shouldering for in your service you carry the immense responsibility of ensuring that thousands of children from all different social economic walks of life go as readers problem solvers mathematicians friends and personalities i wanted to take this short note to tell
030you that you are failing in that responsibility i cannot tell you how absolutely disgusted i was to receive president bruno's email on the first day of school adding the board on on the back for the work that clearly wasn't done in working toward educating our students in person the concept that families were yelling to him that they were ready for e-learning and excited to be locked up in their rooms all day blankly staring at screens from their porches was too much to be believed and too upsetting to immediately comment without a chilling period sadly that email showed the respect that this board has for its constituents that we're a bunch of lemmings that will believe whatever junk is thrown our way i could go on and on about what science were really following what the
031real risks are here what the real impediments to returning score why our children our teachers and our families are being deprived of a choice as to risk tolerance and educational options but at this point it's quite clear that the decisions are and have been made for us with mary a survey being issued or desired endpoint being asked the board's action tonight tonight even meet in person despite guidance suggesting an in-person meeting is accessible despite the village of glenellen board meeting in person and despite thousands of other boards and companies and schools meeting in person daily says everything about d41's commitment to in-person learning if the board's action can be read as any indication as to the board's commitment to in-person learning debate meeting continued homeschooling for d41 student is afraid to complete with that now
032being known the least the d41 board can do is shoot straight with us for once and tell us we're not going back to school this semester so we can plan our lives accordingly and ensure that our kids get the education they deserve and that we pay for because what they're receiving now and what they're receiving in the spring does not meet even the lowest educational standard this is a failed experiment the longer this carries on without in-person learning the board's leadership fair will also become more apparent to the masses it's not too late to change course in the alternative at least shoot straight with us so we can independently plan for our children's education and next is christy kovich although many of you may already know me i would like to quickly introduce myself my
033name is christy kovich and i have a fourth grade boy a second grade girl and a kindergarten boy at ben franklin i am a d41 parent by a but i'm also a licensed educator i have my degree in elementary education my master's in gifted education and my esl endorsement i've taught various areas at the elementary level since 2003 including k through fifth grade intervention for math and reading first grade through third grade remotely last spring at the first grade level and i am currently completing my paperwork to become a substitute for district 41. i believe i have a substantial background knowledge as a parent and a teacher to objectively evaluate our current e-learning situation in district 41. i love the teachers and administrators at ben franklin both have worked endlessly to benefit our children past
034and present i have endlessly supported our teachers because as we know if our teachers aren't strong our kids suffer i have spent hours campaigning for some of you on the board because i believe you were the right candidates who support our kids and do what is best for our kids and clearly this is not happening i have sat through almost four weeks of remote learning with my children spending the most time with my kindergarten and second grader if you are not aware of what children this level should be learning in school please ever remind you they are learning to read they are learning to read this means that they are not able to navigate new content they are not able to write a response to their teachers currently what they are doing is becoming extremely
035frustrated and ultimately hating school they are crying before having to log in because they get frustrated and confused if they don't understand the directions from the teachers or they have technical difficulties or they simply feel isolated from their peers they are not learning they're not learning to read the major focus for children at this grade level this is causing so much harm then you apparently realize our foundations for early learning are failing remote learning has basically wiped out every valid successful teaching strategy active learning visualization differentiation guided instruction benchmarking to drive instruction cooperative learning well this goes on and on if we continue with remote learning in this manner our students will be left in the dark not only emotionally but also academically according to the children's reading foundation 74 of the struggling leaders will
036not catch up after third grade they will lag in every class year after year because more than 85 percent of the curriculum is taught by reading our district should start preparing for the majority of students who will be below grade level if we continue in this matter i challenge you to sit in on a kindergarten google meets class our teachers are working 10 times harder with half of the necessary outcome please reflect on how engaging a 22 person adult zoom meeting is and then equate that to an online kindergarten class of 22 students on the local level i have seen many organizations go back in person with success preschools park districts private schools and even local school districts just down the street including wheaton 200 bloomingdale and oak brook this should be an indicator that
037in-person learning can work in a safe manner our d41 community is only seeing a lack of leadership on the part of our board of education you as the board of education represent us as a community us may mean those who choose to remain learning remotely or us may mean those pleading for in-person learning in some form all should have the option to choose it is your responsibility to make sure our teachers feel safe enough to return it is your responsibility to provide a safe and secure environment for in-person learning it is your responsibility to provide our community with a meaningful and valuable education it is your responsibility to do what is best for our children our vote gave you that responsibility okay just two more folks uh mark fournier uh i am unfortunately uh please
038share this message i am unfortunately unavailable to attend this meeting due to a conflict we appreciate your time and commitment to our district school board function and increased consideration required during this covet impacted school year our family maintains our objection to the initial decision to start the 41 school year under an e-learning process and its continued failure on student learning the direct and indirect negative impacts for even a temporary e-learning scenario is detrimental to medical mental and physical health of our students and teachers in an effort to improve the situation enable us to return to in-person learning we ask that you provide additional surveys to our village citizens enabling a wide range of responses and suggestions to your current e-learning process i and i presume many others are willing to assist in developing an appropriate
039survey that captures comprehensive feedback in a timely manner for immediate implementation for one improvement to our current e-learning curriculum two suggested e-learning process changes three suggested methods to implement return to in-person learning asap or at least by halloween as previously suggested by the board cdc and the federal government other questions and concerns that have been raised in prior correspondence and board meetings but have yet to be fully answered prior to the commencement of the school year's e-learning decisions are what is the cur current covet case count among active d-41 faculty and what is the positive negative covet test ratio for d41 faculty what are these same case rates for d41 citizens uh if not yet obtained has the d41 board solicited this information from the idph so that it may be shared with a village
040in order for all of us to effectively participate in the decisions required to return our students to in-person learning one portion of the decision to start with 100 e-learning was attributed to the teacher slash faculties union leadership what was communicated by the teachers union to its members prior to their initial decision to advocate any learning to this people on board for your decision what were the initial and current votes positioned by all d41 teachers on whether to a return immediately to in-person learning in our schools with recommended safety protocols in place as is occurring across the nation b start continuity learning for the 2020 school year seven how many d41 faculty have submitted doctor's notes saying that they cannot return to the classroom how did the quantity of these requests measure up to the locally
041available substitute teacher pool and again to the regionally available pool per qualified curriculum eight what is d41 doing to change the infrastructure in the school to keep students safe private schools here and schools and other nations have made glass plastic barriers work effectively and finally what does the d41 faculty utilize sip time for during the covered school shutdown how is this time utilized for faculty to effectively communicate to approve school plan and the last comment is from jesse garman first we want to thank our fantastic preschool parents who have embraced your most remote learning and worked alongside us for the past three weeks to meet the needs of our students thank you parents for supporting us and being flexible with us as we learn how to navigate remote learning together secondly we want to thank
042our administration for answering our countless questions and supporting us behind the scenes while we recognize the need for our youngest learner to be physically present in school we want to highlight the current conditions of our classrooms five of the six of our preschool classrooms do not have any tables of furniture for children to sit at and more importantly socially distanced from one another as resources have been shifted around in the building in addition to the physical needs of the environment we also need written procedures around cleaning protocols mass protocols if a student struggles to wear a mask toileting diapering procedures for staff and children and sac procedures while we understand that these procedures and protocols will be made for the general kindergarten to fifth grade population this preschool program has specific needs that require protocols
043with different accommodations than k-5 these policies and procedures need to be clearly written and communicated to both staff and families prior to coming back in person our program is not physically ready to quickly shift into hybrid learning learning and preschool requires strategic planning implementation and thoughtful classroom setup to meet requirements such as a preschool for all grant and developmentally appropriate practices this requires advanced notice and time in order to fulfill the high learning expectations of the d41 community due to the circumstances of covid19 the early childhood classroom will need a substantial overhaul of materials in order to be safe and successful we know that you will do right by our youngest learners as we continue to work towards their educational and social emotional needs in an ever-changing climate be present each day knowing that no
044matter the course of events we're going forward shoulder to shoulder normal times will return and when they do we will get there together and jesse appears to be me or at least she attributes the quote uh to me so i want to thank all of our public commenters including those of us who joined us by zoom and those uh who submitted email uh thank you uh to all of you okay we will now move into the presentation part of the meeting and up first we have a mandated title ix trading for board members and we have a special guest to lead us in that training melissa will you introduce our guest all righty from our legal counsel of franzik we have jackie warns with us tonight um district admin has sat through our mandated training
045but the board tonight gets the pleasure to do theirs so jackie it's all yours thank you melissa and thank you to the board um for having me i know that um with everything that is going on it's a lot to ask to take your time to talk about uh title ix but as melissa mentioned it is part of the requirements in new regulations that were released in may of 2020 and which became um a final rule that became effective on august 14 2020. um nancy i don't know if i can share my screen is that possible for the powerpoint yeah so i made you a co-host you should be able to share okay let me just start my slideshow and i will do that thank you so one thing that i do um request um
046as far as with the board is to when i do this with boards is just um to hold the questions until the end i know you'll have questions um you are lucky the the training for the title nine team members is three times as long as this training so um you are you even though i know it will probably feel um but it'll feel like a long time that we're together it is actually very short for the amount of information that we're gonna be covering okay so i've shared that hopefully you are able to see it so um let's jump in so just again to kind of talk about the why why are we here um today and why why are we taking your time for this as i mentioned there were major changes to
047the title ix regulations and specifically the um sexual harassment regulations the regulations just to put in perspective are like your administrative procedures so the law is like your policy and then the regulations are the administrative procedure that are put into place by the um department of education and specifically its office for civil rights which oversees the enforcement of title ix and so those regulations as i mentioned went into effect on august 14th and they do require that everyone who has a formal role in the title ix process receive certain training and so because there is a potential that down the road you all might as a board be called to do that that is why you are receiving this training today essentially because it is required but that said i wanted to talk briefly about
048why this is important other than the fact that it is required by the law because obviously um i know we we all in this space in education we do like to make sure that we check off the boxes but there are bigger pictures as well and so what we know from a significant amount of research and i've got some of that research here on this slide is that sexual harassment is extremely prevalent in both our communities and in our schools so one in four women reports experiencing sexual harassment or sorry sexual assault before the age of 18. 10 of children report that they are the targets of sexual misconduct by an educator before high school graduation almost 50 percent of u.s students report that they have been subject to some type of sexual harassment by
049some perpetrator whether it's an employee or another student before graduating from high school and we know that this conduct has moved online with a very large number of students who report that they have been the subject of sex-based misconduct including bullying on the internet and yet even though we know that sexual harassment is prevalent in our communities and in our schools according to a 2017 report from the u.s justice department only 23 percent of all sexual assaults are reported to the police and you might think that that means that students have turned to or employees have turned to their schools their employers in order to get help when they experience sexual misconduct but that's not true either so this data here from the 2015-2016 school year which was at the height of the obama administration's
050very robust enforcement of title ix and of sexual harassment only 21 of schools in this country reported even one incident of sex based harassment or misconduct in their schools and this really doesn't add up when you think about the statistics we just talked about it's not possible that students aren't experiencing sexual harassment in a higher number within the school environment than this but what we know is that even in a context when many people believed that the title ix rules were very complainant friendly with the complainant being the victim of sexual harassment and that they were very unfriendly to respondents who are the individuals who have been accused of sexual harassment even when that was the case only 21 of schools reported even one incident of sexual harassment and so what we're going to talk
051about today is that the new regulations that your schools are going to be implementing are they kind of swung to the opposite end of the spectrum at least that's what you hear in the media when you hear talk about these rules they are much stricter on complainants they require many burdensome steps that many feel are going to lead complainants to be even less likely to report sexual harassment and so against this backdrop it becomes extremely important for you and for the administrators who are implementing uh this rule in your school district that they are aware of what the rule does require and what it doesn't require and of the protections that are still in place for victims one of the questions that i have received the most i would say from boards is well what
052can we do about this we want our community to feel safe and to feel that they can report these things to us and i would say that once you see what this process looks like that depending on how you look at it there are actually a lot of protections that are still there for both parties for all parties in the process and so focusing your community on that is going to be key and then also making sure that you all and that your administrators are implementing these rules with fidelity so that they don't make it harder even inadvertently for the parties than it has to be the reason it's so important that we get people to the help that they need when they've experienced sexual harassment is because we know that sexual harassment and assault
053can have long lasting and detrimental effects on victims whether it's impacts on the victim as an individual or impact on the larger team or community we see that there are significant impacts of sexual harassment and assault and one thing to note about these new title ix regulations is that for the first time the department of education has said that these clearly apply to employee complaints of sexual harassment even employee on employee complaints of sexual harassment which is a big change we tend to think of title ix as being a student-focused rule or law but that is not the case anymore and so it's important to remember that these effects they can impact not just your learning environment but also your work environment as well we also know that unfair processes have long lasting and detrimental
054effects on the parties on the complainant and the respondent so one of the real drivers of these new regulations was a sentiment across the country that under ocr's previous guidance and and um case determinations that really if you were alleged to have been if you were alleged to have committed sexual harassment or discrimination or assault that you essentially couldn't win that the rules were were very tipped in favor of the complainant and didn't protect the rights of the respondent and so the department of education's new rules really shine a light on the need to provide fair processes in title ix sexual harassment complaints for both complainants and respondents the law also it does require that school districts respond to sexual harassment and failure to do so can lead to complaints either in the department of
055education's office for civil rights or in the courts so i actually um i worked i've worked for forensics since i was a baby lawyer um but i left franzik in 2016 at the beginning of the year to go to work for the department of education's office for civil rights and i was there until the end of 2018 so i went in under the obama administration and came out after working for some time under the trump administration so i really got to see both sides of kind of how enforcement takes place and one thing i can tell you is that regardless of who's in charge you did not want me knocking on your door saying that someone has believed that you mishandled a civil rights complaint because it is it's lengthy it takes up a lot
056of resources you would have to call frantic to get someone to help um and so it's just something we really want to avoid and then obviously with lawsuits we definitely want to avoid those to the to the extent that we can because they are extremely costly even if they end up in a settlement it usually is is it's unfairly um expensive for everyone who's involved so we want to keep the district from running into these types of legal challenges if at all possible so the next question i have to talk through with you is is just a more general what is title ix we've talked about why we're here and why this is important but okay what are we even talking about here what is title ix and i often ask people to think of
057what's the first word that pops into your head when you hear title ix and for many people when they think of title ix they think of sports and that makes sense because when the law was passed in 1972 there is no question that it was passed to address equity in athletics but if you look at the language of the statute it is much broader than that it doesn't say anything about athletics it says that no person in the united states shall on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in be denied the benefits of or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance that means in any school you can't have discrimination based on sex and very quickly following the passage of the law in 1972 the courts and
058ocr's predecessor started to extend the reach of title ix to a bunch of different areas and i have those listed here on the slide the first couple of them which are recruitment admissions and counseling and financial assistance those are really higher education problems but everything else impacts your district in some way so we have athletics sex-based harassment treatment of pregnant and parenting students discipline so with if a male student says i feel like i'm being disciplined more harshly than a female student for a similar offense single sex education whether it's in a school or even just a program within a school employment as i said which the department has now said yeah you know this has always been there but now we really we want to have our share of the enforcement when it comes
059to employment and then retaliation which is where someone treats someone poorly or it acts adversely to them because they exercise some right under the law so whether it's they filed a complaint or they were witness or any in any other way participated in the title ix process and had some adverse action as a result all of these things are still covered by title ix we are not going to talk about them much at all today a little bit about retaliation but not everything else not much at all and that's because these new regulations they focus on sexual harassment that does not mean that the rest of these things are no longer an issue you're going to hear that you are going to be now your district is now living under a regime where you have
060one policy that is used if you have a complaint under title ix sexual harassment and then you have one policy that's used for everything else so you're going to have 2 260 your uniform grievance procedure and you're going to have a new 2265 that is going to be your title ix sexual harassment procedure the rest of these things will all still be addressed under 2 260. so they're still going to come up to the board for instance on appeals um because that's what 2260 provides for um but they're not going to be dealt with under these new processes that we're talking about those only apply to title ix sexual harassment complaints and what the new regulations do is they for the first time explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex and then they also
061put in a bunch of procedural requirements things that must be in your policy things that must be done when there's an investigation or adjudication of a title ix sexual harassment complaint requirements about things that need to be on your website and in your policy about your title ix coordinator and many many more requirements so that is really what we're focused on today so our next question is when must a school district respond to sexual harassment and my answer to that is a very lawyerly answer which is it depends on which law you look at um so we are talking about title ix today these changes happened in the title ix space but there are many other laws that prohibit sexual harassment in schools whether we're talking about students or employees in the employment context the
062most important of them is title v of the civil rights act of which prohibits discrimination based on sex and a number of other characteristics in employment the illinois human rights act also prohibits sexual harassment in employment and it also prohibits sexual harassment in schools and then there are also sex equity regulations from the state board of education that nobody knows about or thinks about but they are there and so all of these things control when a school must respond and again we are going to be talking about title ix but i do want you to know that the response requirements for the district are still in place for these other laws and they are broader than title ix so you need to think about when you receive a complaint when the district receives a complaint
063your first question is going to be is it title nine sexual harassment because if it is you're gonna have to jump through all of these hoops and use these title ix procedures but if the answer is no it's not title ix sexual harassment that's not the end of the inquiry because you're gonna then ask well is it sexual harassment under one of these other laws and even if it's not sexual harassment under one of these other laws is it bullying is it assault just plain and simple is it fighting is it just addressed under your discipline code so the title nine inquiry is really the first inquiry and like those it's not a venn diagram right i don't know what i i should know this better since i'm doing teaching from home now for my
064own children and i'm i feel like i'm learning new things and but you know you've got the one circle and then the bigger circle and the bigger circle and title nine is the smaller circle so as far as when you must respond to title ix sexual harassment the requirement under the new regulations is that a recipient a school with actual knowledge of title ix sexual harassment in an education program or activity against a person in the united states must respond promptly and in a manner that is not deliberately indifferent this is a lot there's a lot here but this really encapsulates for you what the threshold questions are for do we need to use title ix to respond do we need to use these new title ix regulations to respond you'll be able to come
065back to this slide if you want to know this is the answer these are the threshold questions but to walk through each of those the first question will be did the district have actual knowledge and what that means is that someone has notice they sense something they observe it they witness it they see it they hear it or it is reported to them either directly or indirectly that is actual knowledge and in the k-12 context that actual knowledge can be to any title ix coordinator and any other official who's been given authority to institute corrective measures by the school district that includes for k-12 under these rules all employees so any employee that receives a report or otherwise witnesses or observes conduct that meets the definition of title ix sexual harassment needs to know that
066they need to report it up the chain to your title ix coordinator which is marcy conlon they need to make that report it needs to get there so that she can oversee and make sure that it is handled correctly board members we don't really think they fall within the definition of of officials with authority so but that to me uh that doesn't change the fact that if you were to find out individually if someone were to contact you and report title ix sexual harassment you should still report it to the title ix coordinator but if we ever find ourselves in a lawsuit where you didn't report it your lawyers would we would argue in that lawsuit that if the complaint was only made to a board member they're not an official with authority but we
067really would prefer not to have to do that at all so better yet just make sure you report it if you hear of any conduct that is sex-based that occurs within the school district now even though there is this broad uh ability that a student could just go and tell an employee a and one employee could tell another employee and that's enough for actual knowledge the title ix rules also require that you have a method by which individuals can make more formal reports to the title ix coordinator and this has all been taken care of at this point but the the basic idea is that individuals in your community need to have a way to make a report even if it's in the middle of the night on a saturday night and they need to
068be able to do that through voicemail through email it doesn't mean there has to be somebody sitting there who's checking it at that moment you're just going to have someone checking it in a reasonable you know fashion but they need to be able to make that report and any person can make a report of sexual harassment any person it doesn't matter if they are the alleged victim which is again the complainant it doesn't matter if they're the respondent which is the alleged perpetrator it can be anyone who can make a report and that would trigger um this this questioning that we're doing right now so that is actual knowledge which if you remember is the first part of the threshold questions we're asking the next threshold question is it's actual knowledge of sexual harassment and
069what is sexual harassment well i have the same cute answer for you which is there is a different definition under each of these laws and we're talking about title ix sexual harassment so again i want you to think about that diagram that just because something isn't title ix sexual harassment doesn't mean that the district isn't going to respond to it it just means that you're you're not going to respond to it using your new policy 2265 which addresses only title ix sexual harassment you're going to respond to it under 2 260 which is going to address all these other types of sexual harassment but what is sexual harassment under title ix the definition that the department of education has given us is that it is unwelcome conduct determined by a reasonable person to be so
070severe pervasive and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person's equal access to the recipient's education program or activity that's what we typically refer to as a hostile environment but it is a much narrower standard than you see under the old definition where it could be severe pervasive or persistent now it must be severe pervasive and objectively offensive and before it was enough for it to just interfere with or limit a student's ability to participate and now it's a person not just a student anyone but it has to be an effective denial of access so we have this more narrow definition than we used to but the department of education tacked on top of that a few exceptions where you don't have to go through that severe pervasive or objectively offensive analysis the first is
071quid pro quo by an employee and the second are what are called the big four types of sexual misconduct under two laws that govern higher education the violence against women act which amended the clery act so again your head may be spinning i'm gonna walk through each of these so the first is employee quid pro quo that is where an employee of the district conditions an aid service or benefit on an individual's participation and unwelcome sexual conduct so this is where a teacher says if you engage in this conduct with me i will give you a good grade or if you if you don't engage in this conduct with me i'm going to tell your parents that you were misbehaving that is an employee quid pro quo this little carve out only applies to an
072employee not a volunteer not another student so if the the student editor of the newspaper tells the student photographer if you engage in this sexual misconduct with me i will publish your photograph in the newspaper it doesn't fall within this automatic catch-all of employee quid pro quo that funnels it into the sexual harassment definition under title ix but you're not gonna just ignore it it is in fact still title ix sexual harassment you just have to analyze it under that hostile environment severe pervasive and objectively offensive question but for employee quid pro quo severity and harm are presumed so you don't have to go through that same thing with these big four from vawa which is sexual assault domestic violence dating violence and stalking the department of education has said that this conduct we assume
073that it is sufficiently severe and pervasive and objectively offensive you don't have to look at it it's gonna be title ix sexual harassment if it if it occurs people are referring to this um vawa big four plus the employee quid pro quo as the title nine big five and i kind of like it it's easy to remember you've got the hostile environment definition unless it's conduct that falls within the title nine big five in which case you don't have to go through the hostile environment analysis but for everything else you do and what you're looking for there again is unwelcome conduct determined by a reasonable person to be severe significant serious name-calling is not going to be enough here even nasty jokes probably aren't going to be enough particularly if it's between employees first amendment
074protected speech isn't going to be severe so it needs to be something that is is very serious it has to be pervasive which means widespread or um that it's happened more than once unless remember if it's the big five it doesn't have to happen more than once so if it's sexual assault we don't have to go well it only happened once so it's not title ix sexual harassment it is because it's in the title ix big five for everything else though we're pretty clear that if it's just the first instance of sex-based uh harassment or um or bullying from one student to another that it probably isn't going to be addressed through our title ix procedures and then objectively offensive means a reasonable person of the same age and maturity level as the complainant would
075they find the conduct to be offensive so we're not looking at what the individual thought because i might find something offensive personally that a reasonable person wouldn't we're looking at what a reasonable person thinks about it and then again it must effectively deny access um that just means there's gonna need to be some impact what we know is that a drop in grades alone probably isn't enough but a drop in grades can be relevant same thing with an employee if an employee is just not performing as well that's probably not enough alone but it can be one factor among others that shows a denial of access so all of that is getting at the question of is it title 9 sexual harassment so you need to have actual knowledge of title ix sexual harassment those
076are the first two threshold questions the next threshold question is whether it's in a program or activity of the district and what that means is that it is a location event or circumstance over which the district exhibits substantial control over both the alleged harasser and the context in which the harassment occurs you may know from when you've dealt with discipline issues in the past that the standard for discipline in schools is much broader than this we talk about a nexus and a disruption that's not enough under title ix it must be in your program or activity meaning that you have substantial control over both the alleged harasser and the context in which the harassment occurred to put this in a context that matters to us today what about remote learning well if kids are on
077your remote platforms and they're engaging in conduct you probably have substantial control over both the alleged harasser and the context of the harassment but if it's outside of the school day and not on your technology i'm not sure it's covered i don't think it's covered by title 9. again that doesn't mean you're going to ignore it as a district it just means that you're going to address that conduct under 2 260 your uniform grievance procedure instead of 2265 which is your title ix sexual harassment procedure the next threshold question is that the school a school must only respond using its title ix sex um sexual harassment procedures if the conduct occurs against the person in the united states and you may recall that this language was in the statute that i read you a few
078minutes ago but the ocr has taken a much more narrow interpretation of this under the new rules and what they've said is that the actual incident itself must occur in the united states so if it occurs on a study abroad or spring trip if we ever get to have those again then it's not going to be covered by title ix as sexual harassment it will almost certainly still be covered under the illinois human rights act so i'm not suggesting that you are going to ignore that conduct it's just if it didn't happen in the united states you're not going to be using your title ix sexual harassment procedure so the next question now that we know the the threshold questions of what what is title ix sexual harassment is well how must a district respond
079to that harassment and i have the same answer which is that it depends on which law you're looking at which law applies but you see here that i've got for you the options that are available which is your new board policy to that should say two two six five i clearly had a little typo there two two six five which is the title nine sexual harassment procedure or the other option is is is it under two two six zero which is your uniform grievance procedure and that applies when you have any other violation of law or board policy including bullying um including sexual harassment that doesn't that isn't severe pervasive and objectively offensive all of those things you're going to use 2-2-6-0 and you also still have to keep in mind and your administration will
080prompt you on this that there may be other rules that come into play as well there may be other procedures of yours like bullying you have a bullying policy that has some requirements when it comes to how you respond to bullying and for those of you who are visual learners this is my uh homemade attempt at uh putting this in a visual form for you i like to think of this title ix sexual harassment procedure as an off-ramp this isn't a great offering but i tried to find something that showed you're going down your path of 2 260 but if somebody comes along with the title ix sexual harassment complaint you have to go off down the path now you can always consider whether there is another procedure or policy that comes into place that
081you can rely on that um that doesn't have anything to do with sexual harassment so the example i give with this is let's say you have someone who says i was sexually assaulted in the bathroom at the school and that's you and you now have actual knowledge because they've reported it to you you they they have actual knowledge of conduct that is title ix sexual harassment because it's sexual assault which is part of the title ix big five it occurred in a programmer activity because you have control over that bathroom and control over that the alleged perpetrator in that bathroom and it occurred in the united states so it is going to go under two two six five that's how it's going to be addressed however let's say that that same student says i was
082sexually assaulted in the bathroom by another student and they used a knife and the sro goes down they find the pull the student out of class they have a knife that student can be disciplined for having a knife that has nothing to do with sexual harassment so you may have parallel processes that are going on where you're dealing with the knife first in a much shorter disciplinary process but you also are going to be going through a rather lengthy title ix sexual harassment process to determine if the sexual assault occurred now the only evidence of the knife is the the report of the student of the complainant you're going to address everything under 2265 because you can only use a different policy if you have some independent evidence separate from the um separate from the
083sexual harassment if however the conduct wouldn't be title ix sexual harassment or if there was a dismissal under title ix for some reason you could consider in some cases then you would use 2 260. i'm going to see if i can figure out if people can mute themselves okay so we then have um okay all right so um so then what does that look like what is the what does the response look like under this new 2-2-6-5 well basically there's two elements to it there is there is a supportive measures conversation and meeting between the title ix coordinator and the alleged victim of the conduct that is required regardless of whether or not there's a formal complaint or not anytime there's actual knowledge of title ix sexual harassment the title ix coordinator must meet with
084the complainant in order to discuss supportive measures which we'll talk about what that is and to notify them that they have the right to file a formal complaint only if a formal complaint is filed or open does the rest of the process kick in when that happens the district is going to consider things like informal resolution they're going to if necessary conduct an investigation there's going to be a decision and there's going to be an appeal and each of those have very very specific requirements that look nothing like what you do under 2 260. they are brand new and very different so before we go through all of that let me at first give you a definition of what is a formal complaint since that is clearly important for determining if you only have to
085do the supportive measures conversation or do you have to do more so a formal complaint is defined as either it's a document that is either filed by the victim of sexual harassment the alleged victim which is called the complainant not by a third party who reports the conduct a third party does not have the right under title ix to file a complaint that is very different than under 2 260. so um it can either be filed by the complainant who is the alleged victim or it can be signed by the title ix coordinator in some circumstances which we'll talk about and it is a there's a written document in which they report sexual harassment and request an investigation now i mentioned that the title ix coordinator has the ability to sign a complaint in some
086circumstances the the rules are very clear that the that the department of education wants you as a district to respect the wishes of complainants who may not want you to do an investigation and unless it is something where it would be unreasonable for the district to ignore it you are supposed to um defer to the complainant's wishes but there may be some circumstances where there are allegations against a an employee or another person in a position of power and that they've allegedly engaged in multiple instances of misconduct or even one very serious instance of misconduct where it wouldn't be reasonable for you to just say oh the complainant doesn't want to go forward with this so we're just going to let that teacher keep teaching right so in that circumstance the title 9 coordinator has
087the ability to file to sign a formal complaint that does not make them the complainant the complainant is always the alleged victim and that person will still have all of the rights that are afforded to complain it even if they didn't actually file the complaint themselves so that supportive measures meeting to just mention that again briefly um it requires that the title ix coordinator meet with the complainant to discuss the availability of supportive measures to consider the title ix complainant's wishes with respect to supportive measures to inform the title ix complainant that they can get supportive measures with or without filing a formal complaint and to explain the process for filing a formal complaint this initial meeting is really important to the department of education because up to this point and at this meeting until
088a formal complaint is filed you are expected to maintain the confidentiality of the complainant but once a formal complaint has been filed whether it is filed by the complainant or signed by the title ix coordinator the district has no ability to keep the name of the complainant confidential they must tell the respondent the name of all known parties and this is a big change we used to have some discretion over when we would do this and we would try to maintain confidentiality if we could we cannot do that anymore under title ix sexual harassment so it's very important to understand that distinction because once a formal complaint starts there is no longer any ability to allow anonymity supportive measures are a new concept we've we've always before referred to interim measures but now the department
089of education has made clear that they don't like interim measures they think that these measures should be available whether or not there is a complaint so they shouldn't be interim in nature they can last as long as needed and most importantly they can't be punitive so it used to be that if we had a complaint that one student sexually assaulted another student we would often pluck the student the alleged perpetrator the respondent out of that class and we'd move them to a different class and department of education for years told us that's what we should do now they're saying you can't do that because if you remove a respondent from a program or activity before a decision has been made that is considered to be punitive and disciplinary supportive measures are also available to both
090the complainant and the respondent so once the respondent once a formal complaint has been filed supportive measures may be provided and should be provided to the respondent and these can include things like counseling course modifications schedule changes but again without burdening any party they can't there can't be an undue burden and they cannot be punitive the very narrow exceptions to this are emergency removals and administrative leaves under title ix again new things under under title ix for students and other members of the community who aren't employees you can use emergency removals in cases where an individualized assessment analysis shows that there is an immediate threat to physical health or safety of another member of your community mental threats threats to mental health and safety are not enough for an emergency removal it has to be
091a threat to physical health or safety and this is important because these new title 9 sexual harassment complaints are going to take 60 days 90 days 120 days so if you've got the alleged perpetrator who can't be removed they're sitting in the classroom think about it you're not going to be able to expel that student at the end of that process even if you wanted to because under senate bill 100 you have to show that there's no reasonable alternative and if that kid has been sitting in class for 60 90 120 days we aren't going to be able to meet that burden under state law so using emergency removals is going to be important in cases where the conduct is really egregious and physical in nature and where we think at the end we might
092like to have the ability to expel um because otherwise i think we're really going to be hamstrung in being able to defend an expulsion decision if the student has been in school without incident for the the dependency of the investigation we also have to think about other things if we do emergency removals for instance uh you guys know this an administrator can't just remove a student from class for 120 days even if the federal government says they can why because that's an expulsion under illinois law so it's actually going to come to you as a board in the early stages as an expulsion pending the outcome of the title ix investigation it's going to be very weird but we at franzik have thought this through and we think we understand how to walk you through
093it so when it comes up you you will be able to rely on us for help on that but the point is though is that the title ix coordinator is the one who does the emergency removal and she doesn't have the authority to expel a student to remove a student for more than 10 days also it could be a change in placement under idea or section 504 so there's lots of things where there's interactions for employees it's a lot easier if you have the ability to put an employee on leave either paid or unpaid under your policies and your handbooks you can do it under title nine too so luckily that is a lot easier than with with students all of that occurs regardless of whether or not a formal complaint has been filed once
094a formal complaint is filed again you have these four additional steps the first one is likely not going to impact you all as a board at all it's in formal resolution the only thing where you may come into play in this is deciding if you want to offer in formal resolution at all because you are allowed to offer informal resolution in title ix sexual misconduct cases unless it is involuntary you can't force people to participate in this you can't use it if there hasn't been a formal complaint filed and you can't use it to resolve complaints that an employee has sexually harassed a student but in other contexts you can offer informal resolution which can be things like restorative justice mediation um to the parties if they want to try to resolve their complaint without
095going through this this investigation process and i think this will be a really good thing i think it will be really useful in some cases um but the questions that you'll have to think about are things like are we ever going to allow face to face informal resolution i vote no um i don't suggest that you do it and when we do informal resolution training we we encourage people not to do it um because it can be very traumatizing for both parties involved to be face to face but there are lots of ways to do informal resolution that don't require face-to-face interactions we actually did this at ocr for complaints and i was on the informal resolution team and it could be a really positive way to end a complaint without having if you think
096about it a complaint it's a zero-sum game someone wins and someone loses with informal resolution your idea is you're trying to find a way for both parties to come out feeling like they've won or that they've at least they found a resolution they can live with so it is a very important option um that you may be called on to to consider if informal resolution isn't appropriate or the parties don't want to do it or it just doesn't work then you're going to move on to an investigation and there are very specific things that are required to be part of an investigation under these new rules usually ocr just looks at your policy at 2 260 and they say did you follow what you said you would do now they're telling you what has to
097be in your policy and what you have to actually follow um we don't recommend that your title ix coordinator be your investigator and most districts aren't doing that and the reason for that is that the title nine coordinator i keep describing is a little bit of a mother hen which the male tie line coordinators find very funny but it is really that idea where um they are sort of making sure that all of the people in the other roles are doing what they're supposed to be doing and that the supports are being provided there are lots of responsibilities on the title ix coordinator um and that instead we're suggesting that these investigations be completed by other trained unbiased investigators either at the building level or at the district level depending on the nature of the
098incident and these individuals cannot have any actual or perceived conflict of interest or bias toward any party they cannot prejudge the facts and there has to be a presumption that the respondent isn't responsible from the beginning from the outset there are a ton of very specific things that have to be in an investigation under title ix i'm not going to go through these with you at length you can read them later if you want to i'll go through the most important ones with you which are things like the presumption um that of innocence and the same opportunity to have an advisor present uh so they people can have an advisor of their choice if they're a party and so they can have an attorney they can have their parent they can have their union rep
099but they also can have a clown or uh you know their their mom they can have if they're an employee i say that is you know it would not be what you normally would see in an hr matter that that an employee would bring their mom but they can under title nine um they also have to we have to schools are going to have to provide written notice to respondents before they speak with them on these matters that is a big change we have in local parentis rights in school administration and so normally if you have an allegation against a respondent who's a student you go down you pull them out of class and question them but that's not possible under these new rules there's also a requirement that the parties be given access to
100the information that is collected during the investigation with an opportunity to provide a written response before the investigation report is completed and then after the investigations report is completed the investigator has to provide that report to both parties and allow them an opportunity to review and respond and they get 10 days for each of those review periods so you can see how this is all going to add up to a really lengthy process you got to give notice before every meeting you got to give 10 days here 10 days there it's not going to be as short as as we're used to under your uniform grievance procedure after that investigation process is complete it then moves into a different stage which is the decision and the decision maker can't be the title ix coordinator can't
101be the investigator on the case it is going to be in in many cases it's going to be um it's going to be melissa for you or um you know it may be a district level administrator but this is the person who is going to look at the investigative report look at the evidence that has been collected and decide has there been a title ix violation and um so what is gonna happen here that's really interesting well you don't have to do a live hearing which is good that has been required now in higher ed and is a bit of a mess but it's not required in k-12 you just the decision maker just has to issue a written determination but before they can do that they have to let all parties ask written questions
102of any party or witness that they would like that party or witness to answer in writing this is the thing that scares people the most when they think about the impact on the complainant because imagine a circumstance where you have a small child who has been subjected to misconduct by an educator and that educator now gets to ask written questions to that child i mean through their parent the parents have all the rights of the children under this so we're not getting rid of the parents but still through the parent the parents gonna have to go to the child and ask for questions and write answers and send them back to the decision maker who's gonna send them back to the respondent and that's scary that's you know people are going to be nervous about
103it the thing again i think we have to focus you need to focus on as school leaders is that there's a lot of protections built in here the questions have to be relevant they can't just be whatever they have to be relevant and you can control things like the tone and the whether it's a harassing question those types of questions aren't going to have to be asked so i think that's where we need to focus with with people building up confidence in this process for as long as we have it is that we are going to do everything we can as a district to make sure that this process is fair and that it's not re-traumatizing or too difficult for any for any party um there are some exceptions for relevance that are very important
104including you can't generally ask questions to the complainant about their past sexual activity unless it is used to show consent between the parties because we did this before so i'm saying that this was consensual again that type of thing or if it's used to show that someone else is the one who actually perpetrated the conduct you aren't there's not the ability to rely on or ask questions about medical treatment records or legally privileged information so again these are some of the protections that are in place that i think we need to focus on in order to build confidence in this process for complainants and the standard of proof that's used in this process in the decision making is preponderance of the evidence which i refer to as 50 in a feather you start out 50
10550 and if there's a feather on one side that side wins if it ends up 50 50 which i've never seen happen but people always ask well what if it's really just he said she said and it's just 50 50. under the preponderance of the evidence standard the respondent prevails in that circumstance if it's really dead even because there's a there's a presumption of innocence and that presumption has to be overcome by even a feather and then at that point once the decision maker finds that there's enough evidence that title ix sexual harassment occurs then they can impose punitive and disciplinary responses and again you as the board are going to get pulled in because some of those responses they won't have the authority to do at the building level and so um but they
106will recommend in the decision making level that those things be be done after the decision there is an appeal this is required it has to be available to both parties and it's available on three for three bases so a procedural error new evidence that wasn't available at the time time the decision was made or a bias or conflict of interest on the part of one of the members of the title ix team who was working on the case in each of those cases there must be shown that it was there was an impact on the outcome it's not enough for it to just be you know that this happened it has to be that there was an impact on the outcome and the parties have to be um notified that an appeal has been filed
107and they have to be given an opportunity to to submit written statements so there's no opportunity to speak before the appellate decision maker just a written statement and then finally um there is a decision that is written um that will describe the results of the appeal and the rationale for the result the title ix decision maker on appeal cannot be the title ix coordinator or the investigator or the decision maker on the complaint this is going to be an interesting question for you all as the board is are we going to be involved in this process are we going to be the appellate decision maker or are we going to leave that to melissa because that is i will tell you the vast majority of boards are not doing the appeals and the reason for
108that is that they know that in the most serious of cases they're gonna have to deal with senate bill 100 for an expulsion or or a suspension or they're going to have to deal with things like 2412 with 10-year teacher dismissals and it's going to be very difficult to balance that you were the appellate decision maker here and then you were also you know the but again that is a question that is left up to the district to decide who is going to do those different roles i've already mentioned bias conflict of interest in fairness so for purposes of time i will tell you that um essentially you can't have it you can't have bias you if you have individuals who have uh they have a vested interest in outcome conflict of interest they cannot
109serve in a role in this title ix process and they can't prejudge any matter before them which i always tell people the way that you get out of a claim that you prejudged is to show your work analyze the complaint show your work on why you reached your decisions it will be very hard for someone to say that you pre-judged it if you've explained it very thoroughly and there are um some pretty burdensome record-keeping requirements in this new rule so um all records must be maintained for seven years after the end of a complaint most of that is going to fall on your title ix coordinator um but do want you to be aware that this is something that is going to be new and is going to require some significant work from your title
1109 coordinator sorry marcy she knows that already but um but it is true all right and with that that is the end of my presentation so i am happy to answer any questions that you may have jackie thank you um there must have been a bit of a challenge to take three hours uh into an hour or so but it is critically important and it's important that we that we have this training i do want to take a minute i will call on board members to see if they have specific questions for you okay so why don't we begin uh julie hill do you have any questions for jackie no thanks thank you come back with us you will tomorrow i bet ted any question no questions thank you thank you ted uh guillermo sorry
111i'm mute uh just one quick question jackie what's is there anything next for us to do besides just attending this uh this session right now for right now that is that's it um unless you know and until you you have the policy that comes across your um your plate and that'll be the next thing that you'll where you'll need to think about this thank you jessica uh jackie thank you for the thorough presentation and um for the new rules and uh kind of guiding our focus there um i guess you covered like what is a reasonable person and that's somebody of the same age and maturity um and i and then the other phrase was objectively offensive which that's a weird that's like a yeah it's really the same idea so objective it needs to
112be offensive to a person who is in the same position um and the idea of is that what what they're trying to get at is they don't want people who might be very sensitive to conduct that the normal person the reasonable person in that that situation wouldn't find offensive so i always say for instance you know my uh grandfather told really good dirty jokes and so i from a very young age he couldn't tell my mom's voice from my my my voice for my mom so i heard jokes when i was five six years old that adults would probably blush at and so i might not have a reasonable person's response to a really dirty joke because i've been desensitized to it thank you grandpa so you're not gonna look at me to say if
113if an employee comes in and says someone has been saying these horrible jokes and i'm the investigator i'm not gonna think to myself well i wouldn't think that those jokes were bad i'm gonna think what would a reasonable person one who didn't have that desensitization from their grandpa think about it and so the idea is and it goes in the opposite direction too right that there might be someone who for reasons that aren't that for which people might not be aware that person might take offense to speech that a reasonable person might not so that's what they're trying to get at with that yeah so what a reasonable objective person be white hetero or um are is there some measure of protection for people who are not white hetero and they might have a different
114culture or different so it's definitely not um a an average person it's because that would require so you're looking at a person who's in similar circumstances so for instance if you have a person who is um i'll say you know because race doesn't really come into play for title ix but i'll say for instance if you have someone who is uh homosexual you would ask what would a reasonable homosexual person think about that comment you wouldn't ask what a you know a heterosexual person would think same thing if you were dealing with transgender a transgender individual you wouldn't ask what would a cisgender person think about that comment you would ask what would a person in the same shoes but you're looking at a reasonable person's standard again you're looking at kind of what and
115you do have to think about things like community norms and it can be very hard i've done hundreds of these investigations it can be very difficult to try to suss out what a reasonable person would do in a particular circumstance but there is there are guide posts there are cases there are other ocr decisions and that's what we as the attorneys go and look at when we're trying to make a determination about whether you know if we get a call from someone does this fall under title ix we would go and look at what is out there that helps to define what conduct would be reasonable yeah and i'm sorry if i missed it but the passage of these rules what is the process for that like who who did the approving yeah so this
116was a um the department of education so the way that this works is that they issue proposed regulations and they open it up for comments so they actually issue the proposed regulations in november of 2018 and they spent until may of 2020 reading through the commons and i i usually have it here right here but um the the volumes of the commentary that they released with these rules were they painstakingly had to go through and respond to every single comment so it's 2 000 pages of commentary and they had received over 125 000 comments so um the the regulations were very hotly contested so they um weren't able to get them out until may of 2020 and that that could only be done but they ultimately the department of education in the office for civil
117rights gets to decide what it is um but they do have to through that process they have to answer a question the reason that they did this this way is because it's much harder to now erase in order to create new rules a new administration would have to go through the same process over again in order to create new roof and so that's why we think there was a rush even in the middle of a pendant and getting through out was to get them in place in case there is an administration because this administration really wanted these rules to be advanced thank you you're welcome thank you jess jason any questions for jackie you know i'm you there it is i couldn't find my computer thank you thanks jackie um understanding the changes that that
118went into place and and going through your explanation there's obviously been a lot more um protections that have been implemented to protect about a ledge of uh harassers that being said what protections are available to um school districts of uh to provide protection um or a sense of safety to um the complainants of it during the during the process if you can't remove someone from a classroom or what have you right so that is where the supportive measures are going to come into play just your emergency stuff no so there's really there's two levels there's supportive measures and then there's emergency removals emergency removals are only available in the worst of cases again where there's a risk to fiscal health and safety supportive measures are available in all circumstances but they're just not as robust
119as they used to be so for example like i said we used to we would take the respondent out of a class with a complainant we would move them to another class and we would say that the burden is going to fall on the respondent and that's what ocr told us to do for for many years and then now it's the opposite it can't burden the student but so what we could do is for instance we could offer to the complainant would you like to move to a different class would you like to talk about preferential seating in the classroom so that you don't have to see this person we can figure out kind of it's a little bit like when you get a no contact order and you have to figure out someone's going
120to enter the building here and enter the building here and they're going to sit in these places and you orchestrate when they enter the room so there's there are and there are a lot of creative things that we can offer it's just it can't be punitive so for instance um one of the things that people are really relying on heavily i would say as these roll out is mutual no contact orders where they say to both both the respondent and the complainant you can't have contact with each other it used to be that we would just tell the respondent you can't have contact with the complainant but now we worry that in most circumstances that would be seen as being unduly burdensome or punitive to one party so we put it in place for both
121and at a gut level as a complainant that feels bad right i mean you're like why why are you telling me i can't contact this person i'm not gonna contact this person but when you explain it to them that this allows us to ensure that we're protecting you from contact just by saying that you can't do it either you don't even want to so this is allowing us to protect you and i think we will be able to explain those those options and i do think there are options that are still going to be available under these rules so i i guess the situation of pop said it just it just popped my mind during this if you had you know a situation where you had a complaint made by by a student against an
122employee how um and you you couldn't take punitive measures against that employee and at that employee was in a classroom what kind of protective measures we given to a complaint in that situation where obviously we still have a person in power in power over that complaining so with employees it's much easier the department of education is still allowing us to put those in okay all right or unpaid administrative leave thank god that's right you said that okay yeah thank goodness because i mean if you couldn't you're right there's really no way to to provide any protection because i forgot you had said that so that's right okay thank you you're welcome uh jackie um my my question uh which i think you was implicit in a response to uh to just buttomer that under title
123ix discrimination on the basis of sex does include protection against discrimination of lgbtq students and employees it does now as of august 31st so um we actually have a blog at franzik title 9 insights that if you if you want to learn any more about this you can go over and read i just published a blog this weekend on this that the department of education was taking the approach that title ix did not apply to discrimination based on sexual orientation or transgender status really lgbtq plus like any of that they said it doesn't apply unless there's discrimination based on gender norms is you aren't acting enough like a woman or you aren't acting enough like a man which is very different than i just don't like you because you're gay now as of august 31st
124and after a recent supreme court decision in the employment context the department of education has come out and said that they do they will be enforcing title ix with respect to lgbtq plus where they think there is a distinction is that they believe that there is an exception for um and they look at the text of title ix regulations for their support um that there's an exception for sex segregated spaces and teams within a school environment so if you're talking about locker rooms or bathrooms or access to athletic teams they say we aren't going to enforce that however in illinois the illinois human rights act has been interpreted much more broadly than that so again we're really they get to have kind of the first word of whether they want the first bite at the
125apple are we gonna enforce this but that's not the end of they don't get the last word because we would still have to consider whether we need to provide access under illinois law thank you thank you an important edition uh and a good one i think um my last question is the uh there's nothing in the uh in the presentation that that you gave and talking about title ix that addressed the specifics or the nature of the actual investigation are there benchmarks all their guidelines that would uh establish that an investigation was thorough unbiased i worry about perhaps the wrong sorts of approach that could intimidate a complainant or seem to um suggest that the complainant is actually you know somehow guilty of some act that would bring this behavior upon that person um so
126i i'd be really curious about the investigation sure so we actually have a whole separate training for investigators that talks about um that talks about all of what you're describing because it is extremely important i will tell you that what the rules say is that one slide that was like impossible to read because it was like teeny tiny writing that is what they say must be involved in an investigation and really it's more broad it's like treat people fairly and allow their advisors and give them notice but when it comes down to it when they investigate and and when they when they analyze an investigation i guess when they consider whether an investigation was appropriate ocr will look at things like um was there bias in the words that were used for instance though like
127in our investigator training we talk about sex stereotypes and how you can't say things that that might be along the lines of well how are you dressed or you know oh well men can't be the victims of sexual harassment things along those lines because it exhibits bias and actually we talk about the investigator training how important it is to train ourselves to use the terms complainant and respondent because even calling someone you know we it's okay to say alleged victim and alleged perpetrator you hear me say that a lot but you have to be really careful not to say the victim that suggests prejudgment of the facts you have to be really careful not to say the perpetrator because the same thing so there's a lot that goes into these investigations as far as making
128sure that they come across as fair thank you jackie uh board before we let jackie go for the evening any last questions that might have occurred to anyone as a result of any of jackie's responses to other board members questions i don't see anybody coming off mute so i i guess we're good uh jackie thank you so so very much very important training wonderful to have you here it's great to see you all thank you have a great night bye-bye jackie okay we will now move on uh to the 2021 district 41 reopening school plan update and i will turn it over to melissa to facilitate all righty well first and foremost i just want to share that legal counsel will walk us through any title ix um claims um you know this is obviously
129new and extremely complex so um you know we will work closely with them every step um tonight i'm going to give you a sneak preview of the upcoming d41 magazine this edition will be all about making a shift to our blended model um we're doing this intentionally because it will be a an important resource for parents so mike um i'll let you know when to advance to the slides and we'll definitely skip the slides that have videos um wanna just really quickly address um because these um the questions regarding pre-k um absolutely furniture has been ordered and katie and dave diligently made sure that um they were you know the inventory was in supply and that um delivery will take place long before any start date written procedures have been developed and our nurses are
130currently updating those procedures based on the latest idph guidance that was updated last friday in addition prep member and advanced practice pediatric nurse katie oducci who you will hear from katie when we get to the metrics subcommittee will provide an additional training to our staff members along with our district nurses on ppe and safety precautions in the classroom katie has extensive experience with pediatric patients and with covid positive patients and and finally dr mccluskey is our liaison for the preschool for all grant and she has worked extensively with the lead consultant on the grant i'm confident that between katie and assistant principal margaret turner that they will have our pre-k team more than ready by the time pre-k start date comes um and so i am going to um jump into a presentation and some
131of this is is not really urgent for tonight so you'll notice um in parts of this i'll skip through the slides rather quickly um so again this is just a sneak peek at what the next edition of the magazine is going to look like want to share with the board um that you know while we opened under full remote we've been preparing for the transition um into our in-person blended model the plan includes that we're going to talk through our blended am pm model in october with our youngest learners and then bringing all district 41 students back in november um we will meet or exceed our goal date that was discussed at the time the board approved the the plan to open fully remotely i'd also like to thank our glenn ellen education association orga
132as we refer to them for working through this plan with us and supporting the need to meet our target deadline for students in grades three through eight and exceed our target deadline for our youngest learners i would also like to thank our partners for advocating for a more personalized process for our sixth graders to help them acclimate to hadley it's important for the community to know that the board of education and administration maintained a commitment to make this shift a reality while also maintaining a commitment to continuous improvements in our full remote model it's my sincere hope that we can focus on moving forward and prioritizing the work that needs to happen over the coming weeks our ability to return to in-person instruction and maintain in-person instruction will take a commitment on everyone's part the
133safety of everyone remains our priority and our obligation as we prepare for our shift to the blended am pm model this seems like a great opportunity to remind everyone that there are factors that impact our ability to open our schools for in-person learning and most importantly to stay open the graphic on the next page provides a clear reminder that we remain in a pandemic and each of us plays an important role this was sent out to families and i want to just very quickly um review it and and make sure that people understand how all these gears interact with each other so the health data is one of the gears that we will be looking at and monitoring you'll hear from the metric group in a little bit they are going to talk about the
134dupage county framework for reopening and the metrics that are used to determine the model for in-person learning based upon the status of the local data as people know the dupage model breaks this into minimal moderate and substantial risk categories exclusionary requirements we've sent these out to parents and they will also be linked in future correspondence as soon as tomorrow morning um these were also updated last week so we will be attaching the most recent updates to the exclusionary requirements we've been really encouraging parents to take a look at them um you know as was stated during public comment um you know in person learning there are extensive exclusionary requirements and parents are going to have to plan around them for how to address daycare in the event of an unexpected and potentially lengthy quarantine staffing
135any in-person model requires that we have sufficient staff to maintain a safe and high quality learning environment in order to sustain any level of in-person learning parents should and anticipate that there will be a level of substitutes needed and possible teacher assignment shifts that become necessary safety protocols and equipment in order to stay open district 41 must be able to maintain our inventory of the required ppe and sanitizing products i just want to give you an update as to where we're at with ppe um dave thank you has ordered and been ordering um really since day one in our planning way back in the springtime but we have managed to secure a very large inventory of ppe including n95 masks kn 95 masks surgical masks gloves gowns face shield and clear view masks we also
136have scheduled fit tests for our nurses and custodians this is important because as long as we are able to continue replenishing our inventory we will be appropriately stocked parent and community responsibilities our families definitely play a crucial role in our ability to open and remain open it's absolutely crucial that families conduct the daily self-certification process that will be required we'll send separate information out about that it's crucial that parents keep children home when they are sick or symptomatic and as a community everyone must commit to bringing down and keeping down the community transmission rates both in and outside of the school day so transition timeline on the next slide i'll show you a more detailed look at this but we are planning on bringing the primary grades back for blended starting in october prioritizing our
137students who we know have had the hardest time navigating remote learning the plan remains to shift to the blended model for all students in november after the end of the first quarter so the first day of in-person learning per grade level and this is tentative based on board support october 15th we are looking at bringing back kindergarten first and second grades october 19th will be the start date for pre-k november 2nd we will do the transition day for um sixth grade and they will be the only ones in the building and then on november 5th we will do grades 3 4 5 7 and 8. again i want to reiterate that this is important when we talk about the metric later this all is based on dupage staying in yellow and orange minimal or moderate
138transmission and not in red which red as you'll see later lends itself to remote learning so this is just a more detailed look at what will be happening between september october and november so again um you know this is um week september 14th through the 18th so depending on board support tonight for this plan we will start tonight with a general email to families after the board meeting announcing that the board supported the plan if that is the outcome tomorrow morning there will be a robocall and a detailed emails to families to start the selection process where we are asking parents to commit to the blended model or to stay on full remote um those need to be done on night by 9 um as you can see and we'll talk through that drives the
139process moving forward for the remainder of september students will stay on full remote um in october the first week we will on will be on full remote um on the 12th through the week of the 12th through the 16th columbus day there is no school institute day there is no school for students and the 14th we're making a remote learning planning day i know that doesn't make anybody anyone happy um but it's crucial that we review and the and practice the safety precautions we review and practice arrival and dismissal um procedures it is time to create individual manipulative kits for students and just do whatever we have to do to fully prep for blended in person then k2 will start blended on the 15th and 16th um the 19th pre-k will start k2 obviously remains
140unblended then the week of the 26th pre-k and k-2 remain unblended grades three through eight are on remote um 10 30 is a remote planning day and then well it's a remote planning day in the a.m and a um p.m sip day no attendance that day for students um 11 2 through 11 6 that following week on 11 2 it is um same as the week before so third through eight are on um full remote pre-k through second grade are on blended um 11 3 is an election day so there is no school we do not have an opportunity to waive this 11-4 because of the election day is why we picked um to start that back um you know that week so um and i think that wasn't adjusted to put in um the
141sixth grade so let me go back one slide and make sure that is correct so 11 two sixth grade will start and then the fifth will be the remainder of the grade levels so on 11 2 we just we will add before anything gets sent out um that that is the sixth grade start date um in a little bit you are going to hear summary updates and report reports from our pandemic response team most people have heard us talk about this but pratt is composed of representatives from our partner organizations who work directly with district 41 in addition pratt now has three parent and large members who each bring a very specific skill set to the team pratt is organized into four subcommittees who have clearly defined priorities and purposes so one of the subcommittees
142that you'll hear from is service and support to families and their group is all about focusing on identifying needs and matching resources and assistance to families and students monitoring the metric group they will share out with you a presentation later but their focus is really monitoring that framework and the the county metrics um they will talk a little bit later how we will use that for decision making then we have a return to school needs sub-group and their focus is really identifying needs and solutions related to in-person instruction and then we also have a communication subgroup so the daily in-person schedule this is really taken from our original plan so um you know this should all look very familiar um we remain on the am pm 8 30 2 11 is the morning session um
143one and with 11 to 1 is that midday break and 1 to 3 30 is the pm session so this will be in the newsletter and this is not new information so i'm not going to go over it in detail here covid self-certification will be required daily again we will be sending very detailed information out to parents it will be a simple process but it's an important process this will be required daily by the parent or guardian it will be done through an app and compliance with this is required failure to complete the daily self-certification will result in a delayed it will result in delayed entry into classrooms for everyone at arrival the more students who show up at school who haven't been self-certified the process of getting kids off buses um and into the
144building and identifying and finding those kids who have not self-certified so that they can be temping symptom checked before entering the school um there will be a process for that but obviously that will delay everybody um entering the building as quickly as possible um so after three missed self-certifications there will be a conversation with the principal and we will be moving that person into remote we will work with parents um so that they understand the process we have different people who are going to create kind of a cheat sheet process the best suggestion i could make is to set a reminder in your phone to do it it literally takes seconds it's simple but it's mandatory masks at school no changes there the expectation will be that all students and staff will be required to
145wear masks while in the building and to keep one and another safe the district will provide each student and staff member with a mask we will also be passing out to students the masks that the state provided for every student in the state of illinois and you know so just important information that parents should know and be aware of and i'm sure they're doing that is have your pr have your child practice wearing their mask for increasing amounts of time this will help as they enter the classroom and they're required to wear their mask set up a system to ensure your child brings their math to school each day we will have extras at school in case a student forgets or their mask breaks and becomes unusable students should have a multiple masks to rotate
146through to ensure they are using clean masks should your family need help securing multiple masks please contact the school office our supports to family and some other groups are very willing and have been working on supporting families who need assistance with this social distancing no changes there return to school i'm going to skip through these um in the magazine there will be links to some um informative videos about mask wearing about hand washing when to stay home transportation again nothing has changed here the daily self-certification needs to be completed by the parent or guardian before the student boards the bus mask wearing is required to be on the bus we encourage parents we know we can't require it but to the best extent possible to please provide supervision while at the bus stop we can't
147be there so obviously um the students are going to need some help and adult assistance to make sure that they are socially distancing and wearing their masks when together at the bus stop snacks and water bottles no changes there we will not be doing snacks in district 41 classes the water fountains will be shut down but the bottom bottle fillers will be working students will follow the classroom teachers roles and routines for using water bottles during in-person instruction chromebook expectations just want to reiterate that all students in grades k through 8 who attend the blended model are expected to bring their chromebooks to and from school daily one of the positive and unintended consequences of the mandated closure is that we are now one to one district in grades k through eight in the event
148that it is necessary to shift back to a full remote model students need to have their chromebooks with them at home and will also need them for school please make it part of your child's routine to charge their chromebook prior to coming to school for their in-person instruction we'll include this again in some videos and information that will be coming directly from the principles as well we will be including the most recent exclusion guidance again we're just telling parents please please please make sure you read through this it's very extensive um and we are finalizing and working through our communication process of when there is a quarantine um how that is tracked and monitored internally but then those notifications that are required to be sent um based on different scenarios that may happen and then
149information that accompanies them so that when parents receive the notification in case they need to review what the expectations are in terms of a doctor's clinical evaluation or a physician's note or a cova test all of that is really contained in here and and we will send that as part of our communication process again this is just more information that came out with the latest revision from idph so that is kind of um just a snippet of the next upcoming um newsletter but i will take it back to the plan in case i'm sure there will be questions um but want to provide the board with opportunity um to ask questions and really to discuss this timeline and you know ask any questions and have good discussion on this thank you melissa so bordet has
150been our policy i will call on each of you if you have questions to ask about what melissa has presented so let's let's begin ted has these any questions for dr kaskowski uh no no questions at this time thank you ted julie uh any questions for dr keskowski still looking for the new button um i have well i sent i sent a whole bunch of questions and then i sent a bunch more questions so i just wanted to say thank you to dr k and the rest of admin who took the time to answer them diligently um i do have one question i just thought of just now as she was going through the calendar we have now lost a couple days of instruction for like just you know changing things with code but have
151we are we gonna add any days i know we lost one in august and then we're gonna lose another one here and i can't remember in the middle of october i think are we gonna are we gonna be able to make those up at all or just count them lost yeah um we don't have to so remote learning planning days count as days of student attendance so as of now we have all of our required days in um and we do have a plan for any severe weather closing because we you know um have been implementing full remote um that will be the plan for any weather related closings we we don't need to go back to the matrix for that um we'll revert to um what a remote day looks like in the event
152that we have any weather closings but but as of now we meet the requirements for the number of school days okay um i think that's all i have for now thank you thank you thank you julie uh uh jessica any questions for dr kaskowski yes um i too sent a bunch of questions and then a few more so thank you to the staff for responding to all of those i guess just to piggyback off of julie's question um if we were to have like a widespread power outage or um internet outage like we did recently um do we have enough days for that or if we see something like that would we need to tack on at the end right right those are considered active god days and so um you know in the event
153that we had a lengthy outage um power outage we we couldn't do an in-person day um because you can't have kids in the building without toilets that flush and other things like that so um depending on the nature of the day we would communicate that with parents and and how much out of school time that would constitute but those are typically considered um active god days okay and then i think i might have more questions when we hear the reports from the pratt team but i i guess one of the things that struck me is that you know for the for the guidelines we have a minimum column a moderate column and then so if we return to full the full hybrid plan while we are in the moderate column what's the difference between moderate
154and minimum in our in terms of our response right there really isn't um because you know as you're aware in order to socially distance we don't have the space to get all kids back um for full days of in-person learning so we there really isn't any significant difference between minimal and moderate for us um you know for districts that have the capability to do that they might have um some you know they might be in their all kids um in person in minimal and then um in orange or moderate um where they would do 50 percent of their kids attend or you know attend for partial day but because we can't um fit all of our kids in for in-person instruction our model doesn't change and and it really doesn't make sense to to try
155and juggle three models if it goes down um our model will work our blended model will work whether we're in minimal or whether we're in moderate okay and then i know i kind of expressed some concerns over email my questions about having kindergarten show up the same day as first and second grade and i understand that um the the team thinks that that is quite doable right now but i also know you know the devil's kind of in the details and once you get the broad framework um that's just the first one of the initial steps and then you start planning actually fully out what it's going to look like and so i guess i i would just appreciate if if as things maybe got harder if they were to get harder as they sometimes
156do um that that would be an option that would be considered to have the kindergartners come in advance of the first and second graders if if you get into that and the details make it look like oh yeah maybe we missed you know and and it's important to note that when we sat down um we had a very lengthy meeting with principals um and really talked through um what could this look like how could it work um you know because they are the ones who manage the logistics of pulling all this together at the building level and making it happen and having staff be in the right places at the right time um so this was done with our input um this is not where we started our conversations it's where we landed after really
157talking through the nitty gritty of what happens in the schools right thank you thank you jess guillermo any questions for dr kaskowski no no questions right now thank you bob thank you sir thank you and uh jason uh any questions yes so um uh thanks for putting this together and um this presentation really does address some students who whose families choose to send their kids back into the hybrid model and if you could address somebody just briefly what the process will be for families who choose to keep their children in the remote model what that process will look like what the commitment time will look like what have you right so the you know as i said tomorrow morning very detailed letters will go out there's a pre-k version an elementary version and a version
158of the letter for hadley so those will go out tomorrow morning and we put as much detailed information into those letters so that parents could make the best decision possible um including a table that kind of outlines opportunities and challenges that are inherent in each of the models we try to be very transparent you know obviously an in-person blended model has more opportunity for um quarantines and you know missed time due to the exclusionary criteria um the need for substitutes and and things like that so we spelled all that out as transparently as as we could um but that really drives the process so when these are due um and my table says noon on 9 18 that is not accurate we changed it to the end of the day on 9 18. um so
159by saturday we can start running that information and get a very good idea um you know if we needed to on saturday but you know clearly we'll be back at this um we could get a very good idea of who's requesting what so um starting this next week um you know we know that there will be families that the offices need to follow up with phone calls um and reminders and so some of that will be automated within our system for emails reminders um to families who have not yet made their selection um and then phone calls but if after we make three attempts and we're not able to get in touch with a family um you know their default placement will be in the full remote program we need to make these decisions so
160we can start staffing so first we staff for the full remote model um and that process will go through hr um and so um teachers that have submitted medical documentation and certified a need to work remotely um that process will flow through hr and so we will staff the full remote program first um and then work it backwards and make sure that our positions are filled in the in person so again knowing that moving into 9 21 and 9 28 we will very likely still be trying to make contact with parents but our hiring processes then will all start um our interview processes will start we know that people are working their way through the requirement process at the regional office of education to get their sub they don't call certificates anymore but to be
161licensed through the regional office process and once they've completed that then they come to us and they could go through our process um so that will be ongoing as we match um staff needs to remote and then staff needs to the in-person model okay and then we're discussing so you'll be stacked only so you'll be staffing from the of a remote program down to the in-person hybrid so parents of our students are going to be they're going to stay with their amp and designation as it is now um but their staff their teachers may change is that we don't know how that's going to work out at this point you know we don't know there may be you know minimal needs to change an am pm assignment um particularly at hadley once they see how
162these requests play out but again we've put that um in the table that accompanies um each of these letters so you know certain things are important to certain parents and certain things are important to others so um you know they can make the decision that best fits their needs um you know but we we really won't know until the requests come in and then we start staffing it you know backwards as i said we'll first staff the full remote program and then we'll staff the in-person program okay thank you thank you jason melissa two uh two items um can you talk a little bit about um or address the relationship between the time frames that the district has developed and the uh the multiple elements that go into actually being able to implement uh the
163hybrid i mean you've got some real dates here uh and i'd like you to talk a little bit about the the firmness of those dates and why those dates are established the way that they are right so again we know that with the letters going out tomorrow um 9 18 is a short turnaround time but i also think that parents have you know probably have a very good um thought process in mind already of what their preference is i don't know if the information that accompanies that parent commitment letter is going to change their minds at all but um you know we really need those commitment letters to come in by the 18th so that we can start um matching staff and staffing programs um you know we always have a need to make a
164significant amount of calls um in response to things that we we just don't hear back um you know our families don't go in and make the selection or indicate what it is that we're asking them to indicate so office staff will be following through on those phone calls until we've made you know as i said at least three attempts to contact a family so that we can give them the opportunity to make the selection before we would um staff them into full remote um you know but then it starts um the process through hr you know if there are any teachers who will request to take a leave whether it's through ffcra or fmla or even a leave option outside of that we need to know that because then as soon as those arrangements are
165confirmed we start the staffing process so hr has worked extensively on recruiting new pools of subs training new subs on technology but also keeping our postings active um because you generate new applicants that way um and new interest in positions so um that process you know does not happen overnight we process our own fingerprints and things like that so we're able to speed that process along but you know people have to go through the process we can't um start them until they have so we've built in time to prepare the classrooms we've built in time to do all of the hiring that may be necessary we've built in time again to give teachers refreshers and go through processes and procedures and make sure that all of the individual student kits are made and ready to
166roll um we already have bus routes being built the beauty about doing the roll out this way is that the routes can be built based on the kids who are eligible for bus riding and um you know when it's only k one and two on those buses it's not a new route that has to be made so then when we add three four five to it they just um you know they're they're already routed so there'll just be more kids um on those routes when we add all of the kids back again though keep in mind that that's based on 50 of our kids attending am or pm and some families may opt for their own transportation so many moving pieces here but once the routes are built um we don't have to change routes
167based on this we just add kids based on where we're at in the phase in um you know so really it's the hiring process that we've given ourselves um a little time here to make sure that we um can you know have the interview processes and get people through the hiring process and into classrooms um during this we're also obviously monitoring um the status the covet data status across the county um in the event you know if dupage goes into red while we're still in this planning process there is no reason for us to stop planning we can continue our work even if the county is in red if it starts to get close to when we would be making our shift and we're still in red we would be communicating that with our families
168um and obviously if there were a last minute um change where the county was moved into red we would probably do something more significant like a robocall to alert our family so we will be watching the data throughout okay uh thank you and one last thing um julie's question i thought was a good one to address any days of non-instruction non-instruction and and so my question is a little bit different but that is if when we get to the end of the academic year and the district has is able to document it document some learning loss that would restrict the ability of a student to be prepared for the next grade level would there be then consideration for some extended year i don't know what that might look like i know there are um um
169you know there are a number of considerations but uh i'd like to um yeah i'd like to have you respond on that right um you know i think if we determine that there was a need we can you know we obviously do already access the extended school year program through our case cooperative but um you know there's nothing that says we can't investigate doing something as a district over the summer i haven't looked at upcoming summer construction projects or anything like that um but it's something that we could um investigate and come back to the board and say we have a need um you know clearly we didn't do summer programming last year because of covid so um looking at does our um what we offer for the summer meet the needs um or is
170there something new or different that we might need to offer um this coming summer we can certainly do that um once we have a handle on um students and student learning after they're back thank you thank you uh i i see jess's hands gonna go up i'm gonna go back around and give board members a a second opportunity uh to ask any questions that might have got triggered as a result of the discussion jess you raised your hand so why don't you go ahead and go ahead and ask um so for a parent that just wants their child to stay with their teacher regardless of whether it's remote or in person what kind of avenue might they have to ensure that you know i don't know that we can ensure that it depends on you
171know we start it backwards from um you know being on full remote and staffing the full remote program um there may be some situations where people take leaves and it's unanticipated um and and that changes it so i don't know that we could ever say to somebody you know beyond the shadow of a doubt there won't be a teacher change um you know somebody could be out and under quarantine and not well enough to work and then obviously there would need to be a sub who steps into that so um you know we we will do everything we can to maintain consistency but the priority is to keep the classes covered um and then this might maybe be a question for later i know we're going to talk about metrics with uh that team but
172um so if you need to punt it to that that's fine but i'm i guess i'm wondering what what we know about disruptions um happening at other schools um that have returned already and and just how is there a coordinated organized system for monitoring those disruptions you know across dupage county um in school districts um so that we can monitor it going forward because it seems like all the data is sort of counting by age but not necessarily this is what is happening in schools yep yes so you know we're on one or two calls weekly where all the superintendents are on and everybody will have a process where you have to maintain the documentation regarding who's out on a quarantine how long that time period you know whether it's a quarantine or isolation how
173long that time period is again if you become symptomatic at the time that you're home that time period the clock starts over so we will we have to maintain that data um and and so yes it's it's part of what we will do with the dupage county health department for contact tracing around convert positive cases but we will have data about quarantines and whether it's staff or whether it's students that will be maintained the nurses are actually building some of the communication aspects of it now um and then we're working um to see what what capability is within skyward and skyward's a very robust system so um that is likely the mechanism that we're going to be using for input inputting and monitoring that information because obviously then teachers need to know when to anticipate
174somebody to come back the nurses need to know what the requirement is for somebody to come back um you know so we we will have that and yes we can monitor quarantine periods in speaking with places that have been in person um you know nobody has hit saturation point where they didn't have enough subs yet to cover positions but again as um districts start to phase into their blended models um you know that may change a little bit and we've all talked across districts about some different strategies for how um they may you know we may all handle um you know a tighter sub pool for instance if a teacher is out on quarantine but well enough to teach from home um having them teach remotely but putting another qualified adult in the classroom to
175provide the supervision while the teacher still does the instruction that would not be our our first choice but um all districts are trying to think through um you know how to uh backfill or handle days when when it's just really short and really tight when you say that we will have the reporting we will have the metrics and the data for disruptions um is that something that's going to be added to the dashboard or what who no wait what's yeah we have to maintain that and we um there is a process for when people return off of a quarantine um you know what gets them re-entry whether it's a negative cova test or a letter from the physician or some kind of confirmation from the county health department that they're able to return depending on
176the circumstances those things are different so we have to record the time out and also the documentation regarding um you know whether they've been cleared by the health department or they have a physician's note and a negative covet test we will have to document and maintain all of that so each district is responsible for maintaining i guess my question was really about the reporting out of it uh kind of like yeah you know so far they haven't and i don't know um you know i think if districts that are in person start to have um what they would consider outbreaks or um things like that we will you know i'm sure talk about them at our meetings but so far that has not been the case so it hasn't been part of our conversations but
177they will work hand in hand with the district and with the district's nursing staff on all of the documentation and the contact tracing but whether they'll share um you know whether district a has had x amount of teachers in quarantine they'll talk with us about our data but i don't know if they're going to share data um in a large setting meeting like that about about other districts okay yeah it hasn't happened yet it hasn't been yet um but you know we also share with each other on those calls what is going on in our districts and you know as i said the people who are open in person have shared with others um some of the things that have been more challenging and things that have gone well so i think as as more
178districts um are are moving in this direction um there'll be different information that we get to share and talk about but as i said we have um you know we've been doing monday calls we'll be doing um sometimes a tuesday call depending on what week it is and then we do friday called as well um and in addition to that we do it with our feeder groups too right so i guess from the parent perspective somebody who's trying to weigh like obviously disruptions are a big kind of unknown um and they're one of the things that i think is going to impact the quality of the instruction that they receive right that's just that's just one of those realities of the sad situation that we're in with the pandemic but i guess what i'm trying
179to my line of questioning is that i'm just trying to ascertain you know do we have an official um record of data that parents in the community can see and say yes things are going well and even though i have subs the sub pool is fine or oh my gosh there's having districts throughout the county are having disruptions all the time and and i think what the reason i i asked that question is because people have their opinions and they're telling us what their opinions are and so it would be helpful as a board member if we had an official record but you know those are the conversations you have to have with the health department um moving on though um one of the things that's also would be a parent concern and the return
180to the hybrid is revisiting that question of um when will you get notified um if there is a potential exposure to covet in your classroom and um i think it's worth asking the question again because as we have seen the health department keeps updating the guidance so is there new information about that is there some um is there like a flu chart that i saw one for nurses but i don't know if that um covers like uh notifying when when do parents get notified and how can they kind of maintain that because that's something that comes up every flu season and you know this is different right so yes they have give they have provided um template letters districts have created their own letters there are different notification processes depending on whether it's a close
181um contact notification or just a a non-closed contact so um we have those requirements and like i said one of the things that we heard from a district that is open is um they discover that when you have to call and say that you're sending somebody home because they're symptomatic that um parents almost it's too much information to digest over the phone so the recommendation was to follow up with an email letter and actually attach the information about what's required on the parents part at that point so are you required at this point to have a clinical evaluation by a physician um and get a doctor's note in what instances do you have to have a covent test or don't you um so that information will accompany um you know when those notifications go out
182okay thank you thank you thank you guillermo any additional questions for dr keskowski yeah just um one quick question uh and just remind me i know this question came up before but for uh families they have more than two kids and they were asking can they both be on the same am or pm um can you just remind me how we address that question right so principals did their absolute best um to do that as much as possible um you know there are times when they just absolutely couldn't um it you know but they did their very best and they also tried with extenuating circumstances to work with families um who had some more significant significant issues um i i will say we have tightened up the process we learned um from that first time
183around that it's just not possible to do this on a give us your preference because everybody wants am and so it really comes down to balancing the classes and staffing efficiently um to to be able to do this and to keep it going so um you know we we can't unfortunately allow easy movement in and out of each model because you can't staff that way so um you know in order to do this and make it work you have to get you have to be tighter on some things you know what we have said is please reach out to your principal they will you know attempt to do what they can um but um you know when we say significant extenuating circumstances everybody's opinion on what that is is vastly different um so at the
184end of the day principals have to fill their classrooms and maintain um you know a balance between their am and pm and and it hadley it's even more complicated you know so they cannot overload any one session um re-entry back in is based on space so um for new families moving to the district um you know once we no longer have space um in our classrooms and the you know in the ability to socially distance um we will you know move people into the full remote model but have a wait list for blended if that's um what a family desires but um again we we have an obligation to not overload um classes or have them be wildly out of balance from am or pm thank you thank you uh ted did i ask you
185if you had any questions in this round i have none thanks thank you ted thank you uh miss hill any questions for you in this second round actually do um i just i think i have kind of a few but i think they should be really short easy answers um so you talked a lot about um dr k talked a lot about staffing and so i just kind of have a couple like i think yes or no's but here are my questions um i think that you are planning to hire more full-time teachers is that right if we need to okay but presuming you have at least one classroom of remote children you'll need an extra teacher right um it depends on the numbers at that grade level so if we don't need to hire
186we won't hire but if we do we absolutely will okay and you feel confident that that's a possibility because last time we tried to do this it was like well we couldn't we couldn't staff it i felt like that was the main driver of going full remote at the time so i feel confident that you could hire enough teachers to make that all work well i feel confident that hr has been working on well i don't want to say almost nothing since but has been working furiously at this um and also keep in mind that one of the drivers um last time that complicated this for us and many other places is that there was no definition of safe um and so the definition does now exist and and we've you know committed to we
187are gonna um you know rely on the matrix and make our decisions that way that matrix metrics um and definition didn't exist before okay and then um are you when you talk about having subs available and hiring new subs are those are you going to plan on having them all be long-term um capable or qualified subs or what right so i guess i have a very foggy understanding of the staffing needs and requirements whatever so if you can clarify that a little bit that'd be great right so we have a pool of people who can sub and then we have people who are able to long term sub mercy i don't know if you want to put your the long-term subs will need to have a full teaching license to be able to sub in
188a in a classroom longer than a week and so was my name yes so that is a different level of some you know different level of licensure that we're looking for right um but as far as day-to-day subs you know we can have them but we also have people that are trained to work with our technology and so they're able to sub for remote classes and in-person classes so we're trying to diversify the substitute pool so we have people that can work on both sides of the model which when we were doing this back in august we didn't have that it was you know everybody was basically just in-person substitutes and had done nothing remote to um you know support students through technology so we've been working on that with our subs okay thank you
189for that um clarification i guess for me i appreciate it okay okay that's all i have thank you that's all thank you thank you julie and uh jason any final questions from you yeah i think i asked this but i don't remember if you answered it or not and after you're avoiding it but the um uh when we're looking for a commitment from i'm not from families further about whether they're looking at the hybrid or the floor about what's the timeframe on that that commitment well we're what we put in what we're looking for by the end of the 18th i mean the duration of the commitment or no because honestly if we had to shuffle the deck and throw it all up for grabs again at the end of the quarter and go through
190this entire process um you know that so we're saying that this is a commitment for the duration of while we're under this restriction where we're in blended or hybrid and then extenuating circumstances they should go to their building principle but um part of what you know i think everybody has learned and discovered is you one of the toughest parts of this is the staffing piece and so if there's this constant back and forth and movement between the models it's going to make it much harder to stay open in person so the more we can anchor and staff and and minimize the changes and disruptions the more stable our model will be should be for those things that we do control we'd love to offer flexibility but again flexibility complicates that whole staffing piece yeah thanks
191thank you jason okay robert i said thank you jason thank you melissa thank you board uh melissa let me give you now an opportunity to introduce the representatives of the pratt subcommittees i know they have important reports uh and board members may have some questions uh as they are uh informed uh by the subcommittee so right so i am gonna thank our pratt people for waiting patiently in the waiting room um and i'm gonna ask um ellen and katie from the metric group if they would like to go first and mike will project their presentation for them i believe oh thanks mike um can everybody hear me okay yes okay um i'm ellen dickey i'm one of the members of the metrics subcommittee um also on the committee are katie ducey uh david chuck and
192kathy maxson so um we'll give you an overview tonight of what the beach county uh benchmarks and metrics are and um show a little bit of where we have been in the last few weeks um so i think as a lot of folks have already seen the duke ridge county school metrics came out and they have created three subgroups three three categories of community transmission the first is minimal community transmission in which they encourage in-person learning um keeping physical distancing between students and staff and there are certain criteria that you have to meet to be minimal uh the middle is moderate community transmission which also encourages learning models that maintain at least six feet of social distancing um some to no mixing of groups of students and teachers throughout the school days as they say
193and um a mix of students participating virtually and some participating in person so both of these minimal and moderate categories would be supported by our hybrid model of physical distancing and having some students in virtual and some students in remote the third category that they have the substantial community transmission um and once we move into substantial they would encourage 100 um remote learning so if we go back and look at what the actual benchmarks are for the three different categories um each category has uh we'll start with minimal first but we'll focus more on moderate because that's where dupage county is right now um so the illinois department of public health has categorized each county and we'll go into this a little bit more later in either blue orange blue or orange depending on what
194your statistics are in your county so um for minimal community transmission dupage county would have to be in the blue category as far as ivph is concerned for moderate we would have to only transition to orange once in the last four weeks so we'll explain that a little bit more when we show on the idph dashboard um the second benchmark that we look at is the weekly county case rates so for minimal they would like us to be below 50 cases per 100 000 residents for moderate we would have to be between 50 and 100 and if we go over 100 then we would get pushed into the substantial community transmission uh the third benchmark is the overall case number increases the weekly case number increases um so for minimal they would like us to
195be um between five percent and ten percent increase occurring week week over week uh for moderate we need to be between ten and twenty percent and then once we go over twenty percent we will get kicked into substantial kind of a lot of data but we'll break it down as we go forward a little bit and show examples um the fourth benchmark is the looking specifically at youth cases so for minimal they would like use cases again to be between five and ten percent increases occurring each week um moderate we would have to be between ten and twenty percent of youth uh increases each week and then going over twenty percent would kick us into substantial and the last uh benchmark that goes across all of the all of the categories is the weekly testing
196positivity um minimal is under five percent testing positivity leaky moderate is between five and eight percent and then anything over eight percent kick us into substantial um there's a couple different there's also a minimal if you see there's a benchmark of having your neighboring counties what your neighboring counties are in are they in orange or blue those apply to the minimal category they don't apply to the moderate transmission category so if we go down um to the next slide mike um just vote this is this is where dupage county is now um it's where we have been for the last few weeks since the metrics first came out we are in moderate so again just to reiterate moderate they encourage learning models that maintain at least 60 of social distancing between teachers and students some
197to know mixing up groups of teachers and students throughout the days although we did confirm with the county that we can consider a group grade level um so we can't have we can't have mixing between grade levels and that still would be within the county benchmarks and then again some students participated in virtual ones and participated in person which would be our hybrid model of half day in person and half day virtual uh this also the county does leave it open to see school officials using their discretion to determine which populations of students should be receiving in-person instruction so a few notes as we're looking at these metrics um so first of all metrics are updated every friday but there is a lag time so the metrics that just came out um last week are
198only valid up until uh september 5th and actually they came out a little later the dupage county metrics didn't come out until monday of this week so the data has a lag time of at least six days depending on when they're released um another important point is that your level of community transition is the transmission is determined by the highest category that you meet so for instance if we um have a case count if if we have four of the five uh benchmarks that meet moderate but our um our weekly case count is over a hundred that would put us in substantial so you just need one particular one of the five benchmarks to put you into the next category if that makes sense right um can we can we just sorry just want to
199jump in um i think that's important for people to understand so where we are right now in orange in order for us to move to yellow which would be minimal risk transmission we would have to show all of the benchmarks in yellow over two reporting time frames which is a two week so when you think about what it takes to move down um it would be that we met all of the benchmarks in yellow for four weeks and that's to really um generate some sense of stability so that districts aren't being asked to shift back and forth between their models but yet on the flip side in order to move to a more um serious category so to go from orange to red that determination would be based on a single benchmark being in substantial
200then they can't they categorize the district base i mean the county based on that um and so they want your shift to full remote to move a little bit quicker because that is considered a public health um you know situation that we would need to act on so they did try to frame this with some stability um to the greatest extent possible with all of the unknowns so that districts aren't easily shifting or planning their shift and then mid-shift the data changes again and and now you have to pull back so um they have built-in um a level of stability um that they could into their framework thanks melissa the next point is that the dupage county health department has encouraged everybody to look at the numbers on a county-wide basis so district 41 is
201comprised of students from well and we've lombard carol stream and glendale heights but they're encouraging all the school districts to use county level data when we're making our decisions obviously because the populations in the towns travel a lot throughout the county for sports and shopping and work so they'd like us to look at it from a county level not a town level a couple other notes um when we're looking at the metrics is the youth case rates they do break out the youth cases into different age groups so they have three age groups of youth youth rate cases the first is zero to four the second is five to fourteen which encompasses um all of d41 students and the third is the 15 to 19 age group um well obviously we don't have all of
202these age groups um we do have to take all the age groups into concern to a certain degree and then just as a um to let people know when we got these these metrics the um illinois department of public health released their metrics on um august 17th and the code of exclusionary guidance didn't come out until the 20th and then as melissa said it was changed again on september 10th so these things are constantly being reevaluated and then the dupage county health didn't put up their framework until um august 28th so if we go down we can take a quick look at where we've been we have data going back so this was the first week the dupage founder released its summary of school metrics week 34 is what they categorize it does and it's
203from august 16th to the 22nd so this is the snapshot that will be released every friday to let us know what the previous week's numbers were and as you see it goes through the individual um individual benchmarks and tells you what your trends are so here in week 34 um we were listed as moderate um you can see that some of the numbers were um we're trending upwards and then if we go down to week 35 the following week when metrics came out um we're still listed in moderate and it gives a snapshot of what numbers came down and what numbers are trending for trending upwards like if you want to um there you go and then we like i said we just got week which is from august 30th until september 5th so we
204are still um as we said before we will always be a week behind on these metrics but you can see um if we go under week 36 that we there are certain areas that are trending up that we have to keep an eye on one that um i think katie will talk about a little later is the illinois department of health metrics for putting counties in orange which is warning and why we went into orange this week another previous week so um it can get a little complicated but right now the last three weeks that have come out dupage county is still in moderate um so we'll have to wait until the next next week's metrics come out to see where the where the trend lines are going um so i'm going to kick it
205over to katie and she's going to talk a little bit about the metric methodology to give a little more in-depth information on that hi so these are um the metric methodologies from idph um the first one that i'll go over is the weekly new case rate per 100 000 people it's calculated as a rate which is the county case count for seven days divided by the county population times one hundred thousand um so you can see there's minimal moderate and substantial we have hung out in moderate for all three of the reported weeks for the metrics um week 34 through 36 so you can go to the next slide these are more for reference later when you forget what they meant it just can tell you the calculations um the second one is weekly count
206of new cases increase um so this is the total account of new cases during seven days and they measure um the change in percentage from week to week for two consecutive weeks so this is part of the reason why you need two cycles of monitoring which is four weeks because of these percentage changes and this seems to be one of the metrics that has the biggest swings that we've noticed in monitoring the last three weeks so you can go to the next slide the third one is weekly count of nuke youth cases increase and like ellen had said this is for um the under 20 population so 0 to 19 during seven days and it also is measured change from week to week so you'll see when you look at the dupage county grid that
207they put out that they'll show you exactly how much negative or positive percentage that we've gone up from week to week and then again it'll give you minimal moderate or substantial um also for this one we have we have remained in in moderate as well you can go the next slide um the fourth one is test positivity this is the data that is through the um electronic laboratory reporting um for idph um so kova test right now it's there's a range average of days for the reporting and this the date that you would get a positive test is the date that the person inputting the data enters the results so they could have had the test over a week ago but it's not considered a positive test until the person puts it into this electronic
208laboratory reporting system so it makes it kind of hard to it adds to the lag time um and then i guess three to five percent of the test data is not electronically reported so you just have to kind of ignore that and then again it'll go over in percentage increase from week to week minimal moderate or substantial and go to the next slide this is the dupage county kova 19 dashboard if you haven't seen it and i know it doesn't look nice but that is actually how it is on their website everything is kind of scrunched together and then in the top right hand corner of each of these little boxes there's a there's an area where you can open it wider and you can select data to look at what you want so like
209if we want to look at the 5 to 14 for the last from april till now we can we can look at that trend so um just wanted to show you that and go to the next slide um this is the data for glen ellen glendale heights lombard wheaton carol stream we cannot sort it out by our district boundaries but these are the towns data this is from the northwestern cova dashboard which gets their numbers directly from idph so this is kind of a busy slide but you can basically see the towns that feed into our schools what their percentages are this is interesting because it goes over how many tests a day are are done what their positivity radar it adds a couple things that aren't considered in the metric but we'll give you
210an idea you can go to the next slide and then this is like i said on the dupage county dashboard it can show you the ages so from 0 to 4 is the blue line on the bottom 5 to 14 is the green line and then 15 to is the red line and it this is data from april through this is through september 13th you can go to the next slide idph also has their own metrics for school determination that they keep so this is week 35 it shows us moderate in two places test positivity and new cases per 100 000 and then the next slide is week 36 which shows us better on test positivity so we went from 5.5 down to 4.8 but our new cases per 100 000 went up so still
211considered moderate um the new cases that you'll see on the bottom in the youth case increase are also up but they're still considered minimal next slide so this is the statewide picture of um so august 30th through september 5th so you'll see all the county outlines there the blue is indicative of a stable coven 19 metrics which we had been in up until this point and then orange is warning signs of increased coven 19 metrics so that is part of the dupage county decision making you know where you are orange or blue is definitely one of the determinants i believe if we're in orange for two consecutive weeks that would move us to substantial so it's definitely something to keep an eye on you can go to the next slide and then just so everyone
212knows what the idph county level metrics are they're different from the school metrics but like i said the blue and orange this these this is the data that informs those um you know stable or unstable so um the things the two things that put us into orange where new cases per 100 000 and the number of deaths so we went from 77 cases to 89 that puts us at a warning and then the number of deaths went from four to six so that that puts us so because two of these eight are in warning that is what changed our color to orange and then you can go to the next slide um i just think this is this is interesting um to show so this is june 7th through um september 6 the case rate
213per 100 000 and this is for dupage county as a whole the red line that goes across between well it's the 50 per 100 000 threshold that's considered the ideal of what you would want to be below so you will see like around july 19th that's when we crossed over that's threshold and we've remained above the since then and it kind of saw tooth so it goes up and down up and down but all of these as long as we stay under the 100 keep us in moderate and go to the next slide um and then this is our final slide i also think it's good to see on a graph what our dupage county test positivity has been and again the eight percent you'll see the red line there shows um that is our
214threshold which we have remained under throughout so that's from july 3rd through september 11th and i think that's it do you have anything else to add ellen ellen did you no oh go ahead um no i mean nothing else to add except that um i think one thing that we have um come to understand is that these numbers are going to continue to fluctuate up and down um it's just uh how much they're going to fluctuate that it's really going to affect um you know what level that we're at and there's a lot of different variables that go into the testing number the testing positivity uh so just to keep in mind that we're going to see ups and downs over the next few weeks okay and then any questions that the board has we're
215happy to answer if you if the point is well yes let's do that i mean i know we have other subcommittees but i would thank the board members after seeing this presentation and thank you by the way uh for the visuals um and for the deliberative explanation but i think board members would likely have some questions so that would be a good time and you know what let's leave your presentation up in case board members wanted to go back to a another slide or two so keep sharing your screen let me uh then uh call on board members uh ted uh do you have any questions for ellen and katie uh no i don't but i i do want to thank them for the visuals um having the historical perspective on this careful explanations was
216very helpful thank you uh guillermo do you have any questions for katie and ellen no thank you thank you both katie nerlin for for the really good in-depth information really nice thank you so much thank you and uh julie uh any questions for ellen and katie i don't thanks i sort of obsess over this in my free time so okay i appreciate all the time and effort that went into it so thank you for that thank you uh jessica any questions please sorry i do um but thank you for the the presentation was very good um i'm wondering like for the on the um illinois department of health website one of the other metrics that they show in the um time the time series metrics is something called cluster percentage and i haven't been able
217to figure out what that means um and you may not know because that's not one of the ones that would kick you up or down but it is one that they list um in that so i so i was just curious if you do know what the significance of that is i think katie might know um i'm like julia i study this in my free time um the cluster percentage is um it is a percentage of people that were at an event so i think they've had a few where one was like a graduation party that they can link an outbreak to or like a camp that they can link it to um what's the percentage of people that you can tie it to that event if that makes sense okay yes so yes it's
218a weird chart because they have like the dates backwards but so it looks like in july we were really high but now we've been lower so that's good yeah i think there's only been about three of those okay well that's that's good and then the dupage county um corona virus dashboard it's something that i look at here and there as well um i guess i'm wondering what you feel like is the most useful from that um i guess out of all those resources that you've kind of shared with us between the dashboard and the id ph school metrics what do you think is like the most useful tool to be looking at um i personally think the idph is a little bit more user-friendly and easier to navigate they if you go into the idph
219they have you can go right to county metrics and they have very clear clear presentations maybe than the dupage county copa dashboard i think that they use cases on the dupage county dashboard are really useful for us to keep our eyes on because um you know while the you know if our youth cases continue to increase but it's mainly clustered within 15 to 19 year olds and then that something as a district that we need to think about if that's the only metric that's keeping us in moderate and our five to 14 year old rate is really low then that's something to consider as the diminished as a district about how much weight we're going to put on 15 to 19 year olds which is obviously high school but also some college kids in the
220you know there's college kids that are 18 19 in dupage county that fall into that category as well um so i mean there's different pieces of it that's that's i find that the most useful of the code of the dupage county one but i think that idph has a really good layout katie what do you think i agree and um i think the um the case rate per 100 000 is kind of the thing that i watch um the uh children's hospital of pennsylvania um put out their own metric and i don't want to like add on to metrics but they're really considered the pediatric experts of the country so you know if you have free time you could check out their metrics and they they've done an amazing job their thresholds are so much
221lower and they really focus on um the percentages are important but that case rate per 100 000. they have a much lower threshold than dupage county has been very generous with us um so that's that's the number i watch and and you know it does seem to go up and down but um our percentage as you can see it fluctuates like we could be lower now or lower than five percent but our county turned to orange because of you know two other things so it's a lot to keep track of but i would say that's my favorite metric to watch did you repeat that source i'm sorry to interrupt you what was that it's um that the children's hospital of pennsylvania has the unfortunate acronym of chop um and they have they have if you
222google um chop coved metrics um it's very interesting and very and they have like they have like a cliff notes version and then they have like a 20 page version that really would help school districts make decisions if you needed like another outside source yeah and just just what you need yeah right right and i guess can you talk a little bit more about um looking at the county level data versus a district level metric and i guess i'm just hung up on the fact that i thought we were gonna get a district level message at mometrix um that seems more targeted uh than than the county level so i don't know maybe assure me that it's okay that we're looking at the calendar yeah um ellen and katie and and you can weigh in
223on this too um you know as i've heard the the discussions about it in the meetings that i've been in um you know while while breaking the data down by our attendance boundaries that's only important related to school but so much of kids life happen outside of school when you know they're worshiping going to restaurants participating in athletics going to relatives house or friends and family that there's so much crossover between the communities um that the county did not feel that the best way to look at the data was by attendance boundary because there's just too much crossover to say that that's you know an accurate depiction of where families are and what they're doing thank you thank you jason any questions for katie and ellen no real questions um and i appreciate the the
224depth of your presentation but i think it's important to understand it's just just if you just give the public a background again because i think it's important to know where that information is coming from and and just you know and and why and why you guys are the ones given this information katie why don't you go first tell us about your credentials um so i just graduated i'm a family nurse practitioner my background is i've worked in as a nurse in the emergency department at good samaritan hospital for the last 15 years i sit on a number of advisory boards now including this one um i uh two at lurie children's hospital of chicago um on their family advisory board and then also their ethics advisory board and then i am also on the board
225of the illinois society for advanced practice nursing so anyway so i have a little background in this and like dr k had said um i have been taking care of covet positive patients um since march so yeah thank you and ellen um i actually previously i worked for the federal government for 10 years and then i worked at argonne national lab uh for the past five years in the biosafety and security program um i actually have a policy background i have a master's in public policy so i dealt a lot with using scientific data to make policy recommendations to stakeholders great thank you very much i appreciate it and thank you for youtube everyone on your society for the work you put into this thank you so much thank you jason and uh melissa you
226may be in a better position than either katie or ellen um to comment on this although perhaps uh both katie and ellen uh have gotten read in on uh uh previous ways in which the county was providing metrics and and health data and you said this a little bit earlier but i think it would it would be important to revisit here for folks uh that the county has actually um taken a substantial step in defining safe on the basis of it on the basis of the model that school uses um rigorously applying the social measures and then looking at the uh the health data and that was not always the case this is a substantial change and it's a change that occurred uh really after um the board took the step to move to full
227remote this is uh a substantial change and you know that history probably better than any one and then you know and maybe ellen and katy can comment on this in addition to having a lot of metrics unlike what was also true previously the county is now establishing thresholds for each of those metrics that then leads to a recommendation on their part so it's not just that they're metrics but they now lead to some directive from our health experts so any combination of ellen katy and melissa if you could uh just comment on that right i think the important piece of this is that um their framework really does support districts in terms of making decisions and how to apply or make changes to your models so that you are compliant with what's required and minimal
228or moderate or you know once we get to read that did not exist so people were developing models based on vastly different things but none of us had a definition a consistent definition across the county or outside of the county for what constituted safe and so you could never really answer that question of well what says it's safe for in-person instruction and so they they have provided that um to us um you know the interesting thing i think with having um ellen and katie you know on pratt and having these conversations is um you know the ability to kind of talk through it from darlings and you know which of these benchmarks or indicators are maybe more important than others um you know it's really helpful because in all honesty and this is what we've
229told people all along um this was the part of reopening that was far more complicated than shutting us all down in march and this was the part that was missing and yet we were being expected to create models and make decisions without having the information that we actually needed to do so so um it's wonderful to have them on pratt and be able to um you know share documents and share information with them but also i think most importantly to say okay here's how i'm interpreting this but i'm not a medical or scientific professional so am i interpreting this right um so beneficial to us to have the framework and the metrics but also to have a mechanism where we can bounce this off of each other and say you know am i looking at
230this information right or um you know is this as important as it's jumping out on the page or um you know so there's just been a tremendous value in not only the framework and the metric but just having um kind of our own in-house experts to just you know talk about it all with great uh ellen and katie any final thoughts before we allow you to step down and we invite other members of the pratt committee you're good no no additional comments you're good okay thank you ellen thank you well thank you both um you can stop sharing your screen ellen and we'll let you step down and then melissa will give you a second to introduce uh representatives to the next subcommittee okay and if they're still hanging in there with us we have
231jill and jackie from the subcommittee that works on supporting students and families yes hi i don't think jackie is here today okay um i think i am the only one well welcome i'll try to make it as entertaining as possible um so in our committee um we really we looked at um trying to find a common theme and where the needs are lying what like where are the problem areas that we're seeing um the greatest needs for various students and families and what we really focused on was equity that was really the company no e-learning right now holds a level of difficulty for every family but there are some the more vulnerable that um are having more difficulties um so we're looking at laying people with language barriers parent education uh uh lower parent education
232levels um household incomes lower household incomes um special needs disabilities all these factors obviously we know play a role in how somebody is going to be able to access e-learning and access the material coming from the district even the informational material coming from the district and we're also dealing with a whole a whole other level of uh basic needs you know when you're looking at the hierarchy of needs um what basic needs are not being met because of the difficult times that we're living in that also make e-learning difficult so that was our question how do we make the e-learning experience more equitable across our family populations um not easy to do of course but there are some relatively simple changes that we can make um and then of course some more difficult changes that
233might take a little bit more time but ultimately what we did see is a lot of what's happening that we're seeing that's happening during learning are sometimes things that are actually being uncovered that might have had um might have had other solutions like for instance at the beginning of this school year there were a lot of families that could not obtain their children's um schedule they had they didn't know where to go day one because um they had difficulty accessing skyward we found out skyward was in english only which i don't think we were aware of before that um and even if it were translated would they be able would would a lot of our parents be able to even navigate to that location and be able to unders understand the schedule once you get
234to it um so those were things that were probably always there but families knew their kids would get off the bus and be at school be at a safe place and the teachers would all of course take care of where the kids needed to be so obviously through all of this we're seeing some of these some of these areas that can't be necessarily remedied as quickly by the teachers um some of these areas are kind of being on um uncovered i suppose that's kind of our guess so one of our goals is to improve access to information and technology um focusing on communication and technology access aligned with specific family needs um providing translation of course for programs and use in the major the the most represented um language populate or in the most represented
235languages um you know that of course includes skyward um if we can't provide that translation are there alternative methods of getting out the information like for instance if we couldn't provide translation and skyward and to be able to get access to a schedule is it possible for a schedule to be mailed or or some other alternative um simplifying messages and i know we've already talked about some of the communication changes that could happen in the district but we also see with some of our families even if it's translated some of the vocabulary is at a level of difficulty that might be too much and so even keeping language simple before the actual translation happens might actually help with the process um using simple visuals when possible and avoiding the multi-link access when possible just because
236that adds another layer of confusion sometimes i know that's difficult in this day and age but if there's a really important piece of information to not have to click on on something additionally would probably be very helpful um providing basic computer literacy training for our parents and caregivers and i know jackie reeves has said that she is interested in talking with the glen ellen public libraries um as a possible resource for this um the difficulty i know uh within our b-pack we attempted to provide a little bit of of this option um live virtual assistants right before school started um but we are we are looking at some of our families who are really interested in being involved are at a level where even um even just uh being able to write a password is
237very difficult because that's all in english so so it's just it and then you have to be able to know where to go and check for your email in order to fund and get your password changed so all of these different levels just add add add more difficulty to being able to um obtain the communication or find out more about how their children are doing in school i was also in listening to the presentation for returning to school i think it's going to be really important to look at access to the kovidself certification requirement um and i don't know if that's been discussed yet but i would imagine that could be a real issue for some of our families yeah um we're working on it um that's where after our after our last committee meeting
238um when you had shared some things um we started talking about how um you know through through that department um they could create some things that would make that easier oh great um also we we didn't have anybody representing s-pac on our committee but we did reach out to us back as we know that that's one of our more vulnerable top student populations um and kim lechner gave a great idea as a relatively quick little boost of a helper she said that there is a father and this is an example it doesn't necessarily mean we need to send out switches to everybody but there is a father a churchill dad that figured out a way to make a single access switch for his daughter to mute and unmute during a google meet meeting um and
239i know even just having a kindergartner the difficulty at first just having the motor control and of a school-based physical therapist so it is something i think about but just to have the motor control to be able to access that and then also it can be multi-step if the mute button is hidden so the students also have to understand that they have to make the mute button visible and then be able to control their their hand to be able to reach out to be able to get that switch so she said it has been a wonderful addition um to their e-learning it gives her daughter a an extra level of independence and helps her as a parent whoops jill weave i think we may have lost jill she seems to have frozen and i'm not
240hearing her saying that there are some children um i have is everybody hearing me okay jill you we we did lose you for a little bit and your screen looks like it's frozen oh dear can i pop out and come right back in please let's give her a chance to do that before we shift to the next subcommittee if she has a hard time getting back in then we will invite another subcommittee rep to to go ahead here she comes all right all right you're back there you go where did i leave off um switches okay so we were also she also suggested that some of the students might benefit from um a larger screen those who have difficulty seeing the smaller letters um or on smaller screens and even access to level texts um
241for some of the students um these are just suggestions just some some recommendations some areas that they've um heard are areas of of need and and could be past could possibly add to um slight increases in independence possibly slightly more comfortable during this process um we also wanted to look at improved access to support because we're obviously looking at um a a whole different time right now it's it's difficult to begin with before covid to jill we've lost you again uh the audio and yeah we're seeing you but there's no audio oh you might wanna if you are able to get back in you well there we go maybe she's coming back we can ask her to wrap up i'm afraid she's not going to stay on very long mike do you have her trying
242to get back in not yet bob no okay do we want to jump to um wade's group by he might have a short update yeah why don't we do that if he goes with us um wade is here from our back to school back to school needs um the group really focuses or wants to focus on needs related to in-person instruction so wait i don't know if you're in if he's still hanging out in the waiting room no i don't see weight in here anymore okay um then he probably had to go i know he works um and then our last sub committee is communication and i see kim still hanging out patiently in the waiting room so kim do you have a quick um update that you want to give yeah um are we
243able to share those few slides that we said mike should he have them thank you mike great so we have a quick update um as far as um the communications team goes we really wanted to just ground set um for this meeting a lot of the other committees have been doing um quite a bit of work and will be supporting if you can go to the next slide please um so we thought it would be good to melissa shared some of this information um but to really just level set what's the purpose of pratt we're an advisory team not a decision making team we're operating in collaboration with the district independent of the school board our we're here to offer transparency accuracy and urgency on the issues at hand another thing that we thought was
244important is that we're focusing on long-term goals and stability versus the the short-term goals next slide please as we craft the communications and what's guiding this team um we have three goals first to bring children back to in-person school we um you know say safely that's really according to the safety metrics provided by the dupage county health department that's the framework that's guiding us in addition to bringing children back we think it's important to also stay in school again using those safety metrics provided by the dupage county health department the other goal that we have is really around leading some community alignment um as a group we want to capture stakeholders their concerns challenges feedback and outcomes and really work to address those each member um of this team is also a parent or and
245or community member that means that we all have different viewpoints we're having debate and discussion at each of our subcommittee meetings so we're really trying to capture what's out there in the community um and and really represent some of those views as well um we're really trying to bring the independent viewpoints to the group and it's definitely not people who all share the same opinion on the models or reopening next slide please um and then finally as melissa mentioned our subcommittees here there's four of them monitoring the framework and metrics that's you heard from katie and ellen that group is it just as it says monitoring the metrics and the return to school framework and providing us with guidance the next group is the return to school needs brainstorming solutions to needs that emerge related
246to implementing our models um our service and support to families um which is really about focusing time and energy on working with the school staff to identify those families in need of support and resources and the communications group which is our committee um that's really here to support the messaging and with summary reporting we will be working um you know communications is a is a big deal and we're going to be working to provide more frequent updates in some different capacities we'll look to get it out and we're also going to look to take some input in as well thank you kim abort obviously jill's not here to answer any specific questions oh you snuck in on me be before i i i give you a chance to wrap up and ask any questions are
247there any since uh kim just went through do you have any questions or or thought for uh for kim and i'm actually not seeing and kim if you stop sharing your screen i'll be able to see there you go um so i'll go through real quick julie do you have a question for kim actually just because you mentioned communications and i've been sitting here wondering this and i don't know if this would be you guys if this is something to ask the district or none of my business but here's my question um this chart and i'm wondering if we can put these metrics on the district website so that people don't have to go hunting in all these four different places to find these numbers and we can just easily quickly look at the d41
248covid you know page or whatever um to can if parent we were like joe was i think it was jill is just talking about like parents are having trouble navigating various things like if we can put this with our current numbers on our website somewhere or something just to make it really quick and easy for parents because not everybody wants to like spend their evening digging around the county health website like i do sometimes um i'm wondering if that's something you guys have thought about or the district just thought about or if i should just well they provide us with a summary um but you know and ellen and katie showed it it has the arrows upper arrows down are stable um they post them on their website um and i had a hard time
249finding them today but i was able to find them um let me see if we're able to link directly to that um if the health department is okay with that um okay cool all right let's see yeah great super uh let me go around real quickly to see if any other questions for kim that are communication oriented ted any questions uh nothing for me thanks all right thank you guillermo no nothing for me thank you jess thank you and jason i i think he said no questions well no question said thank you sorry there you go uh kim i have no questions either but thank you um for agreeing to uh serve in this uh capacity obviously the communication is very important so well i know we'll be hearing more from you thank you all
250right let me just quickly return to uh jill maybe you you could wrap up your presentations we don't want to lose you again and and board members have any questions i want to give them a chance to also ask them yes that's all right um is everybody hearing me now we are okay great um so our other goal is improving access to support um so again we're looking at how do we how do we reach out to these families how do we even find identify the families that are in need i know um gcrc talks a lot about some of our our families who are quite isolated based on their language um culture um family income all of those things really play a factor um so and then we're also thinking that the need is
251even greater now and and some of our families who might have qualified before for certain areas of need there could be other that um might have been middle income and then this happened and now they're in greater need how do we identify those i'm sure there's a lot of staff already working on that but it also made us think about do we need to look at a review of our current system our current support staff system is it robust enough to be able to handle all of these areas not only of course like with social workers not only 504 plans and ieps in addition to um really getting out the social supports that families need um and then um you know what has changed what might be different in terms of outreach activity for social
252workers and then also even looking at family liaison role i know i hear a lot of great things about our family liaisons and their ability to really do a lot of that work that leg work that the social workers can do to reach out to our families and gain those connections so maybe that's in another area to look at whether it's the possibility of expanding or finding other avenues of trying to improve that outreach increasing partnership with outside resources such as gcrc to help identify and provide support for those in need obviously the gecrc is already a really big partner with our schools um you know even looking at um you know in what ways that whether it be them or even another community organization that can improve its partnership with the schools to be
253able to better address those areas of need also exploring other strategies for improving outreach and then even you know somebody brought up the idea of the community schools model moving forward and how important it is to really look at which our schools already look at the whole child but really look at that importance of bringing the family in and how um how if if we were to strengthen that community connection um that that might improve whatever happens in the future as well so obviously there are a lot of areas that we can work on um specific answers aren't necessarily there because obviously there's some there's there's some fact-finding and need for some investigation i suppose thank you thank you jill thanks for sticking with it yeah wow you had to work hard let me quickly
254give a board member zoe a a chance uh to ask any questions or comments guillermo no thank you jill thank you so much thank you julie no thank you jessica i'm good thank you thank you and ted no questions and mr lobock no questions thank you joe appreciate it thank you thank you jill a very important subcommittee and a lot of great ideas and topics that you addressed much appreciated okay thank you and last but not least um katie's going to give a short update just um what's transpired with first and second grade science thank you katie hello um so as of this past week um the math coaches have joined in the planning with our first grade and our second grade science teachers um the math and science teachers are splitting the live group
255lessons so that we can create smaller groups of students to engage in the lessons this will allow for students to have more of an opportunity to participate and to engage with their teacher um and with the lessons themselves um jeff burke um the principal of ben franklin has joined me in the weekly planning meetings as the principal representative so we meet with um the math coaches and the science teachers each week um and jeff and i keep the other building principles up to date and share kind of our next steps and where we're going with the planning um at our weekly principal meetings each week so that's kind of where we're at with um science right now katie melissa were you about to say something nope just said thank you to katie okay uh board
256members are let me just quickly in case there's a question that you have for katie on the topic uh ted no i'm good thanks thank you julie thank you aguiarma no thank you thanks very good and jessica thanks for the update no question thank you uh and jason thanks kitty and i'm sure you'll continue to monitor the situation and address any changes as they're necessary yeah we've been monitoring it from the start um and at the beginning of our science instruction we were really trying to engage the students in what they needed to know in order to be successful in science like how to take attendance and how to do some of those like more routine pieces and now they're really starting to get into you know the curriculum and engaging in some virtual activities
257and and pieces like that so i think that we'll continue to see it evolve over time but those first couple weeks we're getting you know six and seven-year-olds used to a remote setting you know for science right thank you thank you i'm bored before we close out this discussion and move on to the consent agenda let me just quickly uh go through and ask each board member if they are in support of the reopening school plans as presented this evening uh ted yes thank you julie um yes thank you julie uh jess um yeah also yes thank you yeah guillermo yes and jason yes yeah um and i'm also supportive so thank you aboard for providing consensus uh on supporting this reopening plan and thank you melissa for the presentation and all of our uh
258pratt representatives yeah thank you you know thanks for that frat team you really you really have to give that that an extra shout out because just the amount of time that those people are putting in on a volunteer basis thank you so much absolutely okay uh we're gonna move to the consent agenda are there any items board members would like to be removed from the consent agenda to be considered separately i'm sorry what did i just hear oh sorry i wasn't i was just looking for it all right and then hearing none may i have a motion to approve the consent agenda which includes the open and closed session meeting minutes of august 24 2020 and the personnel report which includes employment recommendations and resignations as presented thank you i'll roll call me smoke mrs
259hill yes mr estes yes mr lobock yes mr guzman yes this is buttomer yes dr bruno yes upcoming meetings monday sept september 28 2020 7 o'clock p.m will be a regular a board meeting the board's intent is to be in person at hadley conditions permitting and then on tuesday october 13 2027 p.m there will be a regular in-person board workshop meeting tentatively scheduled to happen at hadley also are there any items board members would like to submit for a future agenda thank you then we will the board does have a need to adjourn to closed session and may take action following the session may have a motion to adjourn to a closed session to confidentially discuss section 2c1 the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees including hearing testimony on a complaint
260lodged against an employee to determine its validity section 2c2 collective negotiating matters between the school board and its employees or their representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees as presented to c 11 litigation when an action against affecting or on behalf of the school board has been filed and is pending before a court or administrative tribunal or when the school board finds that an action is probable or imminent in which case the basis for the findings shall be recorded and entered into the meetings of the closed meeting i need a motion as presented i so move there we go thank you any okay good we got them both any discussion all right roll call me smoke mrs butter yes mr lobock yes mr rusty's yes mrs hill yes mr
261guzman yes dr bruno yes all right board members you will close out of this zoom and please uh go back into the ones sent to you for the uh closed session thank you thank you all