District 34 Board of Education Meeting

001we're gonna go to their next section in the agenda which is the approval section and i need an approval of the agenda and so may i have a motion so may i have a second a second and this is the approval of general can i take a voice vote all those in favor please say aye aye all right any opposed the motion passes now we're going to ask for an approval of our january 24th 2022 regular and executive session minutes may i have a motion so moved and may i have a second second and this will be a voice vote all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed no all right motion uh passes and now we are coming to our audience comment section audience comments are always welcome please know the board

002ask that anyone addressing the board complete a form the link is on the board agenda page and is also posted in a news item on the district 34 home page comments are to be three minutes or less this participation period will have a total time limit of 45 minutes and finally this is an opportunity for community members to address the board but the board does not respond during the public comments section of our meetings we will have a second public comment section later in our meeting kathy do we have any comments yes we do i just want to explain that uh kathy is going to be pulling you into our meeting and uh it'd be great if you could turn your camera on so we can see you when you talk also please and our

003um first speaker is april perry april i'm bringing you on to the screen hello everyone i am speaking tonight on what i believe to be a majority of glenview parents who are in favor of masking you all are used to hearing from the people who are unhappy not the people who are happy with what the status quo is and so i'm speaking for those of us who are very grateful that our children have been kept in school and safe for the last six months those of us who have children who are too young to be vaccinated and those of us who have children with teachers who are immunocompromised or family members who are immunocompromised all of us are asking you to keep the masculine date in place until the end of the school year i

004also look forward to a time when maths are no longer necessary but that time is not now the regional data is roughly the same if not worse than it was at the start of this school year that chart that you've used in the past to signal a return to remote learning that chart still has yellow and red squares throughout it the data simply does not support a removal of masks at this time moreover vaccines are not available for children under the age of five which means that any child who's in preschool who is a close contact someone who has coveted actually has to stay home from preschool for 10 days this is an untenable position for families who are working many of whom have already had multiple quarantines over the last several weeks and months

005your duty is also to our youngest children and i'm hoping that you will keep them safe i'm asking that you keep the mask mandate in place thank you thank you very much for your comments the next participant is mary beth dar mary beth i will be bringing you on as a panelist sorry can you hear me okay now i lost my notes thank you so much for the opportunity to speak tonight i really appreciate it um i am asking the board to please lift these mask mandates and let's start a return to normal in our schools it's long overdue this isn't about taking away the ability to wear a mask it's about giving parents and children the choice of work what works best for them and their families and making mask wearing optional i hear

006parents saying over and over and over again it's no big deal it's just cloth over the face my kids are fine with it kids are resilient and i think to myself if that's the case then why is mental health at crisis proportions for our youth why do i see post after post and all of the different facebook mom groups asking for referrals for youth therapists all anonymous of course but then there are no openings for several months because social workers and therapists are overloaded i'm here tonight because i'm very concerned about this crisis of mental health in our children analysis of 29 studies published by reputable organizations such as jama american academy of pediatrics the cdc and hhs have revealed some very troubling statistics 20 to 25 percent of our school-aged children are newly experiencing

007depressive and or anxiety symptoms eating disorder hospitalizations found a 120 percent increase and emergency room visits from suspected suicide attempts increased 51 percent in adolescent girls many people don't really know what anxiety looks like as someone who has struggled with it for decades i can tell you exactly what anxiety looks like it's when you worry about something which is normal but then your worries gradually start to turn into your reality when a negative what if scenario turns into perceived real life even though it's not real life at all you can become so debilitated by what your thoughts are telling you that you no longer think rationally and can't sort fear from reality and this is exactly what we are doing to our kids it's not about the mask themselves it's about what we're telling our

008kids with regards to the mask wear that mask so you don't kill your teacher bobby how would you feel if you gave grandma covid and she died susie imagine that weight being put on your shoulders as a young child for two years it's unconscionable in my opinion we're long overdue for these strict mandates to be lifted on our children study after study show from all over the world that children are not the main vectors of disease and schools are areas of low transmission moreover we have a very high vaccination rate among teachers in our district we just need to start putting the children first and they should not be bearing the brunt of this pandemic anymore it's time to lift the mandates and start the return to normal or at the very least it's time

009to show us the metrics that will allow us a return to normal thank you so much thank you very much for your comments this evening thanks for joining us right next we have heather cartwright okay welcome heather can you guys hear me okay yes all right um [Music] all right well my name is heather cartwright and i um truly appreciate the opportunity to speak this evening um for those of you who don't know me which is a lot of you my son is an 8th grader at springman and my daughter is a second grader at lyon elementary um and i just want to say that both of my kids have had amazing experiences in glenview and i truly appreciate the support that you guys provide for the teachers that are working tirelessly to create this

010positive learning environment for them this has been as you all know an incredibly difficult two years um so hopefully they continue to receive that support from you um i chose to speak tonight um because i'm becoming increasingly concerned that some of the loudest voices in the community will falsely be perceived as the majority um i think it's inevitable that we will move to a mass optional environment and i think it's a goal we should all be striving for however i i don't think it needs to be a decision that's made because of political pressure or threatening emails or any of the other fairly alarming things that i've seen in other school board meetings in our area um so i'm asking you guys to please consider the following when making your decision um we need established

011metrics um determined by public health officials for when we should pivot between a mask optional and a masked mandate as the science will continue to evolve it's going to continue above and throw us a few more fun surprises um i also think it's really important to take into account the staffing shortage that we're already facing i personally would rather have my children taught by their teacher versus somebody who doesn't know the curriculum and who's unable to provide for them what they need and i also think it's really important that teachers and families have time to provide um well to make decisions for their own family and also to um prepare their kids for this the kids have been through a lot and my fear is that if this happens really suddenly we're gonna have a

012bunch of kids in school behaving how the adults in many cases are behaving in our communities and they need to know how to talk about this and they need to know how to handle their playmate at recess who doesn't support the same political ideology this they do and they're little and they're gonna need a lot of direct instruction on how to do this um so yes thank you so so so much for all that you do the fact that you guys are still working tirelessly our school says a lot about who you are as people because you have been through a lot that's it that's all i have thank you so much i appreciate your support thank you uh very much for your comments this evening and thanks for joining us next we have um

013anastasia ivanova all right anastasia hi uh can you hear me okay uh for some reason i don't think my video is on and i don't know how to turn it on so i'll just go if that's okay with you that's fine thank you okay um i have um one question for this board um but i'd like to pre-face it with some facts the cdc released information that cloth and surgical masks do not protect anyone n95 masks protect the person who is wearing it there are multiple studies that show infection and transmission in children and adolescents is low there are studies that show prolonged wearing of masks is harmful to children's physical and emotional health and causes developmental delays the court ruled that idph and isbe's emergency rules avoid an illegal and each student by law

014is entitled to due process just today jay carr voted nine to zero to block the re-implementation of prince chris emergency rules we have our board some of the board members emailing concerned parents that their children are not deserving of due process because they don't agree with the judge's ruling and think it's not going to hold up district has unfinished construction that's costing way more than expected the government sr funding that the district receives is tied to keeping corporate mitigations in place such as masks shield testing and holding vaccine clinics so my question today for you is why haven't you dropped the masks last week thank you so much uh thank you for joining us and thank you for your comments this evening our next participant is mais salbasi and then after mais it is laura

015coleman and i don't see the right name in the attendee list so if laura coleman is here and can click the raise hand i will pull you next as the next speaker after mice can you guys hear me hello thank you everyone for your time my name is may sal bazi and i have three kids in the district this pandemic started involved in two different versions version one flatten the curve and follow the science version two wear a mask version three get vaccinated version 4 get a second vaccine version 5 get boosted version 6 continue to wear mask version 7 you can take your mask off at restaurants bars sporting activity lollipoos and rioting version eight children must continue to wear a mask i can continue on to talk about the inconsistencies but i think

016you understand if the inconsistencies were not enough we had to sit there and watch a board member call our children that don't test knife wielders as of yesterday a board member told a parent to wear his mask on his genitalia and i'm paraphrasing we strive to teach our children to question logic for their everyday lives but here we are told to follow the same logic and disregard our own thinking forcing one way of thinking is no longer a democracy but a dictatorship when science evolves it evolves to include different hypotheses theories data and conclusions it is not a one-size-fits-all you cannot force our children to one type of science the type that allows you to reach into the purse of those that hold it so a prudent independent thinker would ask at what point are

017we going to allow the community to govern themselves you feel endangered you protect yourself and your family the best way you know how you cannot force someone to wear a life jacket because you cannot swim it doesn't protect you same logic with this particular virus at what point will you stop shaming these kids at what point will you will you punish the teachers that shame our children and ask them about their vaccination status at what point will you punish a teacher that walks the kids to the office and demand they wear two masks because the teacher's mother is in the hospital like you did to my child the time has come and it has become clear that you are on one side only and have no interest in being fair to all so your false

018claim of diversity equity and inclusion as a facade to the charade we the people have had enough you can no longer use our children as your pawns for your benefit as you see fit those that want to continue wear masks please do but you have no right to force my children to do the same because you believe it protects you but i know it harms mine enough uh thank you miss albosi i just want to point out that your mention of two board members are not members of this board those are probably members of district 225 board so i just want to point that out to the public uh thank you for joining us this evening and thank you for your comments thank you okay next we have rich hughes rich i'll be bringing you

019on slowly but surely okay rich you're here mr hughes are you able to unmute yourself thank you there you go i've only participated in about 400 zoom meetings in the last year i still don't unmute myself and i still don't turn on the video when i think i have so anyway sorry about that thank you for having me i appreciate the time i agree a thousand percent with those who want to see the mask mandate end i believe the data is all around us there don't need to be any more metrics by people at the public health department of illinois just look around you know children are not dropping like flies in sweden or tennessee or florida or texas or south dakota or anywhere else this particular virus is not really much of a problem

020for kids the flu is more dangerous many years than this virus is and like other speakers have said masks don't work there have been studies i've shown it time and time again and masks and vaccines do not protect everyone else and when have we ever in america ever put the burden on our children to protect everybody else it's unconscionable i can't believe we're still doing it and there is just no data that supports keeping masks on our kids and there's a lot of stuff that indicates that things are really really bad from co2 buildup way past the normal level and what's considered a safe level of co2 in their systems to all of the problems with all the psychological problems i wish tony fauci were 40 years younger so he would he would still be

021alive and could be sued for what he's done you know 10 15 20 years from now with all the probably neurotic and other problems neurotic children and other problems that we have so i think i think it's clear that the mass mandate needs to go away people want to wear masks that's fine they can wear masks but like other other speakers have said don't tell me my child has to wear a mask she doesn't she's healthy this is not dangerous for her and it is definitely not her burden to protect everybody else and we know that about 700 kids or so have died from covid they all had co-morbidities we also have a cdc with 21 000 employees and a 15 billion annual budget and we still have no analysis of how many people have

022actually died from covid versus with covid but there's more and more and more data coming out showing that everybody who gets admitted to the hospital if they happen to test positive for covert they're called a covet case even though they might have a broken leg i think we're gonna find out down the road that a huge percentage of this is just hysteria we've gone crazy and it's time for everybody to just take a breath and think about what we're doing especially to our kids they're the least vulnerable they're the most important part of our society if your child is i just i just can't believe what we're doing to our kids we have got to stop we have got to think about the kids and if you're concerned as an adult you know get your

023health taken care of wear a mask wear a shield wear gloves do whatever you want to do as an adult but we need to take our kids out of this equation give them their childhood back there is zero data that shows that they're in brave danger there is zero data that shows that they're dropping like flies they are not mr hughes uh thank you uh your three minutes are up i appreciate your input and thanks for sharing tonight thank you thank you the next speaker is liz mclaughlin i'll bring you one now okay you can probably hear me now okay we can hear you thank you for joining us thank you i am a parent of a student at hanking and first and foremost i want to thank you thank you all for all the

024board teachers and staff has done to keep our schools largely open and keep everyone involved safe this is a huge accomplishment and demonstrates that the decisions made and the actions taken thus far are working i also acknowledge that you all as school board members you've been put in a tough position to make unpopular decisions and it's not fun and this includes the resolution you're discussing on masking tonight on whether or not to make it optional and i respect that you all have thus far followed the advice and recommendations of local and statewide public health health experts and again this has ultimately resulted in keeping our children and staff safe my ask for you tonight is that you continue to consult with and follow the recommendations of these experts when you consider the resolution that's before

025you tonight and even if this means not making any decision on that resolution tonight if you need more time to deliberate there is simply too much at stake here to preemptively relax universal masking before recommended by the experts i'll give a few reasons here one we need to keep the schools open for our kids i fear that lifting this too early could lead to a spike in cases that might warrant a pause in in-person learning two there are many in our community that remain high risk despite being vaccinated some of these individuals may be the parent or guardian or the district 34 child or even a teacher or staff member some may also be students at district 44 and this includes my son who has a heart condition three not all children in the community

026are eligible for the vaccine at this time many of them likely have siblings at district 34 or bullying i feel that making masks optional at this time could lead to bullying of students that can that bullying of students that continue to wear the masks out of medical necessity my son has already called names for wearing glasses he was also called names the day i sent him to school when he wore two masks when omicron first came out and he doesn't i didn't make him anymore because he came home crying because he got made fun of and finally i worry about the impact of lifting the universal mask he may have on our teachers and the health care system who are already stressed so to be clear i am hopeful that we can honestly eventually move

027away from universal masking and when circumstances warrant but i also hope that any decision to do so is based on peer-reviewed science and recommendations of experts in the field i am also advocating for a flexible approach where universal masking can be re-adopted if circumstances weren't and i feel that adopting metrics could be helpful here with such metrics possibly based on cook county department of public health recommendations and or the number of hospitalizations or cases in the community schools or even in specific classrooms so again just thank you for all you're doing and thank you for all of our teachers um thank you for joining us tonight and thank you for your comments thank you so much and next we have nanette ross meredith good evening i'm nanette ross meredith the math interventionist at pleasant ridge

028and president of the glenview education association i am speaking on behalf of our membership as we work each and every day to provide all of the children in district 34 a high quality safe and emotionally supportive education we're asking our school district not to make any rash decisions changing covid safety requirements we should be focused on our students not worrying about health and safety the consideration of mask optional as indicated in the board agenda is a concern to the gea membership the majority of our members have been extremely disheartened to learn of the consideration by our board of education and administration to move to a mass optional policy without updated guidance for schools from the cdc we should not be abandoning our safety protocols for keeping staff and students safe without the backing of the

029cdc idph and isbe we've been able to keep our schools open with these safety measures in place we know that in-person learning is the best way for our students to learn and we should be doing everything we can continue to continue to meet in person our students thrive on consistency and the last two years have been anything but consistent we do not want a disruption in our students learning as we are bridging the learning gap for them which was created by the pandemic in order to avoid yo-yoing on these covid requirements let's let the courts make their decision and take that time to formulate a plan that best serves the students families and staff in our district a few things to consider with the board considering a mask optional learning environment what plans have been

030made for some of the most pressing issues that would impact the classroom for example how are teachers and staff to support both the masked and unmasked students what tools will be put in place to help teachers help students and guide their respect of others what guidance will be provided for interactions between unmasked and math students when parents request that their mass child be separate from the unmasked child what safety guidance will be provided to ensure the health and well-being of staff students or their close family members who have serious medical conditions such as cancer or debilitating autoimmune conditions these are only three of many examples that demonstrate the need for thoughtful and science-based decision making which will affect all members of our school community we look forward to engaging in future conversations with you about

031current mitigations in place and adjustments to them to keep staff and students safe and in school the only way we got through the last two years was by working together and we need to continue to do so our students deserve a team of parents community members educators and other stakeholders behind them thank you for your time thank you very much for your comments and thank you for joining us tonight and next we have laura coleman hi sorry hi hi okay so here we are again thank you to the board um thank you to our teachers and other staff for working to maintain a healthy and safe environment and making the best of a truly resolved testing two plus years you are so appreciated and i'm so very sorry that we are back here again facing

032those who would throw a lot of your good work back in your faces so regarding masks i feel at this time we should follow the advice of state officials and wait to vote on any resolution to make masks optional until the end of the month at the very least in the meantime here are some things to think about so contrary to some opinions wearing masks isn't living in fear it is living in kindness it is taking care of the people around us and that's what i tell my kids when they ask why we still have to wear masks they get it being uncomfortable for a few hours is not is not a civil rights issue full stop asking people to care about the health and well-being of another human being by doing something that could

033protect them from serious illness isn't a war crime so seriously enough of that and lastly operating with an abundance of caution isn't some deep state plot by the board to misappropriate funds screw us over or the indoctrination of our kids to just shut up and submit or whatever other tinfoil hat conspiracy someone cooked up on a tuesday morning and i'll close with this when asked does wearing a mask in school get in the way of having a good time my fourth grader my fourth grade daughter's response was why would you even ask that question no so thank you for your time school board you are so very much appreciated thank you so much for letting me speak thank you thank you for uh joining us tonight and thank you for your comments and next we

034have maruna semforesku maruna i will bring you over and i hope i pronounced your name can you hear me yes yes i was not prepared um hello my name is mirona zamfirescu and i have two masked children as pringmen um why aren't masks optional at this point uh what are we doing are we becoming more afraid the milder this virus gets and the more protection and treatments we have it seems we worry more about liability fear power money other people's health than our own children children should come first no matter what your hesitation and lack of leadership have divided this community it is so disheartening to see my neighbors being unkind to each other just because they disagree on mitigations and the kids are watching us what is the example we are setting kids are

035being turned against each other we promote kindness in schools and we argue because we weigh risk versus benefits differently of course we do we have different upbringings and different life experiences we are a community and we do not need to agree on everything we do not need to constantly judge each other and point fingers it is not a contest on who has highest morals or most virtue at least one thing should unite us what is best for our children we vacation in so many places where people just go on about their lives normally and then we return home back to emergency mode i feel as if we are locked in somewhere and everyone else is outside living life normally how do i explain this to my children how is this virus more dangerous here than

036almost anywhere else in the country i should not have to sacrifice my children's mental health over other people's fears asking for choices not selfish but forcing someone to live a certain way to accommodate others is everyone complied with all the measures for two years now we took vaccines and boosters and wear a mask but now most of us want to move on and live life i am as accommodating as i can be but not when it interferes with my children's well-being i draw the line there get all the vaccine doses wear the masks the n95s can 95s ppe's hazmat suits skipping them whatever it takes i'm all for it but please let others move on i mean this is omicron and we are on third and fourth backs in those look i have an immunocompromised

037immediate family member i've lost loved ones i get it but it's time to put children first the social emotional toll that continuing covet protocols have taken on them is more harmful than the virus itself that is a fact so no they are not fine why are we putting a burden on our kids to protect others children have zero percent chance to be severely affected by this virus what are we protecting them from freedom of choice a normal childhood my question to the board is this are you more concerned about everyone and everything else but the kids what exactly are our priorities here thank you very much for joining us tonight and thank you for your comments next is colleen kanisek scott bring you one my name is colleen konasak scott i was born and raised

038in glenview and i graduated from gvs my mom was a principal in glenview for over 15 years and actually has a street named in her honor just a few blocks from westbrook to me glenview is home with such deep roots it's always it was always important for me to raise a family here now we have two boys in district 34 one of them is my profile picture and i feel trapped in a situation where the fate of my children of our children is out of our control as the parent of a child with special needs these past two years has been another nightmare our youngest son brooks suffered a vaccine injury in 2019 and was left with a brain disorder called apraxia apraxia is the loss of the ability to do something in brooke's case

039it affects his ability to speak children and adults with apraxia know what they want to say but are unable to form the words early intervention is crucial and the illogical restriction still in place by our district has robbed him of this chance children like brooks need unrestricted access to the lips into the face of themselves their peers and teachers in order to have any chance at intelligence intelligible speech they need to be able to visually observe cues when working with their teachers needless to say the social and physical restrictions placed on him have only magnified the challenges that lay ahead in developing his ability to communicate with the world with that said maxine and vaccines are not a one-size-all solution a one-size-fits-all solution they were never meant to be and they never will be my

040son is a perfect example of that going mask optional gives parents the power to choose and have the ability to accommodate everyone equally those that feel they need the protection of a mass can choose to wear an n95 and pursue vaccinations if that's what they feel is the right choice for them those children who cannot tolerate a mask or have issues like my son can choose not to wear one the bottom line is what might be right for your child may not be right for mine masks are not keeping our schools open no one makes a decision with more love than a parent for their child i firmly believe that i hope we can all recognize and respect this whatever side you are on no one is winning in the current situation tensions are high

041relationships are strained and our community is torn apart yet our children are bearing the most heavy burden of all our children have done their part and why are we putting the burden on them to protect others when the rest of the world is moving on now it's time for them to allow them to have the childhood and education they deserve to the board i ask you to do the right thing for brooks and for all the children whose voices cannot be heard thank you very much for joining us and thank you so much for your comments kathy are we okay and next we have elizabeth wurtz hello there um hopefully you can hear me my name is elizabeth works and i'm a mother of two in district 34. on february 4th judge gershwin granted a

042temporary restraining order against schools mandating masks for plaintiffs of the case d34 was one of the defendants and now several families within the district have been granted the right to send their kids to school without masks as stated in the case the plaintiffs were seeking due process under the law be afforded to them should they choose to object to being quarantined which include by definition includes masks as well as subject to vaccination and testing in the ruling the judge agreed and thus granting the tro she also made note that although the class certification was denied the court had declared idph and isbe emergency rules and overreach and thus void today the illinois joint committee of administrative rules voted against extending the idph emergency rule on school mass mandates i fear that by denying other children

043their due process d34 is breaking the law and setting itself up for legal liability i'll put aside my concern for the interpretation of the law for right now in the email sent on february 6 the superintendent indicated that we are following the opening plan in rereading the plan i see that we are using data driven decisions and clear communications over the past two years many have questions what are the metrics i've not seen answers from the board that clearly outline the data points that will be used to determine when masks are no longer required without clear guidelines it leads to suspicion and distrust people begin to question what is driving the decisions are there other other motives at play unrelated to the health and mental well-being of our students is there even a plan without

044a clearly communicated plan and defined metrics suspicion creeps in and leads to division you can see the cracks forming in the community since idph and isbe emergency rules have been voided the board now fully owns the decision so i ask what are the metrics and when does this end naperville 203 was in a similar situation to d34 they were named as a defendant in the case and initially went forward with keeping the masks in place and mandates in place they've recently changed course and are mask optional their email to the community stated that quote based on naperville 203 metrics and our ability to successfully mitigate risk we are confident that we are ready to adjust our mitigations and continue to provide a safe learning environment for all as we see communities surrounding us changing course

045and saving their confidence in keeping everyone safe what is holding us back have we not invested in better filtration can 95s for those who want them encourage vaccines for staff and students alike what makes natural naperville ready to move forward and not d34 the world has changed a lot in two years when the virus came along we at first did not know it was scary and then i see the time i'm good thank you and then we've learned more and we know who it adversely affects and have the better tools in our arsenal to fight this it's time to move forward with a mass optional approach thank you all right thank you for your comments and thank you for joining us next we have renata renata please correct me with your name pronunciation hello it's

046renara gergichano i have a fourth grader at hoffman i'm here to support the mask optional for children in our schools please do not confuse my being here and talking on behalf of mask optional with the possibility that i do not appreciate the job of our teachers administrators or the board i know that you all have a tough job to do especially now and that you cannot please everyone i'm here to express the opinion of many who might not want to get involved for one reason or the other i know there's 8 000 of us and just a few on this call i do not blame them if we look at what just happened last night during district 225 board meeting who would want to have the possibility of being insulted for expressing an opinion by

047the same people who put rules in place rules that were meant to keep these meetings orderly i'm not saying this will happen here tonight and one hour into this meeting i know we have raised above that we are a small community that we should be able to have and we should be able to have a civilized dialogue and express our opinions freely i feel that at this point in time we are stuck with no way out of this madness an exit plan was not clearly communicated to us the parents what metrics what planets need to align so we can finally unmask the children and those who want to keep the masks until they think it's right for them please do so nobody's taking those away from you i've been silent for the past two years

048our family has followed every protocol put in place by this board but i will not stay silent no more i'm asking you to look at other communities that surround us look at the other 40 plus states in this nation that have implemented mask optional look at states who had in-person learning some mask-free without significant evidence that today they're in a worse situation than we are what do they know and we don't let's not follow the political science anymore in making covert related decisions and look at evidence please tell me what's going to happen on february 28th when the masked mandate is being lifted i suspect that the vast majority of us will stop wearing a mask we are going to enjoy our lives in large settings with friends and family but come monday morning we

049are expected to strap an n95 mask on our children's faces and send them to school to somehow feel good about our coveted mitigation protocol it's not okay to use our children as buffers or somehow blame them for the fact that covet is still around covet is not going anywhere and we need to be more creative and find ways to deal with to deal with it without punishing or putting the burden solely on one age group that has been shown to suffer more psychologically from all the mandates then covet himself and it's not the kids fault if somebody gets sick please don't punish them anymore thank you for joining us and thank you for your comments this evening next is sanya tomasevic sonia are you able to uh unmute thank you yes hi let's see can

050you guys see me can't see you but we can hear you hold on working on it bye we can see you thank you hi everybody good evening my name is sanya tomichevich i have two kids in district 34. i grew up during the balkan war as a child i learned a hard way what it means to be homeless hungry and discriminated against coming to america was my only family's choice and the best possible blessing we could ever pray for because at that time america was land of free and brave much has changed since then now my children who i'm have who i have taught to first love them love themselves and respect themselves and then everybody else no matter their color religion or financial status are now being discriminated against because they came to school

051without a mask they're not allowed to go to their classes receive the same education as their peers because they do not want to wear a mask my 12 year old daughter is the only child in spring man that choses not to wear a mask and has been kept in boys locker room since last week the night to go to lunchroom her classes or even outside because she does not want to wear a mask in the whole springman school building administration could not find one classroom one office for one child to stay in without a mask all day please tell me how would you feel if that was your daughter my eight-year-old is better treated in glenn grow as she also chooses not to wear a mask with her two brave friends that keep her company

052but still they're not allowed to go there to do to their classes or participate in activities as their peers they however are allowed to go to lunchroom and outside even do yoga how do you explain this two different schools one same district what is even more sad and disturbing is that the good teachers and the principals that do not agree with the same policies that they have to follow are are afraid to stand up for the same students that they say they care for so much because of the bullies like you if district 34 teachers and principals are afraid of you how do we expect our kids to stand up against you that is why god gave us parents like us to fight for them parents listen to me our kids are more important than

053our statuses jobs and careers they're our future teach them to love respect and think for themselves teach them to question everything and everyone with respect of course because future of this country depends on it god bless you all and make masks optional because they already are everywhere else except in district 34. i want to close this with the glenn girl statement spread positivity share a smile be kind pass it on how are we supposed to do this with the masks on please explain thank you for joining us and thank you for your comments this evening next we have dana russo i believe uh that will take us to our 45 minute window after dana so can dana be our last speaker at this session and we do have another session i want to remind everyone

054is that all right can i ask how many people we have uh shooting right now yeah let me count that hold on one sec 24 20 yeah 24. okay i think we'll end a public comment like we have said after 45 minutes and then which would be after uh miss russo and then we the other commenters can stay and comment at the end of our second comment session is everybody able to hear me um i have a daughter who is uh signed to speak after me but she has to get to bed soon so if you don't mind i would love to defer my time to my daughter's sisters and patiently waiting you have chloe coster after me hopefully we're stopping our uh our comments after you so okay i'm gonna defer it to her

055since she's so been patiently and brave waiting i will do that thank you thank you i appreciate your time yes hi i'm chloe coster i go to pleasant ridge school i'm in fourth grade one fact about me is that i have been in pleasure school for two years now and i've never been to pleasant ridge school without a mask that makes that honestly feel really sad i can't imagine how other people might feel too i came to school to learn and not argue with other classmates about mass talking about mass can create our units among students i don't want to hurt other kids feelings but i do believe it is time for us to be able to go to school without math i want things to be normal again i want to be able to

056see my teacher smile i want to be able to really i want to see my classmates when we talk to each other and interact with each other i recently requested a meeting with our assistant principal and asked her why are we still wearing masks when the judge said we can go mask optional if kids want to wear and they feel more comfortable that is fine by me but please give us a choice i would als i would like to ask the leaders to please go mask thank you very much thank you for speaking um miss russo there's still a minute and a half left if you would like to add um well i think i was going to kind of mimic some of the things that other people said and kind of try to abbreviate

057things here i think there's definitely clear in evidence uh and data that is even reported by the cdc that looks at pediatric hospitalizations comparing mass states to unmasked states and showing those numbers are really comparable i think we've in some respect lost perception of our numbers and have perpetuated some fear among parents and patients and uh and children i'm a mom and a physician in this community for over 20 years so i feel pretty passionate about this subject i'm feeling passionate about protecting the public but it's definitely time to move forward to mask optional we're going to be one of eight states at our mass uh mandating mass and over 500 districts in this state are now going mass optional based on the tro ruling these states and the rest of these districts they're not

058putting kids at risk they are definitely trying to mitigate risks of masking at this point with the increased risk of depression anxiety suicide risks speech and developmental delays we have to start acknowledging that those are real repercussions of our decisions and masking masking at one point and those efforts were necessary but now it's time to move on and to protect these kids and take the burden off of them thank you so much for your time and for all your hard work thanks uh thank you for joining us and thank you for your comments and please tell your uh daughter uh she's a great public speaker thanks oh thank you very much okay um we are going to ask my dog to stop barking first but um i uh we are going to be moving our

059meeting on for now we will have a second comment period so uh please if you'd like to speak to us we'll be able to hear you again but it's time for us to move on with the rest of our meeting and now we're going to move to the consideration of resolutions the consent agenda that is um here we have three resolutions we have 22010 the personnel report we have 22011 the payroll warrants report and sorry vendor warrants has everyone looked at those is there any questions uh this is a consent agenda so it's i'm just going to ask for a motion to approve still moves second there's a second from mr heggy and this will be a roll call vote um nelson hi jack torwicks aye tom stark hi and stephanie hi okay the motions

060carry all of the consideration of resolutions and consent have passed mr nelson may i uh just interject something quickly certainly uh based on our personnel report i'd like to offer a congratulations to kristen caceres who will be serving as our new assistant superintendent for student services starting july 1st uh kristen we will give you a more personal and proper introduction uh when we're meeting back in person again and uh to mary garrity we are certainly not saying goodbye to you yet so uh don't get any ideas thank you all right thank you very much um now we're going to be moving to our uh f section the consideration of other resolutions dr deli would you like to uh start us off with um some information yes thank you uh good evening everyone and thank you

061for joining us i have enjoyed hearing the different perspectives in our comm community and i know we'll continue to do so during our next public comment session uh i have a few comments i'd like to make before the board engages in its conversation surrounding the district's mitigation plan and specifically mask wearing as you know district 34 has been named as a defendant along with 144 other illinois school districts in a lawsuit which sought a temporary restraining order for both named and unnamed plaintiffs to stop mandatory mask wearing and close contact exclusion in schools on february 4th a circuit court judge issued two rulings the first ruling was to deny the requested class certification this ruling made the temporary restraining order applicable to only those plaintiffs named in the suit the second ruling was in favor

062of the plaintiffs named in the suit which meant that the governor idph and isbe could no longer mandate mandatory mask wearing and close contact exclusion rules in schools for the named plaintiffs our legal defense team has advised us that nowhere in the ruling is a removal of a local school district's authority to enforce its own mitigation plan that is why the decision was made to continue following our mitigation plan which contains mandatory mask wearing in the meantime this lawsuit is on appeal and a decision on the appeal is expected on thursday as the legal system operates i implore everyone to allow our teachers our support staff members and our principals to do their work without threats and intimidation as we have unfortunately seen in some cases to our to our staff please know that the

063board will indemnify you from liability and defense costs in any legal action pertaining to this matter setting aside for a moment the lawsuit and the legal system which needs to see this case through to completion i believe it's important to understand that since the start of the pandemic governmental agencies at the federal state and local levels have been required to make make mac make decisions without the benefit of the totality of information that one would ideally desire decisions however are required and pandemic related decisions in particular are about balancing risk these decisions are not binary and should not be viewed as simply good or bad along this coveted journey we have always made a good faith effort to balance risks and i understand completely that people are entitled to judge our work through their own

064set of beliefs i'm not exactly sure how this pandemic ends but i feel like we're moving toward the end of what has arguably been a very long neck on this hourglass by any objective measure and i understand for some there are no objective measures our local covid dashboard is much improved positivity rates hospitalizations icu patients and deaths all continue to decline this is not to suggest that we have exited the pandemic but simply to say that i do believe this is a reasonable time to reconsider our mitigation plan and specifically the future of our current masking requirement with respect to timing i can only say that the court appeal will likely be rendered on thursday the governor has signaled that masking requirements for indoor venues will be relaxed on or near february 28th but not

065for schools hospitals and nursing homes and the cook county department of public health has issued a memo stating that the vaccination and masking order can be lifted in a similar time frame as recently as this afternoon the joint committee on administrative rules has now weighed in on this matter so i'd like to wanted to just provide this as a as a very quick review probably didn't seem quick but a quick review and some context for uh what i now understand will be a board discussion on this topic thank you very much um uh thank you very much dr delhi it was a great summation of how we've gone along this path so far uh i first before we uh get to this consideration of other resolutions i'd just like to reiterate that covid mitigation decisions

066for district 34 are made by this board our teachers support staff and administrators are implementing the board decisions that we have agreed upon and so please treat our teachers and administrators and support staff with the respect that they deserve they are not supposed to be attacked thank you now let's move to our consideration of other resolutions and this is number one on it discussion and action to update the mitigation plan to move to an environment that recommends but does not require mask wearing in a school building um let's move to a discussion it's time to uh talk about this does anyone uh would let anyone like to go first mr heggy is raising his hand mr heggy please yes uh thank you so you know i i think that's a great summation that you both

067made on the legal standing of where the district is you know this is a board decision it's a local rule there's nothing no one has come forward from the state to say anything otherwise so you know it lies with us you know and i think it's an appropriate time to review our mitigation plan because so much has changed uh you know first the legal status has changed and secondly the virus itself has changed you know we're dealing with a variant that's substantially different than when it started and i share a lot of people's frustration with the fact that we can't seem to get a metric on when we move in or out and i just don't know if we ever can you know even with these incredibly low numbers we've had the last week or

068so certainly compared to the incredibly high numbers we had in early january you know that that wouldn't moving out of uh you know mandated math probably wouldn't be appropriated appropriate if we were still dealing with delta and it might not be appropriate if we're dealing with you know whatever might follow this but for the time being uh you know the virus has changed to a point where yes it's still uh you know more so infectious but less so um in terms of uh the harm that it causes so we all know that we're going to inevitably move to a mass recommended or a mask optional society overall so the point becomes you know when to do it and obviously we don't want any sort of decisions that are driven by ideology you know we want

069to make decisions based on the realities around us and i think the realities around us show that we have increased ability to protect our most vulnerable individuals masking is available for those who need or want it we can certainly accommodate those people through other surrounding them in the right environment within school we make accommodations for all sorts of issues we can certainly continue on that path and the wide availability for vaccines for most of our students not all that the zero through five is coming or one through five but the vast majority are our teachers are well vaccinated and as is our community overall so uh you know this just seems like it's the right time to go uh and in terms of you know setting a date for that because we can't set a

070metric we can't tie it to anything that might happen other than a preponderance of the uh of what's around us i'd like to see us take take a week in that time period come up with the ways to protect ours our most vulnerable give people a little time to get used to the idea and then you know we go forward and if that doesn't work we will reevaluate if the disease changes we re-evaluate um that's our authority as board so that's my point thank you uh mr heggy i see uh miss check torowitz would you like to uh weigh in um yes i would i'm gonna take my hand down for a second before i say anything in fact i'm gonna my comments uh you know i might have more later on i guess i

071have some reactions um to what was just said i'm just gonna say that we really don't have the clear legal standing until i guess thursday i just want to point that out but i think the legal issue is one thing the health issue and um i think that's another aspect it's not just a legal issue and we've heard from so many people on both sides of this and um i mean i guess if one thing we have in common is i think we're all pretty stressed about this issue it's not easy for anybody and we should acknowledge that this is hard work any way you look at this [Music] i am very concerned about our medically fragile our students our parents extended family and teachers we heard that in comments today we've heard it in

072the emails i i urge people to consider how complex it is for a family with a medically fragile student or parent it is not a matter of let's figure out where they can sit in the room to make them safe they must consult with their medical personal physicians sometimes several specialists not just one or two they have to consult with our administrators with our teachers there needs to be a plan oftentimes ieps which are legally binding have to be amended this takes a significant amount of time and there are legal obligations that this district has to those students one week i propose is not sufficient time for that it is not sufficient time for the community to adjust to a radically different classroom setting than what we have been doing before um and i guess

073i didn't really want to lead with a date but since it was thrown out there i really feel um it's a little bit of putting the cart before the horse because we haven't had a discussion about all the other issues and possible parameters but i just had to speak up about setting a date being conscious of setting a date that does not give families who have medically fragile kids to react and again those those situations are often extremely complicated and again i have to point out there are legal issues involved with those children who have ieps and um you know i know i'm going to have more comments later but i really wanted to say that first i'm going to let some other board members talk i i know there are other things people want

074to bring up and i think we also have to be discussing some parameters that we might want to uh put in place no matter what the time time frame we're talking about is i know somebody mentioned the february 28th date um that seems to be the day that adults will be able to take off masks in public at a bare minimum i think we should consider that all right i'm going to let somebody else talk for a while thank you uh thanks natalie i appreciate those good comments uh diane did you wanna speak yes um so i i've been thinking about this for a while as i'm sure all the board members have um we are likely all extremely encouraged to hear recently that there's many reliable sources that are saying we are likely past

075the worst of the coven pandemic to our parents students teachers staff and community i just wanted to extend a thank you for all of your efforts up until now for caring about your larger community covid presents us with an evolving situation that can change daily and none of us have a crystal ball i don't think any of us can predict what's going to happen next week or even tomorrow at this point that being said there are many reasons for all of us to feel a sense of optimism and this optimism has brought us here to today where we're considering a school mass optional policy and how that may look in the future public health mitigations and the timing of the implementation and removing of such mitigations in schools are typically decisions reserved for public health

076experts epidemiologists and physicians with expertise in infectious disease in pediatrics as a board for the past two years we have ourselves looked for guidance from these experts in public health departments our board is not a public health department nor are we qualified to operate as one masks are but one layer of mitigation in our battle with covid there is every reason to believe that if the metrics continue to improve public health departments will be changing the recommendations concerning masks even within group or congregate settings such as schools within coming weeks none of the local health departments that i am aware of however have yet changed their current recommendations on masking within schools when it comes to public health we need to be cognizant of guidance from these local public health departments as we have been

077throughout the pandemic as well as guidance from the american academy of pediatrics illinois department of public health is b and cdc right now that guidance is quite consistent and i would suggest we continue to follow the advice of public health experts in addition as we enter the month of march in glenview we will be seeing warmer weather which hopefully will allow additional mitigation measures to come into play additional time spent outside and perhaps more time for students in fresh air approximately 57.4 percent of students in district 34 are currently believed to be vaccinated and this is a good start but a better vaccination rate would provide a safer environment in which to remove a mitigation measure i would ideally like to see us provide families that may have been on the fence or simply ambivalent

078about vaccinating their children more time to utilize this mitigation i will let other people speak before i say anymore thank you thanks diane um can you take your hand down because i uh it kind of freezes my screen up sorry that's right uh is anyone else uh would like to speak mr jim bombster thank you [Applause] uh so first you know to me the decision of mask optional i think of people some of the sentiment here is that it's it's a matter of when not if and no one knows the time frame but that time frame of when kind of feels like it's measured in weeks and not months in most scenarios so like that's one framework i think about in terms of the consequence and impact of the decision we make it's not a

079decision of it's not it's not like a permanent it's not whether to or not for forever it's like do you do it now or do you do it in some time frame that feels like weeks and so the marginal impact there is maybe not as big as we might think because there's there's not maybe a ton of difference in in that time frame so i just wanted to kind of give that perspective um in terms of how i kind of view it um so what i did here is i just to me there's lots of inputs into this problem those those of you who know me well like i'm sort of a math i'm a math person mathematician so i've tried to try and boil this down like what do i feel like are the

080inputs into my decision and i thought i would just share some of those like how i'm thinking about this and what i think is important so considerations in deciding what to do one we've talked about is just what are the actual local county state or federal laws and orders that are in place like that has to factor in our decision and obviously one of them has been kind of thrown into the into the gray area space and to my knowledge there's not a local there's not a local or a county or a federal law other than on the buses that apply that would apply to our schools so the only one that was in play was the illinois mandate the second one is what is the guidance from local health authorities which is the local

081ones county illinois department of public health and cdc but when i think about that i also think about like to what extent is their guidance actually tailored or being able to be fitted to our local setting um i i have a little bit of a feeling like they're they have to have a least common denominator approach and like the cdc you guys need to set a national standard and their guidance isn't really tailored and so that's a factor in how i think about it too i would love to be able to rely on uh you know health authorities but it would help me more if i felt like they had something that was a little bit more responsive than even even cook county has the city of chicago in it and i feel like that

082weighs into how we might want to have to think about interpreting that uh also the you know the current level this is the the more obvious metrics the local levels of transmission hospitalization and death those currently are down dramatically from where they were just even six weeks ago um i think the case rates might be down 90 um in our in our local community and not only it's not only where we're at it's also the direction they're going so not only are we low versus then it's still going down uh severity levels another thing i think about too like omicron is not delta you know like if we have a lot of the metrics that on our dashboard for example now we have case rates per hundred thousand those were developed and used at a

083point in time when um you know the severity of the infection was was higher right so like an omicron case doesn't in my mind doesn't equal a delta case or a case before that so even though those metrics they're getting even close to not being read anymore but in my own mind i kind of weight them slightly differently because 99 of all infections now are omicron someone mentioned this too like what are the local regional metrics of community protection vaccination rates prior infection like that that should weigh into how transmissible we feel things are um what are the other local restrictions and mitigations in place i feel like this can to me it's going to provide some cognitive dissonance to know that all of our children can go unmasked in every other public setting starting

084on february 28th but still not in a school so that's something i try and reconcile i also at like the obvious ones of like what are the educational and social emotional cost to our kids of maintaining this hard to measure hard to know for sure but we've certainly heard a lot from the community about what what that's all about you know how effective are the mitigation strategies it's when people say masks work maths don't work i think maybe sometimes there's a do individual masks work versus do masking policies work um you know in some ways masking policies are only as good as the compliance with them and um you know i work in a school i see teenagers all all day and it's it's hard to have full compliance right so it's no it's hard

085to know whether the presence of the masks are doing what they're supposed to do when when uh it made it isn't being implemented with like sort of the perfection of wearing a perfectly fitted mask at all times just a couple more thank you for humoring me here um i think another big important is to what extent have individual mis risk mitigation strategies such as personal masking and vaccinations are they effective and how long have they been broadly available to the community and for a sufficient period of time and um i feel like we're quite if not they're very close to that having those personal those individual strategies available to people and then another one is the ability to re-implement mitigations like if someone was saying hey the choice we might make tonight to be mask

086optional is a forever choice i'll feel very differently about it than if it's something that can be changed based in response to conditions so my assumption is we have the local control we can change based on um based on changing conditions and speaking of those conditions i think it's also important to know like if things were to deteriorate how quickly could we react like does would a new wave just materialize and hit us tomorrow or would we be able to see it coming and respond my view is that we would be able to do that so that gives me greater comfort in making a choice now because of that and then natalie talked about this one about uh just are we allowing appropriate lead time to allow individuals to plan and make appropriate adjustments to

087prepare for a change in mitigation i don't know what the magic number is there but you know i'd like to make sure we thought about that too so it's not just immediate and then also the operational impacts to schools like just what's it gonna mean on the on the ground for everybody in the schools whether you do something or not do something um so anyway that's sort of my framework of how i've kind of how i've been thinking about what are all the factors that go in and you can see why this is a hard decision and right you have this kind of put all the stuff into uh that would be great if you could build a model and say give me all the inputs and out pops a number it says make a

088decision but um so these are all the things that i weigh and i'll leave it at that thank uh thank you very much jim uh i mean i think everyone who's spoken has enumerated how hard a decision is because we don't have uh clear guidance that is uh easily digestible by everyone this is not a decision lightly made or lightly considered and uh i believe dr dela you said that this is a a a decision we're making without a hundred percent clear data which makes it even harder so this is something that we're going to continue to talk about i'm going to ask i'm sorry to put you on the spot mr corman to you could you have anything to weigh in on thank you yeah certainly and i would have preferred to hear from

089the steamable dr dolan first but i'm happy to jump in and hopefully you can hear me through my mask i'm actually in a school building now i had the opportunity yesterday to work in a second grade in a nearby school district and those second graders eight years old uh were essentially uh basically just chomping at my my hips every time i would walk by i was getting hugs and they were almost all consistently masked and they were joyful i hear all the time about people telling me oh the masks are this they're that or whatever you know as a substitute teacher a year year and a half ago i made the decision to become a substitute during this pandemic to help out nearby school districts obviously i cannot sub in district 34. but my hope

090was that if i subbed in nearby districts i'd be able to allow someone else to come into district 34 and being in these classrooms for nearly every grade from one through eight now has been very instructive at times very stressful my highest priority and i've said this since the pandemic began is to keep our school buildings open to be able to educate our children it was exactly why we pushed as hard as we did to open last spring earlier than some wanted us to and earlier than many school districts did nearby and if it takes a mask to keep a school building open that was a price in my opinion that was the greater good and sometimes we have to make decisions that are about the greater good the school board members here know and

091certainly dr delhi knows that the school board has received an incredible amount of email on every side of this topic i want to stress something that dr delhi and and president nelson mentioned the school teachers the social workers the lunchroom staff the school bus drivers the perez they are doing the work that we have asked them to do i promise you they are not paid enough to be pilloried to be insulted i have heard stories of teachers going home in tears we i'm very very frustrated by the activities of some parents in the community that have tried to send their kids into our buildings believing that maybe four weeks ago they were armchair epidemiologists and now they're armchair attorneys thinking that they can tell us what should and should not be the law we have

092attorneys that we have followed and have given us legal advice it has sometimes changed and evolved and it is frustrating at times but the seven of us were elected by this community to represent your interests and that's sometimes lost on the people that are mobbing us for lack of a better term on all sides of this issue i can guarantee you that in 2019 or 2018 when i decided to run for this position i i ran because i was a construction professional not because i'm a health care guy it's not what i this is not what any of us that ran in 2019 could have possibly anticipated or before that date we as a board and as a district have to have and must maintain the ability to run our buildings several of our buildings

093are dealing with children that their parents have convinced them that they don't need to wear a mask that has made teaching the other remaining children more difficult i'm just going to call it like i see it i can't tell you that we'll never ever have to wear masks again frankly i hope we never do but if there's another delta variant or another variant that's more virulent we'll probably be back here again and something else i want to stress i don't know what the court the appellate court is going to do on thursday but it's entirely possible that they will overrule judge grisham in which case every school district in the state might be wearing masks again that's just reality as hard as that would be to switch for those school districts that have gone us

094masked optional to switch back boy that feels awfully painful to me i would like to see the court days work its way through until we understand and and it may not happen in the time frame that we need it to before we have to make a decision uh whatever i'm almost done almost done whatever our decision i hope that our kids will not bully any each other over a decision to where or not to wear a mast i hope that that message is being sent home we have 8 000 or so parents in this district 4 500 4 700 kids most of them have not given us their opinion on this less than 200 have is my guess we have to balance the needs of eight thousand parents against two that two hundred that have

095written to us so please keep that in mind we should always strive to act legally and that's something that president nelson and i spoke about earlier and the last thing i'll say is whatever we do coming out of this and i think that that member bomb stark is right we're talking weeks not months we are going to have to monitor attendance for illness if we see a spike in a building where a bunch of children don't show up to school because they have coveted or whatever the case may be we have to be able to implement mitigating strategies to protect the buildings to keep them open so i hope whatever we do we give the administration the authority to do what they need to do to keep our buildings open thank you mike um natalie

096i see your hands up but uh is sorry if i let james talk i was just gonna say please let james talk thanks i just i'm just trying to go around the room first and then we can set get figure out where we're at all right thank you great thanks natalie um i first want to start off by saying thank you to the administration teachers and staff and parents who continue to support our students i think everybody on this call everybody on the board every participant tonight and and even those that weren't able to participate but are watching this we're all aligned with the goal of keeping everybody safe healthy and in school i think that should go without question this isn't about money this isn't about anything other than trying to do what's best

097for our students in preparing for tonight i spend a considerable amount of time reflecting on what we know what we've learned especially in the last two years and and what we don't know as it relates to our responsibility uh as school board members you know public health experts describe the need for layers of mitigation our conversation right now is focused on one of those multiple layers of mitigation masks and yet we are missing the force for the trees and that we're not talking about the totality of everything that we can do to mitigate and enable our schools and effectively maintain the school and the classroom as a safe setting for parents for teachers for students for staff you know individually risk is decreased by vaccination that's the number one health prevention strategy to end this

098pandemic it's not about masking it's not about socially distancing it's actually about participating in vaccines our vaccination numbers are nowhere close to the other recommended pediatric vaccines that are scheduled including measles mumps and rubella 57 within our school district is not good enough as a public health expert and student of past pandemics that is not going to be how we get out of this that's not how smallpox was eradicated that's not how we effectively managed measles and polio it takes time and takes commitment that said this is not about child abuse either and this is about a collective trust within our community to be able to work both managing our individual risk by doing the things that we need to do getting vaccinated potentially you know keeping ourselves away from others if we don't feel

099well or if we've been exposed or at least testing to know what is our status so that we don't unintentionally affect others there are societies that have brought those principles into practice and have done so for decades if anybody's traveled to japan or other asian countries during seasons of respiratory viral transmission wearing a mask is not offensive it is not a judgment it is effectively respect that you're trying to show your care for others and i'm i'm remiss in saying that we have not once kind of brought that to the conversation to our children to understand here's how and why we do the things that we do it is not about us it's about you we don't test enough if we're going to be taking one thing away we need to do more of other

100things and effectively this all comes in with balance everything has to come together else it all falls apart and this is this is really the the crux of the challenge here and whether it's you want to talk about how this is you know layers of swiss cheese where each solution by itself is imperfect but the imperfections cover up for are covered up by the other complementary solutions that is what it's going to take and if we are truly going to go forward and and do one thing it is going to have to come at the commitment and the achievements of others if we and i think we and again i'm not i'm not in a not not when it's it's certainly uh it's certainly going to be a win when we get there we're not

101there yet and if you look at the data the projections from the cdc for illinois and also if you look at and extrapolate those epidemiologically to our counties cases are declining and will be roughly 30 percent of what they are today in two weeks now this the omicron spike is a very bizarre uh scenario it's highly infectious and it's not to be underestimated more cases of covid happened in the last six weeks that happened in the entire calendar year of 2021. i'm hopeful that we can not use data to try to create a story and narrative but to remind everybody that we are not able to look back yet and say that we're out we're we can have a light at the end of the tunnel we can't set expectation we can get there but

102we have not emerged into the light yet school boards are not public health experts they they frankly they're not they're not at the table and if they ask from the community is that we now start practicing public health policy that is something different it changes the expectation and it should also change the timeline by which we operate as a school board to meet the needs of the community we have a lot of individuals within our community who also don't have a voice and for that i think we need to acknowledge that we do have a diversity within our community we have a tremendous amount of access and we are raising our children to be global citizens and we need to take that accountability and take that responsibility not just with the pandemic but with everything

103in terms of mutual respect and commitment i personally look forward to the day when we can safely as a community look each other in the eye see the smiling faces of children without any sort of obstruction we're not there yet we have a responsibility to maintain a consistent approach leave public health policy and guidance to public health agencies we don't have the data we don't have the qualifications nor the expertise if the request is to do it today if the request is we are going to now own that responsibility and be accountable to it then it's going to take time and i think a two-week window as natalie suggested earlier is enough to at least say these are the three things that we're going to target and everybody has to participate that is the community

104maryland today as an example set forth that masks are going to be optional if and in communities where vaccinations for the entire community are at eighty percent and community transmission is at low or medium as defined by and tracked by cdc if we want to go to that we can adopt a measure that somebody else has taken that is not something that i think we should do as a school board because of the the unknowns but if we want to commit and say we can do those things and set the timeline to be consistent with other state elements within the state then we can do that and i'm just going to close with this leadership at times is is difficult you know i want to acknowledge all of you for your steadfastness your commitment to

105the students and to our community in the last two years it takes courage it takes grit and that's the example all of our students deserve so thank you um thank you dr dolan there's a great perspective and it brings us uh you know i i have a few things that i want to say is that first all right now um i i'm hearing from everyone at this point that the idea of uh changing to a mask optional recommendation i'm sorry a mask recommended but optional idea is is a possibility right now what we're talking about now is where and when we want to do this i think that's where the group needs to get some more consensus i feel like we're a little all over the map at this point on that but i would

106like to point out that even if we did move to a mass recommended but optional policy there are a couple things that i think we need to do as a board to help the administration manage this and one of that is that we would have to definitely make sure that everyone understands it would still be mandatory on buses that is federally regulated uh number two that any students that are if they were test positive for covid and they're returning from an exclusion because of a positive test i think that they uh they will always have to wear the mask for the next five days because that's still recommended by the cdc because they're still could be transmittable um there's another thing we still have this legal tro uh lawsuit out there and as uh mr

107uh corman mentioned you know we have always followed the law and right now it's a little gray as to what the actual law is but on thursday if the tro is stayed or reversed by the high court that we actually follow whatever that the laws that are lawfully in place at the time that we can ascertain from our attorneys because as we hear there are now three branches of government involved with this so it's actually uh it's a little murky once again coming from springfield who's in charge and and who's making the rules so those are just a few of the things that i want to talk about i natalie's hit her hand up for a while i'm going to let her talk everyone's going to get some more time to talk because we need

108to talk about it yeah and actually i'm going to take us a little back i'm sorry scott um i really appreciated dr dolan's comments and they're a reflection of this sort of balancing that we are all trying to do and all the factors that we are weighing in in that balance and mr bomb stark also did a really great job of of saying what the things he was balancing and i just feel the need to say a little bit more about our staff and why i believe we need more time as well for staff they have pivoted and adjusted and put and you know we've talked about it but they have been trying to figure this out at the grassroots level and we need to give them time to figure out this next transition however

109long this transition you know is gonna take to to where we get to the roll out of it they need to figure out how they're going to manage their classrooms we did hear that tonight but it's real and they're professionals they're part of our school community as well they're not um just workers they're professionals and we need to honor their professional environment and so again that's another factor that i'm considering that i you know i just wanted to make that clear another thing i really feel that i need to say that there is not a single board member that is not deeply concerned about the social emotional welfare of our kids whatever our conversation is tonight wherever we land we are not oblivious we are uh to the tremendous stress that our students are under

110uh that is definitely factoring in to all of our decisions always i know a lot of parents are very concerned about it we are too we're parents too and we worry about our kids too so i just i feel the need to say that because um i don't want anybody to misinterpret what i'm saying about we need time as i'm not considering that aspect i am considering that aspect and i i i dearly hope that we do not transfer our angst with this onto our children so i that's that's it i probably will have more to say to come but for now that's it thank you all right john uh you got your hand up i do uh pull it down there we go uh yeah you know in italy i think that's a great

111point that you make you know sometimes we get in here and we have these conversations and you know we know the baseline of each other and that is of course caring deeply about the social emotional well-being of all of our students as well as the education as well as 25 other things that we don't sit and list because that's why we all got into this uh but you know well worth pointing out i agree um you know just on the on the win uh aspect of this i i guess what what's what's sticking with me is you know all the the various things that people have mentioned that we need to do and need to be cared for that's not going to stop and i think saying that hey we can get all that done

112in in any amount of time is wishful thinking at best so it feels like picking a date is a little arbitrary to me i but at the same token i want to give individuals as you know dr dolan was talking about the individual action that people can take you know a little time to get that k95 mask if that's what they want to do you know a little time to adjust to it and uh you know i'm i'm i'm sticking with with my thought of a week um versus two i mean because that's a short week so you're only talking about a few more days i don't think uh we get finished with all the things that need to do and you know and i would employ the administration you know continue to reach out

113to the voiceless continue to protect our most vulnerable and you know always pivoting and adjusting i mean we're not going to change i mean we're not going to ever be in a situation where we don't have to change our situation has changed so i don't think we can walk away in two weeks and say whew done it's great but i don't think two weeks is a magic number and i don't think there's any point in pushing this any further you know in a week i just don't see what we pick up well we pick up the time for us as a district to fulfill our legal obligations to our students with ieps and that's a real thing and i mean do you think you can get that done in two weeks um it's longer process

114to change ieps address all these needs these kids medically fragile people generally have more than one issue going on sometimes one big issue going on there are frequently several different types of specialists involved in their care a parent needs to consult with each one of those specialists sometimes those specialists needs to talk to them to themselves consult with our district consult with teachers social workers our school nurses by the way also need to be involved in that conference those conversations are detailed and lengthy um four extra days really isn't asking for all that much i mean if if as i'm talking about it i'm thinking maybe two weeks isn't even enough when i start enumerating all the things that need to get done to provide for the safety of these kids who really let's i

115have to also say that those kids are not saying i have a choice to wear a mask or not those kids don't have a choice they have to right unfortunately that's their reality of their world and and if we're gonna say that four days won't give you any extra time well then i'm willing to go three weeks or four weeks or whatever time it takes to help them get to where they need to be uh thanks natalia diane has her hand up i'm going to let diane uh weigh in alone i would agree with natalie i mean we have a legal obligation it's not just a matter of whether or not we want to i mean the americans with disabilities act i mean we have to allow these children to get their to get everything

116set and we need to allow the families the time we need to allow the teachers to work with them also too i mean something that was mentioned is that the teachers need time to develop classroom policies they need time to adapt and you know they're not going to be able to do that in a second they're going to need a little bit of time so i mean we need to allow them the time to do that and the grace to do that because they are professionals i think they deserve that from us as as working professionals so i would allow want to allow the teachers in addition to that i mean something i didn't address earlier is um you know there may be some teachers that for one reason or another were did not decide

117to get vaccine i know it's a very small portion of our population but i would like to see those teachers have a chance to also um because they might have been on the fence because of a medical condition that we don't understand talk to their doctors and decide whether or not to get immunized um just additional things i think we need to give people time to adapt thank you um i i just like to weigh in that i i think that uh we we all agree that we want to give time we're we're talking about how much time uh that we need john has mentioned more than a week john is comfortable with the week diane wants more than a week natalie wants is more wants more than a week i i'm ready to lean

118into a week if we have to i'm just throwing that out there right now but clearly if i could lean into a week i could lean into two weeks so i i you know i just want to put out there that as a community we're greater than 90 first dose vaccinated glenview is 75.8 fully vaccinated our staff is 97 vaccinated i've i've i'm i'm struggling as a as a person right now because we haven't had a stated goal from the governor until recently that he's looking at hospitalizations those numbers are coming down those are they're plummeting we're projecting the numbers right based on the numbers right now in in one week those numbers are going to be dramatically lower at this point in two weeks they're also going to be much lower it's it's amazing

119how much they're plummeting uh you know we're going to do what we can do as a board that's the best worst decision that we have to make right now so uh does anybody else have any thoughts uh you know we get we're we're honing in on some ideas here um can i say can i i know i'm talking a lot those of you who know me know i tend to talk a lot so this is not out of character for me um i so trying to encapsulate what i my thoughts right now uh i think scott that um we do have to be cognizant of what's going on in our community in terms of those numbers and i don't suggest that we don't keep i think we do need to keep that on our radar

120um and i that is why i feel comfortable having this conversation in the first place is because our numbers our our dashboard numbers are low that's i will admit and so that's why i've we should have this conversation um along with a month many other reasons i i will say that i feel like we're getting some sort of signals from people that from public health officials that it is coming it's imminent it's around the corner um as jim and i think dr dolan also said um uh that's less than training it's weeks rather than months i feel like in two weeks at a minimum the mandate is being lifted for indoor mask wearing it would make sense to me that that would be the day that we also align with that i don't i assume

121that that is not an arbitrary number picked out of somewhere that wasn't vetted through public health officials who for some reason don't really want to come out and say you know our local our illinois and our local public health officials are very reticent to uh commit to a day for schools um i did also happen to and maybe other people did too hear what dr arwadi said who's with the cook county department of public health he's fairly well known at this point um talking about how we're going in the right direction we're close we're not there yet and dr dolan also said we're not there yet i feel like two weeks gives the numbers a chance to go even lower gives everybody breathing room to get more comfortable with this i i respectfully propose that

122we adopt the two-week date this february 28th date of um to go to mask optional since this is the road we are going on because of the numbers at least give families a chance to adjust to it particularly them the medically fragile i think that's going to be it for a while for me um jim just on the question of when to i feel like just regardless of what the date is the fact that there's some certainty to it is is a big aspect of of it as well right versus having a date that's like when when the guidance changes by these three different like it's hard to know exactly what that and it could be it could be honestly it could be months and and and so that that's i guess i'm in favor

123of certainty versus an uncertain date that we're tying to um second i i wanted to come back to the idea about in person you know as being really important the ability to stay in person i mean the the case rates four weeks ago were in our schools five to ten times higher than they are right now and so i guess my point is i'm i'm a little less concerned about some big spike creating the ability they need to have to close the school even if there's a even if there were some sort of uptick it feels like hard to imagine that it would be at the levels of four weeks ago where we did stay open and managed through it so uh okay uh diana's our hand up i do i i want everyone to

124understand that we're not talking about uh on or off switch about we're talking about masks recommended but optional that doesn't mean all students will have masks off that doesn't mean all students will have masks on it's i think it's hard for us to understand the risk concept with that that's just another metric that i keep in my head diane so i agree with what was said about i mean i think every signal from our public health officials and also to the fact that we have some other things going on um lead me to conclude that in all likelihood we are going to be seeing it come to an end anyway so i mean we're on that course personally if i had my druthers because i'm not an expert and i don't think this board put

125themselves onto the board to make uh public health decisions i really don't think we did i would i would allow us to just follow the um the departments of public health as we have during this entire pandemic it's also consistent with what we've done however i understand this board wants to wants to act on this um and and there's good reasons to conclude that we're going to be doing that soon anyway so this would give everyone a chance to to plan um you know my thought is i'm wondering what's going to happen when masks come off in illinois on what is it february 28th i'm wondering i mean it could be things go very well it could be a week and we also don't know what it's going to look like in two weeks i

126do agree that i think that it's going to look better if i had to guess it's going to look better but we don't know again right none of us we've all thought things during this pandemic that haven't come true so i hope that it's better in two weeks but it could not be and i think we also are making our um our prediction and policy base based upon conditions right we're not saying no matter what we're saying based upon conditions that they continue to improve right so with all of that being said i would be comfortable with um coming to a date certain i kind of would like to see a date give us that buffer to see what are things going to look like a week after all the masks come off in illinois

127is it going to go up is it going to go way up i don't know it probably will not go up a lot is what i'm thinking and if that in that case i would like to see a week after the february 28th date that being said i think we're talking about it being pretty inevitable in that time period i think it's going to happen i mean i think it's going to come down um so i would say that we could set it um either whatever comes sooner that would be another way to draft it to say um whichever comes sooner whether it be a date certain or um [Music] you know by ruling of or we can set a metric even that would be another way to do it just a different option but

128my my druthers would be to follow what we've been doing all along but i'm i'm i'm more comfortable if we could say that uh to say that we gave ourselves a buffer after the state takes them off just a thought okay does anybody else have anything we're really kind of all over the place right now sorry um mike um yeah so just a couple of very brief points one from a logistics perspective what we're talking about and i'm presuming we're going to have a snow day because it looks like we're going to get a snowpocalypse on thursday or friday we're talking about tomorrow one more day this week we don't have school monday we're talking four more school days next week with that knowledge in hand i'd like to ask dr delhi to weigh in

129on kind of the that iep component the ada component that natalie has brought up and diana have brought up so we better understand not so much the risks as well as making sure the nurses are prepared who have been doing yeoman's work for our schools for two years i think we owe it to them to possibly give them the time so i'd like to get some perspective on that from dr delhi or from mr dorkan or even mr silverman dr silverman thank you so yeah there are obviously implications uh behind setting the date so and we've talked about uh what i would call the major categories there are certainly educational considerations uh that have to be made and adjustments that have to be made we do have over 80 children in our school district who

130are on ieps i i would not be able to recite for you how many of those have specific medical uh related components of their ieps but i imagine it's pretty high number and so that is something that will take some time you know how much time you know we're we've become very used to getting work done um in in shorter periods of time than we would have ever imagined it doesn't make it ideal there's also educational planning and this has been touched on by others but teachers do need an opportunity to and we stand ready to help them and actually formulating some lessons sel related lessons that really get at this notion of uh a new social environment uh because things will literally look different for them and it's uh while it's not a bad

131thing uh we've been living a different existence for some time so there's that educational social emotional learning component to this there's a classroom management component to this that that will need to be relearned um because the norms you know have have changed and so those are all real challenges that uh our our teachers and support staff and administrators need an opportunity to shift with as well as as has been cited parents um and others at home then there's the operational aspects of making a shift like this so you know the point for us getting together here is talking about updating a mitigation plan so that is that is uh some work that would have to be done that's that's not time-consuming work with the right parameters but that's work that has to be done and

132um you know there are other management and organizational decisions that will have to be made uh partially related to any updates in the mitigation plan uh that we'll need to be able to talk through as a leadership team and prepare for um so you know i don't know if this helps you in terms of your uh of your time frame but you know one week would be a bare minimum um two weeks would be i think more doable and that's that largely rests with um some of the special education work that would be done but uh something in between a week and two weeks would would actually work also so i don't know if that helps frame this or if that's what you were going after but that would be my input on that can

133i just interact diane's i'm sorry i forgot to take it down scott i apologize again okay i forgot to take my fake hand down so just well i don't mean to step on dr delhi's toes but i really feel we need to ask mary garrity about ieps and um medically fragile students um if you don't mind mary i i don't mean to impose on you you had no idea i was going to call on you to talk about this but if you could take a few moments to um so that we can hear um what all that entails for those students well so dr drelly is right there are um over 80 students in the district that have ieps with medical alerts and about two-thirds of those students have conditions that are related to covid

134conditions such as diabetes asthma and other more serious issues heart conditions things such as that nature as you know natalie ieps are individual decisions that need to be made individually as you stated in terms of looking at each individual's child's needs and then trying to determine what needs to be done when we look at what are our mitigation factors that are left once we remove masks and we remove that piece that's what we need to start balancing in terms of what what can we put in place to ensure that those students remain healthy and safe and as dr dolan said you know looking at those vaccination rates of the children that are in that classroom i know that some other school districts have asked the parents of the children in those classrooms can you please

135have your child mask in this classroom because there is a child with a serious health condition so it is complicated it isn't a simple answer because all of their conditions are very different and so it's sort of weeding through what each of the individual needs are and determining which children will need different mitigations and will need different strategies put in place at this point so i i don't know that i clarified it any further but um it's difficult you know just to answer that um without the team of people that typically work with our students that's very helpful information mary thank you so much and um i sort of don't want to belabor this point but i just can i just bring it into perspective a little though i mean also uh did you have

136to do this when we moved to a remote situation in the beginning of pandemic also is there some idea that you had you know and they had a lot of time to do it though they did i remember going remote on march 17th not really announcing it we did go remote but but um you know at that point remember we thought things were going to last only a few weeks and yes uh tristan casares and i along with our all of our assistant principals pretty much worked around the clock during that time in terms of putting in place remote learning plans and working with our teams to determine how fape which is free appropriate public education would be managed in a remote setting so did we we attended many many webinars that were held nationally

137so lots we had to learn lots very quickly true but we did have you know at least um two or three weeks during that time when um the we were on that emergency order of remote if you remember that thanks mariette that i mean that's helpful because uh i believe i've i heard the quote that it's as hard coming out of a pandemic as it is going into it how many of us have done that in our lifetime scott yeah um i have a couple questions really quickly scattered by me um so if we're going to talk about one thing i think we have to talk about all the things right and so yeah and all the things includes vaccines i mentioned earlier in my opening comments and do we have any need to help

138support any of our community in terms of access to vaccine do we need to you know kind of either re-engage idph or clinical partner to support any of our k-8 students with vaccine access that's kind of first question second is if we go to mass optional do we have the inventory the capacity to help support those families who maybe don't or would prefer to have a more effective mask a k 95 mass that fits a pediatric face as opposed to a surgical mask or a cloth mask and move away from double masking into something that actually has been shown to be effective those are two questions where i have again it comes down to if it's going to be optional for some can we instill confidence in the others that are going to be taking

139a different approach to managing their own individual risk because this has to be a context of balancing individual risk with the trust of the community and awareness of the community one thing can't happen without the others yeah i can i can respond uh briefly to that to the extent that uh we determine that we need to be doing more outreach with vaccination clinics we can certainly uh partner up and do that we we have been under the impression that uh the the and as you know we we put a a substantial push on that uh and had multiple relationships with different agencies uh at one at one point in time um to really make that advancement and i i think we've done a good job it of course you know winds up being a personal

140choice but to the extent that this becomes an availability issue or that there's some access uh that's that's uh proving to be a hurdle we would be happy to orchestrate uh other opportunities for uh vaccine clinics um i i haven't heard information that that people are having a difficult time with that but we would certainly uh be responsive to that with respect to the kn95s we have been supplying and will continue to supply mass to our staff members we can broaden that outreach and have some level of availability to uh students as well i i should probably know but i don't recall off the top of my head the the shelf life of a can 95 so depending on the you know the frequency and number uh that we would need we'd have to dig

141a little bit deeper into understanding the kind of supply that we would need uh but again certainly doable uh okay um does anybody else have anything uh that they want to bring up right now i mean uh this is a little been very extensive um i i feel like we've landed on a point that uh mask recommended but optional is is something we want to do there does seem to be some consensus of having a firm date um versus uh you know relying on an unknown mitigation number that we aren't sure is uh out there right now um i i'm hearing that uh the people are comfortable they would they would like to have this happen really between the 22nd and the 28th am i correct other than uh somebody else i i see you

142i see you diane i'm just i'm just want to talk for a minute you know there are some people that are between the 22nd 8 or the 28th um and we could even go in between there and say the 24th if we had to but those are dates that have been put out there um and diane i'm going to let you talk right now because i know you're not on any of those no i i actually would just i mean again to be clear my position is uh only consensus driven at this point because that's kind of what we do as a board um my druthers would be to wait for uh guidance from public health experts as we've been doing throughout the pandemic um that being said because we do work towards consensus um

143i would be uh more comfortable with the two-week date much more so than the one-week date and honestly i i still would ask that we'd give us a week after the 28th because i think we could see a little spike might be minor we might not see any spike but you know i i what i hate to be doing is going back to masking constantly if we could avoid that by giving ourselves a little bit better pushing cushion a little bit better planning to have the schools more ready i think that's better than having to tell everyone we need to go back to masks that's just me thank you yeah i do also want to reserve the right depending on like right now we're in the omicron variant if there is another reason that we

144need to change our mitigation strategy as we go based on how uh how the pandemic's reacting that that needs to be in that good idea and that would be something that the superintendent would be directed to update our mitigation plan to be consistent with something like that um i uh any there's any other input that i threw out those dates has anybody else i mean i i missed uh john heggy i you've been pretty clear on where you're landing um i'd like to hear from natalie i i think i know you're the 28th i i want to abort 20 or i got that or i just want to hear uh from so many other guys uh jim maybe i think where i would land my preference i think would be the 28th i think aligning

145it with the rest of the state feels like it makes some sense plus it gives that lead time for the schools and or for the teachers to to be ready and i also want to maybe throw the idea of do we need to have at least formally some condition right we keep saying we're assuming it's going to be better but do we at least want to have something that we put in place that's it's the 28th and you know whatever whatever we want to see so something got better you know we i don't think it's hard to talk about it's better than the first half of february is this you know you don't you you want it to be not just um random data fluctuation either though right so i don't know if it's if

146it's like the weekly average in that week versus two weeks ago or something but just something that we're committed to this idea that we're doing it because we believe it's going to get better and hold ourselves accountable that it actually does if metrics continue to improve like language like that yeah and yes but but i think we need to be a little bit more specific that that could be suggestions yeah um i i don't uh i'm i'm not comfortable with that i'm i think that pen pins us and then and we're putting a date on something and it's still contingent and so it's not it's not a certainty jim and as you pointed out if there's something to be said about being specific about this now i do want to point out that if if

147if our covet mitigation plan that we're asking him to look into you know if if there's a reason that he doesn't feel the the administration doesn't feel we should move they'll let us know i mean uh i i don't i think we're we need to land on a date here this this is uh it's it's too hard to all we're doing is introducing more uncertainty i like jim's suggestion that's good that's fine i kind of feel like we could say as you know as numbers continue to case numbers continue to drop that leaves it interpreted by who well we have numbers we have a dashboard to look our dashboard is going to be mostly green by tomorrow i hope you're right me too that could be the condition the dashboard is green well what part

148there's nine squares in the dashboard which ones are you focused on i think there's what a couple that are red so i mean we want to we want to get more of them so not red i can pull it up i'm pulling it up right now i mean that that cases for 100 000 is going to probably be red for a little bit but i also think that omicron you know what i talked about earlier like i feel like 100 cases today is not the same as 100 cases when it was delta you know the terms of i think well i think tomorrow uh i think tomorrow we could have nine green boxes out of i mean uh nine out of 12 boxes yeah and i agree with that there's no question the case is

149per 100 000 i don't think that's a metric to be used anymore uh it's very strong because its correlation to hospitalization is not as evident with omicron right now i know james i understand high numbers do lead to hospitalization i get it but with omicron it has to be much higher numbers even too yeah i'm only gonna have one thing i don't think a single day is what we have to look at i think it has to be consecutive days if we're going to be going to looking at dashboard colors all right so if you can consistently stay then that's great and it's not a single single point variance which is great across our dashboard is updated once a week in their seven-day averages i believe yeah that's our dashboard is updated once a week

150and it's a seven-day average so i don't think that and and so i'm saying what i'm suggesting is that if we go to that it's a bad metric it's perhaps going to be one of those things with the lagging indicator if you only look at it once you're gonna have seven days delayed information so if we're gonna get to the point of having something that's flexible it's gonna need to be updated more regularly and we have to go to a different data source right so i think our cova dashboard is not a metric for us to use because it's it's too static it doesn't move quick enough based on how the numbers are crashing right now so if i might um a couple couple points one i think i've i've personally landed on the 28th

151for the reasons that we've mainly discussed did mike disappear we lost mike he's coming back here he is lost i got lost somewhere i'm not sure how that happened can you hear me okay yeah okay great um you know it's i think i counted seven school days um to be able to get the medical to be able to get the instructional i'm aware that some school districts made snap decisions based on their interpretations of the tro and frankly i can't imagine what those teachers must have felt like the next day when they were slammed with the idea that they were they were essentially they lost control potentially of their classrooms and i think that we need to be able to maintain order and discipline in our classrooms i would i would really respectfully ask the

152parents that are sending their kids into our buildings unmasked to please give us the grace to get through to the 28th so that we can get the masks off everyone in our buildings that want to be unmasked i believe we'll still have a high percentage of students that will choose or their parents will choose to be masked and i hear over and over again from those parents that want mask optional that that's what they want so i'm going to take them at their word that they mean mascot and i guess if you're looking for direction for me scott i would align with the 28th it gives i think enough time for everyone to get their their stuff together i'm not sure putting a metric on it is necessarily helpful i agree with you that adding

153ambiguity just uh in my opinion will unsettle the community to think that well is it really going to be the 28th who's going to make the decision that it's going to change uh the 28th aligns us with the state and i think directionally that's probably the best we're going to get right now i'll leave it at that thank you and i'm happy to make a motion if that's where you're at you're muted scott john wants to speak and then i will go to uh dr kelly so john i can't i can confer to a dr dally uh for the moment okay dr delhi john you you've yielded your time for the moment indeed that why thank you so i would like to make an in the meantime comment and what i mean by in the

154meantime uh independent of what the date winds up being uh in in this is a sidecar to mr corman's uh conversation that uh children who are mass non-compliant in the meantime are separated in an area of the school building they are given access to their schoolwork and they are supervised to the extent that we can they and there is no uh zooming apparatus for those children so that practice will continue and i think it's important that people understand how uh mask non-compliance functions currently and how it will continue to function until whatever the date is thank you all right john yeah i would just continue on the point that uh you know others have made and you know and i know others have made the opposite but the condition i just don't think we can

155put it in um you know the metric that we have is based on another disease you know i mean it was nine months ago and i i continue to think that you know that you know that we should be looking at a week um and that to degree is somewhat arbitrary as well but uh you know for reasons previously stated so um i'm because i was one of the people who was saying you know advocating for metrics well i guess my instinct for that was sprang from the [Music] um worry that something was going to happen intervening but i do take the point that mike made mr corman made about um it actually just throws a lot of indecision into the community and a lot of them more debating and uncle unclarity about what's going

156to happen on the 28th so i for that reason i would be willing to say that it is makes more sense to perhaps make 28th the date and barring some cataclysmic events uh which i don't expect i don't think anybody expects we can proceed with that date of the president ocean can i uh can i uh i'm going to ask for a motion right now i'm going to make a a motion and a second that the board of education update its cove administration plan to move to an environment that strongly recommends but does not require mask wearing in school buildings as follows that the school districts shift to a mass optional policy but strongly recommended that the policy for all staff students and visitors on february 28th so move quick 2022 hold on that there's

157more parts to it that masks shall remain mandatory on buses and for any students returning after a five day exclusion due to a positive test for days six to ten as recommended by the cdc but that if the tro is stayed or reversed which we know is possibly happening on thursday by a higher court at any point the district shall return to its prior mass mandatory plan so long as that state or reversal remains lawfully in place and we're not even sure that's going to maintain that that will be lawfully in place and we will also are going to direct the superintendent to update the district's covet mitigation plan consistent with tonight's board action and you would be able to get that to us at the following meeting perhaps dr delhi i'm sorry the updated

158mitigation plan yes uh well before your next meeting thank you we'll work on getting that updated and and properly shared with the board and then communicated with the public okay so uh i'm asking for a motion is there a second second i can't hear you natalie scott i believed at one point you said february 28th and in another point you were reading february 21st did i no i said february 28 2022 i wanted to say the year because i just don't want to have a date that has no year attached to it right now thank you i'm sorry i just need to clarify it and i'm sorry whoever sec i think uh mr bomb stark second mr second so we have a motion and a second on the table i'm gonna ask for a roll

159call vote on that resolution katie corman hi peggy hi dolan stefani no for the reason stated stark hi nelson i vote i so the motion carries uh dr dally you have some work ahead of you here for us and uh thank you for everybody that was a a very robust discussion i want to remind everyone the board speaks with one voice we may not have uh all agreed right now but we all agree that the board speaks with one voice and i want to thank everyone for their input it was very important tonight i hope the community can get some resolve on on the direction that we're heading now we're going to move on to the rest of our uh agenda so i hope everyone sticks around we got a lot more work to do

160that's great number two is our fdk resolution uh does anyone have any uh questions for eric on that just uh if i can just make a quick comment the the board has clearly made a whole series of board formal actions related to uh full day kindergarten planning which is well underway and we're very excited about isb does require this specific resolution be passed uh by the board so we ask for your consideration thank you i do have a quick question i know what what is the practical implication of the the half-day students being counted as one like why is this here well one of one of the impacts is for instance uh the evidence-based funding and the way that a full day is counted versus a half day you know i'm not sure based on

161early indications from bisbee that it's going to change our tier status but it may have some minor impact for instance other than that i think it's just a formal declaration that that we're moving to a full day program yeah okay okay i'm going to ask for a motion in a second for approval is there a motion so moved second who is second peggy aggie and i believe we need a roll call vote for that kitty yes we do stefani on mute sorry i corman i check torowitz hi dolan hi tom stark hi peggy hi nelson aye motion carries our next motion is the 22015 asbestos abatement phase two and three we've talked about this before does anybody have any questions i will ask for a a motion in a second move that for uh action

162please mike corman second jim bob stark tim bombster all right we can we have a roll call bomb stark hi corman hi jack torowitz hi dolan james dolan hi erin eddie hi nelson hi stefani hi thanks that was good now we have the 22016 internal subbing memorandum of understanding has everybody read that uh we we've had that discussion too i think it's it's i think that's a great thing for our school district it really speaks to our teachers that there even want to be subs within our district that's awesome love that is there any question all right i'm going to ask for a motion don't move john peggy motion and a second i'll second natalie second and a roll call vote jack torowitz aye corman hi stolen hi bomb stark hi peggy hi nelson hi

163stefani hi motion carries we're moving to section g of our agenda discussion we're starting with staffing allocations it's mr kevin dorkin thank you um the report that the board of education has is the first read of our 2223 staffing plan so uh a lot of work went into that to this point but that will certainly potentially evolve a little bit between now and the march meeting i would just share some brief um highlights of that report due to a variety of factors uh largely driven by enrollment but other factors as well including some decreased numbers in our students receiving support through an iep we we're seeing about uh 14 fewer uh full-time equivalent positions among our certified staff for next year and similarly we're seeing about fewer full-time equivalent positions among our support staff so

164the certified and support staff positions both look to decrease for 22-23 and then in the midst of analyzing our needs we're looking to do some shifting of some of our fte in a little bit more um flexible manner we're going to allocate uh four positions to support mtss work multi-tiered systems of support through a new position we'll title mtss specialists those will be at intermediate and middle school buildings those those roles will still require the lbs ones licensure which is what we require for special education services so that if our numbers were to increase um either by the fall or at some point during the year we have the flexibility to still meet needs and potential increase in our caseloads now we're also adding a couple of physical therapists positions to our district staff and

165increasing some early childhood coaching all through some some shifting in the services we get through true north finally among the support staff with our very exciting uh additions and construction that's currently going on we've added a small number of support staff positions among the custodial and maintenance ranks to just maintain the increased square footage that we'll be taking out i would be happy to entertain any questions that the board has and we would anticipate bringing forward um updated recommendation for approval at the march meeting does anyone have any questions at this time for the preliminary uh staffing allocation i just want to make sure i'm reading the the enrollment piece of it right the the projected enrollment drops by about kids in my if i look at that chart it's what 40 through 98 the

166current year down to 42.63 so that's correct and then you were saying that the full-time certified staff dropped how many positions so a little under 14 and some of that is a function of um in the report that i shared in january regarding our enrollment uh actual relative to projected we didn't see this school year the sort of robust return from some decreased enrollment the previous year that we anticipated you know a variety of factors probably played into that delta emerging in the summer and plans that people made that they stayed with more permanently rather than returning to us so really looking at the two-year decrease tell us a little bit more of the story of why we're looking at fewer fte if that if that makes sense the way i explain that that would

167be about 60. i was just trying to square like even if it's 60 60 students 14 staff kind of feels like a felt like a lot of staff for only losing 60 kids i'm just wondering why you were able to do that yeah there's some shifting some of it's um when you look at the entire district enrollment when you get into the math of each school in each grade level the formulas that we apply for staffing sometimes they just land in such a way that you know they're different fte needed per building per grade so i shared with this report just a high level summary of enrollment um that january report really gets into much more depth about you know where numbers are for each grade and for each child you can get weird outcomes

168because you're near break points on classes precisely methods and things like that that is a factor and also different grades have different class sizes am i correct correct so rising right so for example second graders rising to third those class sizes increased similarly from intermediate up to middle those class sizes decrease so there can be shifts of that nature too okay i mean it's a good it's a good outcome i just want to make sure that it's not in a way placing undue burden on teachers because you have fewer per it's it's like the the student-to-teacher ratio would be going up slightly but that's an aggregate i understand like at individual classes that might not be that wouldn't be happening correct yeah okay any any other questions all right we look forward to the is

169it the final report next month kevin uh that'll be the recommendation for 2023 that we'd ask the board to take action on yes thank you thank you all right uh let's uh move on to uh phase two and three construction discussion yep so just wanted to update uh the board in the community based on last month's conversation that we you know uh were able to answer questions that came from the board based on the final administrative recommendation regarding the way we're going to bid out the work that's that's already been put out addendums have been put out and we've taken all the comments into advisement and you know try to allow for as much flexibility as we could going into march when we plan on presenting um contracts for for award from the board um

170with increased in all the expenses and costs exceeding original estimates any work that we're not able to do you know during this round we still can add to the facility assessment make it a priority and when resources are available at a later time we can we can tackle that so i just wanted to mention that and see if there's any other comments from the board as we prepare for for the awards in march if if john wants to go first he also has his hand up that's fine me okay um so uh eric and i did correspond a little about this after our last meeting and if you give me a second he provided me some really great answers to some of my questions um so i just wanted to kind of bring that out

171because we were talking about door replacements and i understand better what is what is proposed to be kind of eliminated and um [Music] for the most part it looks like these are doors that aren't really in student areas um eric uh our you know troy our from our architects um kind of delineated which doors might though still be in student access areas they're not a lot i mean i think we're replacing most of the doors that are in student access areas to be accessible ada accessible but he does mention these corridor dividing doors which although stay open most of the time i i am worried that if those doors are closed in case of emergency that could have a dire consequence for uh kids who need accessible doors so i respectfully ask that those doors

172be added back into the project and there was one other thing i wanted oh and he did mention something about doors also to offices i think particularly to principals offices and to the school nurse's office and while i would prefer both doors also be wheels here accessible because i think it's really important for a student to be able to be able to get into the principal's office i find it essential that the door to the school nurse's office be ada accessible it should not ask add too much back into the project but it is the very kids who need to be in contact with the nurse that need those doors to be accessible so it seems like that that would be good and i don't know if this is the right uh you know time

173to bring that up but um other than that you answered all my questions sufficiently and i was you know happy with your answers but i respectfully ask that in those two cases we add those doors back in that's that is my comment i don't know if you have a reaction to that or if that [Music] i would say that uh we will do what we can i know that the bids are out addendums have been issued and so we're we're kind of figuring it out at the last minute here but if we can make those changes happen we will okay and then if not then that i would ask that that goes to the top of the list when we do our facilities assessment exactly okay thank you no problem uh john yeah thank you

174so here i i guess you just said something there that confused me um when you talk about bids you're out you're talking about if the bids are out on a full scope our bids are released with the administrative recommended pullbacks so what we did was we issued base bids that were all inclusive to sort of cast by net and then addendums with deductive alternates were issued so that we could find out if we didn't do certain things what the cost was and so um [Music] we're trying to to provide as much flexibility and options for the board with with the cost overages so it's complicated um what we do is we sort of you know voice our our thoughts to the architects and they've put this together in a way that i think will provide

175as much flexibility as we can um and then there's obviously change orders something like what natalie mentioned if there's a couple extra doors that we need to put on i think we can do some small you know design work and and do it through a change order if you will just to get a couple more doors or doorways put in well right okay so we that that's how we come to the options that we have having a rough idea on what these what what taking these items off would save us and i guess my you know my problem with the memo you issued is the focus on things uh i just think there's things we're focusing on that we can't fix later like just for instance the sync thing and i hate to auto you

176know just focus in on that but we can't put that back in later i mean not realistically like you know to put the the plumbing in place you got to you know dig up the floor so this is the time to do that finishings which is significant portion of these can be put in later um yeah there's always some cost savings to do it in all at once but we can't so i i don't know why we're taking things out that we're not going to be able to do later um and and keeping things in that we can and you know the the doors are a capital improvement um not a declaration so i i think and and they provide a real safety valve uh safety uh value and then obviously there's the legal aspect

177of compliance as well so i i guess i would really like to think see a rethink on what it is the administration thinks should stay in and what should come out and focus on things that can't be fixed later so would it be helpful uh john for us to reissue that uh our intention list similar to what we did at the last meeting and then accounting for the q a that has gone back and forth between board members and us and yeah and the architects to to i guess better crystallize that um i'm just trying i'm just trying to figure out what would be what would be helpful the at the end of the day it's uh of course a question of how do the bids come in um and how much over are we

178and you know are we willing to dig into fund balance or are we willing to make some of the difficult choices about scaling back on some of the things that uh we originally you know two years plus ago thought we would be able to do i'm just trying to figure out what would be helpful to sort of crystallize this for for others well i i think what's helpful is you know what is it we can live with with putting off uh you know we i don't think we're i'm ready to concede we're never gonna do some of these things but they're gonna have to be done in a different order in years to come um yeah i you know well i already said how i think it should be prioritized i'd be happy to as

179a member of the subcommittee you know to work with the administration on that now volunteer uh mr corman as well but um yeah i i i don't think we've got the right priorities yet so so just so that i can get a little clarity john because i'm the one that actually questioned hard on the sinks in the classroom which is not really a best practice in educating k through 12 education anymore were you suggesting that was a good thing to uh challenge or i'm just trying to get where you're at i don't want to get overly specific into the weeds on that but that's an example of if we think that sinks are somewhat worthwhile and our architecture certainly thought that at one point um we will probably keep that let me answer that john

180they thought it was worthwhile because most of the classrooms had them i challenged and said we're going to change all of the galvanized pipe to copper and do all the other things and i challenged pretty hard uh uh kevin uh uh our team and they came back and said you know best practice most school houses we're not putting sinks in classrooms so i'm the one that kind of pushed pretty hard to say if it's not a best practice for most k-12s in the last two decades why would we do it let's cap those lines and pull those things out and save that money just as an example well mike i get great concerns if if we've got architects who are designing things that aren't to best practices that are two decades old well that that's

181a fair question but i think they just went with what was in place and you could you could argue that probably a lot of things but that's a that's a tough nut to crack i think well i would also make the argument that it's actually hard to project where we're going to need things 20 years from now in education as we can see we're already making extensive modifications to a tia and 20 years ago we thought we had a state-of-the-art building so you know let's not get too deep into this that way i mean for what i understand john you want to be able to have a little more flexibility to uh adjust projects you feel that aren't fully net in your mind somewhat necessary at this time is that where you're getting it that

182we things that we can hold off on like uh i i'm not sure at this point but i i think i don't want to get too premature into this discussion until the bids come in and we actually know what we really have to cut i i don't want to uh you know i'd imagine we did make a promise to the community so uh the cuts do have to be strategic i personally do not want to dip into um our fund balance and uh and i'm employing you know the administration to find any way possible to come in uh within budget and if i may you know throughout the course of the design process you put things in there and you design not knowing what the estimation is going to reveal and so part of this

183was you know putting it in designing it estimating it just so we can see what it looks like part of the recommendation is a series of cuts to try and keep us in line and on budget and that's what what our goal was and the whole purpose of this discussion was if there's things that you feel are important that we need to dip into fund balance for this is an opportunity to at least talk about it and then once the actual bids come in and we know what it looks like then that's when we make final decisions well you know i gotta follow up on scott's point and eric i mean he just kind of said the opposite like we you know there are people here don't want to dip into the fun balance we

184don't have to take a vote on who that is but that's not the only option we can put work off and and then do it at later dates even in ten years or five years i mean we we can do that um our only option can't be dipping into the fund balance no that's not the only option and we we we can forego other other work and hope that we have the money later when we need it our operational budget is telling us a different story as we all know but i'm just saying our thought process shouldn't be on what we don't want anymore we wanted all this at one point and there's reasons for it and there's reasons we might not even understand today it might be used in a different way but i'm

185saying the focus should be on things that we cannot fix later a reprieve reprioritization of what it is we're trying to do and um right sure bids have to come in but you know the cost of finishings in particular is going to be fairly static versus the cost of again just we'll use these things as an example of installing a sink later is going to cost way more than installing a sink now in this phase of construction so i just would like to see it through that lens so so i just want to add two things one you know when we went when we had the referendum and you know we built you know our program and our plan that the the fund balance amount was part of that conversation and part of that promise

186whether we use it or not that's a discussion for another day but that money was part of the overall conversation um you know and second and i'm just going to be candid here i don't know how many of our board members provided feedback to the list and i'm not trying to call anyone out but i would like to see more feedback i provided feedback on three or four items that we then chewed up uh with the subcommittee and with mr miller and dr delhi i'd love to get more feedback from other board members you know at least to give it a once-over and if nothing else say you know it looks it looks fine which you guys are attempting to work on all right so i i think i think we understand where we're at

187mr corman when i was talking about the uh fund balance uh i understand what we promised i don't want to spend more than we promised that's what i'm alluding i agree i agree with that yeah so uh you know will this will be much more clear what when did the bids come in eric uh but we have four bid openings that are happening over the course of this next week and then they need a week to you know do their due diligence and then that's when we'll meet with the subcommittee to go over uh all the bids in great detail and hopefully come to the full board with the recommendation in march so our next meeting is march 14th will we have a little more clarity by them oh yeah okay so let's uh let's

188end this discussion right now so everybody okay with that subcommittee meet some needs just for clarity great okay thanks you got an idea what we're asking for so i i think that's good all right we're uh back it's time for audience comments again audience audience comments are always welcome please know the board ask that anyone addressing the board complete a form the link is on the board agenda page is also posted in a news item on the district 34 home page comments are to be three minutes or less and this participation will have a total time of 45 minutes as our first finally this is an opportunity for community members to address the board but the board does not respond during public comment section of the meetings kenny do we have any comments we do

189and scott you had mentioned at the end of the first participation period that we'd allow those who signed up for that period to comment this period if they wish so i will ask how many comments are on your list uh yes total is 26. i know that not all of these people are still here okay and um we're gonna still limit this to 45 minutes and people that can't comment can uh share their uh thoughts with the board via email or other methods so um the first person is anna kowalski anna i'll bring you on oh good evening um i had to change around a little of what i was going to say as i was to speak on behalf of my children and my family for mass optional um so while it may sound

190that mass optional environment is to potentially happen come february 28th and we should celebrate this win mass optional should happen tomorrow we have districts even tonight following the announcement from the joint committee on administrative roles switching to mask optional tomorrow they do not have students with ieps how are they able to do it but we can't figure it out fear has dictated the lives of so many for far too long if you're not comfortable unmasking fine but you don't make decisions for my family i'm gonna call it like i see it so many board members have said staff needs more time you've had two years to think about the endgame two years to unmask our children what have we been doing in those two years enough is enough thank you uh thanks for joining us

191and thanks for your comments next is sure they're here vinnie molito hello hi we can hear you hi how are you hold on i'm sorry i need to find my notes that's all right vinnie it's fine take your time you're going to or already have gotten a lot of speeches from parents but i truly don't think you realize how bad the masks have gone in this recent lawsuit that you have completely ignored for the last two weeks involved over 140 districts in illinois and out of those districts the very large majority of those of those districts who could who could uh who who managed to figure out like what i'm sorry i'm choking up the large majority of those districts got got rid of their mass mandate in school students who have the students who

192the students who have to actually wear the masks are in not in are not in very good conditions we are not even asking you to get rid of the masks completely just to make the mask in district 34 optional as students have already made the point that they do not want to wear a mask in their school and is against and and it is not only that but it's also completely against the constitution because obviously in the first amendment we have the freedom the freedom of choice freedom of religion freedom of speech etc um and there's been a protest at my school and we've been uh we've been protesting the we've been protesting for mass optional and um i believe i believe that this is something that a lot of that a lot of students

193want even if even if some uh may not speak up about it and um from what i've seen here in this meeting um a large majority of the parents have also seemed to want the uh mask mask optional to go through and they wanted it to go through very um quickly tomorrow because the last speaker um was right you did have a lot of time to think about this um and to go over what could possibly happen and she's right enough is enough is enough um and i'd also like to bring up effect on the cdc yeah you can see the the mortality rate of covet is almost exactly the same of that as an unvaccinated child that has gotten the flu um so it's it's not as it's not as bad as it's it's

194not as bad as people are making it out to be the omicron variant is not uh it's it's not as bad as delta and um oh god there's something else i had to say i forgot geez um crap what i have to say i'm done thank you vinnie thanks for sharing your perspective and your thoughts thanks for joining us tonight i'm sorry you have to stay up so late and the next speaker um i think sorry knows vinnie it's kristin molita oh where am i i can't find me kristen i can't oh there you go you unmuted um okay am i ready to go yeah yeah can you hear me okay my name is kristin molito and i am a mother of three children in district 34 and i have lived in glenview for seven

195years my stance is firm masks should be optional for all individuals immediately your decision to use an outdated mitigation plan from august of 2021 can only make the rest of the community assume that you're either a passive and apathetic in forging a new plan and or b choosing not to adhere to the data we now have to make new decisions for the betterment of our students in fact after hearing you discuss a plan and time frame this evening i am actually shocked and flabbergasted that all of you have not been preparing for the ending of masks it's utterly irresponsible and i as well as many others feel let down this conversation should have happened months ago how have none of you prepared for this stop dragging your feet how are other schools able to pivot

196in one day and glenview needs an exacerbated dragged out plan how do all other districts follow the ruling of today but our district does not that should have been the topic of your discussion this evening but again our board is about six months behind with that said tonight rather than share my opinions as to why we should have the freedom of choice i will touch on a few grim observations that i have seen about this district over just the past few weeks the first is how is it possible that not that that our one district is so adamant on making masks mandatory when you when we are watching the world our communities and our neighborhoods around us live freely without masks how is it possible that almost 500 districts in the state of illinois have

197gone mask optional yet here we are tonight having this discussion i continue to ask myself why why really why is our district doing this and now we know you are not prepared for this sadly our community image has been fairly poor over the past few weeks and that's before neighboring district board member joel twab vulgar his vulgar tyrant in front of his peers the board and our students last night furthermore it appears that there is something that is trying to be kept hidden perhaps it's the third round of sr funding from the state that you only receive if you continue to keep the children in masks i'm not sure if the rest of the community is aware of that but they should be and now they are so that lends me to ask what was

198really your concern is it the funding is it the safety of the students and teachers families are grateful schools are open because they have been fooled into believing that school closures will happen if masks are optional in fact a mom april and a mom liz this evening already thanked you for keeping schools open this is simply a scare tactic and clearly it's working because in fact mr cortman you brought that up this evening what an effective strategy to get families to believe you're on their side to be honest i wish i believed you had the teachers and the students best interest in minds if that were the case i would be spending this evening enjoying my children rather i am here seeking the truth from our elected officials who have no good explanations or planning

199for their decisions and our district and sadly again they are six months behind thank you thank you thank you for your comments and thank you for joining us next is karina trap hi how are you thank you so much for letting me um speak tonight i really appreciate your time and um this opportunity um but just like every other parent in this district i'm frustrated and concerned with the direction our schools are headed in regards to covid protocols i attended the board meeting last august and the school board told us their hands were tied they were following the mandate set forth by governor pritzker in regards to masking the children you said there was nothing you could do it was out of your control your hands were tied well a few weeks ago a judge

200ruled the governor's mandates void and rightfully untied this board's hands giving all of you the opportunity to finally give the parents of this community the opportunity to decide for themselves what would be in the best interest of their children but rather than giving the parents that opportunity just as over 300 other school districts in the state have done by making masks optional you in turn tied the hands of parents who truly know what is best for their children and took it upon yourselves to make those decisions for us and that's wrong regardless of what the outcome of the appeal may be you have proven to us that your hands were never tied you were doing exactly what you wanted to do and continue to do so no one is saying masks should be completely removed

201families who want to have the option to have their child wear a mask should be completely allowed to do so i support their decision to do what is best for their children 100 the same option should be available to families who would rather not send their child to school with a mask on it does not have to be political it is about recognizing each child as an individual with varying degrees of needs and circumstances it is about respecting the parents of this community and recognizing that they not you know what is best for their children i hope this board will come to its senses and follow the lead of the majority of the states in this country and now over 300 school districts of the state and untie the hands of this community give the

202families the opportunity and the right to decide for themselves what is best for their children thank you thank you for joining us and thank you for your comments next is corey moore hi can you see me hi good evening i know it's late my name is corey moore i'm representing the concerns of students and their families with health issues and disabilities who've been listening to the discussion tonight i first want to thank you for having not having a knee-jerk reaction to removing mass tomorrow how did all the other districts do it christian molito asked i'll tell you at the expense of kids with disabilities and children and staff with health impairments many of those families in the other districts are in absolute crisis right now so thank you for not doing that to us as

203a parent who went to the iep process the transition to remote times two it was not a short process there were conversations with staff with nurses with parents with the students of themselves with this associates um i implore the board to continue to lean into using mary garrity kristen caceres and the assistant principal's expertise as we make this transition they are the experts that you've hired lean into them two weeks is the bare minimum you've given the staff if you are placing this on the staff please make sure they are supported above and beyond for the next two weeks so they can have these conversations with families so they can get the translators so they can talk to the health officials and the experts that these families are going to be bringing in clear their

204schedules so they can support us the families and the children do not rush the finish line at the expense of our students and staff these are real kids with real health issues there are teachers with health issues they are not a number of 80 or some phone calls or paper pushing that needs to happen in the next eight work days that the board has provided they are a legal responsibility you have a responsibility to provide adequate time for these accommodations i cannot imagine how hard it has been for you i know you are volunteers i know many of you have worked tirelessly in this community and are being abused and threatened in a really shocking way and i know you're tired not just tonight but like in general and i know the administration is tired

205and i'm grateful for your leadership but i'll be honest it hurt tonight to see members of this board cling to a date over the well-discussed reality of the potential harm to children with disabilities and children with and staff with health concerns i know you want the abuse and the threats to be over i can't even imagine but please do not view the next eight work days as anything less than an absolute race to avoid disaster for so many in our district that rely on your choices um i also want to say please please please support this the nurses the special education teachers and the assistant principals who have an incredibly enormous task on top of everything else they have to do in the next days and while i'm hurt i am grateful and i am

206hopeful that this board will continue to listen and learn and do what's best for our community thank you and sleep well thank you very much thanks for joining us next is scott steele hello can you hear me yes yes we can hear you okay so i'm not it's my my video should be on though okay sorry um if you wanted to be i don't know yeah so i just first want to want to commend the board um you know for finally moving the ball forward and making a decision it's been long overdue um i also want to particularly commend mr hagee he's really been the only one on the board that's been willing to engage over the past couple years in a rational and good faith exchanges on this topic and so i want to

207commend him particularly um you know there's been a lot of talk about you know the the neighboring districts and counties um you know we have evidence right in front of our face uh i pulled the last six month case rate from surrounding midwestern states nine midwestern states and the order from highest lowest case rate for those nine midwestern states wisconsin indiana minnesota illinois iowa nebraska michigan missouri ohio the only state out of that group of nine that has a statewide mass mandate for schools is illinois so if masks are supposed to be so beneficial and effective then why is illinois the fourth highest case rate out of those states what are those other states doing that we're not doing are we to believe that illinois there's an illinois covert variant that's more deadly and dangerous

208than the variants in those states it's just it's common sense and logic you don't need to be a doctor or a public health official to put the put the pieces together um i just want to quickly address some of the the um topics that were discussed you know on the meeting tonight um you know between the board members um you know i think it was mr dolan that said make some comment about how vaccines will end this pandemic i i mean with all due respect you know i think 2021 called and it wants its narrative back um it's obvious now that these vaccines do not stop uh infection or the spread this virus is endemic it will be around forever so i'm not sure why we're talking about how vaccines are going to end the

209pandemic number one um number two there's been a lot of talk about you know following the advice of the public health officials are these the same public health officials that um said the vaccine would prevent infection and the spread which obviously has been an epic failure um are these the same health experts that tell you to wear a mask when you walk into a restaurant to your table and then you're free to take it off while you talk and eat are these the same health experts that you know have implemented a vaccine mandate in cook county a month and a half ago and now are eliminating that you know next week so i i just there's just a lot of you know i hate to use the word misinformation because it's just been butchered over

210the last year but there's a lot of misinformation discussed tonight and i just like the board to really reflect on you know some of the some of the facts and data that are out there and move forward based on that thank you um thank you mr steele for joining us and here thank you for your comments thank you next is margaret raider good evening um it's been a very long night um you know my covet experience was what i was gonna share today i was going to um say that you know my daughter um and um on december 10th spiked a fever in the middle of the night and i did what any mother does i kind of just dragged her in bed with me and her with her fever and took care of her

211um i tested her with an at-home test the next day and it was negative um i did notify the school that she had a fever and she had a few symptoms and i would keep them updated um saturday night the 11's she tested positive for covid so um so my husband and my younger daughter moved to the lower level of the house and i stayed in quarantine with my daughter um [Music] there was like some inconsistencies with spring men because they made the kids that were not vaccinated that were close contacts leave but the kids that were vaccinated and a close contact got to stay um that confuses me a little bit we kind of have heard you know through and through that vaccinated unvaccinated have the same amount of virus in the nasal fairing

212and can spread the virus the same so um but anyway so then um so after the 10 days of quarantine no one else in my family became ill we were testing with a pcr test every three days for illinois department of health i was called during that time by contact tracing and they had it reported that both of my daughters had coveted even though it was only my older daughter i was told by the contact tracer that it was too late to amend that so that day my daughter was editing as a covert case who was not a cover case um then following on december 21st my younger daughter spiked a fever i was in bed with her and i you know had her tested she was positive um i had her in bed with

213me for 10 days um and i never caught covered from either of them and in the beginning of the pandemic they had mentioned that kids were not the super spreaders they were not the ones carrying the higher viral loads i've tried to go back and look at different studies and haven't been able to find anything that um sorry anything that doesn't contradict itself um it was only after my husband got sick a few weeks later that he gave it to me so it's not i'm not saying i can't be in fact i'm just saying that it took my husband to get sick to have enough viral load for me to get sick so i just wanted to go along with metrics and show no increase in cases with mass and unmasked schools i agree because

214i think kids really are less of a spreader and there isn't really enough data thank you uh for your excitement i appreciate it and thanks for staying up late i appreciate that yeah you could see how i oh sorry i'm sorry um next is um nan ross meredith [Music] good evening again i just wanted to come back and thank you for the really thoughtful conversation that you've had this evening these are all really difficult conversations that we've been having for so long and i think in a time when teachers have felt beaten up and like no one's listening and no one's paying attention the fact that you had the type of conversation you did tonight with administration and board is really it means a lot and we are great very grateful uh for that consideration

215and we feel really supported so um thank you very much for the time we appreciate it thanks for your comments and thanks for your staying up late again next we have jen patel can you hear me we can hear you yes okay thank you for um letting me speak um and i know that you guys voted to go mask recommended and not required and so i won't belabor the point of the jaycard decision today which was a unanimous 9-0 vote to suspend idph's emergency rule and i'd like to thank you for finally taking a vote on masking took us a while to get here but it was refreshing to hear the thoughts of the board members and specifically mr heggy mr nelson and mr von stark lastly i'd like to just address some of the

216um comments that mr corman made about bullying and um teachers losing control when plaintiff kids who entered into the classrooms um i find it interesting that mr corman would bring up the point about bullying when he has abused his position as a sitting board member by using intimidation tactics against parents who are lawfully entitled to constitutionally protected due process i have reviewed many social media posts from him and emails to other people um they've sent them to me and his tone is rude and he is emotional unprofessional and he has resorted to profanity and you know i would suggest that we consider his position on this board um we know that this is not an emotional discussion really this comes down to a simple issue about due process and um i'll leave it at that

217the second thing about him talking about teachers losing control i i think that that's unprofessional for him to say it's conjecture my daughter is the plaintiff and she went into her school and i cannot con um command principal puetz enough for her leadership and how she handled the situation including my daughter's teacher who handled it with ease and with smiles so it's unfair for him to say that these children entered the classrooms and the teachers were unprepared and lost control thank you um thank you for your comments and thank you for uh joining us tonight uh next we have rishi awitramani yeah can you hear me yes yes yes right here sorry my notes uh on another app i was out um yeah so it seems pretty uh thank you very much for the time

218first of all uh and sorry to keep everyone up late as well um it seems to me from this board meeting from the parts i heard that the it's pretty clear that the board has never had a strategy on how to deal with corvid whether it's going into the pandemic coming out of the pandemic anything it seems at times you want to follow the health experts well the health experts are saying the master face decorations at least the ones that our kids are wearing in school um sometimes you seem to be wanting to follow the courts sometimes not if you win the palette this decision you seem to be wanting to put that into your decision tonight but the courts already ruled that this is illegal and we are far we're not following that what

219are we teaching our kids over here do we want to follow the law do we not want to follow the law uh another thing i found pretty appalling in this meeting was the uh the kids that are not wearing masks right now it is pretty appalling how you are actually treating them they are just as good as my kids who are wearing a mask they're just as good as any other kid you cannot be putting them in separate areas of the school you cannot be treating them that like there's some people with leprosy or something what have we learned all these years of you know in how to treat each other this this is absolutely appalling it's the worst thing i've ever heard about happening in our school is treating kids differently just because they

220are not wearing a mask they are following the rules of the law they are following everything and you are treating them very unfairly and one thing i feel also you didn't discuss is the rules of quarantining uh i i understand they discuss mass a lot but what happens when the mass becomes optional do the quarantine rules change uh i understand that mass from six to ten days after an infection et cetera et cetera were discussed but the quarantine rules in general were not discussed so i would like to have some more uh about that um another thing on your february 28th date the february 28th date has absolutely no significance to children it was a date decided by the governor to relieve some of the mandates that are taking place but it was periodically stated

221not for schools so why are we choosing it for schools again you're seeing just randomly following things that you uh you're picking and choosing that seem to just fit what what's in your mind and not what's uh what our community is thinking um lastly also when you want to mention the pta is organizing a meeting a fundraiser in the in the fundraiser they are oh thank you rishi that's all right sorry thank you very much for your time thank you and we have one more speaker um signed up at jeff duncan so i'm last i guess i get extra time i'm sorry no [Laughter] uh first off uh thank you everyone for for hearing me out uh my wife heidi and i have two boys at lion school kindergartner and a second grader um as

222our oldest son jack in the midst of uh kovid was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes certainly changed our world rocked our world and one of the things when we were in the midst of being at the hospital with doctors and nurses everywhere we had two primary questions for everyone that would listen number one what can or can't jack do the answer was nothing jack can do everything like every other sixth grade six-year-old at the time the second question we had was what about coven mind you this was in june of 2020 okay so this was fresh and to a person the doctors and nurses said jack is at no greater risk than the average six-year-old okay so that hasn't changed so we look at it from the standpoint of jack is one of those 80

223odd kids that require additional attention but we don't expect him to be treated differently okay we are very thankful as a family for the staff teachers especially nurse sydney over at lyon um for the attention and and care and compassion that they've showed for our family we don't know where we'd be without her um that said i look at it from the standpoint of we've taken so much from our kids over these past two years and while we may sit here as adults and say it's only two weeks it's only count them off on our fingers eight school days it's more than that it's way more than that you know i volunteer as a coach for youth sports i coach six seven and eight year olds and i've done that for the past several years

224the number of kids over the past 18 months that have come off the field or off the ice crying it's almost every single one of them that's not by chance that is because these children are crying out for help okay they're getting upset they're emotionally unstable okay and what we're robbing of them is is is this chance to be normal we owe them normalcy not two weeks from now not based on some arbitrary date that things might change with our great governor pritzker our local and our state policies have robbed our children of so much over the past two years and i'll close with i appreciate every single one of you for stepping up and and being part of this this this board none of you signed up to be health experts i would agree

225with that however every single one of you signed up to be a leader in our community and again arbitrarily setting two weeks because some expected you know date that something might happen that's not leadership you have set a date where no one will be happy the pro-mass crowd will not be happy the pro-optional crowd will not be happy thank you uh mr duncan uh appreciate it guys thank you that's about to be thank you scott there is one more who signed up and um i did not call so i think i have found this person um northa i'm gonna promote who i think is you northa gabriel i hope this is you if it is not the person i promote please let me know can you hear me okay hi um first off thank you

226i know it's a long night so i appreciate and i thank you for giving me the chance to speak uh my name is ninortan district 34 parent um truthfully i was really reluctant and unsure if i was going to speak today i also work in education and with that comes pressure from all around because it is boards like you superintendents like yourselves that make the ultimate decision of who gets hired and who gets let go not to mention the pressure that comes from colleagues and unions that have differing views i know there are teachers and staff in district 34 that feel like they have no voice and are afraid of negative repercussions including being ostracized by colleagues and possibly lose their jobs especially those who are not tenured when we went into education we never

227imagined living and teaching through what we just endured i mean we've all lived it it was almost 24 hours 18 hours a day of non-stop remote learning working teaching um we never went into education for fame riches or glory but we went in for the children and to make a positive impact on our communities um i'm going to go a little bit off script just based on all the conversations that happen there's a lot of discussion going back and forth you kept asking for more time data metrics and in the meantime your surrounding district our surrounding district has been in person since fall of 2020. what is being weighed into their analysis and is there a way for us to collaborate with them on their thought process and planning for pulling back of some of

228these mitigations what is it that they know that we have been unable to figure out should we be meeting with them for a collaboration session to help us out at the start of the 2020 2021 school year that's almost two and a half years ago while district 34 was still in remote our district where i worked was in person and personally having worked in healthcare during the sars 2003 outbreak i had a lot of anxiety going in i knew i needed a n95 mask and when i worked in 2003 i had a fitted mask to protect me i worked the entire year as an immunocompromised person with a newborn at home i worked the entire year with an n95 mask because that was what the community wanted for their students i know the anxiety that

229comes with change but we now have therapeutics vaccinations and thankfully natural immunity to protect us to the district 34 teachers administrators support staff please know you are not alone we are here to support you please speak up for your students yesterday my child got home sorry my child threw aside all of her valentine's treats and said the best part of her day was the hug she got from her teacher our children love their teachers and we are community that support them henry adams said a teacher affects eternity he can never tell where his influence stops it's masks today but i'm sure there will be other issues with that we will contend with in the future have courage and be the voice for our children and for each other we are one nation under god indivisible

230with liberty and justice for all including the smallest members of our community thank you for your time and i know it's been a long night for you all thank you uh for uh joining us and for sharing your uh comments thank you very much and that i believe we are officially um we've covered everyone who's signed up who is here all right thank you kathy that was a tremendous task pulling everyone into the meeting i appreciate that now we move to our report section we have the number one foia report number two true north board meeting report number three phase one construction change order report the number four monthly budget report the number five referendum expense report the number six current year financial projections number seven the extended school year and supplemental learning experience report

231and number eight the following meeting agenda does anyone have any questions about the reports okay i see no hands raised i'm going to move along oh i guess i finally sorry i raised my hand maybe i didn't see oh i see it now i do it's because your background is kind of yellow do we uh do we need to discuss the agenda given the context of our discussion earlier uh and the follow-ups as laid forth with respect to the mitigation plan and such um i will make sure that that will be on the next month's agenda is that good yeah all right dane is that all right yes and i believe dr delhi did state that he plans on having that done before the next meeting even so we should see some preliminary work ahead

232of that too yes great thank you dr dolan um any other uh business no other business right now all right i am going to make i'm going to move to adjourn this meeting thank you everyone and we finished under i think ahead of 11 10 is my window so thank you thanks scott thank you for everyone for coming thank you for all 400 people that watched on you zoom and i don't know how many people watched on youtube but thank you to the community