CCSD 46 Board of Education Meeting: August 11th, 2021

001this is the community consolidated school district 46 board of education meeting for wednesday august 11th 2021 at 6 30 pm at frederick school uh so first uh i need a call to order in a roll call please weedman here mac here brayden here anderson here lacroix here and miller here okay uh that gives us a quorum and next we need to stand for the pledge of allegiance please next i need an approval for the agenda so moved second miller i anderson i mack hi weedman hi brayden aye and mccroy hi okay uh next up will be public comments uh before we start with the public comments uh we are making the announcement that uh tonight's meeting board meeting is the last board meeting that we will be accepting online uh public comments as the board

002is now obviously meeting in person again any public comments will need to be made in person here at one of our meetings so with that do we have anybody for public comment who is it if you want to just say the name that's fine i'm adrianne little okay good evening it is a myth that masks prevent viruses from spreading the overall evidence is clear standard cloth and surgical masks offer next to no protection against virus-sized particles or small aerosols the size of a virus protocol is much too small to be stopped by surgical or cloth mask wearing a mask to prevent catching stars cove two or similarly sized influenza is like throwing sand at a chain-link fence it does not work there have been one large randomized controlled trial that specifically examined whether masks protect

003the wearers from the coronavirus this study has found that mask wearing did not reduce conventional levels of statistical significance the incidences of stars cove to infection there have been hundreds of mask studies related to influenza transmission done over several decades it is a well-established fact that masks do not stop viruses part of the evidence shows that cloth face masks actually increase influenza linked illnesses bacteria are 50 times larger than virus particles as such virus particles can enter through the mass pores yet bacteria remain through the in the mass resulting in the mask wearer continually exposed to the bacteria all parties mandating the use of face masks are not only willfully ignoring established science but are engaging in what amounts to a whole school of clinical experimental trial this conclusion is reached by the fact that

004face mask use and cova-19 incidents are being reported in scientific opinion pieces promoted by the cdc and others the fact that after reviewing all the studies worldwide the cdc found no reduction in viral transmission with the use of face masks additionally children have been repeatedly shown not to be drivers of the contagion it is well accepted that children have statistically zero chance of dying from covet the cdc shows the k-12 mortality rate from one with covid is .0003 any intervention especially one that is prophylactic must cause fewer harms to the recipient than the infection since children have the lowest death rate from covet infection the cost benefit of requiring children to wear an investigational face covering with emerging safety issues is especially difficult to justify since i'm only allowed three minutes to speak i'll have

005to save my comments and research on the negative effects of mask wearing until next time long story short there is no reason to force anyone especially children to wear face masks the governor's unlawful mandate is just that not law he does not have the power to pull funding or accreditation from a school because they allow families to make the health decisions they feel are best for their children he is fear-mongering and sadly it's working bigger picture it's not just him doing it it's not just school boards falling for it i'm getting off topic we all know the real reason school boards are mandating masks fear of lawsuits there is zero chance of somebody being able to prove when and where their child got coveted so you can stop worrying over that what i and other

006parents will be able to prove is that school is the only place our children were forced to damascus and when those physical and mental illnesses start developing those children you can rest assured those are the lawsuits you should be worried about in closing no one on my side ever wanted to take away a family's choice to do what they feel is best to protect their children they can wear their masks however the pro mask families have done just that to me they have taken away my right as a parent to do what i feel is best for my child to allow him to breathe freely connect with others and be a kid thank you nicola cake hello my name is nikki case i have a daughter going into third grade and a son going into

007eighth grade we have decided to pull our children from district 46 being a parent in this district i think i should be informed what is being taught in our school and changes sorry i cannot breathe being taught in our school and changes being made in the curriculum and not from other parents and from my child when he comes home i also feel we should know what is in the movies videos my children are being exposed to and watching i feel we should know the resources and what the standards are we are discouraged with the direction of the public schools are headed concerning covid critical race theory and the sex education that will be taught in our schools when this bill comes to pass which unfortunately i feel it will so now i'm bringing up masks

008we the people need to take a stand against you the cdc governor pritzker no matter if you are for the masks or not this is beginning of the end of our freedoms i feel like you do not have the right to tell me that i have to put a mask or give my child a vaccine teachers and parents need to teach our children not the government it is our decision it should be our decision if i want to put a mask on my child to go to school i'm standing here and i can barely breathe this is what everything that adrian said is so true there has not been any deaths or a high rate of deaths in the in with children and you want to put masks on our kids for six hours because

009the government's the governor says it should be mandated the cdc the who all these people have changed what they've said wear a mask don't wear a mask get vaccinated you can have your freedoms back but no now it's all gone because governor pritzker comes on tv and says everyone needs to wear a mask and i feel it's wrong and i feel like you don't have a right to tell me to put a mask on my kids or give a vaccination that isn't even federally approved thank you okay chris are there any online there are not online none okay thank you okay next is the presentations uh for tonight we have the one-year solar energy savings report from performance services good evening my name is brian adiac i'm the general manager for performance services our illinois

010office here thanks for having me in tonight i have some pretty exciting news to share on the performance of your solar project i think we're just pulling up the presentation here wow a picture in picture it's pretty nice okay so um your project again just to summarize it was four solar systems installed at four-year buildings frederick the middle school park and prairie view in total 2.35 megawatt system and so the great news just in comparing what your actual electric utility bills were prior to the solar project being installed so 2016-2017 is what we had used in terms of evaluating the utility bills before we really assessed the project and worked with the administration board to design and implement the project comparing that to july 2020 through june 2021 so the fiscal year this past fiscal

011year there was an electric uh utility bill reduction of two hundred and forty eight thousand dollars so seventy percent uh this is uh quite substantial so before again it was around 355 000 is what you were paying for these four buildings in electricity this past year was 108 000 uh the system produced you can see there just under 2.9 million kilowatt hours and i'll have some more information to share in terms of what that contributed uh to the reduction but this was relative to what we had predicted it was 96 percent of what we had predicted so we're very satisfied with that we've seen you know there's lots of variables of course that impact how a system performs many of our projects we've seen some results that are in the high 80s low 90s to

012the high 90s so this is um this is uh we're very pleased with 96 percent of predicted um and then there's just a bullet point there to comment on the weather we do evaluate how many clear days there are in a year relative to what is typical this past again from july 2020 to june 2021 there was about a 13 percent decrease in annual clear days compared to the 37 year average so um performing at 96 percent given that is is is pretty good uh this is just this just shows you each of the facilities and how they perform relative to the predicted so you can see the middle school outperformed the others just underperformed park was probably the the furthest off but across the board again 96 percent and then here's the net kilowatt

013hour usage month to month so you'll notice some of the negative numbers and that's where you're a net exporter of energy now thankfully in our state we have net metering legislation so uh you're able to capture those credits when it's exported and utilize them towards months where you are a net importer it's it makes you know intuitive sense uh that in january february is where you are using the most electricity because there's the least amount of sunlight and of course uh this past january and february we recall we did some some pretty good snowfall um as well so that net energy usage is down 91 percent again that's comparing to the base year and i'll show you some of those numbers here in a bit this is just the total electric cost so you can

014see really the substantial reduction especially as you would expect during the summer months less so in the winter months but still a reduction there as well so across the board really pretty impressive results in how the system's performed and how it's impacted your utility bills this is just showing the weather data so compared to the the performance of the system or the output of the system so the orange bars are kilowatt hours from the solar panels and the the gray there is cloud cover with of course the snow depth peaking in january february and we did have some pretty impressive snowfall in january february in fact i think it was and we've done a number of solar projects across chicagoland area but there were there were some months where it was 20 of what was

015predicted in these months it was really uh really quite a decrease in what was expected given the snowfall so no solar panels do not work in snow i think that's i think that's pretty obvious this is a little bit tough to see this slide but it shows each each facility and the reduction so comparing the base year that i described to this past fiscal year so you can see is this a pointer on here that doesn't work when you look at the all facilities box towards the bottom there the reduction that two point just under three million kilowatt hours is 91 reduction so again the base year these four buildings used 3.25 million kilowatt hours and after the fact they used 292 000 so just a really remarkable reduction in in the electric usage and

016then cost as well that's that same 248 000 number there also so you can see them for each building and how they performed this slide shows as part of our performance guarantee we use the output of the solar panels multiplied by what we call the base year rate to determine the calculated savings and compare them to what we had proposed or predicted and so on a calculated basis we observed 234 000 dollars in savings which was just above what was projected the 230 000 so we met the bar there and that was about two percent greater than predicted so it's pretty it's been pretty good results right i mean it's quite room in here maybe it's the mask i can't see any expressions um this is a great savings and income summary slide to show

017the energy savings over the past two years so that 234 again that matches the the calculated number here and then the year prior the 210 000. and then we're showing there was a really substantial rebate from comed for this project as well which was received in in january february of 2020 that was uh the 589 thousand dollars there and then what's really improved the economics of this project is the district's ability to sell what's called the renewable energy credits to comed which is i guess not to get too deep into the weeds but our utilities are mandated to have a certain percentage of their generation be renewable and so rather than comed building and owning solar farms all over the place the state of illinois has instituted this program that essentially incentivizes combat and gives

018them the ability to purchase the legal claim over power produced like systems like as from systems like yours so it's just another revenue stream for districts or any other entity that installs solar to reap that benefit so i believe the total contract value kind of the maximum amount that these systems could earn from selling these wrecks is a 1.9 million just under 2 million so that gets invoiced over time so to date the districts have received about 775 000 and so you can see below there kind of the remaining amount to be invoiced is 1.2 million now that is uh dependent upon the performance of the system so it is great news that it's performing you know as we predicted so that the district can secure that revenue so in total you're at about 1.8

019million in what you have saved or earned for the project with of course many more savings to go over the over the coming decades any comments questions yes so assuming that weather is the biggest factor in production um i understand that the you know cloudy days were were higher than the 37 year average but what would account for the variability among the schools in production good question assuming the weather was relatively the same within a you know five mile radius that's exactly the question that adam asked and chris asked over here so there's a number of variables between the systems that are different in particular the the ground mounts versus the roof mounts is one factor so on your ground mount systems those are that are higher tilt which can not only produce kind of

020more energy per panel but relative to predicted they're less impacted by the snowfall the middle school actually was almost a surprising performer and perhaps that is due to the nature of that roof because of course that is a an outlier from the four systems as well with the the tilt of that roof and the way the panels were oriented park was the lowest tilt so that was a five degree tilt now you might still say well even given all that we're still in the same weather condition so your prediction should be your prediction should be more consistent the other factor beyond just the nature of each system and the characteristics of the particular building is the maintenance on the various facilities so i think one of the factors for why your buildings have performed as

021i know adam's got his eyes all over it and so when an inverter goes down he's able to observe that and rectify it because when you do have a piece of equipment that does have an error throw a fault and it's not uh it's not on then you're losing that production so um it is it is possible and i we would have to dick up dig up all the maintenance records to see if there were more instances of faults at park than their other buildings but that would explain some deviation as well so i've got the un's climate report that came out on monday on my mind and wondering if there are any precedents for using solar panels for community-based experiences around environmental literacy is there anything that you're aware of sure i mean we

022in many of our projects and i believe with this one as well now i know um dr glickman correct me from wrong but i don't i don't recall if the need program was facilitated here uh or whether that was done under the prior superintendent but there is an opportunity to incorporate it with curriculum or at least share that with students but community wise as well i guess that's something for the district to consider if that's of interest to broadcast that or convey it or you know however you might prefer in terms of um making that making highlighting awareness to it mr lewis i think you might have some information to share about it so yes so when we first put in the solar panels um the staff that have curriculum that's related to this to

023this opportunity for solar panels um we did go through the need project and had trainers here on site we were able to get resources because we didn't we didn't do it for every grade level because it was not a natural fit in their already jam-packed days of curriculum so we looked at the space every wednesday i'm sorry that off the top of my head i don't know which ones we did have staff get trained and then we will be working again adam has been talking to me about how we can get the better information um with the live data and the graphs and charts and some of our math teachers are actually interested in seeing real data to do some analysis so it is in the works but we have we have many materials from

024need training was great and to make sure that we're incorporating it in fantastic thank you for that i appreciate it and but i want to clarify i'm i'm i'm looking so i chair the community engagement committee and i'm looking to develop partnerships outside of the classroom although i love the stuff that instruction is going on in the classroom so my question was more is there a precedent for other taxing bodies to learn from our district about social uh about the solar panels is there any um operations i tell them about your district all the time what's that i said i tell them about your district all the time it's a great it's a great example but me too i'm sorry go ahead go ahead um no that's good so it's more is there a way

025to [Music] has anyone else developed partnerships with other taxing bodies or other municipal groups or civic groups to promote environmental literacy not just with students but with anyone in the community who's interested in learning yeah that's a really good question i don't have examples off the top of my head for our projects as to a district potentially partnering with the municipality or other taxing bodies that are local i know gray's lake of course has a pretty really strong solar base given that not only district seek district 46 has installed them but district 127 has as well as we're uh installing an array on the grayslake library as we speak also i do know that the town of evanston did pursue uh or at least think about having a joint opportunity with the school district and

026uh the city um that actually didn't uh go forward it was they were trying to do some sort of joint procurement and it got too complicated and it didn't seem to be providing the benefits but um so sorry i don't really have much more uh examples on that no that's great thank you i can reach out to someone in evanston appreciate it anybody else have any questions i have one for mr wildman would it be appropriate for you to or would you be able to update a break-even analysis on this project one was prepared in contemplation of the outlay and the savings and i would just be curious to see a new kind of break even you know the outlay the debt service offset against the savings yes i can provide that fee okay thank

027you very much all right thank you for your time okay our next presentation is the tentative 20 21 22 school budget i can only think of one person in the room that's gonna talk all right this is the tentative presentation of community school community consolidated school district 46. here's our mission empowering learners creating equity cultivating community so how do we fulfill those well we do it by having actionable goals here is our finance goal that was affirmed by the body of education review expand and clarify financial practices to increase transparency and communication with a focus on aligning financial decision making to district goals we are also guided by board policy specifically for calling 2-0 which determines we have a fund balance of 25 to 30 percent just like to stop here and talk about the

028budget process is built upon a participatory zero-based budgeting input from departments such as technology and from building principles the administration engaged in a cycle of meetings with the business office to gather their requests for the upcoming year participatory budgeting increases responsibility in ownership and decision making builds an understanding of school budgets directs funds to pressing needs and encourages budget leaders to be innovative and take ownership we're still in a global pandemic which has made budgeting more challenging the current year spending has not been typical and the needs of the coming year require a higher level of analysis and planning by the administration so here's the timetable for the budget process after this evening's presentation the budget will be publicly available to the community tomorrow in the district office and on the website public hearing for

029the adoption of the 2021 budget will be held on september 22nd after the hearing we have until september 30th to adopt the budget with the state i think this is a great quote for any budget i'm not going to read it out you can read it yourself so here's our all funds budget i just like to walk through you very briefly the total difference between revenues and expenditures is 1.2 million which means we have a deficit budget however i'm very proud to tell you the education fund is balanced work very hard to bring this in line by making sure we do everything possible to reduce waste and focus available funds on students the major individual funds which are deficit spending are the operations and maintenance fund transportation fund and the debt service fund the operations

030and maintenance funds is an increase in expenditures this year as we continue to invest in our buildings and equipment transportation fund is feeling the effect of back to back six percent increases with durham transportation with our kids back in school is something that we have to prioritize and finally the debt service is in a deficit position as we pay the last of our chromebook lease payments in the next two years purchasing chromebooks outright means we do not have to pay interest payments so where do our revenues come from well sixty percent come from local taxpayers 27 percent comes from the state of illinois the largest of these grants is evidence-based funding which is 14.4 million smaller grants make up the difference federal funding may took 10 percent including idea title and the additional pandemic relief

031and local funds make up the rest local funds and interests make such a small part of the revenue budget due to interest rates being historic laws we also see a reduction in local funds as we collect less from parents for food as our meals are free this year and here are the characters where we spend that money well we primarily spend most on people we are a people business the combined salaries associated benefits and additional purchase services for such things as food service transportation in our nighttime custodial equals 75 percent of our expenditures the next largest category is debt payments with 13 percent for our standing bonds debt certificates for solar panels and existing copier leases and chronic leases the 1.2 million deficit is a symptom of our adequacy gap with the state of illinois

032quantifying in 2020 this amount to be 17 million dollars so into the foreseeable future it may be difficult for the district to adequately fund all the needs of the district and remain balanced balanced means we have revenues that match our expenditures making a small start of capital we're sorry we are currently receiving nine hundred thousand dollars to one million dollars per year extra from additional funding from the state so it might take many years to reach adequacy at this rate assuming that all things remain equal this is slow there we go so what do we get for this we get excellent schools despite the adequacy gap we continue to focus our resources on kids so here's a rebf in a chat fiscal year 17 was the last year of the old general state aid formula

033and in fy 18 we finally got high evidence-based funding we did not receive additional funding in fiscal year 21. here we have our pandemic relief funding which will be which will we will be continuing to use this year we focused on additional teachers new furniture for social distancing the most exciting of all for the district coming soon new curriculum resources for english language arts we look forward to bringing a recommendation to you in the second half of this year to be implemented and adapted in the 2023 school year here are some of the other investments we'd like to bring you to your attention and be celebrated a new key card system for all buildings this address is a safety concern a new website for the community this comes from our strategic planning communication goal vehicle

034replacement investing in our fleet for the first time in many years replacing old and deteriorated vehicles finally making a start on the long list of capital that world presented this is evening with to the finance committee and looking forward to the the report from train with our partners as part of a long-range plan to helping us identify and prioritize capital projects so what happens next a budget document called the 5036 will be put on display tomorrow we will make any updates to the budget and any material changes although none are anticipated today through the final presentation on september 22nd we'll prepare for the public hearing on september 22nd and finally once the budget is adapted the business office will begin work on a five-year projection for the finance committee and the board of education this

035will help us make decisions in the coming months and into the future thank you i'd like to invite questions from the board of education uh i i did have a question real quick on the abf funding is your 2022 year is that an estimate because i thought usually we don't hear until after we get into this budget process i just received it and it was we were exactly correct so yeah we've rece we have the exact amount in the budget thank you chris thank you so much i know this took a ton of work and i appreciate just you've only been here a few weeks so thank you i'm just noticing again that the budget reflects a structural deficit that our revenue is not aligned with our expenditures and um hoping that we can talk

036more about that seems a significant concern in the finance committee be great thank you anybody else have any questions okay thank you next will be board reports anybody from the board of education have anything to report yeah so we're a week and a day from the start of a new school year and in a my phone was going crazy certainly in a normal school year i'm constantly amazed at how the big plane gets off the ground in time for school and especially so in a school year like this so i just wanted to say thank you for all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes to get ready for the school year i'm pretty sure i don't want to see how the particular sausage gets made i'm sure there's some rooms right now

037that don't look how they're going to look in a week but thanks for all the efforts from the teachers the staff the administration to get ready for another school year um so i also wanted to offer some thanks first to amy mackey and her girl scouts they built an ada accessible raised bed in woodview's outdoor classroom which is school gardens which is fantastic um so thank you to amy and her and her scouts and the second thing i wanted just to let you all know i've done i've spent quite a bit of time attending the green schoolyards webinars they meet bi-monthly and the last one published or they shared this resource with us and i thought it would be helpful to our board as we approach the board goal meeting it's called five guiding principles

038how districts can use covid relief funds to advance healthy green schools and it specifically has very concrete ways that we can think about advancing equity which i thought was of use might be of use to us and then also dear to my heart is it it gives us some concrete examples of how outdoor learning provides yet another layer of insurance to make sure our students remain in school all year and then it additionally has some some suggestions and links to resources about mental health and about increased instructional gains and reducing the achievement gap and i know learning loss is something that's important to us so i just thought if you are interested i i'll just email it to everyone if you're not interested you can tell me you don't want it but that's a resource

039that i that i've been reading and it seems very useful to us and then the last uh item that i have is if you've not seen the un released its climate report on monday and it has some pretty dire consequences um and really highlights the next three years and asks policymakers to prioritize our carbon footprint and reducing our carbon contribution to the environment and we've got some opportunities in front of us to make some of those changes to make sure our kids are comfortable and more comfortable and can learn in the next 10 years so it would help i think meet those global goals so that's my board report okay thank you um superintendent good evening well um thank you mr lacroix for your comments because that is exactly what i was going to speak

040about it has been very busy and it's always very very very busy before the start of a school year but this year it is exponentially busier everyone continues to rise to the occasion our office staff in our schools and the office staff in this district office our administrators our custodial and maintenance staff and of course our teachers who are planning and setting up classrooms and so very excited to see all of their students on their first day of school there's a lot more to tell you about the start of the school year but we actually have that as a report as an agenda item in a little while so i'm not going to take time on it at this moment i am going to hand this over to mr lewis um he also has a

041lot to share later about the start of the school year um but i know we will have him talk for a moment about jump start kindergarten thank you for that um so if you remember our jumpstart kindergarten program was a little bit of a surprise for us we found out late in the game actually late june that we had qualified for some additional state funds um from a grant called gear ger at the moment i don't know what those stand for um but we were able to pull together with help from a lot of my colleagues across the district we were able to find if we had staff what students could be invited to meet the criteria what materials we needed to order and we started on july july 19th so from the end of

042june to july 19th we were able to pull a program together called jumpstart kindergarten it was for identified students who had been in early childhood the preschool for all program or who had been on the wait list for the early childhood preschool for all program so this was a program that we designed for a half day experience for students we focused on literacy and numeracy and i'm saying we are still working on it because tomorrow is actually the last day so we have been going strong since july 19th monday through thursday so it's been four weeks we've had 21 students who met the criteria and whose parents families were able to fit it into their schedule we provided transportation to and from for all of the students we had two teachers who readily applied and

043we accepted we also had two assistants so we had two classrooms each with a teacher and an assistant we had a director as well who was there to coordinate again i said new we had new materials focusing on math and literacy and so we got those organized and delivered in time they're very very happy with them they were similar to the materials we used during our more typical summer school program that had already ended when we got this information we also provided lunches and breakfasts to a majority of the students as well and so lunches and lunches and breakfast went home on mondays and thursdays and they filled the gap for all the days in between so it was a pretty hefty bag or two for our incoming kindergartners so we had a lot of

044adult support helping them get on the bus or get into their cars so the thing that we are taking from this experience is that i am very very interested in trying to see if we can continue this in the future because we're seeing the strong benefits of having our early learners come in and get a taste of kindergarten and learn what school is about learn what schooling is thankfully this group of students have been amazing they've really worked hard they knew how to treat each other they knew with some guidance how to sit when they needed to sit and how to get attention and toileting issues all kinds of things so it's been a really fun thing i've i've enjoyed every minute i've been able to get there but i i would say it's a

045huge success and the other reason i would say it's a huge success is the number of phone calls i got the week that jumpstart started from other parents saying how do i sign up for my my child because my friend or my neighbor or my brother or someone's child is in the program and they're already talking how great it is and so that's what also triggered how can we expand it broaden it if we could have a jump start experience as part of our typical summer school that we usually do in june i'm i'm sharing that i would like to come with a proposal for us to see how we can make that happen because i think it was very very beneficial so thankfully with really short notice we were able to pull together something

046really great for these 21 students who qualified who met the criteria for attending so and i can't say that it was just me i had friends in the ec department i had friends in the special ed department i had friends in transportation i had friends in the buildings it was housed at prairie view i never said that so we use the kindergarten rooms our kindergarten teachers know this week where they're typically setting up their rooms many of them are they knew they had could come in the afternoons so it did impact scheduling but we needed to have a four week program to qualify so whew um jumpstart kindergarten has been a really great success thank you mr lewis and thank you so much for all of your hard work and pulling all of that together

047really thank you and um the other person we're going to speak with you tonight is mr halperin adam will do a full report in september about our summer projects so this is not that because he will do that for you but he was going to just share a couple of things that i think there are things that we heard in the finance committee meeting but not all of the board members were present for that so if you can just hit those highlights that would be great dr glickman thank you very much to the board everybody just want to give a little update as you stated we talked a little bit about the new chemicals coming in with the cleaning service and to kind of piggyback a little bit on uh ms miller this actually reduces

048our carbon footprint so to go along with reducing our carbon footprint on our cleaning products and also our solar it brings us to a gl a green seal cleaning district along with that it will actually lower our costs that we are spending yearly on chemicals and it drops the amount of chemicals that we are using in our district and for our students and everybody all around we will have about a 95 percent reduction in chemical packaging and the disposal of it and we will never run out of chemicals everybody knows throughout every this pandemic no matter what you go to look for something's gone we will not have that issue so we look forward to that we look forward to having that seal on our district another little project that we have going there's kind

049of a two-fold within it we are updating our alarm systems throughout the district some are very antiquated and we are making them uniform throughout and within that it gives us key card access to all of our doors it's added security for the students for the staff it also breaks down the time that it takes us to upload stuff into the system is right now i have to go to each individual door throughout the schools and plug into it it takes me about five to ten minutes on top of getting all the information from the secretaries so this is going to drastically reduce the amount of time that we'll take we'll be able to do it from the computer in the office also if there's ever an issue of any sort we hit a button and

050we can lock all doors down we don't ever want to hear that or see that but we have that ability thank you okay thank you so much adam and that's the end of the superintendent's report for this evening [Music] next was the community engagement committee report so point of clarification earlier i said that i was the co-chair of the community engagement right i said i was the chair of the community engagement committee i misspoke i'm a co-chair with michelle and steven just want to make sure that that's clear but as far as our committee report i want to thank andrew oschlauger you've all gotten the organization chart that he designed for us and we're going to be using that chart at our next meeting which is august 24th this meeting is a little bit different

051than our regular meeting we're calling it a community cafe and we'll be focused on connecting people on the blue side of that chart to one another and then to local resources focusing on listening to ideas about partnerships this will be held at meadowview's outdoor classroom and we'll use that chart there so again that we're focused on the blue side of of that chart and that's it okay uh we are now up to the consent agenda so if i can have a motion to approve the consent agenda including the uh personnel addendum that you received earlier uh today so move second braden hi lacroix hi anderson aye miller i mack aye weedman hi uh okay next is a motion we're on to action item sorry uh next is a motion to approve the contract with gsf

052nighttime custodial services which if you had if you had time this evening and you had made it to the finance committee meeting they talked about the changes that they were going to make inside the district chris or anybody have anything to add for the board members that weren't here yeah with reference to the memo i'd just like to reiterate that this was a rfb that we put out um and it was bought approved by you all and we had um six responses and this was the lowest lowest responsible business so it's uh it's the right thing to do for the district to use competitive bidding and gsf is a good responsible winner okay i'll make the motion to approve the contract with gsf nighttime custodial services second weedman hi miller i mack hi braeden aye

053mccroy aye anderson aye uh next action item is a motion to approve the purchase of four new vehicles for the new school year actually it's longer than just the new school year it's just purchasing them in the school year so looking for a motion to approve so move second any questions okay lacroix hi brayden hi anderson i miller i mac hi and weedman hi uh next is a motion to approve the community engagement committee as a board committee um versus what is was a superintendent's committee because we are adding a new member to the community engagement committee so once actually part of that is appointing michelle anderson to the board so she will join christy miller and steven mack on the board for the community engagement committee so i will gladly make that motion to

054approve that change second okay anderson aye mack braden i lacroix miller i and weedman hi uh unfinished business we are now up to the 20 21 22 school year update thank you okay good evening board of education yet again um my colleagues mr woke and mr lewis will be helping me present in a moment they seem very shy and don't want to come stand next to me but moving on and uh we do begin with our mission empowering learners creating equity and cultivating community that mission guides what we do and so we wanted to put it front and center of this presentation and a very brief outline um we're going to start by talking about staffing for this school year and that is because as mr wilden was talking about earlier when he talked about

055the the budget we are a people intensive organization and so staffing is ultimately very important in the school district so we'll start with that then mr lewis will talk about some things to do with instruction and i will close out talking about our mitigation strategies for this school year strategies that were unique to last school year and unique to this school year as well so i'm going to ask actually both of you to come on up and talk about staffing good evening um so this year if you saw on twitter or facebook the other day uh we had 40 41 attendees at our new teacher orientation over the past two days we have another hire coming on tomorrow um while meeting with them tomorrow throughout the week i've been scratching my head going this is

056a really high number um and it is it's higher than our normal number um but then i sit back and think that we added five bilingual positions this year we hired uh added three additional teaching staff to address the small classroom size so we were unable to use our mitigation strategies within those classrooms appropriately so we did have to add on three new positions and then also support staff so special teachers to help support those classes as well so we did have an increase in ftes this year because of that so naturally you'll see an elevated number of certified teachers that we hired um i'm going to turn it over to mr lewis to talk about the new teacher training so yesterday and today are some of the my favorite days of the school year

057because we had our new teacher orientation days so they were full days for our new teachers to be in i am share that resp i share that responsibility with our curriculum coordinator mrs amanda woodruff and it was a full house today with that many but we have had a really good experience we check a lot of boxes off and so by the end of both of those days the new teachers have a lot of information their heads are full but we have guest speakers like our own mr vipenz who's over here talking in with his amazing team about technology everyone gets their devices everyone gets logged into our system that's really exciting it's really hard then to close those to continue listening and mr walk does a presentation about evaluation and our mentoring program which

058he's going to talk a little bit about and then our incredible instructional coaching team comes in and does some instructional strategies amanda and i do some history of the district demographics getting to know experiences because it is kind of their class of new teachers and so they do always remember we started together we make friends across the district and just because it continues yesterday we lost power and so we just kept going without power for a little bit my friend adam came made sure that things were good power came back back on just for us to have lunch today we sheltered in place because of the storm and so our instructional coach team lost about three minutes and got them into their safe locations they just continued instruction and it was pretty impressive to see

059that there was not a not a lost minute even sheltering in place during the storm today so we're thrilled the new teacher training knows that they continue to get support because part of it also is they met with their in-district mentors they had time with their principals to do building tours or building specific things today there were specific meetings for some of the groups with my colleague dr diaz for all of our el and bilingual staff which was big and then heather lorenzo and linda mizwicki were able to meet with all of the related service special eds people as well so we had lots going on over the last two days amazing they're a sharp group we're very very excited about them to join into our district it just was good days i get the

060opportunity to talk about our international teachers but really all credit goes to dr diaz so over the past two weeks we've had two international teachers join us from spain they'll be teaching at park school and gms there's a lot of changes going on sorry so park school and gms and they arrived like i said over the past two weeks one as recently as saturday afternoon so dr diaz has been amazing running them around getting them to the bank helping them try to get their social security ids and most importantly helping with housing which we all know right now is in a crunch um so we have almu and maria who will be joining us this year from spain and they are here on a three-year work visa exceptional they were part of our trainings today

061and yesterday as well they're funny they're interesting they were learners perfect yes um and so that brings me to the new mentoring program now i will be talking about this in a little bit under uh discussion items so i'm not going to give away too much but this year we also do have a tosa a teacher on special assignment um her name is katie o'brien and she'll be working um as basically the mentoring coach coordinator um and working with title one buildings um and so we have a new opportunity this year to build upon our um as i call it our first day buddy mentoring program whereas the teachers come in the new teachers come in they meet a mentor they go back to their home building they show them where the bathroom is they

062show them where the caffeine machine is they kind of show them around the building and then they're usually a teammate so they're able to help them throughout the year but it's not really a formal mentoring program we do have that program still for our third year teachers and up third year to the profession and up and we're going to katie and i are going to be working on that program to refine it and make it a little bit more robust as the year goes on but we have a special program that we're going to be doing this year for first and second year teachers to the profession and i'll share more about that in just a little bit that brings us to our new support staff new support staff being non-certified staff that is custodians

063that is office staff that is program assistants who are teacher assistants as some of you may know here we call them program assistance so uh we have currently hired 17 of them um we currently have 30 30 openings left of which are somewhere in that hiring pipeline so either have a meeting scheduled of hiring meetings scheduled or we're waiting on fingerprints or they're waiting for their license so i have to say that they're not completely hired yet because you have not acted upon them but they are in that pipeline and as soon as that paperwork is complete those positions will be filled that leaves us with a good number of positions open still so we are [Music] doing everything we can to fill those positions the positions posted on indeed dr glickman shared it out

064through her newsletter and if you know somebody that's looking for a program assistant position it's under my way and so that brings me to the end of my presentation i'm going to turn it over to dr clickman again thank you and i just want to comment that the difficulty we're having filling those positions really mimics what we're seeing in other industries as well if you've been out to eat for example recently you may hear wait staff talking about how they can't get anyone hired and you know in in retail so in many many positions in out in the world we're having difficulty filling roles but this is the one that we care about right now quite deeply and we're going to keep working on it all right i'm going to hand this off to mr

065lewis thank you again so here i am again talking about these are some of the things that we have been doing over the summer so one of the big things that we had is we had thinking maps writing and reading writing training we are modifying our instructional program for writing instruction based on the use of thinking maps you've heard me talk about thinking maps in the past we've been using them in all content area but now we're going deep into writing using thinking maps the exciting thing that i have to share about the summer trainings is for our k-1 program and our 2-3 program and our 4-5 program we had 103 staff members come over the summer to be trained they were with us for a full day each of those 103 staff members were

066with us for a full day of training over the summer we were thankfully able to pay them using title 2 grant money the title 2 grant money that we would have used for substitutes last year so we always budget money to pay for subs we moved the grant around and we were able to pay our teachers to come in over the summer we still have a number of staff will be trained but we'll be doing that in small groups as the school year begins but that's really exciting that 103 staff members came in to learn and to grow and to practice our instructional coach team again i've maybe said it already once they're amazing um they created very very strong professional development opportunities on top of that for writing we also had 48 staff members

067who either came in for a half day refresher or a full day full-on course about thinking maps and so it was helpful to have that so we had a good number of those 41 new staff members who came in early to get training so that they could hit the ball hit the um i don't even know if that's phrases you hit the ground running right when school begins so again we were able to pay them using title two funds to support their learning so we're really very very excited that that many staff came in over the summer and were able to fit that so we had six days where all of that happened over the summer and then the next thing on the topic was institute day plans as we were starting hopefully the institute

068day agenda made it to you board members um so on top of new teachers today and yesterday we're getting ready for new all staff opening institute days next week and so those are on the 17th and 18th because of what we're dealing with right now we typically bring the entire staff together in one location we're choosing not to do that this year so we're having all the meetings in a home school so it means the school that the teachers work in and then we'll move from there so we have two full days of experiences for teachers for pd for welcoming to hear about the new things that are coming are happening also for them to work with their teams and then also for them to also work with people in job-alike so similar roles we'll

069be able to we'll we're going to do that in person because there's some things that we need to actually it'll be more effective to be in person for that a majority of the time will be virtual with thank you board you've provided us a video for a welcome to all the staff and many other people have created videos that we'll be sharing with staff in a staff meeting experience but instead of having all the presenters live we're having videos and we do have a number of pd sessions for some of the new programs that the board use you approved for us our new foundational skills program for example and k2 that company and men almost all the companies and now i should say all the companies that we're using are not allowing trainers to come

070in in person so they provided video trainings for us to be able to share during those times so new teachers are all staff institutes coming we're excited it's going to be two full days for our teachers which is really good another thing i was asked to speak about was the intervention block two of our colleagues amanda woodruff and linda mizwicki have been working all summer on a refresh for mtss rti i'm using a lot of acronyms mts s stands for multi-tiered system of support and rti is response to instruction and so those are two ways that we can help kids with unfinished learning or who might benefit for some additional support they've been working on a refresh we've been using some of our esser funds to purchase some new materials that will help us in

071data collection and data analysis for all those things and so we have a very important refresh time for all those things one of the big things that we've chosen to do this year is to include a 30 minute intervention time in every building schedule so we'll have time where no new instruction is happening but it can be for kids who need extra support it can be for kids to use some of the other tools for enrichment and extension it can be when some of our services are being provided so every building has reworked their schedule to find a 30-minute block for every student that they can have an intervention block more information is coming on that to all of you as as as it's rolling out but it is it is a really amazing thing

072for our students and staff to consider whew on top of all of that as you know because we've talked about at the board a number of times we're beginning our process of our equity audit it seems like we've been talking about it and talking about it for a little while but it's actually going to be happening and so dr glickman and i have been finalizing the group we look for volunteers of staff members to create our delt our district equity leadership team and our first meeting with our consultant is september 21st and so that's just right around the corner and so that's just the first step of the whole year-long equity audit process so i am assuming that we'll be giving updates as we progress through each of the steps but staff is excited we

073had very passionate request to be on the committee to support our district moving forward with equity so that was those are all some of the things we've been working on and just wanted to give a fast update about all those things thank you um that's the really really important stuff what we're going to be doing this year and so this last piece is just how we're going to be safe while we're doing it right what are we going to do to keep ourselves safe wait i want to make sure i didn't miss something okay there we go so i'm starting with a quote by our state superintendent who several weeks ago said we have no doubt that children learn best and educators teach best when they're physically present together in the same space we want

074to do everything we can to ensure that that happens safely and so that's that's what this is all about um these details are in the plan that was sent out to our community about a week ago so i'm not going to go through every last piece i'm just going to hit the highlights for you as you know social distancing is a large part of the plan classroom desks will be at least three feet apart like they were last spring but we're really glad that we are no longer being asked to have them all face one way that was the recommendation we had gotten last spring and that's what we did that is not very conducive to outstanding instruction and how children learn with each other and it's no longer recommended so they will be able

075to be moved into pods and other structures as long as the students are sitting at least three feet apart lunch will continue to be in shared spaces just like this one will continue to be in desks four to six feet apart and that's again to keep students safe particularly when their masks are off breakfast will continue to be sent home for consumption that's something that we did last spring that way children do not need to be unmasked in the classroom and eating breakfast they can bring home a bad meal at the end of the day and eat it at home the next morning and our bus capacity is returning to normal capacity last year it was uh there was a limit of 50 students but that's no longer being required so bus capacity will return

076to normal and there will be seating charts on those buses and that will help for contact tracing and of course students need to be masked on buses which brings me to the next piece masking is a very large component of our mitigation strategies universal masking is required indoors for all students and staff regardless of vaccination status and they can be removed at recess and obviously while eating and any time their teachers take them outdoors although we will be asking our teachers to keep the children socially distanced outdoors while that they are unmasked missed one we talked a lot about cleaning procedures earlier i will just mention that high touch points will continue to be cleaned at least once a day we'll be using those sprayers and disinfectants that you've heard us talk so much about

077and the contractual night cleaning crew once we start with our new group in october will increase from 15 a staff of 15 to actually 23 so that will really help enhance our cleaning in the evenings and then on to activities meetings and social events these are our plans and i want to just clarify some of these things may change a little as we go along but we are going to be resuming our after-school activities using appropriate mitigation strategies as already discussed um we are planning not to have volunteers at the schools at least inside the schools at least for the start of the school year that can change over the year but that's how we're starting we will be doing virtual back to school nights and parent parent-teacher conferences so those will be online remote

078our iep meetings will return to in-person meetings but can be conducted in another way remotely upon parent request and we have the potential of outdoor activities with our ptos and ptfs we actually have some decision making conversation we still need to do regarding all of that um so we're having quick conversations about that i think as soon as tomorrow and that actually brings us to the end of our school update so board of education do you have any questions for any of the three of us or any of the other members of our team i just want to say thank you for all the work that you're doing and also for the mentoring program in particular i i know as a when i was in the classroom a long time ago i would have loved

079that so thank you for prioritizing that especially in light of the teacher shortage i think it'll be something we can sell our district on so thank you thank you just a second thanks i mean i feel like last year was a whole different set of conversations and there's not a lot of precedent so i know all the care all the details all the implications of every decision and how they intersect with each other had to really really be considered very very carefully and i'm just i'm so proud of the group that came together to put this plan together it's it's safe it's instructionally sound um i'm excited for us to all return to the classroom thank you before we continue with any other comments something helped me to know that somehow we missed a slide

080so we're going to go back for a moment can you bring our slides back up because i know we have a slide that was about covid testing and where is it was it did i skip it there we go i was so excited i missed that slide all right so i'm sorry let's just hit that for a quick moment um we have two kinds of covid testing that are part of our mitigation strategy and it's pretty important so i want to make sure you hear about it although you've been hearing about it the first is our shield testing that's the weekly saliva test tomorrow parents will be receiving from the schools all kinds of information from the start of the school year one piece of that information will be information about this test and there

081will be what's called an opt-out form so parents who do not want their children to have this weekly covid test will be able to opt out however we're hoping very much that most of our students will do this testing it is a wonderful strategy for us to be able to test our students who are asymptomatic they're feeling just fine we will be able to do this very quick weekly saliva test to make sure that they really are not sick there will be one staff member at every school who will receive results of those tests and the parents of the children assuming that the children are taking or engaging in the test will also have the opportunity to go into a portal to see that their students their children are not ill obviously if anybody is

082sick we will be contacting families and working through that process with them but we're really pleased about this test um and then there's the binax now testing strategy this is something that actually the um the state is just now allowing us to do what's called test to stay last year we spent a lot of time talking about close contacts remember that all i think i showed you pictures about classrooms and if somebody got sick all the children around them that would have to quarantine all those conversations due to this test to stay if a child at school is sick with covet as long as we have certain mitigation strategies in place the children who are around them will not have to quarantine one of the absolutely required mitigation strategies is that they are masked right

083so the child who is ill was masked and the child who was sitting near them is mass that's one but also there is the test to stay and this i confirmed today with the lake county health department that they will only allow children to avoid quarantine if they were close contacts if they are engaged in the test to stay and here's how that works if there is a child who has who is has coronavirus and there is a close contact the family will be invited to have the child with a close contact go through the binox now testing strategy that's the nasal swab will do it at school and they do it four times on day one so that's the day after the exposure day three day five and day seven and as long as

084the child continues to test negative on those tests they do not have to go home we're so pleased about this because our focus this year is keeping our kids in school and healthy and learning in school so we're thrilled about that that that opportunity okay so now a little backwards because that's really the end of my presentation board any questions or comments for me any further ones nope doesn't look like it all right thank you so much thank you all right next is new business and the only item on there is a discussion of first and second year mentoring program memorandum of understanding in partnership with the illinois federation of teachers and i assume that was what you were alluding to mr wolk well i didn't want to let the cat out of the bag

085too early um but uh the state has started a collaborative effort for first and second year teachers to the profession um is going to be paid out of the cares act which passed federally a couple years ago and this is a collaborative effort between isb ift illinois federation of teachers and iea illinois educators association those are the two big unions in the state and uh we've decided to move forward with this we would like to move forward with this program um pending um your approval um but what this is is it will be for first and second year teachers to the profession they will have an on-site mentor what they that they will meet with uh regularly um at a once a month at a minimum they will also have a virtual instructional coach so

086they will have regular meetings with somebody somewhere else in the state all these people were had to go through an application process the virtual coaches had to go through an application process through the union ift and the iea on-site coaches or mentors had to fill out an application and they will be going through a training process that will be put on by izb what this requires from the district is an mou memorandum of understanding that we'll be participating in this they had a very uh did a stock mou that we shared with our legal counsel our legal team made a few adjustments sent it back we discussed it with the union they're on par with it we've had meetings with the state [Music] representative the person at the state level that is responsible for this

087we've been our union here at gray's lake we've been on board meeting with them regularly this is a win-win for everyone especially our new teachers so um like i said mentioned at this at this point all it it would be from the district is a signature on the mou um this program goes until the funding runs out um and that's i mean we don't control that any other any questions does anybody have any questions thanks chris that's like christy miller said i would have loved that in my first couple years teaching um i'm assuming that some of that funding then is for stipends for the mentor teachers it will be for the mentor teachers and this year so we tried to get in on it last year we reached out to the state in march

088last year and then they want to try to sign us up right there um for the remainder of the school year we said we can't do that um one of the changes from last year to this year is that the mentees will also receive a stipend for some of their outside work that they'll be doing because it will be beyond their school day so that's something that they've worked in and again that's being paid for through cares does anybody have any problem with us just moving forward with this or do we need to bring it back for a vote okay two thumbs up okay so 14 thumbs up we do have the mou um and i'll get it to um soon to get yeah if you get a tour tomorrow you can swing by tomorrow

089we'll do thank you uh now we're up to topics for future agenda items yes one moment all right september 1st our next meeting um we'll begin with a policy committee meeting so members of the board who are on the policy committee you'll be getting invitations soon from mrs walker about that and we'll be sharing with you the policies to be discussed that evening then there will be and so then we'll talk about those at the board meeting as well so that'll be an agenda item there'll be a food service report we'll have mrs lorenzo do a presentation an overview of our special education out placements that was requested of the board earlier in the summer we'll have mr halperin come in to talk to do an update on summer projects i think he'll have some

090photos for us um and also presentation from trane who's been doing our indoor air quality uh assessment so they'll be presenting that information so that's september 1st and then september 22nd then wolves will be coming they were here tonight with the finance committee but they'll be coming again for a long range master facilities plan approval and then we'll be looking to approve our policies that the ones that we discuss at the policy committee meeting on september 1st that is what i have at this time okay anybody have anything they would also like to discuss in the future i'd like to add a potentially bringing in as we talked about some of our state legislators as guests to talk about the strength spring legislative sys the spring legislative session what the impact was on education the

091decisions that were made and then maybe even a look ahead from them as well and i'd be happy to talk about timing you know depending on where it could fit best on the agenda and you know reach out to those uh folks to to get them to get them in i'm thinking specifically melin bush and sam yang ling do we have other do we have any other representation in district 46 beyond at the state level at the state level i believe they cover our entire district okay yes great and then if there are others that we also would want to put in that lineup like john wassick i think that would be fantastic you read my mind i was just about to say how about at the county level i think it'd be nice to

092just have every once in a while to invite one of them in so maybe i'll put together a list for that good yeah and then i am wondering if you could just pull it closer sorry um i'm wondering if we have any more information about the board goal setting meeting do we know what the process will be or what we need to do to to prepare for that meeting so we do have it set am i correct it's the end of september let's see it's so we do have it set and i do not have information directly from the facilitator but as soon as school year starts i will reach out to her and we'll get that information too we have lots of time right yeah what's the date again do we know yeah i

093think it's either september 24th or 25th okay i can give it to you it is the 23rd so the board of education meeting in the 22nd and then we have the board self-evaluation on the 23rd and um thank you for asking that question because we'll we'll go ahead and uh find out what the board needs to do to prepare dr glovin do we know what time it is on the 23rd i have it on my calendar at 6 30. okay um i believe that was the determination okay great thank you sure okay anything else yeah i don't this is not a topic for a future agenda item but the next seed all governing board meeting i think is august 25th i may not be able to attend that one and so as i mentioned before

094i would be reaching out to one of you to be a sub and represent the board at that governing meeting i'll be a little bit more clear once i start my school year next week whether that so maybe in the back of your minds fellow board members keep the august 25th as uh we do not have a board meeting that night but i might reach out and ask it's my responsibility to get a sub if i can't attend so i might reach out to you thank you okay um [Music] sounds like that's it do we have any more people sign up for go ahead ma'am too okay jeff please how many do we got online ashley mahoney all right good evening everyone um i'm going to keep this shorter than i probably have in the

095past just to first good luck to all of our teachers i know everyone that is well i shouldn't say everyone most teachers want to be in the building and so everyone is happy to be there regardless of all of this um so i just have questions i i'm gonna good luck to the teachers thank you for everything and i just have questions that seems like everyone's like oh we're happy we did this and we're happy we did this but there's some things that really stood out to me that were missing and so i figured i would get them out there and hopefully there are things that you're thinking about also or maybe it's something that i should have read in some of the documents that were sent and i just missed them so the first

096thing is how often are we looking at making changes so many districts decided to put a plan together went mask optional had to backtrack because of the mandate so when will we make changes are you sticking to this is what we're doing for the whole year are you going to reevaluate um once we get out of this lifted mandate like i know other districts have said we will reevaluate this on a month-by-month basis i was wondering what our plan is the second thing is how often are kids going to be given breaks in their masks every hour if they're taking a break every hour where are they going for that and i ask that because as adults we all have the luxury of taking our mask off during our day we go into our office

097we get to take it off i'm a teacher the second kids walk out of my door i get to take it off the kids never get to do that except for lunch and a 30-minute lunch in a six or eight hour day isn't enough so i'm just curious how we are going to address that um and in addition to that like having snacks in the classroom in the morning or in the afternoon depending on their lunch time how is that going to look as well the bin acts now just i don't i was the first hearing about it i'm curious how different it is from the pcr tests that we heard about being pulled because of false positives and not distinguishing differences between covet and other illnesses and so what is the difference between this

098test and the pcr test that we were hearing about my second questions i think are probably more specifically for mr lewis what are our plans for leveling the gap for our current first graders this year that jumpstart kindergarten sounds like it's going to be super awesome to give those kids that needed a lot of what they missed last year to get them ready for kindergarten but what about all of our kindergartners from last year that missed a school year so what are the plans for the first grade teachers to get them to where they need to be i saw the intervention block so that sounds like a great thing but what's being used is it research-based stuff obviously i'm assuming for interventions it would be but what about for the kids that don't necessarily need

099an intervention so what are they now going to do for those 30 minutes is it just sit and read is it a free time what kind of academics are we giving them to push them a little further oh i can't believe i didn't just think of this one and i didn't hear anything about what we're doing for any of our social emotional needs i don't know what everybody needs and what every child needs but i can tell you from the small children that i've worked with and seen that is where we need to spend a lot of time and effort academics obviously is super important but some of these young kids learn more in those young grades about how to interact with people and this isn't helping that and this isn't going away i can

100speak for my own daughter i think she thinks that this is like a muzzle and she can't speak her teacher last year had to have hand signals to say hey are you okay because she wouldn't speak through her mask so what kinds of things are the teachers the social workers the support staff putting in place to try to help kind of level some of those things um and i think that's it sorry i've got lots of notes um i think that's it i just so those are things that i thought of maybe you've thought of them and they just weren't addressed tonight maybe you haven't thought of them but hopefully just something to be thinking about um some of the other needs that our kids have for everybody who did speak tonight make sure you

101have your email on the list so that we can answer and respond to you sir can you please put your name and email address on there if you could just state your name please my first grader really had a hard time with the with the being on camera all the time we actually ended up pulling her out of school in january because she was having so much anxiety about it and i really don't want her to go back to remote learning i'll do anything to keep her in school i don't care about the mass i mean i love that she's you know some level of protection with the mask i i don't know what level that is or you know what i'd really like to know is about the mitigation efforts that you guys are

102doing masks are fine you know they give you like 20 you know uh supposedly 20 protection but my child can't get vaccinated i can i am but she can't i'd like to know what other mitigation efforts you guys are doing i'm hearing about air quality reports that are happening in september school starts next week in august what about you know the testing i i fully support the testing however i want to know like am i going to be notified before my daughter's tested are we going to be told as parents if a child in my daughter's class tested positive i mean i don't care who it is that tested positive that's not my business but i would like to know that someone tested positive because i'd like to know whether or not i feel comfortable

103sending her back to school um at least you know for two weeks or whatever um i just you know i think that you guys are struggling with a lot of stuff going on and there were probably a lot of things going on even before covid there were i remember attending the meetings before covet 2. and thank you for so much you know for your service and i mean this truly is service and thank you so much for your work on this but i'd just like to know more about you know the different layers of mitigation that you guys are doing masks is one mitigation effort it's not all of them and i totally understand the ladies here or anyone else out there that you know doesn't want their kid to wear masks my daughter she

104she was okay with it she was totally fine but you know you could tell at the end of the day she was sweating she wanted to take off her mask as soon as she got in the car she didn't want to do it anymore but what other mitigation efforts are you guys doing you know three feet six feet what what is the ventilation that's really what i care about what is about the ventilation it's an airborne virus cleaning and scrubbing surfaces doesn't you know matter so anyway thank you very much thank you okay for the online comments yeah we do have a few i'm going to ask maybe mr woke if you can do the first few mr lewis then you can take over and i'll finish up just because there's enough that we don't

105wanna yeah yeah yeah you can be those as well yeah that's fine all right the first comment comes from sarah williams it states mass nor vaccinations will ever stop cova 19. a vaccinated person will still get coveted 19. do you think the vaccination does not is does is lessen the symptoms if somebody chooses not to get the vaccine it's a personal choice and it does not affect somebody who is fully vaccinated the non-vaccinated people are less likely to spread the virus versus the vaccinated people simply because the vaccinated people are usually asymptomatic and still go out and live a normal life while being positive for coba 19. giving families the choice to amass their children or unmask their children has no negative side effects to the masked individuals quit making our kids out to be

106the how to be the boogeyman give everybody a choice the next comment comes from abby peters and i apologize i always put your her name in her name please let her know um i just want to voice my support for our board our administration our teachers and the mitigation measures in place to protect our kids and the staff of our schools i don't know one person who is thrilled to wear a mask or one person who has died from wearing one i do however know people who have died from copen we are not fighting a war like world war ii but we are fighting a global pandemic and i see it is every one of our responsibilities to do our part to slow the spread i also want to encourage the funneling of any government

107funding our district has received to expanding our outdoor classrooms and outdoor spaces in order to provide a safer learning space and additional learning tools for our students not only do our outdoor spaces provide hands-on learning opportunities but they also provide our kids the chance to learn in real life in their local places and they plant the seed to become environmentally literate our children deserve the opportunity to discover the wonder of the natural world in order to be inspired and save it um the next comment comes from jeremy heintz can you tell us about the layers of mitigation efforts that d46 schools will be employing throughout the schools can you tell us about the indoor air quality and ventilation the distance in inside class sizes testing and parent notification the next comment comes from laura diaz

108dear d46 board of education thank you for your careful decision-making in regards to the mask requirements for students in d46 i know these decisions are not easy and i appreciate the effort and consideration you take in making decisions regarding our children and their health i can imagine that serving on a school board can feel thankless at times but your work does not go unnoticed i am grateful to send my boys to the district that is led by thoughtful evidence-based leadership regards laura diaz anna osis writes thank you for following the masking recommendations set forth by the american academy of pediatrics cdc and idph it is absolutely terrifying to think that schools doing other uh to think of schools doing otherwise we want to we want our kids in schools healthy and safe thank you again

109for keeping our community safe by requiring mess for all jill birdwell writes thank you to the board for following healthcare guidance regarding the masking policy i want school to be able to continue to be in person just as much as anyone else therefore being safe is important for them to be able to do that thus far the honor system un helpful when it comes to controlling the spread of the virus and its variants as a mother and of former and current d46 students i thank you i thank you and support you whole i'll just keep going i'll just keep going okay you're on a roll um sherry frazier writes can you please go over the logistics of the kovid saliva testing jeremy heinz writes will parents be notified of someone in our school's kids class

110a test positive i want to be notified i do not need a name i just need to know that they are exposed and when jeremy heinz writes thank you for all your hard work and service to our community carrie zuck writes thank you for working together to safely keep our kids in schools the shield testing and test to stay programs are an excellent way to keep kids in the classroom and limit learning during quarantine my kids can't wait to return next week rachel rozek writes i would like to thank the board for the effort that they have made over the past 18 months to make cautious decisions using evidence-based available regarding the use of mass social distancing and other matters related to covet in schools i know there's there is no way to please all

111parties and that is important to balance the physical safety of our students and the staff with the social psychosocial development of the children of grace lake however as much as we don't want it to be the case mass continue to be the safest way to allow in-person classes barring the approval of a vaccine for children under the age of 12. thank you for working for working to keep our kids safe barbara swede writes uh will sports be available to our children this year matt kavers writes thank you for for taking my question and your effort throughout the pandemic in regard to the mask mandate for students what is the metric that is being used to determine when it will be safe for kids not to be using mass currently the cases in lake county are

112way below their peak and deaths are at zero for the seven day average um is the goal to have zero covet cases and then mass can come off more clarity around what the end goal we are looking to reach would be helpful chris hartman writes i'm writing to express my strong support of the masking requirement for all d46 students teachers and staff when school resumes with the drastic increase in covet cases in lake county the delta variant and the lack of clarity on how long vaccinated individuals are truly protected from covid it is essential that children and those working closely with them remain mass a mass mandate protects us all but in particular our unvaccinated children who are at most risk other public institutions such as the gray's lake library and businesses throughout grey's lake

113have reinstituted a mask mandate for the safety of our community and it is essential that d46 do its part to protect our children thank you for your time and that is it okay thank you and uh just wanted to uh remind everybody that this was the last time that we'll have the online public comments uh any future comments will need to be here in person at the board meeting obviously as with anything else if we go back to virtual meetings we will revisit that policy to continue so um so that we don't need a close rate we do we don't we don't have those okay you put your thumb up [Music] no so uh next is i need a motion to adjourn so moved second lacroix i miller anderson aye weedman hi and braden hi

114we are adjourned [Music]