Harper Creek Community Schools Board of Education Meeting 10-11-02021

001okay i'm gonna put it live now mike we'll see how everything works we are live yep anytime you're ready mr best all right i'd like to call the harper creek board of education regular meeting for monday october 11th 2021 to order please rise for the pledge of allegiance followed by among the silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you mr secretary please call mrs allwork present [Music] mr bess here miss allison reed mr barry smith here and mr jason smith here seven president we have a forum all right thank you for that mr secretary mr ridgeway we have modifications to the agenda i have two modifications that i'd like

002for the board to consider one is adjusting public comment from three i'm sorry from five minutes to three minutes as we did at the last meeting and then the other is adding a information discussion item called beetle lake road crosswalk and then adding that to action as well so that would be down at the bottom g under information e if the board so chooses please read the motion mr secretary cheer calls for a motion at the harvard creek board of education modify public comment time allotment for participants from five minutes to three minutes for the october 11th 2021 board of education meeting support it's been moved by mr meyer supported by mr barry smith do we have discussion hearing the scene in place mr myers yes mr jason smith yes mr barry smith yes dr

003borders yes mrs allward yes mr martin about yes and mr bess oh yes okay motion passes 7-0 and chair calls for a motion for the harper creek board of education at beetle lake road crosswalk to the agenda as information and discussion item g and action item e so support i missed that i did dr borders and supported by mr barry smith yep all right do we have any uh discussion hearing cnn please call the roll mr barry smith yes mr jason smith yes mrs allwork yes mr myers yes mr martin or vote you have some mr bess i vote yes okay motion passes 7-0 all right thank you for that communications and start with president's remarks uh i'd like to thank everybody who's in attendance tonight um in an effort to improve our sound quality

004we are live um streaming the uh meeting via youtube if you cannot be on tennis tonight but wish to share your thoughts with us you may email the board at hcboe harpercreek.net number two homecoming 2021 is in the books was an outstanding uh celebration of the community thank you for all who attended the festivities um very honored and proud to live in the harper creek community really shows how much support we have in this community for harper creek so great great weekend for the beavers and also along with the harper creek education foundation and beaver boosters annual golf outing was a uh another large success um mr ridgeway i think we brought in 12 13 000 is that correct yeah we're really hopeful that we eclipse twelve thousand dollars that would be three thousand more

005than last year if that is the case that's great uh proceeds raised directly impacts students through athletic opportunities and scholarships thank you to all who donated and participated i can tell you it was a fun time to be had and want to remind the audience although we have a much smaller audience tonight we want to make sure we give every board member an equal opportunity to speak and we so we'd ask you to refrain from applause or any unbecoming conduct and please just be respectful so that being said i will pass it off to mr ridgeway and administration yeah i have a few things um one thing i'd like to cover is a lot of folks we had a fairly large attendance at our last board meeting and people don't typically come so i want

006to make sure i explain what public comment is and the expectation so public comment is a chance for audience members uh to talk to the board about their opinions their comments what they what they feel you know good bad indifferent but it is not a question and answer and so sometimes it's frustrating when someone comes up to the microphone and asks a direct question and doesn't get a response and so i had talked to board members over the last month and we had decided to address a couple of questions that came up things that had answers that that we knew fairly specifically um the first was under critical race theory there's a question about what the district's stance basically is on that and the district did adopt a critical race theory stance in august that

007stance is set up using masb the michigan association of school boards guy talks about the fact that we do not teach critical race theory it is more of a college level even a graduate level topic but we do have an equity statement we do talk about diversity inclusion and equity within our school system but we don't specifically teach critical race theory and then tonight we're also going to talk about a policy a board policy that we currently have called controversial topics and controversial topics are lots of different things critical race theory would fit because the definition is when when people have varying opinions and there's definite two sides to an issue that is typically what we call a controversial issue i also want to talk a little bit about quarantines um the district is legally

008obligated to follow the quarantine order in the in the um county and people were asking you know what's the penalty are you just going to lose money well really the penalty is it is a misdemeanor and that misdemeanor is punishable by a fine in jail time it is for school leaders and school leaders would be myself and president best would be the two leaders and so we really feel like we are teaching young people we need to follow follow the law and quarantining of students is something that it has guidelines that have been set forth for us that we follow now there were some changes to the quarantine guidelines right now if there's a close contact which is defined by being within six foot of someone who is as tested positive to covet that test

009is verified by our school nurse when that happens then we do contact tracing a lot of contact tracing is looking at seating charts we see who was sitting within six feet of the student that was positive the student that was positive also has a conversation with the health department if they're younger if they're an elementary student it's with their parent to try to determine other individuals who may have been within close contact and then when that happens we make notifications and so as a school district we feel very strongly that we should notify people um in person by a phone call we have in the past on occasion when we have lots of quarantines in a given day done some different things emails as well as notes but in general our constituents can expect a

010phone call from the school now you will also be contacted by the health department typically by letter and that letter does not usually get home for a couple of days so the contact from the school is really the first official communication that someone would give for close contact and then the change in rule at harper creek we are um you know we recommend math but they are not required therefore kids can test on day six or day seven and come back on day seven with a negative test and we are offering testing here at the school in the administration building every day monday through friday from 1 to 2 p.m i guess there's caveat we are not going to do it on days off of school so for example this friday is a day off

011of school so it will not happen but it will happen during school days and that will give an opportunity for our our parents and our families to come in and do that because i know there is a cost involved especially if your insurance does not cover um that that cova test it is a rapid test by the way and then finally masking you know we all know that there's varying opinions i'm asking it's a controversial topic um as defined by you know there's definitely two sides um that that would have varying opinions on the topic um right now the board hears from the community members emails are sent to board members i think they we probably would say they receive three to five emails a week from community members who are talking about masking if

012community members would like to email the board there is a board email that is on our website it's under the board of education page you can always email myself or my assistant sharon zebel and we'll ensure that that email gets to the board as well if you want to have your opinion heard there but we understand we understand very clearly that masking is a topic that is you know very near and dear to many people and the board is going to continue to look at data they're going to continue to have discussions at board meetings to decide what direction our school district is going to go in the future and so i'm going to leave it at that i do want to say i thought homecoming last week you know just on a lighter note

013was great lots of community out parade uh carnival prior to the game during the game at halftime with our band in palm uh and then we actually won the game it was a big game for the the football team as well but the community piece of it i was very happy with and i'm glad we were able to come together as a community on that day so thank you mr best and that's all the comments i have thank you mr ridgeway mr secretary of communications we have none now all right thank you for that and i don't believe we had any student board reps on correct yeah she's here she's here would you if you if you want to uh go to the microphone and and say anything if not you don't have to alison

014i don't mean to put you on the spot just read anything you want to report what do you think about homecoming how about that that's an easy topic um i thought homecoming went really well um i know a lot of the students appreciated even though like it was going to be outside that everyone did everything they could to still provide that experience and in the gym i think that everyone did a really good job with changing it from outside going to inside and i just know a lot of the students had a lot of fun and they really appreciated it all right thank you thank you all right move on to district updates and mrs williams with curriculum good evening i'm just going to quick give a summary of the narrative report i believe mr

015ridgway has an under discussion for our um target goals so i'll reserve that is that correct mr ridgeway you're going to go over that during discussion or do you want me to go over that yeah i'm going to go over during the information discussion but i may have your assistance during during that time absolutely so um in your narrative report you'll see there is a link in a additional pdf that is provided that report should look familiar is the same setup that we used last year we found that to be pretty simple and included the subgroups at this point we do not have growth we just have proficiency our benchmark assessment for our k-8 students is nwea a couple of highlights our albion students have started we have 40 plus students that is part of

016our strategic plan to grow and have youth come into our district we want them to feel like this is the place they want to be when they graduate i think we had around 12 or 15 in years prior so we are super excited to see them working with students they are not interns they are in their early years of pursuing education so we're making a concerted effort mr ridgway the principles of myself as well as our teachers to make them feel welcome and just help give them that experience early on so that they don't wait till their senior year to find out if they want to be teachers so that that's definitely a bright spot in addition we have our district school improvement meeting coming up in november so we have reached out to those

017community members via email and we're excited about that our dcc meeting which is our district curriculum council with leaders from across the k-12 board grade level and content leaders the meeting this last week was very successful we took a look at our school improvement goals and basically took them through the professional learning community questions what will our evidence be and how do we respond if we're not meeting that target and how do we respond if we are how do we keep people growing on both ends pbis super excited about the continued work with our positive behavior intervention and support that's a tier one universal support so as you know our um is lead across the board in years past we had different acronyms at different buildings and so when they came into the middle school

018the middle school's job was to try to help get them all on the same page and we decided let's do that from kindergarten so in our transportation department as well as in our classrooms lead is where they're learning what does it look like in the hallway to be a leader what does it look like in the classroom in the library etc we've had some meetings with our transportation department and we're in the process of building leaders we have some bus drivers that have stepped up they've had experience in other districts and so that's super exciting because um when our when we share the leadership and it's not just one or two people it's it moves a lot better so we do have a meeting this thursday with those leaders and our cisd partners so we're

019excited about that and that includes having some visual visuals up on the bus that emulate what they see in their classroom listening circles we had 13 people that were trained we don't have them up and running yet we are in the process of organizing and to provide space for people to come together and so i'm excited more to come on that next month and then for our engagement we do have fall parent teacher conferences k-12 that are happening over the next couple of weeks does anyone have any questions all right thank you thank you mrs williams all right move on to facilities and mr robinson excuse me yes good evening i submitted my report as well a couple things to highlight um you know though the men's cult project is ongoing uh i was out

020there today they're doing a lot of work out there permitting is where it needs to be right now so that's moving forward one of the other things we're working on and i just sat in a meeting this afternoon is on the uh high school hvac uh engineering documents are wrapping up right now along with specifications and submittals or we're getting ready to put out for some medals uh we'll probably right now we're putting budget items or budget numbers on those projects and so once we get that we'll probably uh we'll get that in front of the board and using budget numbers will decide maybe and i think probably with a building committee or something along those lines it's kind of piecemeal you know it's kind of an a la carte menu we're looking at um

021so we're there we're right there in that planning phase of all that right now we're moving quickly so we can get it out to bid if we do choose to so we can be out to bid in december and um because as everybody knows getting anything right now is very difficult um even getting we have some projects right now even getting companies to come bid on projects many companies right now are saying i'm not even bidding on any more work this year because we're that backed up so there's some problems out there a lot of it deals with manpower the other part of it is you know is shipping raw materials across the across the uh the oceans mainly um some of the other things we've got going uh in my report we talked about

022some i think i i mentioned the school uh the pool scoreboard we're working on that still getting that up and running i will be bringing a proposal also to the board we're probably going to put this on my future needs for next year or we're going to figure out some monies mr ridgway and i are talking about it right now um initial proximization approximate cost on that board it's gonna be about 92 to 95 000 so um but it's it's done it the display is not working at all any longer and so we're really working hard to get that fixed back up we've been mandating it now for quite a few years and uh so um on a good note you know i want to piggyback on what some other folks have said homecoming was

023awesome um it was great to see you know my seats in that in the press box and it's the first game we've really sat and i could look out over all the area and it was just wall-to-wall it was just people kids having a great time and that was really cool to see and also our alumni we had a lot of alumni i mean our north parking lot is a great example i think that parking lot was packed by 3 30 in the afternoon and that's mostly where our alumni folks come in and and camp do their tents and whatnot so it was a good thing and it was good to see everybody back and it was it was fun so that's really all i have questions for mr robinson hey uh jim in your

024report you mentioned um was that limited to the high school or was that buildings hate to say that um over the across we had some pretty substantial there we go hello we had some pretty substantial rains and uh a matter of fact we had like almost six inches of rain in two days so that those bring out the leaks really quick so we're working on that i've got a map right now working on some roofing companies we are working in the high school as well though on some we think we found one that's been a issue since the building has been built um so we're thinking we're getting closer and getting that fixed up too so lots of work going in on that thanks jim board members anybody else all right thank you robinson and

025we'll move on to finance ms sobermeier hello um so the audit was a few weeks ago they are clearly not here they are still finishing up on their end just going through the review process but it went really well there was no large changes and we ended up pretty close to where carol had budgeted adding 876 000 to fund balance if you look at the first report i sent to you guys it shows where we ended versus the budget and the percent variance the second report is the same report but it's for this year so where as of the end of september we were and if you look at it the one thing that i wanted to point out instructional related that line item it the percent variance was fairly large but that's because um

026the esser funds were not accounted for for all the laptops that were approved to be purchased the third report i'm flying right along mr ridgeway sorry is the cash balance report that shows where we are at in september cash-wise if you look at it it's probably one of our lowest months because we don't get state funding and we haven't received all of our [Music] taxes in and uh if you look at it the i'm i'm on the cash report just so you know mr ridgeway but uh they uh it's pretty high right now but it'll go down because we owe a big um large payment 700 000 payment this month and then the last one is just the list of the checks for all of september so if you have any questions no not at

027this time we might in the in the spring but as of right now no we don't have to i just saw the amount of outflow versus income i'm like there's a big difference oh that that'll be fairly normal um every it's seasonal right usually in september yes because we just haven't received any state funding or we and and most of the federal funding is reimbursement so once we get enough i go out and request that so you'll start to see that increase great thanks we have a facility set up for that in in the event we do need to borrow is that correct with southern michigan yep everything's set up they they sent it out twice a year to see if we needed to i go over the reports and and we didn't need to

028at this time there's the cash flow report if uh anybody would like to see that i was a little slow getting to all right any further questions from this is from this obermeyer when i looked at your report it was all 100 and that's the plan at this point we're not at 100 right now is that true the the very first one we're at um where it's close to 100 percent that's the end of june so you want it to be as close to 100 as possible that means the uh okay that's just the june that's as as of june 30th the second page is where we are at right now so yeah on the screen the first that's last year's yes finishing up and then i'll flip down the next one this i messed

029up too dan i didn't know there was more than one page so and i'll stop bringing last year's once the audit is presented i just want you guys to know where where we are and then this year's we've spent you know in some cases you know depending on the money so it always looks a little different because we just haven't received the revenue for this year but we're of course spending the money but we will get it well you did a really good job because none of them you know they were any of the ones that were over were just slightly over 104 percent and that's i really appreciate it yeah carol actually did a did that budget and she did a great job yes [Music] and mr ridgeway we have a meeting coming up

030on october 26th at 6 pm to review the budget correct auditors will be here we will do it in the regular boardroom and they will go through the audit with you i really think it's critically important that you have an opportunity as a board because you oversee money as one of your key roles and so you know exactly what's going on and so if you have questions about where we're at how we're doing controls anything like that that would be the opportunity to do that with the auditors and we may actually have another piece to that meeting i think that there's a request for us to look at the high school hvac potentially engineering on that day as well but for sure on the 26th when are we going to get the formal audit well

031we'll push hard as we can to raymond to get out here as soon as we can and once we get it usually they send it in an electronic forum we can send it out to you if you have a chance to review prior i hope i'm assuming anything else for ms obermeyer thank you and technology mr maynard okay so i'll give you some updates as well um we are getting our high school teacher devices we've been long and waiting for are getting those ready as we speak we're still waiting on one key component that we need to deploy those but we're having the computers ready just in case if anything should happen and teachers need a laptop suddenly we'll be ready for that um our e-rate project that was approved two meetings ago i believe

032we've received some of the equipment we ordered like everything else many of the items are delayed so we received a large number of batteries right now but we don't have our main battery backup unit which we really need or the servers that we ordered or the wireless hardware they tell me december january so we can start planning to install those items there's a number of other things we're looking at and some of these are already on our cobot money wish list such as replacing many of our oldest projectors around the district and a side effect of replacing the projectors is new projectors are widescreen and so like this one is a full frame and then suddenly our screens no longer work so we might have to replace many of our screens as well so that's

033a wish list item that's coming up um our middle school needs new classroom microphones um our mini repairs still need computers and having some for the subs and a related project we've been researching upgrading the sound system in the boardroom as well as in the cafeteria here that system is completely failed and we finally have pricing on that so that's not in here but i do have those numbers available and the boardroom needs an upgrade as well because one of the problems in that room is its only accepts the older vga type inputs and quite often we have people come in there to present and they bring a you know new computer by new last you know eight years and it won't plug in because we don't have the inputs so we're looking to do

034that upgrade at some point as well as add an installed camera so that we can do these kinds of meetings without having to you know do a lot of jumping around so that's excitement we're looking forward to and lastly something just to put on the radar that um our server infrastructure here we have three servers and a dedicated storage appliance they're all running fine right now but they are getting near the end of their service life and so we're looking at what it's going to take to get those replaced could be in the next year could be the next two years really depends on what comes back from the pricing and what the vendors tell us when they research the warranties so it's just an fyi those are usually more expensive projects but they are

035telling us that because of modern hardware we can downsize from three to two which automatically brings a lot of savings in annual licensing and maintenance costs so with that i'll take any questions looks like none thank you okay all right uh next up english language learner presentation all right i'm excited to introduce karen strombeck she is our el teacher i like to call her the el expert now let her um explain what what el is just so everybody knows but i am going to put her powerpoint on the screen um if people would like to follow along so i'm going to start that up right now maybe [Music] let's see how do i get it on the big screen hold on there it is let me try something different here in just a second i

036want to make it look good for you i'm gonna restart it i know everybody's watching let's see if i can get it to go there no no i guess i have to do it the other way i apologize that's okay i'll just duplicate it it'll be smaller but we will still be able to see it all right so yeah my name is karen strombeck and i'm our esl teacher for our students our multilingual students um in the past we have called the at an el program an ell program there's always lots of acronyms in education and other places so you might hear el which is english learner might be ell english language learner the state uses lep which is limited english proficiency i was in a professional development recently with some people from the east

037side of the state and they use the term multilingual and so i've been working on transferring our things over to multilingual it's much more strength based and it's um i i always tell my students i'm like you have a superpower you know two sometimes three sometimes four languages um and everybody wishes they had that so um so we are really trying to start kind of shifting our language over to that um yeah just because it's more strength-based so um so yeah so my name is karen strombeck and we're just going to do a brief overview um kind of give you some information from this past year also what we're focusing on this year with our students and yeah so again those are the acronyms that you might hear at the state level but also kind

038of in and out of harper creek as we shift into multilingual learners um oh can you actually go back sorry so our multilingual learners are identified through the home language survey um and that's on our um on our registration form so everyone fills that out and then that's sent to me and i contact families to find out who needs to be screened who doesn't sometimes they're filled out wrong and so i'm just trying to figure out who actually qualifies for our program and then all of our students go through a screening process when they first register with our district they come from a variety of backgrounds and they also have a lot of different ability levels in english the students and the families so you can go ahead and yeah so um this is a

039court case that actually spurred um english language programs in public schools back in the 1970s it actually happened out in california with a group of chinese students who um just really realized that they weren't getting the same education as their peers and so um this this court case kind of proved to everyone that we needed to provide some supplemental support for our students which is why we have our program here so this is harper creek at a glance um we have students from all over the world some of our students were born here some of our students have come over from other countries we also have a number of exchange students as well that are included just a little fun fact for you we have several students from india and um hindi is the official

040language but there's actually 20 um different languages spoken actually over 20. now in uh india and we actually have several um different languages here so so we have students from all these areas here yeah yeah yeah so we it's a very a rich group of kiddos and it's fun because it's there's kind of pockets especially at the elementary but i mean middle school and high school they all come together but there's like pockets of where different nationalities live too and so according to the elementary so you can kind of see where different groups live so um so our students actually take a test every year to determine their english proficiency it's called the wida test actually the access reader test um it covers these four main areas reading writing listening and speaking and when they

041take the test it goes into content areas as well so like if a speaking test it actually might be more of like a science type question so it might be talking about the turtle life cycle and they have to talk about the turtle life cycle but we're not actually um grading them on the content we're grading them and how they're speaking reading writing and listening so that happens in february and march every year in michigan and i did that so this is actually my second year in this position i was a elementary teacher over at beta lake um for the past 10 years but then i taught overseas for two years prior to that so this is actually i've only gone through this wida test once um uh this past year so i'm still getting

042used to all of this but um so this is what the wida test measures it's the english language proficiency levels there's six different levels um i actually haven't taken the test myself but watching some of my students sometimes i even question if i would pass it which is kind of um comical so i would i would hope that i'm a five or six but i'm not actually sure sometimes reading some of the questions i get um but yeah so each year they take the test in february march we get the scores back and then we have a kind of a guide to show us how much time each student needs to work with me outside of their classroom time for that supplemental support and then this also tells us when kids are ready to exit

043the program as well so for the state of michigan it's a 4.8 is there their number of proficiency um which is seen on the graph kind of where that dotted line is right before five so um they also with these numbers they have different levels according to the four areas so they might be a three in speaking but they might be a one in writing and so and then they have an overall score as well so that kind of drives my instruction with my students and then they have they're called can do statements for each level so i can read those kind of see where they're at but then where we're trying to get them to so so this is our harper creek students by the numbers with the weda scores we have 27 students

044so we have majority of our kids are in level three right now close what is level four we have several students that are like right at the like right on the edge of exiting so i would hope that several of them are going to exit next year as well my my support doesn't end when they exit we just move to more of like a consult checking in so we're we kind of check in and over the next three years it might not be i might just check in with them but i might be checking with teachers or just checking grades too just to make sure that um they have what they need so when they exit it's not just a oh see ya you're good um and then i also have students too that don't

045actually qualify we have a kindergartner this year um well actually a couple of families they didn't actually qualify but their families need support and so i'm also providing support for the families too so it's not just our students but it's also our family members too so that kind of goes into what we're doing so i work with students on a weekly or bi-weekly basis again that's based on those those levels of english so it varies from let's say 45 minutes one time a week to 60 to 90 minutes a week and then i'm either pushing into classes or i'm pulling out of classes it's been fun last year most my kids were virtual so we did a lot of virtual work this year i'm in classrooms um and it's it's been exciting to be with

046them in their classrooms and in the hallways of the middle school it's a whole new world that i'm experiencing so um we're also building bridges between the schools and the homes um that's kind of my we'll talk about it more but that's one of my focus areas this year is just making sure that we're providing our families especially some of that information that's going out about current like changes in quarantine protocol or changes in the calendar making sure that those documents are translated for our families that need translation not all of them do need translation but some of them do we want to make sure that we get that communication to them yeah again just collaborating with other districts i meet with i was in a webinar last week with 300 teachers from the state

047of michigan just going over best practices talking about programs doing a lot of monitoring but also working with students go ahead i was just going to say that interpreting a piece of it so we've had a lot of documents go out over the last really two years but that are very important to parents and then at one time all of a sudden mrs strombeck walked into my office and said hey do you mind if i send these out for to be interpreted for all these all the kids i'm like yeah whatever so now we have a down pat where if we have an important communication that goes out that it goes to mrs strombeck so she can make sure that the families understand you know what we are asking them to do especially with the

048changing environment we've had over the last two years yeah absolutely especially with changes of schedule we don't want them showing up if school's not in session right yeah do we have support um for these students for the nwea which is written in english but i don't know if it's written in any other language yeah so with um with our state level tests like the m-step and the nwa so with their english they actually will do that on their own with their math test a lot of times i sit with them and read it to them um and or someone reads it to them that's like that's written into one of our best practices i guess so yeah best practices yeah so who's our partner for getting interpreters yep so we work with vosis which is

049through um it's a organization in battle creek and then so we use them for um like big translation some of our translation we use um like online software but then if we need something like we're talking about getting all of our pbis information translated we're going to get that formally translated so that it's perfect so we'll work with boces they have a number of written translators but then we also have our translators for conferences like we have conferences last weekend this week so i've got translators coming in working with our families or we also do phone translation for some of our so we have several families from vietnam there's not a vietnam or vietnamese translator around here so we use a phone translator which is pretty cool when you think about it because you can

050call somebody and say hey i need a translator and then two minutes later you have somebody on the phone translating your meeting with them so we also have that available to secretaries so we have a family come in they need to register they're not speaking english secretary can call that number and say hey we need this translated and they can start that conversation right away so so we're trying to get all of that seamless so we're trying to get that information out to all the buildings so that we are providing that so how are you dealing with the different dialects that some of these have different dialects so that's a good question um we're just doing the best that we can i will say that yeah yep so sometimes we have um some students that

051are helping us so we have an older sister for instance that's helping some of the the translation so some of that kind of depends on the families as well yeah okay yeah thank you most of our families that have moved here maybe that maybe they haven't lived here for a long time they're moving here they have at least some base of english that we can at least get to a point where we can get what we need translated but if you want to click to the next one yeah so these are our celebrations we had three students exit our program last year which was really exciting especially with us being mostly virtual and i only had a couple kids um in person last year um so we were really excited about that and the kids

052were really excited too we celebrated them and with the principals and um the kids were really proud of that and then we also we have money from the title three budget um and the 41 a budget 41a budget and so we've been able to give out books that's a big push is to make sure that our families have books in their their households so we gave over 150 books we actually had the kids fill out like an interest survey um so i had them write down like books that they were interested in and then we went out and bought them and that was it was like christmas in april and then actually most of our students um a lot of our students took advantage of our summer school opportunities so they came for summer school

053and then we also had a teacher i was on maternity leave but um we had a teacher give supplemental english support as well and now like coming back this fall like our kids are doing really well like that they kind of sustained everything over the summer because of those which has been awesome so so again areas of focus um for this year one of my main focuses right now is just making sure that we're getting things translated we really want to partner with our families and provide resources so they can be active participants in their kids education so we're trying to get them into come in for conferences to get those translated getting those documents translated even if i mean so at wattles park they had a popcorn money let her go home let's get

054that translated so that their family knows about popcorn money um because those are important for kids that they have popcorn money every week um but then also the bigger documents as well so um and then creating a school culture which best practices are being used a lot of our teachers are already using a lot of the best practices whether that be direct feedback or giving wait time the things that multilingual students need every student needs so just really encouraging teachers that they already have what they need in their back pocket and using me as a resource and also working with the students but a lot of what we do in our classrooms supports these students as well so because ultimately we're all language learners we're still learning vocabulary and thing in middle school and high

055school so yeah so that's our brief overview thank you you have any questions what are the ages of the 27 students receiving the supplemental support yep so i have um i have kindergarten all the way through 12th grade so we have this year we have 11 kids in the elementary buildings i have seven at the middle school and then with the exchange students there's nine total at the high school so what do you do if they don't read and write and speak your own language well how do you help them learn english yeah yeah it's it's um some of it is a we just try and try again try again um fortunately a lot of our students have come with at least a base um i will say some of our students don't know how

056to read and write in their home language they know how to speak and listen in their home language but they don't necessarily know how to read and write and that's something from my perspective i'm really encouraging students and hey like yeah ask your mom how to do that ask your dad how to do that because again i'm trying to really encourage them to see that as that that super power because in our changing culture we need more and more people that are going to be bilingual um and a piece of that from the state of michigan they offer what's called a seal of bi-literacy and so a student in a junior and senior years they can actually take a test and get a seal on their diploma so we had a student last year who

057actually isn't in the el program but he speaks russian and german um as a heritage language so his his family came over from russia he's not been in russia but his family came over been taught russian then he has this sealed by literacy on his diploma which looks great for employers in colleges to say hey this kid's by you know bilingual trilingual um so i that didn't i don't know if that answered your question but we yeah we do our best so answer great thank you yeah i mean if you've ever been to a a country or non-english speaking country yourself and you've been there quite a while you find out really quickly the human mind is is an amazing thing because you can and will eventually learn how to be bilingual yeah and for

058example one of our students that exited was a what we would call a newcomer so he came over from south america came up from south america three years ago and he's already exited the program like that's yeah it's pretty impressive so board members any other questions thank you for your excellent work thanks all right uh we will now move on to comments related to agenda items again if you would state your name and address for the record and you have three minutes to speak you just come forward to the microphones or one at a time if you would hello my name is diane indian i live at 803 clark road i was at your august meeting when you discuss crt and that was my concern for even attending i have some notes here um however

059i know that you use the equity training and i've recently become aware of the fact that equity training is kind of a beginning steps leading into crt and socialism so i want you to be aware of that and i know that you wouldn't do the crt of oppressors and oppressed because that just totally destroys a child gives them no focus and they just don't know what to do because they're being told all the time what they are and i've heard of parents both sides saying that's not right you're not letting my child develop as they should and as they were destined to be so i thank the board for being concerned and working together and looking at things also investigating that is the best thing you can do for all of us here in harper

060creek and for your students thank you and god bless thank you hello my name is i live at 252 beaumont drive um in reference to the agenda about the um multi-language families my kids were actually in that program two of my kids actually tested out of it and i have a first grader that currently is in that program i was born in poland i came to the states when i was 12. i came here not knowing any english and i think it's a great program for kids but i have a question and a comment is there anything available for english how do i say english-speaking families that do not speak a second language there are many kids in the district that struggle with uh speech disabilities and they need the extra help that the same

061thing with the kids that do speak other language do i mean i know that we have we offer kids with a 504 plan and ieps we offer extra support but we don't offer it to kids that do not follow or they don't belong into those groups and i think it would be a great thing to offer that because our kids are struggling really badly and if we don't start it in kindergarten they move through the grades still struggling so they're especially with the pandemic with families being virtual a lot of kids struggle during that time and now with the years going by they're not where they're supposed to be they're still there's a lot for them to catch up thank you thank you thank you anybody else all right hearing is seeing none we'll move

062on to the consent agenda chair calls for a motion that the harper creek board of education approved the consent agenda as follows approve the general fund check social services fund checks and the student school activities fund checks in accordance with the list discussed approved the september 13 2021 meeting minutes as reviewed support all right been moved by mrs allworth and supported by mr myers [Music] i'm going to have to abstain from voting on well i'm going to have to abstain from voting on this topic and i think we need to relook at that because if we only had four people here which we have would have a quorum and i couldn't vote then it wouldn't pass and i think we need to re-look at our practice of abstaining but i'll abstain tonight but maybe in

063the next meeting uh something that we can uh discuss yeah i wrote a note on it and so extending from the consent agenda yeah it'd be so it would be i wasn't at the meeting because you weren't at the meeting okay and what he's saying is if we only had four board members here and he was one of those four and he had to abstain we couldn't pass the consent agenda okay we will uh get a ruling on that i don't believe you have to obtain i think that's just something we've done here at harper creek as a process or procedure not as a policy it's just been a practice it's not in our board policies it's not illegal uh or anything like that so okay any other uh further comment okay all right please

064call the role mr martin mr barry smith yes dr borders yes mrs allwork yes mr jason smith yes mr myers i'm sting mr martin about yes said mr bass i vote yes okay motion carries uh move on to information discussion school year update quarantine guideline changes mr ridgeway okay i know that most people know about these and i didn't actually talk about that to start in the communications piece but some of the questions that i that i'm hearing from parents community members first of all how does the process work how are quarantines communicated how does an appeal process work um how does the day six day seven test out process work those are some of the things that have came up over really the last a couple of weeks since our last board meeting um

065in general the process for quarantining occurs like this we are informed of a positive covet case typically a parent will call the office the office person that takes the call will inform our school nurse who is our health department employee that we are um connected with and she will check to make sure that it is a confirmed case if it is a confirmed case then then we start the contact tracing procedure and quite honestly the seating charts are a big piece of that talking to the positive individual is a big piece of that and then also just trying to determine uh who that person may have been in contact with do they ride a bus do they play sports are there any other extenuating circumstances um for that individual and then it goes through the

066process people um are determined now the folks who are close contacts aren't told who the positive individual is so it makes it kind of a difficult circumstance for parents because they get a phone call you were close contact well who was it well we can't tell you who it was but you know believe us you they were close contact and so we have to have an appeal process and here within our school system if you feel like well i'm not sure if that's true the first step really is to call the principal within that building so that they can take so some quick checks was the student in their assigned seat we can always look at our video cameras if necessary to see at lunch um was that were the students together or not um

067if we determined that we feel as a close contact there is also more of a more formal appeal process at the health department that they will go through and review the case and just want people to know that because i think people are unsure of what to do or if they really feel like this was done in air specifically in terms of the six or seven day testing as i said we do test kids here with rapid tests we received the test last year we did this with our um in athletics it was required and so we used the same tests they are not the test that's when you go and you have the q-tip that goes way in the nostril it just goes in the front end it is self done by the individual

068and then there basically is a dropper that goes on top of the q-tip on the test and then it's it's kind of like a strip that if it if it comes up two strips then it is determined as positive now some people are concerned because those tests aren't as accurate as getting getting the test think the pcr test and that is true we understand that and people can always go get another test if they feel like you know maybe it came up positive but it shouldn't have but we do that at the administration building every day from one to two if you do test negative that school on day seven of a quarantine quarantines are 10 days currently and it gets kids back in school just a touch earlier we have had quite a few

069people that have taken advantage of that and the lines have been a couple days out the door because we have had a lot of quarantines specifically in the high school over the last um two weeks do board members have specific questions about quarantining or anything to that order or questions you receive from parents or community members mr ridgeway i think the three things that i hear um is uh the lack of due process and i think you've you've addressed that but i think there still is a feeling out there of of parents uh not necessarily having as much say in it especially there where they feel that their rights start where somebody else's end in other words not knowing not being able to identify who who was the close contact uh that had coveted um

070and obviously that's not anything we can change but i know it is something that parents uh are concerned about you're right that is set by the health department's guidelines yeah so the the director from the health department specifically from the beginning of the pandemic was that when we have a positive individual that only those who need to know should know that they were positive and so within our processes we really try to keep that close as close as we possibly can but still manage for example many of our front office secretaries don't know who the positive individuals are they're not privy to the information and so parents get frustrated when they call because they're asking questions that really that person doesn't know the people that are doing close contact tracing our principles within the building

071our health aides within the building our our school nurse is also doing contact tracing we try to not expand it only when necessary to get the job done as quickly as possible ultimately ultimately the health department is in charge of um quarantine so ultimately you know a appeal would go to the health department and they would go through a process to see if in fact they felt it was a close contact uh second thing on on my list was the uh clarification of the uh students have been that have been diagnosed as covet positive having that 90 days as you and i spoke uh earlier today so there's a few ways that people don't have to quarantine one of them is individuals that are vaccinated do not have to quarantine but also individuals that can

072that have contracted covert with a coveted test do not have to quarantine for 90 days so within 90 days of the close contact if they had contracted at the right word covid then they would not have to quarantine as well and the last piece was can you clarify the maybe a typical notification of close contact let's say a student is exposed on a thursday afternoon that student's not notified until the following monday because of uh how everything goes down and how that kind of shortens the period somewhat yeah and i don't want to put any of our buildings on the spot but typically we try to do same day if possible especially if we find out about the the coveted positive in the morning we can typically do the close contacting throughout the day and

073get that done that same day but many of our um it's it's kind of ironic a lot of our covid positive reports come back in the afternoon and there's just not time so let's say we get a two o'clock report in the high school there's not enough time in the day to finish it so we are committed to making sure that that is done that next day that next morning so when we do have a lot of covert positives i know that if your parents you saw that today we had quite a few coping positives um i think last friday uh and specifically in the high school we had a few copied positives as well that's when it takes a little bit more time two days i don't think we've gone that long sometimes the

074health department letter does not come for two days but we as a school district will contact as soon as possible ultimately the same day but in reality sometimes it's the next day so in essence really even if it's the same day or the next day and when you add in a weekend in there most kids if they choose to do the testing on the sixth or seventh day and come back the seventh day the effective amount of school days that the student is off could could be really no more than five days um in most cases yeah so i just do a little bit more detail if it's really from point of contact the where the close con when the close contact occurred it's not from when we notify the parents so if the close

075contact occurred let's say on a wednesday we receive the positive covet notification on a thursday we go through the close contacting and you're notified on a friday you've already you've already had two days two the six days that have already gone by so i guess what i want people to know is that you know the effective time of the quarantine wallet as long as you're willing to test in that sixth or seventh day the effective amount of time is less than six or seven days generally most students are not uh out for more than five school days which is is too much too much but it's not uh it's not quite as bad as it seems uh unless a student uh or and or parents would decide to not get the test and wait the

076full ten days and then parents have the right not to test because some people are you know do not want the testing done so then the 10-day period would be necessary by the health department rules covet positive individuals cannot test out so we have had people come to the school who had tested positive recovery to try to test out on day six and seven it's only quarantined students not positive students or staff rob your nurse she is that the only thing she does is woodwork no but uh that feels like it at this point uh the nurse is responsible so the board had generously put health aids in every building and last year with covid we actually made them virtually full time and so having our nurse from the health department plus the health aides

077we are also responsible for all the medication that students take if we have a diabetic student that has to be tested on a daily basis or any other health needs that have to occur those things need to occur and so our nurse is the trainer for all of our health aides but she also wants to make contacts with families before kovid the nurse would be calling and contacting families and helping them get health care when necessary and in a lot of cases families that don't have a regular pediatrician or even a physician the nurse was really their lifeline to to health care and that person was helping them as well as helping them get to the necessary care they need so no the nurse is unable to do her job to the fullest at this

078point because we are so unindated with doing covid and this is every school not just harper creek every school is spending a lot of time on covid related close contacting sending letters to families the nurse the health department nurse in our school is responsible for doing that they do get help sometimes from the health department but in general that person is responsible in the health aides we have health aide in the middle school and high school we do and we we thought about it it seems uh like like a bad idea at this point but we thought about reducing the hours of our health aides in the middle school in high school because we felt like we wouldn't have as many cases and things would be better this year but now they're still they're full-time

079just like they were last year mr ridgeway how much of of the administration's time maybe percentage maybe you can speak for yourself how much time do you think you're spending uh regards to uh covet calculating numbers and responding to different things with your schedule if for me personally covert related probably two to three hours a day um in terms of our administration it really depends on the day so we've been very fortunate in the elementary school over the past really two or three weeks we haven't had very few coveted positive cases so they don't spend a lot of time on it but the middle school in high school has not been that way so the principals are probably spending at least half of their time on covert related responsibilities okay maybe more depending on the

080day and can you just one more time for anybody listening out there we are following the mandates and orders of the health department and so when when individuals want to be upset with harper creek they probably you know we're just a messenger is that correct yeah we are the messenger right we but i fully understand i know that might one of my jobs is to talk to parents and community members who are upset and try to help them understand and explain why um and it's hard because sometimes it's like the the due process piece is tough because you know how do you know and those things but ultimately we are following the health department rules it's an order it is it does have legal weight and i think that some people they understand it but

081i don't think that us as a school board we are not allowed not to follow laws it doesn't matter if it's if it's uh quarantine orders or if it's how we spend the finances from the state of michigan board members anything else all right we'll move on to president biden's covet 19 action plan staff vaccination requirements okay i just want to hit this really just quickly right now this is not in place our understanding is this is going to come through the national osha and then it will eventually get to my osha it is not a something that was passed in legislation it is in order in order from the executive branch of our of our country we don't know what the rules and regulations are but in general we know that the order says

082that employers who receive federal money that have 100 or more employees must have a mandatory vaccination requirement or a testing weekly testing requirement for employees now we don't know specifically we don't know specifically if um what the rules are going to be but what we do know is when the rules come down there's going to be time miosha does not have the rules from osha yet and when miosha gets the rules it's going to take a period of time we want employees to be aware but we are not implementing until it is required of the school district um because i know again controversial issue vaccination some people believe that uh you know you should vaccinate some people believe you shouldn't vaccinate and we're not here at least i'm not here to debate um vaccination what

083i'm here to inform is that this is a rule that is going to potentially come down now will things change before it gets to harper creek probably i think i watch the national news every night i think there's going to be challenges and maybe those challenges will occur before they get to us but i think our employees deserve to know that it's a possibility that this may come from the um my osha regulation department uh just to add on to that just current news that just came across the wire says uh governor greg abbott in texas has issued an executive order prohibiting vaccine mandates by any entity in texas uh says the covet vex coven 19 vaccine is safe effective and our best defense against the virus but should always remain voluntary and never forced

084i just share that with with the audience and the board because i i believe that we're going to see many challenges um to this so as mr ridgeway and i spoke i thought we should get ahead of it and just make sure that staff know that this may be an eventuality at some point though yes we have to make sure people know that this is this is more than likely coming and so therefore we have to be prepared we do our school staff does have access to the booster vaccine um the harper creek staff that chose to be vaccinated received the pfizer vaccine and we do have pfizer booster shots that are available here at the school but there's also clinics throughout battle creek and i heard that you can go to places like the

085pharmacy to do that as well if that's something of interest and school personnel do fit within getting the booster shot now rob do we have a feel for what percentage of our staff has been vaccinated i would have i would be guessing um because uh we did not ask that question of individuals at this point but if i was going to put a number on it i would say we are about 80 during the first initial vaccination clinic that the school district held and this would have been back in february i believe we were at about 67 percent but i think we've claimed probably to 80 percent of our staff well the reason i ask i mean irrespective of my whether i agree with the policy or not i mean if it happen from a

086worst case scenario um we'll probably have to have some contingency plans in place in case uh some of our people who are unvaccinated choose not to comply right and we you know you hear things to the great vine not anything that i would say is is is a hundred percent but people talk about you know i if that's the case and i don't think i will continue employment with employers and so we have to be prepared for that eventuality we have to be prepared for the testing process if it comes up i think we've gotten better at it but we are right now our main tester is our athletic director and his and his assistant and i don't know if we can sustain having you know those two people be our testers any other comments

087in regards to president biden's covet action plan okay we'll move on to cover data okay that's another right thing and i know it's blurry in the audience here and i'm not sure those folks at home if you're able to see or not but i'm going to talk through our where we're at this is the same chart that i provided the last meeting and i know i received feedback from many people about this data i don't want it to be biased i don't want it to you know push in a slant in a direction i'm just i'm going to report what what we have currently so the very top are the total positive cases for harper creek community schools this school year as well as the total number of quarantine individuals if you go across the

088top the total positive cases students we had three albedo lake one staff six at wallace park elementary and five staff six as sonoma students and one staff member in the middle school we've had 31 positive cases and three staff at the high school we've had 50 positive students and most of those since our last board meeting i looked at the numbers we had one at the last board meeting and then staff three and then other that would be our transportation department our maintenance department our administrative offices we had one staff member in other that also tested positive for 96 students and 14 adults for a total of 110 positive cases to date when i say to date i mean about last friday i did not include today's numbers and i'll talk about that when i

089get done where we're at with today's numbers total quarantine students i can read them again but you can see we're lower in the elementary schools 28 at beadle lake 60 students at waddles 85 students at sonoma sonoma had a somewhat unusual case we did have 50 students quarantined in the very first case this year and that had to do with our before and after care program we made adjustments so we wouldn't have that same issue in the future but we had lots of students from that one but in general less than the middle school has 200 has had 232 quarantines and now the high school as a is at 321 for a total of 726 students you will notice there's very few adults seven this school year and the reason for that is if if

090an adult is quarantined they do not need to um i'm sorry if a doll is vaccinated they do not need to quarantine and then the other piece is the adults are mindful of of distance and trying to make sure that they are staying six feet or more away and you know try trying to just be mindful kids it's really hard our deaths are in a lot of cases are less than six feet in most cases i also went through one more time the number of quarantine prior to being pro positive and individually that i don't think the numbers are small but in total we've had 25 individuals in quarantine who tested positive i'm sorry 25 students and two adults so 27 individuals and that's 26 percent of our student population who was in quarantine i'm

091sorry who tested positive was in quarantine prior the county rate is 29 right now that are that we're in quarantine before testing positive okay current status well if i need i don't think i'm going to move the screen at our current status you'll notice in the elementary schools we have no positive cases and only one quarantined student at this point in time middle school we have and this is as of friday right an end of business friday nine positive students no staff 40 quarantine students in middle school high school 11 positive students 3 staff and 48 quarantined students and you can see what our current totals are 27 students and 3 staff for 30 people who are covered positive 89 in quarantine no staff i did compare districts again some some people had some suggestions

092and so i made sure i added in all the school districts that surround us that are like us um harper creek marshall battle creek public and penfield um harper creek numbers i just went through those 110 positive cases 733 quarantines to date marshall marshall is a district that does require masking universal masking they've had 37 total positive cases and 112 quarantine so significantly less than harper creek lakeview also requires masking they have had 156 positive cases and 824 quarantines and then battle creek public i said at the last meeting i didn't have their data what i meant is i didn't have their quarantine data battle creek public has had 96 positive cases i don't know the quarantines it's not published on their website and finally penfield 93 cases and 681 quarantines so really marshall is

093is one that is a lot less than the rest of the district significantly less i think than the rest of districts in both cases and quarantines and then i did this thing last time and i hope people i'm a math guy i can't help it so i proportionately i said okay we're different size districts so if everybody was the same size as harper creek how many cases would they have so for example we had 110 marshall would have 37 we're almost the same size lakeview proportionately would have 103. so harper is slightly above lakeview in positive cases battle creek would have 70. so we're slightly or we're above lake i always say medical republic that's a little bit more than slightly in mathematical terms and then finally penfield would be a little higher than harper

094creek and i know penfield has had you know they had a lot of positive cases over the last couple of weeks and then the same same for quarantines it's almost identical you know us we're higher significantly higher than marshall and quarantines and we're gonna be higher than a district that wears mass in quarantines because of the three foot versus six foot radius lakeview has had 546 quarantines proportionately so less than harpercreek and then penfield is a little bit higher when you look at the proportions 9.25 the last piece of data i received from the calhoun county department of public health now those words are kind of small and i'm just going to read them between the start of school and october 1st there have been 476 school age positive covet cases in calhoun county during

095the same time last year there was 46. so we have significantly more kids that are positive this year than last during the same time from august 20 to september 30 this year 28 percent of 15 to 17 year olds that are covered positive were in quarantine prior to testing in calhoun county our number if you if i flip back up was 26 so we're fairly close to the county average and number of students in quarantine at test positive at the last meeting i had stated that there wasn't a lot of kids in quarantine that tested positive that has changed many of our students that are in quarantine are testing by mr a third of our students in quarantine are testing positive approximately mr ridgeway the statement that says uh between the start of school and

096october 1st um that doesn't take into account though that their last year was the original covet 19 virus and and this year it's the variant which seems to be quite a bit more transmissible i would agree totally i'm just trying to share the data that was shared with us as superintendents by the county there is much more data at the comedy level they do a weekly report as to our cases for a hundred thousand as well as uh percent positive i believe last week uh calhoun county was 13 um percent positive so ever for every test 13 of individuals come back positive and i would say that's pretty true based on the testing that occurs here as well um i think last week i'd be guessing i don't have it in front of me but

097we were somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 or 320 per 100 000 cases as a from the county data and and anecdotally um what are the symptoms that that you're hearing and what are the um you know what are we what are we seeing out there as far as um how sick kids are getting so this is real anecdotal because i i do not talk to all parents who have coveted positive students but some do report to the school nurse or maybe the health aides or the principal or the teacher the the typical symptoms that students are exhibiting a headache is is a big one at this point uh cough stuffiness you know they're you know really stuffy noses and then of course the taste and smell if somebody loses tastes smell that's a pretty

098telltale sign in terms of sickness going to the hospital we haven't had as far as i know any students that have gone to the hospital that doesn't mean it can't happen i know that there was a tragedy indicator with covid and i i want to respect and i want to make sure that people understand that that i think that it is a disease that does make people very sick i have not heard of students that have been in hospitalized but i have heard of of students who have had you know uh tiredness and you know heavy flu-like symptoms probably the majority of kids have light flu-like symptoms so some heavy flu majority probably light flu for what i've heard and i have a senior that was actually just quarantined for the second time and then

099did test positive and uh much like um uh you know very light flu um a couple of low grade temperature for a couple days and some fatigue but besides that was not affected that strongly and it's my understanding that from other people i've spoke with that the variant kind of acts like allergies um mimics itself as allergies so um i just thought it was important that you know i think when we when i think of covet i think of this big bad monster and i know it's been a big bad monster in a lot of situations but it doesn't seem to be affecting students as bad as the adults and just thinking about maybe even the stomach flu where kids are sometimes off a week and they might be throwing up and so on and

100so forth this doesn't seem to rise to that occasion um as far as the uh how how sick they are i i will say not an argument or anything but there there are people with underlying health conditions where it's very dangerous and i want to make sure that i i say that i think that with a lens of inclusion and a lens of you know understanding our population we do have you know kids that have underlying health conditions and and it can be very very serious so i want to make sure that people understand that we as a board we understand that you know we're governance team we work together you know that is understandable as well and so we take this very seriously in terms of you know making decisions on um masking or

101not masking just so just to clarify you know since we've drawn the comparison to the same time last year uh and then so same time last year we were also on the hybrid schedule correct we were hybrid for middle school in high school last year um we were in person for elementary but remember we had about uh 20 of our kids were virtual yeah that never came to school so there's a large comparing apples to apples that's probably not a comparison i think that i think what they're trying to get at the health department was this is very transmissible it is actually passing through kids uh fairly quickly fairly easily and we're closer together than we were last year i mean in hybrid we were definitely six feet apart middle school and high school i

102think this is from mr joy i just want to clarify was not my intent to discount anybody that has health conditions or anything of that nature but i guess my my point is is from from what i've heard uh from different families who have had it who've been quarantined including my own student is that the effect on most students and i might use that 99 number because that's something a number we continue to hear most of them seem to be uh you know rebound pretty quickly from it and don't have any substantial issues obviously we do have some students out there that we have to worry about and i think those are the ones that we really should put more effort towards if if you're a student or even an adult that has health challenges

103um so is there any questions about data or any other data that you would like for me to try to talk to yeah i've got a couple questions rob sure number one on the current positive cases list your total for students is 27 but i only come up with 23 when i add across there okay so i was missing that point and secondly am i correct don can probably answer this question better than you can penfield is also mask not mandatory pen phil's optional mask yeah and that's why i was that was what i was asking and bo to your comment about it being you know mostly mild symptoms in students i think that's been pretty well documented but the concern isn't necessarily just the students it is the people that students come in contact

104with who are much bigger risk so the fact that we have 10 times as many students this school year that have tested positive versus last school year is a significant concern dr borges i can agree with that um although some of the i guess some of the data that i've seen uh suggest that whether you've been vaccinated or not everybody is a carrier and so really you know unless we shut everything down i guess we're all have the potential to you know share the virus or share coven um except for the fact that masks do work no i i i know you disagree with that and i respectfully um i've seen a lot of information out there says unless it's an n95 mask these might have some effect but you know i think our audience

105members from last week brought up some great points the petri dish comment really stuck with me i've seen some interviews with some doctors on the internet that talk about the mask reducing the amount of oxygen that people get and that's what covid you know really strikes on is people's oxygen levels so i think that the data has been weaponized kind of based on both points of view and i think there's science out there that like statistics can be used in different ways to support differing views and so in my mind uh the jury's still out on masks unless it's an n95 mask which is what i what i've seen that seems to be the method that may actually stop transmission again you then go to those other issues of mask not being worn correctly the

106petri dish effect you know less oxygen so and so forth and do we want to do that for students who are the least affected by covet as far as symptoms and so and so forth so the other point is speaking with the director of the health department is that we don't have the data on students going to the hospital because they're a lot of them are going to pediatric hospitals and for some reason they can't get that data how many peter pediatric hospitals no one there are out there kalamazoo grand rapids probably yeah grand rapids is a big one and the the magnitude of the the pandemic it's it's odd that our health department can't get that information it is that was his statement so um dr barge brings up a good point i want

107to make sure for the district comparison so masking and i'm asking so harper creek is um you know mask optional marshall is universal lakeview is universal masking battle creek public is universal masking and then penfield is like harvard grade just so that everybody has the same data and i apologize about the numbers i don't know what happened i'll have to take a look and see why my numbers didn't come up because i said there was this did not include today and if you're a parent or a district staff you know that today we had 10 positives that i sent the email out about a six middle school if you're a middle school parent three high school students and one high school staff member so that is not counted in these numbers i may have inadvertently

108put some of those in this morning when i was doing that i i wanted to make it with apples to apple so i wanted to make it from last friday but just so everybody knows that's that's where we are at on a daily basis and then the quarantines associated you know some of them have already been established so if you bear with me for a second see if i can find it quickly i do want to show folks the dashboards because i want to explain that so this dashboard i have made an adjustment to and this dashboard has currents this is for this week so starting october 11th so so far this week um 10 we've had we have 10 we had one other high school student that came in after the email went out

109so we have four six ten students that are covered positive this week so far one staff member and then 16 associated quarantines so far some of the contact racing has not been completed and i will update those as soon as possible and then the other dashboard is done every day and this is the total number of current people and i updated this for october 8th um and the the numbers that you see um that that's where i was getting the higher numbers deal i apologize i made an adjustment just to only do it for october 8th i've got a question before maybe before we move on on the 26 percent so that's meaning that uh of the total number of students or i guess if you 726 plus seven staff of the total number that

110were quarantined 26 percent of those became positive is that what that i think i don't think so i i think of the covet positive individuals 26 were in quarantine okay because if we took the other way around you know we have 700 and some quarantines if you multiply that by 26 we have not had that many positives correct so the 26 i mean i think you stated it maybe stated again 26 represents what the number of students who test positive who are in quarantine prior to testing positive so that's the number that's a percentage of the total positive cases correct as opposed to a percentage of the kids who are important to you correct so 26 of the of the total positive we're already in quarantine correct yes 25 out of 96. that's 26 board

111members anything else we want to put in on the coved data okay we'll move on to the masking discussion which we've did do last week and i think we've already kind of around about why he touched it but mr ridgeway well i think it's important because we have all received communications from community members on both sides of math the masking issue i would say more communications of late have been to to universally mask and reasons why from the emails so i think it's important because our constituents you know believe this is a topic of conversation that we should talk about and um i think the board should have some deliberation as to uh current stance as opposed to you know making an adjustment of our current procedure failed so i think it's i think as

112a course of action i think it's important in these times that we talk about these things in uh in public well you know it's a time that we have to have courage whatever we decide i mean it doesn't matter if we decide for mass or um choice because either way there's potential students you know getting sick and there there's nothing that guarantees it that a person that's vaccinated uses a mask still can get covet symptoms and still transmit covet but it's rare and i think it is what i say is that if you use a mask you're reducing your chance of being quarantined if you're vaccinated you reduce your chance of being quarantined yeah that's my concern is the number of quarantines we have obviously the students do not get that sick luckily but because

113of the regulations from the health department if we've either been vaccinated or masked the number of quarantines goes way down and that's where we're having problems is keeping kids in the classroom i don't disagree with that uh however i think part of that is is that the health department's mandate so that six foot uh radius uh or six foot uh uh measure per se is versus that three to six foot um in other words if the everywhere was masking it goes to six foot is that correct mr ridgeway everybody's mass it goes to three feet so if we have a positive uh covert positive who is masked and then another individual who is masked then the the close contact goes to 3p they both have to be massively three feet not one but weren't we

114told that everybody has to be masked for to get to the three feet not just two no they will allow it we've had that case happen a few times at harvard not a lot a few times board book is excited to announce it all sorry but we've had that happen a few times and and the health department said if that's the case then they can do three feet but in general like let's say marshall because their numbers are so low they're assuming universal masking so they're making the assumption of three feet whereas we're making the assumption of six feet because we're not and then if if we go through the contact tracing portion and the deposited person was in that mass we ask each individual student who was a close contact were you masked and

115then if it's not if they're both massive then it becomes less than three feet and you have less people quarantined that way mr jason smith you want to put something in i'm just digesting what everyone's saying i guess unfortunately i was out of the country uh during the homecoming so i'm just curious for maybe those that attended i heard a couple say it was a full house lots of people there my assumption would be granted it's outside but people were probably perhaps closer than three feet so what were the optics the community does a good job supporting harper creek athletics so what did was community uh wearing masks i saw one mask i didn't see anything i did not see another one there you go okay well and i'll again i'll i'll keep my comment

116short and sweet because i i mean we've all i think done a lot of reading about efficacy of basque or not i articulated a point of view at our last meeting on this issue frankly i hadn't seen any data that would cause me to move off of that point of view when i look at the lakeview data that has a mass mandate i don't see any appreciable differences i think bo you made a good point i think masks are effective if it's the if it's the right mask and it's properly fitted and i don't um again i again i don't see anything data anything in the data that would cause me to move off my opinion from last month's meeting where i i deferred to parents making the right choices for their their children the

117health department set out a meta-analysis and the problem with the meta-analysis is that's basically statistical people people like that and they get you know they get a group of reports or research and use statistics to determine what they get um but the problem is it's what they select which ones so you know they can sway it one way or the other but they had a number a number of researchers research that they quoted in there so something to look at um you know and it's just it's just a tough decision yep and we are receiving a number of folks who send us research um within emails i think that we've all seen and received those so i will continue to pass along if it's not sent to the entire board so you are privy to

118all the information i i guess i would tend to agree with barry's point of view as you know i don't know that we've seen any data that would move us off our decision i also come at it from the perspective that we are elected representatives by our constituents and in my mind our constituents have made it perfectly clear where they stand at and i think if our constituents all stakeholders wanted students to be masked i think they would be sending more of students to harper creek masked i think that we come we represent a pretty conservative area in a lot of ways and people are for choice and freedoms and with that being said it's at this point respectfully to anybody that would have disagreement you know for me it's still a no as far

119as masking it this time now the question i have is is it mask wearing or that's stopping the problem or is it parents you know not letting their quarantined child to come to games come to school right those kind of things you know i don't think i haven't seen a study on that at all that's a fair that's a fair point mr meyer i mean it's one of the things we shared at the last meeting we had a a larger audience here um but yeah one of the things that the community can do is if we want to help is if you've got a child who's sick don't send them to school if they're so again this is when you talk about what's required in the community it's important that everybody steps them up and

120does their part as far as that goes and it's hard it's emotional you know we want our children to be able to participate in the game that they love and it's just tough i mean but parents have to step up and say we don't want you affecting infecting others and we want you to get healthy then you can go back i i fully agree with uh with the comments you know the thing i would say is that i think a lot of kids just don't even know that they're really sick i think that's why it continues to spread more because you know so many kids maybe just feel like they have a regular allergy or something that's no no different and i'm sure there are a select few that have have thrown caution to the

121wind and knowing that they weren't feeling well i think sports is a big driver if you're at this time of the year you know those students want to play after they put all the work and time in but i would echo the comments that if you're a parent and you're student is not feeling well to keep them home with that being said i think last week our last i said last week last month at last month's meeting we did hear a parent saying stop testing because that's what they felt was precipitating the numbers of quarantines and so on and so forth so which is i guess a little bit backwards i can understand the perspective uh of where that parent was coming from uh not saying i agree or disagree with it but you know

122definitely well and our technology should be able we should be able to do distance learning for those students that are in school so they're not missing school they're not missing the extracurricular mr ridgeway you want to speak to that if you would what what are we doing to support the students who are uh quarantined or isolated in general if it's a you know high school middle school they um each teacher has their google classroom when they follow that at home and go through and do their homework if we have a entire classroom quarantined and we have that with a fifth and sixth grade we also had it in the elementary school in several occasions and that's where distance learning comes into play where the teacher is on [Music] for lack of a better term a

123zoom call and they stay on it the entire time during the uh hour so if it's middle school it would be first second third all the way through seven out seven hours if it's an elementary student it would be in the morning and the afternoon the entire time the teacher would be on the kids don't have to be on the entire time because the teacher could do a lesson have them go do do things but then the student or the parent can get on to talk to the teacher because the teacher is available the entire time that's what distance learning is and that's a huge difference from last year some of the complaints that we had heard was well the time with the teacher wasn't enough it was only five or ten minutes or you

124know in some cases in other cases it was 20 30 or even more minutes but the state changed the rules and just said if in distance learning you have to be on the entire time but if a student is quarantined in high school middle school not the entire class is quarantined then it's it's very similar to when they're absent except for we use google classroom for them to get to their assignments um it just came to me i didn't really mention this and i don't know that falls under masking but um you know the the worst effect on my senior was after being quarantined for five days he then tested positive and then was isolated for 10 more days um the mental effect on him mike you know my son is normally a pretty upbeat

125kid uh you know pretty well liked um it was you you saw it wear on them and that's one of the uh probably the worst ultimate symptom of of covet is a result of covet is that the isolation um and quarantining wears on kids so i just thought i'd throw that out there i did have a question um the uh elementary school data i mean their cases are next to nothing are we seeing a higher absentee rate our parents are we seeing that parents are keeping their kiddos home if they if they're not feeling well yeah i would say for the most part parents are are more conscientious about keeping kids home more than we would have been prior pre-covet i mean pre-code i mean a lot of times people said kids you know i

126probably was guilty that myself but now i think people are much more conscientious um beyond that one thing in elementary school you think about it they are trained to wash hands use hand sanitizer and they're doing a better job of that as well at the elementary school than i would say at the middle school high school is students in general um but but beyond that i can't give you a reason why it's so low we have had cases but there's just not as many we're not seeing those students that are out there getting tested and reporting that they have coveted otherwise we'd see it in the numbers correct right um you know there's there have been some kids that were in quarantine most of the quarantines in elementary school where they become positive are family

127quarantines not necessarily school related um i believe i can think in my mind there was two instances where i know a student it was probably a school related positive just because the family didn't have it when when it all happened but yeah it's it's kind of odd some other schools are seeing more cases in the early l i noticed and some some research some data um than we are we have not seen as much of course you remember we have smaller class sizes this year too not gonna be careful with that our elementary schools are listening right now going mr ridgeway last year we had 17 and now we have 22 so it's not that much not too small but relatively speaking we had 26 in a class typically in elementary school so we're relative

128we're relatively speaking smaller than prequel than prehogadia respectfully to the hand-washing comment covet has passed through the air as my understanding yeah but i think a lot of germs and things are passed along there too so maybe the kids aren't quite as sick as they have been because we're more conscientious anything else on the masking discussion all right thank you we'll move on to controversial issues okay this topic has came up for a whole board discussion instead of just policy committee although the policy committee did talk about this when we met it came from the conversation and critical race theory to be honest there was questions that said okay we have a critical race theory stance it's not necessarily a board policy it was voted upon by the board so it is a stance of

129the district but what about you know where does it fit within our current board policies and so i said okay well controversial issues and so i'll click on our neola policies that we currently have and if nobody's if you have never gone to our policy book you can find this on our website under the board of education page under uh board policies and bylaws and controversial issues is one of those and i've already explained what a controversial issue is but in general it talks about how we are going to teach controversial issues you know what's allowable what's not allowable in a lot of cases you know there needs to be permission from the principal but i think all of us know that kids are inquisitive and they're going to ask questions and they're listening to

130their parents they're listening to community listening to other people or news and they say what's the big deal about the vaccination or what's the big deal about mask and so you know you're a teacher you're in class how do i handle it it's a controversial issue and so in general we expect that teachers are going to speak both sides of the issue you know and and talk about you know why people would feel one way or the other i think that the way that i heard it the best is we want to teach kids how to think not what to think and trying to present the information in a non-biased manner on either side of the of the table now when we talk about things like abortion or we talk about things i don't know

131other things that might be out there that would be maybe global warming is something else that some people may disagree with some people may agree with those are somehow somehow easier topics now than than vaccinations and masking i think the reason they're easier topics is because vaccination and masking are closer to home and we as a community and our parents are listening to what the conversations that are happening in class they don't want other adults you know pushing their kids in a certain direction and so this policy is set up to deal with that and then there was a question that said okay what happens if somebody violates our controversial issues policy should we change it should we should we put critical race theory in it as an example and so the policy committee talked

132and and didn't agree necessarily that we would put critical race theory at its own as its own piece in there because we did talk about that uh because every controversial issue is important and this is the current the current um uh one of the current issues in the united states that people are talking about but there may be something else that comes up in the future but there really isn't much in here about what happens if you break the policy and i said well what happens is you go to our board policy on discipline if somebody breaks the policy and there's usually a written i'm sorry a verbal warning maybe a written write-up eventually moving on to days without pay and then worst case scenario is you know somebody's removed from the district um and

133so i said we're thinking about going to troon policies instead of neola policies which many of you in the audience don't even know what that what that means but neola is a group that set up our policies that we put in place about oh six years ago and we're considering going to troon policy so i said uh true show us your policy so i shared this with the board just friday so it's not something that's been out there a long time for board members to preview i hope that you had a chance to look over the weekend but if you didn't here it is and it's very similar and it talks about you know the ability to discuss and listen and dissent are essential elements of responsible citizenship we encourage students to develop skills and

134critical thinking respecting others opinions distinguishing between fact and opinion engaging in respectful and civil discourse and considering relevant factors in reaching decisions we would all probably agree with that a controversial issue is a political social cultural or other issue that is likely to result in opposing viewpoints in the community and then it talks about and i won't go into i'm not going to read this to you but it goes into how teachers can handle this issue within their classroom and then finally at the end of the policy i'm just going to go down i'm trying to go slow because i know it's hard to read at the end the very end if a parent files a complaint regarding a controversial issue raised in class in a class assignment or at a school-sponsored event the complaint

135shall be promptly reported to the building principal and and the superintendent or designee will discuss the parents complaint and potential remedies with the parent and the impacted employee or employees and then it also says an employee who violates this policy may be subject to discipline up to and including discharge and so i think the true policy goes a little bit deeper and that's kind of what some board members were asking that's my opinion i'm going to let the board discuss and decide because the board selects policies but my recommendation is to if we do anything with controversial issues policy is to accept troons policy this standalone policy that we would use within our policy book and it would replace our current controversial issues policy okay mr ridgeway is there anything in our contract with neola

136that would prevent us to go to truman because i like true and better uh no except for the fact that they will not defend it okay so neola basically they will defend their policies if if there's a legal claim against it um if we have a different policy they would not defend it but because we used trum they would defend us on the other end the suggestion is because we were thinking about going to true policies anyway and i think it hit the the things that people were concerned about how could a parent file a complaint as well as what happens if the policies violated yeah i uh agree with don's point i uh i think the true policy is is better written than the neola i think it's more complete the only thing that

137i i think is missing is and maybe this doesn't have to be part of the policy but as we communicate it is you know what is the mechanism for our students to uh uh provide feedback if they think this this is violation maybe it's it maybe it is embedded in that last sentence you just read probably is it does say parent specifically in that last sentence and i think we got a again this is one of those things um you know i didn't even know till that scott brought up a while back that we even had a controversial issue policy which is shame on me but we there's a lot of board policies um i think this one whichever one we approve i think it's important that we communicate this to the community and the

138students so that there is awareness that it exists and then what the remedies are as needed yeah we knew there were some controversial issues happening um over the last year and a half i know that mrs williams had sent the controversial issue policy out to our staff so that they had some guidance because it's tough i mean you're in the teacher in the classroom somebody brings something up what do you say sometimes you're just lost for words because you don't want to get yourself in trouble you don't want to say the wrong thing it may be uncomfortable you know you may have a strong opinion one way or the other and you you know that oh geez as a teacher i gotta teach you both sides of this how am i gonna do this to

139me to make it so that kids are thinking on their own those are difficult things to do from a teacher perspective well i think it helps provide guidance for our teachers and i think it also from on the flip side the student who perhaps finds themselves on the opposite side of the argument with the the boss in the classroom who's the teacher and uh what type of uneasiness that might create so i think communicating to all involved i think will be very helpful okay uh barry to your comment about you know student not being in you know in that wording there probably the student isn't in there because they are not a legal entity they do not have legal standing they are minors so it'd have to go through the parent and then okay well

140now let's make and that makes perfect sense yeah let's make sure the students understand that if you have a concern take it to your take it to your parent and this is the process they'll follow and i i will say every time we've looked at neoliberal policies don and uh aaron and i are our policy committee every time we've looked at these policies comparing neola to throne i mean it is like night and day yeah and it was absolutely night and day tr troon is just better correct oh all the way across the board and therefore we have another agenda item we're going to talk about that leading into the next agenda item yeah too to be fair neil we didn't have any real we had board policies but they were making it up on

141our own before we got neola and that time neola was the only one they were very helpful yeah yeah i'll talk about that a little bit more the differences between the two uh groups but yeah um uh mr ridgeway the what i would uh reiterate is that um i think we need to have some type of formal process for parents that may feel they have an issue that they want to raise as far as that goes i also want to say that you know i know that our harper creek staff has you know 99.99 of them are are great teachers and that we you know generally don't have to worry about those type of issues but um like any situation there's can always be a bad actor someplace and so just in case i think

142we have to have it you know spelled out with a lack of better words teeth to make sure there's that process in place maybe something above and beyond what um troon is even saying as far as a uh i don't know if we want to list a formal process in there as far as you know how a parent goes about doing that placing a complaint smirking i mean are you looking for a form is it pretty is like parent talk to the principal so why is there another step in between that you want or need okay maybe there's something maybe there's a form that is available on the website or something of that nature well it would just paper within our um student handbook uh rights and responsibilities that there is a formal complaint process

143and there's a forum at the end of that okay you know and i know parents will look at me and say well there is there is but a lot of people just like the policy book it's hard to read the whole thing it's there but what what we would more than likely do if we if a concern was raised then we would push people into that direction so is this a formal complaint and here's the here is the document you would fill out for the formal complaint move forward so it sounds like there is a formal process yes there is yeah again do parents know about that that that's the part that i think that you're talking about is we want to make sure people are aware that this is something that they that they

144have they have rights you were ahead of the curve president best i stand corrected i still love it all right anything further on controversial issues all right uh move on to committee meeting updates and the policy committee okay the policy committee uh met and talked about uh really three things one very important that we'd like to vote on tonight so within our reduction in recall policy of certified staff it was noticed by our school district attorney that we did not have an end date for recall and he said that was highly unusual that we should we actually had a situation and i want to try to you know not break any privacy but we had a situation where there was a person on layoff for approximately i think 10 years that we had to ask

145about a job and the attorney just said that we don't think that that's a good practice and so we asked this is tammy chapman and i as uh within the hr world and they had suggested one or two years i went to the policy committee we discussed it and we felt like a two-year time frame for recall would be appropriate to be on a recall list in case someone is laid off and so our suggestion and i believe that sharon had drafted up um a policy make sure i think it's on here which and she highlighted the changes hopefully you took a look at that ahead of time but she very simply added a sentence a certified staff member is eligible for recall under this policy for a period of two years after the effective

146date of layoff we think that's fair to the employee but it also is um fair to the district who can move on if the recall doesn't happen and so we're asking i would say we're asking on behalf of the policy committee i am recommending that we make that change in policy 3131 staff reduction recall and that allows them to be called back without a formal interview process within that two-year period if they are qualified and certified for the job they are recalled because these folks are laid off they are not um released from the district there's there's a difference i mean if someone is released or we don't renew a contract that's different than so they have first right of refusal they would okay and that's it's state law but the time frame is not

147state law we we have as a board uh discrepancy on how long we we do the the list and one of the staff that got laid off for two and a half years um i wouldn't have been able to come back if you could find you know i don't know how to do that more flexible if you got somebody that's good we had a major problem where we laid people off like we didn't in the 80s and everybody was leaving michigan um do we look at can if we have this policy can we can we you know do something or work i don't think it precludes us from looking at that person it just precludes it from being an automatically reinstated in the position okay if that makes sense within the first two years that

148person will be automatically reinstated into a position that they're qualified and certified for yeah don that's the way i was looking at it when we had the discussion at the policy committee meeting that it would be an automatic reinstatement but that person would still be potentially you know hireable in that position but not necessarily automatically if it was more than two years okay all right the other discussions that we had uh one was on controversial issues we've already went through that the policy committee took a look at it we did not have the truly one that was new new to everyone but we also talked about this neola versus troon and so neola northeast ohio is what it stands for association of policies or something um but neola it was a policy group because masb

149michigan association school school boards used to do it they stopped and so most districts in michigan went with neola you're protected legally with those attorneys write those but the difference between neola and now these new policies from true law firm is that niola is gray there's a lot of gray when you read a policy it gives you a little wiggle room you as an administrator you know you can do things a little differently and if you think about a district like harper creek where you might have three elementary schools and one principle is interpreting the policy this way and doing things and another is doing the same exact policy a different way you know that causes some issues the troon policies true and law firm policies are more prescriptive more procedural and so therefore something

150happens then you follow a step-by-step process the other issue that we've we saw it's easier to read just in plain english easier to read niola was very sometimes you read a sentence and you might i'm not sure what that means i mean what am i supposed to do versus the true policies are much more clear and i think that the policy committee is strongly recommending we move to the shroon policy it's about a about a year-long process so if we started now we would implement around july 1st earlier if we could but more than likely july 1st would be the start date so we would stay with neola until we transferred over so we're legally covered as a district we would go through a process by which we there's certain selections you have to make

151as a as a board and as a district and we pull you in when necessary to make those make those calls some of it's administrative you know you may not know all the finance policies we would probably lean on our finance person to help us but you may really want to have a lot of say on our student discipline policies so that we're fair so there's probably certain things where there will be the policy committee will do a lot of work and there's some where the administrative staff will do a lot of work but eventually we'll bring it to the board for full implementation the policy book is about a thousand pages long so it takes some time to get through that entire document so that we understand what it is unfortunately well i shouldn't

152say it that way ironically i've done it twice neola so i've read that book two times mr ridgeway the uh uh difference in cost between neola and troon is it trues a little bit more but it's pretty close is that correct actually the annual subscription costs are identical um i think they're within five dollars but you have to pay for the upfront cost so you know full disclosure i wrote down that the um the cost for us to transfer upfront costs are eleven thousand dollars and then it'd be twenty five hundred dollars a year for annual updates but the eleven thousand is the number that we're talking about tonight because that's a significant amount of money um we're fortunate to be in a position where our you know our finances are are in good shape

153and i think that we can do this without affecting kids and but i think it will affect our kids and our adults um our both our our staff and our parents because they'll be able to read the policies and know what it says instead of interpreting policies and they're not sure what they say you know for my take would be that there's value in spending those dollars in this situation because we're getting a uh you know a better model per se a better mousetrap and um so it sounds like the rest of the board is supportive of making the change because they are more prescriptive in their approach and i think that's it in terms of the policy committee unless i forgot something i don't think that's it you know the only comment i have

154this is more about our committees and our meetings in general you know i think the whole purpose of us having the committees is so that a smaller portion of the board can do do a deeper dive and then come back to us with a much deeper understanding than we might have is having the discussion with seven of us so um i think it's important that we have we ask questions but my bias is always going to be this i don't say this to stifle any conversation but my bias is always to uh respect the recommendations of the any committee any of our subcommittees that come forward i think assuming that we're all doing the best job we can in those subcommittees that's that's how we best make provide that efficiency to the broader board so

155yeah i agree we i think we spent about six months talking about this off and on all right we'll move on if there's nothing further on the policy committee move on to the budget committee yeah this is real quick we just looked at the september end of month um data we talked about the audit presentation it's going to be on the october 26 at six i had mentioned briefly that potentially the hvac group would come in to talk about the engineering you know i will talk to president best specifically to make sure that's okay on the agenda but we could you know do two things at once on the same night i don't think either will take a long time the audit typically is a half hour or so maybe even less and then the

156presentation on the engineering you know they may spend you know a half hour or so explaining to us where they're at in the process beyond that we did talk about uh potentially purchasing a used plow truck for the transportation department they had taken a u one of our other used trucks district trucks and unfortunately it just fell apart so i don't have a recommendation yet to bring to the board but probably at the next meeting i will bring a recommendation to buy a used plow truck it pulls the buses out when they're stuck in the snow it plows a lot when the buses are out doing the route so it just makes it a little easier for all involved that's it on a budget committee well we will meet at the monday before the board

157meeting at 8 am we had talked to me maybe about looking at changing that so i'll just talk to the budget committee about about that uh time wise i think that mrs obermeyer miss obermeyer has some issues getting the the month end stuff at that point so maybe we'll shift it to like wednesday but we'll get with you guys you uh members all right uh looks like we're done with budget committee we'll move on to the call for building committee meeting yep i'd like to call a building committee meeting um sharon was nice enough to write down our members are beau tim and don we'd like to look at short and long-term planning our elementor teachers would tell you that our our buildings are full because the small classroom sizes are relatively small class sizes

158we have lots of special teachers on carts we need to take a look to see what we want to do in the future short-term future with that and then long-term future is where do we put our buildings 20 30 years from now we know that the middle the current middle school will be the next large building project but that's not going to happen until 2036 or seven but we want to plan where's that building gonna go so we don't build something and it's in the way so we wanna do short and long-term planning at the at this at this meeting i would need a zoom and we can do that so zoom is available for any board meeting still i've got it working pretty well in the office now for those and then if people

159wanted to watch community-wise they could zoom in to see what the conversation was about i don't know if you want to throw something out or if we want to have sharon do a do a poll out i'd like to i'd like to see if we can bring in king scott and csm to be at the table at least to listen even through zoom either way i want them to know what we're thinking long term we don't have anything on the ballot or not yet you know we have to figure out what our needs are this elementary needs is going to be important i do i believe all right so we will look for a uh poll from mrs zebel yeah uh to find a date and move on to summer tax collection okay i'll go

160really quick every year we have to approve a resolution to collect summer taxes in general school districts do summer and winter tax harper creek has always done summer tax one of the reasons we do summer taxes so we don't have to borrow money from the state of michigan in the past borrowing money would cost you know forty thousand to a hundred thousand dollars to borrow a few million dollars um as well as attorney fees and so by doing summer tax collection and our casino revenue we don't have to borrow money and so i would suggest we continue with the summer tax collection our community is used to it it's not a change it's just we have to notify the townships current uh millage rates 7.12 for debt and 18 meals for non-homestead or second homes

161and that is an action item and that is next item yes so i just i breeze through it but it's an easy one any comments okay we'll move on to mid end of year student growth goals okay i wanted to show you this so when we do our school improvement planning we go through and and we have to by mde standards have goals specifically growth goals you know we have proficiency would be our m-step test and how we do on an annual basis but growth is really measured more with our nwea test and we wanted you to know and here is our nwa results and when i say that these are our um our benchmark results are beginning of the year you'll notice we're going to fill this in for beginning mid and end of

162the year so that we know where we're at with all of these but our growth goals and went down kind of quickly but our growth goals are very simple at a minimum 85 percent of our k through 8th grade students will will meet expected growth targets in reading and then there's a goal later on and in math um from fall to winter as measured by the nwea test we will when i say we mrs williams uh will and i will report to the board where we're at mid-year and end of the year at meeting that goal it is a it's not an easy goal to to meet the standard is is very high and that's what we want to make sure that our kids are meeting basically getting a year's worth of growth in a

163school year anything mrs williams you'd like to add about the k-8 portion probably what anything you want to add no just as we as you know from last month we shared m-step and our math is significantly low we are seeing um with our bridges which our board approved a few years ago we are seeing some growth where it's implemented so really we're focusing um the principles of myself are getting in classrooms and looking at implementation because as we know it's those habits and routines and using that curriculum we no really just we have a lot of work to do and we know it so it's the priority standards which we keep saying are really important but i'm going to tell you that's really counterintuitive to how we normally show up because everybody wants to put

164all of it in and so we're just going to have to be crystal clear formed by our professionals who i have full trust in and will be supporting we'll also be taking a look at where are we seeing growth so i'm pulling some historical data what buildings grade levels are we seeing growth and what support might our teachers need to ensure that they have clarity on how to get that growth we've talked about several other meetings how do we engage our parents so that they understand i know as a parent i was at an elementary conference and the teacher went over the nwa results and shared where our young person our second grader performed and specifically what we could do at home to support and those are the kinds of conversations that we want conferences

165and beyond conferences to have by law we have to have a irep which is an individual reading plan for all k-3 students who do not meet benchmark there's a protocol and so that's also happening in the back end and engages parents because the plan is not just for what we're going to do here at school it's allowing the parents to know at a very in kindergarten hey are they on track because the third grade reading law still exists and i don't say that to scare people but i just say that that's you know these early interventions are critical so i also want to lift up just the hard work happening on the release time the focus and the professional conversations are going very well and as administrators we have clarity on what we are looking

166for when we're in those spaces it's not our space to talk it's our space to listen and support and so we at our last meeting principal meeting identified what are we looking for so not do we just have this time what are we looking for and there's different um teams that need different levels of support so that's really all i have to add thank you mr ridgeway i just want i want to make sure you are aware um as we move forward you know we as a board have our goals and we'll take a look i think at the measurable part of our goals as we get to the next next piece um if anything that happened with coveted with the board that we have uh we need to take a step back into is

167looking at our goals and saying how are we going to meet and what are we going to measure those goals with i think that's something that we have to focus and target on as we go through this school year or comments all right we'll move on to the i actually do okay sorry um so looking at student achievement yep um which is different but we need to see the growth because it's tied in a lot from the state i know when we look at short-term and long-term planning there's identical goals identifiable goals in business and industry right to be able to meet a certain benchmark a certain level of productivity a certain level of customer service and then you're you know you get the drivers in behind that and so there's a sense of urgency

168if we take and look at meeting state averages for our test scores and getting our students to at least meet the state average and i'm assuming that state average is probably weighted that 85 percent or something meet that but i i recall and remember the great results that your team and homer produced and was always in awe and what are we going to get there rob do we have a three-year goal do we have a one-year goal what is it going to take to get the sense of urgency for our students our community i think we're better than average unfortunately our report card doesn't show that yeah what i would say tim is as i said about the uh the board goal and the board goals and what we want measurable at that point in

169time we need to sit down and say this is what the expectation is okay this is the first one year two year three year on the proficiency end you know student growth is where we really wanna push hard at with our staff and our teachers but we also to see the other and you know getting better great it's a lot of it is urgency and um well it's tough people taking uh you know that whole responsibility pieces these are my kids and i'm going to do what i have to do to be successful i mean and i get that it's not building a widget right you can't just dial it in on the caliper and the meter and so much more involved than that but that's that's good that i'm looking forward to that discussion

170and seeing what we can you know drive harper creek to be even greater anybody else want to add to the discussion all right thank you for that mr martin we'll move on to high school course approvals graduation alliance tch computer science pretty specific right so graduation alliance they are the group that we're using for virtual instruction in the high school they added two classes basically for us to be able to have our students take all courses the board has to approve course guides unfortunately these two courses were not in the course guide to start this year because there are new courses at gradle red alliance we have students that are interested in taking these computer science courses who are virtual students and so i would like the board to approve both of these classes so

171that um they are acceptable for graduation requirements as well as um that they they they're not just wasting their time taking these classes that they count towards their high school completion i guess is the best way to say that i think they're they are legitimate classes we have computer science classes here at the school so kids that are in school can have them we want to make sure kids that are virtual can have those same opportunities do we need to hit tch 102-2 good to go on that one both both the same i mean they're both one semester one one semester two all right uh we will move on to g the added item crosswalk all right i'll talk about it our safety committee which is mr bested senate but we also have a group

172of public safety officers chief of police we principal tech director facilities director we all come together once a month and we talk about school safety and what we can do and one thing that's came up over the over the years really probably for a full year we talked about a crosswalk across beta lake road we see after school middle school kids who are going between cars going across the street we don't think that's safe we added a crosswalk on b drive north across from the middle school and we have a person that goes out and puts a sign up when the when the kids cross but the other way we don't so we talked to the county they came up with an idea and we rejected it it wasn't good enough we felt like just

173putting some paint on the road wasn't enough it wasn't going to stop traffic and so um one time i was on vacation and i saw a location that you as a pedestrian could push a button and if it started up these pedestrian lights flashing on both sides and traffic is expected to stop while the pedestrians go across and we thought that was a good idea we asked the county they came back with a couple of proposals the one proposal that we like is a forty one thousand dollar forty one thousand three hundred dollar project and we said oh wow that's a lot of money i'm not sure if we should spend that on this project and so we asked the shell station to cross the road it's walters dimmick johnny's if they would be supportive

174if we put a crosswalk in because they would be a benefit a benefactor to the crosswalk and this today that's why it's an agenda item we found out that they are going to support that up to fifteen thousand dollars so it's a forty one thousand three hundred dollar project they would support 15. i think that we could use our future some of our future needs money to finish that project it would be 26 300 i believe i do not exceed if i didn't get my math wrong this time and i would recommend that we do it because a it's a project the safety committee has identified but b we don't want to see a child get injured going across that road and we know kids are going to cross no matter what we have bigger

175plans beyond that be just so you know we want to put a trail in uh like a walking path around the entire this entire property that would be step one we've we've asked jim robinson to get a cost for part of the walking path from the middle school to the road um it would it would travel behind the schools kind of next to the baseball softball fields um going over towards the road so kids could walk on a sidewalk with a bigger idea of um doing a pathway that was about 1.6 miles is that right jim yes sir around our entire project that that's going to take a lot more money and so we are in conversation i'll say with some other groups who may be supportive of us getting that done for the community

176but tonight i am recommending that we do the board approves 26 300 do not exceed out of future needs to finish this crosswalk project so as a safety committee member this is a project that i've wanted to see for a long time i've really tried to push um i think just in the last six months to a year it's got more traction and um i don't know about anybody else as far as board members or their audience but i've seen countless students that cross at the exit there on bead lake road go dart across to the shell station i saw it saturday i saw two i would say middle schoolers probably at the at the saturday football games for harper creek junior football maybe they were even you know fifth sixth raiders i can't say

177exactly who they were but darted across um in the middle of traffic and it just this has been a project that i i feel like if we don't get it done there's going to be a tragedy at some point and um you can't put a a price on a on a student's head like that and so i i think this is an absolute no-brainer uh that we uh appropriate the funds and um uh get this put in and i i've seen these types of crosswalks be very effective down in where we um go on spring break in mark island florida and they you know kind of throw back and forth and we can push them and just so if you're picturing it it will be more up towards that um again that excellent accident from

178the administration building on beetle lake road and on the other side of the entrance to the shell station it was you know originally said by the kellown county road department why don't we just have them you know go down to the intersection well you know kids don't do that they take the shortest path and um you know my thought is we have to meet kids where they're at and um if it you know 25 000 helps save a life a life then or an injury i think it's well worth it and hopefully it will be designed um by the road department in a uh in a manner that really does bring awareness to somebody that's going to cross so i hope the rest of the board is supportive would this project be eligible for any

179grants even on like a reimbursement grant or anything like that through the state or federal government we could look for for federal grants we've been very successful in the safety committee of having grants we oh my goodness we had uh i know 225 000 grant that officer mackey had written a few years ago and we did you know the vestibules we had another i think hundred thousand dollar grant that we we received so we've been really successful with that i don't think it fits in in that kind of grant but i have been in contact with the vatican community foundation in terms of supporting a recreational type grant and they've been supportive especially of the trail eight trail that i was talking about um i have to look specifically to see if anybody would else

180would want to support that we were excited that you know we had some commitment from the business across the street but yeah we're always looking for other means to do that if we can i think that's an excellent idea i just don't know of a grant like the top of my head like that this one would fit but sometimes you just get small grants too from smaller entities like thousand dollars at a time and adds right up officer mackey has been you know very uh uh vital in securing some of those other larger grants so he maybe he'll have to have a thought on it so any other comment on the crosswalk okay we'll move on to comments from the audience my name is carlina papias up 252 vomit drive i have a question comment

181regarding the quarantine since we're quarantined so many kids have we thought about distancing the kids more we have a few gyms that are not in use every block we have an auditorium and we have a cafeteria that if we have classes that are bigger and the kids can't distance themselves by six feet in order to avoid quarantine why don't we have the teacher do lessons in the in the gym we have what a big gym and a gym in the back and then we have here that kids can sit all over here not sitting next to each other also regarding the data regarding the quarantine um i was at the commissioner's board meeting last week and i talked to one of the commissioners and he mentioned to me that the data that they are using

182to for quarantine is how many kids tested positive while they were in quarantine so the data that shows that it's 26 percent that would be incorrect because only 25 25 kids tested positive out of the that were in quarantine that would mean that there is a 3.4 percent positive out of the quarantined kids instead of 26 yeah i respect that so that's you know i went there asking about the quarantine order which i found some unsettling news during that time which is a fight that i'm going to take to the health department next week but that's something that could be addressed with the health department regarding what data they are using in order to push the quarantine order than what we are providing them thank you anybody else wish to come forward and make comments

183all right here in cnn we'll move on to action uh policy 3131 staff reductions recalls mr secretary here what's up sorry about that chair calls for a motion that the harper creek board of education approved the change to policy 3131 staff reduction recall to include a recall timeline for certified staff at two years from the date of reduction as discussed and reviewed so support sorry aaron i believe it was moved by mr barry smith i think mr myers beat it was me you know i'm sorry we sound so much alive you guys could be brothers all right it's been supported by dr borders do we have discussion sorry about that all right hearing the scene none please call the roll dr borders yes mr jason smith yes mr barry smith yes mr martin i vote

184yes mrs alwart yes and mr myers yes mr bess yes okay motion carrying 7-0 all right thank you for that next true law firm pc policy service chair calls for a motion that the harvard creek board of education approved the transition to troon law firm policies program with a projected transition date of july 1 2022 i support it all right it's been moved by mr meyer supported by mr barry smith and do we have discussion just for the audience just uh in case somebody's wondering we have mr jason smith and mr barry smith that's why we make the distinction so all right uh hearing and seeing uh no comment uh please call the roll dr borders yes mr barry smith yes mr jason smith yes mr martin about yes mrs albert yes mr myers yes

185and mr bess i vote yes okay motion carried 7-0 all right next item under action is summer tax collection chair calls for a motion that the harper creek board of education adopt the resolution authorizing the collection of summer property taxes as reviewed and discussed so mo support it's been moved by mrs allworth supported by mr barry smith do we have discussion hearing cena please call the roll dr borders yes mr martin i vote yes mr barry smith yes mr myers yes mr jason smith yes mrs albert yes and mr bess i vote yes okay motion carried 7-0 all right high school course approvals chair calls for a motion at the harbor creek board of education approved the harbor creek high school graduation alliance course tch 102 computer science as reviewed and discussed so move support

186it's been moved this is all worth supported by mr barry smith do we have discussion you're going to see them please call the roll mr myers yes mrs albert yes mr barry smith yes mr jason smith yes mr martin i vote yes dr borders yes and mr bess i vote yes okay motion carried 7-0 all right last action item e crosswalk chair calls for emotional the harper creek board of education approve a beetle lake road crosswalk project with a do not exceed cost of forty one thousand three hundred dollars of which twenty six thousand three hundred dollars of the project would be the responsibility of harbor creek community schools support it's been moved by mr meyer supported by mrs all work would you repeat that number yes total cost not to exceed 41 300 of

187which 26 hundred of the project would be the responsibility of harper creek i just want to verify that number uh the only comment i would have is that uh we uh do seek any other any other funding sources to offset that 26 300 if possible any other comment i just want to say um i applaud the shell station for stepping up and showing their support for for this project absolutely that's awesome yeah i agree all right please call the roll mr jason smith yes mr barry smith yes mrs allward yes dr borders yes mr myers yes mr martinez yes and mr bess have oh yes okay motion carried 7-0 excellent all right uh any uh agenda items that you would like to see for the next meeting at this time uh discussion of our practice

188of abstaining and i think we just need a consensus i don't think we really need because it is just a practice okay anything else board numbers all right as always i will reach out by text and email although i think i forgot to do email this time but and if you have anything in the meanwhile please reach out to me and i will make sure we get it on the next agenda so with that being said a meeting adjourned at 9 40 p.m thank you