Richfield School Board Meeting August 17, 2020

001monday august 17th and i called to order this regular meeting of the richfield school board attending this evening's board meeting our board members paula cole peter tensing allegra's meshech christine malik tim paulus and i am crystal brackey we are also joined by superintendent yunowski and several district staff members here in the room who you will likely hear from later in the agenda richfield public schools mission statement is that we strive to empower we strive to inspire and empower each individual to learn grow and excel and that is certainly especially important for us to keep at the center of our meeting given the magnitude of decisions before us and our community as it relates to the 2020-2021 school year we want to welcome those of you watching this meeting live or in the future via youtube

002thank you for being with us you will probably see that as a board we are meeting in person this evening for the first time since mid-march and we are practicing social distancing in this room and complying with the statewide mask order though the executive order allows for the removal of masks while speaking during public meetings subject to open meeting law such as this one i am going to continue wearing my mask and encourage others to do the same if you are watching please consider utilizing the closed caption button in the lower right hand corner of youtube if that makes it easier to follow our conversation after the fact so with that our first item of business this evening is to approve the agenda before us as approval of the agenda is a routine business item

003i will just briefly pause to see if there are any comments or questions related to the agenda seeing and hearing none is anyone prepared to move the agenda as presented well second so we have a motion by ms cole in a second by mr paulus any discussion all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed please say nay the chair boat's eye and the agenda is approved and we have successfully done our first in-person vote in about five months so excuse us as we all get used to being back in person and doing this live instead of via google meet so we now move into the information and proposals non-action items section of the agenda we begin this evening with time for public comment and i am pleased that we have five members of

004our community who have requested time to speak at this evening's meeting before our first comment i want to provide a brief overview of our guidelines as outlined in board policy 216 we welcome comments from members of the public we ask that you ensure your comments are consistent with our policy especially around protecting the privacy rights of individual students and staff members members of the public have three minutes to speak unless translation is required in which case six minutes are provided we have both virtual and in-person ways for members of the community to participate in public comment which we hope encourages participation in whatever way feels safe and accessible for community members thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts with us and know that even though we will not be responding in the moment this

005evening that we take your comments very seriously and you may receive follow-up from us or from a member of the staff so we have as i said five public comments we will go through them in the order in which the request was received and i would just like to apologize in advance for any name mispronunciations that i or others do so our first comment was submitted via video from corey cochran hi everyone my name is corey cochran and i teach 8th grade global studies at rms and i'm writing today or speaking today to share some thoughts and comments and concerns that i have with regards to the fall plan the first one that i want to share has to do with the planning process and how the survey data was used to inform making this

006decision around the hybrid approach i experienced the survey in terms of the data collecting mechanism as being sort of already decided that we were going to be doing a hybrid model in the fall which to me was not representative of what our actual options are and so it felt as if we were already down the path of hybrid model without really considering distance learning and so that's concerning to me from a decision-making standpoint from a sort of democratic processes standpoint of how that decision was made and the why behind it especially if that data is going to be utilized to justify certain approaches um when not all options were fully on the table to begin with um i'm also concerned about what we're going to do when teachers get sick to me it's not a

007question of if they get sick it's a question of when and i did appreciate seeing the in the board packet information about the guaranteed 14 days however i did not see um a plan that addressed um coverage and what we're going to do for those students when a teacher needs to be gone will they will their coworkers be expected to cover for them it's already been incredibly hard to be gone as a teacher in the district we want to be there for students we want that consistency and it's very it has been very hard to find subs so how is that going to be addressed in even harder um circumstances even more stressful circumstances um similarly with that continuity and consistency piece we talk a lot about as educators the need for clear expectations and

008consistency for our students in our classrooms and setting up our classroom environments and i worry that we are putting in a lot of work to design a model for one day in person for secondary students and what happens a month from now if we have to go to distance learning it breaks the continuity um and how it would be prudent of us to start from a more conservative place and provide that consistency and time to plan for our families and students um so that we can rely on this sort of you know standard model throughout the year and if things improve which hopefully they do we can really focus on um upping that um socialization and social peace which we know is important um i just want to know a couple of pieces of research

009and evidence that i'm seeing that really do suggest we need to be taking a more conservative approach right now um this op-ed from the new york times really suggests that we need to be at a place where the virus the spread is less than one new case per 100 000 people per day um which unfortunately hennepin county is not um in the last couple days this research from harvard was published in the new york times also um giving sort of county by county data on whether or not a county has the capacity to reopen schools given new caseload information positive test rates and then also healthcare capacity and hennepin county is in pink which means it's according to this study is not ready to reopen so again going back to the why behind hybrid learning

010i would like to know more about that rationale considering this strong sort of evidence that's indicating we need to take a more conservative approach and the last thing that i want to share with regards to the why behind why distance learning makes sense to me is the impact we're seeing on black and brown communities and we know that black and brown communities are bearing the brunt of coven 19 far more so than white members of the community and so if we think about this as a risk decision and participating in that risk how are we justifying that as part of our racial equity lens that we're trying to bring to this work so again thank you for your time and your commitment to ridgefield and i look forward to seeing where this conversation goes thank

011you okay our second comment this evening is a written statement from darcy emmerfall that will be read by board member tim paulus good evening my concerns are specifically regarding the schedule of two days in person three days distance learning per week for third through fifth graders academic social emotional concerns for students in grades three through five as a mom of three young children and as a sixth grade reading teacher i have a tremendous appreciation for the work of elementary teachers they are teaching our youngest learners the building blocks both academic and soft skills that they will need for the rest of their lives in and out of school it is unreasonable to expect that students in grades three through five will self-direct and stay on task while distance learning three days per week without the

012resources support and physical presence of their teacher not only are our students learning from their teachers they're learning essential skills like conflict resolution empathy cooperation and communication from their peers it is discouraging to me that this will be a scarcity with the current proposal of third or fifth graders being in school only two days per week equity concerns as educators we are continuously evaluating and improving our teaching strategies and communication to ensure that we're reaching all of our students in a time where we are trying to break down the walls of systemic racism provide more opportunity in addition to closing the achievement gap it is counter-intuitive to deny educational access to any of our students the proposed plan for third through fifth grade students not only perpetuates educational inequality it may also cause significant challenges

013for families who don't have the job flexibility to teach their children from home three days per week the proposed schedule will also be problematic for families who have a child in k2 and a child in grades three through five instructional care questions and concerns the email the parents sent on august 13th made references to instructional care for children of tier 1 workers yet included no details where is the instructional care coming from when i received an email from richfield fun club on august 14th there was no mention of instructional support our fun club staff expected to teach our students it is my understanding that fun club is not directly connected to rps if they are expected to teach our students have they been made aware of that will they be able to facilitate the synchronous

014learning components of the hybrid model what are the options for people who are not tier one workers but still need care for their children for many parents who are unable to work from home the cost of care for their children three days per week could cause financial crisis for the family thanks again for your consideration our next comment uh is from laurie hummiston it is also a written comment that will be read by christine malik i would like to request an addition to the requirements for student athlete participation in sport in richfield public schools temperature checks logged prior to entry to the team environment the pool the ball field etc this was done this summer during st louis park synchro swim summer club we are also doing this prior to entry to vulnerable vulnerable patients

015at my workplace it doesn't take long and has been effective at early identification of otherwise non-symptomatic people it's especially effective when a log is kept it enables the ability to follow someone who runs cool like me with an average of 96.5 to 97 degrees who then could pop up to 99 to 100 degree temp if prior readings aren't logged the three degree jump in temperature may be missed or written off as a slight change from an assumed normal temperature of 98.6 you could compare this with a 3 degree jump assumed for an assumed normal 98.6 to 101.6 which would be enough to necessitate a test to be completed thank you for allowing me this written comment and our next comment is from douglas christ who is here with us in person and is making his

016way up to the microphone i think you still need to turn it on oh great thank you hello yes there you go my name is it may be working yeah scott can you hear it i can we'll wait just a moment and as as this is a good opportunity to share we are in the new district boardroom for the first time so we are also working through technology for the first time so thank you for bearing with us that one's working all right my name is doug klice ritual class of 1980 and i live with my wife julie also ritual class of 80 at our family and our family at 6745 lakeview i'm here tonight for our daughter a senior at richfield high school i felt it was the least i could do for her

017to be here tonight to convey our family's thoughts on the hybrid model for 6th through 12th graders being presented as part of the agenda item tonight for fall planning update as we all know over two weeks ago families were requested to complete a survey about back to school options in a survey stated at the beginning that students if not choosing a distance learning model would be able to be going back to school using a hybrid model and the hybrid models presented to us and for which we selected our choices all indicated that students would be in school at least two days our family was happy with a minimum two day a week model as presented in the options but to our surprise within a week of the survey being completed families were sent an email

018with a hybrid model for sixth to twelfth graders of one day a week that was not presented to us in the survey and essentially lacks any in-school academic course instruction we are dismayed and very disappointed in this model especially since it wasn't one of the choices on the family survey in reading through the presentation emails and board documentation the chart on page 18 of the planning presentation shows 66 percent of the families one of their high schoolers and 60 of the families one of their middle schoolers back in school the chart on page 23 shows that nearly 51 percent of the high school staff and 62 percent of the middle school staff wanted to distance learn or instruct in an email updated date at 8 14 explaining the administration's reasoning behind the hybrid model being

019presented the fourth bullet points of the items taken into consideration when creating the hybrid model states that staff preferences allowing teachers who prefer distance learning the opportunity to continue this model of instruction also the teams listed on page 4 of the presentation look to be made up of just staff and administration along with these items and what is stated in the last paragraph of the hybrid model section in the 814 email it appears that staff choices were considered above those of the students and families of grades six through eight in email dated 814 in the pods section third paragraph it is stated that at the secondary level students have classes with multiple teachers throughout today and no single group of students has the same schedule making pods not possible for core instruction and that the

020only safe way to bring in our secondary students and have them in these year-long pods is with an advisory day only this decision of requiring secondary students to be in pods itself leads to soon as not being able to return to school for academic instruction even for two days knowing that the pods are not conducive to a high school student's schedule with students meeting moving between classrooms were there any other options considered other than pods at the secondary level trying to explain to our daughter how the administration ended up with grades 6 through 12 being in school just one day a week and not even for academic construction has been a challenge with her knowing some of her teammates from holy angels on the gymnastics team as ritual co-ops with holy angels that they are

021going to school two days a week and some of the girls from her girl scout troupe who attend school in edina in lakeville and knowing that they're going to school two days a week all using a schedule that is essentially what was option three in a family survey has made this all the more difficult to explain and for her and us to accept other neighboring districts are using the hybrid model that's basically option three in the survey in which students aren't class class two days a week did the administration work at all with other school districts when developing our hybrid model to see what works there and what they were doing there doesn't appear to be any plans in place for bringing secondary students back to school more days than one with the only reference

022being the last bullet point on page 24 of the last page of the presentation that states that advanced modeling or planning would have to be needed to move to a less restrictive model and with the administration stating that grades 6 through 12 are going to remain in pods the whole year it appears that one day a week is the best it's going to be for the whole year for grades 6 through 12. i think the administration needs to be more straightforward with the students and family of secondary students regarding this closer to my heart i have a concern about how this model will affect the music programs at rms and rhs band in choir it appears that individual band lessons are proposed for one of the possible activities in the afternoon of a student's advisory

023day at richfield high school but what about choir students and what are the options going to be for band and choir group practices and performances assuming the hybrid model for grades 6 through 12 goes forward as presented feel this administration needs to explain directly to the 6th and 12th graders in terms they can understand i.e no asynchronous synchronous type statements how they came to this decision and whether this model of one day a week is essentially going to be in effect all year at best i feel the older students at least deserve this explanation and i know my daughter would like one i asked the administration staff to consider a model that brings secondary students into the schools at least two days a week as was presented in a family survey we completed at least

024sometime during the school year thank you for your time thank you very much our final comment this evening is from stephanie macabee it is a written statement that will be read by allegra smishak rps school board this comment is related to the last school board meetings discussion on sros student resource officers i am grateful i could observe the board's discussion of this on youtube video one of my observations was i am concerned that over the past few years the 13 out of 16 students receiving citations whose demographics were identifiable were black indigenous people of color students it is significant that the sro has had autonomy autonomous meetings with students with parent or guardian present possibly but with no school staff present is this to avoid having to list this in the student record that is

025if a staff person is present does this have to go into the student's file i believe that to be fair school staff needs to be present because i do not believe that it is only students of color who require a resource officer to speak to them and these citations can later in life come up on the screen if a person is pulled over by the police causing an officer to possibly treat that person more aggressively and lend energy towards the school to prison pipeline i suggest strongly that meetings with officer and student consistently have a school psychologist counselor social worker present who can help to identify what may be troubling a student that person could offer other assistance and decrease anxiety about going to jail or even prison i also request psychologists counselors and or

026therapists make rounds at schools they may observe unfair treatment by staff with students or even parents including ignoring the same behavior of a white student that they may cite a black indigenous person of color student for if this is occurring it needs to be addressed i believe it is also significant that the questionnaire commented on by students asks if the student agrees or disagrees with going to an sro if they are having problems or needed help this question in itself is inadequate it does not allow for input on whether students would prefer to be able to talk to a counselor psychologist or therapist about their problems a police officer's training is not to be a counselor i ask for less funding for student resource officers and for more of the safe schools levy to go

027towards psychologists and therapists the spring up of safe schools funding for other services could be used for consultant services fees with pre-existing state license providers this would be less costly than hiring a single staff person and would allow specialists to be consulted that are more trained for the issues the student may be having finally please be aware that the number of neither agreeing or disagree responses to the questionnaire i agree is significant people may not wish to say they do not want the police in one situation but do want them in another i am in support of less uniformed police presences at our schools but i ask for a single specific officer with interests in the youth i hope that the students when they get to have a meeting and discuss sros further get to

028speak freely enough that even if they express emotion they are not judged as uncouth or aggressive these issues have been simmering in the psyche of people in the city nation and world and current protests and events exemplify this i request that a specialist or specialist be present at this slash these meetings that may diffuse or articulate what the students are trying to express there are local therapists that have specializations in helping people through trauma and the twin cities have certainly been experiencing significant trauma of light thank you thank you and thanks to everyone who contributed this evening the next opportunity for public comment will be at our board meeting on monday september 21st and i look forward to working with anyone who would like to address the board that evening i also just want to

029acknowledge that that is a long ways away and people are thinking through a lot and we are all in the midst of some extraordinary decisions and so i just also want to encourage people that you can contact us at any time all of the individual board members are on the richfield public schools website our emails are there our phone numbers are there and we certainly welcome hearing from you between now and september 21st as well the superintendent update this evening contains the fall planning discussion on everyone's mind as we look into the future for richfield public schools this fall before i turn things over to the superintendent i i just want to acknowledge that there are some things that we do have answers to and made decisions around we are eager to hear more of

030those details this evening there are also many things that are still in the process of being determined um and as we work with our staff to determine some of our specific plans especially as we continue to monitor public health data and listen to the expertise of health officials and really that is the focus of the next several weeks is on ensuring we do have a strong clear understandable and safe plan for the start of the school year and many more details are still going to be coming in communication to staff and families and also in our next board meeting on tuesday september 8th so with that i will turn things over to the superintendent all right so thank you i'm here tonight to present to you our plan to provide education to the students of

031richfield public schools this fall and obviously this is a year different from all others for those looking for a summary board packet pages three four and five show the outline of our overall plan there are also approximately 200 pages of supporting data of which will be tightened up as we move forward for overall communication tonight i will talk about some of these things more in depth our plan begins by acknowledging the guidance from the governor along with the cdc center for disease control along with the mdh minnesota department of health school decision making begins by knowing that regardless of what the schools are offering in general distance learning will be a choice all year long for families making that decision that means that a family can choose and commit to distance learning regardless of our

032overall district learning model our next step is to give consideration of the current coveted infection rate in hennepin county the case rates per 10 000 provided for a five step structure including zero to nine cases allowing in person for all students ten to nineteen per ten thousand allows in person for elementary and hybrid secondary 20 to 29 hybrid for all students 30 to 49 mean hybrid for elementary and distance for secondary and 50 or more for 10 000 hennepin county residents means distance learning for all students current hennepin county rates are between 23 and 24 meaning that today's plan is hybrid for all students it means also that we'll be constantly reevaluating case rates and making decisions based on current updated public health data we planned throughout the summer with 15 core teams leading planning

033with members of all bargaining units and teams from across the district it's this distributed leadership that created general support for our overall plan it's also important to note that while our team is supportive we are also fully aware and committed to the need for ongoing partnership and ongoing voice with our team members and community members as we continue to gather further detail to each component of our overall plan as mentioned before distance learning is a choice and an opportunity for any family or any student students choosing this model will be asked to commit for a grading period either 9 or 12 weeks commitments will be made but could be adjusted quicker if space is available it's also important to note that much of our summer work was making our distance programming better all students in

034distance will receive some synchronous live teaching there will be small group discussions and interventions along with the opportunity to engage later if live instruction is missed our distance learning will be much improved and designed over months of teamwork across our district hybrid and in-person programming bring students into the building in person requires a set of safety precautions including maintaining 50 capacity in the classroom social distancing enhanced cleaning and masks while there are technically different requirements for in-person school and hybrid the maintaining of safety is a major focus of each option i want to discuss hybrid the most this evening because our plan is to bring in all students using a hybrid model and i really want to focus on a couple of the details because they have driven much of our planning the largest piece

035to discuss is the need for pods pods are small groups of students typically a classroom that reduce exposure between groups and individual students this is easiest to understand in an elementary classroom where students enter the classroom of a teacher they remain in that pod or classroom for the entire day maintaining pods or small groups minimizes exposure to other students and is much more complicated at secondary in one classroom at elementary one student would be around one teacher and approximately 17 students at secondary and i'll discuss as i continue in further detail create some particularly large challenges in elementary hybrid we're looking to bring in our students as frequently as possible while maintaining a pod and still able to provide effective cleaning for our buildings k2 would be in for four days per week with wednesdays

036used for distance learning along with a full building wide cleaning grades three through five would be in for two days per week with half of the students on monday and tuesday the other half on thursday and friday again wednesday is used for cleaning the days when these students in grades three through five are not in the building are also used for distance learning essential child care for critical workers is then provided during the time where students are in a distance model using our staff our paraprofessionals to provide a structured learning environment for those students qualifying under the state definition of critical secondary school provides an added layer of challenge in maintaining a pod each secondary teacher has a content license while elementary classroom teachers are able to teach in every subject in secondary teachers are

037licensed to teach only one subject this licensure provides one of the large challenges that students need to see many different teachers to receive their content when we paired the licensing issue with feedback from students and parents given this past spring we decided to create and use a positive method of advance enhanced advisory providing advisory check and connect and a range of in-person supports and additional options to all of our secondary students in middle school the building would be used two days per week with this model with eighth graders split and providing leadership support to the younger students with sixth grade on one day and seventh on the other in high school grades 9 and 11 pair up on one day with grades 10 and 12 paired up on a different day finally with rsep our

038alternative program also one day per week set based on student needs also providing a greater number of asynchronous or taped activities that can be accessed at any time which appeals more to our alternative learners here you see an example of who would be in buildings on which specific days including essential child care education and also the staggered opportunities for each of our students transportation creates the next challenge structures to keep kids safe include assigned seats and routes with enhanced cleaning we need to remove the hazardous bus service to support safely getting our students to school through crossing guards and patrol we also are needing to move start times due to the 45-minute routes up from 30 minutes or less because of enhanced cleaning needs this will move centennial and stem to a 7 30 start

039sharing the hills and rdls to 8 15 and the middle school in high school to a 9 am start i also want to point out that we will continue to re-evaluate our model as we continue receiving data based on case rates we are prepared for distance hybrid and in-person models based on changing hennepin county coveted numbers we did absolutely send a survey to all rps family and received responses feedback and information from over 3 400 respondents i'm proud of our team members for our diligence and work in this area and voice is very important and has gone into the planning of this model over 50 percent of all families regardless of grade or ethnicity wanted their students in school over 35 percent of all families wanted fully distance learning beyond that one-third of families wanted

040their students in as much as possible with another 30 percent wanting part-time in school overall african american families preferred sometime or 50 percent in school with some time or 50 percent out meaning they wanted their students in more frequently if at all possible latinx families also had similar responses wanting students in school a significant period of time based on parent input what we looked at were models that would have students in as much as possible while still maintaining safety standards when looking at our transportation survey we received the most public support for eliminating hazardous street crossings this data helped us to make decisions about transportation when surveying staff staff response strongly preferred online instruction especially at the secondary level with approximately 20 percent of the secondary level wanting in-person learning it's important to remind us

041that pods at secondary are required for safety instruction where students cross pods cannot safely occur due to licensure issues one student having three or four classes could be exposed to up to 100 students rather than the 17 students in one classroom at the elementary level thus to summarize our recommendation and plan we're planning to begin our year with distance learning for the first week during this week we'll have individual family and student teacher conferences we'll distribute all learning materials and prepare all students and families for optimal learning we'll fully launch the hybrid model on monday september 14th truly understanding why we're choosing this specific model requires an understanding of our philosophy along with our capacity looking at the survey data we went to launch an in-person side of hybrid that maintained pods and safety measures

042while having students in as much as humanly possible we also wanted to prioritize similar to the governor the younger students due to the reduced evidence of their transmission of covet we need to acknowledge that our classrooms are funded and staffed at 25 students per classroom but are only able to hold about 75 percent of that number during covert we also need to acknowledge that based on a family selection of a distance model somewhere around 30 percent of our staff will solely be used to provide distance learning finally we need to add that we are only able to transport about 40 percent of the students we typically transport at any one time when you put that together that means that we can accommodate about half of our students on any given day at the most on

043the surface you can certainly suggest that our pros model does not look like the parent preference on the surface you can also suggest that our proposed model does not look like the staff presence we believe that we are bringing in the students to the greatest extent possible reduction in student numbers in school days are due to reductions in capacity created by reduced staffing reduce classroom capacity and reduce transportation ability wednesday at elementary is being used for cleaning at secondary we looked at many models we we could look and could go back and look at a block schedule where students only went to four classes daily however even in this model assuming that students have half the same students in every class and half being new each student would be exposed to between 50 and 100

044students daily then a different 50 to 100 the next day and up to eight teachers that model is impossible while maintaining pods and the main added safety needed at secondary school that aligns to the reality that secondary schools are similar to adults secondary students are similar to adults in their transmission of covet i also want to add that there are many details not in my presentation that are either in the overall board packet or continuing to be refined in the coming weeks special education for example where case managers will be working with families and possible and possibly expanding their numbers of days in the building depending on their individual needs up to four days for each of those students there's also not enough detail about activities where the high school league has launched four sports

045and we're continuing to examine the best ways and levels of student participation that are appropriate for our district finally i want to acknowledge that this report is in the superintendent update and not a new business item for vote the school board role and the superintendent role can be confusing the board is the governing body and remains a role overseeing vision policy and evaluating the superintendent as superintendent i'm delegated the role of leading and managing many of things we discuss at the board are not action items start times instructional models and many of the programs we use in our district are not voted on by the board they all they are however discussed overseen and given guidance and feedback which provides administration clear direction on areas of focus improvement and implementation saying that out loud provides

046a great opportunity to turn it back to the board for input questions and guidance uh and before i do open it up for board member comments and questions and i know we are going to have many of them this evening i i just want to build on steve's last point and just say that as a board we are responsible uh whether or not we vote on any given item especially this one we are responsible and for the reasons that steve outlined our role is to advise the superintendent and it is to hold the superintendent accountable which we will do in this process and want to acknowledge that we will be held accountable as well by members of our community as we should be um regardless of what our final plans might be and whether or

047not we ever take any formal vote related to this um so i think it was important for me to say that out loud and for people to hear that we are responsible and we are accountable regardless of whether or not we vote on this item this evening we are having a discussion and that is so that the public can hear our discussion it is so that the superintendent can hear what is on our mind as individual board members but i also want people to know that the superintendent has been spending a lot of time with each one of us as individual board members over the last several weeks and having conversations and hearing our questions and concerns and so what we are going to be talking about tonight is just a continuation of what has

048already been underway for quite some time so with that i'm going to open it up and in our virtual meetings we've been doing this in alphabetical order but we are just going to throw the doors wide open here and i'm going to see who would like to go first we [Laughter] i'm afraid i'll never stop um well and actually that's good it's okay to just ask some of the questions and comments and we can do multiple rounds okay if that's fair um i i do want to highlight then to start with um there has been concern raised about the survey options and what ultimately the plan was and as a parent i looked at the survey and said hybrid models in person you know schooling and and in no way did i think it was

049going to be you know strictly advisory for secondary um i have the opportunity to hear more feedback on that but we have not communicated well nearly well enough how we came to that decision that it would be you know it's interesting when people said it was important for students to be in school they said of course the academic contact and then they listed a number of ancillary things and we're providing all the ancillary things in that secondary one day but none of the traditional academic content it seems and so i think we've that we we haven't been clear enough on that and the other part of that that that people have asked about and i and i certainly understand is if we were aware of that at the time why would we phrase it or

050where to present it in a way that suggested hey do you want your students in school even if it means it's going to be largely you know we didn't include now of course it would be a 7 000 page document if we included all the details but that's a challenge right so that that's something we have some some explaining to do on because it it does seem to be that the the the loudest concern raised is this is not what i thought i filled in in the survey it doesn't seem to matter now we we've presented it and sort of bent the results to sort of support it but i don't think the question necessarily matches what we've offered even though it does in some ways it doesn't in others so i'm i guess i

051would respond to bent it to match i would say we are not providing what specifically i would acknowledge is asked by for about the parents um so we have 60 of our parents that i would read the survey and i would interpret it as would like their kids in every day pretty much all day if at all possible or a reasonable percent would like that um i'm going to also acknowledge that we would we are not presenting a plan that is what the staff are asking for either where there is a percentage that are looking at distance learning we are trying to set up a situation where we are bringing in kids as often as we can um there are capacity issues specifically at elementary um there are also licensure and teaching issues and pod

052issues um did we know those pieces i would say districts are learning now as things continue on as districts open up in the south and students go from class to class we are seeing districts shut down already we are seeing districts that have not chosen a pod model um end up in a situation where they're not able to provide more than a week in instruction and colleges i believe the most recent one north carolina just shut down today after one week of classes what we're also finding is that if we look at trying to provide in person and try to provide academic content there is an assumption that there are teachers of all licensure area present to do that so i'll pick a subject that we don't have for example and imagine that we taught

053japanese in our school if our japanese teacher has a physical health accommodation and can only teach from a distance we are now not able to staff that class in person and so as we look at all of the possible staff licensure area situations we a are not able to have teachers teaching across content areas that they're not trained for we also are not able to staff every single piece of our building and so at k2 and 35 we are bringing in kids to the literal fullest extent that we can where we are able to cover it with teachers in the classroom and have the physical capacity for space some things people have brought up are using space at other buildings that are open it's not a function of space it's a function of having k-6

054licensed teachers be able to teach the sections and then at secondary it is both not doing the additional exposure that is protected by pods which then makes it very challenging to do content from a licensed perspective um and trying to keep kids safe while having them in as much as we felt that we could do that from a safe perspective and and and i i certainly understand that and i appreciate it and and that is that is a a real logistical concern and a hurdle that that's almost impossible to get over and i and actually i find what's rolled out is thoughtful but but it is without knowing how the parents would respond i suppose we could get into all this detail and they might not have chosen it and we didn't necessarily know the

055staff opinion at the time either and so that there's there's things where those those two bits of information meld together i guess and that's something for the public that you know that we have explaining to the public to do is all and so we we're starting out tonight it seems absolutely that's okay so we've we've definitely shared a couple of things and our communications professional jennifer valley is sending out letters on a very fast basis um and we are learning the things that are appreciated by the public and we are learning the things that are not and so we are also um continuing to develop details as we work on each of those those components and so we continue to produce communication documents and we'll continue to share all the way up to the start

056of school and obviously beyond as things will continue to adjust all the way through if i could pick one one thing you you'd mentioned um one of our greatest concerns is is actually the space and managing the number in a building and and also transportation and the elementary plan almost i i do have a concern about the four days for k2 and with with half of the three fives present at all times because that will that means you know half the 75 of the students will be present in the building at the same time i mean it'll be lower based on opt-outs so if one assumes 30 for distance learning it'll be a number it'll be roughly half 30 to 40. it should be 50 or lower across the building yes okay so i just

057wanted to make sure we we understand that and that we're not straining the busing and we're not straining the the number of people within a building we believe we're at the maximum we can transport which is also why we're removing the hazardous crossings we're recommending that later in our policy tonight um and that was supported at again at most i don't think our parents would prefer that but that is what what they would work with the best um and actually accommodates our plan thanks i i'll give it back to others to jump in for fear that i'll just keep rolling so i'd like to add a little bit just based on what you said and what i have some of the questions that i have asked over the past couple of weeks and one of

058the things that i really appreciate about what they are doing on that one day and at the beginning of school for all of our students is taking some time to prepare them for distance learning and looking around at what steve already mentioned about other schools and colleges and how as groups and schools and students have come together rates have gone up and places have closed i think it's important to prepare for that possibility as we move forward so if we are forced to go to distance learning in the next couple of months doing this work up front first with our students while they're in our buildings will pay off for us in the end so i think that is a really important point to make that that is part of that advisory is also focused

059on getting those students ready and providing supports for them so that they are able when when if we go to distance to to handle that better and those skills will go with them as they go to college because a lot of college classes are online and distance even without covent so they're it's a valuable skill either way i think so i do appreciate that aspect of it and i like that we're doing it across the board in all of our schools and just i'll just tack on the busing i had made a suggestion and i don't know what like what eventually came of it but since minneapolis and st paul are all distance learning do could we get access to their bus drivers or something since they're not being used and we need people to

060transport our students is that an option available to us um i know that mr holgi has explored outside options we did develop a model that we felt was sustainable and we were able to maintain our schools on three start times either way we had to go to 45 um 45-minute bus route times and the biggest component from transportation is removing the hazardous crossing piece but we feel that given given the plan we're presenting we're actually able to transport the students we are looking to and additional buses additional buses really aren't the barrier um in in the shorter term it it's more around classroom capacity is the biggest piece and then the amount of staff we actually have available in addition to the license staff that we have in those areas i want to repeat something

061you said because i think it's important that people who are listening hear it which is yes we are preparing ourselves for the possible possibility of distance in the future and we will continue to monitor rates but as you look at as you look at schools that have opened and have not followed a pod model they are moving to distance and they're moving that way extremely quickly and so we're going to continue to monitor rates we're going to continue to monitor and adjust and we're going to make sure that we are ready for whatever comes our way and increases or decreases in numbers so a couple of comments um first first of all i very much appreciate uh you know the comments that you made relative to the importance of the pods at secondary um i

062think that um we we need to definitely be aware of the the one thing that we do know about this virus and about the capacity we have to try to mitigate spread of the virus is that the only tool we have is social distancing that's that's been really clear i think throughout the course of the pandemic that the most effective tool for mitigating the spread of the virus is social distancing so i think that that's um that's just a reality and then it's also clear that these secondary age students do transmit the virus in a different way you know we have pretty good evidence now that secondary students will transmit that virus differently than the younger kids so i'm appreciative of the challenges of mitigating covid in the at the secondary school i think the

063other aspect of it which is just to sort of build on the point that you made is that there are several reasons why we will potentially why individual students or individual pods could be moving to distance themselves quite rapidly so obviously if we do have a covet case in one of our buildings and we you know we have to have a number of students who are going to be out for a defined period of time and or staff on the basis of close contact the only way that we can mitigate that outcome is by keeping the social distance staying rigid and so this is a very difficult but real reality for our students at secondary that it's just going to simply be a different experience for them i think the other aspect of it is

064that a confirmed case of covet is not the only reason why students will be missing a lot more school this year than they would have in the there past all sorts of viruses we all know about them common colds you know that cause you to have a fever and a cough and you have no idea do i have coronavirus or not and so you need to stay home until you are better and so even if you're not out for the full 10 days you know with a non-covid illness you're still out and so there's going to be a lot of folks who are going to be doing distance learning even if they really want to be in school they're going to be they're going to be out and i think the other element of this

065is that the quickest way for us to see our as steve mentioned the quickest way for us to see our opportunities for in-person learning sort of melt away is to start having cases so the best way that we can preserve those opportunities is to be extremely vigilant about following the guidance on maintaining social distancing universal masking and staying home when you're sick and so i think that um that's a difficult reality but it's a real one let's talk about that for a second because i'm not expecting people to read immediately through 200 pages of the board packet um but these are the things that we'll be communicating out so imagine a student shows up with a cold or a runny nose or a fever they are immediately home for 10 to 14 days depending um

066if that student then is diagnosed with covet all of the students that have had exposure are then out for 10 to 14 days as are all of the staff in a pod model that's one staff and 17 students give or take at secondary in a non-pod model that is upwards of eight staff and could be up to 200 students at secondary and so the non-pod model creates this situation that makes it extremely challenging to maintain at elementary obviously it is much easier when a teacher goes into the classroom and can have their students all day long license your inability to teach multiple subjects at secondary absolutely makes us much more vulnerable to the risk of covid and and again echoing where i started and where you talked about dr tensing a student who wants to

067come to school with a cold shows up to school with a cold and they are isolated and then asked to stay home for 10 days pending a covid test and so it it becomes a lot of students missing school as individuals as groups of seven as as pods or as up to 200 students and eight teachers depending on who who they are intermingling with yeah so i think philosophically it does make sense and i think christine and others have touched on this that um we do i mean we know that distance is going to be a component of the experience for all of our students and doing distance right and doing distance as effectively as we can is important um and then i think the other thing that philosophically makes sense is we say okay

068well let's let's try to get those social interactions because we know how important those are let's try to get them as much as we can but knowing that that's that's going to be probably the the second you know that's going to be the much more difficult area to commit to and that's going to also be the area that will be potentially falling back that is the issue that everybody spoke of in the spring is social emotional and mental health of children was something we needed to put some additional time in to focus on um and that is where that extra commitment um to do that work has really come in can i i'm gonna ask a direct follow-up question um so i'll be brief but i did hear from one of our teachers today who

069asked the question about what happens when a student is symptomatic um how is it determined that it is actually safe for them to come back because sometimes symptoms go beyond 10 days or 14 days so who is actually making that determination and how can we have confidence that we are not going to just be putting people right back so what we know what we know medically is that um shedding of infectious uh code sars kobe 2 is something that we have studied we there are studies with folks who have been infected with cyroscov2 and they will shed live virus for about 10 days beyond the onset of the illness after about 10 days more than 99 of people are no longer shedding live virus you can still detect viral dna in those folks so if

070you do a pcr test you may get positive um but that those virus those viral particles are not infectious and this is reported out in the new england you're doing the journal of medicine this um this spring the other thing that we know is that the more severe your illness the longer you shed so that's where we have some advantage in that younger people tend to get less sick so small children and teenagers are going to shed virus for a shorter duration of time than older folks and so the folks who are sickest and end up in the hospital or end up in the icu they may shed virus for 21 days so those are some of the kind of medical facts on which which would guide the guidelines on when it's safe to return

071so it was those studies that led cdc to modify their return to work and really return to school as the same concept from 14 days to 10 days with being three days beyond fever and so fever is the most specific symptom all of the other symptoms whether it be cough runny nose sore throat body aches all the other stuff that can go along with covid those symptoms could be due to many different things and don't necessarily correlate with shedding a virus it's fever that tells you that your body is actively fighting off of this infection so that's where our return to based on the guidelines that are both from the minnesota department of health and cdc and dr clarkson and her team have been doing quite a bit of work on this that's where you

072end up with some fairly good guidance on when a person is out ill when can they come back and we have a number of scenarios that dr clarkson could review with you in detail on exactly you know sort of if this then that and i think there might be 10 plus different kind of sets of parameters that will guide the different guidance that we would give um the other element on that is you know we're going to take into account does this person have a have a covid test or not are they coveted positive are they covered negative or are they covered unknown um there are those folks who will have a fever and they'll have covid like symptoms and they'll go see their doctor and they'll get tested they'll get negative the doctor will

073check them out and we'll realize oh i guess you've got strep throat you know we have an alternative diagnosis here so we have an alternative explanation for the symptoms and we know it's not coveted therefore you can return in a more expeditious manner um same thing would be true for any number of other febrile illnesses that would be common among people in the fall if the person chooses not to get medical attention and chooses not to be covet-tested that's where you get that 14 days so that's and as always we're incredibly fortunate to have a medical doctor sitting on our school board and it looks like dr clarkson who is not a medical doctor but uh has expertise in education is going to share more and i think well and i'll steal her thunder i

074think uh dr tensing brought it all up but in the board packet we do have the decision tree um that that kind of walks us through all of those things which was one of one of dr clarkson's teams worked on there's any added detail please and dr tensing and another community member are part of our planning team so their expertise are very much appreciated as well as we are developing a covid guide and we have a covered coordinator which the district is required to have that oversees that whole process which is a licensed school nurse who works closely with the department of health and then also the department of health is creating these teams these response teams to help districts respond when there is a case encoded in how we communicate that out and what

075the expectations are about how long people are out and their return to school so it's not ever the district just going for the world thank you and i think again just getting into that secondary uh piece the the difficult reality is is that the more you increase social contact uh the more you're just increasing the odds it's just math unfortunately so thank you yep so i can lead off with something related to what pete just said so um i guess i want to bring up some of the potential challenges of providing athletics and i i recognize how important that is but i really want us all to be aware of kind of the choices we're making by offering that so we all just talked about the fact that we are limiting students in the building

076to one day per week and we're separating them into pods and then we're providing for them to participate in sports after school somewhere that it looks like there will be more than one day a week and that will inevitably intermix these pods that we are separating out in our school days so if there's a positive case in that mix it's going to come back to the teacher our coach is probably a teacher and students that are in different pods because not all the same kids in the sport play in the same pod i asked about if there was a way to do that but they're different grades i think that that's next to impossible i just think it's something that we have to be aware of does it make sense to provide that and mix

077these pods in that way and we just if if that's what we're going to do i just think we need to be really aware that that's the choice that we're making that if we do that i think our athletic department and activity director are currently working on how do you do these things in the safest possible way and really trying to figure that out between being outside between being masked and then trying to figure out what things are acceptable and what are not i would say that the minnesota state high school league has done a great job of i would say allowing a lot of activities as we look at things like scrimmages and games which obviously intermingle students across buildings even in addition to across classrooms i would say i don't know enough medically

078to have a recommendation there i would say that i know that i'm glad we are looking into that and trying to figure out what are the ways to do that safely and so that we can decide which of the state high school league rules or suggestions are appropriate and where where do we want to be more strict if that's something that we want to have as a conversation those are things we are looking at and trying to figure out where is that right place for for activities and athletics and as i look through all this the kind of thing that comes out to me is to like what you're talking about to take into cdc take into account cdc guidelines and mdh guidelines and not just what we hear from minnesota state high school league

079but really to go a level up from what those recommendations are and make sure that like you said we're trying to do that as safe as we possibly can i think it is hard to try to find that that sweet perfect spot you know and speaking with uh one-on-one no which of which there isn't you know in talking to our band teacher who has a list of five things at the middle school that would make it more safe even then the ideal is obviously to hope for sunny days where he can bring them outside and do that when possible and then doing things over the internet just because the huge difference between inside and outside so there are a lot of a lot of areas where we're going to continue to collaborate with our staff

080and continue to collaborate with our families and really tighten up tighten up details and really make some of those ancillary next steps of decisions not because i certainly am not presenting to you something tonight that has every decision made there are lots of conversations about what exactly will the instructional day look like down to some of those finer details and some of the finer details of everything else can i ask the athletics and i agree with the sentiment that we we would not really do well to rely on the health guidance of the state high school league um who you know it breaks their heart to not offer the app you know the activities they really they they try their darndest to make sure the the activities run they did what it is within their

081their guidance that or their rules even that that if the school is by case count on distance learning then they can only do remote practicing but it is open right for if we have students who if we are in the hybrid range like we are and students opt into the distance learning how do they get treated um are they are they allowed to participate on you know the monday to friday practice uh they are they are yeah and then from an activity bus perspective because i know that was a question that you had also asked uh we are currently looking at our transportation models and we are um polling drivers to make sure that we have drivers that would be able to provide that if an option and so we should have that answer in

082the coming weeks and you also you just mentioned band and and and um like music coral there are some special specialist classes that that i imagine fayed will be outside as much as possible as well right in that in the aspect or with the goal of i mean i think i think and peter can tell me if i'm if i'm wrong on this but being outside is a very different dynamic yeah most definitely yep so there's that but and you'd mentioned you know can can music or you know instrument lessons or coral be outside or inside um very different right if if we can be outside if they can't that is a there's a much higher risk of contamination if people are people are singing and projecting um a lot of exhaust and so you

083know things like art foods classes the high school all kinds of classes that that will require some sort of firm plan i don't expect us to have it tonight but there are a lot of specialist electives in electives that that are very challenging to do um in a non-traditional way right so here's what i want to name because we've had a lot of conversations with our bargaining units so we had 80 people working over the summer which means that there were 580 people who were not they were on their summer break they're not actually paid to work over the summer and so the people who came in had the time and were willing and able to do that and so the last thing a foods instructor for example needs is me telling them how to

084teach a how to teach a foods class in the first place but b how to do that in the times of covet and so one of the things that we are forgetting and why some of the details aren't fully in place is there's a large number of staff to still have a voice in this conversation about what what it looks like and the superintendent assistant superintendent or any of our team are not necessarily the people to to give definition about exactly what that looks like in a best practice model we can do some of the safety guidance we can do some of the structural guidance but how to actually teach foods in a time of covert where outside is the best that we absolutely need the foods teacher on site to have that conversation yeah

085i think those specifics are they're understood once they're said out loud right that the staff is does not you know the license staff tends not to come back until the week before classes so which means we're still two weeks away from their first day reporting back even though they may have thought of things and you know as as they do on vacation but they're not obligated to i'm looking at some of the educators here you must take mental breaks in the summer as as you are as as you've earned them and um so it's understandable if you're not you know thinking back of how to handle this the um the challenges of this coming fall right and what we do know is they are looking at it they are thinking about it but as you

086know in the board packet there's somewhere in the range of 200 pages of documentation to weed through and so some of their basic questions like what happens if i get sick or what happens if a student comes into the class and gets sick they're needing to take time to read review digest but then also have us bring them in to train and to talk to them about some of the most important pieces so that we are all on the same page as one richfield i'd like to piggyback off of that this is more of a comment for my lack of questions this evening um i in my day job work as a district admin in a nearby district in hennepin county and have been spending all of my days and nights and weekends with brilliant

087people working with pieces very similar pieces to what you're all working with in richfield and i feel really confident that if there was a unicorn option that would be this like amazing option for everybody we would have found it and we would all know about it because it would be famous across the country i think the communication piece that i have struggled with is finding that right balance of communicating as fast as possible so that staff and families can make decisions but our models need the information to form the model to begin with so for example like it's hard to build a model when you don't know exactly how many students and staff you're working with and it's hard for families and staff to commit to something that you can't tell them more details about

088so it's a constant um you know move a little bit say a little bit get more information move a little bit forward go back because what's difficult is when you say something that then one of the 10 000 pieces change and you have to walk it back because i know that feels horrible for everybody involved so i just want to say that i have appreciate everything that i've seen i know how many brilliant people are working on this around the clock and i think as much as possible for our public to understand that the fluidity is going to continue because the virus continues to shift our numbers continue to shift in hennepin county and uh it's i also realize how frustrating that is for everybody involved to not have something you can hold on to

089that you know will be there uh throughout the year okay so i guess i'm up i've been in my house for four months um cheating with the supermarket i guess in the gas station and taking my kid to daycare recently this is how i first i want to apologize to the community for the the the the perception that the survey meant that you were gonna get what you asked for um and i said that for myself i don't know if you know what i mean like but but that's really it because i know how surveys go that you're really trying to get to try to provide to people they're they're their their choice but you can uh it's like i mean you know when i'm teaching and i'm signing for parent conferences you choose two

090choices but if other two parents already picked those then you're gonna have to go with the third one to put it in a context that our parents watching at home maybe you know it's not it's like apples and oranges but kind of like that so we this this proposal the way i see it is trying to give the physical instruction personal instruction to to the students and we all know that students you know humans are social beings and we all know that we have more experience teaching in person than we do online and there's a lot of things that we know that we know but there's also a lot that we don't know about these viruses what is it going how is it you know it is it's a very dangerous uh uh space or

091like for myself i struggle like my son is gonna stay home this year my four-year-old has to go to daycare because i have to work so we can't there's there's no there's no unicorn unfortunately and in the world that i have even like i am i'm one i'm my my own personal fears made me even fearful of having kids coming two days a week one day a week four days you know because but that's my personal view and it's not what parents in the majority felt when they did their survey so that's that's how hard this is and i'm very worried that because of fevers that happen for other reasons i mean teachers we know that kids get uh you know strep they get the flu they get colds they get runny noses all year

092round my daughter has had androgynous for two years since she started daycare and that child showing up who does not have covet is going to interrupt his or her own learning because they're gonna be sent home until they figure out what's wrong with them the other 16 kids at elementary are going to be sent home that teacher is probably gonna be home and this is like a i i'm very worried about the recipe for for for destruction of how this how how how much interruption that is going to cause and how i think that if i just know with my 7th grader that he's just gonna be home and he's gonna do it right like then i don't have to worry about what's gonna happen if he starts and then he stops and then and

093then i agree with christine that yes even a week that they see a teacher face to face especially the little ones is good because i i told elementary seven years like i can fathom what i believe to teach a kindergartner coming to school for the first time you know the in this way but i guess i just wanted to say that i think that the administration and the team here has done the best that that they can to to try to accommodate as much as possible and i'm hoping for that the worst case scenarios don't happen and i hope that things get better and that then we can start bringing our kids back to the buildings because really is what we want um but there's there's no magic one here i have two questions sorry

094um one is what kind of education are essential workers children receiving so there are two different components there is the the same classroom hybrid model that everyone will be receiving but then they're entitled to free child care and so dr clarkson and her team are developing a supervised instructional support model and so there will be rather than fun club who we used in the spring our paraprofessionals and our team members will be providing oversight and helping to make sure that they're engaged in instruction and learning and so they won't be with classroom teachers but they will be with the students from child care and it will be an instructional support care and dr clarkson we'll come back and give more details okay so um i will respond to the one comment from the community member

095um fun club will be providing some type of child care and i don't know we're not sure they'll be able to have the space to do it full days but there isn't the same expectation because they are not a school sponsored child care that they will be providing instruction during that time ours we have a registration page that is already up and going we have i believe last time i checked this afternoon we have about 16 students that are enrolled in our supported instructional supported model for our tier one in tier one families so we'll continue to take registrations and they can choose the number of days that they that their child will attend and it will be offered any day that the in person is not being offered so the biggest difference being that

096fun club is a recreation-based program and this is supervision that includes the school day six and a half hours that then is supporting them in the learning that's happening their classroom in a distance model during those days so they're they will be enrolled with everyone else is what you're saying that is a requirement of the state of minnesota yes okay and that's what i was worried because it sounded earlier as if the those students were going to go to phone club and we're not going to receive their content grade level content but they'll have a support staff in there helping them so they'll be able to access their distance learning that would be taking place so they'll be able to go through their scheduled day just won't be in the classrooms but not connected to

097fun club at all fun club is a completely separate program and while we use their services in the spring this fall because we are having more live teaching occurring and live streaming we aren't using their services during the school day this year and i promise this is the last one for this okay the transition and i know there's a lot of but it's in the documents but i like to to discuss publicly what the transition from hybrid to distance will be in case of emergency in case we have to wrap up and so hold on steve sorry is one one component to for those teachers that there are some teachers that we will already be assigned by distance only for the students who show for the parents who chose that but then the teachers who

098are in person i mean how will that what kind of support will they get to then make the switch in the midst of you know after the year has started so we are actually conducting almost all of our training um around safety measures and distance learning um and so we are under the expectation that there will likely be transitions consistently throughout the year and so there will be classroom transitions there could be school transitions and there could be district transitions classrooms would transition if there is an exposure within the classroom and the entire classroom would then be isolated at home and would then go into distance learning which could be supported by the teacher if they do not have symptoms that made it so that they couldn't teach online or it would be supported by

099substitutes or additional supports from the district there could be a school that ends up closing and it could also be the district and all that is going to have to do with exposure possible cases and then also across the community what our overall data looks like but we should be prepared to to do that and we are and it will be on very short notice especially at the classroom level i have two things i think maybe three um technology so what how are we handling the technology i know in the spring it was very different environment of course but with the grade three through five having three days of distance learning are we assuming to go one to one chromebook for them we are distributing one to one across the entire district for every single

100student that's some of the things in our first week we're going to have those community meeting conversations teachers and students we're going to distribute materials distribute food and then also distribute technology as appropriate um that's that that's great to hear thank you um also i i appreciate you bringing up um the clarification that that students with an iep and special ed population who need other accommodations um that while the if they're in secondary they're they are not confined to a one day a week or if they're in grades three through five they are not restricted to two days a week we we students who have additional needs and have a plan for such we can be flexible and accommodate right yes yes super and they're in their um building lead and their and the people

101the team they work with will be reaching out to them as they come back into the system correct super we just can't get enough dr clark getting their steps in oh i have other questions dr mobley who's our director of special ed has been working throughout the summer with all of the leads there's already been outreach to many of our families whose children receive services they started when the original survey went out to find out they did direct outreach to our students on ieps and the the first group that they are prioritizing in particular are our students that have higher level of needs that spend more time receiving special education services throughout the day and they've contacted the majority of them to find out what their needs are and to start planning for up to

102four days of in-person for our center-based students and then they'll be all case managers will have communicated and scheduled planning meetings with all of the families going into early september will will similar flexibility be extended to students in the rsep program although they you know they may not necessarily be have ieps but but they're they're in an alternative program and so we we recognize that they're there because there might be challenges that they they deal with that have placed them in this program or they've opted into it for reasons that that mean that you know there might be more like the one day that that's listed here how flexible are we on that if it's requested i will i don't want to speak on behalf of dr will height i know that student needs always

103come first in her planning and with her team so we can get back to you on exactly what those plans are that's great that's great and so i know we we have a lot of work to do on a masking policy you know i know that that we've probably been scrambling to make sure that the staff are aware of their supports protections and leave options and things like that right yes we're considering going with masking as a procedure however we have rethought that theory and are going to be presenting a masking policy to the board it will probably have been informally sent to the board because the school boards association and the state have come out with several model policies for us to examine and play with um so we'll probably try to do that

104on an expedited basis to hopefully present and pass in a one reading on the 8th of september so i'm going to just jump in on that particular subject and if you were going gonna move on can i yeah you can ask about that no i was gonna wrap up okay since this is on the same subject i think it's really important to cross-reference that with cdc and mdh guidelines um i looked at the msba policy and it's very loose and very open to interpretation and i think i feel pretty strongly that we need to be more specific than what's in there it openly op gives the option of wearing a face shield which has not been proven to provide any protection i think it's important that we define what is acceptable as a mask just

105recent studies have come out that show that the bandana or gator type actually can make it easier to transmit but definitely is not any better than no mask um and then also like the correct way to wear a mask so you're covering melted nose so we will look at all details and try to figure out that best policy and we will informally gather some feedback on on options over the next three weeks yeah i think one of the exceptions that i find concerning is that if it impedes instruction in any way that you can remove the mask and i think we all can pretty much say a mask is going to impede instruction there's it's just part of the process it's not going to be easy that you can teach phonics with a mask on

106right to kindergarten i mean maybe some maybe our genius teachers here can but i can't fathom how that would work but there are better things in my personal opinion that kindergarten should be doing anyway so i think that's the least of the product and so i can just add on to one thing on to that that just from experience i know how challenging it can be to wear a mask from for eight hours and teach i've been back in the teaching lab at work this summer already and i get a good break and i have a office i can go to and take remove my mask and take a few minutes off and it is is very challenging sometimes it's easy but sometimes it's really hard so i also think we maybe want to consider

107what supports we can put in place for teachers and staff through the process different ways we might be able to help prepare them for that challenge i know we've talked about taking advantage of summer school the summer school faculty's insight in their experience and sharing that broadly but i think just kind of having perhaps looking into different ways that we can support that process agreed so sorry tim no that's okay i i would just i would just wrap up with i know i've asked a lot of questions or had comments that that that may sound critical but i have said for a month or so like the most honest if someone said what's the what's the the most what's the method or delivery of education that we could promise that would be delivered as we

108described it in the middle of the summer and it is distance learning um it's the least least likely to be disrupted you know and yet as we've learned through the surveys and some of the comments from the public there's aspects of it that are wildly unpopular and so as as allegra had said you know many people have been looking for the unicorn and no one's really found it and so we we are we are trying to to put together um the puzzle best we can even though that it seems to be made up of different sets yeah thanks yeah you may have noticed i would agree it is it is very challenging it is very challenging i have a couple of comments and questions and we're right at about the one hour mark for this

109one conversation so i want to be mindful of that but this is really important i think people expect us to talk as long as we need to talk about it so i also am not interested in cutting conversation prematurely short i think you have shared the specific rationale for why six through 12 is one day a week in person as it relates to the the pod safety philosophy and the licensure challenges and requirements i don't feel like i know that same rationale for why third through fifth is two days a week as opposed to the earlier elementary grades being four days a week so can you say more about that sure in the governor's plan it suggests and kova data suggests younger should be prioritized and so we began with kindergarten and trying with the

110philosophy of getting students in as often as we could in as many days as possible and as we looked for the amount of staff we're going to have and the physical space that those staff will need to teach this essentially provides the most amount of students we can actually have in a building at a given time to understand it mathematically about thirty percent of our staff will be teaching distance learning so we're down to seventy percent of our staff already at k five um then um of that seventy percent of our staff they're only able to teach three quarters of the amount of students and so we have to have more classrooms for our students for our students to be able to fit in and so we just don't have the staff to be able

111to staff more classrooms and bring more students in thank you um i think the next couple of questions are related to that pod philosophy specifically as it applies to secondary because i think that is where we are all hearing people are looking for more than one day a week in person and i want people to know that like we hear you um we hear the the dissatisfaction with the model um as it's currently structured for one day a week in person at the secondary level um so you talked about you know there are a lot of examples of non-pod models that are leading to widespread closures do we have successful examples that show that taking a harder line pod philosophy is actually paying off uh we will need to study and gather additional data right

112now the places that aren't closing aren't hitting national headlines and local headlines it's all the places that are and frankly they're closing within the first week and so i can certainly look to that in the coming weeks i i think that actually connects to just a broader concern of mine which is everyone is in crisis moment we do not actually have great information holistically about what is working um and how to learn from that as everyone is just trying to plan day by day at this point um i think a question that certainly has come up is that we do have neighboring districts that are doing two days a week i think in particular um at the secondary level um are they not following the pod philosophy that you have articulated that is our priority

113they are not following the philosophy that would be accurate they are um for the most part moving to a block schedule which would have three or four classes in a day is the best knowledge that i have about those that are coming in twice and so they would take their instructional day and split it over two and then students would go to all of those classes okay thank you that is also helpful um and then i think the couple of things that i would just say in follow-up i really appreciated the point that was made by mr kleist in his public comment earlier about i think the critical need for us to have direct communication with our students about the decisions that we are making how deeply we know they affect them and why they

114are what they are and i think there are very age-appropriate ways to do that from our littlest learners all the way up to our high school students and so i really want to see how we are going to be doing that and how we are going to help them just come into this with us and also help them understand what it's going to look like when they do come into school like physically what is it going to look like and give them a sense of that before they get here for the first time i think that the two final points i would make one is just so people hear me say i'm really reluctant and concerned about something that could feel like a series of starts and stops and starts again of of students and

115of our staff coming in and out over and over again based on pod exposure because that to me feels potentially traumatic in other ways um and so that is something that as we get closer to this is is something i'm going to want to know more about how we're approaching from a decision-making point of view and at what point do we make the decision that actually based on the data based on what we're seeing in our own district the safest thing is to make that transition to distance learning for however long um so that's on my mind and then i think the last thing i would just say is um what is being shared tonight is the current best and we know less than ideal thinking um and there is still a good amount of

116time to go before students would be back in buildings especially given the one week sort of all virtual start to the school year that has been shared and so i want people to know this is fluid um we are not going to open school if we don't feel like we can or should safely and in alignment with what people are looking to us to do and that obviously includes actually listening to the experts who know this far better than i ever could or or will be able to um but i think people need to know that we are going to make hard decisions when we need to make them based on the information that's available at that time i'm looking around is there anything else that people would like to add i do have one

117more thing so i guess i just wanna and some of this is connected to what crystal said but to bring us back to march and april of last year and when we had our student representatives here and how you how much you could see how it was all affecting them and very much related to what you said about communicating and working with our our students and this especially these high school students that are going to be here one day a week we did a we did a distance survey in april and i um watched that presentation again earlier today and um a couple of the things that i that i noted and that were mentioned in there were things like holding more face-to-face class so having some synchronous learning so i see that we've added

118that so that is really good um a couple of things and then also the the social emotional supports that added social aspect for our students i think incorporating that into that day and also into their distance days i think those things are being looked at and done another thing that i saw and i'm sure this is being worked on but i just wanted to bring it up again um there was a there were a lot of students that felt the work was too much and that's a common thing when you go to online and distance is the workload can increase a lot more than you realize it is when you don't have the students in your classroom so making sure that you know everybody's aware of that we talked about it and it was in

119that survey um also another thing that was brought up was um hot spots making sure we have enough of those to go around to families that need them and then another comment that i saw in things that we said we would look forward to um helping work out was how to help households that run out of data so those were just a couple things that i that i saw on that survey i think a lot of it is being addressed and i'm guessing the rest is on the way in the many wheels that are turning as we move closer to opening school those are all details in the conversation and those are all the things that we are looking to try to provide and then just to repeat something that crystal said which is this

120is still fluid there are four weeks from today till the first students come to school in that actual capacity for from this very moment right here um and so what that means is is that that is four sets of data that we will look at that is another four weeks of information that we're going to have to try to determine um and we'll have four weeks of more knowledge of how many people are choosing distance how many are there more students we could accommodate are there fewer students that we could accommodate what are those things that we can actually continue and continue to solidify i mean we will we will give you our word as administration and staff for this district we will keep working to the last minute to make sure that we continue

121to look at everything and provide the best the best options possible and just acknowledge how deeply difficult that level of uncertainty is especially for families who are trying to figure out what work life school other things all look like this fall it is extremely difficult for everyone involved yes okay um we will move on to the second item in the superintendent update on the open enrollment policy all right so we are not bringing open enrollment policy for a vote or anything today we are bringing it as a reminder one of the unique components that occurs um due to covid it's on page 230 of the board packet that i am focused on is open enrollment and we are a district that is an open open enrollment district which currently legally means we have to be

122open at all times for all students wanting to open enroll however covert provides some additional challenges and so we need to be ready as a board to be ready to examine and change this policy to perhaps take action on a board meetings notice or even possibly on a special board meetings notice and so what i mean by that is we are able to accommodate a certain number of students in our classrooms and if there are people who are wanting to open enroll to the district based on choices we may run out of space the only way to tell people that that can't happen and we don't have that plan at this time our data doesn't suggest that at this time and we did not create a plan that suggests that but we don't know in

123this time of uncertainty in section 4 non-resident student enrollment under the enrollment options program c standards and a and b and specifically looking at a but i've highlighted a and b for you space is available under for the applicant under enrollment cap standards established by the school board or other directive and what that generally means is that this board could take action to close a grade level to close a school or to close the district to open enrolled students and so i just want the board to be aware that as admin there are many decisions that we can make and there are decisions that we cannot make this is one of those components that um we cannot make as administration only the board can take that action via policy and so we would want you

124to be aware um that we may come back depending on the data and the students that we see during that first week of distance or during those coming weeks to have that conversation to see if we need you to take action again we do not anticipate it at this time but we wanted to make sure you're aware of that component of the policy just just to ask you so when you say you weren't you're not aware of it at this time so it's fair to say with there's no information that you have right now of an influx of open enrollees um we are having open enrollees in certain grade levels and at certain places at this time um we are not aware of those that we cannot yet accommodate okay well i suppose it's just

125a wording thing but would there be a rationale for um looking at our i mean looking at our 50 capacity numbers i mean we've got we've got some numbers we can work with at this point is there any rationale for putting something in policy around that and then how and i guess we have to have it maybe wordsmith right so so there's some complexity to that um so right now for example we have a we'll call it a soft wait list in one of our grades at ritual dual language so we are making sure that we can fit them into dual language now they are able to come to our district for the grade and go to one of our other three elementary schools so open enrollment is not by school but it is by

126district and so it is sadly extremely complex we have some rooms that are larger than others and so they can accommodate more students at half capacity and some fewer students we obviously has one that teaches in spanish and so that provides an additional component where families might not want to open enroll to richfield looking for spanish and go to stem for example and so what we are doing is we are plotting out each classroom we we're plotting out the largest classrooms for k2 because those are our in-person classrooms that will have the most students in them and then we are anticipating obviously half the students to be in our three five classrooms and so we are looking at the spaces we are measuring we have had our architects with mr holgi draw diagrams of every

127classroom to see how many can you fit how many can you fit socially distance what is that best practice model and we are doing that by building by classroom by teacher and so as we go along and as people continue to say i want hybrid i want distance we're going to know exact numbers but we probably won't know those exact numbers until until much later in the game right just to clarify something you'd said there um so if for example we had space in second grade in general we would we could remain open but if someone said they were only interested in rdls we may have not we may have no room for them and so that we we can say that this building or this program does not have space but we can accommodate

128you elsewhere that is correct we cannot say you cannot come to richfield public schools but we can say there is not a physical space right now at uh unless we've closed down second grade correct unless unless we be you we close down second grade yes that is correct thank you okay this is yet another thing we will have much more information at our next board meeting um so the next item on the agenda is approval of the consent agenda containing routine business items i will pause for just a moment to see if there are any questions or requests before we proceed with a motion to approve i will move approval of the consent agenda as presented i'll second so we have a motion by ms malik and a second by miss meshach any discussion all

129in favor please say aye aye any applause please say nay the chair votes aye the consent agenda is approved we move into old business where there are four items before us this evening all of which are existing board policies that we have been reviewing and updating the first of which is local and out of state travel excellent i'll just harken back to the consent agenda where miss cassandra quan was just named the board secretary um even though she's been acting in that role and at the rate and and position of the past assistant to the superintendent so we welcome her in that official capacity thank you for taking a moment to them we're so excited that you're with us so it's official you cannot escape now all right local and out of state travel we

130are pushing this forward for a final read um updated with new msba guidelines with very few changes and then the updated travel reimbursement form which is a much newer form that had been in the packet previously not a huge amount but i will open it up for questions i i i have a question i i thought i i brought up at a prior meeting the idea that since the the expense for school board travel is approved by the superintendent's designate um i had asked if if we would be able to add something that would that would clarify that above some maybe even just only above a threshold like if a school board had travel expenses that it would be a report to the board at the next meeting so 3a at the bottom travel to

131other meetings for which the member intends to seek reimbursement from the school district should be pre-approved by the school board and then as approved but then at the 3c uh itinerary submitted for approval to the administrator and superintendent followed by review of the school board thank you right so so a the a part um isn't enough it wasn't enough because for example the national school board meeting could be in hawaii in which case we would all want to go and but c the itinerary must be submitted for approval followed by review of the school board i can accept that i have no more questions great any additional questions or comments all right we could entertain a motion to approve in that case so moved second so we have a motion by mr tensing in a

132second by ms malek any final discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed the chair votes aye and the revised policy is approved we move next to petty cash all right and so this is also recommended for a final read of the petty cash policy 710 and guideline 710.1 again a very short policy with just a little bit of updated language and then the petty cash fund where school names were actually changed to being accurate and then also we updated the dollar figures to be accurate with um current practices and also best business practices thank you any comments or questions seeing none we could entertain a motion to approve i move approval of policy 710 and guidelines 710.1 as presented so we have a motion by ms malek in a second by ms

133cole any final discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed the chair votes eye the revised policy is approved next up is credit card usage credit card usage okay policy 712 and 712-1 um again credit card usage another very short policy with very few to no updates and then also credit card usage to update with p card and common practice there were a couple questions about credit rating i will say that having had a p card and checked my credit rating i noted that the p card is not noted on there and so there is no notation of the p card it is not actually associated with an employee outside of identification through our organization and so we felt pretty comfortable and confident in our review that there is nothing actually tracking the

134p-card to the employee themselves i i do struggle with that though still i having read it again um and i know that mr holgie gave us that that similar information but but our guidelines and policies usually cover things that are within our control and we are not in control of the rating agency if for some reason the bank pieced things together that steve winowski's card was this one and it did show up we don't have control of that at all and so it doesn't seem necessary for us to say that as a guideline we could say it's our intent that it doesn't that it doesn't appear on a credit rating but we don't control that because we aren't the ratings bureau and similar there was another one in there it can be used anywhere that

135accepts mastercard it can be used anywhere that accepts it right if they happen to accept it we don't neces you know if a merchant accepts it i don't know why we would care if they somehow came back and said oh well i usually don't accept mastercard but in this case i mean it's just it's accepted it can be used anywhere it's accepted right it seems strangely narrow um i think that was added because the p card is a mastercard sure and certainly could be adjusted but it again though that's not it it's a mastercard and i think that someone who holds one of those cards knows that it can be used anywhere that it will be accepted period um whatever sticker happens to be on the door and what what the point of sale machine

136accepts or not and so that that was i don't know strange to me that that that we would be so particular on that when when it isn't within our control necessarily unless we want it to be within our control if we if an employee had had a hundred dollars charged to the p card and we found out that the merchant actually doesn't accept mastercard would we reject the charge right so i guess i'll look for um thoughts from the board so these are guidelines and informative um and so they were verifying in the agreement and in the language um and it generally helps if there is an issue or question um i guess it doesn't okay so yes it might might not carry weight or be as important as the policy right right it does

137not concern me um and and part of it is perhaps that i have had business issued credit cards for many years and not none of those issues have ever come up or been a challenge okay can i ask on the unallowable purchases the sales tax minnesota sales tax on most purchases yes um so do we provide each of the purchasers with the information like a tax-exempt letter i'm going to call mr holgie up to get in the weeds with us come on down craig um so yeah so when requested we provide a letter for them to bring to their whoever's be making purchases in most cases we're asking that they use approved vendors that already have those on file one of the great things about the p card is because it's set up with the

138tax exempt account those things are automatically deducted and pulled off of those as items if individuals are using their personal credit cards to go and purchase if they don't have that verification then they do have to pay that tax exam because they're the tax for those pieces because they're notified that they shouldn't be using their personal card unless it's approved and then they're also notified that they need to get that tax number too so okay all right no thank you so so we i'm just making sure that we do provide that the taxes got purchased up front so that if they happen to be charged sales tax by someone we weren't saddling the employee with the tax if it happened to go through um when the p card is used they're automatically deducted but we

139do provide that notification form if somebody goes and makes a purchase doesn't ask for that tax number or making it from on the approved vendors then they are responsible for that tax because they weren't following the policies our auditors don't let us pay taxes um sales taxes where those are in place so that's one of the things that they're screened for and why we would deduct that okay all right thank you i have no more questions okay is anyone prepared to make a motion to approve the revisions i'll move the revisions i'll second so we have a motion by mr paulus and a second by ms malik any final discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed the chair vote side the revised policy is approved and we move to the final old

140business item the student transportation policy all right so this um is where we are actually asking for a small change as we presented in our model and as our survey suggested we are examining our our bus walk zones and we are examining the best way to ensure that we can have a policy that allows us to get our kids to school while following the policy and using cova guidelines and so we are not looking at a policy change that we expect to be lasting for multiple years we expect to come back to this policy perhaps even again this year depending on what happens with covet and certainly come back to this to do some further re-examination prior to next school year as a reminder minnesota law requires school districts to transport schools students to school

141if they live more than two miles from the school and so as richfield we have done secondary at the two mile circle but we have gone with elementary at the one mile and then also have noted hazardous crossings which means that many of our students are living much closer to school than one mile and are also getting transportation given coveted and bus capacity we are functionally not able to do that and abide by the policy and covet social distancing guidelines we have set up school patrols and are working in partnership with the city and our safe routes to schools team to make sure that we will have people supporting our students at those hazardous walk zones and so what we are suggesting is that at this time we remove the statement um that talks about

142hazardous crossing areas and i'll point to that in a second and then also even though it is not in policy i think since we're talking about student transportation it's important to continually talk about start times at past we had a 7 40 starts an 8 10 start and an 8 30 start so a 30 minute route and a 20 minute route and right now with kovid we are only able to do 45 minute routes um and so that would require changing start times um and then similarly um changing between who was on which um which tier of start time and so moving centennial to that first time with stem at 7 30 um 8 15 at rdls in sheridan hills and nine o'clock at richfield middle and richfield high school and this is to make

143sure that we actually have the buses um and the amount of routes because each school takes a different number of routes and so while in the past we had bust stem and rdls together it is actually because of the number of routes not possible to take our two city-wide magnets and keep them together given the given requirements of cobit 19. so you'll see in here our proposal in relation to school crossing guards and then you will also notice on page and i am struggling to find it exactly at the moment but uh has redlined out and gotten rid of actually it's because it's a clean policy that's why i'm not finding it is removed the page on hazardous crossings which are now worked into the proposal for for providing patrols and crossing guards with that

144i will open up for questions can i ask how did we determine which of the elementary schools would move earlier um what we did is we looked at the number of bus routes that were needed to try to provide so right now we have 19 drivers available we have 22 buses available 19 drivers also would take both the schools but then also the special ed routes and some of our smaller routes and so what we did is we compared compared the number of buses needed to transport in the k2 four days a week and three five two days a week model and paired up honestly the only workable math and when we talked about bus routes for say sheridan hills or centennial or rdos was that factoring in the adjustment to radius and and um

145hazardous streets or was it existing bus routes um no these are going to show projected bus routes mr holgie come on back and since we won't have to clean that microphone again since he will be the star of our show from this point forward at that spot at the table to talk bus routing mr holgie thank you so yeah so our transportation dispatcher did routing based on a variety of different models we looked at eliminating the hazardous zones making it all the one mile we looked at two mile we also looked at a mile and a half variants and tried to fine tune where those numbers were projecting that some of our students would be distance learning so we pulled off some that we thought would be moving into the distance learning model that we

146wouldn't be having to provide transportation so made some assumptions on that and we're working to clarify that at this point so yes it was based on what we were projecting with this route without the hazardous zones when we did those schedule changes did so so we did that switch without um so we i believe our parent survey was not did not include anything about start time or significantly about start time did it uh nope no so we have no information on how this will be received nope okay well this could be problematic absolutely well we have some options we could uh what we what we don't have the option of doing is maintaining the same start time um so it puts us in a very difficult spot and obviously requires us to communicate this as

147broadly as possible right and as we discussed earlier this start times are not something that it has been board action it's being shared here because it is tied to the transportation policy but start times are not actually what we are voting on this evening no start times are not in board policy that is just trying to say this as many times as possible and i just want to be yes be clear what what we are doing here immediately before us um i think the the one thing that i really appreciate is that the boundaries did not change because that was discussed as an option previously and i think that was what was very clearly going to be deeply problematic for many if that boundary zone for busing was going to be changed especially on such

148short notice that doesn't mean start times are going to be more popular but i think we have had a series of difficult trade-offs in trying to figure out how to make our existing bus supply and driver supply work right so couple things one is it has gone out we did communicate that out in the previous email that that was proposed and that went out to all families um the option that we would have outside of this would be moving to more tiers and so essentially if we don't present a model as such our next would be to move somebody to and continue expanding upwards if we were to look at well and as we talked about in a previous meeting if we looked at not removing hazardous walk zones or bringing everybody in we would

149be looking at start times as late as 11 o'clock with two tiers for for richfield middle school so it's it is a complex situation it is i mean i'm sorry i don't think we have any any flexibility personally i don't think we have flexibility on on changing the radius or the hazardous streets i i just have concern about about the thing that's not in the policy uh which is which school we we seem to be just doing this without any information about impact on the community and so that troubles me and i will add so we are moving the start time by 30 minutes for ritchie middle school in richfield high school it has moved back by 30. we are moving the rdls start time by 25 minutes we are moving um the start time

150of centennial by 40 minutes and so we are trying to do that in in the best way possible but yes we are moving pretty much every start time by between yeah no i know and there's there's aspects of that that are hard it's just i you know people pick the schools i suppose sometimes based on start time and the one that fits them for example my child did not go to stem or rdls because there was no way she was going to wake up in time for the 6 55 walk to the bus stop for the seven o'clock pickup so we were at sheridan hills unfortunately for her sheridan hills was then the third of our of our tiers and and by the time she got to the middle school that was now the third

151of our tears so she's really lived well at sleeping in and and i struggled you know there could be some you know the the school that was like chris was centennial so we moved to our middle tier and now we're moving it back and so um i know it's temporary i know it's um or i assume it's temporary it doesn't have to be but it's it's just um it's a challenge and so we don't have information on start time impact from the community and so that's okay that that doesn't mean i don't support the policy because we we are we kidding we need the policy change we cannot manufacture buses and even if we could we cannot manufacture drivers so following up on your thought do you does is there a concern that we may

152have parents that want to switch schools for their children based on this start time change um we don't necessarily believe so because um centennial had been an earlier start time previously um had been to the best of my recollection they had been 740 at one point am i but not for any of the parents that currently sure have kids in that building um the additional component is we have the beacons program there which provides after school child care for them so it is certainly possible we have people who want or need to switch schools based on start times um that is something we would try to work to accommodate i might recommend that we come back to start times in a future meeting once we have some more information i i am glad that it

153has actually been shared with um families already um i think it would be helpful for us to know what are we hearing back are there actually enrollment changes that we think or know are directly tied to start time changes okay i just had a technical question on the hazardous crossing is that something that is defined in statute or is that just something that we get to sort of decide for ourselves that is something decided for ourselves so if you think of sheridan hills for example kids they are three blocks from 66th which is a or in pen sorry they're three blocks from penn which is obviously a hazardous crossing um and so we have chosen to bus across there so if you live three blocks to the east of ten or east of the school

154that is across penn you would get a bus now we will use the school patrol but those are those are our decisions and do i remember correctly that that in part of revising this one of the things that was learned is actually many districts do not have hazardous crossings in in their policy districts similarly situated and they don't have hazardous crossways identified so we were one of the few districts that still had that identified just in the general area i know last summer i heard some community feedback with frustrations of what our radius was um so i anticipate by expanding there will be more frustrations along with you know what we all are dealing with we are not expanding you're not no no so we are staying at the one mile radius but the hazardous

155crossings go away and students will then oh i'm sorry for it to go across the street um i retract that i miss red the first paragraph yeah but that is that is great news but i would tell you fortunately this serves the same way if you live four blocks to the east and you have to cross our pen so if you live on oliver and are right across from sheridan four blocks away you could have caught a bus before yeah it's a function i mean so it's it's a net decrease in in right there are 440 students that lose transportation option based on this so there may be something there so my question i guess would still remain then in this case what factors might have us consider um changing the policy back to include

156that would it be covered numbers would it be we're going to commit to this for the school year so i think numbers and the numbers of students in school is why we needed to make this decision okay so potentially if something shifted we might reevaluate it this policy this school year yes if we were able to move to in person we can certainly go back to that and we could also have a larger conversation about start times again honestly for next year because we probably won't have the level of transportation hopefully let me say hopefully we'll not have the level of transportation um requirements that we have right now the only other thing i would say just because it feels important is it also could enable us to have a conversation about having the boundaries

157become even smaller um if we are able to realize actually taking the hazardous routes out ended up not being of a significant impact does that and do other changes enable us to have the conversation that many of us have said over the years we would like to have but has been financially kind of prohibitive for us to think about actually bringing those zones even closer in i did get a text from our communication director who has gotten multiple emails about start time and the biggest question people have actually had is when is the end time of schools sure um and so just reminding and we will be clear in our next communication to go out that um we are looking at still maintaining a six and a half hour school day and keeping the same

158school day of six hours and 50 minutes at the high school in the middle school so we're planning to maintain those same days same time any final questions or comments about the proposed student transportation policy changes okay is anyone willing to make a motion to approve i will move that we approve the transportation policy as amended i'll second so we have a motion by mr attensing in a second by ms malik any final discussion all in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed the chair both i and the revised policy is approved we move into new business items before us related to both policy and facilities work the first item is review of policies that are required to be approved annually by the board but have no substantive edits from previous years so superintendent

159younowski i'll let you do a brief review of how we're going to handle this correct so a new process recommended to us by uh board secretary cassandra um we have a set of mandated policies to review these should be looked at yearly by the board and as you have read the board packet in advance you have reviewed the policies there are a set of them today that have no changes or no substantial change in terms of statutory changes since previous since the last time we reviewed them and then there are some that we will review later on during this calendar year that are mandated that have some larger changes and so we're looking at the mandated reporting of male treatment in vulnerable adults and how one is required to report that in the process that

160goes about the mandated reporting of child neglect or physical or sexual abuse minor changes not substantial at all and just a couple of very small wording changes mandated reporting guidelines um have no edits uh student student sex non-discrimination um also has no edits and then our overall student behavior policy and guidelines which were just recently redone in connection with our students and neither of those have edits so the the role of the board um and then noted as reviewed is just to have reviewed them and then ideally move those forward and just to to confirm the superintendent and i discussed and we can actually approve these in one slate of policy so we do not need to take them one by one are there any comments or questions however before we would entertain that motion

161i i think for our viewers to clarify what is it that we're doing why we like skipping and grouping policies that don't sound like they're together so this is this is a this is our homework for this for this packet review that we started reviewing since you know when we get the packet the week before that we reviewed these policies to ensure that they're still uh within the law the recommendations uh and that's why we are saying we did our homework and that we reviewed it so yes and cassandra did a lot of homework for us before it even came to us to ensure all of those legal pieces are in place yes thank you correct and unlike our other policies which we do three reads these have no changes and we're actually required to

162just review them on a yearly basis um the other ones that have changes those will come back in a slower process than this i would just comment a thank you to cassandra for helping us streamline this process we do a lot of policy review it's very much appreciated is anyone prepared to make a motion to approve the slate of policy i will move that we approve the mandatory policy review as presented i will set i will second great so we have a motion by ms malik a second by mr tensing any final discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed the chair votes i and the policies are approved um so we turn now to several facilities change orders across the district so craig holgie is going to do an overview of the

163orders and then we will approve them building by building perfect thank you uh so the first series is centennial facilities project change order number nine uh for a total of eighteen thousand six hundred forty eight dollars and nineteen cents this has to do with some additional demolition work and some infill association associated with some walls um also includes a credit from a previous pr new total on that is six million eight hundred and eighty seven thousand dollar nine hundred eight hundred ninety seven thousand six hundred fourteen dollars and seventy four cents um then we have change orders five through ten for sheridan hills um total of one hundred eighty four thousand seven hundred and seventy nine dollars um thirteen thousand nine hundred and eighty nine dollars for some adjustments to aluminum plates and new front

164door entry additions um some cinder block demolition and infills associated with that uh another change order twenty and number six for twenty two thousand five hundred eighty four dollars for some mechanical work change order number seven forty thousand six hundred sixty four dollars for some demolition of the exterior walls and new ventilator openings uh change order number eight twenty seven thousand four hundred thirty five dollars for modifications and revisions to the toilet room layout and it added plumbing change order nine four thousand eight hundred ninety four dollars for a cost associated with some electrical revision revisions and added demo associated with that and then change order number ten for seventy 75 213 000 for some changes within the boiler room um plant in that area total again 184 779 dollars for a total new project

165of nine million eight hundred eight thousand two hundred twenty three dollars uh moving on to richfield stem on facilities project number 24 a net increase of 18 894 dollars and seven cents for mechanical changes related to existing conditions and some piping along with computer room coiling units and some ceiling modifications and acoustic panels a total of that now is at fifteen million four hundred thousand one hundred fifty eight dollars and forty two cents uh richfield middle school we have change order number three for six thousand thirty six dollars and ninety five cents for additional drywall and plaster scope modifications to align existing walls windowsills and soffits total project at sixteen million seven hundred two thousand nine hundred sixty six dollars and forty five cents and uh ritual high school uh change orders twenty seven twenty

166eight twenty nine and thirty for a total of four hundred seventy one thousand five hundred sixty six dollars uh the largest of that is 239 434 dollars and 34 cents for electrical items associated with the repair and replacement of a buried electrical feeder that was damaged one of the challenges here was not on any of our plans it did not locate in any of the locations because it was so far underground that that's really the car part of where that fell in place change order number 28 128 and 390.62 cents for ceiling modifications added soffits and room layouts and then also some revisions to the gym striping plan and additional floor and wall patching change order number 29 49 195.68 cents for various architectural modifications regarding door hardware window sills and some insulation piping that

167had to be replaced and finally change order 30 for 54 36 545.36 for temporary heat for the south gym um when the mechanical units had been removed to maintain that area and stuff like that um as well as some additional fire dampers ductwork modifications and dryer vent an additional drive that was added to the lower level that project now is at thirty seven million one hundred sixty two thousand six hundred thirty seven dollars and nineteen cents so with that we ask for your approval um and can answer any questions if you have those we will start with any comments or questions about any of these facilities change orders as just overview i did have a question on the high school one just uh if you if you could speak some more um the the uh

168electrical feeder that that was um you mentioned somewhere in the in the courtyard is that correct yep yeah we we had another one of those near the like the flagpole entrance um really this i believe is the same one so this is the big one that we've been dealing with kind of back and forth so part of the process is they work on what is the total cost kind of negotiate that back and forth with the architects with ics with the contractor and things like that so this happened i want to say it was about almost a year ago at this point where they were working on some of that area it was actually when they were putting in the um helical piers i think so what's basically holding up much of that new entry

169that went into the courtyard area so um it's probably that same one it's that first large substantial one that was hit big that was as it said 20 feet below nothing showed where it was going so they'd investigate where it was do temporary replacements for it added replacements turned out it was wrapped in asbestos so there was an asbestos abatement part of that same part of the project what else would it be like i don't know why you put asbestos around something that's so far underground but they did at that time and so that's what happened so it was like one of those series of things that just kept um piling on with more issues that could have um happened within that area so i i suppose i guess it's fair to say that as

170as we make changes in to the plant and new new structures and wires and and things put in we've documented them better than they have in the distant past uh yeah it's a good straightforward answer any other questions okay we will take these one by one first up is um centennial change order number nine i will move approval of centennial change order number nine oh second so we have a motion by ms malek in a second by miss misha any final discussion all in favor please say aye aye aye aye any opposed the chair votes i the change order is approved uh next is sheridan hills elementary change orders through 10. i moved to approve sheridan seared and hills elementary change orders 5 through 10 as presented now a second so we have a motion

171by ms meshach in a second by mr tensing any final discussion all in favor please say aye any opposed the chair votes i the change orders are approved uh next is richfield stem school change order number 24. i'll move the change order number 24 as presented all second so we have a motion by mr paulus and a second by ms malek any final discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed the chair votes i the change order is approved we have richfield middle school change order number three i will move the change order for richfield middle school as presented all second so we have a motion by mr tensing in a second by mr paulus any final discussion all in favor please say aye any opposed the chair votes i the change order

172is approved and last but not least we have richfield high school change orders 27 through 30. i move approval of richfield high school change orders 27 through 30 as presented so we have a motion by ms malek and a second by ms cole any final discussion all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed the chair both i the change orders are approved um last but certainly not least in the new business section of the agenda we are thrilled to recognize the annual donation from the richfield spartan foundation superintendent yunowski yes and we are proud to serve as intermediaries to these students college accounts and so it's recommended to accept the following donations with gratitude as a special donation of the richfield high school scholarship fund received on august 10 2020 in the amount

173of 24 thousand dollars from richfield spartan foundation funding a thousand dollar scholarships for the following 24 high school graduates and if i am incorrect in the name pronunciation i did practice but we'll see how good i do let me see hannah hintermeister top scholars caleb nolenberger and madeleine gibbs against all at odd scholarships luke out molly stark ifrah ibrahim catherine vasquez guadalupe galeno rodriguez joel sofia potayos pollatos destiny smith partridge julio tapia hernandez catherine myson reuben augustine cavedo sumaya muhammad ahmed ahmed lindsey franco nicholas then athletics academic excellence and leadership anna jensen annelise pierce clara lybeck karina hartman and taylor eckerman the desmond family scholarship yogitta manikeron memorial scholarship alexandra medvek and vashti sanachara and then attached you'll see the letter but more interestingly you'll see the hand off of the check in our gymnasium

174and underneath is the new gym floor which was just put in and is continuing to be finalized and so the first glimpse at the new gym floor within our within our building fantastic i can't see the floor because i'm struck by how large bill davis is he's a solidly built man um and a really wonderful person if you ever have the chance to talk to bill he is the greatest he's a lovely man he really is yes even if he is shrunk in his age that just means he was all the more large in stature looking up to him both literally and figuratively right so i will move that we accept these donations with gratitude all second so we have a motion by mr tensing in a second by ms malek any final discussion all

175in favor please say aye aye any opposed the chair votes eye the donations are certainly accepted with deep gratitude and especially on behalf of the graduating seniors of 2020 who benefited from these scholarships we next move into the advanced planning section of the agenda beginning with the legislative update so i will look to superintendent unofsky and board member peter sensing to see if there is anything you would like to share here in addition to the lengthy conversation we have already had about fall planning um just a couple of brief updates obviously the governor extended the emergency order since our last board meeting however we are obviously meeting in person as we are anticipating that at our next board meeting we'll also begin to have students and staff coming in in person so we are modeling

176and leading the way of social distancing masking and some of those legislative requirements um and then additionally there is cares funding allocated out to districts to help support some of these components that are added added on so we are thankful to the state and federal governments for funding and supports through the cares acts to support the needs of districts in in the times of covet yeah i don't have anything really dramatic to add that hasn't really been touched on already much of the amsd meeting was relative to sort of guide how to interact and work with md and mdh to kind of get your hybrid model going and do your in person component and the legislature has uh has not been terribly active of late even with some special sessions it's been not a whole

177lot on the k-12 front thank you we'll transition to information and or questions from the board that people would like to share with one another or with the public one one thing that and this again comes from amsd but i think that i would like to put in a plug for the website mnvotes.org obviously we know that this general election coming up is going to be a really unique experience and mnvotes.org is the website run by the secretary of state where you can get information about all the different ways that you can vote in this upcoming election and obviously participating in the democratic process is not only our great privilege but our responsibility so the other piece that may be of interest is secretary of state simon did comment on the challenge that his department

178may experience getting poll workers or election judges and this could be an opportunity for some of our high school students if you're 16 and older i see dr daniels nodding i know that they've done that in the past and there may be an opportunity this year i served as a poll worker last tuesday on the primary day i figured it was another way i could put my covet 19 antibodies to good use and hopefully keep some some of our more vulnerable poll workers safely at home it was a great experience and this is especially important for any high school students who are thinking about it it is a paid opportunity correct um which was news to me yeah so thank you for bringing that up yes and and i believe i'll add i believe that

179some um of the polling places have changed from last year so just a reminder to check i know mine didn't but i know some did so especially those little schools yeah okay anything else all right uh our next meeting will be on tuesday september 8th at 7 00 p.m in light of the labor day holiday on monday after that we'll meet again on monday september 17th with time at the beginning of the meeting for public comment oh thank you good catch monday september 21st not really sure where the 17th came from that's probably today yeah that that feels about right um are there any items board members would like to request for discussion on an upcoming agenda okay the next item of business is to move into closed session um for the purposes of labor

180negotiation strategy as allowed by minnesota statute 13d .03 um before we entertain a motion to do that just want to note that the meeting feed is going to stop at this time the only thing that we will do after the board concludes the closed session is adjourn so just want people watching to know that there will be no further action or discussion that is public after this time do we have a motion to move into closed session so moved second so we have a motion by mr polis in a second by ms malik any discussion all in favor please say aye any opposed the chair votes i we will move into closed session at 9 26 p.m and we'll come back together after a brief recess to clear the room thank you you