BOE Business Meeting 2021-8-19

001(upbeat music) Hello. Welcome and thank you to all those attending this evening's board meeting, whether in the audience, via live streaming or watching later on demand. I call this meeting to order and I have a few opening comments. All board members are present and attending this meeting either in person or via video conferencing. While the governor's order that allowed for board meetings to take place remotely has expired certain provisions exist in the open meetings law that allow board members who are unable to be physically present to attend meetings via video conferencing. The video conferencing provisions are not relevant to public participation only to board member participation. The public, however, has the right to attend this evening's meeting at any of the locations listed in the public notice issued on Tuesday, August 10th. We hope that

002everyone has been having a restful and restorative summer. The board acknowledges and thanks our administrators, teachers, staff involved in summer work over the past months, including preparations for the upcoming school year, implementing the spark program, teacher and administrative professional development, STI classes and other enrichment opportunities, plant improvement projects and cleaning and organizing throughout our many buildings. Dr. Hagerman and members of his administrative cabinet will soon provide a report on the opening of school. The board recognizes and is sympathetic to the fact that certain risk mitigation strategies in place again, this year remained challenging in many ways for students, faculty, and staff, parents, and caregivers. The board appreciates the community support as we follow New York State education department, Westchester county department of health, centers for disease control and the American academy of pediatrics guidance to

003help ensure a safe school environment, and as we work together to provide the best educational experiences for students in the face of continued COVID 19 challenges. Thank you in advance for your partnership and respectful engagement with us this year. We've very much look forward to welcoming all students, faculty, and staff, back to school on Wednesday, September 1st for a full regular schedule of daily in-person learning. Recognizing the vital importance of school in our lives we wish everyone a safe, successful, and enjoyable return. Thank you, Dr. Hagerman. Thank you very much Karen, echo those sentiments and have a few additional thoughts as well. Like Karen, I'd like to say good evening and welcome with a new year rapidly approaching we appreciate you joining us here at the high school or as part of our streaming audience

004this afternoon, to become more informed about some of our most significant work. And more specifically during today's meeting about the planning processes for the commencement of the 2021/22 school year. As Karen alluded to in a few minutes, the district administration we'll be presenting a back to school update that will address our decision-making processes, current guidance for opening schools and other logistical topics related to our COVID-19 risk mitigation efforts that will be in place at the start of the new school year to ensure the health and safety of all of our students, staff and their families. Typically, during this first fall board meeting, we do a deep dive into summer work, including any special programming and professional development that's gone on over the last few months. Unfortunately, Edgar was not able to be here tonight and

005so we will reserve the formal presentation of this work until our September meeting. However, I do wanna say a couple of words about summer work tonight. For as part of the joy of the summer came from the continuation of student and adult learning. For many students this was manifested in their participation in our summer enrichment program called SPARK or Summer Project based Academic Retreat for Kids. Over 300 rising first through sixth grade students participated in the three week program that was held at Fox Meadow in Greenacres Schools. The essential question that was posed to students in the program asked as responsible citizens of our global and local communities, how can we apply our learning to help make our community and the world a better place? In response, students demonstrated their critical and creative thinking skills

006as they worked on a variety of hands-on interdisciplinary activities, including researching and designing a garden for Greenacres, examining how to protect endangered species, designing an animal shelter for local pets, exploring ways to encourage greater use of solar energy and composting. All of these through the lens of how to improve life in Scarsdale and attract new families to our community. Soon engagement and enthusiasm were apparent and on a daily basis, they were on display throughout the entire program. As is the norm in Scarsdale many of our teachers were also deeply engaged in personal and professional development over the course of the summer. While this work varied from school and level common themes included a focus on curriculum adaptations and enrichment, interdisciplinary connections, and the integration of multiple perspectives aligned with established earning standards. Here are a

007couple of examples of that. An interdisciplinary team at Scarsdale high school explored resources from the New York historical societies, exhibition on Chinese American, exclusion and inclusion exhibit, the Asia society, the museum of Chinese Americans, as well as multiple articles on Asian American experiences with a goal of broadening the current American history curriculum. At the middle school interdisciplinary teams work to enrich the curriculum to include contemporary examples of peaceful protests, alongside historical examples to create relevant and engaging connections for students. Elementary teachers work together to expand the texts and other resources being used in classrooms to ensure multiple perspectives, reflect and celebrate diversity and provide opportunities to engage students in a variety of local national and global perspectives. Our work on diversity equity inclusion also continued throughout the summer as Edgar and I worked with potential

008consultants. And our entire administrative team read Dolly Chugh's book, The Person You Mean to Be, which will serve as an anchoring text for our ongoing professional growth and planning this year. We will also be sharing a more expansive report of our DEI efforts at our next board meeting in September, including the unveiling of our district's new DEI web page. And finally, the bulk of summer months was filled with planning for the reopening of our schools. As I mentioned earlier, this will be the focus of tonight's meeting, and we will continue to provide regular updates throughout the year. I would like to thank everyone involved in this meaningful work over this summer, particularly following the very challenging year that we had last year. Our teachers, administrators, support staff, parent leadership, and the board are all to

009be commended for their ongoing commitment to our collective planning and personal and professional growth. I think I speak for all of us when I say that I look forward to welcoming all of our students back in just a few short weeks. And again, thank you for being here tonight. Do any board members have opening reports or comments? Yes. Hi. At the last board meeting Dr. McIntosh distributed to all board members, a copy of the book, The Person You Mean to Be, which Thomas suggests reference by Dr. Dolly Chugh. He distributed to us because the cabinet would also be reading it and using it as a launch for discussion of diversity, equity and inclusion, which has been mandated by the state of the school policy, in which the district will be starting to discuss in detail

010this year. I wanted to encourage the community to also read this book I found that an easy read, but very powerful and it's simple and clear observations about bias within our society and how good people often have tendencies to undermine our best intentions. I was just gonna read a real brief overview of the book for those that might be inclined to try and give it a read. "At one point or another you've probably questioned your own beliefs about discrimination and equality, but have you ever considered, how much of a role your upbringing plays in that? Most people don't realize the extent to which their background influences what they believe. In this book, author, Dr. Dolly Chugh draws on cutting edge psychological studies to show how our unconscious biases are informed by our experiences. For example,

011even if you think of yourself as being anti-racist, there's still a good chance that racist tendencies lurk beneath the surface. Fortunately for us although we can learn more about ourselves and others so we're aware of what we're paying attention to and what we'd been neglecting all these years." So for those that have kids in the system I think it's would be really helpful to pick up a copy and give it a read. Thanks. Thank you, Bob. Even those who don't have kids in the system? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Any other reports? Okay, then we'll move on to item 2.0: Information and discussion items and begin with the back-to-school update. Great. Thank you very much. I'm gonna have a couple of presenters who are gonna work with me here tonight. Eric and Stuart so he is

012gonna cover parts of this and then we're gonna ask Ray to come up during the portion on athletics. So, first and foremost, we are very excited in spite of the challenges still lie ahead of us we still know that the Delta variant is something that is very much an obstacle to us, sort of moving forward in this process, but we continue to hope that through vaccinations and through risk mitigation efforts, that we're going to be able to open the school year as normally as possible under these circumstances, and to be able to conduct a school year that looks and feels to students like something much more traditional. As you can see on the agenda slide, which is next, we're gonna cover a couple of different areas tonight. I'm gonna just touch on some acknowledgements that

013I feel that I need to sort of point out for folks. Eric's gonna talk to us about the current health metrics, we're gonna talk about the guidance that is influencing our work and potential guidance that may be coming as well. We are also gonna talk about community and community engagement, which is something that we heard a lot about last year in terms of making sure that we have not only transparent and clear communication, but also very clear ways about how folks can provide feedback. We're obviously gonna go through and probably spend the bulk of the time on the key plan components themselves. We wanna make sure that both the board of education and the community members who are watching this have a very clear sense of what we're gonna be starting the school year with

014and how, and to make sure that we answer questions that you folks may still have. And then obviously, as it says here on the last item, we're gonna leave the last portion for questions and answers. Moving onto the acknowledgements page. I spent quite a few moments at the onset of this meeting talking about some of our work that has been under way in the district from really our teachers to our administrators to apparent leadership, other folks who've been working in thinking about the year ahead. Obviously I mentioned the spark program, just a huge kudos to all the teachers and the administrators who led that program. It was a first of its type here in Scarsdale, but the reports from parents and students were that they much enjoyed this experience. And it just would not have

015been possible without the work of many, many hands. So thank you all for those of you who are involved. Professional Growth and Learning, I also touched upon, which was quite extensive. Again, we'll learn more about that in September's meeting, but beyond the things that I mentioned, there were tons of stack and STI courses and other things, and Edgar will be reporting out on that in September. And then also the reopening, which is what we're gonna be talking about for the rest of the agenda here tonight. So with that, I'm gonna ask Eric to talk to us about our current metric. Thank you, Thomas. I'm gonna start off by just giving a little bit of an understanding of the CDC and the tiers that it provides for counties in determining whether there are low, moderate, substantial,

016and high spread. I think it's important to understand that the CDC's metrics are a little bit different than the ones we see in the New York times and some other papers that are out there. So when we talk about tiers of classification and where we find ourselves, just understand that we're always referencing the CDC in that conversation. So basically the CDC uses two metrics to measure the possibility of spread in the community. The first is the positivity rate, which is the rate we hear most often right now that is sitting at 3.8 in the county of Westchester. This is yesterday's number, I did not check it today so it maybe just slightly different. That's on a trend that's increasing slowly over the past few weeks, it has stayed between about 3 1/4 and a quarter

017and where we are now 3.8. And the second metric is the sum total of the seven day rate per 100,000 residents. It is a metric that's hard to find quickly. You actually have to go into the CDC website, all of the other conglomerate sites don't give it in this way. You'll often see a number in Westchester that somewhere in the twenties that is the daily rate per 100,000 residents. You have to add the last seven days of that rate to get this number, which is 139. And then the infection rate, which is not used by the CDC but as an important rate of the amount of the average number of infected person, tresses passes COVID onto is 1.16 and that is decreasing, which is a good sign. That being said, in talking to all of

018our doctors that we've worked with and talking to the Western department of health at this point, no one sees a tail off in the increase in the Delta variant, as of right of this moment. So Westchester county is currently an area of high transmission according to the CDC. Much like last year, the two indicators that the CDC uses are on opposite ends of the spectrum. Our positivity rate places us in the lowest category or low transmission rate while the per 100,000 has us in the highest category. Under the CDC, you choose the metric that puts you in the highest category, but because of our population density, the a hundred thousand number is much more difficult to bring down in an area like this so we really have a dichotomy between the two metrics. We have

019a couple of things that are going for us. In Westchester county, 75% of the greater than 12 year old population is currently fully vaccinated and about 81% has received at least one dose. If you look at the numbers of Westchester county vaccines, being given on a daily basis that has started to climb since the beauty of a Delta variant. So that is we are a very high county of vaccination and that is a protective factor for us. Next slide, Jerry. As we start to think about the key procedures we're gonna use this year and the key mitigation strategies, I think it's important to go over what relevant guidance there is for us this year. It is very different than last year. The New York state department of health guidance from last year is no longer

020in force as the executive orders and state of emergency was ended in New York sometime late last, early summer that had taken all of those precautions and guidance kind of off the table. New York state department of health has declined to provide guidance for schools as of right now for the upcoming year and has left us really with three sources of printed guidance one from the center of disease control, a second from the American academy of pediatrics. And then just recently last Friday, the New York state education department has come out with their written guidance. The CDC and the AAP have very similar guidance for schools K-12 and the New York state education department, essentially references schools to use the CDC guidance. So really when we talk about the guidance that is out there, they

021all tie back to the CDC guidance and the AAP guidance and you'll see, obviously the procedures we're using draw directly from those areas. We are also been instructed to work with our county department of health and of course our district physician. County department of health understand has a very specific realm of powers in the county for public health. It can adjust quarantine and contact rates requirements within the context of the state guidelines. So each county can implement those a little bit differently. So as we go through and we start to talk a little bit about contact tracing, some of Westchester counties designate for close and proximate contact will differ a little bit from the CDC guidance because they have local authority. I'll point those out as we go through. But I would encourage to take

022a look at the guidance that is out there for this year. It is actually shorter, a little bit more understandable and aligned than last year's guidance, which is a good thing. And I think it's important to understand all of the guidance recognizes the importance of live full-time instruction and the use of precautions to the best extent possible while maintaining the ability to have schools open for children. So that's really where we find ourselves as we go into this. And I would just add to that as well. The superintendents in We%stern have been meeting on a weekly basis with both the Westchester county department of health and George Latimer himself has been in each of these meetings and there's been a lot of advocacy around trying to get even clear guidance. And we also understand that

023when our new governor takes place, that some of the emergency powers may be restored to that position, which may allow more clear state guidance to come out of the governor's office at that time. So again, we expect there to be more clarity and more guidance over the next couple of weeks or perhaps months. But moving on to communication and community engagement, our commitment on behalf of the district of course, is to continue to provide public health metrics and that obviously factors into our decision-making processes. Although we will continue to follow the best guidance that's out there, particularly from the CDC and AAP, as Eric mentioned. And I think all school districts pretty much in Westchester are standing shoulder to shoulder around following those same practices. And we will continue to provide community updates, in fact,

024we provided one just today. There was a typo or two I was pointed out to me, so apologize for that, but we will continue to share out as much information as we can. To our families and community we have sent that message which really is an encapsulation of tonight's presentation and the key points of this plan, but there'll be more specific site based information coming out from school administration on some of the logistics of your children's schedules and those kinds of things in the next couple of days. Again, we welcome opportunities for questions and feedback, both formally here in this setting as a board meeting, but certainly any other time on people email us all the time every day and we welcome the opportunities to provide clarification on any of this information, whenever folks need

025to have questions answered we're here for that. And at this time last year we did have to do a daily reporting to the state that became part of a state report card. At this time, the state is not requiring that testing, I think that the state must feel comfortable enough with sort of where the numbers are that is not a requirement at this time. However, we are prepared that some of the changes in guidance may require us to do some additional reporting and we are working on that. Very specifically we've been monitoring the vaccination status of our faculty. We're also putting together a survey for parents to reveal the vaccination status of their children, and we hope that we would be able to get good numbers on that as we started the school year so

026have a better understanding of the numbers of the vaccinations that have taken place for our school specifically. So we move into the next portion of this, which are the key plan components. And you can see on the next slide, we try to be as comprehensive as possible, but we certainly, again, we'll be opening up for questions if there's anything that we don't answer by the time we get through this presentation. So we're gonna talk about school reopening, our planning priorities really hit on social emotional wellbeing, because that's a topic that's been very important to parents. We heard a lot about that over the course of last year. Some of the logistical pieces like masking, hand-washing and respiratory etiquette, we're gonna do a little bit deeper dive into the vaccination and testing protocols. We're gonna talk

027about our physical distancing across a variety of learning activities in our schools, we're also gonna hit specifically on lunch. We're gonna talk about special academic implications. Many of these were brought up as questions last year, and we had to make some schedule changes that reduce our specials times or eliminated specials altogether and we wanna bring those back under with risk mitigation efforts in place. We're gonna hit on academic intervention services for special education students. As I mentioned, gonna come up and talk to us about athletics. Stuart is gonna walk us through cleaning and ventilation as well as transportation and traffic issues. And then we're gonna round out with daily attestations and how to handle absences along with positive cases and contact tracing and visit our protocols for the year ahead. So again, it's a lot

028of information here and we hope folks will follow through the entirety of this presentation. So I'm the very first and probably most exciting aspect of our plan is that we will be fully, fully open finally. To all students beginning Wednesday, September 1st and we really are celebrating that day as a return to Scarsdale Schools, the way we sort of aspire them to be. Part of what that means is that class schedules and educational programs will return to pre pandemic norms for the most part. There will continue to need to be some alterations, depending, particularly for large scale events or large scale classes. And of course we've been saying since the spring, we're not planning on offering any hybrid or remote learning options, unless we get specific guidance that says that we must offer that as

029an opportunity. As we proceeded through the planning, the priorities were really well set. The first is of course the physical sale health and safety of our students, our faculty, and our staff here. Also looking at the wellness and social emotional wellbeing of those people as well. Followed closely behind by the appropriate risk mitigation efforts that the guidance is saying as best practice, our curricular co-curricular and extracurricular activities. When we look at these, our framework is to provide as normal a schedule and an offering of activities as we can under the circumstances. And I think we've gotten to a place where the vast, vast majority of our programs or sports or clubs will be able to run. There will be certainly some restrictions around trips and overnight trips and things like that that are, especially during

030this Delta rise and the beginning of the year going to be difficult to allow to happen. That being said, as the year goes on our context is to really do everything we can do safely. So as numbers change and numbers go down, we very much expect some of the early restrictions that we have to hopefully be lifted. And then of course communicating with the community on a regular basis to help everyone understand where we are and where we are going. So we're gonna start out with the social emotional wellbeing. Over the past 18 months, 19 months, there has been a range of experience for students, parents, family, units. Some students have weathered the pandemic very well and are extremely resourceful and resilient, other other families and children have had a more difficult time with it.

031This summer has gone a long way into helping students regain some of the normalcy with camps being open and an excitement about activities that we're we're here to for not allowed. That being said, we're continuing to work with our district psychologists, clinicians, counselors, to monitor and assess, and then intervene with our students' social emotional wellbeing. Each school now the clinicians in each school are looking to welcome students back on September 1st work with teachers, visit classrooms, understand the place that students returned to school and figure out the need for assessment, is there a need for what school-wide, district-wide assessment or our in-class assessments of students' social emotional wellbeing gonna give us the information we need. So as we start up, we'll be looking at the assessment piece. We also continue to partner with Scarsdale Edgemont

032Family Counseling, through our youth services project and the five social workers that are assigned to our schools. And we also use them as a referral entity for students who are in crisis or families who are in crisis. The district also maintains our ability to use a dish to bring in additional counseling services through a consulting basis should we see the need for that. Obviously we have counselors in every building guidance, counselors, psychologists, and social workers. The district office has two psychologists that usually work in other aspects rather than direct intervention those psychologists can obviously be brought to bear if there is a need and we have a fairly deep bench of psychologists who have recently retired, who have worked with us for leave replacements, who are all willing to come in and lend a hand

033should that be needed? We also have provided targeted professional development over the summer, especially in courses around positive psychology. Our director of psychology Elliot Cohen has run a number of those courses this summer and we have spent some time in our faculty meetings at the end of the year and we'll as we start up working with staff to understand student experience and how to look for red flags of any signs of students that are having difficulty. So from a social emotional wellbeing standpoint, we stand ready to receive our students and understand where they're at and intervene if necessary. That being said, from personal experience and from speaking with the camps in the area, many students have come back with a raring interest for camp and a great engagement there, which is heartening. We can move

034on from social emotional wellbeing. Masks, hand-washing and respiratory etiquette. As everyone knows, masks will be required, universally indoors for all individuals, regardless of vaccination status. Outdoor masking is optional for both students and staff and all mask wearing should adhere to CDC guidelines. So if you are outdoors and unvaccinated, we are recommending that you continue to wear mask, especially if you are in crowded areas. And the district is retaining the right to require outdoor masking for large congregant gathering. So those could be things like elementary graduation from last year where there were many, many people outside sitting close together, that is the type of event that we would require masking outdoors to keep, especially a large group of unvaccinated students safe. We will continue to provide hand sanitizer and hand washing opportunities within the classroom, and

035teachers of course will continue to emphasize the need for respiratory hygiene and cleanliness, especially within the younger grades. And very specifically around using lab equipment, around using shared equipment. We have students sanitize prior to and after use of that equipment, especially if it's gonna be shared between students. Similarly, if they go into the library to breath stacks and take out books, those are times where we ask everyone to use the hand sanitizer that's provided. The district has on hand and appropriate stockpiles of PPE for teachers and students who forget mask or who need specific types of masks. We also have gloves more hand sanitizer than we can shake a stick at. So we're all set as far as that goes, as we start the year off. Next slide. Moving from masking to vaccination and testing,

036I'd like to start out with staff testing and vaccination before I go into the details. My sincerest thanks go out to our labor units and to Dr. Patrick for working together over the summer to come up with a very forward thinking plan for vaccination and testing for our staff. My understanding is at this point, we are one of the only districts in Westchester to have done this agreement with our unions, where at this point, teachers will be required to provide verification of vaccination or be tested on a weekly basis for of COVID-19 through a PCR or molecular test. The district will provide those tests for the teachers and staff, and this is inclusive of all staff and contractors who are directly involved with students. So that would include our safety monitors, that would include our

037related service providers who are coming in, working through contract. It would not cover one-time presenters or things like that, but any staff member who is in regular contact with students would be covered in this testing. As far as students go, we cannot re require vaccine or vaccine verification from students. That being said, we will be serving the community and the parents to get an idea of verification. Survey will go out next week. We strongly encourage the parents to provide both verification for students who were vaccinated and let us know which students are not vaccinated. It will help us from a school standpoint, know when we can move back from mitigation standpoint and also help us understand what the risks are around larger events. So that will go out next Monday or Tuesday. Eric, and just

038add to that. Just so folks know if all parents should not expect that only parents who have students eligible for the vaccinations should expect that survey to be coming. So we recognize that it's not children 12 and under are not eligible so we're not gonna be sending parents with only 12 and under. Well, we actually may be surveying for under 12 because we I'm gonna get to the next part, which is our testing from the county. The county has decided to provide testing to school districts for free. They have not given us the full details of this, but they are gonna provide both gateway and screening testing for school districts. That being the case, we will need to gauge interest in those parents who are willing to have their students tested and that would be

039for K-12. So that's a relatively new program that we've learned about this week, and the county will be assigning us to one of three vendors that they have selected and carefully vetted. As Eric said, they will plan on doing a gateway testing, which is to test everyone who wants to be tested, say in their first week or the first two weeks. And then after that, the thought is to have up to 20% of your school population be tested, of course, on a voluntary basis if you're a student and as Eric described, if we're a faculty member, you can opt into that if you have not shown proof of vaccination yet. And finally, we will be requiring verification of vaccination status or weekly testing for our student athletes to participate in extracurricular sports, given the risk

040level of sports comparative to the classroom, and the fact that it is an extracurricular activity. And Ray will give us a little brief update of the number of athletes that are vaccinated at this point, when he comes up to talk to us in a couple minutes. When we move from here to physical distancing. So the next one is physical distancing. We have a lot of experience with this from last year obviously, and we do know that the concept of physical distancing as one of the most important risk mitigation efforts that helps eliminate the spread of COVID-19 or greatly reduces it at least. The CDC is now recommending three feet of social distancing whenever possible, understanding there are moments in the school day where that may not be able to be maintained, but again, as part

041of a multi-layer risk mitigation plan, we believe that all of the factors that we've talked about, including the masks and the social distancing, a hand-washing and so forth will continue to help keep our students and faculty safe. In regular classrooms we're gonna maintain that three feet of social distancing whenever practical, just as we did last year, at the end of last year, I should say, although some activities, again, may require shorter distances for limited periods of time. And lunch in some special activities will require greater physical distancing we talked about. That with band choir, other kinds of athletics and things like that. And so we're gonna walk through some of those pieces right now. We're gonna kick off with lunch, and I'm gonna ask Stuart to kind of walk us through that one, please. Sure.

042Thank you, Dr. Hagerman. So food services team is excited to start serving the kids once again for the new school year. Lunch will be served and all sorts of different spaces, traditional, non traditional, and utilizing outdoor spaces once again at the middle school, high school specifically where the tents will be arriving before the students get back for the September 1st start date. Each individual school is developing their own specific plans as far as schedules and exactly what spaces they're gonna be using and parents should expect to get that information from the buildings administration as we get closer to the start of the school year. Elementary food service, we'll be offering a similar to the past couple of years, pre-ordered individually packaged lunches, and then both the middle school and high school will offer both hot

043and cold served and grabbing go options. So we will be having, for instance, at the middle school high school, salad bars and some hot entrees, there'll be served by cafeteria personnel to the students individually and then they will take that lunch and go to their spot where there'll be enjoying their meal. As far as tracking or tracing daily seating charts will be maintained. So we'll be able to take care of that and follow through if need be. And students will be asked to wash or sanitize their hands before and after lunch. And as you recall, barriers were used last year and now per CDC recommendation, they will no longer be used. I just wanna be really to clarify a point. In the first bullet, it says, there'll be using six foot social distancing. Stuart you

044didn't explicitly say that and I wanna make sure I'm looking at the bullet. When we first talking about this as an issue, we did have elementary parents who shared their concerns about being less than six foot and having masks off. And so, as Stuart said, we're gonna be using all available spaces to be able to try to ensure that six foot social distancing while kids are eating lunch. Absolutely. There is some specific academic implications for physical distancing that I want to and shared equipment that I just wanna touch on. Band orchestra and chorus are specifically space driven. They will be participating at three foot social distancing and maximize, and that that distance will be maximized whenever possible. That being said, those three classes usually comprise of a very large number of students they're not our

045regularly sized classes. So finding spaces for them can be quite challenging to provide the room we need for multiple class group. So we will have students participating in instrumental activities, and singing and instruction. It may look a little bit different than it used to where we may be breaking up groups into smaller groups and using non-traditional or outdoor spaces. Each building has kind of their own limitations on that, but they are finalizing those plans of exactly how they will schedule those. And it's important to understand that the infection rates and guidance that i&s there now will... the infection rates will really depend on whether or not we'll be able to do large scale performance as we move. If the Delta variant continues to climb, I do see a future where we wouldn't be doing those

046large scale performance activities. That being said, if the numbers start to get better, then I could see us really moving quickly to be able to provide those for students and parents. That being said, the music and choral department is looking to maximize the amount of opportunities that our students get to play, to sing and to perform in those areas that is safe. So they will take place, but it will be a little bit non-traditional in the music department this year. Lab activities will be utilized and they will be reinstated fully. Any shared equipment will be focused on having sanitation prior and post of using that. Similarly with the libraries, they will be open, students will be able to browse stacks, check out books and use other resources, but we'll be pretty stringent on hand hygiene

047as we have students enter and leave those spaces. Physical education classes will be held outdoors to the extent possible. We will push the boundaries of whether that we normally wouldn't push to have students outdoors and being physical. When classes do need to be conducted indoors, the sharing of equipment, extended periods of close contact will be limited and masks will be worn by all staff and students. So in general, most of our specials and less traditional academic activities will take place. There may be a few schedule changes and differences in those programs, but we'll be looking to have them as traditional as possible. Just one more addition to the band orchestra. Last year, we were able to provide some of that experience by using specialized, the musicians are wearing specialized masks that allow instruments to be

048close to their mouth, but also have a mask effect and then also utilizing instrument covers. So for Woodwinds and others, where there might be projectiles of aerosols and things, they will be continuing to practice with those. Again, that was a question that came up by a number of parents last year. So I just wanted to be very clear about that. I apologize, all of those protections will be there this year. We have the stock in place and we're ready as far as PPE goes with that. I'd like to move on to academic intervention services. There are concerns with the non-traditional year we had last year. Many students did have difficulty in a virtual environment. Academic intervention services are fully operational within the district this year, our child study teams will be looking at students from

049the very beginning of school. Any student who's having difficulty achieving grade level standards and moving forward in classrooms, we'll be assessed as all of our students are and brought to the CST team to look and see if there's a need for additional supplemental services, whether that's by the classroom teacher within the classroom or through pullout services, and in some cases, if students are showing signs of a disability doing that type of screening. So it's important that we'll be using a number of different testing options that we use every year, which is our Fountas and Pinell reading assessments, our star testing teacher recommendations, we use unit and lesson assessments to determine how students are progressing, and we take into account past state assessment scores and all of our diagnostic screenings that happen in the nurse's office

050and also through the special education department. So those are all fully in place and operational last year given the split schedule. Many of those AIS services happened half the time they would normally, or on a different schedule this year, we are reinstating them fully within the six day schedule so students will have the full Penelope of support services. I'm gonna turn it over to Ray to talk a little bit about athletics. Oh, thank you, Eric. All sports we'll practice and compete during their traditional seasons during the 2021 and 22 school year in compliance with health and safety protocols that we've developed from the New York health and safety guide, from New York state ed, the centers for disease control and prevention guidance for schools and the American academy of pediatric guidance for youth sports and

051physical activity. We will not be having our daily attestations and screenings, but students who experienced symptoms with COVID-19 should remain, must remain home and are required to produce a negative COVID-19 test or receive clearance from their physician on return. Vaccination status fortunately for us has been one of our questions and our pre participation questionnaire. And right now students and families have reported 95% of our student athletes are vaccinated across all of our fall sports, which leaves about 29 students who would submit a negative PCR test and will have to participate in our weekly testing program at this point. A face mask must be worn at all times indoors for staff, students, and visitors, and on school supply transportation. Face masks will not be required for competitive cheerleading while flying stunting or tumbling, for gymnastics while

052performing skills or swimming or diving while they're in the water because of the risks outlined in the AAP guidance. During wrestling, an adult coach, or an official be closely monitoring for safety purposes so we're meeting the recommendations that are outlined in the AP guidance. For outdoor sports, a master not required. A split staff and student athletes are not fully vaccinated are encouraged to wear face masks when the social distancing of three feet can't be met. In general, when we're looking at our spectators are we're gonna be asking them to socially distance at three feet or more possible and we'll also be recommending that when social distancing can't be met and for the unvaccinated that they use face masks. This year we will be using locker rooms and be allowing indoor access for our visiting teams.

053We will not be planning at this point, any overnight travel due to the inability to meet all of those recommendations that they have in place. When we do have positive cases, we will be following the district protocol, but in addition to that, there will be a return to play progression that we also use last year, where we worked together with our school physician to bring students back safely, to participating in competing in athletics. We will be allowing home in a way spectators games will continue to be live-streamed and our visiting teams will be held screened through their school districts procedures. No sharing of water and so on, but we are happy to be able to offer all of our sports within their traditional seasons this year. Cleaning and ventilation. So the district will continue its

054comprehensive and enhanced protocols for cleaning and disinfection as we started off the school year per CDC guidance. Really consistent with what we installed last year with a focus on the daily cleaning and wiping down. And then in many instances using electrocytes water, which is that Viking pure that the board approved early this year, where we use that to do actually the cleaning and disinfection, we can use the same process, which is fantastic and it does allow our cleaners and custodians to get around the building effectively and of course applying this so we can continue on with our daily programs. Complete protocols are listed I'm not gonna read through all of them, but it does go through each of the spaces and the type of protocol or guide guidance that we'll be using in each of

055those spaces. I will say, as far as a focus on the elementary buildings, there is a focus on that due to the vaccination status of our younger learners, where we will be using both the wipe down a disinfection cleaning and disinfection method, and also using the electrostatic or electrolysed water on a daily basis. The ventilation plan will again be following what we put in place last year, where we did update all of our filtration and all our ventilation to the extent possible with our systems. The only difference would be that we'll be allowing the classroom fans, which will help cool those spaces, especially during the beginning months of the school year. Included in the ventilation plan is guidance for air conditioning for AC window units, where we do encourage all of our classrooms to use

056them, and then also to keep the windows open to the extent possible so that the classrooms themselves can feel the impact of the AC so they can not have the heat as a deterrent. And then during, as we get colder, it'll be just the opposite. You open the windows to the extent that you can feel the heat so again, you're not stressed attracted by the cold from the windows. And the complete ventilation plan is linked again in this document and a documentation we'll be sending out to the community. Well, as far as transportation and traffic, our transportation team is busy finishing up the routing for the upcoming school year. For all the eligible families, there'll be a full regular schedule as past years, as far as protocols as we did as we finished up last

057year and throughout the course of last year, students and staff will be masked on the buses. And again, the windows will be open as much as the weather allows to help ventilation in those buses. And loading, when we load students, there'll be from the back to the front. Cleaning and disinfection does not stop in the classrooms we'll be doing that as well in our buses no less than once per day. I say that typically a bus would be cleaned at the end of each day and disinfected, if there's a change in students from the morning to the afternoon, possibly cleaned and disinfected during the middle of the day. Buses will always have a extra PPE for students if they happen to forget theirs on any given day. Quarantining will not be a necessary aside from

058a positive individuals on the bus. And many of our parents may have seen a recent survey that just went out which is showing that there seems to be an increase in ridership from last year, which was positive, which will have a real nice impact on reducing some of the traffic around our buildings, predominantly the middle school and Quaker Ridge. Also a Quaker Ridge with the help of Eric and working with Scarsdale police department we do expect assigned to go up no left turn sign on the front exit at Quaker Ridge to Weaver street, which will help ease some of that traffic from the parking lot, and is over at the middle school SPD will be monitoring and enforcing the parking regulations on those side streets. So combination of increased ridership on our buses and some

059additional help from SPD hopefully will alleviate a lot of the traffic around those buildings. I think it's important just to say out loud, we are asking all parents to follow the on-campus student pickup routine at the middle school. As last year, many of the side streets were blocked with cars, picking up students. Many of those cars were parked in no parking areas and SPD will be enforcing those rules at the beginning of the year. So just as a kind of fair warning to everyone picking up at the middle school. I'm happy to announce that our use of easy screen will discontinue this year to the great joy of nurses who spent a very inordinate amount of time following up on easy screen failures and non-compliance. This year the CDC is no longer recommending the use

060of daily attestation so we will be ending that practice. That being said, students and staff who experienced symptoms associated with COVID-19 must remain home and there'll be required to provide a negative COVID-19 PCR molecular or receive clearance from their physician in order to return to school. So we can't stress this enough, especially given the rising Delta variant and it's increased viral load. We need to be absolutely vigilant about having students who have any type of symptoms or staff who have any type of symptoms stay home for the betterment of the entire community and the ability for us to continue school. Nurses will be following up on absences to determine a return to school plan for those students, just to make sure that every family has a touch point upon absence from school. That kind of

061leads us to what is the current status of contact tracing positive cases and quarantine. Given the fact that there are now massed and unmasked rules, there are vaccinated individuals, unvaccinated individuals, individuals who have had COVID, it gets a little bit more complicated than last year. This graphic we're starting with kind of gives you a general idea of the people that would need to quarantine upon exposure to a positive case. The CDC and Westchester counties department of health interpretation has two types of contact. The first is close contact that is being closer than six feet to an infected person for more than 10 minutes, cumulatively over a 24 hour period. If you read the CDC guidance, they say 15 minutes, but this is where Westchester county department of health has a different standard within our county

062that we are obliged to follow. So it is 10 minutes over 24 hour period, closer than six foot. Obviously that can happen in a mast or an unmasked setting. I'll get to which ones have to quarantine in which don't in a minute. The other type of contact is proximate contact and is that as the sharing of an enclosed space of a regular sized room or smaller. So when we think about a regular size room, think about your standard classroom and being in that space for more than 10 minutes with an infected person cumulatively over 24 hours. So if you are vaccinated, this is the easy one, you do not have to quarantine if you are in contact with a positive case, that is either proximate or close contact. Just to be clear on the chart.

063When it says individuals refers to both students and adults, when it says adults, it means adults, when it says students, it mean students. So all individuals it's referring to both. That's correct. This is where we get into the change for unvaccinated individuals there are some difference between students and adults, according to the New York state education and Westchester county department of health. For unvaccinated adults, if you are in close contact with a positive case, you must quarantine whether you were massed or unmasked. If you are in proximate contact as an unvaccinated adult, you do not have to quarantine if you are mask, you do if you are unmasked. Now students in school, this changes a little because the New York state department of education has reduced the physical distancing to three feet. So unvaccinated students

064who are masked do not have to quarantine for either close or proximate contact. They still must quarantine if they are unmasked during closer proximate contact. And then any individual who has had COVID in the last 90 days does not need to quarantine due to the antibodies that the disease provides to people who have gotten, and then recovered from COVID. This chart is the easy way to look at it. If you look at our plan, that is all spelled out in narrative and goes through exactly what constitutes contact. For the purposes of lunch, I think it's worth saying in a large space, so in a space, the cafeteria or a space like this, which is a larger room only, and where students are unmasked, only the students in closest proximity to a positive case will need

065to quarantine. So the students surrounding the positive case, it would not be the whole room ponder a proximate context situation in a regular sized room, proximate contact would encompass the whole room if they are unmasked. This terminology gets very confusing. So just to be clear so Karen and I are in close contact, within six speed, and it's been more than 10 minutes. So we are in close contact and all of these categories, this was the chart that we would look at for us, everyone in this room, this little room is in proximate contact. So if we found ourselves under any of these circumstances, we would be looking at that proximate contact column to make the determination. So I just wanna just sort of get a little visual to that. So all of our nurses are

066extremely well versed in close proximate contact rules, and we will be contact tracing any type of exposure within school. The next slide, I would encourage anyone who has any questions to look at our plan. There is an FAQ for positive cases contact tracing and quarantine, it's exhaustive I think, but we'll really give you an idea of when and where people must contact trace. So just to go over the basics. The contact tracing window, which is referred to as the time in which you must contact trace for exposure is still 48 hours prior to the onset of symptoms or for asymptomatic people 48 hours prior to the positive test date. So if I was asymptomatic and I tested on Monday, I would need to contact trace for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday and obviously any days past

067that. If I was symptomatic on Sunday, got tested on Monday, I would have to contact trace for Friday, Saturday, and then Sunday, cause that's where my symptoms started. So that is the contact tracing window for COVID. At this point, we are expecting hopefully the quarantine numbers to be fairly low, given the exception for mass contact of students and the need, not to quarantine both on buses and in classroom instruction situations. So with any luck, our quarantine numbers will remain low. That being said, the district is currently engaged with the STA regarding plans for this supporting continuity of instruction for students in quarantine and looking at how do we provide touch points and instruction for those students over the time that they are out. On average, it tends to be five to seven days worth of

068school that are missed if there's a positive case for people who are quarantine, when you include the weekends. We do still have all of our tutoring services under contract should we need to utilize those services but at this point, we're looking for ways to really maximize the effectiveness of our quarantine instruction. We'll be giving out those details once they're finalized. Moving from there, I will turn it back over to Thomas or visitors. Okay. I think last spring, when we talked about the idea of visitors, we imagined this world in which our doors would be thrown open once again to the full community. As we were dealing with the, with the Delta variant obviously we're having to think a little bit more carefully about that. We will need to be restricting school visitations during instructional time

069to meetings and appointments that are really face to face. And so that's obviously a case by case basis we can't sort of tell you at this moment whether certain kinds of meetings, those are gonna be obviously people's best decision-making and hopefully a joint decision between those who were having the meeting and other parties that are invited to those. In all cases though visitors to the district schools will be screened and we'll be required to follow all of our district mitigation strategies, including wearing masks. Our community has been incredibly supportive around this idea. As you watch the news, we're seeing other communities in which people are openly defiant of doing things like wearing masks or other kinds of mitigation efforts. You know, we know that this is a contact and a partnership with our community. And

070again, we're really appreciative that people have been willing to follow these understanding that our most vulnerable students are the ones who have yet to be vaccinated. After school and PTA activities will be conducted and will there'll be expected to follow all of our mitigation strategies. I've been in contact with Meg Simon and a couple of points over the summer, she understands that the PTA's are preparing for those kinds of activities and understanding that they will need to be following in the same sort of footsteps the district is relative to the risk mitigation efforts as part of any afterschool programming and things like that. The district will also allow outside entities to apply for building usage, permits that we've done in the past. It's part of our being a good neighbor aspect of the school district,

071these groups will also be expected to follow our mitigation guidelines. However just wanna be clear if they're not following them and it's not a school activity we will certainly have people accept that feedback and pass it on to them. But we're just not in a position that we're gonna be able to sort of police all of those, we will do our cleaning and disinfecting protocols as we always do before and after those kinds of events, but we're gonna be very clear about what our expectations are and again, expect that people follow those. Large outdoor activities may be subject to mass mandate. As Eric said much earlier on if the administration and district physician team determines that it's in the best interest of students. Eric used the example of graduation ceremonies last spring, coming up, we

072have things like elementary back to school picnics that are outdoors, but also we expect large volumes of parents and students to be coming to those. So we could expect that that will be something we'll be asking folks to wear masks too. And finally, mask will be required at board of education meetings and other kinds of large-scale meetings, regardless of vaccination status. You know, this is something that it goes back to the universal mask wearing and all of our school buildings and we will be doing that both during the instructional day and for any school related business outside of the instructional day as well. And that really brings us to the end of our prepared remarks and we'd love to open it up and hear whatever questions board members may have. I have some questions. Please

073go ahead. Hopefully most of them are pretty short, but there are quite a few. Eric, you talked about mental health and starting with sort of an in-class assessment and potentially deciding if a broader assessment would be needed. Do you have a sense as to how long that might take to do the in-class assessments? So psychologists will be working with teachers and grade levels from the very first day of school. We wanna really have a good handle on where students are by mid to late September. Okay, great. Thomas, you talked about the county testing. Do you know when we'll get more details on what's involved with that? Yeah. So we had to sign up as of tomorrow is the last day to sign up. Once the county has all of the participating school districts, they are

074gonna cluster us together. So I suspect we'll be clustered with white Plains and edge Monton, east Chester. They will assign us a vendor and then I think they hope to start within two to three weeks after that gets done. So I anticipate right around the beginning of the school year. Okay, great. So we might be able to do that gateway testing before we start school? Or right as. Okay, great. And to confirm that's free you said. Thank you. Yes, important word free on the part of students and faculty who are participating in that. Great. Stuart, you talked about physical distancing, so does that mean we're gonna have like directional hallways now, or it'll just sort of be normal? It'll sort of be normal. I mean, we had all the signage up last year a lot

075of that signage remains. It will determine sort of building by building exactly what procedures they may have, but I would imagine it would sort of start the way it ended last year with that. Great. And also you mentioned lunch, we're getting tents at the high school, also with the middles. Similar to what we had at the end of last year so those tents will be reappearing. Now we only have approval for them from SED for three months so it be September, October, take us right about through Thanksgiving, which sort of works out with the weather anyways, we are working on the paperwork to be prepared for the spring, if need be. So the board could expect to see that sometime in the early fall for thinking ahead for the spring. And ours are the funds

076for those coming out of the COVID budget that we allocated last year. They would, yeah, we did certainly did not plan on that in the budget. It come for those in a special code and then we sort of come out at the end depending if we overspend certain facilities, codes, account codes, if we need to do a transfer or not, but that would be the general thinking. Great. Ray, you talked about the spectators that sports. Will there be any limitations on spectators and indoor sporting events? Right now don't have limitations on us spectators at indoor, we typically get a manageable number and we're in the planning processes for our like multi-school activities right now and considering how many, what the numbers would be like. And once we, once we go through that planning process, we'll

077take a look at what the district has decided on large mass gatherings to make any further determinations. Great, because that leads into my next question. Eric, you mentioned band orchestra, chorus, and potentially having those kinds of concerts depending on the levels. Are we still, are we planning for them now? How are we addressing that? So at this point kind of inexplicably, both New York state education department and the CDC guidance have been absolutely silent on performing arts, which is surprising. My hope is that that will be rectified in the next few weeks and we will have some level of guidance on that. That being said, yes, we will look to see how we can do performances. We have worked with Dr. Corsaro, Dr. Gilbert and Dr. Chugh in this process of doing this plan for

078reopening, we will continue to work with them around as we come closer to those milestones in talking with them thus far. The numbers on the Delta variant were unknown. We don't know how far they're gonna go up, we don't know how long the rise in the Delta variant will continue. So it really will depend on where we find ourselves in that moment to whether or not we can find a way towards performances. Okay, thanks. And my last question is for you as well. Just to clarify, because we've had parents asking this question before is not the district that quarantined students. Thank you. It's a great question. So what I explained to you as the Westchester county department of health guidelines for quarantine and contact tracing as a school district, we have no authority to officially

079place people on quarantine. That being said, the department of health does not have the manpower to immediately contact trace a call and follow up with parents on a timely basis in schools. So the schools are left to make the initial determination on what the quarantine would most likely be as anyone who was quarantined last year, including my son will attest you get information from the school district about a quarantine and that is then confirmed by the Westchester county department of health when they call you anywhere from a day to two or three days later to inform you of the things that the school informed you of. Because we are required to immediately contact trace and report to the department of health who the exposed person was and any contacts that fit the bill for close

080or approximate contact, according to that chart at this point. Great, thank you. I'll take a crack at it. Two questions of I'm looking at my questions. The first one was you mentioned protocols for staff for vaccine or testing, and then you mentioned that anybody who's in regular contact with students or staff would have to follow those. And you subsequently mentioned that somebody coming in on a one-shot basis would not have to follow those protocols. I guess my question is... Well, would not be subject to test or vaccination. Okay. So I guess my question is, but is it that we would never require it or that we're not required because I can imagine... We would be treating them like other visitors to the building. We would be screening them through similarly to what easy screen asks.

081We would have them mask and we would have them maintain six foot distance from students and from staff members. Okay. That's a good clarification. The other thing is more of a general question and it's just to avoid misunderstanding, that there's different things that you mentioned, you mentioned the New York state education department guidance or department of education guidelines, and you mentioned, I think Westchester county department of health guidance. And when we say guidance, I find that sometimes it means different things to different people. And so there's sort of a scenario where there's guidance which is recommendations and guidance which is perhaps requirements. And so for instance, what you mentioned about the contract conduct, tracing and reporting, that sounded like a fixed requirement. When we talked about some of these other things is the guidance from

082department ed and the guidance from department of health requirements, or like sort of recommendations that we've determined that we will find. The answer is yes. There's a little bit of both in there. So I think it's important to understand kind of regulatory authority. CDC is providing recommendations to K-12 schools, they don't have the regulatory authority to say, you must. The New York state department of ed does have the regulatory authority to say you must and in some cases in that guidance, they do very few quite honestly, they say refer to the recommendations of the CDC. So I'll give you an example. You must wear a mask on public transport including school buses. That's a must in there. That being said, they are recommending you maintain at least three foot of social distance where you can,

083where it doesn't stop students from being able to have live instruction. So I think it's important most of the guidance in the New York state department of ed guidance is in the context of we are recommending that you follow these to the greatest extent possible while still being able to provide a full-time in-person education to students. So that is the directive from the state on the vast majority of these. Westchester county department of health is a little bit different. They handle the contact tracing the quarantine that is regulatory force, you must do those things. So they are issuing orders of quarantine and orders of isolation for students to protect public health for students and adults to protect public health. Okay so that all makes sense, and it sounds like I'm gonna say it just to

084back and then correct it if it's not right, but basically it sounds like most of these guidance are requirements, except to the extent that they interfere with the getting the in school education or some other, I guess, conflict. It slightly differently in that they recommend like amongst all the other recommendations, they also recommend in person learning. So it's not in spite of it's in addition to, and we think it's so important. We also think you need to follow these other mitigation efforts. So, right. So is it that where for instance a requirement that there, or I'm sorry. My own language, I'm confusing myself, a recommendation that they make would preclude the in-person education of let's a number of students and that presumably not just one, although not to minimize one, then that might be a

085recommendation that we would then not follow because we couldn't keep everybody in school to do it. I don't know what that would be... I think you're hitting on exactly the right tone there. That what they're saying is you must maintain as many of these precautions, we recommend that you maintain as many of these precautions while maintaining a full in-person learning experience for students. Obviously there, when you start to parse apart, every recommendation that they write in the CDC guidance or in the New York state education department, there's obvious space that you can make an interpretation the way it's written that does that mean you can only fit the kids in the class at two and a half feet, do you go ahead and do that or should you break up the class and have another

086section of fourth grade in that room? So there's a wide range of how you can approach those things. The way we've approached it is we want students to have the most traditional experience that we can while maintaining the physical distancing and mitigation practices they have in there. We believe we can do that. Does that mean that there won't be in one lunch room somewhere, a 5 1\2 foot space? There may be. I think those are pieces that we can maintain the distancing to the vast majority of spaces and we're looking to also, whenever we make these decisions, we also look at how they impact the quarantining rules and how kids will be impacted. Were there a where there a positive case there? Okay. I think that's a good place for me to stop asking the

087question. I have a few questions. Just following up on the discussion about masks, are there any requirements for the type of mask that either faculty or students must wear? So it is you can wear cloths or disposable masks that should be close fitting, cover the nose and mouth Gators, bandanas, non mask masks we do not allow in the schools, but it really is a cloth mask, more layers the better, but at minimum it must be a disposable surgical mask, or a cloth mask that fits over the nose and mouth. There can be no exhalation ports cause that essentially defeats the purpose of keeping your own germs in. But that's generally where we're at. Is there been any thought about increasing the threshold of what's an acceptable mask? So for example, not just a cloth mask,

088but either a multi-layer cloth or not allowing human cloth. I'm just curious what the thought processes. Yeah. We haven't entertained increasing the mask mandate, above and beyond what is typically out there for the CDC and others. I think when you start to move into heavier masks, kN95 mask or N95 mask they are much harder to degree through. They are more, for certain people, they are certainly less tolerable. And so we have not looked to do... CDC also recommended not double masking for children. One suggestion I may make that sense is going back to that discussion about sort of that one-off visitor, that we don't know their vaccination status, they have not submitted a weekly test, perhaps for them, we wanna require a kN95 or a surgical masks. So I'm just thinking we're bringing somebody in

089on a one-time basis that is a risk, there's a benefit to that. Obviously we're bringing them in for a reason and that's one mitigation we could get. I think it makes sense maybe to ask Dr. Corsaro maybe give us a little, his thoughts possibly on masking and this conversation. Dr. Corsaro did you hear that? You're muted muted. I did not hear the question. So the question is the thoughts around requiring more stringent masks like KN95 or multi-layer masks, whether that for before for people at large, or at least for visitors that are coming into the school where we don't know vaccination status? I hate to get into the process of being a mask police force paint. The surgical masks surgical mask, which is what you're wearing right now is suitable. The mask has to be

090properly fit. That is the key thing that the mask is properly fit. Now, the question of a cloth mask, as long as it's multilayered. If there's two or three layers, the cloth mask is suitable. A surgical mask, the disposable paper masks, assuming that they're multilayered they're suitable. The important thing with children is that the mask is properly fit and is worn properly and this is where we can see contagion if the mask is worn below the nose, for instance. That's not a proper fit, it has to be above the nose to be adequate. So to get back to your question, I don't think that we have to go beyond a surgical mask it's suitable. If someone would watch enhanced PPE because of a health condition, then the step up would be to a KN95 mask,

091which is comfortable. And if someone has a serious health condition or a nurse who's working in the nursing office, N95 should be advised. However, the N95 has to be formed fit and medically approved before they can use. So that there are steps that they're required in order to have someone use an N95 mask. So it isn't just handed out, it has to be approved first medically, and then form fitted. The KN95 which could be purchased over the counter is a more comfortable fit, which is a next grade up. And I think that the recommendation should be based on someone's health condition rather than what is being proposed here. Again, the most important piece here is that the mask must be properly fit. And this really applies to children in order to have this waiver of

092being able to not have to quarantine if the student is exposed within three to six feet to someone who is COVID positive. Does that answer the question? Yes. Thank you, sir. Just to short circuit, the next question. We maintain both stocks of adult and child sized masks for students and for adults, and obviously give the correct size to any student or adult who needs it. KN95 are available for any of our staff who feels they have a higher need of protection. And we do have fit tested KN95 for all of our nurses. And we will have those masks available obviously then all of our visitor management stations as well. And I'll just add for visitors. It's quite common now, for example, if you go to the doctor you come in with a cloth mask, they

093give you a surgical mask. So something for us to consider. Can we just talk, or I don't know if it's Eric or Thomas, just talk about the process if a student has a legitimate issue with a mask or in a specific scenario, such as they're getting pulled out for speech. So at last year, and in this coming year, students who have documented medical and/or educational challenges, speech and language might be one of those or students who cannot tolerate mask because of a disability, we have had mask exceptions within the school for the past year, and those continue to be available. Any family who has a child that they believe needs to have a mask exemption, whether that's for a particular activity like speech and language, or for the duration of the day should get in

094touch with our building administration. We will ask for documentation of that issue if it's a disability, we may have the documentation or we'll have a conversation with Dr. Corsaro, the parents, and the providers to that student to figure out whether or not that mask exemption is warranted. Just from the speech and language 'cause I wanna be clear our speech and language pathologists all have stock of clear masks for students and for themselves. So when we talk about things like I'm having a word retrieval problem right now, but when we talk about speech lessons that are being given, many of those students will use clear masks so that the speech and language professional can see their lips and they can see the speech and language professional's lips. So those are pieces that we have in place.

095Thank you. Just that a couple of questions about quarantines. Do they differ at all between indoors and outdoors? So yeah, that's a great question. Outdoors would not be considered contact unless there's long exposure, very close. That would really be kind of one of those subjective cases for the department of health to adjudicate. So if we had a situation where we had a graduation ceremony where we found out that one of the adults sitting in the audience was positive, we would consult with the department of health on whether or not that needed to be contact traced or not. They would ask where the seats were, where all the people were and how that event progressed, but from a contact tracing on a standard situation, we're not contact tracing outdoors. And can you talk about the chart

096you showed was very helpful? Does that apply to non-school settings? So I don't know, is the answer to the question? Sure. Well, it says... ...based it off of the guidance. Well, but what I'm saying is the exemption for students in a class where they're three feet apart is what specifically for students in a classroom where they're three feet apart. And it was presented that way, I assume if we're talking about religious studies or a classroom experience that is private outside of the school day, that they would treat that similarly, although I can't tell you with a hundred percent certainty that they will. It's just not something that they have. Yeah, no, it's fair. I think just given, we know people are gonna do things after school, different settings, we may wanna put a disclaimer that

097we can't speak to what happened in it, in the same setting, not in the school. I agree with you. Can you just talk a little bit about the example you gave for lunch for a second? So you mentioned you're in the big cafeteria, it's only the people around you that are gonna get quarantined. However, if I understood the updates recently, we're gonna use a lot of spaces for lunch. So that might include a classroom? Correct? If there's a classroom having lunch, is that the whole classroom getting quarantined? It is, remember that classroom would have kids spaced out at six foot apart so it there wouldn't be 22 or 24 students in that classroom during lunch. But yes, is the answer to that question. And then just last, all of this is, it looks very prescriptive.

098We have a chart from Westchester county, but let me give you an example and I know you're not the decision maker, but I just wanna get your thoughts. A class has a case they're all masked students so nobody has a quarantine, but a day later, another case is that whole room getting quarantined? So the answer is, I don't know, but it depends. There would be a conversation had with the department of health. You know, I think, listen, not to be the harbinger of worst-case scenarios. If we have a year like we had last year, which had zero student to student in class spread a little two instances of spread on teams and two adult to adult transfers over the entire year with over 200 cases, then we are gonna have a very similar, very much

099more traditional year this year. If, and this wouldn't be a Scarsdale phenomenon, we would see this Countrywide. If the Delta variant is spreading in a way in schools that is markedly different from the variant, there's no telling what the next steps will be. That is a different conversation. At this point, we don't see that as being the case because we really the lack of spread that we had last year was very gratifying. But if we were to see two cases in a classroom or three cases in a classroom, that would be an immediate call to our district physician and we certainly would probably put that class on quarantine until the department of health rendered a decision in what they were doing there. I would imagine that they would be fairly conservative. Yeah. And the reason

100I asked for two reasons, one is hopefully we don't have it, but if we have this spread, what that means, correct. And I'm also just trying to think through, this is the example where you start to ask, what does that short-term remote option look like? And I know we don't have that answer, but when we think about it, given that Delta is so much more transmissible than alpha. Just understand, I think if we are in a situation where a class, the whole class, or all but two or three kids in a class that is a situation where we moved to remote for the duration of a quarantine for those kids. What we're talking about finalizing is when it's the one or two kids in a class, or it's the one kid in this class on

101one kid, what are we doing for those where it doesn't make sense to put it entire class on quarantine, but it makes sense to make an individualized plan for that student. Just wanna be abundantly clear. We will be providing quarantine instructions for students. We've just had, we've done it one way in the past and we know that we can fall back on that if we need to, but we're exploring other ways that are actually gonna be potentially stronger connections for students and I'm more connections with classroom teachers. So that would be a change in practice for our teachers. And so it is something that we have to work with them on and not formally negotiate, but agree upon. So that's what we're in the process of doing. And then we'll be slightly different at each

102of the levels because of the developmental needs of the children, the teachers schedules, the high school already has tutorial time, for example, built into the schedule. So that allows them some opportunities that maybe elementary teachers don't have. So it's just parsing out the full package and we also wanna roll it out at the same time so we can be very clear with parents. We learned last year that when you roll out small pieces of things, sometimes it doesn't necessarily have the best result. I have a few others, but we have a couple of virtual people and I wanna give them the floor 'cause that can be hard to jump in. Jessica, Jim, do you guys have questions? I can. I had a few written down, but I guess first of all, one of my, let

103me ask, can everyone hear me okay? Yes. Great. I wanna know specifically what accommodations will be available to students who have a reduced mask tolerance, not due to physical disability or another issue, but it is sort of a psychosocial factor. And right now it seems like the CDC guidelines really only take into account physical disabilities. And I'm wondering how we're gonna manage that, Eric. Yeah, I think it's probably, there's no specific answer for that 'cause every one of those situations is gonna be different, but I think it would be contextualized much like the 504 in the CSE process. So when you think about a definition for an exemption, from something like this, or for accommodation in school, you have to have an identifiable disability that does not necessarily have to be a physical disability. It

104can be an emotional disability, it can be any type of disability that needs to be documented and understood and be something of note. That being said, it also has to substantially increase your this is an educational institution, so it has to substantially limit your ability to access the education. So two legs of that definition that would get to an accommodation for masking and whether that would be increased. And I could see those types of things being the accommodations could be specifically setting up increased mask breaks for that particular child on a more frequent basis or having a particular place for a longer break in the middle of the day for that, or so we could, we could do that in a number of different ways, rather than you don't wear a mask or you do

105wear a mask. I have to say Jessica walking around last spring and out of classrooms. The teachers did this so seamlessly and easily kids would just because it's not a kid might be great one day and the next day it's really hard to tolerate. And I found them to be kids to be self advocates around this and say, I really need to take a mass break. The teacher said, great, go take a mass break, come back when you're ready. Like I just, it was a very kind of informal process. Our teachers, I think in every way work to support our children and I think mask wearing is just gonna be one more of those ways. And I think it's probably a good idea. I think that seems to just defer grade to grade and child

106to child. It's not gonna be a one size fits all. The temperature of day sometimes, you know, on the 95 degree day outside, it's a different, it's a different set of mass breaks than you need than the 50 degree day outside. Right. And sort of in the same vein of addressing some of the mental health stresses that emerged during the pandemic, this was something you addressed in your part of the presentation, Eric, but I'm wondering whether we have the option of creating some sort of ad hoc mental health advisory committee separate from Dr. Corsaro group that would enable us to get some additional guidance throughout the year, or as long as we deem it necessary now that the restart committee panels have been disbanded, just to make sure that someone is monitoring at all levels,

107the sort of mental health of our students, so that the board can continue to focus on core issues around strategic vision... Yeah, thank you for the question. ...and the other things we normally do. So I'm currently each building has a child study team that is responsible for looking at individual students, but also looking at kind of the health of the building in and of itself. Those are made up of our school psychologists, obviously social workers that are in the building, any guidance counselor in the building, the administration as a teacher representative on those. So those are in, in case we do not have a community mental health committee. We have not had plans to start that actual, obviously Dr. Corsaro is our physician that we go to, if there are specific pieces and if there

108was a need for consultation with a psychiatrist from the community, we have access through to psychiatrist from Southern Westchester, Northern Westchester BOCES that consult on a regular basis with us about individual students. But we could also consult with them on a wider scale for talking about more large-scale situations. Right. And Jim, do you have anything before I continue to dominate the remote questioning cable? I can try to come up with questions, but everybody who's had questions has asked my question. So rather than trying to think of one that no one else has, I'll just be happy with them, the answer. All right. So I'm just gonna ask my last question, which is basically whether I wanted to go back to a question that Stuart's, I think falls under Stuart's realm. Stuart I was just curious

109at this point, whether we have a sense of the busing situation, I may have missed it. If you mentioned it earlier, in terms of what percentage of eligible students are going to be utilizing the bus. I know a survey went out. We did, I didn't get the final numbers, but I got them through yesterday where we had about 1100 responses. It was about 30% of the total, but the over it did show a very nice increase in the expected participation, really focusing on Quaker Ridge in the middle school, where of the percent that replied for those buildings, 75% of those were a yes. Now, compared to where we were last year, where it was more in the realm of half, that's a really nice increase that again I mentioned should help the traffic situations around

110the buildings. It's great from a traffic standpoint, given that increase, are there gonna be additional mitigation steps? I know some people have mentioned the possibility of things like assigned seats or other measures that might be taken around busing, is there any thought about what kind of bringing the windows down on days when it's appropriate? Is that on the table at this point? Yeah, we would continue with the same mitigation that we had last year. So keeping the windows open to the extent possible with the weather, which is most days, except on the very rainiest of days, loading the buses from back to front, everyone wearing a mask and then being mindful of our bus runs themselves of how they're laid out, who gets dropped off where to try to make the time on the bus

111as short as possible. Thank you. Those are all my questions. I guess this is a quick question for Stuart with the traffic and the situation. What is the situation at SMS with the parking lot, with the construction that's there? Is that gonna be gone in two weeks? Exactly. Just so everybody knows free time at the roofing project that's going on right now, Yeah. (all mumbling) Yeah, no, it is scheduled to be completed. There would be well 95% completed, but all those spaces will be cleared up any staging areas will be shrunk down and ready to accept more parking and the traffic as it picks up, that's as a major roofing project, it was the complete building all of the middle school. So they've done a great job. They've been working on weekends as appropriate. The

112weather has cooperated for the most part, we've had a bit of rain, but that's always the concern during a roofing project, but we do expect them to be finished, 95%. And Ray, can I ask a question that I know there, Eric mentioned that it is recommended if you're unvaccinated that you should wear a mask or think about wearing a mask if you're outside as well. Correct? And I was wondering we have 29 athletes who are not vaccinated is the recommendation that they wear a mask while they are competing, especially in closer context, say like in football or soccer field hockey? No, no, so you'd be encouraged to wear a mask when they're not in competition or performing their sports activities, if they're standing around the sidelines for extended period of time waiting, or if they're

113on the bench, but otherwise, no, that's not the recommendation from the CDC. Okay. Recommendation from the CDC is unvaccinated where masking crowded areas, outdoors. Got it. So close, so even if you're competing close to the next... Yeah. So right now with outdoor sports are generally considered safe. Okay. And the transmission rate is fairly low. I mean, I think Dr. Corsaro can discuss that a little further when we look at medically but for sports outdoors right now, it's not recommended that they wear mask. And that is why we're on a weekly basis for any unvaccinated. Sure, okay. And then just back to the mental health, I just wanna make sure I'm understanding. So we will have our teachers working with our psychologists and scars of family, Edgemont counseling, you thought reach workers to sort of assess

114that in an individual level and I was wondering who and how will determine if a larger assessment needs to take place of our students? Like how, how would that be done? I know Dr. Cohen had mentioned there had been, I guess, surveys that had gone out or last year so I was wondering what is maybe the plan for the fall? So what we found in our surveys last year was by and large, very few of the results from that survey were for students that were not already on our psychologists and clinicians, radar screens. So we didn't really garner many new student information from those surveys. I think the linchpin to what will require us to look at a larger survey. And if we're looking at a larger survey, that also means we're gonna need to

115be looking at a larger intervention, to say, what do we have going on here. Is really whether we see an uptick from our guidance counselors, from our social workers, our psychologists and our teachers talking about students who are displaying on the youngest levels, different behaviors than normal. So in other words, your youngest kids who are suffering with social, emotional distress, or wellness are typically not telling you they're suffering from social emotional distress or wellness. They're acting in ways that are atypical for the age group and our teachers are very well versed in looking at that, understanding that and bringing that to the attention of our administrators and our clinicians. In the middle and high school, we make very specific outreach to students at the beginning of years from the social workers, from the psychologist. So

116each student knows how to access those, the deans meet with different with each class throughout each quarter to understand kind of how kids are feeling. Those are the pieces, those red flags of kids stopping in to talk to deans who are voicing issues at a rate that that is abnormal for a 1500 person high school. Those are the red flags that we would look for as far as do we have something deeper and larger going on. Thank you. Bob, go ahead. Eric, picking up on Karen's point, could you just recap for parents, what you recommend, we're starting school, there are parents that are anxious about their kids. You know, there are different personality types some will be hesitant to call and make to do about something, some will not hesitate. So yeah I know the

117district has a chain of command, so to speak in terms of issues, but for those that are new, we're just starting and they're not familiar with it again, I know it's all kind of buried in there, but if you could recap if you have a child you're concerned about this child for A, B or C reason, what and when is the best time to share that concern with whoever? So let me go by level 'cause I think it makes a difference. So on the elementary level class lists have gone out just recently, so my suggestion is prior to the start of the school year would be sending an email to the principal assistant principal with a copy to the teacher that they will have. Just outlining if a student is nervous, if a student is

118having difficulty or has had a terrible summer or left school last year in one way and is significantly different than another at the beginning of this year and let the assistant principal principal, and then copy to the teacher know that way they can get back to you, give you some very specific advice about what may be the best things to do in the next week or so leading up to school. On the middle and high school level, contacting your deans or your counselors would really be the way to go. The counselors and deans are back in the office starting on Monday, so they will be there to kind of field some of those emails and calls and give you some advice on kind of what the best way to go is. If it's a student

119that has an existing relationship with one of our clinicians, that's certainly reach out point you could also use, but if they don't the Dean and the administration of the building. You know whenever you have a question, I don't know who to get in touch with, I don't know how to do this, the principal and the assistant principal of the building is always a good place to start the email say, please get me to who I need to get to and they will get back to you and let you know, these are the people you need to speak with. And if you can't get in touch with anybody else, feel free to email my office and I can also direct you to wherever makes the most sense. I just had a few other follow-up questions. Ray,

120it sounds like our program is very robust to keep our kids safe. Are our opponent schools doing the same thing? So it's interesting. I think it's gonna be different school to schools. We had our first eighties meeting today to discuss this and in the absence of guidance, I believe that most schools will be adopting the CDC and the API items. We shared what our thoughts and ideas were Scarsdale was pretty much out in front with documentation, but is very consistent with Connecticut state, their state athletic conference has put out, which is a pretty comprehensive document that addresses sport by sport for the fall. So I do think that it will be in more alignment. You may see some differentiation in testing and screening, but for the most part, there will be asking indoors and not

121masking outdoors. I think in general, there'll be allowing spectators. You may see some differences depending upon facilities and size of facility on the number of spectators that are allowed, or if a spectators are allowed, but in general, the will be very similar just because of the guidance. That's the recommendations that are in place right now. Okay, thanks. And just to add to that, Ron we're meeting as a group of Westchester superintendents and every district out there plans to be following the same guidance from the CDC and AAP. Okay, thank you. Can I just add one thing. I think the difference that you will see is the level of vaccination. I think that's gonna be the biggest difference across school districts to expect that every district will be where we are at 95%, I think is

122unreasonable, but I think that's the basic difference. I think the other protocols will be very simple. And obviously it's something we'll have to watch depending on what happens in this area, because we may be great in our bubble, but I'm just thinking about what are the vectors that it can come into our community. Just re regarding reporting of cases, if I understood correctly from the district's guidance, it will come to board of ed meetings rather than emails like it was last year. I've gotten feedback from parents at that was very helpful so that they had a general sense of what has happened in our community. I share that feedback with the group. Sure. It might be something that if we do see cases uptick, we may wanna consider a more frequently. Yeah, I think you're

123right. If we do see cases increase, we might adjust it. I think it's important to note there are two ways we'll bring it to the community in our community updates and through board meetings to start with. So when doctor Hagerman or myself are sending out community updates on other pieces, that's certainly information which we would include. We have had mixed feedback all around on, do you wanna report every case? Do you not wanna report every case? At this point as I said before, the state used to have the school report card, they've discontinued the reporting requirements for that. I don't know if they will reinstate that as the school year gets going, if they do, obviously we will participate in that and report those numbers which is, is kind of an ongoing always up-to-date situation.

124So I assume what will probably happen is if those numbers really increase at a rate more than we're seeing now, we probably will see some of those things be reinstated. Okay. And then just two more questions and maybe this is not for tonight's meeting, but we talked a lot about at the end of last year, CSC, special education and uncertainty about whether there will be more students flagged or less students because people weren't in the building. Have you seen any difference this summer? Yeah, I think not in the summer compared to like, I don't think we've seen a jump once school ended. I will say Dr. Hagerman we'll be going over demographics and enrollment in a moment, you will see that besides the two additional kindergarten ICT classes coming in, we had an additional two

125ICT section breaks that require the hiring of two special education teachers. We've had 12 additional students come into the program in the annual review season that opened in April and has gone through the end of the school year. I think that is probably at least partially, well, five of them are move-ins so we are getting kids from other places who are coming to the district, the other nine, I think you can say, at least some of them work students who may have been on the fence prior to the COVID year and the COVID year kind of made made the difference in moving that over. Have we seen an increase? We did see an increase in referrals, especially towards the middle and end of last year, not exponential, but certainly it was a hefty spring as

126far as initials go. Not all of them were qualified as students with disabilities, some of them were students who got pre-referral services or needed 504. You know, I think there are a group of kids coming that we really have to figure out was this to say. Some kids in virtual type of instruction weren't performing in the way that they would if they were there every day, whether it's because of an attentional profile or because of whatever the setup was. So we've kind of worked through many of those and made plans. Many of them made plans to engage some extra support on the beginning of this year and gave some accommodations at the beginning of this year. And then come back to the committee as we get a month or two in to see if things

127have kind of righted the ship to what it looked like prior to the pandemic. So we've done a lot of those things over the past six to eight months, and we'll see where those numbers go. I don't necessarily suspect that we're gonna see some exponential jump from the numbers where we were at the end of last year. I don't know, necessarily think we'll return to baseline before at least halfway through this year, but that's me guessing from not having any crystal ball. I wanted to jump in briefly Ron, are you done with your questions or did you have more? I had one more, but if it's on that topic, I'll just let you do. Just quickly for Stuart, I get this question a lot still. Can you just talk about the rationale for tents at

128the high school in the middle school, but not at the elementary schools for this fall? Yeah, we're just continuing on with the practice, the principals were confident that they can make the schedules work within their buildings and the spaces that they had, supervision becomes an issue when it start to go outside and the little ones start to maybe be a little bit more mobile than the middle schoolers and high schools. So we just continued on with that practice. Thanks. Jessica. Sorry. I just have one more question for Eric. I'm curious. I know that amid the Delta variant, one of the things that really gives us hope about coming back and having a successful school year this year is the success that many local programs, including day camps and overnight camps have had. And one of

129the things that seems to have contributed to that success is that those programs started with kind of a clean slate. Most of them were required a negative COVID test to resume camp or various programs. I'm wondering if there is any consideration at this point of having some sort of pre start of school, rapid testing made available to students so that we can... I know that we've been talking about ongoing testing, but I'm talking about an entry point test that would kind of allow us to start the year with a clean slate and make sure that situations like unmask lunches didn't present the kind of risks that they might otherwise. Sure. So I think sleep away camps very much had pretesting routines. That being said, my understanding is the vast majority of day camps did not

130have ongoing testing or entry testing. That being said, the county program that's being touted does look to do some gateway testing. I'm gonna say that with the understanding that we are a whatever today is August 19th and the county has not given us full details about their start-ups. So I'm a little leery to say that we would be ready to do a full kind of gateway testing. We cannot require students to be tested prior to coming to school because education is compulsory mandated, and we can't put a barrier so to students accessing that. That being said if we can, with the county provide the option for testing early on in the school year, we certainly will do that. Okay, I'm not talking about mandating it, I'm just asking really the question about making it available

131to everybody. I know you didn't ask it, but I just wanna be sure to re hit the idea that all of our staff will be either verified vaccinated, or tested prior to the start of our school year. And so our athletes, and so we'll be making it available for anyone else who wants to be tested as well. Can we ask maybe it's for Karen, Amber Thomas, the PTC to report out what they're doing for the people they're bringing in. They might be doing the same thing, they may be requiring their vendors to be vaccinated. I think that's a great idea. I'll follow 'em, I'm gonna be serving as the PTC liaison again this year so I'll follow up with Meg to find out what kind of protocols they're gonna put in place for their volunteers,

132especially those that are coming in during the school hours. So I did talk to Meg today and we were actually setting a meeting for not necessarily, but the following week to review and to go over all of this information. And we talked about the importance of standing shoulder to shoulder following the same risk mitigation strategies and efforts when they're in our buildings with our students. And so that's already in process, but it'll be an ongoing conversation, certainly over the course of the year as well. Thanks. Any other questions? I just wanted to thank you all of you for working so hard to ensure the safest environment possible for our students and our school community, while also supporting the best learning experiences possible. And we really, really appreciate your putting together this presentation for the community

133to also reference and doing what you, everything you can for a smooth opening. And we understand that I know you said at the beginning, but just wanna reiterate it, that you will keep the community informed of any changes on guidance, new developments, information as you receive it, and I also expect parents will get more information from their building level of detail in the next week, coming weeks. So thank you, and thank the board for having this meeting. I think it was important for us to do this in a very public way beyond just sending our community updates to go through this extensive questioning and answering process to help provide more clarity to this work. Eric and Stewart live in this every single day and so sometimes it's good to have people who aren't living in

134it every day ask us those questions because we've been sort of internalized some of these answers and sorry, Ray was living this every single day too. I didn't mean to leave you out. To extend it on, just again, it's not just the people in this room either who've been doing this work and there's been so many other people from our custodians to our bus drivers, to our teachers, to our building principals this is really a team effort and we're very appreciative of the continued ability to be able to work together around these issues and then also have the board support in the community support. Dr. Corsaro and our physicians have been instrumental. We're not gonna keep you on after we move beyond this Dr. Corsaro, but we wanna thank you and appreciate your ongoing insights

135into this work. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you. Okay. So we've been sitting for two hours, part of our wellness protocol to take a five minute wellness break. ...to be present and to speak at designated times on agenda items or other non personnel related matters. If you come to the microphone, please state your name, your address, and if you are speaking on behalf of an organization. Thank you. Hello everyone. Leah Dembitzer, 354, Merrick road. I'm speaking as president of the Scarsdale middle school PTA. I just have two very brief comments of my own and then I'm gonna read a statement. My first comment is I'm glad that additioning continuing instruction plans are being made for when students may be out for quarantine exposure or illness, since they don't seem

136to be like they're gonna be able to zoom into the classroom, and when they're gonna be on an extended absence, I think they need a lot of extra support. And sometimes I know the tutors might've been overwhelmed a bit last year. Sometimes there was not a timeliness to it so I hope that that's considered in the plans. Thank you as well for the proactive district emphasis on student mental, emotional health and wellness. A note about Scarsdale, Edgemont, family counseling service. I know that in the spring, I think they might've been a bit overwhelmed too so when you're giving a referral I know that you have the ability to hire another outside consultant as needed, but just to be aware of if they have people available to the students that they're being referred to them. Yeah,

137I'm gonna read a statement. I'm speaking on behalf of the Scarsdale middle school PTA executive committee and legislative advocacy. The Scarsdale middle school PTA executive committee strongly encourages the board of education to allow remote public comment during the hearing from those present section of its meetings, the SMS, PTA, EC believes that robust, active and diverse public and participation are essential to the board's process. And the 2020/21 school year, the incorporation of remote public comment, further expanded community engagement on district issues. The restoration of remote public comment would allow middle school parents who may be unable to attend the board's evening meetings in person to more fully engage in district issues and publicly participate in meetings. The SMS PTA EC hopes that the board reinstates promote public comment in order to increase accessibility and to hear

138from a more diverse group of voices. Thank you, Leah. Well, good evening. My name is Alissa Baum, 27 Lane and president of the League of Women Voters of Scarsdale, and I'm speaking on behalf of the League Board of Directors. First really appreciates the school board has called this summer meeting. We appreciate your dedication to ensure a successful year ahead and still uncertain times. As for public comment, the week's position is that the open meeting law allows remote public comment. As the League stated publicly on June 21st, one of the big central missions is to promote the public's active participation in government. The League has recognized and supported the school board's efforts to increase accessibility to the community. Maintaining virtual public comments is one more avenue through which the school board can broaden the public's access

139to the participation in school board meetings. Furthermore, the week has continuously advocated that a more complete picture of community feedback combined with relevant expert opinions and research will serve to enhance for decisions on complex issues and their implementation. We understand that the advisory opinion recently issued by New York state's committee and open government makes clear that government officials such as school board members can participate in public meetings by video conference so long as the public is able to view a public meeting at any site, at which a board member is participating. The advisory opinion does not prohibit virtual public comment. In fact, with regard to the participation of those who are not board members, the advisory opinion states that, and I quote, "The open meetings law does not prohibit a public body from permitting invited

140guests, that is anyone who's not a member of the public body, but who has been asked to actively participate in the meeting to speak or testify using a remote access platform. The school board has the right to invite anyone, including the public to speak at board meetings from a remote location. Internees meeting the simply choosing not to do so. This is counter to the very essence of the open meetings law, which seeks to ensure robust public engagement with elected bodies. There's also counter to the support of public engagement, to which the League subscribes and defends. The League board, once again, respectfully requests that the board reconsider its decision denying the public the opportunity to comment at meetings virtually. Thank you, Alissa. Follow up to public comment, did you want to, anyone else? Sorry. Okay. Did

141you wanna address the availability of tutors or the plan for..? You know, we have the tutoring services available I think that Leah was absolutely right, that there were moments last year, not moments weeks last year in which the tutoring services. And in fact I think probably all mental health services, we heard reports all over the place, just trying to find therapists, trying to find support during COVID was just a very difficult time. We did not anticipate that being the case, but also having said that we don't necessarily plan to be using the two research tutoring services in the same way in that we would like to develop the plans that we've been working on with our teachers to make sure that our Scarsdale teachers are the points of contact and connection for continuity of learning,

142and we are negotiating those agreements out at each level and we'll be sharing that information out again as soon as that work is finalized. Thank you. The board will also be addressing the issue of remote public comment under item 9.02. Okay. So I will close public comments and we'll move to item 5.0, The Personnel Report. Okay so Thomas has the pleasure of presenting the personal report tonight because Drew is out of town with his family to taking a well-deserved vacation. And in the absence of, you know Drew always does a terrific job of presenting slides, enrollment trends over time and provides a good context for the year, and he is gonna do that when he comes back in September again. I'm gonna review some high-level numbers, understanding that even as we speak, we have enrollments

143coming in and people leaving and so on and so forth. So it is a very dynamic process right up until we open the school doors for our students and their families. So I'm gonna start with enrollment because I think that context will be important for us in terms of talking about the personnel on allocations that go along with that as well. So at the elementary schools, as a total, all five of them, we had 2052 projected and 1,982 students actually enrolled at the moment, which is about 70 students down overall across all five elementary schools. To do a little quick breakdown of that at Edgewood, we projected 366 we're actually gonna have 355 so down by 11. Fox meadow, we projected at 458, we're actually have 427 today. That's our most significant decrease, that's 31

144students. Greenacres was actually up. We projected 302 and we're at 327 so that's a plus of 25. Heathcote we projected at 373, we have 361 so that's down by a dozen. And Quaker Ridge was projected at 553 students there at 512 right now so actually I'm sorry, that was the largest difference with a drop of 41 students right now. So that's our elementary schools against total of 70 down at this moment. At the middle school, we're down 20 students from projections. We had projected 1,150 and we are at 1,131. So that's a decrease of 19. And at the high school we had projected 1515, and we are currently at 1477, which is just shy of 40 students down, across the district that means we're down about 127 students. So when we translate that into staffing,

145we budgeted 203.3 FTE, and we actually have 204.6 and I'm gonna kind of walk through how those numbers have sort of changed. So at the elementary level, we reduce our special education skills by 0.05, but we added four. a special ed ICT, Eric kind of walked us through what happened there. We had a total of 14 new students to that program and we were pretty close to full in all of our classes. Last year, we had five move into, as he mentioned, we had the rollover, a fifth grade section from last year that rolled off. And this year we have three sections coming in so that's a net of two classes right there and as I mentioned, we have 14 new students not counting all of our incoming kindergartners. So we had one class section

146there. We used all four contingency positions that were available to us in the budget and we had to add a point or an art and a point for MPE for just class enrollments and various classes. At the secondary level, we have budgeted 101, sorry, 107.1 at the middle school and 159.4 at the high school, and we are right there at the middle school at 107.5 so just 0.4 above and we're right on target at the high school, 159.4, which is exactly what we budgeted for. We added back a 0.4 FTE as our and our ENL class at the middle school English was a new language, but again, those numbers are very, very close at this point. Our class enrollments are locked in at this point, we won't be adding or breaking sections any longer, which

147may mean we'll have to see what happened when the numbers come in and obviously our class guidelines that we have historically liked to keep in place. So we're watching those numbers closely. And again, we expect there to be some ups and downs before we present the formal numbers in September as well. Any questions about the enrollment at this point? Just curious, and maybe this will be a question for Drew when he gives a deeper dive, but any insight into the those hundred 27 students, where did they go to private school? Did they move out of the district? Are they doing other things? Yeah, Rachel's our guru, but I'm not sure she's prepared to answer that question right now, but in anticipation of our September presentation on that, we do track that data and so we

148do have it available and we'll be able to respond to that question. (audience mumbles) Yeah. ...we've seen more families moving far away than other years, but I can do more than that. So NTV land, who probably didn't hear that response, Rachel said that we did have a number of international families who either moved back home or did not return back to Scarsdale, and we had a number of families who also moved out of state to other places. But again, we'll get more specific details to that question. I don't think you have this now, but it'll be interesting anyway to see, not just this year to last year, but in the year before, because I think that... Yeah, Rachel, we keep that longitudinal data, correct? Drew usually provides. So we'll be able to yeah. We have

149all the trends in the charts that we normally do. To move on to the certified personnel, we do have five probationary appointments on the agenda this evening, which we're very excited about. Dolly has been recommended for a probationary appointment in the elementary tenure area. Joshua Gaylord has been recommended for a probationary appointment in the tenure area of English. Carolyn Quintin has been recommended for a probationary appointment and the tenure of agriculture. Amanda Frey has been recommended as a probationary appointment for elementary, and Deborah van Wagner` has been recommended as a probationary appointment in general special education tenure area. So we are excited to welcome those. It doesn't completely round all hiring this season, but it gets us pretty close. So we're excited about bringing them and as Drew said, we've seen a record, a number

150of diversity hires this year, which is an explicit goal of ours and so we've been very pleased. We've been able to track the kind of talent that we wanna come into Scarsdale and also be more broadly representative of our student body. And then on the non-personnel side, I really don't wanna give this part of the report. But we also have one retirement on tonight's agenda and it's our very own Rachel Moseley, who's the director of information technology and the chief information and data protection officer for the district. Rachel joined the district office in 2013 as a part-time employee. In her retirement letter she states that it's been a privilege to work with from all the units around the district. Scarsdale feels incredibly fortunate to have so many talented and hardworking educators and staff and has

151been my great honor to find and implement technology solutions that help them in their daily work. She also goes on to say that she has cherished building leading and mentoring and her department, which she truly has in a really gifted way. Together we have worked hard to provide the district with state of the art technology, infrastructure and systems and I'm very proud of our accomplishments. A highlight of the career of her career in Scarsdale has been quote the joy I found in working with everybody, the close collaboration and team spirit and the many laughs that we have shared. So Rachel indicates that this was not an easy decision, but it is one that's gonna allow her to focus on spending time with her family and pursuing her varied and interesting hobbies. So I can't say

152too much because I would get emotional about this retirement, but Rachel has just been such a phenomenal part of my team, such a phenomenal part of this district has touched so many lives. Really when you think about some of those great institutional heroes Rachel has been one of those so we'll leave it at that for tonight. Any questions? Let's move on to item six, Written Communications. Amber. Thanks Karen. Item 6.01 is the preamble about written communications. Please note that the board of education email is also viewed by the superintendent and district clerk. Open meetings law requires all board deliberations, which may lead to action or policy changes to occur in public. Therefore your written communication and emails will be reported at an upcoming public board meeting. A board member will respond at their earliest convenience.

153Can I move on to 6.02 item? yes. 6.02 are the written communications the board has received through August 13th, 2021. There were 39 emails and all emails that requested a reply received one either from myself or from a member of the district. There were 23 emails on district matters. Topics included the superintendents contract, competitive cheer, district boundaries, a particular student's 504 plan, Columbus day, masking and risk mitigation efforts in light of the Delta variant. There was one email asking about the selection of a DEI consultant. There were 11 emails on board meetings, topics included virtual public comment, board agendas, board retreats, and remote participation for board members, and there were four invitations or sharing information. Thank you, Amber. Items 7.01 is the preamble to the Consent agenda. The board may conduct some of its business

154using a consent agenda in an effort to achieve greater efficiency at board meetings. It consent agenda condenses some of the routine business of the board of education into a single motion. The consent agenda is prepared by the superintendent of schools in consultation with the president and/or the vice president of the board. Items are selected for the consent agenda when the officers of the board and the superintendent believe there is no controversy regarding them. The items on the consent agenda will have the same background material as ordinary items on the board agenda. If any member of the board feels that any item on the consent agenda requires discussion prior to action, that board member may remove that item from the consent agenda merely by requesting the same at the meeting. The exempted exempted item then moves

155to the regular agenda. However, all non exempted items would be removed, seconded and voted upon without discussion in order to provide greater efficiency to conducting the routine items of business of the school district. Could I say a word? Yes. Thank you. Yeah, go ahead. So, because of you're voting on Rachel's retirement and some of you may wish to reject that I wanna be very clear that the retirement doesn't go into effect until August of next year. So Rachel has graciously agreed to work with us again throughout the year. I just forgot to mention that timeline before so with that information, hopefully you can vote your conscience. Okay. Carl. Okay, that's good. I was gonna pull it off. So I moved that the consent agenda consisting of the minutes from the reorganization of business meeting of

156July 7th, 2020 as 8.01, the certified personnel report that Dr. Hagerman described as 8.02, the personnel nonsense certified 8.03, all be accepted. Can you make a motion? I started with it, I moved it. I started it, I think with the motion. Okay, sorry. It wasn't clear. I've moved at the consent agenda be accepted. I second. Oka, any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No, I think that was everybody said okay. So the consent agenda is approved and now we'll move on to item nine, Information and Discussion items led by the superintendents starting with 9.01, the DEI Consultant Update. Thank you. For folks who are new to this typically I will lead us through the information items and then Karen picks back up on the action items. Although the first agenda item makes sense for

157me to conduct the second one we'll actually be Karen after this. But on this item, this is about our DEI Consultant Update. When we ended the year, we talked about our various efforts that were underway, including setting goals at each school level, working on board policy, a variety of other actions that we're taking over the course of this year and in terms of both short-term planning and long-term planning that will eventually be folded into our strategic plan. One of the pieces that was critical to this work was our DEI. I'm identifying a DEI consultant who could work with the board, the administrative team and the teachers. Our selection process began with a committee made up of members of cabinet and building administrators. And we started by creating a list of 14 potential high quality consultants

158and/or consulting organizations that we received through a wide variety of sources. People reached out to us pretty active when we talked about this process and you really should take a look at this group or this individual or this organization and so we tried to collect all of those that we could. We ran them through what we created a rubric of qualities and attributes that we were looking for and so we had everybody on the committee look at each one of the consultants on materials that were available. We scored each of those, many of them were extremely high quality, unfortunately with a focus on DEI throughout the region, the country and the nation, we did have some availability issues as well when we were sort of thinking about operationalizing this. But in terms of the rating

159scale, we used a one to five rating scale. The consultants were rated on the following criteria, industry experience, school consulting experience, issue specific knowledge, credibility, motivation, and cultural fit. And based on this criteria and the respect to scores that were given to each potential candidate, the committee narrow down the search to four candidates that looked like they might be viable for us for some of the other reasons that I mentioned as well. The four based on availability experience with like communities and flexibility to our needs. One of them Dr. Derrick Gay who's based in Chicago emerged as the best fit for the district. We did identify others we've been working with or who might sort of have some niche expertise that will help us. One example of that is Reverend Dr. Marks who has presented

160at the district and work with us on implicit bias issues and is scheduled to come back in the fall and work with the high school staff and we also planned to be doing some sort of cope programming along with a PTC and our PTA's. Beyond our screening process we also followed up with reference checks. Dr. Gay received positive responses from both administrators and teachers that he's worked with across, he's worked not only across the nation, but across the globe on this work and so he had extensive references which to draw. It also should be noted that he worked well with diverse stakeholders who had very different levels of understanding and comfort with DEI work. So folks who were in both institutions and individuals who are just starting out in this work and folks who have

161been championing this work for a very long time. And so he has a broad breadth of experience working with different stakeholders and we thought that was critical, particularly where we are in this moment of probably having that same experience here in our own district. Miss Edgar and I provided him with an organizational overview of our needs. Dr. Gay provided us with an initial proposal. Next Edgar and I met with Dr. Gay to review the proposal and provide further guidance and clarifying our understandings and expectations of one another. Since then he updated his proposal to better align with our needs and we appreciated his inclusive and collaborative approach with multiple stakeholders, including boards, parents, teachers, staff, and administrators, and his willingness to commit himself to our unique needs of our district. So we really talked about

162him, both being an outward facing consultant, who was working directly with our faculty, our administrative team, and then with the board, but also somebody who is helping us to think about this in a sort of systematic way as we're doing some of our larger organizational planning. So we'll be focusing on specific training and other programmatic work, and it will be informed through district collaborations with STA, district administrators to BOEM parent leadership. So another way we talked to them about sort of our hopes and dreams around DEI work, but understood that some of the specifics of that would come out as we, you know, like Meg and I have been talking about this and how we can sort of co-collaborate on presenters that are coming to the district and how Derek can either be a part

163of helping us to organize and frame that or he himself being a facilitator of some of this work. And so we have the broad strokes of this kind of, sort of a defined with him, but now we're thinking about getting it more into the nuts and bolts of how we're gonna operationalize this over the course of the year. And he has dedicated days now on his calendar, which is the most difficult thing with the consultants right now, because many of them are booked up for a very long time, including years into the future at this point. So we were very appreciative of his flexibility and willingness to work with us. And so we look very much forward to working with Dr. Gay and having him be introduced to this community. He's had extensive work in

164New York, particularly in New York city and so he has a lot of experience. And again, we welcome the opportunity to work with him and look forward to onboarding him into our district. Any questions? Yeah, please. So do we know when he's gonna start, you mentioned dates, but I'm curious as to when he's gonna get started. Yeah, I mean, so I think we started to the extent that we've had extensive conversations at this part, and he's already been very insightful for us in terms of the planning process. We have talked about this, vis-a-vis our risk mitigation efforts and so we're trying to think about we had hoped she'd be able to use him for our first superintendent conference day as a big kickoff, but I'm not sure he's gonna be available in person for that

165or not. So a lot of those details are still being ironed out. Although when I mentioned we have time on his calendar, but like he has designated a certain number of days for Scarsdale. And again, I wanna make sure that these are being developed collaboratively with the STA with the PTC. So I can't give you what those dates are just that he's holding them for us. Okay. And has he worked with school districts before? A hundred percent, yes. Several of the private schools in New York city on many school districts, actually other organizations like police departments and other things, but primarily educators. Great, thank you. Yeah. Just quickly. I don't know if you can hear me, this is Jim Dugan. We can. Just thought that there'd be a form for him to sort of speak

166to the community and address questions people might have about DEI and thoughts you might have and I'm just wondering if that is in the cards. Absolutely it's in the cards. This is Jessica. Can you give an example of a public school district that is in any way similar to aspire staff that he's already worked with? Unfortunately, I don't have I mean he has extensive, extensive pages long of experience. I didn't bring that with me tonight and I don't wanna misspeak, but I can get that to you. Okay, no problem and I'm sorry, I didn't mean to ask that out of left field. No, absolutely fine. I probably should have brought that with me and I didn't think about it so thank you. All right. So now we'll move to item 9.02, our Board Discussion on

167remote public comment and policy subcommittee work. As I mentioned in my opening statement, the governor's order that allowed for board meetings to take place remotely has expired, board meetings must occur in person and compliance with the open meetings law. Board policy 1230 recognizes the board's responsibility to hear and respond to public comment and therefore encourages public participation at board meetings. Members of the public, both during open comment at previous board meetings, the email, and even the evening have raised the issue of the board allowing for remote public comment at board meetings. Last year's board discussed and made an amendment to policy 1230 at the board table during one meeting on one aspect of public participation and that was time. In consulting with our attorney, this board would need to address policies 1230, 2310, 2320 and

1682340 in terms of remote public participation and there are also other aspects to discuss. It is my recommendation that the best way to do this work is through a board committee that would deal with these four policies to address the topic of remote public participation. A committee would review offer recommendation and amendment to them be brought to before the full board for review discussion and action. I'm curious, I would like to see if there's interest among board members to look at these policies in order to adapt them, to allow for remote public participation. If you could. Yes. Okay, is anyone else? Yeah, I think we've heard from the community many times about the value of having remote public comment and so I think it would be great if we could establish a committee to address

169those policies. Anyone else? I'm certainly supportive of remote public comment. I guess my question would be, for the long-term I understand the value of a committee and policies, but for September 20th meeting, I would like to see remote public comment done. I'd be curious if other people, how they feel and how we can address it both in the short term, and then the longer term policy solution, unless you think the policy work would be done but usually we have a couple of reads of it. I mean, this could go out months. I would think that that would be the committee suggestion as to how to maybe the committee can get together sooner over later, and work with the attorney and move it. So I guess right now we need to see if people are interested

170in are the best approach to do this work. And the suggestion was to do it via committee. So, yeah. Operationally just answer Ron's question very directly. You know, the obstacle now is that the board has policies in place that prohibit that from happening. So really you have to remove that obstacle by changing those policies. But the other vehicle that the board has is the board can elect a suspend its own policies at any given board meeting. So that's not a great long-term practice, but if there is an interest in expediting this, then that is the method to do. That is to say for this meeting, we will suspend the policies that are blocking that from happening at this point. So it seems that there's consensus that the committee right now is the best way to

171do this work. And I wanted to ask that board members who are interested in serving on this committee to email me your names in the next days that by next week, so we can move forward. Okay. Karen, do we need to, to Ron's point and Thomas's point, do at this meeting need to do a suspension for the following meeting, because we can't wait till the following meeting to suspend it because it won't be distributed to the public for them to know about it so it kind of defeats the purpose if at the meeting you suspended, because no one will know. So we'd almost have to suspend it today for the September, whatever it is, 17th or 20th. So I'm trying to understand, you're talking about suspending the entire policy that's what I don't or the

172condition of the policy, what is it that you're saying? I didn't bring up suspending it, but Thomas said, that's how we would operationalize it. My view is I personally believe that for September 20th, we should accept remote promote public comment, however, we can do that for maybe that meeting. I understand that for the long-term the future, it makes sense to do all this policy work and things. Sure, sure. I agree with Bob's we would need to do something before that meeting though, because you want it in the notice with the link to zoom and everything. So the thought is that the committee work would be the most efficient way to address this rather than so the committee could bring it sooner. I think the point is that if the committee brings it to the next

173meeting, even if we vote on it at the next meeting, it won't be available for the next meeting. And so is there a way to make it available for the next meeting to which Thomas is saying, we would have to do a suspension and Bob saying, great, but we have to do that now so that we can notice it. So I think just from a logistics standpoint, what would have to happen, where I'm gonna possibly get corrected by a Dr. Hagerman or somebody else, but I think somebody would have to move to amend, and I don't know if it's too late to do this, move to amend the agenda tonight, to include a motion, to suspend, any provisions in our policies that prevent the use of remote participation by the public. And once we vote

174in favor of amending the agenda to include that action item, then we have to have a motion and discussion on that action item and vote to see if we wanna do that. So can we do all that now that I guess is my question, Thomas, do you think that's legitimate or do you think we're like too late into the meeting? Well, usually when you have an action item of some import, you have noticed that, and you have made that clear to the community that you're doing that. So it would be unusual, I don't know that it's unlawful, but that will be certainly unusual to do that in this meeting. I think what we could think about it, I would just wanna get clarification from our attorney on this, I think we could notice that it's

175coming up like the first public comment might not, but as we progressed through the board meeting, we could prepare ourselves for an eventual we're not voting on in this moment, but say it did pass then potentially at the second public comment and that's a halfway point I recognize, but at least it starts that process. That's probably the cleaner way to go, honestly. So when we send out the notice of the meeting, it should say that it's gonna have to say something about this is specifically that... Say they both... dissipated that... the board is going to vote on this and in the event it, they vote yes then there will be the second public comment would be taking place remotely. Okay. I guess my question is, so when we talk about suspending parts of the policy,

176and when I look at the letter from the attorney, there's a lot of things that need to be worked out about remote public comment. You know, who's running it, what the rules are are camera's required? How do we make sure their name is correct? So I can see that and last year we had a three minute limit because we have the executive order. Are we having limits on time? Are we letting people speak for 30 minutes from their home? So while I can see the value in getting this done and getting the public in there quickly, if we suspend the policy, how are we gonna run public comment without having rules? I'd like to understand that. I agree, because I guess without the rules and the very specific protocols as you're pointing out, we really

177don't know who's calling in, we don't know who's really saying what I mean, you just don't know because of the technology issues. So I think as much as it would be nice to say yes, of course the next meeting, we will have public comment. Unfortunately, you know the good news is this is August and we're just starting and there's urgency to get it worked out. Hopefully by next meeting so we can vote on it and then it'll be in place. So if we miss one meeting, maybe that's the way it has to be. At first, I have to say, I strongly disagree with the sentiment. I think this is the meeting we missed, actually. In my view, we've been taking remote public comment for one year now. I understand there's things to work out, but

178when I read the legal memo we have, and I know that we've done it for a year, I don't think it's very difficult, I mean, I think, I don't know where other people stand, but the questions about should the camera be on, making sure the name is right, it's quite easy, we've been managing remote public comment for a year. I have to say, feels like we're just layering bureaucracy on this and I'm totally good, I'm even happy to serve on a committee to work on this longterm and get everything out. But when I think about the feedback we heard from this community over the last 18 months, and the fact that they've had it for the last 18 months and we can do it and I totally hear what Amber is saying and maybe we

179don't wanna suspend the whole policy, maybe we make an amendment, I think we can do it, I think we can do it in a reasonable way. I would personally like to do it at the start of the meeting so it affects both public comments. We did do that when this board changed public comment before. I just feel like this, we can get this done. So what I would like to do is to, unless it's prohibited, my understanding is that Robert's rules would allow us to suspend the bylaws for the coming meeting to allow public comment via whatever means we set. So should it be unlimited? Probably not, but remote public comment, camera's on, names listed, street addresses given, we can theoretically suspend the bylaws to do that. You mean the policy, is that what you

180mean? Suspend the policy? No, I actually mean using Robert's rules, it would be considered a suspension of bylaws of meeting of meeting bylaws. Okay. So number one, I think that we don't really have bylaws we have a policy, but it's substantively the same thing. So your point is still correct that we can suspend. I think the point would be... so there's two different parallel tracks to potentially get to the same result at the next meeting. The first one is if we vote now, if we make a motion instead of voting now, and we would limit the suspension, I think to only those things that prohibit public comment to happen remotely. So we wouldn't, I don't think anybody would want us to spend the three minutes or start going down that road again right now all

181other aspects would remain intact. And I imagine we could say conditioned it on visibility video as well if we wanted. So that would be one way, but what Dr. Hagerman was saying is that it's a little bit unusual, short notice haven't had any, public doesn't even know we're talking about it in doing this specific action. So the second way to get to it is basically to say to the committee, you've got a couple of weeks, sit down with your pen and paper, write it all out, we'll notice it, we'll have it on the agenda for next meeting and on the agenda, that public comment is likely to be permitted, or it may be permitted for the second public comment. And that way we still get it done as long as the committee puts their foot

182on the accelerator and gets it done in the next couple of weeks. Which I'm fine with and taking into account the first or second public comment I mean, I think I'd be a little more comfortable saying we're just gonna do it the real proper way, and it may only be second public comment, but that that's kind of the way to go, because that way, we're sticking with what we've done, we're following our general procedure for dealing with things with the sole exception possibly of not having multiple readings, if we're all in agreement at the next meeting, with the proposal from the committee. Which makes sense to me, because I think my educated guess is that generally we're in favor of the remote public comment. And so the idea that we'll amend the various policies to

183permit that in some way is not likely to require, I mean, I think most of us, unless there was something major would probably be comfortable doing it at the beginning of the next meeting. So I think the answer is to have the committee that Karen said, but put the assignment that it has to be done so that we can get it done for the beginning of the meeting so that the second public comment can be had remotely. I've switched my viewpoint now because I was originally thinking that we should do it that way, that we should have the subcommittee meet over the next couple of weeks and hash through the issues presented and then we could have remote public comment for the second time. But now I'm thinking we want the public input on some

184of the parameters that we put in place, right? So let's say we do set a time limit of you're sitting on your sofa and you wanna comment, you can only comment for three minutes or five minutes or whatever if we set a time limit. What if we set a time limit and the public wants us to give a longer time limit or no time limit. So now I'm kind of leaning towards wait. I do think we need to get the public's input on the parameters we put in place, I don't know how we accomplish getting public comment by the next meeting, without getting the public's input. We've heard from the league multiple times about wanting remote public comment, but I haven't heard specifics from them. We haven't put out any specifics. I don't know, I

185would caution us from being too quick to amend policies on something like this. So I totally agree with that. Oh, sorry, go ahead, Jim. I just wanna be clear. I don't think the discussion is about amending a policy Amber it's a discussions about suspending in other words. It wouldn't be a permanent amendment that would occur has season would be a suspension. I just wanna make sure that it's clear I supported Ron's position on this. I personally think that we should move quickly to having a public comment remotely. It was done all year last year it was done well, I don't think we don't know how to do it I think we do know how to do it. So I don't really understand, and I understand policy, I understand procedure, I understand order and giving a

186clear head. I understand all of those things, but what I don't understand is why we couldn't suspend this for one meeting. I know maybe we're afraid people will talk for 10 hours I personally doubt. So I just don't think we see the reason why we wouldn't do it, that just my sense. So one suggestion I would have is, and I just wanna clarify my perspective is I think that there's an important dual path here. I think when a previous board wanted to change public comment, it happened at two separate meetings. The first meeting was in not a suspension of the policy, it was an amendment just for that night. That's what I would propose we would do on the 20th is somebody can make an amendment for that night and the amendment will have to

187talk with a lawyer and just for that night. And maybe we have to do it a second meeting, but discrete times, because I don't love the idea of suspending a whole policy because then we have policies what we can govern on. At the same approach I agree with what Amber saying, we wanna think through it and we want input because we might do other things than just say remote public comment. I also have to say from a process standpoint, I very much believe whatever the policy is, whether it's big or small, we should follow our process that there's multiple readings, that it goes to the community because this board might only do it on this, but we don't wanna set a precedent for future boards on just changing policies. So my suggestion would be somebody

188we should ask the lawyer for some additional input, somebody can make a motion, we could potentially just in the notice at a zoom link saying, this will be discussed if the board were to do something, here's the link. And then we have a further, longer term, well, it doesn't have to be long, but however long it takes a committee that does the work. But to be clear, sorry, the last comment is I do think that process should be a little longer because we want, we wanna get it out into the community. It might take a little while we want feedback. We might get feedback, we might have a discussion, we might want more feedback. So I think we should expect that longer policy process to be a little longer. So it sounds like we're looking

189to return to the attorney for advice on how to deal with allowing for virtual public comment at our next meeting, we'll at the same time, creating a board committee to look at these four policies for a amendment's sake. I agree a hundred percent, I have no problem with that at all. I'm just trying to think, and maybe somebody knows this, is there something though we have to do tonight in order for that to happen meaning? Yes. I mean, we're not gonna meet again until the next meeting, obviously, if that's the next meeting. So if we don't decide tonight to suspend it for the next meeting subject, maybe to the approval of the attorney, then we won't be able to do it. There's no way to start the meeting without having it approved. We did that,

190I thought last year. We amended twice actually before the first public comment period. It was on the agenda sI think Karen and Thomas would set their agenda. Okay. We have to change the order of the agenda. I do you think that that that's actually the cleanest. Then you provide the appropriate public notice that this might be an action item and those kinds of things. I think they're just rare, rare, rare exceptions that you add action items on that. Okay. But I have one question which is, I mean, that's fine and then we accomplish the same thing as if we did it tonight, but we do it then and we have noticed and it's better. Okay. But it should only be number... I think to make it clear the way I understand it it's would be

191an amendment to the policy the only amendment would be strictly to permit the virtual participation, would not be to change time limits or whatever the other strictures are, no discussion about personnel you know, those types of know student issues, like those types of things, everything else would stay the same that would be my expectation for that amendment, for that meeting. That's number one, whether everybody agrees or not, that's what I would expect. The second thing is just for clarification. If we form a committee, there are several topics about those policies that have been touched on in this discussion. Again, time limits is one of them. I guess it would be important to me to understand whether the committee is strictly, which is how I initially interpreted, which may be wrong, strictly looking at people public

192participation remotely as an option, or is it a broader look at those policies, including, and I didn't look at very carefully, but including time of it, including whatever other things are in there. And if we're gonna start looking at them, then I agree at that point, it would certainly be a much broader, it would be a more time consuming, there'll be much more for the public to weigh in on. If the only thing that we were thinking about a committee for was, do we want virtual participation that I think would be very, even putting aside precedent and everything else, it's such a discreet thing. So somehow it doesn't have to be right now I don't think, but at the next meeting when we approve the committee, 'cause it sounds like that's what we'll have to

193do from a technical standpoint. I just would like the assignment of the committee to be very clear, so we know what to expect. So can I provide a little bit of clarity on that? Sure. So currently according to an in consult consultation with our attorney, we would need to address policies 1230, 2310, 2320, 2340, and although he didn't indicate it, we actually have a policy on the suspension of policies, which is a 2430. That policy actually specifically says, "Proposed suspension of policy shall be described in the agenda and/or notice for the meeting." So we have a policy that indicates that we have to go through the process that we've described. When you're doing policies on public comment, in talking with Dan about this issue. He talked about what the board needs to determine as time

194manner and place. And so time we know place would become the remote and/or physical and whether there was a preference for in-person followed by, I mean, that's really the only question to consider there and then manner, and that's what you're talking about Carl. Like what are the limitations or not the limitations of doing that? So the focus is fairly specific on these and I think once you iron out the matter or manner, rather than I think that that's what we're talking about here. I don't think this is deeply, I don't think this is months on end kind of work. I think it could happen actually fairly quickly. To cross from I'll propose something because I know that another discussion is general policies of committees. Neither, I think of those tranches has been updated by the

195policy stuff. So I like what Carl's saying about kind of keeping it clean. I would have this subcommittee solely just focus on remote, that's it. All the other bigger questions I think that policy subcommittee. That is what you should do. That's well within our current practice, where we have policies that are really important, whether required for us to implement or to change or things that we've elected to push up to the front burner. So we do have a pathway forward and where we've done that very thing on multiple policies. This all makes to me, but is it not possible to have a motion to amend the agenda tonight to include this as an action item so that we can temporarily suspend these particular policies, allowing for remote comment as was first meeting of the year

196so that we can start the school year with an inclusive tone, with one where all parents can feel represented, even if they're working and unable to attend in person. I know at this point, the board of trustees is already operating with that regulation in place. It seems reasonable that both the BOE and board of trustees would have similar operational guidelines. Yeah. Jessica, I'm not sure if you can hear, are you able to hear us okay? I can hear you fine. Okay, great. So I would just talk to moment about policy 2430, which is a policy that our attorney did not specifically address in a memo to the board, but it does say the proposed suspension of policies shall be described in the agenda and/or notice for the given meeting. So I do think that that

197prohibits us from taking action tonight because we did not notice that we would be suspending policies. So, because it says or noticed, does that not enable us to amend the agenda to include it at this point. My reading of that policy would be no, that we have to be noticed and in the agenda, that would just gonna be a discussion item in advance of a meeting. Thank you. So do we wanna go ahead and approve a committee then we already have Ron, who has volunteered? I am willing to serve on that committee. Is anybody else would like to work on that committee so we can put that in place? I'm willing to serve at that committee. Okay. [Ron Thanks Jessica. Is everyone all right with that? Jessica, Ron and me, will be the board committee

198to address remote public participation. Okay, thank you all and we will speak to the attorney again. Well, and just, yeah, and just for guidance in terms of preparation for our planning to buy ones, as well as preparation for the next board meeting this concept, if it meets with our attorney's approval is that we will notice this, we will have it as a discussion and action item. That that's the direction we're all headed. Yes. At the beginning of the meeting. Yeah, at the early part of the meeting. It's just an amendment, right? It will be series of amendments. Technically I'm the board president, again, just trying to have a win-win here outcome, the board president does actually can dictate the manner of the policy or excuse me, of the public comment we're hearing from the public.

199So we don't have to get into necessarily all the nitty gritty if the general consensus, what I'm hearing is let's keep it the way it was this year and have your board president indicate such so that we will suspend provisions of those policies. Ron is right, you don't wanna usually suspend an entire policy because there have multiple components of other things and you don't wanna create chaos by not having any policy in place at all. So I think we'll have our attorney indicate exactly that give us the changes that need to be made and then we can say, Karen can authorizes the president to talk about the manner for this. As we have a committee of Ron, Karen and Jessica working on longer term recommendations, which will allow a pilot process. Terrific. Okay, great. Thank

200you all. Now let's, if we could discuss policy subcommittees. So the board began to review its policy several years ago. This work was interrupted last year by the pandemic and I suggest that we resume this work again. Working on policies is a primary board responsibility. Our policies hadn't been examined and updated since the 1990s until several years ago, when the board contracted with Nisbett to assist with the policy review program. The board delegated this work to board committees with the faith, it would do the work well and then bring suggestions back to the full board. As part of this work, Nisbett provides guidance on needed updates in groups or tranches. Community members are also able to examine series or tranches being worked on and provide suggestions via the board policy review webpage. Our policies span

201from the 0000 series to the 9,000 series. The 3000 series, which deals with district administration was adopted in January, 2020, the 0000 series which addresses our mission statement and board governance policies was adopted in January, 2021. There are two series that work had been started on. The 1000 series, which is on community-related policies and the 2000 series, which is on board of education operations. I would like to, again, to suggest we resume our work on policies on the 1000 series and the 2000 series. And I just wanna ask if Andre or Thomas have anything to add to what I just went over. No, this board just takes its policy work very, very seriously. It's been a very extensive, I think, open process to the community. I think that anyone who is following this work has

202an opportunity to do that very closely and see the thread lines that are being pulled through through all of the discussions. I do think maybe looking for some efficiencies in that work might be good because it did take us a really, really long time and it really shouldn't be a five-year process, I don't think so. If people have been involved in that work, Jessica and Jim are brand new, congratulations. This is the best part of board work is working on policies. But if we can sort of think about the practices that did work and maybe other ways that we can kind of streamline it a little bit, just so that we're keeping this in front of the board and in front of the community throughout the year. So I just wanted to know if you'd,

203if you could just indicate your interest in resuming this work. Yes. Can I have a one suggestion maybe? I don't know if this is actually helping or hindering, but I'm gonna throw it out there anyway. But for the benefit of kind of, we have a group of people that are seem very willing to take on responsibility, maybe we could have one group through the one thousands and another group through the two thousands and work on them. Yes, exactly. So for Jim and Jessica, I don't know how much you guys followed the policy aspect of the board work before you came on board. But we did have mixed groups of board members who took different tranches and we tried to have them see through the whole tranche. One of the challenges of this year is that

204we were somewhere in progress and a couple of those tranches and then it stopped cold. And so we're gonna have to sort of pick up on some of that work that's gonna be a little messier, it's probably gonna take a little bit longer to start with those that are in process, but on the ones that are brand new, clean starts, hopefully we'll be able to kind of move through those more quickly. So I would ask that you email me in the next week if you have interest in serving on any of these boards subcommittees to do policy work, and then we can put together those board committees. Okay, thank you very much. Any other discussion on this topic? So now we'll turn to item 10 public comment hearing from those present. At this time, members

205of the public are cordially invited to be present and to speak on a designated time, I'm sorry to speak on agenda items or other non personnel related matters. Anyone who would like to come to the microphone? Okay since there's no one giving comments, we don't need item 11 up to public comment. And so we'll move to item 12 wrap-up items. Yeah, as we welcome Dr. Derrek Gay, I will make sure I'm following Jessica's suggestion of having those full credentials out there, including other schools that he has worked on being a part of that introduction to the district. Karen and I will reach out to our attorney to talk about this past conversation that we just had. We will be providing robust presentations on a number of issues, including again, restart opening at our next meeting.

206Stuart always does a great facilities update and capital improvements from the summer so we'll continue to do that, we'll at that point, luckily be able to talk about the first days of school and of course we'll continue to make reopening of focus and we'll have those as the first presentation of each board meeting, as long as we need to this year, as we prepare for hopefully a much calmer and smoother school year this year. That's great. Thank you. Item 13, 13.01: Schedule of Meetings. Amber, are you willing to read that? Yeah. Yes, on Monday, September 20th, 2021, we have a special meeting and/or executive session if needed at 5:30pm in this room at the high school and the board business meeting at 6:30pm in this room at the high school. Friday, September 24th, 2021 we

207have a board development retreat at 1:00 PM in this room at the high school. Is that open to the public? I believe so, yes. No, it's a live stream. I'm not sure. Do you know? I'm sorry which meeting was that? Is the board development retreat open to the public? No, it's not. No, it's fine. Okay. At this time I will entertain a motion to adjourn this business meeting. Second? Second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you all.