BOE Business Meeting 2020-12-7

001Okay, I call this audit committee meeting to order. All members of the audit committee are present and are participating virtually. I'll entertain a motion to appoint Honore a secretary pro temp. So moved. Thank you. Do we have a second? Second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Abstentions? All right, the motion passes. I'm gonna hand it over to Stuart for the collective action plan. Yeah, okay I didn't realize we're jumping right into the audit committee. So yeah, Sorry. It's all right. So, yeah, so, this is the collective action plan associated with the external audit. We are required to submit this with the external audit into the state, into the portal. So even though we don't have any findings in the external audit, it still requires us to submit that document showing that the

002board of education did see the external audit and a sort of so note that there wasn't a finding. So really that's it. It's just really a matter of crossing the Ts and dotting the Is on the external audit itself. So anyone have any questions for Stuart? All right, seeing none, we'll move to item 3.04. Karen. I recommend that the board accept the audit committee's recommended collective action plan for the 2020 fiscal year and external audit. Thank you, Karen. Do we have a second? So moved. All right, any discussion? All right, we'll do a roll call vote. All in favor? Allison Yes. Amber. Yes. Carl. Yes. Bob. Yes. Karen. Yes. Ron. Yes. And I am a yes so the motion passes, thank you. And I guess this then goes on the agenda for the 21st of

003December. Do the board's agenda on the 21st? Even sooner than that, it's... It's tonight? I figured it was a low enough level where... (indistinct) We went together into the state. Thank you, Stuart. All right, may I have a motion to adjourn into our business meeting from the audit committee meeting into the business meeting. So moved. Second. Thank you, Carl. Second, Alison. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, any abstentions? All right, the motion passes. Let's now move into our business meeting. Good evening, to everyone joining us at this business meeting tonight and hello to those watching later on demand. Thank you for taking the time to be with us here. We hope very much that you and your families are doing well. All members of the board are present and are participating virtually, and

004I'll also note that all members of the cabinet are present and participating virtually. The executive order, which allows the board to hold our meetings virtually has been extended through January 1st. The public is able to join, observe, and listen, and the public may comment at the two opportunities during this business meeting. Our next item is 4.02. It's recommended that the board amend the business meeting agenda tonight to include the resolution, a resolution to formally adopt the determination of a foil appeal. May I have a motion to amend the agenda and include the resolution in our action items tonight? Yes, I move that we amend the agenda and include the resolution to formally adopt the determination of a foil appeal. Second. Thank you. Second Any discussion? (indistinct) Okay, I'll do a roll call vote. Alison. Yes.

005Amber. Yes. Bob. Yes. Carl. Yes. Karen. Yes. Ron. Yes. And I'm a yes, so that motion passes. Thank you Amber. And Amber I'll ask you to present that as an action item later in this evening. And Andre will, I guess, address the agenda as we proceed through the meeting. Thank you everyone. Let's see 4.03, my opening statement. Earlier this evening, we met with some of our high school students and heard what they believe is going well, what challenges are, and how we can continue to support and provide a quality student experience. They spoke about the efforts of their teachers, the excellent efforts of their teachers, the curriculum, their clubs and their student connections, the schedule, their appreciation for the Wednesdays and the built-in tutorial times. They noted the impact that this year is having on

006their time management skills, their growth as independent learners and as organizers. They spoke to the community of the classroom and the relationships that they are building. We heard that school feels like school and that classes feel like classes, that the workload seems manageable and actually if they hope snow days occur in winter 2021. The board always values the time we get to spend with these students who impress us regularly. We understand how demanding the past nine months have been and we deeply value their input. Immediately before this business meeting, the board held an executive session to discuss pending litigation and the board's audit committee met and took action. Now, those of you who watch regularly may note that I'm in a bit of a, well, I've been using my opening statement to express gratitude this

007year. I think it's a very important component of helping me get through these trying times. So this week I want to acknowledge the significant contribution and time and talent from parents and community members since last May. We have had heartwarming and impressive examples of district-wide collaboration. We had many parents commit to working through the summer on many restart committees, including the steering committee, the high school, the middle school and the elementary committees, the special education committee, the mental health committee, the food service committee and the communications committee. Via the PTA's and the PT council, hundreds of parents have continued in health and wellness, the coordination of the leadership of non-core activities, such as community service, staff appreciation, the promotion of school libraries and reading in general, the communication of schedules and frequently asked questions related

008to this year's new normal and the organization of programs and information sessions, multicultural events and projects, coding, beading, yoga, school photos and fundraisers and the Wednesday enrichment blocks among many other activities. We also very much appreciate the medical professionals who have taken the time to connect and speak with our building and our district administrators and our mental health staff. And those resident doctors who spent hours creating the communications and educational guides around face masks and safe practices. And I'll also, I expect Edgar will speak again to this, but I wanna give a shout out to the many parents and resident volunteers who most recently stepped up to prepare and present two and a half days. Since we're terrific and they covered a wonderful range of topics reaching and providing enrichment to hundreds of our students.

009So thank you all parents and residents so very much for this ongoing district-wide collaboration. It is deeply valued and appreciated by our students, by this board and by our administration and by our faculty, our full staff. And before I turn it over to Thomas, I just wanna mention that throughout this evening, I've had some internet troubles and instabilities, so if I really get choppy and clunky, Allison's gonna take over leading this meeting and I'll move over to Thomas. Great, thank you, Pam. I'd like to echo your comments and just add a few others this evening. First of all, good evening and welcome to the business meeting during this very busy time of the year. We do appreciate everyone's continued interest and support of our collective work. As Pam mentioned earlier in the evening, we did

010meet with our high school students. This was one of our favorite meetings of the year in terms of community groups. As Pam also noted, they shared many viewpoints on a variety of topics besides snow days, including engagement, communications, curriculum, extracurriculars and many other topics. Additionally, they identified the things that they appreciate most about the current instructional models, as well as some of the challenges that they are encountering as part of both the hybrid and virtual only learning models. I'd also like to acknowledge and thank Pam for joining me at the state of the district forum presentation on November the 19th, Although it was held virtually this year, it was a good opportunity for people that don't always attend board meetings, an opportunity to update the community on the work of the district. It focused on

011things like demographic information, academic excellence, operations, of course COVID-19 and our hybrid learning model, communications, board of education administrative priorities, and there was an opportunity for Q&A at the end for us to be able to ask and answer some questions. The slides from this presentation have been posted on the district's website on the superintendents page and that can be found along with past year's presentations as well. Finally, as we continue to celebrate both religious and secular holidays in the weeks ahead, I would like to remind the community of a district resource that we developed last year, entitled world holidays and observances calendar and instructional implications. This and other documents detailed holidays and observances that have historically been on our school calendar along with several new ones that were recommended to the district as part of

012multicultural clubs. This particular document provides background details for instructional purposes and recommendations on how to acknowledge observers. This is part of our long-term focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. And as I mentioned this, other resources can be found on the superintendents page on the district's webpage. It's also worth noting that our next meeting will also be an education meeting on which we'll be focusing on anti-racist curriculum and culturally responsive curriculum along with teaching and learning efforts in the area of DEI. And so we ask that folks who are interested in that, make sure that they attend that meeting and watch that presentation. And with that, we'll say thank you again for joining us this evening, appreciate it. Thank you, Thomas. At this point are there board members who would like to make opening reports? Bob

013is that you? Go ahead. Yes. I just wanted to report that Amber and I this past Thursday did a tour with Dr. Gill of the Quaker Ridge School. That's part of our annual board responsibilities to have a walk through the facilities to do sort of a quick check or not so quick check, check in, I suppose, with regarding the facilities and the outdoor space and the general, you could say mood of the school in terms of the progress with the rollout of the new schedule. And I have to say speaking for myself, but I think speaking for Amber as well. We just left with such an incredibly energized feeling. The school looks great from a conditions point of view, but equally importantly, just a mood of the school is very upbeat. Dr. Gill is a

014great ambassador for the school in terms of sharing his thoughts. Walking around and dealing with the students and the teachers, you just felt it was a really... Everyone kind of knew each other. It just felt... I hadn't been in an elementary school myself for years, to be honest and I kept thinking, "God, I wish it was like that when I went to school." It was just great. And I think for me as an architect, it also allowed me to see the hybrid model in action and a picture is worth a thousand words. And for me to see it and to understand the physical nature of the social distancing and whatnot and the impact on the school was very, very helpful, very valuable. And I think for me, the bottom line is it's working great and

015learning is being done and kids are engaged and teachers are working hard, but they're really producing the goods. So I think everyone should take a deep breath that our kids at least from my walk through Quaker Ridge, are learning and learning very well. So Bravo to Dr. Gill and to the whole district. Thank you, Bob. Carl, you have a report, thanks. Yeah, just very similar. Amber and I did our walkthrough with principal Finberg and the teacher in charge at Fox Meadow. For me, it was a little bit of a trip down memory lane. Shockingly, many of the teachers recognize me with my mask, but it was really a smooth entrance to school for the full day kids that we could see. The teachers seemed to be doing a great job with the two classrooms in

016K to second grade where that applies. The kids all engaged, all seem to be adapting to having barriers around them or not wearing masks. And a little bit of the hub of that goes along with the new learning system. So it's got some older portions of school, some newer portions of school. And it was clear that how the classes were organized in terms the K to two and so on and so forth was really geared towards the different types of rooms that were available, including using the library at the multi-purpose room. So I think they're really making a superior effort at placing all the classes appropriately and all the students appropriately to get the most out of the space educationally. And really everybody seemed happy and I can't really think of anything better than that

017in a situation where there's so much on everybody's mind and the kids are coming to school and it's completely different, and they were all happy and engaged. So that was, I think the biggest takeaway and that starts with principal Finberg and works its way through, I think the staff to the students. So, another really successful visit. And I look forward to my next one, whatever school that's gonna be. I'm sure it'll be just as exciting. Thank you, Carl. Do any other board members have opening reports? Okay, I'll just say briefly, we had a third tour today. As Bob mentioned, this is by education law, the boards are required to tour the facilities to examine the conditions of the buildings. But of course we love going to examine teaching and learning as well and to observe

018the student experience. And Bob and I were at the high school for the tour of the facilities today. And we took a tour with Mr. Benomo around the entire building and saw, again, a lot of the new spaces, saw how things have changed significantly to accommodate for the new normal. It was interesting walking past rooms that were actually empty and I was thinking, how can we use that room? But of course, the way that the high school is set up with its faculty schedule and students schedule, not every room is used at every single time like we do with elementary schools. And there were some classes with one or two students sitting in the room and were some classes with 14 students sitting in the room socially distanced. But we got to see a lot

019of screens with students working from home, speaking with teachers, listening to videos and watching lessons from home, but also participating with the students in class. It was excellent. But of course we did see most of the very large building and got around a lot of the spaces and learned how it's being utilized differently, but also being so well-maintained and what, even some of the things we're thinking of doing in the future with hallways and such. So those are three of our seven tours that have been concluded this week. The rest, I think a couple more in December maybe, or maybe they're all in January, I'm not sure. All right, so any more opening remarks or reports. We will move on to item five, which I believe is the restart plan update. Thomas. Yeah, I'm gonna

020turn this to Eric. There's gonna be a number of speakers, but I'll let Eric kind of introduce and kick that off for us, Eric. Thank you. Tonight as you can see on the agenda, we have a number of things to cover, including full day implementation for K-2, a change to our longterm absence and homebound instruction for quarantine. I'm gonna go through some of the new designations in New York State, our testing agreement and our planning for implementation of testing should we need to do with stay open. I wanna address the metaphysical advisory committee request. We'll talk quickly about athletics and give you an update there, medium and long-term planning. And then I'd like to just at the end address, kind of where we find ourselves in terms of the spike in COVID, our practices as

021a district and our hopes for moving forward during this time. But without further ado, I'm gonna turn it over to Edgar to give us a flavor of our K-2 full day implementation and the early returns, if you will. Thank you, Eric. Despite the very poor weather conditions last Monday and technical glitches, the feedback was very positive for our K-2 full day transition. Some of the children were indeed tired in the afternoon, but the principals reported that students overall were happy, engaged and enthusiastic. The 2.5 days for setup were necessary and appreciated by all, the teachers spent the time planning for their adapted lessons, space configurations, and for the students time with aides. I had the pleasure of walking through some of the spaces, split classrooms and repurposed large spaces, and was highly impressed with the

022thoughtful arrangements of these spaces, the distribution of materials, and a creativity and ingenuity on display by the teachers and the teaching aides. Not only did the spaces look purposeful, they look warm and child-friendly, you might not even notice it was not originally a classroom except for maybe a basketball in the background. On my tour of spaces, I was struck by the number of times teachers pulled me aside and pointed to their aides as having skillfully engaged the role of facilitator of learning. I heard and saw real evidence of this meaningful partnership. Echoing Pam, a big thank you to the parents who volunteered and presented thoughtful and diverse, interactive synchronous webinars for our young learners during the setup days. So our K-2 students could be engaged in meaningful presentations while teachers set up their environments. I

023have to give a special shout out to Myra Cakindale Rodriguez for her organization and coordination with the multicultural committees across the district. Thank you, Myra. I also wanna thank our building leadership for their hard work throughout whether timing, pickup lines, reshuffling filling in for a classroom absence or individually greeting students at the door. Our principals and assistant principals had been working with our exemplary teachers for the smoothest possible transition. Thank you to all of you. Thank you, Edgar. I'm gonna ask Drew to talk a little bit about our long term, excuse me, long-term absences and or change in policy. Thank you, Eric. So we've obviously seen a number of situations where students have had the quarantine for up to 14 days and that could cross over 10 days of school instruction. In those situations, we've

024been providing basically tutoring under the home bound instruction policy of the board of education. And that policy calls for one hour a day of tutoring for our students. We use a third-party vendor called learn well during the pandemic because they are set up to provide remote tutoring using technology. We understand that the challenges of that limited amount of direct contact with the tutor during this time, and we've decided that we're gonna increase that to two hours a day or 10 hours a week, which is consistent with our secondary policy, which is the age where we would normally see a little bit more home bound tutoring in non pandemic times. So we thought it made sense to change that and increase that. And so that will be changing effective today. Great, thank you, Drew. Any questions

025on the first two before I jump into the testing New York State zone. Can I ask a question. Oh, sorry. Go ahead Amber. Go ahead and then I'll ask after you. I just wanted to ask about the tutoring. So if your quarantine time is somehow less than, it's 14 days, but if it's somehow three days have already gone by before you're notified and so it's actually only 11 days, so it's not quite 10 school days. Do you still qualify for tutoring? Yeah, we're trying to provide that and catch up in those situations as much as possible. And if you're in quarantine for any reason, if you've traveled and you come back from travel and you're quarantining, you can get tutoring as well. Or is it only if you need to? Yeah, this is if you're

026under a quarantine order. So it's when you're dealing with a positive COVID case, this is not associated with elective travel. Great, thank you. You're welcome. And a question too, how is this information being relayed to parents? Is that going out in an update? Yes, that will go out and an update this week. And then how are the parents notified that they notified by the teacher? There's sort of two levels. It is our expectation the teacher continues to maintain some contact with the student, which could be through the parent, but they're also contacted directly by the tutor from learn well, to set up, they have to work together to set up the time that's possible and appropriate for the child. Drew, it might be helpful if you could just speak quickly to how the tutoring service

027tutor and the teacher sync up lessons so that when a student is out for 10 days, they come back and our still able to go right back into the class at the same pace. Yeah, there isn't necessarily a direct dialogue on an ongoing basis between the tutor and the classroom teacher. The conversation is more between the teacher and the student or the teacher and the family. Our teachers are submitting the tutoring request form and they have the ability to provide information in that form that highlights or prioritizes the work that's ongoing and the students of course also have access and the families to the work via our platforms, either Seesaw or Google Classroom to help keep monitoring what's happening in the classroom prior to return. Drew, you mentioned... I'm sorry, I don't want no gotcha

028here, but you mentioned that this is a board policy, but do you really mean more like a practice or... No, it is a board policy. It's actually a policy 'cause I couldn't find it. I'm sorry. Yup, it's board policy 4327. And it's called Homebound instruction, that may be why. The idea behind it is that in normal times, there are medical situations that might require a student to be at home recovering for an extended period of time. Actually it also covers suspension if students happen to be suspended and the board has a policy to deliver tutoring to help continue instruction during that interrupted period of time. So when I'm looking at it, it does say elementary pupils receive one hour per day. And what you're working to do is change that to two hours. Do we

029need to change this policy than formally to temporarily, I mean, is there something, procedure. That, I don't think it's a problem that we're exceeding the policy. And this is of course under an extraordinary circumstance, but I'll look into that and make sure we're okay with that. Thank you, sorry about that. One other just point of information, more than anything, I think it might be valuable to have some follow up to make sure that the tutors are making the contact with the students. We have an established contact at Learnwell, and we're at this point pretty much in daily contact with her, either me or Pat Gaffney in my office. We are monitoring, there have been some problems and some glitches. There has been some miscommunication in specific examples. I think we're aware of all of those,

030maybe not one that happened late in the day today, for example, but we are trying to monitor those and work through each one case by case. I think it's important to recognize that the volume of homebound instruction has gone up 10 to 20 fold this year than as usual. So it took us time to refigure out systems to engage that. I'd like to take a few minutes now and talk through some of the new guidance that we're seeing around the micro cluster strategy that governor Cuomo has put out. You may recall at the last meeting, I walked through the metrics for the yellow, red and orange zones and the corresponding school testing requirements that came with those. Everything I said at the last meeting has now changed and art is no longer the policy. Middle

031of last week, Governor Cuomo announced a change in the strategy as the virus surged. He's focused mostly on orange and red zones, which I'll get to in a moment, but did not mention yellow zones particularly. He also mentioned adding a number of metrics to the designation of these zones, most of which included hospital capacity numbers. Those have not been fully published. He expressed that he would be waiting to see what the full extent of the Thanksgiving bump was. So if you look at the website now, they still direct the yellow zone to be 2.5% positivity rate over a seven day average for 10 days. If you listen to his press conference last week, we expect that to change and have additional metrics added to it. But he has outlined the testing that will be required

032in the yellow, orange and red zones. So the yellow, if we're designated a yellow zone, we will need to do 20% population testing in the first two weeks. Should that test come back lower than the community positivity rate, that would be the sum total of the testing we would need to do during that yellow zone designation. So that is kind of the first set for the yellow zone. For orange zone, schools are no longer required to close for four days once being designated in the orange, but they must immediately begin to test 20% of the population of the school over one month. So 20% of the population per month. And then in red zone, similarly, no closure, but 30% of the population over one month. Those have to be done spread out over the month

033to a minimum of doing 10% bi-weekly. So it has to be done in smaller chunks. We can't fully test 20% on one day of the district and then hand those in as the monthly testing, we have to spread it out over the month. In orange and red zones, the testing results which are a little confusing. So I'll answer questions if there are. If the random sampling generates not, because I'm reading it straight off the guidance. If the random sampling generates nine or more positive cases in any school, or if for a sample size of more than 300 weekly tests achieves a positivity rate of 2% or higher, six cases or more depending on sample size, then the schools would be required to close and work with the department of health in order to establish metrics

034for reopening. So basically if our positivity rate in the testing is 2% or higher, or we have more than nine positive cases in any school, that would induce a closure and coordination with the local department of health to establish a reopening. Are there any questions on that before I move on. Eric, do you know the state is giving us, provides metrics by counting the positivity rate, but now that Cuomo's adding all these other metrics like hospitalization capacity, how are they publicizing that data, do we have insight into that? Not that I can find. They definitely have it 'cause when you look within, as he has designated zones in Westchester, he speaks about those rates and you can find them sometimes in, you can find them on the website for the identified zones. They aren't broken

035out for the non identified zone in any place that I can find. I have talked to the department of health. They do have those numbers, but they're not being published without that zone designation. So, do you have a sense, is it a fair statement that we don't get much warning before it zone designation comes. The press conferences when we're gonna get the... I mean, we have found out pretty regularly any new initiatives/change in procedure from the press conference the way the general public does. Thanks. Occasionally we'll hear something from superintendents or the DOH a few hours before, which is not helpful, obviously. Just to give everybody an idea of the current numbers, Westchester County has a positivity rate at about 6% now for the seven day average. And we're in the high 50's of numbers

036of cases per 100,000. There are six cluster zones currently in Westchester, one orange and the rest of yellow. The Rochester is the orange one and then Tarrytown, Ossining, Yonkers, New Rochelle. I'm missing one off the top of my head or the other yellows zones designated in Westchester. So given what I just said, we have come to an agreement with Sovereign Labs to provide us saliva testing, PCR testing. So this is a PCR test. It is not an antigen rapid test, which has the much higher validity rate, both positives and negative. So we have since received our first shipment of test collection tubes. So if you don't mind me playing show and tell for a couple of minutes, I'll go through kind of the process that the testing will take once we need to do it.

037These are, this is not, hold on. I gotta shut off my background in order for you to see this one. This is the box that the collection sample comes in. This is what it looks like. Students and staff will be required to put their saliva in the top here filling up to the fill line, which is not halfway up the tube. The bottom of the tube is here, it's about a quarter inch. Once that is done, students and staff will flip this over in this top part, there is an RNA preservation agent. You push this down until it clicks, that will drain the preservative into the tube, unscrew large top, screw on the small cap top, give it a good shake. And that's the sum total of the experience for saliva testing. These will be

038delivered to Sovereign Labs by FedEx, and they will be analyzed in the lab for the presence of COVID-19. So at this point, we have all of that straightened out, as far as which type of testing, the testing supplies, all of that has been delivered, and we can begin using those and placing orders as soon as we go through the next two logistical challenges, which are being planned this week. Rachel and myself met with the IT people at Sovereign Labs to develop a process for gaining testing consent and HIPAA waivers from both staff and the community. We are working currently on developing that communication so parents can fill out their registration for the Sovereign Lab site provide health insurance information, consent for testing and the HIPAA waiver. We will work with Sovereign Labs to upload all

039of that. At that point, we'll be ready to provide Sovereign Labs with the names of the students and staff who would need to test should that begin. And they can print us out orders for those tests, which would allow us to mark and label all of these testing vials and then ultimately collect samples from students and teachers. The second piece is looking at how we're gonna be distributing and collecting this testing. There really are two models that we have not determined which we're going to use. The first is an in-school testing model. In other words, using the time between 8:00 and 3:00 to have students and staff come down to a designated location, provide the samples and ultimately box them and ship them from the school. The second model is to send these tests kits

040home with students, have them provide the sample under parent supervision and return them the next time they are in school. Obviously there are pros and cons to each one. The pros to having an in school collection is that we have all the tests, we know which ones have been collected, and we have the students there, we're watching them do it. Once it's done, it's done and we can send it off to the lab. The drawback being, it requires manpower, it requires students to leave their classes for some length of time to provide these samples. Whereas you gain those on the pro side, when you send tests home that students are not missing any instructional time for testing. However, we're not always certain that 100% of the tests that we send home are actually going to

041make it back to school, which would force us to test a significantly higher percentage of students in order to make sure we hit the state mandated percentage marks. So we are with each level, because I believe there'll be kind of three different methods at each level given the different schedules and the different ability of students to manage the testing. And that's gonna be happening over the next couple of days. So by the end of this week, we should have a better understanding of exactly how we're going to do that. Just as some words about the coverage of these tests under health insurance, FCRA does provide for no cost, no out of pocket costs testing for COVID-19. That means that there would be no (indistinct) pay. There would also be no application to lifetime or yearly

042benefits for this. And Sovereign Labs would be working to work with insurance companies to provide them payment. If there were students and or staff that did not have health insurance, that district would be covering the cost of the test about $100 per test. So with that said, are there any questions on the Sovereign Labs agreement? And before I ask her questions, we are following the second trajectory in case for some reason that this outside vendor does not work out, although we don't foresee that happening. We have been approved as a limited site lab or limited service laboratory by New York State. So we also could follow that path and request the free Abbott card test, those are antigen tests from the state should we be designated in one of the zones. And we are now

043approved to take and analyze those tests within the school district as well. So that is kind of the plan B should some of this not workout. Are there any questions concerning the testing? Go ahead Amber. Going back to the orange and red zone designations, is there any guidance on, so you said for orange, for example, you have to test 20% of staff and students over one month. Is there any requirement to test 100% of the population at any time? They've dropped language, yeah, no. They've dropped that language, which I found interesting. I certainly would not advocate us testing the same 20% of kids over and over and over again, but they did not write in a requirement for 100% of testing. Oh, okay, thanks. Over X number of months, five. Any other questions, Bob. Yeah,

044what Eric, would be the turnaround time to know the results in terms of the impact on the school. So we could respond accordingly. Yep. So the PCR, once they receive the tests in their lab, it's a 24 to 48 hour turnaround for analyzing the tests. We also need to include a day for the FedEx, a day or two for the FedEx delivery. So that really probably between a three and four day turnaround would be great, could be sooner than that. Results are delivered in two ways. The individual families will receive an email with a result and a lab report, and the school will have access on our portal to the sum total of all of the test results. Any other questions. I have a question. So while this is going to be, or may be

045required by the state because of its own designation, and it will keep us in in-person learning that the whole goal is to do the testing so that we can maintain in-person learning by showing that the school's percentage rate is lower than the zone area rate. And if it's lower than we state, we get to stay in in-person. But of course we'll be identifying through this aggressive or actual testing, sick students and staff who may be asymptomatic. And then we'll also then be having quarantines as a result of that in the same standard protocol fashion we've been having through the random testing. I just wanna make sure that's clear that the whole purpose is to try to be as to maintain in-person instruction by meeting the obligations of the zone requirements, but simultaneously we could be

046having staffing issues be it because of quarantining, because it would be doing more testing. Yeah, that that's absolutely correct. I would actually reframe the way we think about this testing just a little bit. I look at it as a mechanism with increasing community spread to give us the information to determine that it's safe to continue with in-person learning, that this really is an opportunity to receive data that allows us to with confidence, say, we either do have in school spread that makes it inadvisable to have in-person learning or we don't and we're not gaining, the numbers that are shown in school are significantly lower than that of the community around us. So it really is going... I don't think anybody believes it's a foregone conclusion of where this test best thing looks, especially as it

047starts being done on a wider scale in schools. I think we've been very successful and I think it's important to note that I think our success of not having in school spread is directly linked to the safety measures we're taking. And it is unlike many other businesses, activities, gatherings, it is the most tightly controlled in terms of behavior that you can kind of experience. Students are kind of under adult supervision throughout the entire day. We're making sure that that social distancing is happening. The mask wearing is happening, and that is directly linked to the reason why we're not having (indistinct). So that not being in a sense, the new restated goal or a way to restate this. Why would we not just go ahead and do this anyway, if we're not put into a zone,

048why wouldn't we maybe attempt the yellow zone approach if that's really a strong intent of this activity. We can certainly discuss whether we want to do some testing (distorted sound) side of the zone designation. What I would say is while it is a no cost option from out of pocket standpoint, if we are to go down that road, we are utilizing testing resources that would be used otherwise in the state and I think that is an important thing to keep in mind. Secondly, it is a burden on insurance companies and insurance carriers, which the more testing that happens over this year will ultimately (indistinct) on mass have an effect on insurance rates and the like. Those are just two things that we do wanna keep in mind. And while we do testing, say within the

049required part of it, would students and faculty who are tested because they're symptomatic or asymptomatic or had to, because they've come in contact with a COVID positive person, would those tests results be incorporated into our total percentage testing number? You know what I'm saying? So the ones that are happening outside of this lab test anyway, can we capture them and include them in our numbers? We're doing that now. So any positive results that come from, now, obviously because they're self-reported, we don't know the sum total number of kids who have actually taken tests. There are families that don't report, that they're necessarily giving a test and then report a negative, but we are getting reports of any positives that we have in the community. Those are already put into the daily state survey positive cases

050that would continue to happen along with the reporting of these school-based tests with go into a different section of the survey. But ultimately all of those numbers are combined in coli (indistinct) into one total. So, it might skew heavily towards the positive because if we're getting people who are only telling us about their positive of tests, that portion will be 100% positive. No, well, but, but understand. I mean, right now we're trying to figure out the logistics, one option for schools during a yellow zone designation is to accept outside testing as part of that 20%. I'm just picking 20, it could be 30, depending on which zone we're in. I would make the argument that it would be much more streamlined from school district standpoint to test the percentage we need to test through our

051tests as a reporting to the state, rather than kind of giving, having a mishmash of where these tests are coming, it will create much more logistical work on the back end to try and keep that straight. Families are always welcome to test. Obviously they can use their doctors in their healthcare as they see fit. I don't think it needs to necessarily be moved into the school testing numbers. That makes sense to me, thank you. Eric, I have a question. All right guys (indistinct). If I'm the, let for example, the 20%, if there are positive tests that come back, does it trigger closing of the whole school or just of the cohorts that have the positive tests. It would follow our exact positive test protocol now. And that's really a case by case basis. It really

052depends on when we receive notification of the positive, how that can we complete the contact tracing in time before. If we can't, then we would close a building or a couple of buildings, depending on the way it is laid out in order to complete that contact tracing that happened last week, as you saw at the middle and the high school. Many of the cases come in with enough time for us to contact trace through it and figure out who needs to quarantine from it. And then we don't need to go to a remote learning schedules. So it's really gonna be dependent upon the case. Carl, you got a question. Yeah, two things. First of all, I think just to reiterate Pam's point, which you're agreeing with, but we really have to accept. We can take

053into account. It seems to me, we can't take into account outside testing because you're not getting a sample, you're getting specific self determined reporting. And if we wanna get an actual number that means something, we have to use our percentage and check test our 10%, 20% or a little more to make sure we get 10%, 20%, whatever it is. The other thing is I wanted to sort of just comment Pam's idea that if we get more positives, we may have a staffing issue potentially. I would say I would look at it that we might be avoiding a staffing issue because if we have somebody who's positive and asymptomatic and they get tested, we will hopefully prevent them from spreading it to more people, creating a worse situation. So I get the point, but I think

054we should all think about it in terms of the longer term of every time somebody has it and doesn't know what the ramifications are. Yeah, listen, I think there... While there is logistical challenges that come from increasing positive cases from a staffing standpoint, we want to know what the real data is as far as COVID-19 in the schools, because we need to act accordingly for the sake of public health. Carl, I think it could work in either way. I do think if there is increased positivity rates, we will run into staffing crunches in particular schools. We've seen that happen in Heathcote thus far, and we've been kind of one person or so away from it, both at the middle school and the high school over various parts of the last three or four weeks. So

055it's not something that we haven't encountered or haven't needed to keep a rely on moving forward, but we're doing our best to cover all those and keep the in person learning going. Any other questions about testing? Yeah, I wanted to clarify how the data are supported. So individuals will get their personal results back, but the school districts will get aggregated data. So we will still be relying on-- Yeah, it's the... Go ahead. We just get it in spreadsheet form and we get individual test results for everyone that was tested. So people will have to file a HIPAA waiver as part of the (indistinct) as that. Correct. Okay. Correct, with the consent will be a HIPAA waiver that the data would only be shared with the schools and with the parents. Just wanted to comment on

056about whether an outside test can be used. I think if the testing is done, if the tests are sent home, I think it's fine to require our test to be used. If the testing is done in school, I do think it's important to give parents the opportunity or the option to either take that test home to do it, or to let them go to their doctor to get their kids tested. Rather than if for any reason there is concern about getting it done in the school for whatever reason is, especially think about younger kids. Yeah, Ron, I think what I was saying was our hope is to get participation rates that are very, very high so we would be able to get our 20% or 30% without needing to resort to asking people to go

057get their own tests if they're uncomfortable. Right, so just if there's a student that was uncomfortable doing the test in school, they wouldn't have to do it, you're saying. That's our hope. That's gonna depend on participation from the community. New York City has gone down the route of you must consent to this testing if you're in-person. Given an and quite honestly, we were seriously considering that when we talked about the requirements last time at this board meeting, which required 100% testing in orange and red zones over a month. That has ceased to be the case. So the hope is that we do have the participation rates that will allow our testing to be what we measure according to the state. Obviously, any family can go out and have their children tested. We would certainly appreciate

058those results but we wouldn't necessarily count them in what we were reporting to the state during our red zone, and the yellow, red and orange zone designation. I think we're saying the same thing, I just wanna clarify. I'm actually okay with requiring people to take the testing. I'm just talking about any case where there may be emotional distress for a student who has to do it in school versus the comfortable place. Yeah, no, I think that's a very important point I think that's a very important point from a, if there is a medical, social, emotional reason that makes this extremely difficult for legitimate reasons, for legitimate reasons. Those are times when we talk about work with our district physician, work with the nurses to address those. Okay, before I move on to athletics, I just

059want to address, there has been a request from the community for a medical advisory board. The district administration, our district physician, our contacts at DOH have all kind of discuss this possibility. At this point, the district is working under state, New York State Education Department, New York State Department of Health, and governor's executive orders mandates for all of the different policies and procedures we must follow in the time of this global pandemic. Whenever we encounter a case or a unique experience or a unique medical question that we have dealing with particular cases of COVID, we have access to the infectious disease team at DOH that has been actually quite responsive to school since we've started this and our district medical officer or a district physician, of course. At this point, we're not sure that a

060separate medical advisory committee would give us additional information. And it would take time away from focusing on actually dealing with the cases that are coming in each day and ultimately dealing with the new and kind of evolving mandates that the governor continues to work through rightfully so, given the rising tide of COVID right now. So at this point we're not recommending a medical advisory committee. As we move towards solidifying new policies, as mandates change, that may be a time to address bringing on additional medical doctors to discuss that. But as of right now, we have been reaching out to physicians in the community and our district physician on kind of an as needed basis as we've been going through these, including the discussion about testing and whether or not that it would've made sense to

061engage it as a way to reduce six foot distancing, which was an emphatic no. So at this point, we're not recommending that as a district administration to form a medical advisory committee. And I'm happy to address any questions or comments that anyone may have. I don't have a question for you. Actually I have more of a comment more for the community 'cause as you can imagine, I think a lot of, some of the board of I've heard a lot about this. My comments to those that have been discussing it, I can only speak for myself, of course. I think two things that I would really like to understand better about the proposal of this are what are the specific goals and actions that are being proposed with this committee? Again, this is not question for

062you, Eric, this question is to those that have proposed it. Again, I've obviously read all the emails that have come in and spoken to folks about it, but that's just something that I still struggle with about really what tangible actions we're talking about. And then the second piece that would be helpful to understand for me is what is the benefit of making such a committee district sponsored rather than folks in the medical community working together to provide information either to the community, to the schools through other channels. So I don't have a view either way. Those are just questions that I've been trying mall over as people have brought it to my attention. And I just wanted to share that back to the community so that you understood my thought process. At this point, then

063I'll turn it over to Ray for an athletics update. Thank you, Eric. This fall was a big success by a lot of measures. We had a lot of students participate on 14 teams full. Roughly about 20% of our students. Which is pretty commendable considering the 10 teams in sports that were categorized as higher risk didn't run. So due to the hard work of the families supports and athletes and coaches and our safety measures, sports were not a vector for transmission or for quarantine. And we think most of that is due to the outdoor nature of the sports we had in the fall. But some a little bit of a highlight, we had about 80% of varsity and jr varsity also qualify as scholar athletes based upon the criteria set forth by New York State Public

064High School Athletic Association, which means they have a 90 or above average when we convert from the regular GPA. Every one of our varsity teams qualified, every one of our JV teams qualified. And we had, I'm just gonna do a quick look up, about 240 students who met that criteria. Moving forward towards the winter. Although there are still many unknowns about the winter season, we have a January 4th start date. The gold card health history and consent form has been reopened for bowling, gymnastics, skiing, boys swim and dive and track and field. And it's also been revised to include the higher risk sports. In case they are authorized to compete, those sports are basketball, cheerleading, ice hockey and wrestling. And we had many coaches right now offering open workouts and that schedule can be offered,

065can be found on our website. All right, now there will be two more seasons after the winter, fall season two, you may recall that girls swim and dive volleyball and football were moved to a March 1st start and were expecting our spring season to still kick off on April 19th. The only sport really in question is boys lacrosse. It's not clear if that's been categorized as higher risk but we know that contact sports typically are but we haven't been given a clear explanation on that or whether the rules will be modified to allow for it to be played as a low or moderate risk sport. That's it. Thank you, Ryan. Any questions. And any questions? Ray, I think at one point we were talking about a trouble finding facilities for swimming. Is that still the

066case? So for the winter, we've been able to piece facilities together, some for in December, but definitely for January. Though we have a slight difficulty not understanding whether we're gonna be in all virtual meets, what the requirements might be for that. But I think we'll be fine as far as practices and we do have a potential for conducting competitions. We still are kind of in a holding pattern based upon what the governor's at announcements have been. We're not sure exactly which sports are gonna definitely go starting January 4th, but I think we're in good shape moving forward. We have not yet finalized the space for girls swimming dive because of the March 1st date, we don't know if we'll be able to go back to our traditional home at Westchester Community College. Great, thanks Ray.

067Okay, I'd like turn it over to Thomas for a medium and long-term planning. Yeah, I'm gonna keep this short amount of the time we spend on this, just to let folks know that we continue to focus on medium and long-term planning as well as sort of in the moment pieces for the midterm. That obviously logistics and operations of which you've heard us talk about health and safety concerns, teaching and learning issues, synchronous, asynchronous, virtual only. The challenges that we're having and improvements that we're making to the ongoing hybrid and virtual only plans. And we continue to focus on social, emotional and wellbeing issues as sort of the foundation of our restart plan and continue to make sure that that's a priority for us both in the current times and as we're planning ahead for mid

068and long-term planning purposes. In terms of kind of a midterm example, Eric spent some time tonight talking about testing protocols. So we're in the throws of that ironing those details out. We will continue to share out that information over the next weeks and months as that becomes more clear and as we need to move into an organized practice of doing regular COVID testing, whether we elect to do that on our own or as part of a zone designation. Some of the longer term, obviously as multiple scenario planning for the later spring, any summer programming that we might be offering to the district, and certainly scenario planning for the '21/'22 school year. As a way to kind of communicate this, we've actually turned this work from the larger district restart committee over to the communications committee.

069And we've been working, we've met a couple of times in the last couple of weeks about trying to create a one page infographic that we can capture this information. We heard a feedback on communications about the importance of having succinct and clear information, things that are easily digestible, and then obviously providing hyperlinks for people who wanna go in and get more information. So we're in the process of developing that. We plan to bring that forward to the community at the beginning of the new year in January, that will help illustrate our exact work that we're doing in terms of the mid and longterm planning. We're also on the same communications committee is working on a rebranding of the district restart page. We understand that can be difficult to find information on that web page and

070so we're in the process of reordering and restructuring that, focusing on a pathway forward rather than necessarily looking backwards on this work. And so, again, both the restart committee and the subset of the communications group is engaged in that work. And we look forward to bringing that information to both the board and the community in the months ahead. Thank you, Thomas. And just to end, I think it's important to... Pause there for some questions. Yeah, sure. Go ahead, sorry. We continue to get a lot of questions from the community around space usage, especially as we have heard that things like trailers and other buildings and are challenging. And as we start to think about whether it's medium or long-term with things like vaccine, but that still may require some social distancing. What are the possibilities

071within our space? Again, I'm not talking about today, but in the medium or long-term view. I know we had our architect here the last meeting and that we sent community feedback that we've received post that meeting to the architect for further review. One of the things I'd be wondering about is in response to that, are we asking our architect to do a more detailed dive into what are the possibilities within our own space, if different constraints changed in the medium and longterm, whether it's because of uneffective vaccine or other things, but we were still not back to fully normal. Stuart, you wanna address that question? Yeah, so the architect is indeed taking additional dive into our buildings and working with our administrative teams and cabinet to look at our spaces and try to think about

072them, not always exist now, but what they could be if altered slightly with additional students or whatever it may be. Are we doing 20 different scenarios? No, we're not, but we are trying to look at it (distorted sound). I mean into the extent that we can get updates on, that I think I know I would appreciate it, the wider community would appreciate it. 'Cause when I look at today, it kind of feels like the end of last year. We're headed not in the right direction in the short term, but in the medium and longterm, we're heading in a place of a lot of uncertainty and we just don't know what spring, what next year could look like, but there are obviously some promising developments happening but I'm not sure we can sit here today and

073say by next September even if there's a vaccine we could be back to fully normal. So to the extent we can understand that planning that's happening. And the reason I bring up space users, by the way, September, even if there's a vaccine, and trailers are not super feasible in the next six to 12 months. That seems like our only path forward to increase in person or just staying as we are. Again, not for right now, but talking about where in September that kind of timeframe. I think that the variables that they play off of themselves are exactly, like you said, Ron, that there is a vaccine in the offing that is coming to market as we speak within the next few weeks in England, and then hopefully very soon in the United States. That will

074take some number of months to scalable size, to have real kind of social impact on the spreading of the virus. We have a six foot mandate right now that we're working under. And if we continue to have six foot between students, there isn't available space and across the buildings. That being said, as the vaccine comes online, as the numbers of the virus change, as state mandates change, as we see a changing in the way the virus is spreading, if we see a major drop in mortality for older populations, that may change the calculus on figuring out what is necessary within schools and take us back towards a more normalized situation where we can have more than the students we have in the room now, which may be get us back, that might include keeping masks,

075but loosening up the distance, those types of different things. All of those things are on the table. One of the nice things about planning towards going back to normal is that we do know how to do normal kids in everyday class, It's like, we're set up for that. So it's not trying to invent something new. It's getting closer to what we usually do. So those are easier steps to take than kind of reinventing (distorted sound) To, to that end, that's a fair point. I mean, we know what normal looks like. I think a metric if somebody could get it, that would be really interesting. It would be what is the threshold of social distancing? And the reason I use social distancing is that that's the one that's on a spectrum. Masks you're wearing or you're

076not, unless they come out with a new type of mask. What is the threshold that gets us back to 70% in-person, 100%. Is it five feet, is it four feet, is it three feet? Well, we know that they weren't that close together in a normal time, but just help me understand. I think that-- I just wanna be careful about that because the six feet designation by the CDC was really based on kind of the space in which droplets move. And I'm certainly not an expert on how far scientifically we need to be apart from each other, but the setup of six feet while probably not definitive in the by inches nature has been looked at by the CDC, has been looked at by department of health as the kind of standard to mitigate the chance

077of exposure. And it doesn't really fall down to us as a school district to have that metric, that's really much more. I don't believe that as a board of education, we're going to be determining whether it's six foot or five foot or three foot. I think we're going to be... Clarify, I don't wanna do that at all. And by the way, nor am I saying we should change six feet today at all. What I'm saying is if the state or the CDC or whatever the-- Oh, yeah, gotcha. If they lower it, what would fit our kids back? Because if, and again, I don't expect that to change anytime soon, but if they said, okay, the vaccine is here, we know the efficacy, we know how long it takes to provide immunity. And we're at X%

078of adoption and we think that that can us to five feet. 'Cause it doesn't make ideally, like Eric, you said, we get to a place where they say, okay, everything's back to normal. And we'll get there one day, but we just don't know when that is. I'm just trying to understand and also to make sure we set the right expectation with everyone in our school community of what that might look like. And that's what I meant by the metric-- Let me reach out to the department of health contacts or school physician and some of the local physicians and just kind of get their thought on what do we think that the state would move in that kind of lessening social distancing rather than when can we stop social distancing in just two minutes. 'Cause I

079wan make sure that that's something that's kind of on people's radars, because if it's not been planning for, it doesn't necessarily make sense. So I'll be happy to do that before the next meeting. Eric, can I follow up with Ron. I know there's been a lot of thought about the issue and discussion, I should say about the six feet of social distancing. I wanna make sure that in terms of managing expectation to Ron's point that the decision of dialing up the amount of schooling, let's speak for a moment about the elementary level is not a matter of dialing up and down the number of square feet only. There are other considerations. It's not a matter of if the social distancing goes from six feet to four feet as a scenario, that isn't the only consideration

080in increasing the amount of schooling. Is that a fair statement or not, that there are other considerations in terms of just scheduling the day within a school or not. No, I think six foot is the major. There are really two barriers. There's the six foot of distance, obviously, because it reduces the density you can have in any one given classroom. It's also the population density of transitions and what the hallways look like, what free periods look like if we're talking about secondary and high school what free periods look like and ultimately what the building looks like in transition. It's less an issue obviously in the elementary school because those transitions are much more controlled and can be much more controlled. And I'm sure there can be workarounds around some of those transitions in the secondary,

081but it really is about the distancing and dedensifying of the population in the buildings, 'cause I think it is not unreasonable to say that the reason why schools currently are the places that are looking like the safest group events, if you will, is because we are dedensifying, we are making sure kids are spread apart and we are making sure there are masks in play. So those are (distorted sound). But yeah, I think the social distancing is the major stumbling point. Obviously there are other questions to consider, but if we're looking at the core, it's that social distancing. Just a word to kind of close our research update. Obviously the last especially week and a half have brought rising rotavirus cases we've seen and are seeing the Thanksgiving bump. Nobody believes that's fully in play yet.

082Anxiety and nerves are rising both in the entire community and certainly in the staff community and certainly in the administration community here. But that being said, I want everybody to understand both the community, the staff and the people sitting around this proverbial table here, that we are really taking these precautions seriously. We are acting at all hours of the day and night on any positive cases that could be. You should feel assured that whenever information comes into the district, we were taking every step to make sure that we don't have kids in the building who should have otherwise been quarantined or should have otherwise been isolated. We don't make the determination to move to remote lightly, but we make it quickly if we cannot find the sum total of the contact tracing in time. So

083understand those are our priorities, the health and safety of the staff and the students are foremost in our mind. There was some consternation of the early morning calls last week and we would just like to assure everybody that we had two situations last week, where we had very late night positive results. It seems there is some major lab that has decided to batch out their emails to patients at 10 o'clock at night, which has made life so much so wonderful for us. But at this point, we've set up Blackboard Connect in order to only text and call the school parents who are affected by those changes, that was in the works after our first call but we were not expecting to have two days in a row of kind of midnight decisions for school openings.

084So moving forward, we're set up that if it's a school closure, let's say at the middle school, everyone will get the email but only the people who have middle school children will get the text and phone call in the morning and those types of situations. That's all we have for the restart update. (distorted sound) Super, any final board member questions? Thank you for all that hard work, cabinet. We know that you guys are if not working 24/7, working 20/7. And all for the support of our student experience in the health and safety of our staff and students and families. And I can tell from your work since March, you guys have considered a remarkable amount of input from the community and from your experts and from your peers and you consider it all and you

085get to yes so often and make so many changes, small and big from e-learning quality to Wednesday enrichment to full day Wednesdays, the K two expansion. I mean, it's endless the kids staying in the classroom now, moving in the classroom at the middle school. I just wanna recognize that you have made some significant adjustments. And when you see the possibility of coming to yes, you do it as often as possible and I completely appreciate that work. Moving on, well, we've been sitting for two hours and we have three people whose hands are raised, but I would prefer to take our break now. Here we go. All right, so while we're settling in, I'll just restart the meeting and move in to public comment. This is one of two opportunities where as you know members of

086the public are invited to speak on agenda items or rather non-personnel related matters. So please keep it to district matters and not personnel related matters. Each speaker has three minutes to speak and we will cap this first public comment period at 90 minutes and honorary our district clerk will be timing you and will let us know when you've hit three minutes. So please, learn to respect that decision and I will promote Rich first. Dr. Schutzer, one moment. You just need to unmute yourself and state your name and address whether you represent an organization. Okay, go ahead Dr. Schutzer. Hi, my name is Richard Schutzer and I live at 29 Oak Lane. I am speaking today as a concerned father and physician. As the latter, I have spent the majority of my adult life involved with

087continued medical education, having co-authored more than 30 publications, serving in leadership capacities of several societies and on a journal editorial board. The importance of up to date knowledge in healthcare matters can not be overstated. COVID is no exception. During the first wave, I was in charge of a COVID ICU and had to witness the rapid deterioration and death of previously healthy people. The threat posed by this virus are real but along with this, there are many fears that are simply unjustified. Over the past month, I have reached out to the board as well as Dr. Hagerman voicing specific concerns. Please understand that in the process of this emails I neither push for school opening nor closing. Instead, I have tried to focus on science and board bylaws. While I have tried to be respectful in

088doing so, it is unfortunate that I frequently received no response or a dismissive one. Although I find such behavior extremely disappointing I'm more disappointed at the board's refusal to follow their own bylaws in an attempt to silence scientific knowledge in the midst of a pandemic. I was surprised in July when in the Scarsdale High School PTA executive committee publicly complained about the board's lack of transparency. It is apparent based on my recent communication attempts that the secrecy has worsened. To be clear, when I pointed out that the board's violation of bylaws, 22.30 and 22.10, I was informed by Dr. Hegerman that these do not reflect current behaviors and that the administration recognizes Louis Corsaro, a pediatrician who retired seven years ago because he stated he couldn't keep up with the medicine at that time, as

089the only physician representative. This was further reflected in the restart committees where the medical nursing committee contained our wonderful school nurses, but only one physician, Dr. Corsaro. In case you are unaware, the people that are most affected by Coronavirus are adults. That includes our teachers and our staff that we value so much. Where is there medical representation in the restart committee. I'm simply not understanding where following the board bylaws and encouraging the input of the group of experts that live in our community has become controversial. The administration has not even been following the confirmed case protocol that you regularly refer to. When Scarsdale was first faced with a Coronavirus, March 8th, the district issued an email stating "We asked that medical questions be directed "to your family doctors/healthcare provider." Despite pushing responsibility onto others, you

090have given minimal communication to those same area, physicians, parents. And I unfortunately have to assume our teachers. Basic questions such as how many are currently under quarantine or a failed the easy seen questionnaire remain unanswered. Time's up, can you finish up quickly? I do want to... There are long lasting repercussions of the decisions that you are making today. These include medical and psychological effects as well as the aura of mistrust that you are creating. To avoid any misrepresentation, let me clearly state, I do not care if I am on a committee, but there should be one, nor do I favor a committee taking over day-to-day operations. That should be handled by the administration and their discussions within the Department of Health. Thank for your time and thank you to the one board member that was

091willing to speak to me. I appreciate your feedback. And if there is any interest, I am happy to discuss further. Thank you, Dr. Schutzer. Aaron, I'll promote you. And you just need to... Where did you go? Go ahead, Aaron. Thank you. My name is Aron Israel, I live at 64 Stratton Road. A few weeks back, I put forward a simple model that allows all K through two students to fit in their full classes. Unlike the current split model, where half of them spend the day with a non-teaching aid. This model shows incredible promise and possibility with little downside, yet without legitimate and explicit reasons, without any transparency, without anyone standing up to say why not, it is being flat out rejected. This is a major failure that directly affects our children's education, wellbeing and safety.

092Yes, this change would entail moving some furniture and tech, and some children would interact in masks with seven to nine kids they currently don't mix with. But the positives, there would be no changes at all to children's hours, to busing, to teachers and aides hours, or pay. If anything aides pay would need, would not need the salary increase for supervising a split class alone, which will be voted on tonight in matter item 1205. This is possibly money that doesn't need to be spent. That's because K through two kids that are currently spending half a day with a non teaching aid would actually spend the full day with their teacher and aid as they have in the past and it has always been Scarsdale's optimal pedagogical choice. Please put out a statement if we have a

093new desire choice of half the day with a non teaching aide. A full class K through two model is beneficial educationally, socially, emotionally, and allows teachers to teach with their aides and to avoid teaching every lesson twice. This is a no brainer. How do I know there's room for all K through two to fit full class? At the November 16th board of ed meeting, the district architect admitted that he only used a cursory mathematical estimation for our maximum capacity of classrooms. It was one that was wildly overestimated the space needed per individual, which led to suboptimal choice of all restart decisions and needs to be rectified immediately. I have shown that we can easily fit them all in full classes. See my letter to the editor and Friday's Inquirer on their website scarsdale10583 or contact

094me for a full walkthrough of the class sizes and rooms. We have plenty of room in our schools at six feet. We will never be able to rent rooms at St. Pius because we simply don't need them. Earlier, Eric stated that space is the only limitation, But there's more than enough space in our buildings. I urge the administration board to prove me wrong. Since I've shown this model to the administration board and the community weeks ago, I've yet to receive a single valid refutation of its viability. Instead, the board elected to avoid putting a discussion of these possibilities on tonight's agenda. Stop wasting precious time attempting to poke insignificant holes in this full class K through two model and instead use your energy to fix and implement it. Why won't you openly explore this? I

095expect explicit and legitimate reasons from the board why these young K through two children should not be with their teacher and full classes all day every day. I will continue to ask these questions until I get legitimate answers, and I hope the community will too. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Aaron. Claudine, I'm gonna promote you. Go ahead, name and address. Okay, my name is Claudine Jarsell and my address is 10 Kent Road in Scarsdale. So I just wanted to make a couple of quick points. I hope you're able to hear me, is that right? Yes. Okay. In terms of the testing, which Eric was talking about with the 20%, I actually liked Pam, your comment about, and I wanted to highlight it of why shouldn't we just go ahead and start testing 20%

096of this population of all the people that are in all the buildings. And yes, it was costing $100 a person or whatever the price is that Eric negotiated with the lab. That's not a lot of money if we all do it once. I think we don't have a data point, we don't really know. There's plenty of diseases that we all know about that you don't know if you have it or not until it's too late for some diseases. Here, people are killing themselves trying to find a test and they have varying amounts of validity. And we don't even understand it at all and maybe we won't for several years but the fact of the matter is that people are killing themselves to come up with these tests and make them and ship them out and

097read them and ship back the results. And if we're gonna give it a go, I think we should just give it a go and find out the information, 'cause right now we don't really know. And probably a very large percentage of people that have this virus are asymptomatic. So we should at least know that. And then if I could just make a further comment about the testing, 'cause I'm interested in what the universities are doing. We have lots of university students in our family and engineers and bioengineers. And one of the things that's really interesting is that a lot of universities have decided to test the wastewater in all the buildings. In addition to testing the students and the teachers and everyone who works in the buildings, they also test the wastewater. And that's apparently

098something that's easy to do and they do it daily. And apparently a lot of people come up with cases immediately that way. So then when they test, because some schools are just testing constantly, which is how they stay open even with elderly college professors who are tenured, they find out right away and then they get to the bottom of it. And I haven't heard anything about that at all, about waste water. So I think we, and I know everybody's busy and this is exhausting. I totally get that. This is just the most exhausting thing ever for everybody. But I just think we should give it a shot. And the other thing, I just wanted to point out about the vaccines. (indistinct) Okay, I'll be fast. We don't know how this is gonna work out with

099the vaccines. We have no way of knowing. So this could go on for longer than we think. And I think we really do need an update on educationally when we're gonna work on catching the kids up. Because for us all these people in the octopus screen we're all grownups. If we don't get things done for like a year or two, hey, no big deal, we're all ancient. And one year out of our whole lives is no big deal. But when you're a small little person and you're losing time, a year or two years could be like 20% of your life, 50% of your whole life. So the losses are actually substantial. And yes, we're all resilient, but I think we have to be honest too about what's happening and get a little bit more onto

100that plan and I'll stop. Thank you. Kim, promoting you. All right. Can you hear me? Good. Wonderful, Kim Little, it says 77 Walmart. All right, so I heard Eric's comments tonight and Ron's concerns. But you know, once again, I find myself before you advocating for the creation of a medical advisory committee. I still don't understand why the district would refuse the offer of expert advice during this difficult time. Like everyone else, I understand that there are mandates, but mandates are general, they're not specific. And also there's a delay between the implementation of policy and the discovery of new information. And that that delay leads to problems when you're planning for the future. And I mean, I'm pleased that you're talking about future plans, but I am concerned that you're not going to be able to

101really address the health and medical issues. That's a really big concern of mine. I mean, one of the issues that has come up recently is the testing issue and a group of us raised concerns about testing over the summer, developed a plan, submitted it to you, and that was not developed at the time because it was not felt to be necessary. It was clear from the direction this was going that that was ultimately was going to be necessary. That's an example of a place where a committee would have been helpful. And as far as the testing, I mean, I have some serious concerns. What's the sensitivity and specificity of the test that was not commented on. Are you worried about spinning because spitting can be both a droplet and an aerosolization procedure. Have you thought

102about an outside tent with full PPE for your nurses? These are the sorts of things that I think, again, a committee would help you work on. It would not take up extra time, it would in fact free you up to do the things you're really good at, which is the education and the implementation of the policies that we aren't necessarily privy to. I see this committee as one that can provide information to the community. And if we are not working with the school district to directly to Ron's question, we can't notify teachers if we're providing an information session. We can distribute an FAQ to students and parents that we're not supposed to use the PTA sponsored address books to do such a thing. We also can't distribute anything to the larger community without the protection

103and the name of the school district behind us. Could we do a (indistinct) separate, sure. But it's gonna work better if we work with you. There's also an enormous amount of misinformation in the community. A lot of poor decision making, illogical reasoning, the media hasn't been good, even medical journals have been problematic at this time. NASA had to withdraw two studies over the summer. I think that the use of trusted authorities in our local community will allow us to have a basic level of common knowledge that we all have. And you don't have that now, you also lack the trust to be able to convey that information and you don't have the manpower to deliver those kinds of education sessions. So the fact that you're not willing to use this wonderful community opportunity is really

104to supplementing to me at a level I can't even begin to express. You know by now that Ric, Schtzer and I wrote a petition that has garnered more than 200 signatures from our friends and our neighbors. And this speaks into the fact that other people want this as well. Another concern is there's a lack of transparency. Dr. Corsaro does not communicate with parents and the mysterious physicians advisers of what you speak unnamed it and accessible. As a committee, we would be available to people and we would be named. And finally, 'cause I'm rushing to get through this in three minutes, we wanna work with you because we think the best thing to do is have a unified front. It does you no good if the community experts come out and say something that you then

105contradict, because then it looks like we're divided and it looks like someone doesn't know what they're talking about. And my guess is they're gonna think you don't know what you're talking about because we would be experts. I think it will work better if you worked with the community and I know that I've been pushing this and pushing this and pushing this. And I ensure I'm a squeaky wheel by now. And I'm sure this is frustrating for you. But the truth is this is necessary and I wish you could see that as well. There are other communities doing this and it can be very successful. That's it. Thank you. Bob Harrison, I'm promoting you. And you just need to go ahead and unmute yourself and name and address. Okay, can you hear me? Yes, you can

106hear me. Okay, I'm Bob Harrison. I live at 65 Fox Meadow Road. I'm a 40 year resident of Scarsdale. And I'm speaking as the volunteer director of a Scarsdale Summer Youth Tennis League for 36 years. I have several items here, I have the plans for the comfort station project at the middle school field and tennis courts. Have those plans been submitted to the SED State Education Department for approval. I don't know if you wanna say yes or no now, or comment later. I'd love to hear sooner rather than later. We'll answer questions and follow up, Bob, okay. We'll answer questions at the end. Okay, Lang as you well know, is the architect. Several ways to you pass by seven to zero, the inter municipal agreement with the village and the following night, the village pass

107the inter municipal agreement. So that should not be holding anything up. And the plans have been drawn, I've seen them. Maybe there's been some slight modifications, but so I'm looking forward to an answer as soon as possible. The Scarsdale summer youth tennis league, if you read the papers and letters to the editor, we are raising $10,000 to contribute to donate to the village of Scarsdale but specifically for this project to move it along and move it along and to keep the costs down. And we're asking citizens, residents to donate funds to these Scarsdale Summer Youth Tennis League with a memo on the check for the project. The comfort station project at the middle school field and tennis courts. And we've already raised $5,000 in contributions, and we've just been at this for about one to

108two weeks and residents can contact me at 725-0962. If they have any questions on the contribution, it would be nice to get those contributions into our nonprofit before the end of the year for whatever purposes (indistinct) like. We already, well, I'm already mentioned that we have over $5,000 raised. And just so people know this comfort station is more than a comfort station, it will have a office for a tennis attendant, it will have storage for athletic equipment used by middle school and the high school teams that play on that field. And obviously it will have two bathrooms, one for men, one for women. And also accommodate the irrigation system for that field. So it would be an excellent addition to our athletic facilities for students, adults and the entire community. And there's-- That's three minutes.

109Do you have another topic you want to bring up? Yes, there are some storage bins on the wall, the rebounding wall which is heavily used by tennis players and even children's athletes who kick their soccer balls against the wall for practice. Somehow there's a bunch of containers there. I'd like to know what the story is with those containers they shouldn't be there. You can find another place to put them. They're limiting the use of that wall. So if somebody wants to respond to that, why they're there, what they contain and when they're gonna be moved. Please. Thank you very much. We got it, thank you Bob. Would any other attendee like to speak during public comment. Okay, seeing none, we will close this first opportunity for public comment and move into item seven, which is

110the follow up for public comment. Prior discussion at our last meeting, we decided to add one after this session as well to get some of those answers to you more quickly. Stuart, you wanna address the SED submission and maybe the the storage pods? (distorted sound) I could answer. Mr. Harrison, we have not received the plans yet from Land. (distorted sound) from land to the village and to the district and we're still waiting on those documents. As soon as we get them and get that paperwork whatever we need to do, there'll be a little bit we have to do and then we'll get that to the SED. So that's in process but the ball's not in our court right now. The storage units are the storage units containing all the furniture that we cleaned out of

111the classrooms to make room for all the kids at the middle school. So that's what that is or against the wall. We need a flat area to put that. So that's what's in those units and why they're there will be a temporary until we're able to get things back to more of a normalized state, hopefully for next school year. And Claudine had a question about the testing in the wastewater. We actually did look at that quite a while ago. That's not something that school districts are doing, colleges are doing. We inquired with the county that's not something that we're set up to do or is it really feasible for us to do that. I actually did listen to an NPR study awhile ago and listening to their details on how they do that, that's definitely

112not something that we would be able to do. Thank you, Stuart. And as you mentioned in the restart, the architect has seen the most recent K-2 full time proposal from Aaron, but of course it's constantly looking at use of space and getting our kids to the building as soon as possible. Any other cabinet members wanna comment or have a up to public comment. Carl, are you suggesting on saying something? Yeah (indistinct) first, if there's anything. Okay, just two quick things, Pam. It was mentioned that somebody did not send emails and there was no response or dismissive and you respond to every single email in detail of more detail than I often think is needed. So I wanted to correct that. And if anybody wants to look at the emails am sure they can make an

113appropriate request but there are thousands and you respond to all of them. In terms of the wastewater, not only did Stuart look at it previously, but it was actually discussed at a board meeting and he described similar to what he described this evening. So, I just wanna let people know that not only did he look into it, but he shared the information with us quite some time ago. And I think there were some other sort of misstatements, but those are the big ones I just wanted to nail down quickly. Thanks, Carl. I think that just in terms of communications in email because I respond on behalf of the board as a singular person and when it doesn't have to be the president, it can be anybody who does it on behalf of the board, but

114it's one person. That person can only state fact and state process, can state what we've talked about, but can't state positions or opinions or potentials in responses. It has to be just a very simple statement of reference, but no promises or discussions of potentiality, because who knows what the board is going to discuss or what we're thinking. Unless we've discussed at the table. I don't know what the board's thinking. But we do consider every idea in each board member receives the important, considers it individually, and utilize it in decision making. But basically from a board perspective have to hurry before that I work as governors. So any other, Ron. I just noted two things. Eric, I think you may have had... I know you got to take care of a school matter and you had

115to step away, but I don't know if you heard when Kim Green Liberwood spoke a question/comment she made was about the spit tests was any concern about doing a spit test in school where spray could be going out and either to the nurses that are doing it and any risk to them or to other students that might be in the room or after. I don't know if you can comment there better, I just want you to make sure (indistinct) Yeah, no, that's a good point. If it were to be done in a school administration plan we would be doing that in an isolated area away from other students at a one type of situation. We would also have make sure whoever was doing those tests, they would be in full PPE, and we would have,

116obviously our district physician help us set up those protocols in a way that that would near the way the healthcare worker would do it in a hospital or a physician setting. That being said, it is also a saliva test, there's no I'm calling up a flam involved. So happily there's less aspiration in that, but the point is well taken. It is certainly a risk and we would mitigate it if we were gonna do it in school. Thank you. There's some other comments she had made, which I just wanna point that out that I think it's a fair comment, she mentioned that we quoted some discussions with other local doctors, but since it's not done at this meeting, nobody knows who those people are. There's no names attached to it, we're not a advisory committee, we're

117not appointed. So I do think it's a fair point about whether we are gonna be quoting people we speak to as doctors at this table, if they're not officially appointed or named or in some official capacity. So I just wanted to bring that up to her point. Thanks Ron, anything else? Moving on to item eight. Written comments. Allison. So the board received 41 emails between November 15th and December 2nd. Topics included concerns about implementing the school-based COVID-19 testing, ventilation issues, creation of a medical advisory committee to the board, concerns about the increase to a full day for students in K-2 and questions about additional in-building learning for other grades. All of the emails received a response from either a member of the administration or both. Thank you Allison. Item nine, personnel report. Drew. Just want

118to point out happily that we've been able to fill the final vacancy in the sort of facilities area leadership area. You remember John Trenholm retired over the course of the summer and Mike Patara qualified and stepped into that position as our director of facilities. Tonight on the agenda, you'll be appointing John Antenaseli which will be a big loss for Edgewood Elementary School. He is their head custodian, but congratulations to John, he will now be our second assistant director along with Nick Ferraro. With so much going on, obviously this is an important position to fill, and we're very happy for John. And also on tonight's agenda, a name you might be familiar with, we'll be returning to us. So Antoinette van Demark is going to come back and fill the vacancy that Barbara Toledo left in

119her retirement. And so we're happy to welcome Antoinette back. Thanks Drew. Yes, welcome back Antoinette and congratulations, John. We're very happy for you both. Consent agenda. So just so everybody knows, the agenda is set at a meeting with the superintendent, the vice president and the president, and sometimes a board member does attend that meeting as well. Items are placed on the consent agenda when the officers of the board and the superintendent feel that there's no controversy regarding them, I mean there's no need for a discussion. But a board member may remove an item from the consent agenda at this meeting if he or she chooses, if there's some discussion to be had. So Drew, any items needed to be removed from the agenda, consent agenda. Okay, then Alison you're up again. Okay, there are 13

120items on tonight's consent agenda. Items 1101 and 1102 recommend that the board accept the minutes of the November 16th business meeting and the November 30th executive session, items at 1103 and 1104, accept the certified (distorted sound) and uncertified personnel reports as presented. Items 1105, 1106, 1107 and 1108, recommend that the board accept the claims audit report for November, 2020. The external audit report for the 2019/2020 fiscal year. And the corrective action plans related to the 2019/2020 external and internal audits as presented earlier tonight. Item 1109, recommends that the board approve the revised code of conduct as presented and discussed at our board meeting on November 16th. Item 1110 recommends that the board accept the building committees for school visits and tours in the district for 2020 and 2021 as presented, which cover all of our

121buildings. Item 1111 recommends that the board authorized the assistant superintendent for special education and student services to execute a special education student in an out of district placement. Item 1112 recommends that board authorize the assistant superintendent for special education and student services to execute the contract with Sovereign Labs for COVID-19 testing for students, faculty and staff as presented. Item 1113, I move that we accept the consent agenda as presented. Okay Alison, is there a second? Second. Roll call vote. Alison. Yes. (indistinct) Yes. Carl. Yes. Karen. Yes. Ron. Yes. And I am a yes, so the motion passes. Thank you Alison. Moving onto information items. 4.01 is gonna be led by Ron as a representative to Westchester Putnam School Board Association. And it's a focus on advocacy efforts. Go ahead, Ron. Thanks, Pam. There are two

122items, potential advocacy items for the board to consider from the Westchester Putnam School Board Association. These are around keeping schools open, in other words, this is refers to COVID testing and transportation aid during a pandemic. For each of these items, there are three aspects for the board to consider. There's a resolution from the board itself. There is also a sample letter that can go out to the community, asking for community members to advocate on behalf of these to our representatives. And then the third piece which is for the board itself so that community members will be able to do that. I'm just gonna give a brief background on these two issues and why they're relevant to our district and a little bit about the resolution and the what's called the voter voice advocacy. So for

123keeping schools open, as we heard about from the new from Eric, there are testing mandates that potentially are coming from, well, that are from a state if you enter into a yellow, orange or red zone. As we heard about, there's a lot of logistics that go into those. And there are obviously financial implications even if the testing isn't charged to the district, there's financial implications about this heading up potentially for additional staffing. So if additional nurses are needed in the schools to help administer the tests and all the other setup and logistics. So what this advocacy position is saying is to go to our elected representatives throughout the state and ask for state support around the funding and the logistics around potential mandatory testing. We obviously don't have that many testing kits right now but

124other districts have and that's something that could potentially impact us. So the two things to consider from the board perspective would be a draft resolution that is attached to the agenda as well as a potential letter to the community to inform the community about ways to support getting legislation from our legislators at the state to support the school district. I will just note about the resolution. This came out, I think about a couple of weeks ago, as Eric mentioned, a lot is changing very rapidly around testing. So if we were going to support sending this resolution to our elected representatives, we may just need to look to see if any wording needs to get tweaked, to make sure it's the most up to date. I'm happy to pause there and talk about that one or

125I can go through both if you think that's better to do both first. Whatever you're comfortable doing. I think we can do one at a time but you're okay to do both. Let me pause there 'cause I know I just gave a lot and see if there's any questions from other board members or cabinet members. I just want you to know this does come up at the town call, it's something that's very much encouraged by the Westchester Putnam School Board Association's executive director and executive board. And I know that other boards have adopted this resolution and have encouraged their residents to go to voters voice and submit, not a template. So this is something that's happening in other neighboring districts as well. And I should note, I forget the topic last year but I think

126we did one of these last year and this year's something that West Putt does on behalf of school boards so that each school board or district doesn't need to try to draft their own template and everything. So this seems definitely favorable. It's one of our objectives every year is to advocate when appropriate. This one seems appropriate. And the part about communicating with the community, as Pam was referencing, there's literally a link and all they have to do is click on it, choose, we could set up the link, email it out, choose I and those who are interested in supporting the effort can put the information and gets sent right to the elected officials. So hopefully people will do that. But even if they didn't, I think our resolution was valuable. Even included in the board

127highlights links to the vote as far as site and encourage as part of the highlights, encourage people to go there. Right, yep. I support doing this. Do other people agree? I mean... I support it too. I support it as well. I think it's a great idea. Okay, thanks, Ron. Do you wanna take a look at the wording and see if it does need to be tweaked or I have to tell you that when I talked to Karen earlier this week, she's like, I don't think you needed to get that much quite frankly, but if you felt there was a need. I'm happy to, and maybe I'm just cause Eric is such the expert on this. He can just make sure there's nothing else that should be added or changed. I will note there is one

128or two clauses in there that also talks about not just mandated testing, but district decided pool testing. And they didn't know whether a district wants to keep that in there. It's sort of up to their discretion and I'm not sure there's any downside to keep it, I just wanting to make sure-- I think keeping it helps our other districts. Quickly go over the second advocacy as well. And this is around transportation aid. So more for the community, I think everybody on at the table knows, there are two ways that the district receives state aid. There's foundation aid, which is just based on a formula to help operations, Scarsdale does receive foundation aid. And then there's a second type of aid which is expense based aid and that districts receive based on what they expense in

129certain categories. One of those categories is transportation. The issue that has arisen is that the state law makes it very clear that the state cannot reimburse transportation aid costs if students were not being transported. So if we think back to last year from March to June when we had transportation costs. We just had those costs as a district but students were not being transported. So we have several months of expenses that we would normally get some reimbursement and it's eight meaningful amount from the state that we are not receiving and no district around the state is receiving. So this advocacy is around asking our state legislators to put in legislation that would allow transportation expenses that are occurring during COVID, even if there's times when students aren't being transported to be reimbursable and provide that

130reimbursement for those expenses from the state. This has a similar two-pronged approach. There's a resolution that our board can decide to send. And then there is also a voter voice action campaign as well. And I'll just say there's a lot of non-city to this because while we certainly are affected by that law, that we weren't getting reimbursed for the time a lot of other districts, they used those buses to deliver meals all around their community, deliver technology. I mean, there were districts that have extensive costs, transportation costs and use their buses off all spring to support their families and communities in many ways. (indistinct) higher aid rate. So their budgets are really built up. That where they might be getting upwards of 90% of transportation where it's 6%. Don't have a huge transportation fleet. Again,

131these all like districts have a lot higher needs. Can I ask, do we have any expenses right now for transportation or was it only in the spring that we had expenses for transportation that were not related to carrying the student? And does this resolution, Ron, only cover expenses in the spring or are they asking the state to cover all expenses during the COVID period? I believe it's transport during the COVID period. Not just us. And Stuart, do we have any plans as now, or was it just in the spring that we had expense for transportation that were not related to students? (distorted sound) transportation program. I mean, it's not certainly not 100% but we are bringing students in every day and actually we're probably running our expenses a little bit higher or normal runs because

132of the AFPFL model where we have the shelter services going back and forth. Amber, so just to clarify, so the resolution calls for the declared COVID-19 state of emergency. And if I understand it within all transportation costs that a district might incur, an amount is related, during the time when the buses are not being used for student transportation, maybe it's a day-to-day pro-rata or something, but that's the portion that would not get reimbursed, when students are not using those buses for whatever extended period of time, we can't get reimbursed for that portion of the cost. That's my understanding, Stuart. They do some sort of analysis of what costs might be associated for that the two months or the three months for the... Yeah, (distorted sound) on that. But typically it's not only your driver costs,

133it's all your vehicle fuel on your garage expenses, tools, equipment, all that (indistinct). Okay. So, any other board questions or comments. Again, this seems to me to meet all the requirements that the first one did in terms of why we'd support this. I support it too. I do also. Yeah, I agree. Thanks Ron. So we'll work to get the links for our community into our highlights perhaps and maybe Thomas maybe can go in with a district update as well. Would that make sense, a blurb about this in an update or is the highlights enough? Either or Okay, or both. (indistinct) basically. And then Ron, do you think we're final with the wording of both of these resolutions? If so, they can just be formally done through Honore. I'm happy to take just one more look

134just-- Okay. It's up to you, but I don't think that there's much tweaking that needs to happen. Okay, then we'll send them al through quick. All right. Thank you so much, Ron. Alison 12.02, the draft first look at the board self-assessment tool. So board policies 0310 calls for the board to develop and make public a tool to use for board self-evaluation. At our November 16th meeting, we approved our goals for the year. So I created a evaluation tool for board members to use to evaluate how well we achieve those goals. The first 20 questions are focused on overall board functioning. And the second 20 questions are focused specifically on the 2020/2021 goals. The 40 questions use a five point (indistinct) scale. 'Cause that's the same type of tools we used last year. And that's followed

135by an opportunity for response on board functioning. So this is really the first opportunity for board members to take a look at this to provide feedback. And the tool will also be available for members of the public to provide comments. This is really great Alison. Thank you for putting it together, it's really comprehensive. I appreciate that. And 10 would really be to use this assessment tool at our mid-year retreat in January as we normally do. And then again at the end of the year, which we were not able to do last year because of the complications due to the closures of schools and all of the dramas and the budgeting and such that we were dealing with. We don't need to necessarily approve this. This is not something we vote on and it doesn't go

136to an action item, it's just something like with goals when we're ready to say this is good, it's good and we use it. So unless there's a lot of tweaks to it, we can just accept it as it is now. And it doesn't need to come back as an agenda. Is that a thumbs up, Carl, as it is? Okay. It looks great. Karen. I'm good. Yeah, I think it's fine. Well done. So it's a general consensus then that this is good as is, and we don't need to bring it. Okay, good. Thank you, Alison, for that work. And I guess we'll move on to 12.03 to the second read of the policies and the trunch of the zeros to 1000. Thomas, are you starting that or is Allison starting that? No, this one's also mine,

137I think. So this is the second read on the policies as part of traunch 0000. The first read was in November 16th. These policies include the mission statement and educational vision, the non-discrimination and equal opportunity, student harassment and bullying prevention and intervention and board accountability, board self-evaluation and board evaluation of the superintendent. I know that Ron has sent us some comments. I would encourage other board members to give it another read. And also from members of the public to send their comments with regards to these policy changes. But barring that these should move to an action item at the next opportunity. You're clever. I sent in a few pretty minor comments, although I had some other comments for tonight, but on these minor ones, the response back is that the policies are discussed and can't

138be changed prior to the consent agenda. And I'm a little unclear. I thought we were bringing these up so we could discuss them. I'm sorry, the response, Ron, was in response to the code of conduct. Oh, got it. Okay, let, so let me just ask. Thanks for that clarification, Aaron. So can we just clarify on page four of the... I'm looking at the red line one, I was just, I know at the beginning of the year we usually do a bunch of appointments, but in this policy they actually appoints two people for two positions. I just wanted to confirm that was accurate. 'Cause you usually do all these appointments annually. I was just wasn't sure why we actually put them into a policy. And this is regarding the district's non-discrimination policies pertaining to students and

139pertaining to the staff. By the way, I'm fine with the way it is. I just didn't know why we, in this case, put them into the actual policy versus saying they would be appointed annually. Just tell me, what policy number are you looking at? It's under annual notification. It's policy 0100. Okay. 0100, oh, this was our new one and our long one. Yeah. So I think in some of these cases, the work is assigned to a title, not to an individual person. So the work is assigned to the director of instructional technology, for example, but the person is not named so that if there's a change in position, there's not an issue, but that certain responsibilities would fall under the title. And then I think the naming of the names we do at our annual

140meeting, like we do, we named like the DACA coordinator. Got it. And second minor, just very minor thing was on policy, I think it's 0115, student harassment and bullying prevention and intervention. There's two times where we talk about perceived or actual identifications and have a list out. One of them is just missing the word creed. So one has creed and one is missing. So I think we just need to add that into the second one. Okay. And then I had another question more of substance on the section, let me just get to it, on accountability, section 0300. If I understand this correctly, this is a new policy that is based on a draft NISBO wording. And the NISBO intro reads, the board of education acknowledges that it is directly accountable to the community it has

141been elected to serve and is committed to engaging in a continuous assessment of all district conditions affecting education. When I read that, it sounded like a good intro and I think it's important that we make it clear in our policies that we are accountable to the community. So I was just would hope to understand a little bit more on why, and that's what NISBO recommends, why we would take out that intro. So I would suggest that since these meetings were recorded, I honestly, I don't know if Pam remembers the conversation. I don't. These were two years ago, but we can certainly go back to the tape and try to get some more information for you about the nature of the discussion around that. Yeah, I think that's what we have to rely on going forward

142when we do our policy work, because the way we've learned from the work that we've taken on, it takes months and months and months, hours, and hours of these committee meetings to look through word by word, what makes sense with extensive discussions. And we realized early on that we could not bring that content to the board table. But because the board had allocated this work to a committee that, you know, it was important for the board to respect that that diligence had occurred and that thought, and the discussion had occurred and that if there was a particular interest in referencing why the only way that we could go back to it was the tape. So honoring (distorted sound)has put that structure together that shows what days we worked on this particular policy. And the only

143thing we can recommend at the table is to go back and find which meeting that we discussed that change at. I'm happy to do that. I will say, and I'll, I'll go do that. But knowing that this is the second read, having just looking at it, I'm just gonna share my view that I do think it's important that under the accountability section, we include the wording that the board of education is directly accountable to the community that it's been elected to serve. I think that's an important statement. My observation would be that, we felt that this wording was more appropriate to the accountability system is necessary to improve the effectiveness of the district and to maintain the trust. And then it describes the components of that system. Pam, just... We often felt that the NISBO

144wording was poor. We often felt that for Scarsdale and for the realities and the particularities of our work and what we felt was more effective governance, we made things, what we felt was better wording. Tighter wording, more accurate wording. So can I read that? Just because I don't think everybody's may not be looking at it. So Ron cited to a deletion, which, or an opt-out, whatever you wanna call it, the next sentence reads, the board recognizes that a comprehensive accountability system is necessary to improve the effectiveness of the districts and maintain community trust and support by keeping the primary focus on student achievement and what can and should be done to improve that achievement. So I wasn't (distorted sound) but I could see that there are at least similar sentiments, let's put it that way.

145I mean, I liked that second paragraph a lot. I think it's great and I not only think it's great, I think that the adjustments that the subcommittee made are great. I just, my personal view is I think it's important to have a clear statement about who the board of education is accountable to. I'll just share my other two quick comments on these. I will go back as well and see, try to understand the rationale. There is a full paragraph says, the board is committed to keeping the public aware of such progress and performance as appropriate. I believe the initial NISBO wording was on a regular basis. I personally think on a regular basis is the way to go. I think, again, this gets back to where our accountability is and we should do it on

146a basis. And then just lastly, there is somewhere there's wording I think about that it will be made... That's it for that section. Okay. Other comments on these policies at the second read, they would come to the action item in the next meeting, is that correct? There's only two reads and then approval. Ron, on that last comment you made, which point was it? It was the same 0300? Yeah, so it was the same 0300. And it is, well, if you're looking at the clean version, it would be the second paragraph before the list of items. Got it. Okay, yeah, I'm looking at the clean version. Thank you. Pam, I procedurally, if we agree that first sentence is worth reinstating, how would we, I mean, I don't wanna be at the next meeting and it's on,

147and suddenly we're having a discussion because we wanna have that back in. It is a reasonable statement, whatever, I think, but whatever it is, how do we deal with that issue? Because it's at least a discussion point right now. So my understanding is that the board allocated and assigned that work to the committees and that the committees were to come forward with the policies adjusted for the board's approval with very minor tweaking and such, but no substantive changes to the proposals. So within the process that we've gone through and planned for, we haven't had subsequent changes. Now you may not consider this a substance change, but the changes we've had would be minor wording here and there. Otherwise it's the board relying upon the committee work that's otherwise, there's no point in having the committees,

148you do the work at the table. But if you wanted to change like this it would happen during the first and second readings, because once it goes on the agenda for the final read, you wouldn't change it. That's my understanding of this-- (distorted sound) I mean, they're happening or we have board policies for third read, and I think it is worthwhile to go back to the tapes and to understand the nature of the conversation that led to that change before we make a decision. So I would recommend that we bring this for a third read in light of the need for more data. And then we wouldn't put it on as an action item that day. We would then wait for another meeting to approve this. We would bring it on as an information item

149again at the next meeting and be able to share that response to Ron's question as to how the committee came to make that change. Sound good? That makes sense to me. I just I wanted to add one other, this one is more minor in policy 0310, board self evaluation and 0320 evaluation of superintendent. Both of them have a clause that say the board shall use an evaluation instrument that focuses on the superintendent's annual goals, duties, and competencies. The evaluation template will be made available for review by any individual. I can just think it would be helpful if we add will be posted on the website and made available for review by any individual. I think it's a more transparent way to go that... And I think we do that anyway. I mean, it's part of

150our agendas. So I would just put that in there. That sounds fine to me. I mean, that's how we make it available, so. Right. Okay, so we'll put this on again, one more time for a third weed. I would also encourage everybody to go back and view the video yourself, but I think Allison will do the same and we'll be able to present a little bit more to the community, a summary as well on what the change was about, but it's certainly easy for each of us to go and find that video and view it ourselves. I would consider that part of our work as we prep for policy reads, because otherwise we're not gonna know why we did anything two years ago. All right, sound good. All right, 12.04. Now, Thomas. Actually, I'm just

151going to turn this over to Edgar. Right, I'm very happy to present item X candies stamped from the beginning. The social studies department is interested in using it in their 80 U.S. history course, race and ethnicity. It's the winner of the National Book Award 2016. I know the board had a chance to preview it. What I found very interesting about-- Alison, just unmute yourself, Alison. Sorry Edgar. Oh. What I found interesting was actually the structure of it. Stands from the beginning, uses the lives of five major American intellectuals to offer a window into the contentious debates between assimilationist and segregationist, all right. And between racists and anti-racist, from Puritan administer Cotton Mathers to Thomas Jefferson. From fiery abolitionists, William Lloyd Garrison to brilliant scholar, W E Dubois to legendary and anti prison activist Angela Davis.

152Candy shows how and why some of our leading pro slavery and pro civil rights thinkers have challenged or helped cement racist ideas in America. Provocative, interesting. And I recommend it for use in our high school race and ethnicity course. I have to say, Edgar, from a lot of the books that we've seen cross our table this year that there seems to be a really intent focus on adjusting the libraries and the books read in the classes to focus on the dignity, inclusion and belonging work and anti-racism and awareness of cultures and perceptions. I've never seen anything like it in the course of a year, this kind of focus and change. Yeah, I've had many discussions with the social studies chairs and the English chairs. And recently was talking to Ken Bonobo about it and talking

153about how this has really evolved very organically through conversations and through a real interest in getting the best possible text that we can into our classrooms so that we have multiple perspectives. So I'm very pleased with this being used as a text. Thank you very much Edgar, Just to Pam's point, I do think that there's been a focus on DEI, I think it's just been very quiet and we've certainly had a lot of crusaders in terms of our teachers who've been very focused on this work. I do think there's an intentionality that's very explicit and very outward focusing at this point. So I think that's maybe a little bit of the difference. Moving on to our last item under information, which is 12.05, it's memorandum of agreement with our age unit. I'm gonna ask Drew

154to briefly review that in advance of adopting as part of an action item. Drew. Thank you, Thomas, I appreciate it. So associated with our opening of expanding actually K-2 in person instruction. We have been in conversation with the Association of Scarsdale Teacher Aides and Assistants. And what we're needing or asking these individuals at the elementary level to do has expanded and actually it's gone into territory we haven't gone before with our teacher aides. As a result, I think it makes sense for me just to step back a little bit and give a little broader history or a little broader picture of our teacher aid workforce. So we have 250 teacher aides. It's ranged since I've been here in five years, between about 215 and now 250 across the district K-12. Of those 250, fully 150

155of them are in the elementary level. That is where that need has been identified the most. And those aides play a variety of roles from being a one-to-one aid for students with disabilities, perhaps as per IEP, to a more general classroom aide to support another pair of hands with the teacher and really to alleviate some of the responsibilities that would divert from focusing entirely on instruction and supporting students. All of those 250 aides have been part-time. They're part-time employees, ranging from nine or 10 hours a week in some cases up to really until last Monday, a maximum of 28 or 29 hours a week. At the outset of this year, given our a.m./p.m. model at the elementary level, we had assigned all of our aides that would typically work five or five and a half

156hours a day. And in past years, that's what they would have worked. We assigned them to a day that started at 8:30 and ended at 3:30, but had an 1.5 hour 90 minute unpaid break in the middle of the day. And of course, that was associated with this model where we were not serving lunch or having recess in the middle of the day. What we were doing was having to arrival and dismissal windows, obviously in the morning and then in the afternoon. To accommodate the K-2 expansion, a couple of different things have had to happen. We still have a day that runs from 8:30 to 3:30, but now we are doing what we would think of as our typical lunch and recess. Not quite typical, the kids are in classrooms instead of cafeterias, but we

157are doing that and we need the supervision. So for many of our aides, we're now shifting same window of time for them, but now a seven hour day of pay day instead of a five or five and a half hour day, depending on the particular teacher aid assignment. Once we reach the 30 hour a week window, we kind of fall into the Affordable Care Act requirement of an offer of health coverage. And we had discussions with our attorneys to try to figure out what we were required to do, what we could do and weigh those options. And we came forward to you with the recommendation that we do go forward with the offer of coverage for those aides who fall into the category of working 30 hours a week or more. So that part of

158it was just a decision, but then we negotiated with them about what their contribution to that health coverage would be, and the duration of that health coverage. Because we don't expect this model of 30 hours or more a week to continue forever. We see it as a need during this pandemic in order to run our elementary model the way we have it set up right now. So what's before you tonight is the result of a negotiation that happened pretty quickly. And it establishes a couple of key things. First we know we are asking a number of our aides. That number is about 35 of them to actually play a bit of a new role. And that is where we have a grade level split across two classrooms. That could be K and one, that could

159be grade one and two, depending on the building. We are asking a designated aides to be, you know, the adult responsible in the room. Whereas normally they'd be one of two or more adults in the room. They are responsible and we've sort of agreed to a higher rate of pay for them for serving in that role of really basically a substitute teacher with that level of responsibility day in and day out. Second, was the health coverage that I mentioned already. Laying out that as long as they're working 30 hours a week or more they're eligible for the health coverage. And the offer of coverage, we agreed to was for eight months. Effective January 1st, 2021 and running through August 31st. That recognizes the difficulty of going on and off health plan. Some of these individuals

160have health, most of them have health plans through the marketplace or through some other arrangement. And we did negotiate to extend that for eight months. We established two premium levels. So for the individual, the agreement establishes a 4% contribution level. That puts them higher than our lowest contribution group, which is our bus drivers at 1.5% but below our custodians and secretaries, which are in the 505% range. For a family coverage, if a now eligible member of ASTAA is seeking family coverage, we established a rate that's based on the difference between individual and family coverage at 15%. So they basically pay the 4% rate for individual and 15% of the difference between the individual and the family premium. And then again, because the gaining health coverage and switching doctors is a tricky undertaking, we did agree

161to extend the coverage in the Cobra window, the first four months of the Cobra window at a reduced rate. So at 50% of the normal full premium versus 100%. We believe this is a fair agreement based on the work that the aides are doing, stepping up to do. In their view, they feel it's increased risk supervising lunch, for example, when kids are unmasked. They care a great deal about our students and many of them have been with us for a long time and regularly go above and beyond. So the agreement here reflects a larger picture, which is a change to our model, but this is, we believe, a temporary change to accommodate the needs we have during COVID. And we would return eventually to something more familiar. So let me pause there and see if

162there are any questions. Drew, I just wanted to add, for those that don't have little kids in the district, we're in the first week of K to two, and the feedback at least that I've received is just been fantastic that parents and students are just really enjoying their youngest kids being back in school. So I just wanted to say thanks everybody here for making it happen. And thank you to the aides that are in those rooms every day, doing something a little bit new with some of our youngest, most vulnerable students, and just hope that they hear that the feedback has been incredibly positive for what they're doing. Thank you. I appreciate you sharing that. It's great to hear you say that. I don't have final numbers. We've set Wednesday as the, this Wednesday, as

163the date for committing to taking the health insurance. I've done a couple of different Zoom sessions to answer questions, but as of right now, we have less than a dozen aides who've signed up so far. Any other questions? As Thomas mentioned, this is an action item as well tonight due to the time sensitivity of it, since the model began last last week. I'll just mention that to the community that the board did discuss this in executive session as what's required. So we went through a lot of detail in questioning during our last executive (distorted sound). Thank you for mentioning that, Pam. All right, we're good. Okay. On to action items. Thank you, Drew. Thank you so much, Drew. Whoops, I just lost it, but the next action item is probably this since we had an

164additions and Ron, was it? So thank you, Pam. This is the action item related to what Drew just discussed. There is a resolution in addition to the MOA. So I'm just gonna read the resolution first and then I'll make the motion. Resolved that the board here by ratifies the attached memorandum of agreement between the district and the Association of Scarsdale Teacher Aides and Assistants for temporary pay and benefit changes associated with the expansion of in-person learning at the elementary level. I move that the board approve the memorandum of agreement and adopt the resolution as presented. Thank you, Ron. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Carl. Any discussion? All those in favor, Alison. Yes. Amber. Yes. Bob. Yes. Carl. Yes. Karen. Yes. Ron. Yes. And I'm a yes. Did I get everyone? All right, so

165the motion passes. Thank you, Ron. And thanks again, Drew. The second action item added tonight. Amber. Yes, I have item 13.02 determination of a foil appeal. I move that the board adopt the resolution as written and I'll repeat the resolution: resolved that the board hereby ratifies the attached memorandum of agreement between the district... Oh, I'm sorry, I'm still reading Ron's. Sorry. Okay, sorry. Resolved that the board of education of the Scarsdale Union Free School District approves the determination of the freedom of information law appeal filed by Roger Newstat on or about November 25th, 2020 in response to his original foil requests submitted on or about November 3rd, 2020. And authorizes the board president to sign the letter of determination. Thank you, Amber. Can I have a second? Second. Thank you, Carl. Is there any discussion?

166All right, roll call vote. Alison. Yes. Bob. Yes. Carl. Yes. Amber. Yes. Sorry. Karen. Yes. Ron. My Internet's getting bloopy, but you guys probably heard Ron say yes and I'm a yes. So that's a yes for everyone. The motion passes. Thank you, Amber. Gifts. We've moved on to gifts. Carl, you're up. Sorry, had to unmute. I move that we accept a gift from the Scarsdale Education Foundation in the amount of $59,828 to cover the cost of technology to assist teachers with hybrid learning with great appreciation. This is really an excellent gift at a time of need and addressing a specific need. So I move that we accept this gift. Can I have a second? Second. Alison is a second. Any discussion? Thomas, do you have some call you wanna add? Yeah, I mean, I just,

167I have to express just great gratitude to the foundation. They reached out to us in a spirit of cooperation and the spirit of wanting to support district efforts during this challenging time. They particularly were interested in supporting the technology needs. They had heard as many others have that there were struggles both in the classroom and at home. And they were looking for enterprise solutions that could be used either in the classroom setting or in the home setting and they've allowed us to really expand our ability to sort of hear both in the classroom and to be able to facilitate learning through headphone and in ear sets and voice amplifier systems. They've been delightful to work with. They were incredibly quick to come to a decision. They were very much partners in this work. They very

168much wanted to hear what our needs were. They were extremely responsive. I just can't say enough great things about... We know we have a long history with the foundation and supporting lots of projects, but in this time it was something that we very much needed and it was great that they were there again so quickly and so willing to reach out and support our efforts. So I just personally, on behalf of the school district, on behalf of our teachers, on behalf of our students, would like to say, thank you to the foundation for their incredible support at this time. And I'll just add on to Thomas's words that once again, the foundation has come through to help us. We really appreciate the work that they, the partnership they really had with us to support the

169technology program, especially as Thomas indicated, one of our greatest needs, which is enhancing the audio/video conferencing. And this grant really addresses that need in really three different ways. And the idea is that this will provide us with equipment that will be in some cases implementation and in some cases, a pilot for us, and we really appreciate their partnership and their willingness move so quickly and help us during this time of need. I just wanted to say last week when I toured (indistinct) and Fox Meadow, I'm not sure if it was the microphones and stuff that the foundation donated, but it was wonderful, the technology that was there. So I really appreciate their partnership in this effort, because in those big spaces, it was critical to be able to hear the teacher. And it was clear.

170I mean, I stepped into a room and I heard, and it was fantastic. So I'm really grateful for their donation. Anyone else? We all feel the same way. Thank you for those expressions of gratitude that we all agree with them and would say the same, but for efficiency, we will just say, thank you so very much to the foundation. So all in favor. Alison. Yes, and thank you. Amber. Yes. Ron. Yes. Carl. Yes. Carol, I mean, Karen. Who's Carol? I don't know, it's like, I don't even know where that came from. Carol and Karen. I'll change my name to that 'cause I don't want (distorted sound) Yeah. I'm so sorry. Imagine if this one was going to Monday. And am a yes. At least it wasn't Cambra. We were calling your Cambra for the longest

171time. All right, so the motion passes. Thank you to the foundation. Next, public comment. We've reached the second opportunity for members of our audience, our attendees to raise their hands and comment. Three minutes still applies, but we don't have the 90 minute limit on this session. And Eileen, I am promoting you. Go ahead and state your name and address, three minutes. District matters. You're good to go. Hi, I'm Eileen Donovan. I'm at 62 Tansctile Road. I have a freshman at the high school and two kids who've graduated. I'm thrilled to know that you have a K through two back in school. Congratulations, and that is great news. Clearly, we're looking forward to having other kids back in school too. I wasn't able to attend the live session of the November meeting so I watched it

172online. And I have to tell you, I was very dismayed to see that it took eight months after we closed and until November to discuss additional space. And it was a discussion about trailers being put in, in different locations at a $7 million cost. And it seems to be very late in the game to bring that up and to raise it and realize that it's not worthwhile. So a couple of questions I have for you. I know at one point, and it might've been a September meeting, and I've been asking about this since the summer. At one point, there was a discussion where someone went through some property, but wouldn't say what property was walked through with an architect and it just wouldn't work. I've asked multiple times about the use of St. Pius, which

173is located inside Scarsdale. It's near a number of schools. It's got nine classrooms, it's got a new auditorium, it's got cafeteria space, it's got playground space. It's got adequate parking and it's been used for school for multiple years and as recently as last year. No one has ever made a phone call to St. Pius to ask them about the use of that property. I checked with the pastor in August. I check with the pastor again in October and I checked with him recently in November. No one has made a phone call to ask St. Pius, is that property available and what the cost of that property would be and what the use of that property is. So I'm asking, I know in a November meeting, there were specific questions as to have that being discussed

174and explored over the summer and that's not been done. And I'd actually like someone to clarify that. I'm also concerned about why we were looking into spending $7 million on additional space and refusing to get rid of built-ins. If the built-ins aren't being used for bookshelves, because people can't share common space, why won't we knock the buildings down and use the additional space for students? It doesn't seem prudent to keep them at this stage when we could actually use them. And they'd be pretty cheap to take in and pretty cheap to put back up again in terms of cost efficiency. So those would be my direct questions. Again, for all our volunteers on the board, I admire you and I'm grateful. And please keep asking questions and please keep trying to get our kids back

175in school in a safe and positive way. Thanks again for your time. Thank you, Eileen. Any other attendees like to comment at this time? I'll give a couple more seconds in case anyone wants to raise a hand. Oh, there we go, Jesse. And promoting you to panelist. Hi, my name is Jesse Timberger. I live at Eight Eastwood's Lane. I have a middle schooler and a freshman at the high school. I just wanted to ask, I'm forever asking about what the potential plans are for high school and at the last letter that I wrote, and then I brought it up at the last meeting they had said it was conveyed to me that the stumbling block for the high schoolers being maybe full day was lunchtime being pretty difficult to deal with. And I'm wondering after

176your visit to the school and seeing that there were a lot of empty spaces, if that has been relayed to the restart committee to potentially use those spaces, if lunch is the stumbling block. And I know that there were questions after I spoke last time about what would be the trade off. And I know that the part of the trade-off is people think they're gonna lose time, but I'm wondering as best as I can tell. It's 110 minutes per class of instruction at this point, the middle school who does two full days. And then zooms is also getting that 110 minutes. So I'm wondering if that's even feasible if we're looking at it. And I'm not even saying for tomorrow, obviously, but maybe after the February break and the planning can start now and wondering

177if the board is looking at those kinds of things for the high schoolers. Thank you all on the, I'm not sure, I guess it's the district level, for conveying all the information so quickly about the positives and the quarantines. And I really appreciate all that and thank you all. Thanks, Jesse. I was just looking at my notes from the tour today. Okay, is there another hand? All right, seeing none, I will close the second opportunity for public comment and move on to follow up to public comment. Stuart, do you wanna speak to Eileen's couple of points there? The St. Pius and the portable discussion. Yeah, I mean, portables we always knew that they're very expensive. It's not like we didn't ever think of them. So that was a weakness represented that information at the last

178board meeting, but that's something that we've known for quite some time. We recall when we talked about those at the (distorted sound) discussions back a couple of years ago. So we had a lot of those numbers. So from the very get go we knew there were very large hurdles with that. We did, as we mentioned, November meeting, we did call St. Pius. We didn't talk to the pastor, but we did speak to, it was one of the trustees who arranged for architect visits. So we did get over there for that analysis of that space. So can people hear Stuart okay? (distorted sound) Yeah, let me just recap for Stuart because it's (distorted sound) the audio. We did reach out to St. Pius. We did not speak to the pastors Eileen indicated. We did speak with

179a key trustee, and we had our architects visit that site. We've also looked at Lord and Taylor. We've looked at a number of other churches. There've been a number of sites throughout the district that we've looked at. So I hope that people don't walk away with the impression that we have not thought about or look at space, nor did we wait until November meeting to talk about portables. That is work that we had had our architects look at, as Stuart was saying, we are very familiar with portable costs because we looked at them as part of the green acres research. We did have up-to-date costs on those. We understood what the schematics would entail in terms of the requirements, the bathroom requirements, the sidewalks, the foundations, the electricity, the siting costs. We were aware of

180all of those kinds of issues. And that was something that was front and center in our thinking and one of the reasons that we knew it would be very difficult in terms of a short term solution. So just want to make sure that people have accurate information with regards to the scope of work that was done relative to the facilities. Pam, I'm sorry, what was the second part of that that you wanted us to address specifically? Yeah, the two parts were the St. Pius question, which I knew we had already been onsite and architects have been there and also portables that we've looked at them years ago, we looked at them again this summer. It wasn't something that was just as considered in November. Those were on the table from the beginning and things that

181we were looking at throughout the process. (distorted sound) mention that looking at built ins and everything. Oh yes, the built-ins. And that's something we wanted to start doing for tiling... Windows. (distorted sound) obviously they're used as part of a regular instructional program (distorted sound) for what we see as hopefully a short term solution. Pam, I wanted to just add on that portable or the temporary classrooms or whatever. I think that there's a clarification that it... I mean, it was indicated by administration going back however many months that they did not find it to be feasible. We continued to receive questions from the community about that. So in order to respond to the questions with detail that the administration already had, and that we had been, at least generally we, the community, we, the board, been

182provided, the administration added that detail to that presentation at the last meeting so that the community would get the rationale for what had previously been disclosed. Not that it hadn't been thought about, considered or explained to us that it wasn't feasible. Thank you, Carl. And then Jesse. Yeah, we did have the tour today and I don't want to... I could very easily make a mistake from what I heard from the administration, but of course, they've looked at all the models, right? They've looked at a.m./p.m. They've looked at an A/B full day, meaning that the same cohort stays in all the way through the end of the day and has lunch. And then they've looked at the go home before lunch, which is what we have. And the restart committee looked at those and others, months,

183and months, and months ago with students on the committee, of course. And there are a lot of trade offs, right? A lot of moving pieces, a lot of parts. And when you amplify one, one might drop, but when you decide, well, we wanna focus on consistency than something else drops. Hours of instruction than something else drops. There was all these little triggers and they were trying to find which one is considered right now by this restart committee, the most important priority. And while the a.m./p.m. model might give consistency in that it gets students in four days a week, if Wednesdays are still had as planning. You know, there's all that disinfection in the middle of the day, which they couldn't do. It was very expensive and then buildings too huge. So that wasn't the best

184option. And then keeping the student in through a lunch, wasn't considered the greatest option because the students on the committee were very interested in the whole class connection. They wanted an opportunity for the entire class to be together. And in fact, that was reinforced in a lot of the comments we heard from students today that that full class community that happens in the afternoon is something that they look forward to. And so they felt that, both students and the teachers felt that there's a benefit to having the whole class come together in the afternoons for that extended period of time. So again, you know, Ken may be able to speak to this further in an update or in an update to the restart steering committee that then could go into our notes or something, but

185it wasn't a matter of necessarily space for lunch. It was a whole balance of components in particular, getting instruction hours, synchronous instruction hours, and whole class time and participation and experiences as well. So it was just super complex the way you explained it to us again. I hope I didn't misspeak, but there is the possibility that I did. Any other thoughts, comments? Bob, that sounded pretty accurate, right? Yeah, I know she's reacting, Pam, to your comment about some empty space, and you clarified it. The space might be momentarily empty at a particular period, but that doesn't mean it's always empty, right? I mean, that's what they explained to us. Like we walked past the room that was empty, but in a half an hour, it might've been in use. Right, the teacher was-- It's a

186very complex matrix of timing that goes on within the school. So I don't think we wanna give the impression that the school is empty. Right, right. I wanna add too, the high school, once we bring lunch into play, we are talking about this and effecting because of the changing cohorts. So similar to the middle school, we do just in fact, that's one common space with the highest school complexities on the schedule and all the students moving every which way, you know, the complexity of disinfecting after eating, it's definitely ramped up quite a few levels. Thank you, Stan. All right, any other follow up to public comment? Wrap up items? I don't have anything written down that the board has asked cabinet to do or... I have one item I wanted to follow up on if

187I could. So I just wanna let the board and the community know that we'll not be updating the long-term budget model this year, therefore we won't be presenting it at the next board meeting. The reason for tabling study to the future years, based on there's a few titled nature of the exercise every year, given the hurdles. And quite frankly, especially this year, it's the opportunity cost of job Martin's time, which feels better focused on the challenging nature of projecting this current year's projections, which we'll be presenting in a couple of weeks and recurring how the '21/'22 budget. Thanks Stuart. So I had a lot of audio problem on that. So I just wanna reiterate that what you're saying is the long-term budget projections, which you've been doing every, well, that Jeff has been working on

188through the fall and presenting to the board and community every December for the past few years, I don't know exactly how long. You're not going to do this year. You're putting it on hold because of the instability, the unknowns and the amount of work that you're doing right now around other particular adjustments in budgeting, et cetera. Yeah, exactly. All right. Could I just add to that? I don't want anybody to come out of this thinking we don't look at long-term budgeting. I mean, I think that we, in some respects, our budget is very constant year to year. In fact, we're a people organization. Our budget is typically our people, which is driven by our models of education. So I just don't want anybody to think that we don't have any kind of disability. We have

189all sorts of long-term capital planning, we have the building condition survey, which looks at five years, we have roof master plans that go out years. We have field plans. There is a lot of long-term planning. This was just a one specific piece of it. And Stuart, please add anything else. hears that important part. Yeah, that's very accurate. Every year with the financial model, we throw in some different variables, but unfortunately, you know, none of those variables really (distorted sound) such as the TRS contribution rate. We're given a rate and there's a plan because you have to sort of model around that. And we try to work with facilities items in and around those six factors that might be just raising naturally for inflation. Great. All right, meeting dates for the coming month. Alison. So our

190next meeting is Monday, December 21st. If necessary, we'll start with executive session at 6:30. At 7:30, we'll have a strategic plan update and education report. And as of now, that meeting is scheduled to take place in the high school auditorium. After that, our next meeting will be on January 11th. We'll start at 6:30 with staffing recommendations for the upcoming budget. We'll have our business meeting at 7:30, followed if necessary by executive session. Thanks Alison. Thomas, there's not really going to be a strategic plan update. It's something that in a sense you are putting on hold because of the focus on other things, or is there really gonna be next week? At the next board meeting? Yeah, the next board meeting. Then next board meeting is going to be on culturally responsive teaching and learning and

191curriculum. It's gonna be part of our DEI initiative. That's gonna be led by Ed Gargan of Voices of Teachers. We're gonna review the state rubric and then some of our in-house work related to diversity, equity and inclusion. Okay. All right, thanks, Alison. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Is there a second? Any discussion? All right, all in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right, meeting adjourned. Thank you very much, everybody. Appreciate the hard work as always.