001[Music] i pledge allegiance the flag of the united states of america and through the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and done the changes i do have agenda changes um we are going to add to the board and staff reports this evening medical director dr benjamin rudd along with the athletic director george emerich okay and also added to the items report action c approval to accept good for the front uh front end loader d is approval to file a cross claim and an ongoing legal matter an e approval of request for indemnification okay that's the end of the thank you any public comments i didn't receive any did anyone else receive anybody email okay communications no communication okay so we're going to start reporting staff
002reports presentation from gwen incorporated gwendolyn weber macleod and judy dixon and before they begin mrs labar is going to say something thank you so much for being with us tonight i'm glad to have you here as you know back in may we had a slave auction in our district uh over a year ago and when that happened immediately um we felt the need as a district to reach out and see how we could do better with diversity equity and inclusion and we started working with gwen and her team at that time and they've taken us through a lot of work for the leadership team which they'll be going forward and sharing that with you tonight as well as next steps and how as a district we can be the district that people look to and
003be proud of for celebrating diversity being inclusive and making sure that we're being equitable so i turn it over to youth one and thank you again for being here thank you very much join me in this part of the day i d mass so you know i was a real person i decided i wanted to introduce myself to you in a very specific way because i have a very unique relationship with this neck of the woods so my name is gwen weber macleod i graduated from carthage central high school in 1974. i'm a suny potsdam graduate class of 1978 and i'm the daughter of the late lieutenant colonel charles e weber and barbara weber my parents were stationed at fort drum in 1968 so when people ask me where i grew up you know as
004an army brand i could say i grew up everywhere because i was born in germany but i always say that black river new york is my home or that watertown new york is my home my parents made history here in jefferson county they were elected as the first african americans to the county legislature my father one first got a terminal cancer diagnosis about 10 days into his term he died six months into his service and then my mother was appointed to his position and she served as the first african-american woman on the jefferson county legislature after my father for about three years so i grew up here i've grown up here my sisters through fort weber girls were iconically known as the weber girls in our next in black river new york and in carthage
005central and when this opportunity presented itself to me i was very excited to have the opportunity to come home and do this work and it gives me a chance to visit my mom who's still very active in the community she currently serves on the hospital foundation board my mom works on the foundation board at jefferson community college so although she's a southerner she's very much so rooted here so when patty contacted me i was really thrilled to have the opportunity to support a local school district as it addresses what i would offer for your consideration is one of the most important education issues for you to consider so with me tonight is judy dixon judy is the director of business operations and client management in my company and i'm going to tell you a little
006bit about my business and then i'll show you specifically what i'm going to be doing with the district i want to let you know that our style is that we're always open to questions comments concerns and respectful criticism i don't stand here tonight believing for one second that i'm an expert on your district but i believe that you are and i believe that it's the collection of what i know what you know that your education leaders in your district know that will help this project add value to you as you graduate students who can go out into the world of work and college and be successful so tina are you going to be pushing the slides thank you ma'am so i wanted to introduce you to my nick my team you've met me my name
007is gwendolyn weber macleod you can call me gwen and i am the president and ceo of gwen inc um kathy anders has also been working with us on this project she is the senior consultant for organization development in my company i introduced you to judy dixon who is the director of business operations and client management and we have another consulting partner whose name is theresa richardson and she is the senior consultant for emerging leaders in our company so she works with college age millennial age leaders on projects specific to their own growth as leaders thank you it's technology not being your friend it's not been my friend lately so i wanted to just at a high level tell you a little bit about what we do so my company is a private sector leadership development
008corporation it's based in auburn new york our clients are primarily concentrated in new york state but we do work nationally and that is a list of the variety of services that we provide to our clients so we focus on diversity equity and inclusion strategy development and implementation and support we do that for private sector public sector and all kinds of educational and health country health care companies we also stress alive and executive and team coaching so we do one-on-one coaching with high-level leaders helping them think about and process what it means to be a leader and how their leadership is either helping or hindering the achievement of business outcomes and we do work with leadership teams as well we spend a lot of our time in the strategic planning space we do what we call
009executive leadership briefings so we decide and facilitate important conversations for people in all of those industries that i mentioned a lot of what we're talking about now is managing change leveraging trust as a strategic organizational resource we do a lot of team development work we do leadership consultation facilitation and executive and technical assistance so we are professional facilitators and are frequently engaged to design and facilitate collaborative initiatives between companies and organizations and community-based collaborations and we do the same work in education space as well and then we also develop leadership learning communities where we gather groups of leaders together for the specific purpose to learn about specific leadership related topics so i wanted to give you a sense that i feel that we are bringing all of these skills into your district and we'll be
010utilizing and leveraging them to help your team develop a diversity equity and inclusion plan for your district i wanted to talk to you a little bit about how we define diversity in our business because i think it's relevant to you as board members school board members and in your own thinking about it so when patty and i were talking about what this project is about we have a very specific point of view about why school districts college and colleges at all levels should be thinking about this we're of the opinion that when you understand the power of what diversity equity and conclusion can do for you as you're lifting up your mission vision values and trying to achieve your strategic goals it then gives you a better positioning to do something specifically for the students
011in your district so one of the things i will offer for your consideration petty kind of looked at me when i said this to you is even if every single student in your district looked exactly alike your district would still have diversity equity and inclusions to address it could be about socioeconomic status it could be about diversity of style it could be about the full of ray the young people of dimensions of diversity that young people are manifesting in because of the expansion of fort drum you also have the opportunity to take a look at diversity through a full lens so we will send you this model as a lot better level but if you look at that we think of diversity in a couple of ways there's those things on top of that iceberg
012that we see in people things like race gender age but there's a whole lot of stuff going on underneath that iceberg that's also contributing to every single dynamic that's going on in any of your school buildings at any time and where of the belief is when education leaders learn how to harness all of that difference do the inclusion work create cultures in your buildings that enable students to feel welcome supported and valued and then commit to equity which means creating equal access and opportunity leveling the playing field for all students you then position yourselves to create um future graduates who can truly enter a world of work that is waiting for them and the other thing i wanted i gave to patty as a point of inspiration is trend data is indicating that within the
013next five to ten years 75 of new entrants to the workforce are going to be women millennial and people of color and i'm saying to patty that how what a great opportunity is for you as a district to take that all into consideration and align your academic programs your curriculum is appropriate to prepare the young people that you're educating to enter that world of college and work and i personally talk about this as an academic contract that districts have with parents and students that one of our goals is to prepare them to be successful beyond their experience and i totally said to petty because you want them to be your best brand ambassadors you want those highly successful people to say i got my diploma at watertown high and this is what it meant for
014me i said that all the time about carthage central high school whenever i meet young people they never believe that i grew up here especially kids that live here they'll say well we live between this place between syracuse and canada like watertown new york how do you know this like i know go to cartoon central and look at those cheerleading pictures that was me so i wanted to set that context for you because i think that a lot of times when we as leaders are thinking about the idea of diversity we only think about it through a very narrow lens and to be frank with you your recent experience with your challenge could put you in the position as school board members to think about it through a very specific lens i'm inviting you to
015think about it through this lens and in your capacity start to think about what are the things that we need to be supporting and envisioning patty and doing so that we can make all of the young people in our district that are walking through your doors with all of that going on feel welcome valued and supported and what are the policies and practices we need to put in place to level the playing field that allows each of our students to be successful i sit on a number of boards of directors so that's kind of in our purview all right so i just wanted to lay that foundation i think the next slide is going to talk a little bit about the goals of this project i'm glad that was the slide so there's a couple
016of things that we're going to identify diversity equity and inclusion challenges in the district so you have a specific incident that is sort of a symptom of something that could be a challenge in the district but of course there when you have more than two students that could be walking in with multiple dimensions of diversity we need to take a look at that globally and not only in students but in staff and faculty and parents as well one of the outcomes will be that we're then going to work with your executive team your administrative team and some community members to create a diversity equity and inclusion advisory committee and you know as we work in districts and we work in higher education we're observing that having an advisory committee that's a combination of people who
017live work and play in your community and education leaders really creates an environment for the person to constantly be receiving input about how your initiatives are helping students what challenges you might be facing and what resources can these partners bring to the table to help you achieve your goals and it helps you stay straight to strategically focus on your self-defined goals in this area and i want to be really clear about that we're not coming here saying these should be your goals it's going to be through work research looking at your data looking at your student demographic that we'll be able to identify the specific types of things that will work for you does that make sense when i say that to you okay i'm in that space now if you have questions comments or
018concerns or respectful criticism i can take okay great um and the other thing we'll do is then to develop a diversity equity and inclusion strategic framework document to be implemented by the district and what a framework document is for us it's an opportunity for us to take a look at your big picture your current goals your future goals and what are your greatest desires for the students that you're educating here and formulate them into a plan that has goals and high-level strategies that points you as a district in a specific direction that's defined by you and then what happens is once that plan comes through you and you won't feel comfortable with it it then allows paddy and her team to operationalize those goals on an annual basis so you'll see sort of this is
019the big picture this is where we think we should go in relationship to the subject matter and then in your capacity i would offer for your consideration on an annual basis what you would be looking for and asking for would be for your team to say so what what are the diversity equity and inclusion goals we're going to be working on and i want to make this clear they won't be operating in isolation of your comprehensive district plan i see these goals as a support to give lift to the goals that are already existing they just focus you strategically on your student population does that make sense resonate with you okay great so here's the deliverables these are the things that we'll be involved in just general leadership consultation and what that looks like when
020i'm doing it is the conversations that i'm having with patty one on one in her capacity as superintendent the conversations that i've had with individual building principals and assistant principals talking to tina about the work that she's doing and stacy about the work that she's doing and creating a space that's safe respectful and confidential for them to say this is a lot and i'm like i've met carthage since material don't like you can do it but you got to make a plan and work a plan so that's what that looks like we've done some training and work sessions on changing costs with the administrative team and all of the building principles assistant principles and other staff level leaders and the reason that we started with that kind of conversation with them is because anything that
021they do anything a leader in your district does including all of you is triggering change and your outcome is directly connected to the level of trust that the students family and community you serve have in you and the work that you're going to do so that was like preparing them as a team of leaders to do the work so we talked about the specific things that happen when we introduce change how we need to navigate that as a team of leaders and we also talked about the role that trust plays and helping you trigger the outcomes that you want to so we spent a lot of time talking about how the district has increased trust between and among students parents and faculty through how it's behaved during the covent crisis and one of the things
022that i say to them all the time that's relevant for you is that because whenever you're doing any work that triggers change here's what people say to me we hear what leaders say but we only believe what we see them do and it's through how we behave that we engender the trust that we need in your case for students staff faculty the community to trust that you all are doing the work that you believe is in the best interest of the students that you serve um we'll also facilitate some leadership team meetings and then we're going to help organize your advisory board and we will design and facilitate the process that will yield your plan we'd like to let you know a little bit about what we've done today so we've done executive coaching with
023leadership teams superintendent assistant superintendents principals and assistant principals and a lot of that was for us to provide support to them as they're prepping to bring those diverse student populations back into their buildings in this unique learning environment that everyone's in um some of it also created an opportunity them to learn about us and trust us as people that could consult with them and facilitate with them and for me to let them know that as you're doing your work we're also here and available for you to be thinking about how this what this needs to look like in your individual buildings we've also conducted the trainings on thriving through change and leading a high trust team and we're now just starting to talk with patty about beginning preparation to start doing your specific work on
024thinking about how to organize your diversity equity and inclusion advisory board and developing that plan that's just me i'm a multiple ways you can find me i'm also leaving business cards that you can each have and i totally invite you to either through through patty or through me directly to contact me because you know you're hearing all this for the first time and as the work unfolds it'll become more visual for you so i am also very interested in what you're thinking about this body of work because ultimately this isn't solely the work of the superintendent and the building principles it is also a plan that we're inviting you to think about and embrace and just frankly have a point of view about as the representatives from the community to the community on behalf of
025the district so if there might be some point padding if the board is open to this that i could come and facilitate that conversation with you so what does this mean to you as the school board in terms of the role you play in the relationship you have to the work that goes on in this district i think that's a critically important conversation for you to have either with or without me because when you're in the grocery store they're going to ask you what do you think about this and it'll be important to be speaking in one voice and to be on the same page but getting to that place sometimes requires some respectful heated debate what that one voice will be and it also requires fully understanding what you're embracing when you decide to
026specifically add diversity to specifically decide frankly to demonstrate commitment to diversity equity and inclusion and all aspects of them that's my story i'm sticking to it so any questions comments concerns respectful criticism i'm a colonel's kid i can take it is there any plans yet so far about buy-in from teachers and how to work with teachers themselves is it going to come from principles is it going to come from you in conjunction with principles right that's actually one of the strategic conversations we'll be having with patti because you're absolutely on point with that right the teachers in the buildings have to embrace this work with the same way that the superintendent embraces it because here's what really happens right and you all know we roll out plans to educators but then educators are on the
027ground in the classroom with the kids with the parents needing to operationalize that and your plan frankly will be only as effective as the leaders who design it and the willingness of staff and faculty to implement it so we will definitely be doing things to engage staff and faculty to garner teacher buy and frankly their input we're not imposing anything on them anything that shows up in this plan will emerge from people who work in your district so they were inviting them to be involved in the planning process and we'll be vetting everything that we do through them so that's that's one way that we gain the buying program and i've actually been talking with all of the building principles about that as part of our coaching sessions they will take a cue for what
028to do about this topic from watching what you do so that's what we're planning to do thank you yeah anything else good great well we'll make sure that you have our business cards patty again thank you so much for this opportunity i'm so excited to be able to be home and doing this work i can just zip up the freeway instead of getting on a plane to go somewhere to do it and i get to see my mom so i'm really again very much so honored i'm very much so committed to your success and that i can make this promise to you that my company will do our very best to work with these very bright talented leaders you have here to create something that truly allows you to continually graduate diverse students that go
029out in the world and are successful that's my commitment thank you very much take care thank you okay up next mr taylor and miss blair principal and assistant principal at case middle school i'm so sorry we can actually be at case well i'm sorry too because i know a lot of you are really looking forward to dancing down in the cafeteria like you did last year but fear not that will be back next year so you're getting a little reprieve this year but next year we'll be back at it so mrs blair and i are super excited to be sharing with you some of the things that are going on at case so before we get started i'm going to give you a little update uh many of you i think have heard me talk
030about my mom this is grandma pat or mrs taylor on the back of a waverunner in the middle of st lawrence river so she celebrated her 92nd birthday in march and we've been out on the river kayaking and we've been swimming and so i wanted to put her up there because she is quite a woman she is caring and she's energetic and she's supportive and she was a phys ed teacher and athletic director and elementary principal but the biggest one of the most important things about her is she believes in everyone and their ability to do whatever they want and she believes anything is possible and you know she's been retired for well over 40 years and we run into people in clayton and they're like mrs taylor how are you you know you're my
031teacher in fourth grade like she's that kind of a person that makes an impact because she just believes in you and through these times that we're facing uh these are some challenging times to be sure and i really i want you to think about you know when you get to that point where you think this is impossible how are we going to get through this i want you to think about grandma pat or mrs taylor and thinks you know what she always said there's no such word as can you can do anything you want you can put your mind to it so i just want you to kind of think about that if you if you have one of those tough days think about her and you'll get through it and there are my two
032little munchkins that's landon and jackson landon is six and jackson has four and they're pretty cool adorable little characters full of life and they're awesome and they're going to school and that feels great to me and that just kind of reminds me when we brought kids into our school how just powerful that was they just couldn't wait to get back in the building and right now our teachers will tell you like you can just see it in the students eyes they want to be there they're so excited to come back in the building it's super important for them to be back in that classroom in front of teachers right now those that are able to be there and those that are not are connecting and working so hard from home but it just it means
033so much and we've been closed for so long and i love that i can send my children off to school even if it's only two days a week so we have our mission statement of course but thinking in these new times that we're facing you know our strategic plan is really something that really all of the five points are going to be very very important this next year especially the collaboration and you know working with students and families and the community member like we couldn't starting in march we couldn't have gotten through it if we didn't work together and we're not going to be able to continue to get through it if we don't continue to work together you know and i also think about the physical and the mental well-being of our students our
034staff in the community you know that's a huge piece that we will work hard to address and help everybody get through it so you know how mr taylor likes competitions and play little games on the right side slide on the right side if you think you know what that is raise your hand oh because i've got a five dollar dunkin donut gift card right here just waiting for somebody you know what so before a week ago this is kind of like the parachute before a week ago i was up for my morning jog and i ran kind of close to the flagpole and i thought is somebody buried there what is that that's actually a plaque that's got john b johnson it says in memory of john b johnson who was the newspaper owner editor
035um and it was i don't know 1916 to whatever but i just thought that was an important a cool important fun fact that i'd like to share with you and i guess i'm gonna have to keep this for next year i'll pick up on my trivia question then and that's at the flagpole right up by green street and washington just in case you don't believe me it's right up there by the corner so we have a handful of new staff at case middle school some who have been in the district for a while and some brand new staff there are five brand new uh nova shank is our new pivot counselor uh gene table retired last year and was replaced with nova shank so she has already started out great been an awesome support for
036our students right from the start we have a new math teacher megan setteth science marissa rich in speech we have morgan woodrick and brandon facts teacher dean powers and then district movement this year we got a new guidance counselor that came from the high school terry freeman has been a fantastic addition to our staff jumped right in hit the ground running with us absolutely new pe teachers both came from the high school vince williams and lori peters both with a wealth of pe knowledge amy forget our nurse came from sherman and then jen aikens our step instructional coach at the bottom was a science teacher at the high school prior to coming to case this year so awesome new additions to our staff and we are super excited to have this whole group of uh
037awesome teachers and educators fun fact about megan suthep which i think you probably know her grandpa was guidance counselor at the high school some of you are shaking heads going yeah i know mr so our enrollment at case business is booming we've got we've got bodies uh why they must be doing a good job because they're sending us bigger classes each year so we're up to 603 total students and if you can look for our virtual purple and cyclone it's a little under or over a third in each population it's it certainly is very interesting with having just 40 less on our monday thursday days um it feels i mean it feels different no matter what but you can definitely sense 40 less kids but in the building as a whole it's just it's crazy
038having only a third of our population i mean it's things seem to be moving at a much slower pace right now and i'm sure it will pick up and i'm sure those little darlings will get right into their you know energetic selves but for right now i think business is going well so as far as reopening the schools went we have been trying to reopen the school since march we have been creating reopening plans since about april may um just non-stop meeting hope in hopes that we would get new news that we might reopen um but really this reopening started in mid-july um the district has reopening task force with a plethora of stakeholders in attendance there that made some district decisions a lot of work went into that from mid to end of july
039and then from there mark and myself met with the high school 9 through 12 administrators we did a lot of work we really wanted to make sure the expectations were aligned 7 through 12 and then aligned with the k-6 administrators as well so we really had k-12 curriculum and instruction alignment throughout the entire district everybody had consistent and equitable expectations across the board um so we really we had a lot of meetings we put a lot of time into creating those expectations for teachers the expectations for students the expectations for all staff so we could be as equitable and as consistent as we could um so within our building specifically um one major point and actually at the 712 level together the departments have collaborated and the idea behind that is they're putting out the
040same lessons the same tasks the same amount of quizzes the same amount of exams across the board for each grade level so students taking the same course with all different teachers are getting the same lessons the same expectations making sure there's consistency and equity with regards to that and that's for remote and hybrid students they're all getting the same material that was very important to us we didn't want students who are at home to get any less than these students that are in person our instructional model overall the big picture wednesday is actually the start of our instructional week even though that's midweek wednesday is our hype or a remote day for all students so that was a good day where teachers are able to push out their entire week's worth of lessons all the
041expectations and then by the following tuesday all of the tasks for that week are due so students really have a seventh day where they have the weekend to work on some work if they need that support from parents who are working and we really think that that was really a consistent and equitable instructional opportunity for all students so wednesdays in particular we've come up with a neat schedule where we've had a lot of calls lately because tomorrow's really our first real wednesday that we're going to do virtually that students will all meet with their teams at 10 30 they're going to have an hour meeting so whether they're virtual or whether they're in school doesn't matter all of them are going to meet and they're going to work on the positivity project is going to
042be the main focus of that team meeting but then they're going to do breakout groups and talk about other things just a good chance for them all to connect as a group and then for the virtual kids there will be there's time there's specific times that they need to meet with all their teachers and it's not a 40-minute meeting it's a you know 15-20 minute meeting at the most but they will be so the teachers that have their virtual kids they will be specifically just meeting with them so they can touch base see how they're doing maybe talking about things that may be challenging for the week to come but it's their own special time and then the students also the teachers have office hours from 12 o'clock to 2 30 where they can check
043in with their google classroom or they can reach out to the teachers via email or they can set up appointments to meet with the teachers but you know we think we've come up we've come up with a really pretty good plan and i think we're going to really meet the needs and this is an ever-changing plan if we find out that we can do things a little differently we'll adjust but right now i think we're off to a great start so another focus of ours really is making connections and this is really kind of an awesome thing that just came out of covid you know we've always been a district that wants to make connections with our students our families our teachers our staff everybody um but cove had forced this upon us and really
044allowed us to make some connections in some unique ways with everyone so we really wanted to roll into this school year continuing to make the connections that we did at case middle school in march april may and june and i think we've done a fantastic job of doing that anybody knows mark or myself we are great communicators we're going to share we're going to get as much information out as we can to our people as often as we can so focus on teachers and staff we knew that there was going to be panic coming into this school year just uncertainty what's going to happen what's going to come it took forever to make decisions on whether we were opening or any of that so we wanted to keep our teachers as informed as we could
045throughout the summer so we had a few summer update meetings as soon as we had confirmed something district-wide we opened it up did a zoom meeting with our teachers with our full staff and shared out as much information as we could and as things changed and movement happened we continued to do that as often as we could we wanted to keep them as updated as we could and they certainly have thanked us for that this first couple of weeks because they really did feel as prepared as they could have felt coming into the school year so we're very thankful for that we did have a building reopening task force the district had theirs and then we had one specific to case just to make sure all of the guidance from cdc and the state how
046that would happen within our building making sure all that was covered and also making sure the teachers and staff were comfortable with what was in place before we stepped in to september 9th september 10th when students were walking in our doors so really our goal with teachers and staff is always just communicate and inform them as early as we can once we know things so then the next next piece of it is focus on keeping the connection with the parents and the families uh you know we've got we've got our staff we feel like we've got them in a good place now we've got to kind of help our parents and families know what's going on and this of course is just a huge challenge and last year we had school messenger and this year
047we're transitioning into parent square which is a new tool but it's really it's got a lot of great potential and i think as we continue to learn more about it we're just gonna it's gonna grow and grow um you know i actually we were introduced to it from the district office and then i was talking to jess about you know we need to get something out to these people we have an enriched parent meeting like tomorrow like it's not gonna be okay to not let them know about it so we just went on and i sent out a post or an alert or something i don't even know what it is and then mrs lavar said that was great i didn't even know it was up and running or i thought or whatever but she's
048like it's awesome that you did that because that's how we're gonna figure it out we're just gonna do um and you know we had good attendance with that um today i posted uh a post like i'm not a facebook guy and parent square is kind of set up like facebook so it's kind of new to me to kind of understand what's the difference between a post and an alert not like or i don't even know but whatever i'm figuring out so today i did a post on tomorrow kind of going through what we just did with what the first virtual day is going to be right to try and help all the parents know this is what to expect and then all of a sudden on my phone it beeps and i look down and
049it was from one of the parents and she said do you mean like the 16th because on your post it says wednesday the 14th and so i'm like oh so i pulled up the post and my god and then so i i didn't know this but i'm like well i wish there was some way to fix it and i look around and there's an edit button and edit button and i'm like oh i click on that change it to 16. boom change it i love it the post is fixed versus you know an email that you send out it's you send it out it's wrong and if somebody's already looked at it they've seen it maybe people haven't seen it yet so they won't know that i think that wednesday is the 16th i don't
050know but you know it's a good it's a really good piece of communication that i really think is going to help our district especially with a health check you know that's huge for the parents to be able to click on that and these little this little guy here so that's a little friend of mine that i had he had trouble at home he had trouble with his computer and i was talking to him on the phone his mom's sitting right next to him and they just are not kidding i'm like you know what are you guys okay if i come over for a visit they're like yes so i had to come over and help them with their computer and they were able to figure it out i also got to meet the little guy
051named larry who was a hamster hamster right and i'm holding them and then mom goes be careful he might he like nip my finger i'm like but anyways that's all about you know we're we know how important it is to communicate with our students and our parents and our families and our community and we're going to just continue to try and do that as much as we can to help get everybody through this um and finally the students making connections with the students um we did a great thing in the spring where we had our our teachers con making calls weekly or bi-weekly to families throughout the entire closure really checking in on their well-being more than anything um and and we couldn't let that go that was something that every teacher loved the students
052the families that was very important stuff so we were able to continue doing that into this school year we have that all set up where their homeroom teacher is their connection to the school and we're going to make those bi-weekly calls and we're going to check in and make sure health and well-being everything's going well at home whatever instructional model they are using that they're comfortable with it and they're being successful and we can connect them with teachers or administrators or whoever we need to connect them to within the building through that one person so that's been a really valuable connection tool for us also first three weeks of school it was a district plan that the first three weeks we are focusing on social and emotional well-being of students not forcing academic content to
053come right out and so our teachers have really you know taken off with that they're doing some awesome getting to know you activities building some relationships we had the community circles in place from some community circles around this to teach how to do community circles but also just to make them more comfortable and talk about some of their experiences and really get them settled into the school year before we jump right into the academics um last well almost last focus i guess technology has been an absolutely crucial piece to reopening school this year obviously we have students who are entirely virtual um fortunately we have handed out a lot of chromebooks at the end of last year but we still had students coming into this year that just didn't pick them up during the enclosure
054because they had the technology they needed at home um so we are still distributing chromebooks we did have a chromebook distribution day um student logins was really an important piece going into the school year typically in a typical school year the students would come into school and within the first couple weeks they would log on to a computer within the school and get their login all set up for that year and then they could use their chromebook back and forth but that's not the case this year this year they needed to have their logins pushed out before school started so on wednesday september 9th they were able to log in and get ready um have we had some glitches with that for sure our i.t department has been outstanding huge praises to our it department
055because they have just been inundated with requests to reset passwords and get chromebooks back up and running for students who have struggled who maybe have not opened that chromebook all summer and rightfully so that's completely acceptable um but really huge shout out to our it department because they have been working on stuff all day long to get students logins all set up and emails and connecting them with the google classrooms we have had some wi-fi issues the first couple days i think we're in a good place with that we're working on that um so hopefully that'll be um that'll be an in good repair um google classroom school school things that's going to be an awesome tool for us that also took a little bit of time to get up and running um but we're
056actually in a good place with that right now where they are sinking i think we have a few tweaks that we still are working on but you know it's technology and that's where we're at with that so so this is this was an extremely interesting year for a number of different reasons but so there were really three first days we had our first day virtually and then we had our first day thursday with our monday thursday kids and then we had our first day friday with our tuesday friday and if you're a teacher you know how hyped you get for that first day and then you're exhausted at the end of the day because you just you plan and be worried and you know stressed about it and we really had to go through those
057you know three different days and it was exhausting it was really exhausting to present the same information especially to the thursday friday kids with our with our wednesday first day again so one of the neat things that we did so we talked about our homeroom teachers for connecting with the students so during our staff development day we had all of our homeroom teachers they they had to reach out to their homeroom kids before wednesday before the first day of school even though their parents got a letter they got you know parents or whatever but they had to reach out and say hey you know jason are you all set with what's going on with the schedule on wednesday this is what's going to happen are you having any difficulties um and we really feel that
058was one reason why we're off to a pretty successful start because kids knew what was going on and they're all virtual that first day you know and the faculty you know i said you know be diligent you know you're going to call a number and you're not going to get through try any number on that school tool list to say we need to get a hold of jason we need to make sure that he's prepared and ready to go and the staff was just outstanding you know there were some staff that came and said you know i i can't get susie's i can't get a hold of her i've tried every number no nothing works so then we did some knock on the doors before that wednesday just to try and make sure you know
059and i think we had about 80 80 percent uh we're participating on the first day which i think is awesome you know the teachers went above and beyond we had a lot of kids engaged um we had a so so the first thing they did on that first virtual wednesday was they had a homeroom meeting just with them so you and your 12 kids you had a zoom meeting you set it up you talked them how's everybody doing and then this is what the rest of the schedule's going to look like anybody have any questions about thursday friday or virtual or whatever just to kind of set them at ease and then we did have corey the dribbler that was supposed to be here in the spring he was going to do this assembly at
060case and we actually did it virtually which was really really cool and i know this is a bar and some of you guys might have sat in on it but uh you know he does basketball tricks and then he talks about you know how you want to be and what kind what's a good person and everything and we had a staff member in the gym that he was challenging the staff member do this you know do this or do that and the kids loved it and then he asked some of the kids all right who's got a basketball and he's looking on his screen fine oh i see you know you know johnny's got a basketball try and you know throw it up behind your head and catch it or whatever but but it was
061just i think it was very successful a really good first day for everybody and then they also had that team meeting that we're going to continue to have that they will have every wednesday from here on out but it was exhausting um on the right you see kids at the outside door so in case if you when they come up we say you know did you have your health screening and of course a lot of them are like they don't have any idea what we're talking about so then we've gotten to the point where we just say did you have your temperatures taken this morning and if they say no we send them to the left so they go in a different entrance and the nurse greets them and she'll take their temperature we'll check
062them off the list and then they can go on either into the gym or to get their breakfast the first two days we had 67 67 students that had to go in that door and then we had 34 they had to get pulled out of class because then by that time by the time first period starts our nurses can go through and can see who didn't get checked off on parent square and then we pull them out because there's really no way to catch them before that but you know by the right off the bat first period we're able to pull them down so we had 67 come to the door 34 pulled out the second day we had 66 come through the door 30 pulled out now out of those 60s some kids at
063least 20 of them were already checked in parent square and so maybe the kids just didn't understand so we think this is just going to be a work in progress um it moved pretty quick i say 67 there's never a line outside the door you know because of the way the buses drop off the kids they just go you know it moves right in they get it done off they go so we feel like we're in a pretty good place as far as that goes as part of our set plan that we are on a case we were able to get our instructional coach to support our set plan this year um so this is jen aikens and she certainly is a star um she has just been an excellent addition to our staff already
064she's been out supporting teachers she's created a google form for teachers to kind of input things that they could use her for or what kind of things they would like to see or do in within their classrooms so she can create supports for them she's made a feedback form for us administrators to support teachers when we do our classroom walkthroughs and she did a lot of organizing of our stuff so we to support our um getting evidence for our set plan and just keep us on track and moving along with this set plan this year so we're really excited to have jen and all the awesome things she's gonna do within our building this year and to kind of wrap this up some of our celebrations the main thing is that we have students in
065our building you know this summer it was quiet it was weird and just even i don't care if they have nasa i'll take them with whatever they have you know they're excited they're excited to be there teachers are excited to be in class we we are providing them a safe place we are providing them you know some education because is it a little different for sure but i think that the watertown city school district is really uh doing a great job i've talked to a lot of different people in school districts and they can't they're shocked at how organized we are they're shocked at how you know we're really we're doing a good job with communicating well i haven't heard a thing you know mrs the bar all those meetings that she did and the
066governor continued to change you know oh by the way tonight we want you to do this like and we just we hit all those marks you know kudos to the district office and to mrs lane and eager and lavar because i just think we're we're well ahead of the curve up here and as a board you should be very proud of them because i think we're all a really good team doing a great job and i don't know if you've noticed i know you didn't notice the john b johnson sign up front but case has some new signage so when you when you drive around case i want you to take a look up on some of the corners of the building now granted when you look up they're kind of small like they looked
067pretty big when i got them but when you put them on a huge building like case middle school they're not so big so we've got to work on getting some bigger signs but at least if you're near case and in the high school and you look over you can look somewhat if you're on any corner you can say oh that's the case because before people are driving and they'd be like which one is case middle school well i got news for you you know now you know now you've got some really cool signs and you know greatness does live here and i we can't wait next year for the september board meeting because there's so many great things that we're going to share with you you know she just she hit the top of the
068iceberg with the seb coach jeff nakin is already blowing me out of this world she is going to be such a great support to us and i just can't wait to share with you next year i can't wait for a year to go by so we will have gotten through this and we're going to say all right let's go dance and then we'll talk a little bit because that's what's going to happen any questions okay and you better get your trivia because this i'm gonna have this next year and i'm gonna say you never know what i'm gonna ask you so it's just me there jess and i are going to dunkin donuts right now thank you so much all right so we're gonna skip policy report for a few minutes um and we're going
069to have mr george denmark our athletic director and our district physician dr benjamin rudd to come in and discuss with us the recent developments in athletics okay yep we're good so um as you know we've been making a decision about the fall sports season and you know we had made a decision as a group earlier before the new york state athletic new york state public high school athletic association section three and the governor made a decision to start sports on september 21st but with that came also the announcement that local districts could make their own decisions so over the course of the past several days the local superintendents have been working on a plan that makes sense for each district and so in reaching out to our medical director today with a lot of concerns
070and questions and asking for his medical advice on moving forward with the season as well as the meetings that george emerich has been in with the athletic directors i thought it would be in our best interest to have both of them share where their viewpoints are coming from and the information that they have as of now uh because going forward we'll have to make a decision on what our next steps will be so dr rob would you like to start sure so um you know this is the bar asked if i would uh talk we were communicating and asked if i would talk a little bit about um where we see this at from the medical perspective and and i think it kind of comes down to understanding what the risks are and and where
071the benefits might be um and and so generally i spoke to there's a couple other physicians i work with for the medical director we kind of put our heads together today um we're not real keen on the idea of intermural sports in general now i haven't been saying we were just speaking mr speaking i think there are some ways you can mitigate that but the reasons we are is is um the rates of covert infection argument are fairly low at this point in time which is great we want to keep it that way we truly believe that some of that much of that is because of the things that we as the community the hard work communities doing to keep social distancing and other things to keep the virus spread down and if we start
072to erode away at some of those things then we can anticipate there might be an increased uh infection risk in the community and evidence for that would be probably what's happening in the colleges right now so you know many colleges have had different protocols that they've had the students are tested before they come on or they're quarantined for a certain time periods the risk should should be fairly low in that population as well but over the course of a month or six weeks as things erode you know as as people travel a little or this or that some of them had outbreaks so i don't know that that would happen here we hope that wouldn't but cross you know bringing communities together may be a difficult situation um so that concerns us from the medical
073perspective a little bit the flip side is we want to acknowledge that athletics have a very very important role in social development and emotional health in physical health certainly maintaining that and so we've got to find a balance there and and i'm not sure that that question that how to find that balance is a question for me i think that's your question to answer to be honest where does this community where is this board where does you know the school district find the risk tolerance between the importance of students mental and physical health and infection control and there's a balance there i don't know that there's a perfect answer sorry guys that's sort of where you have but but that is that is those are the things that we're kind of playing you know playing
074down playing against um there are probably some ways that we can work to control infection risk either intramurally or even if you want to do intramural athletics depending on exactly what sports there are and what and what measures are put in place so i think if you don't mind i'm going to turn it over to mr emergency let him talk a little bit about some of the things he and his colleagues are discussing and then if we need you we can come back around and take questions is that okay with you guys that's great thank you information kind of keeps changing daily here on me i found out today that we have a i think that actually might work in our favor if we take for example cross country um then you can run across
075member practice just like a gym class and stay 12 feet apart when they're closer than 12 feet they would put their mask on during the meet during a race starting line they're all lined up together the masks are on as they get out on the course the mask comes off the runner has it in their hands when they get towards the finish line they put it back on somebody is there to handle them and ask if they drop their mask in the course so when they finish in cross-country it's called the corral they finish in the corral they're all lined up together they all have their mask on they have their mask on at the beginning they have their mask at the end so dr redline we're talking he thought that was pretty good we
076talked about how uh the cohorts would be mixing now there's about 27 students right now signed up for cross country a couple of football players wanted to go out and they thought they were gonna play football so i'd like to see that they're gonna participate so cross country is one sport test is another sport uh the players in a single game would be obviously a long ways apart the server would serve a set of balls on his or her side the receiving the person receiving them would not touch them they pick them up in the guidelines with their foot in the racket and they get them back to the other side um so that mitigates the chance to transmit the disease in doubles it's a lot of start and stop it's not a lot of
077cardiovascular so in doubles uh they would wear a mask and just so they wouldn't transmit it to their partner swimming i'll talk about that in a second soccer is the one that um dr rudd and i have uh i i too have a little concern about when players set up a wall and they do corner kicks they're close together they're within you know shoulder to shoulder um areas so um the league wants everybody to wear a mask so they would wear masks all the time in practices and in games um there's some people that are against that there's some people that are for it um some people say that the students are running so much that they're going to be out of breath it's going to hurt them section 10 i talked to parallel women
078up there today what they're doing to try to control that they're taking breaks every 10 minutes taking water and mass breaks that's something i wish the frontier would look at we didn't really discuss that as a group though um they're going to clean play soccer balls as often as possible with the qt3 um they're gonna try not to share them in practice um wildville is gonna start their practices on september 21st the rest of the league is gonna be on the 28th they're going to stay in their cohorts right up to the first game on october 8th so um that might be something we can do but um don't put words in your mouth but i think across the country you think we could start swimming we could start tennis we could start soccer is
079a little up in the air yeah i mean nothing's perfect right any anytime if we all lived in a bubble we'd be most safe but we don't do that like there is risk in life and it doesn't matter cohen nonverbal but you gotta do that you gotta figure out where you are so i think cross-country is pretty safe i think tennis is probably relatively safe um i think swimming you know with some modifications is would be okay um soccer i am a little nervous about um i've heard some people have you know separately said these kids are out there playing together anyway they're going to league you know they're doing uh off-season leagues or groups in in syracuse whatever that may be true but that's not really the question that we're answering you know you
080only have what's in our purview to answer and i think that that probably soccer out of the ones that propose is would be the the highest risk i did also he'd mentioned you know we were having a conversation the district has done a good job of taking the student body and dividing them in half and sort of never the twain shall meet except during practice and on the field so so there is some risk in in undoing some of the stuff that we've already done um again that's not to say that should be the only deciding factor but you're increasing it you're increasing you're undoing some of the stuff we've done and that's not terrible but it we should be acknowledging that that's what we're doing on saturday i like such an intense model they're
081going to play 12 games 6 home and 6 away only take 20 students on the road trips so that way the chance of transmitting on the bus is very low they're going to take one bus they're going to sit with staggered seats on the sideline and folding chairs instead of sitting on the bench um to be honest i believe all 24 schools are going to vote yes for having soccer at section 10 tomorrow but uh the frontier league unfortunately hasn't talked about that when's your meeting george uh we're gonna the ads are gonna meet uh thursday at two o'clock the exec council is gonna meet before that superintendent before that any other comments questions thoughts yeah i guess this is for dr rudd um the the information seems to be going in the direction of
082transmission um through the air much more so than contact with someone like this yeah so would would that mean then that um you know tennis or soccer that's not the big worry is touching the balls that that's correct i still if there's a way to do it the way he's describing where you're not touching the same thing i think that is better so the reason that the droplets are a bigger problem drops or aerosols are a bigger problem than the touching of the phone isn't that there's no infection risk there it's that if it gets on your hand it still is there but then you have to put it in a mucous membrane and so if hopefully we're not touching our eyes or picking our nose or putting our fingers in our mouth you know
083but but again that's hard if you're working hard and you have sweat you might be touching your face more i mean so so there are still some you know some risks that way but an outdoor environment is is much better because the wind will disperse droplets things will fall quickly the ultraviolet rays from the sun kill it pretty quickly that's better you know i am more concerned about indoor spaces like a gymnasium or basically any classroom i think is probably higher risk than a practice field but you are breathing and respiring a lot more and therefore there's going to be a lot more droplets produced as well for for sport athletic participation but you're right respiratory is much bigger than than fomite contact yeah if we vote on swimming to go to season number two
084starting march 1st we might be able to swim in section 10. that's also why i contacted carl norman up there all their teams are going to fall season two because um six out of the eight teams can't swim they use the college pools up there and actually two pools up there are down also so that would be our girls yup and they could do some needs virtually you mentioned like we probably don't want to travel to salmon river or massena malone but they would do a virtual me so what do you need from the board at this point just wanted to have that information out there because when we met as superintendents you know we as i would say a frontier league were all pretty much not everyone but we were not in favor of
085starting sports right now this is a huge lift to get kids back in school and we were really thinking that we would have had a january start but then when the guidance came and it suggested starting sports now it was just another curveball thrown our way and we are always you know looking at the safety of our students first and foremost so you know some of the things that dr rudd has said with cohorting students in districts and you know taking a look at the monday thursday group the tuesday friday group but we actually have a third cohort because we have remote only students i wanted you know to talk with the board tonight to talk about the realities of we're living in a whole new um chapter if you will at a reopening of
086school and it's been very difficult just to reopen the school and the educational aspect of it now we're starting to talk about sports and we were making decisions that we've never had to make before quite frankly and we want to make sure when we make those decisions that they truly are in the best interests of our students and i commend uh george emerich and the athletic directors for being very thoughtful about the work that goes into it but i know right now that there are superintendents in the frontier league who are not interested in starting sports at all right now they want to pause and they want to hold off until january and then there are other superintendents that would like to give things a try um but there are risks with that if you
087listen to you know dr rudd and what he said i consulted with him earlier today because this is a very important decision and we want to make the decision in the best interest of all students in the district so i just wanted to share that with you and maybe ask you know if you got any thoughts as george continues to work on the plan as dr rudd continues to support us on the medical aspects of you know the potentials and what could happen as we go forward anyone have any further thoughts or comments and i would like to thank them both for coming yes um on short notice so thank you both thank you you're welcome thank you okay policy committee report jason [Music] the policy committee had our first monthly meeting of the school
088year friday september 11th at noon in the district office and the following policies were reviewed uh eight zero zero one student learning objectives and instructional goals we fixed the wording at the top of this page to reflect the current mission statement uh eight zero zero two school calendar and school day just some minor grammatical changes there eight zero zero three curriculum development resources and evaluation we fix the wording uh the last sentence to reflect timing for the annual report to be submitted eight zero zero four pilot projects made some minor grammatical changes and pleaded some unnecessary language uh 8100 grade level placement retention and promotion policy was required here part of this policy is going to be reviewed and revised prior to finalization but in addition uh we did add some indents wording and missing
089roman numeral 8101 response to intervention rti there were no changes to this policy 8101.1 structure of the response to intervention rti program again minor grammatical changes and deleted roman numeral that was out of place 8102 graduation credentials we added new york to the state education department that was listed there a103 grading systems and the i roll replace the misspelled word make up opportunities no changes there 8105 homework we're holding off on this policy until next meeting so patty stacy and tina can clean up the wording a bit and we'll report back when we have that 8106 student progress reports to parents there were no changes there and there were also no changes to 8107 student schedules and course loads brings us into 8200 home instruction we eliminated some unnecessary verbiage and made minor grammatical changes
090no changes to report on 8201 homebound instruction or 8202 summer schools and programs 8202.1 summer schools and programs regulation changes were made in the title to reflect this policy only to cover grades 9 through 12. we did discuss the need for a separate policy for grades k-8 in the not so distant future i'm sure we'll have a report when we do 8203 limited english proficiency instruction english language learners the policy was required here we just eliminated some wording the old policy had person improved relation we bleeded that we did the same thing in 8203.1 a limited english proficiency instruction english language matters 8203.2 parental notification no changes were needed finally 8205 courses including dissection of animals just made some minor grammatical changes okay thank you so much any discussion all in favor any opposed motion
091carries items for board action the result that upon the recommendation of superintendent of schools patricia b lavar the board of education hereby approves the following retirement resignations leaves of absence appointment probationary instructional term non-probationary instructional permanent permanent part-time provisional substitute instructional substitute non-instructional can't get a motion please probably in a second jason any discussion all those in favor any days motion carries results that the following revised board of education policies are hereby approved and adopted eight zero zero one student learning objectives and instructional goals eight zero two school calendar on school day eight zero zero three curriculum development resources and evaluation eight zero zero four pilot projects 8100 grade level placement retention and promotion 101 response to interventions 8.02 graduation credentials 8103 graduating systems honor roll 8104 make up opportunities 8106 student progress reports to
092parents 8107 student schedules and course loads 8 200 home instruction 8201 homebound instruction summer schools and programs 8203 limited english for proficiency instruction english language learners in 205 courses including dissection of animals can i get a motion please in a second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries whereas that after public advertising for an item for the maintenance department bids have been received and are hereby awarded for the purchase of the front end loader to the tracy road equipment adams new york result that the school business manager is authorized to issue the orders accordingly can i get a motion please susie in a second any discussion all those in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries okay so we need to go into an executive session the purposes of discussing a legal matter
093can i get a motion please jason a second answer all those in favor aye any opposed [Music] good okay um so let's continue please do the items for board action solved by the the superintendent of school that the board hereby authorizes the law firm of frank w miller pllc to file a cross claim against patricia bailey in the lawsuit entitled days versus water town state school district and bailey uh civil action 520 cv 964 the law firm of frank w miller is hereby authorized to take all other necessary and appropriate actions to represent and defend the watertown city school district in the evolved matter i have a motion please okay in a second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools that a request for
094indemnification pursuant to education law section 3811 filed by patricia bailey received 914 2020 having been investigated by the superintendent of schools and the superintendent of schools having made a determination that the actions of pritchard trugally did not arise out of and in the school of course of her employment and those actions are not otherwise entitled to coverage under the statute as alleged in the lawsuit of days versus watertown city school district in bailey and she is therefore not entitled to protection under new york state law education law section 3811 be denied the findings by the superintendent are here with affirmed and request for indemnification by patricia bailey it's all respects denied and the superintendent is directed and authorized to do so advise miss patricia bailey of this determination and to take any and all of
095the necessary and appropriate measures to protect the district in the above reference litigation can i get a motion please answer in a second okay any discussion all in favor any opposed motion cares and that's the end of the resolution okay thank you superintendent of schools report i would like to thank gwen and judy for their guidance and leadership on diversity inclusion and equity and it's great having them here tonight for you to get a preview of what we've been working on or actually a preview of what's to come um we're continuing to work through the request of the attorney general and we've asked a diverse group of stakeholders to give us feedback on our code of conduct most stakeholders have already reviewed and resubmitted back their feedback and that our code of conduct was pretty
096solid so at the next board meeting i will share with you um for your consideration some of the updates and they're just minor tweaks to the code of conduct but some of the updates that i'd like to move forward with in our district i've said it plenty of times but reopening our schools during the pandemic has been one of the most difficult things that i've done in my career and i really commend the entire staff for the reopening and at this point you know we've had little minor glitches along the way but i think having mark and jess here tonight to share the reopening of case and you can see some of the successes yeah there are things you know on the first day of school when the staff comes back and the wi-fi isn't
097working and it's worked right along right up until that day um you know we keep being throwing these curve balls but each time we get a curveball we're gonna we're gonna work on it we're gonna fix it um you know we're gonna tell our staff that it is difficult to come back and try to get you know we're working in a different kind of environment right now but we've also had a lot of glitches with you know not just the wi-fi but we onboarded with parent square and i commend stacy and lisa blank we had the rick on site this morning to do some of the you know workings of how to resolve some of the issues the rick administrative team will be here on thursday and we'll work through the rest of you know
098the glitches whether it's i ready or on boarding with parents square stacy can give you the whole list because really that's her role has been for the past at least two weeks of really just putting out fires when it comes to some of the things that that we're needing for um the curriculum instruction piece of it and just the day-to-day operations even even something that should be simple like taking school tool and you know having that that list of your kids in school tool get right into your google classrooms has been a huge challenge for our staff and again it's a lot of work on the back end but i think today we've resolved a lot of at least the parent square reviews um and some things that go with school tools as well one
099of the biggest struggles i think that we've been faced with is when students come down with some symptoms that they normally would at this time of year whether it's a runny nose or our students who have allergies in the fall i've asked stacey or i've asked tina tonight in her report to give you an update and just go back over the chart from jefferson county public health because i think that's been one of the most frustrating things for parents with kids coming back to school when they've had sniffles or runny nose and in a in a normal environment in the old world if you will you know that happened but in this new uh place that we're at when we take a look at some of those symptoms that kids have had before we do
100have to look at that differently so in tina's report she'll just quickly go through the flow chart and then the state has asked us to submit information daily and she's going to show you that data dashboard and that really everyone has access to look at that information at any time this is some really exciting news so the last board meeting or the one actually prior to that i talked to you about the division of budget and the state education department how we have to put in that new york state school funding transparency form and if you can recall last year you know we had to do several edits and then resubmit it was new and i think josh that's about when you were joining the team well the good news is josh submitted that and
101we were anticipating by the end of september to find out if our plan was approved or if we needed to do some adjustments and i'm very happy to report tonight that late really late yesterday probably almost five o'clock we got an email that said our plan has been approved so kudos to josh in the business department for all of their hard work and making that happen that wasn't easy and i think it's a job well done so thank you for that we have been working with the teachers union on updating our appr plan and we are looking at um having an approval on that update on october 6th and basically what that looks like is instead of having students have to have all these extra tests at the beginning of the year with pre-tests and
102you know we're looking at one district-wide um testing if you will and it's based on the high school regions so we can dig into that a little bit more at the next board meeting but that's actually a huge win for our teachers and our students um i think it's it's a big win for for everyone involved because i don't know if you've had any conversations with teachers at the beginning of the year or even parents listening to what their kids are coming back to it's just a lot of testing at the beginning of the year um and as we try to form relationships with our students right now especially being you know just coming back after a long closure the last thing that kids want to do after a six month you know time away
103from school is to come back and start being tested so i think this is going to be good for everyone and i think that is about it i did post the district safety plan on our website for public comment on september 1st i have not had any feedback on that at all yet but we have a district-wide safety team virtual meeting tomorrow afternoon and i will just share the plan again it's on the website and we'll have a public hearing on october 6th uh meeting okay assistant superintendent for instruction um as caddy mentioned we are still putting out fires with technology but we're in a much better place um and we're starting to move forward with some of our curriculum that we're waiting uh we were waiting for um upload of rosters so some of
104the teachers have received notification of that this week and feel a little bit more comfortable at least i hope being able to unveil that to their students our homeschool population continues to rise in the past week we've probably received 25 more letters of intent that we're still sifting through so we'll hope to give you a better picture of what that enrollment looks like but right now it's just a massive paperwork and folders in our office so we will work through that the last count we had was 140 which is well over 50 percent of what we had at the beginning of last year at this time tomorrow is our first real foray with um a virtual wednesday if you will last week was a very soft landing um tomorrow will really be sort of the
105tone setting for what it's going to look like with teachers having to reconcile attendance um and also post lessons for the following week um on their virtual systems whether it be csar or google classroom so we're hopeful that teachers will find that time to collaborate and also the office hours opportunities refreshing but we do have our tech integration specialists on standby as well as our instructional coaches who all of them have been doing an amazing job to be on hand for any teachers who need additional support um and they'll be there on tomorrow as well so we'll hopefully be able to share with you just a little bit of a reflection on how the first wednesday went we've handed out some guidance on attendance and hopefully that will help teachers as well sort of a
106new announcement i know in the personnel report tonight um i'm sorry in mark and justice report tonight they shared with you that dean powers is our new family and consumer science teacher at case middle school um in middle school you have to have one and three-quarters credits of cte and that can take any sort of picture in terms of career development typically schools offer technology and family consumer science what was traditionally known as women careers but in recent years many districts have taken on other facets of that including agriculture mr powers is actually certified in agriculture so he's really going to be morphing that program into an ag program and bringing ffa to our middle school in the next year you do have to have a certain number of courses offered to get ffa active
107in the middle school arena but it's something that he's really excited about undertaking so we'll have more of an update for you as that comes but we're excited we're going to be sitting down next wednesday with him the facs teacher julie morja the tech team of nate natalin and um oh my goodness why am i blaming brian wilson as well as mark jess and the counselors to really talk about what does that mean for student options when they come into middle school uh just offering a little bit more choice for what they select going forward um and last update for you this is just a preview of what's to come it is time for impact aid this year um we are hopeful it looks like there's some guidance that we may be able to put
108one family on one form um that's kind of exciting news it doesn't mean we have to have five forms for five different children in the same household uh some more information to come on that but just wanted to give you a heads up that that will be coming in the next few weeks thank you assistant superintendent for personnel and student services it's been a busy start to this new school year this new time i i have to give kudos to our nursing staff first of all they have been done some incredible work with our students with the screening process that takes place in the morning we've really refined that we have nurses who are helping one another out visiting buildings troubleshooting different things um and we're really trying to streamline that process and that continues
109to be a work in progress but just the teamwork i think patty had mentioned it on the first day to our faculty and staff about it takes a team to make this work and i think the nurses are proof positive with that for sure they've been doing just an outstanding job and along with that you know our work with public health i can't say enough about their availability for questioning i've called them i called them on labor day evening i called them on a sunday morning i've called them at all hours and they always have somebody there to answer our questions i email uh faithless she gets right back to me they're readily available all the time and because there aren't many questions as patty had mentioned there's just so many nuances uh to what's
110going on and a little bit at the end of my report i'll just show you that flow chart again and you know that'll become more clear to you um we're also uh doing some work with our pps staff i met with them for the third time this morning what a great group i mean we've broken it up k through six so we have counselors we have homeschool coordinators who are getting together and the work of our k-6 staff and seven 7 12 staff both have just been tremendous we're working out some some programs to communicate with families even better than we already are especially for those students who we've not made contact with but they haven't signed on to their classrooms so we're working through that uh process we've had some counselors move from secondary
111to elementary they're taking a leadership role there and sharing their ideas so that's great to see um and we have some elementary counselors up working at the secondary level who are doing some great work too so it's it's really again teamwork is the theme tonight um we we had a we had an idea we met with uh our one of our unions yesterday and we are going to the teachers association what we're going to do next week is we have many staff members who have questions about covid and when they should stay home when they come so faithless to get public health has agreed we're going to do two zoo meetings on monday with our employees so 2 45 and 3 45 our employees will be able to log on and the chart i'm going
112to show you again we're going to public health is going to go over that and then they're going to answer any questions they're going to have like a town hall with our staff and we're making that available for everybody at two different time slots we're excited about offering that opportunity to our staff here at watertown also i we as you know we have watertown nurses at our private schools around the city so i had the opportunity to visit them last week over a couple of days just to check on them to make sure that they're all said and talking to the principals there also i've been having many meetings with employees on accommodations for covenant many many meetings over the last couple of weeks and uh you know certainly many phone calls from parents working
113on procedures and many questions but those those conversations have been productive for sure so i'm going to move up here and i'm going to switch over about a couple of different things here for you just bear with me for just a moment i'm going to do this a different way first thing i'll do is i'll go over the school report so as patty mentioned there is a dashboard out there it's a school report card apropos and every day by 3 p.m i have to collect data from all eight school buildings throughout the district there are several questions that are on this data form and i have to do it by building and the nurses have done a great job supplying me with the information but a separate report has to be done for each building
114and if i put in watertown city school district i actually as i was talking to a couple of parents today i referred them to this site there we are now this is better catch this while i can there we go okay so you'll see that a page will load here and if we scroll down we can see data for our district and then it actually drills down to the different schools so you can see we have all of our eight school buildings listed here and i'll just give you an idea of what some of the things so i have to enter data how many students like on a monday thursday i have a little cheat sheet how many students are on site how many teachers are on site and how many other employees are on
115site then the next question uh asks me to put in the number of virtual learners so i put the tuesday learner smart school on monday and all the virtual learners and then how many teachers and staff are off-site which are zeros then they ask they go on to ask questions regarding how many students have been tested that day how many positives have come in they ask uh several different questions uh there's about nine questions in total and then they have trend reports in here this is actually pretty good they started doing this last wednesday it actually didn't get posted till monday so there's not much data in here that the state and again they added three questions yesterday too and they asked what kind of teaching model we have so i would encourage everybody uh
116to get on to this it's it's pretty interesting and as we get further into the school year the data will become more compelling i think in terms of making comparisons with different buildings so this is the kobit 19 school dashboard and again you can see that some of the data not all the data that that school districts have to enter is presented here but i think they're still experimenting with this site and adding information on a daily basis so now we'll switch back over to see if i can find it here i wanted to show you that flow chart again there it is all right so this probably looks familiar we went over this a few weeks ago but essentially uh what what you see here is a flow chart developed by the jefferson county
117department of public health and there's the umbrella that they they dictate and they tell us they give us guidance on what we need to do if we have different scenarios that arise which we've had many so far uh this being the first week into school so at the top of the chart you'll see that if the student or employee is symptomatic and then they list all the different symptoms of coping 19. and a lot of these symptoms are seasonal allergy symptoms or if a student have a has a stomach ache or a headache or nausea runny nose is one of them sore throat is a big one so if a student has any of these symptoms they're immediately isolated so each of our school buildings off our clinics we have an isolation room those students
118are sent there under supervision they're sent home immediately we inform the student or employee they must seek medical attention and must have provider note and negative coping 19 tests before returning so our nurses have developed a form to go home with students and it tells and it says exactly this and they put the symptoms on the form they send it home now over to the left you see in the green area student or employee has a note from a medical director a negative copic 19 test and resolution of symptoms so if you don't have any symptoms for 24 hours and you have the doctor's note and a negative covenant test you may return those are the three guideposts and they're ands not orders you have to have all three of those things so on the
119right hand side if a student or employee tests positive for kobit 19 this is where jefferson county department of public health takes over they contact the student parent or employee to perform case investigations and contact tracing so they do all the contact tracing they'll contact me they'll contact they'll probably contact the nurses perhaps building principles they'll need lists but they do all of the work all the leg work on the contact racing and at the bottom the lower left hand corner the positive student or employee will be isolated for a minimum of 10 days from start of symptoms and the student employee must be three days 72 hours without a fever without the use of any medications that have progressive improvement in symptoms before they return so that's if a person tests a positive those
120are the guideposts in order for the person to return on the right hand side lower right hand corner you'll see a box regarding contact tracing so contacts to positive pieces are referred to local testing sites and they can return to school after a 14-day quarantine period we've had many questions about this let's say we have two brothers in a family one brother was sent home with a symptom may the other brother attend school the next day absolutely if they go into parent square and answer no to all the questions and that's certainly fine that's been a popular one so as scenarios arise i think we're getting more confident but if if not i i just call public health and out ask because that's very important you know the student safety and the employee safety here
121at watertown are of the utmost importance so that's just a brief overview of that chart again and again we're going to discuss that with our employees again on monday and have a q a for them as well and we'll continue to communicate with parents and again this is today this could change tomorrow and we'll certainly keep everybody posted on that thank you have a um yeah so i think it's safe to say that we will have way more in that green corner than in the pink corner yes and it can be a real hardship for those families whose child has a runny nose who gets sent home so what are we doing to help them with the access to a physician and the access to a test okay so that's a great question so we
122have our partners at north country family health who are assisting with that um i've had so they're a great resource and we have students enrolled there um also i know at our county level i know the doctors are have some concerns about the insurance pieces and the financial burden there so i know we have some advocates amongst our doctors our school doctors in the area but you know i haven't we haven't heard much of that we've heard more of you know parents just going my son has allergies why do i have to get him tested that's been the big thing but but resource wise you know i don't know honestly we haven't had many questions on that um and this is all very new and very fresh well yeah considering that you know some students
123have been in school twice yes exactly exactly um i i don't know i i guess we can't argue with public health but i have some real concerns about parents just throwing up their hands and say kind i'm not gonna send my kid to school you know we make a we make a big deal about making sure that they get fed um but then if they don't have a doctor if they're not signed up with north country health you know it becomes an overwhelming process for them i have some concerns about that and i think that's why i asked tina to share this with you because i do think that we have families you know that are frustrated we're only into a few days of school right now and this is not something that we can
124avoid this is something that's a mandate and we have to you know fulfill what we need to do and follow the rules but at the same time we also have to be supportive to our families so partnering with the north country family i'm going to interrupt you yeah we just got kicked off zoom so you could pause get one back on that's okay i think we kicked off before that facing no i just don't think the screen was shared because people couldn't see it this computer has been a little glitchy here so yeah let's see if i can get back to the long room where we were and that's why i asked tina to just bring this up because i think you know we've only been in school for a few days and i think
125that we've had you know some parents that have received those phone calls from the nurses and students has to be sent home and you know our parents need to understand this is part of the protocol that we have to follow but at the same time you know we are partners in this and we will help our parents uh find the resources that they need we have school counselors we have home school coordinators you know we can all work together to help them find we haven't had that yet where parents have said they don't know what to do uh they don't know where to turn to but i'm sure that we're only in the first few days here that is going to happen and i will say to north country family health they have an application
126in the state to become testing sites and they're going to test even students who are enrolled but they're offering that up to our students as well so they're a great resource but they're still working through the red tape with state to be able to be approved around the district any other questions okay school business manager we are continuing to work on the st3 of all of all those forum submissions as well to this day which are just our actuals transparencies on our budget we are slightly ahead of schedule from where we are last year so that's good we'll be done hopefully before the 27th hunting season opens up we have the mid opening today thanks for approving that as you guys know because you voted last year we had to rent that one because of
127the safety situation that was presented so at least that should make jason happy yesterday met with fiscal advisors discussing the current capital project and with the excel 8 currently being frozen we're going to end up trying to file our sa139s which needs to be done also prior to the end of this month which will trigger futures today payments then we'll be able to use that excellent on future capital projects and we'll end up most likely having that list should be in pretty good shape by the next faf meeting as well as a actual figure that we can shoot for how much we would be able to put into that next capital project without any local share and then transparency reports no evidence okay upcoming dates very lean this time of year there's a lot more
128going on in schools which is very very sad so we've got faff meeting on october 6th right before the board meeting at 6 pm um another policy meeting on the 9th and then school building school for columbus day on the 12th anyone on the board have anything to add i just wanted to let you know i gave you a copy of my superintendent goals for this year during you know all of the reopening that's not something that you receive a copy of and i can go over them in further detail at our next meeting this will give you some time to just flip them over and then i'll go back in more detail at our next meeting okay all right if no one has anything further ad i'll entertain a motion to end the meeting
129susie anasaka michael all favorites