Bexley Board of Education Meeting - October 6, 2020

001thank you let me just make sure i can see all board members here we are on right great okay [Applause] so um good evening everyone uh in accordance with ohio revised code 121-22 and house bill 197 i hereby call to order the board of education of bexley city school district board meeting of tuesday october 6 2020. mr smith will you please uh call the role mr barno here ms mineo yeah miss mitchell here ms powers here the snowden here thank you all right so um moving on to item number one c i just want to thank mr smith again he has sent out our minutes in advance of our meeting so board members have had the opportunity to make edits um and something to his attention given that uh can i have a motion to

002approve one c please still moved right now thank you any comments or edits great thank you all in paper please signify by saying aye aye any opposed theme sign thank you that motion carries okay so um we are moving on to 1d which is the approval of our agenda for tonight uh can i have a motion to approve tonight's agenda so moved thank you in a second second thank you all in favor please signify by saying i i i any opposed same sign that motion carries as well thank you all right so we will get right into um our board reports uh which means that i start first um and i'll go over a little bit of our policy committee um we have a lot of policies this um this month which you guys will

003see but just to make sure we're all on the same page under 3g we have first readings which are for student absences and for teacher professional um staff evaluation and so both of those are first reading um we will um have them on tonight i i ask you to all please review them or review them again before to next month's meeting when we'll seek to approve them just quickly on the student absences you'll note that they're part of what we are changing is an addition for covid and it now says that the students will not be penalized for absences related to contracting copin 19 or having to quarantine or isolate um due to cover 19 exposure symptoms regardless of whether is the student is participating and in person remotely or both um so that is

004the chief change in that which is of course important um it is our still we note in the policy the expectations that students participate in all five days of learning and if a student's unable to attend for any reason the parents or guardians still need to contact the school office so um i think the principals have all set out information about that and i think it's going pretty well so that is that policy the second one is the evaluation of professional staff dr miller can talk a little bit more about this but in general um there is a very robust evaluation system for all staff under ohio law and we have policy obviously which corresponds with that but part of that is evaluation in person evaluation which is needed to change because of covid some

005of the structures really needed to change so um i asked all the board members to make sure and look at this i know ms powers had a question about some of it so as you all look through it the third paragraph on the first page is one that i would ask you to spend some special attention on so that's um those are the policies of 3g and then in 3h you'll notice that it's for first reading and approval um those are only policies where we've added um legal citation to the ohio revised code so there's no content change whatsoever um but we did think it was appropriate per osba's recommendation to add ohio vice code so we're gonna make sure that those are in there and that's those are for first reading and approval tonight

006and then on 3i is first reading and temporary approval these are 11 policies that are coming to us because the um on may 6 the u.s department of education issued the final title ix regulations which went into effect in august so we as a result needed to um change our policies to make sure that we were in compliance with the u.s department of education title ix regulations they are very extensive um you can some of the policies are just changed with with wording but some are more substantive which you all have seen but just for our public's note i will say that the new rules require that once the district has actual knowledge of sexual sexual harassment it must respond promptly regardless of whether a for formal complaint has been filed districts must treat individuals

007who are alleged to be the um victim and the perpetrator of sexual harassment equitably by offering supportive measures which are defined as regulations uh in the regulations as non-disciplinary non-punitive individualized services that are offered as appropriate and without charge to the complainant or the respondent um so things including but not limited to counseling course modification etc so the new regulations are very um specific about the formal grievance process you all will see that i will just in our in our policies i will just note that there have been several lawsuits filed um across the country challenging these final regulations and so um including a lawsuit that talks about the timeline um being burdensome to schools since it's an overhaul of our grievance policies and procedures in a short amount of time during cobit um we

008are continuing to get updated from osba on those um those lawsuits but for us the fact remains um that this is what the law is now and i want to thank dr williams for his extensive work on this so he's getting us as our director of student staff operations he's getting us all um ready to roll so i appreciate his work on that and i um commend to all of your reading those policies and i think that is it for our policies today um my second report is on operations and um i just wanted to highlight a couple of things there so the athletic department and and really again thank dr williamson and the work of his task force which are community members doctors epidemiologists um are one of our nurse staff who have just

009really been incredible and helpful um and so the athletic department is has just has sent out to parents and i just wanted all um board members to be aware of this and also community members a new requirement or expectation that comes out of the ohio department of health order of september 3rd which states that schools must notify within 24 hours of a positive coveted test those in close contact so um as a part of that because of the nature of teams if one of the team members tests positive then that's a quarantine for the entire team and we were concerned through rumors that we've been hearing through the community that perhaps this has led some students not to report um their cova test which is of course incredibly important in reporting that is is incredibly

010important in helping us as a community to keep control over this pandemic as much as we can so the athletic department issued a new expectation or requirement that anyone with a positive test or diagnosis or anyone who is identified as having a close exposure or close contact must notify the athletic department within 24 hours and if they don't then they are immediately dismissed from their team um and if it's the end of the season then they'll be dismissed from the next season's team that they participate in uh it's just it's just um incredibly important and on that note i will say that um i think dr miller will talk a little bit more about our numbers both franklin county and and um bexley in the last two weeks have gone up markedly just the case

011reporting and so it is extraordinarily important that people remember the the requirements of social distancing and wearing masks especially with our students as parents we have a responsibility to make sure our children's behavior complies with those directives and as somebody who has recently suffered from cryovid i can tell you it is not um is not any fun and it is it is still a mystery how we get it that much is clear and in in i mean i don't know whether mysteries right were but i can tell you i was incredibly careful and i still got it so it's out there it's in our community and we all need to act like we have it and the people around us have it and and be thoughtful and considerate but be separate and keep your masks

012on um so that's my statement on operations and then just briefly on diversity inclusion we've been talking about a board for you know a long time how we can support our equity efforts that have been ongoing in this district for many years now and in addition to reading the book so you want to talk about race as a board we've also determined that we think it's important for um board members to sit on anti-racism task force so um alicia mitchell and victoria powers will be doing that for us and we look forward to to their work and their input and their um ability to report back to our board um and so i think that is it for me not that that was um short so moving on to our vice president ms mineo hey

013thank you miss snowden um and as you guys all heard ms known kind of covered our policy uh what's going on with the policy committee as far as the um legislation that's of interest things i wanted to share of the state board of education is working on their budget it should be adopted in mid-october um our treasurer mr smith shared this with us a few weeks back but it's worth noting again that a change um to the cares to cares has resulted in a positive uh positive benefit for us we're gonna uh it's gonna that's a benefit to us and then um recently introduced legislation i thought these were interesting um there's a house bill 763 they're looking to terminate the coved 19 state of emergency in ohio um house bill 365 is uh was

014introduced to continue electronic meetings house bill 368 is wanting to prescribe the use of phonics k-5 and house bill 372 is looking to create um holocaust and genocide memorial and education commission so if you have any strong opinions on any of those subjects you should reach out to your legislators your legislators to give input on that so that's the legislative update regarding um staff and student learning i got a report from miss abraham which we might be hearing more i'm not sure what she's sharing later on um but first of all big thanks to everybody who has made the transition to hybrid um as successful as it has been the teachers the students the staff everybody involved in the process it's been i can only say as a parent on my end i it's been

015pretty seamless and so i'm very appreciative to everybody who has made that happen um as far as upcoming pd for our staff we have two upcoming pd days october 16th and november 3rd they're going to be focusing on digging in deep with the social emotional panorama data the ohio state reading test for our third grade students is scheduled for the week of october 19th um i do have to put a plug in there as a parent of two of my three students had to have special special focus and attention to get ready for the third grade reading assessment so thanks very much to all of our elementary school teachers who are supporting our kids as they approach that um that step and then grades 9 through 11 we'll be taking the psat on october 14th

016it says psat and ms qt okay so i only know my ninth grader's taking the psat okay and this is a big one i think that it's good it's really important to highlight that we had our first parent institute last week and it was virtual that was left lisa smith thank you very much it was on um microaggressions if you were not able to attend uh there's a recording that's available for you to participate after the fact our next parent institute is um on october 21st and it focuses it will focus on implicit bias and that's my report great thank you very much i appreciate it um mr burno uh thank you just a couple of things i i had echo what esminio said about the hybrid and how hard the teachers have been working

017in in getting kids back to school and again anecdotally uh my daughter is just is absolutely loving being back in school i never thought that i would hear her say that but um he's quite enjoying being back in school and you know having having that interaction and having that live uh delivery of instruction so uh i don't think that's what she's excited about but but she enjoys being back in school and having some sort of normalcy too um the only thing that uh that i've uh that i'm gonna report on this evening um and victoria might touch on this as well we had the finance advisory council uh that was led by mr smith in september 24th uh we talked a lot about financing a lot of stuff that's in the treasurer's report the good

018thing is uh what when kyle reported to us on at that meeting about the income tax payment in july was down 60 percent from the year prior um from you'll i'm sure he'll report on this about the collections have started to come in and and they're they're higher than what we had expected um obviously there was some delay in collection and and there was there was um the the county was was allowing people to delay in those payments so that was good news um coming after the finance advisory council we also talked about some of the there was some federal funding emergency relief that we spent on some devices and some public wi-fi that we're going to be looking at public wi-fi access points in school property also some of the expenditures we talked a

019little bit about that but the second part of the meeting was uh of of what we're going to start looking at um as mr smith will start looking at in regard to setting um setting up standards for our policy and our general fund reserve and and when when it hurts a certain point or even the pi lev or the pi fund hits a certain point when do we start looking at a new levy or when do we have to start taking measures when it hits a certain point but we're in the beginning stages of that we talked about that last year but having the finance advisory council for those of the public that don't know it's it's community members as well as uh miss powers and i and mr smith leads it we have a

020lot of um good good minded community members with financial experience that help us form some of our policies and give us good input on where we go uh from our financial standpoint so uh that was a really good meeting and and good to see some people that i haven't seen it forever even if it was on zoom but other than that i don't have anything else to report we haven't had an athletic board meeting and i reported last month in my meeting with mr pettit thank you great thank you very much um so moving on to ms mitchell hi everybody um i have quite a few things to report out for bef as you know our partnership with the bexley education foundation allowed us to um bring the one-to-one our devices to all of our

021students and while we were anxiously waiting and expecting those to arrive in november as many of you know they did arrive and they are actually in the deployment phase now our tech department is busy at work making that happen to get those devices in the hands of students but it is critically important that we continue to encourage our community to donate and support where they can the bef has a large task ahead of them to raise the equivalent of a million dollars to help fund this initiative and we cannot be more grateful that they took up this charge the um official launch of the campaign started october 1st you can go to the bef website and follow the links to the donation page for the devices so i want to thank everyone who has already

022uh committed to a three-year commitment and or anything at all donated anything at all it is a tremendous um we're tremendously grateful as a district that you not only prioritized our students but helped us be able to get this vital equipment in the hands of our students as quickly as possible they just finished the ordering um or accepting orders for the engraved bricks and pavers for the 2020 graduates for the bexley high school alumni piazza and walkway um the youth philanthropy program will meet tomorrow to discuss grant promotions um and then there's a couple of meetings back-to-back that are coming up the marketing and community relations committee and alumni committee will meet in the next couple of weeks and the executive board will also meet in the next week or so here as well and

023then last but not least bef has a a um jazz hold on let me get it so i'm not telling you incorrectly here they will be hosting leo morales who's a local latin jazz artist um who is going to do an interactive workshop here coming up in uh really excited that's um in celebration of spanish uh heritage month um so super excited that they're going to be able to bring that event to the community um i also attended the um microaggressions parent institute i'd like to thank miss smith for leading that discussion in that learning i think one of the most powerful moments of the microaggressions session was when miss smith pointed out that many of the examples that she was providing to the group um were actually student voice voices um and i think

024it's it's one thing when you're reading about something that someone else has said or heard it's another thing when you realize that those um those words belong to students that walk our hallways or have walked our hallways so i'd like to thank ms smith for participating in that uh or bringing that to us so that we can participate in that as a community and as a district um and for also for uh amplifying our student voices in that way um and then just really quickly um we have not had a facilities committee meeting um thanks to covid yay uh but um we i would like to just kind of piggyback um on um ms snowden's point about uh the title ix work that we're going to do um some of that work that policy work

025um has some overlap in the work that we're doing around equity and so as we're i'm talking about that as a board i'd like to encourage our board to be thinking also in in that context as we approach our board duties with policy review as it comes up there are very few things that the board of education is actually responsible for policies one of those so i have nothing else to report today great thank you ms mitchell i appreciate it and i did want to give a shout out to the bef for the um one for all campaign i thought that was such a clever name i thought somebody was thinking so everybody should look at the for the one for all campaign um okay moving on to miss powers you may be muted there

026you go you know i'm just unmuting thanks so much um a few different things to report on health and safety extracurriculars subcommittee met on september 23rd um this is the subcommittee of the task force that is continuing to meet to talk about safety issues led by uh dr williams um it's at the september 23rd meeting we discussed the importance of families reporting positive student code cases to the district as well as providing full information regarding close contacts for contact tracing marley talked about this in her presentation the district specifically requires the reporting for participants and extracurriculars and there's new guidance that marley talked about the primary concern of the committee this week with elevated numbers in the community is to send a consistent and loud message to our community about the importance of consistently following

027all of the cdc guidelines keeping in place those multiple layers of swiss cheese that we know you need each of those different slices of swiss cheese to to help stop the spread you know the mask wearing the distancing the hand washing and sanitizing and quarantining when appropriate so i'm just adding to the voice of others to remind our community about that we've done really well in our schools and um you know it's it's great that we can say that but we need to to keep at it bexley rec department had two meetings since our last board meeting on some september 2nd we met and the discussion focused on progress uh on the renovations and new work at jeffrey mansion we talked about the possibility of a new focus on conservation and providing a separate voice

028for the park through appointment of a jeffrey park advisory group and there was a report on the pre-k program at jeffrey mansion in the more recent september 30th meeting the main areas of discussion were first that this past week the wreck department started to provide jeffrey care at saint albans episcopal church and they're about 26 students there the busy day there is on wednesday when all students are out of the out of the school building in the hybrid model um they have worked hard the back the rec department has worked hard to find a location and they're very grateful to saint albans for providing them the space in addition there was discussion about an application from the bexley brew fest folks to hold their event again this year but in a limited and distance manner

029that would be on october 30th a final decision regarding this event which was very successful last year but you know obviously a different time this year there will be a final decision about that probably this week mr barno already reported on the finance advisory council meeting of september 24th i think i'm not sure i think he might have said that the report from mr smith was on income tax and i just want to make sure that it was property tax that we did well on i think we're still mr smith will correct us all but we had a good outcome with property tax we haven't haven't got the income tax in yet so i might have heard that wrong no you were right i i said i said property tax it's income tax i have

030it written right here and i read it and i said properties that are inc yeah okay um so um also just want to say that you know i won't reiterate anything else that john talked about but it was great to see new members on that committee from the community lots of great input from really strong community members so i'm very grateful for that the bexley covid task force i recently joined this group and i have attended recent meetings the discussion on september 24th centered around the plans for halloween the mayor made clear that while masks could be required others other um things that we would like to have the community do uh to make it a safe halloween are just strong recommendations they're not requirements for participation but they are strong recommendations and i know

031the city has put put those out um they include marking front walks to show safe social distancing passing out candy at the sidewalk staying six feet away as you pass out candy um you know just putting bowls out and the bowls should contain single types of candy so one bowl with one type of candy another bowl with another type of candy if there's any if you're passing out more than one kind um so the city has put out lots of information on that and i'll just add one other thing as sometimes ms snowden asked me to report on the ohio school board association updates i have been attending many of their webinars and town hall meetings i've previously reported on house bill 606 which is always an area of discussion and i'm just going to

032report that that bill was signed by the governor in september and it now does include a provision for immunity for schools against civil actions civil lawsuits for damages in which the allegation is that um the that there is damages caused by exposure to covid the transmission or contraction of covid so i had reported earlier that the schools were not going to be covered by that and they are so that bill went into if it was just signed in september i think that's all i have thank you great thank you very much um all right moving on to our student representative ms george hi all right so um tomorrow is our first meeting for student council we're gonna have it on zoom during lunch and we're really excited because we've been working really hard to get

033the word out um my exec board and our committee chairs we actually made a video that went out to all the students just promoting student council and just explaining what a great way it is to stay involved during this hard time because a lot of clubs are able to keep going through this um at our zoom tomorrow we're gonna just be brainstorming ideas on how to keep the student body involved obviously we have things like homecoming that won't be happening this year but important milestones like homecoming court and spirit week and how we're going to be able to keep those traditions going um we're going to talk about our charity month known as our clash of classes and how we're still going to be able to raise the amount of money that we normally do

034through this distance and just ideas in general to make sure this year is special for our seniors and for all our student body hey thank you sarah that sounds like a lot of work i appreciate very much you guys doing that and um and and lifting everybody up because this is not an easy time um and we appreciate your efforts very much um and again as always um when you need to go and do homework please feel free don't need to stay through our whole meeting um all right so then we're gonna move on to superintendent's um um comments and i just do wanna say um before i turn this over to dr miller um on my sincerest appreciation and gratitude for dr miller when she came on um just three years ago we were

035a very different district and i've been on the board for several years at that point and uh she was the main reason i wanted to run for re-election because i was really looking forward to serving with somebody of um of her dedication and intelligence um and experience so i think we have done so many um great things under her under her leadership and i'm just eternally grateful for the things that she's done for our district and our students and our community so um we have a little something for her from the board but um we'll we'll get that to you um dr miller in a way that is it is safe um and uh and we'll get that to you soon so hopefully tonight so with that um dr miller your comments well thank you

036very much i appreciate those kind words and and i'm going to um start with the business portion of my report and i'll come back to that part a little later so there were a number of items um that made sense for us to report on tonight and of course i have some help um doing this so we listed there on the agenda a number of items that we wanted to just provide an update to the board and so we'll do that so i'm going to start with um some of the work that's already been mentioned dr williams work around our risk mitigation and covid tracking and the health and safety work group from our task force as well as athletics and where we are with that so at this point i'm going to turn it

037over to dr williams to give you a brief report on where we are good evening everyone um just a real quick update uh i think i looked in our spreadsheet when i left school today we had since we started tracking information we we started off with uh four four people staff and students who felt sick and then eventually tested positive so we started out with four positive cases in a row dating back into late august through the middle of september and since then after that time we ended up with about 15 students who had symptoms got tested and they all came back negative um we've had one test a false positive that was verified then by two negative tests within 24 hours apart that we know of and uh in the last two days is

038going along with the message we keep hearing today and hopefully uh community keeps hearing as well is that we can't let our guard down um we're back in school our goal is to get kids back into school we want kids back in school but school can't be the only place where we're monitoring and supervising these types of behaviors um i just looked at the tracking sheet today before the meeting and we have five five uh staff and students who are getting in the last two days they're going in for testing we're waiting for results uh that's that's that's quite a high uh number for testing that i've seen that we've been tracking so far that kind of gives you an idea where we are on our um cova tracking athletically uh we're we're still preparing

039um or when are sports to occur and i and i and we didn't get much guidance as you know in the fall so we had to make some kind of community values-based decisions with input from the community task force or that we that i serve on and a lot of people serve on and and we have to make some tough decisions about we all want school to be back to normal we have to but we have to figure out uh what we'll tolerate as far as the other experience associated with schooling what will we tolerate as a community what do we want to try and then that's where i think me and my team come in as far as trying to help mitigate risk based on those decisions i've heard a rumor today i'm not

040sure if it's how true it is that a couple sports in the winter season are being looked at very closely uh i i don't have i've only heard this second hand so i don't want to start rumors but i think it's important to know that i think conversations are occurring around swim and i think the issue is about ventilation and the heat in a swimming pool and the humidity that's been one conversation as well as wrestling um dr miller sorry dr williams just to be clear about that when you say you've heard bubblings about that is that at the state level or at the county level or i think i think uh um what i've there was a discussion day at a superintendent's meeting at the esc that was information that was being shared with

041superintendents gotcha that was then shared with me gotcha um as far as other sporting information around this is that uh the swim team also has another obstacle we're trying to work around right now until we hear otherwise and that is a csg is not allowing us to rent their gym or their sooner they're not their natatorium um uh right now and uh because of that uh we have to mr goldberger's been looking for other uh pools jcc st charles and see and to see if we could find another place um for our kids to swim and i met the other thing that we looked at so far is how basketball will look in the gymnasium uh we think we can put 180 people in the gymnasium at our 15 capacity um and we we've been

042looking at different ways how we would configure that i met with coach wojack logic from our cheerleading coach to talk about how how cheerleading would work because obviously with the cheerleadings and the chanting indoors that's something we have to put some mitigating steps in place sharing with masks would be one things like that but we haven't heard any other guidance from the state i expect something they'd be coming down pretty soon that would help guide us so right now i wouldn't say we're flying blind because we've got a lot of experts and we're doing a lot of research on this to put things in place but um i think that that quickly summarizes uh the cova tracking that we have as well as where we are athletically right now for the winter sports season dr

043williams can i ask you one more quick thing um our we are using the i know we don't have a ton of guidelines but there are but we are using the responsible restart ohio for youth um sports right that's kind of our starting point yes okay so they have mandatory things in there about spectators and practice and games and tournaments and equipment and facilities kind of stuff right correct including our bus travel and that kind of stuff okay so that's where we're starting from um yeah i was reading through that document and i was pretty pleased with some of the detail on it um and i think it's interesting that they broke it down in between the mandatory and recommended best practices um so i appreciate you guys going through and look and following all

044that as well i did not mean to apply we weren't following it just we got that really late into the fall season right that was the difference right like you had to you had to start before they had finished their um that document so now we're oh now we've got both things um meshed so that we're following all the rules dr williams um i believe you have but um that responsible restart ohio guidelines are we making sure we're furnishing that to the the um student athletes and their families so that like specifically like with either the the individual sport codes of conduct you know when they give the kids um stuff at the start of the season i just want to make sure that we're making sure they're getting that multiple times and in multiple

045ways yeah we've been sending out the health pledge um every i think sunday night we try to send an email out comment as a reminder to everyone our coaches have responsibilities too as far as assessing students they're coming into practices and games and and we track that information as well so i think i i so the short answer questions i believe yes everyone that needs that communication has received that communication and i will also while i have the opportunity is to thank our coaching staff uh for doing such a wonderful job i mean a lot of schools around us have had teams that have had the quarantine and right now i'm happy to say we haven't been in that place we've had a couple close calls but we haven't been that position yet thank you

046um any other questions for dr williams on this section all right um dr williams do you have more for us i do not but thank you back to dr miller thanks thank you i'm actually going to turn it over again to somebody um so you asked about an update on our one to one um thank you miss mitchell for providing some information already on that but i've asked mr pettit if he could also give a little bit more of the detail around where we are with uh the distribution of the chromebook so mr pettit thank you dr miller as ms mitchell touched on as i'm sure many of you know our order of chromebooks for grades two through twelve were delayed about three months and we were concerned it would be delayed even further as

047we heard from other districts who were waiting as well but uh we were patiently waiting while we started our hybrid learning and a couple weeks ago we got word that they may be coming soon and it turns out they arrived the next day we were initially told we would get a two-week warning but we were happy to have them for sure since then we've been doing all the pieces necessary to get them rolled out unboxing testing updating inventory uh getting devices assigned the tracking of chargers and carts so our first rollout was at the elementary grades two through five we started that today and that will go through the 12th that has been going smoothly thus far we'll follow this up with rolling out to middle school starting on the 20th while we are preparing

048those devices we will also be inventorying and assigning ipads that were initially for grades uh kindergarten and first grade we'll circle back and make sure we get those to students then we'll roll out high school devices on the 26th and that will run through the 30th so besides the roll out elementary parents will be receiving an email from me tomorrow morning going through some of the tips and tricks for the devices some of the details about care reiterating digital wellness and a few other pieces toby fisher our tech integration coach and i will be putting together some additional resources and videos as well and i want to thank the bexley education foundation for all their support and work to make sure this happens uh we're really excited to get this out to students thank you

049well i really appreciate i mean that's talk about herculean task that's a lot of work trying to get all those out that quickly that's an aggressive timeline and i really appreciate you doing it because i have heard from several parents that you know part of the biggest struggle this is having to share their laptop with their kids so um this will will make a huge impact so thank you okay thank you ready for me again okay so um we also wanted to provide an update on the work around equity and anti-racism that we've been doing as a district and so um i asked miss smith to provide um a kind of a written report that i could share with you tonight so i'm going to do that and much of this has actually been out

050in our weekly newsletters as well we're trying to keep this on the forefront of our community's mind so they know the work we're doing and to echo well ms snowden and miss mitchell indicated this is not new work for bexley it's work we've been doing for years i can only speak for the last three years but it has been around even before that um but we've talked about just as we accelerated our work with one to one because of covid um the events of the summer and really the the very much the emphasis that we know we need to put on on this work we've accelerated our work and intensified our work but it's not different work so i think that's important for the community to know but the bexley city schools anti-racism task force

051was established in september there are 22 members including administrators teachers parents students alumni community members and representatives from various community organizations and thank you tonight that two of your our board members will be serving on that as well there are three focus areas that and they've broken the work into work groups sort of like we did with our uh back to school task force um kind of that divide and conquer kind of approach so one area is to look at policy and practice another area is to do some surveys and of our staff our students in our community and the third area is around an equity audit the policy and practice group will review current policies and make recommendations for policy updates this working group will also begin drafting a bexley city schools anti-racism equity

052policy for the board and district to review the surveys working group will focus on survey tools and questions for students parents guardians and staff to make recommendations on what the goals of each survey should be so that input can be collected from these important groups and third the equity audit working group will collect sample audits and research companies and or people that do equity audits in order to provide recommendations to the district on a possible tool that we could use so um i think it's important to know we've put some structures in place in the district for a number of areas where we'll full group together and we'll do some research and then find tools so we did that around mental health and well-being with the panorama tool and so the the task force um

053the equity task or the anti-racism task force will be doing that for that equity work so similar uh structure so that's um the reason i share that is it's good news to know you have structures in place that can be applied in multiple areas and so there's experience and actually ms smith led the work around panorama so she's she's led that type of work already for us another area is district professional development be the change implicit in institutional bias modules the implicit and institutional bias module is the first in the be the change professional development series created by the college of education and human ecology at the ohio state university this series features online professional development related to race racial equity and social justice for k-12 educators our director of student community engagement represents bexley

054city schools as part of a collaboration between osu the college of education and human ecology and public school educators the modules are organized into six sessions each of which includes two parts part one is self-paced and is completed online by each participant part two is a facilitated session featuring small group discussions and activities to complement part one and our administrators started the modules last month and our staff will be working on the modules beginning this month the department of staffing student learning and the district pd committee are preparing for the october half day professional development on the 16th and the full day on november 3rd part of october's focus will include anti-racism work with the osu modules for the work in november there will be a heavy focus on anti-racism work including continued work with

055dr hassan jeffries work with dr cynthia tyson both from osu and more work with the osu modules so once again our partnership with osu is very beneficial as we move this work forward and then in the third area um we obviously want to work with our students we want to do work with our staff but we also want to do work with our community and so parts two and three of our three-part anti-racism series at the parent institute will take place on october 21st and november 11th the october session will focus on implicit bias and the november session will focus on privilege um and then high school career college counselor in participation with the bexley minority parent alliance and the best the anti-racism project is hosting a college panel conversation facilitating conversations and connections between

056bexley families of color and leaders in college admissions that will be held on sunday october 18th at 7 00 pm via zoom so quite a bit of work taking place in the district on a regular basis and in different areas so again thank you to ms smith for her leadership in that area and also to ms abraham who works very closely with ms smith on on the development of that professional development for both staff and our parents um also wanted to give an update on our communications council that we wanted to get going i've shared with um dr goode a list of names of people that we would like to invite to be part of that community or the communications group so um i i have not convened the group because of the transition felt

057that it would be best to let dr good do that and so he has the list of names um thank you to all the board members who also um identified folks that you thought might be helpful and also i believe the board wanted to name a representative to this particular group as well so we'll look forward to you identifying a person from among you who would be happy to serve on another committee i know you're all getting very busy with quite a bit of committee work but but thank you for doing it any questions on any of that so the next big area to report on really has to do with where we are in our learning plan so we are two just a little over two weeks into our hybrid learning plan um it

058is great to have students back in the buildings and we have had students in the building from the very beginning because we knew that some students would have to come in but to actually have larger groups of students to be able to see students in classrooms has been very energizing i believe for all of our staff to have kids around so that's that's that's great overall um hybrid is going well students are following expectations in terms of masks and distancing um and actually students are wearing some really great looking masks and seem to really be enjoying showing off their masks so those are great i commend all the parents for finding those wonderful masks for your kids um i've enjoyed seeing those um some successes wednesdays are working well to bring the whole class together

059of students virtually which supports the continued classroom community we've been very fortunate with good weather and so we talked a lot if you recall as we were putting our plans together in the summer that we would use outdoor space as much as possible and so we're able to go outside for lunches and recess and even some of our classes have been able to go outside so so that's been really good the arrival of the chromebooks obviously will further support our students learning in the hybrid space we're really i'm excited and again thankful to mr pettit and his team for getting those out to students in a really short timeline and then students are very focused um with only being in school two days they're very focused on the days that they're there so that's been

060great there are challenges as well um for some students it can be challenged to it's sometimes a reach a challenge for them to refocus after three days of remote learning and so so that sometimes is difficult for some of our students um we are facing as all districts are a shortage of substitute teachers um just i believe yesterday we were short three subs at maryland um we are working hard to identify people that would be interested in being what we would call a regular sub so they would report every day um other than wednesdays but we sometimes even need help on wednesdays if we can identify three to four for each building the plan is to actually give them a bexley email account and give them access to canvas and google classroom substitutes have a

061different role in this environment and so the technology access is really important so we're working to identify so if anyone out there has a college degree and is interested in subbing please apply through the esc of central ohio contact one of our building principals if you're interested in working in a particular building um again you do not have to have a degree in education we certainly would love that but if you have a college degree and you would be interested in working with students and teachers in this space we really could use you every day um i know we've specifically tried to focus maybe on some recent graduates who may not have gotten full-time work in this environment so definitely need to find some people that we can count on to come in on a

062regular basis this is quite a bit of work for our teachers um i just want to underscore hybrid is the most complex way to do school because teachers have to prepare for the students who are in front of them and understandably need to give 100 of their attention to the students who are there they're also teaching students who aren't with them at the same time this isn't really about students leave that the teachers really are having to plan for multiple groups of students at exactly the same time and so it's very complex um and so i i just ask that people understand that i think overall our community is extremely supportive of our teachers and we appreciate that but it is a complex way to manage school um it's already been talked about a little

063bit tonight about the importance of being diligent in order to keep students in school and i'm going to ask mr trill dr abby norris is on our call and if he would give her the ability to to join us as well because you may have some questions over the information i'll share next and i would much rather an expert in the field answer those questions than me and so um she was kind enough to offer her um some time to be with us tonight so i asked mr trill to give dr norris access to be able to speak on the panel um not not surprisingly once we return to hybrid people have been asking so when are we going to all in when are we going to have more students in school and i think

064it's important that you know we all know that that's what we all want we all want as much normalcy as possible and we also know that students in school five days a week is the best learning opportunity for them but we do have to remain diligent and we have to look at the data and the criteria that we set forth for making decisions um and again i'll let dr norris talk more about this if you have questions but in the last two weeks from september 8th to the 21st um bexley cases have gone i said that incorrectly bexley cases have gone up in the last two weeks so from eight september 8th to the 21st there were eight cases and from september 22nd to october 5th there were 27 cases that's in bexley within the

065city of bexley school district it is present covid19 is present locally and regionally and the two-week covid19 incidence rate for 100 000 in bexley is over the threshold for high incidence um and the two-week rate for franklin county is at the high threshold so um high being 100 new cases per 100 000 population and so both in bexley and in franklin county we are high for cases right now um and as dr williams reported we have no active cases in the school district at this time though we do have people being tested and so that's based on what we know right now um i think it's critical that all residents as we said are following the protocols of masks distancing and staying home of six communicating to the schools of positive cases or illness we

066want to keep our students in school but it takes the entire community doing their part in order for that to happen um and then based on our the guidelines that we set forth in appendix b of our back to school plan i would not recommend that we move to more in-person school at this time and i'll go over why a little bit so when we developed appendix b it laid out the criteria that we would look at to determine if we would have a change in learning plan from distance to hybrid to all in to back to hybrid or back to remote and i want to remind everyone that from the beginning from from june we've said this will likely be a year where we will be moving from learning plan to learning plan at

067different times based on what's happening in our community in our county and our state and so we have to be able to be flexible but in that appendix b um that that really is what what i would call a decision framework where we said these are the things we'll look these are the criteria and then we'll look at the numbers related to those criteria and then analyze that and and make a decision and so i want to remind you what our criteria were and then some analysis one of the things we look at is the alert level in franklin county as of last thursday franklin county is still orange or level three i'm sorry level two we have not dropped to level one we're still at level two and have been for a number of

068weeks that's good news but we haven't dropped any farther from there when we back earlier in the summer we most school districts were looking at tying our learning plan just to the alert levels and then we had guidance that said you should look at more criteria than that but at orange the guidance was to stay to be in hybrid and so we're still in orange our second area was to look at positivity rates and case numbers in both bexley and franklin county prior to a few weeks ago we were really only getting our franklin county numbers and now we're able to get our school district numbers we didn't say we'd ignore franklin county and just take bexley and we didn't say we ignore bexley and just look at franklin county we said we'd look at

069both because that's the better way to make a decision so while the county is doing relatively well according to the call that i was on this morning with dr roberts of columbus public health and mr mazzola from franklin county public health we're still at orange and there's been a slight decrease in cases in the county but our case numbers are still right around that 100 per 100 000 number which is higher than what we want um and again bexley cases have risen over the past two weeks the positivity rate in franklin county according to dr roberts this morning is is maybe just slightly under five percent but that really hasn't gone lower than that and guidance has been you want that even lower to have more in person and so we're at a good spot

070but we're not really dipping down any to a point where it's saying this says you should go all in we also said we'd look at trend data over time and if you'll recall we talked about trend data over time being three to four weeks we've only been in hybrid for two weeks we don't have a trend to see what's going to happen in our schools um that coupled the fact that we haven't been in long coupled with the increase in bexley in the last two weeks doesn't suggest more in-person learning at this time um my my recommendation would be to give it another at least another couple of weeks get that three to four weeks and then see where you are and then and then make then reassess the situation um and then we also

071said we would collaborate with franklin county public health and both franklin county and columbus public health officials have indicated that they do not plan to change their guidance from the hybrid model at this time they are not making a recommendation to move forward um i'm going to stop there before i talk a little bit about all in and what might be happening around the state so that if you have any questions about the numbers or what any of that data means i can ask dr norris to help with with those answers you're muted marley mute thanks um i've had the opportunity to um email with dr norris so i have had um many questions answered which i so sincerely appreciate um so i'll let any other board members there you know there's so much to

072this and and a lot of what dr norris has been able to answer for for me are really questions that get down into the weeds of the numbers themselves um not being an epidemiologist or a statistician or anything of the sort um it can be really challenging to understand what numbers um are reported when sometimes they even look like they're conflicting when in fact they're just looking at different data points so i don't know how many board members have been diving into those numbers um so i'll just leave it up to you all to ask any questions that you have um i would like some clarification a little bit on the difference between the franklin county numbers versus bexley numbers hello hi sure is this for me or for you dr miller i think it's

073for you norris that's for you i'd like just a little bit more clarification on um what those numbers how you're pulling those data points just to marley's point you're obviously looking at different sets of data and are we should we be looking at the same consistent data to get the same information or is it important to grab from multiple sets of data to get a clearer picture so if you could just kind of explain that a little bit more sure um so the first to answer your first question about franklin county data so um i don't and no one in this district um is kind of computing or recomputing the incidence rate about franklin county um there are two kind of graphs that get pushed um that get pushed out uh over time that reflect

074franklin county incidence data so one of them is the ohio public health advisory system and that's the one that gets updated every other friday by the governor's office with those color-coded county maps and the way that they calculate those numbers is to look at cases in the last two weeks and standardize that to uh to you know per 100 000 population um and those are numbers that um i'm sure some folks have been looking at each time each two weeks that they get released um the new source of data that's just come on board in the last couple of weeks is something called cats and this also produces an estimate of the incidence in the county over time and um it also pulls from the same surveillance system that the state uses it's all sort

075of one big database that cases go into um but the cats system so this one that's just come on board waits a little bit longer after cases have been reported so the franklin county incidence that comes out of that that cat system looks a little bit higher over time compared to the data that gets released every other week because the data that get released every other week kind of have um some preliminary results embedded in them so they're a little bit incomplete and those cats data that come out later include more cases just because you know some people um some of the records are incomplete or there's follow-up um sometimes the dates are categorized incorrectly when the laboratory first reports so it's basically just a cleaner data set um that's being used for cats um

076so that's the answer about the franklin county data does that make sense yes perfect so they're not they're not really in conflict it's just that one is a little bit more preliminary and one is more complete and because the population denominator stays the same the more complete data is always a higher number because the cases only they only go up um when you have it i'm sorry i didn't mean to cut you off go ahead nope that wasn't and are they only estimates of cases are there confirmed cases by the time they go through the cats they are confirmed cases and actually the the other thing that happens um that gets that is sort of responsible for changes sometimes and how cases look is that the state really likes to record cases according to the

077onset of symptoms instead of the reporting date and so sometimes cases that get reported on a given day then get moved to an earlier time point so we might have thought we understood what was happening say in a specific two-week period and then later on when we go back and look we see some cases have been added to that two-week period and it's because someone looked a little more carefully about when that person's symptoms started and moved the case a little bit further back on the calendar and that's all who's making those decisions that's like that's a case investigator and a contact tracer and a laboratory team that sits with cases at the ohio department of health and looks through the record to categorize people actually yep and actually that that information that sort of

078movement the the kind of making of the sausage isn't visible to that to the outside world that's all a process that happens at the level of the state um and isn't sort of um visible unless one has access to the surveillance the sort of line item surveillance data dr norris could you maybe explain you you explain this to me today that even though there might be multiple numbers based on what the date that people identified the case etc as you were just explaining but even looking at slight differences in the data aren't they all painting a similar picture yeah so this is one of the one of the um kind of um sort of um confidence building components of this data that we've been looking at in the few in the last few weeks so

079um you can imagine that depending on kind of which system you're pulling data from or as as dr miller said which date is kind of connected to a case or um even things like um if you're looking at cases counting a week as a monday to a monday instead of a friday to a friday so things that seem kind of arbitrary um sometimes you sometimes things jump around a little bit with those with those um differences and it's quite complicated to figure it out in this case the the qualitative conclusion no matter how you look at the data is that cases are going up um so whether the rate is exactly at 100 per 100 000 or whether it's 120 per 100 000 or 107. um a hundred thousand a hundred per hundred thousand is

080the cut off and um all of these data that we're looking at kind of no matter no matter how you how you look at it all all show an increase in cases um now i'm talking about bexley in in the last couple of weeks compared to the weeks before that and what's our ratio for bexley like obviously it's not 100 per 100 000 so that cats report that just came out at the beginning of the week had us at 102 per hundred thousand um franklin county public health um doesn't use the same date that the cat system uses to assign dates so from the case reports that we're getting from franklin county public health the rate is a bit higher um but the the the trend is the same as i say over that high

081threshold of 100 per 100 000. and i should say that's a that's a two-week incidence which is what um what's been the recommendation from the beginning because you want to be able to smooth out um you know kind of strange bursts in in testing or other other kind of things that might jolts the data so you look at it over a two-week period to make sure that you're not seeing you know just capturing one strange day for example or even one strange week so it's those are all two-week incidence numbers do you do you know um dr norris do you this franklin county i can never find it and maybe it's because it's not published is franklin county uh publish or make public uh positivity rates because i know the state of ohio does but

082i don't believe franklin county does um and maybe i'm just missing or not looking in the right place so i was just curious about that um i imagine that they probably do but i don't i don't know if they do um and i imagine it's been discussed here before but there's um for franklin county data data that capture the entire county that's generally available through the ohio department of health dashboard if you click on the county it will give you a lot of parameters about the county and i don't know but but percent positivity might be in there the data that are available through franklin county public health the entity fcph um doesn't actually include all of franklin county data um but maybe that's been described before here so i won't confuse it if i

083won't belabor it if others already know that yeah i think the oda the ohio department of health i believe they show the positivity rate um for the entire state but i don't you can click on the county and you can get data and information and the trends it's a little bit different to franklin county public health so maybe the better question is is there anywhere where that that you're aware of even if it's specific to bexley were they where uh positivity rates are made um easily accessible by the to the public i definitely do not know of a place where you could get bexley's specific positivity rates and that's generally because the surveillance systems they don't track the number of tests done they just track the positives so the data on positives per test done

084come from a different place than um than what ends up in the surveillance system and so what gets communicated about bexley's cases never includes the total number of tests done so i don't know how one would calculate a city specific positivity rate okay thank you yeah i just want to add that i've had the opportunity to review this information and through serving on the committee of this of the task force have had the the benefit of um the input of the epidemiologists and and medical doctors that have been helping the the district and in particular i want to extend a great thank you to dr turner in particular and everyone on the task force who have provided us with this incredible detailed information and data and then broken it down and explained it so that

085we can understand it and it's very very helpful to us so i just want to say big thanks for that so any any other questions about the numbers again i i think just to reiterate what dr norris explained to me earlier around yes they're different slightly different data sets but all giving the same general picture which is cases are going up a little bit um and so i want to go back to um when would we make a change in learning plan and again we we laid out a decision framework in our appendix b and so i went through all of those when you look at those four different areas that we said we would consider the data right now it doesn't suggest we should go remote but it doesn't also suggest we would go

086all in now you can change the decision framework if you want to you could make it something different but when we put this appendix together um it was with the guidance of public health it was listening to our epidemiologists and doctors and looking at multiple areas multiple criteria to make a decision about how to change learning plans and it's complex as dr norris just made it clear it's it's complex to understand um but again at this point my recommendation would be to go at least another week or two in hybrid and look at the data then to see if it suggests a different picture but my recommendation based on the decision framework that was approved by the board on september 1st would be that you stay in hybrid for now even though i know it

087is extremely complex for teachers that's that's what i would recommend i also do want to address a little bit of all in because certainly board members i know you and i have gotten requests from parents saying well this is what other districts are doing why aren't you doing that um and it's always hard sometimes we're supposed to be like other districts and sometimes we're not and so it's a complex uh as one of my colleagues on our call today said there's a tension between trying to give people what they want and also trying to create stability and continuity and safety and so there's a there's a tension there but um in franklin county the only district that's all in at this time is new albany schools and dr sawyers reported that they started all in

088yesterday now all in about 30 percent of their students have have elected their e-learning academy which is the same e-learning uh provider that we are using which is schools plp so all-in for them is about 60 percent so um i will share that um dublin reported that they are working with their similar team of doctors and epidemiologists there in their city and they're considering going all in but they have not made that decision at this time if you start looking outside of franklin county you'll start to see more districts that are all in but um the guidance in from different public health departments is different the public health departments are not giving the same guidance to school districts across the state so for instance in my old home area of butler county hamilton county in

089the cincinnati area they've gone back to red for multiple weeks but they're still all in school they started the school year all in and so it's just a different a different location and so um that's why we see different uh decision-making across the state and if you'll recall ohio really left these decisions up to individual school districts to determine what to do and um but we also have policies that say we'll listen to public health and that's what we've done so again our appendix b our decision framework is based on the guidance of of those who are experts in this area um i will say just for example when i talk about different counties delaware and licking counties are advising school districts that they can go back with less than six feet of distance if

090there's at least at least two barriers so if all students and all staff are wearing masks that's your two barriers and then they're going less than six feet of distance to get everybody all in that's not been our guidance and our local work group has also continued to talk about the six feet of distance until you get the community spread to a lower level um i can tell you um there are districts that have been in all year and they haven't had an influx of cases but again their their guidance has been different so you know even even i looked at the updated american academy of pediatrics guidance and on spacing and they you know suggest six feet of distance that say it may not be feasible in some cases and indicate that um you

091have to make a decision about what's in the best interest of the students and the public health and what's going on in your local community when you make those decisions so those are all things that we have been doing um even and i will say with the american academy of pediatrics though they did suggest that or not suggest but indicated that adults should remain at least six feet away from other adults at all times but the student to student may be closer and so it's just slightly different guidance um but when we hear i understand when community members might mention a school district in another part of the state that's all in please understand that their public health departments may be giving different guidance than what we're getting in in franklin county and again it

092is only guidance we are not legally bound to to follow it the board is not um but those are the decisions we've made thus far so yeah going through all that dr miller because um i know that we've heard from a lot of community members that they want to have a number or a color or whatever like you were saying so they will be able to know when we will go over and and i continue to believe that our appendix b that has flexibility built into it by its nature it doesn't provide that that specific number because i don't think this pandemic has taught us that we should be strictly following any one thing other than mass and distancing but there's so much variability that goes on that i think it's really important to have

093these different factors and some flexibility within those factors so thank you and i would encourage thank you i would encourage to to continue to have trend data um as dr north said they already look at the numbers as a two week average but even with that if you can see three to four weeks of going in the right direction that helps you to know okay it's okay for us to make a change but when you're two weeks in hybrid and the numbers in the community are ticking up that's why i say i don't know that i would recommend changing it right now i think i my recommendation would be to to keep watching it for at least another week or two and see where the numbers are and then and then you reassess again at

094that point yeah good thank you very much go ahead i asked another one question really quick so you mentioned that this was interesting in new albany all in for like all in for that means 60 of their student population what can you give us an estimate of like what percentage of our student population um would be in person in brick and mortar so i know what i can tell you is about five percent signed up for the e-learning academy we do have some students who are not coming in um and what we've asked is that if it's for medical reason or some type of other ada reason that they notified the school so that teams can be convened is there a 504 that needs to be written is there a special education plan is there

095a medical reason why and so um so we've been doing that in the district but um i don't have i i didn't pull that number i i don't know but again about five percent signed up for the e-learning academy and again i i will say this i've shared this other districts who also are using third-party vendors um for their content delivery we still have bexley teachers connected with the students um to a certain degree it's not it's not fully the same but um new albany for example is using the same provider that we are and they have i'll say 25 to 30 percent i don't i don't know from dr sawyer is the exact number but it's a larger percentage of students who select parents who selected that option so that answers the question very

096much thank you okay thank you okay so lots of reports but all good information um a couple things just to highlight that are on the agenda um you'll see that we're requesting that we hire a substitute custis custodian um that fits within the 224 000 number that the resolution on june 29th the budget cut amendment resolution allowed that was the amount of money that was not taken from our state funding back if you recall in the spring and so on june 29th you said that we could spend up to that amount um we have been a little bit understaffed in the custodial area and then that coupled with the additional cleaning requirements related to covid we really could use that additional custodian on the casting ham complex so requesting that we hire that person um

097also um ms snowden's already talked about policies so i'm not going to go over those but if anyone has any specific questions i can certainly answer those and then just finally um i wanted to thank you i'm just going to read a bit from my the letter that i submitted to the board i appreciate the opportunity that you afforded me when you selected me to be your superintendent in april 2017. i am very proud of the work we've accomplished together in just three years we have developed and implemented a strategic plan aligned our instruction around key goals developed the bexley learner profile reorganized our administrative structure to be more flexible and responsive implemented an instructional coaching model passed the levy significantly improved our access to and implementation of instructional technology developed a comprehensive technology plan

098and are implementing an expansive one-to-one program and we've opened the important conversations of mental health and racial inequities i'm very proud of the partnership and collaborative manner in which we've developed programs and solve problems we have become a high-performing team but now it is time for someone else to step in and lead the district forward to what is next i'm grateful to each of you for your individual support and partnership i wish you and the district the very best for continued success in engaging equipping and empowering our students so thank you very much for your support your friendship your kindness it just meant a great deal to me i appreciate our community our staff our students and uh i have to say especially the administrative team who um have been with me we are a

099very different district than we were in the fall of 2017 not because there was a problem but because the best organizations continue to grow and move forward and that's what we have done and i know that that dr good and if doctor whoever comes after dr good and after that person will continue to lead the district forward and i'm very grateful um for the opportunity so thank you very much thank you kim i appreciate it um all right so given all of that um that is our superintendent's report so i need a motion to approve items three b through j thank you uh this is a roll call vote uh mr smith that was the second by miss mitchell is that right did i hear that correctly yes yes thanks uh miss powers yes miss

100mitchell yes mr barno yes ms mineo yes miss snowden yes thank you so moving on to our treasures report um mr smith thank you uh tonight i'd just like to highlight a couple of items on the monthly financial report we received our final settlement with property taxes and as it's kind of already been mentioned i'm pleased to report that on a calendar year our delinquency rate is slightly lower than we expected in may of this year we forecasted an increase in delinquency rates primarily due to the unknown impacts of covid and how individuals would pay their property taxes if they could uh so we do see a little bit of it an increase or a higher collection than than what we thought from may of uh earth this year you've also heard a broken record

101from me about maintaining a cash balance to be able to withstand dramatic changes in revenues while i've mentioned the delays in property taxes and income tax collections i've really not talked about how another line's been impacted by by this that's shown on line 1.05 or the property tax allocation line this is a payment from the state of ohio that happens twice a year so you'll see on the monthly financial report this is the delay or an unexpected delay of 1.4 million dollars in revenue from the state this is a direct result of the property tax delay so the state relies on the county to provide the property tax numbers or the amount to the state because the county had to delay in tax collections that delayed the state so as of today we're about three

102million dollars behind in expected revenues but again back to my broken record of its important domain of cash balance we're able to weather the storm in delays in revenue and be able to just continue payroll and paying bills because we have a strong financial footing that's all i'd like to highlight so uh any questions on uh the monthly financial report uh mr smith do you mind um just refreshing my memory what's the [Music] legal requirements for cash balance for schools is it 30 days or is it there's there's no uh the legal requirement is to have a penny in the bank by june 30th okay so by the end of your fiscal year yeah by the end of the fiscal year you have to have a positive cash balance but um we the way cash

103flow works we need probably at least 30 days of cash on hand to be able to meet payroll um that would be bar that would be bare minimum in my opinion the the recommendation from several organizations is 60 to 90 days and that was the discussion that mr barno and miss powers mentioned was part of our finance advisory council meeting in september was to talk about what's an appropriate level of cash to have on hand on june 30th thank you any other questions for mr smith all right hearing none can i have motion approve item 4b please i moved second thank you all in favor please signify by saying i i i any opposed same sign that motion carries thank you all right so moving on to our staff and student learning section um ms

104abraham good evening so before you this evening i have a resolution that's brought to you annually at this time of year the ohio department of education requires districts to um offer career technical education to students in seventh and 8th grade but districts are able to request a waiver so adoption of this resolution would allow bexley to once again request a waiver for the 2020-2021 school year thank you does anybody have any questions for um miss abram about this item all right good then can i have a motion to approve item 5 b please second thank you all in favor please signify by saying aye hi hi any opposed same sign all right that motion carries as well thank you so we are moving on to our um public participation section uh obviously it's a little

105bit different right now i'm being on zoom and because of the limited nature of of webinars it makes it difficult for us as a single shoe is going to sign up and speak in any order so we've asked people to email your intention to speak to um public comment of excel us and um so mr trill do we have any of those tonight sure we just have one tonight and it is from marla rose so marla if you are still in attendance uh please hit there we go uh i'm gonna allow you to talk and then uh the floor is yours hi can you hear me yep i can sorry before you speak i just wanted to um to note that i'm not sure if this was communicated in the in the section um but

106just that even though we do encourage public comment because we want to hear from our community members but um we don't ha it's not a q and a session with the board so even though we we do look forward to hearing your comments prayer board hall so we don't respond to public comments so if you could just state your name and address when you start and limit your comments to about five minutes we'd sure appreciate it sure thank you that's fine um my name is marlo rose we live on stanwood 30 north stanwood i have a son who's a senior this year at bexley high school i had a son that graduated last year and i just wanted to first reiterate uh what mr barna said in his early comments about uh it's been great

107to have my son back to school part time at least it's made a difference i think and he would tell you otherwise that he doesn't really care because that's the way 17 year olds are but i really think it does make a difference in his engagement and his focus i think their sports team he plays sports and i think their team is even playing better in the last couple of weeks just having more of that bonding opportunity together in other ways and i agree i think it's clear from several factors that parents and many experts agree that there's really no substitute for in-person learning i i wanted to thank the board for what they've done toward that um superintendent miller has has been a good um person to have in that position and and i

108appreciate all the work that's that's gone into making this happen and also i appreciate the fact that it is a lot of work to do the the hybrid learning i decided to join the meeting tonight because i had heard the sort of rumblings about the uptick in in cases and concern about that and mostly i wanted to urge everyone to keep keep in person that the hybrid model at least if we can't go back full time make that a real priority and not be committed to um you know any one number or standard that would especially um send kids back to remote i think that should be an absolute last resort um i feel very strongly that and and i think the majority of parents do that we really need to have kids in school

109is best for all kids um but especially ones that that have any any issues i feel really bad for students that they're already disadvantaged in any way my son would be okay but it really makes a difference for everybody um also listening to dr norris turner describes some of those new measures i didn't understand what the new measure is that they have called cats or caps but there's a real lack of transparency there i heard her say i believe that you can't really know a positivity rate for bexley because that information isn't publicly available um and it just i i'm troubled by just going by these top line numbers and again staying in any kind of a rigid formula for for keeping kids away from school my i can say my son who graduated last

110year is living on campus at ohio state they have had i believe over 2 000 positives of covet there um and and as far as i'm aware no serious complications this is what a virus does you know you're going to get an uptick i think nationally there's been an uptick as we get into this season and then hopefully it subsides obviously it's important for everyone at home at school every place to maintain all of the the safety precautions um again i just wanted to thank you and and um oh one other point i wanted to make was going by the public health agencies that also it's they're all guidance it should not be gospel there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes about where they get the data that we can't know who they're

111consulting with franklin county uh board of health got involved with um an outside agency to write a lot of their talking points and get information from they came in late in the game when were instrumental in in keeping a lot of schools away from in-person learning early on that wasn't transparent at all to parents until the last moment which made many people nervous so anyway i i really appreciate all the work that's being done i recognize all the challenges um and again i just wanted to reiterate very happy to have the kids in school and i hope we can keep them at least in school part-time thanks a lot great thank you very much for the comments um mr trill no other members for uh public comment that that was it yep great thank you

112very much so we are now moving on to item seven um a that is our appointment um as for uh dr dan good to serve as our interim superintendent i just want to say how much i appreciate his his ability to come to our district and the work that he is getting ready to do is is significant um and i could not think of a better person to take it on i'm i am thrilled and relieved and uh frankly um you know excited to get to the work at hand uh dr good is very collaborative um he i think really feeds off community feedback and um has an excellent mind for our educational system and a heart for bexley so i'm very thrilled he's here and would like to take a motion to approve item

1137 a on our agenda so moved thank you second thank you any comments i did have a question um and and this is more for clarification for my purposes uh going over the contract i know it's a standard um statement of work um and i think mr smith can comment if he wants but i'm i'm going to characterize it what i believe that it is anytime that we have any work we have an ongoing comprehensive contract with with esc of central ohio and part of the statement of work uh that is part of the agenda that we're approving with dr good um the fee is at 22 378 per month that's not that's not his pay he's employed by dr good is employed by escco and then we reimburse them and that amount that 22

114378 is everything that goes on i mean it's clear in the contract of what it says but that's not what his pay is per month but that is part of the the pa his pay state uh unemployment taxes federal unemployment taxes everything that goes along with that strs scrs contributions all of that so that amount is es cco dr good will receive a paycheck and all the deductions all the taxes not only that they pay but on the back end as well and then we just reimburse them for all of their expenses that are associated with his employment um obviously as our superintendent am i am i correct in that yes in short you're correct okay okay um and then the other and this is based this is based on and i can't remember we

115discussed this before but this is based upon dr miller's current contract so it's as if dr miller was still still our superintendent just that dr good is doing it for the same rate and everything else that's going along with it is that correct as well that's correct this would not be any additional cost to the district and what we would have um seen dr miller been with us the rest of the year okay and then the last question that i have um we i think we talked about this as well i can't remember but dr goode has already done his transition days um dr miller was approved um through the career center upon approval of dr good he would then become our interim superintendent but prior to this dr goode has been already in the

116district already putting putting work in um and all of those days normally when you transition to a new superintendent we're paying we're paying additional pay but dr good and because of our contract with esc with esc dr good was able to to come in to do that transition with dr miller and and meet the staff go through all the buildings at no char no additional charge to the district is that correct as well mr smith yeah that's correct one thing i'd add about this uh relationship or statement of work it may not spell it out directly but contracting with the educational service center they would also provide a substitute in case something with dr good would change either of it essentially the esc would provide another substitute um and we would not be required or

117have a need to go out and search if something would change with dr good okay um i think that's all the ques those are more clarification questions and and especially because of um obviously it's not no comment on dr miller doctor and i just want to make sure as we're approving the contract that i fully understand it before i vote on it so i appreciate um at least i think i figured out all the terms at least you've confirmed that thanks any other questions i just wanted to add one thing based on mr barno's comments that i it's my recollection that it was through the generosity of esc of central ohio that we did not need to pay any additional amount for the days that missed that dr good was in our district leading up

118until tonight and that they donated that to us with no additional cost so that in fact we are not incurring any additional costs between what we would have paid otherwise for our superintendent this year and i just want to make that clear and say thank you for that um i think that's accurate but it might also be the characterization that they would view it as part of their contractual obligation with us to um to serve uh provide that kind of service so we're greatly appreciative of such high level service um any other questions on seven b all right then i'm sorry i guess we did take a motion a second because we've had a conversation about already so um that is a personnel item can we please have a roll call vote mr smith powers

119yes mr bardo yes miss mitchell yes this video yes the snowden yes thank you very much all right then we just have one other brief matter um we um i just wanted to inform the board that um i will be meeting with dr good to go over our board retreat for october 25th um in general i think we'll be looking at governance protocols and and establishing new um or maybe not even new but just making sure we all understand each other moving forward um with a different head administrator at our district so we'll look to um to define those roles um and be in and be clear on those that are border trait if anybody has anything specific you want to add to the agenda a few board members would please um email me i

120would appreciate that and we are looking for a location that will allow us room to to meet so all that is upcoming and that is it for the public matters of our board we need tonight we do have an executive session on marley real quick i don't know if this was the appropriate time um i didn't want to do it in my board report because i want to keep the meeting going forward but i just wanted to say a couple words of dr miller and publicly acknowledge um the work that she's done in the short three years i can't believe it's already been three years but i i especially be president for a couple of years and working closely with her um how hard i appreciate how hard you work dr miller all the time

121that we spent together talking about where we want to go as a district how the board and the administration could work together and and honestly what we had asked you to do you did when we did our interviews back when we had the the full search it wasn't even close to the to what from from my perspective anyway of of what your vision that you're bringing and what we asked you to do and you did it and um it was hard sometimes but you did it with into enthusiasm and hard work and i can't thank you enough for the direction that you've put our district in um the career center is is getting um a great professional um and a great person as well and i can't tell you how much i appreciate all of

122the work that you did and you know outside of work too and the conversations that we've had about a a number of things and and what you've done for our district um can't be measured and and with dr good taking over um i i'm very pleased with where we are now and i'm very excited for you your new adventure at the career center but i wanted to make sure that before your last official day as superintendent that i publicly acknowledged that and made sure make sure that you knew um at least for me and i think i speak for other board members i don't pretend to do that but how much i appreciate what you've done and especially like i said the two years that i was president i saw it firsthand and and most

123people don't know how much and how much you cared and how hard you worked but um they should and and again i i can't tell you how much i appreciate uh all you've done for us so again thank you very much thank you i appreciate that uh mr may have something i i have a little like words of appreciation that i'd like to share with dr miller too that's okay we're gonna give time i'll be fast um so dr miller here's what i want to say to you um i want to thank you for the structuring you've given us in our district the strategic structure you've given us in our district that allowed us to gather input from our stakeholders so that we could build a strategic plan that will guide our work past your

124time with us it's an important piece of the work that you did for us um your focus on aligning the curriculum horizontally and vertically has served our students and i can say personally the students who live in my home have benefited from that work and your dedication to communicating your connecting with our community during the levy season is again benefits that we will long that will be stay with our students long past your time with us um and i think i just want to like i guess i want to say my thank you for your leadership building the leadership team looking at leadership i can say that i have personally benefited from your work in areas of leadership so i thank you not only for the district work but for the personal growth um that

125i've had working with you um i know your passion is supporting each student on their path to success and i wish you luck in the next phase of your work because i know that i i i think that i wish you luck in the next phase of your work and i do think to echo with mr barnum so they do think it is important i didn't write this down but i do think it is important to recognize that the time you spent with us definitely was most not definitely not like an eight to five day on any given day there are many phone calls i had with you many emails my texts that started at 7am and it may be concluded after 10 pm so um your dedication 365 days 24 7 is very much

126appreciated i wish you all the best okay thank you thank you i would just reiterate what's been said your dedication your hard work your leadership have been really tremendous in our district i'm the person here that's worked the least with you but i can see um how much you've done for us and for our entire district and i really appreciate you and what you have have done and i wish you great success as you go forward thank you kim thank you dr miller it seems like um when you started i left and when i got back you're leaving so it's a really ironic um turn of events but you know how i feel about you personally um i am all for um forward progression and forward movement and so i wish you eternal success and

127oh boy for them to get ready to strap one when you get there because it's going to be a ride i'm sure thank you so much for always hearing my endless rants about equity in our district and and for being fearless enough to i want to stand and support that i don't want to belabor everyone and repeat all of those things because i think i at least i hope that you know we all feel um deeply about that um it is it is never lost on me that what we asked you to do as mr bernie said you you did so thank you for that good luck to you um and since you're still in the neighborhood it's not like you can really hide um but um from uh you know just talks about kids

128and what have you um i know you to be a truly super human being so i wish you the very best thank you very much thank you to all of you i appreciate it there we go all right so um with that i will move us into executive session we are um meeting tonight um i need a motion um for a resolution hold executive session according to ohio rise code 121.22 item a 2 and um yes a2 employment of a public official um can i have a motion please second i'm sorry victoria thank you so we have a motion and a second all in favor please signify by saying aye bye any opposed same sign okay that motion carries um on a technical front um mr smith i apologize did we um do we have

129a separate zoom set up for no we don't um that's right okay so we are we'll all meet with our mass socially distanced um and then we will come back to this meeting i don't anticipate that we will have any action to take after executive session if we do we will notice it at that time make note of it at that time and when we come back in but of course is since its executive session we don't know how long it will take so given that um i have a motion a second to move into uh sorry i have a um motion to move into uh executive session so we will do that now and we will come back when we're done all right so board members please sign out of this now thank you

130all right so we are all coming back after having been an executive session wait for my remaining board members to find their way okay so there is one two we're still waiting for mitchell to sign in there's one thank you um this video well actually i know she's just down the hall but um we have a quorum too you do to take action so we will just do that um we did not um we did not have any um board action to take after executive session so can i have a motion to adjourn our meeting a regular meeting of october 6th uh 2020. everybody's quick there you go um thank you very much all in favor please signify by saying aye hi hi any opposed same sign all right that motion carries thank you all

131very much for your work tonight