USD #244 Board Meeting April 2021

001dr thorpe are you there thank you thank you for joining us okay more i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay i'll just start with the general comment uh thanks for everybody for being here tonight um thanks for coming to speak to your school board and your district and your members we look forward to hearing what everyone has to say or what movie has to say here i do ask everybody that right now there's still a policy about mass in school whatever comes out of this meeting is going to come out of it so while we're here i ask everybody to wear the masks when you talk and to maintain social

002distancing if possible with that being said is there any additions or changes to the agenda senator um motion to approve the agenda as presented second what's that james yeah sorry i can't hear you tracy i and move on to student recognitions awesome if i could get our state qualifying team our state series team to please come down i'm really excited to recognize this outstanding group of young people can you hear me okay this outstanding group of young men and young women that were part of our 2021 wrestling season this season was like no other in terms of in terms of just simply how we live through it we started talking at the beginning of the season that one of our simple goals was to get to february you know and if we get to february

003still have a sport still stay active have wrestlers that are competing that we felt like we were going to be successful but we had to get to that point and i don't know if lindsay's in the room with the pear in the room i don't see lindsay but lindsay thanks to lindsay and to dr sawyer uh they kind of put together a plan that that we came up with that said what happens if we wrestle a co-vid kid uh because that's that's something that was very real that you know we lost a young lady for two weeks because she wrestled a girl with covet for 40 seconds and what we didn't want to have happen is be sitting there in january february before league in our big series and all of a sudden lose one

004of these young people so the whole thing is uh they're the survivors a lot of teams in our state a lot of wrestlers didn't make it through to that big series um before i talk about them individually real quick if i can get stacey reed to stand up he doesn't know that i'm going to say this but stacy won the kansas wrestling coaches association uh 2021 administrator of the year for girls division two his support from the way he started lobbying when we very first said we wanted to have girls wrestling stacey at our league level at the state level started lobbying on our behalf and he continued all the way through the day of the girls regional dave was off with his daughter watching and stacy went crazy working that day at that big

005tournament and then he was at every girls event that we had this year and he was one of the first people at the end of an event to come down and talk to our girls and tell them how great of a job he did so congratulations stacy on that award dave is back there i hate to bring it up but i've got to because i nominated both of our administrators they was what we call honorable mention we had over 30 30 administrators that were nominated for this award dave won the award for class 4a in 2014. and so dave was right there in the running for class 4a again so we've got tremendous administrator support this year um let's talk about this group we started the first of february normally we had two tournaments regionals

006and states this year the state thought with with cobit and numbers and everything else let's put together a gauntlet and let's start at the first weekend in february and we're going to wrestle for four weekends in a row and wrestle through that so literally we started at what was called the district tournament and you had to be in the top four to move on to the regional tournament which was hosted here you had to finish in the top four to move into what was called sub-state that's what we considered state day one because typically at that point you had the top 16 wrestlers in the state that were left from that standpoint and then the top four wrestlers moved on to salina for the last day of the state championship series so that's how that

007works we have eight one of them is not here catherine's not here with us but on the girls side um let's go through i'm going to start down the far end brylee itch bradley finished sixth at the state championship this year she also sang the national anthem prior to the championship ceremonies helping me tonight is part of our coaching staff we have three other coaches on our staff coach tim johnson he's got baseball tonight tim is the boys uh the lead boys assistant coach coach mike damon is the girls lead assistant coach and coach petrie is our jv coach this year our next one's samuel griffin just the second year wrestler and finishes one of the top 10 finds in the state and with one match away a grand state alternate if you will samuel

008griffin [Applause] next to him a three-time state qualifier and one of the top-ranked 145 pounders in the state and eastern kansas was loaded the four top guys in his group that he finished fifth all basically finished in the top five at that grand state championship so a loaded bracket our next wrestler damon hoback 160 pounds state medalist fourth place next to him rebecca schaefer she was a first year wrestler for us and she finished as a grand state alternate she took sixth at the state at the state sub state tournament which meant she was one match away from going on to salinas and these last two young ladies are three-time state qualifiers now and they they are now both state medalists mj huff finished in third place at the state championship in salina and ale

009mccartney finished in fifth place at the state championship in addition you got to point out real quick this crew on the girls side first team academic all-state in the entire state of kansas finished fifth fifth over eighth overall out of all the teams in the girls division this year [Applause] out of 58 boys teams our boys finished 11th academically to earn first team all-state honors academically as well last but not least the peace forward step up riley ish katherine lord whose catherine is not with us samuel griffin kaden birkemeyer academic all-state first team have you guys step back and then i'm excited to announce this last one that has just come out they don't even know about this one each year the national high school coaches association puts together the academic all-american list since 2007

010burlington high school wrestling has more academic all-americans than any other program in the state of kansas this year we've added two more to that list i'm very excited about that if miss bradley ish would step forward and if kaden birkenmeier would step [Applause] forward on gpa their grade point average and their consistent career performance of four years of high school wrestling so outstanding job board thank you for letting me introduce them to you tonight thank you thank you okay um the next agenda item is for our board vacancy that we have and we have two letters of interest that came to the district uh one's mr austin burke one mr ron hess you guys strategically replaced in the back of the room we would ask you to come down and sit with us so we

011can talk not scream um the board has options of leaving the position open until a vote by the public we can leave the position open until it's voted by the public and then that uh position will be filled january one next year we're getting a point and that's why we have uh these gentlemen here to discuss and talk about tonight um it's really not to me to put you down here on the spot so we can talk more face-to-face um we've the board all has a copy of some letters that you guys have given us talk about expressing a you know desire to serve for the board and we very much appreciate that i think everyone's read and understands that uh to that end i'll open up the rest of the board for um questions

012or comments that you'd like to have you guys want to have a conversation about it well one of the questions is why do you want to be a board member so first yeah well i was just made aware that the vacancy came up came open and i just felt like i needed to step forward just to have a good possibility of someone to get in there and i feel like i have worked in different environments with the school whether i coached i coached for uh wrestling for baseball high school middle school i've also done some substitute teaching for the school done some parasubbing for the school so i've kind of seen that side of it also done a lot of stuff through work with volunteering for the school so i thought that you know i

013might have a good set of skills that could come in and maybe help help out a little bit and uh i thought i should throw away a hat well that's a tough act to follow likewise i don't have the greatest qualifications for the position but i do have i am alumni of bhs i did start here in elementary school i do care about the community and i just wanted to make sure that there was multiple names that could be selected by the board i feel like i could bring a you know a no opinion banner to this whole board and keep an open mind on stuff okay um so the school board involves a little bit of time um you saying volunteered in austin you're out of the plant right uh i i'm with the

014fair board i work with the city of bronx okay but so the time constraints are once a month for this meeting but there's also some in between monthly meetings things that come up you you see a problem with uh like a 30-minute special usually the special meetings or for something like a bid for equipment or school issues like roofs or something that we have to talk about either you see an issue with being able to meet that need for the board i mean we're usually pretty open about what time that happens but yeah my position right now is pretty flexible unless i'm on a certain situation that would tie me up but usually 30 minutes is not a big deal about breaking away for a short period of time unless we're involved in something that

015is pressing yeah yeah and usually special meetings have probably a day or two flex right sure that can be amazing and luckily i worked in eight to five monday through friday with an hour lunch period so i'm pretty flexible on anytime one of the most important things i can think of is just you care about the community you you put your all into it that takes somebody who cares that wants to make the community better make the school district better and and that takes time and just a commitment you're willing to do it i think that's something i can offer i can see values and being able to listen because i think that's a lot of the job because you've got people coming in talking to you telling you that they have a problem and

016you know assisting and listening uh working together with other people interpersonal communication skills and then you know uh working with within your means looking at policy reviewing that and you know sticking within the scope of what you control because there's there's things that are that happen that are out of our control but staying in that scope and controlling what you control and um i feel like your main role is to listen to your administrators from what i can tell listen to your administrators help them get their job done they're going to come to you guys saying that they need this or that and to help them facilitate what they need and on the flip side students are wanting to bring up something that they feel like they need to talk about you know having that

017forum to be able to listen to them and take that information work with your administrators and see if you can come to compromise move i think that's kind of and you know that's that's on the forefront also you know on the back side with um you know uh the financing making sure that the school's uh running efficiently and and i know that falls on administrators but they um you know balancing out with the board from what i can see from the outside looking at likewise keeping an open mind keeping your personal agenda out of it make the best educated decision for the kids and the school industry that's what it's about in my opinion okay the mike you have any questions for these two gentlemen not anything specific selena i don't have anything additional thank

018you um with that being said it's kind of up the board now to if one member feels that we should fill a position while these gentlemen could fill that force we can make a motion for one to fill it or it can be left vacant until the november election this position right does come up for election in november so if it is filled now uh there will be an auction in november where that person is either reelected or something comes up or somebody else or that person maybe it's not for them they don't want to do it someone else steps into it so with that i would entertain any motions from the board is everybody having an opinion about leaving it open until january if we don't make a decision now will be an election

019in november and then january 1st that individual starts or we want to build tonight we can i know that from now until january 1st seems like a long time i think a seven person board is more of a representational community we do have a part of the southwest part of burlington where you guys reside and you're not in the country a little bit where there is currently no representation and i think that i agree that ought to be allowed for those people to have a representation and if someone wants to come in here about it they can do it and so that's kind of my point to it we got you know what eight months until that next person might serve so we'll make a motion yeah i agree that we need to fill it

020okay i'll make a motion to a point iran has usc 244 board member district 4 effective april 13 2021. okay motion for ron has to be board members starting tomorrow uh we'll go roll call vote mike yes and i think you can go on your computer um you can't put it on your computer yes and lucas yes did she save abstinence it looks like pests motion past 5-1 i'd like to thank both of you for coming in yes austin thank you very much for your interest uh put your name in the hat about for november if you want ron uh tomorrow so we can stacey can get tracy can get with you with some just formalities and stuff sure and then get you all set up and go from there i'd like to thank both

021of you it's thank you and we will have you do the oath right thank you okay next is public comment i have libby sedell down to talk lily if you want to stand up you can if you want to come down you can i encourage you to come out and be in front of facebook signed below request that maps be optional for students and teachers affected immediately the county has had very few cases within the last month to say that candace no longer has a mask wide mandate on public places and the county has no mass order in addition many people are vaccinated in our community with the progress with the community progress we compel usd 244 to progress as well as our students we have spent the last 13 months complying to the rules

022of the governor and the usd 244 board we now respectfully ask that face coverings be optional however we do respect those who choose to wear them it is our understanding that masks might not work how we originally hoped we've lost a year of seeing smiling faces from our friends and teachers we've lost a year of freedom the constriction of the mask not only stifles our speech but it makes us lean into close closer into others to hear it makes us touch our faces constantly which is abstraction in the classroom it causes acne and skin infections which require treatment and doctor's visits many people are also experiencing trouble breathing and headaches we would appreciate ending the school year with the freedom to smile enjoy and speak without the restriction of a mask we also believe there

023would be no better time than now to see if school without masks would be possible for the next school year we understand you might take a gradual approach for the sake of your but for the sake of your students we urge you to take a change now rewards for the time we have already served we deserve our year we deserve a mass free prom graduation spring sports and a mass-free month in the school year of course we will support our fellow students who choose to wear a mask we just want to make this optional please note what we are extremely passionate about this this is not about politics this is about progress it's about giving us back our freedoms we lost in 2020. if the decision cannot be made tonight then we would request the

024school board to hold a special meeting at the earliest convenience to conclude on this matter the time for the 2021 senior class is about to expire so please don't prolong your decision thank you for your time and consideration sincerely your student body thank you thank you libby and thank you again to everybody that showed up and i appreciate coming and expressing concerns very well written and very well received by board so i appreciate it thank you written communications none administrative reports go to bes um i'll add to the report that we had kindergarten roundup on friday and we had 46 kids attend roundup forces that's a 44 contact us today that missed the roundup that uh is looking to come so hopefully we'll have a few more middle school probably the biggest news is the

025last bullet on there we have we have no remote partners at this time we're 100 in person good news uh that i think contributes to everyone's efforts they put in to maintain a healthy environment so thank you high school really have anything i've got quite a bit on there uh we're a band uh concert uh on friday can we have another one coming up and uh i think when i was writing it down i think it was in may 7th and really it was supposed to be april 7th but it looked good i also truly want to say something about my students here i truly truly appreciate what how they handled it they did everything the right way uh being an old government teacher uh that they came and brought it to me i gave

026them some basic information on what i thought should happen and how they handled it is very commendable uh by me and i want to tell them thank you you guys did an outstanding job and people like mr watkins and i are very proud of you so i think no yeah the board is proud of you guys too that's awesome um i have something to add first i want to commend our students a fantastic job the second thing this is deals with uh before you today just in the fact that you have um the list of coaches and extracurricular sponsors one of the things it's been past practice one of the things i would like to see is look at is changing the past practice with our rule 10 we have always opened left them as

027open we are seeing more and more real tense and we have frankly some fantastic real ten coaches to have them see that position open have to reapply year in and year out not to mention if we have a head coaching position that's a rule 10 and that gets posted and then we have the influx and if that person goes through a positive evaluation from mr rudin myself i feel like they should have the opportunity to retain them without reopening it again so again it's not policy it's just been practice so i would like to be able to move forward in may and still list those if they are wanting to be brought back for the following year and part of the reason it's been that practice is because the the hope was i guess that

028you might draw some teachers that would be interested in coaching to come for teaching positions from my understanding from years past and that's why those positions were open we are finding fewer and fewer new staff members are really interested in doing extracurricular activities it's unfortunate because a lot of people i remember when i got into teaching back in 1991 i wanted to do things like coach baseball coach basketball things like that we're not finding that as much and again when we have excellent people working with our young you know our young students uh and our older students as well not only you know high school middle school we want to keep those people on board and so i i would i would really support that that plan as well if they're getting excellent evaluations doing

029a wonderful job we i think we need to keep them on board so has it just been a practice or it's a policy open up every rule 10 position every year and then you go back through the whole i guess the process if you will of whether you have people interviewing or not interviewing yes so if we just say we agree with you then you just want to open it up correct if you would agree to that then what we would do is if they're doing a good job we keep them on board and that we don't list those as open positions i don't know if you have any other questions for us on that topic does anybody have any strong opinion about whether those jobs are posted or i think that it makes sense

030that if they if someone's given a positive evaluation and they want to retain the position hey we think you're doing a good job let's continue that path so that makes sense to me thank you yeah mike here celine did you have any comments or anything for the real 10 coaches no i can support that that makes sense to me anything else for high school special ed report um a lot of the same stuff we do this time of year in terms of evaluating staffing positions and hiring and starting to look at pair positions for the future and things like that so we were very fortunate to receive quality applicants for our two position professional positions our school psych and our speech path so we're very excited about that anybody any questions for lindsay on special

031ed move to technology report and we've got the looks like capability summary for this year yes sir um if i could real quick i've got a social media post i'm going to share that i think that i think reflects and then tracy doesn't have it on there because it literally just came in last night and i think it reflects on things that are happening in the middle school in the high school as it relates to reverence for the flag and reverence for our country but also in terms of values that are our core values that our coaches teach as a part of of our program and and how we teach reverence for the flag for the national anthem for our country itself uh the post reads hi all our silverlight team i gotta put my

032glasses on i hate when it happens when i start to fog up our silverlake team came down to your town to play baseball we were walking in and there were many kids out for track and running jumping and doing what tracks kids do as we were walking the national anthem started playing all your amazing kiddos stopped and saluted the flag no kidding around no laughing just awesome reverence for our flag and country this was awesome to see thank you for teaching these kids the importance of what our flag stands for proud american diana comstock topeka kansas so i just thought that was worth sharing too and we shared that with high school coaches and i know stacy shared that with the student body today as well so just wanted to share that with you all

033because that's a to me a real positive um i'm open to questions there are two bullets uh in the tech report uh that basically deal with will you continue the practice of selling laptops to the seniors for a hundred dollars that has been our past practice over the past three or four years it becomes an incentive for those freshmen as we tell them you're getting this new laptop and it's yours for the next four years and then when you're a senior you have this opportunity we have had knock on wood if i could find it less issues with broken machines and everything else over the past eight months than we have for the past four years and so our kids are doing an outstanding job and we're hoping that that goes a long way because

034last year we had right at 30 kids that bought 30 of the seniors bought their laptops for a hundred dollars from that standpoint so i would ask the board to please consider that as an ongoing item to be done i then wanted to let you know in addition to this capital outlay i'm also working with mr marshall with tracy and lindsey on esser funds and how we can use esser funds to accelerate three or four programs that are focused on remote learning uh from that standpoint so we're doing a lot with the technology piece we're under that budget from past years but we are doing things with our esser funds again to move certain projects like new line interactive boards and some other things forward at a much faster pace so with that i will

035stop and ask what questions you have i'll say for the esser funds is that like acquiring long-term tangible items like stuff that is usable going forth into the future stuff that stays with our district i mean absolutely equipment absolutely right and and it also and tracy can address this as well but they're also within that budget are additional things in terms of protecting our schools and our students with food service with custodians it's a balance of things that you can do with it personal protective supplies there's a variety of things that fit to within that criteria technology is just one piece of that that we're looking to utilize those funds for and kind of connecting with that again we want to try we would like to try to expand summer services like summer learning academy

036we'd like to expand and include more kids we need staff to step up and to be able to pull those duties those positions if they're interested and then they would be able to you know again receive some extra pay over the summer months and we can meet some kids as needs that if they need to you know just work on some different things over the summer to get uh if there's any learning loss so that's the esser funds really do focus on that summer piece for education of kids as well as the technology piece the long-term piece as well any other questions for doug from technology report mike or selena no okay moving on to transportation and kind of just coincidentally i i don't know if you've met brad griffin brad is in the audience

037right here he was in for samuel uh his son for sam to be here tonight for the wrestling uh i just want to welcome brad with you guys here uh again he's just done a tremendous job getting up to speed in so many different areas uh with grounds and transportation i told him i think i mentioned it's kind of like drinking you know water from a fire hydrant you know sometimes when you start a new job in the middle of the year there's so many things that you need to get right to speed on he's done a terrific job and um so anyway brad is right there so thank you brad for joining us tonight and yeah in your report so i appreciate that you provided a report i said that tough craig and also

038i appreciate that you are doing safety meetings with your staff great job okay any other comments for questions about transportation okay we'll move on to everyone's favorite superintendent's report thank you so two quick things i received four and then kind of tying with what doug mentioned there were four different people from silver lake who approached me at friday night's games i happened to be pulling supervision duty at the second game of the doubleheader they came and personally talked to me about that that letter that doug read and that was just that they kind of made goosebumps to feel like our our students were just that quality that high quality that came over and uh on another positive note they said our facilities here are just absolutely tremendous they wish they had you know all facilities

039like that in there in silver lake um i want to reference uh doug and uh craig coolman and courtney finlayson for their work on that technology report they have they have been very aggressive with wanting to try to get the best and the and the most current technology in the hands of our students and staff so they can teach kids better and the students can learn better and so again thank you for your work on on that technology um not only report but the action of that report which will be busy so another busy summer so anyway um at our staff linkage tonight we did discuss the online learning beyond you know the on-site learning as that being the option next year for us here and that's our focus we feel like administrators i i

040charge them with talking with our staff to see again what their thoughts were and you heard that tonight from our staff during the linkage it's very tough it's very challenging to do the remote learning piece and barring anything changing as far as the health piece that's the direction that our administrative team would like to go to now there can be an exception to that let's say come august if there's a student or two exception i mean we make we'll have that be dealt with with the administrators at each of their buildings but our goal is to have kids on site working with our excellent staff in our excellent facilities and moving forward that way i don't know administrators directors if you have anything else to add to that so so for a health issue for

041example uh mr eda would be somebody who would like qualify for a 504 plan or something like that if that's what that decision is but that would that would be one of those items and maybe it's a single class that they wanted in or something of that nature but it's not going to be at least in my mind it's not that person that says hey my child is we've got to go on vacation for the week can i while they're gone can they be online or didn't they only get online for one or two the same way with sickness as well we've got those that would do be involved in that as well i think there needs to be some kind of information like doctor's notes and things like that that is relevant for that

042situation to occur do you have any questions or other comments in regards to how we move forward because we do want to share this with with the community as we are preparing for next year that this this is our plan again barring any major changes or major issues i don't know i would i would say that it's good to get out to the community what our plan is for the fall in our circumstances now and how we see things moving options are going to be available if things change that'd be correct we didn't know last february what was going to happen last march going forward we see what the direction things are on-site learning's going to be the option and you know that may change but they may not i think that's a good message

043for that okay all right thank you for that support again i want to i want to recognize the high school students that were here tonight and and just the professional the young adult um the way that they handled this uh this this time here in front of us so thank you very good job to all of you we have been constantly monitoring all year long health issues and we've done it with our students we've done it with our staff and i shared this with the board on my weekly emails to them and our administrators and directors and our front office staff nurses secretaries office assistants central office people as well you know that we've had monitoring and dealing with so many different things and so as we were moving forward and progressing with this year

044uh we started to see obviously at this point in time around spring break that things were working you know looking pretty good for us as far as the health in our community our attendance rate our absence rate actually this has been one of the best if not the best year for absences in our district um in consulting with lori herman and our health department staff and i think a lot of it has to do with all the measures that we are putting in place and and we're just we're trying to do everything we can to make sure we have on-site learning the whole year as well as have our kids get a complete year and all the activities that they want to be involved with so with that being said as time was going on

045and spring break hit i felt like we needed to see for the first week to two weeks after spring break how we were going to come back after spring break hopeful that we would not spike health issues in regards to covet senate bill 40 did come up which i shared with you some information on senate bill 40. and that kind of uh brought a part of my job into play where i felt like i needed to look at um what we felt like was best because we said for the school district with senate bill 40 and it references a comment like least restrictive means possible so with information that we've been sharing all throughout the county and health department and with our again administrative directors and our nursing staff and continuing on also our covet

046advisory committee having them that's a group of about 30 to 35 people in the community it's made up of board members it's also made up of teachers administrators grandmas and grandpas and parents and so on and so forth we got them together even then last wednesday to get their thoughts on how we're moving forward so i called the meeting um gave him about five days notice because of a variety of reasons everything was looking good the senate bill 40 came across as a possible item that we needed to discuss and administrators and directors we got together and tracy and joined us on that meeting as well to discuss just a lot of different things so i want everybody to know we have considered i i mean this we have thoroughly worked through this topic throughout

047well the past 13 months and especially these last couple of weeks in anticipation for possibly looking at maybe loosening or adjusting some restrictions so with that being said you have i shared with you some information in my in our board packet as well as in my frightening notes and um i've also shared with you the health guidelines piece that tracy has up here on the screen this the part that you have up here and it's in your it's in your board packet on your computer there it's titled usd244 health guidelines the that is what the covet advisory committee came up with as far as a possible option with us moving forward and to kind of paraphrase there's some strikethroughs there basically they felt like a stair-step method may be a possibility to move forward like

048for example stop temperature taking let's say tomorrow morning it's not temperature taking because we really haven't had temperatures in our in our district we've had maybe four or five in each building the whole year and we take about a thousand temperatures a day when you consider about 800 students and about 200 employees approximately we're taking a thousand a day and we've had five total in the in the district and each in each building may be five of high temperature high fever so the temperature taking piece just doesn't seem i think everybody in our community again i want to commend our community today everybody's done an excellent job with trying to you know just maintain health issues here so that we have on-site school and activities and learning and everything so with that being said the

049next step would be they thought about doing away with mass being options and doing weight mass being optional as of april 23 2021 and that was a a recommendation that they brought to um from the committee last wednesday uh james and stacy were on the on the committee and if i'm missing something guys please let me know um if i'm missing or something you want to add well there's varying opinions on earth some some people would say they wanted it to immediately go away but the majority i think of the committee uh recommended uh it'd be a stair-step approach uh i think that there's there's some thoughts about that number one it gives the teacher some opportunity to get things ready or whatever we hope that nobody would go to online but we have to

050be ready to shoot anybody do that if we if we open that up so i think it was allowed to allow some time to do um so as far as that committee went i think everybody hands down definitely agreed that social distancing and sanitizing of high-touch services and hand-washing that those are all things that should not go away and things that we probably should have enjoyed all day long and hopefully those will continue as time moves on as far as the math so you know that's obviously the big debate right now and i don't want to ignore the group because they're worse on there that were fans of keeping the mess because it's obviously worked for us right now we have we've been very successful throughout all of this and so there is an argument

051of why rock the boat right now we have a few weeks left let's just power through to keep these masks on obviously we're doing something right there was a group of people that felt that way and honestly i was in that group as well when i first went into that meeting but when tracy brought forth that we're really tasked with being the least restrictive that we can be i really had to challenge myself to think a different way so taking that stair-step approach to hopefully i don't ever want to say get rid of masks but make them optional of course anybody that wants to wear a mask should be free to wear a mask whenever they feel necessary but to really kind of take that stair-step approach because i think we have a hard time

052justifying continuing to wear masks when there's nobody in our district who is currently positive or we don't even have any cases in our county that are currently positive so how is maintaining mass the least restrictive i don't feel like we're doing our due diligence if we don't look at potentially reducing that squaring um we're just pushing the easy button by doing that method so i didn't want that group to think that they weren't hurt because you absolutely were i was in that group with you until i was challenged to think differently about that but i do i do agree with the plan that's kind of set forth right here it gives us a stair step approach um it also gives those students the opportunity to have a mass free prom which i think is important

053to a lot of them selena do you have any comments would be april 13th is that correct well i mean it could be done tomorrow but mike if we were to do that and again if we were to do that my recommendation would be the 14th and here's why again i i've shared with you that again my recommendation is to look at the 14th be and i heard the committee the cove advisory committee i cannot thank them enough for their time and the energy and effort that they spent that was a volunteer community and i truly understand what they say and i challenge them to think that when i was at the meeting i said if we are looking at the 23rd and it's okay on the 23rd why is it not okay on the

05414th and the reason i'm saying the 14th is i need to get a public service announcement message out to the whole community all of the people in burlington to share with them everything that we've done we have equivalent advisory committee we've evaluated health issues in the in the district not only with students but with staff we have the approval letter from dr sawyer and our county health department saying that this is a this is a proposal that they can support we have had no covet cases in our school now for close to six weeks and we're zero at the county with all that information being said my comment at the meeting was to say if not i mean if it's okay on april 23rd then why not april 14th or another idea would be hey

055listen if at this point in time let's say we're right now and this is august 1 right now if this was august 1 i'd be recommending to the board that we come back to school without mass or mass being optional why if it's okay on august 1 why would it not be okay on april 14th so those are the things that we that in my mind that i've thought about and i understand what the advisory committee is thinking um but i just i feel like in my mind based on all of the information that we have everything compiled that i think that's important that i share with the the public so to answer dr ford's question the earliest i would want to do this is the 14th which is wednesday just simply because i need

056to share with our community we may have some additional remote learners and if we were to all of a sudden say no more mass or mass optional tomorrow it's hard for us to get that out to everybody i need for everybody to do one more day of mass if that's the direction we go so that i can get information out to everybody and then the people can then get in touch with administrators in the buildings to see what if anything there needs to be adjustment wise so to answer your question dr thorpe long-winded march or to me um april 14th which would be wednesday i feel like that's the earliest okay um that said this is becoming somewhat of a negotiation between getting rid of the mask today and waiting until what the 23rd um

057is ready to entertain a motion yeah let's let's talk for a second mike yeah i just um i was kind of going to say what what craig had said a little bit um i appreciate the committee and and i um their time and their input and all of their recommendations um but yeah to to make a recommendation um or to change a policy today and say we're gonna do this in two weeks i just think that that would be really hard um that's just too long i feel like you know if we're gonna make a change i don't think it should be immediate either i think that we need to allow our staff to have time to adjust to that and for our students you know we may have some students that go from remote

058back to in person and we may have some that go from in person to remote so we need to have some time for adjustment but i just don't think that waiting until the 23rd would be the best option either so another thought would potentially be discussing the 19th which is the one day so you start the week fresh one of my thought processes too is as i went through this in my role at the hospital because anytime you have a big holiday or a big event we always kind of hold our breath for two weeks following that because that's when we typically will see um an increase so you know after christmas we were just waiting for it after new year's we were waiting for it honestly after spring break i was waiting for it

059but it never hit um so if we hold off just until next monday which is the 19th that gives you two solid weeks past easter which is probably our last big event where we have families congregating together possibly out of state travel things like that so i mean you could potentially tie some thought process to next monday as well um one thing i want to speak about i appreciate you back to the and mike this is the second page of the recommendations we're about hand washing and water water bottle or filling stations these are the things that we are going to keep doing that regardless of temperature taking masks uh hand sanitizing once per hour the teachers cleaning the classrooms the building's entire room getting clean all the things that you see here are going

060to stay the hvac that's being monitored with fresh filters all that stuff it's not a you know coza doesn't exist we're getting rid of that stuff anymore it's an approach where we stop the temperature taking we stop the masks so i just kind of want to point that out i also want to speak toward we talked about senator bill 40. throughout this whole process to the best of my knowledge we followed everything from dr shellwood when he was there their recommendations the health center health department county health department we follow their recommendations the best of our abilities to do what they felt was safest for us to be able to continue on-site education and this recommendation is coming from that same group and we are as a board kind of legally obligated to do least

061restricted means possible and if this group has looked at the data looked at our community and came to us and said that hey this is where we believe we can go right now i don't i don't see why we move away from that we're just really talking about time frame um i would be in favor of uh wednesday the 14th or the 19th the 23rd i think like it would feel like the thursday before spring break for every teacher in class with the kids knowing that it's getting ready to happen so i think i really appreciate all these young adults that came in and have done the right thing but we're getting ready to tell them possibly that something that that hated freight for however many months is going to go away so how fast

062you rip off a band-aid and how much pressure you want to put on a teacher saying that this rule's changing next friday but we expect you to force it as a board that's difficult i don't want to put any more they're not massive police they're educators they're professionals and so i would be more in favor of the 14th getting everything out there for the public to make the decision for what's best for their families the people that want to come to come back from remote learning they can the people that might feel like that situation that's not for them can go to a remote learning situation and the teachers can prepare for that so i would agree i think that it is important that we uh i think we're all on board with you know

063the mask we would all like to see them go i do think that we have to be aware of staff and students and everybody that that word gets out and it's not immediate bam tomorrow here we go so i came tonight we prepared to make a recommendation for the 19th but to get rid of the temp checks immediately tomorrow and do as craig talked about put a psa out there and let let families all decide whether or not they wanted to come back with no mask and staff and all that to do so i'm prepared to make a motion to prove the revised usb 244 health guidelines as presentable mask being optional uh starting on april 19th a second now hold on and you said april 19th yes is there any more discussion on james's

064recommendation to change and adopt the revised guidelines that has us removing temperature checks tomorrow those temperature checks tomorrow and on monday everybody that wants to come to school and not wear a masking and everyone that does want to wear masks and do that okay we'll entertain them we'll start with selena yes yes yes mike yeah yes and lucas yes motion passes 6-0 um i want to thank all the young adults that came and talked about this yeah thank you and we also want to thank the staff too because we got a lot of input from the staff on this too so on both sides of that i mean pros and cons and seeing what you've done tonight makes me have no concerns about waiting until monday you guys are going to approach it the great

065way monday we're going to start having a great end of the senior year for everybody so thank you very much that being said the next part of our meeting is a resolution to point uh centerville i'm sorry i've got one more one more quick thing uh a couple of things uh wanted to look at possibly doing an open house or a ribbon cutting for the baseball softball concessions and we've received rainbow views from wellsville i love silver lake at our facilities and our new restroom so i don't know if you guys could look at calendar schedule but possibly uh look at it i mean we can do a ribbon cutting one have the rec center there as well and possibly somebody from the jones trust grant who helped contribute to that project as well i

066know it's kind of difficult right now because there are many of you three of you at least an outage right now at schedules in the hospital or something or something so that way we could but then that's going to be before 4 30 and i don't know getting you guys all together with your different schedules um if you want to wait till outage we could do it as a delayed piece and katie could help us out later with a picture and a little story potentially if that would work better for you guys so i would like to do it a day at a time potentially outage after better or you tell me guys uh i mean i'm work i work sixth evening six in the morning so yeah that's gonna be fun uh 5 30

067p.m to about 6 6 30 a.m why don't why don't we wait and do that after outed if that's okay with everybody does that sound good it's all worth getting a date or two on the friday notes and then this last item i have done this is the the fingerprint feed we we have different regulations obviously for the the burlington early learning center so with that being said these are going to be paid from grant funds again grant funds for these fingerprint fees um i think the amount if i'm not mistaken it's like ten dollars for the the fingerprinting if i'm not mistaken i have to i i didn't put that down for the fingerprint and 58 or 48 for the actual application right for the background so the fingerprint fees is what we're looking

068at again we're looking at as well as the background check we do that with all of our employees we background check everybody so with that we'd be using grant funds to pay for those and that may require us to get those people on board as quick as possible we may have hires in the middle of the year that we may have to try to get people up so that we can meet the guidelines the kdhe guidelines of having x number of staff in each room each area we won't do this unless we have to and it's a minimal amount and we'll invoice it so i don't know if you have any questions on that we don't have to make promotions or we just say you you are you have a board policy that states that

069we can send certain bills out that accrue interest or have late fees yes this one we are just tying in to that as well because it's a paper application it's like a three to six week turnaround for a background check um so it'll really hinder the daycare's ability to build positions and like if we have to wait till each morning so just fall into those same under that policy that you already have and that's it okay now we can get back to the centerville 40 committee and so i'll kind of speak for this a little bit the senate bill 40 is what i referred to earlier about how local school boards now have the authority to during times of pandemic disaster declarations to control their school districts there is um also a way for patrons

070to give feedback for that and part of that feedback goes to a committee and so tonight we have to appoint that committee correct they they can they can give let's say for example maybe potentially have a grievance filed with that the rules in place with senate bill 40 as it states now and we just did find out tracy and i just did find out some information that this could be changing so hold on to your hats uh again you you have to hear agreements in the first 72 hours the board of education would have to hear that grievance in the first 72 hours after that grievance has been filed with you guys and schedules and challenges to get some group of you guys together in a three day period especially during an average situation would

071be extremely challenging you have the opportunity right now as it states that you can appoint a committee to hear the initial grievance within that 72 hours or if you want to retain that ability to hear the grievance in the first 72 hours you can do that you just don't appoint the committee so it's up to you however you want to proceed now seven days from now you as a board would have to meet to a to address the grievance so that would give us seven days to be able to get you guys together which is more of a i guess a doable time frame potentially than a three-day period and so with that being said you have the opportunity of choice you can appoint a committee and i've recommended these people myself stacy reeve and

072lindsey graf to be the committee and then we hear the grievance and then we get you guys together within a seven day period or if you want to retain the right to have you guys hear the agreements in the first 72 hours you sure can my opinion on that is the logistics of getting a board together in 72 hours is going to be difficult and i trust our administrator to hear that that concern and then give that to the board and we can move within seven days so i'd be in favor of supporting the resolution as presented is there any other topic or discussion about that i'll make a motion to approve the resolution to appoint senator bill 40 hearing committee as presented for the 2020-21 2021 school year okay it looks like everyone's got

073a computer mike on my computer it came out his eye i already know this motion is 6-0 and the last comment i want to make on that the senators are considering trying to take that option away tracy and i just found out about this today they are trying to take that option away as a possibility at least they're having discussions to have that committee where it would not give us the opportunity to have that that committee um as a hearing committee but as of right now it's not that that's not the case so again that's the stay tuned part piece who knows if it will change so anyway we'll see and the next listed item is the board reports and i believe yeah i wanted to just talk a little bit about the daycare the

074um burlington early learning center uh can you hear me yeah okay perfect but i thought it cut out for a second um i know that we've had um a lot of discussion and a lot of focus on this and it's been kind of a long process over two years and so i think you know maybe people are hearing pieces here and pieces there and so i just kind of wanted to give um a little overview again of you know why the board is is doing this why we're pursuing it um and talk about that a little bit and you know we've heard concern from patrons and our teacher staff on you know the funding for this and the funding from for the burlington early learning center is is purely from grants we're not using any

075general fund money and we're not currently planning to use any capital outlay money it is all going to be grant funded and then self-sustaining we're not uh going to be taking anything from our staff at the schools to to push this through it may seem like there's a lot of focus on it but we're still doing everything at the elementary middle school in high school and it bridges that and the after school program we're still taking care of all the staff and all of the things that we have to take care of there the reason the main driver for this daycare this early learning center is the lack of daycare in burlington and the impact that it has had down the road so the board just trying to be forward-looking um and looking for a

076way to help increase our class sizes to get our class sizes back up uh we only have one class of 80 left and one class that has 70 some kids in it the days of those bigger classes we don't have them at burlington and the the true fact of that is less students means less funding and less funding means we you know we don't need as much staff we can't do as many projects you know so we are trying to maintain burlington as as we know it to keep usd 244 as um district you know that we love and are proud of and keep our student numbers up um you know we're it's good to hear that darla said we had a little more than expected um you know we have 40 46 at kindergarten

077roundup with one extra you know but our current classes in the elementary school are you know in the 40s low 50s middle school same thing so we're seeing this as an opportunity to bring more younger families to burlington and start them at that daycare early learning center and funnel through our schools at you know the two visit biggest employers in our school district wolf creek and the hospital we've seen it we've seen staff leave because of the lack of daycare they couldn't find daycare options and we've seen where we can't get people to move to burlington to relocate here because of the lack of daycare options we you know put a committee together um of the you know man wolf creek um people on their hospital the health department local businesses um that did a

078lot of you know research looking into this and it wasn't just a kind of on a whim i guess you know we put a lot of time and thought into this um feedback from our staff feedback from this committee and you know this really is kind of more of a business craig had talked about this earlier with our teachers at the linkage where this is a business you know it's not really school district money that's going to this the building is ours the property is ours and this is what the board has decided to do with this property we've had other options we've had people we've had other people businesses whatever come to us and want to buy our building and to want to buy that property but we want to keep it you know

079we feel like that's really connected to the elementary school and and there and so this is what we decided to do with this property to benefit the community and to benefit our school and we see the importance in that early intervention piece with from birth you know education really isn't just 5 to eighteen you know we've shown that with our bridge um we go 18 to 21 and so with our this early learning center start you know birth and on so i just kind of wanted to speak to that a little bit yeah i'll just add on i did go uh today and correct me on a tour and it is looking amazing um you know there's some cement work they're gonna do today and i don't know if they got to but the carpet

080they're doing the carpet in offices and painting there's lots of painting done so it's really starting to take shape um they have lots to do obviously i know there's been some hiring done and so if you have a chance definitely probably be a tour and i got to talk to haley and so it's yeah it's going great okay and uh we'll move on to results reports hey uh lucas a couple of these kids have to go to work but they wanted to stop and thank you guys so if you guys want to watch thank you thank you presentation was excellent though thanks for that we just need to count on you four more days one more day please don't does anybody have any questions for the april results i personally like to see all the

081things that are going on in the years prior you know like band and theater and i mean a lot of that keeps a lot of students in school honestly and keeping those programs going is really important so yeah i appreciate the data in this format it's easy to see the trend and easy to follow and i wish there were pictures but the computer graphics has really jumped a lot i don't know if there's a reason for that okay i'll make a motion to accept the results too modern report concerning physical education performing arts visual arts and foreign language as reasonable progress towards meeting the board's results policy uh and motion passes vital next is a contracts approvals and appointments for ksb news okay real quick uh that there's a there's a fee associated with being

082involved with kansas association of school boards uh and that that that they just provide so many different aspects for us as administrators directors we can call for legal assistance and and just uh you know just discuss and and talk about so many different things again they are just kind of our go-to group uh if you'll notice there there is a motion to approve um the ksb membership renewal and the amount of the 985 dollars and five cents um there is this last paragraph that talks about you can do unlimited registrations as well and it's a 50 if you do that it's a fifteen hundred dollar additional fee if you look at the pattern and the trend we're spending about that amount each year approximately and so would we have some more people going to more

083things with aasb if we had that unlimited option that's possible um again um we're close it's not like we're spending three or four thousand dollars more than that 1500 original fee or that amount it's not like we're spending that much more it's really close to whether you pay it up front or not but you may have some other opportunities we may have some other administrators and directors that may want to go to certain things if we were to include that additional 1500 so either way i don't have a strong feeling on that because again it's very very close if you want to approve the 9825 dollars and five cents that's fine if you want to add in that additional season pass that is okay as well have we ever told anybody no one anything that

084they wanted to go to right no but not only are there like he stated administrative and a lot of district office stuff there are options for teachers too and we don't usually those aren't usually publicized i don't know if teachers get like i usually try to send it to the principal when stuff comes through and it's at their discretion when they send stuff on but we don't usually publicize kasp stuff a lot because of those additional fees i don't know if we were to tell more people about it if we have more people interested in some of that and they do have some really good opportunities right here yeah it looks like we've never spent less than that and these numbers that are here right it's always been right around 1500 so yes and right

085around a meeting like 2000 or 2205 so i think it makes sense to try per mike did you hear that about the 1500 addition to that and i could not hear that part okay so there's the there's the 98 125 and five cents and then every time one of the board or administrators go to a conference or something we pay an extra fee and so we're talking about doing a season pass essentially so no matter how many times we go to something or somebody goes to an event it would just be that one-time fee so i think everyone here is kind of in favor of doing that for a year and see how it works out if we get more participation selena you shook your head like you agreed you're back yes sorry i'm back

086sorry i had to step away for a little bit okay so motion to approve the kesb membership renewal amount and the amended amount of 11 325 and 5 cents second mike motion passes 6-0 on cable ksp legal assistance fund right and i guess i jumped the gun a little bit there this is the legal assistance fund again it allows us to retain council i kind of jumped it down with the 10a instead of talking about attendee but this is the piece that i think is very valuable for us we consult them uh as needed and uh again just can't say enough good things about their attorneys and the council they provide for us the question to prove the ksb legal assistant fund renewal in the amount of seconds the other piece to both of those

087that um it gives us access to all the like the forms book all the updated handbooks when we're parts of both of those groups the legal assistant fund gives us even more like student discipline all the school law it gets us up to date keeps us up to yeah when things come up in the middle of the year like sb40 there's forms that are legal provided and come to us and we're not just making something up so that's good next is cli and again you have the information there in regards to our renewal cost with them it's a similar amount slight increase from last year a similar amount to last year i cannot remember the exact difference so you had that down somewhere but it's a it's a very again a very similar amount uh

088it seemed like it was like seven thousand and change so so anyway um i don't know if you have any questions about the cli renewal piece last year it was 69.50 and we'll just be doing a little bit more work with stacy brewton our representative from cli with our different curriculum committees and that's why that there's just a little bit of additional fees there any questions on the cli renewal so in the past we've had conversations aboard the past couple years about cli and about where that goes and other options for cli if we don't approve this contract about a curriculum administrator and the costs of that based on what we are getting out of this i know our staff has done tons and tons of work with curriculum over the past four years five

089years six six six seven so i know they know their curriculum um we've had lots of discussions about the last two years i know we did so my question is how does everyone feel about it this year i know our staff knows their curriculum they work through this process with this institute i guess and we work specifically with a lady by the name of stacey pruden and she's the art our lead person if you will and hasn't this in the past been part of a than the rest of the county is that so this is our third office right southern coffee county is involved with us and uh this is our capital so it's uh 18 300 total between the two we share and we work with their staff and our staff together at different

090meetings that we have we have our curriculum coordinating council ccc meetings we work with them at different times throughout the year on the curriculum piece to again to work together they have similar they're going through similar things as we are so it's a it's again it's a partnership that we have with southern coffee county so why did it go up a third well because because there's some additional work that we have that's going to be going on if you look at that document it's the suggested cli activities for burlington and scc so we've got social studies work going and science work going wellness our wellness committee uh health pe uh that type of thing um our uh sac committees uh i'm drawing a blank on sac help me out guys thank you very much thank

091you lost the acronym for a minute subject area committees um in foreign language fine arts wellness ela social science social studies and science and then we have our ccc meetings which stacy brewton leads and those are uh three different times throughout the year when we get together at the beginning of the year fall meeting and then the quarterly meeting actually there's more there's actually four meetings because it's there's four different meetings so we have the quarterly meetings and you see the work that's also going to be done right at the end of next school year 2022 may 20th 2022 so there's just a little bit more work that's being done here um this this next year that's why we've had a slight increase is this any of that stuff carry over from stuff that couldn't

092or didn't happen this year because of our coded circumstances or is it just uh that's a good question guys i don't know if you i think it's more and more and more normal unless you guys said it's just on schedule okay i didn't know if it was we were going to get this no we decided earlier this year that we're just going to maintain maintain that course a lot of it is reviewing the first again six seven years it's a going through that continuous cycle process just making sure we are where we need to be based on you know requirements guidelines state standards and so on so forth i guess i would refer to the administrators on what you feel like does it still value i think without having a curriculum director is extremely valuable

093and i think that's we don't have that person to facilitate it it's i mean i feel like it's something that's just kind of yeah yeah we're all pretty busy with what we already do you know i mean like the social studies thing in my like here's a good example of what i think this is why stacey facilitating is good for us the social studies assessment for the state of kansas is changing like we haven't had it for a few years and it's going to um like a project-based assessment next year this was the pilot year we opted not to do that in coke and times we just think blood is worth it so the state put out like that social studies assessment has to occur within grade bands so in grades three through five somebody

094some grade has to do that grade six or eight somebody has to do that once in high school socrates has to do that so rather than you know me figuring out for my building him figuring out for his building i i think that's what the good thing about the cli model is we have a subject here committee we have built in time for the social studies teachers to get together collaborate talk about that we can make the decisions based on allowing teacher input we're not making a unilateral decision saying yes fourth grade is yours i mean we're kind of allowing them to brainstorm spacey can help facilitate that for us you know curriculum that the work is a lot less now than it was when i came seven years ago because like the math that's

095the committee i serve on they were just starting that the standards have rolled back around they've updated it they kind of monitor their assessments after they get through that big process it's a lot less work as long as we keep doing the work but i think it is important to have somebody facilitating that work i think unless we are committed to hiring a curriculum director i don't think we have much and i think you guys are asking the right questions because right now we are in that second phase like darla just said and uh if you want you know keep asking those questions because as we get past uh the second phase of everything and leading up to that that's when those questions can continue to be asked because what's the next direction if there

096is another direction or do we just keep re you know redoing it because those are in place at that point in time i think mr marshall and i we are on the obt for iola and what were they they were doing a different one and they had been doing cli yes so i mean it was kind of interesting to sit there and listen to that that they were doing something else that was similar to cli and i don't know that we got into a big discussion on the way home but i'm not wondering okay what was what were they doing that was any different than what we're doing and staying up to date on those things so i agree with darla on that but i think you're asking the right questions because as we come

097down the stretch and we're finishing up the second cycle fully which will be another probably two two years or three i can't remember exactly then then that's the chance to keep asking those kind of questions guys aiola what they're doing now is they've shifted from cli they've gone to the kansas state department of education this hasn't network tasn that stands for technical assistance system network they're utilizing that service there's there's fees associated with that but iola does have a curriculum director that they do pay and there are other school districts i'm trying to see how many in our in our league have curriculum directors i try to pull that up real quick anderson county has a curriculum director burlington does not iola does osawatomy does prairie view does santa fe trailhead they have two curriculum

098directors and wellsville has a curriculum director as well so guys we're the ones that don't and we're utilizing cli currently directors and i just can run through some salaries i'm not going to get the exact but you're looking at anywhere 60 70 80 000 for a curriculum director a good one because it's a lot of work and they'll still be doing the work with the staff because the staff have to have input and involvement if a curriculum director just hands a notebook and says here teach that there's no input from the staff and there's no buy in there so that that becomes a problem and a challenge so like kind of like jameson what we've discussed before there is a dollar fee associated with the curriculum director position um because that's it's a lot of

099work and we're fortunate i guess the system we have in place so i'll stop right there good question though by you guys a good question and see if this is something we need to think differently about okay does anybody have any other suggestions or comments for one year is that possible could do that that would be an option but like darla had mentioned it's going to fall on all of uh our shoulders to try to solve this problem that we have all of a sudden now we don't have this service and it would cause us to have to lead it in a direction and so yes we could opt out but i think our administrators and directors would put another thing that would be a big thing on their on their plate there's times if

100you look in that document where stacy leads this group and it's 3 30 to 7 o'clock we're paying our teachers during that time to work with us after school they get to have the day with their kids and it's a long day for them but we pay them curriculum pay to work and that way they don't have to create sub plans and have a staff you know out of they wouldn't have to be out of their room with that those types of work and those types of hours it's going to fall on somebody to lead those from 3 30 to 7 or 4 to 6 those types of sessions and while our administration directors try to meet those those those group meeting times we can't always be there and they're all now nose goes they're

101pointing at each other to figure out who's going to take it on it so good job guys yeah i think i feel like that's a valid point it is it's a good question my concern would be so if we decide to do that for one year do we fall behind and then try to catch up the next year so and would that increase it just depends on what curriculum are you yeah or you're dealing with at that given time have they changed that curriculum so it's for instance if they haven't changed the curriculum and you stop it then you might be all right but the next group coming for that group coming up they're going to be waiting they're going to be that cycle behind and if they do change it like the next year

102after you stop it do you start right back up with them or do you go to the next one so change that's the other thing the other side here for our math resources we did a seven year purchase seven years ago like we have we have one more shipment of the books coming so next year that's something the math committee will have to do is review the resources again do we want to stick with the resource we have we want to adopt a different resource what's aligning best of the standards i mean you know yeah all that stuff takes time i just think again stacy kind of has a rubric and facilitates that process with our teachers they kind of go out and do some of the work then they come back and we talk

103about a recommendation i mean that's just another example that's not necessarily curriculum but it's tied to the curriculum resources are very important so there's there's a lot of things that kind of fall under that umbrella james the other thing i just thought real quick is the fact that we've got a very veteran consultant that we're using and i think you step away for a year you're not guaranteed to go back to that same consultant and then all of a sudden i mean there's there's some value to the relationships that have been built between those subject area committees the groups that have been working with her from that standpoint her knowing us and knowing our curriculum and so forth and you throw that away for 17 000 and then you kind of start over with potentially

104somebody else because there's no guarantee that that she's going to have an open slot and they're not going to put it to somebody else so i think i think we've had a good working relationship and more importantly i've watched her kind of change and mold over especially the last four or five years to what we call the burlington way which has been important for i think our subject area committees and our administrators so if i hear you guys think it's got some value and i'll make a motion to approve the cli contract for the 21 22 school year in amount of 911 mike motion passes 5-1 5-2 5-1 next topic is the burlington early learning center playground financial program and we talked about this a couple of months ago and i i just want to

105tell you i i really i changed my thought on this um and i feel like it's important you guys have heard some comments tonight and uh and you've made some comments i think it's very important and again i want to say the reason i was looking to do this possible partnership piece with um with the framework of some capital outlay was because what we've done around here has been related to so many partnerships that we've created with it being for example the baseball softball scenario with the concession stands restroom with our rec center the jones trust and uh with the school district and with so many different projects we've done the community allowing us to have the one mill for five years to be able to do the science room improvements the the gym improvements

106and as well as with uh we even had leftover money because our gym base foundation was not in as bad as shape as we anticipated and we've been able to do something again with the first grade wing renovation the partnerships that we've done with so many different things i feel like that this was another opportunity to partner and and to do this now um i i can tell you that i feel uh just hearing different people and listening i've changed my thought on this i think we need to look to spend all of our grant funds that we have and we feel like we can do that and still pay for this playground the original cost we thought on this playground was going to be around fifty thousand dollars kdhe has changed some different guidelines

107i showed monique this and james and stacy they changed some guidelines on us based on what they told us at first and then they said no well you got to do this because you've got little kids and big kids now you've got to fence in and areas they're fencing the whole area you've got a fence in a small area for the little kids and every area is separate they and then they say we have to have so many square foot of space for the kids and because they've now licensed us up for 72 and that wasn't the original number we expected we could potentially again have 72 kids they told us your playground has to expand so with that being said they changed some some information on us that we have to meet these needs

108while we're doing this project and if we don't do that then well we're going to be shooting ourselves in the foot because we didn't do it the right way with that being said haley and i have talked and we feel like we want to spend playground money on this playground we want to spend grant money on this playground first and foremost so it's just a discussion and i'm just going to assume um if you have any questions i'd say i should say assume i want to say if you have any questions you can ask or if you agree with this process this spot i do think that we have to spend grant funds on i think we made that commitment early on that we weren't going to we weren't going to spend any uh because

109sort of puts egg on our face if we have to now if we absolutely had to for some unknown reason then maybe we look at that but we need to do everything possible that we can to not have to dip into that i think that's been we've been loud and clear from a lot of people yeah i mean we made that commitment that we were not going to be um using that money and so we we need to spend the grant money first correct so we'll move forward with that no no action needed there this was just personnel for we always and uh there's also a i'd like to make a motion to reassess an executive session for 20 minutes to discuss the superintendent's evaluation pursuant to non-elected personnel exemption under coma and return to

110open session in this room at the end of that time with six board members thanks we'll leave and you guys stay here and you said 20 minutes right yes now oh okay so okay i don't know i need a piece of paper to hang on the wall to say board is an exec session when it works in your schedule um um yes thank you so oh thank you testers yes uh it's just i hope our community it's everybody um is this year than before so you just have to accept based on what we think is um okay so yes are you done you ready we're gonna go back in yes tracy i think i got everything signed and passed down um okay we are back in the open session the next topic is for negotiations

111and uh that's not the way i might just do a quick little 10 minutes or session for 10 minutes and it's got certified contracts pursuant to the exception forum foreign negotiations motion passes 6-0 903.3 know oh me so one minute so [Music] twice i appreciate that yeah thanks for getting good guidance on how to do it appropriately yeah thanks for having me appreciate that monica suiter made high for us yeah thank you thank you that was delicious no thank you guys yeah thanks ron for stepping up um it was nice to have a couple of great candidates come in here and talk to us so we appreciate that meeting a jury thanks mike thank you okay i'm gonna start working up okay what's that