001[Applause] okay 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 so i have to make a statement before the meeting starts my name is shane fafer i'm an orthopedic surgeon here in town i was asked to run this position years ago when i was first on the board i was attacked at every board meeting because of what people thought it was on the board for over time an injustice was identified was dealt with as a group i have always spoke with integrity and statements of fact to try to make points to better the system and the school district there have been numerous times where my statements have been flatly ignored but that's part of what we consider democracy i
002make no apologies for fighting for what i think is the best for our school our district and our family integrity and respect are two things that i hold in high regard and work with on a daily basis recent events or of where i have voiced my concerns for events that have occurred in our system have demonstrated that i either no longer have that respect or really never did i see a change in the way we deal with things that i do not agree with and i am unable to have an influence in a positive way when i talk i speak directly and i speak to the point people are changing my words and using them to imply things that really have no reasonable way to be interpreted that way there are people accusing me of
003being after the jobs of the administration that is someone else's agenda and i am being accused for doing it the agendas of others are now affecting my family i love my family dearly i have great children a great wife and i love them dearly i cannot and will not allow a position that i hold to affect them in their daily lives i am always ready for a good argument discussion debate but not when it starts to affect my family and friends i have had the ability to make discussions debates arguments for what it is and not an emotional rollercoaster unfortunately that is not the norm i do my best to always see both sides of every story but for the life of me there's no rational reason for what's occurring and it's causing me to
004lose sleep i own my patients more than that people are attacking me based on what they think they've heard or rumors or eavesdropping and claiming that i'm doing something other than what i really am unfortunately these people have never really gotten to know me my hope to all my haters is that this resolves these issues i resigned my position as board president and as a member of the board of usd 244 [Music] thanks okay i assume there's board vice president will be taking over the continuation of this meeting does anybody have any additions to the agenda as presented for the consent agenda any discussions or questions make a motion to approve the consent agenda items as presented there's been a question to say all in favor of on your computer you guys can vote mike
005are you online are you able to vote by proxy or my computer i'm your vote for consent agenda yes so to do staff recognition for dana the bronze award yes uh we got a nice award for and this is for uh diana hess um in regards to again a certificate of recognition this is awarded to diana hess for completion of 30 hours of professional development training presented by the child nutrition and wellness department at ksde and i want to read a quick little letter here it says congratulations for earning the bronze level award in the professional recognition program sponsored by child nutrition and wellness kansas state department of education your completion of 51 hours of ksde sponsored training is a significant accomplishment by taking classes to expand your knowledge and skills you have demonstrated your
006commitment and your professionalism and we are extremely proud of you and this achievement and so again diana's a wonderful food service director we are so thankful we have her on board and she's not able to be here tonight so we don't get that actually hansberger awards but we'll do that later so again congratulations to diana and her service awesome tell our congratulations yes and the man behind the camera doug's banner london [Music] i have to tell you this was hard to keep because i knew about this i want to say november late november early december and they swore me to secrecy and i i did pretty good i guess because again uh as you've seen the republican did a wonderful story on doug we've got a site the website story for doug and again doug
007has some uh i'm going to read the quote from doug here on the public content it says this article is much more about our district and our community and the good things we have going than it is about me it focuses on our people being willing to change and grow and adapt we have great teams of teachers staff administrators board of education members and community that have rallied behind the great things we have gotten to do with educational technology it is about the great co-workers i get to work with and the tech team we have with our adopted cousin tracy helping out a lot it is also about the hundreds of kids that i have been blessed to be able to coach over 31 years and maybe it was closer who knows maybe close to
008a thousand so again um again doug i just cannot thank that enough we work very closely together on a number of different things the fiberboard is just that that is the envy of everybody when i talk to my colleagues around around around the state what we have in place in burlington for our fiber connectivity and opportunities that we're able to to take advantage of again that speaks very very well and the leadership he has so again congratulations today do you have any comments no i do you read you took my comments right there i'm i i get to represent i get to represent what we've done uh and that's that's what's key um you know i i've worked with teachers i worked with a great teacher and of cadre one that that said something that
009impacted me greatly was we were doing one-to-one and she said this she said i don't want to lose my flavor in what we're doing with one-to-one technology and and it took a while for that to sink into me as to what she was really saying um but but what she was saying is is again we've got a lot of great teachers and we don't try to we don't try to change them as much as we try to show them other tools other things that they can do and and our teachers have bought into that our administrators have bought into that in terms of the fact that that we're not producing this robot of remote learners and an online army of remote learners we want kids in front of us uh because that's where we're our
010best and to to have said i would stay here 31 years i i thought this was a quick stop along the way um and to be honest i think this is the only stop along the way and so i've just been i've been blessed with your support um and there have been times i think you've you've bought into a vision that you couldn't quite see but that you bought into it you believed in it so i appreciate it greatly thank you moving on to administrative reports bds anybody have any questions or comments um um may look a little different in the future so one thing i just wanted to make sure that you guys hear it from me is that i want to make sure in the future with those grant dollars that we continue
011to look to fund the preschool liaison position and the parents as teachers um those things are pretty essential to the other grants that we have in place with our research programs within our school um [Music] um well the jones people said they're gonna i mean that's like your top part we're you keep fighting that however what has happened is the first we were kind of late for the game and that was kind of the year between um and craig marshall so we didn't get it on the first half of that so we got it on the second semester of the year one and so they they funded by per people district they i don't know what their formula is but that's how districts are allocated money um the second year we just got whatever amount
012we set our budget on that then they kind of started in year three four and five they gave us our per pupil money and then they also started giving us additional allocations um as we reached the end of that grant the per people allocations pretty well are maxed out with those two things that i just mentioned to you the parents as teachers and the video designer and the additional monies we used in a variety of different ways we met with them on the zooming a couple weeks ago they didn't tell us they're unsure that there will be additional monies like we'll get the per people funding if they are not anticipating that we'll be getting the additional gift that we've got in the last few years that we've kind of tying in um quick with
013that uh there was a letter of support that was going around from the area superintendents today i did sign off on that for the jones trust funds hopefully to continue if nothing else at their original rate but maybe they're a rape that they might say that they continue to increase those funds over the past five years so they've been very beneficial very very i'm just very beneficial to the early childhood learning peace the connection that we've had again with our community preschools so anyway it's been it's been a good deal we hope that that letter will have some impact with the jones trust members okay moving on to bms questions i submitted this and obviously we were presented uh julie augustine does a great job with jump dodgeball for our race close to four thousand
014dollars as chloe gilbert set the new individual record and so the gym will be named after her and again the kids and staff have absolute classes it's kind of funny the smack talking that happens before that happens but i did recruit a couple high school aides since they are there they helped us out tremendously and um it was it was very well received kids did a great job i mean it's just a fun environment to be in uh seeing the kids shirts that they have and things like that so that's those are a couple items that i didn't get to have because julie has to keep that very secret until old school i think they were honorary substitutes that day for a day vhs questions did we oh i was just gonna practice this started
015today 21 for softball fifty five ish for track they just started today uh baseball softball and going for a week now and then uh golf and you think everybody's just ready to get outside and do something i think that's a lot of us awesome did you special ed the only thing i was going to point out i'm very excited that we had interviews we had multiple candidates apply for our school psych position we although we're losing a very veteran knowledgeable valuable employee we had a very good candidate an interview and accepted the position with us so we'll be coming on staff next fall and we actually have an slp interview as well coming out this week so those both are exciting those are hard technology report has already i guess the question you have here
016that next month we'll have the technology capital improvement project is there anything this year that's maybe enlightened our development that going forward with what we've learned over last year is it just more of making sure we have one and make sure the infrastructure is there right right focused on the infrastructure there are some things that we're looking at potentially moving to the cloud if you if you've heard that concept before some server type things that we're looking at transitioning to the cloud at this point email mail filtering type things we very much are believers in the new line product if you've had a chance to see the new on boards in fact you know we used to have the one in here and we replaced with just a regular tv with those new line boards
017um we'd like to we'd like to kind of work together with with mr marshall and try to do some things with some ezra funds to accelerate that process a little bit we're just about done with the middle school we did first grade wing and we started into the high school and now we've got two staffs that are clamoring to be next the best regardless all that all that mystery and door lock work through that discussion so but you know i i think that's those it's those types of things that that and and we do focus on getting additional laptops updating the laptops uh there'll be some discussion uh soon about kind of what what does the middle school look like and i brought this up an administrative meeting the other day and what i'm talking
018about is is does how does that how does that one-to-one continue to look within that building now that we've now that we've had kind of almost a full year of it with middle school level kids so the kids taking them home there's other pieces that happen with them that if the device didn't go home they wouldn't have the capability of finishing up work or often we have kids that are going to do better at listening to a book and following along so diane constantly is downloading books and things like that well if their advice has to stay at school they don't have that ability anymore and honestly we've had very few repair needs very few it's i mean it's it's been minimal so the kids have done a nice job taking us back and forth
019yeah yeah they always have something i mean even an adult sergeant right yeah the uh you know the biggest challenge we have uh in our district and i hear the other districts the other districts are you forgot your device today you forgot your device and i happen to know kind of first hand both two of my children work in topeka public schools now and so my youngest son works actually is a building tech person at washburn rural middle school and he said the biggest part of his day is where's your where's your chromebook where's your chromebook you know our biggest challenge is you didn't charge last night you know and so that's that's that's a challenge and that's responsibility and so forth and so like i said i i'm with matt it's if you would
020have asked me five years ago did i see a point where five to eight would be a full a full-blown take-home i i may never have seen that we had just if you remember we were just doing the year two of a pilot for the eighth graders to go home at semester because of the computer apps class and then all of a sudden we all went home and so you know that i don't in certain cases normal look like the old normal but but i really do think those those discussions will continue on so those are the those are the big things lucas is is that the infrastructure and then new lines and then as well what do we do to continue to expand and keep that one-to-one focus and growing and and doug and
021i haven't had a lot of conversations because again the new lines i've shared with you in board reports pictures of the picture and you see a picture of a promethean board it's not the same that you see it in the pictures that i take and share that with you so tying in though but one thing that doug and his tech staff have done really good with new lines is that that that training piece the cadre training piece so that the teachers when they get them they are effective with them and they are useful and so for example we could probably buy some more over the summer but would we be able to train the staff in their usage if we if we bought like 10 or 12 more that's extra additional work for the tech
022staff to have to make sure that they're installed and usable and then them to train the staff so it's kind of a balancing act how many more can you do but also train them and then the time it takes for them to do over the summer because it seems like those summer hours go fast and summer days go really fast so that's what we're trying to figure out you know exactly how much we can do okay the superintendent's report okay the first thing i shared with you again the capital outlet working document that tracy and i continually work on as well as administrators and directors helping give me input on that document throughout the year i just highlighted and put a few different items on there tracy's pulling up the document there again this is
023what we're looking at during this year you can see some of the things that we've already done and completed and some of the things that we're looking at doing there's still maybe some shuffling here as time goes on so one thing that we're looking at and as the football stadium the led light project out there potentially and this was something i was hoping to be able to wait and do one more year and wait and do this next year but because in the evaluation of lighting so like about this time during spring we evaluate our lights at the baseball softball fields because we've got to make sure we're well lit there and then the football field usually in the spring just to see if we had anything go out over the winter that type of
024thing so fortunately softball's in good shape no lights are out baseball has about six out right now and then the football stadium has seven out and so having said that we're you keep bringing if you bring in a truck to come in and do that repair if there's a service pot i mean a service charge there for the truck to be on site then they charge you by the hour and there's two different guys there that come with that truck and then you're replacing old they're old haylights halogen type lights they are not very uh cost-effective cost-efficient as you can see obviously with our gyms in elementary middle and high school we put led lights there in those gyms and it's just made a world of difference so and it's a lot less expensive and
025it's a much better well-lit project so we're kind of holding off on this football stadium project to see if we can do it this year not based on we've got roof bid coming up on wednesday so cross your fingers and hope for the best for the middle school rook bit and we'll have some information very soon we may end up having a couple of one or two special board meetings between now and i'm going to say april's meeting because we've got a few different projects going on not only with the roof bid but we also have some of the daycare remodel projects going on so we're going to try to we're trying to put them together and maybe just have one meeting but it may require two meetings it will just kind of keep me
026informed so this before he uh resigned his position um we're getting brad griffin up to speed with that and then um with uh with dave and myself being involved in that decision and talking with you and sharing the street with the board and margarito as well margarito solano has been involved with the decision as far as moving forward with an led project if you keep bringing in a truck every year two three four years and it's a 20 25 30 cost depending upon how many likes how many hours you start to put in bad money for these old style lights and you really end up getting kind of a really let's say you get upside down with the project instead of doing it all at once so again we're working on this we've got a
027possible you know a i guess a an idea a possible plan and it's something that they can still do over the summer they say i mean again is it something we have to let you know now on this is no you can get your roof bed determine where you're going to be at with your financial situation and they said even if you have an approval i'm going to say at the april or may board meeting meaning then we can still come in and do the project it's about a two week project for them to come in and just redo all the lights and that's a football stadium again reason being is it could just end up being one year after the next after the next twenty to thirty thousand dollars every time and that's just
028again not a good financial situation questions on kind of what we're thinking about i shared this with you in friday notes and so the lights aren't just a matter of changing uh from a halogen bulb to another people yeah [Music] with that same idea and we've done a lot of the big overhead lights we've changed just change the fixture just change the light well by bringing that picture up there our contacts that build that we're doing these big overhead lights said that you'll get a inferior product that won't last as long and the retro is not going to save you money yeah they say just go ahead and do that i was thinking the same thing and and dave and stacey said in on the presentation we had a gentleman come in uh and do
029a presentation just on what uh you know what what it would look like how it'd be different and then the the just the project in general and it was it was pretty amazing you guys can now uh i mean it's again cost savings better well-lit product and uh yeah it's different than just changing out a wall when you're in your home there's the there's the focus and the angle now hey good question that's the same thing those are expensive light bulbs so anyway again we're going to look at this after the roof bit comes in and i'm going to give you information quickly as soon as we find out it's a busy week here with roof bid and plumbing bids for the daycare and so on so forth again there'll be some flooring and carpeting
030projects going on again throughout the district uh middle school library renovation we have some news and bookshelves there that are failing and falling apart and the carpet's very very very old and dated so while we're doing that we're also going to paint in there we have seen a huge increase in circulation at the high school with the new library renovation there the middle school we're going to do the same thing and most likely the elementary school at some point in time as well who knows that we have will come in the permanent wall project we're going to look to do some of those at the last i guess the second of two phases if you will we did middle school and a couple of walls at the high school two years ago we'll probably look
031to try to finish that up we'll do the proposal from uh on that project and go from there and again the vms roof project opens for the roof project opens on march 10. and then some you know possible air conditioning units and chillers at the elementary school depending upon you know how the funding and finances go and we may we may we're still trying to figure out tracy and i are working a lot in regards to the esser funds and that's the covered money if you will the government quoted money we're trying to figure out what we can and what we cannot use on certain things so for example if you put in like little room pure air purifiers which we found from acs america automated control systems our hvac company they said those in
032this in-room you know little air air purifiers they are not they just they don't work you need to invest in your infrastructure like we've done with our hvac so how can we can we if we buy those air purifiers well yeah you could say you could use for esser funds potentially for that but it's not investing in your infrastructure bringing in fresh air in your hvac systems and being able to take care of your your whole system and your whole building so that's what we want to try to do again we don't want to after coven is over we don't want to have a garage full of 500 air purifiers that are no longer useful and they're worth two cents on the dollar or whatever because nobody really needs it anymore so anyway we're trying
033to figure out exactly what the funding is what we can and what we cannot use funding on and who knows if we can use some money on hvacs it's still questionable and so anyway um questions on the projects when will you have to have that money um for the sr2 fund so we've got some time and again we're we're trying down here a little bit later i guess i can also skip the the second i would go to the third item those are funds again we want to try to focus on student learning and the improvement uh again of of the of the areas where students and staff are so if you skip the two weeks we'll come back to the tuition reimbursement program here in a second um again what we're trying to do
034and we talked a little bit about this at the linkage we're trying to figure out again what we can do this summer and maybe extend our summer learning academy into possible credit recovery scenarios because we do have this money where if again because we've been lucky to have students on site the whole year pretty much so other than the one week of the high school our gap isn't quite as big as other school districts that haven't had kids on site so we still want to try to if we can make up some ground here using these esser funds over over the summer whether it's been because of the gap of covet or just some kids maybe just a little behind over the years we want to try to do as much as we can so
035we're maybe looking at expanding our our summer school and summer learning academy um into maybe k through 12. and offering some credit recovery opportunities and and see where we go darla is also working on a grant for the after-school program trying to tie in some summer learning options there as well so we have a schedule we're waiting to see if we get the grant um and as soon as as soon as we find out we get the grant then we'll share that schedule but we're trying to expand our summer opportunities for our kids and if that's the way we make up some ground even though like i say we weren't off-site as much that's a huge positive for for our students and our families so questions on that third item we'll go back to the
036second item here in just a second okay let's get back up to tuition reimbursement program i just wanted to talk about this um this is something we started in 2018 and uh you have to classify the certified guidelines they're listed i want to talk to you just a little bit about this and and we've had three candidates in the program and um we had one that has completed is now again working for us we have one that did not completely end up moving and leaving and they ended up having to pay back you know the fees for the tuition and paid that back in full and then we have one more that's just uh working on completing the program will be finished i think in december of 2021. and you know again just want to
037talk a little bit and discuss you know if what she was aboard or thinking or hearing we have to make a decision you know moving forward i need to send out some information on this program a positive for this two years ago is we felt like we were going to have a lot of retirements and i guess a positive is that we haven't had as many retirements as we as we anticipated with that being said um when we have these candidates we want to try to employ them obviously if they come through their program do a good job for us we want to try to employ them because again we put some money and we've invested in these people and we've grown our own and then we want to have them at least pull two
038years of duty for us as we've stated in the guidelines um again on a positive we we haven't had as many retirements so will that next year will that change who knows if you do away with the program and then you get four five six retirements and then you wish you would have had those grow your own opportunities so it's again crystal ball we truly don't know we just truly don't know um coming down the pipe but uh again i just didn't know what your thoughts or comments are um and again because i want to get some information out to our staff if they're interested in continuing they're interested in this program if we want to continue this yes i don't think i don't feel like we discontinue it just because we don't have anybody
039apply this year or maybe even next year we still you know could keep it as an option or somebody could be thinking about it for future or i mean just know just because we don't have something this year or maybe we will but i'm just saying i don't think just discontent in my opinion that's just okay well i'll say in full disclosure both of them are now mine so [Music] so interesting enough but it has been a really good program for them um i do think there was some uh bumps along the way uh quite a few that were i guess totally not understood by both sides so they had to work through that so i think that if we were to do it moving forward you could certainly get information from them on how
040that went and i would make it a smoother process for somebody else i mean both programs one went through one program one through one went to another and so they were both two really kind of different programs yes do we tell them what program they have to go through they get to change a good question there um no we don't we it has to be a like a credentialed university where they'll come out of it with a license there are some schools uh unfortunately that they are not on the up and up with you and you they'll take their money but when you're done you won't have a license so again each program is a little different they started again in 2018 some universities started to get into this because they saw a teacher shortage
041and there were people that went down a different career path and we wanted and maybe they went back to school and worked as a paraprofessional or a teacher aide and they wanted to get into teaching and so there were again universities trying to create the program on the fly and so that's something like to say we want to have a discussion with them emporia state's really good to talk they they connect with me at least once a year on some different things and we talk and usually usually it's two or three times a year i know last year we only connected one time kobo was obviously a reason for that but uh yeah again with the program we have two candidates now one is working for us so that's a success story and one hopefully
042uh come december we'll end up you know being able to take on you know duties for us and then the one that didn't complete paid us back every penny when they left before their commitment was over so in that respect you know you think about uh we have one success story one heading towards a successful inn and one we got money back i think it's good no i just wondered like so when they if they complete it and we do not have a spot anywhere and you heard it linkage substitutes we need substitutes something fierce we could possibly end up with a substitute list we could possibly who knows in the area it's possible we could hire them as a district substitute and you know guarantee them daily sub job if you will that type
043of thing there are those options that we do have so yeah our substitute list is is is less than what we i mean i think there are some maybe some older substitutes that were on the list uh that during covet they were more cautious so um they chose maybe not to come back so again our substitute list is really it's minimal right now and at the very least it could be a fully a full-time date a full-time substitute potentially and so and again there's sometimes where there's a semester like where you need a semester or i'm sorry where you need a long-term situation right things like that can happen so good questions the uh life goals map programs for classified students living for certified teachers and right now the one that we have that's the
044success is still in para mode right so it's that move looking to be made next year at the middle school for that sixth grade position then they're they're is happening with the middle school and that's the first domino in the fall they are working on that uh right now with the interview process i mean it would be great to have that you know some long bench come right in and get that right right we do have to open the positions up to interview but it's very possible you know again and there might be uh more than one other position who knows come up as time goes on so good question dr thorpe i don't know if you are still there if you have any comments okay i'm kind of hearing that you want to go
045ahead and want to go ahead and is it something that it sounds like we don't want to discontinue but i mean go forward with it looking at you know we already tried to perceive what we thought were going to be retirements in the future and then maybe some of those didn't happen but make sure we have someone that's wanting to move into a position of the high school or the military or wherever it is that's one to pursue those jobs well i think the the biggest part about it it's a known quantity i mean is someone you already know in the system and hopefully you can keep somebody here you can keep somebody that has kids there i mean it's i think it just is just really throw your own i mean exactly what you
046said so yeah i just think it's a great program i i think that now that kind of someone loves her work out of it i think you could actually sit down with someone and talk better with them because i mean this was really ideal really didn't understand the whole finance piece and all that stuff so you know what do you mean when your student teaching you you can't work and you can't get any money coming in oh jeez you know so i think that's all worked out now people chose not to who knows what again with covet in the situation they may think differently this year so i will go ahead and share information out with the district and 243-245 especially co-op employees can apply for that as well i'll put that out this week
047sometime and see who knows we may or may not get anybody interested who knows okay all right um i'm going to go let's see the next item down and uh haley gifford is here haley is our new daycare director uh it's like i told her i said when you first came on first day it's like drinking water from a fire hydrant i mean you're getting after it fast and furious and haley's done a terrific job we have at the meeting before she got hired we talked a little bit about the name of the daycare so usd 244 daycare center is what you guys had thought about haley has an idea possibly looking at a different name and again the option there that she came up with was burlington early learning center and i don't know
048if you want to speak to that haley at all you sure can i just feel like daycare is kind of a broad term and we really want to focus on kindergarten readiness and getting them ready to go to school and while we will be birth through five years old about we are going to focus on learning and it's not just going to be daycare so i think that early monday and it sounds a little easier you know it's a little easier to say berlin's an early kind of like the rec center says usd 244 on the side that's their own budget they're on board their own everything so i like that that is they don't just see 244 on it called for the daycare that's right in the parking lot so i like that it
049says burlington i think that's a good idea [Music] we're going to take that down it's going away as soon as we can get some we're actually going to probably take that down at the time they start working on the daycare playground so yeah because some people may still think that's the the district office so i guess i'm skipping around here i'm going to go down to the last item and try to see if you can queue this up while haley's still here she may leave this is a video that we watched we had an in-service uh training we were supposed to go to garden city but the weather was dicey and we ended up doing it here in the boardroom there is a video called no small matter and it was an hour and ten
050minutes we started off this conference with an hour and ten minute video and it it was powerful i mean it was really powerful i'm going to show you the two minute clip here um and tracy will cue that up it was just it just it's a wow moment i guess the beginnings of humanity grew up in these very rich extensive families and of course the world we're in now is a very very different world to put him in johnny's with him all day this notion of the american dream is so much old [Music] ignoring this that's a disaster for us this is not the way it's supposed to be we have a deeper understanding now of how important these early years are and why we're unlocking the secrets of the brain first time in history
051we never hadn't really looked into a baby's brain before what's going on up there is rocket science [Music] i want to be very funny i want to be the one that's like you can do anything every child should have access to high quality of education if we get this right our country looks dramatically different whatever you want to call it child care preschool home we have to do it [Music] everywhere the documentary as uh cookie monster said there uh it's just very very powerful and very impactful and uh like i say it's it's going to make a huge difference and maybe one of if not the best thing that we've ever done i think and we're excited we're actually doing interviews now and looking to get staff on board and it's it's really it's exciting
052to see some really good people that one lady that's a teacher in there was just so i mean she was as excited as the kids that's the type of person we want and we're anxious to get them on board with us so yeah okay backing up to the next to the last i on my list i want to talk a little bit about temperature taking in our buildings and our buses before school we started to have this discussion with our administration directors and okay how many are we seeing when kids and adults are coming into the building and administrators and directors you guys can verify with me it is minimal like five or less the whole first 27 weeks of school correct in august it was it was two students uh one parent parent came
053in and stood there for i don't know less than five minutes it was fine another one was waiting for practice to occur standing out in the sun by the time i went got the handheld got them they were fine and same with the the other student was actually in the morning coming to school was in the seventh eighth grade entrance they came down we got the handheld did it again they were fine so we've had three those are all in novels so with this being said we started to have discussions is this a step that we can look to eliminate because we've got staff coming in early and we've got staff that can only come in certain doors in the buildings and you know we try to have these discussions with our administrator and director
054group and then share it out with lindsay payer and dr schloyer and they shared with us some information and basically you know dr slayer's comment was because children don't typically report fevers with coba they don't have fevers like maybe adults would it is not necessary to scream students for fevers any longer this is what he feels like he said however screening adults should continue through the remainder of the school year fever can be a little more common symptom among adults so that's what he or his recommendation would be and again there's we just we wanted again we tried to make it very open enough up front we've had our covert advisory committee meetings we've shared information with the board obviously you guys as well as our administration directors having you know discussions about the these
055items related to covet and then we put our information on the website so having said that it almost seems like this is a step really that's um that's not needed um our attendance rate is incredibly uh it's our absence rate is just minimal we are right now in each building under three percent absence rate for the last i don't know how many weeks you guys you guys can report it's just been it's almost scary how good our absence rate has been with a pandemic we haven't really seen flu-like scenarios occur in our building at all probably a lot of it has to do with social distancing masking hands you know a lot of this is very it's very important so again trying to think about again moving forward what does make make sense i would
056like to talk with our covert advisory committee and i shared that information that we're at least considering this i usually try to update them once a month um i think james and stacey get those emails because you're our board representatives on the public advisory was it a practice or we didn't make it a policy right it's just it's our guidelines our practice right now it's not a policy about temperature taking right now so um again we're at least considering this and maybe we'll look to have if you guys depending on how you feel as a board look to have a meeting if you're saying yes move forward we may have a covert advisory committee meeting before spring break that could be something we could get out to the public if that's our direction again our
057message here is that again we that this this is not i mean it's not like we're getting rid of all of the items on our list we're not just going back to quote-unquote normal but it's a start in the right direction because our data shows we don't i think people at home do i want to compliment the public i think people at home are doing a very good job at assessing the kids if they're not feeling well before they get to school and i think that's beneficial to everybody they don't have to come and pick them up if they drop them off on a bus or something like that you know they have to go get them back from the bus you know a bus stop or whatever the case might be or they have
058to come back to school if kids are walking or riding a bike so anyway i'll leave it up for you guys now for comments or discussion my comment would be that this wouldn't start until the executive order for the state disaster was lifted by the governor right well as her executive order goes and is extended through march 31st so we couldn't stop doing this until then because their executive order says we're going to do it that that is that well that's true that's true i just want to say that we can't listen to the county health guidance trump what the executive order is even if the doctor feels that way that's fine it says very blatantly in that executive order that all people interview buildings will have their temperature checked first time the first day
059or the day so i don't see how we get away with that with changing that between before march 31st now if it's lifted march 31st well yeah again it could be again it could be an after spring break thing or it could be a march or an april one day thing and there's a lot of districts and and administrators you guys can chime in um week america last night about nine o'clock i got a survey from one of the superintendents and and the questions were about temperature taking and who's masking and who's not asking and uh other different scenarios i mean that are listed in regards to cochlear protocol so i just i'll probably get these results probably tomorrow or wednesday hopefully i said please share these results with me and i'll share them with
060you on friday notes but again there are some districts we know of that aren't using masks at all anymore in spite of the governor's orders [Music] i think it's possible but again again it's a balance between counties and states and what's what is uh a dance i guess it's a dance right now and what some people believe you know as an industry yeah i know i know was there the county can opt out for example out of a mass mandate the county can opt out of certain things you know was the executive order included with the school start date it was uh well it was again was separate maybe i'm trying to remember exactly it was the executive order i need to pull that let me pull that out and see um i mean if
061we talk about the business what do they say are we all just ignoring that executive order or they just in the morning and say we don't care we've had a couple districts that have come to play us during the winter and i dealt with some of their fans they're like we don't have it in lebanon yeah they don't they don't have it the anger administrator said it's going to be difficult to remind him but he said we don't have them so our kids are without mass we're practicing without doing this that's scary just start picking the rules i mean some of the rules that we want to follow and i'll follow i'm sure i don't know is that is that what we're suggesting that we just do whatever we wait and see if the emergency
062disaster declaration is over right and that is uh i mean that's a date we may want to look at is that april april one date if you will um i mean again i think a lot's going to depend too on what the advisory committee feels i mean if that's a step they feel like is is really important the data again shows that it's really it's not as important um and again who knows if the governor will come out and make a statement and adjust the executive order when i look at the executive order here i'm trying to pull it up here it says it will it will become effective august 10 2020 and remain in force until rescinded or until the statewide state of disaster emergency extended by house bill 2016 enacted during june until
063it expires whichever is earlier so i guess we'll see again it could be an april 1 date for us it's very possible the 25th of january is extended to march 31st to this year okay yeah so when that expires yeah and and maybe just something that you're looking at yeah i mean we're looking at that if the advisory council comes back and says maybe that's the date that you guys make you say well we want to keep it going until then you know just kind of uh i i think it was just giving you guys the data as to what we were doing and then you guys along with the advisory would be the ones that come up and set the date because we weren't going to set the it hasn't been taking to children's
064temperatures hasn't been catching the kids because did any of those fears end up in coming right and so so you're going to have the same thing in august if the advisory committee looks at this maybe it's in april one day i did have two advisory committee members respond to me and one said this seems like a really good choice to move forward it's one it's a step in the right direction plus your it seems like it's not uh it's not it's he didn't say it was wasted time but he said it didn't it didn't make sense with your data another person responded about and this is one of our staff members that's on the committee said my concern only concern is about masks kids walking into the building and don't have masks on so we
065got to figure that step out and that step could be one if you don't have a mask on you report directly to the office to get a mask or two we can give masks supplies and mask to the teachers and when kids walk in the building they get a mask at the classroom you're taking a little chance with kids walking through the hall but i think kids are so used to it at this point you know if you're there or you have you know a station of mass or whatever kids know when they go in a building they put on them that said we cannot keep supplying mass please check cinemas um i mean they're giving out still probably 15 plus masks a day so i mean we can still have somebody sitting there i
066personally don't think elementary kids can ban [Music] this door has one person in the temperature station that person would be happy to keep doing that right i mean that that's not an issue it's just i think they're thinking that that's not what they're going to be doing there you know all right i think the question is are you going to you know you have to have mass near the building if they're coming in off that if how can you drop off they're kind of quite a way to deal with that mass if somebody still isn't there so well don't you have someone out there all the time so i think as we've evolved we certainly see the science as they call it has evolved to where it says that kids are not necessarily the problem
067but i also agree with lucas in the point that says well we have it and so maybe the government will look at that but if everybody sees the cdc guys who just came out today that's going to change everything i mean and that's going to come all the way down kids the cdc side guy you said today so i'd be more concerned to know how many teachers i don't know that i would know that how much staff was vaccinated what's the percentage of staff vaccinated the cdc guidance came out today that talked about on the adults at least for if you had vaccinated if you had vaccinated uh parents or and your grandkids were not vaccinated you could still visit now without a mask and they're they're so they're opening that up and so we're
068looking at some of that long-term care and all that stuff so i think probably the next month or two you may see a lot of changes and i think it may be right to say that maybe we don't need to take the temperatures anymore but i know stacy could probably attest to we do take them to the hospital still and we have caught some people mostly adults that have had temperatures that we thought of whereas adults we are seeing fevers or we're seeing a change in temperature everybody's so used to taking their temperature every day now if i'm normally 97 and today i'm 99.1 that's a red flag just because i've went up from my normal baseline kind of a thing so we have caught some as far as that goes but kids typically we're
069not really seeing a fever i'm going to speak out on both sides of my mouth on this but i do agree with lucas and that we can't do anything until we know for sure by the state that we're okay to do something i feel like we're okay to get rid of temperatures but i also just want to bring up the caution and that we're getting towards allergy season people are burning fields we're seeing lots of coughs we're seeing lots of snotty noses and that fever might be the the only determining vector that tells us that it's not an allergy so just to caution people on that keep that in mind but i i'm a fan to get rid of it if we can eventually once once the state says that we're able and that's the
070point i want to try i agree i am all for whatever i would like to hear kind of some professional opinions about schools that say they don't have to whatever that's on them i guess but i agree with if we don't even take temperatures and it's not showing or pitching anything that makes sense i mean but uh i don't know another good point too is that average is going to bring 800 people to this area that bring not just coping but all yes would you like me to set up an advisory committee meeting just to have that discussion about our protocols in general and then as well as specifically have some discussions right you know but like possible they were talking about literally the cdc today where they did that but they didn't change anything
071on an airplane and they said they believe that's coming also so okay we'll go ahead we'll hold standpath for right now but we'll continue to monitor what we're hearing as far as from cdc as well as maybe the state as well and we're going to find out more information potentially here in the next few weeks okay that's all i have any other questions okay move on to board member island board reports um i'm sure in this section i reached out to luke silva while we're meeting here we do need private resolution for a board vacancy and since the president um lucas automatically now becomes president and you need to nominate a vice president i nominated 244 board of education [Music] i couldn't hear who you nominated james higgins it's stacy james higgins was nominated by
072monique thanks okay i you will need to see me after the meeting because well the issue is we have payroll this next week he cannot find the check because he's no longer a reward for her this has never happened before and lucas lucas ksb said you may have to hand sign all those checks um because we have an electronic signature there's no way we can turn that around luckily the certified run has very few paper checks so it's not as big of a deal but anyways we can talk about this will allow us to publish in the newspaper so you will need to pass you'll have to fill in the blanks with our district county and then the county republican has a newspaper i didn't have time to type it in there we'll recall that
073again oh his position is four he was inspiring in 2021 you don't need that for this we'll [Music] so someone just needs to read that resolution whereas the vacancy exists in the membership of the board of unified school district number 244 coffee county kansas and whereas ksa 25-2022 authorized the board of education to fill such vacancies no sooner than the 15 days following publication notice in the newspaper having general circulation in the school district being resolved with the clerk of the board of education at unified school district number 244 coffee county kansas shall cause such notice to be published in the coffee county republic good second second hi business 20 minutes regarding a student issue under the exemption relating to actions adversely or favorably affecting a student under a coma and to return in the
074room in this room return to this room at the end of that time including craig marshall stated yes [Music] did you say i did okay i thought i heard it but okay so it's 806. we are going to go i'm following you yes oh sure so bye i think nobody can call me while we're in the boardroom because i kind of had a headache and uh so i set my alarm so i wouldn't make someone sleep too long or something i just sent mark a text message gonna let him know that that's coming so i think he might still be over there because he's saying that he's not sure what to do before they get in this paper thank you okay this okay right you all right [Music] um okay well i wasn't going to
075but i'm going to be nice okay um five years executive session for five minutes regarding the student issue under the exception right into actions adversely or favorably affecting student or under coma and to return this room at the end of that time including great martial stacy it should be there and mike we got the four five more minutes closed captioning not available so [Music] so hmm one minute uh uh next time agenda is contract approvals and appointments this is kind of a carryover from where we had a special meeting to approve the daycare i guess early learning center playground uh and there was carryover topic where you would discuss the financial for that sure exactly and i shared with you some information in the public content of ortox again this is kind of what we
076talked about at the special meeting that we had to approve and you guys had some questions on would we use some capital outlay district capital because this playground would in fact be basically a joint playground be able to use by the the preschool the three and four-year-olds at the elementary school as well so again the jones trust proposal that we have as far as the grant from the jones trust is 50 000. again the playground came in at sixty one seven eighty one we have a fence expense of about 31.087 and then we have that concrete expense of about seventy three hundred and sixty dollars for burlington construction the total of that amount so is 72 249.07 for the total playground so again that difference is 22 22 249.07 that we can either again we
077can use districts industry capital outlay to help offset that additional cost again we turn down the pro the playground project to get to that 70 well is 70 72 to 49.07 or we can use the the grant money that we have again if it's a shared facility that was the one thing i kind of wanted to try to you know kind of i guess emphasize it would be a shared facility for the elementary school to be able to use it for their three and four-year-olds and we are adding an additional hopefully if we get our grant an additional section of canada the kpp preschool so we'll have three-year-olds in the morning four-year-olds in the afternoon or vice versa so it'll be an additional hopefully an additional additional preschool section there and that could create a
078strain on the playground that sets to the north west corner of the elementary school so anyway question any thoughts and again feel free to share and real quick i don't know why that was on consent um it should not have been on that's this is not an action item it's showing that you guys voted that yeah shouldn't be there i wonder yeah it is not on action and still we just talked about this last time about the northwest playground i thought that was not we're not talking about the northwest playground okay so so the northwest playground there is is used quite a bit at the elementary level again so again that that area there is a kind of a shared playground the north playground has the playground and it has it's a very small area
079yeah because the last week they don't have a density and that has been an item that has come up over again the five years that since we've been here since i've been here about trying to improve that playground area we just haven't gotten to that yet it's not i say it's not in horrible terrible shape but that playground at some point in time is it needs some repairs or it it may it emissions it's not an horrible time it's not in the best of shape let's let's say that it may need repairs or at some point time it may end up needing to be replaced so anyway um again i'm hopeful that it'll be quite some time before it needs to be replaced and hopefully it just needs some repairs thoughts other thoughts so i
080shared in our special meeting that uh wolf creek has donated 25 000 for this early learning center and that they would have no issues at all with their donation going toward covering the difference between the jones trust grant to whatever the 73 thousand dollars would come out a couple of thousand dollars by the time you put the two of them together totally cover that that's something that they i mean they would have no stipulations about it they don't mind if they sign up or they would really pursue putting a sign up but i think that donation was there to cover this cost and i don't we talk about the use between school and the daycare and making sure that there's some input from the school district side with capital outlay money put into this playground
081but i think that's something we can manage even with this playground that's just wholly funded with grant i think that's something that i don't think that just your early learning center is going to say this is my grant money playground you can't come on i think we can manage do you have a pla do you think you're going to need that 25 000 from wolf creek for operational thought is that what you're thinking so that we can make sure that i will tell you this again until we get until we get the plumbing did and that comes tomorrow guys i don't know i'm hopeful i mean we i i need a operational forum yeah it could be operational and again it depends on again how many kids are you know signed up right you know
082we have the ability to go up to 72 children in the daycare because of a reconfiguration originally we thought it was 59 well because of the configuration again we're truly with the daycare in some aspects we're kind of building the plane as we fly it because with the re with the the adjustment of some of the rooms and the spaces and sizes they have allowed us to go up to 72. so again again if we get if we get 48 kids it could be you know a little tougher the first year to to make it a budget neutral scenario we may have to use some of that grant money or write other additional brands which we've already talked about write other additional grants to help support it again if we get 55 60 65 kids
083it becomes more sustainable easily budget neutral we feel like again we don't know exactly how many kids that we're going to have signed up so having said that yes it could it could be the case um again it's it's it's your decision though um in regards to the direction so back to our our spreadsheet of you know what we're gonna get done this year you know so if the money goes to this then what are we gonna have to kick off that list and push down the road we would have to adjust something you're right yeah but it does benefit not only it does benefit the the three the elementary kids in the pre-k and it's it's a again it doesn't it's not like we're asking to split this 50 50. it's a small number
084but again again it's it's 22 000 and change so how much will the elementary kids as a preschool kids use it right now like the am preschoolers take a 20 years well actually four times because we got two different sections so to do that there has to be some coordination with the daycare i assume yourself because you don't want to intermix those kids is that right yeah because of the space of the playground it's not that we wouldn't want the kids to be together there's a certain square footage like classes i mean i like that this idea that you know it would be like okay our money or whatever whatever money goes for certain things and it is kind of nice to be like yeah the playground was helping for by whatever grant doesn't look
085specific and i definitely see the point that if we're going to need it for operational funds and then we can use this capital like but like celina said i agree with that like where's that gonna so you won't be able to use if you don't use this for a capital outlay for the program you won't be able to use capital outlay to fund something else for operations right property two thousand dollars respectively yes it is if you choose to go if you choose to go away from the capital outlay option it just means that haley and i we're going to have to make sure that we you know like i said well first of all the point the plumbing bid comes in tomorrow guys and if it's if that's 95 000 that's going to be
086a big world of hurt if it's under 50 000 that's going to make us feel a lot better who knows if it's 30 000 if it's 60 000 if it's 90 000 that building's 100 years old so so what you're saying is the plumbing bed comes in high then we need more capital that money no we just we we're well we're going to be we're going to have to we're going to have to beat the bushes for additional grant funding and we're going to have is that as a board and as being transparent as possible with our public we've levied our capital outlet funds for k-12 education those capital outlay funds were levied at the time four meals for the school one male four just renovations like moving forward if that's the direction of the
087board and the district that we need capital outlay to sustain the daycare or the early learning program i just i feel like we may be crossing a line with being open and honest with our public on how we're spending our funding currently and i will say this and i'll say this time with what tracy has said i agree with what she said if there was no connection with elementary school play kids using that playground i would not be saying we need to do this but there is 80 minutes a day where they're going to have a much better playground set up than they currently do now to be a shared facility if you will and i don't think anyone's saying if it's just holy grail funded it can't be shared is that going to be
088how this works no i think what here i i mean it gets the buy-in from the district i guess but well i if i understand it right what you're saying is if we don't spend this capital outlay at 22 on the playground equipment we don't have any money out there to fund operational side of the daycare and that's what you want to use correct this money from and uh but on the other side of that we told the public that this is going to be budget neutral so now i want to emphasize again budget neutral to the general fund because that was the concern that some staff members had we were going to be taking money out of the general fund and we said yeah that that you're exactly neutral that it was going to
089be taken away from so-and-so getting carpet in their classroom i mean you know correct if there was no connection with the elementary school and then being able to use this playground for 80 minutes a day then you're right i'm not asking to do this but there is that connection that could exist and to kind of answer your question lucas well we say hey listen if the district doesn't kick in any money here will that does that mean that the the elementary school can't use the playground well that's going to be up to haley and her staff and organizing and scheduling if if we do this what i'm going to do is make that directive to haley this needs to happen where the schedule is need to mesh so that not only elementary school can use
090it but also the daycare if the funding isn't there i mean it's again i i if you as a board tell me that needs to happen so be it but um we don't have any support financially into this program the kids at the elementary school are getting a benefit out of this but we don't necessarily have a skin in the game as a board so again if you guys tell me that we need to get to not use capital outlay and we need to have the elementary kids be involved in that playground we'll make we'll make it work that's where i'm falling on is use the grant money there's going to be a lot of checks written for that day here between now and the first playground check and already dipping into kappa outlay which
091i mean like as selena said that somebody's carpet or walls or something in their room and if you know if we think this is something we want to hold on to that one meal for that expires this year then we take that to the public and talk about it for the four meals and then one actually for the science foreign but as it started it was a budget neutral and we're going to get a bunch of grants okay that's that's where i thought did anybody else have [Music] i kind of feel like we should use the way we're not voting anyway it's just great i like i'd like to save that grant money back for operational just because running a daycare is so expensive and we don't really we have a ton of unknowns we
092don't know how many kids we're going to have we know that everybody's going to use that playground and it takes a lot of money take care all right i supported kevin and this is i'm going to throw this out as another idea you could table this until i have a board meeting and then we will have a better idea when the plumbing bids come in because they come in tomorrow that is an option or you can decide what you want to do today that's an option too we can't so the plumbing um couldn't be paid paid i'm just talking about should we pay for um with some capital outlay funds since it's a building we maintain anyone well we are renovating it for the for the daycare purposes so to me that doesn't benefit that
093doesn't benefit the elementary kids that's where my difference is with the playground i think we should take a look i think saying well i don't really like the idea of taking it from capital lottery to be honest even if we could get that number smaller maybe i pay for half that 22 000 with that and a half from calculating a little better but i prefer to table it because i don't want to take it from capital l unless it's absolutely necessary okay okay i think that sounds like where we're going we'll get some bids in for the plumbing that'll have a better idea going forward with capital or what the infrastructure build of the daycare will be and then we'll see how much early learning centers that'll see how much operational money we'll need are
094supposed to open those tomorrow tomorrow yes when does the one build retire or whatever 2022 okay it's more so yeah next item is personnel i shouldn't accept the retirement request of susie baby fair professional effective february 26 2021. have motion second number one vote on your computers and mike are you still there hi election passes 6-0 next time is a bunch of time for uh a local option state average increase correct so for a number of years as it stated there that the state went average for local auction budget has been 30 30 ksde has informed us that they anticipate the statewide average to increase to approximately 31. so with that right and that's for the during the 2020 2021 school year so the final actual percentage it won't be known until june it just
095says again this increase will allow school boards to adopt and it will be as high as 31 for the 2021-2022 school year again without publishing a resolution subject to petition or protest so again you have that option basically because that state average is going from 30 to 31. if we were to before if it was a set of 30 we want to go 31 32 or 33 it would be subject to protest with that being said um board's desire to look at the lld authority to go to 31 for next year if it was based on this year's numbers like our current lob in general fund it would have brought in an additional 75 to the llb um it would only increase in the levy about 0.15 of the male and only cost taxpayers about
0961.73 a year so it will depend next year on what our general fund ends up being that it could be fairly similar is there a driving reason i guess that it's going into a state average of 31 i think a lot of other school districts are having to use 31 32 or 33 to make it through you know and they do that by resolution that can be petitioned right and then since that average jumps up with that average jumping up with other districts going to 31 32 or 33 that increases the state-wide average yeah you got it right gas alone okay i mean you just passed 100 miles no no you just have to we will officially approve the lmp later in the year but we have a report we have to submit to the
097state where we have to at least we can tell them what our number could be it doesn't lock us in so that's why we were discussing it so if we if i do need to put in 31 in case we do plan to go to that um it doesn't make any sense not to do it it's exactly right it gives us that authority and we may or may not depending upon how you know the budget configures in the summer that's how other questions anybody okay uh negotiations do we need 20 minutes i [Music] executive session for negotiations um he just sent you on your way he just sent you on your way come back this way uh okay yes if just make sure it's not it's not streaming it is [Music] i appreciate the haley
098kane i'm just thanking for time anything else thank you dr thorpe