Board Meeting 8-9-21

001i would like to call this meeting of the west and south polanki school board to order uh mr you struck can you please leave some pledge allegiance and absolutely the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice i thank you is that what please call the role yes mr burns here mr used chuck here mrs kaiser here mr keller here ms deal this deal is here remotely mrs carr here mr sikich president mrs justin here president lee here proper notice that this meeting has been posted in accordance with the open meeting laws of the state of wisconsin dr lotzman are there any modifications to the gender this evening now we have no changes all right with that i'll move on to public comments as a reminder for public comments

002you have three minutes three minutes exactly for which to speak we have a lot of people here this evening and others via zoom that would like to speak so we'll be hearing very strictly to the three-minute time limit so please make sure your comments are not longer than that you also need to make sure to state your name and your address before speaking with that call the first person up mr john mulling well i know you hold us to the three minutes i'm john mulling um 3850 south pole drive in new berlin um before i start though i got a request here written requests for the number of the where those 80 books from ibrahim kennedy are going to the book is how to be an anti-racist by ibram kennedy i asked that almost a

003month ago within two weeks you're supposed to have an answer if i don't have an answer to this by friday i'm going to call joe sanfilippo my representative madison who i know very well i will contact all the major tv stations and hopefully have them come next time or call you before the next meeting and see why you're not answering my question but the longer this goes that i don't get an answer about ibrahim kennedy's stuff the more i'm thinking you're teaching this stuff you're teaching this stuff and i can smell it okay so i'm giving you this again to whoever wants it this by friday or i'm calling joe felipe i've had that in for three weeks and i'm not kidding okay three minutes i want to address i did a lot of research

004in the last two weeks talking about following the science i want to talk to any a board member who wants to follow the science and mr may who was here at the last or on online on the last meeting you want to follow the science well i'm going to give you a reason to follow the science and i want you to follow the science here's some quotes from the cdc and who these are all quotes one masks don't work in the community two everyone should wear masks in the community three everyone should wear two masks four everyone every every person vaccinated you should still wear a mask five if you're vaccinated you can do without a mask then there's uh from saint fauci he got he sent an email to the sec former secretary of

005health and human services sylvia burl this is a quote from dr fauci the typical masculine in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus which is small enough to pass through the material end of quote that was from saint fauci two things block this virus an n95 mask or a respirator n95 will block 95 of the particulates a bacteria like staph aureus or e coli is 32 times larger than the covalent virus 32 times larger that's why the mask you're wearing work in a hospital if you're changing a wound or something a prominent uk md compared using a cloth mask to the equivalent of trying to keep dust out of a horse corral using chicken wire this is the comparison he's making this is your mask that you're wearing right now dust

006is the virus that's the difference in the size of the virus i don't think that keeps dust out of a corral dr ben carson a renowned cardio pediatric cardiologist surgeon stated that if you have had covet or you are fully vaccinated you do not need to wear a mask after this meeting i'd like you to go home put your mask on take a a cutting board with a big wide blade take a uh mr mulling you have 10 seconds okay piece of garlic smash it you will smell garlic that means you just inhaled covet last but not least there's a saying out there we've all heard fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me and i'll even once you have a piece of the chicken wire so you can look at

007how dust can get through there thank you thank you very much all right next we have is it kevia mccray hello ladies and gentlemen my name is lakeiva mccray i am a proud parent of a senior that attends west allis central um i would just like to say that well mr craig i'm sir can you give us your address please oh sure i'm sorry about that 24 45 north 44th street i would just like to say that this is really a joke it is a joke from one one end of the spectrum to another i don't understand why something's so easy as covering your mouth so that you don't infect others and get infected is such a problem i am a parent that has i have i'm an individual that has lost more than five

008freaking family members to this to this to this to coleman and if you have not lost anybody in your family and i'm talking about direct contact with people i lost my grandmother april fools day we were not even able to all go to her funeral we were not even able to plan her funeral because we all had the quarantine this is very serious and if you haven't lost anybody you can't sit here and tell somebody how serious or how big of a joke it is it's not my daughter worked her butt off to be she's a he has a 3.7 gpa she worked her tail off her whole four years of school ap classes honor classes all of her teachers and counselors vouch for her write letters for her my daughter has a right to

009walk across that stage in a healthy environment school is supposed to be a healthy place for our children because if we send our kids to school and they haven't eaten if we send our kids to school and they have reps on them that's a big problem well guess what i have a big problem if i send my child to school when she comes home and she gets us sick or she comes home and she's sick something as simple as covering your mouth i don't understand it and we all know these children our children are children so when they go back to school and they're unmasked guess what they're going to be playing jokes with this coughing and sneezing around folks and thinking it's funny well guess what my daughter is going to be uncomfortable just

010like every other child in that school is going to be uncomfortable guess what then now she's at school she can't even learn somewhere where i send her to school to learn somewhere where i pay to make sure that she gets the proper education if we're going to be safe let's be safe all around i don't care what dr saucy and everybody else in the cdc and that damn chicken wire that he set up there this is saving people's lives it's stopping it from spreading if we have if the numbers were going down with us covering why can't we keep that same energy until we get it under control after the dead district thing the numbers shut up i don't want to be sick i don't want to bury my daughter i don't want to bury

011her father i don't want to bury my mother it's serious it is serious to the african-american community it is damn serious and if you don't care about others care about somebody besides yourself what happened and where we don't care about each other anymore mr craig 10 seconds please we don't care about each other anymore then we what's gonna happen is we're gonna mess around we're gonna kill all our goddamn asses here that's what's gonna happen it's about the children and about being saved thank you miss mcrae that does good [Music] thank you everyone thank you you both had your time to speak and everybody uh is it kai and kai rael martin i'm sorry kirell martin hello my name is kiami okay hello my name is kiro martin and my residence is 2445 north 44th

012street i would like drugs off to say um i know that my mother was very emotional and i would like to just come up here and say my peace but i start off with saying this is emotional so whoever told my mother all right all right can please not that's it on that part and um i'm a senior this year so let's get into not just that because i was disrespectful and rude um but i'm a senior this year and like my mom said i worked really hard i understand that some people don't want to wear it i understand it's uncomfortable i understand that it's not what we were accustomed to but if it's able to save lives or allow me to go to school and be safe that's what i want to do and

013i didn't prepare a whole paper or do all this research and maybe that was ignorant of me but um it make you not listen to me as much as anybody else who gets on here who has research or has a whole paper out but i don't have much to say besides i just want to go to school and feel safe and i want to be able to enjoy my senior year that i worked hard for and i want to be able to across the stage and not have to do a drive-by um graduation and i want to be able to go to prom and see my friends that i haven't been able to see in a year and a half and i just want everyone to be safe because like my mom said i lost

014my great-grandmother to this and other family members that i didn't even get to see be buried um and i'm usually not emotionally about coveted i understand how everybody has their own opinions and i don't like to be disrespectful to other people's opinions um but this is not an opinion i do believe that people's safety and health and people's rights and safety and health are not opinions just like how i feel like people's mental health is not an opinion people's safety whether it is physically emotionally is not an opinion civil rights is not an opinion so to want that all together i don't think wearing masks during school for seven eight hours shouldn't be an opinion i think it should just be what it should be and like he said whatever mask is most effective i

015really don't care um i'll wear it and i think that everybody else should wear it um he's right some masks aren't effective and you still can die whether you wear a mask or not and you can still die if you get the vaccine you can still die with anything you do in this world but um if there's a mask no matter if it makes me look stupid or it's uncomfortable for a little bit i'll wear it if i can be safe and keep others safe and know that nobody's blood is on my hands from not being responsible and i don't know if i didn't meet my three-minute mark but that's pretty much it thank you very much oh and also people are gonna have different opinions don't be disrespectful because all right uh leah zacharias

016all right leah zacharias 1958 south 93rd street i want to start off by making it clear why i'm fighting this fight to make masks optional in our school district we've had such a great experience at irving elementary school and we want our kids to continue their education there we've looked at different options such as private school homeschooling and open enrollment but our family would be heartbroken to leave irving i've spoken here a handful of times and sent numerous emails to the board my main questions and requests still continue to be unanswered where is the science the nine of you are making a decision that impacts the health and well-being of not only my children but over eight thousand children the burden of scientific proof falls on the nine of you before making your decision provide

017evidence that masks are significantly effective against the respiratory virus and that making a child wear a mask for seven to eight hours a days won't cause harm because in the research that i have done it's proven that these studies do not exist but i've requested the scientific proof from you multiple times and received nothing except links to the cdc websites and links to opinion articles linking the cdc is not following and reading the actual science its blind faith i know there's no science i can send you to convince you that masks are useless and have the potential to cause harm i know this because i've sent countless scientific peer-reviewed articles i've done countless hours of research and reading have you guys and if you have please provide us with the science that proves masks stop

018respiratory viruses and cause no harm to our children wearing them for seven to eight hours a day the responsibility is yours for the 8 000 students that you are here to advocate for in the past year and a half since the pandemic began there have been fewer than 300 covet related deaths among those 17 and under with a total of 56 million children in the u.s that amounts to one death every out of for every 200 thousand children by way of comparison in the past eight years the flu has killed an average of 456 children a year covid has been a mild flu season for children the american academy of pediatrics reports that about 4.13 million children have tested positive for cova 19 since the onset of the pandemic that's a death rate of 0.007

019of the tested that's not even taken into account all the kids who never had symptoms or were never tested covid cases and hospitalizations are rare among children children account for 14 of all coveted cases in the u.s and 1.3 to 3 3.6 percent of all hospitalizations fewer than two percent and possibly as few as point zero point one percent of children who contracted covid had to be hospitalized children are not contracting getting severely ill or dying from covet and fortunately for our teachers support staff the science has proven that children are not spreaders of cova-19 in addition staff and older family members have all been offered the vaccine i've sent you the science masking is unsafe and the reasons for mask wearing are unscientific please follow the science and data and make masks optional this

020school year thank you jennifer graff hi i'm jennifer groff 2577 south 99th street in west allis i'm here tonight to ask you to make masks optional not only for all the smart reasons that dr michael johnson has stated in his recommendation email but because ultimately these are our children that we the parents are responsible for we are their protectors not the school board or the district we should be able to decide for them they too are americans with rights thank you thank you very much steve broadwell steve broadwall 12965 west ohio court in new berlin uh it's clear you've implemented crt concepts here proof consists of your equity mission is highlighted on your website the workshop materials you have your educators study and the racial justice activism you encourage on the part of students your

021equity mission involves those leaders regarding several books by marxists like ibram kendy who sees racism and absolutely everything and states that the only way to be an anti-racist is to be an anti-capitalist another was white fragility by robyn d'angelo who states that all white people are racist and labels white ideas like meritocracy and individualism as white supremacy another book titled so you want to talk about race contends that america is systematically racist and argues that whites have structured the united states to serve their sense of entitled superiority at the extent expense of everybody else and finally a fourth that they read was why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria in which the author states that racism is systematic oppression based on race why indoctrinate our children's educators with this i'm calling

022it poison tasking them with reading books by writers who obviously don't like this country as they intentionally or unintentionally make race relations worse your april uh 20th letter mr lexman that spawned this dick's district's hyper focus on race and equity said that george floyd death compelled you to act do you know that in 2019 there were nine unarmed black men killed by police in that same time 27 unarmed white men were killed by police why would such a relatively isolated incident though terrible compel you to implement crt concepts anyone would agree it's important to teach our children about our past transgressions like slavery and yes there are certainly still racist individuals in our country today but but why dwell on it rather wouldn't it be more productive and positive to focus on the greatness of

023this country and that we're all americans another disturbing trend gleaned from various documents is your desire to create student activists project 61 was presented as part of this year's state of the school presentation noting one student's project in which she highlighted her activism over the summer another example of this social justice standards document you sent to me mr lessman that states and i quote students will plan and carry out collective action against bias and injustice in the world and will evaluate what strategies are most effective end quote sounds like a blm job description your job is not to create activists and i would say parents if you see a change in your child's attitude about this stuff and perhaps even bordering on militancy like blm and antifa you will know where it came from i

024do believe some of you might feel that you're doing a good thing i really do but and that's understandable considering you were indoctrinated in college by marxist professors who have taken over many of our universities as mentioned before our education system is the biggest reason a majority of our young now favor communism the practical application of the marxist philosophy which is a totalitarian system that's killed over 100 million of its own people over our capitalist system thank you mr broadwell sorry uh rodney jones hi i'm rhonda jones my address is 1457 south 86th street i came here like some others to oppose the mask mandate but to make it not mandatory but by choice i understand that this board and the superintendent possibly have no interest in changing their minds and would rather plow forward

025with masking up our children even against the advice of the medical director dr michael johnson of the west ellis west milwaukee school district who stated in his email recently i'm against i am against masks for children as we have ample data from schools all over the world that children do not spread covet as contract contact tracing in schools indicates that the adults give it to each other and must much less frequently to children child to adult transmission in schools proved to be an unusual event children express little of the ace2 receptor that covet binds to which is why they do not get very ill and have lower viral loads which results in less transmission of the virus to others there are also multiple studies describing the negative physical and psychological effects of masking children for

026an entire school day he goes on to say that paper and cloth masks are not designed to stop something as small as a covid variant only a properly fitted n95 mask will stop a covered virin from passing through as a mom i will attest to the fact that my 15 year old son has been affected strongly by this my once very happy funny bright boy who did well in school now struggles immensely because of many of the constraints that have been put in place he now takes antidepressants he's had occasional thoughts of suicide and he's withdrawn he doesn't want to get up in the morning this is not who my son was before all of the isolation i've done many things to try and help him and i fear that he will only sink deeper

027as his self-esteem dips lower instead of jumping on board and demanding that our kids be muzzled yet for another year i would love for this board to stand up and do something wonderful for the emotional health of our children even a compromise would be wonderful if parents feel the need to have their children wear masks let them if other parents feel it is not best for their kids let them make that decision for their children if you need a trial run to see how things go give them a quarter or give them even a semester to see how things go if rates at our schools rise then it's time to re-evaluate but it is time for you to stop silencing the parents who do care about our children and it's time that you open your

028ears and listen thank you thank you jessica katzenmaier hello good evening jessica katzmeier 7139 west greenfield avenue and i will be brief and uh i i hear a lot of different opposing views and views here for the mass mandates and i'm here for the mask mandate today because i believe that we have to think about everybody that is involved here that we got to stop thinking about ourselves and this situation and think about who all is infected we got to think about the teachers we got to think about the staff in these schools and about all the children so that's why i am in favor of this mask mandate and you know it's this virus is just getting worse again and i think if we just had this in place hopefully we get back to

029our normal life because i would like to stop wearing these things too so that's basically all i have to say so thank you very much dennis wesselmann i'm dennis wieselmann 723 south 90th street uh i didn't come with a bunch of prepared statements stuff like that but i am one that i like to look at the science and stuff like that i know in my life uh all the things that i've been around all the diseases that i've had all the viruses and i just fought through them all and not everybody can uh i i i'm probably in a high risk group i've never worn a mask unless it was mandated that i did so i've got grandchildren that i see weekly and slobber over and they slobber over me uh in from preschool and

030and in grade school and you know i've gotten every virus that they could bring home and the best thing in my assessment for uh this is uh to fight it is fresh air which you don't get when you're wearing a mask if you're wearing a mask you're breathing your own carbon dioxide which should be giving you a headache i know it did for my daughter because she was a she is a nurse and was mandated to wear a mask through her shifts and that and for a long time she was getting headaches from it um i listened to people i've heard emotional responses for the mask saying that it kills people with no factual backup to it i also have heard a lot of substantive objective information regarding not wearing masks and the damage it

031does the damage that it does as far as losing somebody to uh colvid yeah i know i've met people that did end up losing their lives as they would with a flu or some other virus but i also know that my parents lost their lives to the lockdowns and and we didn't we weren't able to have a decent funeral for them so from the emotional side of that i can match you but it's if you think masks are going to do you good then wear a mask but don't mandate it please for those that think otherwise right thank you eric north hello eric north 2001 south 71st street in west allis i'm here tonight to urge the school board and dr lexmond to consider following the example of our surrounding districts and making masks optional

032for the 2021-2022 school year this is truly a solution that can work for everyone as the majority of parents in this district have expressed that the health and development concerns of masking their child far outweighs the risk of them being exposed to covid if the board had bothered to send a survey on this matter you might know this for the small group of parents who do wish to mask their child they're free to do that or they can enroll their child in a virtual academy should be plenty of seats open we need to remember that children are not the bearers of this burden it's the adults so when you talk about following the science follow it look at the statistics of child transmission even during the height of the pandemic they barely made the charts

033so the question goes to what about the teachers do we mask them and not the children well no you can't do that because masking the teachers covers their mouths and their faces both of which a developing child needs to clearly see in order to understand things like speech and pronunciation and just to be able to connect with and be comfortable with a friendly familiar face a solution i can offer to this to the best of my knowledge there are never more than two teachers in a classroom at any given time so social distancing and other mitigation measures between these two adults should be relatively easy to accomplish without burdening anyone in that classroom with wearing a mask one individual came up here not too long ago and i won't name names but some of you

034may remember him he came up here calling the parents of this district whiners and he contended that our kids don't seem to mind the masks whether or not our kids mind the masks is not the issue the issue is that we have a responsibility for looking after what's best for our children's health and development and putting them in a mask for seven hours a day in a stuffy classroom is not please follow the majority voice of your electors and make masks optional this coming school year thank you chanel carlstrand chanel carl strand 2001 south 71st street in west allis i'm here today to urge the board to vote to make mass optional for the 2021-2022 school year i could stand here today and go over all the facts and issues that many parents in this

035district have stated over why our children should not be wearing masks in classrooms however appears to me that most of their concerns seem to keep falling on deaf ears so instead i'd like to take this time today to shame you i would first like to shame you for keeping our children in virtual school for so long using unreasonable metrics to move through the phases it was five months before any child stepped foot in a classroom shame on you for falsely claiming that your intent was to get all children back into school but once it was decided to go into the next phase you'd wait a month before implementing that change claiming there were preparations still needed to be done preparation should have already been done after these milestones after all these milestones and returning the

036children back into school was your intent you said shame on you for being so focused on kovit that you lost sight of all the consequences that your decisions would have on the children of this district and their families and shame on you for only following one science and blinding your eyes to all other professional opinions and studies shame on you for dismissing the people that elected you the parents who have valid concerns and complaints instead of addressing issues you have hid behind kovid the cdc the local health department as an excuse for why you couldn't and wouldn't do anything to help the decisions that you have made over the last year have caused my family who have caused families more stress and frustration than actual virus itself you were elected by us to vote for

037what is best for our children and to listen to the majority voices i believe you failed us because of your choices my children have suffered academically socially and emotionally i know you will justify your actions by saying kova is dangerous and that you were just trying to protect all children well truthfully you did not protect mine from the ramifications of all the choices that you have made since this pandemic has begun and because of that i no longer trust any decision that you i need any decisions you make that are in the best interest of my children i think it's time for you to start actually listening to the parents of the district i think it's time for you to start doing a better job representing the people that elected you thank you thank you

038mr mulling your time to speak is over the whole time next time jason darling good evening jason darling 1037 west mukwonago drive back again same thing shadowing what many are here speaking out about um i don't know if you guys are aware but there's 38 groups within the state of wisconsin many of them that are local it's part of the mckibber institute you can find them at mckyber i'm sorry kyber institute.com there's 38 groups that have all organized it consists of 20 000 families and that number is steadily growing now this has been two weeks ago this report came out they have all stepped up to strictly fight back about the masks and proposed lockdowns they've come at attack on the school boards um for the upcoming school year to at least ask for the

039optional mandate uh i'll quote them real quick it's kind of quoted before uh but they're not your children they're ours and they too are americans with rights uh there has been constant changes from the cdc another gentleman that had mentioned some of those they're constantly throwing out a hail mary every time people have since gotten wise though to the game and i'm wondering when will you if mask works then optional seems like like a win for all that are involved i said this to you guys over zoom meeting months and months ago this isn't going to go away we have to learn how to live with it you're trying to do something that has already been done tried and can't do it and it can't be done with with a virus this was also just

040shadowed by uh dr dan stock which is now as of today a viral video if you guys would like to watch that dr dan stock is from indiana also on a school board meeting he had blasted them about the same issue with all the facts about how everything kids just don't carry it pretty much copying our dr johnson and if we have a medical examiner or doctor advisor that is telling you guys that his recommendation is to advise against the masks on our youth for psychological physical harm i'm wondering why there's any question on it we paid this person to give you guys the recommendations to give you guys the suggestions the rumor has it is that you guys are still going to force the mask upon us uh earlier today actually though too uh

041belling blasted you guys just bringing up dr johnson's email your previous mitigations uh previous decisions and this is going back further than uh coven in the shutdowns i would be embarrassed if i were you guys if i was on this board uh you guys have a moral responsibility to do the right thing to our children to our district to the parents to the citizens uh you need to start doing what you what you know is right not what you're being told to do i can also tell you too that you've lost families over over your decisions in the past year and within the last week now i can confirm two teachers that i know that have just recently taken jobs in neighboring districts because they don't want to deal with it that's it thank you

042all right thank you michael jakes i'm michael jocks um 2206 all 74. i'm here to oppose the mass mandate as um to back up the parents and and the kids um i used to work in the medical profession i know a little bit about this uh but i have here in my hand which i want to give to somebody here on the board who can distribute it to everybody i have one copy of 47 studies here from national institute of health and cdc all say that mass do not stop the virus from going through and 32 studies in here showing the harm that mass caused including the disease that it causes because these masks get filthy dirty and it's been proven when they do cultures of these masks they've got everything grown underneath these masks

043underneath the sun and some kids have gotten brain infections from them in this country as far as mass not working in relation to these studies these studies are coming from the cdc and national institutes health there are other studies out there from respect to medical journals and all these studies are prior to covet and so they always show that respiratory disease respiratory viruses can't be stopped by mass why is that true if you can breathe that virus goes in and out the same way your oxygen and co2 is going in and out and so that surgical mass that you're wearing up there goes into the sides and up to the top and a cloth mask that goes right straight through and then 95 it seals off the air more and because it seals off the

044air more it'll slow the virus from going through but even that is not efficient enough to stop it but by sealing off the air more you can't you don't get enough oxygen and co2 you can't wear that for a very long time without getting the headaches and your co2 going going up and then ending up with the potential toxicity in relationship to co2 and raise shift at the end 95 when i used to work in the hospitals to draw blood and when they went into a highly infectious respiratory patient we wore the n95 mask but that wasn't insufficient in and of itself to stop the spread of the disease and so they had those patients in what they call a negative pressure room where the air is constantly sucked out so it made the much

045lower viral load for you to be able to get infected and made it safe that way this past year when they had the mass i would try to avoid weighing wherever i could and when i walk into the grocery store i tell them i got copd that gives me a medical exemption but this particular thing here has a picture showing how the virus would leak out the size with your breathing with the vapor going out the size of the mask these masks are used for a painter uh asbestos person and and and a coal miner and they're all completely engulfed all completely over the whole entire head versus this little mass that this cloth master foster you're wearing is going to supposedly protect us the most deadly virus in the world give me a break

046it ain't happening and everybody who got this virus since most people were wearing the mask versus me most everybody got the got the virus while wearing a mask so it tells you it doesn't these masks are inefficient and they can never stop it and that's the reason why they've never been used to stop a viral disease in the past before for anything that's been hiding infectious all right thank you mr jake fox all right at this time i would like to open it up for those who are in uh zoom if you are interested in providing a public comment to the board at this time please put your name into zoom chat i have a couple people here already but there's other people listening who have not done so already please put your name in

047so that i can give you an opportunity all right so the first one i have is uh i believe tiffany arnold she put her name first and then again second so i'm gonna go with tiffany arnold mr president looks like somebody's signed up and didn't get called is there some is there another sign up because this is what i i have in front of me is there another signup sheet no i wrote my name so we'll do linda vick and then we'll move on to public schools linda vic my name is linda vick i live at 2184 south 77th street west allis i'm begging to make masks optional with many other people here i can see that this seems to be the the majority anyway um if vaccines which have been pushed so hard are

048supposed to protect us from kobe kobit 19 then if you get the vaccine i would think you'd be able to make the choice to whether or not you want to wear a mask or not if you are protected that's your business and it is your right to wear a mask but i want my kids to be able to go to school and not wear a mask if they're vaccinated they shouldn't have to worry about it they're not going to pass it to anybody else and if we're going to make them wear masks then you have to realize that they're not doing it right in the schools according to the cdc the guideline for wearing masks in school is not being followed they are to wash their hands before they take the mask out of the

049plastic wrapper then they put it on they wear it until they take a break which is maybe two and a half hours before they take it off they are supposed to wash their hands not use sanitizer there is no lines where these kids are going into the bathrooms and washing their hands for 20 seconds and then putting their mask in another bag and sealing it up during their break they're wearing them on their wrists they're wearing them under their chin that's what they do when they go to lunch if we're going to make teachers be police on how these kids wear the masks then they're not going to have time to teach so if they're not going to wear them properly they don't really provide any protection but i do believe that if that makes

050you feel better having your kid go to school wearing a mask that's fine but i just don't want anybody telling me that i can't make that decision for my children on my own thank you thank you very much is there anyone else in the audience who signed up that did not get opportunity to speak that would like to if not we will then move on to those who are in uh zoom and we'll start with tiffany arnold hello my name is tiffany arnold i live at 2100 south 95th street um i have two children that go to irving elementary um i i'm thankful that you're letting us share our opinions i'm a little bit concerned that everyone's mind is already made up so i'm not sure exactly how this is going to affect anyone so

051um my heart is just a little bit heavy on this topic um because i feel like some of our freedoms are taken away and i would really love the option to have the choice i understand like we all have beliefs which create our emotions and then our behaviors and i i want everyone to be able to have their their freedoms but i believe for the mass i would love for it to be freedom of choice for the parents to decide um what's appropriate for their children um and i wanted to share i'm just opening up i had a song that came to mind because that's how things speak to me is a lot of times through music you can all search it on your own and i can leave it in the comments but the

052song is called freedom from jesus culture and it just talks about where the spirit of the lord is there is freedom and i believe that if we can all just come together and kind of love one another and just consider one another i think we can work it out just fine and we can all live in peace and just um all the people that are getting vaccinations they're creating more safety for themselves to not get affected taking care of us ourselves nutritionally i think is really important i think our real battle here isn't necessarily against like us people in our community but it's against like the rulers and authorities and the powers of this world that are bigger than us and there are other things that are going on that are unseen to the human

053eye and i just um pray a blessing over all of you that are making this decision i just pray that god would lay on your heart the best thing to do with the safest thing to do for all of us um and i'm just really trusting more in jesus to help and that the holy spirit would lead all of you and bless you and keep you amen that's all all right thank you next on the list we have janine begley janine bagley 28 26 south 83rd street i have a four care and twins in second grade we attended general mitchell and i'm asking you as a board to make the decision of wearing masks at least at the elementary level optional i could list all the reasons why most especially the fact that little kids

054are not super spreaders but i would just really be repeating everything that everybody has already said before and i'm not sure that that's working so i'd like to try a different route little kids are disgusting they are gross i cannot tell you how gross they are perhaps you guys have forgotten a little kid and a little kid is second grade still they chew on their masks so you have a mask full of spit they snot on their masks a mask full of snot they drop their masks on the ground which you know can be as clean as possible it's not going to be the best thing in the world they have their spitty snotty wet mask on the ground they pick it up and they put it back on that's not to say what about

055all of the kids that never change their masks now i'm one of those parents that will try my hardest to every day give them a new mask but there's a lot of people that don't so you're wearing days old worth of spit snot dirt it's just disgusting um i think you guys kind of forget about that we're also going to be starting school you know when it's warm so what about the sweat and all of that now my second grader would constantly get in trouble last year in first grade because he would pull his mask down to talk he would pull his mask down because he had a hard time breathing how can you punish a kid that's trying to breathe properly because they're not wearing a mask he would get in trouble all of

056the time i'd constantly have teachers or action coming to me and saying my son got in trouble because he wasn't wearing a mask as a parent you know my heart's breaking for them they have to enforce this rule but also for my child who's really not doing anything that's super wrong that he should get punished for but then i have to come up with some sort of punishment or bribe to get him to wear a mask it it's really ridiculous please let me decide what's best for my kids it you know did we forget that whole my body my decision these are my kids they don't get the choice yet i get to choose for them they shouldn't be forced to wear a mask now if people are afraid and they want to wear a

057mask let them by all means let them i'm not saying don't wear masks i'm saying i don't want my kids to wear a mask i don't want all that dirty gross germs and i don't want them to get in trouble it is ridiculous please have an open mind when you vote and please make masks optional it's the best of both worlds you really can't go wrong if you make it optional thank you all right thank you uh next on the list michael may bible board members my name is michael may 837 south113 thanks for hosting this meeting tonight we all have varied careers and areas of expertise i don't trust an hvac technician to provide a medical physical any more than a doctor to work on my car i think we should trust the the

058overwhelming consensus of epidemiologists virologists and medical professionals to best determine our course of action and the organizations currently recommending indoor masking in k-12 schools regardless of vaccination status include the cdc the american academy of pediatrics the american medical association wisconsin department of health services uw health children's hospital of wisconsin health commissioners from all 10 health departments in milwaukee county including west allis's own health commissioner and i know dr johnson does not recommend them but a number of his colleagues at ascension do as they've gone to other boards and recommended that be mandatory for k-12 students now i understand that you're an interesting predicament here whichever way you go on this you're going to anger some people so i ask you to consider the policy implications of what you're doing and here's a few good reasons

059why you should require mass in school first they are shown to be safe and effective measures to help reduce reduce the transmission of virus is it 100 foolproof no but it helps reduce it how is the first line of defense in arresting the spread of virus from the infected wearer when a person wears a mask and they breathe out the air does not spread out in front of them it may spread down below their mass or above their nose but it keeps the water droplets close to that person and then second of all for the the person who wears it it helps them sort of as a secondary barrier but nowhere near as effective as having the the first line of defense being on the infected person i'm an engineer i am not an epidemiologist

060biologist or medical professional and i believe we have one of those on our school board but another eight who are like me not in those professions but in engineering we have a thing where we say every problem begs for solutions and every solution creates residual problems so what is the best outcome here uh in order to help reduce the possibility for the costly and highly disruptive practice of closing classrooms entire grade levels or entire school when an outbreak occurs where the masks now i understand there were some people who said well the cdc changes their mind so much and i think that's why i trust them even more i'll tell you why because the science on this changes the knowledge of the virus and its behavior changes so does community spread so do mutations in

061new variants into and their behaviors we don't live in a static environment and this is a constantly changing thing now i and the last thing i do want a quick offer a quick apology i don't want to mention names but i had north of about two to three people contact me uh on my comment last meeting where i said the parents were the biggest whiners and i tried making the comparison that uh parents seem to be more vocal than kids and and being opposed to math and i do want to apologize for that phrasing um what i really intended to say is that you know kids seem to be much more adaptable to the mass than their parents are lastly there's comments about co2 poisoning that's simply not the case uh it was brought up

062that there was a study in the journal of american medicine journal of american medicine that said it was causing poisoning but it's that journal was retracted because it was uh poorly conducted and the american medical association did not agree with that the study was properly done so again if you would uh please do us the favor uh again trust the experts put good policy before good politics and minimize other problems that could come forth please require mass at this for indoor activities at school and continue trusting the science and adapt if things change thanks thank you mr may susan pavlick can you hear me yes okay um susan pavlick uh 3404 south 119th street west dallas um i'm here to ask you to make mask optional once again um to go off of what michael

063just said um about parents being whiners um i raise my kids to be respectful i don't i don't make i don't raise them to you know shout their opinion at every turn um so no my kid is going to if i if they have to wear a mask they will do it politely um and they'll come home to me and vent about how they hate wearing it so it's not their job to do that to a teacher or an adult because that's how they are raised so i would prefer if people were people would leave that argument out it's my job as a parent to fight that battle for them um and that's what i'm going to do because we parents are fed up with things that don't make sense um the school has air

064purifiers um most rooms have windows i know they all don't open a window but you spent how many thousands of dollars on the air purifiers that alone should be good enough for you um let's focus on hand washing things that um matter in stopping the spread of germs how about let's let's teach our kids proper hygiene skills which the parents should already be doing that at home but maybe we didn't do that at school how about we start having the kids wash their hands before lunch teaching them how to cough and sneeze into their elbow or down their shirts anywhere but their hands and my kids were in rec sports at hale high school which i think is hilarious that they came out with a thing saying you don't need to wear a mask between

065certain hours but come come a certain time i think it was 5 30 you now had to wear a mask because covet only exists in the schools between certain hours apparently same thing as how you can you can play in the playground outside touching hugging laughing in each other's faces outside but you can't get covered then but oh no if you do that inside the school building we're spreading cohen our own medical director doesn't want to mask kids cloth cloth masks don't stop the spread it's a feel-good thing but do you know what they are doing they're affecting our kids emotionally and mentally suicide and depression rates have drastically gone up that is what you should be looking at if you really care about our kids look at those this those statistics and then let's

066have a conversation my own kids have said it makes them feel lonely you can't see someone's face their expressions how they're what they're feeling you can't i will not send my 4k to the to school i'm going to hold him back and just keep him at home because to me sending my four care to school with the mask on all day is not beneficial to him he you you can't see someone's mouth moving how are you supposed to learn how to enunciate and you know talk and read and do all these things you need to see someone's face i guess are you even listening to us or are you just daydreaming when we talk to you because there's been maybe one person here who's been in favor of mast and every other parent is begging

067you to make it optional so please i'm i'm also begging you to make it optional start listening to us it's it's sad that you guys are implementing a uh strategy to combine two high schools because you have so few uh so few kids who are attending your district look at that you're going to have more people leaving your district because you're not listening to us and what we want we are the parents we can decide what is best for their health that's not your job your job is to give them a good education which that is lacking because my my own kid one of my kids i have four kids i attend um well they would have been three kids currently in the district um one of them has you guys failed him drastically to

068the virtual um and the whole masking thing so i'm basically if you can please wrap up your comments i've already looked into homeschooling and private and open enrollment and i was too late on all those things so my only option is homeschool and i i don't know if i can make that work so i am begging you make mass optional thank you all right thank you uh i believe the next person's name is ellen cross ross i live at 2162 south 62nd street and i'm asking you to please make masks mandatory uh for this coming school year i have two kids in the district but honestly it's not about my kids it's not about me it's about all of us it's about our whole community our whole country and what i wanted to say mr

069may actually said so much more eloquently but basically people can read the research they can cite all the studies that they've read you can find things to support your feelings either way but the only thing that is for certain is that we don't know what's happening with this virus it's mutating it's catching us off guard and wearing a mask it's such a simple thing that you can do to keep yourself and others safe and i i had a hard time sending my kids to school in masks last year my employer just mandated masks again after giving us a reprieve and honestly it weighed on me but death and sickness and lockdowns is so much worse than wearing a mask and i think for our kids the way that we present our our feelings about mask

070the way that we we model masks to them makes all the difference and if we promote it as an altruistic an altruistic thing that we can do to keep ourself and others safe kids kids are naturally like they want to help they want to do good and so i think a lot of the negativity that comes from kids wearing masks comes from adults and what they hear and so all that said i appreciate the dialogue i appreciate the discussion and again i am just asking you to require masks thank you very much next we have gina mazzoni gina we can't hear you if you're talking oh so it says here mike's networking okay um well if your mic's not working i guess we can't hear from you but feel free to submit your comments to

071the board if you would like um and we'll move on if you get it working please put it in the chat again i'll keep an eye on it but we'll move on to the next uh person who i believe is sorry it's a scroll down uh where'd it go angelardo hi there can you hear me yes hello we can't we can hear you yeah okay okay i'm good yes go ahead okay hi good evening my name is angela deguardo 2744 south 130. we're in new berlin but the west allis west milwaukee school district um i'd like to propose a mask optional school year for the 2021 and 2022 school year as a family we have three young children and we have chosen to enroll private as of last year and will continue to do so

072moving forward after review of the previous school year and how the pandemic was handled this is not including the end of the 2019 and 2020 year i realized that that was a very abrupt and difficult situation to navigate in march of 2020 we are grateful as a family that we have the ability to do that but it is not easy for us and not every family does have that ability to enroll private open enroll or home school i'm here today to speak on behalf of my family but also for those that will not have the ability to open and roll elsewhere we are the parents and we should have a say in how we protect our children numerous speakers before myself this evening and in meetings past have provided what i believe is ample evidence

073to speak to this upcoming school year being mass optional parents should have the ability to virtual school should they choose as well that is a technology that already exists in this district and should and we should allow them that should they have concerns about others not being masked in the classroom i'm not sure if a survey has been done on a more broad scale on this topic since our family did choose to enroll elsewhere but if that does exist or happen i'd like to politely ask to be included as we are a resident of the west allis west milwaukee school district and our taxes go there and it may also affect our private school being that it is also local in the west allis area i realize that this is a pretty large school district

074and it's but it's been over a year and a half of this so in closing i'd just like to urge you to listen to your local west allis west milwaukee medical director dr johnson but i'd also like to urge you to listen to those that have elected you we the parents of the west allis west milwaukee school district thank you all right thank you and i believe that uh miss mazoni has gotten her microphone to work so we'll try one more time for gina mazzoni my apologies can everybody hear me now thank you my name is gina mazzoni i'm at 1725 south 84th street in west ellis and i would like to speak um for mandating mask wearing i have three different reasons that i'd like to speak and i guess i kind of want

075to go into details on those the first is that the science behind the mask wearing has shown that the mask wearing does reduce the risk to individuals of spreading the disorder the next component that i want to look at is that i agree we should all have a say in how we keep our children safe but the problem is is that we have children within this district with asthma heart problems diabetes and those children are at increased risk of severe complications from cobit i've spoken to several doctors who have had to watch young children die of complications from covid19 in a hospital and i don't want any of us as a parent and as a community to have to go through that and i'm begging you as a parent of an asthmatic and as an

076asthmatic myself to please consider that in your decision as well because even if my child is wearing a mask they're more protected if everyone else around them is also wearing a mask i would appreciate if you wouldn't call me any names thank you the other thing that i'd like to talk about is um that currently colleges within the area are also remanded re-meditating the wearing of masks within their facility um despite um vaccinations because of the increase in kova 19 cases in our area at this time and i'd like you guys to consider that as well as the information from children's hospital of wisconsin our local health department and also the cdc that state that scientifically our kids are safer if masks are worn and not only our kids but all of our families and

077the community as well thank you all right thank you very much that's the last person that i had seen put a comment in chat for zoom asking for opportunity to address the board i'll give one last opportunity for that if there's anyone in zoom who would like to address the board that hasn't already please put your name in chat now okay well i don't see anyone else and so at this point we're going to close public comments and uh we will move on in our agenda which i need to go back to all right on to item seven the superintendent's report uh thank you president lee and um welcome everybody we'll start with 7.1 and we haven't done a return to school uh update in a number of weeks and given kind of where we

078are and getting ready for the new school year and the decision in front of the board this evening regarding masks we thought it was the right time to reintroduce um this particular part of the superintendent's report um caitlin's gonna run the slides for us this evening and so we can jump to the agenda so we have done each one of these with a little agenda and so i want to touch again on our guiding principles that we've tried to follow as as well as we can throughout this entire process of cover 19 and getting kids back to school and trying to keep kids safe we'll talk a little bit about where we are with the health metrics we know what's happening nationally internationally but there's a little more local snapshot on some of the the

079main mitigation practices that are being recommended and we've heard a number of speakers cite various studies and various but there is a kind of common set of mitigation practices that we think are important to pay attention to and we should think we should continue to pay attention to then i'll talk a little bit more about on the where we are what with our mask requirement recommendation um and really focusing on the cdc guidance at this time and and other um places where guidance and again a number of speakers have referenced these things um that part is not the moment of debate for the board that comes a little bit later you know on the the agenda for the action on them that'll go in front of the board but it gives a little bit of

080kind of foreshadowing um and so the presentation it'll make when we get to that particular item can be much shorter and then we'll talk a little bit about next steps um and so in our guiding principles and here are the four we followed all along um really focused on safety and well-being right so how do we maintain as much safety and well-being as possible for students staff families and then the impact we might have on our larger communities trying to make sure we have learning that works for all and that was always a work in progress throughout all of the various forms of in-person hybrid virtual i'm trying to be responsive and flexible and then practicality of implementation and i'll focus a little bit more on that a little later here in the slides so

081where we are with the external health metrics again these are a little more localized than some of what we're used to looking at when we watch television and we can see that during the summer months things like the national trends have gotten worse again and a number of speakers this evening have cited that so the august 3rd it's the last burden report so it's the official report we received from the west allis health department and so they also share some of the county areas and so what we've been tracking is milwaukee county it's the vast majority of where our students and families live we've also been tracking west allis west milwaukee data right and so you can see the covet burden status or burden rate as we've been talking about it um has increased again

082and the colors you know move from green to yellow to orange to red and there's a kind of middle green and then a brighter green if things are really in good shape um and and the arrows indicate that we're definitely moving in the wrong direction i added august 8th and that's a pull directly from the cdc and there's a um you can it's an active link in the presentation so you can go directly to the cdc you can click on your state click on your county and it gives you the latest seven day averages it's always one day behind um so this was yesterday's seven day average and just by comparison um you get a little sense of where things are going um and so i think it is a cause for us to really

083think carefully about how we're bringing kids back to school we're committed to in-person learning how we get them there and keep them there i think is one of the challenges in front of us this evening in terms of mitigation practices so the most common and none of these are surprised to any of us at this time right after all we've been living with during these months but but i think messaging more and more promoting vaccination right among everyone that's eligible so among students teachers family members community members oh a data point i failed and mentioned on the last slide if you go back one caitlyn down at the bottom there in bold so this is another data point that was just shared by our west allis health department and right now 52 percent of revenue

084residents 12 years and older have received a vaccination and that was a data point i specifically asked for it and i was surprised and disappointed by how low it is i was hoping to see a much higher number um because it may change to which we want to think about what we're trying to do to get kids back into school so if that's where we are in our communities again i want to just message on the number one thing that's helping us as people getting vaccinated and so to promote that as much as we can we will be running some promotional activities for students so similar to things you've seen on television to encourage students and especially students get to be at 12 years of age to do some of whether these are raffles or

085those kind of things will roll out with the beginning of the school year just to encourage everyone to participate um the the second mitigation practice that gets pointed to all the time promoting consistent correct use of masks for everyone regardless of vaccination status physical distancing we're used to and right now trying to maintain three feet of space but that one gets to be more and more difficult if we're bringing the vast majority of kids back in person that's why the other ones get to be more important screening testing of students and staff so we're working we're not sure we'll have that all in place there are a number of school districts now that are trying to work with the state to get that done staying home when we're sick improving ventilation we've heard about that

086we still have all of our um uh kind of air handlers at maximum and all of those that equipment that we purchased are ready to go again hand hygiene enhanced cleaning and disinfecting signage and communication what you'll notice is not here are on plexiglas barriers and so just like has been mentioned the science evolves and it evolves pretty quickly and i hope it continues to because we need to keep up with this thing um and so ventilation has become more important than plexiglass barriers and plexiglas starts to impede ventilation flow so we'll see a lot less plexiglass in schools as we bring kids back to school but it's all available um if it makes certain staff or students more comfortable on in the learning environment so uh with that so the the the mask wearing

087recommendation that we're um really kind of promoting and caitlyn can you move to the next slide is really following the cdc guidance and the reason we're leaning heavily on the cdc guidance even though there's competing points of view even from our own medical director but the reason we're leaning there at this time is that's what we followed consistently right that's what we started with and even though guidance from the cdc has changed the science has changed we think to be consistent at this point um is the kind of practical approach to take and they're recommending universal indoor masking for all students and staff and visitors to k-12 schools regardless of vaccination status right and again there's active links here for anybody who wants to take a look at this i do want to um highlight

088um so the next slide from our medical director dr johnson so this was in an email it's also quoted at length in the executive summary which is the action item for the board to consider later in our meeting but i share this on because you know you might think that we wouldn't want to share this because it's inconsistent with the recommendation we're making which is to follow the cdc guidance and other sources of guidance but i think it's important for us to be honest and transparent just put everything out there that we know um there's no reason to hide it um it's just that the preponderance of guidance suggests something other than what our metal medical director um is suggesting but again i think it's appropriate that we're just open and honest about the various

089points of view that exist as we try to figure out how to go forward so so another um place of reference is the american academy of pediatrics so they came out not too long ago again consistent with the cdc um and and so the um i think with the what i've been uploading sorry highlighted in red is the potential difficulty monitoring and forcing mass policies for those who are not vaccinated right and so this idea of making it recommended for those who are not vaccinated and then how do you enforce that in a way and i think it gets to be highly pro problematic if you think about our practicality of implementation guideline um and to try to do that well in schools i think is nearly impossible but again aap is recommending universal masking

090in schools at this time um then our local health officers and we have relied heavily on them as we've worked through this you know past almost two years now and again they're really pushing and this is again right out of a memo we received from the health officers from milwaukee county collectively and then there's another letter just from greenfield and west allis on health departments that we've worked even more closely with through these years that's linked in the executive summary that supports all of this as well so again vaccinations universal masking physical distance quarantine of closed contacts and then the additional layers of protection that i already talked about right are all the things that they're recommending there's also consistent guidance from the department of wisconsin department of health services and the department of public

091instruction and they came out with this last week and again i'm just going to end up repeating myself over and over and over vaccinations masks social distancing other mitigation practices screening testing so all of those things i think start to really become the preponderance of evidence that i've talked about is why we're making on the recommendation we are at this point however that's really where the board wants us to go and whatever direction the board decides to set we're certainly prepared to pursue that direction and implement that as well as we can what i do want to share though is we did a quick survey this didn't have on universal participation but to get at least some feedback from staff and we asked three questions of staff so how comfortable are you with the decision

092to wear a mask being optional for students and staff and there's quite a bit of support for that right so five is very comfortable and one is very uncomfortable but it is interesting that they split um pretty widely on either being very comfortable or going towards the lower end of the scale then we asked a little different version of the question how comfortable are you with mask being required for unvaccinated students and staff and they're the majority um are in favor of that they're very comfortable for required for unvaccinated again it's a challenge of implementation enforcement compliance but more than the first question are actually uncomfortable with that idea so then the last question we asked how comfortable are you with mass being required for all and here they our staff really split on there's

093more people that are uncomfortable with that than comfortable but it's pretty close and so um when i first got the data it's like that's interesting but maybe it doesn't help all that much because it doesn't really shift tremendously in one direction or another uh we we did share with staff when they took the survey that this is not a vote this is not going to be a you know if the majority say um we should all remask that that's automatically done what's going to happen i wanted just to gather some of this as additional information that the board might find valuable as as you deliberate on the direction we'll take a little later this evening so then our rationale right and i've mentioned this already our goal is to open schools keep them open for

094in-person learning uh you know we're we have established a virtual charter school but it being charter school officially a separate school we can't assign a student there that doesn't want to go to a charter school right if the parents don't want their student going there we can't say well you're not you refuse to wear a mask you have to go to the charter school and so so um and given that we um if we have masks being recommended but not required we may have more quarantine of staff and students than we're anticipating and that we're ready for so now we probably have to reintroduce other virtual options so again having some teachers teaching both in person and or hybrid so in person and students in school all at the same time just because of the

095dynamics of the covet spread in the community as we've seen and depending on mass requirements and so um but the goal again is open schools keep them open my rationale is really the recommendations and guidance from the various um entities that i've already cited are strongly consistent students younger than 12 cannot yet get vaccinated as soon as they can we'll promote that like crazy and we're hoping it's sooner in the fall than later and then beginning the year with caution and then evaluating local health metrics to determine when a change to masks are recommended for unvaccinated individuals but but not required may be implemented and in which locations and that's a little bit in the formal recommendation in the executive summary and it's not um unique to west allis west milwaukee other school districts that

096are having this very same conversation right now maybe considering this idea of do we start with everybody look you know a month in and how are we doing especially in secondary where the vast majority of people are eligible to get vaccinated is that going well can we back off there and then as soon as um the majority of elementary kids are vaccinated can we make it optional there it's a potential approach so in terms of next steps um again right so you'll have your discussion and um action later during this meeting and again we're prepared to implement you know the mask bearing recommendations um that we've put forward or others based on your action so whatever the direction you want to set for us we're prepared to support that and then again i just want

097to ask that you consider the challenge of compliance right with whatever it is um is it practical to implement it i think is a piece that um is just keep it might be mindful of so that's that update then i'll go on to 7.2 which is the legislative update so gop lawmakers target public schools with transparency culture war legislation a number of legislative proposals have introduced that target public schools including independent charter schools with measures aimed at increasing transparency to parents and the community it's possible these bills could have public hearings in the near future and we wanted to make you aware of them um wasbee is concerned with the trend of these types of bills that indicate a lack of trust by lawmakers and locally elected school board members in local control of k-12

098education in general i mean we receive requests for records all the time often it is related to things that are curricular in nature we always respond and share responsive records so some of this feels a little redundant potentially but just so the board is aware legislator takes no action in special session on k-12 funding so i think we're where governor tony evers called it's called a special session on july 27th to take a proposal he called to do what's best for our kids in schools and that was to boost funding for k-12 schools and higher ed by 550 million dollars the legislature did convene an end of the special session with no discussion or consideration of the governor's proposal new resources are being made available for emerging emergency connectivity funds the federal communications commission has

099provided new resources for applicants seeking school technology fund to help from the emergency connectivity fund the ecf program is a 7.17 billion dollar federal program enacted as part of the american rescue plan act in march of this year to help schools and libraries provide the technology tools and services their students and communities need for remote learning during the coven 19 emergency period then dpi the 2123 biennial budget summary so dpis released its summary of 2021 wisconsin act 58 so act 58 is the budget the document summarizes action on the state budget for k-12 school funding public libraries and lifelong learning and the department's operations so dpi's operations and then education committees to take up bills banning the teaching of race or sex stereotypes the legislature's education committee has scheduled a joint hearing next week to

100take testimony on bills republican sponsors say would ban critical race theory in k-12 schools by prohibiting the teaching of race or sex stereotypes critical race theory is often defined as a concept that institutions in the united states are inherently racist as they function and therefore maintain racial inequalities along with banning teaching on race or sex stereotyping the legislation would prohibit instruction or training that one race or sex is inherently superior to another or that an individual bears responsibility for acts committed in the past by others of the same race or sex the committee also plans to take testimony wednesday on legislation that require would require school boards to post online information on learning materials used in pupil instruction and that last part we already do it's part of annual notification requirements so that we're going

101to watch that one carefully we think you you will not change at least my understanding of it at this point will not change our approach to our equity beliefs and our work around equity diversity and inclusion but we're going to watch that one a little carefully and then at the federal level a couple things cdc updates guidance again um and now recommends universal masking in schools i'm not going to go into the details of that i've covered that in on the earlier presentation and then the us department of education also released a returning to school road map and again resources fact sheets guides as we bring students back to school and these are very similar to what we've seen in the past but updated as the science has evolved a bit about how to bring

102kids back to school and like our goal is to try to keep them there on then very quickly 7.3 our board of education recognitions for this meeting so in leadership and learning we would like to thank becky greece for all her work with our scholastic training and the rollout and distribution of materials and you see a whole bunch of it lined up here for um four-year-olds for kindergarten so becky's been in charge of getting all these materials in and documented and cataloged and back out to the schools and classrooms where they're going to be used with kids so she's been doing an excellent job of getting the materials organized in the training set for teachers so it has been a huge undertaking we're grateful for all of her hard work on this and then at

103pershing they're giving a shout out to jeff smith the persian custodian for all of the hard work he did this summer and jeff is one of those custodians we have a whole bunch of them that is truly embedded in the life of the school knows kids by name becomes part of mtss teams um and so jeff is one of them so i shout out to jeff and just for all the work he did to help get that building ready for um school in a few weeks and then just a couple updates um in response to public comments uh and so some public comments from a july 26 um 2020 meeting so today i'm going to try to be a little more specific in my responses because it appears that um from some of the meetings

104in the past so we're getting some of the same questions being asked over and over when they've been responded to already in earlier meetings and so what i want to point out here is sometimes depending on the nature of kind of a question that comes comes during public comment will respond in writing just because it's complicated or it's detailed or there's records that are requested most of the time the response is verbal what i'm doing right now and there's no requirement either direction um and we're not even required to respond at all but but it's been a practice here and i think it's an appropriate courtesy to respond to questions that come from the public and so just because i want to be really clear that we are responding i'm going to be a little

105more detailed here this evening so at our last meeting that was on july 26th so john mulling from new berlin he said he's waiting for job descriptions of the seven central office administrators he requested and um and he also wanted to know why 80 copies of the book how to be an anti-racist were ordered and who received them right so with the copies of the seven job descriptions those were sent on thursday august 5th right um we're working on a response with our attorney hartley and deidre rainbow regarding who received the copies of how to be an anti-racist um we've stated in the past that we're not teaching crt to students but as adults and leaders we feel we should understand these types of theories to help us better understand the dynamics that may shape

106the world of the diverse families we serve so our work with students is focused on equity diversity inclusion that benefits all students not the crt work um joe nicola check i'm also from new berlin he was waiting for an answer again from our last meeting on any fiscal analysis regarding why alternatives do we have trust health insurance haven't been considered i this is an example of where i provided the response verbally um so i provided that response on july 12 2021 at the board meeting and the that's all um available to john to joe in the uh meeting minutes but we at trust continues to be a good partner for us but we will when we hit the next because it's every two years right we um we'll go um back to reconsider are there

107other opportunities to explore cost savings joe um was also again inquiring if our enrollment is declining then our budget should be reduced and he felt that focusing on the mill rate causes confusion to taxpayers again i've responded to this verbally in an earlier meeting but declining enrollment does not automatically equate to a reduced budget right so there are many factors which contribute to the development of school budgets in the state and student enrollment is only one of them so uh but but it it is important to point out that even if our school budget does go down as a result of declining enrollment and the individual portion of a property owner's tax bill that's the school portion could actually go up right so our budget could go down but an individual property tax bill could

108show an increase because valuation of property is one of those factors that plays into it right so it's not as easy as enrollments down budget goes down um he also reminded the board that you know that you represent the citizens and the taxpayers and not the teachers and i'm going to take exception with that it is true that board members represent the citizens and taxpayers but they also represent teachers leaders employees parents and most importantly our kids right you have you represent all of them um he also noted he doesn't just he doesn't agree with free child care for teachers and that's not something that's before the board at this time but we think we probably will explore it we wouldn't be the only district in the state that offers that as a benefit um

109and and he also pointed out that he was insulted there's no engagement with the public at board meetings and i think this is an important one for me to detail a bit so school board members do not engage directly with the public during the public comment portion of board meetings to avoid violation of wisconsin open meeting laws right the public has the right to know 20 at least 24 hours in advance what a school board is discussing or taking up for action right so for the board to engage the public in random items that show up during public comment period doesn't allow for the required 24-hour notice and would violate open meeting laws and so that's why we don't engage um and that's why i try to follow up whether that's in writing or now

110verbally um he submitted a copy of the letter he received dated june 25th and feels all board members should sign the letter if they agree with it that letter was never intended for all school board members to sign that would have required the board taking action to approve the letter and in the interest of efficient communication the letter came only from the superintendent and the board president and that's been a practice that we've used in moments like this in the past right and and board members have differing opinions on a number of matters and that's entirely acceptable as you should you're a nine-member board representing a diverse community and so um sometimes that's the route we take in communicating um jason darling west allis parent was wondering if board members were here for the right

111reasons he feels masks should be optional um and we should follow surrounding districts not just mps you wanted to see a survey of teachers and parents we managed to get one done of teachers and so that you know we shared just previously in the presentation um and i already talked about you know our virtual charter school is not an automatic option for students if they're uncomfortable without a mask and um at that meeting steve broadwell from new berlin was disturbed by the letter that was sent on june 25th the letter includes crt terms like equity and anti-racism racism he ran for reference links that were in another letter sent by myself in april about equity and social justice standards and that the district has hired an equity director that he noted the mission statement of

112of our school district includes the word equity and he asked how about excellent or being a good citizen um so the the response is we are and will continue to be deeply committed to our equity beliefs and our equity actions organized using the social justice standards at this point that's not going anywhere it's the right work to ensure all students get what they need and in terms of being a good citizen the social justice standards certainly support that goal i'm just going to read one of them students will express comfort with people who are both similar to and different from them and engage respectfully with all people i think that's kind of how you define good citizenship and so the social justice standards certainly support good citizenship i also want to know we have not

113hired an equity director we've changed an existing position to focus on culturally relevant teaching practices but that's not a director level positions there's myself and four directors and that's how it's been for years then we had a number of parents at that last meeting on all supporting masks being optional again the board will take this up a little bit later this evening and then michael mayer west alle's parent felt that all the comments about anti-crt are much to do about nothing and also felt like he expressed this evening mask wearing is for overall community health and then just a couple updates and information items from me on just a reminder families members of the community if you're eligible to get a vaccine shot please get one right i'm a broken record on it but it

114is the number one strategy for us to try to get a sense of normal again and then just on some of the typical things that happen this time of year because there is still a school year starting and we're preparing for all of the you know fun and exciting things that happen in the school year we launched our leadership kickoff today and so we had all of our leaders at the new mke co-work space which is on 73rd and greenfield which is one of these kind of collaborative kind of drop in rent temporary space um and we used it for 60 of us it was a little tight but it was fascinating to kind of be in a space where kind of the workforce is trending and for us to see and experience that we

115also spread out um to all sorts of field trips across the community and deidra and her team organized all of this and it was really to kind of have leaders engage in some of the deeper learning experiences and do some empathy interviews to get feedback about what kind of learning experiences really matter and really help people grow i was in a group that we met mayor dan devine over at the farmers market and it was an opportunity for us to learn a little bit more about the history and background of development in the city and the vision of where the city is going and i felt really good that it parallels the vision we've set for ourselves as a school district supporting what's on the development of west allis and west milwaukee and our other

116communities we were then expected to go tour all of the murals the walls right so west allis living wait what wait what's the walls the walls of west allis i forget the acronym now anyways all of the cool murals that are um up in the community and that pretty much got rained out the plan was we were gonna rent bubbler bikes and then rain after rain after rain um and we the goal was that we would go and find anybody that was around kind of taking a look at one of these murals and ask them some of the interview empathy interview questions to help kind of inform our practice and tomorrow all the leaders are doing public demonstrations of learning so similar to what we ask our students to do and we reach assigned certain

117standards we had some fifth grade ela and math standards and a social studies standard that then we have to be able to demonstrate that we've met that standard through this experience and through the people we talk to so it's i think a kind of exciting kickoff for us to get back to the core of the work we've committed to over the last few years and not have everything be focused on masks and covid and mitigation but also the learning that we're trying to inspire amongst our leaders teachers and kids so that was a long report but that wraps it up all right thank you very much dr luxman so we'll move on to item 8 board reports i will start with the review of the board calendar item 8.1 so today is monday august 9th

118and we have a regular board of education meeting uh next monday august 16th at 6 00 pm we have workshop meeting on the facility planning workshop this is i believe our final workshop on the work that the fed committee has been doing and we will have we've had two really good workshops so far learned a lot and had some good discussions so i'm looking forward to this last one here before we move on to some decisions that we have to make so that's a good thing coming up august 23rd uh 6 p.m we have another regular board of education meeting and then monday september 13th 6 pm we have the public budget hearing and and a regular board meeting so i'd like to move on to board committee reports with item 8.2.1 the employee engagement

119and culture committee mr keller yeah we had a short meeting about a week ago we we first of all welcomed mary and marshall to the committee as our new director of human resources um we talked a bit about our employee handbook which is currently being updated for the new school year and will be brought to the board for approval in a future meeting and then we talked a little bit more about the final communication process for the professional educator compensation system which should be wrapping up soon great any board members have any questions for brian all right well thank you for that update and then we'll move on to item 8.2.2 our communication and community relations committee on ms kaiser at the july 26 committee meeting we welcomed amanda stewart our new communications and community

120relations director we discussed strategies and goals for the next few years including streamlining the schools on social media forming internships mentoring job shadowing and apprenticeships with local businesses and other opportunities for co-curriculars also we're considering school showcase nights for a few schools the time to show up they're learning instead of one school per board meeting great does anyone have any questions from ms kaiser about that can you just repeat that last one kristen would it oh sure we're considering uh school showcase nights in the past one school per meeting basically would come and talk about all the things they've done we're thinking of streamlining it towards like three or four schools in our room we can just rotate through and share the ideas and see the other great work that schools are doing sure would

121then would we then be getting to see schools more than once per year based off of that is that the kind of goal or just more often i think so it's also more part of just being able to share with other schools what each one is doing oh i see okay great okay we'll move on to item 8.3 board member reports of committee events any board members have any community events that they would like to share nothing all right okay well then we'll move on to item nine our consent agenda we have item 9.1 approval of minutes from our regular board meeting on july 26th and the board work session and special meeting on august 2nd employment i'm sorry item 9.2 the employment summary and item 9.3 the supplementary contract does anyone need anything separated

122out if not i move to approve second so move in second any further discussion if not i'll zoom all those in favor opposed all right okay we'll move on into our uh information action items and we have our first one item 10.1 governing team mitigation practices change to mask wearing requirement dr laxman thank you yeah i'll keep this brief because i've very much covered everything that's in the executive summary on the health metrics here a little bit presented a little bit differently just because the most recent burden rate that was sent over from our health department came today and so that's why the presentation and this looks a little bit different because this had already been published as of last friday um but again the the preponderance of the guidance suggests we should start the

123school year with everybody wearing masks and you know if the board decides to direct us to do something different again we're happy to support that and we'll um implement whatever the guidance is or the direction is from all of you the best of our ability what what i shaped here what we shaped here um is a way to maybe think about starting with everybody wearing masks so we start with the kind of safest approach following the guidance and then um whether it's four weeks or six weeks in we start to look at how are things going in secondary schools in particular the reason i'm suggesting secondary schools is because where most students um and all adults can be vaccinated right so this won't be perfect if we decide to then start adjusting or even start

124the year differently in secondary versus elementary because there are some students in secondary schools that are not yet 12 right so in intermediate schools and that goes to my whole point about practicality of implementation and so to have you know some sixth graders being required to wear masks and others it's um recommended but not required gets to be really hard in terms of implementation so that it's not a perfect solution but the idea here is then that's why we start with everybody in masks on end of september take a look how things are going um can we move to recommended for unvaccinated but not required and secondary and then our suggestion is we would then reconsider elementary mask requirements six weeks after it's announced that you know younger than 12 can be vaccinated right because

125that's when we're going to start to see the first wave of kids get their first shot their second shot and the two-week waiting period of full immunity um there's a way to start thinking about it and the old and then we also set some kind of metrics um and what we would want to see in order to trigger some of that and then we also tried to define out a little bit more about athletic participation performance participation high intensity uh recreation um engagement and because the cdc guidance does not and all the other guidance does not anticipate absolutely every single kind of thing that people engage in in schools right they don't do schools every day that's our job so they have given kind of the high level guidance but they're not thinking about so

126what happens in indoor athletics if we're still you know recommending you to rehearsal masking and so our recommendation is um given that we had pretty good experience in the spring um so right now athletics are outdoors so it's not a problem but if we start getting into the next season and we're getting back indoors that while students are actively engaged in practices so meaning high intensity or in competition or high intensity recreation engagement or students performing so the musical for example so if they're actively kind of rehearsing or in performance they wouldn't need to wear a mask but if you're sitting on the sideline if you're waiting if you're waiting for your coach to show up you should have a mask on it's kind of how our thinking was and again it's it's a more

127controlled group in terms of contact tracing and exposure so it's a little bit different on in our minds in terms of its potential impact on the whole school so that's why we've kind of laid it out this way so our suggestion right now start with everybody reevaluate for secondary at the end of september set some targets of what we'd want to see in the data to rethink those moments wait for elementaries to have access to vaccination and allow masks to be optional during kind of high intensity athletics and activities so you've got jeff has the wia given any mask requirements for this coming fall not that i've seen right thank you yes sorry that's right that's where i'll wrap it up and turn it over to you guys okay so before we discuss i just

128wanted to try to frame our discussion a little bit about what we're trying to do here and at first i want to thank all the parents the community members the staff that have reached out to all of us and given their their feedback and their input about what they think that we should do this upcoming school year we appreciate you taking the time to do that a lot a lot of people do do that and so we know it's very important to you when you take the time out to reach out and let us know what you're thinking and it really shows to me that everyone is really looking for the same goal in that we have a safe uh education experience for all of our students and families that we have in our community

129and i really think that when we're making this discussion tonight that our focus should really be on what we can do as a board to ensure that we're keeping our students in person learning as much as humanly possible with everything that's going on so with that i'd like to open up for questions or comments from other members well i would like to move to amend dr lexman's recommendations for mandatory masks and i would like to propose optional mask wearing and i would prefer to start with optional mask wearing and create some kind of metrics that we would hit if we were going in the wrong direction within our schools because a lot of the data shows that the kids are not spreaders kids do not spread from themselves to parents or we don't know right

130you know we don't have exact data on that information so why wouldn't we be able to take a different the other approach than what you recommended that would be my recommendation so is that a formal motion bill yes a second so we have a motion in a second on this we have uh other discussion so this is to amend the current guidance that we've gotten to from a required to recommendation now you mentioned coming up on some sort of metrics to figure out when we're going to to do that um if we would switch back to uh to require masking for everybody um and so i don't know if we'd be using the stuff that was in the procedure already uh for if we see the the thing is is that the metrics we have

131right now already above where we want them to be so our community metrics but we don't have school metrics we've never measured schools well we've met we have measured schools we have internal metrics that we've been keeping track of but we don't have metrics from school without masks right no no one does and vaccines and with vaccines right yeah we we were tracking and it's not an exact science it's not as good as what a health department gathers but you know what we can track is an internal positivity rate um we're never gonna i think have a burden rate um but uh an internal positivity rate is something that we're monitoring we haven't done it during the summer so we don't have recent data points and in the new health metrics dashboard i have the

132first you know two weeks of school ready to go in terms of internal positivity rate on yeah it's a little hard to know um i'd want to have a conversation at least i would want to have a conversation with the health department about what kind of threshold you know triggers on when it's time to go back to masks based on internal but asking them they're also going to introduce the community metric i would imagine i've worked with them enough for the last months um but but it is possible for us i think to establish that and we'll be able to figure that out tonight i would like to have some more discussion uh on that i'd like to see more you know data with surrounding schools and their positivity rate being maskless because i don't

133know that we have gotten that information at the end of the year i know that's not a large sample size um but i would like to see more of that it was just a couple weeks i mean truthfully as far as data goes the only useful information is going to be from now moving forward because that's with our current you know viruses circulating and with everything else so really the data any useful data that comes from other districts won't be until we're further into the school year well but we do have some data because we have summer programming going on we have our summer school programs we have our musical where the kids are currently together 40 children unmasked what rates have come out of that we have athletics that have started have kids come

134up positive we have some data already unmasked what are our numbers for those few weeks that we have we do have some data we just got to gather it i would caution comparing um a small group ian athletics and uh uh uh 40 kids together for a musical compared to an entire school i think that you're looking at um you know it's much smaller and you can contact trees a lot easier when everyone's in the same spot versus when you have people passing in hallways um you have shared spaces like lunch and specials areas and things like that too so i don't think that that would necessarily be an apple's apples comparison the only way to really look at it is to look at actual people asking for the data i'm not saying apples to

135apples i'm just asking for what our positivity rate and the exposure that they've had currently and we've had stuff running all summer long we have kids that go to the ymc day camp we have kids that are going to our rec camps so there is a larger number of gatherings that we can find information on sure and these are all unmasked activities currently and have been for months the day camps are amassed matt okay our day camps are others aren't well so you also other districts day camps go ahead bill why not it's local data same kids we're dealing with why wouldn't we well we could see if they keep track of that information but again that that's not going to help us tonight i just have a question to me it sounds like there's

136two motions there one to go masks optional and one to get the data or are you trying to marry them together you're correct okay but then we should be voting on those separately and discussing them both separately we're discussing metrics and not the part of optional masks okay so let's handle the optional mask first to hold off and amend to gather more localized mask free data before making the vote or would it be to amend the uh your recommendation and to go optional i guess the question is is how readily available that data might be to try and get it from all our districts again if they're tracking it or not from their day camps i don't know we might be going back to individual health departments to try to pull that information to see

137it's a it's an i don't know question about if the data that you're looking for exists in a space that would be readily available to get you know we have we know our data you know because we have you know that we're keeping track of it but some districts may or may not be doing that especially if they're not masking you know they might not be worrying about it but the health department certainly would um because they would be following up on contact tracing and so forth and so on i'm not sure like for waukesha you know they have a county health department so i'm not sure exactly what they're doing as far as that goes for the waukesha communities so when we have the motion about the amendment we have further discussion regarding the

138amendment and amy if you uh have something you want to say raise your hand i'll let brandon know to let you so we can hear you anyone else have any discussion that they wanted to have about that which amendment are we discussing this is about making it not required but recommended no so instead of just leaving it like wide open like that could we could we say we'll start off making it optional and then us as a board decide what we're comfortable with when we decide that yep too many kids or they're our kids getting sick then let's go back and let's rethink it so we could come up with that number as as the board you know we can say like i i would like to know you know how many kids have to

139get sick before we quarantine like i want to have that discussion because i have a feeling what will happen is if we said no masks and then you know it's day two and you know a little second grader gets coveted we're gonna shut down and i don't want that either i want us to make sure that we're not shutting down or sending um quarantining whole classrooms or doing macro mitigations just because we're not wearing masks you know so i also want to know exactly what will it look like when we start school um as far as quarantining how many kids in a classroom will we micro mitigate by classroom will we will we be looking at the whole school how will we do that because that is important to me because in my mind my

140big question is i want kids to stay in school and i understand that um if kids get sick we're we're going to quarantine and send them home and so i want to make sure that we're saying you know this is what it would look like this is what it would have to take for us and i want to talk about that number be what did we do in the past can you just i don't know um what we did in the past by heart um you know that's yeah the school nurses managed all of that on a day-to-day basis um but but we follow what is the health department guidance so you know they're the ones that decide you know how far do we have to go so an example from this summer right we

141did have an exposure so right the teacher that tested positive and we couldn't get a hold of the health department over the weekend so when school started on monday i decided we would quarantine everybody in those classrooms until we got further information from the health department and um once they got caught up with it and did some of the contact racing and we were wearing masks and kids were in very small groups working on projects so part of our project kept kids a little more isolated and so the quarantine got very limited only students that were really close to where that teacher was um but that could turn out very different so it's very difficult to put a hard and fast number on these things that's what we've learned um the answer we get back

142so often is well it depends and so there's a whole bunch of questions they'll walk us through and from that decide okay so we don't need to quarantine anybody or oh there's too many potential other contacts so now we need to quarantine the whole classroom so it's it's um it is just part of the reality of navigating that it's going to be historically though we we don't quarantine with respiratory other respiratory illnesses correct i mean like in the past we we had we've not done that um we do with pertussis we send kids home and if there's exposures we'd let parents know right right but i think you know the life of covet has been different for sure and that's why i that's why i'm asking i'm at i think that that's something as a

143board or as a school district or i want to know when are we going to be quarantining kids what is that going to take and i think that i want to open that discussion back up now i realize that that's not what we're talking about right now but it it it is in the sense that masks are no masks i think that's going to have an impact yes so i mean i would agree that quarantining is going to be a big part of what happens in this this upcoming school year right master nomas i would also contend that if we don't have mass that we will have more quarantining because the limit of spread is now removed and so if you talk about someone who's doing contact tracing they will ask were they wearing masks

144were they wearing masks properly and if the answer is no that will change the fault what's going to happen next and how many people may have to be affected by that versus if they were masked and so again there's no hard and fast rule on it you know it's it's it's not hard and fast it depends a lot on how much time and how close and and then how many people and that will determine on well you know that's three quarters of the class well we just got to shut that class down or that's three quarters of the grade like we had that lane and now we have to shut the grade down and so those are the things that we're trying to avoid and masking helps prevent the extent to which we have to

145do those mitigation measures jeff i think we determine which of the motions we're going to work on first because if the motion to amend gets voted down we don't need the metrics okay it's kind of a mood point can i make a motion to amend bill's original emulsion that might clarify things so that it's not two separate motions i would say um recommend that we make max mass optional but recommended with internal positivity rates standards and our buildings to be set forth by our next regular board meeting that's kind of what i'm asking for i'm i'm asking for so it's interesting um the internal positivity rate data we'll have will be from summer school and summer camps right we won't have we won't be in session with all schools right right and it's masked right

146then let me just think for a second to reword that differently okay i'm getting there what if i say internal standards in our buildings to be set forth in our meeting without okay mass optional but recommended with internal standards in our buildings to be set forth by the next meeting so i'm going to make a formal motion that we make max i'm amending bill's motion thank you jeff mass will be optional but recommended with internal standards in our buildings to be set forth at our next regular board meeting second okay we have a amended motion in a second do we have further discussion so the big thing on this is going to be that we're not going to require mass we're making it optional and a wait-and-see approach i think my biggest concern is we're

147going into it to a degree blind because we don't have like a baseline starting point in terms of what that data really looks like in terms of you know what you know what what potentially could that look like with no masks and with the percentage of vaccinations that we're at and so on and so forth um that's the part i don't like is that we're kind of blind from that perspective so i i'm not sorry um no i i mean i i think the only i lost my train of thought i'm just gonna say like okay so the last month of school districts chose to go optional right or mask free last couple weeks the last couple weeks yeah so why did do we know of any spikes over the last couple weeks without masks

148it's just a difficult thing okay so we don't so why wouldn't we be able to start that way with knowing that school districts ended with weeks without any mass that we don't know that there's been any spikes why don't we have a timetable on how we start because it's the riskier option it to me it risks the ability to keep people in person learning because we can have more quarantines more people sick teachers out when we get too many staff sick we have to shut down schools because we can't staff them so i think that you know it's the riskier option to do it that way in the hopes that it works out okay and if it does then we're great but if it doesn't you know who wants to hear the v word again

149no one wants to do virtual learning except for those who have selected our virtual academy and i really think that we have to focus on trying to keep people in person learning as much as possible and masking you know every professional organization under the sun has said masking for everybody in k throughout through 12 schools is the way to do that and so by us not following that and just saying well i know they said that however we think something differently um if we're wrong it's the children that are going to suffer and if we're right masking the children is going to be a problem but then we can use that time and actually see our own data and look at it but we don't understand what damages we're doing with masking though either well

150i think it's understood for all the organizations that have signed on to this i think i i believe that in their training and their schooling and the work that they've done like psychological stuff like that that's all taken into account they're they're not only looking at one aspect of it they've never masked in this way before and you're talking about mathematics covet isn't like anything else we've seen i i understand it's very very different i understand and then we gotta we're ready to vote i guess then right well this is the discussion portion bill right no i feel like you're you're directing the conversation to what you want us to that you're telling us that's what i feel like is happening so let's go to the vote and we'll vote well i had more discussion

151all right do you have more discussion i'd just like to point out too that at the end of the year things weren't as open as they are now our kids are out there if you think they're not at birthday parties at the state fair um if they're not at stores without masks they have far more exposure now you put them in a mask in school that's not going to alleviate their exposure outside of school because they're going everywhere now no but then that exposure they get outside of school is mitigated by the mask but there's the masks aren't 100 effective no but it's going to be more effective than nothing okay i think that in my opinion i call this trying to stack marbles that's what we're doing right now we're trying to stack marbles

152and i think that we need to move on because i don't think that any more discussion is going to change anyone's minds when everyone has an opportunity so i want to make sure everyone has the opportunity to speak and then we also have anything they'd like to say jeff i move the call the question oh sorry move to what i move to call the question oh call question okay we have a motion to call the question the motion i made is to stop discussing second okay i hope everyone is able to say everything so all those in favor of the amended mask requirements from required ninety dollars all right we have a motion to call the question in a second all those in favor aye all is opposed amy thumbs up did you vote i

153to call the question yes aye okay all right so then that means we vote on the we're on heather's motion okay so all those in favor of the amended motion say aye aye aye opposed so that fails so we're back to the original motion so that would be for required masking in schools for all k through 12. and this also includes escalators that would allow the district to move forward with reducing mass as described in the executive summary do you have any discussion about that regarding giving the they wouldn't have to come back to the board for decision administration would be able to make a decision based on the metrics that are in the dashboard so it would be based solely on the metrics in the dashboard if there's a motion to approve the recommendation

154then yes unless there's another version you can amend that again differently you can't bring the same motion back that was already voted down but there may be a different way to amend the recommendation that's of interest to the board would would this be similar to what we had back at the start of this where we had the chart that if we got to this that automatically happens and correct correct and at that point it didn't have to go through us we just saw the results correct correct that's what that's why i try to structure it a little bit that way so that would we don't keep coming back to this we know kind of what the threshold is we move on especially if we're not scheduled to meet for a week and a half and

155you need to know to get information out to the buildings if we have like some rubrics for it i get it correct me if i am wrong but i think i saw something about revisiting every four weeks is that correct four to six yeah i think you said which makes sense especially with the upcoming vaccination um approval for under 12 that is looking at the end of september at this point and so being able to look at this again after they're available could really be helpful it yes but i guess my argument is if for some reason we are in a position where it looks like we could change more quickly i would not want to be hindered by a four to six week dead timeline can we call special meetings i was gonna say

156what brian's saying say the rates drop drastically in the next two weeks and now we go back to school september 1st and our positivity rate is down we've already said that for a month they're in mass and that's a month away so it could be as simple as changing in that second paragraph of the recommendation mask requirements will be reviewed regularly so then if both of those metrics are hit the other one i from the previous discussion thought do we add an ore so the west house west milwaukee covered burn rate is at or below 50 positivity rate is at or below five percent or or it could be an and or internal positivity rate is one percent or less so that would be our internal metric and so that could trigger it separately right

157so if we get maybe the milwaukee county rate still didn't quite get there but the internal positivity rate is sitting at the one percent or less then it gives me on the latitude to say we're going to relax mask requirements and it goes back to that kind of let's use our kind of internal number as a trigger so by saying it and or yeah that does that i would i would be okay with um looking at our local burden rate i would have concerns about only looking at an internal school rate because if we're doing well in our schools that's great but as heather pointed out these kids are going out in the in the community and if our internal community if our west also milwaukee covert burn rate is still high then i think

158that's going to be a problem because okay now we're not masking kids are going out the community getting exposed coming back to school if the school's the place that we can control as far as how much mitigation we have i don't i think looking only entered into numbers because last year internal numbers were 0.12 i mean they were very very low right for our exposures very very low which was good it means that we were doing well as far as making sure that we weren't having this happening in our schools that that's you know that's my concern but i would have no problem as far as looking at it wouldn't have to be both milwaukee county and we did kind of this last year focusing on the local data the most local data and weighting

159that more than the total milwaukee county data and looking at west southwest milwaukee covert burden rate at or below 50 and positivity rate is below 5 which we just recently went above i mean we were there for a very long time and so the hopes would be that with the vaccinations continuing and that this current spike that we're seeing right now is not long short-lived that would come back down and we could move forward with this okay so if i'm understanding that idea is that we would drop the milwaukee county threshold and we would just go to the west west milwaukee threshold in that recommendation yeah we can include our internal metrics as part of the decision making process for sure because obviously we want to be like well we're doing great in community but

160our schools are terrible we're not going to unmask in that situation but if um you know i wouldn't want to just only look at that i think as a composite is the best way to look at it okay do we need a motion to amend a couple of words and what so what is the um so we're removing milwaukee county and then adding in internal positivity rate f is it at or below or below one percent i think i said below one percent yeah so so i would i'm going to make a motion to approve the recommendation the amended recommendation would you repeat how it's being amended so it's the second paragraph for the recommendation so the first sentence will now will now read amended math requirements will be reviewed monthly well no will be

161reviewed regularly regularly will be a move mask requirements will be reviewed regularly and if the west allis west milwaukee covent burden rate is at or below 50 and positivity rate is at or below 5 and or the internal positive or infection positivity rate is below one percent the administration will have the authority to make massive the rest of that should be the same was it originally one percent i'm sorry less than one percent was it originally one percent or lower or and then or did you change you said below one percent you said one percent maybe maybe one percent or less oh it should be one percent or less one percent that's what i'm requirements will be reviewed regularly and if the west allis west milwaukee coveted burden rate is at or below 50 and

162positivity rate is at or below 5 percent and the internal positivity rate is 1 or below administration will have the authority to make mass requirements in secondary schools recommended for all unvaccinated individuals but not required and the administration will have the authority to adjust mass requirements in elementary schools when the same data thresholds are met with implementation of any changes six weeks after covert vaccines are approved for children younger than 12 years of age not to be a stickler again but when you were talking about internal rates was that supposed to be an and or because this time you just said and well yes and i did say and because i i mean this is me the four can decide if they want it to be and or and or i wouldn't want us to

163make a decision solely on the internal metrics and so it would always be inclusive so we'd want it'd be one two three we would we wouldn't just be one we just won't be two it just would have be one two three all three would have to be meeting that i think the first time you read it though when we had to correct because of the one percent you did say and or yeah so i don't we want indoor so i think and or still gives you the flexibility you're looking for because you have both words yeah i i find it a nice balance there's not a perfect solution in this we all know that i mean this is crazy hard stuff to try to figure out where to go and what's right for our kids

164and community so the little bit more flexibility in there with the and or i like it probably gets us to the point of relaxing requirements in secondary schools more quickly it'll get us the let's get the school year started see how it goes and at the end of that first week i'm going to start looking what's our internal positivity rate and are we ready then to say okay well cool and secondary um but but the what i do like about this is the most vulnerable population right our youngest kids are protected ominous until they're available until vaccines are available the metrics are good and six weeks after so so i like the balance of the hat and the and or it gives it just a little um i think more opportunity to maybe relax things

165more quickly than not okay so i'll say it again mask requirements will be reviewed regularly and if the west sales west milwaukee covered burden rate is at or below and the positivity rate is at or below five percent and or the internal positivity rate is at one percent or below administration will have the authority to make mass requirements and secondary schools recommended for all unvaccinated individuals but not required and the administration will have the authority to adjust mass requirements in elementary schools when the same data thresholds are met with implementation of any changes six weeks after code vaccines are approved for children younger than 12 years of age that is how the motion would read okay so just to clarify talking about elementary they would you would not lift the mask until the vaccine was

166available and up to six weeks after that so we're aware that that could bring us into november if december december i mean we're aware of that yes yeah i guess i'll be thinking somewhere on the first week of october if everything goes according to what i've seen as far as approval so then six weeks and then six weeks to have parents have some time to go and well it's presuming they got it right away it's three weeks between shots right okay okay so two weeks after the last shot is the fully vaccinated status so that's why the six weeks is there so now everyone might get one you know it's it's just saying like this is the opportunity and if there's most most people who are going to get their children vaccinated will get it

167as soon as it's available to them and so um there might be some other people who wait until you know eoa is is replaced with full passage by the fda which probably won't be until early next year but this gives us the the time frame where well it's most likely probably working with having vaccination clinics at our schools and stuff like that at that time too to make it more available for those who might not have an opportunity to take their child somewhere to actually get the vaccine done but this still allows for this still has our staff members who are vaccinated who we've encouraged to vaccinate wearing their mass the whole time okay correct right and with the data that's coming out with the delta variant i mean people who get vaccinated can still

168transmit it that's that's why the cdc changed the recommendations i'm aware i've done my research i've i know all this i've read everything out there on both sides of the fence i'm not debating whether this science or that science is correct what i'm asking is we have put forth that we want you to get vaccinated but then we're still going to say to you guess what your vaccination wasn't enough and people were against that vaccination did it anyways and now we're going to say to them what you did and what we asked you to do wasn't enough that's my moral dilemma for me okay so that's all i'm putting out there is that for me that seems very unfair was there a motion on the floor we're voting for the updated version or if you

169vote no you're going back to the original mask policy that we had correct yes yes that's correct if a majority would vote to that amendment though it would pass correct so that we wouldn't we wouldn't go back to the original if the majority voted for this clarifying yep okay motion second any further discussion let me get amy up again oh shoot okay amy do you have any discussion no okay you know for the discussion all those in favor aye aye opposed nay name i said i oh so uh amy oh did okay she raised her all right she wrote it down sure okay how did amy vote that inside thank you all right that passes thank you very much moving on item 10.2 20 21 22 informational budget update ms winter yeah well caleb's walking

170up this is really just to give the board a little more background and what we're posing in the next four items which are the base wage cost of living increases for teachers in the a's that are negotiated but then for everybody else and we've always matched them across employee groups but just before we asked the board to consider those we wanted to give you a little bit of update on can we afford all of that in the budget awesome thank you dr laxman and we also kind of talked through ever since spring when we start initially talking about the budget for the next school year we always say this budget is in flux and we'll kind of talk through some of those updates now and why that happens throughout spring and summer so when we

171approve the preliminary budget at the end of june i just wanted to recap some of the items that were already in that prelim budget so approved at the end of june with the preliminary budget for 2122 was a projected deficit of one point about 1.1 million dollars with our plan to balance our final budget and that plan included utilizing dollars at the board previously set aside in fund 38 which is our debt service fund within our revenue limit to utilize those fund 38 dollars to essentially balance our budget and what that means is with fund 38 with revenue limit debt that within the revenue limit whenever you pay that debt payment it basically lowers what you can utilize in fund 10 with your operational dollars so instead of utilizing the dollars that are ready in

172fund 38 for future debt payments basically just gives us that money back within our fund 10 budget so that was our plan to balance our final budget um to once we get to that point so at the end of june we were looking at a projected deficit of about 1.1 million which was very normal and consistent with our previous years and each of our previous years we've made a plan um in recent years to balance our final budget which we've done also included in the prelim 2122 budget was an increase of cpi of 1.23 for all of our returning employees and this budget also included fully funding our new professional educator compensation model which is all of the components within the first year so that meant the annual increase that meant the retroactive micro credentials

173in year one and then um obviously we didn't have we haven't gone through a full fiscal year yet with new micro credentials so it's the retroactive micro credentials um and so the full fully funding that new professional educator compensation model was included in the prelim budget thus far we also on the revenue side utilize an assumption of a zero dollar per pupil increase in the revenue limit so that's one of those important factors in determining our total revenue and that's ultimately our within that revenue limit we utilize that zero dollar increase that's what we were hearing the state legislator is potentially going to do so that's our conservative uh measure right there instead of utilizing a 200 increase which was in previous years so that was what was included in the prelim budget so what's

174changed since then the state has approved the biennial budget so the 2123 budget but there is additional budget discussion at the state level so that was in the legislative update that we heard earlier this evening which is sort of odd because normally once the state budget is approved you know your budget factors this is a year where we the state budget is approved and there's additional discussion additional unknowns at this time there also have been internally we've done some funding analysis within our special education fund so fund 27 and some interesting opportunities that we had with our number of special education students in the 2021 school year so i'll talk through that piece as well and then a staffing analysis those are pieces that we get closer and closer to throughout spring and summer to

175ultimately narrow in on our final approved budget before before budget comes forward in october so digging into each one of those items quickly and a few slides here the state budget updates so the state budget was passed with a zero dollar per pupil increase in the revenue limit which is what we used in our preliminary budget so same as our assumption but there's additional discussion now on additional dollars so one component that we've heard about is this 100 million dollars in federal calories that could potentially come to schools as an additional per-pupil aid and that would be a one-time aid it wouldn't be within the revenue limit it wouldn't be reoccurring but it would potentially be within the 2123 budget so the two fiscal years for us 21 22 and 22 23 and if this

176comes forward as the initial again there's all projections this is just initial talks at this point but if it comes forward with what we're currently hearing that could potentially be an additional eight hundred and eighty thousand dollars for our school district over two fiscal years so it would be wise for us to utilize half of it in the 21 22 fiscal year and half of it in the 22-23 fiscal year again that's just preliminary there are no solid facts or approval on that piece yet and then we also heard this additional and legislative update um potential of additional federal dollars additional dollars that would come extraordinary not federal dollars state dollars um that would come to schools again that's all very preliminary and there's no um further discussion just yet at this point that would

177lead us to feel that we should consider it strongly within this initial recommendation so we'll continue to hear from the state and where that goes this piece of the 880 thousand again is also just a preliminary item but i wanted to make our board aware in terms of our special education funding analysis this is a little complex i'm going to try to keep it at a few kind of high level facts so one item that we have to do within our special education funding each year is meet maintenance of effort and ultimately what that means is that we spend the same amount or more each year between our state and local expenses within fund 27. in 2021 so last fiscal year we saw a reduction in the number of our special education students which is

178a key component of maintenance of effort basically that threshold can be reduced if you have less students so it's just kind of a logical way that the calculation of maintenance and effort works and we did see a reduction in 2021 of our special education students which allowed us to ultimately reduce that maintenance of effort threshold in 2021 and basically utilize our grants so we have federal grant within special ed we have flow through in preschool and basically utilize those dollars that were going ultimately they weren't fully utilized at that point in the 2021 budget and fiscal year and so utilizing shifting dollars from our state and local costs to the grant so shifting onto the grant some of these expenses which allowed our state and local costs to stay low and then what that means

179for the next year so for 21 22 is that we can maintain that lower threshold because we've lowered it in the 2021 year we have to maintain that or higher that's new maintenance of effort threshold so by doing this ultimately reduced our transfer from funten to fun27 fun27 does not function entirely on its own so we make a large transfer upwards of 9 million dollars each year from fund 10 to phone 27 to basically net fund 27 at a zero dollar we cannot have in any fund balance or function on a deficit in front 27. so each year we make that transfer from fund 10 to phone 27. so by maintaining our lower maintenance effort threshold this basically reduced our transfer from fund 10 to 127 that was projected in the 21 22 budget by

180about a million dollars and it's very important to note that this does not mean that our students will receive a lower amount of service within our special education program it just means that um we have to we've kind of reorganized the dollars that we're spending from state and local onto federal grants and of course as students have unique needs in their ieps we need those as well so this was a large portion a large portion of the updates that we have since had since our june meeting on the staffing analysis piece we have discovered the a few vacancies that were not included within our preliminary budget that should have been and then we also have we're getting narrowing in on those staff who are actually going to be on our grants so our achievement gap

181reduction grant or agr title grants and flow through so as we narrow in on those and kind of add in all of those ebbs and flows within our budget the additional revenues and expenses from these budget updates are projected to nest the balance budget for 21.22 depending on additional fluctuations we will utilize fund 38 dollars as needed which was part of our original plan but will be at least five hundred thousand dollars less than originally anticipated within our 21 22 budget so we originally were planning to balance that 1.1 million deficit with our fund at this point that's about half within our preliminary budget um we likely may not have to utilize that at all but we should plan there's you know we're only in august and our budget's approved in october so there's still

182some time for us to continue to narrow in on those expenses we'll also pay close attention to what the state is doing with those additional dollars the additional 100 million and potentially the 550 million that governor evers called the special session about so with these updates we can move forward confidently with the implementation of the cpi increases as proposed in the coming section items any questions can we move to vote on all three at the same time the answer around cpi for teachers and eas because they're negotiated so i would recommend you vote on those separately if you want to combine the other two the other two we always did combine it was actually gary schultz that wanted those separated out last year so we did that okay so i didn't save you lots of

183motions i just any questions for kaitlyn about this so nice work to be able to move monies around to cover that deficit i mean that's uh with everything that happened at the state level it was a concern so thank you for being your team even teacher's team on that work for that to make that happen so working in much much better space and being able to improve these cpis for our staff i think will be a good thing so no other questions we'll move on to item 10.2 we have to take entry no no that one was just the information it's informational oh it says it's action i don't know what's listed under action items oh it's information and action otherwise i was going to move to approver information okay so we don't have to

184move on that so we'll go on to 10.3 then uh 2021 22 based wage increase for teachers second moving second any discussion all is in favor aye approved i'm sorry i post that's approved uh item 10.4 2122 based wage increase for each education second moved in second in any discussion all those in favor aye aye opposed that passes either 10.5 21 22 are we going to combine these two yes please 10. 10.5 and 10.6 which is the base wage increase of 2122 for secretary maintenance and custodial and the administrators and annual employees move to approve second second moved and seconded any discussion all those in favor aye opposed was passed 10.7 district organizational charting first thank you to the board you just gave everybody raises even they're not huge 1.23 will be noticeable so thank

185you um that'll be a little celebration tomorrow okay so um our last time the org chart so dj i may need your help in this one a little bit of good there are not a lot of changes we do bring the organization chart around usually once a year um so it is an item that under policy the board approves uh and so there are what we have done from year to year if there are positions that we find are no longer helping or no longer needed or we can't afford in the budget we do take those positions out so there was one position eliminated in this budget cycle and then there was a position i think there's the only two then one that was repurposed and if you want to talk about that a little

186bit sure as the coordinator position yep um so we had saily sabin who was one of our school social workers retired last year um and she we have somebody else taking over several of her responsibilities but it allowed us the opportunity to repurpose to provide some additional support in our schools work with our students who are english language learners and work on some of our restorative practices and culturally relevant practices and that's alyssa roche so that's a different coordinator position on our leadership and learning team but it's a repurposed position from an existing position not an additional there are um there's one additional position on the or chart two that were not on it last year one is the deeper learning coach at central we have found that in this last year it's been really

187important to put some additional instructional coaching in the building and so that's been added to the organizational chart it's our intention to pay for that position out of some of the federal grant funding we have right now under the category we don't like the term but under the category learning loss that's what it's called within the grant with the intention of working with the team at central to discuss whether or not that's a long-term needed position or do we need to reorganize the administrative structure there um after the grant expires in the next three years so that is one position that was added and then last year we had brienne serving in the role of two a principal at two schools so now we have principals at each one of those schools and went back

188to our historical structure of instead of having an assistant principal at madison we changed to a deeper learning coach slash innovation coach so it's 50 50 on that role as that is how we staff the buildings of that general size at the elementary level any questions about that if not look for emotion move to approve second so moving second any further discussion just not just a question this be brought to us as informational like caitlyn's stuff i mean we wouldn't know to say well you know this person wouldn't be good there that person would be better yeah it is one of those odd ones and have to look back in the new neola policy it was in our old policy that the board approved the org chart so i have to look now if it's

189in a new neola policy because then as information it makes more sense because you're right i mean it's that same thing where you know the board has one employee right um but you have to approve the hire of everybody else so but that's in statute but that doesn't actually make them your employees so it's another one of those just kind of yep i get it so yeah we'll double check it but but since it's in practice i think right now to go ahead and approve it if it changes for next year we'll um bring that back any other discussion all right we've had a motion a second all those in favor aye opposed all right so uh that is the end of the meeting so move through second second and also in favor aye opposed

190we are adjourned