November 23, 2020 School Board Meeting

001There's CIP like public hearing. It's always, it's all the rage, right? Okay. So welcome everyone. This is the virtual school board meeting for November 23rd, 2020. And I'm calling the meeting to order at 5.03 PM. And so I will, when I call your name, if you could say that, indicate that you're present. I'm Cindy Anderson. I'm here. Veronica Nolan. Here. Megan Alderton. Here. Mamie Jundry. Here. Jacinta Green. Here. Margaret Lorber. I know she's here. There she is. Okay, I didn't hear you, but I see you're here. Christopher Suarez. Here. Heather Thornton. Here. Okay, we're all here. I'm here too, Cindy. Did I miss you? You did, that's okay. Sorry, I think I got caught up on Margaret and then I missed you. Michelle Reif is here. All right, all nine of us are here. This

002is not a good way to start the evening, right? I already had too much meeting and it's only been an hour. Okay, now we'll start with a moment of silence. Okay, everyone. If I could get a motion to adopt the agenda, that would be great. Madam Chair, I move that we adopt the agenda for the evening. Do I have a second? Second. Okay, I heard Ms. Lueber's second. Ms. Gentry's motion to adopt the agenda. And so I will call for a vote on that. And Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan? Yes. Megan Alderton? Yes. Amy Gentry? Yes. Jacinta Green? Yes. Margaret Lorber. Yes. Michelle Reif. Yes. Christopher Suarez. Yes. And Heather Thornton. Yes. That's 9-0. And so there are no communications or addresses to the board. We have two comments on the written comments that are

003attached to this agenda. We next on the agenda tonight is the consent calendar. So if I could get a motion to adopt the consent calendar. Madam Chair, I move that we adopt the consent calendar. Second. Okay, I think Miss Alderton seconded Miss Green's motion to adopt the consent calendar. Is there anything to remove? Okay, if there's nothing, then I'm going to call for a vote. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan, I think you're still... Sorry, technical difficulty, yes. Okay, Megan Alderton? Yes. Amy Gentry? Yes. Defenda Green? Yes. Margaret Lorber? Yes. Michelle Reeve. Yes. Christopher Suarez. Yes. Heather Thornton. Yes. Okay, that's 9-0. Thank you, everyone. And then now we're on to old business. First up is the superintendent's recommendation on the renaming of T.C. Williams High School and Matthew Murray Elementary School. So, Dr. Hutchings. So

004one, I'm just excited about this moment. Finally, it's here. But I know we have Mr. Ballas, our high school principal on the Zoom. And I just want to say on behalf of our students, especially, that this is a historic moment for everybody for many, many years. And I can't remember, I believe it was Miss Gentry who mentioned this at the last meeting. For many years, people have been trying to have the name of TC Williams in particular changed. And they really have not been successful. And I just want to commend, one, the board for allowing us to be able to explore and to get information from our community, as well as to educate. our young people and our community about Thomas Chambliss Williams and Matthew Mori. I think it means a lot to this community

005because if we asked people back in June what they knew about Thomas Chambliss Williams or what they knew about Matthew Mori, many people wouldn't have a response. But I can tell you today, especially with our young people, they do know specifically who these individuals were and why these names should not be plastered. on our schools. And that is to me a huge accomplishment on our end and it would not have been possible without the board providing that directive. So I just wanted to personally thank you all. I also wanted to just point out the fact that today we do have our t-shirts in solidarity and let me just show my shirt because I do have it on with my jacket. I tried to jazz it up like Mr. Suarez over there. I'm trying to be

006cool like him. And these are t-shirts that our TC faculty are wearing and they they're there. It may be simple in regards to the words, but it's so powerful in regards to the words, you know, excellence, equity, engagement and empowerment. You know, I mean, those words in itself, they're just four words, but I think they're probably four of the most powerful words in the dictionary, honestly, and for the work that we are embarking on right now. So I just want to say hats off to, one, our TC staff for believing in this and saying, you know, we believe in it so much, we're going to plaster it on our t-shirts this year. And two, thank you for... All of our young people, and I think somebody's not on mute, might be Terry. I want to

007thank you to our young people for their advocacy throughout this process, because really, we wouldn't be standing right here with this recommendation without their hard work. And our two student board members, they deserve a round of applause for what they have been doing over these past few months. You talk about working tirelessly. These young ladies, we knew that when they first came on board, but who would have known that this is what they were going to be embarking on from the beginning? I mean, they started off this way, right? And it has just been an amazing, an amazing ride. And I know that they're going to do so much more beyond this, but this right here is big. So I don't have anything further to say at this time. I'm going to turn things over.

008Am I supposed to turn things over to? to Dr. Mazzinco or is it Mr. Ballas? Mr. Ballas, I think. Thank you. I didn't know if you had comments to say before the board. Sure. Well, first of all, it's an honor to be here and to be having this conversation at this very important, critical time. I do agree, Dr. Hutchings, that the words on our shirts, I don't think they were chosen about. the renaming process that was put in place, but I think actually it all kind of captures the process that we went through, especially the empowerment of our young people in this process. So I just want to thank you and the school board for empowering our students and to give them a voice and especially our students of color a voice in this process.

009And this is just such an important night. I know that a lot of us are very, very excited. So thank you all. And thank you to my student reps. Back to you, Madam Chair. Okay, so what I let board members know this, that what we're going to do is if people, if board members would like to say something before the vote, that's what we will do, sort of like we did for the high school project. So if you raise your hands, I will call on you in the order in which you raise your hands. Okay, maybe that no one wants to say anything. Oh, Dr. Eve. There we go. Right. Well, I'm always, I'm waiting for you guys to just jump right in with your comments, but I guess I will, I definitely have some

010comments that I want to make. So if you'll just bear with me for like a minute. You know, my professional background is teaching at the college level and I've taught both U.S. history and African-American history. most recently as an adjunct professor at NOVA and I was teaching at the time of the incident in Charlottesville in 2017 when Heather Heyer was killed at that time and you may recall that this was at the time Charlottesville the city council had voted to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee and there was a rally that was organized and then a counter rally, I guess, that was organized and that was when she was killed. And I had conversations, just like many of the ACPS teachers have been doing. I led conversations with students about these issues. And that

011really causes you to reflect on your own views about this issue of how we memorialize individuals from the past and name our buildings and things like that. And so now to be in a position as an elected official voting on this issue is a responsibility that I take really seriously. And, you know, I also have three future graduates of the high school. So this really does mean a lot to me. And, you know, when it comes to I thought people might want to talk about the high school. And I wanted to speak for a little bit about the name of Maury Elementary. You know, when it comes to a school like Maury's, some people may point to this man's professional accomplishments, and that's something that I will acknowledge. You know, he was considered the father

012of oceanography and founded the U.S. Naval Observatory, but I think it's important to also ask at a time like this, why was this name selected for this school in the first place? And some of you are probably familiar with the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which put together a lot of research a few years ago on Confederate memorials. And it was, you know, as I learned, it was, I mean, I think people have been raising this issue for a long time, but it was also the shooting that took place at the church in Charleston, South Carolina, that really, really raised this issue. in the last couple of years and the Southern Poverty Law Center put together a database that documents all of these existing sites, including and also schools that are named after

013these former Confederates. And they found that a lot of these monuments were built between 1900 and 1920, which was part of a movement that historians have identified as the Lost Cause. And this was, as I'm sure many of you are familiar, was an ideology that was advocating that the cause of the Southern states during the Civil War was just and heroic. And white women were very instrumental in promoting this ideology, especially the daughters of, United Daughters of the Confederacy. And honestly, like, we've been sort of trying to unravel that history from our textbooks for many, many years. And I was pleased that the video about Matthew Maury that ACPS put together did touch on this aspect of the name. Because if you look at the specific history of Alexandria's Matthew Mori School, there were a

014couple things that I noted about that, that it was named in 1929. And this was the very same year that the Matthew Mori Monument went up on Monument Avenue in Richmond. And that statue came about as a result of a lobbying campaign by, there was a foundation that was established by a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy to promote to promote this statue, excuse me, but one of the things that I learned that this group did, this foundation for the statue, is that they lobbied the Virginia Department of Education to make June 14th, January 14th, excuse me, Maury Day in Virginia schools so that school children would be taught about this individual. And they secured an appropriation from the General Assembly to build the statue, but they also had a campaign where they

015asked every Virginia school child to donate one penny to help this monument be built in Richmond. And I think that there's no doubt in my mind that Alexandria's decision to name this new school in 1929 was definitely tied to these efforts. This was the context that the Alexandria School Board, you know, voted on this name and they even had a, if you see, we posted the handwritten school board minutes from that time, and they even had an essay contest for fifth and sixth graders about Maury's life and accomplishments. And then, you know, another interesting fact about this lost cause is that historians have found that it came in two waves. There was that period in the 1920s after sort of World War I, as many of these Confederate soldiers were dying. And then it was

016again in the 50s and 60s in reaction to the growing public support for racial equity that was resulting during the civil rights movement. And so I think that this second wave explains why T.C. Williams' name was selected. for Alexandria's new high school in 1962. And, you know, we learned about that from Professor Douglas Reed, who talked about in his community presentations and in his book that the city of Alexandria and Alexandria City Public Schools, under the leadership of T.C. Williams, participated in this history of massive resistance. which was an effort by jurisdictions throughout the state of Virginia to resist the integration of public education and public schools. And so in 1962, at that time that the school was named, the high school, ACPS was still refusing to fully embrace the Brown versus the Board of

017Education decision. And so to reiterate, I think it's really important for everyone in the community, and I know you all know this, but to just understand why these names were selected in the first place. You know, some people may argue that changing these names is somehow changing history or erasing it. I disagree. We can't change history, but we can change what history we choose to publicly honor. And the names of places and buildings are a reflection of our values. And so these names that have been existing. They were selected, I think not because of the accomplishments of these individuals, but they were declarations of our community's values in 1929 and in 1962. And one of those values was that black and white children learn differently and shouldn't attend school together. That was wrong, and now

018we have an opportunity to right that wrong. And I think this change was a long time coming, as Dr. Hutchings alluded. And I also want to acknowledge and thank all the people who advocated for these names to change over the years, including the people who signed and submitted the petitions recently. And I also wanted to say that, you know, we've talked about how the school board is a continuous body. It's not the same people, but it is. This is the same board that made the decision to name those schools. And just speaking for myself, I would like to apologize to all of the people. who've been harmed by these names throughout the past up until the present day. As Dr. Hutchings mentioned, people are still learning what these names mean today. And that hurts people

019to find that history out. And we know that changing these names is not going to magically end systemic racism or make our schools equitable. But I do believe that changing these names is an important step to living out the values that our community has embraced. and the values that are outlined in our strategic plan. So for these reasons, I am going to be supporting these name changes this evening. And thank you. Okay, next up, we have Miss Thornton. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you so much to everyone who has been a part of this engagement process so far. I know we got those petitions right before summer occurred, and we were all really anxious at the time, I think, to address it. But, you know, looking back in retrospect, I'm very, very grateful for

020the very thorough engagement process that we had. We heard from a lot of important voices in the community. including our students, as Principal Bell has noted earlier. I don't think we can do a process like this without hearing from our students first and foremost. So I really do thank our student board representatives. I'm not sure if they're on the call this evening, but they really did do such a phenomenal job of organizing, especially the student conversations, completely on their own for the most part. We were there just to support them. So thank you so much to Lorraine and Ashley and all of the other students that participated in that. And, you know, It is with great pleasure that I will be voting to approve the rename of T.C. Williams High School and Matthew Morey. But

021in listening to Dr. Reif speak first, I do have to kind of acknowledge the fact that I did go to school at the University of Richmond, right next to Monument Avenue. And I can't tell you like how many times we would drive down that road and just just shake our heads at the fact that these are the individuals of history that as a society we are choosing to honor. And Matthew Mori statue was removed earlier this year in July and for very similar reasons to what Dr. Reese stated. And I think it is important that. The things we choose to honor should be reflective of the society that we are currently. And clearly, Thomas Chambers Williams and Matthew Morey, you know, a key architect of maintaining the Confederacy in Virginia and internationally, no longer reflect

022who we are as a society, at least not in Alexandria. So I'm grateful for this opportunity in history, and I'm grateful for all the people that brought us to this point, because it wasn't easy. Clearly, it was not easy, but we're here. And so I do want to say, though, that I think that the process moving forward, should the board proceed with this rename, the community engagement process moving forward will be equally important. And I hope that all those that were in the process to date will continue and offer their voices so that whatever new name we do pick is reflective of who we are as Alexandria City. And, you know, I do want to put a plug in as well that, you know, I think we're all very proud of the engagement that we've

023seen on this issue. But I do hope that everybody that has been a part of this process understands that this is a symbolic step. Changing the name of TC Williams High School and Matthew Moray Elementary School is not going to really do anything to eliminate the systemic issues and barriers that we have as a school division. It's important that we acknowledge it, but it's not going to solve anything. So I do hope that people stay engaged and understand that this is one step, an important first step. But there are so many things as a school division that we need to have our community's engagement on, whether that's conversations about disproportionality. and how we identify our students who need specialized services or which students are considered to be talented and gifted, the disproportionality in our suspension

024rates and in our graduation rates, like what we're going to discuss later on tonight. It is equally important that we hear everyone's voices on these issues as well, because, you know, we can change a name all we want, but if we don't change the foundational issues behind those names and behind our division, you know, I don't think that we will really achieve what we're hoping to achieve as a school division. So this is just a plug to our community and to, of course, everyone in ACPS who I know really does believe in the heart of our strategic plan, which is racial equity. and making sure that we remove systemic barriers to that. So with that said, I'm very, very happy to be a part of this historic part of ACPS history, and I will be

025happy to vote in favor of these renames. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Mr. Suarez. Thank you, Chair Anderson, and thanks to my colleagues, Dr. Reif and Ms. Thornton, for their comments. I would agree with everything they said in terms of the substance, and I really appreciate what Ms. Thornton just said about the fact that, you know, that this is an important symbolic gesture that we need to convey to our community, but that there's a lot of systemic work. that is going to need to be done going forward. And I just wanted to offer a few reflections, both on the process that we took to arrive at this point and also to just share some of my personal reflections on going forward and the implications of this name change. First, I just want

026to say with regard to the process, I want to echo the thanks that my colleagues have stated about those who have really advocated for this change, both in this current wave, but also in the past waves, to really bring this issue to the fore. And I want to acknowledge that, you know, this has taken a long time. It has taken too long. taken, you know, decades to, to effectuate this change. And so, you know, I understand that the wait has been long, I understand that there was some frustration, even this summer, and in the lead up to this vote today. But I just, you know, but I just want to say, you know, thank you for your advocacy. Thank you for everything you've done. And I hope that after today's vote that you'll feel better

027that we will have resolved this issue and that we will be able to move forward as a community to really address the systemic issues that underlie this decision and that remain in the system. Which sort of brings me to my second point, which is, you know, some in the community, I think. because of this process and because of the thorough work that's been done to educate the community on the history of the TC Williams name, the history of the Maury name and everything that's been done, our community has a much better understanding of why this is the result we need in terms of changing the name. But, you know, I think we'll still continue to hear members of the community question. why have we done this? Why have we changed this name? And I think

028one of the arguments we'll hear, you know, is about the movie and remember the Titans and, you know, isn't T.C. Williams representative of integration? And so why would we ever change that name? And I just wanted to make a couple of comments about that because I think it's really important for our community to hear and also for our community to convey to folks who maybe don't understand or appreciate all of this background. And it's that, you know, While the 1971 integration of the Titans was an inspirational moment, and while that is something that was good in that it was representative of the removal of perhaps legal de jure segregation in our community, what I think that fairy tale And that story hid in our community for many years is the sort of toxic underbelly of

029de facto segregation that has remained in our system for decades. And that this school board, frankly, has, you know, put the imprimatur on for many years. And so I think that to me, by changing. the TC Williams name and the Maury name, we are saying head on that, yes, you know, maybe there was some symbolic removal of de jure segregation in that the TC Williams name had represented, but we have to tackle the systemic de facto segregation head on that remains. in our schools, the disproportionality in discipline, the disproportionality in educational opportunities different groups of our kids receive in the system, and so forth. And so I think that this name change really represents us charting a new path forward, charting a path forward where we're committing as a board to removing the vestiges of

030this de facto segregation, because that's what we have to do. And so... I say that to say that I'm really excited for the next phase of this process, which is selecting a new name. which I know is going to be a difficult process. And as I said before, I think is arguably going to be a more challenging process because we have to really think about what values we're going to be, you know, sort of articulating, as Dr. Reif said, in this new name that we pick. And so I think that's really important. And I wanted to also acknowledge, I had the opportunity to listen to the audio and the video from the 1971 Titans. And I appreciated that they have expressed a willingness to sort of lock arms with us as we go through the

031process of choosing a new name. And some of them expressed in their remarks that they had some reticence because of the symbolic removal of segregation that, remember the Titans story represented, but that they understand that the time is right to make this name change and that we have to move forward as a community to articulate that new vision going forward. And so I, like my colleagues, enthusiastically will vote in support of the name change for both T.C. Williams and Maury. I haven't spoken as much to Maury, but as Dr. Reif said, Maury did represent a lot of the Confederacy, and the reason for things being named Maury in Virginia was motivated out of some of the really... terrible efforts that were going on to sort of preserve the Confederacy and sort of lionize the Confederacy

032in Virginia. And so I think it's time to move on from that name as well and to move forward as a community to articulate a better set of values for that school also. So thanks again to everyone who... engage the community on both of the school redeeming issues. We really appreciate your efforts as a board and thank you so much for your advocacy and we look forward to voting today. Great, thank you. Miss Green is next. Thank you, Chair Anderson. you know, my colleagues have said it all, but I, you know, I'd be remiss if I didn't thank Dr. Hutchings and the staff and our wonderful student reps and those students that participated along with them and our community, our community that, you know, brought forth the petitions and advocated to do the right thing.

033I'm reminded of a podcast that was put out, put together actually by ACPS. It's on our webcast, on our website, and it's called Voices. And it's actually about a love story that started at Parker Gray with John and Beatrice Taylor. And Mr. Taylor was so hurt, you know, by what had happened to him in ACPS while getting his education. He started talking about T.C. Williams and the things that he had done to African-American students. And I often wondered, I'm like, why hasn't, you know, the petition come up again? Because this was, this came out long before this petition came up. And, you know, he said, and started crying, he was like, change the name of that high school. So I'm just, Mr. Taylor passed away about, I think, almost a year ago now. And I

034just want to say that, you know. If this vote passes and I will vote to change the name of the school, this will be for him and for those people who had to endure the inequities of our school system for so many years. African-American students having books two grades below their grade level, not having sidewalks for our students to get to school or to the school buses safely. Things of that nature that we're in a different time now, but we need to remember those people that endured that pain. So, you know, this is a special and a historic moment. I'm so honored to be a part of it with my colleagues. I'm thankful that, you know, we've gotten to this point. And I look forward to coming up with a name that's going to represent

035everyone, our inclusive, very diverse community. Thank you. Ms. Nolan? Thank you, Chair Anderson. So normally I don't like to repeat items that have already been said, but it just would be disingenuous of me to make this vote and just not share just quickly a few thoughts. The biggest one being especially that, you know, symbols and words matter. And one of the things I'm proud of is to live in a not only community, but especially a school community where the diversity is truly our strength. So there's no one on the board. There's no one that works for ACPS that would ever want. something to symbolize disrespect to any one of our students. So for that reason, I'm grateful to be here at this moment in time. It would, that said, be disingenuous of me not to

036say what has been repeated by other colleagues of mine, that this is a moment to dismantle a symbol and that the real work to dismantle racism has yet to be done in terms of pushing forward the impact that will trickle down to young people that, you know, with this name change, while it's the right thing to do, we do want to make sure that we don't feel like. you know, we're high-fiving each other and the work's been completed because there's much to be done. And thankfully, we have a talented leader in Mr. Ballas and his incredible administrative team, who I know works hard each and every day to make sure that that's happening along with the support of the central office staff. So I just want to acknowledge that and say thank you to him,

037as well as to the students that have been already mentioned that participated. I'm really grateful for the transparent, open process that the board committed to, as well as being laser-focused on the needs to commit to our students. on the fall reopening plan. Because I think we learned a lot as a community. As someone who is a Maury mom, it was really cool to have your fifth grader really engage in the conversation because he really truly learned about it and his time was taken. So particular kudos to Sarah Whelan for all she did to design the curriculum to ensure that thousands of students, really, it's not just something that happened in a vacuum, but that they made it a learning. And as someone who is an educator, as all of us are committed to education, we

038always want to make for learning moments. And also just want to thank the community for the robust participation starting in the fall that they joined us in this journey. So again, just want to thank everyone as well as acknowledge there is much to be done. But the good news is I know that everyone is committed to doing that work. So I'm grateful for that. Thank you. Thank you. I'm also going to say some words and I am going to be repeating a lot of what people said too. But I want to thank the wonderful staff for putting together the program that they did. I mean, I think we, when we started getting, you know, the early letters were all like, I just found out, you know, this. To me, that said, we had to take

039a moment and educate people because otherwise there were a lot of people we can assume that didn't know anything about it. So, especially when we're in the virtual. So I also want to thank the community members who participated, who knew firsthand, who had firsthand knowledge and could provide their view into history. And then our student reps. Oh, my gosh, they're just incredible. I mean, I'm glad to sit back and have them lead it because they did such a phenomenal job. And so I just, in the summer, I said, you know, that Williams didn't do it alone. And I just, I hope that people came away from some of the community readings with that information and really understanding that, because I think it's not just important for what happened in the past, but it's important for

040moving forward. You know, there was the school board who, you know, hires and evaluates the superintendent. And then when somebody on the school board wanted to support integration, the city council, replace them. And then, you know, then you get to the state level and our state representative, who let me just tell you, Armistead Booth, who has a park name for him and is supported, is said to have been a supporter of integration. He was not. That is totally false. I, you know, he was, he supported 99 point plus. plus percent segregation. So he was willing to do the 1% or less. And so we have to be careful. I think that's a lesson that we have to be careful about who we elevate from the past because there was some misinformation there. And so this

041is one of the things that I think in terms about many people being involved, I listened to one of our wonderful teachers from GW Middle School speak at the NOVA. the Northern Virginia District PTA a weekend or so ago. And she kind of summed it up with, it's not the shark that's the problem, it's the water. So this is really, I think, something that we have to keep in mind. There's no one thing, no one person. It's really the system. That's the systemic part of it. So I think we have to keep that in mind. But we do also have to recognize that this is a symbol. So I hope that the allies in this effort continue to support efforts that are really going to make a difference because As an ACBS student, I can

042tell you that the name does not necessarily correlate with what's going on inside because my most integrated experience was at Lyles College, but my least one was at Parker Gray. So it doesn't really, the name is symbolic and it's important, but it does not dictate what's going on inside. And so I think we just need to not lose that in this. So I think that Ms. Alderton would like to speak. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. So, you know, I don't think there's much left to say. I think, you know, all of the board members and Mr. Ballas and everyone has sort of spoken on all of the things that I would say. And so I'm just left with, it seems to me like, you know, we're about to. you know, move toward changing the name

043of the school. And I just want to remind all of us that, you know, we're changing the name, but it's time to change the game. And so let's do this. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and. move that we get this done. So the superintendent has recommended that the school board approve the renaming of TC Williams High School and Matthew Mori Elementary School. And so I hereby move that the school board approve the renaming of TC Williams High School and Matthew Mori Elementary School. I also move that we empower the superintendent to seek the community's input in nominations in accordance with regulation FFR and develop naming recommendations for board approval in spring of 2021. The new names will become effective at the start of the 21-22 school year. Second. Ms. Green seconds Ms.

044Alderton's motion and I will... Call for a vote on the item. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan, yes. Megan Alderton, yes. Ramey Gentry, yes. Jacinta Green, yes. Margaret Lorber, yes. Michelle Reif, yes. Christopher Suarez, yes. Heather Thornton. Yes. Okay. Books, that is 9-0, and it passed. So we all have our shirts on. It's a little hard to see, but we do have our shirts on. Thank you, Mr. Ballas, for that. And now the next is our update on our virtual plus and phase reopening. So over to you, Dr. Hutchings. Yes, what a wonderful way to start our meeting with that. That right there is the best day ever. So I just want to thank you all for that. And I also just want to once again acknowledge our communications team for doing all that hard work

045and still having to go through all of the comments and inquiries that we got about this over the past several months. But thank you all. Big moment. All right, so as we go into our update today, I want to kind of talk a little bit about and set the stage for this conversation. First and foremost, I have to tell you all who would have thought that we're now about to go into Thanksgiving and we are still. you know, in this global pandemic, and we are still not in our school buildings. Like, I mean, we thought when this happened on March 13th, we'd be back after spring break. And then we were like, okay, the summer, then first quarter, then after first quarter, you know, and now we're still, we're still here. And, you know, what

046I know we're going to hear from Dr. Herring today, but one thing we have to keep in mind is that this global pandemic. you know, is not getting better over these next couple of days and weeks and months. They're saying that we could be entering the most deadly phase of this global pandemic with all the travel that's happening right now for Thanksgiving, as well as the travel that's going to happen most likely over the winter break. And I'm hoping that we all continue to take this very, very seriously. I love the fact that we have continued to be methodical and strategic throughout this process. I mean, I can't stress it enough. I mean, who has a playbook on how you kind of like navigate a global pandemic? I know I don't. I wish I did,

047but I don't. And I have to rely on, you know, my colleagues, of course, and our team. But first and foremost, I like to rely on our health professionals because they have the background and the expertise to really give us some guidance in regards to the health, you know, the health side of this global pandemic. I also just want to say it's exciting to hear about the vaccine and the possibilities there, the 95% effective rate right now. What I've heard from Dr. Herring, and I'm sure he's going to mention this today, is that that's good for us. That's a good thing. That's very hopeful. And I'm hoping that we can begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it's not going to happen overnight. And I just ask for us to

048continue. to be methodical and strategic throughout this process. And I'm going to turn things over. to our team. I'm going to start with Dr. Mazzinco. And before I do that, I do want to just make one final comment. And that is, it is important for our community to understand that our team works tirelessly every single day during this global pandemic. We were working hard before the global pandemic. So you take that times 100, and that is what we're working every single day. And I genuinely mean that. I think it's important for many, you know, receive some emails around the transparency and we need more information. And I just strongly encourage people to review our website under our virtual learning page, where you can actually watch all of our meetings that we conduct. You can watch

049the conversations that are happening, the questions that are asked, you know, the PowerPoint presentations that we share, the minutes that we go through. And it can really give you a glimpse into all of the things in regards to all the factors that we have to kind of take into consideration, all of the discussions and the discourse we have to have. And it gives you an idea of just how complex it is. You know, it's not a cop out to say things are, you know, you know, complex. You know, I'm not saying that I don't want us to come up with a decision. What I'm saying is that. This is a very complicated situation and it's not easy to just say, hey, this is the answer, everybody. It takes 20 minutes to come up with the

050solution. I mean, if it was that easy, everybody would be back in schools across this country. And that's not the case. And I just challenge us to, you know, bring that up when we receive these emails and when you're talking to people out in the community. And I challenge anybody who's watching here to say the same thing. You know, we're not the only people in this pandemic in Alexandria. Everybody is dealing with this, not just in the United States of America, but all over the world. And if we're not following the news and we're not using data to make some informed decisions, then we're doing a disservice to our children. So I want to just make sure that I will never be impulsive. especially when it comes to decisions like this. I'm going to make

051sure I'm talking to our health professionals and I'm working with our team, especially our teachers, as we make it through this process. So with that said, I'm going to turn things over to Dr. Mozingo so that we can begin our presentation for today. Thank you so much and good evening everyone. I'd like to begin by just highlighting our central questions for this evening. Here you see that we have five core questions. Number one, what guidance and inputs will continue to inform the decision making process, especially for phasing students back to in-person learning? We want to give an update on what is the staff and students ability to return for number one, that will be Dr. Heron in terms of what inputs are informing us. Number two, what is the staff and students ability to return

052that will be that stage will be set by Dr. Wilkins and Mr. Timothy Michael Carson. What is a hybrid model? Which models have we explored? And we want to emphasize explored because we've not made any decision regarding implementation. We will have an overview from education elements by Natalie Hall. And then what are some of the opportunities and challenges we are exploring for concurrent teaching? especially as it relates to what is concurrent teaching, what are some of the challenges and opportunities, as well as what are challenges and opportunities as it relates to technology. And lastly, and that will be done by Dr. Elizabeth Hoover. And the last question, what are our upcoming focus areas for our work teams? We made a commitment to still keep the community informed regarding some of the work that is occurring

053with our primary work teams and I'll provide. a glimpse into some of the work in the subsequent weeks. You have seen this slide before, but it means a lot to us that we want to continue to put this in the forefront because all of what we're doing and all of our teams are, we've got all of that work is being guided, as Dr. Hutchins said earlier, by the health experts. We want to really thank Dr. Herring because he has been very involved in supporting our process. sharing updates with our various teams. So we appreciate him doing that. And you will hear from him later tonight, this evening. Again, we are still meeting with our principals and teacher groups and really still trying to. find ways to enhance the virtual instructional model. We do want to

054say even to our public as Dr. Hutchins is receiving emails and some of those are coming to us, we're really trying to identify more ways that we can support the implementation of that model. And lastly, efforts are still underway to support different groups of students returning in person to school. Here, we just wanted to highlight again the board's vote on phase re-entry. You can see that there are groups of students that have been prioritized beginning November the 5th through February. And we want the public to be aware that efforts are still underway. A lot of planning in the various teams and groups and efforts underway to still phase in various groups of students. And now I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Stephen Herring, who is the director of the Alexandria Health Department, to

055provide an update to the board and the community. And I think he is switching out his slides. Trying to see if Dr. Herring, are you on? Okay. Maybe he's not on. Maybe he's not on. I do not see him on the call. I just flipped through and I don't see him. He accepted. So let me, I'll tell you what, let's just move on and we can just move on and we'll come back to that. Not a problem. Okay. So we're turning over to Dr. Stephen Wilkins for this part of the presentation. Thank you, Dr. Mozingo. Good evening board members. I'm Dr. Stephen Wilkins, Chief of Staff, and I will be joined by Michael Carson, who is our Director of Employee Engagement and Relations. And together, we'll provide a brief summary of the feedback from the

056division-wide intent to return form. As I start, I would like to recognize the outstanding work by Michael and the HR team to collect this data. We touched over 2,600 staff to get their individual feedback. We usually do employee surveys, but this is a first-time achievement to get every person to comment about their unique work-life situation. This is a high mark for ACPS employee engagement, and we are very proud of his distinguished effort. As the timeline for this form shows, we collected all staff feedback on November 13th and have completed the data analysis about staff availability to return. The staff intent to return form will be followed by a family form to better understand the student's ability to return to in-person instruction. And that form will be sent out sometime in early December. Next slide, please.

057Big picture. The major finding from the survey, and this is a self-reporting form, right, the results show that approximately 55% of staff are able to return to work on site at this time. The remaining 45% of staff are impacted by COVID-related concerns. These concerns are the pandemic health factors that you see in the middle of the slide. We asked the staff to tell us how these factors affected their ability to work on site. factors such as age 65 or older, underlying medical conditions, at-risk conditions such as pregnancy, whether or not a person was caring for a family member with medical conditions, child care challenges, and of course, fear or anxiety of the workplace. And we also had a section for other to capture something else that might be impacting them that needed to be reported.

058On this slide to the right, you'll see the links to the survey should you wish to review the template in question format. So the next steps after this survey are we're going to reassess feasibility of staffing the hybrid model. With approximately half the staff available to work, we will need to review what impact that has on the instructional program per school. We also want to make sure that we are sensitive to the stress in the workplace. We want to offer confidential HR assistance to those individual staff who are feeling extreme anxiety about the workplace. We also have to break this out to provide support at the school level because different schools will be impacted at different levels of anxiety. We want the school leadership team to have the support to manage this distress in the

059workplace. Finally, we'll get some feedback from families with the student intent to return form by mid-December, as I mentioned. But that, of course, is also going to be dependent on any new information about health conditions in our community, as well as the Northern Virginia area. I will turn it over to Michael Carson, who will give some high-level numbers and percentages about the staff based upon the self-reporting form. And you'll get a better understanding of how the teachers... view their particular situation. We will follow this briefing up with a more detailed briefing in December, specifically on December 3rd, and we will provide school-by-school results. Michael, over to you. Thank you, Dr. Wilkins. Good evening, members of the board and ACPS community. We received 100% staff participation to the attempt to return form, that is 2,601 staff

060members. As indicated previously, 55% of the staff indicated that he or she could return to the classroom. From the number of responses, we had 1,290 classroom teachers that responded to the attempt to return form. Of that number, 55 indicated that he or she could return for in-person instruction. That is approximately 690 classroom teachers. This number does not include any other licensed staff, but only classroom teachers. Next slide, please. I would like to provide you with some division-wide details relating to the pandemic health factors, which impacts 45% of our staff members. 45% is equivalent to approximately 1,180. staff members. In addition, we also asked our essential workers and staff members currently reporting occasionally to an ACPS worksite to indicate what pandemic health factors could affect their future attendance. Tonight, I will present the results collectively. Before

061I begin, I would like for you to note that responders could select as many choices that fit his or her individual situation. To the left of the slide are the pandemic health factors that Dr. Wilkins indicated previously. Looking at the pie chart and going clockwise, we had 85 staff members that selected the age 65 or older category, which is about 5%. We had 343 staff members that selected underlying medical conditions that placed one at risk of infection, which is about 21%. We had 167 of our staff members that selected they were at risk for complications due to a current health condition or weakened immune system. This is 10%. We had 253 of our staff members that selected caring for a family member with underlying medical conditions, which is 16%. And 188 staff members selected child

062care challenges due to COVID-19. That is 12%. Our biggest group was 508 staff members, which selected fear and anxiety of workplace infection. That was 31%. And closing this out was 90 individuals, or 6%, which stated that none of the presented health. pandemic health factors impacted them and they opted to leave a comment. We have reviewed all comments and none indicated an immediate health danger. As we, sorry, we are prepared to present more in-depth results to the board on December 3rd. And this concludes my comments. Thank you. All right, good evening everyone and thank you team Michael and Dr. Wilkins for that overview of the latest and greatest on the staff data. As Dr. Mozingo mentioned at the top of the meeting, I wanted to join you all this evening just sharing a little bit about

063what we know from education elements based on our work with other divisions around the country with the latest and greatest around hybrid learning, as well as a deep dive into concurrent instruction. So I'm going to start with a little bit of our latest and working definition with hybrid instruction, then take us through. some of the more recent research and trends coming out of what we've been seeing with concurrent teaching as well. So starting here on this slide, these are the three definitions that Alexandria came up with this past summer, working closely with their cross-functional planning teams and really thinking about what are the benefits and considerations for each scenario we might encounter as we return to schools. So traditional, referring to 100% in-person learning. hybrid learning to any variation of students or staff in the

064building, and 100% virtual learning referring into our current state of virtual plus. So I wanted to flash this on the screen here so that people have a working understanding of that. These are the definitions that we've been operating under, and they're the definitions we continue to use as we continue with our planning. So moving on to our next slide here, I wanted to show our latest thinking around hybrid learning here in ACPS. What it is, is students having set days where they attend school in person and set days where they are learning virtually, either asynchronously or synchronously. What it is not is teachers live streaming a class with students at home for an entire day. And it's also not students participating in asynchronous online instruction full time. So on the left here, you'll notice that

065there's a few different versions of what this might look like. It might look like students returning two days in person during the week and then being virtual three days. It might look like students in person for two full weeks and then being virtual for another set of two weeks. Or it might look like a half day structure where in the mornings you're attending school in person and then you're being sent home in the afternoon for asynchronous instruction. So again, wanted to flash this here so you understand our working definitions before going a little bit deeper into concurrent teaching. So if we go into our next slide here, I wanted to also share four different common models we've been seeing across the country for hybrid instruction. Some of them you'll notice were captured on the previous

066slide, but we also wanted to add some names so that you can have a better understanding of how different divisions are going about their planning as well. So model one is the one that a lot of us have been talking about and hearing about. It's concurrent teaching, also known as mirrored instruction. Basically what this means is that in-person and virtual schedules are functioning exactly the same, regardless of if a student is learning from home or in the building. There's a few opportunities with this, the first being that for people transitioning into concurrent instruction, schedule-wise it is easier to follow, and it can be more effective if more teachers return to the building. We're going to dive into some considerations on the next slide, but a few to keep in mind here are that it is

067difficult to engage students virtual for long periods of time, and there is an opportunity for gaps in learning based on students' environments. Model 2 and 3 refers to mini-academies and a rotational model. I'm sorry if we can go back one slide there, thank you. Mini-academies refers to that there are multiple academies within a school. You're not necessarily rotating like you might be in Model 3. Opportunities for mini academies are that you have really great chances for targeted and small group learning. There is higher flexibility and there's also greater opportunities for engagement since there is that kind of academy cohort structure. Some considerations to note for this are that it could lead to new relationships needing to be built depending on who is a part of the cohorts for the students and teachers who are in

068the building. There's also a lot of planning that needs to go. behind the scenes and throughout the instructional day around the logistics and the experiences that students are having. And it also requires a lot of planning around teacher skill level and the professional development to prepare them for this. This is also apparent in rotational models as well, with a few opportunities to point out being that it is used if more students want to return than allow for space in the building, whereas concurrent is if more staff are able to return. Another opportunity for rotational is that it could lessen the gap in learning experience because students are rotating through the building and are getting both that in-person and at-home instruction. Again, there's some logistical concerns there, and there might be some implications for how you're

069pacing out curriculum. Model 4 is one that we see less common, but it is one to touch on either way. It's called one-day lag flipped. Basically, what this means is that students who are remaining virtual are one day behind. in-person students and are learning using a flipped model. So I won't spend too much time there since again it's one that we see less common, but I wanted to spend a couple more minutes here if we go to the next slide, thank you, talking a bit more about concurrent instruction. So here's what we've seen and here's what we know with the kind of latest and greatest around concurrent teaching. The first thing I want to start with is that concurrent teaching is very much research based and it's also not new. It's been around for a

070number of years now and it's really grounded in small regional universities actually out of Florida who have been using concurrent teaching for a long time to manage students who were both coming to the lecture hall and students who were learning from home. But unlike the K through 12 space in the higher ed space, it was rather unpredictable to know whether or not students would be showing up in person or at home. So concurrent teaching has been a practice that professors have. been using for a long time to manage that unpredictability with where their students would be showing up. What we know about concurrent teaching is that it is in-person and virtual master schedules, again, functioning the exact same way. And it is in-person virtual students being taught at the same time by the same teacher

071utilizing digital friendly pedagogy. It is not teachers live streaming a class to students at home where they're passively watching and listening. And it's also not virtual teaching with students in the room. So wanted to share a couple success stories and then a few common challenges. emphasizing again that we are very much in the planning and exploration phase with scheduling. And this is just a nice to have and a good to know as we continue with these planning activities. So starting with the success stories, the first is that again, there are some easier transition periods when it comes to adjusting to the schedule for families and staff and following that schedule throughout the school day. There's also greater opportunities for consistency of learning experience and also for a classroom community because there's a higher chance that

072students will have the same teacher as they had in the fall with a concurrent model. There's also multiple ways to engage with students in a concurrent setting. Not all students need to be engaged in the same way or at the same time. So that allows for some more personalization to meet our students needs and meet them where they are. Of course, there's some implications and challenges too. The first is that for our teachers, there's going to be a much greater emphasis on planning with concurrent teaching. Formative data becomes the data to really capture intentionally and daily. The second thing is mentioned before, and this is true across all models, is that there are opportunities for greater gaps in learning experience based on where students are learning from. There's also some challenges around coverage if and

073when teachers need to quarantine or just if they need to take a day off or there's need for a substitute. There's a lot of challenges around managing that as well. Also, there's some things that Dr. Hoover will go into in a moment around technology and tools that teachers will need. What I'll name here, though, is that teachers who are using concurrent often require headsets, multiple devices or monitors to really manage the virtual and in-person engagement. So with that, I'll go ahead and pass it to Dr. Hoover. Thank you, everyone, for your time. Thank you, Ms. Hall. Before moving into some technical considerations and challenges of concurrent teaching, I'd like to talk a little bit about some data as we support our virtual learning environment right now. After the first couple months of school, we have

074settled into average daily visits at our student help desk at T.C. Williams to about 40 to 50 visits a day at least. When we compared our traditional school opening to what we've experienced this fall, you can look at our number of tickets. On an average year, we have close to 4,000 help desk tickets. And this year, we had over 6,000 help desk tickets, and we had to put up a student help desk for pre-K-12, which we had never done before, with over 7,000. So you can see, comparing 4,000 help desk tickets, help desk tickets to over 13,000 has been a big jump for my staff. We continue to work on the internet access. It continues to change for families as their situations change. Right now we have almost 1,600 Khajiits out to our families, leaving

075us about 200 still available. And we've been trying to move over some families to internet essentials for the families that that would work for. So we have 123 out of 500 possibilities. So that work continues. And you know as everyone's changed some of their focuses this year we've really worked hard with our face center doing more outreach to families so we've never been a help desk to students and their families like we are right now. So we have worked on doing family webinars with translations and multiple languages and having translated documents on our family help desk webpage on Chromebooks, tablets, PowerSchool, securely and a whole variety of other tools that we've done. So we've experienced the importance of technical support in our 100% virtual online learning. And so now I'm going to shift over to

076talk about what we would need to do if we went to a concurrent learning model, a concurrent teaching model. So we have to consider our current infrastructure capacity. You know, we are, again, we are used to supporting our students in schools rather than at home and in schools. We are researching the cost and availability of classroom cameras and accessories. As Ms. Hall said, in order for teachers to be successful, they need some additional tools, a second monitor, again, microphones, tripods, items like that. We cannot currently use our current bandwidth to support concurrent teaching. So we would have to consider that and that expansion of technical support beyond our current staffing. So knowing that those are some challenges and considerations, we can move to the next slide. I do love seeing my staff in that picture.

077Thank you. Thank you. So there are several projects that we would need to tackle. One is increasing our current bandwidth, which is five gigabits to 10 gigabits. And we know we could we can do that. We have the ability to do that and rather quickly. And that would be about five thousand dollars extra per month. We need to procure would need to procure and install camera classrooms and accessories. There's always a supply and demand. situation these days, but we do believe that we could acquire those. And that would cost us about $300,000 to $400,000. And then another project which would be to be determined is increasing not only our technical support beyond what we're currently doing at Student Help Desk at TC Williams, but also coming up with procedures and how you support technical challenges

078in classrooms while maintaining the CDC guidelines. But if we could do all of those three projects, we would be able to support about 700 classrooms, which is about 80% of our core content classrooms, not including libraries or gyms and cafeterias and some other non-traditional classroom areas. So, and now I'm handing it over to Dr. Mann. Well, we're going to have a little bit of a change in the presentation before we end. Dr. Heron has joined us by phone, and he is going to provide an update at this time. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you so much. Hi, Dr. Herring, Director of Alexandria Health Department. Sorry I'm on late. It was completely my error. I got some meetings mixed up. And I don't have the metrics in front of

079me right now. But as a reminder, there are three core indicators that the CDC has presented to communities to help them make decisions about school openings. And one of those core indicators is the 14-day transmission. And it's the number of cases per 100,000. And there's five different levels. And Alexandria right now is in the highest level of risk for transmission within the school setting. The second indicator has to do with the percent positivity over the past 14 days. And while we're not in the lowest and not in the highest, we're somewhere in the middle. I forget exactly what it translates to, but I think we're about 6% to 7% right now. The highest would be greater than 10%, and the one right below the highest is 8% to 10%. So we're right in the middle

080range there. So those are two of the core indicators that talk about the community. The third core indicator is actually five, just as a reminder, it's five mitigation strategies that ACPS has control over. And from all their plans, they're in alignment with being green, with being the lowest risk of transmission. Then one would go on and look at some of the secondary indicators that have to do with hospitalizations and other things. And there's a mix there, but one of those also is at the highest risk of transmission. What I can tell you is that when we look at the numbers and look at the rolling average over the past seven days, we're as high now as we were at the beginning of the pandemic back in... April and May in the beginning of June when

081it was really, really high. In fact, this morning we reported the highest number of cases since the pandemic started. That was 75. And this was days after we've reported 53 and 51. So we're seeing increases in cases across the board. It's in all age groups. The Health Department, the city, I think everybody's really focused on reducing the transmission in order to prevent this from affecting our most vulnerable population, our elderly and those with underlying conditions that can put them at severe risk. We know the hospitalizations are up as well. Hospitalizations were as low, under 200 hospitalizations, and now it's well over 400. Back in the worst period of time, it was about 900. So we're continuing to put the message out that people are safest at home. And then all the other mitigation strategies that

082we've talked about, face masking and physical distancing, hand washing, sanitizing both hands and surfaces. So that was kind of a brief overview without my having any of the dashboards in front of me. But if anybody has the dashboards in front of them and have any questions about them or any other questions, I'm happy to address those. Thank you so much, Dr. Herring. We're going to continue through the presentation, and I know that there will be an opportunity for questions at the end. Oh, sure. Okay, so I'll hang on. Thank you. We thank you. So we are really committed, as the superintendent said earlier, to continue to learn from our teachers. Early on in the process, we created the Virta Plus Learning Advisory Team that consists of about 260 some teachers and other staff members. And

083what we want you to know is that next Monday, we are going to bring those teachers back together and we're going to engage them in an activity called a SWOT. I know Natalie. provided kind of an overview of concurrent instruction, but we really want to get our teachers involved in the process so we can begin to look at what are some of the strengths, as well as the weaknesses, opportunities, and threats when we are considering this type of instructional model. We are also going to, we're inviting, we're going to host a panel of a few teachers that will also share their perspectives, experiences, and as we would say, the good, the bad, and the ugly. But we want to share every aspect of what is occurring in some other divisions implementing this concurrent model. So

084next Monday, again, we're bringing out about 200 plus teachers together and with the whole focus on concurrent instruction. And also as a part of that, there will be this panel really of those who are actually implementing concurrent instruction within their school division, school district. We want to continue to share with you and the public some of the work that is occurring when the school and division transition teams are meeting. There are a lot of ideas and things that are on the top of their mind as they meet on a weekly basis. As you can see, again, there are six focus areas, elementary instructional model, secondary, the academic support. English Learner, the Citywide, as well as staffing. And in the area of the elementary instructional models, the team is still beginning to look at different types

085of schedules, the type of professional development that is appropriate should we move in with an in-person model. Under the secondary instructional model, they are also beginning to look at, as Natalie even mentioned tonight, studying various types of models, you will recall that the teams actually studied models early on and we're continuing that conversation and looking at the barriers and the opportunities, particularly with in-person learning. In terms of academic supports, we want to make sure that there are efforts underway, regardless of whether it's a hybrid model or the virtual plus model that We are looking at different data sources, data sets, and providing academic supports for many of our students. In addition to that, one of the groups that we are committed to phasing in is our English learners. And you'll see that that group has

086started meeting and beginning to identify staff that's needed, as well as some other issues for bringing students back. And then you're aware of the citywide. program and the commitment to continue to bring groups of children back in that area. And lastly, you heard a little tonight about from Dr. Wilkins and his staff regarding the results from the staff, the intent to return survey. But as Dr. Hutchins indicated, there will be further analysis and communication at our December 3rd meeting regarding the staff intent. But we really want the public and everyone to know that while this is high level, these are just some of the examples of the activities and work that is occurring with the school and division transition teams. And this slide, we love this slide for one of the reasons I love this

087slide because of the continuous improvement cycle to the right, because what this does illustrate for all of us is that whatever is being discussed, whether it's with our teaching, learning, leadership representatives that we met with today, that the topics that we discussed today will be taken to the school leadership team meetings next Tuesday. They replicate, get feedback on that. In addition to the division team. We meet every Wednesday. I just shared with you some of the updates from the division team. And again, just a quick reminder, we want to overemphasize and overcommunicate our real commitment to our teachers and their voices and what we're planning for next Monday. We also want to say to everyone, no decisions have been made in terms of the concurrent. instructional model, but we want to learn as much as

088we can so that the best decision can be made as to what is feasible and can be successfully implemented within our schools. So that is considered. All righty. So this is our last slide. We always show you where you can access, as Dr. Hutchins said earlier, a wealth of information about the virtual plus phase reentry plans. But thank you for this opportunity and those who presented with us tonight. Thank you, Dr. Mozingo. And thank you to all of our team for engaging in this. And as you all know, these are some very unprecedented times. And I know I keep saying unprecedented, but it really is. Every day I wake up, I'm like. We're still in this, right? And there's always some new information. But tonight, I am going to recommend to the board that, you

089know, given the fact that we've had, you know, an upward trend in regards to the data positives for COVID-19, not only in the city of Alexandria, but also in the Northern Virginia region and across the country. It's a huge concern and in consultation with our Alexandria Health Department, as Dr. Herring just mentioned, in regards to the uptick that we're seeing with our community spread, I'm going to be recommending that we delay our transition of students into the in-person until January. And some of the reasons why I believe that is going to be important for us is One thing that I heard from our teachers, even just today in our teacher session, is that teachers are even more concerned with the... disruptions that continue to occur. So every time we make a decision, let's say if

090we are going to pivot to going to in-person and then something occurs and you have to go back to virtual, that's a transition. And it is disruptive to our students, whether we believe it or not, it's a huge disruption. And if we're following the data right now in regards to the health data that's out there. the data showing that after Thanksgiving, as you know, people are traveling and those types of things, that that is when we're going to see that spike occur. So if people are traveling, you know, for us to be safe, we probably should wait, I would say, at least 14 days after Thanksgiving because we don't know who's coming and going if we're bringing in, you know, hundreds of people because November 30th, we were planning to bring in hundreds of people.

091So it wasn't a small group of six. um that if we were to say okay well let's wait until 14 days after that as soon as we got back we will be about to leave a week later for winter break um so people would only be in school for a week and i think that those are just too many uh transitions uh we don't know what the future is going to hold but i think us at least waiting until uh january to continue with our transition of our students would be uh I believe it's not just the most feasible, but I believe it's also the right thing to do in regards to making sure health and safety is at the forefront for our staff and our students. That does not stop our work and what

092we're doing in regards to us planning and us finalizing all of our scheduling and the types of hybrid models that we're going to incorporate. But this will allow us to make sure. that we are doing our part with flattening the curve and not becoming a place where we're now spreading COVID-19 within our schools during one of the most, I believe it could potentially be one of the most deadly times or phases in our global pandemic. So with that said, I want to turn things back over to our Madam Chair for questions. Thank you, Dr. Hutchings. I have Ms. Gentry with a question. Thank you. So before I ask my question, I just have a point of clarification for tonight. Is it, because it's listed as info action, is it necessary for us to make a

093vote at any point regarding this? Or because, I mean, our earlier motions always had caveats, you know, that there might need to be changes. So I just wanted to know if there's a need, if there's ultimately might be a need for a vote. So, yes, so we've actually recommended we recommended to the board that we continue to move forward for updates to be info action. And the reason for that is because sometimes there are situations. So, for example, right now, I'm recommending that that we stay in a virtual setting. That is something that the board would have to would have to vote on, because that would be us not pursuing. um the in person for right now it doesn't mean we're not going to ever pursue in person but that is a change uh in

094regards to the recommendation that we that we had a few weeks ago with the whole transitional planning of november 5th and then november 17th and november 30th and then december so it's delaying um that that particular plan okay i just do we have and i'm sorry i've got a couple of different windows do we do we have language if if if we were to make such a motion? So that's the question that we would need to kind of work through if we needed to have that language with Jennifer Abbruzzese in the board chair. Sorry, Ms. Abbruzzese did put some language in there. So I know it's hard to get all those screens up at one time. But if you go to e-board, there is something in the memo. Yeah, that's that's rather the recommendation is

095listed in the memo and also in the recommendation field for the agenda item in ESB. I don't know if Ms. Nielsen can bring it up perhaps. Thank you. Well, while that's happening, I'll just go ahead and ask my more general information question, because as Dr. Hutchings said, regardless of exactly what we make decisions on in terms of the timing tonight, we're still doing planning because it's not a question of if, but when we return to in-person. But when is the question, right? But while we're doing that and trying to figure out when, I just wanted a clarification. You know, there was, you know, some of the budget implications that were mentioned in terms of the need for the cameras and things like that. And I just wanted to hear from the staff in terms of

096availability of the funding is, you know, if we decide to make those purchases for the cameras, after Hoover was saying $300,000 to $400,000. I just wanted to make sure that that was available and, you know, what other kinds of areas might be impacted if they are. So we are in a situation where we are able to use some of our CARES Act funding. This does fall under that category in regards to technology. So we will be able to identify the funding for the cameras. And it would be totally within CARES. We wouldn't need to pull from something else. It doesn't. No, because our original CARES Act funding is, remember, we're able to spend that over a two-year span, not the secondary CARES Act funding that we have to spend by December 30th, right? So that

097money has already been allocated. But this is for the funding that we do have a two-year span. And with our planning, we did not want to spend all of those dollars right away because we did not know what the future was going to hold for the two-year span. And that was why the VDLB allows us two years. to spend those dollars. So we will be able to identify the funding for that. Thank you for that. Next up, I have Ms. Nolan with a question. Yes, thank you, Chair Anderson. Can we go back to a little bit to, well, first off, let me just acknowledge like huge thanks. I know this is a big lift for everyone. A special thanks to the IT Technology Department to go from, I believe it was. whatever, like almost double

098it sounded like of the help desk and all of the needs. So we've really been just saved by so many of your staff members and the dedication they have to our division. So really appreciate that. Just astounding. My question though, clarifying question a little bit more on the concurrent teaching, you know, as all of us know, COVID has come with its own vocabulary and that sometimes people use it in its first, you know, So anyways, I've heard concurrent teaching used a little bit differently. And in fact, some of the ways I've heard it being used was on the what it's not list. So I'm, to be candid, having a bit of a hard time as someone who taught in the classroom for eight years, just the practical perspective, really trying to understand like, what does

099that look like? The handful of teachers, and granted, it's not a large sample size, but the handful of teachers that I know that are currently. conducting themselves in what they label as concurrent teaching. It's a slightly different definition. It's also come with a significant amount of challenges that they're finding hard to come against. So again, could I get a little bit more of an understanding of what does practicality speaking, does it look like? In regards to the practicality for ACPS incorporating concurrent teaching in our schools? Because, for example, so what I've heard is that it's like some kids are virtually at home and then some are in the classroom. But some of what I had in my head was on that, what Ms. Hall put on the what it is not list. You know what

100I'm saying? So I would just like to know and understand, like, what does it really look like that we're talking about when we say concurrent teaching? Yes, so Ms. Hall, she can come back on and provide some more clarity. But one thing I will say is that next week we're going to be having these discussions with our staff, with our teachers, to talk about how do we make that come to life. in ACPS. What would that look like for us? We're hearing from teachers from other jurisdictions who are already doing this concurrent teaching just to provide us with some insight on the good, the bad, the ugly, the things that they would do differently if they could do it over, things that are working well for them. But if Ms. Hall can just elaborate on

101the actual concurrent teaching model and practically what does that look like in regards to practicalities I think is what Ms. Nolan is asking. What does that look like within the classroom or not look like? Sure, thank you Dr. Hutchings and thank you for your question Ms. Nolan. First I'll say that a lot of what concurrent teaching could look like will come down to that collaboration and that co-design that Dr. Hutchings is speaking to. The second thing that I'll say is that the definition of concurrent teaching that we use and are operating under right now is that from the beginning of the school day to the end of the school day, students who are learning from home and students who are learning at the building are going through the same schedule. So that means they're logging

102in at the same time, they're having some kind of morning meeting or advisory simultaneously, and they're going through the instructional day in tandem. There might be some moments where students who are learning in certain environments environments are going with asynchronous work. There might also be moments where the teacher is pulling small groups with students from mixed environments. But by and large, those students are having the same schedule for the entire school day. Does that answer your question? Lately, if I may, just a few clarifying questions. So for example, you got kids in the classroom, you got kids from home. Are they all being instructed by the same teacher? Because to be candid, that's what I'm hearing teachers are most struggling with is that you're in the classroom and you're simultaneously expected to teach those that

103are paying attention virtually while those in front of you. And again, like we all know that, you know, when you have a kid in front of you. That's really hard to then also pay attention to those that are virtual. So I'm just that's to be candid, my concern and just would love to know, like, what are and maybe that's what we'll learn by talking to folks. And that is what we're trying to learn from the from the teachers who are actually engaged in that, because, you know, we want to really ask, well, what are some of the challenges with that when you're trying to teach kids? Because concurrent teaching is teaching kids in person. So let's say a teacher is in the school building teaching a class of kids. And simultaneously, they're teaching kids in

104the virtual world who are chiming in through a technology device. So you're having to engage, you know, both. And the challenges that comes from that is so when you're doing your virtual teaching, right, when teachers right now who are strictly virtual, you know that it's abbreviated. It's not a typical class because we already know it's online. So you can't have kids don't teachers aren't doing 90 minute lessons. You know, the whole time, because you're not going to keep the kids engaged for 90 minutes, whereas you might be able to do that in a classroom setting because you might have some manipulatives. Kids might turn to talk that type of thing to each other within that class. You can add some additional in-person thing strategies that allow for kids to remain engaged for that period of

105time. What many of the teachers challenges is you're teaching. two different worlds. Virtual world and the in-person world are so different that you're having to pivot and work through, okay, I see my kids are not engaged online. Let me see what I'm going to like pivot to right now with them. but I still got these other kids right here in front of me in the classroom, you know, too. So that is not that it's impossible, but it's a huge undertaking that is going to require us to provide professional learning if we choose to use this model. And we're going to have to do that, you know, next month if we're choosing to do that. That's why we're trying to get through, like, what is our teaching model going to, or structure going to look like

106so we can begin that professional learning and building capacity. uh with with our staff but miss hall i don't know if you want to add um to to that The only thing that I'll add, Dr. Hutchings, is to plus one that you're saying is that the amount of professional development needed to support with concurrent teaching not only needs to happen on the front end, but it's very much a continuous improvement process and support process for teachers. And some of the focuses of that professional learning might look like, what are the routines and procedures that we need to have in place to support the day? What are some jobs and roles that we need to have in place to have our students be fully engaged with the lesson regardless of where they're learning from? I think

107related to that, a lot of the professional learning that we've seen really supports what does it look like to engage students in having discussions with each other, regardless of where they're learning from. And also, what does it look like to rely on formative data and to build in that formative data really proactively to make sure that we are able to pivot, as Dr. Hutchings said, in the moment to support what our students need right then and there. So that would be the main thing that I'd add. And I hope that answers your question about what it could look like in ACPS. Yeah, no, it definitely does. I guess my only concern is it doesn't, it comes with significant challenges. So I just appreciate the conversation. I think it's one we're going to want to definitely

108continue to explore because it's not, it's not, I know this is a very difficult time in general and we're never going to find it. total solution, but I would love to hear the teacher's feedback, not only those going through it, but also where our teachers stand. Thank you. I appreciate the information. Very much appreciate it. And thanks, Ms. Nolan. That is definitely one of the reasons why we wanted to bring staff teachers in from other jurisdictions who are doing this so we can really get an understanding of, okay, well, how does it work and what are the challenges that come along with it so that we could then be able to provide the board with an update around what we think is most feasible and what is going to be most appropriate for our staff

109in regards to the learning models. Because we can't just do things because everybody else is doing it. There are always implications with everything. And sometimes the stories around what's really happening. behind some of these models, we don't really get to hear in the news. So this will allow us to have more of a raw conversation with, meaning our teachers and the teachers that we're going to be bringing in from other jurisdictions to really give them a better understanding of how this works and how or how it may not work. Got it. And if I may ask, Dr. Hutchings, when you're having those conversations, I think the board would especially be interested, given how richly diverse our student population is, it'd be also great to hear not only in general how it's working, but how does

110it work for students with special needs, students who don't speak English as a first language, students who are two years behind the reading level. You know, some of the gratitude that we have is being diverse, but it also comes with, like, it's not a one-size-fits-all approach, which is sometimes is even more. amazing what our teachers do. So really appreciate that and looking forward to learning more. Chair Anderson, for a procedural question, I know we usually get two questions during these conversations. Do you want me to ask my second one now or do you want me to get back in the queue? Why don't you get back in the queue and then we'll go around. I actually have a question on the same slide, which I, so I didn't want to on a different one. Totally

111different. Thank you. It said this model was also more likely to have students keep their teachers and I didn't understand why. And how that was. So one of the main things, and Ms. Hall, she can elaborate if need be, but one of the main things of why this model allows you to keep your teachers is because a teacher is now teaching kids virtually and also in person, it doesn't require us to now switch them to a different teacher because that teacher can if the class is split up and some of the kids end up being in person meaning at the school and the others remain online you can still keep your your class roster intact even if the teacher was unable to come to school in some cases the teacher could be able to teach

112both the in-person students and the virtual students from wherever they are even if they're away because now everything is done virtually in a sense, you know, so you just have a lot more options where you don't have to move an entire classroom or kids from a classroom to a different instructor. So the concurrent teaching is the least. what is it, what's the word I'm looking for? Least disruptive option. But there are also other challenges that come with it. So it might be the least disruptive for the student, but then there are some other disruptions that occur from that particular option. But Ms. Hall, I don't know if I covered that clearly, but if you want to add anything. You certainly did. Nothing to add. The thing I'll say is that it's difficult to speak in

113absolutes with anything related to hybrid because with any changes in the number of cases or any other things that could be happening outside of the building, the percentage of students at home and in the building that goes for staff as well could change. But I would agree with Dr. Hudson saying that there is a greater opportunity for teachers and students to not. have that disruption of being pulled apart and put in separate classrooms. So just to clarify then, the teacher could, if a teacher is not returning, they could both have people in the classroom and at home, but they would just be using the camera and there'd be somebody else, I guess, in the classroom for... Yes. So the practice that many have been doing is there's been an adult in the classroom just for

114classroom management purposes to have an adult in a room because you can't have kids school age by themselves. So but the teaching would still occur from from that instructor, regardless of where the teacher is. So they could be at home, they could be in another location and they could still be instructing those students. through a concurrent teaching model just because of the two-way cameras that you're able to use. Okay, great. I'm clear on it now. I just want to make sure. And next I have Ms. Green. I'm sorry, Ms. Thornton. Ms. Thornton is first. Thank you. Going off of this concurrent model conversation, I am not quite clear on the pros and cons of some of the other models that were discussed on slide 12. In particular, I'm curious about the, let's see, what is

115it called? The rotational model. And looking at it says that one of the key benefits is that it helps out with capacity constraints while teachers remain virtual or in person. It lessens gaps in the learning experience, which I heard was a concern with a concurrent model. So I was just wondering if we could go through again, kind of the pros and the cons of the other models and why we are deciding to explore exclusively the concurrent model. And then secondly, and not quite related, but I'll just throw it in there. Should we proceed with purchasing the additional technology equipment that we would need for any of these models, really? Would they be ready theoretically by January? Like, is that even something logistically that's feasible? So to answer your first question, Stuart, and thank you for

116asking that. Today, we were focusing on concurrent. We're talking next week on all the other models. So we're talking about all four. But we wanted to first focus on the concurrent teaching model because that really is what everybody's been saying we should pivot to doing. And we wanted to first explore that particular option. So next Monday, November 30th, we're going to be doing our teaching, learning and leadership session. We're going to be actually talking through models two, three and four. So we'll have some more information for the board at a future date at one of our other updates. But we solely focused on concurrent right now just because that has been the discussion in the educational world. Why not just pivot into concurrent teaching? And our thing was we didn't want to just pivot into

117concurrent teaching without exploring. of what concurrent teaching is. I mean, even the word itself was just brought to the attention of superintendents in this area a month ago. So I want us to make sure that, you know, we know the concept, but the word concurrent teaching is a new concept. Well, for me, I'm not gonna speak for my colleagues, but I'll speak for myself. But we will have more information about the other three models. The second question that you asked, can you repeat it again, please? Yes. It was about the technology that we mentioned we might need to purchase for any of the hybrid options. Would it be ready by January? By January. So Dr. Hoover, she can, I see her. There she is. Great question. And honestly, it's a very fluid situation. We're not

118the only school division across the country talking about these different models. But we have identified different models that our vendors do have. available. So, but it is a very fluid situation and it's the timing also is when we decide to do this and making sure that we have what we need and do install and do the professional development. But yeah, I can't promise anything right now. We're still waiting for our 3,000 Chromebooks from the summer that was supposed to arrive in July. So, but we do have measures in place to try to go ahead and pursue these technology devices because whether we go with a concurrent teaching model or not, Thinking forward, so let's fast forward, which I know is hard to think about the future right now, right? But in the future, we still

119may have families who opt to not send their kids to school for whatever reason in the future. And we're going to need to make sure that we're equipped to continue to provide some form of virtual learning. for our students. And this could also open some doors to us when, you know, us moving in this direction and having cameras in our classrooms that, and I think Mr. Suarez mentioned this when we first got into this global pandemic, and allowing for other students to like go and take upper level courses or classes or sit in on classes that might be an AP course or sitting on a high school course while you're at middle school or middle school course while you're at elementary school. Us really kind of forward thinking and getting ourselves equipped with this technology,

120it's a huge opportunity for providing, you know, these opportunities for young people moving forward and not just for now. So we're really trying to make sure that, you know, all of these different decisions that we're making, we want them to be sustainable and for them to be other solutions, you know, for future problems too, and not just for the problems that we're experiencing today. Okay, next we have Ms. Green. And Madam Chair, I have two questions, but I'll jump back in the queue and just do my first one right now. First question, Dr. Hutchings or team, can you tell me with the concurrent teaching model what our plans are for substitutes? Because inevitably, I think we're going to need them. Will they receive the same professional development to prepare them for this new virtual world?

121And that's a great question, Ms. Green, and absolutely they will have to. You know, the moment we get back into a situation where staff are back in the building, we could be in, you know, we could have cases where staff members, they are positive with COVID-19 and they're out for two weeks. Not that they're positive and asymptomatic, but they actually have symptoms and they're not able to just Zoom from home, right? So we are going to have cases like that and we will have to have solutions. for that. So our goal is to make sure whoever we have substituting a particular class and a concurrent teaching model or any other model that they're trained to be able to, you know, to complete or implement these practices in our classrooms. Dr. Mozingo, anything you want to

122add from that? I'm sorry. No, I'm just glad you asked that question because he's absolutely correct. What we have, what we've learned and what we know is that even for the veteran teacher using either of these models, they start over at zero. The learning curve for everyone is steep. You know what I mean? So for our substitutes, for our regular teachers, for our veteran teachers or anyone, so extensive professional learning would be essential. So thank you for asking that question. Okay, and next up we have Miss Alderton with a question. Yeah, actually I just had a comment. I really appreciate being clear and us being really cognizant that professional development is going to be absolutely essential if we pursue this model. Because I think one of the challenges with it is that Even though there's

123a teacher who will be in person or someone who will be in person, it's still not the same. It needs to be really structured and consistent in order to support the virtual students. And so like there, I think one of the things we want to consider as a part of that PD is like how to maintain that virtual classroom, that virtual component. Like we use Canvas. How do we set up Canvas so that it's super structured and consistent and it supports the virtual students? And it also needs to support the possibility of a rapid shift to fully virtual. Because like we said, it's not if, it's when somebody contracts COVID. And when that happens, that shift back to virtual needs to be seamless. And so I think that's something to just really keep in mind.

124And you don't want that virtual part to slide simply because someone's in person. Because Otherwise, I think it has the huge sensitivity to just fall completely apart. And then lastly, you know... Again, like what to miss miss Nolan's point, having some training on how to really maintain that virtual virtual portion of the classroom will help better support kids who do have varying needs. So just sort of, again, I appreciate that focus on professional development and those are some things I think we want to keep in the back of our minds as we explore this option. Okay, Dr. Reeve. All right. Well, thank you so much for the presentation. Thank you, Dr. Mozingo and everyone on the team. I know you're working really hard to work through all of these different issues. I wanted to, with

125regards to the recommendation, Dr. Hutchings, tonight about delaying the specialized instruction as well as the students with disabilities in the self-contained language arts and math instruction until January. I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit more about that. You know, my understanding up until this point, there have been challenges with rolling out that program. And it's been around the staff ability to return. And so I know we were not able to bring back the third through fifth graders last week as we were planning in the citywide program. But now it's another thing that's been introduced, which is the delays due to the health indicators. And this is something that I had been talking to you a little bit about. If we have or if we're going to develop some clearly defined thresholds

126in regards to the health indicators so that everyone understands the basis of the recommendation. Like I certainly understand that the case counts are going up and this is we're looking to be going into a more dangerous period. But I know that, you know, just looking what other. other divisions are doing, they seem to be making different decisions regarding the health indicators. So if you could just, I guess, talk a little bit about, you know, again, that program, there were challenges with the rollout because of the staffing constraints, but now we're recommending to delay it because of the health indicators. And it's also a different model. I mean, we're talking a lot about the concurrent model right now, but that's a totally different model too. So if you could just provide some clarity around that, that

127would be really helpful. Yes. And thank you, Dr. Reeve, for that question. I do have a couple of metrics that we use, and I know that if Dr. Herring is still on the phone, he can assist me in this particular area. But first and foremost, I do want to just mention to you, and you brought this up, that our staffing has... been a constraint previously. We've been very vocal about that. We've also been vocal about the fact that building capacity and we did talk about health health mitigations because early on we stated that at any time we're going to have to follow. like what's happening in regards to the community spread that could delay or change any of our plans. We can put all the plans together for the rest of the year and things

128could happen. So we've been very, very vocal about that. And hopefully nobody is kind of surprised because we've been very, very transparent on that on that particular thing. But the three specific metrics that we that we look at in regards to our health mitigation metric one really looks at our community transmission. And this is the number of new cases that are within our community per 100,000 persons within the last 14 days. So this is, and I'll just give you an example. When we have more than 200 cases per 100,000 within the past 14 days, that indicates that we're at the highest risk of transmission in our schools. So that's one metric that we work directly with the Alexandria Health Department. And all of these, this is what we work directly with the health departments of

129Dr. Herring. Metric two deals with the percentage of COVID-19 tests in the community that are positive in the last 14 days. So this is, you know, a level, for example, when more than 10% during the prior 14 days indicates that we're at the highest risk of transmission in our schools. So this is like another. metric that is used by the Alexander Health Department that we're informed about that helps us with our decision making. And then the third metric is more of an internal school risk assessment. And this is the degree of implementation of our own in-school mitigation measures. So for example, just making sure that we have consistency with our mask or face coverings that are being used throughout the buildings, our social distancing. And this is why we've been adamant about being six feet

130apart and not really caving into that because every time you go within six feet, you're now putting you know, the staff and students just at a higher risk, you know, but if we at least stick to the six feet with the face coverings and the hand washing and the respiratory etiquette, meaning when you sneeze, you sneeze into your arm, you know, things like that, as well as all of our cleaning and disinfection, I'm sorry, disinfective measures that we've taken throughout our schools. And then also the contact tracing that occurs. with the Alexandria Health Department. So the third mitigation is really about our internal school risk assessments. And those were those five key mitigation strategies that Dr. Herring talks about in each of our sessions or sessions that we have with the board, as well as

131with our internal team. We're going to be laying this out tomorrow in our ACPS Insider. so that families can actually see specifically when it comes to metrics that we're using that are in collaboration with the Alexandria Health Department. And this is in addition to staffing and it's in addition to buildings, it's in addition to this. But these are the key metrics that we're using in regards to health mitigations. I hope that helped answer your question, Dr. Reif. Yes, it did. I understand. The health indicators are, you know, we can work through the staff. I mean, we have to work through the staffing and the building constraints to figure out what's feasible. And then the health metrics are kind of like another layer. But I guess what I was getting at specifically was, you know, if

132we're going to say when two of these categories are in the highest risk for. seven days or whatever, then therefore we will not, you know, bring kids back or something to that effect, getting really that specific, or if it's just going to be more of a, you consulting with Dr. Herring and then making a recommendation to the board based on what you're seeing, just looking at the total picture. I guess that was kind of what I'm trying to get at. If there will be something a little more specific so that everyone kind of you know, when all the boxes are checked, we'll know, or if it's going to be just a recommendation from you. And I think the biggest, the most specific thing is the fact that, you know, when we're looking at metric one,

133we're looking at the number of new cases within the community. per 100,000 persons within the last 14 days. We're looking at metric two, we're looking at the percentage of COVID-19 tests in the community that are positive in the last 14 days. And then when we're looking at metric three, we're looking at what is the degree of implementation of our own in-person or in-school mitigation measures. And I think it's difficult because this, you know, the situation is so fluid. I mean, so many things happen. The moment we say, hey, this is the number. The next week is a different number and the next week is a different number. So I think it's important for us. And really, I think it's very helpful, especially each week that we have Dr. Herring coming to provide us with these

134updates, because it allows us to see like when we're talking about this spike in regards to our community spread, you can actually see from two weeks ago when we were green to now we're no longer. in the green, you know, we're in the red in certain areas. And that was just two weeks ago. So it's hard for us on, you know, we're talking about opening our schools. We felt comfortable when everything was green and we were low risk, but it's very difficult when you're now at a high risk to say we're high risk in our city. Oh, but we're going to open the schools anyway and just have more people coming in from all over the city because all of our staff are just not from the city. They're also from, you know, Maryland and

135the D.C. metropolitan area. So. we're trying to make sure that we're being as safe as possible. But Dr. Herring, I don't know if you want to chime in because I know we work specifically on this with you. Yeah, I would recommend, and I have been to the... superintendent and his team to remain more fluid than rigid instead of like saying that, okay, if we get to X number of yellows or greens, then we're good to go because one needs to take it in a greater context than just what's happening in Alexandria. Every time I present, I also present what's happening in Northern Virginia, DC, Southern Maryland, Virginia, and the nation because of the amount of travel. And like Dr. Hutchings just talked about that. Staff live in different places. So I know that there's jurisdictions

136that are using these metrics as absolutes, but it is kind of like when you go to your physician and they're treating cholesterol or blood pressure or whatever, they're treating it more than just absolute numbers in terms of deciding when you do diet or exercise or actual medication. but they're taking it in other contexts. What's your family history? What's your personal history? What's your social history? So that way it's more using the metrics in terms of the context. And then the other context is what is a community's risk tolerance versus the benefits of opening. And that's something that really needs to be decided by the community, by superintendent and school board and everybody together. I think the places that are using the absolutes are not not using uh the the art of learning and the art

137of public health and i think that's a very important aspect to consider thank you okay um miss nolan Thank you, Chair Anderson. It's actually perfect timing. I'm glad you had me wait because it nicely follows up to what Dr. Hutchings, you were just saying. And so it's three parts, but it's all part of the same question is that I think it's super helpful what you just laid out. And I know we had talked, I believe, at the last board meeting about getting a visual out there because I think part of the confusion and trepidation for the community is like, what is it going to take for students to get back in? Or what is like the plan or the tiered approach? I mean, I can. to be candid, like as a board member, like I'm

138not in a position where if someone said to me, well, what's it going to take to get kids back? I don't even know the answer. So I'm just wondering like. So if you think about it, like what's the end game in terms of like this spring in September? Like are we simultaneously working on a plan if all things are going well? And then moving backwards from that ultimate dream of having all the students return and staff safely into the buildings. If we understand like how we're moving backwards, it would just be good to know like what's the plan to get us to there? And then like, again, if we could get a one to two page visual that someone with a limited English proficiency could understand. so that we as a community can be supportive

139of what it's going to take to get us back there. Again, it would just be helpful. So to wrap it up, sorry. So what's the end game result and how are we planning to get there? And two, how are we articulating through a nicely captured visual that, again, someone with a limited literacy rate can understand what metrics, understanding what Dr. Herring and Dr. Hutchings, you both just said, that it's not like it's a perfect scorecard. But what is it? What is the mixture or puzzle that we're looking at to? to know how to make these decisions. So to answer your first question, Ms. Nolan, there are four things that we're specifically looking at. And really, it's only three categories. One is staffing. For us to open our buildings, we got to have staffing. Can't have

140kids without staffing. Two, we got to have the building capacity. And that's going to vary at our different buildings. So if 100% of the kids want to go back in one school, we already know that's impossible. So that's not going to happen. So then we would have to come up with a way to be able to only accommodate what is feasible for that particular school building. So the building capacity is real. And when we talked about at our first session, when we shared like our recommendation for the next nine weeks with the board. We said that we were looking to transition pre-K through 12th grade by February. So we don't have extra buildings to use. We don't have a meeting. We can't say, hey, let's go use the middle school for elementary or let's use

141the high school for middle school because we're trying to get everybody pre-K through 12th. So we're going to try to. make sure that we're working through each of our building capacity constraints. And the third area deals with our health mitigations. And those are the three specific things that I just mentioned, which is one, the community spread per 100,000, also the positivity rate, and then our in-school metrics. So there are three specific areas. Now, we've been talking about those three areas for a while, but I think that, and to answer your second question, we are working on because we just started last week, but we are working on a visual for the community. So that's in the works. It's just not done yet because we are trying to, you know, it sounds simple when we're talking

142through this on, you know, on a Zoom, but no, really, it's not simple when we're talking about it on Zoom, honestly, because I got to keep referring to my notes when I'm talking about it. So it is, this is not like easy stuff to just say, hey, let's just do a picture and... Everybody's going to get it. You know, we got to make sure we're doing it so that you can, from this visual, you can understand exactly what that means and not that it's just a visual to make you think, you know, what's going on. Like, you know, so we're trying to be very. insightful and trying to work with the Alexandria Health Department to get whatever we put out there as accurate as possible. So then people don't say we misled them or we

143gave them the wrong information moving forward. But we are working on that. I thought it was a great suggestion. Honestly, when you mentioned this before in our communications team, that night got a text and we had a conversation about it the next day because we think it would be great to have some kind of visual. for all to understand. Yeah, thank you. Next up, we have Ms. Green. Dr. Hutchings, can you tell me up to this point, or are we still in discussions, hopefully still in discussions with any way that the city will be providing us with resources or building space potentially, or just anything as we move forward with bringing the kids back to school? Yeah, so we're constantly in conversations with the city. So we meet with them weekly about space and also

144with our community partners weekly about space. So we're still having having those those discussions. We do have to keep in mind that when you're trying to use buildings that are not. create it for school or for kids to be in and out and all those things. It's not like we can use any space within Alexandria City Public Schools. So we have to keep that in mind. But we are having those discussions right now. with the city and we've been having them honestly since we started talking about the community partnerships back in August when we were needing to find space for our childcare services. So we've been in contact with them and we meet weekly. That's a weekly meeting that we have. Okay, Ms. Lorber. Can you hear me? Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Chair Anderson.

145Yeah, my question is sort of piggybacking on some others. I'm curious when... When are we following up with teachers to find out what it would take to bring them back? I know we discussed this in the past that teachers have a number of reasons that they can't come back and some there's no question about coming back. But others I think may have something to do with fear or uncertainty about the school environment. And I want to piggyback that on two questions. And I don't think we can answer this immediately, but I'm very curious to know how many of our schools have windows that open and how many do not. Because I think one of the things we keep reading about is that. the more fresh air you can get in an environment, the better. And

146so that if we knew that classrooms could be, we could open windows and have air circulating. And then my other question has to do with air circulation systems and purification systems. And I wasn't sure whether to bring this up now or under the CIP discussion, but I'm... have not been able to quite figure out from reading everything to what degree we, along with our HVAC, we've been working on the installation of the HEPA filters, you know, these really protective filters that filter the air. Because I think the air filtration systems and the open windows, plus appropriate PPE for teachers, could go a long way to making people feel more secure. And I think I'm curious about that. So to answer your first question, so on December 3rd, we're going to be able to provide more

147specifics around the fears that teachers expressed. But we're beginning to reach out to staff about those now. And specifically, what we are trying to do is to be able to mitigate some of those fears. So, for example, if people are fearful when we don't have enough PPE, we're able to reassure them that we do. having a PPE. So now that's no longer a fear. It shouldn't be a fear for you anymore because now we're expressing to you specifically what we do have in place and the precautions that we are taking. In regards to our air quality, I'm going to ask Dr. Hart to speak to this because one thing I do know is when I had a conversation with Dr. Hart, some of the research and information that they were sharing was that We don't

148always want our windows open with air coming into the buildings. But Dr. Hart, if you could talk to that, because I think there was some information I recall you sharing with me when I was asking about windows and opening windows and having fresh air in our classrooms. Absolutely. Good evening, board members. So specifically when it comes to our HVAC systems, what the team has really been focused on is first ensuring that our systems are working in the way that they should be working. So working with our contractor, making sure that preventative maintenance has been kept up to date, and that does include changing filters. In regards to the question about the fresh air and opening windows, there has been some varied conversations and really the intent of your HVAC system is that they should be

149able to work without you having to open windows. And I do see John Finnegan on the line as well, but... We want to make sure that we are focusing specifically on making sure that our HVAC systems work in the way that they're intended to work, which means to include filtration, to include fresh air intake, so on and so forth, so that you don't have to open windows. You think about different seasons of the year. when it's cold out, it's not really going to be advantageous to have windows open. You think about outside allergens that would then be allowed into our facilities, mold, dust, other items. So now you're potentially compounding an already very sensitive situation. And so, John, I'm not sure if you want to add anything specifically about some of the activities regarding our

150HVAC that we've been taking at the schools. Yeah, I'll just add a couple of things real quickly. Thank you for that, Dr. Hart's right on. One of the issues is, besides fixing the systems, we are trying a couple of new things. We are trying UV lights. We're putting that in at Lyle's Crunch, which is a brand new system upgrade, and we're going to add the UV. But at all the other facilities, besides getting everything in good working order, we are changing out filters and going to MERV filters, which is a better filter that captures more particulates, etc. And what you do with that is you also turn the air over in the building more frequently. So you turn over fresh air into each room more frequently. So with all of these changes and changing out

151the filters and adding better filters, the whole idea is to is to get more particulates out of the classroom. And when you open up windows, you are defeating that. So you are bringing in air that is not treated, that is not going through a filter. So that's kind of defeating the purpose of the filters. And Dr. Herring, I think he's on the line too. I think it would be good for him to chime in as well. Yeah. The one other thing I agree exactly with what's just been said. The other thing to remember is that these would be secondary measures in terms of the UV, the extra filtration, all that. Those are important. I'm not saying don't do them, but it's important to also focus on what we know. to prevent a virus at this

152time. And I should say this is changing. You know, back in February and March, we were telling people don't wear a mask. But with time, just like all scientists know, with the increasing body of knowledge, we change our recommendations based off that new knowledge. As of right now, what we're seeing is the focus needs to be on the distancing, the masking, the sanitizing, the staying home when ill. Those are the primary things. So I wouldn't want... staff or students or the public to get over focused on oh we've got a MERV 13 and we have this many air exchanges I don't need to do these other things no no at this point at this juncture you need to continue doing these other things thank you that's interesting okay Mr Suarez thank you chair Anderson we

153have a couple comments a couple questions So first comment, I really appreciated the discussion around concurrent teaching and the points about technology and having the cameras and so forth. And it's my hope, and I think this is consistent with some of my colleagues, that regardless, we can move forward with that a pace and get that integrated as soon as possible. It seems to me that. for some of the reasons you mentioned, Dr. Hutchings, like there would be benefits to that no matter what, just having that infrastructure in place, you know, for whether we're in a pandemic or even in the future, you know, being able to give students the opportunity to see a class that they may miss and they're sick. five years down the line or out for some reason, you know, have that

154asynchronously, you know, students making up classes over the summer or rewatching lectures over the summer and materials their weekend and things like that. So just getting that infrastructure in place to me seems like a no-brainer. And I hope that we can, you know, get that in place as quickly as possible. So that was one of my comments. I still, I guess I have two questions and then maybe I might have a follow-up after that. One question is, you know, and I of course want to be super mindful of the rates around the country. It's getting worse. And we have to be sensitive to that. But I'm just thinking in terms of the incremental approach that the board has already agreed to, that, you know, we're taking this very deliberate because we're trying to be thoughtful.

155We're trying to make sure we're learning. We're trying to make sure that we're not, you know, causing any harm to our community. So I guess it's sort of a follow-up from Dr. Reece's question a little bit. I understand some of the metrics that are behind the recommendation, but is there anything, I kind of just like to know an update on what's going on in person right now. And in terms of that, has there been any... you know, concerns from staff about how things are going. Have there been any cases? Has there been any concern from parents now that the rate is going up? Who are currently, you know, the kids who are sending their schools now that they're concerned. I just kind of would like to understand that context a little better in terms of

156how things are going, how many kids are currently in person at this juncture and sort of how we're feeling we're doing. you know, notwithstanding the sort of broader context around the rates in Alexandria right now. So for ACPS, we only have six students who are in person in ACPS. We have not had any cases with the six students in our citywide program at this time. However, we have had cases of essential employees who are in our buildings, and we've been having them since the global pandemic began back in March. I can say that over the past month, it seems that there are more. positive cases just with our essential personnel. And I've just seen that, I mean, you know, over just the past few weeks. So I do think that that is something that is

157an important data point, you know, for us. But Dr. Herring, he may be able to elaborate. Every positive is not confirmed until it's through the Alexandria Health Department. So that's not something that we do. If somebody says they've tested positive, we follow our protocol, which is immediately to get in contact with the Alexandria Health Department so that they can determine if the positive was official. And then they can begin the contact tracing protocol if need be. And if we discover that there are other. potential individuals who are part of our organization that may have been contaminated or in the presence of a person that is positive, we begin to follow our communications protocol. But Dr. Herring, would you like to elaborate on that? Sure. What we do and we hear about a case is we

158interview the case whenever it is a City of Alexandria employee or an ACPS employee, staff member, regardless of where they live. And our focus with that is their possible close contacts and the places they've been in within the city of Alexandria. Now, if it's somebody who lives in Fairfax, but they work here, we only focus on their workplace environment. And all their outside the workplace environment, whether it's church or synagogue or some things they shouldn't be doing, like, you know, eating out with friends or things like that, we leave that to the jurisdiction of their home. Getting back to the staff and what we do is we interview the person, we find out all the things about their possible close contacts, including people perhaps that they commuted with. It hasn't happened with ACPS, but one

159of the things we're seeing is that familiarity doesn't breed contempt, familiarity seems to breed complacency. That there are a lot of workers in different businesses that are real good about wearing their face covering, maintaining their distance from patrons, but when it comes to other team members, they'll have dinner with them or they'll have lunch with them. They'll socialize with them. And that's where we're seeing some transmissions. Again, not within ACPS, but just to give you some context. The other thing we do is find out where they've been because the CDC protocol states that what we should be doing with that space is vacating that space for 24 hours, not doing, if possible, not doing anything with that space. And then after 24 hours, going in and doing what some people refer to as a deep

160clean or a thorough sanitizing of all surfaces. And so that's kind of the two-step process we're dealing with. The people the case has been around and then the places the case has been around. Yeah. No, thank you for that, Dr. Herring. And actually, so I guess I had another sort of comment slash question that's sort of related to the comments you made earlier, Dr. Herring, and I want to make sure I interpreted them correctly because one of the things that I just, you know, and I want to understand is that obviously this is very, very difficult. And one of the comments you made was about being sort of fluid through this situation. And so I guess, you know, right now we're taking a very sort of incremental approach. And I guess I would sort of

161understand that. because the rate of cases is getting higher in the sort of general community, we have to be very mindful of that. And we have to, you know, be, you know, continue to, I think, to be deliberate. And so I understand, Dr. Hutchings, your recommendation to sort of, you know, continue to take things slow. But you also made a comment about, you know, we shouldn't also be overly rigid. And so I worry that if, you know, if we just say stop everything, you know, and we are incrementally doing a good job right now, you know, moving things forward that, you know, we'll lose an opportunity to kind of learn as a division and get our ducks in a row. And I guess fundamentally, and maybe Dr. Hutchings, you can comment on this, and this

162is maybe where my concern lies is. you know, I continue to be really worried about the learning loss for our special education kids and K to two literate, you know, learners. And, and, and so I want to make sure, and I, and I, I know everyone's working really hard and I can tell, and it's like, that's why I made the point about concurrent teaching. I could tell we're trying to get the ducks in a row. And I guess what I'd hate to have happen is the board to say, stop everything now. And then we're, you know, lose the opportunity to continue to educate some of the students where we're doing it in a very incremental, thoughtful, it's only a handful of students way. And then at the same time. be flat footed in January after,

163you know, we are about to have a change in administration, hopefully a change in national policy. We just heard that there are vaccines now it's going to take a long time to get that out. But my hope to God is that healthcare workers, and frankly, educational staff are among the first people to get that, you know, and so I guess. I guess my sort of thrust of my question is, what's wrong with continuing to be understanding that this is a time where people are maybe being negligent and traveling and doing things they shouldn't be doing, rates have increased, but continuing to be incremental, thoughtful, deliberate, as Dr. Herring said, fluid, making sure we have the pieces in place in January to continue to be incremental and thoughtful. It's not open up K to 12 full

164bore right away, but it's, you know, kind of going back to Ms. Nolan's comment, what does the hierarchy look like? What does the tiering look like, the order look like? And sort of incrementally, you know, getting to where we need to go. So, I'd love to just hear some of your thoughts about that. Cause I, I'm very torn here, I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah. And I can understand you being torn. I really can, because I feel the same way. You know, I think that especially with some of our most vulnerable students at this particular time, we're having to make a decision that's in what we believe their best interest health-wise, and not just the students, but also the staff. I mean, what we cannot negate is the fact that our data, when we

165were just talking three weeks ago or a month ago, is worse than it was then. and we didn't have schools and students in the buildings. So why at this point, when it's significantly worse than just a month ago, would we now open those doors back up? Knowing what we know, you know, I think that that is where, you know, I'm always torn with having our students, you know, at home. What brings me back to, I guess, my new reality is the health data that we continue to see that is getting worse. And I think that in regards to your comments, Mr. Suarez, I don't want to send the impression that everything has stopped because the transitioning of students might not be happening, but there is so much more that we are having to do to

166prepare to pivot at any moment. for our students. For example, us digging deeper and figuring out what are some of the fears that our staff have so that we can mitigate them, so that we can have the maximum amount of staff available or able, I'm sorry, able to return into our school buildings and continuing to determine what, you know, the best hybrid learning approach is going to be. as we transition students back. All of these things are huge endeavors that are continuing as we move forward. And I just think that if the data was different right now, I would probably have a very different response. The health data, excuse me, if the health data was different right now, I would have a very different response for you. But because we're seeing it change like right

167before our eyes so rapidly. It's inevitable that we're going to be in a situation where we're having a community spread. I mean, think of last Friday, the executive order from the governor stated we went from having 200 people to 25 people. That was just Friday. You know, it's kind of like deja vu where we're talking about everybody as a whole and schools weren't included and then eventually schools were included. But my question that I even have to even our elected officials at the state level. is if it's not good for 25 people, more than 25 people to be together, why is it okay for schools to be that way? Because there are still adults in those buildings. And we use the argument quite often about children aren't the spread. But I'm curious to know if

168that we're not seeing some of these statistics because most of our schools are closed. And a lot of our schools that are open, they don't have their full student capacity in their buildings. So they're able to follow the in-school mitigations that we put in place. So the more I'm learning throughout this process from Dr. Herring and from my own personal readings that I'm doing. the more confident I feel when we make some decisions like this. It's not fun. So I don't think that I want to make the decision, to be honest with you. I would love for all of our kids to be back in school, as well as our staff members, as well as the superintendent. I would like to be back in my office. And I also know that we are responsible for

169keeping the health and safety as a priority. And if I'm going to continue to say that out of my mouth, you know, to our community, I want to make sure that I am, you know, practicing what I'm preaching out to the community. But Dr. Herring, I don't know if you want to add anything to what I've said. If I can add clarity. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Schwartz. When I said I'm recommending to remain fluid more than rigid, what I mean by that is don't say that if these two metrics are below moderate risk of transmission or below lower risk of transmission, then we can open. Because then you're just looking at two metrics. Now, the one thing I would say is those five mitigation strategies, I've been absolutely adamant, all five of those need

170to be in place, or I would not recommend, I'd recommend against reopening. But again, from what I've said before, I'll just repeat it as long as I keep seeing it. From everything I'm seeing, ACPS has those five strategies in place. But if one were just to look at the other two, core indicators and the secondary indicators, you lose the context of what's happening in the Northern Virginia region or statewide, regionally or nationally that should also influence the community decision about whether to open physically or not. And so that's what I meant by remaining fluid instead of rigidly saying we're going to do X. if these two or three measures are in place. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, I think it does. I guess I just was interpreting that maybe going whichever direction the decision's

171going, you know, that you kind of have to be nimble and fluid, you know, whether... things start to go up and whether things start to go down. So that, you know, but I understand the point. I guess just one last question, if the chair will indulge follow-up question, sort of going back to Ms. Nolan's question, because I think this is something that community needs, you know, is sort of, and I think you said, Dr. Hutchings, you're providing a visual. Will that visual sort of include a bit more clarity on, you know, let's say the pandemic's over, the vaccine cures everyone and everyone's happy again. You know. And we wanted a phase in approach. You know, what would that look like? And what's the end game? Because, you know, I think a lot there's been a

172lot of distrust, I think, breeding in the community, you know, thinking that there is an agenda to, you know, not reopen at all this year and things like that. And I don't think that's your intention at all, Dr. Hutchings. So I just want to make sure that. that we are explaining sort of what is that prioritization and can that be in the visual somehow? Because I would imagine even if we start going back more thoroughly in January, it won't be open Sesame, Al-Qaeda 12 is open. It would be some sort of phase, again, going back to the board's current mandate, which is we've passed at the other meeting, it's a phase in approach. So will you provide more clarity around that? Yeah. I think it's difficult to provide clarity around the fall or even late

173spring. It really is. Just think of last week, I had a different conversation I was bringing to you all. And look at what I'm bringing to you now today. Like, and it's only been a week. Literally, we just saw each other a week ago with the previous update. So I really do think that it would not behoove us to provide, you know, a plan so far. into the future. I think it really would be a disservice to our community. And I think, you know, there are some who might be distrustful of ACPS, but during this pandemic, I've also heard from many people who trust us even more. So I want us to make sure, I want to put that at the dais too, that we have people in our community who are now saying, you're...

174thinking about our children and staff saying you're thinking about my health and my family's health and now I trust you even more than I did prior to this global pandemic and I don't want us to lose that either because yes we hear from some people who are distrustful for whatever reason but I can tell you that over the past several months we have provided any and everything that one the board asked or we try to do, such as this visual that we're going to be working on or that we've been working on. And then the other is trying to share out all of the data that we have, you know, from videotaping every meeting that we have, which I know everybody doesn't want to watch it, but if you go watch it, you'll be surprised

175with all the things that we are talking about and sharing with all the minutes and our information and our ACPS Express and our... videos and our board meetings that are expressive and very, I believe, very educational if people can chime in, which I know everybody can't. And that's why our ACPS Express, we send highlights from that after our meetings. We don't just leave it at the school board. So I feel that we're doing so much to try to keep everybody informed. But we also have to remember that this is a global pandemic and people are going to be frustrated. And we have to accept that, too, and just keep trying to work with our families and any of our community members who are frustrated throughout this process, which we will do because we get it.

176We totally get that this pandemic and some of the decisions that we are required to make brings frustration and disappointment. And I wish I could make it differently. And it's not saying that I don't want to do anything about it because we're working towards it every day. But I can't make the global pandemic go away. That's one thing I don't have control over. And with our planning, whether it is, you know. doing going hybrid and having some kids virtual and some kids in person, you know, as we move throughout this year, all of our experience is going to happen when we pivot, you know, into those practices. You know, it's not a need to come up with a new plan from that because we're going to be learning even from when we pivot into those

177moments, we're going to learn something from that. You know, this is going to be a continuous learning opportunity for us until things get back to some type of normalcy, which. I don't know what our normal in the future is going to be. I genuinely do not know. So we're just trying to adjust like everybody else along the way. Okay, I think we have one last question maybe from Dr. Reif. Yes, thank you. And thanks for that conversation, Dr. Hutchings. And I know, you know, that you are in a really challenging position and just trying to help all of us understand the different constraints that we're working through is, we really appreciate that. And before I get to my question, just kind of like a comment on what Mr. Suarez was saying. I think, you know,

178what's challenging and I guess I'm speaking a little bit to the community here too is what's challenging for us as a school division to Dr. Hutchings as a superintendent us as a school board is that you know we're having to define the risk tolerance for our community and there are a lot of people in our community don't agree on what that risk tolerance should be and we're having to define that for the community and I think you know It's hard for even me to decide where I come down on it, but I think what Mr. Suarez was maybe getting at is that, you know, we do have students for whom the virtual learning environment is so incredibly challenging. And so, you know, even when you look at the governor's phase, the different phases for the

179guidelines, you know, the first phase was remote learning should be the dominant method, but you may choose to bring people, you may choose to bring back students with disabilities. And so, you know, that's, I think that's where, you know, that's just where I guess I'm trying to figure out like, what is, how do we weigh these different risks, I guess is what I'm saying. And I think, you know, you, Dr. Hodges, you made a comment that I, you said, you said like we didn't bring back people at the beginning of the school year, you know, when the case counts were low. So why would we do that now? But I think that was, that could confuse people right there because we didn't, my understanding is we didn't bring people back at the beginning of the

180year because of our building and staffing constraints. We had to have this, develop this virtual model. And so that was the choice at the time. It wasn't the case counts in the fall, you know, in the summer and the fall that led to that decision. And so that's why I was bringing up earlier around the transition of the students back at Jefferson Houston that, you know, the issue with the rollout challenges have been the staff ability to return constraints. You know, that was the reason. And now it's... Now the recommendation is to delay it for a different reason. And so I just think to like have clarity on why we're making the decisions that we're making is really so important. And so that, and then just my questions, the question I had were about these

181staff intent to return form and the family choice form. The staff intent to return form, it's, I would like to get a little more clarity around. you know to what extent is like it is it a survey versus like a commitment from staff um We understand now from this intent to return, like what are the concerns or issues that staff are having that prevent them from returning? So I'm curious to hear more about what steps are taking to address those and how and at what point will staff be making like the firm commitment? I mean, normally in a normal school year, the contract stipulates they start on a particular day. So how does this work now? that they are working in a virtual environment and we may pivot, I guess is my question. And then

182with regards to the family choice form, it sounds like that is more of a firm commitment that we're asking for families. And my question is, are we asking them on that form to commit? you know, through the school year or is it for a certain particular period of time? And then a lot of, I've heard from a lot of people that they prioritize staying with their current teacher. So is that being factored into the family choice form? Like if their preference is to stay with their teacher, irregardless of the model, is that going to be captured in the form? So if you could just talk about those two, the teacher intent to return form and then the family choice form. Yes. And Dr. Reeve, thank you for bringing out the clarity in that because you're

183spot on. We did not pivot into in-person based on our staffing and our building constraints. You are absolutely right. Now we have factors that relate to health mitigations. The point that I'm making is that if we were not able to bring students back at that time, we're in a worse situation now. not just with the health mitigation. Health mitigations actually have an impact on whether staff are going to return, whether we believe it or not. That is what's going to happen. Everybody else is watching the news right now. People are probably going out less. People are not doing, they're wearing their face coverings all the time versus sometimes, like they used to maybe three weeks ago, which will have an impact on us. But I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to clarify that because

184I do not want people to leave thinking that the first um from first quarter that that was because of health mitigations it was because of the staffing and building constraints so thank you for bringing that clear for bringing that up um to answer your question about the intent form uh both honestly are required and it's not, it wasn't a survey, this intent to return for staff, it wasn't a survey like it was back in September, October, where we were just surveying the community or the staff and the community. This intent to return form was specifically around your intent to return when your wave is scheduled to return back to school. So for example, if you were a teacher that taught middle school, gen ed, then you were looking to return in February. So that was

185what you were making your decision based off of. It wasn't a hypothetical. It was true to the time that your transition timeline was up. The same thing is going to be for staff and this, I'm sorry, for families. And this is why we wanted to put this intent to return for families or family choice forms into PowerSchool so that they are attached to actual students so that if families did not complete the form, that we're able to get in contact with them because that is how we're going to really be able to do our planning. and to pivot into the transition, you know, for everybody, because our goal is pre-K through 12th grade. That's the only way that's going to be able to happen. When families make that commitment for their choice, right now it's

186not for the whole year. We are still kind of looking at things by quarters. And the reason for that is because we may get into a situation where You made this commitment. We can't have it so that then tomorrow you can change because we do that. We'll never have a plan. We'll never be able to have a schedule that's solidified because every time somebody makes a change, it changes everything else that we're trying to do. So we got to let people know, which we will be very explicit in the family choice form that you're making this commitment for through that next quarter. You know, this is your commitment for the third quarter. When we get to fourth quarter, there may be a situation or maybe situations, and this is all right now hypotheticals. I don't

187know what fourth quarter is going to bring today, but if we may make it to fourth quarter and we could have the possibility of adding some people in certain classrooms, but it might not be for all. Because if a class was already maxed out for whatever number of hybrid days we were going to do and nobody opts to go back into virtual, there still will be no spots. for certain classes, but in some classes you might. You may have a teacher that has five different openings and somebody else who has zero, you know. So it's going to really vary. So we can't make a blanket statement that we're going to take in your request after this. You really are making this decision for the next quarter. And that's really for us to do our scheduling

188component. We are going to be explicit in the survey as well around the possibility of your class from teacher changing. because that isn't a real possibility. We can't guarantee that the students teachers won't change. But I mean, yeah, that they won't change, but we can inform that we're trying to keep our students with their assigned teachers if we go to that concurrent teaching model, right? As we begin to explore the model two, model three, and model four, those other models may not allow us to keep students with teachers. And we just have to work through what that looks like. So then we're sharing out with the board as well as with our teaching staff and our families that if we pivot into a concurrent teaching, kids can most likely be with their teacher. If it's

189not a concurrent teaching model, they most likely may not be with their teacher. And we want to make that very explicit for everyone. But we will have more information after November. the 30th in regards to that hybrid approach. All right, everyone. So this is a constantly changing environment, but there is a need to have a motion for the change. Since we voted, we're going to have to be voting as we go along. So several motions have been floated out there. So if someone has a motion that they would like to propose, I'm all ears. Oh, I see Ms. Gentry, sorry. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I actually have a clear, I need a clarification. If we are pausing, does that mean that the admittedly few students that are in person, but are in person would go

190back to virtual? So, yes, that would mean that the six students that we have currently in our citywide program would go back to a virtual setting for after the Thanksgiving break. Okay. I just, I think we need to make sure, and I think this is a, I think this is a, let's, let's a reminder for ourselves for future ones. We're constantly learning how to do this and how to roll out this information. I think we're going to need. Before our next update, if there is going to be an action moment, we're going to need to get, I think, some clearer motion language sooner and have it really be part of the presentation. Because I think, you know, as written in the memo, it's basically just saying review the recommendation and do the recommendation. And I

191think, you know, as part of our communication, you know, If I hadn't asked that question, I'm not sure it would have been clear, you know, right? So when we just say something like, oh, we're going to pause, I could think people might think, oh, well, that just means we're not going to let any more students in. So I think we really need to make sure everybody is very clear on what we're voting on, on what is being asked for, and what... you know, put some boundaries on that. And knowing that there's a lot of stuff that we can't know. So we might need to frame it as, you know, we're not going to launch out a whole bunch of dates here, but what is the clearest, most realistic thing we can vote on right now

192for this? And maybe it's just for the next few weeks or something like that. So I'm just admitting that I'm struggling a little bit with trying to make sure that we're going to have a very clear motion. So Ms. Gentry, I appreciate the clarifying question as well as the follow-up. I do want to be clear. What I'm asking is that we pause our transition. of current students, you know, who are in our citywide program, who are currently in person, as well as the students who were scheduled to transition into in person on November 30th, as well as throughout the month of December, and that we defer in-person learning to January of 2021 after the winter break. So the purpose and this recommendation and I totally understand that, you know, if I knew this two weeks

193ago, it would have been on last week's board, right? So it's not information that I knew that I'm just sitting on waiting to tell you all today. I don't operate like that and that's not a part of our agreement between the board and the superintendent. So I want to make that very clear to you. However, we want to make sure that we are being as clear as possible so people can truly understand what we are asking. And the point in having the citywide program also be deferred, the current students, meaning the six students who are currently in this, is that we do have travel and things that people might participate in over the next week. it's important for us to take some of those precautions into place now and to make sure because it's not

194just the six students who are in our buildings you know we also have staff and we also have maintenance and we just it's more than just the six kids who are in those buildings that we take those precautions seriously and that we just take that pause and defer. um until January. So that would be transitioning back to a virtual learning environment until January. Yes for all students. Um I know I have a few more hands now so I have um Ms. Lorber. Just a minute I'm gonna get my picture up there. Thanks, Chair Anderson. Yeah, I just wanted then a further clarification. Because the parents of those six students may well not be watching this meeting, and because I've had feedback that our the parents who ended up not receiving services when they thought they

195would be didn't get really personalized phone calls. I would just like to ask that we be certain that each of these families of the six students get a personal phone call from the school system, either from you, Dr. Hutchings, or from Dr. Werner, or even school board members. I think a personal phone call explaining to them. why this is necessary and how sorry we are, et cetera, et cetera. Because I think there's been, there've been a lot of hurt feelings and a sense that a lack of caring on our part because of the way that families have found out that things are or are not happening. And so, and again, these six families probably aren't watching this meeting and I'd rather they be notified personally than by a email or a letter or something. We

196agree with you. We heard our families last week or a couple of weeks ago when they were really concerned about not being able to transition in person. And we are going to make contact with all six of those families personally. Ms. Werner will be doing that with her team. And tomorrow we are prepared if the board... does approve the recommendation, we are prepared to have a Zoom session for all of our families who were planning to transition on Monday, which is November the 30th, so that we're able to do that. It's over 100 people, so it's not something we can call everybody tomorrow to do, but we wanted to have the Zoom so that it could be recorded. And that information could then be shared in addition to, you know, correspondence, written correspondence, but it's

197a lot more personable. And that's something that I will be joining Ms. Werner from the specialized instructional team going through that webinar tomorrow if the board does approve this recommendation. Okay. Dr. Reeve? Yeah, thank you. Yeah, well, thanks for that clarification, Ms. Gentry, because that was not clear to me. And Ms. Lorber kind of took the question that I was also concerned about the communication with the families. I'm glad to hear that there's going to be a personal phone call made to each of the families. And I guess I just wanted to get some clarity around, so is this going to be effective? Like I know tomorrow is an in-person learning day. So would this be effective like beginning next week essentially or like with Wednesday with the holiday? And then this just kind of

198got me thinking about, you know, if the families that came back were kind of prepared ever for this. I mean, I think we all understand if we come back, there's a chance we could have to go back to virtual. But I mean, I just, this just definitely raises for me like. to what extent they were kind of prepared that this could be a possibility ahead of time and to certainly make sure we're doing that in the future. So tomorrow, our students who are part of the citywide program, tomorrow they're on an asynchronous day because it was only going to be one day to meet this week in person. So they're not scheduled to come to the building tomorrow. So we'll be able to inform them without them being at school and that type of thing

199that was already planned for it to be an asynchronous day. We also will now be able to inform our families who are part of our self-contained classrooms. It's a week, you know, it is a week's notice. It's not the day before, of course, but at least it's allowing them to know up front about some of these changes. I do think that we can be more explicit around the fact that. You know, in the future, we will have to pivot at times. You know, it could be a number of reasons. Sometimes it might not be the whole school division, you know, pivoting to a virtual. It could be a classroom. It could be a school. And I think we're going to have to be very upfront around that. And we're not going to have, you know,

200a lot of leeway where we knew this two weeks before to give you the heads ups. You know, if somebody tests positive and there's, you know, when they do their contact tracing and there's several people. who may have been contaminated. That's something that happens really quickly and there is no time to prep. It would just be the schools or this particular class or the school could be closed. And I just think us making sure we continuously inform our community about that moving forward is gonna be key. I mean, I think we've done explicit communication around the fact that all of the planning is contingent upon staffing. But I think that we need to talk through and be more explicit about and health mitigations could prevent things from moving forward. And it could happen at the

201last minute because things, you know, happen so rapidly with this COVID-19. So point taken, Dr. Reeve. Just a clarification, though, I think part of the reason that there's been no communication with the families is that Dr. Hutchings felt it was important to come to the board first and didn't want to communicate a decision that we hadn't actually made. And then Ms. Abruzzese said that Ms. Warner has had her hand up. Was there something? I'm sorry. I see you before. My hand is not raised. I'm sorry. Okay, I didn't see it, but I was told it was up before, so I thought maybe I missed it before. Apologies. Okay, I have Mr. Suarez. Yes, thank you, Chair Anderson. I sort of have a point of order, and I want to say first, I always appreciate Ms.

202Gentry's attention to procedural niceties, so I'm grateful for you for that. So, and I guess I have similar concerns, you know, and I think that there's a couple things I'm worried about. One is the point Ms. Gentry raised, I think, in her first comments, which were, is a motion even needed? The initial, and I asked the clerk to send me the original motion. which says the school board approves pursuing a phase and approach for in-person learning for all students, grades pre-K to 12, because I believe I amended that, beginning with our most vulnerable students, disabilities and English learners, and later consider expanding student participation according to the superintendent's proposed timeline contingent upon capacity and staffing. And so I guess, I don't want to lose that. I still feel, I was speaking for myself, obviously, but

203I still feel that the board's mandate. you know, is to have a phase in approach, you know, and we've continued to be very incremental. And really, we're only talking about six students here. And I, you know, and look, I respect your leadership as a superintendent. And if you think it's necessary to pull back on those six students at this time, I'm not necessarily going to oppose that. But, you know, I do think it's important to retain the mandate of the board. And I'm concerned that if we vote on, you know, we hereby pause everything, you know, that mandate is superseded and that we then have to revote to. Ryan McCabe, Reactivate everything again and we create kind of community confusion around what our mandate is and what our goal is it kind of goes back

204to you know what's the end game, you know what what is the board policy that you know we are articulating here, and so I i'm concerned from a board procedure standpoint if we're kind of constantly. iterating back and forth, back and forth about some of the motion language that I've seen proposed in some of the messages I've received. Now, I think there may be a way to square the circle based on the comments that Dr. Hutchings, you just made, which is that you're concerned that the current motion only says contingent upon capacity and staffing. You know, I'm open to, you know, having a discussion around, does that language need to reflect, you know, broader health trends and concerns such that, you know, you, you know, have some discretion, you know. you know, to sort of

205pull back based on health mitigation and those sorts of things. So I guess the point is, is this could get you to the same outcome consistent with your recommendation, but doesn't put the board in a procedural quagmire whereby it's rescinded its policy, you know, of wanting to have everyone return, you know, in a phased in incremental approach consistent with what we've been discussing. But You know, make making sure that, you know, we're mindful of these these health changes because I understand the pandemic's accelerated. I understand that people are going off to the holiday break, you know, and and airports are crowded and it's really scary. So I get all of that. But I'm wondering if if instead of, you know. as a point of order, having a motion to just say, we're pausing to just,

206you know, tweak the initial motion that we've already passed and essentially amend that to just say, and, you know, public health considerations or something like that. You know, cause it kind of goes back to the point that Dr. Herring was saying about being fluid, you know, but I just don't want the board's policy mandate and goal. to be kind of eviscerated, if that makes sense. So I welcome my colleagues thoughts on that. I just want to make sure we do this in a way that, you know, doesn't put us in a really weird procedural situation. Okay, I think, you know, this pandemic is putting us in a weird procedural, you know, this is really not the order, the normal way that we do business, right, because we don't keep having to change based on things

207that are changing so quickly. I don't know, in terms of, Ms. Gentry, did you want to take a stab at it? only just to say that I actually agree with Mr. Suarez. And I mean, when I hear back the language of the original motion, I think that more clearly, I think that that motion provides, it reads to me that it provides the mandate that the superintendent and the staff need. I think we certainly have to find a way to make sure that we're having these check-in moments and seeing how that that shifts, but I do have some concerns about, which is why I brought it up initially and thank you, Mr. Torres for bringing it up as well. I think to keep doing amended versions of the motions as we move along, I think could

208be potentially problematic. And again, I'm not always sure if it... I think it can lead to some confusion, as we were understanding tonight, even with some of the issues. So I, that's my, I think my preference is, you know, to rather than try to craft a totally new motion tonight. I think if there's a way we can be clear that this is an info moment, but I'll defer to my colleagues and also if Ms. Abruzzese has any advice she'd like to offer. Yes, that's what I was going to suggest because she has been following what other jurisdictions are doing in terms of these sort of situations. So Ms. Abruzzese, could you? Give us your opinion. Well, ultimately, I would say it is up to the board to determine how they want to handle these pivots.

209This is within the board authority. Our original counsel was that if the board voted to start the school year virtually, that any changes from that would then also be authorized by the board. But really, this is, I think, for the board to discuss and determine how much control they want over each pivot in the process, ultimately. Okay. I see Dr. Eve. Yeah, I mean, just building off of that, I tend to agree with Ms. Gentry. I mean, I don't see the board voting every time we have to pause or quarantine, you know, a particular group of students in the future. That's going to be really cumbersome. And so I would also be in favor of this being information for the time being. And maybe, you know, even we can talk about a motion at our

210next meeting just. that maybe lays out some parameters around that kind of a thing for the future. Okay, so Ms. Lorber. Yeah, I just, at risk of being redundant, I feel, I almost feel like this isn't really, the board shouldn't be deciding. the nuances in this process. It seems to me it's really the superintendent and his staff who are up very close to the day-to-day operation. And if the circumstances dictate that there's got to be a pullback, a change, I just want to concur. I think that I'm much more comfortable leaving that kind of a decision as long as it's well implemented to them rather than changing continually. Okay, I think what I'm hearing there, there's a lot of agreement there's there's maybe still some. I think we'll have an info today. I think we'll

211do a little more research about what, because again, we are in uncharted territory as a board as well. And so I think that we need to maybe, I will chat with Ms. Abruzzese and we'll maybe get even legal counsel to see if we in fact need to be exerting or, you know, having some sort of decision. points when these changes are made, because I just want to, there are some interesting rules. Ms. Eberzi sent me a whole email of different rules today having to do with FOIA that I just got a headache when I started reading, and I'll have to go back to it. So I think we'll leave this for now, and we know we've certainly been informed, so we do have the info about what's going to happen, and how it's going to

212happen, and when it's going to happen. for now. So I think we'll move on from here and then have a little more discussion offline about the way we should handle this going forward. And Dr. Hutchings? I'm just going to add, Madam Chair, that Mr. Suarez, I know he had mentioned earlier about potentially adding to the original motion, adding health mitigations to that, because I know right now it says contingent upon capacity and staffing. And I think, you know, if we were to add that to the original motion, then we would not be, you know, currently in the situation that we're experiencing right now. because I would have been informing the board versus requesting to do something different. Okay, so health metrics and Ms. Abruzzese, are we allowed to amend a motion that's from an, or

213do we need to really do the whole motion from before and then change it? Are we just adding to? Well, it is a motion from a previous meeting that was already approved. So I think the new motion could refer back to the former one and just offer a new motion moving forward. The board proposes to amend its prior guidance and could then use the language from before while adding in provisions related to health metrics. That was sort of my, so we really, someone needs to come up with the last motion right now so we could read the whole thing. It's really kind of this logistics question, I guess. I believe Mr. Suarez had it. Oh, do you have it, Mr. Suarez, from last time? I have the text of the last motion. Do you want

214me to read that? That would be great and make it in a motion form and we're good to go and add health metrics, please. Yeah, so the language is school board approve pursuing a phased in approach for in-person learning for all students grades pre-K to 12, beginning with our most vulnerable students with disabilities and English learners and later consider expanding student participation according to the superintendent's proposed timeline. contingent upon capacity and staffing. So we'd change contingent upon capacity and staffing to be contingent upon capacity, staffing, and health mitigation measures or needs or something like the health mitigation needs. Ms. Abruzzese suggested health metrics. Health metrics. That's fine. Okay. All right. Do I have a second? And I guess I move for that. Yeah. Who did that? I'm sorry. Yes, thank you, Ms. Lorber. I think

215Mr. Suarez was speaking at exactly the same time and then I lost it. So Ms. Lorber seconds Mr. Suarez's motion. And so I'll call for a vote on the matter. And Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan? Yes. Megan Alderton? Yes. Rami Gentry? Yes. Jacinta Green? Yes. Oh, Margaret Lorber? Yes. Michelle Reeve. Yes. Christopher Suarez. Yes. Heather Thornton. Yes. Okay, that's 9-0 with the change. So thank you, everybody. That was quite the exercise. And now we will move on. And as promised, I think the next item will be short. It's the legislative agenda. There was an update to the language that came today. I guess the wrong one was posted, but basically the addition was to add something for CIP. requests so um i don't know if there are any questions and if not then someone could

216make a motion uh madam chair i move that we approve the legislative agenda Second. Second. Ms. Lorber seconds Ms. Gentry's motion. If there's no other discussion, I see nobody with their hands raised. I'll ask a call for a vote. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan, yes. Megan Alderton, yes. Rami Gentry, yes. Jacinta Green, yes. Margaret Lorber, yes. Michelle Reif, yes. Christopher Suarez. Yes. Heather Thornton. Yes. Okay, great. That's 9-0 for that. And now we are, we're almost at the end, but I have lost my piece of paper. I think that we're, I think we're all, we're really at the end, but I don't find it. So sorry, everyone. Oh, here we go. All right. So it's up to my report, which I have none because we already have a long meeting and we have a work

217session to go after this. So I will just say there's the next update is at the December 3rd meeting on this reopening. So announced that Dr. Rachings, you have a report. No, I've reported out enough. Yes. Okay, everybody. Who would like to make a motion to adjourn? Madam Chair, we adjourn. Second. Ms. Gentry seconds Ms. Green's motion to adjourn, and I will call for a vote on that. And Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan? Yes. Megan Alderton? Yes. Mimi Gentry? Yes. Lucinta Green? Yes. Margaret Lorber? Yes. Michelle Reif? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. Heather Thornton? Yes. Okay, that's 9-0 and we are adjourned at 8-12.