Akron Board of Education Meeting Livestream - October 12, 2020

001Thank you. Good evening and welcome to the regular meeting for the Akron Public Schools Board of Education for Monday, October 12, 2020. Roll call, please. Dr. Akbar? Here. Mr. Alexander? Present. Ms. Autry? Here. Mr. Bravo? Here. Dr. Hall? Aye. Mrs. Mansfield? Here. Mrs. McKintrick? Here. Thank you. Thank you. And if everyone on the meeting could make sure that their microphones are muted and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you so much. All right. We have a pretty full agenda tonight. We have several requests to address the board, along with a couple of very important discussion topics that we're going to bring up

002tonight, but we'd like to start with any community and school reflections from the board and in the chat, if you will. There are a lot of extra folks on the call and I want to make sure that I don't miss anyone. I'll start off by just saying a quick shout out to LeBron James, the LeBron James Family Foundation. Michelle Campbell and her family at LJFF for a fantastic conference that was put on called The Huddle last week. Really enjoyed attending. There were folks from all over the country that were joining us here in Akron to learn a little bit more about our I Promise Network and the I Promise initiatives that we have. Our staff from the I Promise School did an outstanding job presenting, as did our kids. They were up there with panelists

003from all over the country, including graduates that talking about their experiences in the I Promise School and it was just a phenomenal experience. So many thanks to them. Big shout out. All right. We do have folks lined up in the chat. So Ms. Mansfield. So, Patrick, you missed a perfect opportunity to also congratulate LeBron on his championship last night. Can't let the night go by without saying that and creating controversy as if there won't be enough out of this meeting by calling him the greatest of all time. At least in Akron, Ohio, I think we can say that and say it with complete affirmation and just let the haters be. Just had to say that tonight. I know he gave a shout out to his hometown, so we can't hope we give a shout out

004to him. I also just want to thank Mrs. Hazlett. I mentioned in the last board meeting, she's a teacher, a fifth grade teacher at Miller South, and she had me in all of her Tuesday classes last week. And they were talking about a book that was about banning books by school board. And it was a fictional. book and they wanted to know a little bit about what we do and if I'd ever been able to or had ever been asked to be in a book. They had really great questions. They were engaging throughout. I will tell all the board members that you were all given shout outs in that meeting by me personally and describing what you all do in your real, your day jobs, as I call them, and continuing to give to the

005board as well. So they were fascinated by that. And hopefully when we get. get back to what our new normal is going to be then you'll get a chance to talk to them as well. I told her that I got to tell the students that the only times I've ever been asked even come close to banning things all involve the arts which created great discussion. with the Miller South crowd, as you can imagine. So I'll go ahead and stop there, but just a huge shout out to her students. I also got thank you notes from all of them. And so that filled my Google Docs. So that was a really pleasant week to have thanks to them. Thank you, Ms. Mansfield. Dr. Hall? Yeah, thanks, Mr. President. the only thing i'm banning right now is

006sugar cookies in my in my household my two-year-old is rampaging right now so you hear so if you hear screaming in the background that's daddy's fault for giving his child a sugar cookie before dinner um so uh anyway anyway uh so no so i i just want to echo uh some of the earlier conveyed sentiments um i think by mr bravo um around as it relates to the lbj uh foundation um huddle that took place last week. So there were some really thought-provoking sessions as related to sort of race, diversity, equity, and kind of this ongoing kind of contrasting and rethinking, you know, the relationship between public, private, charter schools and the intersection with race and equity. So again, you know, hats off and kudos to... um michelle campbell over at uh the foundation for

007put for pulling that together um and doing it in a way that was um i was a skeptic at first but they did it in a very very safe socially distanced way um i've never seen so much hand sanitizer on and all in one place all at the same time for for consecutive days uh so um so anyway so it's very well done uh and then I also just want to take a moment to acknowledge again all the emails and phone calls that I've gotten over the last couple weeks, especially this past week in particular, as we sort of move forward our conversation tonight, even as we sort of get sort of presented what a possible reopening plan would look like for school. So I've gotten a lot of feedback from teachers and parents. In

008fact, I would take handle. I spent probably. eight, nine hours this week on the phone with teachers and parents. So so again, I want to thank you all for the time that you took to compose those emails on the time that you took to send those text messages and the time that you took to spend on the phone with me, fleshing out your positions on why you feel the way that you do. So it was it was it was a pleasure and honor to spend that time with you. So that's all I've got. Mr President, back to you. Thank you, Miss Autry. And then Dr Akbar. Thank you, Mr. President. I also as well quickly just wanted to acknowledge and thank the many teachers and the many parents and guardians who reached out to me

009in the last week or so. Just taking the time to let me know where they stand on issues about returning, reopening, etc. Attending school in person. I really appreciate that. And also just. A special shout out again to the teachers and the families and the students who are entering, I guess, the halfway point of the grading period who have been working so hard to make this remote learning environment the best, I think. A lot of them are starting to get their groove now. They're starting to get some consistency and getting their routines together. I know it has not been an easy task, but I know that they're working hard at it. I just want to let them know that it's not unseen and thank them for their continued work with educating our children. Thank you,

010Dr. Akbar. The exact same thing that Diana did. A lot of my conversations in the last two weeks have been, well, one, about education and the education committee for the racial equity task force for the city but outside of that it's been with teachers and parents more parents this week than teachers but still I have a lot of emails to return but there's been a lot of conversation around reopening plan and the opportunities to move forward with that and really I want to thank everyone for their very thoughtful and thorough responses and emails and if I haven't responded to you yet I will and the last thing I want to do is thank the teachers and administrators for uh all of their work they've done with our our students one of the um things that

011came clear in both the conversations that were not necessarily uh the most positive and those that are that were a little more positive was that they respected the jobs that the teachers are doing um and uh just the amount of respect that everyone has for all of the work that it takes to put on online learning even if they wanted to their kids back in school. So I just wanted to make sure I said that. Good, thank you. Anyone else? Well, that is a perfect segue then into the next section of our agenda, which are our requests to address the board and I'd like to echo the sentiments of my colleagues from around the table, virtual table anyway, to say thank you to the many folks who have been reaching out as we start to

012have the discussion again. around returning to the classroom. We do have three people joining us this evening that have requested to address the board. And so we're gonna take those in turn as they're listed on your agenda. And we're gonna begin with Stephanie Childers. We'll move then to Mr. William Reynolds and then Ms. Jennifer Klein. And as a reminder to all of the folks that are joining us this evening on our virtual meeting, we've invited you to the virtual meeting. You have three minutes to address the board. The board does not typically respond to or answer questions during session, but we will follow up with you or have a member of our staff follow up with you depending on the circumstance after the meeting. And again, we want to thank you for taking the time

013out of your Monday evening to join us. And so Ms. Childers, we'll start with you first. Thank you, everyone, for allowing me this opportunity. I have just learned that the governor is going to be reducing the state perimeters for social distancing for school districts from six feet to three feet. This will increase the risk of COVID exposure for educators. What is the rush to return back? to in-person instruction when you consider the following. One, the quality of online instruction has increased from March until now due to the professional development trainings that were offered to teachers at the beginning of the school year to improve online instruction methods. Two, we are getting ready to begin cold and flu season, and there is no way for educators to differentiate between students having the flu and COVID. Three,

014there is no vaccine for COVID. Four. When we are on the brink of bringing kids in and out of houses for Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, where the kids have a high risk of being exposed to friends and family who may unknowingly have COVID and have not been practicing social distancing. Five, modeling is not being displayed by what you expect of others because your board meetings continue to be virtual. If it is so safe for teachers to... Teach in person. Why not resume your board meetings in person? Six, according to CDC, COVID can be spread by people who do not have symptoms and do not know that they are infected. Seven, any blended learning model increases the potential for spreading this super spreader virus, which means that if 100 of our students contract the virus, they

015will infect 100 to 200 parents. Those 100 parents can then infect another 100 to 500 people with this lethal virus, depending on the amount of people that they would come into contact with daily. When APS parents are infected, this takes away their ability to earn income, and this could potentially mean the death of students, parents. teachers, and administrators of APS. As of September 24th, Ohio school districts have had 394 new cases of COVID. Nine, according to CDC, the best way to prevent COVID is to avoid being exposed to this virus. Ten, there are 21,000 plus students in APS, which include 47% African American, 30% white, 10% multi-race, 5% Hispanic, 8% Pacific Islander, 0.1% American Indian. According to CDC, minorities are at a higher risk of contracting COVID for the following reasons. Discrimination, healthcare access and

016utilization, occupations, educational, income gaps, wealth gaps, and housing. These factors and others are associated with more COVID cases, hospitalizations, and death in areas where racial and ethnic... ethnic minority groups live, work, play, and worship. Community faith organizations, employers, healthcare systems, providers, public health agency, and all others have a part in helping to promote fair access to health and especially protecting minority faculty, students, and parents in this district. What if you, your daughter, your son, your child, your close family member was forced to return to a building with students and people who have COVID, but this would be avoided by one decision? What would you do? The obvious choice would be to continue remote learning, and you are currently modeling that today. virtual board meeting thank you thank you mr childers we appreciate your comments next

017up we'll hear from mr william reynolds mr reynolds whenever you're ready and mr pendleton is helping us keep time tonight mr william reynolds my kids are both at helen arnold uh clc um and I wanted online learning for young children and at children is an IEP student and one of them is not. So they're not one that's on the young end of the spectrum and one that's on the older and five hours of screen time with with this. And here's the other issue that I have with it. how bad too much screen time can be for children. Or I would ask that you would seriously consider, still be online, fine, but under remote IPs, I would ask that you would seriously consider some sort of, it's just not working. I also see kids that there,

018with them and it's like constantly technical or unmuting you know and these are five-year-olds so consider my children and other children that are very young in considering the next step with online learning versus in person versus standard it is a very hard decision but I believe if these kids kindergarten day online we're going to recognize in the very near future way behind because the online learning just doesn't work so thank you for thank you mr reynolds and i do believe that we were able to get the gist of your comments though There were a lot of video issues while you were speaking. So I would also ask that maybe you submit some comments to us in writing that we can share with the rest of the board. And if you'd like to send them to

019me, you're more than welcome to. And we'll get your comments out to the rest of the board. Just in case they- Certainly. Okay. I will send an email and you know. meetings they're running into during the day at school. So. Okay, thank you. All right at this time we will hear from Ms. Jennifer Klein. Ms. Klein, whenever you're ready. All right, first of all, thank you for allowing me. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. First of all, thank you for allowing me to speak tonight on behalf of the students, families, and teachers that want their kids back in school full-time. My name is Jennifer Klein, and my son Noah is a junior at STEM High School. My son has loved his time at STEM, especially the robotics club where he has found his niche in

020life and has flourished. In March, two weeks before the shutdown, my son and his team won the Skills Championship in Ohio and received a bid to nationals, ranking 24th in the country. To say they were excited was an understatement. Late nights, long technical discussions, rebuilds, strategizing, all to earn an even higher ranking and bring home a trophy to STEM. And then COVID hit and it all went away. We were told back in March, two weeks to flatten the curve, and we complied. Then things started to get canceled. Girls were told to go home warming up on a basketball court for a championship game they would never get to play. Graduations that would never happen. Proms that were never danced. Robotic tournaments that were never played. We complied, and the curve was flattened, but still we

021are closed, and still our kids are not in school. When COVID first hit, it made sense to close. We had no idea what we were dealing with. But it's now October. We are starting to get an evidence-based picture of how school reopenings and remote learning are going. And the evidence is pointing in one direction. Schools do not, in fact, appear to be major spreaders of COVID-19. The Brown University is tracking information on the openings of schools across the country. It now includes over 680,000 students, 63 staff, and 1,940 schools, most of those public. Out of that, there are 413 confirmed student cases, or 0.061%, and 237 confirmed staff cases, or 0.38%, since schools have opened. In Summit County, there have only been 36 student cases, or roughly four, out of every 10,000 students that have

022been affected since September 7th, and 46 staff members. There are no massive outbreaks. Most schools are one and done. In fact, since January of 2020 in Summit County, there have only been 63 deaths under the age of 75 out of a population of over 5,000. One might argue that any risk is too great and that schools must be completely safe before local governments move to reopen them. But this approach ignores the enormous cost to children from closed schools. Since the virus has hit, no child from the age of 0 and 19 have died from COVID in Ohio. What is killing our kids is depression. In Summit County, three children have committed suicide, 61 total in Ohio since January of 2020. My husband and I see it personally with our own son. He is an upbeat,

023positive, loud kid. or was before March. We have seen him slowly slip away. There's more anger in his tone, sadness on his face, and lack of interest in school. If you were to talk to him, he would tell you that online school is bad and he misses interacting with students. It is not that the teachers aren't doing their job, but when you are in a class online, there's no back and forth, no facial expressions, no talking. It's just school. School is more than an education. It is relationships, a safe place for these kids, food, mental release, socializing and comfort. I ask you to weigh the cost of the kids out of school versus in school. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Klein. We appreciate you and we appreciate Ms. Childers and Mr. Reynolds for joining us

024this evening to share some perspective with us. We appreciate you. Mr. President, if I may, can we request, I'd love to see the Brown University study that Ms. Klein is referencing. If she wouldn't mind sending us the link or review so that way you can distribute to the rest of us. I would love to read through it. Yes, thank you. All right, thank you. Right at this time we're then going to move into the next area of our agenda which is the section 2.1 2020 inspiring programs and stem award And so I am going to hand that over to our team. We're going to have directly to mrs. Mansfield And mrs. McKittrick so that they can introduce this exciting award That we're here to celebrate tonight. Thank you Thank you, Dr. McWilliams-Woods. Good evening, everybody.

025The Instructional Policy and Student Achievement Committee was pleased to learn of a special distinction bestowed on Akron Public Schools, and we've asked for the award to be featured tonight. I'd like to share a short video that highlights the program from which the award stems. Thank you. Public Schools Health Care in Progress, HIPP program in partnership with Kent State University and the University of Akron received the 2020 Inspiring Programs in STEM Award from Insight into Diversity magazine, the largest and oldest diversity and inclusion publication in higher education. As a result of the 20-year partnership Between Kent State University, the University of Akron, and the Akron Public Schools, the HIP program has received national recognition. This partnership with Kent State University and the University of Akron has been in existence since the year 2000. At that time,

026three major hospitals came together with two major universities to form the Healthcare in Progress HIP Initiative for the Betterment of Community Health. The HIP program introduced students to various medical-related fields and arranged visits to hospital settings to provide opportunities for students to experience healthcare and medical practice in action in eighth grade. Between 2000 and 2017, eighth grade students representing every Akron Middle School experienced three field study visits in hospital settings during the school year. These visits were followed up with optional week-long summer programs in collaboration with what is now Cleveland Clinic Akron General, Summa Health System, Akron Children's Hospital, Northeast Ohio Medical University, Kent State University, and the University of Akron. During the last 15 years, the HIP pipeline began to evolve into a 9th through 12th grade program with our partners, Kent State and

027the University of Akron, taking a lead role. During the summer prior to students sophomore year, the four-day Kent State University research symposium gave students an opportunity to dive deep into career exploration in healthcare fields and experience an overnight in a college dorm. The experience was hosted by Daniel Diaz-Nielsen, Director of the Office of Diversity Outreach and Development in the College of Education, Health and Human Services, Kent State University. Mr. Nielsen is sharing in this award representing Kent State University. In the summer prior to the students junior year, the University of Akron hosted the HIP students for three days. Students prepared personal statements for college applications and took part in speed career talks, which were one-on-one conversations with healthcare professionals. The experience was hosted by Greta Lacks, Center Director, Akron Region Interprofessional Area Health Education Center,

028College of Health Professions, Dean's Office, the University of Akron. Ms. Lacks is also receiving this award for the University of Akron. In the senior year, the HIP students participated in fall and spring seminars to assist them with scholarship and college applications. In 2018, we included leadership training with Rachel's Angels to prepare students to speak about the opioid crisis in health classes across middle and high schools throughout the county. A highlight of September 2019 was when a group of Rachel's Angels were invited to address a Congressional Caucus on Treatment, Addiction, and Recovery in Washington, D.C. with Congressman Ryan. Here are a few testimonials from 8th through 12th grade students over the past 20 years. Their comments talk about their enjoyment with the HIP program. When HIP participants were asked to evaluate the program, 100% of the

029participants indicated they wanted to attend more programs like HIP. As the Akron Public Schools transform from traditional high schools to academy work, the HIP program is the platform the district emulated when developing other partnerships within the city. and healthcare academies throughout the city. The last HIP class will graduate in the 20-2021 school year. But our goal continues to be the same as it was in 2000, to place graduates in meaningful careers with earning power where they can make positive contributions to the Akron and Northeastern Ohio region. Special thanks to Carla Chapman, who helped publicize this national award, recognizing the connection between the community and the classroom with STEM education. This is an important award, and acknowledging the award means acknowledging the leadership of Dr. David James, Dr. Ellen McWilliams-Woods, Mr. Nielsen, Ms. Lacks, and Katrina,

030Dr. Katrina Halasa. As a result of their tireless efforts and with the support of this board and boards before them, programming like the Healthcare in Progress and now the College and Career Academies move forward for our students. Thank you, Mrs. Zizek. That was a fantastic presentation. I'd like to invite Mr. Nielsen, Ms. Lacks, and Dr. Halasa to join us by unmuting their mics, and I'm going to call on each of them individually. We've just heard a little bit about the Health in Progress HIP program being named as a recipient of this national award. Mrs. McKittrick and I were so excited about this. We definitely wanted to have this presented at a board meeting so that you all could congratulate these individuals who've worked so hard on this. We'd like to thank those who've worked tirelessly

031starting first with Mr. Nielsen representing Kent State University. Thank you for all of your work for our students and would you like to say a few words? Sure, thank you Lisa and thank you to the entire board and Superintendent James. I'm very honored to have an opportunity to actually be a part of this award because the heart and soul really came from the students of our great district and I say that as a resident and proud member of the Akron public school system here. And so I'm really proud to be part of this with the students and also really two great people who are absolutely easy to work with and that they lead with their heart in everything they do. And that is Greta Lacks and Dr. Halasa or Halasa as we love to call

032her. And so really, I want to say thank you to Acro Public Schools for allowing us the opportunity to be part of this program and to really also spending. the time today to recognize its greatness and really you can see the greatness in the students and you can see the continuation of what we can do together from Kent State University, University of Akron and of course Akron Public Schools. So thank you for everything and for recognizing us. Thank you Dr. Hlasa for allowing me to be just a part of this journey with you and Greta. So thank you all. Thank you so much. Ms. Lacks, representing the University of Akron, would you like to say a few words? First, thank you so much for all you've given to our students as well. Thank you all

033for taking the time to recognize this incredible program. I think everyone knows, anyone here knows that works in this area that none of this happens with just a few people around a table. that there have been people over the course of this 20 years from Sally Massimi, who originally was at SUMA, to Sue Hogson at Cleveland Clinic Akron General, Mr. Lawson, who I see on the call, Dr. Akbar, Ms. Autry, so many people have been involved in this along the way. And I'm very, very grateful for having had the chance to work with them. Grateful to have had the chance to work with the incredible Akron Public School students that we've had. that we've been able to develop relationships with over the years. We've also had the privilege of seeing these students from Akron Public

034Schools become the medical students of today, become our nursing students, become students in our other health professions programs. And there's been not much more gratifying than seeing our kids succeed. Thank you all for this opportunity. Thanks for taking some time with us tonight. Dr. Halasa, I don't toss around the phrase force of nature, but you know that's the one that I use when I refer to you all the time. And I'd love to have you say a few words. Good evening, everyone. I would like to first thank the Board of Education, Dr. James, Dr. Ellen McWilliams-Woods, my boss, Dr. I want to call Ms. Karen Gijic, for always supporting me no matter what. I appreciate the term a force of nature because really what fuels me every day is the students. I, as a student

035from Akron Public Schools myself, originally was going into medical school and was on the waiting list and eventually fell in love with teaching when I decided to sub while I was waiting to figure out what I wanted to do with my life at 24 years old. And I will never forget the relationships and impacts that students had on my life as well as I had on their lives that first year as a substitute teacher. fourth one. So you can imagine how that went way back when at North High School. And I loved every moment of it. And I have to say, Greta and Daniel said it both very eloquently. You know, it's our relationships with people. It's the people prior to us that created this foundation. And we were thankful enough to have the opportunity

036to move it forward to the... to the opportunity of getting an actual national award. That is amazing. But here's the beauty of it. It doesn't stop here. It goes with our academies. And now we're going to hit students in a way that have all kinds of these aspects every day in their lives through the academy work. So I am so thankful for everyone on this call. I'm thankful for the foundation of the original Dr. Sparrow, who was part of that group that you know, Greta mentioned earlier, that started this foundation. And I'm thankful to end on a high note that is now going to be embedded in our academies. And again, thank you everyone for your hard work and everything you do to make sure that my life becomes easier so kids' lives can become

037easier. Thank you for all your tools and your effort and your love. Thank you so much. She stole almost the rest of my script by thanking the rest of the folks involved. I do believe I got to sit in on the awards this year for this program. And I remember what reminds me is the incredible mutual admiration there is between especially the three of you, but also remembering all of the positive things the students had to say in those awards about this program. So thank you so much again for coming. And special thanks to Dr. McWilliams-Woods, to Dr. James, and all the partners who supported and continue to support this as we move on into our college and career academy pathways. And thanks for letting the instructional policy committee bring this forward. Thank you, Mr.

038Gerald and congratulations to everyone involved. We appreciate the work that you put into our kids and the strength of our partnership is really on display tonight. So thank you so much. Dr. Akbar, you had a comment. Yes. I just want to say that HIP holds a special place in my heart. It was one of the first programs that I got connected with at Kern Public Schools when I moved here 11 years ago. And I just want to say how impressed I am with the work that has always happened through that program. Katrina Hlasta is more than just a force of nature. She is a hurricane times six. And if you don't believe me, if you've ever been to the science fair, you will know. that to be true. I just want to say that HIP

039is more than deserving of this award. For 20 years it has been helping students realize their dreams of becoming a healthcare professional in ways in which they may not have been able to realize because being a doctor might have been the only thing that they knew existed. and you know how people shut down people's dreams because they may not be the best at science, the top performers in science or the top performers in math, but it exposes our students to so many different opportunities in healthcare that students are able to be opened up to a whole new world, pun intended. And so I just want to again thank Dr. Colasa for all of her hard work that she has done over the last 20 years or however many years you've been a part of that

040program. I want to thank Daniel for representing the best institution out there. I am a little biased. So go Kent State, go Flashes. And to my buddy, Greta, who always holds it down for University of Akron, an amazing job there. So that's all I wanted to say. I just, as a personal connection with the program and these individuals, I just wanted to say how proud I am of you. Thank you, Dr. Akbar. And again, congratulations to everyone involved. Thank you. At this time, we're going to move on to section three in our agenda. And this is our superintendent search. And as everyone knows, and for the benefit of those joining us virtually this evening, Dr. James, after nearly 30 years with the Akron Public Schools and nearly 12 as superintendent, has submitted his letter of

041retirement to this board, which is effective July 1st, 2021, with his last day at the end of this school year on June 30th of 2021. And I'd like to state again how much this board appreciates the lifetime of service that Dr. James has given to this district and his students. His vision and his leadership have changed the district for better in ways that will be felt certainly for years to come. But his departure leaves us with a very significant challenge of determining who best to lead this district moving forward. A leader who can build on the successes and the momentum of the last several years and really work to take our district to the next level. So our conversation begins tonight as we discuss who will assist us with our search. With input from board

042members and our current leadership, Dr. Akbar and I have chosen two consulting organizations that we will hear from this evening, the Ohio School Boards Association, or OSBA, and K-12 Business Consulting, Inc. And we're very familiar with both organizations, OSBA, of course, being our statewide organization. And we've actually worked with K-12 Business Consulting in the past as they were the organization that conducted, contracted by Ohio Association of School Business Officials, or OASBO, when we did our treasurer search that resulted in us hiring Mr. Pendleton. Both organizations would bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to our efforts. This weekend, I forwarded proposals from each of them to all of our board members. And tonight we're going to hear brief presentations from each. After each presentation, we will allow for a few minutes of questions or comments

043from any of our board members if you have them. We're not seeking approval tonight on any of the proposals. We will give you, our board, an opportunity to consider the proposals and the presentations and ask the board to select a consulting firm they best feel suits our current needs at our next meeting on the 26th. If any of our board members do have follow-up questions after tonight, I would ask if you can to email them to me by Monday the 19th, that's next Monday, so that I can compile those questions, get them to the consultants, get the answers back, and then forward them to the full board so that everyone has all of the information going into our next meeting. Before we begin our brief presentations, I did want to share just a few points

044with the board and the public. Choosing a consultant by the 26th does allow us to begin our pre-search efforts and our work with our consultants in November. We'd like to have the position posted in January and complete our search by the end of March. And we'd also like to include some overlap between the successful candidate and Dr. James. And we do fully intend our search process to be open, transparent, and inclusive at all steps of the process. It is important that we hear from the community, our partners, stakeholders, parents, and students. This board will determine the best and most appropriate way to accomplish that in the weeks and months to come. So please stay tuned for that. The selection of a new superintendent may in fact be the single most important decision facing this board

045right now. And let's not forget that we're conducting this search in the midst of a global pandemic. While we're determining if, when, and how to bring our students and staff back to the classroom, evaluating options for a potential future levy, advocating at the state level for a fair school funding model, and continuing to build on the success and the momentum of the college and career academies and the IPROMS partnerships, two initiatives you heard about tonight that this board is deeply committed to and invested in. We have our work cut out for us in the coming months, but I do have faith in our board. And our district leadership, we have a long history of being a model in the community for leadership and collaboration. So we will pull together and continue to make our community

046APS proud. And with that, I'd like to begin our presentations this evening in no particular order other than maybe alphabetical order. We're going to start with K-12 Business Consulting Inc. They will give us a brief presentation and then I'll open it up to the board for. comments or questions. So at this time, I'm going to turn it over to Deb Campbell, who I believe has the presentation for KHB. Thank you very much, Mr. Bravo. And thank you also to Dr. Akbar, because we had a conversation with him and a lot of questions were answered. And congratulations to our good friend, David James, who are always very proud of him. I had the pleasure of working with him when I worked at VASA. Carol Oxley, who is also... on this call this evening had the pleasure

047of working with him on the executive board tom ash is a part of our team he's on the call he had the pleasure of working with uh dr james at bassa and chris moore our ceu is over on the call also so i'm going to begin our powerpoint presentation and while i do that i'm going to ask uh dr or chris moore to please just begin with a hello and a little bit about us. There we go. I had to unmute my speaker. First of all, thank you, Mr. Bravo and Board of Education for inviting K-12 Business Consulting to your meeting this evening. You know, we are very pleased to be here and we look forward to having an opportunity to work with you on your superintendent search. We've been in business for going on

04820 years this coming summer, and we have done several searches all across the state, not only for superintendents and treasurers. So I've got one of the best teams on the ground with boots on the ground in the state, and I've got three of them on this call with us, Carol Oxley, Tom Ash. and Deb Campbell, all three past presidents of BASA and are all still active in leadership programs around the state for superintendents and assistant superintendents. Without further ado, Deb, I will go ahead and turn it over to you. All right, and I'm going to turn it over to Carol Oxley to talk a little bit about our search consultants. Thank you so much. It is a great honor and privilege to be here this evening with all of you. And I want to thank

049you for your hard work. But on a very personal note, I want to tell you that... You have just made me a hero in my family. My oldest grandson, who lives in Omaha, Nebraska, was given the option by his mother to hang one poster in his bedroom, and it was LeBron James. So when he hears that I'm presenting to the Akron board with my esteemed colleagues, I will be moving up in status in my own family. So thank you for this opportunity. First of all, I want to talk about Deb Campbell. Deb Campbell would be the lead on this search. Deb Campbell works 24-7. I think she and Dr. James would probably be comparable in their work efforts. She and the rest of the K-12 team are totally devoted to... only finding you the very

050best person to attempt to fill his suit. She is a former superintendent herself. She's been over eight years in Clark 20. She's a past president of VASA, which gives her an unbelievable opportunity to know a network of people, not only in Ohio, but in surrounding states and across the U.S. As a matter of fact, the other night she was just talking to someone that was leaving a school system in Japan that wants to come back. So the connections and the ability to get the right person for you is immense. She's also the co-director of all member services for BASA, which means she knows every superintendent and assistant that is working throughout Ohio. Myself, as Deb said, I'm Carol Oxley. I'm the former superintendent of Lima City Schools. Now, I want you to know that we

051look... a lot to Akron because even though we're smaller in number, our dynamic really allows us to understand what you're looking for. Both of us faced about 100% in economic disability and we got there because we wanted to make sure our students were fed. We wanted to make sure students had meals. We wanted to make sure students were cared for. We at Lima were at a 20% identified students with disabilities. And of course, you and Akron are lower with an 18%. We both have struggled with chronic absenteeism. We both have struggled with reconfiguring schools, adding programs so no one would be lost along the way. So I share this with you as a past president also of VASA. and as a past superintendent of Lima for 10 years, that I am passionate as the rest

052of our team to find the exact fit for you. It isn't about the prestige of being the acting superintendent. It's about a person who really believes in the potential of students from gifted all the way to identified with special needs. And our team also has Tom Ash. Earlier, you talked about the fact that you were looking at the fair school funding. Well, Tom Ash is the person from VASA that was the director of all government relations. After 21 years as a superintendent, of which 15 and a half were spent in East Liverpool, and he was overseeing all of the career tech programs throughout that entire area by nature of his job. He's been honored as a distinguished leader across Ohio, and his work, and again, his network is immense. I bring up our team which

053Chris Moore worked very hard to get people really connected to the superintendents already serving in Ohio and across. multiple states because it's about the relationships. Dr. James' strength was in relationships and we really believe that K-12 with their boots to the ground can really bring you exactly what you're looking for for Akron where you will have choices and people of great interest to continue to move the district forward. Well, we appreciate you all knowing about our search team because it is critical who's on the team and if they had the time to devote totally to the search is critical. So at this time, let's turn this back to Deb. Well, thank you, Carol. And I wanted to just highlight some of the differences in our company and other companies that do superintendent searches. One of

054the things is we have tested protocols that lead to successful searches. Now, everyone is concerned about COVID, and I heard that concern tonight loud and clear. We have conducted multiple searches last year successfully during the COVID crisis and we worked with school boards to make sure that we could complete searches in a manner that was comfortable for the school board, the school, the staff, and the community. So we do have experience with conducting searches during COVID. We do assign multiple consultants to our searches because we want to make sure every detail is carried out with efficiency. And Carol has identified who those consultants would be for your search if we're fortunate enough to receive the nod. We have strong staff and committee involved from the very beginning of the search. And a sample, which you

055have, and I'm going to quickly go to that sample, of how we begin to collect data from your board, your administrators, your teachers, your support staff, parents, and community. This data is collected during either virtual focus groups. or also it can be to us online, but it tells us a little bit about what people think of the Akron schools. It tells us a little bit about what they're facing your district and what you're really looking for in a new superintendent. This is all then put into. to a document, the superintendent search profile, and you received our search services document. And that profile, you can find that on pages 16 through 27 in that document. And that document does talk about how the data was collected. It talks about, sorry, I have to go back. It

056talked about how it was collected. talks about parts of what we found throughout the search. Now, this is not a scientific search, but the data that we collect will give you a very comprehensive picture of what the community, the staff, and the administration are all looking for. We also have community involvement then during the interview process at the interview. process for the beginning, the first round interviews, and also again for the second round interviews. So there's really a strong staff and community engagement involvement from the very beginning of the search. Because our CEO is a former treasurer of Dublin City Schools, we do advise the board on wages and we assist them in the negotiation of a final superintendent contract. We certainly understand that the board has certain perimeters that they will like to be

057within. as far as salary and benefits. We also understand that a candidate will have expectations. So if we can act as the intermediary to negotiate that final contract for you, it makes a better working relationship when you start with your new superintendent. We actively recruit quality candidates. some people call us shameless because we will go after people who are very happy in their job but if they're successful and we think that looking at what your community and your staff and your board of education said is important then we'll go after that candidate. Also work with the board and Mark Williamson to make sure that we send consistent messages about the search and its timeline. and make sure that everybody understands what is search. We want to be totally trained for the board and for the

058search. And then there are always things that boards of education would like to customize. So we customize our search to try to meet your needs. And Carol's going to talk just a little bit about our three levels of searches. You know, I think that Deb has really demonstrated to you quite clearly the importance of community input, excellent communication, all the pieces that are needed for this search to be successful. And K-12 offers three options to you. As you can see on your screens, there's a bronze level, a basic level, there's a silver level, and then there's the gold level. And to be very honest, a city the size of Akron would definitely, I would assume, be interested in the gold level. And the reason for that is you have more opportunity for community input. You

059as a board and as a community would be able to meet candidates. not only at meet and greets but on two different occasions in that search and if board members could go to page seven and eight of the superintendent search document you will be able to see clearly the differences in the different levels between the bronze the silver and the gold and you can see why gold is legalized because it also gives you an opportunity as community and board people to meet the candidates informally. And that becomes critical when you are selecting someone like Dr. James and someone with the provost kind of shoes. Those are the differences in the searches that we offer and I invite the board to go in and look further into those differences. Thank you, Deb. Okay, so what we

060did for you was put together, this is the last couple slides. We tried to organize a timeline. If you would select a gold search, we would try to begin that search process at your board meeting. on November 16th. Critical to having set up to have the interviews set up ahead of time to have all of the focus groups that are going to happen either virtually or in person set up ahead of time. So that would be our first real getting to know the board and getting to know what kind of a search process. you want to set up. We suggest that you would post this statewide in December. A lot of super-informed positions over Christmas break, so we would suggest that a posting from September through March would be able to give you that timeline

061that Mr. Bravo was talking about before our presentation started. proposed that we hold focus groups in December either virtually or in person and around the 1st of December. We would have the folks give us information also via probably a Google Doc that they could complete online a survey, the questionnaire, and we would have all of that information then put into a search profile. And that really guides us with our recruiting process because Superintendents want to know a little bit about what the district has to offer, what challenges they would make. So it's a really good recruiting tool for us to use. And it's also a great springboard for you to understand some of the wants and desires of your community. would present that profile to you or 11th at your regular board meeting and again

062you can look at that profile on pages 16 through 27 in the document that we provided for you we would make the application deadline around What we would do after that is we would present the candidates to the board at a regular board meeting. Now I'm going to quickly move ahead so I can show you some of the tools that we use to present. When we present the candidates to the board, we present them in an upside down stoplight. And what we do is we tell you which candidates that have applied for your position. might be a good fit for the profile that was developed. We just feel like you're asking for our expertise. Now, that being said, you may choose any candidate that you wish to interview because we are not going to tell

063you who to interview. We are going to give you a guideline to follow. but we're not going to tell you who to interview. We are going to let you see all of the candidates and they will be presented to you in a secure portal and you will see all of their information. And you will also have a document that you can use to look through that tells a little bit about each summary of each candidate. We would first around interviews in mid-March. second round interviews in March around in 24th and then you would be able to hire your superintendent by March 29th for that that you would like them to start now I heard you say might be leaving sooner than we have here on this you might want that that person to start sooner

064so we can change that if you if we are fortunate enough to to be able to work with you um a quick presentation i'm sure you have questions so i'm going to give you time now to answer ask those questions um i'll uh hopefully be able to answer them Thank you to the K-12 team for your presentation. We are going to open it up for a couple of minutes for questions or comments from our board. Dr. Hall and then Mr. Alexander. Yeah, thanks, Mr. President. I have what I think are probably a couple softball questions. So I'm going to ask the same questions of the other group that's presenting tonight. So they want to incorporate these answers into their talk. That's fine, too. But so I was curious. So 20 years K-12 has been in

065business, I think is what I heard you say, 20 years. How many superintendent searches have you done in 20 years? Well, over 100, probably not quite 200, but we've done a lot. Okay. How many in our urban districts that are similar in size to Akron or larger? Well, we've never done one as large as Akron. We've done Middletown, Springfield, Newark. Lakota Local is not an urban. They're about 18,000 student districts. We typically... do not look necessarily towards large school districts to do searches with. Okay, gotcha. Have you ever done any national searches where you're looking at, where you're searching outside of Ohio? Yes. Okay, can I ask you how many? Probably about a dozen over the years. Most school districts in Ohio don't necessarily specifically, even though we offer that, do national searches. They typically

066want to hire somebody from Ohio because it's Ohio law, Ohio school finance, Ohio. But yes, we do. Okay, thank you. So with the goal level plan, is that cost higher then? So hypothetically, we said we wanted to do a national search. Would that cost be then higher than the $17,900 number that I think I saw referenced? Yeah. The last one we did was for Trotwood Madison, and it's largely just the cost of the advertising because that is not inexpensive. and that would roughly be about forty five hundred dollars if you went with like a sa or ed week something like that if you wanted to do more than that then the cost would go up we just we manage the uh advertisements that go out and the postings and whatever the cost is you know

067we just funnel that on there's no markups or anything like that Great, great. And then I just have one more question. Do you have any data? So again, having done, you know, over 100 and probably just shy 200 searches, you know, do you have any data on how long your place candidates actually stay in positions that you recruit them to? That's a really good question. One of the reasons why you would want to hire us is because we do make a solid connection, kind of like electric plug in the wall. We check and see what you're looking for. We see what your community, your staff is looking for. We also work with the candidates to make sure as we talk to them, they don't just apply and we just shove them in the door. We

068talk to them. We do the investigation around their background. We talk to them about what the situation in Akron is, whether good, bad, what the challenges are. We make sure they understand that and that they can convince us or show us they've actually dealt with those things. That way, when they come in and talk to you, they generally start to begin to have a feel for what you're looking for. And when a person makes a nice fit, you know, they tend to stay longer. in those situations. So our candidates typically do stay longer. Um, you know, can I say exactly how long I would say in general, it seems like most of our candidates stay somewhere between the four and eight year mark in most school districts that we work with some longer, some shorter.

069And sometimes that depends Mr Hall, Dr Hall on changing board elections. As well, sometimes that may not have a thing to do with the candidate how well they are doing. It just may have a change in board elections. Oftentimes these days can can be a coin toss a lot of times on whether the superintendent wants to stay or vice versa. Roger that. Yeah, so I appreciate the candor in answering that question. When you're looking at, so I know that you mentioned that you've done some districts that look a little, they may not be the same size as us. I'm sorry, I lied, I did have one more question. I know that you've done some searches for districts that may not be the size of Akron, but have maybe an urban sort of flavor, if you

070will. So in that smaller cohort, Again, school board elections aside, again, correlation is not causation. So I'm not asking the question seeking to hold you accountable. That number is lower or higher, but just, but I just was curious if you have any, if you've sort of done the data digging and can kind of answer for a smaller cohort, what your average. that we can look at it's like 3.8 years for the district and i think it's some of the data that i've seen 991 no right right right yeah well marlon at marlon styles at middletown is going on his fourth year and doing strong we hear good things there uh bob hill at springfield is uh you know bob's been there for probably six years and again going well We just concluded the Newark search.

071So David Lewis, he's just off and running there right now. We've also, while it's not superintendent searches, we have done treasure searches for Toledo, Cincinnati. Oh, let's see. But Lima, I mean, so we've done. We've done searches for large organizations, at least in the treasurer ranks. Like I said, we've not, I'll be very honest with you, we've not gone out seeking large school district search work. The mechanics are the same. The number of people involved in community engagement at the front end and the back end, we would anticipate would be a higher number. But the process is the same and the mechanics work the same. Do you mind if I ask why you haven't sought out larger districts? I mean, because again, you said that a couple of times. I just was curious, is there

072a reason why? It takes a lot more time to work with bigger organizations than it does smaller, generally speaking. Okay, roger that, roger that. And then the last thing, I'm sorry, this really is the last question. In the national judges that you've done, I think you said about a dozen, any commentary about how long those candidates have lasted in the roles in which you recruited them to? Well, a lot of times that we've done national searches and we brought national candidates from Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and surrounding states. The Board of Education, these guys are laughing because they know the Board of Education more times than not will pick the Ohio candidate because they can answer the question more. They know about our laws. They know about our intricacies of levies and things. And they're just

073able to answer the question much more detailed. So, you know, that's a, you know, that's pretty much what I would tell you about those. But we just brought a person in to Miamisburg from a superintendent from Indiana. But that's not that, you know, Indiana from where she was coming from was really only about two hours away from Miamisburg, which is just southwest of Dayton. But, but. Fantastic. Thank you for your time. We did the Westlake City Schools search, and we did have national candidates there. And like Chris said, the board felt more comfortable with the Ohio candidates because they knew there wasn't a learning curve for them with school finance and legality and all of those issues. So I just wanted to stress we can bring those candidates, but we don't know for sure that

074that will be the board's choice. Okay. And I just, and I, I'm sorry, I, you know, got to just, I guess, the follow up question here. Sorry. Thank you. Sorry. I apologize to my colleagues for hogging the time here. Hopefully I'm asking questions that they were going to ask too. But, but, you know, you know, you know, are you experienced recruiting sort of diverse candidates as well? So obviously equity is a big, a big part of who we are and what we do. You know, you know, just if you can talk about and then that's my last question but if you can just comment on sort of your experience and you know within the context of sort of that you know in that I have the inclusion lens. Oh, I was going to say, probably

075one of the searches we did, it was a very small district, but it was Yellow Springs. If you're familiar with Yellow Springs, it's a very diverse community, and they wanted diverse candidates, and we were able to bring them very diverse candidates. We also just placed an African American at... The search we did, they were also looking for diverse candidates and that person was placed at Sylvania City Schools. So we have the capability of bringing diverse candidates. We just need to know the types of diversity you would like us to look for because diversity comes in lots of shapes and forms. And I would say Middletown, Marlon Stiles. Um, the runner up there was Gabe Lofton. He's a superintendent senior right now. We just placed Reva Cosby at Trotwood African American female. Uh, we had done

076a search a few years before that at Trotwood as well. Also placed African American male there. Um, so, um, you know, we have, we, there are good candidates there and we definitely go after those candidates. Okay, thank you for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you, Dr. Hall. Mr. Alexander? Yes, thank you all for coming today and presenting to us. And Dr. Hall did ask a couple questions that I asked and I was going to ask and I'm glad that he did. But you mentioned not... going into searches for large districts and that was explained. So that was one of the questions. One of the other questions was you talk about the longevity of superintendents and some of the research that I've read in the past and not recently, not too far, is that a lot

077of superintendents nowadays don't stay as long. And when you guys are searching for those individuals, are you looking for... candidates who are going to be with the school district for a while, a long period of time with longevity, or are there those that are looking for just shorter periods of time? And I have to only speak for myself. For me, I would like someone with a little more longevity who's going to be with our district because when you start continuity of services and things of that nature, you got to have someone who's there because if you... stop in the middle, then you're going to lose some continuity. And what happens, the district doesn't just lose, it's the kids that lose too. And I don't want anything to happen where our kids are losing. They're losing

078enough now with a lot of stuff that's going on in the world now. So that was one of my second questions. So what do you guys do as far as recruiting those type of individuals? Well, I will say that certainly you have been fortunate to have Dr. James there for as long as you've had. I was the superintendent in my district for eight years and Carol was the superintendent in her district for 10 years. And I know you heard of Tom's longevity. So that is important to us. We understand that the research tells us that a superintendent needs to be in a district for five to seven years to make a difference. And so we. specifically look for those kinds of candidates that are willing to make the commitment. And I think the way you

079get those kind of candidates is when you do your homework. You're very transparent about the district. And you have you guys have so many wonderful programs going. You want those to continue, but you will have challenges, too. And if you're transparent about what the good things are in the district and what's happening as the challenges, then it really helps the longevity of a candidate. And, you know, we really we like for our candidates to stay eight to 10 years, you know. Yeah. Yeah. That's my hope too, that we would have somebody who would be eight to 10 years because, you know, for this board and maybe even future boards, we want to make sure this, they have someone that they can work with for a period of time. So they know what's going on. They

080know each other, just like Dr. James, he's been here in the district for a long time working, but we, as a superintendent, we've been able to work with him and do a lot of good things for the district. So we will, for me personally, I'm looking for someone who can, you know, meet the needs that he has or someone who's just as good as him, if not better. I know it's going to be tough, but still, I look for that to happen in the superintendent search. And my second question is, you mentioned focus groups that you have. Who are the participants? Who all participates in those focus groups? Well, we have the administrative team. We have the Board of Education that we do not participate in a group, but we gather information from them. We

081have the teachers. We have the, I was trying to think real quickly, we have the support staff in those focus groups. We have parents. We have key community members. We also have your people who have worked on your levy campaign. We have your mayor. We have all of those kind of people. And probably one of our most pleasurable things to do is to have students. We always... interview students and have them a part of the development of that superintendent search profile that will tell us what everyone is looking for so the community the parents the students the support staff teachers administrators board are all a part of that gathering of data and uh mr alexander um You know, districts your size have lots of entanglements in the community. A program that we just watched tonight,

082the HIP program, I saw three people that we would typically want to have involved in coming and talk to us a little bit about what they would think because of their interactions with the district. So we'd want to know all of those type of organizations that you have so that those folks could be invited. And it typically comes from the board specifically to invite them to come meet with us. And we hopefully will be able maybe to do some of this face to face. We much prefer that over these wonderfully technical contraptions here, but it makes it much more personal. And that's how we like to do business personal. We can. And I noticed on your website when I was researching your district, you have a tremendous business partner base tied to all of your

083high schools. So we would have a special focus group for those people because they are your key communicators and your key support. And we typically will be doing that over two days, not back to back. They're usually one one week, one the next week in case people might not be able to come one week. But we do offer community forums at the end of those days for anybody that wants to come and talk to us and share information with us that they have. And we ask them to fill out a form there, but also just engage in back and forth communication stuff. So that way, if somebody wants to offer us input on your superintendent search, we want it. okay all right good you hit all the points there because those are all the areas

084that we you really need to on those individuals because we do have some great stakeholders here in our our school district and a lot of people and of course all above all our students are very very important to us so uh thank you very much We go to the school, we go to your schools where we can to meet with typically your high school students, not just your National Honor Society or student council people. We want student leaders and those usually end up being some pretty good sized groups, actually. Yeah, we like a cross section of the students that we're going to talk with. So, you know, we want to be sure that we're hearing voices from all the students. Yes, and that's very important to hear from all students, not just some, but all

085the students. All right. Thank you very much. Yeah, and that questionnaire would be online and all students could participate. Okay. You know, one thing I forgot to show you is we try to keep you organized. This is one of our binders for the interview process, and it keeps your questions and everything organized for you. So we do organize you for your interviews. We try to make everything easy for you, and I forgot to show that to you. This is a different format for us. We're used to using a different format, so I'm sorry if it seemed a little... Thank you so much for allowing us to present. Anybody else have any questions or comments from the board? Hearing and seeing none, we do want to thank the folks from K-12 for taking time out of

086your Monday evening to join us. Great presentation. We appreciate that. And we will be back in contact with you shortly. Thank you again. Thank you. Thanks. And at this time, I would like to turn it over to Mr. Steve Horton from the Ohio School Board Association for their presentation. Mr. Horton, you're muted, sir. Happens to the best of us. Is that better? That's better. Thank you. All right. Let me bring that up to you now. Okay. How does that look on your end? Looks great. Great. Thank you. It is such a pleasure to be here. Thank you, Mr. Bravo and the rest of the Akron board for inviting me and giving me the opportunity to share with you some thoughts and insights about our search process. I'm really my intention tonight is to give you

087a good picture of how our search process works and answer your questions. I want you to go away having those answered before we're done tonight. And as always, if you have any other questions, you can always reach out to me. But it is a pleasure to be here on half of our other two consultants. Cheryl Ryan and Terry Morgan are actually both involved with other districts tonight. We will be working on your search. Moving forward, the one important thing to know about our search process is with all of them that we do, and it really has to do with, you know, regardless of the size of the district, is that we have a large organization. We have an organization of our search consultants. We have two administrative assistants in the office that assist us with

088that work, but we also have a communications department, a legal department, a legislative department. They're all... involved in the searches that we do. So we bring a large organization to you and it's been our pleasure to be your professional organization for a long time. So with that said, I like this statement about just knowing that A strong search has everything to do with the search consultants. We believe that it has to be comprehensive and transparent as a process that needs to have integrity. And when we're done, we are searching for that person that's going to be a match for Akron City Schools and to lead your district. There are certainly very large shoes here to follow as we seek. a new person to lead your district. So about the search itself, it is your most

089critical decision and that's why it's such a pleasure to be here to talk to you. It's why it is a service that we offer through OSBA that we take very very seriously because As we work with boards of education in a variety of ways, there is nothing more important than making sure that you have the right superintendent in place to lead your district and to lead it with fidelity and passion. We know that the best searches happen when we have the commitment and the attention of the entire board. It is something that involves the entire board and so our search process is designed to make sure that you're engaged throughout and absolutely connected to the work that goes into finding a new leader. One of the things that we most definitely do and it's our

090core. is working with boards of education. Everything that we do in our search, everything we do period, is very board centered. We have those of us involved have been board members, we have superintendents in our organization, and we fully understand what is so important for the board and as you move forward with your search. So ultimately you own the process. We are here to work through that process with you to make sure that you're on task, that everything is working on schedule, and that it is a search that goes smoothly. It most importantly ends with a very solid appointment of the right person in the superintendent's seat. So it is important to know that everything we do is from board's perspective. So as far as the process, I'm going to break it down and talk

091about what we do and maybe some of the things that make us unique in the way that we approach searches. So we have to find that superhero to fill some pretty big shoes and take over in your district. We do have to work with you to build a criteria for the search. That's work that we do right at the very beginning. And it's also work that we are devoted to with the community stakeholders. As you already heard, we are very much committed to making sure that the community is involved. That it is administration, teachers, support staff, community leaders, parents. Yes, we do hear from students. Um and we've done that in superintendent search we in fact with one of the s down in the Cincinnati are of the things that they rea community engagement and

092community focus groups. An we ended up doing the se those in person, unfortuna pandemic, but we did do portion of this is very important because that garnered a lot of of information and involvement that the board admitted if they had done those in person they probably wouldn't have as strong of involvement in that so we were able to share quite a bit more with the board through that so I you know pandemic or not I really believe in the electronic approach to getting input from people, being able to share that with you. Everything that we collect goes into a report that goes back to you. So it's valuable, valuable information for you. The other thing that we always do in conjunction with our communication department is we develop a full color brochure that becomes the

093tool that we use anytime we are talking to candidates when we're posting the job and the work that we do to develop that pool of candidates centers around this brochure. Invariably as I'm talking to candidates, they want to see that brochure and they want to know what's in there because it's full of information that they need to make a good decision about whether or not this district is a good fit for them. We do believe in involving district stakeholders throughout the search. That is just an important, important aspect of the superintendent search. Recruiting is the other part. A lot of work goes into this. We have very wide databases. We have as big a database as anybody in the state in terms of potential candidates, connections with our districts statewide. But we also have a

094connection with a group called NASS. And this is very important to us in the work that we do. NASS stands for the National... affiliation of superintendent searchers. We do this through NSBA, the National School Boards Association, and so we are connected with 38 other state associations that are involved in superintendent searches, and that connection is huge for us. It's a tool that allows us to really expand our reach and to have connection literally across the country. So we're working with them not just on recruiting and developing the candidate pool, but we also work with them on best practices and idea sharing. The information we share between us and Mass is invaluable. It is important to know that with any search we do, we do not work on behalf of candidates. It is our mission in

095the searches we do to make sure that we are gathering a strong pool of candidates to present to you and we do that very successfully to be able to look at to evaluate and it's done in a way that is not weighted or biased in any way and so I think that is very important and critical to the work that we do on behalf of the school board. Screening is a big process and very very important. That criteria that we build, both through our work with you as a school board and through the focus groups, all of that information we get is that valuable tool that we use to evaluate the candidates that come into the pool. So yes, we do screen internally, and we have outside people from outside OSBA that bring different perspectives,

096look at the candidates. We work together in developing the... candidate ratings that we would bring to you. and we use it through a proprietary tool that we've been working on for a long time now. I remember when I first came on with OSBA, it was kind of a hybrid approach. Candidates went online and they submitted application, the application materials, but then those got printed out and they got put into paper folders, which I never much liked because I didn't think it gave the board a real insight. I like the transparency of making sure that the board knows who all the candidates are in their pool. We do rate the candidates, but we make sure that you have the final say and you have the ability through our online tool that we've called Revelis that we've

097been developing. It's now a very robust and complete tool for receiving applications and working with you to review those applications. But it's important to know that we don't make choices for you. You will know who we think fit the criteria and who we think is potentially the best candidates for the district. But it's ultimately up to you who moves on in the process to that candidate evaluation process. We work with the board to develop the interviews, contact and schedule. Working with you is very important to make sure that the interviews go well, that they provide the kind of insight that you need for the candidates. Here's a place where I always go back to the information that we gather early on through the focus groups, through our conversations with you, to incorporate that into the

098interviewing process. We also... work very closely with the board in developing an interview process that can involve stakeholders as well. As you've already heard, and it is very important, that stakeholders have the ability to provide input and have the ability to be a part of the process. And so we work with the board in developing that. There's another thing that we use and have been using for a long time now. Ironically enough, in my work, uh back when i was a board member working in the corporate world we used uh an assessment developed by the same company that has worked with us to develop the achiever um for all the hiring that we did in the company that i was with um it's been a company that's worked with uh organizations and companies uh all

099over the country for years and they worked with us specifically to develop um an assessment specifically for evaluating superintendent candidates um it is not the end all, but it is a valuable, valuable insight into a candidate's cognitive abilities, their personality traits, their communication styles. There's so much in the report for the candidates come back to you. So all of our finalist candidates go through the Achiever and you get to see that result. And it is very scientifically based. It's extremely accurate. So that's another tool that we bring to the table so that you can have a better insight and ultimately make a better appointment for your district. And then I really want to make it clear that one of the things that we take very, very seriously is we don't ever just finish a superintendent

100search and then walk away. and say we're done. Our connection to you is both professional as your organization, but it's also our commitment to be there as support for boards of education. That's our core mission and it's what we are all about. And so we believe very strongly that if we need to, we'll reopen a search. I had a district treasurer search that I did and for personal reasons, they lost a treasurer that was put in place. a candidate that they were extremely happy with. He was doing great work, but he moved on to be able to work in his hometown. And that was eight months after we had just done a search. So we went back up to them and we reopened that search and were able to place another candidate for them with

101that reopening process. Another important point that... I wish more boards would take advantage of because I think it's a huge advantage is that we'll come back within six months and facilitate a communication workshop just to help you as a leadership team get on good footing with your new superintendent that all of you can develop the means by which you want to communicate and work together. It's a time to... get together and talk about what's been working well, what could work better, what would we like to see, how would we like to do things as we move forward. Those are extremely useful times together. The boards don't often get, you know, those one-on-one facilitated meetings are huge for board, superintendent, and treasurer communication as a leadership team. So, you know, we hope you'll take advantage of

102that too as part of the process. I have thought about timeline and you had already indicated, Mr. Bravo, that you want to be able to get this started in November, which would be when we would come together to plan the meetings. And so the initial planning meeting is so important because that's where we set the actual timeline that we will run the search on. And as a facilitator, it's my job to be communicating with you throughout. uh to make sure that we're on task that we are in line with the timeline that was set um And if that meeting in November gives us time to develop the brochure, it gives us time to work with the focus groups, whether that's electronically or in person or both. We could do either way. And focus groups for

103a district the size of Akron is a big function. There's a lot of people to meet with. And so that is a big consideration that we would hope to be doing. in December prior to actually opening the search. And so my thought was to open the search in December. have that recruiting period through January. I like to have at least six weeks that we work building that candidate pool so that we can come together, conduct first round interviews in February, conduct second round interviews in March, so that you are able to take action and have your new superintendent place in March. Because I know that being able to have that overlap time to have a new person come in and get oriented to the distr and to be able to uh to w prior to

104that official st you. And that certainly i timeline. So just some fi it up to questions. Um f We've been doing searches as an organization for over 30 years. We've done over a thousand successful searches. I think it probably suffices to say that one time or another our organizations probably work with pretty much every district in the state. It is experience and knowledge really from the top down that is so invaluable to our work as we do searches together. All of us in a search division, the three consultants who work directly with boards of education. Like I said, always work together as we're working through searches. But each of us has been board members. We have also, like I said, superintendents and other administrators within our ranks at OSBA. And it's just really the experience

105that makes such a huge difference. The Revelis tool that I talked about was something that we've developed. And it really was because at one time, and this goes back probably seven or eight years now, we looked at the way we were doing searches and said, you know, there are aspects of our search service that we feel like we need to improve. And so Revelis has spoken to those. Rather than trying to cobble something together or take an off-the-shelf... you know, system that's designed for a corporation, not a school district and a superintendent search. We started from scratch and built a very robust product. In fact, it's one now that more and more districts or more and more organizations across the NAS. organization that I spoke about are now using. And one of the things that

106has that has been a real boost for all of us is we are able to share searches with those other organizations that are doing searches. And everybody has commented that it has really brought more national attention to the searches that we do. And then our national candidates, which we always have national candidates outside of Ohio in our superintendent pools. But that's actually increased and I've been very very happy with the diversity of the candidate pools And I think the Rill of Oz has a lot to do with that The Achiever is just important insight into the candidate. It's additional information that you have as insight before you actually go into second round interviews with finalist candidates. It's a huge tool for you to be able to use. And then there's the guarantee. Your district's health

107and well-being is absolutely more important to us than anything else. We want to make sure that your district is solid, that you have the right leader in place, and that we can move forward with you as a member of our organization with the right leader leading your district. So that is the broad overview of our search service. I am more than happy to take questions from all of you. And so I'll open it up to that now. Thank you, Mr. Horton. We appreciate your presentation. for you joining us again tonight we're going to open it up for questions and comments dr hall is first okay yeah thanks yeah yeah thanks much mr president um so some of the questions you've already answered for me uh in your position so so thanks for doing that um

108you you referenced um the i'm sorry you actually you referenced nas uh the national affiliation of superintendent searches um and you kind of uh and you emphasize the national connectivity that you have through that entity. Having said that, how many national churches have you done? Well, actually, over the years, we've done quite a few. I did one last year with Canton that absolutely was nationally focused. Dayton, in our past history. Toledo, those were very much urban districts that... that were a national focus outside of the state of Ohio. I did Mount Healthy's search. It was another much smaller urban district in the Cincinnati area. But I did that this last spring. And we had three candidates in that poll that were from out of state. But not very many districts actually hire the out of

109state candidates. I think it's a great measure to see. you know, measured differ each other to have that v that are coming from outs in terms of actually hir I think a lot of it has t there's over 700 uh schoo forms um in the state of a huge pool right here in over 50% of the searches they do feature out of state candidates that are actually placed in those positions, but they have much fewer districts and just a smaller pool of candidates to choose from. So they almost have to rely on that. But having that view nationally is important. Thank you. I appreciate it. And then with over a thousand searches, I have the same question I asked K-12. Do you have any data on how long candidates placed stay in their positions? We

110did, was it three years ago, we did kind of an audit for ourselves internally, looking at searches going back in our history and who we've placed. And we found out that over 80% of those searches had candidates that had been on the job for at least four years, and many, many more of them more. So that's the most recent information I have, but I feel like we've done quite well. putting the right person in place with the board and helping them choose the person that's going to be there for enough time to be effective. And so from an equity standpoint, I mean, do you automatically seek to recruit diverse? Or I guess my question is, is that your default mode or do we have to ask you for that? Because I feel like that's something

111that we shouldn't have to ask for. I feel like that's something that should just be kind of hardwired into the process, right? I mean, so- I agree with you 100% there. That is not something you have to ask for. My goal with any search is to make sure that that pool is as broad and deep as possible to bring to all of you. Okay, okay, fantastic. And then, um, and then last question I had for now was, you know, thinking through, it sounds like you referenced Canton, you referenced Dayton. So it sounds like, you know, you've done these kinds of searches for districts like are the same similar size and makeup as ours is what it sounds like. Am I reading that right? Yeah, yeah, we have. And so within our organization, like I said,

112we've worked with so many different district the one, the most recent that I completed was the down in Cincinnati with m And they're also over 80% African American. And it's a district that has a lot of challenges. And I was very, very pleased with the level of candidates that we were able to present to them, the quality of the candidates. They were pleased as well. So it's something that we feel strongly about. Okay, great. And last question. You referenced that there was a candidate that you placed. that left, I think you said left within eight months, you know, because there was a vision that was in their hometown that they, or near their hometown. So it made me, it really kind of jogged my memory. Question I wanted to ask the previous group and I

113didn't. So they want to weigh in, they're more than welcome. But if we bring a candidate on, so if we were to, so which other group we go with? If you bring a candidate on and they leave within, let's say, eight months and we're back to doing another search again, I mean, do you do the next search at no cost or reduced cost? Well, it's no cost. That's our commitment. We will absolutely come back and reopen that search for you. And we're talking about something that hasn't happened very often. But it's absolutely there. That is our commitment to you. The only thing that actually comes back to the district would be any mileage or extraneous expenses, but those are usually pretty minimal in that reopen. Fantastic. I think I saw a chat. I think the

114other group wants to answer that question too. And then that's the end of my questions, Mr. Bravo. Thank you. Ms. McKittrick and then Mr. Alexander. Thank you, Mr. President. I just have one quick question. How diverse is your search team? Well, there's me and two women that are doing the searches. They're actually conducting the searches. We are white, if that's what you're asking. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McEachern. Mr. Alexander? Yes, thank you. Hi, Steve. How you doing? I'm good. How are you? Good, good. Hey, I have two questions. You mentioned a screening team that you have. You said it's an inside and outside evaluators. Can you explain that a little bit more and give maybe an example or so of that? Well, we have several people that we work with and have worked with

115from outside that are very much connected to the educational world. Two of those people I've worked with are professors that work specifically with... former superintendents, now professors that work with training professors. We have a couple of people who are active superintendents, retired superintendents that just help us. And I like to be able to work with people regionally and that understand the demographics of the district that I'm working with. So if it's a rural district, there are kind of go-to people that I like to call on. If it's an urban district, again, there are people that understand that. that demographic and are very skilled at looking at and evaluating candidates. Okay. And the other one is Erevelis. What is that product? And can you explain that a little bit more as well? Yeah. The name actually

116is a derivative of the Latin term to reveal. But we created a product or an online platform. that answered a lot of the questions for us. The big thing that we wanted was, we wanted candidates to have a good experience when they apply. And in fact, I have had more than one candidate come back and thank me for the application process through the software. So they have an intuitive professional platform with which they present the information. All of that is kept in Reveles and done in a way that it makes screening the candidates both for you as a board because each one of you as board members will have a secure portal to go in and look at all the candidates and evaluate. But for us also as screeners, it makes it much easier to

117look at education history, work history, references. resume cover letters. We that we asked through our answer that I always encou at that when you're looki because those answers are all of those things that application are very clea it very easy to go in and and it's consistent from c So it really has transform Okay, thank you. Thank you other questions or comments from our board. Mr president, I saw that there was a in the chat miss Reynolds. I think wanted to answer the question about that. That we Mr Horton answered about. You know, about doing a reduced cost or no cost search of the candidate sort of leads to early want to make sure that she had time to answer that. Thank you, Dr. Hall. We'll let this one, we'll do this one, but I'm

118going to ask that any other questions be answered in writing and we'll just get that out to the board in the interest of time. Other presentations and discussions tonight. So thank you for pointing that out. But after this one, we're going to keep moving forward. Ms. Campbell. Thank you very much. Dr. Hall, I wanted just to. reassure you that just like osba if something doesn't work out we again come in and and do the search for no cost one thing that we do is we do midterm checks with the board president and the candidates in november again in january again in march to make sure that everything is going well with the board and with the candidates so that we can resolve any issues early on. So we've been asked to do that. A candidate

119will go, a successful superintendent will go too quickly on trying change initiatives and the board president will say you need to talk to them and our consultants will go out and meet with them. But any other questions we'll be glad to answer and thank you again for the opportunity. Thank you, Ms. Campbell. Any other comments or questions for OSBA? No. All right here, I'm seeing that. Thank you so much. Mr. Horton for joining us tonight. Thanks to Deb Campbell. And Mr. Moore and their team for joining us this evening for your presentations. Lots of good questions. And just a reminder to our board, we're not seeking any action on either of the proposals this evening. And time to let those breathe a little bit with you. questions though or follow-up questions that you'd like to

120submit we want to make sure that everyone gets the same information back now those to me by Monday December October please not December but October 19 I all those get those out to the consultants and get the answers back to the full boards that everyone has the same information moving forward so again we want to thank our consultants for coming on and joining us tonight we know this was time out of your out of your evening so we appreciate it thank you thank you we hope that we hope to have the opportunity to work with you and I definitely appreciate you giving me this opportunity to share with you it's as a liaison for OSPA for their urban network of districts that we work with Steve Szigethy, Urban is my passion I come from an

121urban district and I would love nothing more than have the opportunity to work with all of you. Steve Szigethy, Thank you. And thank you to the board for letting us have some time this evening to share those consultants with you. We look forward to picking up this discussion at our next meeting. But at this time, we are going to move forward with the rest of our agenda. We do have still some discussions yet to have around reopening this evening by going to our approval of the meeting minutes for our regular meeting from Monday, September 28, 2020. Do we have a motion? So moved. Second. Thank you, Dr. Maffri and Mr. Alexander for the motion and the second. Are there any comments or questions on the minutes? I think that was Dr. Akbar. Second. Sorry, Dr.

122Akbar. I thought I... It's okay. We both look good, so. All right. Roll call, please. This is Mansfield. Hey, when you do that to me, Ryan, yes. All right. Yes. Dr. Akbar? Yes. Yes. Mr. Alexander? Yes. Ms. Autry? Yes. Mr. Bravo? Yes. Dr. Hall? Aye. Thank you. Thank you. Superintendent's recommendations, personnel? Mr. President, I wish to recommend approval of the personnel recommendations presented in categories five through 16. Thank you. Do we have a motion? So moved. So moved. All right. We have Ms. Mansfield and Ms. McKittrick with a motion and a second. Any comments, questions, or discussion on the personnel agenda items? Hearing and seeing none, roll call, please. Mrs. McKittrick? Yes. Dr. Akbar? Yes. Mr. Alexander? Yes. Ms. Autry? Yes. Mr. Bravo? Yes. Dr. Hall? Aye. Mrs. Mansfield? Thank you. Next, Mr. President, I

123wish to recommend approval of the resolutions and motions presented in category 21. We have a motion? So moved. Thank you. I heard Dr. Akbar and Ms. McKittrick. And I heard you that time, Doc. Any comments, questions, or discussion on the consent agenda items? Yes, Mr. Akbar. So I just have two. One, I just wanted to recognize the 21st Century Grant that supports the Akron after school programs, which, as you all know, I think is very critical right now with everything that's going on. So I just wanted to mention that and thank the city for that grant. And then we also AMHA as well, I wanna thank them as well. Thank you for that Dr. Akbar. Anyone else with comments, questions on consent agenda? Hearing is. Dr. Akbar? Yes. Mr. Alexander? Yes. Ms. Autry? Yes. Mr.

124Bravo? Yes. Dr. Hall? Aye. Mrs. Mansfield? Yes. Mrs. McKittrick? Yes. Thank you. And finally, Mr. President, I wish to recommend approval of the business affairs recommendations presented in category 23. Thank you. Do we have a motion? Second. Thank you, Ms. McKittrick and Ms. Mansfield. Any comments, questions, or discussion on business affairs? And if, okay. Hearing and seeing none, roll call, please. Mr. Alexander. Yes. Ms. Offman. Yes. Mr. Bravo? Yes. Dr. Hall? Aye. Mrs. Mansfield? Yes. Mrs. McKittrick? Yes. Dr. Akbar? Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. Superintendent's report? Yes, Mr. President. This evening, I have Ms. Pat Schein from Akron Education Association and Dr. McWilliams-Woods to review the work that our a team of teachers and staff and other administrators have worked in terms of looking at changes to the 100% remote and looking at

125some options for going to maybe more of a blended model. Thank you so much. And thank you both for being patient with us. We appreciate you being here. Thank you for being here tonight to share. A couple different themes around our reopening plan and charge that we were given as a collective reopening team. First thing that we want to do is share, I'll share the family survey results that we administered. and take a look at some of the board members asked for us to reflect on some of the current COVID data. So we also have slides for that. And then I'll bring in Ms. Scheipp to be able to share a summary of our reopening teams that have been working diligently beyond imagine. on our reopening plans. And they really haven't stopped since the end

126of last year because they worked all summer on our potential blended learning opening. And then they continued to meet and work as we've been looking at our remote plan. And then they just continued to keep meeting. So this has been a dedicated group. But I wanted to start first with recapping our... survey results that we put out to all of our families. And we explained that the board is going to be starting their discernment process for looking at whether we stay remote the second nine weeks of school, which is right around that November, week of November 9th. The actual end of the first nine weeks is November 11th, but November 9th is when the first week. that we could look at if you do choose to have a change in instructional delivery that would start

127that week. So we sent out a survey that said that you're starting this discernment process at this meeting. And we wanted to get a sense of if you did choose to have a blended model for that second nine weeks, what percentage of the families would choose to have to stay 100% remote and which ones would choose the blended learning model. And it was a high level survey because we obviously didn't have all of the... data out there yet on what the models were going to look like because that's part of our discussion tonight. And we told families that after we present to the board, after you make your decision on the instructional models, we would come back to the families to make a final decision. So the survey really had two goals to it. Two

128primary goals is to inform the families about the models and about the decision-making process and allowing them to contribute to the discussions and let them weigh in. So that feedback process is the first part. But then the second part was for us to really look at our own staffing. And to start to figure out, let's look at the percentage, at least as of today, what percentage of families are choosing remote versus blended so that we can start to look at what percentage of our staff would need to be dedicated to 100% remote and how many we would need dedicated to the blended learning model. So in the survey, the way that we distributed this and put this out there, our goal was to get 100% participation so that we could really hear from 100% of

129our families. We worked very hard at putting it out via emails, via social media. on our website, but we also did follow-up calls from our connectors and we had all the surveys interpreted for all of our English as a second language families. So we really did a great job getting it out there because we, most importantly for that second big purpose for the survey, was for us to begin look to look at our staffing. We had to get a hundred percent. This wasn't just getting a pulse of our families, this was needing specific school by school data. The survey areas primarily were around the major decision of if the board voted for a blended model, would you choose to keep your child 100% remote or would you choose blended? But we also asked about transportation.

130If they are normally transported, would you continue to transport? And would you participate in the school meal program? We also had comments that we're going to do a short summary on some of the themes that emerged. And we had, as of yesterday, when we pulled the survey results, we had 15,756 surveys. We are going to keep it open through Wednesday. We originally said we were closing it this weekend. We are going to keep it open for a few more days because we had a number of people say they were going to fill it out, but they just needed a couple more days to get connected. So the big picture, the major question that we asked in the survey was if the board votes to bring students physically back in school, would you choose to have

131your child remain 100% remote or go with blended? And it's 60% chose blended. So 60% of our families, if the board chose to have site-based instruction, would choose to send their child. to a blended and we describe blended as at least two days per week site-based and the remaining days remote and then 40 percent indicated that they would continue having their child stay remote one interesting fact is with the next day we released the survey in the evening and the next day it's been out for a little more than a week The next day we had 250 responses when I first looked at the survey and the percentage split was exactly the same, 60%, 40%. So it really hasn't changed over the entire week and all the outreach, the percentage has remained consistent. This is

132the grade by grade breakdown. I thought you'd want to see the difference. It starts with preschool at the top and kindergarten. For kindergarten, the percentages, if you can't see it on your screen, is 71% chose blended versus 29% remote. That's the highest percentage out of all the grades. And then first grade was 67% of the families want a blended option. and 33% remote. And then you can see just from the light blue is blended, that it goes down almost in each grade level. The only other grade level that pops up is ninth grade at 59% wanting blended and 41% remote. But certainly our youngest, our families with youngest children were the respondents with the highest percentage wanting a blended option. I also broke down the data by cluster because I thought you'd want to see

133if it was consistent across all schools across the city. And you can see there is some variance. Buchdel had the lowest percentage, 51%, who would choose blended versus 49% wanting 100% remote. And Ellett has the highest percentage wanting blended at 65% and 35% remote. And then all the other clusters, North was the next. The highest in terms of blended was 63% of the families wanting blended and 37% wanting to remain 100% remote. We also asked a question. that if the opportunity became possible, would you send your child physically back to school four to five days per week with all the safety guidelines in place? So we wanted to differentiate, was there a big difference between families who wanted blended, for example, or would it change if we said, what if your child was coming back

134basically full time, four or five days a week? And you can see that the percentage didn't change drastically, but it was 57% instead of 60% said yes and 43% said no. So if you remember, 60% said they would choose blended overall. So it dropped three percentage points to say 57% would be interested in basically a full-time model. The bus question we asked, if your child typically rides the bus to school, are you planning on having your child ride the bus? A very low percentage said yes. Now we'll see how that sticks, whether that means that if we do have blended that families are planning on transporting or getting their child there some other way besides the bus. But if this is the case, we may have lower ridership that will help with the social distancing

135on the bus. And then the last questions were about participating in meals the second nine weeks. Will your child participate? The vast majority said yes, they would like their child to participate in the school meal program for that second nine weeks of school. Then we did have a comment section. It wasn't required, but at the end of the survey we asked if they had any comments. The big themes that emerged are on the screen. As you can imagine, the families that chose the 100% remote had concerns about the flu season coming up, the COVID exposure, some of the safety protocols and things like that. The families who chose the blended option had concerns about the social isolation that you heard from some of the families tonight. And the pros of at least this child could

136be in school academically for a couple days. It was that theme that kind of were pretty consistent across the two groups of families. Because the board has specifically talked in past meetings about the K-2 and the group of families that have the highest percentage wanting blended and the concerns about particularly kindergarten students and their ability to access their education coming in and having to learn computers at the same time, I pulled out what the themes were. from the families in that K-2 range. And for the most part, if they did choose blended, it was because of the inability to stay focused, the student's lack of Chromebook skills, distractions in the home. I don't think any of us would be surprised with those themes that emerged, but I think they're just accentuated for that youngest population.

137So that's the survey results. Why don't I pause for a second and see if there's any questions just specifically about the survey and then I'll come back to the COVID data that the board members or board leadership thought it would be good to include. Do we have any questions about the survey instrument itself? If you could also let me know in the chat because I cannot see all of you on the screen, please. Yeah, Mr. President, I've got a quick question with regard to the those who chose the blended versus. I know this was said in the survey. I just wonder, because I mean, I got a lot of emails and questions about, well, we went blended. Would my student have the same teacher or would they have different teachers? And I know there was

138language in survey that was a qualifier around that. But I'm wondering how many folks who feel that. And again, I know that we can't know. I'm just bringing this up as something to think about with regard to that question. if the number of courses I got was any kind of sort of sample size, there were a lot of folks that were saying, well, yes, I would vote for blended if my student was gonna have the same teacher every day. And even though the survey said that that wasn't a guarantee, I think people missed that disclaimer. So just any comments on that, Dr. Williams-Woods? Yeah, I think, I mean, what a beautiful testament to the strength and power of our teachers in the Akron Public Schools, because that by far was the biggest set of questions

139that I had in emails and texts and calls from families who are concerned about. whatever option they chose, whether it went remote or whether it went blended, they wanted to know, do I get to keep the same teacher? Because that was the deciding factor for them. And we did include in the document that went along with the survey, which had all the information about the safety protocols and about the high-level description of the models, we did clearly right at the top, we said that if you pick remote, you may not have the same teacher. And if you pick blended, you may not have the same teacher. It's actually the same exact language and you'll see that in a second because we're going to use that document to go through the models. That is the tough

140part. And it doesn't matter if we switch to blended today for the second nine weeks or whether we do it at the semester in January. When we do it, We are going to need to shift to these teachers are teaching remote and these are the teachers that are teaching any type of sight things. And even if we go back, if there's a vaccine and we go back five days a week right after the winter holidays, there's still going to be families who are going to pick 100% remote and we will still need to reshuffle the caseloads to enable. teachers to teach remote and teach the remote students and some of the teachers will stay with the site-based. We're hoping to be able to staff within the buildings to the maximum extent so that we can

141keep the staff within the building and use the staff there that if there's four teachers and there's enough kids for one of those teachers in a third grade to go to to go take the remote students and the other three can be site-based. We're hoping that the numbers fall together like that but in our preliminary look just at elementary we know that there's going to be some buildings that in some grades only five or six families in that particular school in that particular grade selected remote and so we may have to combine a couple classes across a couple schools to make one class for the remote but that is true i think it's important for everyone to understand it doesn't matter when we do that if we go to that blended model we're going to

142have to make that shift roger that i appreciate that uh and then the last question about the survey um is it's related um did we survey or are we planning to survey the teachers again Dr. Hall, if I could jump in here. I agree with what Dr. McWilliams-Woods just said. The logistics of staffing are impacted by enrollment and by the status of our staff, our teachers. AEA is sending out a survey. We wanted to wait until we presented these potential models to you, but we are sending out a survey starting tomorrow. I should have the results of that survey. I've been talking to many, many, many, many teachers and we do have teachers across the spectrum, obviously, that prefer to remain remote for their reasons, some that would come back five days a week, some

143in between. We'll have the results of that survey by the end of the week and we're happy to share that with you. I think it'll really inform give us a better picture of what the staffing might possibly look like, that we can then line up with what we think our families are choosing to do with the percentage that would stay home and hopefully we can get a better picture at that time. We also have at the same timing we'll have a survey that will go out to all of our other support staff too that supports the classroom so that they get the same opportunity to weigh in and have us get feedback including our administrators. Thank you. And I didn't see any other questions in the chat so I think you're good to keep going.

144Thank you. Ellen I believe Rob would like an email of this. presentation also. Sure, sure. So the second part of this first kind of teeing up our shared leadership team work. is the COVID rates and looking at the Summit County and looking at the district as a whole then in terms of where we fall. You all have seen this map. This is straight from the Summit County website. They send us the map every couple of weeks so that we can overlay our district then on top of that. So just to reorient you to the map. This is a cumulative and this is very important to understand that the way that Summit County posts this on their site, it's cumulative. So this is all the way from March through today, the case count. So things could

145be better in certain parts of the community and that's not going to be picked up on this particular map. because it is all of the cases that have happened from the beginning of this pandemic. But the case count is on the left-hand side, and this is by zip code. So you can see on this map, you know, the center part, this is the entire county. You can see that there's red parts kind of throughout the county that are on that moderately high area. And then there's one of the darker reds. in the you know just a little bit northern part of the central city so i'm going to click here so we can zoom in specifically on our district when you look around the outside of this orange line that goes all the way around

146you can see this is this is actually our border of the district okay the the black and orange line So this is each cluster. So the Ellett cluster is kind of in that middle range here, that 143 to 242 case count. You've got the Kenmore Garfield is in the lower range, the 90 to 142 case count. The East cluster is here. which is in that moderate range. The north cluster, as we've discussed before, is in that high count area. This whole part of the north cluster that comes down through the central city is on the complete opposite end, which is in that white portion. And then you get out to the Buchtel and the Firestone. Firestone is the next highest in terms of the case count within our district and the book dole is in

147that moderate range in the middle. So when you look, I actually put together the highest cumulative rates. This was compiled by Deborah Folk's team that works side by side with the Summit County Health Department. The highest cumulative rates in the county. are the zip code 44310, which is our North Hill Schools is the highest count area. And then it goes second to Stowe, then to Twinsburg, then Cuyahoga Falls. So these are the within the county. These are the highest count. And then 44313, which is basically our Firestone cluster, is primarily represented by that zip code. So in the county, we're at the number one and then number five highest count rate. And then the lowest count rate, when you look at the opposite and the white zip code areas, all of the schools listed here

148are in that lowest case rate. then the light blue is on the right-hand side which lists the schools that are in that second lowest case rate and again this is cumulative cases since since March so it goes all the way through the summer until now the other question that The board leadership had asked about is are the cases in other Summit County schools. We just were looking at some of the districts that are in the high end in terms of cumulative case rate. This is actually scrolling. This is straight from the Summit County Health Department. on the dashboard that is required, the case rate from the county. And there's 115 out of 122 schools, not districts, but 115 out of 122 schools listed have no cases reported. And you can see the various cases and

149that's week to week reports. since the required reporting structure that the governor put in place for the schools. So that's the information on the COVID rates. Let me pause again because we're now, Pat and I are now going to go into the actual recommendations from the reopening team. So if there's any questions about the COVID rate data, we should probably take those now before we get into the instructional models. Yeah, I've actually got a question, Mr. President. for Dr. Williams-Woods. So on the map showing, again, the color codes of red, pink, blue, et cetera, take, for example, the north cluster where there was an awful lot of red there. I just want to make sure that people who are looking at this, this is not assuming that those students attend school in that cluster, right?

150So, for example, they live in that cluster, but they may open enroll into other clusters. Is that an accurate statement? We actually have, and I think that's a great point, we have, it's about 40%, 45%. of our high school students, for example, go to school in clusters outside of their neighborhood school. So just for high school, I know that just because of college and career academies. And that was the percentage before we even started college and career academies. Since we've been an open enrollment district, our families really take advantage of that. And so it's more regional by cluster in terms of the case, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the students living there are actually going to school there. Roger that. And then quick follow up to that. So then so we have teachers who,

151for example, art phys ed that I think travel from from school to school. Right. So so I guess I guess the question there is, you know, are there do you have a comment or if you will, about, you know, those teachers who are moving from school to school potentially being. Or increasing their own risk of infection because they're in multiple schools in a day or in a week. Any comment on that? I think, and Debra Fogg's gonna showcase the high level health, just as a reminder, because we've talked quite a bit at the board meetings about our health and safety guidelines. But she'll hit some of those major ones in a minute here. But I think it's important that our goal is to have every single school as safe as possible. um it's all about

152mitigating risk right um but and we are uh still today that deborah's gonna mention that we're recommending six feet of social distance and we're recommending masks for all children and all adults unless they have a medical exemption. We're putting restrictions and that is much more stringent than most of the districts that are in this county and in this region and even some of our Ohio 8 brothers and sisters who are opening now. that some are going below that six feet of social distance. Right now, we're recommending to stay with that. And that's primarily to keep our faculty safe and our students and to limit the number of students who would have to quarantine. If we did have a case, if you're below that six feet, you can pick up more students and more faculty who

153would have to quarantine. If we maintain that six feet of social distance, that helps us protect that we won't have to pick up a whole group of students. It may, in fact, only be that one student who may need to quarantine because we've taken that extra precaution to maintain that six feet of social distance. Thank you. Dr. Akbar? Yes, thank you, Dr. Hall, for mentioning the point about students opening and enrolling. That was one of the things I was going to say. The one question I have is really about the next slide that you show with the 115 school district, or maybe it's two slides from here, sorry. Okay. Yes, this slide. So where it says 115 out of 122 schools listed has no cases reported and this is in Summit County. My question is

154how many of those schools are in session out of the 115? There are no They're the only and we can get you that data out of all of these schools because these also include our private schools and charter schools that aren't just the standard districts. But I am not familiar with any Summit County school district that has not reopened as blended as of yet. And then all the private and charters. I would say 90% of those have opened fully. There are a handful that we're aware of that are still doing remote. But I would venture to say we're probably at about 90% of the schools here have opened at least blended. Many have done the five days a week with they with. trying to stay within the six feet of social distance but they're actually

155generally less than that but i can get that data to show exactly which ones of these are um are blended and which ones are fully in session we have a spreadsheet that we track all of that for the typical districts i'll have to work on getting all the small charters as well thank you Great question. Anyone else before we start with the reopening plans? All right. Hearing and seeing none, I think you're good to go. So the, so the, just to tee this up and hand it off to Ms. Scheipp, the reopening teams, our charge was to look at that blended model. And if the board chose to reopen, what should that blended model look like from kindergarten through 12th grade? So that's what we're presenting tonight. We're not going to talk about whether we

156should stay remote or whether we should go five days or whether we should go blended. That is for the board to decide. The teachers were charged with that blended model in the middle. should that look like so that we had a very clear picture and a very clear option to give to you tonight and they have done an outstanding outstanding job i couldn't have asked for better teachers more committed teachers and i said earlier all the way through since last end of last year through the summer and through this entire fall they have been diligent about making these plans tight in terms of a blended option. So I'll turn it over to Ms. Scheidt. Thank you. So just to underscore what Dr. McWilliams-Woods just said, these were teams that were put together. They're listed here.

157We had 10 teams with the exception of the athletic team, which was appointed prior to us putting together these collaborative teams because they had to start sooner. We had many teachers, many administrators, lots of input from March on and I do want to say I also appreciate the number of teachers that stepped up to the plate, worked long hours over the summer. I just want to underscore also that their initial charge was to work on remote models, which they did and which you already have on the table. Tonight we're only I hesitate to use the word recommending, but we're proposing the blended models that these teams then put together so that you can compare and do what you need to do. The first team that I'd like to, I'm sorry, Ellen, did you want to

158pick up here? No, I'm going to go ahead and click. We're going to use the actual document. that was shared with families as the basis of our presentation tonight. And then, but at the end, we've added more detail to the document that was shared with families. So I think we thought this was the best way to show it instead of separating it out so families could know as soon as we post this on the website tomorrow, they're looking at the same document that you all shared tonight. We asked Deborah Folk to just highlight some of the areas for the health and safety provisions that kick off this document. And again, this has been out on the website. This was shared with all the families and this is what was used if they needed more information

159than what was actually in the survey itself. Dr. Hall, this is exactly where I mentioned earlier. that if families chose blended learning, then the fifth bullet down says you may or may not have the same teacher and then the same over here for the remote learning, that same option. But this was the start of explaining to families the two choices for the survey, but then the entire rest of the document is explaining. the safety protocols that will be in place for a blended learning option, and then we go straight into the instructional models. So Mrs. Fok, will you step through and just highlight the highlighted areas for the health and safety? Good evening. It's nice to see you all. As we put together the health and safety for blended learning, please look at the highlighted

160areas and then there's additional information. We will maintain the six feet of social distancing. Although there have been discussions with other districts, and I know that we have heard that other districts may be doing less than six feet, in working with Summit County Public Health, it is in our best interest for the safety of our students and staff to continue that six feet of social distancing. We have reduced the capacity of the school buses, and that was again in line with approval of Summit County. And I please want to advise you that this has been a successful plan because we're using these buses now to transport schools that we service using that plan currently to non-publics and charters. So the reduction and the safety protocols on the buses have been very, very successful. require that

161all staff and students wear masks. We currently were very pleased tonight to receive another donation of almost 100,000 masks from Fort NGL along with the other donations that we have received from FEMA. and GAR and we are able to help support both staff and students in this regard although many of our staff and students do have their own masks that they are bringing on a daily basis. Clean and sanitize the building are standard procedures but thankfully you have just approved the disinfection two-step process tonight during your approval of the business affairs recommendations. This is an application of not only a sanitizing, but an antimicrobial solution on top of that, that once it dries, it truly allows us to mitigate the spread of COVID in our classrooms, in our cafeterias, in our gyms, in our office

162areas. And we have already begun planning that process and have started. We will continue to limit the visitation by outside visitors to our buildings. This has already been in place and we will continually watch that and mitigate that as well. And outside use of the buildings is limited as well after school hours. We will continue to provide meals to all students. whether they will be blended and in school or that they will have 100% remote access. I am happy to report there was a change in the USDA program that allows us to continue summer feeding, which is the easiest of the options through the end of the school year. This just happened yesterday. will be available throughout the season in order to do that and that i wanted to let you know what the bus

163procedures for blended learning are and we listed those at the bottom of the document so that we can let people know exactly what's going to happen what if a child travels by bus man thank you ellen thank you okay miss shite now we'll go through the models so initially when we um brought together the elementary team, which is K-5. However, it does include sixth grade in the East cluster. We had split the teams up into both primary and intermediate. After seeing that, we found that it was easier and more collaborative if we just joined those two teams back together as one. They've worked on this blended model, and it's what they're calling a 2-2-1 model. which would break the students up into two core cohorts. Monday and Wednesday, half the students would participate in on-site

164learning, socially distanced, so that, again, the classrooms would be adjusted for that, smaller class sizes. And then on Tuesday and Thursday, the second cohort would come into on-site. They would be given on-site lessons and learning, teaching and learning. and then they would be assigned lessons and tasks to work on their remote days. So two days on-site, two days remote. Friday, they were calling a remote check-in, and that would be a day where teachers would be able to work with individual students, small groups, do check-ins with most of their class to see where the needs are, what resources students would need, and obviously check in with parents to see where any particular student might need some additional support. If you can scroll down there, Ellen. So a sample daily schedule for students would be coming in

165at 8.30 and working until two o'clock. Teachers, they would continue to be eight to 3.15. Students would receive breakfast. Once they arrive at school, the AM lesson session would begin at 8.30 to 11. And working with those on-site students, lunch and recess would remain 11 to noon. And each school will typically have a different way to approach that depending on the building that they're in. so they can adjust that. The teachers thought it was very important that the students have at least 30 minutes of break time during the day, not only a mask break perhaps. So what the teachers would like to do is have that 30 minutes for lunch and then an additional 30 minutes where they could develop a schedule at the building. which would be a staggered schedule, which a particular teacher

166could then take their students out on the playground and socially distance from each other or have a break within the room, socially distanced with some activities just so they could turn off their brain for a moment and just socialize. It was really important. And they said that possibly depending on the building, they could do a 15 minute break in the morning and a 15 minute break in the afternoon. That would be up to each individual teacher based on their students needs particularly at the younger age at the primary age and then they beginning at noon to two o'clock would be the p.m. Session of lessons Dismissal would be at two o'clock and then the teachers would continue their work day at 3.15, getting that all important planning time. They would be assigned a lunch at

167between 11 and 12, but they would be with the students. So the two o'clock to 3.15 would be for teacher collaboration and planning. Okay, then when we go on to the middle school, questions at each point or wait till the end if there's specific questions about the elementary I think it'd be fine to take them now if there's any question just in term especially in terms of clarifying the actual model itself yeah I have a clarifying question if I may mr. president sure So the lunch piece. So if I'm looking at that right, so the teachers would not get a lunch break or they'd have to eat lunch with the students? I mean, I'm assuming that they're eating lunch with the students and then we're making the time at the end of the day. Is

168that what I'm seeing there? I mean, just for clarification's sake? Correct. They would need to eat lunch with the students. However... There are some cafeterias and maybe Deb Falk could address this. There are some cafeterias in some buildings, depending on social distancing, where some of that's why we say that for the most part, each building can kind of customize this depending on the number of enrollment and number of staff in the building. If they're able to utilize the cafeteria and then they have the staff you can't leave students unsupervised during lunch therefore the teachers will be in their rooms with students at the lunch break for 30 minutes that's not an uninterrupted lunch for the teachers that they normally have that break in student supervision at the elementary level that's very difficult to acquire so

169doing social distancing so they have the team did put a 30-minute lunch also for teachers at the end of the day from 2 to 2 30. and then that 2 30 to 3 15 would be teacher collaboration time in addition to that depending on the special schedule for art music gym is when normally elementary teachers receive their planning times they would have a 45 minute planning time sometime during the day in which they could choose to eat their lunch also during that time Roger that. And then my second last question, I'll see the floor back to the Mr. Bravo. But so I'm looking at this right. And I think I think this is important. This is an important distinction slash clarification. So in the remote model, it might read on this is the kids, what

170kids have, students have instruction every day. And in a blended model, they have three days less instruction. Am I am I am I understanding that right? They do have three days remote. Now, you could argue that on the Friday in the elementary model, some of the students will have instruction based on need, but they are receiving more direct instruction in the remote model at this point. Roger that. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Autry and then Ms. Mansfield. Thank you, Mr. President. I think Derek actually alluded to my question, which was about the self-directed remote learning days. So that, just to clarify, that is actually different than what's going on right now. So what you're showing us, those students on the self-directed remote days, there's not an actual teacher giving a lesson. Is that accurate? That

171is accurate. Yes, currently with five days remote, 100% remote, the teacher is in the classroom 100% of the time when students are being taught. Self-directed remote day is the students would support themselves based on the lesson they received the prior day with projects and work that they had to complete based on the lesson they just received. So that's correct, Ms. Autry. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Mansfield? So I think I have questions on both ends here. So I heard from a few teachers who were concerned about the lack of breaks. I know part of the reason we're keeping one adult with every class is to limit that exposure by adults to children and children to adults. But there's been some concern expressed by a few that breaks may be hard to come by. It's already

172hard when you're a teacher if you have to have a restroom break or. you know, waiting to eat your lunch while you're, especially, I know what cafeteria times are sometimes like, especially with little ones, trying to get things opened and things like that. We usually have people who are in the cafeterias that can help them with that. In this case, it's going to be the teacher while they're also trying to get their lunch in. So just a little. just wanted to express a concern about that. I'm sure there's something in the plan. I told them, Ms. Scheib, that there's no way that you would let us leave them without those safety things in place, those comfort things in place. So I tried to reassure on that. So if you want to address that at all,

173and then I have one clarification after that. I appreciate the question. Thank you. It is a real concern. And just by nature of scheduling, elementary buildings operate different schedules than secondary buildings. In secondary buildings, when the students are on a period-by-period schedule, there is time to naturally include those planning times and those break times in for teachers. This is going to be a real challenge based on our staffing for in elementary buildings. As far as break times from students, that would be during their daily planning time and where a building could support that, an additional break time for. And I think that if Dr. McWilliams-Woods wants to weigh in, I think we have a commitment that those are the details that we will work with building to building after the fact to ensure that those

174teachers have the ability to leave their students to use the restroom when they need to. And they also had a real concern with losing that. teacher collaboration time. You know, our teachers are working, and I'm sure you all realize this, they're working much longer hours. then they always work longer hours outside of their contractual workday. Willingly, that's the profession, but they are working a lot of hours. And so I think we do have to be aware of our staff's social and emotional needs and to make sure they do have that break time so that they can sustain the teaching, the great teaching that they're doing. So yes, we would address that. Yeah, I do think it's important because The model that we had proposed back, I always call it our June 29th model, is different

175than this model. When we were communicating back on June 29th, We were proposing that our K-2 come back four or five days a week. And the way we were doing that was by prioritizing staff in the elementary building to cover classes to reduce class size. So we were going to be pulling tutors and our fine arts teachers and using them to help. support the staffing needs to reduce class sizes in K-2 in kind of a unique staffing model. We're not proposing that here. So I think it's really, really important for everyone to hear what Ms. Scheib said is that we still, with this model that we're proposing tonight. This is a blended model where teachers will have their, there will be regular specials in this model. So they will have their planning time just the

176way they normally do because we'll be able to have the schedules for the arts basically the same as a typical day because we're not pulling them to do the K-2 anymore. Where things change a bit is for lunch. depending on the size of the building and that cafeteria size and how many kids you need to get through lunches, we can use cafeterias and that's part of the health guidelines that we just went through, but it's in this document for your review that you received before this meeting. We can use cafeterias with the appropriate social distancing, but depending on the size of the building, depending on how many students you have to get through different cycles of that lunchroom, we may need to use classrooms as well. And that's where the team said, well, let's have

177teachers then, because you can't have students eat by themselves with just older kids supervising. That's not permitted in our child nutrition federal guidelines. Yes, some teachers may need to, in some buildings, may need to eat with their students, but that's why we've made some accommodations to have students leave earlier to accommodate for that. So it's not the model that you saw last spring or last summer, where we were really not giving teachers much break at all because we were pulling all staff so they couldn't have their planning time during the day. But this one, they should be able to get their planning time in. The only challenge would be because elementary teachers have four days of planning. So on that fifth day would be another challenge for each individual building to work in a break

178time for teachers. They don't have a special scheduled for that day. Okay. And that was one of the issues that came up. And I tried to reassure that this is the big picture plan, and then we would work on it at the building level. And again, reassuring that there was no way that either of you would sign off on a plan that didn't take good care of the teacher. So that was that. The other question is, I want to kind of redirect back to something. that Dr. Hall asked about instruction time. And I guess Diana's kind of was that direction too. Dr. McWilliams-Woods, we talked a little this week about how even though the actual time with a teacher in front of them might be less, how there was a belief from the teachers and

179the committees that with a reduced class size. So especially if it ends up with that 60-40 split, right? So you've got 60% of the kids coming back and then that 60% is cut in half for each cohort. You've got a really small class size and how the staff believe that that would make a big difference in material delivery, right? If you have a class of 24 delivering that material versus a class of eight to ten or less um delivering material yeah the balance that that we're navigating here is in the remote yes you get five days of instruction direct instruction from your teachers for the students who are able to connect in who don't have disruptions at home who don't have technology glitches coming in and out whose family is there to support them to

180make sure they're staying intact and it's not a fifth grader trying to supervise a first grader being online. All those conditions that yes, we have five days of instruction. And in some of our classes, our teachers are reporting that great percentages of students showing up. every day and being engaged that entire time. And then in other classes, teachers are saying that's a struggle. And so when you balance this model, yes, there is less direct instruction time, but you're banking on, just as you were saying, Mrs. Mansfield. that two days of face-to-face instruction without the distractions from home, without the technology glitches coming in and out because of bandwidth issues, without fifth graders trying to supervise first graders to keep them engaged in a lesson, you take all that away. When you get them in front

181of you, and you have two days of class sizes of 12 or less. So you're automatically getting a small group instruction that those two days with then some remote lessons that are assigned by the teacher to support that, where yes, students have to do it on their own, similar to some of our students are doing their learning on their own right now without a lot of family support because the families are working. that those two days of small group instruction, 12 or less, is where the sweet spot that you can get a tremendous amount of instruction done. And that balances the loss of five days of direct instruction. So that's the balance. It's gut wrenching because for the students who are engaged remotely, they're getting that five days of direct instruction. But there's a lot

182of conditions on what I just said about for the students who are fully engaged in their learning remotely to take advantage of that five days of instruction. And I will say that I would be remiss not to repeat what I said earlier that Even among our teachers, as with our families and administrators, we have people all over the map. You know, there's no one perfect model and there's going to be challenges to anything. But I believe everybody approached this with the best interest of the kids, but also keeping in mind. the health and safety of our staff. So I believe when you say staff noted or that I would say in any every instance, some staff believe one thing, some staff believe believe another. So that's why I'm interested and I'm sure you will be

183too at the results of our A. E. A. Survey. We might get a clearer picture. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Miss McKittrick. And then Dr Hall. Thank you, Mr. President. Good evening, everyone. And thank you to the teams for all their hard work in putting this document together. I have a question about. the days when the kids will be at home, especially for our youngest students, maybe up through sixth grade or fifth grade, I suppose, the self-directed remote days. I'm wondering, I'm looking at the schedule and I'm seeing two hour chunks of time for them. And I'm wondering developmentally for especially our youngest kids, if that's an... developmentally appropriate expectation that a child in kindergarten, first, second, third grade can sit and I don't know, I guess maybe the word self-directed is what I'm struggling with

184because I don't know so many kids who are that young who would be self-directed for two hours at a time. So if you could walk me through that maybe a little bit. Thank you. So the schedule in front of you right now, the two hour chunks of time would be for the site-based learning. Those would be that would be the schedule that the teachers and students would follow on site on the two days when they site-based instruction. The self-directed remote time would be at the students pace. They would just have an assignment or a remote lesson that they had to complete, but they would do that at their pace. Yeah, the teachers would be posting, you know, we will have. this general framework that in the morning, if a teacher has for their morning block,

185typically on their site-based days and on their check-in day, that this is when reading is, for example. The families and the students on those self-directed days, the recommendation will be that they continue doing their reading lessons in the morning, and then they do their math in the afternoon, if that's the typical schedule. How they actually break that time up will be up to the family in terms of the pacing for the student, given what... assignments are assigned. It may not be anything computerized. It may be a project that the teachers talked about during the site-based time, and they're asking them to do the project, which might be more of a hands-on type project that they're doing that next day. It's not all necessarily computer-based because now that you will be site-based with them, so there

186can be different types of assignments assigned for that self-directed day. That's why it says self-directed remote instruction, but it can be self-directed in terms of the assignment, whatever the assignment is given. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Hall. Yeah, thanks. So first, I just want to recognize and acknowledge that tonight, the purpose of tonight is not to. debate the merit of these plans. I think it's to ask clarifying questions that will help us make a decision down the road. So again, I just want to make sure I'm following that sort of same rubric myself and sort of thinking about what I'm going to ask and not ask. But to that point, I want to go back to Ms. Mansfield's point for a minute, right? And Dr. Mowry, you weighed in on this as well. I think

187the challenge here is that there's not any real consensus that we know of yet, right? I mean, so a lot of the ifs that you mentioned, the assumptions that you mentioned on remote learning days, I imagine that cuts both ways. I imagine those same ifs and assumptions also apply on self-directed remote days as well, right? I mean, so it gets challenging, you know, on a remote day. Think about the challenge you have on a day when there is no structure that's even attempted to be introduced at all. Right. I mean, and so, you know, I, you know, like Ms. Mansfield, I've talked to a lot of teachers this week as well. And this is why I'm saying there's no real consensus. And this is where the survey results I'm looking forward to seeing, because, you

188know, you know, the 25 or so teachers I talked to this week, all but one, you know, you know, had a lot of concerns, you know, with the blended model, because they were feeling that they were already a little bit behind and doing remote. and that they believe that there was no way that they were going to be able to get five days of instruction crammed into two days, regardless of the class size. Now, granted, that's not me saying that. That's me sharing feedback that I've heard from teachers with this particular group. I'm not saying, I'm not here to say who's right or wrong or to assign value judgments either way. I'm just sharing feedback that I've gotten. And so that's where, you know, as I'm in my mind, as I'm balancing the merit to

189the remote model and balancing the merits of a blended model. You know, you know, where I'm currently at is regardless of what this board decides to do in a week or two, you know, there are going to be a lot of folks who are unhappy with what we do. And so so I this is just, you know, this decision just is, as you put it earlier, this is truly gut wrenching. So so anyway, so that was. Yeah, I think. Just to add in there, I think this is that one time in everyone's career, and Ms. Scheib and I have talked about this frequently, that this is that one time where no matter what you pick, it is not going to be the right decision for a group of faculty and a group of students and

190a group of family members. So I think our charge collectively is to look at all of the risk factors, not just the pandemic risk factors, but also the academic risk factors, the social, emotional, mental health risk factors. Look at all of them and do our best in terms of giving choices, giving options, and moving forward with confidence and knowing that, unfortunately, there is going to be families and faculty and staff who that decision is not going to be the best decision. But we have to look at all of those collective factors and obviously all of the data that we just talked about with the risk factors for the health and safety. We need to look at that collectively. If we have students stay at home completely and stay with the remote, we're doing a fabulous

191job with the remote learning, better than any district I think I would point to. We're doing fabulous. There are students who are not, and we're seeing the early returns from our interim progress reports that I've been talking to our principals, gathering that data that I'll be able to share with you for our secondary students. And we're seeing significant increases in the number of students who are failing. and who are not at the same level that they were last fall. So we know that there are great remote education happening better than I could have ever envisioned and that's a testament to our faculty who are just ridiculously dedicated to our students and families. But there are some students who are not. able to keep up and engage and for whatever reason and I hear testimony from

192Teachers who tell me that students who are completely disengaged in a brick and mortar are flourishing right now. And then I'm hearing student from a teacher saying that students who were flourishing in a brick and mortar are struggling. And that could even be our highest performing kids. So as you know, it can go both ways. I think whatever we choose, if we decide to stay 100 percent remote, we have to figure a plan. to not just let the students who are not making it and who are not connecting and who are struggling, we have to figure some way to engage them, offer some intervention services, offer a way to make that happen. And I think that's the balance. We have this plan for blended. This plan for blended, if that's what you choose, we're gonna

193go full blown and make this a great success as a collective team. If we decide to stay 100% remote, I think we've got to look at needs to shore maybe it's 100% remote plus with some features to help support the students who are not being successful right now, instead of just continuing with exactly what we're doing. And we can obviously talk more about that. And Dr. McWilliams-Woods and I spoke as recent as today at length about perhaps the next charge for our committees would be to come up with some type of intervention model that will address those needs or several models so that our families would have a number of options. So it's thank you, thank you to the teachers and administrators who are on those committees because we just upped them again for another.

194Yeah, right. They thought their work was done, but we're never letting them go away. I think we have our questions for now. Let's move on maybe to the secondary and then we'll open it back up. I think the middle school, this should be pretty easy because it's very similar. It's also a two to one model that we just talked about with elementary. So it's two site-based days, two self-directed remote days, and one remote check-in day, exactly like we talked about with elementary. It's two cohorts. It'll be Monday, Wednesdays. We didn't mention with elementary that the way we'll do the assignments. for the two cohorts will be by last name and then it's called family census that we have in our system where even if your family if your children have different last names they'll be

195picked up as one unit so that we'll line up k through eight the days that students are coming in for site based we'll be able to line up the family so that your students are coming in all on the same day And so we'll make sure of that. So the middle school is very similar. The sample schedule is the same for. The middle school, the students would actually see every single teacher in their typical schedule, a typical brick and mortar kind of schedule on the two days that they come in. And then the same way as elementary on the day, the site-based day, the teachers would give assignments for the self-directed remote days. And they would give assignments either a project-based while the students are there for site-based. But we would continue to use Google

196Classroom and have all the assignments there so that we continue that. And that's just in case there's a student who needs to be off for whatever reason. If they're sick at home, we're so now into all of this digital kind of classroom and turning in assignments digitally that we can have a seamless system now that if a student does need to be out or a group of students need to be out. they can still get their assignments all through Google Classroom and turn their assignments in that way too. That's also another way that we're trying to reduce exchanging of papers too, that we can keep the assignments turned in as much digitally as possible. So the schedules look similar. The self-directed schedule, we just basically in the same way as Mrs. McKittrick asked for elementary,

197we're saying that students should basically follow the same flow of the day. Although this is self-directed, they can use their own kind of schedule to navigate through on the self-directed days. But we decided just to post the team decided to post similar flow for the students to know how much time they should be spending on the different assignments provided throughout the day. But there's flexibility for families on how to do those self-directed days. And then high school, I'll go ahead and do this and then see if there's any questions for secondary. High school is different. It's not quite the same as the June 29th model. The high school team really worked diligently on how best to handle these credit bearing classes that they have. You know, the high school world in terms of courses. These

198are all high stakes courses that they're taking now. These are all credit bearing for the most part, every single credit bearing or graduation requirements for many of the electives as well. So having shifts in schedules and having shifts in courses mid-semester was an issue that the high school team was absolutely. adamant that shouldn't happen in the middle of a high school course. So their recommendation is, and it's almost like I was saying this is a great model of how you can have stay remote, but provide time for some intervention. As I was just speaking to Dr. Hall about, that this schedule maintains the remote during the large part of morning and even into that early afternoon. So the remote schedule would, there's a little bit less time in each course, but the teachers would still

199be meeting with the students every day remotely. And that's this 830 to one facilitated remote time. So that's just exactly like what they're doing now. And then in the afternoons, students would be scheduled in cohort. So it wouldn't be every kid having an opportunity to come on an afternoon. The academy teams would work collectively. So that's all the content teachers in an academy team. And by cohort, they would decide which students needed to come in. And that could be based on, and it's not all the kids would come in in the afternoon. This is where kids could come for, because they're struggling in a course and needing some intervention time, they could come in for their career tech labs. If you think of all of our career tech that we just celebrated this morning with

200our HIT program. all those healthcare fields to get the industry credentials that they need in those healthcare fields, which goes towards graduation. You have to have lab time. You can't get a welding industry certificate without spending time welding. You can't get a cosmetology license and industry credential without spending hours cutting hair. And all of that could happen during this afternoon time. And also, you know, all the way through Friday afternoons, we could kind of block that time during that. that afternoon block. So we're calling that site-based support, but it would only be students who are assigned by their academy team. When you look at a sample schedule then you've got the primary instruction. We're still in block days for our high schools. So on A day there would be four blocks that go through the

201morning. On B day four blocks that's similar to what they're happening right now. And then in the afternoon this gives you a little bit more detail about that self-directed remote and site-based support instruction. So some students would be called in for that afternoon time. And again, they would be in cohorts, same way in two different groups. So we're not asking mixed groups of kids to come in for that afternoon, but the academy teams would work out who comes in during that afternoon block. And then the only other team that we're reporting out tonight, and then we'll take any questions, is the students with severe disabilities. That team is recommending having students come in each day, but knowing that based on there's a commitment that we would have reduced class sizes. The way that our numbers

202are looking right now with 40% staying remote and 60% choosing blended. This would naturally get these classes down from eight typically to four, probably five at the highest number. And we would also look at making sure that there were two educational assistants in the classroom. The MD teachers and Ms. Scheipp can weigh in on this group because they're passionate about keeping their classes intact. and not having the remote kids go and be educated by other teachers that haven't had the students. They are so dedicated to their class and to the relationships that they form with their students and the families that they want to keep that class intact. And so this team will really look at that schedule during the day because they would like to keep the remote students and the site-based students and

203build the schedule during the day to enable them to see the students for some site-based instruction, but then also see the remote students, the 100% remote students at the same time. in the afternoon or with their educational assistants while the educational assistants are with the remote students they're working with their site-based students there will be need to be a lot of time for that team to keep working to figure out what that schedule looks like and what's the best flow but i have a lot of confidence that they'll be able to pull that off yeah did you want to add anything for that group that uh yes i appreciate that the um not only are the teachers passionate about it, but our families certainly. It's so critically important. I mean, even I'm speaking as an

204intervention specialist, those highest need students really need to have their same teacher. They don't do the transitions very well. if we can make but there's also many challenges as far as social distancing, having enough adults available on a consistent basis that we can rely on that will be there to meet the both the physical and social emotional needs and academic needs of these students. So we're not quite there yet, but the team is very represented. Not only the teachers, but there are supporting services, our related service providers are on that team. And I believe if they can continue working on that, that they should be able to come up with something. And I just wanted to quickly mention, because I know a couple board members had teed this up for me to talk about tonight,

205that the interim program that we have in place where the after school program for our students with severe disabilities, I wanted to just give you an update on where we were with that, which is the bridge to whatever we decide for that second nine weeks. The deadline for parents to respond is today, although we're continuing to reach out to families who didn't respond to the survey. So far, we have 73 parents who've responded for the eligible. families of students with severe disabilities. 12 have declined so far, 61 have signed up, so that's about 83% of the families who've reached out. There are a number of families who haven't responded to the survey yet, so we're calling and following up to see if their non-response was because they're not interested or whether they just missed the

206communication that went home regarding this opportunity. So we'll be following up. We did get, we've posted the position and we have a number of staff. We had 28 intervention specialists apply to work the afterschool program. So we'll be able to match that up shortly and it'll start in a couple of weeks. So that is the only thing that is missing from this plan right now is our early learning program our preschool Miss Shipe and I just put together a team. We thought the elementary model would suffice for preschool, but We have decided to have a separate team come together with preschool teachers And so they'll be working this week to look at the elementary model and see if they want to adopt that or something separate so the next time we'll be able to see

207you at the next meeting we'll be sure to include the preschool team as well and that is all we have so we'll open it up to any additional questions thank you Dr. Akbar and then Dr. Hall okay so I'm going to ask my questions first then I have a comment before I do that I do want to say I appreciate you mentioning Ms. Scheib about teachers working more during COVID. One of the sad realities that I've heard is people have made comments that teachers aren't working. I've actually been appalled by those comments because teachers are working more. And as a person who taught for a year, and one of the reasons why I decided to stop teaching was because it was the workload was just so much. I will never think that teachers don't work

208a lot. So I have firsthand experience with that. But with that being said, I wanted to say something else after that, but I want to get to my questions. I won't ask all of them for the sake of time and to let some of the other board members ask. But you kind of teed me up really well, Dr. McWilliams-Woods, because one of my concerns, actually Ms. Shipe as well, is those students in what I'm calling the most challenging group of students. So I'm really concerned about the students who are in special ed. I'm really concerned about those students who are also in need of, you know. a career technical education in the classroom lab type experiences as we talked about earlier today. I'm also concerned about those students who aren't connecting in and what the

209challenges that may bring to them. So with all that being said, Well, I forgot another group that I'm really concerned about, which is K-3. And I'm really still on the third grade portion of that. So just want to put that out there. I'm really concerned about those groups, mostly because we know that they're the ones who are probably falling the most behind. And so I'm wondering, when you think about that. What plans do you have to, how do I say this? What plans do you have if we go fully blended, right? And then something happens, are we going to be closing school by school? Are we looking at the entire district? And then if we do have to go school by school, how are we attending to those needs? Considering if we go with this

210plan, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, I think that's actually an important question because we, Ms. Scheib and I from day one, even back at our June 29th model. We wanted to make sure we were building this in a way that it was seamless so that if we did have students who needed to be remote or if we if the whole district or the governor shut down schools again. Could we do this in a way that it would just be easy for us that we wouldn't have to take, you know, two weeks to freak out and say, oh, my gosh, now we have to go remote. And how do we switch things? Fortunately, we have that infrastructure and the technology and the amazing professional development that our teacher trainers did at the beginning of the year

211that we can make that seamless, that if we do have students who get quarantined in a small group individually. they can continue to learn at home or if we had to do an entire school. I'd like to have Mrs. Folk explain what happens when you do the contact tracing because it is very precise. It's not this large sweep that the whole school has to go and she has experience and is living with the folks from Summit County Public Health. so she can explain what happens step by step when a student gets identified or a faculty member gets identified. Good evening again. So let's go with a student first. When we're notified that a student has tested positive, we ask exactly what information we found with how did they get to be positive and who is

212their contacts. If they are truly sitting in a classroom because it is blended learning, We have worked very closely with our teacher union to explain that every teacher will need to have a specific seating chart, just like we do on the buses, to locate a student in the classroom. So as an example, if I was attending Ms. Scheipp's class, she's going to have a seating chart where I sit, and every day that I'm in the class, I'm at that desk and that desk only. The desks are... socially distanced, I would be wearing my mask and therefore if I tested positive then I could be located as to who I was around in within the class on every day that I'm in attendance. So those charts are extremely important to keep and keep up to date.

213The same thing will happen just as we do on a bus now. We've had to pull this only once for a charter school that we actually thought we had an issue with and it was very successful. Once a student is then told to be positive because of the new governor's requirement, I then go out to the Summit County website and I report that that student is positive. I then also list the school in which the student is located. One of the things that we are asked are, is the student part of any kind of extracurricular activities? And if they are, we are required to list them. We also are required at this point to say, is the student attending school remotely or, you know, five days a week? It depends on those answers as to

214what we need to do next. A contact is considered less than six feet for more than 15 minutes. So therefore, those are the kinds of criteria that we will follow for students. The same issue happens when a staff member reports themselves as a positive to either myself or HR. Mr. Wamus and I work very closely with this. Mr. Wamus then contacts the individual. person to see exactly when did they start to realize that they were having symptoms. You go back 48 hours to start seeing when the disease process started. We then report that also to Summit County Health. and we do that same kind of tracing back. So as an example, right now if you had a staff member that is working remotely from home, they may not have any direct context that we have

215to report. And with putting that information for students or staff onto the Summit County website, I then go out to our website. If you go to our main website, click on districts and then go to the bottom right hand corner you will see the current APS COVID dashboard that is required for us to notify community and we update those are necessary you'll see a listing of active students and reported cases and the same for staff now what's unique is the actual case counts stay the same and get adjusted if we would get more. What changes is after the quarantining is over and the student or released from being in quarantine or in isolation, then that number goes down because they're no longer an active case. So that is then updated and by reporting it to

216Summit County, that is then sent on to the state so that they get that data as well. Did I answer your questions, Dr. Akbar? I think you did. Thank you very much. You're welcome. I think the most important two numbers are anyone within six feet of the student for 15 minutes or more. That's who needs to be quarantined. And then, so it's not the whole school has to shut down. It's not the whole class that has to shut down. It's anybody who's positive, anyone who is within six feet for 15 minutes or more, that's who has to potentially quarantine. Summit County Public Health is who makes that final determination. But that's why the more we can keep six feet of social distance, at least right now, that helps us in terms of the number of

217students who would have to be sent home if a student or a staff member tests positive. And then we can continue their remote education while they're home until they get back. So then that's the perfect model, right? So then the decision on you is that, and what teachers are concerned with, obviously, is what if a student's asymptomatic? What if a staff member's asymptomatic? How do I know if it's an exposure to COVID or if that student has a cold or the flu? So it's challenging. Again, it's not going to be a perfect scenario. On paper, it looks great. Yeah, exactly. I know, you know, I have allergies, so my nose or eyes can be running any day. I do, and every time I cough in a store, people are looking at me. Like you got

218the plague or something. Yeah, so that's definitely a reality that we live in, unfortunately. So I'm going to ask one more question, and then I'll make a point. And then if we have time at the end, I'll ask my last question. So... The other concern that I have is around student and staff behavior. One of the, or actually two of the conversations I had this last week and weekend was around, and I think we might've even gotten an email about this too, was around just seeing some staff members getting comfortable and not using their mask. and being physically distancing. And this isn't to denigrate any one person or anything, but the concerns that I was receiving was more so around students, but then that other staff thing as well. So just thinking about the culture

219that we need to create in the school and throughout the district. around the proper habits in which we need to engage because it's a totally different way to engage in a school than anyone's ever experienced in our district. So is there plans? I'm sure they are. What plans are in place to monitor or encourage those behaviors and habits? And then also, I think Dr. Hall mentioned this months ago. One of my other concerns that's kind of related to that is individuals who may have some type of symptoms, you know, are there procedures in place for them to, for that to be caught early on? Can I help address, and I'm going to go to the second one first, Dr. Akbar. The health clinics at all schools have been updated over this past summer. So our

220nursing staff who we get from Akron Children's Hospital have been trained to look for exactly COVID symptoms. We have isolation units that if a student or a staff member would report to the clinic showing symptoms, they come into a different door, they're evaluated. If it is truly not a COVID issue, the student or staff will be returned. to work or told to go home. But if it's COVID, we isolate them in the isolation location. They will put a mask on a student. The parent is immediately called or the guardian, and they must remove the student within 60 minutes of notification. For 30, 60 is realistic by the time we call and a parent or guardian can travel to pick up a student. Staff members would be told to report directly to the principal that they

221need to leave, and they would leave as soon as possible. And then the principal becomes the manager of the building to help make sure the class is covered while we get substitutes in. The second issue is we have been addressing the required masks. All buildings are signed outside that upon entry, you must have your mask. Anybody who doesn't follow the procedures are reminded of those procedures by staff members and anybody who observes it can make a anonymous call to Summit County Health and if they report that they have observed, you know, adults in a location not following the masking requirements. or students, we have to deal with it. So as an example, I will contact a school principal and say, this is a report. We need to do this immediately. If it is a support

222member, staff member, I have gotten them, the supervisors as well. And we go over the procedures and put them back into place. And we have only at this point, I am very happy to report on only one actual sighting from Summit County Health. And it was corrected immediately and it has not occurred again. So that's been a successful plan as we train everybody. And Dr. Ockler, I think we had one of our teams, our reopening teams, has been working on what those protocols would be to, and they had this in place in June. for the blended model on how do we teach all of those routines for students in the classroom and the routines for faculty. Now we've had a better chance with faculty because we do have quite a few teachers that are coming

223in right now and teaching from their classrooms because we provided that as an option. So at least a good number of our teachers are into that routine now as Mrs. Fok was saying, but the students we know we're going to have to go through some very deliberate rituals and routines on teaching all of those, even just the increased hand washing and how to do that appropriately and not just assume that all kids can adequately wash their hands even now that we've been in this pandemic for a while. So all of those routines we would have to reinforce. And we know that they're not going to be perfect. Mrs. or Ms. Scheipp and I have met separately with our behavior support team, our shared leadership team that we have about how do we address that if

224we end up with issues with masks and any kind of refusal to do things, how are we going to address that? And we've worked through some of that and we'll continue to do that as well. Thank you very much. To that point, I think that it might be beneficial for us to come up with some type of, I don't want to say song, or some type of communication marketing campaign that will get people in the habit of what those things they should be doing regularly that's different. I think that would be important. Another thing on this same topic that I want to bring up. is with the increased need for hand washing, that also requires, you know, hot water. And one of the things that I notice in many of our schools is it takes

225forever for the water to turn hot when you're in the restroom trying to wash your hands. And so that is a concern of mine. I know it might sound trivial, but... that is something to consider as you know not everyone's going to wait forever for the water to warm up so that's just actually dr akbar it is not always the temperature of the water It is the fact that the soap becomes active when you actively put it. So on your hands and you actively, truly do, you know, aggravate it and make a lather. And a lather can be made with anywhere from tepid water on up. So I do take your point seriously, but it's the fact that you've actively done the 20 second washing and most soaps now will work in tepid water. because

226the other part of this is is the requirement of water temperature not to burn somebody you make it too hot and you end up with a first degree burn so we have our water set at the temperature that is regulated according to the regulations for proper temperature in a bathroom okay thank you very much and just the one comment i'll make because I did address some concerns that I had. I also know that the options that you laid out are based off what the committee has put out there. And I definitely appreciate all the hard work that they've put into it. One of the things that I think might be beneficial for our district because of how large it is, is that we also consider a phase to blended model where we're not using teachers,

227staff, and schools as guinea pigs, as I know some people might believe that to be the case if we select certain groups to go back first. But I think what it really does is allow us in a more controlled environment to test out some of these processes and procedures that we need to put in place. with a smaller cohort and then move into expanding it across the district as you kind of put in place with this plan. It allows that smaller group to get acclimated, not only just the students, but also the teachers. And I would, you know, one of the things that I would put out there is that might be a good approach to consider. with some of my concerns, I think, especially also with the concerns of the self-directed remote is somewhat

228concerning to me. So I just wanted to put that out there as another option to consider. Thank you. Thank you. We have Dr. Hall and then Ms. McKittrick. Yeah, I'm going to pick up where Dr. Akbar left off, I think directly. That was a similar question I had, you know, is, and it's something I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around is sort of philosophically here. You know, I don't, you know, I don't know that, I don't know why we have to do all this all at once. Right. I mean, we can start with, I mean, you know, to draw an analogy in health care, you risk stratify your patient population. You look at who has the highest risk profile, you know, other disease states, for example, right. Comorbid conditions. And you design your

229interventions and services, you know, so that way they're appropriately allocated to those that have the highest risk, right. Sort of highest risk burden. Right. To me, it's a similar. you know, sort of philosophical approach to education, you know, especially during a pandemic, right, is who are my riskiest, you know, students? Well, it's going to be my special ed students and generally speaking, right, my special ed students and my young students, my K1 and 2 folks, right? I mean, so to me, I don't know why we can't, you know, I guess this is my ask, you know, is that as we sort of spin this forward, I would love it if we could talk about options that include just a cohort or two going back, whether it's special ed or special ed and or K1 and

2302. And we can talk through the details as to how that gets done. Because I think we're all trying to adopt a getting to yes sort of mentality here with this, but doing it in a way that's responsible. And I just have a hard time with a turnkey approach where Everybody goes back all at one time. 20,000 kids go back. It's an unblended model. So again, I don't want to debate the merit of each model, but I guess I'm just asking. I feel like this is an either-or proposition. I guess I'm struggling. I don't think it needs to be. So again, I just would love for us to also, and we discussed this at the last board meeting too, we brought this up. Several of us did around looking at a phased-in approach. you know,

231starting with a cohort or two at a time, you know, that way, that way something does go awry. You know, you're bringing, you know, several thousand students back to remote online as opposed to 20,000 students back to remote online, which just would wreak even more havoc. And I think in the long run, be more destructive, in fact. You know, so that's so that's that's what I'm going to just put out there and sort of advocate that we have a pathway that we kind of start examining as well. And then. I didn't mean to interrupt, but could I just make two comments on that? Sure, please. So I guess. The first thing would be that while you can put where you can put those conditions, you can look at the students and say who are most

232at risk students. When you're looking at our staff, we have the same dynamics across the district. So you're going to have at risk in any grade level or category and those that are lower risk. So you would be bringing back staff. if you're bringing back staff based on the risk of the students, it would not apply. You need to recognize that would not apply to staff. And then secondly, I understand what you're saying, but you're not really bringing 21,000 students back to a building or in a certain level. You know, every building is different and they're their own little bubble. We did present, I believe, for instance, the at-risk MD models classrooms, where that committee came up with a model that did want to get back into the classroom. I don't know what our preschool.

233group will come up with. We have, and Dr. McWilliams-Wood can talk about our high school model. So I don't know that we're bringing necessarily in these blended models every student back all at one time, even with the models we presented tonight. Yeah, I think that's fair. You know, to your point, there'll be families who choose to, that may choose to go 100% remote. So to your point, that's what would make 20,000. So thanks for that correction. You know, I do think though that as we sort of spin this forward, you know, again, I would love to see an option or options that are out there that where we do look at the cohorts. And I get that there. And again, this may be a moot point, right? Because we still haven't surveyed our teachers. right

234so we don't know what they're going to say so this could all be a moot point which is you know hindsight's always 20 20 but that's why you know i you know i've always preferred to get the input from the our staff first before we start developing models um we don't know we're going to be even more sad right the teachers are also curious about is what you know if we go back at what triggers going back to remote if we would need to i mean you have to set some criteria for making those decisions one way or the other. And I don't know. I'm glad you mentioned that. I'm glad you mentioned that. That's actually where I was going next, right? So to me, we're looking at, I mean, regardless of what we decide

235to do, there has to be criteria, a dashboard, if you will. Subicani Public Health has one that I know some of us have looked at already. But I think that we need to adapt something like that. That way, people in the community have some transparency into sort of what are we looking at. from a science standpoint, that's going to influence our decision. Now, having said that, you know, there'll be plenty of folks in the community that aren't happy with whatever we come up with. I totally get that. But I think for our own sense of sort of integrity, if you will, I think this group has to come up with that. And I think we have to come up with it before we actually vote on something, right? I think we have to have that.

236That has to happen in parallel. It can't happen consecutively in this board member's opinion. So yeah. And then so I guess so then that was going as well. A couple of quick questions. And thinking about and to Dr. Agamor's point, I don't think anything is trivial here. I think everything we're talking about here is of substance. You know, I was had a question about cleanliness as well. Right. I mean, so we're talking about teaching the kids those routines in school. But also in a blended model, kids are in class. They're having to learn those routines. That's also going to take away from classroom instruction time. You know, so and also, too, you know, there's so let me ask my question for clients first. You know, do we have you know, are we contemplating? And I

237don't need to answer tonight. I just need to know that this is something that we're that we're working on is, you know, sort of. you know, tracking what's getting cleaned in the building when. Are we going to have the water fountains turned on? You know, and if so, how often are those being cleaned? Right. You know, the bathrooms, how often are we cleaning the bathrooms? Are bathrooms being cleaned after every time a classroom or students go through there? And so those are things that. you know, one might see as being trivial, but are integral to, you know, addressing and preventing, you know, spread should somebody be asymptomatic and not know they have it and be in the school, right? So that's where I'm saying, like, you know, we have to have some sort of mechanism

238for tracking and being able to, you know, understand who's doing what, when, where, and why, how from a cleaning standpoint. The other thing I had a question slash coming around was the quality of life in a blended model. You know, you know, so if I'm going to school in person, am I going to be in a six foot box all day? You know, so I have my mask on. We keep talking about the mental health aspects where kids want to be able to come socialize and see their classmates. Well, are they really going to be able to are they really seeing their classmates? Are they really talking to their classmates? They're sitting in a mask all day in a six foot. you know, six foot, you know, box, you know, where they can't touch their

239classmates. They can't take their mask off to talk to their classmates. You know, I mean, they, you know, they're being marched to the bathroom and marched right back and marched to the cafeteria and marched right back and sit at your desk. I mean, like, so I just want to put out there that like I'm the quality of life in a blended model going to school. We keep, I mean, we're assuming that. that going back to school is going to cure all this. But I'm just simply saying that I've got parents asking me like, well, I don't like kids going back to school. That's what it's going to be because that's like being in prison. Now, is it really? No. I mean, there's some hyperbole there, right? But I hit your point. So somebody can kind

240of pause there and just, I'd really like to get some thoughts on or some feedback around the quality of life. You know, I don't know if this is a Miss Folt question or a Dr. Williams-Woods question around my life and then also the cleanliness thing. I think in terms of the quality of life, you know, we have to remember that what we are proposing, regardless of whether you decide blended learning, if we phase in certain cohorts, based on the discussion we've had tonight, we're giving families a choice regardless, right? So families can choose. whether they want to for their particular student. And we've heard from a number of families who are gonna say, my fourth grader is coming back to school and my eighth grader is gonna stay remote. And then it could be the

241next family could be the total opposite. And we see that in the survey results that it's not necessarily a family by family decision. They're making decisions based on the unique characteristics of each student. So we're not deciding whether that's a good quality of life for the family. The family is deciding for each individual student whether they want their student to come into school with masks and six feet of social distance or whether they keep their students at home. I think that's important for all of us to remember that. The second thing. Yeah, I mean, I think that's true, but I think that we ought to explain, make sure that parents understand what it means to be in school, you know, in a blended model. What does that mean? I take your point, and I agree

242with you, you know, that if we go that route, they're deciding for their child, but they have to know some more details about what it is they're actually deciding for their child, what the child is going to be experiencing while they're at the school. That's what I'm talking about. Absolutely. And it is with masks and it is with six feet of social distance. I'm hoping. that our families are doing that every single day, if you think about it, that when they go to the grocery store, when they go out to see people in the neighborhood, I'm hoping that everywhere they're going, because that is what they should be doing, is having a mask on and keeping six feet of social distance. So school shouldn't feel that different, although there will be more. students probably together

243doing that but the notion of keeping six feet of social distance and keeping a mask on while you're around other people shouldn't be foreign now to our families but it is but it is it's a different feel of the classroom certainly because you're not sharing all sorts of crafts you're not grabbing the scissors and cutting together all the paper it is there's going to be different routines so we can't take that point away and I think families are starting to visualize what that's going to look like and we can talk families through that as well if they need to verbally talk through it they can call it anytime and we can explain that even further. Roger that and then what about the clean about cleaning the buildings like what's the first question? Yes the health

244care team they have Different things are on different schedules in terms of the cleanliness, all based on Summit County Public Health. And that will be tracked very carefully and monitored. The team has already been talking about that. And a lot of those routines are already in place because we have people in the buildings now. We have teachers teaching from the buildings. We have kids coming up to pick up supplies, to pick up lunches. We have child nutrition workers every day. We have custodians in the building. It's just the frequency may need to increase, but that's all on a schedule that they've already mapped out and talked through. Gotcha, gotcha. Okay, two more quick things here. One, we talked about parents having a time to pick their kids up. I know from touring buildings earlier this

245year that there are parents who don't come pick up their kids, you know, pre-COVID, you know. So it's nice, it's all fine to say that you have a time to pick kids up. But when they don't pick their kids up, and there will be parents who don't. you know i'm wondering what we're going to do about that and then secondly we talked about covet symptoms i think that what we're i think that we're not conflating a couple of different things here you know covet symptoms for covid there's a lot of overlap and symptoms between covid and the flu and allergies and the common cold and a kid that just runs to school without with his coat on button the entire time he's going to get to school and have a flush face a runny nose

246and probably be coughing a little bit that's all going to look like COVID. I had a parent use the term that with cold and fuzzies and we're getting ready to enter what this parent called the Salem witch trials, you know, where every time there's a call for cold, COVID, COVID, COVID, get you out of here, get this kid out of here, COVID, COVID, COVID, you know, and so, you know. Again, I'm saying this. I'm sharing feedback. I'm not assigning a value judgment here. Either way, I'm just saying I'm sharing feedback. This is what I'm hearing. Again, I work in healthcare. I know that the symptoms overlap. We're not going to be able to tell what we think looks like COVID. In fact, it actually probably won't be COVID in a lot of cases, many more

247cases than not. Until and unless we have rapid testing, we're not going to know. So, you know, on any given day, you can have 75 kids, you know, being lined up to go to the room where, you know, the COVID room. Right. I mean, so, yeah. So to me, I just I'm just wondering about is we sort of think through this kind of the practicality. Hell, there were buildings that was torn in January, February that were a third to a half empty. That's pre-COVID, you know, just during rather cold flu season. The kids didn't even come to school, you know. So so, again, I just, you know, so that's what I'm saying before. I just want to I just want to make sure. again uh you know to make sure that as we think over

248our plans the next week or two that that those that we're taking that taking that into consideration as well and then last but not least um you know um Yeah. We talked about the 28 intervention specialists that were that had applied that people had applied for this after school approach. You know, so do we are all those spots filled? And I think that those those those jobs are only available to internal candidates. Are they are we look are we are we do we think that we're going to need more positions and are we open to hiring from outside the district? That's my last question. Because the families just had till today to respond, and then we're going to do some phone follow-up the next few days, just because we want to make sure that parents

249didn't miss the survey or families didn't miss the survey. We'll be able to then see how many students and therefore how many intervention specialists will we need. Right now, it looks like we have plenty. to be able to fill the need, but we won't know until we get through the next few days as we do additional follow up with the families. Great, great. Thanks. I appreciate you answering my questions. You mentioned the remote plus learning, this hypothetical remote plus model. I think you mentioned that. I'd love to see us, you know, in time for the export meeting to kind of have a chance to kind of look at, to see what that would look like. You know, because again, we have kids who are going at four to seven. I'd love to see what a

250remote plus. model will look like. What I'm hearing walking away from this meeting and the superintendent certainly his goal for this meeting was for us to put the blended model out, get your feedback and then go. We knew we were going to have additional work to do as a follow up. What I'm hearing are two important next steps for our teams and Ms. Scheipp and I will figure out how we'll work through this. But the first one is to look at that remote plus, you know, if we stay remote, so we've presented, here's what we want to do for blended. Now we'll look at that a hundred percent remote model and say, if we stay a hundred percent remote, what enhancements could we do to address? the students who aren't being successful in the remote

251right now and how can we shore that up and come back with that. A second piece that I heard that you that collectively the board is asking for is that phased in what could that look like if we either phased in the blended or when we look at this remote plus by nature, is that what it's going to end up looking like is a phased in type approach. I do agree that our, that Ms. Scheib said earlier, right now our blended, the high school is somewhat of a phased in because they're wanting to stay remote, but do some intervention support for students in the afternoon. So that really is kind of a model right now for us to look at for how do you stay remote, but do some support. that I think if we

252look at both of those charges together, we can come back and present at the next meeting a plan that addresses both of those. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McKittrick. Thank you, Mr. President. A couple of follow-up questions and then some... bits of information that I'm passing along from emails and phone calls I've had from parents and teachers. So as far as drinking fountains, will those be turned on? And if they are not turned on, will water be supplied for the kids or will they be able to bring in their own? A couple of other things. Will the kids be allowed to put things in lockers? Will fire, tornado, and safety drills still happen? And then what if a family member cannot pick up a child within 60 minutes?

253What exactly will happen? How are we going to manage that? And then finally, I will just add a comment of my own that I appreciate the idea of layering in smaller groups at a time. And I will leave that now for any answers you might have. Thank you. I can address the water fountains. There are two types of water fountains. There are in-classroom water fountains and those will be locked off. We will not be using them. Public hallway water fountains will be used. They are going to be used with an individual service cup student with a one-time use to be thrown away in the trash can next to it. or students would be allowed and encouraged to bring their own water bottles so that they could fill them. This, I'm sorry, can you ask me

254what other ones, Ms. McKittrick, you asked about? I'm sorry. Oh, no, that's all right. I asked about if the kids would be allowed to use lockers or cubbies. No, lockers and cubbies are not allowed. All items individual to a student will go directly to their desks. And that is a recommendation that really comes out of the CDC and has been supported by Summit County Health. Thank you. What about fire, tornado, and safety drills? How would those be carried out when, especially for tornado drills, you know, the kids have to, I don't know if there's enough room to keep them spaced and do those kinds of drills. All right, they are still required. There has been no change by the fire code or the fire department. So let's go with the first one for fire drills.

255If they are pulled and they are mandated at least once a month, a Drill would be pulled, you would follow directly, your masking, wearing, going out directly. At that point, the social distancing is kind of overridden by the fact you are trying to teach the children to evacuate immediately to the local part of their assigned outside space with their supporting teacher. Those are one of those things that we still are required to do. What is required is if we go to a blended learning model where we have students coming in, say, on Monday, Tuesday, and a different group on Wednesday, Thursday, we are required to perform those with each group. So instead of once a month, we could be doing two a month and that has been already mandated by the fire department. And this

256is at the state level. Tornado drills still have to be done. But again, it is the fact that we have to explain to children in an emergency situation exactly how to go and do a tornado drill. They would be, especially in a blended model with smaller groups, it will be easier to take them with their masks, show them where to do exactly what they need to do in the effective manner in the location they are supposed to go. Since you're on drills, we are required to perform the same evacuation drills on the buses for students that are on buses. And those are also mandated to removal from the front, removal from the back, and removal in between. So those will also be required. None of those waivers have been taken into place. If we could

257make sure Dr. Akbar is signed back in. Hold on just a moment, please while we're waiting the other question was about students who didn't students Dr. Hall. If you could wait just a moment, please. Thank you. The benefit of the public to under Ohio attorney general guidelines. Anytime 1 of our board members drops off the meeting, we are required to pause the meeting. that member is able to rejoin so we are not allowed to continue discussion or questions but he has let us know that he is trying to sign back in so he should be on in just a moment I'm trying to think of a good joke it doesn't violate any ORC modes here I can't think of one though I'll have one prepared for the next board meeting though maybe about four hour

258board meetings right Man walks into a four-hour board meeting. No, no, no. Didn't quite fit. I suspect discussing in Cleveland Browns, 4-1 record is probably also off limits because just because there's got to be an ORC that we're going to jinx them when we talk about them being 4-1 for the first time since I was a senior in high school. So 26 years ago, for those of you who want to know exactly how old I am. Sorry, now I'm speaking with my mic muted. Dr. Akbar, welcome back. Dr. McWilliams-Woods, I cut you off. My apologies. Please go ahead. I was just going to say that the examples of the health questions that are coming, those are... Perfect questions that we can keep adding to this list for our families and post on our website as

259well, but add on this document. Some of the questions we've hit, but I think we can tweak the language a bit to make sure that we're answering those specifically that Mrs. McKittrick answered. And any of the health things, the more we can put that. writing to families to make sure that they have it and see it over and over and it's not just one word verbal response or they heard it someplace but they can actually see it in writing I think that would be helpful so any future questions that you get like that just be sure to shoot them either to mrs. folk or myself and we'll add them to that list thank you follow up to anything I have is What about the kiddos whose parents can't come get them within that 60 minute

260timeframe? Because it's sure for some of our parents who just can't maybe leave work. Sure, sure. And every school has previously had to have a plan for that. And the same logic will apply, you know, that we will do everything we can to have the family come pick them up. We do have security staff that can help assist either picking up the family to come and get them or bringing them home. We obviously want to do that safely. But we have already been in discussions with how each building is going to work that through. And Mrs. Folk has asked everybody to have a plan. You know, what happens? How do we continue to isolate the student if the family can't pick them up? What do we do to get the student back safely using the

261resources that we have? Thank you. One of the other advantages I just want to mention, and we are unique in Akron compared to all of the other districts, but remember when we looked at the... 130 some districts in this schools and districts in this region. We have a lot of models and a lot of information that we learn from these other schools prior to with all of these details that that is helpful that we get to hear all of that information to be able to have. that information move forward. We also have the great advantage of having the other Ohio 8s are also having dates ahead of us. So we're gonna be able to learn from them as well. So I don't think there's gonna be anything that someone else hasn't already figured out that

262you've mentioned that we can learn from our colleagues in our other districts. Thank you, Dr. McWilliams-Woods. I don't see anyone else lined up in the chat. Are there any questions? If not, I haven't asked or shared any of my own. So if the board will permit me just a minute. I want to just mention something too that Dr. Hall had actually brought up a few minutes ago. And we talked about this a little after the June 29th blended option was presented and the board decided that we would start the year remotely. We talked about setting the bar and I had said too that I'm in favor anytime if we feel the need as a board to raise that bar, but really the responsibility then falls on us to figure out what that new bar is

263so that we know as a community what to expect and when to expect it. And that is something that we do need to get back to in terms of the public health data and where we are as a community and as a state and as a country, but more specific to us locally and maybe as a state and sort of where is that bar and what we're looking at. From my personal point of view, if we choose not to adopt the blended model that's being presented to us tonight, I too... have a real concern around some of our populations, particularly our K-3 population, our special ed population, those students that need interventions, which Dr. McWilliams-Woods referred to, or even those students who may need certain enrichment opportunities. What I'd be curious to know from the

264board, and maybe just briefly if you have a single thought, because I know it's getting late. But we'll pick up this conversation again, either in our next board meeting or even a special meeting before that. What I would be interested to know from the board, and again, maybe just a single thought or comment or piece of data, what other information would help you make a decision as we continue this discussion? You know, if you could just kind of, you know, I'll trust that everyone can kind of jump in and. Again, just briefly a comment or piece of data, something that would help you. I'll jump in 3 things 1. I think we're definitely going to need a special meeting. Number 1, number 2, I think we should be looking at. The number 1 of the

265things right? We'll be looking at the number of cases new cases that are the result of community spread. positivity rates. And then I think we also have to make sure that we're talking with Ms. Skoda about testing availability and capability. So those are my quick thoughts. Thank you, Dr. Hall. And also, I want to mention that it's clear I think we all would like to see from Ms. Scheipp the AEA survey, which I think everyone has expressed would be important feedback. Who else? What else can our staff provide that would help you make a decision? Anyone else? You mean making a decision with regard to going back to 100% remote if the rate should increase? No. Making a decision period regarding whether or not we choose one of these models. Yes, what the staff has

266brought us is a blended model. Should we decide to go back to a blended model? And so my question to the board is what wasn't presented tonight or what additional information would you need if we came back? And say another week or 2 weeks at the most at our next meeting. And and that was put to a vote. What information do you need to help make that decision? For me, I would like to see a plan that layers in smaller groups. I would like to see a K through two, maybe three model and including that the special needs kids. Thank you. For me, I think everything that both Dr. Hall and Ms. McKittrick just pretty much laid out. But I would add Besides, I think the teacher, the A.A. survey results will be very critical

267to my decision making. And honestly, it probably will be one of the heaviest weighted parts of my decision. So no pressure. But I think we also if we have that campaign or some type of information around what we're going. to the common message, one of those habits around the culture that we need to build. Having that laid out will be important and will help me make a decision. And then the last thing, I think that with the information that Derek mentioned, I'm also interested in overlaying that with health disparities. and looking at specifically our students, our English language learner students, as well as those who are high poverty, high needs and racially diverse. Mr. President, I would echo a lot of what Ms. McKittrick said, especially that K-3 we talked a little bit about. reading

268and possibly getting them in and layering that in. Also, I think it's vitally important that we start really considering graduation because um and and the high school model that was presented tonight really is a mostly remote with getting those CTE and lab kiddos in um that's going to affect graduation and at this point we're talking about I think with those special needs kids with those k3s and with um with graduation we're talking about life-altering situations here we're talking about situations that could delay your graduation we're talking about delays in reading comprehension and learning to read learning your words in a window that closes so I think that trying to get those students in as much as possible on some level. And then again, as Dr. McWilliams-Woods mentioned, there are some that we're just not hearing

269from. There are some students out there that we have got to get inside at some level, getting some kind of intervention because they they could slip through the cracks despite all of our best efforts um they're not connecting online or online isn't connecting with them how about how about that as much as there's their teachers are trying it doesn't work for them and there are some that are thriving and doing so well on this um because our teachers have worked so hard and have created and worked so hard um to learn this and to get a system in place, but some kids it's just not working for. So I think those are the folks that I'm most concerned about. And if somehow we can get them in, in some levels, layering them in or filtering

270them in, find the word. Dr. Akbar, what did you say? I told you, you trademarked it earlier today. Phased in, what was it? It's too late tonight. I can't think anymore. I told him he could trademark it because it was so good. But those are my highest concerns tonight and things that I would like to see as a way that we could do that. Thank you. And before I move us along, Ms. Autry or Mr. Alexander, anything that would help you make this decision in the next week or two that wasn't presented tonight? Yeah, thank you, Mr. President. I think my fellow board members mentioned just about everything that I would agree with. But for me personally, I am most concerned and what's probably going to help me make the decision is the survey results

271from AEA because the teachers are the ones who are dead smack in the middle of all of this who have to make it work. And they have families, too. And they have concerns too. I heard a lot from them. So I want to hear more from them. But also I would be in support of a phased in approach with a focus on K through three. And thank you, Mrs. Mansfield for mentioning our older students, particularly our seniors, because they're often not considered this because they're older, but you're right. They are absolutely at a pivotal time in need. focus as well. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Autry. Yes, Mr. President, the survey, as mentioned earlier, maybe a little bit more. Oops, I'm sorry. I thought I had myself on the story. I agree with the survey

272from the teachers because I'd like to hear more from them. The science. I need to hear more from science and getting more from there as well. And then, of course, some phase in as to what we can do as a safe phase in. That's it for me. Thank you. Thanks. And for me, I might like to see just an example, and I know it wouldn't have to be exact, but what those bubbles would look like when the point and counterpoint were made earlier about bringing back 21,000 students. I just did some very rough math, and I know it's not perfect, but... We're talking 21,000 students roughly, again, not perfect. 60% of those said that they would go online or at least 60% of the 15,800 responses roughly, which is about 12,600 students, which would be

273split in half to 6,300 students, which would be spread out roughly over 45 buildings, which is about 140 students per building on average. And so to the point about We are bringing back a lot of students, but they are in their own bubbles. If we went with a blended model, we'd just be curious to see how that would break down since I think you've already sort of done that work to some degree. cluster by building just to see what that kind of looks like because it is a it is a valid concern that we're maybe we have done so as well as we have locally for as long as we have because we are a big contributor and a large community within this community that has remained safe or as safe as we can be

274and so there is a concern bringing back that number of students but at the same time when you break it down it does seem like they are much smaller bubbles than when you think about all enrollment so i might like to see what those bubbles sort of look like and then just leaving us our board and our staff with a parting thought and first of all thank you all thanks for the presentations um kudos again to everyone that put so much into this uh we have the utmost respect for all of the work that you did uh in this blended model and every single time this board has asked, those committees have stepped up and put in the work. And we truly respect and appreciate that. The questions that we ask are really just to

275learn more. We're looking at this from a different view and just want to know more and want to know that we're making the best decision that we can. If we choose not to go with a blended model and we stay remote, obviously that puts us remote learning into January. I question whether or not we'll be in a much different place in January than we are in October. It may be worse. I don't necessarily expect that it will be, but it could be. But I don't necessarily expect that it will be any better either. And without the bar sort of being set, as we said before, I don't wonder if if we were in the same position or relatively the same position, would we then choose remote for the third quarter? And in all likelihood, if

276we chose remote for the third quarter, would we bring students back for the final quarter? And so there's a lot to consider here at this sort of... this first quarter point for our board and our staff to consider around this decision because it gets obviously less and less likely and more and more difficult to bring students back the further we get into the year. So anyway, just something to think about. Again, appreciate all of your comments. I am gonna move us forward at this point because we do still have some business left for this board. I just want to comment Mr. President. Yes, absolutely. Mr. Superintendent, you've been so quiet. So I would propose I'll talk to Dr. McWilliams-Woods and Ms. Scheib about, you know, could we give a, maybe we can do a special

277board meeting potentially next week, maybe on Monday. I think there's a finance committee meeting Monday as well, but maybe, you know, present. some quick ideas on what, you know, something between a fully blended model and, you know, going to what, you know, I've heard this evening with. I like the high school model where they're still doing remote, but we have the opportunity for kids to come in and do some targeted work, do their career tech. credential work and some of their experiential learning work and you know somewhere with that. You know, the problem is if we're looking at, you know, what are some of the things I talked to Donna Skoda today, who has reached out and talked with some of our local experts. The science is very, I think, you know, for the most

278part, well understood in terms of what, how it impacts us in terms of infection rates. If we go with the current model where we have a red, orange, you know, yellow, you know, the different levels. We see that, you know, two weeks ago, the majority of the state, I think, was yellow. Now the majority, I think the figure was 92% of our counties are either orange or red. So even if we go to something like that to say if we're red, we're going to be all remote. And some of our sister urban districts have done things like that. But, you know, the problem is when you're moving in, you know, one way to another, the infection rates in Summit County are increasing currently. And 44310 is a hot spot. The problem of looking at it

279just by zip codes is I would love to see more of a, you know, where... GIS to pinpoint where those clusters are. That won't happen, you know, because of, you know, being able to identify where they are. But it's just some things that we'll have to work through. But the problem is going to be, as Dr. Hall pointed out, we're going into cold and flu season. And that is going to be a very difficult time, I think, for us to get through because people are going to just, for anyone who's going to be in person. people will assume that it's COVID and we'll have a lot of panic. Some of my fellow superintendents have already had some issues with that. So I would like to try and work with you and the vice president, work

280with staff and our teachers to come up with a quick look at how that could work and maybe present it as early as next week. Just so there's time to... review that and have a discussion and answer any questions. Thank you. I appreciate that. And whoever said it earlier was right. I mean, you know, even based on the survey, if we make one decision, we're going to have 60% of the people who are satisfied and maybe 40% who are not or the other way around. And if the AEA survey follows similar lines one way or the other, it's going to be the same thing. These are difficult decisions, no matter what, and there is no right decision. I think miss shape may have even said that there's no perfect decision. There's no right decision. We

281will try and do our best to make the best decision that we can with the information we have. But again, thank you all for tonight. We really appreciate it. Thanks for staying late. I'm going to move us along now. There is no president's report. You're welcome. Treasures report. No report. Thank you. Committee reports, legal contracts, and board policy. I'm going to make this real quick. We had a meeting on October 5th. Present was Dr. Akbar, Dr. James, President Bravo, Mr. Pendleton, and we had Mrs. Falk as well as Josh Allen. And I'm not going to go into the policies because those policies will be read again. They were read for the second reading at the meeting. They will be read again after I get done going through this. We talked about the naming policy. We

282looked at the policy. Dr. James looked at some other policies as well, other districts. And we kind of have a decent one. We set us a deadline that we're going to try to get this year done sometime in November. We also talked about, I'm sorry, along with that. We're going to probably have some administrative guidelines for the policy is okay, but the administrative guidelines will give the drive the process of when you have naming. So we're going to have administrative guidelines to go with that policy. We talked about the racial equity policy. It was really good. Mr. Pendleton talked about section 6,000 policies, which he's going to look at how they. policy, actually the business, his office, Treasurer's office can implement some of these things, but he has to make sure they will go along

283with the state federal guidelines as well as our other guidelines that we have for finances. And he wants to make sure we're able to reach those benchmarks that we may want. Dr. James also mentioned that he is looking at a position, a chief of diversity officer in the district, and he's working on some things on that and think that would be a good idea for us to have someone else to help drive some of this work. And we're also with the racial equity policy, also having maybe some administrative guidelines to go along with that. Josh Allen did jump in and he said he would like to read the policy because he would like to look at some data that they may have done in student services that how this policy can kind of help them

284as well. So we ended at five. We started five. Our meeting started about 440 and we ended at 542. That was our policy meeting. Now what we have for this evening for our third and final reading, we have revised policy 5200 attendance, revised policy 5610.03, emergency removal of students, revised policy 5610, removal of suspension, expulsion, and permanent exclusion of students, policy 5611, due process rights, policy 6325, procurement, federal grant funds. New policy 8450 50.01 protect the facial covering during pandemic slash Epidemic events policy revised policy 3216 staff dress and grooming policy 4216 staff Dress and grooming revised policy 50 to 55 11 dress and grooming revised policy 8420 emergency situations at school and finally revised policy 8500 food services. These are your third readings of these policies and we move that they are accepted as

285read. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have a motion? So moved. Second. Thank you, Dr. Holland. Miss McKittrick. As we open it up for comments, questions, and discussions, I just want to say one quick thing. I want to give kudos again to Mr. Alexander and Dr. Akbar around the racial equity policy discussions. I mean, absolutely brilliant discussions, a really excellent policy coming together, and one that really puts us as a leader across the country around racial equity. And so I just have to give props again to Dr. Akbar and Mr. Alexander for their work on this and encourage our board if you haven't had an opportunity yet to get through the policy and to come up with comments or questions or feedback, please do so while our administrative staff is also still working on that.

286And something, just one other comment, Dr. Akbar kept popping into my head throughout the huddle event. with the LeBron James Family Foundation last week and it really got me thinking and it was around the term minority in our lexicon and removing the term minority from our lexicon. And there was a speaker who came dangerously close to talking about that in one of the sessions, one of the panelists. And I really wanted to jump up and raise my hand and take all the credit for saying, yes, yes, we absolutely have to do that. But when you think about it in terms of our district too, in a district that is majority minority, I'm not really sure who we're referring to when we say minority. So it does kind of drive home the point that in a

287majority minority district, minority doesn't really apply unless you're talking about white students. And so I think, you know, there is something to be said for removing that from our vernacular, from our lexicon of. You know, we're not really talking about minority. We're talking about diversity. We're talking about and maybe we need to come up with a better way of talking about that. But I just wanted to say, Dr Akbar, you were in my thoughts last week at this conference. So, kudos to you for bringing that to our attention, even ahead of a national conference. So. With that any other comments, questions or discussions on these policies. Mr president, I just want to. quickly just applaud the commentary and the work that's being done by Dr. Akbar, Mr. Alexander, Dr. James, not just in respect to

288the policy development, but also with respect to the discussion around bringing on a chief diversity and equity officer. I think DEI is super important, and I think it's integral. And I think, honestly, I think it just adds something else to Dr. James' legacy. You have to be the one I think it's more than appropriate that he'd be the one that that that. That takes us that much closer to the promised land and helping us to bring on a chief D. I. Person to the district, so I just want to say, thank you for that. Thank you. Any other comments, questions or discussion. I just have 1, and then I think we need to move forward. So I just also want to acknowledge that the chief diversity officer role in title and probably in the way

289in which it will be positioned will be different. But the district has long had a diversity officer and director and Carla does an amazing job. in my discussions with her and different committee meetings, as well as even with her presentation to the board at a few moments or a few meetings, I should say. So I don't want to make it seem like we just have been absent in that discussion and that role. I think it's elevating the role and permeating it throughout the district in everything that we do. Well said, Dr. Akbar. Thank you. Roll call, please. Ms. Autry? Yes. Mr. Bravo? Yes. Dr. Hall? Aye. Mrs. Mansfield? Yes. Mrs. McKittrick? Yes. Dr. Akbar? Yes. Mr. Alexander? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Finance and Capital Management? We'll be meeting on Monday. There's no report today.

290No report. You're all welcome. Instructional Policy and Student Achievement. I think you gave us our report tonight. Yep. Thank you so much. There is no unfinished business or new business to come before this board, but there is a need for a brief executive session pursuant to Ohio Revised Code Section 122.22G1 for the purpose of considering the employment and compensation of a public employee or official of the school district. Do we have a motion? So moved. Second, thank you. A motion by Mr Alexander, a second by Ms McKittrick. When we do recess into executive session again, we'll ask everyone or just remind everyone to please completely exit out of this meeting before you enter executive session. And we will have 1 brief item to consider when we return. Roll call please. Mr Bravo yes, Dr Hall.

291Hi, this is Mansfield. Yes, yes. Dr. Yeah, yes. Yes, thank you. Thank you. We'll see you in executive session. I'll tell him to wait 8 minutes. I remember 1 in the building a couple of years ago. Do you remember? It was really, really late. Maybe Mr. James remember? I don't even know what we're talking about. We went so long. Yeah, Reverend must have been present. Mr. Alexander's there and we lost Dr. Hall. I'll be back. There you are. All right. So Mr. Rittenhouse, whenever you are ready. Good evening and welcome back. We are returning from executive session to the regular meeting of the Akron Public Schools Board of Education for Monday, October 12, 2020. We do have one final item on the agenda for consideration by the board. It is the item number 32.1, a

292resolution to approve a memorandum of understanding between the Akron Board of Education and the Akron Education Association. We'll entertain a motion at this time. So moved. Second. Thank you. We have a motion from Ms. Mansfield and a second from Ms. McKittrick. Any final comments, questions, or discussion on the resolution? Hearing and seeing none, please. Dr. Hall? No. Mrs. Mansfield? Yes. Mrs. McKittrick? Yes. Dr. Akbar? Abstain. Mr. Alexander? Yes. Ms. Autry? No. Mr. Bravo? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Being that there is no other business to come before this board, we'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Thank you. We have a motion in the second. We are adjourned. Have a good evening. All right.