LPSD BOE Special Meeting 07/20/2020

001will not be with us tonight um mr mika would you take the roll call please yes sir mr clawson here miss phillips here mr schwartz here mr taylor online ms f church here thank you mr mika to view this meeting's presentation documents please access board docs the link to the board docs website can be found via the d38 website www.lewispalmer.org on the board of education meeting webpage i'd like to make a motion to adopt the agenda as presented again okay i heard mr taylor so we'll give it to you mr taylor many questions comments concerns okay hearing none mr mika mr clawson aye ms phillips aye mr schwartz aye mr taylor aye ms f church hi thank you mr schwartz um would you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance be happy to i

002pledge allegiance to the flag 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 mr schwartz all right our first agenda item is the fall plan update okay mr clawson i will uh say a few quick words and then we will jump into our presentation uh we want to thank uh everyone who's tuning in as well let's thank our board for your attention uh and obviously there's a lot for us to cover tonight but before we just dive into all of those details i just want to start with a big thank you to really all our community specifically those individuals that have been working through our workgroup format we have about 65 district 38 stakeholders including uh staff members

003uh parents uh students and uh the efforts and the energy that our community is putting into the development of this plan i just can't say enough of how much we appreciate the level of detail and attention that's going into every part of this plan uh so we're excited to share uh where we're at as far as an update goes this evening we thought the best place to start though would be uh to recap the survey results uh from the end of june through early july so this survey was part of the original framework that was presented to our community back on june 23rd uh and here with us this evening to share those results with us is dr benson so i'm gonna allow dr benton to take us through uh each of those surveys and

004we'll go from there thank you i'm gonna share my screen and hopefully everybody can view the survey data and this is also going to be available if it's not already on our website um quickly want to review the staff survey data at any point in time anyone has questions i can't see the chat so maybe just hop in and interrupt me um can everybody see the graphics on the screen thank you casey two thumbs up so we modeled our staff survey after an industry standard survey that had been sent out to a variety of folks uh via hr and we did modified a little bit to make sure that it met our needs but we felt like the questions were universal enough that we would be able to apply them to classified as well as

005certified employees we also chose not to ask whether or not a person was certified or classified we didn't want to add a lot of demographic data because we wanted people to give an honest response and not be concerned that we could determine if it was a certain respondent or not so the first question asks um basically a variety of questions around the environment and you can see the questions on the next page whether or not folks feel confident returning to work that we can bring them back safely that we will have appropriate protocols in place and that they will be instructed on those protocols we also ask questions along the lines of being infected at work or taking it home to family members how they might contract the virus from either co-workers or students and

006how their job would be impacted related if they tested positive for coping we also asked about child care we asked about job security and we also threw in an extra question since we had an audience around the financial stability of louis palmer school district when you look at the data what you see is strongly agree and agree is the blue and the green neutral is yellow and disagree and strongly disagree are the light blue and the salmon color as we look at the data what we see is the majority of our staff feel like we will be able to return them with safety protocols in place but there is as you look at the data a tendency towards concern over contracting the virus and taking it home to family members so the way that we

007look at this is to say that we know we need to address safety protocols and make sure people understand what safety measures will be in place so that we can try to mitigate as much as possible in terms of transmission any questions about this graph before i move on [Music] the next one is about those safety protocols that we might be able to put into place and um i always this is my running joke with this i apologize but hands down hand sanitizer is the winner hand sanitizer came out as 96 percent of staff said absolutely uh hand sanitizer is a must so with this graph um the yes yes it should impact um versus no uh yes is green no is navy and then not sure is yellow when we asked about masks being

008required for staff and again this is pre-governor order um the the staff was split when we it was about a forty forty forty percent uh for both and twenty percent unsure when we asked if um it was optional there was a greater shift to yes but now we know as of last thursday that all staff will be required to wear master face shields given the governor's order face shields are important for us to consider as a mitigating tool because of students learning language because of phonics instruction and those sorts of things disposable gloves we also asked about that we also asked about employee health screening and overwhelmingly our staff said yes go ahead and do some version of employee health screening also they do want a detailed protocol for handling any kind of infection response

009and a notification of that so we feel like we have a comprehensive response to that as well within the plan we also asked about allowing volunteers within the building and you can see that majority of staff said that makes sense not to allow volunteers within the building there was also a large percentage that said we're not really sure the last question for the staff survey asked um do they need to speak with someone from personnel regarding covid specific leave or workplace accommodations and 92 percent of our staff said no they do not another eight percent or so said that they would and they would also reach out directly or provided their email address we had about a 40 percent response rate overall um based on the 331 or so student as staff answering the questions

010any questions about the staff survey lori this chris i just a couple of points of clarification if you could scroll up uh to the next graph that one right there so um i'm sorry it's the one after this i apologize you want the first graph yeah this one what's the the one that has the high yellow is i'm curious about that particular question okay so that one is [Music] i believe my job would be negatively impacted if i tested positive for copic 19. i believe that's the one you're like is that the one you're asking about oh well i wasn't sure that's why i was asking this one oh hold on just a second nope it's this i apologize i'm having to scroll back and forth i hope i'm not making anyone sick third from

011the bottom it's i believe i will have adequate access to child care so one of the important pieces that we asked our staff as well as our families is access to child care if if we had to do some sort of hybrid model or remote learning model so that's not true and the yellow response uncertainty yes meaning that it it probably depends on whether or not within remote learning whether their own children would be in a remote learning setting or they would be working from home so it's a it's a big it depends thank you you're welcome sorry about that dr ben were these um survey results if i remember correctly the family surveys were due back july 6th their responses were were cut off at july yes the same date okay thank you uh

012can you just review briefly what percentage of the surveys that were sent out were responded to so when you look at we had about 336 staff members respond to the survey um and different levels about 331 on average completed the so it's a very high completion rate for the staff survey it's about 40 percent of our overall classified and certified employees 40 45 is there a magic number that you want to be over to get a relatively credible swath of the opinions um i would say that this is a a relatively credible swath of opinions um that you know anytime you're doing surveys it depends on you know whether you can say yes this represents a population and the fact that almost you know between 40 and 45 percent um is a very high response

013rate as well as you're comfortable you're getting the look the feel of the team yes and when we shared this data with the different stakeholders um like with our instructional core and sel group it there was a reflection that there it was accurate thanks dr penton just out of curiosity that i feel safe traveling to and from work uh can you uh speak to that one so some folks uh carpool or take public transit um we have staff who live all up down i-25 corridor who may carpool together and so one of the it is one of those standard questions around you know how are people concerned about actually accessing work dr bitten yes sir i feel confident about my job security can you just scroll up a little bit please on that the screen

014okay i just wanted to see what category it was okay perfect thank you and help me understand that a little bit is it was the intent of that query to get a sense for how people would feel if they came down with covet 19 or just based on the potential financial ramifications of the district due to a reduced budget from from denver it's probably a combination of the two actually the question is a standard question that was asked um it's by the bob and i looked up the survey um and it's sharm i believe is the the company um and he could rattle off what that acronym stands for um but the reality is that we want to make sure we want to know where people are at in terms of job security uh and

015i do think there are concerns over the the economic impact but also the pandemic impact okay thank you mr clausen you bring up a good point though and it also relates to the last question of our uh first part of the survey here which is i feel confident in the financial stability of our district so that was an additional data point that i do think goes a step beyond just how we're working through the covid crisis and speaks to kind of the overall staff vibe if you will toward where we situate regarding our budget and the uncertainties that are built into our management through this situation as well as some other dynamics so we didn't want to over um load the question per se but you can see that there is a greater um array

016of responses uh that that show us that we don't have the same rates of strongly agree and that there's definitely some uncertainty that's out there thank you any other questions related to the staff survey let me go ahead and move into the family survey the family survey had multiple questions where we asked first of all how many students are within their family unit and you can see a majority of our families have one two or three students within the district we then asked what grade level and what you can see here is a fairly equitable distribution of how what our normal grade levels look like in terms of population of students so that that curve is very similar to what we see um in any given year for enrollment distribution majority of as you can

017see the majority of our students are within the high school range we did have um about 1950 responses to the survey and that includes 28 responses for our spanish-speaking families that were incorporated into these results [Music] so as we keep scrolling what we can see is we have the distribution of where students are going to attend what you can see as well as a typical distribution of students for bear creek louis palmer middle school los palmer high school in palmer ridge high school and with that that is a typical distribution of our largest population the reason i'm pointing that out is that it's basically demonstrating a fairly um when we talk about what did you call it ron a swath of results and whether or not it was a representative swath of results i think

018that's what the terminology you chose that's a technical term dr benton it's it's great um that's why i'm showing that to you as you can see the distribution of results um so it's not necessarily skewed um we did have folks start to drop off the survey just to let you know once they realize there were additional questions but what it does demonstrate too is we still had a fairly high percentage of completion this demonstrates um their likelihood to return in in person learning and what you'll see again with the same exact color coding is the green and the navy is very likely likely yellow not sure unlikely and very unlikely are the light blue and the salmon color keeping in mind that our transitions program is about 12 students so that's the distribution looks different

019only because it's percentage based for parents responding we asked parents to rank their priorities in terms of the physical attendance and it is weighted prioritization scale and you can see that in the table that's below but what happens is it's basically reducing class size and facility cleaning protocols are the two highest aggregate ranking meaning when you rank it one to twelve if you ranked it five and six and that was the everyone and everyone else ranked something one or twelve it um again is an aggregate ranking and so you can see that those are uh important the um as we looked at the data between elementary and secondary students um you could see that there was more of a distribution between the value of recess and meal time for elementary families and more of a

020focus on unique challenges related to certain courses like pe or band for secondary families we started to see there was a shift in the ranking prioritization and that's just all of the tables that demonstrate the the distribution responses this was a transportation question we did ask just trying to do for planning purposes and about 40 of our families said you know what transportation may or is most likely um something that we will be looking at for the fall we also asked um we were again looking at distribution to determine did we have the right distribution of responses and what we see here is that uh 800 or so families did respond that their children had some sort of plan and we do see a typical distribution for the percentage of students who are specialized gifted

021and also who as well as have 504 so we did see a nice representation of those groups um we would have liked to have seen a higher representation of a free and reduced lunch as well as english language learners um but we again percentage-wise it is still fairly reflective this question the way that the data presents is a little misleading when you look at it in aggregate but when you look at it in a disaggregated way the it's actually flipped so elementary stated that they would prefer option two two to one and secondary said that they would prefer option one two to one but when you add them together it looks like it split 50 50 which is always interesting when you look at survey data what that tells us though is when we dig

022further into the data we ask a question around child care and that really was where the difference occurred when you look at elementary there's a higher propensity for needing child care if we were to utilize option one um and that that's important for us to be aware of majority of our students do have access to devices which is representative to what we've distributed in the spring and as well as had access to the internet so that one was the internet this one is device access and when we look at the overall data it is fairly representative to the distribution that we made in the spring for both hot spots as well as chromebooks so what questions do you have about the family survey data i guess i'll ask a quick one you said you had

023about 1500 respondents is that right about 1950. and if the average was probably 1.75 students per family or so i'm just taking a swing at it yep so we're looking at well over a third of the population maybe yeah representing closer to 50 of the population easy right when you look at in terms of who accessed it about the 1950 versus who completed it which is about 1730. um it is it's fairly comprehensive yeah so this is a great job i mean that's that's good response especially in the summer well you know i have to kudos to our families because i do think it's they shared the data and they answered and and they took the time to give us their input so that's great yeah my rough path says we're over of students being

024represented you know i wanted to follow on is that correct that it is approximately 3 000 students that are if you were to buy these surveys so we didn't so you could have had a couple you could have had a parent from each household or you could have had two parents from a household so i would i when i look at this i would assume it's between again about a 40 to 45 percent response rate in terms of our overall population because you may have had a as i said i can't i didn't go through and and sort in that manner and we didn't collect that level of data to determine if there were some duplicates for a household so we're not conclusive on it can you scroll up to the slide that was basically

025all green and explain that one more time because i frankly missed the message there this one yes so this is the prioritization there were 12 different priorities we had families rank and within that prioritization it's a weighted uh basically a weighted prioritization from 1 to 12 and so the highest weighted ranking for items was reducing class size as well as facility cleaning protocols um and then you can look at the secondary ones which were next tier which would be seating students farther apart the unique challenges and then this one which is students and masks we're going to get more into that conversation here in a little bit so if i'm understanding correctly this was uh what issues need to be addressed in order to be physically at school because it's still not it's not informing

026me i'm a little lost frankly as well this is telling us so what we were asking is we wanted parents to prioritize for them for their own their own opinion as to if i want my my child to be in school these are the things that are important to me to make sure that the school district addresses so they ranked 12 different pieces and then this data demonstrates the aggregate of those rankings of the 1755 people who responded so in aggregate the highest the more highly ranked the item in terms of by everyone the higher the number within the graph so so the x-axis is percentage of the so it's out of a out of 12. so if someone ranked it highest it's it's a value of 12. they ranked it lowest um and so

027what you can just see is that it demonstrates that reducing class size and facility cleaning protocols came out ranked higher than any of the other items in aggregate it doesn't mean that parents put that exactly as number one it means when you add up all of the responses the next page details how the math is calculated it's kind of wonky there's an aggregate average so it's based on the percentage of respondents who rank something as number one versus number two and based on this data is there a message because that's where i'm really still lost i'm not sure what this is telling us what it tells us is that parents are saying that when we look at the data for elementary things that were more important to them were things like yes keeping smaller classes

028but also recess also managing meal times as well as cleaning the facilities um to to a deeper degree when we looked at secondary data we were able to determine that parents had more questions or higher priority for their student returning in-person learning by addressing unique challenges within different learning environments like pe or band or more what we consider high-touch type classes so the overall message for us is that facility cleaning and if we can at all keep keep students in a reduced environment in terms of class size which is reducing contact those are higher priorities for families [Music] dr benton can you scroll down to the percentages that one right there so i was looking at what where the highest score of priority was and that was similar if i look at this correctly it

029was still oh like go down just a little bit more um okay it's facility cleaning got very high rankings right correct so when you look at the majority of the data distribution parents ranked it within one to six meaning that it was they were more likely to rank it as a higher priority which is why it received such a high total aggregate mark and then students not being required to wear masks ranked high as well right and again this is also pre uh the survey came out before the guidance came out from the governor i was just looking at the aggregate between the students not being required students being required the facility cleaning protocol and then up at the top the other one at the very top seemed to be reduce class size so it's

030also more highly weighted you can see higher responses between one and between rankings of one to five yeah i thought it was interesting that transportation wasn't ranked as high and that's partly because you know we had a quarter of our parents respond that transportation was a need an additional about 15 percent said maybe and then the remainder you know about 60 of our families said that's not really an issue and so that's reflective in the prioritization as well are there any other things that jumped off the page or when you saw these surveys that made you anything that made you go hmm you know when we dug into the different levels um i i don't think any of us were really surprised by the unique challenges being an important aspect for us to address for

031secondary especially uh we are able to cohort manage elementary a little bit differently and then it didn't surprise me at all that recess was also a huge value to elementary families and the younger the student population the higher that value resonated so again we do look at data obviously in aggregate but we do dig into the levels um and it's important each each principle was their data was shared with them by site so that they could then dig in further and see if there were any other depending on comparing the data to the district to see if there were any differences for their own communities all right if there are any other questions with the family one i'm going to move into the student one so what's great about the student survey is that the

032students um on the stakeholder group actually help craft the survey and so there's some great questions in here that um i did use student-friendly language with and we did send this survey out to 7th to 12th graders across the district and so you can see the distribution of the students who responded we had almost 9 we had 950 or so students who completed the survey which is great um when you consider the population of our seventh 12th grade uh body student body you will see though that a higher propensity of upperclassmen didn't respond um and so that's just something to consider when we look at the data this is the demonstration of where they're gonna uh where they plan to attend in the fall dr benton can you just scroll up a moment please we're

033gonna attend in the fall perfect thank you yep it's about a forty forty percent uh split with high school in palmer ridge and then 20 percent or so for lewis plumber middle the students responses around likely to return were very similar to the family responses so there is consistency within that data you can see that a percentage of students are not sure unlikely or very unlikely to to return it's about 20 of our student population in that category we looked at our data for each of the secondary sites to be able to extrapolate um potential programming to be able to determine if online program would be a good fit for that student and what we can see here is that we ask the question how many plan to return in person versus part-time part-time as

034well as full-time online and we did have a student who was planning to attend the enrichment academy each school was given the data that demonstrates their percentage of breakdown for part-time as well as full-time and you can see here that about 70 percent of our students said they were planning to come back in in person and another 30 um will come back in some version of online we asked the students to also rank uh what their priorities were and what was interesting as i said is that yes reducing the class sizes as well as cleaning protocols and then unique challenges related to specialized classes so very consistent in terms of the data we didn't ask them the recess question but maybe we should have we also asked them what they thought about transportation and the

035data was very consistent with the family survey data as well with a little bit higher for the maybe section but overall about 40 percent responded that yes transportation could be a possibility for them the other thing that we asked and this is uh from the students they asked how many how many students do you normally hang out with outside of school so again kid friendly language and what you can see is that majority of our students spend time with between 0 and 10 other students and some of them as i call them as our social butterflies are hanging out with more than 20. and the students also wanted to know how often and what you can see here is that there's a higher level of frequency of students quote hanging out with others so about

03681 percent of our students are frequently or sometimes hanging out with between zero and ten students they also wondered if the majority of kids felt comfortable accessing food in the cafeteria and i yes the 75 or so said yes they would purchase food in the cafeteria we asked them about the options for return and the secondary students were very similar to secondary families which meant that they preferred option one where they alternate a two-day schedule we also asked about internet access a majority of them have access some of them stick and i had people say well if they're accessing the survey they've had access to the internet um and so they were finding a place to access and this is access to devices and again when we look at it it's about six percent stated

037they didn't have access to devices if we were to extrapolate that out it would be very similar to the number of devices we did hand out in the spring what questions do you have about the student data can you reiterate one time the scale of uh classes that you actually sent this to i thought i saw early on that it was seven through 12 yes so we elementary did not go to elementary it went to secondary for 7th through 12th grade okay thank you you're welcome i have a question about the hangouts yes in senior living communities at least in some of them because this pandemic has lasted longer than originally hoped they're allowing uh folks to interact in what they call their their bubble which is a small social circle that could be as

038little as five as many as six or eight in this scenario is there any way to know uh how how common that zero to five is and there's all the same peoples in the same bubble in that analogy is there any way for us to or is there any experience that says when they hang out with their friends it's typically the same set of friends well i think the intent behind the question was to basically say how many students overall would you normally find yourself hanging out with and so i i think they probably interpreted it as the bubble um it's in terms of how many in their language i think that's what hangout means could could hang out be virtual versus physical um i'm sure for the some of them it could but i

039think that the idea that they frequently hang out versus um sometimes hang out versus never i think that data in terms of the rarely um i said these were their questions and i i honored their work and i did i just know from talking with our students who helped craft this survey that the intent behind that question was really to demonstrate that while our efforts toward cohorting may make a lot of sense as it takes place within the school day that as we understand and can anticipate we will have students that are going to be interacting with other groups of students that they may not be in a light cohort with um so as one student put it does the cohorting hold value if we're going to be hanging out with each other anyway outside

040of the bounds of the school day well i think one example of that is uh sports teams after school um i'm wondering if some of those hangouts with more than 20 people are are the students on teams yeah and i think as we dive into a little bit more of where we currently sit in terms of how we're approaching that cohort dynamic particularly at the secondary level um we recognize that there are significant challenges that we are trying to address as well as some that we just can't regardless of what we do again within the context of the school day that at some level we know our kids are going to be hanging out with other kids whether they're in a light cohort or not and and those are things obviously that we are not

041able to uh mitigate and uh dr benton or dr summers in terms of you know we've had this i think of it last week um and that was a completely different lens only a week ago so having the survey close on july 6th and here we are on the 20th and the school doesn't open until the 19th it's such a fluid situation would you can you speak to what aspects of this data you might that might be different um given the current circumstances this week i think that does involve some degree of speculation i think probably the best place for us to dive into more of what we know today and what we're working with um as we work toward the opening of school and some of the trends that we're addressing within that transition

042i think to some extent i would anticipate that we would get similar data even if we administered this survey now uh but i think it would be a different type of survey that we would probably develop as well so i'm not sure that that did everything that you were hoping to accomplish in addressing that question but it's the survey datas are helpful um and definitely have been informative in the development of the plan i do think that it's important to also elevate the fact that there are other drivers um that are at work and as we dive into more of what those plan details are i think that will help shape uh more of our next steps and how we talk about that sure thanks and i um i appreciate that it's just it's such

043a fluid situation i think it speaks to um as we get into the plan highlighting some of the agility and the ability to pivot if and when we need to absolutely that's a great way to frame it so with that if there are any other questions i'm going to um give my screen share over to dr summers one quick question um was there any common similarities across all three yes um a majority of our students as well as family members and staff uh envision coming back to in-person learning and doing so as safely uh and as responsibly as we can um i i would say generally speaking we're looking at about a 75 to 80 percent response rate that supports that return to an in-person learning and learning environment i also think it's important to

044mention that for those that do not envision that um that we value and understand that that perspective um is one that we have to prepare for that there are um going to be families and students that are not planning on returning and then to the extent that they can leverage both a part-time in-person as well as a part-time um online or or we're it is an online option at that point uh which we have actually had in our district for some time um we we anticipate that there's going to be more students that are electing that option or more families that are telling us uh that that's what they're looking for as well so we recognize that it runs the continuum and that we need to be responsive to all of those dynamics okay so

045with that i would like to make sure that i can position uh this updated document that for those of you that are looking at where to reference that if you log into board docs um there is a link to this plan this plan will be circulated uh with all of our families tomorrow um before i dive into more of the details i would also elevate that we will be um linking an enrollment form uh for our families uh and we are asking for families to respond to that form uh which really is going to specify their intent uh for the 2021 school year in regards to what enrollment option they will be pursuing as best they can tell us that deadline for forum response is going to be july 31st um and while on one

046level i appreciate that this document will do a lot i think to address some of the questions uh hopefully many of the questions that our families have uh what i would start with as a preface is that there is no 100 percent uh foolproof plan so to speak um in terms of every aspect of what the details are going to look like every day there's still a lot that we are going to have to talk with our staff about and prepare for at each specific school site in terms of how we implement uh what these protocols and strategies will be um so i think that will come through more as we work through the plan so that you can understand different examples of where that situates i would also elevate the fact that within this

047document there are several links and i'm going to do the best i can we did not create a separate presentation that created this nice powerpoint that allows us to go slide by slide instead what we thought we would do is really work through uh as best we can page by page and summarize high level information and to the extent that there's questions about this information please don't hesitate to speak up uh and we'll do our best to respond to those joining me uh as we work through this plan will be uh lori benton as well as rick frampton and this will again represent a lot of the work that has taken place in multiple work groups and continues to occur as we're learning more and adapting to the latest information both at a local level

048as well as how we're leveraging information from the state colorado department of education uh and other resources that are important for us to factor into all of the details that we will be sharing with you this evening um so this cover page really just uh reinforces our preparation efforts uh and our plan which currently is about returning back to school on august 19th uh so for those students and families that elect to have their students attending school uh our first day of school will stay the same uh as of now that is our focus is making sure that we are doing everything that we can between now and just uh less than a month i believe it's 30 days or 29 now that's taking us toward that very first day of school so more to

049dive into as we go through this we'll talk through the in-person learning and online learning options in a little bit more detail but we took a lot of information from different resources and guides and you can see one of these linked here in the very beginning of our plan from the american academy of pediatricians we see and agree that schools are fundamental to our child and adolescent development and well-being and provide our children and adolescents with academic instruction social and emotional emotional skills safety reliable nutrition physical speech and mental health therapy all that to say that as we prepare for the coming school year the goal is to have our students to the extent that we can do this physically present in school um and as you can see we are also very cognizant of

050making sure that we do everything that we can within our power to afford ourselves every opportunity to maintain an in-person presence and you will see as we work through this document that we ultimately do have to prepare for contingencies because we recognize as this is a public health crisis that we cannot control every part of what happens in this in this place and so we can work a lot to mitigate risk and to create a health a healthy and safety uh learning environment for our students our staff and our community so you'll see a lot more of how those guidelines will present in an effort to not only come back to school but maintain that in-person presence as best we can as long as we can as we work through this upcoming school year also

051important to mention that we are working as a community to take care of one another and that is a core value so we need everybody's partnership in this process and while there may be individual aspects of the plan that not everyone is going to agree with what we are still uh asking for and expecting is that we um work together for the greater good uh and we put that in terms of some of the more specific aspects of what this plan entails uh just really quickly we are moving from phase one to phase two of this plan so uh what we originally presented wasn't necessarily as much of the details as what i think people were looking for this is a much more detailed document but it's about as much detail as we can provide

052at a district level again uh each of our school sites are now going to have to work at the next level in collaboration with our staff and our families to make sure that we're preparing to execute so that is what our focus is shifting to is how do we make sure that all of this can be executed um and a big part of that is training uh communication reinforcement making sure that we have everything in place uh as we're preparing for that in person return you can see the guiding principles that we did outlined from the very beginning those principles remain the same um so these six principles we are going to speak to specific aspects within each and every one of these um starting with the health safety and well-being of our student staff

053and community you can see additional links including a lot of the people sure sorry teresa i missed did you have a question i know you were going over the core values and whatnot i think it's on the next page i was just suggesting you scroll down okay um just real quick i did want to point out and as i um show you this link to the additional resources this is also reinforced in our um website so you can see a lot of the resources that helped create the details of this plan also linked through the website so all of this information will be uploaded and available via our website as well one of the other driving documents and this document was not published until just middle of last week but it's the el paso county

054public health department guidelines extremely important for us to make sure that we continue to partner with our local public health officials and we will be showing you where there is connection uh to what's within this document as well as what is reflected in our plan uh as we work through this so without further ado uh health safety and well-being of our student staff and community so what i'm going to do is touch on the highlighted topics starting with masks and face coverings because that seems to be one that uh continues to be a representative uh dynamic and as we all can appreciate and understand at this point in time we are currently operating on an executive order released by our governor uh that is mandating masks for all uh 10 and older um as of

055i believe was last friday so this is at this point in time uh how we're approaching the uh execution of that executive order realizing that it will expire uh but at the same i think it's set to expire two days before the beginning of school but at the same time it very well could be updated uh and revised and so with that in mind as well as with all of the guidelines and what we continue to be uh hearing from our local uh health officials is that wearing a mask is a key part um although only one but it is a key consideration as part of a comprehensive prevention plan so we recognize and understand that this may be challenging for some both of our students and our staff members especially among young children but

056we're going to expect that staff and students are wearing masks to the greatest extent possible unless physical distancing can be maintained you can see where masks will be required can you scroll down how much further um maybe i'm still only i'm i'm still on the title page i am as well let me um we might have a delay in the buffering mechanism is it back on yes i apologize for that there you go okay and i just got notes that are telling me that my screen sharing paused or timed out my apologies on that all right so we are on masks and face coverings uh so as i was saying uh we understand that we are subject to the executive order that is currently in place um here are the parameters by which we are

057working to create an expectation where staff and students are expected to wear masks again to the greatest extent possible unless physical distancing can be maintained and what we would highlight in that is that there will be certain settings during the school day and actually as students are if they are taking a bus that would be one place where students would be required to wear a mask and that would mean all students we would expect mass to be worn entering or exiting school when we're sharing hallways or locker rooms restrooms and other common areas this will have to be translated to different aspects of each school so that students and staff know when it's okay to not have to wear a mask for example when they're maybe in a classroom setting and directed instruction is occurring

058in certain situations mass may not have to be worn at that time in other situations particularly if there's a large class that's meeting and the physical distancing cannot occur then we would expect that masks are worn at that point face shields are a potential alternative but again we want to make sure that we are starting from a baseline of masks will be a norm uh and a value that we will be uh encouraging and expecting as we work throughout the day as i mentioned earlier student populations who are unable to wear masks for medical or educational reasons will need to employ an alternate form of mitigation and we do recognize that there may be again times when the mask is getting in the way of what is needing to happen educationally speaking so you can

059see some of the other examples uh that are listed in that following bullet um do you expect i'm sorry question on that piece if you don't mind yeah please with respect for the alternate forms of mitigation will that be managed on a building by building basis yes and and to some extent um it could be within a building on a location by location basis or other factors that need to be talked about thought about involving the specific staff members and students that we're working with at that particular point in time yeah so down to the most practical common denominator yes absolutely thank you thank you um we are asking that students and staff uh provide their own mask um in the event that that cannot happen we um certainly will have them available but we

060also recognize that the supply is one of those things that we may not be able to keep up with that demand so this is an area that we are uh asking for uh support from the community in the in that process i want to be careful not to move too fast through this but are there any questions around the masks or face coverings that i can help address you see can you speak to um when we're when we're talking about teaching our kids um proper hand washing and whatnot when the science says that wearing masks are going to uh that proper mask wearing includes changing out masks every day making sure they fit snugly to the students face um and how they even to how they take it on and off and touching their face

061is has each building or is each building engaging in discussions on what that looks like yes absolutely that will be how they envision that yep that'll be a component of what we will have to not only communicate but uh work to model to reinforce uh to support and and i want to be clear that this is not something that we're looking at necessarily just from a top-down compliance angle this is something that we are using as an opportunity to address more of the why behind it and you brought up some excellent points around how we can reinforce the proper use of masks and we recognize that there will be questions around that and so it's our job to make sure that we are teaching uh and modeling that uh with less of a focus on

062trying to find people doing it wrong i don't think we're necessarily trying to look at this as being masked police in fact that's not an effective way for us to set up the educational environment however there will be moments and times where we do have to make sure that that becomes a point of emphasis and i think we have fantastic staff and in partnership uh with our families and with our entire community i think we can um work from a place of how we look out for each other and how we care for one another in that uh approach so i would expect that to be something that again is reiterated um particularly at the beginning of the year uh as much as we need to and pretty much it's like anything else once you

063learn a new habit and you're working with it um in a couple of weeks it becomes just part of that here's what we're doing and again we're doing this because we want to make sure that we can uh stay in school uh and maintain an in-person learning environment as long as we possibly can i have another question colorado department of health uh released their guidelines on on this which mirrors the governor's uh order as well and one of the reasons i was asking also is i i want to make sure that as a parent and as a board member i want to make sure that we're being mindful that that we're not that in the event we have a student that is trying doing the best they can that we're not going to deny a

064child in education absolutely and again we are not working at this from a finding fault or error with our students um we will work at it from a place of learning uh and growth and making sure that we're doing our part to um you know certainly if we have a student that just absolutely cannot wear one we're we're not going to make a huge um issue out of that but again we'll have other variables that we have to consider at that point in time and one of those dynamics where we do have to really look at this from an individualized perspective at the same time what we need is everybody's support in that space um and empathy particularly for individuals that we know um may not be in a position where they can wear a

065mask or face covering um at any part of the day and if that's the case again we'll work uh directly with that individual student and support for the family as well as uh making sure that our staff have what they need to do what we need to to create that supportive environment and then one other question of sorry to monopolize my time doc i think dr benton and and frampton will address students that are are esl and students and our students that are our special learner students that have need accommodations yes so in addition to obviously the health and safety considerations um we will be working um deliberately to ensure that the learning needs are being addressed and met uh and you'll see that in a later part of our plan as well reinforced in

066that language all right so i'm going to do my best to uh because there is quite a bit still here for us to get through hand washing and sanitizing as you saw in some of our survey data but also just as part of the fundamental strategy you will see and feel a increased emphasis uh in all of our schools to stress uh the importance of hand washing find specific times within the day where hand washing is built as part of a routine built into our routines um making sure that if hand washing is not available that sanitizing is taking place obviously this will require a lot of monitoring of those hand washing stations and doing what we need to do to reinforce all the safety considerations posters and other resources etc to really make that

067happen that one's pretty straightforward um physical distancing is another um high leverage strategy if you will that is consistently stressed uh in all of the health department guidance that we're working with and so as best we can throughout the day yes we will be making every effort when possible to encourage and maintain six feet of physical distancing between our students our staff members etc what we also recognize in the health department has been very practical with us on is this may not be something that we can absolutely guarantee in every situation um so where you can't get six feet five feet is better than none four feet maybe better than none three feet um there's actual uh guidance within the el paso county document that speaks to doing the very best we can but acknowledging

068that there may be certain limitations that we are up against um and in those situations then we will troubleshoot that and problem solve that as best we can um we are considering um one-way hallways and schools where that's possible where that's feasible again that will be a site-by-site specific aspect of the plan we will be designating specific building entry and exits that go perhaps a step further than entry and exit points that we have used previously we are looking at for elementary school staggered recess times um there will be recess there will be lunch to the extent that we can accommodate lunch in the lunch rooms that would be our plan is to maintain uh both a recess and a lunch time uh within those schedules but again that will be site-specific in terms of

069uh at what points that will occur um we do recognize that for secondary there may be limited or just continued use of lockers as well as limited time in between classes and the potential for staggered passing periods at this point in time we are starting the year off without um assemblies or performances or off school gatherings at the beginning of the school year um we're going to do what we can to still accomplish some of the interactions that occur especially as we're welcoming students back where we can leverage an outside venue versus having to do things inside we'll be looking at those options but as a general rule we're going to try to limit large gatherings within each of our school environments and again you see the the statement underneath physical distancing around each school

070communicating uh with their staffing community around more specifics of those plans i want to take a moment now to talk about our health symptoms screening protocols you can see a link directly to the el paso county health document this comes directly from their document basically we need to make sure uh that screening is a piece of that overall strategy as we've talked a considerable length with our school staff around this however there is quite a bit to manage logistically with this and so as we're starting the year out we are not at this point in time going to conduct those symptom checks at the school environment what we are asking for is partnership and intentionality with all of our students as well as our staff members to ensure that there is a self-screening guideline that

071will occur every day prior to arriving at a d38 facility so we will be sending out these guidelines and reiterating what these expectations are and again that is something that we are stressing is of critical importance prior to a student or staff member leaving to come to school one of the things that we know is definitely part of this mitigation effort is that staff students anybody who is feeling ill and is experiencing space in particular specific symptoms that are related to cover 19 need to stay home um so you can see what those uh screening guidelines are we are reiterating uh what things look like prior to coming into a facility but should a student or staff member begin to feel ill during the day uh at that point we will be conducting an in-person

072uh screening in our health room we will be contacting parents we will be taking the temperature we'll be also evaluating the student for that symptom or for the symptoms that are presented we will have personal protective equipment specifically for our nurses or whoever is in the health room conducting that evaluation and then we will also encourage that individual to reach out to their health provider and or consult with public health's disease program and you can see the information there um so what the the guidance again that that we are receiving is telling us this is what we are expecting our students and our staff members to do what they have given us is basically flexibility in terms of how we implement this um and so again we're we're really at this point starting from a

073place of a self-screening um step that our students and our families uh and staff would be conducting on their own this next section really speaks to specific language again coming directly from el paso county public health and as you can see in bold uh this time frame cannot be overridden by any other authority and remains the express authority of el paso county public health and you can see the link to their guidance um and so the information that's here is literally word for word verbatim but you can see i'm not going to walk through every single one of these in the event of a positive coven 19 test result you can see how each of those aspects of what happens then fall out in the event of a positive result in the event of a

074negative test result but symptoms with no other diagnosis um for people with a probable diagnosis without lab confirmation you have cova-19 symptoms but did not seek medical care and then lastly for those of with other diagnosis to explain their symptoms um the the bottom line on all of this is we're looking at an extended period of time out of school for the individual or individuals that are involved and that includes siblings or household members that will also be excluded in the event that there is the different criteria that you see there listed so this will be something that we anticipate having to uh continue to communicate but a lot of times it's going to be when when a situation comes up what do we do at that point um now this will connect to another

075section later in our document as well but at this point this is just one more health and safety protocol that we will be implementing and i'd like to if i can just kind of hustle through the rest of these because they're all very straightforward bottom line is from a cleaning and disinfecting approach we will be ensuring ongoing cleaning and sanitation of commonly touched surfaces that will be throughout the day uh we will be reducing the frequency of touching services uh we'll be communicating more specific cleaning protocols specific to classrooms around band pe science etc [Music] cleaning and disinfecting will be something that we will be extremely diligent about and make sure that we have the staffing and the clarity on what those expectations are up and down throughout the day i want to talk a

076little bit here about cohort management but it's also a component that that still is something that i think we will be communicating more information about particularly as it pertains to secondary because there's different dynamics at play in elementary than our secondary school environments middle and high school but essentially cohort management is really about limiting the number of students who are in regular contact with each other by keeping them in groups and cohorts it assists more in contact tracing it's not necessarily a mitigation of the transmission of the virus it comes into handy more so in the event that somebody um were to acquire covid how do we work with public health at that point uh to determine exposure of other individuals um so at a broad level here elementary students for the most part will

077be kept in a cohort class to the greatest extent possible so the same group of students with the same teachers um day in day out uh efforts will be made for secondary students to remain with similar cohort groups however um and we're just briefly saying here students will still be scheduled in both core and elective classes basically what we're looking at is more of a broader cohort management design for our secondary level because at some point it becomes almost counter to what we're trying to accomplish in returning to in-person instruction if we create too restrictive of a cohort management plan um so there's just not the same level of uh assurance that we can provide uh with our secondary schedules the way that they exist um i will tell you that our secondary schools will

078be talking a lot more with their staff about how we plan uh for what cohort management does look like and this is where i'll put another plug-in for making sure that we are getting the most uh accurate information from our families in terms of your intent to enroll either full-time in person or if it's a part-time option a lot of that part-time election will factor into the way that we design class size and maintain some degree of cohorting as best we can throughout the day so that's just an additional level of information that we're going to need before we can uh have all of that detailed in terms of what the student schedule looks like and where they see themselves from point a to point z from one day to the next um jump in

079real quick and ask a question yes um so as the student survey pointed out i think we if i'm understanding that we're recognizing that a lot of a lot of our students most have established friendships or relationships that they'll continue to socialize outside of the school so cohort management becomes an even bigger challenge is that what you're saying um yes and the experience of middle school and high school is predicated upon students being able to access um both their core and elective classes of their choice insofar as you're not going to be able to have one set of students that is following that same set of students from the beginning of the day through every class that they attend so it just becomes very difficult to manage in terms of um trying to restrict that

080cohort inevitably if you're going to have more than one class in a day which we will um you're going to have that class that's going to go to the next class and the kids that were in the previous class and whatever next class they're in it's just the nature of the the way those schedules are designed and to date we do not have that much better of a game plan to be able to afford that type of cohorting um so again what i would say is cohorting by itself is not about mitigating transmission of the virus it's about making sure that we can trace or partner with public health in the event that there is a positive case so by following all the other criteria that we have already talked through that becomes more of

081the emphasis uh as opposed to cohorting being the only way to manage that limited interaction from day to day does that make sense yeah casey just um to clarify so that i understand completely as well the cohort management in terms of contact tracing and whatnot um if the tighter the cohort the the larger the chance you have of say keeping a school site open if there is an outbreak in a smaller cohort you could potentially isolate but not necessarily shut down the entire school is that is that an adequate that is a that is one way to think about it yes and as we get into the potential of what happens in the event of an outbreak what i can tell you is well i can fast forward if you want me to it's okay

082it's okay i was just thinking in terms of consequences um yeah one of the potential um benefits of cohorting would be that if we did have to shut down there would be the potential of only applying that to the specific cohort of students or staff that have contracted the virus as we talk more about how that potential outbreak is defined and then managed i think you'll see how all of that connects a little bit later thanks okay i think we're getting to the um to the end here of at least principle number one so again we talked about uh limiting large group assemblies and gatherings uh chassa will provide garden guidance uh that we will follow regarding athletics and activities um we are at least as we're starting the year out going to limiter volunt

083limit volunteer guest teacher by guest teacher we mean not sub teachers but uh teachers who are coming in as guest speakers or other additional support and visitor access to d38 facilities so we are limiting that we're not completely restricting that but one of our strategies that i don't know that i spelled out in detail earlier is that if you're visiting a building we are going to limit where that visitor may be able to go so it may be limited just right to the main office we would expect the visitor um to have a mask on and and to have also uh self-screened prior to arriving um also we are anticipating virtual meetings in lieu of those large group gatherings so an example of that would be back to school night some of the other typical

084events that we kick the year off with will be modified as we're starting back in august into september our nutritional services program uh will be in place we'll be a lot we'll be allowing students to access food services we are going to prioritize lunch accounts being used as opposed to the handling of cash we're still figuring out exactly what will be available to students in the form of the meal itself um so to to the extent that boxer bagged breakfast and lunches will be served there will be um still an accounting for a hot meal for students that we're trying to limit just meals that only exist within a sack so to speak sack lunch condiments will be available but in individual packages et cetera et cetera we are going to limit access to microwaves

085hot water dispensers and toasters we're going to do the best we can to also accommodate the physical distancing protocols within the lunchroom setup transportation will at least right now operate off of a normal bus route in compliance with health and student safety protocols so we are going to require our drivers to wear masks as well as any student that is riding the bus we will be cleaning in between our high middle school and elementary routes um and then we are going to look really closely at the uh ridership and so we do anticipate uh that there will probably be less riders than we have been operating with and so we will make adjustments to our schedule as necessary based on uh what that ridership will uh present as uh and then a quick question before

086you move into buildings sure um uh on the nutrition will students or did we get clarification uh whether students will still be allowed to have lunches off campus we are at this point in time um going to allow off-campus lunch that makes sense part of the rationale there is we don't have the space to be able to accommodate all of the students in one setting now we may be adding a lunch we may be having to adjust other parts of the schedule but at this point in time we are not envisioning lunch to be served directly in classrooms that may have to happen in certain situations again a lot of that is going to be side-by-side school dependent but yes that is our initial stance on off-campus privilege thank you sorry to have interrupted sure

087no that's fine uh buildings just uh gleaning over this real quick hand sanitizer stations and healthy habit signage arrival and dismissal uh again we'll maximize physical distancing we are asking that drinking fountains be used only as water bottle dispensers where we do have the water bottle dispensers that will be um what we stress is encouraging all students to bring their own water bottles and we can keep them filled up so that they can stay hydrated throughout the day uh facilities will be cleaned again with appropriate products throughout the day and each evening and then our grounds teams will continue to monitor playground equipment and other outdoor areas for other hazards so i think that may be where i am going to hand it off but before i do um into our second principles are any

088other questions related to everything that was just covered in the health and safety section one more question on the screening i want to make sure i understood uh so if a student ends up with a temperature are we going to do we need do we have to to have that student have a covid test before returning back to school not necessarily what we would be doing at that point is working with the family that's involved and really what we would encourage at that point is their coordination with their healthcare provider and what we obviously do not want to see is the student coming back to school exhibiting any symptomology so airing on the side of safety while we can encourage that test unless there are other signs that are at play we wouldn't necessarily jump

089to an automatic requirement and as i'm saying that i want to double check with our nurses to make sure that that is absolutely how how they are approaching it but that's that would be something that we would again be consulting with that student's family on to make sure that we're all on the same page you see i have oh right there stay on that page um so at the bottom where it says each school will communicate i know it's a concern of a lot of people in the community as to the short run up to august 19th and can you speak to you know a ballpark of when specific school plans will be rolling out so i think it depends on what are the specific aspects of that plan that people are looking for i

090can tell you that again the information that we will get from the enrollment form will be a driver for how many students we are preparing that are returning 100 um in person and students that may be coming at it from a part-time angle and how their schedule will uh align to the way the day will work um i hesitate only because if i create a date right now that says here's when it's all going to happen i i worry about our ability to maybe not have it completed by then what i would also emphasize is that we need at this point in time we have done i think as much as we probably can do in in most respects with this district level plan recognizing that we want and need our staff members to be

091part of the actual how then do we implement this within specific classrooms within specific times of the day etcetera now our staff are not scheduled to return back to work until august 12th is their first official day we're going to talk in a little bit later in the document about how we're trying to approach partnering with our staff to give them some additional time that can be built into how they're returning so i here's what i'm hesitating to do if there is a deep level of detail that people are do not feel like they're currently working with that we can provide we'll do everything we can with our administrators and the staff in the school to create that response um but there's still a lot that they have to do and i don't want to

092create that burden of it's going to be right away so it would probably be more detailed out the very first week of august um but if there's questions that are of an immediate nature that people have they are certainly welcome to reach out uh to their specific school staff i would just personally ask for a little bit of space and grace because it may not be an answer that we're gonna be able to automatically generate all at once right out of the gate so yeah that's that's very trying to create as much of a buffer yeah the best way to say it just being real yeah and i think there's a lot of flexibility and patience from all sides and angles that you know everybody um can bring to the table we appreciate that yeah

093and this might be a question for dr benton i know that there are high schoolers wondering about their school class schedules and when they come out i i actually don't recall when they usually come out but do you anticipate that that would be on a similar timeline or will it be just right before school starts that they'd be able to know what classes they're in and what their class schedules are so my understanding is that normally schedules are released usually the day before processing and then students can determine if they need to make schedule changes but i know that we are also looking at our processing differently in terms of students coming in and how they pre-register for things or get a parking pass and so i think what you can you can expect is

094that the schools will communicate the timeline of when a student can log into infinite campus and see their schedule um as part of that what casey's talking about that face plan so um we do in case if you just want to scroll right into the next place maybe this is a great opportunity for us to move into to number two go forward so uh i think you all have seen this this chart but um basically it just demonstrates the different enrollment options that students will have preschool is in person because we can keep it the concept of cohort management is very strong within the preschool setting and melissa gibson's diner will be working with our three preschools to make sure that they have the protocols in place for safety and for cleaning and for snack

095distribution and that whole component elementary options are full-time in person at school or full-time online and we also have our part-time homeschool enrichment academy that will still run on thursdays the full-time online option will be a mirror of what students are receiving within the k-6 setting k-5 in particular the curriculum that we are utilizing is parallel to what's being offered in brick and mortar in person except for literacy and as you have heard the literacy conversation we have multiple literacy programs at the elementary level and so we'll be looking at adding a supplemental literacy program and obviously at this point in the ball game [Music] we've never had an online elementary so now we do we are an approved program through cde um and thanks to the instructional coaches and the elementary principals for creating

096that program and we applied and did receive um approval for a poor program to have beyond um hopefully beyond covid the middle school option is anything from full-time in person to part-time to full-time online as well as our part-time homeschool enrichment programming and our middle school options um in the past we had no more than 20 part-time students um accessing our online programming and so it was all very supplemental and we contacted contracted with colorado digital learning solutions which is the state's supported boces that is a state support a grant that has colorado educators and is aligned to colorado standards with the middle school programming though and looking at potential numbers our hope is that we can offer programming that is designed and executed by our teaching staff and so as we look at numbers

097we'll have more information and that's one reason why we need parents to fill out that intent form that's going to go out tomorrow that will help inform shaping that curriculum as i said before it was all very supplemental at this point though we know that one of the great pieces of adopting our curriculum in the last few years is that there are digital components that students can access in an online platform and so we would want to utilize those resources including the newly adopted math and english language arts programs the high school option um is also a full-time to part-time either in person or online or combination and we have had our online courses all of our core courses are mirror in-person learning in terms of the curriculum that's utilized with those we do contract

098with some with the colorado digital learning solutions for any supplemental courses that we are unable to provide but those are considered elective or supplemental we also do contracts for some of our ap courses so that students can access ap programming i've had questions about that and we do offer that for online programming information there is a process for parents to um and the students to apply for that because it is a different process so if you keep scrolling one of the biggest pieces is that as we continue to plan for different levels of programming attendance is still a requirement and so we will be working to determine attendance practices and policies for um any kind of in person whether we go to remote learning or online learning and how we how we make sure that

099we meet state expectations in terms of that we also want to make sure that any students who have learning gaps that we address that the group of teachers that we've been working with really focused on making sure we assess our kiddos in a formative manner and plan our programming and our curriculum and intervention based on that so not teaching backwards necessarily but really looking forward to this current grade level and the current grade level content and filling gaps as well there's also a portion here about our special population students and it's really important that we let people know that we will work within the students plans to determine if we can provide a learning environment for reasonable accommodation and services to be met and so the case manager if a student who if they do

100qualify for a plan will help determine appropriate accommodations fulfillment and in terms of progress monitoring and accountability one of the things that we do see essential is making sure that we do provide assessment data to so through our psat our local psat making sure we're prepared for the sat in september as well as the psat in october nwa as well as acadiance which is the new name for dibbles which is our literacy assessment for k3 the difference is that we'll have to look at how we go about giving those but we are going to still see that that's a priority to help our students be able to set academic goals and get the data to our staff to be able to uh to determine if any intervention is needed there is a responsibilities chart that

101is linked within this section to help our staff administrators counselors our teacher leads and our teachers understand the distribution of responsibilities within the first three weeks of return you'll see it's pretty heavy for administrators and teachers and the idea is that we want to demonstrate that we've hopefully thought about and this was created by our group that teachers and administrators and counselors to try and help uh clear up exactly what everyone should be doing and by when so this is the generic one for k-12 and the principals will be working they've been working within their group to have an elementary option and a secondary option and as they work through those they'll be communicating more specific timeline and detail to each of their staff the learning services department will then support the professional learning that

102staff need related to that so that's number two i think that uh sets up mr frampton for our focus on mental health social and emotional learning supports yeah thank you dr summers um we have a really um an amazing group of folks who are focusing on the social emotional learning aspects of our return to make sure that we're meeting the needs of kids not just academically but also the social emotional needs um there are many uh known and probably even more unknown impacts to the fact that we haven't been in school since march um so we broke this uh this plan into three different levels the why the what and the how and the why it really is how are we going to help kids come back in a different world than what we left

103it and and be prepared for that and and so we are putting together all the the what's in the house on how to make that happen one thing i've heard from teachers more than anything else is we had a high level of success when we did the remote learning in the spring primarily because we had relationships with the kids we knew the kids we had all fall and most of winter to learn what motivates kids know how they learn and how to individualize the lessons to meet the needs of kids our big concern is if we were to have to do a closure early in the fall we wouldn't have that opportunity or background to get to know kids so we are going to make one of our number one priorities is is to really

104carve out the time necessary to get to know our kids as learners and as individuals and make sure that we are developing those relationships if um we have to ever go into a remote environment so we can lean upon that um the what we um we believe that social emotional learning shouldn't be a standalone it shouldn't be something that occurs in a counselor's office in the main office with the social worker counselor school psychologist it really needs to be something that's incorporated and integrated into what we're doing every day in every class we feel that our teachers are the ones who get to know the kids they get to know the families better than anybody and when it comes to being able to make those connections and support kids from a social emotional standpoint our

105teachers are the the best equipped to do that so we're going to empower our teachers to um do that to the best of their ability and and we're going to train them on some techniques and some strategies that that will be helpful in identifying when a child is is needing the additional support and how to provide that and be the first line of defense and providing that support obviously there's going to be times when students have needs that are greater than what a classroom teacher will be able to address in the classroom and we're going to have a goal of freeing up our mental health professionals our psychologists social workers and counselors freeing them up to have the opportunity to address those kids who have higher level needs upon return so that's going to require

106us in our scheduling to ensure that there's more flexibility with their schedules and they're able to respond to those those everyday crises that that do occur in schools how is um yes go ahead this is chris i i've held on to this question because this what seems to be contradictory uh to the value of our online learning and so i wanted to raise this question and it's three-fold and it may be include uh everyone on the answer so when i look at the learning options one of the questions i i have is we have good success with the home enrichment academy with homeschooling and has there been discussion about having the home enrichment academy be supplemental to full-time online uh for the very purpose of this uh statement that you make in the what and

107that is you know the the the the investment in developing relationships is equally important to the academic content which you know comes back to that concept if you're full-time online then your relationships are going to be much different than in school or in person and so that's one that's my main question i mean are we have you considered a full-time online that is somehow associated with the homeschool enrichment academy which seems to be spot on to what you're talking about in under the what category so if if i may um answer that the home school enrichment program is a separate program for home school families where they um it it is a supplemental program the online component depending on the level um if it's k-6 they will have enrichment built into or specials built into

108the programming but i think the key piece is that they will also be assigned a mentor where they are connected to their home school and they're allowed to attend different components of this at home school in terms of activities or that sort of thing to whatever level of comfortability that they that their families have um we are also working on the middle school component where they also had an online mentor assigned to them but given the numbers that we're expecting we would also then have group cohorts where the students can get to know other online students in an online capacity and so one of the pieces that what we have realized is that we have some parents who do not want students to attend campus at all and we have some parents who want students

109to attend campus in a part-time manner so we do supplement part-time at the secondary level already between grades 7 and 12. so there is an intended level of connection where students meet with their mentor weekly they also can connect with their teachers and we are looking at adding that additional layer of connecting and cohorts with the students who choose online programming so i hope that helps answer that well dr ben just to be clear then this is virtual meeting not correct correct yes so what you're saying i think as i understand it is we're making every attempt possible for social and emotional learning support be virtually correct as well as in person so part of what the design of our programs and the reason they're a program and not at their own school is that

110the students are still connected to their school of attendance so i'm sorry i'm sorry let me i'm gonna restrict my question a bit i'm only talking about the full-time online okay i i recognize the sel for in person i i get that i'm really talking about what how does this impact those who have chosen to be virtual correct and and what i'm what i'm uh giving information about with the full-time elementary or full-time secondary is that there are built-in sel components within the programming um in a virtual manner and and your professional opinion is that's sufficient well if a parent is choosing to have their student attend in a virtual manner and it's not comfortable attending in a face-to-face manner or in person learning we're going to do everything we can to make sure that

111students successful understand i i really do understand that but the the whole section about mental health social and emotional learning supports is different depending on the school choice that parents and students select and chris i'll jump in i would agree that a full-time online environment is not the most ideal circumstance for children to have the opportunity to interact with peers interact with adults in a natural and personal way so we can't meet those needs in the same capacity or in the exact same manner so what we're going to do is we're going to be intentional and deliberate in doing that in the online environment to the best of our ability but that has been a criticism and a a concern with online learning as the only way that students are accessing their school so there

112are ways that we can overcome that in the online environment but we can't replicate an in-person environment online i i totally understand dr frapton and i literally appreciate what your answers are that you're doing the best you can if that's the select the choice of the parent is full-time online we're not dismissing the what it's just virtual but it's still there correct and and we are going to dismiss it we're going to do we're going to be intentional and deliberate with it it just despite all those efforts it does have its shortcomings you're correct i understood and that that raises the question and again i heard dr benton say that the parents selected full-time online because they want that that's their selection for their safety or for their whatever choice they're making the question i

113was really still asking was is have you considered an option where there is a i'll call it a online school enrichment similar to homeschool enrichment again by choice is it something we have considered offering as a choice and for clarity chris when you say that homeschool enrichment actually has the students in person one day a week i understand so if in fact a parent would be interested in accessing some sort of online or excuse me some sort of in-person opportunities because the online will be affiliated with their school and there's mentors available there are ways that we can make that happen that's what i heard dr benton say but it just hasn't been i didn't read that that way that's my the reason i asked the question right is i don't see that as an

114option but if that's something that will be proffered then great i just that was the question whether or not people choose to do it is another question altogether right and i i'm gonna take a note of of your point here and see if we as the sel committee can't um communicate this a little bit more clearly for a future version of this document one more thing just to throw out there i don't i don't know that it completely addresses every part of what we're talking through but what i can share is that i know that our specifically at the elementary level our principles are talking about is making sure that we have some kind of way of checking in and understanding how it's going for our students in addition to all of the other strategies

115that we're going to employ we understand how big of a shift that environment will be for those that are selecting it so we stand ready to understand how it's going where it's working where it's not and being able to problem solve that in a responsive way because i i would hesitate to try to develop too much of a programmatic response without first understanding more of what the needs are and i just know that that is a priority as we continue to look at whatever the preferred enrollment approach is that we stand ready to partner with our families and understand where we're making it happen or where there's need and how we can um problem solve to address those needs so i would just say that that's something that that you've called out that's a real

116um dynamic that we need to be attentive to and we'll continue to learn together through that and figure out again what's working and where we can improve chris i i appreciate your your line of thinking especially because i know through this process since early june that you know there there are families making choices um based on absolute medical necessity for the health of their kids and or for the health of someone who is in their home so i think this speaks to the overall value statements and the culture that the district is trying to create to really serve every student and i really appreciate that sensitivity yeah i've had numerous conversations with parents already up to this point and this is not an easy decision i i appreciate the challenges in making that decision as

117you have to weigh out many factors in your household and anything we can do to help with that so that's that's exactly why our social emotional learning team is is put together is how are we going to address the impacts that those decisions have on kids and families in this environment any other questions before i jump into the how i have questions but i'll wait until you finish okay um the how a focus of our team was we do not want social more external learning to turn into one more thing that's being heaped on teachers plates in this incredibly challenging start in the fall so what we're hoping to accomplish is by using existing curriculum that all of our schools already have in place so we have responsive classrooms and like prairie winds capturing kids

118hearts mental health first aid our programs that are already in place and and the school cultures have already embraced those social emotional learning curriculum so what we're hoping to do and what we're planning to do is carve out some time in the teacher pre-service days to ensure that all teachers are trained or retrained in the curriculum that is being used in their school as well as connecting that to the unique aspects of covid and the closure so we're working the team is right now in the process of researching how those curriculum are addressing these concerns and we are going to make sure that we incorporate all of that into the the teacher training and we're going to have some time at the beginning of the school year to make sure we cover that base another

119area uh for the how is we have especially at our secondary level we have some very strong peer-to-peer uh options available for kids whether it be link crew sources of strength qpr or our different programs that we have for peer to peer support and we're going to make sure that as we train kids on these programs as we always have that we're going to also incorporate ways for kids to identify concerns amongst their peers and utilize them to to help connect kids with adults in need when they need additional help and then lastly we're also going to be intentional and deliberate about how we support our staff and we're going to ensure that we're looking out for each other as staff members and checking in and we're working with the principals and administrators of the

120buildings to make sure that that is an intentional and deliberate component of of our day as as as adults so we're taking care of each other in this process because this is hard on everybody i'm going to scream we have a fancy little chart that summarizes um summarizes all that i've talked about great what questions uh are there so i had a couple questions um first i want to start out with saying that i thank you so much for recognizing and emphasizing the value of ensuring that we're aware of the social emotional needs of our students and our staff um that this there is no perfect plan and we're working through this and it is fluid it's not just that it's fluid because it's fluid everywhere it's fluid globally and globally we recognize that education

121and in-person education is essential to that component of students um and to that effect my my question rick is then maybe this is a weeds question but how are we with our students that are our sel students um that may or may not be able to are struggling with with um our our guidelines i was reading that we would do we would be working i really encourage that we'll be working to ensure that their ieps and 504s if needed to be updated will be to ensure that we're doing the best we can for our students um and i as a parent i appreciate appreciative of that and want to make sure that it's important that we acknowledge that that's a collaboration that is truly between a parent and their students and the teachers and the

122staff members in order to be successful my question is what about somebody who's not included on that iep team let's let's just say for example um a student in in sixth grade for example may maybe that student's not wearing a mask because they have a special needs um or they they for the end so it doesn't it's not feasible for them to wear their mask how will we help to ensure that the rest of the building staff um knows that that student is that that student is um hasn't i don't know if i want to use the word exemption but that there is there is measures in place for that student yeah that's a really good question um we and there's going to be many students that don't currently have a plan that very well

123may need to have a plan developed in this new environment because of of asthma for example and they haven't had a plan developed if we have students with medical needs in which we have to take that into considerations we put what's called a reasonable accommodation in place and that reasonable accommodation can be many a variety of different things it could be greater social distancing it could be a few minutes earlier passing periods so they're not in crowded halls and that sort of thing and we already have very robust processes for developing plans and accommodations and communicating those plans if you were to go into our infinite campus student information system there's flags across the top so if you were to look up a student you can see flags for students who have unique medical challenges

124or unique learning challenges and and they're going to be we already have really solid systems in place to ensure that that communication is occurring but your point is is a good one in which we're going to have to continue to ensure that our communication is solid because we don't want a student to be reminded on many occasions to put on a mask when we've already established that that wouldn't be appropriate so we're going to have to continue to reiterate and use the existing systems in a way that'll support those kids as well and thank you so much um and i don't know if this is a question that's more appropriate for you or self or dr benton um can somebody speak to if we have a student who is struggling online and wants to jump

125back in on to in learning or is struggling in learning and needs to go online i know that's been discussed um in some of the committees i'm sure that parents are going to be asking that so ideally we would want students to stay within the same format for an entire grading period right that's ideal but we also understand that um that life throws you sideways sometimes and sometimes an online setting is working and sometimes it's not sometimes in person and if students have medical conditions or parents have medical conditions or grandparents have to come live with them there's all kinds of pieces that that could contribute so um in i think for ease we should say oh well gosh it should be at a grading period but in reality we know we have to be

126more agile we um we know that this is the year of agility that's what we're calling it and that we have to be able to shift for kids and sometimes that's going to make the adults um a little scratchy one of my favorite words but we have to be willing to do that for our students and i think our staff um when you get to the heart of a child they're willing to make that shift and it's not easy right it's not an easy transition high school is one where it's it's a huge challenge to do that in the stream but we do have certain situations where we can do that if necessary i hope that answers it yeah that does answer the question i just i have a feeling that that'll be a question

127that um gets brought up i've i've heard it asked several times um and i think under the heading the progress monitoring and accountability measures um it that's really those bullet points are real essential to that and part of it is you know when it comes to student uh who has accommodations if the accommodations aren't working we need to ship those we have a lot of things we have a lot of things that we need to be able to um to shift including enrollment options for kids dr benton's using the word agile i i'm leaning towards nimble but i suspect it's a two-way street i suspect that we're going to have some families who choose online who who realize that's not a good fit and want to come back and i also think that we might

128have some families who are in person who because of of illness or or family dynamics may choose to to discontinue that move for the online so our our team is aware that that's that's a strong possibility of occurring and we're going to work as hard as we can to provide those opportunities that that transcripting at the high school level is probably our biggest challenge to overcome when when we have to be nimble or agile all right i'm happy to move into number four if we're ready okay any other questions great thank you so number four is about staff support professional learning and one of the components that we have discussed is the apuc responsibilities document quite a bit that staff are going to learn to do or shifts they're going to need to make within

129their classroom increased routines and obviously time to get to know their students as well and so one of the pieces that we've discussed for the return in person is um adding two days as optional days for staff to be able to come back um and basically help prep their classroom and so this is the section that casey's highlighting um and we really do want to support equip and empower our staff to be able to have the knowledge that they need for those safety protocols and procedures so we'll be getting like groups together as well during the teacher return week between august 12th and 18th to be able to discuss those protocols so pe teachers and music instructors science talking through with elementary staff in terms of access to supplies anything that we used to use

130as a communal supply is more than likely now an individual student supply and so you can see that we're going to be adding a stipend for for teachers to be able to come back for those two days to be able to do room prep and be able to be prepared for the learning that's going to occur within that teacher return week there also is going to be an opportunity for our class of items to come as well because we know that we're going to be working with them to learn some of those protocols there's a section in here around expectations for staff where we are returning to in-person and building work and then there's some information around the requests for leave and to be able to contact bob foster if there are any concerns questions

131or to apply for that leave we want to highlight that although we know that some of these increased safety protocols and also increases in expectations for staff to be able to plan for pivoting to remote learning within a 24-hour period we're still going to make sure that our staff have regular plan time regular collaborative time as well as a duty-free lunch i'm sorry you said a duty-free lunch yeah so that's where teachers have the ability to go and actually have a 30-minute break within their day okay without supervising students yeah perfect i didn't hear that word correctly and that makes perfect sense thank you it's more eduspeak um in terms of remote learning uh we do want to make sure that part of our plan for return to in-person is also the opportunity when um

132when remote learning has to be basically delivered because of um because of covid that our staff have the ability to pivot within a 24-hour time frame and to make sure that students have resources to do that as well so they'll be working within the first couple of weeks to instruct students and families on how to access platforms we've also streamlined expectations uh including the platforms we'll be utilizing as well as standardized um formats for those platforms casey if you want to scroll down i ask a question right there dr ben so earlier we had talked about the exclusion criteria 14-day quarantine for those who might be ill correct and that's on an individual basis you're talking about now remote learning should we have to close the school but how do we support the individual that

133is under quarantine during that quarantine period is that built in here because i haven't quite seen it spelled out yet so um it is actually within the responsibilities document that uh staff will be populating um an lms for each level so case six as well as seven twelve so k six will be utilizing google classroom and uh 712 will be utilizing canvas as our primary lms there'll be course blueprints but staff to utilize um so it's easier for all all parties to access and staff will be expected to populate content uh depending on level the um and so the students can access any just as though they were sick before um but now hopefully that if a kid gets out for a few weeks um they can log into the platform when they're feeling better

134and be able to access their work any other questions on this section before we move on how about substitutes do we have uh enough substitutes in the event that we see a group of teachers or students having to take time so one of the recommendations of our committee in working with principals is what we're considered what we're calling flexible coverage where we would utilize in-building staff potentially if if at all possible obviously they'd be compensated for that as well as the ability to look at let's say a teacher is quarantined but healthy being able to remote in and then have a support person within the classroom so we are looking at a variety of options for staff we have teachers who you know they want to what does that look like for me i don't

135want to rewrite all of my curriculum i want to be with my kids especially if i'm if i'm feeling better so those are all questions that we continue to ask and try and seek answers to we do expect in terms of substitutes though to have we need to be more flexible in how we go about providing self-coverage the only other key piece to highlight on this page is the difference between remote learning and online programs and online programming is the full expectation that students are accessing their learning in an online platform um remote learning is when us we have to pivot uh due to a covered closure and uh offer instruction for a short period of time online through a remote learning environment so they are two separate two separate programs all right okay so

136that takes us to our preparation for the possibility of school closures and re-entry contingencies uh as we talked earlier this section of our plan is exactly what el paso county health department is sharing with us in terms of how we uh have to be prepared uh in the event of a positive case being reported to el paso county health so you can see sort of this diagram description of what that process looks like rather than spend too much time walking through how all these arrows work what i'm going to dive down into here and you can see again a link to uh that health uh public health document outbreaks are defined as two or more positive covet 19 cases in non-household members with symptom onsets within a 14-day window and as you can see these

137outbreaks can be limited to a single group or class which would be considered more of a cohort outbreak uh staff two or more faculty members or school-wide two or more cohorts within a school meeting the outbreak definition um i do think uh behind all of that in light of the fact that every outbreak will be unique and handled on a case-by-case basis in conjunction with public health again this is part of what we will be doing to ensure that we are adhering to those health guidelines and making sure that we have ongoing communication in place to address the next steps um so you can see and i'm not gonna read through each one of these bullets but in the event of an outbreak the general procedure would be outlined uh as follows so it starts

138with a single positive case within a school either a student or staff member and you can see that the exclusion of that case um is what it's referred to with public health terminology uh the exclusion of a cohort group for 14 days and if no core cohorting the school in conjunction with public health will investigate contacts and exclude all involved students and faculty for 14 days so obviously this and then uh subsequent scenarios creates a real um significant aspect of our plan that we just have to be prepared for uh in the event of a single case or two or more confirmed cases again within a cohort or class over a 14-day period and you can see all of that terminology played out through additional scenarios um have heard it been talked about as we

139have had working groups that there's not necessarily a mindset of if this happens but when this happens um so what i would propose is that everything that we have covered before um is really again an effort to do everything that we possibly can to not only come back in person but to remain in person uh for as long as we possibly can um so there's no really good way to know exactly how it's going to happen until we're back in um this situation what i would also say because i do think there's a lot of um emotion and i mean we can call it fear that goes into this is that we have actually been working a few different uh angles of what we've been doing over the summer starting with our summer sports and

140activities that have been in place uh in large part from june 1st uh and without uh going through every little detail of that we have managed that plan successfully uh over the past six now gone into seven weeks and have had great success great participation and everyone's been following the guidelines to an extent that we have a great deal of confidence in our ability to execute this plan we've also been working with our esy that extended school year um student populations and we've had really good uh success both in terms of how our execution of those protocols go as well as uh the experiences from a learning angle that our kids are getting so while on one hand this is daunting and it feels um you know certainly it's humbling when you look at this

141and say wow we might start and be in a situation where we have to uh go toward a school closure uh for a minimum of 14 days uh in the event that the outbreak occurs we still feel like the best step for us to be able to take as we're going forward is to do everything that we possibly can to prevent that from occurring and execute on the game plan that we have in front of you so then you can see from the point that we are out of school to the point uh where we would be coming back to school you can see the related school closure criteria or what is referred to as a return to learn decision tree uh and you can again get a feel for where we currently are in

142terms of the capacity criteria uh as well as how we would approach a green situation versus a yellow versus a red and so that part where we're at right now is we're in a green situation and we're working into august 19th um ideally with uh that same criteria in place uh and in the event that we have to move to yellow or red at whatever point uh in the school year we're prepared to manage that and prepare to execute on the remote learning scenario so this is the part of the document which i would tell you is very much informed by public health you can see a little bit more in terms of contact tracing and how the county would be working with us in terms of identifying contacts and reaching out to them etc

143and then you can see a little bit more again in regards to how we would implement remote learning uh in this type of situation uh so you've heard the terms agility uh nimbleness um so i'll just throw out one more and that's just the flexibility and the adaptability to all the different situations that we have and while i finish out this part of the document um this will shift our focus to what is also before the board this evening in the language of a resolution that speaks to the principles that we need to use in order to uh execute on this plan and it really comes back to making sure that uh learning continues to be uh a at the forefront of our focal focal point in our efforts understanding that uh there may be

144a moment or several moments at whatever given time we're going through the school year where we have to prepare for uh the implementation of remote learning in which case we need the ability to count that remote learning environment as part of our uh hours and instructional minutes that we are still being held accountable to by cde so i want to get to that in just a moment but i want to just one more time stress the final principle of our plan which is to continue to collaboratively develop monitor and revise our plan uh as we continue to go into the future so you can see the drivers uh behind that you can see the links to the survey data that we uh spent time on again a kudos to all of our stakeholders that have

145been uh hard at work in producing uh what you have before you this evening and understanding that again we are preparing uh for every possible scenario uh and doing so in partnership with our community uh so i just can't stress enough uh how important it is for for us to continue to work uh collaboratively collaboratively toward that end part of me dr summers please at the risk of restating the obvious can i trouble you to scroll back to page 13 please of course now i have the advantage of having a printed copy in front of me uh just so i can see it oh look showing off so it says miss upchurch he obviously print hers first please sir what percent of all the stuff you went through on pages 13 through 17 are mandated

146by our department of health that really has controlling authority over a lot of the stuff we do 100 okay that's really important for us to ensure the public is aware of that the team and the staff are working really hard to toggle between every piece of flexibility we have and what what we have no flexibility for so who's the team for working really really hard to do that and for providing choices for our families and our students thanks for calling that out that is a very uh critical component of how all of this is coming together and i would also just elevate uh as a side note to that that uh our partnership continued partnership or blossoming one if you want to look at it that way with our public health department is one of

147the features of our response to this pandemic that i think is um just a sign of how we're all working collectively and collaboratively uh in such a way that you know i understand there's a lot of different districts in our local community that um all are also on that same page but it speaks a lot to uh the county's commitment or the the health department's commitment to supporting us and acknowledging that um there are some variances to some extent um but there are some bottom lines that they just have they cannot move that target um based on the situation that we're dealing with so um just a lot of sensitivity to all that across the board so dr summers um you know thank you for the information um and i think you somewhat touched on

148this but i just want to be clear so if you have a student in high school and one student within a cohort group test positive for covet 19 or display symptoms what is the plan of notifying other parents for students not in that cohort group or if it is or similar situation if you're dealing with elementary age kids where for example a first grader displays the symptoms do we in turn notify every parent in that school or would it just be all the kids that interact with that the child with the the high temperature displaying the the signs that are in question um honestly mr clausen the best way for me to answer that is the starting point is a conversation with public health we typically are not the notifying party at the very beginning

149in terms of who else needs to be notified and contacted that's a partnership that we would start down that road in terms of making sure that we can accurately provide the information that public health is looking for at that point and then to the extent that they are the ones that are individually notifying individuals who may be impacted versus a school-wide communication that is going out obviously we would be the ones that are doing the school-wide notification within the district but in terms of a more individualized conversation my understanding at this time is that would come more through public health so i hope that answered your question okay then the next question is how would public health obtain the information for all students within a given class or a school from us we share that

150information with them at that point okay they would be working with us mr classen so an example would be um can you tell me more about what type of exposure other students had within the window of time that they're looking at so we may be looking at rosters at that point we may be looking at a number of details and what they may be telling us is here's who we need to talk to at a deeper level versus here's what we need to say to an entire school and you can see pretty quickly why the cohorting is a component that we have to be prepared for but particularly at a high school environment it becomes if that student potentially had access to multiple students both through their classes as well as lunch or any other

151time during the day it we're looking at a pretty significant number at that point so we would want to almost retrace those steps and public health would give us more specific guidance exactly on what they need from that and what we need to be able uh to provide them right and that's consistent with my understanding i guess one concern that i have is that the numbers increase and public health is is overwhelmed have we contemplated any options for being a little more nimble as a district i'm dealing with individual schools to address these issues if public health is not available say for you know a couple days um i think we're going to do everything we possibly can on our end to not only ensure that we're following that guidance from public health but also

152communicating to our families in a timely manner um so i think yes we're prepared for that and i think this if i can just say it this way this is probably the most stressful aspect of what we're preparing for is in the event of an outbreak how do we make sure that we're communicating in a timely and sensitive manner and consistently so that everyone can get the information that they need as quickly as we possibly can so i guess my my final answer all that is yes we're going to do everything that we can on our end um and i still want to make sure that we're doing it according to the guidance that public health is providing perfect thank you that's a great question matt that was an excellent question if so if i

153understand we're going to make sure i guess follow-up question in the event that has to happen uh how or can we protect as much student information as possible um if you're if you're referring to protecting information student information from the health department i don't want to read too much into the question yes um public health and us share that personally identifiable information in so far as its contact information here's the phone number here's the name here's the uh information that we can provide when it comes to what they're looking for so that agreement is protected by law because we're dealing with a public health crisis at that point um we're only sharing it though with the health department and anything that they're sharing with us conversely is protected in the relationship between our two agencies

154so we're both held to the same level of confidentiality in that where it can't go any further than our two respective organizations did that answer that mess up church yep okay i have a couple of questions um and i may have overlooked my first two were this was the substitute teacher population included in the survey and part two of that is do we anticipate utilizing substitute teachers how so the substitutes were not consent uh the the survey the survey was for employees um not that substitutes aren't employees but they're considered temporary employees so the survey was sent to anyone with a lewis palmer domain which is not considered a temporary employee in terms of substitutes we do expect to have regular substitutes um and that's where the concept of the six feet and being able

155to socially distance and also training our substitutes on our protocols is really important and then my my other sort of over-encompassing question is uh dr summers where in this plan do you i'm sort of merging the last two months the cares act money where where do you see that being implementing implemented as it applies to this plan here tonight well i can um speak to one immediate point that we covered through the staff support principle which was the two additional days which gives our staff the option of coming in a couple of days early to set their classrooms up etc as well as maximize the time that we have in that teacher return week with teachers as well as classified staff for training purposes that additional dollar amount is coming directly from our cares funding

156that is something that is allowable under care's use i would tell you that every resource in terms of cleaning supply signage where we need to purchase personal protective equipment other materials and resources that are part of how we're executing on this plan that will all be coded to cares um i will go one step further and say almost anything that within reason we can articulate as a need um that is a function of how this plan is being uh developed and executed uh is is coming from cares and as i say all this i'm wondering if shanna is also available just to share out any other updates from the financial department absolutely uh can everybody hear me we can thank you you're good okay great yeah so we are doing a very detailed uh dive

157into what is allowable under cares uh funding as well as the continued changes that keep coming down additional guidance more detail um my resources team has helped to uh you know kind of dig through those details make sure that we're all on the same page regarding uh the interpretation of that and so there are things such as um some additional instructional time that uh we'll be able to cover in the fall that relates to the time lost in the spring so we're waiting on a little bit more guidance from the cde on how to calculate that out as well as all the purchases of thermometers and masks and such as dr summers said regarding cleaning supplies anything and everything that is related to covid we can code to those cares monies and we are tracking

158that in in a very detailed fashion uh through our finance team right now thanks that's helpful and just to um clarify the timeline any of that cares money coming to our district is applicable through december 31st is that still the case yes that is correct thank you one other point um shannon do you mind just uh also sharing the dynamic around we are allocating um as a starting point a specific dollar amount per student for every school to be able to utilize uh as well so recognizing that yeah go ahead thanks yeah so that that was another um idea that came through the the different teams that have worked through this whole back to school plan and um was that we assign an amount that is discretionary to the principal so if they were to

159come across a need um for their campus that was you know campus specific that they would have some funding already available to them and so we did um apply uh a dollar amount per student based on what's budgeted to each of those campuses so that they have some discretionary funding to spend they've been given the guidelines to make sure that we're still staying within the cares requirements and again we will be tracking all of that backup documentation in the case of an audit so that should should we get audited we are in full compliance with everything that is needed to show that how we spent that money and that it was all within the guidelines set forth for it thank you thanks for bringing that up shayna since you're still on can you speak to

160is per pupil revenue the same for online education as it is for in-person education yes i believe so dr benton did you want to add a line to that uh so it there's a different um enrollment process in terms of documentation of online students i i can't recall the exact number but i actually think we get a little bit more based on the state allocation for online than for actual in person just because we're floor-funded as in person [Music] thank you um at the risk of also just drawing our attention to the resolution mr clausen is that a good time to just make sure that you all have an opportunity to have any discussion around the resolution language or would you rather that wait until the special meeting part of the agenda well um considering

161it's a special meeting agenda if you don't have any objections i'd prefer to keep um keep it as a separate agenda item yeah that's not a problem i i did want to call out if i can the the fact that the way that we're accounting for our instructional minutes and the fact that our students will be engaged in an educational process that affords them the flexibility as well as the district the flexibility to count those minutes which ultimately translates to how we're counting our full-time equivalent status all those pieces connect all the resolution language really does is it allows us to count more than just the in-person learning time as we're going into the 20-21 school year which as you all know because of the unique circumstances that's the purpose of that resolution is really

162to ensure that we are on solid ground where we're not necessarily having to completely adjust policy but we're saying for the purposes of this upcoming school year this is how we're going to count time and this is how that translates to being able to demonstrate to cde that we are within the bounds of the flexibility that they're allowing for us so just in the event that there's any questions around that that's that's the ultimate intent of that resolution thank you dr summers before we move on can i can i make one more request or i guess one more statement um for the frequently asked questions page um i think it would be valuable um if folks have questions um that that frequently asked questions page on our website uh that they know that they can

163go there and if there's not a question that's answered then it's an opportunity to engage in that in that discussion like i think i think of an example of of uh why aren't we doing a hybrid program well because we don't have the bandwidth or the resources to do to we're doing this is what we have and i think it's a i think our options that we're offering families are good options especially considering what we have so um thank you for bringing that point up and and what i will tell you is we we actually have a starting point of that faq that's that's already pretty well detailed we hesitated to link all of that all at once through this document but that will be updated on our website as we continue to go forward

164um through the remainder of the week and uh ms stefan are you on as well do you want to just add any other comment regarding that if if you're there i do sorry i didn't mean to call you out but we're working on it would be my response so it has a feel like we're kind of winding down here so mr classen if there's anything else we're happy to respond to but i also know we still have some other topics here i i have one more thing if i could um dr summers what of this plan applies to our students and the staff at uh the charter school um well i i think the best way to answer that is the charter is in a position where their educational process and approach is under their

165purview uh when it comes to how they set up everything from their learning environment to how they're creating their day in day out sort of activities etc they are also held accountable to any local law or state law that's in place so they have to make sure that they are developing um guidelines that are consistent uh with what laws are in place and that they are going to have to communicate that information to their families uh in the manner that they see best we're here to help provide support in the way of resource and certainly they can align to a lot of what we have developed as part of our plan i would also add that we have had charter school representation in our working groups which i think has been beneficial on both sides

166um but in terms of the way this plan will be communicated and then the enrollment uh form that we're asking our families to complete um that enrollment form is specific to families that are attending our d38 um traditional schools and the charter would do their own process for how they're getting that information for for any families that are signing up uh and planning on attending uh monument academy either their elementary or secondary program thanks any additional questions all right moving on to the next agenda item strategic plan discussion mr taylor would you be gracious enough to start us off i would thank you so in uh i guess i'm going to start this by talking about the strategic plan we put together a draft earlier this year and there were five areas cultivate a safe

167and healthy welcoming school environment ensure high quality instruction and relevant educational experiences for all students deepen our professional learning culture and shared commitments to continuous growth effectively use assets and efficient use of resources and then forging a strong community relationship and foster effective communication with all stakeholders within the first couple there's a couple line items uh that are more specific to this topic one is ensure equitable diverse and culturally responsive learning environments uh prioritize a feeling of welcome and inclusivity for all students and families and in the second one it talks about a strengthened responsive teaching and learning environment that meets the needs of all students further our ongoing commitment to educating the whole child and i think i think my point would be that the strategic plan that we worked on before the pandemic

168and before the social unrest that exists today began i think we already had in place uh the within the strategic plan the items of equitable opportunity uh inclusivity and diverse and culturally responsive learning environments so i'm not sure that we need to add a lot to our strategic plan because it appears to me that it already exists and i'm grateful for that i'm grateful for the fact that we're not being reactive to a current situation uh whether it's the pandemic and or the social unrest that has followed that uh so you know for me uh i appreciate the board uh i've never seen within our board anything but a commitment to these goals and these priorities so i'll start it off with that that's what i believe so i think the elements of our strategic

169plan already contain [Music] uh very pointedly and very explicitly any items relative to diversity equity and inclusion and more thank you mr taylor any other comments if not i would just add one thing that i've requested in the past and that is as we put our board meeting agendas together their alignment with our strategic goals would always help us walk the talk better i would also ask for consideration among my fellow board members that each of us lead one of those five areas currently and each of us you know team with another board member in another area and perhaps in the future we we just consider that our board member comments could relate somewhat to those areas of our strategic plan that we're mostly focused on i think i think again i'm trying to get

170us as a leadership body to walk the talk of our strategy and try and incorporate within our [Music] report if you will uh some of the things that are relatively to that strategic plan having said that i recognize that the last few months haven't been normal and so i'm not trying to call anyone out i'm just trying to reinforce the concept that you know as we move forward with our strategic plan which we will and this pandemic will end uh there will be a new normal i don't know what it might look like but i i have a lot of faith that this current situation is temporary so i want us to keep our eyes on the long term on the big picture and i want our school district right to really have the reality

171that our strategic plan speaks to is it mr clawson may i uh piggyback on what mr taylor just said absolutely mr schwartz thank you what i'd like to propose is once we get to an assemblance of a normal cadence that we have each working leader from the board once every 90 days give a readout on their progress and specifically so we hold each other accountable to move the ball forward that we don't put too much weight on the staff that we do our share to deliver the results of the plan to the students and their families that's why we're here that's a wonderful suggestion and i i would concur with your recommendation thank you can i piggyback on mr schwartz please i'm not sure i can handle it wow this late hour i think having

172our holding ourselves accountable is essential to holding our to being better and growing um together as board members as a district and as a community for our kids for the whole child and for all of our kids on a personal level dang it i want to make a difference in the lives of our students on all of our students um regardless of who they are and where they come from and what strengths and weaknesses they have i really want to be intentional in making a difference in the lives of our students and in our district and being better and holding ourselves not what resting on our laurels and i think a strategic plan continues to push that forward so that there's a vision and a goal it's not just um reactionary and it's not uh

173it's it's intentional and it's purposeful and it's meaningful i think it's well said tiffany i think um also as any part of strategic strategic plan i think it's you know somewhat of a forward-moving document at times and um maybe not that we're changing the words but just being responsive to our stakeholders and um collaborating in a way when we see apt opportunity i think um there will come times like that that um can be really beneficial and and great opportunities so i would encourage all of us to recognize those when they occur thank you miss phillips any other questions or comments on this topic mr claussen if i may absolutely dr summers one of the things that i know we spent time discussing as these goals and priorities were established was a recognition that this

174was really a starting point for where that road map toward achievement and success if we want to call it that lands and so recognizing that for example in a priority around ensuring equitable diverse and culturally responsive learning environments that's a that's a lot um in one statement that i think warrants additional consideration from a place of what objectives are we striving for in that space based on the objectives that we identify how do we measure what progress and what success looks like how do we make sure that we are also able to execute on what those steps involve so that's really the action orientation that we have yet to completely delineate i think we have the intent toward that which i think is a great starting point now what do we need to do to

175begin to help move our steps toward what ultimately we're trying to achieve there so i think some of that is defining our terms i think when we talk about the topic of diversity and equity and inclusion i think helping make sure that we can operationalize that term or those terms and what they present as within our classrooms within our schools within our community there's an opportunity there to make sure that we're all working off of the same page so to speak i think also making sure that we're cognizant of um who it is that we're talking about so for example what type of staff training uh and resources are necessary for us to be able to execute on that objective whatever that um is that we're striving for um obviously that requires a level of

176engagement uh with our staff and with our community um i also want to make sure that we're very mindful of where our student voices and experiences are in this process because i think our students have a lot that they can share with us as we're becoming more specific about the steps that we're taking and really identifying more of the needs i think that's the true test that we need to make sure that we're willing as a leadership team to address and respond to i want to make sure that that this plan is representative and reflective uh of those needs and recognizing that they may be diverse needs um that we're working to address uh in that process as well i say all this because i i think the amount of time and engagement that's going

177to take is something we're going to have to be very intentional about particularly as we're working in our current context if i can for a moment looking at our strategic plan the priority that's listed right above that is ensure comprehensive crisis planning and emergency preparedness for any situation well clearly everything i think that we're doing within our return to school uh back to school plan is an example of what level of detail uh and uh the amount of of work and energy that's associated with that is going to take in order to produce a plan um that reflects that aspiration um so as i say that i just want to be conscientious of the fact that not that this is necessarily a competing priority but it just involves time it involves uh ample uh planning

178to ensure that we're capable of delivering uh on what that plan involves and um at this point if i were to add one more thing to the training plate on our teachers um that would be a um that would be disrespectful to uh what the lift is that they're having to come back into the beginning of the year to do at the same time when i look at how we're trying to prioritize for example social emotional learning supports and support for individual student needs there may be an opportunity window there to say what is embedded as part of that effort around sel support as an example where we can prioritize um aspects of diversity aspects of equity and inclusion to our plan and as you know we've been very intentional in aligning our plan to

179addressing equity as well as a level of coherence across the board so um i just wanted to give a little bit of voice to that because a lot of what we're after um is absolutely uh where we should be directing our our time our talent our energy um but it's also a lift that we're just going to have to be conscientious of and make sure that we're doing it well uh and we're doing it uh from a place of of recognizing where our individual stakeholder needs are in that continuum so again um it's i think we're we're aiming towards something that is the right uh intent uh but there there's a lot more steps that we just have to make sure that we're really uh thoughtful about and as you know we we are here

180to support that process and to make sure that we are uh making forward momentum um or progress toward what we're striving for but i look at the entirety of this year as what do we want to accomplish between now and well let's just say where do we envision ourselves by the end of next june and that might be one strategy for our board and then as a result thinking about it at the district leadership level as well as a community level um and then down to every school what is a backwards by design process that we can implement so that whatever we're striving to accomplish by june we can begin to say here's what it's going to take for us to invest the right amount of time and resource and energy to get uh closer

181to where that mark is recognizing that the work will always be something that we're striving for so thanks for letting me give some voice to those pieces well i appreciate that and you brought up a lot of wonderful points dr summers and perhaps an upcoming work session meeting we could spend a little more time on the strategic plan and address some of the items and concerns that you have and prioritize the limited resources that we have to um get the pendulum moving forward can i die well chris do you want to go first or do you want me to go first you go ahead so i would just add that it it we have the ability to ensure that it's also a collaborative effort too and that we are leaning in and all voices are

182heard at the table while we're doing this perfect and i would just say that casey the experience of the last three months on ensuring the comprehensive crisis planning and emergency preparedness for any situation is a great foundation for us to build upon in every other line item within each of these goals and i hope that that's one of the takeaways is this wasn't just a one-time you know covet pandemic but we actually use everything that we you and your administration and everyone even stakeholders as tiffany says this has been this collaborative effort as i've witnessed and if we can use that pattern i think then our school system within d38 will reflect the values and the the priorities of our community and that i think will be proud proud work that we can be a

183part of thank you mr taylor are there any other comments i also want to um elevate and lift up the the energy and the sacrifice and the hours of work that dr summers has put forth throughout the summer and so many of the staff and stakeholders um and the passion and and dedication and vision so i don't even know how to say thank you appropriately but thank you we really appreciate that sentiment uh all of the support that our board continues to provide i would um just also add that this is a fantastic team i am honored and humbled to work with such dedicated and passionate individuals across the board and and so um it helps make my my job manageable uh or doable and we have missed working with uh all of our students

184our staff and in our community and more of an in-person uh format but as as we talked about tonight we're working uh really intently on getting back to that and um you're gonna continue to get that same level of commitment uh from myself and from each of us so thank you for calling that out and it's humbling and obviously we're doing it to serve our our students our our staff and our families so thank you all right there's nothing else let's move on to board member comments um miss up church can we start with you you know um i've thought a lot about my board member comments and what i wanted to say and honestly i i i have a hard time reflecting on it without um without crying um i appreciate all the effort

185and all the voices and there's been a lot of passion and a lot of hard work like i said um i go back to my own parental perspective and advocacy as a mom and i see so much work and so much growth that we need to do as a school district and as a community and i do think that we are we can grow and learn and i think that we as a community are capable and up to the task and i think working through these trying unprecedented times as a prime example um people come from different perspectives and different ideas um but there is that common ground and we are working together in equity and and i think everybody's committed to being better just being better um as the mom of a uh that

186has had to advocate for a child that's faced his own bullying growing up and as the mom who's had to advocate um my heart is particularly responsive or particularly i'm there i get it i see it and i understand it um and all of our children are that's why we're doing this is for our kids um and i i was on saturday i was a part of a group of women leaders in pikes peak region and we recreated the 100th anniversary uh we recruit of women's suffrage and uh this is the year that's been 100 years and it made me do a lot of reflection and a lot of um thought into how far we've come and how far we still have to go um and we'll get through this i i i guess that's

187all i have to say right now is i look forward to i am afraid too because i have a senior in high school right now that uh this i appreciate the the graduation that we were able to have for our students but things are different right now um and so we do the best we can and that's from the heart and from the hip and i don't i just i don't don't know how to say what needs to be said without strong way so i guess that's all i have to say thank you miss up church miss phillips i just um having been involved with the reopening of the schools project since i think about june 1st i um with four working groups and a steering committee so many people involved hundreds of hours of

188effort um i just want to again casey thank your team thank our community and just say that it it's taken a lot of patience on on all ends it's going to require more patience moving forward i think we have a survey coming out we're going to need that information back in order to lay out the final plans so i think of it more in terms of a positive feedback loop and if it all works uh we are safeguarding everyone in our neighborhood and in our community and it it might even come down to uh saving someone out of the icu or saving a life so it's it's that important and as tough it as it has been uh even for me personally at times in terms of patience and uh sometimes feels like slogging through

189mud i think that it's um an effort that's been really really thorough and i just appreciate everybody who's who's invested in it and i i would say almost everybody in the community is invested it and we've heard from so many people on a number of topics and those thoughtful um and respectful communications with us are important and we really appreciate it i don't think i have anything else for tonight thank you thank you miss phillips mr schwartz well we're at pretty close to three and a half hours so brevity is key here all i'd like to say is anybody can sail a ship through smooth waters but it's really the tough times that defines where your quality people are and exactly who they are what their character is and how they come through for others

190and the teams that built this plan did it in addition to whatever their day jobs and other obligations were they came through they came through on time they built a quality product and they provided our community some level of choice and control in an environment where there isn't a lot thank you guys for doing that i'll have to say thank you mr sports mr taylor thanks everyone i'm gonna make a very brief statement i don't normally write them up but i did tonight dr summers and all who have helped louis palmer school district 38 provides the privilege of of learning according to the dictates of our of your own conscience by enabling all parents and students to learn how where or what they choose thank you dr summers thank you mr taylor i'd like to

191concur with the comments made by my fellow board members i also want to especially thank um miss phillips and miss church for being the board representatives on the steering committee i know that in addition to your responsibilities um professionally and at home you've taken a fair amount of time to assist the incredible team that we have here in district 38 so i also want to thank our district team and everyone that's made this plan um come forward and i also want to thank our community members for the insights and and recommendations that they have offered so with that being said um dr summers we'll turn the time over to you i don't have a whole lot more to add other than uh we appreciate the kind words uh and recognition and as i said earlier

192we will continue to go forward with our focus on doing everything that we possibly can to safely and responsibly return to a successful 2020-21 school year our students are depending on that our families deserve that and you will continue to get nothing but our very best and uh we appreciate that there's um a lot that we're still adapting to so that year of agility and the nimbleness and the flexibility thanks for your patience and grace with us as we continue to go forward thank you dr summers this concludes the portion of our work session meeting now we'll enter into our special meeting first agenda item is approved resolution affirming district fundamental responsibilities in response to coba 19. i believe all board members should have had the opportunity to review the resolution i guess as one

193housekeeping item it's typically our board policy that we go through two readings my note that we have a another work session meeting the first part of i think it's august 10th or 11th correct me if i'm wrong vicki or kathy it's the 11th it's 11th so i guess right off the bat um dr summers i will ask you um is this a resolution that could wait until then so we give the public ample opportunity to review it and give us their input or is it something that you're asking us to act on tonight i really appreciate that question i i would say that i do believe we could um afford forwarding the official uh or second reading of this into the august 11th meeting i would also add that one of the uh dimensions that

194we were working through this past week was we were not aware of any casby updates around specific aspects of this language until late on friday casby did come through with a sample draft resolution it's pretty similar so if we felt like we really could force uh or needed to uh this resolution through i think this would suffice but it would give us um some cushion and some time to make any adjustments that we feel are necessary and and i think so long as we have it intact uh before the start of school which august 11th would give us that um that cushion there i think we we could do that so sorry for the long-winded answer the the bottom line is yes i do think we could postpone an official vote until the following work

195session meeting okay what questions comments and concerns do you have regarding the proposed resolution for one would support the august 11th vote okay i i think that august 11th is appropriate this this is we have we do have uh um [Music] uh policies in place as well um and i do understand the importance of this and and the impact that it has as things continue to be change and be fluid so i'd say sooner than later for sure i guess my only question would be if something strange happens that we can't meet on that date we need to make sure this this is completed so the district has the agility to to perform the tasks that are on this resolution in the event that they need to so i'm fine i'm fine with moving it

196i just don't want i want to make sure we don't delay it past that okay i appreciate that all right any additional comments um regarding this um resolution okay um listen to mika if you would kindly um add that as an agenda item to our august 11th work session meeting certainly okay and dr summers um if you would um kindly get a copy of the updated resolution to us as early as possible and i understand you mentioned there were some minor changes but if we're going to vote on it perhaps we could look at some options of once um i've contacted each board member and obtained their approval our support for the motion and once again each board member individually perhaps there would be a way that we could get it out and get some

197public feedback so just uh just a thought there all right is there any additional business that we need to conduct during our special meeting okay with that being said um this concludes our special meeting um now i'd like to make a motion to convene in an executive session in accordance to crs 246-402 section fi to discuss a personnel matter second okay any questions comments concerns okay i note that it is 9 30 according to my clock i'm at the conclusion of the executive session i will briefly come back on the record and indicate what time the executive session has concluded um so with that being said um we will log off and enter into an executive session and um just bear with me please mr clawson do we need to vote we we do thank

198you um just one second please all right perfect uh mr mika would you take the vote please mr clawson hi phillips hi mr schwartz hi mr taylor hi who's up church hi all right thank you with that being said we will log off and enter into executive session thank you hey mr mika yes sir all right it is um 1003 um our executive session concluded around 10 p.m is that correct miss up church that is correct okay there will be no more business conducted this evening and our um special meeting slash work session stand adjourned thank you thank you good evening thank you ladies okay you