001this is the last public uh hearing so we won't do it a little formal so i'll go ahead and call the special call board meeting uh for august 11th for the millage rate public hearing to order um and i guess we'll just let it sit for five minutes or so and see if anybody can see that budget here and also oh this is gonna be also the budget here okay do we know if we have someone what's that do we know if we have somebody yeah i don't know if we six o'clock i found that on the floor it was just right there but i don't know where the other piece is thank you i might want to check if there's anybody in here for the budget for the village this is the time to
002come in today budget foreign [Laughter] y'all do whatever [Music] you going both yeah okay so we'll adjourn it 605. all right you all ready good going in good evening i'll call the regular schedule board meeting for august the 11th 2020 to order and i'll turn it over to dr jurgen for the indication of dear legislation father we thank you so much for this day well thank you for all the many wonderful blessings that you've given to us for we ask for your hand of protection uh to cover us lord in our community and our school system for this upcoming year jesus name we pray amen amen i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with thank you dr
003jurgen we appreciate that i'll go ahead and turn it over to uh miss tate for the spotlight and turn over to the tournament tonight's spotlight we're going to have representatives from southeast georgia health system they're here to speak to us about the wearing of mass and face coverings by our students you don't mind um i'll please just a bit if y'all would just go through each of you and introduce yourself and and what you do and then we'll go back to each person having you be able to speak and let us know your opinions of what we've been discussing my name is dr jennifer miller i moved here 21 years ago and i'm a family practice doctor i started local immediate care i married danny miller who is a product of the glenn county school
004system of st simon's elementary club middle and glenn academy and i've been in private practice since as a family physician we have four children that have all gone through glen county public schools two still in the school system now i'm steve squire i'm an anesthesiologist at the hospital i work at the brunswick hospital and the camden hospital i've been here for 20 plus years raised a family and love it here and want to stay forever hi i'm cindy pritchett i'm the charge nurse in the year one of them i've been here eight years um moved down here a long time eight years ago i have two children that are in one camp or two grandchildren in the clinton county school system also i'm danny miller uh i have a product of the area since since
005fourth grade with about a 12 year old or 12-year break in the middle for school and residency i'm residency training board certified in emergency medicine and i'm the medical director for the three hospital immediate care centers i'm also not floggy i am the er physician and the medical director for both brunswick and camden emergency room hello um okay first off thank you guys i i realized the hard position all of you are in when you signed up to be board members you didn't realize you were signing up to work during a pandemic um my you know just a little history you know our last pandemic was so it's been 100 years and not much has changed in how to handle a pandemic it's the same thing that we did back then which our mask social
006distancing hand washing for all the advances we've made we are coming back to those same basics and um i think unfortunately the pandemic has been a bit it has become something that is political where we are here to speak on behalf of science and to bring it back to science because that's really where it deserves to be um we feel i will speak for myself that i feel very strongly in favor of a mask and i don't care the term mandate require dress code i feel that it is a very basic protection um if our goal is to keep schools open and our goal is to serve kids who can't have access to computers and internet then we need to do everything we can to make that happen and that includes masks i am also
007the mother who has been required to pick up her daughter because her shorts were too short at school and it was a dress code violation no one was going to die because of it it wasn't a health risk but i had to go get her so i firmly believe that if if we can be firm on things like that that when it really impacts death tolls and lives that we should be able to be firm on that as well so to echo a little bit about what jennifer just said um if your goal is to be in person and i think there's a lot of reasons that that's a great thing even though our numbers look terrible as far as community spread um but there are other reasons as you all have talked about to
008to be in person if your goal is to be in person and you want to stay in person then the three things wear masks social distance and wash your hands and the idea that you wouldn't do every single thing that you can do especially when it's as easy as that um if you don't do that then more people are going to get sick first school is going to close and for in person second and third more people are going to die because if 400 kids get sick and then they spread it to one or two parents or grandparents then the kids are going to be fine more than likely but some of those adults some of those grandparents some of those parents are going to be really sick we've all seen it in the hospital
009we've all seen a 50 year old person a 40 year old person otherwise healthy get really sick and die it's a terrible thing and some of these other people will speak to it um it is just it is something that we've never seen we've probably got a hundred years of experience here between this group and everybody every single day is seeing stuff that just just breaks their heart you know a 50 year old father of four is in the hospital by himself and and he's he's dying he doesn't get to say goodbye to his children and it's because he's got this disease and if we open up without masks then more people are going to get it than if we open up with masks i mean it's very simple the effectiveness of mass we would
010not be working any of us right now if we weren't wearing a mask right now i have nine admitted patients that i'm holding in the er that have covered i've been in and out of those rooms all day and i don't think any of you would be comfortable if we didn't have masks on the other thing is i had coping i experienced coping from my grandchildren that were 10 months old i don't want any of you to ever have it i wasn't lucky but we have a 21 year old in the er that we just diagnosed with bilateral pulmonary embolism 15 minutes before i left i am passionate about this i've watched too many people die and it's not fun so i just if we can do anything if we can save one grandparent one
01130 year old you you have not seen what we've seen so jennifer talked about science the science of mass is very clear they prevent transmission of this does he not but what they've estimated is you have about a 60 reduction with masks and close to 70 to 80 i think it is if you have masculine social distancing i mean they're very effective that's number one number two is what i really think is important is to recognize who this disease is predominantly affecting and it's the poor it's the single mothers it's the grandmothers raising kids the same people that we want in-person learning for because school obviously is a source of food for some of these kids but it also allows parents to work we're very fortunate i've got a big house my kids go to
012school other kids aren't asking i'm going to quarantine the other side of the house but most people don't have that luxury you've got kids coming home to their six-year-old not helping the first place grandmother who is very likely to die if they get it you have multi-generation families living in the same house 20 30 people it's real it's out there we all know it these are the people that are getting affected by the disease and if we don't mandate mass in the school they're going to predominantly feel the effects and then last thing that i would say if you remember my cindy said we work in the er and this is beginning of uh march we've been dealing with this and this is the testimony that we i have at least 40 providers working in
013brunswick and at least another 15 to 20 in canada new york we've had one physician that contracted kobe and he said he got it from his kids now if mass wasn't working we constantly as sydney said we go into the room and come back like we visit these patients we have to take care of them so if max wasn't working then we all have i've been i mean since march i've been working constantly in new york where you know so the same thing with the entire staff we had few nursing staff and a few as citizens most of these people they contract the disease somewhere else not in emergency room and there's no magic for us we're just wearing masks and we're protecting ourselves we wash our hands and we constantly release we have different
014masks we have a little bit better mask and 95 when you go see these patients but the bottom line works i've been with kobe patients since march exposed and i just had it last week i had a test still negative i had some body aches and i thought maybe i got it and maybe eventually we all get it and we all have to wait for the vaccine and other stuff but as much as we can because as steve mentioned and everyone else mentioned is that most of the young people might be okay depending on what baseline medical problems that but we all have mothers we have all fathers we have young kids you know we start seeing this so by wearing masks and promoting it i think there is nothing wrong i mean kids they
015can play they can do whatever they want to do if you want to open this school if you want to do an online school that's a different story but if you would i cannot emphasize you guys really do not want to come to the er or the hospital to see any of us you don't need to do that and that's the reality we've never been that french we always try to play politics there's no politics here you want to see us outside in the park in the restaurant in the anywhere that you know you might be going but you don't want to come to the emergency room and see us with you or your family members so and i would after that i mean i've seen nothing but covet patients since march and i have
016knock on wood tested negative debate and haven't had any problems they were the other couple things that i was going to say was that viruses love kids because all viruses want to do they just want to be happy and multiply that's all they want to do and they want to hop from host to host and they want to do their thing in a non-take cover out of the picture when you go from summer to the school year my business jumps up 50 to 60 at a minimum and it's not just kids i'm saying i'm seeing the adults who have gotten everything that the kids have income it's open and it's not to be taken lightly the last thing that i would say is because i don't think it's been said is that i love my
017kids i want for them to go out and ride on their bikes and i recommend that they wear their helmets and if i happen to be in the neighborhood out and i see my kid on the bike odds are they're not wearing their helmet it's hanging from their handlebar and they throw it on the driveway before they come in kids are great but the idea that they're going to do something that they perceive as not fun not cool not whatever based on a recommendation i think it's kind of foolish i mean we've all seen it with our own kids and but if we mandate it and we make it part of the dress code we make it part of the policy and we have real consequences for not doing it then i think we can
018really make a difference can you speak to the er census in the hospital yeah we two weeks ago and we um maybe this is not something to be proud of but we have 98 copic patients in the in this small hospital here 98 the entire baptist system in jacksonville four big hospital and three urgent cares they have 130. we have 98 patients there at one point that literally we now assume that everybody comes to the er it's called like regardless what the symptoms is that's what we protect ourselves we actually now we see patients with n95 and respirator we say it doesn't matter why you're here let me just protect myself because if there's a problem is that if i have a physician or provider that has a positive which we have one two weeks
019ago he's out of commission for two weeks and imagine that if i have like we don't have that many staff to just walking around and by half of my staff is that means i have to work double shift and so that the stress of seeing patients and all this stuff and that's why i cannot my kids cannot if we go somewhere we go outside and everything if they they know that you know very strict with them i can control my kids but the number of the patients that we see in the emergency room and in the hospital right now i want to say 70 percent 75 percent that they're all co-patrolling so i don't even sometimes even wonder where are they what happened to the heart attack and strokes because the number has gone significantly
020down we just dealing with colgate and i have to say i mean that's sad it is and this is the truth i personally you know we just had a patient a 37 year old 37 year old went home on thursday that did not meet the criteria for admission he came back on sunday as a cardiac arrest i cannot emphasize we're not trying to scare you we're not we're trying to relay the true message that how serious this thing is and as you know everybody said we have told our kids to do stuff they don't like to do it and i think we i i'm one of those people that my kid needs to go to school i i don't think that my kid learns i said this talking about my own kid that they don't
021learn that much at least my kid they don't learn online school so i want them to go but i want them to follow the same thing dress code this would be part of the dress code and if you if you don't do it then you can't come back and i think that you know that hopefully we'll go through this six months will be a vaccine we'll go back this is going to be like the flu everybody gets a vaccine we'll probably have to get it for a few years until this not going to be issued but if if you're really thinking about opening the school please please consider them i have a couple of things to add because um i speak both languages and it doesn't come out that way so the first thing is
022when he says that there's 98 cobit patients that are in the hospital that's saying that the 220 when we reach 220 that's the max that's not the number because we've had to expand and do some other things but when you meet me 220 it's starting you're starting to catch it so before kovid last year we stayed in the 180s 190s without that 98 that are covered positive so without knowing the number what's overly full you don't understand that 98 is a significant event uh the other thing she spoke of the nine holdings in the er what does that actually cause well it decreases patient care to everybody else because an er nurse is not equipped and doesn't it's not a part of the framework of follow-up care for somebody being there for 48 hours so
023what happens is a person who is not covet or something else doesn't get what they need like the 26 year old who died and it wasn't covered related it wasn't because of the er didn't do what they needed to do or the patient wasn't taken care of it was because they weren't in the appropriate place getting the appropriate care at the appropriate times which is out of the realm of the er the uh the other thing dr miller spoke of how close some communities are he has a big house he gets to kids i'm going to isolate you over there the hispanic community has probably been affected somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 to 90 percent and that's because there's so many within a house that it spread and they they're almost done with it
024because almost every single one of them have been through the er who's in our community so what he was saying is it's that impactful to the community that is at risk which is what we're talking about with the you know who we're talking about that community um and we don't want to do that that's why you want to either mandate you don't have to use the word mandate we can use the word we were talking require you know make it a part of the dress code we do we don't require people to wear pants but they do and because we expect you to wear pants to school you you're expected to wear a seat belt in your car it's not to protect anybody else it's to protect you the seat belt in your car so
025when we talk about being mandated and told to do things no we don't like that but we're trying to protect the rest of the community uh i'm gonna say our governor kemp came out and said i want local control and he swore by i want local control so he gave it to the locals we're part of the locals we can make that decision so what did he do to atlanta i tell you all the time don't listen to what i say look at what i do what did he do he's suing atlanta for mandating but there's 30 or 60 something counties that are deciding on mandating i think that we can make a difference and your medical community is getting their rumpuses beat on a daily basis cindy's been doing this for a couple of
026years and then when you see her and she's just her you know she's crying and she's not crying but tears are coming from her eyes and she's like i can't make a difference we can make a difference by just mandating or requiring kids to wear masks so i appreciate them coming and speaking to us and hopefully y'all heard some from the medical community of the 200 people who signed the form that said please mandate masks so we need to work as a community and not a silo we all need to get together be together and make a difference for our whole community and if it's just putting on a mass to decrease the curve i think it's a worthy adventure so thank you all for coming and yeah absolutely so in the words of hamilton
027history has his eyes on you thank you all right all right that brings us down to uh citizens address the board we've got one person signed up uh mr dergaivan heck uh before you start derek i'm gonna read a little preamble he's coming i'll see you coming around there hey derek how are you good i'm gonna read a little preamble before you get started okay all right uh the board of education has adopted a policy that permits citizens under certain circumstances to address the board on a variety of topics of general concern to the operation of our schools we welcome visitors to the board meetings and are interested in hearing from the taxpayers and patients of our school system we have a few simple rules for public comment each person wishing to address the board
028must sign this roster each person is limited to five minutes and the public comment portion of the meeting will not exceed 30 minutes any citizen who has a specific complaint involving an employee must first address the issue with the superintendent and if not resolved then may request to speak with the board however certain matters involving personnel and students must be heard in closed session the superintendent will inform you whether your complaint is one which should be referred to an executive session with the board by signing this sheet you are agreeing to abide by these rules all right go ahead thank you very much uh i'm very happy to be here very happy to be back in brunswick i haven't been standing before the school board i have submitted a letter uh i would say it's
029an informal request to date something that can be hammered out a little bit longer let me just start by doing some more somewhat of a introduction and then i think later on there may be a chance for you to ask myself questions i'm a native of brunswick georgia i'm a graduate research and teaching associate at the stanford university graduate school of education my current post follows my most recent tenure as a kur mervis equity and justice fellow at the center for education at the university of pittsburgh where i received my master's my diversity equity and inclusion practice is supported by research that centers issues of implicit bias and racial gender sexual identity development within learning spaces in partnership uh three years ago with the u.s department of state and education i visited ethiopia's related sort
030of university and i received a fulbright grant in 2017. i hold also a degree in architecture which might be your knowledge of me if at all because i worked with jonathan associates for about four years i received my degree architecture from florida university and i conducted graduate studies both at carnegie mellon and university of pittsburgh i am a contributing author to a recently released book critical race theory and teacher education informing classroom culture and practice i've also presented my scholarship at the inaugural teach africa conference at the university of pittsburgh and the conference of pennsylvania council for international education and the annual meeting of the american educational association i am currently a member of the american education research association and 100 black men in western pennsylvania and the famu national alumni association and the omega
0315 fraternity uh so i wanted to give you somewhat of a background into my experience i'm also a product of altama jane macon and brunswick i was also brunswick high's first black student body president and one of the things that i wanted to do being home and being here is to offer and suggest a partnership around a study of implicit bias i think most of what we have been exposed to have been research on discipline or high stakes testing and so what i want to do is study particularly with my hometown and this school board study some of those benign just common simple interactions between teachers where implicit advice may play a role my aim is to do so with an anonymous point of view so that protocols would make sure that not one individual
032not one child not one teacher or the district was identified and the reason i come here for you is because i don't come as an external researcher i have staked in this city i have staked in this community and so i would not be coming at the person who just came to extract i think in the long term is the possibility that this could help to develop professional development opportunities and that we could possibly make a good food system great particularly around areas of implicit bias one of the things that i'm able to most do is to broach subjects that might be difficult and i think what we are able to do in this collaboration is bring all of the resources of the stamp university school of education which is the second most wealthy school
033education in the country of my research team including myself doctors alvin pearman dr brian brown and we would want to be in partnership for an extended period of time and be at your service and make sure this is a mutually beneficial uh project and process so i'm not sure if this is the time for questions but i'm happy to answer questions now or later it's not really a q a it's more just to present okay i mean i'm not opposed if there were any questions um but if not i know you said you sent a letter out i'm assuming so so we've got so you know we can get in touch with you we can tell you about your spence and we'll just have a meeting or something okay all right thank you i appreciate
034it is that it yep that's all that i have exhausted most of my time all right that's going to bring us down to approval of the agenda um before we approve it i'd like to um to pull the meeting minutes uh there's a couple of just little errors and this bread has been out for the past few days so i'd like to pull seven eight and nine and put them on next month's agenda to approve uh to give us give our time to go through and check over that um so if we can pull seven eight and nine um all right pulling uh seven eight and nine i'll accept motion to approve the gym as presented reverend bobbitt second second uh mr medalla all those in favor all right it brings to uh consent agenda
035items number six uh i'd like to consent 10a 10b c1 any policy john e so i'd like to consent e any additions or deletions all right okay well what i'll do is i'll i'll read those back uh consent uh 10a is the superintendent's report is personnel 10b it's field trips 10c one is the good report and e is the policy committee chair i'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda items all those in favor unanimous passage 7-0 and that'll bring us down to the superintendent's report first item is the construction manager for brunswick high school mdf room mr boudreau yes thank you this is kind of a two-parter we went over on thursday of last week the first step would be to approve rh tyson as the highest rated construction manager for this little
036project they rated it 9.3 and the other proposer was at seven and these were the only two and you know we have a good history with tyson so i mean it's kind of seamless with them at this point i have a question so the reason we're wanting a construction manager if i remember from thursday is because it's a very time sensitive project that has to be precisely coordinated in order for it to be done within the time frame it's a very specific and complicated little project and mr schwartz put together all the details for it and i mean it includes a generator electrical work air conditioning work moving the fiber is just a very about well as you can see when we get to the guaranteed maximum price there are about 10 or 12 items
037in there that need to be coordinated so right i remember that the list okay i'm just making sure that's why we feel like we need a man that's correct that's correct this just it saves us a lot of time versus trying to bid out every little piece of this project and getting a one stop price for this work would have been just as difficult okay so i make a motion we approve passing construction to be the construction manager for the brunswick high mdf room okay here in the motion by mr medalla is there a second second without the year again any discussion not academy but what's that i'm going to academy academy you said bro where's your brother it is friends i read it sorry i could be wrong i guess i should show up
038the meeting [Music] all right all those in favor motion passes seven to zero right thank you all right and then the next step would be to actually approve the guaranteed maximum price that tyson developed for us for the project and as you can see the breakdown it comes in at six hundred two thousand one hundred and twenty six dollars and there is the breakdown on it is that coming from east blast it's coming out east plus three technology line all right you want to put a motion on that one john sure all right uh i want to take a motion to approve rh tyson for six hundred two thousand one hundred twenty six for what al has explained to us as a not to exceed numbers again not to exceed 600 guaranteed maximum price we're
039hoping to whittle it down a little bit but that's guaranteed price not to exceed any motion uh okay a second please everyone bobbitt any further discussion about the number all those in favor motion passes seven to zero okay thank you very much we hope to have this done by thanksgiving miss preston with the 2021 millage rate and the consolidated budget so in the july 28 2020 newspaper we had our budget our one page budget ad that has all the different budgets general funds special revenue fund capital projects debt service and this is um we finished up the second public hearing right for this uh also the same day we put in the paper the five year history of the millage rate ad and since we're not rolling our military back to the rollback rate we
040have to add advertise that we are technically increasing taxes [Applause] so as you know the the millage rate did increase 5.48 percent and we were pleasantly surprised and um that will generate about 3.1 million for our budget and um we are going to go with a 97 collection rate though just in case people can't pay their taxes this year on time um are there any questions on the military when was the last time we were not in our deficit uh before the recession the recession hit um i think our first deficit was 2009 or 10. so close to 10 years yeah this is the first time in 10 years that we're actually not operating that is right it's been a long decade yes with everything going on good job but we are operating with a
041less than typical reserve not our fault right right we made financial decisions along the way based on what we knew at the time correct if we'd known differently we would have done something different but um you know i haven't finished the june um 31st 30th books out yet that's due to this date at the end of september but we will have you know savings for last year for sure based on what happened but um and then a budget surplus is definitely going to help move that fund balance in the right direction so just chair i make a motion we approve the mill as great as presented second motion by dr jurgen with a second by mr medella any discussion on the middle drake before we approve it and that knowledge rate is 16.157 yes sir
042rick all right oh there's a favor it passes seven zero make a motion to adopt the 2021 consolidated budget [Music] any discussion on the budget mr holzer yeah this this might sound a little bit a little bit silly in the face of what we're what we're dealing with these days but um you know maybe for the first time in my 16 years i'm gonna vote against this budget um no reflection on mrs preston but there's one thing in particular and i probably should have spoken up sooner but i figured that um i would be wasting my breath to be honest with you but um i had a little bit of an issue with a lot of an issue with the changes some of the coaching supplements and um there's no doubt in my mind that
043some of our educational leaders and some of our middle school coaches were severely underpaid with regard to what they do but there are some other positions that you know given the the workload they have as far as teaching is concerned and the amount of extra days um the amount of the stipend the the fact that last time we did this we gave an incentive based increase to to our coaches um i feel like you have a lot of teachers out there scratching their heads as to why you know this continues to happen um when they see a lot of those folks leaving early on friday afternoon or not showing up at all when they're still at bus duty or dealing with kids with masks or you know cleaning tables and things like that so um
044just as a as a point of principle i've got an issue with with that being in the budget this time so i'm gonna vote against it okay thank you mr holes anyone else i got one thing that i say every couple of years uh if we're going to uh pay more for education then they should do that with the nurses as well uh you go lp and rn you don't go bsn msn um and i do think that needs to be if you're going to do it for the teachers because they have a better ability to care for the kids versus a better ability to teach the kids because of their education i still would recommend that we look into that and do something different i guess that's dr whitehead's area now but yeah anyway
045just a thought thank you john anyone else okay we'll bring a vote uh all those in favor opposed motion passes six to one that completes my action items okay thank you all right that brings it down to number 11 other uh any other other yes i do have another mr medalla i would like to make make a motion that we make a part of our policy to use the term either mandate or require whatever we see fit uh for the children to wear masks in school okay all right here in the motion on the floor uh is there a second to the motion let's bob it with a second all right any discussion before we take it to the vote yes so i just want to be clear because you mentioned the word policy we're
046not like making a change to our policy with this vote or is that what you're recommending i'm recommending that we that we change our policy which is a part of the return to school framework to mandate masks or to require masks be may be a part of the dress code or wherever dr spence is appropriate but make it that we have to whatever terminology we want to use we can use mandated we use required or whatever we want to use and whatever policy we need to put it in to mandate it there might be some kickback from different places but as all that we went through um i just think it's important for us to do that we're going to mandate it and say for instance that the kids decide they don't want to do
047it what type of discipline are we going to give to children that's going to be how i see it is uh dr spence will be able to to work within his system to figure out what he sees is going to work best for that i'm not saying that a kid comes in doesn't have a mask and gets thrown out of school but see it's not when you mandate this it's not you're not mandating it's your only choice for school because we have virtual education that they can do so you can say you know cindy if you don't want to wear a mess that's fine while you're at home just do virtual school you know there's there's plenty of ways to do it without it causing such conflict that kids are getting kicked out of school
048because they don't wear a mask you know yes it's serious yes it's that serious but there is a way to deal with it constructively versus that i'm not saying you know beat him to death or nothing so i would leave that to him to to have the leeway to do what he needs to do to make it work but at least he would be we would be telling him this is what we want to do and it takes it away from him where he doesn't have to do all that we're doing what we're what i feel we're supposed to do which is to manage and direct and to lead right our school system policies person and payroll so three things i mean before we vote on it do we know what policy it is that
049we will be amending and by voting on this would we need to put it on the table for a certain amount of time any kind of a policy change you're going to have to put it on the right the table for 30 days anyway uh if i can add something but you can policy change requires you later on the table but there is a provision you can shorten it on an emergency basis you can shorten the time on an emergency basis you have to vote on that though you know go ahead i feel pretty strongly that this is a temporary measure for an unusual situation and i am not comfortable with changing our policies to deal with this because i feel like it opens the door to use that policy in other instances where we
050haven't used it before a high flu season or whatever mask up the kids and and we've all dealt with seasons like that and you know it's it's been a situation where we keep the schools running and we keep them at a normal um situation for our students i i know i mean i have two kids y'all know that middle in high school they're coming back they're going to have math they're going to wear a mask and it's it's really me saying that we in our family have dealt with this we have been through the high harbor situation that everybody knows about the with the 44 contagion rate for for kids and everybody originally thought kids didn't get this but we have seen it in especially middle and high school so i feel like it's as
051an education system it is partly our responsibility to help teach these kids to be responsible citizens too and part of that is saying this is what it's going to take for us to have in-person instruction this is what it's going to take for y'all to be able to make it through this year and have an in-person graduation or a prom or all of those things that you felt like you didn't get last year um if you're serious about wanting to attend sporting events or extracurricular activities it's just what it's going to take and it's a temporary basis we've seen atlanta school districts open and then have to reclose schools so if if we can't learn from those that have gone before us then we're we're just ignoring or or thinking that we can be the
052exception to what's going on and we had the hospital staff here and they told us what our hospital rate is so i feel strongly about the mask i'm sorry my mask is not cooperating um i feel like especially our middle and high school kids can handle that mask and the requirement of the mask and i would hope that it's a short-term situation you know we look at it again next meeting is the hospital doing better is the community doing better how have we seen things going on in the schools but i just feel like if if we open up and we don't require it then we're going to close back down but i am strongly against making it a policy situation so in um kind of my opinion is that we would you know agree
053i don't think that there's a vote on this to support our school system and our administrators in our framework that we've already developed specific to covid to require the mass for the kids and and even if it's just middle and high school in that enhanced mitigation yellow category so i would vote no on a policy change and i would be fine to changing it to whatever we need to do it would fall under a procedure of regulation regulation yeah and i think if that's what's gonna say if we give if we give dr spence uh a directive and he creates a regulation he can do that um you know if we ask him to do that if we give him that directive um and i think that i think changing the policy just it's nothing
054against the policy it just changes it just makes everything kind of messy you have to change the policy again or like you said it's on the books now forever and you don't have the fewer policies the better that you have as long as you can rely on state law that's what we all try to do with regard to certain situations of course this is a different situation but i've gone back and forth with this i mean i i went back and forth driving to the meeting tonight and um i've polled a number of different schools some local some as far as auburn alabama statesboro different places and it's about 50 50 requiring versus not um but i think that you know and tonight was very compelling obviously with the speakers we had but um you
055know just from a personal standpoint look at this i would be in favor of i think where i'm going to come come down on this thing now that would be in favor of on requiring masks and just let's say we're going to require for first semester let's get to christmas and reassess it we've got a few weeks off let's see where we stand it's just like evie said let's rather than doing it next week or next meeting let's get through christmas we have fewer kids coming to school we know as it stands right now so it's going to help um in the short term um let's buckle down right now what we can and and see where we are at the change of semesters and you know like 80 says i've got four children i've
056got one of valdosta state i'm taking one to university of georgia next week and if you don't think i'm scared to death then you're crazy but but but he's going and master required um i'm sending my my two little ones to school and most of you know some of you don't know how serious ben's issue was when he was born and he's gonna be in fifth grade this year and when he was born his lungs were were trash okay i mean he was he was oxygenating backwards um his oxygen oxygenation level was 45 when he was born he had two open heart procedures he's had 17 or 18 brain surgeries and if he gets an infection um he could be catastrophic but you've got to i've got to temper that with the fact that he
057needs to be back in school he wants to be back in school around his friends and then for the last few years he's been healthy and i'm not asking you to do this for me or for ben however i'm asking you to do it for the kids that are out there that we don't know about the teachers that are out there that we don't know about the i mean i've got friends and i know y'all we've got friends that are um that are substitutes that are you know well into their 70s um that's still substitute teach so i mean it's not it's not that difficult it's it's it's been sort of a pain but it does take some getting used to but you can't get used to it i mean i see i see little
058ones at walmart all the time with masculine so it can't be that difficult to get them and to wear them um i've been sort of against the whole mandating mass thing but i think just in the interest of and listen my kids went through high school here and i can just envision you know a situation where we have you know some k in social media's out there we deal with this all the time y'all so i think we air on the side of caution if it's just for a semester and say we're going to mandate this and it's up to dr spence and dr whitehead to figure out the best way to handle and i don't even want to call it this one i think if we can we can pay coaches more right now
059when we're not even playing sports then we can have some some um mask available for kids that show up without a mask okay i'm not saying we got to provide ten thousand a day but if there's some in the nurses room there's some of the principal's office or some in the in a couple teachers offices on each hall whatever the case might be we have to make those available um i've heard stories of staff members going to schools and not wearing we have to make sure our staff members are wearing them you know and that's that's kind of disappointed me but i think that maybe you know maybe we need to reiterate that to staff members that are whether it be central office or warehouse staff or whatever i mean unless you're on a lawnmower
060weed eater i think you need to have a mask on um especially if you're going into a school for any reason whether it be for five minutes or an hour um so again it's it's a long way to say i agree with you i don't want to make it a policy i think we can make a regulation dr stinson when dr whitehead could write it up we've got nine or ten days to go to to get our act together with it they've done a great job so far with helping us prepare for this and so it's it's going to be challenging like this whole year is going to be we knew that going in but um i think in an effort to make sure we can do all the fun things like he says that
061they want to do going forward then we need to try to try to make this as possible we can but we need to make sure it's mandated we're regulated well um the motion i made i do not mind adjusting it to both of your recommendations and blend the two i will certainly take what i said off the table and blend michelle said and go with that well i just have a question is it is that something that we need to vote on if we're not making a policy change or do we just i think we need to vote on i don't know i think it's still up for discussion though before we do anything yeah yeah one other thing to um something that mike said made me think of this and he's talking about math
062being being available i know that there have been community groups that have said well we're going to help supply cloth face mass one per student to several of our schools and i'm just gonna i'm gonna ask a few things i'm going to ask the community to remember that this is this decision is based on us caring for our community so in in a kind of reciprocal fashion i would hope we could see more of that community organizations and members coming forward to agree to help and help support this i would ask the kids that are old enough to make their decision on what they're going to do about this to consider again do you really want to be in the schools this year or not i would ask the parents to understand where we're coming
063from on this this is not a political situation this is just merely because our schools are not set up for six feet distancing the surgeon general yesterday just spoke to the state of georgia talking about you know there's three simple things our hospital workers said the same thing so this is not any kind of situation where we're trying to put people in jeopardy of their rights we're just trying to make sure that we can stay in school and educate these kids so if we can have people support and help it would be very appreciated well i'll change the motion to recommend uh dr spence either mandate or require the words of his choice that the kids wear mask sensible i'm sorry i have one more thing i i also want i want to request that
064there be support for the teachers that have to deal with this so i know and you know if if y'all decide to do this and and you're working out the situation i i just i want to be sensitive to the fact that the teachers are the front line and it i know that this is going to make it a little difficult for them so if we can support them as well that would be great i think though too like i mean jerry and i we spoke a little bit i mean about a week ago i guess and at that time we were both hearing and i don't put words in your mouth here we were both hearing because you didn't give me a number i guess but we were both hearing from teachers on kind
065of on both sides and i guess i was probably at that time 50 50 or 60 40 for masking and as the week has gone on um the people i've talked to since yesterday through today and of course it's not all thousand teachers but i'm probably at 90 percent that is that are requesting that we ask kids to mask and so that's another driving force and it's going to be difficult and they're going to have to use some discretion too i mean y'all we've had everybody's had to do it tonight you have to pull this thing down and that's the other thing that i'll say about my own son is that i worry about him just getting good air you know so having a mask on a cloth mask on is going to impact his
066oxygen level i think john i'm not an expert but i think that because i mean if you wear it for any amount of time and you're in your height you're gonna have to pull it down occasionally and breathe you're gonna have to do that we're gonna have to be open to that and it's just gonna be another thing we have to deal with but i guarantee it's gonna be better than trying to rush into online learning like we did in the spring you know i think that um it'll still be it's even better i think everybody ultimately after we have some adjustment period we'll be we'll be better off for it mr chair just procedure-wise you made a second to a different motion which you did would you make a would you be willing to
067rescind your second yeah i'll resend one second i'm sorry do you second the new motion or not you just made the new one okay all right any further discussion and are we going to make this are we going to make a decision to reassess at the end of the semester like you suggested yes i think we should i mean we might even have to do that sooner things might you know we wouldn't conservative you know we're gonna change it i don't think that's gonna happen but i i hear you i agree i don't mind that well if our motion is to recommend that when we're in the yellow category that we wear them so if things do get better and we're no longer operating in the yellow category that's also taking us out of the
068map i want to avoid is going from green to yellow to green to red back to yellow so i would i would be more in favor just saying we're going to wear them till this ever and you know what i mean so i mean i don't think we'll hop back and forth like that but i guess we could i doubt it we could go to red in the back to yellow and then the green so it's going to be more confusing my opinion just have to set ourselves up to maybe have to say wear masks today but not but monday you don't have to but then the hospital fills up over the weekend because the numbers are delayed getting reported and also we're in the yellow again or we're pushing red so i i don't
069know but if you're saying that we say december if we stay in the summer and and literal guidance comes out we can we can always we can always change regulations you know we can always take another vote and change whatever just i mean i think dr spence can see the writing on the wall i don't think we need to be voting on regulations because that's what he comes up with that just me personally we vote on policy we vote for a superintendent to make regulations and if he can't see where we're coming from in the subject then that's a direct reflection on this job performance so i don't i mean i think it's redundant to take a vote knowing that how the board pretty much fits i'd just like them to see how everybody feels
070directly and give and know that he's being supported and directed by the board and with that said now are we gonna i just don't like this set the precedence i know this is unprecedented times but we're setting a precedence now that okay next year oh some other thing that we don't foresee coming up and we're going to have to direct him to do that the same thing and you know are we going to start micromanaging him through making him follow regulations set by the board that's why we develop policies well from a conversation that we had we had he said he well it was in the open forum but he said that just tell me if that's what you want me to do that makes it easy that's what i'm trying to do right i
071mean i think we have well i think you know i don't of course i don't like the m word i've heard that for a long time you know and so i think this is different than saying dr spence we want you to go when was the last time we made a higher higher this week or so this this is an impressive time she said earlier that this hadn't happened in however many years 100 years or whatever 1918. um you know in addition to that i mean you know you have over 10 years i haven't voted on the regulation well let's go on a directive how about phone okay i've got a question [Music] let's not vote on a policy let's vote on a directive i think what john's ass sir is trying to put out
072there where we stand for the public which is fine so let's just vote on a directive to give to dr spence and then we'll move on is that okay with you mm-hmm that's what you're wrestling with that directive you just need to rescind no i was that that's what i said a direction okay i'm sorry that's okay all right that's what i said well we voted him all the time to sign an mou or exactly do this or just sign a real estate agreement or do without taking a vote on buying it yes we give you give you the authority to create this whatever you want to call it yes sir yes you you got the motion damage group just i got seven go back and watch the video i would like to recommend a
073directive to the superintendent of glenn county schools to mandate or use the term require students to wear masks and staff to wear masks in school for the first semester to be re-evaluated in december before before we take a vote i just want to ask one thing as far as on the discipline side of things how is this gonna i mean how would this look as an educator i mean it's that's what i'm worried about on the back side and i get it but and then i'm not opposed to being part of the team and you know i was opposed to it i did go but it's as far as more how you lay it out and you you explain it as far as a regulation versus a policy it makes a little more sense or
074holds a little more water with me but what's the high school principles going to do whenever they've got 60 people so that's going to iss or what how does that discipline level going to play out because it's going to get it could get messy and and that's what i want to avoid is is the is mandating it or requiring it going to more adversely affect our educators and teaching for dealing with discipline issues and going back and forth to the admin how do you foresee that playing out just from being an educator all your life and i mean is that this is different i know but two things that that i'm concerned about is if we're requiring it then i think that puts us in a position to have to provide them and and i
075mean and i can i get what you're saying mr mandela we don't have to we don't we require pants but we don't really provide them but this is kind of different and so while we do have a pretty good storage of mass available what's going to happen in november when we don't have them and so i think we got we got to be ready for that second i think we would have to treat this as a dress code situation and and go from there so kind of like we would what we deal with dress code but if we're requiring it then that means we're going to every kid's going to have a mask on every day it's going to be tough and as an educator that's that's going to be tough but we will do
076it we will do what we have to do i've brought this up before and you know i've talked about for the teachers that aren't able to do the math is there an alternative like a shield a face shield we have 400 face shields that we that we have right now and i guess we could purchase some more but well that goes back i think to what i said about the community needs to step up and support us and we have had some that that have done that and the hospital has said they'll support us and they supported us at graduation so if you've ever thought about helping our school system now is the time that's all i want to say i want to i want to try to take that barrier of not having the
077mass away i mean if they wear the reusable mask make sure they wash them all of that keep an extra one in a backpack if possible but i mean i don't want this to be a burden on the school system because it's a community responsibility or a community effort i'll put it that way so i would hope that your reason number one would go away in that case i've been contacted by quite a few community people about providing mass providing whatever we need yeah and so that's one if if this is something that you you have me do we're definitely going to need more math yes right so everybody's heard that right for clarification are we talking about on school system property are we talking about inside the buildings outside the buildings what are we
078talking about there is that something for me to decide it would be my recommendation that you decide because if they're out there well much more than six foot away sitting there reading you know there's no i'm not a a absolute anything because i felt like the when you make an absolute that takes all the variables away that are can get ridiculous so the kids sitting on this corner over here nobody's around them and they're reading a book or doing something all by themselves i don't have an issue with that but if you're all in the classroom you're walking in the halls and you know that that i would leave that to your discretion to our thing is six foot away wash your hands wear a mask you know anything out you know out of there
079you're you can as well catch that i completely figured out i mean you know because my kids will be in school they have to eat right they go to the water fountain or whatever you know there'll be things they can't do now but um we have to serve lunch and breakfast and they'll have to have their mouths cut off feeds that sort of thing but we're just gonna have to you know 80 percent compliance is better than zero you know what i mean you know and maybe that's not the best answer but i mean you're going to have times where they have them all for if they're outside or by the time they come in the school building i think they need to have them on i mean i think it's i i personally think
080that being outside and you know social justice i mean as i pulled up tonight i saw the band out front and that i saw probably half the kids didn't have them on but they weren't on top of each other either that's going to be up to the band director to help with that you know you're either spread out or put your mask on you know just like you do in class stop talking you know spread out and let's get back to work um either spread out or put your mask on you know whatever the case might be so yeah it's going to be it's going to be tough i i don't disagree with you but i do agree with ed and i agree with you that we need to we need to ask for an
081influx of match and prepare like this thing is going to be with us for years you know and just have more than we could ever imagine and we don't use them we could do it in a back or whatever but um we need to probably get on the horn sooner rather than later if we're going to do this because you know it's just like your name match i mean eventually most kids get used to it i mean how many kids a day forget their badge you know it happens every day here's a temporary here's a mask you know here's a disposable um whatever so i mean that's that's kind of i hate to put it on y'all because you've been doing so much to come up with all these great plans but um that's gonna
082be up to y'all to figure out what works best i think in the classrooms and and listen we're not going to shut schools down if we're not you know 100 percent have this thing figured out you know august 21st or whatever you know what i mean so we just want a good conscious effort and you know in a couple days right now i figured out how to have plans in place through the principles of what we can do for kids that don't have maps that day i still think it's a positive thing that we're not having as many as many kids i mean the three thousand twenty seven hundred however many it is will still impact positively the things we're having to deal with possibly so we'll just see we'll see how it works out
083so if i'm hearing everyone is what the vision i'm seeing is like if you're in a classroom setting or if you're in a hall when classes are changing or anything like that but if you're outside during recess or anything like that obviously you can social distance that was my whole thing if we were to mandate the the capital m it would become the bigger discipline issue but if you leave it to the discretion you're going to give a little bit of freedom a little bit of flexibility where it's like we want you to have your mask on when you're in class you're expected to have it if you're in halls it's packed but you're giving you some leeway this is my thing i i just already see it someone taking a picture you know they
084shouldn't have their phones at school anyway but they take a picture and it's on social media and it's like them and their friend they'll have a mask and they share it then the principal sees it and then what they were on school campus and they were too close now does that somebody the teacher may have a little negative thought toward a certain student and that one gets found upon that that's not the things i worry about but i agree with with the wearing of the mask i'm kind of over that now i get what you're saying and it makes sense i'm just looking at it like this one is going to be an issue and somehow it's going to be an issue and we've got that in it i mean although we've never dealt with
085this before we've dealt with things we've got a category that okay what's called but being this ruling or being unruly or whatever i mean so that falls in that category if you're gonna you know show up the superintendent by purposely going against the regulation put it on facebook or snapchat or whatever that's an issue maybe you should be disciplined for that under those guidelines whether it's a smoking policy we had in place forever or a mass policy that would just put in regulating regulation tonight i think it goes to their discretion their new things happen we had to do the whole vaping thing okay so that's something we've never had before we do it wasn't good when you need to be disciplined for it but it's something we've never dealt with before um but we
086knew if you were vaping in class it was a tobacco product and it wasn't good and we had to deal with that whole situation so i hear what you're saying you're right and there's gonna be some of that i mean they're gonna do this on purpose and that's that was one of my fears you're gonna have kids that do this on purpose and pants just saying that you know can you imagine that the old brotherhood i mean at least rose guys halls now are three times wider than they used to be but you can't even walk down those halls and not hit help you know hit shoulders and how about them and then with elementary too that's that that was one of my because like you were saying middle and high school there should be
087a lot of guys are really tough but the level's gonna be that's gonna be the tough and you may have a pre-k or or whatever teacher and then it's like keeping masks on these kids are going to be and then you got special special ed department that you have to worry about as well so do we cry something that's on the regulation that kind of has leeway on certain i mean that's the thing i think that we're um he spoke of micromanagement and my thing is i don't want to micromanage him give him the directive and let him these little things if you have a child that is special ed that just cannot have something on his face don't throw him out of school he's not going to do that i can't see that happening
088well it's a mandate you got to do it you know we have to have some reason and i have we have to leave that to him we say we're saying what i hear is a group that we want it mandated or required you sort out the discipline part using your discretion and that's why we put you in this position because we know that you're going to be able to make the appropriate decisions on the vapor the smoke and by the way vaping and coveted go real good together so if they're vaping they're going to get it and if they get it they're going to get real sick but that's a whole other sidebar sorry anyway back to the reality i don't want to micromanage on how he's going to have to discipline he needs to
089discipline how he sees fit as a superintendent of schools to get our directives done likely all one time so i think you need to rewrite the book i think there are categories that this will fit under let's just opt in jerry all right question has been called all right good deal all right so we've got the motion by mr medalla miss bobbitt with the second i guess we'll call for a vote all those in favor unanimous seven oh wow let me say thank y'all very much for that um i appreciate it from the medical community and they do too i promise you it's the right thing to do thank you we want to keep our kids safe here i would like to say that it is about keeping kids safe and before i walked into
090this meeting i was about that yeah i was 100 against mandating it but with giving a little leeway as far as you know not saying if you crawl without a mass we're gonna you know you're gonna get kicked out of school or whatever right i think this helps with the direction what we're kind of looking at so it's not more of a hopefully they can gear more towards not a punishment but more of an educational piece so all right uh any uh any executive session material and legal personnel with anyone mr turning nothing good all right all right i hear the motion blub dr eurekan second uh reverend robin all those in favor all those in favor you