Muscatine School Board Meeting

001[Music] and welcome to the monday november 15th community school district board of education meetings how would you take phone calls director thank you during the pandemic we um began inviting classes to help us by leading the pledge of allegiance and we've kept that uh this was what i would call a covenant keeper so tonight virtually we have joining us a pre-recorded version of lisa paul's fourth grade class from grant elementary they're going to lead us in the pledge so i would ask that you please stand and we will say the pledge with mrs paul's class for foreign under god indivisible with liberty and justice thank you to mrs paul's fourth grade class it's always fun to see um the span that each class puts on their pledge with their greeting at the end so we

002appreciate that i'd like to welcome all of our visitors this evening as well as our media representatives it's great when we have a big audience the next item on our agenda will be our student school board update gentlemen i'll pass it to you hello there uh dylan and i just wanted to start off with congratulations to the mhs drama department we had a very successful play this year and then went great and also congratulations to our girls swim teams they did awesome and uh next i also have an update with our high school student council uh more recently we're at a very successful fundraiser for a candle and i don't have an exact number but i do know we raised a few hundred dollars for the mcsa with that event and that went very well

003and we are now currently planning on uh starting the mr muscatine fundraiser the male beauty pageant we usually have and so we're very excited looking forward to having that this year okay so i just have a few things uh first uh this coming wednesday i believe it is the 18th uh mhs administration is holding a parent meeting um not 100 sure on the time that he didn't know when we talked class but some of the topics that they're going to be discussing is a portrait of graduate and the freshman introduction and what they're developing as well as some safety topics too winter sports are starting back up we have boys swim boys and girls basketball um i think that's it uh but we're practice started uh last week for that so we're finally getting into

004the swim of those uh and finally they're continuing to monitor uh hats and hoods being born from both a student and an administrative uh perspective it's not an issue at this time and i personally think also that it's kind of comforting for students not to have to worry about that as well as teachers having to take the time out of their day to stop that and then just one more thing uh last thursday on veterans day um the high school held on a ceremony uh what happened was last year in may a student found a old world war ii uh plaque that was dedicated to people who served during that time it was found in the closet and we knew about it so they found it and um dave domitic who's the uh one of

005the ag teachers at the high school as well as uh a student landed mccreary uh restored it and there's pictures up here of it and yeah so it's just dedicating the staff at the high school who uh have served in the army so that's great an um you know aaron tammy and toby uh for all the work that they've done these past couple years serving on the board uh i know from my perspective the new science film that you guys helped pass was great for students and i think it was really needed and has done a lot to better the education of students along with that even the current the recent renovations the music wing really we really appreciate all of your dedication to the students here and we just want to say a big

006thank you to everyone here on the board thanks gentlemen does anyone have any questions for dylan or gabe before they before we move on the next section of our agenda is our citizen speak portion of the agenda this is where anyone in the audience is welcome to address the board we do have a time limit of three minutes we'll have a timer on the screen for you i know that goes very quick we'll ask that you stop to the podium i have a list of names of those who have signed in to speak so when your name is called if you'll step to the podium and give your name an address for the record i would also remind the audience that per our board policy which is driven by iowa code we are not able

007to respond to you during citizen speak so you are absolutely welcome and encouraged to share with the board uh but a time that we can actually engage in conversation is so you can certainly grab board members before after a meeting certainly um reach out with a phone call or an email and again and you can engage in a little bit different conversation than just the quick address this evening so i'm going to start off with the first person who signed up i'm going to apologize in advance if i say anybody's name incorrectly but i have ann and tom emmerick my name is todd edward and i'm here because i want to object to any um restriction on library books i think it's totally wrong to prevent them from being published or prevent them being read

008our students need an unrestricted library and just can't afford it in this critical time you can't afford to have students without critical thinking skills against banning any [Music] the next name i have is a little difficult to read so again i was apologizing in advance i believe it's france is it silburger it's france silver yeah you can absolutely correct me when you're in that's fine my is spillberger i'm a muscatine resident living in 3404 spinning wheelport and i've been living there for the past 40 years while i'm not a representative of scouting i have been a scout leader for the last 35 years and the scouting program holds helping young people to develop into contributing members of society to that end scouting has required youth deserve desiring to earn highest rank and scouting the eagle

009scout award to earn three citizenship awards as merit badges citizenship and community citizenship in the nation and citizenship in the world and recently scouting has developed another merit badge called citizenship in society which now will all spear eagle required merit page this merit badge requires study and development in three particular areas diversity equity and inclusion all which are designed to lead to belonging i have always thought of muscatine as a welcoming community if we want people to want to live in muscatine i personally believe we need to educate people which includes our children and the importance of welcoming all people regardless regardless of their differences as you move forward i hope you consider who we are and who we want to be before you ban educational materials for our youth thank you franz next on

010the list is deb and i believe it's heggy deb did i pronounce your last name correctly you got it okay i would like to ask is it okay if i pull my mask down just for a second because i i'm old and i have trouble hearing sometimes with masks although i totally support the last band firebase okay i'll pull it down just for a second um first of all i'd like to congratulate the new board members welcome to the board um you've been elected by our committee so for our community so good luck with your serving and i hope you're here to represent everybody i'm here on behalf of faith united church of christ open and affirming committee i'm a member of faith united where we believe that we should be open and affirming and

011welcome all members of all creeds races and sexual orientation and as citizens of muscatine and as people of faith we respectfully ask you to consider that banning of books is both divisive and undemocratic we believe that school libraries should reflect and respect the diversity of the community i know firsthand that a lot of our um elementary schools the percentage of different races might exceed the percentage of white kids we also believe that school libraries should honor and support the freedom of speech and the freedom to learn about the world from multiple perspectives and finally we note that the diversity of library books allows our children to become critical thinkers in a complex world and i want to thank you guys for considering this perspective and for your time as elected officials thank you thank you

012next on the list is matt miller as an advocate and voice of the community that will not be silenced concerned citizens of muscatine make the following statement regarding incoming board agenda item three election of board president vp all board members supporting anti-israel and anti-semitic opinions should be disqualified as school board president and vp nominations i would like to start off thanking clint christopher for the time he continues to set aside for open dialogue regarding concerns that our community and i have had through the school year i realize that we will disagree on certain items but that having our voices heard is crucial to the superintendent and myself and this community during these times and moving forward for what's best for the community and our children i also want to welcome new board members thank you

013it is against [Music] i mean this three minutes really sucks i want to welcome the new board members i challenge the parents of this community to continue pushing you challenging you standing up for what's right this community voted you in your elected officials and you deserve to listen to us and the majority of this community our staff and students are scared to speak up and that's a concern the main issues i want to address real quick are dress codes and safety at our school and lack of control that our administration has offered with the students i understand there are many challenges that our schools need to focus on daily however due to leadership becoming numb to students it is evident that the students are running our schools and this needs to be stopped immediately the

014students and staff of our school should not have to see teenage girls walking around in bras or be told that if the shoulders or the butts are covered then the attire is acceptable by administration and due to this time constraint that i have i can't go in depth enough about the transgender students that you to utilize our girls restroom yet still have manual genitalia or the females that use our male restrooms and still have female genitalia i don't want my kids seeing that i don't think you want your grandkids seeing it if you don't have kids in the school these kids are not giving any consequences our administration needs to be accountable and us as a community will hold you that way when it comes to the safety of our students and staff the administration

015continues to cater to the five and ten percent of students that choose to be a nuisance this community the school board and the administration need to find a way to resolve quickly and with affirmative action before more damage is done to our 90 and 95 of the students that want to be involved and be a productive member of our society we as parents will not allow this disruption to continue and we should hold the board administration accountable i want you all to know this is not a school issue this is a community issue and we all need to stand strong work together thank you matt next on the list is ricky t 516 sunrise circle [Music] i came with two things prepared um i did not actually want to share this and i do respect

016the citizens that did share their comments about not restricting books in our libraries but i feel that there are inappropriate subjects in our library just like we rate movies that are appropriate for certain age groups there are books that are rated appropriate for 14 year olds not that are not in our high school and i i have a few excerpts from those books and and this is the the critical thinking that i guess we're wanting our our students and and kids to have access to yes i understand it's not part of the curriculum but there have been controversial books part of curriculum and i do teach my kids you know appropriate books appropriate you know pictures and my kids grow up learning that stuff and so they are able to judge for themselves but this

017is some things that i guess our school district feels that is appropriate for 14 year olds or older and so from the book all boys aren't blue um text this is from page 201-202 and this book is about a memoir and so these are events that happen in this kid and i don't i don't denounce that these happen to him but the detail that they go into is is explicit um he says do you or his this is cousin talking do you feel that yeah but i laughed and said get your hands off my butt you giggle that's not my hand you're lying i said you then place both your hands on my hips as you lay side by side there was still something poking me you were fully erect at this point i was

018nervous we're going to get in trouble you can't tell anybody okay you said you promised that you weren't going to tell anyone i promise then you grabbed my hand and made me touch it it was the first time i had ever touched a penis that it wasn't my own i knew what was happening it wasn't supposed to happen cousins weren't supposed to do things like this with cousins and then so this goes on for about five pages here's from 204 a little bit more ahead um we sat together for about 10 minutes before you finally stood up you then had me stand up with you at this time you were much taller than me probably about a good foot you told me to take off my pajama pants which i did you then took off

019your shorts followed by your boxers you stood in front of me with fully erect fully erect and said tasted at first i laughed and refused but then you said come on man taste it this is what boys like us do when when we like each other i finally listened to you you then got down on your knees and told me to close my eyes that's when you began oral sex on me as well it continues on to 205 oh i ran out of time but i wanted to say it's like that there is a line cross in this book it is one thing to write about traumatic experiences about your life story so we can learn from your experience this example should be considered adult content and children should not have access to in our

020schools education used to be about reading writing arithmetic more and more more and more it seems to be focusing on a new subject normalizing sex and pornography and i have more to share but i'm sorry my time is out thank you thank you ricky next is i believe sully and i am not clear on the last name is that michelle oh shelley it is i am so sorry i live at 2629 canterbury road muscatine i am a veteran of the united states army i am 100 disabled mst ptsd um so i have some experience with being abused traumatic events and i can also say as a child i was abused and the library was my refuge and being able to go and look at books and read books and read books about women who had

021overcome such traumatic events is what i was going through as a child was a place that gave me hope and helped me succeed and overcome my very traumatic childhood background be able to go into the military and being terribly terribly poor as a child and succeed and go on to use my military background to also put myself through nursing school and become a registered nurse and go on to help people and save lives banning um books banning education banning those safe spaces and places where children can check out books and read about different experiences and different backgrounds that look different than what we would expect um it cuts off like points to the outside world if a child is in a place where things aren't necessarily safe they might not quite know how to verbalize

022or explain what's going on but if they can look at it in a book and put it all together it might empower them and give them the ability to go to that nurse or go to that teacher and say this describes that situation i'm in i read about it here and now it makes sense that i have been in an abusive situation and if you take that away from them because you want to ban a book because of your own ideology or your own narrow world view that's about you not about what's best for your child so i would urge all of you to not be in books just because it might go against what you personally believe and if you're so strongly convicted about that the solution is clear to me as it has

023always been throughout our country's history put your kid in a private school that's always been the answer i pay my taxes my kid goes to a public school and if my my private because i'm a conservative christian woman i i go to a wesleyan church and my kid is 12 years old and these decisions are going to affect him he is right now going through um what you would call being gender fluid and i fully encourage and support that but i don't want the kids at school to get empowered and say oh this kind of stuff is banned at school that's going to create a space for bullying to happen so be careful with what you do and what you decide you have to think these things through beyond what your adult's perspective is now

024you think about the kids at school so i'm done thank you you shelley and next is jim elias i i wasn't planning to speak i just thought i was signing into prison that takes us through then all of our citizens speak uh individuals that signed up so we thank you for coming and sharing your thoughts with the board i will just um i will add that as the board's responsibility is to govern and we do have a policy that talks about uh the process of reviewing um any material that's in the district so i would invite you if you have concerns um which it's we've heard lots of different lenses tonight which i think is great it's a great representation of lenses within our community to look at the 602.1 series and the process of

025the board is outlined once you've thoroughly read a book that you have in question there's there's a document that you fill out with the pieces that are biggest concern to you and then we start that process so i would encourage you take a look at that policy read through what that process is and that's been laid out by the board and then you can work directly with our superintendent to get that process started we appreciate you coming tonight the next item on our agenda is the iowa high school music association is here we have the executive director alan greiner who i believe has a presentation to make [Music] good evening my name is adam greiner i'm the executive director of the iowa high school music association on behalf of the iowa high school music association

026it's my distinct pleasure to honor and publicly recognize tammy drama for her service for music education in iowa as a member of the executive commission of the iowa high school music association for the past five years mrs drama's service to music education in iowa has truly gone far beyond the bonds of this industry her calm professional manner her ability to think through tough situations her strong sense of what is ethically right has served iowa high school this association of its members very well during cameron's tenure on the board her leadership insight and perspective her unwavering devotion to to what's best for all high school students has time and again proven to be invaluable tammy thank you your dedication and service to the iowa high school music association and its number schools please accept this gift

027as a small token of our appreciation foreign [Music] yeah there you go all right our next uh item on our agenda then is our action and possible action items this is our consent agenda the following items are considered to be routine by the board of education and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a direct or so request in which event the item will be removed from the consent agenda and consider its normal sequence from the agenda those items are minutes bills and claims that includes the work session and additionally the um [Music] are we putting the official reporter votes on the consent agenda tom that's separate that's separate sorry so just uh the minutes and bills and claims what are the wishes of the board

028i'll make the motion to approve the consent agenda is that good it's been moved and seconded to present the consent to accept the consent agenda as presented is there any discussion hearing that all those in favor please signify by saying aye and opposed and motion carries sorry aaron i didn't mean to catch up the next item uh on the agenda then is to accept the official report of votes from the muscatine county auditor what are the wishes of the board how many people accepted the official reporting votes my second it's been moved and seconded to accept the official report of votes is there any discussion hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye and opposed and motion carries [Applause] that takes us to the adjournment of this meeting so tonight is

029always each year according to our board policy we have a reorganizational meeting so we will take a very quick recess after we adjourn where we let retiring board members leave and our new board members will find their spots at the board table i would entertain a motion [Music] oh my company [Music] is there any discussion yes thank you um to the current board staff faculty of administration students it's been an honor and privilege to serve alongside of you this this in this season even when we disagreed it's my belief that we were all here for the right reasons the betterment of our students staff faculty and families of this great district however i would be remiss if i did not acknowledge my one great regret as a board member in september when temperatures were running

030the highest i should have been in the room with you and for that i'm sorry lindsay matt and ken god bless you for choosing to run and to be elected uh thank you also to your employers and your families uh for sharing you with us in this endeavor we call the muscatine community school district um and to the rest of the community at large every few years in this great human experience we call america we have an opportunity to choose to participate if we choose to participate to have our horses heard one of the greatest gifts if not the greatest gift of freedom is our opportunity to vote free of fear and intimidation in the spirit of community tonight is a victory for democracy thank you for entrusting me the last four years with your

031children students family and friends and the wise words of the muskie cheer squad let me hear your musky spirit what do you say go muskies go on muskies go muskies go [Music] well stated toby is there any other discussion hearing that the motion on the floor that is for the current board to adjourn all those in favor please signify by saying hi all right and opposed nay and we are judged you'll give us just a few minutes a ballot election so i nominate john to be as president please any other nominations or i know that they cease nominations [Music] and and then cast unanimous uh casting unions will vote for john to be the board president okay is there a second for that no second second by denny okay all those in favor say aye

032aye those opposed i'm sorry cat okay then at this time we'll go through the same process to vote for the office of vice president a second is not required if there's only one nomination we will need a motion and a second to cast unanimous vote for vice president if there are more nominations a motion is needed that nomination cease uh and to cast a union spoke for vice president so i'm not only mike gordon okay can i nominate okay so okay sorry if there are more motions emotion is needed that nomination sees i'll make the motions of the nomination cease all right is there a second for that all those in favor of nomination c say aye same sign okay now we need our ballots okay so on here if you could just uh put

033your name and then by the vice president line just put who you want to vote for and then you can just hand them back so okay uh john the beat voted for karen lindsey phillips voted for karen [Music] kevin voted for mike morgan mike morgan voted for mike morgan matt connor voted for mike morgan danny sure voted for mike morgan swear in each officer individually so if if john if you could stand please and raise your right hand john do you solemnly swear that you will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of iowa and that you will faithfully and impartially to the best of your ability to discharge the duties of the office of board president in the musketeer community school district as now and hereafter required by

034law i do congratulations and mike morgan please stand raise your right hand mike do you solemnly swear that you will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of iowa and that you look faithfully and impartially to the best of your ability discharge the duties of the office of board vice president in the muscatine community school district as now and here after required by law i do thank you mike congratulations so it's my honor now to turn the meeting over to john to me and i thank you tom good evening everybody and again i would like to thank the three outgoing board members stanley rowan and toby for their service uh for the school board and for the years that they serve on behalf of the community and working hard

035for again making our school district one of the best districts in the state of iowa thank you for the confidence that i received from board members whether you bought it for me or not i extend my hand to work with all of you i am here a person who has been in education for over 30 years education means a lot for me i will always always always extend my hand to work with everybody my approach to leading the school board will be a teamwork kind of approach um i don't make decisions on my um by myself i always go back to whatever team i welcome get their feedback and move forward with making decisions uh i look forward to work with all of you as i mentioned again and let's proceed with the agenda items

036and move forward with that one of the first items on the agenda that we need to take care of every year is basically the different appointments to different individuals banks law firms and so on and as a world we can basically make a emotion uh basically to vote on all of them as one item or we can go if the world chooses one item at time and making motion vote and move to the second python so what are the wishes of the world would you like to talk about all of them as one motion and i will read them uh basically the items that we have appoint daphne donald as both secretary uh upon tom anderson as block treasurer designate first national bank cbi bank and plus community bank of muscatine as official depositors of

037district funds in the amount of 15 million each appoint stanley landing and hunter allows gofer and lynch dallas pc as councils to represent the school district in legal matters on a time base designate the muscatine journal as the publication of record designate will not behance it and form it as auditor of weapon upon district compliance officer approved revised board policies two or three point eight e conflicts of interest one or two are one civil rights regulations one or four discrimination and so what are the wishes of the world shall we vote on each item or shall we vote on all of them as a package i'll make a motion to vote on all of the appointments okay we have the motion do i have a second uh mike yes thank you mike uh okay uh

038those of you who are in favor of the emotion please signify by saying i i oppose okay motion count did someone say no no no uh the next item is the organization of the board uh every year we select some of the world members to do themselves on cell then certain county pools or ad learning worlds and so on but first of all item ebola meeting schedule for december of 2021 through november 2022 uh i would like each world member to take the opportunity to look at the meeting schedule and make sure that this works for you and if you have any conflict uh in any of those months that you have to serve please let me know they definitely know and let clint knows so that we can adjust this uh the second item

039board assignments so we start with the appointment to the county conference board and our board member dennis shaw has been serving as the county conference board jenny can we ask you to give us some sort of an update of what you have been doing and would like to continue to serve on that board yeah i'll continue to serve basically we have two meetings a year and we approve the budget and for the county uh on her assessor and uh that's basically it the meetings don't last very long okay thank you for your service danny uh do we have a motion to again elect danny to continue to serve on the county conference board [Music] any discussion okay all those uh all those of you who are in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed

040okay thank you motion carry the second item is appointment to the ad learning center board and karen cooney was our representative and so kevin can you please give us some information about your work there and if you wish to continue to serve on that wall i can um it was actually very much an eye opening especially since it's at seven o'clock in the morning but uh actually it was very very nice to see how well run that we have our ffa area and such that egg those guys are really top-notch they don't um taking those guys know what they're doing we are just kind of like a partner with them so to speak and mcc is also a kind of a partner with that as well and if any of you have a chance um

041i would love for you to be able to know more about how they have the writing for success that they actually do down there as well so it's a program that serves our community very well i have not a problem about taking and continuing that service but if there is somebody of our viewing the board members or something that would like to be able to do that i would not have be opposed to that no i knew it was a seven o'clock in the morning yeah uh so yes i will continue to do that okay do i have a motion and second please i'll make the motion to karen representing second okay thank you all those in favor of the motion please signify by saying i oppose okay thank you motion carry the last item

042is appointment to the other committee traditionally the president of the world serves on this but uh i would like to nominate mike as the vice president to be representing the world on the other committee if he accepts give me a second what's your background i don't do the audio i'd be more than willing to do it but if there's somebody that has a better understanding of what they're looking at i'm i i can uh just let you know that so the audit committee's been in existence uh since before i started so i this is my fifth starting my fifth year so i think sometimes like two or three years before that started it's made up of there's five seats on it not including a board number but right now i have three people sitting on

043it i have a an excellent communications guy out recruiting uh two more people for that for the positions on there but the board uh the committee meets twice a year at the most it's usually one twelve to one over the lunch hour we'll typically meet in the fall during our initial fieldwork audit and then we'll meet again probably around january when the audit report is released but the background of the people on that committee provide i think of value to the school board and that they kind of understand how audits work many of them in past lives did audits for muskegon community school district so they're they're familiar with it and i would say it's minimal time commitment but uh again it's probably twice a year and the board representative can be anybody and they

044can um provide you know additional guidance i guess to bring back to the school board once the recommendation is made from the audit committee so again i i find i would gladly accept the nomination if there's somebody that has a better understanding of the audit process and of the verbiage i don't know matt says i'll be fine i'll accept i don't know what everybody's background is but then i just know that that's not mine i'm an educator or it wasn't an engineer you'll be retired you'll do fine but i think uh yeah you nominate him but i don't think the president can nominate somebody so anyway we can vote on mike i guess so let's go ahead now i might i'm gonna be probably committed okay your emotion okay okay so we have a motion

045and a second uh of nominating mike to serve on the other community okay thanks danny [Music] all those in favor of this nomination please signifies by saying i i i oppose motion killing thank you and i just want to back up to the board meeting schedule so for the new board members there are uh you are on the list a rotating list of two people that review the monthly bills and it's done electronically you'll get instructions from nicole miller who's the district accountant for the district and she will send you out a list of the bills you can review them and then should you have questions on any of them uh either her or myself would be glad to email you you know the answer or email your invoices or whatever it is you need

046to see so that's done electronically now and then your approval that can just be done electronically and then that's what gets presented at the school board like what you saw at the the first meeting that's what uh the summary gets presented at the board meeting but you will you have you will have the detail uh when it comes your time and if there's a month that you can serve you know just let us know and we'll um you know switch it around a little bit so just wonder just want to let the new board members know that thank you we moved to the next item on our agenda board targets and goals report uh we have the following items students will graduate prepare for all secondary options under this item we have work based learning

047brandon wench and gary hawkins i can be muscatine school will utilize resources effectively and equitably and i can see students will learn in a positive and supportive environment i will turn this to clint here today from here yeah thank you i'm excited to welcome brandon and terry tonight from our high school counseling department they've done a ton of work on our work based learning program i want to give them an opportunity to share some of those updates and uh some of the exciting work that's happening with that program so with that i'll turn it over to carrie okay my name is carrie hawkins and i'm a counselor at the high school my title starting this year is college and career counselor and brandon walsh is our work based learning counselor i'll try not to get

048long-winded but i've been at the high school since 2003 and i'm not sure that i've been more excited about a change that we've made um outside of this one the high school or the district i guess last year at the end of the school year decided to change the graduation requirements from 25 credits required to 22. in addition they made some changes to the math and science requirements that every student is needing to complete in order to receive their high school diploma the reason behind it is to give students more of an opportunity to explore their post-secondary intentions while they were in high school and then to make that diploma relevant to what those post-secondary intentions were we felt like we had students who were just checking the boxes of getting their diploma and not

049feeling like they were doing relevant work so by limiting the number or lowering the number of credits it really freed up a student's schedule particularly in their 11th and 12th grade year to give them some of the opportunities that you see up on the board we have students that are taking classes at the high school that earn college credit those are called concurrent enrollment courses so our muscatine high school teachers are teaching college curriculum in our building and the students are earning credit a lot of those happen in classes like agriculture business a class called film is literature we also have students who are enrolled in muscatine high school and mcc career academies and you can see the list there and i'll go into some detail about what our enrollment looks like but these are

050very specific academies that are set up uh intention or intentionally for students to either go directly into a program by completing prerequisites or giving the students an opportunity to explore the actual career so things hands-on like welding we have an advanced manufacturing academy and agriculture academy and then you'll see down at the bottom they are planning to add next year auto tech and plumbing in addition to that we have a whole new work experience program that that brandon will touch on that really gives students the opportunity to explore careers in a couple of different ways one they may have a one-track mind they already know what they want to do i want to go into education i want to be a teacher and he can help set them up with maybe an experience in a

051school building in a particular grade level or maybe they want to bounce around between grade levels and then that multi-track a student who says i know i want to do something in a skilled trade but i'm not exactly sure maybe they spend four weeks on a construction site they spend four weeks with a plumber they spend four weeks in a machining we have a lot of students who say i want to do something in business they have no idea what they want to do in business they don't understand the difference between marketing and finance and human resources so we can we can move them around because they have the flexibility in their schedule so the benefits really um for the students it allows them to do things particularly from my vantage point of getting them

052enrolled in a college course it allows them to take a college course while they still have the support of musketeer high school faculty as well as the mcc faculty and i have students sign a purple waiver when they sign up for an mcc course so that their parent can get communications with the instructor um which will be different than if they graduated from high school and went on to college so just this evening i introduced myself to mr david i said my daughter's in your economics class and she really enjoys it um he normally under some circumstances wouldn't be able to give me information about her course but because she signed that for believer we can exchange that information one of the big benefits is cost savings so right now with the tuition at mcc

053per three credit course a family is going to save about 537 just in tuition but our students also get their textbooks paid for uh if they have equipment like the the night stuff that they need for the culinary academy or their void review forms those are paid for um background checks for cna state testing fees for cna all of those things it gives our students the opportunities to earn some credentials while they're still in high school they will get osha through the advanced manufacturing academy serve safe through the culinary academy and then students who finish the first year of the healthcare academy are state licensed cnas it also makes students eligible for a connection scholarship at mcc and the connection scholarship is automatic for students who complete a certain number of credits while they're in

054high school at a certain gpa so that top tier scholarship if a student earns 12 credits while they're in high school and they have a 3.0 they get two semesters of half price tuition so for a student who's pell eligible they can go to school for free and potentially make some money depending on where those scholarships and grant monies come from and then finally it just allows students to work through their gen ed classes and their prerequisite courses so that when they get to college they can go right into the major that they're excited about going to college for i have a freshman she's a freshman with 64 credits at the university of iowa and she isn't taking one gen ed class every class of her first semester was a therapeutic recreation course and she

055liked school if she was sitting in gen ed classes i'm not sure she'd be having the same experience at the university of iowa these are our fall enrollments and i just this week finished up in classrooms and i'm starting to enroll for second semester you can see the numbers there we have 106 students who are taking 167 individual or ccir courses so this is any student who comes in and says i would like to get public speaking out of the way before i go to college and they're choosing individual courses based on what their plan is we have 70 total students enrolled in the different career academies and you can see the breakdown there healthcare is our largest and we actually run a warning healthcare academy and we run an afternoon healthcare academy the numbers

056that aren't up there are the numbers of students who will just do cna so a majority of the students who are in the healthcare academy have the intention of going on and getting a further degree maybe they want a bsn or a student who is going to enroll in a pre-physical therapy program or pharmacy program those prerequisites are the same we do have some students who want their cna and that's as as far as they want to go with their education so if we have students next semester who are in the healthcare academy that don't necessarily need their spot in cna we'll put them in a different course and then those students can enroll and still still get their cna and be finished what we found out last year was the students who just won

057cnas that completed cnas continued and enrolled the next fall to advance their degree they just didn't know that they had the ability or the funds to do so and then down the bottom are the first year academies we have a k-12 teacher academy businesses prerequisite courses like economics and financial managerial accounting we have one student enrolled in the networking and cyber security and then the bottom one to me is one of the most exciting and this is the aaa transfer so this is a student who says i have no idea what i want to do i have no idea where i want to go but i don't think i want to stay in musketeer right they're all going somewhere else if you ask them so this allows them to take gen ed classes that i

058can map pretty closely knowing that it's either going to contribute to an aaa degree at mcc or i know that they can transfer it to a four-year university and check some of those general education boxes i'm going to talk a little bit more about the uh work experience opportunities that we're creating and first i want to thank our administration um and also our community business leaders for their support and making this work uh it makes it's common sense to me uh but i'm really excited to be uh refocusing our our efforts towards this um we view this the career work experience opportunity in a matter of steps and i want to note that i'm referencing the high school here when i'm speaking but we do have k-12 some career exploration going on we're hoping to

059expand that as well so um i'll kind of go through those the first step would be career awareness and this is probably some of the stuff that's going to be occurring more k-12 and k-8-9 where we're learning about work we do have a new career exploration class that was started this year for ninth and tenth graders right now students are required to take interest inventories through my academic plan that's the current uh server that we're using we have guest speakers in our goal would be to help us out and to help them out would be for a student to identify a career a career within the career cluster or one or two by the end of their sophomore year so they may not have a specific career in mind but if they have an area

060to target then we're able able to help them a little bit better there's also career exploration which is learning around work those would be job shadows we have uh some of those set up and some that have happened already we want to make those specific to career interests not just random job shadows that we're sending kids out to we have i actually have a couple this week on moscow one at krieger's automotive i know our musketeer police department has offered uh students that are interested in criminal justice to go and ride along and ask some questions so that's in the works but we've had a lot of community response i'm leaving a lot of people out that i've already spoken with that those one to three hour job opportunities and worksite tours will be happening

061the career preparation which is learning through work this is the one that i'm the most excited about or the step that i'm most excited about this would be internships and i will say that we're kind of focusing on those being paid although unpaid still adds a value to our students they will earn elective credit and get that opportunity to experience work on the job site those could also include pre-apprenticeships collaborative learning projects which i'll talk about here a little bit more the internships we have some students right now that are at h i stanley amongst others that are focused on engineering we have a lot of our students that are interested in teaching out at different schools within our district and saint mary matthias as well spending some time during their school day working with

062other classes i have some students in construction already so we're just building this right now between our new work based learning program some of the existing connections with some other departments our special education program has students working every day throughout our community we have about 50 students right now that are placed in long-term work experience i would say a lot of those are paid as well so we have some more opportunities that we're looking for i will say next year we will have even more room in their schedule because this year we weren't able to plan ahead of time next year we're going to be able to block out some room in the schedule for students that are looking to do this during their school day and it'll be up to me to place them

063appropriately and finally we have uh there's just an example sorry of one of our spotlights of one of our students that's been working with hackett construction um appreciate tony and jim kellner for helping to publish that within our social media and finally learning forward this would be more when a student is is pretty sure of their specific career path some of this could occur after graduation as well too but um full-time apprenticeships on the drop job training employer mentorships those are all things that can be worked into the school year two of a student is really aware of what they're interested in i want to go back to another project that we that i really like the format of and that we're looking to expand into other arenas is a collaborative work project we are

064going to be expanding our high school and creating a new student center which will begin construction next fall mr christopher and h and i had a discussion about how we can get students involved and we've kind of run with that and and i love the work that's been going on so far we have 11 students right now that are going to be working with employees from from han and helping to create the design work on budget marketing everything that's involved in the ground floor up so those students were selected all based upon their career interest so we have some students who are interested in marketing uh design engineering finance some student leadership and they've already been meeting with with han with deadlines they're going to be working with around budgets and everything and they will

065be able to propose their design ideas to administration into our student body and to finalize that project so they'll be able to use the space that they've worked on and see the process through in a real whole setting so we're hoping to expand that into other arenas i've kind of got something in the work works with students interested in law as well too with something like that as well so uh just an idea we're hoping to push some of this down um two maybe a year or so earlier but generally ninth and tenth graders will still be in that explore stage of guest speakers kind of figuring out what jobs are all about 11th grade they may start on mcc academies start working in some job shadows and then 11 12th grade here really starting

066to get into those internships and some of the collaborative work projects i want to go through a couple quick tests working upon so far because i'll go through a couple of these quick testimonials and then to work with um see what it's like to work in the construction field and everything they're interested in that kind of thing just it's really cool to be able to get my feet wet in this situation and actually get to experience what i could be doing in the future like it just gives you some experience that you need to get started rather than trying to look somewhere whether it takes someone with no experience you actually have some new experience and training and we'll definitely take care of where any other person is gonna come right out of high school

067and love that position give you the experience that they need yeah so then just give you this opportunity to work with them so um for a project like this for some of our leaders it gives us an opportunity to organize around a new opportunity and help teach new skills but even more importantly to me for some of my team members who are individual contributors who don't have an opportunity to be leading other members yet this gives them a really great opportunity to start thinking about how they want to show up as leaders and how they want to interact with other people to create partnerships perspective we have a lot of opportunity for career growth on our own in partnering with a project like this for the students i really hope that what they take away

068is that it can be fun to have a job i hope that they see that we love what we do and that we've been passionate about something that also makes us money and i hope too that they're learning that the skills that it takes aren't just the things that they're learning in textbooks but the soft skills that they can see if they're interacting with our team members and i hope that they get a lot of alongside their peers and listening and learning to serve their peers in the process of coming up with solutions for this project so i really enjoyed my experience working with han so far because it's given me more opportunities on my leadership and expanded my vision on how students can intertwine and help make something that they will actually be able

069to use and i think this is really good because it helps our students become more involved and make something that we would be proud of in this center i want to see more areas for collaboration because i feel like our school building laughs at right now i also want to see spaces for students to study on their own because i also think our building lacks that just like a quiet space for students to get work done thank you i just want to open it up to any questions from the board brady can you give me a just a rough idea of what a career cluster would be yeah there's 16 career clusters and those are decided by the federal government's come up with that so this is just one example so you got architecture ag

070there's healthcare finance and with each of those there's specific careers as well so when they're doing the my academic plan um their personal interest skills are calculated and they come back with career questions that match them might not always be what they want to do but kind of gets them to a starting point thanks i actually work for job training partnership act uh jdp many years ago and worked with clusters and such like that so i'm very well aware and i'm very very happy to see that we have that down in our schools because most of the people that i've worked with also self-sufficiency program for hype programs was long after they had been in school and then trying to do all that catch-up um on there so i'm very happy to see that but

071i would love to be able to possibly ask gabriel and dylan what are your thoughts about what has gone on with this program thus far and what you see in the future yeah so i haven't been involved too much with the work based learning i've heard a lot about it but for the mcc classes i started them this year and with the changes the board made to the graduation requirements um i only have four high school classes so i'm able to take three mcc classes online and so i've kind of sat down and looked at it and i'm able to get rid of the rhetoric credit at iowa humanities credit in iowa so i think it's really beneficial for students if they know what they want to do to be able to take them when

072they're paid for so it's saving me money as well what i've seen it's been very helpful for a lot of students there's a lot of my peers that i know who have plans after school that don't always involve university and these programs have always been able to help them expand and find their different industries that they're interested in and being able to just find what they want to do and get like a head start in that so that when they're out of high school they can go straight into the work uh it's been a lot of positive reviews and it's been very helpful for these students motivating them to get their high school diploma as now it helps them open their eyes to a variety of careers and it's just been very helpful for so

073many students opening this door of opportunities that makes them feel more welcome in our schools and also makes them feel more appreciated that they have more options and careers to pursue other than just a four-year degree i do have to remember that i took the test myself and they said i could be a rocket scientist i remember laughing so hard about that but what i actually really realized from that was oh i could be more than what i thought that i could be and neil said i did not become a rocket scientist but at the same time i definitely grew much much more so i commend you guys for what you're doing for the kids to give them the opportunity to decide what is much more for them we've been in the classroom for about

074the last six weeks doing the inventories and probably the biggest thing for me is that students have an idea of what they think certain job titles do they really have no idea what those jobs are at all and so it's hopefully going to make help them make more informed decisions about the classes that they take before they've gone and spent a bunch of money on something that they didn't actually want to do and i'd like to echo what you just said because you know we see the high school students at the college and having this opportunity at an early age to be taking a college course might change their vision to what they want to do in the future in their life they are learning they are experiencing different classes and based on this basically

075they are deciding hopefully and making better decisions so thank you for sharing the information with the board and with everybody here and we keep looking forward to hear back from you uh with updates on this program because i think that's a great way to go for our students i do have one question um what are the eligibility guidelines if any or what would disqualify a student from participating and then is it open to the home school partnership as far as taking courses at the college both for work based learning and for work-based learning some there are some jobs that age does matter a little bit although i have found that they're if they're working with a coordinated work based learning program through the school district there are uh more allowances than they were to just

076go off the street and try to do some of those things so i don't think there's too much lack of eligibility i think we would definitely be open to home school students working getting some work-based experience as well too i will say as as counselors and administration obviously we're going to tie some things back to the their performance at school as well too it's kind of the chicken before the egg where if a student isn't attending very much or their attendance is poor we the last thing we want to do is take them out of a school day to be able to go on a work experience but at the same time they make might garner some motivation and might start going to school so those that's a fine line there um but that does

077play a little bit of a factor with us any other questions just the last thing i would say is again thank you to both of you as we as we talk about the high school and the district a lot of this continues to flow out of that work of portrait of graduate which really talks about creating additional pathways for our students we know we're going to have students that go right into the world of work we know some are going to go two-year apprentice program military some are going to go four-year college and university some are going to ivy league schools right we have all of those students in our schools and we have to be able to serve them all well and these all start to provide those opportunities to move them in the

078right direction give them skills and experiences so they can be successful with whatever pathway that they choose and as a community we should be really proud of that work that they're doing so thank you department i actually got me thinking on something else it's almost like can any of the kids that are going through this can they actually be mentors to some of the younger kids that are looking to go through it so that they can see you know how well the program has worked for them so that they can it might help uh motivate uh more and more kids in which to be able to come involved yeah that's a great idea and we're just just starting this in fact i was like this might be a little early to even share some of

079the things we're doing but that's a great idea and we're open to anything like that as well i think that's something we'll take into consideration we now have a joint position between mcc and the high school elise kress spends half of her time there half of our time here and her half of her job at mcc is to follow the students who are enrolled one year after high school so it's really easy for her to connect students back to the kids that we have on campus right now thank you next item on the agenda is action possible action the following items are considered to be your opinion by the world of education and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion of these items unless the director saw requests in which

080event the item will be removed from the consent agenda and considered in its normal sequence on the agenda the items are employment recommendations special education contracts disregarding and final reading on policies what are the wishes of the world i make a motion to accept that consent agenda is presented second okay thank you mike thank you carolyn all all those in favor of the consent agenda please signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carry thank you that takes us to item f on our agenda approve msa requests for excess ltp course for serving english language learners in a limited english instructional program during the 2020 one school year the district's administration is authorized to seek modified supplemental amounts from the school budget review committee in the amount of five hundred forty eight thousand four hundred thirty

081dollars to provide 100 spending authority for the school year 2021 actual post of lep program instructions what are the wishes of the world so just uh maybe for the new board members i will just say something um you know this is a this is one of the area and this is the concept of spending authority is so new for you guys like how long you've been i strongly encourage you to when you attend isd convention to you know take take the school finance 101 uh it uh it'll introduce you to this concept of studying authority and it's it's unique to iowa public schools that's unique to iowa's is unique i don't think any other state in the united states has the concept of spending authority and so this is what we're talking about tonight this

082first action item is regarding the year that we just finished one of the areas that if we overspend we can ask for spending authority for that dollar amount so one of the areas we get extra funding for are serving our lep population limited english proficient kids you might also hear esl english as a second language same thing so for again for fy21 i believe i included on the second page kind of the process of how this is calculated and so we're asking uh again it's routine it's spending authority there's no cash behind it we had to use our cash reserves to you know basically fund our lap program this year so then this is for as i said fy21 so i would i could answer i could try to answer any questions you might have

083maybe it's too soon to ask any questions for the new board members but again it's it's something that has happened every year so it's not nothing new okay what are the wishes of the world i can move to approve the supplemental amounts from the budget review committee in the amount five hundred forty thousand four hundred and thirty dollars okay [Music] any question or discussion okay all those in favor of approving msa requests for excess and ep course for serving english language learners in a limited english instructional program during the year 20 20 2021 school year please signify by saying that yeah i i i oppose motion thank you tom uh a full open environment out not on fire year's headgum okay so now we are going to talk about the current fiscal year spending authority

084so you'll learn that our funding this year in 2122 is generated by the count from last october of uh 2020. so in when we did our count this year in october of 21 there were 40 ish roughly students 40.6 and we get the 0.6 from weighted kids such as uh homeschool assistance program that's where they're you get a 0.6 from so there were 40 kids on this year's enrollment that were not on last year's because remember we're getting funding for kids this year we have to send dollars to these schools uh so we want to make sure we get the authority to send no we have to send it anyway so we need to ask for the spending authority for sending that these dollars to those other districts so that's what this asking is for

085okay what are the wishes of the book i mean motion for uh approval of the open enrollment opt-out priority recipient thank you one second thank you all those in favor of approved the open enrollment out not on prior years head counts please signify by saying hi oppose motion carries thank you sending time would you like to so another again we're talking about fy22 and in our funding formula is included basically state dollars for limited english proficient kids but that's only for kids in in that are in an lep program for five years one years one through five so what happens is when we do our account in october of 2021 we are allowed as a school board to ask for that additional authority for those students served beyond five years because we do serve students

086beyond five years so that's what this asking is for again for the current year uh for the additional of 326. so okay thank you tom what are the wishes of the board i mean that we approve the limited english proficiency instruction beyond the five years for the 132 326 a second thank you all those in favor of approving the limited english proficiency instruction beyond 5 years for the amount of hundred thirty two thousand three hundred twenty six dollars please signify by saying hi i oppose motion carry thank you thank you tom for all your help we moved into the next item on our agenda which is the last requirements for students and staff and clint thank you john so i'm going to talk through a little bit of my recommendation the data i've used in

087determining that and to start out i'm just going to read back from my comments from our meeting in september and it should frames um conversation so i apologize for reading by when we tried to get all these comments out correctly so at that time what i said uh towards the end of that statement was given the current conditions and the data as it is today it would be my recommendation for you to implement a mandatory mass policy into pre-k through sixth grade until that age group has access to a vaccine i believe that should only be during the instructional day indoors and not for after school activities or other events staff at that level should also mask in the presence of students since the beginning of the year all students riding buses in the district

088and our drivers have been required to wear masks we have procedures in place from last year with options for students who for medical reasons could not wear a mask we will also continue to provide mass for all students who need them and specialized masks where necessary as well should that be your decision we will need to allow parents an opportunity to make decisions to move students to a virtual classroom i would also suggest a grace period for implementation we need to allow time for staff and parents to work through the logistics and talk to their students i would recommend that implementation be effective wednesday september 22nd conditions may change again as they did last year as before we will adjust accordingly regardless once vaccines are available to all of our students i believe at that

089time a mask requirement would no longer be necessary so that's where i was in september on the 17th during that meeting so here we are again conditions have changed vaccines are now available for students from age 5 to 11. those vaccinations begin on november 5th those vaccinations are available multiple spots throughout the community and then looking at some additional data relative to our current environment similar to what we talked about in september our monthly illnesses at a school level related to covid have dropped approximately 75 percent from the levels they were in september our weekly absence rates related to cobit have dropped from a high of about 32 percent to approximately 11 percent please keep in mind that that changes each week usually it's about three percent in either direction some weeks it goes up

090some weeks it goes down it's been right around that 10 to 11 our current active cova cases in the districts for students is a total of six we have five at the elementary level the current district covert rate for that number would be about 0.13 at the highest at the building that has the most number of students which is currently three that rate would be 0.65 our staff absences for personal and family illnesses for our teachers has dropped by about a third of where it had been in september so we've seen those illnesses decline over time for our paras and non-certified staff we've seen their absence is pretty pretty level over that course of time so our teachers those have gone down a pair of professional staff has been uh fairly consistent vaccination rates in

091muscatine county continuing to improve we have 65 fully vaccinated and uh over seventy percent have had at least one bills and we see that number continue to climb and it will continue to climb now as we add additional students um and children five to eleven into that number that's really positive hospitalizations in our region now that's not just muscatine and muscatine county but as our region those have dropped by about a third as well and that includes inpatient hospitalization and icu and as you know boosters are now available and it's my understanding on november 30th the fda is expected to authorize an over-the-counter treatment for covin similar to tamiflu but again if you take that early on as you're positive with covid would reduce hospitalizations by 90 so all these data points are positive they

092move us in the right direction we're going to no doubt continue to see changes in our calendar rates we've already seen that start to just tick back up a little bit from where it's been a few weeks ago we may experience additional waves due to the holidays due to additional indoor activities you know again we see additional sicknesses in the winter regardless my original recommendation was for the pre-k 6 mandate you know part of the the justification behind that was access to a vaccine as i read through my comments from september that's clear now that access exists exists now our data has improved and given additional vaccination and treatment options we're in a significantly better position than we were in september so at this time would be my recommendation to remove our mask mandate and

093continue to strongly recommend masking at all levels for students and staff i would suggest an effective date of wednesday november 17th as we did going into the mandate we need an opportunity to communicate with our parents to determines which students should continue to wear masks and work through the logistics including communicating with our students while students will not be fully immunized at that point and that's a about a five-week process so they get the first injection wait three weeks get the second one wait two weeks to be employed immunized so they will not be at that point again while they will not be fully immunized with access to the vaccine opportunity to mask i believe it would still provide a safe environment for our students and with that you'll need to have a motion and

094a second in order to begin discussing the topic i'll make a motion to remove the mass mandate starting november 17th second okay we have a motion and we have a second to remove the mask on the 17th uh so now we open for discussion when we entertain the idea of uh possibly i know we did it we did it for staff having a vaccination clinic for student body yeah so we are in the process of working with public health at central middle school as we did with our staff we had a booster clinic last weekend um so we're going to work with them to set up a clinic for students at central um at some point not yet close once we have that we'll we'll announce that but it should be coming up here very

095soon um from iowa public health it says six legit reasons for student getting shots prevent serial illness to prevent long-term complications they're less likely to infect others if they are tested positive side effects for kids are usually mild protect everyone in household and then the last one says skip traditional quarantine it exposed uh i needed to be able to say all of that to be able to show why the importance of actually the kids having the vaccine but having said that my question is really is on that last one because uh it was talked about skipping traditional quarantine and exposed in other words is there some new protocols that are listed as in what the public health or cdc is saying on any of all that so since the beginning of the year our quarantine

096protocols have been different from where they were last year so the only time we quarantine is when you're coded positive that's automatically 10 days so regardless of whether you're vaccinated or not if it's a breakthrough case it's still tended to be positive it's 10 days the only other time we're currently quarantining is if somebody else a direct member of your family in the home is covered positive okay so we're last year you know we did a lot of contact tracing to you know who are you sitting by all of that has changed and again that's per iowa department of public health so right now the two areas uh where we quarantine would be if they are actually positive or somebody in their all right household you any other questions actually i i have more of

097a statement a concern i guess um when we started with the mandate we did it we did it with josie elementary because they didn't have those parents did not have access to a vaccination or the kids didn't have access to a vaccination families that wanted it didn't have access to that we didn't do the high school we didn't do the junior high we didn't do after school events because again those that was a choice that parents could make you could either go or not go and we allowed four days for parents to adjust and come up with a plan if there was a conflict of what they had we're now going to do this one day later which i guess my my recommendation if we they're in school for five more days and then they're

098out for thanksgiving so i would rather see it go that we start november 29th because that gives the parents 13 days to get for five days of school they get 13 days of opportunity to get a vaccination so that would be my personal preference for those five so that's i'll just express that from that side of it and i don't know that i don't know that the one day that we're allowing it's going to be enough time to contact all the parents and tell them what's going on effectively it would be more in line with what we did before i think we went after thanksgiving i don't think it would be very hard for parents to figure out in one day that they don't need to send their kid with a mask and if they

099accidentally do they don't have to worry they can take it off i would be in favor of wednesday the 17th you're not indicating that the staff will contact every parent if a parent needs to express wishes they'll contact the teacher is that the direction i think we will communicate out through the buildings that should you wish for your child to remain in the mask to contact your classroom teacher that's one of the issues we had last may when the law was passed it was immediately implemented so it was very chaotic that first day who was supposed to who wasn't supposed to that's part of the reason we we did what we did in september is give some additional days to transition and figure out who was going to apply for waivers etc students and staff

100still have the opportunity to have the opportunity to work mass because i i've been over at susan clark a couple days and you know we did have uh there's a number of students that wear masks there so you know they still can have that opportunity to wear masks don't i guess my other comment would be what happens are we gonna address that when it does happen because if we put if the council will start to go up again as uh are we gonna address that at that time we're gonna have a plan in place beforehand i think we're going to have to continue to monitor you know and really the the issue we ran into a year ago in november was just our staffing levels the community spread was extremely high we couldn't keep teachers

101in the building couldn't keep staffs in the building so at that point we couldn't effectively run right so we'll have to have some of those measures we currently you know it's difficult to get subs in the district so kind of on a daily basis our buildings are in communication with our district office and teaching learning to determine you know how are you looking in terms of coverage where do you need additional support at times we move district staff to cover in buildings instructional coaches etc so those are things we already kind of have in place in our monitoring we'll have to continue to do that clint one more i left part of my thought process off um one of the things i'm concerned about is the fact that even if parents wanted their kids to

102be vaccinated they couldn't get that vaccination until november 5th and then it's three weeks after that before they can get that second booster even if you were the most diligent parent you ran out the very first day that it was available and you got kids vaccinated to get that second one so that they become fully vaccinated or they're on their way being fully vaccinated if we waited till november 29th it would fall within that i i do have the concern that if the i understand we have parents that don't want their kids to wear masks i also understand that we have parents that want their kids to be vaccinated so no matter what we do i know we're going to be wrong with this in some people's mind and i know we're going to be

103right in other people's minds i can accept that but i just think from a walking standpoint in my mind it doesn't make sense to rush for that five days i think there's a whole lot of business that takes being on the school side of it i just know how much work it takes to try to contact parents and answer questions and come up with there will be a whole lot of what-ifs that we're not going to be able to address until they happen we just know that that's what's going to happen so i feel we're kind of rushing this we really could have an opportunity to pick up 13 days for parents that want their kids to have that opportunity to be vaccinated so i'll be done any other discussion in yellow feedback i would

104just say um i do understand your mayor speaker my wife has come from i also understand where clinton is coming from i understand where our families are coming from as in what all this has done to us in many different fashions many ways some good some negative you know everything with it i think that um it would be probably best if we use the 17th in my opinion so that we can make sure that we are moving forward we need to move forward i personally personally i would feel best if we took and wait until all kids are actually going all the way through their vaccination process that it's going to be difficult in which to be able to take and get that uh i think available uh clint has given us information that shows

105us the what the staff and such would like to be able to have so i would uh suggest that we look at our hearts and our mind and come up with the decision that we feel most comfortable with okay couple things i would like to stress here that clint we want to make sure that you will continue to monitor the situation and update us on the numbers as we are moving this direction the other thing is we want to make sure that the parents uh if they choose to send also their kids with the mask that it's it's uh it's fine with that and we are honoring that the same way we honor some of the parents who decided not to send their kids with the mask and sign the waiver for that and we

106accepted that any other discussion items okay there's no discussion uh i would like to ask all of you or those of you who are in favor of lifting up the mask on the 17th of november please signify by saying lie oppose you okay [Music] okay motion carry thank you thank you the next item on our agenda is discussion and information and the first item is the conflict of employees which is the world policy 203.8 i assume all board members receive a file from daphne it looks like this and inside that file basic questions that we need to answer yes or no and basically provide the information sign this form date yeah and and if you have any questions you can connect with any of us as board members here or you can connect with daphne

107and she can walk you through there uh thank you with that we have moved back to farm for september finance okay apologize for the length of uh the financials typically it's not 12 pages but we're up until uh this month we've been reporting on fy21 so tonight is the first time that we're getting our fy 22 financials uh ready to show to pro uh present typically we meet on the second monday of the month typically my department needs at least a good 10 business days to close out the prior month so we'll always be you might want to think of it as a month behind so we're going to report up through september tonight so wait did i say yeah september even though this says october is through september so i'm going to uh to

108get out the july august september bank balances the fund financial summary through september and then our published budget to actual expenditures through september and then just uh the general fund is the one that we kind of report every month kind of giving you more detail since that is the major fund for for us and then on this front page is typically kind of when we do action items related to school finance either informational or their action items and then just down at the bottom in the bold i'll just point out those are obviously several years out you'll for the new board members will learn about what these are but those are dates out into the future that we need to keep in front of us and determine next steps for them so pages 2 3

109and 4 are our deposit balances as of july august and september typically this is showing our reconciliation of our bank accounts compared to our treasury balance on our on our finance system by fund and then it also always shows you know what were the prior months balances and what is the difference between the current month and and the prior month so on pages on page five uh it is just one report through the month of september that's our fund financial summary basically our fund balance and this is just a year to date revenue you're gonna need expense and our what our fund balance is obviously you know these are presented in the order of the general fund the management fund and people are all property tax funds although we do show a debt service fund

110we don't actually levy for that because we we use physical plant and equipment money to pay for uh some of we at least purchased some technology about three years ago so this fiscal year we made our last payment so typically we would not have a debt service fund but i have to show it because in order to pay that we have to transfer the money from people to that service so and then the activity fund again it's a self-sustaining fund save that's that sales tax revenue fund nutrition fund is a enterprise fund and i do kind of make an asterisk there because again you're going to learn about these especially when we start into the presenting the audit that because nutrition fund is an enterprise fund we make some adjustments that were required to by

111the governmental accounting standards board so i kind of backed those out because if we included them it would appear that the nutrition fund is running in the red and they are not they are definitely running in the black so so nothing unusual to report on the fund financial summary for september the next page is page six and that is showing our actual expenditures to the published budget so looking back at our calendar in april of 2022 we're going to publish our fy23 budget this is our fy 22 budget that we published last april so we're just monitoring our actual expenditures to what was published and you'll be able to see what percent of our budget we have left and although it's important that we show fund by fund the only column we're really concerned about

112is the published budget the third from the from the right-hand side compared to the total used so it's it's a total district-wide that we have to monitor but we do break it out by fund so the final uh three or the final six pages the first three seven eight nine are regarding general fund revenues and so i think what i would point out is in july very little revenue is received for the fiscal year july and august very little revenues received in september is when we start collecting that state foundation aid that you'll learn about and then a little bit of property tax but the main property tax comes in october because we all pay property tax in september so we'll get a big jump in october but this general fund revenue summary just shows

113year to date in the months of july august and september are revenues and by what source are they local are they state or are they federal the last three pages 10 11 and 12 are are expenditures in the categories of salary benefits and non-salary and benefits as on the revenues i have not put in the fy 22 budget line item budget that is obviously we put it we publish a budget in april but it isn't until now when we start developing and building that line item budget based on the expenditures we actually know you know salary benefits and etc so that's very close to being done but i didn't want to put it on here until i can feel you know fairly confident that we uh we will have our line item budget set for

114fy22 we'll be on there next month when we report in october but again this just shows you in the months of july and august typically what our expenses are and then in the month of september you'll see a big jump and that's because september is that month where we start paying teachers for the 21 22 school year in july and august they were receiving their last two payments from the prior fiscal year so that was all expensed in fy21 and so that's why you see a big increase so again it's a little bit longer than uh usual but i would be happy to meet with the three new board members about uh when you go to isb again i strongly recommend school finance 101 [Music] when you come back i'd be glad to sit down

115with you to talk about how what you learned how that all points back to muscatine schools and what our financials look like so that's it any questions [Music] tom do you like do you know what we're gonna get wouldn't you anticipate that's our two dollars okay so those federal dollars are all we have to expend the money and then submit for reimbursement the first time that we were able to submit for quarter one of fiscal 22 was november 1st through the 15th so i just submitted that and so we would we should um we are using s or two dollars now and that will be reported um i'm guessing we'll get that in december so so i don't that answer your question specifically but yes we are getting and we are using us for two

116dollars now and then the health expenses are those claims what you're seeing on this report is not related to the self-funding insurance apologize for that it is strictly what we normally would expense during a payroll cycle for all staff if they're on benefits are there any surprises or anything that you uh not on these first three months i didn't uh i wouldn't point out anything significant thank you thank you any other questions thank you tom for your information uh the next item is announcement upcoming meetings and events november 17 to 18 the iowa association of school board convention and my understanding there the three new board members and karen cooney will be going to that so please learn as much as you can during those two days and come back and share that with us

117thank you november 24th no school no compact day november 25th no school thanksgiving day november 26th no school no contract day december 13th regular board meeting at 7 p.m here in city hall and december 14th 14 riverbend food pantry at 4 30 pm at the administration building any other announcement from any board member uh we would like to wish everybody a safe and happy thanksgiving uh enjoy the time with the family with the friends with whoever you wanna have and spend your day with and be safe with that we move into our last item on the agenda can i have a motion to adjust thank you all those in people please signify by saying hi oppose thank you everybody