001all right just give me one second good evening everyone this is the regular monthly meeting of the bahamas board of education i'd like to call that meaning to order it is 7 p.m on monday november 15th this time i'd like to remind everyone to come in and silence your cell phones i'd also like to remind our visitors in order to facilitate an effective meeting we have those who wish to make comments to the board read the visitor guidelines found on the table outside the door completely attached public participation form and get those over in the corner to dawn public participation is allowed in public participation forces meeting other than those times board meetings are not interactive with those in attendance we have roll call please land here hendrix here schultz here mcmurray here tennessee here
002macomb here i'm making sure let's stand for the pledge please i pledge allegiance to the fire of the united states of america and to the republic of roses one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you everyone board members you've got an opportunity to review the agenda is there a motion to approve the agenda some of you land okay second discussion um all those in favor approving the agenda say aye aye aye opposed motion carries consent agenda you've had a chance also to review the consent agenda the items for approval on the percent agenda are minutes from previous meetings bills to pay the treasury report personnel items surplus items budget transfers and new high school activity accounts does anyone have a desire to pull anything from the consent agenda for individual
003discussion is there a motion to prove the consent agenda as presented hennessy no no key yes yes henry yes mcmurray yes macomb yes donations dr hall we have three donations tonight for the board to approve um an anonymous donation to middletown prairie for eight hundred dollars for headphones for use with chromebooks an anonymous donation to high school it is cash for the social work fund in the amount of fifteen hundred and sixty dollars and um from modern woodland of america chapter 266 a donation to the high school cash for mom's pantry in the amount of 750 for a total of thirty one hundred and ten dollars this month so thank you to all of my donors thank you is there a motion to approve the donations absolutely tennessee or schultz you give the motion to
004nfc in a second to show yes macomb yes and it's communication time is really here for the pto tonight i thought so [Music] um okay just a few things so the book fair was a huge success we raised over two thousand dollars for each school's library um and we want to say thank you to all the bulldog families who donated food for the staff and volunteered for the book fair picture retakes veterans day raffle during this last month and then finally the teachers at both schools have received 200 stipends for supplies for their classrooms from the funds raised for the dog block so short and sweet thank you [Music] foundation report i have nothing for that tonight okay what do we have for visitors yes it looks like we have seven tonight um i will
005remind everybody that you have up to five minutes since we have seven i will do my best to give you a warning when you're running low on time we ask that we avoid calling out students or employees by name and we asked that we do our best not to make disparaging remarks about individuals okay we'll start with nick markey hi it's nice to see the board in person instead of behind an email address my name is nick moorfiew and i have two sons in the elementary schools i work for the school of integrative biology at the u of i and i develop teaching labs in genetics physiology ecology and evolution i have volunteered in our schools and with our students collaborating with teachers at all levels to create biology lessons and i also volunteer coach
006muhammad athletes of all ages i'm here to speak in support of three things the accuracy and utility of rapid tests all district testing including the test to stay program and keeping contact tracing under nita and her staff rapid tests are used to great effectiveness all over the world but sadly not in the us muhammad is the one one of the shining examples in our country of using these tests effectively now that we know about viral loads and infectiousness rapid tests have proven to be more accurate than previously thought a group that includes harvard epidemiologist michael nina has found that the abbott test is 94 accurate in detecting in infectious individuals the board should be confident that these tests reliably identify contagious students board members have stated that the school should not focus or the school
007should focus on education and not testing and tracing however these protocols require little effort from our teachers but have kept hundreds of students in school thousands of individual in-person school days have been saved by this program students are able to learn from their teacher instead of automatically being sent home test to stay does not detract from the educational mission it directly supports and facilitates it in addition there are secondary benefits to test to stay between my two sons they have been in test to stay three times and my wife one of our 200 amazing teachers in this district was able to stay in the classroom and teach 130 high school kids i am sure there are dozens of examples of how testing has benefited the school district in unanticipated ways in a recent interview u
008of i med school professor dr rebecca smith who has also been a big player in the u of i coronavirus response has cautioned schools not to change their testing procedures until the spring of 2022. i would argue school testing should stay for the rest of the year but at the very least i think it's prudent to have the complete testing in place through the cold and flu season in order to for staff to differentiate between covid and other illnesses in addition this district has two elementary schools full of unvaccinated students they will automatically quarantine after an exposure without a test to stay program i urge the board to give elementary families time to get vaccinated and avoid that automatic quarantine i also encourage you to give the wait and see families time to get vaccinated
009through february i also asked the board not to give up tracing autonomy to the health department just yet sure anita works closely with the health department now and follows all the rules but nita and her staff have the ability to be more nimble precise and efficient when deciding who to quarantine having nida and her staff do the traits tracing has prevented the health department from taking a broad brush to cases and quarantining whole classrooms teams or schools in closing i'd like to offer the board a word of caution i guarantee guarantee that people have emailed you about the test to stay program they're using tests to stay as a catch-all phrase for all the testing and tracing done in the district it is not obvious to parents that when you say you're not doing testing
010or you're agreeing just reinstating tests to stay it's not obvious that you're leaving out the open testing open to anyone and then need is contact tracing so i'm sure you've gotten a lot of emails in support of tests to stay and i would urge you not to just reinstate test to stay which would be great it's an amazing program but to do all three prongs of that approach the open testing test to stay contact tracing with nita um and i think yep um i i hope that you reinstate all the procedures that were in place before the november first vote and i think it's perfectly reasonable to re reevaluate this issue in february or march but for the benefit of our families and our students please continue to offer the wide testing program thank you
011thank you melissa reynolds please good evening my name is melissa reynolds and my three children currently are enrolled in the muhammad seymour schools for now i come before you tonight because as a parent i am compelled to speak up on topics that have been discussed in the past school board meetings and what i witnessed personally last year and this year as it pertains to the concerns over top material first off i would like to thank those few board members who are defending and acknowledging many parents complaints and concerns as it applies to the curriculum culture change and the coven 19 testing and tracing i can't stress enough that the parents of this community want an open and transparent communication on what our children are being taught in school this applies to textbooks literature electronic literature
012videos sel and how it relates to the racial biases sexual orientation gender identity history and anything related to the upcoming sexual perversions of sb 818 and if you and if you parents don't know what that is i highly encourage you to do your homework because it is coming to our town in july of 2022. let me make this clear it is not that we don't trust our teachers but anyone promoting pushing or implementing ultra-progressive policies in this school needs to know that we don't agree we don't care if you feel that we need a culture change in muhammad the only job you are supposed to be insuring in our children's care is sufficient academic and not social policies politics do your job and teach our children the approved appropriate age relatable curriculum which is math
013science literature history art athletics music biology these are teachers and not social workers my son last year a 6th grader and 11 year old had to read an article on what kids do on their cell phones this was an electronic reading material with readable questions and all of the things 11 year olds would do on their phones like texting calling their friends playing games googling information i could not bring myself to explain sexual content as a suggested example in this article to my son we hadn't covered that yet and my husband and i do not promote anything pertaining to sex at such a young age this year i personally went over the books approved on the reading list posted on your muhammad website to make sure that they were appropriate reading material for my children
014i was beside myself when my son expressed uncomfortable feelings about a book that he was currently listening to in his ela class the word boob and booby made him and a few of his other classmates uncomfortable so realizing that this book he speaks of is not on the list that you've placed on your website i was able to watch the pre-recorded videos of a teacher happily reading a book called i'll be there on this chromebook sorry i purchased the copy of the book myself off ebay and according to the johnsburg public library this book is for grades 10 through 12. my seventh grader is now a newly 12 year old and painfully listened to a love story of 17 year old seniors within chapters one through six it covered pregnancy kidnapping children spiking shirley temples
015with vodka suicide godless faith and purposely trying to murder someone by electrocution the best part was i caught up with the class around chapters 36 and 37 which implied men sexually enticing a male minor and the kicker is that the teacher omitted the part of the book at chapter 47 where it is from where is prom night and they discussed getting a hotel for just the two of them at the super 8. i took steps and reached out to the ela teacher first and when i received no reply i went ahead and spoke with the principal who had no idea that the 7th graders are reading this book so yes if the superintendent and the teachers can list what textbooks literature books electronic reading articles and all that relates to the educational studies that you
016are teaching in the classroom we would appreciate that i do not want to be lied to again and these are our children and we are the parents and we don't need you indoctrinating our children with the extreme ideologies or racial biases of this community and our teachers along with sexual promiscuity which is child's use we send our children to school trusting that you will protect them and all you are doing is causing them for them maybe taking some time from the culturally responsive training deceptive culture and racial biases classes would free up some time to focus on giving parents a curriculum list that we are asking for you're infringing on our parental rights and it is no longer tolerated to those individuals that we have placed in charge of our children's education demonstrates what a
017huge disconnect that they have with this amazing community in our kids unless you're about 30 seconds okay stop projecting your views onto our children how hypocritical you are to have unjustly labeled muhammad you're not co-parenting our children under the assumption that we are lacking the capability to teach our children diversity based on the color of one's skin or their sexual preferences that is our job as a parish to teach them not yours your main focus should be on core competency of education um so and i'm not from here i moved here and i moved here because i heard that the schools were the best and right now i can't agree with them [Music] thank you uh courtney culverson good evening my name is courtney cuthbertson my pronouns are they them i'm a board member for
018uniting pride of champion county last month our director of operations nicole fredman was here she spoke at your meeting to share research-based information about the importance of supporting lesbian gay bisexual and transgender students nicole posed a lot of questions for you as the board she asked what has your response been to the events that happened at the high school during spirit week what is your current policy regarding bullying what training do you require for teachers administrators and other staff about lgbtq plus topics related to students and about bullying and will you let us help you create stronger support for lgbtq plus students uniting pride's goal is to support the well-being of all lgbtq plus people in champaign county i am here tonight because uniting pride remains concerned that we're hearing that lgbtq plus students do
019not feel safe in the high school uniting pride wants to support your school district teachers administrators staff and students to have the information and the skills to support lgbtq plus students last week we presented information about uniting pride programs and resources at the muhammad seymour high school gay straight alliance meeting and we know that sharing that information is critically important so is addressing the broader environment did you know that over one third of lesbian gay and bisexual high school students in illinois reported being bullied on school grounds in 2019 and that that's nearly double the percentage compared to heterosexual students and did you know that nearly 13 of lesbian gay and bisexual students in illinois in 2019 were threatened or injured with a weapon on school property did you know that lgbt youth who experience
020victimization including from bullying are more likely to have higher absenteeism to drop out of school and to have lower post-secondary education goals did you know that they have higher levels of depression and anxiety and lower levels of self-esteem in 2019 over 40 percent of lesbian gay and bisexual students in illinois high schools reported considering suicide fostering a safe and supportive environment includes assessing school climate developing and implementing policies to protect lgbtq plus students from bullying and violence and building capacity among adults working in the schools uniting pride wants to help and we respectfully request that you respond to the questions posed at your last board meeting please work with us to create a more supportive environment in your schools thank you um eric anderson is that right for mr peterson henderson thank you first of
021all i like to say congratulations football team that uh my neighbors got two sons that was part of that you know you know close you know and i think he got a good shot for it next year so it's kind of fun to follow that my name is eric hendrickson and uh semi retired in the owner of a law cabin here in muhammad i began my education in the most miserable cnp public schools later on graduate from the most excellent part of the college following parkland i earned my bachelor's degree in letters in science at the university of wisconsin milwaukee they were my masters here at the u of i or as an avery branded scholar for an year and a half i was sports editor and advertising salesman for the now defunct uh honest
022citizen also i'm a member of three united states winter olympic teams and the sport of speech game three-time united states national split champion nine world cup podiums and a member of the hall of fame of our sport i've been a product manager for major sporting goods manufacturer and designed several products brought them to market outside of henderson painting i was recently hired to review and write case studies for on to autonomic materials which is located off stanley road i'm here because i care about the future of the country this country as well as some death spots most correctly have stated that if you control the youth you control the future so i care very much about where my property taxes go to the pocketbook issue i want school property to be properly handled with regard
023to market value when it comes to retire that property that's come up as a topic in here and uh i've sat in on two meetings first time i've spoken so that's a recurring issue as requested as has been requested by other contributors for the public i'd like to see a published curriculum for all the grades and all the classes this includes all required and approved reading lists and this is probably going to be a little hard here for some people to get a hold of but we asked the policemen to do it nowadays so i'd like to see cameras in the classroom you know this would help the parents view their child's behavior you know johnny or susie's acting up you know we can get right on top of that you know you can also
024check and see whether some students bullying a student you know you can watch conduct of the other students and you can also watch the teachers themselves so they'd be able to punch in any time on their smartphone or whatever and don't follow their child's progress any time they want to or punched back and if he said had a bad day he could punch in and go to that day and bring it back up and see just what happened makes everybody a little bit more accountable so i think that's some kind of an issue i think is probably you're gonna be getting you know it's gonna get current and i think it's it's it's valid and i think you should consider it um i sure wish i got to go to grade school in high school
025here in my house down to champaign thanks for listening thank you what comes in um you know what's interesting because we start with the pledge of allegiance to the flag to the republic and yet every public school system in the country doesn't obey that oath what do we have today common core absolutely designed to dumb down the students paid for by bill gates the man behind moderna the man who said vaccines are the very best way to depopulate the planet critical thinkers go ding ding ding here now we got that sex ed that got passed we talked about that last month so now they're changing the terminology you do know what a minor attractive person is don't you that's a new verbage for pedophile a minor attracted person that's the next one it was a
026p now i don't know how they're going to put that in the long list you've got the high school club so are we going to have an elementary club is going to be public or private will we even know the way they're shoving this sex education down these little kids throats is disgusting has mohammed gone through the equity education aspect of things are you being told exactly what you have to teach and how we talk by the feds because that's happening around the country you don't have control of what you teach that's what's coming down the bike it is already here and it's probably here just like critical race theory's been actually been going on a long time they're just making it more public and they're they're getting more to the nuts and the bolts
027of it and it's all designed to destroy this nation it's happening in real time all you have to do is look around you see this country being destroyed there's so many people falling dead because of this vaccine you're not seeing it just like trump is censored he can't talk well they censor all kinds of stuff around this vaccine all kinds of athletes are just on the court boom dead dozens and dozens of them in the last couple months but you won't hear that on cbs news but it's true they're also saying those vaccines 95 of the deaths and the adverse reactions are due to five percent of the batches all five percent of those batches went to red states really makes you wonder how evil the people at the top are well i can tell
028you they're really evil so it's very frustrating not to be able to do anything about it sort of speak and i am no threat to anybody because i love my freedom but i do have a warning for you the good book states something to the tune of anyone who messes with the children would be better off with a millstone around their neck and thrown into the deepest part of the oceans and you ought to think about that when you kowtow to what the state tells you to do vaccinating all these children with unproven vaccines there is no midterm no long-term studies on these vaccines and the short term is being lied cdc's only or cdc's actual information people are dissecting it and they're coming up with some horrendous uh results from it i hate to
029be in your shoes i really would hate to be in your shoes to to make sure these kids are vaccinated before they can come to school they're playing with their lives i i would like to see if i had my way the world would hear the world of educators would hear the world of good educators would stand up and say you know what we know how bad it is here we know the left owns this school system and it's they're destroying the country they need to strike all good teachers hear me strike stand up against this tyranny this attack on the children let alone all you teachers who are mandated to have these vaccines vengeance is mine saith the lord keep that in mind when you do things that you know better than [Music] john
030uh john dominic uh i've got a son in high school recently moved to muhammad actually in august uh a refugee from champaign about seven years ago i served on the champaign school board i got a couple of state appointments and education bodies uh under under the runner administration uh i bring up the champagne thing specifically i'm here to talk about the test to say program um is that i know and one of the things that surprised me as a school board member is how often other government agencies bullied unit 4 to spending money they shouldn't have had to or when i was feeling less than charitable extracting money from the classroom for their own budgets i am concerned that perhaps that is happening with some of the the the pushback on on getting rid of
031test to stay and i say that because i know at least in springfield they accept third-party tests uh as a way to get around quarantines from springfield clinic or whoever i can't think of a scientific or medical reason why cvs or walgreens or carl christie osf tests wouldn't be sufficient enough to say okay a student can stay they've had a close contact but here's a negative test in an authoritative record to let students still stay in the classroom i wanted to try to do more research and i just didn't get time to it because i had a lot of other obligations to attend to but i know elsewhere around the state they've figured out some way to do this without running their own testing programs out of schools so i don't know if you're committed
032to making a decision on that on this issue tonight but just really informative i don't know if i have that much skin in the game one way or the other of what you decide uh aside of that i think that it's better to let medical professionals do the medical things instead of imposing that duty on other agencies thank you i'm a family physician at carl and um i came to speak about kobit and to be honest i don't remember your last name nick pretty much everything that nick moorefield said up here was pretty much everything i was going to say um so i would echo and agree with um everything that nick so eloquently discussed with you what i would add in addition to what nick discussed was how removing the test to stay program
033and not doing the contact tracing and cova testing in the schools also disproportionately affects children of special needs because if those children are forced to not quarantine because they can't detest to stay they lose out on services as those services aren't going to be provided while they're in quarantine at home um so if we're you know trying to make equitable decisions for all students in this district we really need to also keep in mind those students that receive services and how this is going to negatively impact the services that they're going to be deprived of and what impact that's going to have on having to potentially make up those services at a later time the other thing i wanted to talk about um is you know the vaccine has just come out um three of
034my kids are were age eligible and they've been vaccinated i still have one uh who isn't five yet and so is unable to vaccinate um we still you know need to give this community time to vaccinate uh their children even if which is a big if a hundred percent of all the children are district vaccinate which i know isn't going to happen we still have you know preschoolers um at middletown that are still age and eligible to vaccinate so there's still a subset of those children that don't even have the option to vaccinate and again this removal of test to stay and contact tracing and so forth could negatively impact them as well um so i do urge you to reconsider this decision and you know think about the entirety of the student body um
035i do also encourage this board and the district to encourage vaccinations i don't know if the district is planning on doing any vaccination clinics i hope you are because i think um having this as a hub with uh nita at the helm is going to be a fantastic service for this community um so with that i would like to also make an additional comment here about the um some of the other topics that have been discussed at the last few board meetings with regard to the curriculum i do agree that you know teachers should have the ability as the educators as the folks who went to school studied student taught um and you know have gained experience in the classroom that they have the ability to teach the students what they feel is best based
036on their experience i think as parents we are right to have our opinions but we're not educators and we have not studied education and there's more to learning than just the basic arithmetic reading writing we live in a society and in part i feel like this community is somewhat so polarized because perhaps we haven't had some of these things taught in our schools and we've only heard one side of every story and we've never had the opportunity to hear other sides of the story which is i think what the school and the teachers are there to present not one side of the story but both sides of every story so that students can begin to understand how um interactions with other individuals that may be different from them um you know they can help understand
037those different people's experiences and where they're coming from and be able to work with them try and see things from their point of view whether they eventually agree or disagree uh with things they're at least given the opportunity to think about things from an another perspective than what they may have ever heard about at home so i think it's really important and i think we should listen to our teachers on that thank you number eight reports updates and informational items uh we'll start with building reports and board communications i'm not gonna board represent anything you would like to highlight tonight but we'll start with uh justin um i just like to say uh just a continued thanks to all our teachers and employees in the district for navigating these times and we just absolutely appreciate
038all your efforts and just glad that we can be moving forward and working with our kids to prepare them for a future that's all i have thanks i just wanted to say congratulations to the football team for their uh performance this year and how they got the playoffs and also um to see how much i appreciate all the work that our music teachers do there's a lot of music things that happen this weekend both band and chorus and there's been a lot of success there too so i wanted to shout out to them let's see i wanted to say that i appreciate all the communication uh it's been a lot from the public we've received lots of emails on lots of various topics uh appreciate the time that people took to send those in um
039you don't always get an answer but i just want to assure you that i've read everything that you've sent and i appreciate the time that that takes with respect to some of the issues it's if you've been watching board meetings the idea of um inclusion and diversity has been uh part of what i've been trying to talk about since i uh took the seat on this board um i'm gonna ask that next meeting we actually have another discussion about creating a board level committee surrounding that i think there's been enough information for us to hear that a board level look at this do nothing but support and help this community and perhaps allow us to have some of the conversations that might alleviate um bullying bullying is a big deal for me bullying happens at
040all levels i think we need to do a better job and perhaps a committee that has a board level focus would allow us to do a better job of that so i guess consider this my official request to have that as an actionable item on next month's agenda i've asked for it before but i'm going to reinstate that request here tonight i'll save the rest of what i was going to say for the next baby thanks uh i'd like to reiterate what um megan said about um all the communication we've received uh for me that's really valuable um i know it can be frustrating to communicate with the the board because you may say you want one thing and the board acts a different way or a slightly different way and um you know tonight
041we saw kind of a little sampling of in our public comments of all the different types of feedback the board is receiving and we really do even though we don't agree with ourselves with each other all the time and we really do our best to try and find middle ground and try and listen to the ideas that are out there and and carefully consider them um but none of that works unless the public is talking with us and telling us how i feel so i'm very grateful that we've received so much comment and uh um i got to meet with uh teachers to discuss the curriculum issues i was very grateful for that conversation um and uh basically that's that in my opinion is the best way forward for our board it's the best way
042for us to govern so please keep that coming um let's try and find where we can find middle ground together and i'll echo those comments as well i appreciate all the um emails communications and even coming personally tonight to speak i think that's um not an easy thing for people to stand up here and and say things publicly sometimes whether they're particular or unpopular and it's okay to disagree so um i think that's part of it and i take no communication that is sent to me personally in any way um so if you disagree with anything that i say that's fine you can try your best to convince me um but i also will reserve the right to disagree um you know i was thinking about more comment and i think this is the time
043of year that you really reflect on gratitude for thanksgiving coming up next week and the first thought i had was how grateful i am for our teachers and staff right now at this point in the school year um this is kind of a crazy time between now and winter break with all kinds of fun but uh crazy things are happening so i'm very thankful for all the hard work people are putting in um but then i started thinking about this journey that justin and i started a few months ago in our quest to be elected to the school board and uh i i don't think anybody ever lied to us and said that this is going to be all fun and games you cry yourself to sleep yeah it this is very challenging to work
044this is um it is very hard as a board member to have personal convictions about things but know that you are not representing only yourself on this board and that is another reason i'm so grateful to live in the community that we live in because i feel like based on the number of emails phone calls text messages face-to-face conversations i've had over the past two weeks i'm so thankful that people number one are invested in our community and invested in our schools and i said that from the get-go but number two that people feel comfortable enough to share their thoughts and their opinions and their feelings and just like jeremy just said even if we disagree the fact that we have community members who are willing to say hey would you please consider this that
045to me that's huge and i'm so thankful that we live in a community where our schools our kids matter as much as they do so thank you to all of you for being making our schools better we have dealt with some very rough issues the last several months we'll even continue to do that um it would be nice if we could just kind of weigh the magic monitor all the time issues will go away i am encouraged that in the middle of all this you can look at our students and you can see some some good things and some fun things happening someone mentioned a couple of you mentioned the football game last weekend we probably would have liked him one day we probably would i know we got a bunch of guys who would
046have liked but you know what they had a good season they did better than 18 has done in several years and they played hard and they represented us well and [Music] that's not an isolated thing we've got kids involved in all kinds of different endeavors extracurricular activities academic activities than just doing some glory things all the time and frankly if that wasn't the case a lot of research would probably say we're out here the point right well the point is [Music] kids are important and uh we may disagree from time to time on exactly the approach that needs to be but i'm convinced everybody in this room everybody that spoke tonight with differing opinions people that have sent us emails the last 12 14 16 18 months with different opinions all of the harder things
047wants to do what they believe and it's nice to see some of our kids thrive in that environment so i'm thankful for that and uh guarantee that we'll do our best to work through the issues as best we can and come to what we feel are the best solutions for our kids we thank you and i'll join the course thank you for all the emails that we've gotten and the phone calls and the text messages and the facebook messages and those who spoke here we appreciate all that we'll do our best to work to it um next is heathers the first of multiple heather our appearances and expenses are in line with the budget everything is going well we're at 190 days but that's just because we got our first half of uh taxes which
048is good but it'll start to level up and then go and then go back when we start getting our 201 taxes which i'll be talking about a little bit here in the future but you know if you guys have any questions about the report you got a chance to look at the report are there any questions for heather at this point okay christine she's not here all right have a chance to read christine's report and i just got questions about person's review you can email christine dr rome i do not have anything to add to my report but i'm happy to get any questions any questions for dr roman report dr hall thank you well um first off i just want to recognize our board this is board member appreciation day in illinois now my
049work of teeth always is so um there's some really cute cards and notes from kids that are spread around come from our school saying thank you and um i appreciate listening to the comments that you just made about your work and what the focus is and hearing from our community and our constituents and serving our students and so um you are serving on a board an incredibly difficult time my guess is though that in the past board members thought that was a really difficult time but um i've been doing this my job as an administrator for a lot of years and this is definitely a very challenging time for public schools in our country and our society so thank you for what you do there's a lot of very difficult decisions i know it takes
050a lot of time and your service and your dedication is appreciated so thank you for all that you do um just couple other things on my report just wanted to congratulate dana martin she's been named to the business insiders 40 under 40 list which is a list every year compiled of the readers in the champagne kind of greater champagne area so dana is a deserving recipient and we're three for three here on the last three years with nathan mills and megan hunter also being named to that and then just a reminder bulldog blueprint is tomorrow evening our community engagement session number five is here from 6 30 to 8 30. we invite um everybody to come and participate and if you can't come tomorrow evening there's a virtual session on on wednesday and then we'll
051be looking into the next one in january yes thank you uh you can i i'll ask because i was asked in the public comment is there a vaccination clinic oh yeah yes thank you um wednesday lincoln trail from three to seven and then three weeks later which i believe is december 8th and we have well over 300 kids signed up all right are there a slot still a little are there slots available yes you can go online and sign up on our coven dashboard area of our website any questions okay that thanks to the unfinished business which is the mou university of illinois we do have someone from the university of illinois that's going to be with us to answer questions and they couldn't be with us until 8 30 and we are running uh
052ahead of that clip we honestly thought we might not get to this point till 8 30. so i would suggest that we skip that agenda now come back to that after 8 30 if that's okay with everybody and then it takes us to resolution concerning hazardous conditions welcome back hello everybody good evening um here to just present our hazardous positions for transportation this year don't have any changes for this year so we would just be submitting again to the state to keep our existing hazard areas for transportation which if anybody has questions on that it's uh so we try and support students that live outside of the mile and a half from their school if they live within a mile and a half and there's a hazardous position which should be what's on the list
053for the surprises to submit that way we can get reimbursement and funding to transport them in that area uh if it's approved by the state most recent ones we submitted were for the three for this school year when it was built so there's nothing's been built since then nothing's changed hey move we approve the resolution concerning the review of hazardous conditions any discussion yes okay we're visiting kobe 19 uh both my understanding that the board wishes to revisit this discussion so um it's on the agenda and ended off to the fourth okay last month we voted to end um contract or to end testing and to outsource contact tracing to see phd effective today was going to be our last day and i know board members at that time we had understood and i think
054with the speakers and i mentioned some third-party options for testing for tests to stay um in some counties they have allowed that cu phd made clear they were not going to allow that and find out what you're thinking tonight uh well are we do we want to make a motion or i don't know if you want to discuss first or make a motion first but it's fine you're saying there was a proposed emotion and i'm trying to find it i'm sorry if you want to discuss first we can do that too pretty flexible sorry ken's not really a techie guy i know [Laughter] where's jared when i mean it's not restoring my confidence in the tech world that is true so i'll while you're i'll take the pressure off where you can did you find
055it i just found it okay uh i moved that beginning january 1st 2022 the superintendent will ensure that all properly masked students are distanced at all times during the school day such that no student will ever be considered a close contact from exposure at school and that the district will provide testing for asymptomatic students in the test to stay program through december 31st 2021. okay this is i'm sorry you want to repeat it it's it's uh okay i move that beginning january 1st 2022 the superintendent will ensure that all properly masked students are distanced at all time during the school day such that no student will ever be considered a close contact from exposure at school and that the district will provide testing for asymptomatic mask students in the test to stay program through december
05631st 2021 would it be possible i don't know if this needs to be an amendment or if this is just a discussion possibly an amendment would it be possible to separate those two statements to discuss and vote separately so let me change that i moved to amend it so that the first part that ken said starting june or january i'm going to need you to just sure some of the math students because that has to deal with that deals with contact tracing and then after the and was the portion where you talked about tests to stay yes which that deals with testing so uh we have two separate discussions to dive deeper into each one i don't understand how the first part would have anything to do with content trees because it's well then maybe
057i'm misunderstanding it it's saying that basically we will not have any students to identify as close contact i guess i think what it says is that we're directing the superintendent to provide distancing such that no one is within the time that would ever be eligible to be traced but not to do transiting or not nutrition just to keep students distance appropriately so that there's no opportunity for those students to be traced by whoever might do truth right and i feel like that is separate than any kind of onsite testing so that's why i'm proposing we have two different discussions so that was mine so i guess i needed some clarity what's the amendment so the amendment is to split it into two motions so the first part would be whatever ken just said and then
058the second part would have to do with testing but again i'm going to need you to repeat that ken sure because i i would like it to include our uh not just to include test to stay students but to revisit the our unvaccinated staff can you read that for a minute sure the second half i think where you're trying to do the split yeah that the district will provide testing for asymptomatic asymptomatic mass students in the test state program through december 31st 2021 so i guess my on that part my proposal would be it's too restrictive when we say provide testing for asymptomatic mass students we're not also then including our unvaccinated employees we're not including unvaccinated students i mean i i think if we're going to be providing on-site testing i would like to
059apply that inside testing whether that's and it that would include tests to say kind of like what mr murphy was saying earlier so that's not just tests to say it's on-site testing so let me can i can i clean it up a little bit sure okay so that first part that is what it is um the second part i would propose that that we say that the district would provide testing on provide on-site testing and i would like to see it continue to the end of the year but at least through season in march spring break to give people that time definitely be on january 1st because if they can't get kids vaccinated during our clinic they may not be two weeks past vaccination date by january 1st so i would like them if people
060want their kids to be fully vaccinated i'd like to give them a little bit of leeway enough that's really only like five weeks you know is that gratifying i'm so i suggest that if we're going to tweak just a little bit of the language we amended otherwise you make a follow-up motion afterwards just to help with the clarity of all this um because we we sometimes get bogged down on well what was the motion again uh i'd say oh i'm already confused yeah right so so my first my first motion was that we separated into two separate motions like the number one thing okay well why don't we we need a second in the vote on that and then oh second why don't we see how the motion goes before we need to see if
061we need to split it in half um because if if the board decides to accept the entire motion then we don't need to have two separate motions right so i i have a very serious concern about the first part of that motion okay and i think if we are saying that we are charging our superintendent with requiring students to stay three feet apart at all times we are essentially requiring our teachers to make sure our students are three feet apart at all times so that we don't have any close contacts which in theory is perfect but in reality is completely ludicrous we cannot get kids to consistently stay through his heart i just think it's it's unrealistic and it is if we could do that we would be doing it well that was my thought
062if we could do that i i mean i think we are trying to do that and we're not being successful with it now so i cannot support that portion but i absolutely want testing back in schools so again i feel like we have two separate issues going on here and i think it's unfair to clump them together into one it's the same thing that happened last time when we had a motion of here's our idea about contact tracing and here's this piece about testing and they were all one motion and you and i talked jeremy and i said you know if they were separated my vote would have been different i don't mind public health doing contact tracing i don't mind that because they do it that's their job but i do not want to
063get rid of testing i want that i want that safety net there so it's the same thing here but i feel like there are two separate issues that are happening and by pumping them together i'm feeling forced like well sonny you want test to stay and if you vote against tests to stay then you know you're the reason we can't have tests to stay i'm not voting against tests to stay i'm voting against the idea that we're going to be saying to teachers you have to keep your kids three feet apart i think that's unrealistic so i think it's putting i think by not separating them it's putting i'll speak for myself it's putting me as a board member in a position where i can't make i can't make a decision on this on this
064specific motion because it's two separate issues so i i think i understand where you're coming from i think in that situation you know you've done a good job explaining what your concern is with the motion um you could abstain at that point and like i said if the motion is unsuccessful we can revisit these individually um i honestly i don't know if the motion's going to be successful or not but we've got a motion in a second so yep so we need to vote on that so unless there's more discussion which there could be this would be a vote on motion to separate the two halves of the original motion climb scroll follow that please yes so the motion stays together can i can i get clarification why did you vote no why do you
065want them as one fellow swoop why do we want one motion on this why are they the same sure for me because i want both pieces so you could separate them and vote yes for both pieces right but i don't need to we i don't think the board needs to you just have i if it doesn't if it doesn't pass then yeah i understand the need for it but but kim like you could vote yes and yes and you heard the fellow board members say i can't vote for both of these together could we please separate these it doesn't stop you from voting for both of them and you're hearing me say if they're together i can't vote for them together i could vote yes for one and no for the other and surely because
066you want to vote them together you said we can't separate them you voted to not separate them because i want the board to make a decision everybody can make a decision when they're separate each one is its own piece by separating it it's not prohibiting anybody from making a decision about either one in fact it's opening the opportunity up for everybody to be able to make a decision about each one would anybody else like to chime in as to why you better go well for one for me the reason that i think this needs to go hand in hand is a lot of the read the emails that we got and the responses that we and the input that we were receiving uh spoke about having kids who are healthy out of school in order
067to keep kids in school the distancing has to stay in place in order to keep kids in the classroom and give them equitable education they have to be in those seats the distancing is one of the mitigations that allows us to do that and it takes the need for testing off the table and so while it may be difficult i have no reason to believe that 36 inches nose to nose is something that we uh can't do and so what i am doing is trying to solve the problem i don't think testing is the solution i think the solution is keeping kids in the schools and the best way to do that is to give the appropriate distance so that the idea of having to test them is not even on the table so is
068there a way is there a reason you could not go for those separately because for me it's conditional so in order to have one you have is what you're saying but we're right but we're imposing a condition that i don't believe is a realistic condition it's absolutely unrealistic i mean it sounds great right we just keep all the kids thirty six and i mean i understand that it has a great ring to it genius let's just do it but they're not little we don't have a little remote controller for every kid what are the teachers reading a book and the book goes 16 minutes are we saying bad teacher you should have cut it off with 14 minutes so we don't have we don't break the 15 minute close contact rule or whatever it is
069i feel like i've listened to the public say that their main concern is they want their healthy kids in school and i feel as though test to stay is a band-aid that helps that come but this motion in its entirety is a solution to that problem and so for me the two things go hand in hand to create a solution and so i would like to vote for them as a a comprehensive solution so what happens what happens in february when we're not able to keep this more unable to meet the required close contact department what's special about february i don't know i'm just picking the time what happens after what happens after january well we can't keep kids apart i'm sorry max but has anybody asked a teacher if this is even possible like
070has any and where is this nose to nose coming from have we found this intake like this 36 inches nose to nose where is this coming from it doesn't tell you what part of the student it says 36 inches and that's that's the extent of it okay so we're going to say no to nose but it could be shoulder to shoulder it could be fingertip fingertip outstretched so it's really more like six feet my point is has anybody asked teachers if this is realistic other than me and they've all said oh yeah this is totally fine because one single teacher i spoke to said oh yeah my kids stay three feet apart all the time i was in the closet friday afternoon 38 kids in that classroom so that classroom would have to be moved
071is my understanding there is nowhere else for those kids to go in that electric classroom to spread three feet apart but there knows to know so i mean maybe we can walk around with a yardstick between them between their faces i don't think the board's job is to micromanage how this gets done that's exactly what happened no we're directing the superintendent to find a solution our superintendent isn't going to walk around with a yardstick nose to nose between kids it's our teachers who are working their tails off every single day who are going to be trying to figure out how to keep kids three feet apart when we are sitting here saying our kids need to be together we need to have those social pieces i get it i completely agree that healthy kids need
072to be in school i agree with that i also agree that colbit is not being passed in schools i agree with that this is not the way to do it by saying that we have no close contacts is either impossible or it is lying and we cannot do either one of those i'm just i'm so blown away by what's happening right now how have i can't do this that's i'm just gonna say it i cannot do this because i have contact traced for over 10 days now since being back here three feet between kids on school buses it's not possible and these routes are not 15 minutes or less there's no way unless we double or triple i can't even get staff for what i have but all the school buses are a special exclusion
073they're not they're not contract racing on school books by cdc and idps guidance they're they're saying there's there's no transmission on school buses there's they've been getting i'm serious a community that i contacted three times last week and the kids that came back positive were within seats of each other each day you can't tell me that in that area and from that bus that we didn't clean it up and have to contact trace that because it was from that that well my i thought i had read somewhere that school buses are a special circumstance and they have allowed that to go on and i can't have the windows open because i get constant phone calls from parents about if sku cold we can't have witnesses so sorry maybe there's something somewhere but you got people
074calling me saying not to do it sorry there has to be a better way to process through this and that was part of the reason i asked to separate this because i think every single one of us i'm speaking maybe speaking out of turn but i think everybody around this table would like to have some testing opportunities available back for our staff and our students and i think if the goal is to keep healthy kids in school by eliminating close contacts i think there is a way we can get there without the language that has been proposed and without asking teachers to do the impossible we sat around this table last meeting there was a very rushed vote we walked away and we answered 200 emails and 7 000 phone calls and we're back here
075discussing it tonight please please can we compromise on something can we say yes we're going to separate these into two motions it doesn't hurt anybody to separate them into two motions you can vote yes for both i 100 agree with that well the first part of emotion i don't know what we're going to do what would be the message i'm supposed to send to our teachers i'm going to read from the ieph site the student on school transportation was within three to six feet of an infected student is not considered closed contacted both were consistently passed and the windows were opened within three to six feet did you say three to six feet what about under three feet that is absolutely wrong i want to clear one thing up is that we didn't create this
076problem we didn't create it so no we didn't that you should be calling the governor's office you should be calling your local health department we did not mandate these things our job is to mandate school and education and now it's forced our hand and when we want to push this back onto our government they say no or our public says no which i can't believe i can't understand why you would not want us to focus on what our mission is and do the things that we're uh we're paid to do our teachers are paid for administrators are paid to do by our taxpayers and put that back on our government to say you solve the problem but instead it comes it falls back on the school on our school board so then we end up
077having these conversations about ridiculousness call your governor's office call the public health department and you and tell them why are you calling us that's what that's what the problem is i that's the biggest thing i don't understand at all is why in the world do we have parents emailing us about the problems that we're creating we had nothing to do with creating we're just pushing responsibility back to where those mandates came from i mean i mean i i just don't get it that's that's what the question is i mean why are we even arguing about this well i don't i just said to you i don't mind public health doing the contractors the other thing is i don't think the public health department has any authority to say that we can't do tests to stay
078at an external level there's they don't have that idph guidance says that we can do tests to stay it doesn't there's a document that says it says we can't why why then are there counties across the state that are doing this and why are we defending that that's what i don't understand why don't we why isn't our administrators pushing back against the public health department saying no there's other counties that are doing this this is this is this is not our job you guys should be doing this we have two clinics here in town who could test we have walgreens and cvs here in town you could test so there's adequate uh of resources here in town to do these things and the problem is now because the government's mandate and they put the responsibility
079on the schools it's made easy it's made more convenient for parents to deal with this because it's not they don't have to deal with it then but as soon as the school says we don't have to and it makes it hard for somebody which i get i totally understand then everybody's upset at the school but your anger should be pointed at somebody else i think you're forgetting our employees too well [Music] i don't want to force people to vaccinate we didn't mandate that by by not testing and forcing other agencies to force our employees other places for tests forcing your own banks they need kids to go to other courts war in essence promoting and force vaccination so i'm not comfortable with that we're not forcing anybody to get saying people can choose whatever they
080want well we make it hard for them if they're not no the people who did hard for him is our government officials who have mandated this again this it's misplaced anger i'm like we didn't do anything but but we have but here's what we've been here we don't have to do anything we could we could have just said you know what we're going to do school you guys figure it out and i'll bet you people will figure it out it would be okay you know i i used this analogy before and i'll stop talking that if you um take away all your withholdings for your taxes and use your faith your paycheck twice a month or whatever you get it it balloons and you say wow i got a huge paycheck but then you get
081a tax bill april 15th and you realize then how much the government has been taking from you this is the same scenario same scenario you don't realize what the government is doing to you because they're making it convenient for you you don't realize how they're oppressing you because they're making it convenient for you and then all of a sudden when it becomes difficult then you're like oh no but then it's and it's our fault it's not our fault we didn't mandate this it's not our job and everybody who emails and wants to know what my opinion is that's my opinion it's not our job our mission is to educate our students i mean the only other thing i'll say is the other thing that i heard was that our kids who are not in school
082are not getting an equitable education which i completely and totally agree with and have been talking about uh for six months now the idea that we're just going to put a packet together and put that on the teachers i think is inadequate all my attempts to have a discussion about enforcing and making sure that we have adequate and equitable education for kids who can't be in the classroom uh have not happened and so while these two are connected you still have that problem i don't know if we're interested in actually solving that one too but uh the fact is is that if kids have to be quarantined they should have an equitable education and they're not getting that right now [Music] here's here's the thing is we're back to the thing is like who's testing
083so if we're not going to accept a test from carl which i've heard that on occasion we haven't we've just not accepted it we're not going to test uh accept a test that's done at christie we're only going to test or accept tests that are down here this this flowchart system you test to say protocol flowchart need it is true it is not i've had parents tell me that their tests have not been accepted from from carl or christie when they've gone and got tested elsewhere there are specific circumstances those are multiple tests later that's because people are trying to prove that they weren't positive right there's specific situations and so so you have a pcr test that's the gold standard and and you want to accept that you'll accept a rapid test that i'm
084[Music] you're not telling the truth you're not accepting pcr tests oh my gosh i cannot believe you're having this argument this what we've been doing for the whole 18 months is kept kids in school we're testing you guys are going to do what you want to do you've already made up your minds wait public health has been doing contact racing the whole entire time what is the message that would go to teachers on january first right what are you telling people you've already decided so what are we going to tell parents i need to know what the that will be sent to teachers on january 1st what am i supposed to tell them that's the state will be in place until that's not what i'm talking about i'm talking about the first part of the
085motion i don't think you'll need to send anything to parents about the first part what you're supposed to tell teachers is well i'm not entirely sure how you want to implement it but it sounds so i am now i have now been charged with keeping almost 3 300 kids three feet apart for the entire day so the reality of this situation is that you're asking employees to turn the blind eye to the close contacts yeah that is what is happening here and if you if that's what it is then just say what it is just say muhammad seymour schools is not no longer going to identify close contacts that is what's really being said here so if you want to be transparent you want to be upfront you want to talk about what you really
086want to do just say that right and then vote on it because i'm not going to be responsible for it because my license is at stake and i'm so that all i'm saying is be upfront and transparent what you want to do and if there's four votes to do that then do it right seriously go for it i want you to be creative jeremy back to school and now we've got classrooms that are overcrowded at the junior high and other places and there's there's no more space for me to be quote unquote creative i this is my fear is that this is going to backfire and i've said this in conversations that i am afraid that this language is going to that fire i completely understand the goals i have healthy kids in school i
087also completely agree that colgan is not being professed in school however by saying we're going to keep kids three feet apart at all times what that means is in order to do that we're going to be going to school on alternate days so you kids you 12 kids get to go to school monday wednesday you 12 kids go to school tuesday thursday sorry no school on friday we haven't had any conversations we have an mou with our union we haven't had any conversations with them this is going to directly affect their health and well-being we've got kids we've got teachers we're going to try to explain wait a second how is this going to affect your health because if they've got now they've got to figure out ways that they're going to have to keep
088kids but how's this going to affect their health and well-being say their mental health if we have students right but it's implying we're putting them at risk but we're not they're they they if they want to be vaccinated they can be vaccinated i think if we're going to put anybody at risk that's what the testing and with the unwillingness to even consider putting our unvaccinated employees included in that group as well well though not everybody has a physical choice to be vaccinated there are legitimate reasons why people cannot do that actually it's extremely rare extremely i'm not a preschool i know what about our cats and dogs i mean because if we don't get them vaccinated i mean there's there's animal vectors we will never be able to unmask or anything i mean it's just
089going to be here forever so i just i mean we might as well just keep pushing the gold poles back for everything i mean it's there's no we don't have any options so let me ask this question how does someone understand we've passed the superintendent if we pass this the way it's written that we asked the superintendent we figured out how to keep them all upon them okay so the superintendent comes back to us and says january 1 we're doing all their 80 days and remote and all that good crap again right are we okay with that that's what you're saying that's what you're saying that is not anywhere in here all it says is that it's up to the superintendent to decide how it's going to work and i guarantee you if we tell
090parents that we are going back to hybrid or we're going back to remote i i'm just gonna turn my phone off because my thing will blow up we could keep them three feet apart now and not contact chris i have a feeling we would be doing it no okay we have an opportunity to find middle ground here we've heard from both sides so many people on both sides we have an opportunity to find middle ground to help people on both sides of this i feel we have an opportunity to bring back the test to stay program keep kids in school i'm just saying i do this as the compromise right from last month's motion which was we eliminate everything and we don't have anything at all to we have heard people say they don't have
091their children a chance to get vaccinated we need some time we need to go and we've heard them also identify the problem of not wanting their healthy kids out of school and so to me this is the compromise between the two positions of we're gonna full-on test and contact trace and we're gonna not test and contact trees and this is we're going to continue some tests to stay for a while because we heard people say that they wanted that and so that is why i would support a lot of people spoke and said they wanted more time and that's what this gives them barely like five weeks like what about people who can't get to the vaccination clinic your kid isn't vaccinated until two weeks past their second dose our second vaccination clinic is what
092december 8th that's if they can do the vaccination clinic what about families who legitimately can't have their their kids vaccinated or don't want to i am not here to force anybody to vaccinate and if we're going to talk about ways that we are doing things that are outside of our educational scope i mean my gosh we start breakfast i know you're not in favor of breakfast jeremy but i guarantee you it's a heck of a lot easier to teach kids that have a full stomach than it is kids who work on this while hungry that is not educational but it is crucial to their education at this point because of where we are in our world right now testing for our kids is crucial it needs to happen right now okay so let me ask
093this when when are we able to get rid of test to stay or we're not responsible for tests to stay and close contact tracing in our schools well we're not responsible for close contact racing when would it satisfy the entire board that we could responsibly hold hand off uh contact tracing and testing when at what point can we do that where we would all be able to agree i don't know that we would all agree but we could all compromise but that's not enough my questions at what point could we hand off contact tracing and testing at what point tomorrow is when contact to contact tracing no no no that's not what i'm asking i'm not i'm not clearing what you're asking well you're just saying that a minute ago that there's kids pre-k kids
094there's some uh kids 5 through 11 who are employees and employees who don't want to vaccinate and are unwilling or can't vaccinate for some reason or there's vaccinations aren't available for pre-k so at what point then would we not do testing would we not do testing and we would not do uh we'd hand off our contact reasons okay so the testing piece i proposed through spring break from the end of the school year spring break we could hand it over contact tracing contact tracing is being handed off as of tomorrow no that's not what i'm asking but you're not honest you don't get my money you've been asking what situation would occur yes with which you would feel comfortable saying the district is throwing in the towel and we're putting our hands up and not
095doing anything at all anymore not doing anything we're not doing any contact tracing and we're not doing any testing in our schools in my mind it depends on two things it depends on what our tax rate is with the little kids but right now aren't vaccinated so what's that batch rate sure but that's that's what i mean so when do we know when is what kind of where direction statewide goes and what they are forcing what they tell us we have to do so i i agree with you jeremy that while we did not create these mandates they've been given to us and they are saying these are the things you need to do as a public school district in under a dph as a group knowing that we want kids in school knowing we
096want teachers in school what can we do to possibly find a compromise possibly find a middle ground my feeling is i am comfortable handing off um contact tracing to idph to me that would be my compromise provided we at least continue with testing now this is just me i'm one member of this board it's clear to me that four of you don't agree with me and that's fine if that's the way this goes and we go back to remote schooling in the spring five that i we're part of the seven member board i am fine handing out contact racing tomorrow i would like to see testing at least go through cold and flu season if not until the end of the school year to provide kind of a safety net if we get updated guidance
097or if some kind of amazing lawsuit comes through and we hear hey the governor is out of line and we don't have to follow these restrictions i'm going to say we can have a mass burning party and all hang out together but that's i mean right now this is our reality well i mean the reason i ask that because the interesting thing is that our neighboring states do none of this absolutely you know so absolutely so we're all arguing about something that that happens here in illinois that has been mandated by our government absolutely so again why are we why are we complaining to us what's what's the complaint because we have to do something about it like we we don't we're not the governor but why are are they in iowa and indiana and
098michigan and wisconsin not keeping uh their contact tracing and their test to stay and all that in their schools until the end of cold and flu season because they don't have to why because they don't have prison like we we have to deal with it okay but i'm just but i mean your argument with them because you want a safety net they don't they all have mandatory pe my my point was is that what safety net are we providing if we have kids who travel in club sports that go to all these neighboring states you have a very good point and they continue to do these things so i don't understand what all the fuss is about that i it's not that i don't just there's there's some parts philosophically i'm with you it makes
099absolutely zero sense i i right i understand that part of my frustration okay i get that part but we've got we're trying to navigate waters and we're not in iowa and in fact it was just uh we were just in the studio and we have some friends in the cincinnati suburbs bigger schools than this huge like way bigger no mass no testing no contact trace but i was like well that's those kids must be like dropping dead every day like what's going on i mean i can't understand it's just it makes no sense i don't understand so anyway i i i'm tired of arguing about it i i you know i told uh people that i was gonna stand up for this if you all want to continue contact tracing and testing through the end
100of the school year or till infinity then let's do it i'm ready but contact racing isn't even out of the thing like that's not even on the motion we're not even talking about contractors the only piece that we were talking about contact racing was when the motion talked about not identifying any close contacts the board voted last time to put contact tracing on public health so that's a done deal nobody's revisiting that unless somebody would like to make a different motion but i haven't heard anybody make a difference about that so this is the motion that we have on the floor this is the motion on the floor that is not what the rule says if you are in test to stay you are not allowed to participate in games you also have to be
101masked 100 of the time including outside are we doing that we are not doing it at home and they are supposed to be staying home when they're not in the school and so here's the problem the test to stay halfway doesn't it sounds great it does not provide us any actual protection it is a lie we are not executing tests to stay even in the manner in which it's directed to be to be executed so what we need to do is figure out how to get our kids separated in order to keep them in the classroom and so while this is hard i don't believe it's impossible in some cases it's going to be real hard but i keep hearing we can do hard things i think it's time to do some hard things and
102instead of pretending like we're keeping kids safe actually keep kids safe neither the customer stay for athletics that changed recently correctly yeah i did a test to stay guidance change for athletics initially it was the extra threat which were fine recently a change to say as we had said she was correct it changes also though when things are outside versus because also we were not required to be contact racing outside so great so that's kind of a challenge there is that now you have to do contest racing outside did you say that change because we're coming inside it's getting full oh i'm sorry and we're not i mean public health is still doing all the contact racing they haven't the whole time we are required to identify close contacts and exclude them from school and
103then public health makes the final decision on those dates they've been doing that the whole time so what does three feet apart look like for basketball and wrestling it doesn't i'm just hypothetically putting that out there sometimes supposed to be creative and it can occur like i said why did it make the rules it's you would be imposing this motion and directing me to do that right with this motion well no close the motion is there will be no more close contacts in the muhammad see more schools right it's up to me to figure out how right right okay we can't wrestle no so we're basketball i think they're they're practicing with mass right now it's considered wrestling so we would so we'd have to cancel right we're going to have kids losing so in
104your quest to return to normal we are now going to be returning to online school returning to hybrid programming taking away kids sports taking away opportunities for kids to collaborate in small groups because heaven forbid maybe closer than three feet what how is this returning to normal jimmy i understand you want to stick it to the governor but this isn't how to do it our kids are going to suffer from this testing sweats kept them in school when school started in auburn our governor doesn't care whether our kids wrestle or not i guarantee it he also doesn't care whether we have hybrid schooler we don't have hybrid school he's doing his own thing wherever he's traveling everywhere doing whatever i don't know but and and your point is well take it i agree with you
105it's ridiculous that like pauline and i were talking about it's ridiculous that at 35 inches oh my goodness we're in danger but at 37 inches no we're good we're fine like it's it's ridiculous i get it but this motion is not the way to solve the issue we are going to be regretting this kicking ourselves and saying i mean i i mean we could pass a motion requiring dr hall to provide us with a unicorn and when she can't provide the unicorn then what are we going to do i mean in theory it's great those little creatures are adorable and in theory this is great and believe me i'm no more fan of all this government intrusion than you are and you know show that to the governor it sounds great to me but we've
106got parents that want kids in school we want parents to want their kids to wrestle we've got parents that don't want us back in hybrids and frankly i couldn't make it to the best of where you think it's going to work i did i did make an amendment and everything you can still amend this motion i can't vote got voted down you have other options making a message that's what i'm saying you you said you were you i attempted to make an amendment i am so disappointed right now like i actually when i ran for this board i legitimately thought that the dysfunction that i was seeing sitting out there on those chairs could easily be addressed and in the past four months since i've been here it's been nothing but a train wreck i
107mean to actually hear people say well i don't i don't want to give you the opportunity to vote no for both i want to be able to have my opportunity to vote for him together like it blows my mind that people wouldn't be willing to compromise on something like that i made an amendment it was voted down can we look at spring break i mean i'll just say that i mean i totally understand that these mandates are in place i don't like them at all any more than the next guy we have the opportunity to ease the struggles for our students and for our parents that's where we have the opportunity to help so i think if we can get further down the road i know i know everybody says like well we'll just keep
108putting it down the road keep punting down the bridge it's got to stop sometimes i understand totally understand that i just really feel like that now is not the time a month from now is not the time so maybe we look at spring break are we actually going to do tests to stay with the rules because again just following part of the rules doesn't ensure that i mean do we just want butts in seats are we trying to actually prevent coven from spreading so megan doesn't mean anything to you that we're doing the best we can we're doing the best we can it's not perfect it's not a perfect system we're doing the best we can but we're not keeping has to say kids from participating in sports that's not the best we can there
109are some simple rules that we are not following so yes we can do the best we can but when you disregard part of the rule we're not actually getting the benefit of the rule being in place so my question is are we going to actually follow the rules if we extend this here's one of the problems the guidance changed halfway through the false court season right the guidance will probably change again i'm just asking are we going to follow the guy it was on a mandate it was guidance and so therefore we finished up fall under the same program we started the fall try to be fair i would just like to make a suggestion that may or may not be taken at this point but it's been a long heated discussion and i think
110it would be good just to take a ten minute break and walk around and take some deep breaths and maybe come back with some different ideas well we're past our normal breakthrough we're good okay dawn's getting our tape going welcome back all right we got a chance to clear our heads here a little bit i would like to propose a motion to alter the original motion remember the original motion that we extend testing for asymptomatic tests to stay kids and unvaccinated asymptomatic staff members out through spring break second i'm sorry to clarify does that mean like if a child has a runny nose they are not allowed to test because that would be symptomatic i think we're talking asians now we're talking colder symptoms so there's probably going to be some technical call on that
111right so there's no need for you to test because you have to stay home but if you're asymptomatic and you're in test to stay that would include asymptomatic justice to kids that have vaccinated and unvaccinated teachers so let me have your faces let me ask this and this might be i need a question as well if a child comes to school with the stuff he does in a headache which is according to a list of public syndrome but as a mom i'm the kind of kid i'm the kind of parent who says if you're not vomiting and you don't have a fever you're going to school i'm sorry but it's so important is she going to get sent home maybe that's a needed question we'll probably do the same thing we're doing now well hang
112on max because you just made a motion to make it asymptomatic and runny nose and headache is a symptom so needa if that if genevieve comes to school and she's got a runny nose and a headache she would not be able to get a quick swab and stay she would need to go home and come back with a negative coca test according to what you guys were talking about yes what we do currently is if we've got a student who has been exposed at home or you know is it exposure if a parent asks us to test them because she if you called and said could you please test her today would like to come through the drive through because she wanted to make sure she could go to school currently move to tesla okay
113if it's as restricted as what you were making it then now she another choice but and then in order to come back to school i don't know this is why the guidance may have changed to come back to school does she need to present a negative cover test to show that she does not that it's simply just a full okay and we currently accept that now if we do a negative rapid test and the child is symptomatic we ask them to go to chris to your car you take those tests all the time yeah the only time they're not accepted is if it's a positive case and somebody's asking us to overturn it because we can't believe in public health and do that they're referred to public health okay but so there are a lot
114of there are a lot of situations we have kids who are vaccinated who want to test because they have been exposed they are not required to come to quarantine they are not required to be excluded but they are it is recommended that they tested day three or five okay we offer that testing as well so just to stay as they pointed out early on is a broad it's being used forever in a way that's very restrictive and we actually every student we test is to try to keep them in school right so max under your motion the only students who would be testing are students who are test to stay asymptomatic just to say and close contacts right you have to be close right um yes and then asymptomatic unvaccinated individuals this is an amendment
115that's superseding that or you're amending it to ken's motion to i'm not addressing that but if if you're going to re-implement test state then there's presumption that you're going to have close contact the other part of the motion says there will be no close contact that's what the first motion is all right i know what the motion is i don't know how you can do it it's like me mandating to all 16 and 17 year old drivers mohammed that none of you will ever speak i command it to hell i want but well you can amend the motion to say that contacts and contact tracing to the iph trying to see phd and um and then the rest of your amendment what do your amendment is replacing the original motion so you're saying that's what
116i'm saying okay so we're eliminating to clarify the whole first part about free feed is gone according to your amendment any more discussion on that can we read the motion one more time asymptomatic students in the test to stay program and asymptomatic staff through spring break uh asymptomatic i'm back sunny day and that's was wasn't my scribbled notes okay you know the questions your comments i have questions um how often are employees testing um for reassurance for themselves a lot we just we just unvaccinated employees regularly and then what about like vaccinated employees who just want to make sure that they're not we have we have parents who ask us to test our children that's going to be off the table we have we have staff who are concerned when they they test regularly vaccinated
117or not so them unvaccinated or required the vaccinated are not required we do a lot we test on average um the fall has been much higher than it was i mean you guys have seen the numbers they're not hidden so it's you know it's not like we were in a low transmission that's why i ph has not taken anything away yet because our transmissions are still high all the things you're talking about are coming from ieph um so a lot so i guess whatever you do on the side i just need to know how to implement it because it's going to be a logistical nightmare i appreciate the idea of the compromise facts and how many of the testing pieces i think i'm still i as somebody who works with children regularly i i would
118like the reassurance to know that i could go to my nurse should i start feeling from me and know that i can get tested right there at school and not be put you know have to take sick times to go to carl christie for walgreens get a public test wait for those results and spend more time out of school so i think i'm i'm hesitant only because of that i would like it to be just testing available i appreciate the commonness um no lamb yes andrews yes murray no the cone yes we're talking about staff expanding staff testing so can we state what the current motion is now well that passed right that was just the event so then i guess need to pass okay all right so this is on the motion wait i'm
119sorry [Music] what what's the current motion on the floor you guys foreign no no can you read it to us dawn yes thank you and then ken's original notion when are we done now so that's emotional so the motion is then that we would test asymptomatic tests to stay students and asymptomatic unvaccinated staff through spring break so that's the motion on the board um to make it testing asymptomatic tests to stay students as well as employees period whether that be asymptomatic unvaccinated vaccinated symptomatic periods they're out for three days so an employee employee who is feeling ill could go down to the nurse get a negative covet test and go right back into the classroom yes because we still have viruses as a teacher i want to know this is just a cold i need
120reassurance it's just a cold i go to my nurse she swabs me he says it's just cold you're good now if my symptoms are getting worse so they continue i'll do it again i might go for a pcr but clearly if we're getting a negative on that it's likely not a heavy viral blood nita have we had any teachers test negative and then a day or two later test positive for coping when they were feeling ill that happens and that's why we recommend if somebody has symptoms and they test negative that they get a pcr they need to be out of school until we get the results of that pcr which can be anywhere from 24 to 48 to 72 hours depending on where they go and what tests they get so we have that
121situation because every single test pcr shield and antigen all pick up differently at different times of the disease process sometimes it's cold sometimes so did i make the wrong did i make a poor choice in proposing this because if they are symptomatic are they going to need to go for a pcr test anyway if they're negative yeah i mean that's where trying to i'm not sure why retirement piece meal and testing yes the testing program has has been very effective yeah so for a long time almost a year now and more effective this school year because now kids are able to stay in school because of the new implementation by like ph and you know to meet its point i have no problem with following it to the letter of the law and giving no
122quarter and no exception with the test to stay program we can do that people are not going to be happy but i i think that you have to i i think you need to to know exactly what we're doing in all of the schools and all the buildings and what we have been doing before you make a judgment here trying to piece it together to try to figure that out just from what you're reading and what you're hearing yeah um can you clarify john we passed the amendment that says that we're going to test to stay for asymptomatic students students and employees asymptomatic unvaccinated staff otherwise staff was required to test right sorry asymptomatic students in test to stay correct because i'm sorry to be going back over there if somebody sympathetic they can do
123a test but they're still ultimately gonna need to go for another one if they're positive they don't if they're positive that's where if they're positive the positive stance if they're symptomatic and positive it doesn't matter if they go to parliament they're seeing in a second test the positive stance per public health okay that's her idph for cdc there's an algorithm that follows it if they are positive and they get a negative from somewhere else the positive stands if they are symptomatic and that automatically goes to public value so somebody's positive they're positive they don't have to get a second test there's no reason to do that they're negative they still have to go test if they're symptomatic if they're symptomatic right but very symptomatic they should be testing anyway because if they're a close contact
124i mean so your other option is what you're saying your other option is every time genevieve comes in with a runny nose we send her home now we're talking about teachers staff right okay well with students now as well because we have that great group of vaccinations i mean we have breakthrough vaccinated staff and students so that's the thing as well so trying to try to micromanage it down to this and this and this it i'm not sure how to do that today you invest tomorrow if you can't but if you have a symptomatic child they can go back to the classroom but the teacher cannot no no if it's negative they can't the teacher cannot go back to the classroom if it's negative they have to still go get pcr if they're vaccinated if
125they're vaccinated and they're symptomatic and they have been exposed there are so many there's it's not as easy as just this than this than this in black and white there's every and you know this from your practice every single time you see somebody it's a specific situation and you deal with that situation with the parameters that you're given and then they're also you also have to look at the whole picture if johnny comes in every single day it tells me he threw up and not one single adult has ever seen it then johnny is going back to class and that happens that's why i think it needs to be simple that we do asymptomatic kids i i was thinking like could it just be we just keep on-site testing as needed i mean nobody's being
126forced to test we're not requiring i will not go for that i mean the only people that have to test at school for idph are testosterone that's an idph guidance champagne public health and not our rule that's best i will help yeah everybody else can test where they want and stay out of school until we get negative results so are you going to make no because the motion is asymptomatic students and tests to stay an asymptomatic unvaccinated employees yes mcmurray i appreciate this i would like it to be full of testing so my voters know yes keith yes yes you know what i never have a second you you don't need to say because i'm originally yeah i move that we uh direct the superintendent to ensure that kids who are home uh quarantined or
127out of school or receive an equal and equitable education to those in the classroom i'll second time according to who's standard [Music] undercover i'm not sure what that means well i like the motion i think we should be doing more to educate our kids when they're at home and i think it's a good idea so that means the same way when kids are feminine when they're in school i'm sorry so if a student is home um because they're not in test to stay or because they have code then their instruction is this same length of day as a student who's in school if that's how you deem equitable i would say yeah i'm asking you how you team equitable oh i would be my google um [Music] uh i'm not sure i don't think uh
128length of time is necessarily what it's about i think it's about access to equitable equitable materials and interaction with teachers dr rubble how many how many students are taking advantage of the evening homework helpline we average less than one student a week in multiple weeks we were paying four certified teachers to elementary to high school with a high school math teacher online every night and we're lucky we have one kid a week that pops on and that's not one junior high one high school went up that's one kid and so i cut back rather than four certified teachers on we have two and that was we were running it for um an hour and a half so now we have one elementary 1k5 teacher and one six through twelve teacher on nightly four nights a
129week you know doing on fridays or maybe i'm sorry we backed it up for on tuesday wednesday thursday i think we're running it right now i'd be happy to expand it to monday night people are taking advantage of it but it's honestly to pay people um just brainstorming with administrators if it's worth continuing because we don't have people online for that you know we make an assumption that the kids that have code are you know it's usually pretty mild they feel pretty good i i think a lot of times that is true but it's not true 100 times some of those kids want to rest and don't want eight hours of school or six hours they can yeah sorry uh me and i can you help me clarify the language of the motion was it
130require students to participate in the ecuador let's make it available okay i mean we heard a lot from parents that my kids are going home with a packet and have to self-teach uh or they don't have access so there is a gap and it needs to be filled and i think we need to fill it i didn't expect you just to do that during the day this is such an interesting discussion because most of the time we're told we can't get involved in the day-to-day direction of teachers and staff and so the times that we try to say we're going to have a policy that our superintendent who is our expert is going to execute it's pushed back on me to figure it out i'm just saying that parents have said their students are not
131being given equitable access to education when they are home there is a gap there that i think we need to fill there are lots of different ways to fill it i am not i don't think the teachers have to figure that out that's why i said we're directing the superintendent to figure that out but there is a gap and i think it needs to be filled and so now to say i am responsible for figuring out what's still teachers you said how do you expect teachers to do that during the day right how would you expect that to happen i'm not i i'm saying that the superintendent needs to focus on how we get that gap that was my motion it sounds to me like you are expecting equitable education to be something that's happening
132during the school day because we're offering educational opportunities in the evening and apparently that's not equitable i'm saying that students who are saying that a packet is not good enough for me to self-teach have a different option i don't know what that looks like that's why i'm directing the superintendent to see what the gap is fill it and this would be just for kids who are quarantined or have coveted correct okay so no one else who's sick i mean i'm assuming that if we have an approach for kids that are home with covet that approach should be extended to kids home with other illnesses but this seems like a ticky tacky discussion where if i say yes it's a gotcha but my assumption is is that if we're going to roll out a process for
133educating kids at home with covid that we could expand that approach to kids home with other illnesses as well i think it's obviously impossible to define what that would look like but maybe there's ways that we can improve upon it so how do we move forward from that i mean i think her motion is to let lindsay work on that because she's right and bring us back some [Music] i didn't say that i said that the superintendent is responsible for filling the gap for kids we will work out that was my emotion so is that a vote that we need to take because to me it sounds like you're asking the motion it was seconded so it is i understand that can i finish my thought sure well you get all angry when people you
134interpret people interrupting you so my thought my question was you made a motion there was a second we were having discussion and then it seemed like it was wrapping up where people were saying okay we will work on that i was asking for clarification median on whether that's a vote that we need to take or whether this is something we can just ask lindsay to work on and if it's a vote that we need to take is this then something that she's going to need to bring back and present and then we're going to need to vote on it again like it doesn't need to always be an issue and i was just clarifying that there is a motion and a second so it requires a vote and i think i said it already but
135i will say it a third time i did not have any part of the motion requiring us to come and vote on what lindsay brings back the direction is that the superintendent bridge the gap that exists so that kids who are at home with coping or quarantined have equal and equitable education by her definition thank you megan it doesn't need to be difficult this is what i've said this is the third time i said it thank you you're welcome son just to make sure the motion is to direct the superintendent to ensure quarantined students receive an equitable and equal and equitable education to those in the classroom by the definition that the superintendent yes that was added later by the definition well i'm sorry i was just clarifying because they said yeah that's what does
136that mean so i'm just clarifying that the board does not need to vote on that are you ready to vote yes hennessy yes yes i don't even know what to do with this album all right now unfinished business mou with the university of illinois director wrong so last month i brought to you mou with the university of illinois who is seeking a partnership with the district her the university is required to have a district partner in as they plan with their principal superintendent preparation programs uh dr rachel rogman asked our district to be that cooperating district says rachel we've done some work together in the past and so there were some questions about the actual mou with my understanding of the last meeting and so i thought i would invite rachel to come and answer
137some of the questions that you had so rachel thank you for being here have you ever wow thank you it's nice to meet you all virtually and we're really excited about the opportunity to partner with your district i'm not sure if you're aware but you have a number of teachers in our uh gone through are currently enrolled in our principal preparation program and we are looking for local districts to be partners with us and thinking about um what principles uh or principal candidates should be learning in their preparation programs so i'm happy to answer any questions about our program or the partnership that you have as you make this decision so rachel what does that look like from our standpoint that's what i i just want to get a better picture of it that's a
138great question so i will say um that i so i'm the program coordinator for the principal and superintendent endorsement programs and i've been at the university since 2017 and we have not had an active partner in my time so this is part partly where there's there's no precedent and it's really up for the the district partner um to be as involved as they would like to be so we meet once a month uh as a as a program and we would invite a representative of the district to come to our meetings either i say right now but two or three of us are in person and most of our meetings are hybrid to join our meetings with an hour and a half once a month where we will talk about program direction student assessments how
139our students are doing on their state principal candidates have two state exams they take for principal's licensure so we look at our pass rates student grades we might review survey data from our graduates and we would um appreciate a perspective from one of the districts whose teachers go through our program um in some of the different topics that we talk about and um we would uh we would hope that the partner could come um every month but if they could only come every other month or every you know once a semester that would be acceptable in terms of the mou and we would appreciate as much time as they could give to us so the only uh requirement from us as part of that mou is just to send a representative to be a part
140of the discussion yes and ideally you know an engaged representative who contributes to the discussion um but yes that that is that is the requirement for for the district partner what uh is the logistics for those meetings at what time of the day what day the week that sort of thing so they normally they generally every semester they change as our schedules change by semester so currently they're 10 to 11 30 i think the first went the second first or second wednesday of the month and most people are joining us virtually um even before the pandemic we have two of our team members in the chicago area so they don't they often will join remotely and i would say we like we cha during the pandemic last year when my kids were at home in
141school in the morning so we changed meeting times to meet my schedule so we're all pretty flexible if the if our district partner you know had a request for after you know later in the day or earlier in the day there's seven of us on the team so we're pretty flexible body questions for rachel so you said that the district partner is that someone who's gone through your program or which do we have someone picked out in our districts to be that partner or how does that take place that i i would say um we generally is someone from central office but it could be an administrator um a school-based administrator it's really for the district to decide you know ideally someone who you know is thinking kind of big picture about the principal pipeline
142in your district and how you're thinking about growing your own future leadership [Music] what um responsibilities would the district have dealing with individual candidates in the program like selecting supervising evaluating uh mentoring guiding those kind of things that's a great question so um because of our um ferpa rules uh the district person could not have access to current student records so like if we were occasionally we will discuss a student we're concerned about um the district person could not be part of that conversation um but they we would love for them to be involved in thinking about um admissions um and and candidate selection which is not protected by ferpa um so and again this is also part partly up to what you know what they're interested in you know if and how they'd like
143to partner with us if they're more thinking about curriculum or recruitment we're really open to how how they want to see themselves um partnering with us we're piloting a new interview process for candidates to do group interviews in the summer and this will this will be new for us which um we have been uh working towards greater compliance with the isb regulations which includes a a one-on-one interview or not a one-on-one but an interview with prospective candidates with two faculty members um so the district partner would be in addition to that as not a faculty member so we'd love for them to participate in group interviews with us if they were free those times and those will be scheduled in the summer but really what whatever parts they're interested in to come to those parts
144of the meeting or come to all the meeting and really kind of hear what we do and then think about how they contribute i think uh the importance of the district partner is for for those of us as faculty we all have k-12 experience but we've all been out of the you know the classroom and the schools for several years so it's really valuable to have someone who is a current district administrator to share their perspectives on what principals need to learn in preparation and so that's really what we're we're hoping to to gain for us from this partnership and for for your district to think about how you can strengthen your principal pipeline and you know continue to develop leadership and how you know are the ways that we can partner with you on
145any other that this is a pretty typical annual thing right yeah okay so kind of recognize the board of education approve the mou and joined with this partnership is there a motion to do that some of mcmurray just a second second lamb thank you for being here rachel appreciate it thank you who would be our person in the industry do you think the time commitment is something you can manage i think there's a lot of value in probably you know working with our teachers and um already do a lot of um i would say um guiding in terms of when they're trying to think about the next steps for their career and i think this would give me better insight in some of those conversations that teachers would like to have i think it'd be
146also it's also neat to have you know because u of i is so um i well maybe maybe i'm speaking out of term rachel but i feel like u of i generally has a pretty good connection with champion and urbana public schools but the outlying communities aren't always as the voice isn't always as heard from outlying communities and so i think that would be a nice opportunity to have that voice in the conversation any comments or discussion well i think this program is really important i think we have some core competencies that are lacking here that really should be addressed and filled first and then once we do that that here i would feel more comfortable voting for something like this yes hendrix yes schultz no mcmurray yes tennessee no macomb yes rachel thank you
147thank you rachel thank you so much i look forward to meeting you in person one day have a good night help the dental insurance well i have good news i haven't seen this in a long time well first of all my recommendation is to improve renewals with health alliance and delta dental health alliance actually had a negative two point one for four percent um impact respect do they understand our house i sound good so yeah so basically we are voting for i'd like you to vote for the decrease in our current rates which will um and and then also keeping deltas until the same again this year as they did last year so my recommendation is to accept both of those and we'll be approved the dental insurance reviews i'm sorry yes health insurance is
148um health wise and the dental insurance is delta dental yes all right we have that motion is there a second further discussion or questions nick murray yes hendrix yes yes hennessey yes keith yes schultz yes is he's trying to keep the rate the same keeping in contact with the county assessor to make sure that his estimate stays the same so that i mean that's the high points are our rate is below the 30 year average as we've talked about before um and we are honestly the lowest around the actual lowest is getting corporate sponsorships that's why they're so low so i consider us so just trying to keep it the same okay questions for heather will we have a hearing in the summer yes we will have our hearings just so you know because because
149the uh you have to have hearing if it's over five percent the assessor has estimated that our increase is going to be 5.26 i will balloon everything for the max for the max seven reason why is because even if it only comes in at four that's all we'll get anyways but we won't lose anything if it comes in at five point two six or it comes in at six so until there comes a little it comes a little higher and we want to make sure we want to make sure we capture all the money without raising the rate so yes and i don't know why illinois does it this way i just wish i could just say keep the rate the same but we have to we have to guess a little bit hennessy yes
150schultz yes yes yes hendrix yes dick murray i hope we accept all six courses as presented in the board packet okay [Music] anything you want to point out yeah any discussion from the board you've all seen the backup do we know when we'll have the curriculum and the instructional material presented to the board for these courses the dual credit courses are we have to follow the parkland uh syllabus that is out there uh the creative writing i have um the unit topics i can send you and i have those uh music the suggested um units i can send you those that were presented to the church team as well and just you we need to present them to the board so you have plans to do that i can do it right now i don't
151need it right now i'm just i'm asking if that's had to be done well that so i'm just we typically haven't done that is that the direction the board wants to go now and we're back to the debate about what instructional materials can you clarify what you're asking for please just for like a syllabus by state law the board is supposed to prove curriculum instructional materials i'm asking if we're going to take that step that was all i was asking so are we going to do that and if so when that was my question i don't need to hold up the vote i intend to vote for these classes so my question was are we going to do what this law requires us to do and when that will happen for the board so i
152suggest we do it in the next meeting and put it into the consent agenda will that be sufficient i will tell you that those courses will not be fully so they have what was presented um the um for example for the creative writing course we have the standards that are going to be targeted in that course they have the course outcomes and goals um and then the proposed units that would be as part of that creative writing course um and then for the history of rock and roll for the high school it's broken up into four units that would be covered but the the actual there's a website that they use to for those four units but the units aren't fully developed as right now and the same for the seventh and eighth grade electives
153they have um the the general overview of the units that will be presented in those uh semester course so for example looking at the eighth grade they'll have a unit on digital music sampling which is using samples from other songs to create new remixes songwriting and careers in music will be the um potential areas but then they're also this is the first time they've offered that course and so typically what's been allowed in the past is let's say they start with digital music and that starts going and they may come up with another unit they want to implement and and you've done the same thing with steam at the junior high and we've always allowed teachers the flexibility to respond to new things that are out there to make choices for things that aren't working
154in the curriculum previous year and make adjustments but um i just if that's not the direct we're not doing that anymore i need time to communicate that with the teachers and we will have a lot less new courses that they have to be completely fully developed before they come to the board my question was just are is the board gonna do that i didn't prescribe when when i'm just asking if the board is going to perform that oversight as direct by law and if so uh the superintendent is supposed to bring that to us that was just a question i'll withdraw the question this is going to get us in the weeds of a conversation that uh i just want to know if we were going to do it so i'd like to ask one
155more question do you expect that they would be fully fleshed out before the course starts in the fall um so i would say that they would have an outline of what they would propose would be those units of study as i said when you've not offered a course before you don't know how kids are going to respond and so if they're if they don't respond a particular way to one unit you can see that unit going a different direction um i would also say that there are at times um new materials new resources things that come up and teachers develop new units and and put in a mini unit to see how it goes and then maybe fully develop that unit more fully for the following school year um but i mean i think it'd
156be a good idea just to see just a general of what is going to happen yeah yeah and i i think that that is what was presented to the dirt team and i feel like they they have hashed that out and i have those power points and i can share them now or i can email those to you to so you can look at i think they definitely have a general direction that they want to go but they're also asking for a little bit of flexibility because they're new and they want to respond to students i'm sure maybe it could be in this so i i'm happy to work with you i'm just trying to be clear it's not like typically at the start of the year they wouldn't have like another powerpoint presentation of
157what that course is going to be but what they would have is a more fleshed out idea of particular what those units are and so that i would [Music] what they've already done so that i mean there's been a lot of time put into it to this point i'm happy to share that if you want to send us those follower points let me do it right now thank you okay other questions comments um yes hennessy yes schultz yes with murray yes liam yes he yes macomb yes i am seven heather and jared rentals everyone will start please what was that jared heather can you start as you please know um because we've come to the podium quite a bit about technology which we'll be coming back to the podium a little bit later about more
158technology um not a lot of good came out of kobe but i will say we we have been able to increase the amount that we have for students both in the class and to take home um with that though we've also we've and as i think some of you stress we need people to actually help jared as well so we have people um that are helping him with all of the aspects but also we it comes with a lot of things as it's not just like giving everybody a laptop especially when it's bought with federal dollars you have to tag them you have to organize them make sure you know where they're all at because somebody could never come in any time i want to know exactly where those devices are that will purchase with
159the federal law so there's a lot of different things that go into it well anyways right now we do not have a designated space for all of the technology um so um what we're proposing so that because i'll be honest there's two people in a room that's the size of a closet we don't have room for the actual technology to be laid out it's in different spots so we're proposing to use some space just temporarily rent out some space so that we can have everybody together and have them and have all of the technology together coming in and out of the district or not out of the district but in and out of the classrooms um so we are recommending that we rent um two rooms and we looked at several different options this is
160the most affordable and best option is to print two rooms at sigmund for a thousand dollars a month that would include all utilities um wi-fi and garbage service so this would just be a temporary solution obviously with the bulldog blueprint we'd eventually come to a permanent solution to where the technology can be housed so that is our recommendation right so as heather said we we currently don't have the space for anything at all in terms of uh receiving so for example right now i have 300 chromebooks that are sending in maintenance uh with no place to go i need to stage those which means i gotta tag them i gotta inventory them i have to prep them um what that means for us right now is currently is putting those devices out in maintenance and
161basically taking over their space uh we just don't have we don't have the space to to work with um the technology that we have in the district secondly i have a i have a data space specialist who's sharing a space with the health office at middletown um on any given day that particular person is having a difficult time working simply because um there's there's little kids who are coming in with different injury injuries um different ailments whatever that may be um and he is unable to focus on his work uh no matter how much uh noise cancelling headphones he wears uh just because you know kids are crying um and i'm finding that in order for him to him to be successful uh we need to find a different solution for him um and unfortunately
162at the time that the space that he is occupying was our best solution um it you know it would be in our best interest if we could find a place for for all my department to work together and collaborate but then also have some storage space to to work with our equipment that we are inventorying and taking in so i would appreciate any help that we can receive remember exactly what approval is stated is there a motion to do that something for a second second plan discussion questions is every classroom in this building being utilized yes and the actually the two two of his the people actually are at um the junior high which as we know how product that is as well um with the devices everything i mean my fear is also a
163better work environment for these people first of all but then also just the fact that we need to make sure that we have everything organized the money part of me organized in a way that we are tagging them and making sure that we have the inventory recorded i mean we're making it do right now but it's not it's not in the best interest um you know things things get misplaced because we just don't have any storage for them just plain and simple i mean if we're out of space in every building we're out of space in every building but i have to say the idea that we're going to go rent space and sing them on kind of makes me uh pause since that was our building and now we're going to go pay for
164space in that building so but if we don't have any space in any of the buildings and we don't have space in any of the buildings it's also concerning that this building isn't even five years old yet and we're completely out of space so that's concerning about uh the long-term planning and vision that has gone into things like building this building right and as you know with the bulldog blueprint part of what they proposed with the groups but you know it's adding on to this building for future growth yeah this building was built as big as it could be built correct without going back for that that was why it was built away and it was built with some excess capacity though we exceeded the estimates by the people you know that projected our growth
165as well not to mention we also didn't predict that we would be housing over three thousand to four thousand devices at any one point in time we never we never predicted to be fully one to one uh whenever this building was constructed yes murray yes keith yes tennessee president hendrix yes nicole yes i am a smartworks right so um this this proposal is a a grant through online state board of education to request to replace 13 smart boards at middletown prairie these were the uh 13 boards that were originally installed in phase one of middletown prairie so construction of 2014. um lifespan of these boards is seven to ten years uh we've hit that limit on some of these boards where they're already starting to fail we've had in the past three years we've replaced
166about a board every single year so uh we're trying to get ahead of the game here um and we have some funding from the state to go ahead and pay for these 100 since this is just uh over a 25 000 limit i have to come to the board so i'm asking for your approval to replace these boards at middletown prairie and will we replace the 13 smart boards and the computer-led purchases to be reimbursed by digital equity grant funds as presented so that's eight and nine i know that you were replacing um screens i want to say i can't remember what school but they aren't smart boards yeah what are they they're ben q right so is is it did you look into whether it would be beneficial for us to start swapping out
167smart boards with those districts so the the reality is in k-5 um our our staff are so ingrained with what smart already has um that it would be something that i wouldn't be willing to to ask our staff to switch on uh they're already being asked to do so much as it is um that this is not something that i would be willing to even consider um if if our staff had never experienced a smart board in their life yes absolutely but since they've they've been exposed to the smart board smart displays for um their entire existence i cannot in good conscious recommend anything other than those boards unless the staff came to me and said hey these are just not working for us um but i've heard nothing of that thank you yeah you're
168welcome jared thank you for continuing to chase down these grants i know that's not trivial work and you're doing an outstanding job so this was in conjunction with dr rummel so i can't take full credit for it thank you doctor the other comments questions yes murray yes hennessy yes hendrix yes schulz yes yes thank you a closed session is not saturday night for discussion this loss will close on the opens and approve on the night of the minutes for the sunday and review the minutes by section 2.065 i lcs is do we have any legal issues discussing that okay so the motion is needed to go in a closed session right now for that reason to do that some move plan the second second okay um your roll call vote liam yes key yes hendricks
169yes schultz yes it's murray yes hennessey yes macaulay yes jared can you shut down the feeding splits uh yes uh do i um need to leave shelly intact or i think she i think we've gone shall we go and uh the public we do actually we don't anticipate any business for those watching thank you for being with us tonight i'm sorry next would you say you want me to stay on no you don't need to okay bye everyone