Mahomet-Seymour Board of Education Meeting 9-20-21

001good evening everyone this is 6 45 p.m and this is the e learning hearing for the milestone board of education i've called to order here at 6 45 on september 20th this time i'd like to remind everyone to please sign in and silence your cell phone they'll let you know visitors go to facilitate an effective meeting if you wish to make comments during the e-hearing to get those visitor guidelines to fill out the public [Music] are not interactive with those in attendance here macomb here and can we stand for the pledge please i pledge allegiance to the fire of the united states of america and junior recovery for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you everyone board members who have seen the agenda for the hearing

002is their motion to approve the agenda so that's jeremy for a second second plan thank you discussion yes so um this evening i am bringing to you the learning sorry about that um i think i can share it okay sorry okay so um what i'm sharing tonight is the e-learning plan and uh after um the option for districts that happy learning plans has been available uh started as a pilot and then became available to districts as an option uh in lieu of having these emergency school days so in the past um typically they've been used for inclement weather but at times they've been used for facility for districts who've needed to shut a building due to facilities maybe lost power or lots of water for a day and so the creation of the e-learning plan

003has allowed districts to substitute learning on those days making them up at the end of the school year so current school code allows for districts to utilize up to five e-learning days um instead of making those up like i said at the end of the school year following last year's remote instruction we feel like we have a good handle on what that might look like for us and have the ability to substitute these days out and continue uh with instruction so it will look a little bit different at the k5 level than it would at 6 12 simply because you're talking about a day that is um not really planned to be off from school so students in k5 who do not take devices home would not have a device at home in order to

004push out learning via google classroom so those students would have essentially what would be a packet in their backpacks we talked to teachers about material that would be included in that snow day packet teachers were excited about wanting it to still especially for elementary students to still feel somewhat like a snow day so maybe activities that might center on things that they could do at their house and have some choice while still reviewing material some math some reading and some other things six through 12 would have a condensed day um and they would have a set time again teachers would not necessarily be coming into the building and just like at your houses where you have different levels of internet access our teachers have different levels of internet access at home so if they are

005able to go live and they wish to do that they would have a set time for their periods of the day in order to go live if not they would just be pushing information out via google classroom um so for attendance on these days students would be marked present upon completing and turning into work for that day so if the student doesn't have internet access on an e-learning day and they are unable to um to log on they still would have the opportunity to to make that work up and be marked present for that day so i there's really not much new or different in there i'm happy to answer any questions that you have or any suggestions shared with all the building leadership teams and then went to jared last week uh so the

006only plan that needs of hearing is the e-learning correct what if you use beyond those five days is it just like a typical year where you don't need to make those up them kind of thing um i need to look on that i mean okay yeah if you go beyond your five emergency dates and you can request what they'd be considered active days okay okay so we're talking things like disastrous weather and yes so not good other questions so when we talked and followed up the building principles um it would be more of a especially at the high school level more of a case by case and course by course how we kind of left that at the dirt meeting because when you're talking about an ap course for example they're on a pretty tight

007frame of in time frame in terms of information that has to be received and taught in that set time for the ap exam but in most other cases it could be review material or introduction to the next lesson okay any other questions so if it's a case-by-case basis of the example colleen gave how do the students know which class is going to be pushing new material and i mean as i sat home and watched some of this delivered online it was hard to tell sometimes it was not consistent across classes what was expected of the students so how are the students to know that how are the students to know what their assignment is or and whether or not they're going to be keeping pace yes so as part of the e-learning plan then information

008is pushed out by nine o'clock and so students would know by nine o'clock that morning what their assignment was for that day it's hard to say like because these are not planned for days what if it would be new material or not because even in an ap course it could be a review day would be the scheduled day for that so by nine o'clock and then students who don't have access would have access to um following you to do the makeup work or to communicate with their teacher then when they return to school if they have questions or they need additional i think support question that was brought up by the teachers was if a student doesn't have internet access and then this is the day then the next day they come back and they've

009missed a day of school and if they already are a little behind how are you going to make that up so they just missed school so that was the concern of the teachers was what do we do with kids who might already but i do feel like when we came on that meaning that the teachers were talking that they felt that they would know most of them would not be pushing out new material right i'm just saying that that was the issue was it wasn't about how they were delivering it it's more we don't want kids to be missing things if you're not it's not desperately needed like an ap fund right try not to put the key to that absolutely thank you hey you have questions or discussion we didn't have one member of

010the public asked to speak during the hearing portion of me and that's here she just left um is there any further information or any further business for the hearing you're not alerting your motion yes henry yes vic murray yes nicole yes all right we'll take a brief break and we'll start a regular meeting shortly all right [Music] yeah i can hear you thank you okay you're there welcome shelly i'm here okay you're very you're very quiet your volume is turned down all right everyone and we're the live stream is live so we are ready to go it is 7 00 p.m i'd like to welcome everyone to the regular monthly business meeting at the education 7 p.m monday september 20th this time i'd like to invite everyone who's a guest to please sign in i'd

011like to remind everyone to silence their cell phones i'd like to mine visitors in order in order to facilitate an effective meeting we ask those who wish to make comments to the board to read the visitor guidelines on the table outside the door complete the public participation form and get those to dawn here in the next few minutes public participation is allowed during the public participation portion meeting other than that time board meetings are not interactive with those in attendance um you have uh one board member who is ill and speaking remotely tonight because of that um and so we will try to be cognizant of the fact that we need to be heard on webex and we'll do our best to project when we're in the room i know we have an issue um

012last week at the uh using a corn belt facility that people had a hard time hearing us we've got a little better sound in here but i caution all the board members to try to be about to project when you speak and we will take all those on roll calls since we have a member participating remotely and we'll start with the comments don liam here here hendrix here the please of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all you have an opportunity to look at the agenda for tonight's meeting um is there a motion to approve the agenda yes land yes yes yes the color yes consent agenda war members you've had an opportunity to review the consent agenda

013i would like to ask that we approve the consent agenda with one change um we did get a late request under the personnel for christian hood for some unpaid lead in november and i would recommend that we approve the consent agenda with that item amended and added to it that we approve that there's a motion to do that okay very good we have uh but i was just wondering about the overnight approvals that i noticed that the the girls have to pay for it but the boys wrestling the district pays for it is there any reason why we paid for some sports and not others so the wrestling is not paid for by the district it's completely paid for by the host team in montana so that was one there were three the montana one

014i noticed was but one and two one is in sterling and sycamore and it says cost per student is zero entry fee and hotel paid through athletic department accounts so the um i believe the volleyball tournament is something new that we've done and i signed the same question for matt i thought your wrist would um reference right i noticed the montana i just that wasn't clearly paid for by that which i've got to look into sometimes the district paying for the volleyball and cross country overnight as well because i noticed the same thing sometimes the sport has money in their sport account from their fundraiser or there's there's a limited amount of district money that gets the goes to all sports that is divided fairly representatively i i don't recall the formula anymore and changed

015i think over here um in an attempt to get more and more equitable to all the scores on top of that then the sports are allowed to do a fundraiser and that their account and i think and i'm just guessing here because i don't know for sure but i know that oftentimes the fundraising money is used for some of this stuff so i and then sometimes i have to do other things with the fundraising so [Music] are we able to reapprove things no i'll work with him on that yeah we're just we're essentially improving the fact that we know the lead now overnight okay well i know this if you say that all the sports are covered and giving uh funding i know that we had the junior high and we had four students go

016to state for the golf tournament they didn't have even have uniforms or anything so i guess i'm now wondering how do we ensure that all of the sports actually have access to funding for things like uniforms for students and things like that because i have not seen has not been my experience that all of those sports are we can have mr mr fisher come in and do a presentation on that another thing with junior high golf was we literally just started it so um i'm just asking a big funny comment about sure you know great question so your question is valid um i was just trying to offer that this was a brand new sport and um we as you said we had three boys go to state this past week and one girl and

017which is awesome so clearly there's a great future with those programs any other questions yes and as part of the set agenda and personal part we just approved some new teachers and dr rummel is here to introduce us to some of your friends so excited um so we're going to start off tonight with margaret jarvis she is she has been here before she has been here for a long time so we are happy to have margaret back as our district 504 coordinator that was a new position for this year uh she was born and raised in muhammad her husband nick both graduated from mohamed seymour high school in 2009 she earned a bs in elementary education graduating at the top of her class from the university of illinois in 2013. before transitioning to this new

018role she spent seven years teaching all three grade levels at lincoln trail and she also served as the head coach of the high school dance team for five years leading the team to state championship in 2015. margaret and nick live in muhammad and welcome to their son mike in april margaret spends most of her free time being a new mother and she enjoys practicing her christian faith spending time with family and friends and reading and doing yoga so welcome back [Applause] next up this evening is a new pe teacher at lincoln trail so lindsay i is very excited to be joining our district she grew up not too far from muhammad and she graduated from southern illinois university in carbondale and this will be his 13th year in the field of education she previously taught

019physical education in both champagne and urbana and comes with lots of experience in the area of adaptive physical education she currently resides in monticello with her husband derek and there are two children and their two australian shepherds she likes to stay active with her family by taking heights and bike rides she also enjoys gardening she's making the transition to the she said making the transition to our school district has been smooth and enjoyable looking forward to another great year here in muhammad with our students so please join me in welcoming [Applause] so lincoln trail is on a roll tonight i'd like to introduce to you our new fourth grade teacher christine russo she grew up in clinton and graduated from the university of illinois in her band at urbana champaign in 2010 with the ba

020in elementary education she spent the last 11 years teaching fourth grade at gibson city before moving to lincoln trail this year she has finished her master's degree also at the u of i in curriculum and instruction to finish that in 2018. she's lived in muhammad for the past nine years with her husband and two daughters she enjoys crafting cooking diy projects around the house and she's excited to be joining the school district and looking forward to giving back to the community in which she lives so welcome [Applause] and lastly this evening i have fairy maxie she is a second grade teacher here at mpe uh she could not be happier to be teaching here with us she's been a teacher since 1994 and it's been in pre-k in kindergarten the entire time so moving to

021second grade has been a breath of fresh air a little more independent and it's the move she needed carrie graduated from eastern illinois university with a certification in early childhood education and has a minor in psychology she lives in st joe with her husband mark her youngest son goes to milliken where he is running cross-country and track and her oldest graduated from southern and now works for the ford corporation in detroit when not traveling following running teams or teaching she is a photographer she owns her own small business where she specializes in boutique photography she works with seniors families and children in this little business so she's very excited to be in muhammad and can't wait to see what the future brings so welcome gary okay the staff who was just introduced there's a long

022standing tradition that at this point you are excused if you would like to leave and not participate in the rest of the meeting uh in 14 years i've been waiting for someone to stay so if you would like to be the first uh you've got the opportunity to agronomic [Music] have a great night wish you all a great day tomorrow here we go okay next up is donations dr hall all right we have um four donations this evening for the board to accept a 500 cash donation to mom's pantry from uh tara and daniel biggs a 500 cash donation to the boys soccer team from robert and lisa mercer 500 cash donation for our boys cross country team from ramona seaman and a cash donation also to boys soccer from jonto and augustina tajijadi for

023a total of two thousand dollars thank you appreciate the honorable good we appreciate all those donations and at this point i would entertain a motion to approve that our nations have been members we'll give dr colleen our second community how's that perfect all right any questions or discussions on donations hendricks yes hennessey yes schultz yes murray yes yes he yes okay communication time uh pto i'm the communication liaison i guess for pto um okay so first the dollar blog dog walk fundraising through concluded september 13th and those of you who haven't seen the facebook post we raised over 150 000 this year that is a record and over like i think doubled what we normally make so um let's see we'd like to thank the bulldog students family staff and community for helping us make

024this a success uh the lincoln trail dog celebration will be friday september 24th in the morning at the old middletown site and the middletown prairies will be on friday october 1st families will be receiving emails about these celebrations and how they can participate book fair will be in person again this year and will take place october 18th to the 21st and you'll get more information about that too um and then staff appreciation do you want me to show you everything that we got so we got all the teachers these little fanny packs for um lincoln trail and middletown prairie and then inside of them were a bunch of coupons and gift certificates and that type of stuff from area businesses there's also a raffle ticket so some of the teachers were lucky enough to get

025a bigger prize there's loser office um they donated some stuff uh ice daddy's donated and um hopi's chef donated as well so it's been a little fun trying to like you know just keep morale up and make sure they know that they're appreciated and we're looking at different things to do during the school year and i'm excited for it so that's i'm also the chair of that as well so any questions that's all i have thank you and then anyone from the foundation okay um building reports um are we gonna skip visitors uh that's later in the agenda um i mean i think it's important we allow people to speak before we vote on things if they wish i'm bored what's your pleasure you know um okay um there's a five minute limit i will

026let you know if you start to run close to that i'll try to give you 30 or 60 seconds i try to do that without interrupting you so it's kind of the best i can you can see donald talk on that i would like to remind everyone that this is not time for personal attacks against anyone in the community or anyone associated with the school district and um we'd like to remind you that this is not an interactive question but we're interested in what we have to say so we'll just go in order we'll start with the green light good evening my name is steve greenlee i am a president of muhammad ladies and gentlemen of the board and the senate community members i stood before you three months ago and told the alarming story

027of how my then fifteen-year-old daughter was presented a very objectionable book as the curriculum for her summer english course i along with several concerned community members read excerpts of graphic material from various books that our students have been provided i implored you to do the job that you are ostensibly elected to do safeguard our children i offer to be part of the solution since that meeting in june two regularly scheduled board meetings have occurred and one study session was conducted to present the process of curriculum development policies were reviewed discussions and debates covered points of procedure whether or not it was realistic to read or review all books available to students and it was suggested that we should be able to trust our teachers to make good decisions about the appropriateness of materials in their

028classrooms there's been a lot of activity with no results and no accountability i still have not received an answer to the question how did this happen well that ship is said i no longer require an answer to that question because i've done my own research and discovered that this was not a one-time event it wasn't the first time it's still going on even now despite a public outcry it is part of an ongoing and expanding effort to convert our institution of education into a center for indoctrination make no mistake critical theory is not some nebulous ideas circulating around the ether of post-secondary education looking to find a crease or an open window into it's already infiltrated our district an article in the illinois news bureau reported that staff in muhammad schools have participated in workshops

029on social emotional learning and young people's mental health host election along with bystander training on confronting acts of bigotry and racism this was apparently necessary because at least two of our administrators and a social work professor at the university of illinois believe that muhammad is an example of a white supremacy culture in need of addressing systemic racism and racism in our schools i implore everyone listening to take a walk through our schools look very carefully at the flags posters bulletin boards and quotes adorning our classrooms and hallways how many of these concepts will you see systemic racism global society collective good transformative education social justice fairness diversity equity inclusion civil unrest tolerance discrimination bias prejudice mandate these are the buzzwords of critical theory they have replaced these constructs achievement respect character dignity integrity faith liberty

030justice equality unity community alien rights peace prosperity discernment consent the hallmarks of a constitutional republic are being systematically erased from public education this is intentional we intend to confront it we intend to stop it it's too late for me to be concerned about how we got here because here is where we are i demand action from my elected representatives to get critical race theory this evil out of our schools if you stand with us we'll work with you if you do nothing or oppose us we'll replace you [Applause] tonight um but i felt convicted to do so um my youngest goes to school here she's a preschooler i've just had about enough with praying on children she's three we don't want to go into accusatory things i understand that but when you have emma who

031is learning to talk learning how to develop cannot advocate for herself she needs her parents to do so so i'll just read uh a definition of harassment harassment is unwanted behavior which which a person finds offensive or which results in a person feeling intimidated or humiliated it can happen on its own or alongside other forms of unwanted behavior that could be spoken written words or use offensive emails tweets or comments on social networking sites besides offensive conduct may include but it's not limited to offensive jokes slurs evidence or name calls physical assaults or threats intimidation ridicule mockery insults or quit downs offensive objects or pictures or an interference with educational work or social performance harassment becomes unlawful where one enduring the offensive conduct becomes a condition of continued enrollment employment relationship or to the conduct

032is severe or pervasive enough to create an environment that is reasonable that a reasonable person would consider intimidating hospital or abusive i felt today i'm always humiliated it wasn't the first time this happened on the district grounds um i also want to know um you asked us not to um call out anyone in particular but i would like to let the public know that we elected you we are supposed to trust in you our educators um and we don't feel that we don't i don't see it where for three minutes steve was talking there was one of these um board members right here did not care to look at steve for the first few minutes of him talking i i just feel our concerns are not being heard i feel our concerns our deaf ears

033and the expense of our children thanks [Applause] and we have an issue what we can't do is we can't call the modern public um nobody nobody calls me i think i got a personal call from dr albano follow-up buttons in regards today um no [Music] all right good evening my name is monica cherry and i am here tonight as a resident a native of mohammed an alum a social worker an individual who works in higher education and a voting community member i am here to talk about some great concerns that i have about what is being touted as curriculum here in our community it is the law for our schools to post the curriculum being taught in the classrooms curriculum is a totality of the educational experiences a student will have in any given course

034what curriculum is not is a book selection guide with percentages of students by grade that will encounter said book while books constitute one component of curriculum there are a number of other components that comprise curriculum additionally the list of books that has been posted is a useless document unless the percentage is 100 next to the book a parent has no way to discern whether their student will encounter instead of stating that it is a big test to get curriculum posted we need to find solutions to get it posted while it is illegal or not to be posted more so it is neglectful of our educators our administrators and our school board not to address this matter immediately thank you gloria um i think it's important to know one vote of its people what brings me

035to these meetings to speak to the school board is that my parents integrated here to the united states in 1965 from chile south america with illegal immigrants we followed all the procedures to be able to come to this country the two main reasons why my parents emigrated here was number one they were not political people and they saw their country turning towards socialism the second reason is that my parents wanted for us to have a better education that we would have gotten in south america so education has always been very important my degree is in child psychology and then my minor was in education i worked at cunningham children's home for six years i had the most number of girls that went on to college because our big stressor was get a good education that

036is the way to rise in this country and respect the laws so that has always been a very very big topic education is always very important out of the four children that came with my parents all four of us went out to college my parents did not have a high school degree either one of them but they found other means to rise themselves in other methods of education so i am appalled that before i'm so called i would like to thank all of the teachers that had my children because you've taught my children well how to read how to write and how to add incredibly well all four of my children have gone on to college all four of my children keep rising and rising and rising in their professions because of the solid education

037that they've received here in muhammad seymour we did not move to muhammad because of the educational system we moved here because working at the children's home we were emotionally exhausted with dealing with girls who had had horrendous childhoods and we needed a quiet place to come to on the two days that we had off we used to work we used to live with the girls five days and then we had two days off we just needed a quiet place thankfully for us we came to a city that had very very good teachers those teachers were allowed to be teachers they were allowed to put their own personalities their own ingenuities their own intelligence into those children it wasn't state mandated so what i'm really concerned about is why i can go to sans and buy

038books and curriculums it cost me ten dollars for each of these books so if i count from k through fifth which is what they offer there i would have spent sixty dollars but mohamed seymour over the past 10 years has spent over a million dollars on three curriculum directors and you parents still have no curriculum so what i'm here today to do is urge you to advocate for your children so that you know what your child's education is because that is what is going to make the children successful so i plead with the board to please look into this issue you're breaking three laws there's a federal law there's an illinois law and your own law about curriculum but instead we get stonewalled then nothing will happen so we need to think of other methods

039to get the attention and that is and i'm just urging you to really think about these issues thank you [Applause] my name is kim greenlee i do have a daughter that is a junior however she is no longer a part of this school system now if you would like to meet with me and discuss why she isn't i have multiple reasons i'd be happy to share them with you two major developments have occurred during the last week in the state of illinois first judges in neighborhood counties ruled that mass mandates in schools are an illegal application of quarantine a quarantine is any device procedure action or requirement intended to limit the spread of a disease by statutory definition physical separation masking testing vaccinations are all types of quarantine in order for poor tea to be

040legal it must be ordered by the health department due to a specific health risk and it must involve procedural substantive due process the current masking mandate in muhammad seymour school district is a violation you process under law second 10 of the 12 members of the joint committee of administrative rules jinkar a bipartisan panel of state legislators voted to confirm that the illinois state board of education overstepped its authority by revoking recognition of schools public and private because of masking policies it determined that the four public schools nine private schools in illinois that did not comply with the mass mandate had not violated any existing rules therefore isbe did not have the authority to punish schools for not a following for not calling the government governor's health guidance the authority to suspend or revoke schools recognition

041in cases like this has not been conveyed conveyed to isbe by the general assembly the effort to do so house bill 4135 was referred to the rules committee by the house of representatives 9-3-21 since rulemaking and health guidance has not been granted to isb decisions about compliance with public health requirements is under the authority of the local school board without fear of penalty sanction or punishment you are you are free to resume the last action that was approved by the 5-2 vote of this board do not relinquish local control before the legislature takes it away from you reinstate the mass optional plan that you voted for we can fight hb 4135 or we don't have to just like my husband said we can do it together or we can remove you it's your choice [Applause]

042marcie hall okay um my talking a little bit uh i want to talk a little bit about um covet testing here at muhammad schools um so for kova testing to be legal here in mohammed schools we need a few things um to make that legal um first of all we need a clia waiver i i need this to be a little bit um i need some answers back from this so um do you know we have that cli away from us yes we have a plea waiver we applied for it in november we have that yes okay has anybody seen that like we have be happy to put it on our website tomorrow okay can you put it on the website absolutely okay um and how about a provider order we have a provider order

043yes we do can you put that on the website sure do we have a medical director who we practice under again what time is not interactive if you've got questions you want to get to the board of administrators ahead of time that's fine we're having to do those i think these are things that parents want to know we have testing happening to our students and these are things we'd like to know yeah i think this is something that there may be a couple parents that are interested in i would agree with that no i think there's more than a couple no one's asked to this point do we have a medical director that we act under yes we do have a name [Music] this is not interactive if you'd like to submit your questions you

044can do that you've got to have a squad so we have non-medical staff we have medical staff that does the testing do you think about it you don't have cancer i know you're not gonna answer um but i know that we have non-medical staff that does the testing we have volunteers that do the testing but under the nurse practice act an rn cannot supervise non-medical staff so we're in violation there so some things that we need to think about in the district that are happening in violation things that i know that are already happening so i mean since we always have a an attorney you know that we might see her over there so she helped me out with that since she's already listening to all things [Applause] [Music] i have no comment tonight thank

045you okay we'll go to i've been really struggling with what i was going to say tonight if anything over the last couple of months there have been requests by the community to look at some of our core competencies as a district and provide them with curriculum and provide them with access to understanding what goes on in the classrooms uh and then this last week kind of threw me through a bit of a loop um both locally and nationally um i guess i'll just share the national for a little bit of context i watched a little bit of the hearings that took place with the usa gymnastics team and those women who came and shared their stories about the abuse that they suffered at the hands of their physician um and as they were speaking uh

046they shared stories about you know telling people in authority about their experiences about the trauma that they were suffering and what was happening to them uh and time and time again those people in authority uh phantom they failed to protect those girls um all the way up to the level of the fbi the fbi knew what was going on and they failed this girl they failed to act they were made aware that abuse was going on uh and had they acted in enough time some of these other women could have been saved these same experiences uh so that was hard to watch um for obvious reasons and then we have things going on in our own district that i have to see on social media about kids in our district who are suffering and being

047bullied and in my opinion reaching out to us as the adults in the room and asking for our help um and i don't want to be the adult sitting in that hearing later where the fbi director comes and says well you know this is really horrific and finally we now know and it won't happen again too little too late um ali raisman said all we needed was one adult to do the right thing and i ran for this position because i saw some things in the district primarily centered around uh doing our court competencies and doing right by kids providing them with a safe space in curriculum and all of my tenure on the board has been spent fighting to get those on agendas and being ignored and having no real ability to do that

048uh finding procedurally to have discussions that in my mind should have been the reason that people ran for the board but we spend more time bickering about uh how to get those discussions on two agendas than actually having the discussions um i'm just tired i'm tired of it i mean tonight we have things on the agenda that i'm quite certain are going to get into semantics about what is curriculum and what are instructional materials when really the discussion we should be having is why in the world as a school district is that not on the website already why do we have to have parents coming and begging us to know what's going on in their classrooms uh and we can't seem to deliver that and we spend a lot of time talking about facilities and

049arguing about how we get stuff on the agenda and the thing that keeps me up at night is that we have very real issues going on with our kids being harmed suffering trauma that is going to be with them life long and we are in the adults in the room and no one is doing the right [Applause] thing i'm exhausted by it and i'm saddened by it and i don't know what else to do i ask for things to be honest the agenda i'm told it's not the right time uh people come and beg for information from us and somehow we never actually seem to have a meeting where we get down to the bones of the business uh and i have to read on facebook that kids are being assaulted at our schools and

050talk to those children who say we don't report it because we know that the adults aren't going to help us and i'm tired of having those discussions i've been having those discussions for years now it's the same story it's out of different mouths we are failing here and i'm tired of this board fighting about whether or not we're gonna talk about something and i just wanna get some stuff done that protects these kids i don't know how to [Applause] just took one of us to do the right thing and we don't seem to be able to get it together say i know um there are some things in the pipeline that have not come to the surface yet um but wanting to make sure that they're done well so um i'm confident that those will

051be arriving soon sorry uh i'm going to pull a little back closer to home and just say a big thank you to our high school administration and our city council for having our homecoming um a lot of our communities around us cancelled theirs and i really appreciate the way our administration kind of thought outside this year and um based on the ticket sales it seems like a lot of kids was very ready um i also am so excited that what leslie shared from pto about the incredible fundraising that they did that's amazing um and then i also love this is kind of a flashback uh flash from the past glorious probably remember this one we had reading shapes at same on and they're making a comeback i started this i was so excited to see

052that i thought oh my gosh that was like one of the highlights i loved i loved those so they're making a comeback at mpe and i just last week was an amazing news for our kids all throughout all the schools with the spirit week and it was just great to see happy kids doing the extra stuff that they needed to do last year so it was a great thing to see and i'm happy for all those kids i think it was friday night i was told between marching band and athletic teams students participated in the student body being there we had three quarters of our high school involved um and then of course you know dance participation went in the closing days of signing up went from 300 um let's go to hunter for financial

053update um we are tracking um we are doing well with revenue and expenses well with the current budget even though it's early and i do want to let you guys know that um our sales tax is up so it is up from last year of course but then up from the previous year as well so we're turning in the right direction there we are getting the edf money and we just got five million more from county for our property taxes so now we just need uh for about we have about three more million to collect in this last property tax cycle before we start i'll be coming back in november with the next living so let's continue um with that process so any questions or any other reports you're um feedback on utilizing that time

054and really addressing some learning loss that we know has occurred due to the pandemic the teacher just really appreciated that time to be able to really plan and address um so lots of positive feedback looking for we've got some ideas for ways to um make november um even better october um so i'm happy to answer any questions about that or any other topic that was listed in the report any questions for dr dr a quick reminder about bulldog blueprint tomorrow evening here in person at middletown prairie elementary gym from 6 30 to 8 30 and a virtual session on thursday evening from 6 30 to 8. also congratulations to our interact club they received the rotary youth service award they were recognized for their project to provide multicultural crams to the students and classrooms here

055at mpe and lincoln trail and we've set our graduation date for the class of 2022 on friday evening may 20th questions for dr hall can i add something to the building reports um there was a false court at the high school that was overlooked and uh it smeared my heart so i just want to acknowledge that we have 21 girls on the high school swim team this fall thanks for making sure we did not forget about it do not forget about those swimmers they are driving the leroy every night just to swim yeah okay um on your new business site first up is district audit with heather holders is that uh first of all i appreciate you and your team i mean i but also thanks to the whole central office and the eops of

056the schools um for continuing to help out with it on a regular basis because a lot of work does go into both sides so i do appreciate it and i hope i i do appreciate hope's continual guidance because anything new comes up i call her it's like a night on my call so just to make sure we're doing everything correctly and she's been doing that to me before thanks for having me here tonight to present the results of the financial statement audit for your fiscal year into june 30 2021. i'm gonna move ahead because i think i can talk through it without the slides there but it'll pop up but i'm just gonna go over briefly a summary of the audit process then discuss some of the highlights i'm going to report deliverables and then

057available for any questions and if i can't answer them i can try to get back to you um jumping ahead to slide three there one more just to talk a little bit about the audit process as heather mentioned it is it's a significant process we start the process with that first box there on the left we do a risk assessment to determine what areas to focus on each year we brainstorm and we come up with these these items as an example and we start with internal control testing which we do come out actually do some preliminary work in april select some samples and walk through your internal controls and then at year end we come back out after year end in july and go through some of these other areas i won't go through them

058one by one but some of our procedures include confirming balances with third parties banks investment companies the county isbe federal granting agencies etc and we also look at invoices we vouch to invoices or trace the invoices we pick random samples of your general payables and your payroll expenses to test those and look at the internal controls and then the related underlying expenditure and supporting documentation for those as mentioned there too another area which we talked about each year's activity funds unique to school districts so we have a focus on that a little bit of the focus this year which i'll explain in a few minutes and then also the uniform grant guidance is your federal testing we're required to do a single audit when we spend over 750 000 federal funds this year we tested

059two programs idea is a frequent program to test here because of the larger dollar expenditures this year that new esser funding was also large enough we tested it also as an additional program next here this discusses each of the audit deliverables the first item there is your audited financial statements your annual financial report the results of that were an adverse opinion because it's not important to the generally accepted accounting principles not on the approval basis of accounting and modified approval but an unmodified opinion or clean opinion on the cash basis and the regulatory basis in the course was isbe the second item there is we do your report under government automated standards since you do have that federal funding and so we issue a report there there's one finding in that which i'll go over

060and then the single audit report is that federal report that looks different this year in your board packets you received all development reports the single audit reports look a little bit different this year because in the past they were included in the back schedules of the isbe form the afr form this year because of all the new funding that was given to districts they knew some of the auditing of that could have been delayed so they pulled that out of the afr form so it could still get issued and supposed to be delivered by october 15th so that was issued separately this year in our traditional format for all other government entities but we were able to get your single audit or federal audit completed so it can all be completed and filed by the

061october 15th isb deadline there are no findings there in the federal funding there's also government's communication letter required by our standards i'll go over with you a management letter if we have any other recommendations we want to make which we do did issue one of those this year and then also new a couple years ago by gada is a consolidated durian financial report so we audited that give our opinion on that and that is in your packet as i mentioned just a couple of findings or observations to point out the um the gas report the government audit and statements report did have one observation or finding and that's is that we as the audit firms prepared the annual financial report and you guys um heather's office did review this report and he issued our opinion

062on it that's something we're required to report for our standards the federal funds report as i mentioned our focus this year was idea and esser and we had no findings there the idea we test almost every year and good history there with just off and on with no funding this year and i'd say very proud of all the funding because a lot of new requirements a lot of new information and we looked at that in detail and did not have any issues with the way that was handled actually there over the expenditures that weren't heard the management letter i wanted to mention that this year i wanted to bring up a few recommendations related to the activity funds there were some new requirements this year related to activity funds the accounting standards issue the new

063gatsby government auditing standards and a lot of terminology here against the 84 related to fiduciary funds activity funds fall under fiduciary funds because it's really holding money for others so we had to look at things a little bit different differently this year this year as you probably saw when you approved your budget those those items now come into a column underneath the education fund they've decided there's enough control by some of these outside fonts that they need to be reported within the school district so with that we're going to look at things a little bit differently and just came up with a few recommendations of one there's your software allows you to track that in a different manner now so i know you're going to look into how to use that software to be in

064the partners with this new standard also just taking advantage of your funds being part of things that could be functioning part of skyrim and really having an extra look at those reviewing some of those i know that bankruptcy but i also recommend spending the business office being able to review some of the activities and the funds with that information inspector thank you for all the activities aren't inspired because one small fund that is not inspired um and then like i said looking for anomalies we found there are some a few accounts with negative balances that are really borrowing from other funds we recommend trying to control that and then we we did find oneness posting and one invoice out of our sample so not very many but one that didn't have really the proper sign

065off of review so i think just additional review of those activity signs would help alleviate some of those issues and control that area that's always a bit of a risky area the governance letter just required the communications to go over that quickly pretty clean report um significant new accounting policies are noted in this letter as i mentioned you did have to implement yes the 84 on fiduciary funds this year that did change the way activity funds show in their annual financial report there were no significant accounting estimates reports on cash basis of accounting we had no difficulties with management and the audit process we want to share with you the governing board and then this year i say congratulations to the heather and your team each year we usually find a few adjusting entries um

066we only found one minor audit adjustment during the audit process here so great job making sure things are classified in that right spot i know how they're entertained very diligent and making sure things are getting coded to the right area and correcting them as they see things that be corrected if an error does occur that is all i have i appreciate the opportunity to come and present this and present your results and get everything done by the isbe deadline does anyone have any questions for me from reports explorer or my report tonight and if you care um the uh the activity folks have already been inserted but a separate database called svaa so now what i'm going to do is follow the directions and actually include and put it merge it somehow i'll figure that

067one out but and then also for the one term that did not have signatures before they put in place some procedures as well so that in the future that they they will um sign off on it because that thing is with sbaa was just the principal signing off but i mean i think copenhagen kind of wanted it to come through central office as well so we'll be doing that as well as well with the new gatsby 84. i feel like years ago activity funds are kind of like a wild wild west of accounting [Music] brought those more into mainstream so it sounds like this is nearing completion yeah this will add some additional layers of really protection there with a lot of fun going through those accounts [Music] thank you very much thank you superintendent

068recommends the board of education board of education approve the 2021 audit has presented it's a motion to prove the audit is there a second second further discussion on the body yes heather we're going to talk about the budget now though the budget's been on display now for 30 days think so i appreciate any questions and coming in to visit and everything and it gives me an opportunity to look through other people's eyes as well to see how things look so i do appreciate it and the only thing that's changed since the hearing is there was an amendment uh to one of the grants so i just it wasn't a difference in their money but just moved it from certain funds or certain accounts so nothing really has changed since the hearing last week so i

069just um if you have any questions or anything let me know how you get my computer or any last questions or thank you for sitting down and having conversations oh no i like kind of you know probably i'd like to talk about it so if you do like just be aware if you come in strange but okay is it a second second is there a further discussion on the budget for questions okay yes [Music] sometimes in the uh in the activity funds we we just like to have approval though with our regular funds 110 203 or our operating funds if we for some reason during the year usually due to funding so say the same case is laid on something in one fund but we have money in working cash we can do a transfer

070so that we're not negative at the end of the month that's what the temporary chances are those are loans so those are something at the end of the year that i pay back so i just it's basically it's a journal entry i move from working cash to the account that needs the funds and then at the end of the year i move them back before even that next month that money comes through as soon as money comes in so that's just to be able to do that throughout the year if we need to the only two uh loans both temporary and permanent that i put in there was for o m just simply because we have been short in o m in the past again i'm trying to divert some of those expenses and again

071it's just because it is solely based off of property taxes we're not getting any state money or any other type of money in that account the other one is transportation transportation is because our transportation claim was lower this last year meaning that we are expected to get less money due to ridership so um so i just wanted to put a safeguard in there we are going to review that again because there's another review renew you can review it for through another period so we're going to do it again just to make sure we didn't miss anything but i just want to be prepared in that account if in case there is not enough to cover it with the extra pure money i did not put any permanent or temporary transfers in for education okay so

072the temporary transfer resolution the recommendation is to approve resolution temporary transfers of working cash as presented their motion to do that is there a second second during further discussion on the temporary transfer resolution yes yes nick murray yes fantasy no yes all right now we have a permanent transfer resolution again i want to be able to at the end of the year if needed to design i have to but i want to be able to cover those same two times o m and transportation if needed um this last year the only one i ended up doing out of the three that i had proposed um was o m so i had that i had proposed education oh and transportation our transportation costs are way down so i did not have to do that and just

073because it ended up that way it did not have to do with education but just to have that safeguard there but i don't think we need to do it with education this year just because we had the extra tier funding so the board has seen the resolution for the agreement with cash funds should we have to recommend support approve that resolution to do that [Music] think murray yes henry yes lamb yes hennessy no key yes thank congratulations next item your key learning plan and resolution yes so we have the hearing on this prior to the board meeting on the e-learning plan so i don't have anything new to present i'm happy to answer any questions okay there's a recommendation to approve your e-learning plan and the resolution as presented is there a motion to do

074that so is there a second second any discussion or questions the only question that i'm wondering about and you might have some thought process um the hours of the day for teacher contact um as a working parent i'm wondering if there's a way to and i don't know how this works with contract time so i don't know if this is like an appropriate request is there a way to i would hate for parents to think they can't contact a teacher because before nine o'clock or you know you like if they need clarification on what their fourth graders will do and then they need good work does that make sense yeah so like i'm wondering if can we wait for the time or i don't know so i so just a couple things on that thank

075you for contacting me this weekend i think um we can definitely change the to the teacher contract hours within there um especially you know i feel you know through the day that teachers would check their email throughout the contest time and i think that's absolutely fair and i think your teacher should be more than willing um to do that so okay i don't see that as a problem um but teachers are well our parents are welcome to email our contact teachers at any time now we do ask teachers to please disconnect in the evening and not return you know please don't be on all the time and spend time with their own families but i think you know after you mention that um we're required to have a five hour day and so that's why

076you'll see it as five and a half hours with the lunch built in for that but i think in terms of expectations for for returning emails to parents i think that we can definitely do that anything else any questions yes sick murray yes macaulay yes item six adaptive pause plan for instruction yes so i just want there to do separate documents or one online um and so the adaptive cause my hope is that we would never ever have to use it but i thought it would be beneficial to our teachers and for parents to kind of understand what would be expected and what the day would look like should we have to do an emergency closure this um has to occur through joint agreement with the health department that that is what's needed um and

077so this is slightly different than an emergency day um the expectation would be that if it's an adaptive cause staff would be coming on site and therefore they would have internet access um families would have the opportunity you know we would know that we were sitting down to check out hot spots uh so that they too would have internet access and so the plan then would look very similar to what our remote students experienced last year we meet the five clock hours that are required both at the junior high high school and the elementary it looks just a little bit different because we don't want our little kids at the devices for the solid like five and a half hours so they would follow a very similar schedule to what our elementary remote teachers did

078last year they might have a morning meeting and do a lesson and then have a break where they're working independently or doing some sort of activity not on the device and then they would come back for another lesson and have some time away come back for less and have some time away in between there the teacher might be doing some small group instruction on google classroom with various groups of students um but then also you can see that there would be um for junior high and high school kids like we had last year when we were on our set office hours so kids were struggling with skill or concept they had a set time where they could reach out to those teachers and get some help and support so questions about the shortened day i

079don't know what kids on the devices for the entire period but also again we're probably not going to have a ton of notice that this is going to happen and so it gives the teachers an opportunity in the morning to adjust to take their what was intended to be an in-person lesson and get it flipped around and ready to go remote with them so this is not a requirement it was just simply something that we put together like i said so parents and teachers would kind of know what the expectations were for the school year should be needed it is teachers administrators parents everyone's hope that we will not need this you clarify enter junior high get the office hours on lunch and then it has office hours um yeah probably thanks um yeah right

080here yeah okay wait no can i answer questions um technically we should have more time before so um there's a recommendation that we appreciate that the cause plan for instruction is your motion to do that so is there a second second thank you all right um so where it says the high school patterns will be open for students to access wi-fi are we allowed if we're on a public chat room are we allowed to have students in the program that's a great question i think that's gonna be a case-by-case okay so i it can there are a lot of different scenarios in which we could be shut down so um if we're able to open that would be ideal um and like i said staff would be reporting for work so if a kid needed

081to come in otherwise we do have the hot spots that are available for check out there also then if there's a if we go on this adaptive pause fifth of a day so far this year um i would just rather have a plan and everybody know what's expected then not have a plan and be like what are you gonna do and this will be every day right not uh yeah friday again okay other questions yes this is the latest batch of policy five-year reviews and updates and so this is um first reading and then next month would be the approval and so i'm happy to answer any questions i don't i didn't see anything that's just really a massive change they all seem to be either five year refused or just some minor needle references

082or minor working changes the only question i had was in reference to jeremy's previous proposal to policy 6-2-16 let me pull it up right isn't that one of them that you had suggested modifying germany is that is that in any way of fascinating it shouldn't i'm sorry no that's no so um in august doctor henrik said he introduced um some additional language for this policy and actually we met last week and talked about maybe putting that into a different but related policy so i think that the update here that we have for six colon 260s doesn't impact what he introduced okay actually um just gives another option for curriculum um yeah by using a uniform grievance procedure or the curriculum objection form okay okay so brent would you have that other questions tonight yeah you

083know i actually have kind of a concern about this press policy thing that we do because ever since i've come on board we sort of treat these press policies like a given like there's just some trivial thing that's given to us and um i'm not sure that many of us really look very carefully at what is being said because we're sort of told or out there or something that this is just something we should go through and as i was reading through it i noticed um some of these policies so in the press plus document that they give you um it gives which laws are changed because or which policies are changed because there's a law which ones are administrative and then this five-year review and as i look through these one of the policies

084we have is 2-130 the board superintendent relationship and the policy that was added in on the five year review suggested that we added a line to the beginning of the policy that said the school board directs through policy the superintendent in his or her charge of the administration of the district by delegating its authority to operate the district to provide leadership and um i have read our school code a couple of times and so this was a familiar selling anything to me and there's more to the policy but that was not changed so i understand the non-changed parts are important um but we had this footnote that said that this policy was updated in response to a five-year review and then it said statutory text previously in the footnotes was moved to the policy as

085a result of the press advisory board feedback so this press advisory board decided that this should be in our policy and so i went back to the law and looked it up to see what the law actually said right and the law doesn't say the same thing as what they put in the statute and so the beginning starts the same that's why i recognized it right the first phrase was the same but what they suggest for a policy is that we say by delegating the authority to operate the district but the law said including considering without without including without considering the recommendation of the superintendent concerning the budget the building plans the location of sites selection retention and dismissal of employees the selection of textbooks instructional material courses of study and then it went on

086and the rest was the same right but there was this change in there and so then i went and thought well maybe i missed something so i went to the isd and i took the training on press 107 right they do a training where they explain to you these different things and it was not in their room they skipped over that policy and so then i decided to think who is actually proposing these policies and it's the press advisory board so i went and figured out who was on the press advisory board and i have a list of people that i won't read out loud um but they have their title after them and every one of them is either an attorney or a superintendent or an assistant superintendent or former superintendent so it's a

087group of superintendents and attorneys that are putting these forward and so while i have concerns that this policy seems to say that the board is going to delegate their authority to run the district to the superintendent which is problematic to me just as a note a bigger problem that i sort of occurred is that we have someone somewhere else writing policies and we're not even looking at them before we adopt them we're technically looking at them but we're not really i don't have the time to do this for every policy on the list right so look into it look at the law watch a video um it's what i feel that we might need to be more judicious with how we just hold these policies through without even looking at them and consider what is

088happening because what's essentially happening here is that some lawyers and superintendents from chicago and springfield are making up policies here and that may or may not reflect an apartment right i mean i don't know what their values are i don't know what their thing they're trying to achieve in the school district is i just know that they're making policies and we certainly have a spin these are the policies we for sure should adopt and then let's consider other policies um and so i just have a lot of concern about just adopting these policies without really looking at them and this one in particular i would suggest that we remove because i'm just not sure that when the law says that the superintendent should be recommending to us things about sites buildings budgets staff curriculum instructional

089materials that we should take away and then replace that with we just delegate everything i think the board should keep their um authority to to consider these things i think the superintendent should certainly recommend on these things that's what the law says um but i i feel as though we need to really think about this and maybe take this policy out um and so i know that lots of people think when i object to things that i'm being an obstructionist but i really feel like i'm just doing research and looking at what's in front of me and i just i'm just not sure i want us to say that we give away our sorority so colleen i i happen to pull out the foundational principles of effective governance beyond the association school board and it

090says the board delegates authority the board delegates authority to the superintendent to manage a school district and provide leadership for staff such authority is communicated through written word policies that destiny district and operating parameters i for one do not want to take on the job of the superintendent we we pay our administrators to do that so i guess so i definitely need you to explain more about what you mean by well i think i have two points right one is that there's legal things that have to be in our policy correct and there's other things that that get put in by this advisory board that are not necessarily legal requirements and then number two your second point is that you feel like this policy is and i'm you can correct me i'm wrong here that

091this policy uh is a little bit too general and also just delegating those uh tasks that you mentioned before to the superintendent without board approval correct correct so certainly let me you're totally correct let me be very clear i don't think that we should run school um we're not the superintendent we have a good superintendent over here here on our school what i'm saying is that kind of what jeremy said there's things that we still as a board are responsible for that there's a reason the law says that we direct the superintendent through policy and that we consider her or his recommendations on all of these things so there's a difference between day-to-day running the school and being the body that approves the recommendations of the superintendent and that's the way that the community has

092input into our schools that's the reason we have a school board is because we're supposed to be overseeing what happens in the school district and the community is supposed to come and we're supposed to reflect what we need in our community if we didn't have individual things in education we could just get rid of all the boards someone in springfield could write a bunch of rules and that's how everything would be i don't disagree with you i think what i'm confused about is what in this is making you think that the board will have a say in what the superintendent brings forward because it says right here school board directs through policy through policy so if we have a policy in here that says the superintendent it feels like you're kind of thinking that maybe

093this is taking away the voice of our local school board because some lawyers and some superintendents put it together but it's also best practice as stated by the illinois association of school boards and it's very similar to what we already do so that's why i'm confused i'm confused why this specific language would make you think that we would somehow lose the ability to keep our school district what we want our sculpture to be by delegating that to the superintendent by delegating the authoritative i'm sorry no no first of all the iasp is a lobbying organization that's run by superintendents right so i'm not sure with everything from the isb is something we should take like for example the isb the other in the past few months strongly advocated that we reduce the amount of recess

094our kids have at school there was a policy suggesting that kids have 60 minutes of recess in k-8 the time that they were moving and the ideas be advocated to reduce that and so now we have no longer have which is 30 minutes five and they consider that a win but just because a lobbying group decides that that's what they want and that doesn't make it right or doesn't make it i don't listen to you so i mean i don't really agree with that just because the iasb says something it's best practice i think that it's part of the problem is that they said we're moving the statutory language into the policy when i look at the statutory language that's not what they moved into the policy they said something too broad like we delegate

095our authority to the superintendent and i want to be abundantly clear this has nothing to do with our particular superintendent right our particular superintendent has even indicated that she's intending to retire in a couple of years and enjoy her life probably um and then we'll have other superintendents right so this is not about a person or that we don't want someone to do some job it's a policy for a whole district that if we say we delegate away we say by delegating our authority to operate the district to her that's different than saying and we're going to take her recommendations to consider which means we still make the last choice right so one of those things and there is curriculum and it's not lost on me that this is coming at a time when in

096the national and state environment curriculum has really come to the forefront and so in this times when people are in turmoil and and very divided about this we're coming in with something that takes away the wording the board will consider the recommendation and it replaces that wording with the board will delegate their authority to run the schools to delegates authority to quote unquote needs empowering the superintendent and staff to pursue board ends single-clientedly and without hesitation a board that does or re-does staff work disempowers the staff high levels of superintendent and staff accountability require high levels of delegation is difficult for anyone of customers to direct action however to appropriately stay focused on the big picture and avoid confusing staff members of the school board must discipline themselves to trust their superintendent and staff and

097not involve themselves in the day-to-day operations so delegating authority doesn't mean that the board will not have a say in what happens it means we trust the person who retired and currently employed to leave the school district and if she's not doing a decent job we won't have a conversation about that when it comes time for an evaluation but to have a board sitting there saying we are going we do not delegate authority to the superintendent that is saying we're going to be getting that work done and that's not our job it's the superintendent's job i'm not suggesting that we take away our delegation this is someone adding this in to the way we do things so why can you not read that in there you're saying you don't want it you don't want it

098in there because you don't like that superintendent because i think as jeremy said it is too general and it replaces the statutory language like why don't we if they say we're gonna put the statutory language in why don't we take the statutory language and put it in charlie you've not had time to prep on any of this probably any thoughts you have on the interpretation here i mean certainly can you hear me yes yeah okay i can certainly try to weigh in on this i mean i i think that probably as you all know it's not uncommon for school districts to use press as a starting point for most policies for the reason that i believe one of you mentioned that otherwise it would take you a lot of time and effort and likely a

099lot of financial resources to work with an outside law firm to confirm that every policy you have was complaining with the law so it's usually done as a starting point but that doesn't mean that there are portions of it that don't work for your particular district that those cannot be modified language is typically not included in a policy is because it's not usually user friendly legislators are not mostly they're not known for user language and it's as it works like in practice so that's why likely there's not actual statutory language included in the policy itself i would have to look at it more closely but that's typically why i think there's a difference though between we can all read the superintendent will make recommendations that the board will then make decisions on substituting that with

100will delegate their authority to i don't think that's a difficult language to understand i think there is a difference and the responsibility still lies with the school board and we have delegated authority uh for example to the attorneys to the superintendent and i as a school board member kind of feel like i'm pulling my hair out just to make sure that i understand how many touches we have with the attorneys and what the attorney says was one of my concerns about using that language in the beginning when we didn't make the vote to delegate that to the superintendent i at the same time see lawyer bills to the tune of 300 000 a year and then i see bills that also indicate that we are touching these attorneys a lot as a board member i'm

101responsible for approving bills and understanding i think delegating authority takes away an important check and balance it makes it too easy for a single person to make decisions and go down a path with no one providing a check to that power so the idea of a school board is to be the check to the balance it's supposed to work together but when you turn over your authority and decision making power to a single person that can lead you down a slippery slope now i think when you understand that the statutory language leaves the fundamental balance of power in place and what we've been presented with from press shifts that power that that is something that we should be discussing as a school board and deciding if that's something that we want to do i don't

102like taking anyone's blind suggestion about what the policies should be for our district and then when you do more research into the organizations making those suggestions there is pause for cause for pause to understand what the motivations of those entities might be and we should take that into our decision making when we adopt policies and we should still retain our authority to tweak policies as we see fit for our community again i'm going to ask what in this is saying that this is turning all decision-making power over to supreme court the voice of the board of the education the board of when you delegate your authority to someone that person can then go make all of the decisions that they want to without directing her by policy if we have policy that says you need

103to bring this back for a vote yes she needs to have the ability to make a decision on a daily day-to-day basis without coming back to us for a scandal approval on everything and our policies give very clear indications of how that is done and that's why we have a whole host of policies and so we don't need to ever delegate our entire authority to that we have a set of policies in place that direct how that is to be done for almost every scenario that we can think of because we have a broader set of policies so it is unnecessary to take the step to say we will delegate everything to you outside of what's already written what's the status term that we're saying the statutory language says including without limitation considering the recommendations

104of the superintendent considering the budget building plans locations of sites selection retention and dismissal of employees and the selection of textbooks instructional material and courses and studies so would it be your recommendation when we approve this next month that we change the trust language to the actual i would think that would be a good choice for us that we would have it actually reflects the statutory language is 16.7 so if you'd like it right here yeah you need to take a break about 90 minutes it's been a little more than that so we'll take a five or ten minute break when we come back we'll start with agenda item number eight we're on reception you yeah i'm back okay very good all right so we are back in session uh we're gonna item number eight

105before we begin i want to remind everyone in the room that you know we are under a masked mandate right now in public education i should respectfully wear your mask or respectfully excuse yourself remember all right sonny okay so um policy 2240 up on the screen i was hoping i i was asking questions about this to dr hall and um we kind of felt like maybe it would be better as a for discussion or conversation so i need i was hoping that if we could talk together we might be able to clarify that first section that says policy development um in the interest of efficiency so my thought process is when i have a 4 30 a.m wake-up call like too many people and spend the entire day with students and then i come and

106have a board meeting that lasts until midnight my brain is much by midnight and i don't feel like i'm really fairly um assessing any uh decisions and making decisions that maybe i'm not able to give full thought to or coherent thought to so with that in mind if we could make our meetings a little more efficient a little shorter um i'm wondering if this policy might be able to help us with that and the most recent policies have been um proposed or as new policies or revised policies i'm wondering how this might impact the time we're spending in meetings so it says anyone may propose new policies changes to existing policies or elimination of existing policies staff suggestions should be processed as a superintendent which makes sense suggestions from all others should be made to

107the board president or the superintendent and then it lists all the different things that the superintendent is responsible for um and including getting advice and suggestions from people who it would affect and then having policy recommendations directed in the written form for board deliberation so i guess my interpretation of this and this is why i don't have a conversation because it seems like maybe we're interpreting this differently my interpretation of this is you have a new policy idea you have a revision show policy you're going to take that to either max as the board president or more of the corporate president and oh and or lindsay and say here's here's what i'm wondering about here's what i'm thinking here's what i'm noticing and then the superintendent in a conversation i mean perhaps it's a two-minute

108conversation that lindsey is able to say oh well we actually have a policy about that here or the reason this policy is the way it is is because of xyz and then when it comes to that first reading all of that extra stuff is already done does that make sense so something where it doesn't necessarily have to turn into you know like like jeremy when you brought your first when you brought one of the policies i said well isn't this covered under whatever policy and you're like uh i don't have a policy like to have that beforehand would have helped with our conversation or like with number three having policy recommendations drafted into written form before deliberation that's not that wasn't done i mean like colleen you had great thoughts on your policies that you

109wanted to propose but that didn't come from the superintendent that came from you for deliberation which was a great starting point so i just need i need clarification like are we are we following this are we modifying is there a way to make it more efficient so that we're not spending hours out of working talking about policies that maybe we could talk about beforehand and then bring to the table like already you know kind of thought through does that make sense well i think i get what you're saying uh the in my instance and and i don't know if it's generalizable or not but um that uh i had mentioned those topics before but never had any detailed discussions about it and unfortunately i had some other things to deal with in august that kind

110of got in the way of having things a little more in order but there were still the material there the um the actual thought of this is what i think you've happened and having a discussion and i didn't think we spent too much time on it at the last uh so and then we've done some additional work on it since then so i think yes you can do it beforehand you could do it in between that person's second reading after getting some feedback from the board in general as well too so i think it's honestly flexible but i agree that the superintendent needs to be part of that processing part at some point before it gets to that second reading um i mean ideally yes before the first week well and like i'm looking again

111at the having policy recommendations directed into written forms before the liberation is that that word deliberation would happen at the first reading right so in order to have the policy recommendation drafted into written form the superintendent would need to know about it before the first meeting right first reading i'm sorry i mean i guess i just i just need to know like are we following this is there a different way to do it so that we can be more efficient i i mean that's why i want to have a conversation does something in this need to change i don't know i'm fine i mean here's the deal uh it depends on who you are when you ask for things on the agenda and whether or not you can get a policy put forth so some

112people as board members have more success when they ask for something to be added than others and it's very frustrating to be the other who continues to ask and no matter what hurdle i jump through or ask the i am denied the opportunity so you are left with trying to put something on paper to get in front of the board there's no other way to do that we just have a policy committee i sat on it if we're looking for efficiency gains then that policy committee could certainly be reinstated uh having said that we would have policy committee meetings people would make come to consensus in that meeting we would come to the board meeting and be overridden so there's no real efficiency gain if that policy committee isn't used for the purposes of coming

113with the recommendation that's going to be accepted by the rest of the board um we have lots of policies that we don't follow unless we want to so i don't think the problem is with what's written in any policy versus any other policy is that it's not followed consistently and that gets us into trouble it causes bad feelings among board members causes us to fight more meetings more of our meeting time discussing how we're going to get topics on the agenda and in front of us for discussion than actually discussing those topics i mean i don't know i mean to me this says should be brought to the board president bringing to the board president the policy that you want as written is following what is written here but it's not because it says that

114the superintendent is going to be bringing those policy recommendations drafted in a written form well it says the staff suggestions should be processed through the superintendent suggestions from all others should be made to the board president or the superintendent it doesn't say you can't come with a policy in the form you'd like it to be i've read through these policies lots of times i understand the structure of the policy and you could say if you if you needed to look consistent you should follow the policies and the outlines that we have them policy development i mean there are ways that we could have board members bring a policy that looks more consistent with what we have here but in actuality most of these policies are not written by us we just adopt what somebody else

115wrote so i don't know if these are the most effective policies they don't seem to be in my opinion working for us i don't feel like we're making a lot of progress and so adopting what the iasb and press says and the way that they want to get things done doesn't seem to be working for us is this a press policy yes okay so can we can i i'm so sorry can i ask about the policy committee yes again um i know that we haven't done any committees as of right now right since at least since we said um is that something worth reconsidering is that i mean i know i know what you're talking about i remember saying that those meetings were hearing and i i remember that so is that would that be

116something worth researching you have to function super differently okay right i mean it was not i mean that presupposes that we are going to accept board members being able to bring policies that are outside of what is brought to us by press so well but we are but but jeremy brought his and then i think that's what spurred this discussion is that we don't like that the board is bringing policies and the way that we're bringing them forward are you asking why i want this on the agenda no i'm just saying in my experience what i believe is that when a board member takes it upon themselves to create a policy you spend more time discussing whether or not they brought the policy in the right way and do we want to discuss this way

117that we do the merits of the policy so in order for anything to move forward i believe that this board would have to accept the premise that any board member can bring a policy in written form for discussion to the board and we won't argue about how it was brought we would start talking about it on its merits so and i i think that's why i wanted to bring this because i feel like there's a discord there and i wanna um honestly what i was hoping is that upon our um oath of office and to the board that we would be able to have a board self-evaluation but after putting out 30 days and nobody having a single mention date where everybody was available we can't do that now until march and so my hope

118was that what you're saying would be part of a conversation kind of a stepping stone stepping stone to what do we hold true to as board members specifically with this the reason i asked for this to be on the agenda is because i feel like unlike what you're saying i don't think it's an issue of people bringing policies board members bringing policies to the table i think that's i don't have any issues with that at all i think my concern is that that is happening without any kind of even acknowledgement or conversation with the person who runs the organization and so to me i just wonder like we have this in place do we not want this in place anymore like do we want to say we don't need to have a conversation with the

119superintendent before we bring a policy forward like i feel like if i was going to propose something to a business and i was on the board of directors of this business i would go to the ceo and i would say excuse me can you please i i would like to see this xyz happen can you please explain to me why your handbook has this such and such policy in it so that i can better understand what i need to change or adapt or adjust so it's not the issue of people bringing policies i don't think that's the issue at all i'm just feeling like there's a disconnect between the process that is outlined here and the process that is happening does that make sense it does okay that actually happens in a lot of areas

120so for example example we had agreed that if a board member asks the week in advance to have something on the agenda then it would be put on the agenda but that doesn't happen whenever you agree to that a lot of them end up on the agenda some of them we end up handling in other ways that are more efficient or more timely or fit with what's going on this is a business meeting we tend to handle more of the businessy things at this meeting other meetings are study sessions those are one we like to do more of our in-depth analysis in in and maybe some problem-solving or or more discussion so just because someone comes forward a week early and says i'd like to talk about this doesn't mean it goes on that next

121agenda that that is the deadline you're correct we didn't establish that so i think maybe there's a disconnect there and again that's not an attempt to shut stuff off but it is an attempt to try to channel stuff in a way that makes it makes it best and most efficient for us to handle well we talked about you know sonny brought up the the uh the board self-evaluation that we tried to schedule months ago and nobody's got any available dates we've got that on now for large i am hopeful hopeful some of this procedure stuff we can all get together on a night that we plan to map out and charts and courses on it's the way we handle things and talk about it those nights that night i i don't know if that'll come

122off that way or not a few years ago when we tried it it was just i was last fight as a dismal failure but we're gonna give that another shot and i would encourage everyone um to plan to do some really hard work and discussion that night about how we can move forward on some things particularly processing i'm sorry well actually i lost my hands okay all right i i if you if you think of it um i do i think maybe we should revisit the policy committee idea perhaps because i feel like if we could make it a little more efficient within these longer within these board meetings i feel like we could actually get more on the agenda if we have more efficient processes that are moving us through the business that needs

123to get done you remember oh i'm sorry it doesn't die so when i read this it seems like one of the implications here is sort of like what to happen from people outside of this process right because it starts by saying anyone can propose a policy so anyone here could propose a policy any staff could propose a policy but sort of in my mind gives this idea like if you're outside the system how did you get a policy in right which is different than if you're a board member because as we just talked about the board members direct the district through policy right so it's like a different situation if you're already on the board although we do give the policies to max and lindsey to put in um but we certainly don't ever do

124this policy with press right i mean none of these press 107s were written by the superintendent they were all written by press and brought to us so i think there's a differential between we don't just want anyone off the street to stay here here's the policy all right um and so i think that's one of the differentials as well thank you perfect is this something that would be relevant to a work of evaluation i think so right thank you i mean i guess what i will say though is that i don't think we can put it seems to me like what one of the downfalls of having the policy committee was that it was almost like a veto if the policy committee didn't want to take it on the policy didn't make its way forward

125if we're going to wait for the board of valuation we shouldn't be stopping things like jeremy bringing policy forward because it stops the business i'm just trying to understand you know until then i think the idea that a board member who is responsible for implementing policy is it is appropriate for board members to bring policy forward if someone from the community as colleen pointed out plus to bring something something forward it's also appropriate there's just a different avenue for that because it has to go through different checkpoints so as long as we are not suggesting that we will stop the business of did that come across i'm just okay it was just when we said march is the but i think you sent an email that said let's not have any policies until we meet

126well i wondered if we could have this conversation this conversation before new policies came up and i don't know whether i mean nothing came up before that um and so i just wanted clarification on this conversation and i think going into for self-evaluation i think this is a good baseline to have but no i never intended it for it to be a comment about not running so thank you for next item is curriculum discussion and i want to share a couple things that i know a lot of the board members wanted to talk about some critical issues one thing i want to talk about this this came out earlier is what are instructional materials okay and that was referenced earlier you know we argue about samantha's well i don't know if this is somatic or

127not i think it's important if we're saying that the board has to prove instructional materials what are the materials the board expects to approve because i i sense at this point in history people are referring to materials that historically have not come before the board for approval and so we need to be i think really clear on what we're classifying as instructional materials and what we're not and i think if everybody was on the same page there if nothing else there would be a lot less frustration questions about what we're approving and what we're not doing so i think it's important to have that discussion the other thing i'd like is for uh lindsay and nicole if they'd like if they've got anything to give us an update on where we're at in the process

128i think it was jeremy and and then i think either nicole or dr hall mentioned earlier there are some things that we are moving on um i know there are some comments earlier in public content that you know we've not gotten back there's nothing that's been done and i guess i'll go back to one of my analogies that i like to use it's an individual um you know i grew up on a light so i use like analogies and as an individual you know you can go out on a jet ski you can spin that thing on a dime you can start to stop on a hurry you can even bob and do everything and then after a while you know maybe maybe take on a partner in life maybe there's children you're more like

129a speedboat right you can't turn the thing out of dime anymore but speed bows can be relatively maneuverable and move pretty quick and the bigger your family unit becomes maybe the harder the bigger vote you need the harder it is well the school district's a lot like the nationwide okay it doesn't start very fast it doesn't stop very fast it doesn't spin very fast and there's a lot of people on the boat that we need to bring along with us because we don't bring them along with us they feel frustrated and they feel lost and they tend to want to jump overboard and we present okay um whether we're talking about parents or whether we're talking about staff or whoever so a lot of times things do not progress as fast as we might like

130so i know there's some things going on i don't can get update any of those tonight or not but first of all instructional material what board i guess is as you read the guideline that says we're going to improve instructional material what are you looking to approve so in in opposition to curriculum right so like it says we prove curriculum and it's a food food construction material like those are two separate things i mean first of all we do have a definition of that but apart from the definitions in terms of instructional material my vision of that is that the content that's given to students will be approved so if the student is doing something in the classroom that's being used to instruct the student and teach the student then it's instructional material like textbooks

131like the reading books like all of those things that are being used as instructional visitors i'm a teacher i'm teaching vocabulary and i get this brilliant idea that i'm going to do a word puzzle that shows vocabulary that focuses on this week so this month's vocabulary works and i create that and use that in my classroom where does that go for approval or does well [Music] in my opinion it's just my opinion what we've talked about before would help us with approving instructional materials so having i think you call them bumpers right so certain things where we say in lieu of you bringing that worksheet to us specifically right in these particular grades these are sort of the guidelines you have for which you don't have to do this right and i think we have

132intelligent enough people working in the district to understand what a bumper and guideline is right and then we don't have to actually look at this specific worksheet but here's the problem when kids get books that have sex scenes in them or 91 uses of the f word like we have to acknowledge that that's a different situation and we can't throw that out because we're gonna have a strong man of what do we do with the worksheet right you have to have the idea of what are we going to do and it looks different in different grades so in the young grades obviously they're sticking those books in those baggies and they're passing around the bumpers would be more effective i believe in that situation but when you get to junior high in high school you're

133not using that many books right so that those books could come and be approved especially if they're a more controversial nature for the parents so as i just want to make sure i'm hearing what you just explained or understanding it as opposed to because i i just brainstormed very quickly a list of what i thought instructional materials were and includes textbooks reading and math series libraries and classrooms library books and our media centers literature libraries lit circle books internet sites articles handouts any other supplementary materials such as pictures maps posters building boards music selections for abandoned choir videos guest speakers substitute teach plans and maybe even lesson plans be considered instructional materials and um there was an agenda request for nicola knight to bring all instructional materials to the board for this meeting to get

134approved prior to teachers using them in my classrooms this fall and um short of having a definition of that i'm not sure what to bring i know historically what has happened and if the board wants to move away from that or have a different definition or process about what comes to the board that's fine we just need to know what it is but again just clear so for my own clarification as opposed to bringing things like this to the board which i would hope is not really what you mean because that would represent just massive overreach and micromanagement that you're talking more about you're talking about um instead of having guidelines that as long as things are within those guidelines then the board will need to see that is that i'm not trying to put

135words in enough i don't know i'm just i'm not trying to prescribe i'm just starting the conversation i'm trying that seems more appropriate to say or maybe at the young grades it's more in terms of here's a library of things that we all use in terms of books right um i don't know what i do know is that it seems appropriate that to consider instructional materials to be novels that kids are being handed at school like i know that i don't know where the line is but i know that for me that falls into instructional material if they're saying to a kid you have to read this we're gonna have a test or we're gonna have this that that is instructional material right and we've had a lot of people have issues and it just

136seems that's in that group so most of the [Music] most of the concern here has been driven by specific guys right textbooks we historically have approved i i i think we don't get that okay i think for my just kind of watch all this unfold and understand what is happening it appears to be what has sparked most controversy has been novels now not that some [Music] not not that there couldn't be inappropriate other things from time to time but that seemed to be the bulk and i and in my mind you you're i i think you're pretty much on target i think that the younger ages there needs to be because we're not going to read every book that goes very first gradebook that goes on um yeah so there needs to be guidelines here's

137some of them probably need to be in guided um when you get to the junior high high school there probably needs to be guidelines about what is acceptable in the library and when it comes to a novel that's going to be the source of class obstruction that great that comes to a higher level does that make sense is that what we're saying i think it would go a long ways to have a syllabus for use for each class or um subject area where you would know that this is what is going to be taught as a parent but i'm talking about just like you would get at the college level course and these are the reading materials that are part of this course these are um projects that are a part of this course that

138you're going to be created on and to me that's pretty simple for us to look through and really have a general idea of what's going to be expected in the classroom then just approving a list of 150 books that's really kind of narrowed down to your subject area this is you know where the kids are gonna have to select one of these five books to write paper you know um so there's i think that producing a syllabus it goes a long way for some of our parents uh requests for having curriculum posted online you know there's there's a course catalog for the most part with um syllabus for syllabi for each subject area and that's where i think junior high high school could could really go a long way to easing some parent anxieties and

139concerns so just help me somehow because that suggestion is a junior high school there's a course syllabus i am accessible dr rummel dr hall initial thoughts um and again i understand you're on the spot i haven't maybe or maybe you haven't thought about this a lot okay what's what's the initial thoughts on that is that something we're easy to do are we well equipped i i think that there definitely are teachers in classes that already have um a syllabus and it's shared with parents in a variety of ways and then there's some that don't and it's that i agree that that is an excellent way to convey to parents here's what's being taught here's the material are being taught here's the goals for the course um i think that we should have some maybe common

140guidelines about how that gets communicated home whether that's through email or some of our teachers do have websites that could be posted on a website i understand that pushing it out through google classroom is not always the best way to make it to the parents so i again i don't have a solid idea would be a guess for me to say how many teachers are already doing that but i feel confident that some are i think that's and part of this conversation i don't know i don't know that it answers the question of what should come to the board i understand but there's the frustration that i think we are hearing is it is a parent level yes that was if that was it seems to me i tend to have sometimes too simplistic look

141at things like this but it seems to me that we could move more in that direction to whatever extent we can um and we can move 100 that direction that would just be awesome i think that gives parents who are concerned the information that they are concerned about i think what are your thoughts on that is the syllabus your thought process jeremy of just the communication piece or is this a set in stone this is what our kids are doing we will not fear from this right that's that i completely oppose that because as a parent and as a teacher i need to know that my kids teachers are adapting what's happening in that classroom based on what those learners are doing so for example if there's a situation where our kids my student my

142kid is not understanding the american revolution and the syllabus says that next week we're moving on to whatever new thing but the teacher determines that this class is really having a hard time understanding this concept and needs to spend another week on it and it's going to bring in some supplemental videos and perhaps it's going to read a diary from the time of the american revolution i need that teacher to have the ability to do that because those kids need to work with i'm sorry it doesn't have to have to date absolutely introducing material that was not in the syllabus let's let's talk about the difference between us okay i'm not a high school or a grade school teacher i'm not a college teacher i do teach real estate pre-licensing places to do that and

143we use a syllabus um and the syllabus kind of is a roadmap it shows what we're going to cover it shows the order we're going to cover in covered in ours even shows the weeks we plan on talking about that item but it is not the lesson plan for each one of those sessions the in reality the lesson plan for each session does shift and adjust it shifts and adjusts because students need more time on the math portion or they need more time on the law portion and then that varies with the class it varies with the students it also uh sometimes current events play a part right you're talking about fair housing and it was just a big fair housing case so all of a sudden maybe we spend a little more time on

144that because it's relevant it doesn't change our syllabus we're still covering over the course of the class with the same material we're covered in pretty much the same order on the same week but you're introducing the material that wasn't listed in that syllabus that's where i use verification okay no i think that there's flexibility to do that within those guardrails facilities so you're still accomplishing the same things you still have goals that you're trying to come there's objectives that you're trying to accomplish with this this course and you can obtain that of those objectives in different ways but you have like some like max a road map of how they are there so it may look a little bit different but it also uh prevent it also helps to maintain some consistency across classrooms especially

145where you have different teachers teaching the same subjects sure where sometimes i don't think kids are getting the same experience so i think that they're you know to me it just makes sense okay so i guess when i was picturing syllabus i'm picturing a syllabus that has here are all the materials you're going to need for this course so here are all the books here are all the you know articles that we're going to pull out of this that the other thing if that's not i mean so to me what you're saying jeremy is you want to have like let's say this is the high school civics course here are the goals that we're going to meet here are the standards they're aligned to here are the things your kid is going to be able

146to know and do by the time they finish this course that's the syllabus well i mean there's also there's by week one week two week three this is what our plan is so what happens so if they veer off of that well i think that's that's obviously there's got to be some flexibility because you can't just plow through well you say obviously which i agree with you to me that would be common sense and obvious but if we're going to sit here and say we need to approve this policy or this is now we need to approve it at the board level is somebody going to be upset that well week four you're supposed to be talking about this and this week five no i think that's something that's i agree but i'm worried that

147that's gonna happen here's here's what i think okay so you're teaching some examples of civics and jeremy's teaching we're all teaching the same class in three different segments okay and there's an article that just works really great to cover a topic and we decided the department or department chair or jericho or jeremy decides that we all need to use this arm all right well then maybe that's listen to the soul it's because we're all using this ever okay maybe i'm maybe my class is having particular questions or particular problems with one issue and the night before i read a great article that helps clarify that for my class and i bring that into my class because i'm the teacher i'm the educator i think that will connect with my class it's not part of what

148everybody's doing yeah i i think that's where we have the dark rails and trust teachers to make decisions now that works really really great maybe i want to come back to my department and say hey y'all maybe we need to put this in or maybe i don't know yeah there's let's face it what as courses develop that's how that stuff comes in right because somebody tried it and threw it good and i was and this one i just worry about um this is this is a direct hands-on example two i can give multiple but last year when i was teaching uh fifth graders how to write a literary essay i planned to use the same outline and same curriculum same guidelines same material same books with this fifth grade class that i had used with

149this fifth grade class next door and when i got into that situation it was an entirely different class they needed different mentor texts they didn't needed different examples it was a very difficult very different places so what i don't want to have happen is for us to say this is what we're expecting to happen and then to somehow take away the autonomy of a teacher who knows what's best for their class to be able to do what's best for their class do you understand my worry jeremy yeah i do and i think that that's valid but um i don't think it's reality i think that they're still going to have flexibility to make changes to their students now i wish i could say that it's the same as the doctor-patient relationship but it yeah so

150i think in reality there is flexibility and but i think that having some a general road map and guidelines and the the primary materials that are going to be used within a classroom um that are going to be used for a grade or evaluation those things should be apparent and easy for students and parents to identify and evaluate themselves i mean to me the idea that the board is approving curriculum and instructional materials for me means that the board is approving the process in which the district communicates what students are learning and what are the materials they're learning from and what are we saying about those materials i want to look at every worksheet i see my role as a board member to ensure there is a process in place for a parent to be

151able to go and figure out what worksheets are being used what texts are being used if you set the process up appropriately and we are if we have not started this at all then there's going to be a decent amount of work to get started but other districts have done this this is not reinventing the wheel you have a list of the books that you use it could be any of these books that that library once takes some time we can get it done textbooks come and go that they come before the board that's a little bit different books kind of go but we owe the parents and the students as we put those lists together something akin to common sense media common sense media is a great resource it takes a book it tells

152you what the content is if there are any triggers if there's sexual uh if there's identity like what are the concepts in this book that your child might run into i think a lot of the feedback we've heard from parents is that they were taken by surprise about some of the themes in the literature that was presented to their kids no one likes to be taken by surprised by them we as a board i believe our role in improving instructional materials is to make sure that there is a concise uh standardized way that we say when you approach a class this is what you can expect that probably includes a syllabus it probably includes major texts it probably includes worksheets teachers use a lot of the same stuff over and over so yes there's some

153work to be done it could also include a section that says we also may pull documents from the new york times other government sites the constitution you could have a section that says when i call other material it's usually from these types of sources it's different for me as a parent if it's a new york times article versus i can't even think of it i don't know i'm gonna say playboy can't think of anything else that would be like ridiculous right but it's going to make a difference to me where the article came from and i think we can have some section where people go oh those look like resources that i'm going to be okay with text cover i'm sorry that's literally the only thing that could come to mind um because i was

154trying to make some sexual powers right but but i feel like in our discussion here where we are getting lost in the forest for the trees as the board is this idea of approval no one wants to micromanage i don't actually want to say yes to a book and no no book i want to say yes to a process that ensures parents understand the books that are going to be put in the hands of their kids and the content they're in and they have the ability to weigh in before that happens on whether or not they feel it's appropriate that is a process issue we can do that and of course there are exceptions but the more that you have the bulk of that done the changes are not going to be i mean as

155long as there's a process for saying oh i updated i added a couple books i added a couple of books here um it's not an impossible test the other school districts literally say this is the list of books do not put a book on there even if it's a third grade book for your library until you update that so parents can see it it's just a part of the process for adding to your classroom as a teacher i think we can get around the hand tying the teachers for a process that delivers what it is that i think we're being asked for which is some idea of what's going on in the classroom and what our kids can expect and my ability as a parent to weigh in on whether or not that works for

156me personally and if it doesn't what can i expect my child to have as an alternative so when we say approve i don't want us to think that i don't have a discussion about which books i don't actually care but i do want to ensure a process that says these are the books that your kids can use these are the themes in those books if that's dangerous or triggering for your child you have the ability to know that beforehand and around those things that might be sensitive this is where we're going to be digging in and teaching and some of these topics we're just going to gloss by and i think we can do that i'm just going to say that i think this milana when here and just say i think this is something

157that really i mean are we either 100 and likes have agreed on every detail probably not because we're some individual people but i think there's i i think big picture where all timers accomplish the same thing i really do um i think most of what the concerns that each of us have um are kind of common and i think we can put together something that works pretty much for everyone will it check every single word numbers every single box [Music] and most boxes for most people and most importantly i think you can provide everybody with with a baseline of expectations that they can count that's what i like to do i don't want teachers to feel like they're being handcuffed to micromanage um i would like them to feel somewhat that they're being protected that

158they know that here's how we operate and if i'm operating in this way i'm you know i'm good um rather than all of a sudden um something happens and and you know i mean look let's face it usually in the past we've gotten involved in this kind of stuff this guy comes to our attention how does it come to our attention right and if i was a teacher i wouldn't like that because every time there was an incident it happened most probably in the classroom and if i could and so they know what to expect and again i think we need to look at putting some basic things in place um i don't know how big of an issue it is i i don't don't know what obstacles are in the way of getting some

159kind of syllabus online for all of our classes i'm sure there's some teachers that have it there i'm sure there's some teachers they could do it tomorrow morning first thing before they start the first period class because they've got it then we'll just have to upload it if we have the mechanism to do that i'm sure for others that would be a more nonsense i don't know but i think that's the way we need in my mind as a parent who's a lay person in education who knows what i know about education from school education and for 19 years of being on a school board that makes sense to me so but i think in order to protect those teachers and in order to make sure that if we're going to tackle this endeavor it

160is useful the district aka the administration needs to provide a standardized format to do that so parents go in every class the syllabus has the same format you find the textbooks in the same place you find the worksheets in the same place find websites that might be used in the same place because what will not go well for these teachers and i don't want them doing all this work to have it not go well is have everyone have their own format for that and parents get frustrated because nothing looks the same so if we're going to do this let's do this in a systematic way so that the process and the output looks the same across the district for all the classes and then becomes a much more effective tool for teachers to use and

161update and parents to use and inform themselves so essentially if i want i've got a student in high school means got seven classes i should be able to go to seven spots and seven websites and click on about the same spot and look for something that's titled the same way and mark the same way and when i open it it looks the same first is the textbooks then is the worksheets then are the websites here's you know attached you see the our version of the common sense media theme books uh you know i mean we owe that to the teachers to to devise a process that is easy for them to use and upload and maintain and then provide the consistency that parents are going to look for parents will be frustrated if it looks

162different and it's not consistent dr norman dr hall is helpful yeah i mean i again i i guess i'm my first question is i'd like to know and figure out you know how many teachers already have um a syllabus that's out there i think that's a relevant thing i think that this process um deserves a voice of the staff and the teachers agreement to also talk about how it can look and how how it should go um i think i think it is a goal to have a standardized format um i you know i i fear that um trying to explain and gain and unders have to get an understanding of how much time this takes only sounds like excuses it's our reality um our teachers are using our early release days um to work

163on unfinished learning you know we came off of a year last year of a year and three months of having not a complete school day so we've got some gaps to fill there so it is i'm not saying that that work can't be done work has been done um despite what some folks might think there's you know i've heard a lot of criticism about what's on our website what's not on our website there's more on our website about curriculum than there has been historically um and also i would invite anybody who has questions about curriculum i would just throw this out there how many of you have come in and met with dr romero or met with me i invite you in to do that it's not in an email it's uh what needs a

164phone call it beats trying to communicate in this context which really is not a two-way communication type of thing we know we have work to do i've never sat up here in the last couple of months and said that things are perfect and that there's not work to do we know that there's work to do um but we're a large organization um you know we've got 200 over 200 teachers teach a variety of different things and we're asking a lot of them and so we'll find ways to carve out time to to work on this we'll continue to do that our teachers have been working on what should be posted on on the website so i don't know dr rummel if you could provide an update on where we are with that so um i

165think ultimately the goal is to have everything up on the website that's what we've been working towards the past several years like we said there's you know like many other applications and other things our teachers have templates that they're trying to spend and keep going while probably their least favorite thing formally writing for a syllable so when we get to when you go to the website and you see the pieces that are put up there now as we continue to add to it weekly as units are finished um the curriculum that's up there right now it's done library level by subject area by unit a unit of study and within that um teachers that the dirk team we had a lot of discussions over the course of a year of what was going to be

166included on that curriculum piece and the key of that was what did they feel like was doable um it would be would be helpful so an understanding that we would continue to grow on that as once we got this foundational piece done then we would continue to add to it and so right now you'll find that there'll be a unit name on there and there'll be a pacing it'll tell you you know this unit designed for two weeks three weeks it a month it can look a little bit different at different grade levels because like at the elementary sometimes it'll say like september october you know because it may be something like social science or science that's taught every other day or every other unit right um and then within that are the essential questions

167and so these are questions that are not meant to be answered yes or no but these are questions that are meant to get kids really thinking and excited just take that with whatever the content is right so i just want to clear we all understand that we all get excited about different things but that would get them thinking about what it is that they're going to be learning about so um and then from there it goes into um the skills which i think is what kind of what you're getting at what is it as a result of this unit what can i expect my students to be able to do at the end of this unit of study and so that's what came out of both the dirt committee and actually should go back who

168started this with the first vertical team which is math and science who also gave input on what they felt was doable within the year that that means so each of the vertical teams they meet for seven meetings in addition to writing curriculum we're working on other things during those meetings so sometimes it's a textbook adoption we're going through that weekly process of reviewing materials um sometimes like when we did the math we were talking about what does it what is the research based on math why might we be looking at moving from what we used to do with high math and fifth grade compacted math then at the junior high so there's a lot of things that we're trying to get accomplished within those those meeting times and so that's why this was kind of

169established as a starting point oh and i'm sorry i forgot also the standards are listed on there whatever standards are going to be covered so those are the big pieces the unit name the facing the standards essential questions and skills um so i that's kind of where we are on the website right now it's just every time something gets added it's updated you'll find now that all of the uh the common texts for grades three through twelve for ela you'll find that those are now up on the website as far as in addition a definition kind of what is the literature circle what is it used for and then the choice selections within that and then the curriculum objection form so all three of those documents are right there on the very front of the

170curriculum website um in addition to that based off of the feedback from the last board meeting if you're working with lots of groups of teachers and getting feedback and kind of talking and lots of discussion um about kind of what would be those kind of uh boundaries right like what would we what would we say these are the things that we would use for instructional materials in terms of content at the end at the k2 level what would that look like at the 3-5 level what would that look like at the junior high what would that look like at the high school so those discussions have been going on um we have lots of feedback some of that's guided by content that we currently have been using and have been using for a long time

171other things are driven by maybe some of the um feedback that we've received from parents um that we've been using in terms of trying to kind of set those boundaries or guidelines um and then i'd say the other big thing that we've just been talking about is communication like how can we communicate to parents in advance what we're going to be teaching and what they can expect um so that you know it's on the website if they need it if once we get to that point but then parents don't necessarily have to wait for them so i think in terms of curriculum these are kind of like not the only things we've been working on those are kind of some of the big things related to this that we've either been working on long term

172or discussions does the when you said this is online i i'm sure i would suspect that we don't have a common look across the district but are we striving to do a common look maybe at least within buildings or the grade levels or subjects everything is submitted on a form it looks exactly the same from kindergarten through 12th grade um i mean just acceleration and title fall under responsibility so those are up there as well and then you've got k5 this they look just slightly different here because of i'll show you in a minute but k5 did you just go through so you want to look at third grade and then there's all the content areas and then here at the top of every page are the standards and so those are the standards for

173reading for third grade and then here are the units they're all right here in this format they actually submit it on a google form and so it populates into the same format for every single um course or grade at the in the district and then you can see it's just a little bit different for six through twelve you got sixth or eighth grade and then the high school level you know it's more so within um you know within the department because of all the courses so um we were making really good progress and then we had a little hand done it and so it kind of slowed us down a little bit but um i think by the end of this so ela remember is taking two years to work on by the end of

174hopefully this first semester all of the reading units will be up and then we'll finish up with writing here in the second semester and that should be up on the website we're just doing those as two separate units per grade level of course in most cases there'll be some that be more integrated um yeah and so then as we move through we have to go back through and pick up the ones that we didn't finish from before then but the teachers have been great with it it's kind of i hate to say it's kind of slow and steady but in a way it's kind of slow and steady just because of all the other responsibilities and things that we're working through right now so i kind of want to agree with something lindsay said earlier

175but we don't want to just make all this work for our teachers and have them do all this mindless work or whatever but it doesn't actually solve the problem at hand which at this point seems to be people actually understanding what's happening with their student well i i'm like kind of equipped because it looks like it looks me at the government surprise a lot of areas yet i heard earlier tonight there's a feeling we've done nothing so where's the disconnect there my syllabus is up is it works help me understand people i mean so i guess what i'm saying is i hear all this good work happening it's not that i don't want the good work to happen or something but i don't want the teachers to do about the work and then still have

176everyone upset right and that doesn't seem like a good outcome for anyone at the table well please know that this work has been going on for a long time so it's and it's gonna it's gonna continue but i do agree that that um you know there's still concern and um i mean there's i guess there's still a problem that we're hearing about that i would love for us to try to solve or make a to do something about that does not diminish the work that's being done it does not create a big new pile of work but i feel as though their parents are still saying i don't understand so you know there might be a list of books there but then there are other books being used and those other books being used our

177books the parents are complaining about it so maybe we have to go back to this idea of bumpers where i mean we have a list of books a list a book not on the list is being read in school and it's about a dad raising a shotgun and trying to murder his children and for pre-teens maybe the parents don't like that very much right so we do all this work and yet that's still slipping through and then parents are really upset and i don't know it's just a mistake or whatever but maybe some kind of idea that there's boundaries or bumpers or whatever we'll call on them could help they're knocking these inadvertent flip throughs or something just last week i got an email from one of my students one of my kids was teachers

178and they were describing a scene in a book that they were getting ready to read just giving their parents a heads up and i greatly appreciated that um and with all the different parenting styles out there it would affect some kids and it might not affect other kids so i appreciate that parents were given a heads up i know that that can't be done or maybe it can be done like across the board but i agree with these guidelines that we kind of need to have boundaries for like sensitive topics political issues sexual issues stuff like that just don't know how we can get there and how quickly we can get there but it's obviously something that we need to address all right nicole you just noticed was we've done a lot so what we're

179doing is that hitting some expectations and i think mostly from what i'm sensing is that you know what i i think syllabuses might address a little bit and and then you know the list of supplemental reading requirements um i i think that would eliminate a lot of our so we are working on criteria for selection and i don't know what to say but then it's being it's being worked on and if at some point it will be completed um that's one piece that probably helped i just interject that as we've been having these conversations about books and materials a couple policies that we already have in place address the concerns that parents had so like teaching about controversial issues is sixth on eight and it deals more with discussions of sensitive topics in the instructional

180program including guest speakers but i feel like it could be applied to the materials that we're using in the classroom it says that it needs to be age appropriate with proper decorum considering the students ages should be followed it should be consistent with the curriculum and serve an educational purpose informative present to balance you respectful of the rights and opinions of everyone emotional criticisms and hurtful sarcasm should be avoided and not tolerant of profanity or slander i mean we have that in there for other things i feel like that's a common sense thing to put in for instructional materials kind of those bumpers um but i think outlining a process this is how how books get put into circulation would be helpful but referring back to leaving the idea of the common sense media website

181we do use that don't we yes so okay can you tell me more about how we use that like so it's just it's just one resource yeah we also use school library journal and some other recommendations i'm just trying to place ages on that um the books that people were not happy with all of those are rated 14 and older none of those are rated 18 and older okay um sorry you know i want to be clear that you know there they're just missing there are different things that are okay for different families um we see that all so i just want to be clear that even though we tend to be focusing here on like 6 through 12 um their parents find okay k through five varies very well as well and i'm glad

182you said that because of a book that i read aloud to first graders it's called it's okay to be different by todd park it's a fabulous book and it talks about how we are all unique and we are all individuals in the book it says it's okay to have too much because guess what there are set families where kids have a mom and a small mom it doesn't always have to be about homosexuality but having that sentence that might be does having that in there might make some families very uncomfortable but it's happening at a k5 level too so i'm really glad that you brought that up nicole because it's it's we're concentrating so much on 612 which i think is where a lot of our concerns have been but we also need to be

183thinking about those k5 kids too and what teachers are empowered to do within their own classroom i'm sorry it is very challenging to find material that um everybody feels like it's okay there's going to be some disagreement among different things and so i think one of the biggest things that we've been talking about with staff that i think is ultimately very fair is how do we just do a better job at communicating the parent so this is what we're getting ready to study and so that you can have those conversations right and so you know the book that i put in my board report that's going into e1 this time told the teachers you need to email parents ahead of time before the unit starts a couple of weeks and include a pdf of this

184section of the chapter there's a very brief um assault that takes place by a family member and that can be a trigger for some of our kids while not very graphic it's still and i say not very rapid there's nothing sexual assaults always graphic so i mean just the idea of it right um but just to let parents know this is in there if you don't want a child to read the chapter it doesn't impact the whole book it doesn't impact the unit it's just then your child doesn't need to read that if you want to read it with your child so you can discuss it ahead of time you know you have options but just to be able to communicate that um to families the rest of the book it's not you know it's

185a it's a memoir it's um it just it covers a lot of topics um that are that are goals of that course in content without there's no language in that book um so i don't know it's hard it's a hard call a lot of times and i think we heard from some families last year about some derogatory terms that were used in some materials i heard from families this year that said they're okay with that they don't want other four-letter words to be used in curriculum so it varies from family to family and it's the best we can do is try to communicate clearly and openly about what it is that we're using and give parents choice i'm going to make a suggestion i don't think we can solve this tonight so it seems to

186me like perhaps a good next step would be to find some way to survey parents with the work we've done so far make sure that the work we've done so far is meeting their expectations find out where the gaps might exist where we are making assumptions about what parents want to hear or where we're overlooking a topic entirely i hate to have us go through all this work with the google forms and never check with the parents to see if it's easy for them to use it's giving them the information that they want it's relevant and actually answering the questions and the concerns that they have to do this in a vacuum really sets us up for some complications down the road so it seems perhaps it would be a good idea to have a

187committee i mean i don't know we have a blue dog gold blue dog bulldog blueprint for facilities perhaps curriculum could have the same approach where we could not make decisions in a vacuum and actually get some real-time feedback on what it is that we're doing where we're going and if that meets the expectations of parents and kids pause on that it seems like getting feedback it will be the best way to understand how more of the community feels about this and then let us move forward i think i would want to know is this information that you currently have useful to the parents i mean i think parents are still having trouble finding knowing what's going on in the classroom so i think that's the the key question because this information helps them understand that

188it doesn't matter if it's on the website if the parent doesn't know it's on the website or doesn't know how to find it and then still their kid comes home from the book and they're upset so it's nice that the book was on the website but if your parents don't actually understand what's happening it's not going to solve problem we bumped this topic to a study session where we died i i think we should i talked about study sessions earlier and we have definitely veered more into a study session approach with this business meeting approach but i think it's been a good discussion um let's look for a date coming up we can do that [Applause] what are we preparing any thoughts you know based on our conversations tonight well i think one would be

189uh i mean says is there a way that we can evaluate um efficiently whether parents have information from what we currently have on the website that is useful to them so we don't need a we don't need a 50 question survey it's just very simple and to be clear i'm not necessarily looking for a presentation from staff right if you've got anything that would be good but just the time for us maybe even to continue the discussion where i am at the moment and explore solutions and actions can you talk a little more about the process for getting books or materials into classrooms i don't know i mean it i don't i don't know i feel like that's something that we're hearing a lot the communication piece and the process yeah i guess i don't

190want another major presentation either i would rather have more discussion and be able to provide some direction yeah so i mean if you think of things that would be useful that's great but certainly i don't think our expectation is to you to spend a lot of a lot of time creating um i appreciate the conversation thank you yeah hopefully that was helpful and i also suggest that we bump this forward request to the next agenda i don't know about anybody else's 10 20 and i know we still have quite a bit of work to do so that's super important great and we'll continue and if not if we can film it that's fine copenhagen um anything we have for discussion [Music] any questions do we know what the governor's new mandate is going to how

191that's going to look for us doesn't change what we're doing okay the changes that vaccinated students will then be quarantined due to exposure right uh i have to be honest i don't remember that part of it but also any student who is exposed would be subject to 14 days of warranty that's not exactly the way that that is going because it also said so they may change their mind too yeah i know that they put out something today that just kind of reiterated and it talked again and they have a line of like a spreadsheet that we've been doing the whole time they have one that they're not pushing out to the other schools in the county and it it talks about what close contacts are and it kind of reiterates within that two schools

192that um vaccinated students sent me a copy of what she said to the regional superintendent what that means for us along with the new executive order so it should be coming out to dr hall from very rules so i've talked to her a number of times over the last several weeks as things have been changing and the mandates have come out and she has assured me now could something change in five minutes absolutely it happens all the time but um she has assured me that what we are doing is kind of the gold standard what we've been doing all along is what we're going to keep doing is what they've told you so they're trying to get other schools to be what we've been doing you know um we want to be responsible but we

193don't want to ramp up we want kids in classrooms well that's the goal every at night i mean i have another webinar i've i've been listening to all the state webinars about opening schools and that is the goal but the main goal of what they're doing is to keep kids in school and to um to use reason and to do the test to stay and use that and it's been very effective in our district uh i mean it's all on the dashboard 440 414 exposures we've only quarantined 144 kids so i think that's pretty good for for what we've got we've had 71 students that are positive so far in the first month of school so what the numbers are on the dashboard are just from august 18. are you um lindsay can you address

194outdoor lunches for our k5 kids increasing exposure risk i can speak to what's done here and here we separate we have our students with cold lunch eat out in this area students eat in the cafeteria and um spread out as much as they can be in those situations but then we also they they have to meet fast and then they go out to recess so i think lincoln trail is following a similar thing but we yeah we eventually are looking at coming inside probably tomorrow actually because it's supposed to rain all day but certainly for an extended period of time in the winter okay thank you there's been a couple days when we've been inside already but that's going to obviously increase and be more consecutive days okay anything else anyway all right closed session

195is necessary tonight two things um first of all higher than ones on the intended we don't need that anymore item two collection negotiating ads public audience employees of the representative or the liberation concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees and then two we want to talk about litigation and when the public body finds that actions probable imminent so basically um negotiating collecting negotiating matters and litigation before um would you want to notify the public that there is a proposed understanding of the mca which we could take action on following eventually [Music] thank you everyone thank yes