Mahomet-Seymour Board of Education Meeting 7-19-21

001the regular meeting of jared leonard sorry forgot to ask shelly you're there i think thank you okay great all right good evening this is the regular meeting of the bahamas female board of education i'll call the meeting to order 701 pm on monday july 19th at this time i'd like to remind everyone to please sign in if you're a guest everyone please silence your cell phones and remind visitors in order to facilitate an effective meeting we ask those who like who would wish to make comments to the board to read the visitor guidelines found on the table outside the door complete the orange participation form and get those in the corner to dawn wave their hands on and we'll need those here shortly public participation is allowed during the public participation portions of the meeting

002other than those times board meetings are not interactive with the audience again other than those times board meetings are not interactive okay last month a group of community members came and spoke to the board regarding reading material as part of the english curriculum in our high school the content they brought forward was concerning to me personally i believe it was concerning to many if not all board members as part of our response i want to let everyone know at our next study sketch session which is scheduled for monday evening august 2nd that means we will take a more in-depth look into the curriculum matters particularly the english curriculum we'll have staff on hand to provide information to the board to answer questions and to help us develop a more in-depth understanding of this situation my

003hope is we spend most of that evening with the board examining this issue with the appropriate staff i also want to take this opportunity to remind parents you have concerns regarding what is being taught in the classroom the very first place the voice those concerns is whether your student's teacher and a building administrator in this particular instance the concerns regarding the novel was chosen for summer school english came to the board with four days left in summer school if the teacher would have known about these concerns earlier changes could have been made sadly in this case the first time the teacher administrator involved found out there was widespread concerns regarding this material was when the issue was brought to the board as a community we are quick to say that we respect teachers and the

004teachers matter not only does starting with a teacher show that we respect teachers is often the quickest and most effective way to address concerns now there were additional concerns about other books on the reading list in the english curriculum in general that we heard about last meeting at this time that's being investigated dr hall will talk about that a little later on in her report and i hope that will be a part of the august second study session on the discussion moving forward as i previously stated i'm definitely concerned about what was presented to the board the material is very concerning and i want to be very clear about that i also have concerns about how it was presented first as i mentioned earlier the teacher involved in english summer school should have known prior

005to the board meeting preferably earlier on in the summer session that there were widespread parental concerns about the book that was chosen for the class of study no teacher in our district or really any district employee ever deserves to be blindsided to the board meeting some of the passages presented the board appeared to be compilations of sentences from different parts of the book and were presented as if they were a single passage while that does not make the language okay it doesn't does mis represent the real picture finally this may just be my personal take on it but it appears the organizers attempted to arrange the presentation in a manner to cast maximum embarrassment and shame on our teaching staff our administrators in the board additionally some presenters interjected personal attacks on board members under

006their remarks these tactics don't do much to help start a civil rational discussion about a very important issue the group that spoke last month expects our district to do better than the material that was presented i get that i personally agree with that i also believe that expectation works both ways so moving forward let's try to keep communication open back and forth i'm here with murray here tennessee here macomb here before we stand for the pledge could you expound a little further on what you think is going to happen at the august 2nd study session i think that's being put together right now but i think we're going to have an opportunity to hear from our staff is what is going on maybe some background as to how we got there and for us to

007change what ask questions and get clarity on what the real facts are around the situation so we know and i want to go forward based on the facts and we go from that is your intent to have it be about the comments made or curriculum no we're going to address the curriculum okay okay but like indivisible with liberty and justice somewhere out there on youtube when there's now a custodian saying i fooled them after three years ago all right next up is approval of the agenda boardrooms have had a chance to look at the agenda um this is a motion to approve next i'd like to make a promotion and make some changes to the agenda um i'd like to let's rari on number four continue with number five and then go to the bulldogs

008blueprint and then nine six eight seven ten and so you'd rather eleven after the bulldog blueprint at the consent agenda and blow dog bulldog blueprint nine six eight seven ten eleven nine six eight seven 10 yeah okay it's a recommendation to make that change in the order i'll second that sucking on that there's very discussion on that okay so we've got a motion to approve the agenda um with those changes and spend a second there's no further discussion i was just at the bottom of the agenda it says that august 17th is a special meeting and um i know that a doodle poll went out to ask when people's availability for a meeting when i received the doodle poll there were only two dates left with the people that had responded so far that i

009was unavailable on those two dates and one of which was august 17th and i have had some communication with another board member who indicated they would be willing to um consider moving that date to a time when all seven board members could attend um so i didn't know from how other board members felt like justin would you be willing to move that date to a day that all seven of us could be there can you talk about this on the 17th i think the problem we've got at this point is schedule the assb consultant but we can check on that i'm jeremy would you be interested in doing that we should have all seven of us there so something to do with your yes i agree i think it would be hard to accomplish what

010the whole point of the meeting was that everyone's not in attendance okay you know ken also said he'd be willing to move in so i guess my request is that we move that to a different date okay we'll what we'll have to do is we'll check with the consultant and see when lc is available okay okay all right back to the agenda is there any further questions on the agenda we have a vote list nick murray yes henry yes lamb yes hennessy yes he schultz yes nicole yes and i apologize that much probably could have been a high vote since we're back in person consent agenda board members have had a chance to look at the consent agenda that includes minutes of previous meetings it includes bills it includes treasures report and personnel changes does

011anyone wish to take anything out of the consent agenda for individual discussion is there a motion to approve the consent agenda no schultz no keith lamb yes henry's yes nick murray yes yes and we have some staff to introduce all right welcome everybody it's great to have a big crowd here so we can introduce some of our new teachers and the first person i'm going to call up is amy mcelroy all the way up here we're hiring amy tonight to be a third grade teacher at lincoln trail elementary she grew up in gifford illinois graduated from the u of i in 2007 with the bachelor of science in elementary education and she spent the last past several years teaching second grade at bottom field elementary school in champaign illinois and prior to that she taught

012third grade for 11 years in rantoul amy currently lives in muhammad with her three children she enjoys spending quality time with family reading and homemaking tasks such as organizing cooking and cleaning she also enjoys teaching sunday school completing dui projects and caring for her many house plants she's grateful about the opportunity to teach in the muhammad seymour schools and is looking forward to working with our students welcome to have you here if you want to go around front and we typically have to shake the board all right next up is amber mills amber we're hiring uh mrs mills for our seventh grade junior high science teaching position very happy to even find a science teacher so welcome amber mill spent the younger years of her life living in the southeastern united states but it's called

013illinois home for the past 20 years she graduated from north carolina state university with a bachelor's of science in biological sciences and also has a doctor of chiropractic degree from national university of health sciences after practicing as a chiropractor for several years she discovered her true passion was teaching science and went through the training to become a certified teacher she spent the last three years teaching science at champaign central high school amber her husband and three children are residents of muhammad she enjoys traveling with her family gardening exercising and baking she's an avid reader of historical fiction novels she's very excited to be teaching in the muhammad seymour school district and can't wait to teach junior high students science in the fall welcome [Applause] all right gabby cuz next welcome gabby are we here we're

014hiring gabby tonight as a third grade teacher at lincoln trail she grew up in mount horror of wisconsin i know exactly where that is it's a town outside of madison she graduated from militant university in 2021 with a bs in elementary education at milliken she completed many internships in both a rural and urban setting additionally she's completed internships in general education special education and a bilingual education setting she participated in collegiate volleyball and was a volleyball coach for surrounding schools gabby will be moving to champaign she enjoys being active coaching hiking listening to music watching the sunset and being with friends and family she's very enthusiastic to begin her teaching journey in the muhammad seymour school district and looking forward to working with students staff and guardians in the fall welcome here [Applause] i'm here

015tonight to welcome lane lane come on up so lane grew up here in muhammad illinois she's going to be a member of our new pre-k program uh in the fourth additional classroom that we're adding this year so we're very excited about that um lane graduated coming from illinois state university in 2015 with a bachelor's degree in early childhood education she's currently enrolled at the u of i working towards her master's degree in curriculum and instruction she's taught second grade in rantoul kindergarten and paxton and most recently taught first grade at barks fall in champaign she currently lives in savoy with her husband and her two-year-old daughter olivia she enjoys staying physically active through taking family walks and working out bar class is her favorite i'm so impressed with that she also enjoys reading traveling trying

016the recipes in the kitchen lane is excited about joining the muhammad seymour school district and is looking forward to starting a new adventure with our pre-space preschool students in the fall so please help me welcome ladies [Applause] okay so welcome to all the new staff now this is an exciting moment for you because you have an opportunity you can be the first new staff member ever to stay for the rest of the board meeting or you can be just like everybody else and excuse yourself thanks for being here okay with the um change that um jeremy suggested the agenda next up would be the bulldog blueprint groups they are here tonight to kind of update us on their progress we have two co-chairs here tonight that would be folks we're about to turn the floor

017over to jim and john okay we've got some slides we'll be coming up here on the board here so talk amongst yourself while i find the slides feel free to talk well first off i'd freely to say i'm happy to be addressing the board but also happy that there's so many people here and i'll use every venue i can to spread the word about what we're doing so thank you for being here to listen to this i don't think you showed up for this but i'm glad you're here with that said we're getting super close i want to introduce revolution most of you know hershey tell them a little bit about yourself well i grew up here and i coached cross country and junior high so and i've stopped a lot so i know many

018kids in the district and most of the teachers so happy to be a part of this group because i do feel um i'm a passion for the school district and i think what we're doing here and building facilities is really really important and as they said my name is jim risley i'm a long time teacher here a lot of you i had in my class a lot of you i had your kids in my class so it's uh it's nice to be teaching you again so uh anyway good all job so the three names that you see up there are the three facilitators that are uh kind of running the facilitating team that we coined the name the bulldog blueprint and uh jmo did a presentation months ago back here to the school board and

019we're here to address the school board today where we're at now all right thank you school board here's why i want to thank you first off i don't know that all school boards go through this process to allow the community to be part of the decision making you in doing that has showed a transparency that is as a community i think would be very valuable and it helps us trust the decisions that are being made so we want to thank you and max mccomb and kim keith members of this particular facilitating team that we know now as the bulldog blueprint group the district the staff we have our meetings they show up and they've done a great job of supporting us they've set up our facilitating locations and we're very thankful as a group for

020that the facilitating team itself these are a bunch of volunteers that were asked to be part of this group they didn't have an agenda they just wanted to help the school and as working with them i am very impressed with their professionalism their care their sense of what the future for our children should be and then the community personally i've been here a long time i would go nowhere else or look for any community other than this to serve this is our home i love it i love our children i love the children that are going up here in the future so the community and the people that have showed up for these meetings i can't thank them enough for their initial interest in the future of our schools huge just that event itself okay

021we got here oh thank you houston bank they have footed the bill for so many much of the things like sending out brochures buying items for our facilitating meetings and we can't thank you enough for just taking the time to do that and reaching out and showing your concern for our students and our community also next slide activity so far facilitating team has met seven times and we have a lot of future meetings planned um we've had two in-house community sessions i don't know if any of you have been there but if you have they have been very informative and i've really enjoyed the interaction but what goes on in those meetings are the us facilitating team the board trying to draw out what this community sees as value and get a vision of what

022they want and also then give them a vision of what it can be when i go to buy a car i have a sense of what i want and then the salesman sits there and tells me hey there's a lot more out there you could have i go wow i have no idea hopefully we have that interaction and we can build the best we can for our kids online you can go online and enjoy these meetings and what we've uh what we're trying to draw from you and get from you it's all on there as it says right here verbatim everything that we talk about our presentations are online there are no secrets uh just get online it'll answer a lot of your questions about what we have been going over and hopefully entice you

023to come to one of our meetings um next session so what went on at community session number one state of the district if you look there are 11 items here the board could just take a look at those items that were used to kind of give us a sense of where we are at as a district in all our buildings you know and you know just to give you the electrical that was look into all of them now one of them i want to go over is if you don't understand the building envelope this is the brickwork just the actual structure of the building where are we with that and where did this come from who is the guy that put this together or the woman that put it together our district architect damon schultz

024and he put all this together and he's good at what he's doing and i think the most exciting thing is this gentleman has a child going to our school so he has a personal interest in uh giving us the best of what he's got overview of facilities our enrollment is growing steadily we're one of the few districts that have uh i wouldn't call that a problem but it's an issue that we have to address and um know it's there we can't hide from that now we've also if you come and you'll see this on the website if you go on the bulldog blueprint website.com we also have the quality of our buildings on a scale where we'll take a look at this building here obviously this is the highest on the scale the junior high

025is the lowest on the scale take a look at what makes one high what makes one low and then you'll see okay when the time comes then we have to make decisions an informed decision i think that's about the most i can ask right now is that we be informed when we decide how we're going to vote for things that are going to be done community engagement number two best practices in teaching and curriculum take a look at the picture says it all i don't know how many of you can relate to that that's a building or a school room i went to you know we were lucky to have all those windows they told us the broad area yeah but take take a look at that though and then take a look at where

026we're at now things are changing things have changed to keep our children abreast the latest the best we have to realize that things have changed the government itself asks us to do more in our buildings than ever before we have to hire special education teachers and i wouldn't say we have to we're lucky to be able to do that and there's a lot of new things counseling and it just goes on and on as new discoveries on how to educate our children better are brought forth we have to have buildings that can encompass that so that's what best practices and teaching is future ready facilities how do we defend the facility in this period of time they didn't even know about computers they had no idea we sat there we learned with a pedagogy that

027was useful to them back it was the best we had they did the best they could but now we need to come up with buildings infrastructure that create the best opportunity for our children to be the best they can be now in one of our meetings i said we don't have to be developing nasa at a space lab so they can be astronauts but let's see if we can build a environment where that's what they want to be they have a good chance of getting there i think you keep that in your mind that's sentiment how can we help them get the best kickstart in their education that we can middle school curriculum implications we need more space we need more space in the middle school our enrollment is growing if you've ever been in

028the building you can see that it's getting crowded it's ability to do what they have to do just me educational requirements are getting more and more difficult the people in the junior high have been incredibly hard working in using every inch of that building for something you have to become organized you live in a big house you put something everywhere you live in a little place you have to be incredibly uh imaginative and use everything that's where they're at to the point where sooner or later even the best imagination isn't going to get the job done so that is uh an issue here when we start talking about what we're going to do in the future right into what i want to talk about is at each of our uh community engagement sessions we have

029an activity that we have been doing interactive activity and at the second um engagement session this was our activity we were given a hundred to divide amongst planning principles and physical features and you could allocate your 100 points however you want it and there were a bunch of options but on the slide here you can see the most allocated topics so obviously the one that's on most people's mind is room space to accommodate the enroll microbes um something else that was at the forefront is buildings infused with technology and that's probably no surprise either because of the day and age that we're in a technology is a part of our classrooms and we need to figure out how our buildings can help us accommodate that a little bit better and then the third most uh

030talked about was engaging in inviting stations we're talking about warm colors of uh lights um and open so not necessarily crowded spaces open and inviting the second part of that was that we got 100 another hundred points and we were able to allocate those to planning principles functional and curricular programs so this also kind of lines up just with the last slide is that we want spaces that create collaborative learning areas throughout buildings that was seven you know over 17 points they allocated to that and then the next one is flexible multiple use multi-use spaces throughout the buildings and that's again how education has evolved is that we need the multi multi-use facilities we need to be able to do group work um i say we i feel like i'm part of the group because

031i was at the buildings a lot and i see that i've been in all the buildings and that's how the kids are being educated this time these days um improved science labs obviously that's probably no surprise to most of you too is that with older buildings that stuff is a little bit antiquated so that's also one of the top three but you can look at the other ones that allocated points to um and this again is from the community this is where the community says that our needs are the greatest so now with all of that information our architects over the summer are working on developing scenarios and in the fall they're going to bring those back to the community and give us some ideas about where we can go from that information and then

032go forward and tweak the ideas and then hopefully have a final product um so that again they're developing the options and then we'll have the meetings in the fall and the winter to tweak those options and oh the website oh yes all the dates will be on the website um once we have them because we don't have a schedule yet in the fall but we will be doing community outreach to make sure that this we need more people involved we need the community involved we want more people attending we have great attendance in the spring sessions but we actually want to reach more people and have more people give their voices because this is a community project it's not our project it's not the board's project it's not the school district project it is the

033communities project and so we want to reach everyone and have everyone involved in the project so and then we will reach a consensus hopefully as a group and report back to the board now our timetable has changed a little bit on that because unbeknownst to me until i was provided this information election day has shifted so it's shifted from march to june so initially the primary election was march of 2022 and it has been changed to june 28th of 2022. so while there's no assumption that this process will lead to a referendum we are just kind of going along with the timeline in case that's the where we go um so if we uh need it on the ballot that gives us a little bit more time into june deadline with the june referendum so

034we were hoping that the board of education will change our date from where we were going to report by november 30th to maybe giving us some more time to do community outreach and report back and have kind of a final presentation february of because that will still fill the timeline if we do go forward with a referendum so on behalf of bris and i we just really want to thank you for your time and we're really excited about this project but my biggest message tonight is get involved in it because we do need everybody's voice yes i would also like to part with a message because i never allow myself to be anything but last the community we have here make no mistake about it it is one of the best of the best it

035has unbelievable people it has people that is very very easy to serve the children that i've got to deal with as an adult teacher was a blessing they served i love serving them not them and that's what i want to really bring across here with this we are now at a crossroads to take this wonderful place the place that many people on the outside look to for guidance they might want to complain about us that's because they're jealous about us i don't know if that's on camera but if it is that's pretty much all for you yeah great i'll stand by anybody but we are not really at that crossroads to keep that going it's now our charge the children of the past have become the adults of the present and the future and it's

036going to be we're going to make a decision so at 50 years from now they're saying they got it right those people did it again but seymour is at top of the top and i am so excited to be part of a process that this board allowed us to have and i think that's something the community should be proud of and say hey thank you to the board so with that i probably won't be one of those people that stick around mcdonald's if you have any questions yeah do you have any questions okay can actually have any board action to change that reporting date um we probably will need to take more action on that probably not tonight at first i've heard of that but we'll run that through the process and we'll bring back

037probably now thank you all right thank you any other questions a question for team double check all right yeah love you folks take care appreciate it okay that's not here yeah all right thank you um and thank you for the work all the good work that group is doing it's quite a process we've embarked on but it's a process like they said this is worth it all right under the changes we're going to shift to new business item one technology service agreement jared lynn let me get up there right here thank you all right uh so this is an annual renewal of our contract [Music] 30-plus years since 1993. if this is an annual renewal uh there is no change in the contract no increases no no changes at all and his work quality or

038effort um i just asked the board to approve this contract as presented um for those not familiar with the kind of services described so far off provides um three days a week from typically 10 to 12 um in the morning from 10 a.m to 12 p.m on site physically uh monday wednesday and friday but then he also provides us with essentially what i would consider 20 problems um hey i've gotten phone calls from abroad at like 5 am saying hey this thing's down can you can you take a look at it do you need me to come in like my vacation he's kind of my backup um so it's it's more than just what's in the contract and typically whenever i like say hey can you take care of something he won't even know us

039for it because he's just that kind of upstanding guy and so he provides uh support for our staff uh if i need help with anything beyond um what we're capable of physically from a manpower standpoint or if we're just uh overwhelmed with what's going on he's able to provide that support for us um i honestly genuinely and again this is on youtube uh i couldn't do without him without help and i've tried tried try try to get him to come here full time he keeps telling me [Music] um on-site hours uh but again above and beyond what is on site uh hours are okay and if we happen to be short on those two hours what's the what's the actual rates i see two so there's i don't have those numbers uh in front of

040me uh but he has different rates for on-site versus promote um so if it's a remote situation uh if it takes in more than let's say 15 minutes or 10 minutes he'll kill bills for that there's like a five minute like hey i just noticed this i'm gonna take care of it for that if it's on site beyond uh those sort of two hours that he's here monday wednesday friday that's his hourly rate and again that rate has stayed the same for at least three years now we increased it three years ago but we haven't changed it since but i mean if he's got it says if there's any of the there's a minimum of 200 hours right it would be paid so he for some crazy reason that we didn't use up 200 hours

041what's the remainder of that 200 hours paid at what hourly rate because you've got the 65 per hour labor rate for on-site and 45 for the vendor's facility so i don't know because i've never got at that point i've never i've never hit that question 200 hours and it was that long yeah that the 200 is all it's probably right yeah okay but again we've never we've never gone beyond that and again the way fraud operates is it's pretty much just like hey what do you need i'm here for you it's not like he the way he builds us is the that hourly rate is so low he charges all his other customers like absorbing i don't want that um board of education approve the 2021-2022 technology service agreement with microsystems an authorizer superintendent to

042execute the agreement is there a motion to do that is it a second second we'll give that to was that common for that to come um any other questions discussion i believe this needs to be wrong yes tennessee yes schultz yes mcmurray yes lamb yes keith mccomb yes uh next is policy 640 and 6210 dr schultz so jared i have to hook because i have is policy there we go um so we um had a discussion about this last time when it was proposed policy 640 curriculum development the change to the policy is curriculum and curriculum revisions will not be adopted at the board meeting at which they're first introduced further board consideration will be given in subsequent meetings after opportunity for community input in order to provide opportunity for community input the superintendent or

043his or her designee will notify the parents or guardians of any proposed curriculum slash curriculum revisions including providing public access to such proposed curriculum curriculum revisions pushed out electronically a minimum of 21 days before a final vote will be taken by the board and there's a similar policy for 6 to 10 where we have to change textbooks and instructional materials and textbooks slash instructional material revisions will not be adopted at the board meeting in which they're first introduced furthermore consideration will be given in a subsequent meeting and after opportunity for community input in order to provide the opportunity for community input the superintendent and or his or her designee will notify parents and guardians of any proposed new or revised textbooks or instructional materials including providing public access to such proposed pushed out electronically when

044possible a minimum of 21 days before the final votes will be taken by these materials and so like our discussion last time we switched it from 30 days to 21 days we added in the language of his or her visit to me just so that the superintendent could delegate that responsibility um and i added to people electronically when possible just so that you know if we're pushing our curriculum we can just send an email out we don't have to have people come into the building just makes it a little bit more accessible for our public and that suggestion was made by dr rummel and myself okay um and it's based upon a recent situation where we have some grant funding available and in order to get the grant money the curriculum materials the textbooks for

045the child development class um had to be approved right away and didn't have this opportunity or this time frame so i mean that doesn't happen very often but i wouldn't want to miss out on grant money or some situation like that where we would miss potentially having some kind of revenue to help pay for the materials but miss out on because we have this so it would be the board deciding whether to make an exception to this timeline so that's probably not going to happen very often but just trying to cover all bases there well and that was one of my questions for verification was because i know last time we had talked about the job development books that grant money that rent was extended and that's how we ended up getting the money but

046it ended up that it might end up that we might not get an extension um the only other um and i do want to say thank you for bringing this backwards forward because i i want to after last time i have a lot more questions i want to have i want to have some more thought behind the idea of instructional materials because based on our meeting last time and just based on the language within the entire policy i think it would be smart for us and maybe this is something that we can talk about at the next meeting i don't know but when we say instructional materials to me instructional materials means something that the entire class is using so it's something like a textbook or something you know and that would be appropriate for

047the board to review and look at are we going to get into the degree of instruction materials are every single book that walks into that that school because if that's the case that's way too in the weeds and i don't know if we need to certify that so this policy is actually our current policy the underlying is new but the point that that says that all textbooks and instructional materials need to be recommended to the board is our current policy as it is right now i mean that's recommended by the iasb why we have that as our policy so the only change we have here is that when the um when the recommendation is brought to us that we won't vote it through on the first meeting it will tell the parents so we aren't

048changing the way that we approve instructional materials we're only changing the timing to say we're not just going to push it through without giving opportunity for people to know it's there so this doesn't provide any kind of micro management or like this doesn't change how we approve we can decide we want to approve or disapprove things but the only thing that this policy does is to say that it can't be approved the meeting it's brought and the public has to know so that parents understand what it is that the instructional materials are in our district and essentially that's been our kind of practice so this just this is i mean yeah the reason is because nicole wrote to us and said this has been our practice but it's there's no policy that says this should

049we do it and so it seemed like there was really a lot of wisdom in providing this to the parents and there were some cases that happened before where books were available but parents weren't told the books were available and then the board said ha ha nothing came not ha ha like i'm like look at that no one came to look at the books but no one had been told the books were there and so this just allows parents to know what we're doing and to be transparent about it it does not change how we and what we approve of what are your thoughts on that sentence before they approve exceptions to these timelines um i think that i've read our policies several times and there's actually two places where we are given the authority

050to make exceptions whenever we need to so if there's something really extreme that we could make a change we already have the authority to do that i think adding it into a specific section somehow brings in the idea that this is not really what we intend to do all the time um and we because we already have the authority to do that i don't think it needs to be added to this policy any policy in our book unless it's a law i mean it does specify if it's a law you can't just override it but otherwise we can change that sorry um and so i just don't think that that's necessary to put in i worry that it feels like we're we're tying our hands like it feels like you you don't ever know no

051people have predicted you don't ever know what's coming like what if like if there's a what if i would feel more comfortable with it with that with that disclaimer there or may approve exceptions to these talents but that's what we have in every single policy in our entire policy manual and we have a policy in our manual that says if we need to approve exception we can do that so we can't be tying our hands because we already have a policy that says that any other thoughts on that part because we probably don't have an agreement on that so whether we want to have that internet i think if we're going to try and take that at the policy specific level that's what actually ties our hands because we're gonna have to go back through

052every specific policy and see if we want to have that if we already have a specific policy dedicated towards when the board needs to make exceptions they have the authority to do that across policies that seems like more efficient way to ensure that the board doesn't have its hands tied and certainly suffices the requirement for us to take action when needing i'm fine about it it really would be very exceptional right you really want to be transparent so i think my concern would be i think it's a long line it would begin express where if we start saying these are policies we're going to approve exceptions for then we're ahead of applying those policies we may not include exceptions before and and frankly we've got a policy that's sort of improved conceptions any time so

053i think in the end i'm fine with that thank you okay so that we're going to call this the first reading tonight because we've actually presented it and handed out the border policy um because i just don't want there to be hard feelings and misunderstandings that go on um you did send an email saying um that you wanted that you felt blindsided by this policy um that the reason we had to have a reading was because it needed to be in the packet and that you shouldn't feel blindsided by it but the reading was the problem is it needed to be in the pack if we're going to be consistent then the first reading should be in the back blind side is another issue yeah but i mean you you put that in under this

054policy says the problem with this policy you said that another thing and i just want to clarify to the whole board that i did submit the request and explain exactly what the policy was back on may 10th when i asked her to move it so i don't want there to be a misunderstanding that somehow i showed up at the meeting and didn't tell you ahead of time was but no one had seen the policy until you handed it out to june 21st we had an idea of what it was that didn't actually have the policy i think the public should have that as well that's the main reason for making this a first reading i'm just saying that the idea of what this policy was was not a blind side but i wrote and said

055i would like the board to have a discussion surrounding the discrepancy between our district practice and lack of policy regarding curriculum approvals that nicole signed it up and my intent actually was to come to the board and i i think we as a board need to spend more time coming together and developing our policy together so i brought a policy with me sort of as a if we got to the point of discussion where we wanted to have a policy we'd have some words there that we could use if that's where it went but i think things are going to go a lot better instead of someone saying here's the policy now everyone get on board if we stay as a board let's discuss do we want to have this policy nicole told us about

056this do we want to have it and then after people said yeah i think we want to do that to say well then let's put some words to a policy and then make a suggestion but if the board would have said well i want to go a different way then i would not have had that policy because i think part of the problem is people get their um get riled up by a suggestion when really the point is to have a discussion as a board and so when people read something ahead of time about the context then they get they make conclusions and they think what people mean and they get all whipped up everyone's all frustrated and it gets away from our ability as a board to come in and have a discussion about

057what we want to do since the board does govern through policy we should be spending time as our board talking together about how we want to govern through policy and then push that out and so there's no intent to have some kind of blindsidedness at the board meeting that's why i did the explicit thing of what exactly topic i wanted to talk about this policy exactly talked about that specific thing with nothing else so i just want to be clear about that because i want us to be able to work together and if we think that if you don't want people to think that my actions meant to blindside when my actions were meant for us to come together as the board of check and so i just wanted to clarify that point to everyone

058so that we all understand i i didn't have an impression i thought you had a policy in mind if you wanted to share it and like that's it true i didn't get any question that was a conversation which is why i'm really glad you just had this conversation because i felt like that was really that was a lot more meaningful like okay all right that'll be bad next month um next item um the normal understanding with the msca um dr hall will present this i understand the union has a statement several conversations that the board had amongst themselves but also with the msca we're bringing forth a memorandum of understanding this evening for the board to approve um just talks about the process for discussing issues of safety obviously that's been kind of at the

059top of the list the last year and i want to thank the msca for the hours and hours of time we've spent meetings there's been a lot of meetings i look back to last summer and spring 2020 and really through the fall we were meeting um meeting pretty much every week there were just numerous issues to problem solving and i think it's safe to say um you know i think i don't think it's a uh it's not private information it's public information that we didn't agree on everything and that that happens but i feel that we've been able to work through that um and this memorandum of understanding represents um coming together of how we want to precede it and move ahead so it's my recommendation to approve this mou with the msc the certain

060power recognizer board of education improve the memorandum of understanding between the msca board of education uh which documents an agreement about both parties at all current grievances and the ulp will be dropped and not proceeded further is there a motion to do that so moved zero second second uh further discussion comments so sorry i i'm confused is this where you are i can't go now or i can go after you once you go ahead let them talk my name is james heinle co-president for the msca and and uh dr hollow is absolutely correct we have spent a lot of hours discussing health and safety issues over the last year and a half so just got a brief statement that i want to read from the msca so in light of the recent agreement reached between

061the msea and the board regarding the processing of health and safety related decisions we would like to express how pleased we are that we could work together collaboratively with the board's result list in the msca we are educators we are parents and we are community members during this past year and a half of the pandemic our goal has always been twofold to meet the educational needs of our students and to preserve a safe learning and working environment for all of us while we may have disagreed at times on the best way to achieve these ends we know these have always been your goals as well therefore we look forward to continuing to work together as we make plans for this upcoming school year so that was a statement that i wanted to make and thank

062you for your time okay questions or discussion on the uh what i'm a little bit confused about the sense it says any relevant guidance from federal state or local agencies to be taken into consideration by the board of education the parties balanced supposed to be dropped from that sentence it's just supposed to say the parties instead of the board so jeremy had a question on the mlu did you hear my question jeremy can you repeat it please should be an and in there yeah the question was about the sentence that says any relevant or starts with any relevant guidance as it's written right now it doesn't make a lot of sense to me i don't have the version you're looking at jeremy can you read the sentence from me says any relevant guidance from federal

063state or local agencies will be taken into consideration by the board of education the parties balanced along with what is known locally about the safety issue i can i can pull up the last version we can certainly make sure that there should be an and dr hall saying when we had the discussion instead of the board of education and then the discussion was that it should be everyone not just the board of education so we're going to drop the board of education and save the parties to mean everyone not just the board of education joel did you catch that yeah i'm gonna i'm just trying to find the last version i have just give me one second here so could we possibly lindsey can you have someone send this to me and i'll take a

064look at it maybe we can pass just the board action on this point obviously the msca is comfortable with the intent that we had we might just need to clean up some grammar there but i don't think i have the final version you're looking at [Applause] hmm so once you've sent that if you guys want to move on to the next item i can certainly take a look at it and then i can let you know if i have any other changes just to hold you guys up that's the that's the last new business side jeremy which sentence is it it's any relevant guidance since it starts there the son shelly when you open it up as a sentence that starts with any relevant guidance okay i don't have it quite yet it's just a

065sense it doesn't make any sense but um and i mean the other issue i guess i haven't guessed it's any relevant guidance so who's choosing what's relevant and what date what other data are we going to use i mean because this is the issue that we have is that deciding on which state is important we have guidance from federal state and local but it also depends on what guidance that the federal stakeholder data they use to come up with that happens if the data is not good facts are not good then how good is the guidance i understand i understand the intent behind this i just think it it backs us into a corner i agree completely with jeremy you know in my course of the university i teach contract law and we talk about

066efficient gaps in contracts and it is efficient to leave gaps in contracts it's impossible for everyone to be able to specify every possible thing that's ever um and so there are gaps that should be a lot of contracts but you know there shouldn't be gaping holes left open um and part of the problem that i have with this is that the reason that we have the problem we had to start with is because there was too big of a gap in the contract without anything specific so the contract said that the employees don't have to work in an unsafe working environment or something along those lines but there was no definition of what was safe and what was unsafe and sunny gave us a perfect example last you know previously about a situation that was

067unsafe and so we're trying to remedy that because we then had grievances and an unfair labor effect um okay so if we're talking about the contract language and that we need to be in closed session are we okay yeah i mean i just want to say two things one i just i just received it from lindsay thank you and the sentence should read that the any relevant guidance from federal state or local agencies will be taken into consideration by the parties and balanced along with what is locally known about the safety issue so that's it's by the parties and balanced and then to colleen's point you know there there's a difference between contract law like a contract between a person with respect to services or contributing to people and a collective bargaining agreement that speaks

068to working conditions entirely so we do want to remember that this is something that was negotiated with the msca and agreed to so i'm happy to discuss the nuances underlying it in closed session but i don't think it's an appropriate discussion for open session if you want my input on it but i think in terms of that sentence that captures the intent of the agreement do we need to change the motion to get the word and back in there or amend the motion so first of all i want to say that what's in the board packet contains a typographical error and that's my fault it's on me so i apologize for that um james did bring a correct version this evening i can make copies of that if you want to look at that so

069my apologies for the um for the typographical error that occurs in the board packet my fault i'm not actually talking about that sentence i'm just giving a general statement about the whole thing and my inclination for how i'll vote so that i'm not considered obstructionist my problem is that when i read this i don't believe that it's i believe it might solve our short-term problem but it's not going to solve our long-term problem because for example if there's a safety issue that involves the board of education making a decision the msa will be offered an opportunity but what happens at the end if the board is not making the decision the grievances we have were from decisions that were made by lindsay so that's not covered here and then if we say whenever possible the

070superintendent will share the reasoning behind the decision made decisions are only made in the public so to be clear what's going to happen i think we're even feeling over decisions made by the board not decisions made by the administration thank you i think i would like for that to be part of the public ever to remain in person in november of 2020. that was not my decision that was a vote taken by the supporters i believe that when i read this it doesn't give me confidence that we will not end up in the same kind of decision again and so while this solves our short-term problem i don't believe it's going to solve our long-term problem because if there's the same ambiguity that we had before similar to what jeremy is saying who is going

071to decide what's relevant guidance you don't want to have these same decisions and the decision that we weren't going to close in november was made and announced and there was no vote taken by the board to say that we would remain open which is fine we signed an agreement that said you had the right to do that and so that was okay i'm not faulting that that's that is the agreement we made as a board what i'm saying is that i'm worried that this is not going to stop our long-term problem and that's why i'm going to vote now i can appreciate the agreement's not perfect but this agreement with gotten negotiated with the msca there's not been a perfect contract yet um and i get that i do know this the alternative is we

072let them go ahead and proceed on two grievances at a federal court case which i don't think isn't the best which i'm pretty sure is not in the best interest of the district therefore we've negotiated this it seems to give us ample ability still to make decisions it gives us the opportunity to be able to partner with the msca and underscore the importance of that and i would say we want to continue to work down the road to prove things improve things i don't have a problem with that but right now this is the i guess for like a better term i thought the lifeline that has been negotiated and uh puts an end to what is currently a bad situation for both parties and i i have to recommend that certainly every board member

073needs to know i believe i think it is problematic if it is so ambiguous that the two parties have different ideas of what input and coming to the table and when input is taken and whose input is taken and what happens if there's disagreement about the input so while i can appreciate wanting to get rid of the grievance process i think the ultimate goal here should be to ensure that moving forward we have a process that doesn't have any surprises or misconceptions about what people's involvement is and then what time and so if this is so ambiguous that there are two different definitions of who determines the data is valid valid to jeremy's point uh who determines whether or not what we hear from the local authorities we have last year we signed a resolution

074that said we would listen to the local authorities and then the local authorities gave recommendations and we did not follow those recommendations so i still don't know what the resolution that says will follow local authorities means given the scenario where the local authorities gave a recommendation and we didn't follow it so while i'm interested in making an agreement with the msca that moves the ball forward i don't want it to be so ambiguous that we end up where we are because people don't understand the definitions and a legal agreement is only as good as people's understanding of it and i don't teach contract law or law but what colleen has said is giving me pause as well so i don't believe that this is the only way out of this i don't think that if

075we go back and make modifications to this to take out some of that ambiguity that the msca is going to walk away from the table i think we had a discussion that was a good discussion where we all want to move forward with a relationship that brings both parties to the table um well i think that's from getting confused we did have that conversation and this is what came out of it wasn't it i mean we sat in a closed meeting and this is what came out of it like right but i in reading this i think it does call into question if the board is going to make the decision they can't be told of a decision that the board hasn't made in public so there's a sentence right here in this document that

076there's no way to make happen because the board cannot make a decision unless it's in a public meeting and once that decision is made the msca cannot be told about it i mean time warp doesn't you know what i mean so yes we are we are in fact signing a document that has a statement in it that we know to be impossible to put them and so if that statement is still in here and we haven't thought through what that actually means are we actually moving forward with the msca and having their voice at the table which is what they were trying to accomplish with the decision making if that can't be done so i'm hearing two totally different concerns and i think my concern is that this is a quote is this a closed

077session topic that if this is two totally different concerns i don't think we should be i mean ready we can't shall we can we be having this conversation right now you can be but i do not recommend it i mean i don't think that this conversation came out of close and had this discussion an agreement with the msca i don't know why this would be raised and open if there were concerns raised we should go into close and have a discussion about it we are really you know it's an odds it's an odd topic to be having after the agreement's already been negotiated with the msca in public in the open session so that's where i'm at with that okay so we've got a motion on the table in a second the motion has the

078wrong wording and we seem to have some folks who maybe want to discuss this in closed session i don't know i'll tell you what you want to do i feel like this is really the msca we had a closed session we had language we had opportunities to discuss it we took it back to msca the msca leadership discussed it they came back we reached an agreement and now all of a sudden we're left back that the decisions but i just feel like why did we all check to the msca if we weren't confident and then where does that leave us in the eyes of the msca like i move the table and have further discussions discussion on that motion is it going to be discussed in closed session tonight like how quickly are we going

079to discuss it [Music] i don't know i didn't make a motion we're happy to have that stuff [Music] msc has not had a chance with their leadership to discuss the changes right yeah we can't change their vote tonight we can vote on the original version and james to be clear the msda was comfortable with this language correct and just so you all understand lindsay i don't know i'm sorry if i'm jumping in here but they actually revised part of the language and gave it back to us this is not our language that they accepted it was a negotiated language that everyone felt comfortable with solved the issue there is not a long-term problem there is a short-term issue that that came up that was subject to two grievances in the elp that the msca is

080saying we feel comfortable moving forward there is no way to define every single term or scenario in a collective agreement and what this does is allow for a process or more collaboration with the msca and the board of education in the event something like this happens in the future and it addresses the issue at hand there is not a short and long term problem there is a issue to be resolved and the msca has come forward and said we agree that this resolves our concerns this is not the board's concern this is the msca's concern and they're saying this resolves our concerns about the contract language so again i'm happy to have further discussion and close with the board about it but this was was recommended and what was agreed to and certainly there'd be

081no reason you if you felt comfortable couldn't move forward with it this evening okay motion on the table is to table i guess and discuss more in closed session uh when you have a role is there a further discussion on that keith mcmurray no hennessy yes hendrix yes schultz yes lamb no mccomb no was that three to three yes so you put down the question so you need to vote on the main motion yeah so that fails so we're back to the main motion uh so in further discussion on the main motion i mean to me this agreement is to have conversations that opens up a chance of collaboration for both parties to discuss the topic and then it goes on to say whenever possible we can share that for dr hoffman share that with

082msc ea leadership so it obviously gives us the opportunity to have those discussions with the msca where it goes from there it goes but well i think the wording is problematic but uh i get the the intent behind it um i mean just to be clear though that we're still the school board and and we're not beholden to the msca in any way and i i'm just this is problematic for me that's my concern i'm fine with having conversations but there's gonna be times when we disagree and that's okay it doesn't mean that we have to file an unfair labor practice when we disagree um so that's my concern is that if there's any disagreement in the future then there's just there's court cases and we get sued because we didn't have a fair enough

083conversation and it's not personal not at all it's just this is our job but i think that's why i appreciate this because it talks about the fact that we can have a conversation do you know what i mean like it's not we're gonna the board is gonna make a decision but we've done that we had that conversation so i'm fine i'll i'll vote for it but uh i'm just telling you that this is i mean if it's said if we have conversations there won't be agreements filed that would be a different case with this right but that's not what it says well i don't think the nfc would ever see if i was [Music] i'm just saying that it's not what this says to us there's gonna be tension i'm okay with tension and that's

084just part of it you know this is there's back and forth always and uh many times we're gonna disagree hopefully more times we will but it's just a little upset so just so i understand the intent of this is to end the current agreement agreements process that was the intent of this that was how this was negotiated the intent i think is in the current previous process and hopefully to create a framework moving forward where we're talking more in a better shape now is any agreement gonna be perfect no are they going to totally give up their ability to ever file agreements against us probably not but i don't think that's the topic i don't think yeah i don't think that's not the table but hopefully it puts us all in their place down the

085road other thoughts or questions all right this is on passing the motion uh i have seen the resolution that will be the copy they sign that has the word hand as opposed to happening we saw that did not broke up with please schultz no hendrix yes mccomb yes all right we have been uh well we'll go one more item four is cobin 19 update so we need to take our break before we do that okay usually at 90 minutes in we take a break so we'll take a quick break come back to the cocoa 19 update then we'll do items six eight and seven and then we'll go into closed session seven minutes calm down [Music] and we are back in the room and uh next up is covered update and discussion back home all

086right thank you um well i want to just say that um we've heard from lots of parents recently uh over the last couple of weeks so for the emails and for the communications um obviously since the beginning of cover there's been many many different opinions and certainly i think for whether you're a parent or a student or a school board member a staff member you know this last however many months now 17 months have not been easy to navigate for anybody so i once again say thank you for the communication and also for your patience and understanding that um as a school district there's a lot of things that we have to work through and consider so it's completely understandable that parents and others are desiring the plan for the 21-22 school year and there

087are indeed school boards across our state who've taken votes and have put forth a plan and um is not my plan to do that tonight so i will put that out there um your messages are not going um unnoticed sometimes there's a volume of them that makes it very time and time prohibitive to answer all of them so i do read them and i know our board members do as well i know that they get something that i don't get and vice versa i also just want to say that those messages again span a range of opinions and approaches about what we should be doing in school next year and so there's not one not one prevailing opinion in my opinion others might disagree with that as well so i understand that there's frustration and

088patience and we all want to move ahead and move away from coded and i want to do the same thing um i want to give our children the year that they deserve last year and the last three months of 2020 we're obviously just beyond difficult for our kids and um it is my intent to make this coming year one of the best that they ever have so at this time tonight again i don't plan to make any recommendations to our board discussing and i'll tell you what what i know right now a whole lot of information was put forth on friday july 9th from the cdc and from ibph as well as the illinois state board of education um no no surprise it's on a friday um i was just thankful that it was not

0894 55 pm that's kind of one typical time when things came so it was earlier in the day so last week you know all that information got analyzed absorbed interpreted lots of different people weighing in and reading if you haven't read the cdc guidance i i would recommend that you do that it's out there there are a lot of embedded links with different explanations and so what i want to just convey tonight the best i can is that the decision is not just as easy as just saying that the school district is going to do one thing um there and the board might disagree with me on this which is absolutely fine but there's a lot of information to take in there's a lot of information to interpret and to decide what is the best

090way to proceed there's a lot of reading to do and a lot of research and a lot of factors to consider we do have over a month before our kids return to school and i know that that month is going to fly by the first half of the summer i already did that and i know before we know it's going to be august 18th our kids are going to be returning teachers are going to come back on august 16. what experience has told me over the last 17 months though is that information will likely continue to change and i also say that whatever i say tonight could be wrong tomorrow or in the next couple of days it could change so i don't know that the release of information is is done changing and we

091could have more information or different information in the coming days and that just continues to require um reading and studying on my part and probably all of you are doing that as well and i appreciate that i think there's a couple of other factors out there that that i just want to mention um it it i would be remiss if i didn't talk to our board of education about liability issues and um those exist and those are very real and um it's it's my responsibility as superintendent to talk to the board about what those are and this is a very new you know this the road down the pandemic is still new in many respects and so there's a lot to learn and understand about that um some of the the good things about the

092information that was released on july 9 is that it does offer some local control for school boards there's more area to do that in my opinion so that's that's good but that doesn't mean that i would recommend to the board that we just make any decision there are guard rails that we need to stay in between in my opinion and at the end of the day um you know we need to consider those and be cognizant of what those are and there are some things that are out of our control and one of those things for instance is quarantined that is we don't decide on that that's not a school district decision that belongs with the health department and as of right now we do not have a new exclusion chart that's what the quarantine

093chart is called with it has all the guidelines on it we don't have a new updated exclusion chart from the illinois department of public health the one that we have is like from last spring and obviously with um schooling out we haven't had to worry about quarantines haven't had any summer school either so you know there's there's there's large pieces of information that are not um yet available to us and i think those are things that we need to think about and wait for some pieces of information to come forth for us we also have an executive order in the state of illinois that's going to be expiring this weekend i don't know what changes that might bring so there's some things there that we consider and i also along with county superintendents have a

094meeting with julie pride this coming wednesday morning and so that is certainly going to be informative and it's a nice opportunity to talk with her and ask questions and hear from her um i i hear what i hear and i take to heart what is being said about wearing masks i hear it i understand it um i hear what you're saying about putting kids out of school in terms of quarantines i'm listening and i appreciate what is being said and the kids are my top priority but so you know that has to be balanced with safety and that has to be a balanced with responsibility that i have in terms of making recommendations to this to the school board to the school district so um i i'm happy to answer any questions that that the

095board might have that that's mainly my update tonight i know it's not much of an update just to say i don't have much new information but it is um relatively relatively new and um still i i think in at least in my mind and other superintendents and school boards might feel differently and i completely respect that but in in my opinion it's still pretty fresh and new and i think that um it it would bode well to um just methodically keep looking at it and moving ahead and understanding that the decision has to be made in the next couple of weeks about the different aspects of returning to school nancy what is the current state law about gold what is it i'm sorry we're not we're the portion can we can we take action on

096on anything tonight given that we have this on the agenda on what we can do well i mean action items should be listed as action items this was meant to be discussion item there have been past times when votes have been taken i don't recommend it and certainly sheldon can chime in on that shelly are we able to take action on uh a decision about mass in school next year without it being an action item i do not recommend oh sorry i'm sorry jeremy it's not listed as an action item but it's listed it's on the agenda as is discussion yeah i i don't recommend that you do that i mean part of the reason is that the you want the public to know when you're taking action on something so perhaps for instance if

097it was on there for action next at your next meeting they would come and perhaps that comment at your next meeting before action was taken so it might put the public in a difficult situation if they were not able to come and express their opinions one way or the other so i i don't recommend it especially on a topic such as that especially when you don't have a recommendation coming from administration on that topic so but it's not it's not uh we're not violating any uh legal there's no legal constraints or anything with this right i mean you said you don't recommend it not from a purely technical perspective but because you do typically have notification to the public as one action's being taken a particular item you could have someone it could there could

098be an issue that could come up from that but not technically though um liberty i know you mentioned you're waiting on to hear what the governor extends with his executive order or not i think the word on the street is he's letting everything expire but i guess we don't know until you see what he does um quarantine guidelines is there anything else well i think another relevant piece of information i will share is that as of right now masks are mandated for anybody on the school bus that's not optional at this point i i don't know if that would change i don't know michelle if you have any insight on that one i mean that's one outlier where masks are yeah we don't see any change coming from that any sort of public transportation coming

099down from the cdc which is they're including a school buses specifically even though it's not technically public currently the requirements on that are that masks must be worn on all school buses so there's not room for discretion on that i guess i don't know what [Music] we went through last year without vaccines and now we have 50 percent of the county who's fully vaccinated we have teachers who have the option to be vaccinated and and guidance uh from the national local level that says we can massa are optional if you're vaccinated so then are we going to start questioning the students basically you know what their vaccine status is so then we i mean are we going to enforce that are we going to that's why i don't get i just just i don't know

100where that information is at this point what we have lots of information already [Music] well so i think it would be prudent and wise and a good idea to include the msca in a conversation which i haven't had the chance to do and um just passed a memorandum of understanding that talked about doing that so that's another factor that i think is important um you know we do have another board meeting in two weeks if the board wants to look at a plan next week and have a special meeting that's also another option i move that we go mask optional in school next year camera are you only only masks for all students you're not talking about quarantine or anything i'm just talking mascot i'm not talking about horns i'm just saying if you want

101to wear a mask wear a mask if you don't want to wear masks because otherwise we're either going to go mask optional or everybody's going to wear masks because then we're policing and then we come up with a situation where we're where we're discriminating a certain hat for a group of people so i just don't understand why why the dragging in the feet is that we need to make a decision so i moved to google mass optional next year motion on the floor for a second i'll second that and i i would like to continue the discussion um i'm sorry with as many times as i have asked for something to be put on the agenda and as many lectures as i have gotten on we will not take action unless it says action or

102discussion i have to object to this motion right now not because i don't agree but if we are going to talk about following rules and common practice and just throw it out the window anytime it suits us i think that's where we end up with all of this frustration not only in this boardroom but in the community so if we want to do this i'm for doing this but i believe it requires us it should have a special meeting where the public has been informed about what we're going to discuss with the outline that is so vital that we can't take any action if it's not in the agenda or in the board packet any other time but on this issue we're going to just i i agree with you that the decision needs to

103be made i'm kind of shocked it wasn't on this agenda uh i think it's disappointing that it wasn't on this agenda i think it is unfair to students and parents and the community for us to not make this decision i agree with you that it's an all or nothing i think that once that decision is made there are other decisions that are going to have to be made with respect to making equity for people and what does that look like and there's a whole host of work that's going to come after that so i don't understand why it was on this agenda um i would like to move on it i think it would be more appropriate to schedule a special meeting in order to do that um and i think we need to do

104that as soon as possible i'm fine with that i'd be willing to withdraw the motion if you would have a special night meeting next week my promise i'm traveling next week so if we could do it this week that'd be great and we only need 24 hours on or 48 hours and so if people i this is urgent i think the community is clamoring for some sort of decision i totally agree with you jeremy that it is our duty to make this decision and we are just going to have to take the information that we have and roll with it so that people can make decisions that they are comfortable with within their families and then we as a district are going to have to figure out what that decision means to roll out for

105inclusion and equity but i i believe this is more appropriate with a special meeting and that would be my request available thursday night i will make myself available how's that other comments because we're discussing this isn't about masks but i'm wondering about if we are following quarantine guidance what are we going to do for students who are in quarantine without an online option this year teachers talk about that i don't talk about the teachers between dr rummel and mrs northrup and myself we talked about how to keep kids caught up um you know it's not going to be through synchronous remote teaching though that's not happening but right kids are on quarantine will do a combination of pushing out information through the classroom that's not the same as teaching synchronously or providing the work and

106keeping keeping up on that um i'll just weigh in if we think we need to make a decision on this sooner rather than later i'm good with a special meeting on thursday i would prefer that we do it that way rather than contradict what we would say is best practice and how we run so i appreciate you withdrawing it in favor of that i understand there's a clamor in the community and desire to kind of get this issue behind us i guess and on one level i get that on the other level um we do have some time before school starts i guess i'd rather measure twice cut once than react too soon and you know last year things changed right after the last minute and i know just because the rest of the little

107operates that way doesn't but we have to on the other hand those things affect us so part of me is thinks it's wise to delay the decision as long as we can on the other hand i understand why parents in public are so i get that part of it too i do think it's possible to make a plan that has contingencies if this than that if this and we make this decision there's a way to make a plan that sets up expectations about shifts in our decision making and shifts in direction and that's just called planning for all different but doesn't preclude us from changing and i think if we're doing our job well we will think through the different scenarios and start discussing what we would do in those different cases because i think

108our community uh setting the right expectations and letting people know what we're thinking if this or if that just promotes good communication and i think it sets us up for a better response and then no one's surprised and my only other comment is i think on thursday we should invite the msu well that was going to be my next question i have two questions first of all is everyone available thursday night just do a quick quick um available thursday night to the special meeting and that's what we need to do my consensus will try to do that right dawn you go ahead and post that tomorrow for thursday night seven and you can withdraw my money selling word for that draw the motion so that's why they just ask make sure everyone is okay with

109that everyone i thought i just did i'm sorry is everyone okay with that oh with driving motion yes okay thank you is there any way to start six o'clock anyway we can start at six instead of seven on thursday i can be safe i don't care it'll be good i'm saying i got problem with six dawn six o'clock thursday night please post it special meeting alcoholic all right next question dr hall i know we need to get some input from the msca can that happen between now and thursday okay certainly invite them we need to start the meeting with a closed session know there's a good question i don't know this we'll post it with a closed session um i think if we also inform the public that if it's not needed that we won't

110have one so if people do want to tune in they may want to check at six and we should have maybe some way to update people and when the actual open session we'll hold on to keep going in close session maybe yeah yeah or you could just find out if you need to do that before you post yeah well i think it depends i think dr hall will talk to the mlca i think it depends how much discussion they want to have ahead of time um all right other [Music] coping related discussion just clarification on my part you're what we're going to do thursday night is talk about masking correct we're not voting on that opening plan because we won't have that yet i'll put together an outline of the plan so we can make

111progress on this and that's what i'm here to come forward so masking's obviously a pretty big part of that but there's there are other things to address lindsay are we legally allowed to ask students if they've been vaccinated or teachers um employees yes students i think we should make sure that there's action under covid so that if other things come up we have the ability to actually take action on them we'll probably list um what was the opening plan and that would be to include masking or will this and asking and then other opening plan details we'll handle it but look we'll think about that but we'll have it so we can take as much action as we can as many items okay anything else in code okay we've completed regular business finite hawk which

112is a new world record for a while so that's good now let's go back to donations and then our no donations for july so that was easy next reports updates and informational items let's go with um i know we kept you up past you're always here okay we finished the year i believe well thank you to the champaign county treasurer for the first time in two years we got both our may and june payments so everybody was asking me last year because we got it we were in financial review last year because the second to the top if that was because of the upswing no was not this year we have more in our bank because of the up suite because we got the two payments um so we are finished the year with 11

113million dollars in our and uh 7.4 that is in our operating funds so um we finished the year with 93.59 five nine days of cash on hand we will again be in financial review as normal um mainly because i will tell you is because our we have not caught up with our enrollment so we are we are always getting paid for the enrollment from the previous year and then as we continue to grow when it grows faster you know we don't actually see the money coming until later so but we're we are doing well our revenue was higher than plan mainly due to the four million extra that we got this year um and i say extra not extra made up made out of money that we should have gotten back in 1819 um the

114expenses lower the plan because of um being conservative but then also just because we didn't uh have as much as many um we had some carryover programs especially with uh cares because we didn't know exactly how much we spent in the time o m i had planned salaries and both there and tort i used tort for a lot of o m salaries mainly to free up some of our o m operations cash it's something that was approved by the board in our risk plan um i did not do all the permanent transfers that i plan for in the budget the only one i did was to o m i did not do the education or the transportation because it was not needed um so so basically you'll see the working cash expenses are a lot

115lower than that's because we only did 460 out of the 810 000 that we had planned um so we had some that came in lower just because of the hours worked you know transportation we did not have as many trips this last year because of coba and everything so that lowered our transportation costs as well as our imrf because that is the benefits for um transportation our capital projects came in about a little bit lower expenses just because we hadn't been built for all of the administration office and same thing for um fire and safety because we haven't been built for all our boiler projects so i'll have to put them in the next budget as well um so um i just wanted to let everybody know i have been working on the next budget

116i know it just you know it seems like we're always doing a budget 20 21 22. um manually entering it i am going to be sending out a basically an invitation to any of you that want to come in um and go over anything that is currently in the budget um before the budget hearing just so that all you know every anything that you have concerned about you can look at you can see how i calculated it um you know because i i've gone by salaries you know actual salaries in every bucket um and i have manually moved them since we don't have everybody in the system yet so that as well as you know taking the um information from the grants that we've received and putting that in as well um so i i

117welcome everybody i have some preliminary numbers in there for transportation once the transportation report is complete the claim then i'll have actual numbers you know that i can put in there as well anything i don't know for sure right now i'm just keeping it flat like uh sales tax i'm just going to keep platform last year because we got more than what we expected so i would i'm always very conservative when it comes to revenue and expenses um but you know i welcome any feedback you know if you think that you know something should look differently then you know i would like that feedback so i will send out an email and you guys are welcome to come in anytime so to look at anything you want to look at and i apologize i forgot

118to look what does um sales tax look like now compared to pre-code um right now it's more than what we expected because we only saw yeah and right now we're coming in about equal to what it used to be so overall we're still down just because of the beginning months but we we're catching up so and i can plan for that too i mean i can balance it out but right now i'm just starting with the more conservative numbers working from there because i always like to get more money than i expect and less there we go yes sorry so but um you know i i i'm going to plan for one year's worth of property taxes hoping again that they will give us our may in june because then again if they for some

119reason did not give us our june again this next year we would be hurting again because we'd be going through that year of less taxes first year you get cut off you have less than expected the next year you'll even out because you get the next years but then now we're seeing that we're we're holding in so and then when i get the final numbers for gsa put that in as well when i say gsa um the evidence-based funding sorry exchange but so anybody have any questions or anything or [Music] thank you thanks thank you very much dr hall report uh my report was the bulldogs um communication to board what do we have done and then we'll close the communication from board then board members would normally have highlighted that they didn't get a

120chance to do that um elizabeth handy please remind everybody you've got up to five minutes if you need it uh we will cut folks off at five minutes in order to be fair max first i want to address you personally thank you so much for your opening remarks the last time i stood before you i was kind of in shock like you guys were when you heard some of the things that had been selected for our children to read um i had only heard those things benign before and i did what i pride myself in not doing and i blamed people and not processes and i'm not going to be able to be here on the second so i wanted to come and talk to you a little bit about processes um and a little

121bit about mohammed when coach jama and mr risley were standing here you could just see the pride in their eyes and the joy that they had in muhammad and recently i've seen some wonderful things happen in our community when i think of muhammad i think of being outside of the soccer games and families gathered together i think of hope and i think of our future and our kids people move to move to muhammad because they want a great place to raise their children um the books that we addressed at the last board meeting don't reflect the values of muhammad and i think as a board one of your jobs is sort of to vote for us collectively and vote for those family values that so many of us moved to muhammad because we loved and

122so i hope that as you think about the processes about how these books came to be in the possession of our children and you think about how you can create processes that will will support family values i'm also really really concerned about the way that this literature impacts the relationship between students and teachers and several people have commented oh they hear stuff like that in the hall all the time some of them do and some turn from it but they should never hear it from their teachers there's a relationship there um it's a power relationship it's an education relationship and it's a relationship that should be based on respect and that type of language is not appropriate in that type of a relationship and i think we need to think about that there's also some

123themes that concern me a great deal i have respect for our english teachers and i don't even know most of them i have respect for them because i have respect for the administration and i assume that they're hiring teachers that are qualified as english teachers i don't think that they're qualified to discuss sex with my kids and i'd rather they not i don't think it's appropriate especially when some of these kids are 17 18 and some of these teachers are 23. and that's that's not appropriate and i don't want that for my kids the themes of suicide of murder of rape our english teachers don't have degrees in psychology they don't have the ability to deal with those triggers and they shouldn't be expected to i wasn't with you and i would hope that they

124wouldn't want to because it's not appropriate and i don't think that they're going to be able to catch all of the kids that this literature will trigger um because the kids that are really triggered by it aren't going to be talking about it and it's dangerous and i think it leaves us open as a community to a certain amount of liability when we throw that stuff out there and expect young teens to deal with it so thank you for your time next up is michael dennis thank you for listening to my question i i haven't won many questions of my first board meeting i've ever attended so um i agree with everything she just said as far as the respect and what should be taught to our kids what should be asked of our kids

125one question i have i have asked a few members within the district that have not gotten a clear answer because maybe they're told not to talk about it or they just don't know and that is with this new school reform bill that was passed that was sent to governor pritzker's office and signed and it was in fact then more or less just over the heads of the parents in public without them knowing much about it at all um i would like to know about this critical race theory that's supposed to be implemented into the school district who is going to teach it what it's going to consider stuff and things of that nature can i get back to you on that yes okay i mean i would like to know before the school season starts

126i plan on my child attending muhammad here we've been here it's a great district we love the people in town but there's a few things that's happened this year through the government i do not agree with and if it comes down to that being taught and i don't agree that my child should be taught that i will be forced to home school so thank you thank you quarter chair would you mind if i were glass uh okay hi um here's a couple a comment about the books so in 2019 when my daughter entered sixth grade a couple of years ago the i think it was the night before school i received all the parents received an email and the subject line was literature exposure list and it went on to it was from all the

127english teachers um in the middle school and it went on to list um essentially like this is what your kid is going to be exposed to and just the language of it sort of like warning you know don't come complain to me ladies this is what we're gonna be exposed to peaked my interest so um i had only heard of one of the books um because a lot of them were news i went to the library and i was pretty shocked at what i found so i met with dr rummel and mr mills along with another parent who's also shot um and we did the same thing that happened here at school our meeting but it was in private we read passages from the book and they were sort of speechless i mean it was

128about um you know a 16 year old girl is pregnant and it starts out saying you know i i used to be really really hot but now i'm fat as a wrestler you know because of a baby you know guys don't like me anymore you know this whole thing she wants to throw a baby in the dumpster it just my daughter was 11 at the time so i was pretty um surprised uh and so mr mills gave me the option of removing my daughter and putting her in the library during english class um which i decided i would have liked to do but she would have felt very outcast by that and so when cobit hit it was actually you know there were a lot of things we were kind of teetering on the edge

129so i just pulled my kids out i have two kids um so i've known about this you know it's been known but nothing you know dr mumma was aware she was in that meeting so um you know i think we can do better i understand they're trying to reach marginalized audiences but i think it's the marginalized kids that can benefit the most from classic literature and from a good strong you know literature that has you know character development richness of language um you know i think every child you can approach a lot of these same themes but in a more appropriate way so um i guess that's my two cents about the literature um and then i just wanted to say that i support a full reopening of normal school without masking without vaccine segregation

130i know you're under a lot of restrictions and just one quick comment about the liability issues there's also um you know reports in the news last year i think about kids you know a couple kids in china that were running track with a mask on i think one one or two of them died and you know kids could get terrible skin infections they could fall and hit their head have a seizure you know there's also liability from wearing masks so that's something else to consider i think it you know and also a lot of kids especially with special needs they have a lot of trouble wearing a mask and it can impair their speech and language development and social development and these are just all things it's not just a minor inconvenience we're talking about

131all day for very young children um you know changes of social dynamics it causes a lot of children you know feel shame um it teaches them to be fearful of other people and i just think you have to um just use common sense when it comes to these things and if you know we're not a medical clinic we can't get into all these things you're running a school and your primary focus is education besides providing the basic safety um then parents can make the decision if they want to send their kids into this or not but right now i feel like i can't send my kids to school because i don't want them in this environment where they're being you know sanitized and masked and where they're taught we don't approach health that way you

132know and uh i think it's just psychologically unhealthy and uh that's all i have to say uh carl roberts hello my name is carla rafferty i'm a physician i'm representing myself my family is a physician i'm a mother of four young children a mother of a special needs child a resident of a muhammad and a responsible member of this community i want to start by first dispelling a few myths first mass do not cause any co2 retention or any harm to the wearer i've been wearing a mask this whole time as have a few other people in this meeting doctors and nurses can wear masks for up to 12 hours at a time during some complex surgeries and there's been no injuries from co2 poisoning second the mask wearer is the person who's helping minimize

133the spread of germs to other people the mass wearer does not effectively stop germs of an unmasked individual coming in their vicinity from getting the germs onto them so your mass protects other people therefore it's imperative that everyone wear a mask in school not just the people who want to wear masks in fact shorter vaccination is hands down the best tool we have the cdc indicates if you cannot maintain adequate social distancing you must wear a mask and we know that last year when we have we're at 75 capacity as well as reduced time in the buildings the school and district could not accommodate adequate social distancing we've covered this in bulldog blueprint process that we are in a crisis of overcrowding over schools combined with years of deferred maintenance on things like proper ventilation

134which is paramount importance in preventing transmission of corona virus some people in our community are concerned about the emotional trauma they claim their child has from wearing a mask or seen others in dance my response to them is that there's absolutely no data to support this and in fact there could be emotional trauma for other things like being exposed to a deadly virus because other people are not wearing masks or the active or the safe rooms that we had to build into this building because of active shooter scenarios so masks are a completely effective simple tool to reduce the risk of spreading coronavirus when they're covering the mouth and nose that's it it's that simple it's harmless the cdc recommends masking when there's a mixture of vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals from multiple households which is

135basically the population of our schools children under 12 cannot vaccinate at present and it's leaving those classrooms very vulnerable our school district also has many children with special needs who are immunocompromised and and they need to keep those kids safe as well children over 12 are not universally vaccinated and while we do have good vaccination rates in champion county muhammad as a community does not additionally if we are not to be collecting vaccination status on individuals you cannot guarantee in each individual is following the guidelines this cannot be an honor system and if we're requiring documentation of other vaccinations that the school needs then we can also require vaccination on covid if that's the direction that our school is going until we get approved vaccines for all ages and we get good vaccination rates any

136plan that expects to fully reopen must include universal masking masking at worst is an inconvenience and a reasonable harmless one to help stop the spread of a deadly virus so we just passed you guys just passed a resolution with the um teachers association that said you will consider all relevant factual uh information that comes from regulatory agencies well just yesterday the american academy of pediatrics revised their guidance to recommend universal masking in all schools for the following reasons and i quote one a significant portion of the student population is not eligible for vaccination two protection of unvaccinated students from covent 19 and to reduce transmission transmission three potential difficulty and moderate in monitoring or enforcing masking policy who are not vaccinated in the absence of schools being able to conduct this monitoring universal masking is

137the best most effective option and creates consistent messaging expectations enforcement and compliance for the possibility of low vaccination uptake within the surrounding school community and five continued concerns with variants that may more easily spread among children adolescents and adults while i do hope we can get to the point where everyone eligible gets vaccinated and realistic that's not going to be the case therefore mass mandates are a must unfortunately coven mass social distancing vaccines have been politicized and there are very strong feelings in either sun however these are matters of science which are not about feelings and opinions but rather about conducting studies analyzing data and making conclusions based on those studies please i urge you to consider universal masking for the safety of our students the safety of our community thank you you and glory

138well i would like to start on a positive note i think that to all of people volunteer to be in the school board you guys have so many different difficult decisions with so many factors so many personalities and so many issues coming up just like this lady said this coalition it's a really big issue i mean there's people dying within three days of the vaccine there's also children that are passing out lawsuits because of children that do sports that are passing out and having to be taken to the hospital there there's all kinds of things this is a russian roulette and we don't know everything about it so it's a very difficult decision and i applaud the board for taking this issue on to do the best for the kids so last week last month

139when i came to the meeting i asked the question at the end and the question was it was about curriculum being available in all schools and it's to all parents not only to parents who have internet okay i actually i asked max max if you didn't know and then he asked nicole and she didn't know so i went on i went to someone who had the solution to this so i made copies for all parents who might be interested on what exactly are the muhammad seymour guidelines and the states and one of them is curriculum development on instruction but also what are the privacy rights for students and the third page that's available is what this is like one of the protection of pupil rights so my problem with what happened last month when i

140asked that question i thought a lot about it is that the problem that i have with what happens on this board is it max i just feel like you don't do your job i mean i only got five minutes i'm not going to miss works okay we're okay we're so personal so okay so so what is your concern if those are going to continue you can sit down this is a public meeting and you represent the community i am one voice of this community okay the thing that you started the meeting with tonight was concerns should be dealt with the teacher this is about the books by the way the thing about the books is not about banning it's about the process that went into putting those books in the kids hands and you said

141teachers should not be blindsided by parents so this kind of brings me to the accountability issue all of the instructions should not be passed on to the teachers having to defend a position because those teachers that chose those books they have a curriculum directive and that curriculum director answers to the superintendent so the bot really stops with the school board because she's responsible to the board it's not the other way around and then you're responsible to the community okay so i had a problem with that because it wasn't about so much the books is it how did they get so far without no one knowing um and the thing that i think about the board is thank you because you know what you guys have an awful lot of homework to do every month because

142different issues come up so i thank you for that so it wasn't a question of the books it's how did those books get there and i think that there was an account an accountability issue that's somewhere along the line and i know that there's a meeting and i thank you for the notice and i will be there at that meeting but it's really not up to the teachers to answer that question it should be up to the superintendent who is in charge of that curriculum and the board approves the curriculum tonight an issue came up about postponing a vote you're supposed to protect the community that open language with the nsea will leave the board open so if a lawsuit goes along with that you know what it's the community who pays the bill so

143that should have been a concern for the board to take up because maybe no one thought of the issue so i'm not trying to attack the personalities i'm really attacking the process of what i see i've seen this problem with the last four superintendents and i've brought this issue up before so i just wanted to make a very public statement so that i'm not speaking behind your backs you guys have a tough job and i thank you for it thank you all and by the way if anyone needs copies of this my daughter has copies of all of the you know these are all of your your rights um for curriculum for parents rights and teaching students okay board members any closing comments well we're an open session we'll start with um i just want

144to thank everybody who came tonight i want to thank people for emails i do think we have a tough job and we are supposed to represent the community it's helpful when we hear from you um i appreciate people coming with expertise and sharing that with the board i do think we have to in these situations lean on experts and people who work in fields and have knowledge bases that we do not so i appreciate uh very much people who have that sense of knowledge sharing that with the board either through email or coming tonight uh we do have a lot on our plate um but we need to get to work and do it we need more meetings where we tick through getting stuff done and um i'm going to commit to the community that

145i think there's some efficiency gains we can have as a board with the way we structure our meetings and what we put on agendas and i'm going to work towards making sure that we do that so that we can and do address the important issues that you bring to us and so that we are serving you in a manner in which you think is appropriate thanks for coming and sharing sorry um i also want to thank everybody for coming and i i want to echo what rizz and jama talked about with the bulldog blueprint committee i'm so glad that you're here to share your thoughts but i really would like everybody who's in this room to at least attend one bulldog session they have been incredibly valuable incredibly well organized um and it's a way

146to get your voice into the future of this district so i would encourage you to do that and thank you jama riz and jen um and the only other thing i wanted to mention is i want to put a plug-in for run muhammad that supports our muhammad area youth club a lot of our students get supported through macy and they have a run at the on the first weekend of august so if you enjoy running or even just want to get out and walk um it's a good opportunity okay jim uh i appreciate all the feedback um i i wasn't here last week but i do share those concerns with the curriculum and we're going to work on those things and get it corrected coming um i thought for my communication i would do sort

147of like a flashback i was looking through some things and i found what i said in the comments i made at the very first school board meeting i ever went to and i thought i would read them i mean i've evolved a little since this but it just brought me back especially given our comments for last week so i thought i would re-read them because i think they're still relevant recently my nine-year-old daughter was given a book to read in her reading group that included several profanities my husband and i find the content to be inappropriate for a nine-year-old the classroom teacher and the principal believe the content is appropriate and that it will remain in the classroom clearly everyone has a different idea about what's appropriated vulnerable people can disagree this incident was the

148motivation for why i came to the school board but i'm not coming to comment on the particular material i'm not here to ask you to ban books and pull censorship or micromanage teachers i'm not here to try to dictate what is or is not taught in the classroom today i'm here to advocate for a policy of increased transparency between our schools and parents as well as a policy of having an appropriately leveled alternative for students whose parents ought their student out of reading a particular book they feel is inappropriate such policies would assure collaborative relationships between students families and the schools and would enable parents to become active partners in their children's education it is the responsibility of the superintendent to keep parents thoroughly informed about their child's education and encourage them to be involved

149establishing effective two-way communication between the parents in the district i'm asking the board to direct the superintendent through policy for the district that increases the level of communication as to ensure that principals and teachers communicate with parents clearly and effectively especially regarding content of the curriculum and media exposures um i'm going to skip some parts for time i believe this policy is needed because the practice of the district has not been sufficient if there already is a policy it's not being enforced i'm advocating for a policy that will be proactive and provide opportunity for conversations and discussions between the schools and the parents and being preemptive and helping stop problems before they occur the policy is not for the purpose of encouraging parents to complain more just the contrary when the parents in the schools

150work together there can be a reduction in conflict transparency between the schools and the parents will also permit the parents to have more productive discussions with their children at home only making their education in schools more effective it's natural reaction to a request like this to say we don't need that here in muhammad and that might have been true years ago when there was much smaller diversity of opinion on what is or is not appropriate but today there's a greater gap between the conclusions of reasonable people and it seems certain that this gap will only increase in the future i'd be happy to work with the district or administrators to collaborate on a feasible policy and would be happy to participate in a continued discussion of increased transparency between the district and the parents and

151so one of the ways i did that was remember the score but i really believe that we need to make sure that we are really communicating well regarding our curriculum since i wrote this i i do believe that as a board we have a responsibility to have some minimum standards for our curriculum and some of the things that i heard in the last meeting i found it appropriate and so we do need to work on having some kind of minimum standards but i also think we really need to have a real effort towards transparency and good alternatives thank you question all right i just want to say thanks to all of reach out over these uh difficult topics that we've been discussing the last couple months um all your voices are being heard we read

152all the emails i keep keep them coming we appreciate it and we're here to represent you guys and also i'm looking forward to the august 2nd meeting to discuss more about the curriculum and find out find out some more information on that and also just thanks for everyone's patience as we work through some things and looking forward to the meeting thursday night thank you um i'll just close with something i guess has been in my mind a lot lately as a community um we um one of the lines of paraphrase one of colleen's lines where we're a more diverse community than we used to be and we're becoming orders and part of that is a diversity of opinion and you know a year ago i sat down with some parents pretty much told me in

153no uncertain terms that their opinion was that to kill the book to kill a mockingbird has an inappropriate language in it we should never ever use the background again last meeting we had some parents who said to kill mockingbird is a classic how did we dare get rid of them we're gonna have and we've heard an email from parents that said we need to mask everybody and how dare you consider doing anything different we've heard a lot from parents who said you know mass should be a choice clearly these are examples of situations where we can't make one decision and make everybody happy it is not going to happen and i guess what i want to remind everybody is one thing i used to love about our community is we didn't always agree but we

154could disagree respectfully and that is a trait that seems to be going away in the world i'd like to say that that's not the case here in muhammad but more and more it seems to be the case here and i can guarantee you a couple things folks that believe strongly we should be wearing masks have opinions why they think we should do that and one of the reasons it's not just they don't believe that suffocating kids this is the ultimate goal okay and i believe that people who think mass via choice have reasons and one of the reasons is they don't it's not that they don't care about public safety okay and so i hope as issues continue to evolve and those these won't be the last issues we face it just won't we live

155in times that are changing there's more out there than ever before um and just because [Music] just because you can sound off on social media doesn't mean it's the right thing to do so i would like to encourage everybody to remember why we all do this why we're here why we live in the community that we do and as we work through issues and maybe decisions don't happen quite the way that you would prefer that it doesn't mean people that disagree with you are evil or idiots or need i say that in jest but if you read some things on social media that's where people are so just as we look to build the community of the future let's not forget some traits that made many of us choose this community in the first place

156that's all i got um i'd like to thank everyone for staying with us through open session we do have a closed session necessary tonight um for reasons five and six on the list which have to do with the lease and sale and purchase of property and i will entertain a motion liberations concerning salaries for one or more classes of employees yes thank you for catching that um is there a motion to go in closed session for those reasons is there a second second discussion thank you very much very clear i was clear last time i do not consider these policies negotiations nor salary i wanted to have a global discussion about whether or not we wanted to use s or money to bonus teachers and i don't believe that there is a reason in the

157closed session that covers that so i want to be real clear that i know shelley you want to comment on that discussion the decision about paying teachers is kind of the most essential term and condition of employment so that would be something that the board should be discussing in closed session it's not as if you could you could or should just decide you're going to give a certain amount of money to the teachers teachers in the union without discussing that with the union first so certainly that's a topic that should be had in closed session first and then discuss with the msca okay so the advice of legal counsel will keep that in closed session any other discussion we were both yes thank you for being with us we'll take about a 10 minute recess

158to clear the room and come back