Mahomet-Seymour Board of Education Meeting 12-14-20

001here go ahead Jared good evening everybody we've got the feed up and U we've got uh tonight's meeting is the regular meeting of the Muhammad Seymour Board of Education and uh we've got several of our members revoke tonight uh we've got three of us here in the room but everyone is present and uh it is 700 p.m. on Monday December 14th at this time I'd like to remind anyone attending in person I we do have a very small crowd here tonight due to to our restrictions uh but if you are here in person and you're guest we encourage you to sign in and please silence your cell phones I'd also like to remind our visitors that in order to facilitate an effective meeting we ask those that wish to make comments to the board to

002read the visitors guidelines found outside and complete the public participation form and to get those to Dawn can we have roll call please here Keith here Henri here Schultz here Larson here H here mome here and let's stand for the plag I PL Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible withy and justice for all very good thank you everyone um board members you've had an opportunity to review the agenda for this evening is there a motion to approve the agenda so move Larson second got a motion in a second there a discussion on the agenda hearing none can I have a roll call vote please Larson yes HRI yes Giles yes Hennessy yes Keith yes Schultz yes mome yes

003um public participation I've got one form I do know we have a union speaker tonight I believe the msea that will be on webx and is there anyone else that we are aware of Don do we have any emails submitted for tonight okay no actually no okay uh board members you've had a a chance to look at the consent agenda on tonight's consent agenda there are minutes of previous meetings there are bills to pay there's the treasures report there's some Personnel changes and there are U minutes from previous closed um sessions is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented so move that's Giles is there a second second Larson is there discussion on the consent agenda uh vote please joh Hy no Schultz no Keith yes Giles yes Henri yes Larson yes

004mome yes donations Dr Hall um we have a an incredible generous amount of donations this month just so grateful for our community and and the way that we're supported um from Mohammad Lions Club a donation uh to Mom's Pantry ,000 in cash um a donation from Tom appzilla who's retired science teacher from Mohammad Seymour Jr High another $1,000 cash donation to Mom's Pantry Patrick and Melissa trainer a $500 cash donation to Lincoln Trail for the 5G packs of joy and Ken and Patricia marks Miller um another $500 cash donation uh for Mom's Pantry so these are all ways that we um find to support our community and and our families who are in need and so a total of $3,000 this month and um just very appreciative thank you okay so we've got the donations

005of to $3,000 to um support some of our ongoing work that we're doing um and some good causes is there a motion to approve those no move okay thank you Colleen is there a second I'll second Hennessy okay Hennessy second discussion on donations need to vote please Henri yes Hennessy yes Schultz yes Larson yes Giles yes Keith yes M yes all right it's communication time is there anyone from the PTO MSA I believe one of our co-presidents is with us Meg Jones are you somewhere yes can you hear me we can and we can see you oh perfect good evening the msa's position on two points Remains the Same first we should currently be following the recommendation of the public health experts at the cupd by conducting instruction in a fully remote fashion right now

006through January 5th the district's failure to follow this recommendation is why msea has filed a grievance on this count second when we return in January we should continue the hybrid model one that allows us and our students to adequately social distance as much as possible msea continues to maintain that we have the right to bargain the board decision to return to a full in-person instruction model in January given that the County Health Board does not consider the district's plan for January to be safe we can't and good contra accept not on behalf students or our members msea would ask for the board to call for a vote tonight to remain hybrid when we return in January thank you thanks M thank you Meg is can I can I just ask a quick question sure Meg

007I'm sorry can you just clarify for me um the grievance part of it the the point one that you made yeah the grievance um was filed in regards to the public health experts um recommending the district go to fully REM um now through well when it was issued um through January 5th so that's what the grievance is in regards to the CU Public Health experts right May that's what okay thank you Megan sorry I just want to ask that part okay is there anyone from the foundation tonight yes I reported for the foundation at the last meeting which was telling you that the annual campaign letter was coming out because um it was the end of the year and they didn't have a bulldog bash lined up and I am happy to report that they

008have received over $1,000 in donations to the Muhammad Seymour Education Foundation so thank you to the generous donors who have done that that will be used to go right back into our classrooms and on behalf of the benefits of our students and our staff okay it's good news and we appreciate all the work and all the things the foundation does to support us um visitors I've got uh one that is asked to speak and that's Amanda mfar is this okay that's fine you've got up to five minutes if you need okay thank you good evening um I stand before you tonight as a very proud educator in our Mohamed Seymour school district and I have to confess I was very hesitant to come here this evening because um I just love my job so much

009and I love what I do I love my students I love working with you Dr Hall specifically and Dr Rumble and I don't want you to think there's any lack of respect on this end but I just wanted to voice some concerns I have this evening um I am just so proud of the work my co-workers and I have done in this District since March I am so proud of our district initiatives put in place to keep our students safe at school including the new roll out of the co testing that started today thank you Maita for helping with that as well and since August there have only been two positive Co cases that have come from school exposure but I have to confess I'm getting very nervous about recent health developments that I see

010on our Co dashboard that's updated daily I have noticed on our dashboard as you all have as well that positive covid numbers have been greatly increasing since the start of November 50 positive cases in November 12 already this month and this should give us all a bit of cause to pause and reflect upon what might be best for our schools in January when we return from winter break the number of students at the junior high choosing to go to go remote is is also on the rise as most of you probably know since November's 1st 62 students in my school have chosen to go all remote and of course I don't know the reasons each family made the decision but I think it's an indication that some families in our district might be worried about

011the 4 day a week all students back model that is currently proposed for January if you were to tell me in August that we would be here where we are today I have to say I wouldn't have believed it I was afraid Co would run rampant even with this high model and we'd be back to fully remote by September however we have worked so hard in our buildings keeping things safe keeping them clean keeping students distance and we the teachers have come together to create and adapt awesome lessons to reach all of our students hybrid and remote as a librarian I've been able to keep books going out to remote students I've been able to visit classrooms while other activities are needed to keep going in the library and I'm still in communication constantly with

012students via email and social media and I'm quote just the librarian if you think and extrapolate this times 100 think about what my traditional teaching colleagues are doing we are absolutely rocking this current model we are keeping people safe we are keeping them educated because of all of hard work and adapting we've done I implore you to please keep this hybrid learning in place when we come back I am begging you and I don't typically do that especially to some people here that I respect so much I know you want to keep our students safe I know you want Mohammed Seymour School District to be upheld as a beacon of Excellence during this pandemic and so far we have been in my opinion so why would we want to exchange the hybrid model we're in

013for a far riskier one for everyone back four days a week except for those students who remain to Who Remain remote I have witnessed my two administrators Mr Mills and Mr fiser work tirelessly trying to figure out where to put students trying to figure out how to keep them safe when we come back in January rearranging rooms tweaking and finding new places to eat lunch I just see them bending over backwards and I applaud them but I don't think they should have to be doing all of this extra work if we could just keep this hybrid model it would keep us safe it would keep us functioning at the high rate we are functioning at right now the simple fact is we will not be able to remain effectively distanc in the junior high once

014we come back in January no matter how much work we put into swapping classrooms using other spaces the numbers are already creeping up I worry very much what will happen in January after families travel and congregate together even when they are advised not to tonight I just ask you to please listen to the majority of your employees who have been working so hard to keep everyone safe please listen to us and keep our hybrid model safe and standing please listen to Julie pride and recommendations from cup PhD please let this hybrid model stand and please consider making a safe decision for everyone working in our schools day after day and all of our students it is okay to reverse this decision to be all in when we come back in January no one will thinkk

015less of you and I really think a lot of people would applaud you and thank you just as I'm going to do right now thank you for your time thank those comments um board members let's start with uh Jeremy sorry Jeremy we had you muted for a minute now you're unmuted or no now you're not unmuted yet move on okay let's go to let's go all right Jeremy all that all that for nothing I don't have anything to report well that's why we work so hard to do that mute him again please just k I have no report tonight either okay Colleen I would just like to say um if you're looking for something to do um for some holiday enjoyment um you might want to check out the madrigals who have a free show

016this year that you can watch online and do a great job thanks okay thank you m I just want to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday uh and vacation time and I hope that everyone uh gets some much deserved rest and is able to uh safely connect with those that they love and have a happy holiday season thank you Lori I would Echo what Colleen said I was able to go to the drive-through magical and I really um appreciated the opportunity to get to do that and hear them they were awesome um I would like to thank all of the staff that we have I started categorizing it out and I thought that was dangerous because I would just forget one field of Staff but all the staff that we have but the families

017and the students for writing this with us so that we can make a difference academically in the instruction of our students um I know today I ran into Lincoln Trail and saw all of the little things out for the different kids to get when they pick up and it's exciting to see that people are still planning and working so thank you to everybody for doing that thank you Merl I read last week and I was surprised and delighted to to see the the data that Champagne County and pyet County are two lowest Co counties out of our 102 in the state so kudos to our both of folks and all the others that keep this thing going way as well as it has thank you um I want to Echo two things first of all

018I think it is really cool the M Madrigal recorded their program and I think it just goes to show that we are uh really we've got students and staff that are really working hard uh trying to do as much as we can the circumstances that we're operating under um and I just thought that was fabulous when I heard that was happening um and then the the other thing is just a thank you to really all of our staff um you know we all know this year hasn't looked like any of us would really prefer it looks right um and back in July when we were talking about what we we going to do the first semester uh regardless of whether you thought we should be uh fully in or fully remote or hybrid or whatever

019you thought I don't think any of us ever thought we would be sitting here uh 4 days prior to Christmas break um and not have had to take any kind of a shutdown Break um and I think that's just a credit um to the folks that are our buildings every day um and I just want to say thank you to all of you I know you're working under some really really odd and often difficult circumstances and uh we're doing the best we can to do the best we can and it is just it's it's outstanding that we're at this point so thank you so much um Financial update Heather hello good evening Dr Hall um I I'm sure you looked at the reports already you can see that uh revenue is a little bit down

020right now just compared to where we are in the year of course that is our taxes our property taxes they have assured me that they will try to get another dispersement out by the end of this week so hoping to get those soon um our the only thing that's really down though is our uh education fund at in our operational f is not that much so um expenses of course our capital projects fund is up a little bit that's just because we spent the bond money out of it for the Fieldhouse our debt service a lot of our um payments are the beginning of the year so it looks like we're a little ahead on that but that's just because it's front loaded in the year beginning of the year um onm we have some

021Grant expenditures in there which will be offset with revenue and of course Transportation our bus laes are already hit so just to understand why the proportions a little bit off um we you know we are looking at our grants on a regular basis um you um Dr Hall did a great job of um getting some supporters for our 10 so we were able to move some other expenses into our cares Grant and we are holding steady with sales tax at 6.21% for the year so that's anybody have any questions or anything questions for Heather I know St of cash still look pretty good yeah we're still at around 100 days and um a lot of that is due a little bit of the increases due to the fact that we have submitted some of our

022expenditures for the car's Grant and the digital Equity Grant so we've received some of that money so good news so we'll just hope that the state keep sending money I say that because I just I was around in 2010 when they stop you know they slowed down their categoricals and such so just waiting see hopefully they will not do that especially since we did not get our tier money this year but I think I saw somewhere where the states doing they doing another Federal Loan or something or another Federal money for us I don't know that we know about that yet but yeah we have not heard that yet but um I will definitely keep an eye out for it so it it would be nice if we are you know uh using quite a

023bit of custodial supplies and so far we've been able to cover them with the K's Grant but I'm assuming you know next semester if we will continue to have more and more supplies so it' be nice if we got some more money for those purposes anything else for hea thank you Heather thank you you're coming back later for several you're like up and down up and down uh Christine nor are you with us yes I see you nothing to report other than what's in the report and to take any questions you might have okay board members you had a chance to look at Christine's report are there any questions okay Nicole ruml you're there hi hi um I use this month just to provide you um with some of the data that Dr Kevin tan

024collected um last spring from uh our freshman will continue continue with this study moving into this coming spring um so we have hopefully we'll have multiple years of data over our time together working with him um but I have nothing to add I'll happy to answer any questions you have questions for Dr Ronald no I'd like to make a comment though I I really like that you included this in here and I I think it has a nice link to our FMP program too A lot of the lessons that I've noticed that they instruct our freshman on go around this so kudos to that program for aligning with theal for the kids and I'm glad to see that those two are working together anything else for Dr romal Dr Hall superintendent report thank you well

025I I will just add the words of thanks to our our staff um students parents community members and to um our board of education for getting through a successful first semester successful is div defined in a wide variety of ways right now certainly things did not look differently but um it has taken a team effort to be inventive and patient and flexible and um just thank you to our students and families and to everybody uh so we'll see what second semester brings and um hopefully it's there are less challenges and uh we'll just continue to get through the 2021 school year but um thanks thanks to everybody and uh it's a a good time to have two weeks away and I wish everybody the happiest of holidays and a merry Christmas and um certainly a

026um bringing 2020 to closure will maybe feel good so um on kind of On a related note I just wanted to briefly mention that we um have started covid-19 testing for our staff and um today we did a dry run of our drive-thru facility at the junior high and it it went pretty well so feeling prepared um thanks to Nita Bachman our health eops and um some of our other employees um this has been a collaborative team effort to get this off the ground and and we're very happy to be providing this uh so looking forward to um doing that for our students starting January 11th and uh I would like to publicly congratulate Matt Hensley our assistant principal and Athletics and activities director at the high school he's the recipient of the nfhs citation

027award which is given um each year at the national athletic director's conference and wouldn't you know it the national athletic director's conference is in Tampa this year and no one can [Laughter] go but uh this citation is awarded to individuals whose contributions have impacted High School activity programs through their association with one of the following groups of Professionals State associations and nfhs staff athletic directors coaches officials music adjudicators and directors and speech debate and theater directors so Mr Hensley's had a very positive impact on our programs but also at the state and National level too so we congratulate Matt for his um dedication and hard work and these are all things that take time of above and beyond um an athletic director's crazy schedule so just appreciate um him and his work that reflects so

028highly on Mohamad sen um School District thank you in another time we probably have him here we probably do a group photo yes we won't do that tonight kind of make a comment uhuh Nita I would like to tell you um that I was at L Trail today and three staff were there and they were like hey we went and got our testing done today and we thought it was great and easy and so I I mean I just happened to be there and they told me and I was I I didn't have any doubt would go well but thank you so much thanks any questions for Dr Hall okay we'll move on to new business item number one which is a 2020 tax lovey hether come back he's got a standing job now for

029a little while stay there for a while looks like yes I am tonight I am proposing the same Levy that we looked at at the financial committee meeting as well as the last four meeting um to keep our rate flat so what we're doing is we're wanting to keep the rate flat at 45979 our rate has is one of the lowest in Champagne County and is lower than the average of the last 20 to 30 years so mohamd Seymour has done very well at keeping um the tax rate steady as you know there's several things that go into what your your tax bill is it goes into your assess value and the rate the what the item that we can actually affect is the rate and so um usually keeping in a flat is what

030people like um we have many funds that are restricted so we only get what we get so for those we rely on the assessor to give us an estimate of what um he thinks that the eav is going to increase by this for 2020 year he believes that it he I believe that it will increase by 3.79% so since those are restricted um we can balloon that just so just in case it goes up by any more so that we get the full amount that is due to US based off those maximum percentages and then we use the 3.79 to calculate what we do for our restricted funds that way um if it is only 3.79 it won't increase the rate so that's basically what you're using the 's value for so with that being

031said I'm recommending tonight that we um that we adopt this tax levy so that I can get it in in time so that we can hopefully receive our taxes on time okay superintendent recommends the Board of Education approve and adopt the resolution concerning an affecting the tax levy for 2020 as presented is there a motion to do that so move is there second second I'm sorry was that SCH that SCH that was Colleen yep all right Is there further discussion on the levy board I just want to say thanks to um Merl and Ken for their work on the finance committee and to Heather of course as well for putting this together and had some good discussions about it and um so I think we're in a really good spot with this thank you just

032yes go ahead K Heather can you just remind me when will we find out what the actual eav is usually around April April okay thank you thank you I appreciate the historical references here and one of the things that I think is most catching for me is the growth that we've actually had in in the Mohammed area with the assessed values being four times higher for commercial for instance U Farm assessments up uh just three times residential up 6X uh in since 1991 so quite a bit the other perspective that sometimes we we lose track of is actually how we rank in the county with our rates so the the the rates historically for us have been in the fours and sometimes uh in fact never in the $5 range U the rates in the

033county today there are actually six uh school districts uh that are under $5 and seven that are over $5 and we are second from the bottom of the entire list so we have been uh fiscally conservative all these years and especially compared to our other folks around of course all the growth and no growth is is hard to compare but especially with the with the um the amount that we receive in percentage wise of state and property we are highly reliant on property taxes so that's even better um that Mohamad Seer has been able to keep lower all these years when they're not getting as much help from the state exactly so thanks for sharing all that kinds of data any other comments roll please Schultz yes Giles yes lson yes Kei yes Hennessy yes

034HRI yes the yes and the levy is passed boiler bids the boiler bids this is actually good news for for me so because as long as it's good news for you good news for this safy money but um we were expecting a lot higher bids so that's what was good news for me awesome so I'm always happy when they come in lower than what I expect and what I plan so I'm happy because good news for you is usually good news for all yes especially since um you know like Mr Curtis has said you know two of the boilers are aren't doing so well they're sick so we want to make sure that we keep um the building up and running as well as possible maybe divert them we did get some bids in uh

035we had the bid on December 8th at 2 p.m. and there were four biders our low bidder is who I am recommending tonight is Davis Hawk H it's h h okay sorry H mechanical um and they came out at $106,900 which the what we had expected was around 130,000 so to your question Megan at the last board meeting we will have about we will still have some money left in health Life Safety even before the new tax money starts coming in so about thank you so much oh so I would like to accept these bids tonight and get them ordering all of the parts needed super tech recommenders of Board of Education accept the bid from Davis he mechanical to replace two boilers at more high school is there a motion to do that so

036moved lson is there a second second J further discussion or questions or comments uh on the bid tabulation form all the way to the right it says for Davis Hulk uh that there is 140 days what does that mean that's just their estimate on how when they would get it completed we just wanted to make sure that really wasn't into any of the decision- making but just making sure that they it wasn't going to take longer than what we wanted so we just asked them to provide the number of days that they would take to getv 140 days yes yes he he's right yes yes I didn't in okay shape moment soent with this okay and safe to assume they might in probability they might beat that they're just us a timeline the architect wrote

037that in to so that all Bs knew that there was a you know we're ready to jump on this they weren't be able to wait until next year yeah okay so well it's finally cold it's been so nice Okay good yeah something we haven't always seen on bibs right as a number of day thing any other questions roll call both please Heather Kei yes LaRon yes Hennessy yes Henri HRI Jeremy is no WR we've temporarily lost Jeremy schz yes Giles yes mome yes can you work on getting Jeremy back right now okay okay we'll keep rolling um next item is the is Jeremy back he's going to try to get him we're not sure if we can get him we're hoping we can I think he bellone service Jer Jeremy did not have internet service

038he's calling in on Cell we think we have temporarily lost I just would like him to be on before we continue thanks Jeremy or we back that's why we were dying BD there he is Jeremy heard the Jeremy here just say yes I voted yes you voted yes welcome back you must been silently okay fuel bids Heather he fuel bid iuel bit what our our contract had expired so we um with Pon Buckley We join with them to do our fuel bid so that we can gain on the economies of scale putting it together um we had the bid at on December 9th at 10:00 a.m. we received three bids um usually we received four but two of them went in together this time um we I gave an option for a onee and a

039two-year option uh to try to capitalize on the low fuel rates as well but we also made it so that we can now because of the times we're in right now we can actually buy off the rack too if it's cheaper so we can choose whether we want to buy out the Rack or buy off the pre-sold uh Fuel and that way we don't have so much money tied up in the fuel as well um so we ask for fixed and variable costs based off of that because the fix will be for the the the the uh the fuel that we put back the uh variable tells us how much they're going to charge us over the actual fuel cost so after looking at the bids um we I would like to propose going with

040the two-year with kins oil that is who we've had in the past but also they were the lowest on the fixed and the variable uh they were very just a little bit higher but when you mix the two together and you do the analysis it ends up the lowest for kins fuel kins oil so I'd like to do a two-year contract with kins oil okay and is it safe to assume that pbl is gonna yes they are the same recommendation yes they're having the same recommendation at they're meeting on Wednesday okay um so superintendent recommends the Board of Education approv the fuel bids from Ken's oil for the next two years is there a motion to do that so move is there a second second do we have questions or comments or discussion just a

041question Heather seems like we did this with pbl last time yes are the actual rates less or or more than than our last contract are are things down um yes right now okay which is why you want like in two years because they down yes and you know and we did we kind of like we compromise a little bit to doing the half and half that way we can buy it when it's even further down than our contract but then we can use the the fuel that we have because this last year has been really hard on them as well because we had a lot of fuel locked in or you know estimated we didn't have it locked in but estimated so they had bought a lot more fuel that we didn't use well because

042nobody ran buses in the spring yes yeah including us have to deliver meals well again say we use No Buses is not accurate but we used way less bus transportation than we would normally used we delivered meals and delivered hot SPS right there you go um any other questions for Heather or comments or discussion please Giles yes ke yes HRI yes Schultz yes Larson yes Hennessy yes the yes next uh board policies 110 310 and 610 Dr home so these um policies were in front of the board last month for a first reading and they just represent some added wording to these three policies which affirms the board's work um in these areas of diversity equity and inclusion in our school district so um happy to answer any questions otherwise these are just coming back

043for a vote after being in front of the board last night superent recommends the Board of Education approve the revisions the policies one col and 10 three col and six col and as presenta as are a motion to do that so move tennessy Z second second second J discussion or questions for Dr Hall I have a question okay I have um I I'm curious does this put us in any legal Peril at all if we don't meet these objectives in other words if uh a teacher or a staff member um saids something that is perceived as um not Equitable or uh maybe hurtful to somebody in some way um and if we are they in some sort of peril as far as you know loss of job uh suspension without pay um you know I

044have I just have concerns about putting something like in here that we don't have anything that really who determines what's Equitable who determines uh what's inclusive uh because be by being inclusive for for one subset of individual you might exclude another subset of individuals uh so I I really have some concern about putting language like this into our our policies um although they are the goals are good I don't disagree with that I think that it's it puts us in some Jeopardy and I can't vote for it so we currently already have a um process in place to file a complaint or grievance under a couple of different policies um that we that we currently have that are in place um specifically um seven colon 10 uh equal educational opportunities so that that mechanism is

045is already there should a um uh student or staff member feel that there is a a reason to file a complaint under Title 9 or other are under our harassment or um equal educational opportunities policies I mean that that's already been in place so that's that's there already um I so you know this this doesn't create in my opinion this doesn't create more of that I think it actually um again affirms uh the board's commitment to um preserving that I appreciate that the the question I I think it's a it's a good question um I think that at any given time um you know we're also going through uh and providing a lot of U professional development and training for our staff um hopefully to provide a foundation for what these things look like um

046in our school district but again there there is a formal mechanism in place that is Guided by our current policies um a lot of that was updated actually last month in approving the Press 105 um updates there was quite a bit of information in there about Title 9 and about the complaint procedure and the investigation procedure um so I feel like there's there are procedures and steps in place that would guide um I guess the complaint procedure should that be there and um that that certainly is is out there and available if people feel that there's a need to file a complaint I guess my my concern is more also more districtwide what if if someone uh concern that we're not meeting objectives districtwide does that set us up for some sort of consent to

047think that that can happen right now without even adopting these policies can I ask a question or a statement it's so spelled out what if it said students benefit from a diverse inclusive and Equitable learning environment that promotes the social emotional learning of all students period I guess the question I have is what does this do in our district like how does this change what we're doing do we have a different policy or different procedures I mean this is policy I guess or how does this make anything different to adopt this do we change what we're doing or do we what's it going to look like well I think one thing that it looks like has been um conversations that perhaps haven't taken place or haven't been uh as in-depth as they have been in

048the past professional development and training for our staff um this is also a a board statement I mean the policies are what guide the the board these three policies happen to be more of like I would you know the philosophy or goal statement they they affirm uh a philosophy they affirm goals that that we have um there there are things I think we've heard over the last 6 months that we do need to do differently in our district so this could reflect that I mean we've heard um we've heard from constituents we've heard from former students we we've um you know made a made a lot of effort and devoted a lot of resources to the town hall meetings the um again I go back to the trainings that we've provided for our staff this

049past fall so um should things look different going forward yeah we're always working on this and we should be other questions for Dr Hall or comments okay vote please Lon yes Henri no Giles yes Hennessy yes Keith yes Schultz president M yes so what was the final score there pass yeah five to one yeah 5 one I would just like to respectfully ask the board you know this these were brought to you in November I've heard nothing from anybody since November 16th um and I'm available so is Dr Rumble should these things want to be talked through or available for any questions and that type of thing I don't say that to shut down Communication in in this venue but I I might have been able to answer some more questions ahead of time so

050always happy to do that with any board member at any time if you have questions in advance um I just I guess I just feel like all the things that we said are things we've already done and I just didn't see um that this was going to change things and so I just didn't know thanks yeah thank you and I can just say for me as I delayed on thinking about it is that I think all is all and I think that's good so I voted for so I I certainly want to say I'm not opposed to that I I believe all is all too I just I was sort of make sure what we do accomplishes what it is that we want to do and so I I just I struggle with go ahead

051Jeremy so I don't disagree with Ken I feel like uh that the diversity industry is a billion dollar industry they've been doing this for decades and they've got nothing to show for it um so to me it's just a bunch of flu and uh I I honestly I don't see how it improves our students lives I don't see how it improves our teachers lives I'm not sure what it has to do with education um so I struggle with the whole concept in general along with I think there's potential Peril for the district legally if you don't live up to your objectives and um I don't know I I'm just I can't support it yeah I guess I want to be clear that I certainly support diversity and Equity I I just keep reflecting back on

052the students I heard talk about how they've been puring and I'm just wondering what we can do that's going to change that and make things better and that's what I want to strive for okay item five Community engagement facilitating team Dr Hall okay part of our next steps uh with the community engagement initiative was to put together um the facilitating team uh those folks are listed on the page second page behind the board bar and um on December 1st two members of our Board of Education um Mr M and Dr Schultz two community members and two members of our administrative team and myself met for the purpose of uh selecting um and putting together the facilitating team I've received um almost 140 I think 138 names from various uh Community leaders as well as um

053School Employees and we narrowed that down uh to the list of folks who are presented here tonight uh this is an outstanding group of of individuals from our community Community we'll be having an orientation meeting in early January so um they can hear about the process and about exactly what is involved with being on the facilitating team this is the group that is going to uh guide and plan our community engagement initiative when we start working toward those meetings uh later in the spring that will involve uh inviting all of our community in to put together a long-term facilities plan so um I am recommending that the board approve this group and we'll um get them together in January and move ahead from there so superintendent recommends the board approve facilitating team for the district's

054Community engagement initiative as is presented is there a motion to do that so move LS then there a second okay I'll second it is there a discussion hey Max I'd like to make a motion that we table this item until the May meeting until the May meeting our Consultants are getting started with this in June or I'm sorry January well if there's no second then we can just move on so I'm in motion second I would like to second that just because I'd like to understand some discussion about what Ken means by that we talked about that the last meeting okay we've got a motion a second to delay this until May Ken do you want to talk about that sure um this simply put is uh an undertaking that's going to take uh many

055months and it's produce a product that is going to be used um in the coming year or two uh it's going to be used primarily by the next board um we have an election coming up in April and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but of the four members that are guaranteed to be on the board come May uh three of them are not in support of this process that we have have put together so I think it's um imperative that we let the next board the board that's actually going to use this product decide whether or not this is um the method they want to use to engage with the community uh I think it it's totally reasonable for to get everything ready um I think we should gather data and and

056prepare um you know survey inputs like Dr Hall has begun doing and I think we should have that all ready for the next board but I think that the next board should actually initiate the process that they want to use um since they're the ones that are going to be using it and so I think we should just postpone this action until May I think we talked about that when we decided even go down this road that point was made before I absolutely disagree with this we do not need to put a roadblock in something that's moving forward if something happens then we can make a transition but we've got the people's names outline the staff outline and it is just a couple of people's directives that are out of what is it one two

057three four five six s there's 26 names on there and you're saying just because of two people might not being the same which may not be to put a roadblock in that I don't think that's efficient use of our time our management or our planning to get a strategy going to make some progress in the community for some development that needs to occur to benefit our students education Lori I'm actually trying to save the time of these folks uh I don't want to waste their time on a process that they're going to spend over the next couple months if the next board is going to come in and change directions uh put a new Comm Committee in place assign a new um task we don't know what the next board is going to want to

058do my point is that this is something that the next board is going to use the seven of us we are not going to use it because this board won't be around anymore the next board will be the one using the product of this work and I don't want to waste these 26 people's times actually I think it's a great asset to use them because then you can get the information that's desired out there by the 24 of the 26 people and you can push that information to whatever the board composition is made up of so I politely disagree with that you know the board is a kind of a Continuum over time there's always things put in place by Boards um that affect the district ongoing and I I I just find it interesting

059and and somewhat disrespectful that there's been a a push Lately by some of our board members to like try to invalidate what previous boards have done um our community deserves um to see us being prudent about planning and moving forward and we need to do that this isn't a card game this is our community's benefit to make the best schools and environment that we need to benefit them we we it's not representative of seven people on it it's 24 of 26 people that will guide that direction to the board of s suggest we do planning that that supplies the work that we're doing now then we should do planning that affects the work that we're doing now we shouldn't do planning that we expect the next board to use and be forced to use we

060it it's just it's just so you're you're saying the board and 6 months from now is isn't going to care what the community thinks now sounds like that's not ex what I'm saying at all Max come on let's not mess around I'm saying that the next board may or may not believe that this is the correct process for engaging with the community of course the next board is going to care about engaging with the community and I think this board cares about engaging with the community my point is we shouldn't Define the process that the next board is going to have to use let sorry kid I'm sorry Ken I I think that's a poor board process to to try to split between one board and another I I think that's poor practice at any

061given time I think our opportunity to learn is high and I I don't wouldn't even characterize the first meetings as planning but rather information gathering that that's I I think the way it's set up specifically in in the written process and and in practice it would be the information gathering that I think is extremely valuable um to get ahead of in the spring I think it's prej judgmental to think that you know that if the board does whatever you think or predict it's going to do that the ideology would change too um that's discriminatory right there you're coming in with a prejudged idea when we just voted on something to make it be equal so I just I can't imagine that we would waste time when we have an opportunity here in front of us

062to start the ball rolling and fact it would be a gift to the people coming in this is the background that's been done done it's just like when you pilot a curriculum you have the information you've tried it out you know what's going on and then that helps you make better decisions in the future you know using that logic whatever this committee puts in place is probably not is going to be implemented over several years so even if even if nothing started until the the next board was sworn in that board is be around for two years so at the end of those two years did we throw it all out again well yeah that's that's bad practice that's bad practice anyway I if anyone else has anything to add take a vote on that

063hang on anybody else have anything to add to that discussion okay so we're voting on the motion to postpone until May HRI no Hennessy Hennessy no no Schultz no lson no Giles no Keith yes mome no all right so we're back to the motion on the table the original motion on the table which was to approve this committee there discussion on that Max you said you were part of the team that led the the selection of this committee is that right I was a participant uh with the consultant actually led the committee the put this together I was a participant in that process do you know um how many members of the selected committee uh are under the age of 30 um I know we made an effort to do that you mean on the

064selection committee or on the facilitating team the facilitating team I don't know exact ages and frankly I don't know how appropriate is to ask that in a public setting but we did make a great effort to look at the different stages in life that people were at in terms of where their kids are or where they are um in their careers and so is a diverse group uh who have varying ages of children in the schools so do we have any students on the committee or on the team there are not students on this team do we have any uh teachers on this team yes how many that's listed there Derek Hal far do you know how many people on the team have children at MP not off the top of my head I mean

065can I can count and I don't know for sure some do do you know is there anyone on the team that has kids that get free and reduced lunch I do not know that nor do I think that's appropriate for public discussion I will say I will say there was I will say there was an assertive effort to try to come up with a diverse group in as many ways as we felt we could do that including most of the categories that you just mentioned so the effort was made do you think it was successful though Max yeah I do and what are you basing that on my opinion you said do I think well that would be my opinion my opinion is a a good group that was there some sort of background sheet

066that the group discussed the the the selection committee discussed about each member or did everyone just know everyone uh everyone did not know everybody have those candidates have any of the candidates I wasn't involved in any of this process so have any of the candidates kind of submitted reasons that they'd like to be involved in this committee and the skill set that they think will be helpful to this committee how was that selection of the 140 names made and narrowed down to the ones that are on the list the 140 criteria the 140 names came I I sent you the list I sent the board the list of the people who were asked to submit names those people submitted names based upon uh their belief that these people fit uh or the people that they

067recommended fit the criteria that was also sent to them and all that was sent out in consultation with Rod right using templates he'd used before and processes he'd used before are any of the community members running board of education we don't know yet the filing period they've not posted who's filed yet there's only been one filing day and uh the filing period last Friday is anybody aware I'm asking the board members anyone aware of somebody that's running I think it's a bit premature to predict that then the filing period is this week other questions or comments okay Hennessy I have stain Schultz present no Giles yes Henri yes Larson yes mcon yes I will once again just say that I'm available for conversation and questions ahead of a board meeting not shutting down any conversation

068taking place here but um we might be able to save some time and and I and I'm happy to engage in those conversations with any board meeting board members uh ahead of time to answer those kinds of questions about this process anything else okay item six is reward is potential revision to board policy 2 Co 30 uh board members you received two potential versions of policy 2 colon 30 um tweaks the policy um and a couple different ways uh this has to do with public participation we've had several meetings this year we've had a substantial amount of public participation and we've been working to strike a a balance certainly we are interested in what the public has to say um we're also have had concerns about time of being able to get to the business

069of the evening and and and through the business of of the meeting in a timely manner there's there's many nights we've been here very late and we've one thing that we've talked a little bit about informally as we've struggled with this is the current policy and and the the two new versions presented for you to consider maintain this um that we could if we wanted to once we've hit the minimum minutes uh tap the time and just say we're done um the problem we've had and the concern we've had is a do we really want to turn people away that want to address the board and and we're we've been hesitant to do that and I certainly understand why and share those concerns and then the second part of that is even if we were

070how do we do that do we draw names do we just let the first however many people say you can talk and if you sign up late you can't and and it becomes kind of cumbersome and difficult so what these two potential revisions say is rather than the option is still in there or I guess we could cap total time if we wanted to but again we've not felt that that has been prudent we've not felt that something we want to do and and even if we did like I said it would be awkward so the other option is to kind of look at the amount of time everyone's allowed to speak so there's a version in front of you that that changes the time everyone's allowed to speak from 5 minutes to 3 minutes

071and then there's a version in front of you that changes the time um to a scalable option where depending on how many people wanted to speak we could set the time between two minutes and five minutes depending on the sheer number of people wanting to address the board that evening um advantage of the three minutes would be that would be very consistent people would know what to plan on uh the advantage the scalable option is you know a nice like tonight where there not very many people waned to address they you know we could allow everybody 5 minutes still and and not scale it back until we had more folks but then the downside is they wouldn't necessarily know as they were planning how long we were going to allow that night so uh there's

072two options for you to consider and um we're not going to vote on any of those tonight uh but we can talk about them a little bit and if there's option there that you kind of like we can bring it back next month for a vote or we could leave it the way it is so thoughts on either of those options my comment doesn't so much go necessarily to the public I think there should be a limit but then it should be the same when we talked about the Robert Rule of Order one time we talked about the same thing with with board members sometimes we speak too much and too often and I said we I'm part of that we and we go back and forth and we've taken up the turns and we

073we got to a time where we were looking at Robert Rule of Order and we were following that and you had your times and then we got off that because frankly part of the mismanagement of our time we have ourselves to blame we've taken too much time talking about things over and over and over again and so if we're going to put the public to the same kind of restriction then I feel like we need to model it ourselves as well any other thoughts on either of these two options I personally suggest we don't uh change the policies I think they're a good balance already Max make a good point go ahead no you can go first a good point that the the public deserves to know how to write what they're going to speak

074and that that limit is helpful in actually getting uh getting the right kind of information from them so to on the night of say it's 2 minutes when somebody prepared five I think it's difficult I agree with Merl also um in the 18 months or so since I've been on the board the average number of people who have spoken at each of our meetings is only 4.44 so while we had one meeting um this year vet went pretty long in terms of public comment that's actually not the norm right we've never but besides that one meeting we've never gone over an hour um most often we don't even go over half an hour um and so I'm not sure the average of eight minutes that we're saving is is worth the um thought that we're

075not going to allow people to speak as much as we do now appreciate those comments anybody else I like the idea of people having they should know what they're allow of time is going to be so they could be prepare um I don't know personally I think three minutes is enough if you could to be clear and concise and uh and what you have to say you're going to make a better Point anyway um so I I I'm I'm certainly okay with three minutes uh well I certainly agree that there are efficiency G s to be made in the meeting I feel like Colleen to Colleen's Point Public comment is really not the issue that probably will save us the most efficiencies I think we've talked previously about ways to tighten up these meetings but

076we haven't ever seen any of those changes come to fruition and I think that because the board meeting is the only opportunity that the public has to come and speak directly to the board uh limiting or constricting that is not the best does not serve us when we when that's the community that we serve I don't want to limit their ability to have and their only contact points to have with the board but I sure would like to see some efficiency gains in the meetings okay anyone else with anything from what I've heard so far I think we're just going to leave things the way they are and certainly the variable options de okay well thank you we'll take that in if anyone's got any other thoughts on that um share those with me and

077we can come back to that at some other point if we feel like we need to um item seven covid-19 update dror H well I think the the main update I'd like to provide is just um again revisiting the um implementation of the testing and um so I need is here I don't know if you want to add anything n other than we're excited to be able to to offer that and it's going well and looking forward to um adding students to the groups of people that we test once we come back um in January so I know if you have I could just say that our test run today was uh great our plan worked as we hoped it would we had a few minor little tweaks um organizationally I think we have a

078plan in place that will enable us to move forward in January with testing our students um so I'm interested to see how that will go and um we have a great response so far from both our staff and our students as far as consents already in um even though we aren't starting till January 11th we have about 250 consents from students already so um that's that's great we've started doing some limited testing in our buildings already with staff and a few students so so far so good I'm um happy to answer any questions I can tell you that we have done for December so far we've tested 122 staff and 16 students and have had one posit identified what else do you want to know how Nita how are we going to like what's the

079plan for testing students in January I know you're still working on it but what what's the what are the basic concepts or what's the general plan that we have um yeah so what what our plan is um that we actually are going to do the drive-through testing cars will be able to on Mondays any family can bring their students to be tested um they will enter off Main Street going towards State Street we have a a setup at the um but on the be bus lane on the junior high we have two doors there we have practiced that plan today and any parent can bring their students with a consent and be tested in our buildings during the week um our staff are currently making appointments with our health eops to be tested as much

080as once a week some have been more we also are able to in the buildings if we have students who are identified as symptomatic or sent to the office for something we will uh connect with the parents if it's a parent a situation where we would be sending that student home and calling the parent then we will talk with that parent about whether they want that student tested um eventually we hope to then be able to add the component of a PCR test if they are symptomatic and still test negative that we would on site be able to do the PCR and send that off to Carl for processing the um those cost us a little bit and some um insurances don't take that the the nice thing about the antigen testing is it's free

081not only to us as a district but it's also free to all families so they don't have to worry about their insurance um so right now that's that's been very helpful we also um learn from public health with their new guidelines if if people want early release from quarantine if we do an anen test on site and that's negative we are able to bypass the process of them having to email Public Health get a letter send all their stuff to them if we see the negative test ourself then we are able to go ahead and um do that release based on public health guidelines so there there are a lot of potential positives if if we're able to identify um actually if we're able to identify even just a few positives that's more than we

082were doing before with with no testing um that this along with the mitigation efforts we have right now with distancing and masks and the cleaning that the custodial crew is doing and the extraordinary efforts that the faculty and the administ have put forth I think it's just one more tool in our tool box if you will that will uh keep us moving forward like somebody mentioned early it's kind of amazing that we're in the middle of December and we're one of the few schools in the area that hasn't had to shut down so I'm I'm pretty proud of us right now but um I I think that our plan for the drive-through testing we hope to test as many families as want to come through we would go from 8 to noon and then because

083the law says I have to give people lunch break we would go from 8 [Music] to and then we'd go from 1 to six to allow for some people to be able to um be able to test after work because there are going to be families that just can't come during the day and then we'll adjust that if we need to can we prioritize um like Junior High and high school students where um the space is a little bit more cramped to where they can be tested on a weekly basis on Monday days you know at the start of the week or is a goal just to try and get everybody tested on Mondays if you know if we can well right now they have that option every parent can bring their kid to be

084tested on Monday before they come back to school on Tuesday right now that's already in the plan so it's just part of the drive-through testing there there's no limit on who could be tested the only limit is that they have to have a consent so that that kind of is our hope that that that parents will take advantage that and some of the feedback we've heard so far is that they're very excited about that possibility of being able to have their students tested um before the week starts um and we're hopeful that a lot of them will take advantage of that so we have no limit on the number of people that we will test on a Monday as long as they come through so if we have to if we have to make adjustments

085TimeWise to accommodate we will I think very quickly know that and we'll be able to do so in an effort to test as many many students as we can Nita are we if this goes over bigger than we envision what's the availability of additional tests like um right now I have 57,600 minus the 122 we've done so okay so 4,000 all right we test everybody much time so far I'm okay so far um and they actually recommended that I go ahead and order a lot so I don't have to reorder as often Public Health when I got them through Public Health okay so I ordered 60,000 and got 57,600 okay so I competed with some of the nursing homes in Champagne County to get them I think so um so I think that I think

086we're in pretty good shape um moving forward we don't have as many of the PCR of course because that's not something we'll do wholesale because it does cost us and the insurance component um so we're we're really we're Limited in like testing all students of course there there there would in a population of students as large as we have there there would be um some families that would not give consent but assuming that most families would were were limited just by staff and also by space right so this this is a a really task intensive process because just doing the swab is like the first of how many steps that goes goes through multiple people uh and then it ends up the end result is is that within 24 hours it has to be entered

087into an idph portal so it's um it takes a lot of human resource to make this happen and we feel like we've kind of we're at our well since we haven't done it we don't know right so start testing students will we'll find out but um it's about an eight step process and today I used 20 people and I tested just the few staff that went through the drive-thru those 20 people would be the same that I would an I will begin with um and potentially would need a few more if I'm looking at traffic needs and things like that to control traffic um our our process right now is an eight-step process it seems to be fairly efficient and that's kind of my deal is being efficient and organized so um hopefully that will

088continue to play out and that was I felt good about the way that it went I I'm hopeful that that would continue to work well um we'll see how many people we can do in a half hour and we'll push it well according to the quick rough very approximate math if we've got 57,000 tests we can test all students and staff if everybody got tested 14 times a piece there you go and we know we're not going to test everybody and you about that I think we're in good shape I think that answers my question about are we in good shape with number of tests yeah that would yeah it sounds like we're sounds like we're in great shape with the test one one question that I think or something that we need to consider

089is that if we're able to identify students or staff that have had confirmed cases meaning they've been tested positive not just been uh diagnosed to say you know someone just said well you you've got Co but actually confirmed test positive within three months they don't need to be retested so it also shrinks the line so we need to if we're able to I don't know if we got if you keep a spreadsheet on that already or not but if we've got confirmed positives then those people within three months don't need to be retested right your test and we and we we have taken that into consideration um so yeah but but several of the people that have tested positive now are out of their three months so of course we have the 50 in November

090that wouldn't need to be tested again right away and so we certainly can we certainly can hear um are there medical license requirements for us to be setting up a testing facility and if so who's whose lure are we using for this we have to have right now there's an emergency um authorization through the federal government that we can do Cleavers to do antigen tests only if we would do the PCR test that will go through Carl we won't be reading those tests or processing them the antigen tests are the rapid tests and the ple wer we have obtained and that's on my nursing license and we have a physician at Christie who's underwritten us as our authorizing physician to do to do the testing so we're working in collaboration with not only Public Health

091but also the physician that um at Christie and then I'm the overseeing it here on site okay and has any additional Hippa training is it required now that we're starting to collect help data on individuals um do we do we have to go through Hippa training do the people involved have to go through Hippa training um well unlike some of the actual Hospital trainings that have to happen what I have done is I've had several meetings with the people that are going to be working I kind of hand selected the people that are going to be working in this environment and um most of those people are people who've already had to go through confidentiality training in some fashion for their position and so we're working very closely on that so that um if you

092walk into the room at any given time you should never hear a name spoken other than mine when they're calling me but um but we have that's a super important um component Negan so thanks for asking that I think that um I have reiterated that a number of times to all of the people who are working in this in this when I did part of the training that was part of the training that I did but just I just legislatively there's no Hipp requirement for the training of people who are going to be performing these tests there's no training required for that um but I'm requiring that everybody have that type of level of of confidentiality before they can work for us and before they can do this for us kind of like for example

093a couple of the people are actually people who work in our administrative offices who've offered to help us um their job is are the most confidential job handling sensitive information is the job of most of the people that are working with me including the health eops and several of the office staff who work with very sensitive information all the time so um there's no requirement that says you have to have this and this training to do this because we aren't a clinic we really literally just got a CLE waiver as an emergency testing site for for the um POC antigen testing as a way to get more testing out there for people that in in one area that's sortly lacking has been testing so schools were among the people that they were looking to get

094this set up for right and and s are there Hippa is pretty serious stuff so what systems requirements and what have we done systems wise to lock down this uh confidential health information that we're going to be collecting and tracking well the it's the thing is is this is not different than what public health is working with I'm doing the same things I'm the all the reporting is going to the state so this the state reporting is is happening inhouse and we're using um we're using the forms in house based on just the consents that parents are giving us so we're not sharing this information with anyone in the district differently than what public health shares with me when they have a student who tests positive because it's different than a clinic where I'm talking

095about your physical exam this is a situation just with with Public Health and just the public health safety of making sure that people are identified as positive in quarantine so and as far as our system in housee I'm not we're not sharing that with anybody other than those who are just simply working in the system to do the testing with us but again sorry so I haven't had the benefit of talking to the lawyers about this so maybe you already had this discussion with them if we are hacked the liability would sit with the district because we're keeping that information on our systems is that correct it's not as if we're storing this at the we're storing this with the public health department or we're storing it with us so we're utilizing the Public Health

096Systems this there is none of that data that is stored with us okay it's all their servers they provided us information okay just and then sorry just to clarify I know we've talked about a couple of different testing scenarios and I want to confirm what I heard tonight is that with the test that we're running right now there is no insurance component required and so we won't be dealing with any sort of insurance information in any manner for the testing we're currently doing is that correct that is correct for the antigen test that we are doing there is no insurance component if we do the PCR testing through Carl we do have to collect insurance information and that's a step that we have not taken yet um we have we have secured some of the

097test kits at this point but we have not gone in that direction quite yet because one I don't want to take on another thing until I know that we're doing this one correctly and accurately so I want to make sure that we're kind of taking baby steps to do that but secondly the next component does require um a lot more paperwork because I have to have people fill out Carl's Hippa I mean in part of our two pieces he Megan um one for for the PCR testing I have to do a requisition for Carl I have to gather insurance information and then people have to also do their consent and their hipo okay their the patient does for our consent we did have the attorneys look over our consent forms to make sure that they

098were complete they do include a statement that says that this information has to be shared with public health entities so that's included in our consent form before people sign it and that's what was included um by our attorneys our attorneys looked at the consent and they determined yes this is good to go yes you can put it forth and U Dr Hall sent those to the attorneys I sat in on a couple of webinars with some of some of the attorneys that was um I sat in on a webinar with idph so I've listened to several different um I I've tried to learn as much as I can so um so yeah we are covered in that way just to make sure that parents are aware that their information will be shared with the with

099the appropriate entities as a matter of public health safety okay and if if something goes Ary and there's a lawsuit filed who holds the liability and would be filed against is that the district well I my guess is here's here's what could happen my guess is if people get sideways and decide that they're going to sue us they're going to sue anybody they think that they can maybe get something out of so it's probably going to be me the district the board I my guess is that they would sue anybody and I don't think there's all it typically in my um in my experience rarely does somebody Sue just one person usually there are a number of people that are included in that so whether or not it's valid or not doesn't mean if somebody

100has an an inkl to sue somebody that they're not they're not going to go wherever they can so I can't answer that as since I'm not an attorney but I my license is on the Clea waiver Dr pao's information is on the authorization and we're doing it as a district so I guess you've got a lot of different entities they're involved can I sign a okay and then um what did our attorneys say about does this increase our liability or um what's the risk increase from I mean because essentially we're becoming a testing facility and so that's an increase of risk that we have that we wouldn't be taking on if we weren't doing testing of this nature so what was the attorney's uh feedback on increased liability and risk for adding these Services during

101the last webinar that I um attend that I listen to they think everybody should be doing this because it's just the antigen testing this is not diagnostic we're not we're not telling people anything other than if a test comes back positive we're going to quarantine them then it has to go through the state reporting then it has to go through a public health entity we simply are doing a mass screening rather than an actual diagnostic we're just doing a screening that that will hopefully catch a couple people that may be positive we are not going to we're not a state testing site we are just a school and and that's one of the that's one of the emergency measures that has come through to let schools to let nursing homes to let other entities long-term

102care facilities and communal living situations to actually have this type of testing to try to reduce the spread in their in their um environments and to try to stay safe because in that effort to try to to take care of things in the community so that the health system is not overrun and so that because several weeks ago we were so far behind in Champagne with some of the testing that I was getting positive results seven days after they had been run so so that really does no good which is no wonder that it's spreading like wildfire because people weren't getting their test results back so I think that um from that standpoint from that standpoint I think that um there they were excited for people to do this and I know that there are

103several other districts that are doing a lot of different kinds of testing um multiple kinds of testing that we just right now aren't ready to do okay and um sorry I just have one more question I know I've got a lot thank you for bearing with me um Pro procedurally this is not going to change our approach to anyone it sounded to me like the drive-thru screening is a separate entity from what we would do with kids um or staff members or employees that come into the building symptomatic because as I understand it our policy and procedure for saying if you're symptomatic you can't be in the building in any way shape or form is not going to be affected by these tests is that correct that's correct these are just again one more measure

104often for I'll use an example often what'll happen is a kid comes to school they're fine and then they start coughing or they have a runny nose or they start running a fever that's very common in younger children especially or a kid has a test at high school and they don't tell their parents and they just come to school and they start hacking up a lum and then they're sent to the office so those are the kids that when they're sent to the office then we are still going to do the mitigation for those kids we're going to call their parent we're going to send them home um if the parent allows us to test them on site then we certainly will do that if the parent has not consented and doesn't want them to

105they still have to come pick their child up and um then we are going to recommend that they call their doctor and their doctor very likely would recommend testing so that's up to them and if they then go through the Carl testing or whatever they want to do that's fine we're not going to force testing on anyone and we will certainly work with the parents but it does not change anything we're doing inhouse currently it just adds an extra level um to perhaps keep somebody from coming in on Tuesday that we might not catch until Wednesday um or something like that so and as far as younger children uh we've had a number of younger children that have tested positive recently outside and I've been called about it but if they come in and they're

106symptomatic the parents are coming to pick them up anyway we're going to have the parent if they want them tested we're going to have the parent administering that swab you know to help them we're not going to traumatize children doing it without a parent being there so we're going to do that um even at the junior high high school level we're going to make sure that the parents are involved in the process we're not going to do any of that without parent parental consent that's kind of our that's our main thing is making sure that we have um that we have parents on board with every step of the way we're not going to test any any students or any staff that don't give us consent okay and do we have a communic I mean

107I'm sure that everyone probably has a host of questions as I have do we have the communication ready to go I mean I guess what I I hesitate to have happen happen is parents think oh my child woke up with a sore throat or the sniffles I'm going to send them to school because I can get them tested at school do we have some communication going out to clearly Define what happens and where you go for testing and whether or not that includes sending the child to school or whether that's just coming through the drive-thru like when does that communication come out to the community so that people understand if this then that well we've already sent some communication telling parents that this is going to be offered and that this will be available beginning

108second semester so we've done that already what we will do as we've continued to do we will reiterate yet again to parents that they need to keep their children home which is which is part of our overall health plan that has been since the beginning um we keep them home when they're symptomatic yeah keep them yeah keep them home when they're symptomatic um and so far our parents have done a really good job with that um and and what we're doing um we have said only if children are symptomatic the thing is is if they're we're going to send them home so we were asking parents not to bring them if they're symptomatic we certainly are going to communicate that again as we get closer to time um and just a reminder this is a

109screening that you can bring your child through on Monday if your child is symptomatic please keep them home the same rules apply right now we have a lot of kids that are testing positive for strep there's a lot of stomach bugs out there right now there are um kids are starting to have the flu so we're seeing a lot of different things right now that are not Co which I mean it'd be way easier if we had one thing at a time unfortunately that's not how that's working so our and our standard policy is still in place if your kid has a fever they have to be home 24 hours fever free before they can come to school um so those things have not changed and we will continue to communicate that those things haven't

110changed so if if somebody wants to be tested outside of the Monday test they have to call our health e Ops and they have to make an appointment so and if you know if we have the opportunity and have time to do that but we're not going to wholesale test kids all week every week because we would not get anything else done we just we just don't have the capacity of the staff to do that and one final question how much PPE do we have for people doing testing and what is the budget that we have allocated for that PP well I'm making um Heather kind of hemorrhage money right now with PPE so Heather has done a great job we have we had some PPE donated we have as much PPE as people want

111I have I saw thousands of shields I have thousands of masks I have more k95 masks coming we have gloves Steve just continues to order gloves we have all the wipes that we could need so as we get low on any particular one type of pp Heather has been great to we've worked together and she's work staying stopped so any any PPE that someone wants is there and they can have it that's not something that's going to be limited for anybody who's helping with testing the only people that are administering the tests right now are the four healthy Ops or myself so all the other people that we have are part of the organizational structure part of the communication structure part of the timing all those things the people that are actually handling the tests

112right now are the four health eops and that's it okay and do we have a standard requirement for them to be suited up in certain PPE as they administer tests um yes they are all wearing gloves Shields masks and if they want them gown the Gown I mean these are little cards at a nasal swab they're sealed inside a card and they're putting them in a tray so there's minimal contact with any of those things the testing is happening outside um in most cases if the drive through if and I have gowns so I I am asking the minimal requirement is that they wear gloves shield and um k95 mask when they do all the testing so that that's the minimum um if they want gallons they want an extra shield they want another mask

113they can have as much as they want they can double up as much as they want but the minimum is that they have to do a shield a mask and gloves okay and Heather would you mind sending to the board how much we've spent so far on PPE and what's budgeted moving forward please sure and I just want add everything that we've spent so far has been covered by the cares Grant and when I took when I took um those tints out that's where I got the money to do the uh to to uh give more money to her for the PPE that we just order and was that 250 was how much did that start out as Grant was 24,000 I just took out about 10,000 for the tents that Dr Hall got covered

114in other places so that 10,000 went back in so actually I'm amending the grant that's what I was asking me just for some information on so that I can amend it and I can use that money still like I said you know I don't know about next semester but right now are completely covered by the grant but I can yeah if you could just send that Grant in the breakdown of everything we've spent and how we spent it that would be great thanks thanks one other point Meg just just real quickly one other point is I just want to point out that that our staff are not swabbing anyone that the people are swabbing themselves just like you would at Marketplace Mall or anywhere else that you go so we simply are taking the swab

115and putting it in the little card and closing the card and reading the card so so they are swating themselves which is why with small children we going to have parents doing it so we're not actually doing that to any person and I can tell you so far we've spent about 11,000 on on total PPE if that help I mean just for a start I'll give you the rest information but so thank you okay any other questions for Nita no thank you to you and all the staff and everybody for making this happen and the finances and everything thank you very much sure I have a question that I'm sorry I said I have a question that Nita will be happy to hear because it's not one for her to answer so at the beginning

116of the meeting tonight um it was mentioned that 62 students have changed to remote since November 1st at the junior high and I was wondering if um Lindsay or Nicole could give us an update on the numbers from all four schools of the number of people who have switched to remote learning since November 1 or whatever sure we can s that to you any other questions is our it are we going to be using um paid days off when um the FKA leave expires on December 31st for covid related absences first and foremost let's hope that FFC gets extended um for those that aren't aware does expire on December 31st and that given the situation that um Everybody finds themselves in in places of work we would hope that um that our Senators and representatives

117in Washington DC could come together and and pass something that would work for um those of us out in the workplace who might need FFC but as it stands right now today that expires on December 31st so I appreciate you bringing that up so what what we have in place here um is kind of a multi-layered um structure for for leave with FFC being the the first leave to for our employees to access and then the next level is um 15 days of um of administ what we're calling um paid administrative absence and and then the third level is people using their own sickly allocation so I think what we would do at this point with what I know right now would be to have people use the the paid administrative absence and as we've

118done with with all of our cases we take them on a Case by casee basis and and we would just look at what the situation is and and what the need is and and that type of thing but but that's what I would say right now knowing what I know now and again just hoping that FFC gets extended thank you any other questions um at the beginning of the meeting the msca asked that we reconsider switching to four full days is there any interest in the board in doing that uh the problem we've got is we're in the they've asked to negotiate that we're in the middle of negotiations with them we meet again on Thursday night and they they were also clear in their opening statement as they've been clear throughout this process that

119they think they've got the the the right to negotiate that decision um so we really can't say much in public right now we are going to talk about negotiating matters in Clos session here shortly K just said switching to four days he didn't we're in the midst of bargaining that we're the M of bargaining that okay so speaking of which yeah sorry before we move on we do have a piece of business that we have to take care of um I emailed you on Friday in the hopes that we would add this to the agenda but um it wasn't successful uh we do we did pass a resolution in July that requires that the board um vote on any changes that the superintendent makes to the reopening plan and um she just made a change

120to the quarantine period based on the cupd guidelines so at the risk of angering you which I'm going to try not to do because I know you don't like this but the board does need to procedurally uh vote on whether or not we're going to uh approve or change or deny the changes so I would like to move that we approve the changes in the quarantine period enacted by the superintendent uh to be a part of the muhamad Seymour School reopening plan moving forward as directed by the cupd that that's a complete mischaracterization of what's happened the the ibp the CDC changed that and then thankfully the champagne Orana Public Health District um also embraced that we're working with them you know I if if I had the knowledge and and expertise to change quarantine

121time I guess I would do that but that's that's not anything that I've done actually actually the health plan piece is I sent the update with the new quarantine dates which we are following based on email I received from cupd that doesn't have anything to do with the overall educational plan the health plan says on the bottom of it that it'll be updated as new information is is forthcoming from public health and so I actually updated the health plan and had sent it to um cupd last week for approval again before changing it on our website so that that piece it it says in the health plan that that piece will be updated as new changes come so I'm I'm working on that piece and the quarantine dates we are currently following Public Health quarantine

122dates as we were directed so the whole overall School reopening plan they're they're kind of two separate things the school reopening plan as far as how we did the educational piece and then what we did for the for the health piece this it's like the school health plan is different and so I'm updating that based on public health and that will be reflect that it was updated on whichever day I update so I have that ready to go I'm just waiting for approval from Public Health on the final so I will go ahead I will second her motion because I didn't hear her say that anyone else changed it I I believe that the resolution the board passed said if Lindsay updates the policy under the direction of idph isbe the governor the cupd that

123she will inform the board and then the board will vote on it I just think procedurally we need to take a vote on this so that when she changed the policy due to the CDC and cupd that that was what was called for in the resolution that was passed by the board so I think it's just well a requirement of us to keep the resolution that we passed to vote and say yes we agree that we should update it as recommended by the superintendent it doesn't seem to be very controversial to me but I guess it is Megan could you please send me your motion just so I have that sure could you send that soon I'll try and send it right now thank you I think the rest of us don't have that resolution

124so I where did that email go on Friday the resolution we passed in July as the board I don't doubt that but I'd much rather be prepared if we're going to have a vote and we don't have that documentation in front of us well this is why on Friday I I do believe I copied the board and asked Max to make an an action item I mean just so you know I'm inclined to approve this because it's in line with the cup PhD but I think procedurally we have to follow the resolutions that we pass and this is part of the board business and so so the email on Friday said we needed an action item on under Co it never said what action we needed to take under Co and that I apologize I

125I assume that you knew as the president that part of the role of the president is to make sure that the agenda has the things on it I didn't understand that you didn't know about the resolution well this change was actually sent out to everybody on Friday December 4th so I'm not sure I I haven't heard anyone object to the change I mean I for one do not in any way object to the change um I just feel like we need to follow our rules which say the board has to take a vote on this so I'm also inclined to vote for it I'm I can't imagine that those sitting in the room aren't going to vote to support what Lindsay said because it's in line with the CDC so I don't I don't know

126that this is controversial or will even be I'm confused by the description of this as being that somehow I changed the quarantine time this was made by an agency that has more jurisdiction over what we're doing and has let us know that this is okay that's what we I don't think that you were the one that made up the dates I I think that you're the one that put out the plan recommended it to the board and the resolution says in it the superintendent has the authority to change the reopening plan to stay in line with the idph and the cupd and the CDC and so the the CDC didn't come and type on our website that we're changing Muhammad's plan that's the prerogative of the superintendent I don't think you were the idea com

127uper with of the policy just I I just I guess I don't understand what the problem is here well the problem is is that it's not on the agenda um what Mrs Hennessy asked for on Friday was simply an action item related to covid no description so it would have been helpful I would think I don't want to speak on behalf of any other board members but for the board to know what it is that was going to be discussed this evening it says we can certainly talk talk about this more during the co update portion of the agenda Dr Hall that's all it says we can talk about it that was my response I think I would hope if you had significant questions or concern that you would have reached out to Dr Hall

128over the months so we could be aware of what you're talking about the health plan has been changed a couple times based on C upd recommendations to me directly I I mean that's let's get all our ducks in a row and have it in black and white for us to look at and review and we'll vote on this at the next board meeting there's there's going to be changes to this health plan that come to us this is a great example in between board meetings and and we the expert in the medical expert needs to be able to work with CD to update our plan and make those CH and that's what she did Max what's the action before the board now we've got a motion before the board Okay so we've had a motion

129before the board to approve this it seems like a relatively procedural thing to approve um what I what I don't appreciate is when when we want when we think something needs to be on the agenda there needs to be a description of what we want to vote on and it needs to be s in a timely manner and this came out Friday after the agenda came out it came out with no did come out Friday I was surprised to not see it on there because my assumption is that as board president you understood that part of the role of putting the agenda together that the president holds is to ensure that the board business is done it was not I did not expect to not see it I didn't understand that you didn't understand that

130the resolution passed requires board I know you I I understand you feel this is my fault I get that so we'll go ahead and if there's no further discussion on the motion we'll go ahead and vote on it what do we vote I I wanted to clarify what we're voting on we're going to set precedent that this has to be voted on every time there's a change that an outside agency makes we are going to be strangled and we're we're going to be tied up in this nonsense this kind of discussion and we can't we're not going to be able to manage this effectively we've been doing not done talking we have managed this effectively for the first semester without the board voting on every last thing and that was the purpose of that resolution

131that was passed last summer so this is an example of where we might be able to find more efficiencies in this meeting without nitpicking every little thing and giving the experts in the room the authority to make decisions based on their expertise instead of discussing everything this is ridiculous I think we're about to vote to support the decision you made well that may be true minutes to get here what Dr Hall just said is also very true so we'll go back and we'll look at this whole thing and maybe we need to amend the whole document so we don't have to go through these little somersaults and hers the motion resolution we don't have in front of us yeah see that's so I'm not supporting anything that we're not looking at this is a resolution

132that this board already passed in point of fact I did not vote yeah I I am still speaking now too if I may I thought I was too may I speak now sure in point of fact this resolution was passed in July I did not vote for this resolution I did not at the time I said I did not think it was a good idea to have this level ofic management the bottom line is once the board votes to enact something as a board member it is our role to fulfill that I did not understand that apparently people voted for resolution that they did not understand I tried in an attempt to make sure that we got the board business done and fulfilled the obligation of the board to get this added as an action

133item uh the language in the resolution that was passed is pretty clear that uh I can read it to you if you'd like the superintendent is here by said because you sent me a vague email and I said no to V I'm notna if you don't if you don't want to do the board business that's fine I'm gonna withdraw my motion I suppose unmuted so the Motions withdrawn said max can I once again suggest that way this can be avoided I don't know who that is but can you mute please the way this can be avoided is for the board to receive the board packet with enough time to look at it before it goes out to the public we received this month board packet five minutes before the other board packet was released to

134the public there was no time for us to review and say oh wait it looks like Max missed an action item that we need to have if you give us some more time to look at the board packet we wouldn't have all of this disorganization that's that's that's a great thought great thought all right motion this time session is necessary for one Number One Employment compensation discipline performance dismissal of a specific employee specific individuals who serve as in contractors in a park recreational educational setting for specific volunteers of the public body or legal counsel for the public body including during testimony on complaint lodged against an employee a specific individual who serves an independent contractor in the park recreational educational setting or a volunteer of the public body or against legal counsel for public body

135to determine it validity we're also going into close session for number two a collective negotiating matters between the public body and its employees or the representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees we're also adding number five the purchase or leas of real property for the use of public body including meetings held for the purpose of discussing whether a parcel should be acquired is there a motion to go into close session for those three reasons so move there a second second call pleas ke yes Larson yes Hennessy yes Henri okay Schultz unil yes HRI yes okay we're GNA log off this link and about five minutes we'll come back on the other link for the Clos session members of the public thanks for hanging with it tonight we do not

136anticipate any business at the end of close session we