7 20 20 D161 Board of Education Meeting Open Session

001lanier greggs here blackman paradis here here and a quorum is present um did you get did did david hear you courtney i did not hear a response michelle he was giving thumbs up because he can't he's driving and he yes multitasking please eyes on the road david um okay uh well thank you everyone for joining us this afternoon to continue our conversation about um all things 161 reopening in the fall uh the first item on the agenda are our um questions from the community and so dana maybe we can um do that and then go straight into your report because my guess is is that your report also covers a lot of questions um that i think uh families have been asking so um if you can uh go ahead and go into that i

002know we did get several um and i know you're also still planning to do um this week's q a that will go out to everyone especially those whose questions we are not able to get to today i just want to continue to say that we are receiving all of those questions and all of those questions will have responses to them um even if we are not able to get to them on today's call but i know that many parents are um using this call to make to help inform their decision that they will make um before the day is out so hopefully we can get to as many of those questions um as possible so dr smith yeah absolutely what we'll do is like always we'll post the board comments that we received publicly and

003we'll respond to those in our documents we frankly there are a lot of really good questions that are really zeroing in on just specific program issues that we have to work out now that we know that we're offering both a remote program and a hybrid program so there's questions about you know changing classes at parker with the hybrid model or you know questions about you know the curriculum on the fully remote so a lot of those questions will come this week we not only have a transition planning team meeting tomorrow but our administrative team is dedicating basically all of wednesday and thursday to focusing on the specifics of the reopening meaning what does arrival look like at fostermore hills what does lunchtime look at serene hills etc so we know that we are going back

004to our weekly board meetings now that we're really approaching the start of school and so when we come back next monday we will have a lot more specific examples of uh things that we can share about both the hybrid and the remote plans just like we included you know a sample schedule again that's truly just a sample but now that we have student numbers rolling in we have staff numbers rolling in we can begin placing those students and really work up uh some of those daily experiences and see how they're going to look but also make sure that they're going to work within our safety requirements so when we meet next week obviously we'll share the comments that we received but these along with the ones we've received in the past we'll go back through

005make sure we don't have any outstanding questions and uh bring that information back to the board but if i'm if i can continue i mean we do have uh i know the superintendent's report has really kind of tied into all of this work we're really focusing all of our time on construction and on our reopening plans as i spoke with fran today she let me know that we have about half of the unit vents installed already so we are still a bit ahead of schedule and we're hoping to stay that way all the way through the completion completion of our hvac projects and we know that we'll have an update a little bit later on in our board meeting but primarily uh getting ready for the start of school we have our administrative retreat days

006this week again focused solely on reopening and what that's going to look like in the buildings and the specific you know actions plans programs that we'll have to have in place to make sure that it's it's successful so between you know the weekly meetings and preparing for the start of school and obviously wrapping up the construction that is commanding all of our time it's engaging it's exciting it's complex work but it really keeps us focused that's the end of my official superintendent's report but i have obviously additional information to share on our committees as well um are there any questions or comments about the uh superintendent's report kind of i don't know if you want to squeeze this into their use when you said that um people are your your teams are meeting to go

007back i just want looking ahead towards our uh fifth gr fifth grade students who are transitioning to six how are we helping them in this moment for those who are choosing to go back in person to i don't know you can answer that now or say maybe later or email me but i just that thought crossed my mind yeah well i think uh not only fifth to six but also our incoming kindergartners as well so by monday we'll have a definite plan for both of those obviously we'll have to be remote and do things differently than we have in the past obviously we're not we can't have the you know sixth grade orientation like we have had in the past that would get kids in the building and give some of them an opportunity but

008obviously if we're doing a hybrid model there's a different opportunity there with uh the decrease in kids and so i think as we're seeing the numbers shake out we actually may be able to do more in person than we and uh maybe initially anticipated because our student numbers will be so low and so you know it's a lot different to try to schedule you know 400 or 450 children physically into parker on a rotating schedule you know even walk that down more say it's 125 sixth graders that's a big difference than you know 250. so i think as the numbers continue to shake out and we know exactly what we're looking at with the hybrid versus remote i think we'll have some different opportunities to bring those kids in in person at least to get

009their feet wet in the building you know see some new procedures and kind of address it that way awesome thank you i look forward to hearing about that um but can we also keep in mind for future when uh we can always look for the uh light at the end of the tunnel whenever that decides to be uh and we're introducing the other kids back into the building that haven't been that would keep them in mind too to maybe get them in on a weekend before they would return to the building for the first time maybe yeah well we'll absolutely need a transition for them i mean obviously those kids who are home remotely when they do come back i wouldn't expect that we would go back to whatever normal was and so we'll have

010to figure out what those new procedures are make sure that those the new kids coming back understand that and that we're all on the same page you my pleasure so i think we can um certainly talk about this when we jump into um the draft of the plan later in the meeting i think that there are um a lot of logistical things that the plan points to and that i know dana you and your team are still working on right it's real time work i know people um are engaged in to make sure we are ready but um i think it would also be helpful though in thinking about the questions that um came to us that are sort of the deciding factor for many parents who are still on the fence so i think

011there are logistical things that you know parents can wrap their heads around once we have more clarity on that but i think that a couple of the big ticket items are um just more clarity around curriculum because what i know i have been hearing is that parents feel like um they're two different sets of curriculum and all first graders won't be learning the same thing so i think um clarification on that will be very helpful and then i think it's really important to point out that all of our families who have students that have special needs and ieps that i know you all are working very hard to ensure that our students receive um the services that they need whether it is remote or it's in person i just want to make sure um those

012parents know that um their needs are being discussed as we speak to make sure um yeah they're a part of our district so absolutely yeah well we have uh more to share on that certainly um okay great so as i know um let's see how many parents we have 170 ish and i see that it's growing but i i i just want to make sure parents feel like they have enough information to make an informed decision you know what once they have to do that before this day is over absolutely um okay so we will move to the next item on the agenda um do we haven't which is the equity and inclusion committee report i guess we haven't talked about it since the dinners no we really didn't talk about it since the dinner

013but uh we did have uh our virtual diversity dinner which was awesome we had about 20 people and i read an article about speaking with you know children about racism and it was a really nice conversation just to just approach that subject but also god really got into okay what does that mean for our district what does that mean for your homes you personally in the next month in the next three months the next six months and so really what we again i think what uh really kind of brightened my eye about the whole situation was was the honesty of the conversations and the focus on okay what now right we didn't uh um spend an hour plus just admiring a problem i thought that was really good conversation so what we'll do is we'll

014get our equity and inclusion committee back together here we'll want to you know debrief the information from the previous diversity dinner we have another one coming up i believe it's in november i i can't uh recall the exact date but i believe it's in november we'll want to start playing we're planning for that but also a few of the other activities that will get done so i will put out uh some information probably in the next couple of weeks obviously we're we're in a peculiar time crunch because as we get closer to the start of school uh that time whirlwind really kind of takes off so we'll take a look at the calendars to find out when we want to plan that next committee meeting but really we don't want to let that work slow

015down because i think it was a great event a little bit smaller but really good ideas um and really excitement for action to move forward so we'll want to make sure that we capitalize on that in the next month or so and get our team back together and then set our next you know steps for the equity and inclusion work for this year okay any questions or comments or um feedback from those board members who attended the dinner no pressure hey i've got a question i've got a question um and give me like 30 seconds because i actually wrote this down i'll make sure i captured the thought but all right i can't find it so anyway i'll just ask it so so dana um one of the things that i i guess i'm wondering

016and wanting to hear about is the overarching like what are we trying to do or what are we trying to get accomplished with the equity and inclusion um from a district-wide perspective um because we talked about race um at the dinner um part of the the thing i guess i'm getting at is do we know what we're trying to do with with these meetings are we trying to for example um have the teachers get trained more and in hopes that we're able to impact our student population um for the future are we trying to work more with the parents to have the parents hopefully change an environment and bring about a different change and how students interact with each other um what can you tell me about that yeah i think that's a great question

017and really we spend a good chunk of our time focused on that what does what does this diversity dinner conversation look like when it's translated into action and and really i think a lot of our work really pointed to as we get our group back together at our coming meetings we know that we're focused on an equity audit for the district but also what what foundation do we want to use you know is there you know whether it's just whether it's courageous conversations or some other program to you know keep the effective work happening in our district to keep our self-reflection happening but also give us a vehicle to have tough conversations with each other and also with our our students to help them grow and i think really the folk the main focus was

018how do we start with the teachers and so uh what we'll see at the next eni meeting will be a focus on you know different programs different ways that you know we can address this we talked about bias specifically or um privilege it's all there's a number of different topics the question is how do we want to break those up how do we want to start those conversations with with the adults before we move them to the kids because we want to make sure that everyone is prepared to handle that and my my last question is did we gather any feedback from the participants or survey them to um find out what they thought of maybe a possible solution to some of the things that were brought out so that we could again i guess

019what i'm also trying to find out is how we can measure success and moving our district forward um after we establish whatever that is that we're trying to accomplish and again um and i can't say this loud enough i'm hoping that this is not just you know the teachers getting trained because i think that the teachers in general really do try to be as equitable as possible um and so i don't want them to just kind of sit up and have you know a video and go through a training session so okay well we've checked that box but more how do we go ahead and and get to parents you know to to get engaged with with us so that we're all on one accord yeah i have i have a quick um uh uh

020interjection here um and david i i absolutely agree with what you say um that is important and i what i would i guess i would kind of ask or suggest is um to which point and how often do we uh send out a just a quick survey to to find out from participants and parents and community members and um kids in our district alumni whatever group we want to tap into which i think the wider the better what does equity and inclusion mean because i think that a lot of the issues that um are going to dovetail into what david is asking about have to do with a common understanding of vocabulary and uh you know just the the word equity you know it's word that you know in education you know that there's a

021difference between equity and equality um and uh you know on a outside of that and outside of the use in education i don't know that people know that so i think it might be helpful in in establishing those ends and um and looking at what does success look like we should have a very clear understanding of what people actually think these terms mean and uh what's what's involved with this that's you know you can run with that or work with that but that's that's just my two cents yeah definitely definitely um i think the other piece of what you just said is that um sometimes it's difficult to measure well sometimes it's difficult to measure what success is and looks like when you're doing work in that particular space in diversity equity and inclusion space

022so i have no problems whatsoever um getting the committee and the district more importantly um to the point where you can clearly articulate what those three things mean from a district's perspective but we just have to be very clear on um what it is that we are measuring and how we are defining success because you know for some just being able to have a conversation with community members about the issues of race and racism is success right that's progress so we just have to be really clear it's been a little bit of time i think um thinking about what that looks like from a district's perspective and how does that support um our overall strategic goals so i just don't want us to promise something and or assume that there are things that we can

023measure that um are not necessarily um quantitatively measured very easily yeah i think this is certainly a qualitative uh thing and um but for from my uh perspective i think that this is a there are things that are observable um that you of course will have to digest and and figure out what it you know indicates um and and for this reason i think that also you know looking at the um you know constantly what do other people in the community think i mean what what just even in that concepts and ideas are the important um especially i mean i have conversations with uh various people including they were supposed to community members families friends and or random strangers who sometimes you know say things that i i don't think we're on the same page

024even though we may be using the same language uh and i think that uh if we're gonna be purposeful in what we're doing and i think it's it's good work and i think it should be purposeful or intentional that um we're always aware it at least of um of of of this uh disconnect or the disparity um and not to throw my brother into the bus i love my brother he's a very bright man uh recently i had a conversation about some issue in the news and uh i you know i realized by the end of a long stream of texts he sent me that we are not on the same page with some basic uh concepts that i really assumed i thought we were um and uh you know and i realized okay this

025is this is a longer conversation than i intended or there's there's gonna be a lot of bridge building here on this one but and i think that for our good work we're doing um and i it i repeat it i think it is very essential and good work that uh we have to keep monitoring okay that we that's how they felt a month ago or you know a quarter ago or a year ago you know what what do what are people saying now what are they how are they describing these um these ideas um of of what we want to head toward um as on a qualitative level you know and it doesn't have to be you know quantitative at all i mean it's just purely you know what people's thoughts are kind of like

026a relationship that you build that's it if i could add something that maybe could clear things up for david i this is the second dinner i've i attended and i thought it was a really good foundation that dana had set up to lay for the work we have ahead i think we have to start where he said with the teachers and and lay that foundation to help the teachers to provide a stable environment for our students to then be invited in to also have those conversations with their peers and potentially with their parents too um so i think this is just the beginning and like said and even michelle it's a it's definitely a qualitative analysis we're never going to get anything quantitative out of this i know i think it was a refreshing conversation

027that i got to have and i was enlightened by a lot of a lot of what i heard and um so i thought it was amazing and i i think we're on the right direction so kudos to the uh committee that all the work they've done and they're putting forth the effort so michelle i also attended and i think success does look like progress and i attended the first one as well and i was in a group with teachers that my children had had and some teachers that i didn't know very well but i got to learn a lot about them and so there was also high levels of safety and transparency and i really appreciated that opportunity i hope that more community members parents attend the next one because i i do think this

028is our opportunity to practice and model this with one another and really understand the idea that we are a team so it's the community and the teachers together and it's not just what we're trying to do for one group or the other yeah i think that's i think that's very that's good feedback thank you um i think um in in the in the effort to make sure going forward we can clearly articulate at least from a district's perspective what our um definitions are for many of these terms i think the other piece and you alluded to this a little bit carolyn is you know the our students and our kids are at the center of all of this and so every single thing that we are doing in the community engagement committee in the equity

029and inclusion committee you know and even the finance committee um it all has to have a direct line to um how it impacts our students and how um the work and the conversations that we have out of the equity and inclusion committee um impacts both our teachers and our students in a more in a positive way right and so if the goal is to give teachers more tools to use to be able to um have meaningful conversations around current events in a way that helps to empower students and help students have a voice um about what's going on in the world than you know kudos if it is a uh if it's another set of tools that helps um um students um be more um open in in um accepting of all people from everywhere

030regardless of what your differences are i mean kudos to that too but i think it will be very important that we are clear on what it is that we hope to get um out of this and then you know we can figure out how to measure it qualitatively but um but yeah but it has to point back to our students and how is this committee helping our parents and helping our teachers to better help our students so okay and i was there too it was great it was um it was a great intro conversation to race and racism it wasn't um designed to be um it was designed to be a 101 you know not not an advanced level class and i think that you need to have um those type of intro conversations so

031that people get comfortable many people who um pretend uh who participate in conversations like this oftentimes have never done anything like this before so how do you create a safe space for even our teachers and our parents to be able to have these conversations so that was the goal i think um for one that was one of the goals i think for that those sets of dinners and so i think it sounds like that goal was probably met so i mean i did get some good feedback it was a nice night certainly a nice event and we'll come back with another one as well and build off of the work from our previous okay so we are going to move to a number of action items the first one um are the bills the bills

032for the month of july were reviewed by miss misha blackman take it away so yeah i looked at the bills they are the same as they are usually well plus reminders of things because of it but in any event um may i have a motion to approve the bills for the month of july in the amount of three million five hundred thirty one thousand five hundred thirteen dollars and three cents who moved second second roll call please i just want to clarify though this black one was the one who made the movement and then steve mr paredes second did it correct yes i made them yes okay thank you all right greg yes paradis yes waitstra yes nelson yes lanier yes blackman yes of course yes and the motion has passed could i have a

033motion please to approve the 2020 2021 consolidated district plan it's all moved second any questions or comments roll call please paradise yes nelson yes craigs yes blackman yes lanier yes lisa yes forest yes and the motion has passed can i please have a motion to approve payroll for the month of june in the amount of 3 million 393 thousand six hundred and seventy three dollars and thirty cents so moved second roll call please nelson yes blackman yes bleedstraw lanier yes griggs yes paredes yes fourth yes and the motion has passed may i please have a motion to approve the foia request as presented so moved second any questions or comments roll call please blackman yes nelson this lystra yes paradis yes greggs yes lanier yes horace yes and the motion has passed can i please

034have a motion to approve the personnel report 21-001 as presented so moved second um i just have one question i just want to clarify um when i pulled up all the documents it looked like one it was the same document that was posted three times i just want to make sure there isn't something else no those are duplicates courtney pulled those up okay roll call please linear yes greg's yes fleece draw yes nelson yes blackman blackman we lost her no she's she's there she's done muted her video looks a little choppy yeah it does yeah she may have been booted already but it just hasn't kicked her out yes yes got it yes fourth yes and the motion has passed can i please have a motion to approve the revised policies one twenty five two

035one sixty five sixty five three hundred five three ten and five three thirty uh second any questions or comments roll call please please draw [Music] yes nelson yes lanier yes blackman yes paredes yes greg's yes chorus yes and the motion has passed can i please have a moment to approve revise policies 2 260 510 520 and 7180 any questions roll call please greg's yes lanier yes nelson yes blackman yes paredes yes leisure yes horace yes in the moment has passed we will now move that the end of our action items will move to um several discussion items that we have um some might be i'll take a little bit longer than the others the first one is construction update antabella friend you're there yep i'm here okay um so construction is actually going pretty well

036um we have almost half of the unit ventilators have been on arriving um which is kind of good because they were only supposed to ship last friday so they've actually been coming piecemeal they are not all installed yet but we're we're working on it um so we're hoping that we'll have well we're they're coming in pieces and they're getting in we're hoping that they've all shipped at this point um but as they come in we're we're putting them in the steam labs are um pretty well done except for some punch list items and of course we're still waiting on furniture but the construction itself is almost completely through um so yeah you've got some pictures um we do have the chillers that were received i believe you saw those pictures some of the pictures of

037the crane putting the chillers on the roof last um last week's board meeting but both western avenue and um foster hills they are on the roofs i'm the we are making some headway with com ed to get that upgrade done at flossmoor hills although that's not completed quite yet but we're still working with com ed um now i'm gonna ask if so we have matt from wold with us today and scotty's also here with us do you guys have anything to add i think those are the big items we do have some on change orders but they're both positive and negative um we've got a 10 contingency on this project which means close to 350 000 um and we're only touching so far like 000 of us so we are doing incredibly well um when

038it comes to change orders and things that are added and deleted from the project [Applause] um this i don't know this this has been addressed but just for the sake of asking um with the new air conditioning um in the uh rooms uh at western and are we um is this all the rooms in at western um steve is your question are all the rooms air conditioned is that your question yes all the rooms where students will be and staff would be working is are all those rooms air-conditioned at this point at this point right now no or i'm sorry at the end of this project in the summer correct at western and flossmoor hills okay um all right thank you is there any actually let me follow up is there any more uh rooms

039where students are learning um that do not have air conditioning in our district or is this it after this project f after this project all of our facilities will be 100 air conditioned okay and the air is it's moving from the outside to the inside and then back outside again um supposed to just circulating within the room uh yes well it will do both our outside air dampers will completely close let's say in the mornings when we need to cool down the rooms quickly or we need to heat up the rooms quickly and then they will throttle all day long um at about a minimum of 10 to 20 percent outside air which will yes like you say circulate that air um five six seven times an hour okay all right great awesome thank you

040i think that if we were all together um dana like this this is cause for like uh all of us standing up and and clapping right now right celebration the fact that when this is over all of our buildings will have central airports i don't think i mean i've been in the district for a really long time and i don't know how long we've been talking about you know air central air at western avenue for example so uh that's exciting building's done so just uh am i still am i still on just to add to that when i joined the district about six years ago uh serena hills was the only building that was completely air conditioned yep yeah i mean i can remember board meetings long before i got on the board that talked

041about uh central lair in the building so um this this this this deserves a picture of scott this time that's right that's usually taking the pictures of us so yes do a selfie um okay great anything else on the construction update fran no um the only other thing we're working on getting some existing floor tiles trying to get them to match you remember we had a plate a piece outside of the library where the floor was buckled some so we we replaced it we repaired it um we're having some problems getting some floor tiles to match but since we've done some pretty wild colors in the library area we're thinking that gives us an opportunity to get a little crazier um with the floor tile so i'm not sure that we've come with a complete

042solution yet but it's not something that i'm really very concerned about hey i have one question um and i think this might be directed more at scott um scott and i think steve was trying to get at this question um but i'll try to be more direct about it with what we've done with the air conditioning um and how the air is either brought in recirculated or whether it's um outdoor and or however you want to look at it with scenario can you tell us anything about how this may have any impact on um the current cdn covet 19 and whether it will be of assistance or none or whatever uh well first of all obviously have an air conditioned classrooms at western and flossman hills world will be beneficial of course uh second of

043all um the universe the way they operate or the way they're going to operate i mean just talking about western floss more is the way that all of them operate um they are on a schedule um they shut down at night and they i bring them on about two hours before school starts so we can heat up or cool down those rooms by the time the staff and students get there so by the time school happens we are in that kind of throttling back and forth to um let more outside air in and and um exchange that air okay uh also with that with our our i use a mirv 6 filter in all of our unit vents and our air handlers also which is also has a microbial uh uh agent on it which

044uh traps and kills any kind of particulate um so they're up operating at pretty much their optimum uh performance um it's greater air circulation and um i think will be um okay as far as the you know idpdh and state board of education is recommended just uh to piggyback on that uh david i was uh kind of asking for that reason i was gonna bring up later but um so thank you for picking it up but uh is is this also the um the same uh for our heating as well does the heat kind of work in the same sort of way or is yes right yes it works in the exact same fashion perfect so this is um so this is really uh in terms of our current events with the uh with with

045uh health i think this is really going to be an improvement uh i would i would agree yes it is okay okay fantastic thank you hey hey scott can you can you again speak to sometimes i'm asking some of these questions because i want everybody to hear the answers uh but can you tell talk about a little more about how often these filters are changed and um i mean you may not want to get into the particulates about how much it's catching but can you kind of share some of that also thanks uh sure those filters on a regular basis are changed three times a year they're changed over the summer now over winter break and then over spring break with covid pandemic happening i'm going to do my best to try to squeeze in

046an extra change at least just for the classroom mute event filters depending on how you know how they look and how dirty they get um that may happen around maybe thanksgiving time um maybe a little bit earlier but it does take some time for my staff to get into every single unit event and and change them out so we have to be careful with that but um at least three times to answer your question dave at least three times a year and i'm gonna look at uh making a fourth time happen good news okay any other questions or comments okay i think fran you still have the floor with the financial report yeah um unfortunately you've got yourself a memo there but the reports courtney and i had a little snafu between the two of

047us so i will get those to you but let me just give you these are still tentative reports anyway um we're finalizing some things with the township treasurer's office rob hasn't put a couple of things in here yet but the bottom line is since the property tax relief grant money was um given to us this year as opposed to next so remember the abatement will come off and will impact the revenues next year but the property tax relief grant money actually came to us in this fiscal year so right now tentatively we are at about a 1.1 million dollar surplus on last year ending the year at about a 31 million dollar fund balance on there were a few other pieces in here that you know led to that one million dollar um surplus of

048course shutting down schools at the end of the year didn't hurt either um but i will be giving you once these numbers are final along with the budget in august we will go through both the way we end the year and the budget um and how we're going to be starting and what our plans are for next fiscal year when i present to you in august so this is just kind of a um a preview of what's to come um the budget is in the process of being prepared right now as you can imagine with everything that's going on it's been a little crazy um and trying to get that together for you i'm i am hopeful that you will be receiving at your homes the budget by the end of next week and that'll

049give you a couple of weeks to go over the document and then i will be presenting it at the second meeting in august okay okay questions i got one question um is the finance committee gonna be required needing or requested to meet anytime soon yeah i'm gonna be sending that out to you as soon as i get the budget done david so that you and miesha and i can um chat a little bit before my presentation in august thank you is excited to hear that he's been waiting for that book fran um okay the next item on the agenda there are several policy reads um dana is that you or is that that is dr mel nachenko hi everyone so i've got three policies there uh the first two are related to just some updates

050that have happened due to the pandemic and then the 720 is the bullying policy so um earlier you approved policies that just updated the complaint manager from robin to jackie janicki uh 720 was in that group but through reviewing some of the updates from press that one had a little bit more updates to it than just changing a name so wanted to get that policy updated completely before just changing the name over 220 or 220 has updates because of the open meetings act and the ability to not be physically present for a quorum and then for 180 also has some of those updates related to the pandemic any questions or comments about those policies okay thank you very much thank you eric next item on the agenda sorry calendar changes yes the the changes the

051recommended changes to the 2020 2021 calendar absolutely thank you michelle so covet is responsible for some of this but some of the other changes are just a matter of decisions that have been made either locally by district 161 or by the state so just a couple of things to take a look at we can talk a little bit more about some of these things later on in the meeting but we'd like to recommend moving the first day of student attendance to monday august 17th right now it is supposed to be thursday august 13th we'd recommend using the 13th which is the thursday and the 14th which is a friday as remote learning planning days they'll give us flexibility to work with our teachers on delivering the remote instruction working in a hybrid model practicing all

052of our protocols for getting students into the building out of the building between classrooms etc so those two days will be very valuable as our teachers and administrators prepare to welcome students the following week since they are remote learning planning days i wouldn't change the end date of the school year we would still get out on time those two count as student attendance days we get a total of five of them the thought is if we do have to go back to remote learning you know hastily maybe later in the winter we'll have at least three days on hand that we can take we can do some planning with our teachers make sure that we're really ready to go if we do have to jump right back into remote learning at a time that we

053haven't planned for it in addition november 3rd is the election day that is by state law schools will be closed so we will add that to the calendar and then monday january 4th we did negotiate an additional institute day in the last collective bargaining agreement with the teachers so we have four total we have three at the beginning of the year and then we have the one in january so that would be january 4th and the students would return on tuesday january 5th and that's it so on the monday is the are we to assume that on monday those who will be participating in the hybrid model will start monday full swing getting on the bus and doing the hybrid thing at the respective schools i think we could assume that some of them will

054uh we need to work out some details this week but um when we spoke last week really i think the intention would be to slow roll that first week so you know start with a couple of grade levels you know say start with our fourth and fifth graders at western avenue but across the district it's a manageable number we can bring those children in get them used to the policies the procedures kind of practice and then the next day bring in a different group and again make sure that they understand the expectations and how to move through the building what does it look like to come and get your temperature checked etc and so it really kind of slow rolled that first week and then i mean full swing full swing no later than august

05524th but certainly the week of august 17th we're starting up all the programs and you know as christina mentioned earlier anything that we can do creatively to form those relationships get those transitions in or the incoming kindergartners or incoming sixth graders will want to do that as well in addition you know we know that we'll have something different for those eighth graders who go to hf for some of those classes and we'll just want to make sure that we are ready to go for them as well so that thursday and friday starting remote will the hybrid kids also start their remote learning on that day no no it's so no students would start until the 27th or the 17th i'm sorry so that thursday and friday you know would be they're called remote learning planning

056days but just for teachers yeah just for staff um so i would i personally um think that starting slow and with a you know first however many grades you think are appropriate on that first day and the second day makes sense um especially if you're able to start with us the younger kids because they are the ones i think who um will require a lot more time and attention in explaining all of the new um rules i mean i just know what happens traditionally when that school bus rolls up and the kids get off right and they go straight to the blacktop and backpacks go off i mean so i think um it will take time for them to get used to whatever the new system is going to be so i think as much

057opportunity that we could give the younger kids to get used to the new system before other kids are in the building that would be great absolutely hey dana um i don't know if this question fits into the calendar portion but um i'm gonna let it fly anyway so because we're gonna start on the 17th um what day or date and i guess it's also comes with like a little asterisk if this has been thought about um our parents um gonna kind of get a chance to get a real walk through and see kind of what um school reopening looks like i i think the that walk-through question is tenuous at best so i think that's going to be challenging um because again you know we're still limited on no more than 50 people in one

058space and so as we you know move through that process of getting kids back in the building i think the our best opportunity will be as we get into that week of the 17th if we are doing kind of a slow rollout i think we'll be able to manage the numbers in a way that we can probably allow some flexibility to get some parents in there because truly after once school begins parent volunteers and other visitors will be minimum or minimal if not zero okay so i'm gonna ask the same question i think you kind of answered it but i really wanna just make sure we elaborate on this so are you saying that it's gonna be a possibility then for some parents to actually then kind of do a walk through and it will

059happen sometime before the 17th is that what you're saying i'm not trying to put words in your mouth i'm not saying that i'm saying it's problematic to try to do it i think we can look at some way to when we're bringing kids in the week of the 17th we can probably start that and look at it that way but you also have to remember we don't have anyone there before august 10th because the teachers come back on the 10th and we know that monday tuesday and wednesday are basically full with um work that we've already agreed to do whether it's on capturing kids hearts or the thoughtful classroom etc and then we'll have those two days on thursday and friday to continue our training teacher meetings at the grade levels at the buildings teacher

060meetings articulation you know fourth and fifth graders teachers meeting you know fourth and third etcetera so i will have meetings and and we've got things planned if we're looking at a full set of building tours i don't know that we're in a position to offer that i have a question and maybe this could resolve that and not to put any more pressure on any principles so i'm going to smile as i say it and i don't want to do this but maybe what would help uh is a like a building tour like hey here's me and my phone and i'm going to walk you through what this is going to look like i'm reaching oh virtual reality simulations oh we could absolutely do that i mean i think if there's time to do it i

061mean i think it is because david i think raising is this um need for parents to have as much communication as possible about what is the day in the life going to look like for their kids so i think that there's opportunities to do that in a few different ways so i think really spelling it out in the guidebook that um um that we have for now i think clearly articulating um stuff there but i think also um if there's time to do simulations that would be helpful um and it can be yes walking through with her phone maybe it's not a simulation but maybe it is one of the principles sort of walking through um and then i also just think any kind of visual right like i would love to see it i

062think parents would love to see this is what the classroom is going to look like for those who are in a hybrid like this is how we imagine kids will be this is how we imagine kids might be on the playground so i think is much information um because it's going to just be a scary time and that's just the reality of it right and so as much as we can do to ease the fear that parents will have so that we don't um let that transfer over to our kids on that first day i think um the the more we can provide the better so i know we're now what four weeks away yeah look a little bit under four weeks yeah so there's obviously there's a lot to do but i think um

063you know we will all appreciate you know any type of visual that makes sense it's such a short you know it doesn't have to be an oscar you know cinematography type thing like just give parents some idea of this is where kids are getting off these are you know because i think we mentioned they'll be you know one entrance you know that is being used i mean so just as much information and i know you already know this but i think that's what david was getting to was what can parents expect exactly and and and and thank you uh christina and michelle because that's exactly what i was trying to get to like i didn't know where to stick that into as a question but except the calendar seem to fit because i think that

064there's still some parents out there who are still trying to decide which one of the two options to go with and if they had some type of idea and that's kind of what i want to talk about at least today what that would look like it might help to make a better make make a decision period i i also want to remember our special ed students too with aids and stuff i know that that is kind of confusing at this point too what that looks like even on off days for hybrid i mean what does that look like so i think maybe that addressing that for our um our kids with ieps like how how is that going michelle mentioned that earlier but maybe a visual of that like what what does that look like

065on the off days for hybrid you know that's something that just popped into my head uh carolyn did you have a question or were you getting ready to say something no i my questions are related but it seems like there's another space when we talk about the draft plan so i just i'll wait until we're done with calendar to ask okay i had one question about the calendar okay so this november election day is officially a holiday um but we've discussed in the past um concerns that um community members and some some of the board members have had surrounding the april election day and using the schools as a polling place so if we're looking at the calendar should we be considering not having school on those days on whatever day that is in april

066yeah i mean that would be a good time to have that conversation um obviously with the national election that was kind of taken care of for us for november but obviously april is on the table in the past we have not but you know local districts around us have closed um for those elections the buildings are still open we use parker flossmoor hills and serena hills as polling centers and so that would still remain you know we can obviously we're coming back next week we can take a look at that april date just just thought i'm actually you know i personally was never all that invested in that issue but i know other board members have brought it up and yeah um it seems like it it seems silly to fight about it to argue

067about it now that now that uh half of our election day is already decided for us but yep um you know if there's a way we can do it that the teachers are happy maybe we should look at that and and dana i guess uh from from my perspective again i i just can't get my mind out of the rona so um if we're still quote-unquote still looking at the virus scenarios um i guess can we if we don't do [Music] if we do close down for april which i can support that do we have enough calendar days toward the end of the calendar to put push that day back and still meet state requirements are we fixed to the 165 can we go you know can we have more days in the calendar year

068um does that have an impact on the fea does it have an impact on anything else yes so but if we you know obviously if we're not in school on the april election day that's just the day that's added so in the grand scheme of things it doesn't affect much it would extend our final school day by one day when you add in the november 3rd and when you add in the january 4th that's another two so essentially we'd be getting out a little bit later in may but still in may would we uh would we just make that a remote learning day oh we could we absolutely could i mean not to uh chance anybody on a in-person day if we can be in person but you know if we're if if it's an

069issue uh because i know that people make plans um you know and they forget that snow happens uh that you know something to consider yeah we could absolutely yeah all right so why don't we talk about it and we'll bring back a recommendation for next monday i think a remote learning day could be a good option i hate to say that out loud but there's always somebody that wants to take away the snow day there's always one that's true oh there's no more snowing it's a remote snow day yeah they're a thing of the past now um any more questions or comments about the rep the proposed revised schedule okay uh and now to the draft of the reopening plan uh one more uh this is a friend uh uh they're issac insurance oh i'm

070sorry yes the the withdrawal yeah so what i'm bringing to you last year so the issa cooperative we are a part of it is where we get our property casualty insurance from um it also covers school board legal and a bunch of other smaller pro policies but we are down to eight members of the co-op six school districts and two special education cooperatives um as you can imagine the property casualty business has kind of been blowing up on us lately and last year it really got bad um especially with um sexual molestation cases on and one of the special ed cooperatives had some a couple of very large claims so our rates were going up tremendously um additionally hartford decided to pull out of the entire public entity market and that's who we were we

071had the majority of our coverage with um and the market that was left wasn't all that keen on picking up um uh school cooperative because the claims have been really up over the last several years um the rates would have gone up 180 percent except the board members chose to use we had a lot of excess balances from prior years so we closed out some prior years that no longer had any claims in them and had some excess cash we closed out those years claims and we used it to offset the premium rates we decided we would see what the year brought i'm trying go to market but at the same time start also looking at other cooperatives for the eight districts to move to and then cobit happened so it's not really been a

072very good year um the market continues to be very very difficult um the policies actually expire december 31st however because of the bylaws of the as a cooperative we're being advised to put the resolution to withdraw in now we started looking at the market again as a group and it just wasn't worth it um so i do have um skip is another pool it's a significantly larger pool than the one that we're currently in it is run by arthur j gallagher um they have taken all of our information and they're working on getting us a quote it would be tentative of course um because we'd be joining them with their new renewal as well but i'll have a better idea on numbers hopefully within the next couple of weeks um jim graf over at um

073gallagher thought that he'd probably be able to get me some numbers this week or the beginning of next so i'll be bringing more information back to you in august um but also in august though we will i will ask you to approve this resolution to withdraw from the co-op questions i'll bring it back when i'll bring the i'll bring the resolution back to you next next meeting for approval on but the numbers for skip probably will be coming in tentative form on i'm hoping this week so i'll be able to get you those at that information at the next meeting as well do we have any sense whether those numbers are likely to come in at what we're already paying i'm my understanding when i spoke to jim was he felt like it was going

074to be in the same ballpark of course they're out in the market right now trying to get um renewal rates as well so what it would become [Music] come january 1st i really can't say the market is really rough right now but if we get into a pool that does not have a lot of special ed cooperatives and i will tell you this that the two cooperatives that are also going to be withdrawing here they won't be going into this co-op because skip has made the determination that they won't take the special ed cooperatives um so without them i'm hoping that we'll we'll see better better premium rates okay any other questions or comments okay thanks brian now the reopening plan yep absolutely so we'll go through this a lot of this information we've talked

075about there's some new information as well and certainly by next week you probably won't even recognize the document we've received a few from some of my colleagues in the area so we have some other documents to work from so we'll probably see if they have any information that's better than what we have and borrow that we'll also update our own information with our new thinking as we address the different pieces as we talk about you know kind of providing some virtual examples etc but really kind of following the work that we've talked about the general buckets how we've looked at everything not only communication but ppe and distancing and screening modifications to our facilities sanitizing we know that transportation is a huge issue um but then we've also hit on food services personnel instruction then

076some information for families so the beginning really kind of starts off and i'm not i'm certainly not going to go through this and read this there's a lot of information here i think it's up to 16 pages it will probably probably be closer to 25 when it's officially done uh as i mentioned we are meeting tomorrow and all of wednesday and thursday focused on this issue so we'll continue to build out some of the specific pieces but really clear uh kind of delineation right away we know that masks are mandatory on adults they do have the option of wearing a face shield in addition to a mask but not solely so we'll want to clarify that that we will provide face shields for our staff members but face shields must be worn in condition or

077in conjunction with a face mask i do know that we're also looking at some specialty face masks so that they're clear over the mouth especially important for any work that our students are doing on reading and speech and language so you know we'll have to have some specialty you know masks probably for stu students and staff but we'll do those for programs and uh students is needed uh we know that we've go ahead see just on that uh do we have a students who are uh deaf and hard of hearing in our district who really rely on facial cues and lip reading to the best of your knowledge i would have to double check my my initial thought is not necess we definitely have students who are hard of hearing um but i can i

078can come back on that for you okay because i i know that when i have worked with uh that uh those kids they um um the the whole face was was the whole communication i mean it was just words absolutely anyway just uh throwing that out absolutely good question okay okay so uh we know that parents will have to screen their children and they'll have to agree that they're not going to send their kids to school with covet symptoms as we know there are a lot of copic symptoms and so uh when parents are you know going through that screening process with their children we want them just to reflect on you know the temperature and any coughs or sore throat etc and then you know guidance for parents we'll build this out with additional

079information on what this specifically looks like we have decisions to make on how that information is going to come to school how we're going to track that information as you can imagine the vendors are you know coming out of the word woodwork with a new app or a new add-on for their software etc etc to capture that information so we'll make those decisions this week on how we're going to capture that and put those final steps and procedures in place we do know that um obviously staff will be self-certified as well and will provide temperature checks for students who have not been certified and we need to make sure that they are safe before entering their particular building you know if they aren't and or they are a student is at school and comes down

080with coveted symptoms we will have quarantine rooms in place where we can send those students and certainly keep them in a safe environment but away from other children so they can be sent home we will have a lot of training for our students for our staff we will expect that not only in a lot of face-to-face training for our staff members the classroom teachers on what the protocols look like but also with the nurses for example and what contact tracing looks like i will have example videos for students on here's how you take your mask off here's when you're having lunch you take your mask off and you'll hang it here so that doesn't get messy or you don't you're not cross-contaminating so we know that we will have a lot of training to do

081we'll try to capture as much of this on video so it exists and it's a good resource for our families siblings etc as we move through dana yes hi misha i just have a question so um if a kid comes and then they exhibit symptoms i see that it has that you know you have to have the two negative covet tests or be fever-free what if it's caught before that so i'm certifying and then i'm like and i don't know she has covet or what he or she called it but you know you just aren't feeling well and so i'm like hey i don't want to send her to school because i don't know what's going on and then it turns out like how do what's the next step that the parent would do you

082know it's like how if your kid throws up in the morning they're like okay don't send them to school you got to wait 24 hours before you send them the next day or whatever so what would it be the same thing that they would need to get something to prove that like i don't and you may not have the answer for that i was just thinking like if it's caught before they get there then how do they come back let me clarify i know kathy can i was was looking for some additional information from the illinois department of public health on that uh because we will have that we'll have families like oh you're not feeling well it's probably not covid but we don't want to send you anyway now what does is that an

083automatic 14 day is it a 10 day are you getting tested so we'll give us until next week on that we should have some additional information okay that's a really good question and and i honestly think that's going to come up a lot as parents are very just cautious about sending their kids back we want to make sure that everyone knows what to do so we'll we'll bring you back an answer for that i also want to know um how other families might be held um accountable in a way that's uniform throughout the district so i mean what do you mean well just you know they want to know if if family a sends a kid to school and i'm gonna just say you know my family's um response when i was a kid was

084you're too young to be sick go to school that is a direct quote um that that probably is not how family be um handled things and that's certainly not how i handle things now um so i think that that uh people would really appreciate if we had something really just as clear as possible um don't do this if you if you were having these symptoms and if you do have these symptoms you know have something that is other than well he feels okay he seems okay uh when you when they come back to school because that's something that i know that a lot of parents are concerned about absolutely yeah and to that point um i'm kind of with steve on that because just like misha spoke to to those who are really gonna be

085trying to do the right thing um i i also like to see that there's equity with those parents who who may consider you know um giving their child some benadryl or some some tylenol to knock off that edge for the first hour and then all of a sudden a child is at school and you know we've got an issue yeah agreed agreed and i think you know that's the you know that's the the dangerous game there you know because a child with symptoms in school is almost guaranteed a 14-day quarantine guaranteed so you know our position would strongly encourage families not to do the benadryl or tylenol move because you know what could be a two or three day process maybe it's a simple cold coming to school and exhibiting covid symptoms is a 14

086day out for sure unless you have the two negative tests and so uh we'll try to build all that out so parents clearly understand what goes into that go ahead and carolyn go ahead so if let's say that happens and so let's say this is a hybrid family um how do we handle like the sibling who is not feeling sick but now they're gonna quarantine how do we what happens to the hybrid kid that has potential exposure but it can do work how do they continue their work if they're a hybrid person and now they're home well so we're going to talk about what that looks like because um the other you asked a couple of questions one was the sibling the sibling issue all of those are are one-off situations based on contact tracing

087and the current situation because the sibling might be okay but you know another kid might not be because they broke social distancing without masks or something right so it all depend on yeah the adults and students in relation to that job and then if you know we do place a student out i think we that's part of the work that we have to do because remember our hybrid teachers are teaching right in person so they're not going to be able to just pop out to do a live session with students so i think we have to have a plan for that we've talked about some different ways to keep those kids engaged and moving forward but we need to finalize them we'll have a draft for next monday okay thank you hey dana i thought

088that the um illinois department of public health was kind of clear on the the whole contact tracer thing and the whole family thing so so that again so that you don't have a cohort that has been taken out and i understand carolyn's question perfectly um but i i think that we're are we trying to really just make sure we're following those guidelines to make sure that we reduce those risks as opposed to trying to to make determinations on our own oh absolutely but you know again you know if we do have a child who's you know identified as having covid there there will be quarantine quarantines that probably expand from that child and so uh depending on you know who they were working with and uh if we were everyone following following the mass protocols

089it could be smaller but we should assume that you know if people do get covered there will be quarantines that extend beyond that person following the guidelines um dana my question is so i know in personal experience from having to go get tested um it's not as easy as one would think to come across and find a location to test children so do we can we have that information readily available for our parents on where child testing sites are available because they're not everywhere additionally they're not the same across the board as far as rapid tests and they're the same it's the same test but as far as length of time a rapid test you can find out within 45 minutes at some locations others it takes upwards of seven to ten days so i

090mean if we can have that information that'd be awesome additionally um as far as the quarantining for you know those 14 days uh yes we're correcting this for for those 14 days those students apparently their attendance doesn't get counted against them just as right that we have to just forgive that to um and i'm not concerned about the attendance i guess i'm more concerned about sure you know either keeping them moving you know in some sort of remote fashion you know as long as we know that they're engaging you know the 14 days of the 14 days we can make that work so my next question is for from an allergy sufferer of myself i've had covid symptoms for um i don't know upwards of eight weeks ten weeks now and which are all coveted

091symptoms so if this is me going to school i would not go to school i guess so but i know i've been negatively tested several several times now um i guess i just don't know how we're gonna handle i don't i don't know i i don't i don't have any idea how this is really truly you know do you get where i'm going with that how are we going to deal with that carefully uh we're still waiting on guidance actually fran and i spoke about the asthma issue today and you know as much as we would love to have all of the you know specific uh information on something that's very specific for example kids with asthma that's going to happen we know that we have them i think we can get guidance on that

092but you know for other ailments that may present themselves with covid symptoms we're just going to have to handle those on you know individual bases so to speak but the algae one you know i think some of those common ones i think we can get to as i mentioned um we're planning this week catholic canal will be back tomorrow and we'll pick it up there um i just i also just want to um point out the importance of um the agreement that parents will be signing those who will be participating in the hybrid model i mean so i hear your concerns um david and you know i mean i i'm extremely hopeful that those parents who select the hybrid model um will sign the agreement and we will um clearly articulate in our documents you

093know what does it mean that a parent has to verify you know what does that mean you know um um who's checking it you know who's verifying it and what happens like all of these steps you know are things i think that um uh will make its way to the document that you're looking at dana but i think um you know there's an enormous amount of trust that we um will need to have um when it comes to all of our families and i mean safety is extremely important to every single family in this community so we just hope that um guidelines will be followed the agreement will be signed um kids will understand to the best a five-year-old can understand you know what the policies are um and then i think some of the

094stuff christina like we just nobody knows that's what the frustrating part about all of this is that um in practice no one really knows what any of these plans are going to look like in any district right but i think as much as we can think through the different protocols and the practices make sure that we've brought in a number of staff members whether it's classroom teachers or custodians administrator specialists just to make sure that our plans are really focused on the right areas and of course working with not only parents on this as well so we have a lot of eyes looking at it we want to make sure that it's comprehensive and that we don't forget any particular perspectives or angles so this document will continue to grow it'll probably be in draft

095form until we're done because we want to keep building and attituding it adding to it and making it better one of the other pieces in here that's new is some guidance on the start times we know that busing not only picking up but dropping off and then sanitizing and then going out again for another stacked route will take longer and so we would like to adjust the start times moving uh the dismissal time at parker up to 12 45 we provide a snack for them during the day and then a bag lunch as those kids leave but if we kept the start time at the same time 7 45 officially those kids can begin arriving at 7 35 it gives us an opportunity to get the buses to parker have all the students exit safely

096get those buses sanitized and then remember our all of our parker buses are paired with an elementary route so it would leave parker and then go pick up for serena or heather lost more western etc and on the flip side dismissing at 12 45 will allow those buses to get home drop the parker junior high students off sanitize again and then back to the elementary students to pick up uh by three o'clock and to take those students home hey dana um i i just wanna ask another question about the the quarantining of a child who has symptoms so and this is more cost question um are we predicting that our current staff staffing from nursing standpoint will be able to handle the quarantining or are we going to be looking at additional costs for either

097the room itself or additional costs for specialized nurses etc etc i think there's a lot of different models out there one of the places we are looking to just provide more coverage would be with nurses if you remember till last year hiring we have not had much luck hiring nurses in district 161 we have had a position posted just to try to get candidates for the last several weeks um longer even we do have two candidates one may be viable one not and again that again we're coming up on probably two months of having that job posted so there are models out there for how the quarantine rooms are being staffed and covered remember a quarantine room is a short-term visit right a child would be sent to the quarantined room before they are picked

098up and sent home with you know mom dad another guardian grandma grandpa etc so um we'll obviously have to have those rooms staffed but they won't it's not a 100 staffing because we won't have kids in there 100 of the time so part of it will be flexible and we're trying to figure out what that means for us right now obviously having extra nurses on hand would be great they just don't exist are we uh going to have some sort of remote learning opportunity or some uh some learning function for kids who are in the quarantine room while they're there i mean if they're there for like an hour or so is it gonna be like quiet reading or something yeah we'll have something for them to do but really if you make it to

099the quarantine room you're probably sick yes and i would um and again i'm i'm really thinking of this as uh these are great ideas and i think they should be in place um and i i don't mean to be the the raven here but i think that um this whole scenario with kovid it just really illustrates uh something that we need to address moving forward because what are we going to do next time and i think these are great things to work out um i i also would imagine a scenario where a kid is in a quarantine room and for some reason you can't get a hold of parents or um they just can't pick them up and they may be there for longer than just like an hour um in which case it's no

100different than any other day when a child comes to the office he'll you know make every opportunity to to get in touch with the family get the child picked up if if that's what the nurse decides uh then if they're sitting there find some some things that they can work on effectively you know assuming though that they are probably ill to begin with right okay so all right so obviously we've talked about the transportation still working on a number of those different pieces but we've talked about um the certification we've got some work to do on uh food service just i know fran has some additional information for our from our vendors so we'll get that updated but essentially uh i would say the big rock here is sending home breakfasts just like we did

101over the summer so we're not preparing those meals at school we're sending them home a couple of days per week just like we did over the summer so those students have breakfast uh food at home we've talked about the additional subs uh dave and steve talked about the nurses we know that we need uh additional support certainly on the cleaning side and moving those evening custodians to the day but you know what we really want i got a question on transportation absolutely um regarding transportation um so give me a visual are are the kids when we sit like every other seat how are you going how are you gonna maintain six feet apart um and are the bus drivers gonna be like shielded and are our children going to be uh tested at the bus

102stop are they gonna be tested at school in terms of the temperature so the way the buses are going to look there will be no more than 48 students on a bus and honestly i'm thinking of starting the year a lot lower than that because i think that we'll have at least right now it looks like of the students who decided to go hybrid only about half of them are going to be taking the buses anyway so we should have pretty low rider um on the buses to begin with so we're going to keep them low because i'm hoping as this year goes on maybe we'll get a little more normalcy and people will start using the buses so i want to have room to put more students on they will be assigned seats um

103we'll send that with the route information and the bus stop information will be where you are seating on the bus um if you're getting on with a sibling there's a chance that you'll be sitting in the same seat it'll be two of them but it'll be from your own household um children will be asked if they have their self-certification when they board the bus if they do they'll go to their assigned seat and we will start the um assigned seats towards the back of the bus so that as kids are getting on the first um stops we'll go to the back and work their way forward if a student does not have their self-certification they're actually going to be put in one of the first couple of rows so that we can pull them off

104the bus first to go get temperature check and uh symptom check as soon as we get to the school if a student arrives and they do not have a mask we will have extra masks a box of masks on each bus so that we can hand it to the child and have the mask up because they will be 100 required to wear masks on the buses as well um we'll probably have the windows open for the majority of the um route so that we have more circulation within the bus um the buses the bus drivers and aids there will be an aid on every bus they will be masked up um some of them may even be shielded up um it's it's kind of their their call what they would like to do but they

105will definitely be messed up um that's kind of where we're at for the moment and uh with the fresh air issue um is this uh something that they have planned for in the winter time as well when it's significantly colder and the windows are more open yeah we're still working on that i mean i would imagine that we'll probably have some of them cracked with with the heat going but yes i mean i i don't think that uh you know we have to have a convertible bus riding down the street in january right right we're gonna have to get reasonable about it and we'll we'll figure this out as as we move forward okay all right good great um on the aids will come from us no the aids are paige's aides i'm sorry kicker's

106age we're no longer with paige it's it's kicker now okay and and do you may not know the answer to this question yet but i know um certainly in years past we've had our old bus company in particular has had their own staffing issues and making sure they have enough drivers and so is there anything that gives you pause right now about whether or not the bus company will be adequately staffed and trained and ready to go the information that i have right now is that actually all of our drivers from paige are now kickered so we have all but one of the drivers is the same from last year so they'll be familiar with our routes etc uh same thing with the aids as the majority of those aides we were pretty we were

107almost close to a hundred percent of the buses having aids by the end of the school year anyway and um that personnel those personnel they'll follow us okay that's helpful um and i think the way that dana i think i just heard you describe a little bit of the process i think like that information in this guide will be extremely helpful right like so parents need to know you know stu they have students will have to show some sort of proof upon entering the bus certification has happened if it doesn't when you get to school you know francis said you know these kids will be sitting in the first row they'll be the first ones off you know um how will students exit the bus and will they go to the door or i mean

108i don't even know how you're gonna do it this year but um so all of that information i think is going to be crucial to help um ease the stress associated with day one because there's already stress even when we're not in a pandemic right on day one especially um for your kindergartners sort of knowing what to do on the first day but i think if parents have a clear vision of when my kid gets off of the bus or when they get out of my car they are going to go here absolutely absolutely um we know what yeah i'm sorry dina do we know what that self-certification that michelle and everyone has mentioned looks like or is it going to be like a tear off paper or what does it look like we're working

109on a couple models okay so we'll make a decision on it this week we just had to uh look at some costs and getting the materials to do it and the uh temporary reading that we will have in our buildings what are we using is it going to be something that kids you know on the forehead they're walking through like what are you thinking that will be well we have to we will have uh face scanners and we will also have uh instant read thermometers deployed to the nurses etc and will we have that in time for the 17th oh yeah yep we'll be ready because i can imagine every school district in the world right now oh yeah looking for the same thing right definitely that's why you know we have been waiting we've

110been ordering for weeks so do we have enough batteries too because we're going to go through them yeah i i don't know i will make sure that we have enough i promise we spent a lot of time um focused on uh instructional minutes at parker last year what will the teachers be doing after 12 45 the parker students are dismissed at 12 45. all right we're going to get into that and i'm going to turn it over to amabel because you know certainly the logistics in this plan are very important but we wanted to talk about just what the different programs look like obviously we have a remote program we've got a hybrid program but at the end of the day the expectations are the same the content is the same and the curriculum is

111the same so whether a family is in the hybrid uh process where their kids are in school two days per week physically or the remote program where they're fully remote five days a week uh where we have the same expectations they're using the same curriculum the same pacing and the same kind of flow so annabelle can talk a little bit about both programs she could also talk cam about your question about how the time breaks out between the different levels and how we'll be using that so am about before hold on i'm sorry i'm sorry mml um before uh the mfl uh part of this i i just and i i sent um a question about this earlier um and you know this is something my wife has asked me um looking at what hf

112may be doing and looking at what uh homewood is doing um to what degree are we either on the same page with um the a hybrid uh monday tuesday or monday wednesday uh scheduling so that um parents in the district um if they have a kid who's going to uh one of the schools um will have an easier time finding child care uh for all their kids um on specific days of the week so if so for example but you know steve i think the challenge is the high school hasn't committed right well that's a huge right and so at the end of the day we do have three school districts and we you know dale vaughn and i work very close together but at the end of the day you know we are three

113separate entities and you know we do have we if the high school has a hybrid model it may be different than ours i'm not sure that they're going to have one and frankly just out of out of our duty to the board and to the community we had to move forward oh i agree i absolutely and and i this is not a criticism in any way with what we are doing i guess i'm throwing this out there because um you know i think we have worked very hard uh i i am very proud of the work that we've done people tell me all the time how proud they are of what we have done in our district i even talk to people in other states and they say wow that's a great idea um but

114i i guess and again other districts are going to decide what they're going to do i work in another district uh where some of our kids go i'm not quite sure what we're doing i hope i learned soon um and uh i guess and again this i wanted to mention this before we got into the uh the the curriculum instruction part um because i know that this will come up as an issue um uh as in the coming weeks as people see other plans unfold so you know that's all i know absolutely i think you know we'll continue to work with the high school obviously we have eighth grade students heading over there for some classes yeah we'll make sure that our kids are in a good position and ready to go okay thank you

115my pleasure my pleasure so annabelle i know you're waiting to talk about the different programs no that's fine um and just to that point we are in homewood in 161 we are in communication with the high school that as soon as they give us more detail on what those classes for our junior high students will look like that they will still be provided just pending what the final decision is from the high school uh once we know that we can move forward with letting our families know but as as dana mentioned our expectations for students and in the hybrid program and in the remote program are the same so grades will be taken assignments will need to be completed attendance will be recorded in the traditional model really the opportunities of the hybrid model are

116that teachers we can safely provide in-person instruction and that teachers will be able to modify their instruction to do that in a small group setting because we are effectively cutting those classrooms in half depending on how those percentages work out at each building we'll take a look at that once we have all of the final parent responses and be able to really see the number of students that we will potentially have in person on either set of the hybrid days but we will be utilizing the same curriculum we will still use our common assessments in both programs as well as nwa map which has started to roll out their procedures for remotely testing students as well so we will be able to still provide the core functions of our instructional models um in both settings

117the other thing is that we are offering some training to our teachers this summer coming up very soon um we're focusing on canvas we are focusing on ckh in a virtual environment uh instructional best practices and also sel for both in person of course and in a remote setting so we are confident that we will still be able to utilize all of our resources how we utilize them may be different depending on the hybrid or the remote setting but all of those bricks will still be in place the other thing with the remote setting uh that we're stressing is that we are not uh we're not relying on recorded lessons as we did in the spring uh we will be expecting students and teachers to participate in live in-person sessions throughout the day uh students

118will receive a schedule with their meeting times teachers will be teaching live and we've been doing that in the summer school program and it's been really successful and we've had really good feedback from our parents and our teachers and i think our teachers who did summer school have learned a lot through that process so um versus students seeing a recording and following along with that they will be live in class in the remote program throughout the day we will still need to uh tweak those sample schedules again once we know what the final number of students will be based on the parent selections and we'll work through that later this week as as we're getting responses um and then on the days that stu the hybrid students are off-site when they're at home they will

119have assignments everything will be through canvas so a lot of the feedback from the spring we've taken and we will be utilizing canvas exclusively not just for the remote learning uh program but also for the hybrid program which will be really important for consistency because everyone will be on remote learning on fridays so those friday remote learning days will give all teachers an opportunity to sharpen their remote teaching skills and also allow our of course our buildings to be sanitized on those days but everyone will have experience and a toolkit for teaching remotely whether you are a hybrid teacher or you are in the remote program and camp to your question around the parker schedule so the original thinking around the dismissal for the 1245 at parker is really because when bran and i sat

120down and mapped out uh in for the hybrid model what it would look like to provide lunch safely to all students it really came down to 18 staff members that we would need on hand and and over three hours for lunch so if you look at the schedule we've condensed uh the day so that students are doing all of their instruction uh during the day before 12 45 and then after 12 45 will be time for teacher plan time teacher meetings and for us to uh prepare the the prep times have been eliminated from the other parts of the day so the rest of the day would be dedicated for teacher planning and plc plc meetings i got a quick question um actually i have two two questions one um and maybe i missed it

121because i've been kind of bouncing about a little bit but uh have you guys discussed what we're gonna do with our special ed and in particular um i know the hybrid calls for two days a week um but are we looking at maybe going four days a week for a special ed second question um regarding lunches um actually there's three questions regarding lunches are we talking about doing those with the cohorts in place third question um can you tell me about how we're going to try to have outdoor classrooms as much as possible yeah so let me go back to the first question special education jackie and i are taking a look as well as with the case managers really depending on the student's plan what services we need to provide and then in addition

122to their plan also their parent selection so again once we have those selections from the parents we can really go kid by kid and take a look at their plan and what we need to do and and make sure that we can still we have to still make sure we we provide the services that are in their plan whether the student is remote or hybrid i think david your question is getting to would those is there an opportunity for those students to attend school more in the hybrid program or yeah so we're taking a look at it we really have to see what those what their parents select and really the overarching thing it comes down to is uh what is their what are their parents comfortable with and so wanting to also still honor

123uh giving parents the choice with that yeah because to that to that said um there may be students who who have need for more than two days a week and that's kind of what i'm really asking about and i get the whole what comes first the chicken or the egg whether the parent you know says i want to go hybrid or remote first but i do want to at least have this topic brought out and talked about right now so they can hear that and so they're trying to make a decision they actually do see that we're we're trying to to meet all the children's needs so if it's okay if i chime in for a second dr smith and annabelle hello everybody um we are looking to see when we're looking at the level

124in continuum of service for students our instructional students receive the highest level of assistance so yes we would like to you know pose that as having an option for those parents again as annabelle said they may not feel comfortable with that but our students that are in a self-contained instructional program all day even following with that guidance from the state it is a very good idea for our district to offer them more so that would be what we're looking for and those ec children also um those are our preschool special education students also that need possibly more more time within the classroom again if a parent is not comfortable with that we will make adjustments and make sure we are meeting those child's needs no matter what okay sorry when are we expecting to get

125numbers um i know you know we wanted to get the faq out for parents but um do we have a target date in mind we want all the parents to get their preferences in so we can see what this is really going to look like today the surveys are due today we've been monitoring their responses since it went out uh and sort of keeping track of what the percentages are of hybrid versus remote but today was the the deadline for the parent survey okay okay can we get an update on where those uh wind up tomorrow please absolutely well here's a quick uh oh there we go peek at it by school the top chart is parent feedback bottom chart is staff feedback parents had two choices remote learning hybrid we did ask a few

126other questions in that form but that's not represented here but you can see how it's shaking out currently and i would say we're probably at about 60 of all families weighing in so pretty close to a 50 50 remote hybrid uh with depending on the building going a little bit further either way from that and then obviously you can see the staff just as a reminder i will place staff members who are immunocompromised or who have nuclear family members who are immunocompromised or another medical certification in those hybrid classes first and then you know any staff members who chose remote learning we would like to place those people into those sections and then if we have additional sections left over uh we'll individually reach out to staff members to place them in those positions can

127you i think you just said this but can you what's the participation rate or response rate so far i think we're just over 60 percent of all families and so uh the administrative assistants returned today and i know they started calling families individually and so what's the plan if um because out of that 40 you will still have some that you just can't reach so what what's the plan for those that you don't hear a response from well we will have to get a response and so that probably involves some combination of continued phone calls texts certified letters that they will have to sign for but at the end of the day if we're still not getting anything from them well i suppose unenrolling is is certainly an option but we'll just have to place

128them into a program and unfortunately if we've come to the placement point and we've tried to contact them through all of those other ways whether it's like i said phone email calling emergency contacts etc if they still don't get back to us but unfortunately we'll just have to place them into a program and move forward i mean practically speaking if we are having that much trouble speaking with them that doesn't really bode well for their ability to self-certify every day during the school year correct um and for point of clarification because i know i was asked this question a lot over the past 48 hours um can you just confirm that whatever program you select now there will not be an opportunity for parents to switch at all throughout the entire school year well certainly

129through the first quarter and then i think we have to revisit it because some students may find success or they may not and and we certainly don't want to if this is going to continue past october 16th we don't want to you know lock somebody in a bad situation and so we're already talking about what that looks like as far as a timeline in september to have those conversations and then if there are families who would like to make a switch for the second quarter to gather that information and to be prepared for that okay i think that's helpful because i think parents are are a little confused and many are thinking that whatever they select they will be locked into that until you know june um and then uh i'm about the schedule with

130the parker schedule ending at 12 45 can you just clarify or confirm that the only thing that's missing um from that schedule is lunch right so the the lunch times are eliminated and then also um the the classes that students would take when teachers would get their their plan periods so we removed some of the pe and encore classes so that we could get we could prioritize the core instruction um and then we would need to we've been playing around and talking with the parker blt about how we could provide some of those experiences remotely to students on the their home days okay no lunch and then no pe or encore courses well dana if you can you scroll again so again this is just a sample but there is one time from 12 to

13112 45 where we would be able to offer an encore or specials class our eighth graders would need to take their world languages classes during that time um so that's what we've been uh taking a look at is how we can provide those classes during the students at home days so that we can make sure that we get to the core instruction and also have time for the protocol things that we have to do during the day um in person annabelle what if any do you see is the impact of not having a double block of ela for our sixth and seventh graders yeah so actually prior to uh well i don't want to say prior to because it feels like we've been in covent for a really long time um but even with the

132revised schedule that we planned for if we were going to have a full day uh we would not we had already determined that we would not have been able to keep the double block of ela for sixth and seventh grade because of our teaming structure and also uh just in order to make sure that we have enough teachers to teach the classes that in order to keep the class sizes from being ridiculously large uh and we weren't comfortable with how large the classes would be uh if we kept that double block so we were already anticipating um the impact of having to adjust our common assessment schedule to make sure that we're still getting to the standards that we need to um but that we're not sort of backing all of those assessments up so

133that it's unobtainable so we would still need to make those adjustments even with even in this situation um we were already planning on having a single block of ela okay and then of course eighth grade their double block is the not double block but that additional period is for their world languages classes so i guess i have a a more broad question under the hybrid model and maybe this is something that you're working on for for the students that leave class on tuesday with projects and homework where do they get the support that they might need if they have a question they get stuck um and then that's part one part two is what does the feedback assessment loop look like for students say like a monday tuesday they are submitting or they're done with

134something on wednesday but it's wrong and now they need feedback to move on so that they can do the thursday well so how are those hybrid kids supported in those off times yeah it's we haven't defined what that will look like yet it's something that we have to be really thoughtful of as dana mentioned earlier our hybrid teachers are going to have a class with them so i they will not be able to remotely answer a question to a student or help them with their homework so we have to be really thoughtful about what we're assigning on those at-home days um so that where it's not busy work and so that it's not work that students will not be able to engage with without teacher support uh and and to your point also making sure

135that when those students come back when their their two days on site returned that we're we're following up with how did it go tell me about your assignments let's review um so we really have to be thoughtful in with planning with the hybrid teachers for being intentional with that um because we right now we we don't have yet and i uh additional staff who will be able to be on hand to support those students when they're at home um so we just we really have to just think through being thoughtful about when they come back what's the follow-up and how are we going to pick up where they left off and and again be mindful about what we're assigning so that it's purposeful and that it's relatable to what the students learned when they were

136in person um and that's all going to come with the the training that and the meetings that we need to have with our hybrid teachers to make sure we're all on the same page with that but as it stands right now we do not have staff on hand that will be able to support those students during the day or during their at-home days okay that's helpful so so then it leads me to a path to compare the two hybrid and online and teacher pupil contact time and if it mirrors hybrid or hybrid is mirroring online that's the part i'm having a hard time understanding so will the online kids too be doing more independent type work at some point i i it's difficult for me to imagine those two groups operating at the same pace

137so maybe you could help me understand that yeah and and the pace may not stay consistent throughout the school year um i think again the opportunity with the hybrid groups is that those classes are really small so the pace may go faster at times for them and and we're we want those classes to be much more targeted to what the students need and versus teaching as if we have a full class in front of us and and really differentiating for those those smaller groups um but i i think that the the pacing may be different throughout the school year but we will make sure that our teachers in both programs are planning together so that the exposure to uh the standards and what students need to master stay stays consistent uh versus uh re remote

138program students sort of going off on on another direction compared to the the in-person students so it's really going to come down to planning and preparation and making sure that we're still exposing students to what they need to know by the end of the grade level okay that's helpful thank you hi i would just add also that i think the other opportunity if you will with um the the remote setting and not not to compare the two but but we did build time into the remote schedule for students to work independently also so with both programs the opportunity for students is that we're hoping to develop more self-management skills and that's different at every grade level band but there will be some need whether it's the off-site days for the hybrid program or the independent

139work time during the remote plan those this although all of the students are need to are going to need to have um some skill development with just organizational skills and and self motivation and working through things independently and again that looks different at every grade level i don't want to say that you know a five-year-old should be expected to do everything independently there's obviously going to need to be adult level support as well but all students will need to have some level of skill with that um i'm still waiting on the two questions to get answered about the um so can you ask the question again about lunches david did we address that no you didn't but it's okay it's okay because there's a lot of great great great questions and a lot of great

140conversation a lot of information i think that all the people who are on this call need to hear um but the question was again this is kind of the same vein of just supplying information um are we talking about doing uh lunches in the cohorts or are the children gonna be moving you know to to lunch and then the second question was can you please also elaborate on how you intend to maximize um outdoor teaching yes okay uh so lunches so at parker we're proposing that lunch would be take it and go uh lunch is at the elementary building we will be utilizing the classroom spaces for lunch so those students would be together um and then for maximizing outdoor time uh it as much as possible while the weather is nice we encourage our

141our classes to go outside that will not always be possible and our buildings will work on individual schedules to make sure that um as they're utilizing outside space we don't have too many classes outside at once but each building will handle that and again depending on the weather we encourage our teachers to utilize the outdoors so will the would the outdoor usage be something that is um put into the structure or it will be completely up to the teachers well i think do you mean in terms of indicating upfront on the schedule when we will be outdoors like on right in other words i guess as as we're looking at it one of the things that um has been bantered about a lot is that um if you can get a cohort outside it just

142at least changes the environment and if you get them outside it also gives you an opportunity if there had to be additional cleaning and sanitation you could do it if you get them outside it just there's a lot of benefit to to to doing it and so um if it's something that we're we're recommending versus something we're actually trying to put in place i get it um and so i'm more just kind of asking how that is being kind of you know bantered about yeah i think as the just given how weather changes throughout the day um we would want the buildings to make those decisions to utilize classes utilize outdoor space for classes um versus making it standard that you have to go outside at this time those are you know if the weather

143changes in that day it wouldn't be possible so we would just rely on our buildings to make those decisions and lastly and and i think because parker still has um like facilities actually to almost conduct classes outside is actually correct no when you say facilities do you mean the outdoor area in the newer wing of the building correct yeah i i don't know that we would be able to we could accommodate a hybrid class in theory because those classes will be small i don't know if we'll be able to accommodate more than one at a time in that space i would have to test it out uh amabel can we talk a little bit about um ace in the in our k5 buildings it it looks like ace is for two hours on fridays is

144that right so that would be um dana if you could go it's for both groups right i think i remember on the remote party um well it happens in a couple different locations okay so we try to place ace and interventions throughout the schedule so that we can give flexibility with that so um not all students are in ace so we need that would be for some students and for other students we could be having interventions other interventions during those times so we tried to put it in a couple of different spots so that we would be able to meet all of those students needs okay and then so my follow-up to that would be for both hybrid and remote k5 i know several buildings if not all have some type of like walking reading

145or walking mat so you're a third grader but you're really operating at a fourth grade and that's part of our gifted and talented policy too will that will students still be accommodated that way will students be have more than one teacher like they might have a reading teacher and a math teacher specifically in k-5 yeah so that's something that we we want to still offer we really have to take a look at once we know what students are in the hybrid program versus what students are are remote only um we can absolutely do it it just depends on which program those students are in if they're in person we just have to work out the movement of those features differently um then if they're in the remote program then it's it's much easier to work

146out um i have a few questions can you hear me yeah i am driving so uh you are i am hands-free don't worry about that so um i'll start by going back to um [Music] the assessment uh carolyn and you were speaking about uh formative assessments i was wondering how we are going to make do our uh back to school assessments for the map and how we're going to do that with our online learners with our remote learners and my second question uh is a little bit different and it kind of goes back to our students with ieps how are we going to and i i transitioned to my phone so maybe i missed i heard some of that how are we going to make sure that our students who have ieps are still getting

147the amount of clock hours that they need on their hybrid days uh that are remote yep so assessments uh we will still give uh the nwa map as well as our common assessments uh map we that we're experienced with testing in person for that so that will continue as usual uh and for remote nwa has released guidelines for doing the assessments remotely uh so we feel confident that we'll be able to get those scores for for both programs um and then also uh you had a question christina can you i think you had a question before this vet question you answered it you said they were going to have guidelines the nwa was going to have guidelines for our remote learners yes um and then this bad question the only other question was this fed

148question about uh how we're just going to maintain the those clock hours on the uh those hybrid students um that when they're off days how we're going to maintain their clock hours uh daily how are we going to make those clock hours up yeah jackie do you want to chime in on the sped students yes for sure so one of the things that we're going to have to look at is specifically at their ieps and what their services look like so if they are to be getting 60 minutes of reading a day as a intervention as part of their iep then we will have to look at those kids specifically on the days that they're not there we will have to look at how that looks virtually for those students teletherapy is something that has

149been utilized i know this district did my previous district did it is going to be something that we're going to have to do some training for teachers and make sure they're prepared but we do have to offer that to students so that we are meeting those needs okay and then to answer your question before um you had about the one-on-one aides and the paraprofessionals too so we're putting some thought into that um you know looking at students and trying to figure out the reasoning they have those one-on-one assistants and how is that going to look in a remote model so is it that that paraprofessional is checking in with a student you know on a daily basis maybe during some of that independent time that would be the time that the pera would um access

150zoom or google meets with the student to go over things um again we need to train our that's part of our professional development plan that we would train paraprofessionals and how to utilize those programs they may not have be comfortable with that um but that's something that we need to put into our plan so again those students are getting something extra and we are still following their iep as closely as we can um and then the same thing with the hybrid model um the off days would be days that the para would then be able to check in with that student kind of the same thing you know the same way of looking at it checking in helping with assignments and things like that thank you so much for answering that question sure uh dana

151um well we will we have i know it says that we're going to hire more permanent subs how are you handling because i'm thinking about like even an online teacher that gets sick and needs a substitute um are we training those subs are we going to provide that there's a lot of different trainings that our classroom teachers are getting how are we going to train our subs permanent or not permanent well a lot of training um we'll bring bring them in ahead of time before school starts and it won't be perfect there's no way that we can replace hours of canvas training that we've given to our teachers but i think we can get them the substitutes up and running in a way that they can you know at least maneuver in the software and

152then it'll probably be a combination of all hands on deck and teaching partners and administrators you know helping those classrooms i mean it will be an issue um truly if we do have a covet outbreak whether it's in the student ranks or the adult ranks and we lose substitutes because of that i think that is a real contingency that we have to plan for because you could easily see how you know you know if you get a couple of people who get sick um you know now we've lost some teachers we've lost some substitutes and now we don't have enough people to run the building so those are frankly contingencies that keep me up at night all this other stuff you know we have an answer for ace and you know lunch will be tricky

153but we can figure that out yeah i don't know that there's an easy answer for what if a quarter of the adults get sick okay i think those will be those will be really peculiar situations that i'm hoping we can avoid but realistically we should plan for okay well i'm also as a um a a question that could have been a precursor to carolyn's question is i mean historically we just have had a severe shortage of substitute teachers so i'm wondering um is there yeah i've started to see like ads all over the place for people to register or become certified and be a sub have you do you know what's happening on that front because honestly i mean we all all of the school districts in the south suburbs will be pulling from the

154same pool and there's been a shortage from the start so do you know anything that's going on in that space to try and um get more folks interested in becoming a certified sub well i think that everyone is advertising we actually might be a little bit better off for a negative reason unfortunately but you need the board do we need to become certified by all means we'll get you in a classroom come on cam but you know realistically um i think our sub pool will be better this year and that is a reflection of the job market i think there will be more people at home who are willing to apply for and take those jobs and at some point i think as you know the economy reopens we will lose part of that pool

155um but at the end of the day you know being a sub substitute teacher is a very challenging job it doesn't pay incredibly well the people who do it typically like the flexibility and uh the lack of maybe daily commitment because of other things that are happening in their lives so i think we'll just have to keep you know building up our pool as much as possible and uh moving forward we did we did increase our pay rates last year if you're a member and we did have an have an escalator in there for um not continual service but the amount of service so after they've hit so many days you know if they've stuck with us then their their daily rate can go up as well so i think that'll help um but everyone

156will be in the same boat on the substitute piece and while i think the pool may be a little bit better because of more people available to be in it i'm concerned um just as the substitutes look at the different options and the risks that they may or may not want to take to work this way yeah just as a side um note because so many of our local colleges and universities will be remote certainly those that have graduate programs and carolyn i don't know if any of your students fall in this category but um that could be an untapped market i mean i know i have i have students in our graduate program who were certified teachers before they decided to go to grad school so there could be this market um of grad

157school students who are here who will be fully remote as well in their own studies might be able to might be interested in studying absolutely so while we're talking about hiring in subs what about social workers there's a section in this plan that kind of really clearly delineates our commitment to sel but also this idea that if you have concerns that your student has concerns that they can visit a social worker are we thinking about hiring more social workers do we have enough are we worried about their needing to be and more available to support kids differently i think we want to see how the numbers shake out i mean i the the issue with the remote kids is real i mean you know when you look at heather hill school you could have 100

158kids in that school right i mean that is a that is a major drop in numbers but it's just based on how the remote or the hybrid selection process kind of shakes out and so i think we want to see here just what that means as far as who's coming back and who isn't in person and then we can kind of mess with those schedules and as jackie mentioned scheduling the teletherapy with our current social workers and um psychologists as well so you know we could always use more certainly we just hired tonight an excellent one at heather hill school so our ranks are complete so we're looking forward to that but really we'll want to take the temperature when we get back we know that we're going to do an sel screener for all

159children just to try to get a baseline on how everyone is doing once we get back and that's for hybrid and remote so coming out of that frankly if we have a number of if we have more students in crisis than we anticipated we may have to come back and potentially add either some additional staff members or uh maybe a vendor for some additional teletherapy okay thank you my pleasure i'm sorry i'm sorry kim so as you say um can you just make it part of your maybe friday updates or whatever the appropriate interval is yeah let us know what the where we stand on these numbers as we get especially as we get past this week and we whatever that number of kids that is not responding to us is i'd like to know

160what that is absolutely um and i i mentioned ace and k5 i just i want to put a bug in your ear for gifted and talented kids in our middle school and i know we have advanced version of courses but either remote or hybrid especially on the remote days you'll you will have varying levels of motivation and i worry about that population because they're often overlooked and in some cases even marginalized i'm not saying that we do that but i do i just want to put a bug in here as you're looking through the different strategies you're using and how you'll differentiate in classrooms to consider their needs too and what it will take to really engage and support them in a way that causes them to continue to drive and move forward sure absolutely

161um i know that you all tracked in the spring the number of students and families who just um just sort of dropped just sort of disappeared i mean so i don't know what that percentage um is but i would be interested i think we would be interested to know um if you know what kind if there's any um special outreach that's going to happen with those families especially if any of them fall in the current category of not having um responded already but i am concerned about um those families who just sort of dropped off the radar and this is not a 161 issue it's an issue in every single district especially i know this was a big big issue um for the high school as well but i'm just i'm concerned about um what

162happens if those families select the remote option and you know and how do we give them some special attention um to make sure their their their student stays on track the parents have support that we can provide so you don't have to answer that today but um just something to think about because i have been thinking about those families who just sort of dropped off absolutely for sure uh so for our new kindergartners and first graders who need or any area who need a device a chromebook that you'll schedule some type of pickup oh yeah learners something absolutely absolutely okay yep that's what i said you know program protocols will look slightly different yeah based on you know a remote kindergartner first time with our district without a device we'll have to have some in-person

163um activity but then that also could be depending on the situation a meet your teacher sort of act you know one-on-two one-on-one sort of thing and i think we can come up some creative ways to kind of start those programs uh on the right foot okay quick question um and forgive me this if this has been addressed have we been uh if we looked into or considered um webcams for classes with the hybrid so that if you are doing a tuesday monday tuesday and you've forgotten although you cannot necessarily hear back from your teacher uh in a live session during the day that you can at least chime in to see what uh the other class is doing well we can we can the the webcam is not the issue it's just going to be

164a one-way process right because again that student would be able to observe but the chiming in right there's no one to chime into essentially yes i understand um and i i think that's probably best but for for a couple reasons but um you know and again i don't know the feasibility in terms of um you know if this is something that would would be uh a privacy issue with you know we don't want access to our kids um or um the if this is something it would just be a technical uh nightmare um but just in terms of um you know if someone is uh and even maybe this addresses the question earlier if someone is a uh wednesday thursday uh student and they um they kind of want to get a preview of like

165what's happening in class you know while they're working on assignments um you know just curious as to how viable that might be useful that might be or if it's just more trouble than it's worth but actually bring it back to our conversation from the last board meeting steve and i i think you and i talked about this specifically the difference in class sizes and the instructional strategies that we have to employ i think because of that i don't know that it would be incredibly valuable to beam into a class right okay realistically you know if we have a hybrid class that starts at 18 kids and now we divide it in two so i've got two groups of nine the amount of whole group instruction happening should be minimum right and i think you know

166as we look at the differences in programs the value of the hybrid absolutely it's only two days in person and then the two days are those alternate days but you're talking about a situation where it's a one to nine ratio or even lower depending on the grade level in the class and so the amount of individual instruction that i think we will expect and that we will see with our students will be higher than the remote so while the remote will have the consistency every day right they're hitting monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday sure without and that's part of the that value the value in the hybrid is that um the really small class sizes will produce a lot of individualized teaching and only from that aspect do i say it may not be the

167best you know just to have the webcam up because a kid may not know what they're talking about anyway okay all right that answers the question thanks hey i got one question and and i i may have missed it but um can you answer this for me um i know we talked about curriculum i know we talked about a lot of stuff and again i think it's a lot of tremendous information being shared with the participants on the phone i mean on the cam but what do we have we discussed what we're doing about extracurricular in particular people like with band and and chorus and and basketball and any of that kind of stuff we are following all of the guidelines and as i have shared extracurriculars will be few and far between if not

168outright non-existent i don't think as i'm reading the guide guidelines basketball for example i don't think basketball even gets off the ground this year uh because of the physical contact issues that are present so um i think you know the band orchestra you know those guidelines are tough and dave mentioned earlier the possibility of having some things outside i think we should probably look to maximize that but you know the kids are going to have two choices you know obviously socially distance have your mask on and sing or try to socially distance and you know give them an instrument that collects spit and vapor that could be dumped out knowing that we have a respiratory illness that we're fighting so unfortunately we are going to have to be very creative with a lot of those

169extracurriculars the guidance will take care of a lot of them and they will just wipe them out before we even start but for the others that we can pursue as as many activities that we can provide for kids outside of the school day we will absolutely do that because it could be a great outlet for the kids i'm just as we work through the guidance i'm not hopeful that we'll have very many of those opportunities i could just have started to brainstorm um ways that we can still hide the band and orchestra lessons remotely so the teachers can do it remotely the students can participate at home with their instrument so we're thinking through some different options for that so so that there's still an opportunity there and that you can do it safely um

170that's a great case i'm sorry steve um i think that's a great case for where a visual like if you end up doing band and orchestra um a visual for parents this is where kids will be sitting like to ensure that um precautions um are being exercised just to give parents especially since they won't be you know there's no open house right so parents who are new to our district for example who will have never been in that building who have no idea what it means for their kid to take orchestra so what does that look like so i think just another example of a visual i'm sorry steve go ahead i was just gonna say um and you know i realize i'm i'm getting into the uh the engineer uh brain trust in our

171on our board um do we have a like a coding club or you know things that we you know this is our environment like okay well what can we do that would be great to do uh remotely or online have we explored any i would ask i would ask if we could have some room to start school and then we'll be more than happy to come back um yes that's fine those pieces sure so dana um for remote classes like art are you thinking about sending any materials home to the kids for any type of anything that could be replicated i'm thinking about all of the things in my home from mr marty's class that all my kids have done the coasters the clocks and i know that they can't cut wood at home and

172you don't have digital printers but i'm thinking about uh mr germarot and is there any opportunity at all to send kids home with the remote kids or no we'll have we'll have to figure a different process out because even if you think about um you know mr grimrod's class at parker now a lot of that is really close group work and so even for the hybrid kids that's going to look dramatically different same thing with all of our steam experiences and so what we'll need are specialists and teachers in those special programs to determine is you know what's going to be the focus obviously music you know becomes a lot of music theory which you know for many third graders that's not their favorite but unfortunately that may be what's necessary and for the steam

173program to help to determine what we can reliably send home and the students can work on same thing for art okay thank you i mean we'll want to you know we know that the programs will be different but the question is how can we modify them so we generate the most consistency and the best experiences for those kids okay thank you of course i have a question i'm sorry i had to turn my stove off i'm trying to multitask um so i'm looking at this schedule and i am seeing that those hybrid students are getting the art and the um pe infiltrated in the day is that correct that's being snuck in right uh yes and then depending on the grade level yeah okay and then for on fridays it looks like it says live

174remote learning that's where some specials will take place is that live remote learning for the hybrid or for the remote learners everybody for everybody correct um i'm just wondering and no i'm not asking to you know dr you know change the days or the schedules but um and it probably would be a bust situation like if we're truly working on core classes and and getting the students those core classes and all the students would be home learning on fridays could we save some time during the school day and move all of our specials to a friday when they would be home which does that make sense because i'm wondering steam like steam is an actual you know class period so how are we how are we going to get these kinds of and i know

175you're i i applaud i can't this is we're all trying to wrap our brain around this and and i'm i can't imagine the task this this i just can't like this is a lot for everybody just i'm trying to put this into perspective do you get where i'm moving with that yeah i think um that's a thought certainly and you know you will notice obviously on friday we put some more specials and interventions and things of that nature i think we run out of time potentially pushing too much stuff to fridays because we have to capture x number of minutes per week per teacher for plan time and that plan time comes from the specials in those courses so and i wouldn't get too hung up on the specifics of these schedules because these are

176subject to change based on the numbers we might be able to do a little bit better depending on how the hybrid versus remote numbers shake out so once we you know really by next monday we should have a schedule that in theory could work not that these don't work but we'll actually have numbers of students behind them to say yes here's what heather hill could look like if we wanted to open school tomorrow so hopefully once you see that christina your comments on the specials may kind of fall into place a little bit more because you're right we want to you know preserve as much instructional time when we have those kids in person as possible does the fact that we're exclusively remote on friday impact our bus contract at all because we don't need

177buses on friday yeah we could talk to them obviously you know and they're receiving a fifth fran would you mind putting that on your to-do list to yeah i i have to talk to the bus company anyway i'm honestly not sure how that's going to work our contract with them is technically by the route that's how they bill us so my initial reaction is no i don't think it will if anything i think it may save us some money this year but um i i've been waiting again to see where the numbers fall because depending on where the numbers fall and where the students live i'm not even sure how many buses in completion i'll need this year so that's all still in flux yeah so to carolyn's point you know the answer is probably

178yes we will see a change in our transportation costs um because with the decreased number of students writing it the question will be how much okay thank you of course so i think um obviously there's still a lot of um details that you are working out both on um the public health public safety side in terms of logistics but also just on the curriculum um pieces as well and so um i don't know if the next version of this document that we will see will be another draft or something that you will be considering your final version but you can let us know um i would personally be okay with looking at another draft or you are ready to um sign your name in blood that's right um but the other last piece i wanted

179to just mention and i'm not expecting a response but just something to um add to your list and bring back to the community is what additional support can we try and offer parents who um will like who are doing hybrid or remote um but need additional support right so i know park district is on our list um and i know the park district is working on something i don't know what that something is um i know other um churches and other groups in the community are also trying to think about how they can provide support for parents on those remote days and so it would be great if we are able to provide the community with a list of you know here's what the park district is doing here is what this organization is doing

180here you know and i know you they're on your list to talk to you this week but um in the past week or so the outreach that i have received from organizations wanting to help like help us figure out like this is a community let's have a community solution to this right how can we step up how can we help what can we do how can we partner and so um i think parents will need a lot of help even those who will also be working remote um full time um will need that i know that um families are thinking about you know pot you know small pods of kids that maybe they can um have their kids working with on those remote days in a safe distance type of way but so families are

181getting creative but i think any additional resources that we can provide information on will be extremely extremely extremely helpful absolutely and yeah we can we'll add another section in this document just for that great idea hey dana do you think that that you your team would be able to survey parents but teachers too i don't know after three four weeks i i'm worried a little bit about our teachers and i'll i will be very eager to hear from them how it's going kind of soon just in the event that we need more coaches or more support or so i don't know how soon you'll find it to be appropriate but i want to know how parents are doing as well um but i i i'll really want to know how teachers are feeling you know

182just about the whole thing what what we're expecting them to do facilitate instruction keep kids safe like all of these additional things that we're adding to them okay maybe there's an opportunity on those fridays to actually spend some of that friday focusing just on um emotional support for teachers or any type of support um that teachers might need yeah maybe there's some time on that friday that's kind of why i suggested like maybe if we had specials that day teachers could have like a chill moment to just come back down you know except the teachers that would be teaching specials right right yeah true but would they be uh put into other positions during the week that they could be helping in the building so i mean like hey now's your time to shine specials

183you know what i mean like like this is your day not that they'd be working one day a week but do you know do you understand like that could they be positioned somewhere else i think so carolyn to your point um dana maybe if you could you maybe this is something eric is eric salon eric is still on i see you okay yes i'm still here oh so maybe this is something um you can think about as well like what types of additional just um support like we think about additional um caseworker support for our students but what are we also doing for our teachers yeah that's my complaint yeah i mean but maybe if some um thought could be given to that um and brought back to us but we do want to make

184sure that their mental and physical health is a part of our our regular um menu of things that we know you're checking on as well absolutely all right sounds good um okay so are there any other um burning questions or comments um that folks have i know you uh have a whole new start of question the q a i know that you're working on to the community i'm really really hoping that parents feel like they have enough information at this point to make an informed decision and you know there is no perfect you don't have any perfect options so your decision won't be um perfect but whatever decision you make we are committed as a district um to support you 100 and and do our absolute best to give your your student and your child

185everything that they need to be successful so um you know and i'm sure even us on the board we're probably all doing different things as well right i mean i if you see me at western peeking into a window trying to just get a peek of my child then you will know um so you know or any of the schools get a glimpse to make sure you know kids are okay but it's just a scary time so i think if we have any additional um feedback or thoughts um and we can get them to dana sooner rather than later so that he can work on addressing those questions by friday be great that would be helpful and so um you know until then i think we'll look forward to the next draft of this um

186and if it's not a full draft if they're like just pieces of it you feel like you want to bring back to us and have a conversation about i think that's also fine great okay all right i don't think there's anything left on the discussion items we do have something that we need to go to exact session for do we still need to do that yes uh should take just a couple of minutes and we don't have any action items afterwards okay um are you ready to set us up to move i am um okay well i would like to thank everybody who joined us this evening i need a motion to adjourn and move to exact session second all in favor say aye all those opposed say nay the eyes have it uh it

187is 6 53 and we will be moving into another room for exact session awesome