001one good morning everybody welcome to the July 13th Board of Education meeting and first of all I really want to apologize we have some technology challenges with audio so we are late and I recognize that there were several people waiting so thank you for waiting and welcome to our Board of Education meeting so the Board of Education is meeting remotely and according in accordance with section 6 of the Illinois executive order issued on March 16 2020 can we have a roll call please well Dave Livingston once oh yeah Carson's yeah Rolla whoops yeah Tootie rich here Savage Williams here thank you so the first item on the agenda is written communication is there any Witten communication dr. Davis okay thank you all right the next item on the agenda is comments from the public dr.
002Davis do we have comments from the public yes we have eight comments from the public and I will read them for the board okay thank you first public comment is from Betsey Lehman the Emison Township High School District 202 Board of Education has on its agenda for today safety at e th s and school resource officers as advocates for dead disinvested black and brown youth in our community the Moran Center for youth advocacy has been asked to provide our perspective on e th SS school resource officers program in advance of today's meeting anticipating this discussion in the near term it has been our plan to personally connect with board members administrators and police officers to share our view on this topic given however the Board's decision to quickly move ahead in discussing this issue we
003are unfortunately limited to in our ability to engage in me dialogue and instead must rely on written correspondence we plainly urged the board to remove the to assign school resource officers from their permanent post on campus and if not presently inclined to do so at the very least delay action to allow for a more robust community dialogue on this issue the close proximity of law enforcement to students on campus directly contributes to the local school to Prison Pipeline despite the best efforts of ETH s's SROs to divert youth from the juvenile justice system and employ restorative interventions the SROs play an inherent role in policing investigating and arresting et HS students and when officers are employed in a full-time capacity on campus they inevitably become involved in situations where their involvement is unwarranted and causes
004matters to escalate unnecessarily to illustrate the Moran Center has witnessed the following scenario multiple times at ETA HS a student engages in physically aggressive act on school grounds the SROs are invited to intervene and then do to the officers mere presence the complaint presses for the SRO to arrest the aggressor a student as exemplified here the proximity of law enforcement regardless of their intentions contributes to the criminalization of student misbehavior to be clear our call to action is not in response to the officers currently assigned to ETA chess but rather a response to the policy of permanently stationing officers at ETA chess the Moran Center does not discount the transformative restorative contributions being made by officers from the Edmiston Police Department including ETA chess SROs Tanya Jenkins and life spells but focusing on personalities even
005friends like officers Jenkins and spell distracts from the structural and systemic harm caused by their positions we appreciate ETH Estes SROs engagement in mediating student conflict counseling and de-escalation however we firmly believe that within the school environment these are roles best suited for social workers psychologists teachers and staff not law enforcement we therefore urge the board to invest in HHS's current internal restorative efforts and continue the expansion of student mental health services we of course support efforts by law enforcement building community relationships but that objective can be accomplished outside of the school environment by urging the removal of SR rose from ETH s we are not advocating for police officers to be precluded from for gain critical community relationships particularly with Evanston youth on the contrary we commend officers current efforts to build a more
006restorative community through programs such as the officer in the gentleman's Academy star Academy as well as the Moran Center's partnership with EPB project bridge and encourage the expansion of these initiatives nationally regionally and locally school districts are removing SR Rose from school campuses and reimagining school safety for example Oak Park River Forest High School decided on July 9 2020 to terminate the school districts existing intergovernmental agreement with the village of Oak Park for school resource officers being assigned to OPR F and although Emison skokie district 65 fell short of terminating its memoranda of understanding with the city of Evanston for the assignment of to route school resource officers last year mr. sixty five took significant steps on October 7 2019 in transforming the role of its SRO district 65 now exclusively employs SRO as an
007emergency planning review and perimeter patrols as opposed to utilizing the services to de-escalate students quote relying instead on increasing the internal capacity of school to address students in crisis close quote encouragingly district 65 shift and policy resulted in zero students being arrested during the 2019 2020 school year we implore the board to thoughtfully consider the precedent established by these educational partners and take similar action we are then sensitive to ETH s administrators concerns that by removing SROs from their permanent position on campus students faculty and staff become more vulnerable to lethal violence including school shootings although the prospect of e THS being a target of a school shooting is statistically low quote statistics seem cold and irrelevant the victims are children we don't think about it in risks in terms of one in a million
008the only thing we think of is our kids could be next so even the tiniest risk appears unacceptably high close quote administrators are of course well intentioned in their impulse to station law and force within the school to mitigate school violence however this grave concern must be balanced against the these actions harm students particularly black and brown students beyond the criminalization of student misbehaviors research has shown that police presence in the school environment can have a damaging impact on students physical and psychological well-being as well as their academic outcomes frequent student interactions with police can act as a psychological trigger and over time result in anxiety lack of motivation and aggressive behavior the 2018 study released by the University of Texas at Austin exploring the relationship between presence of SRL in schools and learning outcomes
009found that higher police presence in schools was associated with higher rates of discipline lower rates of high school graduation and decrease in college enrollment police officers are not the answer to school safety we can thereby urge you to remove the sorrows from their permanent position on campus and instead continue to invest in what makes students safer meeting their developmental and mental health needs as a community partner the Moran setter welcomes the opportunity to be a part of this important discussion and take collective action to create a more just equitable safe restorative and anti-racist learning environment for a ths students sincerely Betsy Lehman Board Chair Moran Center Youth Advocacy Board of Directors our second public comment is from Nikki Pete I would like I would like to make one clarification only because I want a context
010for anybody listening in this is not being rushed and there is no action item on this today we do want to hear the comments but I don't want anybody I heard that in that comment and that was incorrect there is no posted action item on this today right it's just the discussion discussion I'm gonna return to the public conference number two is from Nicholas Davis Emison Township High School District 202 Board of Education my name is Nicholas Davis I'm an Evanston resident and each EHS alum the purpose of this email is to encourage school board to end the practice of having SROs in each EHS research has been coming out for decades now which shows the direct relationship between the presence of SROs in schools and students increased exposure to the criminal justice system thereby
011funneling them into the school to Prison Pipeline while the two SRO in the school at the moment may thankfully not reflect what is typically for Aceros across the country they unfortunately are except to them or the culture and policing since its inception all the way to the present day is one that does not align with the equity standards each HSS committed itself to as a community knowing the relationship that police have with BIA be but be IPOC communities they are represented in the ETH s student staff population is another reason for SROs to be not to be in schools a PD city of Emison data shows the EPD disproportionately over police black and brown neighborhoods in Evanston they just personally arrest black and brown Evan still names and the issue citations to black and brown
012and higher rate than Dwight Evans tones with this data we can see that having SRO in school in Evanston is counterproductive to not only achievement and well-being of students that is alluded to in many of the district's statements on the equity achievement but it also is detrimental to the staff and building visitors who belong to communities were law enforcement process the contract between the districts and the city states quote ET HS recognizes that the discretion regarding whether to investigate or charge a student or other individuals with an ordinance criminal or traffic violation lies with the police officials which as evidence was the above data EP D cannot as a department conduct these investigations and file these charts without creating racial disparity Aniston prides itself on being progressive and yet we are behind the curve on
013this issue schools across the nation have been taking s arrows out of their schools for years all the Afra mentioned reasons and more it is time for us to do the same Nicholas Davis criminal justice in Spanish Temple University 2017 next public comment is from Isabel beso my name is Izzy base L I'm a rising senior at ETA chess and have served on the sword board for the past year I believe that school resource officers should be taken out of the e th s it has recently come to my attention that the contracted SROs are in the hands of the school board ETA chess has contracts with two armed Edmisten police officers who are stationed by their employers in the city of Evanston to potentially serve problems that the ETA chess safety step doesn't want
014to have facilities for the 2020 adopted budget for school liaison officers is five hundred five thousand three hundred sixty four dollars I'm asking it to MSM Police Department to stop policing black and brown these inside of eth s and district 65 presence of police in a place of education perpetuation systemic violence upon students of color and the cycle of the school to Prison Pipeline I demand that both district 65 Matua to terminate their contracts with the Emison Police Department in order to reimagine a space of liberation Anniston school boys must mate must take accountability and critically reflect upon the existence of policing in which black and brown young folk are dehumanized the quest for transformation takes self-reflection critical analysis and conversation alongside the action district 65 in co2 must reinvest in new structures that foster
015places of love and create an educational just space for students of color what public comment is from Lydia we're I'm an Evanston resident and I support the removal the school resource officers from all Evanston schools rather than increasing safety the presence of SRO in schools is linked to an increased number of suspensions expulsions and arrests increasing pinna living cursory old measures does not lead to future success but instead directly feeds the school to Prison Pipeline SROs are especially dangerous black and brown students and should be removed as soon as possible Thank You Lydia we're next is Michelle Allen Weldon I'm an estonian constituent and i strongly support the removal of SROs and comes in schools i've done work in Emison schools specifically in special education classrooms and think our schools would be safer and better
016supported with removal of SROs who only encourage punitive treatment and enables the school to Prison Pipeline the six public comment is from Danny prophet jr. greetings my name is Danny prophet I'm in Penniston resident I am writing today to provide my public comments for Monday's meeting regarding school resource officers at ETH s a right to ask you your vote to cut ties with Emma Stone Police Department interviewed cops from ETH S moving forward policing in schools criminalizes and in axe violence against ms news particularly black brown and indigenous students having police IDI ths legitimizes a system that is at its core white supremacist patriarchy philippine classes and it furthers the prison at school to Prison Pipeline our children deserve to learn and grow in an environment free from people with a badge and a gun
017and the discretion to control contain maim and kill as they choose protect our youth provide them the support and services they need to thrive and make this world a better place instead of cops move to increasing the number of B ths staff members who are CPI trained and expand wraparound support such as mental health services food and housing supports and violence Prevention's the C regaining profit Junior number so our seven public comment is from selfie dead ginger my name is Sophie begginer and I'm an eminent resident and parent of each HS student in my understanding that you will be raising the issue of SRO is continuing their present role with chemists and Township High School well there will be no public comment at Monday's meeting I am writing today to communicate my absolute support for
018removing all SROs from Amazon Township High School ETH s has the opportunity to join a number of progressive districts including district 65 of our clear force and several other high schools and colleges around the nation in removing a sorrows interaction from all non-emergency needs please also add to this action by increasing the number of HHS staff members of our CPI train and the number of mental health professionals in the building the eighth public comment is from Kathy granting earth and it's in regard and she says we sincerely hope that thoughtful and creative leadership team at et HS will find a way to offer in-person learning this fall however that looks it will be better than an all virtual option in our own household our daughter and entering freshman experienced a mental health crisis during Kovach
01919 isolation during her treatment journey we spoke to several mental health professionals that shared clothing quarantine had affected many young people negatively we were very pleased with the recent New York Times editorial board endorsement of reopening students to in-person learning reopening yes the implications of not doing so are devastating New York Times piece discuss the effects of closures on vulnerable populations specifically quote the closure also have also deprived students of time with friends limited their access to reliable meals physical and mental health care and reduce the availability of supports for those who special-needs students have been thrown back on the resources of their families and in every dimension those are the fewest resources have landed have tended to suffer the most a pattern certain to continue in the fall re the issue of reevaluating security
020THS building and potentially eliminating Calliste my security team we believe well-trained must be well-trained police must be a part of a safety team at a DHS the role of the police officer should not be criminalized to be to criminalize students to ensure much-needed safety and secure protocols are enforced a well-trained police officer can serve as a role model and mentor at the same time we support an increase in funding for mental health services in the district from Seelye Robert and Cathy Granger that concludes public comment for this morning thank you dr. Bega's all right the next item on the agenda is FOIA we have three for use in our packet dr. Bayliss any comment about them yes there are three ways in latakia vague Kennedy and Slevin and the responses are effective okay great question
021you have a question you muted you muted my spacer bar is not working okay I sent a note to Eric and Pat I'm just hoping that we could get the response to the FOIA F a GG for which apparently shared some data on student attendance during the shutdown period so I just wanted to let everybody know that I've made that request thank you alright next item is update on fall opening of school well hello good morning board and this is obviously a very pertinent and important topic this morning I'll just review some things that are totally obvious but just a vital for the meeting as you know we announced on March 13th that we were actually announced at the evening of March 12th that as of the 13th we were closing a ths for a
022month due to the Cova crisis that was growing rapidly not only in other states but here in the state of Illinois at that time we knew that a month may not be adequate but without uh but that included a week of spring break so we were going to go to remote learning for three weeks and and then reassess the very next day governor Pritzker announced the closing of all of one-we schools and since that time we're all aware that the Illinois schools did not reopen in the spring at the last meeting I discussed the guidance that the Illinois School Board of Education was issuing at the time we were in phase three the governor's plan when when we shared that and and he shared a lot of the challenges that that plan and those guidelines
023required of us on June 30th is B the State Board released that what they call their part three they had given us three growing versions and that that that was the final version for the reopening of schools in the fall there have been about four different versions of that come out since then there was some modifications but essentially what what they provided initially has remained the same with clarifications [Music] at that time we were talking about all of the requirements that would be required of us these align with the CDC guidelines as many of us paying attention to this the CDC has just within the last week michaei today will not be changing its guidelines that those guidelines may be may be clarified a little bit but those are their guidelines to reopen schools in
024the country so we've been working on the principles that we need to have a plan that is specifically grounded in our goals but into having to do with academic achievement of our students and having to do with the well-being of our students our guiding principle has been that and you'll hear this again in this presentation has been to maintain a healthy and safe environment for our students and staff to maintain our commitment to equity to provide meaningful and engaging academic experiences when we reopen for all students and to address the social and emotional well-being needs of our students and staff as well what we're going to share with you today and dr. cannibal and dr. baby side is the framework of the of the plan that we have been developing we've had over a hundred
025people that's included some the student voices that's included teachers as support staff surveys and and obviously leaders across the district we will have that plan ready for release this Friday so Friday the 17th we will be reduced releasing our school reopening plan for the fall for e th s we will be stressing in there and I'm going to stress our right now that it's going to have to be a living document because we know that conditions are changing rapidly with this virus and and so we have what we think on Friday will be a really good plan but we also know that that even if it's a hundred percent in places we envisioned it today on the 13th of July you know two or three weeks there might have to be some adjustments but we
026still want the board to to consider the framework that we're working with I want to begin by stressing that this is not a minor discussion we're talking about life and death here and I can't state it any more strongly and so I can tell you that everybody who's been involved in putting this framework and ultimately this plan together has kept that in mind we are going to do everything we can to avoid increasing the risk for students and adults who have to come into this building and and and and and we'll be striving for a really good educational experience for our students we have already of surveyed parents and students once but after we give out and put out the plan we will have an even more detailed survey for feedback about that plan so
027so that will be coming we will this week be surveying our staff after we discussed this framework this morning will we'll go to our staff with the framework and and try to get even even though a lot of staff members have been involved in this we're going to try to get even the comprehensive feedback about the plan and the framework that's being proposed so in a moment I'm gonna have Pete and Marcus to review this framework again remembering that we are going to continue working on at the rest of the week and and we will have the plan on the Senate Friday the 17th for for our entire community to review but you're going to get a lot of details today because I want you to understand where our mindset is and what we are
028finding we we can and cannot do any ths first of all I I want one of them say that we are going to have a hybrid or which would be a combination of in-person and remote learning in our plan the CDC and the State Board of Education and the governor himself require masks they require social distancing they they require no congregating of groups or people and and so we have really analyzed what what this bill does a building can do can accommodate to have all of that kind of six feet apart social distancing while wearing masks and what would come up with and you will hear it is that we will be having a rotation available where's where our students will be in groups a B C or D and they will rotate in for
029in-person instruction and you'll hear more about that rotating rotation soon the other students on the day that they that one of the ABCD groups is in school all other students are going to be online and you're going to hear more about what we've done because we were not satisfied with the with the e-learning and online in the spring and I'll level with you my mains dissatisfaction were all of the rules that the governor and the state board through TAS that we could not really conduct a real school as such one example would be grades couldn't count if they only if they didn't raise your grade well that's fine but you tell a teenager that the grade you already had three months ago is fine if you don't want to come to school for the next
030three months it was just simply a you know it was trying to do what we could do we the state we could do at the time but the guidelines they gave us did not allow us to actually conduct real school this plan is real school and you're going to hear about real school but we will have students here in blocks on the days they come they will attend all the hopeful school day will describe how that school day is going to look and that we will have what is a known as synchronous learning that is while class is going on in the room with the in-person students in one of those rotating groups the teacher will be on line to everybody else in the class they're all attending class it's a regular school day although
031we have a blocked out differently it's a regular school day and you attend school every day following your class schedule the periods as they come and the only difference is some of the time you're in the room with the teacher so the teacher can get that in-person connection with all of your students and other times you are doing remotely but these are going to be real school days and you will you will get online with your teacher and you will participate in your school day just as the people who are in class participating in the school school day we will have a component and I want to what parents mind at ease because we've heard from many parents about this there will be an all remote learning option for parents who are fearful of sending
032their students into this setting so they will actually be able to achieve they'll still have intent every day and every period but they will have an all remote option so that they not have and we have students with fragile health issues we have students who have an elderly person at home a grandparent or whatever and we have parents who are scared to death to be sending their kids into a populated environment where they may bring that home to the family so all these options are going to exist for for all of our students and I I just want to emphasize that that this will operate like real school we're also going to be recommending again you're going to hear all of this coming up but I want to give you the context and then we'll
033get into some of the details we will also be not starting school but in person until after Labor Day we will start school in August as already scheduled but everybody will be on remote learning and then we will start the regular day importantly of alternating rotating in person attendance after Labor Day why are we doing that we've been shut down for months we've had people retired or resign and we have new teachers coming on board we've been doing a lot of training all summer long but our teachers are going to begin being in here each day they're gonna be in their classroom when they're that are in person they're with the kids and when they're online and everybody else is attending everybody else is with the teacher too we need to get our staff in
034here and get up and running we need to make sure that that everybody is clear about how to do this thinking their their convenience um with masks and distance learning or there can be some collaboration going on they can be interacting with their department chairs and the like they can be problem-solving they can make sure they understand all the one-way hallways that they can understand all the one-way stairwells that they can understand Howell getting in and out of bathrooms is going to be limited so that they can understand how is going to function and be in this school for a short period of time to get acclimated while they are teaching so school starts on the same date in August but but but we will be all remote getting everything up and running and and
035everybody knowing what they needed to do before we start bringing a thousand kids at a time into this building remember we have 600 employees some are on night shifts but on any given day a good 500 of those employees are here during the school day you had nearly a thousand kids - 500 that's still 1500 people in this building a day will we advocate for the in person and so one of the things that we are really serious about is all the adults in the building understand how it is going to work before we start bringing teenagers into this building who are going to need a lot of guidance on how to operate because I want to say to everybody this will not be the olden ths this is not the e th s that
036we left and until we can guarantee the safety of all of these students hopefully with a vaccine but until we can guarantee the safety we're going to organize this school according to how we can have a semblance of safety and meet those CDC and those those us the State Board of Education requirements and finally I'll end here because I'll come back but I want to say next so Friday we issued the plan today we tell you to go through the framework with you because we need the board's input and make sure the board is okay with this Friday we issue the plan next week on Wednesday the 22nd we will have a live town-hall meeting and dr. Davis and dr. Campbell and I will be at that live meeting it will also be recorded for
037people who can't attend at the time that it's broadcast and we will be responding to questions and clarified but we will have had questions and waves done anticipate what still needs to be reconsidered between now and Friday and we will have then release the plan and we'll have further consideration on how this plan can be improved or peak efficiency if you will so with that I'm going to turn it over to our two pros who have been spending months and absolutely this entire summer of with with these hundreds of people developing this plan and and I want to thank them and everybody who's been involved as you will see in a typical et HS fashion amazing thought and care and concern that's been put into this okay guys well thank you dr. Witherspoon and thank
038you to the board for your patience with us as we walk you through this process as we've been following the national discourse around reopening we know that this is very complex this is very difficult there are lots of moving parts and we want you to just sort of bear with us while we give you some high-level things and share with the community some high-level things and the details will the Devils in the details that will outlast four of those details throughout the week and by Friday and as we outline some of these recommendations and plans and things we've been thinking about is one one thing I want everybody to keep in mind sometimes it's easy to say why can't they just do this or wipe it just a can't do that well we probably thought
039about it and we've ruled out certain things just because there are so many unintended consequences when we're building a school based on the CDC guidelines and based on what we've gotten from is B and as Eric as dr. withers will mentioned this is a very different school this is not the ETH s that we left so there's a lot to figure out the first thing is I'd like to reiterate the safety the safety of our students and staff is our most priority we have had lots of robust debate about how do we open but how do we open morally and how do we open ethically to make sure that we can safely provide the kinds of things for our students and our staff while we attempt to run a hybrid school and so I just
040want to reiterate that the safety of our staff and our students is a priority it is something that we talk about constantly incessantly and the details and the the high level things that we share with you this week are ways that we believe that we can ethically and morally open school in a crisis so I just want to say that Eric mentioned the main the health and our for staff and students our commitment to equity engaging in an academic process and lifting up the social-emotional needs of kids so and and staff so with that being said what we think we can do safely with 1.3 million square feet of space is to roughly bring about nine hundred and fifty kids in at a time Eric mentioned the ABCD rotation 950 is about a quarter of
041our students and we believe that we can provide the amount of social distancing and not having not having about having a lot of crowds in the hallway if we have about 950 kids we're going to open more entrances and exits so that there are there aren't any sort of clusters of kids at the door when you've been a DJ just for a long period of time when you see the traffic patterns you kind of know where where where the where the the traffic sort of begins to converge and where there's a lot of were there a lot of kids and so what we're going to do is open more entrances and exits so that we can make sure that kids aren't crowding in the space we believe that with nine hundred and fifty kids at
042a time it allows for not the buses are as crowded we can socially distance in the cafeterias and be able to feed kids dr. Bayliss is going to go through a schedule that looks like that we're going to have to serve lunch I'll let the same at the same time given the schedule so he'll share some more details about that but nine hundred and fifty kids we think that we can adequately social distance and classrooms and in various spaces around the building so that's very important we don't believe we can do more than that there are some schools that are doing half of their population we've had conversations about a third it just really gets problematic we are doing the best that we can to keep the number of bodies in this building down where
043there is some semblance of school one of the one of the principles that we've learned and sort of having kids pick things up and you know further for the summer and with lockers and things like that in books is that if if it looks like EHS too slow like there's not a lot happening going on that means we're doing it correctly if it looks like there are crowds and people are around and they're long lives and people are huddled together that's not that means that we're doing something wrong so I want to thank our associate principal Robbie Brown for for all of his work in logistics with helping us to close the year and we're using those same principles to open the year we're also looking at a way for our students and staff to
044self-certify coming in before they come to the school so we're going to provide some sort of digital means for students and staff to sell certify and that means letting us know that they aren't this aren't displaying even any coded symptoms we know that people can be asymptomatic and that's just one of the tensions as we look at this reopening plan but we're asking folks to self-certify prior to coming to the building and if they don't self certify then we will engage in the certification at the door but the temperature check etc visitors are going to be highly discouraged and by appointment only and they will be screened in temperature checked upon arrival but we do not want people visiting e th s we're only talking about essential visitors we're going to be asking students and
045staff to scan in we're still having some conversation about this how do we scan in with without drawing a a crowd at the door and we're looking to see if there's any other way that we can do attendance which will provide us with contact tracing if someone becomes infected but right now we're looking to make sure the staff and students will scan in I am going to turn this over to dr. Davis who's going to talk about our remote start and the schedule as dr. Willis won't I already mentioned we will have a remote start school we'll start on the first day of school remotely and for three weeks we will not have any students in the building as dr. Breuder school mentioned we've been shut down for months we really want to make sure
046that our staff are familiar with the procedures so that because when staff are familiar with the procedures it protects our other adults and it protects the students as well so I'm going to turn this over to dr. babies who is going to talk a little bit more about the schedule and the academic portion of our opening thanks Marcus I'm gonna walk us through what enhanced elearning will look like at the start of the school year and keep in mind we have the goal of having 950 students access their courses at ETH X according to a fixed rotational schedule and will determine that a round labor day how that will you know what the we'll be in how we will begin to bring students in but the first thing you know is that elearning will be
047substantially different from what students experienced in the spring when we had to make that transition to remote learning quickly little advance notice in contrast and we were also underneath all of those guidelines from is be around grading assessment and things like that in contrast enhanced elearning will include a return to high academic expectations comprised of well we're going to take attendance and we're going to have scheduled and you're going to be required to to be on your device and zooming or Google hangout during class time we're gonna have return to grading we're gonna grade using our a to F scale we're also gonna have these required live synchronous class sessions where you students will meet with their teacher and we're gonna have a return to assessment assessment will be a little bit different because all
048studio at any given time three-quarters of our students will be working remotely so we're gonna approach assessment as though it we're open book open notebook open Internet so that change is a little bit of how we assess students it actually creates a more robust assessment profile for students and asks a whole heck of a lot more of them because we won't be relying on recall and lower order questions we'll be asking more sophisticated questions that go well beyond a Google search you know to that end we've provided required professional development this summer for our teaching staff through our ETH S Learning Academy so they'll be prepared to offer enhanced elearning starting in the fall and and we're very very clear on what those included we have a unit for teachers on climate how do you
049develop a climate and pay attention to student needs connect to kids how do you do that in a remote environment planning we have a whole unit on planning we have a unit on content delivery how do you what are the best what have we learned about good solid content delivery using a learning platform how do you have robust discussions with students that are both synchrony in real-time and asynchronous using discussion boards flipped grids and things like that assessment is another unit that I just you know spoke about briefly and finally a unit on how to provide students with feedback because we know in a remote anytime students are accessing the content and their assessments and their schoolwork via online environment any time we know that we only have about a quarter of our kids ultimately
050in front of us at a given time that feedback becomes particularly important it it elevates the core principles of teaching you know good assessment good feedback how do you do just-in-time feedback how do you connect each kid to to their learning throughout throughout that time synchronous online classes will be required and will file a bi period block schedule what we did was we built a block schedule that works both for students who are fully remote students who are in the building and students who are outside of the building in that hybrid model so we've done that in-person instruction will be delivered in a model that allows students to participate in person or remotely again if the student and a family decides that they don't want to come to ETH s due to health and well-being
051reasons that's completely fine we will have a remote option available for them should they choose that the determination we're gonna have determinations of now here's the thing when we designed the e-learning in the black schedule you might be asking yourself why do you have this schedule that's not a nine period day well if you're at home and you're going through a nine period day and you're going from zoom - zoom - zoom to zoom you're gonna get zoomed fatigue pretty quickly okay so we're not we're not going to have a nine period a what we're gonna do is we're gonna have a block that says I'm on Tuesdays you'll have periods one through five and on Wednesdays you'll have periods six through nine there's a built in break in the middle of between period in
052the middle of the day for lunch or we just call it a break you know students are working remotely that day we also have built in office hours on Wednesdays and Fridays and that schedule you know that black schedule is a Tuesday Wednesday and then it's a repeat on a Thursday Friday so what you end up doing is students will come in when we're on the hybrid model you'll have 950 students here on Tuesday and Wednesday access you know meeting with their teachers going through that schedule on those days and then you'll have a different group of 950 students on Thursday Friday and every two weeks you'll see all of your students all the students will be able to access and have time with their FaceTime with their teachers and that FaceTime is really important
053we envision that as being you know time to connect with students time to have like a tutorial session time to do some hands-on learning but again you know it's it's it's sort of like enhanced that's another enhancement because we also realize that three-quarters of the students learning will be done remotely so when you've come in and you meet with your teacher that's a special time that's really a time to connect again we're all gonna be wearing these masks so you're gonna have masks on which are very important so it's going to be a different environment and a different experience for kids on Mondays in our schedule we're gonna have office hours and work time we're gonna have student services supports offered on Mondays for students and we'll also have later in the day like we
054would during a normal school year we'll have professional development time for our teachers so that's how that's gonna work in terms of toggling between the remote learning let's say you know there's an outbreak you know in the community and we have to pull back from this model you know we have set up a series of internal and external indicators to sort of guide us some of those internal I'm not gonna list them all but I'll just give you a couple examples we're gonna look at the number of students who are self certifying and who are not self certifying this is a community-wide effort this is a student you know we have to embrace our students and families need to need to do that so if we find out that half of our students are not
055self certifying before they come in the building you know that's an issue and would need to be addressed the number of students we're gonna have a special area for students that are exhibiting symptoms so that they can be you know if they come in and they're exhibiting symptoms we will isolate them and we'll get them the appropriate parental and medical care but we're gonna monitor that number of students that are being referred to that space we're gonna also look at and take a really hard look at the number of students this is extremely serious the number of students who are wearing and who are not wearing masks not wearing masks is a non-starter here if you're not wearing a mask you know you're not you're not gonna be able to access the in-person instruction we
056won't be denying you an education you'll just simply have to work remotely we'll put you on the remote learning clamp because we cannot compromise the health and well-being of our students and staff so again it's to protect the health and well-being of our students and staff that's why I held that mask up it's extraordinarily important and if we find that students are not doing that that will be addressed we're going to look at teaching teacher and student absenteeism as another internal indicator we're gonna be monitoring our social distancing the number of substitute teachers our capacity will become a factor potentially and those if we reach certain thresholds on those we would have to pull back and go remote because that would signal that something is wrong that was signal that there's a potential health issue
057and things like that external indicators include of course Illinois phasing as determined by the Illinois Department of Public Health and State governance that's a big you know that's an alpha indicator right if if we all of a sudden end up back in phase two well that tells you all you need to know we'll also look at regional and local indicators you know percent positive for for testing and things like that to guide decisions those are our external indicators and we'll have other indicators just law just sharing a couple of those with you in terms of lunches and free periods you know HHS has this thing we call the students affectionately call free period and if anyone's ever had a student go through here you know that what that is things are gonna be different I
058just can't I can't stress this enough it's going to be a different experience for one we're going to be a closed campus for students we're gonna manage and assign students to specific locations in the building during free periods lunch and study halls so students will be assigned two spaces this is yeah this is again to control the flow of students to ensure we have no more than 50 students in any given large space we're gonna use multiple rooms for our for our lunch we're not just going to use the cafeteria we're gonna we're putting online several other large rooms students will be assigned to those rooms for lunches again this is a very different schooling experience that students are returning to I can't stress it enough the ETH s we had in in in january/february
059in previous is not going to be the ETH SS students are going to return to and and that's just a logistical fact with social distancing with masks with hand hygiene with all these things but it's going to be a different experience for our students and it's going to be a collaboration with our community to ensure that that it's a success I'm gonna give it over to Marcus and he's gonna talk a little bit about integrating social emotional supports talked a little bit about what can happen on those Mondays and how we're going to do that throughout the semester Thank You Pete and it's just very quickly that our counselors and social workers are going to be continued to work with students as the needs arise we are also looking to integrate more social-emotional learning within
060the instructional because we you know we're training ourselves not to think of Oh academics are here social-emotional things are over here no they actually integrated together and having the social-emotional pieces take the lead and how teachers think about lessons and implement those lessons but the counselors the Social Work social workers are will continue to be available for students because as we remind ourselves or think about it we're still in a crisis and we've also spent some time this summer with that said well we've also spent time to summer thinking through what is our cry says plans should we lose one of our family members our immediate family what about a wild kid family members and so this is such a large undertaking when we think about social emotional learning because it is being that that
061impact is being felt amongst our students it is being effect amongst our staff and it is our first and foremost priority when we think about the operational piece and getting people back and talking through and and doing the things that we would normally do the social-emotional framework and construct is really important for us and we'll be talking more specifically about some of what those things are because we're not going to be reactive we are engaging in a proactive approach with as far as the academics with integrating social-emotional learning the counselors and the social workers and unfortunately what our worst case scenario might be should we lose someone and I'm gonna turn this back over to our dr. Gershman Thank You Pete and Marcus and of course everything in this framework that we discover discussed will
062have lots of details available and added to it in the written plan that will will be coming out on Friday the one thing before we you know discuss this with the board is I would just make an appeal to parents and the students if we all work together on this if we all do everything that's being asked of us including wearing a mask whenever you're in this building we can actually create a healthy environment so we all come out of us when it's over with e th s not having to suffer any of those consequences that were reading about which is not only the getting sick which is desperate enough which is possibly death for some people which as scary as it can be but which is also we're learning that there are what may
063even be lifelong healthy for people who have contracted recovered they are seeing lingering and lasting problems with heart with lungs with even cognitive skills and people we're not scientists we're not medical researchers we know that contracting kovat might have more implications besides surviving it and we just don't want to be part of doing anything that would make the conditions worse but here is my pledge to our students if we can all cooperate and make this work right now I really believe that that it we will see on the horizon it might not be until next school year but we will see on the horizon but we will be good able to get back to our beloved ETH s in the way that we really want it to be and know was the best way for
064it to be and with that we're alone for any comments questions at the board we have thank you for that we're setting that up so well I just appreciate all of you so I see Gretchen pan and let's take questions thanks Pat thanks Eric and Pete and Marcus I I really can't even imagine how much work has gone into trying to figure out the logistics of our building are a really really large student population and how to balance all of the concerns here and I really appreciate your your overview I thought it highlighted virtually everything of importance but I have a couple questions the first thing that comes to mind is I think it would be helpful at a future meeting to take you're from directly or perhaps you can get some more information from
065the health professionals who are in our building and I'm principally talking about physical health not so much the mental health piece which which you did touch on so for example the folks that are in our school clinic and in our the North Shore certified health clinic those two separate spaces that deal with health issues in our building and I think this is important because I would like to see reinforced at every opportunity I think all three of you did it but I think it also is important to come from a health professional to reinforce at every opportunity with our students and our families and our community the importance of all of the basic precautions around masks and and hand-washing and all of those things I really think our community has done incredibly well in this
066regard just based on this is anecdotal and my experience out and about but I honestly don't think we can stop messaging around that important point and so I would I would like to see a health professional at our meeting running through some of this stuff talking about its application within the school environment and just just reinforcing that I think it's easy if your family hasn't been touched directly in any way by this to dismiss it and to get a little more casual especially in this good weather I think people are getting together more outside and even though they're doing it from a distance it's it may give us a little sense of normalcy but there are also risks associated with all of that so I think it's important and then relatedly I am wondering we
067have a student who shows up who hasn't self-certified and they have a fever a high fever you know whatever I understand that we're going that we have a space where we can isolate them more importantly though I think for the functioning of the school is uh oh what about all the kids that that student was sitting in the classroom with the the previous week if it's been a week I mean how are we handling or let me also toss out a teacher says hey I'm not coming in today I have this terrible fever and and maybe I've even already tested positive for covin what do we do aside from obviously those people aren't going to come in anymore you isolate them I get that piece what else are we doing to make sure that this
068doesn't turn into something much bigger yeah I can I can speak to that so first of all we would wait for Co for testing and for making sure if it has called it because people you know we have people with those kind of symptoms pretty often in a high school you know they'd have influenza they have a cold you know not generally a fever but maybe allergies you know they're they're just different things that come up so we would take the precaution but but then we would wait for the result of either testing or a self quarantine for the 14 days that would just be required if we we learn of a possible case in the school we will immediately go to the Department of Public Health and health officials for for guidance they would
069we would certainly assist them with contract contact tracing if they asked us to do that but but we would we would definitely follow their guidance but I will say that it did we we do have to be aware that that it's not incomprehensible that there could be an outbreak here and obviously if there is and we go immediately to full-time remote learning and until we we have further guidance from from health officials isolated cases we you know we deal with Department of Public Health in multiple cases we would go to remote and that's one of the reasons also that we're going to get remote right first yeah you know prior to Labor Day because there is there is no way to anticipate this school year with without formal learning as a component we've already described
070the rotating schedule in all but if there's a surge if there is an outbreak within the school that we already know that we would have to go to remote learning until we had more information and the situation was stabilized so thanks Eric I I think that makes sense and I get them you would follow the Department of Public Health guidance and I just think it's something obviously that you have to be prepared for that eventuality for sure so my last question I don't mean to dominate is I like your priorities we've talked about academics and social-emotional health what a question that's going to be top of mind for many many families is extracurriculars and sports and I I know that's a whole different can of worms and I don't know how much time you have
071to devote to it here but and I know for example that we are already doing you know training over the summer and so forth but in light of the fact that you know college football seems to be sort of in a slow fold you know maybe you could give us some high-level stuff on on sports so there have been no guidelines come from the state on on sports during the academic year they are allowing a certain level of conditioning and and workout following strict guidelines and and I would suggest that there's probably no school being more true to that then we are others wouldn't be but but we're really taking that serious but there has been no guidance and that has been changing so for example the IDSA a put out of the document maybe
072about a week we got a half ago and the Illinois Department of Public Health look at that document and came back and really have added more restrictions it was just really clear the the health concerns are going to have to drive those decisions so yes that those are the kind of issues that are still all schools are going to have to grapple with but I I will tell you again we what whatever the best practice safety issues are that's what we will adhere to we're not going to try to cut corners on that so what I'm hearing you saying is we have to wait because we really don't have very clear guidance right now I mean it sounds like it is that right that's right and and by the way Olli I'll even say it
073out loud when the Ivy League and and some of the other major colleges are canceling fall sports that may have a huge impact on decisions that are made nationwide before we actually get into a fall sports season well in that that doesn't even include for example some of the problems that have cropped up with professional sports that's not going real well either like they had an outbreak among a football team already so so yeah there again that's why why we really want to take this cautiously because it's better to do that than to get way out there on things just because we have some internal confidence that has no basis and and then realize that we got way too far ahead of the situation cautiously and recognizing that things could look very different in the
074next few weeks so you know a month out we will have more and experiences that we can draw upon from other places so Pat I see your hand up thank you for waiting well again I just want to thank Marcus and Pete and all the people behind the scenes that really have just lived and breathed to this whole situation and really thought about everything in terms of planning so I'm you know really grateful to you as always for being so thoughtful for keeping our students health and safety in mind and our staff as well as our equity focus so I'm really grateful to all of you just a couple quick questions Eric you have mentioned after you put out the plan on Friday that you were going to do a detailed survey of staff and
075I think you mentioned that you are also going to again survey families and students I just want to clarify if that's true that's true in fact after this discussion we wanted to get the framework in front of the board and make sure that we're okay with the board on on the framework but we'll actually then survey the staff beginning today because because now they have something tangible to think about and and give us feedback on it we will wait until after the the plan goes out the 17th again and parents and students will have a much more tangible detailed look at what this plan is and then we want to survey them really about their reactions and even things we're going to be very interested will you send your child to school and so those
076are the kind of things we're going to have to find out right thank you and then my other question is this briefly if you could talk a little bit about the areas that are in general are much more in person dictated like EE and some of our special ed students in our day school like can you talk a little bit about what some of those areas will look like at a height just talked about it at a high level for us Pete Marcus why don't I start and-and-and chiming so first of all according to CDC recommendations and students will not have access to their lockers they will not have access to physical education lockers and they will believe at the moment against they will not dress for physical education that there will be social distance
077activities for our students but but that we we are not going to start contact kind of experiences and we're not going to start putting students in a position where maybe there's a concentration of somebody shedding the virus so those are the kind of things that were looking at right now and since I forget the rest of the question Marcus or people want to jump in and I remember what the rest of that was about the day school in some of our more so we're working with special education to really determine student by student how we can meet those needs because that's just the only the only way to do that we've been speaking with their day school staff on a possible schedule and we have been speaking with that it looks that mirrors the e
078ths schedule to some degree although it won't be exact because the number of kids is different and the same with our you know we really trying to understand what what is the impact on our DLP program and so we are having these conversations and those decisions are going to be made on a case-by-case basis we understand that there are safety issues involved there but also making sure that we you know give that student in education so and given the guidelines that's this is a very very difficult thing to reconcile but we will do it and but that's probably going to be on a case-by-case basis and not just on a a program as a whole thank you I have a question couple of questions I wanted to just find out a little bit more if
079dr. Campbell if you could speak to and maybe dr. Beavis if you could speak to ways that you corporated data from last spring and and sort of the remote learning that you sort of had to do a bit you know suddenly how did you utilize that data and creating I'm just interested because I've I've just heard sort of parent and student feedback sort of broadly through the community about you know how they experienced remote learning and I'm just curious to what degree did you utilize that information or that feedback from you know families and students to inform and also teachers for that matter to inform sort of some of the changes and the improvements that you made I'd like to just hear a little bit more about that process and then I have a couple
080of other questions you want to talk about the that from the academic part so we learned a lot about what didn't work in the in the in the spring for example we learned that students needed to have regular contact with their teachers via zoom or Google hangout whatever we use the zoom platform we found out that that was very important for keeping kids connected to school we also learned that having a regular schedule was very important for students so the the asynchronous kind of thing didn't really work well for many many of our students because what it put the what it said was essentially that we look at what that privileged was students who had high executive functioning and many of us do adolescence you know teenagers don't have high executive functioning so that was
081one hurdle so we took a lot of this information from our teachers and our students and what we did was we went and we built a summer school program where we could test out some of these things so we built in a regular schedule where the classes would meet we built in in class zooom sessions that had to occur we required that we require to return to grading we know from from our many of our students that once that you know the fact that your grade couldn't go down was a demotivator right we learned that routine was very very important you know so we were in summer school what we did was we you know we had a daily schedule for kids teachers published you know when they would zoom within that block of time
082what the expectations were we also learned that having to navigate and I'll speak to this just as a parent having my kid having to navigate Google classroom a teacher so we got email assignments another teacher may be using a different platform it was too much to manage it was managed but it was just it was too much to manage I was put it out there like that so we've decided to use a uniform platform we're gonna use Google classroom for all of our teachers are gonna use that to to push out assignments to house their assignments to do all that to one-stop shop it's going to be uniform we did that in summer school we're going to continue that that again is part of the training that's that's occurring right now the live interactions so
083very very important the use of breakout rooms so students can connect with each other so very very important the idea of a weekly schedule for kids not just a class schedule but a weekly flow to like how the classes will go down like when our assignments you know do how does that work just being extraordinarily transmitted about that the idea of building community was very important one of the things that's very different going into a new school year versus the spring is that in the spring our teachers have you know had built community they're classrooms at a minimum for one quarter but many of them you know through the course of three quarters of instruction getting to know kids and then we had the cogut shut down in the remote learning piece we don't have
084the benefit of three quarters of contact with our teachers to build community so we are integrating community building into the fabric of our e-learning we did that in summer school we're going to do that again and we're going to do that even better going into the school year and those can be low-tech communications you know just the the pret you know the presence of our of our teachers and again putting those kids in community with one another very very important you know and we're gonna be very we're very direct about what that expectation is and we've built that into our art training this summer and finally the feedback piece extraordinarily important for that feedback what we learned in talking to our teachers was that when they when we went through those after god days where
085assessments didn't count that was another challenge for us right we had a be the beginning of this whole thing was nothing counted at all so you know if nothing counts and then things count that messes with kids too so but what we learned is that feedback became extraordinarily important during that time frame the ability to connect to kids providing regular feedback on their performance not just grades is it is a shift it's a fundamental shift one of the things used to say in school is that grades provide feedback well I'm not sure if they provide feedback or if they're terminal right kids see the grade and that's their great where as feedback having a conversation with the teacher via zoom or getting written feedback on your Google document or through flipgrid like that kind of
086feedback on your performance so that it's actionable kids can can can develop based on that fear that became very very important and we're integrating that into our we integrated that into our summer school program a little bit but we're actually going to really accentuate that with our training so that we do that over the summer and then we prepare folks for coming to display and you'll realize that all of those things I just talked about aren't net they're they're critically important in a remote elearning environment but they're also critically important in the classroom they're critically important in a hybrid model and they're equally as important as everybody who comes to school regular school model so it's an opportunity really to anchor folks in in these practices and really enhance not just their online instruction but
087their instruction their connection to kids overall so thank you for asking that question and that's sort of how we took that well it was a very good positive experience for many of our kids and our faculty and we've been able to adjust we ran it in summer school we've learned again from summer school what some of those things are that we need to really enhance and with those things to continue and those things to throw away as well thank you and I also realized I neglected to preface my question with profound appreciation because everything that you've been talking about all of you have been talking about so far is just demonstrative and I can only begin to imagine how much work has gone into this and how much work will continue to go into this
088it's really phenomenal and you know I just I just have great appreciation for for all the work and all your expertise that has gone into you know thinking about these things on such a granular level and I imagine you know in terms of feedback you you probably have you know mechanisms in place to continue to perfect and refine because this is a learning environment for everyone and so so I hope that feedback is is will be continuing you know I know one of the things my daughter and I'm reassured very much to hear my daughter's a junior going to be a senior but one of the things that she felt was that there were you know the ability for students to give feedback as well as for teachers to give feedback to students I think
089it's important for students in this environment to feel like like they're being heard and that their teachers are flexing and moving and receiving and responding to you know how the students are doing and what the students are talking about what their what their experiences in this new learning environment so I think it really does need to be a two-way communication between teachers and students the other the other question I have is sort of more logistical and just in terms of resources and I'm curious to know you know with a synchronous with a hybrid model in a lot of these classrooms and I know all these classes and subjects are different and have different resource needs but I'm curious to know how you know for teacher to teach you know a group of students in person
090face to face as well as students remotely what does that look like in terms of planning for that in terms of resources in terms of providing technology that can accommodate both audiences how is there any sense of how that's going to impact our technology budget or other budgets that we you know other allocations that we have for this I'm just curious to know there's any sense of that at this point I can take that I mean one of the things that we realize is that we have to be we have to expand our our bandwidth and our ability for our firewall to handle traffic because you know what we have then is is conceivably every you know teachers second period you know working you know sending out information to their students via a zoom let's
091say you're meeting with the so your start class with a zoom with everybody right you you do your daily assignment then you're gonna check back in on the zoom well that's going on you're gonna get the kids over here you know that the in-person group going and running that uses a lot of bandwidth so we're committed to actually we've invested in are in expanding our bandwidth and our ability to do that it's a lot easier when you have a quarter of the kids 950 students in the building and not half of the students in the building are all the CIB it just it becomes this it's this math engineering problem right how can you optimize that so so there that we have committed funding to that we've talked with our tech folks really work closely
092with our technology folks and in fact I'm the instructional side of that this week I've convened a group of teachers and Dave Chan from instructional technology myself Scott Braille me to kind of sit down and carve out some guidelines some very clear guidelines and parameters around you know what the what that will look like instructionally for folks because what we don't want is there's certain scenarios you don't want like you don't want the kids to come in and you don't want is the instructor to put up a video and make everybody watch the video and that's your lesson that that kind of diminishes the quality of that in-person experience so we're gonna develop a series of guidelines and how do you do that how do you integrate that we and yeah that's going to be
093a pretty nice thing we're doing the other thing we've provided for our teachers is the option this is completely optional for them to say let's say they're delivering some super-important content one day they can record that content record that class and then they would how's that for the sploosh let's say a kid couldn't access the content remotely that day they could go in and then access that so that's kind of what we're those that's our latest thinking on this you know and again that wouldn't be required that would be up to the teacher but it's another way to think about instruction so you offer the synchronous piece but then if some kid for substitute for some or whatever reason couldn't be there that day they wouldn't fall behind you know so we're building in some
094safeguards along those lines and that's just one example of a whole bunch of things where we're looking at thank you very much so I am going to have to I hate doing this I'm gonna have to jump off this meeting because I have another meeting that started at 10 so I'm going to pass the facilitation over to Monique and I before I go I really just want to also express my deep appreciation to Eric and Marcus and Pete and the other 97 people who have been involved in this plan I know that you've been working really hard and I can hear how very thoughtful you have been and really thinking continuing to think about every piece of operations in this district it's just so very complicated and and I understand just from some of my
095work around the community how complicated this can be how it just one decision snowballs into 50 others so and this is the same so we'll continue to talk about this I'm really sorry to miss this meeting but I can go back and review the rest of this meeting and take care if there are other questions there may be more I don't know that we've exhausted this topic but there may be more questions ok thanks sure alright so we're still on the update are there any more questions on reopening I have a quick question first I did want to say thank you so much to dr. Vegas and dr. Campbell and everybody else this is clearly such a thoughtful and smart program that you've laid out here it's it's beyond what I was trying to imagine
096it would look like so I just wanted to thank you so much for that I did have a question about teachers will teachers have the ability to choose to do only remote learning if there are reasons that they can't or don't want to enter the classroom environment okay looking at Eric to see if he's gonna talk Oh starting to talk to you on did you want to go ahead I'll follow you here one of the things that we will have to find out from teachers is what their personal situation is and and given this kind of a model obviously we have to have our teachers and we can't do in-person if the teacher is fully remote so that that's one of the things that it's a next step and our team is already all cranked
097up to start getting that specific information this week yeah yeah so teachers will have an option but it's gonna be determined on a case-by-case basis given doctor's notes and whatever it is they are producing human resources I have a question but of course first of all I just want my deepest appreciation for your leadership dr. Witherspoon babies and Campbell and the staff that worked on this I mean being in education myself I mean you guys are really approaching this in a responsible manner and I know it's not easy because as you said Eric this framework has to be a living plan where there's so many moving parts as you said Marcus and there's so many unknowns but I think we can this community this community can rest assured that leadership of this district is making
098decisions based on the the well-being of staff and students and I think guys clearly straight that my question is logistical in terms of movement in the building so it makes sense that as students spill out into the hallways the likelihood of risk goes up has there been any consideration for like maybe a staggered Bell schedule to minimize the amount of students who are traveling to and from class in the hallways there has and and it turned out that that that giving at given the in-person model as well as the remote we couldn't make it work mr. LaHaye and explain why we could stagger letting people out of their room but if you're going to another class that they were staggered to get out later there might be a line at that door waiting to get
099in so so what we're gonna do instead is we're gonna and we don't have this all figured out but we're going to get some system going with our teachers so that because there could be as many as a dozen students in that room six feet apart we have rooms that would accommodate 12 students not all classrooms would and we'll have to work that way but there could be 12 students in their classroom the bell rings we're gonna have to work with our teachers and probably on their holloway this is another thing we got to work out but when they're in here before Labor Day how do you dismiss your students so when they leave the room they can start falling into the one-way hallway six feet apart and and that's gonna be you that's gonna
100be one of those things that we're gonna have to to really work out probably hallway by hallway because obviously if the bell rings and twelve students get up and all walk out but across the hall twelve more I'll get up and all walk out pretty soon you know we have a bunch of people shoulder-to-shoulder so your question is right on target we didn't think about that and when we figured out that the staggered bail scheduled wouldn't work we decided to stand to work on it you know hallway by hallway so that students can get and file out on the room in a safe way yeah that's the tricky one and I know you guys have probably exhausted so many different ideas on how to do things as you said before but another consideration could be
101to have the teachers travel instead of the students well the problem we have with that that would work in younger grades but the problem will work the students in one class may go to 12 different other 12 different classes next period and so there's no way that the teacher can go and find that group of students just because of the way with all the electives and you know 250 courses to choose from and all of that but I would really suggest places that have more self-contained classrooms where the same kids are all taking math next period or the same kids are all taking a silence next period absolutely yeah you know trying to have the teachers move to the kids it would make so much more sense we just couldn't make up work with with
102a multi section school and that's by the way but thank you for bringing that up because for people who say well I hear they're doing this in that school where I hear they're doing that yes this is a big comprehensive school with hundreds of sections and hundreds of courses and and so so what might work in not just even younger kids but might work in a high school that you know there are high schools in the state with with 150 kids and so what might work there and by the way and don't have all the courses that we offer and and so that's one of our issues is what how do you do is such a complex place and this is why you guys do what you do because I'm sorry dr. Kim you're good
103and remember we're still only talking about nine hundred and fifty kids right so that's the the volume and the hallways and the volume in places that are usually pretty intense won't be that intense because we just can't have that many students in the building so just to remind them that we're still talking about a twenty five percent of our kids across 1.3 million square feet of space now we will as Eric mentioned but I have to have some entrance and exit procedures that teachers are going to have to have so that we so that that is a controlled process but we're still the reason why I'm able to breathe and have saved this and go to sleep at nights because we're only still talking about such a small group but now I didn't fifty small
104to us I think yeah great conversation I think as dr. Campbell said the Devils in the details so you know when I hear social distancing when I hear reduced number of students when I hear different traffic flows and and more entrances then you are actually doing everything you can possibly do to lessen the spread because COBIT is in Evanston so it's in our community which means that each institution has a responsibility to lessen the spread and you can only do that if you're following the strict guidelines which it's not easy to do at all so I commend you all for taking all that information in and trying to figure out what works and as eric stated continuing to see what's working and what's not working because it is a continuum it's not a done document
105things will come up and you'll have to make adjustments and i think as much as we you know want this to go away i think we have to realize that this is a pandemic it's not an illness it's a you know it's a great pandemic that has affected our community that has caused us to shift everything that we do from this point on and we still don't know everything so I know how hard this lift is I appreciate you all doing this and I continue to just pray for our community as we go through this and I know how important the decisions are that the school districts are making not just see ths plus 65 because the decisions you make will definitely influence the entire community so it is not an easy lift how parents
106work what their work schedule looks like you know when organizations look like and how they plan so this is um this is huge so thank you thank you all for sharing this information and for the continued conversations that you'll be having I think that's how all conversation is really good because we do need to move on because we're gonna lose people but they I have just one other things you made me think of when you said that mr. Parsons the new superintendent of district 65 dr. Devon Horton and I are in very close contact we have already developed an amazingly good working relationship it's just it just really gratified but we even just have one-on-one zooms where we could just talk with each other about this so obviously he has considerations that that I think
107are very large or highly complicated at the high school level but he has to think of first and second and third graders I mean he has even another set of concerns but I did want you to know that the two districts are very much in communication on this okay we're gonna move on another important topic and this is just a discussion I think we we need to clear that up but this discussion is around the safety ID ths and source s arrows so school resource officers so dr. Witherspoon do you want to take this well thank you yes we we know that this has become a very discussed topic and so we wanted to talk about our situation here at DHS and what I really want to do today is make a huge distinction between
108ETH s RS on ropes and how they contribute to this school and are not in any way bringing systemic racism and in this school they are not in any way bringing abuse young people into this school and they are indeed an amazing asset to our school they do contribute to our school culture we make sure that when a SRO comes on board and they're usually assigned here two or three years at a time so they really are there's a commitment here we really make sure that they understand from the get-go the culture of e th s and I think most of you recognize that we have been working very hard to create a culture of belonging a culture of loving a culture of student voice and and of respect for our students and and adults
109in this building that we are a highly suit Student Center in school we are a very welcoming and embracing school I will tell you already and I'm reading about some of the other area schools baby many of them and I know enough about them do not have a school culture like e th s to just be perfectly blunt a year ago there were there was a film about high school in our country and I I watched that and in one of the early episodes they were showing students coming into school and they were coming into some kind of a surgery and it looked like a very large a lot beautiful Lobby from what I tell and I remember thinking to myself they had there was a school resource officer they're fully uniform who was barking
110orders of the kids remember when I saw that I just I just shuddered I thought I couldn't imagine allowing that for one second Ettie ths not for one second and so this is long before the issue started being discussed and I looked at that and I'll be honest it just made me wince and that made me realize how different we are from other high schools around us and in the country but I do want to make this clear we know that this has become a national discussion we understand why we understand concerns about systemic racism in police departments in this country we understand that a lot of people who just didn't know are now seeing videos and who are now seeing things that are shocking them and for the first time in their lives they
111realize what people a color have been saying for the first times in their lives they really have a visual understanding of something that maybe they knew in a cognitive way or maybe they didn't really embrace the call and thank God that we have entered an era of that kind of recognition and understanding it has hundreds of years overdue and it certainly hasn't been erased and I would tell you now if there were one semblance of a systemic racism in this school in utilizing school resource officers they would be gone today that's naughty ths and thank God that's not the school resource officers who are assigned to a ths and who have come here ever since I've been here over the last 14 years who understand this is our culture and this is what we need
112from you and and thank you to e PD they send us the right kind of people I can't speak for every officer DPD I can't generalize about every officer BPD but I can speak about the SROs who are signed at the school and they are not the problem and yes there is a problem in this nation and I would encourage all of us to be aggressive in trying to address the problem and do something about it for the well-being of every human being and every person of color in this country so what you're gonna hear from us is how we utilize SROs in this school I can tell you that we are not a typical high school in this country we are one of the larger schools in America with nearly 4,000 students about 3800
113Oersted plus and with 600 adults we have easily 4,500 people in this school each day plus the many many people who come to provide extra services in that it's most common that there are probably anywhere from 4,500 to 5,000 people in the school on a given day school day Google the average size is a town on our community in America and we are larger than most cities and towns and and communities in America we are a small city and we have issues just like any small city might have but guess what we don't use our sorrows to be arresting kids I I will tell you that what we've been able to ascertain so far and what we'll get this right we think there was one arrest for some very Grievous behavior of a student of
114his school last year 5,000 people a day times 175 days and we think there might have been one arrest that's not how it works here folks because this isn't the purpose the purpose of this school is to have people here who will protect us people here who can intervene because believe me when bad things happen we've got one of two options right now we got a great option SROs who understand the kids who work with the kids who come here every day to advocate for the kids and to keep them out of the criminal justice system but if we have to start calling 911 I don't know who's coming and once they get here I can't be telling off of the police officers how to do their job it doesn't work that way so I'll
115tell you right now I'd rather know who I'm working with what the expectations are and and how they serve us then calling 9-1-1 and taking my chances on who gets sent to this school but believe me when something of danger is happening in this school or something criminal we're not going to sit here and leave this school unprotected I hope people in the community you know me well enough to know I love these kids I love them but I know that part of my responsibility is to protect them and to keep them safe and you think about Maslow's hierarchy if they don't feel safe if they aren't safe all other things that need to happen in the school including learning will not happen so we're going to describe a little bit how they function in
116this school and we're going to be sharing with you what their role really is as opposed to what people have this there's general Zhejiang about what their role is in schools across the country and I'm going to repeat and then turn it over I've seen how they are utilized in some other high schools and I am appalled and I believe that they have no purpose in being there so Marcus I'll turn it over to you thank you Eric we certainly we haven't spoken but the way you just started was the way I was gonna hand do it anyway as a as a as a black man raising two boys both of whom are upstairs probably just waking up I get the conversation I get the discourse and being a being well acquainted with the school
117to Prison Pipeline and the research on the school to Prison Pipeline looking at the SROs role in that I am very happy to note that he teach us does not engage in those practices that is reflected and there in the research it is it's it's a it's it's not a binary for us our journey of racial equity has led us to have these conversations over the past couple of years as far as how do we engage students how do we how do we keep them safe and how do we not perpetuate some of the systems and structures that have been historically perpetuated and given to us and for a long time you know we've been working to reduce the number of suspensions we've been working to reduce these patterns and we still have a ways
118to go I want everybody to recognize that we don't feel like we have arrived in any shape form of the imagination we still have a ways to go and part of our philosophy and engaging in restorative practice is to have people who is and part of the badge be a part of those practices and we know that there's over policing in schools we know that kids are feeling like they are constantly under surveillance we know that in some districts and some schools there's a criminalization of adolescent behavior when I see in the research that kids in elementary school are suspended for having or arrested for having a temper tantrum that is totally unacceptable when I see that kids and in some schools are arrested for writing on their desk with erasable markers that those kinds
119of behaviors disgust me and that's that's the practice in a lot of places right and these come out of these zero-tolerance policies of the 90s where we feel like we've got districts feel like they have to clamp down on kids and police and patrol kids that is not happening at HHS our SR rows do not patrol the hallways they do not patrol cafeterias they don't they're there they they're not around like that right you don't you won't see an SRO and the hall asking a kid to do anything if they're in the halls they're in the halls with myself and dr. Witherspoon and other teachers and staff just to get to know the kids right because our Saros they show up to support our theater programs and our fan programs in our our basketball program
120our sports programs and so it's a very different kind of relationship and that is because that is the tone that this leadership sets and the part that dr. where the school mentioned that I was thinking about yesterday and just reflecting on the whole conversation is if we for one second thought that a officer in our school was openly hostile racist aggressive with the kid we wouldn't we wouldn't need anybody to tell us to get rid of those those those SROs right we would have done it we would have done it ourselves and so are the SRO the the relationship that we've had with APD and the SRO is not just the two that we have now whose bios are posted on our website but the that we have had and I have to be honest
121and I have assured with chief cook and I have chaired share with chief adding former retired chief Eddington that I have been very pleased with the types of people that show up to serve our school every single day they have been the kinds of men and women that you can trust behind that badge and those are the people that we have been fortunate enough to work with I remember a conversation with alderman homes in braithwaite's and years ago talking about the kinds of people that they wanted to see in me and as an SRO positions in schools and that's exactly what we got and I am grateful for the for the for the folks who show up each and every day to support a positive school culture and climate for us so one of the
122things that you that you can do or folks can do is to look at our fa Q's that we have on our SRO program you can see that our SRO principals are not engaged in managing student behavior that is a function of our Dean's you won't see a teacher sending a kid to the SR ROS office or an SRO coming to pull a kid out of a classroom that was 10 years ago and we and we said no we're not we're gonna we're not having any we're not gonna be engaging in those behaviors anymore because it's they're they're problematic they're wrong and they're they're they're racist and so we we've been on a journey with this not to say that our past practices have always been perfect but we have definitely been evolving and we've
123learned some of these lessons over the years to bring us to a place where we're engaging si Rosa were engaging with us in a restorative process they know as I said they don't supervise the hallways you can see why they have to wear body cameras and they're very intentional about when they turn those on and off the SROs are involved in our restorative practice I think it is a very powerful image to see a officer working with the family or working with students is usually with a student or a cohort of students those the SR roles are so working with families to resolve whatever conflicts that are bubbling up in school bubbling up in the hallway so I am you know very pleased and are at our relationship and would not want to just simply
124be in a place where that we don't see that we would have a need for a presence like that in our school because some matters that come up in our school our police matters and they just are and as dr. Witherspoon mentioned I wouldn't much not rather call 9-1-1 would much rather have people who were present who know the kids who know the culture who know how we operate and do things to be responding to that and the last thing I'll say is this I don't know if it's true but I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm hope it's true and I'll probably have to do some research I don't think there's any other school in the country that offers a public safety course that the Asaro co teaches like ours and Pete's gonna talk a little
125bit about this I and we're not talking about like oh the SRO is gonna come and get a give a guest lecture no we're not talking we're talking about a real partnership where our sorrows have partnered with our public safety course to actually teach kids because that is their relationship and I'm gonna hand this over to Peter really talk about what that role is and what it looks like and how that is consistent with our other practice and the last thing I'll say is this we recognize that they're there kids who have a lot of externalizing behaviors that kind of lead them to have high recidivism in the dean's office that is why we have worked really hard to engage in more restorative practices and to higher social workers or people with some clinical background
126as our Dean's we just had a Dean and retire and the new Dean that we've hired has a background in counseling so we see the need and also prior to this conversation we've engaged and have done some restructuring and our AIT program our academic intervention program and we've hired two new social workers both women of color very proud to have them joining our staff and so we get the need that a lot of kids who engage in these externalizing behaviors don't need to be criminalized they don't need to be arrested they need mental health support and that is what we are offering for our students Pete will you talk about the public safety course yeah just briefly uh yeah our SRO voice spells teaches essentially it's a co-teaching model similar to other co-teaching models in
127the building Iko teaches our public safety course where we have students who've expressed an interest in a safe in a public safety career be that in the police force or EMT or you know fire department he's taught that since he's been here he's done a phenomenal job that again it's it's interesting to me to hear this because what I think of our SRL is I think of them as an essential piece of the school I think of them as a part of our well-being team for students but also as teachers which is also critically important so much more goes into their role here at ETH s than in other places and you know just to echo at the those folks that aren't in the halls police in the hallways yelling it at kids to get
128to class the difference is our s our ELLs are in class teaching which i think is a stark distinction between the typical view of sorrows' you know I'm also just have a couple of data pieces I think could nuance this a little bit I don't have any data on arrests and and I mean that's not data that we would we would keep it we're looking into procuring that data from from the city but I do have like our 5 essentials data which all this data has been reported before but you know 92 percent of our students report that people at EHS are friendly and more students feel safe in our hallways then feel safe coming to and from school I think that's a really significant piece of data 88% of our students feel safe in
129the hallways and the number is 76% of students feel safe coming to and from school so kids students feel safer here at ETH s again is it is it causal is it corollary I don't know I'm just putting the numbers out there in terms of students feel safer within the context of of ETH s again another piece to think about is our graduation rate our four-year graduation rate is 92% and our five-year graduation rate was 94% students graduate from e th s again if we were if we were and that again disrupts that prison to pipeline kind of piece you know our students we keep our students here we graduate our students students feel safe here at at Evanston Township High School and you know to isolate race and look at our freshmen ninety-three percent
130of the freshman last year black male freshman earned 12 credits or more and we're on track to graduate and had Purdue and actively participate in their post-secondary school planning again we make it's it's a it's a complete sort of wraparound kind of support system here at ETH S and our sorrows although they're not wholly responsible for this they are a part of it in a positive positive way again I would leave you with the distinction at other schools you see the SRO is in the hallway barking at kids you know with orders at e th s that s are always actually teaching in a classroom not doing that policing in the hallways at all and all right thank you dr. Witherspoon Campbell and babies we are gonna just open this up for discussion but I
131want to make sure I just state that this is a process like you don't just talk about this one time something like this that's that's extremely important and sensitive to our community and our school and think that's it so we're going to start engaging in this conversation and if there are any questions or anything that my colleagues would like to ask we can do that now and then plan to continue this I'm sure over time but we can start at least a dialogue right now any questions Gretchen then pass thanks Mona come so this topic is is hugely important there there's there's so much swirling around in not just our community but across the country right now I don't know if there are as are O's in other parts of the world but it seems
132like it might be uniquely American phenomena I I worked as a defense lawyer many years ago and so I've certainly had some interesting interactions with with police and I can appreciate the concerns that have been raised so as I'm sure those who are watching know we've gotten a lot of emails in the last 24 36 hours from people who are really concerned in the community about SROs it's interesting to me that and I and I want to touch on some of the particular questions raised in those emails I'm I really appreciate that people are weighing in on this I would be more interested in hearing about more particular concerns with SROs because sending me an email that asks us to get rid of SROs from the school without any detail and I you know there's
133sort of this forum email that we're getting it's not as as helpful to me as I would like it to be I you know for those who are writing to me and I'll be honest I haven't had I haven't read them all because they were coming in you know during this meeting actually emails were coming in right if you were a student or a teacher or a parent and many of many of the email Raiders are don't just tell me to get rid of SROs tell me about the interaction you had with an SRO at our school not don't don't speak to me generally because I think Marcus and Eric and Pete have all done a really good job articulating why we we are different at ETH s and we are different not just around
134SROs but we are different in a whole bunch of ways so if there is a particular issue that we need to be concerned about with our sorrows I I want to hear about it I want to hear about all this I have no objection to getting these emails at all in fact you know we can go ten meetings in a row one of which by the way was to discuss the memory memorandum of understanding with the city about SROs not that long ago and nobody emailed me at that time about it and we did have a little bit of discussion I opened up that discussion at that meeting about SROs to ask some questions about it so the broad brush you know let's get on the bandwagon and get rid of us our rows just
135isn't as helpful to me as as a more thoughtful discussion however each of these emails which have and and there are some that have been a little more in depth and the Moran Center email I thought was was useful and thoughtful and I respect admire and appreciate the work of the Moran Center very much but there are a couple points I want to ask about I'm sorry too I think this really important topic I want to hear from all the rest of the board so I don't want to take up too much time but some of the issues raised in the emails I've received have been we need CPI training crisis prevention Institute training crisis prevention training so I want to hear about that is that something we should do do we do it now
136if not why not number two I think you've already touched on increased social work support so I think Marcus or Pete just mentioned that we've hired some more people but I think it's not just in the last year that we've hired more people that's been you know over time we've made an enormous change in sort of those sorts of support number three Eric touched on this briefly as did Pete how many arrests have been made by us errors in school not just last year but the last five or ten ideally as long as we've had our sorrows how often does that happen I mean there's just we have to have that data and we have to have a system in which we get that data on a very regular basis so that we can monitor
137it I mean that's what the school board is about we're about accountability and relatedly what are the stats on the positive interventions by our SROs what are the situations and how can we track if we don't already the situations where SROs have made a positive difference with our students and intervened to prevent an arrest now I understand it's harder to prove a negative so this is maybe difficult to get our heads around but I think we could get creative and think about how that's happening not just a list of like they go to the sports events they go to this they go to that I don't need a list of activities but let's let's really think hard about where they've made an actual intervention and then lastly I would like to know not just from
138that five essential survey but in a student survey and staff survey you know what do you think of the Saros how are they impacting you are they impacting you positively or negatively and room for comment and that should be a regular question and in this way I think we can operate from a place of knowledge informed understanding I think our board is extraordinarily well versed in issues of equity we've worked over the years since I joined the board eleven years ago to have conversations around issues of race and equity we work diligently over the course of many boards and many many many years to make dramatic changes in our disciplinary process you know this has been a long long trajectory and we have generally moved in the right direction and I think that we can
139continue to do that and we can be open and receptive to input from our community and I can appreciate why this issue has popped up right now given what's going on I am I I am I am extraordinarily sensitive to the concerns and the really the real stuff that's going on there but the things that go on in districts around this country are not things that are getting replicated here in the same way and we need to be really careful about making those broad-brush kinds of generalizations in the same way we need to be careful about making them about any group any racial group any any group at all so I would I would just insert that word of caution but we need we need some stuff still thank you for all that time ah
140sorry I was new unmuting thanks mummy yeah and I agree with what Gretchen said in terms of needing more information specific to us so a couple questions and I'm not sure we're ready to get that the administration would be able to do this right now which is fine now you think Monique's right this is not a one-off conversation but longer but one question I had is what in addition Pete mentioned that yes arose teach there not in the halls barking at kids but aren't they in the building all day and what does that day look like typically you know maybe they're teaching one or two periods a day maybe they've been called into the dean's office I kind of like to get a sense of what it looks like on what their day looks like
141and what kinds of things they're brought into when how often what the results are because you know one of the concerns is that um you know a surgeon sees every problem as needing a scalpel right so you know they're trained police officers and I have to say that reading about our SROs are crying out sorrows they seem fabulous and I'm I completely trust Marcus and the administration if they say these people are who they are that's great I believe you a hundred percent but I think we have to think systemically too about just having armed dressed or you know officers uniformed officers in our building what is the impact of that so a question is around the their day and then as Gretchen mentioned I really want to hear from parents and students but especially
142students because one of the you know I obviously we're all paying attention to this issue and just sort of reading the research there's a lot of indication particularly for black male students that just their presence in the building is is something that's stressful now it you know we could dig into that and maybe it is that those examples where those black males responded that way they were in a situation where there was a heavy-handed SRO where they are barking at them and arresting them in right with regularity but maybe it's just their presence and so I think we want to understand that a little bit and I really want to hear from the students all students but especially students of color who often have had outside of our school experiences with police officers that just
143their sheer presence in their building might be something that's is stressful to them so I think this is this very important topic and I again I want to agree with Monique that this is not a one-time conversation this is something I think we need to think about and kind of build in to our a now you know whatever we decide down the road but we should be really paying attention to this with data and with with information from our students as we engage in this conversation because it's this is a community-wide nationwide issue I think we should remain mindful that this is not about an exception we have to think globally this is about deconstructing systems practices and policies that have traditionally been disproportionately impactful in a negative way to the black and brown community
144that's why Senate bill 100 exists the the mere presence of an officer in a building in a school can impact subconsciously students that don't feel safe around police and that's a societal issue ETH s cannot shoulder the blame for that but we can be part of deconstructing those systems um ever since I've been on the board I've spoke I've spoken a lot about restorative justice because it's part of my life it's what I do mainly I've done it on the west side of Chicago on the south side to some extent and it's rethinking how people can exist in spaces where they can feel safe and be their authentic selves and an individual a scholar a student you may not have had negative interaction with police however maybe their father their uncle their brother has they
145may have missed witness traumatic events those can be triggers and I think we really need to take a hard look at this data disaggregate it I want to I would really like to see the level of engagement with students and disaggregated by race because some students may feel safe others may not and as it relates to equity the goal is for all students to feel safe I think we really need to take a hard look at that data I think it will you know whatever it reveals we need to help help it inform you know whatever final decision that we come up with and Marcus as you said I too am a black man of three sons I mentioned this quite often I'm in my mid-50s and when there is a police squad car driving
146behind me subconsciously it impacts me as a grown man how much more children that are growing and developing so as a matter of fact I'm very familiar with one of the s arrows I know his character I lifted him up at the black family rally I mentioned him as an individual who will get up at 1:00 and 2:00 in the morning to come see about our children it's not about individuals of course it's gonna look differently in Evanston because typically we are very progressive we have our fingers on the pulse of societal issues and we continue to do that all I'm saying is that we need to consider that this is a global national issue going on and the youth are driving this conversation and with that being said Pete thank you you're always very
147forthcoming and been and resourceful with the data but also let's be mindful that with the five essentials typically black and brown students aren't very responsive to that so where are we getting our information and is it really accurately reflecting all students within the school so just some things I want to you know just put out there for us to consider as we continue to engage in these conversations in the community and within the district any other comments or questions Liz I want to thank everybody else for bringing up a lot of the concerns that I had as well and I did just want to mention that ETA chess continues to fall within the top 20% of racial disproportionality and discipline cording to ISBE and so I think we need to always just stay vigilant of
148this I don't know if it's a mess ah sorrows or if it's the deans or something else within our discipline policies that is continuing to put us in the top 20 percent of having these disproportionality but I also wanted to ask even though we do have great SR ELLs right now inevitably in the future when we have a turnover how do we know what kind of SRO we would be placed with and how much control does a superintendent have in choosing who that person is or any control over who our sorrows are that be quickly answer to do we want to just like I can quickly answer that um we have no control whose assignment we do have control to reject anybody that would would be here that would simply not be acceptable to us
149thank you any anything else yeah I thank you money can thank you everybody my colleagues on the board for your insightful and very meaningful thoughts and questions I do agree with Monique and all of you that this should be a conversation that we should continue and be very committed to continuing and explicit about having with our community and with one another I you know I'm thinking a lot about systemic racism and how we to Jude's point absolutely have to look at this in totality in a holistic global sort of sense and be mindful of that and factor that into our thinking and into our considerations and at the same time systemic racism can only be really tackled at the ground level and at the community level and at the individual level I mean we all
150have our spheres of influence and our you know roles to play in dismantling systemic racism and you know I think about ways that we are taking sort of a systemic problem and you know just to use an example you know this idea of working with a PPD it doesn't come out of our budget to have an SRO in the building we take yes we can have you know rights of first refusal on the other hand maybe there's a way to think about this that's not systemic which is to take a situation that exists in the you know system and in the structure and in the relationship between EP D and E ths and actually say wait a second how are we going to have some kind of safety presence in our building that isn't armed
151maybe or isn't here for a three-year term and just rotating through how do we actually take more control and more thought into developing a relationship that's more based on what we need and what our students need and what our community needs rather than just working within the existing system and taking sort of what the system gives you which is a three year term an armed officer a variety of other you know problematic perhaps characteristics that that we just deal with and I think that's part of the way we have to do that with you know work locally think globally in answer to this problem and I don't I don't have answers and I'm not suggesting any answers but I am thinking a lot about you know the fact that we have an opportunity here to
152to really be very very thoughtful and have a meaningful discussion and makes a meaningful change and be responsive to our community and to our students and and to one another that that's disruptive and compassionate and forward-thinking and healthy and takes all of that into account so that's all I would say just to feed on something Stephanie said correct me if I'm wrong call you administrators our agreement with the city around the SROs involved a little bit a little bit of the kind of discussion I think that Stephanie is suggesting we maybe have more of and that is we agreed ETA just to hire a career planning and placement person in it you know as part of our deal with the city funding the SRO contingent at the at the school because we were recognizing that
153the we're here to support our students were not here to have police officers just roaming the hallways so the idea was to get somebody at our cost to expand our capacity to address those you know employment opportunities for our students who may not be going to a four-year college in particular and might am I right about that Marcus I saw you nodding I remember that being the case and I'm looking at Eric to see if he remembers to head to Eric Eric are you there yeah I'm sorry I didn't hear what that question was I was so it's part of our deal I'm right now working on trying to make sure we don't get caught off yeah yeah yeah I know it had something to do with really understanding what we discussed and negotiated with
154the city of Evanston and the the my recollection Eric is that we ETH s used our own funding to hire an additional college career not college career planning and placement person and while at the same time the city was funding the SROs so in other words it's not just that you know we're not just looking for a freebie from the city on this we we had some thoughtful discussion around what the what our students needs are what our schools needs were how we could work as a community to come up with a with a way to fund that all together and I was just looking for you to confirm whether that way yeah you're a hundred percent right sorry I made you repeat that that's okay I just never don't want us to get cut
155off yes you're you're totally correct first of all the school district doesn't pay anything for the SRO so if they go away it's not like we have money to hire another social worker or anything we don't have that money but we do but we do employ an employment counselor we added an additional one at that time internally and now we're also funding of the employment counselor through the mayor's employer task force as well so so we're we're actually you now have two different additional positions that we're funding that are all designed to help nurture our young people into careers into post-secondary so that they they don't leave here without assistance from you're 100% okay so before we have to I don't know we may have to switch because we still have some business to conduct
156I just highlight how I appreciate working with this diverse group especially what we have to really have conversations and we've had a lot of them at heaven-sent Township this is not new for us to have these courageous conversations around racial justice and you know for me I've always ever since I've been on the board I've been a part of the discipline committee so for me there's layers to this so just defunding the police doesn't do it for me it's defining what that looks like but there's layers to the experience that our children should not be receiving regarding policing and that starts with how we develop behaviors and relationships and create a sense of belonging from our Dean's to our safety staff to our sorrows so it's it's it's broader than just SROs you know I
157want our students all of our students to have a positive interaction with responsible caring adults but I also want them to get the resources they need to be emotionally socially emotionally mentally healthy and as students and as you know becoming young adults so I'm I'm looking at the entire system and I have questions about the entire system how do we support the entire system as we see it as you know building relationships and correcting behavior intervening in behaviors because for me again it's not just RSO it's that it's the connection points along the way so that we are not creating a system or pipeline that's that's critical we cannot be in that business so Lisa do we need to log off at 11:15 or can we just go as far as we can I think
158we're moving on to action items but we are definitely for the community that has stayed with us to listen to this conversation this is the start of a conversation so if you thought we were making a decision that's not how you know we work we're going to continue to have this conversation and dialogue and and continue to address some of the concerns that that have been lifted but it's not it's not over so Lisa you said that there is a backup if we need it correct there is a backup if we need it if we're cut off with this meeting you've received a calendar invite that you could use I'm not certain if we're gonna be cut off if we are then we have that back we have very little left to do I mean
159let me just say real quickly can the public because that's what I wanted to say it's nice to make sure that we post that new link in case we get cut off right public can also access it so let Eric give the direction cuz I know we've been chatting back and forth yeah that's what I was going to say thank you very much so we will also have our IT people if we get cut off they will immediately repost another link where people found their first link and then come right back on so it won't be a new meeting it's just a continuation of the current meeting I think we're going to be alright though so well I guess recommended let's push on so let's see the first one is the Culver 19 reopening plan
160approval resolution I need a motion okay well no question okay yeah so I you know I understand the recommendation that's coming from the lawyers I participated in a million of these transit webinars which have been really amazed hopefully others are participating in those as well and you know I'm generally fine with this concept but what I want to really emphasize here is the school board needs to be in the loop and I am okay with this idea that the superintendent will communicate with the board president the board president needs to make certain that she's then communicating with us and frankly my preference would be that whatever communications the superintendent is having with the board president should just be communicated with the entire board at the same time to that point that you know nor no
161board member is above any other board member what what gets communicated to one should be communicated to all you know that whole point around good governance that we've you know after we've done all the ISB webinars I would be more comfortable with that language I want this spring was hectic it was a tremendous amount of work for our administration and our staff and the school board was a little outside of that loop and I want to make sure that that the communication is coming to us in a sort of regular and timely way so I don't I don't know you know if you want to comment on that Eric or if you couldn't give us some reassurances as a board about how we're gonna maintain that tight communication I would I would just appreciate a
162little more you know reassurance is exactly the right word but I think you get my drift sure and we will also make make the sustaining item on the board meeting agendas going into this school year while we're on such a abnormal if you will the situation so absolutely I really do appreciate that and I know these are difficult I'm not seeking to increase anybody's workload I just want to make sure that we're able to have that back and forth and you know the SRO discussion today is a good example of how we're able to have that kind of communication with one another and we could only do it in these open meetings so you know it makes I know I'm extending hours are usually very short summer meetings but these are times when I suspect
163our summer meetings are gonna go a little longer anyway so thank you laud a yes Livingston yes Manziel yes Parsons yes rola woods yes Tootie ROG yes policy issue number 103 motion move second question we've seen this several times so proper vote law day yes Livingston yes Munsell yes Parsons yes rola woods yes to carriage yes okay consent agenda which includes approval of painting contract approval of carpet contract approval of the bestest abatement contract approval of minutes June 8 2012 session meeting June 8th 2020 regular meeting meeting treasurer's report May 20 2010 de appointments to staff certified support staff status change educational Mitanni paternity leads certified resignations certified and supports suspensions exempt for motion so moved second up or vote all day yes Livingston yes month cell yes Parsons yes rola woods yes good carrot
164yes any alter new business a lot of new business any any old business this is the longest summer am meeting in my school board history that I've ever attended Gretchen oh my goodness alright then I think that we did well a lot of information Thank You staff and them call for an adjournment or I guess we can just adjourn I move we adjourn there you go thank you all thank you okay you