001good evening i have with me today dave merrill the president of the blue ridge unified school district school board as you know we had a meeting scheduled for tonight but that was postponed there's a lot of information forthcoming required to make good decisions and so i'm going to turn some time over to you dave and i know you have some questions and the community has some questions and that was our purpose tonight to try to get as much information as we can out as quickly as possible i appreciate that right we uh we did have this meeting scheduled and it was a week earlier than we normally do our board meeting because we anticipated needing to make some good decisions before school started but all the information necessary to do that's not here so we're
002going to postpone that meeting until next tuesday night so this is just a question and answer period i have some questions have been put together that you know i'd kind of like to just ask you so absolutely some of that information that people would like to know absolutely i hope we have some people listening tonight just to make sure we are social distancing we wore our masks in here and these are cool masks by the way these are uh super awesome blue ridge face masks and we are social distances we're six feet maybe to the inch so left right i'm going to ask you uh some questions that were spurred by a newspaper article today sure and the white mountain independent the first one says how do you teach both smaller in-person classes and the
003internet classes how does that happen that's one of the things we're trying to work out and there's some confusion with the governor's executive order and what the arizona department of education or the ade has issued and that guidance is is conflicting in some areas some believe that the governor's executive order means that anybody who wants to come to school can that's not what it means the arizona department of education just as recently as yesterday helped outline that there are primarily three groups students that are receiving special education direct services english language learners those that are acquiring english language and also anyone that is is in need of those that are in foster care settings and need constant supervision we're going above and beyond that though and there's a group obviously of healthcare professionals single parents
004that have kids that have to work make a living and they don't have daycare and so there's that group and i think the spirit of that executive order was to make sure that all the kids that must be supporting park and so we're still working through some of that and there's still a little bit of there's still some clarity that lacks what needs to be done and we'll know more friday and certainly by next tuesday but that's one of the questions we're trying to resolve because obviously teachers aren't going to be everything to everyone so we're trying to make sure that we have the various responsibilities and duties organized and assigned appropriately so what you're saying basically is that for those people that have a desperate need and for those specific categories probably we might
005be able to accommodate their needs of special needs plus those special needs students will have mandated accommodations here at the school absolutely and in order not to outstrip our capacity we need to prioritize the support that we may provide and are able to provide and that means the special education students and ell and also those that are in foster care settings they have the top priority we also recognize however that working professionals and hardworking people and logistics that are you know driving truck or whatever it may be single parents have no other options they are and they might need a place for even their junior high student to go we're working to make sure we can understand what is our capacity and then we'll work with the community our intention is to try to be
006as flexible as we can however we are not in a position to have someone pull up and drop off eight kids and say you know it's your job to support it that's not that that's not that's what i was gonna say we're not a babysitting service we are not we can't take care of that like if you homeschool your kids you're doing your kids at school and then you try to drop them off at school i mean commit to one or the other right yes so pretty much that's that's exactly there will be some flexibility there will be some will need uh to have child supervision once or twice a week others will require it five days a week we're gonna do our best to accommodate those needs or we're breaking into new territory aren't
007we good education it's it's uncharted waters some of it's exciting some of it's scary it is i think there's some scary parents out scared parents out there that that quite don't know how to make the next step and i hope we can answer some of those questions i agree and those fears are are well founded this is a very unusual situation where you have among other things a global pandemic and economic meltdown high unemployment civil unrest a very hotly contested presidential election these are not normal times and so people rightly so are frustrated some are becoming angry and some are frightened frankly and when people are frightened or angry and frustrated they behave in ways that are sometimes out of the ordinary right just so people understand we we are here as a school district
008to get the best quality the most care the best provided overall educational experience a child can have and i think we have the faculty the administration and the staff to just take care of that i have great confidence in the school district and what they can come up with thank you let me ask you another one of the questions it says do you ask a teacher to spend all day teaching then go home and interact with this with online students if you do where do you get the extra teachers i think the first point to raise is there are not funds available for extra teachers even if you can find funds aren't available for extra teachers we we must meet the needs of our students on great kindergarten through 12 within the confines of our
009budget and the covet care now the care funds will fund principally the curriculum and the computers that are needed to do it we've just ordered if you remember maybe uh six to eight weeks ago close to eight hundred thousand dollars worth of computers for about six hundred thousand dollars and we had an advance of that a store of probably 1.2 million computers and technology most of our expenses are in areas like that and in getting our campuses and facilities ready and having the equipment there to make sure that we can implement some reasonable level of social distance in our physical distance we are not in a position to hire additional teachers and we are not going to ask teachers to essentially support three different groups of students that's what we need to iron out we're
010still working through that um and the case the junior high in high school it's more difficult because you're not you're you're supporting a content a subject some teachers support two or three subjects and there's going to be some crossover but we our administration is aware of that fact and are engaging with our faculty members to determine what's an appropriate way to do this i'm confident we'll arrive at a good solution but it's it's going to take a lot of work now by the way teachers do teach all day and they go home and grade papers yeah and they prepare for the next week so that that's not out of the ordinary they the biggest myth is they're working four five six hours a day they have all summer off and it's the easiest job in
011the world i think people are learning it's not an easy job and i've had a scores of parents some of my own relatives have said it it's much it teaches a much more difficult job than i had given a credit for and so i think that's part of the energy around we've got to get our kids back in school and by the way outlet no one wants our kids back more than we do teachers administrating schools without kids feel weird it's like an empty shell we don't want that no it is it is it's not preferable however we believe that we must do certain things in order to protect our students staff and also our community but we will be prepared but those those are some of the details that are difficult we have to
012work through yeah i know experienced teachers that just recently retired and said boy i'm glad i don't have to deal with this this is tough there's a lot there's a lot being thrown at a lot of people that when the rubber meets the road is where the teacher is supporting the students and we're asking them effectively to make that transition in in a learning modality teach an old instructional modality over not overnight but over a period of six months and so i'm confident in our teachers ability and desire to help and i know they will be successful but they will be putting in hours that reflect that but that doesn't surprise me this is a question about turning back to face-to-face class in october it says uh if you decide not to resume in-person classes
013until the positive test rates industry goes down below five percent what happens if you cross that threshold in october do you abruptly shift back to in-person classes back from in-person classes to online good question the answer to that is it depends just it depends first of all there's not a there's not a threshold that's been established that's part of the problem part of the delay we're having to say let's wait and see what the criteria are before we move forward and the data will drive our decision making and based on what comes out of the department of health sciences from the state of arizona the director of the director superintendent of education public instruction kathy hoffman and also uh that local county will provide us data i mean currently we as recently as yesterday met
014with jeff from navajo county health services and he said they coped virus is widespread i would not be we were asking my opinion today no i would not be opening recommending anybody open school today based on the current levels what the landing point will be on one of those or any of that i am unsure but we will defer to the professionals if the health department says in coordination in concert with the arizona department of education these are the criteria by which you must measure and consider before you we'll do that that's good and that's that's kind of one of the reasons we postponed this meeting tonight until next week so we get some more of that hard data in front of us this is just a question that a lot of people ask me
015when will our youngsters in elementary school when will they get to learn who their teachers are and how will that relationship grow with that teacher online that's a good that those are all i think questions that are pressing on everyone those assignments will likely be made by friday if not certainly by monday but i would say by this friday at a minimum the youngsters will have we'll know who their teachers are and that first week's going to be used to onboard for teachers to get to know students students to get to know their teacher and also become familiar with the technology this is a completely different modality of learning instructing so it we're not expecting kids to turn on a computer teachers to launch lessons and start 100 miles an hour day one we we
016don't expect that those we're expecting progress not perfection that those expectations would be unrealistic and not to mention impossible we're going to use the first week and perhaps part of the second to make sure that teachers are well acquainted with their students there is a pent-up demand for people to connect and kids to connect with kids and teachers to teachers and and at the elementary school these are the teachers that are in closest contact with the kids frequently the lower the grade level the closer the contact so we are providing space and time for that we don't expect kids to be on computers eight or ten hours a day and i will mention this despite all of our best efforts we the the effort and the result of last spring did not reflect online net
017that's not online education that reflected a lot of people working really hard to fill a gap that was created overnight and i do mean overnight we have taken the last several months to thoughtfully and over the period of 18 months consider the curriculum with asu prep digital and understanding its capabilities and also for the last three years have been prepared getting prepared from a technology standpoint to make sure we could launch online learning knowing that education is going to have to change this copic's going to change a lot of industries and i would imagine public heads one of them yeah i doubt we're going to go right back to the same way everything however being looked and felt and rolled will i give a better term pre-code that i think it's going to look different
018we're preparing ourselves to be a better version of something that we were we're already doing a very solid job we could do better we will do better i know we will we have the people to do it here just a question that came up to in in my mind well in this first quarter until october will there be opportunity or will there be a period of time when the class will get together on a limited basis that teacher's class will get together maybe with six students or ten students on a face-to-face basis to get to know each other in different group settings will that happen we're providing teachers a lot of flexibility with how they interact yes and there are going to be some and there have been requirements established between what's going to be
019expected of our teachers and what is expected of our students another thing that i think was a pretty common problem was that some students participated daily and for hours a day and others never even logged on and so there are expectations associated students that do not participate if they are of the age appropriate age 16 or older they'll be dropped from school if they are younger grades they won't be promoted you cannot miss 10 days in a row without a medical condition or some valid excuse so daily participation will be required for the kids we don't expect them to be on computers and devices all day high school students about four hours a day now honestly if you're an advanced placement student and a high performing they may spend up to six hours a day
020it's really not advisable but you can't keep them away i mean they're going to we know that's going to happen we do not expect our young babies and these little guys in kindergarten to be on the computer four hours a day they may be there 30 minutes or 45 or an hour and a half and there are lessons arranged and interactions scheduled to allow time to teachers to get to interact with kids there's there are office times established and by the way all this information will be posted on our website no later than tomorrow the close of business so there's a lot of ways that teach you we want it we don't want to hamstring our teachers and be so rigid that they're not able to share what they know and to reach out with
021their students in appropriate ways we do know however there must be a certain amount of organization and a construct created within which everyone must work in order for this to function so they're trying to strike that balance we will with elementary kids what what's the expectation of parents being able to assist or will that child be able to sit in front of the computer screen and interact with this teacher or would the parent have to help that interaction what do you what's the expectation for that the ideal setting is where you have high parental involvement and direct oversight now having had four kids my own and having eight grandkids that's not realistic parents are gonna be around they're over their kids shoulder four hours it's not gonna happen however the younger the student becomes in
022those primary grades especially kindergarten it's going to be critical to have a parent or not that grandma somebody's got to be there to help out and if you have a a kid that's in the middle grade and they're super responsible and you're having people that are that are you know friends and family and that are there to support or supervise the kids that's a great setting too this is an opportunity for small groups and cohorts i've seen these foremen in local neighborhoods and churches where there's small groups of six to ten kids and parents are taking time helping provide supervision those are great solutions to what otherwise would be a complex problem so those would be those groups would be encouraged they are encouraged and i just was at my oldest daughter's house she just
023had a new baby she'll be 35 in december and she has a brand new little baby she has a boy going into kindergarten she has a second grader her hands are full she's got all of them at home now and i and i understand she's tough dude she's organized and smart and well intended we recognize that there are certain gaps created by this one of the things people can do is and one of the positive things i think i've seen if i'm taking away what i've learned from copen is that there are resources around us once we tap into our community and our friends our church groups social groups and extended family there are people that are willing and able to help a lot of times a kid just needs a little encouragement the younger
024kids however the more encouragement and direct support they have the more successful they'll be this is an important point because it's just made by one of our concerned parents and also a principal within 30 minutes how's my kid going to attend we're not capable of providing daycare that would be contrary to the state law we can however supervise kids if we're superintending a child and they're at school i can't teach them at the same time they can be on their computer and if they're middle grade and older they're probably open up to keep up and they'll be fine but the younger the kids are it's really important parents can find ways to have them home and receiving educational support and stay in and lock step with the rest of the kids they'll find that that's
025that you're going to have a lot more continuity in that instruction a lot more support it's not going to be possible with some some moms and dads have to work some single parents have a choice go to work or don't pay your rent can't buy food we understand that i don't have the answer to how are we going to meet the needs of everybody in the lower primary grades when we're supervising them and they're not in that class that creates a problem however we'll find a creative way to address that we might have a teacher or two who has lower grades that will provide more direct support for the younger kids but as long as they're old enough to support themselves meaning i'm in a group of no more than 99 is the biggest group
026you can have in a large gym and i'm sitting in front of my computer and i'm mature enough to handle that that that would work out and of course they're not going to be sitting there the entire day without breaks yeah it's not like a school period or no eight to six i mean eight to three in the afternoon that's the instruction part but they will have to be at school if they're choosing to say we want to be considered for supervision we agree we can provide that and it's needed they would be there from 7 35 in the morning and by the way they must be on time and they must be picked up by 2 15. so there obviously will be some breaks and we're gonna these are little kids and by the
027way the kids the kids haven't created any of these challenges and neither have the parents they haven't created any of this this is a bad hand we've been dealt that we're all trying to do the best with the cards that we have to play thank you doing good there another one of the questions that's been asking is how is the food like breakfast and lunch how complicated is that issue going to be we're simplifying it for one thing all children that are receiving free reduced lunch and those that are 18 years and younger will still receive once daily two meals at the designated we have about 20 bus stops and other locations locally we're going to continue to deliver those two mails at once monday through friday students that are on site either special ed
028english acquisition or foster kids in foster settings or those that are frankly have no other option and they need supervision we're going to provide breakfast and lunch for those kids and we're going to do it in a packaged way where we're handing them and they're going to be spread apart and you know they'll be fed yeah we'll do the best we can with that and you know the one thing i want to reinforce if we can get the cooperation of our community our most vulnerable population and those families with the greatest needs i'm confident we can meet those but if we have people that are just either wanting to make a point and say i'm going to drop my kid off which you can i'd rather not have that discussion but if we have people
029that are willing to work together i'm confident we can we can meet the needs of a vast majority of our families so that's how we'll feed them we're going to make sure that kids are up and moving as well because it's not healthy kids not going to be sitting for three and a half hours if they're in elementary four hours in high school they won't be setting the entire time i also let uh mr merrell that we'll we'll provide space for i can't do a large number but if we had 40 or 50 junior junior high high school students that needed supervision for whatever reason maybe they just learned better than both of their parents are working we're not going to abandon those kids now they'll be in a steady hall setting they're old enough
030and mature enough to stand together they'll be in a study hall setting supervised supervised and you know and if they're participating doing their part then they're fine if they become disrupted and obviously that wouldn't work but i'm confident we'll be able to provide a space for even a number of those students for those individuals in that circumstance they would need to contact who we'll have a process set up part of the reason for that delay we need a little bit more of the metric because i want to make sure that we're incorporating these are the metrics and uh the data by which we are measuring our decisions and making our determinations and part of the participation will be if you're going to show up and by the way all we were wearing our masks all
031of our students and and parents will are going to be required to wear a mess we are going to take reasonable precautions of social distance physical distance but you and i don't have to have them because we're at least six feet apart in classroom settings we're going to do our best to keep those when we do return to in person well there's a phased approach phase one won't be everybody comes back and i have two thousand kids to account for we'll lose use a staged a b schedule and we'll have half the students in those classes we can do it on that basis we can social distance good we can get it done another one of the questions that people keep asking me is about extracurricular activities sports in a junior high in high school
032and music where are we with that all those groups are permitted to meet we're in phase one the aia has set forth a real strict set of guidelines by which all of its member schools number one must abide we're in phase one our athletic director bob london and our principal lauren webb and principal courtney hoffman and also frankie gerardi at the junior high level are working together and we're allowing small groups of kids 10 or less to exercise uh their social distancing and if if and when we can get this the spread of this disease under control that number will increase the aia recently came out and said no one can start official practices until at least august 17th now if that date i'm not sure if that date is immovable or not my guess
033is that if conditions continue to be widespread they may bump it back a little however it is the aia has made it clear we want to provide an athletic experience fine arts programs and our choirs and those kids participating in the high school level especially an opportunity even if that means an abbreviated season some of our sister schools and elsewhere have said you know what we're just counseling paul sports we think we can do so safely we would have to do it where the students and parents and the participating coaches did so on a voluntary basis no one's going to be forced into doing that but we believe if conditions will level that generally people will admit it's not really the kids that are at risk as much as the adults those adults would be
034taking an extraordinary risk admittedly they would and in many instances they do already by being out in the sun for 12 hours that's not healthy and the mosquitoes have the mosquitoes working in addition to their their daytime job the amount of time these ladies and men put in is extraordinary so our hope is we will be able to do that even if it's an abbreviated season on the other side of the fine arts it's more problematic orchestra outside of the reed instruments orchestra is is you can figure out how you can do that you can't wear a mask and play the trumpet not well probably not like anything but the problem is too singing is most of the most efficient way of spreading into singing and so it just transmits it so it's not really
035feasible to say okay dr d spread your kids 10 20 feet apart put them outside and have your concert i mean they i don't know if concerts will or will not end or they certainly will not move forward not the first semester but where they are looking for creative ways and given time i've learned this about public educator given time we've seen what they can do at graduation did you see a graduation they had a performance and they use zoom and then technology so we have that group and teresa dick and others are working really hard dr d is on that on that issue on the finance side our hope is we can do something for these kids now i will add and this is going to be a hotly contested issue it may require
036no spectators just students however we will film the games and the concerts and the activities and the parents will have access to those live at little or no cost and that's our commitment but if it means between if it comes down between allowing sports and games to move forward and fine arts programs and that requires not having spectators well it makes sense let's put the kids first now let's let's make sure they have their experience so that's an important part of that uh educational experience is that extracurricular it is it's it's a real founding thing to the overall education child i'll add mr merrill that in our survey we had roughly 450 respondents to the first survey close to 700 seconds 80 percent of our parents were interested in extracurricular degrees 8 out of 10.
037and that reflects about our level of participation at the high school about 78 to 82 percent of our kids participate in extracurricular activities speaking of the high school at with uh the asu uh digital prep prep prep did strategic practitioners will we still be able to offer the college credit classes that we have been offering and the ap classes we have and i want to make one more distinction we've said it several times but i think there's some confusion arizona state university is providing the curriculum we're providing the instruction our teachers will need the instruction our students have an opportunity at the high school level for the first semester the fall semester to participate in a dual enrollment class that normally costs five or six hundred dollars i think it's they can take those classes
038and if they take it and pass it satisfactorily and they want to take that for credit they may we're going to continue to offer we have a great partnership with northern pioneer college our kids can take classes in what is called the top the talent project it's where they can receive credit college class while they're doing working here at the high school and we've had a dual enrollment agreement with northern pioneer college for as long as i've been here for about six years and we've had it way before i got here and we still want to provide those opportunities for our kids and we will in fact we think with the opening of the asu open learning lab they'll be space sufficient for black and you've set social distance inside a normalized environment a couple
039hundred students could be in that one time we probably never have a need for that much for that many rather but we have the ability for students to be taking electives of all different kinds like french and german we already have been teaching spanish and there are other opportunities for people maybe mandarin chinese maybe other languages that people could learn or kids could take benefit from those so i guess there are going to be a variety of options for our students wanting to get dual credit or college credit concurrent another question that's come to me several times is the fab lab how will this be effective with the junior high students and the high school students being able to access the fab lab and do that and will other districts be permitted to use our
040impressive fab lab the question for other districts no it's an exclusive relationship the only time that the lab is used it'd be after school hours if it were a 4-h function or competition and that that that pretense if it's not in use obviously we welcome people but our agreement is in our arrangement is that's for blue ridge students first in a person-to-person it's always been managed where we have a reasonable level of supervision there's high there's expensive equipment that that is being used that must be used there's a lot of high supervision that's required and then online only that's a that's one of the things we're trying to work through to say same as our career technology education programs there's a hand on hands-on component that simply cannot be met virtually not yet it may
041in the future but not not so far has to be in the lab has to be in a lab we're trying to look at creative ways the first nine weeks we were planning on having all of the academic stuff sort of out of the way of cte and then allowing kids to come in we may even what we'll be flexible with those teachers in that schedule my guess is knowing the dedication of those teachers they'll be offering night labs and weekend labs and they'll do what they need to make sure our kids get that we probably could once we're permitted and once it's safe to do so have small classes the bad lab is about 6 000 square feet and so we could have easily we could have 20 kids in there without putting anyone
042at risk they're spread apart and we have enough machinery so anything we will move forward with will incorporate those elements another question is uh regarding navit and or the auto shop program how does that go forward same thing with cte they have it struggling with the same thing that we are they have an academic component which is easy to easier to satisfy online we'll do that the next the first nine weeks and to use my friend's phrase the coded calendar nine weeks in the copic calendar is a long time that's about eight half years i mean one day's challenges changes it's so dynamic so we're sticking there and we also have formed this is a good time as sort of a segway to talk about a group of teams we've created numbering uh 16 different
043teams one team is the cte team those are those are faculty these are all these are faculty support staff blue ridge employees that have been formed into 16 different teams to meet the gaps that are created by online learning there's certain things that cannot be satisfied online we know that so rather than throwing our hands up and saying nothing we can do about it we said let's identify those gaps one of them was hands-on with cte so we've created a team each team has an owner someone that owns that project that is passionate about it is going to see it through and then each team also has a supervisor and then the subset of that would be team members to support it brian crane is the supervisor um one of our board members mr waldo
044is working as a team member to help out he's got 45 years experience in that we have obviously the people miss kay and bonnie craig and the others that are in that program are going to be on that team to discuss ways to best meet the needs of our kids and they'll figure it out great well first of all how many teachers have had to say repurpose that's a bad bad way of putting how many teachers will be uh teaching something that they weren't teaching last year i would have to look at i mean we roughly have 100 teachers i would say the greatest flexibility is going to be at perhaps the elementary bands where they might have to have combined classrooms to meet the needs that we talked about i've got to have kids
045that are online plus those in front of me and if we did that we would have a small class and we'd have primary grades you know i think the kinders are always on their own but you might see first and second graders in a group and third and fourth graders and group and fifth and sixth the high school will have perhaps the greatest challenge and i know we have hired some new teachers we remember we had a the override was not successful a year ago and so we had to reduce our m o budget by about five not about by five percent around seven hundred thousand dollars which caused some folks to move from the high school to junior high the junior high the elementary and uh so those those people will be teaching obviously
046they're inviting great events same subject but different rates i don't know it will be interesting but there will be i think it would be disingenuous to suggest there won't be some teachers that are teaching you know they're used to teaching just you know i don't know what it would be let's just say science for instance now they're teaching science and they're also teaching that i mean we'll have to be as flexible as we can to meet the needs of our kids our principals are doing an outstanding job these these women and men are working closely with faculty members and department chairs and individual teams on those their respective campuses to determine our capacity we're asking for we're trying to determine and have pretty closely determined who's willing to come in person when they're able to
047about a third of our folks have a serious underlying condition so about out of the 100 roughly 33 or separate of our staff or teaching staff or they live with a loved one that's in their immediate household so they don't want to put themselves at risk or their loved one at risk or they have a child with an underlying health condition so we're trying to figure out those that are that are don't suffer that condition and are able to provide in person support there they may be those that are doing a number of things some of them might i can tell you one one person that's teaching something different is my wife she was a music teacher last year we unfortunately had to cancel pe and music district-wide there was a kindergarten she's teaching kindergarten
048so i know there are others i don't know i'm talking hampton and other others just some real questions there are a lot of those that we went through in this other stack and um there are a lot of concerns i think over some common concerns around the organization of the school day what's expected of my of me as a parent what's expected of my student what are we going to do if my computer breaks down or i get blocked out or i can't access the content we have answered those questions and all of those questions the frequently asked questions are posted on our website now basically that's what i have in my hand is those questions and answers i did have an individual come to me and said the internet access that we have available
049to us is hardly adequate to what we use it for how are we going to be able to access this new curriculum with the antiquated system that we have i so well that could probably be worked out but you need to talk to the school district and that's true uh rural arizona in particular suffers from spotty internet at best we have purchased devices for all of our kids kindergarten through 12th grade received their own device that device doesn't mean anything it's nonsense it's not useful if you don't have an internet connection therefore we have purchased several hundred hot spots for students and families and by the way teachers except for the same problem some of our teachers don't have the internet access and we're providing them hot spots as well so hotspot serves up to
05015 people at a time so one family and and we have a number of families that have several kids and different great bands that are all on the computer at one time that hot spot will serve up to 15 people at once that will take care of something needs with that bad internet connection one of the bright spots we had in action it was one of the bright spots we were prepared to pivot pretty quickly distribute technology and acquire in relatively short order a store of hot spots last spring and that was one of the advantages that we've had and we continue to enjoy this this was a question that you touched on briefly before but how many hours a day are my kids expected to be on their computer depending on the age group
051high school students roughly shouldn't exceed about four hours a day they shouldn't exceed four hours a day caveat as i mentioned will be advanced placement students students that are just i mean i know are high achievers that that are going to do more than that we don't expect them to it's about four hours a day for junior high through high school elementary age i would say let's start at the youngest age kindergarten might spend a half an hour to an hour depending on that day and what they have but we're not we're not going to burden them with three or four hours a day it wouldn't be realistic so it's based on the maturity the next great span would probably be first grade to second graders maybe a couple hours a day and then maybe
052your oldest kids middle grades four through six probably three three and a half hours a day um in no case for the younger kids be on the computer or in front of any device for six seven eight hours a day screen time screen time is bad it's anyway um technical problems how do they approach technical problems when their devices don't work on site so first of all let me create a little context we're encouraging our teachers and a vast majority of our teachers are going to work from their assigned classrooms for two reasons one it provides a distraction free environment and it also provides swift support so right now i got rocky with us and rocky's helping us with this technology finding out rocky's right here by the way rocky is very handsome he's very
053intelligent and he's easy to get along he's all those things he's wearing a mask right here he is so on those uh we'll have we're encouraging students and rather teachers we're asking them we'd rather you be on campus that's that's ideal however there are certain situations where teachers don't have internet access and they want they and yet they have young children provided we can create a professional environment and i'm sure we can because we did a lot of spring we'll allow those teachers to bring those kids to the classroom in some cases there are some young moms and dads that have to work from home we're gonna allow that we'll have a professional environment and we'll manage that we also have a help desk and a phone that you can can call and also technology
054that can be emailed and we have at every campus we're calling t3s they're teachers that have been trained to provide technical supports so there's three of those three or four at the elementary school an equal number to high school i think two at the junior high and we are we even are looking at taking a teacher and having them dedicated completely to the elementary given that is the great band setting levels and also probably the greatest need for support because the maturity engage in students those t3 individuals they will be paid extra for that they are they are that's a stipend in addition to what they're doing similar to what a coach receives coaching exactly okay question will there be any flexibility for students unable to complete work during their assigned time of classroom support
055yes you can visit the website just to see the presentations for the orientation as early as tomorrow every great band has different expectations essentially what we want to try to do is create structure for these kids that's another thing that parents were hungry for i need some structure i need to know when they should be on i need to have i've got different kids now you're asking me to have one student on with two teachers having conflicting schedules so that we're not overlapping there and we're trying to provide some space so students will ask to be online and they must register they must be online every day and now they have a long hearing day you have to log in every day if you're not you're not attending however there are circumstances where kids won't
056be able to follow that structure log step because of their support or location whatever those reasons are we encourage those parents to visit with their teachers to create a plan that works for them but in every case we need to have structure we can anticipate get account for that student got to provide a reasonable schedule for the teacher and we need to make sure that we're on pace with required standards and the kid needs to be able to achieve prior to the school zone great we've been talking for 45 minutes i think we've answered a lot of questions but is there something specifically that you would like to share that we haven't touched on yet i think it's perhaps just to reinforce a couple of things if if uh if the parents have a computer
057that the student's comfortable with they want to use that computer in most cases they are compatible with our software they're free to do it they're not locked into using a chromebook or what we provide we want to have a brief conversation with technology to make sure it works in most instances it does we need help from the community in not overburdening our teachers you've raised a lot of good points about how many different responsibilities each teacher is going to support if we work together i'm confident we can have our students that are most vulnerable at the highest needs direct services that are required and our parents single parents in particular trying to support their kids and their daily needs and not wanting to having to make that choice well i've got to go to work
058and i need to leave my you know six-year-old kid by themselves we're not going to put him in that situation in order to make sure we don't outstrip our capacity if i have a family that has the ability to to provide that necessary support we're asking them to do that and we're providing a means for everybody to receive a free inappropriate education we are also i understand and i mean i mentioned my own daughter i know that this this is not an ideal condition for me it's not an ideal situation and people are under stress and they're frustrated and we understand that our teachers and administrators and our staff we want our kids back as quickly as it is safe to do so it's important to emphasize where i am and the board is and
059our staff is concerned about the safety of our teachers and our support staff members as well it's true that the common disease may not impact young kids although it's clear they can transmit it it may not have adverse impact we don't know yet it may download we don't know we are what is clear however is that teachers and staff members that drive buses and serve food and support kids into classes if they have an underlying health condition some even healthy and they can track the virus it has serious consequences and in some cases fatal consequences we are we are admittedly taking a conservative approach but if if we're wrong no one dies if we're right people are safe and we are we are as much concerned about the safety of our of our own staff
060and teachers and community members as we are about the safety of our kids all of all of that equation needs to be considered before we move forward one last question about internet security and safety for those kids that are going to be online how will that be approached it's a good question one of the expectations established for the kids is that there's a hard set blind rule and it really starts in about 6th grade to 12th grade that's about the grade span that where inappropriate activity kicks in if a student is engaging in inappropriate posting of activity of materials chronographic materials they have they're the only ones that could do it because they have access access is limited to our parents and our kids through codes that are sent through it's not an open public
061setting those are disastrous what we're talking about is providing secure settings for kids if kids choose to violate that then they'll be long-term suspended and works built there's a zero tolerance for that we're going to take every necessary precaution to keep our kids safe the best safety mechanism is supervision and it's close supervision and close proximity so parents that are having their kids operate online they're not on schoolwork but they're on the internet they have access to the whole world in most cases unless there are specific controls in that computer in many instances there are a lot of homes have homes have our computers have controls our computers have limitations and filters on them but yet if a kid tries hard enough and if they're really intent on doing something wrong and they do it
062we're going to punish them we're not going to tolerate that so we're going to set those standards we're going to provide codes for kids and teachers and to participate to log in and then we'll uh we'll regulate that way anything else i just want to reinforce that we we want to get these kids back as safe as quickly as we can do so in a safe manner and i want to thank i would be remiss if i didn't thank the many people that reached out offering support our hard-working teachers and support staff that are working at this moment to ready our campus to make sure we're prepared to receive students when that happens and our hard-working teachers administrators and technology team that have been working tirelessly since mid-march to make this change i'm confident we
063are prepared to deliver a high quality education to blue students thank you and thank you technology you guys are the real heroes right now i guess we're all done thank you good evening have a good night