001[Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] live corey we're ready to go corey all right so then i will call to order this the emergency meeting of bullet elementary school district december 6 2020 at 5 00 pm uh roll call corey burgess here douglas here charlene d dr stewart thank you mr president board members uh i've asked you to do an emergency meeting due to a due to a situation at diamondback school that requires one at diamondback school reported to the principal on saturday that he or she tested positive for covid this teacher was at school the entire week in the school had of course conversations and interactions with other staff members and participated in professional development on friday force
002this individual was masked throughout the week social sensing might or might not have been class and the circumstances mrs godwin notified me late yesterday afternoon and i knew i needed to run this by the count the county health nurse i did have a text conversation with her this morning and then immediately contacted miss county health nurse jerry lawson the epidemiology section recommends closure of the school based on the number of contacts this individual had during the week this is one of those very tricky situations every situation that we have faced in our district has been different and we try to look at all the information before making any decisions at the sites as i as you might know we're making these considerations two and three times a day every school day based on the data
003and the information coming from our school sites but because this one potentially impacts the entire school this is too big of a decision for one person to make i'll answer any questions that you might have i'll decide to uh close the school we would still this evening try to figure out a method for students and parents to pick up chromebooks at the school site school site least at least like contact people in the office probably the two principles for sure but we would make everywhere available to students and that any parents who needed could come down to the technology department and pick those up and in fact each teacher would continue to teach from home for the next eight school days is that the new timeline dr stewart is the eight days well no we're
004talking eight school days so that's essentially the two weeks we have okay we haven't gotten we haven't gotten good information yet on dropping dropping quarantine from 14 to 10 days that was supposed to be on the table for discussion between all of the counties and the state this past friday so of course we wouldn't know about what you know what direction was coming from them until sometime next week you know when they when they let us know what they found out and technically that whole 10 10-day or 7-day quarantine issue applies to the person with covid not the people who have been exposed and that's part of the confusion relative to figuring out those those timelines the issue is that anybody who's been exposed the incubation period for covid is 14 days so from the
005last day or from the day they were exposed until the 14th day they can still contract it the issue is that folks who actually have kovid usually are at the recovery stage by 10 days after their so you can see how this gets really confused with covid or the people who've been exposed in those quarantine times so it gets pretty tricky for us since it's eight school days that's what we're talking about so essentially we're talking about the remainder of the semester exactly for that school that's exactly what we're talking about okay now i do have a a couple of questions and comments um you did state that the prep masks were being worn and were we're taking the precautions for all the ppe for staff and for students um where where applicable where possible
006is being under that six feet for a longer period of time extended exposure what is it 15 minutes i believe 24 hours our concern in this case or the issue is just factual in this case is that the classes that are taught by this individual are 40 minutes in length as monday you know those kids and that teacher were in a confined space were in a confined space for 40 minutes you know some of the students in that room would have been more than six feet away from the teacher most of the time some would have been closer for us to know who and that's that's why the flex yeah but it's one of the reasons for the ppe is we treat every student as an exposure i mean i know each day as i
007step into a classroom i have to be concerned that every kid i come in contact with is exposed exactly so that's that's why we use the ppe that's why we have that two weeks until the semester is over then they go into christmas for two weeks um at this point we haven't had any other contact for anyone else um i'm of the opinion that we send out notifications of a possible exposure uh to notify the parents of all the school um they can make the determination if their kid has shown symptoms that they're cons always done in the past um of what decision they want to make on returning to school or not uh hopefully that if you are feeling ill or someone is showing symptoms uh they would not come to school uh we
008always hope for that um but in this in this situation i'm not in favor of closing diamondback i have a concern with that cory and and that is is that okay we tell parents you make the decision whether your child should come to school or not but how is that student going to get online services or academics because then now we're asking the teachers okay now you're going to teach some kids online and some kids in class and and i and i will tell you that that's a real tough gig to do um i know the way we're teaching i'm not asking us to go to a hybrid model in that classroom or kid is broadcasting and not and not getting a live teacher um but with any decision that comes with a parent that
009is the parent's ultimate decision we can't make that decision for them but i don't want to take away more education time from kids because of a possible exposure when as dr stewart said we don't know how much exposure is here and if the proper ppe was being in place and enforced that risk is minimized uh to the level that i don't feel we should close and and i and i hear what you're saying i do hear what you're saying i i i'm not one of the the you know people that think that oh everybody's got to be you know locked indoors and whatever it is what it is but um i am concerned because every child have that special teacher every child and so i would rather side with the go with the side of
010caution or error on the side of caution and say no let's close it for two weeks and and rejoin on january and let the kids be online for the next two weeks that's just my thoughts i if i understood them the targets are fun john you are saying the students would have the opportunity to be online during this two-week period they would be online during a two-week period but the problem the the concern that i have is that what corey was saying is well let's give parents the option to say okay my kid's going to stay home and he's going to be online but but no no no no no i want my kids i'm not so you're saying no they don't go online at all correct i'm saying we keep the school open and
011do just like we do with any other possible exposure send the letter out uh we'd be very vigilant in the monitoring on our campuses and we continue forward because we don't know what the exposure is right so i'm not saying change the way we're teaching i'm not saying that i'm saying we should continue the way that we're doing it um then we should continue to monitor but any parent has that option if they don't feel their their child is safe even even in a non-coded situation they they they're the parent they have that option but if we close down early because of a fear that we don't know and it really is a fear of the unknown we are taking any any decisions away from them um and could i interject just maybe to answer
012doug's question and doug you may already know that understand that but i'll make it clear if we close the school then the teachers all the teachers would teach online to all of the students who could join them online if we leave the school open as corey says the students whose parents choose to keep them home would not be online they would just it would be like if they stayed home for strep throat or some other illness and they would be allowed to make up work when they returned only the only students who would receive direct instruction would be those who are in the classroom so you know that's the difference between the two choices there so that's just a clarification dr stewart the i'm not gonna ask the question um so the cdc or the
013the county nurse is saying close is that what you're saying the county nurse recommended closure due to the exposure to or the possible exposure to every student on campus she did ask me about you know how many students we have on campus how many teachers and those kinds of things the other the other thing for you to consider and and you can see why this is such a difficult and complex decision relative to this because everything that corey says is true the you know we don't really know if our t i mean we do know our teacher was following all the protocols but we don't really know what exposure and the reminder might not have been my guess is that if there were in fact exposures to kids and any of them became ill we
014would we would start knowing that before the end of this coming week since the teacher was there last monday and so at the point where we might have let's say we end up with let's hope this were not happening but if we were to end up with two or three cases in that school by the end of this coming week then we would need to have this discussion again because that becomes then considered an outbreak and at that point we would have to look seriously at closing the school based on cdc and all of the other definitions relative to outbreak so you know are we okay with continuing school sure we just might have to look at things again by the end of the week and and i don't want that to be you know
015i don't want anybody to think that if this comes up again at the end of the week that anybody was hiding anything nobody was hiding anything it's just that things develop day by day so you know i just want you to be aware that then the decision becomes less in our control by the end of the week if if there are other cases if there are other cases then the decision is made right because then we have a whole another ball game right now i don't like flying into blind and making a decision because something may happen exactly that's why i'm not in favor of closing diamondback and uh and in the interest of transparency when i sent out the emails to all of you earlier today to see about having this meeting when jeannie
016and brandi both let me know that they had other commitments this afternoon they both are of the same mind that if we were following all the protocols this past week and if we continue to follow the protocols that their opinion is that students should be on campus and parents can make the decisions of whether their students are there or not how many students do we have on campus there now uh kim isn't it about 300 yeah kim says it's about 300. it's a little it's a little closing by closing campus we're taking all those decisions away um of any other problems that may be going on and it's all because of what may happen and that's why i don't want to make that decision on what may happen uh like dr stewart said if in
017this week we see you know two three four uh cases pop up uh then we have to have a hold of a whole nother decision um but by opening monday that isn't gonna change that fact that those two three or four if the exposure's already occurred it's already occurred um so we don't know and i and i'm not in favor of closing well i'm i'm willing to wait it out until the end of the week and see and then you're right if we have two three four kids that suddenly um come down with it then that decision has already been made for us so i i'm willing to wait it out it concerns me but i i i will go with that and cross my fingers that nobody gets uh those are ill oh absolutely
018we always hope for the best we always hope for the best we're all concerned about the well-being of our staff and of our kids um so yes um doug did you have any additional questions or statements nope i uh i second your motion card all right so actually let's just do it as a direction right now then let's just give dr stewart the direction to send out uh notifications to the families like we always do um and let them know of possible exposure we have we have a letter that we use for that um we can update on our facebook page that they're you know that just like we always do uh we'll treat this like we do any other exposure um and we will we'll see what's going on um and if we need
019to get together and you know heck i was actually making a joke to my wife the other day that yeah we get two more meetings this month i didn't know we were gonna have three but uh we can uh we'll just we'll approach each day as it comes because that's the thing with this pandemic is we have to do that we have to be flexible and know that each day we're accepting every problem we're facing and we're and we're taking them on a case-by-case situation and thank you for wrecking with that direction thank you for recognizing that corey because that's the way it works i do have a question though president the uh is there a need for the meeting tomorrow we do have some items on that agenda you could postpone it to the
020other meeting if you wanted if you could if you wanted to decide that tonight there's nothing on that agenda that has to be done this week that's a great idea doug charlene are you okay with just postponing it all till the uh next meeting yeah absolutely all right can we notify the other two board members then and let them know so let's i'll make a motion that we uh or do we have to have a motion to postpone yeah you would have to have an emotion also you would have to have a motion for that one what did we already have a motion on the ball on the floor so well corey said he was just cory just said he was issuing a direction well we did that we did direction for the uh for
021the instruction to go home right you can use directly you can yeah okay so we have a motion on the floor to postpone our meeting monday until what date is the other meeting it's tuesday the 15th starting at 6. combine the two right and you could do your doug that was your motion yeah i will second that motion all right all in favor aye corey burgess hi douglas aye sir charlene diaz okay and then what we can do dr stewart sure and what we can do because the hearing is posted for six on the 15th that will work perfectly you can still have your workshop at 5 30 have your hearing at six and then have the regular meeting start say at 6 because as you know the hearing only has to be open you
022know in case somebody has some questions so that's absolutely absolutely possible great idea doug fantastic i like it thank you so much all right okay and thank you all um i would like to make a motion that we adjourn i make a motion all right i will second that i'll think of that motion and thank you all for uh being available on such short notice i'm hopeful that we don't have to do this very often but i think you can understand that it might be coming up so i really appreciate everybody being available on such short notice absolutely we need to vote on that everything of the meeting yeah yes i i voted uh doug your vote uh yay all right surely charlene dsa okay motion is carried we are adjourned thank you so much
023for taking your time this evening and you are all have a wonderful evening thank you you too thank you [Music] you