Board Meeting

001checking to see like heidi had a bunch of repair pro staff at the high school contacting high school kids starting together you have questions about your work how's it going like the kids that we're not online kids um what teachers do you need to hear from have you been able to reach your teachers your teacher been able to reach you so that's what her staff is doing she like made a script for the are calling so then they can contact the teacher he just didn't need to hear from you good so i had teachers reach out to me today that's fantastic it was good so i know i know that that's how they're going about their k-5 they have staff you know what the teaching staff has the ability to do that and um yeah

002that was nice yeah i saw that i think i'm ready okay ready yep okay welcome to this special meeting of the um valley school unified school district um stand please the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you we appreciate a motion please to adopt the agenda as presented um all in favor aye aye thank you andy did you hear that yeah all right yeah okay at this point we have called in public i don't know if we have any forms okay one i'm speaking but did you feel it do you feel it oh thank you so much thank you oh hi everybody hi again it would last a little over a month before you guys shut us

003down and i lost the last school board meeting i understand there's issues with teachers not being able to be here which is actually administration's responsibility since last year we had the highest amount of kids out with the flu that you guys have ever had but it did not shut down these kids are not caught up and every time you guys shut down what they're going to want to do is quit they'll get their geds and they're all talking about it you guys are going to lose a whole bunch of students we knew this was going to happen we knew that the numbers were going to go up okay everything wasn't mellow and the kids are just starting to get caught up and then you let them shut us down for another seven days or so

004so i hope you guys reconsider this don't do this again um because you're just it's killing the kids you guys are absolutely killing the kids you're going to lose kids in your schools and you're going to lose revenue and people are going to get pissed off about it you know i'm just one person i come forward first before the rest i would come in and try to talk to you guys but you made it over a month and then you shut the schools down again it was poor decision making i understand the numbers are up with the exact day that you guys were talking we had over a little over 5 000 people that have gotten sick from it not been affected that have actually gotten sick from it but what they don't tell you

005is 2 900 of those cases have been recovered so the numbers you guys are getting you're getting a little spurts there's one person that didn't vote the rest of you guys voted to do it i'm shocked especially with you being a doctor [Music] so um that's one thing i want to talk about the second thing i wanted to talk about was um the face masks they're not working they're making our kids sick let me tell you what a high school student does when he's out here or a little kid in general when they drop their face mask they look around and find one on the floor because they have to get into that next class they're not going to make a difference or making them sicker if that kid picked up a face that i

006can see putting wash stations so the kids are washing their hands um science has not proven that these work or they don't work all we can do is watch and see well we've done it we've done that this started out with becoming you guys way before october 19th and saying this is a this was going to be an issue i've been looking at all the statistics i've been you guys consider the nobody did october 19th we had to come in here and fight with him because once again he wanted to close the schools down again now we're into the third time we're all having to come forward and it's over these face masks it may be a safety mechanism for you for certain people i understand that if somebody's sick they need to wear one

007if the teachers feel endangered they need to wear one but you guys are making the kids wear them and the kids are it's not it's not productive it's it's the opposite way and then thirdly i wanted to talk to you guys about i came in here to talk to my grandson um my grandson's counselor about what we need to do on scholarships where they are from last year this year obviously the scholarships have decreased quite a bit because we've lost so many students yeah i don't blame these kids for one day they don't get graduation they don't get their sports they don't even get their friends at school i mean i don't blame them if they all wanted to just go get their gps instead of driving another year and a half but this is

008the way that their school board and their and their administration is going to allow this stuff to happen but anyhow i came in the other day and i came to talk to my grandson's counselor about what we need to do to get them started on scholarships try to be proactive in this a little bit and the lady told me man you have to wear a mask and i said no i don't i do have a medical problem and i'm not supposed to wear one matter of fact i don't even have to wear one here but i'm doing it because we're on close quarters it makes people feel better than sophia and i said no i'm medically exempt and she says well you around the corner right here to those buildings and ask for a camera

009where the name is now so i started to walk out and my little grandson was here we were on the sidewalk i have ptsd okay that's what happens when you're held at gunpoint for days so it uh i started to walk out and all of a sudden i turned around and i saw mrs wolf principal wolf and some other guy maybe their security officer they have here and i said can i help you guys and they said um well you can't go you can't be out here without a mouse i said i have a medical exemption from where we're in a mess i don't have to arrest and then she proceeded to tell me that i don't have to leave the school grounds and i said no i don't i came in here very specifically

010to talk to this counselor so then when i started to walk they followed me they kept following me and i she said well i said just i'll be there anywhere i don't care i don't want to go in the classroom so i went and sat in the front and she came out and we started talking and and i asked for jade and i've been going in dropping off uniforms and taking money to jaina for two years all of a sudden i'm not on the list so she wouldn't want me that's fine we fixed that but um they they kept following me around and so i said and today she would yell things at me she goes well do you have papers do you have papers proving that you don't have code she i said just

011just a minute jason will give him my phone let me record this they left she went and got the teacher and then she came out and they let jayden come over and we sat and talked about everything that dave needs to do from this point forward to make sure he gets a scholarship i did ask her that if there's any other kids out there that might be thinking about it is there a way you can put a flyer out or some sort of a notice because these kids don't even know these juniors have to have these in by name and nobody knows so at that point mrs wolf came out and tried to say something i don't know and i don't even know she was talking to me so i wasn't paying attention and we

012got all the information we needed and i thanked the teacher and i left at least she thinks she is asking me for papers that's what they did to the jewish people it's not funny millions died i think i did really good considering having somebody kept following me around and they wouldn't say anything good just put their hands down follow me and then on top of that you know what happens when the police get called 9-1-1 to the school you know what they think they think that there could be somebody there trying to kill him or hurt the students she wouldn't call the police on me there is nothing they can do about it it's completely against the law to call the police on somebody especially this is a private property i just she made the

013big scene out of it she was following me around it was all over the school she called the police they're just like why would she call us on something stupid there's we we're out here actually putting our lives on online so i don't know what you you know if anything he doesn't do anything but i came back to you because of the school closures you guys are planning on opening on the 6th and let's just leave with that but you guys need to think about these masks because they're making our kids sick we haven't had any easy breathing here with covered here so to show you one the masks don't work at all and there's a high possibility that these masks are getting trained with kids which they are that's exactly what they're doing on

014time all right thank you all right thank you um item seven approval of the consent so public hearings would have to have a motion to open the public hearing okay thank you okay so this is interesting and all the years i've been doing budget this is the first time our december revision or mno decreased so obviously it's kind of coping so our adm decreased 531 we're expecting that to go down even more with the online um so our m o decreased by 244 000. now our carryover did increase by 530 so we actually decreased more than 244 but since we had a healthy carryover that helped us a lot our capital actually increased by 22 000 but it's because the carryover increased by 74 000. and the good news is our 301 increased by 26

015000 so that'll give a little bit more to the teachers but so that's basically the key points with our december budget division one thing i want to point out also that's not included in here in rebecca and i've talked about it is the amount of the percentage of of distance learning will impact the budget as well because for every adm that is um distance learning we only get 0.95 out of that now the distance learning percentage was was it like 60 something at the 40th day yeah around 66 so that means about 30 we'll lose about three percent on the budget because of that now they we received the enrollment stabilization grant which was a hundred thousand dollars to help make up for that but ultimately i think um we'll be down a little bit

016we'll be down uh probably about three percent more based on on the the distance learning portion beyond what's what's in the budget now and that's going to be fluid through the 100th day probably um and actually they're asking us to do 144th day 144 day distance learning calculation so we may not know until the may revision um what the budget will look like so we could lose up to you know another five percent um it's likely not going to be that much probably closer to three percent is what we what i would um think same question that i asked tuesday night still don't foresee any really unforeseen foresee unforeseen still foresee that we're gonna come out okay i believe so because of our stabilization group okay and they carry forward and they hear that anymore

017kerry ford is just gonna be a lifesaver okay we just need a motion to close the hearing then and i'll make a motion to close the puzzle carry you all in favor bye thank you okay now the consent agenda could i get a motion please how many promotions are correct you all in favor thank you amy there we go item 8a the december budget revision so this is where you disapprove unless you have any questions about it does anybody have any questions annie you have any questions no okay and we need a motion please i'll make a motion for the approval of the 2020 2021 december budget division okay all in favor aye aye thank you thank you becca thank you amy okay um item nine a covered instructional model mr schultz so um a

018couple things um as of today we have 26 staff members that are on quarantine or isolation um so that's that increase from from last week i think we were at 18 or something like that last week um so we that's going up um i know that in the past week that the cases in tino valley have gone up 20 and the cases involved that have gone up um uh 15 so just to kind of give you and then in the quad city area they've gone up 800 cases in the past week i'm going to give you an idea um so the you know i'm not asking for you guys to decide what january 4th is going to look like that's it's way too early to do that and um but what i i'm hoping is

019that um we come up with a mechanism that we can at some point decide what january 4th is going to look like um the it really is i see three three factors on what's going to determine that one is what covert looks like um two is what the staff members that we have available and the third which is a positive is the availability of a vaccine i emailed you all but just for the for the public last week the governor said that teachers would be in the first tier for um possible vaccinations for those that wanted them uh that i think is and i think there's gonna be some ranking in that first here i don't think that first year just being everybody um my understanding is those that are in like long-term care facilities

020and and those that are working on hospitals things like that we'll get the first ones the first round but there may be an available availability of a vaccine i reached out to the health department and they for two questions one is we have staff members in classrooms that are not teachers that in some cases have more contact with kids than the teachers and i'm thinking about like our current professionals and things like that so that um uh leslie horton the director of the the county health department clarified that that teachers is kind of classroom status staff members and teachers and support members so it's not just teachers my second question is can we have can we host a vaccination clinic on campus or in our district and she said possibly um and she asked for

021a number of of people in the district that would be wanting to willing to take a vaccination and so i sent out he should have all gotten a copy of it a quick and dirty survey to find out how many of our staff members would be interested um there are there were as of about 15 minutes ago 161 respondents to this and of the 661 respondents there were 97 yeses um to that number um i also reached out to paulden school and mingus springs charter school thinking that hey if we're going to have this let's get let's let's get the other schools in the community and give those those teachers an opportunity maybe it'll bump up our numbers and make a vaccination clinic even that much more worthwhile for the county and i spoke to

022the director of paulden's school or the principal of paulden school this morning she thinks that she's going to have about 10 and i talked to don gonzalez from linda springs charter school yesterday she's surveying her staff so she's going to give me a number before tomorrow and then i'll get those numbers to the county you know i emailed leslie orton back today and said i'm thinking 125 to 103.50 i'll give her a more accurate number tomorrow but that should be the number of staff members that we think that would be willing to be get a vaccination um i made it clear and i want to continue to make it clear we are not forcing staff to take a vaccination we will never do that we are encouraging staff we want to provide opportunities for staff

023to take a vaccination if they voluntarily choose to but i will never i never want to recommend that we require that it's just not people need to be able to make their own choices with their own bodies and so i i want to i want to make that clear um but so that's the availability of that vaccine i think will be a factor as well that needs to be considered um when you make that decision so any questions about that so far how many staff do we have teachers about 250 staff members um of that about half are teachers therapists counselors things like that and if we were in classroom would we have substitutes for those that are out i would say we haven't had enough substitutes even when we were you know in the

024past month we haven't had i think on a daily basis we have at least we're short substances pretty much every day that uh joni made about last year at this time we had a proportionate number of staff and students out so it enabled us to combine classes when we couldn't get subs we still had very low numbers so when we were down 20 percent of our students we were also down about 20 percent of our staff on those days so it maintained that inadequate proportionate amount so that's how it's different from washer in the ship and then just to be clear for those that are listening to this 26 are quarantined they're just not choosing they're not just not choosing to come to school correct those are quarantine and isolation they've either had a close

025contact or they're taking care of kids that have closed contacts in a couple cases or they've actually tested positive so these are these are staff members that have communicated with the district nurse and have been told to stay home based on the isolation guidelines that are on our website yes so when we were had a shortage of substitutes is it true that um basically those substitutes are shared within the tri-city area from point prescott and julie hubble like is that true that is correct so we actually contract with the county who is the who provides the kind of the substitute coordination and um and then the subs are hired through esi which is a company that we're familiar with they do like to return to work retirees so the substitutes are hired through esi it's

026coordinated by the county and subs can actually tell like on the um and it's what's the subject called the sub-client system smartline which is the system the subs can go in and decide which districts to work at so that that is up to the sub but the entire pool is available actually to the entire county not just us um but it substitutes pretty much decide which districts that they want to work for so i was thinking like if they were the only ones that came back then we should um you gotta remember that we have for example at the high school level um we were the we were in person every day and the other schools were hybrid and we had issues so they weren't even in person full-time um we had um and you

027know you're right there's gonna be more more pool but right now we're seeing that with the increase in cases the decrease in the number of available subs because people don't want to work yeah and so it's you know as as cases are going up the availability of subs is going down now right now there's really no subs needed at least on this side of the mountain but um you know when there is when we are in in school the sub pool seems to be shrinking and you got to figure that most of our subs are tend to be retirees tend to be older tend to be in the higher risk um category and and a lot of times they just do it you know it's not as of their livelihood just kind of as extra

028money right and it's not worth the risk to them and to their health to some okay yeah and kim had she was talking a lot about the subs and everything um is there any way we could do like some type of an emergency thing where we can get volunteers to come in and so but i know they probably have to go through fingerprint and background and all that right so so anyone that's in the classroom you have to have a sub certificate for it and there is what's called an emergency sub-certificate which means you don't have to have a bachelor's degree right and we um have a few of those and they are specific to us i think even to a school i don't even think this to a district and so we have to

029put what school that they're going to be a sub for and that's the only school that they can do that at so those are available and we we would definitely work with those people i know that if you are a facebook person you might have seen some of the ads that esi is putting out for substitutes um the county has also put out press releases about the need for subs so and you know right now if there's anyone online that wants to substitute you know call the county we're looking for you we need your help um and so um the the emergency subs pretty much have to be at the recommendation of the district so that's something that if you're interested you can come and call my office and we'll work with you on that

030um but if you have a bachelor's degree it's you know pretty much you have a bachelor's degree um your transcripts and a fingerprint card you can get a subserve that's not a big deal it's [Music] we've done some um probably reposted some of the um esi stuff and the ads um i have a question what about um so of the staff that have been infected like what percentage of those are how many are teachers and how many are supports yeah i don't know i know that um yesterday without the seven we had three that were staff yeah okay i'll just yeah probably probably you know just off the top of my head i'm thinking about third does that sound about right okay bus drivers are probably the worst place that we could be hit because

031we don't have many sub drivers and so when we have a couple of bus drivers out we're that's very crippling that makes sense you know if we had it if we were in session and we had an outbreak of the transportation department we would pretty much have to stop transportation um we have a legal requirement to transport our special needs kids so those that were not that could still drive would be transporting uh special needs kids but um you know it would get to a point where we just wouldn't provide transportation um transportation we do not we are not required to provide transportation um except for special needs kids so um you know that's something that that people rely on and we want to do and we'll continue to do as much as we can

032but it's not a legal requirement that we provide okay any other questions i just have another couple of clarity okay please so the benchmarks that we are aiming for those are put in place by the state of arizona right the department of health services they're not just benchmarks that we say hey let's reach these today they are put in place by the state i guess what i'm saying again for the audience is to clarify that these are not um goals that we have made ourselves but they've been handed to us by the state correct by the governor right yeah to your point and in addition to the recommendations from the state for the benchmarks that they say we should follow to your point annie that was an executive order we have no choice with right

033that is an executive order and really i think my understanding and rebecca correct me part of the esg grant says in there that we have to follow the executive orders of the the the governor so you know we've been good you know people we we allow face shields um and so that's an accommodation that you'll be allowed for anybody um we you know and and i know that uh mrs rope was was talking about uh kids picking up asks kid goes to the office they'll get a mask i guarantee it i i have taken masks that every single school every single office has masks available for visitors or for kids that need it um we had i think four boxes of masks delivered late last week for heritage i'm sorry for little masks for little

034kids for del rio and therefore so no kids no kid no adult no staff member will ever have to go without a match because they can't get one i dare that that's something that i can tell you we have a warehouse right now full of masks so that's not that's not an issue um and and you know so to stress the point if that's not our choice that's mandated by the governor uh there was clarification that came out from dr christ um about um the the face coverings and i reached back out to our attorney to make sure that what we were doing was met the requirements of the executive order and it was clear that they do so we're we're golden when it comes to our procedures when it comes to face parties so

035just to address you know the question that was brought up earlier so if someone really literally has a medical problem and they can't wear a mask what's the procedure for someone to come on campus and do they have to have like a simple paper well they're allowed to wear facials so just because they don't wear a mask they can wear a face shield okay you have to have some kind of face covering right okay now we we do have those we have at least one staff member that and there may be some kiddos that the doctor wrote has written a note saying this person cannot because of asthma or because of some other usually respiratory conditions cannot wear any face covering including masks and in talking with our attorney what we can do is what's

036called a 504 plan which is basically what accommodations can we make for you as either an employee or a student so that you are protecting yourself and protecting others while either learning or doing your job for key for students it's easy because they can go to distance room and that that doesn't have a doesn't have an issue other accommodations that we we could have made but really aren't possible we could keep them in a classroom and they have to stay six feet apart from at all times but if you're in the hallway how do you do that without face covering things like that so it's not really feasible for kids for our employees you know um we put up in our front offices we put up on plexi glass partitions at the front desks and

037we just have to maintain six foot social distancing on which right now when we had kids all kids and you know and uh we went and did a um staff members of the month the teachers and the students or i'm sorry teachers and classified staff of the month we did last week right before the board meeting and we recognized those those staff members last week we went into some classrooms um we went into a class it was at del rio um i won't say which classroom and i'm sure it's indicative of every classroom it was crap you know because typically we put desks together for cooperative working and everything else all the desks were spaced out appropriately as far as they could get it was crowded in that classroom and and the the point to

038all kids in school we cannot maintain the social distance period and the story there's there's no you know on the buses the buses kids we can't maintain that is social distancing and in the classrooms we can't when we have all 100 of our kids in school the governor george said everybody on the campus and so if a visitor comes to the campus and doesn't have a face covering and has a medical exemption even for a shield it would be beneficial if they had that blood fill because we have to follow the executive order and if we start making all kinds of judgment calls out that's risky yeah and if they need to meet with somebody or there's other ways to meet it can be on the phone um that you know a lot of a

039lot of what's the interactions that go on with our parents can be done on the phone it can be done in google meet if their kid if their kids can be on google me they can also do a google meet with the teacher um and so there's there's other accommodations that could be made without a face-to-face meeting they can meet here one person on one side of the room and another person on the other side of the room and you know we can we can do stuff like that we can make accommodations but um you know if people come onto campus they need to wear face cards and just sort of as a point of interest on our cbhs website under the counseling tab all of our scholarship information is updated routine monthly and every

040senior receives an email once a month from a big horse who works in the counseling center communicating all new editions of the scholarship list so anybody in the public can access that it's a very detailed booklet the counseling office is put together and they keep it up to date every single month so under the cbhs website under the counseling tab choose scholarship opportunities good so um the reason it's on here is we need to make a decision about what's happening on january 4th it's in my mind too early to decide what's going to happen on january 4th i've been telling people if you can tell me what copa is going to look like in a month i'll tell you what school will look like um you know things that the number of cases hopefully will

041be going down they're spiking right now um hopefully that doesn't continue um again vaccinations could come into play um christmas could come into play um you know thanksgiving the week after thanksgiving was just horrendous when it came to cases and so this that christmas could come into play as well and so i think it's too early for the board to decide what's going on we're closed for two weeks for christmas from the 18th through the third the district is closed so what i'm asking is that um and this is something that other superintendents have the authority to do um was that you um authorize me to determine the instruction model that will be in effect starting january 4th um it will depend on what we talked about the metrics the availability availability of the vaccine

042for staff and the availability of staff and i'm not going to do this in a vacuum you know i would consult the four of you um also i think it's fair to talk to mike fogle and peter tona who are going to be on the board um starting on january 1 because at least for you your responsibility would be done right um on december 31st um but there they would be have to kind of then be responsible as part of the board starting january 1st on that um january 4th start date so that's what i'm asking for the um i just i'm i just feel like there's so much that comes into play that i feel like at the board that's why we have a board that we are able to make the decisions that

043need to be made for our district and that's kind of what i mean i'm willing okay part of the issue is for the new board to to for the new board to make that decision it'd have to be on the 2nd of january school would start are going to be off as far as we know i mean obviously things keep getting worse but we could have returned and it could get better you know so we don't we can't like use it we can't predict what's going to happen in two weeks we can't predict what's going to happen in our funds [Music] we [Music] right so that's up to you board members can't make that [Music] you keep in touch with us you know the week of christmas and let us know what the numbers look

044like it will all be you know give us an update and give us what your thoughts are leading up to it then we can all be in communication and make the decision together personally i would really like to have peter and um mike be a part of that decision but also um from the from the parents perspective i think they need notice i don't think making that decision last minute is beneficial how much notice do you feel would be necessary so um is it weak and then also because there is an opening on the board right now could one of those i already asked that question did you okay i i spoke to actually emailed mr carter yeah i let him know that about uh mr brown and um it's not this go through the

045process um he can't just automatically do something do you know somebody okay there's a process that he had would have to do and he's i don't think it's the timeliness is not there i know that dr robert will be here because we had talked about about his schedule that week year-round peyton yeah mr fogle i'm around yes it sounded like penny that you wanted at least to hear what but yeah if you know if um you know peter i don't know i haven't i haven't spoken to peter about this so i don't know but it's something that we can bring him in by a phone if necessary so john yes i could or excuse me penny thank you um yeah i certainly can be part of the discussion i i could not be a part

046of a vote right yeah okay yeah got it thanks if that's the will of the board we can make it happen what we'd probably do is post something i hope she i karen may not be there we can get somebody to um cause that's not one of our holiday days is it which day the 28th during those two weeks out of the eight work days we have five and then our holidays so i don't think it's that one of one of those we can pose been posted so we have two choices then we could either meet in person or we could authorize john to make the decision correct after he speaks with after he speaks right is that correct is that what you're saying correct i want to do what's best for the families and

047if that's giving them a week's notice which i think you would do that regardless we would do that with a meeting or with with authorizing me to be honest if you know if you guys want to meet that takes that takes the pressure off of me right i'm following me i don't care either way i i totally trust whatever opinion whatever right yeah i'm probably gonna go by what the benchmarks are so i don't necessarily mind one way or the other in order to do the meeting there would not need to be a vote necessarily okay and let's just do the meeting that sounds like where most people are we can we can set a meeting without a way that's easy can you make monday night what monday night why are you open lunch we

048do like 5 30 or 6. i know for earlier me too i don't want to do that lady there i'm sorry so lunch bean um i could probably sneak out like 11 30 works works for me 11 30 yeah 11 30 on monday the 28th yeah okay mr fumble i'm open december 28th and you'll reach out to mr tona yes and get his opinion on yes what was the time again i'm sorry 11 30 yeah yes and what i may do um is this this would not limit the we've always allowed participation to speak during events i might have might not include a call the public with the knowledge that people can speak during the agenda is that fair i think that's well you can limit that you can limit that that speech also during

049the you know you can stop it at any time whatever works for you guys all right all right thank you okay