001[Music] testing can hear us yes i can hear you can you hear me yep okay and i see [Music] okay i actually [Music] let me see if i can use that url from the chat [Music] just communicate with me over chat we're live right now okay thank you [Music] okay all right it's six o'clock let's start with the pledge of allegiance and officer riddell's gonna lead us in that to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and next up we have recognition this is definitely the best part of the meeting because we have so many wonderful people here to be recognized both staff and students this evening we're going to start by recognizing however three
002board members who are finishing up their terms at the end of december as a michelle benjamin stacy obringer varahal and mike seitz make their way down to the front let us be reminded that they have spent countless hours as volunteers helping to shape the lives of our youth through their outstanding leadership michelle benjamin vice president has served four years on the blue valley board of education stacey varhall has served a total of nine years on the blue valley board of education three years as vice president she's also served as board president mike seitz has served 11 years on the blue valley board of education including two years as vice president to your two years as board president so tanya i know you wanted to say a few words so yes i wanted to thank these
003three board members for the countless volunteer hours that they gave over the course of the 24 combined years um and this is a a thankless job many times but with covet it has been even doubly so and um so we appreciate the time and the effort that you given and making decisions uh and helping to lead this district over the course of the last several years and we have a little something to give to you mike this one's yours and stacy and michelle and if you guys will go ahead and open that and we will show this is a little pyramid that that shows the dates that they were on the board but it also if you turn it you'll see all the different colors that are in the different schools so we we appreciate
004all that you have done we also know that there are some members of your family here and so we want to thank your family for sharing you with us because we know this wasn't just you who volunteered your time your family had to let you come and do this and so thank you very much to our three outgoing board members i want to get a picture first can we get a quick picture with you guys thank you so much for your service so next up we have a group of students that we're going to be recognizing you know academic excellence has been a cornerstone of blue valley's foundation for more than 50 years and is characterized by students achieving at unprecedented levels today our students are still the ones who are outperforming state and national
005benchmarks blue valley continues to have a composite average a ct score higher than the state and national average and is one of the leaders in the state there are 20 current students throughout our schools who have scored a perfect 36 on the a.c.t this evening is a pleasure to celebrate our students who have scored a perfect 36 this school year only on the a.c.t would you please come forward the students are here to be recognized we're going to have you read your names we're going to give you the mic and let you introduce yourselves so come up by dr merrigan i think we had four planned but maybe only two we're here so three students sorry um i'm anna hamilton i'm a senior at blue valley north and i'm here with my parents bryce and
006amy in the back they're super excited to be here but so you're not gonna take credit for all the mustangs that are back here from government class [Laughter] um i'm david stutz i'm a junior from blue valley north and i'm here with my mom and my dad and my brother and my sister that's great congratulations thank you congratulations thank you all right now we have another student um to recognize julia meismer are you here please come forward yep you can stand by dr merrigan you know blue valley students are finding success inside the classroom and outside the classroom so outside of the classroom participation high school activities and athletics are a valuable part of the overall high school experience this evening it is an honor to celebrate one of our extraordinary student athletes who has
007found major success in her craft this year blue valley west golfer julia meismer helped lead her team to win the kansas 6a championship she also won her fourth straight individual state championship becoming just the second golfer boy or girl in kansas state high school activities association history to accomplish this feat to top it all off she was awarded the kenneth smith award for the best female golfer in the kc metro area let's give julia a round of applause for representing blue valley so congratulations to her dad and to her coach aaron anderson so it's awesome paparazzi congratulations that's amazing this evening it's also an honor to recognize two staff members with distinguished service and excellence in education awards these special people go above and beyond each day in our schools and across the district would
008frank moore please come forward with his supervisor matt brooks we're excited to recognize frank moore one of our daytime floating custodians with a distinguished service award frank has been with the district for almost 18 years we know that our custodians play an important role in maintaining and supporting our schools tell us tell us what is so special about frank all right well when i got here you know in 2011 the first time i got to meet frank and we kind of hit it off a little bit we have a little bit of military in our history but frank helped me build something that's truly impacted each and every one of your schools which is our summer routine that we've been doing now for the last 10 years which is power washing sidewalks degumming the sidewalks
009washing the windows and high dusting all of our schools or most of our schools that have that are really high so that has saved the district you know thousands of dollars a year uh in order to do that and you know frank that's that's some hard work there i mean you're up in a gymnasium you're high dusting the rafters uh that's where all the heat is at you know it's really hot up there working on a lift up up high and then what do you do you go outside in july end of july and you're washing windows again not the most favorite thing to do but frank has taken that on willingly and re done a team or helped the team progress through our schools on a yearly basis each summer you know that's not
010to go along with you know the harder places that we send him you know when a high school needs a day custodial floater you know we send frank because he's been with us for so long he knows the routine he can open up any school and you know it's custodians like frank that really make our job easy and so thank you frank and frank we want to thank you you know our custodians have been vital uh during the last couple of years to to to do all of those cleanings within our schools to make sure that our students and our staff are safe and we know we've been short custodians in many cases so we appreciate all that you have done to support our schools and did you want to say anything no no i
011do think we have family members here so we want to you're with my wife we want to thank you roy a big way of wife good support we're going to take a quick picture before we go on to the next one congratulations now would chris landis please come forward with your principal chris legleiter we are excited to recognize chris landa's seventh grade science teacher leewood middle school with an excellence in education award this school year is his seventh year in the district we're proud that our educators continue to provide all the students with a solid foundation for personal academic excellence chris please tell us why he is so deserving well first i want to thank all of the leawood middle school staff it's a great staff that works hard every day for kids and they
012support each other and on behalf of our leeward middle school staff we're excited to recognize chris landis for the excellence in education award when you think about the mission of our district and the purpose of our school it's about reimagining learning and driving continual improvement and when i think about chris he has those same attributes every day as an educator he strives to get better with his craft but he's also so supportive of his colleagues he helps him to grow as well his students learn at high levels but he does that in seventh grade science through very relevant measures that they find connections to but it's also very rigorous to the content standards as a part of our leadership team i'm so proud because he helps to ask hard questions he helps to make informed
013decisions that allows our building to improve and most importantly i think the atmosphere he provides in his classroom and in the hallways helps our kids to be connected they feel safe and supported staff work collaboratively together and he helps the families to be engaged in our school so we're proud to recognize chris landis with the support tonight you know i had the opportunity to be in chris's classroom gosh last week was last week just last week and you were working on the projects where uh they were researching different diseases and uh you were getting ready for for parents and for staff members to come in and for them to pretend like they were the patient and i've done that activity at leewood before i didn't get to do it this year but it is exactly
014what chris just mentioned students are so engaged they're so involved in that and when we were there and we told your class that you were getting this award they were so excited for you so it was very fun and so thank you for all that you do to support the students at leewood middle school and we're going to give you an opportunity to say something if you want excellent thank you i feel so blessed to be part of just a great school and community to my family that's able to join me today thank you for all you have done for me chris melissa they've always been just so supportive and have always provided great opportunities for growth so thank you so much for that and lastly huge shout out huge thanks to leewood middle school
015staff and my seventh grade team for always putting kids first thank you thank you so much [Applause] congratulations chris is this your family right here yep so thanks family wife oh mom we're gonna get you a picture for the scrapbook okay i got goosey just watching you that's so cool the blue valley is known for having the very best educators and staff around and it was an honor to highlight those folks tonight so once again thank you and that concludes our recognitions i would like to let those know who just came for recognitions that it's okay to leave now we don't want it to be awkward for you we'd also invite you if you'd like to stay and listen to the rest of the board meeting you're certainly welcome to do that as well but
016this will be your opportunity if you're wanting to sneak out okay next on the agenda is open forum so welcome to those who are in attendance to address the board or listen during open forum open forum provides a time for individuals to address the board in an effort to ensure an orderly efficient effective and dignified meeting open forum will be provided for up to 60 minutes in an effort to give as many individuals an opportunity to speak as possible during the 60-minute period the board will enforce a three-minute limit per speaker after 60 minutes the board will close open forum and will proceed with its agenda items for the evening whether you plan to speak or just listen we're glad you're here because we care about opinions and concerns of our patrons if you do
017not have an opportunity to address the board during the meeting you may address the board by email communication i have a few reminders about open forum that will help our speakers to have a constructive and positive experience when discussing items with the board when making remarks please be civil and use respectful language please limit discussion to the relevant business of the board tonight discussion of matters related to a specific student or employee is not allowed instead comment should be submitted in writing to the superintendent please remember to limit your comments to three minutes and avoid repeating the concerns of a previous speaker and if you have questions that were that require a response someone will follow up with you at a later time on behalf of the board i welcome you and appreciate your interest
018in blue valley as we strive to provide the best education possible to our students when your name's called introduce yourself before beginning your remarks and as a reminder we ask that all remarks are limited to three minutes and let's go ahead and get started first up is katie bowers good evening um i'm gonna keep it short and i don't think anybody will probably complain uh thank you for letting me speak um after what all six candidates just experienced this year and are continuing to experience hateful emails and daily brutal comments for example which i'm sure all of you have dealt with as well and after speaking with parents teachers admins students and other district insiders i wanted to put forth a request tonight for a community i think a community call for unity common ground
019and stability is due we can't afford to have two sides any longer our community prides itself in being inclusive but what everyone seems to be experiencing is anything but we're losing teachers to burnout we're losing students to other schools we're losing students to suicide we're losing staff faster than we can replace them at times and the key phrase here is that we're losing the district well this district is the heart of the community and now is the time to put aside the hatred going on and actually work together we have an opportunity to pull out of what's happened the past two years and become stronger than before and i intend to be part of the solution i look forward to working with you everyone in this community to making this a reality our kids deserve
020this our teachers deserve this and our parents deserve this in the end it costs nothing to be kind or at the very least businessly so thank you you katie uh next up is matthew couch good evening everyone i just wanted to touch briefly again on the contact tracing portion of the what's going on in our schools a few weeks ago after my son was sent home for the fourth time because he has a mask exemption but was exposed to somebody that was on several occasions an adult that was mass and vaccinated on another occasion a child that was masked but i asked the question i asked mark was after my child is exposed to someone with covid how many of those people that have been identified as being in contact with the cost over positive
021person what percentage of those students go on to then test positive the school district doesn't track that i don't know how that can be but you would think that would be almost the number one thing that you would track is what percentage of the students that have been exposed go on to test positive if that number is one or two percent then there's no reason to send those kids home anymore and for those that have a mask exemption they're being told that they have to stay home until they receive a positive test that's also not true the students and the administrators at the local schools aren't aware of the test to say program and i don't know if that's intentional or not but that test to stay program needs to be communicated to every person
022at every school especially to the people with that have a mask mandate that they are allowed to stay secondly our five to 12 year old students are now eligible to receive a vaccination so if they're eligible and they've elected to take them which i understand they're about maybe 50 to 75 percent of those that age group has taken the vaccine and if you still have to wear a mask then one of those two things don't work so if the vaccine works then you shouldn't have to wear a mask if the mask if the vaccine doesn't work and you have to wear a mask why are our cases in johnson county still skyrocketing the answer is very simple on the on or around november 1st that vaccine became available it's not approved it's authorized for emergency
023use to that age group five to twelve all of a sudden our numbers here locally are are going through the roof i just checked before i came here and we're in the high range right now how can that be if 75 percent of our five to 12 year old students have been vaccinated something like 75 percent plus of our adults have received at least two doses and some have are on their third so these things can't be true at the same time if the vaccine works why do you need three doses if the masks and if they do work why do you have to wear a mask our children again i've said this before so as other people here our children are bearing the burden of this when they don't have to thank you next
024up is laura eakin hi my name is laura and i'm a parent to three children in elementary school in the blue valley school district i'd like to thank the board our teachers and our staff for their efforts to keep our kids in school this past year i know they have come with many challenges but i appreciate those that have worked so hard on behalf of our children i would like to thank the board for also working together last month and voting in favor of optional mask for grades 9 and above and i stand before you today simply as a parent who believes in the rights of parents and i ask you to respectfully vote in favor of optional maths for kids k through 8. as many of you already know the blue valley board of
025education website keeps a running total of coveted cases amongst our schools this information was pivotal last month when the board was made aware that for high school the highest percentage of positive tests in any given week was about a half of one percent with each school averaging around five weeks of zero total cases dr american communicated if the total percentage of positive cases and exclusions at a building rises above three percent masking requirements would return please know every single middle school and elementary school has fallen below a three percent positive rate every single week this school year in fact the average weekly absence amongst our schools due to covid for the last 16 weeks has been 1.44 students in elementary school and 1.37 students in middle school which makes me wonder are we also keeping
026track of the numbers of students missing school for colds or pink eye other strains of flu or those that are emotionally and psychologically suffering due to these mandates because these absences too exist my youngest son was sent home from school on halloween regretfully he vomited at school he later had a fever of 102 but didn't vomit again and the next day he broke his fever i asked him if any of his classmates had also been absent during the week and he named four one of which was this masked counterpart at his table there are 15 kids in this class which means 26 of the kids were absent that week given that his school only accounted for three total coveted cases the absentees must not have all had coveted am i angry with that my child
027had a bug at school absolutely not do i hold this school accountable for his fever and discomfort no do i believe masking him prevented the spread and or lessened his symptoms not at all there was a stomach bug at school and it's not going to be the last i'm sure we can all empathize with kids when they wonder why they are asked to mask at school but hardly anywhere else in fact it seems quite contradictory that kids are asked to wear masks to school yet a mask is not required at the grocery store walmart public library theaters nor at our kids numerous sporting events held at blue valley hilltop or any blue valley school where they spend hours on end touching and breathing on each other they aren't required at restaurants or local businesses where
028we attend countless birthday parties masking requirements ended this ended at these facilities seven months ago when the mandate was lifted why for the demographic with the lowest number of cases who the virus is least transmitted among that among the have the mildest symptoms and the lowest percentage of hospitalization and death why do we impose the strictest requirements i understand there are parents out there who believe the safest option for their children and themselves is by masking and i support their choice however based on the data available i respectfully ask the board to empower parents to decide for their children thank you for your time [Applause] next up is diane o'brien hi my name is diane o'brien and i've been a teacher at blue valley high school for 22 years and i'm also a parent in
029the district the crisis on our hands is not crt being taught in our schools it's not books being removed from our libraries it's not even coveted what all of us should be talking about right now is the teacher shortage that is getting worse ask a principal how many qualified candidates apply for teaching positions it's shockingly low for those of us in classrooms every day it's no surprise that our coworkers are thinking about and some actually planning for their exits at the end of this year here are just two of the many reasons teachers want to leave the first we have a very vocal parent group in our community that stands up at every board meeting posts on social media and sends angry emails about all the bad things we are doing in our schools administrators
030spend hours a day dealing with angry parents instead of connecting with the kids in their schools teachers fear the chances of getting that email where angry parents target them without knowing the full story we also know that you'll post about us on social media sometimes even including the names of staff members the negativity surrounding schools is toxic as a community and as a country we must change how we go about disagreeing with things happening in our schools can you imagine what you would do if i allowed another student to talk to your child the way we were talking to district staff board members administrators or teachers we as a community have to turn this in a different direction one of trust and understanding one of speaking with respect and kindness you may not realize that
031this current climate is a major reason teachers want to leave but it is and the second reason our students need us need more from us than ever before teachers don't just teach content we teach kids and kids don't just walk into our rooms every day ready to learn especially not now many teachers leave their classrooms at the end of the day completely drained from giving everything of themselves and yet this is not enough for you all those concerns you have for your student multiply it by 20 28 to 150 for a teacher and some of the parents in this district expect us to handle each minute with their child exactly how they think we should handle it with little to no trust in our experience as educators there are many people out there who will
032say well if it's too hard then find another job my point exactly this is what teachers are doing they know that working in this toxic environment is unnecessary my message tonight is for the board and our community please begin the conversation about the teacher shortage talk about this at every board meeting use the same passion you've shown for masks sports books and crt we have to figure out a way to move forward that doesn't drive people out of education and for those angry highly critical accusatory parents in our district please know that you're a major contributing factor to teachers leaving you have a choice to be angry but we also have a choice to leave in the next four months most classroom teachers will be making their decisions about coming back next year now is
033the time for change something has to change your child's education depends on great teachers and the talk is ticking [Applause] next up is jenny cox jenny cox overland park you didn't see most of us prior to last year i know i never came but it seems these policies and decisions approved by the school board struck a nerve masks need to be optional for all students and staff now all coveted protocols need to be dropped i know many people feel the same way and it's hard not everyone can be here tonight people have lives and we don't have time to come here we work we care for aging parents we take care of kids we have emergencies and we don't have time for this we're talking about masks while we have 36 other things that we
034need to be doing a few of us were able to make it tonight we leave our families and other responsibilities to come here and i know you all do too it is that important to us and we have more to do than we have time to accomplish there's always more lists than there is today each of these pieces of paper they're all emails they represent there's 68 emails here and then there's nine more in my inbox totaling 77 and more just keeps coming they represent individuals that feel the same way i do each of these people knew that i was speaking tonight and they emailed me asking me to represent them and each of these people know of many other people as do i that feel the exact same way and in each of these
035people here tonight that are talking regarding these this subject they also know many people that want masks to be optional and they want coven measures to be dropped most that have sent me an email have families and students that want to see and need these protocols to be dropped and never to go back to them so some of the comments i received my seventh grader comes home from school with headaches all the time and tells me that she feels out of breath and light-headed at school someone wants me to ask the board have you guys yourselves experienced a teacher teaching them a lesson with a mask and then without the information transferred without a mask is greater than with we aren't providing the least restrictive environment which is a public education requirement i would also
036encourage them to have a conversation with a little kid without a mask and then with so they can feel the immense difference in communication another person says it is also time to allow parent volunteers back into our public school buildings where we can begin to create a warm healthy welcoming environment while allowing teachers and staff to focus primarily on our students educating once again another one says i'm in a district i'm a district employee and i find it hard to communicate with the students with a mask on i don't feel like i can speak at a meeting myself in fear of retaliation a physician assist as a physician assistant assistant i have been fighting this issue from the beginning there's no some scientific studies proving that mass clerk can prevent covid19 we believe we all
037believe it's past time for you to represent our view next up is amy thomas good evening i'm here today to ask that all masking quarantine mandates for all schools be removed effective immediately as of the most recent week blue valley school district had a total of 111 positive coveted cases that is equates to a 0.4 positivity rate as i dug into the numbers in the blue valley coveted dashboard for blue valley southwest theater system i compared the high schools and the grade schools there were four positive cases in this particular week most recent at blue valley southwest fort morris elementary and four in wolf springs the grade schools are less than half the size this data shows that mass optional is not driving up cases per capita in our schools however while researching i did
038find something else that was extremely disturbing i discovered the blue valley school district's reporting covid positive cases in the schools is completely flawed at blue valley southwest there are four positive covid cases for the most recent week which is a 0.4 positivity rate however there were five healthy students that were quarantined an additional eight being forced to test to stay these healthy children these are healthy children however blue valley is counting the total number of students four coveted positives plus the 13 that are quarantined and test to stay for a total of 17 positive cases which is reflecting a 1.42 positivity rate this is absurd you cannot count healthy children that this district is forcing to quarantine or test as coveted positive cases you are arbitrarily driving up the percentage positive cases because the number
039of healthy students being forced to test or quarantine is triple the number of actual covid cases the fact remains the positivity rate for this week at blue valley southwest is 0.4 percent not 1.42 the blue valley southwest nurse last year said in the entire school year 2020 to 2021 not a single student that was forced to quarantine tested positive not one but we continue to force these kids to quarantine and miss school masks should be mass should be a choice not a mandate and healthy children should not be forced to miss school or be forced to test daily for a virus they have no symptoms for i'm not asking mass to not be allowed if parents want their children to be masked they reserve the right to do so but that should be a choice
040we need to get back to parents being expected to keep their symptomatic children at home and allow healthy children to remain in the school and not be subjected to testing or forced to wear a mask thank you [Applause] next up is lisa and i think i got this wrong last month so help me out one more time mcmahon yes i try to make it more complicated than it needs to be can i move this up i'm a little tall that's okay i always bend over and then i realize i can move the microphone okay so um i'm lisa and i'm here to discuss ending mask mandates and getting parents back in schools from my own experience i recently had to run from one airport terminal to the next while mask to connect to to catch
041a connecting flight even though i'm healthy i had to keep stopping because i felt like i was going to pass out i also had great difficulty going down the stairs needless to say i missed my connecting flight and i'll never forget the feeling of suffocation as the mask kept getting sucked onto my face i literally could not breathe it makes me so sad to think about what our children are forced to endure each day at school and on the bus especially those that wear glasses is they can't wear contacts yet how can they run or see their material if their glasses keep fogging up i often see adults remove their mask while speaking at meetings and i'm sure that our children and teachers would like to as well masks make you hot sleepy and the
042lack of oxygen makes it hard to concentrate and can cause headaches this is a disaster recipe for learning add in physical activities like gym band sports etc and it's miserable the kids aren't even exempt from masks for drama band and choir performances it's not only unpleasant for the performers due to the oxygen restriction it's also not very fun for the audience you can't even see their face or hear their words if schools really thought that basking is the answer to protecting kids from covin then why is it that parents aren't allowed in the schools they would simply just have to wear masks after all for decades we've been told that it's vital for our children's well-being to have our presence at school it gives them a sense of safety and security knowing that we're in
043the building and involved in their education however now parents are banned from the schools and most blue valley schools you can't even go in to drop something off at harmony elementary i'm told you have to sign your kids in and out outside we are the same moms and dads that have racked up countless hours volunteering in support of schools whether it's cutting shapes attending field trips manning concessions etc now we're not even allowed in to have lunch with our own child today i heard from a class mama who was preparing a party next week with other moms they had to drop everything off today so that the items can quaranti prior to the party of which they themselves are not invited to we have done so much to show teacher appreciation it would be nice
044to have some parent consideration rather than treating us like the enemy this is cruel so why are the least vulnerable to covet still in masks i personally feel it's about control i feel like they're being groomed to be submissive and that it's an aggressive attempt to make parents feel that the schools are in charge of their kids it sure feels like bullying and has to end let's please remove the mask and get our parents back in schools i personally will be pulling my child out if this doesn't happen thank you [Applause] next is oksana taishlag good evening everybody i apologize for my accent i'm not natively born in the united states but i'll try to do my best uh my name is aksana taischleck i'm a mother of three kids one of them is currently
045in blue valley i'm here today to represent myself my husband and my kids i ask the board to make masks optional in all blue valley schools immediately i work with data analytics so data and research are my passions i would like to reference three scientific studies that outline mask mandates impact at the end of 2020 cdc conducted a study in georgia elementary schools published in may of 2021 91 893 students from 169 schools in 51 counties uh participated in the study plus teachers and administrators about half of the participating schools had mass mandates another half didn't have it the study compared covet 19 incidents in school with various prevention strategies including mask requirements the study demonstrated that social distancing and student masking were each found to have no statistically significant benefit in ordinary language this
046means these measures will not confirm to work these findings are confirmed in practice by our peer nations such as united kingdom france netherlands switzerland italy uh and scandinavian countries these countries with various age cut-offs do not mask their elementary and middle school children they recognize that masking children harm them from academical and social emotional perspectives now let's take a look at the brown university studies where scientists collected the data from 1600 children the study started in 2010 well before the pandemic it measures iq equivalent in kids from zero to five years old the results showed that overall drop in cognitive development from 2019 to 20 to 21 was 23 before that the line was pretty flat i quote the scientists comparing yearly scores since 2011 we find striking evidence of declining overall cognitive functioning in
047children beginning in 2020 and continuing through 2021 the third study i wanted to cite is conducted by scientists from netherlands in germany and it was published in april of 2021 it comprised 191 adults um basically the study showed that overall emotional recognition accuracy declined from 70 percent in unmasked group to 49 in the masked group these were adults think about what we are doing to our children who are just learning how to recognize the motions now from research to practice there are no statement task mandates in kansas or missouri stores restaurants fitness clubs are full of people who are not wearing masks you can look around this room after school kids are engaged in extracurricular activities or play at each other houses with no masks so why exactly are we still continuing to mask our
048children do we believe that covet only spreads in middle and elementary schools please remove mask mandates parents who want their children in masks they have this truth thank you next up is laura couch okay after that we have zaylee cox hi my name is zaylie i'm 17 years old i'm a junior and i live in overland park and i'm here to ask that masks and k-8 schools become optional i'm not a parent but i think that me being here has shown that this has come to a point where more than just parents are realizing what's happening right now elementary and middle schools are some of the last establishments in johnson county to require masks you claim that masks must be required in elementary schools for the health and safety of the students these same students
049are spending 16 hours a day outside of the classroom their weekends and weekdays are filled with sports time with friends meals trips to the store and so many other situations that are conducted completely unmasked and i know you've heard this multiple times tonight but these same students that are going about their daily lives maskless and for the majority of the time healthy they're forced to wear masks in school due to health concerns and that just doesn't make any sense when mask requirements were first put into place in the public school system the reasoning was that vaccines were not available to the students eventually kids above the age of 12 were cleared to receive the vaccine and at that point the masks were made optional in high schools vaccines are now available to all kids above
050the age of five why are mass not optional in elementary and middle schools the logic should be followed but it's not applied the younger students in elementary schools in particular are suffering from these mask requirements how can these students learn phonics if their teachers and peers mouse are covered by masks i have family members and friends and i personally have worked and volunteered at local elementary schools and seeing a startling number of speech impediments and learning disabilities developing in these classrooms covid has a 99.997 percent full recovery rate across all groups in the u.s the risks of covit are much lower than the risk that of these mandatory mass ring and what it poses to the development of these young kids on top of all of these practical reasons to make masks optional choices regarding
051the individual's health should be completely up to the individual it's not up to a board member it's not up to a principal or any other figure to dictate the health decisions of individual families and students any staff member or student of any elementary middle or high school should be allowed the basic right of health autonomy whether you choose to wear a mask or whether you choose not to wear a mask should be completely up to you and you should be allowed that choice with all due respect our choices regarding our health are not dictated by a select group of board members masks need to be made optional to all staff members and students in our johnson county schools thank you next on the list is cindy hoelscher okay l o'brien hi i'm ellen i'm a
052senior at blue valley north and for the past seven years i've participated in a variety of different performing arts and tragically in the blue valley school district the performing arts do not have the space they need at blue valley north in particular our band and orchestra programs share one room which is an issue for storage and the students a genuine own health the ceilings in the band room we are provided are too small and can cause issues to students hearing as well as the hearing of teachers in order for students to be able to safely have abandoned orchestra classes the ceilings need to be at least two times higher in order to not cause lasting ear damage there's also an issue of storage where students are spending entire class periods having to move equipment because
053we don't have adequate storage space within our band orchestra choir theater and department and as well as in our performance spaces this is obviously very detrimental to students education in the performing arts if they do not get time to actually learn instead just constantly move equipment an issue with that has or the issue with this has been talked about for years and there is space on the blue valley north in particular property to be able to expand it however by compressing all these groups into multiple spaces we're not just harming the performing arts learning we're also harming the learning of students in other areas for example at blue valley north our music theory class is taught in the middle of our math hallway students can not learn about music in an environment where they have
054to concentrate just simply due to students doing their assignments other teachers came in to complain to that class about how they are disturbing the environment of everyone else this is due to the lack of space in our performing arts department and there not being room for students to adequately learn and grow in all matters of performing arts especially considering how many times it has been proven that both music and performance are extremely beneficial to student education thank you thank you for sharing that and last on the list is efren taylor hi my name is ethan taylor and i'm a student at blue valley north i've been watching the blue valley board meetings for a while now my condolences to everyone that has suffered severe cognitive impairment for having to listen to this very vocal minority
055of anti-science bigots it's embarrassing for our students growing up you said that at the beginning that there's no personal attacks and he's leading with the person exactly i didn't attack anybody personally i didn't say it's cool you just attacked people okay stop that's terrible that's that's an anti-scientific it is a personal attack of anyone that doesn't agree with them it's not permitted in these meetings so much for free speech it's not free speech you agreed to speak under the conditions that you wouldn't attack i didn't attack you personally well if you took personal offense now it's an attack right an anti-science advocate yeah discussion of matters related to a specific student or employee is not allowed did i did i name anybody specifically he did not he did not name any names let's just let
056him finish please don't talk this is his time to talk please let him talk they just started it over this is why this this teacher here my mom is a teacher for 30 years of special education these these teachers are suffering because we can't speak okay please continue okay it's embarrassing for our students growing up witnessing adults cry like babies because wearing a mask is too uncomfortable belief like this are infiltrating our country our community and now our school it's time to stop treating their ideals like they're debatable teaching about diversity is imperative having an inclusive library is a necessity and having mass in school is essential when i think of how covet cases are going down because effective masking and vaccination my first thought isn't let's stop doing that my first thought is let's
057keep doing what's working and then devote six to one at a time where students are about to be traveling in mass they'll come back and spread this deadly disease without mask what will you say when one of your students who has an immunodeficiency dies from your incompetence what will you say when a daughter loses a loving parent to a virus she contracted at school something you could have prevented what what will am i making you uncomfortable bored is reality uncomfortable bored are you getting too comfortable bored are we tired of a board who puts politics before students i've asked you all a lot of questions this evening but the most important question i will ask now do you care about your students if you do you'll protect them by bringing back the mass mandate you'll
058help them feel included by continuing your efforts with diversity equity and inclusion you'll show them why we're the best district in the nation show us that you care show them who we are if not the people will hold you accountable we'll find a new board one that will leave a legacy of accountability one of integrity a board we can be proud to call ours choose wisely thank you okay that wraps up open forum for tonight on behalf of the board of education i'd like to thank our participants we appreciate that each of you took time to share your opinions with us please know that the board and district administration took notes during open forum and will follow up as needed we're now going to take a five-minute break for our closed captioners to have a
059few minutes so we'll be back at we'll just say 6 55. hey it's interesting because one of our college friends that we know um hey jody thank you yes i remember these from last year no they're really good they're this is not a re-gift this is a keep yeah okay we're back uh ready to get started again i'm going to call the meeting to order um first of all we are going to receive reports from board advisory committees and i'm going to start over here with uh mr hurley oh i'm sorry sorry i'm not thinking curriculum and instruction miss dr collier yeah patrick if you could give that cni report that would be great michelle says i'm starting over here good evening and the board board of education curriculum instruction board advisory committee met on
060november 10th um that evening uh kelly out executive director of curriculum instruction innovation along with adam wade director of academic achievement and accountability presented on the district's current math project more specifically the committee learned that we are looking forward to 2223 with new k-5 math curriculum along with new k-5 and 6-8 math resources in sum the committee learned going forward the elementary middle school students will experience an increased interactive math experience that allows students to think differently and develop themselves more deeply as mathematicians adam wade director again of accountability achievement went on to present the district's assessment and data update similar to what you as a board have received in doing so he explained the differences between the different type of assessments and how they help students more specifically he defined and provided examples of
061the following summative assessments screening assessments formative assessments and long-term or periodic assessments all of which we have reported on to this board finally jennifer liscinski presented on current high school course proposals which are being developed for board of ed consideration in april and may these include courses in the areas of world language mathematics and career ready programming the committee will not meet during the month of december and will meet again january 19th thank you thank you next up is student advisor student activities board advisory committee sorry i'm struggling the student activities committee met on november 18th director of school administration matt ortman shared an update regarding sportsmanship summit that was held on november 9th the committee listened to a presentation given by blue valley parent tom herzog about current efforts to focus on mental health
062awareness and the hashtag be the difference campaign with middle school and high school students there was also a conversation about looking at future efforts to provide training and resources to sponsors and coaches around this topic high school middle school administration and blue valley recreation provided activity and athletic update updates the next committee meeting is scheduled for january 13th keep rolling the finance and operations board advisory committee met on december 9th via zoom i along with board representatives patrick hurley and amy tyson provided a brief district update eric pollam assistant director of planning and operations presented the results of this year's enrollment report and report the results of the facility planning committee's work eric will be presenting to you shortly jake slobodnick director of facilities and operations provided a construction report to the committee elementary number
06324 is successfully wrapping up construction this month the blue valley high performing arts edition is also nearing completion and is scheduled to open the second semester director of business operations jason gillum and jake slovodnick presented the bids and contracts on the agenda for board approval this evening the next meeting is scheduled for january 6th thank you much okay now we're on to the agenda item where board members and the superintendent um give reports on items not included on the agenda so i was a little a little early to the trigger earlier uh patrick do you have anything yes thank you i want to thank mike stacey and michelle for their service as board members and appreciate the time and effort that they've put forth over all these years and how the school district has benefited
064from it stacy okay i do have a few thoughts i would like to share if you'll spare a few minutes of your time this evening please forgive me for using a written speech but i want to be sure to include everything there are several folks that i would like to thank so please bear with me first i would like to start with a huge thank you to my family for without their support this would not have been possible thank you to my husband for his support over the many years from the late night meetings to the yes we're having pizza again for dinner conversations and more recently threatening emails personal attacks on my family and police having to drive by my house he has been a rock through all of the ups and downs of
065serving on a school board and is greatly appreciated and to my two kids the reason i have served blue valley for the past 20 years in various ways it is not always cool to have a parent so active in their schools but they hung in there and always encouraged me as a bonus they got to hear about snow days early my parents who were smart enough to move here over 40 years ago and they always set a good example the importance of volunteering was stressed early in our house around the dinner table especially when my mom also had the chance to serve on the blue valley school board back in the 1990s i will always value the support they have provided and to my extended family my sister and brother and their families their support
066has been amazing and i am thankful that my eight nieces and nephews are currently in the blue valley schools between me attending blue valley north my children attending the northwest feeder schools and my nieces and nephews attend blue valley high and blue valley southwest feeder schools our family has been through every feeder except for blue valley west and i apologize i did not have more nieces and nephews thanks to the wonderful staff of blue valley and my fellow board members dr merrigan you have shown nothing but grace and dedication the brief time you have been leading us i look forward to following your progress in the future and to the staff at district office and in all of our buildings thank you for your tireless service to blue valley you are all making a difference
067every day and to my fellow board members thank you for all the support and the hard work that you have shown despite these extremely trying times i know none of you signed up for the name calling and the threats of the past two years but you have always worked to make the best decisions possible for our students for those of you continuing on i wish you luck and success for michelle and mike thank you both for your years of service it has been a pleasure serving with you all i will miss you all immensely but not the 7 a.m meetings i have served with three different superintendents four if you count the interims and 10 school board members and i can honestly say that every single one of them worked hard to do right by
068our students i have been here for many of the big and small changes in our district and i am really proud of all that we have accomplished together things like an increased focus on social and emotional well-being for our students and our staff sorry new schools and facilities and boundary changes additional career path opportunities for our high school students improvements to our middle schools changes to the transfer rules which have leveled the playing field for our athletics and activities for the opportunities for our kids five years ago no one would have ever guessed that blue valley northwest would be paying blue valley west to go to the state championship in football and blue valley southwest going deep as well if i recall there are obviously many more that i can mention but i do not
069want you all to have to be here all night so i will move on the people sitting up here all do so for the same reason to help all of the students in blue valley i have never once made a decision sitting here based on what was best for my kids or on my own personal thoughts rather this role is about working together with six of my peers to develop a game plan that provides for the complete education of our students here i have a deep commitment and passion for blue valley with strong roots in the community i moved here as a young girl in 1981 and i attended morse indian valley leewood middle and blue valley north and no we did not move around a lot there were just a lot fewer schools back
070then with larger boundaries many of my favorite teachers from my childhood were still here to teach my kids some 25 to 30 years later i grew up playing blue valley rec sports and then had the chance to coach for nine years and serve on an advisory board i also had the chance to serve on the blue valley educational foundation and create events for them some of which are still going on 10 years later i spent five years in pta pto leadership in my kids schools and served on several district committees and was twice recognized as a blue valley volunteer of the year award winner i mention all of these things as examples of my long and involved history with blue valley which is why i feel compelled to say the following we have an exceptional
071community here in blue valley and we need to keep it but that is not as easy as it should be these days we are built on exceptional public schools here it has helped create a strong economy unlimited business opportunities and a healthy housing market although some may say too healthy looking at the recent sales prices and rent costs but it is a sign that we are doing things right in blue valley that so many want to live here our local leadership is fantastic and we are lucky to live in such an environment this is obvious when one of the biggest issues in an election is how roads are repaved you know things are going well if this is a major issue ahead of jobs health care and housing where else would one of the biggest
072complaints be about how a city is making an impr its improvements not whether or not it's doing so we have fabulous emergency services healthcare options and parks and i know from growing up here and raising my family here that it all starts with our wonderful strong public schools the desire to live here to experience those public schools this community has changed over the years and that is a good thing we do not need to nor should we want to go back to how things used to be we have wonderfully diverse families moving in all the time and we need to embrace that those that may look different or go to a different house of worship or have a different family structure they all bring us a wealth of experience and ideas that we can benefit
073from so reach out and get to know your neighbor across the street or across the hall education today looks a lot different than it did when we all went to school these kids have grown up with more stressors and pressures on them than we could have ever imagined we grew up with tornado drills they have active shooter drills we did not know when we weren't invited to a party now these kids know the minute that it happens thanks to social media the amount of stress and bullying that comes from these social media apps is both maddening and saddening kids today have cell phones capable of capturing a picture or a video of whether it's your best moment or your worst and it never goes away it's there to stay the mental and emotional health of
074our kids is constantly being challenged they have access to more alcohol and drugs than we ever did along with new temptations like vaping and this is all on top of the increasing pressure about what to do after graduation there is an expectation that the kids not only go to college but go to the best schools and get a scholarship to pay the ridiculously high cost that is one of the things that i am so proud that we are working on here in blue valley showing kids all of the opportunities that they have our work with johnson county community college and the overland park fire department to create new learning opportunities that will provide immediate career paths is so important we need to inform our students of all the options they have and prepare them to
075get there whatever they decide to pursue if you talk to local employers they will not say that our kids need more math classes they will say they need executive functioning skills they need social skills to work with others and emotional maturity to be able to do so yes absolutely reading writing arithmetic they're important and they're why we're here tonight but it is not the only thing and we must continue to work hard to prepare our students to go live their best life whatever that may be and none of this is possible without the amazing teachers support staff and leadership that we have here at every level we have exceptional people working for and with our children i've had the opportunity over my nine years on the board to see about every school and program we
076have and i can assure you they are all exceptional and dedicated to your kids whether it is in the classroom the lunchroom or on the bus the staff here is second to none i would encourage everyone to take a few moments sometime this school year to thank them or send a note of encouragement they could sure use your support and if you really want to make a difference for your students in their education journey please get involved with your school reach out to the principal or the pta the pto group and see what you can do to help serve on the parent group board help at an event send in flowers or snacks and not just during teacher appreciation week as i look at my fellow board members it occurs to me that i do
077not know the political affiliation of each one because it does not matter none of us ran for this position serving our community with any outside agenda other than helping our students develop into happy prepared adults which is why the recent election is so concerning with the outside influence and support i do not recall a political party in the past getting involved to the level that we just saw is not a good look for blue valley and i would caution you to pay attention to this in the future i believe that anyone who sits up here should do so free from the influence of others without an agenda and solely for the purpose of helping our students i would also urge you all not to believe all of the misinformation that is so easily available these
078days log off of facebook turn off your evening news commentaries and stop going down the youtube rabbit holes the information that you are getting there is not applicable nor true for blue valley masks are not a political decision they are one of public safety we are not teaching critical race theory in our schools we are however working hard to make sure that our students feel safe welcome understood and valued for some this focus on diversity equity and inclusion may be uncomfortable but it is necessary our kids will benefit immensely by understanding and celebrating the differences among us equity serves many groups within our community for example economic with food assistance an academic with english as a second language it's not just a diversity issue teachers are not requiring your kids to read any controversial books
079and the curriculum is appropriate and follows state guidelines there have always been and should always be a wide range of books in the libraries and i'm really just sure that anyone could find a book that offends them if you look long enough but that same book may bring comfort or value to another person and for those of you that worry about your child and their reading choices please sit and discuss that with them and set some expectations but do not forget to also talk to them about their cell phones there is a lot more controversial material available to them on the internet than there ever will be in their public library and for those that think social emotional growth is not important in our school system i would ask that you speak to a student
080about it they realize its importance and are asking for help with all of those issues and stresses that i mentioned earlier i am an eternal optimist and i see things continuing to improve here every day in blue valley we have amazing kids that show up ready to learn we have a truly dedicated staff ready to help them we've got that all covered what we need help with is bringing the parents and the patrons and this community together so that we can all work to ensure that we are preparing our children to leave us at age 18 and be able to succeed in life volunteer to help at your school and reach out to others and get to know them i assure you anything that we can do together to strengthen the bonds in blue valley
081will allow all of us to benefit from it we have a wonderful thing going here in blue valley and we need to work hard to keep it push back against those attempts to undermine public education and divide us we are stronger and smarter than that and together we can help every child in blue valley achieve more than they ever dreamed possible so thank you all for the honor of serving you the past nine years on this school board it has truly been the best volunteer experience of my life thank you stacy a lot of powerful words there thanks your turn now mr sites i just want to thank you for allowing me to follow the gettysburg address i'm sorry i have a lot of thoughts um i'm not going to cry a couple of things
082first thank you my family for putting up with the last 11 years it was 11 years and one day where i was sworn in at blue valley northwest high school and the occasion of having the board meeting in northwest uh was that we were having a uh a vote on the boundaries for blue valley southwest is that right eric yes and uh god bless the board at the time they decided to have that vote or to have me sworn in after their vote um i will always be be appreciative of that but all kidding aside thank you to my wife my family i want to thank the other board members that are not here tonight that i serve with laurie heisel clint robinson tony till pam robinson sue matson steve klika and cindy bolling they're
083in large part the folks that taught us up at this horseshoe how to be good board members i want to thank the superintendents that i've had the opportunity to work with tom traig al hannah todd white and tonya merrigan without their strong support um our students would not be in the position that they're in today uh and this district wouldn't be in the position it's in today uh and finally the staff and i don't have enough time to recognize all three 000 of them but the ones that i've dealt with the ones that we know even the ones we don't know have been nothing but stellar i look around the room sometimes and i'm amazed that at the talent that we have uh i wish in my previous professional life i had the same talent
084that blue valley's been able to attract you know um in 11 years you're proud of some things and there are some things you that you don't feel good about um i'm proud of the fact that this board and i'm going to paraphrase stacy in far less words this board has never been a political board we have differences and one of the reasons that we're able to come to agreement is that we're respectful of one another we listen we don't have to agree but we find an opportunity to agree on what's best for students and that is incredibly important we understand our purpose we understand the role of board members sometimes we get a little deep in the weeds but we understand that the role is not to be in the weeds we have goals the
085goals that we have are shared goals they're the goals of the strategic plan and and everyone comes to a to a board like this with things they'd like to get done things they'd like to get done and if that makes it to the strategic plan great and if it doesn't i didn't get that one right um and finally the behavior of this board has been in my opinion nothing but stellar we've never been bullied by the loud this is not a control issue this is what's doing best for students we've always been student focused and we have never in 11 years followed any political agenda other than doing what's best for students finally i want to say thanks to you guys um we haven't always agreed we haven't always had the same thought process but
086at the end of the day i call you all my friends because we agreed that what's best for students is what we're going to do i said there are things that we're proud of and things that maybe we're not proud of frankly i'm embarrassed that the public doesn't understand why the school board exists and i think if i had to say anything that's something that you guys can work on um i'm embarrassed in some cases by the behavior that's shown toward one another we saw it tonight i don't mind telling you i was embarrassed by an adult who wouldn't allow a student to continue when that's exactly the behavior that's been thrust towards the board um i have one request oh a couple of other things proud i almost forgot these are the important ones
087i've been most proud of of two things the first is the way we rolled out technology and if you all recall um shawnee mission gave and uh god bless them they gave a a tablet or a device to every student we decided not to do that and for those of you who think that technology does not belong in the classroom you're doing your student a disservice and the disservice you're doing to your student is that you're asking him to grow up in your time not in his folks i learned a long time ago this isn't my world anymore it's the world of my children and if i'm going to ask them to do the things that i did as a child and learn the way i did as a child i'm doing them a disservice
088i often look at dr collier and and your counterparts in the ed services group and curriculum and i think who are these kids and then i realized that they understand how to educate and what to educate and what's happening in the future if we revert to a system that educates children the way i was educated we're putting our kids at a gross disadvantage the second thing i'm very proud of is our is our emphasis on mental health and social and emotional learning and i challenge you if you have a problem with that try to educate a child who has mental health issues or social emotional issues and who can't concentrate on learning because of all the things that are going through his head that's why it's important to keep sel and our mental the mental
089health of our kids at the forefront of what we do a lot of things have been thrust upon the school the school system the public education system i once asked tom traig how much time do we spend on things other than reading writing and arithmetic you know ethics and values and social and emotional stuff than mental health and he said i don't know i can't figure it out but it's gone significantly up in his tenure and that was what ten years ago nine eight years ago and i would argue that it's gone up since the problem we have is we haven't had any days to the school year we haven't added any hours to the school day so we're cr trying to cram 10 pounds of learning into a five pound day i'm not sure
090how we fix it but if if if we can't concentrate on the mental health of our children then we're again doing them a disservice i have two requests guys just two for those of you lucky enough to stay the first is we've got a good thing don't screw it up it's that simple and the second is be kind be kind to one another be kind to me because i'm old but just remember that everything that we do your children are watching and learning and will emulate our actions as they become adults and finally it's absolutely been a pleasure working with every one of you um you know i've been looking forward to this day as many of you know for a long time and now i'm not sure i wanted to be here no i'm
091just kidding i wish you all the best and thank you michelle you want to round us out sure mine will be much shorter so um i have been in education a long time i grew up in new york i went to college in pennsylvania i lived in new york city for a few years i taught in chappaqua new york which is in westchester county just above new york city um after my husband and i got married we moved to austin texas where i taught in west lake in the ian's isd i enjoyed living in all of those places and i was fortunate to be a part of some really amazing school districts nationally recognized school districts but when it came time for my daughter to start kindergarten i knew that i wanted my children to
092go to blue valley schools i was living in austin and i turned to my husband who grew up here he graduated from blue valley north and we had been dating a long time so i had come to kansas city and overland park in leawood kansas many times over the years i knew this was a fabulous place so i turned to him and i said it's time we need to go because he wanted our kids and i wanted our kids to have the same education quality that he did and that came from blue valley schools um we picked up we moved to johnson county so our kids could go here and looking back that was the most important decision that my family has made thus far since 2007 my daughter has graduated from blue valley north
093as the class of and my son is now a sophomore at blue valley north so both of them are mustangs just like my husband was and both are products of their strong blue valley education and are thriving where they are now as a teacher by profession when i moved here i kind of couldn't stay away so somehow i ended up volunteering in classrooms i taught elementary science programs i'm sure people wanted me to stay away but i kept trying to do more i served on pto and advisory committees each thing i did with the district and those schools made me fall more in love with blue valley and its people when an opportunity to serve on the board of education and props to patrick hurley who was one of the people that convinced me to
094to do this i was honored to be elected and truly loved serving our district in this way i'm so proud of our district our teachers our administrators and our students and our families as i stepped down from my role on the board i'm honored to be a part of blue valley's capacity and i am actually very sad to end this chapter there's i went to lunch with someone the other day and there's a she asked me if i was sad to be leaving and if i was happy you know that i had done this and i i use an expression that i actually don't like but i'm going to tell you about it now just because um there's a saying that you all know that um you don't want to know how those sausages made
095and so i kind of thought of that as you know the more involved i got in blue valley the more i got to know how things work here and instead of it being messy and complicated like you imagined sausage right um it wasn't at all i was nothing but more and more impressed and moved by the passion that everyone that i have encountered has for our children for learning and for continuous improvement it's truly an amazing organization with talent professionalism dedication and a true love for our kids our leadership in dr merrigan was exactly what we needed when she came on board and she's exactly what we need now um i have every confidence that dr merrigan and her amazing team full of very talented professionals will continue this amazing path that we've been on
096it's been rough sometimes but that's that's what makes us a family we get through it and we come out better at the end of it um i know that you guys are all in good hands and i am sure that i will come pop up somehow and i'm sure i can't stay away so i'll figure out some way to stay involved but not on the board of head so thank you very much thank you to everyone and thank you to my family for all of their support and i will miss you guys very much tom um thanks for to all three of you for great speeches and all very inspiring i really appreciated all of them i didn't mind listening to the link that all stacy and just some great remarks from everybody and i
097appreciate all that um you know the beauty of our board is all the different temperaments towns and convictions we had and how we're all built a little differently but a lot of things we had in common which a lot of you guys mentioned the incredible passion we have for blue valley kids and the education here i appreciate it and thank you for your intelligence and your wisdom through all these years sense of humor at times especially when that was needed and most importantly thank you for your partnership and all your friendships as well it's uh it's meant a lot like i always say thank you for your leadership with a with a capital l especially during the last couple years that l has gotten much much bigger and i do i mean this and to
098all the board members and obviously the administrators is because of u3 and a lot of groups it's one of the reasons that we're still the one which is my favorite hashtag ever christy mcmurlin if you're still in here so i mean that we're still the ones great things are happening blue valley and a huge part of that is because of you three and we will miss you but we will carry on and of course do our very best so thank you all right almost last i guess um so this is also board updates too so i did want to draw attention to the wonderful things that are going on with our bands district bands and district choir um um other performances holiday performances that we've had that are absolutely fantastic everyone is pulling those off
099and it's so wonderful to be able to hear these young musicians playing again other events theater events i've been to have been fantastic blue valley ed foundation was able to do their surprise squad this year and award grants to all the schools and it's so exciting to see the innovative ideas that these grants will be able to support we also were able to open a new fire station on the campus of blue valley southwest and it's going to it's such a great resource for us so we're excited about the the uh area that it will serve but also that the the presence it has and for our students to see and be able to learn in that environment is really exciting um so then on to my um comments about my my fellow board members
100um it has been um my honor to serve with you three um and i've had you know almost two years of being able to serve with you even though i've known most of you a heck of a lot longer as i was kind of a groupie setting out um in the in the room for many many years right um just trying to learn um you have your leadership and insight for our district and and knowing that you've always always put our kids at the forefront of any decisions um is has been such um an example for me and i've i've appreciated there's never been any question in my mind about your dedication to our kids and i absolutely love that that and it's made me proud to be a part of our board um our
101school district and our greater community so thank you thank you guys dr american well i will add my thanks to stacy and mike and michelle it has been my honor and privilege to work with you each and every day i will forever be grateful for you giving me the opportunity to be the superintendent of this great district and i am very proud of the work that we have done and continue to do so thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything that you have done uh to ensure our our kids are set up because that's what we're here for is for the students in our district you know um over the course of the last two months i have visited all 39 so 35 schools four programs plus i went to the the
102overland park uh fire departments training center and got to see that program in action and that re those were the best 40 hours of my first semester because i got to see firsthand what was happening in our schools and we lose sight sometimes of of what's happening in our schools but i got to see elementary students excited and engaged in hands-on science lessons doing the phonics work that that this board approved of the resource that we bought i got to see middle school students who were involved in performing arts activities or in engaged in in english and math and and excited about being there and then i got to see high school students in the same manner and you talk to kids and they're going to give you the real scoop they don't ever hold
103back and and they are excited to be here and lots of really exciting things happening within our schools so thank you to our teachers and to our staffs within our buildings uh for a very good first semester um they have worked tirelessly because that doesn't just happen those kids aren't excited to be there and engaged in learning without the staff behind them so i really want to take an opportunity to reflect on this first semester and thank the staff out there who are doing that each and every day and then i want to remind everyone that we're in about a week getting ready to go on winter break and our staff really needs that break so between december 22nd and january 4th if you email somebody you won't get an answer likely because we we
104are asking staff to really step back and to take that break so come january 5th when your kids show back up we're ready to go and we're refreshed so again a great first semester um excited about the work that we will continue to do this year and in so appreciative of everybody in this district and all the work they've done great very well said and i'll just say for myself that i think we're all very lucky to be part of blue valley and i felt extremely lucky to have worked with the three of you so thank you for uh welcoming me and um you know and helping me along the way and and the rest of us as well and then just to kind of piggyback on something that mike and stacy touched on in
105particular but just the message of kindness and positive attitude i think that i am a perfect example of being surrounded by people with kindness and a positive attitude and it has done a world's worth of of help to me this year in a year that's been pretty pretty different than what i expected so it does make a difference and i am hopeful that our community can get around that in the future all right next up do i have a motion to approve the agenda for our board meeting tonight i would be happy to do that and i will be very brief in doing so i move that the board of education approved the agenda for the december 13th regular board of education meeting as published thank yous motion by stacey second by jody all those
106in favor please raise your right hand motion passes seven zero next step uh a second opportunity here a motion for the consent agenda i move that the board of education approved the consent agenda for the december 13th regular board of education meeting as published thank you tom uh in second by michelle all those in favor raise your right hand passes 7-0 thank you all and now we are going to move on to sure get it right here excellent it is time for the facility planning board advisory committee report so i'm just going to introduce this topic and then hand it off to eric palmer assistant director of planning and operations the facility planning committee is made up of 20 individuals we have representation from patrons from all five of our feeder schools so that make
107up 11 of the members we have three board of education members that serve on the committee along with six district office staff this year we had four committee meetings that extended from the last week of october into the first week of december along with an open house that eric will talk about that was held in wolf springs to talk about a boundary change for wolf springs elementary and the new elementary 24. uh eric is going to go into some of the background on um enrollment and what we do as far as the model in blue valley which is exceptional um and then he's going to talk about enrollment projections for five years and then talk specifically about that boundary that i just mentioned so eric okay thank you very much first i'll talk a little
108bit about kind of our annual update to the enrollment report every year we go through a process of doing a set of five-year projections for the district so that we can use that as a way to make decisions well ahead of time with the facility planning committee and so this year's kind of highlights of the enrollment report just touching base on where we stand enrollment-wise as a district we've had a long long history of growth in this district obviously last year was a departure from that but this year we were back to growing again so our head count enrollment on count day in september was 21 847 students taking a look at the change in enrollment of our area districts kind of helps us get a sense of what's going on around us and whether
109what we're experiencing is is common uh to this area and this is something i mentioned last year this graph was getting a little boring and i was getting ready to cut it from the presentation because you could see the years where we had our housing boom there were districts like us and olathe with a large share of the housing and a large share of additional students to our enrollment and then as the housing market cooled and we had the housing bust everybody kind of grouped together into positive growth but very very modest positive growth and then last year this graph got interesting again see if this will go and it will forever be interesting for that year i think and so what we saw there uh was with everybody really losing enrollment except spring hill
110which had a statewide virtual school this year however things have kind of returned to normal we did not see a large bounce back from last year's downturn in enrollment but for the schools that were in that zero to 250 student range each year we're right back to it talking about kindergarten enrollment something that i talk about a lot when i kind of do expanded versions of this is how blue valley is a move-up community and we add students year to year so we'll start out with a kindergarten class maybe in the 1500s and that class as they move through will grow until they become a senior class sometimes in the you know 1900s um so our largest kindergarten class of all time was 2006 2007. uh in recent years we were coming back to where
111we were getting close to that again last year we had whoa whoa whoa i promise i hit the button once and that concludes my presentation and they spoil my surprise slide uh so last year we had a drop in kindergarten enrollment down to and we talked about a lot of ways that might uh have come about including folks that had the ability to wait an extra year and get past the year that was 2020 coming back the following year and so we thought we might have a big year coming into this school year and we did we broke our record so this is the largest kindergarten class we've ever had talking a little bit about cohort growth just kind of checking in since this was interesting last year we were trying to use our cohort
112growth which for those who aren't familiar that's taking last year's second grade class how many were in that class and how many third graders were they this year did they grow as a class or or decline as a class and so last year that was a way of really looking at what the effects were in the downturn in enrollment and we noted that the biggest effects were in the very youngest grades and so looking on the graph on the right you can see this year that's where we had our biggest recouping of enrollment including the largest ever cohort change for the kindergarten to first grade cohort this year some of what's contributing to our growth and will continue to contribute to our growth is housing development and this plays heavily into the five-year projections in
113the enrollment model development activity in blue valley it wasn't certain going into last year how development would react how the market would react i can say now having looked back the lumber prices things like that did not have a dampening effect on development in this district what we had was quite an uptick in housing in the district and the long-range forecasting for the kansas city region continues to show blue valley as a growth area in their in their long-range forecasts with groups like mid-america regional council so how much of an uptick did we see at our largest years in our history we may have had a thousand building permits only a couple years of that but it was quite big for quite some time and it's where blue valley really became good at managing growth
114out of sheer necessity and large volume and so there was obviously the downturn when we had the recession things had begun climbing back up and then things kind of leveled off and had actually started to subside in recent years a little bit down into 300s these are permits from count data count day single family within the boundaries of blue valley last year we had our largest year since 2005 2006 and so we continue to see that energy there are new subdivisions coming online things that had gone dormant for some time that are getting picked up by more reliable development sources and we will continue to monitor and model the effects so that we are ready for those new students before i talk about what the projections show i just want to kind of give everybody
115a sense of you know what we've come to expect with these projections while we rely rely on these project projections and that's to talk about just the accuracy of the projection model um and so this is a way of showing the the darker bar on the left is for any given year what we were projecting five years before that year happened uh and then the red bar on the right is what we were projecting the year before um so if you look all the way at the right year 2021 to come into this school year five years ago there was a wide range of possible outcomes and we still didn't know about a coming pandemic and so then last year we were able to make adjustments to that and you see that red bar on
116the right having made that adjustment and what we ultimately have seen in actual headcount enrollment shows that we're kind of right back in the lane adjusting to current conditions and so this is what the five-year forecast is saying for the district it's showing moderate growth going forward for those who aren't familiar with this graph the red line at the top is kind of an economic boom scenario where every bit of new housing development coming into the district is selling houses hand over fist and then the blue line on the bottom is another economic bust and our reality has always been right down the middle and that's the line we use to set our expectations you'll see there it is projecting a slight decline next year in the mid-range i still think there's a good chance
117we can can best that number but what that is is right now not only do we have our largest kindergarten class of all time we have our second largest senior class on their way out and they were only off by about five students i almost had two records to report to you tonight so we have a large large senior class going out and that leaves a gap for the incoming kindergarten to fill so the model says maybe next year with that big class going out we might have a slight downturn and then continue to steadily grow so to give a brief synopsis of each of the levels that the model shows us elementary schools most schools are fairly level in their trajectory the report notes that cedar hills leawood overland trail and wolf springs are
118schools that may at some point in the five-year projections exceed the desired capacity levels those are things that the facility planning committee we talk about next we'll take up and discuss as to what the best course of action is for schools that meet those criteria middle schools aubry bend and oxford were projected at some point to exceed the desired capacity in their mid-range projection both of those later in the projections and then aubry bend it notes that there's a large amount of housing that's happening in the auburn bend area and that is going to be something we'll have be having a conversation about going forward in in coming years high schools there really wasn't much to see there when it comes to building capacities in large part because of the new addition at high that
119is now open and fantastic and it really set things to where everybody is right in that desired enrollment picture for the five year period so those are the details kind of the highlights or what's in the enrollment report i'd be happy to answer any questions just about those numbers before we get into what the facility planning committee picked up and did with those numbers and the recommendations they have and feel free to reach out to me on the side if you have you know a detailed answer that you don't want to burn this meeting with i'm always happy to talk uh to anybody about that so for the eric how do you say thank you you do a great job and i know you love what you do i really do yeah i know and
120your information is truly crucial to the success as we plan things so i appreciate it and thank you for making it even more understandable these days for a couple board members including myself to really understand so thank you you're most welcome and thank you for the kind words [Laughter] okay so for this year's facility planning committee kyle noted we had several meetings uh what they're tasked with for those who don't know is they review uh capacities and projections for all of our schools then they'll identify schools that may need some action whether it be administrative or board action to address a capacity issue and then for schools that require action develop recommended solutions of all the schools that we discussed the one that was identified for needing possible board action is wolf springs elementary and
121they recommend board action at this time why do they recommend that well here is wolf springs five year projection and as you can see uh this year's enrollments 516 if left unchanged with the development activity that we see ramping up in that area they could reach over 800 students by the end of 500 years from now when they exceed the desired capacity which we usually use 110 percent as that number would be to start the 2023-24 school year so the facility planning committee is recommending opening the newly constructed elementary 24 to give relief to wolf springs in the 2023-24 school year they considered possible boundary scenarios and weighed them against a weighted set of established criteria and after identifying a preferred boundary and presenting it in an open house and also considering information that came
122from an online thought exchange from the community the group convened again to review the comments that had been made and reaffirmed that they continued to endorse the version that was taken to the open house so no changes were made after the open house here you can just see in general the weighted criteria that go into that decision the reason that they made the choice that they did for their recommendation is because it meets the most of the highest priority criteria and so what does that look like i'm going to hit it again and it'll go all the way in right okay here's what the boundary looks like and here's what the numbers look like with that boundary so it it really follows the same strategy that was employed when wolf springs was opened giving relief
123to timber creek the idea there was to leave timber creek with a good enrollment a stable community that would not have to be in impacted by future boundary discussions hopefully for a very long time and that has been successful to this point because we were not we did not need to involve timber creek in the discussion and so the only impacted community for elementary 24's recommended boundary is wolf springs you can see with this boundary if opened in 2023 24 it brings the enrollment numbers down at wolf springs to a very manageable level and it keeps it at a very level enrollment going forward for the following years of the projection period and then you see elementary 24 opening with just over 200 students in the projections and beginning to grow because they are left
124with the growth energy in the area we had a lot of questions come in from the community as to what happens when we do open a new school and set a boundary and these are some of the main common answers the recommended opening as i said would be for 2023 per board policy students that are within the identified new boundary for a new school are required to attend for at least one semester and any exclusions to that would be children that are attending the chinese immersion program at wolf springs would not have to switch to the new school or if a student were living in that area and they were a transfer to a school other than the one receiving relief which in this case wolf springs they would not have to attend elementary as
125well so i'll go back to the map and the numbers any questions about this recommendation um i have a question i know we discussed this a little bit at workshop so we discussed this quite actually quite a bit of workshop so just to let everybody in the room know and um i know change is hard i know you know we went through a split when mike some of my kids were at morris elementary uh in order to go you know some went to timber creek that was that was hard i had my oldest uh went to pleasant ridge one year and then went the other two at aubrey bend and you know changes change is hard um but but we knew what was happening we knew what was what was what was coming down the
126pike so um can you tell me a little bit about how as a district the information that we give to homeowners that um or people who are thinking about buying about how this you know things may change depending upon your your neighborhood a little bit sure in the information that we have outward facing um for anybody looking up our boundary information that always carries some kind of disclaimer for lack of a better word at the bottom or notice maybe a better word that says that these boundaries for any school are subject to change from year to year as the district seeks to maintain the right capacity and enrollment picture at each of our our schools so for anyone looking for our boundary information and pulling the map off the website it's there usually when sometimes
127people call the district and we're happy to discuss with them how the process works and and all the details if they're trying to make the most informed decision possible but at the end of the day anyone that is moving in to a kind of a growth horizon of the school district should reasonably expect that they may be part of this conversation thank you and i believe this morning to mention there is a website a page on our site as well as you've reached out to various realtor groups in the past to make for sure everyone in the community is as informed as they possibly can be so but thank you very much yeah that's correct eric um we had a couple of i don't want to say challenges but suggested alternatives was this plan that
128you're presenting unanimously accepted by the facilities planning committee yeah after reviewing the uh requested alternatives and the effects of those and then weighing them against the criteria one to the other when we had our last committee meeting the vote was unanimously for this particular configuration okay thank you any other comments or questions for eric i think i would just add after uh sitting in on the four meetings that we're referring to here that this was a process that was done very well i really appreciated the information and insight that the district provided and we had patrons on the committee that were able to look at it with a level head and a very open mind and have come up with this solution which i personally endorse i think it makes the most sense for our
129district financially enrollment number wise and just as importantly longevity i feel like that this will hopefully leave wolf springs with a set boundary for a good time to come and allow the new growth happening down there in the southwest part of the district to continue and then you know when the time comes many years down the path or down the road to be ready to open another elementary school and then hopefully do the same thing for elementary 24 make it a set compacted boundary that is a large area i would imagine most of the people that live in that area understand that if you choose to drive your kid to school it might be a little bit of a drive time and also probably the majority of those folks will qualify for a free bus
130ride for their kids if they live more than two and a half miles from the building which obviously a majority of them will be able to take advantage of so i again appreciate the process i um the hard work that was put in and i do think after listening to our patrons speak at the meeting that this does seem to make the most sense for the district to move forward okay so this uh there is a action required with this uh would anyone like to make a motion to approve the recommendation that eric presented tonight sure i moved that the board of education approved the recommended school boundary for elementary 24 and the recommended opening date of august of 2023 thank you stacy motioned by stacy second by michelle all those in favor please raise
131your right hand motion passes 7-0 thank you so much thank you very much um i just let anybody know since i am willing to you know go into depth with anybody else's questions uh there's my contact email in case anybody's interested thank you thank you next up dan carney is going to give us a school safety update so as dan walks up and gets his presentation ready we thought it was important that you hear from our director of safety and security dan carney this evening about school safety in light of some of the events that's happened across the country in the last couple of weeks and dan is a gem for us so dan is going to talk to you about what's happening in our schools and we have some of our officers here this
132evening that highlight that too so dan i'm going to turn it over to you thank you um i should say congratulations to stacey mike and michelle and for the record i did cry during mike's speech so i wasn't really sure what to bring to the table tonight so i i put some things on some slides keep it brief but if you have other stuff that you want to talk about i was sitting there thinking of every time there is a school shooting in this country of significance the very first phone call i get is from a parent typically who asked me about metal detectors and i didn't put anything about metal detectors up here but it comes up it comes up all the time the question of metal detectors if we had metal detectors we
133could stop guns from coming into schools is the theory and so i'll start with that the in looking at that which we've done many many times over because we always take those suggestions like after sandy hook after parkland we we take those suggestions and we examine them carefully there have been studies done that show that metal detectors don't always keep weapons out of schools and in some cases they actually prompt the introduction of more weapons into the schools because kids want to want to beat the system so to speak but that really isn't the big reason why um we haven't ever moved in that direction and by the way i don't fault any jurisdiction that does because every jurisdiction has their own set of problems but in our case we put a lot of stock
134in relationships between students and staff and metal detectors the minute you introduce them along with all the armed security that goes along with them and that's the first thing that students see in the morning it it absolutely will create an us versus them kind of scenario in your school like guards and prisoners kind of relationship you know that's the first thing you experience every day so because we put so much stock in building trusted adult relationships between students and staff we don't think that's the way to introduce kids to school every day not to mention that kids come into schools not just through the front door as we all know they find their way in through sometimes one of the 35 entrances to a typical high school anyway so um that's metal detectors just something
135that comes up every time i started with this slide just because um i like the idea of reintroducing everybody so it's kind of a rehash of things we've talked about before to that p3 tips app that we still we still have this great partnership with crime stoppers um over in kansas city and those are um they have personnel uh law enforcement personnel that answer those tips 24 hours a day seven days a week if a student wants to submit a tip about something they've seen or heard that's concerning to them they get looked at right away and this has been pretty beneficial to us our weakness in this is marketing it to the kids and i think we can do better with that and i'd like to i like for our officers to kind of
136take the lead on that in high schools to market it okay this is the most boring slide that i have here but there you know when you're talking about safety and security in schools people want to know what you're doing so i just break it down so people most important uh physical security is important of course procedural stuff and then relational which i kind of mentioned before and i i always like to talk the most about that because i think it's the most important thing that we have um but kind of you know when i go out and talk to the staff in schools i i have this slide i love to throw up there that asks them about who is the security guard in the picture and i have of course the uniformed officer
137and i've got the principal and the custodian and everybody and of course the answer is everybody is everybody's a security you guys are undercover security guards in your school and whether you knew it or not right because everybody has to be vigilant everybody has to watch and then you have to let someone know when you see something that's concerning you have to let an adult there in the building know about it so we can do something about it right so that's why it's most important and most important but that's just a quick look at that i thought you might enjoy this this was an article that was in the blue valley high school um a paper at one point it's probably been a year ago or so but that's officer burgess on the right from
138overland park police department and officer nate schmidt on the left from the blue valley campus police department these like most of our and another reason we're putting it up there is to show this this this partnership that's just invaluable that we have with our police departments these guys are like brothers but it's really how what what happens at every high school where we have one of each in the high schools they just become become such good partners and um do such a nice job and these two of course didn't stop at being school resource officers they also became track coaches and football coaches at their school and it's really a cool partnership that on paper especially in theory i'm glad i wasn't the one who had to argue it because it might have sounded weird
139or maybe that it wouldn't work they wouldn't get along or something but it's it's really something to watch these watch these guys work there's our blue valley officers a couple of them aren't with us anymore um the top two left have have left us but we hired kelsey houchin who's here there she is right there and uh so she made number nine and we just hired a fellow thankfully to work at harmony and aubry ben his name is officer jim wright and he comes to us mostly from california but he's he grabbed a job right when he got in town but he's ready to come here and and join us so there they are you might remember i did this little recap with you last time where i talked about the experience of these officers
140people sometimes might think well you have campus officers they must be like wells fargo security people right you say no no these are highly experienced officers they have about twice to three times as much experience as actually the city sros have because they're typically a little bit younger they've all worked in cities um they it's they they have really interesting backgrounds if you if you get a chance to talk to them and then our training their training and i know this is important to a lot of people that we have good um uh substantial training that really is meaningful not just hey we got to get our hours of training in so let's go do something um so they they we have this foundational training they must have been through a police academy had the
141national sro foundational training the cit training that we hear a lot about that deals with mental health that's a foundational thing for every one of these officers to have and and myself then there's mandated training and fair policing is one of those so that's the training is the training is really good um let's see so he's talked about physical security not going to go through all these it's just kind of an example i i sometimes will say you know the physical security in in this country has become like a multi-billion dollar industry and people call and email me every day trying to sell us stuff but we're very picky in the school district about what we do we always ask the question will will this make a substantial difference and make our district safer this
142thing you're trying to sell us will it truly make a difference and and we ask questions like how will it impact our culture and those sorts of things too we're just not going after the latest shiny object that's out there so we can say we have it and there's a lot of it out there we also don't neglect it so we we've spent money on good solid systems for keeping our schools safe and um pretty impressive uh procedural security of course we have a overarching district emergency plan which is very very important to have in place especially if anything happens it's so important to have the plan in place and be able to draw on it for your strategies and what you're going to do people typically don't open it up in an emergency but
143if they've read it they have a pretty solid idea of where to go when there's an emergency in one of our buildings then the building has an emergency plan of their own and it's kind of i think i described this before it's kind of like federal law and state law so you've got the federal law up here that's the overarching and the state law gets more specific for that state or in our case for that school okay so they get very specific about where they go in a fire where they go in a tornado that sort of stuff um crisis response yeah crisis response team training we do this with our uh crisis response teams from the schools every other year we have training here typically minus the coveted year where we bring in the
144crisis response teams from each building and we work through scenarios with them emergency scenarios by the way they're not all school shootings either that's you know there's all sorts of emergencies we can work through and we do it with them which is all it's always kind of fun and it's also very instructive if you can learn how to work through any emergency or just any odd emergency it's you're going to be better at every emergency and then drills and contingencies for procedural security we're pretty good about following drills and when i say contingencies i i like for the schools to throw in a contingency so you have a fire drill but you put tape across a x a typical exit that says this is on fire you can't go this way and make this make
145the teachers and everybody work around those contingencies you can do them with lockdowns you can do it with all those things okay and kind of the last part again dealing with violence in schools it's always important before you talk about this to have a little bit of perspective um and so i'm not going to have a slide up here that has all the stats and how many shootings and how many people killed in all that business just suffice it to say kids are safer in schools than they are in their own homes they just are i think that kind of gets the point across anyway so back in after columbine i'm going to put all this up here so we don't there we go after columbine the secret service did a study on school shooters
146and they were attempting to find a um a profile i guess is what they were sort of after so that they could identify who is the person who's going to be a school shooter you probably heard that before if anybody's going to be a school shooter it's going to be this guy because he wears a trench coat all the time you know or whatever it is that's and what they found when they did that study and then they updated it a couple years a couple years ago the secret service did again is that there is no profile um really but they did find some commonalities um some common denominators in school shootings and um they typically back then and i think they've done it again they stick to the number 10 for common denominators they
147have 10 of them and i've got five of them up here because these are the five that are the most helpful to us all right and you can see in in written in black are the are the findings okay the common denominators and then in purple there what i've what i've put there is how that helps us okay so in other words if these school shootings were sudden impulsive acts that would if they were sudden impulsive acts that would be tough because we don't have any time if we don't have any time to figure them out ahead of time get in front of them before they reach the end zone just for example on that second one you notice i put a couple words or three words in red there and and so if attackers
148engaged in behavior prior to attack that caused concern or need for help that's good because we can identify behaviors of concern and we can assess and manage those behaviors that identify assess and manage comes right out of the secret service playbook for when they're trying to identify people who would assassinate elected public figures identify assess and manage that okay other people knew the attack plan we can gain access to these lines of communication that's a good thing if we can do that and of course all this stuff is going to wrap up here i'm not going to read the rest of you because you can see it it all wraps up with this trusted adult relationships and why i put so much stock in that why our school district puts so much stock in it
149dennis mccarthy who left here 10 years ago for me was the same way said this is the most important thing we can do when it comes to school safety is really have trusted relationships between kids and staff in buildings for the for all those reasons and there's really the i kind of tried to boil it down to five things first of all it's just the right thing to do it's not good to have a student walking through a building who doesn't have anybody they can go to in that building when they're having an issue when they're having they're feeling bad about themselves they're feeling suicidal or if they know that someone else sitting on the right or left is having the same problems if they have nobody to go to you know you've heard that
150after after a big incident where they say yeah nobody knew really knew that kid that's just not acceptable that's not good and then if they have that trusted adult relationship with somebody which we've seen play out so many times over the years i've seen it play out it opens up lines of communication that you would be really surprised about you'd be really surprised that a student will go and talk to somebody and tell them hey i'm concerned over here i'm seeing something that's really scary also if you have those relationships it establishes a baseline of behavior of normal for kids so they you can see what normal is and when they go off that you're more likely to recognize it because you've you bothered to get to know them you bothered to get to know
151who they are and you have this nice thing going this nice friendly thing going and so it gives us an opportunity to intervene and hopefully prevent violence in schools that's just something i threw in there because there you know when you're out talking to the to teachers and so on you talk about what are trusted adult relationships these are just some things there's probably you could list a hundred things you could do to really foster those good relationships with kids most teachers know exactly they already know right and and uh people who work as classified staff in our district probably already know but i always like to just hit on them again you know and especially that last one that one to me is just huge that you never should embarrass humiliate or demean a
152student in any way there's no reason for it there's just no reason for it now i got that from my time as a police officer that there was never a time in my mind i think you guys would agree with me on this there's never a time when you need to do that now you watch cops or you or you hear stories about cops and they they do these things or you see the detective in the interview room pounding on the desk and smacking somebody in the side of the head and all that stuff all television stuff there just never is a reason and i thought well if there's never a reason for us to do it then there certainly is never a reason for anybody else to do it either because we were we
153would deal with people who had committed serious crimes you know sometimes sickening crimes or hate crimes but it just it it serves no purpose except to create division and ruin those trusted adult relationships that you worked so hard to build okay that was that's just what i was going to throw at you because i wasn't really sure what you might want to hear but um i always like to reinforce that relationship thing it's big for me so dan talk a little bit about the relationship because i i hear you talk about relationships all the time internal relationships that staff have with students what about the external relationships that we as a district have with the local police departments yeah that you know it is amazing to me i i am constantly surprised at how good
154that really is um you you guys know that i have to make calls in the middle of the night sometimes because some information has rolled in about somebody making a threat to a school or something like that and i mean the response is instantaneous and there's this there's this really nice back and forth with that so they'll jump on something like that and i'll get a phone call back saying here's where we are this is what we've done the student who made the threat did not mean mean it they have no access to weapons they're they're horribly remorseful they were goofing around on social media or whatever it is but we told them to come in and meet with the principal tomorrow at 9 30 with their parents so those work out very well with
155the police department and then they'll call me and say hey we could really use a building for some k-9 training and we'll work that out or most recently we've worked out a deal to help the johnson county police academy which of course are all those officers to graduate and they're going to have a graduation ceremony at blue valley southwest i can't remember that i think it's in march maybe but so we work out stuff like that for them and we'll we'll waive that fee to try to you know give them a helping hand uh since they're doing so much for us i don't you know it's just that daily back and forth and um it's just too good to be true almost how good it is yeah so i think that's one of the key
156things that sometimes we we forget because i've i've called you in the middle of the night or at um six o'clock in the morning when i wake up and by the time school starts uh because of the relationships that you have and that we have i've called sros before that work with overland park or with leawood and and we get that information and we work together as a team uh to assess a situation and to ensure the safety of our students in our school so i just wanted to highlight that i throw all these pictures on these slides because i i listened to a presentation from a fellow who lost a daughter in a school shooting in arapahoe colorado and his side business was uh powerpoint stuff and he said always put lots of pictures
157on your powerpoint so it makes a lot more interesting so i've been doing that ever since so if you wonder why i keep doing that well the pictures are fantastic i i can't even it they rivaled by nothing right um but uh i just want to thank you um as you know you know because my background this is kind of near and dear to my heart and and you know we all know um that kids can't learn in an environment that they don't feel safe in so this is like primary basic you know um and and it's so incredibly important so i really appreciate the work you and your your your people do um they are always you know more than willing to to reach out in my experience to reach out and talk to
158kids parents etc and i just want to say thank you so much thank you any other comments or questions all right thank you okay that was great we're going to take a five-minute break so our closed captioner can take a quick break so let's resume at 8 26. okay we are ready to get started again we're excited to keep moving yes we are next up we have a covet update dr schmidt i'm excited to be back again tonight to talk a little more about covid and where we're sitting there before i begin though i do want to say i'm thankful for our board every every meeting but in particular tonight stacy mike michelle i have a day job in special education you know students with disabilities students with giftedness also working with social emotional learning
159and all three of you have been so instrumental over the last uh eleven nine and four years in promoting that work and uh making us better than we were before so just thank you just a quick snapshot over the match metro you know as as we all know case numbers are have been increasing across the nate metro from about thanksgiving on is very similar to what we saw last year at this time honestly we're about three weeks ahead of a wave if you lay our graphs on top of each other from last year but as you can see you know the case numbers have kind of gone down and came back up a little bit and the hospitalizations lag just a little bit on that and and this is metro wide this is not just
160johnson county uh johnson county vaccination rates we talked about this a little bit before uh the reason i threw this slide in is just to highlight that five to 11 year olds are now able to be vaccinated uh we have you know about 30 percent that were fully vaccinated which which i was surprised it was that high because it was only is less than a week ago that you could have gotten through your second vaccination and had two weeks to be considered fully vaccinated for those in that age group about 10 percent have had at least are fully vaccinated in 27 are have their first shot i know of one parent that i that i assisted in getting signed up for vaccination and i know that they just got their first i think on monday
161or today so i know that that should be much much better after after we come back from break mark i'm sorry i gotta ask this question it was alleged um during some other time this evening that seventy percent of our five to twelve-year-old kids kids no it would i mean right now this is the this is from johnson county and it would be 10 or fully vaccinated uh 27 have had one shot okay thanks you bet um i want to just say our driving clinic is doing a booming business we continue to be open six days a week short short hours on sunday we offer a new pre-registration to speed that process up which increases our capacity currently we can do between 275 and 300 tests a day in there and as you will see
162in a minute our business is good we do remind everybody that still listening that they do need to call and make an appointment before going there otherwise it just really gums up the system the clinic will be closed over winter break as a reminder too december 22 through january 3rd as you can see our testing numbers have just gone through the roof you know november 7 then november 14th those numbers that's where we had the biggest gain and that was even before thanksgiving the thanksgiving week was a short week and so of course many fewer tests and then back to about 12 12 19 with 152 positive so we're over 10 positive at this rate which is almost identical to what's going on in the county as a whole uh also you know our dashboards
163as i know you are all watching that carefully those numbers have gone up and as as i mentioned before when you lay the when you lay the graphs on top of each other from last year is very similar to last year but um one thing that one reason that is higher now is because we're doing testing and so because we have test to stay and that's a free service to our community that people are taking advantage of that they're also taking advantage of it just to check if they have you know cold or something and we are discovering some some cases that we wouldn't otherwise suspected and i think a year ago our numbers would have been much higher had we had that capacity cova dashboard again the number of quarantines they have remained fairly
164flat and i think that's largely due to the test this day option that we're keeping kids in school as you're very much aware last last board meeting we talked about we we took the mask mandate away from the high school but we put in some guard rails that if uh those impacted by by covid which would include those that are being quarantined those that are choosing to participate in tests to stay and the positive cases is over three percent then we would go back to masking and if if we get higher than that number it really becomes very difficult to continue to do tests to stay which would then require kids to miss school and um i've heard mike say several times you know one of the things we really want to do is make
165sure we keep student students in seats students in chairs and so you know that continues to be a bright a driving force and that three percent will allow us to do it i mean it'll be a strain but it'll allow us to do so so how are we doing so if you look at the elementary middle and high school you can see that elementary has a rate of nearly twice as many that are impacted than they are at the high school level a middle school is also very similar to elementary keep in mind that elementaries have just very recently been able to be vaccinated and so as those numbers creep up i expect those those numbers to kind of come together a little bit more and our high school from what i'm hearing from the
166principals is the number of vaccinated uh folks have been very high as they're you know figuring out who's been at close contact and so forth so as you can see all three of those levels are quite a ways away from three percent in aggregate but when you look a little closer and like at the high school level because honestly it only matters to high school at this moment you can see that blue valley high came the closest this time at two percent and and they had a couple of small related outbreaks you know that came around from a school but then the others southwest had a bit of an issue as well but then the other schools very very low numbers and so i'm hoping hoping that that stays in that way we have about
167six more days of school before a well-deserved break and then we will you know when we come back then of course we will use use this data to determine how we come back okay questions discussions mark what's the test to stay number signify on the previous okay test this day would be students that were able to come previously would have been quarantined but are able to come to school because they're testing each day and when they get a negative result then they're able to come to school so why do we include them in the in the numerator for the percentage yeah it it has to do with being able to manage the number of kids that are impacted and being able to see you know how many kids would otherwise have been quarantined can we
168manage to test to stay because we have a limited capacity within our testing center to maintain that and so that's part of it i understand i'm i'm still trying to figure out why that's included in the two percent the the i think the intent of the board was not to not to was to how do i say this the intent of the board if i'm not mistaken was to say if we have a large population or three percent population of a given school that is either positive or quarantined then we would um we asked you to to put the mass mandate back in for that school for two weeks my math is cockeyed or not but if we didn't have tests to stay they would be quarantined well i understand but i'm trying to figure
169out why we do have tests to stay and the fact is it's it's a it's a funny number we we don't have two percent at blue valley high that are that are indicated either positive or quarantined and and and that i don't think you guys correct me if i'm wrong i don't think that was the intent of the board no i i actually would take a opposing viewpoint mike um i think it absolutely was the intent to include those because if they don't show up for the test to stay then they're in the quarantine category and in our effort to make sure that most folks continue to come to school if at all possible we allow them on a day-to-day basis to determine you're either positive or negative that day but at any point you
170know within that 10 days or however long that period is that they could show up with a positive test they have to be counted in those quarantine numbers i i heartily disagree okay i i don't understand we have 23 kids at blue valley high in a week who are not ill right day-to-day day-to-day they're in school and yet we're suggesting that they're included in the count and and i you know this might i'm not going to die on this stake here i got 15 minutes left but yeah i agree did we talk i know we talked about tesla state last time i don't remember at all it was going to be included in this percentage either i know somebody pointed out earlier tonight and i wholeheartedly agree with you i don't i don't these i'd
171love to i get tests to stay i just don't know why it's including these numbers my point is we're trying to identify the absence rate within a school caused by covet and yes i agree had we if we didn't have tests to stay then those folks will be quarantined agree wholeheartedly but that's why we have tests to stay for them to be in the building for them to be in the building but but they are still at risk within that time period of quarantining of being positive it is still i get it and if that's the case then once they move from the test to stay column to the quarantine column they're not going to move to quarantine they're going to move to positive or they're going to okay okay they're going to move to
172positive that's the time you count them not when you're testing them and they're testing negative that i mean it just doesn't make any sense to me but they're technically quarantined they're being allowed to test then what's the purpose of test to stay why even have it so that those kids can attend school and not be quarantined at home i get it we test a kid he is he or she is not symptomatic and test negative and yet i i don't understand why we would count that number in the percentage i think it's to count all the people who are potentially at risk at that time that we've identified with being exposed to code there's also apologize there's also a management piece to this uh our nurses are struggling to keep up with the number of
173close contacts that have gone through that and if masks if masks are back on probably the number of close contacts will go down because both people are masked and without that guardrail if you will that would have mass go on it will swamp the nurses and swamp test to stay so i mean when we came up with the number of three percent it was based on the understanding that you know tested state would be part of that but you know of course you know certain understand that the board didn't understand it that way and by the way our motion just said positive or quarantine that we passed correct it didn't say test to stay it said positive it said i don't remember what it did i'm looking at it right now i i i feel
174very confident that the understanding that i left with that evening was that the test to stay would fall within the quarantine until such time as they dropped out of the window of time that they had to continue to test or they moved to positive i i i struggle to understand the logic of not including those kids when calculating that three percent because they were identified as exposed and it is within the ability of us now having that test to stay option to allow them to continue to be in the classroom which is our goal which is what we're all working for and not have to quarantine but technically they were still within that quarantine category and i i wholeheartedly believe that if that conversation had not if that had not been the intent that i
175i i just believe our entire conversation would have gone differently yeah i i don't agree and frankly what we're trying to do is identify the kids that are either positive or quarantined that was that's my understanding of the intent of the of the motion and the intent of the three percent and i'm not trying to take sides here i'm just telling you what my recollection of what we're trying to do and i don't remember i i the test to stay folks are close contacts the reason we have tests to stay is to keep as many kids in school as possible and yet we're trying to count them as nothing positive i get quarantine i get tests to stay it just makes it's illogical to me and i'm not going to argue the point anymore it's
176it's illogical to me i don't understand why test to stay is included in the number the fact is we're under 3 at this point carry on so here's what i would say the board needs to give us direction what is it that you want us to do well i mark i think you mentioned that that and my understanding was was this also that the way we're doing it but but i think you just mentioned is it unmanageable the the other way i don't want to lose any more nurses we've lost some great nurses i don't want to lose any more staff um you said it was it was you know kind of the guard rail so what let's not make this harder than this already really is but like i said the way the way
177we're the way they're running is the way i understood it at the last meeting i don't think we should ever make a policy decision this is going to sound terrible and i i i'll upset every nurse that we have and i don't mean to but i don't think we should make a policy decision on the basis in this case on the basis of gosh it really is hard to do i think we have an obligation to make a policy decision on the basis of what's right and figure out how to do it so if we make a policy we would need to be able to do it though that the board's up obligation is policy so our obligation is to figure out how to do it and if you can't do it then let us
178know and and we have to either modify or say sorry figure out how to do it so what we what i would tell you is that we don't believe that if we go above three percent um on the test to stay that we would be able to continue that program and still because we are at our capacity now we've we've upped everything we can do with mod um we're we're testing 300 students are not even students 300 students staff whoever a day um we are at our limit um no one should now we can change other things that we can if if you want us to look at not doing close contacts not doing some of that that's another discussion but that's where we're at i think we're talking across purposes i think that that
179i understand tess to say test to stay is not those numbers are not going to change if if we include them or exclude them from that percentage those no the number of test stays are not going to change the number of kids being tested won't change the calculation i'm just talking the calculation not the amount of work a nurse has to do not the amount of work that you have to do or anyone else you think we're overstating the percentage i think we're overstating the percentage of of known and suspected cases of code yes it's the the amount of work that our nurses and administrators would need to do you are correct it would not be impacted until we're over three percent right when it's over three percent however and mask are able and mass
180go back on in that case then that would prevent that number from growing bigger and and just talking about is the way we calculate the percentage we're trying to identify the sick kids and the kids that are likely to be sick and we're counting quarantined kids as kids who are likely to be sick sick right yeah the the test to stay kids either move into the positive or or are removed from the test to stay they're going to move one way or the other they're going to go off the roll or move to positive but not for 10 days it's not a me it's not i mean it's a day-to-day thing you can be you can be negative for five days in a row and then be positive on the sixth day those folks need
181to be included in the quarantine because they are capable of becoming positive because they were identified as being in a quarantined category and possibly have contracted the virus i i love and appreciate the fact that we have tests to stay and it allows them to come to school until such time as if and when they ever do test positive but i believe it's critically important for those numbers to stay in the quarantine category because on any given day within that time of exposure they could become positive they they're they're in the quarantine category but because they're willing to go get tested they have an opportunity to come to class it doesn't remove them from the quarantine category do we do let me ask you this are those kids mask required yes yes and they're but
182i'm going to say that it's going to sound like prison they're in the general population right but but require masks yes and then also lunch they need to eat six feet away so that when their masks are off they're not infectious in the inimitable fashion of stacy and mike coming from different places i'm not going to say i agree with her but i certainly understand her point this has been a microcosm last time i get it back for a second yeah i noticed that right before i came up here it's actually 12 quarantine at the high school and 40 testimonies those numbers did look big but oh this is what i wanted to just look at really fast isolations and exclusions is the way that we refer to it at least in the way we
183talked about it last time so what do you thoughts anyone else i think all mike was saying would you he didn't think column five should be up there it doesn't change what we're doing for tesla state just think call of five was misleading to the motion that we passed again give us direction just to clarify so if we make a modification it would be positive cases and only those that are staying home would have to be at three percent before we would have high school kids put mask back on that's the discussion say that again if if we remove test this day only from the equation but we do not change the trigger the three percent it would be positive cases plus quarantine would have to be at three percent i think we understand and
184i don't i don't remember what the motion was tom there's no doubt in my mind that that the motion was exactly what you said it was i i don't have it and i trust that you have the ability to look it up because i don't that being said um i think the question is do we want to modify it and at this point i think the importance is we understand why i don't think any of us had had tests to stay in or out it was a it was an assumption i think many of us made and i'm going to suggest you leave it the way it is for the time being there's no reason to change it at this point that i can see i mean even though i i argued like hell with
185stacey and and didn't understand it i understand the logic i don't have to agree with it but understand the logic and and i i you you we have we have two choices we modify or we leave it the way it is and i'm going to suggest my personal suggestion and if put to emotion i would leave it the way it is i get why there's confusion i think it's important that we understand the the reason for the confusion and this that's why this discussion was good would you like for me nope i don't have any motion to make no i mean the one i'm sorry the one that was passed no i trust i read it i read it we trust him so it seems like we have a general consensus not a vote but
186a consensus to leave it as it is okay yeah dr mary any thoughts uh no we're not quite done with our presentation okay okay well dr collins so as part of our covid update tonight we would like to address second semester and protocols and practices that are in place that will be in place second semester so what we anticipate is actually a return if you will or conducting of practices in schools that will begin to appear more normal or familiar to families so we heard this evening about school volunteers so over time during second semester our schools will begin to work with our parents to invite them back into to our buildings for volunteer opportunities that being stated each site manages that a little bit differently they did before and they will going forward as
187well so all of that won't return to past practices necessarily january 5th but throughout second semester our principals will be working again as i said to return school volunteers field trips we will begin to allow our buildings to engage in field trips field trips academic field trips that are tied to the curriculum that being stated our priority for transportation will be first and foremost getting our students to school home from school and to athletics and activities that require best transportation so we know given um our stresses related to our bus drivers this year some of those field trips that are planned may be canceled we're going to ask for flexibility again from our teachers and our parents and planning and planning those field trips so again throughout second semester we'll be working on that also
188second semester we start to see we have seen in the past we'll begin to see more of it this year will be those students who are transitioning between levels or you'll start to see middle school that wants to perform something for our elementary schools our principals will work together to start to provide opportunities for our students to prepare for transition or to have different experiential experiences with their peers at different grade levels second semester and then also end of the year activities so second semester and always includes a very big very busy april in may and so on those end of the year events principles will begin working with parents and staff to prevent to provide end of the year activities that again look familiar we'll conduct those activities in a safe manner but again
189hopefully what you're hearing overarching is throughout second semester we'll start to return to things that are more formal and i'm sorry more familiar and really help foster that increased home to school connection that we've talked to you about is a goal for us during the school year if you have any questions happy to answer those um quickly so just to reiterate so that anybody who is watching realizes that that is not a board decision that is an administrative position and so any questions parents have about the procedures within their school they need to direct to their school principal first um because we do get a lot of questions on that that's not something within our range all of those things that you that you just heard tonight are all administratively led at the district or
190more specifically at the building level and buildings do so with the guidance of district administration supporting them thank you so that's it that's the cobit update for this month okay our last agenda item is to approve the legislative positions for the 2022 legislative session so before you tonight i am requesting approval of our legislative positions for the legislative session which will start in just a few short weeks these are we've worked on these over the last couple of months these will allow us to really talk with our legislators and watch bills around those priority positions that we have and really enter into testimony based on that our priority positions have not changed the first one is to fund special education at the statutory amount to apply at risk funding to find student measures enhance student
191mental health and then eliminate tax credit and vouchers for private schools so those are the um the four key ones and then we have some other standing positions so i'm happy to answer questions or um i can ask you a question um so in order for our parents and patrons especially parents to know about these um i know that sometimes in the past we've disseminated it through our ptos and ptas and parent groups um is that still kind of the system or how are we doing this now uh there are a couple of different ways one is we have a district website around our legislative positions which we will have up there last year we started doing a brief update at each board meeting january through may with the key legislative things that happened and
192we will plan to do that again and then pta pto they have started to come in person and we're meeting with them and we will absolutely be giving them some updates pta pto presidents i should say and we will be giving them updates throughout the semester as well any other thoughts comments i was going to make a motion okay go for it i moved the board of education approved the legislative positions for the 2022 legislative session second all right motion by mike second by stacey all those in favor please raise your right hand motion passes 7-0 and do i have a move if we adjourn longest tenured board member gets to say okay and second longest tenured born member second second all right motion by mike's second by michelle all those in favor raise your
193right patrick thank you 7-0 thank you any birthdays none happy birthday jesus you