Blue Valley Board of Education Meeting 7-19-2021

001welcome everyone we're going to do the pledge of allegiance officer reindell will be leading us thank you thank you okay first we're going to start off with public comments so open forum welcome to everyone 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 open forum the board will enforce a three-minute time limit 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 that

002you are here because we care about the opinions and concerns of our patrons if you do not 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 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 specific student or employee is not allowed instead comments 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 if you have questions that require a response someone will follow up with you at a later time

003on behalf of the board i welcome you and appreciate your interest in blue valley as we strive to provide very best education possible for our students when your name is called introduce yourself before beginning your remarks as a reminder we ask that all remarks are limited to three minutes all right so let's get started first we have miss holly rook for your terrible leadership thank you i came here to thank you for your terrible leadership last year you failed to make important decisions about the education of our kids while you continue to pass the buck vote against having our kids in-person learning and without masks and one of your own members sent their children to florida because their schools schools were open you know there were groups of parents that were formed to help each

004other to make important decisions regarding our children's education our family moved to overland park two years ago we chose to be in a school district that was highly rated we chose we had numerous choices for a school district that we could raise our elementary age kids but we've been deeply disappointed with the academic program at the elementary school that we chose our kids rarely came home with homework and they continued to fall behind in reading and math they are still not at grade level for reading and math and how do i know this because we enrolled our children in a private school this spring and we had them tested as part of the onboarding process and they are still not at their grade level when we came to the district they were testing at their

005grade level that was two years ago i'm not saying that we didn't have good teachers but what i did notice was that there were no spelling tests and no homework that came home and the class sizes were pretty large i'm also saying that our children were bullied on the playground and in the classrooms so with the 2021 school year behind us we're looking forward to being free of blue valley schools and the parents that i've spoken to are already deciding making these important decisions about their enrollment choices i think it's a very wise decision for the parents not to support the blue valley schools some of the actions that you can take today as a parent if you wanted to continue with the blue valley schools write your school members school board members and logistics

006superintendent and let them know the changes that you want continue to talk to your kids at the dinner table to understand what they are learning in school and most importantly if you do not agree with the mask mandates or certain curriculum the schools are teaching then get a mask exemption form signed by a local pediatrician and our parents group can help you with that to find that local pediatrician because they're really hard to find also you can opt out of certain curriculum such as sex education with binary gender education anything that's related to the 1619 project and get to know your teachers your students teachers personally if you want to know more about taking back your kids education please get to know the school board candidates that are running for your district that agree with

007no mass mandates for kids and are focused on key issues on helping your kids to achieve better reading and better math skills that will actually help them in the future to the activist teachers that continue to promote a divisive learning environment your time in blue valley is limited thank you okay next we will have galen perry thank you i'm dr perry um i appreciate your opportunity my opportunity to talk first of all i appreciate your desire to protect the blue valley school community these are very trying times and i want to apologize to you for the mixed messages that our public health agencies have conveyed to you and the burden that has been placed on you we all feel like we need to do something right rather than do nothing but as a physician i

008want to put you in my shoes i want you to play doctor tonight my oath is the hippocratic oath and i have been told to first do no harm my job is to weigh the risk benefit ratio of every patient who sits in front of me and sometimes they want me to do something right and sometimes doing something is harmful so i don't do it so i respect your desire to substantially reduce the risk of infection in our school district especially among the unvaccinated but i want you to look at the risk benefit ratio our mental health services are overwhelmed our hospitals are not overwhelmed with children i think that speaks worlds um we know and we have known for a long time from a large sweden study that 1.8 million students went to school

009with no mask all year and there was not a single cova desk and the teachers actually fared better than other professionals we also know that children don't die from this disease the survival is 99.95 percent 99.95 percent 331 children have died from covenant in the united states a thousand children die every day from drowning forty percent of our kids are immune already and kids don't spread they're not big spreaders household studies have shown that our teachers are obviously at risk and if you have comorbidities you can go get a vaccine if you choose and actually 64 percent of johnson county residents greater than 50 have already been have already been vaccinated so put yourself in a situation where you put one teacher in the room she chooses to be vaccinated and oh by the way

010that sweden study was before vaccines you put 20 to 30 kids in that room unmasked regardless of whether they're vaccinated or not those kids are not a risk to one another they don't they don't die from this disease the teacher is also not at risk based on the sweden study but now she could be vaccinated you have a classroom who's safe okay we're not putting anybody at risk and that's what we want right so my question is and my my desire is we need to normalize the lives of our children we don't need to place the burden of this pandemic on our kids we need to we need to prioritize their mental health the mental health services are overburdened the hospitals are not full of kids dying and then we need to quit stigmatizing their

011friends so i would beg you to consider your policy and the risk is mental health issues normalize our kids lives thank you dr perry um next up is owen frederick mr frederick is he here nope okay next up is melissa gainer keener i'm sorry if i mispronounced that everyone does it it's jenner oh i definitely would not have gotten that no one does thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight uh my name is melissa jenner and i'm a mother of four children three of whom are in the blue valley system i'm a physician practicing in pediatric and neuropathology i'm here as a private citizen i'm not speaking on behalf of any health care system or practice i am here to present a letter signed by myself and a hundred other local physicians regarding the

012safe opening of schools for the 2021-2022 school year this letter has been emailed to the blue valley board of education as well as to other local school school boards within the kansas city metro on both sides of state line a copy has also been shared with the local media dear superintendents school board members and administrators we the undersigned our physicians mddo who practice within or reside within the kansas city metropolitan region we can comprise a wide range of clinical practice and specialties we agree with the newest guidelines published by the expert that the cdc january i'm sorry july 9th 2021 the american academy of pediatrics july 18 2021 and the johnson county department of health july 16 2021 we urge schools to follow science and the experts and to enact the following procedures and policies

013at a minimum one prioritize in-person learning two mandatory universal masking for grades in which students are not yet eligible for vaccination this would be grades preschool through sixth grade uh board i ask you to please silence the the members of the audience so that i can have my time to speak thank you let's be respectful please we all have our opinions and we want to be heard number two i'm sorry number three strongly encourage masking for unvaccinated students in grades where students are eligible for vaccination that would be grades 7 through 12 in most schools we agree for strong contact tracing including following health department guidance for isolation and quarantine we all agree that our students need to be in schools and they need to be safe enacting these policies will give schools the best

014opportunity to do both while minimizing potential instructional interruptions due to illness contact isolations and quarantine sincerely the undersigned the complete list of signatures is available on the pdf which is attached to the email um please note that these are the minimum standards for safe opening uh we recognize that the american academy of pediatrics recommended universal masking and we agree with that on a personal note i am exhausted and i am disheartened i wish i didn't have to be here today i'm not a public speaker and i have no desire to be one or to have a public presence i have nothing to gain personally for being here other than possibly being ridiculed or harassed on social media and other platforms what i want to do is care for my own children and the children who

015are my patients i know that the last 18 months has been hard on all school boards it has been hard on us as physicians as well but in the end i'm going to choose safety over being popular and i really urge all of you to do the same thank you so much for your time this evening thank you okay uh next up um jason anderson is did he make it great thank you i can tell i'm going to be popular as well so thank you for your time my name is jason anderson i'm the parent of a fifth grade student at timber creek elementary i'm speaking today just for myself and as a liaison of the blue valley kova 19 transparency group which is a gathering of a little under a thousand other parents teachers

016and other affected community members so my comments are not endorsed by them but i think that they accurately reflect our shared experiences over the past year so as i just mentioned earlier today the american academy of pediatrics issued new guidance urging in-person learning for all students which is excellent and also recommending requiring masks for all students regardless of vaccination status in their words and i'm just quoting them as we start the 2021-22 school year a large portion of students are not eligible to be vaccinated and there are coveted variants that are more contagious because of this and because we want to have all students in school the aap advocates for all students teachers and staff to wear masks while indoors and school now obviously that that's not where the district is today and i don't

017expect at the end today that that's going to really change there's just too much in motion at this stage i've not been a lifelong resident of the district but it's been very personally saddening that public health policy and this this preference over rights has become such a divisive thing people are looking for black and white answers to something that has just a whole lot of gray i'll use my own personal circumstances as one one example so my son who is 11 is is not yet eligible for a vaccine obviously my father is um so he's currently hospitalized in in the icu and is preparing for chemotherapy right now i just came down from st lux like two hours ago um we only have an in-person solution for next year right and with no mass mandate

018just an optional requirement so i get to now decide whether it's safe for my son to visit my father or whether it's safe for me to visit my father or anybody else in my household based on unknown unmasked behaviors of other people in his school and his classroom now i get that we all have different perspectives on risk and what's risky and what's not and how much risk we're willing to accept and that's that's totally fine like we've it's always been that way and for the most part those risks are things that we can just isolate to ourselves they don't have a ripple effect to the others in our community but when those decisions affect the risks of others you're stealing safety from others for your own personal benefit and when you send your child

019to school next month without a mask you're slightly increasing my risk or my son's risk for contraction disease which yes is very very unlikely to cause him any harm but it does create just a little bit more risk for people in our orbit and for others that are in similar situations i am not the only person that lives in the district who might have other family members that they are worried about and we are equally entitled to an appropriate education by the district okay thank you very much next we have jim mcmullen um good evening my name is jim mcmullen i've got five children four of whom are three of whom have graduated from the district one who's a rising senior at blue valley west and then a little one i'm not here to talk

020about covid i think there's some other people that will address it i'm here to talk about blue valley's stated mission and i'm going to start with a an anecdote or maybe just a personal experience my oldest son attended blue valley academy five years ago during his senior year it was really a wonderful [Music] school with dedicated teachers and staff he's doing very very well these days those were unpleasant years for him the academy provided him a light that shone through some really dark times this past weekend he attended a funeral for a classmate of his at the academy the sad reality is that if you have a child who attended the academy by his or her mid-20s you see too many of that child's classmates who have wrecked their lives unfortunately we feel like our

021boy is on the right path our community is changing rapidly its cohesiveness is fraying and i think we all see it kovit has driven a spike through the heart but our future is not written i believe the district should explore expanding the academy's mission to junior high as well as using the academy's approach more broadly across the district namely striving for a more close-knit environment in the educational building a little bit like our elementary schools do um just kind of disappear to the junior high and high school level and educators with a focused and a noble cause so i have some suggestions first i think we need to reorient the district's view of our young people blue valley's mission views our young people as fragile and vulnerable it reads through on every line of the

022mission statement but they are neither fragile nor vulnerable all of our students even the ones who struggle mightily as my oldest son did are resilient and capable how would our world change if we viewed all of our children as resilient and capable and we put them to the challenge with the district's excessive focus on social emotional learning we are encouraging our young people to look inward to focus on themselves instead of with an external view focused on others and the community i urge the district to look long and hard as its mission we have a very potentially tumultuous time in our society in front of us i think we can all sense it the pace of change is rapid and institutions are often far too slow to adapt next miss amy thomas i love that

023we start each meeting with the pledge of allegiance where we all agree that we are one nation one people indivisible imagine my disappointment when i read this material from a mandatory de i teacher training that states that america i quote america is a racist country built on racist ideas it goes on to say and i quote privileged white people oppress people of color and heterosexual people suppress gay people this training went on to encourage teachers to quote use your voice and educate share the truth about racism with others and help organize or attend protests this hateful device of material teaches teachers to hate america and ultimately break every person down into privileged in the oppressed this is the exact definition of critical race theory crt is not a noun as we've been using it it's

024a verb crt is the action of a marxist movement that teaches people to hate america and it segregates people into privileged and oppressed it sounds a lot like this training blue valley chooses to call this training de ni so you can tell the public in the state board of education that you don't teach crt you can call this whatever you want to the material of crt here's my biggest concern in the late in the last board meeting you mentioned having denie committees of each school what oversight do these committees have what are you doing to ensure this material is not being taught to our children recently one of you up there was quoted blue valley is going to insert de ni into everything we do and we will rewrite curriculum to insert d e and

025i if this is a material being taught as d e and i it needs to be stopped immediately and parents need assurances that this hateful divisive material will not be built into our curriculum as mentioned in prior board meetings i am responsible for dei for a national company if i trained on this material i would be fired if i called it de ni because it is hateful divisive discriminating and it creates a hostile work environment additionally this training does nothing to accomplish any business objective how is this training doing anything to achieve academic excellence i believe there is enormous value in diversity and is critical to organization success i believe we should take the time to learn about cultures with people with different backgrounds because i know collectively as a diverse organization with differing people

026in different perspectives we are better together that is the message of diversity it should not be aimed at segregating people into privileged and oppressed which does nothing but drive a wedge between teachers and teach in making them hate one another in america i have applied to be on the deni committee i ask you take my application seriously i believe i can help blue valley provide a diverse diversity message that is unifying when it encourages us to appreciate one another for our differences i hope that we can look forward and focus on the real issues at hand we do not have a diversity issue we do not have a race assist in blue valley we have an educational issue we are falling short in our scores we are falling short in reading and our kids are

027behind we can rally together to focus on education not this thomas next is brooke liu uh hello my name is brooke liu and i've been a physician assistant for the past 14 years on friday july 16th 2021 dr samny areola sent out a letter to all school board members and superintendents in the johnson county area he stated that the johnson county department of health recommended that school boards implement a policy for indoor mass for children or persons not fully vaccinated do you realize we're in the largest clinical trial of all time have any one of you actually sat down and researched the vaccination scientists from pfizer moderna biotech and the nhih took a synthetic spike protein put it into an injection encapsulated it with a lipid nanoparticle that contains graphene graphene is four thousand times

028stronger than titanium it is a man-made metal-like alloy which is indestructible it is toxic to humans it can sustain heat temperatures up to 1700 degrees fahrenheit so they took this unstable virus which we all knew from 2020 that kovit was unstable and vulnerable and encapsulated it into an indestructible delivery system that people are injecting into their bodies to produce billions of spike proteins on august 6 2020 the world patent office granted moderna the patent w.h.o zero two zero one six zero three nine seven this was a global plot patent for messenger rna lipid nanoparticle vaccines the covid 19 vaccine contains chimeric viruses and toxins combined with diagnostic sorry i feel like i'm reading so fast to get all this through lipid nanoparticle platforms the lmp can target specific organ and organ systems throughout our bodies

029but are not limited to reproductive cardiovascular pulmonary or the central nervous system specifically crossing the blood-brain barrier what's so alarming is that these encapsulated spike proteins can put biomarkers in the lipids and go and bind to specific organ systems more recently these biomarkers have congregated in women's ovaries and bone marrow these biomarkers are cytotoxic and can destroy these organs and cause our immune system to turn on itself there was a recent study performed by jefferson university in china between messenger rna and lipid nanoparticle platforms these lipid nano nanoparticles made of graphene used in pre-clinical vaccine studies were highly inflammatory so why as a healthcare provider and a mother would i inject something so toxic and harmful into my child which can essentially destroy their immune system we're starting to see the short-term effects of this

030vaccine with blood clots meningitis heart attacks myocarditis strokes shingles and death we have no idea what the long-term effects are of this vaccine the fact that this vaccine is being pushed so heavily is unconscionable you can call me crazy or conspiracy therapist or whatever but i suggest you do your own research next is christine white my name is christine white i have two daughters at blue valley northwest i'm a pediatrician and my views tonight are my own i'd like to discuss the different approaches that can be used to teach reading for decades there has been a debate within the american educational system about the best method one group believes in what is called the science of reading or structured literacy this is simplistically referred to as phonics where a child is taught the sounds our

031letters and letter combinations make then they use that code and knowledge to sound out words and from there they can really take off reading the other method is whole literacy whole literacy teaches kids to guess what an unknown word is based on the context of the passage and what word would make sense or using a picture on the page to guess what the word might be hold it or she does not teach a child to sound it out basically you must memorize every word to learn to read when you get to the third or fourth grade and there are no pictures to use as clues you are lost in 1997 the us congress formed a commission that looked at 600 studies about reading to determine which method was superior after three years of study these

032education experts found the science overwhelmingly supported structured literacy as the best way to teach reading blue valley uses the whole literacy method with a sprinkling of phonics and i believe this has led to our district's poor reading scores 21 of our kids read below grade level and less than 50 percent are prepared for college or career when they graduate reading difficulties are a national problem but states such as florida and mississippi that have enacted laws that mandate structured literacy have seen huge gains in their reading scores in the last 20 years florida scores increased 19 points mississippi's have increased 13 points but in the last 20 years kansas scores have decreased by two points decreased the gains are seen for all students in these states but students of color and students from lower socioeconomic groups

033saw the biggest gains blue valley has started to nibble around the edges of structured literacy but we need to jump into the deep end of this pool and fully embrace it we need to invest our time and money to train every kindergarten through fifth grade teacher in blue valley and structured literacy the main job of our schools is to ensure our children can read and write our main focus right now in our district should not be on social emotional learning or on diversity equity and inclusion it should be on academic excellence and ensuring we are putting all our efforts into that most important endeavor thank you next is michelle mitchell hi my name is michelle mitchell i have two kids at blue valley northwest and i was also an emergency sub last year as you

034know because i've been here before i want to talk about that we don't need to have mass to keep our kids safe because kovid is not lethal to this age group i looked at the data today on the kansas state for the health department and 0.0 percent of the deaths in the state are for ages 0 to 17. our kids might catch it but they are not at a high risk of having serious complications or dying from it we started this whole thing with we need to protect our hospital capacity and we need to protect our elderly and we we locked them down hard these kids have paid a dear price for this you take my high schooler he's a senior this year he lost the last quarter of his sophomore year he had half

035of a junior year because of hybrid and just decreased instruction and he's looking forward to his senior year and we're all on board for what was published on the last day of school if you're vaccinated master optional move forward fully in-person education i'm very concerned with the media reports like today from the american academy of pediatrics saying universal masking in schools it's not necessary the children are not at a high risk for covid and so i dug into the data this afternoon it's been a few hours and i couldn't find nationwide data on how many of this uptick in the past month are due to people that haven't been vaccinated versus vaccinated but i dug into five or six states that had that data available and it truly is currently a pandemic of the unvaccinated

036adults it was 99 point some odd percent of the deaths in the last month have been unvaccinated adults and it was in the mid 90s for the hospitalizations so while our children might get exposed to it and might test positive to it their symptoms are mild the side effects from masking isolation and all the uncertainty and craziness of all this division in our schools is far more detrimental to them than any exposure to anything that they would get in the schools the other thing is there's no more mass mandate in the county it doesn't make any sense when the lowest risk demographic is universally masked while out in the community we're not putting at people in masks so we're out at baseball practice we're at soccer practice we're in the sam's club we're hanging out

037with our families we're going to parties no mass no massive mass but then our healthy adolescents and children have to wear masks in school and the other thing is when i subbed last year i was in all but four of the buildings in this entire district and it was really awesome experience i couldn't believe just the difference from school to school and the culture and it was a great experience but when i had the little ones i just don't see i'm not a doctor i'm an engineer how a soiled brown black wet mask on all day every day for a young child is an improvement in public health it's disgusting it's gotta be worse thank you next is paul schmidt all right guys my name is paul schmidt i'm a dad i believe i like

038southwest i'm a junior i want to ask you a few questions to kind of get your mind stirring who was your favorite teacher in high school middle school not elementary but we'll talk about high school because that's where minds are shaped that's where hearts are inspired and all that do you have one do you even have one was it rocky stone was it steven cortez was it raj traver was it chris jensen or was it my dad how did they inspire you can you answer those questions i asked myself i asked my oldest daughters that question my oldest said it was her avid teacher four years of investing in her loving honor but what's interesting is i asked my daughter and i knew the answer right away i go she goes stephen cortez and she

039also mentioned bill mcroberts from from caps they helped shape my daughter building confidence inspiring her career pursuit sparking an entrepreneurial spirit why because they love to teach inspire and they care so why am i doing this i want to contrast some things i learned in the last 12 months that are major headwinds coming your way and they need to be looked at and addressed older students especially young men are disenfranchised with school how do i know that i have two families in my neighborhood a friend whose kids could care less about school parents of elementary kids have to hire tutors to get their kids at grade level parents are pulling their kids from blue valley because of a lack of trust and a lack of confidence academic achievement proficiency are below standard parents have experienced

040indifference communities have suffered so i asked you about your favorite teacher for one reason i want to picture them i want you to create the lifelong learner i want this to be about lifelong learners instill curiosity and thirst for knowledge i believe the district has lost sight on that so what would i do if i was a real this is the real world business i'd be an activist investor buying shares of stock forcing chains so what i do here's my 3.5 things to do number one take a student first approach 100 goal of all students able capable to be at grade level in math reading and other essential skills shifted districts focus to those things that are original its purpose teaching kids how to be learners educated in math and all that removing conferences from

041the teachers and finally if those things don't happen demand changes at the executive level of the district to clean house and put put the right focus in on the teachers on the mission of the school the prayer face one thing it's a crime to board kid with education thank you next is ken stewart hi i'm ken stewart blue valley community member a proud teacher from blue valley high school i retired in 2016 after 22 years there as a high school librarian and i stand here as a librarian before you these two trophies i would expect y'all to know what they are by sight and more importantly what schools won them and for what reason these are for our library programs these are international awards for our curriculum-based integration of information management systems to put it

042very shortly these are applied for internationally it took us a year to get the forms done to get everything done because this isn't a crystal apple award that a television station gives out for a good job this is for a program that is so embedded in curriculum that it's seamless you don't even know it's there but our kids graduate with the information skills they need for post-secondary schooling and post-secondary work your passing the thing on cutting library paras is unconscionable you don't know what is going to happen it's a domino effect the reason we can get awards like this the reason we can be so embedded in curriculum is because we have the support staff we need we're teachers we don't sit behind a certain desk and check books in and out all the day

043if you knew what the parents do at the school levels my first question would be okay who suggested it because this is obviously an administrative decision it's not educational so i would be questioning the principles okay with the list of all the things the paris do how are you going to get them done now very easy let's take three fun things okay the schools the kids have macbooks at secondary okay they're in the middle of a lesson in school it goes down the teacher looks at it they can't get it fixed they send it to the library the para goes through it they know what to look for they can't get it done they check it in check them out a new one getting back to class back in school then that one is sent

044to i.t who's going to do it substitute laptops in the morning who's going to check them out i mean there's a myriad of things that have to be done ela class set novels how many hundreds of dollars have had been lost at school levels because these are textbook funds and they were not taken track of until the libraries took them over we were the perfect people to do that there's so many things librarians are classified are excuse me certified teachers our contracts are 7 30 to 3 15. okay we had till 5 o'clock wonderful wednesdays for a while north has been 6 30 till 3 o'clock in or 4 o'clock in the afternoon for 20 years you need to investigate the programs you're not asking the right questions next is jacqueline stanley hi my name

045is jacqueline stanley i have three kids two of which are at the elementary school and i want to give a shout out to our elementary school harmony elementary they've been phenomenal my kids teachers have been amazing and we're so grateful for them and so i do want to mention that i'm going to speak for the teachers a little bit later my youngest was supposed to start kindergarten this upcoming year but with things being so unknown and uncertain we decided to put her in transitional kindergarten and hold off for a little bit couldn't bring myself to enroll her i'm also a former middle school social studies teacher so i know what it's like to be a teacher i've been there i've got the kids i've been a teacher i'm not out of touch at all beyond

046that i have friends throughout the district that are teachers i've got friends in other districts that are teachers as well what i want to speak to today is two things the first is transparency and i just ask that you guys please be transparent with us don't change the rules to the game at the last minute we have parents that have been waiting to see what they can do with their kids this upcoming school year knowing what the plans are moving forward so please just be open and honest with us that's all we want we want to know what to expect the other thing i want to talk about is autonomy it seems like in our society today we're really divided and especially in our community it seems like one side wants to control others and

047the other side wants to take personal responsibility for our health for our families for what our kids learn and obviously i am on that side when it comes to masks vaccines this should be a health decision made by individual families i don't need to know the results of your colonoscopy i don't need to know if you're on birth control i don't need to know if you're working out daily and eating healthy foods i sure hope you are because that should be the first thing that you're doing that's none of my business okay so when we are looking at the health of our families of our our kids that's that's none of your business and the teachers i'm going to get to that too regards to curriculum gosh i really wish we could focus on educational

048learning objectives the math the reading factual history i want to teach my kids the values that are important to my family i don't want somebody else to be responsible for that that's my job we have so much room to grow and improve educationally please let me teach my kids values and i promise at home my kids are learning to be respectful inclusive and kind that is of the utmost importance in our family but i want to teach that i also want to mention oh gosh i'm running out of time teachers there are more teachers than you realize that think like me there are teachers that are being asked if they're vaccinated and they're scared there are teachers that can't speak out they can't speak to this they're talking about how hard this past school year

049was i talked to one that was in tears today she's we have a culture where she can't share how she feels because she's not on the right side and that's so sad so i want to speak for our teachers too gosh dang i'm so mad i ran out of time thank you next is julie myrick yes sorry don't start my clock yet hang on oh here we go okay first of all i want to thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak to you this evening and i really want to let you know how much i appreciate actually seeing you guys face to face for the first time i would like to express my concern regarding dr ariel's recent letter to superintendents and school board members the health department recommends that school boards implement

050a policy for the 2021-22 school year that requires indoor masking amongst persons who are not fully vaccinated it is my understanding that the navigating change policy for the previous school year was implemented by the school board because we were under an emergency order due to covid19 since no emergency order exists in either johnson county or the state of kansas no new policy should be implemented now or in the fall during flu season when you know cases will rise like viruses typically do parents and children have been the victims of a massive disinformation campaign it is time to start questioning how we got here and it's time to stop listening to the so-called experts like dr areola it's time to be empowered and stop living in fear do your own research you will discover that you

051have been massively lied to at first you will be sad but then you will be very angry this is good as more people wake up to the propaganda surrounding covet 19 the more they will demand a stop to this medical tyranny no child needs to wear a mask or get the vaccine children are at an extremely low risk from coven 19. children spread covered much less than adults and asymptomatic children do not spread covet teachers do not need to do not face an increased risk from children schools have not driven the spread of covet 19 and the effectiveness of mask is inconclusive masking children correctly is unrealistic because improper masking is common and unsanitary masks can hinder speech development in children and children struggle to learn with masks in addition to causing headache and fatigue

052some masks contain toxic chemicals many places currently do not require a mask on children our children have played all summer without masking without an increase in cases schools and cities without mask have not fared worse perhaps they fared even better a group of parents sent their kids masks to a lab for analysis of the six masks submitted five were contaminated with bacteria parasites and fungi including three with dangerous pathogenic and pneumonia-causing bacteria no viruses were detected the analysis did detect alarmingly dangerous pathogens to include pneumonia tuberculosis meningitis sepsis keratitis amoebic encephalitis utis resistant to antibiotics food poisoning some crazy word i can't pronounce that leads to lyme's disease diphtheria and legionnaires disease the face mouse studied were new and freshly laundered before wearing and have been worn for five to eight hours during in school

053learning by children age six to eleven do you still think maths are safe especially in school school-aged children who have an incredibly low risk of infection and a statistically zero chance of death as we ask more questions please accommodate individuals who think differently than you or you will destroy your school district i have decided to transfer my children out of blue valley and they will be going to private school because your overreaching policies do not require parental consent and do not put children first thank you next is debbie detmer okay all right i'm debbie deber i'm a grandmother of eight and a great aunt germany and um i live in shawnee kansas actually but i have many in this district uh the emergency declaration is no longer an effect and it's definitely over you need

054to update all ventilation throughout every school to decrease the spread of viruses that's your best step and you've got the money from the coven and then continue to wash hands those two things right there will make the difference that you need the cdc is not the law neither is the johnson county department of health our a.g derek smith and our sheriff hayden is the law you the school board members are not the ones that make the law our kansas legislators make our laws the measured carbon dioxide content in inhaled air observed in a study of mass german school children was at least three-fold higher than the german law allowed according to research letter published in the journal of the american medical association so no more coveted 19 mitigations not from the school's period no masking

055no distancing no vaccine passports no contact tracing no testing on our children staff and teachers there are zero deaths in johnson county under 20 years of age look at the dashboard since the pandemic began zero there are children dead due to the experimental drug the vaccine in recent weeks i will take that zero death for natural infection over rare but non-zero death rate for children getting vaccines and we cannot base policy on a few kids we have to base policy on large numbers singling out the unvaxed kids opens up opportunities for those kids to be treated differently and it's discrimination could suffocating our children quit indoctrinating our children via crt america is not racist stop spreading hate stop crt teaching thank you very much for your time thank you next is jessica eberline hi um

056yep i'm jessica eberline and i'd like to just say this in response to the diversity equity and inclusion committee suggestion at the june board meeting to implement a dei subcommittee and response system to each school i'd like to share these words it's a from a chinese woman who suffered under the communist chinese mao say tang regime and recently denounced her county school board in virginia so these are her words and this is what she had to say i have been very alarmed by what's going on in our schools you are now training our children to be social justice warriors and to loathe our country in our history growing up in mao with china all of this seems very familiar the communist regime used the same critical theory to divide people the only difference is they

057used class instead of race during the cultural revolution eyewitness students and teachers turn against each other we changed our school names to be politically correct we were taught to denounce our heritage the red guards destroyed anything that is not communist old statues books and anything else we were also encouraged to report on each other just like the student equity ambassador program and the bias reporting system this is indeed the american version of the chinese cultural revolution the critical race theory has its roots in cultural marxism it should have no place in our schools and i thought that was pretty well put but that's obviously not my experience i've been in america my whole life and actually right here in blue valley and i had a great childhood and i really don't think that's what they

058are i don't think that's what the dei committee is saying but i do definitely think that these systems of reporting can start off sounding like a good idea and quickly go into tattletailing and especially with kids and their little brains are not fully developed yet even as teenagers so anything subjective or i feel like as a teenager i can for sure say we could have um use this to maybe manipulate a situation i just would ask that instead of maybe these reporting systems maybe we just work with the students one-on-one which i think is what we did growing up i wasn't a perfect kid and i spent some time in the principal's office but it was addressed with me privately and if it was another student involved or there was bullying or things like that

059um i just think that might be a more respectful way to handle it for all parties involved so that's just my opinion thank you thank you next we have michaela weidman hi there i'm michaela widman and i'm a former school teacher currently in ftm which is a full-time mom and i'm here on behalf of my husband jared whitman who's an md but could not be here tonight we have six children ages almost 10 to and all have attended blue valley schools we have a unique perspective and we wanted to share it if we may and thank you for letting us and please bear with me because we might have a different opinion than you expect when you start to hear me speak some of the people here might know our story but two of our

060kids spent years enduring a torturous neuroimmune illness called autoimmune encephalomyelitis this means that their immune systems were misdirected and relentlessly attacked their brains and central nervous systems for years two of our other kids had early onset of these symptoms as well which was also difficult to endure as well as terrifying we knew that they were one trigger away from possibly going full blown like their siblings we spent years managing these illnesses before finally finally finding treatments that brought them back to health and rehabilitated them from traumatic brain injury from their own immune systems to describe more how rare and severe these illnesses have been our daughters doctors in seattle and our son's doctors in houston we discovered in 2017 that our kids could no longer be vaccinated when our youngest received her kindergarten shots and

061within 24 hours her body had become neuro autoimmune this made my husband and me wonder if the other kids had also been vaccine injured without our knowing and understanding we had a great lack of knowledge at the time all to say our family is medically exempt from vaccines now everyone says that if you don't want to protect yourselves from this pandemic get vaccinated and wear masks to protect those who cannot be vaccinated so here we are we are those people getting a vaccine for our kids could be like sending a bolt of lightning through their immune systems and nervous systems firing them up and misdirecting antibodies into their brains causing inflammation and traumatic brain injury potentially believe it or not getting covered could also do the same thing i know people that this has happened

062to they fear the neuro autoimmune more than they fear the covet admittedly it is a scary life we live we have fought hard and have spent an unspeakable amount of money to keep our kids alive and bring them back to health that said you might be surprised to find out that my husband who is an md and i still firmly believe that it is not the responsibility of the whole community to inject something into their bodies that they do not feel comfortable with nor subject themselves to the breathing discomfort of wearing masks just to protect our kids thank you okay that wraps up our open forum for tonight on behalf of the board of education i'd like to thank our participants we appreciate that you took the time to share your thoughts please know that

063the board and district administration took notes and during openforeman we will follow up as needed with participants next step is to call the meeting to order i moved to the board of education approved approve the agenda for the july 19th regular board of education meeting as published it's not working right the motion by tom and second by stacy to prove the agenda all in favor raise your right hand six zero thank you um next we uh need to take care of some organizational things this is our organizational meeting where we entertain motions for our board clerk and treasurer would anyone like to make a motion for that sure i'd be happy to i move that the board of education appoints the following for the 2021 to school year uh clerk sarah vaughan treasurer jenny daniel

064and assistant treasurer nathan mull second thank you motion by stacy second by tom um all those in favor please raise your right hand okay then six zero all right um next we are going to receive reports from board members and superintendent on items not in the agenda patrick you want to go first stacy um yeah i just have uh two quick things um serve on blue valley rec as the liaison for the school board and we do have upcoming interviews for the two open commissioner spots we will be doing those uh next week so we hope to appoint those at our next board meeting in august and then i would just also like to thank all of the applicants who have applied for the board advisory committees that we currently have unfortunately sometimes there's limited

065openings it depends on where you reside and if there's an open spot for that area so we will be appointing a lot tonight and then more so again next month in august but um would love to be able to appoint everybody but unfortunately just don't always have the space for that so we will have quite a few today and then some more next month as well um in time for the school year to kick off and to get some of those folks on the committees thank you uh tom i've got nothing okay jody i just wanted to mention that the um caps network um has has spun off from from the district and um they are going on gangbusters um creating networks all over the country and even some parts of the world so i

066believe there's one in australia from what i recall and i want to say i had written the number down but i can't find it in my notes i want to say there's around 72 or 76 partner members out there in the world and so we're really excited about the direction that's taking and the potential for students to have real world experiences out there so um they have their big cap the bash tomorrow um where they're bringing um the partners um from all over the world they're zooming in and having small sessions and and networking so it's really exciting to see this growth it is very exciting i actually met with um the caps network from kuwait uh last week last week maybe the week before but it was really neat and very exciting to see

067how what we started here has just blossomed into awesome opportunities for children all over the world um mike uh two quick items both um kansas excuse me kansas association of school board related the first is um randy watson who is the um kansas what's his title commissioner of education yes education dude we'll be visiting here september 2nd on a listening tour from 6 to seven thirty at hilltop he'll also be uh in olathe from nine to ten thirty a.m on friday september third and uh i'm not sure where that is yet that the location to be uh determined somewhere in olathe though and uh on tuesday september 7th from 11 30 to 1 somewhere in kck at their central office if i would urge if you're so inclined to visit and interact with dr watson

068the second thing is the kansas association of school boards annual conference is in kansas city in overland park this year uh november 2nd to the 5th and have you that's what i said 5th to the 7th come on 5th to the 7th 7th to the 5th it's the fifth to the seventh correct it's the fifth to the seventh it's uh thursday friday saturday um have you found out whether they're coming to the district or not i believe they are okay and we'll have an opportunity to uh host them at that point that's all i have thank you thank you mike um i have one thing to share um i was asked to serve on the um task force through the state board of education they are looking at our high school graduation requirements it turns

069out kansas hasn't updated their graduation requirements significantly at all in the past hundred years so they're looking at them trying to see what will make our learners more prepared for their future today and what we think the future will bring and that's part of what dr watson's listening tour is about to gather information and what we want those graduation requirements to look like um we just started i've only been to two meetings they're meeting pretty much every three weeks or so and so i will keep you all updated like i said we just started we were looking at what they're doing in ohio which was very impressive um and just kind of getting information on what what we want at this point and we'll see where we go from there quick question for you so

070kansas requirements are a little bit different than blue valley correct okay so we ours have been updated yes oh absolutely okay ours happened and ours it hasn't been 100 years for blue valley but um no ours are updated and ours are actually more rigorous than the state requirements are um but as a state of kansas they are looking to make it more effective we'll just say that okay and dr watson um actually wants the community to come out so you we will be communicating out some information he just sent us the specifics uh today we know it will be at hilltop but he wants teachers he wants community members he wants high school students to attend and so we're going to work really hard to get as many people there as we can to give

071that feedback and i have one other thing i just want to comment on the summer work that's happening within the district so our teachers have engaged in some professional learning you heard in may when we gave an update on the dyslexia and literacy work we're doing that we bought a new phonics resource for our elementary teachers and they have been engaged in that in june cleaning and construction is happening i walked through blue valley high school and it's pretty exciting to see the mobile's gone first of all and to see all of the classrooms that are there technology was in there working frantically to get them ready for school which starts a month from yesterday and then finally our hr department is hiring like crazy and we have lots of classified openings so if anybody

072is interested in either a part-time or a full-time job once kids get back in school i would encourage you to look at our website there are lots of opportunities for anybody who is interested in that so that's it thank you and the our website was recently updated with our dyslexia stuff so i i just know a couple people were speaking about uh literacy and so um there's great information on our website there too on what we've been doing and what we're planning so um okay next we have board advisory committees so i believe finance and operations is the only one that has met this month correct that is correct the finance and operations board advisory committee met on thursday july 15th via zoom i provided an update on the continuation of summer projects and the

073annual work district staff are doing to prepare our buildings for teachers and students at the start of school linda stevie budget director with the blue valley rec commission presented their 21-22 proposed budget this is a new business item on the agenda for this evening director of accounting and payroll nathan mull presented the annual july approval items and the documents included in the board's consent agenda for approval nathan also presented a summary of the district's investments as of june thirtieth twenty twenty one jake slobodnick director facilities and operations gave a brief update on the status of summer construction things are going very well as dr american said and we have two weeks left of construction and everything seems to be ready to deliver on time jenny daniel and slate jake slobodnick presented the 18 bids and

074contracts that are also on the board agenda for approval tonight due to conflict with the new teacher of orientation the next finance and operations committee meeting is scheduled for friday uh august 6th at 7 30 am i'm happy to report we'll be in the district office high plains room in person for the first time in a while thank you kyle um next up we have to approve the consent agenda so can i get a motion to do that i moved to the board of education approve the consent agenda for the july 19 regular board of education meeting as published thank you motion by tom second by stacy all those in favor please raise your right hand okay that's six zero thank you now we move on to new business okay we do need to approve

075the blue valley recreation commission 2021-2022 budget so i think jenny daniel is going to make her way up and we also have folks from the blue valley rec commission here as well to address any questions you might have good evening as kyle mentioned the blue valley rec commission presented their budget on july 15th at the facilities and operations committee meeting tonight we have steve basinger our executive director of blue valley rec commission and jamie stevie the financial analyst for the blue valley red commission as you remember blue valley rec commission cannot tax so we are the taxing authority for the blue valley right commission and so in that way the board has to approve their budget so they're here this evening in the audience in case you have any questions about what was presented in

076your packet any questions okay then um could i have a motion to approve sure i moved that the board of education approved the blue valley recreation commission 2021 to 2022 budget thank you motion by stacy second by tom all those in favor please raise your right if i can just make a quick comment real quick of course yeah i actually uh sit as liaison to that and i will tell you that they have put in a lot of uh time and effort to make sure that they have all of the i'm gonna get this wrong the t's crossed and the eyes dotted is that right um but they're they're very thorough they've done a great job um patrick and i and sometimes tom fills in for us we sit and observe the meetings and just

077know that everything is upward they've done a great job and i wholeheartedly recommend approving the budget our finance finance and operations committee also went through this in detail last thursday morning when they met thank you any other comments okay then all those in favor raise your right hand thank you motion passes 6-0 all right next new business okay as dr collier makes her way up i'll i'll set this up we're here tonight to talk to you about our return to school update and what that's going to look like as you know last year we were under an emergency state or emergency order and the school board had to make was the one that had to make policy senate bill 40 actually um indicated that they were the only ones that could make policy we've transitioned

078out of that and so we are now back to um the administration the that's the duties of superintendent and the administration um to create uh establish a safe and in environment within our schools and what that operationally is going to look like day to day uh so dr collier is going to bring us up and then we have other people here who can help to answer questions as we go as well thank you it's always exciting to come before you to be able to talk about the start of a new school year and certainly you know that there's quite a bit that goes into preparing for a new school year tonight's presentation as dr merrigan referenced focuses on really providing for health and safety of our students so we're going to talk about transitioning to

079school how we're going to be ready to welcome all of our students back to in-person learning this year i'll make a few comments about remote learning to clarify for you and others what that means for us this school year going forward and we have some things in place operationally uh dr hayden will be able to speak to that and then we'll also talk about other protocols associated with again keeping our staff and students safe as we prepare for the new school year so let's talk first about transitioning our students back so consistent with navigating next guideline the guidance provided to us by the state we're preparing for really increased school to home connectedness we know last year certainly played a toll on the connectedness our families and students feel and so we want to just

080have an increased emphasis on that focusing on culture and climate and really revisiting what does it mean to perhaps be a jaguar what does that mean so our principles we will be working with our staff with our staff on that also we will be welcoming back all of our students that were virtual ed students that haven't returned to in-person learning since march of 2020 so we're going to make sure our principals are going to be working with those families and students to make sure that we have an opportunity to transition those students back early before they walk through the school on that very first day of school so that they have the opportunity to ask questions and reacclimate themselves to the school environment additionally we have families and students that were new to blue valley

081last year it was their very first year in blue valley so we want to make sure that we too revisit that for those families and for families that are new to us this year ensuring that we have proper orientation to our school environments for them and then we will continue this year transition for our students moving to middle school moving to high school and of course it's always exciting to welcome a new graduating class and that will be our kindergarten students so our building principles will be working with staff certainly here we're we're mid-july we have staff still not returning they haven't returned to duty yet but we'll start to see principals return next week and they will begin to work on details and be communicating with families more specifically what school will look like

082particularly maybe at their particular school site next we'll also be focusing on really routines and processes and really quite frankly that's really nothing new at the start of every new school year our staff work with students to help them understand routines and processes for safe orderly function and operation of the school building we are going to be holding back to school events this year certainly we weren't able to do that last year but we are going to be holding back to school events our principals will communicate what that looks like in some cases we'll make sure that we provide virtual options one thing that we know last year is that parents provided us feedback that let us know really they like to be able to have some options that pair well with their very busy

083family schedules and so i as a parent if i can't make it to the school but perhaps there's a video or some type of virtual option that still allows me to connect to the school and get information that would be important for me as a parent guardian to be able to process with my children so those are just some of the transition back to school activities that we have planned for the year and there will be of course more and more detail that will develop over the next few weeks we'd just like to remind everyone that the current guidance from the state does not allow for remote learning this school year so if you can believe it in july we've already been asked about snow days so because remote learning is not allowable for the

084state for attendance purposes we anticipate at this point as i stand here today in july that snow days would take on a traditional really a traditional approach this next school year parent-teacher conferences we learned from parents last year that those zoom sessions really worked so for parents perhaps we have a parent out of town one parent's in town it's hard to schedule those parent teacher conferences then we're still going to work with our teachers and principals to allow for zoom parent teacher combination or a combination of combination thereof excuse me of zoom or in person parent-teacher conferences more to come but again lesson learned from last year that we can apply this year if i am a student perhaps i have to leave class leave school for a dental appointment or something and i really

085think i could zoom in class i might just miss the first few minutes of class but i'd like to then perhaps be able to zoom in for a portion of that but currently right now under current guidance we won't be able to allow that flexibility this year so just want to make sure everyone understands we just don't have that flexibility this year but certainly um there's there's certainly things that we learn from that for students when we have instances where we have students that might be um homebound or not able to access the classroom for a particular reason we've always worked with families with students with in those situations and we absolutely will continue to do that and so in some of those cases we can make some modifications hey katie quick question i know

086i enjoyed the conferences being able to kind of boom boom boom um you know do them through zoom as well then my husband was working in houston so we were able to attend um together i'm curious what what did the um the staff think of those was it more difficult or did it matter i'm just curious thank you for that question i will say overwhelmingly from both staff and parents we received wildly positive feedback about parent-teacher conferences last year so i would say both parents and teachers um have positive feedback for for us and um would suggest then that we we would want to go ahead and continue that as an option thank you and i just want to throw out there that my youngest is thrilled about the snow day option potential out there

087that's a big deal to her i think that news probably if we continue on that place on that path will make many thousands of students happy jody so i'm going to turn to dr hayden and he's going to talk a moment just about operations so what you're going to see is a lot of the continued practice that we had from this previous year on the screen so the first bullet there talks about enhanced cleaning practices so we had invested in a lot of new equipment prior to the last school year to help us with this process and so those that will just continue we also have cleaning supplies available to classroom teachers as needed if they want to use those in between classes or transitions we have a lot of availability of hand sanitizer and

088water bottle water bottle filling stations once again that was a pretty significant investment by the district to place those strategically around buildings so they would be in a good position for student use managing and monitoring the air quality so something that's really we're blessed with really in blue valley is high quality hvac systems that we are constantly modernizing and one of the things that we also have the ability to do is to manage the fresh air the degree of fresh air that's coming in and also how often we refresh that so and we have staff that monitor monitor that on a daily basis so we're in a good position to continue that practice we're going to have a continued use of id cards with lanyards for our elementary kiddos as they go through food service

089lines and then middle school and high school will discontinue that use and go back to the practice of using keypads and also self-serving themselves so i think charles and team are happy to hear that from a staffing situation because that becomes very difficult to manage kyle just as a reminder where are we with food service for this year is it continued free to students yes the usda had come out with an another year essentially of free meals for all students k-12 so breakfast lunch options are available for everybody one things that will happen with all in-person learning this year is going back to more a la carte options for kids that they would have to pay for but the free meal option that's endorsed by usda will still be available so it's not an all

090you can eat it's not no no it's not it's make sure you tell your kids that because the bills will rack up in a hurry trust me no ice cream is not included i can attest to the very large bill other questions additionally we're going to talk a little bit about those pieces of health and safety when it comes to communicable diseases particularly covid19 so we're going to encourage again this year personal health assessments so for students and staff you have a fever you have a stomach ache generally not feeling well you have that cough we're going to encourage students and staff to conduct personal health assessment in our messages to stay home come to school be in our facilities when you feel well we will also encourage social distancing when and where we can

091do that and we will emphasize three feet of social distance similar to what we aim to emphasize last year as well so that will be in place certainly with enrollment in some of our buildings that becomes a little bit more difficult similar to what we saw last spring but we certainly will emphasize that and put that in place where that is possible additionally closures so similar to last year if we have an outbreak of covid19 or really another communicable disease then what we would do at that point is we would await guidance from the johnson county health and environment to really recommend any school closures last year often it was asked well would we close a classroom would we close a wing of a school perhaps so again to close a classroom again we would

092work in conjunction with guidance from the county if we were in a position where we were needing to do that exclusions or quarantines we would continue to work in cooperation again with johnson county health and environment regarding any of those recommendations in an instance where were impacted by an outbreak or exposure etc to make those determinations in terms of whether or not an individual would be recommended for to not be included for a short time in the school environment masks will not be mandated at this point masks will continue to be highly encouraged in our schools and our other district facilities for those individuals who have not been fully vaccinated they're optional for fully vaccinated individuals one thing that also optional for any outdoor activities for students and staff and then one thing that i'd

093want to emphasize is that the decision to wear the mask or not wear the mask within our school or other facilities really should not be met with uncivil or unfair treatment in any way based on that individual student family or staff member decision vaccinations we will not be collecting vaccinations as a requirement for school attendance or for school enrollment vaccination information would be utilized only in cooperation with the johnson county health and environment in making any decisions that we might have to associated with exclusions we will not maintain that information really when that's requested and again that will be funneled through again the health department not necessarily through our nurses for our request of that information or maintenance of that information from students also in terms of the requirement of vaccination to participate in an

094activity or an athletic team again that's not a requirement because again vaccination is not required as a condition associated with attendance or enrollment obviously i'm standing here today as it's july sharing with you the recommendations of where we're currently at with planning we would be mindful would want you to know that we'll be mindful of the fact that if there is an outbreak either within the community or within a school it's possible that some of these protocols would require adjustment as has been noted this evening we're not currently under a mandate of any sort either from local state or federal authorities if we were to find ourselves under a mandate from either one of those three levels then blue valley school district would be in a position to comply with said mandate i'm happy to

095answer any questions that you have this evening again happy to do that or any other members of the team are here tonight to assist um i was just going to ask what are the current quarantine rules now and and what what is our plan if exposure just go go into a little more detail on that for me so thank you for that so certainly i'm looking for mark schmidt he'll uh he'll partner with me on this he works very closely with the health department but at this time really we're still working through that and as we stand here today we know some of that guidance still has yet needs to be tightened and communicated to us but if we need to practice exclusion if a child is positive for covid then we would work with

096the health department to determine whether or not indeed that they would need to be absent from school for for a said period of time because of their diagnosis of being covenanting positive mark anything else you want yeah um you know one thing that we need to remember is as we've worked with the health department they they will look at who's had close contact who would need to be quarantined or excluded from either activities or school at a given time one of the things that comes up is students that can show that they have immunity from uh covet are allowed not not to have to do any kind of foreign so if a student has been or staff member fully vaccinated or if they have had a documented positive covet test within the previous six months

097then they would not have to quarantine because they are considered to have immunity at that point hey quick question then so that is not our standard that is the health department's guide standard that that is correct uh in fact we just looked at the received the brand new updated guidance today and it said six months yeah katie i have two questions um the first um has to do with snow days um and i just don't remember our uh approved calendar does that take into account the possibility of and snow days i just don't remember whether we included that or not right so right now where we're at with our planned calendar for snow days at this point our first snow day wouldn't require us to make up any day so so we feel we're pretty

098good based on the number of snow days that we experience in the year that could require us then to communicate later in the year that we have to make some of them up but we should be good for really probably about three or four i don't have the numbers in front of okay might be about three or four days we should be good that's fine second question um i'm i guess i'm a little confused um about what questions we might ask parents if i read your document correctly we're not going to ask are you vaccinated or are you not and if in fact someone has to know that we're not going to do the asking the county is going to do the asking is that correct so let me take your first question first as

099our students enter the building there's we don't have a need for a classroom teacher at any level to ask a student whether or not they have been vaccinated if there is a reason for us to have that information really related to covid19 or quite frankly other any other vaccination that's required by law for school attendance that would occur through our health services department through our school nurse and a parent a student should be asked to respond to that question quite frankly and if so we would want a building administrator to be made aware of that we'd want that parent to reach out to that building principal to to address that but again we addressed that through health services um the next question um can you reword it mike sorry sure um for one reason or

100another the county needs information i hope that we're going to give the county the information about the student in terms of how to contact them and the county contacts that student or parents their parents their guardian about their vaccination not us is that a correct statement right thank you thank you for asking that mike we will um commute you know connect our parents to the health department uh certainly if we have to assist in any way shape or form is a conduit certainly we're prepared to do that okay thank you so so the broad thoughts here appreciate all the work here and and great stuff on all of it so at the end of may our dating criteria policy ran out and i go i know my instagram just walking everybody through it ran out

101on that day per what we decided back in august and during that time we um we announced that their mask would be not mandated for 21-22 correct and we also gave you as our board as we like to leave from up here you and your team the authority if you will to present what you just did to us with your recommendation so your recommendation would be mask or not mandated follow all the protocols that we've deemed here and we move forward correct that is correct okay that is our understanding as well uh and we have not deviated from our decision on masks okay from from from in may when we announced it for school okay we would share the recommendations um from the health department uh everybody has seen those and those are recommendations and

102so parents and staff members need to make decisions um and what's the best for them and for their children the other thing i do want to highlight is what dr collier said is that we're going to work hard with our staff to ensure that we we don't bully and we don't make anybody feel uncomfortable for the decision that they make again whether you're a staff member or where whether you're a child the next piece of that too related to dr merrigan's comments our buildings are really going to be working as i mentioned at the beginning of resetting again that stage of the climate at the school and just a sense of you know we're all back and just again building that school pride and being part of that school team for the student body so

103that'll be a major emphasis just again thank you leadership and leading us to this moment here i appreciate it thank you very much thank you okay next we're going to approve the new and revised curriculum so kelly ott who's our executive director of curriculum and instruction is here to talk to you about um some curriculum that is on your agenda this evening for action good evening i am here um to to present 11 courses to you as proposed curriculum documents just as a quick reminder this is kind of the end of the process it began almost a year ago in the fall when courses are identified either new ones or ones to be revised december those approvals were made to go ahead and go forward with creating these new curriculum over the winter and spring

104teacher teams wrote those curriculums received feedback from a broad audience in the spring the board of ed advisory committee gave input and again this summer it's been out for about two weeks for for comments and then i'm here tonight um with the documents for your consideration so i'm just going to go through these rather quickly if you have questions after each slide i'd be happy to entertain those so first in the area of career ready programming this honestly is super super exciting this is the beginning of our fire science uh partnership and collaboration with overland park fire department so i have four classes to present to you emergency medical science medical first aid and cpr hazmat for first responders all things i know nothing about and intro to public safety so we've been working collaboratively

105both with johnson county community college and the overland park fire department to develop these curriculum um so those three entities are involved in that and those were all these curriculum or in your board packet any questions on those judy so just to be clear so these four classes are exactly what you need in order to get the certificate for the first year it's a two-year program so um here in the next year we'll come with the the second wave to kind of finish out the the two-year product program these are obviously tied in john's county community college tied into the new fire station going next to blue valley southwest correct correct correct it's been a great partnership and they've been extremely and we have a firefighter who is teaching this course correct correct we jointly

106with the overland park fire department have hired an instructor for our courses the instructor has some education backgrounds so we're excited about that and we work with him on about almost a weekly basis on instruction in these things and where do you take these classes at will they be at the fire station yeah they will be at the training facility you can see it from a 69 highway the tower yeah right there yep they they've gone all out by the way they're painting rooms and getting t-shirts for our kids and they are really really excited about welcoming them and of our students we have three um female students that are that are in in the program out of about 15. so we're super excited about that too is there a game plan for us to

107tour once it's we can make one i would love to see it i think i'd be i think there'd be a lot of people who'd be interested so great kelly um for a long time many of us have kind of pushed you guys to provide courses like this and i just want to say thanks for the work you've done both in conjunction with johnson county community college and these four courses for providing an outlet for kids that is unique experiential and really teaches them some skills that they'll be able to use immediately and provides the first year of education so um my hat's off to you i know you're going to go through some other stuff but um i don't want to take the shine off of this this is outstanding work thank you there's

108a there's a team so there's a whole bunch of people that are that are responsible for this so it's great so i'm going to go into less exciting things perhaps but the next uh group is just industrial technology our middle school design and robotics not a new class but one that they wanted to update that's when i think we'll update rather often as technology changes uh middle school teachers got together wrote that got feedback and and we're here today with that curriculum document okay math um over the last year and a half we've been working on rewriting middle school math curriculum we've done sixth and seventh grade and we are here with eighth grade tonight this is the on level integrated math 8th grade course based on kansas state standards the next one is social

109studies another exciting new class is a new class for us we are adding advanced placement world history or ap world history to our lineup this is absolutely almost 100 based on the college board curriculum it's just been formatted and possibly the scope and sequence tweaked a little bit to meet the needs of our learners is that a year it's a full-year course why did i think we had do we why did i think we had ap world history yeah it's a question i shouldn't ask but um have did we take it out and put it back in no this is the first time that we have um had ap world history we've had europe ap europe european um we've had world histories but not ap world history and this mirrors um the on level requirement

110of world history the other thing i would say is that this is um over the many years that we've done ap classes um this one is a better alignment for the state standards and what we've done and it's hard yeah next one the last this is the last group world language is a multi-year process to re-redo all the world language curriculum we're getting really close to the end of that multi-year process bringing forward french for spanish for chinese five we're beginning the fifth year of the chinese mandarin chinese program also super exciting and believe it or not we will have fourth graders um going in at wolf springs uh and we have a chinese language arts curriculum that was developed so these are all world language kind of just natural next steps and that's it

111kelly um i know the answer to this question too but i just want to ask it anyway uh who develops the curriculum for these classes right typically it's groups of representative teachers um and then we engage in pretty frequent and often feedback groups with other stakeholders that include other teachers of the course sometimes it's teachers in classes above and the next step and the step prior just for that that continuity and then of course the board of education curriculum and instruction advisory committee has input almost um in the beginning on just the course approval and then on the curriculum in the spring and summer so lots of people anything else thank you thank you okay given that i think we need to make a motion and to approve the new and revised curriculum as presented

112anyone wanna i'll move the board vacation approve the new and revised curriculum as presented thank you motion by tom second by mike all those in favor let's raise your right hand thank you that passes 6-0 great job um thank you kelly for all of your team's work that's a very seems insurmountable but somehow you you get it all done and it's amazing so thank you um next we're going to review the 2021-2022 district goals um two years ago the board of education approved the current strategic plan that strategic plan has four different areas in there those are around being a strategically agile system if anything covet should have taught us to do that but being a strategically agile system having extraordinary educational opportunities for all students health and well-being of students staff and families and

113then finally exemplary educators for our students and by educators we met every employee within the district that was defined as you recall we had lots of input from our community to develop that strategic plan the goals that are before you we have been revising we did that last month during our workshop and then this morning we spent a little bit more time but they're all tied to the strategic plan those are goals that we would come back to you each month throughout the year and make sure that we update you on where we're at with those goals last year we did it semester by semester that is not typically our practice so we have presented them for the entire year any questions or comments would you like a motion i would love a motion okay

114i moved that the board of education approved the 2021-2022 blueprint as presented second thank you motion by stacy second by tom all those in favor raise your hand thank you very much six zero that passes okay now we have a large job of appointing avoided board advisory committee applicants um just to let everybody know we're going to appoint like 22 people in a row i don't want to it will be it's not the most exciting thing ever then we'll be done i just want to in case you wanted to sneak out i'll start if that's okay meeting minutes for this meeting where can they be found sorry once they're approved they would be found up on our district website under um board of education and they're formally approved at the next meeting there is a

115video of this meeting as well that you could go back and watch if you were so inclined okay okay so i'll start i move that the board of education reappoints farhasas as the northwest area to a two-year term on the finance and operations board advisory committee motion by mike second by tom all those in favor ocean passes 6-0 i move that the board of education reappoints sarah holmes of the south area to a two-year term on the finance and operations board advisory committee second motion by mike uh second by jody all those in favor motion passes six zero i move the board of education reappoints bob johnson of the northeast area to a one-year term on the finance and operations board advisory committee second motion by mike second by tom all those in favor motion

116passes six zero i moved board of education reappoints louis pizzani of the northwest area to a one-year term on the finance finance and operations board advisory committee motioned by mike seconded by jody all those in favor motion passes 6-0 i move the board of education reappoints tom robinette of the northeast area to a one-year term on the finance and operations board advisory committee second motion by mike second by jody all those in favor motion passes 6-0 i move that the board of education reappoints brenda stacillus of the south area to a one-year term on the finance and operations board advisory committee second motion by mike second by tom all those in favor passes 6-0 i move that the board of education reappoints brian watts of the south area to a one-year term on the finance

117and operations board advisory committee second yep um motion by jody second by patrick all those in favor then passes 6-0 i move that the board of education appoints tamara sandich of the northeast area to a new two-year term on the finance and operations board advisory committee motioned by jody second by patrick all those in favor motion passes 6-0 i move that the board of education appoints casey johnson of the south area to a new two-year term on the finance and operations board advisory committee motioned by jody second by patrick all those in favor six zero motion passes and i move that the board of education appoints jason anderson of the south area to a new two-year term on the finance and operations board advisory committee motioned by jody second by patrick all those in favor

118motion passes 6-0 okay we will move on to facility planning i move that the board of education reappoints kelly miller of the south area to a one-year term on the facility planning board advisory committee second motion by stacy second by tom all those in favor motion passes 6-0 i move that the board of education reappoints chrissy weitman of the northeast area to a one-year term on facility planning board advisory committee second all those in oh sorry motion by stacy second by jody all those in favor motion passes 6-0 i move that the board of education reappoints chris heiss of the south area to a one-year term on the facility planning board advisory committee second motion by stacy second by tom all those in favor motion passes 6-0 okay moving on to student activities i move

119that the board of education reappoints john chen of the northwest area to a two-year term on the student activities board advisory committee as an at-large representative second motion by stacy second by patrick all those in favor of sorry i moved that the board of education reappoints sean goodall of the south area to a two-year term on the student activities board advisory committee as a blue valley west high school representative motion by stacy second by tom all those in favor raise your right hand that's 6-0 and finally i move that the board of education appoints rebecca campbell of the northwest area to a new two-year term on the student activities board advisory committee as a blue valley northwest high school representative second motion by stacy second by tom all those in favor motion passes 6-0 i

120move the board of education reappoints jurisdictor of the south area to two-year term on the curriculum and instruction board advisory committee second motioned by patrick second by jody all those in favor motion passes 6-0 i move the board of education reappoints nat milgram of the south area to a two-year term on the curriculum instruction board advisory committee second motion by patrick second by stacy all those in favor motion passes six zero i move the board of education reappoints rene renee bartholomew mew of the northwest area to a two-year term on the health and wellbeing student service board advisory committee second motioned by tom second by jody all those in favor motion passes six zero i moved the board of education reappoints andrew vanderlaan of the northeast area to a two-year term on the health and

121well-being student services board advisory committee second motion by tom second by jody all those in favor motion passes 6-0 i move that the board of education reappoints lindsey weiss to the south area for a two-year term on the health and well-being student services board advisory committee second motion by tom second by stacy all those and oh sorry jody all those in favor she can have it if she really wants it six zero i'll move the board of education reappoint excuse me appoints don greer of the south area to a new two-year term on the health and well-being student services board advisory committee second motion by tom second by jody all those in favor 6-0 and that we'll do it next we'll do other folks next month correct yes there are more yeah all been called

122or yes i move we adjourn do i have a second regular second motion by mike second by tom all those in favor thank you guys happy birthday tom mitchell yes thank you appreciate that and thanks for serving our friends you're gonna like you