001[Music] so [Music] you [Music] so [Music] so the following [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do you [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do so [Music] you [Music] so [Music] do [Music] you all right first up tonight elect board of education president for the 2021 calendar year i nominate amy teisling to serve as the board of education president for the 2021 calendar year motion by stacey obringer-varhall second by michelle benjamin all these in favor please raise your right hand that motion passes 7-0 next up elect board of education vice president for the 2021 calendar year i nominate michelle benjamin to serve as the board of education vice president for the 2021 calendar year motion by jody d second by stacey obringer barhal all those in favor please raise your right hand that motion passes 7-0 you ready
002to rotate with me miss benjamin madam president you ready awesome official all right next up on the agenda tonight we have uh public comments 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 the opportunity to speak as possible during the 60-minute open forum the board will enforce a three-minute limit per speaker after 60 minutes the board will close open forum and will proceed with its agenda items for the evening whether you plan to speak or just listen we're glad you're here because we care about the opinions and concerns of our patrons if you do not have an opportunity to address the board during
003the meeting you may address the board by email communication i do have a few reminders about open forum that will help our speakers to have a constructive and positive experience when discussing items with the board when making remarks please be civil and use respective language respectful language if you are speaking in person please keep your face covering in place while you speak please limit discussion to the relevant business of the board tonight discussions of matters related to a specific student or employee is not allowed instead comment should be submitted in writing to the superintendent please remember to limit your comments to three minutes and avoid repeating the concerns of a previous speaker and if you have a question that requires a response someone will follow up with you at a later time on behalf of
004the board i welcome you and appreciate your interest in blue valley as we strive to provide the very best education possible to 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 let's get started first up tonight we have christine white okay my name is christine white i'm speaking as a private citizen uh my views represent only my own views and no one else's i have two daughters at blue valley northwest i know you all are bombarded daily from so many sides about the issue of letting kids be in school full-time if that is what their parents desire i know it seems scary to go out on a limb and be the first johnson county district to fully open
005your schools but my question to you is what is your endgame when will you say okay we are safe enough the aap the cdc dr fauci and dr lemaster at the johnson county health department all recommend our kids be in school full-time if mitigation techniques and practices are in place so i ask you what will it take will it take 60 70 80 90 of our gender population to be vaccinated will it take all teachers in our district to be vaccinated or all students vaccinated what will you do if these are your criteria and only a minority of the general population teachers and students want to and do receive the vaccine now is the time to put kids in class full-time if so desired by their parents follow the lead of hundreds of other districts
006in our country and our area and put them in class as dr ackermann will explain later they aren't spreading it there and mortality for kids is almost non-existent and for staff it is amazingly low a nurse i work with has a son who's a freshman in the blue valley district i have her permission to share this story when he left middle school in march of 2020 he was a happy thriving active energetic kid who loved sports loved school as much as anyone can love school but with the lockdowns and no school in the spring it was hard on him as this continued into his freshman year he became more and more withdrawn he couldn't play sports he couldn't go to school he hated learning on the computer his grades were falling and he was shutting
007himself off from friends then one morning in september he took a lethal dose of insulin that he used to treat his diabetes luckily his mom a nurse again found him unconscious called 9-1-1 and got him to children's mercy south where he received treatment once he was stabilized she went out to the bathroom and noticed that there were four other kids in the er that tuesday morning and they all had a sitter an adult trained to stay with a suicidal patient so they won't harm themselves she asked the nurse about this and was told that the only patients in the er at that time were suicide attempts they were all just waiting for a psych bed but because there had been such an increase in suicide attempts in our area there were no beds anywhere merillac
008research or children's mercy they finally got to bed after 36 hours the floor they were on at children's mercy was full of kids who had attempted suicide prior to the pain i'm sorry attempted suicide prior to the pandemic could i have like 15 seconds okay prior to the pandemic children's mercy didn't even have a psych unit inpatient but it's so bad now they've had to open one i heard of one of my patients that had to wait five days in an overland park er for a bed because all the beds were so full in our area children's hospitals in missouri and across the country have seen a 24 increase in kids presenting with mental health issues such as suicidal ideation and suicide attempts from may or from march of 20 2020 to october 2020 compared
009to the same times in 2019 i only share this story because i'm unsure why this information is not known publicly i thought perhaps if you all knew the severity of the mental health pandemic and put that in perspective with the very low risk of cova transmission in schools that you would vote to open them up thank you next up is jody jones good evening to you all my name is jody jones i come to you tonight wearing two hats hat number one i'm a mom i have two sons one attending overland trail elementary and the other attending blue valley north high school and i also have a daughter who would be at overland trail middle school this year but my husband and i decided to enroll her in a private school this year now let
010me tell you about hat number two i'm a registered nurse in the intensive care unit of one of the major trauma centers in the kansas city metropolitan area we have a very large population of covid19 patients at my hospital i have cared for patients who are struggling to breathe who feel like they are drowning and sadly despite the heroic efforts of my amazing teammates the patients who make it into our cove at icu and have to be placed on a ventilator have a very very poor prognosis i have held the hands of more dying patients than i can count setting up face time on our unit's ipad so the family can say goodbye i can assure you i have seen the worst of the worst that kovit can bring with my personal experience dealing with
011this devastating disease you may think i'm here tonight to encourage you to keep the schools closed but that could not be further from the truth while our coveted populations seem to be ever increasing i would like to tell you about another trend we are seeing we are seeing drastic increases in drug overdoses and suicide attempts in teens and young adults specifically hangings the teens i have spoken with are are struggling and the lack of full-time in-person school has been identified by every single one of them as the most significant contributing factor to their mental health struggles i have grave concerns about the mental health effects of continuing to keep our school buildings closed in-person school affords not only a superior format for education but provides countless social supports for our students school is a lifeline
012for so many kids as any teacher will tell you from meals friendships positive adult role models school psychologists and social workers esol services and extracurricular activities the list is extensive and i've only named a small portion of the benefits of in-person school as a school board i want you to know that you will be held responsible for the fallout that will occur if you continue to withhold the services that support these most vulnerable members of our community be bold be brave do the right thing and let our children return to school thank you again for your time and i'd be happy to answer any questions you may have thank you so much and lastly for in-person comments tonight jill ackerman jill ackerman mom of four blue valley students and i'm here tonight to provide the
013latest scientific research and evidence to you regarding covet 19 and school closures and to encourage you to reconsider the faulty and dated gating criteria last week a letter published in the new england journal of medicine summarized data from 2 million children and teachers in sweden showing that while schools were open severe illness in children was exceedingly rare and the occupational risk to teachers was no different than non-teachers also last week a study from duke university and unc following nearly 100 000 students and staff was published the conclusion quote our data support the concept that schools can stay open safely in communities with widespread community transmission dr fauci admitted on november 29 2020 that schools haven't been the major driver of community spread on november 4th 2020 dr joe lemaster our own public health officer for
014johnson county said of the covid19 infection rate we don't believe this is predominantly being generated by the number of cases coming out of the schools the schools are doing a good job to protect their students and their staff november 19 2020 cdc director said quote there is extensive data that we have gathered over the last two to three months to confirm that k-12 schools can operate with face-to-face learning and they can do it safely and they can do it responsibly and quote last week the president of the american academy of pediatrics said quote children absolutely need to return to in-school learning for their healthy development and well-being we have impressive numbers of covid19 infection in our community and hospitalizations are up our schools and community should continue their excellent aggressive mitigation measures to prevent symptomatic
015and asymptomatic spread fortunately the science has shown that schools are not super spreaders and the data has not supported any fears that schools are the drivers of community spread the science has shown that lockdowns have negatively impacted diet sleep physical activity and obesity rates among our children and there's been a dramatic increase in mental illness substance abuse and deaths of despair in our youth and the journal of american medical association november 12 2020 it is reported that an estimated 5.53 million years of life lost may be associated with school closure future decisions quote future decisions regarding school closures should consider the association between educational disruption and decreased expected lifespan and give greater weight to the potential outcomes of school closure on children's health unquote the academic failure across the country has also been well documented
016including a measured decline in a.c.t results here in kansas as strongly as possible i encourage our elected leaders to make policy decisions that reflect up-to-date evidence and recommendations from our experts all of the data and quotes i presented tonight are from the past two months the decision to continue remote learning is based on gating criteria that was formulated nearly six months ago and does not follow the science we've placed the burden of this disease on our children the innocent who are at the least risk shame on us thank you uh we will complete open forum tonight with remarks from one of our patrons who submitted comments in writing david edwards the following comments were submitted by david edwards student at blue valley high good evening my name is david edwards and i am a student
017at blue valley high school for nearly four months i have been working to undo a decision that after some research i found was made by superintendent tanya merrigan as well as district administrators jennifer lozinski and david stubblefield the latter two i actually met with in october this summer the books to kill a mockingbird of mice and men the adventures of tom sawyer and the adventures of huckleberry finn were removed from the books available as teaching resources to english teachers since then i've spoken at or submitted written comments for two board meetings not asking for the decision to necessarily be overturned just for the board to hear from both sides of the story and vote on the matter in his book why we can't wait martin luther king jr said the following to the negro in
0181963 as to atticus finch it had become obvious that non-violence could symbolize the gold badge of heroism rather than the white feather of cowardice to kill a mockingbird is a crucial part of history that helped impact the civil rights movement there is little difference if any between reading a crucial book about civil rights and english class and looking at historical documents related to it in social studies the book itself is a historical document the board chose to replace mockingbird with monster it was supposed to be a similar story with similar principles yet if you look at the book there were no actual instances of a broken justice system or racism or really any societal problems besides poverty i have no problem with this book and think it is a worthwhile read but it doesn't do
019a good job of teaching the principles that to kill a mockingbird does and isn't quite as deep as mockingbird either all we want is for you to re-evaluate the decision the way it should have been done in the first place with a public board vote that takes into account input from parents teachers and students from both sides if you are a parent teacher or student with an opinion speak up and if you'd like to review various emails and other resources i collected about this span please visit the update tab at change.org to kill a mockingbird thank you that wraps up open forum for tonight on behalf of the board of education i'd like to thank our participants we appreciate that each of you took time to share your thoughts with us please know that the
020board and district administration took notes during open forum and will follow up as needed with participants all right next up i will call the meeting to order and our first item for tonight is uh reports from board advisory committees and dr merrigan i believe is going to do finance and operations you bet there are just two tonight the first one is finance and operations that meeting was on january 7th uh deputy superintendent kyle hayden opened the meeting with a general update about what was going on within the district including the kova dashboard then design and construction team jake slobotnick director facilities and operations presented as a design and a guaranteed maximum price update on the blue valley northwest gymnasium project along with the flexible learning environment upgrades from morris and stanley elementary the next thing
021on the agenda was the listen and learn budget conversations as we talked about in our last board meeting we are doing that in each of our buildings as well as in our board committees and then finally a quarterly investment summary director of accounting and payroll nathan mull presented a summary of the district's investments as of december 31st 2020 the meeting ended with a review of bids and contracts and the next meeting of the finance and operations committee will be on thursday february 4th at 7 30 a.m via zoom thank you dr american and our second and final report tonight is curriculum and instruction from dr collier the curriculum instruction board advisory committee met via zoom on december 16th as part of the blue valley's strategic plan objectives related to diversity equity and inclusion as well
022as professional learning dr kelly wessel presented on both of these topics this presentation presentation highlighted the formation of the diversity equity and inclusion board advisory committee in addition in addition professional learning objectives associated with the de and i work center on the development of a broader awareness of implicit bias and developing a deeper understanding of what impacts individuals groups and organizations tied to this is the goal of understanding how students and families have experienced the impact of interpersonal prejudices dr wessel articulated that ultimately we want to build a culturally inclusive learning environment for every one of our students to this point curriculum work is aimed at making curriculum more inclusive strides made in regards to our library collections and adoption of instructional resources were two examples shared with the committee finally dr wessel emphasized that
023in blue valley professional learning is designed to advance professional educator effectiveness professional learning is insured and focused on being relevant collaborative sustainable and results oriented the next meeting of the cni board advisory committee is scheduled for january 20th via zoom thank you dr collier the next step on the agenda is reports from board members and the superintendent with items not included on the agenda mike seitz you want to start us off nothing anything from you michelle no okay mr mitchell no ma'am okay stacey anything from you patrick okay jody okay and dr american i do have a couple of things first thing i want to draw your attention to the piece of art back here in the corner that is a jeff hanson original jeff you may or may not know i'm sure our audience
024may not all know but jeff was an alumni of blue valley he went through several of our blue valley schools he's a very talented artist who recently um sadly died but he worked with the his foundation worked with the education foundation and all of our schools have one of those prints as well so i just wanted to thank the ed foundation for doing that as well as the jeff hanson foundation because that's a beautiful piece of art if i could just interrupt i am wearing his scarf um in memory of him tonight also so he was a dynamic individual who really uh taught us how to um lead right right so thank you that that's fitting we didn't even know we didn't plan the other thing the next thing i wanted to do is i
025should have done this before the meeting and i forgot but tom we have a little gift here for you do you want to come down front here we want to thank tom for his service as president of the blue valley board of education um what a year to be president but we want to thank you for for everything and if you hold that up to the light it catches all the different colors of the blue valley schools awesome yeah thank you thank you pleasure appreciate it thank you congratulations thank you tom yeah thank you on behalf of the board thank you tom for your service during a very challenging year we appreciate it thank you all for your support and collaborative teamwork and and um passion over the past year as well and our community
026as well i i have appreciated everybody's passion to do what's best for our kids so i'm looking forward to the next several months of vaccinations and testing and a roadmap to get our kids back in school full-time as as we all want so thank you and i'm looking forward to your leadership amy thank you as well michelle um and then also this is a school board appreciation month and um you have some cards from some of our administrators and schools across the uh district thanking you for your service i actually had a really good day on friday and i went to cole's coffee crew and so they they made me a little gift bag so i had to show a shout out to my friends over in oxford middle school and they actually helped me
027with a little gift for you so i have for you a gift certificate to cole's coffee crew and so they wanted me to tell you that when i asked them for these gift certificates they're open on friday from 8 30 to 9 30 and they would love for you to come and get some coffee or tea so happy school board appreciation on behalf of the district we appreciate all of your volunteer service people might not know you don't get paid anything to do this but we appreciate all the time and effort that you put into that so i'm going to make sure you get these at the end of the meeting i'll pass those around and then finally i just want to give a shout out to our students and our faculty and staff this
028is the last week of the first quarter feels a little bit like the our first semester excuse me not the first quarter like the semester that wasn't ever going to end but this is the last week of the semester it ends on thursday and i want to thank our our community our students our staff for all of their work in making it work this semester so that's all i have amy great thank you and that's such a wonderful gift thank you so much all right so moving along um we need to approve the agenda for the january 11 2021 regular board of education meeting as published do i have a motion i move that the board of education approved the agenda for the january 11th regular board of education meeting as published second thank you
029moved by stacy seconded by tom mitchell all those in favor please raise your right hand passes seven zero and um if we could also uh approve the consent agenda for the january 11th 2021 regular board of education meeting is published good grade promotion yeah very good just haven't made a motion in a year and i was just yeah you were anxious too giddy i knew that the board of education approved the consent agenda for the january 11th regular board of education meeting as published all those a favor please raise your right hand thank you passes 7-0 and then first up on our regular agenda tonight is a legislative update right and so i'll set this up and i believe we have mark talzman who's coming in from kansas association of school boards uh mark is
030a lobbyist with kasb and he's going to give us an overview of the legislative session which i believe started today um and talk and then there'll be a chance for you to ask questions as well and there he is hello mark can you hear us i can can you hear me we can we can thank you thank you so much i i certainly wish i could be there with you this is a little bit different because i can't see any of you but um a couple a couple members on your board know that i'm capable of talking whether anyone is listening or not so um i will i will try to give you a quick overview and look forward to the conversation with you i do want to say what a pleasure it is to
031uh to have a chance to visit with you a little bit tonight uh it is a real honor of course i appreciate being able to talk to any of our member school boards but in particular uh your board is the board of where my granddaughter will be attending school in a couple years so i i kind of just feel a special uh stake for that um uh i was asked to give just kind of maybe a a quick look at what we think some of the issues will be which probably won't be any surprise to you and then certainly would open up for your questions or thoughts or or feedback on how we can serve you as well as possible i think that there are going to be about four broad topics this year and
032i thought i'd just phrase it in that way to as the as the place we could begin you know the first uh just really ties into the discussions you've already had this evening and that is how will the legislature respond to the way public schools have handed the handled the coveted pandemic as you know last spring the decisions were really taken out of local board hands by the governor's decision to order school close under the authorities she had as the legislature has responded to that we've moved into environment where almost all the decisions have devolved down to local boards and in consultation with other local officials and this has produced not only a lot of different approaches across the state but as you just have heard tremendous frustration on all sides no no decision you
033could make is going to please uh please everyone you you know that you've been living that i think the question is the legislature will be hearing those same kind of concerns that schools open too soon or they did not open soon enough or were too restrictive or all those factors are going to be you know everyone who's concerned with what their local school board has done or is doing can talk to their legislators and ask for relief so as the legislature tries to figure out where the state moves forward in its policy and its laws i think we're going to have to be looking at and closely monitoring whether there will be changes in law regarding how schools can or can't operate or what they must do or choices that have to be provided to
034students in some way the second issue that i think we have to look at is how will the current economic recession nationally in the state and the budget issues the state is facing impact school finance you're probably aware that although the situation looks much better than it did a few months ago kansas is looking at a budget deficit next year there's still obviously a lot of economic uncertainty in the country and during the great recession of 2008-2009 was really the first major reduction we saw in school funding uh really in a generation or more uh and that would have been worse if there hadn't been federal stimulus aid if any of you remember at the time that we have not we've not seen at this point from the federal government but when that aid expired
035in a year or two the state didn't replace all of that and and then coupling that with state tax policy we had about eight years of school funding falling falling behind inflation never really recovering from the last recession so how the legislature responds to this this issue i believe there will be calls to look at what we're putting into school funding for a variety of reasons and if the legislature pulls back that not only raises some issues with the courts but just the long-term ability to continue to fund our districts and there'll be a great number of questions on one hand about how has not having in-person learning all the time affected budgets and potential savings and on the other hand all of the additional costs that have been necessary to try to to mitigate
036the pandemic and might be true going forward third issue just to mention is a perennial and that is how much local control will the legislature continue to support for education even aside from the issues of the coveted pandemic we know that every year the legislature deals with a number of bills that would either require schools to do things or prohibit schools from doing things or giving more authority for schools to do things because a lot of people have a lot of what they think are really good ideas that they want to see pursued and so we we can look at everything from studies this year over cash balances and and facets of the school finance formula to uh children in foster care their education levels ongoing concerns about about bullying again issues that you all
037know about some will be back every year they're some new and it always comes down to that discussion of to what extent the legislature believes the state kind of knows best for whatever reason and where they're willing to leave it to local elected officials to solve that and last last issue that i think will get even more attention this year in the past as a major issue is will the state expand its supporter subsidies for private education both having what we believe will be a somewhat more conservative legislature in some ways a parental frustration over remote learning and and frankly new modes of learning probably means the legislature is going to have renewed focus on bills some of you probably remember in the past that would try to direct public funds in a way that
038would support parents and families choosing private education the comment we always note is though these are often phrased around the term of school choice it is important in our view to understand that all of these programs we've seen presented in kansas in the past and nationally all that i'm aware of really leave the decisions as to what students would be served with the non-public school by their choice of students they enroll or the programs they wish to offer or the policies they put in place there may be good reasons for other schools to want to do that but public schools of course have to educate everyone and so that fundamental concern is always what sounds may sound good for some students could have an impact on the system that has to serve all students but
039again because of the factors i've i've laid out i think there will be a stronger push this year than times we've seen in the past so i think those are the four big topic areas i know some of those address your legislative priorities that were shared with me and i will stop talking now and then see whether there are any questions or observations i can help you with mike you have a question mark this is mike seitz thank you for um for everything you've done um on behalf of school children in kansas you've been a supporter for a long time for as long as i've known you anyway and probably a few years before that um this this might be a little bit frivolous but i think it bears asking i know that the legislature
040and the capital have been um adjusted physically to ensure that um appropriate social distancing uh guidelines are followed but i also just heard that there's a real question about lobbyists and if you're not allowed in the capital what will you do all day all kidding aside how will that work for you guys it's a it's a great question and i don't i i don't you talk about you talk about my tenure you know mr sites actually i started working for ksb in this role basically in 1990 when blue valley was about a a 4 000 student district um so i've watched that growth and and and been in the capital all that time and i've certainly never seen anything like this so there's several things that i think we have to keep in mind whatever
041physical limits are there will still be the opportunity to provide testimony and in fact it's our hope that by by being able to have people testify virtually and you've done that yourself you know we may be able to get more people to have a presence and share their perspectives so in some ways this may be an opportunity to get a new set of voices there the second thing it's going to have to be is very much a question of uh us and everyone else being able to try to use uh you know email phone calls if necessary texting social media those other ways more than we have done in the past but again i think that creates an opportunity for for maybe more people to be a part of that the challenge that you say
042so what will we do all day well again we can probably monitor committees better over zoom and remote technology we expect to do a lot of that what you can't do is have that interaction with people between committees in the hallway and and quite honestly i i don't know how all that's going to unfold i think we're all going to be trying to strike that balance between being safe for them being safe for us but making sure we try to still have some of those uh relationships um honestly my challenge this first week is my wife and i are still dealing with her having an exposure a week or so ago so i'm i'm not going out at all this week as we try to try to make sure we get through all of that
043so you you are you're raising a point that is i think a challenge for all of us i think what we have to try to do is um try to mitigate that where we can by trying to get more people involved in different ways well mark again thank you for your last years of service um to the to the kids of of um of blue valley especially but but to the kids of kansas and uh i would say 30 more but i don't think your wife would appreciate that and and please pass my thanks along to the staff at ksb as well i will i will thank you and certain certainly as you well know from your time on our board our advocacy effort is really a team effort across the entire staff but more
044than that it has to be a teamwork effort with all of our members because as we always say most legislators don't care a whole lot what what i may say they care what their constituents think what their what their fellow elected officials think and our job is really just as much as anything try to give you the information you need uh to be good advocates and for us to simply have the time to follow every day in and out what's going on so so thank you all right are there any additional questions dr american uh mark one item that you didn't mention is mental health and mental health funding for either the school pilot programs you know they've started a couple or for um mental health facilities within our community do you see that on
045the horizon at all yes a couple of things there we are somewhat waiting to hear um what uh what the governor may say in her budget about either the fate of that program or possible expansion that is a priority association that our legislative committee has identified for this year and as you may know the legislature had a a special interim committee on mental health modernization that really didn't look too much at school issues but i think there is going to be attention to the that broad topic and obviously that brings in questions of how uh youth and families are a part of that so yeah i didn't mention that specifically but i do think in in the whole general area of of of health and and meeting other needs of our communities particularly as we
046try to come out of the pandemic that's certainly going to be a part of that and we'll be looking at that very closely thank you mark this is michelle benjamin i was just going to ask where you see the role of special ed funding and the deficit between the amount that the state gives is supposed to give us versus what they actually give us for where we cover a lot of special ed costs here in blue valley so if you could just tell us what you think is on the horizon in that regard you know the challenge that we face there is the kind of gannon settlement that the court agreed to in the legislature agreed to had this uh you know five five or six year steps of seven and a half million dollar
047increases but that just isn't enough to cover the increase in costs and i think all organizations are are trying to raise that issue with the legislature i think the challenge that we're going to be in just just frankly is given the additional funding that has come into education under again and is still scheduled and the budget constraints that the the state is probably looking at adding money really anywhere is going to be a challenge i think everyone agrees that's the most important area to do it it is possible that we may get help from the federal government with the change in administration and change and control of congress more funding to fund the federal law which is supposed to be funded at at 40 of costs um is and and perhaps phasing that in over
048time i think is something that will be looked at now of course the federal government has a lot of demands on its on its funding as well but within education priorities i think that would be high and if the um if the federal aid increased and under the maintenance of effort the state couldn't back away its commitment that could push that percent of excess cost covered up to that 92 percent uh a quicker perhaps than if the state does it on its own because that 92 percent as you may know is it's basically a formula which looks at the total cost of special education provided and then the excess cost is what is not covered by state or federal aid so federal aid comes up that will help as well but i think again no
049no question that everyone is pointing out that we continue to have a real deficit in this area i'm just being honest and saying that and maybe if there is extra dollars i think most people would say that's where they should go but i do believe we are going to be challenged in some ways to hang on to what we have uh this year um and and part of the problem is hopefully if we can get through some of the immediate problems uh maybe you know in the next several years that's something that the state could look at or we could get behind is trying to fully fund that commitment which they're now you know we're supposed to be at 92 percent i think the latest estimates are by next year we will be at 70
050or less percent thank you all right are there any other questions for mark this evening i think we're good thank you so much for your time this has been a really beneficial update i appreciate it would just stress that if you ever have any questions that is not clear or have suggestions on how we can can better share information to be useful to your board as a whole than individuals please feel free to let me know we're always looking to do that and thank you for your time tonight i hope you have a great rest of the meeting thank you have a good evening as well thank you next on the agenda is the learning update that we've been doing at each of our board meetings thank you i'm going to come up here because
051it's hard to turn around and look at that so dr collier and i are going to team this and then dr schmidt is here as well if we get to some things that that he can answer so i think there we go um so first up we've been sharing this each month and so this is our cova dashboard this is on our district website um i would note that the last column there is actually two weeks because it was during the winter holiday and of course we didn't have people we just lumped all of that together so our number of positive cases was 107 over that break our number of quarantines was a 199 and then this was asked of us so we started doing this is breaking apart the uh coveted positives by uh
052staff and students so this last week we had eighty one star it was two weeks 81 students and 26 staff so it gives you an idea of where we are sitting in of course this would be those who have reported to us um it's not you know again i always tell people this is not i think maybe i was exposed these are positive i have a test in hand so semester one i just want to give again i said that in the the briefings is that semester one ends this week we are in the home stretch of this first semester friday is a professional learning day for our staff we had many students um who switched modes and so from virtual to in person or in person to virtual so several class lists change they
053also need to get grades ready etcetera so friday will be their time to to complete all of that we have finished the semester in person elementary and our middle and high schools were remote so here's i'm going to have dr collier talk to you a little bit about what we're doing going into semester two so as we um begin to think about uh welcoming students either to the virtual ed program or to in person perhaps for the first time for some students this year our teachers and administrators have been working to plan for transitions and those transitions will begin actually this week and so in some instances students are coming into the buildings to learn about the hybrid the mitigation measures in place during hybrids so that they are familiar with those so they get
054to be in the physical space prior to being there with with their peers learn where their classrooms are to be able to follow their schedule etc virtual ed teachers are also conducting orientations with students our elementary family families are also getting reach out if there were students assigned to new teachers so if students have new teachers either in the virtual ed or in person mode teachers are reaching out to students they will also be mindful about doing those getting to know you activities and all those types of pieces that you would actually expect at the beginning of the school year those things are happening now as well and then the next piece associated with that too is just really the focus on the professional learning day on the 15th those teachers collaborating around many needs
055that students have perhaps certain interventions or supports were put in place for students so all of that's happening too so there's a smooth transfer if you will from students between teachers if new teachers have been assigned et cetera so the staff again has done a really good job getting ready for start a second semester so one thing that we've had some questions on so we thought we would just share that here is air quality we have had lots of efforts around air quality within our school districts we've increased the amount of outside air ventilation in into our facilities we run systems 24 7 in order to continue that ventilation into our systems even when it's unoccupied we have scheduled more frequent air exchanges and turnovers and we change the air filters much more frequently the
056other thing i would say is that all of our classrooms are outfitted with co2 sensors so that allows us if if there are concerns we know that immediately and the other thing i would say is that this board has been very prudent in making sure that we replace those systems on a regular basis in fact this last bond each summer we're replacing those things our hvac systems which helps us we replaced i don't even remember how many last summer alone and additionally we have somebody on staff who monitors that that's their job and so that has allowed us to i feel really good about the air quality that we have within our buildings and there's more information there as well as on the blue valley website so staff covered testing we just wanted to give
057you an update and make sure everybody knew what we are doing around covid testing so i first will start with symptomatic employees those are employees who have one or more symptoms we have referral cards for the johnson county department of health and environment sites those are drive up clinics oftentimes and that's the nasal swab option we also have saliva tests available at all blue valley sites until january 21st which is um again these are for symptomatic um you use this put a specimen in your little cup and then you take it to the lab or you mail it in and you have to isolate if you have symptoms of course um you get results in 24 to 48 hours and then we have a covid protocol that we follow anytime somebody is positive we work
058with them to make sure they understand what they need to do all of these are pcr tests these are not those rapid tests that that are not pcr approved so all pcr tests i will i'm very excited that we have worked with a area lab mod labs to do testing for asymptomatic employees and so mod labs is like i said an area lab here in the county they have a contract with the kansas department of health and environment so it's a state contract so that's how these tests are paid for it's an on-site saliva test it is optional so i want to be really clear on that we are not requiring our staff to do that but anybody working within blue valley results in 24 to 48 hours but i will tell you when we
059did this in december it was much quicker than that it was that same day typically in the evening so between december 11th and the 22nd we tested 1210 employees and seven were positive and we of course followed the covet protocol for those seven who were positive and then it's a pcr based test it is going to be an ongoing weekly option um so we have we had to work with the lab to make sure the funding continued through after december 31st i'm happy to say that it did and as long as that funding holds out we're going to offer that on a weekly basis we're going to notify our staff tomorrow about that and again these are optional this is not something we would require any of them to do and then for student for
060symptomatic students we have referral cards for johnson county department of health environment we have those saliva tests as well same thing as staff they have to isolate if they have symptoms results in 24 to 48 hours and they they would follow a covet protocol too if they are positive the one thing i want to add about students is that we're really looking at some options for some possible testing of asymptomatic students i don't have enough information to share with you yet but that is something that we are actively looking at because we think that is going to be a very positive thing in our roadmap this semester so kansas vaccine rollout so kind of a lot of information but this is the new information that we have and so dr schmidt is here too if
061you have questions on this but this links to the kansas plan if you've watched the news you'll know that kansas has a five-phase plan um we currently are it's under the direction of our local health departments that's who we're working with they're currently vaccinating under phase one which are your health care workers our school nurses um i'm very happy to say fit into that and they have already received their first dose on january 5th and 6th so they were able to do that last week other school personnel with medical type license those would be people like slp school or speech language pathologist ot occupational therapist a physical therapist there's a number of people a cna an lpn some of those folks we believe that will happen soon there have been some openings that have come
062up but they filled up very quickly and so our folks haven't gotten into those but we're ready for them to get their first dose here very very soon also included in phase one as it should be long-term care facilities and senior housing and then those workers critical to pandemic response and continuity all other school personnel as far as we understand it fit into phase two so that is bus drivers custodians people who work in the lunchroom para educators teachers counselors anybody else would be in that phase to as far as we understand it we are starting to develop a plan we're going to start rolling out some general information about vaccines to our staff so staff if you're listening to this tonight you should expect to hear something from us in the next day or
063so we are not going to tell you if you should get it or not that's something you should have a conversation with your health care provider but people need to start getting ready and to make sure that they have all the information that they need so we anticipate that happening as early as last week so that that would be the earliest probably um but we're going to be ready because what i have said you know even like with the school nurses we got notice on january 4th the appointments are the fifth anytime there's an opportunity for somebody to be vaccinated we're going to make sure that they are so that that's exciting and gives us some hope um so our next steps we're transitioning students to new learning modes obviously in some cases next week
064we're looking at assessment options for ongoing academic monitoring nobody feels like this year has been by any means perfect and we know that we need to academically monitor and see the gaps that we have with students and how do we fill those gaps we also would i would say monitor for social emotional needs of kids i should have included that as well looking at educator vaccinations we're developing a roll-out plan and it will be available to all school staff and also looking at coveted testing options we have one for staff covet testing available on-site weekly if they choose and exploring those options for our asymptomatic students so with that we are any of us are here for questions if you have them hey quickly could you go over um i know we have you talked
065about the nurses being in phase one and all can you i may have missed it but um there's also some other staff that are higher on the list than phase two those that deal with maybe special needs students and all that can you talk about that just a little bit yes they are um what what is their license called uh well they're related service providers but these these are almost anybody that works in the school district that could otherwise have employment within the hospital i thought they had us they were they're licensed not by ksde but by i i can't remember sorry um but but it is exactly what mark talked about our related service providers are um see it we have some cnas we have some lpns um who work on staff uh social
066workers i believe in fact our children's mercy social workers have had the vaccinate first round of the vaccination um so yes we believe those will happen in phase one hopefully as early as this week but it's just when it when it becomes available actually earlier in this meeting i i was notified that there were some open uh slots uh and so i sent that email out to all staff that were eligible that's good news that is good news thank you jody any other questions yeah real quick dr merrigan obviously the vaccine's a big deal and back to a road map for getting these kids back in school um and i know you're being aggressive with the vaccine meaning like you mentioned earlier it's available you got the nurses going and you're also saying when we're
067ready to go or they have it for us our staff will be ready or you'll be working with our staff to get that going as soon as we can so this becomes available to the county correct correct anybody who wants it um we will have a plan ready to go so that we can roll that out quickly okay so between the combination of the vaccine and the ability that our teachers to test when they need be per what you just showed us in a previous discussion this is all part of the plan to head that direction for for back in school or these are some of the steps that need to happen to do that i think these are some of the steps absolutely that we need to uh take to ensure that and testing
068of our students those asymptomatic students as well would be another thing that we are aggressively looking at so that we can get i agree with you our goal is ultimately to get these kids back in school consistent conversations with the county in regards to the rollout is where it comes from the state of kansas yeah it comes it comes to the county i don't think they have a lot of control over um looking at mark to say you know hey we want 4 000 doses on friday for blue valley i think it comes to them and then they have to they just but they do dispense it yes my understanding is that they know how many doses they have when it comes off the truck so at that point they're kind of set up and
069then they send out emails once they know okay and again i'm not being tanked i just seen some of the process roll out i'm just trying to look at our world here i would say the school is taken care of the school nurses who went and got their first dose last week said it was very well organized um and have gotten um you know follow up to see how they were doing it's a text that they they sign up for so i i feel confident that we'll we'll get there it's just a matter of when they get the doses because i know this happened other districts and and other people that are in this phase right there's a lot more people than what we're seeing right okay i appreciate it are there any other questions
070thank you to all of you that was a very helpful update more more to come okay next on our agenda is a budget update and dr merrigan is on that's me again yeah kyle uh couldn't be here tonight so i'm gonna give this so this will be brief uh last month we talked to you about our budget situation and the fact that we were looking at a 4.4 million gap for next year and that we needed to engage our staff and our community this is the same slide we had last month and so we're going to do listen and learn sessions in january and early february at all of our school at all of our school sites so school staff meetings board advisory committees other standing committees and so we've started that you heard me
071in the facilities and operations committee update say that we did it in that meeting i personally did a couple of schools last week we have several more scheduled this week the dei committee that's meeting this week is is going to have this as part of their agenda this is just so a little bit for you about what we do we start with a video update that so everybody has the same information about our budget situation and then we do a thought exchange and these are the two questions that we ask what do you value most and would want to see protected from budget reductions and so as you know in a thought exchange you get to give your idea and then others within the the school or the committee have a chance after they give
072ideas to rate your idea so that the top ideas rise and maybe those who it was important to you but not to the rest of the committee wouldn't necessarily rise up the second question what could we suspend obviously is a little harder but we've had some good feedback from our schools and committees that we've done that with we also will do a community thought exchange where anybody in the community could give us feedback that will be at the end of january promoted via our multiple communication channels that we normally do that with social media email to families etc this is the same slide we had last month i just wanted to remind because i'm going to tell you something in the next slide that puts us a little bit in perspective and so you can
073see here the effects of covet on the budget and that we reported that as of the last december meeting we had received 1.8 million dollars in federal revenue to help assist us in costs but we still had two point almost 2.7 million of expenses that had not been covered well good news is that there is another relief bill out it's called the elementary and secondary schools emergency relief funds it's called esser sr2 because it's the second one that's come out um 332 million 816 811 was allocated to public schools in kansas that's a lot of money and that's that's awesome you know thank you for allocating that it is allocated according to a title 1 formula and for those of you who don't know how title one works uh title one is a funding source
074for low income um students first for uh those those districts who have lots of students on free and reduced populations and blue valley has some title 1 funding not a lot but out of that 332 million blue valley got 1.4 million which we would never uh turn away money and so we're very very thankful and it's actually estimated that we would receive that it's not final yet but i just want to reiterate that that still doesn't even close our gap um from what we had this money can last for several years you might think well that's not going to last us several years and it won't but there are some districts who had sizable amounts of money because of the basing it on the title one formula so um just i'm sorry interrupt so we're
075really if i if my math is correct 0.004 percent of that money is that right cfo it's about 65 a student for blue valley and there are some districts who have well over two thousand dollars a student okay so which equates to some districts 25 30 35 million dollars correct so just to get just to understand this clearly some districts wouldn't be expending their chunk in one year oh no probably not it may take them a number of years in order to spend down this allocation whereas we can't even cover right i think you know some honestly if if we had a large chunk of money we we would be talking about things like uh summer recovery programs um that's what some districts likely would be doing or extending school years or those kind of
076things but yeah again we never want to turn away money and we'll take anything then we appreciate but i just wanted to be clear on what it is blue valley's getting our timeline so here we are in january we're giving you that update we are at the staff and community engagement phase we will continue that in february and then we'll be back in march with some recommendations for you questions yeah i have a quick question so this is all based upon what we know or expect right as far as the budget but referencing the earlier conversation with mark tallman obviously that number could change next year so are we going to just stick with this as we go through march and and look at it for that dollar amount or if we find out that
077the legislature acts and you know makes some changes to the budget to the money are are we going to try to then increase it and adjust as needed or i would say that's a that's an excellent question stacey and you know i don't envy the legislative group at all because they have hard decisions to make just like we have hard decisions to make and so we'll actively monitor that and um as of right now we're going to aim for that 4.4 million but we'll be ready to continue if we need to go further than that we we would be ready to do that all right i don't think we have any further questions on that topic thank you and next up is uh to receive and approve the spring 2021 goals so i'll i'll do
078that as i'm standing here so before you are um goals for the district you know typically we do goals for the entire year uh we would typically do that in july um this year we opted to do them just for the first semester and so this these are the goals for the second semester you will notice they are tied to our strategic plan around the four different pillars that we have continuing the work that we've done the first semester around getting kids in school virtual learning you'll see some assessment work in there as well as a technology supports for students and staff and then finally diversity equity and inclusion work you'll also see some some things at the very end of this document around the tactical work that we need to do around our bond
079and around our budget so i'm happy to answer any questions but these are the goals we would like approved for the semester dr america we've obviously covered several of these and had retreats and talked about our goals anything here press on on your end that stands out and move all red thoroughly but just from a personal basis or dr collier or anybody else i would say that some of these i just want to highlight that many of these would have been done in some fashion without covid but they've changed because of covet so for example we always were going to investigate online learning for a group of students i just don't think we thought there would be 6 000 students that would pick that we always have been looking at the instructional technology and the
080supports that they need we just wouldn't have moved maybe as quickly because we put a lot on our teachers in a very short time i would say the same would be true in the area of exploration of doing further work around formative assessment summative assessments those year-end pieces in terms of system for ongoing monitoring of student learning that's those are written into this plan again part of the district's strategic plan moving that up as well and again also goals around mental health and well-being in the strategic plan moving some of those actions and probably no rough idea you know back to normal in school person next fall life's better any idea what the virtual enrollment would be or thoughts i know we had a survey it was pretty minimal on the people that talked about
081it in the survey but just curiosity so we are actually getting ready to um move into as we go into second semester that portion of second semester early portion is about enrollment and registration for next school year so we will be working to communicate with families help families understand what a virtual option would look like next school year obviously we still have some additional things to learn here second semester but you know certainly we've learned a lot first semester but we do anticipate we will be in our planning for some a level of virtual option and so we do anticipate we will continue that i just told you as i say no just a general check in with how things are going with um class registrations for the upcoming semester you know we have a
082week to go and i know parents have gotten and students have gotten the schedules for next semester as every everybody's kind of in place and feeling a lot better than last semester i know i'm not placing blame that was a little bit of a nutty situation where we had 2 000 extra virtual students in one moment but um everything's feeling good you know i certainly appreciate that question michelle and really thanks goes to the teachers principals the counselors that really worked to study students schedules what students requested particularly at middle and high the feedback we received around the virtual ed program the work that happened at elementary to try to keep students together with similar peers etc if they were going to be changing from one mode to the next i would say overall i
083would say first and foremost things have gone smoothly since we have opened up schedules and teacher assignments as of late friday afternoon we have some things that were work still working through with some families but generally speaking very pleased with how that has opened up for second semester thank you i know that was an enormous task and thank you for taming the beast again the the um kudos goes right to our staff who worked with families to make this happen more smoothly and our counselors oh my goodness sure yes yeah if i could just add really quick as a parent i have really appreciated this less frantic experience and being able to have a dialogue with the counselors who've been incredibly responsive and amazing but i don't i don't feel the pressure you know in
084a stressful environment anyhow i don't feel like we're losing time because they're not i'm not worried about them missing their class or the class they need to be in so it's it's really been nice at least from my perspective thank you thank you for sharing that we hope that the changes add to some level of contribution of some reduced stress or anxiety for our students because of those schedule changes and adjustment with what's happening at middle and high are there any other questions so we do have a motion related to this uh to approve the goals if someone could make that motion i move that the board of education approves the spring 2021 goals as presented thank you a motion by stacy second by jody all those in favor please raise your right hand motion
085passes seven zero thank you and our uh last agenda item for tonight is to approve the 2022-2023 calendar and we did talk about this at the last board meeting so um we'll head our take it over dr collier sure thank you as you mentioned i did present this at our last board meeting and we had minimal feedback suggesting any drastic changes that would be recommended for the committee to reconsider i would like to publicly thank the members of our calendar committee that take on this task every year and consider the input of staff and um so again minimal changes here for you on on this calendar from our last meeting if there was a change it was a a word or a detail down below but nothing significant relative to the substance of the calendar
086as previously presented great uh do i have a motion i move that the board of education approves the 2022 2023 calendar as presented second thank you uh motion by tom second by michelle all those in favor please raise your right hand motion passes seven zero and with that we are at the end uh do i have a motion to adjourn i move that the january 11th the regular board of education meeting be adjourned second thank you motion by tom second by jody all those in favor please raise your right hand and happy birthday to dr schmidt on thursday