Blue Valley Board of Education Meetings Live Stream 10.12.2020

001check one two three testing one two make sure it clears out we are testing we are testing check one two getting that okay ryan test one two test getting that right test one two you getting the text yep okay okay so my check one two check one two check like check one two might check one two uh okay um my mic check one two might check one two might check one two check one two check one two check mic one two might check one two test one two might check one two testing one two testing mic one two check mike one two three testing test one two test mic one two we are ready to get started and we'll start with the pledge of allegiance christian mcnerlin all right thank you so give me evening

002we have a very special person who is going to kick off our board meeting i would like to invite heartland elementary second grade student to visha gupta to the front to lead us in the pledge of allegiance so come on up you'll go stand over by the flags where we practiced oh you i'm gonna give you this make it official sound good oh it's funny it's ready to go you speak into it you lead us i pledge your allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and tuber republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all wow that was really good very good i know you have a principal here that also wants to present you with some flowers and we have our superintendent dr tanya

003merrigan who has a certificate as well so all kinds of wonderful things for you and then we want to get a good picture oh that's so nice look at dad once now dad gets the priority pick thank you so much you did an outstanding job today all right before we get started with recognitions this evening i know that some of you you know maybe here just for the recognitions which most of them are back there but we would invite you to continue to stay or if you want to leave after our recognition you're welcome to do that either way so just wanted you to know there would be a quick little break so rebecca parr would you please come forward with your principal scott roberts it's like the academy awards coming from the back we're

004excited to recognize rebecca special education parrot hilltop learning center with the distinguished service award rebecca has been with the district for a total of five and a half years of service cassandra scott would you please um start us off with a few comments about why she's such an outstanding employee absolutely i'm going to present those to you rebecca i am honored to be able to recognize rebecca this year she has worked out the hilltop learning center because she works with our students that are in special education and are medically fragile and so they're currently at hilltop to keep them all safe but i like to think of rebecca and everybody that works in that program as a superhero this is someone that comes every day and she's there for students who are who have medical

005challenges who have cognitive challenges and she is there and she's that she has such a huge heart and such a belief in everybody gets to learn and everybody has a wonderful experience it's something that i'm proud to say i work in blue valley that we're able to work with students at all levels and make a meaningful experience and that's what rebecca does every day she is caring she's thoughtful she's dedicated she never misses ever misses she's always there and for students that's what they need they need that constant driving force connection every day and that's what we're making provides so um on behalf of and the other thing is she also builds great connections with our peers and um so she comes to all the events she comes to plays and games and she's there

006but she wants to continue to connect with kids um each and every day and so i am humbled um and honored to be able to uh to be here to speak on your behalf rebecca congratulations thank you so much for everything you do so rebecca i think it's um app that you have the super mirror superhero mask on scott just referred to that but is there something you want to say i just want to say thank you to all my coworkers and everyone else who made the hilltop school so productive in my family thank you i see you have a couple of special people here as in family as well so on behalf of blue valley we want to thank you and congratulate you on this honor thank you congratulations we're going to take a

007picture now [Applause] hey would you mind centering in front of the staff recognition sorry [Music] too you want to be with mommy in the picture yeah two wonder womans that's great thank you so much and congratulations all right next up our excellence in education awards would teresa swallow please come forward with your principal roxanna rogers roxanna you got your hands full too we are excited to recognize teresa swallow a spanish teacher at blue valley middle school with an excellence in education award this school year is theresa's 21st year in the district roxanna please tell us why teresa is such a rock star at her job we come bearing gifts well deserved i have been in education for 30 plus years and i can tell you without a doubt that teresa swallow is one of the

008most dedicated teachers i have ever ever seen i've worked alongside her for 13 years and um the passion and the joy that she brings to the students each and every day is unparalleled and she's been doing it pretty long time and still i think that well i've heard her students stay say things like she really loves what she does it's important to her but she does find absolute joy by being in the classroom still even with all of the challenges presented um to her over the years and then now she um may talk about it very briefly but she's a problem solver she's not a problem admirer she's a problem solver and that is something that you just can't teach quite honestly and and another thing that teresa's worked with three different partners since i've

009known her one is somebody that she um was in lockstep with for many many years and an important part of education is collaboration you have to be able to work with other people and make them feel better and um and for the kids so that they get the same experience in the classroom so she had her long-time partner and then when she retired jeannie retired then first year young man graduated from college i had no doubts it would go well but it was awesome then he moved away and recently she's working with someone that had classroom experience transferred from another building same thing worked seamlessly the common denominator is theresa swallow and again you can't teach that and it's absolutely critical and she just makes everyone around her better so thank you so much for

010your dedication to this district and to our school and to the profession you're amazing so theresa and i go back quite a ways too back to your kids being at blue valley high school when i was a counselor there oh my gosh hi so um i couldn't agree more with roxanna about the longevity that you've had in this district and the effect you've had on hundreds and maybe thousands of kids but is there anything you want to say um i'm never usually at a loss for words um no a little over 21 years ago when the when the blue valley middle school principal convinced me to take a long long-term sub-position i fell in love with teaching all over again i fell in love with the students and the staff and the culture at blue

011valley middle school and uh so fast forward to 2020 and this is by far been the hardest year i've ever had teaching but the kids are still who they are uh their enthusiasm their thirst for learning their their humor they keep me laughing and they along with my family and and the staff at blue valley middle school they keep me going and i'm just holding out hope that one day real soon i'll be back to giving high fives and pets on the back and hugs when they're needed because they're always needed and i i thank you for this and i thank them and um this is especially meaningful to me this year thank you congratulations teresa congratulations we're gonna take a picture congratulations thank you is your family right here yes thank you for your

012support congratulations it's awesome thank you okay we have one more this is our second um excellence in education award winner would colette barack please come forward with your principal shannon adams we are happy to recognize colette barack a k2 interrelated resource teacher at stanley elementary with an excellence in education award this is colette's fourth year in blue valley shannon tell us why colette is such an outstanding teacher well i'm just gonna start with colette i don't know about you but as we walked up just a moment ago i felt like we were walking down the aisle together so um i will just tell you though um sometimes i do feel like you're my work wife because you do all the things colette started out teaching at stanley i think in fourth grade and then moved

013to multi-age and now has progressed to be a special education teacher and um that's a big deal um colette always takes those kids who need it the most and they are her people and they have the most growth because they are with her it's impressive and if i could package it i would um so colette i will just say i've learned over the last year that it's really important to tell people why you need them and why they're so important so i'm saying it through flowers because one that's the norm for this but two those particular flowers i chose on purpose yellow roses typically mean three things caring or showing caring which you do for our children every day and i appreciate that it also yellow roses also stand for friendship so i appreciate the

014friendship you have with all of your colleagues at stanley and with me as well and it also means joy which is what we have at stanley because of you and teachers like you so thank you for that and then the daisies those are for new beginnings because special education is a new beginning for you this year but i also feel like that's the professional you are you are always doing the next right thing as they say in elsa and frozen but you're always doing the next right thing you are continuing to grow and you are the epitome of a true professional so thank you for being on my team so is there anything you would like to say sure you want me to hold something um i think i got it thank you shannon told

015me she wasn't going to say a lot of things so thank you so much i truly love getting up and being able to do what i love every day so thank you for pushing me and for also just giving me the right environment so i appreciate that i know that i work with some of the best of the best so i feel very honored right now to receive this award so thank you and thank you to blue valley because i do feel honored to be a part of this family so colette on behalf of blue valley we want to congratulate you and thank you for all that you do this year especially because we know this has been an especially hard year and teachers have worked maybe doubly hard to make meet the needs of

016their students we want to thank your family who's here with you because i i'm betting that we've stolen some hours from you that you didn't get to have with your family so thank you so much for all that you do all right congratulations we're gonna take a picture now one thing i would like to close with as i know that as you guys make your way back around um is one more round of applause for all the people here that were recognized and for tethesha who led us in the pledge of allegiance normally the place it would be packed with people from their schools their colleagues and i know that they're online tonight rooting them on behind the scenes so thank you very much and just know that um behind them is a huge um

017cheerleading squad who they cheer each other on all the time so we're sorry we're able to bring big crowds in today but we know that virtually they were here so thank you and that concludes our recognitions thank you christy sure is great to be uh giving back awards um it's been a while and i'm sure glad we could do it in person so before we go into um public comments i was working last night on preparing for our meeting and i wanted to make sure you know obviously the past several months um have been tough in our community if you will very tough in several facets also we've had some very tragic events in this district over the past month or so and i want to just acknowledge a lot of these and let everybody

018know that our thoughts and prayers are with all these families that have suffered over the past several weeks if you will so first of all steve madden mark the moorish principal who passed away uh to his wife stacy daughter sierra son tony and his parents mike and sally our blue valley west student tyler woods and his parents chris and kathy woods and sister samantha who's a freshman at blue valley west leewood elementary teacher we lost to cancer brittany marinsky and her husband paul i thought some prayers to them and then over this weekend more tragedy in our community that directly affected blue river elementary in a tragic accident on saturday night brent moroney who is father of reese and eden kevin corvin father of ryan troy hamlin father of carter and then in critical condition

019chancey adams uh father of eight of ava adams so again on behalf of the blue valley school board we're thinking about these families and and some of the circumstances that we've had over the past several weeks so i want to make sure they're all acknowledged and thought through on many of this so i appreciate that moment if you will on to patreon comments and our open forum uh we'll do it similar to last time we were bringing in somebody um virtually and then the rest of our folks are in person uh welcome to those who are in attendance to address the board or listen during the 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

020provided for up to 60 minutes 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 limit per speaker after 60 minutes the board will close open form and will proceed with his agenda items for this 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 the meeting you may address the board by email communication i've got a few other reminders about open forum that will help our speakers to have a constructive and positive experience when discussing items with the board when making remarks please be civil and use respectful language if you're here in person please

021keep your face covered in place while you speak please limit discussion to relevant business of the board tonight discussion of matters related to a specific student or employee is not allowed instead comments should be submitted to writing to the superintendent dr american please remember to limit your comments to three minutes avoid repeating the concerns of a previous speaker and if you have questions that require response we will follow up with you at a later time again on behalf of the board 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 tonight we will start open form remarks with our patrons joining us remotely and tonight we have just one as a reminder

022we'll limit this to three minutes so let's get started with carl heinz virtually he can't hear me at all right carl can you hear us can you okay we cannot hear you we think we're good on our end can you turn your up still nothing yeah all right carl we got it figured out we're sorry can you uh begin again we appreciate you being on oh no problem thank you very much it's it's better to talk to somebody who can hear me rather than just it's a small general rule i we totally agree great thank you okay i'll start all over again my granddaughter is a student in the blue valley district and i had the opportunity to assist and observe her during the recent virtual education sessions and i'm here today because i found

023certain elements of my third graders educational curriculum very disturbing i furnished a pdf of one document i found particularly troublesome to the board you should have seen it along with some written remarks the curriculum that these kids are being subjected to is inappropriate subversive and destructive now here are the examples to prove my points the math section involved pattern recognition requiring a child to know how to count by eights and to recognize a progression based on only a few numbers yet these kids aren't even through their multiplications tables yet this is a total turnoff to math the language section includes lessons on complex dependent and independent phrases participles opened and closed conjunctives language construction theory such as this is completely inappropriate especially for third graders it's not helpful it's difficult to comprehend it's just a

024waste of time the reading assignments included pieces on voting and a profile of muhammad ali the muhammad ali peace focuses on boxing discrimination islam and malcolm x these are not contextually relevant for eight and nine-year-olds why do we have an article on an ex-felon draft invader instead of on someone important like george washington thomas jefferson or abraham lincoln the voting section was supposed to describe what voting is all about the cover included a picture of black people demonstrating the materials cover things like the 15th amendment women's suffrage struggle through marshall's supreme court case and the voting rights act full page biographies of martin luther king jr rosa parks and cesar chavez are included the lesson is all about 1960 civil rights segregation and california agricultural labor strikes it failed to mention why we have elections

025what people we elect do for their job how often we vote how do we vote what a ballot actually looks like how it's counted and the difference between local and national elections instead it focuses on slavery discrimination against black voters black voting protests supreme court cases the women's suffrage movement etc etc this stuff was irrelevant and pandering to a social movement the science curriculum had a video about the kelvin scale in language appropriate for 10th graders students are introduced to fahrenheit celsius and kelvin the video was totally incomprehensible to a third grader and did a great job of confusing and turning off young people to science the entire curriculum is overwhelmingly peppered with images of people of color the videos often feature black performers the only white people you see are portrayed negatively or is

026the color of the people oppressing some minority group social engineering is apparent with photos of multiple cultural black white relationships implying that two white parents is somehow different quite inclusive while inclusiveness is okay there's a point where you feel like an agenda is very much in play if this is the state of the curriculum in our country when we're being corrupted from within the images and subtle messages are a kind of brainwashing our children are being systematically turned into social activists with no relevant educational background i'm afraid it may be part of a very sick agenda who's responsible for this why did the board of education approve this curriculum are they paying attention or have they delegated to some group without any review and i would conclude by saying delegation without supervision is abdication thank

027you gentlemen i have been ladies i appreciate you listening to my rant i hope that it made some sense to you and i hope that you will take action on what i've stated thank you carl appreciate it okay we'll hear from our patrons who are here to join us tonight in person um again we'll limit our comments to three minutes and first up uh terence god all right good evening my name is terence codd and my son attends sunrise point elementary i'd like to start by thanking dr merrigan tom mitchell and mike seitz for meeting with my wife and i some about some while back to discuss some concerns we had and to give a special thanks to dr merrigan for always being so responsive via email i'm speaking tonight because i'm concerned about the

028district's policies regarding quarantine healthy students when someone around them tests positive for coronavirus i think this is an important issue because excessive quarantines cause unnecessary disruption for students and they can create a sense that the situation is worse than it actually is i also have concerns around the schedule modifications in place for older students so i have two criticisms of the district's quarantine policy first it seems that the policy being implemented by the district is much more conservative than stated or the written policy the guidelines from the district state that only close contacts of individuals who test positive would have to quarantine where close contact is defined as within six feet of for a ten cumulative minutes or more in a single day without masks the incident at timber creek elementary more than 100 students

029were asked to quarantine it is example of this overly cautious approach based on the data available on the district's kova dashboard it seems that none of the individuals asked the quarantine went on to test positive this is strong evidence that the quarantines were unnecessary i hope that the district is tracking the rates of positive tests in individuals asked to quarantine and using this information to evaluate whether the current policy is appropriate quarantining healthy students is a dramatic and unprecedented response and should only be used where there is overwhelming evidence that is necessary my second criticism is that the district is being unclear about the nature of the quarantine and who was ordering them again using the timber creek incentive as an example the district initially claimed that the county ordered the quarantine however the letter

030from the county that was distributed to parents was written after the date the quarantine was ordered and only recommended a quarantine it did not require it i exchanged several emails of dr merrigan and now know that the quarantines from the district are only recommendations and that you can still decide to send your child to school i think the district should be more transparent in their communication regarding quarantines and if they are mandatory or not regarding the schedules i'll start by saying how happy my family is that elementary school is back for full time in person learning and has made a world of difference for our son to be receiving instruction from his teacher in person and to be around his friends it is my hope that the district will continue on the path to more

031in-person learning and fewer restrictions moving forward that said it is still not clear to me why remote learning or hybrid schedules are necessary at all for families who elected for in-person learning according to the johnson county kova 19 dashboard 95 of deaths from coronavirus have been in people over 60. importantly zero deaths from coronavirus have been recorded in school-aged children at all for this reason and the growing body of scientific evidence that schools are not high-risk environments i'm asking that the board please propose and vote on a motion tonight to immediately open all schools for full-time in-person learning schools and districts in johnson county the larger metro area and across the country have made the same decision with no adverse impact on community transmission i hope that you will give the students and families in

032blue valley the same opportunity for full-time in-person learning thank you again for hosting this public forum thank you terence three minutes spot on appreciate that um linda migliazzo linda my name is linda milianzo i live in leawood and i have a 7th grader and a freshman in blue valley this isn't an easy situation for anyone especially our teachers and those who have lost loved ones my heart goes out to our children who are suffering i'm pleading for you to allow them to return to school full-time to due to the massive detrimental effects the lack of in-person schooling has had on our youth i previously provided you with my story and i come to you with a prayer that others don't have to experience what my family has gone through or worse to lose a loved

033one this that's why i'm here because of the isolation and the things done to try and protect our community from covid our children are hurting and it has to stop our district has lost a couple of students and others to suicide since the lockdowns this last spring public health officials admit that anxiety and stress are increasing but parents pleased to send kids to school in person full time feel like they're falling on death deaf ears our student district has i'm sorry studies consistently document the negative effects of excessive screen time on use academic success social skills even career success there are links between screen time and depression and suicide attempts in adolescence studies show that kids who spend more than five hours a day or 24 hours per week in front of a screen have

034double the risk of suicidal behaviors including ideation planning and temp attempts that require hospital hospitalization especially with covid screens have become the way to socially interact virtual learning adds six to eight hours of screen time a day and isolation when kids spend too much screen time you need to be worried now you're telling them to have excessive screen time when kids isolate themselves you need to be worried now we're telling them to isolate social isolation frustration with virtual schools and having things they look forward to be being taken away from them do the covet prevention member measures are contributing to the decline of our children and families mental health children are contributing i'm sorry children are becoming dissociated secluded self-conscious and angry many are resorting to harmful ways of coving coping and the negative impact

035now can have long-term consequences including ongoing depression and emotional issues getting kids back to school connected with others and off screens as one piece that could alleviate some of these problems it's not too late to minimize the damage that we're doing to our children's mental health i want everyone to take the mental health of our children and our families more seriously we continue to hear the incessant focus on the number of coveted cases but it's frustrating to see at many board meetings where there are peers where it appears as if the board only focuses on coveted cases and not the other ripple effects of isolation where is the data that tells us about the mental health of our children mental health issues should be factored into the equation as school boards and mental and public

036officials form policies to deal with covet i'm finishing up who is keeping track of this information how many kids have recently started counseling looked into suicide and who have made attempts that were thankfully unsuccessful many kids are failing classes how many are not attending classes this information should be tracked and disseminated just as much as the covid case data is it's bigger than anyone realizes and it needs more attention than it's getting public and private schools all over our city and our country have been in session for two months now they're doing it safely and successfully why can't blue valley you've heard the statistics what are you doing with that information right now it feels like many are not standing up for our children for their education their well-being or their long-term safety we're not

037simply fighting for an in-school education we're fighting for the well-being and the lives of our children thank you for your time and thank you dr marion for promptly responding to my email earlier this week i really appreciate it thank you thank you linda amy thomas hi good evening thanks for having us tonight i my name is amy thomas i have boys at blue valley southwest in aubrey bend middle school um i am coming here to advocate for our children to go back to school full-time in person my sophomore took honors geometry last year we know in the fourth quarter we were getting by as best we could in geometry his teacher flat out said there was a section he couldn't get to he will not learn this information she made it clear he needs to

038know that for the a.c.t who's going to teach to him he now has chemistry in algebra 2. these are critical to his success on the act this year is critical for him and these implications of not learning this material is long far beyond this year it is his application to college it could affect the college that he wants to get into long standing my seventh grader three hours a day he has nothing to do on his days he's not in school 10 30 to 1 30 nothing to do he's getting straight a's don't think he's learned anything i really don't i pulled some information i moved here from florida for this education specifically chose blue valley because i didn't like school system in florida in tampa florida they're the seventh largest school district in hillsboro

039county 222 000 students and employees they have no gating criteria there are temperature checks on teachers only every day they are full-time in person since august 27th they have had 613 cases since august 27th at 0.27 positivity rate dallas texas just outside of dallas this school system chose not to go with the dallas county school gating criteria they have 37 000 students they've had 43 cases for employees 0.62 positivity rate and 14 students with covet 0.37 positivity rate now i'll go to local rockhurst high school 1109 total students uh 1059 in person this past week they had a 0.1 isolation rate for positive cases and they have 0.6 quarantine due to possible exposure blue springs high school blue spring school district 11 223 in person school and staff they've had 18 total cases 0.16 positivity

040rate three cases of known school spread these instructors and teachers know you can't just look at the school system we know that you also have to take into consideration community spread and studies have found that schools are not spreaders and they are not spreading it among the community so i urge you and implore you to allow our high school and middle school students to go back to school full-time and learning the consequences are far beyond this one year i appreciate it thank you thank you amy dr white hey hi my name is christine white i live at 11301 west 125th terrace i just want everyone to know i'm speaking as a private citizen tonight i am not speaking for any group i'm speaking for myself um i also want to let everyone know that i

041am 100 behind people that want to learn virtually i'm 100 behind people that want to learn remotely um or in person i just want to tell you guys thank you for doing a very hard job at a very unusually hard time so i would not want your job i'm very grateful that elementary school kids are in school and i'm hopeful that middle and high schoolers will be back in person very soon maybe by the end of the month or early november tonight i would like to address the question of quarantines just looking forward and being optimistic that kids will be in school as more kids get back in school there will be more exposures the question then arises how do you handle these we have already had some small and large scale quarantines in our

042district when these have occurred there seems to be a paucity of information given to the families of those affected it has been nearly impossible for these families to find out many details of the possible exposure they aren't sure if the district their individual school or the health department has ordered or recommended the quarantine sometimes these families are told one thing by the health department but another thing by their school and aren't sure which advice they are supposed to follow families aren't sure if these are recommendations or if they are orders or requirements set out by the health department for their kids who are now out of school for 10 days with hit or miss access to remote learning with a teacher what are these families to do and this could happen to them over and

043over for the remainder of this school year how much school can a child miss and still learn what they need to i think what is needed is a plan before this starts to occur on a wide scale and more transparency the first thing i would do is very clearly delineate what is an exposure as uh defined by the health department it is being within six feet of a positive case for greater than or equal to ten minutes straight with no masks being worn by either party make sure we know what that is definition is and that we stick to it the second thing is who is recommending the child stay home is it coming from the school the district or the health department is it a recommendation or an order if it is an order

044it must be in writing and come just from the health department there needs to be a process well delineated for families so that they gain access to the info that they need if they find themselves in the situation there should be a website with phone numbers email addresses of school personnel district personnel health department personnel who will quickly return their queries there needs to be guaranteed can i have 20 seconds almost done there needs to be guaranteed remote learning with their teachers if the student must be in quarantine they should not be expected to school themselves for 10 days i think we should carry out this process with surgical precision only cutting out the smallest amount of tissue or excluding the smallest number of students with definite proven exposure i know many public and private

045schools in our area are doing this very well right now they identify the cases and they limit the number of kids excluded we need to talk to these districts and figure out how they're doing this and follow their lead we need to be much more upfront and transparent with families that find themselves in this situation developing a plan now is essential for success in the coming months thank you thank you dr white jill ackermann thank you i'm sorry i did not sign up to speak i thought i was signing in for attendance oh but while i'm here thank you for your help are [Music] anyway while i'm here thank you for your job you've got a really difficult job i appreciate you making decisions um i recognize you're elected by us to make decisions on

046our behalf thank you so much tough job um i guess while i'm up here while i was sitting there i just kind of want to make some quick reminders on my mask i've got written down per cdc it's online right now the survival rate for our kids in blue valley is 99.997 percent that's their best estimate if they were to if they were to contract covet 19. the american academy of pediatrics recommends in-person learning i think you all know this but i'm just reminding y'all this past week the world health organization came out with a statement they discourage lockdowns and they've said that they acknowledge that continued lockdowns will cause irreparable damage that's per the world health organization someone mentioned the fact that schools aren't super spreaders based on some pretty quality clinical data um

047and studies out new york state some in israel china i think we're going to be getting more information about that regarding the fact that schools aren't super spreaders um i don't even know how much time i have left because like i said i was not prepared for this um i want to just remind us a little bit about gating criteria and how important is that we have quality data when we're talking about gating criteria if our tests are so sensitive that's wonderful and that's that's fabulous but we're getting positive test rates on patients who have such low viral load that they really shouldn't be considered capable of transmitting the virus so it's really going to skew things when we take into account just positivity based on these incredible sensitive tests um also when we talk

048about positivity there's a true sampling bias considering we're sampling patients who are symptomatic versus a group of people that better represents blue valley um again wow surprise speaker thank you so much appreciate it and just i can i encourage you to continue to make rational decisions uh in the best interests of our students and our community at large thank you so much welcome to blue valley thank you jill [Applause] next up david edwards good evening my name is david edwards i'm here tonight to talk about the removal of to kill a mockingbird of mice and men the adventures of tom sawyer and the adventures of huckleberry finn from the resources available to english teachers when teaching their curriculum i was assigned i'm a student at blue valley high school and my english teacher was originally

049going to use to kill a mockingbird as a teaching resource during this school year however when the decision came in to remove the book she had to change what she was using to a different book i i looked into this i corresponded with a few members of the district including dr merrigan and it seems that the decision and i also had a meeting with david stubblefield and jennifer lozynski two district administrators who are who were partially responsible for the decision and from what i've gathered that who'd the decision to remove this was made based off of listening tours as they were called that were conducted it sounds like uh late last spring or during the summer and it sounds like they he gathered feedback from people who wanted the book removed but after they gathered

050that feedback they did not listen to people who wanted the books to stay they he made the decision based only on negative feedback from the books and they did not listen to the parents and students who are all stakeholders in the issue and rather than have the board of education vote they instead had some commit they instead had two committees come together to sort of make the decision the academic services department and the school administration team if i am correct i came here tonight to ask that the board who perhaps hear opinions who voices who want the books to return to the curriculum and to vote themselves they are the elected officials they should be accountable to the voters on this decision and while there are a lot of valid reasons for removing these books

051i feel like there are other equally if not more valid reasons for keeping for keeping the books on the curriculum and i feel like those opinions need to be heard if such a huge and important decision is to be made thank you for your time [Applause] thank you david kerry paschke thank you good evening my name is kerry pashke my address is on file and i have three kids in the blue valley school district i want to thank the board for the opportunity to speak to you here tonight although honestly i wish i didn't have to be here again talking about this same topic but i've still got two kids who opted for full-time in-person learning who still aren't full-time and in-person learning so here we are a middle schooler in high school are now

052hybrid while on one hand i see it as a step up from completely virtual because theoretically the kids are in person two or three days a week versus zero days per week but a closer look shows students are actually in the physical school building a whopping eight to ten days during the month of october and that's just not good enough but that's an adequate way to describe the hybrid model isn't it not good enough the blue valley school district website says our district offers quote education beyond expectations but that's not what this is you already know that of course because that's why elementary was moved out of it so help me understand the logic behind transitioning our middle and high school kids into it seems like it's just wasting more time to me especially when

053the opportunity to move our kids directly to full-time in-person learning for those who chose it was a fair and valid option on the table but you opted for an intermediate step the kid just keeps kicking the proverbial can down the road and i want to be clear that i'm speaking directly to you tonight the members of the blue valley board of education because you have both the power and the capability to open our schools for for full-time in-person learning not the gating committee and we're not even asking you to go first time magazine recently reported that nearly half the school districts across the country have reopened for fully in-person instruction according to the center for reinventing public education now from what i understand that's close to seven thousand school districts just in the united states

054that have taken this step ahead of us way ahead of us most of those districts took that brave step over two months ago when our kids were still on month six of their summer vacation i would argue that as a district we have fallen behind we've wasted five weeks on distant learning and hybrid learning that we can't get back so at this time i am respectfully asking you to move us forward to follow the trail that has already been blazed for you and allow all of our students who chose it the opportunity to return to school full time and in person by all means allow those families who want to remain home the opportunity to continue on with their virtual education i respect their choice and the district's willingness to offer them that but for

055the rest of us please no more distance learning no more hybrid model we didn't ask for those we didn't choose those so please stop making the decision for us to be stuck with them we chose full-time in-person learning because that was a choice you gave us you've got the mitigation strategies in place to make it happen you've got literally thousands of school districts who have been going strong for months now if you need examples for how to do it and proof that it can be done safely and nothing i repeat nothing short of that is ever going to be good enough for our kids thank you [Applause] thank you carrie william edwards thank you so much for having me happy indigenous peoples day happy columbus day uh my name is william edwards i'm the proud

056father of uh mr david edwards over there i live in the wilderness neighborhood near row 159th street i'm here to ask the school board to vote on whether to approve or disapprove the recent administrative decision to exclude four classic books from the list of books approved for classroom instruction these four books advice of mice and men huck finn tom sawyer and to kill mockingbird are all classic american novels most american most adult americans have read one or more of these novels as an english assignment in school as an attorney who practiced in a small town in rural kansas i've long felt an emotional connection to the to kill a mockingbird character atticus finch the author harper lee based the character on her own attorney father the situation depicted in the novel is a composite of

057several real cases in the 1930s deep south one of which twice advanced to the us supreme court the the novel may have been fiction but it played a crucial role in the civil rights movement in 1963 dr martin luther king cited the character atticus finch in his book why we can't wait dr king found inspiration in the power of atticus's non-violent opposition to injustice just before my son's first semester was about to start his english teacher notified him that the district no longer allowed teachers to directly assign this book my son investigated as he mentioned before earlier over the subsequent over the subsequent weeks until a meeting with high-ranking members of the district they explained that after several after a series of parent meetings the district personnel had an internal discussion and determined that the

058books were harming students in particular the use of the n-word was found to make minority students uncomfortable that's true to kill a mockingbird doesn't play that word almost 50 times additionally the protagonist hero atticus finches is of course white the african-american characters are depicted in a way that aligned with negative cultural stereotypes and the dialogue written in the 1960s can be difficult to digest through the lens of 2020 sensibilities these are valid concerns and i believe the district had no illite ill intent in accommodating these concerns while i can understand why this book makes people uncomfortable i don't agree with the way that blue valley approached the question the district administrators did not employ their diversity and inclusion advisory committee it did not make its decision making meeting accessible to the public when the final

059decision was made nobody objected in other words the district only took input from people who wanted the books excluded i understand that the district wants to protect students from harm all book bans all book bans are done to protect people from harmful ideas but ironically protecting people from harmful ideas does inflicts the most harm of all it creates a people who expect to be sheltered from concepts with which they don't agree this doesn't prevent intolerance it promotes it the district should hear from the other side and listen to the advocates of these books administrators should not be expected to referee sensitive cultural issues like this that's why we have elections that's why you're here that's why i'm asking the board to decide on these books thank you thank you william dave travert hi thank you

060good evening my name is dave trevord i'm here speaking as a resident of the district and also in my professional capacity at kansas policy institute on behalf of the many probably hundreds of parents we've been working with over the last few weeks over the issues you've heard about tonight the lack of in-person full-time learning for students i'm going to direct your attention to the handout you're you're just seeing now one of the first one talks about the basically ineffectiveness of these things we have to wear these masks the johns according to the data from the kansas department of health institut uh in health and environment the counties with mask mandates had 18 percent faster case growth than the counties without mandates and johnson county was tracking there on the yellow line right along with all

061the other counties that have a mandate the next table down shows really encouraging information it shows the survivable rate in johnson county according to the kansas department or the johnson county department of health it's 100 percent survival for kids age zero to 19. it is 99.9 for adults aged 20 to 59. that's as of last friday these are encouraging pieces of information that hopefully will encourage you to let these parents get their kids back in school now if that doesn't do it maybe you'd be looking at the achievement levels in this district because learning from home learning remote is not the same thing and unfortunately there's also there's already a lot of kids behind according to the kansas department of education 21 of the 10th graders in the blue valley school district are below grade

062level in math and reading about a third of those 10th graders are at grade level but they still need remedial training and less than one half of the 10th graders in blue valley are on track for college and career and if that doesn't do it then maybe some of the quotes from the attached article uh about the unfortunate suicides that are occurring in the blue valley district uh we've attached the article that our media outlet the sentinel published and i'm just going to read the quote at the bottom this is from stacy that's that's not her real name we made that up to protect her identity when stacy was in the emergency room uh when her son tried to commit suicide she said there were three other children in that emergency room who had also

063tried to commit suicide she says every single mental health person i've talked to every single one has said this is a kid that under normal circumstances this wouldn't have happened this is because of the isolation and all of the things we've done to try and protect him we've hurt him and it has to stop on behalf of all these parents please make this stop thank you thank you dave i think dave was the last one last speaker we we do appreciate all the speakers tonight in your comments i know carl who's offline had reached out i think on september 24th i know you had directed um dr collier to meet with him or talk to him i believe that that happened terence appreciate you coming and meeting with us in person in your emails as

064well linda thank you for your note last week and your bravery and speaking tonight amy i know you've emailed me in the past and thank you for your comments tonight jill for stepping up and coming up and talking um dr white has been here several times we've been in correspondence uh david and william edwards in regards to the books i know we've received several emails from them and have followed up directly i appreciate carrie i know you've been here several times and we've traded notes as well and then dave obviously we've been in correspondence also so i want to acknowledge all the speakers and the notes we continue to get and do appreciate on behalf of the board of education education that you are here that really do okay next is we will call the

065meeting to order first up receive reports from board advisory committees we've had several board advisory committees that have met since the last time we met so the first one up is curriculum and instruction and i believe dr collier has that report good evening the curriculum and instruction board advisory committee met via zoom on thursday september 24th the first meeting of the year was spent getting to know the new committee members for the 21 school year in addition the committee reviewed the purpose of the cni board advisory committee which is to provide the blue valley school district with input feedback and perspectives from interested students teachers administrators and parents who are willing to study various topics and make recommendations that will benefit all students the committee's first update consisted of details associated with the district's literacy

066team and current practices associated with assessment and professional learning pertaining to dyslexia in the district's efforts to remain in compliance with and exceed the state guidelines for dyslexia finally the committee engaged in dialogue associated with the start of the school year with details surrounding the hybrid model virtual ed and distance learning in addition the gating criteria was briefly reviewed relative to its impact on each one of these learning modes the curriculum and instruction board advisory committee will meet again on october 14th these meetings will continue to meet via zoom until further notice health and well-being and i think mark schmidt is going to give that report good evening our first meeting of the school year took place on wednesday september 23rd at 4 pm via zoom after introductions and reviewing the purpose of our committee

067we spent the remaining time talking about the mental health supports both within johnson county and within the blue valley school district with a bigger focus on what's happening with covet 19. tim dewis joined us from johnson county mental health he's the director there and he he was there to discuss various supports available within the community some of the program highlights include operating a 24-hour crisis line walk-in mental health services and expanding the use of video therapies that will make make therapies available to adults and youth within their homes mr dewees also mentioned that johnson county soon would be offering a front-line supports that had previously been reserved for police officers firefighters and medical workers and open that up to teachers as well we have now shared that new resource with all of our staff within

068blue valley tara walrod then came forward and you're going to hear more from tara later on tonight but she talked about the various things that we have going on to address anxiety screen addiction financial insecurity and grief and loss as tom mentioned we we have had multiple opportunities to work through some of those resources tara also thanked the parent organization bv well and for offering multiple summer parent resources dealing with resiliency connections and meeting the emotional needs of their children our next meeting will be by zoom on november 4th 2020 at 4 pm thank you very much thank you mark finance and operations with kyle hayden good evening the finance and operations committee met on october 8th via zoom conference call there were 19 of the 20 members present and four guests were able to

069join us also i shared back to school updates related to the status of the current learning modes at each of the levels our directors jason gillum charles rathbun and jake slobodnick shared information and fielded questions regarding some of the district's struggles with staffing you'll hear a bit more about that in a little while the 2019-20 financial audit was presented by director of accounting and payroll nathan mull and jonathan nyberger who's the vice president with alan gibbs and hulick a report is on the agenda for later tonight nathan wall also presented a summary of the district's quarterly investments as of september 30th director finance jenny daniel presented the bond tax compliance checklist summary for uh for 2020 and this is included on the consent agenda also tonight the tax compliance procedures cover regulations regarding the allowable

070expenditures of bond funds investments the use of district facilities and other related items jake slobodnick director of facilities and operations presented a design and budget update uh specifically focused on the antioch district activities complex the project consists of new ticket booths grandstand press box bleachers restrooms locker rooms concessions and storage areas the gmp total is 10.68 million which is approximately a hundred thousand dollars under budget jake sabotnick also presented four items within the bids and contracts document i mentioned the antioch district activities complex a benefit area agreement with water one the transfer property agreement with the city of overland park and utility easement agreement with the city of leawood jason gillum director of business operations presented the remainder of the bids and contracts particular attention was given to several items including the use of the

071pinnacle staffing group for temporary labor the additional funding needed for powerschool and consulting services for our business plus project transamerica voluntary employee retirement savings plans and a cr a contract for additional zoom licenses and cloud storage imagine that the next finance committee meeting is scheduled for thursday november 5th and the final committee that met since the last time we had a board meeting was the diversity equity and inclusion committee that met on thursday october 8th again via zoom during this meeting we continued with giving the committee information uh from within the blue valley school district that they had brainstormed during our first meeting they wanted to hear about so uh dr amy dillon and dr eric ponzwick from the blue valley human resources department were there and talked about the recruitment of diverse staff and

072the processes that they go through they also talked in length about the uh force program which is a program with mid-america nazarene where we um are able to get uh students men of color in to do their practicums and internships here in student teaching and then hopefully we can hire them to stay on within blue valley the second half of that meeting involved dan carney our director of safety and security who came in and talked about an overview of our campus police and school resource officer program as well as the trainings that are involved within that program the meeting concluded that evening at 6 pm and our next meeting would be on thursday november 12th again from 4 to 6 pm via zoom that's it for our committee reports thank you dr merrigan and others

073appreciate the update uh next to receive reports from board members and the superintendent on items that are not included in our agenda tonight michelle benjamin i'll start with you i don't have anything at this time thank you patrick hurley i don't have anything at this time madam vice president nothing for me either jody dates sorry um yeah i just wanted to to throw a note out there dei um it's always so filled with information and and we go up and actually past our six o'clock uh deadline every time because there's so much there um it's it's really incredible um the committee members are incredibly constructive and and ask really some great deep diving questions so i just wanted to do a shout out for that um i was able to attend a bv well event

074last week dr ellen katz um spoke who's with american public square and he talked to us about you know civility and and then the question then turned to how can we teach our kids about civility and uh it was uh you know in good modeling for them so it was really an interesting topic and i would recommend any bb well events um you know that that that are out there that if you can attend those that that it was really really good thanks jody stacy um yes i do have a couple updates uh regarding keisha we had our board of directors meeting on september 16th we did have 100 digital attendance which was great it makes a little bit easier for folks to participate because they are coming from across the state usually to topeka

075we received a state of the association report participated in breakout groups allowed for a one-day regional tennis tournament approved virtual scholarship attorneys if needed moved the state gymnastics meet back two weeks later and modified pre-competition dates for those schools participating in the alternate fall season for the sports of cross country football and boys soccer then there was an executive board meeting which i'm actually not a member of but they also met recently to review and they did support post-season spectator guidelines that will restrict state event attendance i believe probably around 50 capacity and reduce participation numbers details will be provided as the staff work with the host sites and the respective local health authorities so it's a challenge for working in different areas with different rules and requirements and they did announce that they have

076a sportsmanship focus they are planning a competition between student organizations to promote sportsmanship they're calling it hashtag starts with me in case you're interested our next meeting is a regional meeting that's planned for october 26th and then um i would just like to say as always a thank you to our teachers and our staff here in blue valley who have been working so hard and doing such a great job and i also really want to thank all the parents that have reached out with feedback on what is working well and what can be improved several good ideas have come up out of this and i really appreciate the willingness of all to be flexible and creative and we are really truly lucky to have such an engaged and caring community here so really appreciate everyone's

077times with that and that is all i have this evening mr president thank you stacy my excites i'm not sure i can top what stacy said uh however i do want to remind the board that this wednesday from 6 to 8 p.m the kansas association of school boards is having a zoom regional round table i think some of you attended last year um it was in olathe if you recall and and what this does is it gets board members from around um our part of the world together just to talk about what's going on in their districts so it's not too late to sign up i'd be happy to help anyone if you're interested i know you are um and there are no refreshments okay thank you mike thank you stacy great reports again stacy's

078on the board of directors for keisha i serve on the appeals board for the organization as well um if you're twitter fans they run a great twitter of the weekends with all the kids activities and athletics throughout the state and it's it's a joy to watch some of that as it goes on couldn't agree more uh when guards are teachers i've been on a couple calls lately last uh one last friday one today with my kids teachers just going through some things and just their passion and the way they're handling stuff is just refreshing and i knew it was happening but it was just great to spend some time with them as well and also your comment about feedback so to all the parents and patrons and teachers and staff we continue to appreciate your

079feedback and have made changes and uh take your thoughts with with to our heart and um and they've been good at the end of the day and and we appreciate you helping come up with some ideas and things that need to get better here at the district so thank you for that that's all i have nothing else yes oh yeah doctor oh yeah the superintendent yeah yeah i have two things uh one this week is national school lunch week so shout out to charles rathbun and all of our food service staff who have worked tirelessly and have had to make some major changes to ensure that kids continue to get fed so thank you again to all of those october is also national principles month and i want to give a huge thank you to

080every single one of our building principals and assistant principals our administrative interns um because they have uh really led our buildings to make changes and they've had to make lots of changes within those buildings so they truly are doing amazing work and i want to thank them publicly for all that they are doing awesome thank you dr morgan next approve the agenda for the october 12 2020 regular board of education meeting as published looking for a motion i move that the board of education approved the agenda for the october 12th regular board of education meeting as published second motion by amy tiesling second by stacy obringer bar hall all those in favor please raise your right hand that motion passes 7-0 on to the consent agenda looking for a motion i move that the board

081of education approved the consent agenda for the october 12th regular board of education meeting as published motioned by michelle benjamin second by jodi dietz any further discussion or anything we want pulled off the consent agenda to go to new business from board members okay seeing none all those in favor please raise your right hand that motion passes 7-0 on to new business receive the audit report for 2019 2020. so just a few minutes a few minutes ago i mentioned that nathan mull and jonathan nyberger presented the annual audit to our board advisory finance and operations board advisory committee they're both here this evening so i'm going to ask jonathan to step to the mic here and share some highlights at your places you should have received uh this full document he's not going to go

082through every page he assured me he just hit a few highlights so jonathan thank you thank you for having me this evening i'm jonathan nybarker with agh and i was the officer in charge of the fiscal year 2020 audit for the school district here to briefly go over the financial statements and our audit with you and then answer any questions you may have starting off in the financial statement book that everyone should have pages one through three are the auditor's report the auditor's report includes standards that we use for the audit but most importantly the opinion that we issued over the district's financial statements our opinion can be found on the second page in the first paragraph we issued an unmodified opinion which is the highest opinion the district can receive at a high level

083in the district um there were several changes that i was going to discuss this year the first is that there was a prior period adjustment that the district made related to capital assets more information on the adjustment can be found in the third footnote to the district's financial statements otherwise some of the major changes include the district's refunding of previously issued bonds the issuance of 2020 construction bonds and increase in investments due to the investment of bond proceeds from the construction bonds and spend down of the construction bond proceeds which led to an increase in capital assets during the year then kind of skipping towards the back of the financial statement around page 86 is the schedule of expenditures of federal awards because the district expended more than 750 000 in federal aid during the

084year the district is required to receive a special audit over those expenditures for the 2020 fiscal year we audited the special education cluster and the title one grants our first letter on these grants can be found on page 90 and is our letter on internal controls and then on page 92 is our letter on compliance for each program's requirements i'm happy to report that we did not have any findings that were reported in either of these letters then separate from our financial statements we issued our auditors communication letter to those charged with governance one of the key points on the first page is that the district did not adopt any significant new accounting policies during the year also on the second page it discusses some of the significant estimates which include the net pension liability

085allowances for receivables compensated absences and other post-employment liabilities and then on the second page it also notes that there were no uncorrected misstatements in the district's financial statements this year in closing i would like to say that we greatly appreciated all of the assistance and cooperation from district staff this year this was our first year auditing at agh and as i noted during my finance committee meeting an audit is a huge undertaking but especially with a first-year new auditing firm auditing the district the district did a great job with all of the staff that we worked with and it seems like they do a great job here working for the district so thank you for your time and i'm available for any questions that you may have thank you jonathan questions mike sites not a

086not a question i want to thank jonathan for the overview gave the finance and operations committee i also want to thank kyle hayden for the work that your organization does i won't say this is the best but possibly the best one of the best audit reports i've heard um including the work that happens out in each of the schools so i just want to say thank you to you and your you and your staff pretty good amy yeah and jonathan just quickly one we're thankful for your participation again i think having that continuity um for the school district is uh extremely beneficial so thank you for that uh i know on your list of topics uh for forthcoming items is the lease accounting um have have you guys started to work on that yet or

087is that something that will really start up next year um probably really more with the next fiscal year i'm not sure that we've kind of discussed it in detail at this point um just kind of that it's on the horizon and and maybe everybody's dreading it but it's it's inevitable so yeah yeah and i have the same opinion about it with my day job so i appreciate that but again thank you for the work that you do and like mike said the presentation at finance and operations was extremely helpful any questions we had from patrons at finance and operations or most understood i know we got a pretty cfo heavy group with that group and so i just wanted to make sure anything else from board members on the audit okay jonathan appreciate your work

088thank you yes thank you very much okay now we're on to learning update with dr merrigan and team uh actually dr collier is making her way up and she is going to give us an overview of kind of where where we've been since the last board of education meeting the first thing i'd like to do this evening in this update is to bring to light the fact that we do continue to monitor and report coven 19 activity within our school district we present this on our district back dashboard combining student staff data protect to protect the privacy of individuals i would like to point out that the number of cases as you can see has decreased we are proud of our staff and students who are working together on mitigation criteria as employees and students

089to assist us in decreasing the presence of covet 19 in our environments here in blue valley and also our we are thankful for our students our parents and staff who engage in daily personal health assessments each day before coming to school or work to keep our environment safe and healthy just last week we welcomed back all of our in-person students at the elementary level to their physical brick and mortar classrooms this obviously feels very familiar to our students and our staff and would like to point out that the benefit of the hybrid model at the elementary level in particular really assisted in bringing these students back successfully so why is that it is because they have the opportunity with their teachers to practice and understand the rationale for the mitigation measures we have in place

090furthermore the students returned knowing that they were going to be working together to help maintain safety and health in their learning environments i would like to point out too that our elementary administrators and staff have really worked very hard to fully utilize the facilities at each site and so what do i mean by that i mean that they are really uh working to ensure social distance and they're using all spaces for the purpose of instruction lunch arrival dismissal and various breaks at middle school and high schools as you're aware we welcomed we welcomed back all of our in-person students to the hybrid model in addition those students began experiencing the rotation the ab schedule that you've heard about the emphasis i would like to point out to you as we brought students back to the

091physical environment was really not a focus first on content but rather a focus first on recognizing the various wide-ranging student reactions that students would experience as they return physically for the first time to the classrooms that they left back in march additionally our teachers allowed for time for relationship connections classroom community building and opportunities to process with students in some instances their emotions and feelings and reactions about returning to the physical school environment additionally just like at the elementary level our high school and middle school students are learning and practicing mitigation procedures and routines we've had the opportunity as district administrators to see those in place firsthand our students are practicing and have learned about transitions and hallways between classrooms loading and unloading buses lunch assignments and you will see lunch happening in our pacs

092in our commons throughout buildings also at middle in high school in the hybrid model when students are away from school learning away from school our teachers are working to allow students to connect via zoom to the classroom to check in when they're away from the classroom to understand what the assignments and expectations are when they're away and check in since we last met virtualed has experienced some revisions at the middle school schedules were revised to increase live synchronous instruction particularly in the area of electives with an emphasis here on world language that moved to five days a week for our virtual ed middle school students likewise for virtual ed students at the high school level our students experienced many individual student schedule changes to address the conflicts that existed in schedules that we spoke about

093and that you've heard about and additionally we've worked to increase live instructional synchronous time synchronous time for our virtual ed students and particularly at the high school level what i'd like to point out is its second semester we will be giving our parents the opportunity to change the learning model in which their students are engaged last week we began to we distributed a survey to our virtual ed parents students and our staff teaching virtual ed and allowed them the opportunity to give us some feedback and prioritize various features around virtual ed for our consideration for revisions some of these areas of consideration we asked for input in included the daily schedule that students and parents choose for this would choose for the students to experience prioritization of live synchronous instruction and that daily schedule and

094that live synchronous instruction time obviously are very tied together and then teacher assignments here at the end of october moving into november we will be communicating with our parents to help our parents understand clearly what will what the virtual ed experience will be like second semester and also want to give all parents the opportunity to reassign their students to a learning model so if you'll remember this past summer we asked parents to choose virtual ed or in-person learning again as we committed to we will give parents that opportunity to do so here for a semester change in doing so we will be very clear and concise about what virtual ed is and is not when we make the revisions we will also make it clear about in in person what our mitigation strategies will continue

095to be and that also when choosing in person for second semester in person can impact a student in three ways just as first semester fully in person in a hybrid model or fully remote so again we anticipate that communication going out here at the end of october with commitment by mid-november more information to come that to say while we're looking ahead the second semester while we're providing you some updates on what's happened first semester we certainly want to be very clear that this first semester this first quarter first semester hasn't been met without any struggles um would like to point out in the area of resources just what exactly that has meant for our students and parents and that's this issue of canvas so obviously you're aware that canvas is our student learning management system

096and we want the usability of canvas to be very friendly for our parents and students we know that that has been a hurdle particularly at our elementary age elementary grade levels as students and parents begin to navigate that for the first time and they started that this year in a full remote model so we understand that that has been a hurdle and we are continuing to just so you know how are we dressing that we want to look at commonality of experience within canvas from teacher to teacher and again be mindful of that user experience lessons in both the hybrid model in virtual ed and when we were in the full in a full remote um setting um i would just share with you that we've received a wide variety of feedback on synchronous lessons

097and we've received feedback that there has been too much we have received feedback that there has been too little we continue to remind our teachers when students are learning remotely that content the learning standards within the curriculum and the age of the learner drives the experience of this of synchronous instruction next routines we know that familiarity predictability and routine are so very important to our learners that being said i would share with you that change continues to happen we've all experienced that and we know that has an impact um on all of our students our staff and quite frankly um our our parents so how are we addressing that we continue to monitor for um and allow for time for our teachers um support of our parents our teachers are doing an amazing job i

098hear reports all the time of the ways that teachers are trying to assist uh parents with their students when they're learning at home etc so again we're trying to be mindful and extend grace knowing that change between uh models or just the day-to-day reality that school is so very different we certainly want to continue to be mindful of that and then there's uh experiences not one of us is left untouched from the experience of coven 19 in our lives we know that there's the social emotional mental health impact on our students and our staff and that's why this evening we've provided an update for you to help you understand more clearly what we're doing in that regard finally this evening we would like to also talk to you further and provide you an update on

099staffing and what this has meant operationally i pointed out to you that we haven't met this uh beginning of first semester without hurdles and the area staffing isn't a is an area that is currently providing some hurdles for us i'm going to turn that over to dr pinswick and dr hayden so last month um i talked to you a little bit about specifically bus drivers food service and then also custodians of grounds if you take a close look at this slide there's a couple things that we've been doing to kind of enhance our efforts and recruitment one is a enhanced social media presence where we're we're targeting specific areas of the kansas city metro area and trying to get the word out about our needs and then the other is we're putting yard signs at

100all of our schools to hopefully as people drive through dropping off picking up their kids that if they aren't interested that maybe they know somebody who is and they can spread the word so um just a quick update on on durham and and what that looks like for our bus driver shortage um as i mentioned you know we had an early shortage of around 20 drivers and they stepped up the recruiting efforts i think durham corporate has really assisted in this way in bringing in drivers from around the country so we had half a dozen drivers who joined us last week from california and arizona we've also started utilizing our all point transportation vans to help with some routes and they've stepped up in that regard durham office staff oftentimes leaves their offices and their

101posts to go out and cover routes we're using our substitute drivers to the fullest extent possible unfortunately it hasn't always been enough and a lot of times what our situation is is is we'll have people who are absent um either they plan an absence or it's an unplanned absence and you're left to be scrambling a little bit to try to piece together some routes and sometimes that ends up you know creating a situation where we have combination routes and um we know that when we combine routes that's more students on a bus that can lead to a social distancing concerns um that that we may hear from families about so but they are still working they had a good week last week with recruitment uh interviewing and um hired a few drivers they're hiring daily

102we anticipate if we have uh repeat the week that we had last week for the next couple weeks we should be fully staffed by the end of the month and have additional drivers that would help us in substitute situations in the area of food services we currently have 23 openings and that was as of a friday end of day charles and his team are busy out there once again interviewing and trying to hire on a daily basis we don't have a lot of applicants in the food services area right now so anybody out there listening that is something that we really need some help with so they are using the the services of pinnacle a staffing agency and have five people that are serving in that capacity in the facilities and operations realm we still

103have 27 vacancies and 20 of those are in our custodial services and we know how important that is to keep our buildings clean and so once again they're using the services of pinnacle they have 10 positions that are temporary positions right now so that is assisting us that's helping close the gap but that's still not enough and we also know that with these these types of support positions that we constantly lose those folks that move on to other things they may move physically and so we're always filling those just on a regular year let alone during a pandemic so once again we're trying to do as much as we can to fill positions but i think word of mouth and our patrons uh assisting could be uh really helpful thanks kyle in terms of substitutes

104um when we met with you last time we were talking about our numbers and to look at kind of point in time going back to last year and this year looking at the month of september we had over a 90 fill rate for our teachers that's a good rate we'd like to be higher but it's a good rate and it really talks about the additional people that we've added dr dillon and olivia schmidt have been working on this again through the social media and as you'll see the signs are going to be out here in the next couple days and we added over uh 30 individuals into that sub pool so almost 10 percent increase from where we were a month ago same true as paraprofessionals we went from having about 103 vacancies to being

105at 80 as of today so we've made some good progress in those areas and what we're seeing is as families start to have their kids come back into schools that some individuals at that point are able to get back into the workforce and so we've seen an increase on that but again we're going to be continuing to look at different ways that we can utilize last friday we were at 94 substitutes that we had in our district that were taking jobs that's a great number but we know that when we get into the springtime that that number is going to increase so we need to get that pool up and so we're continuing to look for additional employees in those areas any questions questions from the board for our administrative team mike yeah i promised

106dr collier i wouldn't ask a question that i hadn't asked before but i'm going to have to because it just hit me do you have any indication of the average daily attendance after the first week i do um i can tell you that we're our attendance without that number right here in front of me or i can get that to you but our attendance is actually fairly commensurate with our attendance uh from from last year date to date we haven't had reports from from buildings that uh attendance is poor but rather that students were anxious to to return to their classrooms in the hybrid model for middle middle and high and actually i asked dr merrigan that before but and i knew you knew the answer yeah i don't need the number what i needed

107to hear is is that it was commensurate with this same period last year because that's one of the gating criteria that we use yes thank you thank you and dr collier can you just repeat um on as parents select uh the method of learning for the second semester um you would mention that the um information would be available or the the selection would be available by the end of october can you just repeat um how long parents have to choose and then also just a reminder because the second semester starts on kind of an off date we're not used to and if you could just remind everyone of that sure thank you so um with the delay of the start of school our second semester actually begins after january 14th so our first semester um

108ends after we come back after winter recess which is not which is not common so thank you for asking me to provide that reminder to individuals uh we anticipate uh that that time that timeline for choosing a learning mode particularly if the family's going to make a switch will be one to two weeks quite honestly we haven't narrowed that yet to determine whether that's going to be a one or two week a time frame but we won't do want to give folks time to contemplate to contemplate that revision and i would just share that when there is a shift we're going to shift student population here to what degree honestly we're not quite sure but when that student population shifts so if i happen to be a virtual ed family and i go to in

109person then obviously i'm going to experience teacher changes as i return in person but or if i am in person i move to virtual ed naturally i'm going to experience teacher changes however based upon the amount of shifts we have in our student population from one model to another that could impact teacher assignments for next semester we'll be mindful of those but obviously staffing is driven by enrollment and so that is a potential reality uh second semester and we will ensure that that's in a written communication that goes to parents great i think that was important to touch on so thank you on that too good question yeah patrick dr crawler thank you uh tom uh quick question about as as we we've put together several different platforms for learning uh obviously one of those

110is the virtual platform or in the distance learning have we thought about obviously consistency across the district is going to be important particularly i think as we go back into schools and on the virtual side have we have we thought are we thinking about what quality control um options are as we um you know different schools may have their own consensus across from one one school to the next because of the uniform curriculum and i think the uniform curriculum is is also in play in the virtual classrooms but what about quality control have we thought about that sure thank you so um time is always imperative right for for teacher growth for communication etc so to your point we know that at the elementary level for instance we have really looked at trying to find

111ways for our virtual ed teachers at the elementary level to get together to collaborate to help um really with the load and if teachers are collaboration collaborating that assists with the load and quite frankly canvas is so very new to our elementary teachers so our elementary teachers at virtu virtual ed teachers are engaging in professional learning uh communities uh small teams virtual ed teachers that will be meeting more frequently to to assist that collaboration obviously continues to impact quality secondly first of all hats off obviously to all of our teachers teaching virtual ed and teaching in that format in a way that they haven't done so before we are communicating regularly through adam wessel with our virtual ed teachers and the purpose for really seeking feedback from our staff from our parents and quite frankly

112our students um is all about really quality and continuing to morph and improve that virtual and experience particularly for second semester and the feedback that we've received has been really quite very very beneficial to us thank you did you have something she answered oh she did okay awesome jody you're not on here um just really quick i know some comments i've heard it from virtual learners is it maybe the level of like homework they have and you know we're talking about consistency and and all of that um i don't know if if at some point that can you know if we can take a look at that um because you know we don't want to um make it so daunting for for these kids whether you know virtual or in person that it's overwhelming and

113i'm specifically talking about the high school level so um if we just take a look at that sure certainly first and foremost a key word this year is grace and that is extending grace to our students and the different experiences that they're having so our teachers are mindful that zoom may not be working maybe a link didn't work um maybe at the end of the day the load was quite a bit and student hasn't gotten something in so i've seen evidence of and heard evidence of our teachers extending grace and we're going to continue to to share that message uh secondly we are aware just as in every year even in traditional model that homework load can can vary uh but to your point as we see that with consistency come from teacher feedback through

114uh throughout this first quarter uh second quarter and then from parents as well obviously we we turn around and we share that with our teachers as well thank you for your question michelle you're good just on a just curiosity made directed towards you as well so we're one weekend on elementary back in full time and we're one weekend on hybrid if you will but just your general thoughts i know i think last one times i was here you had visited 21 of the 23 elementary schools and and i know you hit 10 schools on day one of hybrid but just you know after a week your thoughts and overall how it's going from various folks you know teachers to principals to the kids i mean obviously i know how my kids are that are in

115in in hybrid and uh in high school but just your thoughts from anybody well first of all tom we only have 21 elementaries not 23. oh really fyi oh wow okay so but we're building elementary 24. okay we don't count the one right yeah okay so we have 21. sorry students love being back in school i have yet to talk to a parent who said my student doesn't want to come back uh it has been the other way around so we've heard from middle and high school i would say teachers really really love having students back in the classroom uh what you really need to do to get a full sense of what we're asking our teachers to do is to go to a building especially during lunch go to an elementary during lunch go

116to an elementary during recess go to a high school during lunch and to see the mitigation factors that we have that we're asking our teachers and our administrators to go through and they're they're managing and they are making that work and and as dr collier said if you go to blue valley north for example i was there on day one for lunch they are using their gym for lunch they are using their commons area they are using their flex area and they have students six feet apart just like we're asking them to do that that does not come without a lot of work and a lot of um on everybody's part so i would say students are amazing you know as i've talked to administrators and teachers they all would say kids want to be

117in school and they're doing what we're asking them to do because they want to be there you know we were so worried about masks at one time it has not been an issue with kids i have yet to have an administrator or teacher tell me a kid is refusing to wear a mask that that has not been an issue we were worried about being able to do lunch well we figured it out but it has not been without a lot of work on on the part of teachers so i would say it's going very well but it is exhausting to our teachers and i want to reiterate what dr collier has said is that they are working really hard to make this work for students because they want it to work yeah other comments thank

118you i would just echo what dr merrigan has said is that it's going really very well um the the response from students i happened to talk to one particular student when i was building a visiting a school and asked her how it was going and she said she was just so happy to be in physical the same physical space as her friends again you know kudos to all of our staff working really hard uh to make to make this happen and our virtual ed teachers they have just responded every time we've asked for a revision every time they respond um and so again just enough can't be said for for all of our staff and our principals because really i think it's going really very well given you know considering everything that that they're experiencing

119and doing in rook and bachelor on dark covered numbers and it looks like we had five total lasts of the lab for the last week 30th through the 7th and we count virtual as well in those numbers students that or other folks you know sometimes you get an email and it says nobody was affected at that school so are those virtual students as well that may have it we have no because they're not within the physical unless they're not unless they're in activities right or sports okay and if a student happens to be an in-person student um part virtual part in person for some reason if they have a unique schedule then because they're in in person they're they would be included and dr merrigan your uh by or bi-monthly review of numbers is coming

120up again next week i believe yeah we said we would do that two weeks in and that would be next monday okay all right okay yes thank you mental health and well-being so our next uh update to you is with tara walrod who is our coordinator of counseling and i think she's going to start us off with this presentation on mental health and then i think we have some friends from our hr department who are going to talk to us about that as well so tara thank you for being here thank you and thank you for having it having me and making our mental health efforts known to our families i just wanted to start out by connecting this to our strategic plan as we know we will foster cultures of balance and health and

121well-being for our students our staff and also partner with our families i'll be talking about student efforts and family efforts and then amy dillon and candy hawk are going to join me to talk about staff efforts i feel very fortunate to work in a school district that makes mental health a priority and that we have 67 counselors in our district our mental health team is made up of counselors social workers and school psychologists psychologist we have 19 social workers and 24 school psychologists very exciting to add an additional jcc counselor this year and a virtual counselor as well i just want to take a few minutes to talk about um our tier one all student efforts and things that we are doing to support students at um for all students both virtual no matter what

122learning mode they're in we want to make sure they're supported we started with making um working with administrators teachers and staff on priming for change and we made videos we have done social stories in order to help our students come back and understand those changes and i as you just mentioned a lot of those changes students are wearing their mask and they're doing those things because they understand the why behind that we also spent some time with our staff on relationships and tone for starting the year we want regular check-ins with kids so at the elementary level they are continuing their class meetings and we are doing lots of feelings of check-in activities our counselors are helping with that our project happiness is our resiliency programming that we have for our three through five students

123and we have actually moved that up this year because resiliency growth mindset and discovering to be a happy or healthier human right now is very needed so we're moving that up instead of doing in the winter and doing it this fall our virtual classrooms receive all of the council same counselor lessons that our students in person receive so counselors are going in and doing lessons with our virtual classrooms the same as they are with our students who are in person and this week we begin our panorama sel assessment and again any student who is in any mode of learning whose parents signed up for that will will take that sel assessment starting this week at the secondary level our primary culture building is our sources of strength program and this is year two for most

124of our schools in year three for some of our schools it's in every middle school in high school and we had our sponsor training our adult sponsor training on october 2nd and our student trainings actually kick off on wednesday with harmony middle school and they will begin their student campaigns which will are um getting ready to begin as well we are continuing our connections with the trusted adult which is a format that we use asking kids who is your person we do it through our advisories and it's an important way for us to know the students are connecting and those are just kicking off now that we've been in school for a month and that way we know who what which kids are not making connections so that we can begin to reach out to

125those students our virtual classrooms at the secondary level are also receiving their counselor lessons and curriculum as well just like our students are in person so no matter what mode they are they are still getting um the same canvas course with a lot of the same videos and instructions to help them as well we are doing counselor check-ins like the one you see right there from blue valley west they have started this week as well because we want to check in with our kids are they feeling great about school okay uh yeah i'm struggling or i'm in a dark place and i need to check in so that way we can set up meetings with them whether it be in person or by zoom the four areas of focus that have really risen to the

126top by research and in our school district have been anxiety and that anxiety is around covid it's generalized anxiety it's social anxiety and anxiety versus fear and those are things we're concentrating on this year as a mental health team screens as you've heard tonight was mentioned grief and loss not disgraceful grief and loss of a person but also grief and loss of graduation events programs things like that and then insecurities around finances and mental health so just out for being able to provide outside resources we talked a lot about this on bvn muted with dr american you're going to hear more from dr wesley a little bit on professional learning but we're really working to do our monthly sel strategies to all staff members this year around a lot of those things that we're focusing

127on those four areas so our first one in september was on anxiety and providing strategies to help students with anxiety and for staff to recognize behaviors they might see if with a student with anxiety for example avoidance disengagement are a couple of those that we see especially with our virtual students we also did a learning leaders last wednesday to talk with them also about behaviors they might see with anxiety but more importantly we want to give them strategies so we've really been working with our staff and administrators to build capacity in the building on what can we do when we do see students with anxiety whether that's in person or virtually and giving them a toolbox so if a student for example is gone in the classroom we don't we can't say due to privacy

128reasons that it's due to covet but we might we would still wish them well whether they're on a vacation they're at an appointment or they are struggling with covid19 we just want our students to have a strategy to let them know that we care about them and we miss them um grief and loss we are very lucky to partner with keep the spark alive and they have donated that give me 20 boxes for all of our eighth graders so that will be starting there's some research out there that says impulsivity related to suicide happens in 20 minutes so the give me 20 box is a box that's put together by students while talking about resiliency that they decide what is important to them they can put notes in it special things pictures things like that

129and then when they're sad having a bad day things on social media are working out they grab that box and they have it so that's going to be done with all of our 8th graders and we're making um a strategy to help with our virtual students to be able to pick those up as well our sources of strength training as i mentioned starts this week and then at our elementary level we're really working to build culture and community lots of things in october happening anti-bullying week is also part of october red women week is also part of october and we're using those opportunities to build culture and community in our elementary schools our flight team is continuing to respond to events that happen as you know it's our district crisis team and we are trying

130to have both in-person and virtual responses so should something happen in a building we'll respond and be in the building available where students can come to us we will also have zoom opportunities for students to zoom and be able to talk with the mental health professional at the building and we're also providing memory boards as well and the memory boards are for staff and students to post memories pictures and share things that way as far as family opportunities we offered we have partnered with start stand together and rethink technology safe sane and seen was the name of the program it was a webinar put on two weeks ago and every feeder school had an opportunity to register but really they could register for any theater school they wanted to we were very fortunate to have

1311 350 register for that which we were actually not expecting that many but we had room for 1500 and we had 1350 so that's super exciting and that was really an opportunity for us to work with adults parents on healthy screen time and what that looks like k through 12. as jody mentioned our bv well is working diligently to work to help with the mental health it's one of the favorite things i get to do is work with them in the spring and may before we left we spent a lot of time on that grief and loss since a lot of students were grieving things like graduation and not getting to prom at the end of school so they spent a lot of time um presenting four different programs each one each week for parents

132and then we spent the summer deciding talking about these top mental health concerns that were rising to the top and so in august they did three more we call them just little snacks where they get an opportunity to share out with community resources and um we use those in order to to promote resiliency stress and help parents with identifying emotions that their kids might be having and coming back to school and then we also had dr alan katz for civic minded on october 8th which was which was a great program and we did record it for any parents that want to watch that and then resiliency and stress is going to be our continued work from here on out um our board of ed as health and well-being as dr schmidt talked about met with

133tim deweeps and we are really strong partners and i'm really leaning on him right now because virtually our students if a crisis happens we will be utilizing them to help us with that and they're wonderful people to work with and here's just a few of the things that blue valley partners with johnson county mental health on a lot of people don't realize how much we do with them but we do so much with them our sources of strength training comes from them zero reasons why mental health supports our alcohol edu for our 10th graders our suicide risk assessments and postventions we have a johnson county prevention roundtable that meets once a month we they have worked with a lot of our staff and suicide prevention training coaches and different people in our district around assist

134and safe talk and then they also are a strong drug and alcohol resource for us they provide assessments for our kids and they also provide a youth leadership summit for all of our middle school kids who want to attend they also by the way talked a lot about their um their johnson county numbers when it comes to mental health which has been really helped us see what's going on beyond blue valley and as far as their numbers just a few things they mentioned were that their total clients served has risen six percent since last year their emergency contacts have have risen 28 their triage has raised 29 their children and families um who've come in have raised 11 and that's their adults have raised 21 so pretty much everything is going up when it comes

135to mental health and that goes right along with our resources um we do have blue valley social workers who connect our family to financial and community resources we also have a mental health resource webpage for parents we are coming out with a brochure with what's the difference between a counselor a social worker and a psychologist for our new families so that they know and any other families that would transition into a middle school or a high school or elementary and then we are also just really encouraging families if you are worried call your students school and ask for the mental health team we'll get you to the right person just don't be afraid to call the school um don't necessarily wait for us to send out a check-in form they can just call us at

136any point so any questions i actually have a quick question the civic minded um presentation you said that it was taped how can fam where can families go to see that if they great um well it's through the bvd foundation so i will ask them to put that on their either their facebook page and their um website as well okay perfect thank you i had a quick question too so you talked about the um the brochure and the difference between the counselor social worker and psych even a seasoned older people um that wouldn't hurt for us to know that too is there a spot maybe on the website that kind of delineates that or is it just a hard copy brochure we've got a hard copy coming and then we're obviously in the process of

137putting it on our student health and wellbeing page as well we recently added just the brief descriptions of the differences along with the number but we're going to put some additional information in as well i was going to ask the same question because i i mean it's a great idea because a lot of people do ask it yeah you let us know on that or maybe a copy to the board as well because i know that question comes up and i think us having a little more knowledge would be great sure thank you thank you jody patrick this is a related question to the previous two questions so do we have a on our resource page uh something that can help parents um address or find resources to deal with anxiety and isolation and some

138of those four pieces of what we're seeing most commonly in the district right now yeah our um district web page has as you can see like bullying substance abuse and different things um as far as the coveted ones we have not put them specifically on but that's that's great input to consider to put on there um our counselors all have it and so does our social workers and psychologists so we should we'll make that available it was on when we had this summer the coveted questions it was on there but we'll consider adding it to our student well-being page thank you sure sorry i know that i see amy up there ready to come up so maybe my question is probably going to be addressed but are you going to talk about staff i mean

139mental health stuff you will that's what they're doing great perfect awesome mike sites before we go on first of all thank you for what you do i also never miss a chance to plug um johnson county mental health center and tim deweese if there's an organization that has been able to pivot um successfully it's tim and the johnson county mental health center you know mental health has been seen for years and years and years as a in-person therapy and tim has and his staff have really done a terrific job in helping everyone in the county understand um not only um the ability to to pivot and and do some things um offline but also take the appropriate um physical care and and protect his employees and the public um the the patients and the and

140the patrons from um getting sick and i i i don't say this often enough and i should tim is a wonderful resource uh in johnson county and tim i know you're not listening but um um he might be i told him i was talking we're talking about him tonight i talk about him but um if you ever get a chance um i'd be happy to to um help you meet tim he's a terrific resource i would also say in answer to your questions uh the student wellbeing page on our district website i just pulled it up to make sure i wasn't not thinking correctly but there are a ton of resources on that page that parents could go to the second thing is bvwell on their web page is the information about um yes okay

141thank you thank you good evening in terms of employee and staff mental health well-being we've been doing what we like to call dripping well-being and that just means offering lots of opportunities lots of resources lots of activities in a variety of modalities in hopes that our staff will find something that works for them because given the fact that we were in a pandemic somewhere in person somewhere at home somewhere we're in a variety of places we wanted to offer as many resources as possible in a variety of different ways and so i'm going to hand it over to candy hawks our employee wellbeing coordinator and she'll talk to you about some of those resources well first i want to start by asking you are you doing okay you guys doing okay um you should have

142received a little stress bar stress ball star for for your sanity a little bit um i have noticed a lot of board members have been i've already been playing with them thank you for asking yours is already ripped in harlem [Laughter] well as my role here is to make sure that our staff and our adults are having their bv best day so they can take care of their kids our children and our students the best that they can so um a while back actually last year we started this initiative and you also have that brochure you're looking at right now um value us in blue valley all together so we came up with this trying to come up with a hard copy and a virtual copy knowing that people kind of learn in different modalities

143and so if you notice there are qr codes they can scan where this goes to is our bv employee well-being page and in each category if you notice these were pulled from our 2018 employee staff well-being survey these were the top three asks stress and resiliency work life balance and emotional well-being so once you click on those and if you don't have access to qr code or you have you have an android not an apple um you can also just go right to our bvconnect page which is our intranet site for our staff i'm sure you're familiar with that so all of those linked to that resource where there's multiple different avenues of resources in the the well-being emotional stress and resiliency different ways there's articles there's podcasts there's um the hotlines a wide variety

144of wellbeing resources listed for you we also thought it was important that they have just quick tips so a quick one thing that you could do if you're kind of in that stress mode what's one quick thing you could have to do so that's on here is that that's now one thing let's practice one of those with us right now so if you look down toward the bottom we just relax three f's your face your fanny and your feet it just kind of takes that whole body relaxation into into mode and then mentally you can think about okay am i present are you really thinking about right now and then what time is it so this kind of goes uh back to um what tara was talking about stress and anxiety so anxiety is things

145that we've been happen in the past things that happen in the future but if we're focused on what's happening right now which is what these steps can help um helps teachers kind of make sure we're right here in this moment not thinking about all the other crazy things that are going on and then on the back is the resources of our national hotline so if you're in these crisis mode now you have these one quick numbers that you could call because the brochure was so large and sometimes you don't have these quick accesses to your bb connect page we came up with the badge tag now you did not receive one of these but we do have a couple extras if you want to see this goes on the employee badge tag on one side

146has the now one numbers on the other side has now one thing so they can do a quick little look um to to to just kind of circle back and take those those three s and just kind of calm ourselves down so these were given to our principals back last october of 2019 it was a year ago actually um they were given to them specifically so they could then have a resource to give to their staff and say here is these resources that we have we want to break the stigma start the chat about mental well-being for you so we gave it to them specifically um at their meetings to make sure that they were doing it not just me passing it out i'm making it a meaningful i guess to our staff all right

147let me figure this out there we go moving on so another thing that we are doing to drip in well being so those qr codes link to our employee well-being page so on that well-being page we also have other resources um as far as mental well-being desk stretching videos so there are five on there of just seven to eight minutes worth of stretching relaxation staff members could to just watch just to kind of debrief they could do it at their desk before school starts at the end of the day on a lunch break just to kind of decompress mindfulness resources and other mental health resources and some archive newsletters that we keep a lot of mental health resources listed on including a coveted 19 well-being newsletter that we created that had lots of different resources

148including johnson county health department so at the start of covid we felt that it would be important for our principals to know like where to send our staff or information that they could use um since they're kind of the obviously the leader of their buildings so we created this this newsletter just for principals to use um to know where to send their employees assistance program which is the eap information on how to get their staff there um just those quick links again back to that employee wellbeing page just so they had hands-on resource in case their staff came to them so this is interesting little story so i partnered with our great caps program on getting students involved in helping our staff mental well-being i thought it would be a bigger impact coming from a

149student to a teacher saying hey you know i think it's important that you keep you're keeping well with yourself your self-care and your mental being because it impacts us as learners so i've got fortunate to pair off with a great student from blue valley west who was passionate about her mental health she created this video for us on the importance of mental health for her for the staff for teachers and then it directed them on how to find our blue valley resources and where to go in this in this video and this was shared with our principals and if they wanted to share with their staff that was their option another way we partnered we like to drip in well-being is through professional learning so principals were given a menu of presentations that were also

150we're just continuing to grow on to these options um that could they schedule in their staff meetings or professional development um so i come in and give presentations on stress resiliency a newer one on navigating the new temporary norm that we now have on the canvas site that teachers can also just kind of reflect back on all the time self-care mindfulness i did it at pleasant ridge so getting in person face to face at the time now i'm offering those zoom options so if they wanted me to still be a part of their their staff well-being i can do that as well for them and then one of our biggest ways that we are dripping in emotional and behavioral well-being is through our benefits of course so blue kc members are now offered a mindful

151program is what it's referred to and they provide counseling for our staff guided well-being tools many other directed options for our staff as far as mental and behavior health blue valley is also fortunate enough to have an additional eap option through our disability program their company's principal but they use magellan health as their as their provider and our staff has 24 7 free telephonic health coaching through them now dr amy dillon will come back to talk about what we plan on doing in the future all right well thank you candy so next steps um we cut we talked about dripping well-being because we were in a pandemic and we really didn't know as most people across the country really how to handle employee mental well-being during a pandemic so candy and i worked on this

152a while we thought how do we get how do we help our employees self-assess and then present them with resources depending on where they are right in this continuum so what you will see very soon is a campaign called traffic light of mental health and what we've done if you um and then we've combined it with hashtag start the chat because we want our employees to start talking about mental health we want them to check on one another we want them to self-assess just like we're asking our kids to do um we want our we want our adults to do that as well and so by using a simple symbol of the traffic light um we hope that our employees will again be able to start talking about it and self-assess and so if you

153think about it green light right if somebody's in the green zone it would be things like they're calm they're mindful they're controlled they're optimistic and just as you think of a green light when you come to green light you go right you continue going but your car doesn't go unless you put gas in it unless you do maintenance on your car and so we will provide a menu of resources of even if you feel like life's great and your mental health is really good you have to keep feeding yourself right to keep that mental health so um or to keep your mental health in the green zone and so we will provide a menu of resources we've started working on that already and then if you move over to the yellow zone um things like

154anxiety we start to see some depression less inclined for self-care less interested in social interaction so we describe that and then just like a yellow light the action is slow down right slow down and assess do you go through do you need resources what do you need and so again we're going to provide a menu of resources in the yellow zone and that includes a lot of our benefit providers that candy was talking about the telephonic and digital uh counseling um different things um our employee assistance program that that our uh benefits providers um provide and then finally the the red zone and we know what that is um you know uh um overwhelming a person's overwhelmed has loss of perspective is withdrawn uh may have urges of self-harm and just like a red light

155then the action is stop like stop take action um and that menu of resources will be things like our hotlines our local state and national um mental health providers um things that are on the badge with all the of the different numbers and the hope is really that we're going to have this lots of different places and again the hope is that people will start to self-assess people will start to talk about it the stigma will start to erase um and then they will know very quickly whether you know what resources depending on where they are in that continuum what resources they can access and so we were dripping this well-being and now we feel like we need a kind of coherent way to put it together for our staff and so we hope to

156have that for you very soon um and um i'm very excited about the next the next steps so i think we're answering any questions you might have questions jody well i just want to say i'm really impressed with the programs that you've devised and it's so deep and broad and it seems to touch on so many different things and i know there's a lot of work still to do but but i am really impressed about how i would use the word i guess meaty even though i'm i'm not a meat eater but um just really really thick and solid so i really appreciate that and i was just gonna say same thing echo that but then just these are such terrific resources and with our teachers just a little overwhelmed right now i could totally

157see in boxes something coming in you know something about check out our mental wellness stuff and i don't have time right now um so how you know we're trickling it in but maybe we need to do a little flooding too which maybe the traffic light thing is your where that's gonna happen but i just worry that in how busy everyone is that it's so easy to push it aside because right now we have to do this but you have to do you too so yeah i completely agree um sometimes space and time is almost what they need right now like a little extra time um but we also can't forget um we also we have uh they're called building well-being champions so we have a person in each building who is kind of like the

158liaison between say me and their staff and so in fact just today it wasn't well mental it was some other programs we have going on um but we we do include that and so they do forward that information and share that information with their staff so it's more direct information um maybe we can add more of that if i just think more making sure that they even know it's there right now they know but more reminders would be a great yeah thing to make sure of okay yeah great thank you awesome yeah i agree and i think part of it's pulling it together but candy's been doing these these programs and she's like i can't get anybody involved and we keep hearing us they don't have time so i think it's it's partly that start

159the chat it's the checking on one another it's the i don't think you're okay right now we need to get help or we need to get resources it's taking care of one another um and and we i think it's kind of all of us and in making sure that people take time when they see people or not even even out of the green zone sometimes even in the green zone so that we can stay there so thank you perfect thank you other questions thank you this is very well done as well so thank you both very much next up um you've heard a lot about uh the different things that our teachers have had to do this year and the pivots that we've made and one of the reasons they've been able to do that

160is because of some professional learning that has been given to them and so dr wessel is here to talk to us about professional learning within the blue valley school district and so i'm going to turn it over to her thank you dr merrigan good evening members of the board of education and good evening anybody that is still watching tonight or we'll be watching this at a later date i'm here to provide you an overview and just give you an update on our professional learning priorities for the 21 2021 school year professional learning is a core value in our school district and we are so thankful that it continues to be a key strategy outlined in our strategic plans building the capacity of every educator in our system is how we offer a transformative educational experience

161for every student in addition to that professional learning high quality relevant collaborative professional learning is a key recruitment and retention strategy when we go out and we try to bring the best of the best to the best of the best it is important that we get to talk with fidelity about the professional learning and mentoring that is happening in our district people stay if they feel like they have a future in your organization if they feel like you're going to be invested in and have numerous opportunities for growth and development this is something that we offer every employee here in the blue valley school district we believe that the focus of all professional learning is on student learning and that those characteristics that must be involved include being relevant collaborative sustainable and results oriented and

162as just a quick reminder this is a definition that we developed in partnership with the blue valley education association in april of 2017 after gathering feedback from all of our community and staff members as with anything there are certain requirements that must be met when it comes to professional learning as set forth by the kansas state department of education all of our licensed staff members must have an individual professional learning plan on file our school district is required to have a five-year professional learn learning plan on file and accepted by ksde and ksc regulates the type of professional learning that we are allowed to offer and actually give professional development points for so that they can continue to renew their license in addition to that we do have annual mandatory trainings that we must fit

163into the professional learning calendar when it comes to who designs our professional learning or who sets the goals for what professional learning will be first and foremost is our blue valley strategic plan district administrators the board of education use the blue valley strategic plan to set the annual goals and priorities for each school year we take those goals and priorities and we design objectives and plans for how we are going to have that professional learning happen using our district leadership teams instructional design coaches special education consultants and our k-12 content coordinators the district blueprint then influences the building blueprints that each school designs using their building administration team and their building administrators and oftentimes their instructional design coaches as well both the district blueprint and the building blueprint is going to have a dramatic impact

164on the individual professional learning plans because our individual staff members participate in the professional learning designed by the district and by their building leadership teams in addition to that it is these activities that then spark curiosity or get people excited about learning new and going deeper and to various topics when do we do professional learning well i think the obvious answer to our community is those days when school is not in session but staff is coming to school anyway and as you can see in the next two slides here's just a comparison of the hour breakdown when it comes to district design professional learning building design professional learning and what we consider to be educator design professional learning each year you can see a slight increase in the number of hours part of that was

165due to the dismissal of the early release days our last year for doing that was the 2016-2017 school year when we did that you can see that we actually gained more hours for professional learning and actually allowed our staff to take a deeper dive because those hour and a half afternoons just didn't give us enough time to really go deep and to apply in the 2019-2020 school year you will notice a decline in the hours and that's particularly due to governor kelly closing schools on march 18th the decision was made that it was important that students are learning as much as possible and so we decided not to do the remaining professional learning days that we had established for the school year instead we made a giant pivot and we started to offer optional continuous

166learning professional learning sessions these sessions happened at various times throughout the day and they covered various topics anything from how to run zoom because for some people it was the very first time diving deeper into canvas elevating your skills and also looking at social emotional learning such as managing and naming your emotions during this time for optional voluntary professional learning we recorded 2 925 hours of professional learning thanks to the 550 staff members who took advantage of it in addition our staff engages in professional learning when students are in school in fact some of the best learning happens when you are learning alongside of your students and you are modeling what it means to be a lifelong learner this happens in our professional community learning communities that meet on a regular basis this happens through

167the coaching cycles that our staff engages in with our instructional design coaches this happens through our robust mentoring program this happens through professional learning networks conferences workshops this also happens through social media we have a lot of staff members that engage in twitter chats that have joined facebook groups that are able to collaborate and connect and gain resources from educators all around the world let alone just in blue valley we've started to see an uptick in the number of professionals that are listening to podcasts in fact we've started to even offer sessions that are based on podcasts so that you can listen to it reflect on it and the nice thing about podcasts is you can multitask so you can do it while you're driving you can do it while you're running and in fact

168let me just plug bvm unmuted because on the episode that they dropped on september 4th they actually did an interview with dr merrigan emily demo tara walrod and karen mulligan and they talked in detail about the difference between a counselor a social worker and a school psychologist it was a fabulous episode i learned a ton so we're starting to see that the other thing that um both tara mentioned is and candy and amy mentioned is this idea of providing snackables this is when we just send a two to three minute video we give you a two to three minute strategy that you can take and implement into your classroom or into your learning opportunities that afternoon they've been highly effective and i can tell you that this last week alone we sent out a snackable

169on anxiety and grounding exercises and deep breathing and when i had my four-year-old son in the er over the weekend thanks to a strider bike accident i was doing all my grounding exercises that i had learned from the snackable that we put together so they are effective for the 2020-2021 school year we certainly have design plans and a lot of our professional learning has happened if you look at our school calendar when it comes to teaching and learning it was very important for us to look at our priority standards under the guidance of ksdes navigating change we knew that we really needed to dive into formative assessments so that we could personalize the learning experience for every student and continuously monitor their progress and growth in addition to that dyslexia and literacy continues to be

170a top priority when it comes to elevating our schools and elevating our students experience there's no question that we had to spend a lot of time learning more about canvas and honing our campus skills in addition to knowing just how to use canvas better to provide a more personal learning experience for our students we had to get a lot better at designing in it as well and we have new tools such as city labs and atomic assessments that required a good amount of learning and training in order to navigate them as you have heard social emotional learning continues to be a top priority for us focusing in on anxiety and behavior intervention particularly for those behaviors that are indicative of anxiety and we continue to focus on providing diversity equity and inclusion professional learning so

171that we can have spaces where every single student feels safe and that they belong this year we really focused in more on implicit bias and how to disrupt it throughout our system certainly we've also had to just support the various learning modes that have taken place so we've done a lot of professional learning on hybrid distance and virtual we've had to make some pivots as you all know because you approved it our school calendar changed over the course of the summer pushing a lot of our professional learning to the front so that we could prioritize our student and staff well-being spend some time focusing on guidelines and procedural changes and expectations to provide that sense of safety and structure and routine we've had to hone in on going back to the basics so that we

172can provide support for all of our learning modes and we've been continuously trying to build capacity of our individuals by modeling the skills that they need to be using so right now we're doing a lot of one-on-one and small group coaching an example would be that we have personalized sessions a seven-week series for our full-time virtual ed elementary teachers so that we can help them to design their learning experiences coming up in quarter two we are using all of the tools that we are being that we are asking our staff and our students to use so that we can model for them and in that modeling it's great because you can provide these little tips and tricks and it just makes it better for everyone we are committed to providing ongoing support through in our

173coaching programs our professional learning communities there are a handful of professional learning days still available to our buildings for them to set forth and get their goals accomplished for the year as tara mentioned we are committed to providing professional learning to our building administrators on a monthly basis and as i mentioned we will continue to drip the snackables into people's inboxes and using social media one of the positive things that really came out of the continuous learning quarter was the success of the optional professional learning we are going to continue with that we are offering these on-demand sessions so they happen live but then they're also recorded so that you can watch it when it's convenient for you as of now we have offered 20 sessions to date and we are dropping new sessions weekly

174they're all housed in our return to teach canvas course so it's a one stop shop and each session is about 20 to 30 minutes so based on ksd regulations that means that individuals will receive a half point of professional development for their attendance whether they watch it live or record it we do have a form that we've got on our canvas page and in our course there so that staff can fill out ideas and provide us feedback on other topics that they might need and we have a team that is reviewing those ideas and feedback on a weekly basis and responding to them again i want to thank you for your commitment to the students staff and families in blue valley school district as evident in the way that you value professional learning for our

175staff any questions thank you questions done great job appreciate your passion and enthusiasm as well yes and my son is he's great is he good yeah we're all good just a little strider bike accident good for him does he know how many elementary schools we haven't believed thank you um next policy review what's the helmet good evening last month i presented to you some revisions or pretty much entirely new non-discrimination anti-harassment policy one for students and one for staff as you know we have some new title ix regulations that were issued by the united states department of education and we were under a time frame to adopt that you you did do you did adopt that last month but i did hear some concerns that you raised on the uh student policy on who the

176investigator would be for student on student claims at the time i had principal building principles down to do that investigation i heard your concerns about that i don't disagree with your concerns so i bring to you tonight a revision to that policy it's policy 3625 if you look at your redline version of that in your packet on page four is where the change is and we would have a third party investigator who has no conflict of interest as the designated investigator and i have a handful of of candidates who we could reach out to when we need an investigation done any questions questions i know we had a whole bunch of our last meeting i know we had some patrons that actually followed up with you as well with some concerns that we had some

177great discussions with which was which was all good but that is correct i had a couple of patrons reach out and i spoke individually with those patrons as well okay and i know jody you patrick had some questions as well others so i just thank you for for looking at that again and taking the concerns into consideration so i really appreciate it and i've read through you know what what has been uh revised and um if it i think it's right i think it's the right thing to do i thank you for your concerns that's what makes this process work and i have got two of these uh comments on taking a look at that policy you taking another perspective certainly uh this is an action item on your agenda tonight so if you don't

178have any other questions i'll let you do your job thank you melissa any other questions okay entertain a motion sure i move that the board of education adopt policy 3625 prohibition against discrimination harassment and retaliations students as revised second motioned by mike science second by stacy o'bringer barhal any further discussion all those in favor raise your right hand that motion passes 7-0 on to appointing patrons to board advisory committees i move that the board of education appoints brittany verret of the south area to a new two-year term on the diversity equity and inclusion board advisory committee much by amy teisling second by patrick hurley all those in favor please raise your right hand motion passes 7-0 i move that the board of education appoints kevin ladness of the northeast area to a new two-year term

179on the health and well-being student services board advisory committee second motion by stacy o'bringer bar hall second by michelle benjamin all those in favor raise your right hand that motion passes 7-0 next motion i move that the board of education reappoints jennifer van gundy of the northwest area to a new two-year term on the health and well-being student services board advisory committee second motioned by stacey o'bringer-varhall second by amy tysoline all those in favor raise your right hand motion passes 7-0 next motion i move that the board of education appoints sabi karapa of the south area to a new two-year term on the health and well-being student services board advisory committee second question by jodi dean's deets excuse me second by patrick hurley all those in favor please right hand that motion passes 7-0 next

180motion i move that the board of education appoints angie mccarty to a new at-large two-year term on the health and well-being student services board advisory committee motion by jody d second by michelle benjamin all those in favor raise your right hand motion passes 7-0 next motion i move that the board of education appoints aaron teller of the south area to a new two-year term on the student activities board advisory committee as a middle school auburn middle school representative second motion by stacy o'bringer bar hall second by jody dietz all those in favor raise your right hand motion passes 7-0 next motion i move that the board of education appoints adrian newlin of the south area to a new two-year term on the student activities board advisory committee as a high school bbsw representative second motioned

181by jodie dietz second by amy tiesling all those in favor raise your right hand motion passes 7-0 madam vice president will you excuse me for a second and take over for me thank you definitely all right our next item on the agenda is fire station 48 the real estate agreement with the city of overland park and melissa hillman is going to come up and give you the information that you need on it thank you mawson so this is a project we've been talking about for some time we've been working on uh this is our agreement with the city of overland park for a fire station that would be located on the property uh around southwest high school in exchange we would receive a fire science education program in collaboration with the city the city would

182also provide the instructor for that program uh you approved the instructor agreement in august i'm coming to you today with the finalized real estate contracts uh the first uh there are three contracts today the first is the real estate contract which is for the the tract of land the second is a street maintenance agreement uh the city will also be using love live avenue which is a street that gives ingress and egress to southwest and i believe maybe also aubry bend um we're in the street maintenance agreement we would agree to split the cost of maintenance of that road now with the city uh and next is a deed of dedication which is a 10 foot right away which also provides a means of ingress and egress to the city for the fire station you

183have any questions on these um who provides um street maintenance right now so we provide all of the maintenance that is our street and is only used by our i mean our district right now and students and patrons to access our school building now it would also be utilized by the fire station so we would now be splitting the cost of maintenance of that street with the city thank you and melissa about how much does it cost us to maintain that did you turn your bike off approximately how much does it cost to maintain the street on an annual basis patrick i don't have that number for you but i could do some research and get it to you what we have agreed to is a 20 the city would compensate us 20 percent for

184the cost of it um and i don't know that it would remain the same every year we could have you know some emergency maintenance that has to be done but we determined that we thought the city would be utilizing that street about twenty percent of the time and then the other eighty percent it would be utilized for district purposes but i'm happy to get back to you with what our annual costs have been to maintain that street yeah i mean i mean an average five year i mean it's not gonna be the same number every year sure absolutely i'm happy to do that thank you and melissa is there anything else in the agreements that you feel like the board should know about i know we've reviewed them but anything that stood out to you

185are pretty clear-cut from your perspective i think they're pretty clear-cut nothing really unusual it's always a little unusual when you're kind of exchanging it's kind of a barter situation but i think it's a really positive move for the district and i think the fire instruction program would be a positive news for our kids okay mike melissa or dr collier would you give us some indication of when the fire safety instruction would be offered to our kids sure that's set out in the instructor agree agreement um and so the instructor would begin work in june of 2021 that's kind of a planning period and if we have the demand for it the city would start collaborating with us and we would be able to provide programming in uh the next in the fall semester and if

186i can follow up that is at their location and i can't remember where it is in addition to potentially the fire station correct so i think it would be a combination i don't want to step on dr collier's tools toes when we get into curriculum um but we would have access to their facility as well as probably some of this would be done in our buildings as well and equipment access to their facility and their equipment are there any other questions i got another question so as i follow up on on planning doing that planning process so are we teach are we sending our kids to a different location while this is being built or when will it be finished by our kids aren't going to be in the blue valley southwest facility to start

187with that there's a specific training facility located on hemlock it's right over by heartland elementary that's where students have to be trained so all they need is a classroom for the class portion of it so that would be held at caps likely and then they would go for the the physical training of it in the hemlock location where they actually are in the they're doing firefighting i mean that's what they're doing in that location so in terms of the minimum number of kids that would need to show an interest i mean is that going to be part of the enrollment next year that it was part of the enrollment this year but because of covid we didn't have first of all they couldn't do very much because of cobit and so there was not enough

188interest with that limitation as well so we opted to wait a year so we will do full out recruiting again and hopefully have enough students to offer that next year so do we know what that number is whether there's enough to have enough students to offer it i mean is it five is it ten is it three um if i what i say to people every time they want me to nail a number down is if i give you a number if it's one less than that of are you going to say no and if it's one more am i going to say yes so i would say we would need at least eight ish to me would be a an appropriate number to start sure no i think i mean that makes sense you

189just you got to have some sort of right criteria gauge to move forward and otherwise it's not uh effective right because because it's more than one semester or one year right well it's firefighter one firefighter two and then there's an emt program so firefighter one is one semester so you could do the first uh semester of that firefighter two is another semester so it's about an 18 month program and so they they would then be successful in theory the eight would continue on together yeah because you can't join mid mid semester right yep right start from the beginning yeah okay we have uh three motions so if someone wants to start with motion one i move that the board of education approved the real estate agreement with the city of overland park kansas for the

190tract of land located southwest of the intersection of west 175th street and love live avenue is it live okay good second all right motion by michelle benjamin second by mike sites all those in favor raise your right hand motion approved seven zero six six six zero my apologies i move that the board of education approved the cooperative agreement with the city of overland park kansas for the maintenance of love live avenue circuit motioned by stacey obringer rahul second by patrick hurley all those in favor please raise your right hand motion approved 6-0 i move that the board of education approved the deed of dedication to the city of overland park kansas for the south right of way line of 175th street uh motioned by michelle benjamin second by stacey obringer rahul allah in favor please

191raise your right hand approved all right motion approved 6-0 thank you madam vice president on to executive session sometimes it is necessary for the board of education to adjourn the open meeting to convene privately in executive session kansas law permits executive sessions for limited purposes such as discussing private information related to specific employees or students the board cannot vote or take any form of action while an executive session following our executive session tonight the board will reconvene in the open meeting for the sole purpose of our journey in the meeting there will be no further board action this evening you're welcome to stay until the meeting is formally adjourned or you may go ahead and leave at this time i move that the board of education go into executive session for 30 minutes to discuss

192specific employees pursuant to the exception for non-elected personnel under coma and the meeting will resume at 9 15 at which time there will be no additional discussion no action will be taken during executive session motion by amy tyson second by michelle benjamin all those in favor please raise your right hand motion passes seven zero i have to take the restroom okay