August 26, 2020 Governing Board Special Meeting

001years to survive the overwhelming loss and the mental anguish while i still had to continue to raise my daughters and to teach i know how it feels to have your heart ripped up and have to live every day without you by your side now with the reopening of our school happening just around this corner this will become a very real possibility for everyone here in my continental family to also experience it might be the loss of a spouse a co-worker a friend or a child our hearts will break and losing one of our continental continental family is way too many i know how valuable teaching in person is to every child every day out of the classroom delays the education of our students as school board members you are weighing the potential consequence of lost

002teaching days against the potential loss of cost lives i am asking you to delay i'm begging you delay our in-person teaching until after our fall break our numbers will be much better instead of the heartbreak of losing one or more of our own our classrooms will be filled again with joy laughter and learning thank you for allowing me to speak thank you next up we have our third grade team come on up well i had a letter that i was going to we were going to i have it yeah thank you we thought you were remembered well you're not shy okay dear governing board the third grade team would like to express our desire to start school tuesday september 8th or as soon as possible while we feel we are we have managed this transition

003to online school very well we don't feel that our kids needs are getting met academic needs and emotional needs we feel that we are prepared and have been training or sorry we feel that we are prepared and have the training we need to keep our staff and students safe all three of us have children that attend continental we see firsthand the emotional strain this has had on our children our kids need academic structure and socialization which is not taking place while in line thank you for your time and consideration ashley montoya sharon flowers and alex house thank you thank you joe ferguson you're up hi my name my name is joe ferguson i've been working here i believe this is my eighth school year i've been teaching for just over ten years um i i've

004been fairly fairly involved in the development of our mitigation plan and our continuity of operations plan and i i wanted to express some concerns about returning to school on the 8th or making the using the data that we currently have available to us now as as i'm sure you all are aware and those of you who have been following following the data you're aware that it's very easy to cherry pick data look at it within context to to suit your own political motives so i'm not going to cite cite any data here but but i do want to express to you the importance of using data in a way that is compliant with the county because regardless of whether or not the data that you're using uh supports the decision to open in in a

005morally appropriate manner in a way in a way that is is in the best interest of our students and our students safety none of that matters if we open in a way that's not compliant with the county and as it stands right now the county has nine benchmarks and again it's i i want to express to you it's important to use the data that we have available to us right now now it's um though the benchmarks that we've met that were in the green according to the county are coveted like illness that would put us in in phase three of our reopening plan for code like illness the benchmarks that were in the yellow are lab testing availability and utilization adequate hospital hospital bed capacity to care uh for two times the current coverage cases

006plus surge statewide as some of you are aware the way the way surge works is that when other county counties hospital systems are overwhelmed they ship them to counties with uh with stronger infrastructure and pima county is one of those counties so we're we're bringing a lot of patients in from santa cruz and some other smaller counties uh sufficient personal protective equipment ppe for emergency responders that we're we're in the yellow there now keep in mind yellow means it's it's uh we're okay to open in phase two the facility support for patients who who can't be discharged home statewide that's the fourth yellow category the red categories this means don't go back continue to operate phase one cases over two consecutive weeks with complete reporting of cases percent positivity timely case investigation testing of symptomatic

007contacts within 48 hours now this is important especially i want to draw your attention to cases over two consecutive weeks with with complete reporting of cases so the numbers that have been released recently indicate that our cases are declining and have declined for more than two weeks that data is not reliable until um until that data has been completely reported and as uh as of now it's still taking a couple weeks for uh local organizations and healthcare facilities to um to get their data reported to the state so that means that we won't know what this what the situation is right now until two weeks from now okay so using those benchmarks making a decision right now will put us in a position where we are not in compliance with county guidelines um that's important

008because the county is that the county is uh is the level of government that issues our um issues our permit to operate right if we open out of compliance with the county they can send a health inspector uh in in to inspect our operation and one bureaucrat can shut us down that's all it takes now i'm not saying that we won't be we won't be able to open on the 8th what i am saying is that if we make the decision right now we will be out of compliance with the county um i also just wanted to and some of you are i'm sure you guys are already aware of this or you all are already aware of this but three schools in tucson have closed two of them were closed today i i want

009to be back in school i want to be back in school on the 8th i think the data will support the decision of reopening by d8 i believe the data supports the decision to do it now i think it's i think it's relatively safe however if we make that choice to open right now we may be we will be out of compliance with county thank you ladies and gentlemen my name is mr i teach music here at continental along with mr ferguson now just a couple of quick small comments i have concerns about reopening in a very simple form and that is masks we all we all use them now it's kind of becoming normal however being on the task force plan looking at our continuing of operations plan and looking at guidance from the

010trust and just what we've been talking about task force meetings our classrooms allow 17 students to fit six feet apart and that's with one kid by a door and another kid with a paper towel dispenser at their head a little uncomfortable our current numbers based on from what administration has said is that we will have more than 17 kids in each class which means for seven hours a day students will be in mask as i'm sure many would agree this would not be fun for seven hours i took it off just to speak when i'm looking at a student's face and they're answering my question from 12 feet away it's gonna be really hard when i know what their answer is i can't see their expression is it going to be okay it may be

011okay but i know that that's going to present a very large challenge and being an effective teacher of having faces covered if we could figure out a way to get less than 17 in a class so they're more than six feet apart i wouldn't be as worried as someone echoed i think our kids need to be here but i also think that their safety our staff safety is more important i think that that is our number one priority as educators i know we talk about every time we talk about emergency training that's what i tell my kids when we practice our lockdown my job first is to keep you safe so that's what we do that's all i got thank you europe governing board thank you for taking the time to not only hear myself

012but all of my colleagues and the members of the community um mr ferguson i've been working very close together so he stole everything that i was planning on saying so i'm just going to kind of reiterate i want to go back to school and get our kids back here as the disciplinary and looking over the mental and the physical well-being of the students which is my primary job it concerns me greatly that a lot of the kids that look at school as a safe place to be do not have that outlet i know we're talking about it not being a safe place but we're talking about child abuse we're talking about neglect we're talking about starvation that happens being an administrator that's a big part of my job and i deal weekly on a weekly

013basis with kids who come with those concerns of safety at home and in the community and as a school we're more than just educators to these kiddos many of them we are a safe place to be and so one of my big concerns is some of those kids that rely on this um on this place and these people don't have that right now and so my heart goes out to them as we're not able to reach out and have that connection and watch over their safety and well-being having said that i also have some concerns that when we reopen it needs to be the right time right now the county is not supporting reopening because of the numbers my concern with that although we do not receive monetary funding from them they do provide the

014permit to operate and they also provide our food service operation permit and at any time for any reason they feel that we are providing an unsafe environment to the public they can shut us down and as we've already seen with many districts that have tried over the past couple of weeks to even start small a place to go learning have been shut down by the county because they're calling two people in an entire school an outbreak to me that doesn't consist of an outbreak but it is the county and they're doing that my fear is as a district if we open we're just going to be another statistic and we're going to be another headline and i feel that as a parent and also as an administrator at the school that that's not where we

015want to be as a district and so we have to be very mindful of we need the support of state ade as well as pima county before we move forward because otherwise we're going to be that headline in tomorrow's news and it continued we pride ourselves on being the positive headlines in the community having all these different clubs having all these other our music departments going and playing those are the headlines that we cherish and look forward to in those positive interactions and we really want to try to avoid being on the negative spectrum there's a couple things that we still need to figure out as well as far as moving forward and right now the unknown is are our teachers and our students going to be held to a 14-day quarantine if they're in

016contact once again if we're held to that standard there's no point in opening because it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when in this situation that someone with kobe will come onto our campus and if one teacher is exposed that means an entire classroom is exposed and then their siblings potentially exposed and once again we're shut down so as long as that is the standard 14-day quarantine we cannot operate and so we need to work with our our community leaders making a realistic um a realistic goal for us to be able to operate which my recommendation would be something along the lines like if you have signs and symptoms you stay at home and don't come until you're clear for 24 hours like has been our current policy for the all the

017years that i've worked here and i don't see how we can function as a district operating under any other guidelines once again i thank you for for your time and consideration i don't envy any of you to make this decision because it is a tough decision because this is you know as mrs roman and i said we're dealing with lives here and so it's it's a very important thing to to consider and as you can tell i'm on the fence myself so thank you for your time man thanks steve thanks sir okay tom is it america america i'm tom merrick i've had the privilege of having this to be my third year to be a school bus driver here i love it it's just really neat experience and i'm going to piggyback a little bit

018of what mr immersion said the the first thing i tell my kids in the fall when they get on my job is not necessary to make you have a fun ride to school it's not necessarily to get you there on time my number one priority is your safety and do i have of course we have rules don't stand up don't change these and things like that keep your hands inside that's our part of the safety but the whole coven situation is another part and i'm not speaking officially on behalf of the other point nine drivers we have eight or nine drivers we have but i'm just speaking for myself that i think um i don't envy you as mr olathe just said i do not envy you at all you have to make a decision

019that i would not want to be put into and whatever that decision is and trust it would be the right one and um we just look to you for the guidance and thank you for everybody who's concerned about it and that's basically what i want to say is i i wish you the best in your decision and i'll be happy to go back to work um i would like to get that paycheck again but uh but it has to be the right time and right decision so thank you thank you okay i have one to read this is from julie cerulli i've lived in the greater green valley area for 22 years and as a parent and business owner i am proud that all three of my children have gone to condo from kindergarten through

020eighth grade two now attending university and studying business administration and engineering the third a senior at walton road i strongly feel that their success can be attributed to the education they received to continental and prepared them for to be leaders and excel at home moreover over the last five years i've witnessed a high proportion of continental kids take leadership roles in academics music clubs and greatly excel in sports i also frequently heard high school teachers praise the goodness and decency of the kids that have come from continental but should be a source of pride for all continental true middle school truly is a unique place i am concerned that for the first time in two decades the board was split in passing the overhead i also know from working on previous overrides that coil creek

021has not always been an area of strong support for the continental school overview could the board specifically the two members on the board representing quail creek comment on how they are proactively influencing the voters of quebec to support the continent override in the upcoming election thank you all right thank you thank you anybody on the line are there any more people on the line who wish to speak to call in okay uh many thanks to each and every one of you for showing up tonight we appreciate you being here okay of the minutes please minutes for august 10 how much we approved august 10th in minutes please yes thank you minutes for august 12 special yes thank you okay thank you also everyone for being here members of the board thank you i wanted to

022just share some highlights for starters and we had our back to school parade thursday august 20th and there's a few snapshots so our teachers continue to show cult pride and we are so very proud of our families our teachers and you can see we had a long caravan so again thank you everyone who participated in our cult i just don't know where the fire truck was i know we did get in this time and i also wanted to take this time to showcase some of our digital learning that has been going on with second and third grade um all our teachers are doing a phenomenal job but i'm excited that second and third grade um we will need to come and just do a little demonstration on what our students are seeing on the other

023end so let's start with second grade hi hello my name is mrs fernandez and i am the second grade dle teacher so um all of second grade has very similar uh virtual classroom and since our kids are new to having their own chromebook and they're more used to tablets we thought that this would be a kid-friendly way to introduce our classroom so basically what you have to do is you have a bookshelf with different baskets and if you click on each basket you will find that classroom for example if i click math it will take me to the math classroom and we have a live session every day that's why there's the link and each basket has a recording of the whatever day we did you go back with the home button and you can

024go to reading and reading has an uh read-aloud and assignment for each day and they can also direct you to a virtual library that has hundreds of books to pick from okay okay again i go back with the home button and if you click on writing every room has a schedule like monday tuesday to make it easy for parents and for students so if i click on wednesday it will direct me to the wednesday writing it has instructions there and i go back with the home button that's here this time oh come on hold on this is my brain break it right here i'll fix it free okay okay so they have can i go to my homeroom is still going like that this is not supposed to happen but okay so okay this is

025my home room you also have i excel uh brain break and there's a moving brain break and one to relax in case the kids need it counseling corner has mrs godfrey's um weekly video and um grammar has our interactive notebook and presentation for the week and um it's been going well the the kids are getting a hang of it um even though it was a rough start start i think they really benefit from um from the live meeting that we have daily but i agree with third grade and i think that they need the interaction with the teacher and with their peers and i mean if we see them at walmart or any other store um i think we should give it a try what platform are you using this is a google slice it

026is yes and it is linked to my google classroom and it is linked to youtube and it's linked to [Music] that is very well put together you guys did a lot of work thank you i can only know what i've seen there and i've seen the sixth grade which is nowhere closer there's not any continuity like that that that is fantastic thank you very much and while they're transitioning just so you know we were able to purchase these new view boards for all the teachers so they all have them so ours is pretty similar to second grades um we have our stream here but we have in class work it's all kind of organized by you know first check in make sure you get your attendance done and then we have virtual classrooms so all

027student needs to do is click on our pdf here and it takes them to something similar to second grade so we've been pre-recording our lessons and we'll just basically link our video to the whiteboard so in regular classroom we're at the whiteboard teaching so all our lessons are at the whiteboard we have daily oral language practice and so we have that in our read sign so if we were to go to read it would take you to the video and we'd work together with them so they're working with us and they can pause the video when they need to write their answers or take the time to fill it in and then um when they're ready they press play and we did a whole tutorial the first week of school on how to navigate the

028whole classroom so they could learn it and practice it before we actually put assignments on there that way when it came time to actually do work they knew exactly where to go and how to do it and what to do um and then we have uh it's like a to-do list i guess so the work to do so parents and the students can see in here click the read sign to get our deal well done do a read aloud and then watch the video do the lesson watch the other video do that lesson and then we also have links attached for i excel for flipgrid we use flipgrid so if we ask open-ended questions they can still share with us even though we're not going to be live for that question maybe or we'll talk

029to them during the live session about it but it gives them a chance anytime during the day or the week to answer that question or to draw a picture and show it on there and explain the picture to us so how reporting so they'll be able to record themselves and then what's cool about flipgrid is only their class gets to see that video it's not exposed to the whole world like youtube would be here so only we can see it their peers and the teacher so i can't see miss flowers flipgrid responses she can't see my classes responses so it kind of makes it seem like we still are in our classroom because they can respond to each other too um so it's pretty cool so we have all of this and then when we're

030done we showed them how to [Music] i don't know how to do it on the screen but to go back to google classroom and then i'll let albert go back it's easier on the computer this is going to be a real thing to get back to class yeah and so after they're done going through the video lessons in our little classroom then we have showed them how to go down to the actual assignments and so we have the week of so you can see we have the last few weeks of all the work and instead of having the assignment show like this every single day gets posted it posts the day of so they know okay this wasn't here yesterday i know i'm supposed to click on tuesday if today's tuesday um can they get

031ahead no okay so we thought about doing that but with the math lessons we wanted to make sure that they're understanding the standard we're on before they can just skip ahead and then we're also having google meets tuesday through friday and so if we gave all the lessons and we would have that google me then they might be everyone would be in a different assignment so this way it's controlled the date on tuesday we talk about the lesson from monday or tuesday morning then wednesday we're talking about tuesday and so on so it helps us all sound i just think the only last part is if you just scroll down to the bottom we have a part what we have two parts one is the welcome to third grade and it's just some things that

032are special about you know maybe some pictures or we have um what do we have on there a video we have our virtual handbook so parents if they need to have any questions they know they can go there and find out how we do grading um and we also have what else do we have there oh the third grade supply list of things that they're going to need and then technology resources on the bottom we have um just the rules for the zoom or actually just google needs to have the rules and then we have our google meet schedule so each of us have a schedule we have it posted there and then the last part which is kind of cool is each student has so that each of our classes are each student has

033um a part on their with their name for user names and passwords and so we get emails constantly like what's my daughter's ixl username and password and so this way there are no questions it's there we even have the links posted for ixl the think central um link is there and then we've noticed that a lot of kids have expressed they don't feel like they're typing typers so we have a link there so they can do typing club to help them out but this way try to it's kind of like this is the middle man like if they need any questions for anything go look in the google classroom and we're not trying to be rude but it's in the google classroom and trying to train kids as they need to get anything it's all

034in one place and i would like to point out too that everything that we're doing here we send information to the parents so they've received emails they have instructions on how to first get there as well so everybody is in the loop and understanding what we're doing weekly great so i have two questions but one is that bottom part where everything is because we all got the emails but and i try to file them in a folder and all that but you know it's mediocre effects so that is a super good idea and the other is and i what's the parent what's your feedback so far i'm great we communicate we email our families every friday and we kind of just give them updates on you know talk to your child about google classroom and

035we encourage them to log on and look at some of the videos as well so they know what their child has been completing and what they've been watching um i don't we haven't had any negative feedback yet i think we're very organized um it's all at one place i think the only thing that we kind of think is tough is it's a lot like a lot of assignments we decided to not do one for each subject like some of the other classes or grade levels are doing we kind of thought at this age um maybe up to five or six classes was just too much for before a third grader to handle to go to one google classroom for math and one for language arts so we have it all in one but when you

036have it all in one you saw how ashley was going down i mean we have they're all by weeks and so if it's it's it's a lot it's a lot that you have to scroll down but that's why posting it once um by the day if kids are really on it and for the most part i'd say about 80 percent of our students are completing that assignment that day the other 20 are maybe a little bit lagging or they're waiting for their mom or a family member to get home to get logged on or to get some work done and then of course you just have some that just don't like just like to wait to the last minute to the end of the week until sunday 10 pm to finish all assignments okay and

037um we asked during our google meets which are tuesday through friday we also each picked uh separate times ashley's in the morning alex is right after lunch and i'm at two o'clock that way if ashley has a student that could log on at the nine o'clock meeting um they can go to we can invite them to go to alex's even though that child's not in alex's class we are still teaching all the same content the videos we're sharing between each other so that kid can not feel left out and get caught up with her or ask a question all our classrooms all our video lessons they're all the same so whether they miss mine and maybe they had questions about math or ela they can hop onto one of theirs and they know exactly what

038the student's talking about and they can go back and review it too we haven't had that issue yet but we have that option for anyone that you know like i have one kid that hasn't done one google me just yet so i'll reach out this week and just say is that time not working and if they say that time isn't working then maybe i can give that option to um that student to go to one of the other ones if that teacher ashley or alex will do the exact same thing in their google me as well and you guys are doing this from here at the school we come to school and yeah we do it's easier for us you know we have all the books and everything here so it's easier for us to

039stay focused as well because you're holding up distractions you know and here we just work well together and just we do like one day where we we record all of our daily oral language and read alouds because we have a read aloud we read to the kids um every day and that's one thing that's different we each read our own selection of books so i'll read what i'll pick a book for myself and then um wednesday it's kind of like planning and we plan what our lessons are going to be for the following week and then we start recording and then thursday we also do more recording and then we make our virtual classrooms so we're doing shareable links taking each of the pictures and it's a different classroom like mondays is science in ela

040and it has all the links to that and then if you go to tuesday we have a totally different classroom but all the clickable links are the same so we'll still have videos on the whiteboard we still have our to-do list there's still a dol link on the read sign the links are on excel it's all the same in every class it's just the background pages and it's a different subject and different subjects we do ela mondays and wednesdays we do math tuesday thursday science monday and friday wow you guys should be very proud of yourselves well we have to ashley is the one that well yeah she helped with that we collaborated on the amish stuff but she was the big emoji like queen so she was a good expert yes you know the

041younger ones they dig [Music] the first day we were like okay shareable links what is this and then we're like taking screenshots of pictures and you'll see when ashley showed you some of the classrooms like we have faces and i mean like literally our face is like like in the middle because they just the video doesn't capture that you know the pretty smile at the beginning so we have these funny faces on there and i think now we we style at the beginning yeah so we can capture that part yeah so i think now we're good yeah and i just want to add i want to thank you in terms of time and true team planning that's truly what it takes to work as a team to work smarter not harder to collaborate um two

042so um alex is our new teacher in the middle you can see alex she did her student teaching here with mrs flowers so that relationship piece didn't have to be fostered and developed because you already have that which is huge um and also uh ashley and alex both attended this summer um admin yeah training that was offered for free well it wasn't free but it usually cost a lot more but due to cove we were able to get our teachers to attend um at a discounted rate so it was a full week of learning various organizational skills technologies so really putting what you learn into practice is evidence so our kids are very very lucky so thank you very much thank you very much appreciate it good job guys you don't need the laptop anymore

043so i thought you'd appreciate seeing some of the highlights and things that are going on again um i'll try to get our teachers in a few at a time to kind of highlight some of the things that they're doing because there's something that's going on in all the classrooms as well i think it would be good to continue that maybe two classes two grades at a time rotating through just i use fascinating yes and what they've done just to showcase because it is truly teaching and learning and i think it's critical for you to be able to see what our teachers are doing and how our students are participating so thank you ladies again we appreciate it so i just wanted to give you another little enrollment update of where we were again we are

044down 66 students from the end of last year to now there's 20 possible students who have withdrawn to be home taught or to attend virtual schools that would we would be able to entice into our ali home later later on down the road so being that we're in this time and people have been really nervous about school a lot most of our students who have withdrawn have moved out of state or out of district so again it's just the 20 of the 66 who have either withdrawn to virtual school or home school on just a few updates all the second graders who needed devices were distributed so again thank you we had some great volunteers we had great staff ms nathan mr curtis and our programmatic aides all were key in getting these devices distributed

045we had 70 k1 tablets distributed as well we have 18 kg hotspots out so everybody that said they need a hot spot has one we mrs cuevas also started a google doc to track the student participation for teachers to fill out so we currently have 22 students who are not actively participating in digital learning so we're going to be following up with home visits and contacts with the students because teachers have tried phone calls and emails so now we're going to go knock on their doors the pima county health department has assigned a rep to our school like they stated we would have to be in contact with our nurse with maureen so they have their contacts so in cases of covet positive or cope with people who have been exposed to coven she will

046be the contact person with pima county health to do the reporting and they will be guiding us in next steps in terms of quarantine and dating our school like we were saying two students who or two people in a classroom who test positive would be considered a um an outbreak so that still hasn't changed we also have good news we have 214 signed waivers we did roll out the acknowledgement forms on monday and as a four o'clock today we had 72 signed acknowledgement forms so we had a parent call in the evening the first parent call last week to discuss any questions about the waivers or acknowledgement forms and also reopening the school discussions that were went well and we're going to offer another parent zoom call tomorrow at 4 30 to 5 30 and

047open it up to any parents who want to ask questions about what participation did you get we had was it 40 parents there were about 40 parents on the call the first call and we encouraged them we said let your friends know that we're open to listen and a lot of it was dialogue amongst themselves and and it was pretty um split we have the parents who are saying again like our staff we want our kids back in school what's going to happen and others who are saying why they're concerned but we did try to explain that the waivers and the acknowledgement forms truly a vital piece of that is parents doing their part and not sending their kids to school and making sure that they don't have any of the symptoms to help us

048in this team effort of making sure that all kids are safe so the progress report again um we don't have to show it it hasn't this is as of august 21st it didn't change from august 13th which we showed at our last meeting but we know that they will update the progress report on thursday so tomorrow we're hoping that it's going to look more in the yellow in the progress areas so again um like i mentioned pima county superintendents we're hopeful and anticipating that we will be in the yellow progress category by september 8th so in my superintendent's meetings that's what we're all anticipating and just to reiterate i did include in the packet the memorandum that we received by mr chuck huckleberry and i think the biggest thing in that memorandum was our concern

049last time that we had the state and pima county saying two different things and we had two different criteria that we were looking at and so now the scientifically based criteria offered by the state of arizona and pima county have been aligned to avoid any possible contraction or confusion so we were happy about that because all the superintendents were having the same conversation we were having on what metrics are we truly looking at so we were happy that that was the memo that we received for the back to school committee that was by mr williams so again in that memo it states when progress is shown for each of the nine criteria in the yellow this will signal when the pima county health department may recommend schools begin hybrid instruction some face-to-face instruction combined with

050online so we are preparing superintendents are preparing hybrid models of providing in-person instruction once all nine indicators are in the yellow progress zone i wanted to just share their opening plans in tucson and some surrounding schools like us and set the aspirational date of september 8th again looking at starting a hybrid model as soon as all the metrics are in yellow they are having their meeting as well tonight at six o'clock their meeting starts i spoke to mr vanenzuela and they're looking at as soon as the metrics are yellow at a hybrid model of a monday tuesday cohort a wednesday being a cleaning day and thursday friday cohort b i think as a leadership team and listening and speaking to our board we really feel like we want to try to get the kids to

051have daily instruction as much as possible if we can work it out we don't have class sizes of 32 or 35 are when we say our numbers are higher than 17 we're looking at 21 and 22 in the elementary second grade is the highest with 27 and i'll show you another grid middle school has the classes that have 27 28 but we'll have to readjust the master schedule and kind of see what we can do in that area schools that have announced to start after fall break in october are tusd tanka verdi and sunnyside they'll set a start date between september 14th and october 5th is what they have nogales started with small special ed cohorts on monday and they have no definite date to begin in person learning and they're watching the mentions closely

052rio rico approved an aspirational in-person hybrid start date of october 12th so they're pushing even the hybrid model later than most of us would like to see so i included a few examples of hybrid models where the class is divided in half and which is the sawahita model monday tuesday and the other cohort the 10th thursday friday we talked about amnp hemp cohorts which would be the preferred continental model if needed i did speak with our second grade teachers being that we have 27 kids in the two in-person teacher classrooms thinking that we have to split that up and make a third class and maybe some kids half of the cohort comes in the morning and the other half one half of that one third of that cohort would stay in the evening or the

053afternoon and we'd have to provide in-house coverage with existing staff so that's just something second grade would like to have them and they preferred an am pm model versus a two day a week in person for students so a transition model includes the following allowing special education students and kindergartners on campus first and slowly transition transitioning additional grade levels many are still contemplating what a hybrid model would look like for middle school and high school students so these are just conversations that we've been having with superintendents and you know every district district is different the needs are different the kids are different in terms of where what kids need so we've been working with our teachers to develop a transition plan that will ensure processes in the coop are doable and consistent so students must

054be taught and given the opportunity to practice the procedures and expectations so as we have met and discussed we were hoping that if all nine indicators are yellow we could follow plan a which would be september eighth and ninth we would bring one grade level in from each pod so we would bring in kindergartners second graders and fourth graders to return to school to make sure that we can get their temperatures checked make sure that we can practice and show them how and when they need to wear their masks how to line up what recess will look like then we would look at september 10th and 11th bringing in first third and fifth graders and then on september 14th bringing in the rest of the middle school students and that's assuming everything's in the yellow

055yes right which today is not right but we're hoping that by september 8th we would be um if not all night indicators are in yellow and we were just thinking as a team if if if not all nine indicators are in yellow we could follow plan b with the governor approver approval to operate in hybrid mode um and and you know we're listening to our teachers in terms of their reservations so if we're not all in the yellow and we do truly have to start school then our plan b would be that on the week of september 8th through the 11th so that would give us four days to work on our processes and procedures with kinder second and fourth the following week we would add first third and fifth the following week we would

056add middle school so it would just push it back another week and that would put us that all students living on campus for two weeks ten days prior to fall break those are the same dates they're the same well they're kind of spread out though so if we're in the yellow plan a is everybody back in two weeks if we're not in the yellow it's giving us an extra week and everybody being back in three weeks just to make sure that we can ensure the safety of the kids so for current class sizes if you see here in kindergarten are two in-person teachers we've had 18 and 21 students our digital teacher has 21. so when we say we can get 17 to possibly 20 students in a classroom if it's 17 students they can

057be six feet apart and not wear masks in class right now if it's more than 17 kids we'll have to squeeze in a few more kids they won't be six feet apart and they will have to wear masks so that's huge for us because we know that it will be difficult to have students wear a mask the entire time so what i what we would do also first steps is teacher one would contact those 18 parents and say if we start on september 8th or that week are you truly ready to send your child to school or would you keep them home till the end of the semester so some of the numbers may fluctuate a little bit um it could happen where enough parents say they're going to keep their kids home and we

058have 17 kids in the class and nobody has to wear a mess or it could be where we say here's the number you know we're at 20 or like i mean second grade you won't even look at because that's a whole other problem but if we look at like 22 kids and we say there's 22 kids in the classroom kids will have to wear masks or you're going to have some parents who will say well absolutely not i am not sending my kids to school that number would lower and we would end up with 17 kids who wouldn't wear masks and then the parents would be upset because they'll say what you said they were going to have to wear masks so i think it's we're going to have to be very careful how we

059message that to our parents and what the numbers look like so you'll see second grade we did get seven news second graders this year because the numbers in second grade in first grade last year were not this high um so again we would call those when i talked to the teachers they said there may be one or two of the second grade parents who would not want to send their kids to school right now in september that we could move to the digital teacher but i don't anticipate that we would have 14 kids they know we want to go to digital classroom so we would have to figure out that model for second grade will have to look a little bit different so for governing board elections update to shift gears we will have three

060open seats for our governing board elections that will take office january 2021 election day is november 3rd 2020. we have two existing governing board members on the ballot and one vacancy that will be taking mr adriano c so we will have mr mcgibbon and mr rollery on the ballot we have three write-in candidates we have kelly ellen laura cortez and paul fitch and mrs shelly keith will continue fulfilling the remaining two years of a passport member c which expires december 2022 so that's just an fyi november third election day so again um thank you and we will keep calm and stay alive so if you have a question if we go to an am pm model of hybrid doesn't that kind of dispel the need for cleaning so if you look at the denmark models

061where they're using cohort groups they're the the whole key is you've got a group of people that are together and you clean when that crew leaves if we have a group here in the morning and another group comes in the afternoon we just cross contaminated so we have an extra classroom because the digital teacher is not actually present in the room so we would have those kids and we would have if we do afternoon we can get the custodians to go in it because it would be like an 8 to 11 and then we have time for the teachers to have lunch clean the room and be ready for like let's say the 12 to three or the 12th third 12 15 to 3 cohort so we could put them in that other room and

062have the teachers go to them and for that third cohort in the afternoon rather than move the kids but because the teachers have all their material and their stuff in their own classrooms we did hire that additional custodian so that custodian would definitely be you know we have to focus all hands hands on deck to clean and be ready for that next group and what about the transportation model will we be able to get the kids out get the bus cleaned and pick up the next group of kids yes because what we're doing right now with our claims inside the buses it's just a quick spray there's a mister that goes over and correct me if i'm wrong it dries in ten minutes the spray we have is less than five but that's that's past

063that's post cleaning of the bus and ideally we wouldn't want to we wouldn't want to bust the morning kids home if parents were not there obviously we'd have a place for them to stay but in terms of coverage and having people in-house to cover those students because it would technically be two cohorts getting instruction for three hours and we would have to either push them in so that's logistically something that we need to work out because if the middle school kids are still home the second graders could go home and they'd be there but once we have everybody back on campus we have to figure out how to keep them here and service them well not everybody has a middle school or at home right but your preferred model is to gradually open the school

064and the time you would have the split classes morning and afternoon is only if we have overflow in the classrooms and we can't do the distancing is that right right so in october we'll look at the numbers again at the corner because our people have said they want to stay digital through october have the option of coming back so if we have a lot of kids coming back we're going to need that digital teacher to come back so then we may keep two digital teachers on to do maybe a k2 digital a three five digital because we're going to need bodies in the building but we're going to get to a point somewhere where you have no choice right you have to everyone has to be yes and in december those who choose to still

065remain online we could offer them the official aoi and all teachers are back so it's just going to be this little quirky time between you know october and december or september and i think you're going to have that lag time of parents on the fence and not coming back because of whatever the reason is right now yes and then the social distancing we're staying with six feet not three so it's six feet in order for for students to not have to wear a mess if it's three feet they have to wear masks in class if it's less than six feet they have to have nasty class is that a school room no because we're trying to kind and then if they have to leave their seat they've got to put their mask on to the

066bathroom or the sink or something like that to transition to the cafeteria makes a lot of sense and we're going to stagger cafeteria time and recess time and all that so we may shorten even shorten the recess time a little bit just to make sure we can keep the kids safe can you give these new thank you any further questions from here um we have a consent agenda please [Music] sorry thank you new business a food service assistant furloughs i don't like so again we're recommending um to further the two food service assistants until it's possible to have them return i'll move that we do the furlough with a comment i agree with mr mcgibbon that it is it's a second so are we going to be taking food out to people so we are

067taking food out to people and surprisingly our numbers are very low so we went going to um via animals and mr nain has been there and there's only been one or two lunches picked up um he's gone to minetta heinen's and maybe five lunches at the most picked up on any given day here we've only been serving maybe one or two so very very low how's that compared to the summer is that yes well in the summer when we were when we had before we went on summer break when we had the fourth quarter we were taking food anybody from zero to 18 because we were we had the additional funds and it didn't cost didn't cost exactly so now we're taking food to the to the families that are free and reduced lunch currently

068or are wanting to pay for lunch to be brought to them the first day we went out we took 82 lunches and i gave out five okay and then we've taken it down to where we're taking 20 out every day and we're coming back with about about 10 9 or 10 coming back so the criteria have changed we've gone from anybody between the ages of zero and eighteen you didn't want some lunch no questions it could be anybody and now you must identify as free of a checklist and sign off on what they did and the difference was fourth quarter that was federally funded versus now where there we don't have that support as a school district um but even towards the end right before summer i think like the last two weeks we started

069down below two preschool staff members to return from furlough so due to the number of students that are coming that preschool is watching preschool and kinder students we are glad that we were able to offer these programming needs to come back he one moment please okay [Music] so how many students are we seeing in our preschool steve do you know the number of preschool students preschool had 10 and they're not just preschool they're pre-k through kinder it was assigned a classroom three and we have 10 to 11 signed up but i don't want to say we're between five and eight a day our attending it fluctuates a little bit some of the parents have opted where they're truly using it because of work schedules and their work are having them go every other day so

070we're only seeing their kiddos every other day and then some of our kids are coming you know monday through friday so kinder can come to that yeah we're set up for it's pre-k through through dinner and how many teachers do we have in there now miss jenny oversees it but she's not actively working with the kiddos as she is working with doing all of the rest of her normal students she's doing the digital learning aspect with them and then we currently have two um two pair of pros that are coming in and running the actual program with those kids so that would give us four force uh staff in there four staff for five day kids no so it's only two programmatic gains so so these are the two that are working the program and

071then we have some additional who are ready to provide some coverage in those two people so there's two we're looking for substitutes in case one of them has to be out or anything of that nature but correct but we would have foreign [Music] and so these two that we're saying bring them back so they've never known earlier but they've been brought back as of last week so they're already back so we really don't need to approve it because they're already back yes it was just we need to get it back on the board that they are backing from fertile because we had discussed that we would bring them back as needed but we wanted to officially let you know they're back okay i will acknowledge that the two instructors are back mr thank you see

072reopening of school update going back to some discussion on hybrid so again um with this um action i am making i'm asking for the authorization of a hybrid transition model as metrics allow for the reopening of school with our aspirational date of september 8th what i want to ensure is that we can as a leadership team develop the transitional model that will work with more teacher input parent input and organization so that on september 8th we don't mislead our families to think that they're going to get to just all come back so i'm asking for the authorization to develop a transition model that we can start as soon as we are given here yellow light i should say to proceed with things so just because i'm a slow learner um so the yellow light i

073like that it's when we're all in the yellow that is our quote go time hybrid hybrid go time and the hybrid go time is to slowly open the school like you mentioned kindergarten second grade each pod over the course of three to four weeks and i i think that's a really good idea and i i think it should be really at instead of the sorry that was me um the board discretion i'm not the discretion your discretion because it's public knowledge when the yellow lines are lined up right i don't think it's necessary to have a separate board meaning to say oh all the things are up if we can agree to your model that you've presented that's what i would um agree with your proposition i guess or the agenda item lack of a

074better word did i [Music] yes so we are we are asking for authorization to develop our hybrid transition model based on some of the plan a and plan b and some of the things we have discussed that we need to clarify rather than the aspirational date of september 8th being everyone back to school so the model can be one of we went over three the two or three days for a group and then another two or three days and then if it's not quite that good we go to maybe a week and then the other one was an ampn so there are options available within your discretion yes yes yes and i just say that between now and september 8th we need more time to prepare our teachers and start to look at some of

075these scenarios to call our parents to see how many truly will come back on september 8th so we can make decisions based on whether you know if truly all the kids are coming back we need to get the message out to the parents that if classes are more than 17 kids will be expected to wear masks um or not so but we need but we need to gather that information i think when this all started and i was one of the ones who said it that i think kids are accustomed to wearing masks now they're a lot more resilient than you think it may be i would totally endorse the gradually opening phase versus the am pm and the two days on monday off two days on so i mean i will go to your

076expertise as to what is applicable at the time but just i would encourage that but i wouldn't encourage think that the authority is unless we're all going to yell and is that what this is saying that we have to be in the yellow to be able to open because i think if we're not that's going to open us up to lawsuits the county or am i missing something no that's why i'm also saying the model as the matrix allows for reopening this right so i just want to make sure we're clear on the metrics yes is that joe is that the metrics that you guys are seeing my my understanding of the of the options and superintendent rico's presentation was that the we we're authorized through executive order by the governor to open regardless of

077whether or not we met the metrics if that's the case the opening plan would be the hybrid model which would be ampm or block is that correct okay now the other option would be the gradual the gradual opening where uh i think the preferred model that you present presented the first first two days would be um one three five the second two days would be two um it's important to specif but the yellow light in in all categories it's important to specify the difference between the hybrid model and um slowly slowly ramping up because we're using in listening to this conversation we're seemingly using those two terms interchangeably so we hadn't really thought about we hadn't really discussed a hybrid model because we didn't think our numbers really it was necessary so for one grade

078level with 27 kids in each classroom i don't think constitutes a hybrid model for all grade levels when you look at our other numbers in our classes like kindergarten if you see in candor we have 19 and 21 students so that's doable if we could probably get those down to seventeen and i would make sure you have enough don't get into classrooms if you need to put a second grade class in the third grade pod or a fifth grade pod you could well there's space in this in that part itself we have to get somebody there because we don't have funding for or approval for an additional teacher so it's with existing staff that we would have to figure out how to service those students if we can't and that's part of the conversation that

079has to occur because if we can't do it with existing staff then we would have to look at a hybrid model for second grade only so that's why because you think you need that third teacher to maintain the online section at least until so second grade has 27 kids in each class and the online teacher has 18. so second grade is is high in general when they all come back we're going to have you know 25 kids in the class when typically as a board we've staffed kinder through second grade at 20 students so would there be another elementary online less better online person will pick on actually that that potentially could pick up some of the slack in the second grade not slack isn't the right word but for that online portion search to

080maintain it if we get to the overload of the second military class you know yeah so that's why i said we could get resources we already have maybe a couple hours from the third grade teacher empowers a fourth grade teacher and they all can i can't think that there's i don't know how long it's a full day or not like it is in a normal school day right so those are just things that we need to think through so we'll be looking at a trans phase in transition model and possible hybrid for second grade if i may have a point of clarification we have some discussion about the two day on wednesday cleaning that's a surreal issue that's not on the table here just fyi for everyone but it it may be if we meet

081the second grade and we can't figure out internal coverage and the teachers decide i really think the teachers have to have a voice in how they want to service their kids so if we as a team decide if that's the way to do it to split it up into two cohorts and you know we may have to be creative with second grade but i have a feeling if you're over that roughly 17 student mark there's going to be some pushback from parents about wearing a mask all day long i personally this is my as a parent and as someone who has just a little enough training to be dangerous um uh that's not good for any human being to have that masculine face it simply is not that's my opinion so there's going to be

082some pushback there and we have the third grade teachers here their classrooms are at 19. so we've set up six foot distance with 17 deaths do you think that you can get two more deaths in your classroom and still have them six feet apart and not wear masks it'll be pretty tight yeah it would literally put if we did that the teacher would have to stand in the corner of the room and because you could you could put mrs helton's here we used hers as a demo you technically could put probably two more across the front and the kids would be it's like this at the at the front of the board to add two to three more kids to your seventeen frankly that's absurd in my baby that's we we set up that the

08317 is as close to comfortable as mr merzon said their heads weren't in the paper dallas spencer but it is but it is it is right there when we say that 17 in our professional opinion and it was the three of us that did it that would be our comfortable as the max and that's only happened two rooms open and the third room is still available beyond life's the five so here's the other there's no reason but you have to have you have to have teachers to put in the third room and that third teacher is doing online schooling but here's the other thing that we could look at because miss helgen you're the digital teacher your neighbor is miss navado can we open up there's no opening now so in any part are there

084middle school only and right now the two my classroom one and two that have the on-site place to go students those are actually being operated and that's why we do have more than 17 in those classrooms because we're actually using two classrooms because the middle school is designed without partitioning down the rooms so i've opened those up so i'm dealing with double the square footage of an average sized classroom which elementary does not have that much so how obligated are we to our students to continue the online once we'll just pick on the second grade since that's a conversation to continue that or say hey by october 1 you've got [Music] so we can condense our like i said our digital teacher so let's say ms halton she's the first great digital teacher if we

085when we bring back the other kinder teacher and the other second grade teacher because of members we would ask miss halton to figure out how to service k2 those digital kids so we should be a lot less too yes because we're anticipating that there will be less um but again it's just we've asked parents if they have said digital to remain digital till october so yes there's a commitment for well but we've had a few calls of parents who say well no we want to change our minds and our mind and we want them back in but with the numbers the way they are we're not going to be able to say okay come back because we don't have the staffing just for information the the second semester starts on what day october october that

086we october so i'm i'm a little concerned here uh because i sit on this board in support of public education as a public educator having taught in many different states licensed in many different states to be a public school teacher i'm number one concerned about us throwing our public education system away we're moving toward an online program you don't you don't have to do too much work to go on craigslist and find all the opportunities to make between 25 and 50 an hour providing modules of online training in math english language arts uh even music and so i'm really concerned about that my second major concern is that as a board part of our job is to be visionary and i don't do well with surprises i like to think things through i'm a pretty

087data driven person and i'm hearing data about santa cruz county which is one of the four counties that has the highest rate of covid per per population of any state navajo apache apache sand cruise and there's there's yuma i think so so even comparing us to that it probably isn't a good idea i think if we look around at our zip codes 85614 and the surrounding zip code area that's probably a better better idea of using the data-driven information to make a decision i'm concerned that we are not being aggressive enough that our parents may look for another way to educate their kids and if you can find a better option than public education i'm in i'm ready to listen but i think if we don't say to our parents and our business community who

088wants their people back at work that we support you we're working with you i think we're going to have a problem across the country in education and i'm not sure as a board sitting here saying that we're the visionaries that we're you know we're supposed to set policy and be the vision and come up with the new ideas i i just don't feel comfortable saying you know what superintendent good luck we're passing this over to you you know work on some models do the best you can you know we'll support you yeah we do support you but my goodness we absolutely have got to look at keeping public education alive and we're backing down this is when we need to lean in and we're just we're saying we're going to divide you up we don't

089have resources for this we're going to move this teacher look who would wake up tomorrow morning and say send me to the u of a i want to be a teacher those numbers are going down public education is going down i just i understand what you're saying i understand what you're asking for i think if it means that we have to have a poem with you every day then we need to have a call with you every day because our job is to be standing on the edge of that cliff looking out for you and i think we need to be giving you a lot more information than we're giving you now and so that's my feeling i mean i'm i'm i'm all in favor of getting these schools open but we need to do

090it in a data-driven method and we need to recognize that we care about our teachers we love our kids we support our administration but we serve a community and we need to address that so that's my diatribe and i'm sorry anything else well i just think that there is some data there from if we go to the red green yellow purple colors that's the data there and it's a very unknown how many parents that september 8th is the day if everything's in the yellow will really be sent i don't know but me as a parent of a sixth grader i don't know what i'll do september to begin with i sure as heck would like to have her out and be here in school but we as parents we don't know and i think i'm

091not alone in that into some of their friends and you know and unlike you i don't say oh it just won't work out i'm not a big believer i'll add something as a parent as well because first and foremost that's that's far more important than anything i'll ever do on the board is to be a parent right and of course i want my kids to be safe when they come back here as well absolutely in this particular situation i think they're simply asking for their authorization to try and make something work and if it's a if we're slowly transitioning over the course of a week or two i i think we owe them um a little bit of slack in the rope so to speak and and allow them to to use their expertise they're

092they're in the thick of it every day and they're seeing the data change like the weather and i can only imagine frustrating is for me as a parent how it is for them um it's absolutely mind-boggling will you please uh commute if you're on the phone please and um anyway i think that it's very appropriate to allow to give them some flexibility to try and i can see i can see the concern about september 8th everybody comes back to campus it sounds like it could be a little bit chaotic and i think there's no harm in allowing a little bit of transition period to try and make it work i think i just see no arm there right because they can learn the procedures instead of you get 700 people yeah you get a few

093one in one time you get you know the time when the conditions are right and the transition i think that is a i really do like it and i just want to reiterate that we want our kids back in school too like there's we we believe that our kids need to be here but we also have to um not at the expense of their health or the staff members health or i mean i my job is to take into consideration all of our stakeholders so unless i speak to my teachers hear from them speak to our parents we have kids on the task force that we hear from i mean our team can agree we've been on the phone talking about this for 15 hours a day and we're texting teachers at night and we're

094calling teachers at night and we're saying what do you think what do you hear um here's another potential thing if kids if teachers call their parents and say all kids will have to wear masks in class and parents say absolutely not well guess what we're going to be forced to develop a hybrid model so that we can get kids in class where they don't have to wear masks but we have to talk to our parents and i you know we could talk every day but it's time that we need to talk to our parents because they're our customers we've been doing it but it's we've we're constantly doing it we're having these calls we're meeting right now i mean we have to make that personal context so it's clear to parents if we have more

095than 17 kids in a class which these numbers look like kids will have to wear maths in class get but we need to make that personal contact it's not something you can just send in an email and have them respond um because we need to we need to build that trust and right now um i think with the transition model coming in we can reassure our teachers that our procedures are in place reassure our parents and our kids first and foremost because they're all wondering what school is going to actually look like so we have all been doing the work but it takes time and you know we're working on this day in and day out trying to hear from parents hear their concerns so we all want kids back in school as fast as

096we can but i also want to ensure that we are following pima county health guidelines and making sure that it is that we're in the yellow when we're in the so pima county health department says when we're in the green for two weeks and we can sustain the metrics and the green then school can operate in full force like we used to so typically the direction was five to seven weeks when we started talking about this so you know we i'm cautiously optimistic but i want to do it right and we have to i we have a responsibility to our students and our families and to our teachers so we deliberate over retentions and services for kids and it takes time so a decision like this when we're talking about lives of kids and health

097it's not something that i feel we can say let's just go forth and do and let's see what happens because i also don't want to interrupt school and education if we come back and we have teachers who test positive or families who test positive and we have to go right back to square one like that's going to be more detrimental to kids than if we say okay let's get you in slowly let's transition let's do it right that's been seen all over the country from public schools to universities to sporting teams there's a few of us in the background that are trying to contact u of a to see if we can get rapid saliva testing going but that's probably a pipe dream if anybody's got a connection to u of a um you've got

098a mass maybe not i'll try is make us meet the saint the poster child and we can test everyone every day and get the three rapid return i know that's a pipe dream but if anybody knows anybody to reach out to please do that or give me the information i'll do it but i might what you said i was going to bring that up is to open shut down open shut down is a nightmare is it better to stay shut down i don't know i don't know those are and when we look at again testing because we know that our insurance covers the cvs testing for free seven to ten days get your results back there's other places where you can go to urgent care and pay thirty dollars to get a test and get

099your results in one or two hours there's other places you can go and pay a hundred and twenty dollars to get your results immediately the rule still the procedure is if you've been in contact with someone with coven you should quarantine for 14 days so again can we afford to have our teachers quarantined for 14 days if needed and we can't mandate that they will pay 120 out of their own pocket to get a rapid right so so if they're gone 14 days and if the substitute cost 100 a day it'd be much more cost effective for the district to cover that rapid test would it not a day or two versus 14 and then we know so i don't know if that's emotion or it's not policy or whatever but i i wish that

100on the table and i mean we've tossed out can we make a deal with urgent care for teachers that's something that you know um so that will our insurance cover the 30 copay to get the results in two hours to so teachers can have a peace of mind that they can come back and be with a negative test result if you got a teacher out for ten days that's a thousand dollars plus whereas we spend 125 on a rapid test or even 200 that's way ahead and you've got a teacher there and i'm a substitute well that's something we need to do any further discussion no more no okay we are i'd like to entertain emotionally to approve their authorizations of hybrid transition model some about a second yes with the request that this be

101extended out through at least the end of january to look at modeling to model through the end of january right so it says an aspirational date of september 8th i'd just like to see the model being sent out through january since september 8th will slip that it gives thank you uh the liability endorsement for the trust superintendent recommends the purchase of the liability endorsement for 20 000 bucks right the if the claim is made if there is a waiver there's no deductible if there's a claim of the the uh acknowledgement is ten thousand deductible if somebody that didn't do either makes a claim then it's a twenty thousand dollars right and then they cover the rest regardless of what it is so what we did ask the trust is let's say it's in a classroom

102and we have three three students who have filed the plane one who has signed the waiver one has signed nothing and one for a sign who has filled up the acknowledgment form then that would be a thirty thousand dollar deductible and it would count as one claim is what we're asking them to clarify because we said is that three different claims or is it grouped as a classroom considered one um and i really hate to ask this what are other districts doing is this a popular thing they're they're saying yes i think this is a good idea to buy it or you know let's roll the dice or right now statewide it's right around the 55th right and the way the attorney post it is if we don't purchase this coverage and there is a

103claim then we would have to go with [Music] i believe it was towards the end of september yeah it's not any time in the near future and that covers for the fiscal year yes um there it is september 15th well greg you're the finance guy what do you think i think 20 grand now is better than a hundred degrees later okay i'll move that we approve the insurance policy i'd like to move that we tabled this until our september 14th meeting tell is yes motion passes now we have a motion on the floor thank you okay let's see our colts k program so again i sent you all the information and the approval letter of our aoi school so we're asking for approval so that we can start to let our parents and families know

104that doi is available and was it mentioned in there which program did you guys pick so um with for our uh five through eight kids we will be using mesa distance learning mason okay yes and then for the k-k-fours we'll be using edmentum uh with their kelvin learning product is that the one veil uses or not yes that is the only value sarita uses an ingenuity something like that yeah and what happened with edge annuity we're looking at we looked at um one makes the distance funny because they're one they're the one of the oldest aos in the state so they're already grandfathered in their approved they have everything you know with the state we looked at florida distance for florida virtual edge annuity and momentum uh to fill in the other platforms for the

105grades that means the distance learning did not uh did not offer so with edge annuity we didn't want to sign or say we're going to commit to anything until everything was all approved because there would be no point and then they want to hold us to a set number of kids but uh once we got the approval and we were talking edge annuity is not taking any more students for any virtual courses so we have we decided to go ahead with edmentum to offer our 4rk force okay thank you i'll give a second yes further discussion yes yes sir so there was a discussion of we lose money per kid that goes aoi right or is that exempt this year at least that's what subreddit told me that their aoi this year their examples still

106get their full six grand or whatever it is per kid when we get that or not because is it discount no we we will get we did not expose they created a digital pathway model to operate like an aoi hiring their own existing teachers right so the state approved anybody who developed an aoi type virtual warning was going to receive full funding so it wasn't going to even though they contracted yes and then the cost of the state keeps five percent we only get received yeah how much is that so that comes out to 175 dollars per course per student okay so um so a thousand dollars yeah i can tell you right now did you say for a course yes so it comes out to if if they take four core classes and one

107elective for mesa distance it comes out to 32.50 oh sorry i take that back 1750 if they take uh four cores and uh and two electives it comes out to 2100 or if we just offer uh core classes for say like fifth grade then it's it's a so it's an average of two grand a year and we're still way ahead and yes the the funding well the cost versus potential funding is always is less than you know what we get back right okay thank you further discussion so if we're going to be getting then if we get kids enrolled in aoi and it's costing roughly 2 000 and we're going to get about 9 000 from the state what do we do with the other 7 000 i'm not understanding what you're saying well per

108student well per student and average uh average aoi student will generate five thousand dollars in aoi funding okay five thousand yes okay so so we would pay you know in that case if it makes a distance depending on the number of courses two grand so we pay two grand of mesa and then we keep three thousand in funding that funding it goes to the school to for staffing purchasing of additional you know software vendors or we have to purchase the software to begin with yeah right well no we pay them it's all hard so that money will go into the school's budget it goes just where all the other money for the students goes the one really nice thing about aoi is our district boundaries have now gone to the state's boundaries so we could

109be teaching kids from page to you went to nogales we can have everybody in between and we have a gross profit of three thousand dollars per student yes which we don't have when we have to account for all of the sanitation facilities instructors curriculum everything there's still an aoi instructor that has to be paid for but but in a sense yes that's what fails and what what vale did is that they instead of using the platform's own certified instructor they hire their own teachers and they're purchasing the course which is obviously even a lot it's a lot cheaper than the all-in-one package but we don't have the manpower without the staffing to do that so we would have to rely on on on their virtual teacher as opposed to an on-site virtual teacher depending on

110the number of kids it still sounds like a pretty bad option it's a very lucrative deal for the school and we've been losing funding for kids who are being homeschooled or because we haven't had this option to offer uh this has already been approved correct we just motioned we have a motion so this is the vote correct yes so this has already been approved though right the aoi um in july was to submit the application but then the state approved it yes the application and so it's we've had it at our school we've been approved reports we're ready to engage yes but congratulations on the successful submission and the start of uh continental online learning technology school program i guess in order to pull the trigger we've got to say approval yes you have to

111be presented to the word for approval introduce us to the student facility board please all right well i'm going to do this standing up and over here at the podium because sitting in that chair for too long makes my butter fair enough so good evening everybody um i wanted to take a few minutes to introduce the board to a department of our government called the school facilities board the school facilities board was created back in 1997 and their sole purpose was to make sure that district school district buildings public school buildings were at and operating at a minimum standard back in 1997 roughly 600 million dollars from the general fund was put out to get schools to a minimum standard and for the sfb to maintain this minimum standard so what does that mean for

112us as a school district that means that when i get an invoice from pueblo mechanical for fifty two hundred dollars to replace a compressor i can have the school facilities board pay for this versus using the district's money when the american fire comes in and tells me that it's going to cost me twenty three hundred dollars to replace a a four inch fire pipe that's twenty three hundred dollars and i can have the school facilities board paid for versus having the district paperwork the school facilities board will deal with any health and safety issue or any building issue in a occupied space that produces adm so if if the air conditioning unit in this building was to go down that that condition in this room i'm going to have to pay for it this would

113be what they call excluded space but if it went down next door in the library that is that comes with our school and helps us drive adm so they would actually pay for that i have another invoice on my desk for twenty eight hundred dollars but it's for the snack bar and bathrooms out here that does not produce eight am so that is twenty eight hundred dollars that i have to spend so the way this way the sfe works is we have a project we submit that to our sfb representative they take it to the sfb board the board approves or disapproves of the project and then we can move forward as some of you may not know i'm recently an ex-employee of the show low unified school district and last year alone i spent

114four million dollars of school facility board lab and that a lot of it went to yours close to a million dollars on a high school gym floor there are 750 000 to put air conditioning in that high school gym there's another 650 000 just to put bleachers back in i spent hundred and ninety thousand dollars of the school facility board money to re-roof and hole in elementary school so the school facilities board is there to help districts take their budget and stretch it when things break they're not going to help us out with aesthetics um if our buildings were stucco and the stucco was falling off they would help with that but they're not going to paint it because it's been six years since it's been painted so the way that they're going to work

115is after they vote to approve they will send us a letter for the superintendent to sign off on and as well as the board president the next item that we're going to talk about is actually to use a stamp for the board president and i will kind of give you an insight as to why that is on the agenda for this evening so when we submit so let's let's just say using tonight as an example if this was a regular school board meeting if i submit a program a project for tomorrow it could be upwards of a month before we could actually get started on the project if we were sitting here and waiting for a board member's signature on that project so tonight in the next agenda item i am asking for permission to

116use the borders of president's stamp to move these projects further along and get them going instead of having to wait upwards of the month to get things started i gave you a high level overview of what the school facilities board does i would be more than happy to answer any more specific questions if you have them we need to entertain questions from the audience if that is all right with the president let's get it clarified i think my question is what's the catch okay so good question what's the catch yeah the catch is there is no catch the catch is the school facilities board usually gets a right around 63 million dollar budget a year it comes right out of the government the state's general fund okay they have in the past had to go

117back to ask for extensions and a larger disbursements but the catch is there is no catch and we haven't done it maybe because we haven't known about it the reason why we haven't done it here we just didn't know well we talk about it all the time at the arizona school boards association meetings yes so we do know about it um okay so let me rephrase the person or folks who have held this position in the past may not have known about it so let me go ahead and rephrase my answer that way but there but there truly there is no catch if there was a catch it would be get your projects in before or april before the sfb starts running low on funds so this is also for building new facilities as well

118so the sfb will build a new school but they have to show you have to show two years of being at or over capacity in your building before they ever consider it so they will also if you do not have land for a new building they will purchase the land as well or they will they will facilitate the discussion with the state if you have statements correct and over the blm educational purchase program correct yes so what would be the maximum amount of money that you would want a stamp for so that you could approve on behalf of the award what would be the what's the top line well and i'm going to be honest all those projects i did in show low a million dollar project i had my stamp the very next board

119meeting it was here's what we used to stamp on we've got this sfp project this is what it's going to cost so then the administration is making the decision and informing the board correct over the stamp is just for the ssd it is just for so once they get that once the sfb board approves a project they changed over their system so it may not even require now but the old system required a wet signature from the superintendent and it's either a stamped or wet signature from the board present well kudos to you for bringing this here well that's why we're here we're in the business of education and it just doesn't mean math and math and reading but doesn't do buses and stuff it does not do buses it is just your facility so

120fortunately we don't have boilers so when a boiler goes down there's 75 000 to replace the boiler so i guess i just want to make sure i think from my house to here is about five miles and i think all of us live fairly close and so waiting a month for a signature why would that be because it has to be done at a board meeting or have the approval of at a board meeting to use the authorization to use a staff so i think this is our third meeting in august so we don't see i've been here for five weeks and this is my sixth meeting yeah so i don't think we have any trouble scheduling uh board meetings or second but yeah i think we're talking about a fourth one before the end

121of the month so i don't think getting board meetings is a problem it's just a way to advance the project quicker it's all it is and every year that the board changes over if we have a new president this would come up again okay thank you and you're very welcome now we move on to g if that was the information that occurred yes uh using the board member stamp on the sfb application i'll move that we approve the board members down for the sfd application second i will second discussion well i'm going to say again i don't think we have any trouble having board meetings i think that taking the board out of their position of being responsible for the vision for public education in the green valley area to include the infrastructure and any

122necessary repairs to the infrastructure makes the board a shall we say a rubber stamp and takes away i think not only some of what the board should be doing but what the board does this is if you look in the statutes in the arizona revised sections this is what boards are supposed to do so we're supposed to be working with you and helping you get these things done thank you for the discussion i think it's a windfall thing that i mean it could save us significant money oh i agree all right there's no there's no challenge to the fact that using the school facilities board which as you said has been in business since 1917 1997 so it's been in business for 23 years the fact that we haven't used it is more on us

123than anything else but the fact that we're talking about you know the board isn't going to be the one that is is leading this vision and and supporting our infrastructure and being more proactive and what are the needs of the infrastructure and even approaching the school facilities boards to address upcoming needs and even building a new school you know these are things that we talk about at asba all the time and i think now is the time for us to get a little bit more engaged sorry about that i forgot i had another item on the agenda so currently the district does not have a 403b plan or a 457 plan 403bs and 457s are the government equivalents of a 401k this would allow our faculty and our staff the option of going ahead and

124subsidizing their retirement by entering into a 403 b or a 54 57 k or a 457 plan so i bring it tonight for your approval for us to speak and search for vendors who will offer us a 403 b or a 457 plan do we have any of those plans in place now so this is a benefit and optional too yes any of the staff that would great thank you yeah i in my limited tax information knowledge so this goes in like a 401k and is not taxable until you pull it out correct correct government could choose a government version that's a great option hopefully that you guys can take advantage of that because when you're old you're different this is price yes how worn out the advent staff is and all this planning and

125i'm glad that you were not me but you know you i just want you to know you have my support and um we all want to do the right thing for our kids and families and staff to get them here and greg again they're a great welcome to the school and just these couple of proposals here are i think looking forward to the law conference with the arizona school boards association um i know that there's going to be a lot on there about about liability insurance that is going to be coming in from the federal and state governments so that will be very helpful for us when we look to open schools thank you i think it's good said i'm very grateful for the efforts here i know it's tough i know it seems like

126every every time we get a little momentum we hit another brick wall but i'm convinced we'll figure it out we just have to keep stepping in the right direction so i applaud each and every one of you for your efforts and let's keep moving forward we'll get this figured out so thank you and i just wanted to announce that our override posters should be up um this weekend so we should be visible by monday oh and we need volunteers to help put them out ferguson there we go [Music] okay thank you