001our executive session so i'll call us to order briefly announced on our agenda was the need for an executive session uh pursuant to ars 38-431.0 a and 3. the governing board may convene an executive session for discussion of for discussion or consultation for legal advice with the governing board's attorney regarding arizona open meeting law requirement in consultation with our attorney today and with the superintendent uh there is a need to postpone that executive session for a later date to be announced and i am open to entertain a motion for that before we move to the special organizational meeting at six o'clock dr santa cruz i move that we table this discussion for future discus for future second thank you mr carr thank you miss eugetti we have a motion and a second oh any discussion
002seeing that there is no discussion then we will vote uh all those in favor of tabling you said tabling right yes mr crown tabling the executive session has announced on our agenda please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries we are postponing executive session and we are in recess until 6 00 pm when we convene our board organizational meeting do we really get recess uh yes but you can't hug anybody there are there ropes yes thank you where are they they're with uh dr mccord and he's not here so you'll have to find him here i am oh there he is mrs eugenie would like a jump rope i just want recess oh we've got those so we're about 20 minutes away from the start of the organizational meeting i want
003to thank you for wearing the appropriate face coverings while you're in the room please make sure that your mouth and nose are properly covered and that you're wearing the mask appropriately thank you foreign shhh let's go oh anything good evening this is monday january 4th and this is a special organizational meeting brief board meeting and a business meeting immediately during the process we are at item two we have postponed the executive session that is listed on your agenda and that will appear at a later date item two item two point zero one is called order two point zero two is a roll call miss wilson would you please call row miss laurie wood here mr reed carr here dr charles santa cruz here miss sheila eugetti here miss jill humphries here mr president all board
004members are present you have a quorum thank you mrs wilson we're at item three dr santa cruz yes mr dr mccord didn't mean to ignore me there yes i know you and i spoke earlier and you have uh some information to present so please go ahead correct uh first i'd wanna i want to let everyone know i am not in attendance in the meeting because today i tested positive for covet 19. i had had some symptoms of the past few days and decided to go get tested so uh i am calling in for the meeting so i wanted to make sure everybody knew that secondly as we moved to this pandemic and this will be our process moving forward for our board meetings in terms of mass please be aware during board meetings and while
005on gps property you're required to wear a mask additionally your mask will cover your mouth and your nose at all times if you've chosen to address the governing board during the call to the public this evening or any evening coming up you're required to wear your mask while speaking if you don't have a mask you can find one at the table in the hallway as well as hand sanitizer if for some reason individuals choose not to comply with our math requirements you'll be asked to leave the premises and you can be the remainder of the meeting online we thank you for your assistance to help with the health and safety of our students staff and community thank you dr santa cruz thank you dr mccord and take care of yourself and get well thank you
006sir item three we are at the organizational portion of this meeting and it is the nomination of officers for the governing board item 3.01 what i will do is read for or request nominations three times and receive those nominations at the end of those three requests we will vote on those who have been nominated for the various offices and those offices include board president and board clerk so as we look over the business and the responsibilities the board president is obviously representing the board in public activities and also presiding over the meetings and assisting with the assisting and identifying items for the agenda at each board meeting and making sure that all board members are duly informed through the appropriate processes that are in place through the superintendent so with that we will be accepting
007nominations for president once president is elected then i will move from this chair and the new president will proceed with the rest of the nominations dr santa cruz miss you jetty i i would like to make a motion that we continue to have you as our board president during these very trying times you have been a rock and have helped us get through a lot of issues and i don't think right now trying to make that change would be a good thing for us so i'm going to ask that we nominate you to be the board president for the next year thank you ms eugetti before i accept i think there needs to be a second and then we'll call for additional nominations if there are any i will second thank you mrs humphries there
008is a nomination and a second is there an additional nomination for board president making a third request for a nomination for board president anybody out there want to do it hearing no additional nominations then we will vote you have one nomination before you and i'm not sure if happy is the right word but i am certainly willing to serve for another year if that is the desire of this board there are equally capable candidates on this dais but i understand the rationale and accept responsibility all those in favor of the nomination as presented by miss eugetti and seconded by miss humphries please signify by saying aye aye those oppose the same motion carries and it appears that you are stuck with me for one more year dr santa cruz if i can just add hopefully
009we have a normal year this year that you can preside over we are going to work hard at trying to get there the next nomination is for board clerk the board clerk obviously is responsible for activities in uh place of the president should president not be available and for signing of appropriate documents as necessary through business services and superintendent and presiding over meetings in the absence of the president as my understanding at this point i will again call for nominations i will do that three times and then we will vote is there i would like to to just say that i would like to continue with what we have and we have a very good clerk with mrs wood so i think we should continue with the that what we've done for the last year
010so mr jetty has nominated miss wood to retain her position as board clerk is there a second i'll second thank you mr carr i will request nomination a second time is there another nomination for bird board clerk i will request a third time is there a nomination for board clerk seeing that there are none we will vote all those in favor of miss wood continuing as board clerk for the next year please signify by saying i those pose the same thank you miss wood we're in the soup together all five of us the next item of business is meeting times and during this past year our meeting times have been 6 00 pm for regular board meetings 5 p.m if we have a need for executive sessions sometimes earlier but typically 5 o'clock and our
011policy meetings have been at 11 30. is there a request to change those or is there a motion to change those or to remain as we are dr santa cruz i felt this have worked very well so i will uh make the motion that we keep the times the same as have been this past year thank you mr carr is there a second second there is a motion and a second any discussion regarding our business times and board meeting times seeing no discussion then we will vote and meeting times will remain as they have been six o'clock 11 30 and 5 for executive sessions 11 30 for policy meetings o'clock for regular business meetings and work study sessions all those in favor please signify by saying aye hi hi all those opposed the same motion
012carries we're at item 4.02 is a review and approval of rules of order and we have been using robert's rules as our foundational document and we have utilized an asba hybrid format for our own purposes to streamline our business it has in my opinion worked well for us uh that is rules of order policy b-e-d-d is there any request to change that or a motion to continue and a second please i move that we continue with policy bedd thank you miss humphries is there a second bye second thank you mr carr so it has been moved and seconded that we continue with policy bedd our rules of order for operating our meanings all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye all those opposed the same motion carries next is 4.03 is board appointments
013to various committees and just as a review we have a policy committee which is a committee of the whole enrollment management committee which is a committee of the whole legislative representative which has been occupied by me during this past year town of gilbert liaison and city of mesa liaisons gilbert liaison is mr carr mesa liaison is ms wood gilbert education foundation has been miss humphreys insurance trust representative has just been miss eugenie and the audit committee has been mr carr is there a desire to change or is there a sweeping motion to continue committees as listed i am open for a motion i think someone can amend it but i would just move that we continue with the assignments as as have been in in discussion if someone wants to propose a change we can
014substitute that motion but we'll start the discussion okay we have a motion is there a second second second to continue committees as listed and as they have been anyone interested in discussing whether or not any changes or shifts and adjustments should be made i'm perfectly happy to continue a second year with my assignment so i do think we should change once a while but i think we did change last year and it seems like putting one year our second year kind of helps us get continuity and understand the role that we have on that committee and how to support those people thank you miss humphries i concur with your assessment and i am willing to continue in my role as legislative representative as well other board members your preferences or comments seeing that there are
015none i am accepting that there is a concurrence and that we will continue with committee assignments as listed and as they have been so all those in favor of committee assignments being retained as they are please signify by saying aye aye aye those oppose the same motion carries we are at item five which is the adjournment of this special organizational meeting is their emotion i move to adjourn thank you miss humphries is there a second second thank you mr jetty there is no need for discussion all those in favor of adjourning this organizational meeting please signify by saying i i those opposed the same motion carries we are adjourned from our special organizational meeting we will now move to our brief board business meeting and we will once again for the record do a roll
016call miss wilson dr charles santa cruz here miss larry wood here mr reed carr here michela eugetti here ms jill humphries here mr president all board members are present you have a quorum thank you miss wilson we'll now move to item 7 which is a request to speak to the governing board and we have this evening 70 people who have requested to speak to the governing board we will move through that once we have played the recorded message please the board may make an open call to the public during a public meeting subject to reasonable time place and manner restrictions to allow individuals to address the public body on an issue within the jurisdiction of the public body at the conclusion of the open call to the public individual board members may respond to criticism
017made by those who have addressed the board may ask the staff to review a matter or may ask a matter be to be put on a future agenda however members of the board shall not discuss or take legal action on matters raised during the open call to the public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action during the open call the board requests that speakers refrain from voicing complaints against school personnel or any person connected with the district as it may impact due process rights policy k e k e b and k e d are provided by the board for disposition of legitimate complaints including those involving individuals forms required for use of these policies can be obtained from the gilbert public schools website thank you we have 71 one additional speaker
018made request there just after i announced the number uh just as a my uh item of information all of us have reviewed and or read all of the emails or many of the emails that have come to us and so we have a very good understanding of where people lie relative to the issues all we would ask is that appropriate decorum prevail we understand this is a passion-laden item and we will listen intently and act appropriately and judiciously when it is our time so i will call in groups of three as we work through the 71 request to speak first up is ms bonnie hickman mr nevin cauley jocelyn crozier thank you board members let me start by saying that as an educator from for 26 years in the district i respect our board and
019our leadership and i will abide by whatever decisions happens tonight i just want our community to be able to work together and to heal together on august 11th the board made a decision quote um it that they would reopen schools when it was deemed safe according to health benchmarks set forth by the adhs and mcd ph based upon that parents and teachers decided which model was going to be the best for them and their families either in person online or flex we also have to follow maricopa guidance about face coverings and it's on our website so we probably should be listening to their guidance as well some people might think it's silly that teachers are concerned about getting sick but new year's eve hundreds of kids in the gilbert area ended up at a new
020year's eve party we want to start back to school tomorrow but it's an incubation period we're only supposed to have half of our kids but like in my class seven of my kids are are on-site kids and because there's no subs they're in my room also so it's not half our rooms are about 30 feet by 30 feet which is from that wall about to this the camera up there and out to the area where this thing is and we've got you know anywhere from 23 to 30 people depending on how many are there in that space there's no more cares act to cover the employees for the minimum of 10 days that we would be out if we got sick but there's no hospital beds anyway it sounds like but i do want to
021thank you for putting 9.02 on the agenda because i know at least you know that we're concerned about it um hopefully we're going to start getting the vaccine soon i've prepared my classroom and myself as best i can i have a top-notch air purifier in my room i have a schedule the kids wash their hands every hour and i have three weeks of sub plans ready um you know my son has grown my will is up today and i know where i'm going after this world so i'm not worried i'm not afraid but i do want to be prepared so i would just ask that at a bare minimum we maybe have hybrid for two weeks just to deal with the incubation period until we know what's going on i know it's going to be
022difficult to have in-person schooling though if we end up with too many teachers in the hospital or actually not surviving covet so thank you for listening good evening board um so i wanted to start off experiencing what miss hickman said there was a vote at the beginning of the school year and many people made decisions based on that vote i was actually given i was going to teach online virtually when the board voted that we would follow benchmarks i felt and many people felt that that was a healthy safe way to go and so i decided okay i could be in our class with those benchmarks you know i have to take care of my family but if we're following benchmarks then i can do that okay so with that said uh we need to
023continue to do that the benchmarks right now say that we should go virtually governor ducey said that we should keep schools open safely and he said on many occasions that safely is basically guided by the state department the state health department so the state health department benchmarks and the county benchmarks that we've been following all say that we should be virtual right now that's been the same for three weeks running um we need to follow those guidelines schools are based on guidelines that we need to follow if a student has lice we have guidelines to take care of that so there's not a spread of that right uh if a student has said that they're feeling suicidal we have guidelines to take care of that if there's an active shooter we have guidelines to take
024care of that so that the students the staff in the community are safe covet is the same thing we have guidelines to follow so that the students the staff in our communities are safe so i implore you i know that i'm a parent many parents are really you know they have a lot to deal with and i totally understand that this creates a hardship but we need to keep people healthy we need to keep them safe we need to follow the benchmarks and those guidelines to do that i really appreciate your time and your service thank you very much after ms crozier will do phil sherwin jennifer eberhaus and chris bollinger jocelyn thank you hey um i don't know if anybody else feels a little deja vu tonight but i'll tell you i didn't realize
025how many times i was going to get to wear my cute green shirt when i ordered it back in july but um i'm here first of all to thank you dr santa cruz and reid and lori for your words and thoughts at the december 15th meeting you guys talked about how you read the emails from parents dr santa cruz talked about how he spoke to many teachers about the lacking of education in our hybrid and our virtual classrooms and we all appreciate your willingness to stand up for our kids that day we cannot thank you enough or tell you how much as parents we appreciate someone helping our children now we are all here tonight because of the rumorings we've heard about a teacher's association that thinks they may speak for the majority and i'm
026just here to tell you that they do not they do not speak for the parents in our community and they most certainly do not represent the needs of the children in our community they do not have our students best interests in mind i appreciated governor ducey's remarks this week as he was put in a very similar situation to what you're in tonight when he was asked by kathy hoffman to mandate a school closing his office issued the following statement governor ducey will not be considering this request or issuing this kind of mandate this is a local decision the online option is already available the governor has repeatedly made his preference clear kids have already lost out on a lot of learning and he wants schools open we're asking you please follow our governor please open
027the schools do your job and represent the community i know it's hard when there's a lot of noise i know that there's an association that has a lot of voices but our children only have your voice and we voted you here to represent our kids we voted you because they need you and i want you to know that if you vote for our kids you will not stand alone we are here to help if these teachers walk out we will walk in we will sub we will volunteer we will do whatever it takes to keep our kids in school we appreciate all you've done we appreciate the concern you have for our kids but please do not forget their best interests they need to be in school they need this more than anything and there
028are options for online if teachers feel they need to move that way if students feel they need to move that way they should but for the rest of us we're begging please keep our schools open thank you [Applause] thank you good evening board my name is phil sharon first time speaker long time viewer uh thank you for allowing me opportunity to speak here um i'm going to be as concise as possible i don't know any of you so you wouldn't know that i'm not concise but you'll find here shortly so some things i wanted to share real quick here um i want to first of all thank you for your support leading up to this unfortunate pandemic we've almost all obviously been forced to make very difficult decisions um micheli obviously voicing to say hey
029why don't we continue some things that have been working and some points that i want to mention tonight are you know we've got many options for can for children to continue to be educated one of those options is in-person education and my biggest ask that i'm going to start with is that we don't take away that option there are many here tonight that are currently educators for online global academy that are continuing to push for in-person education to be ended district has completed surveys in the past we've seen 89 percent of teachers and staff if i'm correct or incorrect please let me know um that are ready to go back and we're willing to so my ask is please don't take away the option for my family for my daughter in second grade for my
030future son that's going to be our sorry my current son that's going to be a future student at greenfield elementary you know i have many things to say about this but i'm not here to try and dispel your understanding of covid however i do want to make sure that i'm very pointed to say please be metacognitive and think about your thinking on the decisions that you're making with our students we are in our local community here there are dashboards yes that are available at the same time there are not dashboards that are reporting suicides happening in mesa public schools there are not dashboards that are going to tell you about the impact that are happening in people's homes about what it looks like to try and educate a kindergartner second grader a 10th grader you've
031heard many stories about that last time but i want to just remind you of those things uh last vote there was a mention from dr santa cruz about being focused on education and that is my ask do not take away our option for in-person education to cite some things that i think would be willing i'm sorry would be worth your time to consider if you haven't already a study completed by the cdc and um sorry a study completed by the cdc uh students that tested positive provide for covid were more likely to have attended in-person classes than those who tested negative but they were more likely to have attended family gatherings play dates parties and funerals with that researchers have continued and also concluded studies about how schools contribute to the spreading of the virus
032in the community long story short it was concluded in michigan in washington if you want to look it up but at the end of it they found that when community infection rates were low reopening schools did not seem to worsen the situation even if reinfect infection rates were high it still not did not impact reopening schools schools continue to remain open the last point that i'm going to mention here there was a study completed time jennifer eberhaus chris bullinger and brian maurer good evening i spoke to you at our last meeting i wore the coats you'd remember um i'm speaking to you tonight to tell you how much i appreciate last meeting's boat it was important mr carr you did a wonderful job making that motion and i felt that you did a wonderful job
033in your compromise to to find a way to keep our schools open because that is really what we're here for tonight we have to find a way to keep our schools open there's no option open schools is essential this is not a parent versus teacher agenda okay i can speak for myself but i know i'm not alone in saying that teachers are essential and we love our teachers and we love our open schools we don't want to see anyone get hurt but we need to talk about excellence in education because that is what we have at gilbert public schools we have an excellence that we have to maintain online school is not providing excellent education for every student it's not if it was do you think we would all be here it's not so let's
034find a way to get what we need to have the teachers come back to the school in a safe manner we need to find that compromise or maybe we don't but we need schools open end of story i appreciate the vote i know that these are extremely unprecedented times and it is very difficult to be a leader in this community it's always been difficult but now extremely so because there's no right answer here we throw around this word safe what does safe mean anymore is there any safe in the world left if i feel this do we not think the students also do there's no safety at home for a lot of these students especially the ones completely underserved that you have a duty to provide excellent education for it is so vital that we
035keep our schools open for those underserved and underprivileged students that we do have in gilbert please stay true to your last vote be a leader in this community that i know that is very difficult to be we love our teachers we don't want to lose our veteran teachers let's find a way to keep them safe but back to their classrooms where we need them to be please hold true stay fast in your decision children are going to be safe teachers are going to find a way to be safe we have to find the compromise we have to make sure that we are getting our schools open thank you [Applause] we have chris bollinger brian maurer and steve w so if chris isn't here uh brian maurer i appreciate the opportunity to come first time here
036i've got four children three of which go to gilbert public schools by day i'm a chief financial officer in the biotech industry and also serve on a couple of biotech board of director roles including the arizona bioscience industry association which represents uh roughly 600 biotech and medical device companies here in the state i am in favor of in-person schooling i'm in favor of having our teachers uh teach our kids in person because i think the value of education the value of future leaders happens in person not virtually am i i have a hard enough time keeping the kids off of video games um and virtual education tends to push them that way so keeping kids in school is certainly important keeping kids in school safely is important keeping teachers safe is important my wife teaches
037in a different district she is in person all the time started today so it's safe for other districts to be in person it can be safe for our kids to be in person the option for in person or the option virtually for those who are at risk or vulnerable i think should be allowed for both of us one of the things in my industry that has come across my desk is what's called the great barrington declaration i don't know if any of you have heard of it but it's a list of epidemiologists and others who have put together a paper and have produced that and have about 50 cosigners but the the three authors one's a professor of medicine at harvard university one's a professor of medicine at oxford university and one a professor at
038stanford university uh their whole focus on this paper which i can leave a copy for if you'd like is being a focused protection for those vulnerable and one of the key objectives for them being focused on those who are vulnerable is to get people back to a normal life including keeping students in school in person school keeping them out is what they call a grave injustice not only to those who are vulnerable but to the kids themselves yeah we all know lower childhood vaccination rates worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes fewer cancer screenings as well as the mental health issues that uh come from what we have are lockdowns and things that are out in society but for keeping it short those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal schools and
039universities should be open for in-person teaching and that was signed by 712 000 concerned citizens 13 000 medical health scientists [Applause] we have steve w jennifer c and sandy t my name is steve walker i am a parent of three kids two of which have graduated from desert ridge high school and one that i have we have made the decision to unenroll her from gilbert public schools and enrolled her in ala and she has had a fantastic experience there it makes me sad i grew up in this district myself i went to many of the gilbert schools and i'm disappointed in you i'm disappointed in the board i'm disappointed that i have to be here again having this conversation over and over again is a bad version of groundhog day i want to thank the
040many good teachers who are willing to work and teach in person your responsibility as a board is to ensure a quality education to the children within our community and to do the will of the people the people the parents students and good devoted teachers have loudly and repeatedly spoken that our children need and deserve a quality in-person school experience uninterrupted for those good teachers that are afraid of covid and don't want to teach in person due to the risks of their job the district should repurpose those teachers if there is an open position and if not they should let them go those teachers that don't want to teach in person the ones that want to call a sick out and act like a union and claim that they're not they need to quit they need
041to go get a different job change careers i want to thank our health care professionals who choose to show up to work i want to thank the good doctors and nurses and police officers the firefighters the members of the military i want to thank costco workers and grocery store clerks who interact closely with thousands of people each day i want to thank prison guards meat packing plant workers and nursing home workers and last but not least i want to thank the good teachers who are willing and ready to show up and teach in person the board sets policy according to the will of the people and shane's job is to manage through that decision [Applause] yeah jennifer c and sandy t hi my name is jennifer cave i'm a parent of two kids here in
042gilbert public schools lived in gilbert for over 20 years my oldest needed to start kindergarten we looked at all options we looked at private we looked at charter and we looked at public and we chose public my kids are academic they're gifted and accelerated so at one point we looked again at public and at private and at charter and again we chose gilbert public schools it's been 13 years i've got a senior very concerned about that because it's not easy these kids are going through a lot this pandemic has been most trying for all of our lives and i'm sure for each and every one of us here my children have struggled if you have children i'm sure you know what i'm talking about if you're simply human i think you'll know what i'm talking
043about so to have structures is needed i'm here today to stand up for my children and for all of the children here at gilbert public schools because no one else is we are we're here i haven't seen that i've seen it on the december 15th meeting though i can say that they need to have a voice these children need to be in school if there's a reason to keep a child home keep them home choice is key here if the teachers are at high risk take care of that but we've been doing this now for 11 months that's on you and them this virus isn't going anywhere i think most of us here seem to be pretty educated i think we all know that we're going to have to live through this we're going to
044have to make a plan and that plan needs to be structured it's been apparent with everything everybody said it's not being passed in school that's obvious yes they're out partying i can't handle that i can't i cannot manage that i am not the police so we need to come together we need to have a plan to move forward on december 15 the same board walked away from a board meeting with a plan one week a hybrid then back to full in person i didn't love that because i don't believe in hybrid but you know what i had a plan as most humans children work better in structure so with that plan i could at least manage my children's expectations and help them move forward but then suddenly i hear about a sick out and the
045possibility that we're going back on that that's not okay in my personal opinion that is unethical and a blatant disrespect for employees students parents and fellow staff members if that sick out happens i see that they're pulling back on that that's not okay [Applause] if you don't show up for work you shouldn't have your job unless you are sick when obviously i mean that's just common sense by the way board members and superintendent you're the leaders here this plan is in your hands as leaders what you do matters it matters to my children it hurts my children if you don't do the right thing it's been hurting them i hope you understand we're here because we have to be we want you to do what's right for who you're supposed to be here to represent
046the students [Applause] sandy t and we have holly t and natalie w hello uh my name's sadie just so you know i'm sorry it's okay it's okay no worries um so this is my first time here um i've never i've come to the rallies but i've never come inside um mostly because i didn't think i would have to um i feel like based on what my my other people have said that we've been going through this for a little bit too long now we have had to our voice to voice our opinions over and over and over again we are the majority opinion it is what should be listened to um i think my biggest problem that i'm struggling with is that it's inconsistent things are super inconsistent right now every tuesday night i feel
047myself as a mother of five kids having a little bit of a panic because i don't know what's gonna happen at this board meeting i don't know if my kids the next week are gonna be out of school and i'm gonna have to look my sixth grader my second grader and my kindergartner in the eye and say i'm sorry baby you can't go to school next week you have to stay home even though you are fine your school is fine most of you and your friends and your teachers at your school are fine that is my struggle is to look my kids in the eye and tell them that over and over again we need some consistency we need the plans to follow through the plan that you guys came up with on december 15th
048i honestly didn't mind one week of hybrid it was just another week that i was like i can do it i can do this because i'm looking forward to the next week where you will let my kids be in school full time my kids want to be in school full time so badly i want to just tell you a little bit of my personal experience having a sixth grader a second grader and a kindergartner all at home along with my four-year-old and two-year-old who get mostly no attention because all of my attention is on my school kids i have to sit with them because two of them one can barely read the other one cannot my sixth grader she's fantastic you will hear from her in a minute but still needs help because i'm not
049a teacher i'm not built for this i expect these teachers to show up just like the grocery store workers just like the health care workers i expect them to show up we are all doing our best i expect them to do their best as well um just my last last few things please keep our kids in school we've said it over and over and over again please i beg you as a mom i don't have any medical background but please keep our kids in school you have holly t natalie w and looks like caitlyn g hi my name is holly taylor and i just wanted to come up here and say that this has been really really hard on me and my mom because i i will be staying up till like seven o'clock at
050night just doing my homework because there'll be like problems with their computer or the internet will come out cut out and it's just really hard on us and because of all the glitches on our computers and and all that it's just really hard and in school it's been so much easier to get work done and to communicate with my teacher so much better and to ask her questions and being and i just want to say that we need to be in school thank you for your time [Applause] hi thank you for staying up late another night i'm amazed that you are willing to do it and i'm glad you are and hear us out i'm a gilbert parent and i beg you to please take care of my children get them back in the classroom
051we desperately want structure i loved what she said a couple people ago about a plan i need that plan my kids need that plan as a parent i have done my best to present this as an opportunity for my kids to see that they can adapt to changes as i guide and watch over them i am seeing their hope decrease they're being challenged constantly here's an example my high school student son qualified for the state cross country meet he's been working for years for this two days before his the meet my healthy son was contact traced and was unable to participate his spirit was broken my heart was broken to see him navigate this there was no one at the school office that was able to offer any support other than this is how it
052is thankfully his coach gave him advice and encouraged him to let this challenge make him better not break him athletic programs and the coaches have been a lifesaver for my kids mental health i share this experience to show an example of what our kids are going through as challenges will continue to come up you can provide consistency for a large group my kids want to be in school they want structure with many things being challenged and interrupted please give my children some hope please represent my children please give them options that work for them there already exists virtual options and i'm glad for that please stick to your vote you showed bravery last meeting you showed me it does not have to be a 5-0 vote that we can be represented in the vote please
053continue being brave please stick to your vote [Applause] hello this is my first time here um i hate public speaking but i feel like i have to be here tonight because i am fed up and can't do this anymore i'm tired of my five-year-old not getting the education he deserves virtual learning does not work it never has worked and it never will work let's stop pretending that it does work and let's get back to full-time in-person learning i have noticed a huge difference in my son's education along with his attitude from september through december but now that he has not been to school every day since december 4th i have noticed he's gone two steps backwards and this is not okay my husband and i have been going to work outside the home since this
054pandemic started teachers should be held to the same standard they are essential workers delivery drivers grocery store workers and first responders have to go to work and show up every day no matter what my family has made sacrifices and has done everything possible so we can stay healthy and keep our family healthy every family i know has done the same thing by closing schools you are punishing the kids and the parents that have been doing everything that has been asked give everyone the choice and stop taking our rights away and for the people here trying to take my rights away i have never once tried to take away your right to virtual education i want my child in person i'm tired of the inconsistency in my child suffering from it thank you [Applause] the next
055three are cara dodd martha romero and carrie glover hi gps board and dr mcgorr dr mccord my name is cara dodd and i am speaking on behalf of the gilbert education association gea and the educators in the gilbert school district are committed to the safety responsibility and successful operation of the district the purpose of this letter is to continue our collaboration dialogue with the governing board and district administration to resolve concerns the gea has not promoted a sick out due to the fluid situation brought on by the pandemic and various views of members and non-members we do acknowledge and support the concerns of these members and teachers and believe constructive discourse is the best action to work together for all stakeholders we encourage the gps school board to consider the following recommendations virtual returning from
056winter break move to hybrid when two of the three metrics are in green accommodations for the specialized populations spice skills cope and special education to attend school during this distant learning platform use the arizona state maricopa county guidelines and dashboard to guide district decisions about returning to some in-school instruction and then use the gps dashboard to guide decisions when moving individual schools from in-person hybrid or virtual updating the gps dashboard daily review verbiage of the policy for employees regarding covid testing and staying home until results are back partnership with health agencies to provide employee covid19 testing as you are making these decisions please take into consideration the following open the sick bank enrollment for current school year considering elementary and secondary schools separately when deciding on delivery models creating a coveted committee comprised of all
057district stakeholders it is our hope that you might consider our request as we value the relationship we have in the school board and district staff we thank you for all your hard work and dedication as we continue to work together and find our path through this pandemic thank you [Applause] good evening i am here tonight speaking as an individual to ask you to follow the maricopa county guidelines and metrics which are backed up by science and data over the gps dashboard the gps dashboard does not show an accurate count of positive cases as each site which is very deceiving i know for a fact that a teacher at my school site was exposed and contacted covid from another teacher at school but was never counted on the dashboard the gps dashboard should be updated daily
058and include all positive cases no matter when the results come in i urge you to keep your promise of ensuring students and staff safety by following the same metrics you used to open schools at the beginning of the year arizona superintendent of public instruction kathy hoffman publicly asked governor ducey to order arizona schools into a two-week period of distance learning due to the covet 19 case numbers positivity rates and covet related hospital visits reaching heightened levels he refused which puts this very difficult decision in your hands this has not been an easy year for anyone students parents teachers staff and our healthcare workers as a teacher i have risen to the very difficult challenge to teach my students in any mode you have asked for virtual learning was very difficult for my kindergarten students but
059we made it work i was happy when we moved to hybrid because i was able to safely social distance my students while teaching half of them in person there have been a lot of negative comments about teachers who want virtual or hybrid model to stay safe which has been very disheartening let me tell you in person instruction is way easier on a teacher a plan as educators we do what we need to do to teach our curriculum and keep our students safe even if it means double planning for in-person students students learning from home or finding ways to engage our students for virtual learning virtual learning may not be an ideal learning environment or my preference however it is the safest model to use right now especially after community members have disregarded safety and mitigation
060strategies by having large gatherings for christmas and new year's if you are not willing to put the entire district in virtual learning i urge you to consider hybrid for elementary and virtual for secondary for the next two weeks and then revisit the maricopa county metrics to decide how to further proceed thank you for your time it is my hope that you look at the big picture and do what is [Applause] right after after carrie will have kathy stiger katrina jonas and dr allison wilcock good evening members of the board i've been a gilbert teacher for 27 years and i'm a parent i have a graduate of gilbert gilbert classical academy and i have a junior at desert ridge high school so i'm speaking to you with both of my hats i hear a lot of
061parents referencing the board decision on december 15th but let's remember that there was a board decision that happened before we went back to school and that's where i'd like to start on september 7th when gilbert public schools teachers and i returned to our classrooms for in-person instruction we did so with the understanding that the board and the district would follow the recommendations of the arizona department of health services we trusted that these recommendations would be followed to keep students and state staff safe and contain the spread of this virus within our community however today all three of our metrics are read according to the adshs and they recommend remote instruction yet tomorrow i am scheduled to return to my classroom for in-person instruction with half of my students in hybrid learning in one of my
062classes that means 20 students will be there i cannot socially distance them and they are high school seniors they are big kids the action that some have referred to um is a result of teachers feeling like the community has broken their half of the bargain we said we would come back and teach in person as long as mitigation strategies were in place but when new year's eve parties happen and lots and lots of people post pictures on facebook of all of their family together with no masks i'm a little worried about going back to my classroom because it takes two weeks for this to incubate i know that there's concern about the possible stage sick out but i'm actually more concerned about the real crisis that gilbert public schools will face when dozens of students
063and teachers test positive and get sick in the next few weeks because it will happen many students fall behind because they are ill or have to be quarantined because they had close contact with a peer that happened to my son and he lost his 4.0 because he had to spend the last part of the semester teaching himself ap physics because we were all in person and someone who knew they were infected came to school my son struggled my son bore the brunt of that please don't break the trust that the community has in gilbert public schools ability to keep their students and staff safe we all know in person is best but for right now until we're all safe learning cannot happen please live up to the commitment that you made before we went back
064in person and follow the metrics and begin the second semester remotely until it is safe to return in person thank you [Applause] kathy steger trina jonas and dr allison wilcock your board members and dr mccord thank you for opening tonight public's comment at tonight's meeting i have been a teacher in gilbert for 35 years i've dedicated my life to this district and i am speaking as an individual tonight although i think many share my opinion last summer the administration the board and teachers worked tirelessly to ensure that gps students would have the best learning experience possible in the middle of a pandemic we are here in the middle of a pandemic trying to teach and make this all work no one has been through this before and we're just trying to work together here the
065board in the administration adopted procedures to ensure the safety of teachers and students and the board also voted to follow the maricopa county and arizona health department guidelines and benchmarks which governor ducey asked to be made these benchmarks are based on scientific data and recommendations of doctors who are experts in the field of epidemiology i am asking that you remain consistent with your previous decisions to follow these guidelines you followed them on the august 19th board meeting the november 15th board meeting and the december 12th board meetings making your decisions based on those guidelines please continue to follow them regardless of public pressure unwavering resolve and honoring your word will ensure trust among families and teachers and as far as the gps dashboard is concerned that is a work in progress i'm asking you to
066be cautious in using it to determine delivery models please be transparent share the guidelines that determine how the numbers of cases are counted and posted on that dashboard and i'm also urging you to update the dashboard on a daily basis and finally i'm asking for community help we all want school to get back to normal we need help we need to work together to achieve that goal thank you [Applause] hi my name is serena jonas i have three kids in the district and i'm a volunteer everywhere throughout the whole district to recap i'm here today to ask you to keep your vote the same and allow kids to return to school full-time in school next week your vote was not just somebody was not just some blatant open the schools but you took um a
067wise and informed approach and evaluate and to evaluate each school on their own numbers and have schools go to hybrid or remote learning based on their own school's community numbers that is a great compromise last meeting you heard from countless doctors and medical experts about how kids are being affected and literally dying due to school closures there was one person who was a paid representative for the teachers association slash union who stood up here and said the teachers don't feel safe and please vote to go back online this was not based on any data new studies or any expert information and even just the benchmarks that were just mentioned how that was based upon medical experts we've got 15 medical experts that will disagree with that and i would love to see the study that
068that's based on because that was before any of us were actually even in school so they had nothing to base it on so like they put those benchmarks in place to get us going but now we know so much more you can do this if there is a teacher problem then let's address the teacher problem but we need to stop doing this to our families can we ask why the teachers don't feel safe let's fix that how can we make them feel safe all of the data that we have show that the kids are not transmitting this virus at school and that the mitigation plans are working so if these people still do not feel safe in these sanitized rooms with masked children then i really hope that they're never ever leaving their homes to
069go to costco target walmart or ever eat out ever and if you want us to start tracking and following every single teacher like i bet you parents are gonna start doing it because it's difficult to say you don't feel comfortable in the sanitary environment that the district has bent over backwards to create for you and it's very frustrating but i think we can specifically address all of those issues and lastly if there is an inability to work these things out with the teachers and there is a shortage of any kind then let's address that specific issue all i know our district and this is a special community and one email out from dr mccord saying that you need help you need volunteers you need people we would volunteer for free to come down and help
070i have a master's degree i will come and help do whatever you need until you figure out how do you get people and i know there's a million other parents that would too but i haven't gotten any of those i've heard trinklings oh we don't have enough subs and we've been working on substitute plans and trying to jump through the hoops i don't know how many you know letters i've written of recommendation for friends because that's needed to become a substitute teacher but like we can do this i know we can do this and all of the private and charter schools are open that's the problem that's the problem if this was california we had no other option then that would be one thing but we have options so if you think there's a deficit
071now and poor bonnie's over there trying to scratch two pennies together to save our district it's you have seen nothing yet if they go if you don't all go back now all of his parents are gonna leave and it's going to be so bad they won't have jobs they won't have jobs thanks [Applause] meet allison wilcock christy anderson steve lashweer and dan lundell good evening i'm dr alison wilcock i speak to you again today as a community pediatrician as well as a concerned parent of my three children at greenfield elementary i spoke to you previously about the detrimental health effects of on our community by not opening our schools for in-person learning i stand by these i continue to see the mental health of our families and our students deteriorating the lack of motivation increasing
072and the obesity and drug use skyrocketing the abrupt changes in learning modules are placing a large burden on our community if our children are not in the classroom we must put them somewhere else while many of us continue working so i realize that the safety of staff is important but we are all having to just shift our children to a different place to day cares boys and girls clubs and grandparents i again echo dr fauci and that the schools are the safest place for our children this is reflected beautifully in the fact that most of our schools had zero active cases when they closed in december this means that this controlled environment is the safest place for our children and our teachers to be it's safer than the grocery stores it's safer than the restaurants
073and it's safer than the family gatherings they've been at for this last month unless you're a teacher that has not left the house in 10 months your argument to keep teachers safe by not having in-person learning is completely erroneous i i don't understand how when the rest of us are expected to do our jobs through these unprecedented times teachers are above this expectation i remind you that children do not quarantine from the doctor's office for 10 days when they are sick and yet i will continue to provide quality care to my patients because their health and welfare is of utmost importance to me i ask do you not see teachers as essential workers do not see yourselves as essential to the health and welfare of our students and our community dr santa cruz stated at
074the last meeting that our schools are not set up for online learning i've had first-hand knowledge as i see the lack of instruction for my children i refuse to allow my children to have a subpar education i ask you to make a decision tonight for the entire third quarter and stand behind it because the constant changing of the plan is very difficult on families and teachers it's imperative for the health of our children in our community that you reopen schools to in-person learning our children need to be educated and motivated they need to value hard work learning and healthy relationships over hanging out and checking off a very short to-do list when they're online or hybrid i also want you to know i have already signed up my children to go to a school that's
075dedicated to full in-person learning and will move forward with the decision if gilbert schools do not reopen because their education is important to me i love our schools and i really love my children's teachers and i hope we will be able to count on gilbert public schools from this point forward to provide the amazing high quality education we have always received i hope you will continue to put the health and well-being of our children and families and community first with your decision and i thank you for your time and i'm grateful for my children's teachers [Applause] christie anderson steve lashweer and dan lindell i stand before you as a concerned parent and i would just like to share a little bit of our experience i'm a mother of five children my youngest is three and
076my older four are attending elementary school they have been bending over backwards anything i've asked them to do uh cleaning their hands extra for their t to help their teachers out wearing masks they've done it um separating distancing from their friends they haven't even questioned me i've been so proud of them for for doing what what everyone's asked them to do um but they've just been told it's not enough and schools and to be told it's not good enough and schools might be going online again crushes their spirits it like many have said i've seen these kids with a love of education just dwindling and their hope going away um they have been good sports about things for the most part and i have been proud of them they all have amazing teachers i am
077so grateful for their teachers they have gone above and beyond to help them and i am i will forever be in debt to them for doing that because i know this is a scary situation i know it's unprecedented and none of us wanted this this year um we cannot continue on with this charade anymore our kids are not pawns schools are for you learning students need to be in their schools and their teachers need to be there to teach them kids all over are being forced into situations that are uncomfortable unsafe scary and then unmanageable this will cause long-term damage more so than their chance of getting covered as we've already seen in the news there's the like people have said the suicide rates are up um addictions are up kids are not being watched
078my experience with my kindergartner she flourishes when she's in the school her teacher talks about how much their class is growing and then when school goes moves back to hybrid or online it's it's crushing they they aren't learning like they could be if they were in school um when she is at home she complains that her eyes and neck hurt from looking at her screen and here i have to sit here and force her to do it i have to help her to get her work done my third grader has a little girl in his class that he has to watch cry because she has no one at home to help her do the work and my heart just breaks i wish i could go to her house and help her too my fourth grader
079starts the day for online learning frustrated my husband and i are both there trying to help her and she still can't find the work that her teacher's talking about even though her teacher has tried her best to prepare her for that hybrid day my sixth grader is is doing okay he's a smart boy and he's doing really well but he's he's also become my helper to help all the other kids so he's being torn from his work if i have to go manage the three-year-old or do other things all i'm asking is that you [Applause] hello thanks for letting us speak i think we're going to be here till like one in the morning so hopefully everybody's ready and i am i'm grateful for gilbert schools i spoke at the last meeting i grew up
080here in gilbert um i just want to start by by saying a couple questions do we have control over a virus and the answer is no do we allow the virus to control us unfortunately the answer is yes do lockdowns work let's look at california no they don't do controlling lockdowns stop the spread of the virus well california's proving no it doesn't how many kids transmitted covid at school i have a very reputable source from a local school area that's bigger than gilbert that said zero kids have contracted covid at school i hope we can learn from the past so that we can be better in the future this virus is no longer new it is over a year old we must move forward and have faith in the future people need us to lead
081them through chaos i am grateful for the hard-working positive teachers i had a lot of great teachers at gilbert high school in mesquite junior high and president santa cruz you're you're one of my my teachers i forgot to mention that or one of you were my principal and i had a lot of let's see i had fun running cross-country and track with coach corn i hope we can let the kids grow like we all had the opportunity to in our day at school we are depriving our kids and parents of the pursuit of happiness parents are not allowed to watch their kids run outside where social distancing is a hundred percent possible i hope that we can work to support the majority of constituents and gilbert and teachers that want schools open today in mesa
082they went back to online school and the online system went down this fails our kids and teachers i do believe in closing do believe that god is in control not man if it's someone's time to leave this world then they will be called home my grandfather taught high school for a long time before retiring and then died in a car accident in front of mesa high school while still pursuing a substitute school teacher job teachers that are great impact their students for the rest of their lives like my grandfather we are not in control it says had to quote who i look to for my source of hope god for god hath not given us the spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind i am afraid of the
083future of gilbert schools please don't make us find alternative options for our kids [Applause] dan lundell angie ward and deanna victor i'd like to thank my name is dan londell i'd like to thank all the teaching professionals for all you do for our children i believe you are trying in good faith to do the right thing but people of good faith can disagree and that's why we're here unfortunately many of our public health leaders have failed to give clear realistic truthful and courageous information designed to empower responsible people to make their own choices given all the money and politics involved in all things covet many people have lost trust in public health institutions and particularly coveted statistics in this environment the chaos is amplified by a news media that is all too ready to inflame
084fears play up divisions and misinform the public in order to attract more clicks for example recent studies show that the incubation period for this virus is absolutely not two weeks and that asymptomatic transmission is far more rare than was thought early on this has created an even more unfortunate situation where many otherwise intelligent and rationable rational independent thinkers are drastically misinformed as compared to past public health emergencies and therefore unable to make sense of the risks that's a polite way of saying that i don't hold it against anyone for believing or assessing risk different than i do we are in an information war the effects of these unilateral school closures have been catastrophic depression anxiety child sexual abuse and exploitation and suicide and these effects are far worse for the underprivileged children whose parents are
085not here tonight where are they they're at a drive-through they're at walmart they're in a service bay they're somewhere and they are on the margins the other tragedy is that these lockdowns and unilateral closures will cost our children and many caring teaching professionals those precious and pivotal moments of connection that make the difference in the lives of so many children especially the least privileged children my children will be fine if the schools irrationally close again i and many thousands of parents will pull my students out and we will peacefully seek the educational alternatives that the law allows for our children and our schools and our teachers will be diminished but what about the tens of thousands of students being raised in hard-working underprivileged families who cannot make that choice why discriminate against these students and
086their hard-working parents we're here to ask you to take a stand against unilateral and one-size-fits-all dictates that hurt the most vulnerable and give parents and teachers a chance to make their own choices and to own those choices take a brave and permanent stand against activists with agendas counter to the will of the people take a stand for common sense uninflamed science these are turbulent times we are not here to attack our schools or teachers we are here to try and preserve them but i will issue a word of warning if we continue to kind of [Applause] angie ward deanna victor and madison judd thank you board and dr mccord for holding this meeting this evening my name is angie ward and i'm a mom of five kids that have all been students at gilbert public
087schools both my husband and i have volunteered countless hours to gps and we have always been extremely grateful for the teachers and education that our kids have received while here i'm here today to plead with you to hold strong to your decision from the meeting in december dr santa cruz mr carr and ms wood we are truly thankful for you [Applause] the families in this school district are truly thankful for you for putting our kids first and remembering that their futures are in jeopardy by not being able to learn in person online schooling is not getting the job done my children's teachers and the administrators at their schools are absolutely incredible i am so grateful for them and for their positivity and encouraging my kids and i hope that they are able to continue to
088learn in person because i know that they want to be teaching in person hybrid and online teaching has been difficult for them as well i know that there should be no debate as to what's best for our kids we've heard from countless medical professionals that they are better off mentally physically emotionally and socially when they are attending school in person please put our kids first i recognize and appreciate those who have concerns about covet and do not wish to attend school in person whether they be students teach teachers or staff they have the right to stay home and protect themselves they have that option under any of the proposals that are before us today however those of us who are less concerned about kovid should also have the right to attend school in person just
089as the majority rule should not dictate to the minority the minority rule should not dictate to the majority please don't forget the reason that you're elected to this position to do what's best for gilbert gilbert public school kids and their families thank you [Applause] first i want to say say thank you to lori reed and dr santa cruz for voting for our children and their best interests which is to be in school it is the safest place for our children to be not only the safest place for them physically and from the virus but the best place for them their emotional health and well-being keeping our kids in school is strongly supported by your governor and the cdc whose guidelines you have been following and trusting trusted in i appreciate teachers all the people all
090my children's teachers more than they know i appreciate them so much um because as your my children can tell you i am not a teacher i'm not meant to teach my children and the online programs hybrid and virtual have failed my children i have a daughter who is very motivated i she has struggled immensely with this um this year and she's very motivated and extremely intelligent and is able and has struggled so much with this and it's been so hard for me as a mom to watch her struggle um and to lose that lack of motivation for her love of learning she loves to learn and it is so hard as a mother to watch that like dwindle in your child's eyes um i teach i cannot take a teacher's place they do a fabulous
091job and i am very grateful for them and i just respectfully ask the options are kept open including in-person learning and those options for people who are concerned about covid those options are kept open for them to do online learning or teaching again i trust that the board will follow the guidelines and strong recommendations from the cdz and keep our kids best interest at heart and keep our kids in school again thank you lori reed and dr santa cruz [Applause] deanna victor madison judd and amy johansen i'm sorry madison then forgot to put that in the pile my name is madison judd and i'm a fifth grader at mosquito elementary i want to start out by saying please keep our schools open do you know what it's like having to learn by staring at a
092screen i do you are hurting children in this community mentally and emotionally i have experienced so much anxiety when i get overwhelmed while doing school on the screen i have trouble breathing and communicating if we keep on doing the hybrid then i will continue to experience this if we do online then it will only get worse in school we follow every guideline and try to prevent the spread my mom comes to play at my school it is this week we practice outside in mass social distancing and sanitize everything we could we are being safe and responsible when i saw the first board meeting in the beginning of the school year seeing all the teachers asked for us to go back to online was heartbreaking i burst into tears and couldn't stop we need to be
093in school it is not it is not healthy to keep us out you always tell us not to waste our time staring at the screen so don't make us please open our schools and get help us get off screens thank you to those who voted for just one week of hybrid for the benefit of students like me please let us continue in person we will do anything to get to go back to in person if we don't if we go back to online i don't think i'll participate and my siblings said they wanted to be homeschooled not all parents weren't made to be teachers if we do online that is what they will be doing please pay attention to the school cases not the community's cases they show that we aren't the ones spreading the
094cases no matter how many times you put us in a hybrid or long line there will always be someone fighting to open them please let us stay in person and tune and not do school on screen [Applause] it's amy johansen tina judd and lizzy thing first thank you for um being here and um i didn't think that i would be here back again but here i am um i thought after the vote on december 15th we were headed in the right direction and i want to thank you for the vote that was for you guys um taking into consideration everything that you had heard especially from all the medical professionals that spoke and then again tonight they spoke again and i'm not a medal i don't have medical degree but i agree with everything that
095they said that the safest place for our kids is in the classroom the cdc states that the schools are not the main driver of the community transmission and children are more likely to get the virus out of the school outside of school settings i know everyone's tired and frustrated we all are tired and frustrated and i'm sorry that there was that you felt personally attacked at the last board meeting but unfortunately when you are on a public school board that's what happens we're tired too we've been advocating for in person since the summer and we finally felt like we were moving forward only to get a notification that we're having another board meeting here we are again i told you before i've been a part of gps for 25 years and i'm getting tired of
096people telling me i don't care about teachers i have spent countless hours in the classroom being the classroom mom going on field trips i love my teachers that my kids have had i've had three graduate from gilbert public schools from gilbert high as a senior right now don't tell me i don't care about teachers those were teachers or some of the ones that rallied around me when my mom died i am so grateful for them i am grateful to be a part of gilbert public schools and i have always advocated that this was the best district but i'm telling you what i will pull my daughter she's a senior i will pull her um there's so many teachers that i've talked to that don't want to say anything because they're being bullied they're being bullied
097so are some of those doctors that spoke last board meeting they're being bullied that is not right and it has to stop i'm tired of seeing teachers who stay they're too afraid to be in the classroom when i go to work every day and i'm surrounded by hundreds of students from two different high schools they're in my office every day they are crying they're breaking down they're suicidal they have coming from broken homes they're in my office guess what i show up for them i go to work i listen i'm exhausted and i'm not a health counselor if i don't show up for work i don't get paid and that's how it should be no one signed up for coven19 we're all making adjustments in our personal lives and at work nothing in this world
098exists exists any more than except coven and i'll reiterate the fact that kids are killing themselves and they're stuck with abuse happening in their homes is this fire it's real [Applause] i just want to start by thanking our school board i know that you didn't ask to be here during a pandemic and i'm sure you've had a lot of a lot of emails so my name is tina judd i'm a mother of eight children my oldest graduated in 2020 and my other seven children are all currently enrolled in gilbert schools aging from preschool to a senior in high school i was a special education teacher in my profession and now i volunteer to run our elementary school musical every year and i've been there all last quarter and today i'm here because i've watched school
099board meeting well i'm here because my daughter asked to come but i've watched a school board meeting after meeting and seen teachers coming claiming to be victims and unsafe but they they are not the victims our our children are your statements at school board meetings that schools are not safe are not founded on fact i'd like to cite a recent article that was posted in the washington post written by a physician and the dean of public health at brown university quote the latest data has failed to provide compelling evidence that in-person schooling leads to meaningful increases in infections in communities there is no evidence suggesting spread within schools when effective mitigation measures are in place new data and experiences of individual school districts demonstrate the opening schools in a pandemic with infection control measures in
100place does not lead to increased transition of the virus educators can work safely in schools and schools can be the safest place to be for children during a pandemic end quote the data does not support closing schools our school district data itself shows that our infection control policies and health policies are working that our district put in place i love my kids teachers and i love our schools but my kids and our kids can't handle the inconsistencies of constant change when you come here and ask for schools to close based on community numbers please understand that the data isn't supporting that especially medical professionals for children these decisions are crushing our children and when you make changes we parents go home and pick up those pieces have you watched your child have anxiety an anxiety
101attack so bad that they have trouble breathing they can't stop shaking and they can't even speak because i have have you slept in your child's room because you know they are contemplating suicide and you want to make sure they're alive in the morning because i have and i had to tell my daughter that her friend that she was going to room at that college had committed suicide i don't want to have to do anything like that again any decision to close schools continues to damage the mental emotional and physical health of our children so i know please stop telling us that teachers aren't safe here the measures the districts work hard to put policies in place and i've been on campus and i know they work thank you lizzy thang jessica gillespie and laura olson
102first off thank you for your service i don't think any one of you would have chosen this situation and i know that probably none of us want to be in your shoes i just found out that my dad served on a school board and like you dr santa cruz he said the pay was great i feel it's most important to thank you for the decision that you made on december 14th i know i'm not here to tell you anything that you haven't already heard and i don't have any statistics to share with you but i want to ask the board to give us some answers i know your job keeps you busy and with my emails alone i know it would be impossible to respond to all of our questions so that's why i'm here
103i know you're concerned with staff shortages but have you done re recent surveys i know there's one floating around on some of the facebook pages but it won't be accurate unless it's done through the district and you have all the teachers and all of the staff there are spots are there spots here and there that need to be filled i ran into a board member and i know that they were concerned about a teacher being high-risk at one of the high schools and i don't know how that relates to my kindergartner not being able to go to school when there's one i know there's more than one that are high risk but when that's the concern i'm like well why aren't you telling people that there's a kindergartener that's not going to school um and
104what have you done to make the online platform and learning better i had concerns the first time i pulled up florida virtual i have a kindergartner who can't read and the thing was three paragraphs long and the concerns are still there the system put in place is awful and it's part of the reason that we are fighting so dang hard this is a terrible platform um you need to give teachers more creativity if you're going to force us to be home it's that system is complicated it's dull it's robotic and i all i think we all know what a flop it was and here we are four months later do we know the definition of insanity we're doing the same things over we keep coming back to this board meeting um we can't keep going
105back parent people want transparency okay what surveys have you done how many subs do you have in the sub pool and how many are needed each day if it's a staffing issue let the community know let us help you like justilyn said when the teachers step out the parents will walk in we are there to support this i know people are concerned with community spread and a couple of our board members are really concerned with that and when we go which i urge you to do the school by school case if a certain school gets shut down because of spread maybe it'll teach their little community to stop if i've learned anything from this experience i know that i need teachers and my kids need teachers and enough is enough i know you've heard it
106a thousand times our teachers scrambled to get packets ready for this week and when you change it on them they've lost all these hours of work and it's just not fair to do that life is hard enough as it is [Applause] jessica gillespie laura olsen and jacqueline mcleave good evening i'm jessica gillespie a mom of five with four children in public school and i love my kids teachers they are true heroes in my eyes and i can't imagine what it must have been like this year for them i know that they have my children's best interest in mind and i would like to thank the board for their decision to have one week of hybrid learning following the break that is to be commended but with talk of a teacher's sick out i'm here again
107on behalf of the many parents who feel that the board might backtrack on their decision this sick out represents only a small minority of dissent and does not speak for the vast majority of devout teachers who want to teach in the classroom please don't let the pressure of a few loud voices affect the well-being of the majority we have been able to identify effective measures to facilitate the safe resumption of in-person learning that is a fact teachers and staff have worked to ensure that our children are given every opportunity to learn in a safe in-person environment there is no data correlating a rise in community cases to school campuses a school-by-school approach can still keep our teachers and staff safe superintendent kathy hoffman recently called for governor ducey to order all schools to remain in
108distance learning for two weeks after the break he responded that they will not be considering this request this is a local decision the online option is already available and the governor has repeatedly made his preference clear he wants the schools open hoffman herself said research shows that it's safer for younger grades to be in person the reality is that funding for public schools is bleeding out parents are signing their children up for charter and private schools in droves in a state with school choice district schools cannot afford to go down this road any further we need a chance to salvage what little hope we have for the future of public education pushing the option of online learning depending on county metrics is not the answer on december 28th the president signed an executive order stating
109that when public education institutions fail to provide consistent in-person education federal education funds will be given to families instead of districts these districts will lose funding what will our schools look like when families have given up on public education and our funding has been gutted i watched in tears last march as my children said goodbye to their incredible teachers via a car parade with no clear information as to when they would be able to return in person at that time we did not know what we know now about the virus and its effects now ten months later we have so much more credible information and the survival rate is higher than anyone could have hoped for why would anyone try to keep these kids at home again no more not one more day the damage
110has been done and it's irreversible but we can make sure that it does not continue stand by your vote to allow full in-person learning on january 11th this stops now and it stops with you [Applause] it's laura olsen jacqueline and i believe it's mcclure i said mcleave earlier it's mcclure and zara olsen first i want to commend and thank those of you who brought forward and voted in favor of the school by school protocol so many of us that were here at that meeting related and literally jumped for joy feeling that we finally had been heard we applaud you for this we now expect that plan of returning to in person in a week with a school by school infection rate plan to be implemented my husband a physician spoke at the last meeting of
111the minimal spread that has been seen among children he spoke of our hardship of having four elementary age children in full virtual and hybrid models he touched on the tears anxiety heightened emotional outbursts lack of quality educational stimuli and lack of physical activity etc our children took immense strides in their learning and social development participating in full-time in-person learning going back to hybrid even in the few weeks before break the trajectory of the learning path they had been on during in-person learning our children's emotional outbursts with frustration of at-home learning returned unfortunately we are currently seeing a large spike in the community spread of covet in arizona obviously we care about our kids and don't wish to endanger any teachers six months ago switching to virtual learning was reasonable as we knew very little about
112this virus now we have several studies showing that in-person learning does not cause a spike or is associated with a significant contribution to community spread a recent study from yale looked at the risk of transmission from children looking at 50 000 child care providers they found the risk of contracting the disease was the same for workers whether the child care facility was open or closed again reinforcing the low rate of transmission from children those of us that choose in-person learning are done we are done being put in a corner every few weeks fearing that our children's education will be crippled again with online learning we are done hearing about community spread that the data shows is not impacted by school attendance we want to hear about what you are doing for our children and their
113mental well-being i have applied to be a sub and i'm willing to get a sitter for my younger children and fill in if that means our kids can stay in school we want the plan you voted upon a few short weeks ago to be implemented this plan must be given a chance before you make another damaging move for our children to further virtual or hybrid learning this meeting is premature know me know that me and other enraged parents will be here every time you make a move or motion that is detrimental to our children do not change policies out of fear of a teacher's union or the minority parents who feel their children are safer at home you have the correct precautions in place with masks social distancing and a school by school infection rate
114plan please follow through on implementing the december 15th plan [Applause] hello my name is jacqueline mcclure i'm a stay-at-home mom of two elementary aged children at vvl a small school with a very involved community surroundings my question to you guys is why are we here we spent four hours or more right before the break right here in this very room so why are we here again because teachers including the at that time had the time to speak so why now because a few teachers think that some party happened at some place over the holiday well if that's true then after the first week of hybrid learning those schools will have spikes and you can choose to close those schools i'm going to be brutally honest this is insane we have as parents have been completely
115bamboozled you guys all all voted before the break and you haven't even given the previous vote a chance our kids haven't even started school you have zero numbers pertaining to individual schools you asked the governor to mandate a school closure and he refused so why because you didn't like the governor's answer because teachers are threatening a sick out we shouldn't even be having this conversation we know from studies of medical professions the safest place for our kids to be is in school we know from dr fauci the safest place for our kids to be is in school we know from the cdc the safest place for our kids to be is in school so are we no longer following those science guidelines let's give it a chance before you destroy our kid's life again let's
116give it a chance to fail let's give it a chance to succeed most of us especially in my small community did not have holiday parties or we greatly reduced the gatherings but now with our kids being out of school they can go hang out at places like fat cats the movie theaters or other indoor places play places where they mingle with kids not even at their school how does that make sense for a medical crisis i send my kids to school not only for academics but at their young age for emotional learning as well this is hurting all of our kids especially our young kids at mel elementary age level but it's also hurting the junior high in high school as you've heard about the suicides please stop the back and forth please go on
117a school by school basis let's give our children back their childhood so they can give us the brighter future we also desperately need leave it on a school-by-school basis remember what made you become a board member and a leader in our community in the first place our kids their learning and everyone's future do the right thing and leave it on a school by school basis [Applause] zara olsen eloise foamer and phoebe foamer hi my name is zara olson and i don't like hybrid i'm a fourth grader at greenfield elementary and i have an excellent teacher that has taught me so much but trying to learn at home is very hard i have four other siblings running around the house waiting for my mom to help them it is also very hard to understand my teacher
118because she has a mask on talking through the computer when i took a test at home i couldn't focus so i didn't get that good of a score but when i did it in class i had a huge improvement i wear my mask covering my nose and mouth i social distance and i wash my hands i love being at school learning with my teacher and seeing friends i don't on hybrid days i also miss running clubs so please let me be in school full time [Applause] [Music] help her with that microphone there hi i am elvis fulmer and i go to greenville elementary and i want in person i don't get to see my friends drawing online i don't learn anything because it is very hard to focus it is not good for you staring
119at a screen all day some person keeps you healthier safer and that is why i want in person my mom is not a teacher i want to learn from my teacher it's hard for me to learn new concepts from my mom a homework packet or a computer screen i still feel behind in like i'm trying to catch up from the end of last year i was so happy at the decision you made at the last meeting please stick with that plan and let us get back into our classroom so we don't keep getting behind i am a kid you are a adult you don't know how much we are suffering online it is hard in person is easier we learn more and we get higher grades my teacher is amazing but i don't want to
120see her only mondays and thursdays i want to see her every day [Applause] hi i'm phoebe fulmer and i am a first grader at greenville elementary i love my teacher and love being in person at school to learn from her i can't focus on my work at home i have a hard time understanding things i follow all the rules and wear a mask please don't change your minds and let us go to school thank you [Applause] next up we have corey childs jack childs and blake gantt hello dr mccord hello board members my name is jack i'm in 4th grade and i go to greenfield elementary i love greenfield elementary but i think it's really hard to learn anything when i'm not at school i mean i do like to stay home and play fortnite
121but i'll be honest i just really want to be back in school after so much time away from school and just part-time in the classroom i just don't feel like i am learning anything this year i ran to be my class representative for student council and i couldn't believe it but i won i was so excited we started planning good stuff to get our whole school more excited but sadly most of the stuff we have planned has been cancelled i am asking you to try and look at this situation as if you were a kid my teacher's name is miss stegman she's so fan fun and a really good teacher you should probably give her a raise who was your fourth grade teacher i'm sure you probably had a good one because look you are
122up here today i'm asking you to please keep the schools open to let me learn i talked to my friends hudson and mason today who are in 5th and 3rd grade they are also greenfield gators and i and wanted me to ask you to please keep the schools open thank you [Applause] that's my boy jack right there um jack's my world um thanks for letting me be here i think it's my third time um uh board members thanks for letting me be here uh shane mccord thanks for being here and uh quick shout out to mr martin back here he was the principal of my my older girls back at highland park elementary the most epic principle thank you i'm a long time gilbert resident i got four kids that go to gilbert public schools
123you know i took a little bit of time and i read about all of you like on the internet i didn't know much about you and to be honest i was really impressed i saw the service that you give i saw the things that you do and uh i was like this is awesome and i just i sincerely i want to say i want to say thank you um i don't know you guys in person but if you're anything like this guy back here man we're in good hands um let's see so you know what's great about the new year it's that there's nothing really special that happens between december 31st and january 1st it's just that we take time and we look at the past year and we look what was good we look
124what was bad and we said hey how can i be a little bit better and i thought about it and i want to tell you even though you already know who's really excited about 2021 ala they're really excited about 2021 recently on my facebook i got an announcement it said hey we're opening up a new k-12 and it's going to be in mesa and it's going to be in you know x amount of months and we don't even have a location yet but we're just going to open this bad boy up i'm going to tell you who's excited those executives they're stoked man because they're just listening all these board meetings they're like hey whoever's going to hybrid or online dude we're going to eat these guys up man we're going to fill these schools
125up with thousands of students um we all know what a huge charter school does to public schools and i want to say that again we know and we know in the last three years that with dr shane mccord we kick some major butt in making gilbert schools extra awesome man i wrote down all this stuff but truthfully guys oh yeah this guy right here um ken bragg he said he's queen creek board president he said we will find every excuse we can to stay open while others are finding excuses excuses to close let them we will stay open and that's that's what we're all asking that's what gilbert is asking just stay open do it for do for jack thank you [Applause] blake gant brittany arnett and lindsey jones i think somebody's coming blake brittany
126or lindsay good evening school board um so grateful for you guys thank you for the support the your service i know none of you thought going into this job there would be a pandemic and you'd be on the board i'm i'm grateful for you guys for sticking in there with us i'm a mother of seven children i have five in the gilbert gilbert public schools i have two at neely traditional one at greenfield junior and two at gilbert high and we love it we love public schools we're in it and we want to stay um and i also am grateful that we were able to get things rolling in the fall so that my girls could have their high school volleyball seasons so i speak for all the athletes too that we're able to get
127in their seasons and miraculously get through their seasons and i hope we can start it in january for all the winter sports and the spring sports that were cut off last year because these kids only have a few years of high school and their precious years and i know they work really hard for their sports seasons and so i'm grateful that you guys got that in for the fall first of all i know this virus is real i'm not oblivious to it i've had close people to us that have been ill i've had some that passed away and i know it's real my family went through it in november i do know it's real however i'm not letting that keep me from living my life i'm not letting that keep my family from living our
128lives i know we need to learn how to live our life with this virus we need to learn how to go to school with this virus um also we love our teachers i love our teachers and i'm so grateful for all of them that have come to school and been extra supportive i i think teachers are awesome and as a parent if i feel like it's not safe for my kids to go to school i won't put them in school it's a choice i have um i kept them out of school if they even had a cough or any kind of cold or anything just to protect our teachers i want our teachers to feel safe and i wonder what our teachers are i don't understand why our teachers don't feel safe you school board
129members have put in amazing safety protocols amazing mitigations to keep our school safe they are safe our classrooms are safe the numbers have shown that the numbers have shown that there's no spread in our schools and if there is a spread those protocols that you guys have put in place have stopped that i'm so grateful for that thank you for putting those in our teachers should feel very very safe um one thing that's concerning to me is our suicide rates and they're up 60 percent this fall teen attempted suicide rates and and suicides are up 60 this fall and that one alone statistic should put us all unanimously put this these kids back in school um i again i'm grateful i hope you guys will stick with your decision for what you did in in
130december our kids really do rely on you they love being in school and we want to keep this going thank you [Applause] lindsay jones jessica first i just wanted to thank you for the opportunity for our voices to be heard i'm a mother of five i have a junior a freshman a fifth grader a third grader and also a preschooler at the beginning of this year i made the hard decision to unenroll my two elementary age children from public school i had always been happy with our neighborhood school and the administration there my two oldest had gone through their elementary education at this same school it was sad for me to leave a place with people i trusted to teach guide and influence my children virtual learning was not how i wanted my children taught
131i did not take my high school age children out of public school they are currently attending gilbert high school as a parent watching my children with two vastly different experiences in very different learning models i can tell you my children that are not in public school right now are thriving and learning and looking forward every day to going to school my children that are bouncing back and forth between virtual hybrid and in person are struggling their grades are suffering their motivation is lacking and they are feeling defeated the virtual learning structure is confusing not only for the students but for the teachers as well i appreciate the teachers that have done their best to adapt to a teaching style that is new to them but i just wanted to reiterate from my personal experience my
132children that are going to in person school are doing so much better emotionally and academically versus my children that are going back and forth between virtual and hybrid thank you [Applause] jessica pecha i have two children in gilbert public schools i wasn't really planning on talking tonight so i'm not going to be able to say anything more profound or provide further overwhelming evidence as to why it is better for children to be in school so i want to turn a question to the board into the teachers and the audience why did you get into education i guess you don't answer we're not allowed to answer by lots not on the agenda okay the answer isn't clear right now to most of us right now you are showing your interests lie in control and power and
133using our children as pawns we supported you through red for ed we have supported you through volunteering in the classrooms we supported you providing classroom supplies and class treats we support you through fundraising and donations the state even passed the prop 208 why are you refusing to support us and our children now that is your job when did you stop caring for the well-being of future generations maybe education just isn't the right career path for you anymore in fact after hearing some of these stories if you are still contemplating a stick out you should just flat out be ashamed of yourself i'm not even speaking for my own children they are fine my husband and i take great interest in their education and social well-being but there are many children out there who will not
134be fine there are children hungry there are children who are fighting domestic violence i am here to speak for them they deserve better the teachers used to speak for them and they're not anymore they are choosing to stay home i am here because i care about my children the children in this community and the future of our country and i urge you to please keep the vote that you decided on december 15th and allow the people who want to feel safer to be online and for those of us who want to be in school and our children who want to be in school to continue to be in school in person ninety percent of us are the majority who are sick of the 10 percent trying to urge us to adjust our lives around their
135desires so please please continue with what you decided on december 15th and thank you to all the parents that are here supporting us and if you hadn't noticed we're continuing to grow so please take that in mind as well [Applause] andy after andy we have katie thorpe riley gaylord and cambria garby garvey hello um i'm not gonna say much i wasn't planning on speaking but if the guidelines and the masks work then i don't see why the school should be shutting down and the teachers are fighting that the schools aren't safe their specific school isn't safe then we there should close their specific school now it shouldn't affect all the other schools that have no active cases and there's not much else to say thank you [Music] [Applause] kathy thorpe braley gaylord and cambria garvey
136i'm kathy thorpe i have three children in gilbert public schools an eight-year-old and two six-year-olds yes twins i was very impressed with the gps dashboard that shows active cases per school and the decision on december 15th to move from hybrid back to in person and only go to an alternate style on a school-by-school basis i'm here to reinforce my support for that decision i want you to imagine what life is like for those of us who want to be in person instead of virtual or hybrid imagine a five-year-old in august who was expected to sit for a two-hour block each day and listen to a teacher she had met in person for 20 seconds and student attendance was between 15 and 20 children with very few chances to participate and be heard imagine a mom
137trying to make sure all three young children were logged on and paying attention to webex at the same time imagine a mom logging into work at 5 a.m and 10 p.m on those days to try and fulfill responsibilities to her employer imagine a home where screen screen time is limited and now there are three children who work on webex buzz and google classroom for several hours per day and the suggested reward from the teachers is to offer more activities on the screen imagine at parent teacher conference two teachers telling you that based on the first several weeks of school remote including on-site learning that they were really worried your child would be a behavior problem in the classroom but the child has done remarkably well in the classroom with structure and routine and the teacher
138has had no problems with behavior imagine a kindergarten teacher saying she's just trying to keep kindergarten from sinking because of those first several weeks of school when we weren't in person she has so many children leaving for power math power reading etc that she has had to rearrange her whole schedule and barely had time to do assessments for parent teacher conference imagine a progress report from that same teacher where only two standards were filled out because that's how far behind the whole grade is imagine a second grade teacher saying that she will cry with you about the decision in december to go hybrid and a first grade teacher who said she needs her students like she needs air imagine a report from a therapist about your six-year-old who is angry and acting out at home
139that says he suffers from the following from frustration because of covet and losing his routine i feel a loss of control because of covet and not being able to make choices about school and friends anxiety because of covid not knowing what to expect and feeling everything could change at any minute with no warning being overwhelmed because remote learning is hard and it feels more difficult to learn while he's feeling isolated i've been impressed by the protocols in place and when my husband received a positive covet test i informed the teachers early the next morning the school nurse called and informed us that time riley gaylord my name is briley gaylord i'm a 7th grader that attends greenfield junior high the cons of online learning is that not everybody has great wi-fi or the time inpatient
140to sit to sit down for six to seven hours a day on a computer with acquired with a quiet environment government officials are making decisions that aren't beneficial for arizona or its citizens my parents know what's best for me but their voices aren't being heard another reason we should go back to online learning is that socializing is key in our life and if we are doing online curriculum we are wasting a quarter of our day sitting on a computer not learning as much as we would if we were in person the other students that have spoken will agree with me that our grades stunk at the beginning of school year but the minute you let us go in person hands-on learning all of our grades took a spin for the better an example of this
141is that i took a math test online on a computer and got a 60 but then we went in person and i got it and my test grade improved i got a 106 on this test this just proves that we need to be in person my mom and his my mom is an example of a parent that had to become a teacher in order to insure my little brother and nine other boys in education that is all in person and has a plan that will not break and ensure their elementary education please let us stay in person [Applause] cambria gurney brianna gaylord and lisa madison hello i am a mom of four kids who have attended and are still attending in gilbert public schools and actually mr santa cruz was my principal at gilbert high
142school so it's kind of fun to see you up here now working for my kids as well thank you um last year my son graduated in 2020 in covid um it was not the same as my daughter who graduated two years before him it has been very different and was not even close to the same as the experience my older daughter is able to have for him as a parent and a life coach i'm dealing with um [Music] only the beginnings of how kovid is causing huge lifelong mental physical emotional social negative effects negative effects on our children and one of the major effects with children not being in school and spending many additional hours on social media gaming and phones has significantly significantly increased um child human trafficking a topic that's not really wanted
143to be spoken of but is very serious and important and child trafficking is now turning to online predators and is a 150 billion dollar industry in addition to apps chat rooms and dating sites predators also use online gaming sites to find their victims now uh one in five kids online are sexually propositioned through gaming platforms and other social media and these non-contact oriented forums of sexual exploitation are increasing significantly this scenario is very scary for human trafficking because already trafficked teens are often used to lure other kids into this trap in newsweek reported that predators were using the extremely popular online gaming um forum of fortnite to reach kids adults were infiltrating the game and and offering game advancements in exchange for explicit pictures online decision making is critical for tweens and teens alike a
144factor for risk-taking behaviors of adolescents is that their brains are not mature their frontal cortex the area responsible for decision making does not fully develop until about age 25. thus tweens and teens might not consider the long-term consequences in assessing online pre-risks predators and traffickers [Applause] hello my name is brianna gaylord i have four kids that should be in school full-time in the gilbert public school system i am now a printer guide for 10 elementary kids that should be in the gps school system but felt that we needed something else for the school year with the uncertainty as a mother i know that there is risk in life and yet i still want to live and experience life this is also what i want for my kids i don't want them to be afraid to
145live life we are human and there is risk in this there is risk in being a nurse a parent a construction worker an uber driver a doctor an electrician a scientist a police officer an athlete a pilot i could go on and on but the point is anything we want to do and b will always involve risk so let's live while we can and let's not take away the things that make life worth living from our kids my junior high kids are still in the gps system last year my son was cut from the basketball team and so he worked so hard this whole last year to achieve the goal of making the team this year which he did where um when where sorry where will that drive go if we take school sports and
146socializing away from these kids what will drive them what will motivate them what will they want to even fight for if we keep ripping things away from them it breaks my heart as his mother to not be able to watch him either to be able to watch him either or my daughter play softball please let me choose if i want to take the risk and watching my son play bass play a basketball game or my daughter plays softball parents were allowed to watch the football games so please open up the gyms for the basketball parents and the fields for the girls softball parents please let's let these kids live their lives the way that we got to live ours and let's not instill fear in them but rather faith and hope in a life well
147lived please let our kids go to school as we wish thank you [Music] [Applause] next three are lisa madison kathy waldow and ali troutman hello my name is lisa madison i spoke at the last meeting and i had no intention of speaking tonight i wanted to be here but i had no intention but here we are again um wanting to voice our opinion and like i mentioned in the last meeting we as a family have been in the district for 17 years i've absolutely loved this district the teachers the staff the board i was a substitute teacher for several years i loved it i was a room mom i volunteered so many hours gone on so many field trips this is where our heart is is in gilbert district it always has been but we're
148getting to the point where we're tired of fighting i'm in a position where i could stay home with my kids my kids are old enough that they could do online schooling at the beginning of the year we weighed our d we weighed our options we really really were so close to going to a charter school we decided as a family to stay here to fight for the vulnerable us parents that are here that have the opportunity to come and fight we're happy to do so but there are kids that are at home that don't have the support that that our kids do that um need people to fight for them they need in-person school we're so proud of the decision that reed carr made last meeting on december 5th and the other two board members
149followed through with with and we're just asking you to stick with that decision i know there's a lot of teachers that have spoke about the benchmarks that we're that were put in place for august and want to go back to that but we are also given a choice in the summer to have full in person we were not honored that choice we're at a different point than we were then we have new information in august the benchmarks we had no idea what it was going to look like and now we know the spread of the community does not mirror the spread in our schools so that's all we're asking is just to please stick with the choice that was made on december 15th and let our kids go back to in-person learning thank you [Applause]
150kathy waldow ollie troutman and jennifer johnson good evening happy new year i am a mom to a second fourth and ninth grade gps student and hopefully to future gps students as well as a local pediatric health care provider thank you to those that voted for the choice to to maintain in-person schooling i am here to implore you again to maintain your vote for in-person instruction there is no data linking a rise in community covered cases to our school campuses in fact so many of our campuses had zero cases prior to break and were yet forced back to hybrid learning because of community spread all we are asking for is for the board to adhere to their promise of moving campus by campus for closers which will still keep our beloved teachers and staff shielded but
151also allow as many students as possible to learn in person whose families choose that option of learning and are not at risk this decision is not just about our sheltered gilbert community again or our largely high achieving students here in our community it is about so many children who are suffering from depression anxiety unexposed abuse food insecurity and the absence of any structured or stable environment without their schools open across our state and nation and they are watching us and i experience that personally in my own practice teachers are incurring risk off campus by living their lives one could argue even more risk than sitting distanced from masked space students who are required to quarantine for seven to ten days with essentially any illness symptoms stop our hemorrhaging on enrollment and preserve our future funding
152i beg you on behalf of my own children and of my pediatric patients and their families as well i am also here again to ask that you consider a motion to temporarily waive the district substitute teacher application process or streamline it and allow those substitute teachers who have received their certificate from the az department of education to step into the classroom now and support and help our teachers although i work part-time as a healthcare provider i am ready to do just that a streamlined district application process would expedite your ability to recruit professional parents like myself to temporarily staff our classrooms when needed or warranted to support the teachers that i love and all of us are here to support please make the right decision and keep our schools open thank you [Applause] hi i'm
153going to make this kind of short and sweet i'm a mom of six kids who are all in the gilbert public schools and i also work from home i'm i stand here today to let you guys know that i will no longer let you guys destroy and break down my family and my kids education for those board members who don't have kids in school you guys have no skin in the game you personally do not know what it's like for our children my kids are not learning online or on hybrid they are zombies by the end of the day and to those who are saying virtual until safe i hope i don't see you in costco walmart grocery stores salons or any public places you should be doing all those things virtually enough is enough
154keep our schools open thank you hi my name is jen johnson and i just wanted to thank the board and all of you for being here and putting in the time i have one graduated from the gilbert pub public schools and three currently enrolled in gilbert public schools um why is our children's education not considered essential you don't see nurses doctors or nursing care facilitators on strike those whose lives are in the most danger and why because they know that what they do is essential and i believe that teachers are essential i reiterate what a parent what a previous speaker said this is not a parent versus teachers i love our teachers i have a bachelor's degree in elementary education and top fourth grade for four years before raising my own kids i fight for
155the teachers the teachers i know want to be in person i believe if you were to pull all the teachers in the district the large majority of them would scream that they want in person and let me make another point please remember that for student athletes this is an absolutely devastating time for them many have been unable to play the sports that they have worked day in and day out for weeks months and even years and i believe that going to all virtual would shut down winter sports for good because it would shut down the facilities they use to back up what a gentleman shared earlier a study by mckenzie and company estimated that lower quality remote learning which is what we have and will have has a huge impact on kids it is estimated
156that lower quality remote learning from march until now equates to 6.8 months of learning loss for black and hispanic children the estimates are worse with 10.3 and 9.2 months of lost learning disparities in minorities are estimated to increase 15 to 20 percent the decision was made at the last meeting to move schools to online individually if they reached a certain percentage of coveted cases to me that seems like a win-win if cases in a particular school get too high they move to online and keep teachers safe if cases in a certain school are low and or non-existent then the students continue in person this seems like a no-brainer and i'm not sure why we are here addressing it again but thank you for your time [Applause] tara hall jason hall and don rhodes i'm back
157we've wasted so much time and energy fighting for what is safe and what is not i've said it before i will say it again the school board serves the community and votes on the educational needs of the students educational needs not safety needs reid lori and charles all voted to keep our schools open i'm counting on you three to honor your vote and stand up with integrity to the word you gave thousands of students and families my kids i have four of them one at highland high school one at greenfield junior high and t2 at neely traditional academy my kids are fourth generation gps students so we're talking my grandparents are rolling over in their graves right now this is appalling that you're creating a mockery of my town i'm old gilbert and i refuse
158to stand by and not speak out on behalf of my kids and the future generations of gps students keep the schools open [Applause] good evening board thank you for the opportunity to let us speak to you tonight i continue to be concerned about the influences that are trying to impose their will upon our gilbert public schools there is no doubt that 2020 has been a challenging year on many levels unfortunately it feels like the biggest challenge has been in the fight to keep our children where they belong in school across the state systems are open closed hybrid etc continue to be a bouncing ball of uncertainty why does this uncertainty continue to happen with our schools while at the same time the malls giant retailers restaurants churches parks and even movie theaters remain open my
159message is simple it is the difference between faith and fear i know a couple of the board members are fearful of coven 19. they have made it known multiple times in board meetings at the beginning of the school year gps conducted a survey that showed nearly 90 percent of parents want the schools to remain open for in-person learning they are choosing faith and not fear if in-person learning is the desired of ninety percent of the students and parents and i asked why do we continue to come to this point of deciding whether we should go back to a less effective remote learning model it doesn't make sense to me local teachers unions are threatening a sick out because they feel that the schools are not safe from coven 19. as it was concluded in the
160december 15th board meeting schools are probably the safest place for students teachers and the community to stop the spread of coven 19. for some other purposes the teachers unions are using the covid boogeyman as an excuse to drive an underlying initiative i say there has to be an underlying initiative because i'm ninety percent sure majority of the teachers employed by gps are not going home from a day in the classroom locking themselves in the closet surrounded by hand sanitizer and clorox wipes this continues to be my concern about the direction of gps decisions and votes are being made against the will of the students and families that that the gps board are supposed to be representing i know it has got to be tiring for each of you but i am asking you each of
161you to continue the continue to fight the good fight and hold fast to your vote from december 15 to return back to in-person learning beginning next week there are many of us who support you and pray for you to do the right thing for our children's education and our community live by faith and not fear that is what this community was founded upon and is now at risk today thank you [Applause] don rhodes darlene hibbs and leda de velgler i'm don rhodes and i am a gilbert native i have lived in the zip code of 85234 my whole life so obviously i've been a publi i'm a product of the gilbert public schools i've had two boys graduate from gilbert public schools and i have a freshman in the gilbert public schools i'd like to
162read you your mission our mission the teachers the mission of the gilbert public schools it says the mission of the gilbert public schools is to provide all students with an educational environment where they can achieve academic excellence succeed in developing strong interpersonal skills and self-esteem and mature in physical growth and development did you hear that mission statement do you feel our current school system and what we're providing our students is fulfilling that mission statement i don't and i don't think a lot of parents do either and other community members my son as i mentioned is a freshman in high school he has hated school all his life there's been a few teachers that he's really enjoyed he currently has some that he really likes this year this year was the first year where he begged
163for school to start he goes mom i will wear that mask if it means i can get into the classroom him not when he's not been in the classroom it has been a struggle his emotional his demeanor his respect has not been great he was voted student of the he got selected student of the month in september that was amazing my son has an iep not that he's not smart jill's watched him over the years he's an eagle scout he knows how to work his iep is not being fulfilled i'm contemplated if i should talk to a lawyer to make sure what you guys need to be doing to make sure his iep and all the other kiddos ieps are being fulfilled because it's not he's not getting what he did the resources he needs
164he does so much better in school our home environment's not as great because you know what i'm home all the time so we don't get a break from each other however we do our best to make sure we do and if i know if i'm doing the best i can and he has a pretty good home life i sure worry about those kids who don't have a good home life i've even [Applause] darlene hibbs thank you dr mccord and governing board members as a teacher and parent in this community it's important to remember as divided as we see we share the common goal for all our children to learn in a safe equitable educationally effective environment public education foundation is inclusivity where no child is marginalized or excluded but the global pandemic is leaving a
165large portion of our vulnerable community behind simply choosing to go to global academy is not an equitable solution for too many students promises were rightfully made by the board to all stakeholders to follow the data and benchmarks set by the maricopa county health department to help parents make informed decisions gps asked families upon returning to in-person instruction to sign waivers and published mitigation strategies that gps was adopting to aid in keeping schools safe and transmissions low but unfortunately mitigation strategies are not being followed 100 of the time the district also promised full transparency by notifying students and staff of possible exposure in positive cases through both the school dashboard and email our school dashboard is self-reported and we know it's understating cases and inaccurate based on age group demographics and zip code data published by
166azdh at the last meeting the board established its own benchmarks and data to be used to determine what school instruction mode to return to and when instead of the states parents in favor of in-person learning spoke at the previous board meeting about maricopa county's health department benchmarks and data being arbitrary that is not the case state benchmarks were created by public health experts with careful consideration and foresight to limit the spread of covet 19 to not overwhelm our hospital systems and to protect members of every community across the state to not use this data responsibly and accurately contradicts what educators are mandated to do every single day by administration i ask the board to please reconsider to use the unbiased science-based health department benchmarks again in an effort to be part of the solution to
167decrease community spread and keep our staff students and communities safe the idea our schools are safe when cons community spread is at an all-time high 17 000 reported cases just yesterday and our hospitals are at capacity as a reckless notion our schools are not a bubble independent of the community at large plain and simple we as a community need to rediscover the art of living together small sacrifices from each of us to limit what we do outside of school we'll dictate what we can do inside of school it has to be a cooperative coming together for the collective good of all then and only then can we get back to what we all want and that's in-person instruction but until then we need to return to virtual until it's safe lastly long after this pandemic
168is oval we're going to remain a community tied to one another let's navigate this with kindness respect and good will towards each other thank you [Applause] lita after leta will have sophia hammer iman massard that's after the speaker okay is that right lita go right ahead after leta speaks we will take just a brief recess okay thank you i'm here today as a parent of two gps students as a gps teacher a community member and perhaps most importantly right now as a sister of an icu nurse before i share my thoughts i want to share some of hers with you she was recently on an email chain in her neighborhood invited to a new year's eve block party with about 50 people this was her response to them i am one of your neighbors i
169live nearby i'm going to share with you that my heart is heavy i am tired and i feel so defeated originally i was just going to ignore this thread and just hope that you enjoy your new year's eve party and pray that none of you or your family members have to see me in my professional capacity i am an icu nurse that has been working covet icu since march at one of the larger hospitals my husband is a firefighter our family has been profoundly impacted by covid we are in the middle of a pandemic odd that i should have to say this but i feel the need to are you not aware of what's going on right now do you not realize that my hospital is out of icu beds we all want normal but
170having a block party on new year's eve will only perpetuate the issue each of you that attend are contributing to the problem and are not a part of the solution your contribution to the problem is breaking health care workers we are your neighbors she went on to tell them i will leave you with this aspects of covet exhaustion are due to the reality that many of us are carrying the weight of others irresponsibility we're holding a societal umbrella in a downpour while you're laughing and pretending it's not raining because you're not getting wet it's exhausting now i'm going to quickly share some of my words i'll talk fast both as a parent and as a teacher the one thing i emphasize about above all else to my students and my own children is integrity integrity
171is the practice of being honest and showing consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral ethical principles and values the five core tributes of integrity are honesty respect responsibility generating trust and helping others i'm going to ask everybody in this room and in our community can you say that you are acting with the utmost integrity to everyone including our health care workers each day that you walk outside are you holding your children accountable as well i like many others have seen pictures of not just students but adults standing shoulder to shoulder with people outside their household and no masks on in grocery store with no mass despite signs clearly they are making mess and yes i do grocery shop i need to feed my family i have seen videos of dances and parties because parents in
172the community seem to believe their child's normalcy matters more than the lives of their neighbors i ask you is that having integrity i don't think so to me that is putting self above community as long as the way the community behaves the only that is the way they behave the only responsible thing to do is to return to virtual uni learning it is negligent to ignore the arizona department of health services scientists epidemiologists and doctors that all agree school buildings should be closed while our metrics are read i guess i'm out of time we have about 15 more speakers we will take a five minute recess and return in five minutes yes i hope [Music] right i know you're right no [Music] 72 people i think we're about there we're about there tom blodgett is
173numbering him as he as he tweets out the summaries of every person so for some reason he heard seven so he has like 51 and 70 and 50 so if we go over he's gonna be really really [Music] oh i'm glad you didn't [Music] make sure you make sure i were talking [Music] okay if we can reconvene please those of you who are in the room please make sure you are seated and or and have your mask on appropriately we are going with sophia hammer iman moussard and anthony and i'm sorry anthony can't read the last name there so ms hammer thank you hello board members i am sophia hammer a senior at gilbert classical academy high school i am here today to discuss my concerns regarding covid19 i am saddened because this is not
174my first time coming to speak to you all about school safety i was here back in august before school start started to address the same coveted 19 concerns but here i am once again begging my school district to take a pandemic and let me reiterate a pandemic more seriously i want to go back to school as a senior i want to make this year count but not at the expense of my teachers and my peers trust me i hear your concerns about mental health i struggle with ocd and generalize anxiety myself i take virtual counseling i do think we need to emphasize mental health counseling more but i think we may need to be more proactive rather than reactionary the same meeting i went to in august you all agreed to uphold benchmarks which you
175all have not currently in arizona there are 561 542 cases 964 deaths a 12.6 positivity rate and an icu capacity at around 93 percent the benchmarks that you all placed included cases percent positivity and covet-like illness which i'm sure you all know but according to the official maricopa county website the gilbert unified schools district metrics are about 682.04 cases per 100 000. a 15.63 positivity rate and a 12.8 coveted like illness rate which makes all the benchmarks you all put in place in red or the substantial category meaning by your logic we should all be virtual we are not asking for virtual for a long minimum of two weeks but since you all don't seem to necessarily care about the lives of teachers and students you all won't even abide by the metrics you put
176in place we are here today to ask for virtual learning for just a minimum of two weeks in order to protect everyone we do not want to see more deaths and we do not want to see cases rise we just want to know our school board cares about the health of teachers and most importantly the health of students i urge you all to evaluate your decision on returning tomorrow and uphold your word follow the benchmarks you all decided on and don't make me a high school student be ashamed of our public school officials i rather i don't want to see any of you masking inequities by pushing students back in schools do it when it's safe do it when it's right thank you [Applause] iman and i believe the next speaker i believe it's anthony
177but it's difficult for me to read good evening board members i'm ivan masoud a senior at gilbert classical as well and i'm here to voice my concerns about schools reopening in person tomorrow morning i acknowledge the precautions that you've taken and i appreciate them however i'm concerned that there isn't enough being done for the students and educators of gilbert schools continue to not test students temperatures at the door or follow the benchmark that was given by the state arizona's cases continue to rise and so does the risk for our educators and students we're going through this pandemic as a community so there is no reason to put more people at risk when it can be avoided once it's safe and numbers have gone down i'd love to get back to my senior year but after
178new year's it's not safe thank you to all the teachers who are accommodating and making education accessible to all i appreciate you we request following the benchmark guidelines and having in-person schooling once it's safe again which would be around two weeks thank you [Applause] anthony yes anthony fiannaka father four three kids currently in gilbert public schools about five years ago my wife and i made a decision to take our kids to gilbert public schools out of private schools because of the excellent bands that you had in your public schools um has anyone considered the impact on your band programs that virtual and remote learning has had the answer is it's pretty devastating despite the excellent efforts of excellent instructors who are trying to keep the program alive my kids have worked hard to be excellent
179musicians every bit as much as a star athlete would work they want to do things like participate in state and things like that and all those things have been cancelled because of covet now kovit's here and we have to deal with it but we made some decisions a few weeks ago and people up here stated their opinions in good faith and we made a decision on december 15th to go ahead and do hybrid for a week and come back for live instruction which would allow my kids to continue doing the things that they like to do and be the students that they can be by the way my kids are excellent students but they do struggle at home with virtual even in other classes not just banned so what's changed since then well what's changed
180is we had a small minority of teachers and and i love teachers to be clear we appreciate the instruction our children have received from these teachers but we've had a small minority of them threaten to basically have a sick out to me that's not negotiating good faith we don't have to agree but we come together we state our opinions we make a decision and we move forward several have said oh well we have these metrics that we we had from a long time ago and those metrics say we should stay home that's true but we've also been told to listen to the science but what if the medical professionals said they said the best place for our kids is in school you've heard it not just here but you've heard it from experts at all
181levels they say they should be in school if you ask the parents they'll say they should be in school when you ask the kids the vast majority of them say they should be in school when you ask the teachers the vast majority of them say they should be in school this actually shouldn't be that hard a decision i understand the safety concerns and please i don't want anyone to get sick all right we we've lost we have family members just get covid uh we've lost people that we know dude i've got a family member right now who's sick from covid in the hospital it's a big deal but you've made great decisions that have protected our students that have protected our staff let's keep those in place where there are gaps instead of having a
182sick out and walking off the job let's identify where those gaps are and work to fix those things that's the way we work through something this like this not by just surrendering and saying let's go to virtual where we know the education will not be as good i appreciate you listening to me thank you and appreciate your decisions thank you we'll go with wendy fandaca and then karen moss hi wendy thank you thanks for your time again i was at the last school bar meeting i wrote out thoughts that time i wasn't going to speak today but i want to speak from my heart this time i just want to give you feedback and i've been sitting in the hallway listening the whole time and i mean this carries over from the last school award
183meeting i hear lots of parents what i hear are parents and it's mostly moms by the way they're fighting for their kids because moms want to fix things that's what we try to do for our kids and the kids have no power and as parents we don't really have power either to fix this but it's a fixable thing and you guys have the power to fix it and i really felt i was happy with the decision you made at the i was expressing frustration where i was happy at the end and i felt it was a fair compromise and mr carr said that it was the right thing to do i feel like it's still the right thing to do um but i just i don't know whether what are we doing to our kids
184i was going to say the same thing that my husband said i feel parents they're trying to stick it out with the school district that for whatever reason they've fallen in love with it i did take my kids from private school to this district because of the band program at campbell verde because of the excellent teaching i thought i saw there and um the community i bought into the slogan every person every day we're a community we're we're in this together we we do school together all of that stuff has been gutted this year all of it just gutted and and what are we and i feel for the mom i don't know who the mom is with the cross country student that shouldn't have happened he was not sick he'd been working for four
185years to do all-state uh cross-country and he couldn't do it there should have been some accommodation why can't he run six feet away from anyone if he was next to someone he could make himself six feet away why couldn't he participate he was not sick that's that's wrong what are we doing to our kids i i have times so i'm going to review my kids real quickly with you i have a one who graduated last year so she's a college student but she didn't get a graduation not a problem like a virtual graduation or whatever it was but no real graduation she is fighting to have life real life but i tell her we tell her things we did in college and um she's she's just kind of a size and says well i hope
186i get to have a normal life and do some of those things again she's spinning her wheels she's waiting for her life at a prime of her life to start my son is the senior this year he's he's the one who had 43 days out of 87 days and it is accurate uh but he was only there 43 days and he uh he likely is the second number two oboe in the state but he didn't get to go and try to prove that last year he won't this year and then he'll be gone he's done he goes off to college my third one we're losing him in math i might have to pay for a tutor for math if it's like this hybrid virtual if it goes back and forth and my youngest one she
187has four years left she's doing fine my time's running out but i mean what are we doing we're in week 41 of the two weeks to stop the spread okay how much is enough when is it going to be enough i don't know [Applause] karen moss after karen will have amanda harlis megan winter and heather schlemmer thank you board members superintendent wherever you are for allowing me to speak this evening i'm here with my daughter um i am a math teacher at gca and have been a teacher in gps going on 26 years i am greatly offended that anyone would challenge my desire to teach and go to work i have so much anxiety each night about this issue i keep coming back to one thing there are parents and students who live in our
188district that do not follow the guidelines in fact they simply do not believe in the science behind covid some of these people are attending extended family gatherings some are attending new year's eve parties yes with hundreds of teens potentially exposing each other and then posting it on instagram to boast about it as you know tomorrow some of those students are walking into your gps teachers classrooms including mine as of today 5239 people in maricopa county have died and arizona is now number one in the world i'm asking you tonight please follow the county metrics arizona state superintendent kathy hoffman and the dashboard suggest virtual learning how can you ignore these warnings our schools do not have appropriate safety measures in place there is inadequate ventilation the disinfecting it's up to the teacher at the high
189school i have 28 to 32 students in my class six sets of that and they're only two feet apart i measured this is at least 150 contacts that your student your high school student is exposed to daily at the last more board meeting you decided to just use district dashboard metrics unfortunately this method is inaccurate at my school alone there are two reported cases i have multiple students out and i have received more than three letters of exposure or possible exposure many parents are ignoring these guidelines and refuse to call their kids in sick there's no accountability in that system i'm a parent for 14 years in gc uh gps i have high school age children they will not be going to school unless we go virtual i believe in science what epidemiologists say january
190is going to be the deadliest month for covet i hope that as a board you will follow the science make a responsible decision have online learning for two weeks [Applause] we have amanda harlis megan winter and heather schlemmer megan europe amanda harlis was also up and heather hi thank you dr santa cruz members of the board and district leadership for the opportunity to speak today my name is megan winter and i know some of you up there sitting there thinking great winter is coming again and i'm speaking from my heart and from my many hats that i wear in this great community of gilbert today i'm a mom like five like many of the people here tonight i'm an educator an activist a friend among other things we are here today because we care everyone
191in this room is invested in wanting the best for gilbert students i just completely rewrote my whole script based off of what i heard here tonight and i too truly wholeheartedly believe that the green and the black and the purple and whatever colors in these rooms really do have the same goal in mind and that's what's best for our students and our kids i want to thank the teachers and families for showing up here tonight there's many out in the parking lot as well standing in the cold as they're not letting anybody else in today we have heard many families and teachers speak passionately about how they love school and gps decisions are going to be made tonight that are not popular nor convenient but need to be made i believe you as a board
192know that the district needs to be virtual chandler public schools just voted tonight to return to virtual for a couple of weeks excuse me i won't need three minutes sir i agree with them too but i won't need three more than three minutes excuse me this is the board meeting they forgot to start the timer i didn't see the timer going i understand that and so we've started the timer we allow her to speak please yeah well i might want a few more seconds left back um i truly want to thank them for oh i don't know where i'm at now but anyway we can't wish away the numbers and the benchmarks they're there they're in our face we can't put back the clock back to two weeks earlier back to september we can't go
193back in time all we can do is be where we are today and today we are in the red we can't uh however there's been a change along the way of what metrics we have followed and so what i'm begging you to do is to put away the idea that we can't make changes because we have made changes and go back to the maricopa county guidelines and dashboard to guide the district we also can go back to look at individual schools this might require a reset in order to be able to follow through with this decisions about returning to to some school instruction would be great you like for hybrid for some schools where the community is following i truly want to thank the um i really want to thank all the elementary parents that
194were here tonight talking about how they taught their kids to wear their masks and behave that is wonderful and they really appreciate it we know that part of the problem though is coming from the community that's not here tonight that they're not following rules and some of the kids especially in the junior high and high schools are making a mockery of the different rules and we can't the teachers don't have control over that even when they try to we need to get the spread under control simple such simple steps such as masking up and avoiding large large gatherings we have educators students parents and community members arguing amongst themselves i am pleading that we get back to mutual responsibility for educating the students of gilbert this means that we need the community to support virtual
195learning to so we can get back to in-person learning i would like to ask for forgiveness if i offended anyone or hurt anyone in the process of getting to this moment tonight i truly care about the people and what is best i have never encouraged to stick out nor has the gilbert education association encouraged to stick out we haven't threatened to leave gilbert public schools no one here tonight has threatened not to show up tomorrow thank you [Applause] heather i don't blame you for not trying the last name nobody likes that one including me all right dr mccord dr santa cruz and members of the governing board thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight i think it's important to note that there were about 50 people still waiting in line to share their perspective
196when they were notified that no more comments would be taken this evening my name is heather schlemmer this is my 16th year in special education the majority of which i've devoted to students and families in gilbert public school i say that i would i would say that i fit the description of a good teacher from the gentleman who spoke earlier i am willing and ready to show up to teach however given that we are in the middle of a frightening surge in covet illness i believe this can be done virtually as a temporary measure i am fully capable and equipped to show up to teach online and to do it well i'm also a parent my elementary age children attend our neighborhood school in another district it was our preference for our students to attend
197in person we value the magic that happens in a classroom but we wanted to be sure they could do so safely their district has followed the benchmarks and guidance put forth by public health professionals as a result changes to their schedules and instructional delivery has been predictable and consistent giving us adequate time to make plans as a family they miss their teachers and friends but they have received excellent instruction and social learning opportunities through the incredible efforts and constant innovation of their school teams i think the previous 60 or so speakers have captured key issues as understood through differing world views so i will just briefly highlight a few of the concerns that continue to flood my thoughts as i prepare to wrap my mind around returning to my classroom first as i watched the
198last meeting online a key phrase was included in the intro to both mr carr and miss humphrey's proposals with strong mitigation strategies with tremendous gratitude to my administration and custodial team for their efforts i do not believe that we have been adequately resourced as a district with the staff supplies time or physical space necessary to implement strong mitigation practices in alignment with the question of why don't staff feel safe the cdc has an interview guide in the k-12 toolkit which i would encourage the district to consider adapting to gather stakeholder input and address remaining concerns second i'm very concerned about the expiration of additional paid sick leave under the cares act it is also my understanding that gps will no longer be able to provide the generous additional 10-day buffer made available last semester i
199currently have five sick days should i need to quarantine or heaven forbid fall ill i do not know what i will do i think back to the weeks where i have received multiple exposure letters and worry about how many more bullets i'll dodge especially as a community spread is rampant and while the district dashboard is not fully accurate or transparent lastly and the one that causes me the greatest stress is that mortality conversations exclude concerns of morbid morbidity we just really have no sense of what ongoing issues may present in both staff and children regardless of survival rates and or presentation of symptoms in my extended circle this has included blood clots heart and lungs we have dana fredericks looks like bailey e and alma e good evening my name is dana fredricks i am
200a parent of an 8th grade student athlete at highland junior high school i've been an active parent volunteer in the district since my son was in kindergarten serving on ptso school councils as well as in the classrooms first off i want you to know i recognize what a challenging position you've been placed in and personally feel you shouldn't be the one making this decision but since our state leadership will not it sadly falls in your lap i'm here tonight with a lot of trepidation as my family has taken the recommended mitigation strategies to remain socially distanced as much as possible throughout the last nine and a half months and continue to do so despite my concerns about being at large gatherings such as this i am here as my concerns for the safety of our
201students teachers and staff outweighs my apprehension as i feel email correspondence has not been as effective as those that have expressed their concerns in person i have always had the utmost respect for our school board and our district leadership and was appalled by how you were spoken to at the last meeting however despite the level of disrespect you were shown it is apparent that those who yelled the loudest were clearly heard based on the decisions that were made and while the concern of those who opted to remain socially distant and express their concerns via email fell on deaf ears while the main discussion has been about in-person learning versus virtual versus hybrid i believe the bigger issue is the decision that was made at the prior meeting to use district metrics versus the county metrics
202as had we continued with the county metrics there wouldn't be a discussion about the learning model as the benchmarks clearly indicate where we should be district metrics which rely on self-reporting and can easily be manipulated to fit the narrative by positive cases not being reported or unacceptable the commitment from this district at the start of this school year was the county metrics would be followed making the choice making this choice is nothing more than a bait and switch by changing on the district reporting the commitment this commitment was made to gps families and staff and needs to be honored i've heard a lot of people talk about honoring your decision on december 15th i'm asking that you honor the decision you made in august the issue surrounding covet is not based on what's happening at
203the schools as i believe our schools are doing a great job but unfortunately it's what's happening outside of the school that is creating the problem which then brings the issue into the schools as a district we cannot continue to control the decisions people have made to partake in social gatherings and travel for holidays as well as not mask up accordingly we should not be opening our schools following two weeks that people have been gathering and traveling school should be virtual for at least two weeks or at minimum in a hybrid model to mitigate the amount of people on campus at one time this is not i've got some more i know i'm running out of time there is quite a bit this is not ideal for anybody this is not what anybody wants every teacher
204i know wants to be in person but their safety should not be compromised everyone talks about our students having the choice to go online our teachers don't always have that same option um thank you [Applause] bailey e alma e and stacy f good evening governing board members and dr mccord my name is bailey and i'm a junior at desert ridge high school i am aware that you have been forced to make decisions of great magnitude and consequence i know this is not what you signed up for these choices should be made by people with the proper qualifications fortunately you were given guidelines to follow by medical professionals the county health dashboard all year you have been using this data to guide your decisions when we chose in-person learning at the beginning of the year it
205was assumed you would continue to do so your latest decision to instead use the highly inaccurate district dashboard blindsided us i assure you like everyone here i am eager to return to normalcy i want nothing more than to go to school in person and to enjoy the social and academic opportunities that i expected of my junior year however i am mature enough to put the health and safety of others above my social life like most teenagers covet has significantly impacted my mental health however the loss of a loved one would be worse and your recent decision makes this more likely i understand the pressure to bend to the will of the loud and aggressive parents advocating for full in-person instruction i am here to advocate for the students parents and educators who want a safe
206and ethical delivery model i should not have to worry for my family's health when i notice the classmate usually seated next to me is absent i should not have to wonder if there will be a hospital bed available should myself or a family member need one i should be able to attend classes without having to worry if my assigned partner for a project has attended the masculist party that took place last weekend many say we had a choice but it wasn't that simple global does not support all students needs those involved in special programs like ap capstone ib and those in need of special education services should not have to choose between fulfilling their educational needs and keeping their families safe these needs can be met by following the metrics and changing the delivery model
207accordingly this is what was expected and what we prepared for this is what i ask of you remain in the full virtual model for at least two weeks until the county is able to publish data on the state of our community then follow the county metrics i beg of you please make the right decision tonight thank you [Applause] hi um i am here as both a gps parent and also an employee i'm a special education teacher in a self-contained classroom and i'm here because i love working for gps and working with my students every day i also am so very proud to have two kids that attend gps schools and admire the wonderful job that the teachers and staff have done for them i know that many like me want our kids in school and
208end at a gps school because of the excellent education that is being provided by all of our talented and caring teachers therapists and support staff i know i do not speak only for myself when i say that as educators we do our job because we love our job we are passionate about teaching and we care for a student for our students with that being said i do know that we must prioritize the health and safety of our educators students and the rest of the community as we go through this pandemic by using reliable metrics i understand how hard it is to stay home i stayed home with my kids and i had to teach at the same time and i have a child with adhd so that was extremely hard i understand but it is
209my job as a parent to help them and also to fulfill my job um virtual learning is not the best best for all and i totally agree i totally agree with that but it is only temporary um uh virtual learning is especially hard for the population of my students the students i serve and um i do not want that for them but right now it is what is needed um as of now the arizona health department metrics uh which you guys have decided to adopt indicates a different significant community spread but you all know that um hospital bed availabilities are the lowest percentage seven percent as of sunday since the pandemic began um i am currently expecting a baby and this concerns me i have not had covet and i am concerned about getting it
210at work and not being able to be careful if i happen to have severe symptoms at the beginning of this parents and teachers agreed to return person learning because you guys committed to following these metrics on august 18th and indicated that those metrics would guide the mode of learning this recommendation right now is for virtual for all students no exceptions during hybrid right now is still bringing kids to campus and exposing everyone this is what guided me and i am sure other educators and parents in choosing our mode of either learning for our students or teaching back in september i understand that the survivor rate is 98 99 but that ignores the risks depending on many many things including ethnic groups as per the cdc black and hispanic and native americans are much more likely
211to die of covet in all age groups and i am one and i am in one of those groups um again i repeat this is only a temporary situation we all have to do our part so this can be over sooner rather than later the fact that i want us to follow the benchmarks [Applause] f kim v and lisa nenning hi thank you for the chance to speak i'm going to be brief um i have two kids in the district currently and one who graduated and is now in the healthcare business which has given me some perspective but i i'm when i chose gilbert public schools for my kids i did so because when i talked to the teachers and when i talked to the principals i got the sense that they felt genuinely supported
212by each other by parents by the community and i know that that's when magic happens in the classroom when teachers feel like the community has their backs that's why i sent my kids here i have i have been incredibly impressed by the education that they've gotten um thus far but this pandemic has really compromised that sense of support that we've been able to provide the teachers and that's why i'm here today to support the teachers so that we can get my kids can get back to normal they can get back to normal sooner i think we all need to work together to to make that happen um i know that there's a lot of people in in you know in the district who are very data savvy you make data driven decisions all the time
213about education about the curriculum i'm asking you to make a data driven decision about the safety of our teachers and our kids i'm asking you to use the most reliable valid data that we have and that's the maricopa county data not the dashboard data the the virus doesn't understand school boundaries i don't think that dashboard data has been accurate i think there's a lot of agreement on that the county data are the best that we have and i'm asking you to make your decision based on that let's go back when it's safe to do so thank you [Applause] we have we have kim v and then tisha hensley brown and lisa nunning dear members of the board mr dr mccord thank you for the opportunity to hear us speak tonight we appreciate you taking all
214of this time to hear everyone speak i'm a parent of 16 years in gilbert public schools including a child in special education from the age of three i'm also in my 24th year as a full professor at arizona state university with expertise in child and adolescent development and family dynamics many of us are here tonight because we share the common belief in the greatness of gps what makes gps great is the people it's the educators it's the staff members it's the administrators it's the bus drivers it's the janitorial staff it's everyone who works together to make this a great district and we all want our children to be in school because they have such talented smart and hard-working educators and they've worked 10 times as hard this year as any other year they've probably been
215teachers and they clearly want to be in the classroom but as many people have said tonight we're in the middle of a global pandemic epidemic my grandfather is 101 years old and this is his first global pandemic this is nothing like we've ever experienced in our lifetimes and if we want to save gps through this global pandemic then we have to prioritize the health and safety of our educators and our community and we have to do it using reliable and valid metrics metrics developed by state state and county health experts a panel of them not an individual pediatrician not a researcher like me a whole panel of them said that it is not safe to be in school right now all metrics are in red and frankly i thought they were very weak metrics and
216they're all in red these metrics are in place to prevent our health care system from being overwhelmed there's almost no beds left in our health care system and i'd also like to speak to the data about school opening because i've heard it mentioned tonight the data says that school opening doesn't contribute to community transmission when transmission is low and when mitigation strategies are strong in the schools and in the communities we meet none of those criteria right now and if you wonder why the schools aren't safe listen to what the teachers are telling you because i post on facebook and i got tons of messages about their concerns about safety so ask them why they're not safe they have very good reason because the mitigation strategies are not effective is our community doing our part
217i think we've all seen the instagram video and we know the answer to that and we don't know what's going to happen in the two weeks post that so i encourage you to return to virtual learning until we know we must prioritize the health and safety of all members of our community our children are not better off if their educators are too sick to be there they are not better off if our teachers die we all know we have a teacher shortage and a sub shortage we can't afford to lose our teachers and and frankly i i don't think they feel supported right now i think that we had an agreement to stick to the metrics and we need to do that for the teachers thank you [Applause] good evening members of the board and
218dr mccord first thank you all for your service to our community i am a parent of two children who attend a district elementary school i speak on behalf of my family and for friends of the district who could not speak tonight due to fears of putting themselves and their families at risk of cobed in fact i and many others have written this board requesting you ensure all families have equal access to communicate verbally and publicly to this body the current practice of requiring public verbal input to only be given in person is denying access to our most coveted vulnerable and medically fragile gps families and silencing a significant portion of our district population during this pandemic we ask gps to do all it can to create a safe option for them especially now when our
219district town county and state are all red and well within the substantial transmission level of community spread i also speak to express our concerns that the board has decided to disregard the state and county metrics they agreed to follow last fall both the state and county dashboards currently and for some time have indicated the learning model for our district should be virtual this board is chosen to disregard these metrics and instead rely solely on their own dashboard and a symptom-based screening strategy the district dashboard strategy would be helpful if it was reliable but it's not it relies on three faulty assumptions that prevent it from capturing a complete and accurate count of coveted cases and transmission risk in our schools one it assumes all children infected with covid will be symptomatic several health organizations inform
220us that children do get infected with the virus but that many are asymptomatic and or have very mild symptoms the district's dashboard strategy does not account for these asymptomatic kids a recent paper from the aamc states the phenomenon of asymptomatic kids quote opens vulnerability for schools where safety strategies including screening students for symptoms end quote and that this quote may not be effective to capture infections among school-aged children end quote two it assumes parents will notify health personnel when their child has at least one symptom kids with symptoms asked to stay home for 10 days is a disincentive for parents to report symptoms children with slight or very mild symptoms may not even be obvious to their parents a recent statement from the american academy of pediatrics says the number of reported copic cases in
221children is likely an undercount because children's symptoms are often mild and they may not be tested for every illness it is reasonable to say that some children with mild symptoms are not counted on that dashboard three it assumes parents will choose to have their children tested for covid parents concerned about invasive tests costs and a desire to keep positive counts low may choose not to get tested covet positive children without a confirmed test result will not be counted on that district dashboard for all these reasons the district dashboard does not give us an accurate nor complete picture of coveted case and transmission risk in our schools it is important the board follow the state and county metrics for valid and reliable data to assess risk to our children our families our teachers and staff currently
222our local epidemiologists and public health experts are telling us that there is substantial risk in our community [Applause] lisa and then robin doder and then finally ted gibson good evening um dr mccord and gilbert governing board members thank you for subjecting yourselves to this marathon and for allowing us all giving us all a chance to speak i know you all to be staunch advocates for the students and staff of gilbert public schools my name is lisa nenning i am a 37 year teaching veteran 27 of those years here in gilbert public schools i am here tonight to urge you to follow the guidance of the state and county health officials which recommend that schools in maricopa county move to virtual instruction due to the substantial risk of coveted spread the board voted to do this
223at the beginning of the school year and then voted not to do this on december 15th that decision must be preempted by current particulars surrounding the spread of the virus here in arizona there were more coronavirus related deaths reported in december than in any other month in 2020 some statistics that were just reported today include number one a 91 percent increase in the seven day death average this represents a 460 percent increase since october the first number two a forty six percent increase in seven day the seven day case average this represents a one thousand five hundred and ninety nine percent increase since october the first in fact it was reported today that arizona is showing the highest per capita rate in the world right now health experts number three health experts believe that the
224new strain of the disease which was originally discovered in the uk is likely widely sp already wide spread in the united states as i'm sure you know this strain called a ticking time bomb is known for the speed with which it spreads this variant is not dangerous because it causes more serious cases it's dangerous because it causes more cases more cases means more hospitalizations more deaths it seems only a matter of time before it finds a comfortable home in highly populated school campuses just today england entered its strictest lockdown since march because the new variant is driving a spiraling increase in new cases number four excuse me most importantly our hospitals and their staff are overwhelmed school communities must work with the health care community if we are ever to have a hope thank you
225[Applause] robin daughter and ted gibson thank you i'm rob and daughter i'm here against my better judgment i'm a high-risk teacher due to an autoimmune illness i opted for virtual school this year and my presence here today means i can't help my disabled mother for the next two weeks or unless i get tested those of us who are trying not to risk exposure have not had opportunities to speak to the board so our voices have not been represented and that's why i'm risking it but i'm here on behalf of my work family and my students right now arizona leads the nation in per capita infection and hospitalization the recent holidays will only exacerbate this on december 16th ducey stated that our current numbers are the result of halloween and thanksgiving gatherings how long will our
226christmas and new year's surge last how bad will it be do we really want to risk it some are arguing that we don't see school spread but schools aren't an island and the idea that schools are safe zones from covet is inaccurate and dangerous especially considering masked non-compliance in secondary schools at the massive house party in gilbert on new year's eve a video showed young masterless youths dancing in a standing room only environment how long before they get sick how many people will they infect before they even have symptoms the community outcry is misdirected this is the world's worst group project if the community wants in-person schooling the pressure shouldn't be on the school board to force that it should be on the community to make better choices all a single week of hybrid will
227accomplish is the potential exposure of every staff member on our and half of our students population since the virus can spread before symptoms and has a two-week incubation period two weeks of online instruction is the minimum length of time required for safer reopening an ids a study found and i quote fifteen to forty five percent of sars cove to infections are asymptomatic all others can be considered to have a pre-symptomatic phase in which individuals are infectious prior to being symptomatic i hear people say repeatedly that teachers should choose online if we're worried but there weren't enough online positions for everyone who applied and frankly teachers who opted to teach in person did so expecting to make the board to make decisions based on the state health metrics as promised the school's coveted dashboard is not
228an acceptable replacement you've heard multiple reasons why the one that bothers me the most is excluding confirmed cases if they weren't on campus within 48 hours of a positive test even though we know this can spread prior to onset of symptoms i understand that the mental health of our students is an area for concern but remember covid didn't start that we've been fighting for more services for years as the teen suicide rate has been climbing we should be proactive not reactive and focus our time and resources to outreach and providing services to those who need them the unknown long-term effects on young people and healthy adults include heart [Applause] that's fine we'll take it in the book of proverbs king solomon wrote the way the fool is right in his own mind but wise man
229listens to advice i know that i'm looking at five people that want to make a very wise decision tonight the problem is king solomon didn't tell you who's advised to listen to and that's the quagmire we find ourselves in if you think that the 71 people that you heard speak before you today are an accurate representation of all of your constituents i think you're sorely mistaken i think you know that we are in the middle of a public health crisis and to choose now as the moment not to listen to our public health officials seems not only flippant it seems like a disregard for life and i can't stand for that human life we're all humans we all have commonalities we are by nature social beings and we've been asked to not be social to
230be antisocial because viruses are social so we've had to move away and we've all had to make sacrifices so who do you listen to i'm here today to tell you not to listen to me don't listen to me i'll tell you what i want i want to teach in person i do and i think every single person in here wants a return to in-person teaching but it's not about what we want it's about what our hospitals our doctors our nurses our emts need us to do if you think that you can send 30 000 people back into campuses over the next week into poorly ventilated rooms and not have at least one case of viral spread i don't think you've been paying much attention and that's what our doctors are asking us to do not
231to spread it to a single another person because there is not room for them in the hospitals so yes schools are the safest place for our kids but icu beds are the safest place for advanced cova patients and if you continue to disregard the advice of our public health officials that's what you've chosen you've chosen to listen to the wrong advice i hope you make the right choice i hope you'll do better for gilbert i hope you'll follow what chandler just did that you will keep all students and staff out of classrooms until the 19th they also decided not to have school tomorrow to give a work day to all those that have to pivot into this new reality we have and on the 19th i suggest that you bring back elementary students and special
232ed students think long and hard about what you're going to do with secondary students thank you [Applause] thank you that was our last speaker we'll move on to item eight which is consent agenda information for consideration discussion and direction and possible approval item 8.01 is approval of the consent agenda items is there a motion so moved thank you miss humphries is there a second second thank you mrs eugetti is there any discussion seeing no discussion we will take a vote on the consent agenda to be accepted as presented all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye all those pose the same motion carries 5-0 item 9 action items item 9.01 is discussion and possible action regarding the type of learning mode for the third quarter of the 2020 2021 school year is there
233a motion related to that i have something to offer if there is not a verbal at this point um dr santa cruz i i was considering motioning just for discussion if we could discuss but if you have a motion to offer i'm open to that actually i took the liberty this afternoon of drafting three possible scenario motions and they are printed for your review and i'll give the board a couple of minutes to take a look at what's been presented each of them at least under my consideration is a separate item obviously we would if accepted we would only accept one of them sorry on emotion number three there seems to be a a missing part or sentence to complete can you tell us what that would be sorry board members that number three motion
234is incomplete there at the end but the end should read like the end of motion possibility number two i will submit motion number one for discussion if there is a second well i will second let's discuss i think it's important to discuss well the motion as i propose it that is motion number one is the introduction obviously is on november 4th this governing board instructed the superintendent to utilize school by school covet cases and gps boundary county publish specific metrics for determining when school or the entire district will meet its hybrid or in-person or will meet at school and in hybrid person in person manner gps has calculated some school specific except exceptions as previously determined those limits are and then we list the one percent for high schools 1.5 percent and the 2 percent
235for elementary schools the junior high school was 1.5 percent that was by way of the introduction the body of the motion as i presented would be the board updates its instruction to the superintendent as follows k-6 classes will be held in hybrid fashion for the first two weeks of the third quarter of school followed by virtual by a virtual instruction modality for the month of january two thousand twenty grades k-6 are provided additional days in order to allow time for parents slash guardians and school staff adequate time to organize this mode of instructional for this mode of instructional delivery gay grades 7 through 12 will begin virtual virtual instruction on january 11 2021 through january 29 all district schools will remain in virtual instruction mode until local county and state health related data indicates an
236appropriate and significant decline in covet case numbers and the rate of spread of the disease this motion may be in effect for the entire third quarter of the 2020 2021 school year i offer that as a point for discussion and miss humphries has seconded discussion i'm if i'm reading it correctly i'm just trying to process this right now it'll be two weeks of hybrid is that correct for the elementary school kids so we would be disregarding the tricks by reading that from you know basically what we're what we've we're hearing right now is from the the county is that we should be following we should be doing virtual and this would be disregarding it right and to be sure the as i've indicated that all schools will remain on virtual instruction mode and then i
237inserted a given the local county and state health related data that indicates the appro that there's an appropriate and significant decline in coveted numbers probably should have included that above as well but for point of discussion my concern is that i want we've we have tried these many many months in every way to educate our students and to keep our staff and teachers safe and mitigate and um we absolutely 100 know that virtual learning there's the education we don't fulfill our purpose to educate with virtual learning so my concern would be could we find any other way to have mitigation strategies that i understand the concern for the safety and health but i also understand the need and the commitment that we have to educate students so how can we find i guess for me
238the virtual through the end of january is really concerning and i actually i would like to i know that that we are looking at all the health metrics which we do look at we look at all of that but i also know that things have been updated um and that guidance from the cdc and from our county continues to update um and i i think that would be important to discuss as well i don't know if if jen frost our district nurse would be willing to give her latest the latest update from the county she's she speaks with county health often about what their guidance has been as of late if you'd come and just give us a briefing of that so that we can hear so that we can take into consideration all of
239the data that's so important including those metrics that we agreed to and that we looked at months ago that have now that there's other data as well to consider so on december 17th the last day of maricopa's guidance meeting with school nurses and school staff we have a meeting every thursday and that was our last guidance and in that guidance they indicated again dr peggy stemler said that if we have mitigation strategies in place if our community is supportive if we have enough staff that they actually did support us being in school and person and that we needed to make that decision based on our school community not based on the metrics from the district i i and other staff members from different districts districts have explained to them that it's very difficult to make
240those decisions as individuals when the dashboards are up there and they're visible and they're very visceral and they're all in red and they continue to stay understanding of that but that again that their recommendations are solely recommendations they did give us a powerpoint on the 17th and again it stated on page six that they found that there is not any good data saying that school is supporting the spread of the virus that it's a community spread that it's funerals weddings parties birthdays get togethers with families versus in school that actually the in school is where the environment is more controlled so my feeling from that presentation from them is that if we go virtual i don't know that it's going to change our community metrics i don't know it's that it's going to change anything
241for our community because we can't see that our cases in our schools have risen or dropped based on what's going on in the community it hasn't it's been a an independent factor okay again i think that's just something to add into this discussion and into the data that we start looking at and keep looking at that we're receiving from epidemiologists county health officials not just coming up with this on our own to to have that discussion so just one more thing to add in as we discussed and try to find the best way that we can to educate our kids but also have health and safety which is so important of our staff and and we need to do all that we can so i'm this is this is this is hard this this is
242really hard i mean it is a really hard decision and it's very hard to navigate i did have uh peggy stamler's number so i did talk to her today because i looked through that presentation and and was reading it and the conversation that i had with her you know i think we can do what we want as long as the community gets behind us and helps us to do it the conversation i had with her was that maybe we go two weeks virtual allow some of this to get out of our system but that means that if we're two weeks virtual we can't have kids running around at the park with no mass we can't have kids going to fat cats we need to stay home and help everybody stay safe so the metrics can
243go down and i i know that's a big ask i think it's really hard to um our our data isn't our destiny but right now we do we're in substantial spread and last summer when we were at our peak i i knew of a few people that had covered but i hear of it many many families many people i talk to that they're in quarantine or they've had a family member test positive and it does you know it does impact the schools and i listening tonight the problem is that everybody is right kids need to be in school and also we need to feel that it's safe we need to have strong enough mitigation strategies in the schools and in the community that people can feel that they can they can trust that when they
244go to school there will be um you know that they aren't risking themselves i mean i don't think any of us would be here tonight if we thought it was a risk that we would get covered and then take it home to a family member who would die or that we would die i mean we wouldn't take that risk we would stay home so i i think it's um for me i i am concerned about this long time of being virtual instruction but i also think there are valid concerns and i i do think we need to address some of those concerns that people have for safety ms frost did county health express any opinion or research-based data related to the month of january after the holiday and february when the incubation period will be
245in full blown no they have not said anything that's specific again they they go back to and it's kind of a canned response is that if our community is in support if we have the staffing if we have mitigation strategies and that's kind of the two-fold though if our community is in support that doesn't mean that our community wants school it means that our community is in support of the strategies that encourage us to be able to school go to school safely keeping their kids home when they're sick following the quarantine guidelines those kinds of things um you know kathy hoffman said that she was hoping for two weeks of virtual just to kind of um quell the spread you know after our last new year's which i think in a way does make sense
246because then it could shake out any positives for those two weeks and hopefully go back to lower numbers but again i i don't have any data that shows that school spreads it so that that's kind of a contraindication right there that we have another meeting on thursday but they haven't given us any any guidelines per se for that we don't have data i have anti-total data of people a couple people getting it at school a teacher who sent us an email explaining her story and how sick she was and then a friend who feels that her daughter possibly got it at school but it's hard to know because it's more prevalent in the community right and that is hard to know because with not only children can be symptomatic but adults can be symptomatic a
247very large amount of adults and so you know you unless you don't go anywhere else but one exact place every day you really can't say that you got it somewhere i i am very good i i was to me this is backwards i think that we that right now is when we should be virtual and then look at it like you said in two weeks um depending on what happens through the you know through from the holidays i don't think there's anybody that sits up here that doesn't agree that we should be in in and would want to be in the in the classroom i think that you know i heard that from the teachers i think we want our kids want to be in the classroom but we're in a pandemic and you know
248sports and all those other things are have been cancelled not because of us but because of the excuse me those were all aia decisions they did not excuse me this is the board meeting and we're discussing it's not audience participation now we've just listened to you and this is for us to discuss so we can make a decision it was done by the arizona as an interscholastic association those decisions have been made by them we you know we've had some decisions to be made but um you know i i think that we have to be safe for our whole community i've said that all along i think that we should all be in the classroom but we're in the middle of a pandemic what i would like to see is let's let's do virtual and
249give it the time and hopefully that in the next couple of weeks we will have we'll be in a place where we can go back to hybrid and that that's i feel very strongly about that and i've said it before yeah i i would agree absolutely with your sentiment the issue that drives part of my thought process relates to the fact that our one-to-one technology at the elementary level is not the same as it is at grades seven through twelve so what will have to happen at least it's my understanding and mr castellano can correct me or or dr newman can correct me is that teachers and staff have to be given time to call back in the technology wherever it is and then reassign it and some of those have already been placed in
250a holding pattern to be reassigned somehow and some of those are now just being collected i i think i'm correct on that mr castellano the turnkey operation at the 712 level is a little easier because the technology is already at a one-to-one i believe correct um we gave the elementary schools the choice though whether they wanted to collect those back or not so some elementary schools did collect those back but not all of them but i don't have the specific number on how many however they've done this to almost three times now so they could turn those around quickly the schools that need to hand those back out at the elementary level and check those back out okay the and the other the other condition that was there at least as i was thinking was
251the whole idea that parents and guardians and staff whatever it is that we decide need to have time to prepare for that eventuality whatever it is and and so those are drivers in in that thought process as well uh no no question that everything is in the red and we are just seeing escalating numbers of cases and the people have already mentioned that the hospitals are full and i'm not a health professional and don't pretend to be one but if we don't have teachers in the classroom even if we amass a whole army of parental support educated certified uh people instruction still is timing i guess all of these numbers have increased while we haven't been in school so how does that no don't don't don't i'm trying to discuss with him so i'm just
252saying then how that's where my concern is is then how does us staying out of school necessarily keep that from spreading if this isn't about school spreading that's not our job our job is to educate students and our job is to keep spread from within the campuses it doesn't it's not our job to keep the whole um virus stymied that it will never appear anywhere and i guess my real concern too is now that we're bringing up there's another viral strain that we're concerned about i'm concerned when are we ever going to what is our exit strategy here to ever have our children at school you know i'm just saying and it's it's critical that they are in school there's this doesn't this doesn't this doesn't even just let's not be delusional that there's educating
253as much as the teachers are working as hard as they are in virtual learning they would agree with you i know i think i know they do i know and i know they've done all they can and i and we've heard and we know it isn't a viable option for learning it that learning doesn't occur through that so i don't know again i i don't want to go virtual because i don't feel like there's any i don't feel like we meet our purpose if there's any way to find mitigating strategies to help teachers feel safe to make sure that we're being safe in the next couple weeks especially as these numbers are high i would prefer to look at that yeah and the answer to the when question is probably a good one because i'm
254not even sure the medical professionals know that i i think another concern then is that there are though other schools around us that are in school full-time and that's so so there is some again just as we've been told by the county health there is some leeway in it and so again we're making a decision that impacts students and their learning and there will be all kinds of consequences of it i know there are both ways i know there are every way so but i just hope that i just want us to know and be clear on the decision that we're making also i do want to talk about what are any financial impacts of it i also want to talk about that we still will have to have on-site learning so it's not as
255if there won't be students on campuses with adults and you're talking about the governor's executive order right which we have no control over right so but it doesn't eliminate that students will be on campus with adults there will be fewer students and and maybe they can social distance more well we can do hybrid then and have fewer students on campus that's true too you know um could i sorry let me ask though miss betts could you speak to what because to make a decision we should look at all of the things that are involved in this so what would be the financial impacts possible if we do virtual if we do hybrid what what kinds of things are we looking at just so we know all the impacts that we're looking at so um i
256can only share with what i know today and so what i know today is that um based upon our thinking that we would receive uh funding to the level of 98 of last year's weighted student counts we requested a 30 million dollar enrollment stabilization grant and we received 14 million dollars of that so and then now as of january we now know that the governor i mean the state the department of education has applied that distance learning reduction uh to us on top of that so we we have now quantified that and that amount is 6.4 million dollars that's based upon the first 40 days so the as we have more distance learning days that that amount could go up or it could also go down because the distance learning is over 180 days not
257just over 40 days obviously the first 40 days we had a significant number of of um distance learning days which accounts for that high percentage reduction so but it's early it's early to tell we don't know the you know number of students that might be enrolling again in january that happens often there's also withdrawals in january that also happens so everything is very is moving and very fluid right now so we don't have any no the only thing is the more days that were that were distance learning it will be more of a reduction than if we weren't so that's the only thing i can say about that okay miss bets can i just so that we have the 30 million dollars deficit and the 6.4 million is on top of that that's correct that's
258correct but we did receive the 14 million dollars in the esg grant recently and we do know that with the corona the second corona relief package there is some monies designated for k-12 education throughout the nation that has not been quantified for gilbert public schools at this time so there's lots of moving parts right now i know okay go ahead go ahead are you going to ask her i was going to ask a question about finances but you would go ahead on your thought i'm on the i'm on i'm actually going to ask for something different and i i know this is not a fair question to probably ask you because i should have called you and to give you to prepare you guys for this question but it kind of just came up right
259now and we've talked about this in the past our insurance trust do we know what we've paid at this point for cases of for our employees that have been hospitalized or whatever do you have any kind of a i'm sorry to ask you that now i don't have that um with me but i can get it to you we get one monthly report just on the covet right yeah like how many hospitalizations i know that that early on the the i think it was one of our consultants said that if an an average case would could be up to about 250 000 correct if it was like an average of a hospitalization the 250 thousand dollars to my recollection was somebody who would be hospitalized right hospitalized and therefore an extremely long time yeah i
260don't think we're that is not every single case that we have i mean but it still has an impact on our insurance absolutely it does yes because we we are self-insured correct we're self-insured we did not plan for covet so there is an additional cost this year because of covert related medical bills which happens whether we're in school or not though still we still have cover that if employees get it at school or not but um miss betts also what what would be the plan during virtual for we know for teacher i mean for staff for bus drivers for lunch for all of our other employees who are critical to our everyday work and who don't have a paycheck coming and can't necessarily work virtually how can we how are we going to accommodate that
261and what's what would be the plan or the thought so so right now um in our discussions uh we were talking about every staff member in order to get paid needs to be working and so as an example you brought up the in-school support so if drivers don't have work they need to do related to transportation they potentially could be deployed to our schools also what we did in the fall is we offered specialized supports for our special education students and bus drivers were expected to be able to provide transportation taking those students back and forth from home to school for their appointments so the biggest issue i see that we normally would not have a potential constraint on our operating budget would be our enterprises so we talk about our enterprises monthly so that's
262our community schools as well as our nutrition services so depending upon the decisions made if if they are if they are to right size where their expenditures are more tied to their revenues then the impact on our operating budget would be minimal if a different decision is made however where due to a decision where their their people are staff members are paid anyway regardless of the revenues then it would have potentially a substantial impact on our operating budget so we know in nutrition services as an example just an example right now we know that we're serving about 18 000 meals a day while students are in school because all students are receiving a free breakfast and a free lunch when we were in providing meals a year ago in april and we were providing them
263virtually and in many cases even sending them home via with our drivers again we were serving anywhere between um probably six to eight thousand meals a day so at that level of revenue we have to right size in order for it to not impact our operating budget was it just until the end of december or is it for the whole year that the the free lunches are going to be done it's through the entire entire year through entire the entire footsteps even if we were virtual we could still provide those services we would definitely provide the services um but it does require then the families to come and pick them up then so it's it's a little bit different so so there definitely would be impacts on the other staff members either where they're working
264it would depend upon decisions made again so if we're in virtual does that mean that we're not providing other activities through community schools are we not allowing renters to continue renting in any of our buildings are we are we limiting our ability to raise revenue so that would be the other consideration there's lots of decisions and all of that so those are it all depends upon you know what we come down to and what our recommendations would be to you as a board but the general sense is that employee group about whom ms wood is referring we would first look for alternate assignment kinds of opportunities for them as we move through the time frame that we're going to be involved in a different modality is that and and that that's true the the expense
265of those staff members though then would still be born by our operating funds so it would just it would just depend again right you know but by and large but if we have a need for them we could deploy them in another need yes you are correct and and that has already been budgeted for to some degree is that right we are as far as i know fully staffed with everybody already for all of our paraprofessionals and all of that so um i don't i again it depends okay and we we do expect that even if we did offer another another opportunity for a driver or for a nutrition services person to maybe provide support at schools for our in-person supports they may not want to do that and so they would they potentially would
266decline so it all depend upon what's available okay so then would you furlough them or how would we how would we keep those bus drivers who we're always looking for to be on our staff and not be and we were we would we would be assigning them as i said uh to schools to provide sdi supports or we'd provide them assign them well another option would we consider if we are in virtual would we still have preschool special education preschool so we'd have so if we did we did that at one point this fall that would provide work for our drivers but yeah we would definitely be looking for work for them training we've made a decision to provide additional cpi training for all of our transportation drivers and our bus monitors uh there are
267ongoing training requirements for them so we would work that that's our goal is to work really hard to make sure that individuals have work to do so they can continue to be paid yeah [Music] discussion that that comment just concerns me we're now looking for work instead we have we have work if there's if the if there's if there's not if we don't have the work we will not be providing the work that's correct but we don't have anything we start school theoretically tomorrow we're now looking for things for them to do tomorrow because we don't have things because high schools they're not driving their routes because we're not starting high school for another week and then it's all virtual so if i understand the if i understand the motion correctly k through six the
268motion has us going two weeks of hybrid and then virtual so starting tomorrow and then through the end of next week going two weeks hybrid and then converting to virtual through the through the end of the month seven through 12 they don't return to school tomorrow and then they and then a week from today they go back to school in a virtual format for the rest of the month now i believe seven through 12 would go back this week tomorrow and on the 11th is when they're okay theirs would begin because as i read through i get to grade seven through twelve we'll begin virtual instruction on january 11th okay right so they're not going back to school tomorrow tomorrow is the sixth but but it doesn't say anything it doesn't say anything about am
269i missing it where does it say that they're going back you're right there is no specificity related to their calendar for this week and i neglected to put that in but it is a given that everybody would do school tomorrow as was prescribed in the motion of the 15th for the first four days of the third quarter okay so that so that what they do this week is left out of the motion as it's written right um i'm just to clarify so much of this decision regard is related to the funding so so again at this point in time i believe the worst case is that we are short the the 16 million dollars plus the six million dollars at this point in time but i believe that to be the worst case scenario and
270the legislature hasn't begun yet so we don't know if the governor will continue the commitment of getting us to 98 of prior year so if that's the case we will have the revenues available to make sure that all of those operating expenditures that we planned for would be would be funded so again truly from my view the issue would be the additional impact associated with our enterprises where their expense expenses are expected to match or their their expenses are expected to match their revenue so it does not have an adverse impact on the operating funds of the school district so just to clarify yeah but that there was an anticipation among school districts statewide that the legislature would act to hold districts harmless as it relates to the funding and it was a it was
271in the in the executive order so the governor's executive order indicated that he committed to funding 98 of last year's weighted student count yes so it would be reasonable to believe that something is in the offing related to that funding and i'm afraid to commit to that because of everything that's happened with the enrollment stabilization grant and there wasn't enough money to meet the need correct so i just don't know i just don't have enough information right now to be able to confirm that so that's for this year that's for this year we're going to start looking at next year's budget really soon and that's correct there will be impacts on next year's budget no question absolutely and and our decisions absolutely will drive just drive families to make decisions as well so correct as
272long as we are clear on that and know what we're doing i guess i would prefer to talk about the education and that that's what we're supposed to provide so at some point i i would like to maybe address that a little more but maybe i'll let you if you had a comment i i'm i'm really speechless and that's not very often that i'm accused of being speechless um you know if i look at this from an educational achievement perspective i don't think there's any way that we can say we're improving education and you know if i look at this from protecting the long long term care of of our teachers and our staff i don't see any way that this doesn't damage the number of teachers that we employ how we employ them it's
273going to have not only budget impacts this year and i and i get people are going to now turn around say you only care about the money no that's not true the money enables us to take care of our staff um the budget impact this year and as and you know i i don't like the threats any like more any more than anybody else that i'm going to pull my kids and go but it's it's going to happen and so how are we taking care of teachers i mean i just don't see that we're doing that i think if we're going to implement this we need to have an emergency meeting tomorrow with recommendations of where we cut costs because we're going to have to cut costs this year and we're now making a vote
274without even knowing the the implications i look at this and and frankly i feel like we're disregarding the health advice that we've received and i and i fully understand the i i fully understand the metrics um i've spent more time looking at those metrics and i know what to do with i also understand that we adopted i mean if we look at the history we adopted that we were going to follow the county metrics before there were county metrics and people say we walked away from the three well we we said we would do that without even knowing that we're going to be 3 5 10 20 or 30. we said we wanted to follow that and the intent there was to follow the professional advice because we aren't professionals those metrics came in they've
275changed not by us the county changed them i mean if at one point it was if any one of the three are read then you do something and they had all kinds of repercussions of what you did then they changed the repercussions and they changed and said no now we suggest you only do it if all three are read and we got accused of changing all kinds of things that was not an action on our part that was an action by the county in the state some think it was political some don't personally i believe it was based off of additional information we have a letter from the the county health director and dr sunshine who if you understand who dr sunshine is she is actually a cdc epidemiologist on contract to the county she's
276one of the leading epidemiologists in the country she signed a letter december second to miss frost to our district after reviewing our mitigation strategies and the letter says in spite of the fact that they know that the i mean this is the county health department they know what those metrics are the letter concludes the level of community transmission does not always reflect transmission within schools when strong mitigation controls are in place and again they've looked at our strategies they've looked at our mitigation controls when strong mitigations are in place the school communities community supports these strategies schools can be a safe haven for both students and staff even when covert is spreading outside of school so that that is one of the leading epidemiologists names on that letter a cdc employee telling us that we
277can be a safe haven we can actually be a place where teachers can go and be safer than they are in the community and at home i know there's a lot of questions about what mitigation strategies we have we have we have spent more time reviewing these and i get it not everybody trusts us but we're doing everything from bringing outside air into the ventilation system so that we're circulating air we're filtering air we're cleaning yeah i know that during the day teachers are having to clean it but that doesn't mean it's not being cleaned we've got crews that go in and do specialized cleaning we've taken every mitigation strategy i can guarantee those schools are being cleaned more and more deeply than our homes are with stronger chemicals that sanitize and antivirus levels of
278you know so i look at that then i look at the last presentation that was just shared with us which was dated december 17th so after we're seeing the spread maybe it's continued to increase but they they knew what the the spread was doing and the guidance we're getting from our county health advisors is i'm trying to find the page if a school can continue to operate safely and we've got strategies in place mcdph maricopa county department of public health support staying in the hybrid learning scenario so we ought to at least be doing that then they continue or or we ought to just simply say we're in essence declaring that our mitigation strategies aren't safe we're doing one or the other if we're ignoring their advice they continue with the recent publications emphasizing the
279benefits of in-person learning particularly for elementary schools and the emerging data indicating the in-person school attendance is not a risk factor for youth testing positive for code 19. maricopa county department of health recommends preferentially keeping elementary and middle schools open for in-person learning so at minimum if we're taking the advice of our county health department which i will again emphasize includes one of the leading epidemiologists in this country we should be looking for ways to at least keep our elementaries and junior highs open um you know if i can just hit one other issue i i'm i this is perhaps unrelated but i want to hit it because we've heard it several times folks we have done everything we can to keep extracurricular activities going believe me i had kids play sport i want to
280be there i want you there that is not our decision our only alternative if you want us to keep sports going with people in person is to pull out of aia which means that they'd only be competing in in five games amongst our own high schools that is not our decision i want you there i think everybody wants you there watching your kids play basketball but that's that's that's out of our control right now we're going to do everything we can if you look over the summer we kept practices going for sports in as safe as environments we could we were one of the few districts to do that we've we've continued to do that we are supporting the kids the best we can we want you to know that it's not perfect we have
281to have some give and take with some things that are out of our control so please know that we want you there but it's either followed aia and for the time being you're not there but we let our kids compete and have that activity or we withdraw and you lose the activity so recognize we're trying to find balance here it's it's it's not all in our controls last board meeting we had a bunch of people talk about masks you know if you have issues with masks you can take one of two decisions either go complain about the executive order and the county because that's where that's coming from it's not this board we will follow the law that's one of our charters is to follow the law so we're going to follow it and we're
282going to ask you to please embrace it i get it you don't like it you know i still to this day don't like seat belt laws i don't like them because they tell me what to do but i wear my seat belt and i insist my children wear a seat belt every single time why because it's the smart thing to do we're asking you give give up on that one issue please and support us that's that's the number one complaint i hear about teachers especially in the secondary level the kids don't really wear their mask we're constantly having to remind them it's a trade-off you don't like it i'm not asking you to like it embrace it anyway help us help us keep things going um but in the end my goal is i want
283school going back to the motion i want school in session i would suggest that we advise this and follow the council that we have from our from our county health department let's find ways to keep elementary in person that is the direction in spite of the metrics that is the direction that the very people who are behind those metrics are giving us as direct advice so what i would suggest mr carr is that we vote this motion down and that you proposed the motion that you just read out of the maricopa county health manual there from dr sun and shine related to hybrid and the k8 model and uh what we're going to be doing with the 912. that the motion surround that idea i don't know if it's appropriate dr santa cruz before that
284or after but i would like to address um some of the concerns about the dashboard including updating it in a way that is more transparent if can be i believe we've been trying to be we've heard a few suggestions from um and asks of teachers so i don't know if you would if i should bring that up now or after let's do that after let's vote on this and i'm encouraging you to vote the motion down and then we'll wait to hear what uh okay that's crafted by mr carr okay any addition you could actually just remove your motion from the table if you'd like i just assumed go ahead and vote it down okay all right okay any other discussion okay and what we're looking at is generally speaking the the number one motion
285that's in front of you okay so all those in favor of emotion as written with the understanding obviously and not let me rephrase that with the motion as presented to you please signify by saying aye all those opposed please save simon motion fails mr carr um i would like to move and i'm gonna i'm winging this so please um we'll craft with you i would like to make a motion that grades k through eight uh return to school in a hybrid fashion for the next two weeks um well i i'd like to make a motion that k through k through k through eight return in a hybrid fashion and that we revisit that decision at the earlier date of january 29th or when we know that teachers are able to receive the vaccine so you're
286you're proposing four weeks of hybrid learning 4k well i i i i'm look i mean my own personal preference is i'd like to go back in person i know so i'm i appreciate the way that you're really compromising i'm i'm trying to find something that incorporates this i think the the motion here so the answer to your question is that motion yes it would consider four weeks it follows the essence of this only it keeps him in hybrid the whole time um and the understanding is obviously excuse me i'm speaking out of turn we'll wait until that motion is seconded and then we can have discussion what about the secondary are you gonna well i i think we make a second motion and talk about secondary separate okay i'll second that motion mr cry so
287you know again my goal is to get us back as soon as possible it's my understanding that that teachers in should start receiving vaccines in approximately a week to two weeks and it will take six weeks once you know they have to have two shots and two more my understanding from pfizer is that while it does take two vaccines to be the 95 percent effective that within 10 days you are 80 plus percent effective so so otherwise it was quite that high something well i was looking at that slide earlier today i can verify that and share that because i thought it was only about 50 effective which is much better than zero but um that's that's good to know thank you but you know if we could do that if we can get our
288teachers on that vaccine list then you know we we can get them back in person full time with with the effect of that vaccine that that that's my goal i'm trying to find ways to get us in school mr carr that then that's been moved and seconded so the discussion and the comment that i was going to make is that the motion as you have presented it presumes obviously that all of the department of health metrics and all of the necessary data is included as we evaluate through the 29th is that right um i mean i would go back i i guess i would go back to what we discussed last week and i know there are people who concerned about the one percent one and a half i in my mind thank you for
289that clarification in my mind i'm going back to that per school metric i know that there's concern i would highlight that there are other states who have adopted that on a statewide basis so this is not a unique thing and they did that at the recommendation of their health department statewide health departments in fact it's you know at least our neighboring state it's even more lenient because if it's under 1500 students then it's 15 cases so if you take that to an elementary that only has four or five hundred cases you can be three almost four percent of the students so um so i i would go back to looking at schools individually but we're already in hybrid instead of full time which is what we were looking at before i i don't have an
290issue with including that our own individual calculation couples with everything else around us simply because we're not uh isolated we're not an island we're subject to what is going on around us whether we like it or not um i i was going to maybe suggest that we add some language that should the metrics become better than we expect that we can revisit the issue i mean i i think that the positivity rate and the covet-like illness i think we're setting on a path for the next two weeks we already know it's going to get worse it could get somewhat better um but maybe not before the 29th so it's kind of hard to know i think we're doing this backwards in all due respect i i think that we i we should be virtual for
291two weeks and then look at going back even maybe full time at the end of the two weeks um and i i certainly am not a scientist and i think that we you know all of the information that we get we can get information from anybody that will say anything that we want them to say but today i had an opportunity i went with my husband to his cardiologist and i've had to take him to a lot of doctors appointments over the last two months and the only one i get to go in with is the cardiologist because the rest of them i have to sit in the parking lot and talk to the doctor on the phone because they don't let me in i don't know if it's me or just in general but
292at any rate after we got finished with his appointment he asked if we had any questions and i i asked him about this whole situation and i explained that we were having a board meeting tonight and i just said what is your opinion and he said that he works at chandler regional and at mercy on the weekends he's on call as a as a heart specialist and he said that that the toll that it's taking on the health care workers is beyond anything that we can imagine and he said if i said to you know we had a probably a 15-minute conversation and i'm not going to go through all of it and i i said to him if you were going to make this decision what would your decision be and he said no
293school right now so that's just you know what i heard today i think i would have a question for uh ms frost um i was wondering what what the dashboard looked like towards the end we went into hybrid those last two weeks but what was the dashboard when we were all in person i mean just to kind of gauge where we were it seems like for elementary and junior high we didn't show that many cases on our dashboard if you could pull it up and look at it i just just to kind of give us some uh guidance on when you pull it up miss frost just go ahead and come to the point yes that would be fine we'll continue our discussion additional discussion regarding mr carr's motion on k-8 i i know that
294that is um in part of those recommendations from a county i do have concern of looking at it differently between i guess we already have with our numbers though with our um these numbers the one percent one point five percent two percent i'm just trying to figure out how is that is that the best thing for our students first of all but also for our staff to have different staff have different requirements and are we are we asking are we introducing one more thing that now we've we again and i know this is i appreciate our staff our teachers i appreciate our families and students we have tried in every way these past this past year we have tried everything i think more than other districts to find ways to have students in school and
295keep our stuff and teachers healthy so i i know this would be introducing yet one more iteration of what we've tried so i just i'm a little leery of that but i don't know i don't know what the what the better alternative is there at least my recollection miss wood is that when we developed and devised the 1 1.5 percent and 2 percent high school through junior high and elementary respectively there seemed to be some general acceptance of that as a process at least as i was listening to folks speak to us at various junctures okay the other piece that continues to be a concern and consideration is our own dashboard those two items are not related necessarily but our own dashboard and whether the self-reporting mechanism is really a viable mechanism giving us strong
296conclusive and honest data that seems to be the concern with that there is at least a passing concern if not a solid concern related to the protocols of individuals whether those are mostly high school students but students on campuses and or other adults visiting campuses and the use of face coverings and appropriate kinds of behaviors related to health and safety issues so you know those are just what you think okay miss frost so december 1st our total for the district was 34 active cases december 9th our total was 71 active cases for the district and then december 16th was 66 active cases for the district and if i may i just wanted to address some of the questions about the dashboard because i do get those as well and i hope that people understand that
297there's absolutely no intent to make things look better than they are and that the method of reporting actually even though it's based on the fact that the family or the staff member would report to us county department of health knows about those cases as well so should a staff member or family member decide they don't want to report to us we will find out about the case eventually so people do need to be transparent about it and we have not had an issue with that i get emails somewhat frequently stating that people know that there are more cases than we know about and i think the misnomer is is that when you see students out of school because they maybe have a different illness or maybe they're quarantined the assumption is is they're positive and
298so then that's a dangerous road to go down because then you do think that there's all these positive cases rumors fly rampantly the other one is that the 48 hours so a person has to be on campus within 48 hours of their symptoms starting or with a positive test and that's not something that we came up with arbitrarily that's actually an epidemiology guideline because we know that somebody that is either symptomatic or has a positive test likely was infectious on campus in that 48 hours so we are following the guidelines that we've been given that's not something that we made up it's not been a directive of department of health for us to move farther than that 48 hours so if it's been four days then since somebody's been on campus before their symptoms start
299our direction has not never been that we would consider that an exposure on campus that's why we did not include those in the dashboard appreciate those answers but we could we could include those in the dashboard we absolutely they don't affect they haven't affected who was exposed at school but they maybe become part of the community the number in our community who has it we we could definitely include that the only question that i continue to have is if we could if we include that number and i have to let you know it's not a a huge number um if we include that number are we going to use that number towards the percentage of the campus to make that decision if we're going to hybrid and why and why would we whenever i get
300posed those questions i my question back is is what is the what is the thought process behind that what is the goal for that question um just same as i've been asked several times now can we publish the numbers daily monday would be a very difficult day to publish because we wouldn't get those numbers until the end of the day and monday is a very busy day because everybody's coming from the weekend can i physically mentally publish them daily yes but what is our goal what is that to what end um what do we you know or would we look at the numbers daily and then make a daily decision based on that i don't think that would be something that would really be feasible so could we report them daily yes but they do
301fall off after 10 days so those numbers would go up and down very much each day my my quick response and or reaction would be the goal of that would would simply to allow our public and our staff to have that running count right with the caveat that after 10 days these numbers drop off so that they that they believe in all honesty that they're receiving earnest data in a timely way and i understand that and i do agree to a point my problem is i think that no matter what numbers you put on there and how frequently there are still people that don't believe that it's actual numbers so um whether it would be soothing to people to see the number daily or if it would cause them or anxiety i can't yeah i
302can't say that's hard to know that dr sanders if i'm i mean we are all and i'm looking at myself we are all guilty of confirmation bias and so when we see a report that doesn't validate what our perspective is we automatically discount it it doesn't mean it's wrong it means we discount it you know and we and we all do that to varying degrees and and i have questioned miss frost multiple times on this dashboard we've done it in board meeting i know several of the rest of you i don't know i assume several the rest of you have probably done the same in separate conversations with her and i remain confident that the data that she has is as every bit as accurate as the county dashboard is because the county dashboard has
303lag time too yes there may be a case or two that are left off of there that we don't find out until a week later when we find out from the county so it may never appear on the live data but we do find out about it and we know where the inaccuracies are so i i recognize that not everybody believes in that dashboard but i have a great deal of confidence that it's it's as accurate as anything that we get out there in spite of sometimes i look at it and say those numbers don't look right um when i've questioned it there's a there's reasonable explanations for it dr santacruz dr mccord go ahead i think it's also important to point out that at the beginning of the establishment of this dashboard that we
304all knew that when it was reported on a wednesday morning that that was a moment in time and so i think if we go to update this on a daily basis i would recommend a tuesday through third or friday just the mere fact that a monday like ms bros said is is a very hectic day for all the nurses on our campuses they've done a tremendous job reporting everything that is reported to them and jen is very very good about making sure our running spreadsheet is updated on a daily basis and tabulating all the numbers for wednesday morning we can do tuesday through friday i think that would be more feasible than anything but i would not do monday just because i think it would be a a bit of a waste of our folks
305time because the numbers wouldn't be accurate and again they come into question i agree with you i don't have an issue with that and i don't have personally an issue with reporting twice in that week as opposed to every day or three times in that week as opposed every day but if every day from tuesday to friday is feasible and not absolutely onerous on staff and we can do that no issue with that but i'm not personally or professionally married to every day thursday through or tuesday through friday multiple times that week perhaps but may i make a suggestion maybe just try it for a couple weeks and then maybe you could report to us at the next board meeting or a policy meeting just um i it's up to the board i i would
306say if you did it every day for two weeks and then let us know whether that's too much of a burden for the nurses and for yourself that's kind of what i was thinking miss frost is your mic gun i don't think so is mr carr you had mentioned you know the one or two cases that we've had that were not reported that county sent to us and that's literally it so more than likely what happens is that somebody tests but then doesn't get their results back for seven to eight days for whatever reason because it's been so busy we've had so many cases and so that positive can't show up until it's actually fallen off the board already so that's really more than likely what happens we've literally had two cases that were not
307reported to us that county called us and let us know about so it's it's really i just want to make sure that our community understands that there are not people running around with covid that it's a secret at least in the school district i've made a lot of connections with the county investigators they know who to call they know exactly who to email so when they get a case if they if they thought that it was for our school district they would let us know and then i guess follow up just on the 48 hour thing that keeps coming up as well is that should we ask that that's reported on the dashboard so that there's no discrepancies when we're doing this again the reason is the reason it's not reported is because according to
308epidemiologists that you've been instructed by it is not those people have not exposed people on the campus and they're now quarantining correct so but that would that worries the languages on the website i believe it is explained on the website right but i keep hearing from teachers that there's that 48-hour thing so they i think that they think there's many more cases than are being reported well and i think the problem is is they exactly they think that you know there's 500 cases that just weren't reported in time i had a teacher email me the other day and say that she read somewhere that somebody is contagious for 14 days before they have symptoms and that's not clinically appropriate from everything that i've read from reputable sites so i have to only go by what
309i know the cdc you know american journal medicine i have to go by those sites i can't use directives from other areas that are not scientific and if cdc and epidemiologists at maricopa say 48 hours is what we are using then that's what i feel is more appropriate to use i don't know that it would solve anybody's problems if we reported cases that were not infectious on campus i hate to say that it i mean we have the gilbert data there's a gilbert dashboard for our city or town there's also our maricopa dashboard that has our cases within the school district so i mean i can do it i just don't know if that actually reflects a data point that that need that would right guide us in our decision making maybe we make a
310separate comment so thinking about it basically someone would have to if it was a normal school week someone would have to be find their symptoms basically monday morning and not go to school monday at all and get a positive test and not have been at school saturday or sunday right for that too but if it if again in the effort to be clear could we put a separate column with positive cases that have not been on campus or not to be quite you don't think clear we could um i just don't think that's the best use of my time okay um also it might it might um start to go into verbal violation just because oh that's you get more specific with a small group of people and then it's more easy to do i
311just do want to i want to make this as trustworthy as possible and i understand again i could do it i just i go back to why would what's the reporting do or is that a data point that we would use to make a decision okay so christmas break well christmas break so that's similar to why i think the december that first number that you read was lower i think because of thanksgiving break is that a true in thought it was lower because of thanksgiving break because then there maybe weren't as many reporters that's what i think people have said well if they were well it could be i mean but if they were infectious again on campus then we would report them right so i did get i did get over um the very
312beginning of christmas break so i think our last day was the 18th so up until monday i was getting reports of teachers or students that were positive as of friday they got their positive tests saturday at the post so those went against their school's numbers now because we didn't publish over the break they will never be an active case but it is a recovered case on that camp desert okay so okay good so you're still keeping track of all of that as recovered cases absolutely and so does that 48 that 48 hours doesn't ever figure into the active cases though the recovery cases i mean the reason well they have to be active in order to be recovered okay that makes sense thank you i appreciate that other discussion on mr carr's main motion i've
313had a request for a brief recess after this boat and mr carr just so that we all have an understanding of what it is you're stating can you repeat that yeah i'm going to try and get as close to what i said what seems like an hour ago but um k-8 will return in a hybrid fashion through the earlier of january 29th or when teachers have the vaccine made available to them so as soon as they have that vaccine his earliest dr senators wanted metrics in there as well well i said if we but i i think if the metrics were to change we could just revisit it um i don't expect a huge change between now and january 29th because we're going to see an upward trajectory and then it's got to come back
314down and that's really hard to predict so i don't think we need it i take my words back so so do we need to write and we would leave in place the metrics of one of well one and a half and two percent of the junior high elements yes we would we would leave that in place because we're already in hybrid though so would you that well that was my question i mean so are we saying that we would go to virtual if we exceed that since we're already in hybrid is that well in the previous motion that i wrote it was that we would we would go to hybrid for two weeks and if the cases continued to go up the original motion said we would go to virtual [Music] so i i i
315honestly don't think we need that because if we're in hybrid we're we're social distancing we've made those mitigation strategies stronger just on that alone that there aren't as many people on campus and we can spread out a little bit more so um so it's in my opinion it should be a given that all of the metrics govern and drive our decisions regarding motions that we make whether those are state county local metrics or our dashboard and uh gatekeeping metrics is worth one percent one point five two percent all of those should be a given as we work through that because when we talk about it in a board meeting we we constantly come back to some metric of some sort i i guess my my question i'm trying to think so we're kind of based
316on the county guidance that was given to us at the elementary and junior high level correct specifically we we are recognizing that we're we're not directly following the published county metrics because we have in place mitigation strategies that the county has told us are appropriate so we're following county guidance yes we are absolutely following county guidance that's outside those metrics um one could expand the utility of the term guidance to mean whatever verbiage is written in a manual or a letter or the metrics that are provided by that agency as well well and i'm not sure that we're going to have separate metrics that apply to me it's a matter of you know where they're saying that that we can have it even when there's community spread the metrics they're publishing is looking at the
317community spread so this is if we have the mitigation strategies they recommend we stay at least in a hybrid fashion even when those metrics are red but in in fairness to your concern i know i would rather again i'm going to be very clear to the public i would rather be in person and more and use metrics to go to hybrid but that's we're trying to find compromise here with that in mind if we're going to measure something we ought to measure the spread in our schools so i would go back to this school specific metric that we were just discussing because now we're looking we're not looking community spread we're looking at the spread in the school if we need to take additional action it would be based on what we're seeing at the
318schools i understand what you're saying so i i would either leave us in hybrid as as communicated or if we feel like we need to have a metric we make it this the school specific metrics and amend the motion to include those school specific metrics um otherwise we always we wouldn't have a measure but we can always as we have done come back and revisit the decision and change the model but i'd rather have a plan and at least the community knows what we're intending to do so i i would again i i would leave my motion if people feel like we need to amend it to include a metric i would go back to the school specific metrics that we have in place any additional discussion i guess again are we is this a
319way that we are able to address the need for students to be educated and get the in-person experience that we know they need and yet understand the the need for the mitigation of cohorting and extra social distancing i guess that comes i i agree i i would prefer to be in person school sooner myself i don't know i don't think any of us are in disagreement with that as a as a goal i don't think any of us are in disagreement there can i interrupt dr sanchez and i go back to question i think i was looking at your question from the opposite perspective of what happens if it gets worse all of a sudden it's clicking in my mind you are asking the question perhaps of if we see improvement do we return is
320it like okay i think that's where the disconnect was why i was confused i was reading into your question the opposite perspective so i i would agree with you if we see improvement in the community we ought to be going back sooner than later so if that's what you're suggesting then yes i agree with that well it's a it's a double-edged sword it works both ways you know if we see an absolute explosion in the community with the possibility as we're as was presented tonight by multitudes of folks that that could contaminate our own environments hasn't yet that doesn't mean it won't i think we have a much better chance of getting back to what you're you know the in-person learning by going virtual for a couple of weeks and looking and following the metrics
321that's that's my opinion well frankly i think this is a big compromise on the part of some board members i mean it's way more than oh sorry i i think i i know this isn't all that you want mizzy jetty i i realized that but i do think that it is a huge compromise if mr carr votes for his own motion i will say that um so i i think it is a huge compromise and i think that um it gives our ka kids that in class time and yet classes are smaller i know that they can be more socially distanced i think we need to be careful about mitigation strategies recess places like that but i think i think that um this is quite a compromise and i'm willing to accept it and vote
322for it so my comment related to miss eugetti's concern is and that is going virtual immediately is the strain it puts on the classroom folks and the staff to get devices appropriately allocated and accounted for and uh moving in a direction that would allow them to provide some form of instruction they need time to get those ready and that comment is just response to ms eugetti's concern not necessarily to the motion and i and i i understand all of that i mean and i understand i'm respectful of what everybody is saying you're ready to vote on the motion that is presented by mr carr using the guidance from the arizona department of health and the verbiage that he extrapolated from miss or dr sunshine's memorandum i guess you ready all right all those in favor
323of the motion and we're looking at k8 in the motion please signify by saying i i those opposed nay nay nay motion passes three two four one four one four one i'd like to have something else with me but that's okay i voted nick oh you voted oh i didn't hear you that three two oh sorry i'm sorry it's three two but it passes so we'll take a five minute recess and come back and pick up the 712 or the 912 issue five five minutes gca is going to have to figure its own way out i'm sorry i guess i want to ask why you voted no okay we'll reconvene we have a motion past 3 2 regarding our okay regarding our k8 configuration uh our next mission is to address the 912 issue related
324to return to school and we are ready to entertain a emotion well i moved that we do the same thing i guess for 912 at least to discuss that we just passed for k8 okay so is there a second i will second it for discussion okay and my understanding this would is that uh the configuration of language in the motion would encompass k12 i guess yes at this point is that what you're is that what you're indicating yes that the previous motion with the addition of k or 9 12. yes additional discussion i i guess the one question i would have and maybe we can call on a high school teacher that's here is um i know they were doing hybrid for two weeks before the break um is doing hybrid considering that we are
325aware of high school kids doing things over the break that maybe it would have been wiser not to do um if the if going hybrid would be if they would feel sufficiently that they can distance from students or have fewer students in their room so that that's more comfortable and i i know there's at least two high school teachers here in the audience do either of you want to address that lisa do you want to say whether that you feel like that would be something hybrid going hybrid for four weeks would that be enough to make you feel comfortable for four weeks for everybody yes lisa i'm sorry can we get you to go to a microphone yeah can you also tell us which high school you know miss taylor pardon me this is a
326board meeting i can only speak for myself correct when i say that it's it's better than i mean it's better than nothing i felt much safer in hybrid than i did in full-time instruction um but my sister who is a health care professional points out to me that i'm still you know there the there's no difference in the amount of exposure but but it does provide for social distancing and that's you know that's something to be grateful for okay reduce numbers and social distancing yes and lisa you're at what school highland high school thank you miss taylor do you have a a comment on the 712 or the 912 format marcy no not really okay all right i think everybody here okay all right yeah all right any additional discussion i i guess i i
327mean that is one alternative does anyone have a different alternative that they want to maybe put before to discuss um i mean i i'd really like to see consensus and i i know miss eugenio's really struggling with this and i'm sorry so if no one else has another motion i i guess we go ahead and my uh you know my if i can step back and just comment before we vote my my concern with the hybrid and i think this has been alluded to but i just want to say my concern with the hybrid as well as the the virtual is the more people that i talk to in the community and the more that i actually observe when we have kids going to school only on monday and thursday or tuesday friday but we'll
328just use one example what that means is that monday night tuesday night and thursday night are not school nights and parents struggle to tell their kids oh you should go to bed at nine or ten o'clock at night because it's not a school night so when we have the kids in school less it's my sincere belief and i respect that others disagree it's my sincere belief that we actually contribute to kids being out more socializing more it's it may not be our intention but that's what happens um and so i greatly fear that as we go this model we're actually doing the exact opposite of what we intend to and we're we're increasing the likelihood spread likelihood of spread not decreasing it um so i i just i just throw that out there that is
329not an advocate i'm not advocating that that behavior is appropriate i'm just simply saying that's the unintended consequence of of some of these decisions and i think we actually put our community at greater risk but again respectfully i know that others disagree i think are you a high school teacher yes yes please go right ahead we're trying to fill our way through this global but i have my friends on the text message and i asked her the same question that you posed to the room and she said that um she would feel safest and virtual for two weeks and then after hybrid would make her feel far more comfortable and then of course pending a vaccine that would help so she she would feel more comfortable if we went virtual for two weeks and hybrid
330for two weeks especially considering the massive party that was held yeah she has a lot of concerns about um pre-symptomatic exposure i'm concerned about students but also how that works into that as well so [Music] i'm concerned about high school students and i know it again we're trying to balance meeting educational needs which i don't know that even hybrid i know it's not adequate it doesn't meet educational needs and i know it's a lot of work for teachers to do it it's a lot of work for parents at home and then it's a lot of down time for kids in the in the off too so i don't know i don't know what the right i don't know i i would still be concerned with with virtual for two weeks and then hybrid for two
331weeks i don't know i'm but i guess i guess we need to i think again my assessment of the discussion is that everyone has an interest in trying to address those needs those educational social emotional psychological needs of the young people who are under our charge along with their health and safety and the health and safety of the folks who are providing the service staff and faculty and trying to organize around those two principles the comment that miss eugetti made is consistent with our teacher from global academy and that is she would be comfortable with the two weeks of virtual and then to hybrid and assess at that time and that's not the motion but i think i'm interpreted what uh mr jetty's thoughts are i think that would be my sentiment as well except
332with the concern that i've already articulated and that is getting the devices allocated for all of our students particularly our k-6 students in an appropriate and orderly and organized manner and try to try to mitigate that downtime even though none of what it is that we proposed is an optimal educational format we know that kids are involved in in some cases less than but at least minimal learning and i'm not happy with that but i don't know how to address it so having said that is there additional discussion the discussion is that the language for the first boat on k k8 also encompass the 912 format with what is ostensibly the four weeks of hybrid instruction is that everyone's understanding of the motion it is okay with that then we will vote all those in
333favor of the motion as you understand it please signify by saying aye aye aye all those opposed arne i'm i'm sorry i i am really torn on this i i would like to know if someone has a different idea because um i i think hybrid for four weeks is a lot for our teachers and our students um i think two weeks virtual and two weeks hybrid is also a lot because that's that's a difficult challenge and i don't really see the metrics getting better in those four weeks so i i guess i'm if if someone has a different idea please put it forward before i vote because either we we pass or we fail so the vote count is i have heard it is a three two and it right now it's a two two
334because i haven't voted you haven't voted i have not voted i'm sorry to say um but again i'm i'm looking for if someone has a different motion and they would say so or put forward a different idea but at this point i guess i'm i because i'm not hearing somebody come up with something else i think the the splitting there is exactly as you've communicated that's either two weeks of virtual and two weeks of hybrid or the four weeks of of hybrid uh because obviously we have not entertained just going full bore with in person at this point well i was since since it hasn't passed at this point i mean i would certainly entertain that but i uh but i don't have the feeling that that would pass so i i think you'd be
335correct um i i did vote so it did pass but so we are in the configuration of four weeks of hybrid or our schools k through 12 for four weeks to january 29th santa cruz may ask a question of perhaps uh miss taylor or dr mccord if he's still with us coherent with us given his condition is there a possibility in at the high school level of letting those students who are attending from home still join the classroom via zoom or some broadcast or some way to engage them in actual schooling instead of just you know having the three days on your own in the two days in class i know teachers are doing the best but if we had that ability it seems like it would at least enhance our further education mr castellanos
336you want to tackle that question dr mccord i'm not ignoring you if you have something you'd like to weigh in on please do so i'll go ahead and address the technology side of it okay um so our classrooms aren't set up to do that the best a teacher could do would be to initiate a webex with the students and basically have their laptop open next to them so that when they're speaking then the students at home could hear but that teacher couldn't stray too far away from the laptop unless they had like a wireless you know mic or earbuds right so they had the microphone still so our classrooms just aren't set up similar to like what this board room is so could it be done yes the user experience for the students if the
337teacher stayed right by their laptop then they could hear them but you know that experience is that's up for debate on whether that is good or not right so dr santa cruz yes go ahead may i also say that when we are looking at hybrid for the spring semester we would be having students come alternating days so every other day they would either be in the classroom or not so it would not follow the same model that we had done previously where it was a monday thursday tuesday friday we were looking at every school day the group would come so a half the kids would come the first eight like day a and the next group would come day b day a day b and that would continue that way so there would not be
338as big of a gap other than just so one day in between they're in person during that hybrid time so if i interpret that let's go to let's skip this week because we only have four days this week so let's say i i this week or starting next week i might go monday wednesday friday and then i would go tuesday thursday then monday wednesday friday that's a pretty major change that uh i mean i would support it because it puts kids in the classroom more but that's a pretty major change that i don't think we've considered uh in this discussion so are you talking about that would start when would that start here in january or would it start it it would um this week because it's a four day week obviously this week we
339would continue as we have already stated and then we would begin next monday with monday wednesday friday or that group go tuesday thursday and then if there is a holiday just as there is in january then whoever whoever did not have class on that friday when they came back holiday monday tuesday they would have class so it'll be every other day okay so you're splitting the alphabet on a rotation monday wednesday friday for a through l one week just for example and then m through z tuesday thursday that week the following week it would be a through l monday wednesday friday and am i following you just okay yes on a regular week unless we had a day off somewhere in there but yes and and that format uh would be difficult to institute in
340your lower grades is that right we were talking about that k-12 we would be we would do that as a height yes so that is uh a morphing of the hybrid process as we know okay and the benefit that i mean if i take a two week schedule right now they're attending in person four out of four out of ten days that at least gets them to a fifth day i mean it's not you know i that almost sounds sad that i'm excited to go to 50 of the time but i would say also um i'm not aware of another district that has a hybrid schedule so their choices are limited to either virtual or in person i mean that was the discussion i i've been having discussions with a board member in chandler and
341that was kind of the discussion that they either went to virtual or they went in person because they don't have a hybrid option correct we are one of the very few that has a hybrid option for our k-12 although the school district i grew up in in utah has that hybrid option they're doing the same thing and so utah has been doing that since i was in high school there but the difference is it's not hybrid you do it you know one week you went yeah i went every day when i was in high school in utah read okay so that would be communicated dr newman to k-12 faculty and staff beginning this week in preparation for next week yes so our plan would be that um our parents and staff would be notified about
342the decision of course um tonight and then with the information specifically what as soon as tonight or tomorrow the communication would be that what the hybrid schedule looks like this week and then beginning and then we would follow up at the later in the week with what the hybrid schedule would look like the following week so not to confuse the two because we've already stated this week due to the holiday right my only request would be that that is thoroughly communicated to our students our our parents our faculty and staff and that they understand that this is a modification of the hybrid we have all been assuming over the past few times we've initiated that so if that that occurs that's that's an important feature all right any additional commentary questions concerns relative to this
343portion of the agenda if not we'll move to item nine point zero two uh dr santa cruz if i may i i just wanted to say um i felt there were a lot of good comments made tonight and i think the most important comment was that we all want the same thing for our kids and we need to find a way to unite and work through this difficult pandemic and it's it's not what any of us wants but i think we're all trying and um to do what is best and we may disagree about what that looks like but i think we're all trying so i did appreciate everyone that came and spoke [Music] robin you've been waiting patiently though global academy students who are doing like half hybrid half in person if we do
344that a b b schedule like some hybrid like learners are going to that's going to interfere with their classes like for example i have my ap biology class on like when we were in hybrid i mean i do my calculus class online and we're when we were in hybrid it kind of interfered with it good point i'm going to ask you to have that conversation with dr newman and share those concerns with her so that she can work with you and students like you with that kind of schedule to see what we can do for you yeah definitely right now yeah just anytime thank you okay moving to item 9.02 is discussion and possible action regarding the expiration of ffcra emergency paid sick leave it's taken us a long time to get to this point
345so is there a motion so that we can discuss that or before let me defer to dr mccourt is there something you want to say there or should i defer to mr mcintosh i'll just introduce it real quick and then mr mcintosh can pick it up thank you dr mccoy sfcra expired on december 31st of this year and that was uh basically paid time off for folks that had contracted color code related illnesses and as that expired the question came up what do we do for staff moving forward and um there hasn't been anything put in place by the federal government to reauthorize that as of yet and so as it stands today those that have covered or have to quarantine would essentially have to use their sick leave during that time so mr mcintosh
346you want to fill in the gaps good evening i don't think there are many gaps he said it quite well thank you yeah the upshot is miss eugenie go ahead i just think the important part of this is that that that our staff needs to know that it was not us that this was this is that this was the 10 days that was given by the their first cares act and then it was not um done again correct in april the federal government you know passed the ff the original ffcra which expired as dr mccord indicated december 31st there has been an expansion of that and there's some confusion out there because they're um when they just voted in late december to extend portions of the ffcra it did not include the paid portion for
347employees um to utilize these 80 hours as they were in the first semester so there is a piece of it that says that until march some employers can do that if they use their payroll tax credits we're a school entity so we don't have the payroll tax credits therefore we cannot qualify for that therefore there is no more um extension of that original paid sick leave act portion of it when you and i talked though you said there is a possibility that the congress could come back and reinstate that but you you don't have to guarantee it i have no guarantee of that it's my understanding and talking and reading everything through sherm and the hr professionals across the country that the new administration may come back and look at this piece of it during
348this time of pandemic but there's been no for sure and i think the other important piece too is is that this was an additional 10 to two weeks basically that didn't come off the sick leave and i think when you and i talked about this earlier um and i i don't even know if this is a possibility and i know we don't have emotion and that there might not even be any point in having emotion but i was wondering if we could possibly do something with our sick leave bank okay i'll be happy to give you the stats so far what we have because i don't know it might not even be worth having a motion um in the first semester certified staff use 1433 days in this relief act and our and our classified
349staff utilized 30 088 hours currently in in our medical leave bank on the certified side we only have 480 days and we only have a thousand hours so it would be depleted rather quickly if we tried to utilize that and remembering that in order to be a medical leave bank member you had to donate a day so in my opinion i don't know that that would be the best interest of the medical leave bank because everybody who donated a day would then may not have the option to utilize it in the future i think i think the most important thing is that everybody understands that this was not something that we did correct it just expired that is absolutely correct and i i think we need to explain to people why we can't just give
350them sick days why we can't just say okay take 10 sick days i mean the gift of public funds right if we were to start giving away sick days that were not accrued or not accrued through the agreed upon like memorandum of understanding and what we bargained for you know um it would be a gift of public funds in my opinion and talking to the attorney and the auditors that's also what they stated and that's just a big no-no i would get a big red mark on us right so thank you the upshot of all of that is that our covet-related sick leave money expired december 31st 2020 and it has not been reauthorized it was specifically earmarked for covid related illnesses if we have a faculty or staff member who should contract covet related
351illnesses they would be obligated to utilize their own sick leave if they have expired their own sick leave or utilized all of their sick leave we would have to look at other alternatives for them or they would be reimbursing the district is that correct that is correct they'd be if they're if all of their sick time was depleted prior to them contracting covet 19 at this time they would be paid off those days unless they were a member of the sick league bank previously they could request some time from that and as long as there is time and days if there's time and a a day or two available in that bank correct dr sanchez yes how many days did you say were used by the act first semester for by certified staff 1433.65 days
352it was for both groups that was just the certified and then on the classified it's 30 08 hours which it's hard to tell how many days that is because support staff you have part-time employees and you have full-time employees that would equate though if you'd used an eight-hour day it'd equate to 3761 days on the support staff side so we're close to the 6 000 day mark yes sir thank you dr mccord do you uh i don't see a need for a motion with item 9.02 is there some anticipation that the board take action on this item no sir very good board members are you okay with simply having the information for discussion i don't see a need for any motion related to item 9.02 so we move to item 10 which is adjournment item
35310.01 is there a motion i move to adjourn there is a motion to adjourn is there a second a second thank you mr carr typically there is no discussion at this late hour certainly none all those in favor of adjournment please signify by saying hi hi all those pose the same thank you for your attendance those of you who stuck with us on livestream and those of you who came to the meeting we are adjourned