Gilbert Public Schools District Board Meeting 11/04/2020

001uh good evening and welcome to this governing board meeting for gilbert public schools today is wednesday november 4th this is a work-study session we will follow the work-study session with a brief board business meeting once we have adjourned from the work study session i would like to call this meeting to order we're at item 1.01 and we are continuing our discussion on the covet 19 contingencies as per item 1 or 2.01 we started a discussion last week during a special work study session and brief board business meeting and we wanted to give our public the opportunity to weigh in via email on some of the items that they may have heard as we addressed various and sundry issues during that meeting this is a difficult item to resolve and i'm not sure that it can

002be resolved until we have completely rid ourselves of the pandemic whenever that time occurs we are aware that our proposed procedures are different from what is in the public space as it relates to the arizona department of health as it relates to the arizona county health department and in some cases the cdc we don't scoff at those and we don't take them lightly they are integrated into our thinking as we discuss the contingency plans that we think might assist us in addressing the teaching learning process here in the district our goal in this instance is to keep the teaching and learning process moving forward and keep students engaged in their learning and schools open not at any cost but certainly as much as we possibly can we're mindful that there are some inherent risks associated

003with any position we take whether that position is in support of closing schools immediately or in support of finding some process to keep schools open we are not intent on placing people in unsafe situations or in compromising anyone's health and yet we know that that is a risk we know that that risk is a part of our everyday life and risks are inherent with anything we do particularly as it relates to this covid19 period we've established many protocols to try to address health related issues and the tracking of safety issues and concerns related there too sanitation and mitigation processes all of those things are factored into anything that we may discuss this evening none of those issues are set aside none of those issues have been just cast away but we do have as a

004board to at least establish and i've used the word contingency before i'll use it again a contingency plan so that we can stop the process when necessary restart the process again as necessary and look at what the trigger points are when we initiate whatever it is that we establish so the discussion i think will surround in general some of those things that i have just mentioned and more my commentary is not comprehensive i have not consulted with my fellow and lady board members but i am mindful that they have some strong opinions and emotions relative to the issue as well and we will attempt to thread this needle and get the best possible protocol in place for our use and our efforts in the gilbert district dr mccord has spent a great deal of time

005in pulling together a presentation so i am going to defer to dr mccord for his presentation and then we will open it for discussion and interaction among board members dr mccord please thank you dr santa cruz governing board members give me one second while i connect and there we are okay tonight what i'd like to do just to start off with is our dashboard was updated this morning and you can find it on our website looking through we have one case at burke i think to note we have 20 confirmed active cases at camp poverty high school and that's running at 1.04 percent and i believe there were a few more cases added just this afternoon but not to the dashboard because we update that on a weekly basis canyon valley has won desert ridge

006high has 12 deserts junior 2 gilbert high two highland high four highland park two meridian elementary one mesquite high six patterson is one quartz hill is three settlers point elementary is one south valley junior high is three and superstition springs elementary is one and valvos lakes elementary is at three and their percentages are next to it as a district we're at 0.2 percent um and i just wanted to highlight that for everybody to make sure that they know again this is this is not hour by hour this is updated on a on a weekly basis every wednesday morning and so cases drop on or drop off they are added on and so we picked a day during the week to be able to update it to make it as current as possible but knowing that

007these change on a daily basis so just wanted to point that out next so just kind of picking up where we left off a little bit from last friday just what are we going to use to determine whether we go to hybrid or to virtual and this is just a recap from last week's numbers new numbers will be out tomorrow but i just wanted to put them up there so everybody saw again nothing new on these slides here again you'll notice the trends of where we're going as a county and as a state again in our boundaries we turned red in the cases per hundred thousand continued to be yellow or turned yellow in percent positivity and stayed green in copen-like illness and just adding uh the dashboard for this week over the average of

008the last five or six weeks it's point zero eight one percent but again that's from that one day per week i think that's important to note let's talk about a little bit what is hybrid you know we we talk about this and and just to make sure everybody knows and continue to know dr santa cruz kind of asked for a definition so we're putting it here in black and white for everybody the hybrid instructional delivery model splits students into two groups the student with the last name a through l will attend schools on mondays and thursdays students with the last name m through z will attend school in person on tuesdays and fridays all students will participate in virtual learning on wednesdays and the days they are not on campus so just wanted to make

009sure that goes back to when we talked about phasing in and just wanted to reiterate that why move to a hybrid model uh the move to a hybrid instructional delivery model is designed to be an additional mitigation strategy that will support the decline of percent active positive cases at that particular school or in a particular school district the theory behind that is less students on campus much easier to social distance and less interactions by the total population on a campus process um you know we talked about this a little bit last week what is the process of deciding that a school moved temporarily to a hybrid instructional delivery model again this is the thought and this is uh my thought of how we would do this the number of active cases per campus is monitored

010by our district leadership and health team health services team and in addition every wednesday district leadership will meet to review the active case counts by school just like i showed you from the dashboard dr mccord can i jump in real quick just to be clear so even though it's only updated every wednesday all the cases that are reported will show up on that like from the previous wednesday to this wednesday i'm just saying at some point if you've reported if there's a positive case it will be on that wednesday if it's reported to us in a timely fashion yeah does that make sense so they could have symptoms on a monday and not be in school but we don't know about it and then maybe they haven't been in school till friday the clock starts

011ticking when they have symptoms correct but then it would show up on the next wednesday one it should yeah it should just as long as we're there within that 10-day frame i think it would have to you would you would hope so yeah jen do you feel like we've covered most of those cases i mean they're they show up on this sorry come on now with your sweet voice we need to have a microphone so um just to be clear and this is on the dashboard the microphone closer sorry on the dashboard it does delineate what criteria and they have to be have been on campus during their infectious period so per se a student's been at home for a week because his parents went for vacation and he turned positive if he was not

012on campus within 48 hours of his positive test collection or symptoms then he did not expose anybody at school so then that would not hit the dashboard thank you if a school reaches think again if a school reaches a percent active case count per population of that campus including students and staff the data will be reviewed and investigated along with the district health service department and maricopa county health just to ensure we have all of our information correct within 24 hours it will be determined if the school move temporarily to a hybrid or virtual learning model as an additional mitigation strategy to prevent the spread of cobit 19. if this is the case parents and staff will be notified immediately by email text and alerts on the school district website and that would mean that

013we would move into it that following monday how long we say we'd stay in that model for a minimum of two weeks for hybrid uh during that time we will monitor a range of factors including but not limited to the adhs benchmarks maricopa county health benchmarks guidance from county health department and the school's active case counts parents families will be updated regularly as we move through the process so for example if things aren't going in a direction we're still because we're still in hybrid and we still have kids reporting and cases continue to go up in there at that whatever determined number we have for that campus then we can stay in hybrid or we can move to virtual is it possible that the whole school district will move to hybrid or virtual um you

014know at this time arizona health department guidelines recommend school districts transition to virtual learning if all three benchmarks per 100 000 individuals percent positivity covered like illnesses move to substantial spread for two weeks if a decision is made for the entire district to move temporarily to a virtual learning model all parents staff will be notified immediately and will be provided the information needed to transition if we are unable to have class because not enough staff is available to open school properly we would change to virtual and that has to deal more with our teachers out sick our staff outside do we not have enough people because of the spread of the virus on a campus we want to ensure that we have enough people there to make um school appropriate for our students so dr

015mccord yes um this is the change that was made last week correct by then correct by the state because prior to that it was not all three it was it was one to consider one area right and it didn't matter which area correct just one would it be just one school of moves a hybrid and not a district-wide approach you know we talked a little bit about this and we talked about this last time and again we can still decide on this i i think one of the best approaches to look at individual schools on an individual basis again some schools have never had a case and and i don't know for what reason that would be but we want to minimize the impact it has on families because we know how important it is

016and and what we've heard from our families about being back in school and how much better it is for their students but that doesn't discount the fact that we have the ability to move to all virtual al or all hybrid as a district if we need to but at the beginning of this looking at that approach might be the best course of action are we still using adhs and maricopa county benchmarks to make decisions yes throughout this process we have looked at those two sets of data been reported here and i think it's still important to look at that because it's it's just another set of information to help guide us in our decision making process and jen i'll probably have you come up here a little bit more for real quick we'll talk a

017little bit about this you had asked last time how many people have quarantined and jen you want to talk to the slide a little bit sure so we were looking at an average number of students because every situation is unique sometimes we're looking at smaller classes sometimes it's the seating arrangement within the class our larger amount of students that have been positive are secondary so those classrooms depend because a lot of them are different and as well as we have a lot of students that are in their 11th and 12th grades that only have a partial schedule so trying to come up with a number that kind of captured all that so for elementary we're looking at about three students per positive which would give you 54 students um and that is considering that we

018have um are you missing a number on there i hope not yeah what did i miss just the number of active cases yeah today so yeah so i was using the number of active cases that we had to date junior high we were looking at six students per positive um and then had the high school average was um also six students per positive so for the high school students that was a total of about 636 students and that was our entire amount though that's what we based it off of so that was all through the time that we've had any positive cases a 636 students total correct have been quarantined because of those cases and that's just an average again because we've had other like i said we've had other times where for a high

019school student we only had four um just because of the the seating arrangements or different things so i was just trying to give you an idea it's a good ballpark yeah what happens if a teacher tests positive um so far if a teacher has tested positive we've only had two instances where we had to quarantine children and that was because the type of instruction given was more personal like a coach or somebody that was in a setting where the children needed personal hands-on care trying not to be too specific um but in our average day-to-day classrooms the teachers are very aware of their personal space as well as the child's personal space so the the teachers are not standing there you know over them obviously in the secondary it's the same they're they're keeping their

020distance and letting the them have their space so there's only been two instances where we had to quarantine students because of a positive teacher and that's based off an interview with the teacher correct yes so it's not just us it's like what kids we in close contact with based on these guidelines right and then they give us the names right we do our job and when a teacher is out because either they're positive or because they're quarantined do they arrange for their own substitute i know we have two permanent subs at every campus but how are we covering those teachers we'll cover them through substitutes if it's the the one of the two subs that's on the campus great if not we will arrange to get us up for them okay do we have and

021you may not be able to answer this question but um even if a student isn't forced into quarantine do we have other students that just maybe their parents choose not to come because of the situation i believe we've had a handful of parents that have said you know we've received this letter that there's just general notification for the classroom and at this time i'm uncomfortable letting my my student come back anecdotally i believe that those are very short quarantines that the parent may initially feel some hesitation and keep their child home for a day or two and then decides that the child seems fine and they send them back all right thank you jen any more questions virginia before you sit back down i just wanted to say um in addition to the benchmarks and

022things that we're looking at a lot of the instruction that we have from the cdc and from the state health has been to work with our county or our local health departments our county health departments so can you just speak to that how have we worked with them and what's the how often have we worked with them that kind of can you kind of give a summary of of our relationship with the county health department and how closely we're working with them um we are working with them closely they do have an instructional webinar that they provide for a school more health related issues weekly as well as i'm in contact with them probably three to four times a week with their initial investigators their epidemiologists there is a little bit of a disconnect and

023i don't know that people understand this necessarily is the cdc does have guidelines and then what happens is they further delineate down to your local authority and so typically what happens is that the health department is supposed to look at basically what our community looks like and then decide from there what the cdc guidelines say to them and then kind of make it more a better fit the differences though are initially the cdc their close contact guidelines were 15 minutes for 6 feet and hours were 10 minutes things like that but the cdc if you look at their recommendations currently they feel like school is very important and they would really like to see school back in for the other health related reasons that children are in school for their social supports their education all

024those things and because they've pointed out that school or that children are not affected by the copa virus the way that adults are so the lien is a little bit different when you look at that i have talked to maricopa about some of their guidelines regarding quarantine for children that are different in other states and at this time they've said that they're not going to change anything thank you you're ready to jump back up you never know all right um you know going through some of these things and and you know think about what are some of our options moving forward and these are my thoughts um you know again using a percentage uh at a for the entire district for all grade levels in terms of active cases on campus to consider going to

025a hybrid model looking at percentages for different levels high school junior high elementary to determine that [Music] you know looking at it is if if we hit a percentage do we automatically go or do we put them on a watch list for a week or two and then move through it if it continues you know looking at two of the three maricopa benchmarks turn red we hold an emergency board meeting to have a discussion about do we do we go entire district as a hybrid do we go virtual depending on what some of those county and state metrics look like so those are some things that i think we probably should hammer out by the end of the evening just so we can put kind of a a period at the end of this and

026so we can move forward and and start making some progress related to this so what i've done and what i said i would do and again these aren't the only options these are just some of my thoughts um i told you last time i'd give you some possible scenarios related to percentages and i have every school listed with these and so again these are just me looking at possibilities from one percent one and a half two percent two and a half three percent and moving through so here's just some possibilities scenario one uh you'll when you see up on the left-hand corner it says scenario one that's one two three that's that is high school junior high and then elementary looking at that taking one percent of the population of course the high schools are

027larger so those numbers are going to be larger but moving the percentage up at the junior highs it's two percent gives you those percentages there and then of course off the right is elementary at three percent again these aren't recommendation these are scenarios scenario two one and a half percent of the high schools two at the junior highs and three at the elementaries and obviously i could have given you 40 of these at least but i only gave you six [Applause] two percent of the high school two percent of the junior high three percent at the elementary first scenario three scenario four is basically a two two two model two at the high school two at the junior high and two at the elementary a 1 a 2 and a 2.5 gives you numbers that

028looks like this then the last scenario is a one three three again i didn't leave out any scenarios on purpose this is just examples so we can talk about any other combination you'd like or none of it at all it's up to you and then here's just what they look like with all of the percentages and so that's a good reference if you have some different thoughts about what you want or what it would look like you can reference that and that will give you some good ideas have we seen any any indication of numbers of students that just since in the last few weeks since some of the schools have gone their numbers have gone up that they've gone but they've asked to go to global or um um i can't i can't tell

029you exactly but i i know that we have i mean we've had some that uh have wanted to go to global because there's rise in at their campuses and and at the same time we've still had people from global wanting to go back to their campus for whatever reason they kind of are our withdrawals and enrollments on campuses they're very um how do i put it sometimes it's a wash in terms of the number of who's going global and who's coming back i mean it's not as much as it was when we first started this process but still today we still get some of that movement and i know we talked about this at the last meeting but maybe some people that are listening tonight um haven't heard this but can we talk a little

030bit about why we're using different percentages about with the different schools or the different levels um yeah and you know when i first looked at this um looking at one let's just take one percent for example one percent at a burke elementary if you look at that's three three people on that campus and it begs the question is that is that enough is should we go to a hybrid model because of three and dr santa cruz and i had this conversation before the board meeting some would definitely say yes one case would be enough and some would say no i think 30 cases on a on a campus you know of 318 kids would be the mark and so that's why i put all of them out there just so everybody could see but just

031to illustrate that a one percent of elementary and i know it's simple math just looks different and can impact a campus quicker than maybe a high school or junior high well i think one of the things that's a challenge is we have these metrics that measure the spread of coven 19. so you know if we go down to one percent for example um for canyon valley that's two kids and we still have 218 we might have to take some out that are quarantined but we don't have a metric that shows the need for academic and social emotional supports and we have to really consider that so again it's a how do we judge that risk because we do want everyone to be safe we don't want to put people in a position of compromising their

032health but we also know that we need academic learning social emotional supports and and to take care of kids that the best i mean i think the one thing we can all agree on in this pandemic is the best way for most kids to learn is in the classroom and there are people who are making online work and i really i really appreciate those that are making it work and i'm glad we have that option but you know we i think we can all agree that um being in the classroom and being with the teacher is really important for a lot of kids you know and and i think it's definitely worth saying you know we're we're looking at percentages and numbers and these are people and we all realize that and and i don't

033like to reduce people down to numbers this is just us trying to figure out some systematic way to be able to try to do the right thing and and here we're using percentages we don't have to use percentages at all we can just use a number if we think a number this this kind of helps out in terms of trying to make sure that there's some kind of equity i guess in a number but um you know there's there's a number of different ways that we can go about this but looking at a a systematic way and again people definitely should not be reduced to numbers but and i don't want this to be offensive to anybody this is just a way of trying to calculate the a good way to to move us to

034a different model if need be mr carr you have something thank you just to go back to the question miss eugenie asked would you scan back to the slide 13 because i think that really addresses miss eugetti's question as to why different percentages at different schools if we look at the elementary level the average number of students quarantined per positive case is only three the other night when we spoke we were speaking hypothetically and we put the number much higher at a high school but based on the data at a high school for every positive case we have six students who are quarantined or affected so the multiplier there of how many kids are out of the classroom uh you know it looks like it's twice as many at a high school level as it

035is at an elementary level and that to me is part of the question is yes we're concerned about the positive person and and whether the positive person is spreading it but we're also concerned about the number of people who are exposed and and again we've gotten some emails people questioning isn't it within six feet why are we only talking two people we don't determine who is quarantined we have our seating charts the county actually looks at that and they determine who is quarantined people to the left people the right people to front the people to back and in our experience has been in spite of whatever they say about the six-foot circle it's the county who has said the people to the left and right that's not something that we're doing on our own that's

036unique that is the county health department determining that so in their determination for each person is positive at the at the high school we have twice as many people who are now not in school as we do for each positive case at elementary which in my mind affects the quality of education when we have a large number of people out that teachers are trying to support their studies and so on not only does are they not in the classroom the teacher becomes more stretched and therefore less effective because they're trying to do individual lessons and individual support and and so on so to me that's the rationale at least in my mind as to why we would look at different percentages at elementary versus high school but i don't know if that answers your question

037again that's it for the scenarios um the summary i think now we're just at a a discussion point or we can do discussion at a um because it's an agenda item we can talk further but we're here for any questions this is this is um this is not easy this is not easy for anybody in this room or outside this room in terms of trying to make decisions like this and and again and i'll say it it can probably come off as insensitive or uncaring and that's i don't know anybody sitting in this room that is like that and so um we're we're trying to do the very best we can with the information we're given in order to try to make sure we educate kids the best of our ability and there are opinions

038about that all over the place we see him we hear him we read them and and i i can appreciate every one of that doesn't minimize what anybody thinks uh inside or outside of this room we're just saddled with the the task of trying to figure out how to move this forward and how to continue to you know keep schools open to the best of our ability but yet trying to keep people as safe as possible and i know that's hard and things have been changed on us throughout the process and so um you know there's definitely plenty of sleepless nights related to this just trying to knowing that you know you've got the weight of over 35 to 40 000 people looking to you to help make decisions related to this and that's not

039just u5 that's everybody pretty much in this room and so i just think it's important people understand that and know that because we will definitely try to do this from our heart but and i've said it at numerous board meetings i i don't know what the right answer is to any of this and no one's whispered it in my ear just yet and so hopefully we can get as close to what we think is what's best for kids and best for staff so i wanted to add something on i i this is one issue that has brought in more emails than any other issue in my eight years on the board and not all of those emails get answered i personally am choosing that rather than read a few and answer a few i'm reading

040as many as i can and foregoing answering others because i think that it's important to get everybody's input and i sure that everybody else on the board is trying their best to keep up with the number of emails that we have received on this particular topic um it really has generated i don't know if i had a graph it would it would definitely by far be the longest bar on the graph um so i i think that we have had a lot of community input and i think we've tried to keep up with that the other thing i wanted to mention was just that when we're working our way through this process we're really there's the five c's there's children what is best for children there's the community what does the community want there's common

041ground how do we find common ground and i think that having five people from the community actually is a really good representation of of what everybody's thoughts are and when we come together and and the forces consensus when we build that consensus we really do um i think we come up with it with good solutions and then the fifth one is constraints and we are under a lot of constraints this is a worldwide pandemic i think most of us would want to make choices that are careful and and thoughtful as we go through this and i think everyone on the sport is trying to do that yeah along those same lines i think that one of the things that you you suggested last meeting dr santa cruz was that parents email us which they have

042and and since june well actually since all of this started we received a lot of emails um but you know i didn't take a tally i think it's been fairly even on both sides since you said that last week i think that about half the emails we've had have been absolutely keep the schools open and the other half have been um hybrid or being careful so you know you did ask for community input on that um you know my concern goes back to the fact that when everything changed a week ago with the uh governor's um announcement and we are now um doing something that's completely different than what was recommended even by the governor and then arizona school board association the arizona school administrators association i'm not sure where aea stands with this but

043they recommended that we go that we stick with the original recommendation which once again what does that mean is it maricopa county is it our district you know we we really we're really being having to make these decisions without a lot of and this is my opinion guidance and i think that's what makes it so so so really really really difficult to make this kind of a decision i've spent the last three days at a hospital because my husband had surgery and the protocols at a hospital are unbelievable i spent a lot of time talking to some nurses that have dealt with with uh covered patients and things like that and it's given me a different perspective about it and so you know i think i've always spoken how i feel but after sitting for

044three days listening to people who are dealing with this on a daily basis it kind of scared me so you know i'm certainly willing to talk about everything but you know they they've seen the worst of the worst and i get that you know you talk to someone that's dealing with it and then you talk to someone who's not you're going to get a whole different perspective i agree the information certainly runs the gamut and i appreciate the commentary from all of the board members now and in the future related to this issue we hear our community when they tell us there are some inconsistencies in applying the protocols at the school level well i'm not sure i would disagree that that doesn't occur because it's a human enterprise and sometimes people will apply their

045understanding differently hopefully their application of the understanding is not so far away from the actual guideline that it puts anyone in danger at least that would be my hope but to completely negate or disregard the idea that there may be inconsistencies i think would be preposterous on my part at least if not all of us we know that and yet that's not an intentional kind of behavior on the part of anyone the cleaning protocol the sanitization i'm absolutely certain that from time to time it is as intense as we want it to be and other times because of whatever circumstances may occur on a school campus or with a staff in that evening it isn't occurring as consistently not because that's an intentional issue it just is what happens in the day and yet others

046may say to us yes but you're in charge and you should know that and correct it immediately and i think that our leaders on the campuses when they are aware i would hope are addressing that as immediately as possible i say all of that and and many other things just so that at least on a global answer to some of the questions in the emails that we've received where we're not blind or deaf to those issues we know that that that could and does occur the other issues relate to how and when and why quarantines occur and who makes that call and when is it and why does a quarantine occur in one circumstance and not in another circumstance on campus x as opposed to campus why uh i don't know the answer to that

047question i'm not there on the day-to-day but we have health professionals in those areas who are making those calls and i am hoping if not imploring and believe that they are following the protocol there as closely as they possibly can and then the consultation that we have with county and state health as we need to uh one of my big questions ms frost is have has as any of the have any of the agencies at the state and county level expressed any concern with how we are operating as a district to you and requested that we modify some of our procedural and processes no they have not they have thanked us for answering the phone and for working closely with them they are up against a lot right now they recently announced that they would

048be asking us to do more of the investigation because they don't have enough staff that is a concern for myself and for our staff members because we have we have a limited number of staff as well um but we are being as thorough as possible with asking the teachers um the seating charts the coaches everybody involved to make sure that we're doing our due diligence and finding the students that need to quarantine so from that point of view it becomes a collaborative between our staff here as one agency with the county and state health as the other agency so and we have heard over and over again that the recommendations are guidelines and that the final decision is going to be placed in the lap of local boards and administrations and even when letters on

049[Music] community spread or outbreaks that's a collaborative effort as well we give them the information they tell us okay it's time for a letter is that a correct assessment that's very cartoon of the biggest frustrations i've heard from our community is for instance we kind of tried to drill down that an outbreak is two or more cases on a campus that are not related outside of the campus and so when you get a campus with two or more cases the community members are expecting to have that outbreak letter right away and what we are seeing and what i understand on our side of it is that county cannot declared an outbreak until they have completed every single investigation and made sure that none of those students had interaction outside of campus when you have two

050or three sports members or two or three members of a certain grade level they really have to make sure that those students aren't friends of a club outside of class or all those things and it takes time county is telling us that the phone interviews with the parents and the students are very lengthy sometimes they don't get a hold of them right away so it can take a week to finish an investigation and during that whole time we see the number that is above two and so we know that we are at that place where we could declare an outbreak but that's not our place um county has to do that part of it and so it's not us trying to withhold any information we just have to be patient and as cases go up

051their investigators have a larger and larger burden and it takes longer and longer i'm glad you said that ms frost because therein lies the reason for this discussion is we're looking for an interim kind of effort process for us to try to contain what we know might become something bigger or could become something bigger so we're looking at the percentages and the impact on local campuses individual campuses and whether or not doing it that way makes any sense as opposed to shutting down an entire district my guess would be that if we had all three in the red and community spread was rampant and we could validate for ourselves that that was absolutely necessary we would shut down that would be my guess i i'm one person on a five-member board but it would seem

052logical that that might be an approach we could take but uh that's what this is about and that's really all we're attempting to do we're not trying to get between the cdc local health and the district and uh try to communicate that we have all the answers we don't we're just looking for a process and doctor i just i i would like to for us to have a discussion if we can about um the three different criteria and miss frost you might not want to leave yet sorry you might as well just stay here you know when when i first started watching this whenever it was when we first started getting this information you know i just looked at all three of them and it didn't seem like any of them meant one more than

053the other but now that i'm looking at it and this is just this is what i'd like to have a discussion with everybody to me that the most important one is criteria one um the percent of cases that are actually you know there um covet like illness i mean that could be somebody every morning when i go to the hospital they said have you coughed sneezed run a fever or whatever and i think if i answered yes to one of those then they probably wouldn't let me in the hospital i don't know so i'm not sure that that's necessarily on the same playing field as as number one and then to me number two is kind of in the middle but from what i'm gathering is from what everything we've said they've all been equal

054up until you know right now so i'd like to have a discussion about do we think that one of them is more important than the other or they're all the same or or what okay do any of the three issues weigh equally or should be one one be weighted more heavily than the other mr carr did you have some commentary well i i was just gonna add to what you were saying and one of the reasons we're looking at how we can affect one school is we hope that by taking some proactive issues or proactive steps excuse me where we have a hot spot will actually contain help the community contain and therefore we never get to the three red you know so i mean we have we have to face the reality that may

055happen but that's i would just simply add to everything you said that that's that's our hope is that it doesn't spread to where we have to close the whole school district or we're even having that discussion in a meaningful way my question to you mr jetty is which one in your opinion weighs the heaviest the first one how would you read that just less than 100 cases per the actual cases is i think isn't that what number one is that total the actual cases where the other is just the cases two could also be positivity could be part of that but i'm not sure that covert like illnesses is something that i don't know i mean i i don't understand i think can i can i i think number i think cover like illnesses is

056important i think all three of them are important i do think they are because i i but i would be fine if you wanted to look you know if it goes substantial in two that we have another meeting but um because remember from the beginning we were trying to flatten the curve right and why are we trying to flatten the curve so that we have enough capacity in our doctors in our hospitals and our ventilators and all the things that we can actually treat and so to me it is important to see are these cases actually are we seeing cases where it's severe enough that people are going to the hospital with it or maybe there's a less severe strain that it's kind of you know changed a little bit i don't i'm just coming

057up with things but i'm just saying or maybe with the people that are getting are getting it the 20 to 44 year olds is a lot of it right now we don't see them going to the hospital as much so i do think there is room to look at that because it does put a it gives us information about how is this affecting our whole community and our ability to care for and treat and make sure that our community members have you know the treatments they need and the doctors and the ability to be treated so to me i i think there is some again you know the numbers that have been determined as minimal substantial minimal moderate and substantial i know many of those come from the cdc as well as the state and

058county now um i think it's important that we watch the trends and just start saying are they you know are we trending up are we seeing a huge like a exponential increase a sharp increase are we seeing a plateau you know i think that's to me is also telling so that's my thought i don't know if anybody else has thought no i i really appreciate that because you know i think that that we're being put in a position to interpret data that i know personally i'm not trained in so that's why i asked this question is you know is there is there a difference or are they all the same one outcome good mrs brock how about we do this one concern i have about the cover-like illnesses especially as we reach flu season is

059that there's no differentiation besides two of the symptoms and so if that's not a delineation of an actual positive covalent test then that those symptoms could be anything so to use a benchmark that is you know not even quite a full assessment of an illness to me is a little bit worrisome i i can't i can't think i think i read this in the arizona republic but there was some concern that hospitals and somebody may have to correct me because i'm just remembering something i read um hospitals don't have to report the covet-like illness but it's it's not a metric i mean i'm sure they tried at the beginning but it's it hasn't changed much over the time that we've had it because it's not one that's well reported or well documented it's staying like

060it stayed it's stayed lower it's gone lower it's stayed at two or three percent week after week after week and will not necessarily go into red that's unless we start seeing more flu patients and then they put that in the criteria i i don't know personally i find it strange i'm not a trained epidemiologist either but i just find it strange that we're using that as a criteria when the common cold also fits those symptoms the flu fits those symptoms allergies can fit those symptoms so yeah you know i i've looked a lot at the different metrics and trying to understand what drives them as well and every each of the metrics has its positive negative so to me you almost have to look at them holistically i mean if i look at the cases

061100 cases per 100 000 that number dipped down at one point to 33 the week that started september 6th and if we're following the current data the week that's just concluded we're trending towards about 121 in that number based on the live data on ade so my question naturally becomes maybe this says something about me in a not so positive way i don't know but what led to the 88 increase and there's two elements that that adjust that one is the number of people being tested and the other is the positivity rate and mathematically you can isolate those two variables so if i look at it though through through those variables and and compare it that 88 increase 49 of those have increased because of positivity so we would have gone from 33 to 82

062but we're at 121. well the 39 is because the number of tests that were administered that week of september 6 versus the tests that were administered last week have more than doubled almost tripled if i'm remembering the numbers right so that's driving an increase of that number in another cell so we have you almost have to look at it holistically because that number can be greatly influenced if the number of people double if positivity stayed exactly the same and the number of people being tested doubled that number doubles so you know we have to look at what's behind the numbers to understand what's what's happening um when i look at the positivity rate and i've said this before if we had random testing or if we had widespread testing in the absence of random testing

063this number would be much more accurate to me but again it's a self-selected number oh i'm not feeling well i'll go i'll go get tested so it's it doesn't in and of itself it doesn't necessarily represent the population of the whole now the fact that the testing is going up and the positivity rate is going up that would tell me you know more people are feeling symptoms and there's more people positive so to me that's probably a a metric that i would consider because it it considers both those those factors but even then it can fall or decline greatly depending on who chooses to go get tested or who chooses not to it's it's very self-selecting um you know in the hospital visits early on they were saying this was the best early indicator of

064of whether it was widespread people were going to hospital but as as you indicated the number has varied a little bit it's ticked up and and actually this the most recent week appears like it's going to tick down ever so slightly but it i this is my interpretation it may or may not be right i think as people have gotten used to the concept of covid they're less likely to go to the hospital immediately oh i've got symptoms if they don't get severe i don't need to run to the hospital um it that's a natural tendency in human nature as we become as we become accustomed to a specific risk we react differently than when it's an unknown risk well as more and more people are accustomed to it and they're seeing people the large

065majority people recover in you know three to five days i don't need to run to the hospital so people aren't going there as often that at least that's what i've read and that's that kind of my interpretation is the long story of that missing jetty is i'm not sure there's one metric better than the other because each one of them has flaws that's why we have to look at things holistically in in my opinion other comments board members then i think it you know we are going to hit a point here where we're going to have to determine in order to assist dr mccord and staff and ms frost with when and how which percentages we're going to use and i'm sure that will come in in a motion uh i'm hearing us say that

066in concept we agree with validating this procedure of when we move to hybrid and when we move to virtual am i incorrect in that assumption so we we agree that we are in the same ballpark relative to creating a process for that to occur the next piece is is it 1 1.5 and 3 or is it 1 2 and 3. that comes when we get to a point in a motion i don't know what other dynamics we need to be concerned with uh dr mccord i think outlined them quite well in the verbiage you provided in terms of a road map and an understanding anything you wanted to add to that october court no i think that you know i i mentioned camp overtly earlier there at 20 and and again that's at a little

067over one percent and um i only say this that that there's a possibility that we could have a school going hybrid on monday and that determination a lot of the things we talked about in terms of processes could possibly kick into gear tonight and and get rolling tomorrow so i don't know how much we want to just discuss percentages before we get to the part of the board meeting where we talk about motions and so forth but in looking at the high schools you know we have a wide range of sizes we have high schools that are as big as highland high school over 3000 kids and we have canyon valley that's 218. my suggestion is that we maybe take canyon valley and gilbert classical academy apply a different percentage to them maybe a little

068higher percentage than these other high schools that are much bigger because you know you get to canyon valley that's at one percent that's just two cases and these are kids who really really need to be on campus and engaged with a teacher so i'm just thinking because of their size um maybe we applied the size that we would for an elementary although they do have you know classes and they do mingle more um then in elementary school i'm just just looking at that i just think that's something we should consider as we think about what percentages we want to apply okay anything else are you comfortable with the information you have as we move to our brief business meeting okay i'm assuming we are and if that's the case and dr mccord have nothing else

069to add to this no sir then we will move to item 3 3.01 and that is adjourning this work study session and we will stand adjourned we'll move to item 4 brief board business meeting and we'll call the meaning to order and item 4.01 and mrs wilson would you please call the rope dr charles santa cruz here miss laurie wood here mr reed carr here michela you daddy here miss jill humphreys here mr president all board members are present you have a quorum thank you mrs wilson we move to item five consent agenda items item 5.01 is approval of consent agenda item is there a motion summit thank you ms humphries is there a second second thank you mr jetty discussion seeing none then we will move to the vote on consent agenda items all

070those improved approving consent agenda items as listed please signify by saying i i those opposed the same motion carries five zero action item six six point zero one is fy 2020 budget revision number three dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members we have before you fiscal year 2020 budget revision number three do the enrollment uh stabilization the finance team is requesting approval for the revision under ars 15-915 budget correction process i have just funny bets here and anybody else just you bonnie just bonnie tonight to present good evening dr santa cruz and governing board members so there are only three pages that are impacted with this enrollment stabilization grant so it's a very simple revision we are obligated to revise the budget so that we can have the authority to spend enrollment

071stabilization grant monies once they are once our award is approved we're expecting to know that at the end of november so for this one you can see on the front page robert if you could go ahead and zoom in on the pink the pink cell there so it's the enrollment stabilization grant to remind you is a federal grant associated with the um the cobit pandemic and you can see that that we move that up to 38 million 482 667 which is 12 million dollars more than what was reported on revision number two any questions on that so note that the grants are all federal projects that's why it's 38 million the portion that is in the enrollment stabilization grant is 12 million dollars so um they've they've zoomed back down for me again so now

072go ahead and move to the next page that's impacted let's see not quite so this is the next page of the budget that's been attached to the agenda item that is impacted you can see the federal projects that's in the very first column and you can see where we have the federal projects that are funds 300 to that's the range of federal funds that the enrollment stabilization grant number is under and you can see that that number is 14.9 million again 12 million of that is represents the enrollment stabilization grant the other amount is a combination of a couple under the 300 to 399 that make up the additional about two million three million dollars to get it to the 14.9 million so any questions on that thank you robert and then the final page

073is of course the summary page and dr santa cruz this will be the page that we need your signature on once you approve the budget revision and you can see oh i'm sorry is it this let's see it's on the third page there we go and you can see that that's the same 38.4 million that was on the very first page that represents the total amount of all federal projects for gilbert public schools so we chose to mimic some of our strategies in the past to highlight cells or rows that are changed and these are the only three areas in which changes occurred and they're very simple changes and so that's all i have for you okay before we move to discussion allow the presentation before is there a motion i approve i move that

074we approve the uh revision number three to the fiscal year 2020 budget second second mr jenny thank you discussion anyone well i just thank you for all the hard work i mean you make it so transparent there's no no questions left so thank you i really appreciate it and just information i believe that miss betts will need all of your signatures on the document before you leave so please see miss wilson before you check out this evening so we can get the appropriate signatures on the appropriate line any other discussion seeing none we will take a vote all those in favor of item 6.01 please signify by saying i i posed the same motion carries five zero hey item six point zero two dr mccord anything to add at this point no sir i think

075we've we've hit this subject from a lot of different angles we have um so going back to july 28th when we were making motions on the fly we have a template motion that i'd like to share with everybody and so we can go through that part of it uh it's up to you guys but i just wanted to share with you by another board member so i wanted to make sure and i brought copies too so um i if if you don't mind dr santa cruz i'll just talk a little bit about well let's uh i mean i'm wondering here and i'm needing some help will this be the motion that will open the discussion well let me let me make a more do we want to provide a motion to create emotion so let

076me make a motion for discussion very good okay that we just because i feel like if we just discuss first if someone else has a motion that they want to put forward as we did last time when we got towards the end of the meeting we had various motions and then we selected and worked on one i have this if someone else wants to put something forward we can discuss otherwise if you want me to make this as a motion i can go ahead and make this as a motion okay let's open it up with your motion to discuss item okay so 6.02 yes so we just need a second meter second second okay any discussion on that all those in favor of the motion then please signify by saying aye aye all right so

077sorry can you cut so we're voting to accept this no we're voting to discuss this open discussion on this proposed okay all right okay okay so let's do that again so that we get it for the record item 6.02 a motion to discuss the proposed motion those in favor please signify by saying aye all right those opposed same motion carries five zero i'll defer to miss humphries who want to discuss this please okay so um i because we i felt like july 28th would have gone a little smoother if we'd had some written out motions to look at i chose to write one out um and we can we yes can you put it up there and i will gentlemen in the back if i could have the screen i will read it out loud

078just for our audience gilbert public schools governing board prioritizes the academic social emotional and physical well-being of students and staff during the worldwide covet 19 pandemic it is the goal of gilbert public schools district to mitigate the spread of the virus within its schools and within the community gilbert public schools will continue in-person instruction for those enrolled until due to the spread of coven 19 one of the following guidelines shows the need for change on a school-by-school basis to the hybrid a through l and through z model of instruction a guidelines established by gilbert public school show coven 19 cases per week higher than blank for high schools blank for junior high schools and blank for elementary schools meaning that we can fill in the percentages that we want b two out of three guidelines

079for gilbert public schools district as established by the arizona department of health services and reported on by the maricopa county department of health services shows substantial transmission read for two weeks these guidelines those guidelines show more than one hundred cases per hundred thousand residents more than seven percent positivity for testing and more than ten percent covered like illness at hospitals as substantial transmission red see two out of three guidelines see above for each zip code within the boundaries of gilbert public schools as established by the arizona department of health services and reported by maricopa county department of health services show substantial transmission for two weeks gilbert public schools district will return students and staff to virtual learning for two weeks should coven 19 cases continue to rise within the school community or within the wider

080gilbert and mesa community should cases decrease during the two weeks of hybrid learning students and staff would return to in-person instruction this motion unless extended by the board will end june 30th 2021 so i i wrote this trying to think of what what are the elements that we want in place for motion i am happy for input edits on on this crossing things out i just felt like it would give us a good place to start because it talks about the things that we want to establish with percentages but also these other metrics that we're trying to follow for both the district and the zip codes within the district should a zip code go into red we could then consider um closing the schools within that zip code mrs humphries where did you get the

081seven percent is that is that what this what would go into red and that yeah that's that is what makes it go into substantial commission transmission i thought it was ten percent yeah just to clarify that's the one metric that doesn't follow it's the middle of yellow okay again but but you're you're right again if we followed the specific metrics that they set two of the three match the yellow but that one moderate was defined as five to ten and the specific metric was seven percent okay but well that was for that when they said that when it i i read that it said you know under seven percent for re opening or something along those lines i don't remember the exact wording but i was like okay so once we're reopened what what then

082what so we can change that if we need to move that up to the 10 percent um that was i was trying to understand it to the best of my ability i just want to reiterate my concern as it relates to zip codes because i think that's that's an important factor with the exception that the assumption is that the zip code listed also is consistent in conveying that those people in that zip code are students in that school and that may or may not be true and and we can cross that one off if that's the consensus of the board i mean that was just the one that i i put in well and because the zip codes also don't cover the district you know they don't align with our boundaries so there can be

083a zip code that it's partially in our boundaries and partially out of our boundaries or mostly out of our boundaries and just a small piece i wouldn't want to mislead either because i know that as health services and the superintendent review the data they look at zip codes and consider all of the factors that are out there for them to review so i'm not discounting that i'm just wanting to be careful not to miscommunicate what triggers i i my question was so if we say for each zip code i mean i was getting kind of the same way it seems repetitive of b but i was trying to make sure that there was no confusion over that so if we're saying if a school is in a zip code and that zip code's there we're

084going to take that school we're going to isolate it further are we saying that we're going to look at the aggregate of all the zip codes i was thinking mostly because i did look at the zip codes and we are getting into territory in our zip codes you know some some of our zip codes have 120 cases per hundred thousand so i was thinking if a zip code in our boundaries turned red that we would consider closing the schools in that zip code that's just my thought because what i part of this was i wanted to thread the needle between the concern that setting these percentages at the schools i mean a hundred cases per hundred thousand residents is one tenth of one percent so if we're setting our cases at one percent of the

085school population now that represents a much broader area of the community because we have children and parents and siblings and grandparents and extended family but um so that trying to thread the needle between those who are concerned at is setting percentages that are higher than one tenth of one percent because um i think i think it's hard to close a school if you have for example campo verde if you have two cases to send 1998 kids to hybrid or virtual because you have two cases i feel is taking into account the social emotional and academic impact for those other students and so that's why i was including the zip code but we i'm open to rewriting we can take the zip codes off and just use the district boundaries if that's our preference i i

086appreciate your work in this i just want to make sure i understand what you're okay looking i i'm trying to think about i would trigger a review of that school community in my head well and i'm i'm trying to think probably the elementary schools we don't have any that schools that cross zip codes but certainly at the junior high and high schools we do so do you go by the combination of two zip codes or by the greater of the two zip codes or i mean to me i'm not sure how we apply it to those schools well i i assumed that we would just use the zip code that the school sits within even though the boundaries might cross zip codes in a different way so so in that scenario i'm looking at highland

087junior that sits in a mesa zip code and i'm looking at highland high that sits really just across the street for all practical purposes that sits in a gilbert zip code but have essentially the same boundaries yeah so we might close the junior high and not the high school well that could be problematic [Laughter] i'm just trying to think through scenarios yeah and that's you know this was just my thoughts and and if if we are of a consensus that we don't want to use the zip codes i'm fine with that i just was thinking trying to i want to address people's concerns that we're not following the metrics but i want to address the concerns of people that want their kids in school because of the social emotional impact and the academic impact to

088and it's we all know this is really hard so no i i greatly appreciate your work i mean anything anytime you put something out and people throw darts at this is not okay this is not intended to be you know i'm just trying to think through the scenarios and the practicality of it i think we could just cross that one off if we're um we are at least committed to gilbert public schools but i also didn't include any metrics for the state or the county county wide metrics or statewide metrics feeling that those were too far out of our realm for us to really use them as a valid measure of what is going on with our in our community i think it's important for us to at least communicate to our community that we're

089going to review and assess all available data to make the decision is that what that one is trying to get at yes i i would say that that is and maybe we can um put something in where we direct the superintendent to consider um add some language in there on the zip code part because that's definitely well zip code would be a data point yeah okay so leaving it generically open to reviewing and assessing all available data well that's that's where we probably would want to add some wording where we're directing the superintendent because i haven't put that wording in so that that would mean that so far looks like we might be okay with this as a motion with some modification to see yeah i liked your idea of not including c but because

090i think that b when we're looking specifically at gilbert public school district which is the when the county goes through and does they've figured out how to include those zip codes appropriately in our district i think that that would be a that would cover it what i'm hearing is that we just cross off c is that that i think the most important piece to me is that is is i think it gets back to maybe we don't have clubs have actual school cases but if the community transmission gets high i think that we have to look at that because it's going to get to the schools if the community i mean that's that's my opinion that's why and i think you have it covered in two okay well you're saying in b let's keep and

091b this is a very long motion for emotion let's just cross c off okay let's make it simple and um maybe we can add a sentence um you know directing the superintendent to also look at zip codes as he considers as well as the state looking at the county i'm just saying we've always had the county and the district side by side yeah just i'm saying just look at all the data if we're looking at it so but i could be fine with this too so something on the order of superintendent is authorized to review appropriate data and make a recommendation to the board so so let me clarify just my understanding are we separating a and b i mean i had interpreted a as whatever we set those metrics at that is a trigger

092point right um and i'm gonna go back to our wednesday conversation if we hit x percent for high schools and i think it's actually a modified x percent based on our in our discussion because if we know that five of the cases are all from the same family maybe we consider that differently but but with that caveat it's x percent at high schools y percent at junior high z percent of elementary schools that becomes a trigger point in which the superintendent wouldn't bring back to the board necessarily but would notify the school that's going back online right or the hype or sorry i'm sorry thank you thank you for correcting me sorry for panicking in the room everybody calm down um whereas b i'm interpreting the conversation b if we hit two out of three

093metrics then the superintendent is bringing it back to the board for a discussion versus a trigger point where he just makes the decision um i was considering that if they were two out of three guidelines were in red for two weeks that that would automatically trigger another action by the superintendent too okay so he wouldn't be if we want to have him bring it back to the board we need to add that language that's the way that i interpreted the motions i read it but then we were talking about he'd bring it back um for with a recommendation well that sounds like it's not him making it it sounds like he's bringing it back and we'll vote on it so i just i like your interpretation i yield to that i i just want to

094make sure we're all clear because when we when we were going to bring it back with the recommendation that's not what i was reading so i was in order to move to the entire district virtual it would go hybrid first right hybrid first hybrid first for the entire district and then virtual if what what triggers virtual down below is what she's saying the if the um so in the bottom half in the last paragraph uh gilbert public schools district will return students and staff to virtual learning for two weeks should coven 19 cases continue to rise within the school community or within the wider gilbert and mesa community so if if we're in hybrid and they still go up then after two weeks we would go to virtual should cases decrease during the two weeks

095of hybrid learning students and staff would return to in-person instruction phase back in face vacuum are you talking so that doesn't have anything to do with the substantial transmission that just says or the percent positivity that just says it just means we're not moving back into the numbers haven't moved back into the yellow range um but we could stay in hybrid i mean that's that's the discussion would we stay in hybrid would we go to virtual if the numbers continue to rise that that was the what i was trying to figure out is where we have the trigger between hybrid and then virtual and that's kind of what i was concerned about or we can just put a motion we'll come back for a meeting and have a big long discussion when we hit some

096place so i guess my my question would be i liked all right um so you know obviously i want to stay in school i mean well i think we're looking for a way to to stay in school if we can do so with with the acceptable level of safety um we're not trying to risk people's site but people's health or or life and we're not also not trying to risk their emotional and mental health it's a balance we're trying to find where we have triggers for coming back is is the indication so if two out of three are red we're going to go to hybrid based on b is it when two out of three are yellow or green we come back from virtual to hybrid or back to i mean is that the way

097we're reading that or uh or is it just a decrease i mean the way it reads just a decrease it could be the way i wrote it it's just a decrease but that i got as far as i could i'm a collaborative decision maker and i needed input well and i'm looking at you because you wrote it but that certainly is a question to everybody um i'm just trying to make sure that we're we're all on the same page here and and again i recognize that we got to where we are through a compromise to follow a metric that we didn't know at the time and the metric came out and we've been trying to follow it and then last week the metric and how it's applied not the metric itself but how the metric

098is applied changed which there may be scientific reasons for we there may not we don't know we just know it changed um but given that particularly that three of my fellow board members compromised on on that vote to get where we are i'm looking specifically those three in in the spirit of recognizing you've compromised to get us here i have to honor that to feel like i've got a level integrity in my previous vote so i'm i'm asking do we set those triggers back following the metrics do we set our own metrics what would you say what would be your preference i mean if we're going to like when we adopted it we adopted the specific metrics which was the seven percent and that's what's written in here now the metric has changed to not

099that specific metric to the but to the red yellow metric so i'm not sure where you're coming from on that and i'm i'm trying to honor the spirit of that compromise in i mean my preference would be to to get us back to school assuming that it's safe at the 10 percent but i i don't know if that's safe and i don't know if that's the spirit of compromise and just for discussion sake my my sense of it would be that just as you graduate to virtual you graduate from virtual so if you're on virtual for the period of time and there's there is a data point that says okay we're okay let's move back to hybrid for the 14 days or the two weeks and then if assess that and then when we are

100at that appropriate point we go back to in-person learning that's just for discussion sake in my thought as i understand your concern mr jenny i'm a little bit confused so hopefully maybe you can help me out here a would be we would set a percentage correct for each school so let's say we say one percent for high school and one of the high schools goes into hybrid but nobody else does number two though is and is meant for the entire district correct um yes i mean well she would be b um well because then we would be in uh substanti it's not three metrics insubstantial which is what it was changed to but it's two metrics and substantial and kind of um trying to knowing that people want to be in school and they really

101desire to have their kids in school i'm trying to kind of i don't because i don't think covet like illness is really going to go into red but i i think there's other metrics that could show that we really have a problem in our community right and i guess at that point if it was the entire district then we would all be going into hybrid and then we would all be going to virtual learning if going into hybrid for two weeks and did not bring the transmission down but what's most important to me is that you know i i think i understand using the the different schools because you know what one school might have none and something else another school has 20. but i really feel very strongly that if as a community we

102uh whether it's school kids or whatever we get into the red in two areas then that means that we need to go into hybrid so i think this is what i if i'm understanding it that's exact that's what you're saying yes i'm trying to honor those that have asked us to continue to use them and then you're the last paragraph or the last one is not the last paragraph yeah would be that if it continue if we're in hybrid as a whole district and everything continues to trend up then we st we go to virtual yes and if it trends down we go back to school we go back to hybrid okay and then go back to school and and well i guess we're in hybrid so if we go to virtual then we would

103go back to hybrid and then back to school okay and then within that within that there still could be a school that maybe would have to stay yes yes that that could happen so for example say if the district were all we had you know maybe 10 positivity and 150 cases per hundred thousand so those two are red um for the entire district then we go into uh virtual for two weeks oh sorry yes sorry i didn't say what i meant okay perfect i'm just trying to clarify to see if i'm gonna go on a hybrid for two weeks and then if if those that positivity end or the cases went higher we would we would move to virtual and then move back just as we did um earlier in the year and and everything

104is within a two week yeah everything's and and i i i'm i i do have this concern i'm very concerned for teachers um whether you know two weeks is a a good time frame for this i i heard lots of good feedback about when we did hybrid from the 8th to the 21st that people felt that worked really well and and they got some were saying i wish we could do this all the time just have half the class that we can get so much done and we can really build those relationships and do a lot of learning so um i'm i'm just con i'm i'm just trying to honor those who really want us to follow the metrics and those and try and thread that needle between those who really want us to follow

105the metrics and be extremely cautious and careful which we should be and those who want their children in person because they've seen the impacts of being at home and not being in the classroom and not being as engaged in their learning can i can i interject for just a second so when we're talking about this now we've got again and i think it's important because this is what i think through our community off from the get-go and and i don't blame them two sets of metrics here we got the county and then we have which is up here and then of course we have our gps boundaries what would this be referring to or would it be specific to one or the other are you talking about b yes b is our uh gps boundaries

106okay and maybe we should um maybe add boundaries in after district uh yes two out of three guidelines for gilbert public schools district boundaries as established by the arizona department of health services and reported on by maricopa county department of health so that would be this metric here yes the one that that we've followed very closely this is this is my sheet but i've followed it through the weeks could i ask a question just one thought again would there be any reason or way to or reason we'd want to or need to or should stay in hybrid rather than go to virtual what could be a what could be a you know is it necessarily i i just don't know i'm just trying to figure out if that two-week thing necessarily triggers that we have

107to could we stay in hybrid for a month rather than well i think if there weren't a substantial increase you know if it if it went from say it's a hundred cases and it goes to 110 or it goes to 108 i think if there were not a substantial increase then i think we could stay in hybrid that's my i don't know what the number is or how but i just wondered if that could be if you know if like you said if if we if we increase by one you know after two weeks yes does that mean we need to then maybe we do but i'm just saying do we absolutely need to go to virtual or are we doing what we need to in hybrid and it's just we need to extend the

108hybrid a little bit longer yes we could do that we could i don't know what the trigger could be for that look i know we're all hoping that this conversation on b is hypothetical but the reality is based on the zip code data when the data comes out tomorrow we will have one week in the red on the hundred per hundred thousand and the following week is probably going to be higher than that based on what i'm seeing on the in zip code data yeah we're probably going to be somewhere around 115 when the data comes out tomorrow and probably 127 ish in in two weeks that number is subject to change because there's cases are retroactive so we're going to be in the red yeah positivity is still below the ten percent it's it's

109right at seven percent the most current week is higher than that but uh it's such partial data that it's you can't draw a conclusion on it um but my point being we're this is a very realistic scenario that three weeks from now we could be have we could have uh within three or four weeks we could have two of these metrics in red in the entire district and hybrid yeah right yeah based based on the zip code data so um i think we better recognize that we're not speaking hypothetically we're speaking with the reality of of what may happen maybe we could add some some wording to this motion that we go into hybrid for two weeks um and then we would have to have a board meeting to to decide upon if we needed

110virtual learning or that the superintendent would make a recommendation to us to the board if we to go into virtual learning if we continue to be in the red in two out of three categories for more than two weeks for more than two weeks i i mean as much as i am a believer in trigger points i would prefer that only because you know if if we're close as close as we are right now yet we have how many schools that have no cases yeah do we really shut down the whole district you know and if we look at the data right now and a week ago we would have said a different area of the school if we look at the data right now most of our cases are at two schools one elementary

111and one high school that sit literally adjacent to each other on the property um does that skew it do we close the other side of the district that's significantly lower um you know we are pretty widespread and you know as much as we like to think we're a small community other than when there's athletics or other events which there's not between the two schools i'm going to use my example because of their size we don't have a lot of movement from desert ridge over to camp alberti yes there's some and i know people bump up against people who bump up against people etc so again i i i'm going to recognize that my fellow board members retreat uh compromised a great deal in opening the schools and so i'm i'm in that same spirit i'm

112i'm compromising so i'm bringing up points but i guess i'm i'm looking for ways that we can keep as schools open as much as possible i i'm not looking to risk people's safety we know that a number of teachers and a number of parents came back based on the assumption that we were going to follow these metrics we also know that we have a significant number of people who are going to be very upset if we close their schools beyond well at all but beyond a certain time period so we're going to hear from it regardless we know that so just trying to bring those points out so i've put some alternate wording on that last paragraph um gilbert public schools board will meet to decide uh whether students and staff return to virtual learning

113and i'm just going to cross out the two weeks should cover nice 19 cases continue to rise within the school community is that language that would help you with that so so we would go to hybrid but in order to go to virtual we would have to have another board meeting and another discussion is that towards pleasure which will be painful and we're all uh looking forward to that pain yeah well then again and just to reiterate if i'm i'm capturing this a little bit in my head so based on your information in maybe three weeks we could have two of the three in red for two weeks possibly and who knows if it would go down or then looking looking at the live data i expect that the next two releases tomorrow and next

114week or hundred per hundred thousand will be positive um or sorry we'll be substantial thank you we'll be above that red that will be the second week on that one yes so next this week will be the first week next week will be the second um if the the the the positivity rate right now uh the most current week if i remember right was was right at seven slightly above seven for the this is we're looking at county we're not looking at you know because we don't have school district specific information in live data it is going to be right at seven maybe you know tenth or two cents above seven percent when we move to the week that of october 25th through the end the current week which historically the first couple days the

115monday tuesday data trends higher and then it kind of levels out as the week goes on but last week was an exception to that is trending above nine percent so if that continues that trend when that data comes out two weeks from the end of this week's two and a half weeks that one may be trending towards red so it would probably be four weeks before we see that but right that's and that's i think that's a good point because the the 100 per 100 000 would be in that would be four weeks of substantial for that in order to catch up with the two weeks of positivity correct yeah yes now now i will say in terms of cases abc 15's reporter made a comment the other day that statistically they're seeing that the

116cases may be on this current wave may be cresting now he didn't say it is cresting he said it maybe it may be there are some statistical elements of the numbers that show that it might be kind of cresting we we're all hopeful that's the case because frankly i want i don't even want to have this conversation but we have to have it yeah and the possibility exists that that could go down below into the yellow again and then the other one rises so we're still at one instead of two i think if we do this we need to separate it out a little bit just because the first paragraph says about the school-by-school basis but then part b is actually addressing the whole district so i think i think i would keep that so

117just have a yeah and then i would say additionally um the district would change as a whole to the hybrid a to l m to z model of instruction and then put b in if two out of the three guidelines for gilbert public schools boundaries would that be okay you're gonna have to write that down okay okay well i'm just saying just because to me otherwise at the top it just says school by school basis but we're talking in part b we're talking about the whole district it's not school by school okay so can you read those changes to me again so i would just say keep it how it is okay and then i would say another paragraph above b i would say additionally um let's see the entire district would move to hybrid

118a through l m through z model of instruction if and then b okay two out of the three district yeah if that's okay with everybody that was just one thing that i think trying to be clear it's a two-part motion that's what i'm thinking that's what i'm wondering if we're doing is that getting close to a comfortable area are we and we did we decide 10 to be substantial or did you or we changed it to ten percent okay okay i didn't know what yeah it is why did you change it to ten because they said that was the substantial once it gets above ten percent the seven percent was on another that you had to get two below seven percent to initially reopen that that was uh yeah that was the area that was

119the original metric that was specific to reopening schools 10 7 is yellow but 10 would be red yeah and that's that's the criteria that the county came up with yes well that's that's the criteria that the arizona department of health came up with okay because the county is slightly different but i went with we said the arizona department of health metrics so i went with those so read the read the sentence out additionally okay additionally um the entire district would move uh sorry to the hybrid a through l m through z model this okay sorry would move i put in school by school and i don't need that no it additionally the entire district would move to hybrid um to the hybrid eighth a through l m through z model of instruction if two out

120of three guidelines for gilbert public schools district as established by the arizona department of health services and reported on by the maricopa county department of health services show substantial transmission for two weeks and then i give the again read it again we're talking about the gps boundaries on this yes right so should we take out some of that and just say that specifically well because the prior wording was we can just add some wording at the beginning two out of the three guidelines for gilbert public schools boundaries as established by the department i think you're just trying to make it separate it from the previous yeah he's just i think dr mccord is trying to say is it too much to have all the arizona department health services reported on by maricopa county department of

121health services does that do people get confused which which one we're looking at they do which chart we're looking at here okay and this is the way my brain works it sounds like we're saying that school district was established i feel like we have been these days well we could then we can take out and just go published by the maricopa county department of health and just take out that whole phrase and that simplifies it because it's it's it is you know i if we take a 10 minute break i can probably rewrite it in a better way but um that's good on the fly through the three guidelines for gilbert public schools district boundaries as published by the maricopa county department of health services show substantial transmission read for two weeks yes and then

122ice that these guidelines show more than 100 cases per 100 000 residents more than ten percent positivity for testing the more than ten percent coveted like illness at hospitals as substantial transmission and did you put in anything about we would meet again um yes down in that last full paragraph public schools gilbert public schools board will meet to decide whether students and staff return to virtual learning should covert 19 cases continue to rise within the school community or within the wider gilbert and mesa community should cases decrease during the two weeks of hybrid learning students and staff would return to in-person instruction so we only have to meet if it's going up to decide what we're going to do i think it's it's really important that um you know as much as we would like

123to give all of this to dr mccord so he could take all the flack i think it's important because i think there there was a school district that did give this to the superintendent to make these decisions and as much as i think that it's important for you to be able to make a lot of decisions in this particular situation i think we have to all be a part of it and not just you i think you're already taking enough heat from it on a day-to-day basis and then we could add that the sentence undersea that dr santa cruz had said we could add that to the end of this paragraph where it says return to in-person instruction after that we could say the superintendent is authorized to review appropriate data and make recommendations for

124the board if you want to add that but you're saying make recommendations to the questions yeah that helps them out are you dr mccord just gave us a minute time limit so we better hurry uh hey well the computer it won't snooze it's gonna restart on me here in a few um do we so i can add that at any point if we take a break and i'll i'll put it on this i think i've captured everything else i think that before we vote it would be good we need to talk about the percentages yes want to go there first let's add percentages and then then we'll take a recess and what we at least what i'm summarizing here is we have a motion in three parts one of the parts relates to the concept

125and the trigger point percentages the next part relates to an additional element that would cause us to move into a online instruction and hybrid instruction hybrid and online yeah i can say it could be either but as a district as a whole the third one would be a meeting convened by the board should there be a need to move to an entire district online instructional mode so in the second part we're just moving to hybrid it's only in the third part then we have a meeting in order for n to go back to virtual that's what i wanted to clarify okay so and then the last portion is that that meeting that we convene to make that ultimate decision yes okay percentages for discussion sake uh proposing to you one two and three i i

126don't know if this is possible i am concerned about canyon valley if it's down to one maybe we could just name it separately and put a percentage on canyon valley because it's such a small school i don't know they want to go to three but at least two where they would have four four cases i mean four cases isn't very many but we if we went to three or seven those are just for discussion stakes so uh if you want to move canyon valley and i heard you see i did say gilbert classical academy they they you know it's one percent is six whereas these other high schools those you know highlanders 32 cases i really wouldn't want to get higher than 32 cases at one school even though it's a big school so i

127i think let's keep gilbert classical academy and but i think move canyon valley maybe let's just say like you said three or four i just again i think i i wouldn't want to go higher than three but if we went to three that's seven not three percent i'm saying three cases or four pieces let's just say a number of cases okay um what number of cases then i would say three or four four maybe should we anything else i was gonna say five that's two and a half percent is five and i can just add that down here i mean i'll just just add canyon valley uh canyon valley established four elementary schools and four count and four five cases for canyon valley do we feel like what about rise and well rises only goes

128from zero to one so we can put it another you know it's only 41 students so they wouldn't want to go higher than two or three and i'm just i'm just asking because i mean right now under this criteria we would essentially close with one case yeah and and i look similar to some of our smaller elementary schools you know burke um well no if we're three percent you're probably okay my question is is three percent for the elementaries does that accommodate the needs of students and teachers in the best way is it something that from conversations that we've all had or is that too high because it is three percent is you know getting to 20 cases on some campuses i i think that is a little high i i think i would be

129more comfortable at two percent i mean that keeps you kind of in the 14 10 17 13 range for some of the bigger schools um whereas if you get to three percent that's like 28 cases at greenfield elementary yeah that's a lot of cases in one week and we know that the elementary was specifically was very difficult the online mode delivery but we're talking about going to hybrid at this point yeah and hopefully going back but again it's that balance of trying to meet the needs the very best that we can we want our staff to feel like they're being cared for and taken care of we want our families to know that we want health and safety but also learning and emotional health so i'm not comfortable with three percent i think that's too

130high okay so one and two one two two go half you wanna do one one and a half two one two two one one and a half two do i hear four one one and a half two and and this is for a single week correct so if they hit it for a single week we go hybrid for two weeks yes i i i i don't i hardly want to say this but i think we could go some of these bigger junior highs we could go 20 21 22 that seems really high though i think we should stick with the percentage you're saying one percent that's two percent there are those numbers if we do the one and a half percent we're more in the teens 15 16 17 12 13. and and i've written

131down five cases for canyon valley school and three classes for rice junior high so we're gonna do one percent for high schools 1.5 for juniors and two for elementary and then we're going to be specific for the other programs for the for canyon valley and rice junior high but miss humphries is also saying what would you think of doing two percent for the junior high look at the junior high look at the last page we go if we're gonna do one percent for high school it does go a lot higher it goes higher so i think i'm good with one and a half percent okay i mean i we we have to see how this works if it will work and then we have to adjust accordingly so do you have one that's one when

132you say it just accordingly i need to understand that a little bit differently i mean if it's not i don't want to come every week and readjust a percentage is that what would you no i'm just saying mr jetty if it's not working we have another meeting the very last time we discussed it okay yeah look at the very last page right before thank you so where did we end up with the percentages again and five cases for canyon valley school and three cases for rise junior high school it really those numbers keep us in the teens except for our well actually just except for a couple of really big schools we get into the 20s i don't know one one percent and then 1.5 and then two percent we're in the teens for every

133school except um highland high school gilbert high and desert ridge and those would be highland high would be 32 gilbert high would be 21 and desert ridge would be 24. that one percent and campbell verdi is at 19. so we we've already hit a trigger you know even go ahead ms frost come up even looking at like burke at two percent that's still six cases that's in houston do you want to say something miss russ go right ahead okay um i just did want to point out i heard you mentioned that we're considering um if the numbers hit that percentage within a week and just so that you know the cases fall off after they hit the 10-day mark because that is the recovery date for the case so in the case of campo which

134we've been talking about a lot tomorrow the fifth we'll have eight cases that fall off okay so just taking that into consideration that we could go into hybrid based on number one week and then next week it could be very different now i'm not saying that next wednesday we won't have more but just to keep into account that and we see that only i think because we have some clusters where we know that there's a certain group of students that hang out together and so we can have a large amount of students fall off so do we need to put in something where we have that shows this percentage for two weeks maybe or i mean that's i mean that would make sense to me because we're trying to show a trend you know and

135but it um i know there would be others that would argue that you could also spike higher than that it could the way that numbers come off and on two so during the interim period you could be higher just as you could be lower but if we're trying to do it based off of trends well because the reason to do it by trends is we don't want to disrupt kids okay this week you're in school and then next week you're in hybrid and then we two weeks and then you're in school for a week and then you're back in hybrid and um we just want to be i mean even uh kathy hoffman superintendent kathy hoffman said what we want to watch is is the trends um not specific numbers but the trends are the

136trends going and let's recognize i mean this is disruptive to kids this is also very disruptive to teachers who you know i mean if we were to notify the school today that they're going hybrid on monday teachers will be scrambling to rewrite their lesson plans and and you know um so this this is an impact on on not just the kids not to speak to education because obviously that's not my my training but the lack of motivation um students when they know that they're going to move to a different platform we've seen um i've heard we've seen the grades drop dramatically with students because it's hard to be motivated and engaged from a hybrid platform or a virtual platform and so knowing that that's going to change and it could be so inconsistent i think

137would be difficult for them well and we really need stability so um you know i think we need to think in terms of two week or 14 day blocks to give one give teachers the opportunity to plan accordingly even though it's short notice wednesday to monday but and families as well wednesday to monday and you stay there for at least that two-week period unless we make some decisions at the campus and administrative level uh prior to the end of the second week but dr santa cruz what do you think that we need to hit these numbers like one percent two weeks in a row before we would go to hybrid or do you just think we hit it once we hit it on a wednesday and we go to hybrid yeah i think it's a

138logical thing to to hit it on on a particular day on a wednesday and moved there for two weeks i don't think you hit it and then wait for two weeks we'll wait and see yeah wait and see if you hit it again the next week yeah i don't know what are your thoughts i agree i agree with what a week just once you hit it once you hit it go and you stay there for two weeks okay you evaluate in the second week as to whether or not that needs to continue in that mode so if we if we hit um 19 cases at campo then they go hybrid for two weeks that's what you're saying so based on real so if we did it like what's posted on the on yeah that means

139they go on their day which is what we would utilize um they would go camp would go hybrid i would we'd leave here tonight i'd call christa cox and say get your stuff ready and we'll talk tomorrow about sending out notifications to families i i think we need to see a trend of two weeks myself i i want to be careful but we're we're trying to keep these numbers low and the the one thing i would like is if if there's something happens at a school and and we have a for example eight new cases what was it that happened can we set out a lessons learned to other schools so that we can say okay these kids got together for a halloween party and then they all got covered and then they came you

140know then they came to school or they got tested just be aware of this to the other schools i would like to see lessons learned because williamsville high school had to quarantine their entire band that's a lot of kids and i don't know exactly what the reasons were but i'd like to know what what they were so that we can be careful with our own bands that we don't have to do that that we don't make no mistake we are able to do that and and on a campus basis and so in fact i just sent an email out to our staff about some lessons we learned at one campus that we could apply to others as far as their personal activities go um yeah it is what it is i would like i would

141really like our community to prioritize school and kids being able to go to school and and those other activities take a back seat for now until we have a vaccine until we have a lower rate of transmission i mean we are in a spike and i don't think any of us want to go back to june 30th where we had 5400 cases in one day that that is exactly why i would argue implementing okay while waiting for a trend once you hit a number you implement you stay for two weeks you evaluate at the end of the second week or an appropriate time in the second week and make a decision as to whether you remain or go back but to wait for two weeks to see if the trend is going to develop uh

142i think is counterproductive in my opinion well at some level there has been a trend because it has increased because they were below it last week and now they're above it this week so and but i don't know if that meets that level but but those involved in the triggering of that would know that and probably would know why we don't necessarily need to know but you know that because i don't want us to be in a position of saying uh we're dictating what you do on your personal time that's not that's not our business that's not our purview it's our concern but you know i'm not about the business of saying you can't you can't do your family thing or your neighborhood thing although i would caution you against that but i'm i'm not

143in control of that and we have to deal with what we have to deal with not what exactly what goes on and i think it's really important that we stop the trend correct but recognizing the comments let's recognize that in every stats class you ever take they will say a single data point doesn't make a trend right it may simply be the anomaly um so we're drawing conclusions without a trend we're drawing conclusions on a data point mr mr carr we're in in my opinion in a place that i never thought we'd be in trying to make decisions that nobody wants to be making and i have the utmost respect for all of us sitting here trying to work through this and it's not fair but it is what it is so we have to

144we have to come up with the best that we can do because it's us and we don't we're the ones that are having to make this decision nobody else is helping us and i agree with your statement mr carr one data point does not make a trend uh but the trend is around us and it's broadcast to us on a daily basis we're simply taking the information that's impacting our organization and trying not to do one-size-fits-all but trying to individualize that contingency plan for that location at that point in time that doesn't impact the rest of the group only that particular location we hope could be more but we hope but it's it's not it's not impacting everyone else so if i can ask you know one one of the things we we really haven't

145addressed in the motion we've said you know i think right now we're one one and a half and two percent is what was proposed for the motion okay um but within if we can use campbell verdi as as the example here we've said it's a modified one percent and we've said that in discussion but we haven't said that in the motion so if we know that there's a family of siblings etc we might you know we leave it the discretion of the superintendent this is much a question as a statement are we are we leaving this at the discretion of the superintendent to remove one of those cases or perhaps two if there's two sets of siblings and recompute that and hit that trigger is that what we're proposing even though it's not stated in

146the motion or are we going straight percentage period i think straight percentage periods takes the confusion out of it yeah argument and i'm i'm not arguing one way or the other i'm asking because that was a discussion point it was when we met on and it was friday and i actually brought up right um but you know as we talk through this i think it i think it just opens the door for more confusion more suspicion about what we're doing and how we're doing and i think part of the goal to this is make it as transparent as possible so people walk out of this room watch this later on understanding okay here's the parameters they're working in and and there's an understanding i i am concerned about um just saying we hit that number

147and we'll just go for it instead of waiting for two weeks because i'm really concerned about yanking kids back and forth um i i am because i this is hard enough um and i think kids are you know we know kids are struggling um you know i mean i'm an adult and i am struggling sometimes with this pandemic but being yanked from something that's um gives them structure and then being put back into hybrid and and all the concerns i i really think we need to go with two weeks because i just feel like if we if we we're going back into hybrid and then we're going back and and and i we just have no idea um you know whether this will go i just don't want to jerk kids around because i think

148that's bad for them and so to the point i think that was drawn sorry dr mccord if if we take a potential scenario and i don't know that i'm interpreting everything that miss frost said correctly but we're at 20. two days later eight drop off and we're back to 12. so the way that the dates fall and they come in we may have only been you know we may have been at 12 bumped up to 20 been down to 12 and only been at 20 for for one or two days and it just happened to be the wednesday but the real data point shows that we're at 12 either side of that again i'm playing hypotheticals here and i know that's dangerous but do we make a decision because it hit on a wednesday but

149even though it didn't on the monday before the friday before with the timing so i i i actually agree with miss humphries i just worry about taking a specific date and time without seeing a larger data set and trend the wednesday the reporting day though that's the wednesday that we update okay they get reported every day right and they what but you just updated wednesday well and here's the thought we could add to the motion if if they're reported every day and and we get eight and then we're getting 10 more if it continues to escalate um we could can then i think you know if you have an escalating week where they're escalating every day then maybe we should consider to me that hybrid would be more compelling then and that's fair but to

150dr mccord's point on on transparency the board sees that but the community doesn't yeah the the teaching and and education staff don't so we're creating a situation that's increases the likelihood of misunderstanding and mistrust so i i mean i'm torn between the two i i agree with you ms humphries i i i'm not comfortable just taking a snapshot in time can we come to a consensus on whether it's per week or we wait two weeks can is there some way we can so it so let's take campo as a scenario okay so they're 20 today if two one of two things can happen based on what we're talking about they go we pull the trigger go to hybrid monday or we wait until next wednesday if they're at or above their one percent 20 or

151above they would go to hybrid the following yes does that not create a lot of anxiety with everybody if they're sitting around waiting to see what's going to happen i think i think he can do a plethora of things um i think yeah i mean i really do i think it could create some anxiety with students staff and families i think that um and even whatever we make tonight's gonna going to trigger some of this people are just gonna be like i'm not reporting i don't want to be number 20 you know on the campus and so a lot of different things can can factor into that but yeah you're you're right yeah i i think you know as i said these are uncharted waters and we've never been there before but i think we

152have to be have some kind of a plan be consistent and there's no matter what we do there's going to be exceptions you know no matter what we do but we can't look at every exception it's just not possible otherwise we'd need 25 hours of the day instead of 24. well that's what i guess could we report more regularly on a daily basis i think that takes so much time though from the yeah the nursing staff is part of the concerns but that's one option because then we could see a couple days in a row you know if we said wednesday and thursday or both 20 i'm just saying because to because to jennifer's point the reason we're even discussing this was because she said look eight will fall off tomorrow we won't even be

153at 20. so should we consider that could we do that or is that asking way too much i i think to compile it is taking so much time i'm not sure that's one consideration a second consideration that i have is if our point is to mitigate and add this as a mitigation strategy i to me it feels like waiting another week i'm concerned that we miss the mitigation and that we've you know we didn't act fast enough well i just i don't know i'm just saying i don't i just wonder if that's the point of this is that's what it triggers is there's a concern we're putting in an extra mitigation strategy so it doesn't escalate i i do i am concerned about whiplashing back and forth but at the same time i'm also concerned

154about having a point where we say you know this is at a point of concern that we need to enact another mitigation strategy so we can prevent the next thing so those are my two thoughts maybe you could address the updating the testing more regular i know we've had questions about that and i don't know if it's even possible to compile it i know it changes regularly it it'll it drops off and comes up and right i mean it is there when i say a lot of work and and jen could probably talk to this better but i know that schools report they re you know families report to schools schools report to gen and we have to confirm those reports before right they get to jen right and it depends on what time of

155day we could get that at five o'clock at night so you may not get real up to date each day right but so maybe and then at the same time we've got to take off the ones that come through right right just to make it as true a number as possible but um i'm fine with the snapshot i think it captures in a big picture what has come through and what's dropped off for the most part in that week um and where we're at for that week i think where we're at is reasonable especially knowing what the nurses and jen is trying to do but that's how we continue to report it but then i i i wonder if we do just do as soon as you hit it that's that triggers it and we

156go to that next mitigation strategy of hybrid well you know and i agree with you and appreciate what you're saying the implement implementation point of any any program any process is always a tough one to start because somehow somebody gets caught in the middle there and that's the reason you have to implement so that you forewarn everyone else the possibility exists that in two or three weeks this could be me and i'm prepared for the possibility you know on the flip side a different scenario here we already have our critics even related to our dashboard that our dashboard is misleading incorrect inaccurate not appropriate and yet all we're trying to do is communicate as much information as we receive to people who would consume that and nothing is ever going to be enough we would

157employ people three shifts a day to push out all of the data and all of the information that everyone needs to receive in hopes that those who would be receiving it are reading it and digesting it there are some who are very diligent among us here on this board and in our community there are some who just receive it when they receive it or when they decide to turn on their computer or read the newspaper or watch the news i'm not faulting any of that everyone has their own priorities i'm just simply stating that we have to have a starting point in my view at some point and by the way even if we had people doing it 24 7. it would still be considered biased by some so that's correct you know we we

158can we can change the dashboard still report once a week and take an average from wednesday to wednesday instead of current active cases um average of current cases from one date to another i mean that's gonna that's probably gonna lower the number and but that that changes the whole intent to the dashboard of being transparent as to where we are today so i i and dr mccord i wasn't necessarily offering a criticism oh no others have already given simply making making that statement uh are we at a point where we think we understand where we're headed so that we can take a recess craft and hammer out the final portion of this uh motion i i think we are but can i ask one question just trying to i'm trying in my own my mind

159answer the question that miss humphries and i have about trends can you remind me where campo was last week do we do we remember say they were at like on wednesday of last week six or nine i remember it could be it could be reversing a number but it's one of the two it wasn't i don't they weren't in the teens i don't believe okay that's so that more or less my that more or less answers my question because my question was even without being there two weeks are we is it giving us enough of an indicator that they're close that it might serve that same purpose but in this example i don't know that it did um it was six last week so in this in this example it didn't necessarily would it would

160not have necessarily provided us that pre-alert so that just looking to see if that was the case but i i anyway back to your question dr santa cruz all right what i would like to do is call a recess for five to ten minutes hammer out the language in the motion come back read the motion first and second motion discuss and finalize the motion so we stand in recess for 10 minutes you're welcome i just really wanted to think it through so julie want to bring me your piece of paper and i'm going gonna have to take a break oh you're good show me where here's my chickens i think i've got everything i added drought today how are you okay oh tonight okay thanks thank you okay if we can reconvene thank you for

161your indulgence we will reconvene we are prepared to hear a motion regarding our contingency plan and its various components ms humphries i will yield to you all right thank you i make the following motion gilbert public schools governing board prioritizes the academic social emotional and physical well-being of students and staff during the worldwide covet 19 pandemic it is the goal of gilbert public schools district to mitigate the spread of the virus within its schools and within the community gilbert public schools will continue in-person instruction for those enrolled until due to the spread of coven 19 the following guidelines show the need for change on a school-by-school basis to the hybrid a through l m through z model of instruction guidelines established by the gilbert public schools now show sorry guidelines established by gilbert public schools

162show confirmed active positive covenanting cases per week equal to or higher than one percent for high schools and i think we might need to add some language one percent of students and staff for high schools okay one and a half percent for junior high schools and two percent for elementary schools canyon valley will be based on a total of five confirmed active positive coven 19 cases and the rise program will be based on a total of three confirmed active positive coven 19 cases the superintendent will make this decision based on the confirmed active positive coven 19 cases reported on a weekly basis on the gilbert public schools coven 19 dashboard additionally the entire district would move to the hybrid a through l m z model of instruction if two out of three guidelines for gilbert

163public schools district boundaries as published by the maricopa county department of health services show substantial transmission read for two weeks those guidelines show more than one hundred cases per hundred thousand residents more than ten percent positivity for testing and more than one sorry more than ten percent covered like illness at hospitals as substantial transmission red gilbert public schools governing board will meet to decide whether students and staff return to virtual learning for two weeks should coven 19 cases continue to rise within the school community or within the wider gilbert and mesa community should cases decrease during the two weeks of hybrid learning students and staff would return to in-person instruction the superintendent is authorized to review appropriate data and make recommendations to the board this motion unless extended by the board will end june 30th

1642021 is there a second do we need to end june 30th if we won't be in school until well that's just the end of the school year so i just put that date and considering that hopefully we won't have to come back and revisit it for next year but who knows so so as a point of order i'll second it so we can continue the discussion okay thank you mr carr discussion any additional discussion i think there was one edit i wanted to but make don't remember what paragraph it was just can you go down he was adding the students it was that and then there was another one um can you read do you mind rereading the part that says we go to virtual learning it was show and i strengthened but i wanted

165to change it to you the last paragraph as the board would meet before we go to virtual gilbert public schools governing board will meet to decide whether students and staff return to virtual learning for two weeks all right thank you mr carr something um i'm just i'm trying to think it through it's hard not having it's long enough it's hard not having it right in front of me i'm just thinking through but uh just want to indicate to the community kind of as a summary our intent here is to set criteria but our real intent is we want kids in school we know that's where they learn best um you know and we hope that that's conveyed we're trying to set this criteria high enough that it we're not just jumping at you know shadows

166but still reasonable enough that that we're keeping those people who are most concerned and and and that's not a small percentage based on the feedback we're getting it's a it's a sizable percentage we're we're trying to address their concerns as well this is an approach of balance one of the things that i would have concerned with was particularly the elementaries i think at the high schools students you know some may not be happy but it's easier to jump back and forth because the kids are more capable i worry as we move elementary kids what that impact is to parent ability to care for those kids with really only two days notice you your it comes out wednesday afternoon we notice them and by the way parents by monday you better have somebody to watch your

167kids if they're not in school and i know that's not our concern but it is our concern because it affects education and the safety of the children and and if we want to be safe so i i do remain concerned about the timing of that for elementary kids and i don't know where the balance is thank you mr car your point is well taken and just as inside as we look at the last paragraph and that meeting of the board to make a determination about virtual learning i continue to have concerns with uh how we do that and how efficient that model is and what we what we are going to do to modify and repair that particular mode of instruction for our district and that's not a criticism of anyone that is just simply

168trying to come up with a delivery of electronic instruction that is not quite as labor-intensive and or as complex as what we had so that's that's a concern for me another point if i may is aren't we still under the executive order that we would need to provide um on-site yes on-site learning learning so do we need to put that in here somewhere no because it's in the executive order okay so you would communicate that as needed correct and that same wednesday night thursday night whenever it goes out to parents it would be said this is this is how we will provide this now to clarify do we have to provide on-site services if we're in hybrid because because my interpretation executive orders we have to provide on-site services if we're in virtual learning data

169during hybrid as well yeah so the reality is when we move in elementary to hybrid we're probably going to have a sizeable number of those kids there they're just not going to be the same environment actually not necessarily because it also states that we have to have the appropriate personnel to be able to supervise them and if we don't have the appropriate personnel because a mini because we won't have bus drivers available they'll still be running paraprofessionals will be with primarily their special needs students and we're short on paraprofessionals at many of our elementary schools anyway so we would figure out what the limits would be on each campus based on available personnel so that is another concern if we go district-wide especially to hybrid it's absolutely it's a huge element of this but even

170an individual school we would still have to provide that right and they may not have the staffing process that's true but but i i guess i'm just thinking [Music] district-wide i just thought the magnitude of it sounded you know i another thing could i and i don't know if if we include that in here but if we do switch to twitch a mode maybe to from um in person to hybrid could we trigger could that also trigger a deep clean of that campus sure or some kind of you know making additional mitigation yeah and additional medication that way i don't know if it's over the weekend or friday or the next wednesday as soon as possible but could we have maybe put a protocol in place that we say okay let's need to be like

171yeah let's you know let's make a stop right here and we're going to going to do our best to address it in every way so that we have mitigated you know maybe add something something to that or oh that in in my view that would be an administrative procedural thing and ms betts would have to be on on the ball because in my view that would be a weekend kind of experience for our custodial crew not that you aren't on the ball already i i know i noted that notice no phone rang this time right no no phone but again adding another level of what we're asking of correct people correct just acknowledging strategy right i mean it enhances that yeah that's what needs to happen but it does ask another level of you know

172stuff and so okay is a complex issue and it is not easy to uproot overhaul on a dime from one mode to another and it is difficult on teachers staff families and students we are in an ephemeral mode in all aspects in that this is not a normal year for teaching and learning and if we believe for one moment not that our instructors our paraprofessionals and our educators aren't providing quality instruction but with the uncertainty of everything around them it is difficult to fully concentrate on the learning that is supposed to be occurring in every discipline across the campus and our teachers and administrators and paraprofessionals are doing an incredible service and job trying to get that accomplished under these uncertain times so uh we appreciate that we understand that and we respect that so

173just for clarification for everybody so this would after this is approved this starts now and so based on campos numbers that's what would happen i just want to make sure we're all on the same page that will be our first foray into the implementation of this plan so so so recognizing that i mean normally we would know that wednesday morning it would send out a notice we're effectively because of the time this meeting sending it out thursday morning so well i think we had i talked about 24 hours yeah and here he said 24 hours and notification will likely go out either early in the morning if not this evening sometime what is the hour eight nine almost nine nine o'clock so it probably will be in the morning so any additional discussion i what

174i think i want to say is that i think this is we are doing our best and i know we're going to receive a lot of emails from the campo verde high school community we're trying to thread that needle between keeping people safe and making sure that there isn't a continual spread of the virus and supporting children in their academic and social emotional needs and i think that i hope everyone will understand that that is the desire of everyone on this board and in this district and who are working so hard i just want to say in public education i think the people that go into public education have a wide altruistic streak because they always give way more than you could ever imagine anybody would do for a business unless they owned it but

175i they care for our kids as if they're their own kids and we're trying to do our best difficult decision board members i appreciate your diligence and your attention to the task if there is no additional discussion we will take a vote and that would be item 6.02 all those in favor of the motion as read lengthy as it is please signify by saying i i those opposed the same motion carries five zero we're at item seven adjournment of this brief that's a laugh board business meeting 7.01 we are at the adjournment phase i am available for a motion if you take out the word brief i'll i'll move okay i took out the word brief so moved thank you mr jetty is there a second second thank you mr carr appreciate your diligence this

176evening appreciate those of you who are watching live stream and those of you here in the building we are oh we are not until i vote until we take a vote all those in favor of a german please signify by saying aye aye those pose the same motion carries 5-0 we are adjourned don't forget to sign with gabby