Gilbert Public Schools District Board Meeting 10/30/2020

001this special meeting of the gilbert governing board to order today is friday october 30th and i appreciate those of you who have decided to join on live stream and those of you who are here in the building with us today we have a work study session presentation and the possibility of a brief school board meeting shortly following the presentations and the discussion at this point all board members are present dr mccord i'll defer to you in just a moment i just want to set the stage here the reason for our meeting is to engage this board and staff in a discussion regarding the methods that might be utilized should we have to take other steps to help mitigate the spread of virus and how we would do that there is a need to address a

002series of circumstances especially given the fact that the communication and the information that is coming to us from the state and the county level is changing frequently we have based our mitigation strategies our school openings and many of our decisions on much of the information that has come to us from those two entities and we want to make sure we stay at least current with the curve with that dr mccord and staff have organized a presentation and will be making some recommendations throughout and those recommendations are simply that we as a board probably will chime in and make our own recommendations as well and we may or may not make some decisions regarding a plan today but at least we are open and discussing the plan so that all of us in this room and

003in the community have the opportunity to at least understand why we are moving in this direction so without any further ado i will defer to dr mccourt thank you dr santa cruz governing board members if you just give me a second while i connect here and for those of you watching we are now at item 2 the presentation discussion of topics item 2.01 presentation discussion regarding health benchmarks and what methods to use to return to hybrid or online learning if needed if needed is a very important and operative word as we go through this discussion dr mccourt thank you sir um appreciate all of you being here this morning and to everyone out there watching this is one of those situations where we don't like to have meetings outside of our regular meeting time but

004time is of the essence and i think this is extremely important not just for folks in this room but everybody out in classrooms as well as in our community so today we'll be talking i'm going to go over the current benchmarks since they came out yesterday and go through some of that at the end of that i'll also talk about how many total coping cases we've had with students and staff from starting on september 11th when we actually started counting those types of things and then look at the average percentages that have been posted on our dashboard each week just give you an idea of what that looked like and then we'll segue into talking about um what will move us into hybrid what will move us online and um and then we'll i'm sure

005we'll have plenty discussion throughout so i'll move on this has been in the news quite a bit and actually took some people by surprise last week when the dashboard came up and i mentioned this tuesday night the graphic on the left is is what we've been using as well as the three different types of benchmarks and then thursday morning when they updated the dashboard it changed to the graphic on the right which is much different than the graphic on the left in a lot of different ways a lot of things been thrown out there about that school leaders were consulted on this and whatnot and i know in gilbert public schools we had no idea nobody consulted with us about a change and um i checked with many east valley superintendents and nor were they

006or anybody in their district so i just want to make sure people understand that because there's been people asking why didn't you tell us of this change well we found out just like everybody else did so i just think that's worth mentioning and again looking at the changes [Music] for the new dashboard you're looking at red yellow green and they're reporting them in a similar way in terms of you know for the first one cases per hundred thousand uh whatnot but it's where they fall and how they structure them so in order for something to be green in that area of course it has to be below 10. for something to be green in the percent positivity it has to be below 5 and for something to remain green in hospital visits for covalent illness

007it has to be below five and of course anything above a hundred in the cases per hundred thousand would turn red for percent positivity anything above ten percent would turn red and the same goes for the third category hospital visits for covet-like illnesses and this is per county they also you can look at it for the entire state then you click on your own county and it'll tell you where you're sitting so just wanted to chat about that real quick and again that just explains some of those areas in the level of transmission green is minimal yellow is moderate and red is substantial currently as of yesterday maricopa county data is 84 per 100 000 course that's trending up that's moderate risk criteria two percent positivity is at 5.5 percent that has changed from green

008to yellow which is moderate risk and it's trending up and criteria three uh went up a 0.1 percent so it is trending up but it's minimal risk almost level and that was the data reported yesterday for maricopa county for gilbert public schools this is just a snapshot of the last two weeks i'll get to the details on the next slide we went up to 100.33 per hundred thousand which is considered a substantial risk we went from 58.22 last week to 100.33 criteria 2 percent positivity is 6.78 again trending up last week we were at 3.93 percent and in criteria three we remained the same at three point all right three percent and again looking at those same numbers side by side just ready um so has the has the district boundary data so it's basically

009it's it's um the data that's within our boundary area it's not necessarily in gilbert public schools but that's what we're seeing but it's in our boundary has it always been a a week a week ahead because this says data reported on october 29th it always has okay okay so and if you'll notice side by side maricopa county actually is a week before right right okay or a week they they have for some of them one they're a week off on a couple of the areas so and it always has been that yes okay nothing's changed there until today the date the the times of reporting have not changed that i'm aware of okay um and i also want to iterate a little bit something here if you click on our district or you look in

010that area as a district we're considered yellow okay which is a moderate risk which is pretty much where we've been since the beginning some people seem to think because we have one area in red right now that the whole area is red that's not the case in a lot of the areas if you click even on the zip codes which within those areas you will see some red per 100 000 that are over the 100 mark so i think they average that out to determine for the entire school district the the moderate risk i mean that's what i'm assuming well and dr dr mccord my understanding was that previously it would be two weeks above the red they would change that two weeks below they would change down et cetera now as you had that

011in the previous slot that's no longer how they're measuring it's now when all three areas are red or all three areas are yellow or all three areas are green so that was the change that was in in this week versus necessarily the the two weeks right in in any single criteria correct and they changing so that you have to do better to be in green right that was also kind of like a warning right yeah um yeah and that was the big difference one read in the past we were to consider going virtual now at all three and again and there's there's some definite disagreements about that out there among organizations and so um i'm not going to get into that but i i just know that that swirls out there dr mccord you and

012i spoke a little bit yesterday and i think it's also important to note that since you mentioned zip codes that a number in a particular zip code may not may not be consistent with a number on our dashboard our dashboard and simply at least in in my people mind is that one that that number reflects cases in the area in that zip code those may or may not be students who attend our schools they could be anybody and we need to understand that there are a variety of assisted living homes in our area there are a variety of people living in those zip codes so to make the leap and the assumption and correct me if i'm wrong that those numbers are reflective of the numbers of students in schools with that kind of issue

013going on would not necessarily be correct i agree with you on that okay yep all right and just looking at uh the last four weeks for maricopa county you can see where we've gone up again just to reiterate i in in criteria one especially i changed in the past it was all green based on the previous criteria i changed it just to reflect what's current just in case i don't want to confuse anybody and then same for gps boundaries again a comparison of the last four weeks i think it's telling i think it's telling to notice to note that perhaps for the first time our district boundaries are higher than the county as a whole that has traditionally not been the case we've been better off in the county as a whole and right now

014we're a little bit worse off and as i was clicking through our zip codes the west side of our district seems to be a little more stable than the east side and then as you move east even past our boundaries as i looked into other zip codes and other districts just to see those numbers are rising there as well and it might be more population in those areas and so and that's consistent with what we're seeing at schools as well the east side of our district the high schools in particular as well as some of the elementaries are seeing higher numbers than the west side correct um just so you guys are up to date we started our we went back uh the day after labor day in person that's when we started tracking in

015terms of what's happening on campuses and so to date as of this morning we have we have had some of those are still active but many of course are not but total number of cases is 126 of that 20 staff members and the rest 106 students and then our weekly dashboard every week we update it on wednesday and we show a total percentage based on the numbers at the bottom in the district and here's a listing of those numbers we didn't report for fall break because we weren't here but that's our average over the last five weeks of reporting and that's for all of our schools including staff and and and district and transportation employees as well that's including staff students everybody that's affiliated with gilbert public schools which is so the total number is

016what thirty five thousand thirty six says i'm just oh total yeah i'd say close to 35. okay that includes staff and students correct dr mccord if you were gonna assign a color to to our october 28th what color would it be color yeah well that's a good question because you base that if you're going to base that off of what the county has said i think we'd be green but again i don't think that's a fair way to do that just because those are the number of people tested and we don't know how many people have been tested within our schools so but that's the actual number of cases correct which one the thirteen percent the third thirteen point thirteen point i mean i'm sorry yep that's the actual that's that's the percentage of that

017was reported on that day okay and i think it's important to realize and know that they fall off and on so that's a moment in time on that day okay so dr mccord on the previous slide we've had 20 cumulative cases among staff members and we've got roughly 2 000 teachers yeah and staff and staff right um sorry i i say that more inclusive and students we've had 106 and we have roughly 31 000 students 33 yeah that's including online 33 right right so you back that off it's probably more like 27 28. oh 45. i was going to say 2 000 is just the teachers i was still stuck on teachers thank you well and and i would say our global academy students could also i mean they're not on our campus but right

018they could also have a case of koba depending on what happens we don't count them though just i mean no offense to them but no and that's why i was looking at the 28 000 so i mean if i just quickly do that math of our staff cumulatively we've had point four percent roughly of of the staff affected by covert cases and we've had point three zero zero point 0.3 percent of students affected to date and that's of information provided to us or information that we have run down that is what is reported to us on campuses so yes and could there be others out there of course and and again i don't want to you know any any case is a risk to to to an individual i i'm looking at more from a

019comparison that we had more staff but we had those numbers are so similar that you got to say that it's affected the population as a whole the same we haven't had a higher percentage of teachers we haven't had a higher percentage of students of that right and again that's since september 11th so i just want to make sure people understand that okay kind of the part that um another piece of why we're here you know with the rising cases we do have some concerned staff we do have some concerned parents we do have some concerned students and so and we have concerned concern here i mean we we want to make sure we're doing all we can to keep people safe knowing that our goal is to educate kids to the best of our ability

020and so as we're moving through this and seeing how cases are rising we need to be able to understand what's going to put us back to hybrid what's going to put us back to online or virtual and so i think that's where some discussion needs to happen here and and like you had stated at the beginning dr santa cruz if we make a decision today if not we can make a decision next week but more than anything i think a good discussion is is worthwhile here um you know some of the questions that have come up in my head as i'm thinking about this and i know to you and others that have talked to me if we return to hybrid do we do it as an entire district or just by school if you'll

021notice on our dashboard we have several schools that have no cases or have one or you know low amount some have never had any so that's something to think about and then what number do we use to determine a change um do we look at percentage of active cases on a campus total number of active cases for an entire school district standard number for elementary junior high high school what i mean by like that is no matter what your population is at your elementary if we say there's five cases that will jump you to hybrid junior high there's number high school that that's what i mean by that uh strictly just going by the county benchmark strictly going by boundary benchmarks again things that we've all talked about to some degree and at some level

022but i think plays into making some decisions or having some discussion here today dr mccord just to minimize confusion and so that the public understands what what definition we're using could you define our use of the definition hybrid and how we're we're thinking so ms wood and i've had several conversations about this and i think it's good i i do because i think even when i say online you know dr newman back there i she said can you change that to virtual because that's kind of what we use but i didn't change it dr newman because it was already in the agenda so um so yeah some of those things interchange hybrid what we're talking about here is we talked about the phased-in plan we talked about students m through l coming to school monday

023the rest coming through on tuesday wednesday they're all online and then continue that process again thursday and friday and so when we say hybrid that's what we're talking about so that they should focus on the a through l m through z that wednesday kind of cleanup day and folks coming to school according to their alpha listing generally speaking on the designated days that's what we are defining as hybrid that we would move to for this person either by school or by district for this purpose to be sure the term hybrid can be applied to all of the other mutations of what delivery methods we would decide to use however for our purposes that's how we're defining hybrid the other is the traditional in-person face-to-face instruction that all of us generally have experienced in our lifetime

024yep correct um you know looking at those and ask those some of those questions and and kevin and i having conversations you know my recommendation is to use a percentage of students and staff on a campus and make a change in delivery model on a school-by-school basis and and one it's easy to calculate it's easy to keep track of too it's easy to understand by students staff and families they see that they can understand that and the other piece of that is trying to keep kids in school as long as we can and knowing that at certain or several campuses that it's not necessarily an issue in terms of spreading or having cases so i think it's it could be better for everybody involved but again that's my recommendation but i'm sure it'll be a

025topic of discussion uh and should we reach a specified positive case count on any campus additional layer investigation will be initiated by our district health services team in consultation with county health department and some of those things that you have to consider when you're looking at that is family relationships between cause positive cases so let me do a scenario for you let's say we have a threshold of six students on a small elementary school okay and three or four of those students are brothers and sisters which is very possible is that a reason to close that school because they're all contained within their household or is that something that we need to consider if we're going to shift the hybrid or shift to online so those types of things i still think we need to

026look at is it something to do with a program at desert ridge we had football players that had coveted and and coaches and we shut the program down and they have been and i think that was a good thing instead of shutting the entire school down or moving them to hybrid so we can look at those types of things to mitigate that but at the same time if we went school by school we could we could look at those a little bit specific more specific to what the needs are on those campus and dr mccord in in light of that recommendation um i did have a phone call yesterday with miss amber franco who was the president of the gilbert education association and she reached out to me and we spoke a little bit and

027she indicated that that's what the teachers would like to see as well that they would like to see us look at school-specific metrics versus a district-wide shutdown so i was grateful to hear that that's also consistent with individual conversations that i've had with teachers um okay so i i'm hopeful that that representing the sizable portion of our teachers uh is is an approach that i think will keep parents happy and keep teachers happy and i i would concur with that my discussions have yielded similar information the other question that comes into mind let's broaden the use of the term program and it becomes more impactful probably at 7 through 12 rather than k through 6 but k through 6 would still be impacted and when we talk about program and we determine based on whatever

028information we have utilized to make that decision to close down a program for a period of time is that all encompassing does that include athletics in the evening and all of it uh i think that's for a specific program it would right yeah you know if if we looked at gilbert high school for example because it hit a threshold does that mean for that period of time whatever we determine everything ceases if we go to hybrid or if we go to now in my head part of me says if we go to online completely online hybrid i think we could definitely have some discussions about that to keep things moving forward because we did we even though games hadn't started really yet maybe golf did i think um we could we would definitely try to

029keep things moving uh forward with that yeah i just think that would be a question i'm not advocating i'm not advocating one way or the other i'm just saying that's that's uh an element that we have to consider most definitely well i think one of the things that we need to look at and i when we get to the numbers that you show for different just some suggestions for different campuses i did a little work on um what would be the numbers of people who have to quarantine depending on the number of cases and that can really go up fast oh yeah i mean really i i just chose the number three thinking if somebody's sitting in a class the person in front of them and the person to each side has to quarantine and

030if you get in high school where they have six classes and then you times that by the number of students if it be you know pretty soon we've got half the campus quarantined um depend you know if you assume that it's different kids in every class but um it it goes up really fast and um there was a story in the new york times i read about a school in utah where the school board did not want to shut the school down but in the end because they were quarantining so many kids they ended up closing the school for a month and then were able to reopen but you know that that's a huge concern because that's a lot of kids and they're also missing school correct waiting to see if they have symptoms or

031not and then if they get symptomatic even maybe missing more school because you have to wait 14 days yup to figure it out it it is and that's we we've heard from many families who um have a difficult time with that and and i can well appreciate that um and us trying to follow the guidelines the best way we can um it's difficult i mean it's it's hard i don't know jen frost has talked to the county about that and i don't think there's i mean they responded but there's there's no movement on it and i don't know if there will be and uh i miss humphries i think you bring up a very good point if we've got for example you know four kids in an elementary school those four kids are generally contained

032i know they might move a little bit but they're generally contained in each of their individual classrooms where to your point at a high school if we have a high school with 15 kids who have active cases well if i take those 15 kids and my understanding is that it's usually the kids to the sides so it's two kid generally two kids there may be exceptions i'm looking back to see if miss frost corrects me so it's generally two kids per student if they have a full slate of six classes that's 180 kids that are out on on quarantine that may or may not have coveted but were exposed plus the 15 so you have potentially 195 kids out of school for that time based on on the 15 kids at school so it does

033affect a larger number and to dr mccord's i think probably all of us have taken phone calls texts etc with frustration with the quarantine please you know parents who are listening online recognize that that is a strict guideline from the county um and as dr mccord mentioned we have we have questioned the county whether they could come back with a negative test if they could come back you know our goal is to keep kids in school but as long as the county health department is following that strictly we're following it strictly so i did pick the number three so if you go to the one percent and we'll get there if it's 19 kids at campo you times that by three kids after quarantine that's 57 it times that by six periods that's 342. because

034wait wait wait so so 19. so there's 19 kids and they're each in six classes and we quarantine three kids from each class which is a 542 that's a lot of assumptions but that's a yeah that's assuming that there's no repeats that you know this kid isn't in another class with another kid or something but but it goes up really quickly dr mccord and i agree with your mathematical approach other than from everything i've been told from miss frost it's usually two kids it's very rarely three okay well that's good to know but i just picked three because i thought one in front and two to the side you probably don't excuse me sorry i didn't know where are you finished yes okay thank you you probably don't have this on on hand right now

035but do we have kind of a ballpark figure about how many kids we have had to have quarantined because that that kind of goes into what we're talking about now if we have an idea right even right now how many kids were missing let me let me turn a little bit apart give her a few minutes let's see if she can look through some stuff and we'll see if we can get i should have thought of that before so so two corollary questions to that um do we have any indication of how many cases are actually spreading at school and i think one indication of that is okay we have you know 15 kids who and i'm using 15 because we have a school that's at 15. we have 15 kids who are uh active

036cases and that what's 180 that are quarantined of that 180 how many of them actually contracted covet it would be interesting to understand that that are we really spreading it or are or are our mitigation measures containing it because that's the goal is to contain it right the other thing is and and is we recognize it even if we move hybrid those kids still aren't able to attend school going hybrid they still have to quarantine 14 days so they're still gonna miss the in person not only miss half the in person for those two weeks but but everybody's missing but everyone so so they're still affected so the one is are we spreading it or is the mitigation working and the other is does change really spare those kids anything well here's the question i

037would would ask miss frost is if we're in hybrid where it's only half the kids and we can spread out more maybe those kids wouldn't have to quarantine because they are further away i mean that's that's possible that's a question that i think we missed frost come on up and let's use a microphone so that folks can hear you i appreciate you i know that you would you would prefer not to be there but that's okay hybrid we did have a couple circumstances and the majority of the classrooms were able to spread out more so that did require less quarantine but to mr carr's question or maybe it was not but we have not seen a lot of turnover when it comes to a student that is positive in a classroom those students need to

038be quarantined and then the quarantine students ending up turning up positive so most of the quarantine students or almost all the quarantine students have remained healthy and been able to return to school correct once they're according to correct we have um just as a quick recollection through all the the numbers and names um i know of one right now i'm not saying that that's the only one but i only know of one from my head of a student that was quarantined and that ended up themselves turning out positive and that's not to say that that was a classroom exposure either they could have got it somewhere else because it's widespread right there are actually a lot of reports out now regarding school time and the spread spain does a huge amount of contact tracing and

039they have not seen an issue with school spread affecting the community things like that there's a lot of schools that have opened across you know europe things like that where there have been spikes and then they plateaued so vanderbilt university as well has done a lot of studies yale there's a psychologist at yale that's done some studies and so we're looking at areas such as this where we have currently as of today 43 active cases in a community and our population is you know 258 000 people so that's our school community um whereas the dashboard is reflecting the entire community inside those boundaries and and i would say that also uh kjs was discussing this on my way over as i was listening to the radio they were actually talking about this very specific issue

040of keeping schools open the metrics and that in the schools we seem to be doing a better job of mitigating and keeping the virus from spreading right i agree if i can just give a quick shout out to our health services staff the nurses we have here in this district are absolutely amazing we are very lucky to have nurses a lot of districts don't have the amount of nurses that we do and we are also looking at in the schools particular if we see an area weight training class or an art class or just an area that causes us to take a second pause they are ramping up efforts in those areas um our principals have been helping our you know everybody is working on that so the minute they see something where they think

041there could even be a slight correlation they're readjusting that our school staff have really jumped on that to make sure that you know we're doing everything that we can and it's been kind of exciting just because there's don't push back they're all working together to make sure that we're doing what we can so that the kids can stay in school can i ask one question about shared materials i know we're trying to discourage that but sometimes it's not really possible to not share those materials right what do we do in the case of shared materials they're just trying to minimize it as much as possible trying to minimize it um as a as a mom i have had some emails from teachers asking us to purchase individual items and so um not to toot my

042own horn but then i have purchased extras so that if there are students that can't afford that we have that i know in a particular art class on a campus that they're using they're wiping things down in between use but that was actually something that we just looked at was another class that um we wanted to try that as not try it but do that as well and so we're making sure that those classes have the materials that they have these as you all know wipes have been in short supply so whatever we can to look at to make sure that things are wiped down in between that the students are maybe sanitizing more frequently because there are you uh shared items things like that okay thank you don't go too far i was gonna

043say you just as well sit there because there's probably going to be another question you know what i can i'm okay you'd rather run back and forth [Laughter] okay so based on my recommendation i threw out some um some numbers based on some schools um campo desert ridge high highland high mesquite junior greenfield l meridian and mesquite elementary and just kind of a breadth of you know how many people are on each campus and again this is students and staff so if we went with a number of three percent uh looking at campo 57 students to that's we'd look at going hybrid and then you see the rest of the numbers there for the rest of the campuses and obviously it's just general math but the lower the number of people on campus the lower

044number of cases that will be there that's and then here it is for two and a half which i i'm sorry so i have one question when we think about this and these numbers is this 57 cases in a week is that how we're defining it or is it 57 cases over two weeks this would be 57 cases within uh that are active that i would say okay so like our wednesday dashboard correct if we see this number that we're saying and i just wanted to say we haven't been anywhere near these numbers i just want our public to know if you've been looking at the dashboard this is we haven't been anywhere near these numbers at this point this is just you're just putting out a number yeah i'm just i'm just throwing out

045numbers okay well one of the concerns i hear from teachers is that not all cases are being reported um i know my my understanding uh is that we could even look back if if a from everything we know people who are being tested we're getting 90 plus percent are being reported by like by parents is that correct that's what i understand i would say i mean higher than that higher than that great in those cases where somebody a parent doesn't report to the school do we still learn about that case the county will contact us if they look at the number if they look at the person's address and it looks like it's in our district they'll contact us and say hey you know johnny or sally has cova do they go to your schools

046and then we make contact and track it back from there so so at that point we can look no sometimes again my understanding from previous conversations typically we get notice from the parent and even before the county has a result we're notifying the county of a case in our school correct yeah if we're notified in a timely fashion right in the rare case where we haven't noticed the county they get notice of the positive case they don't see that student already reported from the school they then that turn around and report that to us correct so from it from a perspective of of knowing about it might delay when we know about it but we still know about it right well i was gonna say um if people are i want to think that our

047parents are doing their best to be honest and truthful but if someone would maybe not take their child to be tested or test someone in their family i mean i think we could also just look at absences and see what our absences are doing because if someone yeah no they do the nurses are following that you you if you have a child absent if you have any covet-like symptoms you dial number one and and you basically get a direct line to the nurse at that point she knows or he knows that you're there if it's anything else like doctor's appointment that day or whatever then you do number two or like um whatever you know something else it would take out of school like a driver's test whatever it is you know then you could

048go to number two and then they don't necessarily follow up on that but they're very from my experience as a parent they're very much watching those absences and the nurses are following up with any symptoms like that at all so and if you have covid like symptoms you either have to go get a negative test to come back or you need to stay home for 10 days so even if it's not being reported as a positive test they're not at school well the idea is they're not at school spreading it my grandson had a runny nose yeah it dried up in 24 hours we got to go back to school but otherwise he would have to stay but are they checking with but the nurse checks and i mean it's a very much they're very

049cognizant of it is what i've been hearing so thank you for all right and if i if i understood miss humphrey's question correctly she's asking if the teacher never does call the line and never pushes that one if the student is absent for a couple of days then the nurses are proactively calling the parent either nurse or attendance right so i mean if we hear nothing we'll we'll call and find out hey and talked about this that rumors run rampant and a lot of times schools try to run some of those down just because they want to either figure out what's going on with someone or ease someone's mind and so um you know if a kid kids have been gone for a couple days just because they don't feel well for whatever reason and

050all of a sudden you know remember and primarily on the high school level all of a sudden this kid has coveted according to the you know rumor mill and so and that's not the case and and and that's detrimental to the kid and to the family and so we have to be very careful with that i think that's an important factor you know to mr carr's point as well the internal communication at a particular school without violating hipaa laws looping back to the classroom teacher and at least giving them some reassurance that we're on that topic or we're on that case and that there is no need for alarm would be appropriate i don't know what we're doing in that regard but uh that's some of the communication i've read that we've received is that

051uh you know that rumor begins and they make up their own story and i'm not saying that they're fabricating something i think it's a level of anxiety that we need to address and would you agree with that miss frost for the record she's just trying to get in her steps you could take the microphone back there i don't know so to your point absolutely one of the issues that we see is that when a student is out for an illness or a dentist appointment um for the day if a parent decides to keep them out for the day all of a sudden that one day absent begins to spark a story or if a student is positive and we do need to quarantine other students those students that are quarantined somehow become positive not that

052they are actually positive but the feeling is they're gone for a number of days so they must have something and that's unfortunate just because it's a virus and it's through no fault of anybody's people get it and it just ends up sparking more fear and anxiety in my opinion and social media does a lot to help that i think so um there's a lot of perception about what's going on i got a call the other day asking if gilbert high school was closing down gilbert high school had zero cases i saw that on social media yeah so so it's really um it's really unfortunate because parents are unable to focus on what's important and i don't want to lose focus on what kids really need right now which is our support they need their social

053emotional support they need all those things not worrying about whether or not there's a million cases when there really aren't thank you ms frost i think it's important to reiterate at this point that this discussion is a desire on the part of this board and please correct me if i'm speaking out of place board members to keep our schools open and to keep everyone safe as as much as possible and we're trying to thread a needle here between the rumor between the actual fact using the information that we're given using the information that we derived and trying to go forward that way so it is and you all know members of the public and and folks in this room how complex this whole issue has become and it morphs and there are mutations every day

054of something else i want our faculty and staff to know that uh and the students and the community know that they are uppermost in our minds and we're not perfect but we're doing all that we know how to do to try to thread this needle and miss frost and her staff have been absolutely invaluable in getting that information through and staff in general here at the district level and on the campus have done what they can as much as they can to keep things moving forward that doesn't mean they're not anxious that doesn't mean that they're looking not looking at the numbers in every class i know that mr mcintosh and ms udall are looking at numbers constantly to try to minimize large burgeoning classes and spaces that they're using for instruction i know that

055miss udall has monitored at the high school level which classes are growing so i just want the public to know that we are trying to look at as many dimensions as we possibly can to thread this needle mr j do you have something i i just wanted to tag back on to mr reed's mr reed mr carr's comment about the case is being reported and this is i just want to kind of lay it out because i have heard this from teachers also that parents aren't reporting if you go to any covid testing site that is then reported to the county correct any of any of them any of them so there are some very small rare few ones that still report via paper and facts i don't know which ones those are those are

056on our list for for referrals but i will tell you i have had one case over a fall break that was not reported by a parent that was reported from the county and that county investigator used to contact us through the the gilbert website to find me and then ask me to look up that student so that's one out of all of these cases the parents are i feel being honest about when their student is tested yes but but but there is something in place that that guarantees yes okay and do you know what the the the time is on that how long how affordable yeah i'm sure they're probably overloaded but now now it had we have seen it slow down a little bit um over fall break it was a couple days but

057it's just like anything else they have only so many investigators so i i want to point out too i mean i've had a couple conversations with the maricopa public health department and one of the one of the the great things that we have is we have some data to look at we're not flying blind i mean you think about the pandemic of 1918 we're not just guessing about where people are and who's sick and trying to figure out how to solve this we have all this data and it may not be perfect but it's much better than not having any idea where the cases are or you know how sick how what the spread is in the community so i think that is a huge uh advantage that we have with our technology and and

058the things that we've been able to do that is the one thing that i do worry about a little bit that skews um the data is the the percent positivity because we have a lack of testing now so the lack of testing and then the number of positives that drives that number up yeah so i worry that that's still a criteria that we're using because it's not necessarily reflective of all the tests in the community anymore it's a test small it's a small sample and so um you know if we're going to look at numbers i'd rather look at a number that was a little more indicative of what's going on in the community in other words probably the positive cases the actual cases well we know how many actual cases but they that percent

059of positivity is um looked at according to how many 10 number of tests have been taken and so when the number of tests taken is down that drives that positivity up just the percentage-wise because the sheer number of tests is lower so it's it's a number that tends to make people anxious however it's not necessarily a great reflection of what's going on in the community okay can i this right here um you have this is the actual number of students students and staff and staff okay so with what you just said is the three percent an accurate number in terms of just the like there's 57 at campbell that's of the total kids at campo it would just be the number of actual cases versus so as opposed to there's no testing involved yeah okay

060that that that's good yeah and that will be active don't want to cut off discussion but i really because these numbers that dr mccord has put into a graph here are pretty telling as it relates to communicating with our public and with ourselves about whatever percentages we plug in the number is large and so we want to see that so that we can get to the discussion about which what we want to do as we go through this before before we go on can i just add one thing so miss frost what within hipaa kind of back to what you said what with inhibit can we do to help teachers feel like they are being informed and able to be safe in their classrooms so we do actually let the teacher know that there's a

061positive student in their classroom okay just don't name the student okay and so um even if we weren't going to tell them there was a positive student teachers especially at the the elementary level well you know your student's gone yeah and they need to be supported academically and so um and then they are especially at the secondary level then the teacher is told this student you know jane smith is going to be out for a number of days please touch base with that student so you can support him or her academically so we don't ever have to share what's going on and in some ways it's a double-edged sword because that student could be out because they had an appendectomy but we wouldn't share the appendectomy either that information and so the teachers at that

062point can come to their own conclusion which unfortunately sometimes is that they may have coveted and they don't um but at the end of the day if there is a positive student we do let the teachers know you have a positive student that's been in one of your classes okay and dr santa cruz if i can go back to your comments about kind of the perception that teachers have um using some assumptions and some real numbers if we have a high school that has 15 students we have 15 students who are out because they have active cases we then can say times six times two students times six classes times two students so we have another 180 students who are out in quarantine then if we make a further assumption that half of those students

063half of the 15 have one sibling at the school those siblings are asked to quarantine so there's another seven students so we've quickly gone from 15 positive cases to 202 cases 202 sorry 15 cases to 202 absences for a time period you know if i look at that at a school that has 2 400 students with 15 cases that's 0.6 percent positivity rate but i have 8.4 of my student body who's now missing class and just to clarify you're you're not suggesting that we're corn we're quarantining the siblings of the quarantine students only the positive students correct correct right that's something that's a common misunderstanding yeah no i added seven 15 students added i added seven to that number to get you know so roughly half so we've quickly gone i mean if i'm a

064teacher and i'm seeing eight point four percent or you know we'll say we'll round it to ten percent if i'm seeing ten percent of my students gone i'm absolutely going to think that covet is widespread we're in and out it's just the natural perception i would think that i i would assume that they would think that where in reality it's not 8.4 it's 0.6 percent all right dr mcguire what i'll do is is i'll just move down to the slide that has all the percentages on it right here and again you can see how i think again you can see how it goes down based on the percentage as the percentage lowers and so i just wanted to give you guys a snapshot of three percent below and and half percents in between uh just

065so you can have uh information making informed decisions i i think it's worth pointing out you know if you look at like mesquite elementary that's five cases that's if if you're one percent there that's difficult you know that could happen uh real quick and um and so i don't know if you know the same percentage should be applied to every level um you know maybe there's a different percentage for elementary different percentage for junior high different percentage for high school especially according to where it seems we have more cases and so i just want to let you guys think about that and and have more conversations related to that in terms of i have a question about elementary because in the past um in some of our elementary schools we have a uh department wise

066for fourth sometimes fourth fifth and sixth grade sometimes it's just fifth and sixth grade are we doing that this year or are we just containing jason martin through six into the same classroom because that i think makes a difference um on the number of students that he can talk specifically about that okay good morning so there are less students that are departmentalizing or less schools that are departmentalizing at the elementary level this year there are currently about half of our sixth grades that are departmentalizing but many of them are keeping relatively most of the cohort of students and they're switching just the teacher some of them even aren't uh some of the students aren't even moving the rooms and the teachers are revolving around the room so the three sixth grade teachers are doing that

067you do have to realize there's still some movement at all elementary schools because of all the pull out programs for reading uh alp ell services and so that kind of differs from campus to campus but they're being very cognizant of that the good thing is in a lot of our special programs is there tends to be less students in those rooms so they're able to very easily social distance so you might have four first graders come in from uh four different uh teachers rooms for a reading program but they can all sit at least six or eight feet away from each other and then go back to their classroom so that there's and of course masks are on as well too so those interactions are safe at that level but there is less departmentalizing at

068the elementary this year not only partly because of covid which is definitely an issue but a lot of our elementaries right now and the intermediate grades only have two sections per grade or three we have a lot because of the students that went to global or some other venue right now and so when you get down to two sections per grade level it does tend to make departmental departmentalization harder for the teachers all right thank you thank you jason i guess in my question is so in reference to choosing you know trying to come up with this percentage um so what is our purpose in moving from what is our goal what are we hoping happens if we move from in person to hybrid we're hoping to slow it down slow it down even though

069it's not spreading at the skulls is what we see we haven't we think our mitigation strategies are effective so i'm just trying to see what what do we well i think we go back to the original discussion when we when we started all of this is saying we would go back if the spread you know within the community was larger and so i think this is part of that discussion and and knowing that you know the goal posts have been moved back but the game hasn't changed right yeah i agree i'm just trying to figure out what is our what do we hope to see what happens i want to see that a couple things one i think um less number of students on campus we saw numbers that were lower now i can't say

070that because we went back numbers went up i numbers went up across the state so there's a different correlation there but i think it it would help mitigate what happens on campus could the numbers go down would they go down could they go up yeah that could happen but i think it's just another mitigation strategy to help uh with with community spread like substantial we're talking about um moderate to substantial spread it's just one more we're trying to put in one more mitigation strategy okay okay okay well and i think i think because we've hit that mark of 100 cases per hundred thousand we really have to consider at this point we don't see that spread in our schools but it could come even even though we have all these mitigation strategies because it's more

071widespread in the community it may affect us more yeah i but again our goal is to to contain it from transition well so we might see more cases coming to school that are happening somehow out of school but i don't i want it we are what our main purpose and goal is to not have it spread through the school and transition to school and that's what we have to work on and i think that's to me that's what i'm seeing is happening even with you know with the mitigation strategies in place i think that we so far have felt like we are not seeing a single case go you know we haven't been a super spreader event in our schools basically and we're trying to keep that down by not having dances not doing those

072you know i mean those are the fun things that we all want to do but just during this time in order to keep that community spread from happening and helping our community be safer we're asking people not to do dances not to do big social activities because that has an impact on keeping our schools open and keeping our kids where they can be in the classroom and get educated which we all agree is the most effective way for them to learn yeah to your point this would i think as as we look at our entire community at least the communication i've read and you've read the same communication in large measure there are folks on both sides who are reviewing the data and who are making their own assumptions and drawing their own conclusions regarding

073that data just as we are this whole threading the needle analogy is simply trying to address both sides of that discussion and letting our community know that we're not blind to either or of the dimensions related to this covid challenge and that we would be ready if we needed to do something and it's a series in my head of what ifs because as i read the communication coming from our community i'm seeing a lot of a whole lot of what ifs what if this happens what are you prepared to do that and then they have a suggestion or what if this doesn't happen and please don't close the schools and please thank you very much for what you've done and on and on in every dimension and i think we need to be prepared to

074one give our parents and our teachers and our staff advanced notice should we have to do something that abridges what we're currently doing and be able to implement whatever that is when it is time to do that and decide on what the parameters are for doing that implementation so i think that's at least in my head what the goal is of this discussion not sure we're going to reach any conclusions today but it is certainly worthy of the discussion dr mccord right and and again with your question about what the purpose of hybrid is did i get that yeah it's good i so i guess the reason i was thinking that is so if so okay so if we have five students at mesquite elementary so i'm just thinking and that's one percent how what

075is the rationale what is logical you know if that is one percent does that mean we should should it just be a trigger point one percent boom we're done no matter where you're at we would look at some of those some of those other things you said right that kind of that that makes it a little tricky it does make it so i wonder if we just keep it more to an absolute and we could do that but then the other thing i thought was we just we just went through and explained though how elementaries do have way less typically they're in one class maybe a couple classes so it would be much less um well because you're quarantined i would say because you're not quarantined right as many people so i don't know you

076might be able to have a little higher case that's what i was wondering maybe that justify at an elementary school whereas um the high school that would be that would be two percent whereas at a high school where you have one percent at campo um you know that could get really high right two or two 200 kids or right so forth that's kind of what i was trying to rationalize and that's the same thing i'm thinking i mean i just was playing with numbers a little bit if i use greenfield elementary off of this chart as an example if i have one percent so i have nine kids who are out because they're covered positive and now i have another 18 again simplifying the model it might be a couple more because of specials but

07718 i've got 27 out of 903 i've got three percent of my students who are now out of school if i do the same thing moving up to one and a half i get up to four point three percent by contrast if i take those same two at desert ridge if i take 24 students who are out then times six classes times two you know i ended up i end up with 24 who are out and another 288 who are out because of uh that and i'm i'm up at you know 13 percent of my students are affected and i moved to one and a half percent i'm at almost 20 percent of my students who are affected again not positive but affected by the quarantine and positivity combined that to me puts us in

078a different model if i'm missing 20 percent of my students how effective am i being in person what impact am i having on teachers reaching out to 20 of their students on a case-by-case individual basis trying to support them so there comes a practical element as those numbers move up that's different at the elementary level because of the compounding effect of the multiplication than it is at high school level so and junior high because also they have the same schedule yeah yeah so now i i didn't do it for junior high because it's the same yeah i agree with which experience did you use i used desert ridge high school as an example um and i used gilbert elementary but what percent oh it was i used one and then one and a half and

079it goes from 13 to 19.5 percent of the kids affected in that simple math and dr mccord your your recommendation is that we my recommendation is to use a percentage i didn't specify which one right but your recommendation is that we use a percentage for our schools as opposed to the dashboard right i think you know and and we've used this analogy it's it's i i think we have to concentrate on those campuses that might be having coveted issues for whatever case and and i don't want to i want to penalize the least amount of people as possible if if things are being managed in a in an elementary community very well and they're not seeing anything happening at their school i want them to continue because i know that's important you know i wrestle

080with that quite a bit too just because you look at the numbers for a community you look for because we are a community you look for the numbers for a county um but i i also have talked to many many staff members and the the the difference in the child today as opposed to beforehand is is vastly different and and much more positive and so if we can keep that going uh i think it's important for our kids well i would say if our if our number of cases per hundred thousand residents really skyrocketed we'd probably have to have another conversation and that's that's as long as we're keeping the beauty yes is we can call this in a 24-hour period sit down and have this conversation and i agree i mean because but the

081other part is if we have the community behind us to work on this and and just just an example i i guess i'm a news junkie because i listen to the news all the time but you know a study out of the university of washington they did some modeling if 95 percent of people comply with a mask wearing a mask when they're out and about will save a hundred thousand lives by the end of february so just that's what they have modeled um but we you know if our community can get behind us and help us keep these kids in school because i personally think that our number one priority in the state should have been getting our schools reopened not our bars our restaurants i mean i do understand we need businesses and people

082have to make a living but our schools are our future our kids and their the education they receive today has a huge impact on the next 100 years probably 80 years and so our our schools need to be a priority and when people think about what they're doing because this is a individual responsibility and it's a community responsibility and we have to make all those parts work together so that we can focus on keeping our kids in school and yes they may not to get to do all the things they want but i think getting their education and being there in the classroom which we know is the best learning model for almost every student and and i'm sure there are a lot of students who are online right now who would like to come

083back when they feel like it's safer so i just think that's a huge priority for us and that we'd like to see a priority in our community in all of this i i i do worry about staff i mean it is it's it's hard for them it's it's it's a challenge and um you know i think teaching working at a school is is hard enough and then you add this to it and the level of anxiety goes up and so um i worry about that and i i i worry that um you know that they don't feel supported or that they don't have what they need and so we need to be doing as good a job as we can to make sure that those things are in place and um but again whether on

084a campus of 50 people 20 may not have any concerns about any of this and 10 may and it doesn't matter whether you do or don't that's how you feel and you own that and that's that's real to you so and if it's real to you it's got to be real to me and so we have to we just have to be mindful of that your feelings are your feelings we shouldn't be um making less of somebody's feelings if that's the way they feel we need to help them to work through that and support them in the best way we can dr mccord the concept you've proposed here at least for us to discuss also helps us localize and individualize and it gives that grouping of people who are in and around that particular school

085or set of schools the opportunity to really drill down on their own behaviors their own issues related to how they interact to help us keep that school open so i appreciate what you're what you're trying to do there i'd like to tag on to that too um yesterday i listened to the the governor's press conference when he was asked at the i didn't see the whole thing but he was asked at the end what educational leaders he had talked to and he evaded the question or dodged it and after the conference the state school superintendent came out with a statement that they were not consulted at all aea has come out with a statement that they were not consulted asba came out with a statement that they were not consulted in the arizona school administrators

086so those are the four biggest um agencies or associations that have to do with education and so you know for me the frustration is that that things change and and we get we get mixed messages and yet we're we are in charge of 33 000 students and 4 500 employees and you know i i i think everybody knows how i felt all along um i could live with this i think this is a a give giving a percentage of our school district because of of what we're doing if we come up with the percentage and we know that we're going to go to hybrid if we if we hit that percentage at each school but i'm going to go back to what mrs humphrey says if all of a sudden we have an uptick in

087our community then i think we have to immediately go back and and just i listened yesterday to the um head of the university of utah medical center and they were the sheet i can't remember a man or a woman i should be able to remember that but i don't um saying that that they're getting to a point where they may have to start deciding who gets to come to the hospital so old people like me you know might be i'm not taking you because there's a young person that has coveted and you know what a decision that that has to be for anybody to have to make so i think that if we start seeing in arizona an uptick and i think the governor said yesterday we were 13th lowest at this point which is

088a good thing um but it could that could change next week i agree and and again i i think that would be prudent of all of us if if we notice some things just go out of whack um that we sit down and have another conversation about what to do next and um i i have two questions because i um i i think we're having a really good discussion and i think that you know making some benchmarks of when we might go to hybrid and maybe even when we might go back to virtual is a great idea but i what about transportation if we have some schools that are hybrid um and some schools that are not is that going to have an effect on transportation or not at all it's good to go not

089at all because they're running the same routes okay all right the other question i have and this is my concern is if we put a school back into hybrid or back into um virtual because of circumstances we're an open enrollment state i i am concerned about families jumping from one school to another and if a school is closed because of the number of cases that's not really beneficial to be taking people and putting them in a different school that that is a concern so i i'd like we chatted about that um the other day people hop in schools because something's closed down i get that but i also understand that [Music] open enrollment we're we're going to contain our classrooms to the smallest number we possibly can so we have the ability to deny that

090based on a pandemic okay because i i want to keep people safe and i just can't do that if people are fleeing from one place to another that makes it worse so thank you i've got a couple of comments if i can you know first of all i i think i need to acknowledge my fellow board members you know if we go back to july we adopted a process that was a hard-fought emotional compromise with the intent that we wanted students back in school and and i know that my fellow board members gave a lot uh to get to that compromise and we said we would follow a set of metrics that we were not at that point published we didn't know what we were adopting in empowering us to go back to school we

091said we were going to follow the health department metrics so it does become you know a little bit frustrating when we finally have gone through a lot of uh pain to understand something that we adopted without even fully knowing what it was when we adopted and now with no notice or no real explanation for those the app the metrics themselves haven't changed but the application of making decisions based on those metrics has has been changed no i'm not necessarily opposed to that because we get new information and we've got to be able to change in a pandemic based on new information but the lack of explanation is is is concerning i wish i had more information as to why input and so the having said that as a preface i acknowledge that we have all

092been focused on keeping schools open and safe you know none of us want to risk people's health we but we recognize all the the mental health the physical health the the covid case etc what i like about this approach even though we haven't yet said on numbers is that we're trying to keep people safe we're trying to keep people open keep schools open but we're mitigating the risk as it happens in a specific geographic location at a specific school if we go back to hybrid now one thing i would suggest is that we say if we're going to go back to hybrid we're going to do it for a two week period you know we i think that helps with the open enrollment if parents know oh this is going to be two weeks so

093this is going to be three weeks whatever is appropriate whatever we we feel is appropriate but that prevents the outbreak from spreading to other schools and hopefully keeps it contained within the community so we're the the isolated school community instead of the wider community we're going to have to face another criteria is what happens if following the current standard of metrics we apparently now hit all three red before the question was all in the back of our mind we had decided what happens if one hits red now it's following those guidelines so we're trying to find interim step to address issues before we get there and hopefully prevent it from getting there so that that's kind of my feeling i know that's not going to satisfy everybody on either side we're going to get feedback

094on both sides but we're trying to find that middle ground that maintains a compromise maintains safety and health and keeps our kids in school and we hope that our community will recognize that effort and support i just moved over to the next page just and to go along a little bit with what you just said there i would recommend a minimum of 14 days two school weeks i guess is the best way to put it and monitor uh you know the active cases on the campus if if it hasn't gone down or gone up based on the next you know the following week the week before they're supposed to go back i mean i i then we extend it i mean that's i think that's i think that's logical more than anything but but i

095think you have to monitor that so i don't know if this is too much specifics but are you thinking like basically wednesday we have our dashboard come out our district number of cases would you say go hybrid by friday go hybrid by monday i so along this whole journey that we've been on since march we've learned a few things yeah and um don't start a hybrid model the day after labor day especially if you know you're a through l so am i right everybody yeah okay um so i would try to start it on a monday um that of course you know there may be a holiday somewhere in there coming up but i would try to do it that was so wednesday we see it we look at it pretty a little deeper just

096to make sure and put principles on notice and then that's where we're at thursday we make sure staff knows parents know students know that on monday we'll be going to hybrid and um for the next two weeks and continue to the communication with that school and community as we lead up to the end of that the oh sorry the people those who have been quarantining for the last week or two yeah and those who've been out with positive i mean it's it's going to be a long thing but it's just what it is so yeah timing may not be good for some of those of their quarantine [Music] so i was just going to make a recommendation in case it's a monday holiday because that will probably happen and i i don't know if this

097will work well or not but it's just my idea that if we start with l3m on tuesday that we take the a through a through l on wednesday and not have that right one day of open and then thursday friday right that would just be my just a supplement yes monday or whatever everybody gets two days in school it would make the cleaning process i would imagine a little bit harder but um a little bit and um might be some confusion but that comes down to communication right it's always that will they know that they're supposed to come to school on wednesday or will we you know i mean we want to keep it as simple as possible but i can see that scenario happening again very easily because there's a lot of monday holidays

098yeah so yeah that's my suggestion were you were we able to get a ballpark figure on the number of kids that have been quarantined i'm sorry i i i won't yeah how many kids we've already had been quarantined here well i wouldn't you know what just just i would just go with a more pure number than anything because i don't think that in every case there has been people that have had maybe if you just could have it for next week okay yeah because i'm sorry that i know that's a lot oh you're good information to try to get dr mccord [Music] sorry as we as we move through the presentation uh and we get to a spot where we think we're we're ready to do something uh i would suggest that we kind of

099back off and hold off a little bit go a little slow and let's look at a framework these are all this is all verbage words on a page and i think it might be appropriate to add to the words on a page with a graphic that says if we're in hybrid here's when we're going to notify here's when we're going to implement and here's how long we're going to be there and here's a target date for return or something on that order if anything i've said makes sense but yeah i think as we pull all the words together that we create a flowchart we create a framework that people can see and follow a road map so that when we notify and we say you are moving to that they can just look at the

100chart and say oh that's what we're going to do and that's for families that's for teachers and that's for staff so that they can prepare their headspace and their actual implementation appropriately does that make sense yes and something visual is a lot easier sometimes to grasp than reading an email and trying to put the words right so interpreting what's being said we've not made a decision or any kind of vote but it sounds like we're kind of reaching a consensus around an approach here we have not set discuss specific numbers in there one of the things i i believe dr santa cruz brought up but i may be remembering wrong because it's been long enough ago in the conversation what about activities do we measure activities you know if we go back to a hybrid

101i know your response was i would keep those activities open unless there's a case do we set metrics specific to those i i think it's been working we've only had to shut down i think two activities at this point on a temporary basis i think that i wouldn't set metrics for that necessarily just because there's so many different sports and different numbers of people and health services would have to go through and and diagnosed how are these being spread and so i would just leave it up to uh the district on that one doesn't that aia have some guidelines as well they have some guidelines too yeah two for that's less than 25 25 more more than three or more quarantining for x amount of days so i'm saying we've been following those as well

102as i think we actually responded faster than the aia guidelines would have required us to do but in doing so in doing so it actually allows a return to those activities faster than the aaa guidelines would have allowed us had we waited to hit the ai headlines so what i find interesting on this comparison that you did with going from three to one is it's all the same schools nothing changes if we do one percent or three percent it's all still the same seven schools am i reading that correctly i don't know what you're doing you know yes it's just an example yeah yeah it's all the same yeah we would have one for every school right but this is this just an example or do is this just an example this those are the

103actual numbers of those schools right yeah but so that's a real example of campo that's not the cases that have happened though no no no this is what would happen if there's three percent we haven't had near that many cases at any of our schools no no okay then i'm this is not the actual numbers no no nobody's exactly which which actual numbers are you talking about this is a hypothetical if we had three percent of cases that would be 57 right students and staff at campo then if that's our best metric then we shut it down okay going back to page 15. that's not what we have no no so what we have what what is what is actual on that page in terms of right now are the numbers of students and staff

104that are on that campus so so the 57 is what is three percent of so that would be the numbers where are the actual numbers then there's none in the presentation there's none in the present it's on the dashboard okay so depend let's say we went to three percent how many schools approximately would that effect none at this point so far none would okay so far i just want to know with how many so far none would even be at one percent none would go to as of today right yesterday right even in the past if we even looked over the past weeks since we've done it none have had that many cases that even one percent and the reason i kept picking on desert ridge is they're the closest that where one percent would

105be 24 active cases they currently on the dashboard have 15 active cases and that that's that's why i was picking on that school versus versus any other just because they're closer to that number than anybody else so as of today we would have no schools that would qualify even under one percent correct all right and i think that's an important feature miss uj because those who might pull this from our website these are all example hypotheticals these numbers except for the student population at those schools the numbers on the percentage column do not exist currently and i think that's important for the public to know because we certainly don't want people taking this presentation and running and saying look you have 57 students who are active on campus x right no that is just not

106the fact we don't have any at this point these that are significant enough to warrant any concern these are the benchmarks that we may use if we decide on that percentage correct and what those numbers could look like if we use that percentage yes um so that's that's some hybrid talk and and we can circle back to that and get some talk more specifics and just about going back to online um again the original benchmarks uh set up if we were reading one of the three areas we could should consider moving back online and then the new benchmark said three and then in the revised safely returned to in-person instruction that was revised last night yeah at some point yesterday afternoon late in that area it says a county has a county has one benchmark

107in red in the red category for two or more weeks even if different benchmarks schools should consult with their local health department to determine whether to prepare to transition back to virtual learning with on-site support services with for example based on community level data a local health department may make a recommendation for a school or district to move to virtual instruction even if only one metric is in the substantial transmission category that last piece where i started with for example was not in the document that was revised i guess on october 22nd so i think this is in response and they changed a graphic to match what the county looks like now this is the graphic that we have the one that they had in the revised one was the one we've been using from

108the beginning so just to clarify that um you know i do predict that one of the three you know benchmarks probably the number of uh per 100 000 will will hit red i mean we we're going up and as i see you know a daily tally coming in from you know the number of cases in our state you know today it was 1500 so that number is increasing and so i think that'll directly impact that so we would have to what i would recommend on this or when we would consider uh we do it as a district again do we do it on uh per site and and i have a recommendation but at the same time and i know this is talking out of both sides of my mouth i mean if if it

109if we got into a bad situation where it blew the percentage that whatever we determine uh the active cases and we just see those coming in more and more every day for whatever reason we may just want to shut that one school down and we've seen that across the state at times i mean we're a larger district and so maybe if a high school shuts down in one district that that's their only high school but looking at that but at the same time if we notice it throughout the whole district i think we again going back to conversations we had earlier i think we circled back up in this room and make that decision uh whether it's an all-district thing or not so this is more of a a tricky one it's the next logical

110step after hybrid obviously um but there's times i think if we're going to go online i'd love to do it on a school-by-school basis but at the same time i think that it might end up it would be if we had to go to that degree it might be the entire district so that's kind of how i feel i feel like if i feel comfortable saying for sure if if we meet all three benchmarks it are substantial if i'll move to substantial for sure that we should prepare to transition back online and consult with our county health department which we've been consulting with yes regularly so we're getting regular feedback often correct and they the county has not suggested that we go hybrid or close any schools at this point even with the cases that

111we've had they just go through the point of quarantining and then continuing our mitigation strategies and different things so we have been consulting with the county this is this whole discussion is above and what we can do like you said in steps before we um you know before other measures take place so i i think we should do what you know what this a lot the latest things i've said is if so here we are now yeah as the county goes we've now seen our district is insubstantial for this week let's keep in mind watch the county and see what happens next week and then let's um watch with consult with our county and see where we're at and that's and i think what you're talking about uh is the next bullet is if the

112county has all three benchmarks in the red category adhs recommends schools transition to virtual learning in consultation with their local health department right and that's where sheila talked about in terms of consulting with people that contradicts what was originally said so that's that's that's the difference there yeah i think but so that's i to me that's like a definite is it yeah that that should be uh then we're we're gonna be going virtual we'll talk to the county department but we'll be going virtual probably i think the whole district should that right right because we'll be back to a substantial spread within the community hopefully it would just be for a couple weeks i think we should have a return plan in place right not like an unending you know month we can have a

113date on it but have yeah we'll have um we'll have metrics on it right should we talk about that again yeah well and then and then the next question it's almost like here we are back to we had that available for free for a while so what would be the circumstances so the executive order i believe is still in effect okay and so we would have to provide on-site learning but also with the understanding that with the staff that's available we don't have a lot of staff available we wouldn't have bus drivers available to come and help out like they did in the past or food service workers so that number on those campuses would be extremely limited okay we don't know the exact number yet but well i i do think we need to

114communicate that sure that there might be spaces but they are limited um because because they're you know more people are trying to get back to work we may not have people at home to care for those children so correct um our elementation we have to think about change the motto that's a huge consideration yeah dr mcclure may clarify something you said in that response if we go back to online we'll have on-site services but right when you say on you said on-site learning we won't be doing teaching and instruction right we will have on-site support on-site support is what i think he uses yeah for the exact same i just i just don't want anyone to misunderstand that that if you drop your kids off teachers are going to be there by that word learning

115yeah right and we won't be holding class right right and i would request in the event that we consider in the event that we have a full shutdown that as we look at a reopening model that we graduate as we did this time that we go from total online to a hybrid and then to in-person that would be my recommendation as that we consider that as we if we ever hit that juncture and just some final thoughts for me the state county district of course everything everything's increasing again a plan moving forward i think it's beneficial for all involved students staff and families sticking to our mitigation strategies is paramount and i and and it's really easy to get lack of days again a lot of this and so um i know our principals i

116know our teachers i know our support staff are continuing to push these things and and even with them they get a little coveted fatigue i i understand that but we have to stay diligent with that and what we do off campus will have a positive or negative effect on what happens on campus and so we have to be mindful not just of on campus but what we're doing as community members so that's kind of that board members we've engaged all along is there anything else that you would want to direct request seek information regarding the presentation i i would like to know i mean i know that miss frost is working on it but i would like to know how many kids we've had to quarantine um because as we pick those percentages the number

117who have to quarantine makes has a real impact and so i would rather hold off and maybe i don't know make that decision at our brief board meeting about the percentages although we're probably going to be in red for at least one thing next week hopefully it'll go down but who knows but um because i think you know whether we pick one percent and i i do think um i could run you some scenarios yes i i think just um at the elementary school where there are more in cohorts maybe it could be a little higher percentage because we won't have to quarantine as many and then maybe at the junior high in high school uh a lower percentage but to me kind of knowing how many people have to quarantine makes a difference whether

118i pick one and a half percent or two percent or or one percent um that would make a difference to me on my decision okay other consideration at least from my point of view is as we move to the brief board meeting here momentarily it is certainly possible for us to engage in crafting emotion and doing something with that it is also possible because we know it's going to happen anyway to give our community an opportunity to weigh in via email to staff in terms of suggestions or thoughts relative to what those who have chosen to listen have heard or read or believe and when we get to our meeting next wednesday that will also give us an opportunity to individually craft a motion that we think might fit our needs for next wednesday to

119act upon relative to this kind of uh plan so those are just my thoughts they're not set in stone i'm just sharing those with you and thinking out loud anything else for the good of the order relative to the presentation and what you have heard and participated in this morning one other point i think i'd like to see some language around the community's substantial spread and if we're in red for those different categories and what that would mean so what do you what do you mean well i mean um i mean i could probably find it in here if well if then yeah if if if we're um if we reach these metrics then what then we'll go everyone will go virtual we'll consult with the public health department what what according so here's here's

120my question okay are you talking according to the county health department or gilbert public schools because if you're talking gilbert public schools that's what this discussion is about well that's what i'm saying i i think um i because i'm a visual person i would like to see something in writing this exchange that we had with miss wood about um if we go red in all three metrics then we're going back online is there another case where we would go back online um that again that would be up to you as a governing board so i think if you if you need to talk that out a little bit more then then might be the time to do that now i guess the the interesting part of that is is even at this point it's barely

121over the 100 but it is substantial at this point and yet in our schools were not seen i do appreciate that we have this local data in our schools now it's not as if we're seeing this yeah you know i'm just saying so i to me i i kind of like that we have this idea of the local numbers whatever we decide on that give us trigger points of saying you know what at this school now it's it's become an issue of basically if you want to say substantial at this school right there's enough people with it at this school that we need to look and try and make another mitigation strategy um i would prefer to do it that way and always in consultation with our health our county which we're always in consultation

122with they make other recommendations and we need to work with those and you know figure out figure that out but um to me that's where i think is what we're doing i think that that is the mitigation strategy until we hit for sure all three substantial that was my thought well and state and county agencies health agencies i should say have really left it up to us they so so far and and stated clearly that what we are sharing with you are guidelines uh they're they're not set in stone they're pretty concerning when you look at them but the ultimate decision rests with this board according to what i understand relative to the state and county health agencies and the governor for that matter well i would say um just it was referenced early in

123dr mccord's presentation but the percentage of covet-like illness there's a lot of disagreement about what that number is going to mean and whether it would ever be read because of the way things are or are not reported correct thank you ms humphreys mr carr dr sanders i would i would i would agree with your your assessment with the caveat that we've been told that if a school has an outbreak or whatever the the county may step in school specific and say hey we want you to take this additional measure this additional measure up to and including they could ask us to close the school correct um and when i say ask they would essentially require us to i would also highlight for those you know as we we're talking numbers of one percent one and

124a half percent i'm i'm kind of assuming we're going to fall somewhere in that range but that that's just based on the discussion um i did have a discussion with miss frost uh i guess it was last week earlier this week i can't remember when when there's a discussion that she commented to me said normally in an outbreak situation flu outbreak uh you know whatever other illness outbreak the county declares an outbreak at when it affects 10 percent am i remembering that number right from our conversation yeah so normally we're talking when it reaches 10 of our population so in this case the county has defined it as two cases that they can't contract trace outside of and the state has defined it that way as well not just this county so a much stricter

125definition of what an outbreak is and we are talking about taking mitigation steps at a much much earlier case than we would ever consider taking um you know that statement's probably going to frustrate some in our community and it's going to frustrate some that we're not being even more proactive in going at a half a percent or a quarter percent we understand that we're trying to find balance thank you for that mr carr i i i i i think getting back to what we're all saying is that that i think that the um percent positive or a percent of cases is probably the most important criteria to go on as opposed to the you know like something like the colder like symptoms because i think that could happen to anybody any day jill getting back

126to you when your question a little bit so what i'm hearing you say is you'd like to see something or in order for us to go completely online as a school district we need three reds in all categories well i i guess what i want to understand is is what that is and i guess that's i mean that is our decision but um i don't i don't know how to judge that because i i when i've watched this through the weeks of from it's from starting from march and check the website and and looked at all of the data that i've looked at i always felt that when we got to 100 cases per 100 000 residents that was a concerning that was a concerning benchmark too and percent positivity in testing you know let's

127all run it down and get tested we hadn't i haven't mentioned it but we did have an email from the university of arizona looking for people teachers and staff to be a part of a study where they could self-administer a covent test for free and just keep track of and if they got sick share their symptoms or whatever i mean that came into our board and i think that's something we should pursue looking at and encourage people to sign up for but um when i looked at this that hundred thousand hundred cases per hundred thousand was kind of my benchmark not positivity not covet-like illness and we've already hit that but when we look at our schools that spread is not in our schools and so it to me i'm struggling because that's what i've

128used as my benchmark this entire time but it's not affecting our schools at the same rate as it is in the wider community and i would say you know if you look at the arizona department of health website um it's the 20 to 44 that are the most cases and then it's the like i think it's 44 to 54 or something like that that is the second most although the number of cases the kit for 20 and under has gone up a lot as well so i i guess what i'm trying to say is that even though we have hit that benchmark that have i've been watching all this time and we're in the red on that one category that's not in our schools and i think um i think maybe looking at the percentages

129but just understanding that that wider community spread may have an impact on the number of cases that we see within our schools and maybe some language to define that a little better i mean because i as um well i i followed will humble previous um director of the department of health for the state of arizona and he has totally said that that coped like illness number will probably always stay green because they're not reporting it in a a continual way they're not required to report it and so it's kind of a flimsy number so that's where i'm i'm struggling because the benchmarks that we have been given it's really hard to know and i've i've relied on the 100 per 100 000 residents and here we are in red but it's not showing up in

130our schools and that's my conundrum right um so i i guess i live to me i would and maybe i need to go home and think about it for a while but to come up with wording or an understanding of where do we get with that cases per hundred thousand when do when does that get sufficient that we say okay now it's a concern to our schools um and that's that's what i'm kind of struggling with is that clearer a little bit yeah a little bit i don't think i miss humphreys you bring up some very good points like none of the metrics are without their flaws you know i mean percent positivity it's a self-selected group who's going and getting tested it doesn't necessarily represent the population at large it represents generally is skewed

131towards those who are feeling symptoms so they're going and getting tested the number per hundred thousand is highly highly volatile based on the number of people being tested yeah so if if our perce even holding our percent positivity um equal if the number of people getting tested doubles then that number doubles uh so it each one of those independently has some major flaws in how we interpret it and you're you're exactly right in your comments so it's that's why we kind of have to look at them in totality and we have to understand what's behind it in driving the numbers but i agree that it is concerning that they're going up yeah the concern it's concerning and that's why we're having this discussion because we're saying what are how are we going to address this

132and how does this happen because jumped up to 149 cases per hundred thousand like they went up almost 50 or 60 cases in one week right well and remember though also i wanted to just clarify the where 100.3 and as a district boundary the county was still below that at this point yes how they reported it so it might change as well but i just wanted to be clear on that so counties at 84. right right yeah which is moderate the first time we've been worse than the county so and but we have seen fluctuations too so we'll see but we should know more but again let's i i'm with you that that's concerning and that's why we're having this discussion exactly what and that's a national trend yes a slow as well as a

133state trend we're seeing those occur and there are all kinds of recommendations and and commentary from the medical professionals out there as to why and hitting the winter months and the vacation times and the holidays and all of that factors in so the numbers are are scary when you look at them in total when you drill down and take a look at how it's impacting our organization and that being classrooms teachers and staff we're not seeing the same thing the numbers do not correspond and so there's there's the issue and that's why we're having this discussion and thank you miss wood for saying that anything else for this discussion dr mccord thank you for pulling it all together and getting it there uh i look forward to seeing that framework that we're going to develop

134so that we can move forward with a plan board members anything else if there isn't and i'm going to call for adjournment of the work study and move to the brief board meeting so i'll adjourn the work study session and we'll move to item four the brief board meeting and item 4.01 is roll call miss wilson would you please indulge us dr charles santa cruz here miss larry wood here mr reed carr here michelle yujetti here miss jill humphreys here mr president all board members are present you have a quora thank you mr wilson action item number five and that's item 5.01 discussion and possible action regarding the approval of methods to use for school to return to hybrid or online learning dr mccord anything you want to add no i just think it goes

135along with our discussion that we just had during the work study what i'm hearing is that we'll reconvene maybe probably on wednesday with some more but that's up to the discussion of you guys right now board members uh need a motion for item 5.01 i'm going to motion that we um postpone until our next board meeting and and can sit reconsider this and and vote on it at our next board meeting 34 thank you miss humphries is there a second a second thank you mrs woods is there a discussion 5.01 mr i think based on everything that we've talked about today if you can come up with the 50 000 things we've asked you to do between now and wednesday so that we can make an informed decision and and the right decision for the

136safety of our students and our parents and our families and our teachers what i would like to do is come back with um just like a metrics or a matrix that says here's what this looks like has some options for you because i i don't know where everybody sits on those percentages to go to hybrid you know specifically so i'll give you some ideas of what that looks like based on some of the examples here today as well as maybe changing the percentages at different levels so you can see that and could we have a like an idea of which schools might be close to to hitting hitting one of the percentages i my only concern was we it felt like there was some urgency in holding this today do we feel like we have

137we just wanted to get it started and get some information started i just don't want to not make a motion forward if you feel like we need to no i don't start moving forward as we've kind of analyzed it we feel like we're i think we're we're in a good spot and i think next wednesday uh will give us an even better idea i'll update us on whether dashboard is from that morning and based on that information that comes out that might that might be something to where one of those schools indicates based on one of the models that's adopted to go to hybrid i'm not i'm not sure of that but you know it's it's only friday so well i was going to say well the county won't put anything else on thursday we

138can somebody who's good at data can maybe divine where we might be on thursday to talk about it wednesday night read i i track that probably that probably twice a week off the live data um i'm happy to share with what with what numbers we might be on thursday but we'll know our our own school numbers we know them daily correct we will know those yet well we update those every wednesday correct okay you do know them every day you know them every day yeah they come in some drop off some add on so usually it's somewhat of a wash okay any other go ahead mr crack i'm not sure with the motion being to postpone this maybe this is discussion for next time but because it's not i'm not sure it's directly related to

139this but would there be a criteria where we say if we hit a certain percentage or if we heard it hit a certain percentage for a two-week period and i'm saying percentage students active cases you know if i'm just trying to be a little more flexible i don't know that that's the right way but if we're at you know one and a half percent and i'm plucking numbers out of the air just off of this one and a half percent at a given point or if we're above one percent for two weeks um you know i don't know what the right answer is i don't know that any of us know that there is a right answer but but uh i i wouldn't be adverse to even some suggestions like that well i can say

140if you mean if we were hybrid and it was still going up maybe moving to online i'm assuming the the the metric is to go online right now we're saying again just one percent would be you know 19 students at campo if we're above 19 active cases two weeks in a row we go to hybrid but if we hit one and a half percent which takes us to 28 then we go on then then we go online based on the one that is exactly what i was i mean trying to and i don't know the one percent and the one and a half are the right numbers i mean i feel like honestly i feel like we're pulling numbers from the air because we don't have guidance where that is but the intent here is

141again we want to keep schools open or as open as possible by that i mean hybrid we want kids in the classroom wherever possible and again i i would agree with uh miss humphries those may be different numbers at a high school level because of the potential spread than it is in elementary but uh um just just some ideas as as we formulate a recommendation that i'm sure we'll then throw darts at that recommendation come wednesday yeah and it'll give you an opportunity at least in your head craft the language for emotion for next wednesday given the fact that when we crafted our original motion that took us four hours so it got better though it did get better got better time i wouldn't know i voted against it well it was it was an

142active lesson in democracy for sure any other commentary if not we have a motion before us and the motion is to postpone action on approval of a method to use school to return to hybrid online learning uh is there anyone who understands it differently if not then the motion is before you and those in favor of 5.01 and the postponement of please signify by saying i i all those opposed the same motion carries five zero we're now at item six six point zero one is a motion to adjourn is there a motion so moved thank you miss humphries is there a second second second has been there thank you mr eugenie any discussion no discussion then we will vote on adjournment all those in favor of adjourning this brief board meeting please signify saying aye

143aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero thank you for those of you who are watching on live stream thank you for those of you who attended here in person we are adjourned you