001yes i can thank you thank you good evening and welcome to tonight's meeting of the gilbert governing board it is july 28th we welcome all of you who are here present with us in the main boardroom those who are present in the overflow room and all those of you who are on live stream we will start our meeting with a moment of silence then we'll go into a pledge led by miss eugetti and then the roll call so if you'll please join me in the moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you mr eugetti ms wilson item 1.04 would you please call the roll miss laurie wood
002here miss sheila yujetti here mr reed carr here ms jill humphries here dr charles santa cruz yeah mr bor mr president all four members are present you have a quorum thank you mrs wilson we would need to approve tonight's agenda item 2.01 is there a motion i move that we approve tonight's agenda thank you mr jetty is there a second second thank you mrs humphries any discussion seeing none then we will call for the vote all those in favor of tonight's agenda and the approval thereof please signify by saying i i those opposed by same motion carries five zero item three item 3.01 we are into the superintendent's report dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members uh thanks to everybody for joining us this evening today our new teachers reported for work
003those that are new to the profession and those that are new to gilbert public schools we held several small group virtual meetings to welcome those who are new to gps and this year we have approximately 130 new teachers and for my interactions with them today we definitely got the cream of the crop from our communications and marketing department i'd like to officially acknowledge the incredible achievement of terry bradford chris hover and everyone who contributed to the creation implementation and development of www.gilbertschools.net backslash thrive including our high school counselors and career liaison staff thank you also to our district supporters especially marcy taylor barbara newman and brandi burton for fully supporting this initiative and to our high school principals and administrators for all your support the other day we found out that thrive has won a
004national award for the national school pr association earning merit award in the internet category we're so excited to see how important a resource thrive will be going forward especially for our high schoolers this year this award specifically goes to terry bradford who worked tirelessly and expertly to make thrive what it is and continues to be the forefront of thrive and also to chris hober who brought the idea forward as a solution and supported the work from the start so congratulations to them i want to talk about our bond rating on tuesday july 28th of this summer today gilbert public schools sold its school improvement bonds project of 2015 and 2019 series 220. proceeds in the amount of 40 million dollars will be deposited into our bond building fund on august 20th of 2020 the demand
005for the district's bond issues was significant 221 and a half million of investor orders were received for 34.3 million offered at the time of sell which was six times out subscribed the true interest cost of bonds was .609 percent which is an all-time historical low rate for bonds issued by the district gps's strong rating of aa2 by moody's and aa minus by s p were affirmed during this process the rating agencies credited the following reasons for our ratings one large and growing tax base in the phoenix metro area anchored by moderate resident income levels the district's healthy financial position has materially improved with consecutive operating surplus in the last five fiscal years and to remain healthy with conservative enrollment budgeting and prudent management and lastly the district's low outstanding debt with rapid principal amortization is
006a strength so congratulations to our finance department ms betts for making gilbert public schools a very financially healthy place to be how much will we save on that ms betts for our taxpayers in the coming years well it was a good shot you could have made up a number but no i'm glad you didn't but again that's that's extraordinary so thank you for that um we started our school year our school year begins on wednesday august 5th this school year like the ending of last school year will be something we've never experienced before all of our teachers and students will start online and we will make it the very best experience we can let me say this publicly we will run into some bumps when we kick this off make no mistakes but we will
007do all we can to make sure that we correct them and as fast as we can please know we miss our children and we miss our staff there is no doubt about that we are doing all we can to look out for the best interests of everyone involved in educating and raising our students tonight we will discuss the reopening of the 2020 2021 school year there will be differing opinions on this subject and guess what that's okay more than anything tonight i want everyone to remember that we care about each other this district this community was built on the backs of people who taught us that in order to be successful in anything we do we must first build relationships and have respect for each other in times like this that's easy to forget there
008have been several moments over the last five months that i've forgotten about that myself i've had to stop and remember why i do what i do and quickly i remembered i do this for our students staff and our community i do this for the people i've worked with side by side for the past five months i do this for my family and i do this for myself as we move through the evening let's not lose sight of what's important our students and each other dr santa cruz that concludes my report for tonight thank you dr mccord we are now at item four a request to speak to the governing board item 4.01 ms wood would you want to read that or would you prefer the recorded message let's just do the recorded is that ready
009that's fine please play the recorded message on the admonition body on an issue within the jurisdiction of the public body the board may make an open call to the public during a public meeting subject to reasonable time place and manner restrictions to allow individuals to address the public body on an issue within the jurisdiction of the public body at the conclusion of the open call to the public individual board members may respond to criticism made by those who have addressed the board may ask the staff to review a matter or may ask a matter be to be put on a future agenda however members of the board shall not discuss or take legal action on matters raised during the open call to the public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action
010during the open call the board requests that speakers refrain from voicing complaints against school personnel or any person connected with the district as it may impact due process rights policy k-e-k-e-b and k-e-d are provided by the board for disposition of legitimate complaints including those involving individuals forms required for use of these policies can be obtained from the gilbert public schools website thank you i would like to acknowledge the fact that mr carr is with us he had a commitment out of state he is joining us telephonically and that would round out the five member board so mr carr is with us by telephone we will start with cara dodd who would like to speak on item 7.03 of the agenda and after cara dodd it would be megan winter ms dot good evening board members
011my name is cara dodd and i'm speaking as an individual i am a spice one autism teacher here in gilbert i would like to say thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight i'd like to thank dr mccord the special education department our administrators and the board for what they're doing for our students and staff here at gps as a special education teacher i would like to share my concerns with online learning for our students for the majority of our students with special needs online will be extremely difficult most of our students see the computer as a reward and not as work our students with special needs need face-to-face learning they need hands-on learning they need certain therapy materials and they need structure and routine students with special needs need in person i would hope
012with the new guidelines with your opening schools are special education students will be able to be in person thank you for your time after miss winter we'll have bonnie hickman good evening thank you i would like to speak to you as meagan winter teacher of english language learners community member and mother of five gps graduates putting on hold in-person learning would allow the district the board staff and families to make better decisions right now all decisions are being made without knowing the data and whether the board will accept or create their own measures the personal feelings of many are to have students in the schools learning this will happen students will come back to the seats the question is when i'd like to see personal knowledge and experience drive decisions with correct data and protocols
013we have the buyers contractors some materials but the blueprints are being made and waiting for approval of what will be considered safe if there is a change in the trajectory we could always move the in-person learning earlier this would be easier change than to go back to online learning we could even bring in subgroups of students in for one-on-one learning such as special education students title students english learner students and other vulnerable populations i would love to see some kind of assurance assurance that the board will accept the guidelines provided by the secretary of education of the state of arizona i personally need to know that the board will accept the data that will be provided by the governor and not start in person i have medical issues that at this time force me to
014choose to teach online there are many unknowns such as harmony students face max requirements the opening matrixes and the protocols of the schools i need that guidance of knowing to know when it is safe and knowing what you will accept i i'm hurting wondering if i made the right decision or did i make the wrong decision because i did not have the information or assurance from the board if the board would delay the in-person opening it would give you the board the time to get the data and guidelines from the governor it would allow the board to develop their visions guidelines school protocols and procedures the district would have time to reassess family choices and staff matching i know you hear all the time that i want to be with my students i do too
015i just think that we need to have policies procedures and guidelines to be in place i respect each of you i'm glad that each and every single one of you are sitting in those seats this is a very difficult decision to make tonight i'm saddened that you have been put into this position but i do promise you i will work hard and do my best in whatever position or what kind of learning environment i am working in this year thank you for your time and your consideration thank you miss winter after mrs hickman martha romita hi good evening board my name is bonnie hickman and i am a teacher at paterson elementary um this is my 26th year in the gilbert district in the same classroom and i just wanted to primarily thank you this
016is probably not what you signed up for when you decided to run for the board and i just want to thank you for for all that you are doing and the fact that we trust you and that we know that we're in good hands and we appreciate it and i also would like to just state that the program that you've bought for our district so that we actually have something to teach from that will be an effective teaching tool is as is as good as it is um there are so many places that don't have that and i just thank you for spending the money and using what you did to um get us prepared for this kind of pandemic ahead of time and it's going to be different um but i'm excited to see
017where it's going to go and our kids are going to be okay and just to the community that's listening right now we're going to we're going to do well with your kids this is not going to be like it was in march when we were doing crisis education and trying to figure this out you know there's one way to log in there's one place to log in you aren't going to be having to hunt all over to find things so we have done a really good job with this for our parents and for our students and i just want to thank you for being willing to be in this hot seat right now because i would not want your jobs and thank you all to the people that are in the uh the district also
018that have put so much work into this because i wouldn't want their jobs either thank you thank you mrs hickman ms romero kathy steger will come after miss romero i'm a little short good evening thank you for your dedication to our district my name is martha romero i am a kindergarten teacher at houston elementary i am here tonight to speak on behalf of delaying in person school until the data says it is safe i love teaching i want to meet my new students in person and be back in school but not until it's safe governor ducey has said that we need to continue to social distance wear masks wash hands and avoid large crowds it is impossible to social distance in a classroom with 20 30 40 or even 60 students if we open schools
019now we are creating large crowds instead of avoiding them kindergarten students are not required to wear masks and are not great at washing hands or even staying in their own area no matter how much i teach model and review the expectations i do everything possible to keep my students safe while at school it will be very difficult to do that this year in the middle of a pandemic i also worry about myself and my colleagues being exposed and getting the virus we have seen several teachers who were following proper precautions and died can you imagine the impact that would have on your on a young kindergarten student or any student for that matter it would impact them negatively for the rest of their life when making your decision please consider the data and the cdc
020guidelines to keep gps students and staff safe teaching or learning online may not be ideal but it is possible and the best choice for us right now the kova numbers continue to rise along with deaths i worry if we open too soon the cova cases will skyrocket which will force us to close the schools again this would be detrimental to our students staff and community i urge you to allow time for the numbers to decrease and flatten which will allow students and teachers to be safe and give us time to learn the online expectations and be successful thank you for your time thank you miss steger good evening thank you for allowing me to speak tonight my name is kathy steger and i'm speaking as an individual i've been teaching in the gilbert school district
021for over 35 years i want to thank you for your time and dedication to our district you are volunteered to guide us your experience and expertise is greatly appreciated it's evident that you care deeply about students the families and staff and we need your leadership now i'm here tonight to ask that you wait to open our buildings until it is safe for the 400 4 500 employees and over 34 000 students to return i earned an undergraduate and a master's degree in education to prepare myself to be an expert in the field as a teacher i am asked to use data to inform my decisions i am also required to use research-based strategies and curriculum to address my students needs the research done by the people who have spent years studying and developing materials and
022methods to ensure a positive outcome now i'm asking you to use data and science to inform your decisions i'm asking you to follow cdc guidelines to ensure a safe reopening i'm asking not for a date but a data-driven decision data and guidelines were created by doctors and experts who are educated and devoted their lives to understanding viruses when arizona reopened in may the cdc guidelines were not followed and the inspect the infection skyrocketed however now that some guidelines are being followed our numbers are improving following data and guidelines work i know you are hearing from people who want you to open in-person classes now they will not feel the responsibility of covet-related illnesses and possible death among students their families and the staff they will not have to explain the decision to hold face-to-face instruction
023when the data didn't support it please use data and scientific guidelines created by the experts in the field of virology not a calendar date to decide when our schools are safe to reopen thank you for your time next up we'll have ms sherry goodman followed by scott encardona and amy rowe after scott sherry goodman there she comes thank you i'm very glad to be here today i'm speaking as a parent a mother of five four who have graduated from highland high school and one who's still in the program i cannot sing the praises enough of the teachers administrators there and um and i hope it can continue um i keep hearing the word data we need wait to see data if we look at other countries right now we can see that those who've gone
024back to school they have not seen outbreaks this has gone on for months they're not outbreaks if we look at daycare centers that have remained open here same thing we do not have outbreaks happening so if we're waiting for data we have data we have two options on the table really here we have those who want to go back to school those who do not feel safe those who do not want to go back already have that option right now you can stay home you can teach online you can be online you get to have that option those of us who would like to go back who need our kids back in school need to be able to have that option and we understand the risk that might happen because of of that decision we
025have teachers who want to go back also understanding that risk i am a parent of a child with special needs there is not an online program that will work for my son it has been devastating him losing this program that he loved and was his only social experience to be at the school with the most amazing teachers and there's no way my child can be online at home so my options will be to pull him out into home school and to quit my job and to be his only social experience that he has because of this option so i don't understand how being online and waiting for data will be able to serve any of these kids with special needs communities it will not work for those teachers who do not feel safe you have
026the options to be home and teaching online and if you choose not to do that or do not want to go back when it's time you have the option of quitting your job just like my husband is a police officer if he chose not to go back to work when this happened and did not want to be on the streets with the protest in fact we weren't even allowed to leave the state for a vacation for months he would also have to quit his job workers in the grocery stores doctors nurses also had that option to quit their job if they did not feel safe and i understand there's times when we don't feel safe but teachers are blessed with the opportunity to be able to teach from home and earn an income as well
027with many opportunities so once again we have those who want to stay home with every option to do so and that is your right and i understand the fear that some have you're absolutely welcome to stay home but we need to have that right to be able to go back to school and i i just hope that the board will listen because there will not be a date that it will be completely safe for us to go back there will not be a vaccine that will be a hundred percent that will never be a completely perfect setting so that is what i'd like to say to the board and i thank you for your job thank you thank you mr goodman i'm sorry can i ask people to refrain from clapping we just want to
028hear everyone's point of view and when we clap for people it really drives the division in the community and we all have to come together and make a very difficult decision so i would ask people to refrain from clapping mr and cardona good evening i appreciate this time for the board to give us opportunity to comment um my name is scott incardona i'm here as a parent of a elementary school age child who attends here in gilbert and i just am asking the board to please delay school in-person schooling i would like you to make the decision based on health and guidelines and i think that's extremely important um it's a very tough decision being on the board but as a parent i have concerns excuse me for teachers and for the students and i
029thank you for the opportunity to comment thank you thank you sir ms amy rowe followed by amy woods thank you governing board and superintendency for the opportunity to speak here my name is amy rowe and i am here speaking on behalf of myself my family my son and my community oh goodness i'm a long-time resident of gilbert my husband and i are both graduates of gilbert high school our son attends gilbert public schools and i've had the honor of being a special education teacher in the district for nearly 20 years i've never spoken publicly like this before i'm very nervous but i felt compelled to speak about the reopening schools during the current covet 19 pandemic at first i thought it would come and tell you all the reasons we shouldn't open why we're not
030ready like lack of building space to allow for social distancing limited training for staff on proper sanitation lack of innovation in our classrooms in the older buildings widespread community transmission of covid fear and anxiety of staff parents and students in regards to getting sick or possibly worse i'm sure everyone's already very well versed in all of that then i thought maybe i'd bring in some inspirational quotes or statistics or personal anecdote to persuade you however i'm sure your inboxes are overflowing with stories newspaper articles and science references so in the said i decided to be a more pragmatic approach and i will ask the governing board and superintendency to consider the following action items to protect the nearly forty thousand students and staff that you serve here [Music] first i'd like you to delay in-person
031reopening of schools beyond the august 17th date recommended by governor ducey originally so that we have time to plan properly and prepare whatever method parents are choosing for their children perhaps consider reopening our elementary campuses before secondary since emerging research shows that younger children are less susceptible to serious complications of this illness and those parents have child care concerns as well considered a staggered reopening schedule on campuses such as ninth grade comes in for one week as the only grade and then you add on additional grades each week until the campus is at full capacity allowing students and staff to practice the new guidelines in a smaller group with less repercussions of error mandatory cap on class sizes based on the size of the room the students are in not just their grade levels knowing
032that older buildings may have smaller rooms than some of the newer campuses perhaps we should adjust students schedules and or offer six-fifths to secondary level teachers to help reduce those class sizes to allow that social distancing requiring face coverings and mass for all students pre-k and up as well as staff to reduce transmission i implore you to take action tonight on this important issue so that teachers staff students and parents can begin planning for a safe return to campuses when the time is right thank you so much for your time next we have amy wood followed by jocelyn kozier thank you for hearing us tonight my name is amy woods and i'm speaking as a parent of two kids that are left in gilbert public schools i have a son who graduated as well i
033would like to speak a few minutes on the importance of the kids going back to school in person i have a daughter who will be a sophomore at highland high school and a daughter going into eighth grade at greenfield junior i never thought i would hear my daughter say please let us go back to school we miss our friends we miss our teachers my daughter who will be a sophomore said i'm really nervous i didn't learn one new thing this spring and she did every single thing and we checked that she was asked to do i understand that they say everything will change and be new i do believe that but they need to be at school in person uh one of our major reasons for wanting to for the kids to go back to
034school is that it is not the same learning online yes yes one of our major reasons is wanting them to go back for their education they need to learn and be prepared for the entrance exams in college and what they need to get them there but equally as important is the effects on school socialization for children at school learning to socialize face to face is one of the most important school skills that we will learn at school these kids are already looking at too many screens during the day the last thing they need is all of their schooling to be online staring at screens all day long with no ability to ask their teacher in person or ask a classmate questions asking questions and learning to talk and speak in front of others is such
035a vital skill to develop you simply can't do that when you're not in the classroom also i think you're getting forgetting how valuable it is to see friends in the hallway during lunch or after school for some children this is their only safe interaction they get all day long are we thinking about those kids some of you are saying it is not safe for these kids to go back on july 24th tim tim pierce with the daily wire stated the cdc as well as the american academy of pediatrics is endorsing schools reopening in person the cdc says the best evidence they can find says kova 19 poses low risk to school-age children and they are unlikely to be the major driver of the spread of the virus they stated we need to invest in our
036children and their well-being they are one of america's greatest assets if children are left at home in isolation it can put these children in abusive homes at major risk cnn health report states self-isolation forces victims of abuse to be trapped with their abusers stress heightens in the likelihood of abuse too many parents being their child's teacher is going to be an added major stress teachers in schools teachers and school coaches are a safety net to those children from many abusive homes many times these children open up to their teacher or a friend at school if they are isolated at home who are they talking to please remember we need to be a voice for all of our school-aged children we can't forget these kids and their need to be in school learning and socializing thank
037you for your time thank you for all that you do jocelyn closure and then kyle noble and after mr noble elizabeth garcia hi my name is justilyn cowser i am a mother from the school district i have four children one well one just graduated one in high school junior high and i also have a first grader i am here to ask you to get our kids back into the classroom as soon as possible we are all here every single one of us because we value education i know that we are all parents educators teachers that know the importance of education that's a given we're all on the same page there and i know that's exactly why each of you serve on the board is because you know how important education is for our children as
038a board though your job as stated on the gps website is the board will act as the general agent of the state of arizona in carrying out the will of the people of this district our teachers and employees of this district have a voice they have unions and they have administrations that represent them i've heard that our teachers have voiced their opinions when they were surveyed and the overwhelming majority of them would like to come back and teach in person our children however only have one voice and that is yours the teachers unions did not vote you in we did the families in this community voted you here and we have faith in you that you will do what is best for our children we have faith that you will listen to our concerns and
039govern this district in ways that are in our children's best interests we have heard from many organizations such that amy stated the american academy of pediatrics cdc the world health organization that are all encouraging kids to get back in school and off these screens as soon as possible i know that the parents in our community understand this and it showed when 89 of us asked for our children to attend person attend school in person one way or another either full-time or in a hybrid situation only 11 percent of our district asked for their students to go online that was just a survey taken less than two weeks ago and that is how the district feels you have an important job and that is to represent the families in the community that put you here with
040this overwhelming majority asking for an in-person education i don't see how you can make any other decision than to send our kids back to school i agree that we should offer online options because there are families that don't feel comfortable with this and as we have heard there are teachers that don't feel comfortable with this and that is why we have the online option we have that option for that 11 of the students and that small percentage of the teachers that do want to teach online but to me the bottom line is we as parents know our children we know what is best for them we know what they desperately need right now and as a board you know how this community feels you asked us and we spoke i am asking that you have
041the courage and the ingenuity to carry out the will of the people in this district do not let a union dictate what is best for our kids let the parents dictate what is best for our children if someone wants to stay online they can let the other 89 of us do what is best for our children thanks hi i'm kyle nobley i'm a parent of a child at findlay farms you're facing a very difficult decision right now but you're all on this board because we trust you to make the right decision even when it's tough to not take the easy way out and to do the right thing for our students and teachers we tell our kids what's popular isn't always right and what's right isn't always popular right now is the time to put
042that mantra to use there's a very vocal group of people out there trying to pressure you into making the wrong decision the truth is there's no way you can even consider opening schools to in-person learning at this point in time we have no idea exactly how bad the spread is in our community because the testing and reporting has been so woefully inadequate sonoranquest alone is reporting a testing backlog of over forty thousand tests right now on top of the backlog we have a twelve to fifteen day turnaround on getting test results the first step to containing a pandemic is to have good accurate and timely testing we failed at step one and thus have no business considering any step past that such as reopening schools from the little that we do know arizona is getting
043absolutely slammed by cobid as of today one arizonan dies every 14 minutes from this virus until the testing and reporting is back under control we will have absolutely no idea what's going on in our community and thus any reopening metrics given by the department of health will be completely useless further what kind of plan do you have to keep our students and teachers safe what happens if a student tests positive does the whole class have to quarantine does the teacher what about if a teacher tests positive who quarantines then what about if a student's family member tests positive does that student need to quarantine how can you even attempt to teach kids with any consistency if you have to constantly be sending students and teachers home for quarantines and if you're not going to be
044quarantining positive cases and those they come in contact with then how can you say that you're doing everything you can to protect the health and safety of our students and teachers will you be offering counselors when a teacher dies and students feel responsible what about when a parent dies and the student believes they brought the virus home from school do you have enough subs for when teachers are out sick or quarantining do you have enough resources in the school so students don't have to share computers and books do you have enough desks to spread everyone out in every classroom do you have enough floor space to spread everyone out adequately who will be providing hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes teachers are already supplying their own school supplies will they have to provide these items as
045well as a state arizona rushed to reopen and look how poorly that's turned out let's learn from our mistakes and not repeat them so considering the massive testing backlog the slow turnaround on testing the huge amount of unanswered questions regarding the health and safety of our students and teachers i say we are nowhere near ready to even consider opening the schools up at this point in time we have to push back the in-person school date well beyond the august 17th date my biggest hope for this year is that we don't have to start morning announcements with a moment of silence and every yearbook doesn't have to have several pages of remembrances at the back for all the students and teachers that we lost to kova this year you know what the right decision is please
046don't be afraid to make it next we have elizabeth garcia followed by colby ashton and nevin cawley good evening to the board and the superintendent thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is liz garcia the last time i addressed this board was in 1992 as the first ecology club president at mesquite junior high now my husband and i are gps graduates my children both attend greenfield junior high i teach at gilbert high and i am a taxpayer within this district i cannot imagine being more invested in this community i'm here tonight as a parent and a teacher to ask you to please make the decision to postpone the start of school until at least after fall break first as a parent i do not feel that my children are safe to go
047back yet even so i have serious concerns about global academy i understand that some of our teachers will teach the online curriculum for the year and that we will not be hiring additional staff that means we will have fewer in-person teachers if in-person classes are reduced to accommodate safety measures such as social distancing per the cdc much like we're practicing here in this room the only way for the overall cla average class size to stay the same is for online numbers to skyrocket how will my children's teachers give meaningful feedback or tutoring when they have far more students than in a typical year all while in person teachers have less than their normal amount of students have you thought about how to navigate this and when do you plan to tell parents how this is
048going to work there are families with concerns for going back prematurely and those kids still deserve the education that gps is known for if we postpone the start of school students can be in reasonable class sizes and hopefully then our community will be ready for safe in-person instruction next as a teacher i want you to know that i very much look forward to being back in the classroom when it's safe i don't think we're there yet and not knowing is so frustrating teachers are planners we spend time during breaks and weekends planning for our students teachers are problem solvers we differentiate instruction and find inventive ways to reach all of our students being in limbo has prevented us from planning and it has prevented us from finding solutions for our students the truth is we
049don't know when we'll be able to go back postponing until after fall break gives us the time to plan and find meaningful ways to reach our students instead of spending our time wondering what tomorrow brings we can exhale and do what we do best finally i want to share something that one of my mentors shar fujino would ask me when i felt conflicted what's best for kids it always gave me such clarity and it still does today i understand that what is best for every child right now may be different but ultimately having teachers who are focused on them and the curriculum not all of the what-ifs will be the best education that they can get thank you for your time good evening board it's good to see everybody superintendents good to see you um
050a little nervous as as as i'm standing in front of you i got my hair cut today though so i hope it looked alright i uh i felt compelled to come here tonight i two a little over two years ago we were in a tough situation and i felt like then a very vocal minority and well-organized minority um spoke their piece which ultimately led to the abandonment of my children leaving them without teachers in a classroom to go to my concern today is that that vocal minority is also going to drive this bus when most of us want our kids in the classroom so let's open the schools on august 17th to in-person learning as has been stated those families that are worried about the health and safety of their children can enroll them online
051those teachers that are worried about their own health can teach online the rest of us want our kids in the classroom butts in the chairs pardon my language i'll sign a waiver have your legal department work one up i'll sign it the teachers that want to come back they can sign the waiver but let's learn in the classroom and let's let those who don't want to be in the classroom have that option as well the district has done a great job over the last couple years of stemming the flow this or slowing the flow of students out of the district into charter schools homeschooling private schools we had a problem and the district has done a great job in selling the district to the parents of a great place to learn if gps decides to
052remain closed that loss of students will turn again into a waterfall to the point where the only items on the board's agenda in the future will be which schools are we going to close next which teachers do we have to let go which administrative departments are we going to have to shut down i don't want that i've had two school two students go through gilbert public schools and i have two more still here and hopefully someday i'll even have grandkids come to this great through this great school district i want it to remain great i want it to remain healthy i want my kids in the chairs on august 17th thank you after mr crowley is that collier kelly it's kelly coley yes sir angela i am nevin kelly uh i am a teacher and
053a parent of uh well i'm no longer a parent of students here with gilbert because all four of them have come i've gone through my last one went through this past year so thank you you did a good job with them um i want to talk about uh two things the first has been said a lot so i won't say a lot about that and that's an abundance of caution we've used that term quite a bit because this calls for it this situation calls for an abundance of caution governor ducey has also said like in everything that he puts out the safest place to be is at home right he ends with that all the time um i know you guys are looking at the numbers i know that you are going to get metrics
054and you're going to have the health department helping you through this so i won't say a whole lot more about that because i know that you will do your job with the data what i do want to say is i want to talk about stability parents and teachers need stability right now and there's a lot of voices and they're all saying all kinds of different things really what they want is something stable it may not look like how they want it to look teachers and parents we all understand that but here's what i would like to see and here's what i think will help everybody if we go in this uh first nine weeks and we say we're close to in person we have the executive order that takes care of things like some people
055need to be in person some people need child care there's an executive order that covers that but if we say for the first nine weeks we're close to in person that takes care of a lot of the data we can look at that at the end of the nine weeks and say are we ready to open or does the data say continue to keep us closed if it says continue to keep us closed then give another definite date that we'll re-look at it that definite date gives parents times to plan it gives students the knowledge that um what they're doing for the next nine weeks it gives teachers time to plan and know what environment they're planning for and then we make that new plan and go with that we can take those steps so
056um that's what i'm asking that's what i'm proposing thank you guys for your service and everything that you're doing i know it's tough and uh i love you guys so you can do it thank you sir next up is angela philpot followed by valerie landgren and joe goosek good evening my name is angela philpott and i am a parent of three gilbert public school students my twin daughters mckenna and morgan are seventh graders at desert ridge junior high and my son mason is a sophomore at desert ridge high school i am also an ell teacher in the district i am here tonight as a parent and an employee to plea that this governing body make the ethical choice to delay in person school until the end of first quarter or when health metrics are met
057as deemed by professionals in the field as i sit here and i look at all of us spaced apart with mason my classroom is not this big and i have more than 20 students at a time and so if our board is following these procedures and teachers in the field cannot follow these metrics i don't know how we can ask teachers to go in person and while other parents have said well you know there's the option for online there's the option to be in person well those children that are low transmitters supposedly have to work with adults adults have to be on campus and those adults are out and doing whatever and bringing them back to those children and those children are transmitters and so as a 22-year veteran school teacher i want to be
058in a classroom with my students more than anyone especially my ell students they deserve in-person learning however i cannot risk my students lives and their families lives a lot of my students live with grandparents who are elderly and even though my students may not get as sick it can be detrimental to their grandparents and i do not want to attend the funeral of a student or of their families this school year nor do i want to contract something and bring it back to my own loved ones i hope that the district will adhere not to an arbitrary timeline that's not set by medical guidelines but by an adopted calendar covet does not care what calendar is adopted by any elected body this virus will sicken and kill anyone in its path no matter how much
059we want our schools to reopen in person again our district acted responsibly in march and shut down in-person learning when the threat was growing we protected our students and our employees and we need to continue protecting them until the threat diminishes to manageable standards my brother is also a teacher but in florida and their schools are being required to reopen as child hospitalizations are starting to surge and have increased by 34 percent in the last eight days and while florida has embraced the title best of the worst let's not follow their lead gps should be showing their leadership to other districts that have the health of employees and their students are top priority during this global pandemic while online teaching is not ideal it is the safest path during this time of uncertainty phoenix union
060isaac isaac deer valley dysart in a growing number of other maricopa county districts have already calmed the fears of their employees parents and students by postponing in-person instruction until after first quarter this allowed time this allows time for numbers to flatten and gives teachers parents stability to make plans for virtual instruction instead of waiting for week by week numbers we lost an educator from my home county who taught summer school and they took every precaution with ppe with and with her and her her brother still passed away so how can we open schools knowing this i implore this body to trust the public health professionals and make a data-driven decision to postpone in-person instruction and protect our students and staff and stop community spread of this virus thank you first i wanted to say start
061off and say thank you to dr mccord and the board members for taking the time my name is valerie landman five years ago i proudly joined the gps family as an educator leaving my full-time position at a hospital pharmacy i've been there for 14 years and still worked there during the summer thinking back to my first year teaching yikes it was challenging the next year was equally as challenging but something was different i connected with the students the teachers the staff i found my spot i found my family the gps way is to connect create and care the final day to decide what my kids were going to do for school i was undecided i was at my wit's end and at 6 pm not friday i had a really good conversation with my principal
062he didn't have many answers for me but i felt that he had the best interest for the teachers at my school at heart i decided to try and teach flex until i was told i would be teaching two groups of kids so in my mind i would have double the students double the amount of parents and double the exposure to families so why not just teach global academy like myself and many other gps teachers i have talked to we don't want to lose our position at our schools and we don't want to leave our school families that we've worked so hard to gain i know many parents have talked about how they want their students to have a normal school year i want the same for my two kids what about working parents i'm one
063of them too we're trying to make it work i'm also in a social media group doctors and nurses talking about covid here in arizona i've assembled a few quotes teachers didn't choose to be friendly front line workers teachers shouldn't be putting their life on the line and be forced to go back to school health care staff at least have ppe teachers don't teachers are working on creating their own ppe out of their own money because there are concerned for their safety my current class roster has four fewer students on it than last year how are we supposed to keep our students distanced and safe it's up to us the parents the teachers leaders in our community to show our children not to bury our heads in the sand but to embrace this new normal just
064as if one of my kids was diagnosed with diabetes would we just ignore the fact that they have a medical issue because we want them to have a normal childhood experience no we would embrace it we'd give them the medicine and we would make it a new normal that's what a parent does they teach their children to face difficulty in life and not just to ignore it parents are their kids first teachers this shows we are not ready to return students to the classroom i don't want to end up like the educators in chandler and then attend one of my colleagues funerals or worse the students we do have the technology now the resources a curriculum path like florida virtual let's utilize it to our benefit so i please urge you to let teachers stay
065with their school families and remain online past august 17th thank you next we have joe gusik followed by kelly slater and terry playmon board president fellow board members superintendent mccord all gps parents taxpayers and last but not least students as i always tell you i'm joe goosick i'm the lovable slightly annoying america i'm the education lyrics i've had to make this comment before to this board and i will make this comment to the entire community we elect boards and have five different people for a good reason this is their test not our test the constitution united states and the first amendment gives us the right to petition our government it does not give us the right to push the button for them you will have an election at some point in the future and you
066can make a decision then based upon their collective actions we need to make sure that we honor that as i've said before five zero four one three two two three one four zero five we go forward that is the dna of an american citizen decisions are to be made and we execute this board these five are the guardians of this institution on behalf of all of us they don't just have a decision of one singular child but they have of over thirty three thousand some four thousand staff members this institution financially as a whole today tomorrow and far into the future i definitely heard somebody say that hey i'll sign off on an agreement fair enough don't think it'll stand up in court we need to make decisions that are based upon that the one
067key metric for me is that the fact that we don't have currently today in the state of arizona hour turnaround on covet testing dependable there is one board member i supported when he lost and community members did not treat him very well i supported him again to be on this board for a very good reason and i supported him to be back on this board so i call on mr reed carr board member read car to use his talents to go help this district secure the necessary assets to make that happen we need 24-hour turnaround the marlins had 13 players with it two more today plus third thing half the team is out of action i simply say to you you will open the schools when we have that 24-hour turnaround because that will give
068us the opportunity to have a true workflow and until then i'm sorry for me as an individual sharing my thoughts and ideas with you it's a no go you've got to go get that thank you so hello i am dr kelly slater my husband dr nick slater may or may not join us because we have our kids with us today um so we're here as individuals and we are both full-time doctors and full-time parents in the morning and the second that we get home until the kids either pass out or we just lay on the couch until we're going to pass out so to say that we want to send our kids to school full time is an understatement our oldest is going into kindergarten that leaves us with three more at home who are
069not school age and are currently not attending daycare they used to but you know with covid and being doctors it's hard to send them to school but we are pro full-time school and i feel like it the fact that we have been offered the flexibility to either send them to school full-time flex time or keep them at home that should be more than enough for parents and teachers my in-laws are teachers there's i have nothing against you know people wanting to stay home to be safe whether it's keeping their kids home to be safe or themselves stay home to be safe but they have that option that's the part that i'm not understanding about all of these talks is they have the option to stay home do i know every little thing about how it
070all works and how many teachers get to stay home of course not that's not my realm my realm is being a doctor and being a doctor i understand the cdc guidelines like you cannot believe i answer to many other higher medical authorities on top of it sterilization is obviously of significant importance to our practice in order to continue having any source of income for these kids so we do get wanting to be safe and you know preventing the disease but this data everybody keeps talking about is it's i don't know if we're just watching fox news or everybody's watching cnn but like the cases are supposed to go up everybody is supposed to have contracted this at some point we're all supposed to have some sort of antibody to this eventually am i saying i
071want to go out and have a coveted party of course i don't but the case the deaths the percentage of the deaths are going down the cases that's what we're focusing on are going up the countries like someone else previously said who didn't shut down the schools and didn't shut down their economy guess what they're doing just fine that's not to say that gilbert public schools has to open their school august 17th even though i pray to god that they do it's just to say that the facts are there how we perceive them all seems to be so different i mean i don't know how else to explain it it seems like those people who come up here and talk who don't want school to start are those who either have i don't know maybe
072i don't know i don't want to say too much like they they're just they're afraid and they should be because they watch the media is what i'm assuming but this is a disease of the elderly people with comorbidities children not so much i get that adults are obviously teaching them and they don't know who the other adults are around i get that but i don't see a reason to shut down an entire school district because of that if we were afraid of that then we shouldn't have school because the common cold we should cancel school all fall because of the flu that's insane to me to say that because kofi just came around that we're gonna cancel school for the next two years until everybody's inoculated with is insane um i'm not sure he's gone
073so obviously he has nothing to add to that but uh i just i feel for them the people who work obviously there's probably not there's probably a lot of mothers who work full-time stay being a stay-at-home mom i don't think i could do it i mean there's a i like working and i love my kids but that it's a lot it's a lot and those people need if they need to send their kids to school whether it be because they want their kids to have the socialization they need somebody else to teach them i'm a terrible teacher there's a reason i'm not a teacher i thought about being a kindergarten teacher it's not for me my kid going into kindergarten i'm not quite sure how to do that at all actually and watch four other
074kids in the evening you're also asking me to give up all the free time i have fun time with my kids every single evening until we decide to open up school we wake up just like every kid in the universe hates waking up we go to my work right now they are watched by somebody while i work all day while he works all day then we come home and right now we have the opportunity to watch tv as a family and do all that kind of stuff i'm supposed to come home and then sit on the computer with my son for however long doing all his schoolwork all day long i'm not trying to push it off on someone and i get parents or teachers i we teach him the best we can every day
075but i cannot give up all my fun family free time between me and my husband because we didn't want to open this up because of a virus i just can't do that so please please open the schools up i'd have you open them up tomorrow if i could but please don't push it back any further thank you we have terry playman followed by samuel ashby and then our final person will be amber franco hi good evening thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity to speak tonight i am a parent of three gilbert public schools students one graduated and is on his way he's been nau for the last three years two daughters a seventh grader and a sophomore i'm a native arizona girl and i know like most of you we've grown up
076or the way we grew up we grew up getting to go to school in our own neighborhood there weren't boundary exceptions there weren't charter schools around we're blessed that we have many options for our students based on their learning ability and their skills and what works best for each student my daughters i i gave them the option i said what would you guys like to do and they both said mom we want to be back in class this online learning they didn't learn anything i asked my daughter just last night i said um how do you really feel about this and she said mom i don't feel like i learned anything last year at all and she said honestly i don't think the teachers really care that much about us they already have their education
077so why would they care about ours and that was out of her mouth and it just really kind of hit home with me that she would be that insightful that they're um taking the opportunity away from their them thriving thriving with their teachers thriving with classmates they look forward to the extracurricular activities my daughter has looked forward to being a cheerleader and getting to go to the football games and yeah sometimes life doesn't always work out the way you want to want it to but i think with the options that you've given the parents stay home be online learning if that's how you feel if you're a teacher and you want to teach online make that choice for yourself but for us who our children want to be in school the teachers that want to
078be in school teaching if that if there there's many more from what i hear that want to be in class teaching with the students keep giving them the options but don't take it away from us i think the only thing that's being taught to my daughters right now is to how to live in fear and i've always taught my children not to live in fear i'm a flight attendant for 26 years for an airline and i go to work and i have no fear i'm around many people passengers from all over the world and i have no fear i understand this coronavirus is a serious and i'm sorry for the loss that has inflicted on many many people but i think that there's going to be more by depleting their immune systems by not allowing
079them around students and also um just their mind body and spirit they need to be growing mentally physically and spiritually and i think if you keep them at home they're going to do a greater detriment to our students so thank you so much thanks for all you guys do appreciate it how's it going thanks for letting me be one of the last ones to speak um i felt compelled to be here as well and i wanted to be here because most the time the minority tend to talk louder than the majority and this is especially the case in this situation especially when our children don't have a voice and it unfortunately will have a terrible effect on our children some of the questions i wanted you to think about are what about the parents who
080have small children at home and won't be able to stay home with their children all day because they work have doctors and other appointments for themselves and their children along with other responsibilities what about the children that can't be monitored while they are on the computer opening them up to who knows what especially with the moms or dads that are watching other children facts are children have very little effect on the spread of the disease so what's popular has nothing to do with what is right with a first grader and two more small children at home my wife doesn't have the ability to be home all day while i work to monitor school for my first grader what about parents who have three or five children in school how do they manage online learning for
081all of their children we try our best to restrict screen time for our children and now they will be forced to be staring at a screen all day we're very blessed to have the means and availability to help our kids at home and monitor what they are doing online if we have to but most parents do not this is a predator's dream to have so many children online and accessible in person social interaction is so important for our children who will be the future generation whenever we go back there may be a surge there will definitely be a learning curve but if we keep pushing it off it is just postponing the inevitability the inevitable the reality is the children are much higher at risk for many other things like abuse child sex trafficking pornography
082and others than getting the virus at school so please refrain from listening to the fear-mongering and scare tactics that you've heard tonight and will continue to hear like the statistics we heard earlier 89 percent of us the majority not only want but need our children and back to in school in person school as of right now now those teachers and parents that are afraid of going back to school have the option to go online please don't only give the minority the option at least give the 89 percent the option to have their kids in school as well thank you and amber franco is our last speaker good evening governing board members and dr mccord my name is amber franco and i am the gilbert education association president the gilbert education association advocates for education professionals
083and to unite our members to fulfill the promise of public education preparing every student to succeed in a diverse and interdependent world today i am speaking on behalf of all gea members over the past couple of months the gilbert education association has focused on providing up-to-date information and thoughtfully listening to our members concerns regarding the impact of the pandemic on public education we have engaged members in weekly zoom calls and work to address questions and concerns about returning to school this has reinforced our priorities as you move forward the gilbert education association's primary focus is ensuring the safety and welfare of students staff families and the community recently the gilbert education association members were pulled to analyze how they felt about returning to work on august 17th and overwhelmingly 75 percent said in-person instruction should
084be delayed until at least the end of first quarter or until it's safe members were also asked using a rating scale of one to five on this statement i am afraid to go to school and work on site due to covet 19. 45 strongly agreed and 20 agreed with the statement that's two-thirds of these of those surveyed as of today 2107 new cases have been reported in the state of arizona the numbers are up by 277 from yesterday we are not headed in the right direction to open up schools it is essential to make the decision based on clear guidelines science and safety the gilbert education association advocates for the governing board to provide the flexibility to postpone the start of end person education until guidelines are developed and implemented to guide the safe implementation
085of in-person school model pushing back the start date to the end of the first quarter would allow gps to make clearer decisions using precise data and guidelines ensuring that we can all move forward safely i'd also like to provide you with the arizona education association statement regarding the reopening of schools the gilbert education in the gilbert school district has been in fairly close alignment with the aea statement some of the points made in the statement are beyond the control of the district in regards to funding and testing as we continue to discuss the in-person start date we urge you to continue to focus on the objective criteria for safely opening schools thank you thank you amber i believe that is all of those who have submitted a request to speak we have heard from all
086of you and will be that will be an agenda item as we move through the agenda this evening so we'll move to item five presentation 5.01 monthly budget report for fy 2020 third quarter financial report dr mccord entered any introductory remarks no just our monthly report led by miss bonnie betts welcome ms betts um thank you very much uh good evening governing board members uh dr mccord we've combined the june monthly financial report with the third quarter financial report so just to forecast what's going to happen over the next few months so as you know we've already adopted our new budget for the fiscal year 2021 but we are completing fiscal year 2020 right now so this monthly budget report represents activity through june 30. and then we wanted to talk about the third quarter
087which represents data through march 31st of 2020 catching us up to that final quarter quarterly report before we do the afr the annual financial report and the fourth quarter report will will be presented to you in early october so to begin let's see here if i can get this to work so it's on there we go okay so um as a reminder uh june 30 is the end of the fiscal year but there's a 60-day encumbrance period that goes through the end of august so though the though this is data represented through june 30 there is a lot of work that still continues uh in july and august so the final payment of invoices of product that was received prior to june 30. there's a lot of journal entry corrections and movement of expense in
088and out of various funds final revenues are received from our federal grant funds based upon the spend through june 30. final i'm sorry final revenues yeah federal grants and then as well as property taxes so we collect property taxes for fiscal year 20 through the end of august purchase orders are closed and encumbrances are released and then finally we pay many of our certified staff members through 26 pays through the end of july and so all of these payroll runs are reflected after june 30. okay so just to take a look at some of the details on the funds maintenance and operations and unrestricted capital are the two notable ones there was a slight increase in spend in that final month reflecting a little bit lower available balance than you saw at the end of
089may in unrestricted capital the same situation occurred we did receive some products and unrestricted capital prior to the end of june allowing us to make sure that that encumbrance stays there so that we can pay those invoices during the encumbrance period these are very small changes the other thing as i mentioned we are now in that stage where we're closing purchase orders where the unneeded the unneeded encumbrance will be released and so we very much expect that the available balance and maintenance operations as an example will go up after all these purchase orders are closed the most notable example would be in the fuel line where our transportation vehicles did not run through the third quarter but we still had maintained the fuel encumbrance that would be an example in which we would see additional
090budget balance carry forward and maintenance operations secondarily i really wanted to talk about federal grants a little bit note that the available balances are quite high again due to the covid pandemic and the federal government cares act these available balances will be able to be moved forward into 2021 so we will not see any decrease in any of those available fund balances which is good news for us going into 2021 the other information is standard we still feel very comfortable in these available balances in both food service and community schools in spite of the loss of revenue during the third quarter so we're still looking like we are in pretty good shape in those two enterprise funds and there's nothing else notable unless there are any questions that any of you may have okay great
091thank you so going into the third quarter financial report i just wanted to remind you that when we're looking at the quarterly reports are references from the same quarter a year ago so the comparisons are going to look at the third quarter march 31st 2020 in comparison to march 31st 2019. it's a different reference than what our monthly reports are looking at so first of all revenues just wanted to share here you can see that the source of our revenues whether it's federal local state or county they stay pretty much the same on a percentage basis each year however when you look at how much revenue we're expecting in comparison to how much we've received you would expect that we would have received 75 percent of our revenue at this point in time but you
092can see from these graphs that the expected annual revenue is um and versus how much we've actually received we've actually received closer to 57 or 58 of the revenue expected and the primary driver of that is the state aid rollover that was legislatively required where we do not receive our final state revenues until july 2nd 3rd 4th something like that any questions on that uh miss bats the state aid rollover that goes back to the previous crisis the great recession correct where they rolled over and didn't pay schools in order to make their state budget balance that's correct that occurred in either in 2010 or 2011 yes okay so we still haven't corrected those cuts yet that's interesting that's fine i mean i i just want to remind people that we still haven't recovered from
093the great recession as an education institution we're not whole yet from the previous cuts that's true so the operating revenue by fund go ahead mr carr miss beth thank you to clarify that that's not and i agree with what uh mrs humphries is saying it's not a cut it's a timing issue so this is a cash flow issue not a revenue issue that's correct we are limited by budget not by available cash in terms of our ability to spend that's correct so the result of that is there could be scenarios where we're getting cans and so on to advance that cash if it were needed that's correct and so there's still expenses associated with that as we are incurring debt and are obligated to pay that the interest on that debt whether it's through the
094tax anticipation notes or through the line of credit from the county okay so so moving on to the operating revenue by fund the year-over-year comparison you can see that in maintenance and operations we were at 130.5 million after third quarter back in 2019 and up to 134 million in 2020 directly related to the increase in the state formula associated with the legislative action back a year ago other notable is medicaid so we've been driving the medicaid reimbursement through the special education department and through transportation and that's notable as well as that has increased over a million dollars year over year which is also very good news and medicaid is a very flexible fund giving us lots of abilities to spend that in various ways going into 2021 and then also notable is capital we did
095receive a big bump in unrestricted capital that we haven't seen in a very very long time and that's representative um represented at the 2.2 million dollars in comparison to 0.5 million dollars a year ago okay so items to note again operating revenues budgeted for 2020 are expected to increase by 8.6 over fiscal year 2019. capital revenues again last year partially due to the focus on cash reconciliation etc we did not have the revenues posted appropriately between unrestricted capital and mno that has been corrected and then again report shows 55.2 percent of expected annual revenue received by third quarter again not 75 percent of the revenue expected due to that stated rollover of 32.5 million plus 4.7 million property taxes are playing a role there as well as i indicated the encumbrance period is through august
096so we are receiving property tax revenues through august for the 2020 school year any questions on the revenue conversation ms betts can you just remind me the expected increase of the operating revenues at 21.3 million is due to increase in state aid primarily due to increase in state aid due to the governor's 20 by 2020 in addition as you know we did see a very significant increase in in our student account yep student enrollment uh as of the 100th day last year both those things contributed to that increase and again remember too that the operating revenues are not just maintenance and operations we're talking about all of those operating flexible funds that we include in the operating fund listing every month so it's not just maintenance and operations okay thank you for the question so
097expenditures operating fund expenditures year-over-year comparison again you can see that on a percentage basis by each of the categories whether it's operating dollars for supplies whether it's capital whether it's salaries and benefits it stays fairly consistent year over year again we are at 85 percent and 87 percent salary and benefits in gilbert public schools operating fund expenditures expended encumbered versus actual expenditure this gives us a little bit of visibility on the actual spend versus what's encumbered and it's not it's not always the case that because it's encumbered it will be totally spent as i indicated as we release encumbrance as we're finishing out the school year during the encumbrance period we will probably um see that encumbrance release additional budget balance carry forward so you can see in all those categories that in the salaries
098for the third quarter expended in 2020 as an example were encumbered 160 million but we've spent 110 million 160 million would represent what we would expect to spend through june 30 on salaries and benefits just as an example okay this is just a reminder that everything that we've shared in this quarterly financial represents year-to-date the monthly financial report that we presented to you back in april for the end of march so the totals are tying back together so that we have again that same reference so again that these are all of your operating funds you can see maintenance operations classroom site from the teacher salary medicaid e-rate school plan civic center indirect is a large contributor so just an example of all what we would consider operating funds and then the expended year to date
099items to note so we were up 13.3 million dollars or 5.6 percent from the prior year again as you remember we did award a four and a half percent pay increase to teachers and three percent to all other employees all that is contributing to that increase in expenditures benefits interesting situation with the benefits as you know we have an expected sick leave buyout at the end of every year as teachers and staff members are separating they're able to buy back some of their sick leave and that's considered a compensated absence due to the pandemic and the the closure of operations pretty much in mid-march we we did not encumber that payout but we did in the prior year so this is a timing issue that reflects the benefits decrease quarter over quarter but the same
100dollar amount we have actually paid out those uh compensated absences now for 2020 and it was about 900 000 which is very comparable to what was actually paid out in the prior year just a reminder our total compensated absence liability is just under 9 million operating capital increased due to increase in additional allocation so we did work hard to make sure that we were putting more money into capital for athletics art music and pe which hadn't been done in many many years due to the cuts to the district additional assistance yes so that's all that we have today on the financial report board members any additional questions for mrs betts just to comment thank you i mean this is very clear and and appreciated and i really appreciate that this is the first time in
101over in eight years that we've been able to put that money into athletics and music and art that's really exciting to me so i hope we can hold on to it through this next couple years thank you mr carr any additional questions i i would just have a comment to mrs betts again i i thank you numerous times for the quality of your reports and all that you've done with as many people watching this i just want to acknowledge how far we have come in the last several years and i think the reflection of that is the report earlier on the bond sale that we had a historic low rate on those bonds saving our taxpayers significant money and allowing us to put more of those funds directly into the assets of the school district
102to address the needs of students that is reflective of several years of efforts but especially the last couple of years that have that were commented earlier in the rating and so on so thank you for your team's effort and thank you for this report thank you mr carr mr jetty anything ms woods anything no additional questions from the board again i echo the thank you we moved item 5.02 a presentation of the governor's executive order dr mccord and i had a lengthy conversation and felt it important that we take the time for him to report and give us the opportunity to have a conversation and or dissect what we understand from this executive order so dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members um just to reiterate what you just said dr santa
103cruz i just wanted to to take a few pieces of this and and have conversations about it let you know what i believe to be true and and possibly what is um the interpretation from some of our attorneys as they as this was rolled out last thursday and even from the um maybe even from the ade so let me just start with as you i'm not going to go through all the whereas and all that good stuff i'm just going to go to the first item and talk to that a bit and that is uh the arizona department of health services shall develop public health benchmarks for the safe return of in-person teacher-led classroom instruction and make them available no later than august 7th 2020 these recommendations shall be informed by the centers for disease
104control prevention guidance and may be revised as necessary to reflect the most current public health standards and then it says each district and or charter school shall consider these recommendations guidance from the county health officials community needs and available resources determine when in person teacher-led classroom instruction can safely be available and school districts and charter schools shall refer to the mitigation strategies as outlined by the centers for disease control and prevention to adopt a mitigation plan prior to opening school buildings for on-site services or in-person instruction and essentially that is that they're going to give us the matrix to help us determine when um schools will reopen and as all of you know they have until august 7th i don't know if they'll come back to us sooner than that i have a lot of
105personal questions related to that in terms of what are they going to use what will be the standard of measure and when does the clock start ticking when we get it in our hands or does it if there's a downward turn do we look back x amount of days i don't know the answers to those questions just yet as i sat in a meeting with several superintendents from the east valley yesterday they had some of the same questions regarding that so i don't have any specifics related to that i don't really have a lot of specifics related to some of this but i just wanted to let you know that um those should be forthcoming and once we have them in our hands we will definitely let you know and we'll have to conversate about
106what that looks like how we report that out how often do we report that out and you know in my head i i see things on our website that we can utilize to inform the public of of what those measures are and how we're tracking those and i don't know if it's on a daily basis every other day i don't know there's there's a lot of questions but i just wanted to point that out to everyone at this time going to number two each school district and charter school shall begin our teacher dr mccord would you [Applause] yes sir would you prefer we hold questions or ask oh no you go ahead one of the two questions related to number one um and the first question applies to much of this section some of the
107past executive orders applied to school districts charter schools and private schools this executive order doesn't mention private schools so are we on a different footing in that case and then the second question is uh we're told that we will have guidance from the county health officials we know we're waiting on the criteria but how does that look like who is our liaison to the county health department and how do we make sure that we're receiving that information specific to our district those are actually great questions mr carr that you know when it comes to private schools i i don't have any of their criteria what criteria they're supposed to be under um blowing in the wind i heard that they can kind of determine what they want to do because they are private institution and
108probably don't accept any public funds or very few public funds so i don't know the answer to that the second piece is who is our contact i have uh our director of health services jennifer frost here somewhere back there you ready to come up um she can just let us know who her contact is there and who she has conversations with on a regular basis as a regard to guidance as well as gilbert public schools good evening dr santa cruz so i talked to dr nurse teresa crowe she has been appointed the head of the kova team for schools she's the liaison we speak every other day at least she works with dr sun and shine and we're working on a consortium together excuse me and we're also working with the other district health directors
109thank you um to make a a collaboration between the districts to make sure that our hopefully that our information is similar and congruent as we go forward so they would speak with us directly one of my biggest concerns is i don't know if the data that they're going to give us is going to be community data or if it's going to be for the state or the the county our community has very different rates than other areas and so i don't know how specific it will be i'd like to add to that as well i think we have about 10 zip codes within our school district boundaries and we have to be mindful that maybe one zip code takes into two percent of our population um so when when those numbers are coming out i'm
110hopeful that um those we parsed out but i'm sure that they probably won't be and so we'll we'll we'll rely on some of the mathematicians within our district to be able to get that out and again what they're going to measure um i'm not sure there's there's been some standards set forth in other states and other countries and i don't know if they're going to utilize that or what they currently utilize now when governor ducey reports out so i'm there will be more to come when it comes to that anything else on that all right number two each school district and charter school shall begin teacher-led distance learning instruction by the first day of school by the first day of the school district or charter school's instructional calendar submitted to the arizona department of ed
111the school district or charter school shall submit its distance learning plan to the ade or the arizona state board of charter schools no later than the start date of the distance learning instruction or august 14th whichever is earlier as required by executive order 20 2041. to the greatest extent possible schools should offer synchronous learning where teacher provides instruction in real time instruction provided via distance learning shall count towards the minimum instructional days or an equivalent number of hours required by asrs 15-30 341.01 and 15-901 consistent with executive order 2020-41 the state funding for students receiving instruction via distance learning on either full-time or part-time basis shall be treated as a student receiving instruction via the arizona online instruction as prescribed by asrs 15-508 or 808 school districts and charter schools that comply with provisions of
112execute executive order 20 2041 executive order 20 2044 and this executive order will be eligible to receive grant funding for the enrollment stability grant program to address any potential funding shortfalls so long story short we we do have an online program we have submitted and again the the question comes up do you have to be approved in order to start no you don't you just have to submit just so we know that and that kind of goes back to what we've discussed earlier in the summer about an online program other than that i think that um we're in good shape bonnie is there anything you'd like to add related to funding related to that portion of it i think it spells it out pretty well but is there any questions related to the funding related
113to that i have a question okay how difficult is the grant funding going to get we don't know yet because we have i don't think there's an application for that portion of it just yet so um the training that the asba gave through one of their webinars was that it was going to be a significant amount of paperwork so that's just what they said yeah it it usually is um so was it an option or their choice between either applying for the grant or receiving a guaranteed was it 98 right no i think if you you automatically get that and then if you want to apply for the gap that's up to you is that what you're referring to i think so i thought there was i thought somewhere there was an either or provision
114in one of those things yeah go ahead so my understanding is that initially we expected that it would be an automatic that we would have at least 98 percent of the prior year as our guard rail and the understanding is now that we have to apply for that so however the governor as part of this order did add another close to 200 million dollars to that enrollment stability grant so it's closer to 400 million whereas in the prior executive order it was about 200 million we are we still are anticipating that the commitment is there um i don't know what kind of hoops we're going to have to to go through to get the dollars but i do believe that the money will be distributed appropriately and will be used to make sure that our
115enrollment the funding associated with our enrollment is is at least stable to the 98 percent of prior year okay i think that's if i can clarify the way i oh go ahead the way that i had interpreted paragraph d was that if our students are going online they'll be funded at the aoi rate and then we have to apply to make up the differences is that what we're saying that's um that's my understanding and what's not clear for me is i don't know whether we have to apply to get to the hundred percent or whether we apply to the delta between what we actually have to the 98 from prior year so the bottom line is we are going to make sure that we have all the data and apply for as much as we
116possibly can my understanding from the webinar that i watched is it will be a hundred percent for online once we apply for the grant and then um a little bit more for those who do in school actually go back and open schools that's our understanding but this has changed so often that i don't know where to hang my hat just yet so so the other question that i have related to this does the funding still function on the 100-day enrollment so somebody were to start online but transfer the quarter of the semester and then be in person 100 day do we apply them as being in person 100 day just for that day right so um in my conversations with our student count professional she has indicated that ade's intent is for the let's just
117say that we're the first 10 days online their intent would be to have the aoi funding the first 10 days for those students at the 95 percent or the 85 percent she also indicated where the 85 percent is part-time she also indicated that that we can expect that probably 90 95 99 of our elementary schools will be considered full-time so we would receive the 95 of that enrollment for the first 10 days and then they will switch it for the 100 the um 10th day through the 180th day for the for the extra 170 days and separate those out i do not know how they will be able to implement that so those are the questions that we were asking regularly we're supposed to hear more within the next seven to ten days from the
118department of education on how that's going to be realized so this could have a major impact on cash flow if we're funded short and we have to wait for a while to then apply for the grant to make up the difference i think that's very possible and as you stated earlier in the exhibit that would be made up by borrowing on the line of credit from the county yes any cash flow needs would be made up though we are entering the 2021 school year with a very positive cash balance so it would probably be no earlier than the end of october before we would need that if we need it thank you anything else on that all right thank you i'll move to number three each school district and charter school shall begin offering free
119on-site learning opportunities and support services for students who need a place to go during the day as required by executive order 2020-41 and shall begin august 17th 2020 as prescribed in order 2020-44 let me go through a couple of these a school district or charter school that has not returned to physical buildings for teacher-led classroom instruction in accordance with paragraph one of this executive order is still obligated to provide on-site learning opportunities and support services under executive order 2020-41 b says on-site learning required by executive order 202041 3b includes in-person support services such as student supervision and strategic support for students in need during standard school hours which may include teacher-led or paraprofessional support for students with distance learning instruction a school district essentially may adopt procedures to ensure maximum protection of students and staff
120based on mitigation strategies for distance uh for social distancing um so let me kind of in let me give you our attorney's interpretation free on-site learning and support services include but are not limited to student supervision nutrition health services strategic support or teacher-led paraprofessional support for students participating in distance learning on-site support services will be available to limit our students with specific needs and does not require traditional teacher-led in-person classroom these services allow students who need a safe place to go engage in distance learning away from home schools may develop procedures to help recommendations of course neither the governor's office or ade have defined how school districts are to meet the operational requirements of free on-site support services of course we may employ non-certified staff to supervise schools operating learning labs may do so at
121limited school locations school districts may set building capacities there is no requirement that school districts transport students to the on-site support services and then the on-site learning provisions in this executive order course is confusing ade intends to issue additional guidance on this portion of the executive order in the near future the intent of the requirement is provide a place for arizona's most vulnerable student populations to learn during periods of remote learning if you go back to part of this executive order it talks about students in need it says again supervision strategic support for students in need during standard school hours that's pretty vague and you know in my head am i going to determine of 34 000 students i i'm sure they're all in need of something so how do i determine where that starts
122and stops and so we will be looking for more guidance as it's related to that again ambiguous at best but i i can appreciate the fact that they they understand that school districts may make different decisions moving forward and we do want to help the most vulnerable but um we don't have a plan in place for that necessarily at this point in time because of direction that is needed again in conversations with superintendents yesterday uh nobody seemed to have any kind of firm grasp of what that looks like and what that will be moving forward dr mccord one would assume then devoid of any [Music] identifying metrics for those items under three that it would be logical to assume that the district would determine who those served young people would be and there are some
123logical places that one could go but that may or may not be what's intended is that that's correct i think they did leave it open-ended to a degree for districts to be able to determine who those students are but again going back to my previous statement i don't know where that begins and ends and i don't want to eliminate students from help that they may need but is a student in need because both parents work and they don't have the support at home sure is is a student in need because they're on a 504 or an iep of course is a student in need because they won't have the proper nutrition available for them at home of course but what does that look like how long does that look like during a day is that
124a regular school day is that a couple hours those are a lot of different things that that we need either guidance on or to put a fence around so we ensure that we're capturing those students that deserve or need that service but yet at the same time it could definitely look like schools just open again and and that would be difficult to explain uh to the to the greater masses out there about are you helping students need are you just actually running school again so uh we have to be careful with that dr mccord and this is hypothetically obviously with i think which is about everything that we're doing right now um let's say that that we decide it's title one and special ed children that need services so we would possibly open up three
125or four sites through the throughout the district and we could control the numbers in the classrooms and we would have if we were not in school let's say we would have the space to be able to do that correct well it depends well if we're not in school let's say no again that depends because if i have x amount of students but yet i have teachers teaching online in their room okay you see what i'm saying yeah so that's difficult too okay the the second part of the question i have on that one though and and once again i don't know that you can even answer this question what parents that are paying for vik um could they conceivably say they would qualify for this i'm glad you brought that up um [Music] so is
126mr ryan back there so we will be having um he's there but he's not there did i wake him up um the um we will be having because this order starts on the 17th we will have daycare at a cost up till that point but i'll let mr ryan explain to you a little of the interpretation that he's gotten from other school districts as well related to this uh governing board dr mccord thank you um yes it's a confusing time as we're all discovering every day as of right now what is laid out is a child care plan gps child care kindergarten through eighth grade as well as preschool child care opportunities leading up until the 17th registration has been open for that along with some employee child care options to assist our employees there
127on their campuses it poses some challenges as teachers are wanting to be in classrooms and certainly wanting to teach from there but principals have been fantastic and looking for different ways and different locations of those students to be the challenge comes on the 17th so obviously huge difference if we return in person versus not if we don't then we're looking at before and after school options for families we know many of our families are working both adults are working and they need options for their families and to dr mccord's point and i think what dr santa cruz is referring to as well is where do you draw the line 504 iep traditional student with two parents working and what not so we're preparing for for everything staffing is starting to become a bit of a
128concern with relation to the number of employees we have folks working today to identify support and staff members to be working in the classrooms with students obviously ten to one ratios spread out throughout the campus when the child care portion of the executive order came out that's led to a number of questions if if we're looking at four or five six hundred students falling into a category coming to a particular elementary school while we're asking teachers or teachers are wanting to work in classrooms and educate students from afar does that then send them home while their kids are on campus and it certainly leads to a number of scenarios but we're planning and sbik will be offered before and after school for families is an option we've had a number of questions come in as
129you can imagine depending on the the particular schedule of families if they're doing the if they chose online do we have things still particular days for them if they chose in person do we have before and after and so we're we're planning for all of it and we'll adjust accordingly given either governor ducey's direction or the governing board can you tell me how you came up with the ten to one through the course of the summer that's what we've been operating at was was ten to one um space in a classroom we could um we could move a little bit further in terms of the six feet by six feet in social distances that's also part of the executive order is to maintain social distancing within within the child care environments that we're providing it
130also allows us to with adults to to have an adult stay with those students and for us to not mix kids and so a goal summer has been and as we move into the child care component of this or portion of this is to not have different kids on different days and and it's been slightly frustrating for some parents as that's a little bit different than previous years where they've had a bit more of a choose your own adventure and which days you want we just feel as though it's it's something where when we're bringing more students in with the 10 that we're already in the classroom we're just exposing them to more so we've chosen over the summer to limit that do you mind explaining the protocols that you're using sure so a number
131of of pieces have been put into place including each morning we have staff members that are being monitored and tested for fever any sort of temperature by nurses that are on campus so they have a procedure they go through each morning parents as they drop off we have curbside drop off and pick up going on so to alleviate numbers of people coming in and out each day parents are also kind of a testing if you want to answer or say describe it that way but three questions that they answer related to their student having a fever any sort of symptoms and whatnot deep cleaning in the evenings albert and his crews have been fantastic and we've actually had further dialogue today ms betts was with the group today and discussing future protocols and and what
132we'll be putting in places numbers you know potentially grow on our campuses and the size if a student or a or a staff member or anyone ever reports obviously they don't they don't come and they don't work if there's a classroom that we believe could have been compromised in any way that classroom is immediately deep clean by albert and his crew operations comes out we remove those students so there are a number of pieces we put into play into place that i think have been really effective and a number of things that have given us some good information so we can plan moving forward so we're excited to be able to have portions of what we were doing this summer in place so we could learn and i think we're gonna we're in a better
133position now thank you dr mccord and mr ryan have we evaluated the possibility of utilizing sites where the student population is small the regular student population is small as particular target areas where we might place programs of this type or services of this type and i also know that we know the percentages of people who are served in special ed of the 34 000 students the percentages of folks who are on free and reduced lunch percentages of ell students percentages of on and on and on we we know that information uh if it's determined that those constitute the special populations of folks who need to be served yes that data is available and and we'd be able to make those decisions based on that criteria uh based on those percentages so those are those are
134factored into correct the conversation the decision making you know i'm looking at several of our elementary schools that are uh not near it at capacity uh in terms of a student population and there there is room there but i don't know how practical that is it simply is a thinking out loud yeah and many of those that aren't at capacity serve special ed kids to begin with with self-contained classrooms so many of those rooms are utilized and also depends on location you know we definitely don't want something coming from the desert ridge area over to houston if we can avoid that just because we don't want them traveling that far if need be thank you mr martin actually was able to do some great work in the last week week and a half as well
135and found funding mechanisms to support our title students so speaking of particular pockets of students and locations to help support whether it's child care in the first two weeks or whether it's beyond that if if there's a necessity and so he's done some great work there which i think have given some families some opportunity that maybe um we're struggling to find that opportunity before thank you sir i i have one question sorry um is for those families who are concerned about the cost between those first two weeks what would be the process if someone was needing child care but concerned about the cost what would they need to do and who would they need to talk to sure so a number of families have reached out individually based on location based on school campus demographics
136sometimes families are qualifying we've we've put lists together um ann brielin and the group over at community education has put together a list of students uh christy odell's been working on the same thing where we're actually identifying and communicating with those families to inform them that they qualify even before they have a chance to reach out because sometimes we just don't know other times they reach out individually certainly if they if they get in touch with myself or anybody in the front office of community education we don't want that to be a factor that has children in an unsafe environment or on an unsupervised environment we certainly work with those families the best that we can okay thank you thank you if i made dr sanchez dr mccord sorry go ahead i'll go ahead um
137i just have a struggle philosophically that we are going to divide students up and decide who has needs or not and assign that you know by different it's like that's a struggle for me as a parent it's a struggle for me as a superintendent it's a struggle because like i said how who am i in school to determine who is really in need and who isn't it's definitely not by the car you drive because yeah i've seen plenty of people with very nice cars that are in need i don't know what their particular situation is and so that's difficult that's why i'm i am looking for some more criteria from ade before i get saddled with making that type of decision thanks dr santa cruz dr mccord i was going to express something very similar
138to that you know and as i read through this executive order it really doesn't limit it to need as much as a those who need a place to go and that is a very broad interpretation that is both parents were working and they'd be left at home that's an iep 504 all the things you know all the things that you mentioned and i also don't see where it limits or gives us the ability to limit i mean it basically says we can limit at a site but we can't limit in totality so we'd have to keep opening more and more schools and it refers to two other executive orders but i can't see the either of those executive orders clarify or limit who we can accept or not accept and mr carr just as a
139matter of information becomes even more convoluted as at least in an interview with the state superintendent public instruction that there was a comment made at least that you don't have to have programs to serve these students at every site right you can limit the sites well i'm not sure how we would do that either well we also can partner i mean it was made very clear that you could partner with outside organizations like the boys and girls club i mean it was left pretty open for the districts to decide which i think makes it hard mr ryan did did anybody test positive or get infected this summer so uh throughout the summer we had a matter of fact we checked this this morning for the positive results that were submitted so there are 11 staff
140members some on site some not there were some working in offices that weren't on site and there were some on site of the ones on site about 70 percent of the of the of the of the ones on site were on one campus um as well and we had discussions related to um what was potentially occurring on certain campuses in terms of social distancing and how we're running meetings and whatnot as well there was one student who reported positive that occurred after a parent had tested positive and they went in to have their child tested after that and may i ask 11 out of how many employees we had 85 working over the summer probably more than that when you consider offices and whatnot as well so that number is the span we actually had
141seven on our campuses which would have been out of the 85. and if i may ask are they doing okay absolutely they're all back to work um i think we have one that is still within and i'd have to check to verify i think one that's still within the 14 days and hasn't returned all others are back working mr ryan do we know if any of those employees contracted it from students or if the student contracted it from employees or if the employees caught it from other employees i can't speak to that certainly it's something that um through miss frost we're communicating with the county anytime there is a positive case there's a report that goes for tracing purposes and trying to figure out where came from whether it was on a campus or outside
142of the campus in in some way shape or form we hear different whether it was the the teacher that we've all heard about a different part of our state that may or may not have been an on-campus thing same goes with ours it's really a challenge to tell and to know for sure so i wouldn't want to be able to wouldn't want to speak to that without knowing absolutes anything else continue dr mccord thank you mr ray all right uh number four is um each school district and charter school shall take the following steps to ensure parents and guardians are notified of school operations post the distance learning plan um by the first day of distant learning instruction notify parents guardians of requirements and the minimum level of contact required to maintain enrollment as indicated
143in the plan post its mitigation plan on school district charter school district or charter school websites prior to that post on the district or charter website the details of their plan provide free on-site to provide free on-site learning opportunities and support services which is what we just talked about and make direct contact with families of children enrolled in the free reduced lunch program students disabilities english english language learners and those in care of the arizona department of child safety including foster care i think this one's pretty straight forward does anybody have questions on that [Music] all right next is all school districts and number five all school districts and charter schools shall develop and implement a policy to require face coverings such as face masks or face shields for all staff and students over the
144age of five until the arizona department of health services determines that face coverings are no longer necessary or recommended to contain the spread of the virus policies shall include exceptions for instances when students can socially distance or are outside in playground settings with distancing and shall allow breaks for students to take their face coverings off and safe environment uh schools shall incorporate other restrictions and exceptions consistent with the guidance from the cdc and cloth face coverings should not be worn by children under the age of two or anyone who has trouble breathing is unconscious incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the mask without assistance so i think that's kind of straightforward as well we will be bringing to you probably august 11th i think it's policy j llc or jlcc one of the two i
145can't remember off the top of my head we'll be bringing an addition to that policy that just covers face coverings for this and so we won't have to write a new policy we'll just have an addition and we will be looking asba is supposed to be coming out with some guidance on policy related to that so my hope is that it's there we have it before the 11th just be able to look at it dr santa cruz may ask wood so this is a change from what we had previously said though to parents that it was six and older and this has now said five and older so basically everybody oh wait it even says preschool doesn't it where does i think it says nobody under two so it would even be preschool right okay
146so that would be something we need to um let our parents know as well yep definitely all right dr santa cruz if i may go ahead and square i just want to clarify you know we've gotten a lot of emails a lot of communication people saying i don't want a face mask we don't want kids to require face masks etc our previous policy we are a subdivision of the state we are obligated to follow the law whether that's statutory law or whether that's administrative law and the executive orders fall in that as did the county ordinance our previous policy that we adopted followed the county policy as we are required to do this policy that we are now talking about will follow the governor's order as we are required to do so we recognize that
147there's a lot of opinions out there we appreciate there's a lot of opinions about masks but we are in a position that at the subdivision of the state constitutionally our authority requires us to follow those laws and so whether we like it whether individually or not whether the public likes it individually or not we as well as every other school district every other charter school out there if they're following along complying with their legal obligations and their existence they're following this policy that's great i think we would agree with you mr carr all right dr mccord will we have some kind of something written in or maybe asba or our attorneys can about and i i need to use this term carefully enforcing that will there yeah i see what you're saying i'll only be
148let me i i just came back from montana yesterday and i watched kids both in two airports and they were with their parents and i was like oh my gosh if this is what teachers have to do and principals have to do it was i mean it was unbelievable yeah and they were with their parents right we will definitely look at hopefully there will be some language that will address that um because i think you're you're also talking about you know policing it right and what's that yeah well it's it's and that's that's a 64 000 question you know i what i don't want is is people disappointing kids all day because of masks and and teachers and administrators so if this is still in place by the time we come back which i assume
149it will be we have to send the message very clearly that this is this is almost like a law because it's an executive order so um we'll address that okay section six this one says as a direct benefit to the state it's public schools and arizona families and in furtherance of the public purpose of ensuring that properly trained qualified and experienced personnel continue to be available when in-person classes resume arizona's public schools may continue to pay their employees or classes of employees including hourly employees during periods of school building closures so long as the public school determines that such payments are necessary to preserve the properly trained qualified and experienced workforce it serves the public purpose of protecting the public schools investment in its workforce and the public school has sufficient revenues to continue such
150payments due to school building closures that is as determined by the governing boards of each public school and b to be eligible for payment the employer remains committed and available to work during the employees normal work hours or during periods of school building closures whether the work is to be performed in personal remotely or the employees given an alternative work assignment for which they are qualified to perform and so i i think that is somewhat straightforward but i also think it's important to point out that and we have a resolution related to this um i believe that's number 7.04 that basically adheres to the executive orders gives us the ability to pay employees our certified staff of course contracted and ready to go support staff is at will employees with set amount of hours per
151week and several of our support staff have been working and will continue to work because of whatever positions that they hold you're talking about paraprofessionals who work during the day to with students primarily on a campus uh we will definitely have some assignments for them to be able to work as dr dr ryan i'm sorry you didn't get that doctorate yet um but it sounded good didn't it mr ryan um has alluded you know to help with child care having paraprofessionals help out with that and and work with them i think it's important to know that um there are several duties and things to do within this district that have to be done especially as you read through some of these orders that we're required to do um and we will need the help of
152the paraprofessionals we also have food services as well as community education which are revenue generating departments that are self-funded and that revenue is not coming in or won't be coming in as strong as it usually is in a normal school year so we have to be mindful of that within this order we have the ability to pay them but we also have the ability based on finances to not pay them or furlough them based on uh how we are standing financially we have to be mindful of that i mean i would love to pay every employee every single day for their whole contract time but that was the struggle even before this came in because you know we can't gift public funds without something like this and so we have something like this but we
153also will have needs we've had we've had people tell us that they don't want to do a certain job well that's not necessarily going to be options for people and if they decide that they don't want to do that they'll have options to either use their personal or sick time uh to be able to make up for that which most of them don't have or they can be furloughed and so um those that's that's an that's a that's a word we don't like to use but we also have to understand that part of this executive order part of that resolution states that you will be available during your work hours you will come and help when needed or we will give you assignments during the day that might be similar but not the exact same
154as what you've done in the past and so that will be our expectations moving forward related to this i think beyond that too dr mccord it's an opportunity for the district to maintain its workforce because some of those positions of which you speak uh require some kind of license or some kind of training so we have made an investment in those employees as it relates to their training and we have the option to assign other work to them while we're paying them and i think that's a benefit to them i agree and i think you know you've heard from some special education teachers this evening and during the spring several of those paraprofessionals that work within those classrooms with those staff members also got online to help out and it was it was very necessary
155and extremely helpful so we will also have things that schools that principals are clamoring to utilize their paraprofessionals for uh whether kids are there or not and and can you like and that's to help support teachers in a lot of different ways and so and we will do trainings for our um our transportation department and we will utilize them in any way shape or form that we can so our principals and directors are are thinking as creatively as possible but again there may come a time where uh we're not able to do that and so we may have to make some tough decisions related to that and as a cabinet we've had numerous conversations about that because that's my our support staff is the backbone of the school district and i appreciate and admire what
156they do on a daily basis and the last thing i want to do is is cut them free from um their livelihood i i don't want to do that but i also know i have an obligation to the school district as a whole and moving forward we have to be very strategic and how we are utilizing these dollars because there is some unknown as we move forward not just this year but the following year and maybe a year after that and so we have to be as creative as possible but also as strategic as possible any questions related to that any additional questions i guess i have one so with perez you mentioned you you're fine to have them on campus with students how do they feel about that some some are okay with it
157some are not just like our teachers right so i'm just like sure work remotely from home because of the online platform whereas a paraprofessional maybe they could too working online with that teacher from home but we also may have some things on campus that we're going to need assistance for just like we have for operations and custodial that have been here since march um and many other people so um it it it's not a pick and choose type thing it's a supply and demand of what needs to be done and who do we have available to do it so anything else doctor saying can you find a comment go ahead mr carr first i want to echo you know if we go back to our last school board meeting much of our discussion about when
158to start school contemplated our desire as a board to pay all of our employees um so i want to be very clear that all of us want to find a way to retain our employees and value them but as dr mccord well let me first say i recognize it in the private sector oftentimes we retain employees for the skill sets that they have and we pay a retaining fee to make sure that they're available nevertheless that's not a an indefinite payment in the private sector so i very much appreciate dr mccord's explanation yes the state has recognized our need to retain these employees and the problems that we have in retaining them and their skill sets with the gifting law so i'm grateful that the governor found a way that we can retain those employees
159but as dr mccord stated that's not an indefinite thing it cannot be we need to pay people for providing services and adding value and i hope that we can get back to regular school sessions and so on as quickly as we can safely do so and are allowed to do so so that we continue to pay these employees and have them when we need them so i appreciated the balance and the delicacy with which dr mccord expressed that it's not indefinite but we're doing all we can to retain our employees i'll just do one more i think the rest of them are pretty but this has to do with preschool says notwithstanding the provisions of this order executive order twenty twenty forty one and twenty twenty forty four developmental preschools which provide services to children
160with disabilities may provide services in person consistent with cdc and adhs public health recommendations and just to clarify a developmental preschool program typically serves both students with and without disabilities often an individualized education plan for a preschooler with disabilities will include interactions with typical peers to enable learning via peer modeling this order does not appear to limit school districts from including typical peers within developmental preschool programs so i think it becomes a school district decisions of course we will need to follow the cdc guidelines if that's the case and so um just wanted to hit that other than that i think the rest is is self-explanatory unless somebody else has a question i just thought it was prudent to go over it with you in in some of the things on how we've interpreted as
161as an administration how you interpret it as a school board and how uh attorneys in arizona department of education and even the governor's office interpret some of these things because some of them are are similar some of them con conflict a little bit and i think there'll be even some more information coming out soon with further and clearer explanations so this coming out thursday while i appreciate it i i know several people step back and go well wait a minute what does all this mean and so we're still trying to figure some of it out and that's okay we will as we go but we will also continue to work towards august 5th making sure all of our kids are educated starting on that day thank you dr mccordle and i appreciate that we continue
162to seek additional clarification uh just as a hypothetical if one or two return to full-time in-person schooling with everybody back in their appropriate positions then this executive order evaporates in so far as the dynamics of how the operation is moving it is constricting only if you're doing something different correct this order as as it stands extends through the the 2020-2021 school year and ends june 30th of 2021 but like you said if if wow we're just back to normal and and life is the same as it was before we left in march then i don't see anything needing to apply but we'll see how that goes so it's an interesting dilemma that has been woven for us any additional commentary questions no if not then we will move to dr santa cruz may i ask
163for a five minute break okay then we will before we move to item six we will recess for five minutes we'll return [Music] at eight forty four oh yeah you look like your timeout over there that's all you gotta say hey i guess i could it should be uh you're not speaking into the mic yet i am okay we'll call the meeting back to order okay [Music] thank you moving back to our agenda we are at item 6. item 6.01 is approval of the consent agenda items is there a motion i move that we approve the consent agenda items as presented thank you ms eugetti is there a second second thank you mrs humphries any discussion um i i just wanted to point out that one of these uh consent agenda items is the approval
164of participation in the arizona diploma sales program and i believe that has been going an ongoing effort for at least a couple of years i don't remember the specific i know there's one for music mrs newman what are the four areas that they can get that seal on their diploma i just want to congratulate us because we've worked on this for a long time arts saleh by literacy sale of civic literacy and seal of personal finance okay thank you that i just think that's an incredible opportunity for our students and i just want to point that out thank you dr newman any additional questions commentary hearing none then we will vote all those in favor of approval of the consent agenda as presented please signify by saying aye aye all those opposed all those pose
165the same motion carries five zero we move to action items item number seven item seven point zero one athletic trainer services rfp 210108 25 dr mccord any introductory remarks there yes sir just a few uh it is recommended that this rfp for athletic trainer services be awarded the following and responsible and responsive vendor dignity health is recommended for the award based on their qualifications experiencing cost and performance evaluations the rfp evaluation committee was comprised of ford members of the gps athletic department the evaluation committee met on july 8 2020 to discuss and score the proposals dignity health dba mercy gilbert medical center offered the requested services for nineteen thousand seven hundred fifty dollars per trainer in year one the cost will increase by three percent per year to a total of twenty two thousand two
166hundred twenty eight in year five total cost of gps over the five-year contract is five hundred thirty thousand dollars dignity will contribute sixty percent of the trainer salaries and benefits for a total of eight hundred fifty thousand the trainers provided will remain employees of dignity health throughout the contract in addition the award of this contract allows for the continuity of athletic trainers for district athletes as dignity health has provided training service for gps for the past six years the contract will be in effect for one year with the implementation beginning september 1st 2020 and includes an option to renew for four years estimated annual cost is 115 000 and this will come from our m o fund we have our district athletic director uh mr steve mcdowell here to answer any questions if you need
167it mr mcdowell just a question for you could you uh outline the benefits of our association with dignity health because i know we in the past hired certified trainers who are actually members of the faculty how has this transition helped or are hurt or enhanced to what we're doing thanks dr santa cruz board members dr mccord we still have those trainers employed since we entered this contract with dignity health six years ago now uh the training you know world has changed a lot as far as trainers in high schools you don't find a whole lot of full-time trainers on campuses anymore many of the districts around us have actually transferred over to where they just hire someone to come and do after school work as we see that possibility in our district this contract will
168give us a chance to have a blended model as we have as trainers would leave or retire or move on the dignity dignity health is willing to have them continue to teach training classes for us if that's what we need most of the trainers could be cte certified so for us it solidifies safety for our athletes um in a pretty dynamic area right now as far as trainers and high schools it also adds thing to that it also adds the ability for us to have trainers at auburn junior high athletic events which we haven't done yet in our district so and we are one of the few districts who has an association like this with a major health center in their community is that right yeah we were the first to do this um we
169were lucky because we were first it was free for six years i was going to say i i remember them doing it for us for free right um especially back in the day when we didn't have the funds to pay we're in a better position now so yeah i appreciate that and and other districts have been paying you know a quarter of a million dollars a year for this service and so um but because of that relationship with us there can they want to continue that and they're willing to still you know shoulder a majority of the cost to keep this going i i have a question if if you just want to explain a little bit more for somebody who's not familiar with what an athletic trainer would do i know we have classes
170sports just explain a little bit more absolutely we have sports medicine classes um that vary you know vastly some of our trainers teach full-time all day because they have enough classes to do that in other of our smaller campuses or shrinking campuses there might be only two classes for them to teach so principals and registrars are left with trying to find a blended assignment for them to be able to get a full fte besides the teaching they provide they help the athletes with injuries they also have relationships with local doctors to help bring them in to help diagnose injuries and stuff mainly doing rehab and performing services that our athletes would have to pay a lot of money for if they want the private sector to get it all right thank you it is actually
171an exceptional service that is provided by the school district to our athletes in collaboration with a major hospital in our area so thank you mr mcdowell for pursuing that and solidifying that for us absolutely they reached out to me originally so i can't take credit for that board members any additional commentary questions thank you mr mcdowell that having been said then item 7.01 is before you is there a motion so moved thank you mrs humphries is there a second second thank you mr jenny any additional commentary all those in favor of item 7.01 please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero i didn't get my eye in i'm sorry i i heard it anyway okay item 7.02 discussion and possible revision of policy gccg dr mccord introductory remarks uh
172yes sir dr santa cruz governing board members at our last board meeting when we were having a discussion related to pushing the date back or starting online on august 5th the um the question came up and i i believe everybody was in agreeance with it or had the same thought and idea was to ensure that due to covid we were able to provide some additional sick time for our staff members and so dr or mr mcintosh added to policy gccg professional staff a voluntary transfer of accrued sick leave he added an asterisk at the bottom and it states for the 2020 2021 school year if an employee has exhausted ffcra due to covet 19 and the employee contracts covet 19 for a second time they may request up to two weeks or 10 days 80
173hours for a full-time employee or for a part-time employee the number of hours equal to the average number of hours that the employee works over a typical two-week period of paid sick leave from the medical leave bank membership to the medical leave bank for coven 19 related requests is waived for the 2020-2021 school year so we asked for your approval moving forward with that board members 7.02 is before you is there motion so moved thank you mr jetty is there a second second thank you mrs humphries any additional discussion i i have a question so this is this is this is in addition to the 80 hours that was provided by the federal government yep that that is the ffcra that's what that's referring to so i had an additional question um my concern is
174not so much if someone might get it a second time and and that could happen because we don't really know um if immunity would last very long but what if someone is sick for a longer time i mean some people have been sick for quite a long time with code 19 and have not recovered quickly so would this also cover that person that type of situation it would cover them for up to 80 hours okay so if if there were different circumstances related to that so based on that they would be given through ffrc and then the medical leave bank that's 160 hours so that's typically four weeks um you know they could raise they could go to the sickly buyback bank and and apply for any help but in this situation we are not
175saying that they necessarily have to do that all they have to do to qualify to reserve that uh to not reserve that is to actually have a qualifying coven if i read i read a lot of information and i'm a little bit on information overload but if i read it correctly also and i know we'll get into this discussion after a bit the arizona risk retention will cover it under workman's comp if it's if it's been contracted at school correct i believe so um and we can get we will get into that a little bit later with um bonnie but um i believe it does mr carr did you have something um i just would ask similarly uh what about long-term disability would that kick in at some point mr mcintosh 90 days he said
176let's hope they're not that sick that's a long time any additional commentary question none the item is before you 7.02 all those in favor of [Music] the item please signify by saying aye aye all those the same motion carries five zero item 7.03 discussion and possible action regarding the reopening of schools for the 2020 21 school year dr mccord any introductory commentary not necessarily just other than the fact that i think the uh item speaks for itself this can be a discussion or possible action there is nothing specific in there other than the 2020 2021 school year i i know that there are thoughts and ideas related to this so i think it's important that as a governing board you have this discussion and if if there is a need to do something different and
177in terms of pushing the start date back or keeping it the same i believe that's an important discussion to have for the school district in the community thank you dr mccord in order for that discussion to occur item 7.03 is there a motion i have a mission i move that we begin schools online august 5th as we've said and then look to reopen schools as allowed per the data and metrics to be outlined no later than august 7th by the health professionals in ade and governor ducey his order basically according to the order and the resolution so you're saying just let me clarify make sure i understand the motion yeah that we begin online august 5th and that when we receive the metrics august 7th then we look at those and see if we can
178when we meet those metrics then we reopen schools without a specific date right okay is there a second i would second that thank you mr carr it's been moved and seconded floor is open for discussion i would like to ask i go ahead mr carr go ahead mr craig i would simply comment we've heard a lot of commonality in the conversation of the desire to be back in person as soon as it's safe um i think the parental comments that we've received via email that we've received in person the teacher comments that we've received via email and in person have all centered on that that we want to get back in person we recognize we need to do so safely and i i haven't heard for anyone other than that from my perspective we would
179be asking arbitrarily to pick a date in the future and where where both the teachers comments and the parents comments are to use data to drive our decision let's wait until we know what the criteria is according to executive order that should align with cdc guidelines which is the same things that the gea called for the same thing that parents are calling for and that enables us to get back as soon as possible and we're going to assume that the cdc guidelines that we followed we're going to assume that health experts within the department of health the state department of health and the county department of health are going to advise us it removes the political politicization of this discussion and that enables us to move forward as soon as practical and safe to do
180so i found it interesting as i went through many of the online comments uh i started tracking uh the last several days of comments and just found it interesting that we had several people who self-identified themselves with various confessions amongst those if i find those in just a moment we had seven who self-identified as physicians and er physicians mds etc six of those seven who are working in the field of medicine six of seven said it's time to go back to school we had two who self-identified as nurse practitioners and by the way we could add two more doctors who spoke publicly tonight we had two nurse practitioners and and to clarify they didn't say it all cost they said let's go back to school as it's safe we had two nurse practitioners say the
181same thing nothing that opposed going back we had 11 nurses again self-identified as nurses in their emails nine of them including two who identified themselves as school nurses and several who identified themselves as nurses working in a covent environment nine of the eleven said let's go back to school as soon as possible um you know if we're going to listen to the experts then let's leave ourselves open to doing that as soon as possible rather than pick a uh rather than pick a a uh arbitrary date that is not based off of data and again i am not suggesting any of those comments that we go back before we've met those metrics and before it's safe we want people to feel safe based off the data thank you mr carr let me reiterate as i
182think i understood the motion is that we begin online on august the 5th as previously moved and approved and that we await the metrics as they're delivered on eight 7 or or before whenever those metrics are delivered and respond accordingly to the metrics utilizing them to open when safe according to the metrics when we meet those metrics so if just as a supposition here if the metrics come back and say in order to open for in-person instruction your area or whatever is identified as your area could be the county could be the state needs to be under five percent positive or at five percent positive then until we get there we're not open we continue to do online but not in person that's the intent of your motion okay i i think i understand that
183i didn't hear miss woods or i didn't hear miss wood's response but that was my understanding of what we second what i said and her response was that was her intent so is that everyone's understanding of that motion any additional commentary i i do have additional comments i do understand the motion um one of the concerns i have is the um other people have put out parameters of what they think it might what would be needed to open school safely and a lot of what i've seen depends upon the state one of our speakers mentioned it you know a decrease in the positive rate to five percent right now it's about twelve and a half percent according to the the department of health website today another is having a test turnaround time that is much
184faster than it currently is because we do have a huge backlog so a lot of it is on the state to do their part so that we can test contact trace and quarantine people to bring the spread of the virus down the other part is on us to have a mitigation plan and plans in place that can help keep students safe i spend a lot of time looking at the data over the weekend and i think it may take quite some time for the state to bring or the county to bring down the spread in our area in a way that i would feel safe about and i'm i'm open to looking at the governor's metrics but i um as a board member i want to really understand those and if i don't feel like
185they're sufficient i want us to be able as a board to add additional items that might make people feel like we're being doing our due diligence and being very safe about reopening i i can understand that i want us to be safe but then then we would be strained from the data and the experts which we've been charged to do several times so i just want to keep that in mind as well well i'm not that i would be estranged ourself from no you're sick but you're saying we should then make it more stringent according to our opinions compared to what they've said so i think we should start with let's at least start with the metrics see what they are when they come because that is as has as was mentioned by many people
186tonight which i agree with um and we've had sent in many uh emails and i do want to actually sorry to interrupt real quick but i do want to thank all the staff the parents community members who are here tonight who spoke tonight who emailed us who are participating online and who have great investment in this and care about this i appreciate it so anyways we have heard from many that please use the metrics please use the cdc please use um you know the aap please use those guidelines to guide our decisions so i i say let's use those just let's use those well i again i i would want to look carefully and ensure that those metrics meet my expectations i i did spend a lot of time looking at the data and one
187of the things i looked at is that when we closed schools on march 13th we had 12 cases today we have about a thousand eight hundred cases so one of those metrics that i would like to see um and i'm just saying i i don't know what the governor's going to put out but i wouldn't feel comfortable until the number of cases comes way down per day um more perhaps what they were in april about 200 cases a day some somewhere along that line because a lot of people tonight spoke about other countries that have opened their schools again well those other countries have 50 cases in the entire country and we are having 50 000 cases in our country per day so we have a lot of work to do both in arizona and
188in other parts of the country to bring down the spread of the virus to a point where it would be safe to open schools and to tag along on that i think in my this is my own personal opinion every thursday when there's a press conference we hope that there's going to be something that comes out but it doesn't seem like much changes and that's my greatest frustration but before we talk about that could we talk about two other things that i think are really important and then we can get back to that if that's okay with everybody um the discussion is open it has to do with this let me just add this piece before i yield to you mr eugenie and that is that idea of metrics i think it's incumbent upon all
189of us to recognize that it is not one singular percentage it may be a a myriad of two or three or four different kinds of headings or or areas that must be in place before you open so i wouldn't want us to confuse folks by thinking it's just a number it may be more than that miss you jetty okay i i would like to ask the question that um and i think it's i'm not sure dr dr mccord who's going to answer this i'd like to ask about the information that came out from the arizona risk retention which is i believe all but three districts in the state of arizona belong to it and they have come out saying that they will not cover any kind of a lawsuit or under certain circumstances could we
190go over that please yes we can i'll bring up mrs betts to have that discussion about that and this relates to district liability is that right arizona arizona risk retention which would be our life you know how we get served for playground accidents and things like that yeah there was a lot of that was published i think ktar put something out and it was all over social media and we saw it a little bit before that and miss betts would have some more specific information related to that so i have some very um recent information uh regarding that so so first of all um the uh the thought would be that the state of the federal government would come out and would hold school districts harmless for any liability related to the coronavirus pandemic as
191that has not yet occurred then the risk retention trust went out to their reinsurers to find out whether there was any possibility to provide liability coverage the the thinking initially is that well this is a a communicable communicable disease that is extraordinarily difficult to determine where the individual who has it got it whether it came from the schools or from mcdonald's or from costco or from walmart and so being able to prove that that it was due to the school district and also the fact that our liability insurance generally we cover a claim in the event that the school district failed somehow to protect the the community or the student or whatever we failed to fill a hole in the parking lot as an example and somebody tripped and broke an ankle anyway so that
192was the initial guidance the reinsurers would not provide any coverage related to this and so at that point in time uh the risk retention trust administrators got together and they have scheduled a meeting for the 4th of august regarding a possible option for school districts throughout the state of arizona and this option would require the school district to at least have everyone fill out the acknowledgement form there were two forms sent out one was a full waiver of responsibility of the school district if their children come back to school and the second one was an acknowledgement form indicating that they understand that there is a communicable disease out there and that the school district has has in many cases little control over whether it's transmitted or not so in the event that they would provide
193coverage it would be at a fee for every school district and it would be um it would be as long as those acknowledgment forms were filled out by every parent who's sending their child back to school and what happens if the parent refuses to to sign it and then under those circumstances it is the idea would be that they would be encouraged to go online the parent would be encouraged to go online but under those circumstances and we haven't discussed this so i am on the risk retention board and we have not discussed this as a board and so it's going to be discussed and decided upon on the 4th of august those questions of course will come up right now the answer is that that the um that it's possible that the insurance would
194not be provided so we won't know anything until after the 4th of august or past that time correct right it's there the good news is they think they've come up with a possibility um the other thing that's that's i mean it's well and good that you can say it's a communicable disease and there's no way we can control whether it's transmitted or not or where it came from in the school but the concern that most school districts have is just the number of claimants that would at least come out and claim present a claim and then the potential legal costs associated with having to defend numerous claims associated with this so those are all of those things that are playing a role in what the board will do on this particular issue on the on
195the 4th of august this is this once again is one more thing that we don't know and we're being possibly forced into making some decisions when we don't have all the information um yes we don't know the um we have not met as a board on this at all it's they've just been working behind the scenes to come up with some options and and in the event that the trust is not able to come up with some options and cannot offer liability insurance because no one is willing to ensure that then we as a district will be liable to pay those claims if the person suing would win in court and i think it's probably a little bit different than that so it's not the paying of the claim for purposes of a damage that
196was due to to do to the student that attended school it would be more of the legal costs associated with actually defending it and not knowing how many claims and i think that was the rationale behind the waiver initially and some of the lawyers i've i've talked with staff and some of the lawyers are yes the waiver does have validity and others are no it doesn't have any validity so so it's it's there's a lot of things we're juggling um in the air right now does that include uh staff as well that would have to fill out that no the um the staff is covered under workers comp so you asked the question earlier again it goes through the same process though did the is the workers comp claim due to something that occurred on
197the on the work site versus from some other source all that investigation would be done but that would be done now regardless so would they have some kind of contact contract contact tracing to figure that out will they set that up or how will that work um they that and i i and i i don't know what the the legal ramifications would i i'm probably asking you questions you can't answer because you haven't been at a board meeting yet and i apologize no no that's that's okay but i think these are all things that we have to take a look at for what could possibly happen to the district based on the limited information we have right now yeah and i think the biggest fear of my understanding the biggest fear from fellow school districts
198throughout arizona is just the potential legal costs associated with defending a claim that something occurred um due to some negligence on the school site even even if it happened at costco somebody can still sue us correct i think that's the i think that was the point miss butts so is there still a chance for a hold harmless cause so my my uh my information from staff is that they continue to lobby for having the state legislature um put put out some sort of legislation indicating that the school districts will be held harmless for it's it's sort of like it's sort of like having the measles at a school or chickenpox i mean i don't think it's been in history that anyone has submitted a liability claim against the school district because their child got chickenpox
199at school or perceived to have gotten it at school so this is a very weird time with this pandemic in the kona virus and it's my understanding is what is that it has to be legislatively you know it has to go through the legislative process in order for the hold harmless to really be effective it definitely has to be through the legislature though the federal government's talking about it as well but nobody's done anything no one's done anything yet could that be addressed in an executive order no because i think it's a legislation it has to be the legislature has to has to pass a law i don't know that for sure but i know a lot about the two trusts which i'm going to ask the next question they were working on that before
200they um gave up the session in march because that was one of the laws that didn't get through with that hold harmless clause so so our legislatures live let's just left us in a pickle too not just the governor the legislature so anyone who wants to write an email please email the governor and the legislature because if you got them to do their part you wouldn't have to email us [Music] mr jenny something else not for mrs betts but from unless somebody else does i do have i'm going to put mr mcintosh on the hot seat now go ahead um mr mcintosh as you know um i have been on the insurance trust since since the inception um which was in about 1986-87 there thereabouts when our district self-insured so that we put our own
201money into the insurance trust and then we contract out with blue cross blue shield and so on and um having had a very dear friend who was one of my teachers at my um at gilbert l when i was there quick her husband went through 30 days 21 of them on a ventilator and now having to go through a lot of therapy i had asked you to get me the information we have x amount of dollars that we put in every year correct correct okay and then if we get to a certain percentage or a certain point 300 or 325 thousand 350 000 50 000 so so up until 350 000 of an of an insurance claim we pay for it correct and then we then after the 350 we have an another company come
202in and take over but we pay a huge premium for that and it's based on how many cases we have correct on how many hit the stock yes each year yeah so if we have a whole bunch then our our premium goes up okay so from my experience it seems like we have about five a year that hit that and it's usually a cancer or something like that correct correct okay how much just ballpark figure would it cost for one employee who is hospitalized and for so many days and i i know you can't answer the ptot question or whatever but just let's say one employee ends up in the hospital um with 20 20 days or whatever with coven so i asked the question to our consultant at meritain and he said a conservative
203number with an employee who would contract covet and has comp some complications has to be intubated for 30 days would be about 250 000 and that's just for the hospitalization not not for everything that happens afterwards correct okay so how often do we get to 250 000 can you answer that we haven't yet okay we have had 28 of them no i'm just i'm talking about just in general do you how many employees do we have to get to 250 000 i probably should have asked you that question um i i shouldn't ask you that now my point is let's say we get 15 employees that get to 250 000 or more right what would happen to the trust would be 15 employees times 350 000 so whatever that number is and what would that
204mean for our trust well right now we're sitting on 14 and a half million at the end of the year and then we would start the year over you know with the 27 and that would be that would be just in addition to then everybody else that would get sick has to come out of that 14 million so it could conceivably really do damage to the trust if we had a large population of people who had to be hospitalized it would be a large number um we're fortunate so far you know we've had 28 employees with it um 21 of them were members of the trust we've paid 13 of those claims for a total of 35 975 dollars which isn't we've only had three hospitalized so far and then how much for testing we
205have had 453 members tested at a cost of about 90 000 all right thank you thank you if i could ask something sheila just and not to be insensitive in any way truly but um those employees could get this even if we're not at school you know absolutely seriously if you look at charts there's other things besides just being at school that are even more risky which is like going to a restaurant it's like normal things that we do every day so i'm just saying so it's just one of those this is just a really really difficult time for us and for our employees for all of us it's we're just trying our best to figure this out but this is there are lots of implications yeah definitely so going back to discussing your emotion
206one of one of my concerns about this motion the way it's currently worded and i totally agree i want to get back to school as soon as possible but there is a lot the state needs to do and when we're looking at our current numbers i think it would take us some time since i don't know what the governor's metrics are you know i would like to think that you know maybe in eight weeks things would be a lot better and we could get back in school i don't know what the metrics are and i don't know how long it's going to take to bring us down from you know maybe the number of new cases that we have today into a number that's acceptable or how long it's going to take to have testing
207in such a rapid fashion that it would actually um prove useful instead of having to wait for 12 days if you have to wait for 12 days to find out whether you have a positive result that's not very useful to figuring out whether someone is sick with covet or something else so i'm i'm concerned about leaving it open in that way because i think it's going to take some time and i i just wonder about the thoughts of putting a particular date on it so that we at least know okay we're going to to get to this point and if if we can do it sooner we'll do it sooner but at least at this point we will reevaluate and then make a plan because we all know this is changing very rapidly that we'll
208then make a plan to get you know to the next point which might be another quarter on it might be two months on or something i i mean i just wonder if having some sort of a date would be helpful to people then could i offer the day after labor day to evaluate if that's what you're saying because it's going to depend on the metrics is what yes people have asked us to commit to to the metrics so i don't know how that's how having a date if it's not if we're not ready by those metrics then it doesn't matter and if we are beforehand then we can go back to school before that so i i truly am committed to the data and the science of those metrics that's when our i think that's
209when our staff will feel safest to go back whether it's in three weeks which would be a miracle or in nine ten eleven weeks and hopefully like you said hopefully the governor this will encourage all of the things that need to be happening to you know to get us to where we need to be to have these kinds of things this hopefully that will encourage that well i i do think i would like to see i mean this is one of the things i felt was positive about the governor offering metrics was to say um to our community i mean this is the frustration here we are we should be opening schools when we close schools in march and we stayed closed over the summer wasted an opportunity as a state in the numbers that
210came out in june and our highest number was june 30th and it was 5400 and something it was june 29th or 30th i'm sorry if i get that off a little bit but that was our highest number if we had continued where we were at the end of may and were to bring that down we would be perfectly safe to open schools so one of the things i would hope that we get with metrics from the governor is to encourage all of our community that we're in this together we can't it's easy to make a decision oh i'm gonna go see my friends i don't have to wear a mask but all in all each one of us has to take that personal responsibility to help bring this spread down by doing those things that
211keep us safe and keep other people safe wear a mask wash our hands social distance i've been home so much since march i've only been out one day on a hike in payson and i only saw four people while i was there so i mean it's it we we need to consider that this is a very different time but it's definitely something where we as a community need to work together in order that we can protect our vulnerable elderly citizens and i looked also looked at the ada ade website it's not 65 and older who are getting this it's our 20 to 40 and 40 to 59 and actually the graph the line for youth there are 10 coveted cases for those who are 0 to 19. so it's not the elderly who are getting
212this it is the younger populations that are getting this and so i think it's all of us in the community working so that kids can get back in school and so that we can bring this spread down and i i would be willing i i would almost want to look at it earlier than the day after labor day so that if we did things well we could open schools the day after labor day um but that would be just a checkpoint because we just don't know how things are going to go but i mean maybe i don't have a calendar to look at what the date is previously but you know i i think people need i think once we get to where those metrics are made i think we need a couple of weeks
213for people to pant to plan i mean if we're pl what i would say let's plan that we're going to be online and when those metrics are made met or when we know they're going to be met we have two weeks to help transition from what we've been doing online to going back into the classroom whatever that may look like i'm hoping it will look a lot better because i think when we get into the classroom if it's too if the cleaning and the protocols get too difficult to deal with i think people are going to get tired and lax and that is a huge concern for me because i want our community to be safe jesus would would you be willing to to um to say let's do it for the first quarter and
214look at it again on labor day or even sooner because it to me we we should make the decision work with it so that teachers and everybody know what to do but we can you know if everything gets better we can it we can immediately you know just if we say the commitment is to this date and things get better why can't we go back to school why then why say that day i would prefer sheila that we would i would prefer that we would wait till we see the metrics on august 7th so like the first week of school basically online and then have maybe have a special meeting the 11th or something or that next week and it since and by that time we'll have more information from the trust as far as
215liabilities and maybe a few other things like that and then from there maybe maybe we would say there's no way this is going to happen before the first quarter i just don't feel comfortable saying the first quarter students need to be in school as soon as possible as my thought as soon as it's safely and i know you i do and i know our teachers are saying the same thing so do you know i just think they need to be able to plan any teachers i know this is frustrating i know they need limbo is they've been it's been horrible i know and and we all have though it's been we do have plans in place and we do have plans to go back sorry go ahead mr craig mr carr go ahead i think
216if i if i may i understand the concept of setting a date and pulling it in but to me it's the exact opposite of the approach that all of these so-called experts that we've been asked to rely on have suggested the cdc the american academy of pediatrics and the national academy of sciences engineering and medicine as well as the uh i'm sorry i forgot to name the the john hopkins university as well as harvard have all suggested that we as policy makers should start with the concept that we should be in person so let's start with the idea we want to be in person and if we have to delay it based on the data we delay it that is a communication to our parents that we are trying to get into school as quickly
217as it is safe to do with taking the opposite approach is a message to our parents that we're willing to delay and if we're willing to delay i can tell you from my personal conversations i know at least a hundred students who are planning to homeschool elementary i know several high school students who are planning to start a community college and skip their get get their diploma through community college we are sending a message where we will permanently lose these students and the support of these families if they know that they're getting the message from the board in the top that we're trying to support them they're willing to support us but we have to meet the expectations and we have to do it safely i mean this approach versus the alternative approach achieves the
218exact same thing but conveys to our parents and our families and our teachers that we value their safety and we're going to do it as soon as we can let's not forget that regardless come the 17th we are still obligated to follow the executive order with those special populations that is correct so throw that into the mix because we're going to get the metrics hopefully before that and if we get them we'll have to evaluate them and determine what we're going to use or how we're going to use them and then decide on when it's safe based on those metrics and it could be very soon after that it could be fall break it could be first quarter it could be labor day we don't know but we're still obligated to the 17th i think
219it's and i want to go back to just a question that keeps swirling in my mind when it comes to the data is and i don't know what people are assuming either in this room online or anywhere out there of when those metrics and and that data when do you start counting it what day is that is that the seventh can you are you able to go backwards and start at a certain date do you see what i'm saying because i would assume that there would have to be everything that i've read in in metrics that people use is that there's a 14-day trend right so that automatically puts us if we started on the seventh and we let's say we had a downward trend that automatically puts us to the 21st at minimum and
220so those are just some questions swirling in my head as it relates to that as well i don't know when that starts or if they'll allow us to start it earlier i don't know so i i wanted to make a comment go ahead dr santa cruz um i i disagree with mr carr i feel like if we that setting a date that's too early is disheartening when we have to move it back and discouraging to families i almost feel like it would be better to set it back a little bit and then if we can bring it up that's to me more encouraging but just okay because i did look up a lot of data and i looked i i mean i just googled things and looked at websites so this is theguardian.com and they
221had a a wonderful map where you could see that because what i was looking for was the number of cases per hundred thousand residents to be able to compare us because at one point i think when we were around that high day of june 29th or june 30th we were the worst in the world the worst in the world per 1 000 residents or sorry 100 000 residents number of cases and today um we are currently second in the united states in number of cases per 100 000 residents louisiana was ahead of us at two per hundred thousand residents we are second at two two thousand two hundred and fifty one cases per hundred thousand residents and new york is third and florida is fifth new jersey is fourth so we are ahead of new
222york congratulations so when we're talking about setting a date to go back to school let's be realistic about where we are we have a long ways to go before i feel like the metrics would be safe to return to school and i'd i hope that would only take six or eight weeks i mean we've had a drastic downturn but i'm not looking just for a downward trend because we do have a downward trend for the last month but we were the worst in the world at the end of june so i need a downward trend and a minimal number of cases to feel safe about reopening schools that is kind of my point i i can appreciate that ms humphries but i also think again if you're going to say we're going to rely on
223the data and the experts then that's what you have to say that's what you have to go by you can't and i would qualify that with then deciding not to and putting an arbitrary thing on it so that's my concern with i guess my concern is right now i'm not trusting the governor very well that's my problem well but how but and how are you putting apologies and your feelings first how are you qualified then to to be well to discern the data i'm just i'm just trying to i'm looking at some people who have put out those sort of plans and when i get the governor's plan i'm going to compare it to what some other people have suggested other people who are also experts i'm not i know it's i know it's my
224feeling but um it's also my objectivity the governor has not led in this pandemic and helping us to get safely through and he hasn't always followed the data as well as he should have the open ema is a great example so um i am grateful that the governor has set aside his own opinion and delegated this to experts in the arizona department of health and i hope he gets it right so she's trying to set aside those politics and follow the experts which is what our teachers have called for and our parents have called for let's use the data and put aside our feelings please i am using the data mr carr and what i'm saying is the data that i looked at says we have a long way to go before it would be
225safe to go back to school i mean as far as the number of cases per day that's the data i'm looking at the number of cases per day and the number of cases per 100 000 residents that's the data i'm looking at and and miss humphries what expertise science or medical do you have for setting that criteria in lieu of deferring to those who have expertise and work for the department of health because right now we're put i'm saying i'm willing to put aside my feelings my preferences my politics and follow the data that's what i'm asking us all to do i'm not taking my opinion of when it's safe i'm deferring to the experts as we've been asked to do and i think that we're all saying that too mr carr it's just that
226we don't know when that's going to happen and as i said a little while ago let's possibly come up with a date we can always backtrack on it would it be a problem and again respect respectfully go ahead sorry no go ahead and finish your thought as i said i think we would get to the same thing but i think the message to the community is the wrong message and that's that is my opinion my feeling um not my decision making would it be appropriate miss wood to suggest any emotion that as a concluding thought utilizing the data to determine the date that is safe to open so would your intent be that we come back after we find out what the metrics are a week after and have more of a discussion or what
227i don't know what you're saying i absolutely that's what my my thought is is that always the data to open just to add the copy out because when it's safe to open and to determine that time frame oh i like that okay can i clarify this and dr santa cruz i absolutely go ahead please dr mccord well i just i i for everybody out there so does that negate the august 17th date because that'll be question number one as soon as we close out this meeting so do we go back to school on august 17th or not i think that it needs to be clearly stated that now there is no date specifically and that data and metrics will determine when we open is that what i'm as i read it and as i hear
228it that would be my interpretation and that's that's more or less what i was going to say i think the reality is i hope that we can hit august 17th i hope that the bell curve shape that we saw with a very very steep increase is followed and we get a true bell curve and it decreases at that same rate i think the reality is that probably not going to happen and i'm willing to acknowledge that but only the data and time will tell us that and i'm willing to follow the data on that but yes dr mccord i and dr senecer's i agree in all probability the data and the metrics that are released are going to require a push out by all schools and i think that but our goal and go ahead
229i was going to say i think that's pretty well been articulated as i listened to the last press conference by the governor and superintendent and uh the director of health services i think they they kind of echoed that sentiment as well that the 17th was a moving target to begin with what is the wording of the motion as it currently stands i don't want to put words into it you see miss wood's mouth other than the last three i said yes i move that we begin schools online august 5th and then reopen schools per the data and metrics to be outlined by the health professionals ada and the governor but what did you say dr santa cruz i thought in your motion you indicated metrics as as a part of that yeah per the metrics
230i said the data and metrics outlined by the to be outlined by the health professionals and the ade and the governor to determine the opening date for this school year okay in person in person yeah so should i not say then reopen the schools i believe i move that we begin schools online august 5th and then per the data and metrics to be outlined by the health professionals and ade and the governor determine the in-person opening of schools everyone understand just go ahead yes help us out i was gonna say i i'm not sure that's exactly how we worded it so may i suggest that we offer a substitute motion and word it how we want it to work please is is that okay with you dr santa cruz that's okay ms wood is going
231to accept your amendment okay yeah let me see i i i hadn't written it down i was going to go with what she had just said that was pretty good i saw him looking up at the sky like sorry i just was acknowledging that it wasn't worded exactly the same and since we didn't have it maybe we offer what she just said as the substitute motion i don't think it needs to be a substitute motion i think it's substantially what she offered to begin with so unless we want to tweak the wording it doesn't need to be so so basically we right now we don't have any idea when we'll go back to school we just have to wait well we do know that we'll be online i think i think no well you don't
232i don't mean to interrupt you sorry i i think maybe what we could do is add something that we will be online until the public health metrics are met and we will provide a what a two-week window where we can transition from online to in school that doesn't mean that we have to wait until those metrics are totally met maybe if we can see that it's coming we can announce it or something like that so so that would be a completely different motion than what you had because that would be just an open end and we're not going back to school till the metrics are met correct that's what she said that's what she is that what you're saying yeah that's what she said you're saying when would you feel safe to go back when
233would our teachers feel safe to go back i mean we can choose a date but how do we know it's it's horrible as i recall and i'm not sure if miss wilson captured the exact wording but as i recall the original motion was included august 17th or as the metrics allow because it did i did have the date in there and but the reality of the situation as we're acknowledging is it's when the metrics are met you stuck the 17th in there and that at least for this dull mind has confused me yeah well and that's again maybe i'm recalling incorrectly what i seconded but my recollection of the converse of the original motion was that it was that it included august 17th or when the metrics were met i don't recall that so we
234don't recall now okay then i recall it as being she has it written down well scratched out a little bit so i move that we begin schools online august 5th and then i said reopen per the data and metrics to be outlined by the health professionals in add but then after i talk to you okay i move that we be i move that we begin schools online august 5th and then per the data and metrics to be outlined by the health professionals in the ada and the governor to determine the in-person opening of school that sounds horrible which again that could be indefinitely okay and can i just just uh i'd like to just i do have some some statistics here um four days ago dr deborah burks stated that it's still an open question
235how rapidly children under 10 spread coronavirus without this knowledge um it it could be a very difficult reopening and as of today according to the arizona department of health services the fatalities are 47.41 deaths for a hundred thousand in the zip codes eight five two nine six and eight five two three four and i believe that somebody said there's nine zip codes or something i have all the cases for yeah we are interested yes there's um 101 to 500 cases per 100 000 and um according to the today's data we we are in an area where cover 19 is widespread um congregating people during this time frame could accelerate the spread and schools could become super spreaders the harvard global health institute rates ten cases of infection out of a hundred thousand as a threshold
236for a stay-at-home order that's ten cases our infection rate maricopa county is almost five times higher than that our positivity positivity rate is 12.7 percent the threshold to an act suppression and mitigation measures wearing masks hand washing social distance etc is 5 we have more than double the positivity rate in our community at this time health experts advise stay-at-home orders above five percent positivity and in our community we are more than double that with a positivity rate of 12.7 percent and i i think those are the metrics you're talking about except for what maybe the governor might change them a little bit is that correct i'm saying whatever he comes out with with in conjunction with i don't know what he's going to use i have no idea because positivity rate has some amount of
237i mean i can go through and explain exactly why that doesn't matter that much just like the doctor did everyone is going to get it we need to i mean we want to have that many people get it the positivity rate means that people who don't have it aren't being tested so at some point if we all go and get tested that would drive the positivity rate down those of us who got tested and didn't come back positive did you see what i'm saying so i have no idea what exactly the governor and this um health officials will use to be those metrics but there will be something like that that will give us guidance that will say when it's less when it's when wearing our masks doing the things that the cdc say says
238having as much distance as possible in our classrooms which i saw on the um american academy of pediatrics that they feel like three feet with with um students is enough with mass there's other guidance i'm just saying we'll do all those things we'll put all those things in place and we'll screen we're going to be serious about you can't come to school sick i know that that's been different than in the past we have to do things different now this is this is what we're going to have to do so that we can come to school but all of those things in place plus when the governor's metrics which basically is part of his executive order that i think we're going to have to abide by anyways so i guess i don't know where i'm
239going without sheila i'm just i'm just still concerned about the limbo with the teachers and not having you know are they going to plan for this are they going to plan for that you know and and i hope there's probably never been a time in my life that i would hope that i'm wrong but i don't see that this is going to happen anytime soon you know so if it's open-ended i think i can probably live with that i would just like to say i would i would you know my preference is say okay first quarter with the if we meet the metrics then we can go back i just i agree with mr carr though that the idea is it's about the metrics not about determining a date and that it's about we want
240to be in school yeah that's what we're saying we want to be in school so i know it's just it's semantics at some level of what we're saying but i think it does send a message and it's a difficult message i i'm we're going to have disappointed families at this point i think some families would prefer to hear exactly that the first quarter so they would leave and do something different so you think people are willing to just you know like wait it out well what choice do we have our we have to wait till the data says and right you know that's the same but it's to me it's the same thing because you know we're saying okay we we plan on it we'll say the in the first quarter but if there's a
241miracle on on september 5th or whatever then we can go back you know it's me i think it's it's easier to go back to school and i i i can ask the experts it seems to me it's easier to go back just to say okay you know everything's good so we can we can go back i think it's easier if if we had a date that we can move it up then move it back i think moving it back is discouraging and i don't i don't know what that date would be i mean what do you mean what do you mean by moving it back i mean i mean if we set a date like the day after labor day and we have to push it back to october right i think that's very yesterday
242moralizing to people whereas if they okay we're gonna work for this date in october and we're gonna stay online but all of a sudden look arizona's doing great that's my point and a month early we can announce hey we are going to be back in the classroom in two weeks because we've met those metrics so in two weeks guys instead of waiting till fall break at the end of september or the middle of september we're going to be back in the classroom i think that would be a relief to people whereas if you in the middle of september you say well never mind we're gonna go to october people are going to be very discouraged and i understand that that means some people will leave yeah i i i don't think um i think what
243i would say to our community is when i talked about the five c's before we talked we i talked about children community common ground consensus and constraint tonight i would want to talk about common ground and consensus every email that we received said i love gilbert public schools i like all the things that my kids get to do i like the extracurricular activities i want them to have their teachers and the academics if that's what you love if and we i think we can all agree on that the consensus is we want to make it through this trying year this pandemic and be able to keep that intact and in order to do that we need to keep people enrolled in our district because when we start having to cut budgets and i've cut budgets
244more than i've enhanced them when we have to start cutting budgets then it gets really hard because we start losing some of those wonderful things that we currently enjoy and so the way i would want to encourage our community is okay i know and and frankly community college is going to be online too because they got the same problem but if you really love what your kids had then stick with us so we can get through the trying time and stay with us so that when we get on the other side of this they can still have that and that's what i love about public schools is we can be the best option for all kids and that may mean we have to you know work a little bit in this online environment to make
245a better education for some of the kids that struggled it may mean we have to consider special ed how they are educated because there are people that online isn't going to work for but we really need to think about how we're going to make that online part work really really well as we move forward because that is our we've got to have our connection to our community we've got to have our connection to our teachers we've got to have that academic part we've got to have you know i've been trying to think how do we do the extracurricular activities can kids come and they can be outside and maybe we have band practice in their way spread out or football practice and they all stand in their little circle but at least they're there together
246or choir practice is all you know in the outside so they're singing but they're like 20 feet apart so nobody gets any particles i mean we've got to be creative and make this online part really really good and i i i mean frankly what we need is the metrics for the governor and then we need some direction about how long what they're going to do to help us meet those metrics because most of this is on the state in the testing and contract tracing and quarantining so those numbers come down to where we can feel safe about bringing kids back to school that i can bring us back to the target it appears that we are at least in consensus with most of the motion that's been offered the sticking point is a what uh
247the end of it a date open-ended and there there's where we're stuck if i'm uncorrect please correct me but i i believe we're in agreement with everything up to the point for about when we open when we actually go back to in-person instruction uh i think i i don't know that we'll know that if i may hold on miss you jetty has the floor let me let mr carr needs to go ahead and finish okay i i think that we we we can't come up with a date but i think we can come up with the date and then change it you know and i think i i think exactly what you're saying but i just i just don't think everybody should be in limbo and i think teachers need to be able to plan
248they need to you know if they're going to be on online let's give them the opportunity to to make that the best experience they they have they can and then if we ch i don't think there's a teacher i've talked to and i think you'll have you'll be hard put to find anybody that believes in brick and mortar schools other than probably you and i and i'm not saying anything about the rest of the board but you know i spent 38 years of my career in a public school 17 years as a teacher 21 years as a principal those were the best years of my career and that i i loved every minute of it well mostly every minute not always everywhere let's be honest but but you know we are an unprecedented times and
249so i you know there's i want us to be back i want our kids to be back i want it to be normal and i'm an old lady you know i mean i i i want the whole world to be normal but right now kobe's in charge of the world we're not and so all i want us to do is plan give people a date that you know we're going to target let's say like i said first quarter and then if a miracle happens mr mccourt dr mccord how i mean how soon could you get if let's say september 17th or 15th or whatever it was a friday could you could we get it be back to school on monday i think i i well could we yeah we could would it would it look
250real pretty probably not so i think could you get in a week could you do it i would i you know we could probably turn things around in a week i mean we have we would have to do something some things administratively on our end um i'm sure and then we'd have to determine my hope is what we have to figure out is who's going to stay online who wants flex because a lot of people are going to change their mind probably tomorrow and so we're going to keep trying to backfill that so it would take a week maybe two but we'd work real hard but people some of the people that are going online right now knew would probably choose to go back to the classroom if the if the conditions are such the
251metrics are such that that they would that everything would be okay correct and they would feel safer right let's realize that this isn't going away no i mean i'm concerned about even october i mean you know the way arizona is but mr carr i'm sorry you have the floor thank you and i apologize for interrupting there's just enough of the delay on the phone that sometimes i think i'm speaking in a gap and i end up speaking over somebody no problem i apologize to my fellow board member look i i recognize that we all want the same thing we want students back in school the state metrics whether we like it or not require an open date regardless of which approach we take any date that we choose today is an arbitrary choice we're picking
252a date out of the air and regardless of what we think we're misleading we're misleading the public if we get the date that's too soon and we have to push it out then we yank the carpet out from under parents and students we set a false hope and because we move that date on them if we set a date that's too late we send the message to our parents that we aren't desires of opening soon and has been as has been acknowledged by other members of the board in our recent in this conversation and as i stated parents will leave they've already told us that many have that leaves us not only with the impact now but it leaves us cutting budget next year when they don't come back this year we're protected by the
253by the executive order but even this year let's recognize that if if our numbers decline we will be riffing and that's something that none of us want to do we're not going to keep teachers on with decline numbers even though we have protected revenue so we're not protecting our teachers we're not protecting our our staff if we make a decision that leads to people leaving and we will be facing the difficult decisions that we so often hear about of cutting budgets i would suggest we and i've tried to make this case multiple ways i would suggest we send the message to our our parents we are doing everything we can to open as soon as we can we don't know until the metrics come out what date that will be but we want to make
254sure that we do it as quickly as possible knowing that it's safe based on the health experts you know i will share with you over the last three weeks i have purposely spoken to 11 gilbert based pediatricians that i know now maybe this isn't representative because they're people that i know but i asked all 11 two questions i asked them if school would open up will you send your child back all 11 immediately responded back yes i will send my child back in person then i ask them is that what you're telling your patients and i will give a kind of a generic summary answer because of what that what what the consensus answer was and their answer was no i don't tell my parents that i tell them they need to evaluate their own
255individual situation is their child at risk are they at risk do they have someone else at home at risk make an informed wise decision you know that's that's what we need to give parents the option of doing making an informed and wise decision and we need to let them do it as soon as possible and if we send the message that we are that we're going to pick a date out there in time that isn't as soon as possible we will find parents homeschooling and not coming back i know i've already talked with three groups a week ago i talked to three separate groups that contacted me one of which had already bought curriculum they want to come back to our elementaries but they're willing to not come back to our elementaries if we're not
256willing to give them a message that we're going to open i've i alluded to earlier in the conversation i've talked to numerous parents who are already prepared to send their kids to the to community colleges and call and universities early we're going to lose these parents who want to support us mr carr i would prefer to speak more positively i want to encourage people to stay i'm not going to talk about who's leaving i'm going to say why you need to stay and what the reasons are for staying that's going to be my message to people we have a great district and we have provided for over a hundred years through the great depression the great recession world war ii world war one we have provided a great education and we will get through this
257pandemic and i'm going to encourage people that this is the best place to be even if you have to be online for a little while with your kids and i have a great book you need to read before you go back to school with those kids taming your spirited child is the best parenting book i can recommend please get it read it so that you can work with your kids and not have power struggles and that's what i want is a positive message i'm not going to talk about i'm worried people are going to leave i'm going to talk about why there are reasons to stay when we're not willing to talk about both sides of the issue then we're not going to make a wise decision i think if i could say one thing
258too i think another concern that i have and you mentioned you talked to other superintendents in districts and nobody has everyone's kind of just waiting right now or everybody's planned to open or what is the pun because that does kind of make a difference sure right now everybody is in the east valley well no let me rephrase that that would be inaccurate mesa is has never set a date to go back so i think they're playing the wait and see tempe l has pushed it back to [Music] their fall break kyreen starts their digital online i think today or tomorrow and then they're planning for august 17th as in person and flex but that was as of yesterday and then chandler already pushed their start baked the star date back for online to where we
259are and they're at august 17th we're the queen creek is at august 17th online on the 4th or the 3rd and higley has already started online and they are august 17th nobody i don't know mesa i think maybe has a board meeting tonight i don't think anybody else has a board meeting right now or this week or nobody alluded to that i didn't check that so everyone indicated that they were sure that would be a topic of discussion moving forward so that's that's like i said that's what i know as of today i may be inaccurate in a couple pieces but i think the 17th is where most we're at and that's for in-person face-to-face learning in person you know whatever options they're out there giving but in person utilizing their options including face-to-face correct
260if if they can do that under the metrics the governor gives them on the 7th correct so it could be open ended there too i i still think we need a date and then we can move it back if we have if we well maybe we just need to vote because i i'm not i don't want to set a date i don't even open ended so i guess we'll just see where it goes i guess okay let me see if i can please state them figure this out here and interrupt me and correct me if i'm misstating here begin online on august 5th and reopen for person learning once the data and metrics have been evaluated to determine a date for full in-person learning and do we need to put the are we all do
261we need to make it specific about the metrics basically that are being released by the uh the governor included data and metrics in there you did but do when you say that they're just not any data and metrics it's whatever the plan the governor or the per the governor's the arizona department of the arizona department of health services and health services right gabby did you get most of that most of that will include department of health services in that and that's been moved and seconded that's not a substitution that's as close as i can get to my understanding of the original motion are you okay with that ms wood well really i pref i wish that we could go to school sooner in person but i think that that general consensus has been met i
262think every one of the board members would like to go to school as soon as possible yes but just as many of our parents but in late in light of that so is everyone satisfied that they understand i understand the motion yeah i i just i just wonder to me this is this is very difficult some people will need a date and some people won't want a date so how do we make a motion that satisfies both because i mean i i really think what we have to do is pour our energy into online learning and make that the best possible and when the governor releases the metrics which um you know august 7th i i think we should at the earliest opportunity when the administration has had time to look at that and can
263present it to us and discuss it and i mean to me a lot of what has to be met is it's what the state has to do it's not on us it's on the state and i'm not sure that's my concern about the governor's metrics because it's got to show people that they can feel safe and that the virus is under control we have a governing board meeting on august 11th that um we we may be ready to to have the disguise depends on what how it's delivered to us and what comes out but i would do everything i can to be prepared to talk to it on on that date okay that would be the the work study and brief board meeting correct okay and i i would concur with you with relative to
264the online learning and i think we have to acknowledge our teachers at this point many if not all of them have already done one or two trainings on the platform that's been presented to them and many of them have reported very positively on what it is that they have uh received via the training and the platform itself uh i am less concerned than i was the last quarter of last year regarding the electronics and the use of of that online platform and i i'm just confident that that's that's in place it is not their preferred mode that's acknowledged but am i correct in that assessment dr newman she's nodding approvingly so those of you who couldn't see her she has indicated that that would have been a true statement okay and and mrs wood i
265in all due respect i totally understand what you're saying and and i agree that we have to have the metrics in place i just think we have to have a plan and so please understand that that's where i'm coming from from i just think teachers need to know parents need to know and then we can make changes if we need to but i totally appreciate what your emotion is all right the motion is before you my assumption is that you understand it as much as i do and uh we're ready to vote and i won't try to repeat all those in favor of the motion as presented please signify by saying i i all those opposed the same nay hey huh i i have to say nay i hope we can come up with something
266a little better i don't know what that is so i guess we go discuss some more but um i i really i understand why you don't want to set a date and i i hope in if we're going to have a different motion that we we certainly emphasize that we will look at the metrics and return to school at the earliest opportunity that we feel it is safe for everyone i mean i think we all want that it's just how we communicate it that is the sticking point here um well then make a motion please we are open for another motion i am perfectly satisfied just as a recommendation with the verbiage on the previous motion with the exception of ending it with evaluation of a 4a date of opening i would like to move
267that we plan at this point on opening or going back after the first quarter going online until the end of the first quarter with the uh with all of the and if we get the metrics in place at any point in time between now and then that we can then automatically go back have an emergency meeting or whatever you give them direction give the give them direction right now i don't know if i'm making sense well let's keep it simple i know let's just make a mistake you make it now i'll second it okay okay well i'm i don't have anything written down because i wasn't planning to make the motion but okay so this is the motion i would make i motion that we have we have we work for exceptional online learning and
268meeting student needs through the first quarter looking towards meeting the metrics set by the governor and reevaluating at the earliest opportunity to get students back in school second and don't ask me to say it again i hope somebody wrote it down i might be able to recall it if i have to but i hope you got it gabby okay the understanding there is and gabby if you got it i'm um you're so can someone summarize that in a shorter phrase because i didn't follow all the work okay so so what i what i said was to focus on exceptional online learning and meeting students needs through the first quarter and i get i don't know what the date is that the first quarter ends so somebody give me what is that date um you must
269and re-evaluating um as we get the metrics as as we get the governor's metrics to open schools at the earliest opportunity can somebody tell me what date the first quarter ends and i can put that date in but i just don't i don't have a calendar quarantina i gave up my calendar um october 2nd so we're suggesting we return to school on october 13th yes that would be the end of the of the fall break day or second semester statement my what i said was that we would focus on exceptional online learning and meeting students needs through october 2nd with the with the message as we're going back to school october 13th yes yes but with the understanding that if the metrics come through come through and we meet them that we can go back
270to go back into earlier if we were metrics and unfortunately if we are still in a world of hurt we would have to push it back that's i i'll be candid here if that were the message and my kids were still in school i have loved gilbert public schools i've served every year at the global public schools and if any other school district opened up the day before i would take my kids to that school that's that's the message i'm going to give and i and i hate saying that but i'm being candid well and i hear you it's just that i feel like for one if if we can really have a focus so people don't feel like they're being pulled in 20 directions and we're not the only district that has set that
271date i mean deer valley phoenix union i i know there are at least half a dozen districts that have have used that date so we're not the only one and within with all due respect mr carr i totally understand what you're saying and i think that the biggest concern i have and once again i'm going to say this i hope i'm wrong i think any other school district that that goes back without the metrics is probably going to end up online anyway well i i do think we have and i miss you jetty i i don't disagree that that's a real possibility i really don't but the message that you've sent to our parents with with that date is that we aren't focused on opening in person i don't think we said that i think
272we said yes we're going to as soon as we can that was that was my question if i can interrupt my question was going to be embedded in the motion although it's not clearly stated and i think if i'm anticipating what you might want to want to say mr carr is that if the data and metrics right are such that we can open before that date we will that we will do all we can to begin in-person learning once the metrics have been evaluated honestly i feel like we need to all go to communications class because that's not what the public is going to hear the public is going to hear we're not going back till october 13th the rest of it is all going to be fluff and if we don't recognize the message
273that we're sending to our community we're going to lose it and and i know that's not the intent i'm not saying that's intent i'm just saying from my perception that's the reality of what's going to happen okay what if what if we reword it in an english major what if we put the rest at the beginning saying when when we meet the metrics set by the governor we will have in-person instruction until that time we will focus on exceptional online instruction aiming for a return of october 2nd if except i left off i don't know right i need to sit in an hour and i would support i would support i would support that motion if we were if we write it that way but that's exactly what we just said and we voted 3-2
274and against it we didn't say october 2nd she just said october 2nd i the only thing the only thing i disagreed with the motion that miss wood mrs wood said was to have a tentative date and maybe we can even say it's a tentative date because that's all it is i mean frankly it's taking me a month to get here because when i saw the letter put out by several board members that was my one disagreement i thought oh my gosh i don't want to tell people that i'm not we're not going to go back to school the whole first quarter but looking at the state of things today and looking at the data that we currently have on new cases and the number of cases per hundred thousand people it may take several months
275to get to the point where we can open schools i mean that's that's just my and i i'm not an expert i'm just looking at it to say how fast have we come down and how fast can we do it so is there a way that we can word the motion include opening as early as possible meeting the governor's metrics and includes something about online learning so so parents and teachers know that that is our focus and a date of or end of fall quarter is there something you can suggest that we can all agree on mr carr are you opening the door for a substitute motion for mr carr i i am asking for a substitute motion or i am asking for some help in wording the motion in a way that would be
276acceptable that he feels i mean i understand that we we want to the most important thing needs to come first in the motion and the most important thing he's probably correct the most important thing we need to tell our community is that we will work hard to open our schools as early as we feel it can be safe for everyone for everyone and the meeting the metrics hopefully he provides good metrics that will make us feel that way first we're not going to meet that if we're if we're going to say safely for everyone as long as disease exists as long as we're in a pandemic it's not safe for everyone and i said that statement last time there's always going to be risk the question is how much of that risk can we mitigate
277and that's exactly what the metrics are intended to do um and and the idea that we can guarantee the safety of people i think is a is a fallacy i wish it weren't so the the question is how do we move forward the best we can in a pandemic world um i simply would again i mean my preferred languages were going to open as soon as we possibly can safely and we're going to measure safely by the by the arizona department of health's metrics the experts we're going to rely on them um if we've got insist on a date for reevaluation i would rather reevaluate sooner than later let's let's come back and say we'll evaluate september set first and you know at that point we look at that we have the metrics we've had
278the chance to look at them we had a chance to measure them it's a minimal time um okay can i make this suggestion sorry i'm making motions out of my head is kind of hard so i'm trying to write down um how about if i word it this way i don't know if this is an amendment i mean it would be a slight change to the wording we will open as soon as we possibly can when we have met the governor's metrics and we will focus on exceptional online learning and meeting students needs and i have one that possibly could work okay if you want i'm trying to write i'm just trying to figure out how to put with the intention of opening as soon as possible we will continue online instruction until october through
279october through the first quarter unless the governor's metrics allow us to do so sooner with and we went using the words with the intention of opening as soon as pos as on as pos as possible read it one more time please share with the intention of opening as soon as possible we will continue online instruction until october whatever first quarter unless the governor's metrics allow us to do so sooner but when we started out with the intention of opening soon as soon how about if we if we put with the intention of opening just read your first phrase with the intention of opening with the intention of opening as soon as possible we will continue after we have met the governor's metrics comma we will can we will continue online learning through october 2nd unless
280we can open sooner does that work but i think i think if we start out with the int you know using the word intention yes opening can i go ahead i'm just listening and i'm trying to put it into words and i could be as confused as everyone else how about we will continue to learn online through the first quarter or the data and benchmarks provided by adh determine we can open for in-person instruction sooner um the reason we need to change that so that i i'm understanding mr carr's reasoning if we can put the first part the second part first and then put the online learning second so what people read first because if you think people are only going to remember half of what you say we want to remember that we're working
281to open our schools and in the meantime we're going to do exceptional online learning so could you i'm sorry if i had if i had 15 minutes to write this out i could figure it out but doing it without sitting in my own little desk in some peace and quiet is rather difficult we're still we're still working so let me offer let me offer this and you may want to add your first quarter thing here but it is similar to miss woods initial shot at it begin online learning august 5th and open schools as soon as it is safe to do so period utilizing department of health services data and metrics to determine the date when in-person learning will begin dr sanders can you give me just one minute go ahead i just want to
282write something down i think we're all just kind of i would second balling here can you can you repeat that dr sentence can i suggest maybe we just take take a two minute break or just not even this not even a break but just give everyone two minutes to kind of think through their wording and suggest it not a problem is everyone okay with that yes yes okay charlie right now [Music] um you know the reason why tokenization came into place with federal government was getting higher uh canada industries help with getting tired of people having the final cabinets for putting a credit card information on the sales president and literally having all of them walk away and just start looking through okay got one okay okay if we can reconvene we apologize and appreciate
283your indulgence those of you who are watching and those of you who are in the audience with wording for emotion that we can discuss and work through we've been doing that for the last almost an hour we're still in that mode we now have a need for miss eugenie and mrs humphries to cancel remove their previous motion so that we can open for a new motion sorry i remove my motion from the floor and i remove the second and then i have a new motion mr jetty has a motion that she would like to read mr carr you still there i am still here thank you okay gilbert public schools will begin the school year and remain online until the arizona department of health services guidelines have been published reviewed and met at such time
284the board will reconvene if the board votes to reopen the after the metrics have been met parents teachers and administrators will receive at least a one week period to plan and implement their reopening strategies we will open safely either by following the metrics or at the end of the first quarter whichever comes first except we have to meet the metrics no matter when that comes i'm a little concerned about that we will open safely either by following the metrics or at the end of the first quarter whichever comes first but it i mean that that could be a moot point you want me to put well i think it's important can i share this one and i don't want to be a competing motion i just want to share what i worded um because what
285i was going for was um mr carr made the point about messaging and putting the part about reopening schools first so um i just want to share this and then if we want to change some wording or something sheila we can do that um so what i came up with is we will open schools after we meet the metrics established by the governor and department of health until that time we will focus on exceptional online learning beginning august 5th and re-evaluate prior to october 2nd if the governor's metrics have not been met and i don't have anything in there about time to plan but i feel like in the time that is there we would know you know i mean this is pretty predictable we can say you know we're going to open schools in
286two weeks because we can see the decline and we can see that at this point we'll be ready to open so i don't mention that in the motion but i i do agree with mr carr's point that we want them to remember that we're working to open schools and put that first so i don't know if you want to will you repeat it please okay sure we will open schools after we meet the metrics established by the governor and department of health until that time we will focus on exceptional online learning beginning august 5th and re-evaluate prior to october 2nd if the governor's metrics have not been met that way we don't really give a date that we're opening schools we're saying we're going to reevaluate if we need to at that point and it
287would be prior to the end of the fall semester so that everyone could know before we left school on october 2nd what the plan is for when we come back i i can that i don't think i can second the whole thing okay what do you want me to do if i may i i've got something somewhat similar okay drafted well let's listen and then we'll decide which one will your credit or rewrite and i will give credit to a a teacher who emailed this in as a suggestion that i've been modified but gilbert public schools will begin in-person classes upon meeting the arizona department of health services guidelines at such time the board will provide teachers administrators and parents a one-week notice to plan and implement the reopening strategy beginning august 5th and until
288the guidelines are met courses will be held online that that doesn't give us anything about the first we will reevaluate prior to october 2nd if the governor's metrics have not been met we can just add that last sentence and then it gives us it's not a date we're not saying we're going to open but it gives us a chance to talk about what our strategy will be if we continue without improvement can we can we add that to it mr carr yeah so if i add if the guidelines are not met prior prior then the board will re we'll just discuss august 2nd something like that if and re-evaluate prior to october 2nd i mean you can put the governor's metrics first we will reevaluate prior to october 2nd if the governor's metrics have not
289been met so it just gives us so it gives a kind of a it gives us a date but it's not a date of opening schools it's just a date of consideration why don't we consider like every week until we open well because what i want is to give people some stability by giving them i know i again so i'm back to i feel like we're not taking care of students we're opting for stability for adults compared to meeting the needs of students first and i guess mine would be to table it until we can hear the um metrics by the governor august 7th start back in school august 5th just go forward like we have planned table this and come back august 7th or the week after that august 11th and move forward after
290that i think we offer the compromise of pulling that date in to the to the day after labor day and that way we're at least meeting more frequently to reevaluate well i i think i'm certainly happy to reevaluate it um after labor day and look at where we are but when i'm putting out a date for our community i i want to give a date that is far enough away that that we have a very i would say if the state can get its act together and if we in our community can take the responsibility of doing the things we need to do on our end to stop the spread of the virus wear a mask wash our hands etc etc that it is very i would hope it's realistic that before october 2nd either
291we've met those metrics or we can reevaluate in a way that we know where we're going and i'm i can kind of see that towards labor day but i don't want to have to move this date back i would rather move it up and say okay look we did better let's do it now then move it back and say oh we didn't quite make it i that's my concern about labor day i'm going to encourage us to either accept and second the motion read by monsieur jetty accept and second the motion that's read by mr carr or accept and second the motion that has been presented by mrs humphries i i will withdraw mine mr jetty is withdrawn hers uh well let's let's read each motion again and then mr carr go ahead and read
292yours again and then we'll listen to miss humphries line reads gilbert public schools will begin in-person classes upon meeting the arizona department of health services guidelines at such time the board will provide teachers administrators and parents a one-week notice to plan and implement the reopening strategy beginning august 5th and until the guidelines are met courses will be held online and then we've added per ms humphreys the board will re-evaluate october 2nd if the criteria has not been previously met um i withdraw my motion i will go with mr carr's motion with the addition of the august second october october 2nd yes and i'll second it okay mr carr has offered a motion and it's been seconded by miss eugenie and mrs humphries and if you don't mind just read it repeat it and we'll read
293it one more time and please forward that to mrs wilson i will forward this to mrs wilson gilbert public schools will begin in-person classes upon meeting the arizona department of health services guidelines at such time the board will provide teachers administrators and parents a one-week notice to plan and implement the reopening strategy beginning august 5th and until the guidelines are met courses will be held online the court the board will reevaluate october 2nd if that criteria has not been previously met okay can i just add a couple words prior to october 2nd just that we need so that we have we meet prior to that and i maybe we can even give a date um september is september if we're going to modify that i would i would love to move that data in okay
294can can we move it in do we have a business meeting on september 29th or september 22nd i think we do i think we can evaluate it as yes on a weekly basis when the governor comes out with things without without even well i think we can but again i'm just trying to put a date in there and and the date i'm trying to put is that by the end of fall by the end of our fall quarter by october 2nd we will have looked at this again if we haven't met the metrics and we will know where we're going for the next quarter um and so i i could pull it in i mean i don't know what okay is that two that would be a week well actually you'd have you'd have a
295week or plus a fall break but we they need to have fall break off we don't well yes but they would have so if we if we could look at making a decision on the 22nd that would give them almost two weeks before fall break so i would be willing to put the date of september 22nd to re-evaluate to re-evaluate and notify the community of i don't know is is that okay instead of october 2nd does anyone well i still think we need to october 2nd but we can reevaluate re-evaluate on september 22nd i'm still 22nd september 22nd that would be our regularly scheduled board meeting would it uh and again i'm maybe i'm pushing this we're trying to find a compromise but would it make sense more sense to do it with the grading
296period would be the grading period yes the end of the first quarter oh sorry i'm used to the mid mid quarter grades but uh you can do it grading more at the end of the grading period i don't think that makes any difference does it dr mccord it could be the october 2nd or the end of the first quarter okay we have listened okay so the date so the date we the date we decided was september 22nd correct okay so just read it again one more time to make sure we've we've got it the way we want i mean we've worked really hard to get to this point and i need to hear it one more time gilbert public schools sorry gilbert public schools will begin in-person classes upon meeting the arizona department of health
297services guidelines at such time the board will provide teachers administrators and parents a one-week notice to plan and implement the reopening strategy beginning august 5th and until the guidelines are met courses will be held online the board will reevaluate prior to september 22nd if the criteria has not been previously met okay you can take out prior to and just say september 22nd does everyone have enough information to vote or is there still a need for additional discussion i'm going to accept that as you're ready to vote okay did we have didn't mr carr made the motion did somebody suck i seconded this has been moved and seconded you have heard the motion miss wilson will receive it via a forward from mr carr it's been read three times we will now vote all those in
298favor of the motion as stated by mr carr and adjusted please signify by saying i i i all those opposed nay nay and i recognize that that's my motion i just strongly feel like putting that date in there sends the wrong message to parents okay but i recognize it as a compromise and we will all work towards making it work okay motion passes 3-2 and we have something in place we will now move to item 7.04 approval of resolution regarding governor ducey's executive order dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members um before you i have a resolution that i'd sent to you before the board meeting and essentially it just resolves the fact that we will follow through on the governor's orders so it's essentially what i talked about in the presentation
299thank you is there a motion summit thank you mrs humphries is there a second second thank you mr jetty any discussion well i just want to thank our administration because i know they're going to have a lot of work ahead of them to implement this executive order so thank you and and i had prepared a statement i'm not going to do the whole statement but i i would also like to echo that i'd like to thank dr mccord and the cabinet and all the other wonderful people that have dealt with the pandemic pandemic over the past several months just when they have a plan in place to handle the situation something unforeseen occurs at this point there's absolutely no handbook to guide them and they're superheroes in my book okay i think that needs a
300round of applause thank you mr jetty any additional commentary my only comment related to the resolution is that the executive order makes the superintendent responsible for a great deal over which he has no control and we need to recognize that fact and embedded within the verbiage of the executive order and even to some degree the resolution we need to understand that that's there and this coveted issue is so unpredictable and so volatile that i will only say i appreciate that dr mccord and the cabinet staff and as we move towards online and reopening schools our faculty and staff and all of the work they will do to try to mitigate this disease and to try to move us forward in the best learning mode possible so thank you all for that diligence and that effort
301and dr santa cruz if i could add to that yes go ahead just the parents who will actually be sitting with their children at home as well in this extended period of learning which we forget sometimes but absolutely they're going to be doing a lot of the heavy weight and i think they should be acknowledged as well so absolutely and that certainly goes without saying and i appreciate you're adding that so with that the motion is before you item 7.04 approval resolution regarding governor ducey's executive order yes sir sorry i'm i'm sorry i just was looking through it i had discussed with uh dr mccord earlier today and was still reading through it to see a conversation that we had talked one thing that i would like to modify it on that is that the
302resolution needs an expiration date although it implies that it is for this school year it does not state that clearly and so without an expiration date uh it uh you know 10 years from now someone could find it and say hey i still have all the authority to do all of these things okay i i think we can add the date without too much without too much consternation there this resolution expires on on july 29th let me look at the executive order um this order shall remain in place for the duration of the 2020 2021 school year that ends june 30th 2021. okay does that is that what's your car was that what do you think about that add that language to the end then yes i i think that's perfect thank you thank you
303okay so with the addition of the language related to the date of expiration you have the motion before you it is time to vote all those in favor of the resolution with the appropriate expiration date please signify by saying i i those opposed same motion carries 5-0 item 8 item 8.01 any request for future agenda items nothing to verbalize at this point but if you have something please make contact with mrs wilson so that we can add it to our next agenda dr sanchez i was going to bring this up during 7.03 but we kind of got long-winded there um so perhaps if i can put this on for uh either recommendations from the superintendent but i think related to the opening we need to have a conversation about extracurricular activities in sports right now
304aia is moving forward we're not meeting in person i believe the aia assumption is that that they are letting practice to start based on that august 17th date and we'll have sports etc barring a change um we we're kind of leaving our athletic programs in limbo without any direction and then the other thing that i'd like to add related to the opening of schools that this is a suggestion that came from a parent who has several elementary schools boys and she said is there any way that with the school's opening on the fifth we can at least open up the libraries so that we can continue to have our children read and so i'd like to have a discussion on how we can facilitate that type of thing and do so safely and then we
305also at the last board meeting highlighted a couple of policies including the attendance policy that we thought needed to be suspended or amended for the year and we've not yet discussed that so do i hear you correctly that you are suggesting those three items for the august 11th meeting but if if we i mean if we want to throw two of those in there and to tonight i i think it's part of opening the schools the first two but but yes otherwise we're going along tonight so well your preference would would be to open that discussion at this time i i'm a little hesitant particularly the sports you've already voted yeah particularly the sports in the library i think i think we need to give direction but we need to do it as soon as
306possible well i understand that mr carr but i'm a little concerned that while that is part of opening schools that's not specifically in our agenda and in an abundance of caution even though i think it would be a good idea to discuss it tonight i think we should wait so we can agendize it because somebody who's interested in libraries or athletics would maybe want to comment or send an email or something and so that's my concern it's just that it is a part of opening schools but it's a little bit um beyond the discussion and it wasn't on the agenda question dr mccorden mr mcdowell do we run a risk are we in any jeopardy by not acting on mr carr's suggestion this evening this evening no i don't believe so um and i'm thinking
307probably more about athletics because they can start practice on august 17th uh august 11th we we're cutting it close but um i think we'd be able to provide you more information if we feel that um we need to meet sooner for that specific purpose um i will alert you and we'll alert the board that maybe we need a special meeting related to that and just for your information mr carr i had a very brief conversation with mr mcdowell just about the general things and the aia is still unresolved in a lot of its approaches am i correct there mr mcdown [Music] if you could just repeat what he said i could not hear i'll help him i'll have him cut my microphone i apologize um yeah mr carr is correct as of right now the
308aia is starting or planning on starting sports on august 17th that would be all false sports um obviously with decisions being made tonight in boardrooms across the state that could change at any moment like anything else but as of right now august 17th is a date pick to start fall sports and we are scheduled to meet on august 11th according to dr mccord that's cutting it close but we could meet that agenda item and all of the nuances related to it at that time does that work for you mr carr yes thank you all right then we will take your agenda items if you'll deliver them to mrs wilson so we don't forget them for the august 11th agenda dr santa cruz real quick could so do we continue with that plan for sports in
309place until we discuss that or what yes yeah i think we might okay remain status quo okay yeah i don't think the impact is negative towards our sports program at this point and the 11th will validate and confirm with the information we receive at that time fair enough with that we have some agenda items that mr carr is now represented and asked to be placed on the august 11th agenda any other items seeing that there are none we'll move to item 9 board committee reports gilbert education foundation 9.01 mrs humphries we had a board retreat virtually and had a discussion it's a challenging time to figure out how to connect and have that community engagement when we're all trying to stay six feet apart um so we're just working on some ideas for fundraising for
310gilbert education foundation thank you mrs humphries 9.02 city of mesa liaison mrs wood nothing to report thank you ma'am 9.03 and 9.04 town of gilbert liaison mr carr and if you'll follow up with 9.04 finance and audit committee just the mayor mayor daniels communicated with me today and expressed the town's desire to support us in any way possible as we consider how to restart and how to serve our students we live in a great town that wants to support education and the audit committee has suspended meetings for the time being so no report there thank you thank you sir item 9.05 insurance trust representative miss eugenie nothing to report nothing additional to add and 9.06 legislative information nothing to add at this point from me item 10 meeting dates dr mccord our next meeting date
311will be august 11th which is a board work study and brief board business meeting august 18th is a policy meeting and august 25th is another board business meeting thank you mr mccord this has been a very long engaging and i think relatively productive meeting i appreciate the indulgence and the work of the board tonight in trying to wordsmith something that might make sense in terms of the reopening of schools and all of the hard work from staff and those who are getting ready to begin their online learning item 11 is adjournment is there a motion to adjourn summit thank you mrs humphries is there a second second thank you ms eugenie typically no discussion unless anyone sees fit that that needs to happen otherwise all those in favor of a german please signify by saying
312i i i i those opposed the same we are adjourned