Executive Session/ Special Board Meeting 06/30/2020

001welcome to join a conference now please enter a meeting number followed by pound if you are the meeting host please enter your pen otherwise press pound to continue right do you have her already gavin do you want me to wait sheila can you hear me sheila i got it i had to do it twice no problem okay you're good all right i'm not sure if i'm good or not but that's okay you're good you're on already okay good evening sorry for the delay this is june 30th for a special board meeting we also have a need for an executive session and the information is as follows item 1 1.01 call for executive session pursuant to ars 383 0.03 a and 1 to discuss the potential appointment of dr joyce meyers as executive director of talent

002management human relations there is a need for that executive session is there a motion dr santa cruz i'll move that we move to executive session thank you mr carr is there a second second thank you ms eugetti moved and seconded any discussion seeing none we will take a vote those in favor of moving to executive session please signify by saying aye aye those opposed motion carries 5-0 we will move to executive session of first floor conference room and reconvene or convene the board meeting upon our return our return thank you [Music] hey test test thursday friday beautiful [Music] is okay uh oh okay [Music] miss you jenny are you on the phone miss you jetty mr jetty miss you jetty can you hear us just having a couple of technical difficulties but we'll go ahead

003and get started miss eugetti is out of state and we will connect with her shortly she will be calling in i'm sure there'll be a bit of an interruption as that happens we apologize for the delay we were just in executive session and so i would like to call this meeting of the gilbert school governing board to order it's tuesday june 30th this is a special board meeting miss eugenie can you hear us can you hear me now yes i can hear you yes thank you okay thank you so we've called the meeting to order we will start with a moment of silence and then i will lead us in the pledge please remember cindy wood teacher from desert ridge junior high school as you engage in your moment of silence please stand as we

004engage in that please join me in the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america the united states of america for which it stands with liberty and justice for all very good thank you for that we are now at item 2.04 the roll call miss wilson would you please help us with that miss laurie wood here mr reed clark here michela eugetti here miss jill humphries here dr charles santa cruz here mr president all boar members are present you have a quorum thank you ms wilson please add item 2.05 to your agenda we need to approve tonight's agenda that is not listed for us i will entertain a motion for approving tonight's agenda dr santa cruz i motioned that we approve tonight's agenda but in doing so move item 6.01

005uh ahead of item 3.01 thank you mr car is there a second second thank you mrs humphries any discussion seeing none we will then take a vote all those in favor of approving tonight's agenda moving 6.01 to just before item 3.01 please signify by saying i i those oppose the same hi motion carries five zero four members we will move to item 6.01 prior to the presentation dr mccord do you have some introductory remarks i do thank you dr santa cruz governing board members tonight i bring to you as a recommendation for the executive director of talent management for human relations dr joyce meyer dr meyer has been principal at mesquite high school for this past year before that she was in chandler and before that she was here in gilbert public schools where she

006started her career as well as was a parent of two graduates from gilbert schools so she's our recommendation thank you dr mccord item 6.01 is before you board members we'll entertain a motion i move to approve the appointment of dr joyce meyer as the executive director of talent talent management human relations for the 20 20 21 school year thank you mrs humphries ms eugetti i would like to second that thank you it's been moved and seconded is there any discussion seeing none dr santa cruz i would comment i don't know if anyone in the public comment has requested to address this particular item but if they have i think it'd be worth acknowledging the public before we make the vote thank you and i don't see any requests to speak to that item dr santa

007cruz would could i so go right ahead miss i i would like to just say that i i am so glad we are having this position and we could not have anybody better than dr joyce meyer you we appreciate that additional remarks or commentary seeing none we will vote all those in favor of approval of item 6.01 that is the appointment of dr joyce meyers as executive director of talent management human relations for the 2020-2021 school year will please signify by saying i i i those are those opposed the same motion carries five zero we'll move to item three points dr santa cruz can we have miss dr meyer oh yes i wanted just to roll right back i know i appreciate that i know she was okay with it too congratulations dr meyer my

008apologies i was just in a hurry there who do want to hear from you congratulations thank you i just want to take this moment to thank you dr santa cruz and the governing board this is an amazing opportunity and i look forward to serving gilbert public schools i do want to thank dr mccord for his trust in me and his leadership i've had an amazing year at mesquite high school so i can't leave without saying thank you wildcats and i'm forever a wildcat so great place to make my last school stop so thank you thank you mr myers [Applause] and thank you for the interruption there dr mccord we'll now move to item 3.01 a plan to reopen schools a presentation for the 2021 school year dr mccord would you want to introduce that thank

009you dr santa cruz governing board members first of all to everybody welcome this evening thank you for attending our special board meeting those that could be here in person i know there's several people online this is a very highly anticipated uh presentation before we get going i'd like to just read some remarks that i was thinking about um over the last couple days and i wanted to put them on paper just so um everyone could hear uh this evening we'd like to present to you our reopening plan for the 2020-2021 school year but first i'd like to take you back to monday march 9th that was the day when reality set in for me as superintendent regarding the coronavirus it was spring break and i just finished putting up some shiplap on my island in

010my kitchen uh everything was right in the world i was pretty proud of what i accomplished and is feeling pretty good about my woodworking abilities i remember sitting on the couch that evening and the news was on the newscaster was talking about the potential widespread of the virus in arizona this of course piqued my interest because just before spring break we called our crisis team together to discuss preliminary plans if the virus hit arizona likely to hit the state of washington or the country of italy at that time i'm not sure anyone in the room really thought it would be something to worry about when i went to work in the morning on march 10th i knew things were going in a different direction as we made our way through the week i knew the

011clock was ticking and we had to make a decision regarding starting school up again after spring break on friday march 13th we decided to close down the district it definitely wasn't a popular decision nor an easy one but i believe it was the right one a couple days later governor ducey closed down all the schools for the remainder of the school year our teachers support staff principals technology department teaching and learning department all stepped up to create the best remote learning experience for our students as we possibly could given the amount of time we had to put that in place the experience wasn't perfect by any means for our students or our staff but it was close to perfect as we could get our operations department and nutrition services department sanitized our schools and fed

012our students while we were closed as a superintendent i don't know if i can remember a time when i've been more proud and honored to work with such amazing people we made it through the rest of the quarter and even had a virtual graduation which wasn't perfect either we knew that we had to focus on reopening our school system come august 5th so we assembled a task force comprised of 130 administrators educators support staff and parents the goal of the task force was to offer options for opportunities to learn when we returned to school many hours many lengthy discussions a few tears and even a few laughs went into the making of the reopening plan our assistant superintendent of teaching and learning dr barbara newman headed up the task force and has been the glue

013that has held all of this together we've reviewed this presentation modified it reviewed it again and modified it again and reviewed it and modified it again and at noon yesterday it was ready to go then at 3 pm yesterday governor ducey held a press conference regarding an update on the pandemic in arizona cases have been steadily on the rise and that has been concerning for many including our students staff and families during governor ducey's press conference he announced an executive order pertaining to schools here's a portion of that executive order states all schools shall delay the start of in-person classes for the year that begins july 1st 2020 until august 17 but schools may begin the year on their regularly planned start date prior to august 17 2020 through distance learning now obviously this executive

014order made eyebrows go up and jaws drop this executive order threw a wrinkle into what you may hear tonight but it doesn't change our approach to what we can offer students when we return before dr newman starts a presentation i'd like to say this to our students you've been through so much in the last four months and as a father as an educator and as a superintendent i wish i could change all of that for you i'm truly sorry for what you've had to endure but i'm very very proud of your resiliency and your grit and to our staff thank you thank you for caring about our students thank you for going several extra miles to get the job done and thank you for your unselfish hearts we know that in times of crisis everyone

015reacts differently it's human nature what i want you to know is that i've heard your thoughts concerns or your lack of concern your fears or your lack of fear please know none of your words have fallen on deaf ears our plan that we will present to you tonight will not be perfect but i promise you we will do all we can to make our students educational experience and our employees work experience as safe and as gratifying as we possibly can we won't have all the answers tonight but we will do all we can to get those answers to make everyone feel more at ease i love this school district i love our students and families and i love working with some of the most amazing people in the world gilbert public schools has been around

016for over a hundred years it's been successful for one reason and one reason only and that's the people it works with and serves now here's dr newman thank you good evening dr santa cruz governing board members and dr mccord thank you could you speak into the mic a little bit more please sir thank you good evening dr santa cruz governing board members and dr mccord what we have for you here is as dr mccord mentioned the plan that we have created and the reason why we created it is because we want to provide the best educational experience for our students and also choices for our families dr mccord mentioned 130 more than 130 committee members we had our advisory committee we had subcommittees in addition to that we had just under 26 000 survey responses

017we had additional feedback whether that be emails or that be meetings or phone calls conversations a lot of conversations with teachers and administrators techs and support staff tonight's presentation um different than before is going to be more of the sharing of the plan instead of subcommittee reports which we had considered previously our guiding principles through all of this work was to be sure that we were and everyone understood that we were obligated to find ways to serve all of our students even during times of disruption when remote learning requires them to connect from home we're responsible for the needs and meeting those needs of all of our students whether that be from low-income backgrounds students with disabilities and our english language learners we know that decisions are best made by consulting those closest to the

018problem including school leaders health officials community leaders and of course our community and our parents we added a fourth guiding principle as we began and we worked through our work and that was resource limitations to include product availability and funding levels must be considered to ensure that we operate in a fiscally responsible manner so through those guiding principles we determined what our commitments were to our community and to each other we wanted to be sure that we're ensuring the health and safety of our students staff and families provide a high quality education for all of our students ensure the social emotional well-being of our students staff and families we wanted to offer choices based on what's best for our students academically and for their health and wellness which includes both in-person and online learning options

019provide support to students who experience a disruption in their learning due to sickness or future closures and also we've added our last commitment which was create a plan that is flexible that could be modified as circumstances change and as you already know plans have already changed and so our plans are fluid so due to that disruption whether that be a disruption for an individual student whether that be disruption for a classroom for a campus or an entire state we want to be sure that we're able to safely run our services and also abide by local or state orders miss newman can i ask a question on that slide i appreciate the intent but i want to clarify that when we say we're going to ensure the health and safety of our students staff and families

020that's not something we truly can do we can do everything we can to mitigate the risks but we're living in a global pandemic and we simply can't promise that everybody will remain healthy so i understand the intent behind the word but i don't want anyone to misunderstand the intent on that thank you for that as we've mentioned previously we want to provide choices for our families and we have three delivery models for those choices the first option would be full time in person our our students would go to school five days a week and they would receive their education in their campus classroom another option option b would which is what we call our flex option that's a combination of in person and online and i will go into more detail a little bit later

021but our students would receive some of their instruction online and some of their instruction in person and then option c for families that feel as if it's safest for their children to attend just online instruction we have our gps global academy and that provides the option for our students to receive full-time instruction from our gps global academy teachers we want to be sure that whichever option the family chooses we were providing a quality education for our students and also that we had support for individual student disruption if that were to occur dr newman can i just say i think there's been a little concern that maybe we're just going to focus on we're only going to offer one of these like if there's going to be we have to settle on one of these not

022that we're going to be able to offer all three of these concurrently that's the plan that we would offer all three of these and that families would choose what works best and i know you're going to go through that but i just wanted to kind of if you want to address that a little bit make sure we do that absolutely the plan is all-inclusive and we are um we have plans in place we are ready we're willing and we're able to provide all of those three options for whichever option the family chooses for his or her children and um we will be able to do that due to the fact that we will if we need to and as the presentation continues we'll be able to do that because we will make sure that we

023have teachers and staff in the places that are most appropriate to be sure that all of our kids are receiving the educational opportunity in whichever option that they choose so they will be working at the same time concurrently yes thank you for that i guess except when we have when we have an executive order that says we can't be in person so we'll have to work through that yes so our plan is to be sure that we have everything in place that we are able to do that and then of course when something outside of our own um ability to make those decisions then that would happen but we would within that provide disruption time so for example our full-time in-person campus classroom our students for example if there is a disruption or a closure

024our students would continue to receive their instruction with their classroom teacher so every single option would remain it would just look a little differently during that disruption so we thought it might be helpful to go through each of the three options and explain a little bit about what it might look like for a student and then as well talk about what are some ways that it will also how it will look for some of our staff and also some of the precautions that we're putting in place depending on what those options are so our option a school campus with safety precautions our students would attend school five full days per week there will be social emotional supports in place for our students there will be accommodations and support services provided whether that be for our

025ell students our students with disabilities will our title students will continue to have support for them at our title campuses our students because they're going to campus five days a week all day long they will receive their elective classes they'll attend their special area classes as well desks and tables would be facing in one direction in rows whenever possible during that time there might be marked tables and areas so students know where the safety areas are for them to be to make sure that they're not in too close of proximity whenever possible classroom visitors would be need to be scheduled we would not have visitors just showing up on a campus and going into a classroom they would schedule that to make sure that they're adhering to guidelines there'd be hand washing sanitizing multiple times

026each day classroom when our students arrive on the campus they would report directly to their classroom there would be controlled student movement throughout the campus as i mentioned there would be support during disruption periods so if a student was sick the student would continue to be supported by his or her classroom teacher the individual student supplies would be what we would utilize whenever possible and any other items that would not be able to happen that way we would make sure that they are sanitized we would have class size considerations so a very careful review of their master schedule and making sure that we're leveling classrooms so that we're able to keep our class sizes in a at a number that is most appropriate and best for our students and our teachers with that too there's

027some cleaning and disinfecting that will happen there will be increased daily cleaning and disinfecting of high traffic areas doors counters sinks and other horizontal surfaces the restroom and health office touch point areas will be disinfected twice daily guidelines and supplies for cleaning the desk and tables provided to each classroom teacher there will be use of hydroxyl ozone machines to disinfect larger areas there will be signage for safe hygiene and hand washing posted throughout the classroom sinks and rough restrooms and our water fountains would be closed as a result of making sure that we're adhering to safety guidelines in addition for cafeteria our salad bars would be at this moment initially eliminated at the start of the school year choice is going to be provided to our students for meals but those will be prepared in

028the morning and packaged to facilitate placing on student trays to minimize clean up and spillage cafeteria tables will be marked decreasing table capacity sometimes by 30 or 50 percent as we are able to do that to minimize proximity to other students additional garbage cans will be provided for disposal of completed meal packaging and leftovers and after each lunch period tables and seats will be wiped down for the next group of students there's some health considerations and plans in place that we want to be sure that you are aware of we will have a parent at a station form that parents will review the list of symptoms daily that expectation is that our parents will screen their students before school each morning to make sure for example has their child experienced any of the following a

029fever 100 degrees point 100.4 degrees or greater cough muscle aches shortness of breath diarrhea questions about if the child recently has been in close contact with anyone who's tested positive for cova 19 or if anyone in the household's been diagnosed with coca-19 and then they would if as they go through their their testing that if that none of those are the case then they would send their students it would be safe for their students to be at school in addition there will be district health protocols for students and staff stringent health office requirements for students returning from illnesses so students when they return after being sick they would be checking in with a nurse and the nurse will be going through a protocol to be sure that the student is well age-appropriate education on good

030hygiene including what constitutes close contact making sure that staff is educated on signs and symptoms to help identify students notification to our staff and parents of positive contacts there's a student letter and a parent letter face coverings we will be utilizing base coverings per state and local agency guidelines right now that is for all students first through 12th grade they are required to wear space coverings as of today we will continue to follow our state and local agency orders and there may be an exception that will be documented health concerns to be handled the same as we do with our vaccination requirements that will all be handled through our health office in addition there will be a suspension of chronic absenteeism notification and reporting due to coven 19. we know that if our students are

031due to cobia 19 having to be out for an extended period of time we don't need to add ex additional stress to our families by telling them that they've missed they already know that they mess so we will be sure that we are suspending some of that we're keeping track of the absences as we need to but we're we're going to um adhere to not to adhere to some of that and there are miss newman on that one and perhaps on others as that's written in policy i assume that we will need to suspend that policy in a formal sense yes we will we'll be bringing that to the policy meeting thank you and then just also we have many many forms um actual flowcharts and forms we have an internal plan our internal plan

032is multi-pages our internal plan will be provided to our administrators to our staff to our families as appropriate within that form not only is it procedures protocols guidelines that we'll be following there are supporting documents so for example as i mentioned the student letter if on a campus something happens and they need to notify students our staff will be able to go whether to that electronic file or that binder and just pull that letter and get it prepared for our distribution to those that need to have it so that has really been the work of the task force is making sure that everything that is within the plan will is and will be readily available it will be continuously updated um as we need to and we'll continue to um add to that as as

033like i mentioned we need we might need to at the end of each option i'm also going to ask if you have any questions we'll stop okay so so each option we will be able to ask questions after each of them there we do have some elementary and secondary specific guidelines or information that we wanted to share um as i mentioned students will see eat in cafeteria with reduced cap capacity there will be a limited number of students in the playground our vfk provided 27 locations we will have structured door side drop off and pick up and our manaser preschool building blocks and k-prep will be provided with curbside drop-off and pickup for our secondary there will be a staggered release schedule for passing periods and directed hallway flow patterns reduce we're going to reduce

034the usage of our large common areas the gym auditorium lecture hall and the library there will be virtual assemblies reduced cafeteria seating with other locations open for lunch we mentioned that before it might be kind of great for the kids to be able to go and eat in different places around the campus for example on grass or outside with with others so that they're able to practice the additional distancing phased approach to athletics and performing arts which we've already begun modified performing arts practices and field trips will be determined on a month by month basis with the fine arts we're going to be sure that we're following national recommendations practicing in larger areas across the campus perhaps in sectionals or smaller groups the collection and storage of instruments there will be a protocol for that

035and and safety measures put in place um so that um our students are not in a very short small complex enclosed area for any length of period we will have procedures in place for that and at this point i'd like to ask if there are any specific questions you might have for us for this option okay i do have a question um particularly regarding choir because we have some choirs that are quite large and some that are smaller are we going to adjust the size of those choirs so that we don't have a concert choir that's probably 80 kids so that for the um practice mr ryan may want to speak a little bit more to this as well for the practices it would be more practicing in sectionals and others so we were able

036to still anyone who wanted to participate in choir could but they would be then practicing in smaller groups instead of always in the larger group okay and and spread out i assumed him to more than just the choir room because that's not big enough right their time they made mention about perhaps in an auditorium and spreading them out there i thought the auditorium are going outside and getting a little air conditioner for the teacher because she's going to be out there all day but the kids can last for their 50 minutes you know so yeah that's i mean because that is the hardest one because of the singing band is different and obviously orchestra is way different because they're just bowing so i'm i just want to make sure we get those opportunities especially in

037choir and also in general music in elementary so that's those are tough ones thank you all right our second option for our video before we move on as we hit some of these points do we have in our manual trigger points measures that uh as as things improve when we're all hopeful that they do that we that we're able to start removing these and return more to a normal whatever that new normal is but more towards a new normal approach yes we do and are those some place where we can understand what those are yes once when we have the um the form the document or the the binder or the electronic version of that yes all of those will be in and those will be some of our supporting documents that we have in

038place as well so our second option or choice for our families would be our flex and as i mentioned we talked a little bit about um our elementary and secondary before flex is also we're going to discuss it in in two ways we're going to discuss it just in general as we mentioned students are both online and in person but it looks differently between elementary and secondary our flex at the elementary level as i mentioned are our students will be in person and online learning with the same classroom teacher so with that our teachers will be working five days our students will just be coming to school um two days a week the classes will be at each school based on our kasich's enrollment needs our hope is that at every campus we're able to

039offer this and be creative and how we might do that but it will depend on the numbers the numbers of students and the interests of families for that but we do have some creative solutions as to how we can continue to keep our students on their campus with their community that they know there will be a decreased number of students in the classroom which will allow for physical distancing our students will receive two days of in-person teacher support each week that will look like a monday thursday hour a tuesday friday 7 30 to 12 30. we will we wanted to be sure that we were avoiding multiple days in between our students so that's why we did not have for example the meeting on a monday tuesday because then there would be five days before

040they were back with their teacher with their students and when their and their their friends their peers um or so then wednesday would be a the day that the teacher would be able to do some small group and online work um do some prep and planning as well and when also then when the students are coming they'll be coming 7 30 to 12 30 which means the teacher would have opportunity in the afternoon for example to follow up and catch up with students that were working online that same day we want to be sure that we're making every effort for our siblings to be able to be using the flex days that are similar to their sibling there's others right so we want families to be able to come on the same days making that

041easier for our parents parents would be providing their own transportation because we have a modified school day they're going to be arriving earlier and leaving later the special area classes will be available through our gps global academy that will be optional if our parents want our students to take some of those classes they would we would provide a district advice for anyone that needed it at our elementary level since that is right now not normally the practice students having lunch that would be an option if they wanted to stay at lunch on those two days with their peers our teachers would be assigned two cohorts of students so this is not like what we did with remote learning our students would be in person and teaching them they would be assigning the students the work

042when they are not with them and then they would come back and they would be attendance reporting and the expectation is that students would be attending to school work five days a week our secondary flex option is similar in that it's in person and online experiences five days a week our students would be engaged in the work this will be for our grades 7 through 12. students would request a partial day with their currently enrolled school and then they would take any portion of their schedule in person and their remainder online for from their home or school campus ap and dual credit courses would be the ones that they would currently take on their school campus if that's what they were desiring to have in their schedule our on-campus courses that the students would be

043taking would be scheduled consecutively based on the availability um already been talking about master schedules and making sure that we are having opportunities for um students to take those classes and so that they wouldn't have to take a class in the morning and then take the last class at the end of the day that would not be an option for our flex students there would be campus assistance with scheduling our gps global academy classes that they'd be taking online all of these structures are already in place we already have students that are already utilizing this this option we just have never called it a flex or a partial day option for our students but we've always done that to meet the needs there will be a district device provided because there's already one for all

044of our 712 students students would provide their own transportation if they're arriving or they are departing at times other than our transportation would occur as i mentioned systems are already in place for this so for example registration on campus support we have our center for success so we've talked about adding additional center for success opportunities so maybe a student might first period take a class go to a center for success and work on an online class because the other class the student wanted was third period and so that would be the opportunity for them to do that and we would do our best to do scheduling to provide that for our students dr newman we would be adhering to what's in policy related to the five consecutive courses or the five credits for high school

045students we we have that in policy there are sometimes exceptions when students want to take a community college course for which we do not have for example dual credit so we do have exceptions at times when students do not do that and we would continue with that if our students had their grad credits and they really wanted to take for example a course that we did not have we've always it's gone through a process where they work with their counselor the administration also has a conversation with parents they make sure that that's what's best for the student make sure the student does have all grad credits and then that student sometimes does take that at the community college okay the question also relates to what if a senior only needs two credits to graduate how

046would we treat that so we would um encourage them to take more but i don't think that we would we have not um specifically said we would have to change policy we would have to suspend policy if we wanted something different it's important that we are providing choice for our students but at the same time we also need to be sure that we are receiving funding that we need to but the flex is for the purpose of being flexible and so that might be the option where we are not on campus we would want our students to be there all five periods flex we may not same thing with global academy i think that's an important feature uh for us to emphasize uh funding components become a real issue as it relates to district and

047uh whatever we have written in policy we should stay as close to as we can well i would add that the funding that is provided for those academics helps us to have the funding for the extracurricular activities so you know it if you want to be on a baseball team you really need to be there for five classes so we have the funding to provide for that baseball team dr santa cruz i would suggest that we have that discussion in a policy meeting and further discuss and explore that particular issue as ms newman communicated there is an exception place already in process and either on a temporary or otherwise basis given the situation given the current direction of the state that they're going to give us 98 percent funding regardless of count it may not

048be the same point in this situation and i would like to at least explore how we can be as flexible as possible to meet parental needs uh i wouldn't disagree with you mr carr just simply is worthy of uh having an open discussion so that at least that is out there in the public and i'm sure that dr mccord will add that to our policy mean [Music] thank you are there any questions about our flex model so on the [Music] for the high school for the secondary junior high in high school basically they would come to school for a couple hours a day and then they would go home and take the rest of their classes through the online learning through the global academy so it's just combining kind of those both both of those

049things it's not like they'll have one single teacher or anything like that it's just pretty normal to what we have right now but just giving them maybe a half day option or shorter options and then taking the rest of it online correct i do have one question about global academy they would have options for honors classes ap classes with global academy would there also be options for special ed students with global academy in all three of the options through the our task force work we have ensured that yes we can provide services for our special needs students it looks different perhaps than it used to and so we need to be sure for example for global academy there will be options for our students with learning disabilities and there will be florida virtual is our

050curriculum there will be shells specifically that will provide additional supports in those shells and we will have our teachers providing those the delivery of services for our special needs students as well okay thank you so option c our new newly branded gps global academy we are super excited thank you again for your approval to make that a k-12 entity our gps global academy for the 2021 school year will have highly qualified gilbert public schools teachers that will work five days a week full time providing online instruction to our students they'll be utilizing an accredited standards-based gilbert public schools adopted online curriculum it is also ncaa approved we have already processes in place to ensure that our athletes are getting what they need and they're getting the guidance and support in that way as well they

051will have our students will have access to full-time teachers that's different than now because our teachers are part-time so often our teachers are teaching during the day and they're not able maybe to answer questions when a student might have those questions so they'll have access to those full-time teachers five days a week those teachers will have office hours in addition to some synchronous lessons that they'll provide there will be open lab hours we'll have some virtual lessons for opportunities for students to discuss and converse and collaborate and work together our social emotional supports will be in place for all of these options including our online again the support services for english language learners and our students with special needs as we develop the plan we really looked at all three options and delivery models and

052we said how were we going to address the needs of and we looked at all of these various pieces of it to be sure we'll have in-person support at our new gps global academy campus we're moving to a bigger campus there will be opportunity for example maybe students are working um full-time online maybe students are doing a flex even schedule that they have and we'll have our teachers that will be able to um if it's works for the families and the families need that in-person support they can go visit um with a teacher they might have some virtual science classes and spiritual science labs as appropriate as well our students will be assigned a mentor for goal setting and additional support those mentors will be usually that there will be teachers it may not be

053all of the teachers that they were assigned to our teachers will have a much bigger load for example at the secondary level than they will have individual students that they're mentoring but it will be um someone that the student has as a teacher the gps counselor will have his counselor assigned to the secondary students for academic counseling support and again we will have district devices available our 712 students already receive those and we'll be sure that any of our k-6 students who need them will have them i have a question too um last year we piloted a blended learning structure uh are we still doing that or where where they would meet like once a week with the teacher or is that kind of moving away because of the current crisis well the current situation

054did not let us do the full pilot okay but we do want to con add some of those similar components so we want to be sure that if that works for our families that our teacher is available for students for for example like i said the science labs or other things that might be good for them to have okay thank you um all this is yes just a question and i'm not totally certain of all of the dynamics related to this question but i'm informed that uh the state government in florida has done some augmenting of its internal budget as it relates to uh online education or virtual instruction will that have an impact on us at all no it will not um we actually consulted with the florida virtual hour rep already this this

055evening that is the university of florida program that they had provided some resources during covet 19 to our k-12 it's an opportunity for students to earn college degrees or geds and provides also some additional support as far as scholarships go to our higher education florida virtual is its own entity it is a k-12 entity and we were told that actually their funding increased through the governor's bill in florida and so we're hoping that that gives us even additional supports for additional courses or things like that very good thank you dr santa cruz for me yes ms newman and i just want to clarify again because i've gotten a lot of questions about global academy and the online option this is not what we did fourth quarter last year uh fourth quarter we transitioned a number

056of students within their existing classes if you will with their existing teachers and they you know we give the teachers credit they were doing something completely new that they had not done in the past but this is a fully developed curriculum that's taught online that's designed for online we have offered it in the past but it's not the same as for those parents who transition from in person to online during fourth quarter right thank you this is um very different than fourth quarter remote learning um all the work is required students are expected to meet virtually with their teacher at least twice a week for a class as well as work through online lessons and complete those assignments daily those lessons have videos in them those lessons have assessments those lessons have progress checks and

057that is all built within the online shell that the students will be working on i'll talk a little bit more about the show later but the importance of that is everything is all in one place and so for example our full-time global students would log right into their portal and it would have all of their courses right there so that's an easy access for students and for families as well also we will as i mentioned we'll have the the support for our special needs students with this online option what we want to be sure is if parents choose the option of a full-time global academy or even the flex option staff will work with parents and contact parents and review the iep to make sure that the course selections and the support is in place

058that's appropriate for our students so that they're successful in this environment so here are our courses at the elementary level or at all of the levels we have our core classes we have electives k through 12. um at the elementary level unlike perhaps maybe as they circle through and they have all different kinds of specials our students would choose what elected they would want at that k5 classroom whether that be pe technology spanish or art we would also be sure that our sixth graders while they are at the elementary level for us here in gilbert public schools our sixth graders would actually have electives that are offered at the junior high that's a more of a middle school model which is the six seven eight so our sixth graders would have electives pe reading study

059skills spanish coding and art we would have opportunities for gifted or honors students at all three levels our gifted students would receive an acceleration of math for fourth through sixth grade and also the enrichment of our sixth grade curriculum at our elementary similar to what our model is currently right now our middle school would continue to have honors courses right now we don't have honors courses that we have offered and that's why we are running those through our teaching and learning departments to ensure that it is what we would consider honors and what we've said is our guidelines and our parameters for what an honors course would be and then at the high school we have honors classes there's the ability to take and offer ap courses whether or not we have those will be

060dependent just like on a campus of our teachers our staffing and what assignments our teachers would have of whether or not that would be an option what questions do you have for us miss newman with online there always has introduced new challenges there's not necessarily a teacher to call as a parent if my child is taking online how do i monitor their success how do i monitor progress and make sure they're completing assignments so the uh the portal that we mentioned which is our our our buzz agilics is the virtual platform that we have literally a parent could go right to that portal and that portal would show the parent not only would it show the parent all the courses that the student is taking but the progress that the student has on each of

061the assignments there is an a piece within the portal of communication between parent and teacher we are going to have teachers that are more available we're putting that into their schedule so they are available for phone calls and they are available for emails and that is in their daily schedule to be able to do that and um and help that way the um trying to think what other options for our parents we have besides the portal we also are going to have the opportunity for our the communication will be such that our teachers will be communicating with parents more and the parents will have only one place to go to figure it out that's what's going to be different about gps global academy and as we work through this through all of our options instead

062of parents thinking well our teachers are working on google classroom over here i think i think i got a text over here or there might be an email here that's really our our main purpose of looking at and ensuring that we have a virtual platform k12 so that our parents will have access in that way i have a question will that will the parent have to help some of the younger students like kindergarteners and first graders if they make this choice it seems like they would need more help with a global online curriculum than maybe some of the older students the yes the assignment so will be not always on the screen so there may be assignments that they might get and tell them for example an activity to do and that might involve them

063doing something hands-on and so that would be something that they'd be able to do gps global academy also with flex we know that our kindergartners will not be on the screen for five day five hours a day we're expecting our kindergartners to have two hours a day for that kind of work and then our teachers would teach on the days so our students would get both for example english language arts and math lessons two to three times a week and so the other time would them do some independent practice with that or independent reading or some other component similar to that okay all right thank you okay so the whole child supports um we can't say it enough we miss our students we want them back we want to be able to support them in

064any way that they can we also are so appreciative of the opportunity to add additional supports social workers and mental health counselors this year this upcoming year who would have known that in such a situation how how wonderful that would be for us we knew that we really wanted it and needed it but especially now there will be a opportunity and really a focus to re-establish the connections re-engage the disconnected we had we had students who were not engaged during fourth quarter we've had students that haven't been able to um engage in a lot of conversations or activities with our friends and so it'll be really important to do that outreach and the family engagement pieces the collaboration with campus staff so that their our teachers have support in helping them to also support their

065um their students the utilization of our behavioral health team members we have behavioral health bht members can i interrupt you and go back to the options just to make sure globally regardless of which option the student chooses as long as they meet the aia requirements for enrollment i'm assuming that we will count them as eligible to participate in athletics or or whatever other events is that is that correct assumption that is correct so our students in flex or global academy will continue to have the same opportunities that they have previously had in regard to participating yes thank you sorry for interrupting no that's okay it's also important for the process to include classroom and school-wide preventative interventions coordination with families and also that collaboration with community resources to be sure that our families and our

066students have what they need from a social emotional perspective i did want to add something in here i think it's really important to understand that students will learn best when they have those relationships and they feel comfortable with their teacher and that is part of the importance not only because we care about them but because we know that they will function better and do better if they feel comfortable and feel a part of their class or connected to their teacher that's really important absolutely in any of the settings yeah it's super important yes we were just talking about that this morning the importance of just connecting with the student and reconnecting and and building those relationships right from the very beginning and that will make such a difference we think too we know it will

067so for academics we've talked a little bit about this and previously about some of the things we're considering we knew that it was so important to make sure that there was that continuity of learning so that is why with the addition of the gps global academy going k-12 we now have the opportunity for our students in any of those options and all of our teachers to have access to a virtual platform have access to some online curriculum as well and so we are planned and we're ready if there are is any potential disruption whether that be individual classroom or a reason to close we're able to continue with the learning and we already have it in place and ready to go um we want to be sure to with that that there is a one-stop

068easy access for our students and for our families so students we have a rapid identity tile when they go into and log in initially they will just click on that it will take them right to the buzz platform and from there they will access their curriculum the curriculum will vary um depending on these options that our families choose um but we will always have a component of the virtual platform within any of the options so that everybody is familiar with it that is something that our teachers did such a great job of adding websites and creating google classrooms and doing some of that and they did such hard work but it was still difficult sometimes for our families to navigate all that especially if they had a student at the elementary level or a student

069at the high school they weren't always utilizing those same programs so that was really important to make sure that we had that the next piece is from an academic standpoint is we need to be sure that we're addressing the learning gaps we had a disruption for an entire quarter some students engaged and some students did not so what do we have in place for that we have several things we have our priority standards that we have curriculum guides scopes and sequences that we've already created for our teachers we knew this was coming this is something that we did during the closure um where we've already shared them out with some of our teachers at the various grade levels or for the various content areas the scope and sequence will will also include an identification of

070those priority standards that were missed in fourth quarter so for example if if a student is now doing fourth grade math that student would not take all of what the student learned in third grade fourth quarter or should have and they're not learning it right at the beginning they're looking at through the where those priority standards are and well where they will learn that progression of that standard in fourth grade and that's where the scaffolding and additional instruction will take place right then and that is actually in place right now for example in our math and in our english language arts we know that for foundational reading we have you know our students that missed perhaps a quarter of learning how to read and our foundations is a very very strong foundational reading program as

071is our spalding and so adding additional time for example during our 90-minute reading block to make sure that our students are able to meet the needs of what they've missed make sure that they've at least demonstrated proficiency we also know that gaps are going to continue to occur we're going to use diagnostic screeners teachers are going to identify those students specifically in reading who have gaps in those skills they're going to use whole group small group or intervention settings so that they can support those students with specific identify needs whether that be in person or in the virtual platform so as we're talking about all of these we make sure we made sure that regardless of the choice of delivery model our students would be taken care of in all of these areas and so

072we we literally had a matrix that said you know option a in person what about our flex and then what about our online learning and so that is there the learning support in services we will be reassigning staff because some staff will not be able to come back for example to the brick and mortar so that works nicely and that will need staff at our gps global academy as well that will ensure that we're going to have highly qualified and appropriately certified teachers and individuals that are providing our support whether that be ell specialists our special educators and also our title interventionists and then also for assessing student growth to inform our instruction we don't have spring 2020 data we don't have any of that because we did not take our state assessments and so

073it will be important that our teachers continue to work through our data teams process and through their psc plcs they will be able to have their classroom formative assessments they'll be able to determine what that student progress is towards proficiency of those academic standards the new platform we have a new platform for assessment so not necessarily the best time but that's okay because we already have things in place and is in regard to training and other wise our governor issued an order that said that we must have benchmarks within the first six weeks of our school year and we have already indicated that that is possible whether that be in person or virtually we're able to do those benchmarks in both of those modes so we're good we can make it happen and um that's

074a huge relief to know that we have that in place as well is there any questions about academics dr newman not necessarily a question but a statement for sure and that is and i'm certain you and the task force have factored this in we have a huge concern for our students and our families as we should they are our customers we have a group of professionals and staff who are also uneasy and i would hope that all of this structural stuff becomes part of their pd and that they have an opportunity to become as conversant with it as they can prior to meeting their their students in in whatever format is is chosen so that we're not placing additional burden on those teachers at any level k through 12. uh and and i think that

075just needs to be said absolutely and i will go into more detail in regards to some of the supports that we have for our staff it actually is great timing dr santa cruz because that's next we know that we will have us regardless of the delivery model our teachers will be full-time teachers if they have a full-time contract and they will be teaching their regular work hours they'll be assigned to a delivery model that is best for them whenever possible and we know that we have some personnel that's susceptible to illnesses and otherwise and we want to be sure that they are also working in a safe environment we know that some of our staff can't wait to get back to our our students in person and we want to make sure that that environment

076is safe as well there will there has been a staff survey that's already gone out um from our otm office and they have surveyed our at-risk members to gauge their intentions in returning to work while maintaining also the confidentiality that they have in place they've offered and they will continue to offer special accommodations whether that be alternative teaching assignments whether that mean that they there's a need for example of additional staffing do we need additional custodians do we need additional nurses do we need additional health aids there will be we've reassigned a dean already to our flex model we know that super excited about the flex model i mean we wanted to do splendid learning for a long time but it does require a additional training and additional skill sets so we want to be

077sure that not only did we not um we wanted to be sure we provided the adequate and additional continuous training and professional development for our teachers not just in the beginning of the year but throughout the school year our professional learning communities they'll be able to meet on wednesdays with with the staff and we also knew that this would be extremely difficult for an administrator while the administrator has all of the in-person classes going on as well um we we're able to um have the expertise of a dean that has experience in online learning and um and so we're super excited we've assigned a tie to that team as well um and she is dynamic and she's very very knowledgeable and i think that the teachers will feel very comfortable going and asking for assistance

078and help from her as well that also as far as our employees we want to be sure that we are reporting identified coveted cases following guidelines established as i mentioned there is um there are forms already created and in place and we've had to use some of those um you know in different instances and there um we continue to make them as accessible and as updated as things change as we can the notification of those cases also adhere to ferpa and hipaa requirements and its state and federal employment law and extended leave allowances i want to go to the next slide just to show also some precautions that have been put in place for staff um procedures as well that are put in place we'll have personal protective equipment including our distribution of n95 mass

079as appropriate to our staff hand sanitizer is going to be in every classroom there will be cleaning solutions provided for that daily spot cleaning of hive traffic services there will be deep sanitizing every two days at a minimum throughout our campuses and our offices district health protocols for reporting and returning to work will be in place there will be that daily health screening and reporting to supervisors as appropriate if our staff does not if our staff is not healthy and that notification of contacts when our staff has been perhaps in the close proximity of somebody who perhaps does get the virus we also have cleaning and disinfecting for protecting our employees there's going to be some other additional slides that give you some more than what i'm going to explain right now but restroom and

080health office touch point areas will be disinfected twice daily there will be guidelines and supplies for cleaning desks and tables that are provided to classroom teachers there will be signage for safe hygiene and hand washing posted by all classroom sinks and restrooms and the utilization of our electrostatic sprayers for wide area disinfecting that is both our we have the backpack style and also the sprayer style the handheld sprayer style that can be used we also have return to work support in place for our employees it's important that um as employees are experiencing some things and they are also responsible for students as well um that they have and are very knowledgeable that there is an employee assistant program in place for all of our staff members there's regular communication and check-ins with our vulnerable staff

081the training for use of the online platform and the supplemental resources and i'm going to talk a little bit more about that later but that is the support that we put in place and we wanted to be sure that our staff knew that we're not going to leave them without the tools that they need and that instructional technology support dedicated as i mentioned just to virtual learning dr newman i do have a question especially considering the unknowns with this virus you know someone a staff member could have a family member that gets sick or they could have a contact with someone and not know whether or not they should quarantine it seems like are they going to have to use their own sick leave to deal with this or are we going to provide additional

082sick days i know there's something under the cares act but can you explain that a little bit better i'm going to ask mr mcintosh to explain that a little bit better good evening dr santa cruz governing board members and dr mccord so in order to answer your question the first 14 days of any symptomatic or confirmed case of the covet then they would have that from the federal government under the ffcra act and then if they needed additional time to care for a family member etc then they could utilize their own sick time at that time okay thank you yeah thank you so related to that mr mcintosh [Laughter] one of our challenges obviously is a large number of our substitute teachers are in by age what we may classify as a high risk category

083um we might have something to help the teachers but do we have resources for substitutes and and caring for them well currently we are getting ready to deploy a survey to all of our substitutes to see how many of them would be available to come back to work and also surveying them kind of like just like we did with the teachers if they have a reason or they're uncomfortable in coming back the two-week allowance is for is for employees so i'm assuming that that two weeks the 80 hours of the ffcra we would have to then go back and look at what substitutes how many hours they've taught or covered last semester and then we would proportion it out like that so um we haven't got all the way through that piece yet but we're

084working on that right now so we would i would have to seek some legal counsel on on substitutes because and also look at what the surrounding districts are doing with their substitutes but we are sending out a survey to see how many of them are willing to come back because we do know we're going to have a high utilization rate with substitutes because of coven 19. so are there concerns that we might have a shortage of substitutes under the circumstances are are we concerned about having a shortage of substitutes under the circumstances until i get the survey back it would be hard for me to guess um we are working on developing plans so that we could have site coverage with substitutes those those who are willing to come back we could assign to a

085campus so that way when a teacher or another staff member is out there's already a pool of substitutes on that campus to help cover um during that time so we're still in the developing plans with the with that but i think that we'll get there we've had the highest number of substitutes in our pool last year than what we've ever historically had but in our current situation until i get the survey back it's unknown just exactly how many are willing to to come in and help gps okay thank you i'm learning to enunciate better so you can hear me through the mask this is not related to that so um i'm not sure where this question comes in but since you've been talking about health protocols under employees this isn't necessarily related to employees but

086traditionally when there's an outbreak of some kind of illness at a particular school we report that to the county health department and they intervene what role does the county health department play at this point with with ongoing covid and if we have an outbreak miss jen frost is here specifically to answer those questions and if we're going to address this in the future we can i'll wait for an answer to that this is perfect okay this is great thank you good evening dr santa cruz members of the board um dr mccord so i've been working with department of health probably every other day we meet and they currently don't have a percentage typically with things like measles chickenpox those types of things there is a number directly tied to the virus that they want to

087use in order to know that they're going to shut down a classroom or excuse me a campus at this time we are reporting each case that we know of as positive and confirmed but they have not decided because this is a community born virus they have not decided what number that would take for a campus in order to shut anything down does that answer your question well we don't know is the answer so yes dr santa cruz go ahead go ahead ms eugenie i am i have a question for uh mr mcintosh okay let him come to the microphone go ahead and ask your question he and i talked about this this afternoon uh it has to do with the fact that the first coronavirus response act only covers 80 hours of paid leave for

088a staff member but what happens if that staff member gets exposed again and i know chandler has said that they are going to cover the teachers or any employees that that happens with so what are we going to do hi josh go ahead missy jenny it's shane um mr mcintosh and i talked about that i did speak to chandler as well it's something that they're going to propose to their board which is something that i would propose to you as well and that is if somebody has confirmed case of covid that is their second go around with cobid would we be willing to cover another 10 days for them to be able to recover quarantine for that time so i think i would be willing to propose that to you as a governing board but

089we would need to look at what policy that specifically speaks to and suspend that portion of it or reword it for the time being one of the concerns is that sometimes people are sick for quite an extended time with this virus and and they don't necessarily necessarily recover in just two weeks or even three or four i have heard of cases where it's gone on much longer so i think we're going to have to be a little flexible on a case-by-case basis depending on what the employees need mr jetty did you get the response you were looking for i did but but my question it has to do with even just being exposed not necessarily having it well i would think if they're if they're reporting it and they need to quarantine and whether they're

090exposed or whether they have it again we would be able to work with them based on direction from the governing board related to that again it's it's something that within our policy because the cares act takes care of the first 80 hours the assumption would be then the employees sickly would cover that moving forward but if we want to do some things different as a school district we i'm more than willing to do that but if they don't have enough sick leave and they keep getting exposed we've got to figure that one out right and and and again even if they had enough sick leave we could suspend them using that sick leave if they've been exposed again and need to quarantine that's that's something that we could decide as a as a school district

091and governing board your observation's a good one thank you dr you bet i i think that is another item for policy committee we'll have to as dr mccord has suggested take a look at the policy that applies and adjust the language accordingly for this moment in time so your your point is well taken thank you thank you dr santa cruz and dr mccoy dr santa cruz it sounds like our policy meeting is going to become a retreat it it does thank you mr carr go ahead dr newman all right um so there will be additional obviously training and support our teachers will be trained um and receive professional development as i mentioned initial and then ongoing professional development on the platform and also on best instructional strategies with whether that be for a blended model

092or whether that be for an all online model and how can they continue to engage the students in academic rigor like they would be used to in the classroom we want to be sure initially in july we once we have um approval to move forward we will train all of our teachers and at least one hour of training that we will pay them it's optional for them to do it in july but we know that some teachers want they want to get trained now because they have summer and they're used to summer time and working and preparing and so there will be an optional pd just on the overall common knowledge of what the virtual platform is we initially also knew that we need to have additional training for our flex teachers and for our

093gps global academy teachers now with recent news just as of yesterday there might be a need for us to train all of our teachers in much more detail on the florida virtual shell and how teachers can access that and how they can pull their own resources in there and do some more things that way sooner rather than later and so with that we know that with the return to school before our students would begin their calendar our teachers have their contracted calendar and so those days would be while the teachers on contract that we would be sure that teachers not only received the additional the initial training if they did not get it in july but then all of the additional training as well and support we've talked about having additional um almost an expert

094on each campus a go-to in addition to our ties who are such a great resource they will be doing the majority of the training along with dr barton at gps global academy and we have four teachers that our on our at our brick and mortar campuses right now that also are gps global academy teachers part-time and so that will be our team in addition to our professional development educators as well ms human just for a quick break is he jetty are you still there i i think i am i i think i get disconnected you're there here we got you i just i i heard a couple beeps and i didn't i just wanted to make sure you were still there thank you sorry to interrupt i wasn't leaving [Music] i'm afraid miss eugenie might

095have said something and that's why we heard the beep but um miss newman sorry poor attempted humor very funny miss newman you made a comment about when teacher contracts start with contracts starting as as uh as documented but now with us starting school later are we suggesting that the teachers still report on the report date and begin their contract if that's the case not knowing whether they're going to change the number of school days our teachers then gonna have to report and teach more days um and again if if i'm if i'm being a segway i'm not intending to so please if that's already addressed i can wait but well it's it's not necessarily addressed because it's it's kind of what happened yesterday in terms of the discussion of of when do we actually start

096school you know the governor said uh august 17th is when we can go back in person but also left the door open for us to start at our regular date online and so if that was the case the teachers would report not new teachers they'd report a couple days before that but all other teachers would report july 31st and we would continue teaching or start teaching online and then as you got to august 17th or up two if things haven't changed then we would segue in and into those three models of those that chose in person those that chose flex and those that choose to continue online and so that's how we'd move forward if for some reason we didn't do anything and pushed everything back and in person can start or those three options

097could start on the 17th then their contract would start three work days before that and so um everything would be pushed back but at that time and we don't know the answer to this today but the assumption is is that the pays would be delayed until uh that started so and that was one of my questions i mean from past experience or past discussion if we don't start the teacher pay we can't begin to pay them or if we don't start the contract we can't begin to pay them by state statute correct and i haven't seen any executive order to change that nothing in writing that would say pay him and start whenever you want because otherwise it would be considered a constitutional issue of gifting public gifting yeah um so i just want that

098clear to teachers i've been asked by a few teachers the simple answer at this point then is we don't know that is correct and and and i think that's something that we should probably discuss at further length this evening in terms of what our intentions are for august 5th uh as we move through this again not necessarily part of the presentation but definitely part of the discussion and also you know we talk a lot about teachers we need to recognize our support staff and again the same type of concept of gift of public funds if we go online or even if we wait and do nothing until august 17th there's still uh a lack of them being able to be paid and even if we start online the question is how do we or do

099we pay them because they won't be performing there'll be a handful of course that will continue to work but there'll be several paraprofessionals out there that we will not be able to utilize we might be able to do some trainings for a lot of different groups but that won't be a full-time job 40 hour a week it might be a few hours here and there so that's that concerns me greatly because our support staff and it seems like when things like this happen it seems like support staff is always left out of the loop and and they're extremely important to the operation and the functioning and the education of our students and so i don't know what there's a fix for that but i unless again like in the spring the reason why that was

100able to happen because there was an executive order well this executive order does not address that and i don't know if a future one will or not so again gray and related to that dr mccord the a executive order last week uh i believe it was last week indicated that they would guarantee school funding at at least to 98 percent of last year which the purpose of that is to allow us to to move forward planning because we simply don't know with only weeks to to come how we're going to support parents in their choices of online in person or or flex or you know whatever model they choose but the executive order that came out yesterday seems to indicate that if we start online that those even with the plan of transitioning the full

101time that those students who start online will be treated as an aoi online arizona online student for funding purposes so we seem to have con conflicts in those two executive orders the older one only a week old indicating we will receive funding the newer one indicating that our funding may be diminished um i understand it's just a two percent maximum decline right well i don't know i mean the newer one supersedes it doesn't reference that so that's my question if we could seek clarification because if that's the case and then again if funding is based on 100-day then maybe it doesn't matter because we're back in person by 100 day anyway right um so i i think there's some some questions where those two executive orders are in conflict with each other the newer one

102of the two seeming to give us a lower amount i think that impacts our our decisions and our ability to make decisions and we need to seek clarification on that very possible i i see it as irregardless of what we're funded at for aoi we're going to be held harmless up to 98 and but and i want to yeah i want to uh interpret it as i will leave with that but but anytime you have a newer document that says something that typically supersedes the previous document so in my mind it left it unclear i don't know that was the governor's intention to leave it unclear but i would like to if we can seek some clarification on that so that we're making smart informed decisions and we'll have uh mrs betts come up and

103a few talk about some dollars she might have a little more info to be able to share and i agree with you mr carr i also to add additional confusion as i listened to the governor speak yesterday i latched on to the word maximum flexibility in the financing i can interpret that any way i would like but i'm not sure that my interpretation would be equal to his interpretation or to the legislature's interpretation but we we need to capitalize on that maximum flexibility terminology and i did speak with mrs betts yesterday and she and i had a very good conversation and she's doing some research on our behalf i feel like i've been doing yoga i'm so flexible for the last four months this is awesome we also want to be sure that we're providing

104parent training and support as well training on the platform and how to access the platform how to best help students who are learning online or in blended situations that resource navigation and where to find things for students or where to look how to access progress of students and then again that strategy for student support what does that look like in all of our settings and so that will be also a focus when we look at training and support with that too we want to provide technical support tech services did an amazing job it was always fun to watch you know the cars driving through and whether that be because they had questions about a device or there was a device that perhaps needed some a little bit extra help there but they are prepared to

105support they are prepared to support at even a larger scale than they did before their students will have access at k-6 to not only a device but also some insurance options that they obviously did not have during fourth quarter and obviously they did not have it previously because our students did not have devices but they have expanded that opportunity for parents to purchase insurance for those devices also that internet accessibility and the importance of making sure that our families who may not have internet access do and so continuing to work with that cox connect to compete program making sure the collaboration between tech services our title offices and our parents and then for our parents that might live in locations where cox does not service those subdivisions making sure that there are alternative hot spots

106that are provided from the other vendors other than cox as well i have a question on just devices and i probably dr mccord can answer this we had a robust one-to-one um seven through twelve program and we've been able to roll down a lot of our chromebooks to the elementary will we need to purchase more chromebooks in order to give access to students or have we had sufficient chromebooks we've had sufficient chromebooks we've also ordered more because some have aged out and we're in the process of replacing some and also the city of mesa has graciously donated the funds to the tune of 420 chromebooks for our district from the money that they received from the federal government related to or the state actually i think related to um covet 19 so that's actually on

107the consent agenda for this evening okay i just wanted to make sure that we we're covering those elementary students as well thank you dr newman that we're not talking about all elementary students we're talking about elementary students who are either in the flex or the online the global yes any of them that would need that in either those options though knowing too we're going to we need to be flexible and there will be times of disruption so if an individual student for example all of a sudden is needs to be home for a length of time we'll be able to provide that for them as well okay thanks so as you can imagine um just i'm sorry questions keep coming up and this isn't related to this this is going back to our three options

108but uh as this is new information questions arise as they come to mind within all three student options uh how does evit work at the high school level if they choose the hybrid they choose online does eve it just work the same way are there special accommodations in all of those not only eve it but also our cte programs we've take have plans in place of how our students can continue for example our even our cte part of cte is that you have to have a certain percentage of hands-on experiences so when our students are there we want to be sure that they continue to have as many hands-on experiences just in case there is another disruption for whether that be student or otherwise and they also are utilizing some online programs that have some

109virtual experiences as well but we definitely would be able to um with just like the flex is a partial day gps global academy we could do the same thing with our students and then of course our brick and mortar and we'll follow what ebit says as well in regard to what their plans are we do not have those yet either so as you can imagine our district operations have um been working overtime did you have a question i do and and this may have been observed and i might have missed it but if in a classroom a student exposes a a whole class with a teacher and the entire class would have to be quarantined for two weeks what are is going to be the solution for that so if i think i heard her

110i'll try it okay if a classroom for example that would be a disruption of an entire classroom we would then continue to support the students the teacher would be able to if the students were having to be at home for a certain length of time during that quarantine time then the teacher would continue to support them through online learning they would already be used to the virtual platform they would already be used to some of the access in regard to the curriculum and our parents would also have knowledge of that so students would be doing some element of that throughout the um throughout the week and so we would continue with working with their classroom teacher whether that be an individual student is experiencing disruption or a classroom the same way thank you dr newman

111so for transportation times on buses will be minimized with new routes created buses will be cleaned twice a day once after our morning runs and once again at the end of the day base coverings will be provided to students who do not have them as they um as they arrive and and get on the bus in the morning or after school question about bus is will we it's been said that if if we can have the windows open will we have the windows open to help there be more airflow in the bus or or not i believe that we would we would have one or two windows open so there would be airflow okay thank you and of course we would take temperature into into i mean we're going to be careful that we don't

112um heat the students up you know in a manner so we'll we'll we'll do the best we can when it comes to that but yes that's the original okay thought is to have a window open okay thank you um as you know there have been cleaning protocols and materials that have we've changed some of our practices and we've added additional ones the we've standardized our practices acro throughout the district there are high use areas that are cleaned more frequently for example as we mentioned before bathrooms auditoriums multi-purposes the high-touch areas that we've purchased pro texas cordless electrostatic handheld and also backpack straight sprayers that are purchased for schools and for bus fleets um every school will have one depending on the size um they may have more than one and then also that sanitizing liquid

113that is used in those machines will also is already available and will be there at our warehouse as is needed the hand sanitizers will be mounted and available throughout our buildings in classroom surface cleaning materials will be available throughout the day we have approved a deployment of additional five-member custodial work team so as they're needed whether that be due to absences or an outbreak or a situation where they might need some heavy cleaning they are ready and able to work in that way there will be enhanced training for all our custodians and our non-custodial staff on the use of the disinfectant application um the the use of laundered and sanitized color-coded microfiber cloths for specific surface areas so that we're avoiding some of that cross-contamination do you have any questions about any of that or

114what i haven't mentioned maybe related to this so the disinfectant wipes would be available to teachers in the classroom we would be providing those there will be one of them whether it be a disinfectant wipe or whether it be the sanitizer that they're able to spray and utilize those cloths in that way to clean yes in every classroom okay thank you right so the financial and advocacy piece we've touched on that a little bit already tonight continually monitors state and federal funding as well as student reporting guidance that we receive sometimes always almost on a daily notice we will apply for and manage the cares act grant monitor warehouse supplies of our personal protective equipment and cleaning materials with that working closely to make sure that those are not only available in the warehouse but

115budget lines are already set up for our campuses and departments so it allows for quick acquisition for those needed supplies without any kind of delay for that facilitate that budget also again so that is quick for them but also make sure that that's readily available and it's there as they are requesting those materials it's important as i know you know to report the status of budget regularly to all of you and to the leadership team to make sure that we're making wise decisions and decisions that are fiscally responsible and then continue with that legislative advocacy for funding and accountability as well how is the legislative advocacy advocacy going to take place what are what do we have in mind there that's discussions with superintendents who actually have uh active lobbyists who are working for school

116districts as well as our local legislators i've been in a lot of contact with jennifer pollock i know she's probably watching us right now and uh very good with information and passing along information they they've done a really good job of keeping us in the loop and listening to our concerns okay thank you i'm going to ask mrs betts to come and explain the next slide because i think i probably could do it but certainly not give it the adequate justice that it deserves if you don't mind doing that i could try but you know that you'd still have to come up for a question or two anyway so dr santa cruz governing board members dr mccord um yes i just wanted to share that based upon the governor's first executive order which happened last

117week we did run a calculation based upon a presumption that we would be funded on ninety percent of the fiscal 2020 adm in addition um that was that nine zero or 98 would be funded at 98 percent 90 sorry maybe i may have um 98 of the 2020 adm actually the greater of the two but the worst case scenario would be 98 of the prior year so based upon that that would be a total loss of 664 students in addition to be extremely careful we also made the assumption that the 664 students were at our high school level which has the highest weight so in doing that calculation we determined that the maximum loss would be 1.5 million dollars note that we already assumed a 400 student loss so it's a 264 additional student loss

118and if i could address mr reed's question regarding guidance so we just received it i don't know maybe two hours ago there was a a school finance lawyer consortium group that came up with their interpretation of the two executive orders and simply the first the second executive order which does supersede the first one potentially expires august 17th or when we go back to in-person school so at that point it expires and therefore the first executive order then comes into play so based upon that guidance they are um their their interpretation is that the of the prior year adm would still be the enrollment stabilization still available to give us some clarity going into the fiscal 2021 school year so so assuming that the start of school does not get pushed out again and again and

119again past day 100 then the 98 would apply so the the presumption though is that the as part of the second executive order the governor did make a request that the department of education look at the impact of the a decrease from 180 days down to 177 down to 170. in addition as dr mccord shared if we began distance learning on our normal calendar expected to start august 5th that those two weeks of distance learning very potentially could be considered part of the 180 days that that is still an area that needs to be clarified and they're all waiting for further guidance from department of education regarding that so the idea would be that if we started distance learning 180 days would start on august 5th allowing us to finish school on our normal calendar

120school end date and and again as long as as long as we've transitioned back the funding would be based on in-person enrollment yeah presuming that but regardless we'd still be protected even if we were a hundred percent all 33 000 students went to arizona online were still protected to 98 percent of the prior your adm which still protects us anything further thank you so communication we are so fortunate to have dawn and team to help they are always she is always reminding us and her her team provides so many different ways for us to communicate we need we know we need to have plans and platforms in place to achieve frequent ongoing communication we have to make sure that those messages are developed at the district level so that we have that one source of

121truth which is what don always tells us that we need and oh and also a place the goal is that there's always a place to find that one source of truth making sure that they our stakeholders have that helpful important and detailed information and they know exactly where to go for that information will be accessible and provided in a wide range of media we'll have a video library that will have short videos for our families highlighting key safety information that needs to be reinforced reinforced whether it be for our students or for our families they will be accessible to on the external website they'll be accessible at our internal hub for our employees as well there will be signage and signs that are posted throughout our campuses and offices to reinforce best safety practices we

122have our parent newsletter and emails and we will continue with those on a regular basis and make those at a time that our families know that it's coming so it's always on a regular at the same day so that they're able to anticipate and be ready for that and know that's there our internal employees will have as i mentioned our employee hub we'll make sure that we have posters in english and spanish we're making also sure that we're achieving as i mentioned that consistent district voice whether that be the communication templates that we use the daily updates the training whether that be on our front for our front line staff so our office office members at our campuses they have that information they know right where to go to get that information they're provided the

123information they can reference that and direct our families to the right place to receive that information and as i mentioned communication channels whether those be existing and new the district website our blackboard emails our school websites and our school newsletters as well we started all of this with the charge of creating a task force for reopening schools and i guess i could say an incidental benefit of all of this is that we know how important it is for us to have a continuity of operations plan it's important that if there's any kind of disruption whether it be because of kova 19 or anything else there are plans in place so that we can continue with the continuity of our um education and of our services as well so with mr newman can i interrupt you

124just go back to the communication plan you don't need to switch slides okay i just want to make a comment you know a couple of years ago it seemed like everybody i talked to in the community was frustrated with our district communication and over the last few months everybody has said to me i can't believe how good the communication is so i just want to thank don but the entire staff that feeds her the information for the improvement that's been made i'm sure that there are areas where we can improve because and parents will let us know what those are but thinking where we've come from to where we are today uh thank you to everybody involved it's it's really set us apart and we've heard that from the community thank you for that and

125there's a lot of work that she does to remind us all all of the time at all different times of the day and we do appreciate it from our perspective too because we have our areas that we're working with but all of that still has to get communicated out and that's not necessarily our area of expertise but it's um she's able to create that in a way that it's it makes sense and it is a cohesive message for everybody so with this continuity of operations we know and we want to make sure that once we are done when we start school when we are moving towards the end of july we have this internal document and this plan that has more detailed descriptions for all of the areas that i described today we have protocols

126in place we have those protocols are readily accessible we have a detailed description instructional videos and what our service delivery will look like for our our academic standpoint we have flow charts we have our notification letters and we have the signage and that's all going to be in one place and and so regardless of what the disruption is um we were thrilled to know that now this will all be in one place we we experienced in fourth quarter very quickly we had to all of a sudden put some things in action now we can reference and all of the work that the task force has done um amazing work that the task force has done and those that are not directly involved with the task force but have provided so much input and done so

127much work to make this something that we can be proud of here in gilbert public schools so next steps um ongoing as you mentioned mr carr communication our website notifications we will continue with that just you know we submitted and posted our presentation online and then we got news yesterday so we're being very flexible and will continue to be flexible um so in july parent parents will identify and i'll show that slide to you in a second but what their choice will be in regard to the delivery model of instruction for their students which of those three choices they want for their student and they can choose any of those three for their student whether that be gps global academy or the flex choice that will be listed on the website that's listed here we

128anticipate that it will be soon but we do need some time to go through the most recent order and make sure that we review and plan whether that be for a new start date or if our start looks a little differently than we thought that perhaps it would prior to yesterday afternoon we want to make sure that our families are making informed choices and we want to be sure that all of that information is provided and it is as easy as possible for our families so if ours right now our students are all enrolled in their on their campus at their school campus and so if families choose um instead to have their student work through another delivery model they would be able to access that right on the website and that would be an

129all-in-automated system for them and with that too it would automatically send a message to a campus our campus would then reach out to our families whether that be for flex or gps global academy and assist in the registration process so our families are not having to do an over abundance of extra work because they've already been enrolled and so we want to assist with that we're going to continue in july with the start of school preparations our teacher and staff training our staff reassignments our office of talent management will be working very very hard making sure that um our staff are placed in in the spot that is right for each of them and then august we had a date and initially there took off the dates just for tonight but our first day of

130school we're anticipating will be in august one of the dates whether it be the previous or the 17th we want to make sure that our families get this information as soon as possible we'll continue to update the website so um initially um this was going to happen tomorrow as soon as you approve the plan if you approve the plan then we were going to be ready and we have everything in place we as i mentioned we want to take a little bit more time after the executive order yesterday but our families will have three choices they can choose any of those three choices for their children they can have three of their children do all three of the options if they want so they might have an older sibling choose one option and a younger

131sibling choose another any any of those that they wish that flexibility we want to continue to practice that that has become a word that we have continued to use our kids are have been and have had to be extremely resilient and we'll continue with that we know that once a family chooses something we would really recommend that once they choose an option they continue with that option for example through a quarter so that that is an easier transition for the child as they move from one to the other um sometimes that might not be best for what a student is so the recommendation is when is if the option is not working for a family or for a student the family is communicating with its campus and the campus administrators and they develop a plan

132that's best for re-entry or exit out or into one of those options so in in the scenario that somebody starts a class on global academy and they we ask them to try and switch at quarter now they've got a grade they're partially through a semester-long class does that grade transition or are they treated like a transfer student where if they were coming from california wherever it may be we would start with a fresh grade we wouldn't bring their california grades we would the the grade should be able to transfer for that quarter so then that can be applied for their semester grade so if they're getting an a they'll carry that a in if they're getting a c they'll carry that c into their new class right one question i have on finance we haven't

133had finance for the flex option before but i understand that was in the the executive order that was last week is that correct so we would get full funding for that the classification included that the hybrid or flex option would be right now reported as aoi uh depends again on future guidance where as as an example let's just talk about secondary for for instance so high school students can presently enroll in two classes a day in global and they would be that proportionate fte in online and then the other three classes would be the fifths of an f or yeah the three fifths of an fte on bricks and mortar and that's how it would be reported as it relates to elementary it appears that we would be reporting them as arizona online right now

134that's the interpretation however everyone's still waiting for further clarity on that okay thank you any other questions i i did want to say something i i do want people to understand that under normal circumstances we would take a whole year to learn about these different options and discuss it and then make the decision and then we would take another year to put it into place instead we have a month and we have to make the decision now and then another month maybe a little bit more to put everything into place so usually we would go through a very very careful process and i think this is part of the governor's problem too is that he doesn't have time for the careful process that he would usually do nor do we we have to make a

135decision and move forward and plan and do the best we can so that when we go back to school we are prepared and and usually it does take a lot longer we move much more slowly so you have to be patient with this miss eugetti board members any additional questions at this time uh doctor doctor stevens i don't i don't have a question i just want to say thank you to dr newman and all the members of the committee because this is an amazing presentation thank you mr jeddy dr santa cruz if i may so i guess i know that i was hoping that we would have that frequently asked question page up by tomorrow because we're going to have a lot of questions even just about the basics that you presented tonight like if

136families want to start thinking about we possibly would want an online i think i'd want a global academy but what might that look like and i know you had started putting together you know a lot of details about that so that people could start exploring it and i think we're going to have those questions so how do we i know some of the things have changed but how do we help answer that we talked about this before yes okay don and i and so this is this is like it was scripted oh well perfect don was ready go right ahead speak up yeah as dr mccord yes we are aware that people have been waiting quite a long time for this information and we do have certainly details about the three different learning models and

137we have that available so absolutely if it's determined that that would be helpful for the community we would be able to go live with the information just not with the registration piece so that when our families do make the choice they have the full set of information um in light of the governor's announcement yesterday but we could certainly go live with the the core content we have pretty in-depth faqs ready to go live i think that'd be helpful yes and based on you know the results of this evening we are talking about putting an email out at eight or nine o'clock tomorrow morning hopefully sometime in the morning and to be able to first of all give our families information our staff and second of all being able to direct them to an area where

138they can go find more detailed information about several questions great i think that would be really important our biggest fear is that we don't want to confuse them yeah you know but as we had discussions this afternoon they're going to have questions and i'd rather than be able to go read it first and then ask more questions if need be and so um that's the that's the approach we would take okay great well and we had even said like the global academy we were going to have some access for parents to go online and look at like especially the elementary and even the junior and high school are going to be different than what it's been even this summer school you know experience and what's been in the past because we know that we need

139to put different things in place to make that you know just a more robust experience especially and offer that to our families who need that but i know we talked about having some access for parents to maybe the k through six or you know curriculum so they could go and just start looking at it and say you know this is an option for me or not that's already been created okay and so they will be able to have access to see what that looks like because gps global academy will will exist k-12 regardless right of a choice and so um dr barton has already created that and that's avail that will be available on the website as well as soon as possible okay thank you thank you ms wood other questions comments just comment i

140would like to echo the previous comments and thank uh dr newman and the hundreds of people the parents the teachers the staff the uh you know there were literally 100 something people on this committee then this has been a lot of work um i i will say right out that uh my i don't usually get get anxiety but my anxiety level coming into this meeting was probably as high as i ever remember it nervous and it's well thought out not every question is going to be answered and not every solution is going to be provided we can't anticipate that in this fluid environment but thank you and since your last question or your last slide asked for questions i'll apologize for all my questions all along and not for holding them and dr newman and

141dr mccord i would echo the sentiments that have been expressed thus far i would also like to add and and would ask that dr mccord ad if he chooses to and that is that as much of the planning as has occurred and as well designed and well-intentioned as all of the models are and with all of the pieces that are in place including the extended documentation data and research things still remain fluid we don't know what tomorrow brings we don't know what will happen to change or disrupt our thinking again we think we are on solid ground at this point and yet i can still feel the ground moving beneath me so i appreciate all the work that is done i don't want any of us to think that we have completely and finalized every

142detail we are going to learn as we go we're going to do the best we can we're probably going to make some mistakes but not intentionally and all of this is with the best intention and with our families and students in mind along with our faculty and staff in mind as we move through this process so we have lots of responses some answers some definitive some yet to be defined and i hope i haven't misspoken dr mccourt not at all and and uh to dr newman and the task force um being being there uh during the process and seeing uh the things that they they went through to be here tonight it was it is extraordinary especially as you highlighted miss humphries in terms of the amount of time i'm i'm always impressed by the

143things that they do knowing that we probably missed something somewhere and when we figure that out we'll we'll correct it and we'll move forward i think and and we can have this discussion now or we can have it on the um 6.02 but i think it's worth having the discussion and and having some clarity in terms of what do we do on august 5th are we going to um start off the school year online and then transition um into the three modules that are offered um i i think we we need some guidance on that as well as i think the community would be uh appreciative of understanding where we're going on that um just because we have everybody assembled tonight and um and we're in the midst of the discussion we can like i

144said do this now or we can do it at an agenda item it's up to you however i'm open to the discussion now but i would recommend that we move it to the 6.2 time frame so that we have about five requests to speak so that we give our folks who have been diligently and intently listening to what's been presented to give them the opportunity to say what they came to say so if the board is willing and ready to indulge me in in that recommendation that would be what i propose that's good for me i i wanted to as well i thought if we could accommodate those who have been so patient and we're glad that they're here tonight i'm thankful that they're here to participate with us i would be fine with that

145very good then we will address the question proposed by dr mccord when we reach item 6.2 on the agenda we will now close the discussion on the reopening of school plan presentation and move to item four which is the community request to speak and i would ms wood would you want the recorded message or would you like to read it dr santa cruz before we go there could i request a five-minute comfort break most certainly we will recess for five minutes thank you thank you [Music] i could do it cheers i guess yes okay for the masks we are the nurse did she just leave she do you see jen she um i talked to her about that yesterday and she said that there would be a similar just like how the governor made this

146and now we'll reconvene in about 30 seconds uh okay i would like to call us back to order please we are now at item 4 a request to speak to the governing board item 4.01 michael please play the recorded message goes to address 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

147not discuss or take legal action on matters raised during the open call to the public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action during the open call the board requests that speakers refrain from voicing complaints against school personnel or any person connected with the district as it may impact due process rights policy k-e-k-e-b and k-e-d are provided by the board for disposition of legitimate complaints including those involving individuals forms required for use of these policies can be obtained from the gilbert public schools website have five requests to speak this evening the first one is not a request to speak but simply a question that she would like for me to read for her i believe that's correct is that rosie padillas is that correct okay and the question is to the task

148force dr mccord and probably to miss miss chen and that is will there be a testing set up for covid19 or an antibody test jennifer did you want to address that go ahead and go to the microphone so that the public can hear the response and dr sanchez just to clarify we're able to respond to this question because it's already an item that's on our topic okay thank you um to answer your question no we will not be testing or providing any antibody testing i do have a list of resources and a packet to give to parents that are interested should their child exhibit any kind of symptoms or if they're just curious for those resources how testing works where they can go get testing and what kind of testing is available in our area

149absolutely correct um we don't have that here at the district but if you want to um call me tomorrow i will get you all those resources thank you jennifer we have the following people who have requested to speak to the board on item 6.02 miss katie mrs katie layton mr brian layton and mr corey childs is that correct so mrs leighton please come forward hi what i was gonna i wrote down what i was gonna say because i seem to be scatterbrained sometimes my mind goes blank when i'm speaking in front of people um i it's kind of changed a little bit since you have i don't know what her name was doctor something but she went over the different things and um wow like that takes a lot of work and time and effort

150and um thank you for putting all that effort in i do feel that of the community around me by highland high school would i think they're very frustrated we want a normal year for our children we want to send our kids to school and for them to have traditions and to be able to be around each other they all hang out every single day so um i mean pep assemblies dances football games all of those things that's part of high school and it's my oldest daughter's senior year so with that said i don't really have a question i just wanted to say my opinion so me i don't know if it will make a difference but i got a rare virus ten years ago that um made me deathly ill and uh it changed my

151life forever and i couldn't do anything i didn't get to raise my children um throughout their elementary school years and i couldn't drive for years and years i um because of it i have damage to my brain stem and it took eight years for my neurologist to be able to help me to be able to cope with life and to have a better life so it might be surprising that i feel i was very scared to get any cold anything so i might surprise the board that i feel that each individual should be able to make their own choice if they want to go to school if they want school to be normal then they should have that choice and um and if those that are scared are fearful then they can stay home and

152do school a different way and i do feel like that the options do address a lot of that but it's i feel like it's so rigid and almost like not to youth school not in philosophy but in rigidness and kids are not going to adhere to those roles um but i did want to say that the facts about kovid do not equal the fear that is being put in the public it's not the black plague that took 60 percent of europe's population it kills three percent of the people who test for covid not the population just the people that test for it and most of those people are 80 plus years old 65 plus but most of them are 80 plus years old with a few flukes um and so i feel that the fear

153is just ridiculous 99.7 percent of people survive and so um eight of the ten coveted cases are people um that are si is it 60 yeah 65 years and older and so why should 17 year olds be living like an 80 year old a 75 year old and my dad has lung problems and i would he i love him i want him to live forever but he feels the same way he it's not fair to make other people wear a mask and i would have loved if people wear masks or stayed home so i didn't have to get a cold or worse but to insist on that in my opinion is very selfish and we have to let people live their lives and choose for themselves i know this would probably be better to governor

154ducey than this board but i just felt like saying what i feel this whole time there's been moms texting me and they're very angry and uh so um it might just be the high schools that feel that way i'm not sure but i think there are a lot a lot of times the people who are living in fear are the ones that are heard and that are the loudest and so they're the ones being heard and that's why i wanted to come here today it's so not like me but i wanted to be a voice for in my opinion the majority of parents in gilbert public schools so thank you thank you mrs leighton mr leighton i too uh good evening thank you board for uh providing this opportunity i uh come advocating not only

155as my wife mentioned two daughters in highland high school but also a you know born and raised here in gilbert and i love this community and so as i come voicing what i feel it is it is because i've i've lived in this community i know the values of this community and that is why i live in this community and so as as i listen and and the task force i also want to say thank you to the task force i have no idea what time and you know effort that entails in putting something like that together i'm i'm grateful for the options that are provided the students in this community i my my advocation is for those that choose the on campus scenario for them to be able to have a normal on-campus scenario

156those those things that our our youth are starving for so you know a social life and the traditions of what is high school and i feel that as as they go back to school and they are restricted of those things that that has a negative impact on not only their their their uh learning atmosphere but also the memories and the the social skills that they are going to need moving forward in life the other concern i have is as i listen to the the guidelines put upon what i see as our educators the teachers uh those that are working with our kids on a regular basis on a daily basis the extra things that i feel are being put on the educators i don't know how that's possible for them to to be expected to

157maintain a clean classroom but yet attend to each student online or in person or other scenarios that come up and so that that concerns me not only for for the education that my daughters are going to receive but also the the the community in the whole at the high school and i would hope that uh my my hope is that as those that decide to to be on campus that we we provide that opportunity or the opportunities provided for them to to be a normal high school kid given the circumstances i know but we are assuming those risks as parents and as children and we have been assessing those risks on a on a daily basis from the time we've been parents and i would ask that we continue to be given that opportunity thank

158you thank you mr leighton mr childs thank you i'm i'm corey chiles um thanks for letting me be here i've never been to anything like this before and uh the thoroughness of all this is pretty awesome i'll be honest um i've lived in gilbert about 17 years got four kids all go to gilbert schools got two high schoolers on the palm team and two elementary age kids i work full time mom stays at home and she normally volunteers three to four days a week at the elementary school she loves it the reason why i'm here is uh i want to kind of be a voice for some people my family i have two kids who have slight special needs and um some family members who suffer from anxiety and depression and uh since everything's been

159shut down um it's been really hard and for my wife in particular when you have an illness like depression and you put a pandemic on top of it it becomes my best comparison is like being in the grave and i know we have an option a which is awesome and i'm really excited for and i'm just trying to advocate for my children especially my children with special needs that the ability we have to have the great people who are part of the gilbert schools i saw mr martin here he was our principal for a long time at highland park elementary he was awesome um you know we just we need you guys man my kids like they need you and um really to be honest you know i haven't i go to work i come

160home we watch a lot of netflix we do a lot of nothing and you you know you look at the news and everything and i swear over these last couple months the world's become like a crazy mean place man and just like looking at all you guys around here and seeing like an actual like real concern and not this like violent like uh you know war of words between everyone actually has kind of renewed my hope for the day you know i'm like hey you know you know yeah you know gilbert is a great place to live there are a lot of like really good caring people and i and and i'm grateful for you guys i want you to know that um and i got 30 seconds left but my request is just to

161remember those people who don't have a voice um my family we've counted on you in the past you've come through in awesome ways i do like the new email stuff that i get and i love to read them please please keep them in consideration you know i'd love for the school just to be open again because it would really bless my kids also a lot of my neighbors i've talked to i feel like they really feel the same way um we live in morrison ranch thank you thank you mr childs our last speaker is mr joe gusik who just listed general for me board president fellow board members uh superintendent mccord all gps staff parents taxpayers and last but not least students my name is joe goosaki and i'm the lovable slightly annoying i'm the

162education lorex i want to say thank you to the committee i want to say thank you to the board for allowing the committee to do all this hard work you are flying a plane at 600 miles an hour and you are trying to rebuild the plane simultaneously that is commendable your efforts are not unnoticed mr mccord you brought up about how old this school district is when this school district first came into existence shortly after they went into world war one when it had its first graduating class it was still in world war one and it graduated four students and in that next fall the spanish flu appeared 000 americans perished over the next three years i hear the voices as i spoke last time and i hear them clearly we're a country that honors

163free will it is one of our greatest assets but it's one of our greatest achilles as well the surgeon general today asked the children if you want a football season wear a mask if you want prom wear a mask if you want graduation wear a mask one of the federal elected officials from tennessee echoed the words from the a.d a former football coach and said students if you want a football season wear a mask do i like to wear masks no if i could die today and wipe all of this out instantly i do it but i can't i feel the pain behind me and i feel it in front of me and i understand everything that's going on but we need to go forward i appreciate all the options that you've put forward i

164do believe that we do need to make sure that we respect everybody's opinion but we need to work together because we're communal gilbert is a golden rule town by proclamation it is also an education first town keep communicating keep educating keep getting better at it and let's keep having the discussion as we go through this very trying time on many people's nerves and on their wallets and on their psyche you know the thing that i do ask is that we make sure that we make sure that these teachers and staff have the proper ppe if it doesn't mean you can't pay for it i'll pay for it what i can if it means that you can't they have to pay for it get it for them be the conduit to find the face shields and

165all the other things that they need to make them feel comfortable in front of our students so that they can get the best possible experience they can i'm going to go just a little bit over we need to come together this is our moment we've sent a man we sent people in space long ago and one of those space missions actually had a problem those group those gentlemen went to the almost were to the moon and their their their ship had an issue very smart men and women on on this earth as americans got together and took a list of items and thankfully somebody invented duct tape because those three gentlemen would have come back dead i will end with this and and mr carr is correct you're not here to provide a guarantee of

166anybody's life in the next year let's make let's give everybody the best opportunity that that does happen once again i ask everybody to take a step back be respectful to each and everybody's opinion and let's work through it this plan is the best plan you got i don't know how to satisfy everybody's particular situation in this given scenario so i get it we're americans we like to self-govern and we don't like anybody to trample on anything the reality is though within those rights that you all have you also have responsibilities and i'm going to finish on this as an organization you need to keep the pulse on the front line of our hospitals those people got ppe coming out their derrieres and you overwork them you under run them you drive them into the ground

167what they are going to have to do is do triage and just like they did in my home state of new jersey in the tri-state area where they literally had to do a triage environment where they put a number on somebody's bed and it would be one two three or four and if there was not enough equipment i'm sorry number four you were going to die so let's be present of that as an as an organization and as a fellow community member to our first our frontliners in our hospitals because if we run them into the ground if this does get out of control then where are we going to turn then my apologies for going over this is tough and i i want you to know i'm proud of all of you thank you

168thank you mr gusik we'll now move to item 5 the consent agenda items item 5.01 is approval of the consent agenda items board members ready for a motion dr santa cruz i motion that we approve the consent agenda items thank you mr carr is there a second a second thank you second thank you mrs humphries is there any discussion seeing and hearing none we will take a vote all those in favor of the consent agenda item the consent agenda as printed please signify by saying aye aye those opposed please signify by same motion carries five zero we now move to action items item six six point zero one has already been addressed 6.02 is the approval of the plan to reopen schools for 2020 2021 school year dr mccourt any introductory remarks nothing specific other

169than the fact that we presented this reopening plan again we have uh three options available to our families and uh again wanting to additionally have the discussion about august 5th thank you dr mccord so item 6.02 is before you uh is there a motion i moved to approve the plan to reopen schools for the 20-20-21 school year thank you mrs humphries is there a second a second thank you miss wood there has been a motion and a second to approve the plans to reopen school for 2020 2021 uh any discussion dr santa cruz i did i did want to make a couple comments i i think that there's been a lot of thought and effort put into this plan and i i think we're really again building the airplane just like joe said we're really

170putting effort into trying to provide the kind of experience for each child that they will feel comfortable with under the current circumstances and when we make these decisions there's kind of four c's we have to think about what's best for kids what does the community want and how can we find common ground as a board and come to consensus the fifth c is sometimes there are constraints and there are a lot of constraints we're not free to make any decision we want we have constraints by statute by finance and also from the department of health so well i know we all wish that our kids could just go back to school and have a regular year that's just not in the cards right now we've been thrown back 150 years to deal with illnesses in

171the way that our ancestors did before they had the we had the medical um and scientific progress that we've had today so um i just want to complement the district and all those who worked on the task force and the cabinet and dr mccord for all the hard work because i there's a lot in here and it's a lot to think about and we're going to have changes we're going to have disruptions as demonstrated yesterday but i think it's um we all want to give our kids a great education and we'll do the best we can to make sure they have memorable experiences whatever the circumstances thank you mrs humphries the question also is before us what do we do with august 5th so so discussion yeah our options dr santa cruz if i may

172so our options are right now we can start basically we can have our parents choose those three one of those three options how they want for the rest of the school year but if we come back on august 5th basically each of those would be delivered online well it would be all online on august 5th moving to the next time in a presumably august 17th then those three options would kick in but it would be so if you registered at your campus school and you said i want to do on campus then and we started august 5th at this point in time because of what the governor said those campus teachers would be giving um the online instruction to those students until august 17th when we come that is correct and i guess my concern

173i have a lot of concerns one is the funding paying our teachers and staff because they're they're depending on that at that point i'm concerned that we'll have a repeat of the fourth quarter that will start school that way if we go back online so i just would want to address how could we make sure that it was i guess i don't know if i want to say i guess i just want to be a successful beginning of the school year i don't want it to be like a waste of time for two weeks i would agree we've had that discussion okay dr newman you want to come talk about the training that would be in place uh moving into august 5th and miss wood we you almost mirrored our words that we've had over

174the last couple days so i'm glad you asked hello again um yes we would be sure that um while our classroom teachers would be the teachers we would be utilizing um already the platform that's in place and we provide the adequate training for our teachers to where they could implement this in a way but with the expectation is that the assignments are required there will be lessons that the teachers and the students will be expected to log in and participate in those some of those live times there will be additional support whether that be small group one-on-one or other there will be particular hours in the day that the teacher will work with students on that there will be time provided and that's already going to be delineated out for as far as the expectations

175of what it looks like so that teachers have time during their 40 hours during the week that they're teaching or that they're working they have time that they should be that they are communicating that mentor piece will kick in right away the connection with the kids will kick in um to be sure that the students understand the platform so the first time that they're engaging in it the teachers are actually teaching the kids how to access that what is an online lesson look like why is it that we're doing it why what they'll be doing when they're not working live with the teacher and the teacher isn't doing like a webex lesson with them and so all of those will be in place and that's why we'll spend not only july providing some optional training

176for the teachers that will pay if they want to do it then that will give them more time to plan and prepare and get ready instead of that quick jump that we had to make for fourth quarter but we will also those days that they come back prior to the august 5th that will be intensive training planning collaborating with others to make sure that the quality of instruction and the connection is there for our students can you talk about students with special needs too sure thank you sure what the task force has created as part of our academic sub committee is making sure and understanding that we need to provide services for our students so for example if it is an online option that our parents are choosing for their students we will have teachers

177that will look at what for example that online curriculum looks like and they will be making modifications at the district level first and providing some of those shells to our for example our special education teachers that are going to be providing the instructional support for them with that too we want to be sure that teachers have the option and they do have the ability to access curriculum from all the grade levels regardless of the grade level that they teach so they're able to provide scaffolds and extra pieces there additionally they will be providing virtually if that need be or if students can come in maybe they are choosing the online option but in a small setting a student can work one-on-one with a service provider we'll have the opportunity for them to receive their services

178in that way but every single area of eligibility every single type of service that needs to be provided we have within our plan of what that would look like we have students that were not able to for example have their reevaluations for special education eligibility we already have begun some of um some of our students for example that are moving from sixth to seventh grade or in eighth grade to ninth grade we we've already initiated um reinstating some safely but reinstating some of the reevaluation so that students can start the beginning of the year with the appropriate and new iep based on the eligibility and the evaluation results that they have and we'll continue to do that that will continue throughout we won't have to stop because we're doing online learning we won't need to

179stop and not provide the reevaluation and some of the meetings that the staff members need to have or some of the academic testing that they need to provide for the students in order for them to provide data on the goals and see what the instructional needs are for the students after so the question still remains what are we doing with august 5th dr mccord you have some additional thoughts i do i just you know there's there's a lot of speculation related to to what will happen in the next you know six to eight weeks um first i i i have a fear that if we don't start educating our kids on the date that we've said we've started we're going to my fear is that they're going to look for someplace else to be educated

180whether that's online or that would be their only choice and so that's one and i want to keep all of our kids the second fear is that if we don't start on august 5th and we approach august 17th and all of a sudden that gets pushed back again what does that do to us educationally what does that do to our students what does that do to our staff and so those are the types of things that keep me up at night related to this i feel like we're a little bit boxed in in terms of making a decision you as a board me as a superintendent the clock's ticking i think when it comes to making a decision on this and granted the clock was started yesterday on us to a degree because there are

181things that we still have to continue to plan for training for our staff we do need to figure out what will we do for our support staff and so although not ideal my recommendation would be to start august 5th and be able to continue to keep our kids and then knowing that we will be able to move into those three options presumably on august 17th you know and even families that choose the online option to begin with or that they chose the online option for when we're able to reconvene on a campus they may get there and say oh this might not be the option for me you know i really need to be in front of somebody or you know the situation you know in our state has stabilized to a degree and their

182comfort level is different not that just doesn't go for our students but it goes for our staff as well and so you know not not ideal by any means the most logical choice i in my opinion yes but i'm one of just many so but a superintendent that's what i would think is our best choice educationally at this time thank you dr mccord i i would concur with your recommendation of august the 5th with this trepidation in mind and you and i have spoken i've not spoken with dr newman but i think through our task force experiences i've echoed the same kind of sentiment and my concern is with our faculty particularly with the online platforms i i have a suspicion that many of them are presuming that what we have in store for them

183relative to the online platform through global academy is very much like the experience they had at the fourth quarter of last school year you have reassured us as a board and reassured many this evening that no they're distinctly different but that training component and that opportunity for teachers particularly to get acquainted with their new students for this academic year loans large in i think i don't want to speak for teachers but i i have a suspicion that it looms large in their minds because the business is about the relationship that's built between and among students and teachers and teachers being conversant and comfortable with the tools they're utilizing to implement the instruction they've been added so that would be the caveat a long one albeit but i would concur with your recommendation of august 5th

184with the expectation that we do everything we can to address those things i've just mentioned uh dr senators i i haven't thought about it um go ahead mr jetty sorry mrs that's okay thank you dr santa cruz um thank you and i really appreciate dr mccord's words and your words and i'm really glad that tonight i'm not limited to three minutes for a public comment but i have written something that is from my heart and i wanted to say it right now i will be entering my 50th year of education in august and in may i made a statement that i a decision to vote about graduation was the hardest decision i ever had to make i never realized then that i might have to make a decision that could possibly be a matter of

185life or death i spent 38 years of my life in a school study 17 years as a teacher and 21 years as an elementary principal i love working with children educators and parents i love getting hugs and interacting with people to this day i am still in contact with many former students parents and educators and i value that connection so very very much it means more to me than words can ever express nothing can replace the community that is built in an individual classroom or in a school i will always believe that is the best education the child can ever get they need to learn much more than just our curriculum they need to be able to find out how to solve problems with others how to play how to face failure and how much

186our educators care about them they and i both need hugs and i know that not being at school can hurt our child's mental mental health i totally understand that but i would rather deal with those issues down the road than deal with them with death when i ran for the board i knew that there would be times that i would have to make a decision that would not be totally something that i believed in but i knew that it would be the most important to this community that i love i have chosen to live and work in gilbert and sometimes a decision is made because that is what is what people want but this is very different because this could be a life or death decision i am so saddened that it's become political there

187is absolutely nothing political in what i'm saying right now it is about the value of the lives of our children our families our parents and the community that i care so deeply about i have many memories of growing up in douglas arizona most of them are extremely positive but there are two that have always stood out to me now more than ever i remember when polio was rampant and we couldn't go to the public pool in the summer i remember a very prominent doctor whose daughter had polio and was in an iron lung they would bring her to sunday mass and i could hear her iron lung breathing for her she later died i remember when a vaccine came out and how happy everyone was for that i also remember when i was in third

188grade my grandmother died in november shortly thereafter my teacher sister beatrice ann died suddenly she had been my first grade teacher and i was my third grade teacher it was devastating as a child to lose my teacher and i don't want to ever put a child through this with that being said i know i can't and i won't make a decision to ever cause even one person to die i truly understand that going back to our schools is what is needed but that was before this horrible virus exploded in our world throughout my career and my life i have felt the loss of students parents and co-workers i have done more than my share of luigi's for people who i cared deeply about it was devastating to say the least but a decision i made

189did not cause any one's death i have been told that children can die in a bus accident or on a field trip that we have approved i understand that but that's an accident to me this is completely different we are in unchartered waters dealing with a health risk that we have never seen in our lifetime i know tonight's vote is only to approve the possibility of three ways in which we can go back in august as we all know there are many variables that can happen between now and august 5th or august 17th with the governor's executive order i also feel strongly that things have changed drastically since we did the first surveys i absolutely believe that we need to follow science and metrics i can only hope and pray that the trend we are

190seeing now doesn't continue and i respect the varying opinions of the different scientists and professional organizations and that is just it there are so many varying opinions on what is safe and what is not please know that these words come from my heart and my heart has always been with our children our families and our educators is my life and this is why i continue to do what i do and i can just be retired i love gps and i love being a gps board member i have been so blessed in my life to be able to serve this wonderful community at so many different levels and i have so much respect for all of you and all that we've done thank you thank you mr jetty well said mrs humphries well i i just

191wanted to point out that we're on a motion for the the plan and that we're going to have to make a separate motion about the um changes to the school calendar so i just want to make sure that we are aware of that but my thoughts are this has been very unpredictable so far and i don't think it's going to get any easier i would concur with dr mccord that we start online on august 5th and then if we can transition to having some of our students in school those that choose to do that or some on the flex schedule those that choose that that that we do that when that's possible um the best way i can um the thing that i've connected it to was i used to live in pennsylvania and so

192there was one school year where we had 10 snow days you'd get off and then you'd realize oh it's snowing we're not going to school today and at the end of the year we had to make up those days it was very unpredictable but you know we have this opportunity that um we can do good things online i think kids will be ready and wanting to be involved in education and having some different activities they've been home i mean we've had a whole march april may now we've got june july and we get to august i i think they will be ready and excited to do something even if it's only online until we can get to a place where we can be in person and i would suggest to all of us really think

193about what we're doing on the fourth of july we're here now because of the last two weeks of may and memorial day we're in this position if we want kids to go back to school let's put on that mask let's do the things we need to to stay home keep ourselves safe and keep people around us safe because this is a communicable communicable disease it's all of us together no one of us can solve this problem by ourselves we all have to give the concerted effort to bring this down to a level where we can deal with it where we can trace people and quarantine people there are other countries that have dealt with it and are now being more able to open unfortunately because of leadership issues and i won't say where they are

194but the fact that we as a school board have to make these decisions just shows that the leadership hasn't been there in other places but um again if we want our kids to be back in school it's incumbent upon us to do the things that we can to get them there and i i really think we should go ahead with the august 5th and then if on the 17th we're able to bring kids back to school who want to be there let's do that but starting and getting people going i think that's the most important thing we can do thank you mrs humphries board members anyone else dr santa cruz i do have some mr mccord if we don't start august 5th uh there's the possibility that we would have to alter the schedule and

195add days is that correct yes sir that's correct and we and we based on the the governor's uh executive direction executive order he's directed i'm just making sure i understand this all correctly he's the most recent one right yes he's directed the arizona department of education to look at the possibility of changing the number of days but at this point we don't know correct according to the order they will do an analysis and that shall be submitted to the governor the speaker of the house representative the president of the senate and the state board of education by august 31st so there's and again i'm going to go back to when we talked about high school graduation and we talked about the possibility of adding in person graduation we all wanted to do that but we

196but i at that time brought up the idea of certainty versus uncertainty and we had to make a decision we made a decision to have our virtual graduation so that we were certain that the seniors would have something we expressed that in the level of uncertainty we would add if we could and based on the experience that we had as well as witnessing what other school door districts did they tried to move forward with that and from what i saw one one of the school districts canceled it all together the other one had about a 20 attendance so they didn't really achieve what they'd hoped anyway so if i look at this my i'll be honest my desire is not to start um let let option two and three start my desire is to if

197we're giving parents the option of starting in person that's that's what they want i mean and so we're in essence removing a portion of that option but we do so with an uncertain if we proceed with that with again that's my desire we do so with a level of uncertainty we don't know that we will start on the 17th governor ducey made that very very clear that he's moving it to august 17th but that he may move it again so we also put an uncertainty in the lives of not only the students and the families but now we look and say we may have to make up days so all these families that have plans scheduled over uh fall break or spring break if if we move the date we may have to cancel those

198breaks and we create additional uncertainty in the plans when families are already moving vacations we put uncertainty in the lives of our teachers because now we can't tell them when their contracts start and how they're going to pay their bills i don't like this decision i don't like the fact that the states move the target without telling us what the new where the new goal line is i don't like the uncertainty that's that we have an ever moving goal line and we're trying to develop a strategy to get across it um given where we were if we could delay this decision two weeks i would do it but that just simply creates more uncertainty in the lives of our families and our students uh even during this meeting i've gotten and in the last half

199hour i've gotten texts from several several elementary teachers please don't make us start online it's so it's so difficult i've gotten texts from parents the online experience isn't what we want um you know the the simple reality is i i don't know how to give everybody what they want uh my preference is not to return august august 17th it's to return august 5th in person that's not an option that's given to us we recognize that the authority that this school board has is a delegated authority it's delegated by our legislature and our governor and an authority that we normally have has been taken away from us we have checks and balances those checks include things from the health department right now we're operating under a governor's order to change the date it's an authority that's

200been taken away from us we don't want to get in a situation where we have an outbreak and the authority is taken away from us from a health from the county health department or state health department we've we're we're operating in new uncharted waters and we and please parents i beg your patients because it's a situation where we don't have the answers in some cases we don't have the authority to do what we want my preference is to take a little bit of risk and move us and plan on starting the 17th and if it gets pushed out again then we go online the 17th but recognize it in so doing i will also make a motion to cancel spring or fall break um something i don't want to do but we have to assume

201that we have to make up those days we've had a long long tiresome spring break and i never thought in my life i'd say that about a spring break it's still spring we never went back it feels it feels like it's still spring break it's still for spring break um so my my my suggestion for the in-person option option a would be that we delay until the 17th uh knowing that we will be canceling uh that we'll make a motion on 6.02 or three whatever it is for the calendar that we would have to cancel that fall break and yes that impacts families and that impacts teachers and impacts grading periods and that impacts so many other things but that would be my preference just for clarification and you're saying that and that only makes

202up half the days by the way i recognize that no no no no i wasn't even talking about that just yet um we would only really have one option if we started on the fifth does that would true are you assuming flex as well well i'm i'm saying for the end go ahead and start the well the flex would have to wait too yeah that's why i wanted to yeah that's that's that's a good point yeah um it's not ideal and and we would have to clarify how we can pay teachers and not take it out on the backs of teachers and their and their salaries um there's probably not a whole lot we can do for support staff and i i say that feeling the real weight of that decision and that's my recommendation

203i appreciate that and and i think you described my terms of being boxed in extremely well i mean i i really think you did i think uh everybody that you up there on the dice as well as us out here that are bringing recommendations to you have gone through those same scenarios in our head and and uh like i said i don't this isn't this isn't exactly what i want to do but at the end of the day i think it's our only move um so sorry any other commentary ms wood i think my one concern with the 17th is that we there are districts around us that might start before that yeah i i would be online though it would they would have to be online as well correct nobody can go in person

204not not not that i not that i'm aware of i don't know anybody bucking the system just yet yeah but you know we're not so that scenery is are we actually then are we because my my first preference is that as well i'd rather be in person oh sorry let me let me speak here i'd rather be in person if we're in person i just worry that that but at the same time then i think okay and i worry about the families again trying to start on that online when they it's just a huge effort for everybody it's a huge effort on our teachers who aren't planning to teach online but are going to need to do that although at the same time we know that there were probably going to be some types of

205disruptions here there there might have to be a maybe a a class or a school two-week quarantine or different things is what kind of what i imagine more than whole shutdowns hopefully but right um so we do want to be familiar with this new platform and maybe this would give us the time to get familiar with that in a good way is that too much task of our teachers though to come back and do that i don't know and families i don't know but i'm i'm kind of back and forth now on august 5th just my thought is if you were going to change the date and not start until the 17th and cancel fall break i would almost prefer sending out a survey to parents and having a special meeting before we would do

206that because i think that is a huge change and i think i'd want to hear some feedback from families about which option they would prefer going online on the 5th and then having their fall break if they can go somewhere we'll have to see where we are the trend is not good for that but um i would i would rather get some feedback ins before we make that big of a change to our calendar that that's a huge change i would think that um if we decide to go online on the fifth and um it's looking like that date may be pushed back um in terms of starting um yeah we could we could go out with a survey i think it would be a little difficult right now in terms of just timing and

207not that i don't want the feedback it's more of just a matter of time to be able to get there and so um looking at and you know we can get that into that calendar discussion um you know we have looked at some possibilities of when school would start and taking away some other days that we have within the calendar you know if we started and we just started everything on august 17th mr martin our calendar expert over there we calculated that we could end the school year everything being copacetic on june 3rd and that would be taking away days such as october 12th which is the day after fall break that was an extra day looking at taking away and starting on january 4th which would be the end of winter break and then

208the day after spring break which is march 15th we could start there and add that day back in and then the day after um the spring holiday weekend which is april 5th so again that would take us to the end of the school year for students on june 3rd last day for teachers would be june 4th if we left all those intact we would probably end on june 9th and so again that's making up well i think a lot of these things are assumptions but just looking at some numbers and trying to create something that is normal but yet knowing that we would extend the school year and again knowing that people wouldn't be starting to get paid probably until a later date in august if if we took that approach would we still end

209the high school semester and i highlight high school because of finals uh whereas elementary don't has a little more flexibility would we instill in the high school semester before the christmas break that would be my assumption yes i mean you're looking at how it's balanced out right now it's 87 and 93 days so you'd be taking well you'd be taking a a few more days out of the first semester so your first semester would be even shorter but we can entertain the idea of coming back in and doing finals after winter break i would really rather not i haven't had personal experience but i've watched lots of nieces and nephews do that in other states and it's just what ends up happening is they ended up studying the entire break instead of getting a break

210correct so looking at this you'd be you'd essentially be taking nine more days off the first semester so it would be a shorter first semester as opposed to a second semester and if the state then decreased the number of days to 180 to 170 would we could we further adjust and end in a more traditional sense we could we could it would be after the fact and so that's that's sometimes difficult but we can do it oh we did it last year yeah by quite a few days oh what do you mean for the online yeah i mean effectively yeah yeah do we know testing um is the state going to require testing i mean effectively we lose four or five days to testing anyway we know that we have to provide benchmark testing that

211was in one of the executive orders just last week we have not been given any definitive answer when we've asked specifically about spring testing or what else that will look like we know that we have our students who miss the a.c.t and we wanted to provide that for them in the fall i don't know if we would still do that or not but we don't know for sure what that will look like in the spring but we do anticipate that we would do something i i feel similar to miss humphries if i mean if if we had the opportunity to seek input from our parents you know i feel like we're under the gun to make a decision so that people can plan but if we even could call a special meeting a week from

212now and have time to survey parents and perhaps survey members of our legislature or the governor's office as to whether they can allow us to start to pay period start start a pay period so that we don't tickets out on our teachers if they can give us some options along those lines i would still really prefer to let the in person meet in person beginning from the beginning of the year if we come back in one week and we hear from parents that they don't want to do that and we hear from especially those parents who prefer the in person and we hear from the governor or from the legislative office that there is no option within the gifting element then that might alter our decision because we can't make a decision that rides on

213the back of of employees um i i don't want to put off the decision but i also want to put it off as long as we can if it gives us additional information to make a better decision i don't know if that's an option well we have a couple of things to vote on one is to vote on whether or not we approve the plan that's been presented and we can take that vote the other relates to the date when we gilbert unified school district determines to start albeit that we would start with one mode and that would be the online global academy feature it's tough to fly blind and i can appreciate all of the angst that all of us are working through making assumptions about whether or not starting on the 17th and

214there's an additional pushback and adjusting the calendar and the assumption is that parents haven't already made decisions about their recreational time or whatever those time frames represent for them already it's been my experience in this community that people here make decisions well in advance sometimes a year in advance at least so for us to forestall on an assumption that we're not going to impact family calendars is not realistic in my view at all rather than not have and i'm going to use a very hokey analogy a piece of cake for dessert that is there for me as opposed to taking the whole cake knowing that i will get the whole cake at an appropriate time that's the toss-up you know we're not losing in my opinion uh anything by one approving the models and two

215starting on our calendar appointed date we're simply pushing back the implementation date of the two models that we've already presented so i guess on one hand is something better than nothing or waiting until we get the model that we want right away i don't know which of those options really flies the best i have i have a real sense that keeping our calendar intact as much as possible makes sense to me i think i would concur with that because i think that that at least gives predictability and and under the circumstances some predictability seems um very valuable right now dr santa cruz mr jetty uh i totally agree with what you're saying um can we clarify exactly what we're going to be voting on for both of the issues yes ma'am because we will we

216will need a second motion under item 6.02 the first motion really relates to the approval of the plan and the discussion has been open because we we threw in august 5th but the second motion would have to be related to august 5th as the start date or not that is my understanding is that correct document okay so go ahead so we're just gonna vote right now we're gonna vote on just the three correct plans the option i mean that's the option okay correct and then then we'll have motion for the second part correct correct is that is that everyone's understanding as well yes we're just voting to accept the plan that was presented tonight and then we have to have another motion to decide the dates on the school calendar beginning the school year correct

217so are we ready to vote on item 6.02 the plans if we're ready to vote then all those in favor of the reopening school plans for 2021 please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries i think i heard an eye mr eugetti is that correct correct motion carries 5-0 so the plans are approved now we'll entertain a motion for the start date related to august 5th i make a motion that we start school august 5th online and then resume um the other options on august 17th or when allowed to by the governor there's a motion on the floor is there a second second thank you mr jetty motion and a second we've had discussion around it it is open for additional discussion should you choose so i guess my question goes

218back to santa cruz yes miss eugenie i'm sorry i i i just think that that whatever we vote on tonight could change in the next week depending on so many factors i would concur with that assessment mr carr had a comment mr carr very similar and my suggestion would be well my first my question i guess would be uh what's the likelihood that we could clarify those questions um about paying teachers or and or adjusting the calendar if we were to table this for one week and have a special meeting in a week [Music] my answer would be clear his mud to you and when i say that i don't know i mean you heard mrs betts earlier you know you've had a group of lawyers interpret certain things i i don't know i mean

219we would try as hard as we can to be able to do that i mean i have a problem with that just the time frame i mean it was 24 hours and you've gotten a lot of different opinions since 3 pm yesterday so we would do all we can to do that i'm not sure they would have answers even if you went to try and clarify i'm not sure that the state would have the answers to give us that would help us know because they i don't think they've worked it out in their minds how how it's going to work and we haven't had a legislative special session yet some of that may need to be acted on by the legislature rather than just the governor that's my concern and i don't disagree with that

220ms humphries um at the same time like i said if if we don't have you know if if the decision to move forward with our previous motion allows the school to start moving putting in place all of the options that we just approved and delaying the decision of the calendar by one week with the hopes of getting information additional information enables us to more successfully meet parents desires and pay teachers with more certainty and so on to me it's it's worth one more week of uncertainty if we're saying well it's only a one in you know one million chance of getting any clarification then it's then we have to we have to make the decision based on what we have and and if i if if i gave you an answer i'm afraid i would

221just not be telling you the truth and i and i wouldn't want that you look at um [Music] you know just based on today we're delaying them the families being able to choose one of those three options until starting next next week and so and that enables us to do staffing when it comes to 17th time if we decided to go online on the 5th and and i know that's a a huge task for otm but we can do anything i mean if it's your choice to to delay this until next week i may come back and give you more information than you've ever wanted in your life or i could just be staring at you i i can't promise you anything but i'll do my best i guarantee you that so mr carr are

222you moving to table until we can secure additional information through communications and public relations in dr mccord or that that's why i'm headed but i want to make sure i'm making it informed i mean dr mccord alluded to the fact that it delays staffing it delays things so we also have to understand the cost of that decision and we we want to serve our community but you can't do everything we have limited resources and we have time frames that are that are real and we have constraints as as ms humphreys use the word so i'm trying to understand what the impact on those constraints are i'm not trying to keep our administration up 24 hours a day for the next week to answer these questions so that's my question uh what's the reality of of

223getting any more meaningful information and the answer is i don't know yeah and and my intent is not to push any of you into a corner or a decision i i'm just telling you what our reality is and and moving forward so i i apologize if if any of you feel that way i just know that we also have a community that that's looking for answers one way or the other and so i get that too so if i understand what you're saying dr mccord and that is and i i apologize i do not mean to put anyone in a poor light here but a delay in a decision this evening would stymie talent management from getting information organized as it relates to communicating with our parent community about the mode of instruction they will

224select if i understood dr newman earlier if this was approved if we approved a start time along with the plans she didn't talk about start time but that's my verbiage then they would submit to our parents their options for choice is that correct that is correct um can i ask dr newman a question i think might be helpful that when we talk about and i'm sure you've discussed this with members of your task force but maybe not because there's only been 24 hours when we talk about starting schools online for everybody whether they want to be in person whether they want to do the flex schedule or whether they want to do global academy let's plan for the most optimistic outcome that we get to go back to school in person on august 17th what

225would those two weeks look like you know for somebody you know i mean say someone's starting kindergarten or first grade or second grade what is that going to look like for an elementary school student or a middle school student maybe somebody starting seventh grade where they haven't even had the opportunity to be in that school before or somebody starting high school how does that look for those teachers trying to teach students so that it won't be like fourth quarter where we're trying to figure out how to make it work and parents trying to help students through the next couple of weeks online we have not had a lot of conversation because this just happened yesterday afternoon right so um we the conversation we've had is that there will need to be extensive community building um

226that we would normally always do but even more so for our students because that was not necessarily what they had planned teacher-wise so there will be a lot of discussion related to that circling around social emotional supports and otherwise that we we would be putting in place anyways it would just look differently because it would be online okay i mean i just i i assume we'll figure that out because trying to build that online is going to be much harder than in person you know which is the one reason why i'm hesitant to start on the fifth but i'm concerned that there are other districts who are going to be starting and people have been waiting and waiting to get back to school and i i think that's a real concern and also the point

227as dr santa cruz said there are a lot of people that plan early and and may have planned things for fall break so hoping that they can do it well and likewise we'll have parents who were assuming that we're starting the fifth that are working parents and now the sudden they have a kindergartner or first grader who is trying to attend class online and we're essentially asking those parents to take a week or two off of work to support to support their children and that sounds great we live in a fluent community but that's something that many of the parents can't do i mean it's it's it's a no-win situation um and and i'm not suggesting that that's an answer but it goes both ways yeah absolutely are you ready to vote dr santa cruz

228can i i say one more thing please go ahead go ahead mr jetty i agree with what everybody has said and and my belief is that whatever decision we make tonight could change tomorrow or next week and so i think we just have to make a decision and then we also have to remember that we have to be flexible depending on what happens in the next few weeks agreed i appreciate that comment so dr san cruz would you please remind us what we're voting on and remind us we are voting on emotion thank you thank you mrs humphrey i made the motion i remember but it can get very confusing so i want to make sure everybody knows my understanding is that we are voting on a motion to start school on august the 5th

229on line to begin with any additional commentary discussion questions a motion to table would scuttle that motion hearing nothing it is time for the vote all those in favor of the motion to start school on august the 5th with the online platform only please signify by saying i i all those opposed signify by same motion carries painfully five zero dr santa cruz maybe may explain my vote please i still believe that we should wait till the 17th however i would still like to ask the superintendency to gather as much information as they can by voting in the affirmative that gives me the right to to reconsider this motion whereas if i devote voted in the minority i could not do so so i would like to ask you to see what other information you can

230gather around the possibility of paying that this allows you to move forward this allows you to plan if we can get additional information in the next week or so i may request a special board meeting depending on that information for a reconsideration of this vote thank you mr carr appreciate that and i think that's a wise move all right dr santa cruz go ahead miss you jay can i just say one thing sure um i really appreciate what mr carr just said and i concur you know like i said earlier this could change tomorrow or july 6th or july 15th or whenever so thank you mr jetty and the commentary from mr carr and your concurrence is consistent with what we have said since we began our deliberations and that is this is all fluid

231and flexible so we are at that point we'll move to item 6.03 discussion and approval of changes to the 2021 calendar uh dr mccord did you have anything by way of introduction or i i no i don't think it's it's actually a necessary item at this point in time i put it on there just because it was we run out of time to post and i didn't know exactly what this was going to look like so item 6.03 given our last vote is a moot point so we will move to item seven item seven point zero one dr snackers beforehand before we move to adjourn can i just thank everybody in the room thank you parents for their patience and understanding uh thank our superintendent and administration and staff for all the work they put

232into this but i also want to thank my fellow board members i know that we have uh varying opinions on how to proceed i appreciate that each one of us have listened to each other and the professionalism and i appreciate that i can look each person in the eye and know that that their whole intent is to do what's best for this community and what's best for the teachers and what's best for the children so i just want to thank each of you for for your efforts on behalf of our community even when we disagree thank you thank you mr carr and i would echo your comments and share appreciation with all of you as well also would say thank you to those of you in attendance tonight it's been a lengthy discussion and would

233also thank those of you who continued and stayed with us through live stream all evening with that said item 7.01 is before you is there a motion to adjourn so moved thank you mr carson a second second thank you mrs humphries no discussion we are adjourned thank you very much have a good evening you