001good evening i'm going to go ahead and call this meeting to order dr foley roll call president reese members of the board please let the record show that all members are present thank you we're going to go ahead and have a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance i move that we approve the agenda as it's presented second any questions or comments regarding the agenda all those in favor aye aye that motion carries 5-0 dr foley superintendents report president reese members of the board i have just a couple events up here for us we're getting ready to go into the next couple weeks where there's some big conferences and different things that are happening um next week i continue with aasa national superintendent which is actually in person for the first time at
002the beginning of the week and monday evening for those who are able to join me we'll all be sliding from the one side of the valley we'll meet you at the east valley board dinner at mesa public schools in which we will come together with a consortium of governing boards from across the valley the following week we have a short week and that is also a the law conference asba law conference you'll notice that we initially had a board meeting planned for september 8th those dates were determined prior to the law conference there will be a handful of us who will be the law conference most of the whole week which is also in person and in order for us to stay for the full day we wouldn't make it back here in time and
003so we are moving all of our business to the 22nd which will be a longer meeting but important we're running out of dates so september is going to be a busy month full of conferences coming forward thank you we'll go on to board comments any board comments i so just one thing i uh missed uh williams field event on friday night but i saw the mayor was there and i saw the dance team performance and everything looked amazing and it looked like a really really really great event so i'm sad that i missed it and hope to go next year it was um homecoming no i'm sorry media night thank you i couldn't think of the word for a minute but it looked great thank you it was a fabulous event president reese and i
004were both there and we got to see all the cheerleaders and all the football players and i they brought everyone before us so it was really i that was one of it's one of my favorite events so yeah i spoke with mayor peterson and she was saying how what a great event it was and was really proud of the community so any other board comments all right then we will go on to our request to speak we value input from our constituents this time has been set aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board please remember this is not an appropriate venue to evaluate discuss or criticize district personnel policy keb provides a process for complaints about personnel speakers should be aware that false statements about individuals may result in civil
005liability members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ars 38-431-01h action taken as as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date please limit your remarks to three minutes and we have barbara summers i am here tonight to discuss my concerns with our mitigation policy both revision one from seven one twenty one and revision two from eight twenty one twenty one and the progressive mitigation plan while i do understand how frustrating it must be to be in the position that our school administration is in trying to keep our students safe while having their hands tied due to policies being placed
006by our governing board and not wanting to over promise to any of our parents our policies surrounding covid this year are extremely vague in fact the differences between revision one and two and even the progressive mitigation plan are virtually non-existent aside from the remote learning instructional model i would love to see some changes made to the policy for overall transparency honestly transparency has felt somewhat problematic in schools during our current climate and sharing more even to the extent of not having an answer at the moment would go a long way some considerate considerations for the mitigation plan a section on some information regarding close contact quarantines and confirmed illness isolation and return to school procedures following these periods a high level overview of contact tracing some better guidance on thresholds for switching to the basic
007safety strategies mentioned in the recent email and mitigation plan at the school level information outside about outside school events and activities and strategies around them an allowance for voluntary transition to temporary remote learning for families during times when our school and community transmission rates are higher an addition of overall district statistics on the dashboard with the number of quarantines for the district and classroom or program quarantines if they should happen bringing in the opt-in now b-necks now test for symptomatic students on campus potential changes based on parent input for possible opt-in masked classrooms at the elementary level where it's easier to do and the children aren't yet eligible for vaccination suspending outside volunteers from working with students or in classrooms switching back to some of the past mitigation strategies like one-way hallways potentially adding mass
008as a temporary mitigation measure for a two-week period or more depending on health numbers trend in times of high positivity rates on campus there are many other strategies that we can look to implement at the school level but there also needs to be changes at home parents if your kids test positive report it to the school instead of just calling them out sick this helps the school to identify potential problems and mitigate them proactively your kids are sick keep them at home we are all in this together and we all need to do better the freedoms that are often preached here and in society are not absolute our freedom is tied to overall common good and keeping each other safe thank you guys thank you kathleen richards good evening um thank you for the opportunity
009to speak i'm here as a parent of a two children in the higley school district who are both under the age of 12 and unable to be vaccinated at this point i'm here specifically to ask the board and the district to provide parents with more transparency about mitigation requirements some schools in the country and definitely around arizona notify of cases by classroom we here in husd simply get a letter about covid at a specific grade level nothing more and i would love to know what is different about husd besides the fact of ada because it doesn't seem to apply elsewhere why is it unique to here it feels like we can look around as parents and see mitigations happening around us while husd has happily returned to 2019 are we even quarantining close contacts beyond
010football because it's impossible for a parent to know without playing a game of telephone i'm not expecting a quarantine level by school but i am looking at what mesa put out yesterday at their board meeting with a number of quarantined in the district total week over week and something like this would afford families in hui husd the idea that something is actually happening as opposed to what it looks like now and can the district please find ways to hold parents accountable for sending their children to school sick there are parents sending their children to school who are pending covet tests and they're doing this because there are no consequences finally i would like to address board member wilson and something that you've mentioned at the board meeting on 8 19. you stated that families will
011leave this district and that that's okay and then you emphasized kindness since that meeting we have lost in our district several families who i know personally and who have chosen to pull their kids or are on the hunt for other schools outside of this district these are families who put in time for teachers who volunteer for school needs donate items and money to help make usd husd a better place their kids are the ones you are excited to have your child be friends with these are the people leaving our district currently leaving us with parents who come into board meetings screaming about liberties accusing parents who mask their children of child abuse and generally behaving like kindergarteners throwing a tantrum that is who is staying and if we're truly okay with that kind of exodus
012of kindness and respect what does that say about our commitment to the mission of husd thank you thank you and mindy brocker and i'm back thank you board for your time you know this is three meetings in a row now and i know i'm talking into a void care for our children is displayed by actions and this board does nothing says nothing in any way that actually indicates to me that you have any intent to protect my children from covid so many people come up here and give you facts and figures some are really solid work you know them because our health department and your medical staff are giving you the same analysis and recommendations others will spout misinformation to fit their bias they feel things they know somebody who knows somebody they heard it
013on the internet that something is happening then they run down here and scream at you mass mandates are still the most safe and reliable method to curb transmission in an indoor environment and you all know that whether you want to believe it i can't change those internal biases but it's a tragic shame while kovit continues to decimate lives here in arizona hold on this board allows no changes in fact you twist the facts to fit your personal narratives you won't mandate mass because it's against the law yet when law clearly says that mass is required on school buses both private and public you change your internal definitions of what's actually transportation to allow you to speak out of both sides of your mouth still i've been waiting for this week i was assured that thoughtful
014mitigations were coming we would put out procedures in place that would help protect students i now know that's not true the level of mitigations this district is allowing is a sad shadow of what you should be doing in all they're actually decreasing and to be honest i've never been so stunningly disappointed in a set of adults in my entire life i ask that you remember you reap what you sell when you chase away all reasonable people in deference to the loudest and most violent all that remains is the chaos you've nurtured i haven't abandoned this district yet maybe i'll get the opportunity to help hold all of you accountable for your inaction i really hope so thank you we have no other requests to speak so we will move on we are now at our
015consent agenda items do i have a motion for consent i move that we approve consent agenda uh item 6.1 through 6.9 second any questions or comments regarding items on consent all right all those in favor aye aye aye that motion carries five zero we will go on to information items dr foley 7.1 progressive mitigation plan update president reese members of the board one of the things that we have tonight is just a overview just a few snapshots again this is by no means the complete document one of the things that we have done as we've shared with you in our status report is we've updated the mitigation plan we've been working with our administrative team on this one of the reasons why we work really closely with our whole administrative team is they understand their
016schools they understand their sites they understand the situations and they understand the cases we have recently updated um our mitigation plan and added in an additional piece that we just want to kind of talk through tonight and we put some things in here tonight to just kind of do a general overview one of the interesting conversations that we've had with our administrators is that what's very hard in this conversation is to find we use the term the goldilocks rule you know you know the story of the three bears too hard too soft just right when we're talking about about our strategies there is there is this goldilocks rule in the fact that some think they are too hard some think they are too soft and we're trying to navigate what is just right and one
017of the things that we learned in previous years and when we implemented mitigation strategies is that one of the things we need to have is some general guiding principles that we work through when their scenarios happen because in some cases there are as we've shared multiple times it the the dep the details are what determine what's most appropriate for the next level next step so today we're going to kind of talk through some of the conversations general just of this of the administrative team so we can begin this dialogue and discussion mrs richards president reece members of the board like dr foley mentioned we met with the elementary administrators aps and principals and our one dean and then also the secondary group of principals aps and deans it's important to go to them because they
018are the experts they know their kids they know what's happening they know their families and they're very in tune so three of the examples up here were put in place through the end of quarter one um suspend non-essential visitors volunteers and activities from involving external groups and organizations that was both elementary and secondary that thought you know this is a good thing for us to do right now to minimize the risk of exposure the other one was to suspend assemblies and large gatherings during the school day so i think it's important when you look at this list we're talking about the school day itself okay not before not after the other thing elementary administrators believed would be helpful would be to have their kids go straight to their homerooms when they get to school avoiding
019a huge massive group of kids on the playground at one time is that something we said we're going to do all year no we're doing it right now trying to minimize the risk and then we'll reevaluate it these other things on this list are examples of things that can be done um if it's not 116 degrees outside then we can take learning opportunities outside some of them are going outside for snacks and it's you know weather dependent but timing dependent they're also postponing or canceling non-essential travel or field trips are there plans for field trips later in this year absolutely so these aren't things we want to get rid of these are things that we're looking at this point in time with the number of cases that we have going on and of course we
020will follow maricopa county department of health quarantine instructions very carefully so i think we should all applaud our administrators our teachers and our families because i think in my lifetime anyway this has been the most challenging so they're out there they want kids in school they want kids learning and they want to keep them safe president reese members of the board we're going to talk a little bit about things that happen outside of the school day and that's the difference that other than miss richards remember outside of school they are optional these are choices that people have to attend they are not mandatory events and so when we talk about perhaps assemblies and gatherings during the school day they are mandatory because the classroom goes down and sits together and everybody's in the gym but
021when we're talking about an event after school or after hours or not during the school day it is optional for people to attend and that will be a choice that they'll have be able to make when we talk about different mitigation strategies of course at first i started from a sports aspect so forgive me if some of them seem athletic heavy but we started looking at that and remember the mitigation strategies that we had put in place last year and so when you take a look at some of these they're following what happened last year the ones i want to really jump into though are the reduced spectator uh attendance at events last year the aia came out and really had very strict guidelines on what they would allow or not allow at the competitions
022for what we did in terms of how many people were there by the time we got to the winter at first there was no one at all then they added some and we could get some people in there some people not this year the aia has not made any directive or any decision according to that there is not anything that's saying this is what you need to do to limit the people at the events moreover they gave us a list of guidelines and said very closely this are guidelines of recommendations these are not rules we're not expecting you to do everything that we have put in place in them and so while we have that listed up there as a possible thing to do as of this time we have not made any uh changes
023to limiting the number of spectators at events that's not just for sports but it would go for when we get into the concert season or anything like that we would continue to do that some of the other things that you see happening up there we do though for the people who are making the choice not to go to the event continue with the live streaming that we did last year and trying to put everything impossible as we can online so that people have that opportunity so they can still see uh the concert or the event or or the game as they're going forward some of the things that are already in place we encourage people to bring their own water and not have shared water different mitigation things like that cleaning after our practices and
024going through last year we're in the practice of inside the gym in between games they would clear the gym we'd spray it down and come back in and so that when there would be a new fresh group of people coming in and we would continue with those practices inside the gyms we additionally looked because the question comes up what about the people who rent from us because we are a community partner and there are a lot of people who who depend on our rentals and what are the expectations for them and we are expecting them to follow the same strategies that we're following up to and including if they are not following those than with cancellation of the rentals and i know that's a question we get we've already seen we will quarantine specific teams
025or groups at the direction of maricopa county health and we'll continue to work with them uh looking at specific cases and specific things that we need to do but once again the differentiation that truly after school or these are optional activities that people can choose to attend or can choose to be a part of as we move forward with some of the specific things we're doing outside of the school day so one of the questions happened one of the things that we're going to be discussing tonight in a public hearing setting and this is one of the things that the help that is part of house bill last year there was a remote model that no longer exists one of the things the state is requiring us to do is that for any purpose in
026the event that there was any kind of concern a quarantine or a water main break or a fire or for any reason we had to or were directed to close a school we would would move that instruction temporarily to a model which we have to define which is what we'll be going into detail into our public hearing and which is included in right now in our mitigation plan online that talks through what would that look like and again this is something that we do for the purposes of attendance this is kind of required by the the ade for adm but it's a way that we can transition and utilize from now forward so having these put in place is something these emergency plans the state realizes now that districts need to have in place in
027the event of you have your in person you have your online and then you have a instructional time model in the event of any reason you would be transitioned into or closing a school a classroom per se and so we'll be going into that in greater detail in the public hearing thank you have any questions dr foley i just wanted to mention um just briefly on the quarantine under the direction of the maricopa county department of public health [Music] it looks like that's changing a little bit i just want to kind of give a heads up that we have heard from neighboring districts who've already been notified that quarantining is changing and it will look what it looks like is that we will when quarantine happens that potentially we will be looking at quarantining more
028people per case so um [Music] we will follow the direction of maricopa county public health department like i said we've heard some from some neighboring districts who've already been directly notified because they don't have a mask mandate that there are going to be things in place so we follow what they tell us to do to begin with but it looks like our turn is probably coming and we will hear from them which will change some of our quarantining so we don't have the specifics on our district yet but change is probably coming president reece there was conversation that there was concern that there were districts we're not quarantining we've been quarantining all along we've been quarantining in consultation with the health department agent every time just as we are supposed to we follow the letter
029and again as we shared there are a lot of evolving parts and pieces to these that continue to evolve and we are part of all those conversations and discussions and when there's issues or concerns they are being directed to school districts and we are working through that with them and will be responding as we are as we have all along under direction thank you just want it to be a surprise that we know they've already been notified ours is probably coming so any other questions or comments i have a question mrs anderson uh for the last topic um you mentioned regarding the rental facilities um how are you guys confirming that they're following the mitigation plans do you have somebody there with them are you checking on them i mean i'm sure they're signing paperwork
030and have we had to cancel any um agreements due to not following so one of the best and i'm sorry board member anderson board um one of the most important things with that is training and making sure when our facilities are rented that these individuals are trained and expectations are laid out clearly to my knowledge we haven't denied anybody to this point but one of the most important things is our custodial staff and making sure they're trained and they go back and clean thoroughly because if you're a teacher in a classroom somebody uses your classroom you want to be assured that it's been cleaned properly so i think rentals are important for us as we work with our community that handling them appropriately is essential right now so thank you um if you don't mind
031one more question for mitigation strategy are we ever going to consider going back to smaller class sizes i know that funding is um not that you we went to smaller class sizes for mitigation but i'm saying class sizes have increased over the years and they keep increasing and i'm sure they're at numbers that are still considered pretty high even for normal years is that something that we can consider moving forward is start reducing these numbers in the classrooms board member anderson members of the board as you know you have a governing board policy that mandates class sizes in the elementary grades secondary is a little bit more challenging obviously that is something we adhere to and we could look at policy this is a budgeting conversation decision it's also a classroom space conversation and decision
032because when you make changes and you add teachers you're adding two spaces and obviously one of the things we now have a better understanding of after this past year is where are we on in our capacity site review as you know we now have walked every single square inch of this district to figure out where our rooms how are we using space if we had growth where would that be as part of our planning for so i think that this is a larger conversation and budgeting decision and it's also a policy decision the other issue is the sustaining of the staffing and as you know there's a lot of competing conversations for those dollars as you are aware today we sent out the esther survey where we're asking for feedback because there's these one-time dollars
033that can go toward investments and anything that we add once the funding ends we then have to sustain moving forward and so these are important conversations and discussions because we're also hearing people say we want we want social emotional resources we want additional counselors we want additional social workers we want additional so these are all of the pieces that we will be navigating through and the budgeting conversations and the priorities of what we do with our district but that's where we are right now any other questions just have one more question dr blake can you talk about why we notifi notify at a grade level and not a classroom level as far as uh um there is a case one of the things that was uh board member schultz one of the things that was
034we're doing an abundance of over communication in other words because there are you are you're at recess times together you're at lunch together in some cases there's departmentalizing of this so that that way you are notified that there is a potential case in that grade level so it's an over over communication when there has been in consultation with the health department identification of the need to quarantine those communications go to the individuals i can tell you that this has become a consuming all around-the-clock thing i will tell you that on sunday afternoon myself and the preschool director and the health department were identified being made aware of cases even coming in over the weekend even prior to our ability to get a hold of someone at the health department we were notifying families this is
035our knowledge of this is what we're aware of this is what it could mean and we will inform you as soon as we know more so those who need to know more are being directly communicated with even prior to us getting an official directive to do so just so that we can respond out of abundance of caution but you should know that this is an all-consuming all we are doing is coveting yeah that's a great question because grade level they have their specials at the same day so if it's sixth grade they've all had art and all of that so that's a great question our hope as we've shared with you is that again making people aware that there's potential exposure one of the things we've said from the very get-go is that one of
036the things we cannot and assure is that there isn't the potential for exposure our hope is is that making you aware you are paying attention to symptoms the thing that is the most important thing you can do is to please as as as we have said again and again and again please if your children are sick please keep them home the way that we stop having to notify potential exposure is is not being there to expose in the first place any other questions okay then we will go on to 7.2 paid sick leave benefit due to kovid 19 pandemic miss martins good evening board member pardon me goody good evening president reece vice president wilson and board members my fellow colleagues as well as our community tonight i've got in front of you some information
037items related to covid19 paid sick leave benefit you may or may not recall back in january we extended the federal ffcra families for families first response corona act i think i got that wrong but it's essentially something within those areas but um we extended it because of the fact that we did see and have high covert level cases still that were operating and felt that it was a best best option in the district to provide that for our employees as well as those that they had to care for whether it was dependents at home and or additional um maybe other dependents in relation to parents things of that nature so in cabinet a couple weeks ago we decided that it was worth bringing back because of the fact that we've seen those increases in cases
038all across the district as was reported last week when we did our presentation you know we have higher numbers now than we had had last year so looking at this and looking at the number of employees that have had to be out already from july 1 through august i think it's best given we've worked with individuals and they've had to exhaust all of their time because whether they're waiting on a test and or they had symptoms and encouraging them and what was great was our employees staying home because they were sick and or somebody that they care for were sick i'm not going to go bullet to bullet but summarizing in general the family's first coronis recovery act the actual component of ffcra was from january 1 to december 31st in terms of the federal
039component we then extended it um pardon me april 1st i'm all over the place i apologize from april 1st to december 31st and then after that we then extended it from january 1 to june 30th it's still 80 hours of paid sick leave we had had that and extended that part of the ffcra also included fmla individuals are still eligible for fmla depending on qualifiable cases fmla existed prior to ffcra the only difference with ffcra was that our individuals actually got paid traditionally fmla was previously a non-paid federal leave component we would not look to offer this to employees who've already exhausted the time so if they've already utilized it they wouldn't get additional time these are for all individuals who haven't had an opportunity or fortunately not so much an opportunity were fortunate to
040not have been sick prior but may be sick now and or sick as time extends as we talked about it we thought it should be probably for the whole school year so not just from now until december but to go ahead and look at it for until june 30th of 2021 uh and going back and retroing from july 1 to august 25th today's date so then for those individuals that have already had to exhaust their time and potentially in a doc status we would be able to credit their general leave time back and or vacation time depending on the eligible employee next slide so these were all components of what ffcra had prior to what we did and what we extended the benefits through the only difference that you'll see this time around if we
041do get this approved tonight and you'll see on your agenda it is not only for an information item but also for an action item we feel it's important that we go ahead and not only discuss it but move forward with it so that way we can address employees as more and more questions have been coming up so you'll see on there in bullet number four we did put an age component to it in surveying other school districts as numbers were increasing a number of them came out and said we're only doing this for our employees we're not doing this for anybody else we feel as though based on our population and issues that we've already seen where we've had employees need to be home for their young children and our younger age children and they
042didn't have any other option that we looked to incorporate that still but put what we felt was a an appropriate age limit for those who couldn't stay home alone versus those who could typically in middle school um they start to stay home alone for various reasons in terms of responsibility and are able to stay home alone so you'll see that age level there and then also if the individual of place of care is closed and the care provider is unavailable then you'll also see that we'll accept that for children under the age of three and we had done that last year because of the fact that we did see that too where whole organizations were closed as a result private day cares around the areas so if something were to occur i'm not aware and
043i've not heard anything legislatively on the federal level that this entitlement benefit would come back up but if it would we would void this and then do appropriately with the federal government in acts and then again as i mentioned earlier the employment benefit would apply this whole school year so returning back to july 1 and going until june 30th next slide questions president ruiz mrs wilson i just had a quick question why did we choose the age of three because we have a little gap between three and five is the under 11 still in place then like that's what i'm i guess i'm wondering like is that gap the under 11 is still in place but previously when we had had this back in the um back before june 30th what we were seeing too
044and what we did you may or may not remember was we offered some child care facilities for our employees we had uh kids club kind of work with us and were organizations where they were not sick but they were to quarantine we allowed them to participate in that i left it there as an option not knowing what may or may or not occur as we move forward with this but it would cover all those kiddos from 11 under okay great thank you we just don't have facilities currently in which we are able to offer that because preschool is you have to be three or over as well as potty trained thank you anderson where are you going to ask something forgive me if this request sounds outrageous would it be possible to add trying to
045get the vaccine numbers up and some people have reactions and they need some time off to cope with the the um the symptoms that they get from the shock could we open it up to staff who maybe are sick you know they get stomachaches or you know or whatever and sometimes they get fevers afterwards and if they can't get on a day they didn't get in the middle of the week because of whenever the appointment happened could we extend it to them as well or care for a child that may have something similar or do we need to just stick to straight up coded because i think given the dynamic um sticking to covet is probably best and because we're alleviating 80 hours for them hopefully they then still have general leave time in which
046they could a day of sick um you know i'm willing to share my own personal experience to where when i got vaccinated the first time it was just um my arm was sore i was perfectly fine but pardon me um the second shot it knocked me out fortunately i got my second shot on a friday afternoon so i was knocked out all on a saturday but then by sunday morning i felt fine again i know everybody's circumstance is a little different but the hope would be that um they're not having to utilize too much time as a result of that and maybe being able to coordinate the potential some of those shots as a result around schedules and what maybe might be more convenient but i think we'll start to get it'll get um squishy
047using the word that came up last week squishy i think is a good word for that because then we're gonna have to ask people to provide us documentation of their vaccination and i don't know that i want to go there you would have to ask that how else could we be able to monitor people say i got fascinated i'm not feeling well um this should be used for that purpose and not necessarily for the purpose of some other sick component for the for then for the coveted lead they have to provide proof that they had that they were swapped or whatever correct okay yeah so they have to provide us documentation of a positive covet test and or documentation um in which they were told to quarantine by a health care provider and our district
048nurse miss jillian fulton does qualify as a health care provider okay all right thank you i just thought i'd try i remember i understand i love this idea but i i think it would get squishy for sure as far as and i don't think you could legally ask somebody for their vaccine when it comes to yeah but it's it's it's an idea for sure president reece mrs caleb i'm grateful that you have um put this back on our laps and i will be happily you know voting yes for this and i'm thankful too that you chose through the end of the school year um just to you know give our teachers that cushion that they so deserve so thank you for bringing this to us and the retro yeah nope thank you any other questions
049comments this is teachers and staff correct it's district districts districts all employees staff as well i think when you said teachers i'm like wait i thought it was teachers and staff so i just want to make sure it was everybody that got this okay great thanks president wilson it's everyone yeah all employees no other questions all right then we will go on to thank you for the presentation we'll go on to our action item 8.1 do i have a motion uh i move that we approve the reinstatement of the sick or the paid sick leave benefit due to coven 19 pandemic second any questions or comments all those in favor aye aye that motion carries five zero all right we're going to go ahead and recess our regular meeting to enter into a public hearing
050it's our public hearing number one pursuant to house bill 2862 for our instructional time model dr foley president reese members of the board i'm going to ask dr sue borzicz to present parts of this and she'll be happy to answer questions when sue started with us last year i don't think she'd even been working with us a few hours and i assigned her immediately you got to start working on the remote learning model at the time that was what we had to work on and it was part of attendance and so obviously she was part of this with us last year and has been helping us interpret what does this mean with her department and with the district leadership what does this mean for us and what would this look like how would we document
051it so that if in the event that we ever needed to utilize this we have this in place and could use that code and capture adm as required for this for multiple reasons so she will start us through what the framework would look like and again once we put this in place this would be a model that our district would have in the event that ever needed to utilize for any purpose thank you president reece vice president wilson and members of the board it's an honor to be here tonight to present to you um the ins and outs of our instructional time model as dr foley mentioned to you last year we had a distance learning plan that we were allowed to write because we didn't have an aoi or an online school if you
052will and that distance learning plan was our accountability for attendance and making sure that we accounted for each one of our students for our adm it allowed for the parents and students to move into remote learning and back and provided a structure by which we were accountable for those students unfortunately the distance learning plan was just designed to be a temporary tool to use until a district crafted and was approved the aoi which is what we did last year during the time that we had that distance learning model in place at the end of last school year districts who had a distance learning plan those all those plans expired and um and we were either required to have an aoi or we could not offer online learning for students and so obviously we hva or
053higley virtual academy was born in our district in the meantime though the arizona department of education now has asked us to come up with an instructional time model and the purpose of this is just a little bit different than a distance learning plan the instructional time model is an attendance and accountability tool that um allows us to account for our students and receive adm through different models of instruction and the purpose of this time model is to create something that is a little bit more sustaining that will will last over time so in other words this isn't going to expire at the end of the year this will go on and it is a tool that we can use for multiple purposes so while tonight we may be looking at this through the lens of
054coved it actually is a tool we can use in case we had a flood in case we had to shut schools down for more than a day for students because of various natural disasters you know some mountain schools will use this to account for their snow days so there's multiple reasons that we might want to have this in place and so this is why we're bringing this to you at this time the um and of course we have to receive approval from the governing board and we have to present this at two public hearings and those are requirements of hb 2862. so how this will play out in elementary schools and keep in mind once again this is just an accounting and model for attendance but at the elementary schools right now if a student
055is quarantined for a day or two or up to 10 days independently outside of their classroom or outside of a group of students that is handled independently with schools through canvas through a learning platform and and that's how we contin we'll continue to do that however if we get into a situation where an entire classroom an entire grade level or the entire school has to be required to temporarily quarantine then we will jump into this instructional time model and this will be offered for students at the elementary level then students will be attending daily live sessions much like they did in the remote learning model and attendance will be taken during those sessions for students and that will be reported to the state in that model so student would be remarked remote present for the
056day now to note lessons will be a little bit shorter and the duration of and supplemental assignments will be provided through canvas very much like what they were in the remote learning model last year so for example this might this is just a samples of what us elementary school schedule might look like this might be a little different depending upon the elementary school but you get the idea that you know there'll be live instruction throughout the day in core subject areas and then office hours and independent work assigned at the same time for our fourth and sixth or fourth through sixth grade students who might be in diads and triads or departmentalized depending upon what school they go to the idea is the same their schedules will still match their master schedule at school and
057they will receive instruction from that in that diet triad departmentalized model the same as they would if they were in person but it would be some live instruction and some independent work now at the secondary schools this looks a little different if you can imagine if a student or a group of students let's say student council or the football team for example has to be quarantined those kids are in multiple different classes throughout the school all day long so the um the ability to provide live instruction to those students if they get quarantined is impossible because the teachers are teaching in-person classes you know at the same time so if we have a school group or a team for example at the secondary level that is required to temporarily transition to virtual learning then asynchronous
058um learning is what they will engage in and that's very much like what we also had in remote learning last year students will have the ability to access canvas they will get their assignments videos instructional pieces on canvas they will be able to do them at a time that is convenient for them they don't have to do them at the same time that their online or in-person learners would be doing them but they will be marked present in our system remote present and the accountability will be through that canvas model where they have to log in and complete the work now at secondary schools we do have an option where it does go i mean where it does go to synchronous learning but it would only happen if the entire school was quarantined and then
059if you can imagine the entire school being quarantined means that teachers are not teaching in person so then we would jump back to that model where students would be attending the classes as they would in their master schedule during their the regularly scheduled time and we would take attendance in each class and remark them mark them remote present and then assignments would still be provided through that canvas learning system so just as a this i'm not going to go through this but you know by line but this is just an example of what a secondary class schedule might look like if we had to um quarantine or if the entire school had to be shut down for any reason so all in all this the there this doesn't impact husd in a negative way this
060is how we this is a tool that we will use to account for attendance and account for our student all of our students and they're learning should the model of instruction change for whatever reason throughout the year and this is designed for students who we would have we would be telling them they couldn't attend school in person for more than a day so natural disaster whatever any questions questions mrs anderson i'm sorry uh to avoid scramble because as you said you know some quarantines may be coming some may be coming our way how are teachers and support staff being prepared for this i know that there's been sufficient trainings we have some really good people that have been hired and i know there's been trainings in place but to avoid that stress on teachers because
061i know it's hard because i just want their students to succeed and adding on this training i know adds on more to their day which is more stuff to to do is there is there anything that's kind of being taken off their plate as well i'm just going to put it out there but the main question is how are we preparing them right now for this board member anderson members of the board obviously part of part of development of this plan and that's one of the reasons why we've been building our progressive mitigation plan this is a component of it and why we've involved multiple administrators in this conversation as well as representatives from the teachers association the the fact of the building of this is part of the beginning of the preparation you'll also
062notice that there's we're required to have two public hearings so this will be public hearing number one then there will be public hearing number two which we will have on the 22nd of september which will be our next scheduled meeting in the meantime what happens is communication begins going out from this is like this is information about what this is in the event that this needs to happen obviously behind the scenes of course with any mitigation strategy there's the work that happens behind the scenes the communication that goes to the community the schedules that'll go out the information for teachers and how you alert it i think you've probably been even reading in status how we're even trying to get our own our own student information system to be better at alerting to communicate with
063people because oftentimes when this happens there's short notice but this is the plan that we'll be helping people understand will happen in the event of any reason because you know let's take an emergency a fire that can happen and overnight things need to change and communication needs to go that's not the time to start the drafting the communication for which which happens so basically the preparation is in preparing people for this transition fortunately the transition this time is going to be easier than when we were to harken back to to march of of last year or year wherever we were like 2019 it was like 100 years to be honest um where we had never even here we were we launched a school year this last previous year without even having ever trained people in
064person or showed this to students the elementary level so we've come we've come a long way and hence we're sustaining that but obviously it would require ongoing follow-up and communication with but we've come a long way but this is this is the beginning stages of how do we help prepare and plan for people so in the event that this has to be utilized people know what we're doing and how we're doing it and what what what information comes so hence there will be sharing of this is the plan this is the communication this is how we would transition this is what you need to do that we're building behind this so with that said does that mean that this is on our professional development coordinators radar as well for the teachers that weren't here who
065haven't gone through it um brand new parents to our district you know i mean it was a learning curve for parents as well um not that our professional development coordinator but just that there's information um on on how this will happen so with the start of this is is that all part of what's coming together so we can see what professional development needs to be done what teachers are are comfortable with this some saying wait i know i i got through it it might have been a blur because i think all that time was a blur for most of us but um you know i could use a refresher or things like that and again as you saw one of the things that we built into our new teacher orientation was a heavy emphasis on
066our learning management system and how we're utilizing that and that's something that sustains across so this is ongoing and and sustaining so this is not a one-and-done kind of thing because the learning management system is is is a component that stays with us regardless of the model in person um online or in a time management model president reece mrs keller um just and maybe it's just a refresher but because of covid our teachers were trained in canvas quite extensively and again our new teachers that was i know mr treat dr dr i see his name all over status too he's a busy man um but i know his emphasis was on canvas and with that said to this day every teacher i think the expectation was that canvas is updated on a daily basis anyhow
067because that they know at any moment's notice one or two or three or ten of their students could be absent in a day so i was under the impression correct me if i'm wrong but canvas is just part of their daily routine is that true yeah yes richard um board member taylor yes he's being very intentional with his instructional coaches as well as um dr borzich and mr lotzenhazer with their administrators so without saying it to sound bad they're ready to go should this happen so it is important that they keep up with it because i think the little kindergartners it's still a big struggle so we probably still have work to do there that when they get home and have to get into this isn't the time where they have to learn it so
068yes they're working really hard it is a huge learning curve for many even us parents but i'm thankful that canvas is part of our daily routine i know it's something that all of our students now starting in kindergarten and first grade when they get to college they're going to be pros also i think it's important for our community to realize that remote learning was just for a season and it will its remote learning is is so different than online learning and i only know the difference and knew the difference because my children took online classes way before covid and there was never a live teacher on an online class that just did not exist in online teaching so just to make sure that again the remote learning was for a season for a reason and
069now it's online and and as much as you know i i never want to see us to go back to remote learning if possible but i understand the reason for it and again it's not the same as online so i think we need to make sure we're clear on all that president reece this is wilson dr foley president reese brings up a good point is there a parent refresher on kovid because i haven't been on that website sorry on canvas sorry we're still living covets so um on campus like covet is just always on my mind so you know now you know um is there a parent refresher like part of a night or something i know we do some nights i know it's a little different during covet times but is there something on
070our website or something that's like a little parent refresher on the program we'll remember wilson a governing board we may need to put together probably again we created a lot of visual tutorials on how to one of the things you would see that again in the progressive mitigation plan we even talk about device distribution one of the things we've even had to think about is at the elementary level should this have to happen there are students who do not have devices at home and so obviously on the night before you don't send your your kindergartners home with a device home we would have a process for those who would need it to do a drive-through pick up kind of thing so obviously there's going to need to be resources sent to families to communicate devices
071logging on access and a lot of tutorials and visuals were made but those parent resource pages would be revitalized and re it re-utilized for the temporary in the interim dr when that's uh president sorry um when um according to when they are quarantined is there i'm sorry a letter that says like here's the instructions on what you need to do or how you need to do as far as canvas being sent home right now there would be obviously communication with the individual teacher on the case-by-case basis depending upon whether it is one an individual situation or it's a whole class situation is there any questions for a public hearing any questions from our community so in this discussion there has been talk of canvas is being updated regularly and is now a part of the
072daily uh routine for but as a parent i can say who had kids who were exposed we got a letter we had symptoms we stayed home at first grader with nothing and i had to ask for the rest of it so and and i am a former teacher and i think we are expecting too much of our teachers nationally it's not unique to husd but i don't necessarily think husd is setting the teachers up having friends who are new teachers this year around the district i don't think that that is something that is happening and i can only speak to an elementary level but i have friends at multiple levels in the district who are all very frustrated and we're four weeks in so i'm hopeful that this will alleviate some of that potentially um
073what is the plan when the teacher is quarantined if the idea is that there is some remote learning versus online learning which i will argue my husband's an instructional designer there's absolutely live instruction in all levels of online learning um but if the teacher is quarantined then what is the plan for the students who because that teacher is taking time off potentially of symptomatic or caring for someone who's symptomatic the ripple effect of that especially at an elementary level is there plans for that is that what is coming in part two mrs richards thank you for your question so i think um a couple pieces good feedback that you're providing to us about what you've seen or not seen in regards to updating on websites and communication i think sometimes too it's depend upon if
074it's been a few students or several students that's very good feedback for us because again we're developing this and supporting our administrators through this whole process and again we have new people at different levels and so they're kind of entering into this and i think that we're going to need to provide additional support second um the part about the the what it would happen if a teacher is out we would have absolutely have to have a substitute who would be part of of supporting that during that live instruction if that teacher was if the teachers weren't team there would be or the students are quarantined there'd be a substitute who would be working with and supporting the instruction at that time they'd be logging into the canvas class and meeting the students and engaging with
075them at that time so when you say a substitute and i just want to understand this because we have a shortage of substitutes here in husd and most of those substitutes are not equipped to deliver actual instruction so the teachers are now being asked not only potentially to come up with this module but also essentially the much dreaded sub plan for a remote learning model for someone who is not trained to deliver that model is that correct potentially mrs richardson's one of the things that i know that we've been working on with our substitute who is training in these tools but that would be one of the things that we would have to make sure that that that anyone who had that was in the position doing that would log in we also might end
076up having in some cases teachers if if i had a grade level who might be who might remotely then have multiple class students in that class at the time they might need to help cover for two at that time if we needed to um one of the things we also have our instructional coaches at the district level who also have stepped in to help in situations when they and and they are experts in that as well so obviously in in you you are right it is a case-by-case situation by situation basis and we're working on building the capacity of everybody um and i will say more intentionally this year in our new teacher training than we ever have historically okay um and then where do the kids who are sick fit into all of this
077so covet can knock a child flat on their tush and delta is very different and the expectation that a mild case is what every child will experience in terms of checking in on canvas the expectations and then subsequent to that the makeup work that's associated with that what what will be the process or is there is that in in process to create one of the things that we have been talking with our with our teachers and administrators on all the time is to be very flexible and to work with families obviously we understand that and to be accommodating for work um and to communicate with us on the situation so if a student needs an extension or we need to provide more time that is something that our administration and teachers are understanding needs to
078occur and i think that we will be responsive to that um i think what's important is for families to communicate what's going on and and as you've seen it's kind of a different you know element you know this age of the student also depends because there's as a kindergartner first grader my ability to do independent work looks very different than a senior who's working on course credit so obviously we're going to want to be responsive to those needs okay thank you you're welcome and i think also just for clarification um obviously if we have to quarantine a classroom or anything the teacher although they would be quarantined would still unless they're sick yes okay so yeah the teacher even though they're quote unquote quarantined with their class yeah then the expectation is the teacher would
079be the one logging into canvas and everything if the teacher is ill yes that's a different expectation okay we would never expect a teacher who is ill to be trying to log in but if the entire school or sure classroom is quarantined then that teacher would be quarantined but the expectation is that they would they would still run that that i understand but i think that we're looking at a potential for more adults and children to end up sick especially given our setup in the classrooms so in that respect and knowing that we have a shortage of substitute teachers and knowing sort of what level they are at as a parent i'm already stressed out when a teacher is out and i know that the instruction is not quite at the same level not that
080we don't appreciate substitute teachers but um that so i wanted to understand how that fits yeah and then like last year when we were kind of in that remote environment um i mean we had teachers who said you know yeah i've tested positive but i'm okay and and they would still teach you know so they would be working with their administrator because again this would only be in the situation what we're specifically talking about is if we had to move to a different learning platform for temporary reason and so yeah if the teacher was unable to like dr foley said another teacher from that grade level may be the ones popping in there and providing some of that instruction and adding the um coverage for that or an instructional coach um someone who can can
081help do that in a remote environment and any of you correct me if i'm wrong out i would not i know we're working with our substitutes but if we're in a remote environment we have some different flexibilities i don't think we would be specifically asking a substitute to step in in a remote environment when we could have a another teacher from that same grade level who knows the kiddos when we have an instructional coach who could just log in so the re the remote environment would be very different than the in-person environment okay so and you guys don't have limits to how many you can have in a canvas classroom at a time because i know those exist i don't know does anyone know if there's a limit on the canvas classroom technology wise there's
082not a limit in the number of people that you can have in a canvas classroom so if a situation came up where we did have a teacher that was out sick we could easily combine some classrooms or split some kids up into other classrooms so that they could benefit from instruction from another grade level teacher if we needed to without worrying about whether or not that was going to work within the canvas platform it does get very slow when you do that does that help it does thank you okay whoops mrs carey i don't want us to forget either that our teachers have always been super accommodating when a child is sick that's not that's never been not a thing so i want to make sure that we understand that if a child my child
083had mono in third grade which was very rare a third grader having mono she was out for three weeks and i mean her teacher was more than accommodating for a sick child so i hope we understand that all as a whole that there would never be a strict deadline for his child who needed help getting through an illness in their schoolwork and typically we've had our normal rule of thumb that we've seen is the number of days out they have the number of days to make up but again like you said it can affect people differently um and the number of days may be the same but more one student may definitely be a little more functionable if you will and can get through some of that work where another student just i mean i've
084talked to a mom who their kid got up and showered had to eat something and was back down you know so they're they're clearly not going to be working on their work at that time and so i i think that the expectation from everybody in this room is that if we have kids that are are sick that we will absolutely work with them and give them the time they need to make it up and um i know sometimes it sounds like our new word is squishy sometimes that can get convoluted when in in the older grades because we have semesters and and everything else which um in high schools i mean that those timelines matter and and there's not a lot we can do but it we can still work with somebody we're not going
085to let that happen so i don't think that would be the expectation so yes absolutely i yeah president reese members of the board to that point this last several years we have had to create plans and back and backup plans for those plans for sub coverage both in person if there weren't subs what would our internal coverage be what would the plan be if if we didn't have enough and needed to for any reason temporarily close a site obviously those have been plans that have been internally operationalized so that in the event that they're needed they're there the same kind of things we are finding is that if there's concerns with this particular situation we need to be aware of it because we can accommodate and modify for it so i think one of the
086things that we have learned is that each and just about the time we think we have figured it out there's a new scenario that emerges with different complicating factors that we're going to have to work through again and as long as we're aware of them we work closely with the administration and the school side and the teachers to address it and we just need parents to communicate with us so that we understand what's going on so we can we can do our best to respond to the point that when we're talking at the high school level and there are credits involved and there's timelines involved there's processes we follow but there's also there's also um processes that we follow when we have to make exceptions and extensions or incompletes until we can make it up
087as long as we're aware we have been able to accommodate and again we just ask people make us aware of those situations we've got to remember too this is also these are temporary that we're looking at not like when we went from april till the end of school and then from july until september we're not we're not looking at even long think long-term things if we had a building issue and that building was not able to be used this would be used temporarily and if we still couldn't return to that building we're going to have to do something else to get them into other buildings um so again this is not something that we're that's meant to be a long-term thing um like we didn't know if it was ever gonna end before but so
088this this is meant to be very temporary president reece oh yeah oh it was still on the other topic but i can wait do you want me to wait okay yeah i just have a i have a few questions you know mine no go for it um so for this instructional time model to apply you would have to have the closing of a large community say an entire classroom right so i guess my question is well first of all is a child considered quarantined only once the county has stepped in or can a child be considered quarantined like if their siblings are ill and the county has not yet notified good question so it depends we've been working with the county health department we have not implemented additional but we've been following their direct exclusion
089guidelines on all those situations so we work with them to determine when we need to quarantine so yes this model would kick into place when if we were directed to quarantine a classroom a grade level or a site and the question that once last year we had um we had adopted initially thresholds that would trigger potential closure um one of the things we found was is that we never hit that threshold what what happened though is that the last few weeks of school at a particular school san tan when we removed the mask mandate there was an influx in number of cases at a particular school one of the things that happened at that point was we found it was concentrated to a grade level to a few classrooms they could track it back to
090an event that several people attended that caused a potential outbreak um a tight the the threshold we had would have caused us to have to if we it was one that we implemented upon ourselves would have caused us to have to close the whole school when in reality the health department said you might have if we have any if we see more connection here we would we would quarantine this just this classroom so what we're finding and and what all those schools are saying is that we're determining at the more we learn is that it's a case by case school by school situation by situation because complicating factors tend to make this more difficult and more challenging and hence why we do this as per state statute literally i have the documentation from dr sun
091and shine ourselves uh when and how and when we follow what and on and we're in consultation with them on all of those things so then sort of a follow-up question like i know that an ongoing concern in these meetings has been people sending their children in sick and despite no matter what side of the aisle you fall on i know people are worried about a restrictive attendance policy like if you miss 10 days then you get this nasty gram that you could be charged so people are worried about keeping their kids home when they're sick is does this or could this ever cover and could an instructional time model ever cover those children that are still waiting for their test results or have a sibling that's ill and the county hasn't yet made the
092notifications good question the challenge is is that this is for us there's synchronous and asynchronous the challenge is is it's really impossible for a student who is at home awaiting to be able to get live instruction when their teacher is teaching live it's really almost impossible to do quality in person online and for the teacher in the classroom to do in person and online at the exact same time that has been a challenge so this our model is for for entire classrooms or entire grade levels or schools for it to be synchronous the asynchronous component at the secondary allows there to be some more additional flexibility the part you mentioned about the attendance last year we really stressed the fact that there was no letters there was no tracking and we we tell people if
093you need to be out be out this year we are still selling people if you need to be out be out we are required still by law per the attendance similar to the same one to make people aware but there is no punitive punitive follow through because of attendance or absence we just need communication and to be able to document and track that okay so all right i appreciate it i'll think i'll email you the rest of my questions because they're not exactly about this model so thank you thank you mrs anderson um i i just wanted to add on um is it is it miss richards okay to to uh what she was saying and i'm glad you brought this up because it is i think mindy um touched on it when students are
094out and i know that it's a little separate from the plan that we're bringing forward but i just want to reiterate that there is universal communication the whole school for that leniency for assignments and for time to make it up and and maybe even just the understanding that they're now really behind um so so thank you for bringing that that was something i wanted to touch on and also it's interesting how things work out we and i know i'm in a different school district but we just went through this and in my department where we had a teacher out with covid even after being vaccinated and for for two weeks and she was gracious enough we used google classroom and she was gracious enough to upload and daily and daily and daily but one of
095the problems we came to even though we had guest teachers in the room they didn't have access to the programs and it was so frustrating because the kids could see what the guest teacher couldn't see and so there was this disconnect and i think it led to changes in guest teachers they were frustrated and they couldn't get that content covered and the students were wildly distressed and so i just want to make sure as you know we're training the new teachers we're training the guest teachers um and for these extensive leaves that we have like i brought up before that there's just not this scramble um that there we've looked at the technology we've looked at the access we they know the guest teachers know how to communicate the parents know how to communicate and
096the students know what to expect mrs martins can we confirm i think can you confirm the training that's happening for our subs so what i can confirm board member anderson is the fact that we did offer all the training for what we were calling rescue subs so our permanent subs that are at each site that are there daily we made sure in addition to the training that they had access so that way they could go into a classroom as needed to do that we've attempted to look into training for our guest like daily one-off situations um and depending on the circumstances we might want to reevaluate that and look a little more it's a little bit more difficult because of the fact that they're not technically our employees here at higley we use esi as
097you're familiar with and so because they're not technically our employees that access component is a little um more difficult but we could potentially look in working with it to see whether or not we could do a generic login in which that after like a day it's automatically reset so then that way it doesn't stay um depending on the length of their their time and with us at higley in that classroom if it's a couple of days or just a day and going from there but i do know that actually we just had a um a conference call this morning with esi and we were talking about a number of things in terms of strategies to build pools in addition to the fact that what other districts are doing to be creative to incentivize their own
098subs to keep coming back so i know some of those things i'm going to kind of take to heart with our hr sub and volunteer specialist and decipher whether there's a proposal we want to bring to cabinet to discuss it a little bit more so board member anderson along those same lines last year when we would have a teacher out for two weeks or whatever and we had a sub we did use district level coaches to go and help support as well as well at elementary we have site-based coaches so they just worked in tandem with them and it it honestly went pretty well and i know that's not the one day situation but these were sometimes two four weeks long but it seemed to work well one of the pieces that was an important
099component that we would maintain was those rescue subs that were kind of our employees that are intended to be like our traveling teachers if you will for these cases so again that's a component that's been an important piece that we learned as part of covid management for for covering classes which is one of the reasons why we sustained that this year hey there um so i know there's talk about confusion for parents for kids with getting onto canvas just because they're they're not using it often why can't we implement canvas just into our daily classroom routine um i think i heard we were one-on-one with devices or close to it at this point why can't we make the change to utilize it daily weekly really get into using it for assignments to mitigate the problems
100with you know forgetting how to use it when we're outside the classroom so that's been a discussion and it feels like we've been in school for six months and i know we haven't yet but i think it is a good suggestion because as a kid even if i'm on there two or three times a week it's not as scary or i don't get as confused because i know what to click and where to go so i think working with our principals that's something that we can continue to do because they update canvas as needed but some of them are doing this i know for a fact yeah some of them definitely are and it eliminates paper overall so i know you know paper is always a big thing but if you're just submitting doing your
101assignments online and submitting them there anything that would have been paid for it really enhances the experience makes you learn how to use canvas and feel comfortable with it and takes away that paper cost so absolutely all right thank you thank you president reece mrs wilson uh can we uh we would still be passing out our food and it would probably change a little bit right if we were to have to go to a model like this where a whole school may shut down would we like do a pass out at that school because i know that's a big part for parents right now a lot of parents are enjoying and utilizing that food the free food program from our federal government that can that started with president trump and continued with president biden so
102i just want to make sure that that would still continue for those families that rely on that vice president wilson that would be one of those components similar to the device distribution that would be communicated out so let's say in the event that it was at a school and there was a fire at that school we would translate transfer to another where they would be something similar like a drive drive through pickup we got really good at drive-through things after we figured this out um but we got better at it so that would be something that we would work through and communicate thank you i just know that's very important for a lot of our families this is kind of off topic a little bit but can we uh same talk but can we uh
103when you talk about the letters that go out and the concerns um that i think mindy had about it um concerns about uh the letters for the 10 days of absences can we send something to our community i mean i know we're talking about it now but not everybody's watching or paying attention as an email letting them know that hey we're required to send out this letter but we really want you to keep your kids at home if they're sick any kind of sickness you know right now and just make sure we're communicating so that it it's not passed on to facebook and then it loses something in the telephone game a little bit of communication about that remember schultz we'll work on putting together something like that and i think one of the things
104we're finding is that sometimes when these are sent from the schools directly they tend to be uh read more closely than if it comes from us from the district so we can work with uh our pr team on putting something together perhaps to have the schools send i i i know you have a lot already on your plate but if i think just the communication and people understanding more of it would help us and even the canvas stuff and how that works as well i agree that's something i know we talked about it prior to going back to school and um and everything but it's definitely worth reiterating yes because we we indicated there was the change we're these letters by law we have to send them out but but um just keep your kids
105home when they're sick but the important part about that communicate with us that's the important part we need to know that your kids are homesick and you can do that through parent view you don't even have to call and do the machine anymore you can do it through parent view but we need to know where your kids are that 10 days is is truancy but if we know where your kids are then that's okay we have another question yeah my daughter missed to several weeks of school she has an iep and she has different learning needs when between being sick and then having to quarantine for a different reason she missed about almost three weeks of school in that time period she probably could have been doing some work but she didn't understand the assignments
106particularly she's a freshman math and science just dropping in a powerpoint presentation and expecting her to understand what to do without that learning now she's back at school she has double the work and building on math skills is hard like and if she has to quarantine again what's in place for her so she can like continue learning without getting left behind mr watson mr lutz mr latin houser can you respond to her question i think any time when we're looking at providing supports that are for our special education that we would have to work directly with the case provider and to see what other different opportunities we can and so i hope that we would be able to reach out directly to her um case manager at the high school yeah or because i just
107said freshman correct yeah at the high school and then in as well as working with shauna and the special education department to see what other kind of resources we had to be available during a quarantined period i think it would have been great if there was something in place that time you know in the beginning when she needed it so he dropped videos or something if i would like for you i'm gonna i'm gonna point to someone in the audience i'd like for mrs miller mrs miller right here in the audience she is our special education director i'd love for you to talk with her directly afterwards or soon after because i think she can she'd like to work with you and follow up on providing additional information so let's see what we can do
108to support your student and help her out with the situation and i'm bringing it up also for other students that are probably going to be experiencing this or who already have i think that i understand your concern with the time and making sure we intervene because you're right getting starting behind and trying to catch up we may need to identify how we can modify and support um and accommodate with the needs that have occurred so shawna will be following up with you directly and i think that's a fantastic point that as we continue we still we're still working through this plan and as we continue and we have more to more work to do i know it does have a schedule for special education students and and what that would kind of look like but
109how do we how do we support those with ieps if we have to move to this type of this type of learning environment for temporarily and and i know that for mrs miller but but yeah that's an excellent point that we need to look at and make sure that we have the ins and outs of so if this were to become our reality we're not then trying to figure it out now details for sure because each student's different it's an individual plan and we would have to see but how that would be coordinated i think is is more important that it's in the plan how do we coordinate that because that is a lot of students but what would that there's an identified process of coordinating supporting our ieps and things like that so that's
110a fantastic point thank you yeah thank you for bringing that up with as i have a daughter with an iep and i wonder the same thing if she had to be quarantined you know not falling through the cracks because with putting canva in place with regular learning she would still have the issues and fall behind so i appreciate your question very much perfect and maybe there would be a contact person if your child is falling behind and needs help and i don't know if it would be like a at the school site or if it would be more at a district site and maybe we could put something together like in that quarantine letter if your child is falling behind and needs some assistance contact x and i don't i've read the quarantine letter multiple
111times but um haven't vice president wilson members of the board i think one of the things we have found is one size rarely fits all and really the closer to the student that we can make that contact the better so when it's we're talking with the teacher the principal because when when they when they come to the district we're five six seven layers removed and of course we're happy but we our ability to help is to go back down to the closest source to the teacher the teacher the student the support systems administrator the team around them and so what we will do is always encourage to start there now with that said if you're not if the answer is not being reached and your support is not getting there then you need to make
112us aware so that we can intervene and i think one of the hard parts is is that um sometimes by the time we get brought in it's late too late or not too late but it's it would have been better if we had been intervened sooner if you will well and the maricopa county public health has made it very clear we have to use their letter so um but it doesn't mean that we can't have supporting information please reach out to your child's teacher perhaps if they're on an iep their case managers um you know things like that so but yes i'm sorry i forgot that we did have to use their letter and i have seen it many times it has come under our emails but it has forgotten the letter dr sunshine's name
113at the bottom yes their letter so all right well thank you for putting this together it was great conversation so at least we got a lot of different topics discussed and and everything so we're going to go ahead and adjourn our public hearing and resume in our board meeting and at this point we're on future agenda items does anyone have anything president reece mrs kaler no i don't have anything dr foley thank you so much on your plate and i just want to say thank you so much for all that you're doing all of our staff each and every day all staff all teachers i really went into this school year a little more encouraged and hopeful and again it's been just a challenge after a challenge i would love for us to just get
114back to educating children and focusing on that and i know that you would love to do the same thing but like you said earlier today you were just coveting all day long and i just want to say again how much this board appreciates everybody that's working so hard um and and we just i look forward to the day where we don't even say the word and we can just educate but thank you anything else i think we all agree with that all right then we're going to go on to adjournment i move that we adjourn second who is that amy i'm like all right all in favor hi hi motion carries 5-0 have a good evening you