001good evening we're going to have this meeting called to order dr foley roll call please president kaler members of the board please let the record show that four members are present mr witovich is not able to join us this evening thank you very much we're going to have a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance through the flat of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with justice 2.1 i move that we approve the agenda second any questions president keller yes um i just want to make it clear that our meeting tonight and our discussion tonight is not we're not voting on if we're keeping schools open or closed right now and i know based on a lot of emails we received
002that people believe that we are meeting tonight to have a vote whether we're going to keep our schools opened or closed that is not what tonight's discussion is or our vote is our discussion and any voting items is to further our mitigation plan so i just wanted to kind of make that clarification with the agenda tonight thank you very much all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries 4-0 board comments mr glover uh well i just if if if you've written written to me you've probably got some variation of this response but i'm telling everybody and i just think we have to spread these the messages of the things that we all must do if we want to keep our schools open so i'm just going to be a broken record so wear a
003mask properly wash your hands avoid large gatherings get tested stay at home if you have any symptoms stay at home if you think you have covered and are awaiting test results and then carefully consider your holiday plans thank you thank you mr glover wonderful reminders we are going to move anybody else go ahead oh i'm so sorry mrs wilson i just want to thank everybody who sent emails i have read them all i may not have responded but i just want to say thank you i have read your concerns and i'm listening president keller yes mrs reese the same i we we received a lot of emails and even if you didn't get a response because there are so many i too read them and took all the information into consideration on how people are
004feeling and thinking and regarding covid and some other items so i too received lots of emails yes and also just to piggyback on both of you if dr foley or any administrators are left off of an email that is sent to me i make sure that those get forwarded on to the right personnel because sometimes it's just sent to the board and it really helps when i send them off to dr foley or any of our other cabinet members so again yes lots of emails and we do read every one of them it's my morning coffee routine we're going to move on to request to speak and i have a little blurb here before we get started we value input from our constituents the time has been set aside for anyone from the audience who
005wishes 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 liability members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ars 38-431-i'm sorry period 0-1-h action taken 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 a decision at a later date and we are going to limit our response as always to three minutes so first i have kristin gomez i'm sorry i just got them as is good evening my name is kristen wilson i'm actually a
006special education teacher resource teacher at bridges elementary and i just wanted to come up and first thank you all for everything that you're doing for us i know this is a year of difficulty for everyone and i also wanted to just thank you again for reading my email as a teacher for the district as well as a mother i have three children that attend schools here in the district one of them is a special needs student and i know that we're not discussing or voting tonight but as a mom i can't tell you how much i appreciate the fact that you all gave him the opportunity to go to school because online teaching for him is a huge struggle like many special education kids it's very difficult for him and without even though the the
007staff tried with aid support online or you know the the extra support that the teachers were trying to give him it was awful and for the first time in my life having an autistic child i thought i was going to have to do something for his mental stability because he needs to have in person he needs to have that connection with a person even his peers he needed he he has become very much um i mean he's my loving warren but he he has to have the connection and without that connection he struggles and so even though they tried to support online when we had to go online back in march his behavior turned to a point that was very scary and troublesome because he had made such strides in our program through higley with
008special ed and so i bring that to your attention because i know you have a lot on your plate i know that there's a lot at stake here but i also know as a teacher we are doing everything we can on our property and we are working hard and we are cleaning and we are disinfecting and we make sure that those kids follow the rules they all want to be on campus they love being back on campus we have seen such a huge change in kids and this is gen ed and sped kids alone like all of them like they want to do better they want to work hard they want to do their work they have missed being in school and they've missed not only their peers but they've missed the teachers they've missed
009the engagement that they get to have with those teachers the learning and we're taking a situation and we're doing the best we all can it's not going to be perfect but i will tell you that these kids deserve us they deserve our community standing up and following the rules of wearing a mask and washing our hands and staying six feet apart and not traveling during the holidays to keep them where they deserve to be because in 20 years that's who's going to be running our country and if they went for two years without an education that's what worries me so thank you for everything you all are doing i appreciate it from the bottom of my heart as an educator and as a parent thank you so much next up i have julie hancock good
010evening ugly board dr foley my name is julie hancock i am a parent of five children that have been raised in the district my youngest my baby is now a senior um and i am also an employee i um i teach at bossman early childhood development center i want to thank you for your efforts to keep in keeping our schools safe and open during the past four months as a special education teacher preschool teacher i can tell you that our staff is working tirelessly to clean and sanitize the classroom the playground and the whole building our three to five-year-olds are doing a phenomenal job of wearing masks i am telling you that some of our special needs kids at times struggle to even keep their shoes on but these kids are wearing their masks we
011are social distancing as best we can and for children in this age group um the parents are keeping children home like i've never seen before um they are doing so because they support us teachers and they want their children to continue to have in-person learning opportunities i want to thank you for your efforts to keep our schools open even as cases rise i feel fortunate that i'm working in higley and not at the charter school down the road from us that is closed because they don't have staffing to keep it open i'm grateful that our mitigation guidelines allow us to keep teaching and that although most of us hate wearing masks that they are allowing us to keep teaching in person even if someone in our class tests positive my purpose in speaking today is
012to ask you to continue to keep our classrooms open for in-person learning even if you're not voting on it tonight just please keep this in your heart and in your thoughts i have taught virtually i can tell you that even though we teachers did everything we could to make our lessons engaging and appropriate our special needs students struggled my three to five-year-olds are not able to gain an appropriate education through a screen all of my students have speech delays and have other developmental disabilities they need one-on-one attention from a caring teacher they need their peers to model appropriate behavior they need speech and language therapy occupational therapy which is hands-on and very difficult to do virtually they need eye contact and physical feedback that comes from in-person learning i can tell you these things i
013can tell you these things because i've taught them i've experienced them and they are not appropriate for our special needs students no matter what age federal law states that we must provide a free and appropriate education and this is not done so in a virtual learning environment we spent last three we spent the last quarter online with these kids in three weeks of this school year online before we went in person i've seen dramatic increases in their behavior and in their development they are happy to be in person the teachers are happy to be back the parents are happy that they're back and children thrive in a happy environment if our cases continue to rise and we have to shut down i'm asking you to please remember our most vulnerable students our special needs students
014who need consistency and a face-to-face contact our younger our youngest learners can't excel on an online platform thank you thank you very much [Music] next i have rebecca shaver speak right here thank you um first off i want to say thank you so much for letting parents participate in this meeting and to be here i really appreciate it um i would like to read dr redfield's most recent statements regarding schools he is the director of the cdc he said schools are among the safest places that american children can be amid surging cases of corona virus across the country school closures are an emotional response to rising infection rates data does not support the notion that closing schools reduces coronavirus transmission children are not major vectors of coronavirus and are less likely to become infected with
015coronavirus or spread it compared to adults infections detected in schools did not necessarily originate there but simply reflect the spread of coronavirus in the wider community and dr fauci just this past sunday said keep the schools open if you look at the data the spread among children and from children is not very big at all with the constant narrative of follow the science science data and experts are all in favor of keeping schools open even when cases are on the rise closing higley schools won't stop community spread as long as adults can enjoy themselves at a bar and go to the movies and have dinner at a restaurant with their peers children should be able to learn in a classroom with or without a virus in the community the sole purpose of our education system
016is for educating children it should not be used to profit off of children it should not be an employment protection program and it should not be a political entity so i asked this board to continue what you've all been doing already which is keep our schools open and i really appreciate the board members that have voted to open our higley schools and i so appreciate the staff members and the teachers that are coming every day showing up every day for our kids to keep our schools open for children and families that truly mean it so i really appreciate it so thank you next we have heather mays did i say that correctly um first off i just want to say thank you for allowing us to be here tonight and speak to you guys i
017appreciate the opportunity to do that and i want to say thank you to all of you on the board along with teachers and staff who work tirelessly every day and put in hard work and effort that is keeping our kids in school um and keeping our key our kids needs at the forefront of the agenda my daughter who is in middle school at cooley has attended the higley school district schools for the last five years she's always been a good student and excelled with good grades this year as she began her school year remotely her grades were shocking to us as we looked over them and saw d d c f was very concerning to us as parents after a long stretch of a's and b's from our daughter um thanks to the leaders of
018our district and um teachers our daughter was able to return to in-school learning and um along with other students at cooley and i'm happy to report that her grades are once again almost all a's so we're very happy to see that and um just a very strong reminder to us that the in-person learning is so incredibly effective for her and that she really struggled with the online even when she didn't have the ability to verbalize that to us it was very apparent in her grades and that we could see that i'm also the mother of a of a special needs fourth grader um they're getting a lot of support tonight it sounds like which i'm so happy about but i'm the mother of a special needs fourth grader and this has been especially eye-opening for
019us as to just how crucial daily in-person learning is for him we're incredibly grateful for the teachers who day in and day out love our kids and want to see them succeed just like we do on a number of occasions while sitting next to my son while um he's having online instructional zoom calls and sitting next to him assisting him um there has been a number of times where he's gotten so frustrated or overwhelmed with the inability to navigate the computer that he has gotten up and shut the laptop before i even have a chance to stop him or help assist him and what he's struggling with we've learned that online schooling is completely ineffective for our son as i'm sure is the case with many other students who are challenged or have an iep
020that requires specialized learning assistance as a parent i do not have the adequate training or resources to progress my kids education the same way our teachers do and again i'm just so grateful for the opportunity for them to be in person and to be in school learning and say thank you for that and thank you to all of our teachers who are working so hard every day to keep our kids in school thank you thank you next i have jennifer zauer members of the board and dr foley i know i shared this with you via email but i feel it's important to share with the community as well so over the course of the pandemic i have learned of the importance of speaking up and sharing concerns sometimes it brings change sometimes people think the
021concerns you raise are crazy and sometimes the only positive is that you know you said something rather than staying silent and wishing you had spoken up like many in our community i've been trying to understand how community numbers can be so high while school dashboard numbers are so low in my desire to understand the discrepancy i searched for an explanation and while searching i read that not all positive cases in the district are reported on the dashboard i reached out to the district nurse to confirm how numbers are reported and learn that if a student is outside of their exposure period which is i understand it is two days before an onset of symptoms or two days before a positive test if asymptomatic and they test positive their result will not count on the dashboard
022this means there is an entire bucket if you will of kids and teachers who are positive and currently enrolled in in-person school who do not show up without including this bucket we don't have a realistic picture of what is happening this is concerning so i'm asking you as a district and governing board to consider three things that are really related to your proposed school closure things you have in your powerpoint for tonight one please include all staff and students with positive covid tests on your dashboard if you have to add a separate column for that missing bucket to indicate they were not active then do that but don't withhold a set of crucial data teachers cannot withhold the subset of student scores in order to make their test scores look better so we shouldn't withhold
023a subset of test results to keep our numbers on the dashboard low please use more than just the husd cova dashboard which relies on parents to self-report to make decisions about keeping schools open instead use a combination of the dashboard and the arizona department of health services covid dashboard which includes all positive tests it doesn't discriminate based on when someone tested positive neighboring districts like gilbert are doing this please stay true to your words from when you voted to open schools in august if only if numbers continued in the right direction both the arizona department of health dashboard and the higley dashboard are trending in the wrong direction in fact there was a 100 increase in the number of acted cases on the husd dashboard from monday to tuesday the families teachers and staff in
024this district trusted you to open because you said you would watch the numbers to make sure they were going the right way please don't take away this trust when i first started teaching 20 years ago my mentor shared an analogy with me that i still share today with my college students when teaching students we want to be the doctor and perform well checks or assessments so that you can diagnose concerns when they are small and easily treatable if you miss these checkups and don't intervene then you end up in the emergency room because things have spun out of control our district is getting a checkup every week right now with the benchmarks from the arizona department of health services the emergency lights are flashing and it's time to intervene i know there isn't an easy
025answer or one that makes everybody happy i'm sure you've had as many sleepless nights wondering if you made the right choice as i've had wondering if i've made the right choice as a mom but i know that i will sleep easier tonight knowing that i at least shared my thoughts with you thank you thank you so much president taylor yes can i just comment real quick on yes thank you for coming up and speaking with us and i read your email and i've seen some of your comments the same type of comments and multiple emails but i just want to clarify just something real quick is when we voted to open our schools and we said we were going to watch the numbers that was prior to our opening when we had our discussion of
026opening our schools we also did indicate we were not going to be using the maricopa county dashboard any longer after our schools opened that once our schools opened then we would work with the county on when and if and when we would need to close and like i said i've heard multiple emails where people have referred that our dashboard for maricopa county is continuing to rise and that we're choosing to ignore that and that we said we would watch those numbers and we did say we would watch those numbers we had a two-week period from the time we were voting until we were opening schools and so we we did say we were going to watch that to make sure they were trending correctly prior to and that we would pull an emergency meeting if
027we needed to change the decision we had made so i totally hear what you're saying and i've heard that comment multiple times in our community and so i just i felt the need to clarify that that we did say we were going to watch those numbers prior to opening and then we also indicated once we do open we would no longer use that dashboard on determining the direction of our schools so i just i want to clarify that so people understand that we we're not doing something that we said we would do um and so this board has has done what we said we were going to do and we did watch those when we decided to open to make sure they were still trending down because when we were making that decision we were
028on that cusp of our numbers turning green and so we felt they were headed in that direction we made that vote expecting them to turn green but we did say we would watch those to see if that changed prior to our opening date so i just want to clarify but i i hear what you're saying and i'm sure we'll have some discussion on our dashboard tonight as well so i appreciate your input there thank you thank you next up we have jen larson i just want to start by saying how much we appreciate all that you guys have done and especially from the moment you guys decided to get our kids back in school and the efforts that have been made and i looked at the dashboard today as i'm sure many people look at
029the dashboard often and what you have done is a success because our numbers there's over 13 000 people on the dashboard that are included between staff and students and there are currently 16 active cases and i understand that those numbers may not reflect right this moment but that is still a testament to your success and what you're doing and how you're doing it because as we've all learned very quickly throughout this whole process numbers are not all they seem to be and they are not extremely accurate i heard um one researcher say yesterday that up to 50 of positive cases or positive results could actually be negative so we have to be very careful i i will cite it and actually send it to you guys if you would like that um so we have
030to be very careful basing so much information on these numbers and and also i don't want to get off track but i have kids i've had kids at higley school district for 10 years now love hillary school district the teachers are amazing at anything i say is no reflection on those teachers that want to be there with our children i think that is a good majority of them and i appreciate them so much and i appreciate your guys's work um and i know that this is a vote you guys are voted in for this position and so we are your constituents and i hope that you guys do listen to us and the one point that i really want to make is every single parent that is dropping off their kids at school right now
031which is in the thousands agrees with what you're doing the parents that have their children in online school currently are the ones that maybe don't agree with what you're doing with in person and i am sure that you know that the greater majority of parents are happy with the choices that you've made and the way you're handling this and they show that by dropping their student off giving you that ability to take care of their student so um also yeah i just want to appreciate the courage that you guys have had in doing what you've done as far as experts go and listening to so much misinformation and so much information it's overwhelming i try and stay up-to-date i'm sure you guys try to stay up to date um i think no matter what the
032cdc needs to trump whatever arizona guidelines are the cdc is not perfect but they are the standard and because someone has come up with some other arbitrary number that they think we should be following that should not supersede the cdc uh there's also thousands of experts experts epidemiologists child psychologists i could go on and on and i'd be happy to send you any information i'm sure you get plenty that all agree that children should be in school they are not super spreaders their infection rate is extremely low as you can see from the dashboard and as far as concerns about asymptomatic spreading the cdc says that that is extremely rare so when you add the rarity of children passing it on top of asymptoma asymptomatic children i think we're very safe but anyway i just
033want to say i appreciate so much what you guys are doing and especially thank you for allowing us to be here as parents and as members of the community to share how we feel thank you i have two more i wasn't sure if they're here kristin apodaca i say that right all right senor apodaca i think was my spanish teacher so maybe that's where it came back okay so yes hi my name is kristen apodaca and i first want to just say thank you for the opportunity to be able to be here and speak tonight i have four children in the district i have one in high school who also played football this season i have one in middle school and two in elementary i've had the opportunity to experience the way things are being
034handled at all three and i've been very impressed with all the precautions taken every day and how well the staff and students do with following all the guidelines at school like okay the previous shutdown and experience of virtual learning for my children was what was not one i would ever like to happen again one of my children is on an iep and being back was not i'm sorry being back to in person school has been a night and day experience from when he was doing virtual learning he needs the one-on-one help academically as well as being able to be in community with his peers for his mental health my daughter also struggled with depression during virtual learning i understand there are many who do well with the virtual platform but there are equally if not
035more that do not i have serious concerns for our children if we shut the schools back down again there are studies coming out about how high the failure rate is amongst the students on the virtual platform there are also studies showing how high the mental health issues like depression anxiety suicidal thoughts and attempts are with the amount of isolation the kids experience our mental health industry is overwhelmed right now it is almost impossible to get an appointment because providers are so full they are not taking new patients or their availability is months out i know as a district i heard you say that you want to look to the experts or to the science to help guide you in your decisions dr fauci on november 29th said and i quote we should not be shutting
036our schools down if there was a choice we should shut down the bars and keep schools open not shut down the schools and keep the bars open i sincerely hope you take his recommendation seriously my biggest question tonight is what is the end goal how many times will we open and close the schools of course if we shut down the schools and even the state cases will go down and when they open up again we will they will go up because logically that's how it works i have watched the dashboards for all three schools my children attend over the last few months and they have all been low in cases especially when you compare the amount of cases versus the amount of students and staff in the school the dashboard has also shown that each
037case documented was off equally a case resolved ziggly has done a great job of letting parents know if there was a case and if their child was exposed i know there's a lot of pressure on the board tonight from parents and groups who think the best answer is to shut down i truly hope this board puts all children and only the children first and chooses to keep the schools open while also continuing to offer the option to those who want their children to go back to the online platform i think higley has a huge opportunity right now to be a leader and show others that our district puts the children first and has done a great job of implementing guidelines and we should praise our teachers and students for how well they have followed them
038in the classroom thank you thank you very much and did sarah sullinger did i say that correct it's karen oh cara i'm so sorry it looked like it right yes cara so sorry my friend wrote it down for me i wrote it wrong blame the friend that's right that's her fault uh thank you for this opportunity to speak um first i just want to say thank you for the job you've done when i know you volunteered this job you didn't plan on a major pandemic so thanks for sticking with it for our kiddos i have a friend on the aotoki board and i know that she's definitely had it had it rough so um thanks to the teachers staff who spent countless hours trying to change everything familiar to accommodate so many situations my name
039is kara i'm a mom to five kids three go to chaparral elementary but before we went to gateway points we've been with the higley unified school district for six years we love it we have had friends that go to charter schools and a huge advocate for public school my mom's a high school math teacher so she's in her last year of teaching so i have major respect for school teachers um sorry i'm like such an emotional person in general i don't know what the future holds but um the kids being in school has been the best for them mentally physically emotionally i'm a stay-at-home mom but i also work two two part-time jobs in the spring when the class slide was a little bit lower or the class load was a little bit lighter were
040able to trudge along with homeschool but this fall was a different story we started school at 8am finished about 5pm every night managing three kids was rough lots of tears lots of falling behind to spend hours catching up lots of googling researching to learn how to teach my children pretty much retaking fourth and sixth grade um first grade was a little bit easier since they've been back in school their grades have gone up they've had more time to just be a kid without the heavy burden of at home school putting on them they've had less kind of less of a workload i think they've gotten it more done in school anxiety has decreased my 11 year old son who is very depressed has been very bad very happy back at school there was a few
041weeks back in the fall before we opened up the i was kind of looking for a different option for school just because i i knew that there wasn't a perfect option out there but i just was very desperate um so i was just searching for anything normal but stuck it out and i'm happy i did [Music] my work suffered i felt like i was a newborn again in the fall i felt like even just like showering was hard eating during the day because my kids had different lunch schedules and just trying to work with all three of them trying to find zoom eating spots in my house trying to shuffle the different computer situation because not all of them had word or whatever they needed for school um lots of anxiety lots of agitation um
042i also have two twin four-year-olds at home so that was hard to juggle i chose all these kids so i'm not complaining about the amount of kids i have i'm just saying it was very stressful a very tearful few months um with coveted cases being loaded low in our district um and reports i've read that schools aren't really the super spreaders i just really hope we can keep schools open functioning how they are currently i'm fortunate to stay at home but i know that there's not very many people that are as fortunate as i am to help their kids um so i hope you take that into consideration so anyway talk too long thank you thank you you have a built-in math tutor for your high schoolers coming up thank you all for speaking tonight
043thank you for being here i know it's not easy to get up here and speak so i appreciate each and every one of you for coming and taking the time and you can share with your friends that are we do social distance our board room we have masks and i think everybody feels fairly safe in this environment so we welcome people to come and speak at our board meetings one thing that came to mind when everybody was speaking is i remember when dr foley in the spring she was invited by a family to come and see them see a mama teach and a daddy teach class and you spent time in a home watching them i think it was five children that they were juggling online so you had first you can i heard you
044i saw dr foley's head kind of shaking with some of you mom was out there because she did go and see first hand what that online learning in a home looked like so i appreciated that in you okay we're going to move on yes go ahead um well i appreciate everyone who's spoken and acknowledged the work of our staff and i just wanted to call some attention to that and you know when you consider the issue of closing a school which we are not talking about uh directly tonight just keep in mind you know our staff it's not just the kids it's the kids that are in contact with our staff and i i worry about them i think we all worry about uh the safety of our staff but it's also the brothers and
045sisters of the children who go to our schools and the parents and the grandparents so we worry about all of these things yeah it's primarily about the kids it's kids first i've never said anything different but but these teachers are really very stressed and we should acknowledge that and factor that into it and then when you have a classroom when you have you know even 10 kids in quarantine these teachers are committed and they're doing their best all day long teaching and then they feel obligated to go home and try to reach out to those kids who are in quarantine and it's just it's a lot [Music] we're talking about other places that have had success europe enacted really strong public and private mitigation but they preserved schooling so it's really not me you should
046be talking to it's our governor that you should write to and talk to and ask him to close those close some of these businesses so that we can preserve school that will help as well um but i mean you're welcome to be it's a right to me or to be angry with me too but i can only do so much um you know the people that i'm angry with is uh i you know i ran into the store and i knew exactly where i was going in and out ba-ba-ba but i saw a guy and he had a he had on a shirt uh that said you're an american act like it but he was wearing his mask inside this door on his chin and i just thought dude this is these are the people
047that need to get it um because i i mean i we shouldn't be fighting with one another we should be telling those people to get with it man because you're ruining it for everybody um you know and can i tell the mask police story i said okay so a group of uh parents visited our school and uh were in the stands and they weren't adhering to the mask protocols and they were asked politely i think and then by security and instead of adhering to that so that we could all be safe and and sports could continue for our kids they decided to chant mass police go away these are the people we have to be angry with these are the people who are ruining it for all of us so you might not like some
048of my reactions to some of the decisions i have to make but it's a result of the actions of some very selfish people so anyway i all right that's enough [Laughter] go ahead mrs wilson uh i hate following mr glover i'm not going to lie uh he makes it very difficult i just want to thank all the parents who got up and spoke i know it's not ever easy to get up and be a public comment i enjoy that we have public comment and we've had it since september 8th or 9th i think was our first board meeting back the 9th and i just appreciate all of you coming and putting yourselves out there because it's never easy we do it time and time again and for you guys to do it it's a big
049deal so thank you and thank you for all your emails i think every single one of you i may have seen an email from so thank you that i got a pre view of it so thank you so much um yes i did i was going to say that mr ducey is more worried about outside restaurant venues today than our schools but i digress and i won't go any further so we're going to move on to our mitigation plan and dr foley and her entire cabinet i think is going to be presenting tonight president kaler members of the board yes tonight we're going to be talking through an additional mitigation plan to kind of more formally put out there what would be a plant if we were to have rising cases on campus um but
050before we start that we want to start tonight the district cabinet administration and i want to start with a thank you we want to kind of start with this extended thank you to our entire highland community for their grace their flexibility for their perseverance their pa their passion and our ongoing dedication during these constantly changing and challenging times to our students we want you to know that we are proud of you we want you to just keep focusing on your learning and keep making choices that help keep you and your in and those around you safe to our employees wow we are amazed by the colleagues that we work with um collectively as a profession we collectively have never worked so hard um we are adapting fast we are working on every level to make
051sure that what we do is is in the best interest of our students um and again i think you can be proud that at every level of our organization we have colleagues doing what is best for their students and working hard to keep their students and each other safe i think we've demonstrated again that higley is one of the best places to be our professionals are amazing our support staff are some of the best and we're grateful for them and what they're doing for our students we also appreciate our families and community members i mean we are truly blessed to live in a place and to work in a place where we have such an involved community and so for those of you who have reached out to us who have emailed us who have
052called us with comments questions and concerns we want to thank you we want you to know that we um that we hear you that we're listening to you and why we may not always be able to give you the answer you're wanting to hear that we're listening and we're trying to respond to you with what we're able to do the cabinet and i want to thank our governing board the amount of hours the amount of time the dedication you've shown during this time with us um is important and we appreciate you um please know that your leadership team has spent hours and hours and we continue to spend hours and hours navigating the constant covet management as it shifts and changes and new information comes out and unique needs come out please know that your
053team is approaching this with integrity that they're doing this with their whole hearts with our passion with our with every fiber of our being with the whole hope that what we do is right for our students in higley so please know that we are we are an amazing place um and we've got amazing people and i want us to start with thanking this collective community for what we're doing and how we're doing it together so um with that we kind of would like to start an update tonight with our recommendation for our mitigation plan so we're going to start this with a conversation of so what do we know um and what are what are what are our more formalized plans and so obviously we know um that the our when we look at the
054public health and maricopa dashboards it's continuing to trend in the wrong direction yes today governor ducey and cara crist are are warning us that it's going to continue to trend in the wrong direction it's important to remember that the data that's released each week is not two-week lag time and so again this is this is important for us to know again we also have our own dashboard i'm going to talk a little bit more about the dashboard here in a while but one of the things that's important to know is that our dashboard is updated daily monday through friday and that we are being governed by directive and direction on our metrics that we report that is in alignment with the health department i think it's also important to know one of the things this
055question that has come up often is well how do you know if parents don't tell you one of the good one of the good things is again every one of our students that's enrolled is also through ade connect which is aligned to a school district the health department works with the state department to inform every positive test is aligned back to a school so if you don't tell us we will know and find out anyhow again the lag time might be there but again we will find out and have an opportunity to to be aware of that so again dr foley i'm just going to interrupt real quick and and that's so important that when our students are waiting for a test result that they don't come to school when they're we had our nurse
056this week alone i know called out two students we have to stop that and and we have said it over and over and over again stay at home and it's okay to stay at home so i i don't know how else we can say it in any other way but i just had with that this important thing to remember and again one of the things that we had outlined before is that uh if we had rising cases or if the health department had any concern at all we would always respond and close on a side by side but we also wanted to to clarify for a community to more formally present this to you for us to discuss what that would look like in the event we should have cases rise on campus and so
057that's what we're going to kind of talk through tonight so what else do we know i'm sorry can i ask a quick question about the dashboard i know there was discussion that we've had several students email teachers saying hey i'm going to be out because i have kovid and this and that and we have had when the teacher receives that we've had people follow up with the parents to find out you know hey this is what's happened they're not here you know do they have this and on some occasions it's been no they've never even been tested or on other occasions it's been yes they do what shows up on the dashboard i mean so we have people self-reporting and so what what numbers show up on the dashboard okay in three slides i'm gonna
058get there and go into that so if you give me two slides more i will go into a little more detail on that i'll put up the dashboard and we'll talk about it you're welcome um so when we look at um when we look at our own data on our dashboard one of the things is there's a story behind each and every one of these and one of the things that's important to know is that we follow and and the our district nurse jillian has never also worked so hard the woman works literally around the clock i know because she and i are on the phone all hours of every day um talking through what we've learned and what she's finding out or what we what where what we know and what we're finding is
059that we are seeing little evidence of spread on campus most of these when we look at adult cases and student cases happen um with with exposure or activities outside of school and again we are looking at each and every one of those cases what we're finding is that our mitigation strategies work and we have to stay vigilant with them and you know those this this requires this is where we've this is where we've done well face mask wearing your face coverings it is it is the difference between um primary and secondary exposure it works um sanitation works staying home when you are sick when one of the things families are doing is it is a good thing if you have symptoms and you're not staying and you're not well and you haven't been at school
060that's a good thing because it's not allowing for exposure to happen on at school on campus so it's not a matter of not having the illness it's a matter of not being on campus to allow active cases to spread which is really important so hence there is a there is a tracking of each and every case what we also know is that we want to have options for families next slide please what we've learned i mean we've talked with our families we talk with our students we talk with our leaders we've talked with our teachers we our students i'll tell you most students learn better in person and that's not to say that when when we were forced by executive order to close you don't have a a choice one of the things you'll hear
061me say tonight is we have our district mitigation plan but it can thou be overruled by uh an executive order or maricopa county shutting you down and they have and they will but when you have the ability to make a decision at the local level what we know is that our students learn better when they are able to do it in person we want to be able to offer that for families as long as we're able to safely do so we also know that the social emotional is really hard to replicate through a screen there is there is so much we are social beings and creatures to to be able to connect with each other um even socially distanced and through a mask um is far superior than through a screen and social emotional learning
062is hard to replicate and it's not that we are not doing that in the online setting it is that for most students it doesn't have the same impact without and those are what we know when we look at other professional perspectives and i'm going to start at the bottom because a couple weeks ago there was a news there was a news press conference with cara crist and kathy hoffman who were talking about yes they're concerned about rising numbers in coveted cases but they're equally concerned about rising cases in arizona in in suicide in in mental health issues um we also talked about the fact you heard them saying that when schools close this is detrimental and again every community every situation is different but we have to make the decisions we have to make decisions
063for our local community and again you heard parents tonight reference doctor i always want to call him redford but it's redfield he said again that when we are saying to you that um sometimes there's concern when we say well this the higley dashboard doesn't mirror or trend the community dashboard are you hiding something what are you doing it doesn't make sense one of the things we're seeing is higley's not alone in this again we're following the guidance that we're required for tracking our numbers have to match the health department and one of the things we do a little different than other districts and is we update our our dashboard daily so if you're updating it weekly it may never hit the active column it may hit the resolved column when you're doing it daily you're
064going to see movement because every case is a little different depending upon when you were supposed to first had symptoms and tracking it back with exposure and again that comes direction not from jillian um our district nurse making that up or or one of the district administrators we're following the direction from the state health department so switching to the dashboard for just a second there we go so what hits the dashboard so first of all this is updated daily for monday through friday and it again it has and we're updating not only the cases that might have been reported but if there were new students or individuals or staff members on any location that is also pulled from our student information system so that we can truly monitor at the site again if there are
065positive cases that require communication because there was exposure on campus every day there is a letter or that would go to those either primary or secondary depending upon the exposure sometimes you again depending upon when the case was reported whether it was self-reported or it came from the state you will find that um if the the case may stay longer in the active but each case is tracked individually by their dates on their own and so people can say well why did it go on one day and off the next it's supposed to be there for 10 days depends on the case depends upon when that person had its symptoms and so one of the things that we have had jillian do is is she's been doing a little road show where she's gone around
066to our schools or or has it scheduled to do so in the next few weeks to help answer questions to our our employees about what goes on or why does it go on we had you know questions concerns about what about if a student again their when they showed symptoms they hadn't been on campus for a while they they don't go on obviously we tracked them but it's not posted in here as a column we've had conversation about potentially adding that column although that column would not change our percentage of positivity because again they're cases but they are not active or or on campus at this point so again jillian works tirelessly with the health department on on reporting that and again um this how we're recording each and every case what are the scenarios
067um is part of that presentation we've kind of done in the road show and if at some point you'd like us to come back and do the road show for the community and for the board we will do that because it would it would help to have the examples so you can see scenario one if if a student got sick on this day with with and or showed symptoms or tested and was last on campus which when who is communicated with or not but please know that every active case that is on campus where there would be need for communication for exposure are tracked on that on that dashboard whether in the active cases or in the resolved cases and communication goes out so dr foley just clarification there the example that comes to my
068mind is if someone was tested and confirmed positive let's say over our fall break correct that's not going to go in our confirmed active cases because they weren't on campus for two weeks so if what if it came within correct that fall break time frame so that's not going to show and jillian would have that data and information but it would not go on this that right now this is tracking our protocol for those who need to be communicated because of exposure or on campus during that time frame and again jillian did not make up those time frames she's following the exact dates that she's working with the health officials on and oftentimes i will tell you our our employees and our families are very good at reaching out and providing information and sometimes they
069haven't been but we still have the information and so again one of the things i will encourage you to do is if you have if any community member teacher family member has concern about are they hiding the district the district has no desire to not do this right there is no reason to hide this this is meant to be a tool that we use for us to monitor what's happening on a campus and is there need for concern if you have concern or wondering please call please call and reach out to your site administration reach out to jillian the nurse reach out to us and email so that we can listen to your concern and talk you through it now you may not like the what we're doing or how we're doing it but know
070that we're following exactly with the guidance from the state department on how to track that our numbers have to match theirs and every single case and every single scenario jillian has need tight and documented as thoroughly and completely as possible thank you dr foley for just reiterating what parents and families and our community members can do in the situation where they do i think there is a lot of things going on the rumor mill and that is not always helpful so please go to your principles go to your teachers and have those conversations and teachers go to your principals that is their first you know line of communication and we're there is absolutely no end game for us to try to change this dashboard in any way shape or form we want to be as
071transparent doing it a daily update as possible is anything perfect today i always go back to that there's nothing perfect in education right now but everybody's trying to do the best we possibly can and again if there is somebody out there that we've missed for some reason please bring it to us bring it to the attention of your principles right away and it will be addressed and it will be looked into further the one thing we have we have been very careful to say is that um it's important to know that actually higley does more on the communication than the health department would like our secondary notification where we let you know that there was a case if you're not a primary exposure is more communication than they're comfortable with sending but we feel that
072it's important so one of the things that we're doing above and beyond is the daily update which means it's real time monday through friday cases are moving based on the individual scenarios behind there and two that that additional notification we do is above and beyond what was actually encouraged to do because one of the things that's important is again we've talked about hipaa and for you know hipaa ferpa ada violations if a parent were to call what the nurse could not tell you would be who the person was what was their symptoms that that would be personal information but again um if there is question and concern about that we should we please reach out and again going to those when we're not putting it on the board it's still being tracked because it would
073not impact our percentage of positivity in alignment with the direction we've been given from the health department so again we are not wanting to not do it right and dr foley yes um and just going back to hipaa law we do not know the names of the students so when you email us sometimes you guys will tell us more than what we even know up here so we do not know the names of the students we do not know who's infected who's not it's kept from us as well so just going back to hipaa it's very much a separate thing we just know a number just like you guys thank you and dr foley just wanted to go real quick back to president taylor nothing's perfect we have had some failure and communication and i
074know that's been out there in the community there has been some failure in communication it was not on purpose it was not malicious and once it was brought to our attention it was resolved and if there continues to be you know if there's something that a teacher a parent feels they should have been communicated and weren't they need to reach out to their site administrators you were saying it's not we're not doing anything malicious we have no purpose of doing that um there there was a failure and we were able to track it down and change it and hopefully going forward that that has been fixed so um i appreciate recognizing that we've had this and that we've addressed it we fixed it um nothing's going to be perfect but hopefully um if things do
075happen that it's brought to our attention so that we can correct it um so we were talking about these cases so these come from the health department these numbers well or self-rep the health department confirmation they confirm that or self-reported but obviously we we even move quickly when we've seen a parent provide a positive test she may still be waiting on the confirmation but starts the notification process so that again it is as quick as possible but it is confirmed yes so only the confirmed cases go on the dashboard though we don't although we have a parent notification we start that communication process but it doesn't it'll hit every time there's a communication that every time a communication goes out the dashboard will reflect okay so this could reflect self-reported as well because she's in
076the process of confirming it with the state because she'll get the formal documentation that says positive case and you always have to confirm what the state but we'll start the process of the notification and hitting it the dashboard so even if the state department is a few hours delayed the letter won't stop that day which is different than when we started because initially when we started this process we were fully waiting until we got it from the county and we weren't really taking the health or the self-reported and so now we've updated and changed to where we are now doing the self reported self reported with the with the verification of a test result allows us to to trigger that quickly and so quite honestly most times these things are happening by self-reporting anyhow i
077mean most people are coming forward and saying i have concern what does this mean i will tell you that um jillian has worked really really hard but she has also spent a lot of time counseling parents and families and community members on so what now what and what does this mean and i'm concerned about these what about this and she's been wonderful to help with that and find additional information so dr foley um did i just read today too that the cdc now says 7 to 10 days quarantine instead of 14. so tomorrow jillian has a meeting they at the arizona department of health is having a meeting with all of the local nurses to talk about so what does this mean so yes the cdc just announced that they're looking at shortening the more
078that they learn about covid and how it is transmitted and how it spreads they're looking at the fact that again that quarantine could probably be a shorter period and so they're looking at making recommendations instead of a 14 day to a 7 to 10 day so or 7 to 9 or 7 to 10 days so that guidance is coming so she has a meeting tomorrow with the health department which of course i think one of the other things is when we started this year we started our presentations to you with caution tape under construction one of the things we're finding is that we are operating with the guidance and directions we're given and then as direction and guidance evolves or changes or as we learn more we morph with the most recent guidance so obviously
079as that is formalized and they're going to have their meeting tomorrow it may impact when a health department puts you under quarantine the amount of days you have to be out and again one of the things we'll say is that health department or executive order trump a district plan so we've had parents reach out when when there has been a primary exposure and they have been directed to quarantine and the parent says but i just got the my student just had a negative test here the um unfortunately the order from the health department requires so many days because they view they view that that test is too soon to to demonstrate or to show truly that you have not been exposed and potentially could be harboring the virus so again the guidance here is looking
080at at narrowing down that window instead of a 14 day but again that's being formalized and guidance will come and as soon as we get that direction we'll communicate that out to our health offices who bless their hearts today we're already emailing and texting jillian so what does that mean she's like wait till our meeting tomorrow we'll get guidance and we'll update it so i think what's important to remember is that we will continue to update what we are doing with the guidance that we are given or directed to do please give our regards to mrs fulton and her team i know that it's countless hours and i know that we're used to male emails that might be a little harsh but she sure hasn't as a district nurse um endured the anger or the
081you know the upsetness of a parent and so this is new for her i'm sure so please give her our regards that we appreciate her time and energy well i appreciate your acknowledging that president kaler members of the board because they're she is a member of the team who approaches this with integrity and all she's doing to be wants to do it right with upfront and cautious careful thoughtful and and we we value and appreciate that in her um and what she does with her team so let's moving ahead um i want to talk about the proposal kind of in a nutshell and then we're going to kind of walk through the details of this but one of the things what we're wanting to do is to formalize so so if there happens to be
082a scenario in which and this is where having a dashboard that is updated daily is helpful is if there happens to be a scenario where you are seeing an increase in cases that are sustaining for a few days that's concerning because what that says to us all of a sudden is that there is a change here and how this is happening you've noticed on the dashboard things come on things come off and again those aren't jillian just deciding to play numbers here that is based on each and individual case based upon the exposure the window and tracking it by that campus so if a school said we're going to propose that if a school were to see um three consecutive days where the percentage of positive or active cases met or exceeded the recommended percentages
083which we're going to talk about here in a minute we should be concerned to be perfectly honest with you if that's happening we may have already been told by the arizona department of health got a problem shut down um or what we want to also say is or if we as a district are seeing trends that for instance if if our recommended percentages for a school said and i'll use i'm going to use the early childhood center for a second said six because that was two percent of the population if they were five five five we're not going to say you're not bad enough we have to wait until there's one more of you who has coveted before we would trigger this it would say to us if we're seeing for three consecutive days monday
084through wednesday or tuesday through thursday that we're seeing these numbers are rising unsustaining it says to us we need to probably take a look at that or the health department says because of these exposure this is this is a little bit different trend or or how there was there was for an ins if there was an issue where there was no mass there was primary exposure we'd need to quarantine that again could change the dynamics every case and scenario is a little different it would transition us for to a one week of remote learning because the the concern is is there are too many cases on the campus that are active that cause us to want to make sure that we that we do a mitigation strategy that would slow the spread because we have
085a rise in active cases next slide so our proposal would be is that if we had a site and we were looking at a side-by-side mitigation strategy if we had a school where we saw that those were trending and sustaining and heading in the wrong direction prior to or prior to a directive to shut down we would propose that the next week and this would be made on a week-to-week basis that the next week we would transition the learning model for that campus for one week to a remote learning for everyone on that campus the purpose of that would be to slow the spread and the numbers of positivity down what would happen would be again that by thursday night by five o'clock we would notify families and staff in employees that said come next
086week we are transitioning this school to uh remote learning that gives that doesn't give a whole lot of time but it allows you to know that because of the cases sustaining school would still happen that friday but the following week we would transition to a to a remote learning the entire school would go through some deeper significant deeper sanitization and we'll talk about what that would be in just a second and again the whole school would shift for that one week and we'll talk about why only one week in just a second but again i want to stress that this would be our mitigation plan unless the edhs said you need if if a directive comes this it trump it overrules it trumps our plan it says if an adhs comes in and says nope
087because of a primary exposure we're going to send you into a quarantine now those quarantined days may be fewer in the next few days than they might have been but in instead of it being a one week it could be seven days it could be ten days and it could start tomorrow depending upon the directive we would never ignore a directive from the health department or an executive order so again that's a caveat to that so next slide dr foley really quick before we go on on this slide so i just have a few questions i guess here that if they're if we're in a remote environment can you please clarify for me that that will cease any and all outside activities because you know when when we first started kind of having the discussion
088of a further mitigation plan one of my questions was is there a way that we can slowly start backing things off like many of our speakers have said dr kara krista said many people have said that we know that this spread is not happening within our schools the majority of it whether it's outside family activity um getting together things like that we do still have some activities going on i know it's very difficult for parents i too have a senior and i would love to have my child have a typical senior year and that's just not possible given our circumstances but i think we need to make sure we're prioritizing our classroom education and i'm going to say classroom education because there is value to additional things that we do on our campuses and and
089what our kids get involved in but we need to prioritize our classroom education and so for remote all those things we'll cease correct vice president race members of the board correct we're going to talk about that in just a second about what happens on the campus but yes when the campus is closed everything at that school stops there will be no outside activities clubs sports events of any kind that happen on that campus if if the campus closes the campus closes for the period of the week one of the things that we would also say is an additional mitigation strategy for if we had an administration the district would work with our site administration if we had if we were getting if we were approaching and sustaining numbers not meeting that threshold but rising we
090would encourage events that were happening or performances or are outside things to be postponed delayed cancelled again this is this is why we wanted to formalize this so that we can begin again implementing this as an additional tool in our toolbox for decision making on events and other things but when we trigger a shutdown everything for that week closes down one of the other things i wanted to stress too is that um bullet two this would be made on a week by week basis so let we make the call for a week that if because numbers were rising this week we need to this we're rising and sustaining we need to trigger to a full remote learning if cases continue to come in and i know there are people asking well but how will you
091know school is closed but again remember if if if if if in doubt don't delay we will know eventually because those cases continue to come if if this case is the next week sustained we're not going to we're going to make the call the next thursday to say based on the fact that cases have sustained and are continuing to rise on our active cases we will continue this week it'll be made on a week-to-week basis but our hope would be that again by the time you wrap around two weekends and a whole week that we are minimizing the amount of loss of instructional time and we're almost at a quarantine uh nine days so we'll highlight that here in just a minute and see what it looks like on a calendar but essentially it is
092it is providing an opportunity for slowing the spread again means mitigation strategies are working by minimizing the amount of time that we would be out of school so next slide when we ask when we say well what what what should our proposed percentage of positivity be our our recommendation and again you've seen you've seen other districts put out similar percentages that they're that they're considering for their mitigation plan and again they're yielding different outcomes every district is looking at what works for them but when we as our administrative team looked at this we actually feel that these are good good good good working threshold numbers to to apply and because we're talking about increased and sustained numbers let's take a look at what this looks like next slide so this looks like our dashboard if
093you will because what you've got is the schools the population or size the taking that threshold that we just showed before and again some may ask well why are the percentages different the percentages are different because the number of students on that group or campus again make it so that it would be about the threshold that we would begin to say there is concern here so again looking at the first one cooley early childhood center what if we saw that we were sustaining a monday tuesday wednesday close to six we need to look at we're we're not we're we're concerned about the amount and number of active cases in that in that environment that would lead us to say we may need an additional mitigation strategy to slow the spread so next slide and again
094this is just it's showing it a little bit differently with looking at again these were pulled off the dashboard yesterday not today because they wanted the presentation to be posted 24 hours in advance but looking at what were considered active cases on the dashboard compared to that threshold as of yesterday the active versus the required cases and i want to stress again that it would not be that we have to have the five you have to have six for those three days if we are looking like we are there or we're sustaining and we're not dropping off or we're going to continue to be we're going to err on the side of caution here but that would be a more formal way for people to know that this is what we would do if we
095were concerned about the number of cases on that campus okay hello uh president kaler members of the board cabinet and community and especially all of the people that are here this evening we appreciate it so you might be asking why is it one week and dr foley elaborated but it does give students a nine day break from each other being on the campus and then it allows that time for the spread to slow or stop however we will want parents to continue to let us know if they get a positive case and like dr foley said the health department will continue to update us there will be a complete in-depth sanitation and disinfection of the entire school site that's happening daily but dr fowler and his team will go in and really hit the site
096hard the other thing that we want to emphasize is this approach will lessen the impact academically on our students so they're going to continue to learn remotely but we as we've discussed before we believe in person is the way to go next slide um sorry mrs responds um if i guess go back maybe to the calendar there i know we picked a january example during our christmas break are we still going to be tracking numbers while we're gone so that if for any reason a certain school during christmas time had an increase they would get notification perhaps on that thirst i mean we're not technically working but we are working non-stop 24 7. um so that they wouldn't come back that first week in general that is a possibility for a site correct definitely i
097wanted to make sure because um actually my daughter asked me that question today she goes does this still count during christmas break and i said absolutely but i will double check yes because it's a two-week break so a lot of things can happen when we're gone for two weeks or when we come back and i think it's really important that parents keep vigilant about making sure if your kid has symptoms do not come to school it's okay it's much better for everybody not to do that so i think that our communication process about all of this is key so families know what to do all right so we've already talked about this it's a temporary return to remote learning it's for a one week period monday through friday determined the week before we would send
098notice to parents and staff no later than 5 pm on the preceding thursday but when i spoke with my principals we talked about how important it is if we determine that sooner to get the message out as soon as possible because it impacts so many people in so many ways so the model would shift to remote learning for one week we'll have additional cleaning sanitation disinfection administrators and teachers or other employees would be allowed back on campus either 24 hours or on the next school day so if we close down on friday and his team gets in there and it's good to go they could potentially come back on monday should they desire so some teachers are going to pick i want to teach out in my classroom rather than from home president kayla are
099members of the board vice president reece hopefully this slide will help clarify the question that you had earlier but when we do close a campus down all activities on that campus are closed and this goes honestly for all organizations so when you look at athletics that means we would not be allowing practices anything like that for that nine day period so i know even our sports practice on saturdays that would not be allowed for them to come back in sometimes the questions asked could they go find a different place to practice because of the spread and the group of kids the answer would be no we are saying for nine days you are stopping what is happening on your um with that group activities the same way clubs will not be allowed to meet on
100campus uh same thing not off of campus either they will be closed for the nine uh the nine days if there were supposed to be a performance or event if we could postpone it we would postpone it but if it's not able to be postponed we would cancel that event facilities rentals and working with community education facilities we would have to close for facility rentals as well and so i know there are organizations that are used to using our facilities on a weekly basis for all of the year we would have to be in contact with them and let them know that our facility was not available for that time period because we don't want anyone on our campus the learning will be remote and i think we need to jump on this there's this
101idea of remote versus online that was the huge question back there if you're an online student this does not affect you at all your online classes are going to stay the same way this is only for our in-person students who will now switch to remote for those five school days nine days total but for the five school days originally we had support services on campus we will not be offering those support services on campus for that week there's a waiver that we will be submitting as was outlined in the executive order to the ade because once again our goal is not to have our kids congregate and be on campus we want to reduce that spread this also goes to kids club on that particular campus kids club will not be available on that as
102well this just goes back to again we don't want to close our schools it impacts our community in such a great way the last time our schools were closed everything closed and so parents were home i think about again even mr um to mr glover's comments is we have to all work together to keep our schools open because this time the parents are working again and they don't have that luxury of staying home because everything's still open so i always think that in my head right now is that i know that if if we reach those levels it's just really impactful in so many ways and so again we need all hands on deck to keep our schools open members of the board that's a lovely transition because one of the things we want to
103clarify about this plan again is that this is a mitigation strategy this is different than what happened under executive order that that that had us go into school closure and again it was very different you couldn't go to a restaurant you couldn't go to your favorite hangout things are open now and so this is a mitigation strategy if we find that we have concern about the number of rising cases that are sustaining that tells us that we need to look at that more carefully this is would be our safety it's a mitigation plan again it would be our dashboard that our higley dashboard that would trigger that and again and i just want to reiterate that if at any point though the edhs because of the way the camp the numbers were rising or the
104way they can the the cases were spread if we were directed to close they would determine our return date and we would follow that and we would follow that immediately so again this would be our own mitigation plan in the event of we weren't directed to do something different next slide hey attendance continues to be very important even if we're on a remote learning league so we've had practice with this most of our families understand this unless they're new to our district that students will be accounted for daily and that's because we're using canvas but parents can also telephone email communicate through microsoft teams or google meets teachers can also see student participation through assignment completion and sometimes our parents communicate through writing so all of that is perfectly fine and acceptable only one of
105those is necessary for us to know a student is present doctor doctor mr watson-hauser already talked about this when he said our online students are not impacted by this they continue with attendance and their assignments and their classes as they are currently doing one thing we would like to add sometimes parents want to change modalities and switch they will we will not be allowing people if they were online if we ever go remote to switch over to go back to remote we're gonna you're gonna need to stay in whatever modality you are already in because hopefully this is a one week thing then we go back to in person next slide please all right elementary we will be looking at using canvas as we have and continue to do with our students this is a
106unique thing because elementary students most of them are not one-to-one they're not like secondary taking devices back and forth we're right in the middle of testing season and should this happen we're going to accommodate students without technology by providing printed materials textbooks workbooks etc a lot of our families do have technology so we're blessed the other thing that i want you to recognize is this will resemble what our online kids are currently doing we know that live time with teachers is essential however we don't want our kids sitting in front of the computer for six hours straight so you'll see that there will be small group opportunities there will be time for special services breaks lunch and of course specials so those vary a little bit based on primary self-contained or intermediate which those kids
107are departmentalized in diets or triads secondary schools we're actually looking at a different model than we did before if you remember before we had two days kind of in the mornings then we had a wednesday off and then two days but we really feel like to maintain the acute epidemic academic momentum of what we've been doing in person that we need them to be active and engaged with us more than we did before so what we're asking is that they will follow their daily schedule but the only exception would be lunch since everyone has the opportunity to be lunch everyone would basically have an a lunch so they go to first second and third hour have lunch then go to fourth fifth and sixth hour we're asking and requiring the teachers to have a teams
108meeting when i met with the administration we felt that 35 minutes was an appropriate amount of time to have an open teams meeting required for every single class we picked 35 because that gives them about 25 to a half an hour in between classes because we know that sometimes there's screen fatigue although i feel like sometimes with teens they have a lot of screens anyway and i doubt they get as fatigued as we do but there is that opportunity for them to have breaks as well but you know what we found is that the engagement when we're remote is not nearly what it is when we're in person and we have to find a way to keep that up and requiring expecting more during this one week closure is really important for us and so
109we're looking to do them following meeting with every class every day and doing it for at least a 35-minute teams meeting food service sorry um if for any reason this would occur during finals how would finals be addressed in our especially our secondary if we would continue to follow the finals schedule uh how it is with the half days and the finals put in there and then we would be looking at a way that they do finals remotely that's not ideal but if that's something that we would have to do i think it's important to finish up the semester and get that finished and not push it back to when they came back from break thank you do most of our teachers plan um a week or two two weeks how how how do our
110teachers plan is it a one-week plan a two-week plan i always think about like if they were going to close they kind of have their lessons planned for the next week for sure but do they go further that really depends on the teacher okay okay food services food services will still be open and we'll be able to provide on our campuses they can't eat on campus but they can drive through through curbside pickfish for breakfast and lunches good evening president kayla members of the board my fellow colleagues as well as our higley community impact on employees so we certainly know this is going to be disruptive to our students our community but also our employees and we've tried to think strategically and thoughtfully about how we would not only continue the momentum as we talked
111about because we have to in terms of our employees in their instructional models but also looking at what we have to do at the site to be able to maintain what we need to do and keep them ready when they come back so in terms of our administrators our front office employees facilities maintenance grounds and custodial after that 24 hour period shutdown where all those additional campus-wide sanitation and disinfecting protocols will occur we are expecting those groups of employees to come back to work continue to wear masks in physical distance and the reason for that is because we still have to operate although our students are not physically on campus they are still going to be learning remotely and all of those same factors as ms schritzer's and mr lotzenheiser has mentioned in regards to
112attendance etc has to be addressed and people have to be available for that our certified teachers and our other certified again after the 24 hour disinfection cleaning and protocols they can either come back to work and as ms richards mentioned earlier work in their classrooms we found that in the fall term when we first started remotely a number of teachers felt it was better to actually work out of their classroom due to connectivity issues with internet as well as sometimes depending on their home situation it was better to be less distracted so we'll allow them that option and or they may work remotely and if they work remotely we'll continue the work log it has to be submitted to their site administrator as we always have for any remote work whether it's been in the
113fall or if it's continued in certain circumstances in regards to quarantining right now with certain employees and situations depending on the needs beyond that in terms of our classified particularly our paraprofessionals our health aides and our kids and kids club employees related to our paraprofessional specific there are certain situations in which worked successfully back in the spring as well as in the fall where utilizing those paraprofessionals in that virtual classroom is the first option so we would want to look at that if not we would look at an alternative assignment for example because we could never not have enough people helping in situations of sanitation and disinfecting duties we certainly have employees who would still have applicable to them as of right now continue the ffcra that goes until december 31st we've not heard anything
114in terms of whether or not that will be extended as of right now but if they have time and they have not had to utilize any hours in related to that paid sick time that would be available to them in lieu of any general leave if we need help at other sites you know we have been active in terms of our hiring and what we've been doing all across all positions in the district but we are still short in certain areas at certain sites and we can always utilize the systems in crossing guards lunch aids again other custodial type duties at some of the other sites so we would look at that as an option too and again other disinfecting and sanitation type methods they could take their general leave or they could look at
115unpaid time um so we have lots of options for everybody and we'll certainly work with them and continue to work with them as we have since all of this started back in march and work with their needs and the best serve theirs as well as ours the best we can questions comments concerns dr foley i know we've talked about hybrid it's a word that gets thrown around a lot do you want to explain maybe why we didn't go that route just for our community to hear or maybe it's better for mrs martin's because i know she also had that conversation with our teachers but i just thought i'd pose it to you and you can maybe pass it out as you see fit thank you board member wilson and governor board absolutely so one of
116the things when we started back at the beginning of this we actually had like a covid or our team that looked at all different kinds of scenarios looked at all kinds of different schedules one of the things that initially came out of those conversations was um i mean we looked at all all different kinds of schedules there was concern about the hybrid schedule being that the hybrid schedule there was a lot of concern that there was a very hard as a teacher to plan in person as well as online for students who are not there when students are not there on those days they work independently and and again the teacher they can you know call the teacher before or school or after school but during the day the teacher would not be available so
117that was one of the feedback that we got initially from our task teams looking at schedules going that is not something that we wanted to recommend it was either we were either going to be in person or online so again could we implement a hybrid schedule we could but we've also asked we've asked administrators we've asked teachers talk with us about how do you feel about a hybrid for the one or two who said yeah i'd be interested in doing a hybrid now remember in a hybrid the teacher comes every single day it's the students who come they come two days in and usually a wednesday out and again that's what our initial schedules kind of looked like that we played around with the thought was that makes it really hard because you're trying to
118do both remote and in person and it slows down the amount of academic content that you cover so from an academic perspective the task team said not our preferred schedule so we've asked people tell us about you want to look at a hybrid a kind of schedule for the like i said the one or two say yeah i'm interested we've had substantially more that said for the very same reasons that came out in our initial test team so it's not that high that higley didn't put together a hybrid model we looked at several different schedules it was the recommendation of our task teams that we originally composed this summer when we began looking through what could what it could would should might or or potentials for us as we navigated through school closure look like
119when we reopened so again if any of my other team members want to add additional that's where we were with hybrid i would just say that when i've talked to a lot of parents they were worried about it and trying to make sure they had child care every other day or whatever model we put in place so i i understand that doesn't represent everybody but in some of my conversations they communicated that as well the other potential issue for our teachers is if they're working every day and they have kids in our schools and their kids are two days a week where do their kids go and mrs richards i'll piggyback on that that um again parents are working and so and i and i'm concerned that if for me personally looking at a hybrid
120option just big picture is that the kids on the days they're in school they're in school in a clean environment with a mask on and on the days that they're not in school they're at the parks and fat cats and other places and skate parks and and there's not those kind of so then you were exposing teachers to a student one day every day there you kind of know you know we're in a groove together right now and then oh tomorrow i don't know where you're going to be or what you're doing and then the next day you're back in my classroom and so i i too kind of wrestled with hybrid this summer and i those kind of thoughts kept coming back into my head president killer members of the board again it is
121a structured schedule it works it is a potential option there are some districts that are using it and there are those who love it or hate it there are advantages to smaller groups then again that's one of the things but when our task teams and again one of the things that we've tried really hard to do is again build our plan and run it through our leaders and our teachers and our members of our task force and get feedback that was not the one that they wanted us to consider at that time for many reasons so again that was the feedback we received and i too heard that from teachers i just wanted our community to hear it because a lot of our community had been asking well why haven't we considered a hybrid and
122i just wanted to make it very clear that our teachers were at least clear for us we heard from teachers that they did not want to do a hybrid seeing different kids in and out of the classroom they would be exposed the same as what they are right now so i not that i was suggesting a hybrid i want to make sure that's very clear i just wanted it to be known that we did consider it um it wasn't mr glover is gonna be not allowed to be very it was something we did discuss in the summer and that's what we had came to and we had i think talked about it again um again a few weeks ago and i just want to make it very clear i was not for it i just
123want the teachers to know i'm not for it i don't want you to have to do that but i did want our community to know we have considered it so thank you mr glover i'm president so um so now people have numbers and they have some certainty and i think that will give some people a level of comfort what i hope people did not take away from looking at our dashboard and i want to be clear is that you can relax now [Music] we have got to keep our our foot on the gas pedal here you know when i hear people saying like kids don't get coveted or they're not carriers kids do get it a million more than a million american kids have gotten it they can transmit and it's dangerous to suggest otherwise
124you know i i learned the term nasal load because i learned that little kids can carry huge amounts of uh nasal load you didn't you didn't learn that when they were two in your house no i did not i did not know that one um but these are not magical numbers you know this is a result of hard work you know our numbers are low uh compared to the outside community because of her the herculean efforts of our staff and i would say some responsible parenting and a massive investment in things like um like air filters and and cleaning cleaning supplies so if we want to stay open you know we just we cannot be complacent or cavalier about these numbers um they're serious and there are triggers now um but it's this tonight i
125think is a call to the community that and you know we're fighting well we have to admit we're fighting uh the clock for time here until a vaccine gets here which would probably be i'm hearing april may-ish maybe if we're lucky so it yeah it's going to be a long year and i would continue to encourage our teachers to be flexible and understanding as they have been and to continue to do that as we persevere and uh you know i'll just i'll finish my comments by saying if we want to stay open we all have to do the right things and encourage one another to do the right things we know what works thank you mr glover i just again i hats off to our teachers because i know um as much as the roller
126coasters that we've ridden um every day is it has been challenging especially when they do have a class that has been several kids are missing because of a quarantine and then trying to watch over them and their current class and we love our teachers and we're so grateful for them and that is across the board in our district and so just hats off to our teachers and know that we we eat drink and think about this all day long every day it doesn't it doesn't leave us so yes and i agree mr glover we we have to stay vigilant this is not a time to relax um on a lighter note i did i did see a meme the other day that just made me chuckle a little was that moms were afraid to send
127their kids or let their kids come home for christmas break that they would never get to go back and because that happened last time with spring break and so i was kind of giggling a little bit but it is true and it could happen and we need to stay vigilant so this is three i just i too want you guys have worked so hard at this and i want to thank the focus of the entire test team to keep our schools open and we receive a lot of emails and some say you know you guys say this is a tough decision but it's really not just close them and then it's a really easy decision and so thank you for putting our students first and coming up with a concrete plan something that we can
128look at something for our staff to measure something for people to know what's happening in our schools we've said it earlier we're not seeing the spread within our campuses and so it is hard when we look at that dashboard every thursday when we get our daily numbers it is difficult to see and say why are we still sending our children to school look at how much we're growing here and our campuses because of our teachers because of our administrators our custodial staff because of our students they are keeping those numbers low on campus and i have to tell you i have again well i wasn't able to respond to everybody there are emails the way our emails come in i it shows you when you have emails from that person and it will list them
129out i have emails from people who in the summer were sending emails do not open you're being irresponsible if we send our kids back to school do not do this it's not safe and now receiving an email we have to keep our kids in school it is the safest place for them to be and we need them to be there academically we need to be for them to be there mentally socially emotionally and so they need to be there i have received emails from teachers who again emailed me in the summer do not open it's not safe you shouldn't do this now who are also emailing going we cannot go back to a remote environment we need to be in person what i've seen from these kids and how they've worked and that they want
130to be there this virus is real it's going to be here for a long time and hopefully vaccines will help but you guys have done an amazing job from an administrative standpoint i feel working with our staff if people are afraid they they have their own reasons for being afraid and you know thank you miss martens for helping navigate for our staff what they can do what their options are we want every single one of our staff members and students to be safe and to feel comfortable and we're doing everything we can to keep our students and staff safe but if they're not comfortable that conversation needs to happen and thank you for giving so many options and really working on what we can do to try and help make a staff member feel safe
131here and comfortable so you i know have put in countless numbers of hours working with our staff and and it's so appreciative and so like mr glover said earlier our theaters need to close our bars need to close those need to close b i'm not saying they need to close right now don't let's not take my words out of context but those need to close before our schools do we need to prioritize our students and their education and um so i i love the plan thank you for taking the time to do it i have to tell you while i love the plan i'm not thrilled of thinking of our kids going back to a remote situation it was not conducive to their learning it was not healthy for parents and you know i mean
132a lot of guys say happy wife happy life boy you know you have moms and dads who may still be working from home who are trying to do their jobs to provide for their families and we go back into that remote environment and they're trying to be educators and they're trying to get through their work day that they can't change their schedule and they have conference calls and trying to help their kids so the thought of going back to a remote situation is not great for me but understanding why we would need to do it and that you have a plan when we would need to do it and we will not close our entire district unless we're told to do so um i know that was one of the concerns that people have said
133for that we would make these decisions district-wide that they will be site specific um so that thank you i know you guys are working hard and i appreciate the thoughtfulness and um the time it took to create this to really make sure that this is what we need to do and how to do it so um i think it's i think it's important that people understand we like mr glover's been up here so many times we have to do our part our communities have stopped doing some of their part our grocery stores don't wipe down the carts like they did at the beginning of this and in the summer they have the little wipes for you but they're not doing that people are getting lazy and using the chin diaper instead of a mask and
134you know i i'm not a fan of masks either they drive me crazy but i wear them in public i wear them when i'm at work i it's important so we do need everybody to do their part and no matter what your feelings are for your own child whether you believe it's real not real whether you believe in masks that they help not help we need to think of someone else and we need to think of our students and if you have an online student and they're doing great i'm glad and anything we can do to help you one of the questions we had on our board packet was could we see our online lists and what i noticed is we have classes online for one student class is online for one student because a
135student for whatever reason chose to be online which is the beauty of the choice and that teacher made it happen that teacher made sure that the student could get the class that they wanted as an elective to teach it online so we have done a lot and we just need people to continue don't have huge parties please talk to your kids know where they are please don't support them going to large events it's it just puts everybody in jeopardy so i guess i took mr glover's little soapbox and um i i just we need to do our part we need to keep our kids in school i appreciate the plan that really focuses on not a knee-jerk reaction because our community numbers are climbing but what's really happening in our schools so thank you yes
136thank you dr foley and team i know people were upset with us for waiting until december 2nd to roll this out but it wasn't just a one-and-done this was a comprehensive mitigation plan once again created from scratch and um precise to higley which i appreciate and that we just didn't kind of piecemeal something together but we we did talk to our stakeholders and that was really important so thank you for all the work any other comments or questions i do have the online classes we did ask for them and i was pretty impressed with all like vice president reece said all the classes that we're offering it's amazing honestly because i wasn't sure i'm like okay we are hearing that you know some classes are not being offered i looked there is a lot to
137be offered um it's pages and pages of you know regular english honors english ap english all the things um so if you're not comfortable it's okay not to be comfortable and to send your kid into this environment this is an okay environment too i just i stressed it when we went back in the fall and i'll say it again your choice is the choice you need to make we are not judging you i'm not judging you i would assume no one up here is judging you if you feel like you need to send your child for any reason to the online environment and i don't feel like they should be judged to go in person either that decision is purely based on your family and what you need at that time and if this is
138the option great if the other option is the option great let's not judge each other on that let's come together and just agree that you're educating your child the best way you see fit at this time so thank you for this because this is really amazing on how many classes we are offering and thank you to the teachers who are picking up seventh seven fifths then all the things to make this possible because i know there's a lot of teachers who teach one class because they're in school in the in the in person for the other five so thank you i think we have some staff members right now that are teaching in person doing a six-fifth online and also getting their master's degrees or other things they're going to stu their students themselves and
139so again teachers are to me are some of the most amazing people on earth and i um support them and adore them so with that i moved at the governing board i'm gonna move on to 6.1 i move that the governing board approves the district's coven 19 mitigation plan in the event there are increased percentages of covet 19 cases on a school campus second all those in favor motion carries 4-0 i move that we adjourn second all those in favor i have a good evening i