001all right good evening i'm going to call this meeting to order dr thomason roll call president keller please let the record show that all five board members are present tonight thank you very much we are going to have a moment of silence followed by the pledge i move that we approve the agenda second any questions or concerns all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries five zero uh superintendents report dr thomason president kayla are members of the board we do have some exciting things coming up in two weeks we have our last board meeting before the first quarter is over and then we go into fall break starting on september 28th going through october 9th so we'll have a two-week break for for the entire district and then on october 21st we'll have the
002next board meeting and the only board meeting for the month of october thank you very much fall we felt a little fall last night i do believe it was such a delight i thought okay arizona i'll love you again all right board comments mrs wilson i just wanted to thank all of our staff especially here at district but then even lower our admin our teachers our staff everybody who made tuesday possible it was a big heavy lift and even our online teachers they did a great job i've heard very big praises i also was driving near cooley today and saw a gilbert police officer pull over there's a lot of construction up there on wrecker and he pulled over and was able to cross kids at that little cross there and i just want to
003thank gilbert pd and probably maricopa county sheriffs because i'm sure they're out in high force and helping our kids stay safe on the way to and from school so just thank you to all those people thank you mrs wilson i also noticed there was a lot of people out cleaning up trees today and even community members were trying to help so um there's still quite a few down around here so yes beautiful thank you thank you mr witovic yes um i i'm just i just prepared something because i think it's important that the community that's watching knows everything that that took place for us today so i'm going to read something to you here our schools reopened yesterday our community can be proud of the higley administration teachers and staff who have dedicated countless hours
004to ensure our schools have met the state and county and public health dashboard guidelines for a safe and healthy environment we want our students to be excited not fearful as they begin their school year whether online or in person as our students returned to school yesterday the staffing teachers needed to be adjusted to accommodate both types of in-person and online students we have amazing teachers and staff who are doing all they can do to ensure each student will be served to do this particularly administration and staff completed countless hours they worked over the weekend they worked on labor day people you cannot understand how many hours it went in just for to say let's open school and they all wanted this to be a safe and successful opening our buildings were disinfected new higher tech
005air filters were installed and tested classrooms were rearranged to accommodate social distancing and additional cleaning supplies were ordered students schedules were reviewed according to their online in-person preference and were assigned to be taught by our qualified higley certified teachers no matter what their preference took place that took place on september 7th and that was huge in reference to they had to move all the students that were online or the ones off online it was an incredible task and what that took place and i just applaud them the it infrastructure was reviewed and enhanced to accommodate online learning classes additional safety procedures were determined the staff was trained and new signage was put into place these are extraordinary times the response from the higley staff and teachers have been extraordinary to meet the challenges of reopening
006our schools no matter how our students have selected to learn i as a current board member of the higley governing board join the community in wanting the best for all our students i would like to publicly thank every single employee for working together to ensure a safe and successful opening i'd like to further say for the people that are watching out there on television or anything like that anytime you come in contact in the near future with a higley employer be it a bus driver a school person the secretary anybody just say thank you because what they have done is an incredible task and i want this community to we need to begin to show some kindness first of all and i think this is a great start for all of us to start acknowledging
007all the good work that we have done together to bring our kids to school today thank you thank you mr witovich and i echo both of your sentiments and i know that several many of our teachers thanks to great leadership are doing six fifths they are um getting we are getting those ap classes for those kiddos we are getting i heard about a student that goes to drama for first hour and then goes home and goes online so we've made some accommodations and i am too so grateful that we are trying to reach every student's need to the best of our ability and it's with great staff and great leadership that that's been taking place all right we're going to move on to request to speak i have a couple thank you mrs reach stretch
008okay we value input from our constituents the time has been aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board please remember this is not an appropriate venue to evaluate discuss or criticize district personnel policy keb provides a process for complaints about personnel speakers should be aware that false statements about individuals may result in civil liability members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ars 38-431-01h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date please limit your remarks to just three minutes mrs amy ludwig oh thank you i'd like to start out mr glover um thank
009you thank you so much for your continued support of teachers and students in this district i greatly appreciate you i'm so sad to know that you're not running for re-election okay so to the rest of the board um this is my fourth year teaching i thought that the first six weeks of this this year were hard that is nothing compared to how this week has been and it's day two um you said all of these lovely words about how much you appreciate how hard teachers are working but i don't think you you really understand fully what's going on inside classrooms right now every teacher that i know is working a minimum of 12 hours a day they're working weekends that's time sacrifice from our families time that we're not getting compensated for at this point
010if i incorporate those hours into my pay i'm making about 13 an hour 13 an hour um we are expected as teachers to do so much extra sanitizing to keep students and staff safe i appreciate that the pacing guide is not being adjusted at all we are still expected to teach students the same amount of content that we are in a regular year because they're getting tested on it not because that's what's best for students not because it's what's best for teachers but because they're getting tested for it so um i don't how were we supposed to do that i don't understand how we're supposed to teach the same amount of content in um a limited amount of time because transitions take much longer now because we have to clean and sanitize everything we're supposed
011to keep track of when a student keeps their mask on and off i am 90 students i have 30 students rotating in and out of each of my classrooms i can tell you right now there is no effective way for me to tell you who took off their mask in a class at what time it's not possible unless that's all i'm doing all day but of course that the pacing guide as i said has remained the same so i'm still expected to teach them content as well um it's it's a lot it's very difficult and um you made this decision by cherry-picking your data and you were not up front and clear about that so the metrics were not met they were met for the county and they were met for the district and you
012combined them which is the opposite of what what you did prior but i digress so um you made this decision by cherry-picking the data if teachers were to do that um i think we'd probably have a lot more a-plus schools throughout the state but of course we're not allowed to do that and nor would we because we like our data to be accurate because that's how we effectively teach um and you did this with one week notice one week notice for families and for teachers so that was so nice of you to do it over labor day so we could sacrifice our three-day weekend to be in the classroom preparing because guess what my classroom was not prepared because my hours and hours and hours of time were spent creating my online canvas and then
013we had one week and two days where we we didn't have to teach we had those two days to do everything that we needed to do wednesday we had our meeting that gave us our policies and procedures wednesday we open school tuesday it's like a 44-page playbook that's constantly being updated it doesn't even have the contents on it because it's changing so often i submitted my resignation to the district today i'm at a school that i love to be out with the team that i i is so strong with students that are amazing and parents that are so supportive and i had to quit my job today because i am unhealthy due to my stress level because of the decision that you made you could have waited you could have waited and given teachers the
014time that we needed given families the time that they needed we could have wrapped up first quarter and gotten everything all squared away but you didn't do that you gave us one week notice and you're sitting here saying thank you for all of our hard work but i'm um those words are lost on me i'll be honest i just wanted to stand up on behalf of all of the teachers that i know in the district because they are working just as hard as i am uh we're actually teaching online and in person so i wanted to stand here and say that the decision you made was not based on accurate data you are not clear in the way that you represented your data i hate to ask you i'm almost done and because of that
015i had to quit my job so because i can't get i could just get a second job i can't do that because of the amount of stress and work that i already have to do that is a direct result of the actions of the board cherry-picking data and giving teachers one week notice to do everything so i appreciate your thanks i'm i'm i'm i'm so glad in my heart that it's meaningful to you thank you thank you mrs ludwig miss ludwig sorry molina rangel hi good afternoon um that's a credible story um i certainly want to echo that sentiment for weeks i've watched patiently completely impressed with the online schooling my personal students doing fantastic hearing a bunch of families struggle so fortunate right feeling very fortunate that my teachers are prepared and my students
016have the support they need i understand that's not every family what i asked on the last school board meeting when i submitted is that you just please take the time to make a good decision because we cannot all go back to school as a high risk family as other high risk families we have to make decisions on what's best to keep our child safe my children are doing fantastic at home my husband and i do a lot to make sure they have everything they need we work 10-hour days we work on the weekends we work on the holidays there's no compromise if you're not a teacher as well we have to do both my concern is that they went back to school with very short notice very little information from sauceman junior high on what
017our options were you can get more information later but make your decision now who does that i give job offers to people and they won't accept them unless i tell them how much money i'm going to give them what's the difference i would expect the same consideration the problem is my daughter was told yesterday she has no instructor at 12 years old teach yourself that makes no sense to me so what i'm asking is i understand there needs to be time these teachers have done an incredible job so far i have no doubt that it can happen again i'm asking to please consider for the for the children that have to stay home at sosman junior high please please get them an instructor i mean my daughter wants to learn how lucky am i can
018you please give them some teachers can you please give them an option to learn in an equal manner as every child that gets to go back well i'm asking thank you this is mr philip rangel uh my name is phil rangel uh molina is my wife we're in the same uh situation with our daughter uh currently everything uh that she's doing online i've talked to the principal i've talked to um i've lost a message for the superintendent to give me a phone call back also um as it stands right now we have a daughter who's struggling at age 12 to deal with online learning it's she wants to learn that there are no teachers willing to help we were told that she has the ability to speak to a teacher on wednesday and all of
019her teachers have combined within one hour of her if she has any questions on any of her assignments whatsoever so she's supposed to go to every teacher within a one hour period she has no interaction with anybody else she deals directly with a module that she has to figure out herself colleges don't do that my son goes to centennial elementary he's got a platform and the one thing that i look at is we were there we were out there at centennial elementary with signs honking horns for red for ed because it was a cause we believed in i feel like this is the time where we need to be paid back our students should not have to suffer because you chose not to give them a proper education my daughter is in accelerated english she's
020in accelerated classes and as of today one of her lessons that she had to do was she had to do a point of view who is telling the story my son did that last year in third grade so my daughter is currently going to suffer when she goes back if she goes back and she's going to be behind for everything that she worked for from kindergarten through sixth grade on accelerated she's in she's in the honor society she worked hard on an application throughout her uh this summer to make sure she got into her yearbook class that year of class was taken away from her because it's an elective she can't have anymore the school messed up and headered in-person learning so everything that we have regarding online we were given within a day to
021to process this so the school messed up our enrollment and didn't have us in anything so we were not receiving any emails so we we all go in now uh we have a zoom call tomorrow at 11 a.m with the principal but we work 10 to 12 hours a day just like the teachers do how are we supposed to take the time off from our schedule when the uh the in-person learning has a zoom call at 5 30 so it's a lot of inconvenience so me as a parent i have to teach my child because the resources aren't there for a zoom class what is the reason why we can't have a a computer in the class with just a camera on during while the teacher gives the lessons to the people in the live
022class no one can answer any of the questions like this her schedule is completely changing i don't want to see my daughter suffering there's nothing like seeing a a child that is sad and and frustrated and has no one to go to other than her parents because the teachers are are not there anymore i guess you can go to the teacher from you know 11 to 12 on a wednesday but she has to pick and choose which one the online is a complete mess and i'm all i'm asking for is the time to get it fixed right we've been in this pandemic since march i work for wells fargo we transitioned from home and figured out everything within two months we're a multi-billion dollar corporation we had the resources to do it but it's now
023six months for higley unified school district i know our tax dollars are going to this somehow we can figure it out i hate to cut you off but thank you thank you very much okay we're going to move on to six i move that we approve 6.1 to 6.8 seconds questions comments and concerns all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries five zero okay we are going on to a president taylor yes can we thank for the gifts can we do a thank you to the school for the gift oh yes you can i believe anybody remember it was coronado i think again pto i just thought it would be nice to thank them yes absolutely i did have that on my notes earlier but yes thank you to the pto of coronado they've
024done a lot already this year okay now we're going to our information update from educational services president kayla members of the board at this time i'd like to turn it over to mr luttenselder to give us an update on our educational services president kayla members of the board dr thomason members of cabinet uh dr foley and mrs richards can't be here tonight so you're stuck with me so um we've got quite a few different topics for discussion uh that we're going to go through today next slide please so if you'll take a look we're going to have an update from jillian fulton our district nurse we'll talk about elementary specials tonight we'll talk about the secondary online options different things that we've done to help fill you in i have a short athletics update and
025then we have a food services update as well so those are just some of the tasks and i would like to thank you for recognizing the hard work that many many of our people have done behind the scenes and forward-facing it was as we know the split was a very big task and um there are a few people that i'd like to thank before i forget we have a team in research and assessment who did all the back and work and when you talk about people who came in over the weekend they started saturday morning on making this split happen for us and so i'd like to thank dr susan borzitch brian campbell lori collins julie shipman billie jean welsine and julie cutler that group came in really worked behind the scenes then to allow
026the schools to start making some of those decisions and making those changes it was a very very huge lift and so i'd like to thank them president kayla and members of the board dr thomason members of cabinet my name is jillian fulton and the district nurse i have a little health update tonight the first slide here just to recap what we've already gone over and what's already in our guidelines the exclusion guidelines the maricopa department of public health require that anyone who exhibit a covit 19 symptom or symptoms must be excluded from school may return when the following criteria is met those have not changed as the 24 hours fever-free without reduced fever-reducing medication improvement of symptoms for at least 24 hours and 10 days have passed they can have a negative lab test which
027is optional not required in place of 10 days so those are things that we've already had in place this right here the maricopa department of public health services additional component that we have added is the exclusion of students who have an absence related to covet 19 symptoms what that means is if the student is called in absent for any symptom of clovid 19 we are monitoring that it's going to our health office and they are following up with that they'll be screened by the school site health aide that screening includes any active cova 19 symptoms and we do take into consideration the pre-existing conditions from there we have them on our watch list and we're watching them to make sure that they're feeling better if things are escalating if they're being tested if they're not
028if a student has active cova 19 symptoms that are not related to a pre-existing condition we're following those same exclusion guidelines to be able to bring them back to school and these are the exclusion guidelines and the highlighted sentence at the top is what i added this includes students who are reported absent due to any one of the above symptoms and this was given to me by the health department and i find it very easy to follow and it's just nice little picture so i added that in here tonight you can see screen for cova 19 and you can go through all of those no flags they can come to school exposure close contact no symptoms cannot go to school home for 14 days all the way through there and you can see on the
029right where this new component was added at least one symptom cannot go to school um 10 days since first symptoms no fever for at least 24 hours so same guidelines underneath that mrs fulton can i ask a question on that um when we talk about pre-existing conditions it's arizona it's allergy season it's it's always allergy season i don't know that arizona has an off-allergy season for something congestion runny nose is very common with allergies do they need to have some type of medical record saying that they suffer from allergies um you know not not everyone goes to the doctor for allergies that it's something that over-the-counter allergy medicine takes care of because that's what it is so can can you help on that a little bit yes um president killer board member reese i can
030give you a good example too but to answer the first part of your question yes so if sorry i can't see if they have um pre-existing conditions those are documented in our health system in synergy and so sorry i'm thinking of a couple different things to say but parents when they're updating all their contact information there's also medical information and they can update at that time and they can put in something like a pre-existing condition a diagnosis that being said i have had examples where there wasn't something listed of a pre-existing condition however we pulled the data that we do have how many times that student had been in the health office for the same situation in the past year in the past two years and we collected that and looked at that and talked
031to the parents so this wasn't a absolutely you're going home sorry you have a runny nose we look at absolutely everything i will say if they don't have any documentation and i don't have a history of it they need to go home for those 10 days so okay so if they didn't put seasonal allergies in synergy will you accept a medical diagnosis of seasonal allergies i mean and i get it because unfortunately every symptom of kovid is the symptom of everything else too and just because you have symptoms of something does not mean it's covenant and i i get that and i um i understand frustrations um but i i know more so right now that it's the congestion and the runny nose it's the allergy piece um if they never marked seasonal allergies on
032their form i mean i would hate for students have to miss 10 days of school when they do have seasonal allergies and a parent's never thought of marking that because if they think of allergies they think of a food allergy or a medication allergy president keller and board members the parents that i have talked to i remind them to go in and update that information unfortunately if there is nothing documented and we don't have a history of those symptoms being consistent they will go home for the 10 days however they do have an option to go get tested with a negative test and i have been giving out resources just today of a testing site that is testing all ages and i'm getting results back in 18 to 24 hours so they do have a
033choice to to be able to do that and help come back and they can go to the doctor after that and have things documented and bring that to me but it is not a free one time okay you wouldn't got a note and you get to come back we're not allowed to accept those notes per the health department so if we can start documenting that and we have that history of course we take that into consideration thank you for our online elementary specials update i will do my best mrs richards for you it has been a great start for our elementary students but when we look at online basically one of the challenges that was had to be addressed is how a special is going to be happened so i have a statement that i'd
034like to read or some notes from mrs richards our elementary online students have will have access to art music media and pe while they're learning online special area teachers from all of our elementary campuses are contributing to this very important initiative ms stephanie watovic our online specials teacher on assignment is coordinating the collection and uploading of these lessons weekly into canvas as you can see that's a picture of what the canvas page would look like when the students log in grades will not be taken as these are enrichment opportunities and really when we when we talk about our moving forward together this is an example of how we have an example a good blending and teamwork opportunities from teachers all over the district that are coming together found a need moved forward there's an organized
035way now that we're going to be able to provide specials for online learning elementary students so we would like to give a shout out again to the special teachers and to our specialist teacher on assignment who's coordinating all of this work for us additionally when we took a look at our online elementary students how are we going to be able to fit in the band and orchestra opportunities and so with those discussions of those teachers we really need to thank mr alexander rivera and mr david jakes because what they're doing is providing an enrichment course almost like an after school enrichment opportunity that parents can volunteer and opt in for their students regardless of what school in the district they go to and so they meet on wednesdays at 3 30 well given because we
036need that music instruction to continue and we don't want people who are unfortunately are having to make the choice to stay at home to miss out on that and so these two instructors stepped up and are leading this opportunity so it's a free abandoned orchestra after school course wednesdays at 3 30. currently right now we have 66 students in the district that are taking advantage of this situation and so once again i think it's a wonderful way for our students to continue their love of music and the fine arts and thank you again to the teachers stepping up outside of their normal duty to do this yes i just want to say again thank you for all these um teachers that have stepped up in these difficult times and it just um i know it's
037helping their programs too for the future and that's you know been a concern for all of us making sure that so next year we'd still have a robust band and orchestra program going and even if a student does need to stay home if they can come even in an afternoon this is an awesome awesome i'm really thrilled with all of this it's happening thank you so let's jump into a secondary school's update and the idea of collaboration and you know we talk about professional learning communities amongst our teachers and things i truly feel like our principals we're in a very very professional learning community over the past two weeks i know some of you visited kind of our war room as we were outlining how many kids were taking what different courses and where we
038could turn around and offer those courses online and the collaboration that happened not just between the high schools together but the junior high or the middle schools in with each other and figuring out how we're going to get teachers and coverages is it perfect no it's not still a work in progress and we're still working really hard to get the kinks out and we knew that it wasn't going to be easy but we're working really hard to make this important split happen so our online courses are taught they're not school specific and so you might be a student at higley high but we might have a teacher at williamsfield that's picking up the section and actually it might be a highly qualified salesman teacher that could have been able to pick it up or cooley
039teacher and vice versa and so that's where i think the really unique part of sharing who we have available and how can they help and then we got to a point where we had to make a decision how are we going to offer these courses online and so this is where to go back to our teachers we came to them and said would you be willing to teach a course as a six fifths for those of you aren't familiar teacher teaches five classes during the day has a prep hour the six fifths is basically them saying i will give up my prep hour to teach an online section and because of that we had an overwhelming majority of our teachers that said let us help and so we did that there's a significant number if
040you want to know the specifics i think ms martin's has that specific but they stepped up and allowed us to offer more than we thought we could and i think at different depths than we were anticipating earlier and so i publicly would like to say thank you to all of those teachers we're stepping we do know it's stressful we know that these are hard times and we know that their commitment to our kids is outstanding because the bottom line that's who this is for this is for our kids let's just tag on to that i think the community has to understand we don't have any manuals you don't and and for for these teachers i mean they could just sit back and say you know let's just let it happen nothing happens in this district
041and we don't have it but these teachers have stepped up created some fantastic programs to the point that other districts are looking at them online and it's it's wonderful sure there's going to be some hiccups but as as a group of us we we just need to be patient with each other and we're going to get through this but please please thank this group of people for taking the initiative and taking the step forward to making a difference for our kids here okay thank you we will and one thing i i'm happy about this because i feel like we're able to look at the funding for this out of the grant money stabilization grant money and so instead of paying third-party vendors to come in or do other things the money's going directly back to
042our teachers who are picking up the lift and the load and i think that's an important thing for them and so the next couple slides just kind of shows once again at the high school level this is where we're taking a look at the different courses that are listed it's a little bit different than we anticipated because we have been working with chandler gilbert community college to make sure that we have those duel and rob enrollment options they're actually extending uh the the deadline the deadline was supposed to be this week we're extending it to the 22nd so that we can go in and promote more hey please sign up for dual dual enrollment options we have these available for you we have now some a lot of our teachers so if you look under
043cte a lot of these teachers originally were not signed up to do a six-fifths but they said that they would and continue to do it in this in a dual enrollment option and so that just provided more opportunities for our students who are making the choice to stay online so they can continue to get these same opportunities next slide please now once again if you look at more online course offerings just an example electives obviously is the hardest one is the biggest one as we're going through and um these are just once again different teachers who have been able to step up for us and courses that we're putting in not necessarily all the courses are florida virtual courses i have that supplementary uh curriculum some of them are teacher created curriculum as well because
044there is no florida virtual that aligns to them but the teacher said i will take on that role and help have a robust online uh you know i know that we were only two days into it and we're still making adjustments on what needs to happen we're still balancing there are still things that we need to do to be able to help and support our families as you heard and and our teachers and doing the online course offers at the middle school we've had a tremendous amount and i need to be honest one of the challenges was when we went into the beginning of last week we probably had less than 200 kids that had told us they wanted to go into the online option i think by the end of the week we're up
045to 400. so some of the plans that we had set in place now when we're doubling the number of kids we're having to make adjustments and once again the principals are calling each other working on those things calling hr then and say i'd like to offer another course i had another teacher willing to step up and take this opportunity can we have another six fifths and how we can work on that together and so i for those of you who are listening we understand that there are some issues that are still we need to address and we are addressing and please be aware that we're doing the best that we can for our online students thank you mr lotzenheiser and i agree with you we're only day two and again we don't have a handbook
046we're rewriting everything as we go just watching today i mrs wilson and i i think mrs martin's too we were the asba law conference all day and um again we're all on this ship and building it at the same time and it's this is so enlightening though to all of us to seeing spanish for as an elective online i mean before we were saying we weren't going to be able to do that now we are able to do that so these are amazing things happening and i again i i know thank you seems so cheap but truly it's from our hearts right now i mean all of us president kaler so i'm just going to reiterate a lot of the stuff that was just said because i i think it's so important you know i
047think i thank you for clearing up some of the misconceptions that people had about what what is offered and what is not offered um and uh a grand thank you to the teachers who voluntarily said i'm gonna do this extra work now we've figured out how to we're not asking to work for free so in earlier in the consent agenda we approved some stipends for that extra work and and uh i know it's probably uh you know a money a money loss but it's the right thing to do and i want to thank ms richards and and mr bottenheiser for all the hard work in doing that and you know one of my responsibilities our responsibilities is budget so i am willing i know you said that it seems like you may have it covered
048but whatever i'm supportive of any adjustments we have to make in order to compensate our teachers so that we can we can make all these offerings so um i know it hasn't been easy and i know there was a lot of misconceptions so if anyone is still at home maybe angry that something is not offered i would say urge you to just double check because like everyone said a lot of changes are being made so that we can do the best we can and you look like you have a comment dr thomason president caleb members of the board there are about 60 teachers that stepped up to teach an extra section that has 60 teachers that are going above and beyond their their call of duty to help our students and our community have the
049opportunities that they wouldn't otherwise be able to have within the district that's 60 teachers across the district i echo those sentiments that at this point we do have to say whatever the cost to provide the very best we possibly can for our students and again paying for our teachers i mean nobody wants to work for free today and i know that there was some you know there was a lot of people working over the weekend and i'm just i'm just so thankful thankful next time please so a really quick athletics update on september 2nd the aaa aia board followed the recommendations they called the smack the smac sports medicine advisory committee and the calendar was not changed there are ongoing discussions dealing with metrics and different things because different parts of the valley definitely have
050different metrics and how that's working but as of right now the sp fall sports calendar is continuing we did have uh tryouts that started in different sports that have already started football was allowed to start practicing on monday and so that's when that happened they outlined health and safety protocols i'm happy to say that our protocols we were doing already were what was they outlined and asked for our coaches to do as they were coming and so the next step in ours is the continuing to evaluate how we are going to be able to host events i'll met today with the athletic directors in gilbert and queen creek as we're going to try to be consistent with some of the different things we're doing here in the east valley in terms of how we're doing
051with the different teams that come onto our campus and what are those expectations and so um i will be able to provide you more specifics as we get closer within a superintendent's report about how how we're going to host events on campus and you know one of the things we continue to look at is we know that there are a lot of people who want to come to our events so how can we provide opportunities for that and for people who don't feel comfortable with that how can we live stream all of our events as well and so um that's kind of where we are with the high school athletics uh competitions will start within the next couple weeks and so we we will be getting that to you but i think there's a good
052consensus among what we want to do in the east valley about being consistent because let's face it we're going to go play the gilbert schools and they're going to come play us or down in queen cree you know so small within our pocket we're going to be playing each other we just got swim and dive schedules today so there's four they're going to have four contests and they basically left it up for us as a district to figure out how to do it because our public pools are they've allowed us to open and practice some of the municipalities have not and so that's creating different challenges with swimming so that's kind of a harder one so we'll have a game plan put together how we look at that thank you very much for that update
053any questions for mr lotzenheiser okay we're moving on to our food service update president and kayla are members of the board um very recently as of last week the usda and arizona department of education have opened up waivers to allow children ages 18 years and under to have free food service again um you remember when the coven 19 first started we gave out over half a million mills across the district and then they had stopped it uh starting uh july 1 and now they've opened it back up again which have caused a few issues with the staffing because people had jobs and then they were laid off and then when they opened it back up with just a week's notice that they were going to start again a lot of those individuals had already found
054jobs so we've had a lot of people step up and do extra duty in that aspect too so our cafeterias are fully running not just fully running but running harder and faster than they ever have before because there's free breakfast and free lunch for any individual in the school that is 18 years of age and under not only that they have stepped up and done a service to our community you do not have to be a higley unified school district student to take advantage of this so on tuesdays and thursdays they also have food packages that can be picked up for those individuals that may need extra support and these are littles too you don't have to be in kindergarten or preschool to take advantage of this if you have some littles at home that
055need food service or you just need extra support because of conditions that at your home we do have food service available to pick up on tuesdays and thursdays at higley traditional academy and all students within the district would have the opportunity to have free breakfast and free lunch while they're at school also including our online students dr thomason is it beneficial for our community members to pick up that lunch and for us on our financial goals yes president kaler members of the board mrs wilson we do make money on those food service lunches it's not a great deal of money it's about 25 cents for breakfast and about 45 cents for lunch but the district does benefit from from being able to provide those lunch services to our community and our students and so that
056is something that is beneficial for our employees for our students and for our community so if you need that please take advantage of it thank you dr thomas and do you know like if you're in a high school setting is it any free lunch or is it a specific lunch that that goes for that free lunch uh president kayla moves to the board that is a specific usda certified lunch which includes a milk component of fruit component a vegetable component a protein component okay so it is it's not like where all the kids get go have free nachos every day at lunch no it is not an a la carte and you do have to take all components of the lunch right so don't pick it maybe you don't want your apple but maybe you
057can take the lunch and give the apple to your friend or take it home and feed it to your horse okay all right i just wanted to clarify that and this is through december 30th so far is that what i also read that is correct it's through it's through the end of the calendar year at this time all right very good and it's also beneficial for our title families to still continue to fill out those applications correct absolutely that is still because those will still take place after december 31st should the the waiver not continue after the the fiscal year but also to if there's somebody out there that is looking for a job or position we do have food service openings within our district so i think that's important to to let our community
058know too because of the way the the waivers were granted and then they were stopped immediately some people were furloughed and let go they did find other jobs and now they opened it back up full to more students than we've ever served lunchtime before we do have openings across the district thank you dr thomason for that update okay anything else so we're going to move on just go ahead doc uh mr glib oh thank you one more just one more uh i guess comment i guess and i'm kind of blending it in with uh the presentation we just had but back to some consent agenda items you know and and and one of our earlier speakers you know we we have lost teachers we have lost a lot of paraprofessionals we've lost food service we've
059lost other classified and it's it is a it is just a shame and there's just such a human cost to all of this that uh it really has taken its toll on everybody and i hope that at some point we can come out of this and and and somehow be okay but um it's just worth reflecting on on that a little bit you know when you get wound up about something that maybe isn't as important that there are people who are greatly affected by all the things that are going on in a variety of ways so absolutely mr glover thank you for that okay i move we're going to go on to 7.2 i move that the governing board approves the proposed updates to the calendar for the 2020-2021 school year and this goes back
060to adjusting the middle school and elementary teacher conferences after speaking with our administrators they did want to continue with those in the future perhaps not as soon as that they were scheduled from the september date but after fall break when the teachers have had more time to be with their current students in person second i think you need a second correct oh yes i think you need a second second questions comments mr glover thank you i just have one question and you guys may not be able to answer it at all but when i was looking at the calendar i saw there was october 28th 29th and 30th are all half day half day half day and i was just wondering if there was any thought at all given to uh and it's too late
061now probably i get it but um to make it a 28th like a full day i'm just i worry about some of the parents who have to find child care and everything else and i just thought maybe that was an opportunity that that could have been maybe a full day and then the other two could have been half days did you guys talk about that at all or laura am i catching you guys way off guard no i should have sent that in i know sorry president kaler board member glover we did discuss that and if you take a look i guess one of the reasons we we looked at the original calendar and it was set up that way we did have the early releases and so while that was a consideration uh we
062also looked and thought well maybe that has been a practice that has been used previously and how we'd look at the half days and the early releases and you know on the early release days and we even had one today you know on the second day of school because we wanted to be consistent with what our border proof calendar was and the important time that it still applies but we do understand as we're transitioning back especially the the idea of these kids being at home okay any other comments or questions on that all those in favor aye motion carries five zero okay we're going to move on to seven point three i move that the governing board approves payment of a hundred twenty seven thousand dollars two hundred and sixty two dollars and sixty cents
063to high tech network and security solutions llc and this is um for the renewal of our cisco phone system second questions comments concerns all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries five zero wow are we all ready to future agenda items anyone have anything dr thomason i i still would like to um [Music] and this can be like an information item but um i know we're back to in person school um a hour and the late start and having programs for our high schoolers i know once our media centers are completed i'm hoping that we can get some more activities or scheduled the we've talked about the not so much lunch and learns at 6 30 in the morning seven o'clock in the morning but just um getting back into that we need to
064probably figure something out for these um secondary students that are on campus for that gap time president caleb members of the board just to uh make sure we're clarified on what you're asking is that you would like information on a late stock opportunities for high school students absolutely thank you mr glover um just one more thing for dr thomason i know i did see you reach out to uh miss ludwig but will you also reach out or did you also get the contact information for the other couple i have it right here and i was going to ask too that all right yes president caleb members of the board i i normally do also reach out to individuals that speak with a high concern i knew that i was able to find their information online
065so um but with mrs ludwig it's not as easy because she's not in the student information system it's easier for me to just to give her the information and have her give me a call okay thank you yes very good i was going to ask that we could have um the zoo meeting at a convenient time for the rangel family so um definitely i have their information here anything else all right with that i move that we adjourn second all those in favor bye motion carries 5-0 have a good evening you