HUSD Governing Board Meeting August 26, 2020 Live Stream

001all right good evening i'm going to call this meeting to order dr thomason roll call president keatler please let the record show that we have all five board members in attendance tonight thank you very much uh we are going to have a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance i move that we approve the agenda second any questions all those in favor aye aye motion carries 5-0 superintendents report president cater at this time like turn it over to dr foley to read about upcoming events thank you president kaler members of the board we have some upcoming events that we'd like to make everyone aware of obviously we have the september 7th labor day up there as well as two upcoming board meetings in the month of september in addition to these upcoming events

002we have something positive wonderful and happy to share we wanted to share and congratulate mr tannenbaum and his absolutely lovely wife morgan who yesterday afternoon welcomed their baby boy let me introduce you to owen richard tannenbaum who tipped the scales at 10 pounds and 2 ounces congratulations to the tannenbaum family thank you for sharing that with us tonight yes happy news yes we love a happy news all right we're going to move on to some board comments anybody have any comments tonight all quiet on the front we have a lot of request to speak comments so let's get right to those we value input from our constituents this time has been set aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board please remember this is not an appropriate venue to evaluate discuss

003or criticize district personnel policy keb provides a process for complaints about personnel speakers should be aware that the 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 38-431-0 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 decision at a later date please limit your remarks to three minutes thank you dr thomason and mrs martin's tonight president keeler i'm ever grateful to have executive director of human resources mom martin's helping me tonight we do have quite a few to get through it probably take us a little over an hour so we'll get started right

004away the first one i have is from sharon dalton she has children at gateway points cooley and williamsfield please do not open schools until it is safe possibly second semester we have scott and katie bucci children at gateway point coulee middle school in williamsfield high school please wait until safety metrics have been met and maintained as planned before reopening schools next we have jeremy brimmer with 10 kids as an employee and as a parent of killed children i would like to put my request in that we do not return via hybrid model but return to full-time learning when the time does happen hybrid learning where students only go two to three times per week and then do remote learning the remaining days would be very challenging for parents to navigate and figure out opportunities appropriate

005for supervision of their children although on paper it may seem like the safer option it will put even more undue pressure on parents to make appropriate arrangements for their children because of not having consistent a consistent schedule during the week to count on it will also place a lot more work on the district employees to make it all work smoothly for all parties involved we have great parents in this district and i feel blessed to be working with them on behalf of their children children's education and hope that if the decision to go back is either via hybrid model or full-time learning we would choose full-time learning to help support our parents and the students thank you for your time barbara sumners williamsfield hosd board and leadership my family is greatly disappointed in the manipulation

006of the metrics that don't consider families and staff that live work and congregate outside of the specific zip codes that make up our district i am saddened that no consideration was taken into account for these important pieces in our overall safety for students and staff it is also further noted that the district and board has not taken into consideration the problems that arise for families who have chosen the online learning option via the numerous surveys distributed my family has only indicated online since the first survey in june and still my students schedule contained of three or five classes that will not be offered on the online model which i have been told by various staff members counselor and case manager and dean of students that these classes were requested to be purchased from florida virtual

007learning school fvls and the board declined them i asked i asked one week into school that my child be moved to classes that were going to be online to prevent a disruption in learning and was told to send her for just those classes hard pass on that but no one made the accommodations requested we are now far enough into the year that losing these those classes becomes a huge disruption to learning and starting other classes would mean trying to catch up we've been told by several administration members and school counselor that not finishing the full semester means no credit for work done these classes are all needed for graduation one of them specific math classes was not included in the purchase from fvls even though it is available i know i'm not alone in my

008concern for loss of classes especially this late at this late point i hope that the agenda will be revised quickly and to include accommodations for students to finish courses they have already started online with their current teachers unfortunately i do not expect the board or administration to have any concern for the disruption and learning or the loss of students who might move to gps or mps where the online academics offered most where the online academy is offer most all of the courses not being offered by each usd i hope that those board members who wanted metrics to be met before returning to school are taking into consideration those metrics provided are so narrow they do not truly cover the scope of our community and how this and the disruption to learning due to classes not

009being offered that students already started could impact so many disappointed but not alone barbara subner's longtime husd supporter matthew gray i would like to thank the board for their previous decisions keeping our teachers and students safe by online learning also school administrators for working tirelessly to get plans in motion i am deeply concerned that we will have an outbreak when we come back to school especially when you look at other districts throughout the nation who are now having to close and go back to online learning a hybrid option is sensible especially when it comes to cleaning our classrooms and maintaining safe healthy hygiene again thank you for the very important and tough decisions the board members have made and i apologize if i butcher names but andrew bostis i would like to thank the board

010for all their hard work during this difficult time but i feel that it is not i feel that it is a bad idea to open schools at this time the chance for more infections is too great and i feel that starting school at this time will fragment our student population making it harder to reach students due to inconsistent attendance by both teachers and students also the district is still waiting for sanitizing equipment please wait until please wait until end of quarter one i feel the data will only improve and we can return to school with less distractions and spend more of our efforts connecting with students and promoting teaching and learning from don anderson a child at higley high school hello i teach at higley high school and have been an employee of higley unified

011school district for 15 years i am department chair and nationally board certified i know our admin has worked tirelessly to come up with a workable plan and i respect and thank the board for all its efforts as well but i do not personally think we should return to campus yet i write to you to voice my opposition to the return to school date the board is considering based on the following one the teacher survey conducted about return to school was not adequately worded for the board to have correct i to have a correct idea of how many staff are actually opposed to the return to on-campus learning two the az health data shared in the return to campus presentation by dr foley showed we have not met actually met the arizona department of health metric

012on for on-campus learning but somehow we can we counted it as met which betrays fidelity with the board's original decision three the plan shared with staff during today's meeting it was inadequate to address my concerns my own health personal personal health concerns 4. i am concerned that some of the sanitizing precautions such as fogging rooms will have a negative impact on my breathing issues 5. i am concerned that students flows at the secondary level have not been addressed nor has the number of students on campus been limited massive bottlenecks of students and hallways are likely during passing periods and that is unacceptable to me six we were told that we were still waiting on back ordered ppe and that is too much to gamble with the need to properly sanitize seven we were told we

013would follow a regular schedule which will do do little to minimize congestion in the hallways in the classrooms eight it feels rushed we should at least look at a two to three week data from queen creek high school before making decisions to meet face to face after two to three weeks of face-to-face interaction then we will know for sure if their model is protecting students and staff why should we do another experiment when we clearly have imminent data from a neighboring district without risking our own staff or students nine some classrooms are furnished with tables and not desks and yet no provisions in the plan addresses how to separate students appropriately for their safety during instructional periods 10. when does the training we need to get up and to speed occur don't get me wrong

014i long to return to my classroom not under these circumstances though i request you consider adhering to the original decision for remote learning for and look at the data again once fall break commences thank you stephen bain williams field high school dear higley school district board members let me start by first thanking you for your hard work and consideration for higley teachers after today's meeting with administration i would like to bring some concerns that you may not have heard about before you vote to reopen schools on september 8 2020. i'm deeply concerned that is not as of yet safe to reopen schools i see new stories of school personnel who have contracted covet 19 on a daily basis this tells me we should continue to wait until the arizona department of health metrics are met

015i appreciate that dr foley took the time to explain the metrics to us but it does not make me feel any better about my safety or the safety of my students the positivity rate is still unmet for state statistics and the district's stats for positivity are still in the yellow i do not see how we are meeting the guidelines yes we have met two but it appears we have one to go i would compare the decision to open before all metrics are met to that of hiring a teacher with missing qualifications given the high standards higgle unified holds for its teachers i don't think the district would be okay to hire a teacher with just some of their credentials i failed to see why we would make a decision while still missing a key qualification

016we are all suffering from stress and want to be back in the classroom i sit at my desk looking at name boxes instead of my students faces my back and legs ache from sitting in a chair so long i miss my students i miss the classroom i miss my colleagues and i worry that one of my students might be struggling at home and missing out on their education however i'm willing to put up with the discomfort technical problems and stress if it saves someone's life or health i feel we are trying to rush back into this too fast beyond the metrics the sanitation stations are back order or on backorder the new computers for students have not arrived and we know very little about the chemicals being used to fog our rooms i worry that

017within the first days of reopen i will have students breaking out in rashes and allergic reactions i see and appreciate how hard our administrators have been working to make this plan work they want everyone back in school as bad as we want to be back but i do not think we are ready further i would like you to consider what we teachers have been going through as well none of us know if it's safe to return and we trust that our governing board will make the right decisions for everyone involved teachers and students alike lately we've witnessed changing reopening dates and we do not know how far we should plan on how far out we should plan anything i think i can speak on behalf of many other teachers by saying we are prematurely worn

018out from all of this and it's taken a physical toll on us instead of being rested and ready to go we are anxious and exhausted we will likely return with ran down immune systems at a time we need to be at our best again i appreciate all you have done thus far and will go back in the classroom when you give when you give the green light but i ask that you take my concerns into your account during tonight's vote thank you mr stephen bain masters of education u.s and world history teacher higley high school john arnold students at williamsfield high school good evening governing board i'm writing to you after looking through the powerpoint that was made available to the public i am saddened to see that the data being included is not consistent

019i feel you should follow the science and data from either the arizona department of health services or maricopa county you should not be combining data to make it fit for you as educators we should be role models for our children we do not get to pick or choose the information both sets of data say we should not be going back yet we are still in the moderate risk range we need to show our kids that science matters and we will listen to what it says a few more weeks will let us see the impact of the other school openings will have on the community there is no reason to rush this a few more weeks will only help us to ensure that when we do go back we will be able to stay there i

020know we want life back to normal but making sure we handle the virus with caution and concern is up the utmost importance it is our job as adults to make sure it is safe for our kids our teachers and all of our staff i would like i would also like to thank my child's teachers at williamsfield they have been hard-working and their dedication shines through their lessons they are providing we are fortunate to have such wonderful educators in our district thank you for your time jonathan i want to thank the board for allowing me to comment on this agenda item i'm a proud teacher at higley high school and would love to return to my classroom and teach my students but i only want that when my health and the health of my students isn't

021in danger from my perspective as a history teacher i see this as a turning turning point moment if the wrong decision is made we will look back at this moment and scratch our heads and wonder why we wanted to go back so soon my concern is that we as a district aren't ready to return not yet i look at universities like notre dame and their extensive budget and if they weren't able to stop a spike in cases how can we be assured without doubts that the same will not happen for us i plead and ask the board to exercise wisdom and patience and making any decision about reopening for in-person learning thank you jew blaine children at gateway point elementary and coley middle school dear governing board president kaler board members dr thomason dr foley

022and cabinet members i find myself in a con reasons i hold a variety of roles in our district i am a parent i'm a teacher and i am a representative of a collective voice of educators while the majority of educators who have reached out to me share my views i am not speaking for all teachers in our district i firmly believe that the benchmark data regarding covet 19 cases needs to be attained and sustained prior to approving in-person learning to base our return to in-person learning on the fact that the data is trending that way is not safe or in the best interest of the staff and students being in education we all know that data changes so do trends big hair and using copious amounts of aqua net hairspray were a trend thankfully fashion

023is not moving back in that direction but all joking aside there are a lot of factors in our immediate area that could very likely change the way covet 19 data is trending unfortunately we will not know the impact for some time because of the lag and data that is presented by the state basically we are basing our decision to return to in-person learning on a hunch some may argue that i am basing my claim that the data will trend back to the red on a hunch as well well that is a valid argument i would rather err on the side of caution and ensure the benchmark data sustains green results before our students and staff experiment with trends for argument's sake will the governing board can mean if any of the benchmarks from the arizona

024department of health services or maricopa county change to yellow or red and vote to extend our remote learning there is a concern regarding the social emotional health of our students this is a valid concern and one that i feel in my own home but explain how the social and emotional health of a student or staff member will be handled when they have the realization that they are responsible for the illness or even worse of another person regarding social emotional health and the uncertainty of the situation we are in is taking its toll on our staff i have worked more hours this quarter than any quarter of my previous 17 years of teaching i am doing everything i can to provide rigorous engaging instruction for all of my students each and every day i am learning

025new technology and varying ways to use the new technology to reach my students i am analyzing student work and constantly providing feedback on their assignments or making short videos to review the procedures of the concepts that they do not understand yet educators want to do what is in the best for their students we always have educators are also being reminded that the survey results state that teachers want to be back in the classroom with their students well of course we do we do not need that reminder but the part of that statement that is being left off is when it is safe i do not feel that the return to in-person learning is safe yet please consider continuing with remote instruction until second quarter thank you george costellis i am nervous as a teacher to

026go back to school we all know that covet infection rate will spike if we open up the schools children can't grow an environment of fear we still need to learn more about covod while stopping it from spiking we need to be we need to lead by example and keep our schools closed so we can get this pandemic under control before the flu season hits the procedures in place are well-intentioned but they won't stop the infection rate i have been a teacher for 11 years and i have seen how students and faculty get sick each year hand sanitizer and a fog machine won't stop people from breathing the same air for 55 minute periods they will the biology is obvious don't open the schools until we see how covert reacts during false pardon me during flu

027season leah davis children of san tan and saseman hello i am the mother of two children in the district and a substitute teacher this is not the right time to send the kids back to school in person we need to stick to the plan and wait till we meet the health metrics if we go back now we not only are putting teachers staff and students at risk but we will most likely have to shut down within the first week or do or two due to severe contagious nature of the covet 19 as already experienced in other states we need to do what's right and socially responsible for our community thank you a proud santan and saw someone parents jennifer zour santan and saseman i'm writing i'm writing you today to urge you to please not

028rush into reopening too quickly like many in our community we are pleased to see that our numbers are headed in the right direction just two weeks ago at the meeting on august 8th you the governing board said that you wish that there was data by district and not by a county to make the decisions for our schools you are now choosing to use some maricopa county data and some higley district data to make your decisions you asked for data by district you got it and when it didn't meet your needs you have now decided that the maricopa data isn't so bad after all just so you can say that we are in the green and higgly when we are not according to data dashboard that has been provided by maricopa county department of public health

029that was last updated on august 20th we are in the moderate range in the higley district being in this for two solid weeks indicates that we could open for hybrid instruction it's my understanding that uhusd does not have a plan that allows for hybrid instruction therefore for following the metrics to open sooner than october 12th as you indicated you would do we need to wait until we have been in the green for two weeks before we fully open the earliest possible date we can be in the green for two weeks in the higley district would be september 3rd if you follow this and follow your words to give parents a full week's notice before opening the earliest we should open for in-person instruction would be thursday september 10th or monday the 14th if you don't

030want to start mid-week along my thoughts above i would like to point out that one of the biggest concerns that has been shared throughout this entire time has been the mental and emotional health of young children as i am sure you have seen many schools have opened and had to shut quickly due to covet even here in tucson after only three days this too is incredibly difficult on the mental well-being of children this is another reason why it would be beneficial to wait until we are in the green for two full weeks to open it would give us the best chance of opening and staying open and stay open rather than bouncing back and forth children need as much stability and security as we can give them these days if waiting just a couple more

031weeks provides this opportunity it would be one we should strongly consider lastly we've been given the opportunity to watch other districts who have opened this week i believe there's great value in allowing those districts to be open for a couple of weeks before we make any decisions we know they can take up to two weeks from covet exposure before people are sick so let's wait until schools have been open for at least two weeks before making decisions in addition it was just made a requirement on monday if this week for schools to report monday of this week for schools to report coveted cases i'm willing to bet that there were cases last week that we don't know about due to the fact they weren't required to report it until this week in addition we can

032learn about what districts did that worked or what isn't working based on any closures that happen as parents educators and community members we always are teaching children to pay attention to what's happening around them learn from others mistakes and most importantly be true to your word i hope that you as husd governing board members do the same robert colbert children at williamsfield high school in coley middle school why are we basing an important decision on selective data from different sources you're hand picking data to support schools reopening early if you force the schools to open early you run the risk of an extended shutdown which is counterproductive the better long-term option would be to stick to the original plan by reopening after quarter one by doing so you will have extended the quarantine helping ensure

033a continued reduction of covet 19 cases and increasing the odds that we will avoid a shutdown when kids return to the campus eng idled wine centennial saseman i've known since remote learning started that at some point schools would go back in person and things classes teachers and so on would change both for those going in person and for those staying online as the quarter has progressed we have settled into a nice groove knowing that the board previously indicated in-person learning was likely to start after fall break unless benchmarks were met sooner looking at the dashboards today neither the state nor the district levels are all in the green yet yellow still means hybrid which we were told previously was not a possibility due to funding but that's where we're at right now hybrid the fact

034that the fact that stats are being cherry-picked to justify a full in-person return is concerning and i question the wisdom of this push to return in person on september 8th not only are the benchmarks not fully in green we are surrounded by neighboring communities that are also not in the green in fact mesa is both a city and a school district are still in red we are not some small remote community here in husd to not consider our neighboring communities does not grave disservice to us all does a grave disservice to us all in addition to not quite meeting the benchmarks why now if we return to in-person learning on the 8th of september we have less than 3 weeks before fall break who benefits from having everything thrown into chaos with changing teachers classmates

035and everything else that that close to the quarter end and fall blake also on the subject of timing we have area schools that started in person last week there hasn't been enough time to see how their return will affect the numbers if they indeed do why are we not giving these not giving things more time just to see how safe the proposed return is considering the lag time of the covert presents as much as i understand the desire to return to some semblance of normalcy rushing to return to school in person is not the way to go about it we have seen the evidence across the country and indeed even in arizona when schools reopen new class probably new cases happen kids and staff are quarantined and schools shut down again we will reverse our

036current trend which is bad for everyone let us really meet the benchmarks into the greens so we can so we do open schools we can keep them open mandy brocker children at coronado and coley middle first please allow me to thank the board for doing what it can to keep our children community safe by listening to our public health experts remote schooling is not ideal but your teachers and staff have been amazing at making it all work i will ask that you consider a hybrid program so that we can safely take small steps and combine an in-person and remote learning experience i also ask if all possible we be allowed to keep our home campus teachers as some as some of us while not returning to in-person schooling immediately still desire to remain part of

037the school community to join our classmates as soon as it is possible for our family that said we have all compromised as there are no perfect solutions please it would be tragic a tragic mistake to rush school opening only to have to close down after a short time let's take it slow wait for the cool compliance of arizona department of health services recommendations and most importantly get true buy-in from all teaching staff before opening to any in-person schooling this partnership with your teachers full support is most vital step in a successful in-person return if the arizona department of health services says yes but the teachers say no we should wait teachers make it all happen please listen to them over everyone else thank you again for all your time energy and efforts joshua pleasant centennial

038elementary it's too early to open up schools as a health care professional i find it disturbing that the maricopa county tracker shows that we should be hybrid and the board is considering full-time in-person school learning if you look at what is happening in bordering school systems queen creek there are potentially up to 30 students exposed to covert 19 and they have been back to school for only a few weeks we should not have to manipulate the data to justify returning to in-person learning we are not ready yet i have friends that are teachers for schools that opened already and i've heard horror stories there are also there is also the problem of reporting covet 19 positive cases that occur within schools please do not fight the state mandate to report positive cases to the parents

039all parents deserve to know and school staff as a parent i just do not have enough proof that you can protect my two boys enough to consider sending them back to school in person this is a travesty as i should not have to decide on choosing between keeping my children healthy and safe versus a quality education let's face it when you resume in person school learning the quality of education that my two boys will receive will be reduced dramatically my boys will also receive less social interaction with their classmates in conclusion there's just too many questions to be left unanswered do not proceed too early as it could be a giant setback for all involved carrie matthew i have taught at higley's high school since 2012 i have been impressed with my sight in the

040district good faith leadership during this time i truly believe that everyone is trying to make the best possible decision however i have many concerns about returning to in-person instruction while much has been done to address surface sanitation there has been little done to address the issue with airborne transmission which is the most important factor in reducing the infection rates class size have not been reduced no attempts have been made to reduce numbers of the students on the campus in order to create the possibility of physical distancing i have a class with 41 students and others have similar class sizes there is no way to have physical distance with that many adult size students in the classroom i have been told that reducing the class size is unlikely because of the disruption and rescheduling of students

041other teachers and i do have individual student desks we have the flexible seating and tables students in my classroom sit inches apart facing each other while this is this was excellent for student interaction this is terrible for kova transmission there are not enough student desks to change the furniture to at least having students face in the same direction when i asked why a block schedule has not been considered as a way to minimize numbers of students on campus i was told the feeling was that the teachers would require more professional development to make that work and that we we did not have time to do that successfully as a professional educator i am disturbed by the decision that it was that is better to create a more dangerous environment on campus than trust teachers to

042adjust to a new schedule and new habits we have worked tirelessly since march to learn new skills to adjust to new expectations and new realities a more creative schedule would not be outside of the skill set of any teacher that i know and if time for preparation for more safe schedule is needed then it seems that a rushed return to the campus is counterproductive i can see that enormous efforts have been made to sanitize to provide protective gear and to make a face a firm face covering policy those are important but nothing has been done to even create the possibility of physical distancing which is the single biggest factor in reducing transmission i would like to see this issue addressed with the same consciousness with with which other factors have been considered casey jerkowicz to

043the board let me begin by acknowledging the well-intentioned and professional leadership we received at my site and within the district everyone is trying to navigate an almost unnavogatable situation while keeping the students needs and teachers needs all in mind a lot of great steps have been taken towards making the situation feel safer for both students and teachers despite this i do have a few concerns with social distancing being one of the most effective ways to slow the spread of the virus is it it is adamant that class sizes be shrunk in many cases class sizes are upwards of 32 or more students in some cases reaching 40 students large class sizes are difficult enough but when you combine that with small room sizes this seems to be a potential environment where the virus can quickly

044spread what efforts are being made what efforts are being made accommodate this problem to prevent this from happening if and what there is an outbreak what will the district's response be at what point will the district consider reverting to remote learning model has the situation in queen creek been investigated by the district for examples of good ideas and examples of bad ideas for reopening the district while i understand the importance of getting the students back in class especially when it comes to their mental health i believe that more planning needs to be done to ready ourselves for the potential problems that will inevitably arise with the return to in-person instruction there will be problems that appear despite our best-laid plans but in situations like this we set goals and do everything we can to control

045what we can control thank you for your time and attention to this also for your support of the teachers and support staff within the district casey jerkowitz april french with a student at sue sauceman preschool after sitting in a virtual staff meeting this afternoon i have learned that we will most likely be voting to overturn your original decision of reevaluating until after fall bacon and instead we will have this return immediately following labor day weekend this is frustrating real this is a frustrating realization and honestly feels like a bit of a betrayal from the school board in an effort to appease the concerns of a few loud voices who won't actually be in the classroom you are most likely going to change our schedule again there are too many unknown factors to consider i don't

046understand and it's overwhelming it's confusing i also don't understand that if it is safe to return why aren't you allowing anyone in the boardroom we are going to be expected to conduct our business behind the mask why aren't you speaking from behind yours if it's a district mandate if you're worried that people may not understand what you are communicating don't you think the same will be the same thing will translate to the students and teachers my concern now is for students who can't or aren't returning to in person students i care deeply about last week one of my students began smiling and laughing and then immediately started crying when i asked him why he said because i know that when it's time to go back to the in classroom especially if it's too soon my

047parents told me i won't be able to go to school in person i am having so much fun and need this class i am sad because i know it's going to end soon and another one said i don't think i am going to be able to cope if i if we go back too soon i know i won't be allowed to return yet and i'm going to miss my friends this is the only class i care about i'm going to be stuck online with someone who doesn't care about me they were told they would have until at least fall break you told them that as teachers we plan for that it logically makes sense to wait it out for those remaining couple of weeks we've made it this far nicole camp cooley and chaparral i

048realize a lot of parents don't care about the kids who have to stay at home when schools open up but there are parents who do from the information we've been given so far it sounds like the kids who will be remaining online will be left with losing their teachers and classes they've grown to like these kids will be left without the option to continue their accelerated courses and there has been zero assurance the district will be officially pardon me fixing this issue the kids will be losing the opportunity to continue their elective courses why are these kids being punished for having to stay home they're already going to miss out on being at school now they can't even continue on their current educational paths those of us who have opted to keep our kids online

049for health reasons feel like we're being forced to send our kids to campus just so our kids won't lose their accelerated courses and credits you need to make it so their these kids can continue these courses either online or by following video of live classes from home work it out if you have to open if you have to open school so soon then you can work out better online options for the smart kids casey blonde students in kinder and second grade i'm an emergency department nurse working in our community i can speak from first-hand knowledge this pandemic is nowhere near contained or controlled i see many coveted patients every day in my department many can go home but many need to be admitted these people are very contagious and very ill the number reported by

050the health departments do actually do not actually tell the story our positivity numbers are down because hospitals have in the past two weeks started testing every admitted patient so yes positivity rates will drop because of this has it gotten better yes is it controlled absolutely not please let's not use our children in higley as a test subjects to see if it's safe for schools yet let's wait until the october day to see what happens and how other districts are going back let's see if the rates rise which i know they will the online learning has been fantastic for our kids please don't take this from them please don't remove them from their teachers they've grown to love over the past weeks please make the scientific decision thank you for your time alana schranovsky a teacher

051at higley high members of the board my name is elena alana tranowski i teach ap and u.s history at higley high school yesterday higley high had a staff meeting about the potential to return to school on september 8th i'm very thankful for my administration and their willingness to support staff during this time though the information shared with us was deeply concerning to me and many of my colleagues as questions were asked the answers from admin did not calm any nerves first the data that was used to come to a return to school date has been manipulated in a way that i do not believe was intended by the az department of health creating averages that look good enough in order to show the metrics have been met was has been met was met with disbelief

052as the arizona department of health website continues to update and show how schools in maricopa county have not met those benchmarks higley has averaged them to a pass i would be met with extreme criticism if i chose to if i chose to use this math to pass students in my class we were made aware that some district pp has been back ordered though higley high school has a good supply to start how will we know how long the back order will stay in place we are told we will receive health training to return back as teachers we are barely keeping our heads above water with online teaching grading contacting parents students meetings planning and creating modules now add trainings that have not been introduced we'll be expected to do the training on the weekend before

053we go back we were also told the district will be one-to-one for technology so we do not need to be collecting papers from students except there is no date when those computers will actually arrive since this purchase is being approved this evening so what are we supposed to do in the interim will students be instructed to bring their own technology will the network support this because that is because it is not in the past with 150 students entering my classroom in a day how can i ensure that their physical safety will be met as well as their educational needs when so many items are back ordered until an unknown date physical distancing has proven to be the best form of slowing the disease how will that happen when hundreds of students are in the hallway

054in a five minute period and over 35 students sit in a small classroom for an hour how do we just go back to normal on tuesday after finishing virtual on friday i'm i am aware that the answer is for teachers to spend their three day weekend planning and setting up during a time we should all be taking the day off so we we also desperately need it is my opinion if we're actually allowed one the fall break would be the best for planning and preparation for this new normal we must navigate this was a date that was designed decided several weeks ago and lunch best marks were met according to the health department they have not been met while we have all been on this roller coaster teachers have not had the ability to plan

055more than a week in advance because the expectations and chances of going back is always up in the air the goal keeps the goal post keeps getting moved october 12th allows everyone a fresh start a natural break in the progress period for students who chose not to return and will begin new teachers online if you are unaware if a student moves out of a class their grades do not automatically merge into a new classroom they must be entered manually in the new teacher's gradebook the idea of scrambling to start then go on vacation 14 school days later is not what's best for the classroom and education it's confusing chaotic and frankly scary it has always been my goal to be the best teacher and educator i have rolled with punches before there have been changes

056in funding expectations from admin and new curriculum to name a few but this is different this is my 12th year in higley i consider it my home but these are people's lives and livelihoods we are gambling with the rush to open the rush to open based on cherry-picked data is not what's best for students staff or the community thank you for reading and understanding what pressure teachers are feeling during this time kristen terrell to the members of the board i want to thank you for all of your time and consideration you have put into determining the best course of action for our school district this year as a community member and a teacher i am concerned about the outcomes of tonight's board meeting i think the pressure of reopening schools is pushing you to make

057a decision to overturn your previous decision to wait until after fall break now that we have two different sets of benchmark data results to follow we are muddying the water i want to remind you that our district is open we have students teachers and staff coming in all over the east valley to our campuses and our local families are not staying within their borders 100 percent of the time relying on the maricopa county website to just focus on our school district is not an effective way to determine our potential risk to exposure i hope that the you you are i hope that you consider reopening the schools tonight that you will strongly consider a hybrid option if you choose to restart schools on september 8th this will allow us to provide some form of social

058distancing something that is not even remotely possible at full capacity and will ease our students and staff back into school in person school if you look at the information coming from other states school districts are experiencing unprecedented amounts of positive cases among their schools communities within 15 days of schools reopening and are already being forced to shut schools down again i hope that hybrid model will allow us to avoid this happening within the higley to mitigate the risk to our students teachers and staff of contracting the virus utilizing a hybrid model through at least the end of the first quarter allow us to ease back into in-person learning and limit our risk to our community thank you for your time melody led coronado and williamsfield since i can't appear like since i can't appear in

059person to comment i would just like the board members to have the opportunity to hear from me in writing here it is imperative that we get our children back in school the numbers supporting doing so we've met the metrics and our kids are suffering through online school the teachers have been amazing but we can all can only do so much while some children may do well with the format others are experiencing constant failure frustration and poor grades to this learning format there's absolutely no reason why public business like movie theaters gyms restaurants etc should be open for business but our children still still not able to attend in-person school with safety measures it is appalling that the needs of our children in our community are being pushed to the bottom as a society we should

060put our children and their needs first there should be no question about that this should not be a political issue this is about our children this is about what our children need they need an education i've seen my children there's a great deal in math and writing skills in the time that they were out of school and while it may have been necessary to do our best with less online education for our time that time has clearly ended it's time you vote to represent the parents in this school district who in your own survey overwhelmingly voted in support of sending their children to school quite some time ago you were elected to represent the parents and children in this district please do so and allow them to return to school as soon as possible kelly

061stromello children at higley traditional academy with the reopening of gyms teacher theaters and water parks etc wouldn't it make sense to delay reopening in-person discussion until october so we can see what happens to the numbers heather malman chaparral in coulee middle school as an employee and a parent i would like it known that i'm in full support of returning to on-campus learning as a mother of three children in the district two of which have learning disabilities i know firsthand the struggles and anxiety and frustration that remote learning is causing them because of this our family is strongly considering placing our children in private or charter schools as an employee working with title one students they have expressed their strong desire to return to on-campus learning they tell me that remote learning is hard and my

062heart breaks for them when they didn't when they don't get the support that they need and their teachers want to give them as for the teachers and parents who do not want to return think you providing the options to work and learn from home and for a majority of us that want to return then keep providing the option to work and learn at school kathleen richards children at higley traditional academy i'm deeply concerned that based on the board's agenda the board seems to have decided to abandon their original metrics of positivity rates based on our county in favor of looking at the small higgle unified school district area we do not live in a world where looking at our rates at a small exclusive level makes any sense teachers are coming to classrooms from all

063over the valley students can opt into our district with open with open choice while our higgle unified school district numbers are low today without waiting to see the impact of the opening of gyms bars theaters and more we cannot accurately assume safety for our students and teachers and staff consistently our for our students is key the board set up a start date provided metrics are met and maintained of 10 12. this goal actually seems achievable as numbers continue to decline with minor fluctuations however if we contribute to the perfect storm of everything reopening at once we are very likely to create an environment of increasing numbers which will require shutdowns and will create more chaos for our kids and teachers i am deeply confused how the voices of the loudest and least connected are now

064seemingly detecting policy these same voices have publicly declared that they send their children to school with varying symptoms with minimal impact this cannot be an acceptable moving forward we cannot teach our children that we can manipulate data to achieve the outcomes a group seeks we are in a pivotal moment where we can teach our children the important lesson of resilience following facts and science and that patience can pay off cooley preschool and higley high in reference to school returning metrics are encouraging but i feel there are still things to still things to consider i believe it would be prudent to wait to see the outcome of other districts if we were able to re if we were able to remain face to face or return to online as a teacher and mother i find the

065weak notice if passes very stressful to prepare i am looking for returning but more time is needed to prepare for another change don igboa children at gateway point in williamsfield as of right now there is already one teacher that i know that has had primary contact with covid according to the powerpoint this teacher would be allowed to come to school as long as they were asymptomatic which would potentially expose any student they came in contact with i am very concerned that sending my children back to school on september 8th would be too soon one of the things that has helped my kids through remote learning is consistency we have not yet addressed what will happen when a teacher or a student has a has to quarantine would there be the same sub for 10 days

066would there be a different sub in and out every other day what if a teacher got coveted would the entire class have to wait 10 days to come back to school or be put through a cova test would quarantining students be able to reach to remote learning for the period the t the time of t with the teacher would they be doing online learning with a different teacher with all these scenarios comes more inconsistencies and we need more answers before the decision can be made please consider keeping this con consistent and continue remote learning until at least october 12th thank you wendy haas i teach at chaparral as a teacher in the district i'm concerned about returning to school our class sizes have not gotten smaller in fact we have positive enrollment since the beginning

067of the school year information shared at our chaparral staff meeting yesterday i currently have class sizes of the following 29 26 27 29 26 i have double desk in my classroom which means students sit side by side at the desk that measure 46 inches in length so each student would have 23 inches of personal space with no barrier between them i am physically unable to move the desk apart and with the large class sizes i will be filling all the desk in my room i'm only able to distance the double desk two feet between in order to fit my 15 pairs of desk the only ppe i've been given is a bottle of is a bottle of hand pardon me a bottle of sanitizer and in our staff bathroom we have a spray bottle labeled

068710 no indication of what is in it we were told to spray surfaces while touch spray surfaces we touch while using the restroom no indication of hong the surface must stay away after stay wet after we spray i haven't heard any protocol for students temperatures illness checks i haven't i haven't hear the plan for mask or what to do and in a case a student refuses to wear a mess or come to school with an inappropriate mask many parents online have been talking about bucking the system by sending schools in mesh masks that offer little to no coverage protection i have not had any updates on acceptable classroom activities can students talk to one another move around the room etc which is worrisome as i tend to focus on very hands-on activities and i rely

069heavily on students working in groups for their learning i don't know if students will have access to laptops in my room as technology was handed out to parents during the virtual learning i'm concerned about the loss of instructional time if we have to transition between virtual and classroom learning it takes a long time it takes a long time to convert from online to in person and i imagine we will spend several days bringing kids up to speed that were unable to create things at home interactive notebooks printed assignments etc thank you for listening to my concerns stacey abrilla students at bridges and cooley good evening members of the board i would first like to express my gratitude to our district's teachers who continue to work harder than they ever have before for little pay under

070extreme conditions and limited to no predictability they truly are heroes and deserve much more respect support and pay i have some concerns with respect to the agenda item 7.1 while it is true there are many options opinions as there are stars in the sky about whether when and under what circumstances our districts should return to in-person learning i think we can all agree that honestly transparency and clear communication are imperative is with this in mind i would like to point out the disingenuous characterization of the statutes of the benchmarks depicted in slide number 10 of tonight's presentation which states all metrics were met on 8 20 2020 this is the first time all metrics were met this statement is decidedly false all three benchmarks have not been met for in-person learning for the county iglino

071flight school district boundaries areas and zip codes or surrounding districts and zip codes slides four through seven clearly show that two metrics have been met for the county geographic area and two have been met for the higley universe higleno fight school district boundary area and that the county health department currently recommends against a in-person learning it appears that the district is taking the position that for some metrics it will consider county level metrics and for other districts other districts level metrics apparently whichever paints the rosiest picture this despite the fact that the new cases per hundred thousand population in the higging unified school district boundary area was 35.3 more than three times the benchmark the percent of positivity rate for the county was 8.7 nearly double the benchmark some people may argue that this approach

072and some may disagree in any case the board and the district's approach to interpreting and applying the data should be clearly stated explained and justified board stakeholders the statement on slide 10 and must be qualified to include the caveats that the metrics were met as of 8 20 2020 only when the data have been cherry picked to suit the agenda i recall certain board members empathetically stating during the august 8th board meeting that the county is large and we should not use county data to make local decisions when the data meant keeping schools closed and yet the board is apparently prepared to apply a single county metric tonight rather than the logic metric but rather than the local metric but only if it means overwriting the local metric in order to open schools for in-person

073learning either the county data apply or they don't we don't get to rely on the data when it supports our position and ignore it when it doesn't thankfully the metrics are heading in a desired direction and perhaps by next week this concern will be moved however i cannot emphasize enough that district leadership should be very careful about the way in which they communicate and depict data to the public the board's 8 20 8 8 20 20 resolution was that the return to school would be approved when the metrics are met there is a valid argument to be made that metrics have not in fact been met particularly given the county department of health clearly states on its dashboard that is the recommendation for higley is hybrid learning and not in person if the board wishes

074to disregard the maricopa county department of public health's recommendations it should do so transparently and with honesty and integrity if the board votes to reopen schools for in-person learning based on the metrics then its members should explicitly state they are willing to defend their position that 35.3 cases per hundred thousand population and the higgle unified school district and surrounding areas is efficiently low to begin in-person learning it may very we well be the right decision nevertheless i implore you to be honest about the facts you use to justify your decision ashley booker santan elementary i wanted to share some positive feedback every board meeting i feel like it's super negative from the public i want you to know there are parents that support online learning i know it's not ideal however i also know it

075won't last forever teachers and senses teachers and staff at santan elementary are amazing they're always willing to jump on on live meetings with me or my daughter if she's having trouble i wish more parents would speak up to their children's teachers for additional help we are parents it's our job to make sure they get the best education i'm sorry that some parents blame you all or the schools on the child's education when we should be the ones to speak up isn't that isn't the saying a closed mouth doesn't get doesn't get fed thank you again for keeping our children and school staff safe by closing the schools until benchmarks are met i'm sorry you were all put in this spot in the first place ashley booker president caleb remembers the board that is the completion

076of the email smith children at bridges it is mind-boggling you are going to send kids back to school in a week there are two reasons why that is a is an uneducated decision one you originally planned for it to be on 10 12. we all understand like anything there was a verbage that read it could be sooner but why not allow the covid curve to continue to trend down for another month as it really as it's really not even another month before we have two weeks off for fall break two it doesn't make sense to send kids back to school when they go on break for two weeks wow guess what people are going to do on the two-week break social distance isn't the 10 12 plan making more sense now make sure the curve

077continues to lower by 10 12 and get the kids back to school then we understand you have to deal with the politics from both sides act like you're not overreacting to that and plan for the kids to come back on 10 12. all it will take is one person in the district to get covered and your rush to change the current 1012 date backfired on your on you bad we love you guys make the right decision lead don't follow please have the courage to read my email in tonight's meeting thank you okay we're going to take just a five minute break okay we're back and i move that we approve consent agenda item 6.1 to 6.7 second any questions mr glover uh thank you madam president i just there uh item 6.5 is not a

078question but somebody may is making a very generous donation to coronado pto and uh i don't mispronounce the name but uh thank you very much to all those all the people who generously uh donate to higley absolutely do we know what that's going to go towards at coronado do they have plans for that gift president kaitlyn are members of the board we do not know uh what that's going to at this time i can find out and put it in the superintendent's report very good thank you thank you mr glover all right all those in favor aye motion carries 5-0 um okay we are moving on to 7.1 and an update on reopening of schools dr foley president kaler members of the board tonight we have some updates that we'd like to provide for you

079let me just do a little overview of what we'll be talking about so that you will know what will be coming in this presentation uh tonight we're going to do a little update on the metrics that are available for us to talk about we're also going to discuss the original resolution that was approved at the august 8th board meeting we're going to talk about some health metrics and protocols one of the things that we have discussed at many of our meetings are the how are we going to communicate what is the process for and so we're going to go deeply into some of those aspects tonight and we have uh jillian fulton here tonight who will be going through those with us and we'll talk a little bit more about that and then we're also

080going to talk a little bit about an example of a social emotional because at our last meeting we discussed the need for discussing what does that look like right now because we know how important that is but in in the remote learning style so we have a couple examples that we'd like to highlight for you tonight so next slide okay so one of the things we want to revisit and we revisit is the original governing board resolution that we approve that was approved at the august 8th meeting and in that resolution it prescribed the following that the governing board approved the return to in-person teacher-led classroom instruction to begin on october 12 2020 or earlier if the arizona department of health services and the maricopa county health department venture benchmarks and health metrics were met

081we indicated in that it prescribed that we would at least give the community a one-week return notice if they were met and that we would re evaluate them at each scheduled governing board meeting so let us talk a little bit about the dashboard and metrics that we are referring to so when we first met on that august 8th meeting the document itself had just come out it had just come out for the executive order from the governor and he had promised this dashboard so we've now had this dashboard for three weeks one of the things that we studied deeply in this document was not only the um what the dashboard looked like but we what were the considerations that we had to have for offering in-person instruction and it had the benchmarks being cases percent

082positivity and covert-like symptoms it also indicated that we would be we in addition that local health departments may modify a specific benchmark because at that point the maricopa county specific dashboard had not yet been created because it came the following week it's important to remember that when we're looking at these metrics that they are on a delayed schedule so for instance what we're looking at for the data that was released on august 20th 2020 those are for the time period of july 26 through august 8th so it's important to remember that the update we get is is substantially delayed in the dashboard so it's from weeks before it's also important to remember that as a district we've been monitoring um on on what's available what do our local areas look like daily so that we

083have some idea of what do the numbers look like that might be in the windows that may come out on the metric so obviously it's important to remember that those are delayed so when we looked at our arizona department of health services dashboard this week what's interesting too is they both come out at different times the arizona department of health services benchmark usually updates about nine o'clock and literally we're sort of sitting there going refresh refresh refresh um because that's when it updates so the good news is is that we see we see trends going in in positive directions they're they're going down which is a good thing you'll see that on this dashboard that the first one it's either one or the other a decline in cases or less than 100 per 1000 individuals

084and so on this arizona department of health services dashboard it shows that we met the first one the declining cases it shows that we did not meet on the arizona department of health services benchmark the one for percent positivity we see it's going down but we have not met that on this dashboard and that for two consecutive weeks the covet-like illness again continues to go down so when we first created this resolution we did not have the other dashboard but you'll notice that in our resolution we had identified because there had been we had been a part of a webinar that had indicated that maricopa was going to be following on the heels of it and as sort of indicated in that first document you can use parts and pieces of this to help understand

085where your community is at to help guide in decision making so next slide so the maricopa county dashboard or it was the one that came out that's more specific zip code school district area so it takes maricopa county as a whole and breaks it down what was interesting is the first week we were the first we were one of the first that was yellow remember that the lagging week's data this is this is almost three week old data so it's it's continuing to give us it will kind of continue to give us a back story of where we were you'll see that from the first week to the second week again the other one has been available for three weeks this has been available for two that we're continuing to improve so when we take

086a look next slide when we take a look at the the original document that says these are the metrics you're looking at and these are the dashboards you we are looking between two dashboards here and we're monitoring that so you can see that on the cases one that um when we look at that data that was met on the department of health services metric this week next slide for the positivity you'll see that this one while we did not meet that on the department of health services we did meet it for the percent positivity indicator while that was the one of the ones that was green so again for just that metric that we met that for that metric on the maricopa i'm sorry on the higley specific one from maricopa county and then the

087covid like illness we've met that one on both both both dashboards so when we take a look at next slide again you've heard in our but you've heard that we have two different metrics that we have been looking two different dashboards we're looking at the three metrics and so this would have been the very first week where utilizing those specific metrics between those two dashboards we would have had a green in each of those areas so next slide uh let's not let's not pass by that too fast please because i have i have the same concerns that a great many people raised about this and you know taking the best score is one thing and combining them is it's they're not that doesn't mean the same thing and i think i think our teachers are

088not fooled by this they know data and if you have a kid that's getting a c first quarter and then gets in a second quarter you might give the kid an a but you might also give them a b and so um i really am not a big fan of this particular slide and i'm sure i'm glad to hear that our teachers didn't receive it that way either um i think it's important you know when we when we talked about these we did not know uh or i mean we had a notion that they might be able to be broken down by school district but we didn't know that for a fact and none of us were betting on it um so this to me is really i don't want to rely that that we're

089all in the green here and then the other thing is if you if you were you don't have to but if you were to back up a few slides there's three colors really you've got green and yellow and red and the the research that is telling us where we are that's yellow is giving us some guidance from experts that is contrary to the full blast 100 percent in person return and i just i'm going to just point that out and some of the other numbers that that that that the state has decided to use you know just by way of comparison like the cases per hundred thousand people it's cool i mean i'm i was thrilled that to see that higley was where it was when those who were released i was surprised i didn't

090have that information i didn't know that so that's awesome and i hope our community continues to do the right things to make it go down but when you talk about 30 i can't even read this 35 cases per 100 000 people the schools like in germany that opened uh we're between like zero point something percent and and under three per hundred thousand so we're our numbers are still high and you know even when you say one on the metrics is like well it just has to get lower all right cool we got a million cases now we only have 900 000 that's lower that meets the metric so you know a grain of salt but kudos to our teachers for calling out that chart because i saw that and i had great issues with the

091fact that you really i mean it's got to be green green in my opinion and not one or the other and cherry picking really does set you up and you guys can comment i'm sure people disagree with me but i didn't want to let that pass without supporting someone president kaler board member glover i understand exactly what you're saying i believe and i understand what our community and teachers are also concerned again we are providing just just an update on where we were with those metrics and and i understand those concerns and questions that have been brought forward so next slide thus if you choose to interpret utilizing both metrics or both dashboards um if you're using both dashboards or metrics from each one if you were to look at it that way we could

092consider that the metrics were met for the first time we saw greens on 8 20. again the projections looking at again we won't know until tomorrow at either 9 or 4 but when we're looking at what our data looked like at those weeks that they will be pulling from the projections look like they'll continue to go down if they were to meet again on the 27th and the third if we were to go back to the resolution and choose to use both dashboards to make that recommendation and we could choose not to do that as well but if we were to do so it would mean that if we were to pull them from that way the first time that we would have met them and allow more than a one week notice would be

093on september 8th so tonight one of the things that you will be determining on and again going back to we can interpret which dashboards we're using and if we want to use them for different metrics or not absolutely but there would be a recommendation for adherence to the resolution where we would utilize both dashboards for those specific indicators and if um with that updated match with with that updated information that you could consider in-person teacher-led instruction to begin on september 8 2020 if the public benchmark metrics continue to be met and again going back to determining which dashboard and metric pieces we would utilize as part of that decision to consider mr glover i agree with a lot of things that you just said my concern in reference to as they say we're cherry picking

094i understand completely what they're saying in reference to this as as we're looking at the data starting at 9 8 maybe when that time comes to have that conversation but i just want to throw it out now the statistics are going to be released tomorrow okay and then they're going to be released again on september 3rd again on thursday if we're looking at something like this i just want to throw this out i would feel more comfortable that we're going to look at the statistics for tomorrow and then we're going to look at the statistics for next thursday and if everything is going somewhat good we'll see a decrease in the next two reporting and then we'll look then i would be more comfortable with even considering opening it up on the eighth so i

095don't know if for us to have a board meeting on that thursday night and say okay guys a thursday night this is what the stats look like for this thursday this will look thursday and then somebody's got a green across the board on either on these benchmarks then then we're going to be okay i mean if there's going to be you know as we talk about we see other school districts around here opening up this was going to give us these two weeks to say okay what's going on around the neighboring community here is is things starting to happen so but we have the chance to come together as a board on that thursday night that third to say look at the numbers have changed we we need to we need to take a step

096back before we decide opening up on the on the 8th but maybe when that time comes during our meeting when we talk about where we're at but i just wanted to throw that out right now as for some discussion and reference to looking at the statistics from the next two times that are taking place mr glover can i ask you a question mr petrovic i'm so sorry i'm sorry i'm like uh if you were thinking of that would you still want us to go back on the eighth that would only give teachers five ish days to prepare um i i guess what my thought is we can have this conversation is is to go through with thinking about the eighth but us as a board are going to look at the statistics tomorrow and we're

097gonna come together on that thursday the third to say okay is this is this going to be a go um so only giving the teachers five days notice and this is community five days that's that's the question yeah that's the question i'm trying to make you like start thinking yeah that's something to think about if you're yes yes and mentally as we go through this slide that that only gives them five days and really over a long weekend right so that might be very difficult right maybe i'm going to look at the 14th instead but i just wanted to throw that out for conversation president keller members of board i think i think it's really important to remember that this these are brand new metrics that we have only had for the last three weeks

098that came out to us and again we made uh we've had these tools we're interpreting them as we go this is is something that again we are going to you're going to use information but again these are new tools that are are again on delayed data that gives us an indicator and again the projections are looking like we may be green this week on the maricopa higley specific but again we're going to know more tomorrow so again there's lots to consider here and and and one of the things that we hear is so important is understanding this is a time with what is our health and safety protocols and how are we going to help support teachers and our community and our staffs and our buildings to understand what does this look like so next

099slide here we're going to do a little update here that is really important for everyone to hear because there are some things that are mandated from maricopa county health department and that we need to be sure everyone understands but we're going to kind of go into the conversation of the role of masks the wearing of masks the difference between primary and secondary contacts what does the communication structure look like with families when when when there is concern about health and we're going to give some scenarios so that we're hoping that we can answer some questions and clarify some information and because there are some differences here that are important for you and everyone to understand and these are things that are also that are uh response to to the state level directive not just higgly

100specific and so we're kind of wanting to go into some of those details tonight president kaler members of the board dr thomason members of cabinet i'm jillian fulton the district nurse i have a health process update tonight the first slide up we're looking at the risk assessment of course we know that masks are mandatory and i found this image that i thought protect that very well you have on the very top your high transmission probability those are two people that are not wearing masks in the middle you have your low transmission probability one person is wearing one one is not and at the bottom lowest transmission probability both people would be wearing a mask miss bolton i'm sorry to interrupt and i'm just and i apologize for uh for the interruption uh i was just

101reading the cdc some cdc stuff this morning and one statistic that really stuck out and i just want to bring it to the community and everybody else and i you can feel free to correct me if i if i if aired but i uh 50 percent of the transmission transmissions occur before symptoms occur and i think that's really worth putting a lot of thought into and then as i as i have this sense that our teachers are very concerned and rightfully so about their health and the things that they might be bringing home to their loved ones um you know the idea of getting tested so i yesterday i got home from work i'm also a teacher and i've been in schools and i got home from work and i thought you know i should

102really got to probably put my money where my mouth is so i went online and i found at chandler-gilbert community college there because the governor has said like he'll help us with these testing blitzes and he'll help schools but i did talk to dr thomas about it and they said well there's just want to channel gilbert so you're probably not going to get one in higley and that's fine so i thought well i'll check this out it's after school um anyway by i saw i got before 4 15 or so i got online to do put in my name and uh and by 4 55 i was there and they had stuck a q-tip up my nose for five seconds uh it wasn't bad at all in and out and uh i have insurance but

103if i hadn't had it and and they're not there's no co-pay no billing i'll never notice it but if i didn't have it they would have tested and so that got me thinking like we should to make our teachers feel better we could have the communities help because we have all these kids people running around possibly that are not um showing any signs that if they if we could just encourage them somehow maybe through ours to get tested it's not mandatory or maybe find a day of the week maybe where it's early release and just say to teachers like okay get out of here go get tested and i think those things would help alleviate some concerns and maybe get people thinking like okay maybe now we have some real data and some real numbers

104and uh and we can move forward so i i didn't know where i was going to shove that in there but i wanted to mention that for the community the testing couldn't have been easier i felt like it was like 1970s american healthcare like i i went i got what i needed it was timely and i was in and out and it didn't cost me anything at all so anyway thank you so for no president healer board member glover i'm not going i'm sorry i interrupted you but i didn't realize you were talking i'm not going to change your statistic you're right and i have noticed that there are many more resources lately about testing and the availability as well in places and that are opening up to do that so i think that's a

105great idea lastly it's they're open 24 hours 24 hours which is amazing i think that even our friends at queen creek did like kind of a testing blitz right before their schools open on the weekend and then asu i got this numbers today because my daughter attends asu and they tested over 31 000 students before they were allowed on campus and 161 tested positive so those were really low which i was very encouraged by so i'm hoping because i have a daughter there that she continues to stay healthy and well but they they're they're following some very strict guidelines on masks on the campus even outside walking to class so anyways i did see that too mr glover masks are definitely one of the most important subjects that we'll be covering in all of the

106health updates the primary versus secondary contact again it all comes down to masks primary you may be considered a close contact of someone with covet 19 if you were exposed to the sick person for more than 15 minutes and within six feet or less you live in the same household neither person was wearing a mask secondary contact you may be considered a secondary contact of someone with covet 19 if you were not directly exposed to the sick person for more than 15 minutes and within 6 feet or less one person was wearing a mask i also want to include that all facts are considered each individual case is completely different and all of those facts are taken into consideration when we're looking at that this is the husd cope 19 health office protocol that was

107put together and this is what our health aides are using in all of the health offices when we are looking at students that are coming in with potential symptoms and the flow sheet that we're going down when we're looking at that you'll notice at the very top in the red if anyone enters the health office with cover 19 symptoms you have to wear your ppe that includes your mask face shield gloves and gown that is a health department requirement and that's something that we're doing regardless the purpose of this flowchart is to help the health office go down and monitor the symptoms look at underlying conditions anything that we can rule out if we need to talk to parents before we go all the way down you'll see the very first thing we're doing is

108assessing the symptoms from that we're going down you if they have symptoms we're isolating them we're contacting their parents we're contacting site admin we're sending them home with the exclusion guidelines we're also i just want to be very sure that everybody knows we are looking at pre-existing conditions that has come up often and it's very important so next slide this is our student cova 19 exclusion guidelines this is specific to students you can see at the top we have the symptoms outlined they go home if they are displaying one symptom we're excluding asymptomatic students who have had positive cover 19 tests or live with someone diagnosed with cova 19 and we are excluding siblings of students who have had a positive positive sorry covid19 test that green and blue box below is outlining if they

109have a cova diagnosis symptomatic asymptomatic below that the cobot symptoms have not been evaluated by a health care provider that's giving the guidance of what we would do there and below that the no symptoms and live with lives with a person diagnosed with coping 19 or primary exposure next is the employee coveted 19 exclusion guidelines these mirror the same as the student at the top with the symptoms and the positive and diagnosis and then the health care provider what you're going to see that does not mirror below that is no symptoms and lives with the person diagnosed with cova 19 or primary exposure we have continued working in monitor for symptoms if symptoms develop within 14 days of exposure they will go on quarantine according to the maricopa county department of public health quarantine guidelines

110the next slide is student versus employee primary exposure to positive cases like you just saw those slides before the students will follow the student husd exclusion guidelines the employees will follow the employee husd exclusion guidelines educational workers are considered essential employees and can go to work after primary exposure if they are asymptomatic and wear masks they continue working and monitor their symptoms and if symptoms develop they will go on a 14-day quarantine with the maricopa department of public health the process for exposure and positive cases i am working on a training i'm going to be filming a video for our employees and in our admin and it's checklist for students and there's four of those they're going to look like exposure for an employee exposure for a student a positive case for an employee in

111a positive case for a student and that will go down and follow that process and it brings us down to the same guidelines that i just shared with you and that will be a training for the employees as well confidentiality who needs to know identifying information the district nurse school health aide school state administrator and human resources it's very important to remember the confidentiality i think this is huge and and it will be included in the training that i do in that video as well lack of confidentiality there's federal laws or state laws we do have hipaa we have ferpa i was just on a webinar at the health department today with them reiterating the importance of that that's very very important and the potential discipline for anybody involved in violating the confidentiality when and

112who will be notified of a positive case general anytime there's a positive number no sorry covet 19 case families connected to the grade or scheduled classes will be notified by email with a positive cova 19 case on campus communication for primary contacts if you are identified as a primary contact the district will work in conjunction with the maricopa county department of public health services who will call you or instruct inappropriate district personnel to call you husd will also send a letter via email secondary contacts will not be notified directly unless the maricopa county department of public health advises husd to notify notification to husd families for primary contacts again they'll be notified by email with the primary contact of awareness exposure communication phone call from the maricopa department of public health services or husd employee

113and will result in a need to quarantine for secondary contacts they'll be notified through the email positive case on campus for kindergarten through sixth grade that will be grade level and for seventh through twelfth grade that would be the class participants so based off of that student's schedule and they will not result in a need to quarantine again facts that go into every single case but in general speaking i do have a question in reference to the primary contact with secondary students they're in a classroom they change classes and every day there's they're sitting around different people in that same class so how are we going to decide if there's no seating assignment for that particular class i come into this math class every day and there is somebody that tests positive how are we

114going to know who are the primary contacts with those students sitting next to that student if they change every day because i think this we said how many days it takes like four or five days or something or before somebody you know so president kaler and um board member botovic i wanted so there's a tab in synergy that's our data system that we have for the district and in there it's a tracing tab and so if i go in there and i type in the student's id number or their name or whichever i use it outlines the entire student's schedule for that day and where they were and what students were in that class so for example i tested it and i put a student in from one of the high schools and i had

115the exact number but 162 165 students that were connected to that student that would get that notification yes the next slide please oh i'm sorry i'm sorry you've skipped i skipped ahead of you and the notification to husd employees the primary contacts will be notified by email with the primary contact of awareness of exposure and communication phone call from the maricopa department of public health services or husd employee and will result in a need to quarantine if symptomatic secondary contacts will be notified through email with a positive case on campus and will not result in a need to quarantine so mrs fulton basically just for to kind of bottom shelf it in a class if the child has been wearing their mask the whole time and there's a positive case that person is considered a

116secondary is that correct so it really goes to the mask wearing whether you are a primary versus a secondary and so you'll be notified through an email but that doesn't mean that student has to go quarantine but if that student chose not to wear a mask or didn't for some reason i mean that's a whole nother conversation that person would have to go quarantine because they would be primary correct yes president kayla and so again all those facts and so for example in this in your example if we weren't had a classroom and every student was wearing a mask they're all going to be secondary if one student takes their mask off but every other student is wearing their mask that's where the health department and i sit down and literally conversations come down to

117how long was the mask off how long were they in the classroom before the mask off came off who else was in the classroom where were they before that when did they i mean every situation boils down to that mask so in general to answer your question they would be secondary contacts but there's always things that play into it that i couldn't guarantee that would be the case so to follow up on that question whose responsibility is in the classroom to keep tabs that the maths are on and for what amount of time etc etc so if somebody says on a certain day the student tested positive so is the teacher supposed to be writing this down every day so and so took off the math for 10 minutes i mean who's going to keep

118track of this and to add this to the teachers in addition to cleaning the classroom and wiping the desk to man to testing to see who's keeping their mask on you know if you can tell me who's going to keep track of so if you call this classroom there's a positive test in the certain classroom and for the secondary and primary who's going to show you the numbers and said okay these two students took the mask off who's going to give you i guess how are we going to how are we going to do that president kaler and board member without i will tell you that everybody is very alert on who does not have a mask on at all times and will that change maybe but right now they can identify exactly who's not

119wearing a mask and there's a lot of remediation there of put your mask on let's put your mask on and that's going to be what happens as far as who's monitoring it in the classroom it will be the teacher if i guess i'm kind of speaking a little bit for myself thinking about past conversations and dr foley can step in but there's discussion you have the teacher reminding the student you have if that student still won't wear it you have admin come in and help talk to the student about the importance and education of wearing the mask and what that does more than likely will need to talk to the parents and have them on board too i mean it's a team effort president taylor board member with that's one of the most important parts

120about this is the mass mandatory mask wearing and that there be there that there be scheduled breaks or places where masks are removed where we can ensure physical distancing because really the mat wearing the mask at all times in in places where we cannot physically distance is the difference between a primary and secondary contact and so hence it's going to be really important that that's why it's a policy that we that we adhere to we talked about the fact that um only a um only a iep or 504 would that would trump's uh policy for that because quite honestly that this is such an important part of us having a safe classroom environment with is is ensuring that wearing that mask is is in place um it's essential i'm assuming that we are trying that

121like we're kind of getting a test run of this and support services and that's how you guys are speaking like how mrs fulton has said that they're reminding the kids to put it on and i'm assuming that's because of support services am i correct this is what's happening at support service like when we're doing support services right president kaler board member wilson yes support services have been a great trial run for masks and i'll tell you that one of the things we've been proud of is our littlest warers of the mass do a very good job one of the things we actually had a conversation with our principals earlier this week was there's the health the health assistant on campus is required to wear uh you know substantial gear from a mass to a shield

122to almost a hood and um a principal was saying to us you know actually what the requirement of this was startling and frightening to a student and we talked about that there's going to be a great deal of learning that has to happen just like when we did fire safety with our youngest learners being not afraid of the firefighter who's coming in to help you in this gear but how important wearing our gear is to protect us and each other um and and the quality of masks and our social and appropriate responsibilities for wearing those masks you know um when explained to our little our youngest learners and and again etiquette about not touching it as often or all those things are part of the learning that goes along with this but when explained to

123and explicitly taught to our youngest learners that they are very receptive and very good about adhering to it yes we've had reminders and we've had learning opportunities but again we've been pleasantly pleased with how our students have done we may need to do some reminders for our adults about wearing it over our noses but other than that we've had we've seen on a trial run in our and our support services the mass mandate and again we have situations in special educations and self-contained classrooms where there are iep health reasons these students are not able to do that and there are protocols that are being put in those classrooms in order to adhere and accommodate appropriately there and um just to address i know as a board we have chosen to sit apart we have chosen

124to keep us spaced apart and so that rule has been very clear to us in this board room that we don't have to put our mask on because we are more than six feet apart from everybody but the moment we walk around in this room everybody puts their mask on we use the restroom everybody has their mask on the district office every time i've come in everybody has their masks on so that is definitely the policy that we are following even here in our boardroom going to the theme of responsibility and understanding one of the things that will happen is when in-person learning resumes there will be an acknowledgement form that will be electronic through through parent view and in follow-up and paper if needed with an understanding for parents to understand how important their

125knowledge of the health safety sanitation and their their students health wellness is to the safety of all that visitors will be discouraged on campus that face coverings are going to be required and if a face covering isn't a mask it could be a face shield but your child will have to wear a face covering because it comes down to that face mask being the difference between quarantining or monitoring it really matters and and strict adherence to that is going to be really important this idea of these daily screening health protocols that your child is symptom-free yep we do know that asymptomatic um is possible hence the wearing of the mask and the hand sanitation and the and and and physical distancing where master off at lunch time and all those things are going to be

126essential and important there's going to be processes and protocols that have to be followed on campuses to ensure that we are as safe as possible and that ongoing communication about any health issues will be expected for instance if your child does come to school and your child does have a symptom that is concerning that your child needs to go home just like it says on those exclusion guidelines for 10 days and now again you can come with a negative test just like board member glover was talking about but sometimes it can take a few days to get those results but again we're going to be taking health and safety very seriously because it's important for us to be able to to if we're if we return to in-person learning it won't be business as usual

127without new protocols and processes in place to ensure safety and wellness where possible now one of the things we have been very direct about from from the get-go is that um physical distancing is not always going to be possible that is one of the mitigation factors that we know we know that hand sanitization that masks that physical distancing are all essential and very very very important um so but the wearing of the mask is going to be essential when we cannot physically distance so there will be an acknowledgement form that will be part of awareness for our community as well as conversations that happen with students about what this looks like in the classroom and there's responsibilities too now does that mean that it will be perfect that does that mean that everyone will adhere

128to it at all times no this is going to be an ongoing new reality for us when we return to in-person learning and adherence to that will help make sure we are able to stay stay in in-person learning at which point um during any of this are we gonna how are we going to educate our students about this i mean the importance are we going to have some youtube videos for them to watch you know the first couple days of school and to say okay you need to put a mask on this is how you put it on um i was watching one the other day we touch our face 16 times an hour okay and this they were showing even with your mask on at 16 times an hour you still have germs up

129here and everywhere else and it was quite interesting to watch some of these videos that some school districts are showing that even with children washing their hands they were missing the top section and things like that so they were educating through videos the correct way to wash how to put the mask on it was it's so i mean it's important that we all are getting the same message to everybody on our campuses and perhaps through a youtube video or something but you know i think we need to all have the same message and how to do this and and you know if we're going to um get through this we need to come together as a group and i think it's important the more things that we do to make it fun for our students

130you know educate them with the bubble man or whatever we need to do but we need to get the information out and it needs to be the same information on all our campuses yeah president taylor um mrs fulton i saw this same mask picture that you shared with us at the banner health asthma office and i actually took a picture of it i found it to be very informative and it helps explain the importance of the mask and dr foley i think you i know you mentioned this just now is that we know physical distancing isn't going to be available in lots of our areas and both the cdc and the arizona department of health services and maricopa county health i mean you put all these health services in and their recommendation is a mask

131when physical distancing isn't possible so knowing that physical distancing is not going to be [Music] possible in our classrooms all the time in our hallways and things like that in some areas may we might be able to spread out a little bit more and have that physical distancing be able to take that mask break and things like that but um i know we heard multiple times in our public comment tonight the concern about the physical distancing and that is why the masks are so important we recognize and if we could physical distance through the recommendation then that would obviously be ideal but it's not it's not available in our industry it's not available in our schools so it that those masks are going to be very important and i agree mr ritovich we we need

132to make sure that we're trying to share with our parents how important it is how to properly wash your hands how to properly put your masks on um and do what we can to to do that properly and the sooner we can communicate that and get our families um hopefully working with it i know it was mentioned at our previous board meeting and i know i saw lots of things out there where it's like working on having my kid wear a mask and i've seen lots of pictures even through the meltdowns of the remote learning but they're getting their kids to wear the masks during remote learning to get used to it so um thank you for sharing that and i think that that's a great visual on how this does how important it does

133prevent the spread of the this virus president kaler thank you well uh thank you got both for your comments and uh mr batovich having been and seen uh around some kids that have gone back to schools i'm impressed with how well they're doing i really expected to hear a lot like put your mask on put your mask on put your mask on because were really good they were really good and sometimes kids are the best of us and and kind of sometimes show us how we should behave but um but if you if now it's maybe a time you know if you want to go back i mean i for me you know i have looked at the hybrid model i think it matches what some of the guidance has said um if you if

134you absolutely must go back short term i would like to watch other people make any possible mistakes rather than our kids i understand that's wildly unpopular and it would be extremely crazy for everyone but you can establish some routines the kids can learn if they're at a new school they can learn the new school but limiting the numbers in tight spaces i think is so so very important um you know and then there's there's you know there's things like the desks are not going to be set up the way that they're that we're used to the drinking fountains are probably going to be covered and maybe every other table and you know the lunch tables you can't sit right next to your buddy anymore we've got to get a little used to that and so

135at 100 full capacity asap full speed yeah i'd rather have a little time to to adapt to that but um anyway i this this um this presentation um i don't think it this is not a bag but there's some data you need some data so i want to throw some numbers out um since august over 70 000 children in the united states have tested positive for covet a 21 increase i think that's important to know uh there's been a sharp rise since july the last two weeks of july 97 000 kids under age 19 tested positive the american academy of pediatrics which people like to throw at us released a report at the end of july and guess which state had more coveted cases per hundred thousand than any other state in the country yes

136arizona you've got it right uh there's about a thousand and ninety-eight per hundred thousand children's we are we are worse or better depending on your perspective uh we're worse than arkansas louisiana and mississippi and that is not great company um arizona has the highest positivity rate for kids it's 17.8 percent so those are numbers that you know i feel like we kind of need to to make some decisions so i just wanted to throw that out there for anyone i'm just going to say though i did read to some of those exact numbers mr mr glover but i do believe the one that with the academy of pediatrics they only they only took nine states total it wasn't all 50 states that they came up with that number i kind of read that later on

137but i did see the same articles that you are referring to president taylor members of the board one of the things that we've had a theme that we were talking about at several of our meetings and it was asked for us to come back is a little bit about social emotional what how are we connecting with kids because we know how important this is you know what our teachers are amazing and they love their kids and we want to connect with them and sometimes it's hard to do that and they have been very creative and have come up with different ways to do that so we wanted to highlight the work of a couple teachers here in ways that they have been connecting with students in remote learning and they've got some great things happening

138that connect with the great social emotional support again it's hard to replace what can happen in the classroom but what we're doing is extending to bring the connection through that screen and connecting with individuals in ways that are a little unique and our students have done some neat work in their class so we're just going to share a couple examples again um just just a highlight of some some of the many things that our teachers are doing with our students in the area of connecting and building relationships with them at this time so president taylor members of the board this for me is a success story for sure so when our kids work with us remotely in person or eventually online here we're not just developing academics with these kids there's this whole other side

139and we call it that social emotional component i like to think of this as the real life skills these are the skills you need to survive as an adult so some of those things include managing your emotions setting and achieving goals developing empathy and the capacity to build those positive relationships with others so next slide please sunny braxtona is one of our sixth grade teachers and she was gracious enough to share this example and i thought about it for a while because all of us can probably we could probably write a diary since march because that's when it really impacted us here and so she's stretching her kids to think deeply and share what's been going on with them she told me today how much the kids are missing school and how they look forward

140to wednesdays and they want to talk about it all the time so these are some of the questions that she's challenged our kids with how has your life changed for all of us there are a lot of talking points data points changes some things might have been positive and i can sit here right now and say our kids have grown through this their technology skills their ability to persevere problem solved in spite of adversity but then there are those challenges or those changes that none of us were prepared for so i love the fact that she's getting them to talk about their feelings um she told me you know some of them are saying i'm getting headaches oh me too or i have anxiety and i'm worried oh me too so this to me is

141one of the best things we've been doing it's such an uncertain time and our kids i guess unfortunately or fortunately are developing some lifelong skills or some grit maybe earlier than we would have wanting to wanted them to go through this but there are positive points when i met with my elementary team this week we said we've got to keep doing this when we get back in person we'll do it in person and online and should we stay remote we'll continue so next slide please so it is a critical time in history and i always think about where i was on 9 11. i can tell you exactly what was happening and all the emotion and how it impacted me as a teacher and and what i did with that and life's really never been

142the same since then and i don't think life's ever going to be the same after coven but we're learning through it and our teachers are like actually enjoying this time in the week so the next slide please so this isn't separate from thinking and writing and communicating it's all combined and so she's using microsoft teams as a platform for sharing and it was kind of fun because mr watson-hauser and i were talking about some of the similar similarities between elementary and secondary and how they're approaching this but i think it's kind of fun to step back and say yay something's going well so president keller members of the board i'd like to highlight something that mr dolan and the staff at sussman middle school are doing where they're using a program where they're giving small

143lessons on the wednesdays to all of their students and they've called it shield and so as you can see student hour for individual emotional learning and development and they started this last week and so they're once again going through some social emotional components with their kids on a school-wide basis and allowing them to have some opportunities to once again talk about some of the issues that they're going through next slide please so this is just the first one that they did last week and as all of you are familiar with stress we are taking a look at that and defining stress for the kids and having them put that within their own words and once again these are all the teachers spread out in terms of a certain period and that's what they're dealing with

144all of their kids going through so the first one was to explain stress next slide please once again just trying to help them identify and i think when you're doing this it's finding similarities that you're not alone that if you're feeling these kind of things there are a lot of people that are feeling uh these kinds of things and once came with mrs richards and i were comparing we thought wow that's very similar to a lot of the themes that were happening from her examples are the themes that are happening uh with us as well next slide please so they talked about masloff's hiring hierarchy of needs and how we are supporting them on the bottom two but how can we help them support themselves and grow through this hierarchy and it's introducing these students

145to these ideas and so hopefully we're continuing to work with them to get up to that blue self-actualization peak next slide please and i what i really liked at the end here is how they finished this first lesson was tell us what you want to talk about so some ownership from the student perspective like hey i'm concerned about maybe i need to talk more about anxiety or continue on with stress or what other topics and so this is going to be continuous theme at the campus about how they can support the students whether it's remotely or whether it's in person and so just another example i think from what our district is doing in a wonderful job and and kudos to the teachers and mr dolan for helping put together this program to support the

146kids there will this spread to the other campuses you know each principal is looking at different things individually we're looking at something yes it has been a theme not this week in our board comments but i think two weeks ago that the social and emotional learning was a big deal for our parents and so i just want to make sure that all campuses are going to get something or work towards something yes and and when we when we meet as a group we share our ideas because some the counseling departments have stepped up with canvas pages and different things to provide resources and different structures so we do like to share and steal from each other any other questions go ahead and listen um in the comments today we heard about ppe not being available

147could you speak to that a little president kaler board member wilson yes i'm going to ask uh dr fowler to come out here so that he can address some of those questions um and he's in the back and has been made aware of the concerns so i'll have him switch places here so that he can speak to that directly president keller members of the board would you repeat the question i'm sorry there were some ques did you get to hear board comments at all yes i did and i was actually i was surprised by the comments there was a couple related to ppe and so the only item that i'm aware of that we haven't received was plexiglas which we did have a supply of plexiglass but that was limited right now so we did

148get plex glass installed in all of our front offices and still working through some of the local areas to get more but that was one area but that doesn't really fall under the ppe i know wipes were limited although we did receive a supply of those this past week and so um we're really stocked in all the ppe areas face masks mass as we know the teacher boxes that we went over a while back we have all those supplies in and those items are being deployed um so i wasn't um and i'm not quite sure what that meant but they said sanitation station hand sanitizers so we did have those set up with the hand sanitizer um on tables and sites and then um just this past week also the purell um ones that attached

149the wall had arrived so i think we have um a number of those that have been distributed and so that's in processing and we're continuing to reach out and and gather more um ppe and so we do have a supply in all of those those key areas so i do think you know maybe a month ago there were some areas that were looking for excuse me but our supply is uh you know stocked thank you so in reference why we're talking about supplies so the box that i we saw at the last board meeting all the all the teachers will be having those in her clap their classrooms the supplies that are necessary president killer mr tovic in fact yes the box um was a a temporary we actually have a special it's a blue

150bag with a higley logo on it that is going to house all of those and they those were and are in process and being delivered out to the sites and put together so yes every single teacher will have those all of those items and um and we're you know gonna keep those replenished and working with each sites to make sure that you know all of those supplies are replenished when they they're needed so if we have the box do we have a guidebook so this box isn't just sitting on my desk then like does each school have guidelines like what's going to take place and what you need to do at certain times and because i haven't seen any guidelines any guidebooks yet as far as what what needs to do yes in fact um

151president keller mr tobich there's um individual information in that box for the teacher and then i know each individual site has detailed plans that they're putting together and then we're working through through with our custodial staff as well as far as training with our high touch custodians which we appreciate the board for supporting those positions that we're adding as well and so yes that's all in in process we had a conversation about additional staff is all the staff in place right now for the maintenance that we asked for in reference i think we were asking there you were saying part-time and i think mr glover asked an orphanage to part full-time employees we're so uh have we brought additional maintenance staff onto each one of our campuses so we're prepared they've been hired president kaler

152mr wintovich i know um just in the last couple days that decision um was made in terms of some staff what we were finding is some sites were having difficulty hiring the part-time position and so what we have done with some flexibility is allowing sites that have currently people hired as part-time people allowing them to take that part-time position and make that a full-time position and so that um process a number of sites had already hired that part-time position but there are sites that we're having trouble and so that they've um and that we've given them that flexibility uh thanks to our hr department and so that's that's in process so i would say about half of our sites have had somebody and then the others are looking at probably current people and looking to

153move them to full-time positions so if we're looking at opening the schools on september 8th we're still not there yet in reference to staffing needed for for the maintenance good evening president kayla members of the board dr thomason my fellow colleagues and cabinet um board member tovic if we're looking at september 8th as a reopening um they will be transitioned and ready because as dr fowler mentioned we've already hired a number of them and the other sites have opted to now look at increasing their current part-time employees that they already have encumbered to full-time status so they'll shift the full-time status if not this week next week one of the question um where are we at on the filters are all the filters in place president koehler mr witovich so we have received replacement filters

154and so those were installed in all of the classrooms that were in occupation now and then the additional filters are are on order and arriving in the next week or two and so as soon as those come in those will be replaced as soon as they arrive and so so you know that's in process i i'm going to piggyback off that mr watovich that i think you know our teachers and our staff not everybody watches every board meeting they haven't seen every detailed powerpoint that we've presented they haven't heard everything that we've heard and we soak it up and we kind of take it all for i take take advantage that we know what we've decided on up here but i think it's really important that our teachers get that time for training on classroom

155expectations when it comes to the cleanliness and the disinfecting and again i'm all for those videos i think videos are a great way to um you know just i'm very visual so um if it gets to the point where more of that needs to take place i would be all for that president kaler oh thanks um so it looks like we're moving on here pretty soon to item 7.2 and just to my fellow board members you know i would just say you still have time to look at the numbers to watch our neighbors and we would still have time to meet that date if we if you all were intent on that date you know a recent national poll says that one in three educators now say the virus has made them more likely to

156resign or retire early you can feel their anxiety in some of the the letters we heard today you know i think there's it sounds like there's a lot of if if this does happen to pass it sounds like you all have a lot of work to do and i would encourage you to go out and talk to people in person uh to let them hear and see and ask and say the things that need to be said because what i don't want to happen have happened is for us to be the next j.o combs you know that here we go everybody's coming back 100 percent but uh you got like 60 teachers not showing up today so then what does that do to those classrooms so i think there's some work that needs to be

157done and i don't think it could be done uh via email uh i think i think it would be wise for the cabinet to go out and and to listen to our teachers and talk to them and talk about some of the numbers and i i think i do think looking at higley's data just the higley school area i mean to me that was very enlightening and uh that helped me think about things differently than i had so i you know i don't know what's going to happen on 7.2 i don't know but there you go thank you mr glover i guess one other concern that i've heard uh repeat about since we're talking about reopening schools is this 14-day quarantine for a student can we just talk about for a second maybe elementary and

158secondary just putting some parents at ease that we've had lots of students in the past that have had to go out for a a long period of time for various reasons illness so um some of those questions i've always said refer back to your principles but in general i'll let you guys kind of take we we provide the education materials that the student needs during that time i mean i'll let you kind of canvas is now up but just to put those parents minds at ease that there is a plan in place for those if there was a quarantine situation president kaler members of the board yes that's very important part so one of the things that we've been talking about and we've talked about it several times is the understanding that this this this

159is a different different approach this year when it comes to attendance and being the fact that if you don't feel good or for any reason we want you to stay home if you uh if there is the need to quarantine obviously there's going to be the need to stay home one of the things that is an ongoing part even when we return to in-person learning is canvas is going to be a management system a portal that ends up being a place where you can go if you are out to get your information or assignments or tasks no it won't be like what would it there won't be the live instruction like there was when it was in remote learning style but if you were out the lessons or or activity or assignment will be posted

160so that your student can continue to get information and can continue to work while they are out so it will be a place that we continue to use even when we are in person we may use our canvas learning management system more than we had before it will be a versatile platform for in-person as well as at home it'll be a way that we communicate with each other and turn in assignments and those things so the uh right now it's the primary vehicle for how we're connecting it will continue to be an important vehicle for home to school connection monitoring what students are doing and how they're doing it so again it will be an important part of what sustains thank you for that any other questions for mrs reese go ahead oh thank you

161foley that's a a good point and i know canvas is new to elementary but the high schools used it more middle schools used it more more than elementary but not as much as high school and that's the same thing that's happened in the past when a student's been out for any reason whether they've been sick that they've had access to their assignments and and everything in canvas and in addition to that i know with our teachers that if we have someone out sick they'll be communicating with um whether and when i say sick whether they're quarantined whether they're ill whether they just need to be home i know our staff will be communicating with them to make sure that they understand the assignments that are in canvas and if there is any questions and and

162will be available for them and i appreciate the comment about this is very different this year for attendance several years back we had h1n1 the swine flu and uh if you had the swine flu you had to be out of school for 10 days and um it hit our district we had kids that were out um and it was it was the children that actually was the at-risk group and so we at that time did not change our attendance policy i unfortunately had a child who got the swine flu and i continued to receive letters from the district about truancy because he was not permitted to go to school for 10 days so anyway i i appreciate that i hope we have made those changes so electronically these letters don't go out because that's frustrating

163but it's appreciated that we're encouraging any time you don't feel well stay home attendance is okay yes the only time you will be contacted is if you didn't let us know your child was out sick and for how long your student would be out sick because we need to make sure that we need to know that we report that for obviously we report it but you will not receive attendance letters before after missing so many absences that has been suspended and again going back to the conversation earlier tonight it's really important to remember that um just again if you don't feel well stay home that doesn't mean the world thinks you now have go but it means you're being responsible for monitoring your symptoms and and hence we need you to do that um and

164an event that you do that we need to be in communication and confidentiality is important but it helps us help keep everyone else safe so that we can communicate appropriately so this will be a this will be a new navigation for us as we return and when we return and whenever that may be the health this we're going to be navigating living through a we're still in the middle of a pandemic until there is a a a vaccine so health and wellness and will be an ongoing theme that we're going to have to navigate together i do have one one question in reference to back to the health slides if i remember right on the health slides on the notification the teacher wasn't part of that plan and reference it looked like it was hr

165the nurse on staff on site the teacher even though they're in the classroom since they will be always wearing a mask or they're always going to be secondary and yet they'll see children in their classroom leaving and not coming back and they'll get an email a day or two later wouldn't the teacher should be on the front line as well as the hr people so they can kind of keep an eye on the rest of the students if they see any other symptoms in the classroom to keep them part of it i mean i'm just kind of concerned why the teacher is not since they're on the front lines and they could help out hr or any of you the nurse in a minute so i was kind of concerned on that one president kaler

166and board member tobitch i understand that concern and it's been brought up a lot and again reiterating every weekly conversation that i have with the health department just on their webinars and daily conversations i have about reiterating the confidentiality it is across the board a consensus that teachers while are able to know that they sent their student to the to the health office and that that student went home they do not need to know why at that point if they're identified as a primary contact they still will not know by who they will know that their primary contact of a positive case but names reasons that they went home down to signing out for why a student went home are all staying confidential if during the school day the teacher took off her mask to

167get a drink of water in the classroom or did something like that then she would be a primary contact correct because the mass came off but not for 10 minutes 15 minutes you know who knows i mean if they need to sit down if they eat lunch in the classroom or something like that they're taking the mask off for more than 10 minutes i mean i'm just i completely understand what you're saying and i and i hear your your fear with that but teachers are not assigned to be on that front line of a confidentiality and knowing why a student went home they'll be notified if their primary contact just like anybody else would okay and again these aren't our rules this is above us this is this is above us but i understand you're

168concerned the nursing staff comes in with a spiral full gear on and there's the teacher sitting in the classroom with the mask okay i mean but let's let's help the person on the front line here and i thought the more the more we work together as a team we can get through this i mean that's that's my concern and i understand it's not it's not it's it's above us but and and mr tobits we all know and i've and i've had this conversation with dr foley that a student their their privacy will not remain private not in this community and and that's just i'm just being real that as soon as there's a case and a student goes out and then another person hears about it it's on social media or snapchat with the kids

169before we even hear and that's just the nature of our community and i and i don't mean that in just a terrible way it's just the reality that very few things stay private and i think sorry dr foley and i think i have two schools of thought on that and i i agree and i think if our teachers know um and i'm thinking more secondary um then someone comes into class and says oh so joe's got coveted and the teacher's like yep not realizing not thinking i i mean it it's just a response and i'm not trying to say that they're irresponsible or anything like that but it's hard to look at somebody and say well i'm not at liberty to discuss that with you and then at that point someone looks at them and

170says okay you don't have to you've said enough but my other school of thought on that is that would they not always be a primary contact because we will not we've already said physical distancing in our classrooms is not possible and like mr rotovic brought up earlier is they are not going to be able to note know that they spent 15 minutes within six feet of a kid and so if they're in that classroom then they're moving around whether if they're at the front of the classroom the kids who sit in front they're going to be less than six feet now they'll be more than six feet from the ones behind but would that not based on those guidelines just because they were wearing a mask would that not make them that primary contact correct

171if they were wearing a mask they are not a primary content even though they were less than 60 even though they were less than six feet you know mrs reese referenced that too as you're mentioning that we're going to be going to the teachers in that classroom to ask what students were not wearing a mask on that certain day so are they not going to be your primary contact because they're going to be the person that can tell you if they were sitting around a certain student who was not wearing a mask that day you're going to have to rely on the teachers as the primary contact in that classroom correct president keller and board member watovic i think it for me thinking about this it goes back a little earlier when we were talking

172about everyone being aware of what's going on in the education for the students and the teachers and i have to say that i really hope there's not a student that is not wearing a mask for 15 minutes without some sort of redirection and some more education and importance of wearing that and what that looks like so that would be part of the working together and making sure that we get that education across mrs wilson all right i just have a little statement and i was trying to figure out where to put it so i think right here is the good time to say it uh today we are here again talking about reopening of schools i would venture to ever to guess that every one of us up here has read countless emails spent hours

173researching articles thinking and praying on what to do today i personally have cried reading emails from parents teachers and staff on both sides of this hotly debated issue i understand both sides mental health is real covett is real i never thought when i was gathering signatures to be elected to this board that i would have to choose between someone's physical health and someone's mental health and that's what we're being asked to do i emphasiz empathize with both sides today i'm reading that people have lost someone i get an email and i read that someone a family member has been lost to covid the next email i'm reading is about the mental health of the kids teachers staff and parents that need that personal contact i get an email one moment from a nurse begging to

174go begging us not to go back because the hospital bed rates and then i get an email from another nurse begging us to go back because of psychiatric hospital bed rates we have divided our community i said this before and i'll say it again whatever decision you make is right for your family make it and it is the right decision please don't judge others for their decision we don't know what they're dealing with safe means different things to different families and different people some thinks it some feel it's safe to go back and some do not please don't judge it's okay please continue to show kindness and show your kids kindness matters thank you very well said beautiful thank you mrs wilson any other questions or comments about reopening of schools before we move on

175i am trying to delay if it doesn't show okay here we go well we have to do a vote here so 7.2 is the vote on reopening schools well 7.1 is now complete we're moving to 7.2 i was going to make it right now can you wait for that one is that okay okay so i make a motion that the governing board approves the return to in-person learning teacher-led classroom instruction to begin on september 8 2020 if the public health benchmark metrics continue to be met second questions comments concerns the um i do have some questions one is the certified staff was made aware of this on tuesday i believe yesterday at which point they were asked if they had any questions or concerns to discuss them at that time if we're making a decision

176today how can some i'm not even aware of any of these questions that these teachers had or concerns um anywhere i'm sure i do have some questions like like if a teacher needs to be out in quarantine are we going to pay their sick leave for them i mean those are some of the things that are taking place so just to find out what if where we're going to be at with the questions that the teachers had yesterday how are we even going to address any other questions if we were going to ask this decision right now i know mr tobich we did cover that in a meeting but again i go back to not every teacher has watched every meeting and even though we live it every day and we have the information i

177don't know how much we have no it's not it's not about watching the meeting the principals had a presentation when they read to the teachers this at that time the teachers were asked if they have any questions it's not about watching a board meeting it's questions that the teachers had at that time so who's addressing those questions that those teachers had for us to move forward on september 8th and how are we going to get to that by september 8th i'm sure questions would be how are the teachers are going to be getting paid who's going to train them how are we going to set up the classroom are you giving us release time to set up our classroom some teachers have not been in this building since march and we want them to open

178up are we going to get are they going to teach online in the same day teach online that evening go into the classroom i mean where are the questions that the teachers are asking who's going to answer them so we get these in place okay if somebody can tell me that all right i get that maybe okay president kevlar board member watovic so one of the things we had a meeting with our principals on monday first we had a meeting with them first to say one that this was a board item that we would be talking about that i had put together the video for them for the slides that would be discussed so that they could share with teachers because we wanted them to we wanted our teachers and our employees to hear about

179and not be caught off guard by by this agenda item we talked with our administrators about once an in-person date is returned a night they have been working on these for a long time these play books these understandings of what it looks like on your campus what are some of the things that you're going to do some of the hr related issues but but providing that some of the health issues obviously have continued to change that have been formalized over the last several weeks so once that date is determined we talked about how important it is knowing a date um whatever they that might be then we'll begin to provide some time with teachers to to outline what does that look like for their campus um as well as address some of the questions that

180administrators got our following up with our administrators today was some of them had questions concerns and wanted to vent or voice their frustrations which we wanted to hear some of them were encouraged to email they were also encouraged to make comment the specific questions we obviously would would work with our administrators to make sure are addressed in their training for their site the recording of the health training that would be part of we also are going to look to find ways to give some teachers some additional time and finalize what where and why that might be but again as soon as there is a determination of a date we can finalize what that might look like for our teachers so again um we're really wanting to to to understand what those questions and concerns are

181so that we can respond to them appropriately i do believe a lot of the questions that they're going to have will be answered by some of the protocols or the quarantine question i mean how many dates are you available for so that we can help answer those things because and this thus far their energies as they should have been have been on remote instruction and they have been spending hours learning all their new management platform and engaging their students so i think it was once the date is finalized or when we have that providing additional training on what does that transition back to in-person learning look like and in the meantime we've been finalizing what those documents protocols videos will look like so that principals can figure out when and how to do that for

182their staff and providing some kind of time for them to uh be prepared for this transition um you know as far as the september 8th date that i'm that we're talking about um personally i would be comfortable if if we did go with the september 8th as a recommending but as i said earlier you know this as as people were saying cherry picking and bringing different things together i want to see the fact that we're going down the numbers are going down so when these students and staff are coming into this building on september 8th that the numbers are going this way okay so i would only be comfortable if we had a board meeting on thursday september 3rd at seven o'clock or whatever time so we can see at that point at that point

183the report that says hey the stats that show tomorrow thursday down next thursday down i would be okay knowing that that we're going in going down and instead of saying okay all of a sudden you know we're looking at opening school on september 8th and bang there's a problem out here you know we can we can grab it in time and not open up school if there's something really happening in one of our local communities that we can continue online say oh okay let's grab it back and see what's going on it's just that's just my thought on reference to that well mr ritovich um as we discussed kind of over the the last friday in our executive session how much work is going to be involved in making this transition i hear you and

184i think that as as board members we need to [Music] look upon ourselves make sure we're looking at the data make sure we know what we're watching i i know i i review it daily for multiple reasons and i think that if we're looking at those we'll look at them tomorrow i know that based on the daily trends it's going to continue to come down and and we'll see what dr foley and her team has seen and that's why they recommend because we're on this continuous downward trend and i'm not okay with less than or with five days of pulling that plug one the amount of time that it's going to take and the work in the background making all the changes switching students to the online the in person switching the teachers and for

185our families because they have to plan as well and they need to make arrangements and whether they work in their home out of their home if there's transportation things like that and with five days notice if we let me clarify if there is a major change within our covered numbers that is absolutely what would need to happen but i wouldn't want to plan on saying well we're not going to give the full go ahead until the third and so i think that as board members just as we said when we initially met and obviously when we initially talked about it the data that we had in the arizona department of health dashboard we were looking at july data because there's almost a three week lag and so it was really old and so that was

186part of that discussion and so i think if if as board members i know our teachers are looking at it i know our administrators are looking at it i think if we continue to monitor it and if need be i think we pull an emergency together emergency meeting together to only pull the plug instead of saying we're going to plan to have a meeting to make sure it's good before we go ahead i i don't know any if if this passes and the plan is the eighth um i don't think any board member would have an issue coming together if something went horribly wrong between now and then to have an emergency meeting to pull the plug and we'll have to deal with that but to say that that's kind of when we're gonna really

187make the full decision i think is is too hard i agree with what that's what i meant to say okay it wasn't to have the meeting to say well let's if we continue no no that's what i want to say exactly what how you transpired it is to is to go with the eighth date but let it be known if there's any red flag comes up between now and and that eight that we're going to come together to to have a conversation that that's what i meant to say okay so we're on the same page so meaning if those numbers on the third are way yeah crazy and it's an issue then kind of in the background we should make ourselves available okay because it sounded like you're asking us to schedule a meeting for

188that day and that's when we would really kind of give the go ahead and that's why i was saying i was not okay with that i think as long as it's in the back here that says hey if there's something happening that we're going to come together it's not just written in stone saying oh it's going to be the eighth no matter what no no it's not going to be the eighth no matter what we're going to take a look at what's happening and if there are some things coming out there then we'll get the phone calls and at that time that's what i meant okay go ahead mrs wilson president koehler it does say in here if public benchmarks metrics continue to be met so just to help you out greg it does say

189in the recommendation from the superintendent's associate superintendent did you have something sad well i mean we we have to agree on what makes what equals a green check mark though too oh okay i was going to say i you know all along i've wanted to look at our local data and when we had our meeting and i brought local data then i was accused of making up my own numbers but using their numbers just in our area and knowing that our area was not trending the same as glendale and and maricopa county and so um i hear the comments about cherry picking um these are all whether it's from the county or from the state these benchmarks have always been recommendations and they've never been requirements and knowing looking at our area and now looking

190at the surrounding areas gilbert public schools and their returning um in a hybrid model but on september 8th mesa is moving towards that and sorry me so they're more they're in the red in many areas around them and initially that first week when we were our own yellow item and everywhere was red around us everyone was concerned because we have people coming from gilbert when a different gilbert zip code was read and those numbers have dramatically dramatically decreased when we look at some of the the numbers we went from a 6.31 to 4.8 percent and we went from 63.3 cases per 100 and we dropped that by 50 in a week in our area so um our surrounding areas have also improved and based like i said i tracked the information daily and they're going

191to continue to improve um because what we look at today and how our numbers have trended down for the last couple weeks what our numbers are today aren't going to show up on our report for almost two and a half weeks and so we've continued to trend down so um i i understand people's comments and i and i get it and we're still using the same numbers we haven't changed the numbers i hear you mr glover we're applying one metric in one place and not in another and i think that we have i've supported returning in school and i think that the numbers have continued to improve which further supports it like mrs wilson said we hear from both sides all the way around we will hear from from one doctor and say it's absolutely

192time to get these kids in school it's what they need to do and it is safe and then we will hear from another doctor that says are you out of your ever-loving mind about thinking of returning these kids to school so there there is no clear defined um line or or place so it is very very divided but um i think with our like i said our data is weeks old we continue to improve and i think that our failure rate of our kids within our district is very high it's very clear that they're struggling we need to to get them in front of their teachers and that we had discussed multiple dates and the eighth was what made the most sense with all the work that needs to be done behind it and i

193know people say just wait until fall break because then you have that time to do it fall break will be a natural break for any cases that may come up because there probably will be some cases it's that's going to happen and so that will be a natural quarantine if you will from school anyway and so um so i think that i think it is time for our kids to go back to school and get into that new routine yes we'll have a natural break but then i think that mentally then they will be more prepared even after fall break to return go ahead mr glover um well i thank you for your passion um you know the eighth doesn't make sense to me in case anybody didn't figure that out but um but that

194still doesn't i know how you feel about what what's green to you but you all need to i mean before this before you make this vote i really think we should be clear on what equals agreeing because if we do have to go back and you do have to tell people because things went backwards what are we going to base it on so i would like to maybe hear from you all of what you guys think is green or yellow or red because you might have to make those decisions yes mr glover i um i appreciate you asking us all for that clarification and i do believe when it goes back to what metrics that boards can look at it was very clear that once the maricopa county gave us clear direction of higley we

195could use those and so i think it's important that we are looking at all the data that we have before we make a decision and again it is it is a two-week lag i know people are saying well we should watch for queen creek we should see what happens with you know north gilbert ala and things like that but it's still going to be a two-week lag it'll be it'll be a month before we see anything from that area so i'm with you mr witovic i want to watch these numbers i'll be i clicked last week i was on my computer all day just looking at refreshing those numbers and watching them and i absolutely am going to watch them and i i understand mr glover your concern and i and i love your heart

196and your passion for hearing our teachers and i think we all echo that we love our teachers we we love our staff and i want them to feel as safe as they possibly can returning and that word safe has a vast vast meaning i cannot guarantee safety of my kids or my teachers that is the reality of this and it's so hard and i don't think there's a single one of us up here that wanted to sign up for this or thought we'd ever be sitting here having these discussions and this being thrown on our laps and so i'm just gathering all the data that i possibly can i'm listening to the experts and i'm just trying to do the best i can by the students the teachers we have the option which i'm so

197thankful for that we do have an option if it's not in school learning we do have it is anything perfect no not right now and so i i struggle i do know um we've had a lot of kids on our campuses we've had sports going for weeks and weeks all summer long we took one week off was it mr la three three weeks total off otherwise the students have been doing their practicing and they did in phases um by what aia um you know encouraged we've had ed on our campuses we've had now we have support services on our campuses so it's not that our campuses have been complete you know totally shut down we've had things happening on our campuses and things have been going really well and even for those school districts that

198open it sounds like things are going really well and i and i hope and i pray that that's the direction that we're headed and again if anything is not perfect right now this is not perfect i welcome any other comments you know mr glover in reference to your question i want this to be done right okay i don't want to see what other districts around us have done with as a free-for-all and it's just a mess everywhere around here um i want us to to do it together i want i want the safety of our teachers i want them to be okay i want our students to be okay and i want our administration to be okay and i just want this to be done right and and safety to be involved on this and

199and i guess reference the the eighth date you know reference to this i'm gonna be watching these next two thursdays believe me okay so and if something's by next thursday on that third not then then we're gonna be having a meeting so so i'm watching here okay i'm not just gonna blank and say okay we're gonna go back to school everything's fine no no no no no i'm gonna be watching this thursday and and i know all of us are and and so that's that's where i'm more comfortable with that knowing that at any time we can pull back and and see what takes place because that gives us another two weeks in reference to that too as well thank you mr whatevich i think we're all on the same page on that and the

200other thing is is that september 8th it does give our behind the scenes employees who are going to be working around the clock all weekend to do the split and we had a lot of information on that last week and it is a huge job and so um the eighth did come up not just for the benchmarks but for also that extra day for those behind the scenes and again having the conversation with our administrators and our teachers and trying to find some space for them like you said mr witovich if they don't if they haven't been in their classrooms we want we want to give them that time i definitely want to try to do whatever we can to provide that time for them to come in um so yeah again it's not perfect

201okay so with that we will vote all those in favor aye aye those opposed nay motion carries four one and with that we are going to take another little break thank you president kaler though before too late i just i'm not i'm not going to say anything ranty crazy just for uh mr lots nicer and for the parents that now have to plan and make some decisions there's a lot of comments and concerns about particularly electives at the secondary and i know we had talked about um you're you're trying to figure out the best to to do the most for the most kids and uh people i think in the community have made some assumptions that you know there's not there's no possible way that x could be offered and i don't think that's true

202i don't put words in your mouth but they can contact the school you have a plan you're doing the best you can maybe you could talk to that while people are thinking about this if that's okay with thank you i totally agree with you mr glover president kaler board member glover yes we are absolutely making sure that um if there's an elective issue please contact your school there's flexibility that we have is everything going to be offered probably not however we can work together and really those numbers and that's where we really need to shore up who is the people who are planning on not returning and that way that could help us because the more people are there the more makes it easier for us to get a teacher to have that class and

203so there's some things that we're not on the list that we're hoping to be able to add because if the need is there we're going to provide it what happens is when it becomes that individual one-off student or that sometimes that's where we're going to have to make some hard decisions but we're working that and we're meeting with our principals and mrs martin's right now to work on some of those hr issues behind the scenes also to figure out where we can merge student need teacher need get it together so that we can make it the best for everyone as possible and so yes and i think it's just really good i know we're still going to continue to get a lot of emails from our community but very specific questions that you have please

204email your principals they each site i know has worked really hard on a lot of different things that they can answer because if not i'm forwarding the email and it gets forwarded and then you'll finally get your answer but a lot of our principals have this information so again those concerns but i know we're still going to continue to get lots of emails and i welcome each and every one thank you okay welcome back um dr foley wanted to have a little comment and then we're going to move on to our athletics update president kaler members of the board what i want you to know is that we will work immediately with our administrative team to also create some time for our teachers we may need to we'll finalize what that may look like so

205that teachers can have a few days here where assignments may be more independent on those last few days so we can give more time for teachers to be able to transition transition with the state now that we have a date we will work to figure out how to operationalize this to work as the best that we can to give more time for teachers to prepare for this transition so know that we will we'll work immediately with our administrative teams tomorrow to start figuring out where and how and why and communicate that as quick as possible thank you we definitely want to make space and time for our teachers to prepare and they are vital to us in that so thank you for that and we appreciate them very much yes thank you mrs mr lotson

206heiser get it right getting better thank you president kaler members of the board tonight we're going to update you a little bit more on what our plan for athletics is moving forward and i need to put a caveat on there like many things there's a lot of different factors at play and there's a lot of different things that could be changing there the al aia while they have you can go ahead and go to the next slide please well the aia has not currently changed the timeline for fall sports there are a lot of discussions that are continuing to happen right now and i'll be honest with you there is possibilities for some of that to happen i don't know where that's going to go we've had some districts within the state that have postponed

207their athletics until they return to in-person learning which could be october and since they are on people's schedules and they are playing that that could have a direct impact on our scheduling in different things those are still questions that are out there and i don't have specifics on them i've got to be involved in two different meetings the last two day one with all the district athletic directors in the state with the ai and then the 6a conference when we looked at football specifically and we don't have answers yet one of the reasons we don't have answers yet is that there's a sports medicine advisory committee the meeting for that is tomorrow they're supposed to make recommendations to the aia executive board who is then meeting next tuesday and we hope to have a more

208direction at that time so in our last meeting i said hey i wanted to come back to you and tell you what the plan are i'm still kind of on hold on a few things okay but we are planning and preparing for different scenarios to play out as you can see a golf spirit line started on the 17th cross country swim and dive started this last monday i know we had a big golf tournament today out at las colinas and so those kind of activities already started our out-of-state sports or the sports that have not had a chance to start practicing are continuing using their summer protocols we're continuing the current health and safety protocols now these are for our high school sports next slide please our middle school we met with the east valley

209conference and i think the overriding theme with that is sports are important at our middle schools and they're important for the culture of the school and they're important for the development of our students and and our coaching staffs as well and so right now the goal for the east valley conference is to try to fit four different sports seasons into three starting in october what that means is we're going to shorten the length of the seasons and we instead of playing ten games we're probably looking at six and then doing a shorter tournament as well and so the goal in this is once again to continue to provide those opportunities we're going to follow the con consistent pattern of what's always been first quarter will be the first group out of the batch it's going

210to be a little tricky because breaks happen and so there might be a time when a team takes a couple weeks off because more winter break and then they might come back for two weeks or something so we're still working on that specific schedule within the evc but the goal is to provide the opportunity for all the students even in a shortened year starting in october mr lawson heiser i'm sure that gives a really difficult time for coaching just because if they overlap or they're going to try to keep them all separate we're going to try to keep them all separate so one was can we fit the other ones in and we felt like so many of our coaches do multiple sports that we really didn't think that we could overlap them so much

211so truly the first quarter is going to be the maybe the first six weeks of the second quarter would be where we play first quarter sports and kind of go from there and chunk it so that we still have those opportunities next slide please so once again an update on our health and safety data coming from our high schools and the participation uh when you know the students that have been on campus i do want to point out when it says the number of participants that did not attend a schedule day due to illness i i need to give kudos to our to our families because if there has been an incident where someone thinks that their primary just maybe thinks they contact the coach and they don't come or if they're not feeling good

212they don't come and so that's been great and so that's communication and with uh you know jillian fulton our nurse has done a great job of that open communication that when there is questions are concerned we are looking into it and making sure that we're following our protocols so it's not saying that we missed had six kids miss a day because they were sick it is just out of concern and caution for what we're looking at but i'm very happy with um the process that our coaches and sponsors are doing on our campuses at this time mr lutzenhauser real quick on that that doesn't mean six different kids either because you explained this data a while ago yes can you go through so that it could people understand the numbers really it's practice sessions so

213we missed six sessions so it could be one person who missed three well they'd count for three up there because we're taking it daily and we're looking at it daily so we don't individualize and say one student it's how many practice sessions have been missed and honestly that's not six kids i'm pretty sure that's only two kids but they just miss multiple days next slide please so when we start looking at i just kind of want to frame our conversation about what it looks like when our events truly start to happen now there's some issues that we're going to talk about one of them being transportation and this is something coming up when we talked about the rest of the schools in the eaves valley how we do it and we understand that we will

214be providing transportation but at the same times parents might be feel more comfortable allowing either their student to do their own transportation or them transporting themselves so we're working and we will provide for you a more very specific form that parents will sign and turn in that would allow their student to either drive themselves to the competition so therefore they're not on a bus with everyone all of the time or the parent will drive them and provide that transportation and you know a lot of times when we talk about teams and buses when we have a large number of kids we'll try to spread them out as many buses as possible but if a parent doesn't feel comfortable that's not going to limit them from going to the event participating in the event in conversations

215with the high school athletic directors we're also looking at our schedules and if there's a possibility for us to change where we're not driving to the west valley to compete and we're keeping it locally within the east valley that is a priority for us right now because we do understand those transportation concerns when we talk about cost-effectiveness of transportation please understand that traditionally our our transportation is paid for from our gate receipts from the people who come to our games and so you know we we manage that budget very specifically that that that's what pays for it so we know we might have a little bit of a challenge this year should we have to have reduced number of people at games and at the same times we want to add additional buses if necessary

216to transport our people and so that's something as a district we're looking at the feasibility and what other different funding sources we can look at to continue to provide those options for parents go ahead mr um well on here on the right slide hang on yeah i'm on transportation all right thanks so it says that the form must be completed prior to a student using private transportation yes uh could the coaches bring them with them i mean if a parent doesn't you know doesn't take the kid there or doesn't sign in and they just show up to the event to pick them up could they sign i mean is there any reason why they couldn't sign that form that evening uh no it just needs to be turned in like typically after a competition or

217something they get released directly to a parent after way or anything like that maybe i'm misunderstanding the question so hit me again i mean so if it says the form has to be completed if if uh if a parent's going to take pick up their kid so so to pick up the kid after the game that's kind of a different process coaches normally have a sign out sheet no this is more they're not going to even ride the bus with the team to the game and so all right all right but those so it's not limited to the other all right that's fine i'm sorry mr glover i thought you were asking if the coach could drive the child and i was like absolutely not no that's what i heard no it's a parent picking

218up a kid afterwards i just want to make sure that they could you know that that we don't make the kid ride the bus back i i just thought that was unusual so okay no okay yes misreading on my part okay go ahead go next slide please so there's something that i think is really important that when we talk about athletic fees and this question has come up from different sources especially considering last spring where some of our seasons were cut short and so i wanted to just talk to you about the athletic feeds first of all they are board approved and so you guys have approved the fees and the amounts already and we will not be asking you to change those amounts or do anything like that how we look at the fees

219and what it goes toward i kind of use the term it's front loaded all right we know that we're going to have a lot of expenses for a season that happens that's why we determine the amount that we need from the fee a lot of this is not based upon how many contests because we are already looking at coaching stipends or additional coaching styles that were added coming out of the fees we're looking at equipment that we needed to purchase coming out of the fees we're looking at a lot of things that will happen regardless of if the number of competitions is going to be limited and i think there's some confusion because i think sometimes people are used to maybe in the club world or doing something else hey if i'm going to a

220tournament then you know we're paying that fee or hey we have three games this week there must be that kind of cost associated we've actually got that all built in and ready to go and and so that kind of stuff comes out of different pots most of the time we're funding that but the athletic fees really are being structured to this equipment to the uniforms and these additional coaching positions and so i know that there were questions last year about the refundability of fees ours were tax credit we know that tax credit is non-refundable this year we've given them the option to say when you pay your fee you can say tax credit or not but we still want to stay up front to people that that really athletic fees are not refundable because athletic

221fees are part of what we're building in to pay for that season up front we know we're going to have that costs and i think it goes to the fact that there's a lot of different times when kids leave on their own accord because they might not want to finish a season or finish an activity in that and and at the same time we're still paying for the coaches to be there we're still paying that equipment that we bought them whether they were there or not and so i just wanted to open that up so that you guys understand when some of these questions or concerns come to us really that's where that money is going toward and it's not based upon a number of games situation and and people have questions coaching stipends before

222oh you know if the games get limited i i want you to understand and wholeheartedly for me i think our coaches when you look at hours spent versus the amount of money they get on a stipend that they when i was a head basketball coach i didn't make minimum wage for coaching i knew that as well okay and so i think when we have opportunities to continue to support our coaches and attract and retain quality coaches it's important to have that consistency of coaching stipends as well thank you for clarifying that and i think most of the um situations that came were just it wasn't communicated properly and it wasn't um a better word it just wasn't communicated correctly i think from the beginning and so there was a lot of miscommunication and a lot

223of misinformation it's important that um that that the parents have the option tax credit or not tax credit i love that that that's on our online even kev group page now so that's awesome and then um also knowing that just because you are in a spring sport doesn't mean that those fees just go to spring sport correct like that sometimes those have been we try to minimize the cost so we have to i don't know spread out the the monies because maybe volleyball needs this this year and soccer needs i mean it's not just all that money that from soccer goes to soccer is that correct uh on a small scale okay because we really do try to funnel that fee and that's why fees are not you know we try to be appropriate for

224that amount there are some times when we have to do that and it's a practice honestly where i want to be able to take those fees and put it toward that group you know and not have to spread it out as much as possible and i think i want parents also who are listening to understand that if there's a financial need and if this fee is is causing a hardship from your family please contact your school we have sources and ways that we can help and support you privately these are not public matters and so if there's a need please come talk to the athletic director talk to the principal come and talk to me we'll figure out a way that i do not want to limit someone for participating because of my financial need

225that is not what the goal in this is president keller and thank you for clarifying so there is a difference between our athletic fees and club fees yes so these this is the 150. right i'm right because i know it's changed i believe yes 150 that they pay for their sport correct not any additional fees they may pay to a booster club which in some cases within i believe cheer and within band where there are competitions that that money comes out of the booster club not the athletic fees so this is the direct football games basketball games soccer games things like that so there is a difference and so if a club does have other fees then they need to be asking their boosters also if it's in addition to that 150 what their process

226is yes that's absolutely correct because there are clubs and different things that do decide to do their own competitions that are not necessarily through the aia how we schedule them and yes those are additional things that families have to support in that way but that's not part of this set fee for athletics okay so hosting events is a big ongoing discussion that we're having and i made the slideshow presentation last week and i tried to outline different scenarios that we'd look at because i think there are a lot of different facets and factors to go into what hosting events first of all we're looking at the fall season in reality we're looking at two major ones we're looking at football games and we're looking at volleyball games okay our golf people can physically distance watching

227the golf tournaments okay and then we don't charge attendance for those our cross country matches our parks the same kind of things we're not managing crowds from that relationship our swim and dive right now swim and dive i don't have a lot of answers for because there are a lot of pools that aren't open yet and so we are still very much in the process and we haven't gotten guidance on specifically how there's a proposal out there that the team swims by themselves at the pool while the opposing team swims at their home pool and they time them individually and compare the times and that's how they determine what it is because there might not be enough pools or to be able to maintain space within it so lots of different proposals that are out

228there and it hasn't been solidified as soon as that happens i'll be able to share with you in the superintendent's report some of these next step things that are coming out of the aia and what they're looking at but when i looked at looked at hosting events i think there's some going to be some non-negotiables about what happens and the number one is the masks are going to be required there is the ordinance if you're going to come to one of our events we're asking that you have to wear a mask and you know when you look at it from this perspective if i'm a senior athlete and i've done so much work and i'm finally going to be allowed to play why would i want to have people put us in a position that

229there could be an outbreak or something like that and now i'd lose my own time again and i think that that's something where i know that the state north to us has already opened and you know utah is playing football right now and these are examples of how they're communicating with their community about masking out because they don't have the same rules we do there's no requirement yet at their games they're asking for all mass to be there and i think that that's very important we will be able to stream our volleyball and our football games so if you are not comfortable coming to the stadium or to the gym they will be streamed through the nfhs we have some we have a little glitch at williams field right now because we're under construction and

230so they're bringing in a new point-to-point contact to make sure we have the ability to do that we will be testing that next week and so right now we're practicing those things so that they're called pixel lock cameras so that those things work so we can stream all of our events we will be using a touchless online ticketing process it's called go fan in our meeting today we confirm that all of the east valley school districts will be using go fan so even if you're traveling to another event you'll be purchasing your tickets through go fan we do not anticipate having a ticket gate open we will need for you to have the tickets purchased and brought and you show it on your phone we swipe that you've gotten in then you can get in

231so in terms of even exchanging things money or anything like that with someone for the ticket gate it's going to be through your phones and through this app called go fan okay and and i think that that's going to be an important thing for us and i know miss you know bermuda always talks about how are we telling people this right how are we getting that and so we as high school athletic directors myself are working on what the plan is to communicate so that our families know ahead of time and they don't show up on that first night and go well i've got a 20 how do i get in you know it's this is the process this is how we're going to do it this is what we want to do looking through

232this idea of our online ticketing through go fan the concession stand once again it goes to selling prepackaged foods so that tray of nachos might not be available like it has been in the past and different things but just from a health safety conscious effort looking at that with concession stands i put the caveat on there once again the governor and the aia there could be changes that could be coming up that we don't anticipate and we will communicate that directly when we do i looked at three different scenarios our first scenario was if we're still in remote learning then basically we're going to follow and track what we're doing within our schools about the plan would be what we're doing with our fans so if we were in remote learning we do not have

233kids back on campus then we wouldn't have fans and so that was our first scenario the second scenario is if there was a limited return to campus or partially that we would look at doing a limited number of participants coming in fans at our events and um there's a way through go fan that you can actually assign specific links to students id numbers and send it to them so if i want to say any participant and the reason why i use the word participant is because we know at a football game it's very important for the marching band to be there and it's very important for the spirit line to be there whether we have fans there or not so they would get that option and their parents would have the link so they could

234come and watch that and so that would be a way that we could limit the number of people that are there we're looking into additional seating at volleyball games when you go to a volleyball game traditionally only one side is pulled out pulling out both sides of the stands allowing people the opportunity to social distance once again we are requiring masks if they cannot social distance and then if we were in the limited scenario there are family passes available we would not be doing the family passes we feel like we would still need to be very restrictive about how we sell tickets and and how we're managing that scenario three is if we are fully open and in-person learning and please remember when we look at timelines i know we just had a vote and

235we're looking at the eighth provided all of the metrics are going in the right direction our first game if we look at volleyball would be on tuesday the 22nd our first first football game would be on for the freshman level september 30th with the first varsity football game occurring on october 2nd and so that's even a little bit more time than it is for us to do that return and so when we look at this this idea of fan attendance right now and and you know this is where i would love to have feedback and i'm we're not asking you for vote or anything but feedback from you to not limiting that fan attendance more than the capacity of what our stadiums are we are looking at football field bringing in additional portable stands whether

236it's purchasing them for ourselves or renting them from others because i do want to have the ability for people to spread out as much as possible truth be told i have not been to one of our football games and so what i hear is that they're very very popular events and then we have lots of people there especially the williams field higgley game and so i know that there's going to be a lot of want and need for people to do that and that's part of our community that's part of what we're doing together and so if there's ways that we can put up and and have to get additional funding so that we put up additional stands or portable stance what we can do is the things that we're exploring right now to be

237able to do remember we're still going to live stream and so if that's a concern we're still going to have that but then we would look at family passes continuing to limit them to four members per pass looking at the passes just so that once again we still do have some control measures put in so we do know the number of tickets or the number of people that we're expecting and so i think this these are ongoing conversations we're having with our neighbors because it also affects what happens when we travel to someone else and so right now all of us are putting together visiting team protocols so that we can clearly communicate with each other truth be told the districts are different levels some people are fully open ready to go it's kind of

238like school some people say right now no fans and so those are communications that we have to do from an athletic director standpoint from a district standpoint so that we're communicating with that together thank you mr lotzenheiser and i'm glad it's you and aia and our athletic directors making all these scenarios and decisions and things like that we really appreciate everything you're bringing to us and i know again it's fluid ever-changing mr witovich in reference to the universities why does the aia different than what's happening with the universities are they looking at different numbers or something i mean why i i mean i hate to say the benchmarks okay but but what what are they looking at that the aia is or what i'm just a little confused here i'll be honest with you uh

239president kennedy board member tovic i don't know the specific answer on that one i you know i i probably read the same articles that you read about why the pac-12 made their decisions and things like that and you know i can only think of scope of thing bringing a hundred thousand people and uh or 75 000 people into sun devil stadium might be a little bit different than bringing you know 5 000 people into our stadium however i i don't know i know within the aia there's they surveyed and said where are you guys at as communities who want to come back and we know that that sports is a very passionate passionate area and a lot of people say like get us back now i know i know a few parents have senior football

240players who like this is this is it and so making some of those decisions and and i i think those parts of it go and go into what's happening here but i can't i can't tell you it'll be it'll be very interesting to see what the sports medicine advisory comes out and then truly what the executive board for the aia if they make decisions because honestly they could tell us based upon this we're going to push football back for three weeks well we're a member of the aia and we will do what they tell us to do in the conversations there are a few districts who have postponed their fall seasons they might be looking at doing stuff within the spring but it's very much on this similar to open schools the local level and

241we get told that quite a bit thank you appreciate that any other okay we're going to move on to our favorite part of the year i look at mr glover [Laughter] [Music] 7.4 we are on so we are going to discuss and may consider action to approve the arizona school board's association aspa draft 2021 political agenda and direct the district's delegate to the asba delegate assembly to represent the board's determined position thank you curtis anyone anyone bueller thank you dr thomas this is the typical silence this is the silence and i i hope you've all read through this i think we have uh talked about it in the past as well i think we're all in agreement and support asba and what they do for all of our students across arizona president canada yes dr

242thomason a general reminder that it is virtual this year yes we don't even have to go in person and that's clear in october now they moved it usually it's the saturday after the law conference and they moved it all the way to october okay do i have a second well well and may consider action to approve so i i move that we approve back to 7.4 please thank you i moved that we approved the arizona school board's association draft asba draft 2021 political agenda and direct the district's delegate to the asba delta assembly to represent the board's determined position i will second all those in favor aye i am really thrilled tonight and now oh i see we're going to name the delegate mr glover not this year huh you're bowing out yeah i've come

243on yeah with the bang i won't be here next year anyway so somebody else can uh all right why not can i nominate it's not a nomination this is a volunteer or voluntold position okay this is not i like to nominate mrs wilson because i didn't want to see him second this is an honor this is an honor to be our delegate i think we're gonna get thrown under the bus here guys i feel like the bus is running me over a couple times with both of you mrs wilson and i are already going to the law conference i will be at the law virtual so we are doing it will be very fun because it always is very fun i think some other people are going as well dr foley i think maybe in

244attendance mrs martins maybe sometimes so yes i will be at the law conference so then you'll be all locked up to uh make decisions on our on our agenda here wait what is it the second it's october 17th oh i was like it's after it's after i was gonna complain that i was on fall break but i can't even use that all right i'll go i'll do it i'll do it i make a motion that i amy kaler it sounds can you make the motion please mr witovich you make the motion second amy kaler going we are being very informal right now i will make the formal motion okay because darlene keeps excellent minutes and we're probably confusing her at the moment mrs kaler yes please mrs christina rhys i move that president amy taylor

245attends on behalf of the higley unified school district the arizona school board association delegate assembly second all those in favor well hang on a week i will be your reserve backup in case anything happens how's that mr glover [Music] oh i appreciate that okay all those in favor aye aye motion carries i'm going to the delegate assembly i know you're all jealous all right we're moving on we have some housekeeping 7.6 i move that the governing board approves 162 220 and 30 cents for carpet and flooring replacement at higley traditional academy and gateway point elementary questions or comments all those in favor aye aye motion carries 5-0 educational services i move that the governing board approves a not to exceed amount of one million two hundred and sixty two thousand seven hundred forty dollars and

246forty one cents to maintain the district-wide substitute teachers second questions concerns all those in favor aye aye aye those opposed motion carries 4-1 you didn't want to have another conversation about that okay just making sure 7.8 i move that the governing board approves payment of 195 454.64 to public consulting group for the fy18 overpayment second questions comments all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero i move that the governing board approves one million five hundred and ninety one thousand four hundred eighty three dollars and eighty five cents for the purchase of student devices device warranties and software scripts subscriptions to support the one-to-one initiative second questions or comments these are these were already on order and we're just approving this tonight so the i know there was a comment earlier that do we

247have an arrival date or did they arrive they're here thank you that's what i thought all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries five zero i move that the governing board approves an additional 84 486 dollars and 40 cents for the purchase of canvas and studio cloud licenses for distant learning questions comments all those in favor aye aye motion carries 5-0 special education day schools that the government i move that the governing board approves the not to exceed amount of two million five hundred thousand dollars for special education day schools all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero and we're going to have a weatherization project i move that the governing board approves the final payment of three hundred thousand forty seven dollars and six cents to sun valley builders for the

248coronado elementary weatherization project it looks great all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero okay future agenda items we still have a lot coming up i know that we've had to push some things back because of opening up of school items is there anything anybody else would like to add to this list i just mentioned last board meeting i'd like to see us set up some type of program or even have discussion on be kindness i think after all our community has gone through we need to all come back together so some type of kindness program would be a wonderful idea for us i'm hearing from a lot of our pto's already that whatever date that was going to be chosen for our back to school there was going to be quite a

249festive reentry we do want to honor everybody coming back and let them know how grateful we are but i agree with you we need to come out of this kinder and more united as we did in other times in our lives um that we had tragedy occur we did come out stronger and more united and i wish that for higley and i and i do hope that we can um do that mr rotovic as well i do like all the signs that are in front of the campuses i don't i remember there was a name that sponsored it i can't tell you who did it but doc okay dr foley knows who um and i was just very thankful that they put these nice signs up just to remind us to be extra kind as

250we're walking into those front offices so thank you to that company president caleb board members one of the things we're going to be kind of doing this is a moving forward together higley moving forward together so we would love to provide uh updates for you along this theme that that looks at building our community together as we navigate this together moving forward love it great thing president caleb yes dr johnson those were donated by um by horse man of course former board member mr little in his mr russ little yes thank you mr little okay i know that there is um i just want to shout out to mr tom blodgett he um tweets our our um meetings he stays up late for all these crazy board meetings town council meetings and um he's always

251listening to us so um here's your little shout out mr blotchett thank you and with that i move that we adjourn second all those in favor all right president members of the board i i did hear back from the incredible uh principal mr jeff armstrong on the funds that were donated to coronado elementary school yes and so those donations were donated specifically for gifted in special education online instructional programs and additional backpack sprayers in progress related to covet 19. awesome thank you so much all right have a good evening good night you