HUSD Governing Board Meeting August 12, 2020 Live Stream

001good evening i'm going to call this meeting to order dr thomas thomason roll call please president caleb members of the board let please let the record show that we have all five board members here tonight thank you so much we are going to have a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance all right i move that we approve the agenda second any questions or concerns all those in favor i i motion carries five zero dr thomason superintendents report president caleb members of the board at this time i'm going to turn it over to dr foley who will update us on upcoming events good evening president kaler members of the board our upcoming events are are presented to you this evening as you will see we have several upcoming governing board meetings and the

002dates that support that as well as the labor day holiday as well thank you so much now we are going to go on to some board comments mr witovich you want to go oh mrs wilson go ahead mrs wilson ladies i just want to thank everyone for all the emails i have not been responding but we have gotten a few more emails probably around 40 or 50. i looked this afternoon i haven't been responding but i just want to say thank you for reaching out i understand your concern and i appreciate you guys taking that time so thank you mr glover anything tonight okay mr watova you're up okay i just like to say a lot of things um first first of all i'm going to start with my negative and then i'll end it

003with the positive that we're on a good note here this evening i served in michigan for 12 years on a school board and also in higley for six i chose to live in the higley unified school district because of the great schools and the community i do not make decisions likely and i always will be in the best interests of our children as i served for all those years on the school district i've watched the different communities responses coming together during 9 11 such things like that the gulf war when the students all stopped what they're doing and we all saying god bless america those type of things nothing nothing has prepared me for what i have been experiencing as a board member in this community i have noticed a change in this community i

004have i have noticed you would not believe all of you who are watching out here you will have not a clue as to the cruel hateful emails that i received because i voted for online learning you know as somebody says well you know you're saying cruel and things like that let me clue you in what is happening in this community right now a media teacher yesterday a family was pulling up to a school the teacher heard that that student that family was not going to be attending that school so the teacher went outside to wish the family best of luck those type of things as the teacher was approaching the car the mother says to her who are you and why are you coming near me and she says well i've been with your teacher

005i've been with your children reading to them she says they don't know who you are and the teacher says to them yes they do i read to them every week and she says i just came to say goodbye to them i wish them well we have nothing further to say and i don't care what you're going to say and she drives off what type of rude behavior is that as those children are looking out the window watching as her teacher is standing there with that mother saying those type of things just in our community one of my neighbors is a waitress high school she goes to serve the family they had a big bill she gets a five cent tip family says to her next time if you serve me without a mask i'll give

006you some money you know it just goes on here and on i just can't tell you uh what's taking place um at times i was trying to even um examples of of my own here okay there was there were some emails that i've gotten and you know i try to be nice and i try to respond to them but you should see and hear the responses that i get in reference to that when i get such thing where they answer their statement it says the rewards far exceed the risks that take place and i think oh my gosh you are telling me that your reward for going to school and a risk to another child is worth it well not to even one child it's not worth it and you know i thought all that

007story about that starfish you know how they say what things matter worth is that one starfish and i thought about that starfish in in reference to those type of things so so those are the different things in fact probably probably the thing that just just the reason i'm even saying this today and going having this conversation with this community that needs to understand what's taking place here is i just told one uh this one person wrote me and i said you know i'm trying to do the best decision i can make with the information that i have and i told him i said uh one of my sons got the virus death store intensive care crying we thought he was going to die he thought he was going to die still has you know complications

008and this was a healthy athletic young person okay i told him i said perhaps my input's a little bit different know what that response was i don't care about your son i want the schools open i said oh my gosh where where has this community gone i mean i'm just sharing this to you because i want you to understand the career the cruelty in this community to what what has taken place and you know we don't have a i didn't ask for this job to open up the schools with a pandemic you know none of us did up here we don't have a clue how to get through this but we're trying to do the best that we can and we need to get through these type of things here and we need to show

009each other compassion we need to work through this as a caring and compassionate adults just think what great role models would we would be if we actually showed some kindness to each other let me just say enough with a negative behavior i believe what we have more good in this community with that you know i want to read to you one of one of the emails that i've got here okay um this is from a parent i got the other day and you know after i read the one that says often give a rip about my child and me myself and i those type of things it was really like wow where am i going to go where am i living at right now okay and let me just read you a note just from

010a from my parent it says how thankful i am that dude that the um uhusd has decided that we at least have a plan i would not consider myself in the middle i don't want to go back full force at this time i am but i am hoping we can get our kids back someday in school at some point when it's safe i want to reach out to you board members who voted for our kids for our families for our teachers for the safety of all children this boat is the most kind loving empathetic act that you have done that you could have done for your community at this time a huge weight of worry and anxiety has been lifted off to this mom and so many many others in this community when you made

011that vote to delay in person i know some of you probably are getting beat up for that decision you can't make everybody happy but i actually cried when that decision was made believe it or not my kids were happy no you know they've got online classes every day but they are smart they know what is going on in the world they see all the schools having to close again and again just in a few days they want to be safe you know that's that's just gives you an example of some of the things that that we have um taking place for us and then it's about showing compassion the governor can make the change people he pushes it to the community instead of making an executive decision a good political move here let the locals

012make the decision with the least amount of knowledge here okay let them be the comedy nominee who's going to take the abuse why i sit back and watch the fighting amongst the children look it up the maryland governor hogan made a directive and changed the opening dates so some schools could come back why can't that take place so don't ask us people ask the governor he can make the change if he wants to he's more happy watching the people fight here amongst ourselves neighbor to neighbor cruelty things like that let us fight amongst ourselves instead of looking over our shoulder and saying hey look at the guy up on the porch he can make the decision but he's letting the two children fight each other on the playground as i said earlier we all need

013to show respect and kindness towards each other as this cruelty will do nothing but destroy this community i have one other thing i want to share with you as well on this one here um i think it was important i was kind to looking around the country and seeing like what how are other people communicating and and how they getting how are the schools and trustees talking to other people and how they getting their communities to come together um i'm going to reach you i found this it's really a nice what this community did and i'm going to read to you what's on their homepage for their school and it's just really really nice okay it says last spring the school named three priorities that would guide our planning for the 2021 school year health

014safety learning and community for months our leadership team and faculty have worked tirelessly devoting the full resources of saint andrews to be ready to deliver exceptional education for each student in the midst of an ongoing pandemic given the ongoing shared risk that coveted 19 possesses to our school community and the larger society our reopening plans must be grounded first and foremost in the health and safety of our children we must acknowledge that local infection rates have risen and have remained elevated in recent months that there is not yet sufficient access to rapid covet testing results sounds familiar and that experts have therefore advised us that the virus continues to possess significant risk if we resume in-person instruction too quickly we have the duty and determination to care for everyone in our school each saint andrews

015student and family and every teacher and staff member who has dedicated their life to our school our community members come to our campus from across the greater washington area and with each return home to our families and loved ones every evening in this time more than ever we must care for the health and well-being of every student on our campus we belong and must be responsible to each other for these reasons our board of trustees and i have dedicated that st andrews will begin the year in our distant learning model for kindergarten through grade 12 through at least october 9th remember this october 9th people okay our medical staff and advisors will continue to monitor local health conditions and guidance and will inform families by the beginning of october whether we believe it is safe

016to to begin phasing in on campus instruction by our hybrid model ladies and gentlemen this is st andrews elementary school outside of washington dc this is the school where president trump's son attends thank you mr glover i'm sorry thank you mr ratovich thank you mr glover well i wasn't going to say much but i i just i'm struck by i thank you for uh your passion mr wittobi and your many many years of service um you know we did get some emails that uh some people were like you guys shouldn't get a paycheck okay well we don't so um but uh you know i wish we could all just start from a place where we accept that we all want your kids our kids to grow up healthy productive citizens and i'm going to say

017that again i wish we could all start from a place where we could at least accept that we all want our kids and your kids to grow up to be healthy productive citizens if you start from there then you might be able to find some common ground you know i think i feel like our time and energy might be better spent educating others on the things that will help get us back where we want to be more quickly we should do those things and we should encourage other people to do those things and science tells us what those things are you know there's the metrics that the governor and dhs put in place so in case people were were confused about the decision we made you know the challenge is for us to meet those

018the sooner we meet them we are we were prepared as of last week to say in a week we can go back so the challenge really to the community is do the things that will help slow and and decrease those numbers to where we all feel comfortably safe so that your kids can grow up and and you know dance at their weddings and you know have give your grandchildren and all those things so anyway that's it for me thank you mr glover anything else all right we're going to go on to our request to speak dr thomason is going to be our reader again tonight he's got his water ready and i am going to read this first we value input from our constituents this time has been set aside for anyone from the audience

019who wishes to address the board please remember this is not an appropriate venue to evaluate discuss or criticize district personnel policy keb provides a process for complaints about personnel speakers should be aware that the false statements about individuals may result in civil liability members of the board may not discuss items that are not on specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ars 38-431-01h 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 although we will not be doing that part but thank you dr thomason thank you madam president once again i'll be reading them directly as written as we received them the first

020one is from dana griggs with children at higley saseman and santan we want five days of in-person school we want to be listened to the survey said 90 percent wanted in person school including the teachers what was the point of the survey if you aren't going to listen open the schools next from miss jennifer larson children at williamsfield cooley in chaparral i have concerns over school closures next from lisa drake with children at higley traditional academy i have been an husd parent for over a decade i am so disappointed in how the board has completely turned their back on this community you were elected to this position to speak for your constituents but yet you have completely disregarded the majority you have made the decision based off this over exaggerated fear that the teachers are

021going to be in the classroom with 25 coveted plus kids i will continue to speak up on behalf of my children and every other child in this district please get the kids back on campus another eight weeks without these experiences and interactions are only going to deflate any desire for education that these young minds are typically so eager for next from rebecca shiver children at cortina saseman and higley last meeting the votes showed that you are not here for children you do not listen to children you do not represent children but shouldn't children be your number one priority all children please put your personal experiences your opinions and your fear aside to let children have a choice everything has been taken from them and only ten percent of children wanting the online program please don't

022ignore and neglect the eighty percent of children that need in-person school thank you next from kerry ware children at higley high saseman and centennial i would like to address i would like to address how all the survey were completely ignored also i would like to express how my family is personally being affected from christina klontz children at cortina and higley extremely disappointed in the vote against returning to school in person please tell me why or even why you even bothered to survey that were in favor of returning to campus in person or were you elected to further push your own agendas with your own personal opinions yes we all saw the email that was sent to a parent from mr k about his son contracting kovid and how he was bias basing his decision off

023of that ridiculous this is not what you were elected to do i am baffled that teachers at this point are the only profession refusing to go back to work everyone else has been back to work for months working with high risk people no profession is dropping like flies jump off the political bandwagon and do something for these kids how about you honor your original plan of offering choices that the parents and teachers who want to return go back that the online people stay online if you are following the data you would see the drastic decline of cases you would see the age group of our children that contract the spread covid is minuscule and the deaths are at zero percent i mean are you even actually looking at the website the cdc has said our

024children need to be back at school you can't cherry pick their recommendations to fit your very biased opinions and agenda we see you and what you are really about and it is not the children i urge you to reconsider your positions next from connie webb children at san tan elementary my husband has been working as a pediatric mental medical care provider for the past 12 years he has worked with the underserved community for all 12 of those years we have five sons four of our sons are hearing impaired three of our sons are adhd and one of our sons is autistic they range in age from 14 to 3 years and are in high school middle school elementary school and special needs preschool we deal with compromised children we do not fear coven and this

025is why my son has caught the common cold and been intubated in the icu for seven days hanging on to life but he recovered i have spent more nights in the hospital with my children struggling to breathe than i can count that being said in our family we live life like there is always a dangerous virus out there we have to be diligent about hand washing in an effort to keep our children out of the hospital i can tell you from experience that it can work do my children still get sick yes but when they do we deal with the problem at hand we would never limit their opportunity to learn and social growth by not sending them to school because there's a chance they could get sick and end up in the hospital it

026is not fair to our children to deprive them of the essential learning that they are missing and being by being in school germs are out there covet is not going away there is no cure but that does not mean that we should live our lives in fear and deprive anyone especially our children of their opportunities anyone who feels like keeping our children out of school is preventing them from getting this disease they are wrong this disease is here to stay if anything it is just postponing the inevitable because at some point we will get it the good news is the majority of us will weather it just fine this is the way communicable diseases work i also have concerns about my own children because as online learning is happening it is near impossible to have

027an adhd children engaged without a parent to sit with them all along the way and even then they are not picking up what is happening this isn't possible with all of the schedule overlap all the schedule overlapping that is happening my deaf children can't even understand what the teacher is saying over the computer so they are not learning anything i think my special needs children are suffering the most the screen time of any kind makes my child unable to keep himself focused and emotionally under control and now you're asking him to be on it all day their ieps are not being followed due to the assumption that children not being able to sit in front of the computer that long after all of their other classes they are getting 10 minutes of a week of

028their services instead of getting the amount of time allotted in their iep as pandemic medical providers we feel strongly that the american academy of pediatrics and the cdc should be some of the main sources that should be taken into consideration when it comes to the well-being of our children and by extension the community as a whole we feel very strong that with both the aap and the cdc having recommended that children go back to school as soon as possible that we as parents and those in charge of their educational need to work to make that happen immediately in my husband's job he has seen the strain that being at home has had not only honor the underserved community members but on our children in general as part of their well child visits all children over

029the age of 12 are given a depression screening to date every child he has screened since the school shutdown began has shown signs of depression as a medical provider this is extremely concerning to him about the well-being of all children should shut down should the shutdown continue in conclusion our children need to be back in school immediately for their good their learning and the emotional health of our community the surveys have been taken by parents and teachers and they showed that both parents and teachers feel that it is in their children's best interest to have in-person school resume immediately those who don't feel comfortable with that option have been given a choice please now allow the rest of us to have a choice that we feel is best about and allow our children to start

030back to in school in person i would ask that you please follow the recommendations of the experts and send our kids back to school molina rangel children at soseman junior high and centennial elementary please do not forfeit safety for loud voices demanding business as usual both my students schools have excellent virtual learning options my students feel safe and want to return when they know they will be not be at risk or put their loved ones at risk i worry these small groups of parents with loud voices will try to change the current course i've seen their social media and it appears their complaints are not validated and most of have not tried to learn technology to prepare their students for minor changes in the long run jennifer gibras children at williamsfield and higley traditional academy

031members of the board this is our first year with the school district as we switched from a charter school and we're excited to do so we are starting to second guess our decision for this first time ever my fifth grade daughter who is happy go lucky has hated school or what this is called the lack of direct instruction and actual interaction is detrimental to my child and her mental health she feels she is not truly learning as she cannot raise her hand and get a direct help during her assignment time while the teachers do their best to physically interact and speak is always better she is she was in tears yesterday due to frustration of not getting her needs met her words quote this is the worst year ever for school end quote discontinued remote

032learning is not helping my students how are high school students supposed to grow and meet the necessary hours for school with only two hours a day of direct interaction honors courses online is not enough time and when a teacher leaves 30 minutes into class what kind of message does that send to the students i'm not i'm done so goodbye and go do your work but i'm not available this is not okay i worry the future looks i'm worried the future looks like not only my children but all higley students we are failing them by not allowing them in-person interaction and direct instruction what is going to happen when students don't meet their benchmarks for passing are you prepared for summer school at no cost to parents to make sure the students get caught up or

033are all those students going to be held back how is husd going to make sure the third graders meet the state requirement for reading when there is only virtual learning and teachers cannot see what a child's real capability of if students get held back how is this district going to handle the mental health of these children who will think they are not capable of passing a grade that what will this do to our teenagers there is already a rise in suicides due to social isolation having students repeat a grade could possibly increase the numbers students need to be in school if proper ppe is supplied and used correctly why can't students and teachers be where they should be in school this is from george he has not listed a school just wanted to thank the

034board for considering educators students and staff safely while our community navigates through this covid19 pandemic thank you from donald donald anderson students at higley high thank you for recently choosing to remain in remote learning in husd since the county health department has issued the safe start guidelines i support using data metrics and facts to determine when it is safe for my student to return to on-campus learning at the school i do not understand the rushed return of the other schools given that outcomes of returning too early are potentially damaging to students the school staff and the community at large i urge the board to stand by their decision moving forward and to prioritize safety over speed the question is less about when school should resume and really more about how long schools can stay open

035when they do resume thank you for your many many many hours of dedication carrie matthew student higley high i would like to thank the school board and district administration for being diligent in circumspect and their decision to delay the reopening of school until heath experts agree that is safe for all who spend our days in the school buildings students and staff i have been impressed with the integrity and care you've taken and appreciate that your primary concern is the safety of students and staff matthew gray higley high i would like to thank members of the school board for making teachers and students feel safe by postponing the opening of our class in school it has made our community safer and will continue to do so thank you so much board members keep us safe final

036one andrew barcio no no school listed as a district teacher i would like to thank the board for all of their hard work also i would encourage the board that a rush to in-person classes is a bad idea both for the well-being of students and teachers thank you board that's all of the requests we had for today thank you again dr thomason for reading all those for us okay president yes dr thomason members of the board i just want to let you know we read these in order as we received them so it wasn't set up to be all positive or all negative yes i know mrs reach organizes those for us very well thank you for that okay we are going to move on to our consent agenda items i move that we approve

037consent agenda item 6.1 to 6.9 second questions comments concerns on the consent i just want to go over the uh 6.6 dr fowler could you just explain that to us in a nutshell president kaler members of the board cabinet dr thomason and cabinet i just want to talk briefly about this particular item when we originally put the purchase in for um the request for the flooring at williamsfield is that i'm sorry is that the number i'm sorry this is the gift donation i'm sorry i'm going to defer to dr thompson because he is sorry okay you're still coming president kaler members of the board this was a donation that was given to the district in in the form of a land donation uh many many years ago uh four superintendents go when mr larry likes

038was the the board the district superintendent at that time he made it the there was a donation of land made to the district by continental properties and there was also a point at that time when we had impact fees for builders that built within our school boundaries the impact fees could be 500 a rooftop a thousand dollars a rooftop or 1500 a rooftop depending on the cost of the homes that were being built in that area so in and return in return for the donation we we waived the impact fees or the rooftop fees at that time now there were more homes built in that area but of course with the recession things had stopped for a while and the building has continued to happen now as we're starting to grow and so the the

039donation of the the land was um an offset of the rooftop fees we have but since that time he has surpassed the in-kind donation and so there was a an opportunity for him to pay for the rooftop seas that exceeded the amount of the donation that he gave the school district and the exceeding of that donation was 32 746 dollars that you see that continental property is a great partner with the higgle unified school district is donating to the district for those impact fees that the district utilizes to help run our district thank you i just wanted clear clarification on that on that gift any other questions comments or concerns and consent all right all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries five zero moving on to our action and information item 7.1 any

040questions although mr holland is not here tonight um if they have any i'm sure that we can email him nothing okay we're going to move to 7.2 um okay so i move in consideration of the recommendations of guidance issued by the centers for disease control the arizona department of health services and the executive order issued issued by the governor of the state of arizona it is requested that the governing board adopts the space covering policy for all students employees volunteers and visitors of the district second any comments yes i do have a comment i was looking around just at other schools in the valley just to see what's going on i just found this really nice one i want to read with you as we look forward to the fall and at this time proceed

041cautiously in planning for return for in-person classes we understand that our only hope is minimizing the spreader covid is to partner with our entire community in that effort in that in we introduce the amdg 2020 program and ask that our parents and students community join us both on and off campus in the following practices number one is a for awareness awareness of your own health symptoms hand hygiene and how these considerations can impact others m is for math it has been proven that maths are effective deterrence to spreading the disease thus we will require faculty staff and students to wear maths while on campus we ask our families to do the same when they go out in public places justicing distancing will be required on campus to the extent that campuses spaces will be allowed

042this is my favorite it's g for the greater good we ask that the men and women in our schools for others of our extended community focus on the greater good and work to protect one another and especially the medically fragile in our community at large and they have this whole program it was just really neat you know maybe you may not want to think of anything it's called am dg and they kind of like the awareness mass distance and greater good and and i just kind of thought this was really nice okay um i'd just like to give credit to uh brophy prep school and i believe oh this is where our governor's son just recently graduated he's quite familiar with brophy school and i just wanted to share with you that they're requiring maths

043at all time on their campus and how their the school is sharing it with the community and how important it is to for them to be role models in the community and to go out there and do what's right for everyone so i just wanted to share how nice this school is doing in reference to that thank you for sharing mr witovich and in education we all love a good acronym don't we yeah just add it to our list of all the other ones that we've yet to memorize mrs reese thank you president kaler i just have a question and concern under students for a that we have changed it from pre-kindergarten to preschool while they do say that no child under two should wear a mask but two to three to five can that's

044very difficult and very challenging so i do have some concerns that we've changed this from kindergarten to preschool i think that's for our teachers will be really difficult for keeping a mask on having their attention if this is my concern is if this is a policy then it's more than a recommendation it's a policy my my request would be that we go back to kindergarten with it within our policy and make a strong request in our preschools so our teachers can help them learn it's a learning process and we have three-year-olds on our preschool campuses um those four-year-old pre-cares that you know they may even turn five and i'm even good with putting an age group of five so in october they've turned five they've missed the kindergarten cutoff so they're doing pre-k things like

045that but i've seen three-year-olds try and wear masks and it is more work for a teacher to try and keep a mask on a three-year-old that that would be their focus until that can't be their focus any longer and they end up giving up and then we have a policy we're not following so that's just my concern of changing it from kinder to preschool is that it's a difficult age there are some safety issues with that obviously not nearly the safety issues of them under two but again my concern is when it becomes a policy the strong expectation that that's followed is very different than recommendation if a teacher can in preschool can spend the time working with kids on wearing a mask and and hopefully ultimately get them wearing masks properly for the amount

046of time they're there as a recommendation but that's just my concern as a policy president taylor vice president reese i hear your concern one of the things in talking about that change that recommendation for the change came to came from also our work with what do we do when someone gets sick what is the protocol for keeping safety and a lot of it has to do with the wearing of a mask you'll notice that in that policy the next two bullets are allow for when we're talking about students we're talking about the student again on a case-by-case basis medical reasons or determined by a staff member and in some cases the spacing where there can be the determination where there can be enough space that the policy allows for that being that this would be

047something that would be consistent with practice across the district again not ideal but it really does play into the what happens when someone gets sick the whether or not they're a primary secondary contact has to do with the wearing of a mask when that physical distancing was impossible and so again it is a challenge and preschool rooms meet unique needs of individual students in that room and some again can allow for more physical distancing than others again the points you have brought up are are ones that we've also had and have concerns about but felt that because of the process for consistency with the allowing in that policy for where physical distancing can occur and exceptions being made that they would be encouraged that when possible or when physical distancing is not possible that mask

048would be be worn and taught the importance of because it truly does have an influence on the next piece about what happens if or when someone gets sick and that mask determines whether you are a primary or secondary contact versus monitoring symptoms to or or being isolated for a quarantining kind of thing so i hear you well thank you i just like i said i just worry about the teachers having to spend more time with those kiddos putting masks back on them causing the teachers to be closer to the kids and having more physical contact with those kids putting these masks back you know on and off and you know some are made that there is a right way because it goes over your nose and the kids having them upside down and the teachers

049really having to put them on for these kids so it is causing the teachers to have a closer physical contact more often helping these kids get them back on so that's my concern i appreciate you guys have gone through that but i stick by that concern and think it's going to be a lot of work for those preschool teachers that if we can encourage it and continue to teach them how to wear it but that it's not their whole day putting masks back on three-year-olds do we have any views from a preschool teacher has anyone reached out to preschool teachers on this i would assume i think a lot of our preschool teachers have the same concerns as our general ed teachers and not just their safety but the safety of the kids while we

050do realize that it won't be a seamless thing it's just like teaching them to sit in a chair or wash your hands or get in line i totally respect that i think we view our preschool teachers just like all of our teachers up through 12th grade so while we understand that it wouldn't happen right away and it would take a lot of practice everything we do takes lots of repetition and practice so that's really kind of where it came from and we tend to think of our our district as a pre-k through 12 district so thank you mr glover did you want to say something i don't want to seem like an utter hypocrite i tend to agree with you so i just want to tell you i was wondering if it could be um

051if well we were going to have the mass policy back in the day was going to be strongly i love the words we use strongly recommended and encouraged strongly requested strongly requested and encouraged so if this is something the board wants to chew on president kayla are members of the board too we also have to ensure that our policy is not in conflict with some of the requirements from the maricopa county department of health services or if gilbert puts a policy in place through them too is that they kind of have to to align a little bit and i think this does a great job of aligning it we will definitely have exceptions for those individuals that are unable to keep the mask on and do the best we can but i think this aligns

052to what the current maricopa county board of regents or board of directors has put in place at this time if that changes then our policy should follow what their recommendations are well can i just follow one more thing so uh regardless of how you go if these kids are i mean if they're given the latitude to take it off i really hope for our i think that they would be more likely to have them off probably because of all the things that you said um so you know things like i know that taking a temperature is not a good indicator but maybe maybe that happens with a greater frequency at the nursery school you know with the digital digital things the spacing the teacher to student ratio and that we spread out as much as

053we can so some attention is paid to that because i do i mean geez i mean i've seen kids that you're three or you know two two year olds they don't want to be in a diaper and they're not gonna wear a diaper and this is a mask it's like so yeah anyway so i i i hear you we we do have time um this is the second read though so so if we were to vote tonight and pass this it would be policy mrs keller i'm i'm okay with it being policy i'm just concerned with it being policy what that will put on our teachers um and i hear the teacher and i agree our teachers are pre-k through 12. i i don't disagree with that um and i've seen three-year-olds and we have

054since the town of gilbert they put theirs in and theirs was five that they recommended five and over um for us our requirement requirement is five and over we give the option of three to five but with that option is that if they're going to wear it they need to wear it because the more they put it on and take it off the higher risk of spreading it to other people and things like that and then seeing my staff having to you know no no i want to wear my mask well then they're they're in close proximity of that child somewhat face to face and they're they're putting them on so i'm okay with it being policy i wanted to state it's i'm concerned with it being policy i don't have a problem with it

055being greatly requested and that we try and do it i also worry about our teachers being so focused on individuals and again it depends on the teachers comfortability but if they're so focused on consistently having to put masks on because this is what we have to do then they could spend a better part of their day for several weeks helping three-year-olds put their mask on correctly keep their mask on not saying it can't be done i agree just like washing their hands i mean we have one-year-olds who wash their hands the proper way but that doesn't happen overnight it takes a lot of time and repetition and i again if it's if that's what the teachers are very insistent and and want i can support that i just worry about them having to be consistently

056in close proximity almost face to face three-year-olds may not they may drool a little bit more or you know things like that and i know our teachers can wear gloves and they can wash their hair i get they can take all those precautions it just does it's just one more thing though that does put them a little closer in proximity of kids than then we would need to worry about but if you're you're comfortable with with that and that's the the recommendation that they they really want to go with in in preschool i can support that i just don't want the teachers to be like my whole some of these kids we only have in our care for four hours and if we're constantly putting masks on then that's that can be challenging so vice

057president reece i think either way we go with it i know patty gleason and stacey utley will be kind and loving and thoughtful and it's not a discipline issue my goodness when i can't keep my mask on so either way we go with it there's not there's not a perfect answer here and i respect it and i know all about snotty noses and drool and just wiggle so either way we go i know they'll work hard to keep our kids safe and by any means am i saying that even if it's not in policy that we should not be doing it it doesn't give the green light of well it's not in policy so we don't need to that from a preschool standpoint they can say this is what we're going to do we just

058know it's going to take us the time to to get through it and if a teacher feels like i can't not today then i want to give them that that ability to do that instead of perhaps another parent coming in and saying well that's the higley policy and they're not following it that's my like i said by no means am i saying if this is not in our policy that we should not really encourage it it's not means that we shouldn't even say that they're you know highly requested or even required within it but that was just my only concern there so thank you mrs reece i think we're just going to go on this go ahead and vote tonight on this mask policy based covering policy and i do agree with you mrs richards

059that mrs gleason will be very kind in this area and the teachers as well and we know like you said the beginning of preschool and maybe this is a chance too that we can talk for just a second that if we are thinking about coming to our preschools when they do open that practicing mask wearing on your little three and four-year-old here and there would never be a bad idea and i know i've seen you know the kiddos out in target with mom and practicing so um you know that can be something that we can kind of just talk about and practicing with all of our kiddos the five-year-olds are going to be going 16 year olds and i feel like they maybe need a reminder like if you're watching this hey it might be

060a good time to start practicing that mask with your five-year-old because i have thought long and hard about this mass policy and what that means for our kindred friends and all those teachers all the way up um so it might be a good time to start thinking about that even with your 16 year old mrs kaler it's one thing to go into a store for a minute with a mask on it's another thing to sit and do school for a few hours with the mask on so um just i think everybody's gonna have to when schools do reopen that we're all gonna have to kind of go through that process of adjusting okay so all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero okay now it's 27.3 and let me okay let me get

061there this is the floors dr fowler so i move that the governing of governing board approves the price increase of forty one thousand three hundred and seventy six dollars to upgrade the flooring for the high school meet higley high school and williamsfield high school media centers second thank you [Laughter] dr fowler can you please give us an update on this thank you president kaler members of the board dr thomason and members of cabinet i was going to start earlier but no the the the item that you have before tonight this action item related to the floors let this be evidence of our continued efforts to always be as frugal with our funds as possible when we selected the floor for both the media centers we were looking at an alternative that was the least expensive

062um the challenge though that we had was once we looked at a mock-up of that flooring uh with getting input from from ben um with extensive experience in the field and then the principles we realized that although it was a less expensive option it wasn't going to be sufficient to to to meet the needs in that larger space so we had to look at an alternative and that alternative included instead of just having the epoxy um to adding a color chip as they call it to the floor to uh to make it um not not slick and also add to the just the feel and especially in that larger those larger spaces in the media center so the the price that you saw the original price that was already built into the cost and so

063it's only the additional piece that we're paying and that's the cost of of adding making those chips and mixing that into the and adding it to the epoxy flooring and really this is a safety issue because without those chips it's very slick that is correct yes okay go ahead mrs wilson what's the durability like on this floor sorry to put you on the spot i mean it's i mean it's a quality epoxy with those chips and so it i mean we're feeling that it'll it'll you know stand the test of time yeah i just have a little concern um being that it is at our high school i'm just thinking about it now like those kids kind of can be rough sometimes so just a thought on the durability of it and making sure that

064it's a good durability to make sure that you know they're not going to chip it away or do something like that does that well we have a we are using wholesale floors which is a vendor that has done a lot of our floor installs and and one of the benefits of working with a partner like wholesale floors is they stand behind their product and so i'm confident if there's any issues that that may arise with that they'll stand behind their product thank you that was kind of my question too was um what is the warranty how long do they give us on a warranty you know what i'm not sure on that answer president kaler but i do know and board member wilson that as i've said in the past they they stand by they

065stand behind their product and so i'm confident that if we have any issues with wholesale i'll confirm the warranty but this company has been with us for many many years and i'm confident that they'll stand behind this product for us okay any other comments questions all those in favor aye aye those opposed nay motion carries 4-1 onto buses i move that the governing board approves the purchase of six buses from canyon state bus sales for the tune of and forty two thousand three hundred dollars and forty cents questions or comments for i know even mr crosby is here tonight is that correct yes i did ask a question beforehand i want the community to know that what my question was um it was about air conditioning to make sure all of our buses were up

066to snuff on air conditioning so mr crosby's here if he wants to come in and maybe just answer that these will put all of our buses at having air conditioning which i was excited about because i knew there was one or two out there that may have we may have loaned to charter schools at time to time that did not have air conditioning so this puts us right on par to have all of our buses air conditioned right mr crosby correct yes our lead is 100 air-conditioned and we're not retiring any buses at this time correct my recommendation would be to hold on to all the vehicles we have because we're unsure of future growth and future bond money so at this point i would recommend we hold on to all of our buses and

067uh just again a thank you to our community so that this is bond money that is being used for the purchase of these buses so i appreciate that mrs reese president kaler um i was just gonna state that this has been in the works for some time you just don't order buses overnight so um i get the timing seems strange at the moment especially um that we're physically not in school but this has been some time you've done a lot of research to make sure we're getting what we need for our district and our community so um thank you i appreciate that and i also appreciate your forethought on let's not retire anything yet and see where we are and what we need to do and how we grow and then we'll have availability there

068before we let anything go so thank you for that thought mr crosby one one more thing how many buses do we have i have no idea i think it might have been in here at one point it is okay um so we have 78 buses um it does say 77 on the paperwork but there is one white special needs bus that didn't get included in the yellow bus count so 34 of them are special needs and the remaining 44 are full size thank you uh yes again and i'm not trying to be negative nelly but um these buses um is coming to us again a little bit later than i would have preferred i would have preferred to get this on the front end and not the back end this dollar mount i know the

069buses are already ready to go have our name on them so and again i know it's been in the works and in the talk just coming to us maybe not first and foremost but with that said any other questions all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries five zero thank you mr crosby for coming tonight okay we're going to move on to 7.5 i move that the governing board approves the purchase of laptops for students participating in graphic information technology programs second and i believe this is we are using cte funds to purchase these specific computers for the students if i am not mistaken any questions comments all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero and now we are going to have an update on reopening of our schools i think president

070kaler members of the board tonight we have some updates for you on a few timely topics that we wanted to share with you the first thing we're going to talk about tonight in our agenda is we're going to talk about what is scheduled and what will be happening starting august 17th for the required on-site support services that are required per executive order 20 2051 and we will share with you some updates about that so that we can clarify um for our community that information as well as provide additional updates we also have information tonight for athletics that is also continuing to evolve so we have an update and then conversation about more updates that will be forthcoming we have a human resources update and then we'll do a metrics benchmark update as well so we're

071going to start by talking about tonight those targeted support services president kaler members of the board dr thomas and members of cabinet so beginning on august 17 2020 the school districts must provide free on-site support services for students who need a place to go during any time of distance learning that's the first start of a quote from denise lobritt talking about what our executive order 2020-51 meant for the arizona school districts and so while it required us to ask us to look at metrics it also said on the 17th we need a place to go so we've been working on this plan very very diligently throughout the last week and i need to give a lot of credit to um as we go through this plan to miss richards as she's been helping spearhead this

072especially at the elementary level and our site principals our academic coaches and the rest of the district we're kind of taking this as an all hands on deck approach to supporting our kids when they're coming on our campuses and so what this is asking us to do is that to make sure that we had our mitigation plan social distancing and have a service available for those kids who need and so tonight what we're going to try to do is explain to you what our plan is going forth on the 17th more specific language came out that said free on-site learning and support services include but are not limited to student supervision nutrition health services strategic support or teacher-led paraprofessional support for students participating in distance learning on-site support services will be available to a limited

073number of students with specific needs and does not require traditional teacher-led in-person classroom instruction these services allow students who need a safe place to engage in distance learning away from home schools may develop procedures to meet recommendations for physical distancing and other mitigation strategies outlined by the center for disease control and prevention and so i think a lot of times when people hear this idea of the free on-site support services really there was more specific instruction given to us about who and tried to clarify who it was for and then what we're going to do for them president taylor members of the board dr thomason and cabinet we've tried to outline our plans specifically so that families know what they're signing up for if they do sign up or register to attend so these are

074free opportunities however it's not teacher-led instruction because our teachers are currently teaching and they're very involved in that all day so principals have been calling families to clarify what this means because we don't want kids showing up and saying where's my teacher what is this where are my specials my electives because that's not what's happening here so this is somewhat repetitive of what um mr lotzenhower has or just uh shared with you so we're gonna provide student supervision and strategic support for kids that are on their canvas learning platform engaged in remote learning so if they have questions accessing content questions about assignments and believe it or not this next week we start dibbles or acadiance testing and we have our seabest testing so kids may have questions and they will need support also we

075have an amazing team of people here is our classified paraprofessionals we even have bus drivers signed up to help directors assistant directors from the district instructional coaches and of course every time i talk to you i highlight our lovely preschool teachers and everybody's working together we have them tentatively assigned to sites at this point and we'll double check registration for numbers maintenance and cleaning is a very very important part of this whole process boxes the boxes you saw on saturday are ready to go they're getting sent to the sites and training's going to happen with individuals that will be in these locations for kids so we're looking forward to being very organized because this is a different model than anything we've ever done before oh next slide yeah so this outlines some of the kids

076that will benefit potentially from this opportunity it includes our special education students our students that are learning english at risk students homeless students or we refer to mckinney vento students of course our employees kids if they need this and children of essential workers so everything's been strategically lined out transportation is available for our self-contained sped students which we call level c and d a lot of those teachers have volunteered to come in and support those kids because march was a long time ago and we're excited that maybe we can provide that individualized support in a very careful thoughtful manner with keeping those medication strategies in place our el students and our title students will also have specific support i'm sorry miss richards you said you you said that um we've already been in touch with

077the families yes okay i'm sorry if you said that i'm sure you did well initially we sent out the survey where they said do you want online do you want in person and then we described this so they replied but i'm sorry yeah i i think i started i was talking about the uh the special ed specific ones the level c and d okay miss miller has personally called every family and i don't want to add up the hours but that personal touch and her ability to work closely with our staff and ensure that we're safe when we do this she's been outstanding okay next slide when we talk about hours of support really the the goal originally was to model the exact hours from the previous school year i know we've all read those

078executive orders that said hey you have to give it for the same amount of time as the previous school year and so you'll look at the elementary and that completely mirrors what they did last year and so those are the hours of support you will notice originally with our middle schools we were doing nine to four we were doing 94 because that's what we used to do however we know that instruction starts at eight and not nine and so therefore we have adjusted that and our principles and the sites have reached out to people's requesting it that we're moving it to mirror that so that we can help support them when classes start at eight in the morning and so instead of going from nine to four it's now going to go from eight to

079three and then our high school is consistent once again with the high school schedule of 7 25 to 2 15. um and my question is the high school starts at 8 2. so we didn't move that one to we didn't move that one back because we felt like it still encompassed the time that they were in there it was truly if we started at nine they're missing out on an hour and we didn't want that if they come in earlier at 7 25 we'll still be able to support the high school and they'll be ready to go at 8 o'clock next slide please and so when we talk about the guidelines and what's happening on our campuses please understand that like with the first one they'll have a designated classroom so we'll have limited spaces

080that there are going to be on campus this is not going to be coming to campus we're going to be spread out about where it's going to happen we will be using multi-purpose rooms cafeterias gymnasiums to allow us to put more kids spread out in a location than just within a classroom a lot of this is going to depend on the registrations and the numbers that we have the more kids that we have the more space that we're going to need so that we can maintain that physical distancing and spread them out on campuses so we will be assigning those classrooms based upon the registration can i ask a quick question about technology in that situation okay if a kiddo brings their own laptop from home into our space how are we getting them on

081the internet does anyone know so we're encouraging i'm like oh i don't know that i did not even think about it until this very moment so i apologize you're fine so elementary set and it's actually in the next slide it has worked with us to get enough laptops and headphones for every kid that comes so the kids that um come for secondary we're encouraging them to bring their district administered or whatever rent it out what do i call it loan down district i haven't dealt with that question if they if we can work with it to get them on because there is a way we do know it is going to be available to support us so is it there isn't there like a vpn number that they can sign on to and then sort

082of like it the wi-fi is open so they can okay i wasn't sure that the wi-fi was open on all of our cases that was really my question okay is our wi-fi yes it is curtis is telling me it is definitely for sure open on all the campuses thank you i have a question for this um so we don't know exactly what the ratio is going to be quite yet because we're going to still confirm but what is our goal for our ratio for i know the answer for elementary i'm gonna stay out of history okay okay so elementaries are shooting for one to ten and if needed one to fifteen so we're working really hard because the feedback we got from the kids club was some of those kids those little kids need more

083support technology wise so in the perfect world it's one to ten i we were we're also getting some substitutes that will be i know miss martens might want to talk about that later that we're trying to over staff for monday rather than understaff if that makes sense and then i guess my question would be it would be one to ten and those one are going to be with only those ten that's what our goal is to code [Music] all day long all day long kind of how we did it in kids club yes that person is going to stay with those kids siblings together kind of thing as well if possible um the siblings thing there's been feedback both ways on that yes i have twins sometimes they're great together sometimes they're not so i

084get it but sometimes just getting kids online at the same time versus like things overlapping on top of each other and secondary at the secondary level we haven't really designated a ratio because we're looking at using some of our larger facilities to spread the kids out on tables and so honestly it could look like there's 30 kids within the gym or the cafeteria with two adults supervising or walking around through that area right now our secondary numbers are tracking a lot lower than our elementary numbers are president kale are members of the board one of the things that was important in that survey was for us to begin to get an idea of the number who might have taken advantage of that and so that initial survey we had people who said yes they were

085interested in doing that we've reached out to those individuals and because registration which we're going to talk about here in a minute is very very important and that will help us obviously we are planning on staffing for the higher number the higher number but to give an example uh for instance at higley high school there may have been 72 people who indicated that they were wanting to take advantage of those services and at this point we have eight registrations so again registration we're going to stress how important that will be obviously will be anticipated ready for the number but registration is going to be huge but the number i think once we've provided clarity on what the support services are and how they're going to be structured i think individuals decided either they were not

086interested in taking that or they still need to register and that registration will be huge so that we can staff appropriately but again we are in we are preparing for the the highest number so that our supervision and staffing is appropriate and truly this is a we are thankful for our employee groups across all who are ready to be there to help and be part of staffing because again all it's going to take we're going to make sure we're safe and secure for everyone so can parents pick up at any time how does that work that's a great segue to the next bullet up there yes okay so yes we know because of the numbers that yes we parents have the ability to bring their kids in and take them out when they when they

087need to be able to and especially since uh we're here to provide support so if they come and they're able to do their support and get everything done we also know that supervision with kids as they're sitting there and if they don't have extra things to do and things like that can also create a challenge so we're asking encouraging parents that please come in and get the support that they need and then they do have the ability then to come and pick up their children will libraries be open or media centered like to give like that was like a valid question right that yeah especially more not so much high school because i know they're under construction but um more the middle schools and elementary if they got done with their homework and their parents

088still needs them to sit it might be important that we can definitely we can pull you know allow them to check out some books some of the media assist centers are being used for children so we'll navigate that i think we just don't know how many kids we're getting and after a couple of days we'll we'll be more more informed i would say but yes yeah can mrs richards can you kind of describe for instance like a first graders i remember correctly is done at like 8 55 or 9 25 they all run together but so what would it look like from the time they're done with their live lesson with their teacher what happens from there i mean if these kids are there until three o'clock can you kind of describe what that somewhat

089looks like so that's the challenge vice president reece and that's why we've been calling families intentionally to describe you know this is what this looks like so they'll have their live lesson with their teachers and then they'll have recorded or live specials opportunity they will have scheduled breaks like stretching movement breaks go outside have a mask break they can bring a snack they'll also have the opportunity before it starts for breakfast and lunch those things the that's that's the concern is this is not this is not school with a teacher so they will have those assignments in all core areas that they can work on with the support of the adults we have in there so i'm thinking more along the lines of some of our essential workers who will need their kids to be

090there during that time right and so i'm just trying to get an idea of what that's going to look like is there any other specific activities to keep them busy are we going to keep them in front of this screen the whole time like if they're kind of like we are here i mean i've completed my work they've come now whatever and it's ten o'clock in the morning and i've done my my assignments i'm here until three so what does so that's things we're working through this um is a challenge for us because like i said our teachers are teaching and so as we navigate it bringing books is one thing from home that they could read think our concern is making sure parents really understand what this was designed to be and what it's

091not and so i don't want children to suffer absolutely not so as we walk through this we'll be able better to navigate it kids club is open it's awesome in preschool so some families are choosing to continue that route they'll have preschool kids but all the way up through 12 years old and they're structured a little differently so i know that's not a perfect answer right now but we've really struggled with is this you know fun with recess and a whole bunch of activities or is this just on-site free support for learning so you're right what about those kids that sit there till three i think we've answered most on this slide the only thing is that we are asking that when they come they are engaging in their schoolwork and that will be that

092will be an expectation if you're there next slide is there somewhere in the slide presentation as far as that coming up is that when they come on campus are we going to get to that we will definitely talk about that it's not bulleted as a bullet but once again going going through school school guidelines just about masks will be required and for uh students and staff when they are on campus with the idea that yes there will be built-in masks breaks and when we have the ability to to social distance and are beyond six feet then we have that ability then to have the flexibility with the masks the elementary students like mrs richards said it's worked and we have laptops and headphones available for them so they don't need to transfer tran transport back

093and forth however with the secondary schools we are asking them to bring their own devices and come we will have a limited number available should the need arise but we're asking for those secondary uh folks to come and bring the headphones and devices breakfast and luff's lunch will be offered similarly and this is where the registration process is important for us so we can kind of plan about how many kids we know we're needing at every site especially with uh lunch with food services and it's going to be consistent with what it would be during a regular school year meaning free and reduced lunch rates apply you can also bring your own lunch and snacks if necessary and you would like to and we encourage people to bring water bottles in their own water bottles

094as well so that they have that with them on campus a board member watovic i'm going to jump in here before we talk about student behavior expectations and clarify at the elementary sites the individuals that have been assigned to these groups of kids will meet them out front to take them to their location so that's what happens at the beginning of the day we're asking that they get there prior to eight o'clock since the instruction starts at eight if somebody's late then we'll have somebody in the office be able to escort them um and dismissal will be very similar unless a parent chooses to pick their kid up at noon or earlier if they get done hopefully that answers does that answer what you're asking mrs richardson i was just curious when a student comes

095onto the campus what is the protocol okay i mean okay i just went and got a haircut today for the first time since for the pandemic people they took my temperature okay i had to sign a statement that i wasn't around anybody that had had you know fed eggs or cold or anything like that and i had to sign a waiver just to get a haircut today so where are we at with this i mean somebody's going to be checking because when the parent brings the child up there they're just going to drop them off and if johnny has a temperature or been around somebody how are we going to know this how are we going to safely protect our staff and parents just dropping off perhaps a sick child and leave them i'm really

096concerned for the safety of our staff here absolutely okay so board member mr wotovich one of the things i think you've seen these family health screening expectations the questions that does your child have any one of the following these are being printed and if you saw them at kids club they're outside every site it's also part of the registration process that parents understand don't send your kid i want to say to school sorry don't send your kid to targeted support services if they have chills congestion diarrhea etc in the classroom or the multi-purpose rooms there's hand sanitation sanitizer that the students can use and if miss patti gleason was here she would say they all should go to the sink and wash their hands before they start i'm not sure every space has a sink

097but i am sure every space has hand sanitizer for sure so on top of that the training that our principals are going to work through with these employees prior to monday and you could probably go help them would you like to so you're aware of the box of items so i think this is a unique time because we're not we're not doing recess we're it's it's just kind of an odd setting that they will be trained on how to keep these kids safe and the employees safe i'm just curious um is like the staff i mean if if a child is sick there um or if a child is sick coming in why aren't we having any um nursing staff designated person why aren't we checking if i'm getting checked to get my hair cut

098why aren't we getting checked for these students coming in with with uh i mean just to save you know so everybody else is safe you know so every campus has a health aide that will be there my campuses um have indicated they're going to help greet and get people in the building yeah i know mr tovic that um even in the colleges the children have to um the students have to take their own temperature in their room or their dorm and so it you know it's professors trying to take everybody's temperature on the way in kind of thing so they're asking that the student and i guess that would be our you know our hope with our families that you know if your child wakes up and has little pink cheeks or something that we

099would check that little temperature and make sure that that kiddo's okay president kaler members of the board that's one of the pro that's one of those self-responsibilities and that we're going to be teaching as a procedure that everyone has to be vigilant on being aware of their how they're feeling and if they're not that they aren't not feeling well that if it changes at any point that their responsibility is to communicate that so that we can get them help and support and and you know truly our students when they understand the why and their role in that i do believe they will take this seriously but it's part of our our community uh processes as a as from students to adults of awareness of how i'm feeling and the communication of that and my responsibility

100for that is a big piece a very big piece can i ask one final question because mr rutovich was talking about that what about students who show up without a parent okay so when they register the parents are indicating like how they get home and if somebody's a walker i know that we're going to have blockers we're going to have bike riders if somebody shows up that's not registered we're going to have to hang on to them and get a hold of their families because i can't let somebody in that i haven't verified they're supposed to be there it's safe for them to be there etc so we are that's why we're one reason for this presentation is to inform families you need to register before monday because we want to be prepared the worst

101thing i can do is tell a kid you've got to sit here until i figure out what's going on so with this registration are we sending it out again just to those that said they were interested so they're right and we're going to do that again tomorrow so it was sent to them that were following up with phone calls okay very good thank you and i'm going to applaud my principles for the time they've spent doing that so what about a parent who's watching this presentation right now and is saying hey wait i think i might need this so they should contact their school okay and say i missed that could you send it to me or help me register thank you you're welcome members of the board that we also have we have this

102powerpoint we're required by executive order to put this information we have actually created a parent version that mirrors this exactly on our website as well with that information as well as we're required to list our mitigation plan as well so that's also on our website so that we are in compliance with those field components okay student behavior we want families and students to know that we have high expectations to follow the code of conduct whether we're on campus or virtual we're the same higley great kids every place we are we want to ensure the safety of themselves and other students we want to follow all prescribed health and safety expectations those questions that will be out front on the poster on the a-frame will also be posted in the locations where the kids are working

103and they can be reminded of those part of that self take care of yourself we also want them to behave in a way that doesn't disrupt the learning of the other students in this environment we want them to go straight to and from their assigned areas and i think mr lotzenhauser probably has systematic plans for secondary where they enter where they exit and it's just like any time we're with husd we're going to be respectful we're not going to disrespect staff or students leave campus without permission this is a support service and we want to take care of these kids but we also expect them to behave next slide please okay these are some of the parent expectations they're going to verify the contact information and everything within synergy is correct we're going to work

104with them to make sure their immunizations are up to date health aides have been looking at all the kids that were interested to make sure everything's in sync we're going to give them a week to get those updated also give them information about free free resources and free sites here's the daily health screening prior to arrival on campus the parents and the students have to understand our code of conduct if a child has specific health needs we need to know so if a kid has asthma or anything we need to be informed and we're not going to release a kid to just anybody that shows up they have to have their id i can just say thank you to whoever got our husd code of conduct up online and it was just some clicks instead

105of three colors of paper for every child in the house and the bus everything was just online and it was just wonderful so i don't know who did that but it was awesome this year thank you good um in just a little more detail dr foley spoke about this but if parents can register by 12 pm on thursday we can adequately staff to support their children we are saying they will not be allowed to attend however we're about children so if somebody shows up and they haven't registered we have paper copies for them to fill out and we will do our best to get them in it might be the next day we just have to you know align staffing to student needs and we're also informing families that kids club has what we call

106wrap-around care before and after at every site in addition at saseman preschool parents have the option if they want to stay with the amazing kids club staff they can do that as well so i think that's it i just want to thank the staff that has agreed to do this yes um i know this isn't an easy choice and i know it's a lot of our aides and a lot of our bus drivers you mentioned and i'm sure that they're not normally used to being in a classroom setting the bus drivers so i just want to thank them because i know it's a hard choice to do this and it's a big deal so thank you it is okay the next part of our presentation today is an update on athletics on august 5th the

107ai aia approved a fall calendar with staggered beginning of fall sports and we'll go through the stagger beginning in the timelines and so i think that had been a question that had been coming up quite a bit and we were waiting for guidance from the aia and on the fifth they decided yes there would be fall sports in arizona i think there are continuing discussions related to this especially when you hear about the fact there's not going to be asu football until the spring maybe for some of us u of a fans that was okay but um you know things are getting pushed back into the uh into the spring in a lot of colleges however at this time we have not received any further guidance from the aia in terms of doing anything to

108change what the plan was done on the august 5th yeah that that's interesting i think mr glover you told me that the from the pac-10 or whatever schools already have said that they're not yeah they're not going to do this and and we're we're behind here aren't we i mean if everybody else is doing this at college level i think they would be a little farther ahead here it's been very very interesting because there's a very diverse different paths that some of the conferences are taking and some of them are not especially with the collegian level and then honestly within the state of arizona there are some different places that are not going to i think tucson just pushed theirs back from football they wouldn't start until october and so there's a lot of different

109things that are in place and so i'm going to go through this presentation today but what i'd really like to do is we're preparing a much deeper dive into this for our next board meeting that i'd like to actually spend some time have our athletic directors here we can start talking about some different plans some ideas within two weeks who knows what's going to change and so we might have to have a much significant update from where we're at but under the rules of where we're at right now here's kind of what we're going to do um these shortened seasons have been reduced the playoffs have been reduced from 16 teams to eight teams so that eliminated basically a week from the season as well the updated schedules they started working on them today in

110terms of football the 6a conference met today and that's where our football teams are in i was told we are very much pushing to make sure that we keep our williams field versus higley football game and then the 5a teams are starting conference meeting is tomorrow and that's where we're going to start working on the other sports schedules students who choose online learning will be able to compete at the school that they've always competed at that will not be a limitation for them to be able to participate in extracurricular activities the transfer rules are still in place we know that those transfers happen there will still be hardships and appeals different things to happen following typical aia guidelines this impacted winter sports as of right now by pushing their start date back normally either the

111week of november 1st they're going to be moved back a week for winter sports so there could also be more overlap between winter sports and the fall sports if we're going to continue in the model that's currently going and so where we are at we're continuing to stay in our stage three of our progression until a permissible practice has started and on the next slide we're going to talk about this permissible practice i don't have the data up on the screen but you all have a handout that showed the number of kids who attended the coaches and the number of students then who left because of a sickness or illness and you'll notice last week we had a very good week on august 3rd we're continuing to follow the protocols from the summer and so

112included with that is in the temperature taking of when the kids come onto campus and the coaches asking the screening we're going to continue that practice for athletics and activities after school until permissible practice starts so if you take a look these are the activities that we're participating in within the fall season you'll notice golf starts monday i guess if there is a sport that can physical distance much more than other ones it is golf and so if you take a look at it starts with the first competition being then on august 24th their season does end a little sooner than the rest of them you'll see october 26 through 29th spirit line uh august 17th is beginning of tryouts for them there are actually some rules i didn't include on this in terms of

113when trump tumbling and lyfts can't start until september so they need some time to practice before that is allowed uh there they have the longest season and so you'll notice their final in the state competition is not until march 6th but we also know the spirit line supports other other sports uh throughout the throughout the season cross country delays a week starting on august 24th the first competition on september 9th and then the state championship is the november 12th and 13th those have been pushed back for what's happening swimming and diving starts august 24th the first competition is pushed back to september 14th i was in a meeting yesterday with the east valley athletic directors swim and diving there could be some significant changes because of the number of kids normally involved with those teams

114and the fact that they all go to the same pool we are working not just we all of the east valley is working on how can we divide so these meets might look significantly different it might honestly be the boys teams at one meet where the site where the girls are a different one to reduce the number of people that's happening and there could be a multiple sites going on at the same time i'll have more guidance from that that was just noted within our meeting yesterday and then we're looking for further direction with swim and dive specifically when we jump into volleyball you'll notice they continue to be delayed this is the staggered start that aia talked about that's the august 31st start for permissive practice and then we go into competition on september

11521st so that's about three weeks at least behind where it normally would be and then with a state championships november 12-21 and then for football football has been pushed back the furthest and i think there's a lot of indicators a lot other districts in different areas within the state have canceled football i know up north there's been a lot of fall sports that have already been canceled i know that there's a lot of discussions amongst football within certain schools and districts around here and so they've pushed it back to september 7th and the three weeks before practice starts and i say the week of september 30th because the freshman game would be on that wednesday the 30th where the first varsity game would be october 2nd we are looking at a reduced season of eight

116games for that and then the state championships would be in december uh december 11th and 12th very much a puzzle piece with scheduling that's going on right now with the athletic directors trying to determine which schools are participating which schools are not participating because like i said i think tucson has just moved theirs back as of yesterday so they not may not be participating within the aia football they might be doing their own thing starting in october down in tucson so that's kind of the staggered one the questions that that we're preparing to provide you more guidance and and we would love to know input on basically is what does it look like to host an event starting in september and and what what is that there right now there isn't guidelines that says for

117spectators or processes or locker rooms or transportation procedures within the east valley we're going to be working with our neighboring districts to kind of come up with similar processes because if our teams travel to another school we want to know what's happening there we are looking at transportation and i know that's been an issue about making sure that our form and parent release so if a parent wants to transport their kids to a competition they will have that option so that they're not riding on the bus with them these are all things that i'd like to bring back to you on the 26th so we can have a deeper dive into what starting of this athletics looks like all of this has been about high school and then we need to know that we already

118know our middle school athletics the evc has been delayed until second quarter we have a meeting on friday we're going to start looking at plans so when i come back to you on the 26th i want to provide for you a plan for the middle school athletics as well there's a lot of moving pieces out there right now and it seems like every time we seem we have a direction going with this it kind of changes and so as we get further updates on that we'll include it within our superintendent's report so that you can get some updates on it before we meet again on the 26th is there any questions i was just going to say this this whole guidelines for spectators hasn't even been talked about correct as of right now i don't

119have any guidance by the aia it's yeah and you know dr fowler could help me with this answer but when we look at it really the schools and the sites have been left to that traditionally the aia has been responsible for playoffs right where the sites have been responsible for that so i think those are some of the decisions that we as a district need to be able to provide you guys options to be able to look and say what would it look like we get to vote again on on on guidelines i'm i is that what you're going to bring back to us no i think what i want to do is offer these are the different options that we're going on and have us all included i i shouldn't kid it's a very

120serious subject it's just kind of ironic what's come our way and what hasn't come our way mrs wilson i too wanted to question the guidelines of the spectators because we've all been i think to higley high and saw the bleachers and how full they are and i don't know that that can happen this year like that again you know we do i do want to think about that i i know you're new but those bleachers get very tight so i just i that's a concern i think for all of us thank you for thinking ahead to know that you're going to probably need a presentation on that thank you you know and one thing that we are happy about is starting last year working with the national federation of high schools they're called pixel lock

121cameras so we do have camera systems that are available should we need to stream and do things and that will be part of what we're looking at we have those on the football fields and we have them in the gyms as well so lots of things to do an update once again on the 26th where we're going to provide a lot more information good evening president kayla members of the board my fellow colleagues as well as the husd community so i'm going to be presenting a brief update from the human resources perspective some of this is going to be similar information that i communicated back on saturday on the 8th so first i want to start off with the executive order um just as you said miss wilson i want to thank all of our

122employees um and this is in correlation to what ms richard said everybody it's all hands on deck so from our classified all around the district to our administrators here at the district office as well as our site administrators in regards to needing to be available to support the services that we're anticipating for this coming monday so um i know that there are some employees that are concerned and i had communicated this on saturday you know that executive order talked about the fact that our k-12 teachers are offering remote learning and so that is what their primary focus is so if you've got those certified teachers in those environments who we have left um you know in not in any terms of this is what we have left but we do need to look at our

123classified and our priorities and what they're doing and do we need to pull them and or do we need to pull them to be on site because although in class instruction hasn't begun these support services have begun and we are obligated to provide a supervisor for these students who come and and take need of these services so it is a hard it's a hard reality in regards to us as a district and our community and our employees and we talked a little bit about this concern sometimes that classified can be rated as the second-class citizens into our certified and i think the governor should shine some light on that here you know we try to do our best as a community to work together and say that we're we're one higgly in all of our

124employees matter and we do that in many ways we've done that in the past results-based funding we've done that in the past with increases and so this is a difficult swallow particularly for me as i sit here because i know a lot of employees are saying you're making me choose my job over my safety and our health and ideally would it be great that we could hire a lot more individuals who are maybe less concerned and ready to come back to work that would be great but then financially that goes back and puts us in another bubble that we've talked about and i'll talk a little bit more about as we look at rescue substitutes and making sure that we have additional individuals available so when we do return back in person but also having

125additional individuals available for when something might happen to an instructor who's doing remote learning right now so with our vendor in terms of esi we are looking at their program called rescue subs we started these conversations over a month ago if not sooner time gets the best of me and we talked about the fact that we need substitutes at all of our sites there was a concern about could they fill the number that we need we are looking at a total of 26 but our first priority is 17 looking at one at each elementary two at the secondaries having them work full time and having them start on monday the 17th we'll make sure that we'll provide them training services for ms teams as well as canvas if they're not familiar with those products but

126we'll also take advantage of the fact that we'll need them to help support these services so if there's availability for that coming monday um they'll be there to kind of help us navigate through that too so it'll be an interesting time as we roll this out and see how that first week turns out as miss richard said and how we've maybe done our best with the information that we have and prepared the best way we can knowing that there's definitely going to be hiccups that we're going to learn from in the process in regards to the arizona department of health services and the safely returning to in-person instruction we are currently in the process of drafting information we sent apartment we spent a significant amount of time yesterday working with our district nurse on all

127of the communication that has come through thus far the communication that came out of the benchmark webinar that we had with adhs last week as well as some new information that she's learned this week and even today as she's been having these weekly webinars with adhs so we're in the process of drafting those items and as dr foley mentioned earlier we identified certain things in relation to our practices on primary contact secondary contact and what that looks like so as we get more of that information we'll distribute that out prior to next week so then site administrators have those protocols in place and we'll go into a more detailed board meeting presentation for all of you at the 8 25 meeting some of the things that she has done already in preparation for our students

128that will be coming back is establishing new protocols for our health offices and making sure that we're ensuring the best we can the safety of our students that are going to be utilizing their services as well as any employees in those roles in this position whether it's ppe whether it's protocols in terms of how many people can be in the office at once if somebody does identify and end up being sick the phone call to the office getting them prepped and ready and identifying where they're going to be secluded within the office because it is a small space so she's been working with them very closely and getting that put into place um and as i said earlier more information will be given at the 8 25 board meeting as we acknowledge and a stipulation

129that i'll always put out there is that it's always changing and so we will certainly put on the bottom of the information that we give out that it's always subject to change based on the arizona department of health services and the reality is is as i've said before with a positive flow chart it's it's going to be difficult and this really is a practice run for us because although we have a number of students returning to a multitude of sites we're not going to be fully at our capacity as it would if we were in person so these protocols these processes in place and what's happening is going to help us in the bigger picture as we prepare for hopefully an october return any additional things in terms of what we know today i do

130know some of our certified teachers have reached out in relation to ffcra men seeking additional guidance in regards to our protocols for if there is a positive case when we're back in the classroom and that what what that looks like for them in terms of their time especially if they have to go in and out of the classroom on multiple occasions i've yet to actually speak with my colleagues as i just got the information earlier today from udall shumway in terms of guidance and what that looks like and there's options that we have certainly any employees who are exposed initially has ffcra available to them for those first 80 hours at a full paid leave if we have individuals to where they're not sick directly but they've been exposed and as of right now that

131exposure window is 10 days that could be potential for self-isolation if they're not sick and they can continue to work remotely during that self-isolation they wouldn't necessarily need to use any additional general leave time so those are some scenarios that we are going to work out and share at that next board meeting also so you could see scenarios that have come in questions that have come in things that have actually happened and how we handled it so that way people can really see firsthand what might apply to them when the situation does occur and that's all i have for you today thank you mrs martens i know that there's a special group of teachers that had some concerns by moving into support services from kids club were they given that choice to stay with the

132kid were they able to stay if they wanted to with the kids club kids over to the preschool how did we are we navigating that little special group of teachers i'll defer to ms richards for part of it and then i'll finish off as i learned a number of additional information today in regards to requests from employees and leaves and so forth so president kaler once again with limited information we don't know how many families are going to take advantage of that all day kids club option versus before and after this targeted support services so we do have a couple of paraprofessionals that are staying with the kids club employees at saseman but then we also have our program leaders that have offered to help during targeted support services which is above and beyond because

133they'll help from 12 until 2 45 so to answer your question if i knew how many kids needed the full day kids club it would help so they register by 8 pm on thursday we're getting this other registration by noon tomorrow and we've told all our administrators we gave you list of people that we may have to give and take and you know miss gleason's been great about the whole thing and those teachers and those paraprofessionals i feel like i need to take them cupcakes or something because they're the ones that have been out i'll buy it because i've heard from their little sweethearts and i get that you know we would love to open just our preschools and let them but we can't and it's just it's been so hard on my heart to

134be very honest and so i just want to give a shout out right now to that group of people that are really going the extra mile for us and i and i'm grateful i'm grateful for everybody that's coming on monday because i know yeah nothing is ideal so they've been in the trenches loving on those kids and you know they've been great about we'll go where you need us and i wish a circumstances weren't like this but i was just thinking about the relationships that they've already made with some kiddos too which they've already had these connections and i would hate to kind of yank those away from them as well if there's an opportunity for them to still connect with those students so we'll keep looking at it it's fluid thank you you know

135as i said earlier president kayla are members of the board it is a challenge um you know we have a similar to an unfunded mandate here where we have to provide support services for the last time i heard numbers of up to 1 000 students who plan on returning to our 13 sites next week so that's difficult and again we're not at a financial position to hire 100 new individuals to help us support these services and continue to maintain payment for our current individuals and or payment in regards to some other components and leave many of you know with the ffcra there are six different options employees can choose and i've said to you many times before this is the first federal act that employers have received where this has kept you in a paid

136status all other federal act leaves have always been unpaid with the employer allowing the ability for the employee to stay in a paid status so we have those financial challenges in terms of an update for our district we did get about 30 new requests for ffcra especially with the requirement that we need everybody hands on deck next week we're going to work with those individuals because they do have the right to apply and if they need an accommodation or if they fall within those areas we completely respect and will honor that and work with them the best we can for those individuals where they don't fall under ffcra or don't have an accommodation that's needing that's where as you said miss kaylar and miss richards has mentioned and others have mentioned tonight our hearts are

137torn we understand their concern and where their pressure lies in terms of their own personal opinions but as ms reese you've mentioned before we're also an employer so at some point people have to make decisions and i know they're not easy decisions but we have to decipher what can we do and as i said financially these rescue subs we're looking at to help support the district that we know will need for the next year is approximately a 500 cost that we have not anticipated we've already spent almost 200 thousand dollars in various ppe that we did not anticipate we expect and anticipate there's other equipment needs that we're going to have um we're paying for these required leaves under ffcra for individuals because that's what the leave act says however we have to backfill their

138positions because we need the staff to be able to man all the different requirements that we have so as an employer we are in very challenging times and you know i'm appreciative of our federal government as well as our state government and understanding the uniqueness of school districts and schools and the ability to have an executive order that allows us to keep individuals in paid statuses that is unique like no other however you know again this executive order also puts on us other components um that in in my opinion and maybe i'm i shouldn't go there but i'm gonna go there um you know the governor really skimmed through in his actual press conference and left it for us to identify and work through after um you know so people didn't necessarily know or hear

139the details of that executive order and understood what that really meant um so again challenges that we're doing our best and as you said mr rotovic did well we're making the best decisions we have with the information that we have in the moment and sometimes that information changes so the decision that was best a week ago isn't the decision that's best two weeks from now thank you mrs martin any other comments questions thank you president caleb members of the board the next portion would just be a review of what we had on saturday there's really no new information that we have since then since the arizona department of health services are gonna is going to update their dashboard every thursday so the information we have is also uh 12 days in the rears and so

140when they update it tomorrow it'll look at um 12 days in the rears though that we're looking at the information but the good news is is go to the next slide please is that um at this time we have met one of the benchmarks and that is the the the first benchmarks a decline in cases or less than 100 cases per hundred thousand individuals for two consecutive weeks and so uh it's not the less of a hundred cases per hundred thousand but declining cases for two consecutive weeks you can see the top graph there the bar graph shows a decline for two consecutive weeks the other two benchmarks that we have not met is two consecutive weeks with a percent positivity of seven percent right now uh two weeks in the rears we were 13.2

141we we imagine that's going to go down a little bit tomorrow but we still don't believe it's going to be in the green tomorrow the next one and the third benchmark is two consecutive weeks with hospital visits for covet-like covet-like illness in the region of ten percent below so last week we met up for one week which was eight point eight percent and hopefully uh tomorrow they'll give us the good news that'll still continue being below ten percent so uh with that information we did uh have a webinar today with the maricopa county department of public health and they're putting out more regional and more localized information so hopefully the dashboard for the maricopa county department of public health will be set up quickly um i was very excited when i saw it on the

142webinar today i actually ran to dr foley's office and and said take take a look at things so it was an example of what they're going to put together it's not put together yet but it will break it down by zip code and even school districts if you're a high school district they can break it down by that an elementary district and then for the higley unified school district they should be able to break it down by those metrics and so we're really excited about that information coming and we will continue to update the board and the public every time we have a meeting just to let you know where we're at and what we're looking at and so we can take a look at this and it looks like i believe tomorrow we'll get

143the metrics saying that we've met two and so we're just looking at that second um the second two consecutive weeks with a percent of positivity below seven percent so we can get all of our kids and teachers back to where we want everyone to be we know that we want to be here dr thomason thank you i did see that for maricopa and i think it's by friday is there hope but we'll see if they can make it by friday for those numbers and i just want to reiterate again that it is the hope and goal of this entire board to get our kids back in school as soon as we possibly can safely and with our staff in mind as well i know that there's been a lot of communication emails whatnot and one

144of the one of the things i want to focus on is that yes our teachers it was a 91 that they want to return to school but it was with the caveat when it's safe and they are looking at these benchmarks and they are following this data very very carefully so um i i appreciate that we can get our zip codes though and i'm sure that that's going to be more defined data for all of us to chew on and again our board is willing we if we see something we will put an emergency meeting on the books we only need 24 hours to do that and we will do everything in our power to get these kids back in school safe and sound and that is the goal of this entire board and i

145just want to reiterate that to our entire community and again i'm thankful for the teachers doing phenomenal work i'm thankful for the families the mamas the dads the grandparents the aunts and uncles all hands on deck like mrs martin says to help school these kids our support services starting monday and trying to help those i always call them the little least of these that just need a little extra support and i'm grateful grateful president kaler i'm too glad to hear that they're going to zip codes that was kind of my plea was i don't think we have the same positivity rate based on the research i didn't and the numbers i was gathering that we don't have the same positivity rates in our area as they do on the west side as they do on

146maybe in a downtown area that our positivity rates are are lower so i'm excited to hear that they heard us um what they had initially said was that school boards and school districts had asked to be the ones to be able to make the decision and that they were going to provide us this data but it wanted to be at a local level but you weren't going to provide us local information so um i'm very excited to see what they come out with and like president taylor said all our board members have committed to these numbers we get clear on our numbers that we've committed to having an emergency board meeting because we did recognize that these come out on thursdays and our board meetings are wednesdays and we don't have board meetings every week

147when these will come out every week so it's kind of all hands on deck here too that as soon as that we can meet the metrics that have been set um we will be willing to come together to make decisions on that so i'm excited because that like i said um i i use their same metrics their same information their same numbers um in our local area and it had a very different picture for us so that was one of the deciding factors for me is i don't think we're in the same place as some of the other areas within maricopa county so i will be watching for that and looking for that and thank you for being on webinars i i don't know that everyone realizes that there are a ton of these between

148arizona health department between maricopa county health department and sometimes they're conflicting information even and so it's really difficult to kind of sort through so while our kiddos are having to learn through screens right now you're spending a lot of time on screens in webinars so thank you and i look forward to seeing that information okay well thank you so much appreciate the update future agenda items as you can see our calendar is very full through the end of the year is there anything somebody would like to mrs wilson for our next update can we have a mental health update on how our kids are doing i don't even know how you guys would provide that but i'm hearing it through public comment i'm hearing it in my email it's a struggle maybe we could see

149what we're doing as a district because i'm not quite sure my kids are a little older so i'm not right there on the screen with them just what we're doing to help our the mental health of our children if i could see that that would be great and then just can i give some direction right now from the public comment is that okay to do right now um can we review the parent who said that their child's only in school for an hour and just make sure that that if that they're only getting an hour in high school just to make sure that that kiddo is on the screen when they need to and how to figure that out that would be great thank you yes hi um i'd just like to tag along on

150what mrs wilson said um earlier in reference to the to the mental health um i would like us to see not right now but sometime in the future that we set up some type of program act of kindness okay as i said earlier we all need to show respect and kindness towards each other as this cruelty will not nothing but destroy this community and for for you that are watching on television right now when um we were beginning our meeting and as as we were reading some things in the meeting there was an adult male and a young male individual yelling through the door okay um i don't know about you but um adults are in here conducting a professional meeting and as far as i'm concerned that behavior is not acceptable and that's not

151okay with me that that type of behavior is acceptable within some individuals so i think it's i know teachers we have more on our plate but if some other people aren't doing something like that i think we need for our community to move forward for mental health and those type of things some type of kindness program so if we can do something with us and with the chamber together i think as we move forward this coming semester that we take a look at bringing this community back together because it's been not a good experience for all of us and i think we we need to come back together here somehow and if we can figure something out be it whatever i think we're going to have to look around online and see what's out there

152see what's out there let's kindness because there's just too much going on right now the the other thing as we go through this i'm really concerned for for the health and and just the mental health of of our administration and our front line staff right now um i'll just try to be politically correct that i find in our community and our society nowadays they're quite intense and demanding and i really have a concern for the people that are answering our phones at our schools the principals that are dealing with some intense conversations all all day long that there's other things they need to address where i'm going at with this conversation is that perhaps maybe with the care act money as we come back or do whatever we're doing here that perhaps we set something

153up as some type of triage that could be a general phone number when you're calling to higgle you go to i'm just as an idea i'm just throwing something out to you as they come in call into higley that there are trained people that can answer a variety of questions that are trained for type different type of environments and answering questions that may be intense i'm trying to figure out say the correct words here but um just let's let's put some thought to that because you know these principals and these front-line people are answering the phones right now i just feel so sorry for them because there's some really demanding phone calls they're getting and and i don't want to wear these people out and physically and emotionally these principles can only take so much

154in these phone calls okay and so if we can maybe think of something to lighten that load on phone calls for them with a triage or something let's let's let's take a look at it because i'm just kind of concerned about them on that their safety okay thank you mr wittovich pleasure thank you mrs reese miss martin do we have anything through our insurance company for an employee assistance program vice president reece absolutely um the whole time that i've been here at the district and certainly prior to my tenure we have the employee assistance program um and so it's free to all of our employees and they can get up to five different sessions depending on their need they get three phone calls sometimes if an individual needs some counseling whether it's mental health whether

155that's something else they can get up to five free items or sessions and then get forwarded to a local provider that's covered underneath the medical benefits that we have and we've actually been touting it i'll be transparent and say we touted it more in the spring and recently we haven't touted it as much so i'll make sure working with our benefits department that we're doing that our marketing department starting today is doing a social media pitch just like we did last year with wellness wednesdays so that started today too and we'll continue to make sure that we're you know keeping that at the forefront because we do mr ortovich and miss reese things get busy and things get crazy and sometimes we neglect the things that we need to care for most and thank you

156for that because i i thought we did have that program through our insurance and i please if we can share that out to all of our staff our teachers we're not in an ideal situation and while even between the five of us we have opposing views and we can respectfully agree to disagree in views but one thing that just the entire covid situation has done is has made everything emotionally charged you know we're very protective of our kids our parents are crying every day when they're seeing their kids crying every day i mean this it has just i can't say what i would like to say it has made a mess of a lot of people's lives and we just don't we just don't have sometimes we just don't have control of our own life

157and we feel everything has been taken out of control so even for our teachers i i'm concerned for the i know we have several that come into our building and teach from their classroom um but we have several at home and just the same as the kids that we talk about is at risk um that we kind of feel we need to have our eyes on because we are kind of their caretakers in that aspect i i am concerned about some at-risk employees um that are working remotely who have who are afraid who have not gone out and interacted with people that i think we need to remind everybody that we do have the employee assistance program and it might be a good opportunity to take advantage of and like mr rotovic said our social

158media our emails they're not easy to read on either side bottom line is we're still human beings um while we've been elected and proudly serve our district we have our teachers who who do work really hard and bottom line is we're still human beings and we're also going through this covid stuff in our own way and so if we can really get that out there maybe look at a different wellness wednesday for our staff versus what goes out to our community to they they're set with a different set of circumstances i know you i'm not trying to put any more on your plate because i know too you guys are just overwhelmed and sometimes we just need a break from it so um but just some thoughts that if we have the opportunity that we

159can do i think that would be important you know just to go along with that whole conversation and reference you know our counselors at our high schools are do a wonderful job they have a lot on their plate but as we come back to school there's going to be even more on their plate with all the things that like mrs reese said and maybe we might look at maybe some additional triage that can help out our counselors to you know so they're not going to be swamped with phone calls and things like that so just a suggestion yes we need to care for the mental health of all in our district right now and i know a lot of the kiddos are struggling with that and so i do believe we have some sel going

160on in our in our daily curricu not daily but weekly curriculums and so um they'll be good to share with our community what we're doing i would love to hear that as well um any other things all right next is i move that the governing board convene an executive session for discussion or consultation for legal advice with the governing board's attorney pursuant to ars zero three 38-43103 three and a four second all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero and we should return in a little bit thank you and we'll take a break yes please mr watovic i move that we can re reconvene in general session second all those in favor i i i motion carries five zero i move that we adjourn second all those in favor aye aye aye motion

161carries five zero good night you