001good morning dr thomason would you please call this order call to order our meaning i'm sorry roll call it's already a day president caleb members of the board please at the record show we have all five board members present today thank you so much and i thank everybody that's here today on their saturday morning i appreciate you all we're to have a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance i move that we approve the agenda second any questions all those in favor aye aye motion carries 5-0 request to speak we value input from our constituents this time has been set aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board please remember that this is not an appropriate venue to evaluate discuss or criticize district personnel policy keb provides a process
002for complaints about personnel speakers should be aware that the false statements about individuals may result in civil liability members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ars 38-43 h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date please limit your remarks to three minutes i've asked dr thomason this morning to go ahead and read all the comments that we did receive via online and also i just want to state that all of us up here have received numerous emails over the past week we have read every word whether we were able to respond to every single email i
003apologize i personally am not but we're trying so again thank you for reaching out community and dr thomason i'll hand it over to you president kayla members of the board we do have 27 comments that i'll be reading today i'll read them exactly as written and sent to us okay the first one aubrey fulmer students at cortina saseman middle school and higley high school we just moved here a few weeks ago from out of state and my kids need normal in-person school to start asap there is no way to meet friends and feel comfortable in a new place without it this move has been extremely hard for this reason we need normalcy and that means productive normal school routines delaying it is not healthy these children need this structure and to regain confidence again next
004one shelly naylor children at cortina saseman and higley high school the children need to be back in person learning asap this is vital for their mental and physical health being home in front of the computer screen is not healthy for them they need the interaction of other students and teachers they deserve the right to a good education and not dependent on a little instruction given over a live teaching session and having to navigate their way through a computer program to get their work done children already have too much screen time in their lives without schooling being in front of a screen please let these children go back to in-person learning now so they have a chance at actually learning and being mentally stronger rebecca shiver children at higley sassem and cortina i would like to
005speak and ask on my behalf of my five children that you please let them go back to school they have been struggling with the distance learning program and some of their teachers have been struggling as well please let teachers staff and children choose rachel schweitzer children at san tan elementary and soseman middle school dear miss keeler i don't know how much of a voice you have in reopening schools but it has been more than i have as a parent we are in five we are in day five of remote learning and it has been disappointing depressing and overwhelming i know everyone in authorities seems to be saying it isn't safe to open schools please do the research for yourself it isn't safe to keep them closed the cdc is saying it isn't safe to keep
006them closed we want a choice for in-person school for teachers and students please be a voice for my children i have a child in seventh grade at saseman who hates school now and cries that everything she loves has been taken away she excelled in every subject before school closed i have a child in fifth grade at san tan elementary who is anxious and has a panic attack every day over computer work she has gained 10 pounds since being home and we are already concerned about her health her activity and stress eating it has gotten worse i have a second grader in spanish immersion who is missing her friends and teachers and acting out aggressively toward her siblings she loved school before it closed and remote learning is not working i have a kindergartener whom we
007call our sunshine girl because she is always so happy and bouncy and i can see the light draining out of her she is so excited to start school and she feels cheated and disappointed she's not getting the socialization that is so critical in kindergarten and lastly i have a two-year-old who prepare who perhaps is being cheated the most because i cannot sit with her and play like i used to disney junior is taking my place as a scurry around between my four student children helping them with computer program issues and following lengthy steps to turn in in assignments is overwhelming exhausting and demoralizing i have had to put my career as a real estate agent on pause because now i am unpaid full-time technical and emotional support person who can't even do that well because
008i care for a two-year-old at the same time we are drowning we want our happy kids back we don't want to give up on public school but this is asking too much please please be our voice rebecca schweitzer mother of five share cardona children at soccerman and higley high school our kids need to get back in school being out of school this long is now online is having a devastating effect on my children my oldest is a junior at higley high school and involved in band this year you can't have banned class and not meet in person it just can't happen he's losing out on the experience and losing the benefits of the me that music has has for their brain developments he is also taking higher level classes and needs to be in class
009with an instructor so he gets the full learning experience he can't get online our middle daughter is an eighth grader at soseman middle school she is very much an extrovert she thrives on being around people and being social she can also be by herself for small amounts of time but she needs human interaction she is an accelerated classes she is in drama she's involved in many things she needs to be in the classroom she cannot keep doing these online classes and staying staying home away from people she is trying to keep it together she has never had an anxiety or depression issue since being out of school she has become anxious enough to need a counselor she is now being treated for depression also she can't cope with everything being online we are slowly losing
010her her personality is changing our youngest daughter is in seventh grade at sasaman she is a bit quieter than her sister so initially staying home was not a bad thing for her social aspect but the scholastic repercussions have been huge she basically failed her last semester in elementary being online didn't help that at all she is she has an iep and she needs to be in the classroom with teachers that will assist her where it's needed she does not engage online and i need to stress not she shuts down if she can't be in the classroom she doesn't have anything to help keep her focused and keep her adhd manageable there is not enough structure to keep her interested and engaged she must be in the classroom that's it she has to be i feel
011like we are already sitting setting her up to fail the teachers are great they are doing the best they can but they are not going to be able to help my child through a computer screen last year she was just starting to get her confidence up and participate in class and now she's gonna have to start all over and try to get some of that back please please please have the option to go back to school for those of us who want school if someone wants to stay online then let them have that option but do not withhold in-person school from us that is so desperately so desperately needed connie webb children at san tan elementary our special needs kids need to be back in school online learning is not effective for a child with
012special needs she was unable to navigate it on their on his own and able to learn anything from 30 minutes of screen time on top of that their speech surfaces have been cut down to 10 minutes per child per week which is a waste of everyone's time ieps are not being followed which is which are legal documents that are ignore that you are ignoring our kids need to go back to school but in particular special needs kids need to be back in school because they need services they are not they are legally entitled to sarah launder children at cortina i just wanted to make sure i was able to express my desire for kids to be in school in person as soon as possible online learning is provided to be a sub has is proving
013to be a subpar option for elementary children i had to pull my kindergartner out of public school and find an alternative if we go past the 17th of august i will be moving my second grader as well i would also like to request parents being able to be present at the next board meeting thank you for your hard work i know these decisions aren't easy christina klontz children at cortina and higley high school it is absolutely imperative that our children have the option if they so choose to have in-person learning multiple experts have been consulted and asked about whether it is safe for children to return back to school the consensus across the board has been yes jonathan apodaca cortina saseman and higley high schools have the ability to safely reopen hannah johnson williamsfield high
014school i would like to advocate for our children to be in school face to face please listen to the hundreds of professionals that have advocated for the mental health and development of our children and the children and the need for interaction and some normalcy to return to their lives i can tell you the number of suicide attempts and sadly success have skyrocketed during the last few months and now it's terrifying to see actual damage and loss of life happening with these children and healthy young adults because their entire lives have been ripped away from them quidera walker williamsfield high school i wanted to offer solutions for the absence of physical education for our students physical education solutions brooke buschmann students at cortina parents who want their children to participate in remote learning have been given
015that option please give an option for in-person education for my children for our family online learning will not be sustainable long term i have four children one preschool age and three enrolled at cortina elementary none of my children are proficient at using computers my sixth grader has adhd and will likely need a 504 plan in place sometime this year he has five different teachers this year and struggles with staying focused during online learning i i have to click through each teacher's canvas page to check for assignments daily to make sure he hasn't missed anything my third grader has down syndrome i must be present with her all the time online learning sessions she is bored with watching her teacher on the computer i can barely get her to sit for 20 minutes i'm very concerned
016with her regression in reading and math since march also concerning is the lag in therapy services she doesn't get as much out of speech therapy sessions online as she would in person my second grader is getting better using canvas but still struggles he is often left to fend for himself while i attend to my two older children's needs a second grader shouldn't be expected to navigate canvas on his own i feel a lot of guilt that this child is on his own and simply because his siblings need extra help all three of my kids schedules overlap i am running from room to room computer to computer all morning trying to make sure each child is on the right meaning and no one is having technical issues all while trying to keep my four-year-old busy and
017quiet the first week of school was incredibly stressful and i'm at stay-at-home mother i can't imagine the stress of parents who both work or who are single parents this mode of learning will not be sustainable for our family please allow families to continue to send their children back to school in person nicole camp children at cooley and chaparral since no one is happy about the online option with florida virtual how about the district follows what combs district is doing you can broadcast classes live and stay at home kids if when school is open this will greatly reduce the stress parents and kids are feeling about changing teachers and classes again and kids won't have to lose their electives or accelerated courses if they decide to stay at home the kids need consistency also if schools
018have to close again because of covid then the kids can keep the same classes and do them virtually again your online option is less than satisfactory at this point kids need consistency my kids will be heartbroken if they have to change teachers or lose classes kathleen richards student at higley traditional academy the current plan of placing all students with remote learning requests once buildings open for instruction requires removing students from their current learning environments based in their schools and putting them in the global academy the stress this creates for students on a social emotional level makes this absolutely unacceptable additionally the florida virtual learning that provides the online content for the global academy is not up to par with several schools and their curriculums including our homeschool higley traditional academy the majority of fvl content
019does not allow for student teacher live lessons and does not involve peer-to-peer interaction the idea of self-guided learning for a kinder or lower elementary student is not a viable concept the board has stated that there will be a seamless transition available for families and students from remote to in-person learning but there is no way for this to be accomplished if these children are behind in their curriculum there is no reason for this transition to be acquired and i encourage the district and the board to look at education needs from school to school and set up measures that allow remote learning to continue as it was started on 727 by not implementing fvl curriculum when the year began the district effectively limited this as a viable option for our students the lack of transparency with enrolled
020families with regards to this plan will i fear ultimately result in many families deciding to enroll their children and options that removed them from the higley unified school district if that happens the funding impacts will be lo will be long lasting as soon as children's as soon as a student leaves the district it is very hard to bring them back you cannot pull the rug out from under parents and students and expect them to roll with it with all this in mind the district has several options delay opening until the end of the first quarter this allows the districts and schools leadership teams to further develop a viable option for remote learning while monitoring the health and public safety issues if opening immediately is found to be safe and necessary then it is the job
021of the district to continue the remote option that has already begun petrina davini children's bridges we have been part of the higley school district since my son was in kindergarten he is now in sixth grade and attends binges elementary school and loves it there the first thing i need to know is that my son is a differentiated learner he has a very high iq and adhd and odd and sensory integration disorder which all leads to high levels of anxiety my son needs structure and challenge in his life daily the quarantine of the schools being closed have been very detrimental to my son's overall well-being and mental health the second thing you need to know is that my son also had covet in december he was sick from thanksgiving until the first week of january with
022a cough off and on fever and body aches he only missed a few days of school he continued to play baseball and soccer during the time as well i want you to hear this because he went to school and exposed this virus to everyone he was in contact with for an entire month and there was no catastrophe we we nor his doctor had any idea what it was at that time but my son now carries the antibodies and my husband and i do not it is far more harmful for my son not to not be allowed to go to school please give us a choice thank you for your time and consideration lisa cotton children at higley traditional academy i'm at a loss for words if children can be on campus with janitorial staff support
023staff etc why are teachers exempt from this returning to school is not the only risk of covid it is not going anywhere how long do we feel it is acceptable to continue this online learning how long to expect kids to tolerate isolation and lack of social and emotional interaction how is any length of time acceptable every other aspect of the workforce has returned accepting their responsibilities and the inherited risks why are teacher and school staff exempt from this please do not delay in-person learning past august 17th the parents and students need a choice a long one i'm gonna take a drink jennifer blast channel children at higley and saw semen i am requesting husd extend the current virtual model of learning for at least the first semester and ideally to offer this through the entire
0242020-2021 school year to show support for this i have created a petition online to indicate how many parents fill in a similar manner as well as to list our specific concerns please view the petition at www.change.org backslash husd online learning the petition reads as follows i am writing to request the higley unified school district continue the current virtual learning model for the 2021 school year as well as to express our concerns with the different models this document focuses only on the methodology of off-campus learning this is not intended to address the decision to return to campus for the students who wish to for the purposes of this document in person refers to the regular on-campus learning online only refers to online learning with florida virtual academy curriculum and virtual refers to the current learning being
025offered as we begin the school year we appreciate the higlino fight school district is doing as much as they can to support families and students making meals available at schools and bus stops distributing technology to facilitate online learning keeping us updated as best as you can and more the outreach communication and concern coming from our individual schools and teachers has been wonderful the combination of live online meetings and independent learning is working well for my students i would like to see the current model continue or be the base for our online learning model for the 2021 school year our current model allows instruction and live feedback from the students teachers our current model is workable balance of live and independent learning can we not use the per purchased online curriculum to supplement rather than to
026replace this model there is a variety of reasons that families have not there's a variety of reasons that families have for not wanting to send their students back to campus whether out of concern for the health of their own students or their ascr our at-risk family at home of the teachers and staff or other reasons many parents do not wish to send their students back to campus some of the many concerns that parents would like husd leadership to hear are listed below disruptions and consistency in learning many parents are concerned with the disruption of online campus learning that will occur when quarantines are necessary if our students return to campus but must then quarantine how will their learning continue if they must quarantine due to exposure in the first period class will the other classes
027offer online support how will the logistics of that work are there adequate substitute teachers available to support in-person classes emotional impact of multiple transitions how many different learning environments will students have to adjust to during transition from our current model back to virtual in case of quarantine where shutdown teaches reassignments for online versus virtual versus in person's learning etc husd has stated that students may transition back to the in-person learning at the beginning of each quarter how will that work if they have had to change the courses being taken for example would a student be allowed to rejoin an ap blinn class or another class not offered online if they begin this year for students who need to change from in person to online midway through the year many of the same concerns apply do
028they get have credit for this coursework completed in person but not offered online especially if the course is a full year course how will absences from in-person schooling be handled will current guidelines of no more than blank absences be updated high school the classes offered online will not allow students to take full course load will additional classes be offered later to allow students to catch up they may lose progress towards their graduation as well as lose the opportunity to graduate with various seals are any details available regarding allowing students on campus to take elective courses that are unavailable online reducing the exposure risks what options are available for dual enrollment as an online student are students allowed to take any cgcc online course for husd credit middle school will the online spanish still count for
029high school credit algebra and geometry how will distancing work during the passing periods during lunch elementary school curriculum consistency for students in special programs such as hta or h pal online only offerings do not meet their needs continue their programs how do they continue learning new material adapting to changing teachers losing interaction with classmates will be the hardest for our youngest learners our current learning method allows social interaction with both teachers and fellow students which we feel is important for students mental health and development teacher and staff concerns teachers are already asked to do so many things asking them to be the primary protection of children's health as a concern will class be will class time be used to clean surfaces where students and wash hands how will teachers sick leave policy be updated to
030allow for mandated quarantines will they be financially penalized should they be required to quarantine or be or become ill what if multiple teachers in a department are absent at the same time do we have qualified substitutes to keep classes on pace if teachers are required to quarantine off campus 10 to 14 days we support teachers who wish to continue teaching via our current model as it allows them to teach our children without compromising their health or their students faculty concerns how will distance facility concerns how will distance distancing work during lunch are the facilities still available for rent to outside groups what cleaning this defecting is done after the rental before students and staff are in the buildings again how will this investing or distance be possible on school buses what are the protocols for
031notify notification when students have a test positive how will contact tracing be done and communicated with hit within higgle unified school district we recognize that many parents are selecting to send their students back to campus that is a long-term goal for most families with the current offering offerings families are feeling forced to choose between educational projects and student health and safety if the current canvas-based virtual education model and were not to continue to be offered many families would choose to continue their students learning without disruption many families are happy with the online only model that will be offered once campus reopens specifically because it loses the live instruction and social and academic interaction in addition the loss of courses available for online only is a great concern especially for older students we urge the leadership
032of the higgle unified school district to continue offering the current educational model throughout the school year or for as long as any online learning is offered thank you katie wolfenden children at cortina elementary to all those who are making critical decisions right concerning our children and their education i would ask that you seriously consider the following concerns and how their education affects them mentally socially and physically first scree time there have been countless studies as well as pediatrician and psychologist recommendations to limit the use of screens and technology the long-term effects on children especially under the age of 12 is damaging mentally and emotionally the current solution to have our kids sit in front of a computer all day is beyond unhealthy addiction to technology and screens is a huge problem in our society and
033online education being forced will greatly exacerbate the problem second internet exposure it is close to impossible to keep our kids safe online now we are throwing thousands of kids on computers for numerous hours and drastically increasing the risk of exposing them to pornography online predators and countless inappropriate and damaging content that they should never witness between parents working and trying to help multiple children there is no way that kids will have someone monitoring them every second there on the computer we have to keep our children safe and prolonged time spent online as anything but safe third anxiety depression suicide mental illness is huge is a huge concern because of this pandemic having kids isolated no physical contact no real emotional connection to friends and teachers is incredibly detrimental to their mental and emotional well-being suicide
034and youth has already skyrocketed over the past decade and those numbers will trajectively be astronomically higher if kids don't get back to in person and due to their social isolation their anxiety and depression take over fourth at-risk children the homes where these kids are at risk of neglect and abuse there's no place for kids to be combine the normal stresses that trigger abuse and the current pandemic situation and abuse causes cases have drastically increased since this all started five months ago we need to protect our children in these situations and often teachers are the greatest chance of coping and escaping these situations i won't even go into detail about how much less effective online school is as far as our kids getting an education i think that is obvious but honestly the above concerns are
035much greater and children's lives can be ruined or even lost if we don't take these concerns and factor them in yes covet is real but these other factors are just as real and can be far more damaging to their mental health the current online situation is not sustainable nor is it mentally or emotionally healthy for my kids if school isn't resuming in person on august 17th i have already informed the principal that my three kids at cortina elementary school will be withdrawn from public from the public school system this has nothing to do with cortina's teachers i applaud them for their efforts right now but i have to do what is best and put my kids in health and education first we are so grateful for our health care workers and all those on the
036front lines right now where are our teachers principals and superintendents that are willing to stand in front on the front lines on behalf of our children please take a stand for our children and fight for their mental and emotional well-being please advocate for in person as well as provide an online option for the most vulnerable please make it possible to find a way to get them back in school immediately respectfully katie wolfenden jennifer tsar students at san tan and saw semen dear husd board members superintendent thomas and associate superintendent foley thank you for taking the time to listen to the concerns from the community and share them at the board meeting during these challenging times i have learned the importance of voicing my concerns and have two concerns that i would like to share with
037you first i urge you to follow the recommendations of both the maricopa county department of health and arizona department of health services and not open schools until the metrics have been provided on august 6 2020 and they have been met in 2019 there was a measles outbreak which thankfully did not hit higley community hard however i have no doubt that if it had you would have followed any of the recommendations from the maricopa club and arizona health departments for closing schools this is no different the maricopa and arizona health departments have provided clear guidelines for when schools can reopen safely and we are not there yet opening before the metrics have been met would be irresponsible sorry getting dry second as mr montovich mentioned during the board meeting on july 29th one of his concerns
038is retaining wonderful professional and dedicated staff in the higgle unified school district i recently learned that two prayer professionals in the district are being told they must come to work in the on-site learning options for children who need a place to go on august 17th they have been told if they do not they will have to resign many of these paraprofessionals have children of their own who if they must work the on-site learning options will have to bring their own children who they are trying to keep safe with them why is the district why as a district are we asking them to risk the health and safety of their own children for someone else's child is there another option for providing work for the for our paraprofessionals i'm afraid if we don't explore other options
039by the time we are able to open we will have lost the dedicated talented staff we need for our schools thank you again for listening to the concerns and thoughts of the community as we make these challenging decisions kate windsor children at cortina although state and county bureaucratic agencies gave a one-side fits all guidance to opening schools these are not mandated and you still have a choice to either blindly follow or make the right choice for the higley families that elected you into office your primary responsibility is to answer to the higley taxpayer not the teachers unions or government bullying as a dedicated certified educator and parent i have to do what is best for my children i'm so happy that we have choices to make for our children's education because of past experience and
040beliefs i chose to put my children in a public in-person education yet due to uncharted circumstances i'm forced to educate my children in ways i never would have chosen via remotely or through another school choice that is where the problem lies every parent in this community has a choice i'm grateful husd still gave a choice with surveys with an in-person option and online my fear is that choice i have chosen will not be available due to this district's decisions there are so many options for online school but we are limited with in-person choices i don't want my choice of in-person learning to be intimidated by mister by ms hoffman's letter which was not based on facts or data i read the cdc guidelines and recommendations for in-person learning this fall i have seen zero evidence
041that the state of arizona or husd that learning on campus is dangerous each day the numbers roll in that show that our children are not at risk that and that cases and az are decreasing they show us that children do not transmit the virus as dangerous rates but since kathy hoffman says arizona is not ready will we just accept her opinion my business gave me the opportunity to work from home a few weeks ago so i could be here to assist my children in their education there is simply no way that they could attempt their learning and keep up their classes without me at home let alone deal with the technology problems next week as i head back to work i am just trying trying to pray my kids can navigate their educational needs without
042me their full time with without me their full time to help i am at a place where if higley doesn't allow in-person learning on 817 i have applied to a local charter option to pull my three children out of husd pending they will be open i hate this but i have to take care of my family first i have seen firsthand the struggles of my children and have had and have had and it is not something i am going to sit by and let happen further i plead with you to take a stand for what is right for the families of higley and vote to give an in-person option for students on august 17th those who are fearful of in person have already been given the online option as hoffman stated families will hold districts
043accountable she is right about this but wrong about why thank you kate winter cortina parents certified teacher and hst substitute teacher dr thomas and tate just i you've expended a lot of air just take a second and breathe please this is my third time reading these so yes we're almost done i've got about six left and all the long ones are done thank you mr clever next monica coates children at higley and higley high school in cortina distinguished members of the board dr thomason and dr foley thank you for all of that you have done during this difficult time i am a mother of four we have a higley graduate three still in school our family would love nothing better than to return to school that being said even more we would like to return
044to school when it is safe to do so our family follows science and metrics we have tried to make decisions for our family based on logic rather than the emotion after listening to the state metrics and take and even taking talking to our own doctors and first responders and our own family we know that waiting is the best thing right now we love the staff and teachers at our schools we worry about their safety as well as the safety of our own kids i have big concerns about the tight spaces that our secondary students who are at higher risk are being asked to return to we are compelled to look at us the situation from a bigger picture than just ourselves what am i concerned about returning too soon shutting back down and so on
045we have seen this happen on multiple in multiple countries and now in several states this is what would be even more emotionally damaging to our kids we have been nothing impressed with our online program so far our kids are fine their teachers are fine and we will get through this please do not put our kids into a situation where they cannot sufficiently social distance while the arizona numbers are so high also please do not put our teachers in paris into this situation that situation either we have been impressed and proud of how husd has handled kobe so far we trust that you will make the best and safest decision for school return sincerely monica coates jennifer gibras children at higley traditional academy and williamsville high school in reading over the return to school plan i
046disagree with the cafeteria setup and having children all face the same way if we as a general public can go to a restaurant and sit face to face why not in school what do classroom setup setups entail will there be plexiglass on desks if so then why not why the mass also my children has a hard time hearing people with masks on will teachers be in mass or will they be in face shields angela james children at saucerman first and foremost i want to thank each and every board member for their tireless thankless hours you have spent during these unprecedented times to ensure the decisions you all make are as right as you can get for the safety of the husd family the last survey only indicated two options in person or online later we
047heard that if schools open the online option for those who chose not to return to campus in person learning is still available but it will not be interactive as it currently is our family is a high risk family we have chosen to keep our middle school son home to minimize any risk we feel as though families who are choosing the online option are being abandoned by the district basically telling us that since we are choosing the online option we are not privileged enough to continue the interactive instruction our kids are now on their own per se granted our son is very responsible and can do this with minimal help but enjoys seeing the teachers and interacting with his fellow classmates through the course interaction has anyone brought up the option to do live streaming to
048avoid this somewhat of a letdown i understand that hybrid was taken off the table because of the budget but you cannot tell me that with the amount of money within the state that someone hasn't solicited major corporations to fund the option to live stream classrooms statewide i just don't want to be part of a problem of saying how this isn't fair for those who are a high risk without offering some sort of solution to this this problem we are facing this system that is currently in place is working thank you for your time stacey abrilla children at bridges and cooley first and foremost and first and most importantly i would like to thank the teachers staff and administration of the higley district for their tireless efforts in preparing for the embarking upon remote learning i'd
049like to share some concerns and suggestions for the board and the district leadership that will assist and support our families while we are managing remote learning being physically separated makes connecting with classmates and parents challenging i've seen and heard several parents desperate to connect with classmates and their families for support and interaction but unable to do so because they don't bump into each other at pick up or drop off please consider making school directories available for those who have given permission for their contact information to be shared consider allowing classrooms to share contact information and for classes to help families and children connect outside of their brief online lessons many families are struggling during this time and could use assistive assistance while the schools may not be we may not provide direct assistance you can
050place links on local agencies on your covid webpage it would be simple to add a link to the county's resources page or assist for instance to help families locate rental assistance employment and other resources that they may need while we are on the subject of the website please have your it team convert all documents from word to pdf on the websites to make them readily accessible on all devices irrespective of the operating system and application of the liberty availability i've previously mentioned that word documents appear jumbled on mobile devices and this was told and was told that the district is not allowed to post files as a pdf because ada and a idea requirements this is simply papikash there is nothing in those regulations that prohibits the districts from posting files in pdf doing so
051will actually facilitate accessibility not limited files and announcements need to be readable and they are not currently readable on mobile devices where most people view them please fix this by replacing word versions with pdf as soon as possible canvas is a great tool it's unfortunate that teachers were given a crash course and then required to figure it out in such a short period of time the teachers have made a tremendous effort and should be commended however there are issues families are finding assignments difficult to locate secondary pages are not consistent with one another which leaves students and parents having to try to navigate six or more systems and expectations kids are having to look in multiple locations and are getting emails and announcements and discussion alerts this is too much for young kids to manage
052please make sure that teachers are getting the appropriate technical supports that they need please have teachers use the system similarly and post and organize their pages similarly to help kids and families know where to find items and when they are due finally and most importantly as the board and administration are considering when and how to open our schools for in-person learning please explore the benefits of opening first for younger students especially elementary ages please consult the emerging body of evidence that demonstrates that children age 10 and lower have the lowest risk of getting coveted of having complications if they get get it and transmitting kova to others when they are infected if and when we meet the metrics for reopening please allow the elementary schools to open and keep middle and high schools closed to
053ensure the district can manage potential outbreaks and to mitigate further spread this approach would reduce risk to our teachers kids and families while also getting the kids who need the most support back into the classroom which will allow parents to work from home and or allow them to work outside of home during the school day older kids are generally more independent and need less assistance from their parents or caregivers during the school day as compared to little kids older students can navigate the technology ask their teachers for help and can safely be at home alone to continue the remote learning while parents return to work the middle and high school campuses have more students and staff than the elementary schools do they have kids changing classes and congregating and passing in hallways throughout the day
054and have many more kids at lunch simultaneously it's clear that the elementary setting is a lower risk and it also creates a higher burden for families when schools are closed allowing younger kids back on campus first will alleviate serious burdens for our families and would be a lower risk than opening for all ages at the same time we could monitor the trends to ensure the metrics continue to trend in the desired direction for a few weeks before sending the older kids thank you for your time and consideration albert putzing children at cortina elementary given the lack of clear evidence that schools contribute to the incidence of community spread for many countries that chose to reopen their schools in may of 2020 and their intention to do so again in september 2020 why is husd choosing
055to keep schools in remote learning mode evidence suggests that the sustain suspectability of students and staff contracting coven 19 is not any different than other people in different professions or even the general public additionally the rate of transmission between children and between children to adults is low with most evidence suggesting that children contract the disease through exposure to sickened family members wouldn't this suggest that in-person learning is justified two more lee takovic children at higley high school questions one will parents be notified in a timely manner when there is a confirmed case of covid in my child's school two will students be subsequently quarantined if they were in contact with the confirmed case three mask lower transmission rates will higley require students faculty and staff to wear masks four if masks are not mandated then
056seriously why not the kids have a dress code to follow final submission travis st dennis student at bridges my kids are in k and first grade arguably some of the most important years in their educational development they aren't learning anything nor am i an educator to know how to teach them the right way to understand these principles not only that my wife and i work full time if amazon can operate a distribution center with thousands of employees on the assembly line safely or costco can operate safely with everyone who said they are scared of this having no problem going to costco or target can't we run a school for a demographic of science that has by and far deems to be mostly not impacted by this virus in fact the infection rate of our youth
057is less than that of staph infections and the death rate of negligible is negligible to the point i can't really be quantified that from the american association of pediatrics john hopkins and the cdc the three benchmarks that are used as a guide for deciding to for deciding are deeply flawed the false positive and over reporting of the virus gross is grossly rampant and has been caught and exposed time and time again a recent high profile example of this was the governor of ohio who tested positive then retested a few hours later tested negative or florida where they openly acknowledged that reopening reporting of the death from a motorcycle accident was recorded as covid arizona has its own stories and very concerning testing debacles it is more than obvious that a this is largely driven by
058politics please choose another demographic to hijack or political agent for political agencies my children are not a political tool and will have lifelong repercussions of these selfish antics all we are asking for is the option to go back and let teachers that want to go back with kids that want to go back go back your online program is already established if people want to use it let them thank you president keller members of the board for going through that with me thank you dr thomason for reading all of those for us i know that was a lot take a breath a drink appreciate your time on that okay we're going to move on to our action and information items in consideration this is 4.1 in consideration of the recommendations and guidance issued by the centers
059for disease control the arizona department of health services and the executive order 2020-51 issued by the governor of the state of arizona it is requested that the governing board approves the first read of this face covering policy for all students employees parents vendors volunteers and visitors of the district second any questions comments or concerns i just want to thank um mrs reach and dr foley and dr thomason i know we kind of had to put together a face policy based covering policy it wasn't very clear what we were given by um asba so we kind of looked at other face covering policies in other areas and i appreciate you guys putting this all together for us mrs reese did you have something i do um just a few suggestions let me i'm sorry i had
060my notes and i walked out without them [Music] um i would like to ask that we make a slight adjustment in the general area item number f says individuals should wash their hands after removing their face masks i would like to ask that we add wash their hands before and after if they've been touching something else and they're then touching their face it washing their hands before and after i think is very important i had one other give me just a moment and because this is the first read we could make a change on it when it comes back and then on our second read we could go ahead then make those changes and then adopt it on our our goal is for our august 12th meeting i will have to i apologize like i
061said i walked out with out my notes this morning um i will i will let you know it was another small change just like that suggestion um mrs reese you could email that possibly and then um we would have a change then for our second read absolutely this afternoon okay any other questions comments all right all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero we're going to go on to our 4.2 our information update on reopening schools uh dr foley i believe has quite the presentation and with her uh other staff is here today um dr or dr mr witovich also would like to do a little presentation of cleaning at some point during your presentation so when you are prepared for that please let us know we would be so grateful thank you
062president kaler members of the board good morning thank you for joining us here this morning we are going to start with some updates and if you would advance the next slide please i'd like to share with you what we're going to talk about this morning so that it that everyone understands what will be part of our presentation and the agenda of flow here will include this we're going to start this morning with a little bit of an update on clarifications on the distinctions between our remote and our online one of the things we've heard from our community we want to take a second to address some questions and misconceptions and have them also know that there are things that we're working on to help provide that clarity so we're going to have a little update
063there that we're going to start this morning we're then going to transition into our information as we spoke at our last board meeting we talked about collecting survey data from our community and from our teachers our certified staff so we're going to share with you what we've learned in that communication at our last meeting we also discussed the mitigation plan one of the requirements um per the executive order is a mitigation plan and we're going to talk through this morning what that plan is looking like it is in a draft form for you to review this would obviously be something that would go posted on our website with links and information connected to the sanitation responsibilities for physical openings of schools and we've been making progress there so this morning uh we'll have an opportunity
064to mitigation plan and board member whatever that might be a perfect place for you to share your your your thoughts because it will tie right into that and then we're going to talk about the information that we received from the arizona department of health and benchmarks and metrics and discuss that together as well so that's kind of the flow of what we've got going this morning so just so that everyone kind of knows what we're going to be talking about in this section so with that we're going to advance to the next slide and i'd like to introduce you to dr susan borsig who we are so fortunate to have joined our team she started with us in june and as i've shared with you before on her first day we said hello susan so
065glad you are here she comes to us with decades of experience from colorado she has various levels of leadership and expertise in her career and she has been a joint to work with and so she is going to do some information and we're finding some update and we'll be and you have myself and mrs richards and mr um lotzenhouser who will be chiming in as questions come up because we want to be sure that we address misconceptions and concerns and also talk about where we're evolving as well so we'll start with uh dr borzitch on giving us a little update on some clarity of distinctions we also want to share that this inf some of this information has already been shared with our community she's recorded a little uh presentation of this although we'll do
066the live version here as well as some additional documents to help clarify thank you and welcome to higley thank you very much and thank you dr foley um i'm dr suborzig and i currently serve as the director of assessment and student information here at higley and it's a pleasure to be here president kaler and members of the board it's my honor to be able to present this presentation to you and at any time during this presentation certainly if you have any questions um we'd be honored and and hopefully be able to answer those as well so the purpose of this particular presentation is just to clarify the difference between remote and online learning as it has developed now and as it currently stands within our district so we know a lot go back to that
067previous slide please yes we know that um there have been some miscommunication misperceptions misunderstandings perceived misrepresentations and misassumptions that are associated with the communication around remote and online and so we apologize for that we want to take responsibility for being transparent and so we want to listen to the community we want to clarify here and we also want the community to know that we care we really care about what we're proposing and what we're putting forth in this uncertain time we also want to then make sure that we are making a commitment to being transparent and and into developing and providing opportunities for our community to have a deeper understanding of our options next slide please so over the past few days as you have heard we have received many many questions regarding the differences
068between remote learning and online learning and if we clump them together these are probably the categories that we have most received communication regarding in addition to what um you have already heard this morning but primarily um there is some confusion around what is the difference between remote and online learning uh questions around why can't we just continue doing remote learning for the remainder of the time that we cannot be in person what is flvs will my child have interaction with their teacher in online learning lots of questions around who will teach online what does that logistics look like will my child have the same teacher and then questions around the robust piece is online instruction as robust and challenging for my student or will my student be receiving the same educational experience as they would
069in the classroom next slide please so part of the confusion i think revolves around the way in which we use words that represent learning that doesn't happen in the classroom so for example we have heard the words virtual and remote online and distance in reference to learning we hear about canvas computers technology internet and flvs when we talk specifically about the educational components for students learning at home at higley and while each one of these words actually means something different the fact that people use them interchangeably is partially why i think we have some of the misconceptions and misunderstandings that we do so the purpose of this is to explore these a little deeper as it relates to higley so how nick slide please so how is remote learning different from online learning first it's
070important to define what it is um and you'll notice that both of these definitions while worded completely different ultimately mean just about the same thing remote learning is for students and the educator or the information source are not physically present in a traditional classroom environment information or teaching is relayed through technology such as discussion boards video conferencing and online assessments typically remote learning is designed to be an intervention that is not anticipated or intended to be permanent for long periods of time so keep that in mind as we move through this compared with online learning online learning is education that takes place over the internet or through the various use of technology tools it's often referred to as e-learning however online learning and remote learning both can be considered distance learning so that even complicates
071the matter more online learning typically however is designed to be a longer term or a more permanent option so as you can see um the difference is primarily in their platforms and how they manifest manifest state how they manifest themselves and the intent for duration remote learning is temporary whereas online learning is more permanent next slide please so as you can see here since remote learning is temporary remote learning will end once in-person learning resumes it is a temporary situation or a fix until the in-person learning is put back in place we don't anticipate that this fix will be necessary for the entire school year whereas in contrast online learning is designed to be in place for a longer period of time it is designed to be consistent and could be in place from now
072to the end of the 2021 school year so in in a nutshell online learning can actually be an extension and is designed to be an extension of the remote learning environment and modality when remote learning ends and students go back to in-person learning next slide please so let's look at the distinct differences and similarities because i think that's what that will actually speak to what is different between the two remote learning at both the secondary and and elementary levels students are assigned to classes they have consistent contact with their teacher in elementary this is more daily contact whereas in um secondary it becomes bi-weekly due to the nature of student schedules in some areas of our country and in our state some online models only employ synchronous learning which means that the the learning has
073no scheduled live interactions they're recorded and there's no live interaction or minimal live interaction with the teacher and the student in contrast our online learning is designed to have a combination of both have a combination of live interaction with the teacher and also lessons using a recorded modality and two of our teachers are doing that now right they're doing live plus a combination yeah they really are they really are kind of already doing some of this yeah and you'll see you know when we created this we kind of had a clear distinction of what the differences between the two are and what we have found is the longer the teachers are in remote learning the more it starts to blend with this online learning and you might be seeing something i'm seeing that already i
074see that they record things because they might not want the live video with the kids so they'll record it for the kids who can't watch it i'm seeing that with my own children they'll like record but they won't put that one up they will you know they'll do the live session but they'll record a separate one so those kids their questions aren't maybe asked yes yeah and that that's when their faces aren't seen i think was more the thought behind it but i'm not sure i just know that some teachers are choosing that way they're getting skilled with their ability to use technology thank you um so the re and the reason that moving forward the reason that um remote learning and online learning are the way that they differ in this particular slide is
075that if a student in online learning if they were to go to online learning from remote learning once our in-person school is possible that the teacher is the big piece here because the teacher in both elementary and secondary may change and probably will change for the students once they enroll in that online modality and i'll explain a little bit about why that happens as we move on next slide please um in the schedule of learning students both have dates daily schedules in canvas for either one of these modalities the process of logging on and accessing their learning is the same the only difference will be for secondary students may not have access in the online environment to all of the courses that are available currently in the remote learning environment so our online learning environment
076you know and it is difficult to particularly with some of those electives in the secondary to have access to those in an online environment however um in situations that may come up and it's hard to predict how this will play out obviously but we do offer concurrent enrollment if needed but that's a student and a person-to-person um decision with the school administrator uh regarding that availability thank you for clarifying that and some of these particular needs of our secondary for a graduation requirement they really do we encourage them to reach out to their principals directly because as i've been told and i've been seen we are getting very creative with how we're making sure our students are still going to get those requirements online is that not true i want to make sure we are
077you know the people that know your the students best are the print the administrators and the counselors who work with them on a daily basis at that school so we feel that those are the people that parents can reach out to for those individual and specialized situations president taylor to follow along with that one of the things we're trying to say is in this presentation we are will be very hard to globally answer very very specific questions and what we're wanting parents and and students to do is is is after we clarify some some generic components of this to work with their administration so that we can figure out how to accommodate what we can and can't do because again this is this is really important for us to be able to help individuals understand
078the options for their family one of the things that again the number of that we asked families to help us begin to get an idea of what they're thinking because the staffing of this is really important the hard part again we're clarifying is that um having an understanding of how many students drives our sections so currently right now we're all in a remote learning section our all in remote learning section if we were let's take let's use a secondary classroom as an example a teacher a teacher has multiple secondary junior high high school teacher has multiple periods they may teach the same section of something multiple times it's impossible for a teacher who is meeting face-to-face with students in person to also facilitate interaction with students online unless they are doing something like a live
079streaming or those kind of things and those are technologies again that we are looking at more but it it when in our current platform it's hard to do you can't do in-person hybrid and online all at the same time but um i could as a student if i wasn't in the face-to-face portion i can engage with what's going on online and interact with that teacher who may be an online interaction with me in the afternoon so again knowing how many drives our sections and availability for who can teach what and what electives are available so we'll continue to answer or provide a little bit more distinction on that but it goes back to the fact that one of the things that's important is that we have to declare for the state how these students are
080have chosen are they choosing remote slash face-to-face or is it online and how we report that is is a requirement for for funding um and attendance and a requirement that we have to adhere to just to clarify some of these electives are not being able to be offered because of a staffing issue and or or curriculum issues curriculum issue so it's not that we chose what we chose or what we didn't choose it was a staffing issue and now that this i think we have surveyed the staff and that will be coming later and that some sections could be opened up for other electives is that what you're saying i don't want to jump ahead but i know that we received an email from a student who is very concerned and i put students needs
081above a lot and so i just want to make sure that that's put out there yeah thank you and keep in mind too and while we're all in a remote learning environment there are electives that um while we can support their learning in those electives it's not going to have be the same experience like marching band for example it's just not going to carry that same experience when you move over into online learning that might be one of those instances where you would concurrently enroll a student or do something along those lines because because it's available but not available in the online environment may i just chime in also i i think same thing you said we've gotten a lot of emails uh particularly about electives so thinking um openly about uh sort of this
082live streaming is is kind of appealing for some of these unusual classes and and we may have to think a little bit differently about it because you know i would hate for someone to force one of two choices when they're there there might be a third that's that's maybe not you know that's doable for these cases yes the next next slide please sure in reference to the um classes offered in secondary have we started utilizing any conversation with our community colleges back to to go go with us in reference to offering some of these additional classes that we're not able to do yes we've had some conversations about how that correlation and things would work with working with chandler-gilbert community college especially in some of our dual enrollment situations a lot of that still is
083going to depend on that that need how many kids we have out there and that's why once again we're asking go to your directly to your school and let's see what we can figure out and then that follows up with with the requirement of again making sure that the teacher has the capacity to be the dual enrollment teacher and it means again those numbers help us too with we may have to offer some additional six-fifths and things so the number drives the need drives the staffing and that's one of the things we're trying to fit to figure out okay moving forward um this is a big question that we got a lot particularly at the beginning of all of this um a question about teachers and what are the teacher qualifications and so forth um
084and the teachers going to be the same in the online learning environment as they were in the remote environment and because we are doing that and we're shifting with our staff and we're making those decisions you know based upon where students are going to be students in both remote learning and online learning will be taught by highly certified unlicensed higgle unified school district teachers so we will not be bringing in any outside vendors or unlicensed teachers to be teaching those sections online next slide please do other districts utilize outside vendors that are not um certified teachers they may use other vendors and and to the extent of are they certified or not i don't know the answer to that ours are going to be taught by our higley teachers hence we need to know i
085just didn't know if that's what you were getting at that they um that on online would maybe not be a certified teacher so i was just wondering for follow-up because we have heard um that question thank you and just another point um that i that i'm hearing in our community too is that none of us were prepared in the east valley for an online elementary program so this is all new territory i'm sure mrs richards gets this every day it's all brand new and even though our our secondary have had some online programs available to us those two are not taught live and never have been taught live in in an online high school secondary program so if a student needs an extra english class from chandler online academy and or mesa we did partner
086with mesa this summer for summer school there was interactions with the teacher however it was never a live teaching and secondary and so i know that that has been a concern in our community that they want that live teaching for an online program i've never seen one exist yet i'm really trying to go out there and look around and see but it hasn't existed so we would be it would be double the staff and i know that there's been a lot of suggestions on the live streaming the classroom um i know that there's some concerns about um the technology hipaa other children in the classroom being seen that weren't don't want to be seen there's a lot of things that go into this and i just and i know it's hard to explain that to
087every single parent out there but um i think that's the biggest thing is that it just doesn't it didn't exist before and now we're trying to scramble and it's just not like do it am i i'm trying here to explain and i know it's not what people want to hear but it's just the reality of where we're at in education and i know there are some school districts around us that have done some different online they're trying different online situations and again it goes back to our staffing our funding our technology our so many different things president taylor just and i hear you about our our high school piece the colleges though did go to online learning when their physical schools closed they went to live stream you showed up in class at the time
088you were supposed to be in class you just logged on it was all live streamed and whether you have this class that class i you may log in at nine o'clock in the morning and then your next class may be at three o'clock in the afternoon and you log into that class so our colleges and universities went to full live stream in the spring when school's closed and that's why for months i've been asking let's look at this can we do this live stream why can't we just replicate what's in our classrooms online with that our kids are our school days are set up consistent versus a university who has a class here in a class there i also understand the difference of screen time as well like do we really want our kids sitting
089from 7 25 to 2 30 with a lunch break and they're in front of a screen i don't know the answer to that but we can also reach out to our university partners and talk to them about their live streams and that's how u of a nau asu that's how they went in the spring so i not high school or middle school i know that those online classes have been just the same as we've had where you have some interaction your teachers are available but it's typically not a live lesson so but it's out there um we have it local we can check and and try and see um what we can learn also from from our university partners and with that too i know that they didn't have both going on so they didn't
090have kids in their classroom and they were teaching online and i think that's where we're getting that big question of classes going on with children in the classroom where our college is it was just online and so and i see like that's kind of what we're doing right now is that there's no students in the classroom so the teacher just focuses on that online instruction but then when we're going to bring kids back in and then trying to that's where that technology piece the staffing piece and that comes into play these are very good points because when you think about where we were when we started this back in march the first thing back in march is that we didn't have a common learning management platform for the district uh as a k-12 we had
091canvas at the secondary level and we didn't have a common management system so one of the investments our district had to make and a huge lift we had to do was getting a management system that would be k12 because we heard very clearly from people that was a big issue you know the other thing is is that we didn't have an existing um online arizona you know online instruction academy so again in order to do in order to have that you have to have a curriculum that is a standalone curriculum and and quite honestly and i know that there and we're going to talk a little bit more about what florida virtual is what it isn't there are very few online curriculums that have the are aligned to the arizona standards that have been approved
092for entities who want to be an aoi to have now again as we've talked before this is a supplemental piece how we use what parts what pieces whether it's in the remote setting again this is a tool that we are just adding to the arsenal and this year we did it so that everybody has access to it because we don't know how long we'll be in remote or not in remote or if we'll ever go back into remote we still need to have those pieces we also have talked about the fact that even when we return to in-person learning the canvas shell has to be continued to be a way that we communicate with families because if at any point a student is again a culture of when we're back in the buildings if we're
093not feeling well we are encouraging people to stay home to not come to school and to not get behind so that if i am in person and i choose in person learning and i end up with with with being ill if i'm home for two weeks my i don't want to fall behind i can continue to stay up to date and again the florida virtual curriculum allows us to have a library of resources teachers can enhance what's happening in the classroom for the um for the in-person option for the online option again there will still be our teachers teaching it connected with us in some cases our secondary teachers may be teaching sections of it live and sections of it remotely that'll contribute a combination of both so the whether we're live streaming and recording
094or recording it how do we do that so costs associated with this we've had a huge lift of buying more devices since since march so that we can increase our one-to-one because we were not a one-to-one yet and we're working really hard to order more devices so that's been a huge lift the addition of canvas the establishment of the ability to be an online school with an approved curriculum to for in order for us to to do that have all been lifts that have happened since march so again now we're also our i.t and et group our instructional technology and our educational technology folks i.t and et are working together to look at what are the other live streaming options costs associations tools resources so that we can begin piloting some of these things and
095cost analysis of some of these things so that we can respond um again right now our lives we have some good live streaming capabilities at the performing arts center in the little theater as well for specialty things so again working toward this but quickly and fast so continuing with the conversation of the curriculum is something kind of important for us to hit on to right and if we frame our mindset around them you know the idea that remote learning was one of the things that we experienced previously online learning in and of itself is something completely different and isolated and separate we had to create a model here that we could provide some um transitions and some seamless transitions and options for families because it couldn't just be black or white it has to be
096something that's that's can that we can provide for families to have choice so that's kind of why this online looks a little bit different than perhaps maybe what you have heard and spoke to because some of those online programs students have to be in online 100 of the time for the entire school year we're trying to make it so that families can make choices and move back and forth because that's what we heard was really important so in curriculum um in both remote learning and online learning teachers will be using the board adopted curriculum that they're using now the resources that they have available to them and things that they're already using and have already been trained to use in the brick and mortar classroom the difference between the online learning and it really is
097flowing over into the remote learning right now too because we've been in remote learning for an extended period of time is that ability to access that florida virtual system the florida virtual curriculum so while that florida virtual curriculum is not the curriculum that drives their instruction at this point it is a resource that is available to them to pull from it is a resource also that is created specifically for the online instruction modality so we'll have some things in there that are specific to teaching kids when they're online versus teaching kids when they're in person in the classroom and i think that's the important distinction to make is you know online instruction as you well know as parents is very very different from online instruction in the classroom and so sometimes we have to shift
098and use a little bit different um strategy a little bit different way to reach kids and keep them engaged and that's where the advantage to the florida virtual system lies is that ability to access some of those best practices can i ask a quick question right there so the way i'm reading this is for our curriculum the way we have it spelled out for this that our online option is different for the year of than it will be going forward so [Music] we are tr like you said we are trying to mirror and match to allow people to flow in and out as needed as as we can and there's limitations to that but for the 2021 school year and then going forward when we refer to online that is going to look very different
099so our initial online platform is going to be more flexible for this school year than it will be going forward while we don't know what conversations will be happening for the 21 22 school year who knows where we'll be at that but to make that clear that that online platform that we're talking about you guys are working really hard at making as flexible and as adaptable as we can for just this school year and then we'll have different options for next year is that correct i mean we're really talking about three separate models here in the onset because that this online why maybe a better name for this online would be a modified online really because it is that transition piece between remote learning and true online you're absolutely right when we transition back to
100in-person school and person learning will florida virtual be available to all of our campuses and even those teachers who are in the park okay perfect just making sure because i thought that's what i remember from that's what you were doing but i wasn't now i'm thinking maybe it was only just an online piece but it will be available that's what we approved this year and we did it because virtually we realized that to have an aoi you had to have you had to purchase a a full online curriculum that is aligned to the arizona standards and when we look again this is each district who has a majority of them have adopted this because it's aligned to the arizona standards it comes and there are two ways that this comes you either you come you
101will see gilbert is using buzz which is the learning management platform that you can buy if you're using florida virtual um that's their management platform we already had an existing platform we already had canvas so what it is is it's a library that exists within canvases canvas that teachers can pick and pull created lessons for that are aligned to the standards to use as they should choose to enhance the remote instruction or the full online instruction that doesn't mean that teachers aren't creating some of their own but it gives them the same online tools that every other district would have had that had an existing aoi so again how much or how how much you use or don't use it's a supplemental tool for all for the online it is a core program that we
102can supplement again part and piece our teachers are utilizing that and they're using our standards maps and our curriculum guides and the needs of their students to figure out what part what piece and and how to make the whole are online teachers are they able to use our other curriculums that we've adopted okay so they are i yes i just want to make sure i'm like wait is this saying they can only use florida virtual no they can use the all the math curriculum we've already purchased the new science curriculum that we plan on implementing and our ela our previous ela program okay so everything to clarify the same pieces it's just how they're putting them together might be different okay and to clarify that we encourage them to use those same pieces in the
103online because that's how we create that continuum that allows students to move back and forth between online and remote so in a in a complete online program that self sustained um as you can as you know online correct or online instruction is a little bit different um in terms of scope and sequence and so the pacing and so forth in a traditional purely online program would might be a little different than what you would see in in person so by creating this we're creating kind of a combination of both which provides the flexibility to our families who may need to move back and forth between the two and i think too mrs wilson we did get some concerns um like from hta because they also use spaulding and saxon and so that still gives the
104teachers that ability to use those programs online as well so if a student is online they will still have access to that specialty curriculum because that's what drives the instruction on that campus and again i just want to make all that very clear i know we've gotten several emails on that one so and hp sorry there's been a lot of acronyms that we're still trying to switch that one over in our brain gate okay i will remember we're going to have a presentation on that at the end of august that we're really excited to share so moving forward next slide another big concern of parents because it happens in very different ways in very different situations at very different districts but um one of the things is that typically parents view online learning and it
105has been in the past and is a separate school so they so the idea around gosh would i have to withdraw my student from one school to go to the online school and re-enroll them and then withdraw them from that school if i wanted to go back to the in person learning in remote you know in a in-person environment and that became very cumbersome which was another reason why this online learning model is so powerful because students are their enrollment stays at the school that they're enrolled at we don't withdraw them and enroll them in a separate school just because they have chosen to go in the online environment which makes it possible then for attendance grades all of those things to stay constant at their school of enrollment and to provide a little bit
106of flexibility and again that goes to this this year being a little different because when we talk about creating an online school and online academy which is what we're working toward that we're essentially creating the online curriculum pathway there this year looks different in the fact that we wouldn't unenroll you from your current school you because there are more people choosing this option than what historically because of the fact that of we're in a pandemic and we want that option for families to choose location so again this is an evolution of the idea of this year being a modified version of that online in the housing of you staying still within your own school okay next slide specialized support is another concern of a lot of parents and these are when we talk about students
107with special needs or extenuating circumstances in both models we will service students with ieps iops 504s those gifted and talented students will also have opportunities for enrichment and enhancement in both models the only difference in the online learning model is because there are different dynamics and i think shawna can probably speak to that more but there are different dynamics with special ed requirements in the remote learning environment as there is in the online learning environment and so certain support structures will not be eliminated but they'll be modified to align with the online learning environment and student proximity so that's the only difference between the two models and i just wanna business miller here is she in the just i know that she was working very hard answering several emails that we received this past week
108and personally reaching out to those families and so um thank you mrs miller for that and i know there'll probably be more as it goes forward but just reaching out to those families specifically i think is so important because i know we did get a lot of information from our families on that topic so next slide please um attendance is one of those that is probably not as important to parents as it is to us particularly in the area where we work attendance is literally the way that we get funded for our schools and so it's really important for us to pay attention to how that not only how we record it at the school level on the teacher level but also how we record it from the district so here is um there's no
109difference whether students are in remote learning or online learning elementary students um have daily attendance recorded by the teacher and uh secondary students once again is very similar to what they do when they're in person attendance is recorded by period we report that accordingly to the state in the manner that's required under our distance learning plan and that's how we get our online attendance clerk will we have a separate not this year i think it sounds like it will be combined but moving forward maybe next year are we going to have our own online attendance clerk how does that work well it really you know that's i don't know i'm like wait how does this work i know that our attendance clerks are working very difficult right like their job is difficult right now um
110with this remote learning style because we're asking them to pull different pieces oh did they see it you know did they come to the class later because brother had a class earlier and we've kind of worked with parents so i don't know online how that will go online it will still be through synergy um so what what that will look like in terms of staffing and personnel assigned to different depends really upon the enrollment um if it's if it's you know when we move to that environment if it's a smaller enrollment and that can be embedded into what we're already doing that would probably be the case but once again enrollment would drive that as to exactly what that would look like but it's all done through synergy so we don't have to buy any
111new platforms or do anything differently and it's all reported the same through our student information manager so and just as a reminder the board has already waived attendance we won't be sending letters for those who we received emails about that so for those who have longer absences more absences that we've already addressed that that there's not punitive or any repercussions of that we want to make sure our kids are safe we want to make sure if they're not well that once we return to in person that they're not coming on campus for any reason if they're ill whether it's coveted related or not that prevents them from even participating in an online format that those attendance concerns we've already addressed them they're they're not going to happen um for this school year so we did
112get some questions about that just a general reminder we've also suspended awards and recognitions for attendance also this year but just one thing to keep in mind we do still have the 180-day mandate and we still do still have to process through 10-day drops so um those are all the only two attendance pieces that we have to be concerned with that are we still have in place so some of those syllabuses that we're seeing from high school are just old that say talk about the 10 day that you will not be getting homework and stuff so just as a reminder to our community those syllabuses that maybe attendance clause might not be um as important right now and again this just goes back to communication with us so that you let us know if your
113student is absent or sick you just need to communicate with us the duration so that we know that you wh where you are and that you're okay and that your your your parent has excused you because we're worried about your health at this point we communication with us just needs to continue next slide please uh standardized assessments the most important topic and the most fun to talk about um but as far as assessments go um all students in both modalities will be required to take the standardized district on benchmarks which will happen three times this year as well as the az m2 state assessment that will happen in the spring we will provide opportunities for secondary students to also take act of course their honors and ap exams as those would play out in the
114spring and then any other required state assessment at this point we're all still required to take whether we're in the remote learning environment or the online thank you for that has there been an update i think mr um lotzenheiser on the sat being offered this fall have you heard any the a.c.t will be offered to um students who were juniors last year who did not get to take the act okay it will be offered this year as seniors um the date is september 22nd we're just in the planning stages right now i just attended a webinar um on thursday so you'll be getting information um sent out next week any student who had an accommodation for last spring's assessment that has automatically been rolled over we do have an opportunity to enter anything that we
115need to for any new students enrolling in higley prior to that test date and we because we are part of the menu of assessment arizona testing component piece um while our date is scheduled for september 22nd if we have students who can't accommodate that date we've also been allowed to use the other two october dates as well so that can be coordinated through the assistant principles at both of the high schools and then we will again then have the spring testing date for our current juniors can i just give a tip of the hat to the universities who have waived the s.a.t and act requirements yes my own daughter wasn't able to she wanted to up her scorn didn't happen next slide please so to wrap up kind of our long-term plan um for learning
116once again remote learning is temporary it's what we're it's our current situation now but should um this this modality will cease once in-person learning resumes parents of course have been asked which they prefer whether they want to send their school to in person or choose to continue in a remote learning or more formalized online learning capacity once in-person learning resumes and the reason of course as dr foley had talked about that simply a staffing piece that we have to work through but it is important to remember that the students will receive a high quality education in either modality and no choice is the wrong choice we want families to be able to make that choice based on what's most important for their family at the current time and we want to be able to provide
117those opportunities to students and their families so that if changes occur moving forward that students don't have to withdraw and re-enroll that we can make the transition between the two programs very transparent and seamless i think that's really important for us to remember that whatever choice you make for your child is the right choice and no one should judge you for that that's the choice you need to make for your child and i just want to really reiterate that i saw a pediatrician came out and said you know if this is the choice you need to make for your child for their health for their well-being that's the right choice and just to reiterate that to our families our community whatever choice you make you have a reason for it and i respect that choice
118and i think everyone up here respects the choice that you're making and i appreciate the choice that you're making and i don't need to know why you're making it i appreciate it so thank you so next slide please real quick on the long term plan and i know it's learning um and it this is part of what mr glover had said last week though is since we are keeping our our online kiddos with their schools is there a way we can provide some enrichment opportunities some inclusion [Music] i know some of the emails we received was you know my child is very much so about school pride it's not their fault if i choose to keep them online but some type of enrichment some type of community feeling again they can choose to attend or
119not attend whatever that may be but if we can look at that for the long term 2021 school year online model on how do we include some enrichment opportunities how do we how do we make some inclusion and let these kids still feel a sense of their their school pride i think that's important mrs reese you bring up a good point is just making sure that even our online learners are getting all the same emails from their home schools and the events because it might be that that you know particular student could attend something that the community or the school's um doing so just making sure we get all that communication out is huge and just so you know in our distance learning plan that was filed with the state of arizona that was a
120big component that was included in that as well all right before we move on i just i want to make a comment um well first of all i totally agree you know the sense of community and a sense of belonging for just humans in general is it's really important uh it's what separates us from the animals um that's from the simpsons that's all right um no but i i keep thinking about and i've been thinking a lot about like we did we've been reading all these letters and some people have had some really good suggestions and things i i hadn't thought about you know i thinking about the people who would stay home if all the classes that they wanted to take were offered or all the electives were offered i'm really thinking a lot
121about them i would feel a lot better if we had some sort and well look you look at the places where um where people are pointing to as examples of how we could safely reopen and most of the ones that i've seen in red have been able to spread out and reduce the ratio of humans to adults or t students to teachers like a 10 to one day care ratio all right humans all right anyway um but they've been able to reduce that so i mean for me as we're still thinking and playing our way through this this idea of live streaming um allowing people to still see and sort of be part of a class i really think maybe i haven't paid enough attention to it but but it is definitely worth talking about
122because reducing the the number of students on campus and being able to keep the spacing is really one of the things that that most of the experts i think can agree on and not all the emails that i got agree on that but for the experts i think are saying that next slide so understanding that remote learning is um not permanent and online learning would be that extension to remote learning for families who don't want to send their students back to in person learning right now there is one particular instance where we might have remote learning and online learning existing simultaneously typically you would those would not exist simultaneously but if we go to the next slide this is a diagram that kind of shows you when that one particular exception might occur um so
123our current reality right now is that we're sitting here in remote learning um it you know we it is hopeful that at some point in time we would be able to offer that face-to-face option for parents again so some parents will choose face to face some parents will choose online and they will operate side by side if by chance something would necessitate a school closure again to where we could no longer have face-to-face or in-person instruction then those students who were in face-to-face would immediately move into a remote learning environment with their current teachers and their current schedules and in and back into that remote learning environment whereas those students who had selected that that extension or that online piece there would be no interruption from a school closure to those students they would just
124continue on in that modality moving forward through through that school closure and through that reopening and so this is where you'll see that third option pop in is that at the end of the year essentially what we have is we have some face-to-face learners who are in person and we have some students who have opted to stay in the online environment throughout the course of the year if students in the online environment at the end of the year decide hey this is great this is what i would like to continue this works for me we would ask them to make a deeper commitment to that online piece and enroll in the higley virtual academy which then is that separate online school it would become a separate school at that point and then those students who
125didn't want to choose that complete 100 online option would then of course return the following year hopefully with face-to-face in-person instruction so essentially then that online piece that online transition piece as of now would disappear now we know that you know these plans are always um changing and to meet the circumstances and so forth but this is what looking forward now this is what we would anticipate to happen all things stable last slide please so we and we you know dr foley i think addressed really what flvs is i know a lot of parents wanted to know what this flvs was one clarification i would like to make on this is this is a curriculum program there are three different options when you purchase this curriculum program some people purchase it as a standalone independent
126curriculum for a standalone independent online school and um there is an option that doesn't allow you to have the flexibility with the flvs program in other words you can't pull modules out and put modules in and do do some of the things that we feel are you know a big plus to be able to do with our teachers and be able to create that intermediate modified online program so some people i have heard say well you can't pull things in and out of flvs because they're talking to a friend perhaps who teaches with that with that curriculum please know that there are very many there are several options when you purchase the curriculum the option that we purchased allowed the most flexibility we can use modules independently we can use units independently we can adjust
127them we can pull them in we can use strategies from them we can do all of the things that we need to do to be able to remain flexible in our district um or we can use it as a in if we had a situation with a an independent online program and they wanted to use that independently they could also do that um so i think those are some of the con the the things that we're hearing is just kind of a misunderstanding around what florida virtual is and how it can benefit our district and what we purchased it and how we can be really really flexible in it and provide that as an additional tool um to our teachers and you'll notice that you know as the longer remote learning goes as we dive
128into this florida virtual the more you'll probably see that pop up perhaps maybe in both modalities and it is aligned to arizona state standards and and we we were forwarded the documents that show that alignment if anybody's interested in seeing those we have those in the office when will we get access to florida virtual actual um the on because of the of the situation and the demand for online tools our actual install is scheduled right now for the 19th um we tried to get it moved up a little bit but were unsuccessful in doing so um but they guaranteed us that it would be installed on the 19th now we'll have to take a couple days beyond that just to test how it works within our systems make sure that we're not in encountering a
129bunch of bugs that then would cause teachers and so forth to become very frustrated so we'll test that in our environment um for a day or so until we're absolutely positively sure we've worked out all of those kinks and then that will be available midweek um for teachers to explore teachers have been our ambassadors and some of our administrators have already received the first two hour training in florida virtual we have another series of trainings going on for teachers and coaches next week as well so that training will is continuing to happen in a test environment right now while we're waiting for our install do we have one ambassador per site i'm sorry is there one ambassador per site at our site okay i just want to make sure somebody's really like knows it their
130stuff at least one site and they'll be training their staff on a t uh train the trainer model so but we're continuing to offer these two hour trainings as needed with certain content as needed as well just a quick question i get that there's been a high demand for online when this was presented to the board to purchase we were told it would be in canvas on the 10th now we're almost 10 days later i mean literally right now every day counts it does we were myself and the others were informed on wednesday that that would not be the case until the 19th so we were anticipating monday having everything ready to go and we're informed that the delay is is there so again this is our our our we have been just updated on
131this as well that it was there slower in getting them in there so again going back to the fact that our online and our remote learning are utilizing our canvas tools and they're going to get there as quickly now the 19th is the date you gave right there and they and with every system that they install this out they have to make some adjustments which is partially part of the reason that um that we've experienced a small delay is just because we have to create some programs that talk that allow flvs to talk to what we currently have in place and so in order for that to happen we you know that has extended the time frame by at least a couple of days so that we can get those in place as well and
132that also is why we have to test that in our environment for a day or two before we release that to teachers as well because what we you know we always anticipate everything is just going to work seamlessly and we all know in the technology world that's not necessarily the case so we want to make sure that we are doing our due diligence before we release it to teachers because we want them to be able to use it seamlessly without um too much frustration whatsoever remember we were also disappointed to learn that there was a delay thank you um i know that we have gone above and beyond asking our teachers to learn and to pivot and to soak in so much information and so i do appreciate at this time somewhat of the schedule
133we have for our teachers so that they do have this time for this training because it's not just um get it boom it's going to take some time to learn and so i just want our teachers to know that we so appreciate they they're forever learners too and we're so grateful so this is president taylor i would want to echo what you just said our teachers have worked so hard they have learned so much they have challenged themselves and are embracing this and are doing the very they are doing amazing things for our students and we appreciate how hard they have worked and are going to continue to work to support our students in any modality and with whatever resources we have to the best of our ability so thank you we are very proud
134of our teachers because i think one of the things that we saw as a theme in the feedback from our families was concern wanting clarity and but there was a lot of praise for the teachers and how hard they're working and we still also hear families who are concerned and who are having challenges so we hear you and we understand that but our teachers are working very hard rock stars rock stars and i hear you too mr glover and i think it is important how ever we can make these students that do choose online to feel um just a part of our community still and i know it's nothing is ideal i keep saying that and i know it's kind of you know cliche but nothing is ideal in this environment right now and i
135know that parents have to make the best decisions they possibly can for their individual families and we're just here to support them in that and if there's something that we can do thank you for providing your email too we're all getting them so just spreading out what we can do to help everybody out there so thank you for this great presentation appreciate the clarity on that note that last slide i think is a thank you slide just once again reiterating what reiterating what you have just said it's really all of us working together that provide those opportunities for our students to learn grow and contribute and thrive and even in challenging environments such as what we have been faced with this year we can continue still to work together as a team and make this
136happen so thank you very much for your support as well thank you and it's been two hours so i think we're gonna take a little break thank you you see them thank you for allowing us that break we are going to move on there's going to be some survey results and we are a go thank you president kaler members of the board we want to transition now into sharing with you the results of the survey that we talked about at the last board meeting at the last board meeting we spent some time talking about the fact that we would be surveying our families to get an idea of what they were thinking about which led to the opportunity for us to learn more about where we needed to clarify obviously for for instruction but also
137to begin to help us get a sense of staffing because the staffing is a really important piece remember we started this year with the you know our teachers as numbers and class sizes and being sure that we structure this appropriately and it and it can be a true puzzle so we're trying to figure out what does our staffing look like because we have to also be at fair to our teachers because we can't ask them to do three things at the same time so how do we do this and how do we prepare for it so we're going to talk a little bit about our survey results that we learned from our families and that we learned from our employees and talk about some of the things we also saw not only in their responses
138but also in the comments and trends that we learned from them too as sort of themes that emerged next slide okay kaler members of the board uh hear the results uh on a general view for the confirmation instructional model confirmation survey that we surveyed our families on first thing i'd like to know we had around a 65 response rate so there was still 35 percent of our families that we did not hear from or did not answer the survey and so what that meant was we had 8 358 surveys that were returned on all the different levels that we had so the first one if you'll take a look is the instructional model confirmation if you see the blue part which represents 49 of the responses those were the families that indicated that they will
139return to our campus when we are able to reopen our campuses for in-person instruction the orange piece is 26 percent are the leaning towards returning to campus and so our choice was they wanted to know more about the metrics but they were leaning toward returning to in-person our next group was 15 were leaning towards online learning but they wanted to know more about the metrics as well and those were two additional options that we added based upon the feedback that we had at our last governing board meeting and then if you'll notice that we have approximately 10 of the responses said they will choose the online learning option and for those we consider those they were that group and that's the group that right now that our principals are looking at and i know our
140secondary principles have met up and i want to give them kudos publicly they've partnered together to start looking at what this puzzle looks like and where can we expect to offer classes and then the next piece would be how are we going to align teachers to fit these these models but they have met and are working on it together because we know that for instance at the high school level if we have a certain number of higley high and a certain number of williams field it might be feasible if we combine them into a single online section and are allowed to be able to offer that to them as opposed to doing it independently and so i'm very pleased at the progress that they're already making knowing that this is a very giant lift for
141us and these are the puzzle pieces we have to figure out the second question that we ask is we know because of the executive order that we are going to open on august 17th for those specialized situations and students who need support services and i know i think at our next meeting we'll be addressing more specifically for you what does that look like and i know our community is asking for that as well and so if you take a look uh 80 percent of the respondents indicated no they would not be looking at that however we did have approximately 13 percent of the respondents say yes we are looking to do some form of that returning on the uh 17th in some some capacity for support services next slide please president taylor members of the
142board i want to personally thank all the families for their thoughtful response to the survey and their comments are important as we're learning this morning that when they email or specifically when they put comments in these surveys it helps us step back and think wow maybe we need to provide more information and the presentation on re remote versus online is the perfect example so you'll see some themes in these comments mask keep coming up but i'm glad that you guys are looking in a policy so we have a clear direction of what we will do in our schools but having those breaks will be important we'll just have to approach them in a very safe manner the other thing you see is people love their teachers and their their favorite thing is to be in
143person if at all possible however you're going to see a lot of statements about safety concerns about safety so as you read through those i think one of the main things you see is that they want all of us to be looking at data wise thoughtful timely decisions the other thing we've talked about is the social emotional needs and it's hard for kids to be away from kids it's hard for kids to be away from teachers and routines those relationships are key i really appreciated some of the things dr thomason read this morning like it really got me and i know people are hurting and we're all doing the best we can but i think these comments show you how thoughtful our community is and i think in our wildest dreams we would never ever
144be sitting here doing this that over and over i read comments of thank you thank you to you guys thank you to administrators teachers and everybody out there mrs richards i was just going to echo that that every email was so kind and so thoughtful and we just so appreciate all that you know we're trying to be so positive and i really appreciate that so yes i echo that they were and very constructive and very thoughtful and things that we don't always think about were brought to my attention so um ours as well president taylor so we're grateful and we're going to keep you know backing up restarting changing doing what we need to so next slide morning president kayla are members of the board so the next portion that i'm going to present in
145relation to the surveys were directly to our certified employees we intentionally did not survey our classified at this time primarily because we had just recently made a number of phone calls to all of them inquiring about their interest to work in alternative assignments um as dr foley mentioned um and president keller you mentioned wednesday's presentation we'll have a shift and talk a little bit more about some of the additional items that we've discovered related to the executive orders and the need to support these support services and what that looks like so today i'm going to focus on the certified and primarily those do encompass our teachers however we do have other certified which is our slps our speech language pathologist our occupational therapist our psychologists other ed pros and some administrators that are in there
146too that responded to the survey so when you look at the pie chart it's a little misleading as we talk about the next slide but before that you'll see on here that we have a large majority of individuals that did say that they're ready to come back to campus and we had a small number nine percent say that they only wanted online teaching when you add the other two items together it's 91 um just like miss richards thankful for our certified who responded to the survey and very transparent and honest about their comments i know some of you had access to them and probably saw a number of them as we switch onto the themes i'll talk a little bit more about that but thankful that they took the time thankful that they were open
147and honest and i said misleading earlier because although our individual employees are saying that they want to be back in person they're not ready to come back in person so there's a disconnect there in terms of the choices and we did get some comments in relation to woody waning would have liked to have had more choices in the process in terms of saying well can we choose a hybrid or i'm okay coming back but again i don't want to come back until it's ready to come back and i understand what these metrics are that the arizona department of health services in alignment with ade are going to present in the bigger picture so next slide piece so i read every single response that we received back from all of our certified individuals um and we
148had a little bit of some duplications but removing the duplications we did have 742 which is a very high response rate because at any given time of the year we can have anywhere from 730 to 750 certified employees so at 742 it's it's a high number everybody participated there's certainly a possibility of some duplications as some were labeled anonymous or they did not put in their name in the response which is perfectly fine but out of all the comments that i read these were the large themes of those comments wanting smaller class sizes so what does that look like you know a number of individuals mentioned could there be a hybrid possibility and talking with cabinet and talking with ed services one of the reasons why we said that there couldn't be a hybrid possibility
149and this is some of what we talked about another surveying that we had gotten back from our teachers was that they would then be doing duplicate work potentially having to prep for in person and then also having to prep for individuals that need assistance on the days that they're not in as in addition to that our understanding is that for those individuals who choose that hybrid option there still has to be a location for them to attend to if they want to come in person on the days that they are not scheduled to be on that hybrid option or come to a location in which they can receive support some of our surrounding school districts to my understanding had empty school buildings or empty spaces in which they could designate that would be their location
150that their students in that hybrid model would attend to we don't have that luxury here at higley so we don't have a location to where if they chose on the day that they're not in that in-person session for a place to go we don't have them a place to go to then still maintain some of those smaller class sizes so that's something that is difficult earlier i heard miss reece and i think mr glover talk about well if there's the possibility for this streaming then maybe we'll have more families that choose that online option and then they could then provide a potential for smaller class sizes miss kaler i believe you mentioned earlier too though that's budget you know we're working with mr holland he's not here today but actively working with him to look
151at all of our funds and all of our accounts to determine what monies do we have in this unique year that we could pull away from these one-time expenses they wouldn't necessarily need to be stained in the future sustained in the future but paid and utilized now for looking into additional options whether it's technology definitely extra fte what else do we need to help sustain and make sure that it's the best environment that it can be for all individuals involved in the process the next item is more mechanisms for diligence of safety precautions and as we talk about the mitigation plan later dr fowler miss malloy and miss fulton will talk about but wanting to know am i going to get training i'm okay with having to utilize some materials if i need to utilize
152materials to clean in between but as long as you give me the ppe you give me the sanitation products and you teach me how to do it i'll do my best i can however at the secondary levels also needing some extra time as a possibility if the expectation is there to clean the classes in between and what does that look like certainly thoughtful and thankful about adding staff and this is a concern that you guys have brought up before too but is one additional staff member really going to help is that enough and again it goes back to the larger component of budget and what we can sustain and so we are actively again looking at okay what are our dollars what are our availabilities and what can we do with those dollars that we
153do have available um can we look at additional fte within support services and helping with the cleaning aspects too or maybe we can look at some of our other employees that are part-time and extending their fte to help in those areas in addition to our current staffing that we have a large item in what ms richards mentioned in terms of mass must be a requirement how are you going to keep me safe and make sure that i am safe so the mask policy will be something that a number of our employees will appreciate i do know subsequent questions and i'm sure you've been asked of and my colleagues have been asked of is how do we hold accountability for those mass if students choose not to so that's a deeper piece that we'll have to
154go into a little bit more but also certainly educating and letting them know that this is what the district if the board chooses to pass it at the next board meeting the route that we've chosen to go um and it's important for us and why it's important for us and if you're going to continue at higley this is what you have to honor in that process mrs martens too that is an executive order straight from governor ducey that we did have to adopt some type of face covering policy absolutely and also going back to how can you keep me safe if i have 25 anywhere plus some of our secondaries 30 plus students in a classroom you know there's not a way that we can physically distance um and we acknowledge that if we're going
155to go back to in-person instruction and we're going to allow students to come back we're not going to be able to safely physical distance in those classrooms even with the addition of ftes if we financially can afford it for in-person we don't have the space to then separate and divide classes from 25 to 10 or lower um so that's a that's reality um and when we talk next week i'll talk about some other realities that that executive order for lack of a better word forced on us whether equitable or not equitable but what we have to do as a district and some of that is the support services on 817 and if certified aren't working these support services because they're doing remote teaching all we have left of our classified and if our classified don't
156return then we cannot support these support services so what do we do so that's a big challenge and you know just like the emails that all of you are reading i'm reading emails to from our various employees some that have copied me directly with copying you or sent to me directly or making phone calls that we're hearing so we we absolutely understand the challenge and appreciate that a lot of our employees understand that we're in a no-win situation and we've been put in this no-win situation so thankful for them in the larger understanding and trying to do our best to accommodate the best way that we can if possible mrs martins i um i did ask several of my teacher friends to i would like to hear more feedback from them directly and i did
157get that and that that constant communication was yes we want to be back in our classrooms when it's safe and that was the the common denominator in every single email that i received and there they have concerns about even when um so a fourth grade team has four teachers and one is out and we divide that fourth grade class into all the other we're not going to have just 25 or 30 in that situation we've we've done that practice in the past and again that was another concern that our teachers are bringing to my attention and so i i hear what you're saying and i heard it as well in my letters that i received absolutely um and some of that is kind of going to leaves and pay and mr glover brought this up
158at our last meeting in regards to the fact that we hadn't really talked about substitutes yet we are actively working on it and we have been actively working on it as you know sometime in the summer you guys approved our contract with educational services incorporated esi who maintains our substitutes as well as our face retirement program and we've been working with them and they've termed it now rescue subs ourselves as well as another district has inquired about hiring full-time subs our goal is to hire a minimum of 26 full-time subs that will work for us this school year and be housed at each campus to support and go in as possible we know that even at 26 if we sign one per campus two at the secondaries maybe have nine floaters it's still going to
159be difficult and may not be enough but we're trying and we know that that's gonna cost us another four hundred to five hundred thousand dollars if we do it for the full school year so another budget impact that was not planned for this school year that we'll have to find the dollars to support but we know that's important because we know that we have to have at least one additional person to help assist wherever they can possibly assist as needed as we go back to in-person instruction another thing i want to make clear too is a lot of employees seem to be confused about the family's first corona response act ffcra in regards to if they get sick what happens a lot of employees thinking they had to use their own general leave time during
160that time period and i want to clarify that for those first two weeks and this is a federal act so that's why you see other employers across the nation having this is that for that first two weeks if it's coveted related and they're sick or they've been told to self-isolate and or they have to care for somebody who's that they need to self-isolate and be directed to isolate they get 80 hours of paid time at full pay for that initial component and then anything beyond that there are some other components that can extend an emergency fmla that's separate from the original fmla enacted in 1996 the family medical leave act this is separate of that in which depending on the qualifying factors that are related to covid there could also be a potential for 10
161weeks of extended leave at two-thirds of their pay so 66.7 percent um so i want to make that clear as a lot of individuals felt as though they had to use their own time could there be a possibility that they have to use their own time at a later date yes but initially they would not have to would it be ideal if we could give employees unlimited leave for this school year yes but again there's lots of other challenges and consequences with that too you know so we'll have to kind of see how this year plays out but the fact that the federal government did enact this ffcra and i think i mentioned at another board meeting that this is the first federal leave act in which employers have to pay their employees all other
162leave acts that exist individuals it's unpaid and they can use general leave vacation sick time whatever that organization has to keep them in a paid status with the exception of some components of military leave but so this is a unique position that all of us have put in not only school districts but also private employers and employers outside of here so in terms of the last area notifications of positive cases we continue to work with the arizona department of health and will continue to follow the arizona department of health or the miracle maricopa county health department in regards to how we are to inform people and when we are to inform individuals um you know as i've reported multiple times things have been changing every week in regards to just the status of when you're
163out how long you're out if you have symptoms how long you have to be out during those symptoms before you can return so although we have no laid out plans for now there'll be more discussion next week too as we talk a little bit more about the school's reopening plan and how it applies specifically to this area but there is the notion of primary contact and secondary contact still in regards to who gets informed and then separately of that just like with any other types of illnesses like hand face mouth disease arizona department of health are following those same guidelines in regards to how you communicate to others yeah i've seen across the country lately that what's happening is employees that have died their families are suing the employers if they didn't provide adequate safety
164measures so i've seen that starting to come about here so saying that certainly mr witovich you know we we live in a world um that can be very challenging to where individuals really um can seek suits for numerous reasons we've mentioned this before but you know we certainly have our risk management we have workers comp um and it would be difficult for somebody to see or prove that we were negligent and they were able to get covered directly from here depending on the circumstances you know certainly if it's in a classroom there's some dynamics related to that but it'll be really interesting to see if some of these cases get pursued and how they get pursued and then what um what benchmark that provides for other places mrs martins i was able to read through
165most of the comments i think um i was really happy the way you guys made them all anonymous for us um i couldn't i didn't know who was saying the comments but i did get to read through most of them and this mirrors a lot of them and i just appreciate that um i appreciate our staff being open with us and telling us exactly what they need so we can move forward thank you next slide thank you ms martin thank you so one of the things that we had talked an awful lot about at the last meeting and it's one of the things that's also required as part of this executive order is a mitigation plan a document in which you align what is your action plan and your priorities along with the it's aligned
166to the road map for over opening schools and so it's a document that you begin to implement what are your processes and procedures so you have a draft in front of you again this is a working draft that we've been working on to bring this together and there are some components um that we're going to talk through kind of like chapters if you will or sections and so uh we are fortunate to have again miss felicia malloy who is also new to higley who also comes to us with decades of experience and we are so grateful for her to join us and so she is going to start talking a little bit about this and we have dr fowler and jillian fulton our nurse who will also be sharing some information as well and great
167board member withovich this would also be a time to if with what you're in point that you wanted to share would be a fitting in one of these categories wherever one things as we talk about let's bring this let's bring the children back to school let's let's do this okay it's okay to bring the children back to school but we have to understand how we're going to clean schools okay nobody talks about that and when we say clean schools okay so so what is the cleaners okay i mean what what is this brand of cleaner that you're having here right now okay this is the branded cleaner that we're going to use in our schools and i was looking through i asked for what the teacher supplies would be and over here for the board
168members to take a look at the teachers are going to have a spray bottle hand sanitizer paper towels face masks gloves things like that and then i looked at in addition to teaching our teachers are going to be asked is recommended that the teachers will use this product we'll set we'll mist each desk spray each desk with this disinfectant leave it for 45 seconds then wipe it with the paper towels that's the teacher's desk now the high school students as i look at this if there's 20 students in the classroom 20 desk and it has to be 45 seconds that's 900 seconds that's 15 minutes okay that's just on spraying the desk okay now i was looking at at the product the teacher also is going to require to have gloves on at this time
169also to have masks on and when the teacher you know when we clean our houses we clean them maybe once a day or once however it is you're asking your high school teachers to have this product five to six times a day they're asking the teachers to smell these products five to six times a day you're asking your students to smell it all day long now i was looking at this product here on the on the side here that says it contains 8 hydrogen peroxide now the catch is other 92 percent and i looked all over the bottle no it's not telling me what other is okay so so i'm going to be spraying this on on students desks not having a clue what it is um i am reading this is what we fill
170the bottles with that we dilute it with and it talks about on the bottle here it says hazardous to humans domestic animals it says milk may cause irreversible eye damage and skin burns and then it says prolong useful perhaps skin damage and things like that over prolonged use i think teachers using all day long is prolonged use and children smelling it all day if we have concerns about peanut allergies we're spraying products that we don't know 90 of what is in that on a student's desk and it says also on this product that if you come in contact with it if it's wet you are to not chew gum use um eat any type of food or may cause any damage to your clothes so if your desk is wet you need and it says
171you need to wash your hands immediately after we do this so okay so so you've got your teacher in here um high school she's got five minutes and i already told you cost 15 minutes to wipe all the desks off it takes three to five minutes for it to dry is what the instructions say on this so the students are going to come in in between classes teachers go to mask up wash the desks off students are going to come in they're going to come down and sit next to the desk and oh my gosh if they sit at the desk and the desk is wet they're going to have this chemical on their hand they're going to discolor their clothes make sure they don't eat anything sitting at their desk because if their hands
172are wet and the product is wet they cannot put it up and eat it during the mouth on those type of things so my my concern is you know i'm all for coming back to school but but i'm concerned about products that we're using and and to keep our kid our children safe and clean and and to expect our teachers to do this all day long um it just it just makes me extremely nervous with that and it just uh and then in addition to that what you're asking the teachers to do and the staff to do i mean we're just talking about cleaning a desk here and it's gonna cost 15 minutes of the day and every time i walk in a high school room i'm going to get the fresh smell of these
173camels with 90 i don't know what is and then in addition to that i'm expecting the teachers to clean the door handles of the classroom and it takes 45 seconds for that to dry it takes three to five minutes uh light switches and drinking fountains and all these type of things and this is just this is in addition to to the daily type of things that that takes place on that so um i just wanted to share that with you in in reference to that i mean i could go and um every 45 minutes here i could sit and i'd be more if we're expecting our teachers and staff to clean the desk i'll be more than happy to every 45 minutes put my mask on and clean your desk here and then you will
174stay away for five minutes and then if you sit there then you're gonna smell this for the next five to ten minutes then every 45 minutes i will spray it again for you and make sure you don't get near your clothes because this might discolor your clothes but i'm just making a point i'm not going to do it with you today but i just want you to understand what you're asking the staff and the teachers to do you're saying i want the kids to come back to school i want them to come back to school but you know what there's more to just bringing kids back to school it's about cleaning and making sure it's clean and we have the right chemicals and those type of things so i just want as we think about
175these things as we think about maintaining the health environments are we okay with this all day long i don't know if i'm okay with having a child smell this all day long okay so i just wanted to share this with you today thank you this is thank you mr pitovic yes mr woodtovich to be fair um you can get all the information on the msds sheets that is actually required by the government we have to have those on any chemical that we use we have to have them on chlorine bleach we have to have the msds sheets for everything that we have which will inform you of those other items so it's there and it has to be kept by the facilities and everything else and then there's a difference between the diluted and non-diluted
176form and referencing the spray bottle is the diluted form which once that product is diluted in the appropriate fashion which the msds sheets will tell us how that has to happen then it is a safer product than the concentrate just the same as if you get the concentrate windex you're not supposed to use that concentrated form it's supposed to be a diluted form there's a huge difference in the safety between concentrated and diluted forms so i completely hear what you're saying and i understand your point but to be fair we're not giving non-diluted anything to our staff to put in front of our kids that would not be deemed reasonably safe and maybe even reasonably safe isn't the word maybe it wouldn't be deemed safe if if we see the product provided does not require
177any ppe so the diluted form is safer than the straight out concentrate um that we have that we receive so there there is a difference i understand your point um as far as high school to say it takes 45 minutes yes if that you were doing one at a time and waiting and waiting if if someone goes around and sprays the desks and a student walks in grabs a paper towel and dries it that's not going to take the 45 minutes and so just i completely get where you're coming from i just need to state to be fair this stuff is not being handed to them in a concentrated concentrated form that it is very different once it is mixed and diluted with the appropriate amount and the msds sheets are required and i'm sure
178that dr fowler anyone can get you those so you can see exactly what is in it because that is required by law my concern is like i said is the smell of chemicals all day long with the students the coming into the classrooms like you said the high school students um you're going to ask high school students to spray for the teacher those type of things now in addition to that when the teacher gets done doing all this it says on the directions they need to wash their hands so in five minutes the teacher needs to wash all these things off then go the restroom and clean up it's it's not going to happen in what we're expecting so perhaps that conversation on the length of time and those type of things but but my
179my basic concern is is the constant chemical use in our classroom during the daytime sure it may you know they may have all types of list and the safety but i don't know about you but i don't want to smell something all day long like like these type of things and and i don't know about in my house but i don't smell bleach all day long in my house but it's just it's it's it's the safety and those type of things so spelling bleach all day long welcome to kids welcome to child care welcome to schools welcome to hospitals it's what happens to be safe could somebody follow up and find out how many of our classrooms have sinks in them because i know some of them do um and so that would be i
180don't need it now i know you guys have no idea i would know either so i was just wondering if we could get maybe something on that how many have actual sinks that we're allowing kids to wash their hands on thank you good morning board president president kaler members of the board i'm felicia malloy and before we get into the mitigation plan i do want to point out that when this was noted that this is a requirement for us to have the state didn't come out with a template didn't give us any guidance on it so we were left with the task of trying to figure out what is this mitigation plan going to look like and if i could summarize how we came up with this is it's basically the work of our task
181teams that we had from the last board meeting and it really is trying to put all of the information that we gathered in those task force teams and trying to put it into a concise document that we can update as the information changes and as you know it changes very quickly so this is our first draft i did do some google searches trying to find some templates that are out there so i think i found a template that allows us to put in the important information that everybody needs to know but it doesn't have everything if i put everything in here for our mitigation plan it would be a book and that book would change every day or at least weekly so i do want to point that out some of the documents that we
182used to put this mitigation plan together of course we use information from the cdc the arizona department of education education elements maricopa department of health and the national institute for excellence in teaching many of these documents were also used while we were in our task force teams trying to come up with this information so i do want to thank all of our task force teams that helped to put this into one document so we thought it would be good to start off with what are the husd priorities and our priority of course the number one is our instructional options so when you see the underline on this draft that is actually a link that will go to a document for you we do want to educate all of our staff and families about when they
183should stay home and when they can return to school or work it is important for us to continue training all employees on our health screening and safety protocols posting signage as you know you have seen through some of our board presentations the signs that we're putting up on the floor the barriers that we're installing at the schools today you just approved the first reading of the mask policy that's now a requirement as you talked about the ensuring that we have our cleaner school spaces with intensified cleaning what are the concerns with that disinfection and our ventilation how are we going to sanitize our high touch surfaces what are those high traffic areas how we're going to monitor them ms martens was talking about how we don't have the physical space to lower the class size
184as well how are we going to handle hallways when all of our children are in there going from class to class so these are all of our priorities that we are literally that that has definitely been one of the conversations i've had with multiple parents is that passing period in our secondary hallways what is that going to look like if anybody has any weight on that sometime today maybe we can answer that one one of the things too is that we are also going to talk about coming back and probably not the 12th meeting but the 29th with additional updates on specific processes and procedures on all of those because one of the things we're looking at too is that there can be flexibility in those passing periods because of the instructional day how we
185might schedule those and there are a lot of ideas that have been generated that we're working through you know we want to pursue virtual events as much as we can during this time we want to maintain our physical distancing limiting group size and of course we want to limit our non-essential visitors and volunteers and activities even though even when we do come back to in person i think a lot of these things are still going to be in place so we still have a lot of work to do with this document but i believe this is a very good start for us so our first area the areas that we have in here we have promoting behaviors that prevent the spread maintaining healthy environments covet 19 measures and maintaining healthy operations this actually comes from
186the mode the road map from ade so what are we going to do two of the most very important things that we have and i won't go into detail with these miss fulton will discuss these we have our husd daily health screenings and our exclusion guidelines we of course want to teach and reinforce hand hygiene we want to teach and reinforce our face coverings we want to ensure that we have the adequate supplies you know we're telling our teachers that we're going to have these items in their classrooms we want to maintain those supplies we don't want to run out so that's the first section which is our promoting behaviors i i didn't read every bullet i don't like to read to you you have that opportunity um but we'll go ahead and move to
187section two unless we have questions on that just uh miss malloy just one thing um i just want to take a moment to reiterate to the people who are watching um that well okay so like growing up i don't remember my father ever taking a sick day i think he was in the hospital once and he didn't come home and that's it like he now he he went to work day after day after day and we have to as americans really rethink our when we're not feeling well for kovit if we're going to get through this and we're going to open and people are going to be around we really have to just say to ourselves okay i am not going to work yes i could get through it i'm not going or i'm not
188sending my kid we send i mean i've sent sick kids to school before and and we just have to really emphasize and ask the community to please if you're sick feeling sick think you're sick just do the right thing please especially with just a cough and i think we've all sent kids with just a cough because otherwise our kids would probably be out for a long period of time but if they just have a cough you might need to think about and reiterate well maybe we need to take a day and make sure that it's just a cough or just allergies what we thought it was the second area of the mitigation plan is maintaining healthy environments and just want to first of all before i talk specifically identify all of the members of our
189support services team that have been working extensively throughout the summer and continue to work to prepare and adjust and change and and provide all the needed supports including gathering ppe and making adjustments to to spaces and doing all those things that that we're talking about and continuing to be flexible and change with that a lot of these items are ones the boards board has already seen i'm just going to highlight those again in the area of intensifying cleaning and disinfecting appreciate the board support as we've hired additional staff to to work through the high touch areas that that is a work in progress and i've communicated with principals and we're setting out those specific guidelines we do feel that that increased cleaning on those high-touch areas throughout the day is is very important and those
190services that get touched a lot with with their increased visibility and on campus when those students return that will be important process to that and and our training is ongoing and we'll continue to make adjustments as we we work through in reference to the ventilation and i've talked about that as well we do have a very extensive system that was updated many many years ago through climatetech and we we had a group independent third party group come in and assess our systems and they are very efficient more efficient than most and we'll continue to tweak and look at those but we do have programs in place and systems that help to maintain those and uh our summer processes include the evaluation and repair those and and maintenance of those and so that that continues to
191be ongoing but uh we're in a good place there and we'll continue to make sure that those are running efficiently the third point was the water systems and that's again part of our preventative maintenance we have done a system flush at each campus and we'll continue to do that every few weeks until students return if if that happens this year also the water treatment system that service began thanks to the board and you're approving that rfp so our closed water loops that that feed our hvac systems have been enhanced i've been working very closely with principals at sites and you can only imagine the the pressure and and weight that's being felt by our principals on our sites as they try to prepare their sites for the return potentially of students and so i've had
192extensive walks and talks with them working with administrators on revisions to their hallways in terms of routes and how to promote physical distancing i want to thank our warehouse and print shop staff for providing physical distance markers and arrows and dividing markers and other visual aids that will assist in that on each campus as as when the time comes for those students to return we've talked about the cafeteria and the time involved in in putting students through those areas in the safest way possible we've examined and made plans for hand sanitizing stations and looking at ways to to promote as much safety that we can bring to the setting given given the constraints that we also have we also know that physical barriers are helpful and we've we have already installed those in all our
193front offices in the reception areas and continue to work and looking at putting those in places where we're needed again related to communal spaces and cafeterias looking at the the intensive cleaning of those spaces and adding more lunches or and increasing the time in which those spaces are used and really working hard to to meet as many of those cdc guidelines as we possibly can um just in reference um and i want to thank and appreciate mr rotovic's perspective and and board member reese's perspective as well um the classroom situation is one of concern and i completely understand the points uh taken um it is true um ms reese um in terms of the the cleaner it is a diluted solution um and it isn't the concentrated form in fact that's just our trained staff
194that actually uses that and so when it's at the class setting it's in a very diluted form and it is true to leave that for 45 seconds but you know we have done that in a class and you can sanitize spray sanitize each desk in a in about a second to second a half and if you go down the rows with within the five minute time frame it's reasonable to sanitize and wipe those um you know in in that set in that setting um we we do know that um the items also on there just to bring reference the spray bottle the hand sanitizer also paper towel and the green microfiber towel are there for teachers use um as well as information about the new sanit the new disinfectant it's the facili pro peroxide which
195was specifically chosen because this in a diluted form doesn't require ppe we have included masks and gloves in the in the teachers supplies but um in this particular product doesn't require the ppe although we've provided it anyway in addition also some specifics in terms of of how to use that sanitizer and each of our platform and custodials have been trained and we'll provide additional training if needed upon request the other thing that wasn't noted but also is in there is posters for each classroom one related to the requirement and i know the county has required it and i'm anticipating a board action coming soon about wearing face masks also about washing your hands which we know is extremely important in this in this time as well as a um a poster about the symptoms of
196kovid um as per mr rotovich's i mean mr glover's my apologies comment in terms of just being very aware if you're not feeling well it isn't that we're not in the day and age where we're going to just kind of tough it out and if you're not feeling well please stay home and we want that message to be received loud and clear and then another poster about stop spreading germs and and certainly as an educational institution we know that our teachers will take full advantage and help to educate all of our students on these i want to note that these are all items that our print shop is able to produce and produce very quickly and make available to all of our teachers in addition i wanted to note that there's a number of supplies
197and ppe that has been stockpiled in our warehouse and we have an additional additional supplies that are available and and i had noted the amounts up there for board members as well to see that and we're continuing to to get additional mass and and those items that we know that we're going to need and so um we we are doing all that we can and we understand that this is unprecedented times we when we're in a position if we need to return we want to return in as safe a way as possible and we'll continue to adjust and i appreciate the the feedback and the suggestions we agree that the safety of our students and and staff is about more importance and we'll continue to do and provide all that we're able to in support
198and i know in my time as an educator and this being my 30th year i i can't remember a time where you know coming to work and being in this role is as challenging as it has the only time that i could remember that would be even similar was the the morning of september 11th as i watched the news and uh had heard that the first plane crashed into the tower and and as i was getting ready to go into my role as an assistant principal responsible for the safety of a campus the second plane hit and the rumors and people talking about they might be trying to take over schools or what's going to happen that was more of a an enemy and an attack that was more visible this is an invisible enemy
199and one that is probably as more so or even more menacing for our our teachers and and especially administrators and so i reiterated with each of our principals that um that i am here and my team is here all of support services to support them and please this is not something that they have to do on their own and that our our entire cabinet is here to support them and we really appreciate the support of the board as well i can't imagine how difficult and challenging this is for you to navigate this and we appreciate your support but we will do what's best for students for the safety of our teachers and staff and and thank you for your support in this area thank you dr fowler um have we talked about maybe doing some
200videos training for teachers and our videos just to showing our community how this cleaning process may take place in a classroom president keller yes we have a couple that are already in process are ready to to go out and a couple more that we're working on so that is something that that uh that is is in the works i think we're very visual people today and um just being able to see how that looks like for our teachers our staff our community i think is super important so thank you go ahead mrs wilson do you uh last board meeting i believe we've had a lot of board meetings so i think it was last board meeting you mentioned plexiglas was the new toilet paper have we been able to find i think that's what he
201was the words have we been able to find plexiglass are we able to secure more plexiglas we're still limited on plexiglas but we have not given up and so we'll continue to reach out to we do have a little bit of supply but um we're gonna keep working on that yeah i was in a couple schools this week actually and last week and i noticed that where the kids come up to the front office there's no plexiglas so we know that kids are carriers more than they are maybe having it so for that person at that front desk it might be important to have that side as well covered i did but i did notice that as we was out but i knew that plexiglas was the new toilet paper so i was willing to
202but i did want to offer that up thank you thank you good morning president keller members of the board i'm going to talk about the third section of the mitigation plan i'm going to touch base a little bit on all of this the hsd daily health screening that's a form that i believe you guys have already seen the questions that we ask both employees that comes up on their computer then also the kids that right now we have going into kids club and that will carry over to the services at the school coming in august 17th those questions are all symptoms of coven and have you been in contact with anybody that's been tested or is positive and we from there we take those those uh answers if it's yes they're directed to the health
203office and my health offices all have processes and procedures of what we do from there and inside that health office off those questions they're going home and then off the guidelines that are also included in here the htsd exclusion guidelines that helps formulate how long they're not at school when they can come back and every situation is different and everything is a puzzle so i take every situation and kind of piece it together and that's how we get to those guidelines and figure out when someone can return to school safely there's questions about if an employee is confirmed to have cover 19 husd will inform local health officials fellow employees of their possible exposure to coven 19 in the workplace will also be notified while maintaining confidentiality as required by the americans with disabilities act
204also hipaa ferpa and both health departments and state and federal laws there um there's a lot of questions about if anybody is confirmed ovid positive and how someone is informed and again like i know miss martens has mentioned several times we're looking at uh close contact secondary or primary contact and secondary contact and right now we're really sticking to that mainly for confidentiality because that's how we're going and rumors spread so primary contact will always be notified and that is in collaboration with the health department so we talk and then we'll notify there's several ways of notification that right now there will always be a personal phone call i can tell you that that was decided but email letters those are being formulated by the health department now and i'm waiting for those because they
205do have blanket ones that they would like us to use at some point um in if an employee is diagnosed with copin 19 they must stay home i know ms martin's covered the family's first coronavirus response act with that yes they must stay home and i want to include obviously students too also something that has changed that came to my attention yesterday is we've already talked about this before it's been on guidelines and it's been off but now it's going to be back on that their siblings will be pulled also obviously you would think that that was something we you know would stay but that goes back and forth so that will be added again um you know different even if they're at different schools it's the household will be taken for those 14 days
206on quarantine when there is a confirmed puzzle case in the district the area will be cleaned and disinfected i know dr fowler touched on that and prepared to isolate and safely transport any student or staff exhibiting covet i can't stress enough a couple things of notifying anybody of your symptoms and telling somebody that you're not feeling good and you're not coming to work and not showing up to work not feeling good please not sending your children not feeling good that only makes everything effects everywhere that student or employee goes and it's just going to not be a good situation from there um does anybody have any questions for me yes so i just kind of want to talk through because i know our families are very interested in this piece of the puzzle so if
207a student comes into the classroom and is showing symptoms and later we find out that student did test positive they were sent home are his classmates considered primary or secondary contact and is the teacher considered primary or secondary contact and that's that puzzle that i have to put together because naturally if we're sitting here just thinking visually of a classroom and every student in there wearing a mask and the teacher wearing a mask and or face shield those are separate things in the mass policy you wouldn't think that every student is a primary contact things change every single day there was a point since march that student all those students were not primary contacts there was a point where they were primary contacts we're back to their not primary contacts and as of yesterday the
208way i'm interpreting some things i still have my own questions i think we're going back to their primary contacts so that being said that's and things have changed more than that how long we're keeping people out it's gone from 72 hours to 24 hours to 72 hours again we're back to 24. you know for a fever or a symptom we've gone from 14 days to 10 to 14 to now we're back at 10. like so all of those pieces came into it where were those students how long were they in the classroom before that student the one particular student may have been removed those are things that come into it too was it the first period of the day and they the bell rang and they walked in and the student told the teacher i
209don't feel good and turned around and walked out and went to the health office those students aren't going to be primary contact there's so many things that come into that but for the most part at this point as fluid as things change i could say they would be notified as right now today would be notified as a primary content and that would same for the teacher if the teacher was from the classroom the same the classroom itself would be part of contact as of today they would all get a phone call from us personally yes thank you very much i think go ahead i was just going to ask when we initially got our presentation we were told that people wouldn't be contacted until we got the confirm from the health department i hope that's
210changed that if they see a physician have a test and they come with us with a test and they're notifying us that we're taking that and we are taking that they're positive and that we're notifying people while at the same time the health department's being notified which if we're waiting for the health department to come back and notify us or for us to confirm that they have it we keep talking about time is of the essence that's too many days so i i'm hoping we will take notification from a testing laboratory a physician that that's a positive is that that is how it's working so let me reiterate when when the health department gets a positive case it's an electronic transfer from the lab to the health department from there that goes automatically into their
211system i get information nine times out of ten from a family member an employee themselves a staff member that was told and then it goes from there so not very often do i even have to call the health department to get on the phone and confirm that right then and there when i already have all of that information i have and it's the matter of a five minute conversation somebody searching a name and a birthdate that i'm giving you know who i am where i'm from the information and we're confirming that it does not take long to do that outside of the fact that i'm taking the information from the person themselves yeah can we make our own policy on primary and secondary and and not listen to the state and make it very strict
212is that possible everything is possible with that yeah before you to make a stricter policy set to keep it i would say if it's switching back and forth so much for you would it be better is my question president kaitlyn remembers the board i think that we should uh stick with the standard definitions that we that are utilized by the cdc and arizona department health uh services if we start making some of our own definitions for some of these things that could confuse our public we can set strict standards using the definitions that are already out there with the cdc and arizona prime health services but to set our own definitions for for that may be confusing to the public and our community and even our staff mrs wilson were you asking so you said
213something some things are going between 10 and 14 days back to this day back to that if we went with the more restrictive one and just said this is what we're going with even if they change it back to that we're sticking with this that that our policy quits becoming so fluid that based on the most conservative safest piece that we have right now if we just say this is what we're doing and not worry about now it's 24 hours now it's 72 now it's 10 days now it's 14. if we this is what we're gonna do and make it the most the safest piece is is that what you're asking and not to redefine what a primary secondary that's exactly what i was asking going between 14 days and 10 days and going with
214the stricter guideline of 14 days and keeping it with that that's what i was asking if that makes sense or if that is clear and i know it's nothing's clear everything's mud right now so i'm just trying to help you because it sounds like you go back and forth a lot yeah with oh yes now it's 14 days oh yes now it's 10 days oh yes and now it's 14 days and i think that may be confusing our public as well because i honestly don't know and i get an update so yeah dr foley you laugh at me but you probably are the same bow president kayla are members of the board i understand where you're coming from in regards to trying to help with our consistency the difficulty that i struggle with is that
215depending on the situation the time we will get challenges from individuals and saying that here's what's being presented now and it could possibly be based on other medical data information that we're not medical experts on right so there's that dynamic we have the dynamic of individuals who might challenge that and then we also have the possibility of depending on the time and the nature you know there's an article that was included in our board presentation materials today you know could you then have potentially a department where you have a number of individuals out to where that department is not able to efficiently operate as a result too so as much as it is confusing miss fulton and some of our employees that have come to us and asked questions i have to say give me
216a second let me pull up the most recent data and i pull it up and i read it um you know and it it does make me perplexed at times in regards to you know why it changes so frequently but i hope and want to rely on our medical experts that they're making the right decisions for all of us in that process um and that's why they're certified to do what they're supposed to do with that said mrs martin do we know from one day to the next what our policy is like we go back to school if if things are changing and we're back in person school well today it's a 24 hour thing oh next week it's 72. when do we decide that we're not changing or are we just expecting our community
217to say hey well our medical experts today and let's just be clear it just depends on what medical experts because there's this that and everything else today they say 24 hours so i'm going to send johnny home you have to be home for 24 hours but next week susie i'm sorry at 72 now you have to be home for 72. we cannot possibly communicate that to our community for them to know what to expect to keep our health aids up to date what is today's rule so i mean i hear what you're saying about following medical experts but at some point at some point we need to decide what that is and it doesn't mean it can't be reviewed it doesn't mean it can't be reviewed on a monthly basis it but as a parent
218as a community member if we're back in school and i need to be prepared for my job this and that what happens if my child is sent home what happens if a another child in their classroom is positive whatever i need to kind of know what to expect not going what's the rule today so i mean i hear what you're saying but at what point do we make that determination for some consistencies for our sites for our health aides for our community for our teachers um i i and i'm probably asking just the same with everything else an impossible question um so maybe it's the question isn't when can we do it it's when do we do that can i weigh in maybe a little bit maybe this is definitely something to talk with um
219our attorney and seeing if other districts are doing something like this i'm not quite sure if because it seems like that would be a question of um in inferring what they mean today and how does that look for us and is that something that we need to further investigate i i don't know i'm just thinking that that might be something we ask them to help us navigate if you know multiple concerns here from this board so and one of the things i think from this mitigation plan again these are the bullet points that are literally aligned to what the what the road map has i believe we need to come back with an information item specifically for you on what does the letter look like what does the communication look like and and perhaps more
220formal processes for each one with the information that we have at this date knowing that again things may change and we'll have a process for how we identify that update but what will we what will we communicate with people on the website right now about first primary contact secondary contact communication what would that letter look like and the amount of days depending upon the symptoms the diagnosis and the situation so i think we will come back with a more specific plan in the near future for you with this so that we can go through that with more artifacts and processes again this is part of that mitigation plan with marrying the information that sound good okay thank you appreciate that okay the last section uh section four is maintaining a healthy operation some of this
221has already been covered but you know our ultimate goal is to protect people at higher risk for civilian or severe illness from covet 19. miss martin has already talked about that and the processes that we do have in place for that we also are trying to encourage how are we coping with the stress you know it's not just the stress that the children have it's a stress of all of the adults that are working under this we've never been under these conditions before i think everyone i talk to talks about how they've missed that personal touch that you're used to having with people and we're keeping distance from people and we're not you know we're not talking to people as much as we used to so we're trying to come up with those coping strategies
222for our staff and for our students we're talking about staggering and rotating schedules how do how do we make this work at our school site when we do finally go back to in person and again i know this plan doesn't have all the answers it's a start because our i see the principles i see the district staff i see everybody just running around trying to figure out how are we going to make this work and just as uh miss fulton said it changes constantly so you know we we're putting it together and i think we have a pretty good format to start with and it's definitely something to grow with we're trying to create static groups or cohorts i know this is going to be talked about um when we have our support services so
223that the the students that are together stay together so that we know who has been in contact with whom we want to consider options for non-essential travel in accordance with state and local regulations i'm in charge of all the federal grants typically people are coming to me asking hey can i go to this conference this conference well number one there really aren't conferences going on there are some virtual conferences but when that starts to open up we're going to have to start considering at what point do we allow our staff to go on this travel and is it necessary at this point we want to we have designated that our site administrator is the designated covet 19 point of contact we don't want a lot of people to know because of hipaa regulations what is
224happening with that so that administrator at the school site is directly communicating with hr and communicating with our district nurse ms wilton we want to implement flexible and non-punitive leave policies as much as we can can in accordance with the law ms martin's working on that we want to monitor our absenteeism and the big one how do we create that backup staffing plan i know you're going to hear quite a bit from that with our support services that are supposed to start operating next week again this is just putting it in here what our daily health screening is and then encouraging those who share our facilities that we need to adhere to our mitigation strategies the things that we have put in place we have put them in place for a reason and for the
225safety of our students and our staff and anybody who may come in contact with it with our facilities and of course notifying our community of any facility closures so that is our plan as it stands today i was just all wondering if there's any districts out there throughout the country because we're talking about maintaining healthy operations any districts that when they begin to open they open first with the kindergarten group for a week and then the next week later they bring the second first grade then they bring the third grade so perhaps like after um two months but the whole school system operates because if you're bringing one group in first we can like we need to tighten this we need to do this the cleanliness cleaning supplies those type of things need to be
226addressed and then we can bring the next group in because i understand that the the students that are having the most concerns with online right now is the younger ones so why not start with the younger ones start bringing back and see how it works and walk it through i just wonder if anybody has across the country started staggering the population because you know what as soon as something happens like there's some positive if you shut down you just shut down one or two grades you're not affecting the whole entire student body and they don't have to deal with going back online again bouncing back and forth but just kind of curious do you hear anything out there as far as any school districts that are staggering as the students return i haven't heard of
227staggering but i have seen there's other schools that have opened up back east that have had issues that they have determined that there's covet cases and i believe they have closed down the schools again so it's an ongoing and certainly something we can look into president caleb members of the board there are some staggering school districts that are happening across the country one of the school districts that i know about specifically is the one my brother works in in washington and so what they've done is to spread the students out they've had they've closed their middle schools and high schools up just to online so the middle schools and high schools then they've spread their elementary schools out to where they got first through third or the school and then fourth through six are spread
228out to the middle schools and high schools so that is something that we can look into i'm sorry i just want to thank everybody yes it's saturday it's a lot you guys are all here so i just thank you for coming in on saturday i appreciate it me too thank you very much for your time and all your information and i think we are um ordering some lunch because this is going to go through lunch just to let everybody know it's coming yep so again the mitigation plan is something a work in progress you know there are more processes and procedures obviously that are being implemented that are being finalized so as we transition into the next part of our conversation it will be about the benchmarks that were just was the health ben health
229metrics and benchmarks that were just um just released so you can forward to the next slide and dr thomason is going to take a second to talk us through a few things and then he will navigate a little bit on the the dashboard as well so president caleb members of the board the metrics have now been out for a little over 36 hours i can tell you within that time i've attended three webinars and read everything i can on the metrics and the benchmarks that have been put out there so there's quite a bit that's out there there's more that's coming there's more questions that we have also so i can tell you that that at this time i probably can't answer all of your questions but i do have a firm grasp on what's
230happening out there and can explain that so uh first side please okay i think we okay so uh the benchmarks so uh the benchmarks have been broken up in three separate areas so there's the minimal the moderate and substantial uh spread uh to the community so you can see right here there's three areas that we're looking at the number of cases the percent of positivity and the covet-like illnesses so at this time um you know the second level of spread uh occurring within the community or when the both the moderate and the minimal are occurring is what the recommendation from the arizona department of health services says that we can start to look at in-person [Music] next slide please so what does that look like so let's just take a look at what we're talking
231about for arizona so the three areas are cases and they've broken this up into two areas the benchmark can be we're two weeks below 100 cases per hundred thousand for the county or a decline in weekly average cases for two consecutive weeks when we look at specifically maricopa county where unified school district resides we're going to see that we're getting pretty close to meeting the second threshold of declining weekly average cases for two consecutive weeks the second area is the positive uh percent of of those testing with um with coving so for two weeks the percent of positivity has to be below seven percent and that does not include the current week that's two weeks previous before you take a look at opening up and the third area would be the covet-like illnesses and once
232again we're looking at that two-week benchmark for hospitalization visits due to covert-like illnesses that are below 10 and on this one on the covet-like illnesses it's not broken up by county it's broken up by by region and so we're in the central region that's going to include data from gila maricopa and penal counties at this time i can tell you right now that the maricopa county health services is looking at breaking it up much smaller and tighter for even within the maricopa county it's not available at this time but we're looking at breaking it up into smaller areas so what are we looking at next slide so we're looking at um the the checklist that has been recommended for the maricopa by the maricopa county board of supervisors um and then the arizona department of
233health services so the checklist is right there we want to reopen buildings on-site services or in-person instruction that is consistent with the applicable state and local laws and that right there goes specifically with right now the mask mandate so we do have a local mandate on mask and so we would be following that and then then the next three areas for the checklist include the metrics provided by the arizona department of health services and it's the cases below uh one hundred thousand hundred per hundred thousand the percent of positivity uh less than seven percent and then covalent illnesses less than seven less than ten percent so um and then we have to adopt our mitigation plan which we saw today and then also um take a look at different opportunities for traditional hybrid and virtual
234learning models dr thomason yes so you had mentioned that they were looking at trying to provide us maybe some more information so we're stuck with maricopa county which is the largest county in arizona uh president kaler and mrs reese specifically at this time we are but i can tell you that maricopa county is putting metrics together right now it looks like a zip code area but then they're trying to define it down to local school district area also they're working on that as we speak it wasn't available as of last night uh when i was on the the um conversation with several of my colleagues and representative udall from from our area because when you look at this and i know several of us have probably spent a lot of time i know i have
235looking at this our area the zip codes that we serve are not the same as other zip codes and our zip codes that we serve even with two larger communities because we would have to take into account we only have a sliver of our boundaries within queen creek but understanding people are coming from there but it's all of queen creek in our zip codes we have a large zip code from mesa that's also in our in our district and we're still at less than a two percent of our overall population who have tested positive for this but we're not able to make those decisions based on their rules because it looks at all of maricopa county so when they say that local school boards wanted to make these decisions locally is what i heard in
236a press conference that we asked for this that we wanted local control not kidding press conference said school boards asked to make local decisions for local control but you're not giving us the tools to do that you said that there's some discussion if we're supposed to make this decision with this information but it has to include all of our county when are they looking at providing more localized information vice president reece they're looking into developing those metrics at this time i don't have an answer for the maricopa county department health services but i can tell you that the metrics you're looking at are different than the metrics that we have and we're going to get into that in just a second and there was some explanation on some of those different facts just like to
237throw a comment in on this we have to remember that the higley school district is a school of choice we are having students from all over maricopa county come into our school system as well as the employees that come into our school system every day um i don't know about you but people travel outside our four or five zip codes to work and socialize to eat and those type of things so so for us to to just look at the statistics according to what our zip codes are we're out and about everywhere and and our population is out and about everywhere so um i'm i just wanted to throw that in there the school of choice and employees traveling and things like that when we take a look at the metrics please and president keeler
238uh mrotovich thank you for for that comment too but even by zip code uh the higley unified school district does not follow a zip code pattern uh the zip codes that are within our district we are less than 50 of any zip code that is in our districts that that we follow including queen creek including gilberts including mesa and so the zip code pattern would not be beneficial for the higley unified school district to follow either so we we have specific boundaries that incorporate six different zip codes and less than fifty percent of each of those six different zip codes are within our boundaries we can take a look at that yeah the next slide so one one of the things that we're also looking at too is the time frame for when we're looking
239at these metrics so this is the part where i believe that we can get off base because if you go to the arizona department of health services and you look at their data dashboard that's going to give you incorrect information there's a special separate dashboard just for schools and universities okay and so the information that we're getting in the specific dashboard for schools and universities is delayed by 12 days so it is one week of information all of these metrics are broken up for one week okay so when we take a look at the metrics it says less than a hundred per hundred thousand that's 100 for the week okay these metrics are broken down by the week that is the percent of positive cases below seven percent for the week okay they're going to
240be different than the main data dashboard that you look at that is one thing that our our public and our community and everybody needs to know is that if you're going to the main data dashboard and you're not having the information look the same it's because it is not the same we're looking at a separate set of metrics and dashboard so at this point we're going to look at the maricopa county dashboard next slide please okay so these are the three specific dashboard areas that we're looking at for the the safely returning to in-person instruction recommendations from the state okay so these areas as you can see the first area looks like they have met that uh that requirement for less than uh 100 per hundred thousand or two weeks declining okay so that is
241a big statement that is an or okay so you can still see the numbers there we're still at higher than 100 per hundred thousand but you can see that it's been declining for two consecutive weeks and once again this data is almost two weeks old okay the middle area that you're taking a look at that is going to be um two consecutive weeks with a percent below seven percent and you can see we have not made it there yet and this is for for the state of arizona but we're going to look at maricopa county specifically in a second and the third area would be two consecutive weeks for hospital visits for covid19 like illness below 10 percent can we go to the live portion of the arizona department of uh health services so this
242is it this is live and you can see that we do have maricopa county here that is specific this that's a state and then there we go maricopa county okay so for the first metric decline in cases or less than a hundred per hundred thousand you can take a look there that we've had declining cases for three weeks in a row going from the nineteen thousand to the twelve thousand to the seven thousand and it tells you that um in the middle week it was three hundred and five per hundred thousand and then uh the the next week is 173 per hundred thousand so we've met that metric according to the arizona department health services that was a check that one's a go the second one two consecutive weeks with a percent of positivity below
243seven percent so about four weeks ago we were at sixteen point nine percent about two weeks ago we were at thirteen point two percent this is the area that uh we need to get below seven percent for two consecutive weeks we're not there yet we're not even close and then the third area would be two consecutive weeks with hospitalization visits for covet-like illness in the region below 10 so you can see on july 12th we were 12.7 july 19th we were at 8.8 we have not met the metric because that is not two consecutive weeks it's trending in the right direction but we're not there yet so any questions on this that i can answer for you this is maricopa county data this is not higgly unified school district data or zip code data i
244will also say too is that the one area is for the central region and that is the covet-like illness area let me make sure i'm correct on that one one of the areas oh decline in cases is is for the region because they don't have it broken up by by county dr thomason i don't know if you know this i know in the state numbers from the research that i've done the positivity rate and everything that the state is doing and breaking down and and all that includes our long-term care facilities it includes hospice facilities it includes assisted living facilities it includes our prisons and our jails and so all those positivity rates and the positive tests that are coming from those areas that aren't they're in our community but they have limited access um
245also known to be a higher rate of positive cases because of the close quarters and and everything else i think everyone understands why those areas test higher do you know if there's any discussion because it's not really community spread those are specific areas spread do you know if there's any conversation of removing those to get a better idea uh president kaler um vice president reese those were talked about heavily in one of the forums that i was in too but i would also like to say that in that same forum that i was in talking about too they also talked about the percentage of negatives of individuals that have taken this the test two and three times because of needing to go for um for non-primary or non-um mandatory procedures for hospitalization or for for
246care at the hospitals and so they have also said too is that could detract both of those things could skew the results absolutely prisons nursing homes and non-required medical operations also what is the word i'm looking for well with the word they used elective surgeries there we go thank you so on a lot of elective surgeries too they brought that up in the same the same context of the the nursing homes and the prison facilities too is that sometimes you have to take two or three tests for an elective surgery and they say that we know the first one came back negative but that's a week before surgery we know they got to take it three days before surgery and you know they got to take at the day of the surgery they brought that
247up in one of the same conversations too and so i i do believe that quite honestly uh a lot of the information we're getting is not going to be 100 correct and i'm not sure there's a way to go ahead and make that correct especially from a school district point of view of trying to deal with all of that while we're talking about that i just maybe if i got the information right asu is opening up and asu's bringing people from all over the country and the world and if i remember what i read rights maybe somebody could let me know if i did or didn't that they're not going to publicize as far as their positive covet to the public or what what is the numbers or something or i didn't hear that they're
248not gonna i know they're testing everybody on campus and anyone who anyone who comes on campus yeah will be tested as well as everyone who lives on campus housing i didn't hear about whether they were going to publish the numbers i'm just curious on that because i just was warning because since we're across the field over here that would be in our zip code area um with the higher number of students coming here in the dorms over here on campus from around the country too as well so it'll be interesting to see what happens you know absolutely and then and then final slide so this is this is the final slide for safety returning to in-person instruction um so one thing i would wanted to highlight is the arizona department health services recommends that schools
249and school districts meet all three of the benchmarks at the county level that's what it says at this time we're hoping we'll be able to break that down to a more localized area in moderate or minimal transition categories for two weeks in order to begin the hybrid or in-person education processes so at this point in time i believe that maricopa county has met one of the metric systems but we still have two other areas that we're looking at and then i know i'm going to get beat up here but it was very highly recommended by this superintendent that we meet the metrics before we return to in-person education any questions dr thomason for this very detailed um document and yes does anybody have any questions for dr thomason yes mrs wilson i don't have a
250question i want to apologize to the community i was under the impression that these were going to be mandates so when people were emailing me earlier in the week i was saying the governor will put out a mandate i am now under the i now know they are guidelines please don't email me further i have now realized i made a mistake i am sorry i thought they were mandates so i just want to apologize to the community because i did think they were going to be mandates and this is what we were going to have to follow to come back i've heard you loud and clear they are guidelines i see that thank you thank you thank you i apologize and i'm very sorry mr glover i just in case anybody was watching and they're
251not familiar with our our processes on on our website there's a place called board docs and so if you were interested in i mean you watched it on the slideshow i guess but uh if you wanted this they could get it there and and and you can have it there but um you know even though you saw some green in some of those charts please people we were here in may already wash your hands often improperly avoid crowds social distance wear a mask and if you're sick stay home and this is the way that the numbers will continue to go in the right direction but we cannot let up at all we have to be vigilant and we have to care for one another yes thank you mr glover for that reminder dr foley member
252board member glover you're absolutely right in fact we have the entire document on the board docs as well as again it's available online because our presentation didn't include the whole document it had some of the recommendations just as you've shared and also kind of a little diagram about when we do return to in person learning the fact that these mitigation strategies are going to become the new normal that this is a this will be an ongoing piece so there's a and other pieces that are also in this document that we did not go in we're looking purely at what are the metrics at this particular moment so thank you thank you dr foley and i know that the community is anxiously awaiting some further information from us this morning i'm thankful to the asba that
253came out and said here is a way that your boards can go into an executive session and that's what we're going to be doing next and this is a way for our board to talk openly and as a five because normally we can only talk to one um for open meeting law violations and so people have asked me well why are you going into executive session this this is ab asba has encouraged school boards to go into executive session and go dig and hash and review and all the things is one of my sayings i like to say and so we are going to do that next and then we will return so i move that we move into executive session um in executive 7 pursuant to ars 38-431-038 for the discussion and consideration of
254matters related to school safety operations or school safety plans or programs second any questions or comments all those in favor aye aye motion carries we will return board approves the resolution covid 19 district operations as presented and i am going to read the entire resolution second thank you i will read the resolution and then we can have a conversation higley unified school district number 60 of maricopa county arizona resolution regarding covet 19 district operations whereas the higley unified school district number 60 the district closed schools effective march 16 2020 pursuant to orders from the governor of arizona and the arizona superintendent of public instruction and whereas subsequent orders and legislation called for the closure of schools for the remainder of the 2019 2020 academic year due to the outbreak of covet 19 in arizona and
255whereas the governor's executive orders 2020-18 2020-24 and 2020-33 established certain restrictions on public activities in response to the covid19 outbreak and whereas the governor's executive order 2020 36 the return order was issued outlining requirements for businesses and other arizona entities to assist in mitigating the spread of covet 19 as they reopen whereas executive order 2020-41 2020-2021 school year prior to prioritizing kids in schools during covet 19 was issued on june 24 an executive order 2020-44 protecting public health for students and teachers was issued on june 29 2020 whereas executive order 2020-51 was issued on july 23 2020 outlining the governor's plan for reopening of the schools for the 2020 2021 school year and whereas the governing board wishes to resume educational activities and business operations for the 2020-2021 school year in a manner that is
256consistent with existing executive orders but with recognition that there are many unknowns about future conditions that affect the district's ability to conduct its educational mission and other activities and that the current executive orders may be sub superseded or modified by future executive orders or federal or state laws now therefore be it resolved by the governing board of the higley unified school district number 60 of maricopa county arizona that the governing board hereby directs and or authorizes the district superintendent or his designee to take the following actions to ensure that the district complies with executive order 2020 51 and the provisions of the executive orders 2020-41 and 2020-44 still in effect hang with me folks in conformity with order one of executive order 2020-51 the governing board approves the return to in-person teacher-led classroom instruction beginning
257october 12 2020 or earlier if the arizona department of health services maricopa county health department's public health benchmarks are met the community will receive a one-week return notice when benchmarks are met all benchmarks will be re-evaluated re-evaluated at each scheduled governing board meeting in the conformity with order two of the executive order 20-51 2020-51 the governing board directs and authorizes the district superintendent or his designee to take the following actions ensure that a teacher-led distance learning instruction begins by the first day of the district's instructional calendar submitted to the arizona arizona department of education and submit the district's distance learning plan to the arizona department of education no later than the start date of distance learning instruction or august 14 2020 whichever is earlier in conformity with order three of the executive order 2020-51 the
258governing board directs and authorizes the district superintendent intended or his designee to take the following actions arrange for a free site online learning opportunities and support services for students who need a place to go during the school day beginning on august 17 develop procedures to help ensure that social distancing and other mitigation strategies are implemented implemented for the free on-site programs pursuant to order three dot d of executive order 2051 2020 51 authorized the superintendent to apply for a waiver of the requirement to provide free on-site learning if the county health department in conjunction with the arizona department of health services adhs advises the district to close during a coven 19 outbreak in conformity with order four of executive order 2020-51 the governing board directs and or authorizes the district superintendent or his designee to
259comply with the posting and notification requirements described in order four dot a dash d in conformity with order five of the executive order 2020-51 the governing board directs and or authorizes the stu the district superintendent or his designee to develop recommend and implement a policy relating to face coverings and revise the same as needed to to comport with new guidance or requirements from the adhs and or the centers for disease control and prevention in conformity with order six of executive order 2020-51 the governing board has determined that it may continue to pay its employees during periods of school building closures based upon data and information provided by the superintendent and other sources that affirms that such payments are a are necessary to preserve preserve a properly trained qualified and experienced workforce b serve the public
260purpose of protecting the district's investment in its workforce c are feasible because the district has sufficient revenues to continue such payments and to be eligible for payment district employees must remain committed and available to work during the employees normal work hours during periods of school closures whether the work is to be performed in person or remotely or is alternative work for which the employee is qualified to perform if the employee does not accept an offer to work in their primary role or in an alternative assignment the employee will not be eligible for pay according to the committed and available to work status the governing board authorized number seven that i think i forgot the number was i reading the numbers thank you seven the governing board authorizes the superintendent to work with relevant governmental authorities
261to comply with all laws regulations orders and guidelines designed to prevent the spread of coven 19 as the district resumes its operations and activities the superintendent may implement regulations or protocols to support such compliance number eight the district's regular practices protocols and procedures as set forth in the governing board policies administrative regulations or otherwise may not be reasonable feasible or advisable to implement during the coven 19 outbreak therefore the governing board authorizes the superintendent to temporarily suspend compliance with or implementation of the same as needed to comply with applicable laws and regulations orders and guidelines and to promote the health safety and welfare of the school community and to efficiently and effectively operate district district programs and services during the coven 19 pandemic should the superintendent exercise the discretion authorized by this section the superintendent
262shall provide the governing board with a prompt notice of the actions taken number nine the governing board authorizes the superintendent to execute any further documentation to effectuate this resolution including but not limited to requisite request requ sorry requisite documentation required by the arizona department of education or legal authorities with jurisdiction over the district number 10 to the extent to the extent that any provision in this resolution conflicts with or is superseded by enacted federal or state legislation or local ordinances the district shall comply with those laws or ordinances this resolution was adopted and properly noticed meeting of the governing board on august 8 2020. the governing board hereby authorizes the governing board president to sign this resolution on behalf of the governing board comments questions concerns president taylor yes mrs reese so first i want
263to start off by saying i apologize to anyone who took my comments at the last board meeting is not supporting teachers or thinking they're doing a bad job that was the furthest from the intent of that comment i think teachers are working so much harder for so much less time interacting with their students i think teachers are doing great with the situation they've been handed but i will stand by my comments that rel the remote learning method is not effective everything is emotionally charged right now because our worlds have been turned upside down and we just want some normalcy and that starts with our kids in school i want to thank everyone for all the emails i've read every single one and understand each and every viewpoint and situation i was able to reply to
264some but we received so many i was not able to reply to all that doesn't mean they were not read or taken into consideration but shame on us for putting education in our kids at the bottom of our priorities we would rather say we we say we would rather be able to go to our gyms rivers bars amusement parks and everything else before our schools open is backwards we should be saying we need to look at our community and see what else we can do and what other sacrifices can be made just so our schools can open first our kids can go to top golf they can go to main event and they do but they can't go to school how backwards is that i know our businesses and economy is extremely important and that
265we need businesses to open i get that as a small business owner it's tough i think we should resume in person school and give our families a choice we know that the best method for most of our children is to learn in person what the state and county has provided us as benchmarks are skewed numbers from what i can tell they include prisons and jails long-term care facilities hospice care assisted living facilities rehab centers and other areas that would not be community spread they don't provide us the number of tests being done in our area with our positivity rates maricopa county is huge and we should not be held to the numbers of the entire county those who are afraid at high risk have high risk family members or just not ready to send their
266kids back on campus also have a choice of online education there is room improvement for improvement for these options yes and i hope we can come up with something that helps all students for a couple a couple months now i have been asking for live online classes that would mirror typical day that they just physically aren't there for our littles adjustments would need to be made i'm not saying no one is going to get sick that's just not possible no matter when we decide to return to school it's still not possible every time we go somewhere we risk catching this virus unfortunately this virus is here to stay what each person's level is safe is is different people say listen to the medical experts but then you have local medical experts who live in our
267community saying it's as safe as it's going to be for our kids to return and those who are saying it's not who do you listen to which medical expert is accurate i don't know it all makes sense and none of it makes sense i am still in support for our teachers to make the choice they have if they're comfortable coming back into the classroom or working with h the hr department to see what we can do to accommodate them and giving our parents the choice for their child if they should send them back to school for traditional in-person learning i will continue to try to support our teachers and provide the resources we can and to keep our heads up love your job love the kids you teach and start each day new thank you
268mrs reese mrs wilson thank you thank you for reading all the 20 20-51s as you were reading them i was sad for you so thank you for that um i've heard from many members of the community like mrs reese's said my stance has always been kids first and it will never change this is an impossible decision and it is hard we are tearing our communities apart there are the in person and the other and i'm sorry i didn't write it down there's the in person and the online and i feel like the battle has begun please be kind whatever decision you make for your family is the right decision please don't be mean to someone else for their decision we have many factors to consider consider today the health data numbers the mental health numbers
269the community and staff data the cost data and all the other data that we've been inundated with for the last 10 days most of us have not slept we've been tossing and turning every night over this decision and how to move forward in our community we want to listen to everyone we've heard everyone i've heard everyone i appreciate all the comments i did not email everyone back but i appreciate them i read them and thank you for all the data that you've given us in that form thank you tobit i i would just like to say um you know we've gotten a great deal of discussion many emails and given a lot of thought a lot of sleepless nights in reference to this but i want history to judge me for by my decision today
270and by what my my judgment is and what my decision is by what is best for teachers and for students in this community that is how i want to be remembered thank you mr witovich mr glover thank you so much well i just i thank you guys are all well spoken i i do hope that we meet meet the benchmarks soon and so i just again for the second time tonight please do the things we know that are effective in helping us get back to uh being a medium person so you know wash your hands often and properly avoid crowds socially distance wear the masks stay home if sick and uh don't go to any house parties or take that trip to lake havasu just and lastly i think um you know be kind to
271one another it has been a rough week it's been i mean i've lost it i just i lost it a few minutes ago so um you know we're all at the end of the day we're all neighbors and uh most of us are in the education business we care about people and so you know you can blame us for whatever decisions or differences of opinions but it's our opinion based on our judgment based on you know the fact that we care about our community and our kids and and public education so that's all thank you mr glover um yes i echo the sentiments of my board members and it's it's a no-win situation and we knew that going into this meeting today that there was there's not a win for education in this decision and
272we did not take it lightly i mean i'm emotional fragile at the moment i'll just be very honest because of what we've been put through over the last several days and we are human and we love our staff and we love our students and we have family members that are teachers and we have our very own kids or our students and so to say that this decision was taken lightly is just not ever going to be true in this community or within this board that i truly have come to respect so again i want to thank um we want to thank our staff we've asked so much for them and i just appreciate everything they're doing and i know it's harder work and more hours than ever before i want to thank our families thank
273you for reaching out to us again we appreciate every email every comment every even if we can't agree on everything we are thankful for you to be a part of our higley family i want to thank our superintendents and our secondary elementary maintenance hr i mean the entire district office i know also has been working around the clock literally on so many things we were just given these benchmarks on thursday it's saturday i mean we are trying to turn things around and get things going the person i will not thank today is our governor i will not thank him for putting any of us in this position today and i'm just going to end with that any other comments all those in favor aye aye those oppose nay motion carries 3-2 thank you and have
274a good evening you