HUSD Governing Board Meeting July 29, 2020 Live Stream

001well good evening i'm going to call this meeting to order dr thomas in roll call good evening i'm going to call this meeting to order dr thomason roll call good evening i'm going to call this meeting to order dr thomason roll call good evening i'm going to call this meeting to order we might take a pause we have a little good evening echo i'm going to call this meeting we might take a pause we have a little good evening president kaler members of the board please let the records show we have all five board members present tonight thank you very much okay we're going to have a moment of silence hopefully followed by the pledge of allegiance i move that we approve the agenda second any questions all those in favor aye aye motion carries

002five 5-0 upcoming events dr thomason superintendents report president kira members of the board we are still in the throes of kovid so there's not a whole lot of exciting things coming up but we do have two board meetings and uh in the month of august on wednesday august 12th we'll have a board meeting right here at 5 00 pm and then on wednesday august 26th we'll also have another board meeting right here at 5 p at 5 pm so with that that is all we have coming up at this time for the month of august thank you for that usually it's a big kickoff to the beginning of the year so it is sad to see okay board comments does anybody have some comments mrs wilson i just want to thank everyone who's emailed us

003in the last few days especially today i have been reading them up until around four o'clock so if you emailed after that i'm sorry but i do want to thank you all because i know you're all watching this board meeting and trying to figure out how we're going to open school also thank you to all of our teachers admin and staff especially those at the district office who did a little different kickoff this year back to school especially darlene who um or mrs ritch who made us awesome shirts and worked on her awesome shirts and but just thank you because i know this isn't the year that we thought it was going to be the kickoff we thought it was going to be so building that plane while we're flying it has really taken part

004so thank you anyone else i agree it was a strange kickoff back to school my kids are doing great had a lot of great things to say about being online so and i have gotten a lot of feedback from social media that i've sent in and also yes we have received a lot of emails today and we are reading them all i promise even if we don't respond to each one of them this afternoon i know we received quite a few so all right we are going to go on to 5.0 i move that we approve the consent agenda items questions comments or concerns this is really i just wanted to briefly go over what we i was able to meet with dr thomas and mr holland um regarding some expensive vouchers and i just

005wanted to kind of go over that real quick with the board i don't know if other board members i know it came to us in questions regarding our renewal of our insurance last april the board approved to go with the mahoney group what was brought to the board was a cost of 904 thousand speaking with mr holland and dr thomason and dr foley today there there was a clerical error in that and the actual cost was 9.45 945 000 and then um there were two additional there were two additional add-ons later in after the board had approved that which ultimately um brought our total cost to just over 999 thousand dollars so the voucher we have that is for a renewal of 1 million 77 000 in all actuality for me it's not as great

006of an increase as it as i thought it was based on what was presented to the board and what we approved back in april but there was two additional add-ons throughout the year um that just came to us in vouchers and the board wasn't made aware specifically of those additional items so for me the increase at after learning this is nominal i was concerned initially and dr thomason dr foley mr holland we discussed that we perhaps need a change in our policy and process there so i know that they've both made notes of that so there will be time for that to come back for the board to discuss what kind of process practice and policy that we would want for the future in that because that was a large increase from what i knew

007and so i was concerned about that but i wanted to share with the rest of the board that that was literally information we just discussed my other question and hopefully dr fowler i know we did send some questions we have vouchers on here for furniture for our student unions you were able to respond and let us know that this is a down payment um i still have the question do we have at all a final cost on what because this still doesn't include this was a down payment it doesn't include the technology piece do we have an idea of what that final cost is president kaler board member or vice president reese so as far as the furniture the requirement was paying half of the cost up front so the there is a finite price

008to the furniture and then in terms of the technology um the price for the technology um so far the quotes have been really really high and so we have not come to an agreement yet on anything that's reasonable and i will bring back to the board a recommendation once we have one that's reasonable to bring back so so the answer is i don't have a price for technology um the prices that we've seen so far are astronomical and so we're trying to find something that's reasonable and we're not there yet okay and i'm sure it is because everybody is trying to get their hands on technology right now um because that's primarily how people can function um i would just like to ask that that if at all possible come before the board with the

009cost estimates with instead of on a voucher so we can have that discussion so we can get more of a well-rounded cost for the changes in our student unions yes and we we've had a quote from troxell a company that we've worked with before and then this week we met with the principals in the architect in an online format with another company called imedia so we should have their quote this week and then we'll at least have two to compare with but but um i'll have that to bring back to the board i'm hopeful hopefully soon thank you thank you mrs reece yes i think that um dr thomason is even talking about bringing back at least an informational item on our mahoney group and so that the entire board can get an update um

010since we did just sign another year contract so i do hope you can do that maybe soon president keeler will make sure we get that on the next board agenda and then bring the mahoney group in and talk about some of the coverages and the policies and costs for those areas thank you and i agree mrs reese we have to have a policy in place that um moving forward and i'm sure that's going to come back to us as well and president taylor one last item on the consent agenda um i'm going to kind of go back to what i said at the last meeting um regarding the amendment to policy dkc because that is in our consent the expense authorization and reimbursement i'm not comfortable with this and kind of looking at what we've

011just learned and what we went through that thing's just coming through on vouchers and after the fact just it just raises a little more concern for me so i i don't have i'm not able to support the the expense authorization and reimbursement at this time thank you any other questions or comments on my board go ahead mr glover thank you president kaler well i don't know are any of you guys else waffling because i can talk about why i think that that this that the reimbursement is is uh is worthwhile i mean we talk about but i think what happens to a lot of teachers is they go and they're spending their own money and they just you know you lose receipts or you just you know you pay with your your phone you just

012don't have the receipts and i think this is just a nice way to do the paperwork ahead of time i think it does save paperwork after the fact but this kind of guarantees that they're not out of pocket they can be they can get this they can probably get it ahead of time before they even travel or know how much they can spend and get reimbursed so i like the idea i think it's good whatever i do believe there's a cap too for each type of trip so it's not like it's just a free-for-all expenditures there is a state statute that we follow for each trip whether where it goes what it entails so i'm i'm comfortable with that too president killer members of the board that is set by the federal government it's the

013federal government reimbursement amounts uh for each state or country or even whichever city you're at that that we follow and that's that's a capped amount for each individual area depending on the cost of living in that area yeah you're not you know you might get one semi nice meal for that amount of money but the rest of the time you're scrumping and save it's it's not much okay all those in favor aye aye aye those oppose nay motion carries 4-1 okay we're moving on to 6.1 and let me scroll down a little bit there curtis i move that the governing board approves a rollover amount of 232 772 to fy2021 for the renovation of williamsfield auditorium second and dr fowler i think you're going to give us a little presentation on this please yes thank

014you president keller members of the board i'm bringing forward this item tonight regarding the ongoing renovation at the wingsfield auditorium it was brought to my attention yesterday that the board was not aware of this project i apologize for that but i'm bringing forward those details tonight and then i'll answer any questions so beginning with the auditorium we've we've had some ongoing discussions there's been issues with auditorium for for many years it does go back to issues related to construction at the campus that i don't need to spend a lot of time on i know the board is well aware of the ongoing issues we've had but most recently this past fall we had some discussions with faculty some key faculty members in administration about some concerns and the need to upgrade make some upgrades at

015the media center or sorry the auditorium at waynesville and so we did reach out to some vendors and um specifically got some quotes on details related to needs in the auditorium and they were really classified into three major areas that would be the lighting the flooring and the curtain replacing the curtains including the cyclorama for those and i wasn't aware of what a cyclorama was before my experience at a school it's the the blank sort of white um kind of canvas that's at the back of the stage and it's very critical to theater operations because they project the light on there and and if you have one that is is in in disrepair um it does it really impacts the ability of what they're able to do in the auditorium and the one at williamsfield

016um over over the years had really um was in bad shape and and one of the lights had left on and it actually had a hole in it and so it was it was really in need of repair and so when when we reached out to these uh different companies and got the quotes um we felt that the the prices were high and a lot of them it was the it was the general contractor that was going to be making some profit in and the decision as a group we talked about was reaching out specifically to vendors that we knew to to get prices for replacement and those came down to for lighting urban energy and i included some pictures um much much of the house lighting at the auditorium in waynesville was not working

017properly and uh was was very inefficient lighting and so they are more than three quarters of the way believe they're just on their last bank of lights in there um and so that that was something that was a critical need and you have some pictures there you can see that that work is is getting close to complete they're just on the last bank of lights that's closest to the stage over the auditorium area so urban energy is a company that we have worked with in the past and felt very comfortable with with them the second is the flooring um the flooring is circa 2010 or sorry 2007 8 when this auditorium was was built and uh it's in need of some refreshing in terms of the floor and that would be replacing that carpet with

018with new carpet and then the polished areas um that exit stage right and stage left as well as the actual stage itself was all part of the scope for wholesale floors again another company that we've had a lot of success with and have worked with in the past and then finally the the the curtains and there's a couple areas in the curtains that um were challenged but one of which um the the fire marshal requires a certain level of of fire retardant uh ability with those curtains and the the curtains that we had were had not been maintained and the fire retardant had exceeded its its useful limited so um costing all that out it was the best just to replace those including the cyclorama which is brand new as well and so that that

019all of those items were done and that work began certainly right around the time as we entered this uh and i wanna and i'm using it certainly tongue-in-cheek the wonderful world of kovid um in that in that process so that work had been started and typically what happens um in terms of rpos when they're issued if the work is not completed during that that season and it's really hard for our department especially because summer is is when we get most of our work done well the fiscal year ends on june the 30th and the new year begins on july 1st and uh there's it's often very difficult to complete projects before june 30th and so typically what happens then a po is issued prior to to the june 30th deadline and then what is paid

020out um is paid out in the previous fiscal year and then those items that aren't completed or rolled over and then paid out in the new year and in the example that's listed there you can see that only the lighting portion was completed part of the lighting portion was completed during the last fiscal year and the remaining lighting is in process and then the flooring well the the curtains were just recently done again that happened this fiscal year so that payout would be coming in this fiscal year and then the flooring was the last thing to occur and that is the last item to happen and so that flooring can't happen until the lighting is complete and so i will answer any questions that the board may have regarding this item president kaler members of

021the board um i'm intimately familiar with this project in a couple of different areas because we did have some life and safety issues within the auditorium for both lighting and for the the curtain that was in the in the building the floor lighting for the theater where the steps go up that was completely out and was not working and uh some of the emergency lighting too in schools uh when you turn all the lights off there should be an emergency lining that's on in one corner of the room some of that was burned out and taken needed to be replaced in in that aspect too so we thought with repairing all the life and safety issues it was time for a nice refresh and upgrade for the auditorium also so we completed everything all at

022once since they were already going to be there for the for the the projects that needed to be taken care of for life and safety it was actually to the point where um the gilbert fire department said that the curtain needed to be removed from the auditorium because of the fire retardant that had not been replaced for so many years and also with the curtain there had been a fire in the auditorium prior and about a foot a foot and a half of that curtain was cut off to to utilize the still the same curtain and save money but it was also not a great opportunity for theater projects and band and orchestra projects that were on the stage too so replacing at the same time just seemed to make sense thank you that just

023i was just about to ask the question that it was my understanding a lot of these repairs were due to safety issues and so thank you for going through all that yes thank you for the clarification dr fowler um and just moving forward i think we've all stated that we'd like to see these before and more in depth prior to them coming in this kind of fashion because it's already been started but thank you for um the clarification and again being safe we all wanna that's you know so important right now so thank you for that president caleb yes go ahead dr fowler and dr thomason because we we did talk about these being safety issues and um i know dr fowler you have worked really hard on getting things on a rolling repair list

024uh will these things now be added to that so that we are looking at that lighting and we're looking at the curtains not at you know both of our auditoriums and not getting to the point where like you said the fire marshal says yeah you can't even have this because it's just not safe are things like this now being looked at and adding to those refreshed lists president keller board member reece yes that that item along with others we're identifying and and um identifying a list of items to to be on a constant refresh piece so we're able to to stand on top of those items so have we looked at our elementary schools and their curtains as well because i know we do have a lot of elementary schools with curtains and if there

025is a fire hazard with high school maybe those elementaries we need to make sure that there's not a fire hazard president keller board member wilson yes um ben b holtz my um our director of maintenance he works very closely with uh with the fire marshals and has it has an and that's part of our preventative maintenance process that we're involved with yearly and so i don't have that information right in front of me right now but i can tell you that he's gone through systematically with each school and uh knows the age and the status of those curtains so i can get a detailed report and include that in an upcoming um superintendent's report if you'd like thank you i just want to make sure that we're not having a fire break out in an

026elementary school and i'm sure you guys do a great job with that but just for some peace of mind that all those curtains are handled i know the fire marshal comes in regularly i make sure that everything is sprayed with all the fire retardant things on all the cloth but i just want to make sure that that's also because i never thought about the curtain i thought about the bulletin boards but i never thought about the curtain thank you any other questions comments or concerns okay all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero six point two i move that the governing board approves the payment of longevity pay for 2020 2021 school year and the amounts listed for years of service totaling 86 500 any questions or comments for mrs martin we're all

027in favor i think of this one so all those in favor aye aye motion carries 5-0 thank you and what everybody's been waiting for this evening the opening the reopening update of our school update of reopening our you could say it all different directions and at this point i'll hand it over to dr foley foley thank you president kaler members of the board we're excited tonight to talk with you about lots of things and so as the powerpoint comes up here we will get started on on almost two sections to this presentation we're gonna we're gonna start off and now that it's up we're gonna start off by saying we are in our third we finished our third day of school unlike any way we've ever started school and we want to start with these

028pictures of some of our beautiful students in their their home learning one of the things that we are really proud of is our families and our students for how hard they are working together to embrace the start of school very differently than any of us have ever experienced we also have some beautiful pictures here of our beautiful teachers who also have been working hard and differently than they ever have and in talking with our tina and june this week our t hea representatives we're we're proud of our collective teacher team and how hard they've worked together with their coaches and their administrators to embrace this differently so we start off by saying we are we have started school and we are are proud of that tonight we're going to talk about there's going to be

029two parts to this presentation we're going to start by doing some updates from our last meeting that pertain to school right now school that's happening right now some questions that we brought forward and are going to address what we're doing and how we're doing that from attendance to athletics we'll talk a little about do enrollment we're also going to talk a little bit about facilities because one of the things that we have spent a lot of time about is curriculum and instruction and we're going to talk about what have we been doing with our buildings and updates from when we first talked with you then we're going to transition over to some updates and we're going to talk about guidance that's come to us from the governor from the executive order last week and we're

030going to talk about some important things we need to come together and understand and work forward moving forward and so tonight we'll go deep into both of those but we're going to start tonight with right now and then transition into next steps and now what so we're going to start with some attendance updates because if you'll recall last week you asked or the last meeting you said so how are we doing this attendance thing so where we've done it now here uh for day three we've got it figured out so we're gonna transition here for a second to talk a little bit about what attendance looks like in elementary and what attendance looks like in secondary right now okay president kaler members of the board cabinet and community we're excited that we've had three days

031of school doesn't feel like it to me i'm missing those kids our teachers are in there working hard they're taking attendance every day there are multiple ways they can account for students participating and attending so within our virtual meetings within teams and canvas and sometimes zoom they are able to use a roll call feature a chat feature sometimes kids are typing here or their name everybody's doing their own little thing parents and students can also email their teachers which counts as attendance when they complete an assignment or assessment that is also recorded is they're here and they're working and then parents can email to verify their kid was working and logging on so one of the great things is these kids can complete work in the evenings if they need to which is helpful for

032our parents that are working so teachers literally can verify kids the following day in elementary so we're looking pretty good our registrars are following up on any kids that haven't shown up but our teachers are on top of it as well so i think it's going well it's a new process so it'll get better you had a chance today in our questions we had provided with you where we were just in the first few days and so you can see that attendance confirmation connection with our students anticipated enrollment has been very very high which is a very positive sign at the secondary level attendance looks a little different president kaler members of the board so when at the secondary level the the ability for a student to be counted present we're taking attendance every period

033and the same rules apply as the elementary does but what we're doing a little bit differently is that at five o'clock every night we're sending out an email to parents if a student was unverified in any one of the different class periods that they were supposed to be at now we understand that kids do this school at any time and the idea is not to say hey why weren't you there it is really a means of communication that says we noticed you weren't there today in order to be accounted present please just respond to us that you have worked and then our registrar's and our attendance people that are able to count them as president if we get that email response so we've been able to automate that system and so that email goes out

034at five o'clock every night and what we do is we ask them to just send us an email we created four different email accounts that literally say you know wf attendance for williamsfield and you know sms attendance and so they can just send an email that verifies that their student has been able to work at any different time during the uh during the day and so that's just a little bit different process we're trying to do that no we're not trying we do that every day at five o'clock from the attendance during that time this would be a great time to mention that it was above 90 for our community members and honestly i was not expecting it that high and i was really impressed with our registrar's and our teachers for getting that number

035dr foley do you know what the actual numbers i know it's above 90 but i don't have that email pulled up okay exactly i'm like i know it was above 90 i think it was even higher than 90. i think we were 98. between 99 to the lowest being 96.6 so you can see here unless i missed a lower number that we have gotten our families and our teachers and students are connecting with each other and we're talking about handfuls of students that we are still making connections with i think it's just important for our community to know that we are educating kids and they are coming because that was a problem in the spring and it seems like they're coming so thank you mr lotzenheiser tell me about how we do this attendance on

036our wednesdays please so on on wednesday because we have open office hours that we are not required to do attendance because we're not having that time where they're meeting directly with their kids so on wednesdays we will not be recording the attendance so the attendance will be monday tuesday thursday friday but we still have 180 days of school so it still counts wednesday counts as a school day it's wednesday still does count so is it like a remote learning kind of attendance how are we sorry no is that how we're wording it i just want to make sure that we're getting those all 180 days in yes and it's called remote learning is the code that we're able to use uh within the system within the synergy system so the next slide is actually an

037example of what this attendance letter looks like this was built before we had the exact emails put into it but the nice part is one email goes out from the district and it includes all four schools so parents can just respond to that from the secondary level so i know you guys had a lot of questions last time about athletics so i'd like to give you an update of where we are in terms of athletics with the governor's announcement last week immediately after that the aia came out this is their twitter post but at the same time this was an announcement that's saying because there was not a change into the start of the in-school day that august 17th is still the first date of practice so they have not changed any of their guidelines

038of going forward so we're going to continue with the plan that we had put in place once again we have a group of the high school athletic directors principals and myself that are monitoring this situation meeting weekly to determine whether we go on to the next stages and moving forward into what it looks like for our athletics and activities and so right now this is a tentative timeline that we are looking at you can see this week we are considered at stage two following the process and procedures that were developed at the beginning of the summer after two weeks we will be moving into a stage three well this would be our second week in stage two so we would move into stage three on next monday and then would be at stage three for

039two weeks and then the week of august 17th when the ai says that resumption of full in-season practices begin that's when we would allow that to happen right now the tentative start date for competitions is the week of september 7th i do want to say there's a caveat the aia has sent out a survey to all schools within the state it's due on the 31st all schools are providing guidance back and we're expecting that aia will breed for providing some other guidance for us we don't know what that guidance will be yet as soon as we get that guidance we will reevaluate and see what happens there's a lot of questions on our seasons being moved back or are we even having seasons a lot of those different questions as of right now they have

040not changed what their stance is if they do change their sans we will resume our committee to look at what our next steps are and we'll be able to communicate that to you once we have that information so who makes the decision in reference to moving from one stage to the next so it's the committee of the group that we have together the athletic directors the principals and myself have been the group that have immediate have met we are using the metrics about what's happening on our campuses and that's actually what the next slide is in terms of taking a look at do we have contact or incidents about what's happening so so are you um looking at the statistics by zip code of our schools that come into our area as far as what

041the what's happening in our community we are getting a daily update on that from with the community as well sure you know what i think that you know as we talk about these things um i just looked today and i looked at our zip codes and the zip codes that come into our schools and as far as the numbers um as of today it's 3538. um reported cases in our school district so um i hope we're watching these numbers and not just okay because this is important this is here okay it's not somebody else's problem it's it's our concern okay please watch yes we will if you take a look at these were the um two different high schools and the number of participants it seems really high because a student who attends all five

042days is counted five times so this is really the daily attendance so we don't have 212 coaches that's i i should say it's sessions and so some of our some of our camps and clinics only went four days some went five days some only went two days but that's just the total numbers you'll see that we did have an incident where do our health screening protocols one student on one of the campuses was sent home and so this is something that we're really working on with our athletic directors and our coaches and being very diligent about it including the taking of temperatures every time that a student comes to a practice or a camp and we're recording that and tracking that through the athletic directors and through the schools can i just ask a quick

043question on that so this was last week correct and we know that with covid that there's a incubation period and things like that so um with the kids returning to school this week how are we following up with the kids that attended these camps to ensure that no one's sick this week so the idea of the camp is almost an ongoing process so the majority of the the students who attended camps this week there is camp this week and so we're continuing to see them all of the time and so it's not like they showed up and then we haven't seen them again this is ongoing and will be until season starts and will be until we're back in place did i understand that question correct i think so so while the these were camps

044and now we've resumed schools but they're still practices and and things happening so these kids are still coming on to our campuses and participating in groups um so can we are you gathering information from one week to the next for comparisons like i said we know that there is an incubation period and and a delay in what we may see in illnesses so um are you each day looking at comparisons to make sure that we're not having any outbreak breaks or are you just looking per day uh we are recording it every day and if there's an incident the athletic directors are contacting myself and a jillian our nurse if that if something happens so that is happening on a day-to-day basis so they're coming in and so we're recording that information and should there

045be any incidences we have our our plan that we follow and notifying the district nurse that we go through if there's any questions or concerns so this is kind of happening on a rolling yes day but not we're not just oh this day this day we are going back and looking like for instance the one who didn't pass the health screening you know that were going back and making sure okay that was i'm throwing things out here that was on thursday that this happened so we really need to be looking at monday and tuesday at the students that perhaps i'm not saying that this one was out because of that but those are indications so that we're looking at monday and tuesday the kids that were in this group were good we're not having anything

046like that so we are looking at that kind of rolling so to ensure that we have that incubation period covered correct and i don't have it in here but we met this morning and we have not had any more incidents from the kids who have been back on campus on monday and tuesday of this week and now that the students that we've had previously in the students that we have even this week these are our first quarter sports these are our athletes most of them these aren't just the camps but they were actually our first quarter athletes that were not formally practicing but doing a camp before the season is that correct when we use the term camp because it happens in the summer cancer clinic even though right now year-round practice is allowed the

047aia doesn't have any restriction on these are actually all of our athletes from not just first quarter but all the quarters i need to touch base with you about middle school athletics our middle schools are part of an organization called the east valley conference the evc is composed of chandler queen creek and higley schools and um there was a vote made not last week the week before that that as an eevc they decided to suspend first quarter athletics given a lot of the different uncertainties that were happening especially with the fact that if they follow the aia schedule by the time they would be able to compete we would have a three-week season and so as a as an evc there was a vote then and that and from that came the suspension so what

048they're currently looking at doing is we understand that those sports are important for those students what is the feasibility of putting those sports and combining them at the same time that we have in the second third and fourth quarters provided we're allowed to be back uh in person and putting those through the evc has not made a decision on that yet but that is an opportunity that we're looking for there are different challenges that come along with that because we know at the middle schools a lot of our coaches coach first quarter second quarter third quarter fourth quarter and so how do we fit them in to make sure we have coaches another issue that we're dealing with is the availability of referees should we have to combine different sports at different times those are

049logistical things but those are things being brought up and then we're considering for our our middle school students i've been seeing across the country a number of schools around the country are changing or moving their fall sports to spring so um are we kind of keeping an eye on what's happening on the national level in reference to this or are we just kind of doing our own thing in arizona here i i think when we take a look at that there's a lot of discussion and different things that are going on in terms of the aia level about what's happening there's different proposals out there uh currently i know one of the proposals is to keep the let me use football in this example keep football but move this beginning of the season to the

050end so there would be different overlap there have been proposals out there floated by other districts that said yes can we move it to the spring and what does that look like a lot of different conversation but honestly no decisions or anything going forward saying this is what we're going to do yet okay another question that you guys had last time was about dual enrollment so i wanted to give you a really really positive update on this i know that we talked about a liaison that's funded by the chandler-gilbert community college and our liaison's name is jasmine mercado and i had the good fortune to meet her last week she came in even though her official start date within higley schools wasn't until the 27th and as you can see from the slide her goals

051is to be that build that relationship with the teachers and the staff on the campuses she will be housed both on williamsfield and higley's campus and so she has an opportunity to serve the entire district and so there's a ways that this liaison is really going to be able to help and be that direct conduit to chandler-gilbert community college and so we're very happy that she's going to be there right off the bat her first goal and progress was to create a canvas page to start opening communication with parents and with students about the processes for dual enrollment and so i'm excited that we have that person in place i think when we take a look at dual enrollment and how that's going to work there's still going to be some questions about what's going

052to be able to be offered online and what is not and jasmine is going to be able to be there to help us navigate some of those situations in terms of allowing students to take it online it is going to boil down to what qualified staff we have and how that's i call it the split how the split happens between the in person and on the and the online but we do have an available resource that will be working with us uh mr craig pearson uh is also the lead at the district who's working with the dual credit and working with jasmine and the high schools to help streamline that process i know from experience one of the hard things as a parent sometimes when you do this enrollment period right here at the beginning

053of the school year making sure that everything is good and then we have communication with our parents and we're excited to have her on board and to help out with dual enrollment will we be seeing an email as a parent will you be seeing an email from her going out or will it just come from the school staff how does that normally work as of right now i believe it's coming from the school school staff until we can truly have that built in and to go forward i know that the enrollment typically starts around august 4th and goes into september so we have about a month where we have kids to be able to enroll and i think that parents want to know these how we can be able to do that and communicate with

054that and i think there's still a lot more questions unfortunately that we can't answer yet but we will be discussing those options thank you president kaler and members of the board so we just wanted to kind of go over where we've started off the new year with obviously very different for us as well we've partnered up with the transportation department working with josh has been very easy going his team has definitely been able to help us provide food we are currently um providing food at all 13 locations so we're at each school we are offering food between the hours of 7am and 1pm for any of the parents or the children to pick up their meals we're also doing 24 different bus stops so that nobody has to cross any major highway to get the

055food we did that based on just overall where students lived according to some of the demographics they had through transportation department the pricing is not free like it used to be so it is definitely a little different than we did the summer program with a summer program everything no matter whether you're a member of the higley school district long as you lived here you could get the food now it is the regular price food so if you qualify for free or reduced or the pay amount is how you're doing it we've definitely seen some drastic numbers changes um we are currently averaging about 100 breakfasts and lunches per day versus the thousands we were seeing over the summer program um if monday was our first day we did 132 lunches 127 breakfast uh yesterday was

05696 lunches and 94 breakfast today was 103 lunches 96 breakfast so a little bit more we know it's going to take some time to get the word back out there we're also trying to figure out what we can do to try to get more food into kids hands we have got some great feedback from the parents who are using the program they're very excited about it we're looking at which bus stops and which schools are handing out more food and for the bus stops we've definitely noticed a big difference i mean of our bus stops two of them account for like 80 of the 24 um for handing out food so there's definitely a little variation and we we're not seeing the as many freezers we were hoping for but as far as we're concerned

057we're just happy that we're able to provide food for everybody that we can at this point um if we saw that we did send out both letters and emails out to all parents josh worked really hard on that as well he added maps with the letters we actually put the closest location whether it was a bus stop or the school in addition for safety reasons we now have added student id cards um so we're scanning a raise id rather than having them do a typically we'd have a keypad this way nobody's touching anything um most the parents and students have been really good about their cards i'd say we're about 70 so that's not bad because it's new for them um but even if they don't have it with it we are able to still

058search their names and things along those lines um there's some technology issues we've been having but we've been working through that they're very good about just writing down the information and making sure we give the food the kid and we'll in the back end will take care of that charge because we're not as worried about that as we are to make sure that they came for the food that they we are serving them the food are we able to hand out applications to those parents for the free and reduced lunch at that time or not is that allowed are we allowed to hand out applications to a parent so yes not allowed it is allowed so there's a couple different things we did that we did include the link on all the mailing we do

059provide it on all the bus routes as well as the schools we have a stack available for them so we had had some questions about that and then we've asked because we've had the transportation people working at all these locations we just told them that they asked any questions about it go ahead and hand them the application and so they've actually had some turned back in at the sites in the bus stop so then they return to us and we move it forward to rebecca cook and stuff does anybody in the room know when those applications are due because it'll be a new fiscal year correct we have that little at the beginning of the year we get to use old last years correct and then we get a new year correct absolutely so last

060year's i believe goes through october 6th it carries through um but as you add on we can always add on to it but anybody who is in the program last year automatically stays in it i believe it's october say it's early even something close would be good so just as a reminder to all our community it is time to maybe you can already start your new application if i'm correct so you can start it and get those turned back in so then we can have you on that program we have some updates on device distributions so president koehler members of the board we're excited to let you know that we've been able to approve as of today devices we are working with the ratio for every two students one device and we would love to

061be one to one but we're not totally there yet we've also been able to hand out 44 hot spots so this has gone up in the past two days in addition um i'm going to give a shout out to chantel perrine who's our district department secretary for ed services and i can't even tell you how many hours she's put in matching requests to students and families working with the sped department to make sure kids with ieps have what they need and even families that kids stay with the mom part of the time dad part of the time she's worked through that to ensure they have the technology they need so we're excited about it and we appreciate your support with all these requests good evening president kaler members of the board my fellow cabinet colleagues

062human resources update so when we were last here i had talked to you in terms of the communication that we had had related to our classified as we were preparing to reopen schools and what that looked like um you know just as we've continued the theme you know things are fluid so when we first type this together to the governor issuing his executive order um and having new information today and then getting some additional information from our various attorney groups that we use ural shumway and gustin rosenfeld from this past monday on the 27th um so i'll talk a little bit more about that in the next slide but i'm proud to say with the collaboration of all of our various administrators both at the sites as well as to the departments we were able

063to reach out to all classified employees prior to the start of the school year and find additional assignments for those who were looking for additional assignments and for those who were okay with waiting and staying until in-person instruction began we were able to record that information and data also i will say we had a few hiccups but a few hiccups is actually not bad considering the number of people we were looking to identify to discuss meet with and find assignments and i'll say that um you know everyone really pulled together and did a lot of great things and making sure that we were able to accommodate those individuals and their various needs not in all situations were we able to fulfill their full fte but we were able to get very close to it if

064we weren't able and in some situations as ben from food services mentioned you know we had a lot of transportation employees helping us with the food service the delivery the purchasing um so instead of having it switch you know in some cases where we had some employees work a couple hours have a break another couple of hours there are some employees who probably got a little bit more than they would typically get for their fte just because we didn't want to change one assignment for one day to four different people so we had to take that into consideration as we were planning out our different shifts and our routes so that was wonderful and then we get the information from the governor on the 23rd last thursday so if we go to the next slide

065before i talk about that i also wanted to bring up information related to the family's first corona's response act in a little bit more detail i think when this first came out last spring and it had an effective date of april first and it goes until december 31st a lot of the emphasis and for lack of a better word focus was related to our classified that were here and that were working and maybe had incidents where they had symptoms or were exposed to individuals with symptoms and so as our individual certified teachers have returned i think that's kind of opened up a broad new component in relation to this i reminded my colleagues late last week that part of the family's first family's first corona virus response act it's a mouthful um ffcra um this

066is the only federal act that we have related to leave that actually keeps employees in a paid status every other act that we have that's come from the federal government is unpaid and employers can utilize or have their employees utilize various vacation time or sick time to keep them in a paid status so this was certainly a shift for us when we got this information last spring and i will say that in relation to the human resources employees particularly our benefits area an individual ms isabel castillo who's doing dual roles as well as our district nurse ms julian fulton has really been able to help this in these areas in making sure that we get the information out to the employees and they know what their options are in terms of whether it relates to

067ffcra or something else that the district offers but a reminder that i want to revisit that i talked to my colleagues about was the fact that in the spring and it continues until the 31st because you know this is federal it doesn't just apply to educational institutions or educational communities this applies to everybody there's a component in there that talks about if your children's schools are not opened or their entities in which you send your children for their child care is closed you can utilize this and get paid leave time it's an expanded family medical leave act fmla and so you can get up to 10 additional weeks actually if you include the first two weeks you get up to 12 weeks for this in the spring individuals who applied for this and wanted this

068particularly had to give your employer information related to proof of your care or your child care institution being closed interestingly enough probably interestingly enough in consulting and talking with our attorneys as well as some department of labor individuals it has actually become more lenient so i as an employee can say i don't believe the options that are out there is the options i want to provide for my child so i can provide you my own written statement to say i don't believe those are acceptable options as a result i want to apply for the ffcra and they can qualify for two-thirds of their pay and i share that because as we were unsure at the time of this whether or not the governor was going to create an executive order i wanted all individuals to

069know the impact of that in terms of what options and flexibility we give our employees in relation to potential remote work particularly our classified as our certified we already gave that option too and knowing that there is an option for those individuals that could get paid and at the time we were looking at approximately 20 25 employees in our classified area that we're looking at this option that number has since reduced i got an update and that number is now about a dozen employees who are interested in this so one thing that we're going to be bringing to you because i give you this history is related to this executive order that the governor passed and the additional information that we received in terms of guidance this past monday as a district we can decide

070if we would like to create a resolution that the board would approve to where we could pay our employees who are available to work and then they would be committed to being available to work and this is different than the spring in the spring when the governor issued hb 2910 that allowed us all to do that and we didn't necessarily have to decide on the option this one gives the district the option and i think it's in the district's best option and something that we would like to do after talking with my various colleagues in cabinet dr foley and dr thomason at the next board meeting offer you a resolution in which we could hopefully get past so we could keep all of our employees in a paid status and it benefits us in multiple

071ways it benefits us in the context of um that will help with unemployment numbers because if we do end up furlowing because it's not likely that we could have these alternative assignments for long periods of time we would be responsible for the unemployment and then we risk individuals leaving us and then it would be hard to then fill these positions when it is time to come back to in-person instruction not knowing when that exactly is going to be so if we have these individuals available to work and give them as much work as possible then hopefully they'll stay with us and be committed to us when the time does come and we continue in terms of that process as well as the fact that in some of these areas it's hard and challenging to find

072individuals to fill these positions for example our transportation and our paraprofessionals in our transportation area you have to have the cdl and we've known in the past that higley has struggled with maintaining tenure for lack of a better word with some of these positions because they could go elsewhere and sometimes get more money but with our successful compensation study that we had that was approved and done this last school year we've seen a lot less rollover and turnover in all of these positions in terms of our custodial our transportation our paraprofessional range so we want to keep that successful momentum going and i know that might be a struggle for some individuals but as i said the other dynamic of it is we have work and we have alternative assignments we just probably can't fulfill

073the full fte on all occasions but we're going to continue to work and continue to be creative in making sure there are other things that we take advantage of doing that maybe we couldn't in a regular academic year because of the business and the rush of everything else that is going on and you'll notice on there on the slide that it also pertains to our preschool area you know as part of this our preschools were not able to start we shared the last time that our preschool teachers were helping with kids club and making sure that for those students that were enrolled in kids club during their live portions of their study that started off this week those teachers could help support them so this is a dynamic for them too not knowing what all

074is going to happen in relation to the executive order and when preschools can start up and more information was given to the preschools in relation to being able to do developmental preschools certainly being able to offer services to our children with disabilities but then also looking at offering them to others because there's a peer modeling that's involved in that so the guidance that we got goes into more depth but those are other impacts and considerations that we have too that we want to take into consideration president taylor miss martens since we're talking about what we've already covered previously i was just wondering if you can try and help um help me understand what communication has been put out to our staff regarding the expectation i know we talked about the flow charts on excuse me

075on if we have positives and staff and things like that what what communication has been put out to our staff on expectations of returning to work and when they can work when they can't work have we done that communication last friday we sent out additional communication to all of our employees letting them know we've been calling it our guidance chart that julian fulton put together when we first started early on quite a few weeks ago and it lists in there in regards to if you have symptoms if you don't have symptoms if you test positive if you don't test positive when you can work when you can't work and then to call us right away and we actually you know in the update that we provided the last time we funneled a lot of the

076communication through our district nurse so there'd be one point of contact particularly as dr thompson had mentioned at the time because she's been the one that has been in contact with the arizona department of health services too and i can confidently sit here and tell you that every week it has changed every week we have sent out new information in relation to the guidelines and the exceptions and what has to be taken into consideration so every week when i'm answering a question i literally have to pull up the sheet in front of me and make sure i have the right week so i give out the right guidance additionally from that we heard from our administrators particularly at the site level this past monday that employees want to hear more in depth beyond their own

077illnesses what would happen if there is a positive case that is not involved with them directly so i had a conversation with dr foley and miss richards earlier today so we had had these um lack of a better word uh checklist for our administrators and so we actually are now actually going to provide that to our administrators to provide to our employees and we just had to update it and make sure that it had the most recent guidance and part of my hesitation i will be transparent that we didn't hand it out beforehand is because it has changed weekly and making sure people stay up to date up to date and so we felt in terms of the administrators they were the best ones to operate with those checklists and have that information readily available

078but they're concerned and feeling as though their employees need more information so we are going to provide that if i just got the updated sheets probably 30 minutes before this board meeting so we'll provide that if not later tonight tomorrow or friday i did think about what day of the week it was there for a second i'd just like to share with you maricopa community college has a wonderful manual for their employees and it's like everything that you as reese just said the first page says if you have a report of a positive and it's an intense shows and so you might want to take a look at their manual it's online and i think it's important for our staff to have this online for them to refer back to so just absolutely no thank

079you mr rutovich make sure to take a look at that and see how that could apply for us so thank you for that information ms martins there's a slight concern out there that they're i don't know if it's misinformation miscommunication that staff members have been told if you're sick you come to work until you have a positive and i'm like i do not want you at work if you are ill in any fashion because we have a waiting period um on test results and things like that so um multiple multiple multiple teachers and staff communicated that to me today and so that's why i'm asking like what has been out there and what have we communicated to staff directly what has been communicated to administration because i know anyone sitting in this room anyone in

080any of our schools would not be okay and that would not be acceptable for us to say come to work sick and it's i think everyone here mr glover can agree we actually have to reiterate to teachers do not come to work when you're sick because it is inherent in a teacher like i can get through the day so when we return to in person you know they're like oh i'm not feeling good i can get through the day that we have to reiterate do not do not do not you know and so i'm really concerned that this information is out there somehow some way coming from administration from site um site admission in the administration and staff meetings in um group meetings and chair meetings so can we make sure that the information on

081these flowcharts mr witovich said you know things like that can we make sure that this comes from the district office to all of our staff and um make sure that that's being addressed i i find that very concerning that anyone would think that that's okay um i know there's lots of staff members who are very concerned and upset that that would be our expectation and i reiterated that would not be okay that would not be our expectation and i can have a follow-up conversation with you guys but we need to make sure as we've talked about before that the information coming to our teachers our staff all of our sites is very clear and concise and cannot be misunderstood in any way shape or form so with with those checkpoints with that checklist with with

082all of that if we can make sure that we try and get this out and i i totally understand we have daily updates sometimes twice a day i mean let's just be real some things can change from the morning to the afternoon and i know that there's hesitation to communicate in that aspect but i think when it comes to things like this and again i think our our community our staff and our teachers will all know that things can change and make sure you have a numbering system that hey did you check version 20.5 i mean because it can literally be that but i think when we tend not to communicate at all then things can be i don't want to say made up because that's not what i'm trying to say but someone may

083perhaps use their own thought process and communicate what may make sense to them which may not be reflective of our district no thank you vice president reece i'm if you didn't notice i had a look of very concerned surprise because we have sent people home even when they just had a headache so i'm really surprised that there's a perception that individuals are to come to work when they're sick because and i'll certainly look to my colleagues but i feel as though we have reiterated on numerous times if you're sick at all you stay home one thing mr rotovision mentioned is that what we have been doing is every time things have been updating we have updated our faqs which are housed in our intranet so you do have to log in but it's behind the

084scenes big on our staff web page you go to the staff link you log in and all of the information has been there with their respective pages so we'll make sure to communicate that out too that if they can't find the email that they reference back to those pages within visions uh it's a platform in blackboard too in that larger perspective because that is concerning um you know a couple weeks ago cdc said as long as you have one symptom you stay home you know before it was multiple symptoms now it's one symptom and so you know every time that i've been involved or i've heard and i've had almost daily updates and touch bases with uh miss fulton you know we've talked about what's been going on what the cases are and people that

085have gone home just you know for a headache because that's one of the symptoms that's listed or um you know if somebody's had another component where they had a new loss of smell for that day we've sent them home so the perception that you're providing i would like to seek some additional clarification because i i'm uh at a loss to where that perception would have come from um and i don't know if any of my colleagues can call president are members of the board too the information is is definitely concerning i'm not sure exactly where that's coming from but i think we need to follow up on that it's even part of our login process every time someone logs into their computer we have the the checklist there if you have any of these symptoms

086please do not come to work please stay home and please contact your supervisor so in every aspect of the word for any individual that logs into a computer on a regular basis they should be able to read that and understand that this is this is no joke if you have any of the symptoms the police don't come to work so the information is concerning and i will follow up yes separately after this meeting with you because i agree um that that has always been our our stance but as you said with these checklists and and the flow charts you know i just want to make sure our communication out there is very clear and concise and so i will follow up but i was very concerned by that and i know the hours we have

087spent in this board meeting or in this board room and the hours you guys have spent that was not at all what was being communicated through this forum so um but i i wanted to make sure because that's concerning to me and i know i don't want people coming to work like that you know if they're ill they're ill and like i said for teachers that's a it's a new mindset because it's i can get through the day and it's we don't want you to get through the day feeling bad if you're sick you need to stay home so i'll follow up separately with you well i just had our question is this the end of the presentation to reference the human resources aspect or are we going to have some conversations in reference to

088um on-site discussion with staff this is the component for the human resources as part of my update i was not planning in regards to on-site communication with staff i do know um you know through last week a lot of the administrators remotely and maybe sometimes in some small in-person groups did have their kick-off meetings with their teams and the employees on their sites to talk about expectations to talk about processes and procedures but i've not i've not received any concerns so if there's any particular concern mr tovic that yes i do and i think um mrs reese brought it right up up front in reference to there needs to be some type of manual some type of document because we're having one school saying this one school's having a meeting another school's not having a

089meeting uh one school the teachers are asking well you know i have some concerns oh and and they're getting responses like well we don't know the answer to this so so like they're at a loss out here i mean it's it's it's like nobody is is bringing everything together for them to look at and said you know what if if i have some concerns that i do want to continue with online teaching this is what i do they're getting answers from their their administrators we don't know what to do we don't know what the process is and you know so i mean somebody needs to bring this together um from district so so we're all saying the same things at each one of our schools because i'll tell you right now it's not happening and

090your staff out here are very frustrated um they're concerned because they're not getting the same information like i said you're having a variety of meetings out there and they're not getting the same answers so like what mrs reese says just in reference to this this needs to be done now because you're having meetings uh this week with the staff and i don't know what they're going to discuss but we're not having the same answers here so so certainly mr rotolo yeah i do know that in terms of our online component um we have not figured out all the details there and there's other dynamics with that we've been communicating that with our principals on our site administrators again i'm referencing the meeting that we had just this past monday in regards to the higley online

091academy the processes related to that so until we get some of those dynamics set up but i don't want to speak um or step on any toes from my colleagues here but we have not identified completely who all is going to go online what we did communicate prior to the start of this year and what we had communicated in our last meeting was that everybody was going remote and once we identify what the numbers look like for the higley online academy or higley virtual academy then we would be able to decipher other additional needs that we need for online and we're still identifying and working with mr holland in regards to budget what we can afford how we look at that ftes what would that look like at the secondary level versus what would that

092look like at the elementary level so there is still some processing that we have to figure out there you know i'll certainly work with michael pardon my colleagues to make sure that we're communicating that well to our administrators and making sure they're asking the questions so they can communicate some of those items they're the ones that are the first touch for a majority of our employees and they should be the ones that are the first touch for our employees and then coming to us afterwards but you've brought up some concerns that we'll definitely make sure that we look at to an address in the bigger picture for sure thank you thank you just real quick one more hr question sorry yes i know poor miss martens right now um has there been any discussion that

093we have accessibility to testing for our staff i i know that there's a huge liability issue especially when you get into students things like that but um i know they're supposed to have backlogs done but we have seen the length of time for receiving test results and i know for me for my policy as if my staff members have had the need to be tested for whatever reason multiple symptoms direct positive exposure whatever the reason being is that they may not return until i have a test result even if they're feeling better that i still need a test result because they were tested is there any conversation i know obviously in times like this new opportunities come up there's places that will come do on-site testing have labs things like that as well as test

094kits and i know dr thomason and i had talked about one um that could essentially be self-administered if you will um can't verify the accuracy of that or anything but has there been some conversation that as we move forward because testing's not going to go away that's going to be around a long time just the same as kovid's going to be around a long time has there been some discussion to have on-site testing vice president reece we did look at dr thomason provided me with the flyer that you had provided him and we did take a look at that and as you said we questioned the validity of it if that was something that could be done especially because as we look in the news and what we hear not only from the news but

095what we've heard from governor ducing his press releases and press conferences as well as our weekly call with the arizona department of health services is that there's a shortage of tests and you are correct we've had some employees who've gotten tested and they're told that they're not going to get the results for two weeks and then their for lack of a better word incubation period has really surpassed and so according to the guidance they can come back because they've already waited 14 days since the um onset of their symptoms and they still haven't received their test results back so there's that dynamic in relation to that um i'll say that we have to my knowledge not looked at anything else other than what you had provided dr thomason but we can look into that i'll

096be honest and say that i think it's going to be hard to do given the shortage that's out there because some of our employees what we're hearing back at when they're having symptoms and they're going to see and their doctor and or if they've wanted to go to urgent care some of them have received information that they will not get tested unless they get a note from their medical care provider who says that they need to be tested they're just saying wait it out and others are saying that higher priorities so depending on the nature and severity of your symptoms they'll allow you to get tested or they won't allow you to get tested you know and one thing that miss fulton and i discussed i don't believe it was last week i believe it

097was the week before was that we had an employee that went to a site and they said you know we're not willing to give you another test you know and this was when the guidance was you had to have two tests in a row negative 24 hours apart and they said we're not giving you another test because it's going to still be in your system so there's no point to give it to you and then you're still going to test positive and so then they came back to us and challenged us which was very frustrating for us because all the guidance said you had to have two negative tests in a row to be able to come back to work so then in conversations with the arizona department of health services they then ended up

098changing their guidance in regards to when you could come back so um it has been a you know going back to that coveted roller coaster comment i made last week it has been a roller coaster we can certainly look into that and more i'll work with our district nurse so then to see if there's anything she's hearing we are very fortunate that between our district nurse chandler's district nurse and gilbert public schools district nurse arizona department of health services has relied on them quite a bit in regards to conversations consulting with them and having them draft work you know they did share we may not use your work but they have worked together to draft and they've been utilizing each other very well in terms of the collaboration and discussing what's happening at your sites

099how are you doing this is this what you're hearing this is what i just heard so that's been helpful for her to have a support system through this roller coaster too yeah maybe it's just something we can look into and through like you just said chandler gilbert queen creek um that there there are independent companies out there that can do it not beyond what i provided there's other independent companies and and things like that we already realized we're gonna run into a sub shortage and um we want obviously them to be well when they come to to work but if they are well but we're waiting on results that could run into some issues and and things like that and so perhaps there's things out there in checking with our district nurse and department of

100health services may obviously be a good option but maybe that's something that we can look at with multiple districts for services just for school employees certainly and we'll look at the cost and the dynamics of that too thank you i flipped ahead for a second from to this hosd mitigation plan because i think this is something that will be a tool that addresses the very thing we were just talking about the issue of communication all being in one same place and and bourbon botovich to your point about in a handbook one of the things that came out this week in the executive order that we're going to be talking about a little bit later is this idea of a requirement of a cdc cdc-aligned mitigation plan every and and again currently the ade is in

101the process of giving us a template from that for that for every district and it's kind of built on their pandemic preparation document that came out in march but one of the things we did in hindley that we started this last week we started on friday when we read through the governor's orders we went to the cdc document and took that version as an outline for us to start our own mitigation plan which compiles if you will answers to what do we do when we get sick what is our process where you know yes we have some of that information and faqs yes we have some of those information individual documents but it pulls it all into one document of the mitigation plan this is still in draft form but this will be one of

102the things that we have to have as a one of our pieces and you know we're going to talk a little bit later about the governor's executive order with additional benchmarks one of the things that every institution has to have are these a mitigation plan that what works through these things and i think that this will be one of the things that will really help with our communication and our documentation that we're building and putting together with links where we can continue to update it so you don't have to go looking through your faqs or forms that you'll go to that part in the mitigation plan so again this is in draft form we've already started compiling all these things when we get the official template we'll put it in that format but we use

103the cdc's guidance to start compiling that and i think that'll be helpful so this may be one of the things you'll see the draft of this obviously this would be an essential component that we would have as part of any communication for returning but includes all these processes and would help clarify that so i think this is one of the things coming and that we're working on and have a draft for that we can share with you even a board report to begin it is still um we're going to have more components added to this absolutely necessary but this mitigation plan is a big piece that's part of what we have to have as a district that kind of came out in that executive order as well so when we talk about that mitigation plan

104also includes what do facilities look like because again we've talked very heavily about curriculum instruction work what does the work look like right now transitioning into what do facilities look like what are some improvements or updates have we had since we first talked with you about preparing facilities and so dr fowler is going to give a few updates on some progress things and then we're going to transition into so now what president keller members of the board just wanted to update you on some of the things from the support services area um certainly this is our motto all the time but um it's heightened in the uh coveted environment that we're in um cleanliness and safety of our campus campuses of utmost importance and we want to provide the safest environments possible for staff and

105students this summer we have we have had additional time to to prepare our facilities and uh our staff has been engaged in in in full deep cleaning activities which is typical district-wide during the summer we just had some extra time this year to complete that in addition each summer and throughout the year our our staff performs preventative maintenance and that has been done and continues to happen in the mechanical systems plumbing electrical and air filters that has is always ongoing as a board you may recall approving an rfp for water treatment services the company that was successful in that it's called vantage and that's for all school districts um that's the closed water loop the water that feeds our hvac systems and so think of the the air that you breathe that's converted from that

106water that system that's a closed loop is being treated now by this company that's going to increase the efficiency and the quality of that that water which makes our air cleaner also in looking at what we currently have and making some improvements that that aid in in the air that we breathe um our standard air filter the merv is the term used and to show the level of of filter and our typical filter has been a merv 11 a merv 8 and we're transitioning the higher the number the better so we're transitioning to the merv 11 filter and we'll continue to value evaluate that but that's an enhanced filter to provide cleaner air throughout our district question i was doing i looked at the merv and i see we're on merv 8 presently right now

107and i see we're moving to merv 11. why didn't we go higher up to like the 12 or 13 there was additional things on that would take care of things i looking at the 13 it's a whole doubles almost is in reference to that the other question i have as you're talking about these i mean we're putting these filters in who's going to be changing these filters so we we have our own hvc staff that engage in filter changing throughout the district as well as the platform and at each campus are responsible as well and typically the cycle is once a quarter at the very at the or at the very least three times a year the filters are changed the difference between the merv 8 filter and the mirv 11 filter the cost is

108about about double and moving from an 8 to a 13 the the cost is about four times the cost and so we felt it more prudent and reasonable working within the limited budget that we have is to transition this year from an eight to an eleven considering that most hospitals use a 13 or higher that we would look at that in and try to plan for increasing that in the future but we thought going part of the way was better than not at all so that is true though the 13 is is more desirable but the cost comparing the 8 and 13 would be about four times the price so we opted to do the 11 for right now so how many filters are at each one of our schools oh i'd have to get

109back to i mean it's it's thousands and thousands of filters okay so so if there's let's just pick one with schools let's make chaperone okay just to pick a school so how many filters would be at chaparral i i can't answer that yes president kaler members of the board um the one where i'm going at with this question is if this we're spending a lot more money going from 8 to 11 which is cost more who's going to be cleaning these and if we're talking a lot of filters we need to have additional staff which brings me to the part perhaps in your next slide that we're only bringing a part-time employee into the building with all this work that needs to be done you're bringing one part-time employee when we're investing in thousands of

110dollars on these filters and i don't know how you're going to change all these filters if we have thousands of filters president kaler members of the board the the filters that that were changing are the same as the filters in your house there is no more extra labor in changing the filters than there were in the past they are a higher more extensive filter but the actual changing of the filter is the same thing we've done over the last several years i can tell you from when i was in dr fowler's position six years ago that we were spending about a hundred thousand dollars on filters and now going from an eight to eleven that would at least have doubled by then um to two hundred thousand and then if we go to a merv

111for 13 according to the information that dr fowler just shared that'd be four hundred thousand dollars but the actual changing of the filters uh mr wittovich is the same thing that you do at your home it's the same thing we've always been doing with the merv 8 filters so there's no extra labor cost in that but it's something that needs to be stayed upon regularly and continue to be done on a regular basis so so the person changing the filter i just got to refresh my memory here is also going to be the person the maintenance person in the school correct is that who's changing i would i would defer to dr fowler on that we had a different program back when i was in a position so who's changing the filter on a site-by-site

112basis i'll be the plant foreman so the plan on site yes this is an addition to all the cleaning that we're having them do now as well correct well the platform has numbers of responsibilities but you know they support on the cleaning side as well but their main job is facilities not custodial also as it relates to district-wide preventative maintenance and this is a recommendation that we've completed as well through district sites and through through all of our campuses is just a flush of the water systems and this is something that is required anytime during the summer when you go long periods of time without running the water and just a flush to clean those systems out in addition you'll notice plexiglas has been installed in the front office spaces and we're continuing to deploy

113those at each site specifically we are running into some issues with plexiglass and i can draw the um same analogy as how toilet paper was in march plexiglas is now and so we're working hard to procure more plexiglass we have been able to supply that at all of our front offices and we're looking to install more throughout campuses as that becomes available can we make sure when the plexiglas is installed that it's high enough because i've heard from some staff that it's kind of low and people are able to over it so if we could just yes yes i know that there's probably some plexiglass shortage as you mentioned then that's probably why we cut it that way but maybe just that might be a thought to make sure that it's tall enough for the

114tall people i don't have that issue but for other people they may have that issue yes president killer i board member wilson yes that that those points are well taken so there's just a picture of the bridges for example you can see it's harder with the reflection but on both windows there there's the plexiglas that's hanging down down there and we're looking um you'll find that that's at the very least at each campus at this point in time also i want to just bring a little bit of information regarding a company called mckinstry the district reached out to mckinstry and there are an outside agency that has been providing support for maintaining buildings and and keeping facilities comfortable and healthy over the years they performed a free evaluation for our district in the area of

115indoor air quality building controls occupant engagement um also looking at our mechanical systems and our plumbing and and we received um a detailed report from them on july the 6th there and i just pulled a few highlights from from their report that higley is ahead of the curve when it comes to its readiness for student and faculty to return to campuses they also noted our upgraded air efficiency in our operation of increasing our ventilation is in addition to the improved environment and the equipment um that was all in action that they saw when they came out to investigate our sites and they also noted that our staff was busy changing air filters cleaning equipment and performing the maintenance preventive maintenance operations that i referenced earlier and that they felt that we were on schedule to

116have the education and support facilities ready for occupancy now mckinstry did provide a report with some additional recommendations i've just highlighted a few of those one would be turning off the ceiling fans the disabling of automatic air controls that is based on co2 levels they also added the assessment of projected occupancies which would allow us to adjust the air handler units to make sure that we're addressing the minimum amounts and that those are maintained they also suggested the ability to increase humidification in large spaces and also the opportunity for them to work with us in terms of self-funded energy efficiency improvements now with their recommendations obviously some of those are things we can do ourselves but they did provide me an extensive list and a cost associated with that to work with their company and

117so i have those documents and i'm bringing them back at a cabinet level to discuss and will certainly bring recommendations um at a future time for the board to consider so in reference to the projected occupancy are we going with the occupancy that we have now per classroom i mean we're where is this discussion going on the occupancy to if school opens up how are we going to determine the occupancy for these classrooms in reference to the recommendation for the air control well president keeler mr mitovic um our we do have a a very um already high technologically based air control system and there's already preset temperatures uh in each of the classrooms and they're based on occupancy and so the the load in that particular space has a sensor and when the when when

118there's either movement or temperature that causes that center to kick in and that um so that load depends on how many people are in the classroom and so it it does not kick on as quickly if there's only one person in the classroom but but this company would would also work with us to review each of those to make sure that they're working efficiently efficiently many years back we worked with climatetech and installed those sensors in all of our rooms and so we are able to to get a pretty good sense of how efficient those are but um just in terms of of their process they would come and and kind of walk us through each individual one so to answer your question um the the rooms are based on temperature and sensor controlled and

119so a room that doesn't have the temperature rise by bodies and or movement um those units won't kick in um and they would kick in then obviously when students return with that increased activity and then also the temperature in the room with the ventilation system with that being said is each room in our school independent or is there three classrooms tied into one um i'd have to come back on that i think in most cases the rooms um operate independently but there may be some cases where where they're they're shared spaces and so i'd have to go kind of facility by facility but for the most part rooms operate independently okay i'd like you to let the board know and reference to it to see what sure numbers are in reference to what how many

120rooms in our schools are being shared in reference to the uh the air quality in each of the classrooms i will research that and have a response for you in a superintendent's report update just a quick question dr fowler where are their ceiling fans that's a great question i'm not sure to my recollection if i can tell you but that was part of the recommendation so if there was any out there that they were recommending that we don't use them gotcha cause i was like i'm trying to recall any room or any place i've been in the district that there were ceiling fans and it could be that was one of their boilerplate recommendations and so it may be a moot point also i wanted to share share a pilot project that we have begun

121at two of our schools the global plasma solutions is um it's a gps technology and it generates ions that helps to in effect clean the air in those spaces and we have that deployed right now at two of our schools and we're waiting back for some data to show the benefits of this um once i have that i'm gonna be bringing that back to share as well yeah so dr oh sorry go ahead president kayla go ahead well just is it piloting in the offices i mean obviously we don't have students so how are we going to so well the units the units themselves we've we've ordered the the sensor to test the air and so we've deployed them in in five different spaces in both of these campuses the front office the nurses office

122the cafeteria the gymnasium and the media center and so we're going to take some readings in those schools and then compare them on sister campuses with similar makeup and and try to show some differences there and if we're able to show what the technology is saying that it does then we're we'll bring those results back and make recommendations for other campuses yeah i just i'm like anytime there's a crisis in america in the world there's these opportunists and profiteers that come on i'm like super skeptical of this particular thing so i whatever results you have i'm fascinated to find out what this particular one actually does or has any benefit yes and so we're we're not um we're being skeptical in terms of we want to see that it does deliver what they say it

123delivers so that's why it's a pilot and um you know if if um they're they are doing what they say they will be doing you'll be hearing that from me and well i'll report either way but but um we'll bring that back when we have that data also want to talk talk someone i know mr tobich has referred to it already improved sanitation throughout sanitization throughout the campus and we have we have begun hiring and in many cases filled um currently hiring three 13 part-time custodians uh to provide an increased school-wide disinfecting um as an additional defense against the copa virus really having that that person specifically be responding to high touch areas our initial staffing looked at 5.5 hours per site um i i have had discussions and i'm working with with cabinet to

124recommend possibly increasing that to full time at the very least at the secondary campuses just by the sure size of those facilities um as we work through that and so any changes with that certainly will bring that back to the board but um the idea is this person would enter as a particular campus the front office area and they would sanitize all of the high-touch areas and then make their way throughout that building or that campus uh door handles restrooms and and do that as many times as they can throughout the day also understanding that that particular campus would need support for sanitizing during the lunch hour during the cafeteria and possibly some some areas outside as well i've been traveling to schools these last few days and last week identifying particular concerns and needs

125at those sites as well and working with each site principal because each campus is different and has specific needs but the idea is that that high-touch person would have clear clear direction and uh and and work at being very visible but working their way through the campus and and trying to sanitize as many times as reasonable throughout the day and i'm still working on that with each individual site to have that and when i have those details i'll bring that back in in a report or certainly share that with with everybody uh and i don't i i don't want to let this moment pass uh i know your you guys are probably aware but um the idea and the notion that we would pay somebody part time to be on the very front lines and

126not give them health care uh i if if i had my way i would say hire like five full time they'll be around but when you have somebody who's working like 20 hours a week they probably have a job somewhere else because you can't live in gilbert on 20 hours a week at you know 12 bucks an hour so you know our to you know no note to our teachers you know sometimes when we give you raises these are all sacrifices that we have to make in a budget and uh you know if it were me and you asked me you know this past year okay you don't get a five percent raise would you take a 4.75 or 4.5 so that every campus could have another full-time custodian or secondaries could even have two

127i would say yes so i'm not going to be around for the budget next year but maybe that's something that you could discuss with uh with our with our staff um because our custom i mean i someday i think america's gonna look back and regret the fact that we got 18 year old kids feeding us and cleaning up after us or people for 12 an hour and uh and i think i think higley could do better i really do and i hope that we do so full-time i i would be more in favor of that anyway and they'll stick around more as well i think i agree with mr glover on that and that's been my questions for the last couple board meetings was the increase in staffing of all the things we are asking

128to maintain these buildings to make sure our staff and our students are healthy and to bring a person in part-time is ridiculous i mean this this things are not going to get done i mean if we have to walk the walk or talk whatever that saying goes i mean we need to invest in this and get these things cleaned and my question to you is okay you're talking about the doorknobs and things in the hallways what about the classrooms between classes who's who's even looking at that i mean we have you haven't even talked about that so who's going to be cleaning making sure classrooms are picked up in between classes president keeler mr bermudovich i will i'm going to get to that in my presentation as well thank you um and so we've we've

129also made some specific changes to to the daily custodial duties so um honestly you know just like our facilities um and and support services um plan and even our district plan there's not one person that's gonna be able to manage the the issue with rid of the covet it's going to be a team effort and everybody's going to pick up and work together and so on on our campuses we already have maintenance staff and custodial staff and so their duties are also going to change as it relates to addressing this issue and we'll i'll talk further um just an example of some of the high touch areas that we talked about that as a sample that that person um will will work through also certainly with the increased sanitation uh sanitization needs per site we'll

130look at what cleaning is done in the evening and and our focus on on what that looks like as far as the classroom and mrs richtoben response to your question we we have added um additional chemicals per class and this is for each teacher in their classroom a bottle that has the disinfectant again this is provided for teachers for their voluntary use the cdc actually recommends this in in their report per classroom and so that is a peroxide based multi-surface cleaner that doesn't require ppe and can be used and sprayed and would kill the their neural virus in 45 seconds um and you can use paper towel to to wipe it as well you know that that we're providing that per person all that you're expecting the teachers to clean their classroom between classes really

131i'm not expecting teachers the teachers should not be cleaning these classrooms and first of all these chemicals you're going to be spraying chemicals between classes it takes 10 to 15 minutes for these chemicals to dry for cripes sake so so classes in high school are what five minutes so these children are going to be walking into these classrooms with chemical sprays so so mr teachers it's not the teacher's responsibilities to clean these classrooms between it is not is there any training for this are we training the teachers this is how you're going to spray this is how you're going to wipe i don't see any manuals there's nothing been presented on this this is this is ridiculous remember president keller warburtovich the the cleaner for the teachers classroom is provided for their use voluntarily um

132as you know you'll know right now each teacher's classroom typically when the back to school time comes teachers request wipes and sanitizer a lot of the cleaning supplies many teachers already have cleaning supplies and and use them already this is an addition little thing that we're providing for each teacher um are we requiring it no it's provided for them voluntarily in terms of expectations to clean between each class period i agree that's probably not realistic so for teachers maybe it's their prep hour maybe it's um after before or after or just before recess or during their lunch period again this is something else that we're providing each of these classrooms are going to be completely sanitized each night with the new protocols and with the people that we've hired but this was just an additional

133item that we're providing for teachers if they choose to use that they can but we're not requiring them or saying that they have to dr fowler is kind of what i envision and i hear you mr rotovic um but i also feel my opinion is that we're all responsible i mean everyone's responsible so um it is our everyone's job who's on that campus to keep our campus clean and safe and i i'm not at all pleased with the time we're in but how many i'm assuming there'll be multiple because honestly what i envision on a campus is a security guard walking around and having us one of these bottles and a cloth or napkins with them and that anywhere they go any opportunity they have that they're spraying this and anyone who's walking the campus

134custodian or not is going to have this and that that's just going to be on the forefront of their mind oh here i'm walking by let me spray and wipe this and that's it's not a pleasant thought but it's our world right now um so i'm assuming there's going to be this made available to more than just the classrooms it will be in the office and in the media centers and like i said i envision our security guards as they're going around that they're going to have some type of cleaner with them president keller members of the board even here at the district office now as we utilize our restrooms district office personnel are responsible for spring after they've used the the restrooms it is not a good situation it's not anything that anybody wants

135to be in but i'll be quite honest with you if we don't have extra help and support when two thousand kids at the high school change classes and we better not open that's just the way it has to be because i don't believe without extra help support and everybody kicking in to help out it it is possible we we can't have a custodian or our five custodians clean 80 classrooms in five minutes it's just impossible dr fowler on the previous slide curtis can we go backwards one disinfect all outdoor drinking fountains are we going to shut off i mean i i've noticed that a lot of places closed down the drinking fountains except for the refillable water ones is that are we going to keep them all open president kaler the direction on that has

136been mixed and i've seen districts going either direction so we will sanitize those um as frequently as we can and certainly we're encouraging students to bring their own water if i'm directed to do so we can shut those down as well but at this point um i haven't you know it's it's it's a mixed a mixed direction there certainly those that have the refillable water bottles we're encouraging that and we will disinfect those multiple times a day um but but i'll i'll certainly take direction if if i'm directed to do that we can certainly make that change but but i've seen it go both ways so so that that decision was still open at this point doesn't all of our campuses have the water available as well most of them do yes most of them

137do if from my understanding based and i know that we're not in normal times but based on the arizona department of health and regulations that we have to have drinking water accessible so unless we have the the way for them to refill it i don't think legally in arizona we can turn those off the other like when you walk into lowe's and they have them all covered they're allowed to do that but schools have to by law have water available for their students so i mean obviously everyone bring your own hopefully everyone's very well aware of that and want to bring their own but i don't think we can turn off the drinking fountains legally and then just want to touch a little bit on custodial training um we do have ongoing training provided by

138waxy uh recently we had a training for our plant foreman and our night leads with the custodians and typically a campus the the plant foreman and nightly really kind of control what is happening and communicate what's going on during the day and during the night um this was just a refresher for all of our people that are we're currently employed now with the new employees that we've hired we're going to continue to to improve that training and working whether that's needed on a site-by-site basis or certainly bring back training and if his staff need it as well as it relates to the chemicals that we're using also i wanted to just touch on the kova 19 critical response team we have we have employed this group a number of times and it's a group of

139five employees within my department that have been trained and have the ability to use the electrostatic sprayers if you've seen those that are out there and actually i'll show the next slide has a picture of that there's also a backpack version we're able to go into a facility and completely sanitize uh these facilities using this special disinfectant and we've been been able to to really accomplish this task in about an hour and one of the things that i wanted to share as well is we've been able to purchase one of these for each campus as well so each campus has the ability to utilize these to help with sanitizing be that the during the lunch hours the tables um or other high-touch areas and or also outsole in the playground between recesses and those types

140of things and so uh just to let the board know that we have um when we've had us as a suspected case or the potential of any infection we've deployed this team um a few times and been able to um effectively go and completely sanitize area so that that is wanted to bring that to your attention as well and that uses the pure tabs which um you you put in the in the machine and use it and it's very seamless um josh crosby amazing director of transportation actually has had this piece of equipment for a while and it was using it during cold and flu season in the past and now they actually have a number of these and although we don't have a transportation update right now for you if you remember in our

141last presentation we talked about transportation and this is actually what they're using to sanitize the buses as well as some other chemical that they're using to sanitize after every bus run the buses are sanitized and so uh so um that that is important for the board to know as well with the same gun or like the same it's not a gun but um sorry i'm like oh no that's not the word i meant to say no the sanitizer the electrostatic sprayers we don't have enough to sanitize every bus every period every day i mean every week the buses would be used by that but there's a a spray chemical that that disinfects and dries within a few minutes that they use on each of the buses okay between routes and the drivers that's part of

142their i didn't know if they're probably 13 more for transportation because i couldn't only imagine that we would need 13 more yeah we'd probably need about 65 of these that's what i had once so yeah we use it on each bus but but more like each week not daily thank you yes and then finally just to update um i do have one question in reference to as i'm listening to this all the chemicals that we're bringing into those buildings um we're talking about a spray we're talking about the teacher cleaning the room we're talking about you know like like my concern is if you're going to be giving all these teachers all these chemicals in the classroom who's going to be modern this so when you've got 30 students in the classroom in first grade

143somebody doesn't get over there to the chemicals and drinks or spills it or something i mean i'm just nervous about all this and now you now and my other nerd that i'm nervous about is all the chemicals i mean we're spraying here with the spray thing here the classroom here again it this is a lot of chemicals we're bringing in with these children and it's just uh i don't know about you i i i hear you mr witovich and then i go but what is our alternative not to clean what and and again like what where where what do we do we cannot not clean president caleb we cannot clean but my thing is i guess there's procedure in place that would make me more comfortable like okay if you're going to have these chemicals

144in the classroom they're to be locked up okay if this is going to be used in this school this is where it's going to be so so if somebody gets a hold of this we have a procedure to know how to address it okay that's that's what i'm like and my other thing too is and i talked with dr foley that secondary is such a beast and so her and i sat even talking like so how does this look changing classes how much time in between each class is it is it the teacher handing out a wipe to each student to wipe down their area and then they go i mean there's so many different options out there and it's um and i understand what you're saying because then within a few minutes there's another

145student coming in sitting in that wet chair i mean it's just so overwhelming and and i and i get your concerns completely president keller members of the board this is also a very heavily discussed topic within the cabinet in group two and and i want to let you know that dr foley and dr fowler and and david and sherry have really discussed this and we are spending extra money and extra funds to make sure that the chemicals that we buy are the ones that don't require ppe are the chemicals and and the supplies that we need that are the least toxic as possible it is costing us more money and they're very very difficult to get a hold of as a matter of fact we were very afraid that we wouldn't have enough spray bottles

146for when school may open back up and those just came in this week because all these things are are very difficult to get a hold of and so you're right mr wittovich it's this is not a perfect situation but i would tell you that i can tell you this team right here is taking a look at everything dr foley has been an absolute rock star and making sure that even though it's not a perfect situation it's the best we can do in the times of covid mr ratovich i i hear you because i'm around kids and we have chemicals and um and i i'm all for we do need to have procedures and i have no doubt waxy could provide those or or easily typed them up but i agree there has to be some

147processes and procedures so that we use them appropriately because if we don't then either it can go really wrong or we're not doing it's not doing what it's intended to do so they do have to be used appropriately but i appreciate this and i'm not big on the chemical thing either but what scares me more is somebody sending or a kid just doing it coming to school with their own something that scares me more like oh maybe they made their own wipes or something and they're coming in and cleaning their own desk but we don't know what that is and um that i'm more afraid of that um and as long as we can reassure our families that we have these items available we are training people we do have manuals to use them correctly

148so that they can do what they're meant to do um if there was a magic wand that could take that we could clean with that had no chemicals and i don't know i i would love that but um i completely agree with you i think there does has there has to be some processes there because otherwise if we don't use them appropriately it may not do what we're intending you know the questions i'm asking you today it's not it's not directed at you okay um what my concern is i'll just be honest with all of you here this evening and who's ever watching out here um i had a parent to ask me a question today they said you know what's really interesting is that um the last stimulus the first and last dimensions we

149got in there that um we're releasing federal prisoners back into the communities and back to their homes on home confinement for their safety okay and yet we're being told to send our children to schools and we're expecting you as educators to figure it out that's what i get upset about here today so how dare we bringing criminals back in and then we're expecting our children to come back into the schools so that's that's my frustration and with that with appearance i have a total yeah at the at the end i have a total rant about this as well so you're not alone sir mr wu tovic you're singing to the choir okay well and i just want to reassure you i guarantee you we literally sat around reading labels of clorox wipes wet ones we

150were looking at what can what can be used that is effective that can be wiped off so that you're not walking into wet and sitting on wet and finding that there are very few options that had that capacity for cleaning that didn't require gloves goggles or would be you know toxic harmful so it has been we hear you and the concern about what is in those chemicals and the long-term effects and having those specs and and knowing only what we know today i hear you and and know that there has been a lot of conversation about what and how um and and and not being happy with the outcome of any of those but the best of the worst that we can got for you right now i just applaud you for what you're doing

151because it's not your job to do this and whoever thought in our lifetime this would happen like this but back again to to where we're thinking you know i just i just you know i'm not comfortable with everything that's happening and i see these criminals coming out and and we want our kids to go in it's just okay president kayla members of the board too i can tell you that this incredible rock star team has also called our neighboring school districts and peers and we are leaps and bounds ahead of them on some of this safety and some of this cleaning processes and that aspect too i mean they've really done an incredible job of vetting the process the ppe the chemicals and and what needs to be done to try to safely bring back

152students as safely as possible when it's safe and just to finish with with my piece um just a credit to our warehouse staff they've been working very very hard and trying to find as much ppe and to stockpile as much as we can reasonably so we're prepared for four things and there's still still some needs but we do have a good supply of a lot of items um also i want to give the print shop credit which also is part of the warehouse for the the uh directional markers and the uh the the circles that you stand on with the logos that we're adding at sites and uh um schools that need signs and the posters for wear a mask and all the things that we're realizing that we need to add um they've just

153been doing a great job with those but also creating them in a way that it promotes school spirit within each of the individual sites and so you get a chance to to to say say well done to the warehouse people they've been they've been doing a great job job as well i was going to say dr fowler there's one uh business that has done really well in covid in that sign making i've never seen so many signs go up so quickly with instructions per the company in the business it's mind-boggling to me so thank you to the print shop just to leave you with a picture kind of sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words so just some visuals of of uh supplies and dr thomason referenced the spray bottles on the right i

154have to admit i was pretty nervous when we're about to deploy and needed the spray bottles to all the classrooms and our order of about 3000 had not shown up yet and but unfortunately that it did come thank you for explaining what the picture on the left is because i looked at it and i couldn't quite figure out what it was and now i know oh it's the markers um i was like what is that those are the peeling sticks so those are the stickers great thank you for explaining trying to promote physical trying to promote physical distancing so president taylor i i want to acknowledge curtis because he designed every one of the school stickers or markers very nice we were just talking that it looked like twister up here but um that's aging

155us so curtis doesn't even know what that game is okay so now let's talk about some executive orders and i think before we start talking about the executive orders and the information that's been given to us today i want us to take a second to acknowledge each and every one of us has received some very very thoughtful very passionate very detailed perspectives on their concerns many oftentimes divergent views on what we should do and how we should do this together i think one of the things i want our our our community here is that we hear you we understand you when you actually understand even when you have equally opposite opinions we can relate with where you're coming from on both sides and i think that one of the challenges that we have together that

156we're going to talk through tonight are some of the executive orders that have come to us and some decisions that have to be made and they're out and the responsibility that we have as a district on making sure safety security happens as we as we implement these executive orders so i want i want people to know that we are hearing them that we understand them and that we want to do the very best by them and so with that i want to go into some of the things that have come to us as things that we have to do and some decisions that we need to interpret together one of the first things that and again the executive order said several things you heard you heard that governor ducey say arizona is open for learning

157you heard things that 180 days are not going away you heard that that the perspective of there's accountability for for learning this year one of the things that came out of the executive order and you heard mom talk a little bit about tonight is the idea that one of the things that they say is it's essential for us to retain our workers and our teachers and our highly qualified people who are amazing and our higley employees are amazing so that we are ready to resume school when it when we are able to do so one of the things that you also heard the governor say was that he was no longer going to be talk we had been talking about a date obviously there had been an order that had closed in-person learning in arizona

158until august 17th we had been hearing as we talked at the last meeting that there would be an announcement of perhaps a moving of that age or information what we heard in that meeting from him was that they were going to allow decisions on a date for resuming a full in-person in on-campus learning to be made at the local level and then in the executive order came some specific dates that we need to be aware of one of the first dates that was shared and the executive order was that that the arizona department of health services has been directed because there had been a lot of of concern about schools if we're going to put this responsibility on on local governing boards to make decisions we need to give them some metrics to make some

159decisions so they have shared that by no later than august 7th we are to receive some recommendations that are from the arizona department of health services to help us use this the executive order says that we shall use that we shall consider these recommendations one of the things specifically i literally feel like i could recite this executive order to you verbatim because i have literally spent this much time with it but what we what it also says is that each school shall have these um mitigation plans like we talked about earlier that are aligned to the cdc prior to opening so that these are things that in addition to your mitigation plan you can and should consider these recommendations that are coming obviously we've been speculating what might these benchmarks include i mean we are

160currently already monitoring our zip codes by a daily basis our own internal data on a daily basis what are the metrics and pieces that all of this is going to be very important to us can i point out that we are given this data on or we'll give this on the seventh and then the date back is the 17th and that includes two weekends so they are giving us five days five work days for our employees to figure out for us to interpret yesterday so i just want to make that very clear that five work days for all of you so just to our community something to think about five days when you start putting this on a calendar one may begin to have heart palpitations just a little bit yeah and president caleb members

161of the board i know this team they'll be working those weekends so one of the other things that was part of this is while we were told that you decide you use these metrics and you decide when you feel that you can safely reopen buildings and and there are districts around the state who have already identified dates um and and many now are now talking about those as well one of the things though that was part of this executive order um is the requirement that if you are to be eligible for the funding and and all of us can acknowledge that that you to be eligible for the funding you are required to begin on even if you deem that the buildings are not ready for everyone to open and even if you are still

162considering your metrics that on the 17th we are obligated to start to provide on-site learning opportunities and support services for students whose families have determined that they want a place or need a place for their student to go during that day and that shall begin on august 17th when we talk about what those services include those are in-person support services that include supervision that happen during the school day and and they refer to two other executive orders in this one they refer to 41 and they refer to 44 which are basically saying that regardless of what your schedule is that you are obligated to offer this monday through friday from your normal school hours as in previous previous years they do indicate and again these are just i'm pulling these these are um summarized from

163the exact executive order bullets the other piece was with that while you can you can adopt policies to mitigate the physical distancing you cannot re it cannot result in refusal to provide it and the only way you cannot have something again the way you cannot have something is if there was deemed by the arizona health department that you needed to close for instance or it was deemed due to an outbreak you can apply for a waiver and you then would not have to offer a site for for families who who needed this now that is from the executive order now udall shumway and dustin rosenfeld have been working together to help support districts on the interpretation of what this means and arizona department of education also is providing some additional guidance to help us understand

164what we that what that means and one of the things that they've said is that it's important to note that these that the offering of this on-site service does not mean the return to regular classroom uh school it can mean uh it would mean that you'd have online learning or remote learning continued that it may or may not be teacher-led that it could include paraprofessional support but in either case however you choose to staff it you need to provide supervision and support for those families who have identified that they are in need of those support services and that starts on the 17th so one of the things ade has also said is that this was intended there's there's two parts what's in the executive order and the interpretation and the intention the department of ed

165is saying that that safe place for students to come is for you know again students who are deemed at risk special education students students or children of essential workers and that again um so while it's saying districts you determine which populations you open you offer it to it's really you can it's not it isn't saying only those populations it could be for anyone who said i i want a place for my student to go for support services so that one piece and we're going to talk a little bit more about the fact that it's important for us to begin to get an idea of regardless of what happens with when we determine when we're going to open for in-person teacher-led instruction we also need to be able to anticipate and find out from our community

166who is planning on taking advantage of that because we need to ensure the safety security and staffing for for our for those students the other piece that was part of this executive order is a an executive order that says we shall as a school district develop and implement a policy to require face coverings or face massacre shield for all staff and students over the age of and this is right out of the executive order that you see here on the thing then it also says that there will be exceptions that there will be um uh breaks those kind of things that are supposed to be embedded in your policy and so this is one of the other we must do it with with ensuring a safe return to school so what that leaves us with

167is discussing some scenarios here so obviously we are a couple things that we now know one we need to determine a date for when when in-person learning can happen there are very important metrics and tool up tool that is supposed to be released to us by the seventh to help us determine if we can meet those metrics that regardless of whether we do or don't open schools or what our metrics are telling us that on the 17th we need to provide some kind of in-person support in that however that might look and that we must wear uh have a mass policy and implement that so again so here's two scenarios if we are able to to determine that we are we are able to open on the 17th and again that decision would be based

168on our our mitigation plans our a guide that's aligned to the center for disease control whatever these metrics are that and again we don't even know to what extent we would be utilizing um and again county and health officials and our own data and resources to determine we are able to do this or or scenario two which is we are not able to or we need more time or and at this point if we aren't able to remote learning would have to continue for all students until we were able to open in-person learning so those are our two scenarios one of the things that we need to figure out and one of the things we're hearing from to be to to do to do this well and to do this right as a district we

169need time to figure out how to match and marry and understand what parents want for their child and and our staffing of that we've received communication from parents saying i am not ready to make this decision and i completely understand why they are not ready to make this decision because they too want to look at these metrics one of the things that a lot of other districts did that we decided to wait until we had a better idea of when might in-person learning come because again we were anticipating maybe a date um to work with was other we've other districts have have asked families to identify if you had to make a decision today would you want an in-person learning opportunity or do you want an online so that they can staff appropriately we cannot

170staff in a line overnight that is something i mean truly truly even if parents ended up changing their mind if we had a good understanding of what you think you want for your child if you had to make that decision today and knowing that there are metrics so that we can begin to anticipate how many teachers students on campus that has an impact on our rooms our physical distancing it has impact for staffing online those purely online and we need time to align and make that match so one of the things that we are talking about doing is is and you see a sample of some writing there is asking people to to just to to share with us at this point if you had to decide not because we want to make you force

171you to have an answer right now but we need an idea of what our staffing might look like because there it can change and you can change your mind but if we don't know if we don't know how to anticipate we can't align for that and it can't happen overnight this is going to be a multi-multi-week process and even that is going to be really pushing it and so if we delay we can delay but it will delay us further being able to align and make matching happen for staffing dr foley yeah so i think you guys probably get all the same emails i get i got about half a dozen people already just this afternoon saying look we don't you can ask me to make a decision right now i'm i want to wait

172until august 7th when we know what that criteria is so i just want to pass that along i think you've got cc'd on a couple of them anyway but that's fair it it is it is fair and knowing that if we choose to wait to send a survey out until that point we were going to need to allow time for us to to to get that information and align and and at some point too we're so far in the semester there's a you know changing one model to another is is a challenge and yet at this moment we're we're all remote learning and we started the year remote learning for that purpose so and dr foley with that we're not holding any parent to what they might say in their survey either and they can

173absolutely change their mind but you're trying to get like sorry a majority of our parents today to give us an idea of what they would prefer because it will help us with help us with staff to helping us with staffing decisions and it's going to take us some time to note to know that and again it and and we're going to have to use that to help us with making sure we have adequate coverage for all of our classes so again not wanting to commit one way or another knowing that there is option to change that is one of the things we need to know the other thing in this survey that we would have been asking and you see in a sample there an example is we want you to tell us what you're

174thinking knowing that you may change your mind and but the other thing is is we're asking you if you are going to be requesting support services with us clarifying what it isn't um we need to know because i we we need a safety and security situation on our campuses to anticipate and plan for who's coming um and where so that we can adequately respond to that so that's one of the things we really need to know so even if it is even if the decision or the guidance here is we need to we need to know what what people are wanting not that they can't change their mind and i saw there was some very thoughtful uh emails saying can you add a suggestion that says i want in person i want in person after

175i've reviewed the metrics you know i want online only right now again however we choose to do that we need to get a sense of that um for staffing perhaps we can ask i'm i will return i mean like you said we've got emails all day today um and not just today throughout this there are people who my kids returning in person as soon as those doors open they're going and then you have on the other side my child will not be returning they will continue the online at least until i determine it's safe and some have even flat out said for the entire year they have no intention of sending their child to school at all this year and that's you know those are choices so maybe on the survey that we're asking these

176questions you can get the i will so yes i i will send my child back to school on the reopening date and then have the i'm somewhat likely to return them to school or i'm somewhat likely not to return them to school and that kind of it should give us the definites um these ones are for sure not these ones are for sure are and then kind of where the ones that are teetering a little bit like you said um that they want to wait until they see what these benchmarks are you're you're asking me to make a decision and and i totally understand we're all having to make decisions and these everyone has said it not binding decisions for our families but we're having to make decisions with not all information and so if

177we if there's someone whose mindset is you have this mitigation plan you meet the benchmarks whatever they may be because we don't know yet we don't even know what they are more or less are we close we have no idea um so someone's thought process may be with this mitigation plan and i think you guys have spelled a lot out tonight and with meeting these benchmarks then i am likely to send my student back to school or i just still don't know but i'm not ready to make a full decision on it well what it does is it allows us to at least get a sense of where people are feeling right now knowing that they that obviously the more we know and again just like we've learned all along that was one of the

178reasons why we said we're not going to keep asking people because literally what we felt today changed in three days because more information continued to change and i think that that is the reality this is the reality in the heartbreak um the us uncertainty and the not knowing and then not being able to plan we're also hearing that in our voices saying i just need to know so that i can plan and we're trying to but we're also trying to be responsive to the information that we get at the moment and be responsible with that information so um never in a million years what i have imagined as i saw my son phil himself fill out his uh august calendar and his i it just hit me when he wrote first day of school with

179on the 17th with a question mark you know when in the world would we not you know know these things but dr foley i i read this executive order over and over in my head and this support services like can we dive into that word for just a few more minutes like exactly what does that look like and maybe explain to our parents that are watching what what does that really look like in this executive order well what it means is that we are not required the the 17th does that mean you have to start if if you have a space to come it isn't like you're returning to your your classroom like you did when we were all day every day what it would mean is that it could be a teacher it could

180be a paraprofessional it depends on the number the thing is is this always goes back to how many and who and how are we going to cover that that would work with those students now let me give some examples there are some specialty populations so some of our special ed classrooms our students who are extreme programs where this is an opportunity for them to come and to work with their teacher so those so support services as intended for our for those populations but in general this is someone to work with your student to facilitate their remote learning at that time if you are not back in full in-person learning so it doesn't mean come to the school building and school is it like it was it is you come and you'll be in a face

181mask and you'll be working with someone to support you during these times and there would be lunch food services provided there would be support there would be interaction obviously but how many students and would help us determine how we're going to have to staff that and so it could be perhaps one or two classrooms per site it might not be every site so it's very up in the air based on what we get our feedback from our and i know that again i heard the emails i've read every single one that i could possibly read before the board meeting started tonight and i hear the hearts of every single mom and father and grand grandparents writing us god bless them um yeah but we just kind of got to get a number we need to

182know we need and that's one of the things that needs to be part of the survey is again we're not we want to hear what are you thinking and i and i feel that if adding that piece that says in person if you know again says i'm if it makes you feel better not to have to commit but it gives us a ballpark for staffing is important but in addition to that if this executive order expects on the 17th there is something and there are specialty populations this is intended for but it doesn't exclude we need to be able to know you're intending and needing this service so that we can so that the site administration can follow up with you to make sure you understand what we can do and how we're going to

183staff that we need time and that's one of the reasons why we would need to send a survey out like we need to send it out thursday friday ask it back from you by monday which is tight turnaround but that gives us two weeks to figure out who how many where how much and how to support that date while we're waiting for other metrics to help us understand this so again not ideal timeline but this is the reality of the information that we have and the things we need to navigate through i mean we need obviously you know here we are we're having this discussion for the first time as as a collective on interpreting what does this mean obviously we have some work to do we need to take a look at where we're

184required to have a mass face covering policy asba has put those out we need to take a look at that that would be again one of the things that would be pretty common across that most east valley all the state districts who are usually using this but we would need to adopt that regulation um we really need to yes know where parents are but we also need to know who is planning on taking advantage of that and helping under them understand that this is not um return as normal if we aren't full fully back in the buildings and again there are a lot of things we need to as discussed tonight for a safe return to the buildings there's many things that we have got to work through and think about so this will be

185two questions on the survey will there be two questions okay i'm like just thinking this out like as a parent taking a survey there will be one question that looks like this one question that looks like this right the truth there's two things i kind of gave a sample for you to look at yeah there's two things there would be sort of an explanation that and it would be a communication to uh junior members that basically does this it says let us for those for those who are not watching let us summarize for you exact exactly the three main things that are part of this executive order that that leaves us with two scenarios because again you you and i are all hearing from people equally please delay and we're getting as many you start

186as soon as you can possibly start and so we're seeing we're hearing both sides very very clearly i also have some executive orders and some decisions we have to make together um so the idea is we're saying parents here's the executive order here's the scenarios we're going to ask you to do a survey and in the survey you're going to to tell us this because we need to this is going to help help us with staffing because this is going to take some time here to align the other part is is that this also helps us to know how many kids are we looking at providing in safe and secure and appropriate support services for starting on the 17th as per executive order dr foley i um just i know that many people um you

187know and it's you know we live it and eat it and drink it all day long all of this stuff but there was so many of our community members and our staff that didn't even realize that we are being mandated to open up for these support services on august 17th that's right we were not given that choice right so and then it was but it was vague it was it was clear as mud what that looks like for us you know and so this is why we're challenged right now with getting this survey out is because of that in the executive order that many people didn't even know existed yeah and it does i think that it was a tale of two two two two tales uh a tale of two cities the best of

188times the worst of times you heard you that we're not going to give a date and yet in the executive order there is a date for some some very tight expectations so that's a reality we're navigating through and that's why we're talking about this tonight and why we need to hear from our community on what are you thinking especially and especially the component about the 17th and helping us anticipate and appropriately staff so and understanding that nobody is going to be held to to whatever i choose on this survey today does not mean that more information in several weeks from now i can't change my mind but if if if our administrative team has the ability to have an idea of what those numbers are we can begin leveraging appropriate conversations and staffing to ensure

189the best and most appropriate transition when we are able to safely say we can return to to school to return to in-person learning and so the second thing i showed you is kind of an example what that survey would look like it's it's two sets of questions it's a tell us what you're thinking now again if with feedback we've give given is kind of an option one and one one a one b which is yes i'm interested in person but i'm not willing to say that until i have seen the metrics and to nope i'm pretty and we have heard from families too who said i know i'm not planning on returning and let us know that now so that we can begin to adequately staff for that appropriately particularly now that we are really

190working through the as you have been so wonderful to support the the beginning of our online academy so here's that is our our our next next steps we need to also work with our employees to inform them of these mitigation plans which are still in that draft form um that we're getting guidance on what needs to include but are the very documents and and components we talked about earlier tonight um we need to also survey our our staff members again and say tell us again what your what your preference is now that doesn't mean that we can meet everyone's preference but where are you and how are you feeling about this and then we need to kind of look at what does this mean for us and moving forward so i think my clicker decides

191this stuff will these go out per child the survey or family okay i know some kids in the family may want to go back and some do not so actually in my own household that's how it's going to be right so i do see both sides of the emails that are coming in very clearly so i want to make sure that each child gets the survey not each family yes no this will be pertailing and and and board member wilson to your question question about should we send this through survey through synergy do we do this as a separate form well we have exhausted our our capacity in um synergy is not very survey friendly and so one of the things we found to be able to get the information is that it's going to

192go out from each site in a form of component per kid so that we can monitor it more quickly and more efficiently and yes it means that they're going to end up meeting put their student name and id number but honestly the the challenges with the other were not were not less than ideal so this is the more reliable tool to use for this purpose is what we've learned so we need to know your child's name and id number because we need to know what site they're at i've forgotten that question that a couple parents were concerned about putting their child's id number out there but we need to know your child's name so we can link them to the appropriate class it also helps us make sure we've gotten every single student at that

193campus and so you can see from the attendance we monitor closely who our kids are our our building leaders want to be able to touch and know what their parents and kids are thinking so that we can staff appropriately so when we look at dr foley i'm sorry on this survey and i know it it might add just let you all chew on it but are we going to put a place for comments or no i know that that has been a conversation that i've had with parents and a lot of them want to put a comment and i know that makes it a lot of work for us to read through them but hey we we are not wanting to not provide an opportunity for for that and so i think we can easily

194add a comment okay thank you you know and maybe we can separate it out we can have a specific questions and um other comments and that way it will help us you know begin to look at what's actionable for us to help respond to so yeah here's the other thing that so so so what do we do and how do we do this when we start putting this again going back to the timeline of this um obviously july 29th here we are tonight we are talking about this um one of the things that we were wanting to do is send out this communication to two parents with some based on some feedback that we've just talked about adding maybe a comment section maybe adding a part about when i have more metrics at least to

195just get us that information to ballpark it um for us to be able to staff appropriately and to anticipate who's coming on who's think who's thinking they're coming and requesting support on the 17. we're also wanting to send out something to our staff as well to get a sense where they're at we were thinking of a very quick turnaround time because we need time to interpret that look at that start talking about that one of the things i'm proposing not that i want to add more meetings to anybody's calendar but i'm proposing we consider looking at adding and this is a thursday so that we have enough time to get the data together and review a policy would be to add a governing board meeting for us to to look at the face the face

196coverings policy that asba is putting out there because we would need to have that in place to be able to communicate that as one of the mitigation strategies and per executive order and also review our survey data uh what what are what are our numbers looking like right now what are we hearing both from our teachers and from from our from our community and then the august 7th which is a friday is the date that they have indicated we should have hopefully sooner than i will tell you that i have reached out to every single person who i worked with at the ate who was part of those committees saying does anybody know have any idea what are we looking at how does this look um and and we are not i don't have any

197more information and then obviously the 12th was our next scheduled board meeting for us to come back with we have had metrics we will have had um our numbers for us to interpret what do we now do what is our recommendation for for this moving forward so we can respond those are let's uh questions ideas thoughts dr foley real quick on the timeline i don't know how my other board members feel but for me i would much prefer adding a board meeting and i know it's not a lot of time but either friday night after those benchmarks are released or on saturday where we can adopt that mask policy and have the discussion of whatever those benchmarks are i agree so i mean i i was just saying yeah for me because instead of doing

198it the day before we're all going to be sitting there going what is it what is it what is it and then let's do it together we can't talk until the 12th anyway and we know we're on a timeline so i know for me i would rather either do friday night um and i know that doesn't give you guys a lot of time to pull it together um and i know we're going to kind of be prepared like oh we just need this this and you know watching we're going to have all kinds of data waiting to be pulled or like i said or on saturday where we can sit down and kind of talk about those metrics where are we as a district and adopt a face mask policy at that point so i

199agree i can be very flexible on those states too i do help me that you decide and we will make that happen saturday morning at eight nine friday night friday night what would be we are what what time are these benchmarks being released on august 7th we said by august 7th we have no idea we live here we live here seven days a week anyhow so any anyhow any time we're here i i think the seventh i mean if they are running late my fear is is that we i say we'll be scrambled i think we're going to be on the saturday morning so that they've been out and we have a chance to have all read it and bring ourselves up is that okay mr glover okay the saturday morning the eighth because we

200have no and let's hope they're done sooner but i i i have no idea nine am nine am for nine a.m nine a.m mr watovic is retired i'm thinking more of them if they're going to be working late into friday because they just got it and they're yes give them a little bit of time i just want to thank you again i know that i think mr glover would like to uh take the microphone for a minute and thank you for coming tonight even though i know you're not feeling so hot but it it's been a really difficult time in the past week of going through all of this data that you um have put together and shame on them shame on them for throwing this in the laps of boards and we are not

201doctors we are not immunologists we are not cdc people we are not any of those things we are moms and dads and um community members that want the very best for our students and all i can say is shame on them for what they put us through and i am not happy and my vote mr glover will show that i know you love to push that every year and um yeah that's that's my amy rand 2020. going to jump in right quick before scott goes because i know he's going to have a long one and i think it's going to be great but um shame on them for saying that our websites would be up to date as he was speaking i was frustrated because we were hearing the knowledge just as our whole community

202was hearing the knowledge and shame on them because it was not nice because we did not know what he was going to say they did not know what he was going to say and it was just look on your community website so shame on them but go ahead mr glover i'm excited to hear your rant of the day a lot of pressure thank you guys well um you know i think a lot of people are expecting um we're expecting something big to happen on august 17th i think they kind of still are but i'm glad you guys clarified it so i wrote down some thoughts um that i would like to share to maybe help stir some conversation and maybe the people watching can can have these conversations so uh seat belts you guys only

203have me for eight or nine more meetings or maybe ten so um but i am not mad at any of the people who presented here and and and have written this plan i thank you and i'm looking at you and i'm saying thank you it's a lot of work thank you so you're doing what the governor has ordered you to do but what i'm about to say as august 17th approaches is that if we still find it unsafe to fully return by that date maybe we should start thinking about what school could look like if we planned it the way educators think is best maybe if some teachers and administrators hear what i'm about to say it'll inspire them to think a little bit differently because i think the traditional way we're looking at this

204is not really helping us too much but we get mail from all sorts of different people with all sorts of different opinions and no matter what anyone says i have full confidence that the teachers in america will catch our kids up academically when we do get back whenever that is i have no doubts about it we'll catch them up even faster if we could take this giant anchor of substandard standardized tests off their off their necks but that's that's another rant another time you know our families are under the impression that these kids will be okay because they trust us but we're only planning for august 17th because that's that's the date that is being demanded of us um by the governor he's not a teacher august 17th isn't a date i would have picked

205it doesn't sound like most you would have picked that either um so how can we keep kids safe if we open at 100 capacity i don't know i don't know um but why are we even being asked to i would feel a whole lot better if we let our churches open at 100 first or our gyms or our restaurants or our bars or our movie theaters or baseball or football soccer stadiums you know just stop counting people at home depot just let everybody in you know this is what you're asking us to do open up the casinos have all the slot machines open and all the chairs at the bingo tables and blackjack tables open open everything at 100 and if if if those numbers trend down in maricopa county for two weeks then i

206think we'll all feel a lot better about opening our classrooms and our cafeterias and our hallways and our libraries and our gyms and our playgrounds and our drinking fountains and our bathrooms restaurants have closed about 50 percent of their tables so how's that going the classroom we already pack like 30 plus desks in there and these 25 pound backpacks that these kids have to lug around so are we going to block off half the desks cool then you've got to build twice as many schools because we don't have any empty classrooms in arizona not really you know and then you're going to have to hire twice as many teachers in a state that before covid had 1800 classrooms last year without qualified teachers you know you know we don't have one toilet and one faucet

207per student in our schools they share and it's like a high ratio so some of our younger kids they'll go to the bathroom and packs you really think we're going to be able to clean those those thoroughly after every class uses them every time every day you know do you think we're going to be able to like you were saying before you think we're going to be able to clean every single high school classroom during five minute passing periods five or six times a day what's the recess even going to look like those kids absolutely need recess do you think we have the capacity to clean all the balls and wipe down the monkey bars and the swings after each kid uses them these are things that people when they demand that we go back

208have to start thinking about and substitutes we didn't have enough before covet so what happens when a teacher has to be quarantined for two weeks you know that some what some school districts do is when there's not enough subs they split the classes so instead of 30 kids in a class now you got 45 kids in a class and this is our third or fourth presentation i'm not really throwing shade at you guys but i don't think we have a plan for that other than to hope it doesn't happen um you know who wants to go back to school more than anyone is our teachers we hate remote robotic learning we don't like it at all teachers are all about relationships and we miss our kids so people are saying teachers don't want to go

209back yeah we do i want out of my house so what do we do we got to start thinking about what a return to school this quarter is actually going to look like and what we want our kids to get out of schooling when they can't all physically be here simultaneously are there things we can do for social emotional learning and wellness are there things certain groups need more than others or differently than others can anything be done in person if so what and how high schools might need something entirely different than our k-8 students and maybe we could do something about that definitely some of our special ed population needs something soon and we probably ought to focus a little bit uh less on core curriculum content and more on socialization and connections and

210sel and nutrition and physical fitness and mental mental health our poor kindergarten teachers and these little kids who will be starting school for the first time is there something better we can provide for them giving them a laptop seems more like punishment to me than a benefit so if the governor is not going to lead our teachers have shown that they they will and i think we're getting dangerously close to a real tipping point with our teachers again and the clock is ticking to april 17th i mean uh until august the 17th by my account he's 0-2 against teachers and if he wants to go over three keep doing what you're doing governor move the goal post every few weeks so that none of us have any certainty at all you know teachers have not

211been together in person since like spring break so i'm not even sure the surveys we're sending out that we have a real sense of what our employees all throughout arizona are willing to do to to to come back or not on august 17th i don't think we have a real good sense of that you know the numbers in maricopa county we have to acknowledge are getting worse we have really bus drivers in america are older a lot of our paras and cafeteria workers are older our principals are older that's a high-risk category right out of the gate one out of five teachers are over 55 that's a high-risk category so to me it's one thing to be willing to put your kid at risk but when you put others at risk look we live in

212a country that has four percent of the world's population of the world's coveted cases so are we ignorant are we selfish are we stupid are we inept or are we just unlucky we got to ask ourselves these questions because it's imagine having to explain to your first grader why mrs seaver's not coming back to school ever again you know or why grandpa's dead now and these are the things that we're going to have to grapple with if we want to be in a haste to rush back to school and you know what people can be as mad at me as they want you want to send me a letter or hit me up to chat then do what educators are supposed to do we're supposed to be data driven decision makers so send me some

213thoughtful meaningful useful trustworthy verifiable data from experts facts i know that pediatrician suggests that school is beneficial for kids we all know that it's one of the reasons we have school but are those pediatricians really recommending that right now in a county where over a hundred and eleven thousand of our 165 000 cases are in maricopa county are those pediatricians recommending our kids hurry back to school maricopa has more cases than all of our almost twice as many as all the other counties combined so if you don't know someone who has covid or who's on the front lines fighting this you should probably seek him out and talk to him before you demand that we send our employees back and your children back into this bonfire you know again i am not mad at any

214of you guys for what you're being asked i just think august 17th is going to get here and we're going to be right back where we started from and instead we should be thinking a whole lot more about how we can really make the most out of the time when we can't be where we all want to be which is together once again and school boards can help decide what constitutes credit at a secondary level we could rethink that and i'm totally flexible for that ade for elementary just has suggestions as far as i know for what an elementary day looks like so why not rethink it you know are there times and places we could use for safe socialization and what would the frequency of that be you know these things like cooperative learning

215and small group work and collaboration are all things you're not going to be able to do anyway in person so why not rethink what our school day looks like and how our school campus might even look like and how better we can use our resources the limited resources that we have right now there are opportunities i think to maybe try and meet safely in person just not how we are accustomed to do to doing that and certainly not in my opinion at full capacity five days a week not until the numbers in maricopa county show a period of decline so for me i don't want my headstone to say he did nothing he just went along and didn't say anything so thank you guys for hearing me out and humoring me and uh i just

216wanted to speak up and say what i i think is on a lot of people's minds so that's the end of my rant and i welcome your responses thank you as always mr glover and i i kind of had the same thought that when i can go to my gym and when i can go to my church i thought those very same thoughts thanks for your for your time on that anybody else president taylor and my thought is having open comment at our board meetings as well we don't allow that we're reducing the numbers to keep us safe right we're gonna have um starting at our next board meeting because this agenda was already established we're gonna put a link for our august 12th for public comment to go through the website so that we

217can read those comments during our meeting so that is coming august 12th and i think that's important we don't allow more than 10 ish 12 or i don't know count 12-ish in here and so until we allow some people to sit in the back or i know some other school boards are working on different ideas we need to work we need to not have a classroom that has more than that it's my thought president keller thank you mr glover unfortunately i agree to disagree with you and um i kind of represent that other piece to it um i think that's the beauty of the choice and right now as a parent of a student i don't have that choice and i'm sorry again like mr glover i'm not trying to offend anybody i think we're

218providing a very sub-par education to our students every teacher is working harder than they ever have and i'm not trying to discredit that whatsoever and they have put thoughtful things together we anyone who has worked from home there there is no work hours you are working all the time and you're taking a a dinner break and you're having dinner with your family and you're back on the couch with your laptop and you're working you're not engaged with your family you're working you are always working when you're working from home and i'm not discrediting what the teachers have put out there they have worked really hard and we are doing what we can with what we have and i have had so many teachers contact me this last week and say please please tell me we're

219going back to work on the 17th please tell me we will be in classrooms please tell me we will have students they said i'm not meant to be an online teacher and right now i feel extremely inadequate in my job i take pride in educating my students i take pride in them learning and right now we're having interaction some face to face or through this computer but they're self-teaching there's only so much i can teach and engage and work with them over the internet they're having to self-teach i can give them lessons they're having to read it they can log in and ask me questions but i am not teaching i'm giving instruction and they're following instructions and like i said the teachers have communicated to me that they feel very inadequate in their job

220but as a parent i am willing to send my child back to school had this conversation with them and they're not afraid to go they know that they're responsible for their own hand sanitizer they're responsible for their own safety they know they don't hug other kids they know that and they are responsible for that and they want to go back they want to learn and it's not even that they get to hang out with their friends they want to learn and so i think that that is the beauty of the choice because right now i don't have a choice my choice is gone on how my child gets educated i don't i just don't have that choice we have different options and while i'm saying currently that what i feel my student is getting my

221child is subpar is no ding to anybody their teachers are great they've been reaching out our higley virtual online our higley virtual academy is 10 times robust than what we're doing right now we're doing the remote learning and we're doing it the best we can and they will get through it and what we have created was for short term and we knew that and we whether we transitioned to our higley virtual academy or in person learning they will have that choice and for those who choose the online learning they will get a much more robust interaction curriculum and i have full confidence in it my child doesn't learn online and that's not their their way or their choice and for parents who who want to choose that we have that choice and for our teachers

222that we can accommodate have that choice we at that point everyone has a voice on what they choose to do and i don't know anyone who will fault anyone for choosing one way or another everyone has their reasons all of us up here have different experiences with this as as do everyone out there and based on our experience can drive how we feel i won't say i haven't lost anyone to this because i have and that doesn't change my choice on the 17th i i don't know about the 17th on being able to turn everything over we need to give these kids in-person learning that want to be there we need to get these teachers in person teaching that want to be there and i think like i said with mr rotovic i think every

223individual is responsible for participating in everyone else's safety just like the mask mandate that may not it's not necessarily for me but it could be for you i'm protecting you i'm protecting me it's all of our responsibility to help keep everyone else safe and so i think that it's important that we have a choice and anyone can choose not to and i don't fault them for that i don't felt them that at all the governor since this has happened has continued to push children into group settings they have continued to push children into boys and girls clubs they have continued to push children into ymca's our own kids club kids are pushed into there those are group settings they continue to push them into child care centers those are all group settings and you everyone

224has to be responsible they have to have a plan ymca was talking today about let us share with you how we've been successful so when in-person learning comes hopefully you guys can learn from us but we have continued to send our children into group settings and so i think that for me my choice is to send my own student to in person i think we need to be able to give our parents and our staff a choice and not keep it at a one-sided perspective and not prevent somebody who cannot learn online or who doesn't learn online not to mention the other pieces of that i have i have three people online at the same time in my home [Music] and i try and do most of my work from home because i am a

225firm believer if no unnecessary contact so if i don't physically have to be at work i'm not at work if i physically have to be there i am but i try and do most of my work from home if i don't need to my husband's working from home i i'm telling you on tuesday i had to log three of us off because the online the live version the streaming no one was going anywhere everything was just spinning and it's not lack of internet i have cox gigablast and so i there is no faster internet i can get but for me at that point the importance sorry is my husband's work when he's on a conference call trying to work um so we all had to kind of get off and let that happen but there's

226so many logistical issues including the social emotional and we have to recognize that and our kids are expected to be in school and it's not asking teachers to babysit i'm asking teachers to educate and educate at a level that meets our students we have talked about that of providing the education that meets the level of our students and if we can meet the level of our students for those online great then we can meet the students and and those are family choices and i think that we need to look at giving the choices back to our families as well to make that choice including our students or our staff our staff needs to have that choice too and mrs martins have said you know we're willing to work through things the best we can and

227everyone has to we're all having to make choices we never wanted to in the last six months so i totally hear you and i too like mrs kaler have my melon ballot to to send and and voting this year is really important whether we agree or disagree on how it's been handled it has been thrown in our laps and i agree shame shame on them we all had this waiting for this great press conference to be told nothing it was really frustrating and then to be told we're going to give you benchmarks but you're going to make that decision at a local level um so yes shame on them and if you were going to do that why didn't you do that long ago if and make that option um at the local level and

228um so i i hear you i hear all of our families i hear the emails i hear both sides and i get it and i don't fault anyone for it i think actually today i received more emails today saying please resume then i did not but if we resume in person and those who are asking for us not to return they don't need to return they can choose the online option for right now if that's meeting their family needs and so for us to say we won't return in person i don't agree with and i think that um we need to look at that to be able to give them the choice i hear everyone who's saying i'm not comfortable then that's okay i appreciate that and and you have the choice but give us

229the choice to return in person as well thank you mrs reese and this is exactly our emails every day right here we get one and then we get another one and and this is exactly what we see every single day so thank you for bringing it to life on the school board president taylor i just like to say in closing tonight is not a discussion about how i'm voting tonight we have to get additional information in reference to casting a vote so tonight we're not voicing our opinion as far as reference to voting and i think i'd like you um in closing to review over the last page on the timeline so the community members that are watching will understand the timeline that's taking place for us from here on in sure thank you curtis

230can we bring up that timeline again one more time any other questions or comments while we look at that last slide and we're going to change it from i think august 7th to august 8th for our meeting at 9 00 a.m to go over surveys and benchmarks so moving on for some future agenda items i just had a couple um just again my my board can we're going to talk about a policy for the superintendent for a threshold a dollar amount that came up this evening with our the mahoney group and with that we'll do a informational meeting or an informational item with the mahoney group so we can go over our insurance policies that we have and then i still would like to see at some point if the board would like is a

231conversation and or informational and or vote on an in-house versus outhouse attorney i guess we just need to have that soon so especially in copen so um those are my thoughts anybody else have anything we we put some dates on um the gifted and talented program towards the end of august the handbook for athletics and eligibility and we're also going to talk about the fees during that as well um textbook adoption process in october and then mr lotson highs big lots course guides we're going to throw you right in there in november so anything else all right and here is again our proposed updated timeline but again we are going to meet august 8th not the 6th at 9 00 a.m and with that i move that we adjourn second all those in favor aye

232good evening you