001okay you guys we're gonna be live here thanks for joining us okay i'm going to call them meeting to order at 6 p.m i need a adoption of the agenda i move that we adopt the agenda as presented second all in favor aye aye aye motion carry five to zero we do have everyone in attendance today ms carr is on via zoom so yay let's do the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay do we have any public comments no we do not all right so no information and discussion items we'll move right into our action item discussion and consideration for approval of changes to the covet 19 mitigation
002plan for 2122. okay very simplistically um uh part of the requirements of the american recovery uh act is that you have to have approval of the cove mitigation plan for the district which you did back in july it's supposed to be reviewed every six months for changes but anytime you do make a change you have to get board approval again so that's the purpose of this agenda the reason why we're moving it through tonight versus next week is is uh quite simply we're at at a point where the volume of cases is becoming overwhelming uh for some of our issues to give you perspective in the first 15 months we had 205 cases across the full 15 months probably a 50 50 split adult to kids in last semester uh in the fall semester we
003had approximately was a 550 550 cases last semester uh since january 3rd we are just short we're at 438 cases so just or excuse me 388 cases were just short of 400 cases within basically one month and so where we we thought the first year five or six cases a day was hard to sustain with the contact tracing in particular then when you popped about 20 cases on average last fall that became difficult we had a eight day stretch where we ran somewhere between 30 and 60 cases a day and so the the ability to do the contact tracing especially in light of the changes with the cdc and so specifically what i'm talking about there is with the cdc which is the same thing adhs which is the same thing pinella county health are
004doing first of all they not just that they move the uh the period of isolation be it either in isolation for a positive case or uh quarantining for close contact down to five days with then depending on where you looking and who you talk to recommendation to wear masks after that but they had the caveat under quarantining that said if you are able to quarantine then you just wear a mask for 10 days and so even in my conversations with pinal county health they recognize that with that caveat the first time you made an exception you basically just opened up the door for everybody to do 10 days and so we're spending an inordinate amount of time and i shouldn't say we i mean there's principals that are doing it at their sites their administrative
005assistants at their sites there's the technology department there's kayla there's deanna i mean there's lots of people that are that are i don't think people understand just what it takes to go ahead and get all this information out you basically can lock up a school two schools depending on number cases plus a good portion of the district office just trying to figure out contact tracing getting letters out apprising people of everything and and in many cases the individuals who would be close contacted are shown up to school anyway because there's a caveat that they can show up to school if they wear a mask we're not mandating they wear a mask we're strongly recommending it very difficult to to manage that because which kids on five days from uh coming off a positive taste test
006which gives on five days coming off of a quarantine which gets on five day or ten days on a quarantine uh you know which kid got uh came off one to go back on another one so it's just getting it's just getting very very very difficult and i don't know that it's effectively taking care of the issue that we're trying to to do um and so as we as we look to see how do we become how do we continue to move the district forward uh administration has looked this and said this is this is really just not sustainable so what we're really looking for tonight is very simplistically uh you can't discuss anything within the coveted mitigation plan and we can pull it up on the screen because the way the agenda items worked
007what we're specifically asking for is that we would no longer contact trace there's any number of districts around the the state that have have gone to that just for the very same reason we have uh just the the sheer volume of of what's taking place we would continue to notify parents what that notification looks like we've talked about it and i would ask for some latitude over the next couple of days for us to fine tune it i want to get your opinion on what you think the notification should be but we're still working on what the what the uh practicality of that would would look like so that we don't just create another problem uh within within the notification process that is really at this point in time the only change that we are
008are asking for uh relative to the plan there may be other things that you may have concerns about that would be more than happy to discuss just as a notion on a procedural level um what will happen based on your decision tonight uh if there is a change to it if there's not a change to the current plan then we wouldn't do anything but if there is a change under the american rescue plan we are required to get public input so what we said we'd do back in july which we'll continue to do is very similar to what ade does on most things is you guys can make the change we put it out for comment if there's substantial comments from a significant number of people about a specific issue of what the change was
009then we would bring it back at the next board meeting to discuss uh in most likelihood when we did this in july we had comments but there was no pattern we had some people on this side of the fence some people on that side of the fence um some people quite frankly didn't i don't think read it and so their comments were really um counter to they wanted us to do what we were already doing so so if there's nothing there then we would just continue with this and if we decide to make any other changes in the future we'd come back so just know that's the procedural piece that'll take care that will take place after this but the bottom line is all we're asking is do we eliminate the contact tracing and then
010we would notify parents for clarity we would notify parents on exposure and then the parents would have to make the decision as to whether they wanted to keep their child home or not but if they called us and asked us about a contact tracing with my child in a situation where they were close to a person we would have to tell them um we do not know because we're not doing that so i'd open it up for discussion but that kind of sets the table for what we're asking for tonight okay why don't we just start with one one at a time we'll start with you stephen i don't have any questions okay um i'm looking at one of the attachments which is the us department of education interim final ruling and under it um
011there's a capital letter a universal and correct wearing of masks so i'm curious as to if we go to the five-day quarantine period it's the the other yeah and then if you scroll down to the keep going keep going keep going keep going help me i'm sorry maybe it's the one but it's the one that's um has the four pages to it and it's page number three of four i think it's the other attachment because that one has five pages okay okay so if you stop there so if you see the capital letter a universal and correct wearing a mask i'm wondering with the um cdc change and five days of quarantine and five days of wearing masks do they mandate and require mask wearing or do they recommend they're wrapping that i'm trying to
012see how that fits into what's up i believe and again some of you that also worked on this but my recollection is that they did not come out with a mandating a mask it was a strongly recommended uh language that was used by the cdc which created some of the some of the issues even even within this um uh there was not a mandating of masks uh even through the cdc strongly recommended or i think was a term they used i'm looking out the audience guidelines should wear a mask and so so there is not a mandate in anywhere and so we're we're back to that same issue um relative to anything to do with masks and so we have adopted when we came back this uh for this semester we just use that same
013language i mean we might have used strongly recommended but but not a mandate because it's not being supported by cdc guidelines as a mandate so there is no mandate of it and even just to be totally honest trying to track that becomes very very difficult when you have x number of kids in any sort of setting we do the best we can but it's a very difficult situation so there's there's no mandating that's my question okay chad sure um i actually i think i think this is a great idea i think it hopefully will help out and if everybody all the principals were on board with this idea as well then that's a good thing too um i know before what we were criticized for was not necessarily jumping to this but our understanding was
014that you know the language from pinal county right was that we were doing exactly what we thought we were supposed to be doing is that correct the language so did the cdc guidelines change recently which is making this uh this is not possible yeah the the the change was back on december 27th the issue that comes up with pinal county again just in having their conversations they understand what that change does to school districts relative to what's taking place the other piece that i have not seen um uh is is some changes relative to to the legal aspects of contact tracing and and how we can communicate uh with pinal county so even with contact tracing we no longer communicate contact tracing with pinal county we just provide the data for them for positive cases
015um because there's a ruling out there that they may violate ferpa so there's probably two or three things that that have changed since uh december and the cdc's new rulings on the 27th that have placed us in this position that um i would say we we i don't know if it's more latitude or it's just that that things are evolving and it's not quite as as cut and dry as as maybe people were saying in the past well i just a comment and then a question that but my comment is just i think it's been a admirable and herculean task to try to keep up with what we were trying to keep up with and i i understand the parents that were upset um seeing other schools who are kind of already moving to something
016like this but since that wasn't what we were asked to do um i i appreciate the integrity of this district and you dr wyman and the principals and everybody trying to just do what we we knew was trying to do what was best for students and the teachers and follow what the guidelines said and uh waiting until a moment like this where the cdc now gave us some guidelines that allow us to to now go move in this direction my only other question is um i know that you're saying that the the only thing that you want you're asking for is to is is that one thing is there anything else that you would like as well second on the list no the the only other part would just be the the the we will
017continue to notify parents of exposure so if if if a kid comes or an adult quite frankly comes with positive a positive test then there will there will be a form of notification um uh may change from what we're doing right now we're still working on that there would be a form of notification to parents of the exposure but not other close contact um and so that would be the second part of it but at this point i don't believe there's there's anything else i think any other things that we do um or decisions that we do would make in the next month or so we probably have a little bit more latitude just the way uh the plan is written the current plan the way it's written is very specific that we will follow
018the cdc guidelines which if we do this and the cdc guidelines say at least you will be doing contact tracing so we have to change that language because it does not comply with with what's in the current plan okay well i think that's i i'm i'm grateful and glad that now that that there is some more leeway for us to to move in this direction i think it's great for parents to have the choice right uh lisa do you have any questions comments my my only comment is that i think that um i'm in agreement i think this has been a very taxing process and well when we started we didn't quite know how long this was going to go on and it's gone on for a very long period of time which has made
019it really daunting and so i like the fact that parents are still get the opportunity to be notified but yet we're moving forward with how the cdc is also making their changes so hopefully this will help us move forward to the next step okay um i'm definitely on board i'm i do think we need to have our kids in the classroom so um with that i will take a motion i'm hoping to approve the update to the district's 2021 22 cover 19 mitigation plan as presented second uh all in favor hi hi aye uh did i hear yeah yeah okay motion carries five to zero so we will i'll just uh um i guess i'll make a motion to adjourn at 6 15. second all in favor hi hi i i lisa did she say
020all right all right bye thanks guys [Applause]